Today on the Signorile Show

John McCain had a tantrum again, in what looks to be the first shot fired in the Republican war on "don't ask, don't tell" repeal as the Defense Authorization Bill comes up for a vote. LGBT groups are warning people to be ready for a big fight. On the heels of the euphoria over the Prop 8 win, it's time to focus on the battle over DADT. We'll get into it today.


So much more to look at the Prop 8 ruling, including those now determined to smear Judge Walker as a biased gay judge. And why did the media so easily claim that he is gay -- without his saying it himself -- while they claim to be against outing? Lots of hypocrisy to expose here.

Ann Coulter will headline an event for the gay Republican group GoProud. Who next? Anita Bryant? Phyllis Schlafly?

Guest / 3:30pm EST - We've been talking a lot about the boycott of the chain retailer Target. Target says that while they did send out money to those campaigns, their support for the LGBT community is "unwavering." But has the company's support always been unwavering? Abe Sauer of The Awl joins me to talk about Target's past donations and how they tie into Prop 8.

Guest / 4:30pm EST - Pastor Terry Jones of the Evangelical Dove World Outreach Center joins us this afternoon to talk of his plans for September 11th, by holding a "Burn The Koran Day." We'll also speak with him about his "No Homo Mayor" campaign against the openly gay mayoral candidate of Gainesville, Florida, Craig Lowe.

Did you know there's a mosque at the Pentagon --inside the building? Yes, and it was opened shortly after 9/11! Why haven't conservatives ever complained about it as they're now doing with regard to the "ground zero" mosque?

Amid reports of a deal between Google and Verizon we'll discuss the future of net neutrality, how it will affect you what will happen if the FCC doesn't step in.

Larry Kramer has unleashed on Barbra Streisand...again. What about this time? We'll talk.

We'll go through some listener surveys this afternoon!

And who will be your Angel, Turkey, Gassie and Climax of the Week?

All these stories and so much more, today on The Michelangelo Signorile Show!

And, don't forget, you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook!
Listen to The Michelangelo Signorile Show weekdays live from 2-6 pm ET on Sirius XM's OutQ: Sirius 109, XM 98 and on the Sirius XM iPhone app. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! Listen online any time with a free seven-day pass or, if you have an iPhone or Blackberry, go to the app store and download Sirius XM for free, for a 7-day trial, and listen on your phone.

John McCain Foams at the Mouth

John McCain erupted in an antigay tirade on the floor of the Senate yesterday threatening to block "don't ask, don't tell" from being passed in the Defense Authorization Bill.

More from Netroots Nation

At Netroots Nation in Las Vegas I interviewed bloggers and good friends (of mine, and of the show) Pam Spaulding of PamsHouseBlend and Joe Sudbay of Americablog.

I spoke with both of them, in separate interviews, about the LGBT organizing at Netroots. But mostly, we discussed the Democrats, the mid-term elections and the Obama administration on LGBT rights and the anger and disappointment in the community. The interviews are particularly relevant today as the Prop 8 decision comes down and we once again wait to see if the president responds. Listen in.

Interview with Pam Spaulding



Interview with Joe Sudbay (two segments)

Prop 8 Decision Today

The much anticipated decision from federal judge Vaughn Walker on the challenge to Proposition 8 will be announced today. The decision is expected between 1 and 3 Pacific Time (between 4 and 6 Eastern Time), and we will be live on the air when the decision is announced. So listen in and please call in with your thoughts toll-free, 866 305 6887, and join the discussion. Also, give me your thoughts here as well and on the Facebook fan group page and we will be reading them live on air.

Rallies are being planned all across the country, a response from the grass roots no matter what the decision is. It's a big day, and lots to talk about.

Today on the Signorile Show

The hypocrites rage on: Antigay pastor Tom Brock -- who was revealed to be in a conversion therapy group himself -- is now is back at work, admitting to same-sex attraction but saying he's a "virgin" to gay sex.

We took lots of calls yesterday regarding attempts to stop the mosque at Ground Zero from being built. The prominent Jewish group, Anti-Defamation League, now under criticism for coming out against the project, has offered further defense of its alignment with bigots (and with Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and the GOP mob), while the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission has given the ok to the project. We'll go into it more and take many more calls we're sure.

Republicans are actually talking about repealing the 14th Amendment to keep the children of immigrants from becoming citizens, distorting what Congress intended when the amendment was passed. Time for a history lesson!

Guests / 3:30pm EST - Last week, we talked about whether or not people in the LGBT community should be boycotting Target, and now Best Buy, for their giving money to anti-gay political candidates. Joe Mirabella, a contributor with the Bilerico Project, thinks that the boycott, while well intended, won't work. David Reid, activist and guest blogger on LGBT POV, says there should be direct action against anything standing in the way of LGBT rights, including boycotts. They'll face off on the show in a debate on the issue this afternoon.

Guest / 4:30pm EST - A major, and exhaustive report was released yesterday on the loss of Prop 8 in California. The report shows why we lost during that election and what we can learn from it. Joining us to discuss the report, David Fleischer, author of The Prop 8 Report.

Sharon Angle believes the press should only ask her the questions she wants to answer.

And ABC's "Modern Family" is promising a wedding, and maybe even a kiss -- someday -- for its gay couple. But you'll get Nathan Lane sooner. We'll take your calls on the lack of PDAs and whether it bothers you or you see it as realistic.

These stories and more, today on The Michelangelo Signorile Show!

And, don't forget, you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook!

Listen to The Michelangelo Signorile Show weekdays live from 2-6 pm ET on Sirius XM's OutQ: Sirius 109, XM 98 and on the Sirius XM iPhone app. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! Listen online any time with a free seven-day pass or, if you have an iPhone or Blackberry, go to the app store and download Sirius XM for free, for a 7-day trial, and listen on your phone.

Roy Ashburn: I Don't Believe in Outing

On Friday I interviewed California State Senator Roy Ashburn, the Republican legislator who voted antigay for his entire career and who was revealed as a closeted gay man in March after a DUI arrest (audio of full interview is below). He has since apologized to the LGBT community for his antigay voting record. I was glad to have him on the show. The interview was informative and illuminating. I look forward to having him back.

But, at least for now, I'm not very impressed.

I’m not sure that Roy Ashburn yet understands the damage he did, nor the damage that many closeted politicians are still doing. The responses from just about every caller to the show for an hour after the interview were even less generous than I’m being here. At best, Ashburn’s got a lot more growing to do. At worst, he’s still scamming, still thinking about his future and a career.

I came to the interview with an open mind. I read Ashburn’s apology on the Victory Fund website – a complete switch from his statements just weeks prior, standing by his antigay votes – and I applauded it. When someone offers what appears to be a heartfelt apology I think you have to give that person the benefit of the doubt. And so I did.

Interviewing Ashburn is important because he gives us a window into the closets of power, a way to get into the minds of those who vote antigay to cover for the fact they are gay themselves. I asked about his life since his exposure and his life before, and tried to get at what was in his head during his antigay votes.

He began with an apology --- for drunk driving. That was well and good, but it was odd that he didn’t follow it up with apology for his antigay votes, didn’t reiterate what he apparently had written in his op-ed piece. In fact, he didn’t seem to show much remorse for what he’d done and at one point he even tried to excuse his voting antigay by saying his votes never caused any pro-gay measure to be voted down since those measures all passed despite his voting against them.

Strangely, Ashburn says he never experienced self-loathing about his homosexuality. He never viewed his own homosexuality as bad or wrong. He says he never really struggled with it. He voted antigay solely as a career decision, not because of any problems he had with his own homosexuality. It was a cold answer to a question that could have connected him with other LGBT people. We all understand – and cut a lot of slack – to people who are personally tormented by homophobia. Perhaps it’s an honest answer – though it’s hard to imagine that someone like Ashburn didn't experiencing at least some internalized homophobia – but Ashburn depicts himself as someone totally together about his being gay but making calculated, self-interested decisions which harm people. It made me wonder about all the other issues he might have voted on simply out of calculated self-interest. And it makes me wonder about what he is doing now.

Ashburn seemed to split hairs on which antigay rallies he supported and attended. At one point, clarifying my error about a Prop 8 rally I thought he'd attended, he sought to downplay support for measures such as Prop 8. He said he never commented on Prop 8, and while that may technically be true he supported those promoting it and took their money. But more so, Ashburn came out full force for a 2005 Senate constitutional amendment defining marriage as "between a man and a woman," actually hosting a rally with the virulently antigay Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, as the star attraction in the press release, and said: "We need to preserve traditional values for the future of our children. Children must be raised with morals and principles." The statement is heinous, as it implies that gay and lesbian people are not moral or principled and that their being given civil rights will send a bad message to children.

The release clearly shows Ashburn headlining the event. And yet, in our interview, Ashburn just referred to this a "a different event" on a "different measure" from "years earlier" in correcting my mistake that he went to a Prop 8 rally, without describing the event, and seemed to portray himself as someone only having been tangentially supportive of such measures. (To his credit, however, he did bring up his having attacked an opponent at a public event for being pro-gay.)

The most telling topic we discussed, however, was outing. I’m sure from Ashburn’s perspective the interview seemed to be going well up until this point, which was at the very end of our interview. He’s a smooth talker. But on outing, he hit a bump. And it revealed much about his lack of remorse and perhaps even about his future career plans.

Ashburn gave no reason why he doesn’t “believe” in outing except to say he doesn’t. And that makes one wonder: How could he be truly sorry, how could he believe he harmed people, if he doesn’t believe he should have been stopped? This is particularly true since he expressed having no trauma about being gay. Outing him would thus not be doing much on a personal, psychological level. It would simply be exposing a lie about a politician, like any other story the media report on regarding politicians' deceptions.

It was at that point that Ashburn tried to make excuses for his antigay votes. He seems to think that his voting against gay rights had little consequence because his votes didn’t have an impact since all of the antigay measures he voted against passed anyway. But how could Ashburn not see that his positions on gay rights gave moral weight to homophobia, among other politicians and among the voting public, and surely ultimately helped convince some people to vote for Prop 8? He seemed not to accept that his antigay votes had influence in the political culture – something very important in a state that allows ballot initiatives for the majority to vote on minority rights -- regarding homosexuality:

“I don’t believe in outing people…I think you make a very good point, but I just don’t support the practice of…of...of…having people revealed against their wishes…I understand the argument and I respect the position you’re expressing but I just don’t believe in outing people ….I mean, in a way, the system is self-balancing. What you said, Mike, was that I had stood in the way, that I had stopped the advancement of gay rights from being enacted. That’s not true. The bills that I voted against passed, and they were signed into law. In no instance did my vote stop the advancement of any piece of legislation…”

The outing response may also reveal Ashburn’s intentions and aspirations. He did say early on that he wanted to pursue politics further. Support of outing is still not something many politicians will publicly express, Barney Frank's pro-outing position notwithstanding. And yet, in Ashburn’s case, any response except full support for exposing dangerous, antigay politicians seems disingenuous. At the very least, he needed to give a reason why he "believes" it's wrong, and he never did. Does he really think that the openly gay mayor of West Sacramento, Christopher Cabaldon, was wrong to out Ashburn on his Facebook page months before his arrest? And why?

My initial reaction at the end of the interview, which I expressed to Ashburn, was that he’d come far, but had a ways to go. But after thinking about it further and hearing from listeners, I’m not really sure he's come far at all. Perhaps he can do some good in the future, trying to change minds in the Republican Party, as he says he desires to do. But he first needs to dig deep and think further about these issues. You can listen to the full interview below.

Today on the Signorile Show

A battle between LGBT activists outside the Manchester Hyatt in San Diego over the weekend and the gay republican group GoProud which crossed the picket line, broke the boycott and held a conference there. We'll speak with folks from both sides.

The debate over a planned mosque near Ground Zero has taken another turn with a prominent Jewish group now opposing the building of the mosque. And Rudy Giuliani fails to disappoint, calling it a "desecration." We'll get into it all today and take calls.

The trials of Democratic representatives Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters come at a bad time for Democrats, as everyone has been saying. They also raise questions about motives, including whether black members are held to a different standard, and why Republicans like Lousiana Senator Vitter, admitting to having engaged in prostitution and now revealed to have knowingly had a man min who stabbed his girlfriend on his staff, are still in office. We'll get into it.

Lots more discussion about the Target boycott because the company gave $150,000 to an antigay candidate. But is it the right thing? We'll go through some perspectives out there and debate the issues.

Did Lady Gaga do the right thing by giving a concert in Arizona but condemning the immigration law? Or should she have joined an artist boycott and not done the show there? We'll ask for your thoughts.

Fox News is getting a front row seat at the White House. But is it a real news organization, like Bloomberg and NPR, both of which it beat out?

Why are European countries moving to ban Muslim women from wearing veils in public, while Americans -- usually seen as more restrictive and preserving of Christianity -- are less inclined to do so? And will that continue? An interesting question broached by religion scholar Stephen Prothero, and something to discuss.

These stories and much more, today on The Michelangelo Signorile Show!

And, don't forget, you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook!

Listen to The Michelangelo Signorile Show weekdays live from 2-6 pm ET on Sirius XM's OutQ: Sirius 109, XM 98 and on the Sirius XM iPhone app. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! Listen online any time with a free seven-day pass or, if you have an iPhone or Blackberry, go to the app store and download Sirius XM for free, for a 7-day trial, and listen on your phone.

Today on the Signorile Show

Antigay Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tim Emmer says that Target giving him money is "free speech." Then isn't it free speech for us to say no more money to Target? We'll go through the latest in the controversy that has a full-blown boycott of both Target and Best Buy underway in the wake of the Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to give unlimited sums to candidates.

Congressman Charlie Rangel will go to trial on 13 ethics violations, just as Democrats are heading into the mid-terms. What does it all mean? We'll go through it.

Protests have continued over Arizona's immigration law in the wake of the judge blocking the most odious parts of it

Guest / 3:30pm EST - We're all aware of it. Chances are you are signed into it right now-- posting status updates, "Like"ing a friends link, or tagging friends in pictures from a recent party. That's right, I'm talking about Facebook. David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting The World, joins us to talk about how Facebook has gone from dorm room novelty to a network with 500 million users.


Guest / 4:30pm EST - Newly outed / out gay California Republican State Senator Roy Ashburn joins us this afternoon to talk about his time serving in the closet and the apology he has extended to the LGBT community for his actions in while in office.

Defense Secretary Gates has lashed out at Wikileaks following the leak of 90,000 documents about the war in Afghanistan. This as civil rights and anti-war advocates are praising Wilileaks for dissemination the truth.

The National Organization for Marriage continued its antigay "one man, one woman" marriage tour, and continued it's idiotic propoganda campaign portraying the group's supporters as victims. We'll get to the story.

Why did Ellen exit American Idol?

It's Friday, so we'll be giving away our "Angel, Turkey, Gassie, and Climax of the Week!" Chime in on Facebook!

These stories and so much more, today on The Michelangelo Signorile Show!

And, don't forget, you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook!

Listen to The Michelangelo Signorile Show weekdays live from 2-6 pm ET on Sirius XM's OutQ: Sirius 109, XM 98 and on the Sirius XM iPhone app. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! Listen online any time with a free seven-day pass or, if you have an iPhone or Blackberry, go to the app store and download Sirius XM for free, for a 7-day trial, and listen on your phone.

Today on the Signorile Show

It's been 100 days since the initial BP Deep Horizon disaster and two weeks since BP was able to cap off the catastrophic gusher in the Gulf. Now, there are questions from cleanup crews in the Gulf, claiming that they aren't gathering as much oil as they had when the oil was still gushing. Where has the oil gone? And with the media coverage dwindling down, how do we keep focus on reform? Joining me at 4:30pm EST, Lisa Margonelli, director of the Energy Policy Initiative with the New America Foundation, to discuss where the oil is and policy changes in the wake of the capping.

The ruling on the Arizona immigration law blocking the racial profiling provisions is a warning to other states. We'll continue the discussion today.

Congress is not only re-thinking its ban on Internet gambling, but, strapped for revenue, lawmakers are talking about taxing Internet gambling. Should the government be making money off of people taking risks with their cash in the middle of economic hard times?

Guest / 3:30pm EST - We've seen a lot of inadequate oversight and lack of safety procedures in industries like banking and oil. But while they have been the main focus in the main stream, the lack of oversite doesn't just apply to them. Kenneth King joins me afternoon to talk about his new book, Germs Gone Wild: How Unchecked Development of Domestic Biodefense Threatens America, in which he uncovers the culture of deception surrounding hundreds of biosefense labs that have opened since 9/11.

Think it's hot? It's only the beginning. A new Stanford study says that heat waves and extreme hot temperatures will be commonplace by 2039.

The Vatican Closet: The latest in their hypocrisy: The Vicar of Rome has ordered gay priests to leave town, after a magazine revealed three to have been --gasp! -- engaging in sex acts. We'll get into the details.

We'll catch up and read some listener surveys on the show this afternoon, be sure to take it if you haven't!

This and so much more, today on The Michelangelo Signorile Show!

And, don't forget, you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook!

Listen to The Michelangelo Signorile Show weekdays live from 2-6 pm ET on Sirius XM's OutQ: Sirius 109, XM 98 and on the Sirius XM iPhone app. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! Listen online any time with a free seven-day pass or, if you have an iPhone or Blackberry, go to the app store and download Sirius XM for free, for a 7-day trial, and listen on your phone.

Today on the Signorile Show

The direct action group Get Equal staged a protest in the U.S. Capitol rotunda today. We'll get into the facts and the issues.

A judge this afternoon blocked the Arizona immigration law's racial profiling provision from going into effect. What does it mean? We'll go through it.

Officials say the oil is vanishing from the top of the water in the Gulf, which is being seen as good news. But using ultraviolet light some are finding oil is glowing everywhere, broken into particles and under the ground as well.

Only 10% of the 400,000 servicemembers the Pentagon has sent a survey on "don't ask, don't tell" repeal have taken the survey. What kind of cross section are they getting? Can this even be remotely reliable? We'll get into it.

Guest / 3:30pm EST - The Log Cabin Republican's had brought a suit before the US District Court in Riverside, CA, challenging the constitutionality of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The trial wrapped up last week, as we await a decision from waiting from Judge Virginia Phillips. Dan Woods, the lawyer for the LCR, joins us today to discuss the case.

Guest / 4:30pm EST - Earlier this week, news broke that Target, one of the biggest retailers in the US, had donated money to a Minnesota Republican group, which is funding TV ads for anti-gay gubernatorial candidate Rep. Tom Emmer. Joining us today, Randi Reitan, a mother of a gay man who had recently shot a video returning her purchases in an effort to boycott Target.

The National Organization for Marriage "one man, one woman" Summer of Marriage Tour continues to be a complete disaster, with the highest turnout to date of counter protesters in Madison, WI yesterday. And of course, the hatemongers are out in volume if not in numbers.

And that airplane turbulence discussion we didn't get into yesterday, as I relay the story of my flight from hell from Netroots Nation in Vegas and take your calls on your own scary experiences!