People in jobs that require public service without discrimination should resign if they refuse to perform their duties. I don’t imagine anyone is quitting their jobs at the Department of Motor Vehicles over having to issue driver’s licenses to lgbt people. I have remained perplexed at the inability of so many of the anti-marriage crowd to grasp that it is a license. There is no such thing as a gay fishing license, and there is no such thing as a gay marriage license. We should not be unkind to this woman, but I think leaving her job is for the best. Her religious beliefs are irrelevant to her position as a county clerk. From Politics on the Hudson: Laura Fotusky, the Republican town clerk in Barker, Broome County, submitted her resignation last night, saying she could not sign licenses for same-sex couples. Same-sex marriage becomes legal July 24. Her resignation is effective July 21. “The Bible clearly teaches that God created marriage between male and female as a divine gift that preserves families and cultures. Since I love and follow Him, I cannot put my signature on something that is against God,” she wrote in her resignation letter, which was posted last night on the New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms’ website. Fotusky is the first clerk to resign over the issue, but Jason McGuire, executive director of the anti-gay-marriage group New Yorkers For Constitutional Freedoms’ predicted, “This is just the tip of the iceberg.” He said the law should have exempted clerks who because of their religious beliefs do not want to recognize same-sex marriages.
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I was never a Dallas fan, but I have to applaud the original cast on this new version coming on TNT. It’s good to see them still kicking.]]>

By Steve Barnes I guess that the first thing to be said about any Billie Holiday tribute is that it’s a good thing. Any time that contemporary listeners are encouraged to pay some attention to one of the greatest singers ever recorded is a plus, especially if those listeners are led back to the source. But having said that, exactly how good of a thing is A Tribute to Billie Holiday (StormVox Records), which was released last week? A compilation of 13 versions of songs associated with Holiday—by artists ranging from ‘80s standby Boz Scaggs to recent Grammy winner for Best New Artist Esperanza Spalding—the CD walks a fine line between overly earnest embalmings of songs and versions that manage to point out the relationship between 21st-century R&B and the world that Holiday inhabited. A Tribute to Billie Holiday has its roots in what might seem to be a strange source. It’s the brainchild of actor Peter Stormare, whose credits include the Coen Brothers’ Fargo and the TV series Entourage. According to the CD’s liner notes, Stormare’s interest in Holiday’s work started when he read her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, when he was a teenager in Sweden. That probably accounts for the overall structure of the CD, which mixes up the songs with excerpts from Holiday’s book, read by Angela Bassett. But while Holiday’s life story was a sad one, and her bouts with drug abuse certainly have some cautionary value, those things have very little to do with why we should still listen to her music today. Holiday was a master at finding the story inside of a song’s lyrics, and at working against the grain of its melodic line just enough to make a listener stand back and get some perspective on what the song is about. That’s a tough feat for a singer to pull off, and it’s one that defeats a few of the singers here. Two young jazz singers, Erin Boheme and Renee Olmstead, offer up versions of, respectively, “Them There Eyes” and “Good Morning Heartache.” Neither version is bad, but they are both much too blandly comfortable. There’s no sense of tension between the singer and the song. Aside from the fact that Billie Holiday sang these songs, there seems to be little connection between the tracks and Holiday’s recordings. That’s not to say that what we want to hear is a singer trying to mimic Holiday’s style, but something that exhibits a similar sense of adventure is definitely a reasonable request. Three young performers do have some success with that. Rocco DeLuca delivers “Lady Sings the Blues” with a contemporary R&B croon that suits the song more than you’d think. Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds gives “Strange Fruit” a dreamy, slightly detached arrangement that sets up a nice contrast with the song’s subject material. And Esperanza Spalding’s slow, airy version of “I’ll Look Around” (you can hear it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayNWPRD5LY4) is probably the best thing here. Rickie Lee Jones also does pretty well with “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.” The only artist here who has an immediately recognizable style, Jones does what projects like this really ought to. She inhabits the song with her boho-chick persona without losing the song’s spirit. It’s a suitable analogy for what Holiday does with her material, and it’s something that A Tribute to Billie Holiday could have done with a little more of. But if you want to listen to some tributes to Lady Day that really hit the mark, there are quite a few available. Among the best: Carmen McRae Sings Lover Man & Other Billie Holiday Classics, Rosemary Clooney’s Tribute to Billie Holiday, Etta James’s Mystery Lady and Abbey Lincoln’s Abbey Sings Billie. They’re all examples of how a great singer’s influence can live on without becoming imitation. And of course you can always listen to Lady Day herself. My own opinion is that two of her last albums, Songs for Distingue Lovers and Lady in Satin, are her best—but that’s a minority opinion. If by some chance, you haven’t listened to her before, there are several compilations that can give you a good overview of her career. Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday has 36 of the best tracks from the early years, when she was recording for Columbia Records. And for the midcareer highlights, The Complete Decca Recordings has 50 tracks she recorded from 1944 to 1950. Her later career at Verve can be sampled on Lady in Autumn—The Best of the Verve Years. But with Holiday, any place you start is a good place, and once you start, you’re almost sure to keep on going.

Steve Barnes is a freelance writer based in New York City. His work has appeared in such publications as ARTnews and the Wall Street Journal.]]>

The Obama administration, having declared DOMA unconstitutional and dropped its defense of the law, continues to process deportations of non-citizen partners. From Stop the Deportations:

On July 13 in San Francisco, Doug Gentry and Alex Benshimol, a married California couple who have been together for six years, will face every same-sex binational couple’s worst nightmare: a deportation hearing. As anyone following this issue knows, for years there has been little hope for same-sex binational couples seeking to reside together in the United States. Many binational couples are legally married like Alex and Doug, but they are still treated as legal strangers in the eyes of the federal government. There is only one reason Doug and Alex are facing deportation proceedings at all. That reason is DOMA, a law that the President of the United States himself has determined to be indefensible and unconstitutional. [SNIP] As readers of this site know, for decades, and certainly since DOMA became law, LGBT binational couples have fought discrimination in US immigration law. At best, our foreign partners and spouses have managed to stay in the US with temporary visas related to work or study. But even those lucky few are, like all others, deprived of access to a “green card” on the basis of their relationship with their life partner, no matter how long or how committed that relationship is. Binational couples cannot build a future together and live with tremendous insecurity, even though many are raising U.S.-born children together. Far more often couples are forced to live apart in different countries or they are exiled to one of the more than 20 countries in the world that respect our families. Perhaps the greatest number are those forced to live in the United States in the shadows with constant uncertainty; fear of deportation and ruin hanging over their heads. This destroys marriages, and tears apart our families. It is a humanitarian crisis that must come to an end.
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I suppose we should pray for them. From their call to protest on what would otherwise be a happy, joyous occasion: Governor Cuomo and the New York Legislature imposed same-sex marriage on New York with no vote of the people. Voters in 31 other states have been able to decide the definition of marriage for their states, but New Yorkers have been denied that right! Stand up to protest the redefinition of marriage and demand your right to vote! If New York is going to change the definition of marriage, it should be the People and not the politicians who make the decision! Let the People Vote! Join us on July 24 in NYC, Albany, Rochester and Buffalo to let your voice be heard! Additional details coming soon…]]>

I’m not one to diminish the work of activists prior to that fateful night at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, but I’m reminded every year, as we see just how far and wide our equality movement has spread, how seminal that event was. It’s especially significant to see this in places like Latin America, where homophobia remains the rule, not the exception. From Americas Quarterly: Thousands convened along the Paseo de la Reforma to participate in Mexico City’s 33rd Gay Pride Parade recently. Adorned in colorful flags and angel costumes and chanting loudly amid peals of music, people of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) orientation marched and danced in demand of respect for sexual diversity in Mexico. The motto this year was “Laws without Discrimination for the Whole Nation”—referring to the drive to take the progressive LGBT policies that exist in Mexico City (Distrito Federal—D.F.) and expand them across all of Mexico. In December 2009, the Asamblea Legislativa del Distrito Federal (Legislative Assembly of Mexico City) permitted gay marriage in Mexico City, making it the first city in Latin America to do so. The policy has been in effect since March 2010. “We want the entire Mexican Republic to have all the advances that have been won in the D.F.,” said Octavio Perez, 26, of the Gay Pride Parade’s organizing committee. “That is basically the essence of the march.” Although the Mexican capital has made venerable progress with regard to LGBT rights, homophobia within the country remains virulent. Between 1995 and 2008, the nongovernmental organization Letra S has documented 628 registered homicides connected to homophobia, as quoted by the Mexican National Commission of Human Rights. Moreover, 52 percent of Mexican lesbians, gays and bisexuals consider discrimination one of the main problems they face, according to a recent survey conducted by the National Council to Prevent Discrimination (CONAPRED). The same survey also notes that homosexuals and bisexuals admit that they encounter the most intolerance from the police and religious groups.
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