Exhibit 1. The latest enemy of
the right wing, headache medicine

NGLCC co-founder Justin Nelson put the religious right on notice that the recent uproar surrounding the marketing of Tylenol PM to the LGBT community would backfire and that religious conservative interest groups have reached a new level of ignorance and intolerance. "I didn't know headaches were only a straight thing," Nelson said tongue-in-cheek aboutthe latest tirade from the American Family Association (AFA).
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Nelson stressed that the "stop at nothing mentality" to demonize the gay community is wearing thin on mainstream Americans. "

Sen. Rick Santorum has accused the Philadelphia Inquirer of having "outed" one of his staffers.

The Pennsylvania Republican made the charge on Fox's "O'Reilly Factor" last week after the Inquirer published a story headlined: "A Top Santorum Aide Is Gay."

Why on earth would the Inquirer run such a piece? Reporter Steve Goldstein, who was following up a story about the aide's sexuality on a gay Web site, noted that Santorum "has been an outspoken opponent of homosexual rights and a leading proponent of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage." But does that mean his staffers' private lives are fair game? (emphasis added)

Inquirer Editor Amanda Bennett calls the outing charge "nonsense." She says the aide (whose name is not being mentioned by this column) told the Web site that he was an "out gay man who completely supports the senator." The site called him a "self-loather."

"So we didn't out him," Bennett says. "It is being talked about in the context of one of the hottest contested races in the country." She says that perceived conflicts between a politician's positions and personal associations -- such as Vice President Cheney and his daughter, Mary, who is gay -- are a common subject of news stories.

The staffer, who says he's received death threats, notes that Santorum and his friends knew about his sexuality, but not everyone did. He questions why whom he chooses to sleep with should be thrust into the news in a way that heterosexual aides would not face.

Bennett responds that "lots of people are upset by lots of things we write." Santorum, who once said that legalization of gay sex could lead to bigamy and incest, told the paper it is "entirely unacceptable that my staffers' personal lives are considered fair game by partisans."

Howie, when a staffer is involved in eight years of bashing me and the people I love, you can bet it's relevant.

Death threats? That's serious business. I sure hope Traynham has reported those alleged threats to the proper authorities. I fully support Mr. Trayhnam in bringing to justice ANYONE who makes threats against him. (Incidentally, If such threats were made, I'd be willing to bet that they were made by right wingnuts, not people on the left)

All this excitement and the Democrats have not even picked Santorum's opponent yet. As for Ricky's charge that I reported on Traynham to assist challenger Casey... No dice. I never support candidates who don't believe a woman has the right to control her own body.

FOR A GUY who just wrote a stinging book about family values, Sen. Rick Santorum sure sounded mealy-mouthed when asked about U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood'’s dalliances.
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Santorum dodged a reporter'’s question about whether the allegations against Sherwood have hurt the Republican Party.

Here's the story: Top Santorum Aide is Gay: Anti-gay Pennsylvania Republican senator stands by communications chief, charges bigotry.

Kudos to blogger Mike Rogers for another important piece of investigative journalism that last week turned up the fascinating news that Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum has a gay communications chief, Robert Traynham.
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The hypocritical conceit here is that Traynham's personal life has nothing to do with his work for Santorum, while the truth is that Santorum'’s work could have everything to do with Traynham'’s personal life, and with that of every other gay or lesbian American.
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Yet, the mainstream media is beginning to wise up, or perhaps grow up. The Philadelphia Inquirer Saturday carried the Traynham story. By pure serendipity, Sunday’s New York Times Magazine carried a column by the resident ethicist, Randy Cohen, defending reporting about a public figure'’s sexual orientation, particularly when that person’s public posture on gay rights is at odds with their private conduct.
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During the time he has run his blogactive.com site, Rogers has performed a valuable service for the gay community, forcing the resignation of a closeted, anti-gay Virginia congressman, but also offering a brave Minnesota Republican state legislator a platform to acknowledge publicly that he is a gay man.
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It'’s easy to knock the kind of work that Rogers does, by charging that he'’s basically going through people’s garbage to break his stories. But the journalism he does comes from a proud tradition of forcing the nation to look itself in the eye and acknowledge the everyday lies and hypocrisies in our midst.

[Note: If you have not seen this morning's Roy Cohn Award, click here, on the graphic, right, or scroll down following this item.]

A state senator from Washington State, Ken Jacobsen, wrote to The Ethicist column asking about whether it is appropriate to report on the private lives of public individuals. Senator Jacobsen referred specifically to Spokane Mayor James West, an outspoken opponent of gay and lesbian rights who himself was having sex with men.

The Ethicist's response was crystal clear:

Your colleagues may ethically out an official only if that official's being gay is germane to his policy-making. A person who seeks elected office, voluntarily entering the public arena, does surrender some claims to privacy. (Financial disclosure comes to mind.) [Emphasis added]
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Identifying when this ambiguous standard has been met is admittedly difficult. Is a single vote on a single bill enough? My guideline is this: the more aggressively, the more centrally, an official participates in a policy struggle, the more reasonable it is to out him.

Cohen goes on to explain that the argument against reporting the truth means defending hypocrisy:

A counterargument could be made in defense of hypocrisy, or at least for its irrelevance: a policy should stand on its merits, not on its advocates' behavior. That may be so in the dispassionate discourse of academe (at least idealized academe), but in the hurly-burly of political life, the human factor is meaningful and often invoked by politicians themselves -- their military service, their religious observance.

Wow.

And on that note, let's carry on... If you didn't see the latest Roy Cohn Award, scroll down a bit or click here it came out earlier today.

For those of you who don't know the story of Roy Cohn, it's important to learn it. His terror against gay men started in the 1950s and carried through the 1970s, when he argued that lesbian and gay New Yorkers should be barred from teaching in the public schools.

Problem was, Roy was going after those darned "homosexuals" and at the same time he was going home at night and tricking out with men left and right...Denying his gayness all along the way. His life ended in the 1980s and is the subject of the extraordinary show and film Angels In America.

In case you missed it, Traynham is Santorum's DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATION! You know, the guy in charge of the "messaging." Here's a gay guy working for Rick Santorum who bashes gay men and lesbians and freaks out AP reporters with mentions of "man-on-dog sex." Ricky, now really!

Take ACTION: Tell Robert Traynham and his colleagues what you think of him being an openly gay man (and I'm not talking about the celibate kind, either) and working for one of the most homophobic Senators, Rick Santorum.

Click here to open an email to Senator Santorum's office (a copy will be sent to blogACTIVE and to the public e-mail address Mr. Traynham lists on this site.
Now, I'm, not the type to publish home phone numbers on blogACTIVE.com, and I'm not going to start now. I do find it interesting, however, to see that Robert has his number on the web if you want to give him a buzz...Here's the 411.

OK, so Senator Santorum is saying it is NOT acceptable for us to expose the fact that his Director of Communications is a gay man; but it IS acceptable for the senator to use millions of out gay and lesbian people -- who want nothing more than full equal rights -- to move along his agenda?

I'm not one for usually elevating comments from the comments section to the site's front page -- but sometimes a post is so on the money that it warrants being shared with all... I've gotten more email on the "Andrew Sullivan fails to realize the seriousness of HIV" matter than any other post aside from the original Schrock story.

A lot of the problem with how mainstream America sees glbt people has to do with the hypocrisy of closeted, conservative homosexuals, this is true. But some of our image problem is our own fault.

The marriage equality debate suffers from the same problem that the feminist movement has: the people running the politics on the national level missed the bloody point.

I don't care if Mr. & Mrs. RedState Evangelical Christian Conservative accept me and how I live my life. It doesn't matter if they think my eternal soul is going to burn in hell because I'm a pervert who has "chosen" a "lifestyle" that is contrary to God's wishes. What matters is that, because I am queer, I am discriminated against under the law.

If my spouse of 10 years goes into the hospital I have no legal rights to make medical decisions for her. Even if we file living wills and medical powers of attorney, it is possible for her family to come in, sue, and take away whatever rights *she willingly assigned to me* because I have no rights under the law. Britney Spears' husband of two days -- yes that's right, two days -- had more legal rights to make decisions for her than I do for my spouse after a decade.

And let's not get into the loss of retirement, death, and tax benefits.

The problem is that our national "leaders" have decided that acceptance is what we should be seeking and I say that's bullshit. We lost the marriage fight when we insisted that it be called marriage instead of insisting on moving to the European model of church recognized marriage and civil union registration for all couples regardless of sexual orientation.

If the religious right wants to restrict marriage to one man and one woman, fine. Let 'em have it, but they can't have their cake and eat it too.

Restrict marriage to one man and one woman, and then remove all civil benefits that accrue as a result of marriage: no married filing jointly, no automatic assignment of social security death benefits to spouses, no automatic assignment of medical powers of attorney.

Equality under the law is the only acceptable option but insisting on assimilation is just a long road to frustration. Ask any woman who, 30 years after Roe v. Wade, has a right to an abortion but damn if she can afford it because 30 years later she's still only making 75 cents for every 1 dollar that a comparably qualified man makes in the same job. Being able to be legally married, or being able to serve in the military for that matter, is absolutely useless if we can still be fired and denied housing for being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered.

If we don't focus, we will lose the war.

The de-gaying of Vandross is only the latest example of a long-standing media tradition of glossing over the personal life of anyone who does not live a publicly heterosexual life. On the obituary page, at least, homosexuality remains the love that dare not speak its name.

Greetings.

I apologize for the delay in posting to the site. With so many changes happening on the news end of things (check out my news site, PageOneQ) the posts to the blog have definitely fallen by the wayside over the past two weeks.

Thank you to those of you who are assisting in the changes to blogACTIVE and PageOneQ. I have been contacted by some very supportive folks and this summer will bring changes to the site’s design and operation. When complete, the site will be much easier to navigate. While the site will still be a blog in the truest sense, it will also have special navigation for new visitors, direct links to take action areas and other enhancements. The complete upgrades to the site will run approximately $2,400 and, as the chart on the right shows, we’re more than halfway there. If you have not yet contributed, I hope you will consider doing so, by clicking on the thermometer and helping out via paypal.

To those of you who keep coming by as the site undergoes changes, a HEARTFELT THANK YOU! Visitors to the sites and our advertisers help to keep blogACTIVE alive.

A blogACTIVE campaign update
I'm happy to report that the campaign blogACTIVE began a little over a year ago has reached a new level of success in the past few weeks.

Last year, despite the many, many letters to printed press in Rep. David Dreier's district, his story hardly made a ripple in the press when it was first reported here. At the end of June, however, the press was quick to jump on the irony of a Liberal’s son interning for the closeted GOPer Dreier. Publications throughout the UK told the story, complete with reference to the reporting on blogACTIVE.com.

As regular readers know, the goal of this site was never short term change. Our success in taking closeted gays who work against the gay community and bringing them into the forefront of media has, in just a year, been pretty amazing.

Why our work MUST continue
The work, however, remains far from complete. One need look no further than the case of Jeff Gannon (right) to see how far we must go until gays and lesbians are treated equally by the media. Do you think for one minute that if "former prostitute Jeff Gannon" was "former call-girl Jane Gannon" that the NY Times would hesitate asking "Who on the White House staff did you have sex with prior to obtaining your press credentials?" If Jeff were Jane, I am sure Fox’s Sean Hannity would have been right there demanding every salacious detail so he could repeat them with his filthy mouth. Because Jeff Gannon was, and still is, a closeted gay man he gets a free pass from the press -- all because they are too timid to approach the topic of man on man sex, especially when one of those men may be in the highest levels of the U.S. Government.

Now, the apology I promised
In less than a year, I will celebrate my tenth year anniversary in Washington, DC. I moved to the nation’s capital in 1996 to become the development director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the oldest national lesbian and gay civil rights organization. Over the past decade, I’ve been involved in politics and have attended many events and asked questions of (well, some might say “confronted”) elected officials.

I have, on more than one occasion, encountered at-large DC city councilmember Carol Schwartz (left) and, because of her stand against marriage equality for gay and lesbian citizens, I resorted to the same kind of language that Dick Durbin used when he quoted an FBI email to describe members of the US military in Guantanimo Bay. I am sorry for resorting to such divisive and hurtful language and I have called councilmember Schwartz to apologize.

At the same time, I’ve thought long and hard about what caused me, a Jewish grandson of people who fled persecution in Europe, to resort to such words. Perhaps seeing the councilmember, also a Jew, taking a stance against my community was more frustrating that I could pull the words together for. Or, on a deeper level, perhaps the councilmember reminds me so much of the strong women in my own life who have said to me time and time again, “never again” in regards to the tragic treatment of Jews in 1930s and 1940s Germany that I expressed my frustration with language I knew would affect her.

In any case, the tactic has been, appropriately, pointed out to me by my friends and colleagues as one that is certainly not helpful in our struggle for civil and human rights. Perhaps it’s my vision of that “slippery slope” that led me to say what I said…For that I am both sorry and hopeful that the “slope” is not so steep.

An apology for Andrew Sullivan? For what?

A number of you wrote saying I owed Andrew Sullivan an apology for attacking him on his essay about HIV and AIDS. On that, no dice. Some criticized me for posting this picture of Andrew (above) on PageOneQ when he wrote that

I have never felt better. HIV transformed my life, made me a better and braver writer, prompted me to write the first big book pushing marriage rights, got me to take better care of my health, improved my sex life, and deepened my spirituality.

Two email writers suggested to me that Sully’s sleep mask is unrelated to his HIV. Not true. See here. And while I am happy to see that treatment for sleep apnea can help to improve sexual intimacy, I certainly don't think recommending HIV transmission in an effort to get sleep apnea so one may be treated for it is the best way to improve a sex life.

And, finally, Andrew, are you suggesting that it’s only your illness that motivated you to stand up for marriage rights? If that’s true, it’s further proof of the right wing’s ability to pretty much screw anyone ever, so long as it’s not themselves.

You protestations against Bush today do little to help our community out of the mess people like you have gotten us into. Perhaps it's time for you to do a little less writing and a little more reading.

Wrap Up
If you've gotten this far, thanks for your patience! That's it from here for today...I'll be attending some events over the weekend and look forward to more frequent posts beginning next week

And, again, thanks for your support.