California’s secretary of state on Tuesday cleared a group to begin collecting signatures for a ballot referendum to overturn a first-in-the-nation law requiring public schools to teach the contributions of gays and lesbians in social studies lessons Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB48 earlier this month, making California the first state to mandate such lessons in [...]
President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen have certified that the U.S. military is prepared to accept openly gay and lesbian service members, and that doing so will not harm military readiness, the White House announced Friday. Under a bill passed last year that set up [...]
Defense officials say Pentagon chief Leon Panetta will certify that gays may serve openly in the armed services. News of his decision comes two weeks after top military leaders agreed that repealing the 17-year-old ban will not hurt military readiness. The decision is not unexpected. The Pentagon has conducted months of internal studies and training [...]
Thousands of requests pouring in for the first day of same-sex marriages in New York City, the mayor’s office said Tuesday it would establish a lottery to select 764 couples. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Council Speaker Christine Quinn and City Clerk Michael McSweeney said in a joint statement that the lottery would be implemented “due to [...]
Public schools in California will be required to teach students about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans starting Jan. 1 after Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday signed a controversial bill to add the topic to the social sciences curriculum. Textbooks in the state also must include information on LGBT Americans, along with [...]
Governor Brown has two weeks to decide whether he’ll sign a new law that makes it mandatory for social studies to include gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered issues forCalifornia public school students. Senate Bill 48 landed on his desk Tuesday. Supporters of the law say it will not only make for a better education, it [...]
New York City will open its clerk’s offices on Sunday, July 24, to allow same-sex couples to wed on the first day the state’s gay marriage bill goes into effect, officials said on Wednesday. City clerk’s offices in the five boroughs of New York normally are closed on weekends, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that [...]
Broward gay activists Wednesday dressed down Oakland Park Commissioner Jed Shank for saying that a city proclamation honoring the Stonewall Street Festival on June 19 — Father’s Day — would be offensive to fathers. “How is it disrespectful to fathers?” said Jason Burns, major gifts officer at the Pride Center at Equality Park in Wilton [...]
A federal judge is ordering the White House to eliminate the ban on gays in the military. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy must be lifted now that the Obama Administration has concluded the law was unconstitutional. The government appealed an earlier ruling [...]
WWE bad guy CM Punk was caught on camera screaming “You homo!” at a fan during a verbal altercation in Australia today . This as the WWE has said repeatedly they are trying to curb homophobic slurs. The wrestling organization works directly with GLAAD and even produced a series of anti-bullying commercials following incidents involving [...]