• That Channing Tatum's Step Up grossed $20 million in its opening weekend has Hollywood mouths agape — and some worried that studios will be looking to nobodies for box office paydays. [TMZ]

• Laguna Beach's Boom Boom Room – scheduled to close over Labor Day – gets a one year life extension. [OC Register]

• Your First Amendment rights are being restored, thanks to a federal judge ruling the White House's wiretapping-without-warrant policies are unconstitutional and must be ended immediately. [NYT]

• When Martina Navratilova retires for the second time in September after the U.S. Open, the tennis great will be honored with induction into the U.S. Open Court of Champions. [Southern Voice]

• Since its inception two months ago, a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in Washington State has really only raised question about the policy, rather than uproar about gays and lesbians being protected. [Advocate]

• To celebrate the release of Christina Aguilera's new album Back To Basics, Marc Jacobs gave the songstress a shopping bag full of his fall collection. As a thank you, Christina offered the designer a "campy young gentleman" — and they proceeded to dance the night away to "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." [NYDN]

• Fall fashion weighs more than the models displaying it. [Gawker]

It was only on Friday that we reported Pennsylvania's Senator Rick Santorum added his signature to an anti-discrimination letter "affirming that his office does not discriminate in hiring on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity." But now the republican politico is – as many expected, but so soon? – un-inking. The letter is part of a GenderPAC project that has received much support on Capitol Hill. But not in Santorum's office.

The diversity statement is a joint project initiated in 2003 by GenderPAC and the Human Rights Campaign that has received bipartisan support on Capitol Hill from members of the House and Senate. Santorum's signature came after a meeting during the week of July 24 between the senator and GenderPac volunteers. After the meeting, Santorum posed for a picture with them. A copy of the senator's statement was faxed to GenderPAC on August 1, and the signature was confirmed the following morning by Santorum's openly gay senior aide, Robert Traynham.

On Wednesday, Santorum faxed GenderPAC a new statement that read in part, "To be clear, my office has not adopted the proposed 'diversity statement' nor the agenda of your organization.... My name should no longer be reported as having adopted the 'diversity statement.'"

Santorum rescinds support for employment diversity statement [Advocate]
Earlier: Santorum Signs On

• Just like traditional media, gay media continues to consolidate: Nine-year-old Instinct magazine buys 8-year-old travel quarterly Gay Travel News. At last, a fair battle against LPI Media. [Advocate]

• National Underwear Day took Times Square — and Elton John and David Furnish watched in earnest. [PAYOR]

• Gay couples looking to challenege Washington State's Supreme Court ban on gay marriage will get two more weeks to file papers. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

• Massachusetts has dismissed claims by an assault victim that medical personnel delayed treatment and physically and verbally attacked him for being gay. [Boston Herald]

• White collar firms are working harder than ever to attract gay MBAs. [Business Week]

• So Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn are engaged? For real this time? Then why is Jen's publicist denying it? [Jossip]

• Naturists at a British beach have been banned from the area over concerns it's a breeding ground for gay sex. [BBC]

• Pressure builds to have HIV/AIDS considered the word's prime epidemic. [PharmaLive]

In a shocking bit of news, Pennsylvania's republican senator Rick Santorum (yes, that Santorum) joined a letter "affirming that his office does not discriminate in hiring on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity." The decision to slap his signature on the letter came after a meeting with Adrian Shanker, a college student and member of GenderYOUTH, a youth advocacy group under the GenderPAC umbrella. It should go without saying, however, that Santorum's public support for the initiative only goes so far as his own office — it doesn't change the way he feels about what his gay staffers might be doing at home in private.

Gay organization: Santorum signs sexual orientation non-discrimination policy [PageOneQ]

At the end of last week, it looked like Congress was doing something good for the average worker: raising the federal minimum wage to $7.25/hour, making it the first national minimum wage increase in a decade. But a step toward helping the working class bring home a livable wage is never that easy. Rather than pass through a bill mandating the hike, House Republicans tied the raise not only to a federal pension bill, but also to legislation reducing the estate tax (of multimillion dollar estates) — the arch enemy of the Bush administration. Smart move by the GOP: Put themselves in a cushiony bubble where they can't be accused of not caring about the blue collar worker while helping their friends hang on to their wealth — and maintain a proven cycle that hurts the poor.

And before we even get too excited about that minimum wage raise, consider this:

But I also want to point out the paucity of the minimum-wage increase under discussion here. The current proposal would hike the minimum from $5.15 an hour, the level set in 1997, to $7.25 an hour by 2007.

That sounds like a big hike, but it's really not. As Dean Baker notes, due to inflation, $7.25 an hour in 2007 is equivalent to about $5.30 back in 1997. So this "hike" will really just ensure that the minimum wage goes back up to its inflation-adjusted 1997 level. It's not much of an increase, in real dollar terms, at all.

The Republicans aren't the only ones to blame, though the likelihood of the bill passing through the Senate – notorious for killing efforts to reduce the estate tax – looks slim.

House approves sweeping pension reforms [MarketWatch]
GOP Plays Games with Minimum Wage Bill [Mother Jones]

• Lance Armstrong's hosting of the ESPY Awards gave him carte blanche to harp on his two new BFFs Jake Gyllenhaal and Matthew McConaughey.

• When it comes to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the radio might be a good place to start. [Spero]

• If you must masturbate to porn in the office, at least do it properly. [Best Gay Blogs]

• Congress' attempt to pass a bill banning same sex marriage fails 47 votes short of the two-thirds majority required, joining the Senate's efforts in the wastebin. [AP]

• If you're a cancer doc who identifies the wrong location of the malignant cells, your malpractice insurance better cover more than just negligence — but ruining your patient's sex life as well. [365Gay]

• Hopefully your coming out experience went better than this Tawainese fellow, whose parents drugged his coffee and dragged him to a psych ward after he told them he was gay. [Taiwan Headlines]

• As new shots from Justin Timberlake Alpha Dog emerge, there's new reason to resurrect his "Trousersnake" monicker. [Towleroad]

• Do you have your signed Anderson Cooper headshot? [Jossip]

• Black gay bloggers are calling for the boycott of homophobic raggae artists Beenie Man and TOK's concert to raise HIV awareness next week. [Keith Boykin]

• Now that gay marriage in Massachusetts is legal, some employees better get hitched or face the loss of domestic parternship benefits. [AHN]

• Just in time for Lil' Kim's return to the scene, Foxy Brown recovers from her deafness. [VH1]

• The head of anti-gay Protect Marriage Arizona Coalition, Lynn Stanley, died in a car crash. She's survived by her husband and her daughter, Tracie. Lord help her if she's a dyke. [AZ Central]

• More than half of Fortune 500 companies reportedly offer benefits to domestic partners – which means American Express better be offering employees free lattes if it wants to stay atop that Best Companies to Work For list. [LAT]

• Britney Spears might be looking at another round of legal battles with Us Weekly. [Jossip]

• Just as Aaron Spelling is being put into the ground, wife Candy is putting the $150 million manse on the market. And she'll certainly do her best to keep any cut out of Tori's hands. [MollyGood]

After being denied for a Foreign Service officer position inside the State Department in 2001, Lorenzo Taylor will finally get his day in court — to argue Condoleezza Rice & Co. denied him the position because of his HIV-positive status, violating federal law. The case has been dragging on since 2002, when the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund took up Taylor's case and claimed the State Department violated the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits the government from discriminating based on disabilities, including HIV.

State Department officials have acknowledged that Taylor, an Arlington, Va., resident, was highly qualified for a Foreign Service post at the time he applied for a job in 2001. But personnel officials informed him that his HIV-positive status disqualified him for the job under a State Department policy that says people with HIV are ineligible for deployment overseas.

The policy says Foreign Service officers must be capable of serving in certain "hardship" posts in developing countries, where they most likely could not obtain adequate medical care. The policy applies whether or not the individual's actual assignment is to a "hardship post."

Which would make these positions off-limits to anyone in a wheelchair, anyone with vision and hearing loss, and anyone with cancer.

Trial ordered in HIV discrimination suit against Rice [NY Blade]

Gay men may continue to face workplace harassment (except at companies like Starbucks and American Express, right?), but interestingly, they just make better bosses. Self-described career leadership expert Kirk Snyder conducted a five-year study to evaluate gays vs. heteros in the workplace and found "reported levels of job engagement, job satisfaction and workplace morale among employees reporting to white-collar gay men to be upwards of 35% higher than nationally reported statistics."

Is it because they're more communicative? Better adept at handling conflict? Can help their underlings choose the right health care plan and tie?

So what does being gay or male have to do with successful business leadership? The reason gay men are outperforming the good-old-boys in business is due to a new paradigm for effective leadership that is proving to meet the needs and values of today's empowered workforce. Identified as the G Quotient, it is seven leadership principles rooted in the professional worldview of gay men that develops through learned skills such as adaptability, intuitive communication and creative problem solving. In the workplace, these principles are responsible for generating unprecedented levels of professional commitment among their employees. In fact, it's why 84 percent of more than one thousand employees reporting to gay men across four major economic sectors report high morale within their working environments -- compared to 40 percent nationally.

Ah, now we get it: Gay men do "spirit fingers" better.

Why Gay Men Are Outperforming the Good-Old-Boys in Business [HuffPo]

Sure, this little gem may have popped up on a shopping site geared toward women, but that didn't stop you when you bought those 420-count sheets, did it? It's Mr. Right, and he's built to sit on your desk while you grovel through Match.com fill out expense reports. He comes with his own stand and a set of eight message balloons, three of which are left blank for you to fill out yourself with notes like "Robbie didn't call you because he's an asshole" and "If I knew you then, I would've been your date to the prom instead of your mother."

And for $8.95, Mr. Right is suited for what you usually do when you get tired of your men: give him to a friend, or toss him in the trash.

Mr. Right [See Jane Work]

• Q Jew, a gay Jewish dating service, is hosting a bowling party called Cock ‘n’ Bowl next week. Cut Cock ‘n’ Bowl that is. Via NY Observer.

• Gay.com has compiled a list of the big businesses that have your back and those that shouldn’t get your homo dollars.

• Gay author Peter Bracke’s Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th is a 300-word history of the Friday the 13th franchise. Because the world needs more gay-themed coffee table books about really bad horror films.

• Gay activists in Texas are utilizing a unique tactic while trying to beat a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. They are using out of context comments by judges and the Attorney General to prove the amendment could jeopardize traditional marriages. Tricking Texans sounds like a smart strategy to us.

• Made In Brazil has some pics of Madonna’s MTV appearance. And yes, she is still working the Valerie Cherish/hooker look.