Barbara Buono's Lesbian Daughter Is In A Very Different Situation Than Louie Gohmert's Lesbian Daughter

Digby, Jacquie and Amato met with Barbara Buono at Netroots Nation last week-- so now we can all vouch for what an incredible governor she would make. All she has to do is get around a gigantic roadblock, media darling (they're masochists) Chris Christie. But, as far as Blue America is concerned, it's now official: we endorse Barbara Buono for governor of the Garden State!

Early Monday morning I found an e-mail from someone named Tessa Bitterman. I never heard of her and almost deleted it. But something made me open it and read it. I'm glad I did. Tessa is Barbara Buono's youngest daughter, a law student. Perhaps you read the tragedy of Republican Congressman and sociopathic homophobe Louie Gohmert (R-TX), whose daughter, an artist and a lesbian, moved to Shanghai to get as far away from her hate-filled father as she could. Very sad, especially as Gohmert runs around spreading lies and divisiveness about the LGBT community. Buono's daughter is also a lesbian and, of course, her relationship with her mother is nothing like the acrimonious and combative one in the Gohmert household. This is the e-mail from Tessa-- not about Gohmert, but about another Republican hatemonger and homophobe, Chris Christie:

Growing up, my mom was always there for me no matter what. I’m gay and from an early age I felt free to express myself with my mother, knowing she would always support me for who I am.

As a gay American I have a stake in what our governor says about marriage equality. And I have been deeply shocked by Chris Christie. As governor, he has been a giant roadblock to New Jersey achieving equality for all. By failing to support marriage equality, Christie is blatantly delegitimizing an entire group of people.

I have also seen Chris Christie misrepresent himself as a moderate to New Jersey-- that’s why it’s even more important to stop him before he takes his radical show on the road when he goes national after this election.

...Now that Christie is running for re-election, he is more than happy to try and portray himself as a moderate. But the truth is-- his record scares me. It scares me because if he takes his brand of deception national, all Americans are in for a rude awakening.

Tessa urges her readers to contribute to her mom's campaign-- which you can do here-- and reminds New Jersey voters that "if we want to keep politics of polarizing and dividing people from spreading beyond New Jersey" we need to help Buono overcome the media's narrative that Christie "has the election in the bag." This photo shows the inside of Christie headquarters the other day, when interns were fed donuts. Read the label carefully:

UPDATE from Tessa

"Did you see what the Supreme Court just did? They just ruled that I and millions of other Americans have the right to have the federal government recognize our marriages.

"But here in New Jersey, Chris Christie is still blocking marriage equality-- he is trying to be more conservative than Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and the rest of the Tea Party."

And speaking of New Jersey's homophobic and bigoted governor, Christie disagrees with the Supreme Court rulings:

“I don’t think the ruling was appropriate,” said Christie, who is running for re-election in a blue state, one in which Democrats have hailed the SCOTUS decision on DOMA.

“I think it was wrong,” Christie continued, calling it “typical of the problem we see” in New Jersey’s own Supreme Court…

He blasted the U.S. Supremes for substituting “their own judgment for the judgment of a Republican Congress and a Democratic President. In the Republican Congress in the ‘90s and Bill Clinton. I thought that Justice Kennedy’s opinion was, in many respects, incredibly insulting to those people, 340-some members of Congress who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, and Bill Clinton.”

“He basically said that the only reason to pass that bill was to demean people. That’s heck of a thing to say about Bill Clinton and about the Republican Congress back in the ‘90s. And it’s just another example of judicial supremacy, rather than having the government run by the people we actually vote for,” said Christie, who recently appeared with Clinton at a Clinton Global Initiative conference.

Bill Clinton, of course, has completely disowned DOMA and has campaigned against it. The Republicans may too... in a couple decades. More reason than ever to support Barbara Buono for governor of New Jersey.

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Self-Loathing Closet Case Lindsey Graham Shafts The LGBT Community

When California's most rabidly homophobic state Senator, Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) was arrested for drunken driving and discovered with a young male prostitute in his car, I was impressed with how quickly he came to terms with how disastrous his life in the closet had been.

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.

...The best I can do is to say that I was hiding. I was so in terror I could not allow any attention to come my way. So any measure that had to do with the subject of sexual orientation was an automatic "no" vote. I was paralyzed by this fear, and so I voted without even looking at the content. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of people under the law, regardless of our skin color, national origin, our height, our weight, our sexual orientation. This is a nation predicated on the belief that there is no discrimination on those characteristics, and so my vote denied people equal treatment, and I'm truly sorry for that.

Not every Republican who forced the Senate to strip LGBT couple out of the comprehensive immigration bill this week is a closet case. But self-loather Lindsey Graham is. "Everyone" in Washington knows he is but he's allowed to get away with threatening to scuttle the whole bill if it includes gays like himself. Last week former GOP congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) married his boyfriend. Because of DOMA-- which he voted for while still closeted-- he won't be able to sponsor his new Panamanian husband's residence permit in the U.S. Lindsey Graham will have his painful day of reckoning as well.

Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who first introduced the Permanent Partners Immigration Act, in the year 2000 and has re-introduced a version of LGBT immigration equality legislation in each subsequent Congress, was dismayed that the Senate scuttled his legislation.

As the House sponsor of the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), I am extremely disappointed that an amendment to ensure equal treatment for same-sex, bi-national couples was withheld, without a vote, during the Senate Judiciary Committee consideration of the immigration reform legislation. I applaud the leadership of Chairman Leahy, who was determined to–and did–offer an amendment that would allow LGBT families to stay together. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans made clear that they are unwilling to even consider ending the harsh discrimination that LGBT families face in our immigration process, and the disturbing decision to give in to their threats and fear-mongering has again let prejudice rule the day. Excluding LGBT couples cannot be reconciled with so-called “comprehensive” immigration reform. Committed LGBT couples deserve better than the wanton cruelty that current law exacts, and the failure to even hold a vote both condemns thousands of loving families to more needless suffering and gives unfair cover to those unwilling to stand up for justice.

  Despite this setback, I will continue to press forward in our fight to get relief for these families. And I remain hopeful that the Supreme Court will do what’s right in the Windsor case, by overturning DOMA, and ending discrimination under federal immigration and other laws against legally married same-sex couples.

Leahy is expected to reintroduce the LGBT amendment again while the immigration bill is on the Senate floor, so that Lindsey Graham hysteria won't scuttle it. If Miss McConnell, another deranged closet case, decides to lead a filibuster-- which is likely-- it won't get a vote. But in a straight up or down vote, it would easily win, with several Republicans crossing the aisle. Many non-Southern Republicans would prefer not to be forced into voting on the issue. A large and growing majority of non-Southerners backs equality for the LGBT community. If the Republicans use the immigration bill as a hostage against gays, the Republicans who are the most likely to suffer next year are not rotten closet cases Graham and McConnell-- who represent anti-equality states-- but... no one. It's not likely that a single GOP senator will lose in 2014 because of homophobia (unless Graham and McConnell get into some kind of Larry Craig- or Mark Foley-like scandal) but it further damages the Republican brand and could help persuade independent and moderate voters in close House elections to give up on their GOP incumbents, particularly these 15 seats in areas where people are not interested in legislating bigotry:

• Michelle Bachmann (R-MN)
• Paul Ryan (R-WI)
• Buck McKeon (R-CA)
• Tom Reed (R-NY)
• Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (R-NY)
• Joe Heck (R-NV)
• Jon Runyan (R-NJ)
• John Kline (R-MN)
• Fred Upton (R-MI)
• Jeff Denham (R-CA)
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
• Jim Gerlach (R-PA)
• Tom Latham (R-IA)
• Mike Coffman (R-CO)
• Chris Gibson (R-NY)

Ironically, in Gibson's case, the opponent likely to beat him next year is Sean Eldridge, a wealthy venture capitalist married to Facebook founder Chris Hughes. Money won't be an issue.

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Midnight Train To Georgia-- Tbilisi Not Safe For Tourists

Barbaric, primitive priests spread fear and hatred in Georgia

Yesterday I wrote about how primitive, Bronze Age notions regarding the subjugation of women in the patriarchal societies of the 3 major Abrahamic religions, still leads to thousands of brutal murders and barbaric treatment of women all over the world. Friday saw a demonstration related to that mentality in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. This time the victims of the primitive religionists, though, were gay people.

The first thing an international traveler notices on arriving in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia, is that the road leading from the airport to downtown is George W. Bush Avenue. It's a warning. Although rated a "safe" city, many people are backward and very primitive so there is always a certain danger, like the violent conservative riots that broke out Friday against the LGBT community in which 30 people were injured, several seriously. WikiTravel points to "a land filled with magnificent history and unparalleled natural beauty" and asks you to "[i]magine cities with narrow side streets filled with leaning houses, overstretched balconies, mangled and twisted stairways, majestic old churches, heavenly food and warm and welcoming people. All of this with a backdrop of magnificent snow peaked mountains, and the best beaches of the Black Sea." The news reports this weekend pointed to a savage, xenophobic and dangerous people led by primitive, hate-filled priests instead.

Of course, deranged religionist hate-mongers aren't confined to Georgia

A raging mob in Tbilisi chased away a downtown rally designed to commemorate the May 17 International Day against Homophobia. “Kill them! Tear them to pieces!” yelled the agitated crowd as police struggled to evacuate a handful of gay-rights supporters from the Georgian capital's central Freedom Square.

It was a scene of medieval mob violence, as thousands of Georgians-- mostly young men, but also robed priests and women in headscarves-- stormed through a police cordon and went pursuing the activists. “Where are they? Don’t let them leave alive!” screamed frenzied men, as they took over the square, outnumbering and overpowering police troops.

Police barely managed to herd some of the LGBT activists into municipal buses, before angry protesters surrounded the vehicles. The crowd hit, threw stones and followed the buses as they pushed their way out of the square.

The pursuit continued on the side streets. Just outside the square, a mob tried to storm a house, where several gay rights activists had sought refuge. “Drag them out, stomp them to death,” screamed one woman as  she tried to push her way through a group of policemen, who wrestled with the mob at the entrance of the house.

Youngsters swore, beat and threw various objects at police officers, who eventually pulled the activists into a car. A stampede occurred as the mob tried to chase the car down the narrow street, with some falling into ditches.

At the different corner of the downtown, several activists sought asylum in a grocery store and police managed to fight off the mob that tried to break into the shop.

Very few civilians dared to speak against the violence. “Look at yourselves! You call yourselves Christians?” objected one elderly woman in tears, speaking from a balcony. “Go ahead, kill everyone you are told to hate in the name of God and national values.”

Government officials from both the ruling Georgian Dream and President Mikheil Saakashvili's minority National Movement condemned the violence and blamed each other's policies for it.

“Both groups have a full right to hold peaceful rallies. Violence is unacceptable,” said Justice Minister Tea Tsulukuani.

Appearing on Rustavi2 television, senior National Movement parliamentarian Gigi Tsereteli called the violence "anarchy," and noted that "This is not the state we were building..."

On the eve of the clash, the highly revered leader of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ilia II, called on the city government not to allow an LGBT demonstration in Tbilisi.

The patriarch also urged restrained conduct, but gay-rights activists claim that the church fomented the display of violence by speaking out against the rally.

In what some participants described as a voluntary initiative, gay-rights opponents, led by priests, gathered in the morning of May 17 and marched toward Freedom Square with posters like “Stop Promoting Homosexuality in Georgia” and “Homosexuality is the Worst Sin.” Parish women held strands of nettle in their hands.

“Nettle has curative properties,” one woman commented to EurasiaNet.org. “A few hits in the right place and it will kick those demented thoughts out of their heads.”

As the rally degenerated into violence, protesters screamed verbal abuse at Georgia’s National Ombudsman Ucha Nanuashvili and a US embassy official, who also showed up at the demonstration.

Brawls broke out in several parts of town and dozens were hospitalized. The tensions that continued for hours steamed off after the church called on the believers to relocate to the city’s main cathedral, Holy Trinity.

Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili earlier had emphasized that sexual minorities have equal rights with other Georgians under the law, adding that "Society will get used to it." So far, it doesn't look like it has.

Americans, Canadians and citizens of the European Union don't need visas to visit Georgia. The water isn't safe to drink there but "it is a very ingrained and idiosyncratic characteristic of Georgian hospitality that Georgians wish nothing more than to hear that foreigners are enjoying their experience in Georgia. Expect to be asked whether you enjoy Georgia and its cuisine. And it is expected that you respectfully reply in the affirmative. Otherwise your 'hosts' will look terribly dejected as if expressing a feeling of collective failure to show visitors enough hospitality." Watch the video to get a better insight into the national character.

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Arizona Republican Jim Kolbe Is Getting Gay-Married Today

Kolbe and Foley

Former eleven-term Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) has been "living in sin" with his Panamanian lover, Hector Alfonso, for eight years. Today they will legally wed at the Cosmos Club in DC. (It's still illegal for same sex couples to marry in Arizona, although recent polling shows 55% of Arizonans support marriage equality.) Kolbe is the first gay congressman who voted for DOMA in 1996 to get married. Back then, Kolbe was a closeted mainstream conservative-- one of many in the House Republican caucus who, for one reason or another-- felt they had to vote against the interests of the LGBT community. The only "out" Republican-- and the only Republican-- to oppose DOMA was Steve Gunderson (R-MN), who had been publicly outed by raging homophobe "B-1 Bob" Dornan on the floor of the House, in an attempt to humiliate him. And the Republicans weren't the only bigots that day. Nancy Pelosi only managed to muster 66 Democrats to oppose DOMA.

Among the Republican closet cases voting for Bob Barr's so-called Defense of Marriage Act were then-closeted Reps. David Dreier (R-CA), Mark Foley (R-FL), Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Dave Camp (R-MI), Jim McCrery (R-LA), Phil English (R-PA), Denny Hastert (R-IL), and Bill Paxon (R-NY). This week, Kolbe told the Washington Blade "Two decades ago, I could not have imagined such an event as this would be possible. A decade ago I could not imagine that I would find someone I could be so compatible with that I would want to spend the rest of my life with that person. So, this is a very joyous day for both of us." Ironically, even though they’ll be legally married, Kolbe will still be unable to sponsor his spouse for residency in the United States because of the DOMA legislation he helped pass.

Yesterday I had a pleasant talk with one of those former closet cases/former congressmen, Mark Foley. Of course, he was genuinely happy for his old friend Kolbe. "Any time people find love," he told me, "they need to celebrate it. And he's not only celebrating it, he's memorializing it with this ceremony." The two used to travel together frequently but have lost touch in recent years. They were members of the moderate Republican Ripon Society and of the House Republicans' Tuesday Group. "We were called the Tuesday Group but we met on Wednesdays. People used to ask if we were hiding from our friends, the rednecks," laughed Foley who regrets that so many of his colleagues from the Tuesday Group have been forced to turn sharply right more recently, for the sake of political expediency (or survival). There were around 40 members then, which, according to the New Republic "provided a private forum for the party’s more moderate members, and, in its own quiet way, it pushed back against the Republican leadership, preventing it from running off increasingly radical rails... While the Tuesday Group occasionally pushed moderate legislation, members freely admit that its greatest impact was behind the scenes. Tuesday’s members worked to squash measures that would inevitably divide the party-- like strict restrictions on abortion and deep cuts to spending on scientific research or education-- 'bills that would never have had any workability and would just further drive the wedge between us,'" explained Nancy Johnson, then a moderate Republican from Connecticut. Foley remembers that he and Kolbe were members, as were Fred Upton, Mike Castle, Sue Kelly, Mark Kirk, Charlie Bass...

Just before the vote for DOMA on July 12, 1996, there was a Democratic Motion to Recommit, an attempt to ameliorate the negative aspects of the bill. It failed 164-249 but most Democrats (134) voted for it, as did 30 Republicans, mostly Tuesday Group members. The only Republican closet cases who voted for DOMA but also took the brave stand of crossing the aisle to vote with the Democrats on the Motion to Recommit were Kolbe and Foley-- NOT Dreier, Rohrabacher, Camp, McCrery, English, Hastert or Paxon, each of whom voted NO. Foley's proud he voted for the Motion but he knows he should have opposed DOMA. "It was always," he told me, " a vote I wish I could have undone... It's a vote I've always regretted." He then reminded me that both he and Kolbe also voted in favor of domestic partnerships for DC and that "very clearly, Hillary Clinton has just evolved on this topic last week."

Kolbe's come a long way. Mazel tov! Watch his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last month:

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Is The GOP Still In Thrall To The Lavender Scare?

Rep. Aaron Schock's lavender belt

It was historical for Jason Collins to write in Sports Illustrated today that "I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay." I bet it will inspire and fortify thousands of young men and women all over the world. I recall, vividly, sitting with Harvey Milk in the backroom office of his Castro Street camera shop right after a flurry of national media coverage of his successful election as a San Francisco Supervisor. He pulled out a mailbag filled with letters from people. There's one he read to me that still makes my eyes well up with tears. It was from a terrified gay kid in Nebraska or Kansas who talked about how Harvey's election had given him the hope that he didn't have to commit suicide. Collins:

I realized I needed to go public when Joe Kennedy, my old roommate at Stanford and now a Massachusetts congressman, told me he had just marched in Boston's 2012 Gay Pride Parade. I'm seldom jealous of others, but hearing what Joe had done filled me with envy. I was proud of him for participating but angry that as a closeted gay man I couldn't even cheer my straight friend on as a spectator. If I'd been questioned, I would have concocted half truths. What a shame to have to lie at a celebration of pride. I want to do the right thing and not hide anymore. I want to march for tolerance, acceptance and understanding. I want to take a stand and say, "Me, too."

The recent Boston Marathon bombing reinforced the notion that I shouldn't wait for the circumstances of my coming out to be perfect. Things can change in an instant, so why not live truthfully? When I told Joe a few weeks ago that I was gay, he was grateful that I trusted him. He asked me to join him in 2013. We'll be marching on June 8.

No one wants to live in fear. I've always been scared of saying the wrong thing. I don't sleep well. I never have. But each time I tell another person, I feel stronger and sleep a little more soundly. It takes an enormous amount of energy to guard such a big secret. I've endured years of misery and gone to enormous lengths to live a lie. I was certain that my world would fall apart if anyone knew. And yet when I acknowledged my sexuality I felt whole for the first time. I still had the same sense of humor, I still had the same mannerisms and my friends still had my back.

I used to think I was colorblind because I started hanging around with a bunch of really over-the-top, effeminate gay guys in Amsterdam. The ring leader-- or den mother-- was the grandson of a very right-wing Republican congressman from Ohio and the family was happy to pay him a-- what seemed at the time to me-- gargantuan sum to stay out of the U.S. Anyway, that's a whole other story. The reason I thought I was colorblind is because these guys used to always be talking about colors I couldn't see: russet, saffron, mauve, cerulean, sable, jacinthe, azure, chartreuse, aubergine, celadon, vermilion, lavender. Eventually I figured out I wasn't colorblind, just ignorant. Eventually I bought a whole set of dishes in Chiang Mai made of celadon and one of the bands on my label named an album Cerulean. And then there was the infamous photo of Illinois Republican Congressman Aaron Schock (above) in his very gay get up-- he tweeted he burned the whole outfit after the picture went viral-- with a lavender (is that lavender?) belt.

Lavender has been tied to the LGBT community long before the Illinois closet case started sashaying around in that belt. In fact, this is the 60th anniversary of what was once known as "the Lavender Purge," perfect for a national debate about passing ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

On April 27, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued an executive order calling for the removal of homosexuals from all federal agencies. Gay and lesbian government workers were immediately fired or resigned out of fear of being publicly outed.  Even LGBT people working in the private sector whose jobs required them to have a federal security clearance were also fired or resigned.

The supposed justification for the purge was that homosexuals were a godless, immoral group who would work with communists to overthrow the government, thereby posing an imminent threat to national security.

While many remember the “Red Scare” of the mid-20th century, the purging of LGBT government employees, dubbed the “Lavender Scare,” today rarely receives its due as a catalyst for the LGBT equality movement. In 2004, David K. Johnson helped bring the historical moment to light in his book The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government.

Do you think Jason Collins will inspire Aaron Schock? Lindsey Graham? Patrick McHenry? Do you think any of the dozen or so Republican closet cases in Congress will come out? Do you think Josh Howard's film based on Johnson's book will help Miss McConnell reach down deep and find the courage? Dave Camp? Adrian Smith? Trent Franks? Forget it. It's more likely they'll be shuddering in fear behind their closet doors praying it isn't their turn to be caught yet, so have to claim alcoholism and resign in self-imposed antebellum disgrace. It's more likely that they're petrified that a book like David Rosen's Sex Scandal America-- Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming will one day include a paragraph or two about them. Will one of them be the next Bob Bauman (R-MD) or Jon Hinson (R-MS)? This is how Rosen dealt with the horrors visited on the LGBT community during the '50s.

The social repression of homosexuals during this period took many forms and involved both governmental and civil action. Government repression was implemented in two ways: in actions directed at federal employees (civilian or military) and in actions directed at the American citizenry. Government action took place on many fronts. Congressional and federal officials held hearings and investigations, conducted raids, undertook prosecutions and imprisoned ordinary (and sometimes extra-ordinary) people. Repression was framed as a battle over loyalty and ended in many front page exposés, with Weegee-esque black-and-white shots that gave the event a tawdry sheen. The social repression of this period represented the profound political instability America was confronting in terms of both domestic and international power.

Congressional hearings (as well as innumerable local and state government probes) were directed at perverts-- homosexuals, and pornographers, publishers of pulp fiction, comic books and "adult" photo-magazines. Among these, and probably the most pitiful, was the campaign waged against homosexuals. In 1950, the Nebraska House Republican, A.L. Miller helped write special language into that year's Security Act which legitimized the investigation of those identified as "perverts." At the other end of Congress, the Senate conducted a wide-ranging into the presence of "homosexuals and other perverts" in the federal government. Advocating the removal of all homosexuals from government employment (both civilian and military), the Senate report warned that "perverts tend to have a corrosive influence upon his fellow employees. These perverts will frequently attempt to entice normal individuals to engage in perverted practices. This is particularly true in the case of young and impressionable people who might come under the influence of a pervert... One homosexual can pollute a government office."

That wasn't all that long ago. Today the Senate has gay members but one, Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), was elected as an upfront gay person, her gender preference not even an issue in her election. There are openly gay Members of Congress from Colorado, Rhode Island, Arizona, California, Wisconsin and one, Carl Sciortino, likely to move from the Massachusetts state legislature to Congress in a special election. Still, none of the Republican gays in Congress have the guts to come out-- or to even support and end to discrimination against gays in employment. Jeff Merkely (D-OR) is working on getting some Republicans to help him shut down the '50's era, bigoted filibuster promised by reactionaries like Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Jeff Sessions (KKK-AL). Susan Collins (R-ME) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) are already on board and Rob Portman (the one with the gay son) may be coming along. But does anyone think there's any chance in hell that GOP closet cases Lindsey Graham and Miss McConnell would even consider backing ENDA? The only thing that keeps homophobia alive are gays too cowardly to come out and accept themselves.

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How Long Before Half the Gays Will Vote Republican?

Very nice; not for me

There was a time when no self-respecting son of Ireland or Italy, not to mention the children of immigrants from Eastern Europe, would consider voting for he stuffed shirt party of richie rich Republicans. Republicans were class enemies and Democrats were working for the betterment of working families. Republicans backed busting their unions to keep them down, while Democrats helped expand the middle class by passing minimum wage laws, extending the franchise, outlawing child labor, mandating collective bargaining, writing legislation to protect employees at their workplaces, all things the GOP fought tooth and nail. And the result? Millions of the grandchildren of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Russia, Poland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany moved up the economic ladder into prosperity and many of them went with the instinct of pulling up that economic ladder with them and... voting for Republicans. It's a cycle and it's worked for the GOP for decades.

And one day, as hard as it is to believe for non-gays now, it will work with gay people as well. In the current issue of Out there's a prominent sidebar on their "Power 50" feature, The Conservative Gay Tipping Point by Jason Farago. "It's too soon to call the GOP gay-friendly," he acknowledges, "but the rise of the pro-gay marriage Republican is a sign of a shift."

The Obama administration’s recent briefs to the Supreme Court against DOMA and Proposition 8 attest to the huge progress gays and lesbians have made in our fight for equality. But another, more unexpected brief may reflect an even greater change. In February, more than 130 Republicans petitioned the court to strike down the discriminatory California amendment-- and asserted that there’s no contradiction between conservative principles and same-sex marriage.

Many of them seem to have had a recent change of heart. Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor who opposed gay marriage when he ran for president last year, signed the brief. So did Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, who during her campaign for governor of California said she’d voted for Prop. 8 due to her “faith and conscience.” Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s campaign strategist, is there too, as is Stephen Hadley, George W. Bush’s national security adviser.

The brief’s main engineer was Ken Mehlman (No. 32 on Power List 2013), the gay Republican investment banker who managed Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign, which you may remember for its vicious strategy of demonizing gay Americans to drive evangelical turnout. But with younger voters decisively in favor of gay equality, Republicans have no choice but to adapt, and Mehlman, a consummate GOP insider, is now in the vanguard of an effort to reposition the right as a tolerant force. He’s not the only power player. The lead counselor in the Prop. 8 case is himself a veteran conservative: Ted Olson, who successfully fought Bush’s side in the 2000 Supreme Court case that won him the presidency.

It’s far too soon to call the GOP gay-friendly. Mehlman could find only two sitting members of Congress willing to join the Prop. 8 brief; only one Republican senator, Rob Portman of Ohio, is on the record as personally supporting gay marriage, and even he stopped well short of endorsing a constitutional right to wed. Conservatives still bridle at other political goals shared by many gays, from employment protections to AIDS research to transgender rights. All the same, the rise of the pro–gay marriage Republican is a sign of something: that in less than a decade, our relationships have won broad acceptance and that, at this rate, even the right will soon have more to gain from tolerance than from bias. That may be progress of a cynical sort, but it’s progress all the same.

Progress! Because half the gays would rather be Ward and June Cleaver than live the heroic bohemian life outside the cookie cutter mainstream inherent in what it meant to be gay to Jean Genet or John Rechy. Ah, alienation!

Conservatives say gays "choose" to be gay. That's not completely false. You may be born gay but to a good little Republican, the choice comes in on whether or not you open that closet door. A few days ago we looked at the tragedy of Mississippi Republican Congressman Jon Hinson, one of the dozens of closeted Republican elected officials whose lives were defined by the wrong choice, the only choice permissible for a conservative-- life in a dark, tortured closet. His miserable ending is the only permissible ending for a gay Republican... at least if they want to stay Republican (which really is a choice).

Let's go, Wally!

I acted on my unexplainable, mysterious biological feelings because-- at least in part-- I didn't want to be Ward and June Cleaver. Not ever. Not for one second of my existence. I would rather be an outlaw. I read The Thief's Journal and Querelle by Genet and my fate was sealed. I read Rechy's City of Night and Numbers, started supporting myself as a male prostitute and bought a VW van so I could drive across the country to L.A., specifically to Griffith Park (where, totally coincidentally, I live now). I would have been happy to screw Wally Cleaver when Barbara Billingsley and Hugh Beaumont were at church with Beaver but there was never a day in my life when I wanted to join a church, join an army or get married-- or be a Republican. Enjoy the video; there's no reason it's part of this post... except that it insisted on being included. So what the hell; it's good.

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Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) Who Once Voted For DOMA Is Getting Married To A Man Next Month

Here's one homophobic asshole whose mind Kolbe won't be able to change anytime soon

I had already ended my time as the pop music critic for The Advocate in 1996 when Arizona Republican Congressman Jim Kolbe came out as gay. But I still recall the stir around the magazine because they had decided to publicly "out" Kolbe after he voted for DOMA, which was meant to prevent gay couples from marrying. Since almost everyone in Washington already knew Kolbe was gay, the homophobic vote seemed especially hypocritical. Kolbe decided to beat The Advocate to the punch by calling a press conference and announcing he was officially out of the closet.

Within days of the vote on the Defense of Marriage Act, they began a blistering campaign on the Internet to compel Mr. Kolbe to disclose that he himself was gay, a practice known as outing.

The campaign reached its peak last week with a full-page ad in the Washington Blade, a newspaper that reaches a nationwide gay audience, calling on "all closeted gay and lesbian members of Congress" to "end your silence and defend your community."

On Thursday night, Mr. Kolbe spoke.

He also spoke yesterday-- at the Senate Judiciary Committee, this time urging senators to include gay couples in the immigration bill they're working on. He and his partner, Hector Alfonso, are getting married in May.

Kolbe, a Republican who represented the Tucson area in Congress for 11 terms, has a partner from Panama who had to leave the United States after his work visa expired, bringing his teaching career in this country to an abrupt halt. Under current law, Kolbe could not sponsor his partner for a family reunification visa.

Kolbe's partner was able to return to the United States from Panama a year later after obtaining an investment visa, which allows immigrants who invest in new U.S. businesses to live here. But Kolbe said the process was long and expensive, costing more than many people can afford to spend.

"Our laws should not separate American citizens from their loved ones for such unacceptably long periods of time," Kolbe told the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is holding a series of hearings on an 844-page immigration reform bill drawn up by a bipartisan group of eight senators. Among the bill's authors are Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake.

The committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has introduced separate legislation, the "Uniting American Families Act," that would allow gay Americans to sponsor their foreign-born partners to come to the United States using family reunification visas. That controversial provision is not part of the sweeping reform bill, although gay rights' advocates are urging that it be included.

"While the bill you are considering is an excellent starting point for reform, I submit to you that it is still incomplete," Kolbe told committee members. "Families like mine are left behind as part of this proposal. Equally important, U.S. businesses and our economy suffer because of the omission of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families from the bill introduced last week."

Kolbe's come a long way since voting for DOMA, as has public opinion (not to mention France and Delaware, each of which legalized marriage equality earlier today)... but his party hasn't. The vast majority of Republicans in Congress are still hateful and virulent homophones-- or at least pretending to be-- and oppose marriage equality and immigration equality. Let's see if he can convince any of the Republican closet cases Congress-- like Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Aaron Schock (R-IL), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Dave Camp (R-MI), etc.-- to support the LGBT community even before being officially outed.

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Plato: "The Measure Of A Man Is What He Does With Power"

Out specializes in lists-- the 100 this and the 20 that. Every few months they have a list. It must sell issues. The new one has the The Power 50 of 2013. "Welcome," they write, "to our 7th annual ranked list of the gay men and women whose power and prestige is instrumental in influencing the way Americans think about, and engage with, the world." And although Apple CEO Tim Cook is #1 again this year-- don't ask me; I have no idea-- there are quite a few more political figures on the list than usual... even without the now retired Barney Frank.

Rachel Maddow moves up to #4-- between TV show maker Ryan Murphy (Glee and The New Normal) and Anderson Cooper-- but the highest entry for a newcomer is NY Times columnist and statistician Nate Silver at #6, as gay as... Tim Cook.

Haters gonna hate-- but that didn’t stop the wunderkind statistician from prognosticating the 2012 presidential election with, at final count, 100% percent accuracy on his New York Times blog, FiveThirtyEight. As a result, on the day after the election, Silver’s book, The Signal and the Noise, skyrocketed in sales, hitting number 2 on the Amazon bestseller list. The numbers nerd is currently planning his next move, while continuing to apply his data-driven model to everything from the Oscars to the Super Bowl.

This year's highest rated politician per se is the freshman senator from Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin at #9.

She shattered a glass ceiling when she became the first openly gay senator elected in U.S. history. Although a junior senator, Baldwin previously served as a congresswoman representing Wisconsin from 1993–2013. Asked on the campaign trail what it would mean for her to win, Baldwin replied, “When you’re not in the room, the conversation is about you. When you’re in the room, the conversation is with you.”

They lump 3 congressmen together at #15-- Mark Takano (D-CA), David Cicilline (D-RI) and Jared Polis (D-CO):

These three statesmen are the real deal in the new gay-friendly climate on Capitol Hill.

A freshman congressman, Takano (D-California) joined the House this term as its first openly gay, non-white member.

Cicilline (D-Rhode Island) won re-election this November in a heated race.

A co-chairman of the LGBT Equality Caucus, Polis (D-Colorado) cosponsored and helped pass a version of the Violence Against Women Act, updated to protect LGBT women.

Also on this year's list are New York City Council Speaker, and mayoral candidate Christine Quinn, Republican Party strategist Ken Mehlman, Houston Mayor Annise Parker, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry (nope, I didn't know either), as well as plenty of media figures, from Matt Drudge, Kevin McClatchy, and Andrew Sullivan to Perez Hilton. Is Drudge out? His wikipedia page sure doesn't mention he is, only that "[b]y early 2009, Drudge earned millions of dollars a year, travelled extensively (Israel, Las Vegas, Geneva), had moved to another property in Miami and become reclusive, communicating regularly only with a select group that included Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Andrew Breitbart."

So if Out is outing closet cases, what about politicians like Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and Aaron Schock (R-IL), the ones who barely try to hide it when they're outside of their own districts any longer?

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Republican Party Makes A Decision-- They'll Hold Onto The Anti-LGBT Bigotry For Another Cycle

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The decision was unanimous. Every single member of the Republican National Committee voted to reaffirm the party's opposition to marriage equality. There was no debate and the package of conservative resolutions passed with a voice vote-- Soviet style, just the way Reince Priebus likes it. The delegates had been spooked by threats from the far, dark corners of the anti-Jesus crowd to pull out of the party if they didn't keep with the homophobia.

Carnival barkers and freak show hucksters who control much of the Southern core of the GOP have made themselves personally rich by stirring up hatred and divisiveness and they weren't taking any hints that the GOP tone down the rhetoric against the LGBT community lying down-- despite polling that shows they are swimming against the tide of history.

Last month, prominent leaders like Mike Huckabee, Gary Bauer, and the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins were already suggesting the possibility of leaving the party if its positions soften. Now, a coalition of anti-gay and anti-choice groups have written a letter warning the GOP leadership that “an abandonment of its principles will necessarily result in the abandonment of our constituents to their support.”

Though the letter addresses several social conservative issues such as abortion and school vouchers, it focuses particularly on LGBT issues. It encourages the Republican leaders to approve a resolution affirming the 2012 Republican Platform...

That was the resolution that passed unanimously Friday-- right after Tony Perkins called on right-wingers to stop contributing to the Republican Party (and give the money to him instead). From an e-mail CNN exposed: “Until the RNC and the other national Republican organizations grow a backbone and start defending core principles, don’t send them a dime of your hard-earned money. If you want to invest in the political process, and I encourage you to do so, give directly to candidates who reflect your values and organizations you trust-like FRC Action.”

Last year FRC Action, the PAC Perkins controls spent $40,000 on 9 Senate races. Except for Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Deb Fischer (R-NE), all their candidates lost, some, like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, spectacularly... and by following the advise of right-wing extremists like Perkins. I bet though, the last three Democrats against marriage equality aren't going to get much help from Perkins and his bigotry colleagues when they run for reelection.

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Not Every Homophobe In Congress Is Republican-- And The DCCC Wants To Spend Your Money On Anti-Gay "Democrats" Running For Reelection

Jim Matheson (D-UT), a face of the Mormon bigotry against the LGBT community. Last year the DCCC funneled $1.3 million into reelecting him

When you contribute to the DCCC, most of the money that gets earmarked for candidates goes to Frontliners, vulnerable incumbents viewed as having the worst chances to be reelected. There's a list. Most of them, though not all, wind up on the list because they vote like Republicans and local Democrats hate them and don't contribute to them or even vote for them. Like Mike McIntyre... who came within 650 votes of losing in November, will face a primary from Jonathan Barfield next year and, if he survives that (and doesn't retire or try a career Hail Mary pass with a pointless run against Kay Hagan), will be challenged by Republican David Rouzer again. Democrats in North Carolina may abhor Rouzer, but McIntyre usually votes exactly the same way he promises to vote-- last month against minimum wage, for example. Only 6 Democrats joined the Republicans to defeat a proposal to raise the minimum wage-- John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog/New Dem-NC), Bill Owens (New Dem-NY), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) and Kurt Shrader (Blue Dog/New Dem-OR)-- and, like with any reactionary initiative, Boehner and Cantor know they can count on McIntyre. So if you responded to one of Steve Israel's desperate and unending pleas for contributions last week, you just helped finance the several million dollars the DCCC will waste trying to defend McIntyre's seat next year. And if you're gay or pro-LGBT rights it's doubly ironic because McIntyre is one of Congress' most virulent and hateful bigots.

The last time the Republicans made an anti-gay push-- with a homophobic amendment to the Violence Against Women Act on February 28-- 164 Republicans + Mike McIntyre (NC) and nominal Democrat Dan Lipinski (IL) voted for it. It wasn't enough to carry the day. 60 Republicans (not to mention the 197 other Democrats) seem to have decided homophobia is on the way out and the GOP leadership amendment was defeated despite McIntyre's treachery.

Democrats have evolved mightily on LGBT equality-- at least most Democrats have. In July 1996 when DOMA first passed 118 Democrats joined with 224 Republicans to pass it. Only 65 Democrats (+ Independent Bernie Sanders and one gay Republican, Steve Gunderson, voted against it). Last year crazed GOP homophobe and hatemonger Steve King (R-IA) attached an amendment to the 2013 defense appropriations bill to prevent same sex couples from marrying on bases. It passed 247-166. There were 17 Democrats who also voted with the hate-mongers. Here's the list. The ones bolded were singled out by the DCCC, not for retribution but for special financial support in their reelection bids. They were on the DCCC's Frontline list for 2012 and their faltering reelection campaigns were top priorities for DCCC spending last cycle. Because millions of dollars were spent on them, there was no money to go after vulnerable Republican policy makers like Paul Ryan, Buck McKeon, Fred Upton, Eric Cantor, etc:

John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA)
Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY)- defeated
Jerry Costello (IL)- retired
Mark Critz (PA)- defeated
Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
Joe Donnelley (Blue Dog-IN)
Gene Green (TX)
Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA)- defeated in primary
Larry Kissell (Blue Dog-NC)- defeated
Dan Lipinksi (IL)
Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)
Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog/New Dem-NC)
Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
Nick Rahall (WV)
Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR)- forced to retire
Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC)- forced to retire

Over the weekend The Hill counted 11 Democrats left in Congress who are unevolved gay hating bigots. Obviously McIntyre is one of them. Their list includes the 9 Democrats who voted in 2011 to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act that denies federal benefits to gay couples who have neither left Congress nor publicly changed their positions: Barrow, Bishop, Cuellar, Green, Lipinski, Matheson, McIntyre, Peterson and Rahall plus two freshmen Democrats who voiced opposition to same-sex marriage during their 2012 campaigns: Bill Enyart (IL) and Pete Gallego (Blue Dog-TX). Of the 11, Israel has vowed to pump immense sums of DCCC money into the campaigns of Barrow, Enyart, Gallego, Matheson, and, once again, McIntyre.

The Hill also counts 9 Democrats who haven't taken a position on marriage equality yet: New Dem chairman Ron Kind (WI), Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA), Cedric Richmond (New Dem-LA), Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog/New Dem-OR), David Scott (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA), Terry Sewell (New Dem-AL), Bennie Thompson (MS), Pete Visclosky (IN) and freshman Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX).

The Hill contacted all 20 offices this week as the Supreme Court considered two gay marriage cases and several Democratic senators made headlines by announcing their support for gay marriage.

Matheson, Rahall, and Gallego’s offices said they continue to oppose legalizing gay marriage.

Green said the choice should be left to the individual states but didn’t address DOMA, which he’d voted to uphold, or say whether he personally supported gay marriage.

Richmond told The Hill in a statement that he is “a firm proponent of equal rights” and thinks DOMA is unconstitutional, but didn’t expressly endorse legalizing gay marriage. His office said they had nothing more to offer on the matter when asked if that meant he backed gay marriage or just civil unions.

The rest of the offices did not respond to requests for comment.

Sewell said in 2010 that she supported gay rights but expressed a preference for civil unions over gay marriage.

Thompson and Scott voted for an amendment to the Constitution that would have banned gay marriage in 2006. They also are among the 29 Democrats who didn’t sign a 2012 "friend of the court" brief urging the Supreme Court to strike down DOMA, though both voted against DOMA when it came up for a vote in 2011.

Nine of those 29 Democrats now say they support gay marriage: Reps. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), Mel Watt (D-N.C.), Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) and Ruben Hinojosa (D-Texas).

“Like many Americans, my views have evolved over time and I believe that committed adults-- be them gay or straight-- deserve to marry the person they love,” Butterfield told The Hill in a statement this week that represented his first public support for gay marriage.

Hinojosa was in Congress in 2006 but didn’t vote on the amendment, and voted against DOMA in 2011. His office this week said he supported gay marriage, the first time he appears to have publicly done so.

Important: if you contribute to the DCCC, you are contributing to reelecting Blue Dog hatemongers like Matheson, McIntyre, Gallego and Barrow who vow to vote with the Republicans to make sure there will never be equality for the LGBT community. Is that where you want your money to go? May I suggest an alternative? Every candidate on the Blue America list is publicly committed to LGBT equality.

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