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Today’s Top Headlines

Court Denies Govt Request to Dismiss DADT Lawsuit
Man Claims Glaxo Drug Made Him ‘Gay Sex Addict’
Illinois Civil Unions Become Law Today
RI House Committee to Take Up Gay Marriage Bill

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House lawmakers will take up a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in Rhode Island. The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hear testimony on the bill Wednesday. The legislation has been introduced several times over the years, but failed as it faced opposition from previous Republican Gov. Don Carcieri and former legislative leaders. This year, advocates of the bill are more hopeful because it has the support of new Gov. Lincoln Chafee, an independent, and Democratic House Speaker Gordon Fox, who is openly gay and is a co-sponsor of the bill.

Read the full story from the Boston Herald.

Bill-signing ceremonies don’t generally attract large crowds, but Monday’s historic signing of legislation that will allow same-sex couples to enter into civil unions is expected to bring more than 1,000 people to the Chicago Cultural Center. Last month, lawmakers approved SB1716, the “Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act.” The bill allows both gay and straight couples to enter into civil unions, giving them some of the same benefits automatically available to married couples, including the right to visit a sick partner in the hospital, disposition of a deceased loved one’s remains and the right to make decisions about a loved one’s medical care. Governor Pat Quinn will sign the bill into law Monday at 4 p.m., and more than 1,000 people are expected to show up at the ceremony.

Read the full story from the Huffington Post.

A French father-of-two is to take GlaxoSmithKline to court on Tuesday, alleging the British firm’s drug to treat Parkinson’s disease turned him into a gay sex and gambling addict. The 51-year-old’s lawyers say their client’s behaviour changed radically after he was first administered the drug in 2003 for the illness, which causes tremors, slows movement and disrupts speech. Didier Jambart, a married father-of-two who says he has attempted suicide three times, claims he became addicted to Internet gambling, losing the family’s savings and stealing to feed his habit.

Read the full story from AFP.

A federal appeals court has denied the government’s request to suspend a lawsuit challenging the military’s ban on openly gay servicemembers. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco issued an order Friday requiring the Department of Justice to file papers by Feb. 25 arguing why the court should overturn a Southern California trial judge who declared the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy unconstitutional. Government lawyers asked the 9th Circuit earlier this month to set aside the case because the Pentagon was moving quickly to satisfy the steps Congress outlined last month when it voted to allow the ban’s repeal. A Justice Department spokeswoman said it had no comment Saturday.

Read the full story from the Associated Press.

 

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Today’s Top Headlines

Dan Choi Ordered To Repay Military After DADT Discharge
Chick-Fil-A Banned At Indiana University South Bend
France’s Gay Marriage Ban Is Constitutional
US Military Rolls Out Plan to Repeal Gay Ban

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Pentagon leaders preparing for a new culture of gays serving openly in the military are serving notice that discrimination will not be tolerated. Defense Secretary Robert Gates also directed his policy staff in a memorandum to move ahead carefully, but expeditiously, to end the 17-year-old “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy instituted during the Clinton administration. Officials said they will complete implementation plans for the new policy by next Friday and will commence training in February.

Read the full story from the Associated Press.

Paris’ mayor is openly gay. Personalities like the longtime lover of late fashion guru Yves Saint Laurent play high-profile roles in French society. Gay rights groups are as vocal as they come in France. But the country whose motto is “Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite” and whose name rhymes with romance hasn’t given the love and commitment of same-sex couples an equal legal standing to that of heterosexuals. An ongoing debate over the issue is now gathering steam. A trigger point came on Friday when the Constitutional Court – an esteemed body that counts former Presidents Jacques Chirac and Valery Giscard d’Estaing as members – ruled that laws banning gay marriage don’t violate the constitution. They said any change is for parliament to decide.

Read the full story from the Huffington Post.

Call it a fried chicken fiasco. Indiana University South Bend cut fast-food chicken patty wonder Chick-fil-A from its list of campus vendors after it was revealed that the restaurant would be supplying food free of charge for anti-gay event. According to Change.org, the movement to ban Chick-fil-A on campus started with a group of students who came together in opposition of the franchise’s support of groups like Focus on the Family and the Ruth Institute.

Read the full story from the Huffington Post.

Under don’t ask, don’t tell (DADT), not only does an openly gay service member get kicked out of the military, but he or she may have to repay the Defense Department for any unfinished service. Since coming out in 2009, Lt. Dan Choi has become an outspoken advocate for the repeal of don’t ask, don’t tell, which passed Congress late last year but remains in effect until a lengthy certification process is completed. On Dec. 20, 2010, the Defense Department sent Choi a letter — and a bill — saying he owed the U.S. government $2,500 for the “unearned portion of your enlistment or reenlistment bonus.” According to the letter, if Choi did not pay his debt within 30 days, the Department would possibly refer his account to a private collection agency, follow up with the Justice Department for legal action and report the delinquency to credit bureaus.

Read the full story from the Huffington Post.

 

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Today’s Top Headlines

Pentagon to Outline Training for Gay Ban Repeal
The GOP’s Quiet Evolution on Gay Rights
Ugandan Gay Rights Activist Found Beaten to Death
In Amsterdam, Gay Men Have More Risky Sex

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n the past 15 years, an increasing number of gay and bisexual men in Amsterdam are having unprotected sex — possibly explaining why their HIV rate has stopped falling and might even be inching up, a new study finds. Researchers suspect that the trend — a reversal of the decline in risky sex seen in the 1980s — is related to the powerful anti-HIV drug “cocktails” that came into wide use in 1996. The drugs, which can keep HIV from becoming full-blown AIDS and make an infected person less likely to pass the virus on, have altered many people’s view of HIV. Instead of a death sentence, it seems more like a manageable chronic disease.

Read the full story from Reuters.

David Kato, a prominent gay rights activist, was found bludgeoned to death in his home near the Ugandan capital of Kampala, CNN reports. Nowhere has the tension between traditional, conservative African culture and modern ideas of openness regarding homosexuality been put on more of a public display than in Uganda. Being a homosexual is already illegal in that country and carries a prison sentence of 14 years. In 2009, MP David Bahati introduced legislation that tried to make being homosexual carry the death penalty in some cases, though it failed to pass.

Read the full story from CBS.

The recent repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy notwithstanding, it’s been quite some time since social issues played a prominent role in national politics. Republicans rode to victory on the strength of so-called “values voters” in 2004, championing a message of social conservatism on issues like abortion and gay marriage. And it might have delivered them four more years in the White House. Since then, the Iraq war and the struggling economy have consumed the American electorate and left little appetite for much else.

Read the full story from the Washington Post.

Pentagon leaders will roll out a plan Friday that is expected to give the military services about three months to train their forces on the new law allowing gays to serve openly, officials said Wednesday. The plan, they said, will outline the personnel, recruiting and other regulations that must be changed. It will describe three levels of training for the troops, their commanders and the key administrators, recruiters and other leaders who will have to help implement the changes. Under that training schedule, full implementation of the law could begin later this summer. Once the training is complete, the president and his top military advisers must certify that lifting the ban won’t hurt troops’ ability to fight. Sixty days after certification, the law would take effect.

Read the full story from the Washington Post.