But I also think you're right that attitudes evolve, including mine. And I think that it is an issue that I wrestle with and think about because I have a whole host of friends who are in gay partnerships.Read it all.
- Obama
Less than halfway through his first term, President Barack Obama has appointed more openly gay officials than any other president in history.
Gay activists say the estimate of more than 150 appointments so far - from agency heads and commission members to policy officials and senior staffers - surpasses the previous high of about 140 reached during two full terms under President Bill Clinton.
As an orthodox Rabbi who reveres the Bible I do not deny the Biblical prohibition on male same-sex relationships. Rather, I simply place it in context. There are 613 commandments in the Torah. One is to refrain from gay sex. Another is for men and women to marry and have children. So when Jewish gay couples come to me for counselling and tell me they have never been attracted to members of the opposite sex in their entire lives and are desperately alone, I tell them, "You have 611 commandments left. That should keep you busy. Now, go create a kosher home with a mezuzah scroll on the door. Turn off the TV on the Sabbath and share your challah with many guests. Pray to G-d the prescribed three times a day for you are His beloved children. He desires you and seeks you out."
Read all of it.
If you look at what the majority of LBGTQ people need, it’s healthcare, it’s retirement benefits, it’s childcare, it’s the things that cut across constituencies.Read,see, hear the rest.And if we could focus on those things that most of us need and have in common with others, we might be able to produce a kind of coalition politics that would be less isolating for the gay movement. And queer issues could be defined expansively and produce alliances with, say, the AARP, who certainly has an interest in getting some recognitions for Golden Girl households, right?
Let's be clear: Prop 8 was a measure that should never have passed. Today, the California Supreme Court has ruled that the measure itself will stand, but that the 18,000 or so marriages that took place in the meantime will remain legal.
I'd like to suggest that we end this drain on resources that we call gay marriage. The fact that the measure is wrong does not mean that the fight for gay marriage is the cause we should be battling for. There are, believe it or not, many, many gays and lesbians, and yes, a lot of queers and straight people, who don't feel the need to marry. They resolutely object to the idea that marital status should determine whether or not they get health care or validation from society.
Marriage shouldn’t be the dividing line between relationships that have legal consequences attached to them and those that don’t.
commitment and how it should be legally protected. In her book Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, Polikoff calls for a revamping of regulations related to family law, including death benefits, medical leave and divorce -- all with the end goal of reducing marriage’s privileged status in deciding these matters. To make her case, Polikoff cites numerous examples of legal benefits automatically accorded to marriage that frequently end up hurting children and, for that matter, anyone in nontraditional families, including unmarried couples both gay and straight. As Polikoff puts it bluntly: “People who marry 10 days after they meet get legal consequences, and ones who live together for 20 years don’t.” If Polikoff had her way, she explains in the interview that follows, marriage would no longer be “the dividing line between who’s in and who’s out.” Instead, the law should value all families, according to Polikoff – an increasingly compelling proposition at a time when more than half of U.S. households are headed by unmarried people and one third of children are raised in homes by unmarried people.
Signs of the Times: Hallmark Introduces Gay Marriage Cards
Brazilian President Luiz Lula had the First National Conference of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Transsexuals (GLBT), inaugurated by presidential decree, and called for "a time of reparation" in Brazil.
Accompanied by six ministers, Lula exhorted all those opposed to the gay-rights movement to "open and purify their minds." Lula then announced his complete support for the homosexual movement, saying that he is "going to do all that is possible so that the criminalization of homophobia and the civil union may be approved."
After calling for a universal embrace of the homosexual movement, the president affirmed that "homophobia" is perhaps "the most perverse disease impregnated in the human head."
[ILGA has published a map on LGBTI rights that can be used to raise awareness of people on the many laws affecting LGBTI people in the world. It is available on www.ilga.org.]
The International Lesbian and Gay Association’s 2008 report on state-sponsored homophobia says that to be lesbian or gay risks jail time in 86 countries and death penalty in seven.
