Happy Hump Day Headlines

… And The Bright Idea Of The Week Award Goes To
A Tampa Bay church is taking on one of the largest corporations in the world.

“We would like to send them a message,” said Terry Kemple, President of the Community Issues Council that is organizing a boycott of Pepsi products because he says it “advocates the acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle.”

In addition to hundreds of church-goers who have joined the boycott, Kemple just got his mega-church, the Bell Shoals Baptist Church, to remove its 10 Pepsi machines. They have been replaced with Coke machines.

“They (have) begun to utilize the money we’ve helped them build up to trample on what we consider family values,” said Kemple of Pepsi. “We’re concerned about that diminishment of the ability of Christians to speak what the Bible says,” Kemple said.

But Nadine Smith, the Executive Director of Equality Florida, called the boycott offensive to her and embarrassing to those who participate.

“The irony is that – in moving from Pepsi products to Coke products – they actually switched from one company that supports full-equality to another companty that supports full-equality,” Smith said.

Representatives from Pepsi or the Bell Shoals Baptist Church were unable to be reached for comment.

City Officials Abolish Antiquated Law
Officials in Springfield, Missouri, are expected to dispel of a 1976 ordinance aimed at keeping gays and lesbians from soliciting sex with someone of the same gender.

The ordinance caused an uproar in June during the annual PrideFest celebration. Councilman Doug Burlison called for the law’s removal, but has had to explain that this does not criminalize gay marriage nor does it grant any new rights to homosexuals. City Attorney Dan Wichmer has called the law unconstitutional.

In July, the Gay and Lesbian Center of the Ozarks praised the potential removal of the ordinance from Springfield’s books.

“It’s definitely discriminatory against the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community,” center spokesman Michael Siepel said in a statement in July. “One of the GLO Center’s purposes is to continue to work towards equal rights for all.”

The Battle Over Referendum 71 Rages On
A judge on Tuesday refused to block a public vote on expanded domestic partnership benefits for gay couples in Washington state.

Thurston County Superior Court Judge Thomas McPhee rejected the arguments of Washington Families Standing Together, a gay-rights group that claimed Secretary of State Sam Reed improperly accepted thousands of petition signatures that supported putting Referendum 71 on the ballot.

The referendum would put the Legislature’s latest expansion of domestic partnership rights for gay couples on the November ballot.

Washington Families Standing Together chairwoman Anne Levinson said her group hasn’t decided whether to appeal.

Referendum 71, sponsored by a conservative political group called Protect Marriage Washington, would ask voters to approve or reject the “everything but marriage” domestic partnership law that state lawmakers passed earlier this year.

The new law would add more legal rights to the state’s established domestic partnerships for gay couples, putting registered partners on par with married couples under state law. Some unmarried heterosexual couples also could register as domestic partners.

A “yes” vote on R-71 would put the newest law into place, and a “no” vote would reject it. The underlying laws laying out domestic partnerships — enacted in 2007 and broadened once already in 2008 — would not be affected.