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Today’s Top Headlines

Obama Holds Reception with Gay Leaders
Demonstrators Protest Police Raid on Texas Gay Bar
Labor Secretary Denounces Gay Pride Poster Vandals
Gay Marriage Stalls as RI Lawmakers Wrap Up
India Faith Leaders: Anti-Gay Law Must Stay

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Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is denouncing vandals who defaced many of the gay pride posters installed at the agency’s Washington headquarters. Solis, the first secretary in the department’s history to publicly recognize Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month, sent an agency-wide e-mail last Friday saying she would not tolerate anti-gay misconduct. “It appears, however, that some members of the Labor Department team have a different view, as it has come to my attention that most of the posters have been continually defaced or removed,” Solis said. “On several occasions, even the poster frames have been torn completely off the elevator walls.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press.

President Obama isn’t giving gay rights activists any of the major legislation they want so far. But he is giving them some face time at the White House this afternoon. The administration invited 250 leaders of the gay community to a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the birth of the gay rights movement — the protests that followed a police raid of the Stonewall Inn gay bar in New York. But despite campaign promises that activists saw as pledges of quick action, Obama has put on the back burner bills to rescind the 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prevents homosexuals from serving openly in the military and to overturn the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage as between men and women and allows states to ignore gay marriages performed in other states.

Read the full story from the Boston Globe.

A crowd of more than 100 protesters chanted “No more!” from the steps of the Tarrant County Courthouse on Sunday evening as they demanded an investigation of a police raid that happened hours earlier at a gay nightclub. One patron was seriously injured during the raid at the Rainbow Lounge, which resulted in the arrests of seven people, protesters said. Speaker after speaker decried what they called excessive force during the raid, an accusation that police dispute. “I was scared,” said Todd Camp, a former Star-Telegram writer who helped organize the protest. “I have never seen anything like this in my life.”

Read the full story from the Star-Telegram.

Rhode Island seems almost certain to remain the only New England state that does not recognize gay marriage after measures legalizing same-sex unions stalled just before the part-time General Assembly ended the bulk of its annual work. None of the bills legalizing same-sex marriage in Rhode Island advanced to a floor vote this session, continuing a trend begun in 1997. The lack of Statehouse action on gay unions means that Rhode Island is unlikely to allow gay marriage anytime soon, despite decisions this year by lawmakers in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont joined Connecticut and Massachusetts in legalizing gay marriage.

Read the full story from the Boston Herald.

Religious groups in India have warned they will oppose any move to legalize homosexuality as the federal government prepares to hold talks on a law that classifies same-sex acts as crimes. India’s Hindu nationalist main opposition has in the meantime called for a national debate on the legislation that law minister M. Veerappa Moily last week said would come up for a discussion within the government. “This is a sensitive issue and warrants a debate within the Indian society at large before arriving at any decision,” said Sidharth Nath Singh, spokesman for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.

Read the full story from CNN.

Today’s Top Headlines

Jerusalem Gay Parade Ends Peacefully
60% of Gays & Lesbians Say Faith is Important
Forty Years Since Stonewall Riots
Joe Biden Reaches Out to Gay Donors
Pastor Defends Gay ‘Exorcism’

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Activists of Russia’s sexual minorities plan to picket the U.S. embassy in Moscow during President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow in July in support of the legalization of same-sex marriages in a number of U.S. states. The initiators of the picket filed notification with the administration of Moscow’s Central Administrative District and plan picket on July 7, on the second day of Obama’s visit, Nikolai Alexeyev, the leader of the Moscow gay community and the organizer of a number of gay parades that were routinely banned by Moscow authorities in the past, told Interfax on Friday.

Read the full story from the Kyiv Post.

A U.S. pastor defended a video posted on YouTube of an exorcism of a gay man, saying the Manifested Glory Ministries church does not hate gay people, it just does not believe in their lifestyle. The video, which has sparked outrage among gay rights advocates, shows a young man writhing around on the floor at the Stamford, Connecticut, church. The video, which was taken six or seven months ago, has been removed from the website. It is not clear who posted it. Pastor Patricia McKinney said the man told the church “he did not want to live this way.”

Read the full story from Reuters.

Vice President Joe Biden told gay and lesbian Democrats that he doesn’t blame them for their impatience and promised that the Obama administration will begin to push more strongly on the issues they care about, including the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Speaking at a LGBT fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, Biden acknowledged the anger many gays and lesbians have toward the White House, and he pledged to “put some pace on the ball.” “I don’t blame you for your impatience,” Biden said. “I hope you don’t doubt the president’s commitment.”

Read the full story from Politico.

A significant majority of gays and lesbians — six in 10 — say faith is important in their lives, but heterosexuals generally state such commitments more often, according to a new survey by a Christian research firm. “People who portray gay adults as godless, hedonistic, Christian bashers are not working with the facts,” said George Barna, founder of the Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif.-based research company. “A substantial majority of gays cite their faith as a central facet of their life, consider themselves to be Christian, and claim to have some type of meaningful personal commitment to Jesus Christ active in their life today.”

Read the full story from USA Today.

Forty years ago, a New York City bar called the Stonewall Inn shot to global attention when its gay clientele staged a revolt against police harassment, launching the US homosexual rights movement. The popular bar in the Greenwich Village community gave its name to the spontaneous uprising that rocked the neighborhood for five consecutive nights, as homosexuals fought back against police raids targeting gay-friendly establishments. “Stonewall was a surprise — it was a surprise to everyone that participated, as much as it was a surprise to the city,” said Martin Boyce, who back then was a 16 year-old participant in the riots.

Read the full story from AFP.

A gay pride parade in Jerusalem ended peacefully on Thursday but the planned opening of a municipal parking lot on the Jewish sabbath will test the delicate balance between religious and secular Jews in the city. The annual parade has touched off anti-gay protests by ultra-Orthodox Jews in the holy city in the past. But this year they limited their protest to holding street prayers wearing brown sacks in line with a biblical mourning tradition.

Read the full story from the Washington Post.

 

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Today’s Top Headlines

Transgender-Inclusive ENDA Introduced in Congress
House Leaders Strategize LGBT Legislative Agenda
Majority of Texans Support Same-Sex Unions
Irish Gay Rights Protesters Chain Themselves to Parliament

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Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) announced the introduction of a bill yesterday that would make discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace illegal. The revised version of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) has 114 co-sponsors in Congress, including openly gay members Frank, Tammy Baldwin and Jared Polis. Frank said the gender identity-inclusive version has a good chance of passing, due in part to grassroots work by the transgender community. A bill without gender identity protections passed the House in 2007, but stalled in the Senate.