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Homosexual illegal aliens get to stay in US; Obama continues to ignore DOMA

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Photo credit: MUMS

Amid pressure from Democratic lawmakers, Homeland Security officials reiterated Friday that a foreigner’s longstanding same-sex relationship with a U.S. citizen could help stave off the threat of deportation.

Binational gay couples are eligible for consideration under a federal program designed to focus resources away from low-priority deportation cases and let officials spend more time tracking down convicted criminals, said Marsha Catron, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.

However, the Obama administration will not automatically shelve deportation cases or process green card applications involving foreign citizens married to same-sex American partners.

Catron said her agency will continue to comply with a 1996 law that prohibits the government from recognizing same-sex relationships, even as Homeland Security takes these relationships into consideration when evaluating possible deportation.

The Obama administration last year said it considers the 1996 law unconstitutional and would no longer defend it in court.

Read more from this story HERE.

Black pastors’ leader accuses Obama of supporting child rape

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By Michelle Fields.  The leader of a group of black pastors opposed to gay marriage lashed out at President Barack Obama during a Tuesday appearance at the National Press Club. In his remarks, Rev. William Owens accused Obama of being “unprofessional” for ignoring him and insinuated that Obama had condoned child molestation by endorsing gay marriage.

“For the homosexual community and for the president to bow to the money as Judas did for Jesus Christ is a disgrace and we’re ashamed,” said Owens, the president and founder of the Coalition for African American Pastors.

“If you watch the men who have been caught having sex with little boys,” said Owens, “you will note that all of them will say that I was molested as a child. A man molested me in my home, wherever they will say they were molested. And for the president to condone this type thing knowing the full facts is just irresponsible.”

Owens added that the “president is in the White House because of the Civil Rights movement, and I was a leader in that. And I didn’t march one inch, one foot, one yard for a man to marry a man and a woman to marry a woman. So the president has forgotten the price that was paid … where they gave their blood to have equal rights in the United States.”  Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s more on the Coalition of African-Americans Pastors’ effort:

Black pastors group launches anti-Obama campaign around gay marriage

By Dan Merica.  A group of conservative black pastors are responding to President Barack Obama’s support of same-sex marriage with what they say will be a national campaign aimed at rallying black Americans to rethink their overwhelming support of the President, though the group’s leader is offering few specifics about the effort.

The Rev. Williams Owens, who is president and founder of the Coalition of African-Americans Pastors and the leader of the campaign, has highlighted opposition to same-sex marriage among African-Americans. He calls this campaign “an effort to save the family.”

“The time has come for a broad-based assault against the powers that be that want to change our culture to one of men marrying men and women marrying women,” said Owens, in an interview Tuesday after the launch event at the National Press Club. “I am ashamed that the first black president chose this road, a disgraceful road.”

At the press conference, Owens was joined by five other black regional pastors and said there were 3,742 African-American pastors on board for the anti-Obama campaign.

When asked at the press conference for specifics about the campaign – funding, planned events and goals – Owens said only that the group’s first fundraiser will be on August 16 in Memphis, Tennessee. But Owens insisted that “we are going to go nationwide with our agenda just like the president has gone to Hollywood.”  Read more from this story HERE.

Democratic Party moves to include Gay Marriage in Platform

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Democrats appear ready to embrace same-sex marriage as part of their party platform, a policy shift that reflects the rapidly growing acceptance of gay rights in mainstream politics.

Party officials met over the weekend in Minneapolis and approved the first step to amend their platform. In two weeks, the entire platform committee will vote on the matter at a meeting scheduled in Detroit. Then, if approved as expected, it would move on to convention delegates in Charlotte, N.C., for final approval in September.

According to Democrats who were briefed on the vote in Minneapolis, there was no objection when the issue came up. Though the language that was voted on still could be revised, party officials do not anticipate any major obstacles going forward.

The platform language approved over the weekend also included a condemnation of the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing legal same-sex marriages.

The Democratic Party’s move comes more than two months after President Obama personally backed the rights of same-sex couples to wed, making the action decidedly less controversial than it could have been had the party been in conflict with its leader.

United Nation’s Commission wants to legalize prostitution, IV drug use worldwide

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A report issued by the United Nations-backed Global Commission on HIV and the Law recommends that nations around the world get rid of “punitive” laws against prostitution – or what it calls “consensual sex work” — and decriminalize the voluntary use of illegal injection drugs in order to combat the HIV epidemic.

The commission, which is made up of 15 former heads of state, legal scholars and HIV/AIDS activists, was convened in 2010 by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and is jointly backed by the United Nations Development Programme and UNAIDS – the Joint U.N. Programme on AIDS/HIV.

The commission recommends repealing all laws that prohibit “adult consensual sex work,” as well as clearly distinguishing in law and practice between sexual trafficking and prostitution.

The report–“HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights & Health”–cites a recommendation by the International Labour Organization, which recommends that “sex work” should be recognized as an occupation in order to be regulated “in a way that protects workers and customers.”

Specifically, the commission wants to: “Decriminalise private and consensual adult sexual behaviours, including same-sex sexual acts and voluntary sex work.”

For other actions that the UN commission wants to take, please read more from this story HERE.

City officials’ threats against Chick-fil-A may backfire

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As we reported several days ago, Chick-fil-A is receiving heavy criticism from liberals and the gay community for its stance on traditional marriage.  Now, local city officials are trying to create economic hardship for the restaurant chain.  Not so fast say legal experts:

On July 20, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino indicated that Chick-fil-A will find it “very difficult” to obtain licenses for a restaurant in his city, but he backed away from that assertion. He later told the Boston Herald, “I can’t do that. That would be interference to his rights to go there.”

Chicago is the latest city to tell Chick-fil-A that it is not welcome. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said July 25 he would support Alderman Proco Moreno’s announcement that he would block construction of the restaurant in his district. Moreno said, “If you are discriminating against a segment of the community, I don’t want you in the First Ward.” Emanuel has articulated similar sentiments. He said, “Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values. They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents.”

But according to legal experts, barring construction of Chick-fil-A because the owners oppose gay marriage is a clear case of discrimination. “The government can regulate discrimination in employment or against customers, but what the government cannot do is to punish someone for their words,” said Adam Schwartz, senior attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. “When an alderman refuses to allow a business to open because its owner has expressed a viewpoint the government disagrees with, the government is practicing viewpoint discrimination.”

Schwartz noted that even the American Civil Liberties Union, which is known for its pro-gay “marriage” position, recognizes that the government cannot exclude a business simply because it has taken a stance against gay “marriage.” Such a policy could be a slippery slope and could then be used against businesses that support gay “marriage.” Though the ACLU supports gay “marriage,” “we also support the First Amendment,” Shwartz said. “We don’t think the government should exclude Chick-fil-A because of the anti-LGBT message. We believe this is clear cut.”

Jonathan Turley, a professor at the George Washington University Law School, said Moreno’s intentions raises “serious” constitutional concerns. “It’s also a very slippery slope,” Turley told FoxNews.com. “If a City Council started to punish companies because of the viewpoints of their chief operating officers, that would become a very long list of banned companies.” Turley said that Moreno’s actions could be “execessive and likely unconstitutional.”

Read more from Raven Clabough’s story HERE.

 

“Grindr,” GPS-based gay hook-up app crashed in London due to massive influx of gay Olympic athletes trying to use service

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If you were one of London’s estimated 350,000 Grindr users trying to log into the GPS-based gay dating App last week, you may have encountered some difficulty, due, according to some, to the influx of Olympic athletes trying to use the service.

In a July 19th post on the Grindr blog, App founder Joel Simkhai issued an apology to users who had experienced “service disruptions,” and explains, “when we discovered that [Grindr wasn’t working], we immediately set to work fixing the screw-up. The service disruption was a challenging thing to address, but our tech team worked around the clock to solve the problems and to whip Grindr back into shape.”

Simkhai doesn’t address the cause of the disruptions, but London tabloid “The People,” attributes it to the influx of Olympic Athletes in London. The publication reports:

A gay dating website crashed within minutes of the first Olympic athletes arriving in London — due to the volume of demand, say experts… Technicians believe the arrival of Olympic teams on Monday sparked a flood of new customers — and loss of the service in East London.

One Londoner told The People, “It happened almost as soon as the teams got here. Either loads of athletes were logging on to meet fellow Olympians or were looking to bag a local.”

Read more from the Huffington Post HERE (although we don’t recommend it).

Publisher’s note: GrindR subsequently denied that the influx of Olympians caused the collapse of its app, but provided no specific reason for the system’s collapse.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper comes out of the closet on “TV Take out the Trash Day”

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Anderson Cooper very cautiously came out of the closet on TV Take Out the Trash Day, in an e-mail to longtime pal/The Daily Beast columnist-blogger Andrew Sullivan.

“The fact is, I’m gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud,” Cooper said in the e-mail, which Sullivan said he had Cooper’s permission to share with the world.

Cooper’s announcement appears to have been carefully, cautiously timed: The day before a national holiday — known in the TV industry as Take out the Trash Day — is when potentially hot-and-maybe-not-in-a-good-way news is unveiled, in hopes that lots of people are on vacation and won’t notice.

In its coverage of of the news, ABC — for which Cooper worked as a “Mole” host and news correspondent before migrating to cable news — noted that in the past “the 45-year-old CNN journalist has dodged questions about his sexuality in the public eye.”

But Sullivan explained in his Monday morning post that he got in touch with Cooper for “reasons that are probably obvious to most,” on the occasion of Entertainment Weekly publishing an article called “The New Art of Coming Out: How Gay Stars Are Now Carefully — and Surprisingly — Going Public About Their Private Lives.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: mroach