Tag: Mississippi

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Mississippi: Starkville City Council Reverses And Issues Permit For Pride Parade

After the Board of Aldermen in Starkville, Mississippi, voted against issuing a permit to allow the town’s first Pride parade, organizers filed a federal lawsuit saying the Board’s decision to ban speech by Starkville Pride on city streets is a violation of the First Amendment and its discriminatory treatment, based solely on LGBT-related animus, violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

And so, the Starkville Board of Aldermen held another vote tonight to consider the permit.

With Ward 3 Alderman David Little abstaining, the vote was tied at 3-3. Mayor Lynn Spruill became the tiebreaking vote.

Mayor Spruill had previously denounced the denial saying, “I think it sends a message that we are not the inclusive community that I believe us to be.”

Starkville Pride was live-tweeting during the meeting:

Renowned civil rights attorney, Roberta A. Kaplan, who represented Starkville Pride, issued the following statement:

“Bailey McDaniel, Emily Turner and Starkville Pride stood up to vindicate the right to freedom of speech held by every American, no matter whether they are straight or gay.

What happened at tonight’s meeting was a victory not only for our clients and for their equal dignity under the law, but also for the core principle that in this country, we do not restrict a person’s ability to speak based on whether or not we agree with what they have to say.

We look forward to celebrating Pride with the LGBT community of Starkville and the rest of Mississippi on March 24.”

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Mississippi: City Council Denies Pride Parade Permit With No Reason Given

The LGBT community of Starkville, Mississippi, was informed last week that an application for a permit to organize what would have been the town’s first Pride parade was denied after a 4-3 vote by the town’s aldermen.

To add to their frustration, the organizers weren’t given a reason for the denial. Three of the aldermen who voted against the permit left through the back entrance.

At the city council meeting, 16 people showed up to support the parade, only two spoke against it. One of the naysayers told the city council a Pride parade would turn the town into “a Sin City.”

Starkville Mayor Lynn Spruill denounced the decision saying in a statement it sent a message that the small college town is not “inclusive.” The mayor also pointed out that Oxford, Mississippi, where the University of Mississippi is based, has held gay pride parades for several years.

(source)

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Mississippi: Starkville City Council Denies Permit For Pride Parade

With no explanation offered, the aldermen of Starkville, Mississippi, voted to deny organizers of a proposed Pride Parade a permit for the event.

The city council voted 4-3 against granting the permit to Starkville Pride even though 16 citizens showed up to speak in favor of the event.

“It’s unfortunate that you go through the process, you do everything you’re supposed to do and you get denied, really without any explanation as to why,” alderman Jason Walker, who voted to approve the permit.

Only two spoke against allowing the event.

Resident Dorothy Isaac said she was against the parade because “God created Adam and Eve.”

“Do not turn our city into a sin city,” Isaac said. “It should not be this.”

Starkville is a college town home to Mississippi State University. You can imagine there might be several LGBT students who would have liked to take part in a Pride event.

Starkville’s mayor, Lynn Spruill, denounced the decision saying “I think it sends a message that we are not the inclusive community that I believe us to be.”

With Starkville being home to Mississippi State University, Mayor Spruill noted that Oxford, Mississippi, where the University of Mississippi is based, has held gay pride parades for several years.

(source)

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News Round-Up: January 22, 2018

Some news items you might have missed:

• I’m still jazzed about 2016 Summer Olympic sensation Pita Taufatofua (above) becoming a cross-country skier heading to the 2018 Winter Olympics in only a year.

• A young gay came out to his mother in Mississippi last week. But when the mother didn’t know how best to respond, she wisely called a gay bar looking for advice 🙂

• The Twitterverse is not happy seeing Timothée Chalamet lose the Golden Globe and SAG Awards for his acclaimed performance in Call Me By Your Name to Gary Oldman.

• Porn actor Tegan Zayne tweets that two summers ago his co-star, Topher DiMaggio, forced him to have sex the night before shooting a scene. Zayne also alleges DiMaggio demeaned and degraded him during the video shoot calling him “a girl.” DiMaggio denies the allegations.

• Back2Stonewall reports on anti-LGBT banners outside a gay-friendly church near Indianapolis. The banner read, “Die Faggots Just Like Orlando and Las Vegas.” #HowCharming

• According to Fox News host Howard Kurtz’s new book, Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press, And The War Over The Truth, Donald Trump secretly admitted he was wrong to have former White House press secretary Sean Spicer exaggerate the size of the crowd attending his inauguration.

• Gus Kenworthy and Adam Rippon aren’t the only gay athletes heading to the Winter Olympic Games. Check out these three queer women – Cheryl Maas, Ireen Wüst, and Belle Brockhoff – going for the gold in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

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U.S. Supreme Court Refuses To Review Anti-Gay Mississippi Law

Bloomberg is reporting that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review a Mississippi “religious freedom” law, HB1523, that allows broad discrimination against LGBT people.

In denying the request for review, SCOTUS is allowing the law to remain intact.

The justices turned away two appeals by state residents and organizations that contended the measure violates the Constitution. A federal appeals court said the opponents hadn’t suffered any injury that would let them press their claims in court.

The Mississippi fight in some ways represented the flip side of a Colorado case the high court is currently considering; the question in that instance is whether the state can require a baker who sells wedding cakes to make one for a same-sex couple’s wedding.

The cases are testing states’ ability to regulate what happens when LGBT rights come into conflict with religious freedoms. Colorado is aiming to bolster gay rights by enforcing an anti-discrimination law, even though the Denver-area baker says he has a religious objection to same-sex marriage.

The Mississippi law, by contrast, gives priority to religious rights. The state enacted its law less than a year after the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

The measure says religious people can’t be sued or penalized by the government for declining to provide services for same-sex marriage ceremonies. The law also protects people who believe gender is an immutable characteristic or who object to sex out of wedlock.

The 2016 law was passed after the U.S. Supreme Court issued the landmark Obergefell ruling which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

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Mississippi: New “Religious Freedom” Law Will Allow Broad Discrimination Against LGBTs

Beginning this Friday, a new “religious freedom” law will take effect allowing officials and service providers the legal right to deny services to LGBT folks based on religious beliefs.

From LocalMemphis.com:

House Bill 1523 will allow anyone from doctors to store owners to deny service for LGBT people based on individual religious beliefs.

Critics of the law call it the nation’s most sweeping anti-LGBT law, while supporters say it protects their faith based convictions.

Those in opposition said they’re contemplating their next legal step in the coming days.

The legislation passed in the Mississippi General Assembly last year, and was signed by Governor Phil Bryant, but faced legal challenges since had yet to take effect.

That’s expected to change this week after a three-judge panel ruled the plaintiffs who sued in opposition to HB 1523 didn’t have the standing challenge the law.

HB 1523 will protect three types of religious beliefs as justification to deny service to LGBT individuals in Mississippi including the conviction that marriage is between one man and one woman.

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5th Circuit Court Of Appeals Gives Thumbs Up To Mississippi’s Anti-LGBT Discrimination Law

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the ruling by a federal judge who found Mississippi’s anti-LGBT discrimination law unconstitutional.

The law allows merchants and government employees to deny services to LGBTs based on religious beliefs.

Via Lambda Legal:

Today, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the injunction against Mississippi House Bill 1523, the discriminatory anti-LGBT legislation challenged in Barber v. Bryant, the federal lawsuit brought by Mississippi civil rights attorney Robert McDuff, the Mississippi Center for Justice and Lambda Legal. The advocates will continue to fight this discriminatory law.

Overruling the lower court decision, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit denied that LGBT Mississippians are subject to imminent discrimination by HB 1523 and ordered the block to the law lifted because the plaintiffs—a group of ministers, LGBT residents, community leaders and activists—lack standing since they cannot claim a specific harm caused by the law that has yet to go into effect.

“We had to put guards in front of our church after the bill initially passed because there was a truck with a swastika parked across the street and just this week the Christian Knights of the KKK distributed flyers throughout the Hattiesburg area. Today’s ruling leaves us more exposed, so we will have to be more vigilant than ever before to protect our church, our families and our dignity,” said Brandiilyne Mangum-Dear, Barber plaintiff.

More from Chris Johnson at the Washington Blade:

The law prohibits the state from taking action against religious organizations that decline employment, housing or services to same-sex couples; families who’ve adopted a foster child and wish to act in opposition to same-sex marriage; and individuals who offer wedding services and decline to facilitate a same-sex wedding.

Additionally, the bill allows individuals working in medical services to decline to afford a transgender person gender reassignment surgery. The bill also allows state government employees who facilitate marriages the option to opt out of issuing licenses to same-sex couples, but the person must issue prior written notice to the state government and a clerk’s office must not delay in the issuing of licenses.

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Podcast: Season 2 Of Netflix’s Sense8 , Trump & Religious Liberty, Anti-LGBT Army Secretary Nominee Withdraws & More

On this week’s  The Randy Report podcast:

• A Mississippi funeral home refuses to cremate a gay man

• The Equality Act reintroduced in Congress

• Donald Trump signed his Religious Liberty executive order without specific LGBT animus, but don’t exhale just yet

• Trump’s anti-LGBT Army Secretary nominee withdrew from consideration due to his past homophobic, transphobic and Islamophobic comments

• Netflix releases Season 2 of the LGBT inclusive sci-fi series, SENSE8 – #LoveIt

Listen below. And don’t forget to subscribe to The Randy Report podcast on iTunes here.

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Mississippi Funeral Home Sued For Refusing To Cremate Deceased Married Gay Man

For anyone who thinks we don’t need laws to protect us.

Last May, Robert Huskey, of Mississippi, passed away at the age of 82 after coping with a longtime heart condition.

With the outcome becoming clearly imminent, Huskey’s nephew made arrangements at the local funeral home for after his passing.

But on the day of his death, the Picayune Funeral Home refused to pick up and cremate Huskey’s body. The refusal was based on the fact the funeral home had discovered Huskey was gay, and had lived with his husband, Jack Zawadski for 52 years.

According to Lambda Legal:

Since the nursing home could not keep Bob’s body on site, Jack and John had to scramble to locate another funeral home with an on-site crematorium. They located one in Hattiesburg, some 90 miles away. By that time, because Bob’s body could not be housed at the nursing home for the hours it would take for the Hattiesburg hearse to arrive, they had to find yet another funeral home in Picayune willing to transport Bob’s body to Hattiesburg.

The family has now filed a lawsuit against the funeral home with the help of Lambda Legal.

In a statement released Tuesday, Zawadski said, “I felt as if all the air had been knocked out of me. Bob was my life, and we had always felt so welcome in this community. And then, at a moment of such personal pain and loss, to have someone do what they did to me, to us, to Bob, I just couldn’t believe it. No one should be put through what we were put through.”

This is why we need The Equality Act to pass in Congress. Mississippi has NO discrimination protections for LGBT folks at all.

(source)

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News Round-Up: July 1, 2016

Abby Lee Miller of Dance Moms

• Dance Moms Abby Lee Miller faces up to 2.5 years in prison for smuggling $120K into U.S.

• Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood may not appeal a federal judge’s ruling which squashed the state’s anti-LGBT law HB1523.

• Skittles UK drops it’s rainbow for Pride in London to let the gays bask in the rainbow glow.

• Dolly Parton thinks Hillary Clinton would be a great president.

• Gawker posits whether Donald Trump might be tweaking diet pills to get him through the presidential campaign.

• Moodys Analytics, which has correctly predicted presidential races since 1980, predicts Hillary Clinton to win White House in electoral landslide.

• When former half-term governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, runs out of real words she just makes up new ones like “splodey.” Crowd doesn’t seem to notice.