Local
Two more D.C. ballot measures proposed to ban same-sex marriage
Gay marriage opponents have filed papers with the city’s election board proposing two more ballot measures to overturn a same-sex marriage law the D.C. City Council passed and Mayor Adrian Fenty signed in December.
Bishop Harry Jackson, the Beltsville, Md., minister who is leading efforts to oppose same-sex marriage in the District, filed papers Wednesday calling for a voter referendum to block the Religious Freedom & Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act from becoming law.
And in a separate development that went largely unnoticed, Ward 8 resident Joyce Little filed papers with the Board of Elections & Ethics on Dec. 23 calling for a voter initiative that seeks to overturn the same-sex marriage bill by banning same-sex marriage in the city.
“The purpose of this initiative is to allow the citizens of the District of Columbia to vote to preserve traditional marriage as between one man and one woman,” Little wrote in a summary statement submitted to the election board.
The election board scheduled a Feb. 16 public hearing for Little’s initiative. Board General Counsel Kenneth McGhie said the board was in the process of scheduling another hearing sometime this month for Jackson’s referendum proposal.
In a related development, two U.S. senators and 37 members of the House of Representatives — all Republicans — filed a friend-of-the-court brief this week in support of an older lawsuit from Jackson that seeks to force the city to hold a voter initiative on the gay marriage question. Jackson filed the lawsuit last year after the election board ruled that a ballot measure seeking to ban gay marriage would violate the city’s Human Rights Act and therefore not allowable.
The GOP lawmakers’ brief was countered by another friend of the court, or amicus, brief filed by three D.C. same-sex couples that were married in other states and another same-sex couple that hopes to marry in the District later this year. Also signing on to the couples’ brief were the local same-sex marriage advocacy groups D.C. Clergy United and Campaign for All D.C. Families.
Attorneys for same-sex marriage supporters and opponents argued on behalf of their respective motions and briefs at a hearing Wednesday before Superior Court Judge Judith Macaluso, who is expected to issue a ruling on Jackson’s lawsuit in the next few weeks.
The two new ballot measure proposals, including the ones filed in December by Little and this week by Jackson, come on the heels of decisions last year by the election board rejecting an earlier initiative and referendum proposal — both introduced by Jackson and his backers. A D.C. Superior Court judge last spring upheld the board’s ruling rejecting the referendum.
Macaluso is deliberating over Jackson’s lawsuit seeking to overturn the board’s decision to disallow his earlier initiative proposal.
Most legal observers expect the election board to reject the initiative filed this week by Little. Little could not be reached to determine whether she plans to appeal in court any board decision denying her request for the initiative.
“If they keep coming back and the courts continue to rule against them, at some point the courts will throw these cases out in summary judgment,” said gay activist Peter Rosenstein, who is a board member of the Campaign for All D.C. Families. “You can’t keep going back to the courts with the same case.”
But Jackson and Ward 5 Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Robert King have vowed to do just that, saying they believe a higher-level court will eventually force the city to hold a referendum or initiative that brings the subject of gay marriage before the city’s voters.
Marriage bill goes to Hill
Meanwhile, the City Council’s Office of Legislative Affairs sent the same-sex marriage bill passed by the Council and signed by Fenty to Congress on Jan. 5 to arrange for a required congressional review of the law, according to office staffer Ebony Henry.
Henry said her office’s decision to wait more than two weeks after Fenty signed the bill Dec. 18 to send it to Capitol Hill was due to the office’s normal processing of bills that get sent to Congress for their required congressional review of 30 legislative days.
The clock for the congressional review is expected to start ticking next week, when the House begins its 2010 legislative session.
Capitol Hill observers initially thought the congressional review would be completed sometime in March, but some are now speculating the review could be concluded as early as February.
“Nobody knows for sure because it all depends on how many days we’re in session in any given week,” said one Capitol Hill staffer, who spoke on condition of not being identified.
Little, who filed papers in December for an initiative to overturn the city’s same-sex marriage law, filed a motion in federal court the same month seeking an injuction to block the City Council from voting on the same-sex marraige bill at its regularly scheduled legislative session. U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotolly denied the motion Dec. 15, the same day the Council passed the bill, saying Little failed to provide evidence to support her claim that allowing the Council to vote on the marraige bill would cause the city and gay marraige opponents “irreparable harm.”
Little did not issue a public announcement about her motion for the injunction, and most local activists and Council members were unaware that she had made an apparently unprecedented attempt to ask a court to stop the Council from voting on a bill.
One issue is ‘home rule’ scope
U.S. Sens. James Inhoff (R-Oak.) and Roger Wilkins (R-Miss.) joined 37 conservative GOP House members, most of whom are vocal opponents of LGBT rights, in filing the amicus brief in support of the lawsuit by Jackson to force the city into holding a voter initiative on gay marriage.
“Under the United States Constitution, they serve as members of the ultimate legislative authority for the District of Columbia and the very body which delegated to the District its limited legislative power under home rule,” the amicus brief states.
D.C. home rule advocates, including LGBT groups that have pushed for full voting rights for D.C. in Congress, are likely to interpret the brief as a signal by the GOP lawmakers that they will seek to overturn the same-sex marriage law sometime in the future if Jackson loses his court fight. Congress retains authority to overturn any D.C. law at any time.
Most political observers believe the city’s same-sex marriage law will be protected as long as Democrats retain control of Congress, but they caution that the law could be in jeopardy if Republicans gain control in the future.
The same-sex couples who filed the amicus brief opposing Jackson’s lawsuit include city residents Trevor Blake and Jeff Krehely; Amy Hinze-Pifer and Rebecca Hinze-Pifer; Vincent Micone and Thomas Metzger; and Reginald Stanley and Rocky Galloway.
The nationally known law firm Covington & Burling is providing pro-bono legal representation for the same-sex couples in the case.
District of Columbia
Gay priest credited with boosting church support for LGBTQ Catholics
Fr. Tom Oddo’s biographer speaks at Dignity Washington event
The author of a biography of a U.S. Catholic priest said to have advocated for support by the Catholic Church of gay Catholics in the early 1970s has called Father Thomas ‘Tom’ Oddo a little known but important figure in the LGBTQ rights movement.
Tyler Bieber, author of the recently published book “Against The Current: Father Tom Oddo And the New American Catholic,” told of Oddo’s life and work on behalf of LGBTQ rights at a March 22 talk before the local LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity Washington.
Among Oddo’s important accomplishments, Bieber said, was his role as a co-founder of the national LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity U.S.A. in 1973 at the age of 29.
But as reported in the prologue of his book, Bieber presented details of the sad news that Oddo died in a fatal car crash in 1989 at the age of 45 in Portland, Ore., where he was serving as the highly acclaimed president of the University of Portland, a Catholic institution.
“He was a major figure in the gay rights movement in the 1970s, an unsung hero of that movement,” Bieber told Dignity Washington members, who assembled for his talk in a meeting room at St. Margaret Episcopal Church near Dupont Circle, where they attend their weekly Catholic mass on Sundays.
“And Dignity U.S.A. saw intense growth in membership and visibility” during its early years under Oddo’s leadership, Bieber said. “The story of Father Tom and his contemporaries is a story largely untold in the history of the gay rights movement, but one worth knowing and considering,” he said.
As stated in his book, Bieber told the Dignity Washington gathering Oddo was born and raised in a Catholic family on Long Island, N.Y., and attended a Catholic high school in Flushing Queens. It was at that time when he developed an interest in becoming a priest, according to Bieber.
After studying at the University of Notre Dame and completing his religious studies he was ordained as a priest in 1970 and began his work as a priest in the Boston area, Bieber said. It was around that time, Bieber told the Dignity Washington audience, that gay Catholics approached Oddo to seek advice on how they should interact with the Catholic Church. It was also around that time that Oddo became involved in a group supportive of then gay Catholics that later became a Dignity chapter in Boston.
In a development considered unusual for a Catholic priest, Bieber said Oddo in 1973 testified in support of gay rights bill before a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature and collaborated with then Massachusetts gay and lesbian rights advocate Elaine Noble.
In 1982, at the age of 39, Oddo was selected as president of the University of Portland following several years as a college teacher in the Boston area, Bieber’s book states. It says he was seen as a “vibrant and capable administrator who delivered real results to his campus,” adding, “His magnetism was obvious. One student described him as ‘John Kennedyesque’ to the university’s student newspaper.”
Bieber said that although Oddo was less active with Dignity U.S.A. during his tenure as UP president, he continued his support for gay Catholics and what is now referred to as LGBTQ rights.
“For those that knew him prior to his term at UP, though, he represented something greater than an accomplished university administrator and educator,” Bieber’s book states. “He was a new kind of priest, a gay man living and ministering in a world set loose from tradition by the Second Vatican Council,” the book says.
It was referring to the Vatican gathering of worldwide Catholic leaders from 1962 to 1965 concluding under Pope Paul VI that church observers say modernized church practices to allow far greater participation by the laity and opened the way for sympathetic consideration of gay Catholics.
District of Columbia
HRC to host National Rainbow Seder
Bet Mishpachah among annual event’s organizers
The 18th National Rainbow Seder will take place at the Human Rights Campaign on Sunday.
The sold out event is the country’s largest Passover Seder for the Jewish LGBTQ community.
Organizations behind the event include Bet Mishpachah, a local D.C. LGBTQ synagogue that Rabbi Jake Singer-Beilin leads, and GLOE, an Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center program that sponsors events for the queer Jewish community. The theme for this year’s Seder is “Liberation For All Who Journey: Remembering, Resisting, Rebuilding.” Rabbis Atara Cohen, Koach Frazier, and Avigayil Halpern will lead it.
The Seder will honor the late GLOE co-chair Michael Singer. Singer also served on the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center’s board.
“This Seder is both a celebration of how far we have come and a call to continue building a more just and inclusive world.” Bet Mishpachah Executive Director Joshua Maxey told the Washington Blade.
A gay man was murdered in Petersburg, Va., on March 13.
Shyyell Diamond Sanchez-McCray, who was also known as Saamel and Mable, was a drag queen who won the Miss Mayflower EOY pageant in 2015. Reports also indicate Sanchez-McCray, 42, was a well-known community activist in Virginia and in North Carolina.
Local media reports indicate police officers found Sanchez-McCray shot to death inside a home in Petersburg.
Sanchez-McCray’s brother, Jamal Mitchell Diamond, in a public statement the Washington Blade received from Equality Virginia and GLAAD, said Sanchez-McCray was not transgender as initial reports indicated.
“Our family has always embraced the fullness of who he was. He used the names Saamel, Shyyell, and Mable interchangeably, and we honor all of them. There is no division within our family regarding how he is being represented — only a shared commitment to preserving his truth with love and respect,” said Diamond.
“He was also deeply committed to community work through Nationz Foundation, where he worked and completed multiple state-certified programs to support marginalized communities,” added Diamond. “That work meant a great deal to him.”
Authorities have not made any arrests.
The Petersburg Bureau of Police has asked anyone with information about Sanchez-McCray’s murder to call Petersburg-Dinwiddie Crime Solvers at 804-861-1212.
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