Anti-gay cheapskates now trying to worm out of paying court fees over Prop 8

Please ignore that bigot behind the curtain.

The Campaign for California Families spent years opposing same-sex marriage, making its case with briefs in the trial and appellate courts, and arguing its position before the state's highest court early last year.

But the Sacramento-based group now says it was never a true party to the marriage cases and shouldn't have to pay the $12,000 in court costs ordered by S.F. Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer for those pre-Proposition 8 battles.

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Israelis rally after vicious hate crime at gay youth center

UPDATE: 70k rally in Tel Aviv to show support for gay community.

Another story I noticed while recup-ing from my eye surgery. Didn't want it to be missed.

A masked man entered the center for gay teens in downtown Tel Aviv late Saturday night, pulled out a pistol and opened fire, according to Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman. The shooter then fled the scene on foot, Rosenfeld said.

Photographs taken inside after the shooting showed bodies lying near a billiard table and a smear of blood on the white-tile floor.
The dead were identified as a 26-year-old man who was a counselor at the center and a 17-year-old girl. Eleven people were wounded, four of them critically.

"I took cover with someone under a table, and he kept firing," 16-year-old Or Gil, who was shot twice in the legs, recounted in news footage aired on the YNet news Web site. "When I got up it was horrifying, I just saw blood."

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Who's gay isn't as easy a question anymore with youth

Something a lot of us have already noticed. Namely, that younger guys are far more comfortable with their sexuality, and ours, than guys of, say, my generation. It's getting harder to tell who's gay and who's straight, and it's getting harder for kids themselves to define themselves as straight or gay. I think that's because everyone is on a spectrum of sexuality (my theory), a la Kinsey, from straight to gay. Some are gay gay, others are straight straight, others are a mixed bag. Women have recognized, and admitted this, for years. Guys, less so. But now that younger guys are getting over the macho thing, they're far more comfortable to admit that they're not entirely straight, even if they're not even close to being gay. Again, my theory. Yours? Read More...

Gay "cure" debunked again

This happened while I was away on eye-sabbatical. But it's important, so I'm posting it, albeit late. Note that the people quoted from the "cure" side are always the same people. If so many gays were being cured every day, then why do the "ex-gays" always have the same people and followers in every article we've read about them over the past 10+ years? Sounds like a bit of a no-growth industry. Read More...

Gay groups rebuffed in effort to join marriage suit they once opposed

It's a complicated story, and I'm not really sure who's right. It's a time-worn adage of the law that really bad lawsuits make really bad law (meaning, don't just file a lawsuit in the hopes of making a civil rights advance - if the facts of your suit are bad, you can actually set the movement back by getting a bad decision from the court). In this case, the gay rights groups fought hard against those who filed the suit. Then they had a change of heart. And now they want to join the suit as partners.

I can understand why those behind the suit don't want the big groups joining on. Not just out of spite, but also because the more gay chefs we have in the legal kitchen, the bigger the mess (we saw this outcome in California during Prop 8 - we are not a community that plays well politically with others in our community).

So, I don't know if they're right or wrong to deny the groups the right to join in on the suit. But I do worry about having too many different people, and organizations, trying to guide this suit. The lawyers running it are pretty damn smart already. (You'll recall that we wrote about this a while ago - Bush's solicitor general joined Al Gore's lawyer from Bush v Gore in filing this suit.) Read More...