The statement came during Obama’s first State of the Union speech, as he was extolling the importance of diversity to American ideals, at home and abroad.

“We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal, that no matter who you are or what you look like, if you abide by the law you should be protected by it,” he said.

“We must continually renew this promise. My administration has a Civil Rights Division that is once again prosecuting civil rights violations and employment discrimination. We finally strengthened our laws to protect against crimes driven by hate,” he said.
“This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.”

The issue has been a source of contention for heavy hitters on both sides of the issue, who have been lining up for a fight.

To read more, please go to http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/27/obama.gays.military/?hpt=T1

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Congress later passed DADT in 1993.

The law says GLB members are allowed to serve unless they:
–Make a statement of their sexuality , publicly or even to family and friends (and are later turned in)
–Attempt to marry a person of the same sex
–Get caught engaging in a homosexual act

In 2005, a bill was introduced in the House to repeal DADT. The bill however did not have enough support to make it out of committee.

In 2008, more than 100 retired generals and admirals called for a DADT repeal. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has called for a review of the policy.

During the 2008 presidential election, then-candidate Barack Obama promised to end the DADT policy.

Obama, as president, has been criticized by GLB groups for not pushing harder to get the law repealed.

Military statistics indicate that from 1997 to 2008 — over 10,500 service members have been discharged under the law.

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network — an organization providing legal help — say over 13,000 GLB members have been discharged since 1994.

To read more, please go to http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/27/obama.gays.military/?hpt=T1

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Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Ted Olson’s current challenge to California’s discriminatory Prop 8? No, the first was Hawaii’s historic Baehr v. Miike, which launched the ongoing national — indeed, international — movement to end exclusion from marriage. The groundbreaking 1996 trial in Honolulu featured weeks of testimony, all covered on Court TV, followed by months of legal argument, briefing, and deliberation, and then the tectonic ruling by the highly respected Judge Kevin Chang, based on the evidence and argument, in favor of the freedom to marry.

What’s striking in the California courtroom now is how the anti-gay forces, 14 years and tens of millions of dollars later, have come up with nothing to alter Judge Chang’s finding of no “sufficient credible evidence that demonstrates that the public interest in the well-being of children and families, or the optimal development of children would be adversely affected by same-sex marriage. Nor has the opposition demonstrated how same-sex marriage would adversely affect the public fisc, the state interest in assuring recognition of Hawaii marriages in other states, the institution of marriage, or any other important public or governmental interest.”

In the first days of the Perry trial before Chief District Judge Vaughn Walker, a Reagan and Bush appointee to the federal bench, America heard compelling testimony from historians George Chauncey and Nancy Cott, relating how the history of gay people’s exclusion from marriage parallels other denials and discrimination within marriage that we as a society moved to change. Another expert testified about how same-sex and different sex couples function, while yet another reviewed the clear and unrefuted evidence on the fitness of gay parents and the successful outcomes we see in the children they are raising.

The presentations, cross-examination, and bottom-line conclusions all uncannily echoed what unfolded in the Hawaii courtroom in 1996, when national experts in adoption and child-raising and other authorities testified and submitted briefs to enable the judge to assess the justifications put forward for denying gay people the freedom to marry. As in Judge Walker’s courtroom today, the anti-gay side in Baehr tried to suggest that same-sex couples and their families are somehow less qualified, less committed, and less entitled to equality under the law. As in Hawaii, the anti-gay side in Perry is invoking conjecture and diversionary claims, and proposing that the judge uphold marriage discrimination based on speculations and double-standards. In Perry, witnesses for the anti-gay side are reported to be dropping out, or making concessions that support the pro-marriage side; in Hawaii, too, as they learned more about the kind of assertions being made to defend marriage discrimination, some of the opposition experts withdrew or gave testimony that actually supported our case for the freedom to marry.

To read more, please go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-wolfson/14-years-after-hawaii-new_b_431068.html

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Promising the saga of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill continues in earnest through next month, Pastor Martin Ssempa, who’s been one of the bill’s most vocal backers, is planning something of a million man march to rally public support. (Uganda’s population: 31.6 million.) Backed by his lunatic organization Uganda National Pastors Task Force Against Homosexuality, Ssempa’s goal is to show lawmakers the people support further criminalizing homosexuality — a necessary tactic, given President Yoweri Museveni is reportedly “distancing” himself from the bill.

Museveni never officially endorsed the bill, but his support for attacking gays was made clear as recently as November. There was word that he promised to veto the bill, but even that fail-safe approach might not be enough if enough legislators approve the measure.

To read more, please go to www.queerty.com

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“The message of the men’s tragic death came from an email SEROvie’s leader Steve La Guerre managed to send to the [International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission] asking for help. “We were having our usual support group meeting on a quiet Tuesday afternoon when the worst happened.” La Guerre wrote. “The sound is unforgettable. I can’t even describe the horror as the ceiling and the wall of the conference room started to fall and the chaos started. It is now more than ever that SEROvie and ACCV (Civic Action Against HIV) are needed to provide the quality services we provide to our beneficiaries: food, clothes, and any type of help,” La Guerre continued. “Light a candle for these souls and for Haiti. Lord help us.”

The IGLHRC has provided a donation page where Executive Director Cary Johnson said 100 percent of the funds collected “will go directly to our friends and colleagues in Haiti.”

Meanwhile: Housing Works President and CEO Charles King is in the disaster zone coordinating relief efforts for Haiti’s HIV-positive residents. King’s blogging has become a compelling and fascinating look snapshot of post-earthquake life for people with AIDS:

“On the way to the airport, we passed CEPOZ, an HIV/AIDS clinic and psychosocial support center. The two-story building was completely flat. Edner didn’t have to explain that anyone who was there when the quake struck never had a chance. And, if the strong stench was any indication, the clinic had been fully occupied by both patients and staff. We later passed a second AIDS clinic. This one is still standing but clearly not for long. PHAP+ desperately wants to open a temporary clinic for the surviving patients of these two clinics.”

No word yet on the number of casualties at that location, and these were just two of the many HIV clinics destroyed.

Housing Works is accepting directed donations for their efforts to help Haiti’s HIV-positive population.

from http://rodonline.typepad.com

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(Kampala, Uganda) A provision that would impose the death penalty for some gays is likely to be removed from the proposed legislation following opposition from Uganda’s president, the country’s ethics minister said Thursday.
President Yoweri Museveni has told colleagues he believes the bill is too harsh and has encouraged his ruling National Resistance Movement Party to overturn the death sentence provision, which would apply to sexually active gays living with HIV or in cases of same-sex rape.

The proposed bill, though, says anyone convicted of a homosexual act would face life imprisonment and it is unclear whether Museveni supports that provision or not.

Gay rights activists say the bill promotes hatred and could set back efforts to combat HIV/AIDS in the conservative East African country. Protests already have been held in London, New York and Washington.

“The death penalty is likely to be removed,” said James Nsaba Buturo, Uganda’s minister of state for ethics and integrity. “The president doesn’t believe in killing gays. I also don’t believe in it. I think gays can be counseled and they stop the bad habit.”

Ruling party spokeswoman Mary Karoro Okurut said she also agrees with the president that some punishments in the bill should be dropped. But she said she will still push for a modified version of the bill when it comes to parliament in late February or early March.

“Although the president is against some parts of the bill, the bill has to stay,” she said. “(Homosexuality) is not allowed in African culture. We have to protect the children in schools who are being recruited into homosexual activities.”

By The Associated Press (http://www.365gay.com)
01.07.2010 9:30am EST

Photo from http://blackstarnews.com

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Sometimes when we are navigating the complicated social and legal mine fields in the United States, we forget the freedoms we have. Trudging from one awkward family interaction, all those parties for LGBT people with no family to go home to, long conversations about finding a nice [insert opposite sex gender term here] to settle down with, these kinds of holiday traditions can make a queer person feel pretty crappy about themselves.

But a couple in Malawi are struggling for much more basic rights. They were arrested over the weekend for having a same-sex engagement party. Homosexuality in Malawi is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

There are a group of Malawi LGBT people organizing for gay rights in the country. They hope to use the Bill of Rights, incorporated into the constitution in 1995, to protect their membership from prosecution under the anti-gay criminal law. The government is resisting, citing, among other reasons, the rising rate of HIV in the country.

Education and the kind of high profile protest like this past weekend’s engagement party will eventually lead to increased freedoms for Malawi. With South Africa leading the way, there is hope that semi-democratic nations (Malawi has elections, just a lot of corruption to go with it), will be more tolerant of their LGBT citizens. Still, the struggle is long (as Americans know) and the couple in Malawi are just beginning the journey.

This new years let’s take a moment to be thankful for what we have acheived and to send strength to those LGBT people around the world still fighting for basic freedoms.

By Emma Ruby-Sachs, 365gay blogger

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Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza appeared at a packed court in Malawi’s biggest city Blantyre, where they will ask for bail on Monday.

The pair held a traditional engagement ceremony over the weekend – believed to be the first gay couple in Malawi to start the process of getting married.

Homosexual acts carry a maximum prison sentence of 14 years in Malawi.

The BBC’s Raphael Tenthani in Blantyre says large crowds of onlookers went to see the couple in court.

To read more, please go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8434743.stm

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Following one of the most dramatic and emotional discourses thus far in the gay marriage debate, the New York Senate voted 24 to 38 Dec. 2 to reject a bill guaranteeing equal marriage rights to same-sex couples.

The bill, which Democratic Gov. David Paterson was expected to sign right away, would have made New York – the third largest populated state in the country – the sixth state to provide equal marriage rights to gay couples.

Opponents of the measure – with one exception – sat silently throughout more than two hours of discourse about the bill, while 18 Democrats – many of them African Americans and Jews – stood to urge support for the bill.

The bill’s sponsor, openly gay Sen. Tom Duane, in closing debate on the measure, sighed heavily and acknowledged the outcome of the vote was still uncertain. The bill needed 32 votes to pass and, while the Senate generally takes up bills only after the leadership knows it has the votes to pass, the marriage bill was an exception. No one – given 32 Democrats and 30 Republicans in the chamber – knew what the result would be.

“We have work to do in New York, and elsewhere,” said Marty Rouse, national field director for the Human Rights Campaign, which operated phone banks for constituents to call their senators on the issue. “We’re getting closer to equality, but we’re not there yet.”

The chamber was silent when the vote was announced just before 3 p.m. Wednesday.

The debate preceding the vote included numerous African-American senators emphasizing how similar arguments against gay marriage parallel arguments made decades ago against interracial marriage. It included many vigorous statements that the law would not affect religious freedoms.

And it included many tips of the proverbial hat to Sen. Duane and his partner in life Louis Webre.

“In my family and culture, especially as it relates to my religion, it has always been considered that, if you were living together and not officially married, you were considered living in sin,” said Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, an African-American Democrat from Brooklyn. “So, for those of us who believe in that religious tenet, the reason why to support same-sex marriage is that we do not want them to live in sin.”

By Lisa Keen
From www.pridesource.com

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A spokeswoman for the local restaurant, Allison Garrett, said in a statement the employee who left the voice mail “acted outside the scope of his authority and was not responsible for hiring.” He no longer works at the restaurant. The statement did not mention did not mention the other manager. McDonald’s “has a zero tolerance policy prohibiting discrimination or harassment in the restaurant,” the statementsaid.

By rodonline.typepad.com

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