News: Obama, Prop 8, LL Cool J, Focus on the Family, "Don't Ask"

· In first meeting since the presidential election, President-elect Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain vow to work together on the financial crisis, energy, national security and "change the bad habits of Washington."

· More than 100 retired generals and admirals call for repeal of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gays so they can serve openly. "As is the case with Great Britain, Israel, and other nations that allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, our service members are professionals who are able to work together effectively despite differences in race, gender, religion, and sexuality," the officers wrote.

· Lip lickin' LL Cool J to co-host the "The Grammy Nominations Concert Live."

· After a wave of anti-gay riots and arrests across Senegal, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission increases aid to the West African nation's LGBT community.

· Just in case the Jamaican gays and lesbians aren't deterred by the lynch mobs and routine attacks: The upper house of the Jamaican parliament debates legislation to define marriage as between a man and a woman only. Senator Basil Waite proposes to legislate the nation's "preferred family options" to "prevent homosexual unions."

· California Attorney General Jerry Brown urges the California Supreme Court to "review lawsuits that seek to overturn Proposition 8" but "it's in the 'public interest' to let the gay-marriage ban take effect while lawsuits are reviewed."

· Via Wilshire & Washington: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tells ABC News he believes marriage is between a man and a woman but "I don't want to force my will on anyone." The governor predicts the California Supreme Court will reject Proposition 8 .

· Happy holidays from right-wing, anti-gay Focus on the Family! After "pumping more than half a million dollars into the successful effort to pass a gay-marriage ban in California", the Colorado Springs-based ministry and media empire will lay off 20 percent of its workforce, some 202 jobs. "Critics are holding up the layoffs, which come just two months after the organization’s last round of dismissals, as a sad commentary on the true priorities of ministry. 'If I were their membership I would be appalled,'  said Mark Lewis, a longtime Colorado Springs activist who helped organize a Proposition 8 protest in Colorado Springs on Saturday. 'That [Focus on the Family] would spend any money on anything that’s obviously going to get blocked in the courts is just sad. [Prop. 8] is guaranteed to lose, in the long run it doesn’t have a chance—it’s just a waste of money. "

Comments

[BinJA]

I have to laugh at the Jamaican parliament for moving to do this. Not like any gay man who has any common sense, or wants to preserve his life is going to even TRY and get married. this country is so backwards sometimes.....

[BinJA]

I have to laugh at the Jamaican parliament for moving to do this. Not like any gay man who has any common sense, or wants to preserve his life is going to even TRY and get married. this country is so backwards sometimes.....

[BinJA]

I have to laugh at the Jamaican parliament for moving to do this. Not like any gay man who has any common sense, or wants to preserve his life is going to even TRY and get married. this country is so backwards sometimes.....

[Got to love Jamaica in order to change it]

It's really cheap to keep up the mockery of Jamaica. But derision won't help make change there. It's requires a little more commitment to engage with homophobes, who at the end of the day are flesh and blood humans not savages, or with the many well meaning straight Jamaicans who have to choose in this struggle between allying with folks who hate Jamaica and folks who hate gays.

[Bill]

Guess Focus on the Family should have spent their money creating good jobs for their workers instead of denying rights to others. I'll pray for the families of their newly unemployed, and giggle and point at the lunacy of Jim Dobson.

[Ohnoyoudidn't]

Patrina

You made a claim about nature there i had to address. Homosexuality is natural. Get that straight. How can a phenomena observed in every civilization on the face of the earth, since recorded history even in tribes or groups that have been untouched by western civilization be unnatural? Lets be scientific here. We are mammals, if you going to use the argument from nature we have to look at our mammalian cousins or the wider animal kingdom. Biologist have well documented what we consider homosexual activity in thousands of species. I'm not saying if something happens in nature we should replicate it. But you must realize we are animals and if our biological make up determines sexuality then how can this be unnatural, evil, wrong or whatever negative thing you want to affix to it.

So being homosexual is no deviance as you seam to believe. So careful when you appeal to nature without understanding nature.

If you don't see the gay rights movement as a civil rights movement i don't know how to explain it to you. I'll try:

Blacks were thought to be biological, intellectually and morally inferior and were denied their humanity. Gays are seen as evil, deviant, unnatural and undeserving of respect, tolerance and equality. The black civil rights movement was in protest of their inferior status, just as the gay rights movement is trying to do. Blacks would've been killed for being in the wrong part of the south and so too gays, for just simply being gay. So people are hit down for being their normal natural selves. If that ain't a civil rights issue, then boy i must have a sword through my head.

Peace!!! Patrina and btw Rev Haggard held your same views. But nature and his natural liking for dudes didn't stop him from hooking up with a male prostitute. So which is nobler, being honest and talking out about who you really are or hiding under a common vale of righteousness and so called moral superiority. You decide