Openly Lesbian Council Member Heckled, Called ‘Filth’

When a local resident heckled Jovanka Beckles recently, it was nothing new for the first openly lesbian member of the City Council in Richmond, California, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“I’m going to keep coming up here and tell you how gays have no morality. … You’re filth. You’re dirt. Because I have the constitutional right to say it,” resident Mark Wassberg said at a council meeting last month.

While Beckles brushed off Wassberg’s comments, she told another heckler to get “out of my [expletive] face” last month, calling those who were bothering her “a bunch of bullies,” according to KTVU. Beckles, the city’s vice mayor, also recently proposed a crackdown on hate speech in Richmond.

But the taunting doesn’t always come from the public. Sometimes Beckles, who was first elected to the council in 2010, is taunted by her own colleagues.

Continue reading at Huffington Post.

Transgender Women in New York State Prisons Face Solitary Confinement and Sexual Assault
**Trigger Warning: Misgendering**

It was Gay Pride weekend in New York City, but the event’s celebratory spirit was absent from Michelle Scott’s tidy second-floor apartment on a leafy street near Brooklyn College. Her child, Carey Smith, is a transgender woman currently locked up in solitary confinement in Upstate Correctional Facility, a men’s supermax prison located in the Adirondacks.

“Sometimes I’m on my bed, I’m crying,” she told Solitary Watch. “I wake up at five o’clock in the morning thinking about it, and I say, ‘God my son is stuck in a cell for 23 hours a day,” said Scott, who seems to accept Smith’s transition but still uses male pronouns. “And I pray and ask God, ‘Please give him the grace to do it.’” Smith is in disciplinary segregation, known as the Special Housing Unit, or SHU.

In an era of unprecedented victories for LGBT rights, especially in liberal New York, people like Carey Smith are still paying a high price simply for being who they are.

More over at Solitary Watch.

Laverne Cox stands with Transgender Student Appealing ‘Manifesting’ Prostitution Conviction

A student and activist at Arizona State University is appealing her conviction under Phoenix’s “manifesting” intent to engage in prostitution ordinance.

Monica Jones is seeking a reversal of the conviction with the support of her pro bono attorney at Perkins Coie, the American Civil Liberties Union and Emmy-nominated actress Laverne Cox.

Jones, who is a transgender woman of color, was convicted in April in Phoenix Municipal Court for a misdemeanor under a city code that criminalizes waving at cars, talking to passersby and asking of someone is a police officer, according to her legal representation.

“The officer who arrested me profiled me as a sex worker because I am transgender, I am a woman of color and I live in an area that is perceived to be low income,” Jones said.

More at the Washington Gazette.

Summary of Gay Marriage Cases Before Appeals Court

The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Wednesday on six gay marriage fights from Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee on Wednesday, setting the stage for one ruling. Each case deals with whether statewide gay marriage bans violate the Constitution. A look at them:

OHIO

Ohio’s two cases involve rights for gay and lesbian couples at the beginning of life and at the end. One case involves two gay men whose spouses were dying. They sued to win the right to be listed as the surviving spouses on their husbands’ death certificates and for their spouses to be listed as having been married.

Cincinnati civil rights attorney Al Gerhardstein said the state’s refusal to recognize out-of-state gay marriages violates the dignity of same-sex couples and amounts to unique discrimination, since Ohio has historically recognized marriages in other states that wouldn’t be legal in Ohio, such as between cousins or involving minors.

Eric Murphy, Ohio’s state solicitor, said that the state has traditionally defined marriage as between a man and a woman and that same-sex marriage is too new to be considered a deeply rooted, fundamental right.

A federal judge ruled in their favor. In a separate lawsuit, three lesbian couples in Ohio and one gay couple living in New York sued to have both spouses listed on their children’s birth certificates. One woman in each Ohio couple was pregnant and gave birth this summer, while the New York couple adopted an Ohio child.

In a ruling, Ohio was ordered to list both spouses of each couple on their children’s birth certificates. The judge also issued a broader ruling in the case, ordering Ohio to recognize all gay marriages performed legally in other states. That’s on hold pending appeal.

Read the rest at SFGate.

‘Maybe When We’re Dead’: Gays In Alabama Don’t Expect Change In Their Lifetime — But They’re Pushing For It Anyway

Lauren Jacobs, a 23-year-old queer activist who lives in Birmingham, has mixed feelings about the Human Rights Campaign. Although she’s intrigued by the group’s promise to bring more LGBT activists and money to the state, she has more respect for old-school activists like Patricia Todd, who was working in Alabama long before HRC entered the picture. In April, Jacobs and her girlfriend, Taylor Winfrey, drove around Birmingham with a friend, taping up fliers for a photo exhibit on queer youth in Alabama. The exhibit, called “Family Matters,” was a sequel to the project that prompted Huckstep and Misner to come out to the business community in 2012. Every time Jacobs and Winfrey passed a blue-and-white yard sign endorsing Todd, they cheered. Jacobs referred to Todd as “Pat” and said that just knowing about her was “huge.”

Read more here.

WATCH: What It’s Really Like To Be Young And Gay In Alabama