Panel Passes Domestic Partner Benefits Bill

By SEUNG MIN KIM | 5/16/12 1:03 PM EDT Updated: 5/17/12 7:39 AM EDT

A week after President Barack Obama publicly proclaimed his support for same-sex marriage, a Senate panel easily passed a measure that would extend benefits to gay and lesbian partners of federal workers.

On a voice vote, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee approved the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act. The bill is intended to give the same benefits to same-sex partners that spouses of straight federal workers currently receive.

 

Among the benefits that would be provided to same-sex partners are health care benefits, long-term care, family and medical leave, and retirement benefits, according to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the bill’s chief sponsor who has repeatedly introduced the measure in previous Congresses.

“Correcting this situation that allows for unequal treatment among federal workers not only fixes a fundamental unfairness in the current system, it will help the federal government recruit and retain talented employees who might otherwise reject federal service because … they can get fairer benefits packages from other private or public sector employers,” Lieberman said in his opening remarks.

Lieberman, who opposes legalizing gay marriage, said the timing of the hearing — exactly one week after Obama’s announcement — was coincidental and stressed that Wednesday’s bill was about “equal pay and equal benefits for equal work.”

The legislation has 23 co-sponsors – all Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents except for Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Senate panel. Like Lieberman, Collins said during Wednesday’s hearing that the bill was one way to make the federal government more attractive compared to the private sector.

“It’s just a matter of making the federal government’s benefits structure comparable of those of large employers,” she said.

According to Lieberman’s office, one of three employers offers benefits to their workers’ domestic partners, as well as 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies and half of employers with more than 5,000 employees. Furthermore, 24 states and hundreds of local jurisdictions do as well, Lieberman’s office said.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76388.html#ixzz1v9y6OB3g

Posted at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76388.html

Reposted at http://www.blogger.com/

47 Years Ago: September 1964

A small group of activists picketed at the Army's Whitehall Street Induction Center in Manhattan in protest after the confidentiality of gay men's draft records was violated. The action was led by members of the New York Mattachine Society and is considered by many sources to be the first gay rights demonstration in America. Although the organizers had contacted reporters, none of them came to cover the demonstration. It was early LGBT actions like this — and the media indifference to them — that helped set the stage for the Task Force being founded in 1973.

From The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Newsletter. Reposted at Keystothecloset@blogspot.org

Goodbye, Mom and Dad. Hello, Parent One and Parent Two.

Parent One, Parent Two to replace references to

mother, father on passport forms

By Mary Beth Sheridan and Ed O'Keefe, Washington Post Staff Writers. Friday, January 7, 2011

The State Department has decided to make U.S. passport application forms "gender neutral" by removing references to mother and father, officials said, in favor of language that describes one's parentage somewhat less tenderly.

The change is "in recognition of different types of families," according to a statement issued just before Christmas that drew widespread attention Friday after a Fox News report.

The announcement of the change was buried at the end of a Dec. 22 news release, titled "Consular Report of Birth Abroad Certificate Improvements," that highlighted unrelated security changes.

The new policy is a win for gay rights groups, a vocal and financially generous Democratic voting bloc that has pushed for the change since Barack Obama began his presidential transition in late 2008. The decision follows last month's vote to end the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which gay leaders consider one of their biggest victories in years.

Fred Sainz, vice president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group, called the news "a positive step forward for all American families. It was time that the federal government acknowledged the reality that hundreds of thousands of kids in this country are being raised by same-sex parents."

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, blasted it as reflecting the "topsy-turvy world of left-wing political correctness."

"This is clearly designed," he said in a statement, "to advance the causes of same-sex 'marriage' and homosexual parenting without statutory authority, and violates the spirit if not the letter of the Defense of Marriage Act," the federal law that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

He called on Congress to take action.

It was not immediately clear whether a similar change would be made to all federal documents. But after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced in 2009 that partners of gay American diplomats would be eligible for benefits accorded to spouses, the rest of the U.S. government followed suit.

In 2000, Clinton was the first wife of a president to march in a gay-pride parade, and as secretary of state she has advocated on behalf of gay rights. In a speech in June she said the United States "was elevating our rights dialogues with other governments and conducting public diplomacy to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons."

Rosemary Macray of the State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs shrugged off complaints of political correctness and described the switch as an unremarkable bureaucratic tweak.

"Really, there have been so many changes in the last 10 or 15 years with reproductive technology and the like, and so this is why it is important for us to accurately reflect families in these applications," she said.

The DS-11 form is required of first-time passport applicants and children younger than 16. The change will go into effect Feb. 1 and will be part of an already-scheduled revision of passport forms, Macray said.

"It's not going to really involve any expense to taxpayers," she said.

sheridanm@washpost.com ed.okeefe@washingtonpost.com

4th Annual TransOhio Transgender & Ally Conference

4th Annual TransOhio Transgender & Ally Conference will be held the weekend of

August 5-7, 2011 in Columbus, Ohio!

Call for Presenters

Interested in submitting a proposal for a workshop, presentation, discussion or performance? For information, visit the Submission Page.

This year we are expanding our Conference this year to include:

Friday, August 5th: Provider’s Day

Explicitly for medical, legal, and social work professionals

Continuing Education Units (CEU)

More information coming soon.

Continuing Legal Education (CLE)

More information coming soon.

Interested in submitting a proposal for a class, seminar or workshop? For information, visit Submission Page.

Submit your proposal online! Submissions are due Friday March 18, 2011

Saturday, August 6: General Conference

Covering a broad range of interests throughout the community

Sunday, August 7: General Conference

Continuation of programs with a diversity of topics

Volunteers

As with any event, it takes people-power to make events such as the Conference happen. Volunteers will be

needed for Friday at the Provider’s Day and throughout the General Conference:

* Registration/Check-In

* Setup/Break-down

* Session proctors

* Information table

* Meet & Greet

* Saturday evening socials

* And more!

Interested in volunteering? Contact our Volunteer Coordinator, Sarah (sarah@transohio.org).

Sponsorship Opportunities

Do you work for a company or are you involved in an organization that you think might like to be a sponsor of this event? If so, visit our Sponsorship Opportunities page!

For more conference info, visit http://www.transohio.org/

Peer Support for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender (LGBT) Individuals

by Ronald E. Hellman, M.D., FAPA, Director,

LGBT Affirmative Program of South Beach Psychiatric Center

The LGBT Affirmative Program (LGBTAP) of South Beach Psychiatric Center was initiated in 1996 as one of several multicultural services provided by this large, public sector community mental health center in New York City. The program is based at the Heights–Hill Mental Health Service in downtown Brooklyn, one of seven outpatient clinics at South Beach, which serves a multi-ethnic, low socioeconomic population with serious, chronic mental illnesses.

Several years into the program, we observed that our sexual minority population, much like our general psychiatric population with significant disabilities, had great difficulty reintegrating within the larger LGBT community and the general community at large, despite the provision of LGBT–affirmative therapies. We came to believe that it was incumbent upon us to facilitate the creation of a socio-cultural component within a recovery model, in addition to the psychosocial and medical services already offered.

This resulted in the creation of an affiliated membership program, the Rainbow Heights Club (RHC). As members, individuals did not have to be enrolled at the clinic, and this allowed LGBT patients from all over the New York metropolitan area to attend. The larger numbers helped to approximate the diversity found within the city’s LGBT community. And, with the creation of an LGBT consumer advisory group, members came up with a name for the club and helped steer program development.

LGBT individuals with major mental illnesses can be reluctant to engage in psychiatric treatment and adhere to treatment regimens over time, because they are less likely to identify with mainstream settings. They are a minority in these settings, and are also subject to stigma in the LGBT community because of their mental illness and in psychiatric settings because of their sexual minority status. And, unlike other ethnic and racial minorities, their families typically do not share their sexual identity. Thus they can be particularly prone to a lack of affirmation and supports.

LGBT patients have to adapt to largely heterosexual, cisgendered (those comfortable in their gender of birth) mental health settings in virtually all areas of service delivery. Well-intentioned, “integrated” settings fall short when they do not provide safe, culturally relevant opportunities for the alienated LGBT patient. Culturally appropriate programming, fostered at all organizational levels, has the power to transform these patients into LGBT persons in recovery.

A crucial component of recovery for the LGBT consumer is peer support. LGBT peer support allows for a process of authentic identification with others like oneself. It promotes forms of socialization, role modeling, and individuation not otherwise available in the generic setting. Mainstream cultural settings often inadvertently rob the LGBT patient of their experience as a sexual minority person with a different, yet valid, worldview. LGBTAP and RHC were organized to facilitate peer support by bringing a “proto-community” of individuals together that had never previously connected.

Separation from the dominant heterosexual, cisgendered world and connection with sexual minority peers is a common step in the healthy psychological development of sexual minority individuals. Major mental illness can tear people away from that process, and mainstream psychiatric settings typically provide no substitute. LGBTAP and RHC created the conditions and opportunities for these individuals to connect with each other, thereby creating a unique cultural community in which pride, place, self-esteem, support, and hope could be nurtured, as the weight of mental illness became merely a shared part of that larger process.

As a unique, regional program, RHC has served almost 500 members. Collaborating with staff and peer specialists, members have made their needs and interests known, the result being an ever-evolving program of groups, support, skills training, and advocacy. An outcome study of this recovery model found that participants attributed significant improvement in adherence with treatment regimens, reduction in psychiatric symptoms, enhanced self-esteem, improved stress tolerance and hopefulness to the program, despite an average of 16 years of previous psychiatric treatment.¹ To appreciate the depth of this program, please visit http://www.rainbowheights.org.

¹ Hellman, R.E.; Huygen, C.; Klein, E.; Chew, M.; & Uttaro, T. (2010.) A study of members of a support and advocacy program for LGBT persons with major mental illness. Best Practices in Mental Health: An International Journal, 6(2), 13–26.

From "Recovery to Practice (RTP) Weekly Highlights" Volume 2, Issue 4, Feb. 4, 2011. To access the RTP Weekly Highlights and other RTP materials, please visit http://www.dsgonline.com/rtp/resources.html.

Bush's Daughter, in a Break, Endorses Gay Marriage

U.S.   | February 01, 2011 By MICHAEL BARBARO
As president, George W. Bush backed a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage. Now one of his daughters, Barbara, has come out in favor of  it at: emailthis@m3.1ga2nytimes.com

Will she then repudiate her affirmation like Cindy McCain?

Goodbye, Mom and Dad. Hello, Parent One and Parent Two.

By Mary Beth Sheridan and Ed O'Keefe Washington Post Staff Writers

Parent One, Parent Two to replace references to mother, father on passport forms

Friday, January 7, 2011; 11:47 PM

The State Department has decided to make U.S. passport application forms "gender neutral" by removing references to mother and father, officials said, in favor of language that describes one's parentage somewhat less tenderly.

The change is "in recognition of different types of families," according to a statement issued just before Christmas that drew widespread attention Friday after a Fox News report.

The announcement of the change was buried at the end of a Dec. 22 news release, titled "Consular Report of Birth Abroad Certificate Improvements," that highlighted unrelated security changes.

The new policy is a win for gay rights groups, a vocal and financially generous Democratic voting bloc that has pushed for the change since Barack Obama began his presidential transition in late 2008. The decision follows last month's vote to end the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which gay leaders consider one of their biggest victories in years.

Fred Sainz, vice president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group, called the news "a positive step forward for all American families. It was time that the federal government acknowledged the reality that hundreds of thousands of kids in this country are being raised by same-sex parents."

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, blasted it as reflecting the "topsy-turvy world of left-wing political correctness." "This is clearly designed," he said in a statement, "to advance the causes of same-sex 'marriage' and homosexual parenting without statutory authority, and violates the spirit if not the letter of the Defense of Marriage Act," the federal law that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

He called on Congress to take action.

It was not immediately clear whether a similar change would be made to all federal documents. But after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced in 2009 that partners of gay American diplomats would be eligible for benefits accorded to spouses, the rest of the U.S. government followed suit.

In 2000, Clinton was the first wife of a president to march in a gay-pride parade, and as secretary of state she has advocated on behalf of gay rights. In a speech in June she said the United States "was elevating our rights dialogues with other governments and conducting public diplomacy to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons."

Rosemary Macray of the State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs shrugged off complaints of political correctness and described the switch as an unremarkable bureaucratic tweak. "Really, there have been so many changes in the last 10 or 15 years with reproductive technology and the like, and so this is

why it is important for us to accurately reflect families in these applications," she said.

The DS-11 form is required of first-time passport applicants and children younger than 16. The change will go into effect Feb. 1 and will be part of an already-scheduled revision of passport forms, Macray said.

"It's not going to really involve any expense to taxpayers," she said.

sheridanm@washpost.com ed.okeefe@washingtonpost.com