Florida Agenda

PROVINCETOWN, MASSACHUSETTS – During a weekend fundraising trip to Provincetown, Massachusetts, Vice President Joseph Biden praised the LGBT community for “freeing the soul of the American people.” Added the Veep, “If I had to use one adjective to describe this community, it would be ‘courage.’ You have summoned the courage to speak out, to come out. We owe you.”

The campaign stop at Pilgrim Monument and Museum in Provincetown— which has a large permanent gay population, as well as an international LGBT tourist trade— is the latest personal outreach made by Biden to gay Americans. During an interview in May on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the vice president beat his boss, President Obama, to the punch in coming out, as it were, in supporting marriage equality.

“I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” Biden said, adding, “Quite frankly, I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that.”

By Richard Hack

Photo Courtesy Getty Images: President Obama shakes hands with gay rights activist Frank Kameny after signing a memorandum on federal benefits as Vice President Joe Biden (from left), Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Sen. Joe Lieberman (independent-Conn.) look on.

Frank Kameny, a pioneer in the gay-rights movement, and the father of gay-activism, died October 11 from natural causes in his Washington, DC home. He was 86.

“Frank Kameny led an extraordinary life marked by heroic activism that set a path for the modern LGBT civil rights movement,” Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solomese stated. “From his early days fighting institutionalized discrimination in the federal workforce, Dr. Kameny taught us all that ‘Gay Is Good.’”

After serving in the Army in World War II, and earning a PhD from Harvard University, Kameny took a civil service position with the U.S. Army Map Service in Washington. Soon thereafter, he was questioned about his homosexuality and judged unfit for federal employment.

Determined to fight what he saw as discrimination, he argued his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where, in 1961, he brought the first civil rights claim in a U.S. court based on sexual orientation. While Kameny lost the petition, he never stopped fighting for the rights of homosexuals, both in the military and in the workplace.

In the same year, Kameny joined Jack Nichols to form the Mattachine Society of Washington, DC. In 1965, he led the first pro-gay demonstration in front of the White House. Hand-painted signs used in the protest for equal rights now hang in the Smithsonian Institution.

Frank Kameny 1925 - 2011

Coining the phrase “Gay is Good,” Kameny demanded and received the right to speak at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting in 1971, challenging the association’s theory that homosexuality was a sickness. The same year, he founded the Gay Activists Alliance (now the Gay and Lesbian Activist Alliance). Kameny was also the co-founder of the National Gay Task Force and the National Gay Rights Lobby.

“As we say goodbye to a trailblazer on National Coming Out Day,” Solmonese said, “we remember the remarkable power we all have to change the world by living our lives like Frank – openly, honestly and authentically.”

In a life full of proud moments, Kameny never stood taller than when, from his wheelchair, he took his place in the front row at the White House as President Barack Obama signed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act” into law in December 2010.

Kameny is survived by his sister, Edna Kameny Lavey.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – A Google search for Santorum has generated some inappropriate results ever since gay columnist Dan Savage organized an online campaign to link graphic sexual terms to the socially conservative senator’s name. Several of Google’s top search results would offer sites with the following information: “A frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.”

The presidential candidate has reached out to Google to remedy his problem but he said that Google has refused to help.

“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” Santorum said. “If you’re a responsible business, you don’t let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”

A Google spokesperson has responded to Santorum’s charges: “Google’s search results are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the web. Users who want content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly.

Once the webmaster takes the page down from the web, it will be removed from Google’s search results through our usual crawling process.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – While his boss, President Barack Obama, is all for civil marriages, Vice President Joe Biden has declared that he thinks full marriage between people of the samesex is on the horizon, a lot sooner than most people think.

“I think the country’s evolving,” Biden said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “and I think there’s an inevitability for a national consensus on gay marriage. That is my view. But this is the president’s policy, but it is evolving. I think the country’s evolving.”

Biden was asked the question while he was on the show to discuss the law that repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which now allows gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military.

“I think the same thing is happening across the country with regard to the issue of marriage,” Biden said.

A Pew survey released in October, based on two polls taken over several months, found that 48 percent opposed allowing gays and lesbians to legally marry, while 42 percent were in favor. Still, a Pew analysis noted, “for the first time in 15 years, fewer than half oppose same-sex marriage.” About 6,500 people were surveyed. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.

Pew also found “the shift in opinion on same-sex marriage has been broad-based, occurring across many demographic, political and religious groups.”

Biden’s attitude has changed from the campaign trail several years ago when he said he was for civil unions but said that each religion should be able to decide if they are going to allow same-sex marriages in their congregations.