Gay Rights

To the dismay of many socially conservative members of the nation's oldest civil rights group, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is reaching out to gay and lesbian rights organizations. Benjamin Jealous, the NAACP's dynamic young president who is helping to lead a march on the Washington Mall next month, insists that joining forces with gay rights advocates is wholly in keeping with the NAACP's century-old commitment to equal justice for all people. Mr. Jealous, 37, and NAACP Chairwoman Roslyn Brock, 44, are the youngest leaders ever to hold the organization's two top spots, and they epitomize a younger generation of activists who are more comfortable with the idea of gay rights as civil rights than are many of their elders.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court is poised to take up major cases on college affirmative action and gay rights, possibly as early as Monday, that seek to overturn much-disputed precedents, one the bane of conservatives and the other a thorn for liberals. Both cases test the meaning of the Constitution's guarantee of the "equal protection of the laws." The first challenges the Bakke decision of 1978, in which the Supreme Court narrowly upheld affirmative action as a way to preserve racial diversity in higher education.

Kevin Cathcart is among a very select group of Americans: those who have witnessed their U.S. Supreme Court justices contemplating sodomy -- not once but twice. He was there in 1986 when oral arguments led to a ruling that upheld sodomy laws, a devastating blow to the then-nascent American gay rights movement. And he was there again last spring for arguments that set the stage for the movement's greatest judicial victory on June 26 -- the high court's reversal of its own earlier ruling.

WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department discharged 726 service members last year for being gay, up about 10 percent from 2004, figures released by a gay rights group show. The group, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, obtained the information through a Freedom of Information Act request. A spokeswoman for the Defense Department, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, confirmed that it had released the information. Yesterday, the legal group released a breakdown of discharges by installation. A sharp increase occurred at Fort Campbell, Ky., where in 1999 a soldier was bludgeoned to death in his barracks by fellow soldiers who thought that he was homosexual.

When Sen. Leo E. Green is asked about the gay rights bill, the one he gave life to during crucial committee votes this week, he recalls a sign that hung in the basement of his grandfather's rowhouse. "No Irish Can Apply" is how he remembers the wording. His grandfather, a carpenter who worked aboard a ship to pay his passage from Ireland to Delaware, would point to the sign and tell him that no one should have to suffer that kind of discrimination. "It left an indelible imprint on me," says Green, a 68-year-old lawyer.

Gays and lesbians were stung when Maine citizens voted earlier this month to remove sexual orientation from their state's anti-discrimination laws. And though Christian conservatives have claimed a major victory, for gays the defeat is not necessarily the setback it might appear.The repeal exposed problems with one particular strategy for winning rights and legal protection - passing and defending statewide anti-discrimination laws. Meanwhile, gays are moving on several other fronts nationally to win what they see as the ability to be open and honest about their lives and to end a status many see as a form of second-class citizenship.

SIXTEEN MONTHS before the vote, passions already are running high over an anti-discrimination law that would protect gays in the workplace, when they rent or buy homes or in restaurants and hotels. It shouldn't be so controversial. The law passed in the spring isn't that different from what's on the books in 11 states and in Baltimore City and Howard, Montgomery and Prince George's counties. It's the same anti-bias law that already applies here on the basis of race, sex, creed, color, religion, national origin, marital status and physical or mental handicaps.

With two weeks left in the General Assembly's annual 90-day session, legislators face a handful of explosive issues, including a nearly fourfold increase in the cigarette tax, a ban on certain abortions and a gay rights measure -- each of which could rise or fall on the vote of a single lawmaker.Several significant bills appear headed for enactment before the session ends April 12 -- among them an ambitious scholarship program, sweeping ethics reform for lawmakers and a landmark bill giving thousands of state employees collective-bargaining rights.

WASHINGTON -- As U.S. voters look down their ballots next Tuesday, below the presidential line they will find options to join in a genuine political revolt and to enlist as religious soldiers in controversial moral crusades.Across the nation, there are 230 ballot measures before the voters in 42 states, 68 of them put on the ballot by citizen petitions and 162 put there by state legislatures seeking voter reaction.This year's ballot measures, giving the voters themselves the power to write laws, are particularly lively at a time when the electorate seems angry and unsettled about the way politicians are handling government.

Standing in his boss' wood-paneled Cumberland office, Michael Engler could hardly believe what he was hearing. He was being fired."He told me I couldn't be effective in my job because I was gay," said Engler, who had been heading the subsidiary of a large Maryland investment firm. "That was it. I was out."Boiling, Engler figured the logical next call was to his lawyer. But he was wrong.Maryland is one of the majority of states that offer no special protection for gay men and lesbians against discrimination, a fact that for the better part of a decade has fueled a simmering debate between conservative groups and advocates for the state's homosexual community.