I assume you know what happened in Fulton, Mississippi, but in case you don’t: Constance McMillen is a lesbian high school senior who was made to attend a phony prom with her girlfriend and some disabled people while the cool, straight students had their own party a half hour away. Parents and school administrators apparently helped the str8s plan their secret party.

Their defense? We’ve got to quit ragging on these totally-not-homophobic kids!

I am a senior at IAHS, and I’ve known Constance for the last 6 years. Please hear our side of the story before you decide on our fate.?The party we had in Evergreen (the county neighborhood I live in) is 30 mins away from the school. we rented out the community center, hired vendors, decorated, and our parents ran the security/chaperone staff- but it wasn’t prom. Prom was at the country club where constance and 7 other students were. The reason the senior class boycotted the actual prom was not because we hate gays.

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Tell me if you notice anything strange about the US government’s logic regarding all the “research” it needs to do before repealing the ban on gays serving openly in the military: The Pentagon wants the opinions of gay soldiers to help determine how it might lift “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” yet soldiers will still be dismissed under DADT for revealing they are gay.

Don’t worry, you’re not the only one stumped. Earlier this week, Army Secretary John McHugh mistakenly claimed that Defense Secretary Robert Gates had suspended the DADT in order to carry out a meaningful study and gay soldiers who disclosed their sexuality in private to him would not be discharged. Makes perfect sense, but it’s false. Instead, gay soldiers are only supposed to talk to a third party contractor who is carrying out the survey.

Army Secretary McHugh has since retracted his comments and apologized for the confusion, which the Associated Press says “is an indication of the issue’s legal complexity,” or perhaps just its utter stupidity?

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Whoops. Benjamin Ford, an Air Force “bomb expert,” has been charged with assaulting three gay men outside a Hell’s Kitchen bar way back in September. Ford flicked his cigarette at the victims; the victims retaliated by making fun of his baldness; then Ford beat the crap out of them. Surveillance video supposedly proves that Ford instigated the attack. Ford was in town (in September) protecting the president during that big UN summit. Ford is going to be tried by the U.S. military, which will hopefully hand down a harsh sentence, because this kind of thing is happening more frequently…again.

It seems that the entire state of New York has caught the gay-bashing bug. On January 7th, a 20-year-old man who isn’t even gay was taunted for his perceived homosexuality before being hit with a blast of pepper spray at a mall in Cheektowaga. The perpetrators? Two teenage girls.

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Remember that offensive comic strip that ran in Notre Dame student newspaper The Observer last week? Of course you do. Well, the editorial staff penned a long apology shortly after running the comic, claiming that “these comments should not be made at all”  while stressing the need to “work together to address this serious issue.” Also, they mention Senator Harry Reid’s kinda-racist comments about Barack Obama, as though Reid unleashed a tidal wave of hate that Notre Dame couldn’t help but ride all the way to a national scandal. An assistant managing editor at the paper resigned, claiming that she just didn’t have time to read the three-panel strip before it was published. Basically, Notre Dame is very sorry that this homophobic comic ran in the newspaper, even though they couldn’t really help it and also Harry Reid is a racist.
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Oh hey, look at that: New York voted down gay marriage Pineapple express download.

I know this sounds so defeatist and pathetic, but I don’t even care anymore. It’s been voted down so many times that I’ve come to not only expect it but deal with it as well. Believe it or not, I’m trying to stay optimistic.

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Hello and happy Friday! Time for some can-pretty-much-only-go-up-from-here news about us gays’ legal status. Learn about how you can be gay and married in New York at the same time! Also, Ugandans and Republicans have something new and exciting in common.

• If you’re a gay couple living in New York state that got legally married outside New York state, you can still be John tucker must die download.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/nyregion/20marriage.html” target=”_blank”>considered married here. But if you want to get married within New York state, you still have to wait for the Senate to actually, you know, vote on the issue. (Will hopefully happen by the end of 2009.)

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Killing me softly download.jpg” alt=”3033211865_e1a9b8525f” title=”3033211865_e1a9b8525f” width=”300″ height=”225″ class=”alignleft size-full wp-image-18889″ />Salt Lake City passed ordinances on Tuesday making it illegal to discriminate against the LGBT community in housing and employment. A surprising endorsement by the Mormon church virtually guaranteed the passage of the measures by Utah lawmakers, who tend to heed the wishes of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

While still catching up with the rest of the country, Salt Lake City is actually the first community in Utah to proscribe prejudice against gays. It is unclear whether this win for LGBT rights will set a trend for similar legislation across the state. Earlier this year, Utah Governor Gary Herbert said, “We ought to just do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do and we don’t have to have a law that punishes us if we don’t,” in explaining why he doesn’t believe in anti-discrimination legislation (or incentive structures).
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