Appeals Court Deals A Blow To Kim Davis' Lawyers For Not Following The Rules

A federal appeals court on Thursday turned away a request filed by lawyers for Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, and chastised Davis’ attorneys for not adhering to the rules of the court.

In a two-page ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit denied Davis’ request to put on hold a Sept. 3 order that had effectively instructed her to begin serving all couples in Rowan County, Kentucky — not just those who sued her for not abiding by Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in June.

Rather than denying Davis’ request on the merits, though, the appeals court said that her lawyers failed to follow the proper procedure.

Under federal rules, a litigant seeking to put an order on hold must first ask the judge who issued it — in this case, U.S. District Judge David Bunning, the same judge who held Davis in contempt of court earlier this month and ordered her to be detained.

Davis’ lawyers skipped that step and instead went straight to the circuit court, arguing that it would have been “impracticable” to go to Bunning first because of his “extraordinary doggedness” in expanding his Aug. 12 order to include all of the county’s future marriage applicants.

The appeals court wasn’t having it. 

“This is not valid reason to excuse moving the district court for a stay pending appeal in the context of this case,” the court said. Which is legalese for, “You need to follow the rules first before you come to us.”

Davis’ legal team currently has at least three separate cases before the 6th Circuit: the challenge to the expanded injunction, which includes the merits of the Aug. 12 order that set off the clerk’s legal troubles; another one involving a lawsuit Davis filed against Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D); and a third one challenging the ruling that sent her to jail for contempt of court.

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Mayoral Candidate Inspired By Kim Davis Vows To “Eradicate” Gays By Throwing Them All In Jail

If there’s one positive thing to say about Kim Davis — hold on, we’ve got to think about this for a second — oh, at least she’s sane enough to hold down employment, even if she’s not exactly up to the job.

But travel a few clicks down the crazy train, and some real winners start to come out of the woodwork.

Like Eugene Holmes, a mayoral candidate in a small Charlotte suburb who plans to jail all homosexuals if elected into office.

“In my administration I would do just like Mrs. Davis did in Kentucky,” Holmes said. “If you elect me, I’ll uphold the law of the state of North Carolina. I would get the D.A. to swear out a warrant on any man who says he’s gay. Sodomy is a crime, a felony in the state of North Carolina.”

He has a bizarre point — a whopping 12 states still have anti-sodomy laws on the books. Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah haven’t quite gotten around to cleaning house of the outdated bans.

Which is another story entirely. Representatives in Louisiana voted 66-27 in April 2014 to their sodomy ban in place.

But that’s more of a technicality — the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 that it is unconstitutional to bar consensual sex between adults, calling it a violation of the 14th Amendment.

Holmes is a member of the Church of God and also the Promise Keepers, a men’s religious organization. So, internalized homophobia is a safe assumption.

“What’s wrong with eradicating homosexuals? We should jail them, throw them all in jail!” he told the King Mountain Herald.

And Holmes has been jailed plenty of times himself.

In March, he was arrested after he visited the Family Worship Center church in Kings Mountain and began yelling antigay hate speech.

When some people there told him they were gay, Holmes tried to make a citizen’s arrest.

In addition to his “jail all gays” position, the Herald reports he also wants to ban alcohol, divorce and all immigration to the U.S.

“The mayor doesn’t do much, in my eyes,” he told the Herald. “He just collects a paycheck. But (incumbent mayor Rick Murphrey) hasn’t had any competition in the other elections and I wanted to see what I could do. If I’m elected, it will be we the people who run the show.”

If ensuring he isn’t elected isn’t enough inspiration for Kings Mountain residents to get out and vote, we may all be doomed.

h/t: RawStory

Dan Tracer

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/W79UgtuzqJM/mayoral-candidate-inspired-by-kim-davis-vows-to-eradicate-gays-by-throwing-them-all-in-jail-20150917

Tom Hardy on Reporter’s Question About His Sexuality: ‘I Know Who I Am’ 

Earlier this week, we showed you a rather uncomfortable exchange between actor Tom Hardy and Graham Coleman from Canada’s Daily Xtra at a Toronto International Film Festival panel for Legend, an upcoming film in which Hardy plays twin gangsters, one of whom is gay.

Coleman, referencing an interview Hardy did back in 2008 where he admitted he’d had sex with men, asked the actor whether he found it hard for celebrities to talk to the media about their sexuality.

Hardy was none too pleased with the line of questioning and terminated the exchange prematurely with a terse “thank you.”

Hardy addressed the exchange in an interview published today in The Daily Beast:

I think everybody is entitled to the right to privacy. There should be elegant ways to approach any topic, and there’s a time and place to approach anything and have a good, common sense conversation about anything. I do think that there’s a responsibility for people to own the way that they speak publicly. This doesn’t stop us from being human beings; some things are private. I’m under no obligation to share anything to do with my family, my children, my sexuality—that’s nobody’s business but my own. And I don’t see how that can have anything to do with what I do as an actor, and it’s my own business. If you knew me as a friend, then sure, we’d talk about anything. But that was a public forum, and for someone to inelegantly ask a question that seemed designed entirely to provoke a reaction, and start a topic of debate… It’s important destigmatizing sexuality and gender inequality in the workplace, but to put a man on the spot in a room full of people designed purely for a salacious reaction? To be quite frank, it’s rude. If he’d have said that to me in the street, I’d have said the same thing back: “I’m sorry, who the f–k are you?”

He continued:

What he had to talk about was actually interesting, but how he did it was so inelegant. And I appreciate that I could probably have more grace as a human being, but I’m just a bloke. I’m just a man. And I’m just a man doing a job. I’m not a role model for anyone, and you’re asking me something about my private life in a room full of people. I don’t want to discuss my private life with you. I don’t know you! Why would I share that with a billion people? Also, if you felt it was so important for people to feel confident to talk about their sexuality, why would you put somebody on the spot in a room full of people and decide that was the time for them to open up about their sexual ambiguity? There’s also nothing ambiguous about my sexuality, anyway. I know who I am. But what does that have to do with you? And why am I a part of something now that, however legitimate, I haven’t offered my services for? It’s not about what he and his publication stands for, none of that is offensive, and on the contrary, it’s very admirable, and an important issue. But how I was asked was incredibly inelegant, and I just thought it was disrespectful and counterproductive to what he stands for.

Check out all our news on Tom Hardy HERE.

The post Tom Hardy on Reporter’s Question About His Sexuality: ‘I Know Who I Am’  appeared first on Towleroad.

Kyler Geoffroy

Tom Hardy on Reporter’s Question About His Sexuality: ‘I Know Who I Am’ 

Kim Davis Loses Another Appeal

Kim Davis has lost yet another appeal.

Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denied the Kentucky county clerk’s request for a stay of Judge David Bunning’s order requiring her to issue marriage licenses to all eligible couples, regardless of gender. Rowan County Clerk Davis and her lawyers argued that Bunning had improperly expanded the order to cover any same-sex couple requesting a license, not just those who sued her, who have already obtained their licenses from Davis’s deputies. Their motion, filed Friday, was dubbed a “Hail Mary” pass by one law professor — in other words, an act of desperation.

But a three-judge panel of the appeals court said Davis and her legal team, from the right-wing group Liberty Counsel, had not gone through proper procedures in seeking the stay. They went straight to the appellate level, skipping federal district court, where Bunning had issued the order. They claimed, “Seeking a ruling from the district court on a stay request is ‘impracticable’ … due to the extraordinary doggedness of the district court to expand the Injunction.”

“This is not a valid excuse,” the appellate judges replied in their brief ruling today, posted by Equality Case Files.

Two days ago, the appeals court denied another of Davis’s efforts to delay the requirement that she issue licenses to all eligible couples. That one sought a stay of the order while her lawsuit against Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear proceeds. The Sixth Circuit denied that one because, the judges ruled, Davis does not have “a substantial likelihood of success” in her suit against Beshear over his instruction to all Kentucky county clerks to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling. It did not, however, dismiss her suit.

Davis went back to work this week after being released from jail, where she spent five days for contempt of court, having defied Bunning’s order. One of her deputy clerks is issuing licenses to same-sex couples, which do not bear Davis’s name but make reference to the court order.

Trudy Ring

www.advocate.com/marriage-equality/2015/9/17/kim-davis-loses-another-appeal

"That Business in Kentucky": Accentuating the Positive and Coming Out in the South
I turned on the television news at exactly the wrong moment and saw Kim Davis standing on stage between (Republican presidential hopeful) Mike Huckabee and her lawyer. Kim, the homophobic clerk in Kentucky who was jailed for not issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, defying the supreme court and using her alleged religious beliefs as an excuse. When I saw her on television, she had just been released from jail and was basking in the moment.

In full disclosure, the sight of her almost made steam come out of my ears. I asked myself why I was so furious. I am a lesbian in my mid-fifties. I’ve been out since my early twenties. I’m no stranger to bigotry. The fact that the LGBT community incited someone like Davis to break the law and go to jail is progress. After all, she was protesting our Supreme Court victory.

I decided that I was furious because I grew up in “Pennsyltucky.” In fact, I still live in the state of Pennsylvania, though in my early twenties I “escaped” from a working class suburban neighborhood to a part of Philadelphia that is known to be LGBT friendly (but is not always).

I belong to a Unitarian Universalist Church (joining a church was a surprise even to me). My secular background is something that I wrote about in Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters

This morning in church, a fifty or sixty something African American man stood up and told us that he had an argument with someone about Kim Davis: “To me, the business in Kentucky reminded me of Civil Rights.”

Now, I’ve long recognized that being white and LGBT is vastly different from the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. For one thing, a white LGBT person can choose not to be out (even if that choice is often unhealthy). But the gentleman in my church had a point. And If it’s not the same thing as historic bigotry against African Americans, there are some pretty strong parallels. By the time I came home from church, I realized that some positive things actually came out of the Kim Davis debacle.

For one thing, I experienced seeing someone who may be changing his mind about LGBT rights. That is why I’m part of a diverse faith community (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Unitarian’s call it a “Beloved Community“). I get to witness people’s shifting viewpoints and, in turn, am influenced by others. Then I went online and did a quick search on Kim Davis. I found a postcard of Lea DeLaria on The Huffington Post United Kingdom.

The postcard shows Lea DeLaria (the real life lesbian actress from the prison themed Netflix series Orange Is The New Black) with text superimposed that reads: “Welcome to jail, Kim Davis. I get to be your fifth husband.”

That postcard (and the others on the same page) is definitely a positive thing that came out of the situation — positively hilarious.

The “business in Kentucky” definitely underscored the importance of the book I just read, Crooked Letter i: Coming Out In the South. The book is a collection of essays, with a Foreword by Dorothy Allison, edited by Connie Griffin.

Dorothy Allison (the Southern born lesbian feminist author of the novel, Bastard Out of Carolina) writes:

“…My mother’s hopes and dreams for me were as heavy as my stepfather’s contempt and lust. I was the one who escaped but who really escapes? …. In this new wondrous age with Supreme Court decisions affirming gay and lesbian marriages, and gender being redefined as nowhere near as rigid as it has previously been defined, I sometimes wonder if anyone knows what our lives were like at the time when I was a young woman, trying to figure out how to live my life honestly in the face of so much hatred and danger. Who are we if we cannot speak truthfully about our lives?”

The stories are filled with religion — Southern Baptist, Fundamentalist Christian, you name it. It’s not surprising or shouldn’t be — but it is. At first I was appalled at the damage done to people in the name of religion.

Logan Knight, who transitioned from female to male, writes as he returns to his home town years after he left:

“This is what I know, only because I have seen it before. There will be no yelling, no crying; no sermons. If my grandmother cannot reconcile who I am against her religion, if the musculature of my shoulders is an affront to her beliefs, she will simply forget me. She will not speak to me; she will not acknowledge my presence in her house ever again. The sun burns into my arms, and I tense with nervousness.”

While the stories by LGBT people who had to break ties with their families are poignant and heartbreaking. In the ending of Knight’s essay and in the content of other essays in this collection, I began to see another narrative. There is not only acceptance of family and friends but warmth and real love.

People — including Southerners and religious people — are a collection in individuals. They have their own beliefs.

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Cheyenne Jackson just cannot believe how handsome Matt Bomer is

Cheyenne Jackson is no slouch in the looks department himself.

But he thinks his American Horror Story: Hotel co-star Matt Bomer is the real stunner among the show’s cast.

‘Matt looks like he’s carved out of cream cheese,’ Jackson tells Out Magazine. ‘He’s just so perfect and smooth and gorgeous. We were in hair and make-up one time, sitting side by side, and I was like, “Are you kidding me with that face?”‘

These handsome openly gay actors are part of a cast that also includes such stunners as Wes Bentley, Darren Criss and Max Greenfield.

The cast member generating the most buzz, however, has been Lady Gaga. But it’s Oscar winner Kathy Bates who Jackson has been most in awe of.

‘Kathy Bates is literally one of my all-time favorite actresses. she is it for me. Her monologue in Primary Colors, about the reflective light of the moon, is why I wanted to be an actor.’

The post Cheyenne Jackson just cannot believe how handsome Matt Bomer is appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/cheyenne-jackson-just-cannot-believe-how-handsome-matt-bomer-is/

In A Historic Step, Nepal Ratifies New Constitution That Includes LGBT Protections

HRC hails victory for Nepali LGBT activists, welcomes new era of greater equality in Nepal
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/in-a-historic-step-nepal-ratifies-new-constitution-that-includes-lgbt-prote?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Alum ‘Alaska’ Annihilates a Donald Trump Piñata: WATCH

You don’t want to get on the bad side of RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Alaska Thunderf–k, and unfortunately GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has really gotten her goat.

So Alaska, to celebrate the GOP debate on behalf of Rosie O’Donnell, Rosie Perez, Kelli Osborne, hair lovers everywhere, Barack Obama’s birth certificate, and the Earth, takes out her anger on a Donald Trump piñata to see what Donald’s really made of on the inside.

Turns out it’s a delicious nutty filling.

Watch:

To no one’s surprise, the Donald Trump piñatas became a hit earlier this summer in Mexico.

The post ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Alum ‘Alaska’ Annihilates a Donald Trump Piñata: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.

Andy Towle

‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Alum ‘Alaska’ Annihilates a Donald Trump Piñata: WATCH

WATCH: LGBT Vegans Are Coming Out for Animal Rights

A group of LGBT activists star in a new video from the non-profit group Our Hen House, talking about the similarities between coming out as queer and coming out as an animal rights activist. The diverse group use words like “lifestyle” and “social justice” to describe their decision to become vegans.

Our Hen House describes its mission as working to “effectively mainstream the movement to end the exploitation of animals,” and to enable “artists, grassroots activists, academics, lawyers, students, business moguls, media darlings, etc., to create change for animals.”

Provocative animal rights group PETA has also made the connection between LGBT rights and not eating meat. While the group is best known for their deliberately offensive ads and protests, they’ve also used queer celebrities like drag queen Sharon Needles and actress Jane Lynch to highlight their cause.

“In this new video from Our Hen House, a diverse group of activists from the LGBT world share stories of how they personally connected the dots and came out for animals, too,” the group writes in the clip’s description. “‘Coming out for Animals’ highlights personal stories of connections between gay rights and animal rights, all told while enjoying delicious vegan grub.”

Watch the video from Our Hen House below:

Bil Browning

www.advocate.com/food-and-drink/2015/9/17/watch-lgbt-vegans-are-coming-out-animal-rights

'First Person' Talks With Legendary Fire Island DJ Lina Bradford

If you’ve been to Fire Island, you know DJ Lina.

DJ Lina Bradford is a legendary figure on Fire Island, bringing people together in a magical way at her daily tea dance in the Pines.

In the latest episode of the PBS Digital Studios series “First Person,” Bradford opens up about not only her transgender identity, but the rich history of Fire Island and what exactly makes the place so enchanting.

“You really feel the history here,” she said. “If you’re a connected person you can smell it, you can see it. I mean, you walk these boardwalks and it’s just like — there’s a lot of history here. A lot of major people are here and have walked through these woods. It’s pretty special.”

Hosted by Kristin Russo, “First Person” is a web show that focuses on gender identity, sexuality and queer community.

Check out the interview with Bradford above to hear more of her captivating story. Missed the previous episodes of “First Person”? Head here to check them out.

Also on HuffPost:

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