Planet Homo

This Just In: Marriage Legal in Argentina

CNN) -- Argentina became the first Latin American country on Thursday to legalize same-sex marriage.

Lawmakers in the Senate passed the bill after 14 hours of debate that began Wednesday and carried well into early Thursday morning, the state-run Telam news agency reported.

The bill had already passed the lower chamber of Congress.

It gives same-sex couples equal marriage rights, including the ability to adopt children.

The law was backed by the center-left government of President Cristina Kirchner, who has said she will sign it.

The majority Roman Catholic country follows a few others around the world where same-sex marriage is legal. Among them are the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain.

Last month's congressional vote and Wednesday's Senate vote are the latest moves in a pro-gay marriage trend in Argentine politics.

Last year, a judge in Buenos Aires ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage was illegal, paving the way for such marriages in the capital of Argentina.

An injunction by another judge stopped what would have been the first same-sex marriage there.

Ultimately, Latin America's first same-sex marriage happened in Argentina in a southern state with a pro-gay marriage governor.

Patt Morrison interviews Roy Ashburn

Roy Ashburn was smitten by politics as a kid on the Central Coast. At 12, he was pedaling his bike to Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial campaign headquarters in San Luis Obispo, hanging out and helping out. He would grow up to be a Kern County supervisor for a dozen years, then an Assembly member and a state senator for another 14 years, representing some of the most conservative turf in California and casting some of the most conservative votes in the Legislature. Ashburn will be termed out come December, but his life as a "family values" politician all but ended months ago, in the early morning hours of March 3. He was arrested for DUI after he'd left a gay club, and soon thereafter acknowledged that he was gay. His DUI cost him his driver's license for a time and put him back on a bike, pedaling his life in an altogether new direction.

How different has your life been since your arrest?

Totally and completely. Obviously I stopped drinking. All of my normal routines were stopped because of no driver's license, no car, the penalties that are proper for my offense, and I'm going through those step by step, but I guess the bigger change is within me, and that's one that I'm learning as I go.

For decades you worked so hard to keep your sexual orientation under wraps. This must have been a torment, but in another sense, was there an element of relief?

I'm sensing relief now. I had not consciously decided to come out, but there's no doubt looking back that I had become increasingly bold about attending gay events, like pride festivals, and going to dance clubs and bars. Last year I attended Las Vegas Pride and San Diego Pride.

Were you looking over your shoulder?

A little more in San Diego than Las Vegas.

You've been obsessed with politics since you were 8.

I asked my mother to take me to San Luis Obispo to watch Richard Nixon on the back of a train as he campaigned for governor, doing what they called a whistle-stop tour. I can remember vividly being in that crowd at the train station and seeing Nixon deliver a speech.

And when you were 12, you dragged your parents to register to vote for Ronald Reagan?

I watched the 1964 [Reagan] speech about why [Barry Goldwater] should be elected. I was totally captivated, so in 1966, when Reagan decided to run for governor, I asked Dad and Mom to go with me to San Luis Obispo to register as Republicans to vote for Reagan, in the campaign office there next to the mission. I used to pedal my bike to the campaign office after school [to work] for Ronald Reagan. He came to San Luis Obispo; the organizers of the rally asked me to be at the foot of the steps of the bus when he stepped off. I have a picture; it was in the newspaper. It was electrifying.

Why Republicans?

I never was interested in being a Democrat. I watched the Democrat conventions — in those days they were actually somewhat meaningful, and remember, they were gavel to gavel, play by play of what was going on in the convention hall. I watched all of the conventions, but from the very beginning, it was always Republicans.

At some point, you must have realized a public career was incompatible with being open about your sexual preferences.

Something happened that I guess caused me to realize that. When I was in sixth grade, the police had a raid in the sand dunes [near San Luis Obispo] and a bunch of gay men were arrested, probably charged with indecent activity. That sticks in my mind — the publicity and the shame around it. One of my teachers was one of the people. The talk among the kids, the talk among the adults, the talk in the community, the press — at that time the choice was pretty clear: If you were gay and open, it was a life of shame, ridicule, innuendo about molesting and perversion. It was a dark life. Given that choice of whether you come out or whether you're in secret, I mean, there really wasn't a choice.

You worked for members of Congress, then were elected to public office yourself from Kern County. Were your sexual preferences in the back of your mind, or did you just go about your business?

The answer is both yes and no. I was married and had children. And I had a career and a passion. I also had a huge secret. But given my circumstances and my responsibilities, it wasn't an overwhelming issue for me. The desires were always there, but my focus was primarily on — well, pretty selfishly — on me and my career and my family.

Barry Goldwater had a gay grandson and didn't think government had any business in anybody's bedroom. But the recent brand of Republicanism has championed anti-gay issues.

I truly believe the conservative philosophy as embraced by Goldwater: that the government has no role in the private lives of the citizens. In the 1980s, there was a coming together of the religious right and the Goldwater right, sort of a marriage of convenience. It propelled Ronald Reagan to the presidency. Reagan never repudiated that but — this is just my view — I don't think he really embraced it either. In no way do I want to put down people of strong religious convictions; I happen to have very strong religious beliefs myself. But it was a merger of those two, and the religious [right's issues] were about same-sex rules, same-sex marriage, abortion, gun rights, these sort of core, litmus-test issues.

Interview continues here

Bozell: Glee Bullies Should be Portrayed as Nice

L. Brent Bozell III, right-wing scion and president of the conservative “media watchdog” group the Media Research Center, wrote a column today in TownHall to express his absolute outrage at the television show “Glee” for promoting a “homosexual lifestyle.” Bozell, whose “think-tank” is funded by foundation money from David and Julie Koch of the oil conglomerate Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, among other corporate sources, denounced the show for portraying opponents of homosexuality as “vicious school bullies.” Bozell lamented the fact that that Glee’s homophobes were “two brutish football players” who “threatened to pummel the openly gay and riotously effeminate character Kurt for dressing up like a girl”: “Bill O’Reilly recently hosted a “culture warriors” segment at Fox News where both “warriors” agreed that homosexuality is morally acceptable. That same no-debate mentality has been a regular drumbeat on the Fox television series “Glee,” a musical drama/comedy about a high school glee club in Lima, Ohio. [...] The only characters on the show disapproving of homosexuality are vicious school bullies. In the May 25 episode, two brutish football players threatened to pummel the openly gay and riotously effeminate character Kurt for dressing up like a girl. Everyone else in this series approves, endorses or participates in the homosexual lifestyle.“ While it may seem astounding that Bozell found the urge to whine that “this show has presented gay as the ‘new normal,’” and that “Glee” lacks enough friendly gay-bashers, his complaints are par for the course for his organization, which is considered a mainstream conservative establishment. Yesterday, Bozell’s bloggers tried to drum up an absurd conspiracy theory, accusing Time magazine of printing a picture of the World Cup logo that looks “strikingly like that of the Obama logo.”

Top 10 Anti-Gay Politicians Caught Being Gay: Anti-Gay Activists Out of The Closet

In light of prominent anti-gay activist Roy Ashburn recently being caught walking out of a gay bar, and proving once again that conservative voters have little to no Gaydar, here's a list of 10 conservative anti-gay activists who turned out to be gay themselves. Click fr the list below:

via www.ranker.com

Christopher Hitchens had Gay Flings....

THE government of Margaret Thatcher was not known for its friendliness to gay rights or leftwingers.

However, the writer Christopher Hitchens has revealed that when he was a radical student at Oxford in the late 1960s he had sexual entanglements with two men who would later serve as Thatcher’s ministers.
Hitchens, 60, discloses the encounters in his forthcoming autobiography, Hitch-22. He provides further controversy with a claim that Bill Clinton, the future American president who was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, may have tipped off CIA agents about planned anti-war protests.
Hitchens, who has split from the left because of his views on what he calls “Islamofascism”,
In his memoirs, an extract from which appears in today’s Sunday Times News Review, he describes his first gay fumblings while at the Leys school in Cambridge.
He says he had two personae at Oxford: “Chris”, the agitator in a donkey jacket, and “Christopher”, the intellectual. “Every now and then,” he writes, “even though I was by then fixed on the pursuit of young women, a mild and mildly enjoyable relapse would occur and I suppose that I can ‘claim’ this ... of two young men who later became members of Margaret Thatcher’s government.
“For this very reason I can’t really give any more names.”

Michael Dobbs, author of House of Cards and an Oxford contemporary who became Tory chief of staff, said: “The idea of him seducing Tory cabinet ministers is rather intriguing. Nowadays I do not know if it would help or undermine the Tories’ election effort.”

SOURCE

Words Be Taken Down

Representative Anthony Weiner of New York may be a new hero. Taking on the Republican party with passion, Weiner exhibits an intolerance for the back and forth politics of today and calls things as he sees them. He is direct and verbally acute on his feet and he also makes a lot of sense.

Does America Love Stupid?

Sarah and Flo have much in common. They both get too much airplay, they're both folksy and they're both selling you sumthin'. Palin's $100,000 speech at the first Tea Party Convention was warmly embraced as she asked the adoring audience: "How's that hopey, changey stuff working out?" A speech short on specifics but peppered with little zingers at Obama and Democratic party, the tea party enjoyed Palin as they chanted. "run Sarah, run" referring to the possibility that she might run in the next presidential election.

Sarah Palin is many things: charismatic, attractive, popular, but bright she ain't, and this doesn't seem to bother Americans. Facts have become a lost art, truth is a mirror and depends on who is peering into it, for surely many of Palin's assertions  simply have no factual basis, but again, it doesn't seem to matter. This is what we now call politics. Palin represents something, something in the consciousness of many, many Americans that they find assuring. That she is a woman is certainly part of it. Rogue? What is rogue? Rogue is no longer obedient, belonging, or accepted and hence not controllable or answerable. She may indeed be rogue, because most of her speeches make little sense. She delivers the needed zingers that only because she is a woman seem "pit bullish". Going after Sarah is tricky stuff because her being a woman entitles her to a gentler whipping (think vice presidential debates), but at some point, someone needs to call her out. That calling out may be the election of 2012, and should she decide to run, hopefully, the confrontation between facts and fiction can be clearly illuminated.

She is not to be underestimated though. She has a following, a large cult-like following that are blind to facts in favor of her particular fictions. Republicans, as usual, have done a great job marketing their special form of fear, for fear does not require action, it simply latches onto the anxiety at hand and multiplies.

What the President reads

A Washington Post article reports that President Obama reads offbeat blogs among his many sources of information including The New Yorker, the Economist, Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone. Obama was particularly interested in Atlantic Online's Andrew Sullivan's tweeting of the Iranian elections last year, said an aide, who requested anonymity to discuss what influences the president. According to adviser, David Axelrod, "there are some commentators whose views he's interested in, and he'll read blog items."
During the campaign, Obama was known to relentlessly use his Blackberry and continues to do so. Across the administration, people who work closely with the president said he remains fond of his BlackBerry and communicates directly, rather than running everything through his chief of staff.

Mr Gay China Beauty Pageant Closed

The press releases sounded promising: “The Mr Gay China competition is much more than a beauty contest. While physical beauty will be part of the judges’ considerations, it is a young man’s character and personality that will make a difference in the selection."

The winner will be chosen by the audience at the event, whom they believe will be the best representative of gay China, among the final three candidates who are selected by the judges

Although homosexuality was officially considered a mental illness until as recently as 2001, gay events in China have been neutrally, if not positively, covered by local media in recent years.

Co-organiser and Managing Director Ben Zhang was recently quoted in media reports as saying that mainstream media will not be invited to the pageant as he is concerned that overexposure might result in “unnecessary difficulties.

And then:

BEIJING -- Police shut down what would have been China's first-ever gay pageant on Friday an hour before it was set to begin, highlighting the enduring sensitivity surrounding homosexuality and the struggle by gays to find mainstream acceptance.

Organizers said they were not surprised when eight police officers turned up at the upscale club in central Beijing where the pageant, featuring a fashion show and a host in drag, was set to take place.

"They said the content, meaning homosexuality, there's nothing wrong with that, but you did not do things according to procedures," Ben Zhang said. Police told him he needed official approval for events that included performances, in this case a stage show.

"I kind of saw that coming," Zhang said.

Chinese police frequently cite procedural reasons for closing down gatherings that are deemed to be politically sensitive. Though the pageant did not have any overt political agenda, similar events in the past - such as a parade during the Shanghai Pride Festival last year - have been blocked by authorities.

Disney to hear plans to protect ex-'gays'

Shareholders of the Walt Disney Co. will be asked at their coming 2010 annual meeting to consider expanding the corporation's anti-discrimination policies to provide protections to ex-"gays" as well as homosexuals.
The plan came about after the Securities and Exchange Commission said it would not agree with company arguments that officials arbitrarily should veto a shareholder's proposal and prevent the issue from being discussed.
"Like many corporations, Disney implements mandatory diversity training for employees that emphasizes gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders, but fails to include ex-gays," said Regina Griggs, executive director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gay. "It is a serious omission both for the ex-gay community and their supporters."
The organization became aware of the issue after being contacted by a Disney shareholder. Griggs said homosexual activists aggressively have been opposing the request, since the acknowledgement that ex-gays exist undermines the argument that homosexuality is immutable and members need protection.

Entire story here.

Prop. 8 trial begins today

The nation's first trial on same-sex couples' right to marry - and the voters' power to forbid those marriages - begins today in a San Francisco federal courtroom that will serve as a forum for two diametrically opposed worldviews.

For two couples and their allies who have filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn California's Proposition 8, the November 2008 initiative was merely the latest example of historic discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Same-sex marriage poses no threat to opposite-sex couples, children or the public welfare, they argue, and a ballot measure that revoked the marital rights of one "disfavored group of citizens" was an unconstitutional appeal to fear and prejudice.

For Prop. 8's sponsors, a religious coalition called Protect Marriage, anti-gay bias is no longer significant in California, where legislators have legalized domestic partnerships and twice voted to authorize same-sex marriage. Discrimination also had nothing to do with the ballot measure, which merely wrote the time-honored definition of marriage into the state Constitution, they argue.

Extending wedlock to gays and lesbians, they maintain, would radically redefine marriage, weaken biological parents' connection with their children, tell men that "they have no significant place in family life" and force many religious Americans to "choose between being a believer and being a good citizen."

via www.sfgate.com

Political Science: Ask Judge Walker to televise Prop 8 trial

The landmark federal lawsuit about Prop 8, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, also known as the Olson/Boies case is about to go to trial. The presiding judge, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker is holding a hearing on whether the a pool television camera should be allowed to film the trial, given the unprecedented interest in the proceedings. Judge Walker is encouraging the public to submit comments on the issue, before the hearing.
To sign a letter asking Judge Vaughn Walker to televise the hearings, do so by Friday 9 AM HERE

via www.couragecampaign.org

How Larry Kramer's Boundless Outrage Has Changed the Course of AIDS

The Associated Press was at least half-right when it ran a headline, in 2001, saying Larry Kramer was dead. He was awfully close. Because he’d been sick for several years, many people who didn’t know him thought he had died already, presumably from AIDS. But AIDS, for so long his cause, was not Kramer’s problem. His long-standing HIV infection had never progressed, the virus perhaps having found that rare human host more ornery than itself.
Rather, he had end-stage liver disease, the result of a hepatitis B infection contracted decades earlier. His partner, David Webster, an architect and designer, kept him as comfortable and hopeful as possible in their Greenwich Village apartment and Connecticut country house. Still, at only 66, Kramer knew it was time to close up shop. He appointed a literary executor: Will Schwalbe, a young family friend who was then the editor-in-chief at Hyperion. Among the properties that would eventually fall under Schwalbe’s purview were plays including The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me, the novel Faggots, the screenplay (from his Hollywood days) of Women in Love, and a raft of journalism, blog posts, op-eds, and historically important letters and e-mails. These were works that marked the world: that prompted, in a way rarely accomplished by words on paper, social action. He might have died proud of that alo

Read more: How Larry Kramer's Boundless Outrage Has Changed the Course of AIDS -- New York Magazine http://nymag.com/news/features/62887/##ixzz0b0HtE7R4

via nymag.com

Dustin Lance Black on Battling a Gay-Bashing Town

Almost a year ago, I won an Oscar for writing Milk, a film about a famous gay-rights pioneer. My acceptance speech was a call for gay rights that got me lots of attention and plenty of hate mail. Then last summer, my film was banned by the college in the small Midwestern town where I was scouting my next project. It would have stayed that way, if not for an unlikely coalition of conservative local leaders, students, and a gay kid in short-shorts who fought to get the film its due—and gave the town some hope.
Story continues at:

via www.thedailybeast.com

Mexico City the first in Latin America to legalize gay marriage.

Lawmakers in Mexico City have become the first in Latin America to legalize gay marriage.

City legislators passed the bill 39-20, with five abstentions. The city's mayor is now widely expected to sign the bill into law.

Gay marriage is only allowed in seven countries and some parts of the US. Certain parts of Latin America allow civil unions for same-sex couples.

The Catholic Church and conservative groups had opposed Mexico City's move.

The bill calls for a change in the definition of marriage in the city's civic code - from the union of a man and a woman to "the free uniting of two people".

Regional differences

Lawmaker David Razu had proposed the change to give same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples regarding social security and other benefits.

Mexico City's legislature is dominated by the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party, which has already legalised abortion and civil unions for same-sex couples.

Spokesman Oscar Oliver told AFP news agency that city legislators were now taking up a measure in the bill that would allow married same-sex couples to adopt children.

A handful of cities in Argentina, Ecuador and Colombia permit gay unions.

Uruguay alone has legalised civil unions nationwide and allowed same-sex couples to adopt children.

Last month, an Argentinean court narrowly blocked what would been the continent's first gay marriage.

In a last-minute challenge, a court referred the case to the country's Supreme Court, which is due to rule on the issue.

Vinyl Fetish

 

The Politics of a Kiss

Adam Lambert was on CBS this morning and while showing a clip of his Sunday American Music Awards performance, they blurred the moment when Lambert throttled the keyboardist with a deep-tongue kiss, a moment that has raised a lot of controversy. Perhaps Lambert was trying to prove how gay he is to Out magazine editor Aaron Hicklin, who recently wrote an editorial about the lack of gay-friendliness on the part of Lambert's PR machine. Perhaps Lambert, who recently broke up with is boyfriend, was giving his ex a message. Perhaps Lambert thought his first AMA performance should be memorable and wild. Or perhaps Lambert just thought keyboardist Tommy Ratliff was hot.

It doesn't matter. It's hard to believe but in 1968, a young and histrionic actor by the name of William Shatner planted a kiss on the lips of Nichelle Nichols on what would be the first African-American interracial kiss on a network television drama. Shocking, indeed. So listen up America, get ready. For most gay people we have spent a lifetime watching you wiggle your tongues into one another. Lambert, who is certainly not the first, but it may well be because there felt like there was some sexuality behind it, that this kiss has caused some such a stir. We have all seen the exchange of kisses between Kevin and Scotty on Brothers & Sisters, but these are kisses without a penis. 

If it makes America uncomfortable, if it makes American squirm, if it makes a network blur the image because the audience is not ready, get ready. Because in time, with time, we will be in your households, on your TV screens, in your movies, on your streets, making out.

thou shall have no false Idol...

Oh dear. America's perpetual obsession with religion has come to even something as seemingly not about religion as American Idol. Bill O'Reilly has guest, Ramin Setoodeh (Newsweek), discuss the possible influence of Christians voting for the Christian contestant versus the gay (allegedly) contestant on American Idol. Video here. And we thought it was just a battle of the pretty boys. So while Christians may be marshalling a vote based upon the perceived "christian value" of each singer, isn't that exactly what gay people are doing? But with a difference: gay people don't want to see Lambert lose because he's gay. Lambert is allegedly gay, though he reminds of us a young David Bowie who duped us into thinking he was gay or at best bisexual; it was an act. Lambert, indeed seems to enjoy the thrust of a young man's tongue into his mouth as witnessed in these pictures. And all this proves is that everyone should consider carefully every image you upload to the Internet. Yes, it should be about performance, voice, image, potential and bankability, but we have nasty habit of injecting religion into something as common as the weather. In the end, we can only hope that people vote with their heart, not their habits.

Weathering the Storm

In the name of God

An interesting story at miketidmus.com/blog, about Dustin Lance Black's speech at the Oscars debating his references to God. While interesting, there is some confusion about the notion that mentioning God suggests religion, which it really doesn't.

Pass This Along

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.
Ken Starr, who led the campaign to impeach President Bill Clinton, filed a legal brief last month -- on behalf of the "Yes on 8" campaign -- that would forcibly divorce 18,000 same-sex couples that were married in California last year before the passage of Prop 8. Watch "Fidelity" and sign our letter to the state Supreme Court before they hear oral arguments in the case on March 5. Tell the Supreme Court to invalidate Prop 8, reject Ken Starr's case, and let loving, committed couples marry. DEADLINE EXTENDED: March 2. 303,893 people have signed this letter (as of Wednesday, February 18). Our new Courage Campaign community goal is 350,000 signers. Will you add your name now by clicking on the following link: couragecampaign.org/Divorce. With over 900,000 total views currently on Vimeo and YouTube, we're also shooting for 1 million views combined. To help this video reach 1 million people, please tell your friends to watch "Fidelity" and tell their friends!
"Fidelity" used with permission from Regina Spektor and EMI Records.

Happy Valentine's

Are you a B Boy?

How the Economy Works

 

Taking Heat: Sad or Satire?

The new cover of the New Yorker magazine is taking heat for its depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama as terrorists giving the "fist bump" while an American Flag burns in the fireplace.
"Satire is part of what we do," New Yorker editor David Remnick said in a statement. "And it is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to the absurd. And that's the spirit of this cover."
The cover was illustrated by Barry Blitt, who "satirizes the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the Presidential election to derail Barack Obama's campaign," according to a New Yorker press release.
The Obama campaign quickly condemned the rendering. Spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement: “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."
While no doubt the intellectuals at the New Yorker thought they were creating satire, it plays completely into the fears of most Americans—confirming some nagging suspicion that persists like a mosquito on a summer night. In fair play, perhaps they should have a cover of John McCain...let's not go there.

The New Yorker is worried. An automated reply form the New Yorker comments section elicits this response: About this week’s issue: Our cover, “The Politics of Fear,” combines a number of fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are. The burning flag, the nationalist-radical and Islamic outfits, the fist-bump, the portrait on the wall— all of them echo one attack or another. Satire is part of what we do, and it is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that's the spirit of this cover.

Madeleine Albright on Religion

"In order to effectively conduct foreign policy today, you have to understand the role of God and religion. ... My sense is that we don't fully understand, because one, it's pretty complicated, and two, everyone in the U.S. believes in a separation of church and state, so you think, "Well, if we don't believe in the convergence of church and state, then perhaps we shouldn't worry about the role of religion." I think we do that now at our own peril. Religion is instrumental in shaping ideas and policies. It's an essential part of everyday life in a whole host of countries. And obviously it plays a role in how these countries behave, so we need to know what the religious influence is."

Gay Activist Goes Straight

Gay activist Michael Glatze, the politically charged co-founder of Young Gay America magazine and a popular spokesman for homosexual activism, says he has "come out" of homosexuality.

In 2005, Glatze appeared on a panel at Harvard. His rhetoric then was harsh and inflammatory, as he spoke about a protest event.

"What the Equality Ride is going to do is essentially go to all these homophobic, really homophobic Christian schools," he said on the panel. "These are the schools where if you're gay you either get kicked out, or you've got to go to shock treatment."

Looking back on that day, Glatze said that's when he began to seriously doubt what he was doing.

"It was at that point that it was just shattering," he told Family News in Focus. "It was mind blowing. I started to read the Bible. I was terrified. I can't even express to you how terrified I was to be opening up the Bible because I was the ultimate left-wing gay activist."

That led to a lengthy process of reading, learning – and change. In June, Glatze emailed David Kupelian, author of The Marketing of Evil, saying the book had helped with his healing.

"He wanted to actually get some advice on what was the best way to go public with this," Kupelian said.

Kupelian advised him to write about it, and his testimony was posted on the Web.

Gay activists responded to the news with criticism and vitriol. Caleb H. Price, a social research analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said he wasn't surprised.

"A striking feature of the gay activism is their unwillingness to consider the fact that they might be wrong," he said.

While Glatze said he's is uncertain what his future holds, he said coming out is the most "liberating, beautiful and astonishing thing" he's ever experienced.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

Gore Vidal saw this coming: Republicans introduced a bill yesterday as part of their "law and order agenda" that would require Internet service providers to keep records of the activities of their customers activities. Employees of any Internet provider who fail to store that information face fines and prison terms of up to one year, the bill says. The U.S. Justice Department could order the companies to store those records forever.
The legislative fusillade marks the renewal of a political tussle that began in earnest last April, when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called on Congress to target Internet providers with new regulations, which have been generally opposed by telecommunications companies and civil liberties organizations. CNET News.com was the first to report that the Bush administration has been pushing for such a rule privately since mid-2005.
At issue is how broad the rules would be. The Attorney General would have power over the determination of what applies, but could force Internet providers to keep logs of Web browsing, instant message exchanges, or e-mail conversations indefinitely. (The bill does not, however, explicitly cover search engines or Web hosting companies, which officials have talked about before as targets of regulation.)