Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts tagged as “Kelvin Atkinson”

Kelvin Atkinson, Black State Senator, Receives Mostly Positive Responses After ‘Coming Out’

By goodblacknews on April 25, 2013
Nevada State Senator Kelvin Atkinson (Courtesy: Atkinson)

“I never considered myself someone who was in the closet,” Sen. Atkinson told theGrio.  ”My family and friends knew.”
Atkinson said while his close friends in the Nevada House and Senate knew his sexual orientation, his statement Monday “was the first time publicly acknowledging it for everyone else.”
Related Post: Kelvin Atkinson, Nevada Lawmaker, Comes Out In Gay Marriage Debate
“I had no intentions of speaking that night.  [I] heard some of my colleagues speak, and I just felt like now is a really good time to do it.  My heart was pounding through my suit. I just felt like it was time.”

Kelvin Atkinson, Nevada Lawmaker, Comes Out In Gay Marriage Debate

By goodblacknews on April 23, 2013
highway-fundingNevada state Sen. Kelvin Atkinson (D-North Las Vegas) on Monday declared that he is gay during a legislative debate over a measure to repeal the state’s gay marriage ban.

“I’m black. I’m gay,” he said, in what the Las Vegas Sun described as a “trembling” voice. “I know this is the first time many of you have heard me say that I am a black, gay male.”
He dismissed the idea that gay marriage threatened other marriages. “If this hurts your marriage, then your marriage was in trouble in the first place.”
The measure passed the Senate by a 12-9 vote, with 11 Democrats and one Republican voting in favor. It would remove the ban on gay marriages in the Nevada Constitution. If passed by the Assembly, which has a 27-to-15 Democratic advantage, and both houses again in 2015, the repeal would then be put to voters in 2016.
Nevada voters passed a gay marriage ban in 2000 and 2002. The legislature passed a domestic partnership law over former Gov. Jim Gibbons’ (R) veto in 2009. A February poll by the Retail Association of Nevada showed that 54 percent of Nevadans favor repealing the marriage ban while 43 percent oppose.
 article by Luke Johnson via huffingtonpost.com