Dear AFA-Michigan supporter,

Your tax-deductible contribution before Dec. 31st can help lower the federal taxes you owe in April. Thanks for your support, and Merry Christmas to you and your family.

Gary Glenn, President
American Family Association of Michigan

LANSING STATE JOURNAL
Lansing, Michigan - December 19, 2006

Council passes rights ordinance
Opponents aim for August vote to repeal measure

by Kathleen Lavey

After much debate among residents, the Lansing City Council on Monday night unanimously passed a human rights ordinance.
“This is a great way to end the year,” said council member Kathie Dunbar, who proposed the ordinance. “I was always convinced all my colleagues supported this.” But opponents of the ordinance promised Monday to start a petition drive to put it on the August ballot, where voters could support or repeal the ordinance.

“We will be prepared to assist residents of Lansing in making sure that the policy does not stand without a vote of the people,” said Gary Glenn, president of the Midland-based American Family Association of Michigan. It opposes the ordinance largely over the granting of rights to gay, lesbian and transgendered people.

To get a referendum placed on the ballot, the ordinance’s opponents would have to collect valid signatures from 5 percent of Lansing voters, or about 4,370 people. “I’m kind of looking forward to it,” Dunbar said of the potential challenge. “I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my sound decision. The majority of people in town are ready for this.” Several residents both for and against the proposal spoke Monday at the council meeting.

In an e-mail sent Friday to City Council members, Glenn asked for a delay of the vote until after the first of the year. He said passing it on Dec. 19 creates a hardship for Christians who oppose the ordinance and now must collect petition signatures during the holiday season.

The council originally planned to vote on the ordinance Dec. 11 but delayed its vote to address concerns raised by the Catholic Diocese of Lansing. Overall, Dunbar said she has been overwhelmed at the number of positive responses to her efforts to get the ordinance passed. “This sends a very powerful message that we respect and value diversity,” she said.
Among other things, the ordinance prohibits harassment and discrimination based on race, age, height, weight, political affiliation or belief, sexual orientation and gender identity.

The council fine-tuned the ordinance last week with input from local religious and business leaders. Fines for violating the ordinance are up to $150 for a first offense, up to $250 for a second offense and up to $500 for a third offense. City attorney Brigham Smith said cities that have passed similar ordinances have not seen big boosts in litigation or complaints.
Lansing’s City Council passed a similar human rights ordinance in March 1996. Voters eliminated it on a referendum the following November.

“I felt it was time to try again,” Dunbar said. “The community has changed, and attitudes in the community have changed.”

You can read the Lansing State Journal article here.

Gary Glenn, president of AFA-Michigan, said his group will help distribute petitions to local churches, a tactic the AFA also used in 2004 in its successful drive to enshrine a gay-marriage ban into the state Constitution. ‘AFA-Michigan will do everything we can to support Lansing residents opposed to this discriminatory ordinance that will violate the privacy rights of women and the religious freedoms of many individuals, churches and community groups, such as the Boy Scouts and Salvation Army,’ Glenn said.“

CITY PULSE
Lansing, Michigan - December 13, 2006

Religious questions linger as ordinance vote approaches

City Council expected to approve human rights ordinance Monday
by Thomas P. Morgan

The Lansing City Council has scheduled an extra meeting on Dec. 18 to consider the proposed human rights ordinance, but first it will have to resolve differences with religious leaders over language governing exemptions in the employment of gay people.

Making it more difficult for the Council is that although local religious leaders have concerns over the ordinance, they’re not saying what those qualms are — at least not publicly.

The Council voted Monday night to extend its meeting schedule to allow for the Dec. 18 meeting. Monday’s meeting was supposed to be the last one for 2006.

Leaders from area black and Roman Catholic churches were scheduled to meet with the Lansing City Council’s General Services Committee last Friday, but they skipped out on the meeting when they discovered that the get-together would be open to the public.

Councilwoman Sandy Allen, who chairs the committee, said she was “extremely disappointed” that the religious leaders elected not to attend the meeting.

“I was a little disturbed they didn’t stay and give some input, because that was the purpose for this meeting today,” Allen said.

“The religious community, for whatever reason, has not been real forthcoming,” she said.

The proposed ordinance, which the Council is expected to pass unanimously, would protect gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender persons from discrimination in housing, employment, public facilities and public accommodations. It would also protect students, veterans and a host of other classes.

(more…)

LANSING STATE JOURNAL
Lansing, Michigan - December 11, 2006

Human rights proposal on hold
Catholics raise concerns about city legislation
By Tom Lambert

A vote on a proposed Lansing human rights ordinance has been delayed because of concerns by local Catholic leaders, city officials say.

The Lansing City Council had been set to vote on the measure tonight. It now likely will wait at least a week so it can address those concerns, which deal primarily with religious exemptions.
The ordinance would, among other things, prohibit harassment and discrimination based on race, sexual orientation, gender identity and student status.
(AFA-MI note: The following sentence — in bold — is inaccurate; there is no such exemption in the ordinance.)

It still would be permissible for a religious organization to restrict employment opportunities based on those factors for officers, religious instructors and clergy.

(more…)

SALON.COM
New York, New York - November 29, 2006

There is a Gay Agenda — Winning Elections
Gay millionaires and their allies poured unprecedented sums into the 2006 election — and it worked.
by Kerry Eleveld

Five weeks before the 2004 election, Rep. Sue Kelly, N.Y.-19 , made what seemed to be a safe move for a six-term Republican congresswoman accustomed to winning reelection by comfortable margins. Like 226 other members of the U.S. House, she voted to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have altered the U.S. Constitution to deny same-sex couples the right to marry.

Sure enough, the residents of Kelly’s Hudson Valley district returned the moderate Republican to Congress that November with 67 percent of the vote. Voting for a constitutional amendment she had once vowed to oppose seemed to have few negative consequences for her politically — and so she did it again in July 2006. To the degree either vote was noticed, they mostly helped quiet talk of a future GOP primary challenge from the right.

But at least one constituent who did take notice of what Kelly had done also took offense. This September, openly gay businessman Adam Rose wrote a $500,000 check to Majority Action, a so-called 527 political advocacy group, for the express purpose of unseating Sue Kelly in the November election.

“When she made that vote,” explained Rose, “I took a look at the political environment, and I said there’s nothing I can do about who’s president. There’s nothing I can do about the fact that Republicans control both houses [of Congress]. However, here is one thing I can have an impact on.” Rose’s half-million meant that Democratic challenger John Hall was actually able to compete with Kelly financially — and topple the once-safe incumbent this past Election Day in a race decided by fewer than 5,000 votes.
Rose is one of five wealthy people in the top 20 donors to federal 527s this election cycle whose contributions were either partially or entirely motivated by an effort to combat anti-gay legislation and defeat anti-gay incumbents. They turned the 2006 election into an object lesson in targeted giving that could fundamentally change the way politicians think about the consequences of taking anti-gay stances. And the money they gave to federal 527s, while considerable, was in several cases only a small portion of the millions they spent on politics in 2006, since much of their cash went to low-profile but vitally important state-level races.

(more…)

…But no openly gay person of wealth has charged into the political fray as dramatically as Tim Gill of Colorado. …Gill, a self-made millionaire from the software boom, has been the motivator, inspiration, and strategist for many gay millionaires making political contributions in recent years. …The Gill groups have also provided operating funds to MassEquality’s work to support equal marriage rights in Massachusetts, and support for Michigan’s Triangle Foundation and Equality Michigan.”

BETWEEN THE LINES
(homosexual newsmagazine)
Detroit, Michigan - December 7, 2006

Kalamazoo billionaire invests in LGBT politics
by Lisa Keen

He’s not a household name, not even in gay households, outside of Michigan. But he’s gay, he’s on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people, and he’s using his billions to improve the political landscape for LGBT people in Michigan and the United States.

Jon Stryker, an architect from Kalamazoo, inherited his fortune, estimated at $1.7 billion, from a medical products corporation his grandfather started in 1941. At 47, he ranks No. 6 on a list of largest contributors to 527 political advocacy groups.

More impressively, he poured $4.6 million of his own money into the Coalition for Progress, a political action committee he created only in August 2006. Along with a $500,000 contribution from his sister and assorted small contributions from others, the Coalition for Progress had a war chest of $5.2 million and spent much of it on elections for the Michigan legislature.

According to records filed with the Michigan Bureau of Elections, the Coalition spent $1.5 million in the governor’s race, where Stryker’s preferred candidate, pro-gay Democratic incumbent Jennifer M. Granholm, defeated anti-gay Republican challenger Dick DeVos. It also spent at least $1 million on 18 state house and senate races, successfully helping to unseat at least six anti-gay legislators, preserve the seats of two pro-gay ones, and win control of the state House for the Democrats.

“The thing that’s concerning,” said a spokesperson for the dethroned Republican speaker to the Kalamazoo Gazette after the election, “is that he has used his billions in inheritance to fund some very left-wing causes, including reversal of (anti-) gay marriage laws in other states.”

(more…)

An excellent commentary by AFA-Michigan supporter Scott Zondervan…

“What about the discrimination that could happen to women if a man, with a gender-identity problem, wants to use the women’s locker room or bathroom with other women? Don’t women have the right not to have a man using the bathroom with them or taking a shower with them? Personal lifestyle choices that affect society and the community, even indirectly, have consequences. People don’t live in a vacuum, we’re not autonomous. People’s behaviors and actions do affect others.”

KALAMAZOO GAZETTE
Kalamazoo, Michigan - December 1, 2006

(Guest opinion)

Defeated commissioners don’t understand issues
by Scott Zondervan

How sad it is that the two Kalamazoo County commissioners, Joe VanBruggen and Robert Brink, are so intolerant of the voters who did not agree with them.

VanBruggen and Brink are clearly misinformed and naive when it comes to understanding the issue of adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the county’s equal-opportunity-employment policy. Do VanBruggen and Brink really believe that homosexual behavior and cross-dressing are the moral and legal equivalents of immutable characteristics such as race, color and sex?

Apparently they don’t understand the evidence that people are not born homosexual or transgender. Just as people are not born to smoke, drink alcohol or abuse drugs. These are voluntary behaviors that affect the people around them.

Joe VanBruggen and Robert Brink have to understand that society already discriminates against clearly identified health consequences. Look at the discrimination that already occurs against people who smoke. Smokers are currently being denied employment and insurance because of the health consequences. Evidence also shows that homosexual behavior has been associated with dramatically higher incidences of domestic violence, mental illness, substance abuse, eating disorders, life-threatening diseases (AIDS, cancer and hepatitis), and premature death by up to 20 years.

(more…)