• After pussy footing around impotent ENDA, HRC's asking members to get involved. Says President Joe Solmonese:

Late last week, House leaders announced their decision to change the language of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) so that it only includes sexual orientation and not gender identity. These House leaders have said that they do not have enough votes to move forward with the original fully-inclusive bill.

We are profoundly disappointed by this move, and I want to explain our position and ask you to write your congress member today.

Sign their pre-written letter here.

• George Takei's hard as a rock: asteroid named in gay actor's honor.

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The United States Army's got a gay mystery on its hand. Why did three Army members kill themselves over the course of three months last year? And, even more mysterious, was one of them being blackmailed for her lesbian ways?

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Above you see video of Sally Field's acceptance speech at last night's Emmy Awards. You're not hearing Field's actual words: "If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamn wars in the first place.”

Did we not just hear the first shot in the Culture War's next front??

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The Taliban may have made a tyrannical career of defacing works of art in the name of right wing religion, but as photog Thomas Dworzak discovered, they've got no problem posing for the camera. And they look fabulous!

Gay activists can breath a little easier. The Pentagon announced yesterday that on September 17th, they will shut down their Threat and Local Observation Notices database.

Since 2004, Washington spooks have been monitoring anti-war activists and other groups ideologically opposed to the Bush administration, including gay groups.

Governor Bill Richardson knows he made a bad move at last night's "gay debates," when he intimated that being gay is, in fact, a choice: a tired argument conservatives use against gay rights. If gays "choose" their "lifestyle," then they don't deserve "special" rights. Not the implication you want to make at a forum on gay rights.

Within minutes, the presidential hopeful had his team release a statement clarifying his position.

What a perfect conversation starter for Richardson and our editor, who met up with Richardson this morning. Get the goods on Richardson's poor choice of words, what to do about anti-gay Saudis and who's going to hell, after the jump…

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You've got to be fucking kidding:

After discharging 60 Arabic language translators for being gay, the military is now forced to rely on a translating machine that has not been fully tested, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

NIST researchers are evaluating a prototype, real-time, two-way translation systems for the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), point out that wartime military patrols and civilian encounters can be especially dangerous if neither group understands the other’s language.

Servicemember's Legal Defense Network honcho Steve Ralls remarks, "The military is placing homophobia well ahead of national security."

They might as well give terrorists plane tickets and send them on their way…

More homo-hating horror out of war torn Iraq. Gay activist group Iraqi LGBT confirms that anti-gay militias on both sides of the religious divide have launched a fresh campaign against queers. Doug Ireland writes for Gay City News:

Mustafa, 26, was a well-known gay man in his neighborhood in the city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, who went out for a walk with a friend to shop for clothes. Mustafa was stopped and arrested by the local militia of the Badr Corps - the armed branch of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is the largest Shia political formation in Iraq.
…
In the small Southern Iraqi town of al-Simawa - a stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, which has also deployed anti-gay death squads - two gay friends, aged 29 and 30, received death threats targeting their homosexuality. Within a few days, the two young men were assassinated.

The Shia forces also killed a 17-year old boy named Ali.

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Iraq's anti-gay activists sure are crafty. And fast learners.
According to two gay college students, Ahmed, 23, and 24-year old Zaid, the fundamentalist Mahdi Army uses the internet to lure, capture, torture and sometimes kill queers.

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America's Department of Defense could learn a thing or two from their British counterparts. The Ministry of Defense has apologized for discriminating against gay soldiers.

Commander Phil Sagar told BBC radio:

Of course we're sorry for anyone who's suffered personal trauma. We can't change the past and what's happened has happened. But if, as I'm sure you have, you've got testimony from people who feel that their lives have been ruined from this, then clearly that is not a good place to be.

Sagar's apology didn't come from left field - fifty former soldiers are looking for financial compensation for their unfair treatment.

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Congress ain't fucking around with Condoleezza Rice. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos of California and New York Rep. Gary Ackerman, both of whom happen to be Democrats, railed against The Pentagon for booting gay translators.

Citing the 9/11 Commission's warning - "under-investment in critical foreign languages presents an urgent and immediate threat to our national security" - the politicos urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her staffers to rehire gays and lesbian translators…

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The Pentagon may be changing their tune on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The Defense Department's Cynthia O. Smith released a statement saying that though they've been booted from the service, gay patriots can still help defend the nation.

[Gays and lesbians] have the opportunity to continue to serve their nation and national security by putting their abilities to use by way of civilian employment with other Federal agencies, the Department of Defense, or in the private sector, such as with a government contractor.

Gay defender defenders Servicemembers Legal Defense Network points out that this statement's the first time The Department of Defense has invited queers to help fight America's so-called good fight.

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Queer Congressfolk Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank aren't fucking around when it comes to queer Iraqis. The politicos penned a strongly worded letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanding the United States government get their shit together and protecting this targeted group.

In addition to citing a United Nations resolution regarding the plight of the Iraqi queer, Frank and Baldwin highlight the nation's horrific anti-gay crimes rates: According to Iraqi LGBT, a London-based human rights group working to support the human rights of gay Iraqis, twenty-six of its members have been killed since 2003, including the murder of two minors -eleven-year-old Ameer and fourteen-year-old Ahmed who were forced into child prostitution–in 2006. In addition, a mass kidnapping of five gay men from the Shaab area of Iraq took place during the first week of December 2006. All are now presumed dead.

So, what are the odds that Condi's going to hop on this? C'mon, any guesses? We say one in a trillion. No, make that one in a bajillionkazillion. If Condi hasn't done anything about the unending tide of violence, why would she start now? Because two gay politicos are pressuring her? If anything, that'll just force that beast of a woman further into the closet of politically-convenient denial. About Iraq, we mean…

Read the entire love letter, after the jump..

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The Pentagon's anti-gay politics came into clear view this weekend after officials finally admitted the government once commissioned a so-called gay bomb. Once detonated, the bomb would release a powerful aphrodisiac officials hoped would transform once mighty soldiers into sissies (pictured).

Berkeley's Sunshine Project employed the Freedom of Information Act to obtain records of the queer weaponry, which the Pentagon played down as an "idea". The records prove, however, that the government actively pursued the project. Berkeley's Edward Hammond explains:

The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soldiers to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistibly attractive to one another.
…
It would have never come to my attention if it was dismissed at the time it was proposed. In fact, the Pentagon has used it repeatedly and subsequently in an effort to promote non-lethal weapons, and in fact they submitted it to the highest scientific review body in the country for them to consider.

The Pentagon papers also indicate the Air Force requested $7.5 million to fund the bomb, which officials describes as "distasteful but completely non-lethal". Warmongers initiated the project in 1994, the same year 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' went into effect.

Our regularly scheduled Queerty ReBUTTal will not be posted today. Instead, we'd like to open the floor to democratic presidential candidate, Mike Gravel.

As we've mentioned before, the former Senator from Alaska's made Don't Ask, Don't Tell the cornerstone of his campaign.

In this Queerty exclusive, Senator Gravel writes on the very personal origins of his queer-friendly policy. Read all about it, after the jump…

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