California school district billed over lesbian minister controversy

(California) A school district has been billed $14,700 in law-suit related costs by a Sacramento legal firm representing a group of angry parents. The billing comes after the parents sued the school district, demanding materials related to a “Days of Diversity” presentation by a lesbian minister that caused a stir …

Could Gay Lt. Gov Rumors Be Playing in Favor of Cheating SC Governor?

The bombshell revelation that South Carolina governor Mark Sanford had disappeared to Argentina for a rendezvous with an extramarital romantic interest has failed to elicit calls fro the governor’s resignation from the state’s top officials-in part due to Bauer’s politics, though another factor may also be at work: rumors that the state’s Lieutenant Governor, Andre Bauer, is gay.

Bauer’s sexuality has been a topic of speculation before, most recently when openly lesbian South Carolina politician Linda Ketner, a failed candidate for one of the state’s congressional seats, “outed” several state officials, including Bauer, igniting a controversy about airing and repeating such allegations publicly. See Could Gay Lt. Gov Rumors Be Playing in Favor of Cheating SC Governor?

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Could Gay Lt. Gov Rumors Be Playing in Favor of Cheating SC Governor?

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Bruno — Based on a Real Gay Austrian?!

The dude caught in the middle is Alfons Haider — he’s proud to be gay, he’s into fashion, and (just like Bruno) he’s also been known to compare himself to Zac Efron.

Want more evidence? — Alfons is the highest-paid presenter on Austrian state broadcaster ORF. In the film, Bruno works for a channel called OJRF. Coincidence?

The controversy has been raging in Austria

for a while, but Haider just told The Telegraph newspaper, “I never understood the comparison to myself at all. The only comparisons I can think of is that I’m Austrian, I’m gay, and I work for television, but the rest is completely fiction.”See

Bruno — Based on a Real Gay Austrian?!

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Gay Days Expected To Bring In $100 Million

ORLANDO, Fla. — The annual Gay Days event is expected to bring 150,000 people into Orlando. The event caused a lot of controversy when it was first held in Orlando 19 years ago, but now organizers say Orlando’s tourism industry is supporting it like never before.
An estimated $100 million is expected to be generated thanks to the Gay Days event. Gay Days has grown from a one day event to a week long event.
About 3,000 people showed up for the event it’s first year. Now, an estimated 150,000 people are expected to fill Central Florida, bars, theaters, malls, restaurants and theme parks.
As a result, a number of big-time attractions are looking to get a piece of the pie. Universal Studios Blue Man group and Sea World’s Discovery Cove are now sponsors of the event for the first time. Organizers say they know why.
“With the economy stalling, you go after the market that has disposable income. More disposable income for vacation,” said VP of Gay Days Inc. Chris Alexander-Manley. See Gay Days Expected To Bring In $100 Million
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Sen. Jeff Sessions Irked By Lesbian Mom’s Crying Child: “Enough With The Histrionics” (VIDEO)

Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee had a hearing on the Uniting American Families Act, a bill that will “amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate discrimination in the immigration laws by permitting permanent partners of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents to obtain lawful permanent resident status in the same manner as spouses of citizens and lawful permanent residents and to penalize immigration fraud in connection with permanent partnerships.” Of course, some of the discrimination that the bill would eliminate would benefit same-sex couples, so, CONTROVERSY!

One of the people who testified in support of the bill was a woman named Shirley Tan, who is in a same-sex relationship and thus caught in the crosshairs of existing law. The New Republic‘s James Kirchick documents her circumstances thusly:

Testifying was Shirley Tan, a Fillipino woman who has been with her American partner for 23 years. Together, they are raising twelve-year-old twin boys. She originally left the Phillipines after suffering a violent attack from a man who murdered her mother and sister (one of the reasons why Tan does not want to return to her native country, aside from the fact that her partner and children live in the U.S., is that the man who brutalized her has since been released from prison.) Tan was originally scheduled to be deported on April 3rd, but won a reprieve after Senator Diane Feinstein introduced a private bill allowing her to stay in the country temporarily.

Almost right from the start of Tan’s testimony, one of Tan’s young children started crying. The committee chairman, Pat Leahy, paused the testimony and offered the child some measure of comfort. According to Kirchick, these kindly sentiments were not shared by everyone on the committee:

For most people, the sight of a 12-year-old boy in tears at the prospect of his mother being deported halfway around the world would invoke some sympathy. Unmoved, however, was Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, ranking minority member of the Committee and the only Republican to bother to attend the hearing. At the sight of the weeping boy, according to a Senate staffer who was at the hearing, Sessions leaned towards one of his aides and sighed, “Enough with the histrionics.” Sessions’s press secretary did not return a call seeking comment.

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Lesbians And Gays In Gaming

As gaming grows into a more mature artistic medium, elements of the “real world” that were once completely separate from games are creeping in, so make room for the gays and lesbians, everyone! Whether gamers like it or not, the issue of how to treat the gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gendered community in games is quickly becoming an area of controversy.
The influx of people who live non-traditional lives is forcing game companies to come up with more nuanced policies to deal with gays in games. For example, Bioware dealt with the issue by banning the words “gay” and “lesbian” from their forums, then unbanning them, and Microsoft and Sony have had their own methods of dealing with words and concepts that make some people uncomfortable.
A recent post on Ars Technica takes an in-depth look at the issue, specifically, the ad-hoc “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell” policy many think is the answer to the problem. Basically, the argument goes like this: Games aren’t about your sexuality, so as long as you don’t identify yourself as gay or lesbian in an way, there won’t be a problem… which might make sense to you, but what if you substituted the word “Black” for gay?Censoring certain words from profiles is not only discriminatory, it also creates the idea that there’s something wrong with whatever the word is. The words “gay,” “lesbian” and “queer” present unique problems, however, as they are used as points of pride or as slurs, depending on how they’re being said and who is talking. All of which creates the kind of gray area that you can hardly expect the common Xbox Live citizen to either respect or understand.
While using “gay” and “fag” as insults has been around probably since the first online game was ever played, I imagine identifying yourself as homosexual on your profile would open you up to online harassment in a big way, but that’s exactly why gay people should be “allowed” to identify themselves online, if they choose to. I truly believe that if people hang out, game-with and otherwise co-exist with different kinds people, eventually the problem will settle itself. Because, in the end, it’s no big deal. See, gay people are just like you, and you’re just like them, and gay gamers just want to play games, so let’s all chill out and act like humans, eh? See Lesbians And Gays In Gaming
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Time To Repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

During his campaign for the White House, President Obama pledged that he would push to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) — the military’s policy that bars gay men and women from serving openly. Since taking office, however, Obama and other officials serving in his administration have pushed the issue to the back burner. When asked about addressing DADT in March, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “I feel like we’ve got a lot on our plates right now and let’s push that one down the road a little bit.” Ret. Gen. Jim Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, told the President recently “not to add another controversy to his already-full plate.” On ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopolous asked Jones if the policy would be overturned. “I don’t know,” he replied. In fact, the White House website recently watered down language on repealing the policy, replacing the administration’s commitment to “repealing” DADT with a commitment to simply “changing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in a sensible way.” (The more definitive “repeal” language has since been reinserted.) At the same time, Obama has indicated that he remains committed to repealing the policy. Sandy Tsao, an Army officer who told her superiors last January that she is gay, wrote to Obama urging him to act on repealing DADT. Last week, Obama personally responded to Tsao, writing, “I committed to changing our current policy. Although it will take some time to complete. … I intend to fulfill my commitment!”

DADT STILL CLAIMING CASUALTIES: DADT continues to weaken our nation’s military. Last week, the Army sent National Guard Lt. Daniel Choi — a West Point graduate who served in Iraq and is fluent in Arabic — a letter informing him that he is no longer welcome in the U.S. military because he is gay. The Army said it was dismissing Choi for “moral or professional dereliction,” specifically for admitting “publicly that you are a homosexual, which constitutes homosexual conduct. Your actions negatively affected the good order and discipline of the New York Army National Guard.” Choi is one of more than 13,000 U.S. military personnel to be discharged because of DADT. This number includes those with special skills deemed “mission critical,” such as pilots, combat engineers, and linguists like Choi. The Government Accountability Office found in 2005 that the cost of discharging and replacing servicemembers fired because of their sexual orientation during the policy’s first 10 years totaled at least $190.5 million — roughly $20,000 per discharged service member. While DADT cannot be repealed without congressional action, University of California associate professor Aaron Belkin notes that as president, Obama has the authority to suspend enforcement of the policy. Though it is unclear whether Obama will take this route (especially based on Jones’s advice), Choi said on MSNBC last week that he plans to “fully fight” his dismissal “tooth and nail.” “I believe that ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is wrong, and what we really need to be encouraging soldiers to do is to don’t lie, don’t hide, don’t discriminate, and don’t weaken the military. That’s what we need to be promoting,” he said.

REPEAL DADT: Supporters of the discriminatory DADT often argue that repealing it would weaken the military (despite the fact that Arabic-linguists who are in short supply have been discharged because of it) and fragment unit cohesion. However, a bipartisan study commissioned by the Palm Center at the University of California last year found that “the presence of gays in the military is unlikely to undermine the ability to fight and win.” Choi said that “the biggest thing” he is “angry about” is that the Army claims that his unit suffered “good order and discipline” because he is gay. “That’s a big insult to my unit,” he said. After he came out as gay and before he was discharged, Choi said that “so many people came up to me, my peers, my subordinates, people that outranked me, folks that have been in the Army — and this is an infantry unit, infantry men that — coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey, sir, hey, Lieutenant Choi, we know, and we don’t care. What we care about is that you can contribute to the team.’” Indeed, a December 2006 survey of servicemembers who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan found that 73 percent of those polled were “comfortable with lesbians and gays.” Moreover, the American public doesn’t care either. According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, nearly two-thirds disagreed with the argument that “allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military would be divisive for the troops and hurt their ability to fight effectively.” Ret. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Hugh Aitken, who participated in the Palm Center’s study, has criticized Obama’s plans to allow the Pentagon to review the policy before deciding to act on any repeal. “There’s been enough studying throughout the years,” he said. “Creating a new study will not change the facts.”

RIGHT WING STILL OPPOSES A REPEAL: The ultra-conservative Center for Military Readiness (CMR), a group that opposes women and gays serving in combat, is leading an effort against repealing DADT and even trying to block gays from serving in the military altogether. The group’s president, Elaine Donnelly, told Congress last year that having gays serve in the military “sexualizes the atmosphere” because they “engage in passive aggressive behavior.” CMR also tries to muddy the waters with “gay horror stories” from the military, despite having acknowledged that such stories are “very difficult to find.” Prominent members of Congress continue to obstruct as well. When asked about DADT last Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) offered his support for it. “Right now the military is functioning extremely well in very difficult conditions,” he said, adding that “the policy has been working and I think it’s been working well.” Other members of Congress, such as Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) and Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), disagree. Sestak, himself a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, said of DADT recently on MSNBC, “We have to correct this. It’s just not right.” “I can remember being out there in command, and someone would come up to you and start to tell you — and you just want to say, no, I don’t want to lose you, you’re too good,” Sestak said.

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VISTA: Proposal for ‘Carrie Prejean Day’ fails

VISTA —- A proposal to make June 1 “Carrie Prejean Day” in the Vista Unified School District failed late Thursday night, after the school board member who suggested it couldn’t get his colleagues to sign on.Prejean, a 2005 graduate of Vista High School, made headlines last month when she competed as Miss California in the nationally televised Miss USA Pageant and answered a question about same-sex marriage posed by a pageant judge.Prejean’s answer —- that marriage should be between a man and a woman —- may have cost her the crown and created a firestorm of controversy.Since the pageant, she has appeared on several news shows defending her beliefs. Meanwhile, semi-nude photos of her surfaced on the Internet.On Thursday night, hundreds of people packed the multipurpose room at Foothill Oak Elementary School for the Vista school board meeting, many waiting late into the evening to speak for or against the idea.”Carrie Prejean is not a spokesperson for traditional marriage,” said one of the first speakers on the issue, Jill Parvin, a parent in the district who has frequently sided with Gibson. “She is a former student with the courage to speak her mind.”An opposing view was presented by Evelyn Thomas, director of education and youth services for the North County Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and transgender Coalition in Oceanside.”It is wrong to teach bigotry and discrimination,” Thomas told the board. “The reality is, students —- your students —- are part of nontraditional families.” See VISTA: Proposal for ‘Carrie Prejean Day’ fails
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Gay row goes before Kirk’s ‘court’ as split threat talked down

A COMPLAINT against openly gay Kirk minister Scott Rennie will be heard before the Church of Scotland’s own equivalent of a civil court next week.
However, the moderator designate refused to be drawn into the controversy surrounding the appointment of Mr Rennie, 36, as he faced questions over the possibility of a split in the Kirk if it goes ahead.

During what was his first public appearance in the role, the Rev Bill Hewitt, 58, insisted his job would be to oversee a forthcoming Church debate on the issue and he would not be drawn into answering questions about the row.

However, reacting to the suggestions that supporters of controversial preacher Fred Phelps – who has protested against homosexuality in the United States – are planning to demonstrate outside the General Assembly when the issue is being discussed, he said: “People are free to demonstrate if they want. It won’t affect what happens inside.” SeeGay row goes before Kirk’s ‘court’ as split threat talked down Scotsman

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