Gays in the Military: Obama's 'Don't Ask' Dilemma | Newsweek National News

AGE
Faith Beyond His Father’s
Tony Dokoupil 1/17/2009 12:00:00 AM
V.Doug Paul was born in July 1981 in Richmond, Va.—demographics that make his birth, in a sense, historic. He was born, six months after Ronald Reagan's inauguration, to conservative Christian parents who knew for the first time the thrill of voting for a candidate who represented their values, Christian values. Graduates of Oral Roberts University, Gregg and Glenda Paul had thrown themselves into the Reagan campaign, canvassing and making calls. "I liked the direction he was going. I liked his ability to communicate," remembers Gregg. "I liked that he was very much pro-life, less government." When Reagan won, the Pauls felt they had contributed to his landslide.
POLITICS
The Power Of Prayer
12/19/2008 12:00:00 AM
Largely greeted with good will during the transition, President-elect Obama is getting a taste of hostility over his choice of the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver his inaugural invocation. A number of leading lesbian and gay voices, including Rep. Barney Frank, have criticized the selection of the megapastor, who has spoken out against same-sex marriage. Warren, in a statement Thursday, thanked Obama "for his courage to willingly take enormous heat from his base by inviting someone like me, with whom he doesn't agree on every issue, to offer the invocation. Hopefully individuals passionately expressing opinions from the left and the right will recognize that both of us have shown a commitment to model civility in America." In that vein, NEWSWEEK asked two members of the gay community to debate the Warren controversy. Chris Crain is a blogger and journalist who has written about Warren on his blog. Leah McElrath Renna is a psychotherapist and managing partner of Renna Communications who has covered the topic on The Huffington Post. Excerpts:
SOCIETY
Gay Rights 2.0
Jessica Bennett 12/9/2008 12:00:00 AM
It was October 1988, the height of the AIDS crisis, and Michelangelo Signorile was organizing a protest. For six months, he and fellow ACT UP members had met weekly, strategizing and planning. The idea: storm the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, accused of dragging its feet on approving treatments for HIV. To prepare, they'd formed outreach teams to recruit people, an actions committee to coordinate exactly how the protest would go down, and a legal team to deal with possible arrests. They'd signed on graphic designers to create picket signs, and trained members in civil disobedience. As media director, Signorile was in charge of getting the word out—through phone trees, mass mailings and faxes to every reporter whose number he could find. "For months, my apartment was filled with people every single night," he recalls.
POLITICS
A Gay Marriage Surge
Arian Campo-Flores 12/5/2008 12:00:00 AM
When voters in California, Florida and Arizona approved measures banning same-sex marriage last month, opponents lamented that the country appeared to be turning increasingly intolerant toward gay and lesbian rights. But the latest NEWSWEEK Poll finds growing public support for gay marriage and civil unions—and strong backing for the granting of certain rights associated with marriage, to same-sex couples. (Click here to see the full poll.)
ESSAY
How Getting Married Made Me An Activist
David J. Jefferson 11/15/2008 12:00:00 AM
Proposition 8 has changed my life. Just one month ago, when it looked like the gay marriage ban was winning support here in my home state, I turned to my partner of seven years and told him we'd better say "I do" before California voters told us "you can't." Immediately, Jeff Bechtloff and I jumped into full "Bridezilla" mode. We ordered a three-tiered mocha-chip wedding cake from the best bakery in Los Angeles (which now carries same-sex cake toppers). We pulled together a soundtrack of Frank Sinatra songs to play in lieu of "Here Comes the Bride." We asked NEWSWEEK's film critic David Ansen and his friend Mary Corey to do a reading from our favorite romantic film, "Breakfast at Tiffany's." We went flower shopping with my high-school girlfriend, who made the table arrangements and corsages for us.
Veep in the Middle
Jonathan Alter 7/4/2008 12:00:00 AM
After more than two decades on the quadrennial short-list, the idea of former Georgia senator Sam Nunn as vice president has become a cliché. And knocking him down is easy. You know the rap. He's too old (69), too rusty politically (out of the Senate since 1996) and too conservative (he helped design the don't-ask-don't-tell policy on gays in the military in the early 1990s). Plus, he's dull.