GAY PEOPLE'S

Chronicle

TR REMEMBER LAY

INCONCOR

STS IN THE VICHOW

Ohio's Weekly Newspaper for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community

This rally is only a beginning

“Every supporter of Issue 1, every one of them, Democrat, Republican, independent, is a threat not only to us as human beings, but a threat to the basic inalienable rights inherent to us by our nation," Tim Yaczo tells a Statehouse rally. "It is time for them to be afraid."

Cleveland native Yaczo is a student at Miami University in Oxford and a member of its LGBT group Spectrum. With him is Michaela Frischherz of Wadsworth, also a Miami student.

The January 15 rally in front of the Ohio Statehouse's monument to President William McKinley drew 131 activists from at least 15 of Ohio's 88 counties, many of them students.

"To do nothing for the rest of the year except go to gay Pride in June is to be complicit in the institutionalized violence and terror brought by our peers and our government,” said Yaczo.

“If you came out today only to stand here and scream and yell, you are not an activist," he told the crowd. "If you came here today to get angry and then go home to warm up, you are not helping.

The message of Yaczo and the two other rally speakers, Rev. Marj Creech of Granville Metropolitan Community Church and Human Rights Campaign Columbus steering committee member Lynne Bowman, is that rallying is not enough. The LGBT community must organize and commit to repealing Issue 1 and advancing the cause of equality.

Creech drew applause from students when she said, "It has gotten so bad for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Ohio that you're looking forward to seeing Ohio in your rear view mirror when you graduate.

Participants from around the state networked and learned about organizing efforts going on in other regions. Doug Braun of Cleveland Heights, working with the statewide Ohio Consortium on Issue 1, signed up 86 new volunteers who expressed interest in fundraising, legal affairs and grassroots work to repeal the

measure.

"Rallies such as this are merely vehicles to correspond and build organization among all of us as activists, said Yaczo.

Inside this Issue

Letters to the Editors

Charlie's Calendar

Comics..

Classifieds.

Personals.

The soothing sounds of variety Page 9

Martin Luther King Jr.'s family reflects both sides on same-sex marriage

Page 3

Eric Resnick

Volume 20, Issue 30 January 21, 2005

Issue I used to trump 1 home violence charges

by Anthony Glassman

WITH WIRE REPORTS

Cleveland Predictions that Issue 1 may remove domestic violence protections for anyone outside of a heterosexual marriage might be coming true.

A law clerk with the Cuyahoga County Public Defender's office, Jeff Lazarus, has created a boilerplate motion to dismiss domestic violence charges against defendants who are not legally married to their accusers.

He cites Issue 1, the amendment to Ohio's constitution barring samesex and unmarried opposite-sex couples from the rights and benefits of marriage. The measure was passed by voters on November 2 and took effect December 2.

"The thing is, you can only get a domestic-violence charge now if

you are a wife beater, not a girlfriend beater," Lazarus said.

The motion was filed in at least two cases, one of which will be heard by Judge Stuart Friedman of

the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas on January 27. Friedman said that it was a complex issue and that he did not want to rule on it without careful thought.

Ohio's domestic violence statutes define the crime as one of a number of acts against "a family or household member," which are defined as "a spouse, a person living as a spouse, or a former spouse of the respondent."

According to Lazarus and some in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and progressive communities, Issue 1 forbids granting legal protections to "a person living as a spouse," thus creating a conflict between domestic violence law and the amendment.

Phil Burress, the head of Citizens for Community Values and the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, two commingled far-right organizations that worked to pass Issue 1, called that reading of the amendment "absurd" in comments to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Continued on page 4

Bush does Texas 2-step on U.S.ban amendment

by Bob Roehr

Washington, D.C.-President George W. Bush will not press for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, he told the Washington Post in an exclusive interview conducted aboard Air Force One and

'The FMA appears

more and more like

a pre-election ploy rather than a principled stand.'

published on January 16. But even before the article was published, the White House was seeking to "clarify" its position.

"Senators have made it clear that so long as DOMA [the federal Defense of Marriage Act] is deemed constitutional, nothing will happen. I'd take their admonition seriously... Until that changes, nothing will happen in the Senate," Bush told the Post.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan clarified the president's position as being “willing to spend political capital" on the issue, but that for practical reasons that is not likely to be enough to achieve the two-thirds vote required to pass a constitutional amendment.

Social conservatives were apoplectic at the thought of anything

less than total dedication to their cause. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, pointed to the "values voters" who overwhelmingly supported Bush in November.

"Freshly equipped with the demands of the American people, the president should lead the United States Senate in moving ahead to check the pending judicial assault on marriage," he said.

Log Cabin Republicans executive director Patrick Guerriero "is hopeful that the president's comments recognizing the lack of support for the anti-family Federal Marriage Amendment will result in a second-term agenda that can concentrate on much needed reform."

Gay pundit Andrew Sullivan wrote on his blog, "The FMA has gone unmentioned by Bush since the election and it appears more and more like a pre-election ploy rather than a principled stand. (Of course, that's a relief but it's also an indication of how bald-faced a political maneuver this was in the first place). But this piece of sanity from the president deserves praise and reciprocation from those of us who support equality in marriage."

Sullivan urged supporters to "refrain from any constitutional or legal challenge to DOMA for the foreseeable future" while the experiment of gay marriage plays out in Massachusetts.

Bush's statement is consistent with his earlier position on same sex coupling. His born-again experience is tempered by a residual Yankee reticence to publicly discuss details of his religious beliefs. Continued on page 2