Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

A couple of legal issue bloggers expected the ruling to be appealed when the 10th Circuit Court ruled against the Oklahoma legislature's bizarre decision to deny birth certificates to children born in OK who had been adopted by same-sex couples (in other states, since that's not OK in OK).

Fortunately, that won't happen. The Oklahoma agency that issues birth certificates announced last week that it will honor the appeals court decision.

Tom Cross, the state Health Department's deputy general counsel, said the agency could not meet the requirements to have the 10th Circuit reconsider its opinion.

The agency does not believe that the U.S. Supreme Court would take up the case, he said.

"We will be issuing birth certificates for all adoptions, whether same-sex or not, for children born in Oklahoma," Cross said.

Lambda Legal, which filed cases challenging the hastily-adopted law, celebrated the decision.

"This is a monumental decision, not just for the couples involved in the case, but for lesbian and gay parents and their children nationwide," said Jon Davidson, Legal Director of Lambda Legal. "It means that when same-sex couples have an adoption decree recognizing both of them as parents, the adoption, and their status as their child's parents, must be honored no matter where they go."

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Still trying to recover a response at the Logo prez forum, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson got some help from a not-so-desirable source, Fox's Bill O'Reilly.

When a viewer email questioned his previous remarks that Bill Richardson "looked bad by saying he believed homosexuality was a choice," Fox News' Bill O'Reilly responded, "I think everybody's got to relax on all this gay stuff."

You know you're in trouble if you?re a Democrat and O'Reilly comes to your defense. Huffington Post blogger RJ Eskow caught onto O'Reilly's probably unintentional 'Relax' reference, and so we offer this: (via YouTube)




But that wasn't O'Reilly's only indication during the week that he just can't bring himself to "relax about this gay stuff". He also flubbed a report about a poll that showed the votes of most folks in three swing states wouldn't be affected if a candidate were endorsed by a gay rights group. And then he flubbed it again when someone pointed out he'd been wrong the first time. (But then, he wasn't the only one. Politico.com headlined its story on the poll "Gay support could cost candidates".)

But the incident did help earn O'Reilly a not-so-rare two-fer on Olbermann's Worst Person nomination. [YouTube].

Labels: gay news, news bites, politics, TV