The Spokesman-Review says:

Idaho Republican Party leaders are calling on the state Legislature to invalidate local city ordinances that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation - like the one Coeur d’Alene passed after an emotional community debate just two weeks ago.

Six Idaho cities have passed such non-discrimination ordinances in the past year and a half, and a seventh, Idaho Falls, is looking into one now; the Idaho GOP wants them halted.

I'm trying to picture the kind of a person who wakes up in the morning and says to himself, "Today's the day! I'm finally gonna take a stand against those anti-discrimination laws!" How do you think that thought and not realize how monstrous your behavior is?

It's not one of President Obama's grand, sweeping speeches, but it's still nice to see a president addressing these issues in the White House:

There's a new Pew Research study out on attitudes about gay rights, and among all the usual trends—older Americans being less supportive of gay rights, everyone nevertheless conceding that gay marriage is inevitable—comes one unusual finding. As Michael Dimock, director of the Pew Research Center explained it to NPR:

Younger Americans are slightly more likely to say homosexuality is a choice.

But! What's even more striking about this trend is that it's not heralding some sort of return to the past. It's a result of the old, polarized language about homosexuality being a "choice" slowly becoming foreign to young Americans—so foreign that it now confuses them.

"They're not really engaged in the question of what it is," Dimock told NPR. "All they know is that it's OK with them." So, when a pollster asks them whether homosexuality is a choice, they don't hear a word laden with disapproval and political poison. They just say: "Yeah, it's a fine choice."

The entire internet is howling this morning about a "rude" and "boorish" lesbian protester who should run to her lesbian bedroom and bawl shameful lesbian tears after causing a ruckus while First Lady Michelle Obama was speaking at a fundraiser last night:

Ellen Sturtz, who paid to attend the Democratic fundraiser at a private home in western Washington state, interrupted the First Lady to demand that the President sign an executive order banning workplace discrimination. According to a press pool report, Michelle “left the lectern and moved over to the protester.” The pool report quoted Obama as saying: “Listen to me or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving. You all decide. You have one choice.”

The crowd cheered for their favorite! They preferred to listen to Michelle Obama—duh, it was Democratic Fundraiser, and she's Michelle Obama, so it's not a hard choice—instead of the impolite interloper. Security marched Sturtz out of the room while she hollered that she's “a lesbian looking for federal equality before I die.”

Praising the FLOTUS this morning, Mary Elizabeth Williams says that it was a "win" for the first lady and lamented that the "headline-grabbing outburst is a common ploy, one that, it depresses me to say, is far too often used by those of us here on the crunchy left."

I totally agree with her about the overused, crunchy tactic—and I think Michelle did win—but I think that gay-rights protester won too. And she has Michelle to thank for it.

If the first lady had just kept talking, hit the silent alarm (I like to imagine there's a red button under that lectern), or waited at the podium till security escorted Sturtz from the room, that kerfuffle would have been a media blip. But Michelle Obama was such an incredible bad-ass, a brassy diva about the whole thing that NOW WE CAN'T STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. America is talking about the president's authority to "issue an executive order barring federal contractors from discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Thanks to Michelle Obama's awesome smackdown, this wound up far more high-profile than a typical, crunchy heckle. So Sturtz shouldn't cry in her room—she should send Michele Obama a thank-you card.

PS — Dear President Obama: Please "issue an executive order barring federal contractors from discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Usually when I post something to Slog about a high school's treatment of its LGBT students it's a negative story. Like this one:

The graduation ceremony at St. Pius X High School in Albuquerque, N.M., on Wednesday was one student short, as a transgender teen refused to participate in the commencement exercises because the school told him he would have to wear a female student gown. Damian Garcia, a graduating senior at St. Pius X who identifies as male and had a legal name change last year, was told by the school officials that he must wear the white gown reserved for females, or not participate in the ceremony. And so, Garcia elected to stay home.

So this story represents a nice change of pace:

When 18-year-old Chelsea posted a photo of her classmates Brad Taylor And Dylan Meehan to her Tumblr blog this week, she did not anticipate the incredible response it would receive — within 24 hours, the entry had been shared almost 100,000 times. The image was taken from her high school yearbook, and she included this caption:

"Two of my best friends won Cutest Couple of our senior class. First time in my school history a same sex couple has even been able to run for this category, not to mention winning it. So proud of them, and my school."

Dylan and Brad gave this statement to the Huffington Post:

This whole thing has been a bit surreal for us because we have been raised to believe that love is love. We never realized that our happiness and openness would inspire so many individuals. The support we have received from our family, friends, and even strangers has led us to believe that our affection for each other is normal ... When we started dating a year [ago], the thought of a photo of us traveling throughout the world would be a bit frightening, but now we are proud to be part of the LGBT community.

This is big news from the BBC:

Australian judges have ruled that people do not have to be registered as a man or a woman on the register of births, deaths and marriages.

The New South Wales Court of Appeal overturned an earlier decision that a person's sex could not be listed as "non-specific" under Australian law.

The appeal was brought by a 50-year-old activist from Sydney called Norrie, who identifies as being gender neutral.

An officially recognized "other" option from the male-female binary is a great first step toward recognizing that gender is a much more complicated issue than slapping a dress on a stick figure and calling the matter settled. Good on Australia for taking that step.

Jen posted this in the Morning News already, but Slog tipper Dan wants to make sure that you to know about this KING 5 story:

BREMERTON, Wash. — On the heels of a historic decision by the Boy Scouts of America, a local priest is making history of his own. He's among the first in the country to cut all ties to the scouts, now that the organization has agreed to allow openly gay members.

Father Derek Lappe is the priest at Our Lady Star of the Sea in Bremerton.

In a blog post on the church's website, Lappe explains his reasoning, using a junk Catholic "science" report issued in 2000 as the basis of his decision. Lappe writes, "The New Boy Scouts are basically offering a program of ratifying a label of 'gay', which the young man has placed on himself, and which so many elements of society also are happy to place on him." He continues:

Our parish cannot be involved with a group that has decided to ratify or approve the self-identification of a 10-18 year old boy as “gay” or “homosexual”. To me it is cruel, and abusive and absolutely contrary to the Gospel to in any way confirm a teenager in the confusion of same-sex attraction, which is what the New Boy Scout policy will do.

I suppose that Lappe, who belongs to an international organization that has ritually covered up the sexual abuse of children, thinks that gay people would be a-okay if they just stayed in the closet forever. I'm sure that seems like a sensible idea to a man whose job requires a vow of celibacy. Lappe thinks he knows best, that he should be the one who gets to determine how a teenager identifies his own sexuality. He's happier with a culture of bullying, of alienation, of suicide. Fuck this guy, and fuck his bigoted Bremerton church.

...it's from someone who claims to be a Christian.

Thanks for the change of pace, Indianapolis Bisexual Solidarity.

This Friday night, May 17, I'll be hosting the monthly gay party DICKSLAP at the Eagle. There will be go-go men, there will be Jell-O shots—or Jell-O injections (as seen above)—and there will be hundreds of Oxballs sex toys that I will be giving away. My huzzzzband, DJ TROUBLE, will be there playing records in his underpants. See there's that, too. See you there? (Oh, and there is a Facebook page.)

Pussy-heavy DICKSLAP poster after the jump...

Continue reading »

Adam D. Chandler writing on yesterday's NYT opinion pages:

At 20 years old, strapped to a polygraph machine, I quietly confessed that “I might be, um ... homosexual.” Technically, I was lying. There was no “might be” about it. The machine’s operator, who stood between me and a summer sinecure at the National Security Agency, broke character with a compassionate squint.

“Could your sexual orientation be the basis of a bribery attempt against you?”

I assured her that no one would find out. I got the job.

That was eight years ago. It was the first time I had ever revealed my sexual orientation. And it was the only time I’d done so, until now. Not even my closest friends know.

They know now. Congrats on coming out, Adam, and I hope you're getting a lot of support from your friends and family.

Bad news first: Looks like visitors to San Francisco won't be flying into Harvey Milk Airport.

A San Francisco lawmaker said Tuesday that he has abandoned a proposal to rename San Francisco International Airport after slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk and instead plans to pursue getting an airport terminal named in Milk's honor.

The Good News: Minnesota could be voting to legalize gay marriage within the week, meaning gay marriage could be legal in nearly a quarter of the US by next Tuesday.

But apparently there's a gay position on it.

Huh. I thought Jason Collins was black.

In a piece marking marriage equality's "sweep" of New England—Rhode Island, the last holdout, approved marriage equality last week—E.J. Graff reminds us that the marriage equality movement was a grassroots effort launched by rogue same-sex couples:

It is worth taking a moment to look back on how we got here. It was a rogue Hawaii lawsuit, opposed by all the major LGBT advocacy groups, that launched the marriage-equality movement: Baehr v. Lewin was brought by a few couples and a non-gay lawyer, all on their own. As expected, they lost at the trial court and then on appeal. But in 1993, the Hawaii Supreme Court remanded the case back down for trial on a stricter standard, asking: If Jane could marry Mark but not Mary, why wasn’t that sex discrimination? The odd sound you heard was thousands of lesbians and gay men gasping in shock at the brand-new idea that marriage was possible in our lifetime. In the end, Hawaii wasn’t the breakthrough state. But it gave Mary Bonauto, civil-rights director at New England’s Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD)—and the woman generally considered to be the Thurgood Marshall of the marriage-equality movement—the opening she needed....

Go read the whole thing.