Courts consistently allow flagrant discrimination against LGBT jurors

“I believe that people who are either transsexuals or transvestites — I don’t know what the proper term is — traditionally are more liberal-minded thinking people, tend to associate more with the defendants because, obviously, they have been either ridiculed before or are feeling in a position of being in a microscope all the time and are outcasts which lends themselves to associating more with the defendant.”

Left out of first GOP debate, gay candidate Karger pushing forward

Members of the media refer to him as a “stunt candidate.” He didn’t appear on stage in South Carolina last week for the Republican presidential debate because he failed to hit the required support threshold– 1 percent in five national polls. He won’t pull down financial backing from the conservative oil billionaire Koch brothers, nor win over the far-right readers at the RedState blog. Yet, set against the uninspiring candidacies likely to be waged by the men so far lined up to challenge Barack Obama for the White House, Fred Karger’s candidacy could be the most influential, if he stays with it. A moderate conservative former Reagan aide, longtime political consultant and civil rights activist, he is also unabashedly gay– the first ever openly gay GOP candidate for president.

Shove it! Dan Choi won’t pay the government for his being discharged under DADT

The Defense Department, after discharging gay soldiers under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, apparently sends them bills requiring them to pay back “unearned portions” of their contracts. High-profile discharged soldier Dan Choi received his bill this week from Defense Department Finance and Debt Services in the amount of $2,500. He sent a strongly worded letter to White House Public Engagement Director Brian Bond explaining why he wasn’t going to pay.

UCLA study: Lesbian parents are really good parents

Researchers at the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute this week wrapped another chapter of a 24-year study on American lesbian families. They reported that lesbian parents are not bad parents but very good parents, partly because lesbians…

Talking point: The Tea Party is not about abortion

In a Q&A hosted by the Washington Post last week, Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks– the multimillion dollar Dick Armey advocacy group that fueled the Tea Party movement– said GOP Colorado U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck lost his…

TV’s Kirk Montgomery lays it on the line for GLBT kids

9 News personality Kirk Montgomery adds his voice to the suicide and bullying prevention initiative, “It Gets Better.”

Why’d he do it? He told The Denver Post’s Bill Husted, “For the first time in my television career, I…

Buck campaign: He’ll discuss retracting Meet the Press statements if he wins election

Gay rights group One Colorado hand delivered a petition to GOP U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck’s Denver office Tuesday bearing 1,500 signatures requesting he retract his statement that homosexuality is mostly a lifestyle choice. On Meet the Press two…

Colbert dices Buck on the gays: ‘He can’t help it; he was born that way’

The U.S. media has largely embraced homosexuality as a naturally occurring healthy variation of human sexuality, which makes Colorado U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck fodder for television comedy. Buck’s now infamous Meet the Press comments– in which he said…

Buck campaign to gay teen’s mom: ‘Ken may have mis-spoke’

U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck made national news for a week after saying on Meet the Press that he believed same-sex attraction was a lifestyle choice and comparing homosexuality to alcoholism. He later stood by the statement even in…

Women’s Voices campaign ad underlines Buck’s ‘women problem’

A new campaign advertisement targeting Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck put out by a political nonprofit group called Women’s Voices pulls together a short list of statements and positions Buck has made and taken that have increasingly called into question his commitment to women’s rights. The ad cites Colorado Independent reporting regarding his stance on reproductive rights and on a 2005 rape case in which his public and private opinions as district attorney on the case seemed intended to blame and demean the victim.