Per yesterday’s primary results, the official candidates for the 33rd District Senate seat are:
Mick Staton (R) Sugarland Run Supervisor and Dick Black’s son-in-law
Mark Herring (D) Former Leesburg Supervisor.
A candidate forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters is scheduled for Monday, January 23rd, probably at the Cascades Senior Center. Look for the announcement within the next day or so.
This is a very short time frame, so please do all you can in the next 14 days to help the candidate of your choice. Your involvement will absolutely make a difference.
Here’s a little something to discuss with Delegate Marshall Thursday night at the Public Hearing with the Loudoun delegation to the General Assembly …
From Equality Virginia:
Delegate Bob Marshall Attacks Virginia Families Again
Having failed to convince his colleagues in the General Assembly to ban gay and lesbian adoption by co-patroning Del. Black’s adoption bill last year, Del. Bob Marshall (R-Manassas) now proposes to ensure that child bearing is limited to women who are married.
He’s introduced a bill, HB 187, that would prohibit doctors and other licensed health professionals from assisting unmarried women with becoming pregnant. This would preclude lesbian couples from becoming a family through artifical insemination, gay couples from becoming a family through surrogacy, unless the surrogate was married, and would even prevent a widow from being inseminated with her dead husband’s sperm or their embryos.
This is another direct attack on all families in Virginia. Please help us send a message to Del. Marshall today.
Send an email to Del. Marshall urging him to withdraw this misguided bill.
Here is the full text:
HB 187 Unmarried women; prohibition on provision of certain intervening medical technology.
Prohibition on the provision of certain intervening medical technology to unmarried women. No individual licensed by a health regulatory board shall assist with or perform any intervening medical technology, whether in vivo or in vitro, for or on an unmarried woman that completely or partially replaces sexual intercourse as the means of conception, including, but not limited to, artificial insemination by donor, cryopreservation of gametes and embryos, invitro fertilization, embryo transfer, gamete intrafallopian tube transfer, and low tubal ovum transfer.
Join the ongoing conversations in the blogosphere:
Is there something in the water in Manassas?
Bob Marshall puts in another hilarious bill UPDATED
Worthy Policy Debates…
Right-wing Round Up!
The General Assembly’s top priorities should have nothing to do with hot-button social issues.
Roanoke Times
January 1, 2006
As the Earth embarks on another 575 million-mile journey around the sun, the General Assembly is about to gather in Richmond to set a course for Virginia.
Legislators, convening Jan. 11, possess the resources to tackle some vexing issues such as a crumbling transportation system, chronically underfunded education and lagging Chesapeake Bay cleanup, but they will succeed only if they avoid straying into divisive, hot-button social issues.
Questions about gay rights will flare up immediately, as lawmakers consider whether to ask voters to clutter the state’s constitution with a needless amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions. That debate is likely unavoidable, but legislators will waste precious time if they take up other measures to deny equal protection to gays, such as outgoing Gov. Mark Warner’s order that government agencies not discriminate against employees based on sexual orientation.
Tell your Loudoun representatives in the General Assembly what you think at the pre-session Public Hearing on January 5th.
This is an outstanding, heartbreaking WP Magazine feature article about the couple who are the subject of the independent film Barbara and Tibby: A Love Story in the Face of Hate.
Note that Michelle Boorstein will be hosting a live online discussion about this article Monday, December 19 at 1 p.m. at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.
Washington Post Magazine
December 18, 2005
By Michelle Boorstein
After years of hiding their love, Barbara Kenny and Tibby Middleton found a place where they felt comfortable being a couple — until Virginia’s lawmakers chased them across the Potomac.
Read the article
State Workers Given Right to Challenge
Washington Post
December 17, 2005
By Michael D. Shear and Chris L. Jenkins
RICHMOND, Dec. 16 — Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) on Friday quietly amended an executive order that for the first time explicitly bans Virginia state agencies from discriminating against gays in hiring and promotions.
The policy went into effect immediately, and a spokeswoman for Gov.-elect Timothy M. Kaine (D) said the incoming governor plans to continue the policy by signing the same executive order when he is inaugurated Jan. 14.
Warner spokeswoman Ellen Qualls said the change for the first time gives gay state employees the right to challenge hiring and firing decisions based on their sexual orientation. She said the governor was moved to act after he learned that 60 percent of state lawmakers have pledged the same protections in their own hiring.
“It was a powerful message to him that even what has been considered a traditionally conservative statehouse is ready for this change,” Qualls said.
Read the entire article in the Washington Post.
Turkey Baster Bob
Backdoor bigotry, single moms and tequila
The Virginian-Pilot
January 14, 2006
By Bronwyn Lance Chester