Quick News Round-Up

Just wanted to cover a couple of quick bullet points this morning:

• Washington State's "everything but marriage" law was signed by Gov. Gregoire, giving same-sex couples all the rights of marriage except for the word. It is considered the most sweeping DP law in the country. Per the Governor: “Despite the sameness, the absolute sameness of straight couples and gay and lesbian couples, nonetheless here in the state of Washington we saw discrimination. We saw inequality that had to be addressed.” The law will go into effect in July, though a referendum may occur in November.
• Rochelle Hamilton should win the awesomest teenager of the year. She took on Vallejo City School District over harassment after she came out... and won in a settlement. In the suit, Hamilton states that she was forced to attend a group therapy session that taught kids how not to be LGBT. The settlement includes a requirement for the district to make a more stringent anti-harassment rule, come up with a way to deal with complaints, and provide training for staff and administration. Well done.
• The Assembly of that state Nevada passed a DP law 26-14, will likely pass the Senate, but Gov. Gibbons states he will veto it (unfortunately, we do not have the votes to override). I think I also heard Nevada will be passing a sexual orientation protection bill (no gender), but I can't find the newssource.
• Obama's pick for the head of the CDC, New York's Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Friedan is drawing some heat from AIDS activist. Per Housing Works: "Frieden has simultaneously employed an authoritarian, my-way-or-the-highway approach and an unabashed secretiveness undignified of a public servant. He has excluded AIDS groups wherever possible from having input into life-and-death AIDS funding, testing, and care policymaking decisions."
• More ongoing weirdness in the Florida gay adoption ban: you still can't adopt if you're gay in Florida, but the state must recognize out of state adoptions to same-sex couples.
• And in pop culture, Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon plans to marry long-time girlfriend Christine Marinoni; and Fergie comes out as bisexual.

I know, I know, not a lot and it's real quick. Bad, bad homosexual blogger.

Corinne's Law -- Anti-Bullying in Texas

Check out this amazing and heart breaking video put together by Equality Texas in support of "Corinne's Law," Texas's proposed anti-bullying legislation:

The Law, HB1323, is currently 60 bills back and looks about ready to die on the floor of the House (it needs to be on the floor by midnight tomorrow, if I'm reading this right). If you are from Texas, you are encouraged to contact your representative to vote FOR it and to make sure it gets to the floor...

...but this blogger is not hopeful that it will make it. Cross your fingers, folks.

The anti-bullying law will:

• Provide for the movement of the perpetrator to another classroom or campus, at the discretion of school administration. Under current law, the victim is required to move to another classroom or campus in order to escape the perpetrator;
• Expand the definition of bullying to include cyber-bullying by electronic means such as computers, cell phones, text messaging, and instant messaging;
• Require notification of the parents or guardians of both the victim and the student who is bullying or sexually harassing another student;
• Expand the mandatory sexual harassment policy that school districts are required to have to include bullying;
• Expand the state's Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) reporting requirement to include incidents of bullying, harassment, and sexual harassment. Currently, the state does not know the magnitude of the problem. The only way to assess the magnitude of this problem is to collect data on the frequency and nature of occurrence.

So, actually, it's not a "gay" bill at all. It protects all students. I wonder why it's taken so long to get it through. (The law failed to come up to a vote in 2007, as well.)