Choi and Petriangelo charges dropped

Protest charges against DADT repeal advocates were dropped by prosecutors today.

Transgender veteran irate over disriminatory treatment by police

Autumn Sandeen, a 20-year veteran of the Navy, wrote an open letter to President Barack Obama on Monday decrying the intense discrimination she was subjected to as a transgender woman after being arrested at the White House last week.

Sandeen (top left in the photo) and five former and current members of the armed forces, including Lt. Dan Choi, chained themselves to the White House on Friday as part of a GetEQUAL protest of the military’s discriminatory stance on gay service.

[1]

Sandeen wrote on Pam’s House Blend [2], “When I handcuffed myself to the White House fence, I wasn’t an impersonator wearing a costume; I was proudly wearing an appropriate uniform for my gender identity.”

Yet Park Police treated her as less than human. Several people, she wrote, overheard one U.S. Marshal say, “Did you see it? The nerve of it to be wearing a Navy uniform. Did you see the shim in the Navy Uniform?”

Her outrage is understandable. And her message is clear: “President Obama,” she wrote, ”your U.S. Marshal calling me ‘it’ and ‘the shim’ is the equivalent to calling an African-American by the N-word, or calling a gay-American by the anti-gay F-word, it is absolutely unacceptable.”

[1] http://www.365gay.com/wp-content/uploads/news-dadt-protest-sandeen-top.jpg
[2] http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/15940/president-obama-a-transgender-veteran-is-not-impersonator-it-or-shim

Students rally against Georgia prom decision

Although Georgia high school student Derrick Martin has the okay from school officials to bring his boyfriend to prom, not all his fellow students agree with the move. In fact, some students organized a protest.

Protest organizer Amber Duskin, a senior at Bleckley County High School, sent text messages to her fellow students on Wednesday asking them to show up, according to the Macon Telegraph.

[1]

“I don’t believe in going up there and dancing with gay guys like that,” she told the newspaper. “It’s also not just him bringing a boy. It was bringing all this attention to it.”

And his parents, who dislike the media attention, kicked him out of the house. He is currently staying with friends. Ironically, Martin’s father is a math teacher at Bleckley County High and is the school’s Teacher of the Year.

Martin said Thursday the school is considering abandoning the traditional “walk-through” where couples are announced as they enter the dance. He also said some students discussed having a separate prom.

[1] http://www.365gay.com/wp-content/uploads/news-gay-prom-guys-top.jpg

Protest outside federal gay marriage trial in SF

(San Francisco) About 100 people are demonstrating outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco as the trial for California’s gay marriage ban begins.

Most of the demonstrators are gay marriage supporters, who took turns Monday addressing the crowd with a microphone. They support the overturning of Proposition 8, a voter-approved law …

Trans folks protest police in Ankara

Trans folks protest police in Ankara

Protest brews over Cheney center at Univ. of Wyo.

(Cheyenne, Wyoming) A decision by the University of Wyoming to name a new center for international students for former Vice President Dick Cheney is drawing criticism from people who say Cheney’s support for the Iraq war and harsh interrogation techniques should disqualify him from the distinction.

The former vice president and …

5K Irish protest for marriage

A Dublin protest said the government merely tolerates
gay people with CU’s, not marriage.

Prosecutors drop case against gay couple accused of trespassing on LDS property

Prosecutors won’t pursue a case against two men accused of trespassing on LDS Church property earlier this month.

An LDS Church security guard detained a gay couple on Salt Lake City’s Main Street Plaza on July 9 after observing the pair “kissing and hugging,” according to a police report.

Derek Jones and Matt Aune were cited for trespassing after refusing to leave. The incident led to two kiss-in protests against the church in Salt Lake City and one in San Diego.

Aune has said the couple’s display of affection was modest, but officials with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns the plaza, released a statement that the two men were “much more involved” than a “simple kiss on the cheek.” It said the couple “engaged in passionate kissing, groping, profane and lewd language, and had obviously been using alcohol.”

In a statement released Wednesday, Salt Lake City Prosecutor Sim Gill said the trespassing case against Jones and Aune has been dropped.

Gill said despite that Main Street Plaza is owned by the church, there “continues to be a mistaken belief by many visitors that there is a public right of way.”

See Prosecutors drop case against gay couple accused of trespassing on … Salt Lake Tribune -

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Backers of Gay Marriage Rethink California Push

LOS ANGELES — Discouraged by stubborn poll numbers and pessimistic political consultants, major financial backers of same-sex marriage are cautioning gay rights groups to delay a campaign to overturn California’s ban on such unions until at least 2012.

Earlier this year, many supporters of same-sex marriage seemed eager to mount a 2010 campaign to overturn Proposition 8, which was passed by California voters in November and defined marriage as “between a man and a woman.”

But the timing of another campaign has since been questioned by several of the movement’s big donors, including David Bohnett, a millionaire philanthropist and technology entrepreneur who gave more than $1 million to the unsuccessful campaign to defeat Proposition 8.

“In conversations with a number of my fellow major No on 8 donors,” Mr. Bohnett said in an e-mail message, “I find that they share my sentiment: namely, that we will step up to the plate — with resources and talent — when the time is right.”

“The only thing worse than losing in 2008,” he added, “would be to lose again in 2010.”

The issue of when to go back to the polls was also the central topic at a contentious “leadership summit” held Saturday at a church in San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles, where about 200 gay rights advocates gathered to discuss their next step. It was the second large meeting of gay leaders since late May when the California Supreme Court ruled against a legal challenge to Proposition 8, which passed with 52 percent of the vote.

Shortly after the court’s decision, officials at Equality California, one of the largest gay rights groups in California, issued an online plea for donations for a possible 2010 campaign, citing a need to capitalize on anger over the decision and on the seeming momentum from the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in several other states.

But that thinking has apparently evolved.

Marc Solomon, marriage director for Equality California, said he spent June and early July asking the opinions of nearly two dozen California political consultants and pollsters and had been surprised by the almost unanimous opinion that a 2010 race was a bad idea.

“I expected having watched the protests and the real pain that the L.G.B.T. community had experienced that there would be some real measurable remorse in the electorate,” Mr. Solomon said, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “But if you look at the poll numbers since November, they really haven’t moved at all.”

A major factor in any California balloting, of course, is money; campaigns here are remarkably expensive, with a number of costly media markets. The Proposition 8 campaign, for example, cost more than $80 million, with opponents spending some $43 million.

Sarah Callahan, ch

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New York Times

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