Tuition dollars and drag queens

The title says it all.....you can imagine how this blog entry for the Family Foundation of Kentucky's Louisville Policy Analyst reads.

Though I have no idea what the salary of Mr. Brian Buford is (Director of the University of Louisville's for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Services), a $67,207 annual salary will be the least of anyone's worries if something isn't done soon to raise the value of the U.S. Dollar (economy) and lower gas prices.

Love your neighbor as yourself. - Mark 12:31

That's my family value!

This blog provides a great counterpunch:

1. http://clamourunderbridge.typepad.com/clamour_underbridge/2008/06/moving-kentucky-forward.html

Help the University of Louivsille - Office of LGBT Services

Students at the University of Louisville are really excited about establishing the university's Office for LGBT Services and making its new home in the Red Barn on the Belknap Campus. Already, it's becoming a vibrant place where students gather to work on issues and projects and guests can stop in for help or information.

Would you like to help? Their vision includes a working resource library with books, DVDs, and other materials students can check out or use. But, in a time of budget cuts, they have no funds to purchase materials. So here's how you can help...

• Would you consider donating anything from your own library that you aren't using anymore? Books you've already read, movies you've watched a hundred times, etc? Anything LGBT-themed that would be useful to students or even just entertaining.

To make it easier to deliver any donations, the university's Human Resources Department has offered to serve as a drop-off site.

For directions to HR, go here:

http://louisville.edu/hr/contact/directions.html

If you have any question, contact the university's Office of LGBT Services by clicking here.

Stupid, unfounded Homophobia: Kentucky Basketball Fans Outraged Over Photo of Players' Embrace

From The Official Queen of Shade:

If a photo says a thousand words, apparently this seemingly innocent photo of two University of Louisville basketball players embracing has produced thousands of words spewing gay panic.

Hundreds of irate readers have contacted the Louisville Courier-Journal after the publication of the image. It shows Cardinals players Jerry Smith hugging Juan Palacios in the first half of their game against the University of Louisville after a big, emotional play. One reader accused the legendary conservative newspaper of "pushing the homosexual agenda."

Louisville Courier-Journal public editor Pam Platt explains. "Some of the comments registered by angry, offended and/or baffled readers: 'Awful,' 'an embarrassment,' 'horrible decision,' 'poor judgment,' 'distasteful,' 'a mystery' and 'shame on you.' " Then, she nails it: "What is it about two athletes sharing a moment of physical and emotional closeness in the middle of a big game, in the middle of a basketball court, that puts some people off so much?"

Sports fans should be used to witnessing these moments and photos of athletes bonding and it's just beyond the pale that so many (presumably very! straight!) readers would read gay subtext into an innocent sports photo. Platt makes an interesting argument that content is a Rorschach test and people bring "their own ideas and baggage to what they see and read—or what they don't see and don't read into words and images." Or, perhaps, what they would like to see.

Graphic in the Kentucky Kernal brings protests and racial slurs to UK

In a 9-0 vote on Thursday, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights called on the commonwealth’s educational institutions Thursday to stop hate-related incidents and intensify programs to increase diversity on their campuses.

For the past two weeks the University of Kentucky has been consumed with controversy. A cartoon published in the UK paper, the Kentucky Kernel depicted a black student standing bare-chested on a slave auction block as a white auctioneer takes bids from fictitious fraternities with names suggesting that they are all-white and racist: Aryan Omega, Kappa Kappa Kappa (KKK) and Alpha Caucasian.

Almost immediately after being published, protests erupted on campus, and a racial slur was written on a student’s door.

Commission Chairman Henry Curtis noted that in addition to the recent events at UK, the commission has received reports of Ku Klux Klan fliers being distributed at the University of Louisville and hate literature being spread in Bowling Green, Owensboro, Morgantown and Winchester (Brian Stephens, an Advisory Council Member with Kentucky Equality Federation held a counter protest at Morehead State University; click here to read the story from The Independent).

UK President Lee T. Todd Jr. appeared briefly before the commission and said the recent incidents at UK were “ugly and should not have happened.”

Are we slipping backwards, or moving forward in Kentucky? Isn’t adding domestic partner benefits part of that diversity? Republicans in the Kentucky Senate wouldn’t agree (story).

Fletcher reappoints Regents that support domestic-partner benefits.

Governor Fletcher's policy flip-flops are legendary, and this article in yesterday's Herald-Leader about his reappointments to the Board of Regents takes the cake:

Governor Ernie Fletcher filled three spots on the University of Kentucky and University of Louisville boards of trustees Wednesday with people whose stances run the gamut on the controversial topic of providing domestic-partner benefits to college employees.

Three of those named — two from UK and one from U of L — are reappointments of trustees first given those plum assignments by Fletcher’s Democratic predecessor, Governor Paul Patton.

The governor reappointed Louisville civic activist Owsley Brown Frazier, the retired vice chairman of the board of Brown-Foreman Corp. Frazier was among the 14 U of L trustees who backed a proposal to provide health benefits to the unmarried partners of university employees, which would allow gay couples to be covered.

Fletcher recently has urged lawmakers to pass legislation that would block agencies that receive state funds, such as universities, from offering such benefits and included that issue among 67 items on his agenda for a special legislative session. That was a change from the governor’s stance this spring, in which he said such decisions about benefits should be left up to the universities.

Fletcher now has appointed a total of 10 to UK, including extending the terms of May and Miles, and has chosen 12 of U of L’s trustees, which includes Frazier’s reappointment.

This is yet another example of how Governor Fletcher doesn't have any core values of his own, his moves are a pure calculation of how he can stay in office, by reaching out to the conservative right wing and asking the Kentucky House and Senate to pass legislation to ban domestic-partner benefits.

If Governor Fletcher doesn't want the universitys to decide the issues on their own (as they are supposed to), why did he reappoint members back to the Board of Regents that voted in favor of domestic partner benefits?

Family Foundation of Kentucky threatens to file an injunction to stop UK domestic partnerships.

The Family Foundation of Kentucky is considering filing an injunction against the University of Kentucky to stop domestic partner benefits from going into effect on Monday when their new fiscal year begins.

Let them file their injunction, because doing so could open a Pandora's box they will never be able to close again.

Domestic Partnership? The real issue here with the Family Foundation of Kentucky is if homosexuals have the rights to any of the benefits associated with marriage. Why would they not?

Kentucky Constitution - Section 233A: Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Kentucky. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized.

Marriage is something created by the state (both Kentucky and the United States) for the benefit of its citizens.

Most people cannot disassociate a chapel, white dress, and a best man from their definition of marriage. The only religious thing about marriage however is in the minds of the people. When a marriage is dissolved it is done by the state, not God. When a minister pronounces someone married he or she does so by saying "by the power invested in me by the Commonwealth of Kentucky."

Marriage Defined:
Marriage is an interpersonal relationship with governmental, social, or religious recognition, usually intimate and sexual, and often created as a contract.

The reasons people marry vary widely, but usually include one or more of the following: legal, social and economic stability; the formation of a family unit; procreation and the education and nurturing of children; legitimizing sexual relations; public declaration of love.

• What gives heterosexual couples the right to be the only ones to enjoy this? The state.
• Is Section 233A (passed by a 2004 Constitutional Amendment) of the Kentucky Constitution unconstitutional? Yes. It violates Section I, Section II, Section III, and Section IV of the Kentucky Constitution.
• Does Section 233A of the Kentucky Constitution violate United State law? Traditionally, the federal government did not attempt to establish its own definition of marriage; any marriage recognized by a state was recognized by the federal government, even if that marriage was not recognized by one or more other states (as was the case with interracial marriage before 1967). With the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, however, a marriage was explicitly defined as a union of one man and one woman for the purposes of federal law. (See 1 U.S.C. § 7.) Thus, no act or agency of the U.S. federal government currently recognizes same-sex marriage.
  
  Some opponents of same-sex marriage, wanting to ensure that the constitutionality of such laws cannot be challenged in the courts under the Full Faith and Credit clause, Equal Protection Clause or Due process clause of the United States Constitution, have proposed a Federal Marriage Amendment to the constitution that would prevent the federal government or any state from providing a marriage or the legal incidents thereof to a same-sex couple, whether through the legislature or the courts.

Let the Family Foundation of Kentucky file their injunction so the legal battle may finally begin.

A UCLA report released in January 2007 about the attitudes of college freshmen nationwide says acceptance of same-sex marriage grew between 2005 and 2006. The study found that 61% of incoming freshmen last year agreed that same-sex couples should have the right to marriage, up 3.3 percentage points from 2005.

Kentucky Attorney General rules domestic partner benefits unconstitutional.

Kentucky's top law enforcement officer, Attorney General Greg Stumbo (D) ruled domestic-partner benefits unconstitutional today, but left the door open for universities and colleges around the commonwealth to make them constitutional by broadening their definition of domestic-partner.

House Representative Stan Lee (R), currently running for the Office of Attorney General to replace Stumbo was one of two representatives to request the opinion (no surprise there).

“They still have the flexibility to allow and to offer their health insurance plan and its benefit structure to other people,” Stumbo said. “They cannot define the class of people in a manner that would be creating a legal status similar to that of marriage.”

The University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville currently offer domestic-partner benefits.

As I read Stumbo's opinion something struck a cord with me, from another state:

• In 2004 Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm (D), acting on the advice of Attorney General Mike Cox (R), terminated domestic partner benefits that had been won by state unions.
• In February 2007 the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled the state's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage prevents public institutions from providing benefits to same-sex partners of employees.

Here we have a clear case of party lines. A democratic attorney general doesn't slam the door; a republican attorney general does.

UPDATE:

"When ruling domestic-partner benefits unconstitutional in their current form Attorney General Greg Stumbo appears to have made an unbiased opinion based on the commonwealth's current laws and various court decisions. Though this isn't the opinion we obviously wanted, General Stumbo was very clear about ways existing domestic-partner benefits could be made constitutional," stated Kentucky Equality Federation President Jordan Palmer. "It was no surprise that Lexington's intolerant House Representative Stan Lee (R) was one of two officials requesting the ruling."