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Published: June 11, 2008

Legislation of “special significance”

Pro-homosexual bills and an anti-obscenity bill move into the state Senate

Several bills of interest to advocates of the family will be heard by state Senate committees this month.

A bill that, critics say, would pressure foundations with assets over $250 million to contribute to pro-homosexual causes passed the Assembly on Jan. 29 on a 45-29 vote. AB 624, set for a June 23 hearing before the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee, would require foundations to disclose how many grants and the “percentage of grant dollars” they have awarded to “organizations serving ethnic minority communities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities, disabled communities, and other underrepresented communities.”

A bill that would mark every May 22 as Harvey Milk Day passed the state Assembly, 45-28, on May 19 and is scheduled to go before the Senate Governmental Organization Committee on June 10. Milk was the first openly homosexual man to be elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Known as the “Mayor of Castro Street” for his work in organizing homosexuals through the Castro Valley Association, Milk in 1975 outed Oliver “Bill” Sipple, against his will. Sipple, an ex-Marine, had stopped an assassination attempt against President Gerald Ford outside San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel. Elected a supervisor in 1977, Milk was assassinated, along with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, on Nov. 27, 1978.

The bill would require the governor to proclaim Harvey Milk Day “as having special significance in public schools and educational institutions and encourage those entities to conduct suitable commemorative exercises on that date.”

Another bill passed by the Assembly (48-30) on May 27 – AB 2654 – is scheduled for a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 24. This bill would add sexual orientation to a long list of state anti-discrimination laws.

A June 17 Senate Public Safety Committee hearing is set for AB 2104, which would address the posting of pornographic pictures of minors on the internet. The bill, which unanimously passed the Assembly on May 22, would make it illegal for anyone 21 years or older to prepare, post, or publish “a photograph or image of a minor under 18 years of age,” without the minor’s consent, on a web site the poster knows contains “obscene matter.” Violations would carry up to one-year’s imprisonment in county jail or a fine of up to $5,000.

The intent of this legislation, says the bill, is “to protect minors from being traumatized and exploited through the unauthorized use of their images on pornographic Internet Web sites.”

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