GLBT Issues

The Marriage and Family Protection Act is still alive in the Minnesota Legislature, but Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, the bill’s chief author in the House, says it’s unlikely it’ll make it far this session. But with same-sex marriage legal in Iowa and domestic partnerships protected in Wisconsin, pressure is building in the DFL controlled Legislature to deliver some relationship rights for the key LGBT constituency.

“Homosexuality is against the law in the United States,” says Bradlee Dean, the head of the “punk rock” ministry You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, which brings its overtly religious message to public schools at taxpayer expense. Therefore, he concludes, the appointment by Barack Obama of Minneapolis’ Sharon Lubinski, a lesbian, as a U.S. [...]

A lawsuit to force the District of Columbia to put gay marriage to a vote was dismissed on Thursday. Reps. Michele Bachmann and John Kline were among a group of Republican members of Congress who signed on to the lawsuit. Congress has the ultimate authority over law-making in the District.

When Lutherans met in Minneapolis last summer to decide whether to allow churches to hire gay and lesbian pastors in committed relationships, former Gov. Al Quie urged church members to stay with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America even if they opposed homosexuality. But now Quie has become a spokeman for a Lutheran separatist group [...]

Reps. Michele Bachmann and John Kline joined 37 other members of Congress in calling on the courts to force the District of Columbia to put same-sex marriage on the ballot. The District’s mayor signed an ordinance allowing for same-sex couples to marry late last year.

In a move that is being hailed by LGBT advocates and derided by the religious right, President Obama made his first appointment of a transgender person to a federal post this week. Amanda Simpson will be the new Senior Technical Advisor to the Department of Commerce where she will oversee weapons technology.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar announced on Monday that the United States Senate has confirmed Minneapolis Police Department Assistant Police Chief Sharon Lubinski as the nation’s newest United States Marshal. Lubinski is widely considered to be the first lesbian to hold that post and one of only a handful of women in history to serve as a [...]

The National Center for Transgender Equality (NTCE) slammed Gov. Pawlenty last week for his telling Newsweek that Minnesota’s laws protecting transgender people from employment discrimination should be changed. Pawlenty called the 1993 Minnesota Human Rights Act “overbaked” because “if you are a third-grade teacher and you are a man and you show up on Monday [...]

In his interview with Newsweek (mentioned earlier by Chris Steller), Gov. Pawlenty said he regretted a 1993 vote to expand the state’s anti-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity and that they law should be changed. Specifically, he said laws that protect transgender Minnesotans from being fired for being transgender should be changed. [...]

The Minneapolis City Council voted on Friday to denounce Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which would jail LGBT people in that country and impose severe penalties for allies who work for LGBT rights. The first incarnation of the bill even provided for the death penalty in some cases.