Gay News You Can Use: dawning of a new day

Helms dies, LGBT community remembers his ruthless actions against them.

While the conservative blogs and news outlets were praising former Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, many in the LGBT community remembered the hatred and bigotry he ushered in during his 30-year tenure in the U.S. Senate. The video above was created by AIDS activists when they covered Helms’ home with a giant condom to protest his advocacy against funding HIV/AIDS education and research. The protest happened in 1991.

By now, everyone has probably read about Helms’ blocking of gay rights measures and stopping HIV prevention and research funding. Some may even know that toward the end of his 86 years, the senator took to working on HIV/AIDS — in Africa, saying he didn’t care about the disease in America because it was a sodomite disease. And some may even recall his nasty re-election bid against Harvey Gantt, where Helms played out the race card in one of the most disgusting political advertisements in recent political history.

Continued -But Michelangelo Signorille adds one last bitter note to the goodbyes for the good senator by reminding us that the man behind his bigoted campaigns, and a man who remains a Republican operative, is also a gay man. The man’s name is Arthur Finkelstein and he was outed byBoston Magazine, and a few years ago he and his partner quietly got married in Massachusetts.

It goes to show, behind every bigot is a closet case.

Far right anti-gay leaders making McCain beg for votes?

The man behind Ohio’s anti-gay marriage amendment, Phil Burress, is doing a little political flip-flopping. After supporting former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s bid for the Republican nomination for president, Burress told The Los Angeles Times that while he might support the ultimate winner of the Republican primary by casting a vote for him, he was unlikely to support him.

Burress, who led the successful campaign for a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage, said he would vote for McCain, largely because he said an Obama victory would lead to new liberal Supreme Court justices and more emphasis on abortion rights. And he suspects that McCain’s coolness toward conservatives could be a calculated gamble to win centrists. But he will not work directly for McCain, and he suspects that many conservatives will stay home on election day. “They think we have no place to go [other than the Republican Party], and in some respects, that’s true,” Burress said. “But it’s going to take a whole lot more than that for him to win.”

But how times they are a-changin’. That was from June 9. Just last week, The Los Angeles Times reported after a heart-to-heart meeting with McCain, Burress was now on board. McCain indicated that he would take seriously their requests that he choose an anti-abortion running mate and that he would talk more openly about his opposition to gay marriage — a pledge he carried out later in the day by endorsing a ballot measure in California to ban gay marriage.

“It was obvious there were a lot of changed hearts in the room,” said Phil Burress, who led Ohio’s anti-gay-marriage ballot measure in 2004. “We realized that he’s with us on the majority of the issues we care about.”

Even with Jesse Helms dead, the LGBT community is still good for scaring up the GOP Christianity hijackers. As a side note, the Times story also noted Burress was pushing hard for the Huckster to be McCain’s choice for veep.

Social Security for gay partners? No. For children of same-sex relationships? Yes.

In a bizarre ruling by the Social Security Administration (SSA), children of same-sex couples are now eligible for survivor benefits. The SSA continues to deny survivor benefits for the adults in the couple. To explain how this looks in reality, let’s create a lesbian couple — we call them Linda and Sue. Sue enters the relationship with biological children from another relationship, but Linda doesn’t adopt the children as her own. Linda dies suddenly. Now Sue’s children are eligible to collect Linda’s survivor benefits. But Sue is left in the cold.

It’s a twisted logic, but it is a step toward recognizing same-sex couples and providing them with the same survivor benefits that are automatically bestowed upon married couples.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that last year the Social Security Administration sent a formal request to the Justice Department to clarify if the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) prevented the distribution of benefits to children of same-sex couples. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) deputy, Steven A. Engel, wrote in the opinion that the Defense of Marriage Act has no bearing on Social Security benefits for children.

The OLC’s deputy, Steven A. Engel, wrote in the opinion that the Defense of Marriage Act has no bearing on Social Security benefits for children. “Although DOMA limits the definition of ‘marriage’ and ‘spouse’ for purposes of federal law, the Social Security Act does not condition eligibility for [child insurance benefits] on the existence of a marriage or on the federal rights of a spouse in the circumstances of this case.”

How many days before this one gets a new bill rushed through Congress to stop providing this benefit to children?

Transgender booted from gay dating Web site

Boston-area((hyphenated)) single Nick Teich created an account on the social networking site Bisexual Dating Now. In his profile, he identified himself as a female-to-male transgender and within a few hours was getting responses. But an undisclosed technical problem with the site led Teich to call for assistance. That’s when things went surreal.

Teich’s profile was deleted because the company said it did not have any online forum for transgenders and because Teich had signed into the network as a lesbian on the lesbian network. Customer service representative Kiar Dupuis said all the sites are linked, and once a person signs up in one area, gay male, lesbian or bisexual, they are tracked from that profile. Men, Dupuis said, were never allowed to join the lesbian site.

Fromthe Boston gay newspaper Bay Windows, here is the company’s take on the issue:

BisexualDatingNow.com is owned by the Seattle-based company TangoWire, which owns a network of personals sites catering to a range of interests, from the LGB community to different racial and ethnic communities to motorcycle enthusiasts. An FAQ section of the BisexualDatingNow.com site describes TangoWire as a gay-owned and -operated company: “TangoWire was founded by, is directed by, and is run by gay personnel. We don’t discriminate against our straight co-workers — they’re cool people, too, and just as committed to your great experience on our site.”

Prior to transitioning from female to male, Teich had joined one of TangoWire’s lesbian sites but hadn’t been an active user. When he registered with BisexualDatingNow.com, he assumed it was a completely new site but, in fact, the profiles for both sites are linked to one massive database, meaning that someone on one of the bisexual sites could view the profile of a member of one of the lesbian sites. One of Dupuis’ e-mails to Teich accused him of trying to force his way onto the lesbian site.

“We do not have a site appropriate for transgenders. You joined our lesbian site, which is not your sexual preference. You then listed yourself as a bisexual man. This is absolutely a violation of our community rules because we do not allow any man on a lesbian site,” wrote Dupuis. “You are NOT a lesbian therefore you cannot and will not be a part of our lesbian community.”

Female-to-male transman gives birth to live baby

Nope, this is not a headline from The National Enquirer, this is the real deal. Thomase Beattie who made international news when he announced he was pregnant, gave birth to a healthy baby girl, The Advocate, a national gay magazine is reporting.

Beattie ended up a guest on the Oprah Winfrey show, where he said, “I feel it’s not a male or female desire to have a child. It’s a human need. I’m a person and I have the right to have a biological child.”

No word yet on whether The American Family Association will launch a boycott of the hospital where Beattie’s child was born.