The world's first Harvey Milk Street

The world's first Harvey Milk Street was unveiled in San Diego late this afternoon. The City Council unanimously approved the street's renaming. The sign for the street's previous name, Blaine Avenue, will be taken down in one year. Speaking: Activist Nicole Murray Ramirez 

City Councilman Todd Gloria

The LGBT Center

Stuart Milk, Harvey's nephew

International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) march and festival Saturday in Tijuana, B.C., México

Among the sponsors of the festivities: The U.S. Consulate General

Avenida Revolución: Tijuana's historic main drag

The festival was staged on a pedestrian section of Calle Primera just east of Revolución, in front of the wax museum

It could have done with less talking and more music...

Herndon Graddick to be new GLAAD president

First, the Human Rights Campaign makes a totally inspired choice for its new president, then the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation does so, too. The people who look forward to my grumpy posts on the secret International Homosexual Conspiracy email list are going to have to find a new form of entertainment, I fear.

California voters now would OK same-sex marriage

Fifty-six percent of likely California voters support same-sex marriage in the latest PPIC polling, and only 38% oppose it. That is an increase of 9 points since right before Prop 8 passed. The sampling error for the likely voters was ±4.2 percent.

Last week, the Field Poll found that registered California voters now support same-sex marriage 59% to 34%. All kinds of people told Equality California to put Prop 8 back on the ballot this year because we would win and be done with it, but the group's board voted not to do it, reportedly by one vote.

Chad Griffin to head Human Rights Campaign

This is a new day for HRC -- and a vindication/embracing of younger LGBT activists who have dared to think outside the box. Several national LGBT groups strongly ... opposed Chad's lawsuit against Prop 8 -- and now he's to be America's top gay activist.

"I left what was happening at the stage [at that grassroots Prop 8 demo on Nov. 5, 2008], and went into the middle of the crowd, and I didn't know anyone," he told Metro Weekly. "Living in L.A. for as long as I had, I thought I knew every gay person. ... I called a close friend of mine ... and I said, 'The world has changed.' ... In many ways, on that night I found my voice."

Paul Varnell, the syndicated gay journalist, has died

My friend Paul Varnell, the well-known syndicated gay journalist, has died. Here is a wonderful article in The Windy City Times.

And a great tribute by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg.

Paul was one of the most independent persons I ever have known. It wasn't easy to get close to him, and I figure I got as far as anyone did. He was a journalist, he was an opinion columnist, he was a thinker, he was a libertarian and, I think, a Libertarian, he was an intellectual. He liked classical music and opera, he was a voracious reader. His columns raised the intelligence quotient of all the gay papers he appeared in. He was an activist, with the Illinois Gay & Lesbian Task Force and other entities.

He and I, as a journalistic exercise, tried to get a marriage license in Cook County -- in 1989! And when rebuffed, we filed human-rights complaints with the city and the state. We lost. We claimed sex discrimination but they told us it was sexual-orientation discrimination and that that wasn't illegal at that time in Illinois. The Sun-Times made a big story of our little effort. We turned down an invite to appear on Oprah. :-| I suppose everyone is unique, but Paul was unlike anyone I've ever known. I think it was the degree of his independence and the degree of his self-sufficiency that stood out. He had very specific ideas about how he wanted to live his life -- and that is exactly how he lived it, each day and without compromise.

Tributes, obituaries and articles:
Windy City Times
Chicago Tribune
Chicago Sun-Times
The Reader
Queerty
LGBTPOV.com
Independent Gay Forum
AMERICAblog
Box Turtle Bulletin
National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association
The Pink Paper
Towleroad
Washington Blade
PortugalGay.pt
Bilerico
Box Turtle Bulletin (2nd post)
Simply David
Wisconsin Gazette

Best gay marriage TV ad to date

Rex Wockner official bio

Rex Wockner reported news for the gay press from the 1980s until 2011. His work appeared in hundreds of publications.

He has a B.A. in journalism, started his career as a radio reporter, and wrote for the mainstream press as well, including the Chicago Tribune and The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Highlights of Wockner's career include:

Going to Denmark in 1989 to cover the world's first registered partnerships granting gay couples the rights of marriage.

Covering the world's first full gay marriages in the Netherlands in 2001.

Reporting from the first gay-pride events in Moscow and Leningrad in 1991.

Reporting from world conferences of the International Lesbian and Gay Association and the international AIDS conferences.

Making early contact with gay movements in the former East Bloc and developing nations.

And filing stories in the U.S. from the Democratic and Republican conventions, Creating Change, NLGJA conferences, the GLAAD Awards, Equality Begins At Home, the National Gay Men's Health Summit, the LGBT marches on Washington, major ACT UP demonstrations, the National Equality March, the Maine same-sex marriage battle, the trial in the federal Prop 8 case, and New Orleans after Katrina.

Wockner is presently on a sabbatical.

L.A. group plans to take Prop 8 back to the ballot

Love Honor Cherish will submit language to the California attorney general by Friday for a ballot measure to overturn Prop 8.

The attorney general will write a petition title and summary, and then LHC can collect voter signatures for 150 days.

The group would need to collect valid signatures from 807,615 registered California voters.

The initiative would amend the California Constitution to delete or overturn Prop 8, via which voters amended the Constitution in 2008 to re-ban same-sex marriage.

The Los-Angeles-based organization's outreach director, Lester Aponte, said Oct. 11 that LHC already has launched efforts to build a statewide campaign structure.

He also blasted Equality California for showing "a tremendous lack of leadership" when its board voted in early October against leading an effort to put Prop 8 back before California voters next year.

After the EQCA board vote, EQCA's new executive director, Roland Palencia, gave four days' notice that he was quitting his job.

Some California LGBT leaders think the EQCA board may reverse its decision.

EQCA has promised to provide information on its future leadership and plans before Palencia leaves on Friday.

In a statement to this reporter Oct. 11, Palencia said: "The decision about going or not back to the ballot to overturn Proposition 8 was a gut-wrenching one. Ultimately, I believed that initiating a signature drive could ignite something powerful in our movement here in California. This needs to be balanced with the responsibility of raising close to $2 million by December 2011 for the signature gathering alone; and maybe over $40 million to win this campaign by November 2012. Not a small task. Given the pending federal lawsuit, the economy, critical support among the base and a number of other factors, not winning this campaign could be a very disempowering experience."

Active-duty troops march in San Diego gay pride parade

Some 300 active-duty troops (the majority of the contingent) and veterans marched in San Diego's LGBT Pride parade today. As far as we can determine, it was the first time this has happened in the United States in any sort of organized way. It was a symbolic goodbye to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which, while not quite dead-dead, is apparently dead enough!

You can click inside any photo to open it much larger.

R. Clarke Cooper is executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, which filed the lawsuit that has all but killed DADT. Congress has repealed DADT as well, but that process is not quite finished.

This is the openly gay fellow who was the hero in the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.

This is the openly gay speaker of the California Assembly.

This is my openly lesbian state assemblywoman.

This is our insanely pro-gay Republican mayor and his wife.

This is an openly gay Republican city councilman who wants to be mayor.

Who knew?

No comment necessary.

This is a now-openly lesbian actress who I used to watch on a TV show called Family.

The heat, feeling prideful.

(The Associated Press estimated the size of the military contingent at 200. Reuters said 250. The San Diego Union-Tribune said "dozens" in a story and "more than 350" in a photo caption.)