Tuesday, March 9th marks the first day that same-sex couples in the District of Columbia were able to marry. The Human Rights Campaign hosted three ceremonies at our DC headquarters building. Here’s the video of those ceremonies. Please click inside for more info on the couples and photos from Cathy Renna.
Here’s some history to make your LGBT heart swell. This is John A. Perez being sworn in as the first openly gay Speaker of the California Assembly. Please click inside to see videos of John’s acceptance speech, a transcript of his remarks, and photos.
Attorney General Jerry Brown just sent out this email to supporters announcing that he is formally running to be California’s next governor. Right now he seems to have the Democratic nomination locked. The Republicans have a primary fight between millionaires Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner. Here’s Brown’s email:
Today, I am formally announcing my candidacy for the office of Governor of California, to deal head-on with the challenges facing this state I love. I have lived in California all my life, and I believe the obstacles in our path are substantial, but not insurmountable. If we have a Governor who will truly commit to dealing personally with the tough choices facing our state, and who will get in the trenches side by side with legislators, we can get California working again.
This campaign will not be easy. I will face an opponent with nearly unlimited personal resources to pour into television ads and attacks. I am counting on your support, and your hard work over the next nine months. I believe I have the experience, the understanding of State Government, and commitment required to move California forward. I look forward your help in this important campaign.
Sincerely,
Jerry Brown
I posted the two versions of “We Are the World” here and the YouTube version here. Is SNL right?
Fans of the Harry Potter films were slightly taken aback when young star Daniel Radcliffe bared all in a theatrical production of “Equus.” But it was during his Broadway performance of that play in 2008 that Radcliffe learned about The Trevor Project, the nation’s only helpline for LGBT and questioning teens who are in emotional trouble and may be considering suicide. Last Friday, Radcliffe taped a public service announcement for The Trevor Project. In an interview with the Associated Press, Radcliffee said:
“I have always hated anybody who is not tolerant of gay men or lesbians or bisexuals. Now I am in the very fortunate position where I can actually help or do something about it….I think it’s important for somebody from a big, commercial movie series like ‘Harry Potter’ and particularly because I am not gay or bisexual or transgendered. … The fact that I am straight makes not a difference, but it shows that straight people are incredibly interested and care a lot about this as well.”
The PSA is scheduled to air in the spring.
Next Sunday, March 7, there is an Oscar night party at Here Lounge in West Hollywood benefiting The Trevor Project. Click here for details.
Be your own Rachel Maddow! Fans of the brilliant MSNBC commentator know that one reason Maddow is so popular is because she confronts lies with the truth. Now LGBTs and their allies can do the same thing when it comes to the debate about the military’s antigay policy, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
On Wednesday, the watchdog group Media Matters for America – founded by openly gay politico David Brock in reaction to the “Republican Noise Machine”– published a special report correcting the myths and lies perpetuated by biased or ignorant journalists – or reporters who slant coverage to keep access to powerful sources. That’s what many of us suspected was the agenda behind NBC’s Lisa Meyers’ devastating coverage of the original gays-in-the-military story in 1993. (See the video of Meyers report as part of this story. )
Consider, for instance, the February 23 edition of Fox News’ Special Report where Bret Baier uncritically reported that Gen. George Casey stated that repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy “might … adversely affect readiness.”
Lest anyone shrug this off as just another Fox News-Republican spin machine story, remember that the father of modern political conservatism – the late Arizona Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater – also called for lifting the ban against gays serving openly, crystallized in this famous quote: “You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.”
It’s one thing that the Fox News reporter didn’t know about Goldwater. But he should have known and reported that Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, appeared two days earlier (Feb 21) on NBC’ Meet the Press and was asked whether “soldiers on the ground in the field care one way or the other if their comrades in arms are gay or lesbian.” Petraeus said: “I’m not sure that they do….I served, in fact, in combat with individuals who were gay and who were lesbian in combat situations and, frankly, you know, over time you said, ‘Hey, how’s, how’s this guy’s shooting?’ Or ‘How is her analysis,’ or what have you.”
Please click inside to read more and see how you can help.
Bless artists! I didn’t know there was a “YouTube music community” until I came across this unique “collaboration” produced by lisalavie1 of 57 artists singing “We Are The World” edited together into one video. The site encourages people to help Haiti by buying Quincy Jones’ recent remake version of the original song on iTunes: “All of the money from sales go directly to relief in Haiti. Visit the official “We Are The World” foundation and do what you can to help.” I also encourage you to go to go to the YouTube site, click on “more info” under lisalavie1’s intro and there you will find the links to the YoutTube channels for each of the 57 artists featured here. (H/t Rex Wockner)
Lots of chatter Tuesday about Politico’s story on how Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele’s lavish spending is upsetting major GOP donors.
But Democrats shouldn’t get too gleeful. Political handicapper Charlie Cook told the National Journal, posted here via The Fix’s Chris Cillizza, that it is “very hard to come up with a scenario where Democrats don’t lose the House.” And, given all the problems the Republicans and Democrats have these days – he’d pick the GOP’s troubles any day.
Cillizza also notes that: “Stu Rothenberg, another noted political handicapper in Washington, has pegged Democratic House losses as between 24 and 28 seats. He writes: “We currently expect Republicans to fall short of the 40 seats they would need.”
Here’s Charlie Cook:
Could that odd sound you hear be the creaking hands of time clicking over to a new day?
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) announced on Monday that he will soon be introducing a bill in the U.S. Senate to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
“I will be proud to be a sponsor of the important effort to enable patriotic gay Americans to defend our national security and our founding values of freedom and opportunity.
I have opposed the current policy of preventing gay Americans from openly serving in the military since its enactment in 1993. To exclude one group of Americans from serving in the armed forces is contrary to our fundamental principles as outlined in the Declaration of Independence and weakens our defenses by denying our military the service of a large group of Americans who can help our cause. I am grateful for the leadership of President Obama to repeal the policy and the support of Secretary Gates and Chief of Staff Admiral Mullen.”
Please click inside for more on DADT and the CPAC conference.
But back to that creaking clock of time. Who would have ever imagined that an antigay message delivered from the podium of the conservative CPAC stage would ever be met with the sweet sound of boos? And what prompted the boos? This guy condemning CPAC for allowing GOProud to participate. Best line: “The lesbians at Smith College protest better than you do. Bring it!” This video should be on the laptop of every LGBT person who lobbies Congress for LGBT rights.
Iowa’s progressive and highly regarded Grinnell College named (see Rod 2.0) black, openly gay Raynard S. Kington, M.D., M.B.A., Ph.D, as its new president. Kington was deputy director of the National Institutes of Health, where he won a number of admirers among HIV/AIDS activists. The Grinnell press release noted Kington’s partner, “Peter T. Daniolos M.D., a child psychiatrist at Children’s National Medical Center and George Washington University; and their two young children plan to move to Grinnell during the summer and occupy the president’s home at the college.”
One of those young children asks to join his father on the stage (4:17 into the video) during Kington’s moving acceptance speech Thursday. “I feel compelled to acknowledge the special pride I feel as the great grandson of slaves – to be here at this institution whose founders were active participants in our country’s abolitionist movement,” Kington said, in talking about the possibility for the world to change.
Next Thursday – Feb. 25 – I am going to be on a Los Angeles Press Club panel with Andrew Harmon, senior editor for The Advocate, advocate.com and my legally married friend, Ted Johnson, managing editor of Variety and blogger at wilshireandwashington.com. The discussion topic is: “Covering the Prop. 8 Trial: Can the Gay Press Maintain Objectivity (and Should It)?”
Having served on the board of the LA Press Club with Ted, I suspect this topic was selected long before the San Francisco Chronicle published a political column noting the “open secret” that Prop 8 trial Judge Vaughn Walker is gay – which I wrote about citing some facts to counter the spin from the National Organization for Marriage. But the timing is terrific because it may well draw many more straight people who quietly have questions and harbor a lingering doubt about Walker – and our coverage, which is sometimes cited by the mainstream media.
The panel will be moderated by openly gay radio news star and college professor Jon Beaupre who moderated another Prop 8 panel I was on last year. That lead to a political awakening for at least one of his students. Watch:
It’s one thing when a big guy like Keith Olbermann makes irate or snarky comments about Glenn Beck – the weepy, often wrong conservative talk radio and Fox TV commentator who has a “gazillion” followers. But when skinny PDd lesbian geek Rachel Maddow talks about getting death threats from Beck groupies, calls him out for lying about her and then tells Beck to “back off! – something’s happening here. I wonder if this might be the beginning of the “spinal transplant” Howard Dean has been calling for. Watch for yourself.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Let’s face it: the Commander-in-Chief and Congress are secretly afraid of the old men in the military. And the old men in the military, so accustomed to automatic deference by all branches of the US government, are afraid of losing their power as times and the culture change. They cannot fathom that younger soldiers and leaders, the ones the old men are sending to fight two wars, are no longer afraid of dropping their soap bar in the shower.
How else explain the compromise the Obama Administration, the Pentagon and Congress are expected to announce at Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing?
The military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was a so-called “compromise” cooked up 17 years ago after Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn and Republican Sen. John Warner decided to teach the upstart new President Bill Clinton – who escaped military service during the Vietnam War – exactly how Washington worked. In an unprecedented publicity stunt that ignored eons of the military’s top-down structure, Nunn (angry at not being named Secretary of Defense) and Warner went into the bowels of a submarine and asked for the opinions of sailors whose training drilled into them that their opinions do not matter, they must only follow orders.
Here’s how that first hearing went, as reported by NBC’s Lisa Meyers (hat tip to the site devoted to Leonard Matlovich):
Please click inside to read my essay previewing the hearing Tuesday.
This is cross posted with permission from the Courage Campaign’s Prop8TrialTracker:
This is a Witness for the Defense?
January 27, 2010
by Brian Leubitz
Well, it looks like testimony has been all wrapped up. But David Boies’ demolition of David Blankenhorn — the defense’s second, and final, “expert” witness — will continue to reverberate through the record as this case proceeds forward. Was Blankenhorn an actual expert, well, let’s let him answer that:
DB: “I’m simply repeating things that they say.” DB: “These are not my own conclusions.” DB: “I’m a transmitter here of findings of these eminent scholars.”
PLEASE CLICK INSIDE TO READ THE REST OF BRIAN’S POST. HERE’S THE VIDEO TO WHICH HE LATER REFERS OF THE DEBATE BETWEEN FREEDOM TO MARRY’S EVAN WOLFSON AND PROTECT MARRIAGE EXPERT DAVID BLANKENHORN:
How did it get so bad? Democratic liberals and progressives are in a tizzy since losing their supermajority in Congress with the election of Tea Party-backed Republican Scott Brown to fill the senate seat left vacant after the death of Ted Kennedy.
Everyone’s screaming “WAKE UP CALL!” – though no one is quite sure what that “wake up” call is saying: go liberal and secure the Democratic base for the 2010 elections – or run scared and toward the middle – which progressives construe as more giveaways to the conservatives, Democratic and Republican?
MoveOn.org – the famous online progressive grassroots group that revolutionized political campaigning – is pulling a Howard Beal and yelling, “WE’RE MAD AS HELL AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!” Click inside to read info about their “emergency” rallies Tuesday at noon in SoCal. But in the meantime- please watch this scene from the movie “Network” and see if it doesn’t stir you up a bit!
UPDATE: HAITI DONATIONS DEDUCTIBLE ON 2009 TAXES.
Videos of some of the amazing performances from George Clooney and MTV’s extraordinary benefit Hope for Haiti Now Friday night are now being posted on YouTube. You can continue to help provide earthquake relief for Haiti by downloading the music from Apple’s iTunes or you can donate directly and see what organizations are benefiting by going here. For me, one of the most moving performances was the duet by Justine Timberlake and Matt Morris of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” I had never heard of Matt Morris before. It turns out he knew Timberlake from the Mickey Mouse club and Timberlake just signed him to his nee music label.Here’s a link to a video of Morris performing “Money” on the Ellen DeGeneres show.
But if you have time now, please take 4:12 to watch and listen to these two men remind us why every civilization needs the arts.
Stop the Mormon Church’s Nasty Campaign Against Gay Marriage
By Fred Karger
Coming just two years ahead of New Hampshire’s First-in-the-Nation Presidential Primary, Californians Against Hate’s Fred Karger is running “Call Mitt Romney” ads in three major daily newspapers in states where Romney resides: the New Hampshire Union-Leader, the Boston Globe, and the Salt Lake Tribune.
The online ads ask former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to use his vast influence with the president of his church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church), to get them out of the anti-gay marriage business. Click Here for Full Ad Copy We would hope that the Mormon Church would take a vow of ‘political neutrality’ on gay marriage, just like they pledge in partisan politics.
The Mormon Church has been running and paying for these campaigns to ban gay marriage throughout the country for the past 15 years. They have spent millions and millions of dollars in 31 states to take away marriage equality – $30 million in California alone!
PLEASE CLICK INSIDE TO READ THE REST OF FRED KARGER’S POST. MEANWHILE – Here is a trailer for the documentary 8 – The Mormon Proposition to be screened at Sundance Film Festival Sunday, in which Karger is interviewed.
The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC) is holding a hearing Thursday on the proposed “Anti Homosexuality Bill” now pending in the Ugandan Parliament.
The hearing will be held from 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. in the 2172 Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC.
TLHRC Co-Chairman James P. McGovern (D-MA) and TLHRC Exec. Committee Member Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), as well as other Commission members, will hear testimony from Karl Wycoff, Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Department of State; Julius Kaggwa, Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law, Uganda; Cary Alan Johnson, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission; Rev. Kapya Kaoma, Political Research Associates and Christine Lubinski, HIV Medicine Association, Infectious Diseases Society of America, among others. Baldwin’s office said the committee is trying to webcast the hearing.
But is an hour and a half enough time to expose the international antigay effort – for which Uganda is a working model? Religious Right researcher Bruce Wilson produced a short documentary (20 minutes) called “Transforming Uganda” that spells out who’s who and how the Anti Homosexuality Bill is part of a much larger underground antigay Christian movement. Please watch the video and click inside to read about a conversation between Wilson and Rev. Kapya Kaoma – who is testifying today – about the movement.
Transforming Uganda / high resolution from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.
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