Gay Miami Lakes Educational senior wins Silver Knight honorable mention for English & Literature

Congratulations to Sandy Rodriguez, a gay senior at Miami Lakes Educational Center who won an honorable mention for English and Literature Wednesday night at the 2013 annual Silver Knight Award ceremony:

BY CHABELI HERRERA
CHERRERA@MIAMIHERALD.COM

Forty-five students were selected among the best of the best in Miami-Dade and Broward receiving honorable mentions at Wednesday’s 2013 Silver Knight Award ceremony.

A winner and three honorable mentions were selected for each of the awards’ 15 categories. Each honorable mention winner received $500 and an engraved plaque for the lasting impact they made on their communities.

“It’s so hard to pick a winner because every one of these kids do amazing work,” said Jeff Kleinman, a judge on the Journalism panel this year, “straight A’s, incredible service and I have no idea where they find the time for all of this.”

The Silver Knight Award Program was founded in 1959 by former Miami Herald publisher John S. Knight and has honored more than 1,200 outstanding students with the Silver Knight distinction over the past 53 years.

“Everyone is so proud of it,” Kleinman said. “People who won it years ago still carry it as an incredible badge of honor.”

Click here to read more about the 2013 Silver Knight Awards.

Here are complete lists of this year's winners and honorable mentions:

2013 Miami-Dade Silver Knight Award winners

2013 Broward Silver Knight Award winners

2013 Miami-Dade Silver Knight Award honorable mentions

2013 Broward Silver Knight Award honorable mentions

Coconut Grove Eagle Scout Eston Melton III writes about Boy Scouts’ ‘life lesson’ on hypocrisy

The Boy Scouts are scheduled Thursday to vote whether to allow in openly gay scouts. Here is an op-ed written by Eston “Dusty” Melton, an Eagle Scout since 1969, who lives in Coconut Grove:

BY ESTON MELTON III, DUSTYMELTON@EARTHLINK.NET

Phone (305) 364-0020 and you'll hear this recording: "You have reached the South Florida Council, Boy Scouts of America, and Learning for Life."

We all know about the homophobic Boy Scouts of America, the BSA. No self-acknowledged gay or lesbian, youth or adult, may participate as a traditional BSA member or volunteer. Official BSA policy forbids it.

But what's that "Learning for Life" about?

Learning for Life Inc. is Scouting's very own but little-known cash cow.

An educational-supplies company created in 1991 by the discriminatory BSA – and still hosted today in BSA offices all across America – Learning for Life has been paid many tens of millions of taxpayer dollars during the past two decades. It reported to the IRS more than $91 million in total revenues, overwhelmingly from public schools' dollars, since 2000.

The BSA's hypocritical secret: Learning for Life openly embraces gay and lesbian members.

Says so right there in Learning for Life's official Position Statement. "Color, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic background, disability, economic status or citizenship is not criteria for participation," it reads.

The BSA is organized into geographic "councils." South Florida Council is one of 280 nationwide, managing Scouting programs in Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. Its office building on NW 82nd Avenue in Miami Lakes is home to traditional Scouting, as well as BSA's offshoot Learning for Life apparatus.

Same has been true at national BSA headquarters on West Walnut Lane in Irving, Texas. Learning for Life's national office was inside the very same building until a couple of years ago, when Learning for Life moved into the National Scouting Museum right around the corner.

Until last month, the Florida Division of Corporations' records showed the same Wayne M. Perry serving as national president of Learning for Life Inc. and national president of the Boy Scouts of America. Today the president of Learning for Life Inc. is shown as Randall Stephenson, a vice president of the BSA.

How can there be such a symbiotic relationship between the BSA – which adamantly discriminates against American kids and adults simply because of their sexual orientation – and its own, self-created Learning for Life affiliate, which has no quarrel whatsoever with gays and lesbians (not to mention with bisexual and transgender persons, either)?

Hint: Follow the money. The more students who participate in Learning for Life – each and every homosexual welcome! – the greater the organization's enormous income. Therein exists a stark and utterly contemptible BSA hypocrisy.

Learning for Life produces and sells copyrighted lesson plans, for grades pre-kindergarten through 12th, to school districts throughout the country. Each lesson has a specific theme, and is taught by regular teachers alongside their traditional classroom instruction materials.

No one is re-inventing the wheel, here. This is simple commerce. The BSA, through companion Learning for Life, peddles curriculum guidebooks and study sheets that allow students "to practice and reinforce core curriculum topics and skills while learning critical character development and life skills," according to its official website.

Who could quarrel with that, especially when gay youth and adult participants are so gladly and completely accepted?

Learning for Life first came to Florida in September 2000, with the state Department of Education being the conduit of public money paid to any of the 67 school districts that apply for the grant money.

At one of the three separate school districts within BSA's South Florida Council – the Miami-Dade County Public Schools system – the program launched during the 2003-2004 school year at a modest public cost of $158,000 in 21 schools. It peaked at M-DCPS in 2007-2008, when the district paid Learning for Life $475,000 in taxpayer funds to supply program materials in 51 elementary, middle and high schools.

In all, M-DCPS has paid Learning for Life exactly $3,142,660 in public money through the current school year. And that's at just one of the three countywide school districts the BSA includes in its South Florida Council area.

Why is an examination of this cruel hypocrisy – the BSA's harsh repudiation of gays in its traditional program, its mercenary embrace of gays to maximize income from its own Learning for Life company – relevant at this time?

Boy Scout volunteers and professional staffers from throughout the country are now meeting near Dallas for their 2013 national annual meeting. At the pinnacle of their agenda is whether to amend the BSA's historic and thoroughly repugnant policy of discrimination against a certain set of Americans who wish to join and participate in the BSA's otherwise laudable programs.

That policy is abhorrent and un-American. Every other major youth-serving organization in the country long ago found a way for sexual orientation not to be a membership or volunteer issue at all. We are an inclusive nation. The Boy Scouts of America is out of step with our nation. That is entirely wrong, and it must end at once.

If the BSA fails to repudiate, totally, its discriminatory policy on Thursday, then public school districts should directly repudiate the BSA itself. Hurt the BSA where it counts, in its wallet. End "kids for cash." Cancel Learning for Life, everywhere.

There's certain to be a Learning for Life display at the BSA national meeting inside the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center this week. Just don't expect it to include a copy of its gays-embracing Position Statement. Even though there ought to be a large one, front and center. For the BSA to see.

Eston “Dusty” Melton, an Eagle Scout since 1969, lives in Coconut Grove. In 1993 he received South Florida Council’s Silver Beaver Award, the highest honor for local volunteer service. In 1998 he received the Silver Antelope Award, the highest honor for regional service, at the BSA’s national annual meeting in San Antonio. In 2000 he was among the highest-serving BSA volunteers to resign all of his governance positions, in protest of the organization’s U.S. Supreme Court victory affirming its legal right to discriminate against homosexuals.

LGBT activists in Doral protest U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio after gay couples left out of immigration plan

BY ALFONSO CHARDY and STEVE ROTHAUS, srothaus@MiamiHerald.com

Gay activists gathered Wednesday in front of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s Doral office to protest the Senate Judiciary Committee’s failure to include undocumented gay foreign nationals in a bipartisan immigration reform bill the panel approved late Tuesday.

While the number of protesters at the corner of Northwest 87th Avenue and 36th Street was relatively small, about 30, their action presaged potential trouble for the controversial bill that would legalize more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

The 13-5 vote in the committee almost didn’t happen after some Republican senators indicated they might withdraw support for the bill if Democrats pressed their bid to attach the gay amendment to the proposal.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., one of the Republicans who wrote the bill, said the coalition that assembled the bill would fall apart if same-sex couples were included.

“It would certainly mean that this bill would not move forward,” Flake told the panel Tuesday.

While Democrats ultimately caved in and withdrew the amendment, the action angered gay activists across the nation. They vowed to mount a national lobbying campaign to pressure politicians to add a gay immigration clause when the bill comes up for debate on the Senate floor after the Memorial Day recess.

Whether the tug-of-war might kill the immigration reform bill remains to be seen. But what happened Tuesday night in the Senate Judiciary Committee may indicate that gay immigration has emerged as a potentially pivotal issue for the fate of the bill and a harbinger of future epic battles in Congress over whether lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender immigrants deserve recognition as a separate class.

Undocumented LGBT immigrants, as individuals, would receive legal status like any other foreign national without papers if the bill becomes law.

But what gay activists want is an amendment that would compel federal immigration authorities to allow U.S. citizens and legal residents who are gay to file petitions for their undocumented partners so they can get green cards.

As currently written, the bill does not change immigration law that gives petition power only to married heterosexual couples.

“I myself am gay and I’m in a relationship with someone who is about to become a U.S. citizen and he can’t petition for me,” said Felipe Sousa-Rodriguez, a 27-year-old immigrant from Brazil who arrived in the U.S. when he was 14.

Sousa-Rodriguez was one of the organizers of Wednesday’s protest in front of Rubio’s office. Rubio is one of the Republican senators in the so-called Gang of Eight who drafted the immigration reform bill approved late Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Rubio spokesman Alex Burgos said Wednesday that adding a gay-partners component to the bill would likely kill it.

"Senator Rubio and others have noted the reality here," Burgos said.  "Approving this immigration reform legislation into law will be difficult enough as it is and, if this measure is adopted, it will virtually guarantee that the bill won't pass and that the coalition that helped put it together will fall apart."

The Rubio protest was organized by several immigration and gay activist groups including GetEQUAL, a national organization that advocates for the full equality of LGBT people.

The bill would grant provisional legal status to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country prior to Dec. 31, 2011, and have no serious criminal records. Then they have to wait 10 years to apply for green cards after paying fees, penalties and unpaid taxes.

Though the bill survived several attempts in the committee to reshape it, it almost got derailed Tuesday night when the gay issue arose.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told the committee late Tuesday that he had decided to withdrew the gay immigration amendment to prevent the collapse of the bill.

While Democrats reluctantly withdrew the amendment, they also believe that the issue will become moot if the Supreme Court in June throws out a portion of the federal Defense of Marriage Act that prohibits the U.S. government from granting federal benefits to married same-sex couples.

Video | Gay former Eagle Scout James Dale: Change your profile pic to 'show your support for equality'

From GLAAD:

[Thursday], 1400 members of the Boy Scouts' National Council will converge in Dallas to vote on a resolution critical to the Boy Scouts' longstanding ban on gay members. James Dale —an openly gay former Eagle Scout whose membership was revoked by the BSA— has a special request:

Show your support for equality in the Boy Scouts: Change your profile pic now.

Now more than ever we all must speak up about why gay youth and parents should be able to participate in the Boy Scouts. Take action with GLAAD!

Immigration bill without protections for gay and lesbian couples heads to full Senate

BY ERICA WERNER AND DAVID ESPO, ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- A far-reaching bill to remake the nation's immigration system is headed to the full Senate, where tough battles are brewing on gay marriage, border security and other contentious issues, with the outcome impossible to predict.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the measure 13-5 Tuesday night, setting up an epic showdown on the Senate floor after Congress' Memorial Day recess. The legislation is one of President Barack Obama's top domestic priorities - yet it also gives the Republican Party a chance to recast itself as more appealing to minorities.

Sen. Patrick Leahy's 11th-hour decision to hold back on an amendment to extend immigration rights to same-sex married couples that cleared the way for the bill's approval.

Until Leahy, D-Vt., began speaking on the issue to a hushed hearing room Tuesday evening, it wasn't clear how the matter, which had hovered over the three weeks of committee sessions to review the legislation, would play out.

Leahy had been under pressure from gay groups to offer the amendment, which would allow gay married Americans to sponsor their foreign-born spouses for green cards like straight married Americans can. But Republican supporters of the bill warned that including such a measure would cost their support. As the committee neared the end of its work, officials said Leahy had been informed that both the White House and Senate Democrats hoped he would not risk the destruction of months of painstaking work by putting the issue to a vote.

"I don't want to be the senator who asks people to choose between the love of their life and the love of their country," Leahy said, adding that he wanted to hear from others on the committee.

Click here to read the complete article.

Texas judge: Lesbian couple can't cohabitate

ASSOCIATED PRESS

MCKINNEY, Texas -- A judge has ruled that a North Texas lesbian couple can't live together because of a morality clause in one of the women's divorce papers.

The clause is common in divorce cases in Texas and other states. It prevents a divorced parent from having a romantic partner spend the night while children are in the home. If the couple marries, they can get out from under the legal provision - but that is not an option for gay couples in Texas, where such marriages aren't recognized.

The Dallas Morning News ( http://dallasne.ws/16MlSUQ) reported that in a divorce hearing last month for Carolyn and Joshua Compton, Collin County District Judge John Roach Jr. enforced the terms detailed in their 2011 divorce papers. He ordered Carolyn Compton's partner, Page Price, to move out of the home they shared with the Comptons' two daughters, ages 10 and 13. The judge gave Price 30 days to find another place to live.

Paul Key said his client, Joshua Compton, wanted the clause enforced for his kids' benefit.

"The fact that they can't get married in Texas is a legislative issue," Key said. "It's not really our issue."

Click here to read more.

Moroccans tried for homosexuality get four months

BY SMAIL BELLAOUALLI, ASSOCIATED PRESS

RABAT, Morocco -- A Moroccan court has convicted two men of homosexuality and public indecency, and sentenced each to four months in prison, in the latest case against gays in this North African nation.

Prosecutors at the Temara court near Rabat, the capital, said at Monday's trial that the men, aged 28 and 19, were caught having sex in a car and arrested. The men denied the charges.

Moroccan law outlaws homosexuality and gives a penalty of six months to three years in prison and a fine of up to 1,000 dirhams ($115). According to the latest figures available from the Ministry of Justice, in 2011 there were 81 trials involving accusations of homosexuality.

The daily al-Akhbar reported on May 9 that three other Moroccans from the northern town of Souq al-Arbaa recently received three-year sentences for homosexuality.

While harsh penalties exist on the books toward drinking alcohol publicly, selling alcohol to Muslims, sex outside of wedlock and other so-called moral crimes, they are rarely enforced in Morocco and police usually ignore people violating such laws.

However, in the case of homosexuality, it is still taboo in this conservative society, and the lawyers for Monday's defendants were quick to distance themselves from "this phenomenon."

"If we thought our clients were homosexuals, we would refuse to defend them," one of the lawyers said to the judge in court. He refused to identify himself to The Associated Press afterward.

Click here to read more.

AP Sources: Obama OK punting gay immigration idea

BY JULIE PACE, AP WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT

WASHINGTON -- Two people familiar with the Senate immigration deliberations say the White House has suggested to Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy that it would be best to put off a controversy over gay marriage until a bill goes before the full Senate.

President Barack Obama backs the proposal to give equal treatment to gays and lesbians, but is unlikely to veto a broad immigration bill that does not include the provision.

Leahy, the Democratic chair of the Judiciary Committee, has not yet said whether he will seek a vote on the provision in committee. He could raise the issue again if the bill goes before the full Senate.

The people familiar with the deliberations were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and insisted on anonymity. The White House had no comment.

Click here for updates.

Killing of gay man in New York City's Greenwich Village draws thousands of protesters (with video)

BY JENNIFER PELTZ AND TOM HAYS, ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK -- The killing of a gay man who police say was taunted with homophobic slurs drew thousands of people to the scene of the crime to restore a sense of safety to one of the nation's most gay-friendly neighborhoods.

Fabio Cotza, a gay member of an interfaith Bronx church, said he looked around cautiously when he stepped out of the subway in Greenwich Village Monday evening to join the rally.

He said the killing "really makes me scared ... especially since it happened in this area."

His reaction was not unusual after a spate of bias attacks stirred up anxiety, disbelief and outrage even before 32-year-old Mark Carson was felled by a single gunshot to the head early Saturday near from the site of 1969 riots that helped give rise to the gay rights movement.

The crowd Monday carried flags and signs and chanted: "We're here! We're queer!" and "Homophobia's got to go!"

Click here to read more.

Sally Ride to get posthumous Medal of Freedom

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama will bestow the Medal of Freedom posthumously on Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly in space.

Obama says Ride was a role model to young women and showed that achievement has no limits. He says Ride advocated for innovation in science, engineering and math.

Ride rode on the space shuttle Challenger on June 18, 1983. She died in July 2012 at 61 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Ride broke another barrier by disclosing that she was gay at the end of an obituary she co-wrote with her same-sex partner before her death. The White House says Ride's partner was notified last week of the award along with her mother and sister.

The award will be presented later this year.

Lesbian, 18, faces 15 years in prison for having sex with 14-year-old high school basketball teammate

BY STEVE ROTHAUS, srothaus@MiamiHerald.com

More than 105,000 supporters since Friday have signed an Internet petition demanding felony sex charges be dropped against an 18-year-old lesbian who dated a 14-year-old high-school basketball teammate.

Kaitlyn Hunt of Indian River County is charged with two felony counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12 to 16 years old. If convicted, she would be sentenced from probation to 15 years in prison and registered as a sex offender.

Hunt turned 18 on Aug. 14, 2012. She and a 14-year-old classmate, known as C.S., began dating in November. They first had consensual sex just before Christmas in a bathroom at Sebastian River High School. The relationship continued through February, according to an arrest affidavit.

“It’s outrageous that a law intended to stop adults from preying on children is being used to destroy a high school senior’s life,” said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, the state’s largest gay-rights group. “These are schoolmates, teammates. I suppose every school in Florida should start letting high school seniors know they can face 15 years in prison if they turn 18 before the school year is up.”

Indian River sheriff’s deputies showed up at Hunt’s home on Feb. 16, according to her mother.

“My husband answered the door and they asked for my daughter. She wasn’t home at the time,” Kelley Hunt Smith told The Miami Herald on Monday. “They refused to tell my husband anything. They said it was no big deal, it was just something that happened in school.”

Smith said that when her daughter arrived home, deputies handcuffed and arrested her.

“I flipped out, my husband flipped out, my other daughter was crying hysterically,” she said. “I can’t wrap my head around how they could prosecute an 18-year-old for a felony that carries 15 years in prison. She’s scared to death and trusting her parents. We’ve done everything we can to protect her. We’re doing our best.”

At the sheriff’s office, deputies read Hunt her Miranda rights and she told them about her relationship with C.S. “Your affiant asked Kaitlyn if she knew it was wrong to have sex with C.S. due to C.S. being 14 years old. Kaitlyn stated that she did not think about it because C.S. acted older,” detective Jeremy Shepherd wrote in his report.

Hunt's friends and family set up a Facebook page, called "Free Kate."

“When the girls' basketball coach found out that two of her players were dating, she kicked Kaitlyn off the team and informed her girlfriend's parents that their daughter was in a same-sex relationship," the page reads. "The parents then conspired with police to entrap Kaitlyn and press charges."

According to the group, which now has more than 25,000 members, the Indian River County School Board expelled Hunt from Sebastian River and transferred her to an alternative school.

On Friday, Hunt’s friends began an online petition at Change.org, “Stop the prosecution of an 18 year old girl in a same-sex relationship.”

Within 24 hours, the nonpartisan campaign website collected 57,414 from all over the world, said Jon Perri, Change.org’s deputy campaign director.

“It’s definitely one of the fastest. Most petitions don’t get this sort of attention so quickly,” Perri said. “I don’t like to use the word viral, but this is viral. It’s being shared on Facebook, the media and Twitter. That’s what’s driving traffic.”

In Florida, the legal age of sexual consent is 18. In 2007, the state adopted a “Romeo and Juliet” law that would keep 18 year olds from being registered as sex offenders if they had consensual sex with classmates age 15 or older.

Hunt doesn’t qualify because her girlfriend was 14 at the time they had sex, Indian River State Attorney Bruce Colton said Monday.

C.S. turned 15 in April, according to Hunt’s mother.

“She looks a lot older and she’s bigger than my daughter,” Smith said. “She’s in school and goes to classes with upperclassmen.”

A month ago Colton’s office offered Hunt a plea deal, which she must accept by Friday.

Hunt would plead guilty to third-degree child abuse, face up to five years in prison and not have to register as a sex offender, Colton said.

“The plea offer is that we, the state, would recommend two years of community control, plus one year of probation,” he said, adding that his office “would stand silent” whether Hunt is adjudicated guilty.

Many Change.org signers say Hunt is being treated unfairly because she is a lesbian.

“Being gay and in a same-sex relationship, I find this ridiculous and appalling,” wrote Nathan Johnstone of Melbourne, Fla. “I highly doubt this would be happening in if it were a ’traditional’ relationship.”

Untrue, Colton said.

“People are saying it’s being singled out because it’s a gay relationship and that has nothing to do with it,” Colton said. “It has no bearing on whether it is two girls or two boys, or an older boy and a younger girl or an older girl and a younger boy. Whatever the combination, it doesn’t matter.”

Czech President Milos Zeman in gay-rights dispute

ASSOCIATED PRESS

PRAGUE -- Czech President Milos Zeman is being criticized for refusing to grant a university professorship - the nation's top academic title - to a critic of his, allegedly because the man is also a gay rights activist.

Zeman has refused to fully explain his stance, saying he doesn't want to "humiliate" the candidate, Martin C. Putna, "by naming the reasons publicly."

But over the weekend Zeman said on Czech public TV that he "does not recognize people aspiring to teach at universities" who attend gay festivals.

On Monday, Zeman said Putna's sexual orientation itself is not an issue. Putna had backed Zeman's opponent in the last presidential election.

Czech presidents formally appoint the country's university professors.

Politicians and universities have said Zeman's remark was an unacceptable intrusion on academic rights.