Category Archives: D.C.

Report: 10 percent of D.C. residents are LGBT

cherry blossoms, spring, gay news, Washington Blade

(Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

A Gallup report released on Friday indicates the nation’s capital has the highest percentage of self-identified LGBT residents in the country in comparison to the 50 states.

Ten percent of the 493 D.C. residents who responded to Gallup’s daily tracking polls between June 1 and Dec. 30 identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. 3.3 percent of the 4,195 Marylanders and 2.9 percent of the 6,323 Virginians who took part in the surveys said they are LGBT.

Only 1.7 percent of North Dakotans who took part in the Princeton, N.J.-based polling company’s daily tracking polls during the same period identified themselves as LGBT.

The report did not compare D.C. to other cities, but Gary Gates of the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law told the Washington Blade he feels the statistics provide a more accurate snapshot of the country’s LGBT population.

“It was an acknowledgment on their part that this was a part of the population that was being talked about a lot and that there was not much data to speak to that,” Gates, who released the report with Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport, said. “I think they just saw that as an important investment.”

A separate Gallup report released last October noted 3.4 percent of the 121,290 Americans who took part in its daily tracking poll between June 1 and Sept. 30, 2012, said they were LGBT.

The Williams Institute in 2011 unveiled a study that estimates 3.5 percent of adults in the United States are either lesbian, gay or bisexual. The think tank also concluded nearly 700,000 Americans are transgender, but Gallup conceded in its Oct. 2012 report that accurately gauging sexual orientation and gender identity “can be challenging because these concepts involve complex social and cultural patterns.”

Harris Interactive, Community Marketing, Inc., and other survey companies already compile LGBT-specific data. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in June 2011 announced it plans to add a question about sexual orientation to the National Health Interview Survey this year, but the U.S. census currently does not include any that are LGBT-specific.

“I do think it is part of a general process that’s going on of convincing these surveys that this is a portion of the population that we need to some way measure,” Gates said in response to the Blade’s question about the report’s potential impact on the movement to make the census explicitly LGBT-inclusive. “It’s great that a health survey is doing it, but I’d love us to move it to where we get it more routinely outside of simply the sphere of health.”

Same-sex couples seek Va. marriage licenses

marriage equality, gay marriage, same-sex marriage, Virginia, Alyssa Weaver, Mike McVicker, Arlington County, gay news, Washington Blade

From left; D.C. residents Alyssa Weaver and Mike McVicker, who are from South Carolina, apply for a marriage license outside the Arlington County Courthouse on Jan. 17. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

More than a dozen same-sex couples from across the South gathered outside the Arlington County Courthouse on Thursday to apply for marriage licenses.

Gays and lesbians from Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and North and South Carolina submitted applications to Arlington Circuit Court Clerk Paul Ferguson in the complex’s plaza. A constitutional amendment that Virginia voters approved in 2006 defines marriage as between a man and a woman in the commonwealth, but those who participated in the action described their decision to take part as symbolic.

“We’re here to resist the unjust laws that label us as second class citizens and to call for full equality on the federal level,” Ivy Hill of Piedmont, S.C., told the Washington Blade after she filled out a marriage license in the complex plaza.

She and her partner of more than two years, Misha Gibson, recently became engaged.

“I’m here today to request a marriage license and knowingly being denied, but doing that to make sure that people know that we’re equal,” Gibson said. “I’m doing it to fight for my civil rights.”

Beth Schissel and Sally White of Atlanta joined four other same-sex couples who tried to apply for marriage licenses in Decatur, Ga., earlier this month.

White, who lived in Richmond for 30 years, joked with the Blade after Ferguson declined to issue them a marriage license she traveled to Virginia with her partner as a way to celebrate her birthday on Saturday.

“I’m a pediatric ER doctor,” Schissel said with tears in her eyes. “I take care of your children and take care of the sick and injured and I served my country. I went to the Air Force Academy and I served my country on active duty and yet I can’t have all the rights that are afforded me under that word marriage under federal law. So it’s a slap in the face type of feeling and it hits you deep in your core.”

The Arlington protest was the last in a series of actions organized by the Campaign for Southern Equality to highlight a lack of marriage rights for same-sex couples in the South and to urge the federal government to extend full equality to LGBT Americans.

The “We Do” campaign kicked-off in Hattiesburg, Miss., on Jan. 2 when five gay and lesbian couples applied for marriage licenses. Others followed suit in Mobile, Ala., Morristown, Tenn., Greenville, S.C., and three North Carolina cities before traveling to Virginia.

“We all live here in the South and we’re Southern folks,” Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, executive director of the Campaign for Southern Equality, who is also an ordained minister with the United Church of Christ in Asheville, N.C., told the Blade in an interview earlier this month. “This is where we live and we’re working with LGBT folks in small towns and cities across the region who are ready to stand up for equality — federal equality in new ways.”

She stressed her group’s approach to highlight the lack of marriage rights for same-sex couples below the Mason-Dixon Line reflects a broader strategy.

“We do feel like because this is the region where discriminatory laws are most deeply enshrined in state law, it creates a really powerful and unique opportunity to revisit those laws by using peaceful, direct action,” Beach-Ferrara said. “What we’re doing with the ‘We Do’ campaign is folks are taking action in their local communities to resist these state laws, to show what happens when they’re actually enforced. They’re typically invisible because they’re so rarely enforced, if at all. And so the general public is sort of insulated from the reality that we live with day in and day out as LGBT folks in the South, which is these laws exist, but when they’re actually enacted and enforced there’s an opportunity to talk about what that actually means and how that hurts real people and real families.”

Matt Griffin and Raymie Wolfe of Morristown, Tenn., who have been together for more than seven years, sought a marriage license in their hometown on Jan. 9.

Wolfe told the Blade before he and his partner tried to obtain a Virginia marriage license that they were “met with good humor” when they tried to do the same in Tennessee. He noted the clerk said it was the first time a gay couple had ever applied for a marriage license in the town — she did reaffirm the Tennessee does not recognize nuptials for gays and lesbians.

“What we wanted to do was kind of illustrate for people and ourselves what happens when we do that,” Wolfe said. “That’s kind of unprecedented. That was my hometown. It’s where I grew up and as a gay kid there, I kind never imagined that i would be going to a courthouse with a partner and applying for a marriage license.”

Same-sex couples gathered in Arlington three days after a Virginia House of Delegates subcommittee voted against a proposal that would have repealed the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

Neighboring Maryland is among the nine states and D.C. that allow gays and lesbians to tie the knot. North Carolina voters last May approved a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between a man and a woman by a 61-39 percent margin, while Minnesota voters on Election Day rejected a similar proposal.

The upcoming oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in cases challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8 also weighed on the minds of the same-sex couples who applied for marriage licenses and those who witnessed them do so.

“I’m very sympathetic to what the people who came before me today are trying to do and I am happy that there’s other jurisdictions where they can go to have their marriage licenses processed,” Ferguson, who is a former member of the Arlington Board of Supervisors, told the Blade. “There’s a Supreme Court decision coming up and so that will add some clarity to a lot of these peoples’ marriages, which is what they were looking for.”

Tim Young and Mark Maxwell of Winston-Salem, N.C., legally married at the Jefferson Memorial after they and other same-sex couples who had sought Virginia marriage licenses marched from Arlington to the nation’s capital.

“We live our lives in a way where we are not denied anything and we are open to being prosperous and successful,” Young, who has been with Maxwell for 20 years and raised four boys with him, said. “We’ve educated ourselves. We run a business so we pay taxes in that state and we give our money to that state, but we don’t have the same rights as other people and we believe in equity and equality.”

Beach-Ferrara noted her group made a deliberate decision to end their latest campaign in D.C.

“It’s in a lot of ways a small, intimate group, but of folks who traveled on a journey that’s symbolic in a lot of ways in the sense that if you live in the South, you need to travel to Washington, D.C., before you can be recognized as an equal citizen,” she said. “The journey folks have taken sort of helps to illustrate the legal realities that LGBT folks live with, which is you are a second class citizen until you reach the Washington border.”

Marriage equality, gay marriage, same-sex marriage, Virginia, Misha Gibson, Ivy Hill, Arlington County, gay news, Washington Blade

Ivy Hill of Piedmont, S.C., fills out a marriage license outside the Arlington County Courthouse on Jan. 17. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Va. lawmakers kill proposal to repeal gay marriage ban

James Parrish, Equality Virginia, gay news, Washington Blade

Equality Virginia Executive Director James Parrish (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

A Virginia House of Delegates subcommittee on Monday voted 6-1 to kill a proposal that would have repealed the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

Delegate Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax) introduced HJ665 on Jan. 9, the first day of the current legislative session. He told the Washington Blade after the vote he feels “people affirming their love to each other and living in committed relationships is a universal human right.”

“It’s a civil right,” Surovell said. “I don’t think that the constitution should prohibit the government from recognizing people’s love and commitment to each other solely because of their sexual orientation. I think it’s wrong and it’s hateful.”

Delegate Rob Krupicka (D-Alexandria,) who is among the more than two dozen legislators who co-sponsored HJ665, expressed disappointment that the House Privileges and Elections Constitutional Amendments Subcommittee killed the proposal.

“Virginia is going to have to re-visit this issue either because the public demands it, because we are forced to by the Supreme Court or because corporations make it clear that they’d rather move to D.C. or Maryland in order to protect their employees,” he told the Blade in a statement. “Marshall-Newman is so broadly worded, that it puts even basic contracts in question. Ultimately, I’d like us to be talking about an amendment to add marriage freedom to our constitution. But as today’s action shows, we have work to do to even allow for basic contract rights between two people.”

Delegate David Toscano (D-Charlottesville) agreed.

“I did not support the Marshall-Newman amendment when it passed and believe the time is now for it to be repealed,” he said.

Virginians in 2006 approved the amendment by a 57-43 percent margin.

A similar ban passed in neighboring North Carolina in May by a 61-39 percent margin.

Maryland is among the nine states and D.C. that allow gays and lesbians to tie the knot. Lawmakers in Delaware, Rhode Island, Illinois and New Jersey are expected to debate same-sex marriage proposals in the coming weeks.

“We’re deeply disappointed that the House committee has voted to overlook this resolution that would repeal Marshall-Newman,” Equality Virginia Executive Director James Parrish said. “It’s a shame that Virginia cannot catch up with a wave of national change since marriage equality is now a winning issue on the ballot.”

Surovell conceded to the Blade he was “not optimistic going into” today’s hearing in spite of public opinion polls that indicate growing public support for marriage rights for same-sex couples in Virginia since voters approved the Marshall-Newman amendment. He referenced the House of Delegates’ vote last May against gay prosecutor Tracy Thorne-Begland’s nomination to the Richmond General Court to further prove his point.

The Richmond General Court in June appointed Thorne-Begland on an interim basis because lawmakers failed to fill the vacancy — his term is slated to end at the end of next month if legislators do not approve his appointment. Members of the General Assembly Committee of Judicial Appointments are schedule to interview Thorne-Begland later today.

“I suspect that the only thing that will change whether this [SJ665] eventually passes is the change in control of the House of Delegates because the current majority is beholden to the Family Foundation,” Surovell said. “Last year I had a surreal evening when at 1 a.m. on the last day of session I’m sitting there watching my body debate whether a 14-year decorated naval aviator who’s been putting away murderers for five years is qualified to be a judge presiding over traffic tickets because he happened to live in a committed same-sex relationship with children while the Family Foundation sits in the balcony watching the whole thing. I thought there was something wrong with that. That’s the way it is in Virginia right now.”

Chair of Ill. GOP urges lawmakers to support same-sex marriage bill

Illinois State Capitol, Springfield, gay news, Washington Blade

Illinois State Capitol (Photo by Meagan Davis via wikimedia commons)

The chair of the Illinois Republican Party on Wednesday urged state lawmakers to support a bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry.

“More and more Americans understand that if two people want to make a lifelong commitment to each other, government should not stand in their way,” Pat Brady told the Chicago Sun-Times. “Giving gay and lesbian couples the freedom to get married honors the best conservative principles. It strengthens families and reinforces a key Republican value — that the law should treat all citizens equally.”

Gay former Republican National Committee Chair Ken Mehlman, who lobbied lawmakers in Maryland and New York to support same-sex marriage measures in their respective states, also urged Illinois lawmakers to vote for the bill.

“Republicans should support the freedom to marry in Illinois, consistent with our core conservative belief in freedom and liberty for all,” Mehlman said in a statement that Illinois Unites for Marriage, a coalition of groups that supports the same-sex marriage law, released. “Allowing civil marriage for same-sex couples will cultivate community stability, encourage fidelity and commitment and foster strong family values.”

Brady, who stressed he was expressing his own views and not those of the state GOP, announced his support for the same-sex marriage bill on the same day the 15-member Illinois Senate Executive Committee was expected to consider the measure. (The Windy City Times reported late on Wednesday members are expected to vote on the bill state Sen. Heather Steans introduced on Thursday.)

Lawmakers have until the end of the current legislative session on Jan. 8 to vote on the same-sex marriage bill. Governor Pat Quinn has said he will sign the measure, while a White House spokesperson told the Chicago Sun-Times on Saturday that President Obama also supports the measure.

Chicago Archbishop Cardinal Francis George urged parishioners to oppose efforts to extend marriage rights to gays and lesbians in a letter that parishes distributed on Sunday.

Equality Illinois CEO optimistic bill will pass

Same-sex couples can legally marry in nine states and D.C., while Illinois is among the handful of other states that allow gays and lesbians to enter into civil unions.

Gay marriage referenda passed in Maryland, Maine and Washington in November, while Minnesota voters on Election Day struck down a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Maryland’s same-sex marriage law took effect on New Year’s Day, while gays and lesbians began to tie the knot in Maine and Washington on Saturday and Dec. 9 respectively.

Lawmakers in Delaware, Hawaii, New Jersey and Rhode Island are expected to consider measures later this year that would allow gays and lesbians to tie the knot.

Equality Illinois CEO Bernard Cherkasov told the Washington Blade during an interview from Springfield, the state capital, earlier on Wednesday he remains optimistic lawmakers will support the same-sex marriage bill. He said he feels recent legislative and electoral advances on the issue in other states will spur more Illinois lawmakers to support it.

“In the past they kept us, the advocates, say to them that this is the right thing to do politically and morally,” Cherkasov said. “Now for the first time they’ve had a chance to see actually that the voters said this is the right thing to do politically and morally. So they didn’t need to trust just the activists and the advocates anymore. They can look at a clear record of successes from four states of voters being supportive of marriage equality.”

What’s in a name?

By TED SMITH

When I was a kid growing up in Pittsburgh, my civic booster grandmother would often tell me, “You know dear, they call Pittsburgh ‘the San Francisco of the East.’” And it’s true that our fair city, with its cozy ethnic neighborhoods clustered on various hills and valleys around the city, and our two cable cars climbing the side of Mt. Washington, might have had a slight resemblance to the City by the Bay. But as I used to retort, “Maybe, Grandma. But no one ever calls San Francisco ‘the Pittsburgh of the West’!” (Except maybe in jest.)

I call this phenomenon of borrowing the prestige of someplace by extending its name to another slightly similar or neighboring place, “gilt by association,” and it goes on a lot in real estate. It’s interesting to see how Realtors’ names for the same neighborhood have changed over time, as the place has acquired or shed prestige. For example, Capitol Hill (at least in real estate terms) used to extend all the way north to H Street, N.E., and east and south to the Anacostia River (at least, until the I-395 freeway cut those neighborhoods off). But on MLS listings, you can still see various permutations like “North Capitol Hill” or “Capitol Hill—North” to distinguish properties north of E. Capitol St. from those below. That’s now being replaced in some instances with the H Street corridor (or the Atlas District) as that neighborhood has grown in prestige.

The place names for real estate neighborhoods don’t necessarily correspond with the political boundaries for a neighborhood. For example, I live on 10th Street, N.W., between M Street and Massachusetts Avenue. Sale properties in my neighborhood are variously listed as being in Logan Circle (the gilded lily name), Mt. Vernon/Convention Center (my preferred name), Shaw (really?), or that old development standby for a neighborhood without a distinct identity in mid-city D.C., Old City #2 (not to be confused with Old City #1 to the east of us). If you’re a long-time resident of the District, you might pretend to be able to precisely differentiate those neighborhoods. But, though each of them may have a distinct geographic center, their boundaries are fuzzy—partly because their names come from and are used in various political and economic contexts.

Why is all this significant? Because naming is power. To identify a place with a distinctive name is to be able to increase or diminish its political and economic clout. Don’t believe me? Want to know how much extra you can get selling a property with a “Georgetown” neighborhood name? In an interesting negative twist on this, the Park View neighborhood south of Petworth almost disappeared (oh, the signs on Georgia Avenue were still there) when the Washington, D.C. Economic Partnership omitted it from the 2012 Neighborhood Profiles and Maps. (It was replaced with Petworth/Park View after residents raised a ruckus with their Council members.) Why would it be important if the place name disappeared? Because a way of distinguishing one neighborhood from another (whatever the relative real estate prestige of either) would be gone.

What this means to sellers and lessors of real estate property should be pretty obvious: Borrow the best neighborhood name for your property that you can legitimately claim; it will mean an increased price for your home. For buyers and renters, the lesson is to either use zip codes or a map search when looking for a property in order to avoid any confusion over place names.

The power of names to elevate or deprecate the value of objects has long been recognized.  Many people will know the famous quote from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But would it? Not in real estate.

Happy hunting!