Ben & Jerry's temporarily renames ice cream to celebrate gay marriage

From a Ben & Jerry's press release:

Ben & Jerry’s, known for its euphoric ice cream flavors and dedication to social justice, celebrates the beginning of the freedom to marry for gay and lesbian couples in Vermont with the symbolic renaming of its well-known ice cream flavor “Chubby Hubby” to “Hubby Hubby.” In partnership with Freedom to Marry, Ben & Jerry’s aims to raise awareness of the importance of marriage equality and, to show its support, will serve “Hubby Hubby” sundaes in Vermont Scoop Shops throughout the month of September.

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First gay marriage takes place in Vermont

At one minute past midnight, the first couple was wed. Read the rest of this post...

British govt called on to apologize for treatment of "father of modern computer science"

I'm not a big fan of petitions, but in this case, it's getting the media's attention, and that's good. CNN:

An online petition demanding a formal apology from the British government for its treatment of World War II code-breaker Alan Turing is gaining momentum.

Turing was subjected to chemical castration in 1952 after being found guilty of the charge of gross indecency for having a homosexual relationship, an illegal act at the time. He committed suicide two years later....

Turing was best known for inventing the Bombe, a code-breaking machine which deciphered messages encoded by German Enigma machines during World War II.

The messages provided the Allies with crucial information from the British government's code-breaking headquarters in Bletchley Park where Turing worked full-time during the War.

More from Wikipedia, the guy was huge:

Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science. He provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. In 1999 Time Magazine named Turing as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century for his role in the creation of the modern computer, stating: "The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."

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DOMA Do-Do

Not surprisingly, the Washington Post editorial board, run by Katharine Graham's right wing son, is praising President Obama for putting a kinder and gentler face on homophobia. From the Post:

These same sound legal arguments were made in an administration brief that was filed in June. But they were obscured by the firestorm over a legal citation of a case involving incest and the untrue assertion that DOMA didn't single out gay men and lesbians for discrimination. That mistake was not repeated. In fact, the third paragraph of the latest brief states plainly that "this Administration does not support DOMA, as a matter of policy, believes that it is discriminatory, and supports its repeal." We wholeheartedly support the Obama administration in this -- and eagerly await its push to change the law.

Well, no, gay and lesbian Americans, and their supporters, were not upset with President Obama over two portions of the 50-some page brief. We were livid with him because most of the brief was supremely homophobic, and the administration didn't even have to defend the law at all, as Joe and I (who are both lawyers) documented in a huge post dissecting the entire legal document.

But putting that aside, we did in fact praise Obama for the second DOMA brief which was "better." If by better, you mean still defending state-sanctioned discrimination that you once called abhorrent and promised to help overturn. President Obama is under the belief that he can put a more humane face on bigotry and prejudice. Not only is such a thing impossible, it's rather dangerous to boot. We don't want prejudice against gays and lesbians - or any Americans, for that matter - sugar-coated in order to make it palatable. We need a president with the courage and the conviction to keep his promises. Read the rest of this post...