Equality

Today was National Coming Out Day. An event that was started over 2 decades ago. Today at NCSU hundreds of students got their I <3 Diversity shirts from the NCSU GLBT CA and about 100 of them came over to my Democracy NC table and registered to vote. The free expression tunnel was painted in recognition of this event. There are a whole week of celebratory events. It was a good day for democracy and equality.

National Coming Out Day (NCOD) is an internationally observed civil awareness day celebrating gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, etc. people and communities. The name coming out describes their process of publicly identifying their sexual orientation. It is observed annually by members of LGBT communities and their straight supporters on October 11.

North Carolina Republicans doing what they do best. No doubt they'll all be surprised when others follow Jim Neal's courageous lead and start to tear this god-forsaken place apart. Roses Rampage? Maxway Madness? Dollar Store Destruction? They have no idea what can happen when the oppressed rise up in civil disobedience.

I had the MSNBC on last Thursday night, and Lawrence O’Donnell was talking to Ari Berman of “The Nation” about the new Obama Campaign Chief of Staff, Jim “Not Part Of Loggins &” Messina.

In the course of that conversation O’Donnell said something about the recent repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) legislation that suggests to me that he could use a short reminder of how that legislation fits into the larger view of what the LBGT community is looking for as the march toward true civil rights continues.

Luckily for Mr. O’Donnell, I am available to help him out on this one; that’s why today we’re going to audit “LBGT Agenda 101”—or at least the “Cliff’s Notes” version, anyway.

Neighborhood schools sound pretty innocuous to many people. I have been asked by many well-meaning parents what is so bad about kids not having to get up so early to catch a bus halfway across the county in order to arrive at some magic number made up by statisticians. Where's the harm in having your kids go to school closer to home, they ask. Doesn't that make more sense?

Cross-posted from Facing South article by Bob Moser, Texas Observer

Bobby Beltran was already having a blue Christmas. Because of his job, the 26-year-old was missing his tight-knit family's celebration back home in Brownsville for the first time. After work on Christmas night, to cheer himself up, Beltran joined some friends and co-workers at Rain, a gay bar in downtown Austin. He was accompanied by Chris Ortega, an Austin native who'd recently returned to Texas' supposed beacon of tolerance -- and had, only weeks before, come out to friends as gay.

As you may recall, my last blog entry on this was called "What's next?" HCR had just passed, and Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal had finished waiting its turn after earning its place in line through many speeches, rallies, lots of civil disobedience, and many careers and lives ruined. And like many issues coming to the floor of the Senate these days, it must overcome a filibuster. This is yet another area where a Senator Marshall rather than Senator Burr would be the difference between progress and potential failure. Two potential swing votes come from Maine, and so that is where Lady Gaga headed to rally in support of repeal after her recent Raleigh concert, along with veterans, and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. More on the rally, and the crucial vote below.

The National Organization for Marriage, an anti-marriage equality organization, bussed into Raleigh from out of state today for a summer afternoon protest. I imagine they were surprised to find they were in the minority here in NC when they held a rally that almost no one showed up to. The counter-demonstration however had a little over 200 people.

Much of our (more rational) current political discussion about reviving our economy seems to revolve around a simple-minded question of what got us out of the Depression. For the sake of argument, let's grant that it was WWII and not the New Deal's social safety net that revved up the economy again. Does that prove that we don't need government?

By now you've probably heard about the court ruling overturning the unconstitutional Proposition 8. But it wasn't the only big court ruling dealing with DOMA and marriage equality in the past month or so. More on the rulings, the NOM bus tour stop in Raleigh next week, the counter-rally, and the path to SCOTUS below the fold.

http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3&id=107807

In an enormous victory for same-sex marriage, a federal judge in Boston today (Thursday, July 8) ruled, in two separate cases, that a critical part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional.

We are again having to take a short bypass on our planned writing journey; this time to a place that’s, according to their Facebook page, about 148 beer stores north of Toronto, Ontario (which, for the benefit of the less-geographically aware reader, is in Canada).

It’s a crazy place, where duct tape is more truly the coin of the realm than loonies, but we’re going to try to explain it all today…and in the effort we may even learn about a few things that really matter, like the unimportance of importance, and the kind of quality of life that comes from having a junk pile and a sense of adventure.

So grab the bug spray, Gentle Reader, because it’s time to visit Possum Lodge.