Another TV news personality has been urged not to have children. The twist is that this time it is a male anchor, not a woman.

For those not enamored of following Florida media insider baseball, you can bail out now. But for the rest of us media whores, there is a wonderful story that has been playing out for a week or so in Miami, where the ABC affiliate WPLG has fired one of its anchors who now claims it is because he is (gasp!) gay.

Charles Perez has fought back, with a sexual orientation discrimination complaint (which he claims triggered the firing) and a blog post in the Daily Beast in which he details his claims that station management was afraid of his increasing gay profile and urged him not to have children with his male partner. (The station, in written statements, denies Perez’s allegations.)

Perez writes:

Bottom line, I believe they sold me out as soon as my being gay became too widely known. It made them uncomfortable and made me, in their eyes, less advertiser-friendly. They’d demoted me two weeks earlier from main weekday anchor to weekend anchor. It was a move I quickly recognized was leading to the door, and I wasn’t prepared to watch my career circle down the drain.

My ex-employer will never admit this, but if the past decades have taught us anything, it is to be much more subtle about our prejudices. Getting rid of “the black guy” or “the woman” or “the gay guy” or “the Jew”—not to mention many other select groups—has given way to “we really should go in a different direction.” Or “we’ve really got to consider what’s the least objectionable choice.”

And he continues:

One of my colleagues, a higher-up at the station, told me: “The weekends will be better for you, anyway, Charles. You and Keith [my partner] want to have kids. It’s a lot less high-profile there.”

It was a suggestion that never would have been made to one of my straight colleagues, male or female. The only thing I could take from it was that my profile as a gay man, especially if I were to have kids and, God forbid, get married, would render me less promotable and less advertiser-friendly.

In fact, over the previous five months, I’d been told, “Don’t get married, Charles. We don’t need that.” I’d also been told not to have children. In essence: “You’re the main anchor and you’re gay, but let’s not push it.”

To me, having the family I want is not pushing it. Living with love, commitment, and dignity is not pushing it.

By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

This just in from Securing Our Children’s Rights (SOCR), a Tampa-based lobbying group organized to secure, protect and preserve equal rights for children of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender parents in Florida:

Securing Our Children’s Rights, Inc. (SOCR), is pleased to announce HB 3 – Adoption, for the 2010 legislative session, introduced by Representative Mary Brandenburg, D-West Palm Beach, that is a full repeal of Florida’s ban on adoption by its gay and lesbian citizens. Senator Nan Rich has a companion bill in drafting at this date.

Governor Crist has declared Wednesday, July 22, 2009 as Explore Adoption Day and we must contact Governor Crist and the legislature to Explore Adoption by repealing the ban.

WHEN: Wednesday, July 22, 2009
WHO: Governor Charlie Crist (850) 488-7146 or email to Charlie.Crist@myflorida.com

House Speaker Larry Cretul 850-488-1450 or 352-873-6564 or email to Larry.Cretul@myfloridahouse.gov

Senate President Jeff Atwater 850-487-5100 or 561-625-5101 or email to atwater.jeff.web@flsenate.gov

Your Florida Representative – www.myfloridahouse.gov

Your Florida Senator – www.flsenate.gov

THE ASK:
Please ask the Governor to support the repeal of the adoption ban on gay Floridians and ask him to encourage the legislative leadership to pass the repeal.

Please ask the House Speaker and the Senate President to support the repeal and encourage Committee hearings for the bills.

Please ask your representative and senator to support the repeal, and to become a co-sponsor.

Here are your fun facts and talking points, courtesy of SOCR:

(1) Florida’s gay adoption ban was passed in 1977 at the height of Anita Bryant’s anti-gay “Save the Children” campaign. This law has done significant damage to children in foster care by not allowing the best interest of the child to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Curtis Peterson, the lead Senate sponsor, said upon passage of the ban, “We’re trying to send [homosexuals] a message. We’re really tired of you. We wish you’d go back into the closet.”

(2) Destructive impact on children – over 4,500 children languish in Florida’s foster care system today. The adoption ban arbitrarily excludes hundreds, if not thousands, of potential parents based solely on the irrelevant criteria of sexual orientation. These adults could provide stable, loving, PERMANENT homes to many of these children if this ban were lifted.

(3) In 2003, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute released a research study, stating, “reality on the ground is outstripping the pace of the debate. That is, a growing number of lesbians and gay men are becoming parents and are living as families every day, irrespective of what the policymakers do or say.”

(4) There is no credible scientific evidence that the sexual orientation of parents has any effects either on the quality of parenting or on the well-being of their children. In fact, the reliable social scientific evidence indicates that lesbian and gay parents are as fit, effective and successful at parenting as their heterosexual counterparts. (See American Academy of Pediatrics February 2002 Policy Statement, Vol. 109, No. 2, pp. 341-344)

(5) At least eleven (11) mainstream child welfare, social science, and professional organizations have issued policy statements SUPPORTING adoption by lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) people:

Child Welfare League of America
American Bar Association
American Medical Association
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Psychiatric Association
American Psychoanalytical Association
American Academy of Family Physicians
American Psychological Association
American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
National Association of Social Workers
North American Council on adoptable Children

(6) Decades of research indicate that optimal development for children is based not on the sexual orientation of the parents, but on stable attachments to committed and nurturing adults. Children with two parents, regardless of the parents’ sexual orientation, do better than children with only one parent. (American Psychiatric Association 11/2002 policy statement)

(7) Adoption decisions should be based on an individualized assessment of what is in the best interests of the child to be adopted. Applicants should be assessed on the basis of their ability to successfully parent a child in need of family membership and not on irrelevant considerations such as sexual orientation.

(8) Regardless of what policy makers do or say, gay Floridians are raising children and legal protection is necessary for these children. Families have been created by adopting in other states, artificial insemination, previous heterosexual relationships and family tragedies such as the death of a sibling.

(Full Disclosure: Lorna Bracewell is a human rights activist and founder of ImpACT, a gay-rights advocacy group and social network.)

Now, on his blog, Daily Dave 3.0, he writes about his mixed feelings about whether to join yesterday’s protest of his former employer, Media General, for broadcasting the anti-gay Speechless: Silencing Christians hour-long paid television show on the same evening as St. Pete Pride.

He ultimately decided not to join the Red Flag Rally, but most interesting are his recollections about how his former employer treated GLBT issues. Here’s what he wrote, using the acronym MFE for “my former employer”:

I worked for MFE from 1999 to 2008. During that time, I received mixed signals about the company’s views on GLBT people, including its GLBT employees. My recollection is that gay men and lesbians were accepted in the newsrooms, but that sensitivity about GLBT issues — in fact, all minority issues — declined exponentially as one progressed higher up the organization chart. This is a generalization, and there were some exceptions. At MFE’s parent company in Richmond, Va., I sensed a similar inverse relationship between (a) the size of someone’s paycheck and (b) their level of sophistication on GLBT issues and commitment to a diverse workforce.

I’d like to point out that these are my personal opinions: my own impressions and feelings, synthesized over nearly 10 years with MFE. I speak for no one else.

I was out long before I came to MFE, and this never appeared to cause any tension among my immediate coworkers. I got to attend the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association conventions on the company’s dime — back when news organizations still had travel and training budgets, of course. I recall an ambitious diversity training program that included GLBT issues in the curriculum in the early 2000s.

However:

• At the time I left the company, MFE did not include sexual orientation in its discrimination policy. When I asked about this, I was told that it wasn’t necessary because MFE is based in Tampa, which has sexual orientation in its discrimination policy. This didn’t seem like a good rationale to me, as it probably doesn’t cover people working for MFE locations outside Tampa city limits, and it doesn’t send a message of inclusion for MFE’s GLBT employees.
• In 2005, the year after Massachusetts became the first state in the US to adopt marriage equality, MFE mailed a letter to each employee stating that its health care plans would only cover opposite-sex spouses. I felt that MFE was trying to say that in matters of same-sex relationships, the company was so adamant about not recognizing partners that it would even trump state laws.
• When I left MFE, the company still did not have benefits for same-sex partners. I can think of no other large media company that does not offer domestic partner benefits. When I would ask about this (every year, like clockwork, at the meetings to introduce the new health care and retirement plans) I would be told that the company was concerned about the cost of domestic partner benefits. I would point out that study after study shows that the costs are negligible, and the message it sends to GLBT employees and recruits is incredibly important.

I left MFE feeling mostly confused and frustrated about the company’s approach to GLBT employees. I certainly felt valued by the people with whom I worked, but I also sensed that the big decisionmakers at the organization and its parent company did not fully understand the value that comes from building an inclusive, diverse workplace.

For more news and reviews of the summer’s biggest movies, check out the CL Movies & Television site.

Screening information: Outrage is screening exactly once, Wed., July 15 at 7 p.m. at Tampa Pitcher Show, 14416 N. Dale Mabry, Tampa, 813-963-0578. The film carries no MPAA rating.

If there’s a central message to Kirby Dick’s Outrage, it’s that living life denying one’s sexual orientation is an awful existence. Not only is the closeted person lying to their family and friends — often at great emotional cost to everyone involved — they are lying to themselves. There’s a lot of self-hatred hanging in the closet, and it’s an old saw that the most homophobic folks are the most in denial. Still, a person’s choice to keep their preference private is their own. But what about politicians living in the closet who work to advance anti-gay-rights legislation? Don’t they deserve to be exposed?
Michael Rogers certainly thinks so. Rogers is an activist and writer who works to out closeted gay politicians, and he’s kind of the hero of Outrage. One of his early scores was Republican Congressman Ed Schrock of Virginia, a sponsor of a bill banning gay marriage, who was caught on tape soliciting sex with men by leaving messages on a telephone hook-up service. Schrock never copped to being the voice on the tape, but the evidence was compelling enough that he resigned. Rogers has the goods on many more.

Outrage appeals to our base cultural instinct to speculate on the sexual preferences of the rich and famous (it’s practically sport online), and Schrock is far from the most notable politician in the film’s crosshairs. Some are obvious, like Sen. Larry Craig, he of the airport bathroom “wide stance,” who comes across as an incredibly sad man. More surprising (for me anyway) were ex-New York City Mayor Ed Koch, singled out for his awful response to the Big Apple’s 1980’s AIDS crisis, and Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, who’s front and center on a network that works daily to undermine the LGBT community.

Closer to home, Florida Governor Charlie Crist is one of Outrage’s big fish, and the film spends a good amount of time laying out the case against his heterosexuality. Props to reporter Bob Norman of Miami New Times, a vet of the Mark Foley affair, who dug up much of Crist’s backstory after being contacted by multiple unrelated sources claiming Crist staffers had been bragging at dinner parties about sexual relationships with the then-still-future governor. Crist is shown repeatedly denying the rumors, with each denial slightly creepier than the last. (His take of the famed Seinfeld riff, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” comes across as oddly angry.)

But the case against Charlie ultimately lacks a smoking gun as potent as the Schrock tapes. Is it interesting that Crist was married to first wife Amanda Morrow for only 6 months, and his ex found post-breakup comfort with new partner Mildred Harrison? Or that another ex, Kelly Crosby Heyniger, told the film’s producers, “I think I should just keep my mouth shut. … Call me in 10 years and I’ll tell you a story.” Absolutely. But it doesn’t exactly prove Crist is gay.

So, yes, much of the information presented in Outrage is circumstantial. But that by no means sinks the film. Director Kirby Dick knows the salacious nature of this material will attract an audience, but he’s ultimately after a larger point about the vicious cycle of our public discourse, where leaders responsible for making the laws deny their own nature and essentially persecute themselves in an effort to keep their own truth hidden. In particular, I’d point to the scenes featuring former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, with McGreevey and his wife talking candidly about the Governor’s resignation from office after his affair with a male Homeland Security appointee came to light. There is truth and power in McGreevey’s words. And pain.

Ultimately, outing someone is a tricky thing. As the film angrily points out, the media will often go out of its way to avoid discussing someone’s sexual orientation — even when it’s germane to the subject. Even the LGBT community is divided on whether or not outing is over the line. Though Outrage is clearly in favor of exposing the hypocrites in D.C., the film does offer some conversation on the subject. Among the points of view, Journalist Andrew Sullivan expresses sympathy for the exposed and Congressman Barney Frank argues that hypocrisy by those passing the laws ought to be routed out. In the end, I agree with Frank, and as such I enjoyed Outrage. How you feel about the question should tell you whether this is a movie for you.

By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

On Saturday, June 27, thousands of people gathered in the streets of St. Petersburg, FL for the city’s annual Gay Pride parade and festival. While we were celebrating and honoring the legacy of the LGBT civil rights movement, our local NBC affiliate (WFLA-Ch. 8) was airing Speechless: Silencing the Christians, an hour long special paid for by the conservative American Family Association (AFA) that makes a series of specious and demeaning claims about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Watch a clip from the program after the jump.

Within hours of airing Speechless, WFLA was flooded with phone calls and emails from viewers who disagreed with and disapproved of the special’s anti-gay thesis. Equality Florida, a Tampa based statewide gay rights group, repeatedly petitioned the station and its parent company, Media General, to issue a public apology for airing the homophobic program, to divest themselves of the $35,000 paid to them by the AFA by donating it to an LGBT youth organization, and to devote an hour of air time to a special that balances out the hateful message of Speechless. So far, these petitions have gone unanswered except for a comment from Media General’s top Florida exec, John Schueler, who told Equality Florida that he could see why “people who have chosen the homosexual lifestyle might be offended” by the program’s “strident tone” but that the program “didn’t raise any red flags” for him or his associates.

Didn’t raise any red flags? According to Speechless, homosexuals (who, for PR reasons, started calling themselves “gays” in the 1990’s) are a danger to children and an existential threat to the family; they are the masterminds of an elaborate conspiracy to eradicate Christian influence and Christians themselves from our culture; they are simultaneously a cause and a symptom of cultural, spiritual and national decline. How could such apocalyptic rhetoric, such demonization of a segment of society not raise any red flags?

Imagine if Speechless targeted a racial minority instead of LGBT people. Imagine if the voiceover at the beginning of the program went something like this: “Family values, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and morality are all threatened by a radical Asian American activist agenda that’s redefining the family, teaching children that Asian Americans are normal and pushing for minority status and preferential treatment for Asian Americans” (replace the words “Asian American” with “homosexual” and you have an actual line from Speechless). All the money in the world couldn’t get that special aired on WFLA.

Due to Media General’s flagrant disregard for fairness… oh, let me try that again eschewing the euphemisms for once. Due to Media General’s flagrant disregard for the equal citizenship and physical safety of LGBT people in Tampa Bay and everywhere, Equality Florida, Impact-Florida (Ed’s. note: of which Lorna is founder) and a number of other grassroots groups from the surrounding area are organizing a demonstration outside of Media General’s Tampa headquarters at 202 S Parker St., Tampa, on Wednesday at 5:30 pm.

WFLA and Media General have made it clear over the past two weeks that they do not speak the language of reason and civility. We have tried to engage their decision makers in innumerable other ways. Since these attempts have failed, we will be there this Wednesday (at the same time as Media General’s national president) to make our demands in the “strident tone” Media General seems to prefer. Since many of us “homosexuals” are Christians ourselves, we may even quote a scripture or two. Perhaps a little something from Jeremiah? “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by injustice” (Jeremiah 22:13).

Hooray for Florida’s very own  Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen! On Wednesday, along with a bipartisan coalition of 100 House members led by Rep. Barney Frank, she introduced a revised (read: trans inclusive) version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). When passed, ENDA will extend existing Federal protections against employment discrimination to also protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

A version of ENDA that did not include protections for transgender people passed the house in 2007 but died in the Senate. In a recent interview with the Washington Blade, Frank was cautiously hopeful about the bill’s prospects in 2009: “Things have gotten better. The transgender community is lobbying hard.  I just need to remind people that when we have trouble doing something in New York, Maryland and Massachusetts, it doesn’t get easier when you have South Carolina, Utah and Nebraska.”

By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

Confronted with a news story involving lesbian penguins at a German zoo, you would think that evil geniuses Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller could muster at least one decent lesbian joke.

Watch their pathetic attempts after the jump.

If you can do better (and I know you can!) please share in the comments section.

By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

In a recent blog posting, Nadine Smith, Equality Florida’s executive director, issued a formidable challenge to GLBT people everywhere: If you want equality, sacrifice for it. With the bus boycotts and lunch counter sit-ins of the black civil rights movement as her inspiration, Smith asks “What can we (GLBT people) do that demonstrates not only the rhetoric of equality but the personal sacrifice that will awaken the conscience of a nation?”

Smith answers this question with a simple suggestion:

If you’re legally married in one of the three (soon to be four) states that permits same-sex marriage, refuse to deny your spouse on federal forms.

Smith writes, “When the government asks legally married couples in Massachusetts to file as ‘married’ in their state and then mark ’single’ on the Federal Tax form, they are asking that couple to participate in their own discrimination so that the government doesn’t have to dirty its hands.”

According to Smith, this dirtying of the government’s hands is crucial in any civil rights struggle because it lays bare ”the contradiction between what our fellow Americans believe they stand for and what they allow to be done in their name.” She invites us to imagine the “ripple effect of government issued letters to married gay couples ordering them to deny their spouse on federal forms.” “We have to compel these moments,” Smith continues, ”by deciding that our lives will be about honesty and self-respect. Even if it comes at a price.”

While Smith doesn’t delve into the gory details, she does seem sensitive to the reality that that price could be quite high. In a follow-up email, Smith informed me that Equality Florida has reached out to “a law school dean and a well-respected Tax attorney” for guidance regarding the likely consequences for such an action.

Admittedly, it is unlikely that IRS agents will break down the doors of same-sex couples brandishing fire hoses and snarling dogs reminiscent of the black civil rights movement.  However, as anyone who has been caught in the byzantine web of federal bureaucracy knows, the lives of couples opting to take this stand will doubtlessly be disrupted in profound ways. The question is will their suffering be vivid enough to in Smith’s words “prick the conscience of our country.” Well, there’s only one way to find out.

By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

In a presidential proclamation issued on Monday, President Barack Obama officially recognized the month of June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.

LGBT Americans have made, and continue to make, great and lasting contributions that continue to strengthen the fabric of American society. During LGBT Pride Month, I call upon the LGBT community, the Congress, and the American people to work together to promote equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The president’s call for equality and his acknowledgment of the many contributions LGBT people have made to America’s culture, society and politics despite being culturally, socially and politically marginalized are truly moving. However, I can’t help feeling slightly ambivalent about the whole thing. Here’s why:

Unlike many in the big gay blogosphere, the root of my ambivalence is not the excruciatingly slow pace at which the president has pursued formal equality for LGBT people. Rather, it’s the order in which things seem to be happening. It seems wrong to me that LGBT people have been given a month before we’ve been given civil rights.

That’s not the way things happened for African Americans. They officially got their duly deserved month in 1986 when Congress passed Public Law 99-244. This law required the president to issue a proclamation recognizing Black History Month, which had been privately observed since 1915. Then President Ronald Reagan obliged with a document that reads quite similarly to Obama’s LGBT Pride Month proclamation.

All of this happened some 116 years after the passages of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, the amendments to the federal Constitution that abolished slavery, guaranteed equal protection of the laws, and enfranchised all males regardless of race, and 22 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, a federal law that went a long way toward making the abstract legal rights guaranteed by those amendments substantively meaningful for African Americans.

In short, African Americans got their rights first and their month second. It is almost Orwellian that the many achievements of the LGBT civil rights movement are being extolled while LGBT people are still being denied the most basic civil right of marriage and are still prevented from serving openly in the military.  Let’s hope history-turned-on-its-head doesn’t repeat itself and force us to wait 116 years for formal equality.

Cross-posted from the Daily Loaf blog.

I have a secret I can no longer keep. It burns my soul and pains my conscience. I had an affair. I loved a man powerful in Florida politics, and he loved me back. I cannot reveal his name. My honor and his lawyers do not permit me. I will refer to him only as C. He currently seeks more power, and I know that rumors will begin to fly, so I submit my story publicly to save us both, and our love, from the public’s harsh scrutiny.

It all began in the winter of 2008. I was a 19-year-old USF student, wandering through my studies with no real direction, still trying to find myself among the textbooks and study halls. My life did not live up to my name – Destiny St. Clair – and my bright red hair spoke of an excitement I could not claim. I was, I must say, average in every way, certainly not the type you might soon expect to be sipping champagne on yachts with the most powerful man in the state.

I can remember the exact moment my life changed forever. Jan. 30, 2008, the day John McCain won the Florida Republican primaries. “That man is such a silver fox,” my older sister, Fate, said as we watched the announcement on TV. C. was standing at a podium behind John McCain, looking pleased as they announced the elderly senator’s victory. “How is that man even still a bachelor.”

At 51, C. had remained unmarried, and our state of Florida had received that rarest anomaly, a bachelor politician. Most public servants had the constant support of a beautiful and loving wife standing by their side, but not he. But every political accomplishment C. achieved was without the usual cheerleader and confidant of a first lady, that well dressed and perfectly coifed silent figure standing behind her man and nodding in agreement with every word he said. For every public appearance he stood alone with no charming trophy wife quietly by his side. And after his long hard day of governing, he would retire to his wing in the Governor’s Mansion alone, finding no freshly made up southern lady to give him a blowjob and beer while he watched sports to unwind. Such was the tough life of a single governor–harder than one could imagine.

“He can govern my state anytime he wants!” Fate said, unable to find any more significance in the moment than the chiseled lines of C.’s features.

“I heard he lives near us,” I said. “If we ever met him, he’d be so into you. I bet you’re so his type.”

If anyone could tame the bachelor governor, it was Fate. She was feminine and charming with hair that always seemed to be perfectly styled no matter what she was doing. Fate had competed in beauty pageants as a child, so, naturally, she would make the perfect politician’s wife.

“Seriously?” she chortled. “He’s gay, Destiny. I mean, he’s still in the closet because you can’t be a gay Republican, but it’s everywhere that he is.”

I was shocked to hear Fate put it so bluntly, but I had remembered hearing gay rumors. Malicious whispers during campaign season. They never said it out loud, but his rivals would insinuate there was something “not quite right” about a man in his fifties being a lifelong bachelor. And when his penchant for brightly colored shirts and ties that brought out the warmth of his bronzed tan was added to the equation, the bloggers would do the math, and every time it would add up to gay.

If C. had been a single dad or an eligible divorcee, the rumors would have been laid to rest. And if he had been a widower, too loyal to his dead wife to let himself fall in love again, he would have been a hero, the media painting a glamorous picture of his beautiful romance, and how tragically it ended, killed by a drunk driver. C.’s unmarried status would have been spun as something honorable and noble, and possibly even a piece of legislation. But he would never have exploited it. In fact, he would have gone out of his way to make that point several, several times whenever he brought it up out of the blue during a campaign speech. Nobody would even have thought of calling him gay.

But despite C.’s moderate politics and affable personality, and his optimism in improving the quality of life in Florida, he was trailed by whispers all along the campaign trail, nasty rumors used to try to drive voters away from the popular candidate. They clearly failed, since the election results showed a large number of both Republicans and Democrats pulling the lever for C. In fact, for some mysterious reason I was certain might be explained later, the rumors seemed to work in his favor.

I looked back at the TV as C. grinned and clapped in support of Senator McCain the very same way a wife would have done for C. in November two years prior. I noticed C. possessed a certain magnetism I was never aware of before. He was good looking. Very tan, as you’d expect any governor to be, and incredibly well put together, like something cut out of a menswear catalogue. I wondered what that man standing in the back and to the left of John McCain was like. Was he really gay as Fate, along with every gay man in the southern peninsula, claimed?

As I sat on the couch of our middle class Tampa apartment, pondering our governor on a TV that wasn’t even a flat screen, I had no idea that my life, and the state of Florida, would soon be changed forever…