Frustration with Obama
builds to a crescendo

by Matthew S. Bajko

Five months in and the LGBT community's swooning over President Barack Obama is officially over. Instead, bashing the White House for its lack of movement on LGBT rights is in full bloom from coast to coast.

Some are calling it the "Summer of Obummer." Steven Goldstein, the former chair of New Jersey's statewide LGBT organization, Garden State Equality, went so far as to describe the president's record on LGBT rights, thus far, as "a tyranny of timidity" in a release last week.

The president came into office pledging to be a "fierce advocate" for the LGBT community. But the courtship between the Obama White House and LGBT activists has proven to be rocky. (read more)

Coalition-building shaping up

Activists, religious leaders, and others are launching an effort to build broad coalitions now, in advance of a possible 2010 ballot effort to repeal Proposition 8. (read more)

Economy,
marriage fight
batter local LGBT nonprofits

Twenty-five executive directors from a wide range of local LGBT nonprofits met recently in a conference room at a downtown San Francisco office building to vent. (read more)

Fresno a formidable battleground in marriage equality movement

As thousands of people gathered at Fresno's City Hall last month for the Meet in the Middle 4 Equality rally, which drew national attention to same-sex marriage and other gay rights issues, Vicky and Gary Harris were sitting down to a chili dog lunch at the Original Coney Island diner nearby. (read more)

Commemorating Stonewall and the Gay Liberation Front at Pride

Forty years ago this week, the course of LGBT people's lives changed forever. (read more)

The legacy
of the Gay
Liberation Front

In August 1969, a month after they founded New York's Gay Liberation Front, some of its members published a defining statement of the organization in the Rat, a publication of the Students for a Democratic Society. (read more)

Smash the Church
recalls more
than Stonewall

The Stonewall riots of June 1969 – commemorating their 40th anniversary this month – are often regarded as the spark that ignited the LGBT movement. (read more)

Shorter builds bridges to faith community

When Andrea Shorter accepted the job of coalition coordinator for Equality California in March, her task was to bring together communities of color and faith, working for one of the organizations that was roundly criticized during the Proposition 8 campaign for doing neither. (read more)