Haitian ambassador responds to Pat Robertson's remarks today about Haiti paying a price for making a pact with the devil

Watch what Robertson said here, then see the Haitian ambassador's response on Rachel Maddow's show.


(H/t Joe My God) Read More...

Homophobia in professional sports hits home

Me, my dad (Jim Beauchamp) and brother Kash in 1969 when Dad played for the Cincinnati Reds


Fawn Rose, Pete Rose, me and my brother Kash Beauchamp

The culture of professional athletics is homophobic. I would venture to say it is getting better, but I remember just how bad things were when I was growing up around major league professional baseball players. My father was professional baseball player Jim Beauchamp. One of my first boyhood teenage crushes was for none other than umpire Dave Pallone who wrote the book, "Behind the mask" and he actually detailed the combative relationship he had with my father when Dad managed a minor league team, the Charleston Charlies, in Charleston, WV.

My father and I had an estranged relationship that evolved, and eventually grew to one of acceptance and mutual respect around the time of his passing. When he first discovered I was gay, well, all I'm going to say is it was a nightmare. I can't help but think the dynamics of homophobia in the locker room played its part in making it more difficult for him to accept me. He spent his life in locker rooms where the pervasive message was any kind of gay slur was just part of the accepted lingo with the understanding "Faggots don't play baseball" or far worse things, so why should anyone care what is said regarding "queers" in the confines of the locker room? I know it has to be an especially tough burden for gay professional athletes to contemplate coming out in an environment where there is perceived and actual pressure to be a stereotypical heterosexual manly-man archetype.

Sometimes I have wondered if baseball players ever stopped to consider there might be a possibility one of their children might be gay, would they stop with the hateful gay jokes and slurs? If they truly love their children unconditionally, they wouldn't put up with it and maybe, one day soon, we would actually have a major league professional baseball player who had the nerve to make history and become an unforgettable positive example to the world. Just as it is detailed in Dave Pallone's book, he had a romantic affair with one of baseball's major leaguers, so it isn't like we don't already know they are there, but they are hidden deeper than deep in the closet.

It is just a matter of one gay professional major league baseball player saying, "Enough is enough! I am gay and I want to prove to other young gay athletes they can be themselves, a masculine gay athlete, and they don't have to hide anymore." Will they dare to be true to themselves and refuse to continue to promote the homophobia that not only damages themselves, but also the gay children of their colleagues? Gay Major League baseball players have more to lose than their self respect if they continue to compromise, and the straight players need to remember someone in their family might care very deeply what is being said about the gays in the locker rooms. Read More...

DADT hearings being lined up in the Senate later this month

Amazing what a little bad press can do. We owe a lot of this to SLDN and its recent pressure on the President. Read More...

Two hate groups endorse GOP candidate Scott Brown in Massachusetts

I don't call them hate groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center, one of most renowned organizations in America for tracking the movements of the Klan and White Supremacists, calls Browns' two newest endorsements "hate groups." So will Scott Brown renounce the support of the two hate groups in Massachusetts? Read More...

Supreme Court ruling: No cameras at Prop. 8 trial

The Supreme Court has made its ruling:

The Supreme Court has indefinitely blocked cameras from covering the high-profile federal court trial on the constitutionality of California's ban on same-sex marriage.

The high court split 5-4 Wednesday, with the conservative justices in the majority.

Now in its third day, the trial in federal court in San Francisco is over the state's voter-approved ban on gay marriage.

Read More...

Chinese paper announces country's first gay marriage

Wild that the govt-run press is even covering this, let alone the govt allowing this:

State press splashed a front-page photo of China's first publicly "married" gay couple on Wednesday -- the latest sign of new openness about homosexuality in a country where it has long been taboo.

The page-one story in the English-language China Daily featured a photograph of the "newlyweds" arm-in-arm during a January 3 ceremony.

Zeng Anquan, 45, and Pan Wenjie, 27, tied the knot at a gay bar in the southwestern city of Chengdu, the paper said, calling it "the first such public event in the country".

Read More...

Prop. 8 lawyer invoked 'Brokeback Mountain' and 'Will and Grace' to make the anti-marriage case

No wonder the anti-gay side doesn't want the Prop. 8 trial televised. They're making absurd arguments.

Via Karen Ocamb, I got this excerpt from Davina Kotulski's liveblog of the trial. This line of inquiry, invoking movies and t.v. shows, is from the cross-examination of Professor George Chauncey by David Thompson, who is on the anti-gay legal team:

YOU ALL HAVE BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN AND IT EVEN GOT AWARDS— GAY DISCRIMINATION IS OVER

Thompson, the smug attorney for the Proponents of Prop 8, is taking the position that gays are not being discriminated against any more and so that cannot be the reason that Prop 8 passed.

He makes a point and then asks Professor Chauncey if that is correct.

He’s mentioning Will and Grace, the movie Philadelphia, and Brokeback mountain as evidence that LGBT people are not being discriminated again.

Teddy Patridge also has the blow-by-blow at FDL.

"Brokeback Mountain" and "Will and Grace." Wow. Read More...

In a 'major upset,' Homophobic GOPer lost Virginia State Senate race yesterday

Some good news from Virginia -- and there wasn't a lot of good electoral news from VA last November. In a special election yesterday for a vacant State Senate in Fairfax, Democrat (and LGBT supporter) David Marsden beat right-wing, homophobe Stephen Hunt:

In a major upset, Democratic Delegate Dave Marsden outspent his opponent by almost 2-1 and squeaked by GOP nominee Steve Hunt to capture the last remaining GOP seat in northern Virginia. Winning by just 317 votes (out of 23,569 cast), Marsden took the seat by 50.62 - 49.28 percent.

Democrats now control the Virginia state senate by 22-18.

Here's some background on Hunt, which we posted a couple weeks ago, courtesy of the Washington Post editorial page:

Although he was hardworking, his tenure is remembered mainly for his being unanimously censured by his colleagues after he sent a letter to high school principals denouncing homosexuality as a "very destructive lifestyle" and urging them to expose students to former gays and lesbians who had rejected homosexuality. He also used the school board's dais as a platform from which to deliver a broadcast soliloquy about his regrets in losing his virginity before marriage. As the kids might say: Too much information.

Virginia's State House is going to be ugly enough this year. It's a good thing Hunt won't be there, too. Read More...

David Boies and Ted Olson on Rachel

The lawyers leading the case to find Prop. 8 unconstitutional, David Boies and Ted Olson, appeared on Rachel Maddow's show last night. Worth a watch.
Read More...

Annise Parker got 'curt call' from a White House staffer because Obama's message was posted on YouTube

Michelangelo Signorile had Houston Mayor Annise Parker on his show yesterday. During the interview, they discussed the President's congratulatory call to Parker. I'll admit to wondering if Obama would even make that call. But, he did call -- and left a message that ended up on YouTube. It was a good p.r. move for both Parker and the President. The President's staff didn't see it that way. Parker got a call from someone at the White House admonishing her. From Mike's blog, The Gist:

On the show on Monday Mayor Parker gave me some background on how the voice mail may have gotten online -- and how the White House wasn't at all happy about it (audio clip below). Parker herself was "a little surprised" that the White House didn't schedule a time for Obama to speak with her. She was doing a CNN interview and the call went to voicemail. The president left a message and never called back.

Annise Parker: I got a curt call from someone in the White House wanting to know how the president's voice mail got up on YouTube. And I said, "I have no earthly idea how it got up on YouTube. It's not something I would know how to do." And he said, "Well, when the president leaves a private communication it should stay private." And I said, "Then he shouldn't have left it on my voicemail[laughing]."

So, the crack team at the White House didn't bother to schedule a call with Parker. Someone just dialed the number and Obama just left a message. Then, Parker got a "curt call" from a White House staffer. Seriously? These are the things White House staffers worry about? And why was this so bad? It sounded like a press statement from Obama, not a "private conversation." Parker is the mayor of the fourth largest city in America, which means she's facing really big issues -- yet, this was the issue that a White House staffer thought warranted her attention.

So, many of us thought it was a good thing to hear Obama congratulate Parker. But, apparently, we were wrong to think that. The Obama staffers apparently aren't interested in creating good will with key constituencies -- but wait til next year, when they're in reelection campaign mode. Read More...

CNN legal expert: Prop 8 is unconstitutional

What's interesting about this is that the administration's defenders have said it can only challenge laws in court, and the administration has said it will refuse to implement laws, that it thinks are unconstitutional. So the administration finds anti-gay laws, like DOMA and DADT, constitutional? It's a question the White House has never really answered. Does our first African-American president think that laws like DOMA and DADT, that deny gays and lesbians their basic civil rights, are constitutional?

CNN's legal expert does not.

As a civil rights lawyer for 23 years, there is no question at all in my mind that as a matter of constitutional law, the federal court must strike down any law that creates a subclass of Americans, shutting them out of legal privileges and protections available to others, merely because they are gay.

Demeaning and disrespecting gay people is a constitutional affront.

Wanna run for president? Read More...