State revisits 3-decade ban
By Jim Ash DEMOCRAT CAPITOL BUREAU CHIEF

A three-decade ban on gay adoption, a conservative bulwark that sets Florida apart from all other states, crumbled ever so slightly Monday when a Republican committee chairman signaled his willingness to reconsider the policy. Rep. Bill Galvano of Bradenton, chairman of the Future of Florida's Families Committee, said he would consider scheduling a vote on legislation that would allow gays to adopt children that they are already permitted to nurture as foster parents. Critics say the double standard is bigoted, makes it even harder to find permanent homes for the 3,500 children awaiting adoption in Florida and tears children away from the only loving parents they have ever known. "There are probably some inconsistencies (in existing law) that will ultimately have to be addressed," Galvano said. "I remain open-minded." Galvano said he shared the concerns of many of his constituents who were concerned about placing children in nontraditional homes. But Galvano said he was beginning to have second thoughts after talking to the House sponsor, Rep. Sheri McInvale, R-Orlando, and after listening to impassioned advocates hammer away at the state's contradictory policy. The law dates back to a bitter crusade by former beauty queen and Florida Department of Citrus spokeswoman Anita Bryant, who used her celebrity to lash out at gay-rights supporters in Miami-Dade County. Florida policymakers remain squeamish, particularly in an election year.Sen. Nan Rich, D-Sunrise, sponsor of a companion bill in the Senate, was forced to postpone a vote indefinitely last week when it looked like it would not survive the committee. It officially remains in limbo while she hunts for enough support to risk a committee vote. Galvano warned supporters not to get their hopes too high. He won't consider a vote in his chamber until he sees more movement from the Senate. "Forget the issue, and I don't care whatever the bill is, nothing is going to pass unless it has a chance in the other chamber," Galvano said. "I don't want to risk our committee's valuable time on legislation that has no chance of passing." House Speaker Allen Bense is opposed to the legislation but will not stop his committee chairs from giving it a hearing, a spokesman said. A spokeswoman for Gov. Jeb Bush said Monday he has not studied the legislation. McInvale said Rich assured her Monday afternoon that she was winning more support in the Senate. The earliest Galvano's committee could meet is March 8. Gay-rights supporters said Monday they were already planning rallies in the Capitol on March 9 and 10 to coincide with the first week of the legislative session. "We want to make sure it is on everybody's radar while the session is just beginning," said Brian Winfield, communications director for Equality Florida, a nonprofit group with a paid membership of 1,000 that advocates for gay rights. Only two other states, Mississippi and Utah, have laws that effectively prohibit gays from adopting. Mississippi bans gay couples from adopting but does not ban gay singles. Utah requires adoptive parents to be married. Only Florida has an iron-clad prohibition. McInvale said she is already satisfied with the progress, even if the legislation moves no further this year. "Some people were complaining that it was postponed," she said. "They should be celebrating the fact that it got a hearing in this Republican-led, conservative Legislature."
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Jeff Kunerth | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted February 16, 2006

Efforts to modify Florida's ban against gay adoption are not dead, despite a state Senate committee's decision to table the bill, the head of a gay-activist organization said Wednesday.

Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, said there still is a chance that the bill will be revived later in the legislative session: "It's not dead. It's not dead at all."

The bill would have allowed a judge to permit a gay adoption if there were "clear and convincing evidence" that it would be in the child's best interest.

It was tabled after the bill's sponsor, Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston, decided she did not have the votes on the Republican-dominated committee.

Smith said the personal testimonies in favor of ending the ban moved legislators on both sides of the issue.

"It's a victory when, for the first time in 30 years, the Legislature finally had to confront how much harm this ban has inflicted," Smith said. "We absolutely reached people in Tallahassee."

Florida, Mississippi and Utah are the only states that ban gay adoptions outright.

Smith was in Orlando to address a meeting of PFLAG, a support group for friends and relatives of gays and lesbians.

"Part of the power is we had so many straight people speaking up with so much passion that this is just wrong," Smith told the group.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-gays1606feb16,0,7990877.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-state
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Gay Dem resigns in protest over Dean’s decision

WASHINGTON — Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean has abolished the Democratic Party’s constituent outreach desks, including the post of director of lesbian and gay outreach.

A DNC spokesperson said Dean replaced the outreach director positions with a new program called the American Majority Partnership, which integrates efforts to address the concerns of minorities into all of the DNC’s departments and offices. The little noticed move took place last year.

"It’s an expansion of what we had before," said Damien LaVera, the DNC spokesperson assigned to discuss gay rights issues.

But the former chair of the DNC’s Gay & Lesbian Americans Caucus doesn’t see it that way. Gay Democratic Party activist and fundraiser Jeff Soref of New York City said he resigned from the DNC and from his position as chair of the gay caucus in August largely because of Dean’s decision to eliminate the gay outreach desk.

"It took us many years to win that position, have it funded and make it effective," Soref said.

Soref said he told Dean "it was not credible" to simply assume that combining all constituent groups into one program without a specific gay coordinator or director would be effective because it would likely result in less attention to the specific concerns of gay Democrats.

"I thought this system could lead to us being re-marginalized by the party," Soref said in an e-mail message. "I have seen or heard nothing since that makes me feel that is not happening," he said.

Soref said Dean’s decision to hire gay Democratic activist Donald Hitchcock in September as director of the DNC’s Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council, which raises money for the party from gay donors, was not the same as hiring a full-time outreach staffer to address gay issues.

Hitchcock said he could not comment on the DNC changes or his work at the DNC because new DNC rules put in place by Dean prohibit him from speaking to the news media.

Chris Owens, director of the DNC’s American Majority Partnership program, insisted that Hitchcock works with her on gay constituent outreach efforts in addition to his fundraising work.

"I would argue that we have more than one full-time person in place," Owens said. "One of the goals of the American Majority Partnership … is to make sure we are working across constituencies so we can use issues in a way to unify constituencies," she said.

Until last week, when contacted by this newspaper, the DNC Gay & Lesbian Americans Caucus and the National Stonewall Democrats, a group representing gay Democrats with affiliated chapters throughout the country, had not publicly acknowledged or expressed an opinion on Dean’s decision to eliminate the gay outreach desk position.

In a telephone interview last week, gay Democratic activist Rick Stafford of Minnesota, who replaced Soref as chair of the DNC gay caucus, said he is willing to give the new approach a chance to work before passing judgment.

"Nothing is cast in stone," Stafford said.

Bringing out the vote
At stake, according to gay Democratic activists, is whether gay voters will turn out in force in the 2006 congressional elections to help Democrats win back control of the House and Senate. Exit poll data has shown that between 75 percent and 80 percent of the gay vote goes to Democratic candidates in presidential and congressional elections, but that the size of the gay vote varies from election to election.

Eric Stern, executive director of the National Stonewall Democrats, would not comment on Dean’s changes.

"I see it as a restructuring because that’s the chairman’s prerogative when he or she comes in to take over the DNC," Stern said.

Stern said that while Hitchcock was doing a good job in helping the DNC reach out to gay voters, the NSD believes he needs at least one additional staff assistant to help him.

He said the Stonewall Democrats also have asked the DNC to hire more gay field workers to help with Dean’s initiative to more aggressively support all 50 state Democratic Party operations during the 2006 election.

Stern held the DNC gay outreach director’s position from 2004-—-during the presidential campaign-—-until February 2005, when he resigned to take the Stonewall Democrats director’s post.

By LOU CHIBBARO JR
Feb. 03, 2006
Southern Voice

http://www.sovo.com/2006/2-3/news/national/approach.cfm
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TAMPA - They want to be recognized as taxpayers with rights to adopt children. They want candidates who will endorse their civil union.

In the Florida elections this fall, gay and lesbian activists plan to wield their political clout - estimated by some at 1 million of the 10.5 million registered voters in the state.

Toward that end, a dormant political group - the Hillsborough County Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Allies Democratic Caucus - has reorganized.

In a meeting during the weekend at John F. Germany Library, members of the group told politicians and party leaders to think of them as taxpayers first.

"They made that clear," said Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Karen Thurman. "In a political process, there is strength in numbers. It should be critical to any party to get this type of involvement."

Even the people on the other side politically, the Tampa Bay Log Cabin Republicans, support the Democrats' re-emergence.

"They are energized, and let's hope it continues," said Jim Pease, a Tampa businessman and president of the Republican group, which advocates for the civil rights of gay and lesbian Americans. "It's a positive step for everybody. [I] hope they can get running and stay focused."

The GLBT Democratic Caucus started in the early 1990s at the statewide level, said Stephen Gaskill, spokesman for the Florida GLBT. The Hillsborough County group, with more than two dozen members and supporters, is organized and ready to demonstrate its influence, Gaskill said.

"This is a very professional, businesslike group," he said. "This is not a social caucus. We are a very loyal constituency and will support and work with candidates that want our help."

The group re-emerged, in part, because of a Hillsborough County Commission vote last year to refrain from acknowledging gay pride events. It takes a particular issue or development such as this to mobilize gay voters, said sociology Professor Ken Sherrill, of Hunter College in New York.

"Some politicians operate under the assumption they don't vote anyway," Sherrill said. "They make all kinds of stereotypical assumptions about groups they don't know."

Sherrill began tracking the gay and lesbian voting bloc in 1972. On a national level, gays and lesbians only united politically after the government's sluggish response to the spread of HIV-AIDS in the 1980s, he said.

"Here's the critical difference: Most minorities have a way of coping with discrimination, and it's passed on generation to generation," Sherrill said. "Gay kids are not born into gay families. They organize after a catalystic event."

One major issue for many gay activists was pushed into the background with the failure of a campaign for a November statewide vote to place a ban on same-sex marriage in the state constitution. Organizers did not gather enough petition signatures. Such a union already is illegal in Florida.

Activists now have turned their attention to other family life and safety issues, including same-sex adoption and antibullying measures in schools.

"We want to make sure we are heard by the candidates," said Al Giraud, vice president of the GLBT Democrats, speaking at a recent meeting of the group. "If we are not, we have to let them know that they are accountable."

In the Republican Party, Log Cabin members - 23 of them in the Tampa Bay area - are working to bring gay and lesbian issues into the mainstream. The group is chartered by the Republican Party.

"We are not about hard, extreme positions," said Pease, of the local Log Cabin Republicans. "We want to work together, be more moderate. I want to see results. It doesn't matter who we work with."

State lawmakers are figuring out that gay constituents are, like other people, affected by policies and laws, said Brian Winfield, 41, spokesman for the gay advocacy group Equality Florida. "There has been a whole new level of interaction," Winfield said. "I have not seen the gay and lesbian community activated at this level in the entire time I have been here. This is extremely encouraging."

A dozen candidates, their representatives and Democratic Party officials spoke to the GLBT caucus Saturday, including gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis.

"There are issues galvanizing groups," said Danae Jones, spokeswoman for Davis. "You are seeing that across the state. People who don't like where the state is heading are getting out and getting active. That's exactly what people should be doing."

ISSUES
• Roll back antigay adoption ban. Under Florida law, gays and lesbians are prohibited from adopting.

• Promote safe schools. Build on antibullying measures that would further train teachers how to intervene effectively during altercations.

• Work to ensure that the constitutional amendment seeking a ban on same-sex marriage does not happen.

By CHRIS ECHEGARAY cechegaray@tampatrib.com
Published: Feb 8, 2006
Tampa Tribune
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The year-end FEC reports are in and once again, Ron Klein reports outraising Clay Shaw, $371,546 to $316,060 for the quarter. Shaw still has a cash on hand advantage, $1,476,330 to $1,144,930, but that advantage continues to shrink.

Of note is the fact that Klein has outraised Shaw in the election cycle, $1,333,963 to $1,173,663. Only the war chest that Shaw carried over from his previous campaigns is giving him the cash edge at the moment.
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Backers of a proposal to change the constitution to ban gay marriage fell short Wednesday as the deadline passed for garnering enough support to get the amendment on this year's ballot.

The other group that appeared to have a shot to continue its effort to get on the ballot as Wednesday's 5 p.m. deadline approached was Florida4Marriage.org. The group, backed by the Republican party, wants the Florida constitution to define marriage as the union between one man and one woman. Florida law already states the same.

Organizers mounted a last-day push to get petitions turned in, but fell short turning in only about 455,000 signatures of the 611,009 needed, said John Stemberger the leader of the petition effort.

"It was an amazingly strong showing considering the resources we had," Stemberger said. "If it takes another two years it's worth the wait."

Gov. Jeb Bush said earlier this week that if the measure didn't succeed, he may talk to lawmakers about whether the state law that already defines marriage needs strengthening, or constitutional protection. He noted that there's no current challenge to the law, but said it would be hard to respond after the fact if someone did successfully challenge it.

"Hopefully it just won't succeed because it's the wrong thing," said Pastor Paul Anway, who performs gay union ceremonies - not legal marriages - at a Christian church in Tallahassee. "When we see people, groups and organizations using a religious standpoint to oppose this, it feels very discriminatory, it feels like they're trying to create a group of second-class citizens."

Full article in today's Herald Tribune
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President Bush again called for constitutional amendment defining marriage as a man and a woman in his Jan. 31 State of the Union address:

"Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be re-defined by activist judges. For the good of families, children, and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/02/20050202-11.html
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