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.)

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).

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…

By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

eQuality Giving, an online community that provides strategic advice for philanthropists interested in legal equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans, has ranked all 50 states according to the number of Equality Goals each has achieved. On this States of Equality list, Florida ranks an embarrassing 37th with a score of 1.5 out of a possible 6 points barely beating out Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and other shining beacons of progressivism.

What hurt the Sunshine State’s score?

First, its lack of any law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. That’s right. In Florida, it is perfectly legal to fire or deny employment to someone because you think they’re gay or because you don’t think they perform their gender in the most appropriate way according to you. (Interview tip for female job seekers in Florida: Shave your pits and ensure your shoes appear to be adequately uncomfortable.)

Second, Florida is the only state in the entire country with a law on the books banning homosexuals from adopting children. Other states, like Utah and Arkansas, have laws which prohibit unmarried couples from adopting, but only Florida explicitly singles out “homosexuals” as ineligible. (We have Miss America contestant turned orange juice spokeswoman turned anti-gay activist Anita Bryant to thank for this one.)

Third, Amendment 2 (added to Florida’s Constitution this past November) guarantees that marriage equality (or anything vaguely resembling it) will be a long time coming to the people of the great state of Florida.

While this list gives Floridians an additional topic to grumble about, there is a sunny side to our abysmal showing. Perhaps the fair-minded philanthropists of the world will look at this list and take pity on us. After all, we do have a U.S. Senate seat and a Governor’s mansion to fill…

Police arrested an Azalea Middle School teacher Saturday on charges of sending pornography to a student.

Christy Lynn Martin, 32, 3457 Lynn Lake Drive S., was charged with sending pornographic photos to a 14-year-old boy’s cell phone. The boy is an eighth-grade student at Azalea Middle School, but is not a student in any of Martin’s classes, St. Petersburg Police said.

She is charged with one count of transmitting pornographic images through an electric device and one count of transmitting material harmful to a minor.

Martin was released just after midnight on $20,000 bail, according to the PCSO website. Updates later in the day said she and the boy exchanged photos via cell phone, and that the boy told a relative who told the boy’s mother, who told police.

Walsh and Armey were in a heated debate about the relevance of Rush Limbaugh in the GOP.

“I am so damn glad that you could never be my wife, ’cause I surely wouldn’t have to listen to that prattle from you every day,” Armey said.

“Well, that makes two of us,” Walsh shot back.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, waiting off camera for an appearance, later said on-air: “Dick Armey was so far out of line in the last segment with his sexist comments, and he owes Joan Walsh and your viewers an apology.”

Matthews later apologized on behalf of the former House Majority Leader, and said the comments were “overboard.”

Video below:

• Gary Hart was busted by two enterprising Miami Herald reporters in May 1987 during his presidential primary campaign after the reporters staked out his D.C. apartment and observed Donna Rice leaving one evening. It didn’t help that he had dared the media to put to rest rumors of his marital infidelity by saying, “”Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’ll be very bored.”
  (for the serious journalism junkies out there, here is in the inside account by the Herald of how it got the story, in part 1 and part 2.)
• Circuit Judge Gasper Ficarrotta sees his judicial career in Tampa come to an end after it is discovered that he was having an ongoing affair with one of his bailiffs — in his own chambers. They broke up and bailiff Tara Pisano (at the urging of her attorney) wrote a journal about the affair, which later become public during a courthouse corruption probe: “He used his office like it was his private apartment. He had a couch, a blanket, another blanket that folded into a pillow, two small pillows, a radio boom box, many candles, a TV/VCR combo, a microwave, a small refrigerator, a coffee maker, eating utensils, snacks, cold drinks, beer, wine, piña colada, margarita mix, all the comforts of a home. He wanted to have sex on his couch, in the dark, in the light, with candles burning, in his desk chair, in his hearing room, in his closet, on the floor, sitting, standing…. The sexual encounters in his judicial office were countless.”
• Pinellas Circuit Judge Charles Cope was busted in California in 2001, trying to break into a hotel room to hook up with a woman he met while at a judicial conference. The details of his two days of public intoxication and damned-near stalking of the woman and her mother can be found in the Supreme Court of Florida’s condemnation of his actions (download .pdf here.)

Bill Clinton. Wilbur Mills. Jim McGreevey. Larry Craig. Mark Foley. There’s so many more that even the unlimited space of the Internet prohibits listing them all.

Who’s your favorite? And is wanting sex really so bad, or is it the way they wanted sex?