Gay People

Opponents of the Obama administration's plan to scrap the "don't ask, don't tell" compromise by which gay men and women are allowed to serve in the military, so long as nobody finds out they are gay, say that with an all-volunteer force stretched thin by two wars, this is no time to rock the boat. They're wrong. Precisely because the military needs all the manpower - and woman power - it can get, now is the time to end one of President Bill Clinton's least satisfying triangulations, a discriminatory and unjust policy that never made much sense.

Gay marriage opposition illogical Rarely do I read an opinion piece that punches me in the face with the sheer power of its illogic. Cathy Sidlowski's article opposing gay marriage ("Your say: Gay marriage," May 15) packs quite a punch. According to Ms. Sidlowski, gay people suffer no discrimination by not being allowed to marry one another. Why not? Because "gay people are as free to marry as anyone else - within the confines of the legal definition of marriage that applies to everyone.

I'm not surprised that virtually all of your printed responses to Sunday's editorial on same-sex marriage were in agreement with your paper's position in favor of it ("Rethinking marriage," May 10). The fear of being called homophobic, bigoted or even worse prevents most intelligent people who may be opposed to the idea from weighing in on this issue. There are two points in the argument for allowing same-sex marriages that are almost always avoided by those supporting it, and I thought it might be worth mentioning them.

Mark Yost was sick and tired of going to the same old gay bars. Grand Central and the Hippo were old hat. Yost wanted to try out some new places he'd never been before, but worried that as a gay man, he and his friends might not feel comfortable in some neighborhood pubs. So Yost and his friend Byron Macfarlane decided to start the Baltimore branch of Guerrilla Gay Bar, a monthly happy hour designed to bring together gay people in bars they normally don't frequent. The first Baltimore Guerrilla Gay Bar was last month at Claddagh Irish Pub in Canton, and the next one is tomorrow.

They'll be back. Don't think for a minute that they won't. These things run in cycles, and death in politics is about as permanent as death in Marvel Comics, which is to say, not very. Yes, Team Red had its butt kicked and its lunch money taken a few weeks back; yes, Team Blue stands at the prow of the ship, arms wide, screaming "king of the world!"; yes, the Republicans slink off into the wilderness now amid grumbles of recrimination and remonstration. They'll be back. Count on it. Indeed, they are already plotting their return, pundits and polls debating the best way of regaining favor.

LOS ANGELES -- The leading Democratic presidential candidates struck a delicate balance yesterday evening between showing commitment to expand the rights of gay people while justifying their opposition to same-sex marriage during the campaign's first-ever televised forum focused on gay issues. In an evening devoted to sensitive issues of sexuality and social mores, there were also riveting moments of frankness. Perhaps the most personal question of the evening was posed to Sen. Hillary Clinton by Etheridge, who told Clinton that she had felt personally hurt and abandoned by the Clintons.

Recently, Tim Hardaway declared his hatred of gay people. Gay people should be thankful. Let me tell you a story. It's about a man named Bull Connor. In 1963, he was the police commissioner of Birmingham, Ala. Back then, Birmingham was pleased to be considered the most segregated city in the South. Then civil rights demonstrators under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to town. Mr. Connor directed the city's response. When you see those famous images of dogs attacking unarmed marchers, and firefighters directing high-pressure hoses at men and women singing freedom songs, you are seeing Mr. Connor's work.

This is for a reader who demands to know why I write about gay issues. His conclusion is that I must secretly be gay. Actually, he doesn't express himself quite that civilly. To the contrary, his e-mails - which, until recently, were arriving at the rate of about one a week - evince a juvenility that would embarrass a reasonably intelligent fifth-grader. The most recent one, for example, carried a salutation reading, "Hi Mrs. Pitts." We're talking about the kind of thing for which delete buttons were invented.