Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

Some local and local-ish gay news you might have missed:

• Bullying starts at home: A few Olympia parents upset by school's pro-tolerance program -- Olympian

Some parents of students at Olympia's Washington Middle School were "livid" after their young'uns had to sit through a school assembly that advocated tolerance of gay and lesbian folk among them.

And these are the folks who get "special rights" under our current marriage laws.


• Justice Bobbe Bridge to retire; Wrote dissent in gay marriage ruling -- KOMO (AP)
  Bobbe Bridge will retire from the Washington Supreme Court at the end of the year. Bridge wrote a stinging dissent in the 2005 Andersen case, in which a plurality on the Court upheld Washington's special-rights-for-heterosexual-marriage law, aka "Defense of Marriage Act."



• Smith and Cantwell offer bill to fix federal taxation of domestic partners -- 365Gay.com
  Two northwest senators -- Oregon's Gordon Smith (R) and Washington's Maria Cantwell (D) -- introduced a bill that would give domestic partners the same federal tax advantages on employer-provided health benefits now enjoyed by married couples.



• Eli Sanders goes south to visit YouTube star; Southerners upset -- The Stranger + Towleroad
  
  
  
  The Stranger's Eli Sanders traveled into unfamiliar territory last week when he went south to visit with YouTube phenom Chris Crocker. He came back with a great story about how the web gives queer folk access to a much wider world even when they live in a small Southern city. Sanders calls it "one of the most fun and heartbreaking stories I've ever had the chance to write for The Stranger."
  
  Andy Towle has been featuring Crocker's videos for months on his great news blog, but when he posted a link to Sanders' story, Towleroad readers from the South erupted with wounded Confederate pride. Something (and we can't figure out what) about Sanders' story or Crocker himself offended several Towleroad commenters.
  
  Commenters on Crocker's MySpace page responded more favorably.



• Is Sally Clark just too darn nice? -- Seattle Weekly
  
  The town's conglomerate-"alt"-weekly did a story on "Seattle nice" a few weeks back and featured the city council's out lesbian is the best current example of the phenomenon. But that's probably because the even-nicer Richard Conlin (who is neither out nor lesbian, by the way) isn't running for re-election in this cycle.



• Tina Podlowdowski to leave Lifelong AIDS Alliance -- SGN
  
  Clark's former boss and former (and not so nice, according to some reports) city council member Tina Podlowdowski has resigned from her post as executive director of Lifelong AIDS Alliance. David Richart was appointed interim executive director of the service/advocacy agency.

Updating Hutcherson and Latvia:
Redmond's Pastor Ken apparently didn't make it to Latvia for Riga's (finally) successful gay pride observance. Or if he did, he didn't tell his "prayer warriors" about it -- which would be surprising. He has, however, asked them to "Pray for my attempt to get a meeting with President Bush and Condaleeza Rice to discuss issues with the American Embassy in Latvia."

That must mean that he is, once again, upset that the US embassy joined with just about every original EU country to urge Latvian authorities to protect the right of peaceful assembly.

We post news items more quickly on two Squidoo pages: Gay Seattle (northwest items) and Gay News (national and international items).

Labels: gay news, Gay Seattle, latvia, marriage equality, youtube