Frustration among gay Democrats at the White House's unwillingness to make their issues a first-year priority -- or even, in some cases, to acknowledge them -- is boiling over today in the form of a move to boycott Democratic National Committee fundraising.
Gay donors have long been a pillar of the DNC's support -- its treasurer, Andy Tobias, is a veteran gay fundraiser -- and of financial support for Democrats more broadly.
Tuesday night in Maine, supporters of a state law that would have legalised same-sex marriage lost, 53-47%.
WASHINGTON - Tens of thousands of gay rights supporters marched Sunday from the White House to the Capitol, demanding that President Barack Obama keep his promises to allow gays to serve openly in the military and work to end discrimination against gays.
Gay rights is civil rights.
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama vowed his unwavering support for the full gay rights agenda Saturday night, saying that he'll push Congress to repeal the ban on gays serving openly in the military.
He also said that he'll work to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as solely between a man and a woman, to guarantee that gay and lesbian couples get the same benefits as straight couples, and to ban anti-gay discrimination in the workplace.
Thirty years after gay rights activists staged their first national march in Washington - and coinciding with National Coming Out Day - activists return this weekend to demand federal action.
The October 11 event is a call for congress to act on gay and lesbian legislation, much of which were debated during the first 1979 march.
"We need congressional action," Cleve Jones, long-time gay activist and creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, said in a recent interview.
It is now 40 years since the start of a riot for freedom in a small
tavern in New York City – and the riot has never stopped. It is
spreading slowly across the world, to every continent, to Mumbai and
Shanghai and Dubai. Everywhere it goes, it wins, in time. Yet on 28
June 1969, it seemed only like another Sixties ruck in the muck against
corrupt cops. The Stonewall Tavern was a Greenwich Village bar where
gay people huddled together to find friends and lovers in a hostile
country on a hostile planet.
In 1996, when Barack Obama was running for the Illinois Senate, he was
asked in a survey by Outlines, a gay community newspaper in
Chicago, if he supported same-sex marriage. Unlike most candidates, who
merely indicated yes or no, Obama took the unusual step of typing in his
response, to which he affixed his signature. Back then not a single
state permitted same-sex marriage, and sodomy was a crime.
It’s that time of year when queers hold barbecues and parades,
and lift their Cosmopolitans to the dykes and drag queens that helped
start the modern LGBT movement. Our institutions honor an activist or
two, usually a jovial sort that won’t offend any of their funders, and
point to Barney Frank, Ellen, Rachel Maddow, queers marrying in
Massachusetts, and then declare, “Yes, we’ve come a long way.”
This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots
in New York when, for the first time in history, lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender (LGBT) people fought back against decades of police
harassment.
