New Study Shows Prop. 8 Success “Not Personal” --

If you live in California and are a Republican, attend church at least once a week, hold socially conservative views, and are 65-years-old or older, you most likely voted "Yes" on Proposition 8 to repeal marriage equality for your gay and lesbian neighbors. In addition, you are most likely male and probably even know someone, or are related to someone, who is gay or lesbian—but you still supported Prop 8.

the first openly-gay person to be elected to Congress--ever (Baldwin and Frank came out while already in office). The article takes stock all around the country.

“Jared Polis is the first openly gay man to be elected to Congress as a non-incumbent, and he joins Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank as the three out members,” said Denis Dison, a Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund spokesperson."

“a bittersweet election for gay people.”

"... the Obama campaign next week will kick off “Barack Obama: Faith, Family, and Values Tour,” designed to woo the votes of left-leaning Catholics, progressive Evangelicals, and some conservative mainline Protestants. If LGBT people find the tour eerily reminiscent of the South Carolina gospel tour the campaign arranged last year with antigay "ex-gay" gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, their instincts may not be far off.

CBN names Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec as one of the religious surrogates who will hit the road stumping for Obama. Kmiec wrote a June 13 op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle supporting California's Proposition 8, the ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage ..."

David Ehrenstein has an opinion piece up in today's Los Angeles Times titled Obama's gospel mistake. In it he writes:

Black churches are so much at the center of African American public life, and so much in denial about the gays and lesbians in their pews and choir stalls. As the late Marlon Riggs said in "Tongues Untied," his acclaimed 1990 documentary about gay blacks and AIDS, "How many choir directors have to die before we know who we are?" The "Embrace the Change" lineup reflects how this struggle is far from over. McClurkin, who is a minister at an evangelical church in New York, calls homosexuality a "choice" -- needless to say the wrong one. The duo Mary Mary claims to love gays in a love-the-sinner kind of way, equating us with murderers or prostitutes. It is only Byron Cage of the Mighty Clouds of Joy who has been actively working to heal the gay-straight divide.

"How many choir directors have to die before we know who we are?" This question, a direct and simple plea for a community to come to grips with reality instead of fear and dogma, is one for not just African-Americans, but all Americans, including that self-denying nuthouse known as the GOP.