While probably not a first, the town of Beech Grove, IN also elected a very young mayor. His name escapes me, but he is 23 and a senior at Butler university. He might not be the youngest, but he is probably the only one in this election cycle who will be taking finals as he is also taking office.

You left some bad stuff out:

- Rosemarie Belforti, the anti-gay clerk in NY who wants her religion “accommodated” by requiring the public to get marriage licenses through the deputy clerk and by appointment only, defeated her write-in opponent

- Eugene Delgaudio, aka the Public Advocate of the United States, and first-class whacko, was re-elected to the Loudon County Board of Supervisors

- Manuel Rodriguez, incumbent on the Houston Independent School District, who tried to destroy his opponent with blatantly homophobic attacks, appears to have won with a margin of 24 votes

- In a special election in Maine to replace a GOP House member and first-class whacko who resigned after being arrested for pulling a gun on someone, the GOP candidate (described as an “unabashed Christian”) seems to have very narrowly defeated the Democratic candidate. This would have been a pick up for the Dems in a GOP-leaning district. The Dem lost because the Green Party candidate took just enough votes to tip the scales.

Not only did you get your first gay councilman, but you also elected a CFO and financial planner. Smart move in this economy.

First Openly Gay, African-American Republican Mayor: At least that’s what we think happened whenBruce Harris was elected mayor of Chatham Borough, New Jersey.

This is so very cool.

I don’t like Herman Cain and wouldn’t vote for him. But I love that the wingers in the Republican Party support him. It’s an indication that even among those who are least likely to empathize with the concerns expressed by, say, the NAACP, race has ceased being an automatic disqualifier. (Of course, you still have to support their social agenda and their positions on things like affirmative action.)

Similarly, I know nothing about Harris or his positions. But I know that when a black Republican is elected, it says positive things about the future of race relations in this country. And when a gay black Republican is elected, it gives me hope that the grip that the social conservatives have had over half of our party structure for the past 30 years (and over the other half before that) may be lessening.

And that’s a good thing.

Any more than Jim Crow was a viable means of making white people more moral and virtuous.

Yes. The real damage of Jim Crow was not being denied seating at a lunch counter or separated water fountains or any of that.

Yes, that was evil. But the real damage was that the system of Jim Crow laws institutionalized and gave government sanction to the message that some people were inherently better than others due to unchosen immutable characteristics that were irrelevant to any reasonable or real measure of worth.

Even if they had fixed the voting problems and eliminated the fountains, it would not have been enough. The Civil Rights movement wasn’t about where you sat on the bus or any of that.

The real value to the Civil Rights movement was that it demanded that people are equal and challenged those who thought of themselves as decent and who thought that America is “tolerant” and “everyone is the same and equal here” but who were complacent and willing to put asterisk to that equality notion.

It made White America ask itself just why they thought of themselves as “better”. And it wasn’t a very pretty answer.

I have tried to entreat NOM’s supports that discriminating against gay people doesn’t make the lives of straight people better.

Solving society’s problems with family structure through banning gay equality is like solving local drought by banning bottled water. Sure they kinda sound related, but the underlying premise is faulty. Not only does banning one not solve the other, but it eliminates a possible positive influence.

It seems pretty hit or miss as to what they allow there, I see some comments I’m surprised they let through and yet I tried to post the following which I thought was rather tame and they were afraid to let it through:

K.J Peacock said “What I don’t understand is why they are trying to make the world accept what thy do behind closed doors. I don’t care what a person does behind closed doors, just keep it there.”.

They do keep it behind closed doors, trouble is when you say to do that that is not what you want gays to do. When you say keep it behind closed doors what you’re really saying is “Don’t try to achieve the right to marry, just sit back, shut up and do nothing about not having the same rights as me.”. That’s just not on.