Big, huge victories against DOMA lead the news for the week, as already mentioned. The battle against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is getting even more interesting as two groups for LGBT servicemembers issue conflicting advice about whether to complete the Pentagon’s survey about DADT.
What happened to the ENDA vote Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) said would happen this week? Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) now says she hopes it will happen in the next couple of weeks. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a House committee that Congress should not pass its own repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell before he
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen told a Senate committee he is in favor of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said they have appointed a high-level working group to report, by the end of the year, on how the military can implement such a change if Congress
A bit brief this week, but I’m sure you’ll be busy just keeping up with the Prop 8 trial. All the Prop 8 news that’s fit to print: Some of those covering the trial in detail are Bilerico, the Courage Campaign, Keen News Service, the San Jose Mercury News, Pam’s House Blend, and the New
Another big week: President Obama “is under pressure to engage on a variety of gay issues that are coming to the fore” reports the New York Times. Perhaps obvious, but the article is a good summary of where things stand. Lawyer Emma Ruby-Sachs looks at the two lesbians who are under consideration for the U.S.
Can we compromise on marriage? David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch think so. Pam disagrees. What about you? The Obama administration named Jeffrey S. Crowley, an openly gay man, Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy. The U.S. State Department’s annual Human Rights Report condemns Russia, Serbia, and Nigeria, for breaches of human rights for
Lawmakers in both houses of Congress reintroduced legislation to allow a foreign national’s domestic partner in the United States to sponsor their immigration to the country. The bill is now known as the Uniting American Families Act. In celebration of Freedom to Marry Week, same-sex couples applied for marriage licenses around the country, including Dallas,
President Obama has appointed Alison J. Nathan, who is openly lesbian, as his associate counsel. Nathan was recently the Fritz Alexander Fellow at New York University School of Law and a visiting assistant professor at Fordham Law School. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Nathan was the national voter protection senior advisor to the Obama campaign
Some good, some bad, and some ugly this week: The federal First Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments on March 7 in Cook v. Gates (formerly Cook v. Rumsfeld [Ha! -Ed.]), a constitutional challenge to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on LGB service members. Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton also
