Welcome to the Lake County Stonewall Democratic Club!
The Lake County Stonewall Democratic Club is a local Democratic Club serving
the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered) community of
Lake County, California
Gay US sailor found dead after alleged harassment
By Staff Writer, PinkNews.co.uk A gay US Navy sailor who was found dead had been harassed by another person, his family said this week.
Seaman August Provost, 29, of Houston, was found dead early on Tuesday morning at Camp Pendleton in Southern California. He joined the Navy in March 2008. A suspect is currently being held in connection with his death but no information has been released regarding a motive. Gay activists have suggested he was killed in a homophobic attack. Ben Gomez, head of the San Diego chapter of American Veterans for Equal Rights, cited unnamed sources suggesting Provost had died during an argument with another sailor over his sexuality.
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7/20
Foot note: He could not report this harrment to his superiors because of "Don't Ask - Don't Tell" explained later in this article
Military board calls for gay soldier to be discharged
By Jessica Geen, Pink News UK A Syrcause military board has said that Lieutenant Dan Choi, who came out on national television, should be discharged for breaking the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' law. This will make him the first member of the New York National Guard to be discharged under the policy, which prevents military recruiters from asking about sexual orientation but also bars servicemembers from revealing they are gay. Choi's representative Major Roy Diehl told AP that Choi could not be officially discharged until the move was approved by the First Army commander and the chief of the National Guard Bureau, something which could take up to a year. Until then, he will remain an active member of the New York National Guard.
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7/27
Police raid Texas gay bar on the anniversary of the Stonewall riots
By Staff Writer, PinkNews.co.uk Police restrain a man in the bar (Photo: Chuck Potter, Dallas Voice)
More than 100 protesters held a demonstration on Sunday evening after a gay bar in Fort Worth, Texas, was raided on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Chanting "No more", the group stood on the steps of the Tarrant County Courthouse to demand an investigation into the incident. According to various accounts, police entered the Rainbow Lounge on Jennings Avenue and arrested seven people. It is thought that one of those arrested is in hospital with a fractured skull. Todd Camp, a former Star-Telegram critic who was celebrating his birthday at the bar, said: "This looked like random harassment, plain and simple. It’s sad that in this day and age, on the anniversary of one of the most important days in gay rights history that the Fort Worth and State police would choose to attack gays in such an aggressive and unjustified manner."
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7/20
Stonewall Plus Forty
by Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker
The most improbable of America’s mass movements for civil rights—improbable at the time, inevitable in retrospect—got its start at a most improbable hour in a most improbable place. The hour: two in the morning, forty years ago. The place: the sidewalk in front of the Stonewall Inn, a questionable bar (as it might then have been called by persons of delicate sensibilities) on Christopher Street, in the heart of Greenwich Village. Like most such establishments, the Stonewall was more or less openly run by the Mafia; it served prodigious quantities of watered-down booze, though it had no liquor license; it dealt in cash and seldom paid taxes, unless you counted the envelopes regularly provided to representatives of the local police precinct. But none of these was the ultimate reason that the N.Y.P.D. vice squad raided the Stonewall that night. The reason was that its customers were homosexuals. This was, so to speak, normal: such raids were a routine hazard of gay nightlife. Normally, patrons who weren’t quick enough to escape unnoticed would submit meekly to arrest or humiliation. This time, they resisted. No one can say for sure why Saturday, June 28, 1969, was different, but the botched bust at the Stonewall touched off not only four nights of raucous, riotous demonstrations but also, in short order, a sustained burst of political activity aimed at making minority sexual orientation, like left-handedness or dark skin, a legally, morally, and socially neutral condition, not an impediment to full membership in the human family.
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7/15
40 Years Later, Still Second-Class Americans
By FRANK RICH,New York Times
LIKE all students caught up in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, I was riveted by the violent confrontations between the police and protestors in Selma, 1965, and Chicago, 1968. But I never heard about the several days of riots that rocked Greenwich Village after the police raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in the wee hours of June 28, 1969 — 40 years ago today.  Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Then again, I didn’t know a single person, student or teacher, male or female, in my entire Ivy League university who was openly identified as gay. And though my friends and I were obsessed with every iteration of the era’s political tumult, we somehow missed the Stonewall story. Not hard to do, really. The Times — which would not even permit the use of the word gay until 1987 — covered the riots in tiny, bowdlerized articles, one of them but three paragraphs long, buried successively on pages 33, 22 and 19.
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7/6
Stonewall riots deputy inspector claims police were “on the side of right”
 The Stonewall riots happened 40 years ago
By Nell Frizzell, Pink News UK
Just before the 40th anniversary of the legendary Stonewall riots, a high-ranking New York police officer has said that the force was right to raid the bar. The riots, which have been cited as many as the touchpaper for the establishment of a gay rights movement in America, erupted when members of the New York Police Department enacted a raid on the Stonewall Inn, a popular hangout for gays, lesbians and trans people. Speaking yesterday on a special edition of the Brian Lehrer Show on the American radio station WNYC-FM, Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine argued that police were called to the bar because of complaints about mafia connections, dirty drink glasses, and the violation of contemporary dress codes.
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7/25
House Dems urge Obama to halt gay discharges from the military
by Bryan Bender, Boston Globe
WASHINGTON _ In the most vocal plea yet for the White House to take the lead in pushing for gays and lesbians to be allowed to serve openly in the military, 77 Democratic lawmakers today urged President Obama to use his executive powers to order a halt to military discharges under the controversial "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law and work aggressively with Congress to pass new legislation to overturn what they describe as a discriminatory policy that harms national security. "We urge you to exercise the maximum discretion legally possible in administering Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell until Congress repeals the law," states the letter, organized by Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Democrat of Florida. "To this end, we ask that you direct the Armed Services not to initiate any investigation of service personnel to determine their sexual orientation, and that you instruct them to disregard third party accusations that do not allege violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice." A recent study by the Palm Center, a public policy think tank at the University of California, Santa Barbara, argued that Obama has the authority as commander-in-chief to suspend the gay discharge process through an executive order.
Read more7/23
Who Are We?
BOB HERBERT, New York Times Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House.  Bob Herbert One of the most disappointing aspects of the early months of the Obama administration has been its unwillingness to end many of the mind-numbing abuses linked to the so-called war on terror and to establish a legal and moral framework designed to prevent those abuses from ever occurring again. The president deserves credit for unequivocally banning torture and some of the other brutal interrogation techniques that spread like a plague in the Bush administration’s lawless response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But other policies that offend the conscience continue.
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7/23
Obama DOJ to meet with Gay Rights Lawyers
6/22/09
by Zemanta, LezGet Real
It appears that in an apparent effort to smooth over tensions in the wake of the controversy over the administration’s defense in court of the Defense of Marriage Act, the Obama Justice Department has reached out to major LGBT legal organizations and has scheduled a private meeting for next week with them. The meeting expected to include leading gay rights groups like GLAD and Lambda Legal as both sides look for a way on how to proceed with pending DOMA cases. Although this get-together has not been officially announced by the Justice Department yet, Tracy Russo, a spokesperson for Justice, confirmed the meeting to Greg Sargent of the The Plum Line, after he has reported that top gay rights lawyers were upset that administration lawyers had slighted their earlier requests to meet and discuss ongoing litigations involving the Defense of Marriage Act, further angering the LGBT community already stinging after the Obama Administration issued a DOMA defense brief that equated same-sex marriage to incest and pedophilia. In that article Sargent reported that two prominent LGBT rights lawyers litigating high-profile cases against the Obama administration had their requests to meet with administration lawyers to discuss the cases rebuffed. In both cases, the lawyers were representing Federal employees whose spouses are being denied protections or benefits under the Defense of Marriage Act.
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7/5
I'm done. No more soup for the Democratic party
by BKChicago, DAILY KOS
I've been an active Democrat since Carter and while many of you have been active longer I was only eleven when I first went door to door for Jimmy Carter & Lynn Cutler. But that part of my life is over for now and it will take a lot to bring me back into the fold. I started with the Democratic Party in Iowa, my father was a local college dean and as such I was lucky enough to meet every presidential candidate from 1976-1988. I had my hand almost crushed by Ted Kennedy, I shared a bag of potato chips with Al Gore, I remember chatting about Chicago with Jesse Jackson and I remember my dad calling Regan a real "so-in-so". I also participated in the caucuses and it was great lesson to learn how the party created the planks of our platform, it was truly democracy in action. Fast forward to 2004, I have moved from Iowa and had been living in Chicago for 15 years. I had been following politics very closely since the 2000 election and I was very excited about our senatorial candidate Barack Obama. Obama was not some anonymous person to me, we had worked for the same law firm and I would see him around Hyde Park and the U of C. To seal the deal he came to my door and asked for my vote. I saw in 2004 what I think a lot of people did not see until a few years later. I had great hope in him as a senator and he was a great disappointment. He was never bold, he seemed to play the numbers and always side with the safe path. Further, he didn't seem to care, he seemed too busy getting ready to run or running for president. A quick example, when BP wanted to pour more toxic chemicals in Lake Michigan I wrote both my senators and my congressman. Luckily Sen. Durbin stepped in and stopped that mess but no one heard a peep out of Obama, I guess he must drink imported water. I received a response from my congressman and Sen. Durbin but nothing from Obama. That was not the only instance, out of twenty of so letters/faxes/e-mails I sent to my Senator Obama I received one response from his office. But I did not give up hope. I believed that he was something special and that a lot of what he was doing was so he could get in office and once in he could effect real change. I even had hope after his vote on the FISA bill. To backup my feelings with deeds, I raised money, donated and worked on the campaign. I even got on TV standing behind him at a rally in Indiana.
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7/20
 
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