TNR The Plank

I'm not exactly a huge fan of Jim Tressel. Still, I have to admit, for the Ohio State football coach to grant an interview with a GLBT publication and express acceptance of openly gay athletes is a cultural milestone and a heartwarming development.

While Jon is on vacation, enjoying the sun while we rot in D.C., we thought it may be a good time to review some of the classic TNR pieces he has written over the years. Over the next few days, I'll be posting some of our favorites, so be sure to keep checking back. Here is one from February 1997 based on the experience Jon had as a coatchecker at the Caribbean, New Jersey, and Gay & Lesbian Inaugural Balls. While the night started inauspiciously enough, chaos ensued: 10:30: Any semblance of a line has disappeared. Hundreds of black-tied Democrats press up against the barricade, waving ...

Most conservatives realize it has become totally socially unacceptable to advocate discrimination. So, any opposition to minority rights must be framed as opposition to quotas, affirmative action, "special rights" -- a demand by minorities to be held above other citizens. So, how would the religious right respond to the news that the Obama administration has hired a transgender bureaucrat? Here's how: "Is there going to be a transgender quota now in the Obama administration?" asked Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth.  "How far does this politics of gay and transgender ...

From Bloomberg: Uganda will drop the death penalty and life imprisonment for gays in a refined version of an anti- gay bill expected to be ready for presentation to Parliament in two weeks, James Nsaba Buturo, the minister of ethics and integrity, said. Ugandan lawmaker David Bahati presented a private member’s bill on Oct. 14 which sought the death penalty and life imprisonment for gay people in the country. The Ugandan government supports the bill because homosexuality and lesbianism are “repugnant to the Ugandan culture,” Buturo said. Still, it favors a more refined set of punishments, ...

Charlie Baker is a moderate Republican businessman who's running for Massachusetts Governor. In other words, he's got a lot in common with Mitt Romney--or at least the version of Mitt Romney who existed before he thought he needed to be a lot more conservative in order to win the GOP's presidential nomination. But today, Baker struck the sort of bold stance that not even a chameleon like Romney could distance himself from: He picked as his running mate Richard Tisei, a State Senator who last week announced that he's gay. Baker's got a long way to go before he gets the top job on Beacon ...

On an Indian summer afternoon in front of the Justice Department yesterday, a group of dark-suited ministers gathered to protest recently-passed hate crimes legislation, saying it had had a “chilling effect” on religious freedom.  “We will not be bullied!” cried Reverend Pat Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, to a rank of cameras. “We will not be pressured! We will not go silently into the night!” A black-clad traveling minister from Colorado Springs, Chaplain Klingenschmitt, upped the ante with a press release containing some choice anti-gay Bible verses and a challenge to ...

I remember being told by a friend last year, in the heat of the battle for Proposition 8 in California, that "the only reason African-Americans were opposed to gay marriage is that they dislike it when people compare the gay rights movement to the fight for civil rights." While this was clearly meant to be exculpatory, I thought it was a nasty thing to say. My friend was arguing that black people were petty enough to deny gay marriage simply because they resented the manner in which people discussed the issue. What could be more insulting? I was reminded of this last night when I was ...

Inside the Obamacare Laboratory: Have Democrats Learned the Right Lessons from Massachusetts? by Jonathan Cohn Previewing Obama’s Asia Visit: Why He Has a Rare Chance to Improve U.S.-Japan Relations, by R. Taggart Murphy TNRtv: The Jew-Hating, Gay-Bashing Westboro Baptist Church Comes to New York. Oh Boy. by Benjamin Birnbaum and Ben Eisler Should We Be Worried About the Changing Demographics of Unions? by John B. Judis Don’t Let Abortion Destroy Health Reform--Millions of Americans Will Be Far Better Off Than They Are Now, by E.J. Dionne Jr. Are People Flocking to ‘Dirty’ Cities? by ...

The poster for designer Tom Ford's directorial debut, A Single Man, features Colin Firth and Julianne Moore lying in bed together. As such, it had already raised questions of whether the Weinstein Company was trying to downplay the fact that Firth's character is gay. The new cut of the trailer does about as much to confirm this thesis as one could imagine. As Vulture points out, it's nearly identical to the earlier, pre-Weinstein version but "totally omits the shot of Firth making out with Matthew Goode, who plays his dead lover." Nor is that the only homoerotic omission. Among the ...

Chapel Hill's getting some national attention for electing a gay mayor last night. Good for Chapel Hill! But this sort of thing isn't that unusual in that part of North Carolina. After all, a couple years ago, Carrboro, the town that borders Chapel Hill to the west, had a gay mayor and a lesbian police chief.