Democratic Senator Bob Casey announced his support for gay marriage today.

The announcement marks Casey as one of the last Democrats to embrace marriage equality over the past few weeks. 

 

“After much deliberation, thought and after reviewing the civil rights, legal issues and public policy questions presented, I would like to announce that I support same-sex marriage and believe that the Defense of Marriage Act should be repealed,” Casey offered in an exclusive interview with the Philadelphia Gay News. 

 

“I started to focus on the issue of gay marriage much more than I had before,” he added, reflecting on the U.S. Supreme Court’s review of landmark marriage cases on the Federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8. 

 

Senator Casey previously supported civil unions but stopped short of offering his support for gay marriage or the repeal of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act. Casey’s office told various media outlets last week that the senator was “closely monitoring the debate undertaken by the United States Supreme Court,” but had not changed his position on the matter. 

 

A coalition of progressive organizations in Pennsylvania intensified the pressure on Casey by attacking his refusal to come around at a time when Democrats from conservative states were flipping on the issue. 

 

Casey claimed the feedback from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered community and their families gave him the momentum and final push he needed to support their cause. “These stories had a tremendous impact on my position; if two individuals of the same sex fall in love and wish to marry, why should our government get in their way? At a time when a large percentage of Americans lament a lack of commitment between married women and men, why would we want less commitment and weaker marriages? If two individuals of the same sex wish to raise children, why should our government impede them from doing so, especially when so many children in this nation have only one parent or none at all?”

 

Casey, in a wide margin, was reelected to a second six-year term during the 2012 election. 

 

Although gay marriage does not enjoy overwhelming support in the state of Pennsylvania, more residents are in favor (47 percent) of the formation than opposed (43 percent). 

 

Source: whitehouse.gov

 

Marriage equality is on the verge of becoming the law of the land in the state of Delaware, as the Delaware Senate just passed the landmark legislation by a vote of 12 to 9. 

 

A half hour after the Senate vote, Governor Jack Markell signed the legislation into formal law on the steps in the lobby of the state’s Legislative Hall. 

 

Today’s historic victory for the gay and lesbian community follows a remarkable undertaken led by a number of gay advocacy groups in the nation’s first state. Thousands of Delaware residents volunteered, participated in phone backs, canvassed communities, and contacted their legislators to secure the momentum this bill required to become a reality. Delaware state officials including Governor Jack Markell, Attorney General Beau Biden and Rep. Melanie Smith advocated for the bill. 

Delaware officially becomes the 11th state in the U.S. to permit gay marriage. Republican Senator Catherine Cloutier and Democratic Senator Bethany Long provided the key swing votes in favor of the gay marriage legislation. Cloutier was the only Republican to vote “yes” in the Senate and one of two in the entire General Assembly to approve the bill.

 

According to the prospective law, residents of Delaware will be permitted to enter into same-sex marriages starting on the 1st of July. The law will provide a mechanism for converting existing same-sex civil unions in the state to full-fledged marriages. 

“I strongly believe that this is the right thing for the state of Delaware,” Markell said following the vote. 

 

The same-sex marriage bill was originally introduced in the Democrat-controlled Legislature last month, just a year after the state began recognizing same-sex civil unions. Supporters for the bill argued that same-sex couples deserve the same rights and respect of married couples. Supporters also noted that if the Supreme Court of the United States strikes down the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits married gay couples from procuring federal benefits, civil unions would not offer tax benefits or protections under federal law to same-sex couples in the state of Delaware. 

 

According to the bill, no new civil unions will be created in the state of Delaware after the 1st of July, and existing civil unions will be converted into traditional marriage over the next year. The new law also states that civil unions established in other states will be treated the same as marriages under the new statute.  

 

Source: Human Rights Campaign 

 

Over 3,000 people gathered in Amsterdam to protest Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit on Monday. The throng of gay rights activists and supporters flew rainbow flags at half-mast around the city that prides itself on expression and enjoying every kind of freedom. 

 

The cheerfully dressed crowd constantly chanted “Go home Putting!” during a festive protest outside the museum where Putin enjoyed dinner with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. 

 

Amsterdam in 2001 became the first nation to legalize gay marriage. 

Protesters were primarily targeting a bill before the Russian parliament that outlaws homosexual “propaganda” among minors, but also a broad rights clampdown in the nation of Russia, where Putin is serving his third term as president. 

 

Western governments and activists have expressed considerable anger over the measure, which imposes fines of up to 500,000 rubles (roughly $15,850) for any “public acts” that promote homosexuality or pedophilia. 

 

“The law does not impose violations on the rights of sexual minorities in our nation,” said a defiant Putin. “These people enjoy full liberties and rights like everyone else in Russia.”

 

Putin went onto say that gay couples could not produce children and that “Russia and Europe have demographic problems.”

 

“We need to reach a majority with this community; we need to work collectively and not insult each other.”

 

Dozens of police units were deployed in the highly secured area, including anti-riot forces. Dutch police reported that they had briefly detained one individual, a gay activist who wrote expletives against the Russian President on the window of his Amsterdam studio. 

 

Putin’s visit centered on trade negotiations with the Netherlands; many business leaders traveled with Putin discuss trade deals. 

 

Russia and The Netherlands have a detailed trade relationship as many Russian companies are registered in The Netherlands because of its favorable tax regime. 

 

Source: CNN

 

The Federal Reserve typically releases minutes from its 2pm meetings; however, it was forced to put the minutes out five hours early on Wednesday after learning that some people inadvertently received the minutes on Tuesday. 

 

The Federal Reserve accidently emailed the minutes from its March meeting to approximately 100 people a day early. While no major announcements were expected to come from the minutes, they are nevertheless viewed as a primary document that can move markets and influence politics. Wall Street analysts and players often delve deep into the minutes for clues about when the central bank may cut back on its bond-buying policy or hike-up interest rates.  

 

For this reason, the minutes are typically protected by the central bank and their release is supposed to be executed in a precise manner. A spokesman for the Fed told various news outlets that the mistake was entirely accidental and it can be chalked up to a human error. The 100 or so individuals on the list included mostly Congressional employees and employees of trade organizations. These individuals received the minutes shortly after 2 p.m. on Tuesday. 

 

After noticing the error this morning, the United States Federal Reserve decided to release the minutes to the public at 9 a.m. on Wednesday. It is currently not clear whether any trading took place based on the premature release, but the Reserve Board’s Inspector General will conduct an investigation regarding the error. 

The minutes contained very little information regarding expected Fed policy. The primary takeaway from the release is that most Fed members think the central bank should keep buying $85 billion in assets a month, at least until the midway point of this year. 

 

The Fed’s current policy includes purchasing $45 billion in treasuries and $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities each month; the primary intent is to lower long-term interesting rates. That said, the program, which is regarded as quantitative easing, is viewing by some as the primary reason why the S&P 500 and the Dow are at record highs. 

 

The central bank continues to keep short-term interest rates close to zero to further boost the economy. The Fed announced it plans to keep the interest rate near zero until the unemployment rate dips below 6.5 percent or inflation exceeds 2.5 percent a year. The bulk of Fed officials do not expect this to happen until at least 2015. 

 

Source: AP

 

 

President Obama’s $3.77 trillion budget proposal for 2014 calls for long-term changes to Social Security and Medicare in hopes of reducing the deficit by $1.8 trillion over the next decade.

 

The budget’s blueprint, which has already drawn criticism from both the right and left, offers changes to Social Security and Medicare. The budget also includes tax increases that would hit high-income corporations and homes. 

 

The Obama budget also calls for greater spending on infrastructure, nondefense research and early childhood education programs. These investments would be funded by other measures to avoid further adding to the deficit. 

 

“Debate in Washington has raged between reducing our deficits and making investments needed to grow our economy. My budget answers this argument; we can grow our economy, and reduce our deficits,” said the President. 

 

President Obama’s budget was released with a delay, coming after the House and Senate each passed separate and different 2014 budget frameworks. 

 

While the proposal is not expected to fly on Capitol Hill, Obama’s budget sets a powerful marker for continuing debt talks with lawmakers. 

 

President Obama’s budget calls for a $50 billion investment to repair bridges, highways, airports and transit systems. The budget would also create a National Infrastructure Bank to merge public and private capital for noteworthy projects.

 

Obama has already faced heavy criticism from the left for supporting a switch to a chained CPI measure, which is a new way to track inflation to ultimately reduce federal spending by slowing the growth in federal benefits which are adjusted each year for cost of living purposes. Obama’s budget; however, calls for ways to compensate low-income veterans and recipients of Supplemental Security Income. 

 

By 2020, the use of the chained CPI measure would yield an average tax increase of $311 among the 80 percent of homes that would see a tax increase. 

 

Among the President’s new tax measures, Obama plans to place a cap on the tax-advantaged portion of a person’s savings across tax-preferred retirement accounts, such as IRAs. 

 

The President’s debt reduction proposal comes from an offer he made to House Speaker John Boehner during last year’s fiscal cliff talks. The proposal, if accepted, would replace the automatic budget cuts, which took effect last month.  

 

 

Source: whitehouse.gov

 

A recent wave of tremendous cyber-attacks has proven it is possible to bend, but not shatter the Internet. 

 

It is easy for a virus to take down a website; attack methods known as “distributed denials of service” enable cybercriminals to direct considerable amounts of traffic to a website to overwhelm its servers and render the site unreachable. Government websites, banks and financial exchanges have been commonly targeted venues for distributed denial of service attacks. 

 

However last month, European spam-prevention service Spamhaus was rocked by the largest known cyber-attack in history causing Internet speeds to slow throughout large chunks of Europe. The attackers utilized nearly 100,000 servers to transmit 300 gigabits of traffic per second during the breach. The attack was more than three times larger than the Iranian-sponsored cyber-attacks of September 2012, which impeded access to some American banks’ websites for days. 

 

Yet many experts contend that the entire Internet cannot just be flipped on or off like a simple light switch. “The infrastructure of the Internet is highly robust and designed to guarantee reliable traffic at a high quality of service,” said Dr. Schneck, chief technology officer at Intel’s Internet security division. 

 

Despite the relative ease of taking down individual websites, it would be particularly difficult to sustain a widespread level of attack for a lengthy period of time, let alone a continuous flow of traffic that would exceed the limits of Internet service providers. 

The Internet is also too widely distributed to fall victim to a widespread attack. There have numerous occasions when regional access to the Internet was disrupted, either by attacks on vital services, accidental cable cutting, or a government-run utility limiting or shutting off access. Yet the Internet continued to work for billions of people outside of those regions. 

 

In the United States, a number of redundancies are built into the Internet; if one or two avenues are disrupted from your local network to the Internet, you likely won’t even notice a hitch. 

 

Another reason why the Internet is impossible to take down: cyber attackers depend on the Internet to operate. “The Internet is what the attackers need to deliver their attack,” said Gavin Reed, the director of engineering and products for Cisco. “I suppose it is possible for an attack to be large enough to destroy large chunks of the Internet, but we have not seen that happen.” 

 

Only government bodies have the ability to grind the entire Internet to a halt for a sustained period of time. So even as cyber-attacks increase in frequency and size, cyber criminals will never be able to take down the entire Internet. 

 

Source: whitehouse.gov

 

 

As the battle for the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act heats up in the state of New York, two prominent members of the Trans Rights Coalition have launched powerful media campaigns to educate New York residents about discrimination on the basis of expression and gender identity. 

 

The New York State Pride Agenda movement—often known as the Empire State Pride Agenda Campaign—has been broadcasting a radio spot in a number of media markets throughout the state. These advertisements serve as a reminder to listeners that New York employees should be judged on their accomplishments and merits, and not on the basis of their expression or gender identity. The Human Rights Campaign issued a simply statement to back the initiative of the Empire State Pride Agenda campaign, by saying “nobody deserves to be fired from their job or not hired for an employment opportunity because of who they are.”

 

Housing works has issued several postcards that illustrate the struggles that transgender New Yorkers face on a day to day basis. Housing works also explains on its webpage why the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act is such a critical piece of legislation to an initiative whose mission is related to the homelessness and HIV populations. 

 

Both campaigns draw attention to the prominence of New York State passing the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act this legislative session. This piece of legislation would prohibit discrimination against transgender people in employment, education, housing, credit and public accommodations. The state of New York protects lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. 

 

The Human Rights Campaign claims that it is time for the state of New York to close the gap and guarantee that transgender individuals are afforded the same vital anti-discrimination protections that are provided to the rest of the population. Currently sixteen states, Washington D.C., and 166 cities and towns in the United States institute similar laws, including Buffalo, Albany, New York City, Suffolk County, Rochester, and Tompkins County in the state of New York.  

 

 

Source: Human Rights Campaign

 

Support for same-sex marriage is now seemingly a wide held belief among adults born after 1980 as 70 percent claim that they believe lesbian women and gay men should be able to marry.

 

These results were released today from Pew Research; the poll showed millennial support for same sex marriage far outpaces any other generation in the United States. Among those Americans born between 1928 and 1945, only 31 percent support gay marriage. Meanwhile, nearly 40 percent of Baby Boomers and roughly half of Generation X-ers say they believe gay men and lesbian women should be allowed to legally marry. 

 

The prodigious support of the millennial generation has driven a significant shift in the country’s overall attitude toward same sex marriage. Presently, roughly 50 percent of Americans are in favor of legalizing gay marriage while 44 percent are opposed to the formation. This is a dramatic reversal from just 10 years ago, when over 58 percent of Americans opposed gay marriage and just a third of Americans were in favor of gay marriage. 

 

Last Tuesday, Rhode Island became the 10th state in the U.S. to legalize gay marriage. The state Senate of Delaware is set to vote tomorrow on a measure that only narrowly passed in the state House that would also allow gay men and lesbian women to secure a legal marriage. 

 

Earlier this year, the United States Supreme Court heard a pair of cases that challenged the constitutionality of a federal law that prohibits the government from conferring benefits on gay spouses and a California state law that prohibits the formation of gay marriages. The results of these cases are expected to be rendered sometime in June. Gay rights activists and supporters are hoping that the Court will rule in a matter that will legalize gay marriage in more or all of the 50 states in the U.S. 

 

 

Source: Human Rights Campaign

 

Today, President Barack Obama welcomed President Park Guen-hye of South Korea to the White House to celebrate 60 years of bilateral partnership between the United States and South Korea. 

 

Established after the Korean War, the United States-Republic of Korean Alliance is a linchpin of security and peace on the Korean Peninsula and within the Asia Pacific Region. 

 

Today, the two leaders affirmed that they would continue building on the last sixty years of stability by adapting and strengthening the alliance to adhere to the security challenges of the 21st century. 

 

“Guided by our shared vision, we are investing in the shared technologies and capabilities and missile defense systems that allow our forces to operate and succeed with one another,” said President Obama. The President added, “we are determined to be fully prepared to meet fully any challenge or threat to our nation’s security.”

President Park and President Obama also agreed to continue implementing the historic trade agreement between South Korea and the United States, which is already yielding benefits for both of our nations, President Obama said. 

 

“The United States is selling more exports to South Korea, more services, more manufactured goods, and more agricultural products,” the President said. “And even though we have a long way to go, our automobile exports are up nearly 50 percent, and the Big Three (Ford, Chrysler, and GM) are selling more and more cars in South Korea.

The agreement between the two nations is expected to boost American exports by roughly $10 billion and support tens of thousands of American jobs, in addition to creating employment opportunities in Korea, President Obama said. 

 

President Obama thanked President Park, who is the Republic of South Korea’s first female President, for choosing the United States of America as her first foreign trip. The visit between the two presidents reflects South Korea’s progress over the past 60 years,” President Obama said, “from the lowly depths of war, to one of the globe’s strongest economies; from a recipient of international aid to a donor that now helps other countries develop.”  

 

 

Source: whitehouse.gov

 

Greenwich Village, the birthplace of the American gay rights movement, remained in a state of shock on Sunday over the shooting of a homosexual man by gunman who police claimed uttered anti-gay slurs prior to targeting the victim. 

 

Mark Carson, age 32, was shot and killed in Greenwich Village near midnight on Friday in what Police describe as a hate crime. Others are postulating that the shooting could be a backlash against the advance of gay marriage laws across the nation.

 

The New York City neighborhood has long been a haven for artists, and its Stonewall Inn has served as a landmark for gay rights since a 1969 conflict when patrons of the gay bar stood firm against a police raid. 

 

Sympathizers built a shrine to the victim on Sunday, leaving flowers, cards, and lighting candles at the spot where he was slain, on Sixth Avenue at Eighth Street.

“This area is supposed to serve as the world’s capital for gay rights,” said Josh Steinman, age 42, who paused for a moment in front of the memorial. 

 

The killing marked the 22nd anti-gay hate crime in the city this year, compared to only 13 incidents at this time last year, said New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. 

 

“It is abundantly clear that the victim was murdered solely for the fact that he was thought to be a homosexual,” Kelly said. “There is no question about the motive; there were derogatory remarks, and the victim did nothing to instigate or antagonize the shooter. It was only because the shooter thought his victim was a homosexual.”

A suspect, identified as Elliot Morales, age 33, was arrested and charged with second degree murder as and a hate crime shortly after the shooting. Mr. Morales is currently being held without bail and two of his accomplices are cooperating with authorities. 

“I cannot fathom that something like this happened in the village,” said Carmine Tzavis, a bartender at the Stonewall Inn.

 

Residents of the Village said they were scared and feared the violence may have been motivated by the advancement in gay marriage laws throughout the country.

Last week, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton signed a bill to make his state the 12th in the nation to allow gay couples to marry. 

 

 

Source: Human Rights Campaign