The latest leak from the S.S. Obama is that Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano has been tapped to run the Department of Homeland Security. Since Napolitano is an unmarried woman who's um– sort of mannish, this means we get to spend the next four years hearing jokes about our borders being protected by flannel wearing Amazons. She certainly makes previous Homeland Security chiefs Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff look like sissies.

The problem is, Napolitano says she's not a lesbian. She's been saying it for years and "if it looks like a duck" is not a compelling case for determining someone's sexuality. This has made all the gays in Arizona all kinds of peeved, as she publicly opposes same-sex marriage. Back in 2003, long before he came to New York and mucked up The Village Voice for good, Michael Lacey was a rapscallion columnist in Phoenix where he debated at length the most pressing issue of just which side Governor Napolitano's toast was buttered:

"If Governor Janet Napolitano isn't a lesbian, I'll eat your hat. She is a walking, one-woman LPGA tour all by herself.

It may be the thing I like best about her.

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Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota will the Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary according to Democratic officials. The department is responsible for a national strategy on AIDS research and prevention.

Daschle has an excellent record on combating HIV/AIDS. He's the co-chair of the ONE Foundation and in July led a delegation of policymakers to Rwanda, where he visited with HIV patients in clinics to highlight the suffering caused by AIDS in that country and some of the efforts being made to combat it. At the time he told reporters:

“We have a moral obligation to assist those suffering from abject poverty and disease. Investments in the development of our world’s poorest nations must be a pillar of our foreign policy going forward, no matter who is leading the next administration.  I am encouraged by the tremendous impact that these programs have had in fighting the spread of disease across Africa. Over the last four years, two million more people living with AIDS now have access to lifesaving medication."

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Seven openly gay peoplehave been assigned to head transition panels that will review federal agencies and departments by incoming President Barack Obama. They are among the 300 people who are serving in similar roles before January's inauguration.

They are businessman Fred P. Hochberg, former San Francisco Supervisor Roberta Achtenberg, and labor attorney Elaine Kaplan, Rick Stamberger, president and CEO of SmartBrief, Inc., Brad Kiley, member of the Center for American Progress, Thomas Soto an investment fund manager focusing on "clean technologies" and former Romanian Ambassador Michael Guest (pictured, right).

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President-Elect Barack Obama has posted his plan for LGBT Rights on the Change.gov website and it's pretty comprehensive. It is by far, the most far-ranging civil rights agenda for the gay community ever offered by a President. Because the page is swathed in a combination of hopey vagueness and legislation you may have never heard of, here's a translation of the plan from Obamican to English:

Expand Hate Crimes Legislation
Obama supports the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act

In a separate section of the site, Obama offers support for the Matthew Shepard Act, which would significantly expand the 1969 Hate Crime law, give $10 million to law enforcement to investigate hate crimes and direct the FBI to track crimes made against LGBT people. The bill passed the House and the Senate in 2007 and was attatched to a defense spending bill as an ammendment. When Bush threatened a veto, the bill was dropped. The bill has widespread support in Congress and at the state-level, so with Obama's support, this bill will most likely pass.

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The anti-Obama Facebook phenomenon is really getting out of control and, luckily, some ignorant crazies are being forced to pay the consequences. Meet Buck Burnette, a football player for the University of Texas and blatant racist. Shortly after the election, his status read: "all the hunters gather up, we have a #$%&er in the whitehouse." Classy guy, that Buck.

As you can imagine, coach Mack Brown kicked him off the team immediately. Buck then issued an apology that was obviously not written by him.

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It's official: Rham Emanuel has accepted Barack Obama's offer to become his chief of staff, according to MSNBC's "source very close to Rham Emanuel." So what about "partisan" Emanuel can Republicans glob on to immediately to paint Obama's first appointment as evidence of the Democratic president-elect's incompetence?

• He swears, saying "fuck" a lot. Read: He's an angry, angry man! This is especially important because the GOP will be called racist if they try to make Obama out to be an angry black man.

• Emanuel is a ballet dancer. Read: He's a fairy and won't be able to stand up to terrorists!

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It's rare that Advocate journalist Kerry Eleveld make herself the story, but that's exactly what she did in an editorial on Tuesday's election.

You know, the one where a black man was elected president, but gay marriage got trounced in three states? Yeah, it was emotional and Eleveld, seen here interviewing Barack Obama, had to get some things off her chest:

Wednesday morning, I awoke red with anger and blue with sadness even as tears of joy had graced my face for progress the night before.

This week, voters across the nation affirmed a promise that was launched from Middle America. Barack Obama, half black, half white, raised by grandparents who hailed from the heartland, became the president-elect of a country beleaguered by partisan, socioeconomic, and racial divisions that have haunted our nation for decades and escalated to a crescendo in the last eight years.

…Even as one prejudice fell to the will of the people on Election Day, LGBT Americans awoke the next morning to reports from the West to the South that all but confirmed one thing: We are most certainly second-class citizens in our own country…While I do not agree with the notion that I am undeserving of the same rights provided to other citizens by the Constitution, I cannot escape the reality that a majority of my fellow citizens still feel exactly that way. So perhaps it is time to reevaluate our movement’s approach with an eye to the area of our country that just supplied us with the single biggest civil rights advancement in a century.

Eleveld goes on to discuss how Obama told her he approaches gay rights from a strategic perspective, and concludes by suggesting that gay activists should be sure not to forget other struggles - i.e. hate crimes, employment non-discrimination - in the quest for marriage: "…Let us not deify marriage to the exclusion of pursuits like employment nondiscrimination, hate-crime protections, and basic partnership recognition. Perhaps we can embrace the lessons of history — and even smile in the knowledge that the path to freedom is not always straight."