The President and his DoD have had far more power to determine the shape and implementation of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy than they’ve ever admitted. The law in fact directs the DoD not to discharge a given person if their dismissal will harm the armed forces.

That ruling suggests that opinioned bloggers are also journalists, Chapman said.

“I can think of no case where a blogger would be treated differently (than a print journalist under the law),” Chapman said.

In the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson wrote “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, chief amongst these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” at the time it was a radical idea. Today Conservatives think that our gay citizens wanting to redeem this promise for themselves is a still a radical idea. Who would have thought that people who want to wrap themselves in the mantle of the Founders would wind up on the side of the Monarchists?

“There will be no Arizona in Massachusetts!” echoed hundreds of revelers of all races, religious, ethnic and national backgrounds at the South End’s Titus Sparrow Park, the first major campaign rally for incumbent Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray.

Ask your reps to sign this letter urging the Obama administration not to appeal DADT.

Why are Democrats fighting us on gay rights?

The U.S. is a signatory to the U.N. Human Rights Resolution, which establishes precedent for treating all of us with dignity. The extension of rights to good lives to all of us would give more stability to the society as a whole.

Panelists made a plea to all of us who care to keep up the pressure, and lend support to our world by – most especially – continuing to vote for leaders who keep striving to bring rights into actual existence over years of resistance.

There are times in the life of a nation when ideas and attitudes that have been part of the conventional wisdom shift and there is very little that the forces of intolerance and the status quo can do about it. It seems we are reaching that point with the issue of full rights for our gay citizens. The recent decisions in the Proposition 8 case and the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy in California point are good indicators of this change.

While neither of these cases are finished by any means (though the issue of standing is one on Prop 8 is likely to end it at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals) the rulings by the judges in each case have been devastating to the premise that our gay citizens are some how so different from the rest of us that they can be treated with a different standard of law.

This week another case will go to trial, again, challenging the military’s DADT policy. Major Margaret Witt was an Air Force flight nurse. She was a veteran of the liberation of Kuwait, Operation Desert Storm. She also happens to be a lesbian (again and always the very least important fact about Maj. Witt, but one that too many of the more conservative of our citizens is obsessed about) .

An analysis of what many have assumed is a contradiction when the Obama administration says it’s against discrimination against LGBT citizens, then defends anti-gay laws in court.

Answer: It’s not a contradiction.

What’s Important to Remember Sept. 11, Rastafari New Years Day, are the Words of Ras Tafari Himself — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)