Gay activists have hoped to pressure Hazy into selling or donating the property as a gay community center instead of redeveloping it as a high-end hotel, but Hazy told the City Council that he had never received a serious offer for the property when it was on the market

Andy Pugno, the guy who defended Proposition 8 in court, said they would definitely appeal the verdict and have asked for a stay of the ruling – meaning that gays would be prohibited from marrying until the case finishes its way through the courts. That stay is in place until Friday when Judge Walker will take it up again.

For now though eyes are turning toward the highest court in the land and while activists have historically been wary of bringing gay marriage to the Roberts court, Andrew Sullivan has hope:

I am increasingly confident that when this case eventually gets to the Supreme Court, the logic of equality will win. Once you have conceded that gay people are a class, and that their sexual orientation is integral to their lives and immutable, and that they are not defined by sex acts that can be performed by gays and straights alike, then the ban on marriage equality is left without anything but an amorphous claim to heterosexual supremacy – or a judicially irrelevant appeal to simple custom (already invalid in five states and many countries) – to support it.

Walker is right. What this comes down to is whether gay people are inferior to straight people, and whether their citizenship is thereby to be deemed inferior as well. The entire weight of the American tradition stands athwart the imposition of a second-class group of people and declares: No!

Bill “Papa Bear” O’Reilly was on Jay Leno earlier this week and even he says he doesn’t understand why President Obama just doesn’t sign an executive order suspending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell already.

Watch:

Mostly the takeaway is that large, visible, out gay communities are symptomatic of a healthier culture and society that’s more open to new ideas and ways of doing things. So places where gays can be open about who they are are also places that don’t discriminate against black people and subjugate them to being a perpetual underclass. Or that they attract part of the $743 billion that gays and lesbians spend every year and are thus more prosperous. Or put another way:

As Gates and I have pointed out elsewhere, the presence of LGBT people isn’t a sufficient condition for wealth creation in and of itself; gay men and lesbians are no more sophisticated, economically productive, innovative, or entrepreneurial than any other group on average. But places that attract gay people and lesbians tend to have the same open-minded attitudes and business styles that foster innovation. A visible LGBT community is the proverbial “canary in the coal mine,” signaling openness to new ideas, new business models, and diverse and different thinking kinds of people—precisely the characteristics of a local ecosystem that can attract cutting-edge entrepreneurs and mobilize new companies.

So it turns out that despite bringing the wrath of God down on the places that accept them, gays are actually good for their communities. Go figure, right?

Prosecutors have dropped all charges against an openly gay Iraq War veteran who twice chained himself to a White House fence to protest the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Lt. Dan Choi and James Pietrangelo, a gay army captain honorably discharged for disclosing his sexual orientation, were in court Wednesday on charges of failure to obey police orders during the March and April protests. All charges were dropped against them.

Choi and his attorney had subpoenaed President Barack Obama to appear, but an attorney for the prosecution said the subpoena wasn’t served.

Prosecutor Christine Chang declined to comment on why the government dropped the case.

Choi said he believes Obama administration officials didn’t want to draw attention to the policy.

The city government says there have been 142 marriages between men and 129 between women in the four months since the law went took effect March 4.The government said Tuesday that 18 foreigners were among those married, and the rest were Mexican citizens. The largest number of marriages occurred in the first month after the law took effect.

Maybe all the gays should emigrate to Mexico, that seems like a fair trade to me.

It’s always striking to me how the policies that almost no one cares about are the ones that are instrumental in shaping daily life. Take for example this brilliant piece of public policy: Did you know that American cities usually require off-street parking at bars? To take a random example, the city of Long Beach, CA requires 20 parking spaces for every 1,000 square feet of gross floor area for “taverns”. I don’t know what the city thinks people … Read More

via Can’t Win For Losing

… Read More

via Queer Fresno