Lesbians In The News

[Kobi]

On April 17th Grace Mann, an outspoken lesbian feminist at Mary Williams University in Virginia, was killed in her own home. The man accused of her murder is a fellow student and one of her housemates.

The student allegedly killed by her roommate had an altercation with him before her death and received numerous calls and text messages from him, according to a search warrant. He is charged with the murder and abduction. The Medical Examiner's office ruled her death asphyxia due to strangulation.

Grace Rebecca Mann, 20, of McLean, was also threatened with rape by an anonymous poster on the social networking app Yik Yak and she feared for her safety in the month before her slaying, according to a friend who saw the message.

The revelations came Thursday as Mann’s feminist group at Mary Washington announced it was filing a federal complaint accusing the school of doing little to combat a flood of violent and sexual threats against members on Yik Yak this year. School officials denied the charges.

Members said they felt afraid on campus, resorted to carrying rape whistles, walked in groups and one sought counseling. The messages came after Feminists United members came out in opposition to bringing Greek life to campus and commented on a lewd chant at a party by members of the rugby team.

One poster wrote “Gonna tie these feminists to the radiator” and rape them. Another promised to kill “a [expletive] . . . or two” and a third called for euthanizing members, according to the complaint. There were more than 700 messages.

Members said the messages were especially chilling because Yik Yak functions as a virtual community bulletin board, aggregating comments from its anonymous users within a 1.5-mile radius.

“I was terrified,” said Julia Michels, president of Feminists United. “I didn’t know if the person sitting next to me in class was going to rape me.”

Michels said group members met multiple times with top university officials to express their concerns about the messages, including once a little over a week before Mann was slain on April 17. Steven Vander Briel, 30, is accused of killing Mann in the off-campus home they shared with two other students.

Authorities have not revealed a motive, and Feminists United members said they had no evidence connecting Mann’s killing to the Yik Yak threats or her activism on campus. The family said the two did not have a personal relationship and Vander Briel was simply renting a room in the house.

In a statement, university officials said they had been engaging with Feminists United and other students throughout the year to address issues of safety and campus culture. They said they take allegations of gender-based violence very seriously and would cooperate with any investigation that follows the complaint.

“Creating a safe learning and living environment is our first and foremost concern,” said Richard V. Hurley, president of the school.

another statistic in the war on women

[Kobi]

MILL VALLEY, Calif. (AP) - Singer Ronnie Gilbert, a member of the influential 1950s folk quartet the Weavers, has died. She was 88.

Gilbert died of natural causes Saturday at a retirement community in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Mill Valley, said her longtime partner, Donna Korones.

With the Weavers, whose other members were Pete Seeger, Lee Hays and Fred Hellerman, Gilbert helped spark a national folk revival by churning out hit recordings of "Goodnight Irene," ''Tzena Tzena Tzena," ''On Top of Old Smokey," ''If I Had A Hammer," ''Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" and "Wimoweh."

The group was hugely popular before its left-wing activities were targeted by anti-Communists during the McCarthy era. They were blacklisted, unable to record, appear on television or radio and perform in many concert venues, and eventually disbanded.

Gilbert went on to pursue a solo career as a singer, as a stage actor and psychologist.

Gilbert's memoir, "Ronnie Gilbert: A Radical Life in Song," which is the same title of a one-woman show she performed for years, will be published in the fall.

She is survived by her daughter, Lisa, and Korones, her partner of 30 years.

[Kobi]

"Fun Home,” Broadway's first musical with a lesbian protagonist, made history at Sunday's 69th Annual Tony Awards, winning 5 awards including the night’s top prize, best musical, and an award for leading actor Michael Cerveris.

Its composer, Jeanine Tesori, and book writer/lyricist Lisa Kron also made history as the first female writing team to win a Tony for score and book.

Fun Home is a musical adapted by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori from Alison Bechdel's 2006 graphic memoir of the same name.

Fun Home opens in the present day, narrated by the middle-aged writer Alison Bechdel as she recalls the events of her life and tries to write her memoir. The show covers three time periods, which overlap on stage in a non-linear fashion.

The first is Alison Bechdel's childhood ("Small Alison"), when she struggles against her father Bruce's obsessive demands in the ornate Victorian home he has restored, and begins to identify her inchoate sexuality.

The second is her first year in college ("Medium Alison"), when she "leapt out of the closet", identifying herself as a lesbian and beginning her first relationship; shortly after coming out to her parents, she learns that her father has had relationships with men, and four months later he commits suicide.

The third ("Alison"), when Alison is a successful cartoonist and the same age that Bruce was when he died, shows her attempt to understand her relationship with her father, and the meaning of his life and death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fun_Home_%28musical%29

[Kobi]

The freedom to marry feels inevitable in 2015. Nearly 72 percent of Americans live in a state that views same-sex relationships as equal to opposite-sex ones. But how did we get here? For many, including small town Vermont lawyers Beth Robinson and Susan Murray, with Boston-based attorney Mary L. Bonauto, the journey began in the 1980s.

"The State of Marriage," a new documentary, recounts the challenges in gripping detail as the story of Vermont's historic establishment of same-sex marriage unfolds. Not without setbacks, the freedom to marry has since radiated throughout the world. In the film, the pioneering efforts of the men and women who sought to eradicate cultural and legal barriers for same-sex couples come into focus.

"Without the strategic exclamation point on it, I think Vermont was essential to keeping this movement alive," said Bonauto. "The film captures that exciting story."

The film's timely premiere on June 18 at the Provincetown International Film Festival arrives as the United States Supreme Court prepares to rule on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. "The film is a bookend," said Murray. "[The Supreme Court's ruling] will hopefully, finally put this issue to rest."

In the early '90s, the LGBT community was "under siege," says Freedom to Marry founder Evan Wolfson. Without any legal recognition for same-sex couples in the U.S., people were losing their kids in custody cases, getting fired from their jobs for being gay and discriminated against even after years of military service. The movement for LGBT equality was waiting for an opening and someone to take charge.

As a young law clerk in 1989, Robinson admired Murray's work for lesbian and gay families. Murray described Robinson as a "small, incredible bundle of energy" with an "exquisite legal mind" fueled by Pixy Stix. It was the beginning decadeslong personal and professional relationship. Years before the legal battles began, they engaged in a grassroots movement, traveling to state fairs in Vermont to tell stories of real same-sex couples.

In 1994, Bonauto, the Civil Rights Project director at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), pulled together a group of New England attorneys to discuss marriage equality. Skeptics thought it was "folly" or even "reckless," she recalls, but "Beth and Susan clearly said there's a path forward in Vermont." After a series of hard-won victories, including the override of a gubernatorial veto, Vermont became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage through the legislature.

Working tirelessly, Robinson and Murray fought for the rights they knew their fellow Vermonters deserved. "[Murray and Robinson] are not self promoters. They did it because it was the right thing to do," said "The State of Marriage" co-producer Marcia Ross. "They deserve national recognition for the contribution."

"Both Beth and I were in private practice and not getting paid for this, and it took away from time that we would have spent building up our careers," explained Murray. "We could not have done it but for the support of our law partners who were also willing to sacrifice in so many ways."

Though opponents in the film speak virulently about the "consequences" of legalizing same-sex marriage, those in favor cite the changing tide of public opinion as evidence that equality encourages acceptance.

"The law plays a leading role in helping people understand what's acceptable and what's not," Murray told The Huffington Post. "If the law throughout the land is that gay people are allowed to marry, that in turn is going to help a broader acceptance of gay lives. I've seen that in person in Vermont. It's changed the societal message."

"In the Civil Rights Movement, I saw with my own eyes that it cannot have equality for some and not equality for all. Everyone must be included. Everyone must have a palce at the table," says Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who emerged as a civil rights leader in the 1960s. "What Susan and Beth did was in keeping with what Rosa Parks and others did."

Bonauto has since stepped onto the national stage to argue a pivotal same-sex marriage case that could bring marriage equality to all 50 states. In her opening arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in April, representing more than a dozen gay and lesbian couples in Obergefell v. Hodges, she asked the justices to wipe out the "stain of unworthiness" that marriage bans produce.

"I hope that if we are fortunate enough to have a win in the Supreme Court -- and I am not one of those people who sits around counting on anything, but should we win? In my view, yes -- I'd like to think we'll have the fourth decision in a row that says stop treating gay people differently because they are," Bonauto told The Huffington Post. "And I'd like to think that that would have an effect on things like non-discrimination laws. We have so much work to do from my perspective, like ensuring basic non-discrimination so that young LGBT people can grow up in a world where they are safe and respected. We face an epidemic of homelessness. There are so many systemic issues that haven't received the attention they deserve."

A sense of inevitability worries director Jeff Kaufman as well. "One of the things that we encountered while making the film is that there's a lot of complacency these days," he said. "People don't realize that political gains often slip back."

"I don't think you can totally understand what they had to go through until you understand what they were up against," added Ross. "If we don't have a sense of our past, it gets lost and distorted. So much of the movement started with such humble resources, and it not only took over the country, but the world. When they started this process, people thought they were nuts. It's important to have a sense of that vision to spark further change and inspiration for the future."

Knowing the outcome in Vermont doesn't diminish the power of "The State of Marriage." Instead, with the procedural tedium of momentous legal cases made digestible, the film presents itself as a legal thriller. Audiences will cheer. They'll be reminded of how far we've come, and how far is left to go.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...ss&ir=Business

[Kobi]

Tt was the early 1980s, and Mary Bonauto was a college student in upstate New York, struggling to come out as gay. She turned to a priest for help but left convinced her church would not accept her. Unsure where to turn, she felt her life might “be over.”

“The law was one way of making sure my life wouldn’t be over,” she recently recalled. “I could either just suffer from the system or change the system. I decided to opt on the change-the-system side.”

Over the last 25 years, the diminutive, soft-spoken lawyer with a self-described “underdog mentality” has changed the system, more quickly and dramatically than she could have imagined.

As the lawyer for seven gay and lesbian couples in 2003, she persuaded Massachusetts’ highest court to make the state the first in the nation to allow same-sex couples to wed. Now, 37 states recognize gay marriage, and polls show nearly two out of three Americans support the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry.

Bonauto led the final fight in the battle she began in Massachusetts a dozen years ago, when she delivered oral arguments before the US Supreme Court in a highly charged case that would make gay marriage legal in all 50 states. She tackled the core issue before the court: whether state bans on same-sex marriage violate the US Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

It was her first time arguing before the nation’s highest court.

In addition to winning the landmark Massachusetts case, she was part of the legal team that made Vermont the first state to legalize civil unions in 1999 and helped win the first federal court rulings against the Defense of Marriage Act, in 2010 and 2012, before the Supreme Court struck down the law in 2013.

“Mary Bonauto’s contributions to the gay rights movement are analogous to those of Thurgood Marshall to the civil rights movement and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the women’s rights movement,” Michael Klarman, a Harvard Law School professor, said in an e-mail.

Evan Wolfson, the president of Freedom to Marry, said Bonauto was chosen from among more than a dozen lawyers to argue the case because of her knowledge and history and because she represents the very issue the court is considering. The mother of 13-year-old twins, Bonauto married Jennifer Wriggins, a University of Maine law professor, in Massachusetts, after she won the case that secured the right for gays and lesbians. “She can not only answer the questions but embody the answer,” said Wolfson, who has known Bonauto since the 1980s. “She represents the movement because she’s lived it.”

Bonauto, 53, who lives in Portland, Maine, grew up in Newburgh, N.Y., and graduated from Hamilton College and Northeastern University Law School. In 1990, she joined Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders in Boston. She represented clients who had been harassed or fired and helped the city of Cambridge draft its domestic partnership ordinance — the first in Massachusetts — in 1992.

In 2003, she gained national attention, when the Supreme Judicial Court agreed with her and ruled that same-sex couples have a right to marry under the Massachusetts Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. At the time, nearly two out of three Americans opposed gay marriage, and only a handful of countries worldwide recognized such unions.

“People forget that the argument before the SJC was, in many ways, entirely novel,” said Margaret H. Marshall, the former chief justice of the court, who wrote the gay-marriage decision. “The justices hadn’t confronted anything like this before. It would have been very, very difficult to prepare for it, and she was outstanding.”

Despite Bonauto’s legal victories, friends describe her as the antithesis of the showboating trial attorney. She rarely flashes emotion and is more apt to cite case law, or her clients’ struggles, than her own experiences as a gay woman.

“She is a pretty private person,” said Gary Buseck, legal director at GLAD. “She is not particularly comfortable with herself in the spotlight.”

In a briefing with reporters last week, Bonauto credited others with ushering marriage rights for gays and lesbians to the cusp of national recognition. “There are so many people who have been part of bringing this day forward, people who we will never know their names but have worked in their state legislatures, on ballot measures, in court cases, plaintiffs, and so on,” she said. “I’m just so grateful that we’re at a point now where we’re going to get a full and, I expect, fair hearing.”

Bonauto will argue the case with two attorneys with more Supreme Court experience: Doug Hallward-Driemeier, a Washington lawyer who has argued 15 cases before the court, and the US solicitor general, Donald Verrilli Jr.

Still, the pressures will be greater than any she has faced professionally.

Even veteran Supreme Court lawyers said they struggle to control their nerves when they step to the lectern in the center of the courtroom and see the nine justices staring down at them from their mahogany bench. Perhaps her toughest challenge will be to convince the justices that they should wade into the gay-marriage debate when public opinion on the issue is shifting so swiftly.

While Justices Anthony Kennedy, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Ginsburg may privately support same-sex marriage, “it is conceivable — just barely, I think — that not all five of them believe judicial intervention is needed to accomplish it, because the country is so clearly getting there on its own,” Klarman said.

Social conservatives said they respect Bonauto, even as they vigorously oppose her cause. “I’ve always held Mary in very high esteem,” said Kris Mineau, former president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which opposes same-sex marriage. “She’s very capable and very talented.”

Bonauto said she believes the fight she is waging in the Supreme Court does have its roots in Massachusetts and the victory she won at the state’s high court more than a decade ago.

“There is one thing for certain that is exactly the same, which is that we’re dealing with real people, who truly have committed to one another . . . and yet they’re foreclosed from making that commitment simply because of who they are,” she said last week. “It’s a profound problem for people, and it’s why we’re at the court now.”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...a3K/story.html

[Kobi]

Team USA, led by out coach Jill Ellis, beat Japan 5 to 2 victory in the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Cyd Zeigler of OutSports reports Japan has no players who are out, German had only one -- Nadine Angerer -- but England has 2 out players on its team, Lianne Sanderson and Casey Stoney.

That's one fewer than the U.S. team’s out roster of Abby Wambach, Ali Krieger and Megan Rapinoe. These five, along with Ellis, are among the 17 women in the world who competed for this year's World Cup who, according to OutSports, are out as lesbian, bisexual or, “otherwise.”

On Sunday, July 5, star forward Abby Wambach, the two-time Olympic gold medalist, who had never won a World Cup before, immediately ran to her wife of almost two years, Sarah Huffman, who bent over the railing from the stands to kiss Wambach on the field.

Is it just me or does Wambach bear an uncanny resemblance to our own Jackhammer?

[Kobi]

Transgressive lesbian photographer addressed the Lesbian Gaze.