Olbermann: Obama 'Goddamned Wrong' on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

Keith Olbermann discusses "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and wonders why Obama continues to hesitate in halting gay discharges. He talks to Dan Savage, who asks, if 75% of the American public are sold on repealing DADT, how many more "retrograde bigots" need to change their minds before he does something?

On that note, First Lt. Dan Choi was stripped of his officer's commission yesterday at a hearing as was expected and will be discharged. Alison Stewart covered it on The Rachel Maddow Show. 

Will "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" become as big a stain on Obama's legacy as it is on Clinton's? I suppose it depends on how many more lives he ruins because of it.

Watch both clips, AFTER THE JUMP...

Savage: Is Janet Napolitano More Powerful Than Barack Obama?

Dan Savage dug up this little factoid regarding forced deportation of foreign nationals whose spouse dies within a two--year window of their marriage - it's called the "widow's penalty."

Apparently: "Napolitano has ordered deportations of surviving spouses and their children deferred for two years. That gives Congress time to fix the law if it chooses to."

Savage wonders why Obama can't do the same with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". Actually, he could.

Stampp Corbin Changes Tune, Drops Out of DNC LGBT Fundraiser

I posted this as an update to a post about the furor over the DOMA brief yesterday, but it's significant enough that the former head (during the campaign) of the Obama LGBT Leadership Council Stampp Corbin pulled out of the Democratic LGBT Fundraiser yesterday. He writes on his blog:

"Someone get me a Prozac. I ask, 'Mr. President how can you argue for the legality of DOMA, when you are for its repeal?' You really are talking out of both sides of your mouth and my community knows it...Unfortunately, I will see everything that the Obama administration does for LGBT Americans through the lens of the DOMA brief. Meaning, I will be waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop, while praying President Obama delivers on his promises...Mr. President, your DOMA mistake awakened a sleeping giant. He is mad as hell and is not going to take it anymore. You better get LGBT affirming legislation moving quickly or the coffers of the LGBT community will be slammed shut on the fingers of your administration and the DNC. You and the DNC may find themselves asking about our donations 'if not now, when' as we have been asking about our rights for the last few months."

Corbin's position is a distinct change of heart from the one he took a week ago right after the brief came out when debating Dan Savage on CNN. That video, AFTER THE JUMP...

News: Civil Disobedience, Mariah Carey, iPhone 3GS, O.J.

Savage: One year Civil Disobedience plan for gay rights.

Schwarzenegger: Prop 8 challenge should be decided by the courts.

End sign?

Listen: Mariah Carey's new single "Obsessed".

Portland Mayor Sam Adams woes continue: home payment default.

Gizmodo's review of the iPhone 3GS.

Madonna's new kid Mercy and her peeps.

Biologists: Same-sex relationships may drive evolution. "Same-sex sexual behaviors are flexibly deployed in a variety of circumstances, for example as alternative reproductive tactics, as cooperative breeding strategies, as facilitators of social bonding or as mediators of intrasexual conflict. Once this flexibility is established, it becomes in and of itself a selective force that can drive selection on other aspects of physiology, life history, social behaviour and even morphology."

Australian poll: 60% support marriage equality.

It's the 15th anniversary of the O.J. chase.

Thousands flock to Banksy show. "During the show’s opening weekend, almost 8,500 people flooded the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, about eight times what the venue would normally expect."

Sex change in China could require permission from the police: "The proposed guidelines, posted Tuesday, say candidates for surgery must show an agreement from police to change their sex on their identification cards once the procedure is complete. The ministry posted the draft guidelines to invite public and professional opinions before July 10. China has no laws against sex change surgery, and the ministry says the guidelines are necessary to regulate the procedure."

Jamie Dornan all buttered up for new Calvin Klein campaign.

Anti-gay attack on College Street in Toronto: "Around 2:30am on the morning of Jun 7 — after a night out at El Convento Rico dance club on College St — Corey John and Takonda Majikwa were walking west toward Ossington when a group of men approached them. 'They were drunk and had open beer bottles in their hands,' says John. 'When they approached us they were making remarks as 'faggot,' 'fudge packer' and 'you and your girlfriend.'"' 

Why people tend to enjoy Cristiano Ronaldo's time off best.

Larry Kramer praises book on pre-Oscar Wilde gay sex in Britain: "Certainly nothing like this has appeared in America, thus allowing queer and gender studies to pretty much swamp, nay drown, the gay history field with their gobbledygook theorizing of what might have happened. This ludicrous state of affairs prohibits making statements such as: "they did then what we do now," without the wrath of queer theorists raining down insults of an uncommonly vitriolic nature. You don't have a right to say that! say they. You can't prove it! say they. It's been here all along since the beginning of history, say many others of us. Well now it can be said, and proved, in Britain at any rate, thanks to Upchurch."

News: Collegiate Gays, Ivri Lider, Brangelina, Raleigh, Joe Jonas

Reporters ejected from Meet in the Middle 4 Equality leadership summit.

STUDY: Gay male college students get better grades, study harder, party less than straight men. "According to the research, which is apparently the first of its kind, gay male undergraduates appear to be doing quite well: Their grade point average is about 2 percent higher than that of straight males at the same institution."

Jonas Brother is a Single Lady.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie SPLIT!?!

History is on Portland Mayor Sam Adams' side in recall attempt.

Immigration reform in trouble over gay partner language. Catholic bishops protest...

WhoSigned71: Washington state group to publicize names of people who sign Referendum 71, which would put the state's "Everything but Marriage" Domestic Partners bill on the fall ballot.

Björk is back.

Dan Savage's book The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant to premiere as musical.

Former mayor of Raleigh, North Carolina Tom Fetzer sues radio host for forwarding email insinuating he is gay: "The suit comes in the middle of Fetzer's campaign against three other men to lead the state's Republican party, which will be decided at the state GOP convention June 12 - 14. The suit seeks damages of $10,000 or more from Curtis Wright...Wright is accused of forwarding an email that included allegations that Fetzer is gay, though Wright is not thought to be the author of the anonymous email, according to the lawsuit."

Project Natal: A first look at Microsoft's Wii killer?

New York Law Professor Arthur Leonard's research on Judge Sonia Sotomayor and gay rights.

Head of new gay Republican group GOProud Jimmy LaSalvia signs on to support filibuster of Sotomayor.

Gay Israeli pop star Ivri Lider hits NYC.

Chicago HIV study released: "A first-of-its-kind study looking at HIV infection rates found that half of gay men in Chicago who have HIV did not know they were infected, and two-thirds of infected black men were unaware. In addition, infection rates for black men were more than twice the rates for whites and Hispanics. The results of the Chicago Department of Public Health survey are sobering, officials say, but not unexpected."

Young Iranians looking for the change they can believe in?

Sequel to Heathers in the works.

Most homophobic hate crimes in Northern Ireland go unreported: "The survey of more than 1,000 people compiled by the Rainbow Project found that 64% of homophobic incidents in the last three years were not reported. The study was commissioned by the police and while gay rights campaigners recognised the efforts of officers to reach out to the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual (LGB) community, they said more work needed to be done."

President Obama's Failing Grade on Gay Rights

Dan Savage appeared on MSNBC yesterday and told Andrea Mitchell he'd give Obama an "F" on gay rights nearly four months into his first term.

And who wouldn't agree?

Andrew Sullivan also wrote up a scathing piece yesterday:

"I have a sickeningly familiar feeling in my stomach, and the feeling deepens with every interaction with the Obama team on these issues. They want them to go away. They want us to go away. Here we are, in the summer of 2009, with gay servicemembers still being fired for the fact of their orientation. Here we are, with marriage rights spreading through the country and world and a president who cannot bring himself even to acknowledge these breakthroughs in civil rights, and having no plan in any distant future to do anything about it at a federal level. Here I am, facing a looming deadline to be forced to leave my American husband for good, and relocate abroad because the HIV travel and immigration ban remains in force and I have slowly run out of options (unlike most non-Americans with HIV who have no options at all). And what is Obama doing about any of these things? What is he even intending at some point to do about these things? So far as I can read the administration, the answer is: nada."

Watch the MSNBC clip, AFTER THE JUMP...