Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.

There is dismay tonight in the Empire State. The resounding defeat of a bill in the Senate to grant - what a curious term, grant - the simple right to get married, to finally be equal in the eyes of the law, to gay and lesbian New Yorkers is yet another setback for the only group of Americans that can still be openly discriminated against. And no, I don't give a flying fuck what you think your god says is right or wrong, Senator Diaz, you cretinous hypocrite. Go officiate at Hiram Monserrate's wedding, buddy.

We as gays and lesbians are used to this. It was ever thus. We are easy to hate, and not because there is anything in us that makes hatred intrinsically possible, but because of bigotry borne in silence. We have always hidden in the shadows.

No longer. We have a long way to walk yet, but know this: history will yet spit on the grave of Ruben Diaz's bigotry. The day will dawn.  read more »

For over a generation, Republicans and their conservative allies have been screaming about "the sanctity of marriage" and how government must step in to preserve and protect it. This, they claim, is especially true with regard to raising children.

The problem is, they have no idea what they are talking about.

From 2002 to 2007, a period when Republicans controlled just about everything, the percentage of births to unmarried women in this country rose by 26%, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Clearly, Bristol Palin is not an anomaly; even women in their 20s and 30s are choosing to have babies out of wedlock.

This is not a new trend; births to unmarried women have been rising for decades. But it is clear that the Republican screed on this subject is mere words, and that everything they try in the phony name of morality is worthless.

A face only a mother could love.

Vito Fossella is one of those politicians many an activist loves to not so much to hate but smack around. ">If you go to our archives, you're going to find our peeps here at the TDG have been working hard to help Steve Harrison smack Fossella down come November and it looks that the congressman is giving them plenty to work with these days.

Here's a list that'll put you up to date on the face of NYC's GOP :

Roy Moskowitz's Letter to the editor

Michael Bouldin's Baghdad Vito Freaks Out and Harrison, Steinem, and the GOP's Catholic problem  read more »

The Sun reports that marriage equality is making gains in Albany - but the Senate remains a roadblock.

According to the article, Gov. Spitzer seems to be ready to make a push for legalization of gay marriage after the budget fight is over, and it's looking increasingly likely that the Assembly will go along:

The Empire State Pride Agenda, a leading gay advocacy group in New York, says 54 members of the 150-person Assembly have expressed support for a gay marriage bill, up from 35 when it polled the chamber in September.

"We think it has a real shot of passing in the Assembly this year," the executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, Alan Van Capelle, told The New York Sun.

One of those 54 Assembly members is Richard Brodsky, a Democrat who represents a district in Westchester. Mr. Brodsky said he senses that support for a bill is growing in his conference. "I think the prejudice is diminishing. People are thinking about it in reasonable terms," he said.

Brodsky's in the weeds on Albany reform, but he's got the right idea civil rights, it seems.

However, not only would a marriage equality bill die in Joe Bruno's Senate, it might not fare much better in a Democratic Senate, either.

(More below the fold...)  read more »

So Ann Coulter all but called John Edwards a "faggot." Surprise! And the members of CPAC cheered -- again, nothing new here.

Of course, Coulter's hate remark, and CPAC's hateful response, was not even mentioned on the Sunday morning political talk shows. In fact, they seemed to go out of their way to avoid the issue.

But the worst part of this whole mess is the Democratic presidential candidates. The three "major" names, Clinton, Obama and Edwards, have all come out against equaltiy. Every one of them waffles and hems and haws, but they all say what amounts to the same thing -- they are against equal rights for all people.

And neither Nancy Pelosi nor Harry Reid has said a word.

The Democratic party is supposed to be the party of reform and equality. It is supposed to stand up for those who are kept down. But when the rubber hits the road, where are the leaders of the party? They're hiding their heads in the sand.

It's disgusting!

I, for one, will not to contribute a dime to anyone who, on the issue of equality, is as much a miserable failure as George W. Bush.

Shame on you, Hillary. Shame on you, Barack. Shame on you, John. And shame on all Democrats  read more »