Category: LGBT rights

When I first heard the expression, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I remember going: “What the hell? Is Clinton not feeling well?”

Now, of course, Bill must have wished for a little Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell back when he idealized out loud: “Is oral sex really sex?” – to which I felt like writing him a letter saying: “Check this out, Willie. If some liquid flies from your body like a rocket heading to lunar terrain and some of it becomes a news story around the world regarding a dress that it has stained and you are feeling no pain, wearing an expression on your face that’s both serene and insane – you have had sex, my man.”

Having experienced more than my share of discrimination, thanks to old Jim Crow, it’s the “less than” aspects of the deal that gnaws at your soul. It’s the everybody else can do it but you can’t and that quickly grows old and remains old.

By OB Rag Staffer

Saturday, July 18 marked the 35th Annual San Diego Gay Pride Parade and Festival. The parade is an annual event that draws about 160,000 spectators and 152 floats and contingents. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered people are joined by family, friends and supporters to celebrate gay life and have some fun. It started at University Avenue at Normal Street and worked its way through Hillcrest, down 6th Avenue to the northwest corner of Balboa Park.

When I arrived shortly before 11:00, the sidewalks along 6th Avenue were packed with anxious spectators. The weather was the usual perfect day in San Diego. The crowd included infants in strollers, seniors on scooters, and everything in between. There were a lot of families with children. The majority of people were young to middle-aged men and women, and many same-sex couples.

by Anna Daniels

What’s with our county government? A gay couple, married since 2008, was not permitted by a county caseworker to sit together while one of them applied for public assistance,while heterosexual married couples are routinely allowed to stay together while county social workers interview them.

by Frank Gormlie

LATEST UPDATE: 6:00 pm: All protesters remaining in the Clerk’s Office agreed to leave the building without being arrested.

UPDATE: At 5:15 pm, police are negotiating with “dozens” still remaining inside the Clerk’s Office. The County Building was closed at 5pm.

2:30 PM: I just came from the County of San Diego’s Clerk’s Office where a sit-in is going on in protest of the Supreme Court upholding Prop 8 – …

by Jim David

The best singer didn’t win a freaking singing contest. When Kris Allen defeated Adam Lambert as the Season 8 “American Idol,” it was, as predicted, a seismic upset. Endless bloggers posted reactions like “The biggest robbery since Bush stole the election” and “The end of American Idol’s last hope at relevance.”

In the end homophobia won, and everyone knows it.

I am not 100% sure that Adam Lambert, presumed gay but not talking, lost the American Idol crown because of homophobia. I am however 100% sure that Lt. Dan Choi is getting the boot from the US military because he is gay and he is definitely talking.

Gay men and women across the country are taking part in today’s “Day Without a Gay” economic boycott. Outraged by the recent passage of California’s Proposition 8 to overturn state rules allowing same-sex couples to marry, they and their supporters want everyone to be clear on where they stand. Here is what’s happening in Huston.

It’s racism and homophobia, neck and neck, down to the wire. Can they hang on? By Mark Morford / SF…

Today’s Reader Rant is from Ellen Sugg of Burney, a small town in the conservative northern California county of Shasta….