President Obama's Commitment to the Gulf Region

Yesterday, I visited Caminada Bay in Grand Isle, Louisiana -- one of the first places to feel the devastation wrought by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While I was here, at Camerdelle's Live Bait shop, I met with a group of local residents and small business owners.

Folks like Floyd Lasseigne, a fourth-generation oyster fisherman. This is the time of year when he ordinarily earns a lot of his income. But his oyster bed has likely been destroyed by the spill.

Terry Vegas had a similar story. He quit the 8th grade to become a shrimper with his grandfather. Ever since, he's earned his living during shrimping season -- working long, grueling days so that he could earn enough money to support himself year-round. But today, the waters where he has worked are closed. And every day, as the spill worsens, he loses hope that he will be able to return to the life he built.

Here, this spill has not just damaged livelihoods. It has upended whole communities. And the fury people feel is not just about the money they have lost. It is about the wrenching recognition that this time their lives may never be the same.

These people work hard. They meet their responsibilities. But now because of a manmade catastrophe -- one that is not their fault and beyond their control -- their lives have been thrown into turmoil. It is brutally unfair. And what I told these men and women is that I will stand with the people of the Gulf Coast until they are again made whole.

That is why, from the beginning, we have worked to deploy every tool at our disposal to respond to this crisis. Today, there are more than 20,000 people working around the clock to contain and clean up this spill. I have authorized 17,500 National Guard troops to participate in the response. More than 1,900 vessels are aiding in the containment and cleanup effort. We have convened hundreds of top scientists and engineers from around the world. This is the largest response to an environmental disaster of this kind in the history of our country.

We have also ordered BP to pay economic injury claims, and this week, the federal government sent BP a preliminary bill for $69 million to pay back American taxpayers for some of the costs of the response so far. In addition, after an emergency safety review, we are putting in place aggressive new operating standards for offshore drilling. And I have appointed a bipartisan commission to look into the causes of this spill. If laws are inadequate, they will be changed. If oversight was lacking, it will be strengthened. And if laws were broken, those responsible will be brought to justice.

These are hard times in Louisiana and across the Gulf Coast, an area that has already seen more than its fair share of troubles. The people of this region have met this terrible catastrophe with seemingly boundless strength and character in defense of their way of life. What we owe them is a commitment by our nation to match the resilience they have shown. That is our mission. And it is one we will fulfill.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

Today in Gay History

June 5, 1981

The Centers for Disease Control announce that five previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles have been diagnosed with P C P (Pneumocystis pneumonia), which was the first official warning of what would become known as AIDS ~

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This Month in Gay History

June, 1989

U.S. Postal Service issues the first commemorative "Lesbian and Gay Pride" postage stamp

Today in Gay History

Happy 80 th Birthday !

Harvey B. Milk

Harvey Milk Speech
- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Today in Gay History

Happy 85th Birthday May 21st
Frank Kameny (b. 1925)
Gay Rights Founding Father

Frank Kameny is one of the founding fathers of the American gay rights movement. He helped radicalize the homophile movement, preparing the way for the mass movement for equality initiated by the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969.

He was born Franklin Edward Kameny on May 21, 1925, into a New York middle-class Jewish family. A prodigy who had taught himself to read by the age of four, he entered Queens College at the age of 15 to study physics. He interrupted his education, however, to serve in the armed forces during World War II. After the war he returned to his studies, and in 1956 he received a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University.

Upon graduation Kameny moved to Washington, D. C. to join the faculty of Georgetown University. In July 1957, after one year of teaching, Kameny obtained a civil service job as an astronomer with the United States Army Map Service and began what he hoped would be a fulfilling scientific career. However, events over the next couple of years changed the direction of his life forever.

Late one night in 1957, Kameny was arrested on a morals charge in Lafayette Park, a popular gay cruising area in Washington, D. C. He was released, and nothing immediately came of the incident. It was not long afterward, however, that an investigator from the Civil Service Commission came to question him about rumors that he was a homosexual.

That fall, after serving in his job for only a few months, Kameny was fired from the Map Service, and early the next year he learned that he had been barred from all future employment in the federal government. A victim of the McCarthy-era regulations that branded homosexuals as potential traitors and unfit for government employment, Kameny found his career in ruins.

This experience drove Kameny to militant activism. "My dismissal amounted to a declaration of war against me by the government," Kameny later said, "and I tend not to lose my wars." Kameny attempted to sue the government to get his job back, a lengthy process that went through several appeals. However, all his legal efforts came to naught, including filing his own petition to the United States Supreme Court, which was denied in 1961.

Having failed to achieve his goal as an individual, he resolved that it was time to organize and work within a group. Kameny and his friend Jack Nichols established the Mattachine Society of Washington, D. C. in August 1961. Although the Washington group took its name from the Los Angeles-based homophile organization, the two were not affiliated.

The Mattachine Society of Washington, D. C.'s first official meeting was held on November 15, 1961 and drew about a dozen men and women. Kameny was elected as the group's first president. In opposition to many gay leaders at the time, Kameny embraced direct action and sought contact with public officials rather than hiding from them. Kameny believed that gay people should fight a "down-to-earth, grass-roots, sometimes tooth-and-nail battle" against discrimination.

Under Kameny's leadership, the Mattachine Society of Washington, D. C. charged to the forefront of the emerging homophile movement, in many ways anticipating the militancy that was to be unleashed among gay men and lesbians generally by the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969.

. . .Kameny's group focused its efforts on removing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation from civil service employment, as well as on granting gay men and lesbians security clearances and qualifying them for service in the military.

In April 1965, the group organized the first gay demonstration at the White House. A dozen or so gay men and lesbians, including Kameny and Barbara Gittings, dressed in business attire, carried signs reading "First Class Treatment for Homosexuals" and "Civil Service Commission is Un-American."

A few months after that demonstration, the U. S. Court of Appeals issued a ground-breaking decision. The court held that rejection of an application for federal employment on the grounds of "homosexual conduct" was "too vague." The Civil Service Commission, the court ruled, failed to state "why [homosexuality] related to occupational competence or fitness."

After a number of similar court decisions were handed down over the next ten years, the Civil Service Commission finally amended its anti-gay policy in 1975.

In addition to battling discrimination in civil service employment, Kameny also sought to challenge the negative images of homosexuals prevalent in the 1960s. Toward that goal, he coined the slogan "Gay is Good." The slogan was later adopted by the 1968 North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO).

In 1971 Kameny participated in the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, where he accused psychiatrists of victimizing gay men and women with their unscientific theories of homosexuality. He urged the APA to remove homosexuality from its list of psychiatric illnesses, which the organization eventually did in 1973.

In 1971, Kameny became the first openly gay person to run for congress. Competing for D. C.'s non-voting seat in the House of Representatives, Kameny came in fourth among six candidates. He used the campaign to call attention to the inequities experienced by homosexuals in a country in which the government "wages a relentless war against us."

Kameny is also a cofounder of the National Gay Task Force and the Gay Rights National Lobby. In 1975, he was appointed a Commissioner of the D. C. Commission on Human Rights, becoming the first openly gay municipal appointee. He also personally drafted the bill that repealed D. C.'s sodomy law, which was finally enacted in 1993.

Dr. Kameny's archives and papers documenting his life and leadership were acquired by the Library of Congress in 2006.

In February 2009, Kameny’s home in Washington was designated as a D.C. Historic Landmark by the District of Columbia’s Historic Preservation Review Board.

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Today in Gay History

April 30, 1997

Ellen Morgan,

portrayed by

Ellen DeGeneres,

came out on her

ABC television

series "Ellen."

And the world has not been the same since. Thank you, Ellen!

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Today in Gay History

On April 29, 1997

The State of Hawaii created

a "domestic partners registry."

This was in response to the May 1993 ruling of Hawaii's Supreme Court that the state must show a compelling reason to ban same-sex marriage and orders a lower court to hear a case seeking the right of same-sex couples to marry. By November 1998, the voters of Hawaii approved a state constitutional amendment reserving the right to define marriage to the Legislature, barring further judicial action.

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Today in Gay History

Happy 726th Birthday

Edward II, King of England
(April 25, 1284-1327)

"Historians largely regard the reign of Edward II as one of the most ineffectual of the Middle Ages. The nobility deemed his intimacy with Piers Gaveston (d. 1312) inappropriate and excessive; and Edward's insistent loyalty to his closest friend only further alienated them, ultimately contributing to his own fall from power.

Edward was born on April 25, 1284 at Caernarvon Castle in Wales. Although he was the fourth son of Edward I and his first wife Eleanor of Castile, he was the only son to survive infancy and become heir to the throne. . . .

His pursuits were not those typically approved of in kings at this time. Edward preferred such activities as swimming, boating, thatching roofs, and arranging theatrical and musical events. . . . In addition, he formed intense friendships with men whom his father felt wielded too much influence over the prince. Piers Gaveston, a knight from Gascon, was the first and most important of Edward's favorites.

Gaveston and Edward may have become intimate friends during the Scottish campaign led by Edward I in 1300. The king became critical of this friendship, and exiled Gaveston from England. " Learn more about Edward @ g l b t q

Today in Gay History

April 21, 2005

Connecticut Governor signs Civil Unions law, becoming only the second state to do so legislatively without being compelled by the courts. While affirming that marriage was only to be between one man and one woman, the key provisions of the new Civil Unions law were:

Sec. 2. (NEW) (Effective October 1, 2005) A person is eligible to enter into a civil union if such person is:

(1) Not a party to another civil union or a marriage;

(2) Of the same sex as the other party to the civil union;

(3) Except as provided in section 10 of this act, at least eighteen years of age; and

(4) Not prohibited from entering into a civil union pursuant to section 3 of this act.

Sec. 14. (NEW) (Effective October 1, 2005) Parties to a civil union shall have all the same benefits, protections and responsibilities under law, whether derived from the general statutes, administrative regulations or court rules, policy, common law or any other source of civil law, as are granted to spouses in a marriage, which is defined as the union of one man and one woman.

Sec. 15. (NEW) (Effective October 1, 2005) Wherever in the general statutes the terms "spouse", "family", "immediate family", "dependent", "next of kin" or any other term that denotes the spousal relationship are used or defined, a party to a civil union shall be included in such use or definition, and wherever in the general statutes, except sections 7-45 and 17b-137a of the general statutes, as amended by this act, subdivision (4) of section 45a-727a, sections 46b-20 to 46b-34, inclusive, section 46b-150d of the general statutes, as amended by this act, and section 14 of this act, the term "marriage" is used or defined, a civil union shall be included in such use or definition.

Meanwhile, a year or so later, the Supreme Court of Connecticut ruled that legal Marriage constitutionally could not be denied to same sex couples. The separate establishment of mere Civil Unions did not meet constitutional muster.

On April 23, 2009 lawmakers of Connecticut both in the House (vote 100-44) and in the Senate (vote 28-7) agreed to repeal all the old marriage laws and fully replace them with genderless quotes and all references to marriage will be fully gender -neutral. Governor Jodi Rell, a Republican, signed the law. On October 1, 2010, civil unions will cease to be provided and existing civil unions will be automatically converted to marriages. Until then, existing civil unions will be kept and couples may "upgrade" to marriage voluntarily. Same-sex marriages, civil unions and broad domestic partnerships from other jurisdictions will be legally treated as marriages in Connecticut.

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We Need a New Covenant

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