Friday Gay Blogging: The Real Deal

OK, boys and girls, here it is: today's FGB:

It seems to be that the far-right's tactic of smearing opponents with the "g" word doesn't always work: sometimes, the candidate just pulls the plug on them by coming out. This story illustrates some new directions. Here's the article from Time:

Jared Polis has a chance to make history on Tuesday as Colorado goes to the polls - and not just because he has poured more than $5 million of his own money into one of the country's costliest primary campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives. If he wins Tuesday's closely contested race for the seat Senate-contender Mark Udall is vacating in Colorado's second congressional district, the 33-year-old Internet mogul will almost assuredly join Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank as just the third openly gay member of Congress - and become the first openly gay freshman elected to the House.

"Sexual orientation shouldn't be a barrier to participation in the public sphere," says Polis, who has received encouragement from gays and lesbians from around the country. "It's a difficult issue for my opponents to try to use against me overtly without a backlash," he says, "but there have been some jabs, insinuations and whisper campaigns."

Polis won.

The key comment is Polis' statement about "backlash." Yes, if you start to make gay-friendliness an issue, it's going to bite you in the ass, most places. That's where we are now. (I notice that even the anti-marriage forces are trying to pretend that their agenda is not "anti-gay" -- the claim is that they're just trying to "protect" marriage. They don't want to tell you who they're protecting it from.) It's not just me seeing this -- Waldo comes up with some corroboration.)

On a related note, Joe.My.God points us to this story about Republican legislators in Albany introducing anti-bullying legislation in the state Senate, which had bottled up the bill passed by the House. Queerty has some behind-the-scenes highlights.

To paraphrase, I love seeing a plan come unglued -- the Dobson Gang's, that is.

Boycott Time: From Joe.My.God, a whole new group for the AFA and FOF to boycott:

Big money rolled in from labor organizations at Saturday's Equality California event in Los Angeles. The Service Employees International Union presented a $500K check and the California Teacher's Association kicked in $250K. Another $25K came from AT&T. A total of $2M was raised, much of which will be used to fund the No On 8 campaign.

A dessert extravaganza this week, thanks to, believe it or not, NBC: "Ab fab: Guess the swimmer".

But since I can't manage to pull any of those images, here's a nice one of Michael Phelps, courtesy Uh O, It's Minh.