Oct 31, 2008  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR  | COMMENTS     

An official with the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance on Oct. 17 asked the D.C. City Council not to confirm the nomination of Peter J. Nickles as D.C. Attorney General unless Nickles agrees to change his position on three gay-related concerns.

In testimony before the Council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, GLAA Vice President Rick Rosendall said the attorney general’s office under Nickles and previous city attorneys general have promoted policies and legal positions hostile to the gay and transgender community.

“Unfortunately, the Office of the Attorney General has a long history of abuse against the District’s GLBT community,” Rosendall said. “Instead of confronting what appears to be an entrenched culture of homophobia and trans-phobia within OAG, Peter Nickles has further exacerbated the problem during his tenure as acting AG.”

He called on the Council to refuse to confirm Nickles as permanent attorney general unless Nickles agrees to three specific requests: that he stop efforts to weaken the D.C. Human Rights Act’s protections for transgender people incarcerated in the city’s correctional system; that he reverse his office’s opposition to a domestic partners bill pending before the City Council that would provide parenting rights to same-sex partners; and that he make a commitment to consult the gay community on the issue of “legal protections for GLBT people and their families.”

Nickles has said he based his opposition to Bill 17-0727, the Domestic Partnership Judicial Determination of Parentage Act of 2008, on concerns that it would violate federal regulations and laws pertaining to adoption, child custody and child support rules. A local gay rights attorney said the Office of the Attorney General was misinformed on the bill’s impact on federal regulations and that the bill, as currently drafted, was in full compliance with federal rules.