This is a watershed moment in American politics. One of the largest cities in the country will be headed by an out lesbian, chosen by people who voted for her because of her experience and competence. Houston rejected the politics of division and the extremists failed.
Election results are looking very good for Annise Parker, who would become the first openly gay mayor of a major American city. (Houston is now considered the 4th largest.) It's been a very contentious fight, with more than a little homophobia in the mix. CNN's Don Lemon just interviewed a confident and upbeat Parker. Here's a photo of Parker's supporters shouting Si, se puede! Yes, we can!
The candidate, City Controller Annise Parker, is openly gay. If she defeats her opponent, Gene Locke, a former city attorney, Houston would become the largest city in the nation to elect an openly gay mayor. 
It would be a shame if the significance of Mr. Pérez's appointment overshadowed two other political breakthroughs. Evan Low (right) became the youngest Asian American mayor in the country as well as the youngest openly gay mayor when he became mayor of Campbell, California on December 2. California stepped up to the plate again when openly gay Ken Yeager (left) was named president of the Board of Supervisors in Santa Clara.
Today, however, may be the biggest prize of all as Annise Parker (right)tries to rise above what many consider an election filled with homophobia to become Mayor of Houston. If she wins, she will be the first openly gay mayor to lead a top-ten city in the United States. Polls on Friday showed her pulling ahead, but given the tenor of the campaign, anything could happen. I'll publish results here as soon as I get them.“As so many of us know, the dissolution of any marriage is a sad and painful process. It is also a very personal and private one."The dissolution of a marriage is a sad, painful, personal and private process—if you're the straight first lady of South Carolina. If you're just some nice lesbian couple living in Maine or California the dissolution of your marriage is a highly public process, complete with lying campaign ads and anti-gay demagoguery and bigots traipsing to the polls And these anti-gay bigots in Maine didn't look too sad on election night in Maine:
I listen to or read news many hours a day. I've heard the passionate arguments of either side on so many debates. But this statement -- I don't think I've ever heard him say anything positive about the United States -- really frightened me. Why? It was so divorced from reality as to make me realize that there was no possibility of having a logical conversation with people. 
A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed.
I have just recently returned from two weeks in Uganda, ministering the Word among village pastors and Churches. It was a refreshing change of pace from the last year spent on the “marriage referendum”...I visited almost 20 remote villages and spent time with the believers. One of the common sentiments expressed there was that “in order to have a healthy village, there must be a strong and healthy church”... as I work my way back into ministry here at Emmanuel Bible Baptist Church (Plymouth) and with the Maine Jeremiah Project, I wanted to share the following article I found in Uganda’s largest daily newspaper. I had tucked it into my journal and found it yesterday as I reviewed some of my scribbling. I think it speaks for itself, but I hope you will wonder, as I do, where our own culture lost its way.
2. Austria has passed a civil unions bill, allowing many of the same rights and responsibilities as straight couple. There is, however, a pretty distasteful caveat: the bill forbids adoption or artificial insemination for gay couples.
4. An anti-bullying program that had been specific to anti-gay harassment has been nixed by a San Francisco Bay Area school. The Alameda Board of Education this week to opt for a more generic anti-bully curriculum has done little to ease tensions in the school district. Gay parents had pressed for the more specific curriculum to combat bullying while other parents thought elementary school was too early to discuss such matters. (Of course, if anti-gay bullying is taking place in elementary schools, isn't the issue already being discussed by elementary schoolers?) The 45 minute, once-a-year lessson regarding anti-gay harassment sparked a lawsuit.
Ten young Iranian men, including eight teenagers, are currently awaiting execution for sodomy, and two more are being re-tried on the same capital charge. And, in an exclusive interview with Gay City News, an Iranian student gay rights activist confirmed for the first time the existence of queer organizing on multiple university campuses throughout Iran.
The information about the ten youths currently under sentence of death for sodomy (lavaat in Persian) was released on November 25 in a joint appeal by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), the Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO), and COC of the Netherlands, the world’s oldest LGBT rights group, founded in 1946. The three organizations called on Western countries “with significant diplomatic and economic ties to Iran, including Germany, France, Canada, as well as the European Union, to pursue diplomatic efforts to cease these executions.
Hesam Mishagi is a 21-year-old gay rights leader in Iran. Through a translator he told Gay City News via telephone that his organization has been in place for five months. His take on the crackdown in Iran is fascinating. Because of the fraudulent elections, he claims the government wants to prove its authority by persecuting and silencing sexual minorities. The student movement for LGBT rights has not gone unnoticed. According to one LGBT leader, 130 students have been arrested for their involvement in recent weeks. Many of those arrested for sodomy have a very difficult time finding lawyers because of the stigma of homosexuality in Iran.This is exactly what I was worried about. By taking the death penalty out of the Uganda anti-homosexuality bill, the government has improved the bill's reputation, and its chances.
The Minister of Ethics and Integrity, James Nsaba Buturo said the government supports the bill because homosexuality and lesbianism are “repugnant to the Ugandan culture,” but wanted a more “refined” set of punishments. Death was too much, so the refinements include life in prison and reeducation.
Whether the punishment is sufficiently refined or not, Buturo articulates the rotten core of this bill: a heterosexual majority running roughshod over the dignity of a very small, and very vulnerable minority for no reason other than political dominance. And heterosexuals can get swept into the vortex; the bill imposes a regime of controlled speech and opinion, where objections to homosexuality may be freely uttered, but support is prohibited.
I don’t know about Ugandan culture, but that abuse of power is repugnant to any civilized government. And I am afraid our heated rhetoric has not helped. To my mind, at least, this was never about the death penalty; it was always about the discrimination. But after we set the stage with our focus on government murder, the bill now looks, to many people, ever so much more reasonable. We may have cause to regret our inadvertent aid in making that happen.
The bill has an American genesis of sorts, inspired to a large extent by the visits of U.S. evangelicals who are involved with a movement that promotes Christianity's role in getting homosexuals to become "ex-gays" through prayer and faith. Ugandan supporters of the bill appear to be particularly impressed by the ideas of Scott Lively, a California conservative preacher who has written a book, The Pink Swastika, about what he calls the links between Nazism and a gay agenda for world domination, which, by itself, would have raised the anti-colonial sensitivities of Ugandan society.
So I've thought a great deal about his post. Full disclosure: Scott Brown (left), who won the Mass Republican primary for the senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy, is not someone of whom I am particularly fond. He was a vehement opponent of same-sex marriage and, to a degree, civil unions. But it is not in this context that I write about his posing as a nude centerfold for Cosmo in his twenties. I actually don't think this should disqualify anyone, but it is staggering to think what the career of Democratic nominee Martha Coakley's (right) would be if she had done the same thing. Reverse the photos. Can you ever imagine Atty General Coakley elected for anything in Mr. Brown's position? And for the record, Scott Brown is now a state senator in Massachusetts. He was the only viable candidate who ran for the Republican nomination for senator.
Catholic Charities worked through the Department of Social Services in Massachusetts. The state of Massachusetts cannot legally discriminate, so Catholic Charities was not allowed to change its stance on same-sex foster parents that it had embraced for many years. As a result, many members of the Board of Catholic Charities resigned, not in protest over same-sex marriage but over the church's decision to change its adoption policy. These board members are lay leaders in the Roman Catholic Church in Boston, including the Chair of the Committee, Peter Meade (left), who wrote an op-ed in a Boston newspaper explaining his decision as well as his support for same-sex marriage.
New Jersey is the best chance for proponents to add a sixth state allowing same-sex unions. A similar measure was voted down last week in the New York state Senate. Last month, voters in Maine overturned a law that was enacted this year to allow same-sex weddings but never took effect. 
1. According to the BBC, Antonio Ruiz is the first gay man to receive a letter of apology from the Spanish government for being imprisoned in 1976 for being gay. Mr. Ruiz received both a letter and nearly $6,000 in reparations for three months that he was incarcerated under a law enacted during the Franco Regime. Although Franco died in 1975, the law was still in effect after his death. Ruiz's letter and compensation were made possible through Spain's Historical Memory Law of 2007, which recognizes victims of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco Regime.
2. Many LGBT groups are expressing outrage at the Grammy nomination of an singer who has called for the murder of gay men. The singer, Buju Banton, sings in “Boom, Bye Bye” that “faggots get up and run” when he comes, that “they have to die,” and that he will shoot them in the head or “burn them up bad.” He not only has refused to stop singing the song, but has insisted, “There is no end to the war between me and faggots." In a statement, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center said, “It’s an affront to LGBT people, and to all fair-minded people around the world, that Buju Banton was nominated."
3. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has spoken out against the nomination of the first out lesbian to be assistant bishop of Los Angeles. Asking that the bishops of the Communion continue to acknowledge a "gracious restraint" in order to hold the church together, Williams reminded all that Rev. Mary Glasspool's position as assistant bishop was not final, and that there was still time to stop her appointment. His quick response to Glasspool's selection was especially difficult for many since he has yet to condemn the Ugandan "Anti Homosexual Bill of 2009," graciously or otherwise.
Tomorrow, Massachusetts will nominate a Democrat and a Republican to run for the senate seat held for over four decades by Ted Kennedy. While no one in the bunch can match the political skills he honed during that time, the Democratic field of four is strong. I can easily and enthusiastically support any one of them in the final election. It's a comforting feeling, as is the fact that all four are great on LGBT issues, from ending don't ask, don't tell to supporting same-sex marriage rights.
In the Republican primary in Tuesday, one of the two candidates is in complete support of same sex marriage. The other, Scott Brown, is a state senator who was a leader in opposition to equal marriage rights. Because Brown is better known and has the party behind him, he'll probably get the nomination. But it will be a tough road for him. Massachusetts voters like their Republicans with a moderate to liberal bent when it comes to social issues. Mitt Romney ran on such a platform, then shifted to the right when he decided to run for president. Scott Brown must know this. The marriage issue is listed last on his website, and his position is far more tempered than it was, one that would be hard to use to justify an amendment to the federal constitution: I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. States should be free to make their own laws in this area, so long as they reflect the people's will as expressed through them directly, or as expressed through their elected representatives. This is a significant shift from his insistence on a referendum in Massachusetts.
So here are four significant events in the Anglican Church this past week might give us hope. I've mentioned two of them in past posts.
3. This week Bishop Thomas Shaw of Massachusetts instructed clergy that they may "solemnize marriages for all eligible couples, beginning Advent I. Solemnization, in accordance with Massachusetts law, includes hearing the declaration of consent, pronouncing the marriage and signing the marriage certificate." All eligible couples, according to Bishop Shaw, includes same-sex couples.
4. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has issued a statement expressing concern about the pending Ugandan legislation to present the death penalty for LGBT people. I can hope that other major religions will release similar documents.
