Here's a reason why HRC - and everyone else - should oppose the newly revised Employment Non-Discrimination Act:

Lambda Legal's preliminary assessment of the revised version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act shows the bill to be riddled with loopholes in addition to failing altogether to protect transgender people against discrimination.

"Leaving out protections for transgender people is unacceptable, and passing a bill riddled with loopholes will make it harder to achieve equality on the job," said Kevin Cathcart, Executive Director at Lambda Legal. "You can't be fired for being a lesbian or a gay man, but you can be fired if your boss thinks you fit their stereotype of one."

What's more, the new version offers even more outs for religious organizations. Besides allowing churches and the such to sack gays, faith-based hospitals and colleges are given more room to flex their anti-gay muscle.

Here's the video of Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa blasting outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace. Watch as Harkin defends gays and Pace again voices his opposition to same-sex relations.

Trans folks may become political sacrifices. Though the majority of Democrats support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, they apparently disagree on whether or not the government should support trans rights:

House Democratic leaders are strongly considering dropping anti-discrimination protections for transgender persons from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, after an internal Democratic head count on Wednesday found that the bill would likely be defeated if it included the trans provision, multiple sources familiar with the bill said.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi's apparently worried about how the bill will fair with trans inclusion. Sources close to Congress say Pelosi has considered editing out trans rights.

Gay rights groups HRC and the Gay and Lesbian Task Force don't support the move, but gay politico Barney Frank thinks it's worth a shot: "I think the notion that we should let the whole bill die if we can’t pass [a] transgender [provision] is a terrible idea." Frank points to past wins, including women and blacks, which came in stages, not a flood.

Singapore's government's getting sexual today as a new bill looks to strike down laws banning oral and anal sex. While it may sound like a great development for all people, the gays are getting left out in the cold:

Oral and anal sex in private between consenting heterosexual adults would be legalized under a bill introduced in Singapore's parliament on Monday.

Under the city-state's first major penal code amendments in 22 years, a section criminalizing "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" would be repealed.
…
But while the bill takes a softer line on heterosexual sex, a ban on acts of "gross indecency" between males will remain.

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Raised in London and living in New York, Kirsten Price and her soulful voice seem poised to take the independent music scene by storm. Above you see the brand spanking new video for Price's "Freedom".

We recently dispatched editor Andrew Belonsky to chat with Price about this video, her unquantifiable influences and why people need to stop talking "gay".

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A Vermont mother's tired of anti-gay editorials in her local paper. In an effort to channel her anger, the on-the-money mama wrote a long, scathing reply.

We've included the entire Family Pride-provided letter after the jump, but want to highlight our favorite part of her anti-homophobe harangue:

You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don’t know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn’t put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it’s about time you started doing that.

Girl!

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Oregonian gay activists are outing their homo-hating neighbors:

…Know Thy Neighbor announced plans Tuesday to publicize the name of everyone who signs referendum petitions to overturn two gay-rights bills passed by the Legislature this year.

A coalition of conservative Christians is circulating petitions to put the two measures before voters in the November 2008 election. That would enable Oregon voters to decide whether to grant marriage-style rights to same-sex couples via domestic partnerships, and whether to ban discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people.

Know Thy Neighbor pledged to launch a new Web site that will list the petition signers' names and addresses.

This obviously isn't KTN's first time in the rodeo…

John Howard may hold the fate of Australian homos in hands. As politicos and lobbyists gear up for a vote on granting gay couples some of the same rights afforded married straights, "sources" close to the debate say Prime Minister Howard's vote may be the most important. From Sydney Morning Herald:

…Sources said yesterday the result would most likely swing on the view of the Prime Minister.

John Howard was cited by one source as "being quite supportive" but neither he nor his office would telegraph his view yesterday.
…
Fears of a Christian voter backlash and personal moral beliefs are motivating those opposed to any change.

Those voters, who have been writing angry letters to Liberal Party backer, Warren Entsch, don't realize the law doesn't change that much. Gays will only be given 54 of the same rights, including inheritance rights. There's no provisions even close to counting as "marriage". As Entsch says, "It doesn't change anything. It doesn't bring marriage into it."

Howard's been opposed to piecemeal legislation in the past. Will he change his historically anti-gay ways or do old habits die hard? We don't know, but we're on the edge of our collective seat!

Within seconds of getting back from the forum, we received the following note from Bill Richardson, who seemed to intimate that homosexuality is a choice:

Let me be clear — I do not believe that sexual orientation or gender identity happen by choice. But I'm not a scientist, and the point I was trying to make is that no matter how it happens, we are all equal and should be treated that way under the law. That is what I believe, that is what I have spent my career fighting for. I ask that people look at my record and my actions and they will see I have been a true supporter of the LGBT community.

Hmmm, still sounds a bit wishy-washy to us. We'll be sure to get more answers when we interview him later today. Keep those peepers peeled, readers…

• A beautiful reader sent along this comic and we thought we'd send it along to you. You need a chuckle. We do, however, have a question: what if someone's an illegal immigrant and gay??

• GOP straight man and former South Dakota Senator Don Frankenfeld comes out for gay rights and joins gay rights advocacy group.

• Gay people need to think beyond their immediate political needs.

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• Debbie Harry may have been born on July 1st, but she's celebrating tonight at Factory at Lotus.

• Moth genocide! Scientists trick moths into thinking they're gay.

• American soldiers in Afghanistan love their smack.

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Homo media watchdogs GLAAD released their first ever televisual comparison today, the Network Responsibility Index.

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• Country crooner Faith Hill does not tolerate other women's hands on hubby Tim McGraw's package. An overzealous fan learned that the - (turn and) cough - hard way when she got too friendly at a concert this weekend. Hill wasn't trying to make any friends when she chastised the cock grabber:

Somebody needs to teach you some class, my friend. You don’t go grabbin’ somebody else’s, somebody’s husband’s balls, you understand me? That’s very disrespectful.

Read those first two sentences and tell us that's not the best study in contradiction since the concept of "friendly fire"

• Two lawyers, their sex club tenant and the legal space in-between.

• French actor Michel Serrault, best known for his stage and film work on La Cage aux Folles (The Bird Cage), has died.

• AfterElton offers you ten gay superheroes "you (probably) haven't of"! We know Lord Fanny. She's awesome. Except when she turns into that scary monster. That's not so awesome.

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A queer convict in Mexico did some historic humping this weekend.

The man - known only as Ricardo N - got lucky after his love-seeking boyfriend, Augustin N., filed a human rights complaint against the prison for denying their right to screw. Not quite as romantic as imprisoned South African gays' fight for marriage rights, but a step in the right direction.

The commission ruled against the Santa Martha Acatitla in February, saying such a penile penal prohibition counted as discrimination. Though the prison never publicly announced the coupling, the commission confirms that prison officials allowed boys to get down and dirty:

The Mexico City department of prisons and rehabilitation has allowed the first conjugal visit to an inmate with a sexual orientation other than heterosexual. [This is] an important step in terms of nondiscrimination regarding sexual preference.

And, we imagine, an important step for poor Ricardo's limp wrists!

It's been forty years since British parliamentarians signed the Sex Offenses Act, thus decriminalizing faggotry. The social sea change helped millions of homos ride on out of the closet. It also thrust homosexuality into the cultural spotlight, making gays - and their sex lives - one of the most talked about subjects in all the land.

Now, British journo Simon Fanshawe wants everyone to "bloody" shut up about the queers and focus on the person, not the sexual position.

How things have changed even since I came out, in 1976. Endlessly now, I get asked on to chatshows and debate programmes to discuss the state of homosexuality. Over a hundred years after the wonderful Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde termed it "the love that dare not speak its name", it has become the love that won't bloody well shut up.

Eeks! Do you think he's talking about us?

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