GAY PEOPLE'S

Chronicle

Ohio's Newspaper for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com Volume 27, Issue 23 May 4, 2012

BRIAN DEWITT

Tighe Smith of Buffalo tries on a harness while Marco Brandt of Leather Bonding in New York City gives it an adjustment in the vendor mart at CLAW.

CLAW's weekend of fun grows

by Anthony Glassman

and Brian DeWitt

Cleveland-With a dozen supporting sponsors, two fully-booked host hotels and two other hotels rapidly filling with more guests, the 11th annual Cleveland Leather Awareness Weekend continued the event's decade-long string of successes on April 27 to 29.

At 3 pm on Friday afternoon, 1,207 had registered for the weekend, with two days yet to go, just 40 under last year's total at the end of the weekend.

It was the second year that the event was hosted by the Hilton Garden Inn downtown, whose conference facilities allowed organizers to add a third room to the vendor mart. The nearby Hampton Inn was the second host hotel, and shuttle service between the two ran all weekend. The Embassy Suites and the Wyndham at Playhouse Square, which was the host hotel through the 2010 CLAW, both had significant numbers of rooms rented out by CLAW attendees.

While donation figures are not yet available for this year's installment of the Pantheon of Leather Award-winning weekend, in its first decade it donated over $189,000 to charities, with $34,000 alone coming from last year's CLAW. That total goes up to a third of a million dollars when the CLAW Nation parties, which have been running across the country for the last five years, are added. They have raised $140,000 in just half a decade.

One of the recipients of CLAW's largesse, the Leather Archives and Museum, were present again this year, putting out a display of original artwork from Drummer magazine and installing a Story Telling Booth, a private booth where people could record oral histories of how the leather community has affected their lives.

The weekend also saw three inductions into the Leather Hall of Fame. Guy Baldwin, the 1989 Inter-

national Mr. Leather, psychotherapist, author and activist, was honored. So was the late Sam Steward, an unofficial collaborator on Alfred Kinsey's groundbreaking sexual research. He was also famed as a tattoo artist under the name Phil Sparrow and as a writer of erotica under the nom de plume Phil Andros. Steward passed away in 1993.

The final inductee was Irving Klaw, who died in 1966. He was one of the main publishers of heterosexual BDSM erotica for almost 20 years, fighting back against police harassment and government efforts to censor him.

Among the people sweeping into the city for CLAW were residents of 38 states, Canada, England and Belgium.

Next year's event will be held from Friday, April 26 to Sunday, April 28. The Hilton Garden Inn will take its third go-round as host hotel.

Inside This Issue Den mother kicked out of Boy

Scouts for being gay

Page 2

Kathleen Turner is a perfect mom again

Page 5

News Briefs.......

Charlie's Calendar Classifieds ....

3 ........ 6

7

Three Ohio cities look

at partner measures

Cincinnati, Toledo consider worker benefits, Dayton mulls a registry

by Anthony Glassman

Cincinnati-Three Ohio cities are moving forward on domestic partner issues, with two examining benefits for the domestic partners of city employees and the third looking to follow other cities with a domestic partner registry.

Chris Seelbach, the openly gay city councilor in Cincinnati and one of the youngest in the city's history, sent out an April 30 e-mail telling supporters that the council finance committee voted 8 to 0 with one abstention to give acrossthe-board health, dental and vision benefits, regardless of the sexual orientation. All three of the "young bucks" on council, elected last November, voted in favorYvette Simpson, P.G. Sittenfeld and Seelbach.

The final vote was expected on May 2, after press time.

Council in Toledo is also considering a proposal to extend benefits to the domestic partners of city employees, similar to those given to married spouses. The measure was introduced by Mayor Mike Bell at the urging of Equality Toledo and other community advocates.

"What we're trying to do is bring our city, from the standpoint of human resources and affirmativeaction policies, in line with what's happening nationally," he told the Toledo Blade. "We're not the first train pulling out of the station here, we're actually in a way trying to catch up with the policies that make companies and cities competitive in the state of Ohio."

Toledo already has a domestic partner registry, introduced in 2007, and its surrounding Lucas County offers benefits to county employees, as do Cuyahoga County, Columbus, Cleveland and a number of other municipalities across the state.

The measure was being introduced in council on May 1.

The following day, Dayton commissioners may vote on an ordinance to add them to a growing list of Ohio cities with domestic partner registries. While the registry, much like the prototypical one approved by voters in Cleveland Heights, would not carry any benefits in itself, businesses could use registration as proof of a relationship for offering benefits like those proposed in Cincinnati and Toledo.

The ordinance had a first reading at the April 25 commission meeting, and the May 2 meeting is the earliest opportunity a vote on it could be held.

Five other municipalities have domestic partner registries: Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, Toledo, Yellow Springs and Athens. Cleveland Heights' registry, the first in the state, was challenged in court, under the assumption by anti-gay activists that it violated the state's 2004 constitutional ban on samesex marriage. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled, however, that it was legal, and did not come nearly close enough to approximating marriage to run afoul of the amendment.

DeWine asks top court to toss petition suit

by Patti Harris

Columbus Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine urged the Ohio Supreme Court on April 27 to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the petition summary for a proposed state constitutional amendment to recognize same-sex marriage.

The petition, filed by Freedom to Marry Ohio, was certified as a "fair and truthful statement" by De Wine on April 3, allowing them to proceed to the signature gathering phase. Roughly 385,000 signatures will be needed to get the amendment on the ballot in November 2013.

DeWine's approval of the measure was challenged in an April 10

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suit by the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, the same group that backed the 2004 amendment which now bans same-sex marriage.

DeWine, who opposes samesex marriage, defended his certification of the summary, and urged the court to dismiss the suit for lack of jurisdiction.

"In this particular case, the Attorney General was given specific summary language for a specific constitutional proposal," DeWine wrote to the court. "Although that summary language may not detail every minute aspect of the amendment itself, the Attorney General Continued on page 2