News Briefs 12/13/2008 (part 2)
- Moderate evangelical Richard Cizik’s resignation may not stop broadening of the evangelical agenda, U.S. News and World Report, Dan Gilgoff.
- Birth certificates to reflect NY gay-marriage move, Associated Press, Jennifer Peltz.
- Urban Outfitters pulls pro-gay-marriage shirts from shelves, The Advocate, Neal Broverman.
- Web presence eyed for marriage movement, Bay Area Reporter, Seth Hemmelgarn.
- Op-Ed: Replacing Hillary, New York Blade, Allen Roskoff. An interesting argument that Clinton’s replacement in the Senate could be an improvement, since Hillary’s support for equal rights for gay people is limited.
Excerpts from the above headlines follow:
Moderate evangelical Richard Cizik’s resignation may not stop broadening of the evangelical agenda
Richard Cizik, the longtime Washington lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals—the largest evangelical umbrella organization in the country, representing roughly 45,0000 churches—resigned Thursday after igniting a firestorm in the evangelical world by vowing support for gay civil unions in an interview with National Public Radio.
Birth certificates to reflect NY gay-marriage move
State officials will now let married same-sex couples list both their names on their children’s birth certificates in a policy shift deeply important to many gays and lesbians.
The decision, which echoes similar provisions in states that allow gay marriages or civil unions, is one of many changes since Gov. David Paterson ordered state agencies in May to respect out-of-state gay marriages.
Urban Outfitters pulls pro-gay-marriage shirts from shelves
In another sign that one of America’s hippest retailers isn’t as forward-thinking as one might assume, Urban Outfitters has pulled a T-shirt touting same-sex marriage from its shelves.
The shopping blog Racked reported late last week that the Philadelphia-based Urban Outfitters removed “I Support Same-Sex Marriage” shirts from its stores after they had been on sale for only a week. The publicly traded clothing chain blamed the removal of the shirts on bad press, but according to Racked, the negative publicity consisted of only one blog post.
Web presence eyed for marriage movement
At a recent forum on marriage equality in San Francisco, after listening to ideas for what to do that ranged from having a “die-in” at St. Mary’s Cathedral to doing outreach in Spanish and other languages, Molly McKay, media director for forum co-sponsor Marriage Equality USA, cheerily offered some advice:
“If you have a good idea, f***in’ do it!”
During her tenure as junior senator from New York, nominee for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, together with New York’s other Senator, Chuck Schumer, was never a progressive leader. Hillary was wrong on the war, she abandoned single payer health care, and she is against marriage equality. Hillary says to this day that she would have voted for the national Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Her husband’s administration sold the LGBT community out on DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. NYC politicos, for the most part, supported her presidential candidacy for selfish political reasons—i.e., Ask not what is best for the country but what is best for me.
