Nick Shalosky, 21, a member of the Charleston County District 20 Constituent School Board and the first out elected official in South Carolina, details how he used social network Facebook to run his winning, write-in campaign. “Facebook provided me with an avenue to quickly organize after jumping into the race with only two weeks before Election Day,” he writes. “Such rapid mobilization might not have been possible only two years ago. But, with a Facebook page and a knowledge of online organizing, I secured my winning margin without spending a penny.” The Bilerico Project

A group of gay skiers plan to resume their trips to Park City in 2010, saying the ill will between gays and Utah stemming from California’s gay-marriage ballot measure will likely have subsided by next year.

Next year’s Utah Gay & Lesbian Ski Week is tentatively scheduled Jan. 6-10. An Internet site indicates the skiers plan to visit each of the three local resorts, hold cocktail and social hours and have a party. A dinner is scheduled at the Wasatch Brew Pub.

The 2010 event is scheduled one year after organizers were forced to cancel this year’s annual visit.

They said few gay skiers signed up for the 2009 trip because they were unhappy with the role The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints played in the passage of Proposition 8, the California ballot measure. After Election Day, gays and their supporters called for a boycott of Utah. This year’s trip would have been the ninth consecutive year visiting Park City.

One of the organizers, John Harriott, a bisexual who lives in West Hollywood, Calif., said there remains a possibility of the 2010 event being canceled. He said, though, there is a three-in-four chance that it will be held. A decision will not be finalized until early December.

Much depends on the political climate by early 2010, he said. Similar boycotts typically do not last longer than a year, he said.

“I have a feeling this will be a lot of water under the bridge,” he said, adding, “I have a feeling Prop. 8 will be a distant memory by next year.”

California courts are expected to consider the validity of the ballot measure in 2009, likely shifting some of the emotions from Utah to the state where Proposition 8 passed.

 See Gay skiers want to return to Park City
Park Record, UT

Supporters and opponents of gay marriage are gathering signatures, lobbying lawmakers and drafting legislation in anticipation of a Statehouse battle over the issue in 2009.

In recent weeks, the politically charged issue has been heating up in Maine ahead of the new legislative session, which begins in early January. Coalitions of religious leaders on both sides have held press conferences advocating laws that would either make it legal for same-sex couples to wed or constitutionally prohibit the practice.

The advocacy group Equality Maine is ramping up its game, after three years of a low-key public education campaign to highlight gay and lesbian issues. And in opposition, a new group, the Maine Marriage Alliance, is pushing for an amendment to the state constitution that would define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

“Efforts are pretty clearly under way to simply redefine marriage in the state,” said the Rev. Bob Emrich, pastor of Emmanuel Bible Baptist Church in Plymouth and a founder of the alliance. “Let’s put that issue to rest. We want to define marriage, put it in the current constitution so we don’t have to wonder if the court or Legislature will overturn it.”

Equality Maine has been talking with various groups around the state since 2005, when voters upheld a gay rights law passed by the Legislature, according to executive director Betsy Smith. On Election Day, Equality Maine had 350 volunteers at 86 polling places, asking residents to sign postcards supporting same-sex marriage that would be sent to legislators. The goal was 10,000 signatures, and they collected 33,190, said Smith.

“There is clearly a lot of support for us winning marriage in Maine. There’s a lot of momentum, there’s a lot of enthusiasm. We’re really getting a lay of the land,” she said. “We’d be very excited to go forward with a bill.”

 See Gay marriage likely to return
Kennebec Journal, ME 

Gays and lesbians — at least some of them — plan to refrain from working and shopping today as an expression of their dismay over Proposition 8, the Nov. 4 measure that banned same-sex marriage, and as a showing of both their economic clout and their place within the larger community. If organizers carry it off, this is exactly the kind of tactic that can make a difference, though its impact might have been bigger before election day.

For all the complaints (mainly coming from the Yes-on-8 campaign), boycotts against corporations or organizations are a time-honored method of expressing opinions and pushing for social or political change. But in the superheated Proposition 8 debate, this venerable tactic has occasionally been used in ugly ways. 

It started when the directors of the Yes-on-8 campaign sent letters to various companies that had donated to the opposition camp. The missives warned donors to pay an equal amount to the “Yes” side or risk being publicly outed as opponents of “traditional marriage” (the implication being that they would then face a boycott). The tactic looked and quacked a lot like extortion. It’s one thing to boycott, or threaten it; a demand for hush money goes over the line.

Since then, postelection boycott efforts by the other side — defenders of same-sex marriage — have expanded into a vengeful campaign against individuals who donated to the gay-marriage ban, usually in the form of pressure on their employers. At least two people have resigned from their jobs and a third is considering it, including the artistic director of a stage company in Sacramento and a manager at an L.A. eatery. 

 See Gay band to march in Presidential inauguration parade
PinkNews.co.uk, UK

Gay rights supporters scored another major victory in court Tuesday, when a state judge in Miami tossed out a statute that had for more than 30 years barred gay people in Florida from adopting children. The decision came after a week packed full of dueling expert testimony over whether any evidence supports the state’s contention that children are put at risk when raised by gay parents. The answer, said Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy S. Lederman, is not at all: “The Department’s position is that homosexuality is immoral. Yet, homosexuals may be lawful foster parents in Florida and care for our most fragile children who have been abused, neglected and abandoned. As such, the exclusion forbidding homosexuals to adopt children does not further the public morality interest it seeks to combat.”

Yet, despite the good news for gays contained in the ruling, the decision is hardly the last word on the issue. The state has vowed to appeal, and the issue is likely to end up before the Florida Supreme Court, which upheld the ban once before in 1995. On the federal level, the U.S. Supreme Court has already let stand lower court rulings that upheld Florida’s law, the nation’s strictest ban on gay adoption. (See a video on the backlash against gay marriage in Florida.)

Meanwhile, conservative activists across the country are working hard to make sure that no court, at any level, has the final word on gay adoption. Like gay marriage before it, conservatives are looking at the issue of who can raise children as one best decided at the ballot box, not in the courthouse. Those efforts received a boost on election day in Arkansas, where voters easily passed a law that restricts any unmarried couple living together from adopting children. Arkansas joined Florida, Nebraska, Utah and Mississippi as the only states with laws that either directly or indirectly ban adoption by gays.

  See The Fight Over Gay Adoption Heats Up
TIME 

ANCHORAGE — To get elected in Alaska to the United States Senate as a Democrat sometimes requires not acting like one. Talk up drilling for oil in wildlife refuges. Talk up gun rights. Insist that those liberals who control Congress will never push you around.

And when your Republican rival is convicted in federal court shortly before Election Day, do not gloat. He is, after all, Senator Ted Stevens, once decreed by the State Legislature as Alaskan of the Century.

Of course, that was last century.

Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage is the Democrat who last month pulled off what once seemed unimaginable, becoming only the second Democrat from Alaska to win a seat in Washington since his father was a member of the House of Representatives nearly four decades ago.

Mr. Begich’s seat in the Senate has been occupied by Mr. Stevens since Mr. Begich was 6 years old and the state of Alaska was just 9. But Mr. Begich, 46, suggests there is something larger at work in his victory than just good timing in taking on a suddenly vulnerable Mr. Stevens, who was convicted in October of failing to disclose gifts and home renovations he received from a wealthy oil services industry executive.

“We’re a much more mature state in many ways,” Mr. Begich told reporters a day after he declared victory.

 See Alaska’s new senator sees change at work
New York Times