(Columbia, South Carolina) South Carolina’s tourism agency has slapped the wrist of its ad manager and is refusing to go ahead and pay for a campaign to attract gay tourists from Britain.

The state employee who gave the OK for the ad campaign resigned Friday.

“[He] exercised extremely poor judgment in approving participation in the program,” state Parks, Recreation and Tourism director Chad Prosser told the State newspaper.

Prosser said the department will require more review in the future.

It was too late to stop the ads that proclaim “South Carolina is so gay”. They’ve already gone up in the London subway to take advantage of gay pride in the British capital.

But Prosser said Friday the state will refuse to pay the $5,000 cost of the ads.

Atlanta, Boston and New Orleans also are part of the ad campaign. None of those cities backed out.

The ads came to light earlier this week when news stories about them began appearing in the South Carolina press.

State Sen. David Thomas (R) called for an audit of the department and a spokesperson for Gov. Mark Sanford told The State that using tax money “to support a social or political agenda” wais inappropriate.

Prosser ordered an immediate investigation into how the ads were approved without his knowledge.

South Carolina’s participation in the ads was proposed by the state’s London advertising representative and agreed to by the department’s ad chief.

The suit will be filed by Lambda Legal which is representing Janice Langbehn.

Langbehn and Lisa Pond had planned to take their three children on a family cruise. The Olympia, Washington couple had been together 18 years and with their children were looking forward to the holiday.

But just as they were about to depart on the cruise from Miami, Florida. Pond, a healthy 39-year-old, suddenly collapsed. She was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami with Langbehn and the children following close behind.

Once Langbehn and the children arrived at the hospital the hospital refused to accept information from her about Ponds’s medical history. 

Langbehn says she was informed that she was in an antigay city and state, and she could expect to receive no information or acknowledgment as family. 

A doctor finally spoke with Janice telling her that there was no chance of recovery.

Other than one five minute visit, which was orchestrated by a Catholic priest at Langbehn’s request to perform last rites, and despite the doctor’s acknowledgement that no medical reason existed to prevent visitation, neither she nor her children were allowed to see Pond until nearly eight hours after their arrival. 

Soon after Pond’’s death, Langbehn tried to get her death certificate in order to get life insurance and Social Security benefits for their children. She was denied both by the State of Florida and the Dade County Medical Examiner.

In February, Lambda Legal sent a letter to Jackson Memorial Hospital and announced its intent to file a lawsuit on behalf of Pond’s family. 

“After receiving no response from the hospital despite providing them sufficient opportunity to avoid litigation, Janice and her family are now able to seek justice in a court of law,” said Lambda spokesperson Tika Milan.

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies has voted to continue funding the Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) program.

The federal government now spends about $176 million annually on abstinence-until-marriage education.

“It’s hard to imagine a good reason why, in these tight economic times, Congress would intentionally flush taxpayer dollars down the drain by spending them on disproven, ineffective abstinence-only-until-marriage programs,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office:

“We are floored that they continue to ignore study after study, and the consensus of the pubic health community, all concluding that these programs censor vital health care information, teach gender stereotypes, discriminate against lesbian and gay teens, and in some cases promote religion in the classroom in violation of the Constitution.”

A study mandated by Congress last year found that students who participated in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex within a few years as those who did not.

The study, by Mathematica Policy Research, also found that students who attended the abstinence classes reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes, and they first had sex at about the same age as their control group counterparts – 14 years and nine months.

A report a year earlier by the Society of Adolescent Medicine found that abstinence-only education was “unlikely to meet the health needs” of gay because abstinence-only programs focus heavily on no sex until marriage and ignore homosexuality. This could lead to increased risk of infection among these youngsters, the investigators said.

Under the CBAE program participating states then provide $3 for every $4 they get from the federal government. But a growing number states decline to take part in the grant program.

The most recent was Arizona. In January Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) told the Bush administration that the state does not want $1 million from the federal government  because the programs don’t work.

The move makes Arizona the 16th state to reject the federal money.

Because all three girls are minors their names cannot be published.

Police said that the 14-year old victim was attacked in a hallway at Wayland Union High School because she was an outspoken advocate for LGBT rights.

A fourth student recorded the attack, including homophobic slurs, on a digital camera.  That tape was posted on line and is now in the hands of police and prosecutors say it is likely to be entered into evidence at trial.

The young victim sustained bruises, cuts and a possible broken nose.

Michigan is one of a number of states which do not have hate crime laws covering sexuality.

Local police called in the FBI but sexuality is not covered under federal hate crime law. 

The Matthew Shepard Hate Crime Act passed the House last year and the White House threatened to veto it. (story) 

In the Senate, an effort to get around a veto, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) attached the bill to the 2008 defense authorization bill.  It passed last September (story) and then went to conference where it was stripped out.

Even if gays were protected under federal law, the Michigan teens could not be charged with hate crimes because they are minors.

Michigan LGBT rights group, Triangle Foundation, said the attack shows the need for anti-bullying policies in schools.

A study released by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network in 2006 showed that homophobia is widespread in the nation’s schools.

Nearly one-in-five students reported they had been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation and over a tenth  because of their gender expression.

Three-quarters of students surveyed said that over the past year they heard derogatory remarks such as “faggot” or “dyke” frequently or often at school, and nearly nine out of ten  reported hearing “that’s so gay” or “you’re so gay” – meaning stupid or worthless – frequently or often.

Over a third of students said they experienced physical harassment at school on the basis of sexual orientation and more than a quarter on the basis of their gender expression. 

The study also showed that bullying has had a negative impact on learning.

Fifteen Hungarian LGBT groups, a Hungarian member of the European Parliament, the mayor of Budapest and International Lesbian and Gay Association-Europe all denounced the decision to bar the parade.

Chief Gabor Toth said the parade, scheduled for July 5, would obstruct major traffic routes in the center of the Hungarian capital.

Toth suggested that instead of a parade the group could hold pride in “a fixed location.”

The LGBT groups said that the parade has been held along the proposed route for several years and there had been no problems.  The groups said that the parade would occupy only one lane of traffic. (story)

The groups also said that by holding pride in a park or stadium would in effect “hide it from the public eye” basically forcing gays into a police ordered closet.

The Lesbian and Gay Association-Europe accused Toth of caving in to the threats of ultra nationalists.

As anger of Toth’s ban increased, he rescinded the ban on Friday the Hungarian News Agency MTI reported.

MTI said Toth informed the parade organizers the march could be held along Andrassy Avenue where it has been for the past several years.

Peaceful LGBT Pride Marches have taken place in Budapest for years. However last year the participants of Budapest Pride March experienced attacks by right wing extremists.

Gays and lesbians have been making significant strides in recent years.

Last December Hungary’s left-of-center coalition government passed legislation giving same-sex couples many of the rights of marriage.

The Registered Partnership Act will go into effect in January 2009. It will allow gay and lesbian couples to register their relationships and recognize partners as next of kin status. 

The law will provide guarantees for joint tax filing, decision making in health care, and assure inheritance, social security and pensions rights.

It will not, however, allow same-sex couples to adopt or undergo fertility treatment, nor will it allow couples to share a common surname.

In a letter to pride organizers Chief Gabor Toth said the parade would obstruct major traffic routes in the center of the Hungarian capital.

Toth suggested that instead of a parade the group could hold pride in “a fixed location.”

In a reply to the chief 15 LGBT groups said that the parade has been held along the proposed route for several years and there had been no problems.  The groups said that the parade would occupy only one lane of traffic.

The groups also said that by holding pride in a park or stadium would in effect “hide it from the public eye” basically forcing gays into a police ordered closet.

A Hungarian member of the European Parliament agrees with the gay rights groups.

“I do not believe that a colorful parade on a Saturday morning during the summer would cause a major obstruction to traffic on the less-frequented Andrassy Avenue,” said MEP Katalin Levai, who is a former former minister for equal opportunities.

The International Lesbian and Gay Association-Europe said it was appalled by the parade ban.

“We consider [Toth's] decision as a sign of giving in to the threats of ultra nationalists,” said Patricia Prendiville, Executive Director of ILGA-Europe.

Peaceful LGBT Pride Marches have taken place in Budapest for years. However last year the participants of Budapest Pride March experienced attacks by right wing extremists.

“The traffic hindrance explanation and an earlier suggestion to the LGBT activists to organize a stationary event in an area remote from the city centre are just excuses for the unwillingness of the Budapest police chief to take his responsibilities seriously to ensure order,” said Prendiville.

Gays and lesbians have been making significant strides in recent years.

Last December Hungary’s left-of-center coalition government passed legislation giving same-sex couples many of the rights of marriage.

The Registered Partnership Act will go into effect in January 2009. It will allow gay and lesbian couples to register their relationships and recognize partners as next of kin status. 

The law will provide guarantees for joint tax filing, decision making in health care, and assure inheritance, social security and pensions rights.

It will not, however, allow same-sex couples to adopt or undergo fertility treatment, nor will it allow couples to share a common surname.

The new policy also will cover school employees.

The vote came two months after a coalition of LGBT students and advocacy groups appeared before the board to advocate for the new policy. The students said that teens who are bullied are more likely to commit suicide or drop out of school.

The move also follows similar decisions by school boards in Knoxville and Memphis.

“We’re all really excited that all our hard work has paid off and that the school board agrees that anti-gay harassment and discrimination in our schools is totally unacceptable,” said Eric Austin, a Hume-Fogg High School junior and a member of the coalition.

“We worked very hard to show the board the true stories of students here in the district who have struggled to keep learning in the face of name-calling and bullying, and we’re so glad that the board took our concerns seriously.”

Other members of the coalition included a number of Nashville’s most respected child welfare organizations, including the Oasis Center; Centerstone; Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee; One-in-Teen Youth Services; Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays; The Child and Family Policy Center at the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies; and the Mayor’s Youth Council.

The coalition was formed in June 2007 with assistance from the ACLU of Tennessee, which also provided advice and guidance throughout the project.

“These students stood up for their rights and put in an enormous amount of time and energy towards making their schools a safer place to learn,” said Christine Sun, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Tennessee.  

“This is a perfect example of citizens empowering themselves to go out and make changes for the better in their community, which is something we at the ACLU fully support.  That this all came from the efforts of a group of dedicated, hardworking young people is simply wonderful.”

A Gay Straight Lesbian Education Network survey released in 2005 found that bullying and verbal harassment is a national problem across the country.

The National School Climate Survey found that three-quarters of students surveyed across America said that over the past year they heard derogatory remarks such as “faggot” or “dyke” frequently or often at school, and nearly nine out of ten  reported hearing “that’s so gay” or “you’re so gay” – meaning stupid or worthless – frequently or often.

Over a third of students said they experienced physical harassment at school on the basis of sexual orientation and more than a quarter on the basis of their gender expression. 

Nearly one-in-five students reported they had been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation and over a tenth  because of their gender expression.

Though frustrated by the resistance, and insistent that the alarms are unfounded, transgender-rights activists are heartened by an overall trend toward greater protection under the law. In the past 15 years, 13 states and more than 90 cities and counties – home to roughly 40 percent of the U.S. population – have passed measures banning various types of discrimination against transgender people.

Among those jurisdictions is Maryland’s affluent Montgomery County, where the county council voted 8-0 last year to extend civil rights protections for housing, employment and public accommodations on the basis of gender identity.

Opponents, contending the law threatens privacy in public restrooms and health-club showers, launched a petition campaign to put the issue to voters in Nov. 4 general election. Election officials ruled that enough valid signatures were gathered, but gay-rights groups were in court Thursday seeking to quash the ballot measure because of alleged irregularities.

If the ballot measure survives, activists on both sides say Nov. 4 would mark the first time that voters anywhere in the U.S. pass judgment specifically on a transgender-rights measure. Dan Furmansky, head of the statewide gay-rights group Equality Maryland, hopes the showdown is averted.

“I think we could win, but it would be a very expensive, defensive proposition,” he said. “We don’t want to subject our transgender brothers and sisters to a campaign of fear-mongering where their civil rights are up for a popular vote.”

A spokeswoman for opponents of the new law, Michelle Turner of Maryland Citizens for Responsible Government, blamed the county council for the controversy – saying it enacted the bill despite an outpouring of calls and letters opposing it.

“We want the citizens of Montgomery County to have their voices heard,” Turner said. “They were ignored once and now it’s their turn.”

Turner’s group, with a Web site called NotMyShower.net, has focused on access to public bathrooms and locker rooms. They contend the new law entitles someone who is biologically male but self-identifies as female could use the women’s bathroom – leaving open the chance that molesters would take advantage of the measure to intrude into such facilities.

“No longer will women and girls be able to feel completely safe,” the group says. “The outrageous legislation … may result in forcing even religious schools to hire transgender teachers – and then also allow cross-dressing but biological males in your daughter’s school locker room.”

In Colorado, conservative groups waged a similar campaign last month to block a bill that bans discrimination against gay and transgender people in housing and public accommodations. Radio ads urged listeners to tell Gov. Bill Ritter he shouldn’t sign the bill, though he proceeded to do so on May 29.

“Henceforth, every woman and little girl will have to fear that a predator, bisexual, cross-dresser or even a homosexual or heterosexual male might walk in and relieve himself in their presence,” wrote James Dobson, founder of the conservative ministry Focus on the Family.

Transgender activists say there is no record of any problem with predators, or any other type of bathroom or shower harassment arising from the transgender-rights laws already in place in scores of jurisdictions.

“It just does not happen – it’s entirely fabricated,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “There’s not a single case in the U.S. of the problem they’re talking about.”

A Focus on the Family spokesman, Gary Schneeberger, suggested problems might surface in the future.

“It’s rather early in the genesis of these types of laws for there to be a lot of concrete evidence that predators will abuse them,” he wrote in an e-mail. “But the law does, indeed, make it possible – and we would hardly be surprised if anecdotal evidence starts pouring forth indicating that.”

Dana Beyer, a transgender activist in Montgomery County, said many of the conservative activists seeking to overturn the anti-bias law had previously campaigned against school curriculum addressing sex education and sexual orientation.

“These are people living in the 19th century,” Beyer said. “They don’t want to have to think of people like me. … They’re willing to spend time and money and effort to prevent any sort of accommodation for transgender women.”

Though she would relish victory for her side on Nov. 4, Beyer supports the fight to keep the repeal measure off the ballot.

“To win, we’d have to run a campaign costing hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she said, noting that the top funding priority for national gay-rights groups will be California’s ballot measure on gay marriage.

Transgender activists also are focusing attention on Congress, where liberal Democrats are seeking a federal ban on workplace discrimination against gays. Thus far, to the dismay of many activists, there is hesitancy to include transgender people in the proposed bill, for fear of jeopardizing its prospects.

New York State also is zone of contention; the Democratic-dominated Assembly voted last week for a transgender-rights bill, but it’s given no chance of clearing the Republican-controlled state Senate.

Keisling said opposition to transgender rights runs counter to the national trend.

“Policies are changing so fast in colleges, cities, businesses that we can barely keep up,” she said. “The arc of history is clear – we will get our rights.”

Margaret Chambers and Cassandra Ormiston were married in Massachusetts in 2004. 

Because Rhode Island has no specific law banning same-sex marriage gay and lesbian couples can go to Massachusetts to marry.

But those marriages are not recognized in Rhode Island.

In 2006 Chambers filed for divorce in Family Court in Providence, citing “irreconcilable differences”. 

Because of the lack of specific legislation on same-sex marriage Chief Family Court Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah Jr. asked the Rhode Island Supreme Court to determine if he has the authority to hear the case.

Last December in a split decision the high court ruled that laws governing Family Court do not include same-sex couples. (story)

Chambers then took the case to Superior Court.

On Wednesday Superior Court Judge Patricia A. Hurst dismissed the case saying only Family Court can hear cases involving divorce, and said that because of the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex divorce in Family court there was no point in taking the issue back to the justices.

“If same-sex marriage was not on the legislature’s mind in 1961 when it passed the Family Court Act, then same-sex marriage certainly wasn’t on its mind when the Superior Court was established over half a century earlier in 1905,” Hurst said in her written ruling.

But at the same time she suggested the high court left open the argument whether excluding same-sex couples from Family Court could be unconstitutional.

“The question yet to be asked is whether the Family Court Act, now having been interpreted by the Supreme Court, impermissibly deprives spouses in a same-sex marriage to equal protection of law on account of the coincidence in their gender,” Hurst’s ruling noted.

“Assuming the legislature and the executive branch continue to ignore this problem, the question will be whether the Family Court Act is unconstitutional for the reason that it violates state constitutional principles of equal protection.”

Chambers’ attorney has not said if he will take that argument back to the state Supreme Court.

The campaign’s goal is $335 million, with $258 million already raised through behind-the-scenes solicitations over the past year, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said.

Major donors include billionaire financier George Soros, who gave $12 million through his Open Society Institute.

“The purpose is to build a civil liberties infrastructure in the middle of the country – where battleground states are often under-resourced and our efforts are most needed,” Romero said.

He cited issues such as immigrants’ rights, gay rights, police brutality and opposition to the death penalty as causes that would be pursued vigorously as the ACLU expanded in heartland states. At present, the ACLU’s biggest offices are in the Northeast, the Pacific states and Illinois; targets for expansion include Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico and Tennessee, with even the smallest ACLU affiliates in line to get extra funding to hire new attorneys and launch new advocacy programs.

Romero said the ACLU envisions more than doubling the staffs of its Texas and Florida operations, and its full-time work force nationwide – including its headquarters and state affiliates – would increase from roughly 800 to about 1,000. Numerous new satellite offices would be opened.

“We’re going to build these offices into vibrant, muscular civil liberties machines, in places where our issues matter most,” he said. “We’ve done great work in those states, but we’ve always been the David to the government’s Goliath.”

Romero said the fundraising campaign was designed to capitalize on a favorable climate for the ACLU. Since he became executive director in 2001, its annual budget has tripled to $107 million, and its membership has nearly doubled to more than 550,000, Romero said.

“It’s patently evident that the best fundraiser for the ACLU has been George Bush and his cadre of cronies,” Romero said. “If the Republicans loses control of Congress and the White House, we can be sure religious right will be much more active on the state level – our work will be critical there.”

Officials of two conservative legal groups often at odds with the ACLU were not pleased by the fundraising announcement, which came during the ACLU’s annual membership conference in Washington.

“The most dangerous organization in America is trying to become more dangerous,” said Mike Johnson, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund.

Mathew Staver, founder of the Florida-based Liberty Counsel, said the ACLU “already has been an antifamily and in some cases anti-religious liberty and anti-life organization.”

“Any future expansion would simply increase its destructive presence and be concerning to people of conservative, moral values,” Staver said.