TEXAS: Dallas County Approves Domestic Partners

WFAA.com reports:

The Dallas County Commissioners Court voted 3-2 along party lines Tuesday to approve medical benefits for domestic partnerships.  
The approval provides the money for couples who aren’t married, be they gay or straight. It’s an issue guaranteed to divide.
“There is simply no place for pernicious partisanship when it comes to equality,” argued Rafael McDonnell of the Resource Center Dallas, speaking in favor of the proposed stipend for domestic partners. 
Others took the podium to argue against it.  
“This is utterly ridiculous and totally irresponsible position on your part,” said Dallas resident Debbie Morozzo. “This is a waste of taxpayers’ money.” 
The issue is whether Dallas County should provide a stipend of up to $295 per year for county employees’ domestic partners who otherwise would not qualify for medical benefits. The three Democrats on the commission favored the move while the two Republicans were opposed.
 ”Are we going to fund obese people?,” asked Commissioner Maurine Dickey, a Republican. “Are we going to start funding smokers? Are we going to fund people who have blue Pontiacs?” 
An otherwise civil discourse later turned personal when Commissioner Dickey called out a member of the audience. 
“I would just like to ask that he refrain from taking pictures of me during,” said Dickey, in the middle of the discussion. “I don’t care about name calling, I’m just concerned about this person taking a picture of me.” 
The problem was that the person she was referring to was really a woman –– the resident in the audience said she was taking pictures of her colleague who was speaking at the podium at the time and not taking pictures of Dickey. 
After the meeting, that resident, C.D. Kirven, challenged Commissioner Dickey to learn more about the issue before calling people out. 
“I’m not offended by Dickey calling me a ‘he’,” said Kirven. “I would offer that Ms. Dickey go to the resource center and try to get some training on pronouns and ask someone before they call them a ‘he.’” 
The measure passed on a 3-2 vote. Officials say offering domestic partners an insurance stipend will cost the county no more than $100 thousand per year. 
After the meeting, Dickey did not offer an apology. 

Austin Police Department: It Gets Better

TEXAS: Sketch Released In Shooting Of Teen Lesbian Couple

MSNBC reports:

Police have released a sketch of a suspect in the shooting of a South Texas couple that left one dead and another wounded last month.

With help from a witness, Portland police described the alleged gunman as a skinny male in his 20s, weighing 140 pounds.  The sketch was released late Wednesday. Mary Kristene Chapa, 18, and Mollie Judith Olgin, 19, were both found June 23 in a park with gunshot wounds to the head. Olgin died from her injuries and Chapa remains hospitalized. The two women were involved in a relationship, according to family and friends, though it’s not clear if that was the motive for the shootings. So far, the incident has not been ruled a hate crime. The couple had planned to spend time in the park before going to see a movie. Olgin’s family became worried when she didn’t show up for work the following morning. Portland Police Chief Randy Wright told msnbc.com the shooting appears to be a random act, but the investigation is ongoing. Police recovered a bullet casing at the scene, but no weapon. Witnesses told police they heard what could have been gunshots or firecrackers the night before the girls were found, but they never reported it.Chapa has not been formally interviewed by police because of her medical condition. The Texas Rangers joined the investigation, which is being led by Portland police, after offering their assistance.No one from the Portland Police Department was immediately available for comment. 

SAN FRANCISCO: Vigil For Shot Texas Teen Lesbian Couple

TEXAS: Teen Lesbian Couple Found Shot In Park

TEXAS: Brandon Elizares, Gay Teen, Commits Suicide, Leaves Heartbreking Message

The Huffington Post reports:

Brandon Elizares, a 16-year-old from El Paso, Tex., took his own life early this month after being bullied and threatened at school because of his sexuality, KVIA-TV reports.

“My name is Brandon Joseph Elizares and I couldn’t make it,” his suicide note read, according to the station. “I love you guys with all of my heart.”

The El Paso Times reports Elizares committed suicide the day after he received a threatening text from a classmate.

“He worried about everyone else before himself,” his mother, Zachalyn Elizares, told the paper. “He would say, ‘It’s OK, it doesn’t bother me.’ My son had a right to live how he wanted to live.”

Brandon’s mother also said she believed the school did everything they could to control the bullying.

“He’s been threatened to be stabbed. He’s been threatened to be set on fire,” Elizares told KFOX-TV. “They’ve reprimanded several kids and they did everything that they could.”

A Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) memorial service is scheduled for Friday in the teen’s hometown, where donations can be made to the PFLAG anti-bullying fund, the Dallas Voice reports.

TEXAS: State Democrats Add Marriage Equality To Platform

The Dallas Voice reports: 

A marriage equality plank was added to the Texas Democratic Party’s platform during this weekend’s state convention in Houston. QSanAntonio has the full text of the marriage equality plank:

• “Texas Democrats join President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in calling for and affirming equal rights including marriage equality for all Americans. We, along with our President and Vice President, recognize that same sex marriages should be valid and legal in America.
• “Texas Democrats support President Obama and the United States Justice Department in recognizing that the Federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and in refusing to defend DOMA in any Federal Court proceeding. We call for the total repeal of DOMA.
• “Eight states and the District of Columbia have now recognized marriage equality and have legalized same sex marriages.
• “Texas Democrats support the full inclusion of all families in the life of our state, with equal respect, responsibility, and protection under law, including the freedom to marry. Government has no business putting barriers in the path of people seeking to care for their family members, particularly in challenging economic times. We support the repeal of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, the Texas Defense of Marriage Act and the Texas Constitutional Marriage Amendment and oppose other attempts to deny the freedom to marry to loving same sex couples.”

Erin Moore of Dallas [pictured], outgoing vice president of the Texas Stonewall Democratic Caucus, reportedly was instrumental in getting the marriage equality plank added as a member of the platform committee. The party also reported added a plank to the platform on adoption which states, “We support adoption of children by loving, qualified parents regardless of marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression, and the rights of families created by those adoptions.”

TEXAS: Wanda Derby, A 71 Year-Old Woman, Charged With Hate Crime

Pink News UK reports:

A 71-year-old Texan woman was yesterday charged with committing a hate crime after being accused of beating and choking a 25-year-old man with a wooden cane because she believed he was gay and had AIDS.
Wanda Derby of Richland Hills attacked the man – who remains unidentified – on Wednesday night as her son was moving into the his apartment.
Police said that Derby made a homophobic comment and told authorities that the man “has AIDS” and was going to “kill her son”.
Derby was freed yesterday afternoon on $11,500 bail. She is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, enhanced as a hate crime, and assault causing bodily injury. She is accused of hitting the man several times with a cane and choking him by placing the cane against his throat.
The injured man’s mother witnessed the attack and as she moved to call the police, was hit in the face, according to Richland Hills police.
The man had marks and bruises on his throat and body. One policeman said he’d never witnessed such a type of call in 15 years in the force.
Prior to the attack that same night, Derby posted on her Facebook page: “My son Steven is no longer my son. He has sided with the idiots next door and I guess he [thinks] they will take care of him. He will never get another thing from me or his dad. We have washed our hands of him.”

TEXAS: Gay Community Forms PAC To Help Mayor Against Recall Efforts In El Paso

ABC’s KVIA reports:

Members of El Paso’s gay community have formed a new political action committee to help the mayor and two city representatives stay in office.
Council members Steve Ortega and Susie Byrd and Mayor John Cook are facing a recall election initiated by another PAC, El Paso For Traditional Family Values, after the elected officials did not implement a voter-approved ordinance meant to take away the health insurance of gay and unwed partners of city employees.
The representatives said they voted not to implement the ordinance, which was written and put on the ballot by El Paso For Traditional Family Values, because it was so vaguely written, city attorneys said it would also take away the health insurance of about another unintended 100 city employees.
El Pasoans For Equality chair Tony Ramos said the idea to form a PAC came after he and a few friends talked about how quiet and uninvolved the gay community had been over the past two years when the issue of domestic partner benefits turned recall effort had developed in the city.
“I think that El Paso is a very gracious city, a very gracious community and it has allowed us to go about our lives pretty much happily, which has bred some sort of complacency on our parts. And now when we are under full attack by those who would like to see our rights taken back, it is very important for us to show our face, to show that we are very much a part of this community, because we do not want to go back, after all the gains that we have made, in our fight for equality.” Ramos said in an interview on Wednesday.
Recall organizers, who are part of the same PAC that wrote the original ordinance to take away the health insurance of domestic partners, now claim their efforts are no longer about gay or unwed relationships. “The gay rights and the medical expenses become secondary. First, we protect our constitution.,” said Ignacio Padilla, a recall organizer.
Ramos said Cook, Byrd and Ortega did what was necessary to keep unintended people from losing their health coverage. “I can understand the frustration of somebody who voted not feeling like their vote was counted, but as has been pointed out several times, had they known the full effect of their vote, had they known that hundreds of people were going to lose their benefits that were not intended to in the original ordinance, I think they would understand that what happpened was an action of checks and balances,” he said.
The formation and announcement of the new PAC comes as Cook is fighting to stop the recall process in court. He plans to appeal County Court No. 3 Judge Javier Alvarez’s decision not to grant the mayor’s request to freeze the recall process as the courts decide if the recall petitioners broke the law.
Cook said petitioners broke the state election code by gathering signatures at churches and other corporations. Recall organizers argue that law is unconstitutional and limits their right to free speech. “It wasn’t that I was afraid of facing a recall election, because I’m confident that I’ll be successful in that, but it was more about the fact that they thought they were above the law because they were a church,” Cook said Wednesday.
Padilla takes issue with Cook’s allegations. “He continues to try and lie to the community that we did things wrong. We didn’t do anything wrong. We’re very proud of what we did,” he said.
Cook said he owes nearly $200,000 in legal fees stemming from the effort to halt the recall process. “I can use help from anybody. The legal fees are just eating me alive right now.” Ramos said the new PAC already has several fundraisers in the works to help the mayor pay his legal fees.
Ramos said the PAC will reach out to the gay community through voter registration drives, block-walking and teaming up with business establishments where gay patrons congregate, including gay bars.
“We cannot let one faction of this city set us back. History is going to be on the side of those who fight for equality, so regardless of what happens to Susie, the mayor or Steve, history is going to speak well of them because they are the ones who are really in the forefront of equality,” said Ramos.
Padilla doesn’t agree. “Until the state of Texas approves same-sex marriages as a legal marriage, I’m sorry, they don’t have benefits. We can’t turn into a super gay community. What about the other people who are paying their taxes. We will fight to the end to defend our constitutional rights and our right to vote and that our vote be respected,” he said.

Song Of The Day: Texas - When We Are Together 

TEXAS: GetEqual Confronts Corrections Corporations Of America

TEXAS: Houston Lesbian Mayor Annise Parker Wins Reelection  

The Advocate reports:

Houston mayor Annise D. Parker has won reelection despite low approval ratings and antigay rhetoric leveled against her by a challenger.Avoiding a run-off, Parker received 51% of the vote while her nearest competitors struggled in the mid-teens during an evening of low voter turnout. The victory did not come as a surprise to Houston political observers: Parker had led the field in campaign spending by a considerable margin — $2.3 million versus negligible sums raised by her opponents. But as with her 2009 mayoral bid, Parker faced a series of antigay attacks during the campaign. Dave Wilson, who assailed Parker for her sexual orientation, garnered just 12% of the vote. “Being homosexual is one thing, but using your position of power to promote the homosexual agenda is quite another,” Wilson wrote in a May campaign mailer.Speaking with The Advocate on Wednesday, Mayor Parker said that the bigoted tactics aimed at undermining her reelection did not come as a surprise. “They will use them until we prove that they don’t work,” she said of antigay political groups. “They will use them until the GLBT community and our allies decide that we’ve had enough. There are still too many of us who can’t be bothered to vote.”Parker, who received congratulatory calls Tuesday evening from Vice President Joseph Biden and Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, said that her reelection, and the victories of many openly gay candidates nationwide last night, indicate a trend toward greater acceptance of LGBT elected officials.
“That doesn’t mean it’s easy,” Parker said. “If the only thing [voters] know about you as a candidate is that you’re openly gay or lesbian, it’s a negative. But if it’s only one of a series of data points about you, then they can filter that along with all of the other points.” Despite a current approval rating that is the lowest of any Houston mayor in recent history according to the Houston Chronicle, Parker has worked to extend LGBT rights in a city that continues to prohibits domestic partner benefits for gay municipal employees — the result of a voter referendum several years ago. In 2010, she issued an executive nondiscrimination order inclusive of gender identity (sexual orientation had been covered in a previous policy order by former mayor Bill White).“I’m hoping that we have an opportunity to take that back to the voters,” Parker said of city domestic partner benefits. “I would certainly be supportive of an initiative” to overturn the previous voter referendum, she said.Also last year, Parker appointed to the municipal bench Phyllis Randolph Frye, who became the first openly transgender judge in Texas. Asked about the presidential aspirations of Texas Gov. Rick Perry — who has supported a federal marriage amendment and told ABC News’ Christiane Amanpour in a Sunday interview that he would “comfortable” reinstating “don’t ask, don’t tell” as commander-in-chief — Parker replied, “Rick has now taken a hard turn to the right since he became a national candidate.” She added dryly, “I would certainly hope that the rest of the country will send our governor back home so we can continue to enjoy him.”Next month, Parker hosts the 27th International Gay & Lesbian Leadership Conference in Houston. “It’s a great opportunity for elected and appointed GLBT leaders from around country, and the world, to get together and share tips support each other,” she said.

MSNBC Interviews Texas Bashing Victim

TEXAS: San Antonio Lesbian Student Assaulted 

TEXAS: Gay Man Beaten, Burned, Stabbed

The Dallas Voice reports:

A 26-year-old gay man says he was the victim of a brutal hate crime early Sunday in Reno, Texas — a small town just east of Paris and about 100 miles northeast of Dallas.
Burke Burnett said he was at a private party at about 1 a.m. when four men suddenly attacked him, stabbing him at least twice with a broken beer bottle before throwing him onto a fire. His attackers yelled things like “pussy-ass faggot,” “gay bitch” and “cock-sucking punk,” Burnett said.
Burnett said it took 30 stitches to close stab wounds to his back and forearm, as well as a cut above his left eye. He also sustained second-degree burns and severe bruises.
“They knew I was gay,” Burnett said Monday. “I’m convinced they were trying to kill me.”
Jeff Sugg, interim chief of the Reno Police Department, released a statement Monday afternoon saying: “The Reno Police Department is currently investigating an aggravated assault that took place last weekend. The investigation is ongoing and additional information will be provided when available.”
Reno police officials declined to further discuss their investigation.
Burnett said the officer investigating the case told him the attack will be classified as a hate crime. But Burnett said his attackers, whose identities are known, remain at large, and the officer told him it could be two weeks before they’re arrested.
“I’m scared for my life,” Burnett said, adding that he’s staying with a family friend. “I’m scared to go home. These guys have nothing to lose.”
Burnett said he grew up in Paris and came out as gay when he was 15. He knows at least one of his attackers personally. Two of the suspects have been to prison and may be on parole, he said.
Burnett said he’s attended several parties at the residence and was invited by his straight friend who lives there. He arrived at the party several hours earlier with three gay friends. However, the group left after someone at the party was overheard making anti-gay remarks such as, “These faggots don’t deserve to be here. Somebody needs to get them out of there.” Burnett said he didn’t hear the remarks and wasn’t aware of them when he returned to the party later in the evening with one of his girlfriends.
Burnett said he was sitting inside a large metal shed called “the party shop” when he was blindsided with a punch to his left eye. When he got up and tried to defend himself, one of his attackers stabbed him in the back with a broken beer bottle. Burnett called the stab wound “a kill shot” but said fortunately it didn’t puncture his lung.

Reno, Texas
One of the suspects stabbed him a second time in the right forearm — cutting into the muscle but missing an artery — before he was thrown onto a lit burn barrel.
At that point, some of Burnett’s girlfriends managed to slow down the attackers enough so that he could escape to a vehicle. None of the other 20 people at the party attempted to stop the attack, he said.
Burnett’s girlfriends eventually drove him to a hospital in Sulphur Springs, about 30 miles away.
Burnett said he’s hoping none of his injuries are permanent. He’s scheduled to return to the doctor on Friday.
Chivas Clem, one of Burnett’s gay friends who accompanied him to the party, contacted Dallas Voice and other media outlets about the attack Monday morning. Chivas said he fears people in the small, conservative town will try to brush the incident under the rug.
“I intend to make sure the Police Department follows through with this, and that the local press covers it,” Chivas said. “When I saw him [Burnett], I vomited because he looked so bad — and I cried.”
Another one of Burnett’s gay friends, Austin Holloman, said he’s heard police are considering downgrading the charges to misdemeanors because the attack occurred at a party. Holloman said he recently moved to Paris to live with his partner, who’s from there and has known Burnett since childhood.
“We don’t want people thinking this is OK in this area,” Holloman said. “We plan on being here forever.”