Four activists arrested in NYC for trying to get married.

Four activists from the non-violent LGBT civil disobedience group, Queer Rising, were arrested this morning (02/12/2010).

Queer Rising staged a marriage equality protest at the Marriage Bureau at 141 Worth Street in New York City, NY where more than 20 same sex couple tried to obtain marriage licenses. Unsurprisingly, their applications were rejected. To send a message to NY City officials, Queer Rising members chained themselves to the railing at the entrance of the Bureau and blocked others from entering. Alan Bounville, Jake Goodman, Justin Elzie and Gabriel Yuri Bollag were arrested. There were about 50-100 supporters of marriage equality at the protest, the slogan they chanted was “one struggle, one fight, marriage is a civil right.”

Rep. John Murtha

Rep. John Murtha, a fierce critic of the Iraq war whose support for gay rights evolved in recent years, died on Monday at a Virginia hospital, a spokesman has confirmed. He was 77.

The Pennsylvania Democrat and chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee was hospitalized in intensive care at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington due to complications related to gall bladder removal surgery last month. He died shortly after 1 p.m., according to congressional aides.
First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1974, Murtha had a mixed voting record on LGBT issues, though he moved in recent years toward more support for gay rights legislation. Last year he received a 70% rating from the Human Rights Campaign’s Congressional Scorecard for the 110th Congress (January 2007 to January 2009).
During that term Murtha voted for expanding hate-crimes protections to include sexual orientation and for the House version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have banned workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (the bill died in the Senate and has not received a floor vote in either house for the current congressional term). In 2006, Murtha voted against the antigay federal marriage amendment.
A Vietnam veteran, Murtha was not a cosponsor of “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal legislation introduced in the House by fellow Pennsylvania Democrat Rep. Patrick Murphy.
Murtha is survived by his wife, Joyce; his sons, John and Patrick; his daughter, Donna; and three grandchildren. Memorial services have not yet been announced.

Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway, who has been a part of the gay-rights movement since even before she co-starred in the landmark film Brokeback Mountain, told British GQ this month (20100208) that she and her traditionally Catholic family left the Church over its views on homosexuality.


Having a gay family member was enough to make them, like many other families, feel unwelcome. "The whole family converted to Episcopalianism after my elder brother came out,” she told the magazine. “Why should I support an organization that has a limited view of my beloved brother?" Though, in all honesty, after Hathaway's ex-boyfriend Raffaello Follieri embroiled the Vatican in a scandal over their seeming involvement in the convicted fraud's phony real-estate scheme, we're not sure the Church was so sad to see her go.

Pam's House Blend (Pam Spaulding)

Individuals like Pam Spaulding and her blog, Pam's House Blend http://www.pamshouseblend.com/ has been credited with focusing America’s attention on Don't Ask, Don't Tell in recent months. This resulted in a temporary moratorium on Democratic National Committee (DNC) donations by the GLBTY community who made the Obama administration realize there was a price for its inaction on this issue.

Pam Spaulding is the editor and publisher of Pam's House Blend (pamshouseblend.com), honored as "Best LGBT Blog" in the 2005 and 2006 Weblog Awards. The Blend, which averages 120,000 visitors a month, launched in July 2004 as a personal response to the anti-gay state of the political landscape.

With roots in North Carolina and New York City, Pam considers herself to have "dual citizenship" status as a Southerner and a Yankee -- and brings that perspective and voice to her blog, which focuses on current political events, LGBT and women's rights, the influence of the far Right, and race relations.

Pam's House Blend is ranked in the top 50 progressive political blogs. Michael Rogers, editor and publisher of gay blog PageOneQ.com wrote, "Pam is certainly the most important lesbian blogger in America. She's a lesbian in a gay blogging world that is overwhelmingly gay men. She's a blogger as a woman in an overwhelmingly male-dominated world and she's of color and the internet is so skewed to the privileged." Mike Airhart of Ex Gay Watch says, "Thanks to efforts by bloggers such as Spaulding, XGW can spend less time analyzing the religious right and more time focusing on exgays."

Spaulding has provided commentary on CNN during the 2008 presidential election cycle, spoken at national forums, and performed the first-ever live-blogging events for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network's annual dinner in May 2006 and the National Black Justice Coalition's Second Annual Black Church Summit in March 2007.

In 2006 she received Distinguished Achievement Award from The Monette-Horwitz Trust for making significant contributions toward the eradication of homophobia. Pam was named one of Huffington Post's Ultimate Game Changers in Politics in 2009, honored with the 2009 Women's Media Center Award for Online Journalism, received the 2009 Courage Award from the New York City Anti-Violence Project and selected as one of the OUT 100 for the year.

Spaulding has a B.A. in Media Studies from Fordham University and in the non-virtual world, serves as Information Technology Manager at Duke University Press. She is a board member of The Institute of Southern Studies, which publishes the award-winning investigative journalism publication Southern Exposure, and the blog Facing South. Pam is on the organization's Media Advisory Group.

She lives Durham, NC with her wife Kate -- they legally married in Vancouver in 2004 -- and their two dogs.

Scott Fujita

In an interview with Dave Zirin in the Huffington Post, New Orleans Saints linebacker Scott Fujita spoke about why he supports gay rights.

"By and large in this country the issue of gay rights and equality should be past the point of debate. Really, there should be no debate anymore. For me, in my small platform as a professional football player, I understand that my time in the spotlight is probably limited. The more times you have to lend your name to a cause you believe in, you should do that...A year ago or two years ago, I remember reading about an initiative that was proposed in the state of Arkansas. It was some kind of measure that was aimed at preventing adoptions by single parents. Now, the way I read that and the way that I translated that language was that only heterosexual, married couples could adopt children. As an adopted child that really bothered me. I asked myself, what that is really saying is that the concern with one's sexual orientation or one's sexual preference outweighs what's really important, and that's finding safe homes for children, for our children. It's also saying that we'd rather have kids bounce around from foster home to foster home throughout the course of their childhood, than end up in a permanent home, where the parent, whether that person's single or not, gay or straight. Either way, it doesn't matter. It's a home that's going to be provided for a kid who desperately needs a home. As an adopted child, that measure really bothered me. It just boggles my mind because good, loving homes for any child are the most important thing."

Fujita, who is straight, married, and has kids, also discusses homophobia in the locker room and whether or not his views on gay rights make him a target for mockery among teammates.

Adds Fujita: "I have no concern about that whatsoever. I know who I am. My wife knows who I am. I don't care one way or the other Dave. I imagine that when some of this gets out guys in the locker room might give me a hard time, and they always give me a hard time. They call me the Pinko Communist Fag from Berkeley. I'm used to it. I can take it all."

General Colin L. Powell, USA Ret

Colin Powell shifts stance on 'don't ask, don't tell' policy

Retired Army Gen. Colin L. Powell, who opposed allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces when he was the nation's top military officer, said Wednesday that he supports efforts to lift the ban on their service.

 

"Attitudes and circumstances have changed" in the 17 years since Congress, with strong military backing, mandated the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, Powell said in a statement issued by his office. Noting that he has said for the past two years that Congress should review the legislation, Powell said he "fully supports the approach" outlined in testimony Tuesday by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Larry Townsend

Larry Townsend (1930 - 2008) was the pseudonymous author (né 'Bud' Bernhardt) of dozens of books including Run Little Leather Boy (1970) and The Leatherman’s Handbook (1972)

As Staff Sergeant in charge of NCOIC Operations of Air Intelligence Squadrons for nearly five years with the US Air Force in Germany (1950-1954). Around the 1950s he joined the underground movement of a then small LA leather scene where he and Montgomery Clift shared a lover.

With his degree in industrial psychology from UCLA (1957) He began his pioneering activism in the politics of homophile liberation in the early 1960s. In 1972, as president of the ‘Homophile Effort for Legal Protection’ which had been founded in 1969 to defend gays during and after arrests, he led a group in founding the H.E.L.P. Newsletter, the forebear of Drummer magazine (1975).

He lived in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, the center of the Los Angeles leather scene (the equivalent of the SoMa neighborhood in San Francisco). As a writer and photographer, he was an essential eyewitness of the drama and salon around Drummer in which his novels were often excerpted.

His signature “Leather Notebook” column appeared in Drummer for twelve years beginning in 1980, and continued in Honcho to Spring 2008. His last novel, TimeMasters, was published April 2008. His last writing was Who Lit up the Lit of the Golden Age of Drummer an introduction to Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer (June 2008).

His partner of 44 years, Fred Yerkes, passed on July 8, 2006.

Dusk Peterson

Dusk Peterson is a fiction writer, history writer, journalist, and editor. Peterson's articles have appeared in nationally distributed magazines, as well as in international publications. In 2007, after several years of being published online and in a magazine, Peterson's fiction began being published as e-books.

Peterson writes fantasy stories on friendship, gay historical fantasy tales, and contemporary gay fiction. Occasionally, a heterosexual love story will appear as well. Suspense plays an important role in many of the tales; the conflict in those tales is both external and internal. His stories are often placed in dark settings, such as prisons or wartime locations. The mood of the stories, however, is not one of unrelieved gloominess. Romance and friendship, especially male friendship, are recurring themes.

Unique to his works is that black, multi-cultural, and interracial storylines often show up as do characters with disabilities. Especially characters struggling with mental illnesses.

Although Peterson's stories do not fall into the Christian Inspirational category, religion and spirituality are often important aspects of characters' lives.

For more information see: http://duskpeterson.com/