I like the guy who screamed, "God DAMN America!" better

It appears as though president-elect Barrack Obama has begun to sell out the Queer community before he even takes office with the careful selection of a raving bigot to deliver an incantation at his official inauguration. Rick Warren, leader of a superstition-based organization near LA dedicated to the legal subjugation of lesbian and gay people often referred to as a "megachurch" by the corporate media, will attempt to lead our nation in an organized superstitious ritual during the inauguration of our next president. Plans for a public protest have not yet been formalized.

Californians pervert the machinery of democracy to abet religious extremists in an obsessive drive to re-secure special legal status

The state of California, second in the United States following Massachusetts to ensure legal equality for all of its citizens, has suffered a temporary legal set-back in the form of a confusing, discriminatory, and punitive ballot initiative that was funded in no small part by Christian extremists from other states, including the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) in Utah. Although California election officials have not finished counting all the votes, the Christian extremists have already claimed victory in their obsessive drive to re-secure special rights for themselves and those who share their ancient, superstitious beliefs regarding the consensual sexual behavior of legally competent adults. Despite numerous appeals, it appears likely that California's gay and lesbian citizens will once again, at least temporarily, be designated second-class citizens to appease Christian extremists.

Raging Bigots Stifled By One Courageous Pennsylvania Senator

At the behest of Republican Rasputin-wannabes such as Karl Rove, Pennsylvania, not unlike many other "swing" states, has recently been subjected to repeated efforts by Christian extremists (who receive much of their funding from forces outside the commonwealth) to ratify a constitutional amendment that would relegate our law-abiding and tax-paying gay and lesbian citizens to permanent second-class citizenship by denying them legal recognition of any marriages, civil unions, or domestic partnerships they might choose to form. Before any constitutional amendment, even bigoted and Nazi-apartheid-like amendments such as this one, can be put to the citizens of Pennsylvania in a referendum, it must be passed by both houses of the legislature in two consecutive sessions with reconciled language. Last session, the House and Senate each passed very different versions and then did nothing to reconcile the versions, putting the Christian extremist bigots back at square one. This session, the extremist forces managed to convince one bigoted freshman lawmaker to re-introduce the failed legislation.

They didn't anticipate the reaction they would receive from Senator Vince Fumo this time around. No one did. Fumo has always believed that gay and lesbian people deserve equal treatment under the law. Now that he's announced he's retiring because of health issues and an ongoing corruption investigation, he apparently feels more free to really say what's on his mind. During testimony before his committee, Fumo informed one Christian extremist who happened to be African American and was speaking in favor of the amendment that Fumo's more conservative colleagues in the Senate would certainly vote to re-legalize black slavery if they could do it on a secret ballot. People pretended to be shocked, but anyone who knows upstate Pennsylvania (anywhere besides Philadelphia and its adjacent suburban counties), knows that Fumo was telling the sad truth, not committing hyperbole as the Daily diplomatically asserts in this op-ed.

After the slavery revelation failed to derail the legislation (which would be surprising almost anywhere besides Pennsylvania), Fumo attached an amendment to the amendment so that it would also outlaw most heterosexual divorces. Up to that point in the debate, the bigots kept asserting that they were not bigots, and all they wanted to do was to protect the institution of marriage. However, when they were faced with the prospect of legislation that might actually preserve a few marriages (on legal paper at least) but would do nothing to subjugate gay and lesbian citizens, they turned around and went home as very unhappy and unfulfilled bigots. The amendment was promptly tabled. The next time it could possibly come up for debate would be after the 2008 presidential election.

Thanks to the infinite fuck-ups and abuses of the Bush-Cheney junta, our beloved country is in a sorry state. It's nice to know (and it gives me hope that we may re-establish democracy on a national level very soon) they don't always get their way.

American College Students Banned from Withholding Personal Contact Information from Military Recruiters

In a clearly desperate attempt to maintain troop levels more than five years into an ill-conceived, ill-fated, illegal, and disastrous invasion of Iraq, the Defense Department has dreamed up a new, superdraconian interpretation of existing draconian regulations that clearly interfere with the free speech rights of every employee of every university in the country that receives any federal funding whatsoever. If the DOD gets its way, students who request that their respective universities withhold personal academic, demographic and contact data (such as academic interests, home addresses, and unlisted phone numbers) from military recruiters will have to have that data withheld from ALL prospective employers, even if those students specifically request that that information is withheld only from military recruiters. The DOD is very well known in the United States for its discriminatory and unfair treatment of gay and lesbian citizens. It is unclear why it has become so intent on obtaining the personal data of many folks it would never hire because of its own discriminatory and abusive policies.

Republican Denial of the Nature and Existence of Human Sexuality Leads to Serious Consequences

The Old Gray Lady has definitive proof that it takes a Republican administration to increase the rate of unwed, teenage pregnancy in the United States. As proof mounts that teaching children abstinence only outside the bounds of a narrowly defined, orthodox Judeo-Christian, heterosexual marriage doesn't work, Republicans remain firmly committed to denying all these extra babies adequate education, nutrition, and medical care.