http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzSjML1kXr0

In 1948, the California Supreme Court in Perez v. Sharp ruled that the California anti-miscegenation statute, prohibiting marriage outside of one’s race, violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and was therefore unconstitutional. This was the first time since Reconstruction that a state court had declared an anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional.

California was the first state since Ohio in 1887 to repeal its anti-miscegenation law. In a number of states, state laws prohibiting interracial marriage and interracial sex were repealed after Perez v. Sharp.

Why is it relevant to the prop 8 debate that California’s supreme court struck down the State’s anti-miscegenation law, a law that prevented someone of one race marrying one of another? Because the same arguments, religiously-based, societal- and culturally-based, that were used to validate that discrimination are nearly identical to those used to seek discrimination against same-sex couples today. Those who did not believe in the mixing of the races, in the government allowing its citizens the freedom to choose who they wished to marry because they believed it would degrade society and country, that it would create a “mongrol” nation, fought to impose anti-miscegenation laws in this and almost every other state. These opponents to interracial marraige were largely prejudiced, but many truly believed they were saving society.

So it is quite relevant that in May, the California court, a Republican and conservative court, voted that the same legal argument, that such an infringement on civil rights, violates the 14th amendment of the US constitution.

The California Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage May 15, 2008 in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.

The 4-3 ruling declared that the state Constitution protects a fundamental “right to marry” that extends equally to same-sex couples. It tossed a highly emotional issue into the election year while opening the way for tens of thousands of gay people to wed in California, starting as early as mid-June.

The majority opinion, by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, declared that any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation will from this point on be constitutionally suspect in California in the same way as laws that discriminate by race or gender, making the state’s high court the first in the nation to adopt such a stringent standard.

The decision was a bold surprise from a moderately conservative, Republican-dominated court that legal scholars have long dubbed “cautious,” and experts said it was likely to influence other courts around the country.

“Our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation,” George wrote for the majority. “An individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.”

Many gay Californians said that even the state’s broadly worded domestic partnership law provided only a second-class substitute for marriage. The court agreed.

Giving a different name, such as “domestic partnership,” to the “official family relationship” of same-sex couples imposes “appreciable harm” both on the couples and their children, the court said.

Now those who have traditionally opposed homosexuality, placed onto the ballot Proposition 8, which would limit marriage only to heterosexual couples and would deny same-sex couples the legal tax and family benefits of a civil marriage. It is the hope of Prop 8 proponents to impose their religious beliefs into the constitution of our secular state government and our democratic society. They should not be hated for their ignorance, but they must be stopped.

Music Credit: Clay Aiken, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” - to read more about the first day of California same-sex unions, go to: http://ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=...

This video was made for the gay online community, Up4Now.com

It caught the residents of Sacramento by surprise.

Violent protests by Russian-language immigrants began at lgbt community events in 2006, then Satendar Singh, a Fijian-born immigrant, was attacked and killed by Russian evangelical immigrants who believed him to be gay.

These evangelical and pentacostal extremists claim to love God, but show no signs of honoring God’s commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” There are few people who more soundly deny the faith found in scripture than these evangelists, profoundly noting the hypocrisy in their praise of Jesus while ignoring his words of compassion and love. It is shameful. Perhaps one day they can find their way back into God’s loving embrace. We can all pray for their salvation. They harm their children by teaching them only to hate - a trait which will prevent them from becoming contributing members of this country’s secular society.

In case you are wondering - the number of times Jesus condemned homosexuality in the bible? Zero. The number of times he condemned hypocrites? 16. Jesus proclaimed with compassion, “That which you do to these, the least of my children, you do unto me.”

This video marks the one year anniversary of the death of Satendar Singh at the hands of evangelical immigrants. It is meant to keep this violent act in our consciousness until all those involved are brought to justice.

Help capture Andrey Vusik - Singh’s killer. He is a fugitive from justice most likely aided in flight by the evangelical community from which he came.

The idea for this video began with one of the signs held up by a young protestor that read: “Woe to them who call evil good and good evil.” It struck me that the lgbt community’s response to the protestors includes that very same quote from scripture (Isaiah 5:20).

The lyrics of the song, and the pictures, objectively taken, trust the viewer/listener to draw his or her own conclusion. - Thanks for watching and please remember in your prayers Satendar Singh, Matthew Shepard and all gay, lesbian and transgendered victims of violence spawned and ignited by the kind of ignorance and fanaticism shown here. Sacramento is a beautiful, historic capital city and the place I call home. It is home to many good people - too many for the actions of these few to have any lasting effect. Song credit: “Hallelujah!” by lesbian singer K.D. Lang. photo credits: Sac Pride Parade protestors - Dan Aiello, Mira Loma High School protestors: B.C.

Note: Scripture which supports loving all of God’s children: Luke 6:31: “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” Galatians 5:14 “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”; “All are the sons and daughters of God, good people all, Brothers and Sisters, since created by One Father. No rooted difference is there between them.” (From Hindu scripture, since Singh was Hindu in this secular, not solely christian, country); “Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother?” (Judiasm, Malachi 2:10); Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, for this is the law and the prophets.”

A year has passed since Satendar Singh was attacked at
a recreation area near Sacramento by Russian
immigrants who percieved him to be gay, but without
the inclusion of “sexual orientation” in the Federal
Hate Crimes law his killer remains a successful
fugitive from justice.

The death of Singh is symbolic of tension between
Sacramento’s gay community and the local Slavic
evangelical and pentacostal communities who continue
to spread anti-gay rhetoric.

Singh, a 26 year old worker at the AT&T Call Center in
Sacramento, was attacked while picnicking at Lake
Natoma with friends. His attackers were Russian and
Slavic immigrants believed to be members of
Sacramento’s virulently anti-gay, slavic evangelical
movement. Singh was first verbally then physically
attacked because his attackers perceived him to be
gay, according to the Sacramento Sheriff’s arrest
report. He died four days later at a local hospital
having never regained consciousness.

One of those arrested, Alexsander Schevchenko, 22, was
sentenced to 150 days in county jail after being found
guilty on two misdemeanor charges, but Andrey Vusik,
identified as the man who threw the fatal punch, fled
the country following Singh’s death. He is believed
to have returned to Russia,” according to longtime
Sacramento lgbt activist, Jerry Sloan, who is
concerned that the recent Schevchenko sentence and
Vusik’s successful flight from justice will be a green
light for further violence. “It was a little slap on
the wrist. Five months in jail for the murder of a
man was a slap on the wrist. It indicates that if you
harm a gay person, chances are its not going to be
costly.”

Sloan has been a critic of the way the Sacramento
Sheriff and District Attorney Jan Scully have handled
the case. “This whole case from the beginning to the
end of [Schevchenko's] trial has been fucked up.”
Sloan believes the attack, because the attackers first
sent their families home then called friends for
additional back-up, “was a conspiracy and should have
been prosecuted as one.”

Vusik’s flight from justice has been successful so
far, in part, because his crime was perpetrated based
upon his hatred of homosexuals. While the attackers
and the victims both threw racist comments (Singh was
Fijian-born and his friends were Indian), the Sheriff
and District Attorney determined that Singh was not
attacked because of his race, but his perceived sexual
orientation. Something Schevchenko’s jury also
determined.

Crimes based on “Sexual Orientation” are covered under
California state law, but not covered under current
Federal Hate Crimes law. It’s the Federal hate crime
that qualifies a fugitive for the FBI’s “Most Wanted”
list, and it is that list where the FBI focuses reward
money and additional monetary and personnel resources.

“The recent rise in hate crimes in Sacramento are
disheartening to us all,” said Congresswoman Doris
Matsui in an e-mail to the Bay Area Reporter about the
recent attacks against members of Sacramento’s lgbt
community and recent racially-motivated attacks in the
area. “Now more then ever, it is vitally important to
promote and encourage equality and end
discrimination.”

Former Mayor Anne Rudin, who pioneered some of the
nation’s most aggressive local anti-discrimination law
in Sacramento between 1983 and 1992, is particularly
concerned with the anti-gay, Slavic immigrant
community. “They don’t seem to be fitting in very
well. I’m concerned about this immigrant community and
how they are not reacting well to the diversity of
Sacramento.” Rudin was known for promoting tolerance
and diversity during her tenure. “For them to come to
our community and behave the way they do, it really
saddens me. It almost makes me feel like I want to be
anti-immigration, but i’m not going to be that. I
don’t want to think that way.”

“We’re using our resources and that’s all we are going
to say,” stated FBI agent Steven D. Dupre of the local
FBI office, regarding Vusik’s pursuit.

Dupre explained that in the case of a fugitive flight
beyond U.S. borders, the FBI uses “Legal attache
offices that work with local agencies to capture and
extradite,” fugitives like Vusik. “We develop
information as to where we believe the fugitive is,
then we send that information to the legal attache in
that country. It’s up to the legal attache to then
work with local agencies” to capture the fugitive.

“There are a lot of procedural issues” involved with
capture and extradition, Dupre stated. “There’s a
provisional arrest warrant” which the legal attache
will present to the local agencies, along with the
information the FBI has as to his whereabouts. Vusik’s
capture is even more difficult because the United
States does not currently have extradition treaties
with many of the states of the former Soviet bloc
where Vusik is believed to be living.

So where does the FBI believe Vusik is hiding? “We
have several possibilities,” stated Dupre, but
declined to indicate where the FBI currently believes
the fugitive is living, noting that the families
involved in the case have “admitted to speaking to
him.” Dupre explained that to divulge any information
on the progress of the pursuit could jeopardize his
agency’s efforts to capture Vusik.

Sacramento Sheriff’s media spokesman, Sgt. Tim Curran,
was more candid. “He’s in Russia,” and contradicted
Dupre’s assertion that the FBI is using its resources
to capture Vusik. “The FBI doesn’t have anyone on the
ground looking for him. There is not any active
pursuit, as far as I know.” What effort is the
Sheriff’s Department employing to return Vusik to face
charges? “We have an active warrant out for his
arrest, his passport has been flagged and that’s about
it,” responded Curran. “We’re certainly not going to
send officers to Russia to look for him.”
Dupre admits that greater efforts are focused on the
capture of international fugitives who qualify for the
agency’s “Most Wanted” list than those who do not.
Vusik, whose crime was based on sexual orientation,
“does not qualify,” according to Dupre, because he
killed Singh “based upon sexual orientation, which is
not a Federal Hate Crime.” Vusik can not qualify as
one of the agency’s top priorities until Federal Law
changes to “qualify” his attack as a Federal Hate
Crime, according to Dupre. Once returned, Vusik would
face a State hate crime charge of “commission of a
crime for purpose of interfering with civil rights of
another.”

New Hate Crimes Legislation

Legislation which would include hate crimes based on
sexual orientation (HR 1592) recently passed in the
House and has been sent to the Senate Judiciary
Committee. HR 1592 provides for technical, forensic,
prosecutorial, or any other form of assistance in the
criminal investigation or prosecution.

“We must get the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes
Prevention Act signed into law. The House has passed
it, now the Senate must act. This significant
legislation would properly define a “hate crime” and
ensure that those who commit these terrible crimes are
given the punishment they deserve,” stated Matsui.
“Satender Singh’s death must not have been in vain and
it is time to unite as a country to end discrimination
and stand up against hate.”

Bush has stated he will veto the Hate Crimes
legislation.

Whether or not Vusik is captured and returned to face
charges, Sacramento’s lgbt community remains uneasy
with the recent rise in the area’s number of hate
crimes. Ironically, in 2002 Harvard University’s
Civil Rights project called Sacramento
“America’s most integrated city,” and promoted the
California Capital as “an example of a community
tolerant of diversity.”

A lot has changed.

Part of a Greater Movement

Called “a growing and ferocious anti-gay movement in
the
Sacramento Valley” by the Southern Poverty Law Center,
Sacramento’s local anti-gay demonstrations are being
orchestrated and attended mostly by Russian- and
Ukrainian-speaking immigrants, according to a Fall
2007 article by SPLC.

The SPLC article states that many of the demonstrators
are members of an international extremist anti-gay
movement whose adherents call themselves the
Watchmen on the Walls.

In Latvia, the Watchmen are
popular among Christian fundamentalists and ethnic
Russians, and are known for presiding over anti-gay
rallies where gays and lesbians are pelted with bags
of excrement. In the Western U.S., the Watchmen have a
following among Russian-speaking evangelicals from the
former Soviet Union. Members are increasingly active
in several cities long known as gay-friendly enclaves,
including Sacramento, Seattle and Portland, according
to SPLC.

The international nature of the anti-gay movement was
seen at the 2006 conference of the so-called Watchmen
on the Walls in the alliance between American
gay-bashers Kenneth Hutcherson, Scott Lively (The Pink
Swastika), and Latvian megachurch preacher Alexey
Ledyaev.

What SPLC did not mention, however, was that the
orchestration of the anti-gay rallies often are done
in partnership with a small, non-Slavic, Placerville
pentacostal group who call themselves “The Church of
the Divide.” This group includes a member with a
printing business and they are the ones responsible
for the demonstrators professional signage and
t-shirts. They are one example of how the Slavic
evangelicals have been embraced by the existing US
conservative movement.

Vlad Kusakin, the host of a Russian-language anti-gay
radio show in Sacramento and the publisher of a
Russian-language newspaper in Seattle, told The
Seattle Times in January that God has “made an
injection” of high numbers of anti-gay Slavic
evangelicals into traditionally liberal West Coast
cities. “In those places where the disease is
progressing, God made a divine penicillin,” Kusakin
said.

Last summer, The Speaker, a Russian-language newspaper
with an English title in Sacramento, urged readers to
attend a massive anti-gay rally: “Make a choice. It’s
your decision. Homosexuality is knocking on your doors
and asking: ‘Can I make your son gay and your daughter
lesbian?’”

At that rally and others at the California Capitol,
thousands of Russian-speaking teens crowded the halls
of the Capitol building rotunda, wearing “Sodomy is a
Sin” T-shirts. Scarf-wrapped babushkas held up signs
that read, “Perversion is never safe” and “I am not
learning about gay people” according to the Times
article.

Dennis Mangers, a former California state assemblyman
who now lobbies for the cable communications industry,
told the BAR that when he and a group of
community leaders met with the Slavic community
leaders following a violent first picket of the 2006
Rainbow Festival, a prominent leader of Sacramento’s
Slavic community told him through an interpreter “You
all seem like nice people but you have to understand,
we equate homosexuals with thieves, adulterers and
murderers. To us, you are an abomination.”

Despite the barb aimed directly at Mangers and the
other LGBT leaders present at that meeting, both sides
agreed to schedule a second meeting. But before that
meeting could take place, Singh was murdered.

“After Singh’s death we met with the Sheriff, Police
Chief and District Attorney and they all met with the
Slavic community leaders and told them that [the lgbt
community] here was a well-respected, contributiing
part of the Sacramento community and this sort of
violence would not be tolerated,” Mangers said.

“[The Slavic] community seems to have quieted down
some,” stated Mangers. “A lot of that community is
receiving social program benefits and others are
beginning to get good paying jobs like cable
installers, and I think they weren’t prepared for the
kind of response they got from the community.”
Mangers believes that the lgbt community has been an
easier target in the former Soviet bloc states than
it’s proven to be in Sacramento, Seattle and the other
traditionally liberal cities targeted by the Slavic
evangelical movement.

“Gays and Lesbians are suffering violent attacks” in
eastern europe, says Mangers, who believes the
violence in Sacramento has been part of an
international campaign orchestrated by evangelicals
from Latvia, Russia and the Ukraine.

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