I just got off the phone with Dave Coffman, the attorney representing several city employees involved in an LGBT group who are trying to block the city from releasing their names. Philip Irvin, a Seattle City Light employee who supports conservative anti-gay organizations, requested their information from the city in May.

However, King County Superior Court issued a restraining order that temporarily blocks the city from releasing personal information about members of the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Friends (LGBTQ&F)" affinity group.

“There seems to be rank hypocrisy among the gay community,” Irvin argued on Faith and Freedom blog. His public information request, he said, reflected a campaign to release the names of people who sign Referendum 71, which is an attempt to block the domestic-partnership bill.

But Coffman says the comparison is apples to oranges. The key in determining whether personal information should be made public rests on state law, which says the public must hold an interest in accessing private information. In the case of a referendum, Coffman says, the public needs to verify that authorized voters signed a petition—thus that information needs to be publicly available.

However, Coffman argues, “I don’t think there is a public interest in identifying who these people are." He says that it's unclear what city resources were invested in the group, what the threshold for membership was, or what personal information (such as email addresses) the city might have. For instance, he is concerned that someone who attended one meeting but had no real stake in the group could be outed.

“The interest is Mr. Irvin’s alone, and I would suggest it is for nefarious purposes,” says Coffman. It's an intimidation tactic that "smacks of something that would happen in the South, circa 1962."

On June 17, a King County Superior Court judge will hear the case; depending on the judge's action, the case could be resolved or could wind up at trial.

Irvin did not immediately return calls to comment.

As much as I hate to side with semi-professional homophobe Philip Irvin—a City Light employee and an anti-gay Christian nutcase—Seattle Public Utilities should honor his public records request and release the names of members of its "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Friends (LGBTQ&F)" affinity group. The group, says Publicola, is filing an injunction to block the release of the names of its members. Irvin calls bullshit, pointing to threats by gay activists to publicize the names the of people who sign on to I-71... which is a bit of a reach. First, SPU's queer employees aren't the same gay activists threatening to create a website listing folks who sign I-71—and, more relevantly, petitions are public records and when you sign one you're electing to put your name out there. But Irvin's on firmer ground when he says...

Call me a homophobe if you want to but I don’t think the City should fund a secret gay employees group.

You're a homophobie, Phil, but you're right: the city shouldn't be funding secret groups for gay employees. And if SPU's gay group is an official city group, and it receives funding from the city, it should be subject to the same rules and regulations regarding openness and public disclosure that all other city groups, agencies, individual employees, etc., are subject to.

And that's easy for me to say, I suppose, sitting here at the Stranger, where everyone is gay and everything is glorious. What about SPU's closeted employees? What about their privacy? Privacy is a concern for some gays and lesbians—for closeted ones—in way that it isn't for, say, women at SPU who might form an employee's group. But the lesson here is this: if you're not out, an employee group funded by the city—and subject to public records requests—isn't the right support group for you.

Story here.

"6 down, 44 to go," says my pal Rex Wockner.

Both chambers of the New Hampshire state legislature have now approved an amended marriage equality bill, which now heads to the desk of New Hampshire Governor John Lynch, who has already indicated that he will sign the bill. Same-sex marriage will shortly be legal in six states.