Why isn’t the defense in the Rutgers case permitted to know who the other guy was?

The identity of the gay man who was secretly filmed via web cam in an intimate encounter with Tyler Clementi, who later killed himself by jumping off the George Washington Bridge, is being hidden by NJ prosecutors.

The defense claims the unknown man has information that will help their client but they don't know his name. It just seems strange and odd. As much as I don't sympathize with the defendant at all in this case, it is weird not permitting the defense the chance to interview the other guy involved in this entire thing. I certainly don't believe the unknown man has anything to help the defense but let them at him. In fact, maybe he will end up suing the defendant for invasion of his privacy as well. Read the rest of this post...

Marriage, it’s not gay

I find myself on the blog struggling for what word to use. Joe often prods me to change "gay" marriage to "same-sex" marriage. I'm not convinced it's much better. I've at times used "marriage equality," but I sometimes fear that it's code that non-gay people won't get. The thing is, it's quite clumsy when you try to write around the phrase "gay marriage." I'm open to suggestions, but you really need to look at a sentence the phrase is already in and then try to rewrite it.

From The New Civil Rights Movement:

There are lots of reasons I want to get married, and none of them are because I am gay. I don’t want a gay marriage. I don’t want a different kind of marriage; I want the same kind of marriage as my married neighbors have. I want a marriage with all the rights and privileges and responsibilities that everyone else who is married has. I am told there are 1,138 benefits that federally recognized marriage would bring us, and I would like those, too.

But most of all, I want to marry the man I have loved for almost 34 years – a real marriage legally recognized everywhere we go.

Read the rest of this post...

DADT ends on Sept 20 but gay GOPers still suing to declare law unconstitutional

They raise an excellent point.

President Obama signed a certification in July of Congress' DADT repeal, and the repeal goes into effect after a 60-day waiting period. The president hailed the certification as the "final major step toward ending the discriminatory" policy.

But Dan Woods, a lawyer for the Log Cabin Republicans, will argue before a court of appeals today that the group's lawsuit should continue. If the appeals court doesn't affirm that DADT is unconstitutional, there's no guarantee it won't be reinstated, he argues.

"Several leading Republican presidential candidates have gone on record promising to 'repeal the repeal,'" Woods said in a statement. "The military could also bypass Congress and enact new regulations, and a new Congress could re-enact DADT."

Read the rest of this post...

Rick Perry tells evangelicals, in code, that he’s not gay

GOP religious right presidential candidate Rick Perry, who has long been rumored to be gay, told uncommitted evangelicals and social conservatives that, “I can assure you that there is nothing in my life that will embarrass you if you decide to support me for president.”

What he means is, "I'm not gay." But he didn't want to say that, and the press reporting on the story, from the Texas Tribune to Politico, didn't want to tell you that that was what Perry was talking about.

Gotta say, the coyness involved, all around, reminds me of the way former GOP party chair Ken Mehlman, and the media, used to coyly deal with rumors about him being gay. And we all know how that turned out (Ken is now openly gay). Read the rest of this post...

Santorum defends stance on gay marriage

Besides the standard superlative that is (NSFW link) Santorum, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum came across especially smarmy in this interview on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight:"



Santorum also whined about being called a bigot by Piers Morgan.

Santorum countered that the Church's position is founded on more than 2,000 years of history. To adapt those beliefs based on the changing ways of society, he said, would be immoral.

Santorum then lobbed a charge of bigotry back at Morgan.

"Trying to redefine something that is seen as wrong – from the standpoint of a church – and saying a church is bigoted because it holds that opinion that is biblically based, I think that is, in itself, an act of bigotry," Santorum said.

(Note from John: You mean like when the church used the Bible to justify slavery?)

No, Mr. Santorum. To continue to try to prevent equal civil rights for the LGBT community simply because your church says otherwise can, indeed, be called bigotry. In context, the so-called infallible Catholic Church used the Bible as its fundamental "truth" to punished Galileo as a heretic for stating the fact the earth was not the center of the universe. Read the rest of this post...

Obama DOJ assisting case against Dan Choi

How interesting. Department of Justice staff were present in the courtroom, conferring with Dan Choi's prosecutors.  (Choi is being charged with "failing to be obey a lawful order" while handcuffing himself to the White House fence to protest the President's then-inaction on repealing DADT.)  And here I thought the Obama administration had nothing to do with the case against Dan. (I didn't think that, but some did. That one is now settled.)  From Metro Weekly:

After returning from a long lunch break, [Assistant U.S. Attorney Angela] George and her assistant were joined by multiple DOJ employees, who sat in the viewing area, whispering among themselves.

So the Obama administration is involved in the case, and they're apparently working with the prosecutors.  It certainly feels vindictive to me. Read the rest of this post...