A county clerk in California says if she is forced to perform weddings for gay couples she ain't marryin' nobody. She'll give couples a license, but they'll have to go somewhere else to get hitched. Link...

Charges stem from kissing incident at school

by Beth Maples-Bays
Equality Herald - Editor and Publisher

UNIONVILLE - A 16-year-old lesbian Bedford County student faces potential rape charges stemming from a kissing incident at Community High School (CHS) in Unionville. Reports indicate that Jane Doe Minor (not her real name) is currently being held in the Bedford County Juvenile Detention Center pending a hearing before General Sessions Court Judge Charles L. Rich. The proceedings are scheduled to take place on Monday, April 7, in Shelbyville, the Bedford County seat.

Read the rest here.

Opinion No. 07-140
Adoptions by Same Sex Couples
QUESTION
Pursuant to the Tennessee statutes relating to adoptions and the Tennessee Constitution, is it legal to permit an adoption by a same sex couple?

OPINION
Assuming the adoption is found to be in the best interest of the child, there is no prohibition in Tennessee adoption statutes against adoption by a same sex couple.

Link...

UPDATE - 9:30 pm, Monday, Sept. 24, 2007

Isa Infante responds to LGBTQ community concerns.

Go to www.equalityherald.com to read her responses.

Few responses to Equality Herald's questions for candidates

This fall's election cycle kicks off tomorrow with the Knoxville races for mayor, three City Council at Large seats and the 5th District seat.

Read the rest here.

Beth Maples-Bays writes:

Located online at www.equalityherald.com, Equality Herald is East Tennessee's only source for LGBTQ originating in the East TN area.

The EH was launched on January 2, 2007. After serving for more than three years as the East Tennessee Bureau Chief for Out and About Newspaper, I decided the time had come for East TN to have our own news source.

Good luck to Beth and crew on the launch.

The vote count is final: When the Alabama state legislature convenes its next session, Ms. Patricia Todd, an openly gay woman, will be representing the state's 54th District (Birmingham).

Patricia Todd made history Tuesday when voters in Alabama's 54th legislative district voted to send the Democrat to the State House, marking the first time ever that legislature will include an openly gay Representative. The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, the nation's largest gay and lesbian political action committee, endorsed Todd and helped raise tens of thousands of dollars from its national network of donors to help fund her campaign. Todd has no Republican opponent in the general election in November.

The vote was extremely close (less than 100 votes before provisional ballots were counted), but Alabama just elected a gay woman to its legislature.

Patricia Todd, 50, associate director of AIDS Alabama, appeared to have defeated Gaynell Hendricks, 55, owner of the Wee Care Academy. With only provisional ballots remaining uncounted, Todd had 1,173 votes, 51 percent, to Hendricks’ 1,114, or 49 percent.

“We are confident that the numbers are confirmed and that I won fair and square,” Todd said. “The people have spoken, and now it’s time to unite the district.”

Forty five years ago, Birmingham was called "Bombingham" for a spate of terrorist attacks aimed at keeping the races separate. Dr. King penned one of his most famous letters from the Birmingham Jail...

One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face Jeering, and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Times, indeed, are changing.

Congratulations to a real hero.

Congratulations, Ms. Todd.

The Gov. said in Athens yesterday that he would vote for the Tennessee Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Funny, he didn't mention that in Knoxville, but maybe nobody asked.

Bredesen says he support the amendment even though there is already a law on the books. He also says the only question is whether it will pass by 85% or 95%.

And now I'm afraid to go outside because some gay man might jump out from behind a bush and make me marry him.

TN Democratic State Senator Stephen Cohen introduced a bill to allow the sale of alcoholic beverages at two new "premier-type" tourist resorts on Watts Bar Lake. In the process he apparently wanted to ensure patrons would not be discrimated against on the basis of sexual orientation.

The bill passed the TN Senate. Well, apparently TN Republican State Representative Bill Dunn would have none of that. He introduced an amendment to the bill to eliminate sexual orientation from the non-discriminatory list. This bill with Dunn's amendment passed the House and will now have to go back to the Senate.

Oh, my! Now, apparently, "sexual orientation" must be defined. What is Dunn afraid of? Pedophilia apparently. Now, I may be crazy but I think pedophilia is against the law, but being gay or lesbian is not. Why does the Republican Party depend so much on fear tactics? What are they, what is Dunn, afraid of? I reckon they just don't want to lose control in this good ole boy state.

State Sen. Rosalind Kurita, who is running against Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. for the Democratic 2006 U.S. Senate nomination, co-sponsored legislation that would amend the Tennessee Constitution to define marriage "as a contract between one man and one woman."

Rep. Ford was one of only 36 Democrats to vote for a similar amendment to the U.S. Constitution.