NEWSBYADAM AMIR

This week, the U.S. Senate is expected to debate legislation that could move forward an eventual repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the U.S. military policy that bars openly gay and lesbian servicemembers from serving in the Armed Forces. To help this vote move forward, LGBT advocates are going to need a little help from some swing vote Senators, including Sen. Olympia Snowe and Sen. Susan Collins from Maine.

And that's where Lady Gaga comes in. Today, Gaga will be heading to Maine for a rally, along with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), to urge Sen. Collins and Sen. Snowe to knock down any attempt to filibuster a vote to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." It's the latest in a month-long push by Lady Gaga to draw attention to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and to urge her fans to get behind the repeal campaign.

Last Friday, Lady Gaga filmed herself, urging the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell." She ended the video with some serious civic engagement, calling New York Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Better known for her outrageous dress and chart topping music than her lobbying, Lady Gaga may not have a direct line to the DC establishment, but she wields some serious influence.

Although Gaga called unsuccessfully, Gillibrand responded a day later via Tw

Charlie Crist, the Florida Governor with a storied history of speculation about his sexuality, has long been an opponent of or ambivalent to LGBT equality in the state of Florida. But according to RawStory.com, Crist's campaign for U.S. Senate has released a document showing that Crist is poised to endorse a slew of rights, protections, and LGBT-friendly pending legislation before Congress.

Charlie Crist is running as the independent in a hotly contested Florida Senate race. Twice elected as the Republican Florida Governor, Crist left the party when it looked as if he would lose to Marco Rubio, a more reactionary candidate with ties to the Tea Party. With Florida's Democratic Senate candidate Kendrick Meek lagging in the polls, the announcement is likely an attempt to woo Florida Democrats and liberal independents.

According to the letter from Crist's campaign, he will support the following gay rights issues:

Chart-topping rapper 50 Cent wrote on his Twitter account that he had one of his "homies shoot up a gay wedding," because Perez Hilton called him a "douche bag." This 140 character-long exchange, better suited for 12-year-old boys or on bathroom stall walls, has since been deleted. But the good folks over at GLADD have saved a copy of it.

Although 50 Cent's tweets generally range from moronic to barely decipherable, 50 Cent is quite the mainstream figure: His albums "Get Rich or Die Tryin" and "Curtis" went to number one and number two, respectively. He also earns significant amounts from other investments. When Coca Cola bought Vitamin Water, 50 Cent earned 10 percent of the buyout, to around the tune of $400 million. Not bad for a convicted felon.

The rapper, best known for brilliant rhymes like "look mami i'm in the club, bottle full of bub," has a major influence on our youth. His blatant incitement to anti-gay violence, however, is abhorrent. Unlike controversial figures like Eminem, who sought to distinguish between violent messages and homophobic epithets in his music by performing with Elton John, 50 Cent has made his dislike of gays quite clear.

Whenever equality prevails for LGBT people, right-wing anti-gay groups try to delegitimize whichever democratic avenue was successful for gay and transgender people.

Most recently, it was a federal court case that struck down California's ban on gay marriage. As the New Yorker reported, Judge Vaughn Walker had made it clear that he wanted evidence in the case and "lots of it." As he said in his 138-page opinion that gay marriage opponents "failed to build a credible factual record to support their claim that Proposition 8 served a legitimate government interest.”

Walker continued in the opinion: "the evidence does not support a finding that California has an interest in preferring opposite-sex parents over same-sex parents. Indeed, the evidence shows beyond any doubt that parents’ genders are irrelevant to children’s developmental outcomes."

So what basis is there for a ban on gay marriage? In Perry, Walker explained that "the evidence shows conclusively that moral and religious views form the only basis for a belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples."

But for opponents of gay marriage it was not about a lack of credible evidence. For them, the ruling against Prop 8 was merely case of "judicial activism" of course. Citizen Link, Focus on the Family's proxy publication, reacted predictably, "the judge’s invalidation of the votes of over seven million Californians violates binding legal precedent and short-circuits the democratic process."

That's the discernible message in the Pentagon's second attempt to assess the effect of a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Mailed to about 150,000 military spouses, this version suffers from the same problems as a similar survey issued last month to 400,000 active and reserve troops: loaded questioning, insensitivity, and (as I reported a month ago) methodological problems that make its findings useless.

In the military spouse survey's 13-pages, the questions imply that military families would not want to share social activities or housing with LGBT families. It seems the Pentagon believes the presence of openly gay soldiers and their tainted-by-affiliation family would not only discourage servicemembers from enlisting (q. 16), but also that military families would avoid deployment-support activities (q. 29) or that military families would move off-base if openly-gay military families lived in their same neighborhood (q. 24).

Servicemembers United, the organization advocating on behalf of LGBT members of the U.S. armed services, posted a leaked version of the survey. Here are the five most offensive questions:

In the coverage of Proposition 8, some media outlets have acted more like gossip-obsessed teenagers than responsible journalists, at least when it comes to the sexuality of Vaughn Walker, the judge who struck down Proposition 8 in Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

On a number of networks and especially in conservative media coverage, these vitriol-peddlers keep citing one San Francisco Chronicle article that called the U.S. District Court justice's homosexuality an "open secret." However, Walker has not responded to these claims, and the question of whether he is gay, however irrelevant, has not been substantiated.

Critics have even used the speculation about Walker's sexuality to challenge the validity of the case. The argument goes: because Vaughn is gay, he cannot be impartial, and thus should have recused himself. At least this is how it went in a recent issue of the conservative Washington Times.

This is an absurd double standard. By this logic, the sexual orientation of straight judges would have clearly gotten in the way of their rulings, too. Likewise, should the first black U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, have refused to vote in Civil Rights cases? Clearly no.

Call the wedding planner and the florist immediately. The marriage in California is off ... for now.

In a short two-page order Monday evening, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided to extend the stay on Perry v. Schwarzenegger for at least four months, effectively suspending the August 4 decision that struck down Proposition 8 as unconstitutional. No hearing is scheduled until December, and though the Ninth Circuit is moving on an expedited schedule, we probably won't be hearing of any substantial update on the pending appellate case until next year.

Last week, Judge Vaughn R. Walker issued a temporary stay that was set to expire this Wednesday at 5 p.m. for Perry. Without this order by the three-judge Appeals Court panel, California state officials would have been prohibited from enforcing the ban on same-sex marriages.

Although the order to suspend the effect of Perry does not seem like a reason to celebrate, some legal experts are calling it strategically advantageous for gay marriage supporters.

Joan Garner is a candidate for Fulton County Commissioner in Georgia. She stands for public safety, sustainable transportation, and bringing business and jobs to the county. She also happens to be openly gay.

I have long known that the dearth of openly gay candidates has not been for lack of quality candidates, but rather because of the perception that homophobia would spook voters at the ballot box. However, in a handful of primary elections across the country, gay candidates are winning some important races.

Garner’s victory in the Democratic primary for the Fulton County Commission, the county that houses Atlanta, was especially interesting. Her opposition in the August 10, 2010 runoff? Another openly gay, African-American candidate, Keisha Waites. Because there has been no other candidate that qualified for the ballot, Republican or independent or otherwise, Garner has essentially won the race.

Running in the Democratic primary, openly gay Kevin Lembo won his party’s candidacy for the office of the Connecticut State Comptroller. Lembo seems poised to win the general election too, and would become among the few open candidates in a statewide office.

Just days before Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach was to be deployed to Afghanistan, his commander ordered him to talk with police officers in nearby Boise, Idaho under charges that he had sexually assaulted a male civilian, and that he therefore had also violated the still active military policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

When Fehrenbach’s charges of sexual assault were dismissed on lack of evidence, the Air Force continued to investigate his sexuality. Now the decorated Air Force veteran believes he is about to be discharged for being gay, and plans to challenge the dismissal in court.

Although Congress and the Obama administration have yet to genuinely move the ball on the repeal of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," a 2008 court case in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the outdated military law actually created a new standard, a stricter standard that was seemingly ignored with Fehrenbach’s dismissal.

This new standard emerged in Witt v. U.S. Department of the Air Force, when Major Margaret Witt, an Air Force officer and nurse for 18 years, was discharged because of allegations that she had sexual affairs with a woman. This woman happened to be in a long-term committed relationship with Witt, at home, miles away from the Air Force base, and with no discernible negative impact on Witt’s unit or its morale.

What happens when your parents reject your sexual orientation or gender identity? For some teens, it means the streets. A recent report highlights the shocking number of homeless youth that identify as LGBT. Of the 1.6 million homeless youth in the U.S., anywhere from 320,000 to 640,000 are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

In other words, although LGBT youth only make up about 5% to 10% of the population, at least 20% or much as 40% of homeless youth are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, according to the new report by the Center for American Progress (CAP).

As these teens were neglected by their families and communities, so too has research about homeless youth. CAP's report, published today, provides much needed analysis, as well as a short video highlighting the emotional experiences of Nico Quintana and Sierra Webster, two formerly homeless LGBT teens.