In the clearest signal yet that DADT is on it’s way to being repealed Lt Choi has been called back to active duty. This development along with positive hearings in Congress on repealing DADT shows the Clinton/Powell DADT policy will be reversed. Top military brass gave candid and sometimes passionate, for them, testimony of why the DADT policy should be repealed. Colin Powell has even come out against his old policy opinions. It seems like just a matter of time where this discriminatory policy will be reversed.

Dan Choi Back on Active Duty

Gay military rights advocate Lt. Dan Choi has been called back into active duty, he told The Advocate in a phone interview Tuesday. Photographer Jeff Sheng, who recently turned his lens on active gay and lesbian service members for a book about “don’t ask, don’t tell,” originally reported the news on Bilerico.com.

Choi was scheduled to appear at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Creating Change conference over the weekend but instead rejoined his unit in Pennsylvania. Choi said his commander called him personally, asking him to return.

Choi told The Advocate that he felt welcomed back by his fellow guardsmen in his infantry unit.

“Initially, I sensed a feeling of territorialism,” he said. “They were like, ‘That’s right, he came back to us!’”

I received an email this morning from CREDO’s Becky Bond that announced that the trial regarding the constitutionality of Prop 8 will be published via webcast on YouTube.   Judge Walker of the 9th Ciruit of the  US District Court ruled that interest in the outcome was sufficient to warrant publc access to the trial details. 

In the email she states,

While not a complete victory for transparency, it will be the first federal trial within the jurisdiction of the 9th Circuit — which includes nine Western states — to be videotaped in its entirety for public viewing.

It’s not surprising that the supporters of Prop 8 would want to block television coverage of their arguments against equal rights for all couples. We will need your help again in the future

This is a major victory according to the SFGate online news source as stated below:

The lawsuit by two same-sex couples, a gay rights group and the city of San Francisco says the initiative violates the U.S. constitutional guarantee of equal protection by discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender. The nonjury trial, the first in any U.S. court on same-sex marriage, begins Monday and is scheduled to last two to three weeks

This will also hopefully expose for the first time without a doubt who the players were behind the Proposition.  We all know in general who they were, but alot of people are not aware that Dobson’s Focus on The Family, Tony Perkin’s Family Research Council and various other right wing evangelical groups were the money behind the machine.  The Morman Church as well as The Knights of Columbus and NOM also were heavy sponsors.  Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Southern California was a supporter as well.

If their religious beliefs are as strong as they claim, there is no reason why we should not all witness their reasoning for backing this attempt to quell civil rights for a particular group of people.  I wonder with this development how many of their witnesses will still agree to appear?  With subpoenas from the plaintiff’s attorney, they better.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/06/BA121BEGI8.DTL

NEW JERSEY – The state Senate denied marriage equality to all its citizens. The marriage equality bill failed to pass in a 20-14 decision despite Democrats holding the majority. Senators James Beach (D-Camden), Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen) and Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester) abstained and 2 other senators did not attend the state Senate session; Senator Diane Allen (R-Burlington) was one of those not attending, but her absence was due to her fight against cancer. The vote came after an hour and a half of public debate.

There was a good deal of uncertainty about the outcome of this bill. New Jersey Senate President Richard Codey (D) made clear that the state Senate did not have the votes to pass this bill, but supporters insisted that the vote take place today because Governor Jon Corzine (D) agreed he would sign the bill into law should it pass the Senate before the end of his term.

“Most assuredly, this is an issue of civil rights and civil liberties, the foundation of our state and federal constitutions,” the governor said. “Denying any group of people a fundamental human right because of who they are, or whom they love, is wrong, plain and simple.”

Corzine was defeated in his bid for reelection by Chris Christie (R). Christie is an opponent of this bill and will assume the office of Governor on January 19th.

The state Supreme Court ruled that lawmakers must extend marital rights to same-sex couples, and Governor Corzine signed a civil union bill into law in 2006. However, this has failed to extend full marriage equality to the LGBT community.

In 2008 a panel evaluated the differences between civil unions and actual marriage as per the dictates of the civil union law. The panel’s findings showed that while civil unions provided some of the benefits that married couples enjoy, it did not fully provide all the benefits and protections that married couples enjoy under New Jersey state law.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a marriage equality bill by a 7-6 vote on the 8th of December. The bill was then delayed due to uncertainty regarding its passing the state Senate. The reasons for that delay became self-evident during today’s voting in the Senate.

Senator Ray Lesniak (D-Union), a strong supporter and sponsor of the bill, was driven to tears as a result of this outcome. Senator Lesniak has said that local religious organizations have actually written him in support of this bill.

Interestingly, the religious institutions that have contacted Lesniak to express their support of the bill are citing religious freedom as a reason for their support. They’ve said that state law has no right to dictate the parameters of marriage and thereby choosing by omission for whom congregations can and cannot hold official wedding ceremonies. “Government is wrong to interfere with religious beliefs,” Senator Lesniak said.

Garden State Equality Chairman Steven Goldstein has made clear that the fight for marriage equality is not over, and that the issue would once again be taken before the courts in New Jersey.

NEW HAMPSHIRE – At 12:00 a.m. EST many couples shared the joy of greeting 2010 with kisses and clinks of champagne glasses, but some in New Hampshire were celebrating with the same customs for additional reasons. The Granite State has joined Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts and Vermont as the 5th state to allow for marriage equality.

The Freedom to Marry Coalition and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation hosted celebrations on New Year’s Eve in anticipation of the new law taking effect at midnight, and the first marriage took place within the minutes that followed the arrival of the New Year.

In June Governor John Lynch (D) signed the bill into law after negotiating with state legislators about an amendment that would exempt churches and other religious institutions from being compelled to participate in marriages that are at odds with the tenets of their religion.

Many same sex couples have already applied for marriage licences in New Hampshire. The state previously allowed for civil unions, and those unions will automatically become marriages under the new law in 2011 if the couples do no apply for a marriage licence to officially amend their civil union in 2010.

From Think Progress:

Ugandan official on gays: ‘Killing them might not be helpful’; life imprisonment would be better.

Reuters reports that Uganda may “soften” its Anti-Homosexuality Bill, a draconian attempt to severely punish gay men and women by making some homosexual acts punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty. However, Ethics and Integrity Minister Nsaba Buturo is now saying that officials may drop the death penaltyin order to impose a “life sentence” on gay men and women, during which time they could work to cure them of their sexual preferences:

Ethics and Integrity Minister Nsaba Buturo told Reuters that the revised law would now probably limit the maximum penalty for offenders to life in prison rather than execution.

“There have been a lot of discussions in government…regarding the proposed law, but we now think a life sentence could be better because it gives room for offenders to be rehabilitated,” he said in an interview.

“Killing them might not be helpful.”

In recent weeks, Uganda has been facing intense criticism from Western governmentofficials and religious leaders. Most recently, five GOP lawmakers wrote a letter to Ugandan President Yoweri Musaveni urging him to block the legislation, although they added that they still believe “marriage is an institution between one man and one woman.”

According to AlterNet, a man that was mentored by Rick Warren is largely responsible for the original Ugandan legislation. In that legislation the death penalty would be the sentence for the “crime” of being homosexual.

As an LGBT member this is something very important to me. I’m thrilled by this.

From Think Progress: Marriage equality is now legal in the nation’s capital.

This morning at the All Souls Unitarian church in Washington, DC, approximately 150 activists and same-sex couples congregated to witness marriage equality become law in the nation’s capital. “I say to the world: An era of struggle ends for thousands in Washington, D.C.,” said Mayor Adrian Fenty (D), who also invoked his biracial upbringing and noted that it was illegal for his parents to get married 40 years agobecause they were an interracial couple. Several other officials spoke, including David Catania (I), the council member who sponsored the bill. When Fenty signed the bill, he held it over his head and the room erupted in cheers. Watch some highlights from the event:

You can read the entire story at this link

This morning after my husband and I walked our little dog, and while my husband was on the phone, an unfamiliar vehicle pulled into our drive.
I could see the older woman with a cell phone at her ear, trying to get into our yard.
I asked my husband if he recognized her, and he told me to go out and ask her what she wanted.

Yeah, my life changed forever at that point, but I feel so badly now, that I did not thank that woman enough and have no way of doing so.

Yeah, the news was my middle brother died this morning, and besides feeling all the grief and loneliness from that shocking, tragic news, I did not stop to thank that woman enough.

So, I am thanking her now.

See, my brother had stopped talking to me roughly 6 years ago, and yeah, he was gay, and trust me, my husband and I have absolutely no problem at all with that.

You want to talk dysfunction when it comes to an older brother that’s very religious and Republican?
And another brother that is also gay and ashamed and still in the closet?
Or trying to be?

I digress.

This woman had our old phone number and when my brother’s partner called her, she took down all the information and debated about trying to help Lee get in touch with me.

When she handed me the phone, over the gate, and what a fool I was, in not even thinking to open the gate and let her in, and then once I heard Lee’s voice, and his ravaged crying from the heart in telling me that my brother died this morning, my mind totally went blank.

I feel so bad on so many levels, but have an added regret, in that here was a woman that didn’t have to drive up and find me to deliver bad news.

My gosh.

We don’t even remember our old phone number to call her back and thank her appropriately.

I’ll figure it out by calling Lee back, but that woman, in my eyes, was an angel and renews my faith in mankind.

She didn’t have to do that at all.

That woman was an angel.

She drove over 50 miles to let me know.

Even though it was very sad and very bad news, she is an angel.

So, there is good that comes from bad.
Or a silver lining.
She is an angel and I thank her, and feel blessed in this dark hour.

I used to view the initiative process as a victory for direct democracy—the people’s voice bypassing the corruption and deal making of legislative bodies. After living in California for 20 plus years, it has become clear to me that this lawmaking strategy needs to be constitutionally banned. Nationwide.

In California, we are now suffering the fallout of “me first” legislation that drains our tax base, undoing our social contract in effect. We are also living in a culture that has done an end run around one of the central functions of the constitution—protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

The vote in Maine on same sex marriage is just more proof that civil rights cannot be left in the hands of citizens. We need our constitutional protections. Otherwise mob rule will undo the civility we have worked so hard to build.

The initiative process is nothing more than mob rule wearing a populist mask. It should be banned as a lawmaking process.