Rev. Irene Monroe: Sometime in the late hours of Saturday night the call will come in. Philbert (not his real name) — like many of his Christian LGBTQ buddies — waits anxiously for the call to tell him the time and place of the van pickup, and where it’ll drop he and his friends off to a safe and secluded place for Sunday worship.

Anthony Asadullah Samad: The President shouldn’t hide behind black leadership who have access, while they sing a song, as Tavis says, “that we all don’t know,” namely that “the President doesn’t need a black agenda.” Don’t deny what we all know is the real help Black America needs. It’s not a subject that you have to run from. And when your community calls, Brother President, just pick up the phone.

Tim Wise: It’s a common argument, made by those who would rather ignore or finesse the problem of racism in America. If you can’t argue the facts, never fear, just suggest that certain facts are too dangerous to be spoken. The possibility that persons of color might adopt a victim mentality once they learn the extent of racism, means we simply have to move on, and tell those who are, as a matter of fact, often the victims of injustice not to dwell on their experiences too much, lest their commitment to self-help be vitiated.

John Delloro: Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) response to the racial incident at UCSD may foreshadow the fate of race and racism in this nation.

Rev. Irene Monroe: While many black pro-lifers believe that the way to maintain the institution of the black family and to overcome white supremacy is by denying women their right to choose, these same anti-abortionists ironically are also anti-gay, anti-birth control, and anti-condoms, ignoring that homophobic vitriol, STDs and HIV/AIDS will kill the black family sooner than white supremacists anti-black conspiracy theories.

Carl Matthes: It’s time to stop putting the blame for violent or predatory sexual activity in the military on gays and lesbians. Even facing unfair characterization and laws, gay men and lesbians enlist. They serve loyally, even though they must lie about their sexual orientation. And, yet, they remain willing to possibly give, ultimately, their life for their country.

Paul Hogarth: Same-sex couples have largely won the battle for civil unions, but there’s something about “marriage” that makes moderates uneasy – and it’s time that we speak directly to their concerns.

Michelle Alexander: They’re missing in churches, missing from their families, missing from college campuses, and absent from work. Black women can’t find a man to marry. Black children don’t know where to find their fathers. Where are those guys?

David Love: With an economic and political crisis afoot in this crumbling empire, it seems that this salacious celebrity gossip is nothing more than that–a media-created distraction to help us forget how bad things really are in America. This is a sideshow, like the gladiator games in Rome, or feeding the Christians to the lions.

David Lee McMullen: With respect to same sex marriage, the connection is not immediately clear, not until one looks at the language used in the Manhattan Declaration – “the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.” Fundamentalists see marriage as the basic structure upon which a male-dominated society is built. Traditional family relationships allow heterosexual men to maintain control of their “property.” Alternative unions threaten this power.

Robert Fuller: you conclude that rankism is human nature — that we’re like the apes, and they do it, so we have no choice — and dismiss the possibility of overcoming it, consider this list of specific kinds of “put downs” that, not long ago, were deemed cool, but have become a sure way to embarrass yourself.

Randy Shaw: The absence of labor reporters is a symptom of a larger media trend that now sees union activism and elections as deserved only of local coverage, while corporate news wins national attention. So the New York Times reports on Disney’s public relations event in Orlando, Florida is reported by, while UNITE HERE’s far more newsworthy event at Disneyland gets only local press.

Michelle Alexander: The clock has been turned back on racial progress in America, though scarcely anyone seems to notice. All eyes are fixed on people like Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey who have defied the odds and achieved great power, wealth and fame.

Rev. Irene Monroe: While in pre-Hitler Germany all-female orchestras were de rigeur in many avant-garde entertainment clubs, these homosocial all-women’s bands created tremendous outrage during Hitler’s regime. Snow was sent to a concentration camp not only because she was black and in the wrong place at the wrong time, but also because of her “friendships” with German women musicians, implying lesbianism.

David A. Love: When I heard that ten American missionaries are on trial for kidnapping 33 Haitian children and attempting to take them to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic, I, like most other people, was outraged. But I can’t say I was surprised.

Rev. Irene Monroe: A talented pianist and blues singer, and one of the most notorious and successful entertainers during the Harlem Renaissance, Bentley cultivated a large LGBTQ following up until the 1950s. As an African-American woman whose success derived from her raunchy and salacious lyrics to popular tunes, Bentley not only openly sang about sex, but she also openly lived and celebrated her sexual orientation as an out lesbian.

Berry Craig: I’ve never heard of a real corporate executive who had a conscience attack and sided with workers at a plant he or she was about to downsize or shut. I don’t know of any members of Local 665 who have found better jobs than the ones they had at the factory.

Randy Shaw: As the midterm elections approach, progressives face a critical choice: either spend resources now on funding organizers who can win real change in 2010, or invest in the November elections to set the stage for 2011. The choice should be clear.

Mary L. Dudziak: The no-change-during-wartime argument is an example of conventional thinking about war and American society. “Wartime” is imagined to be a temporary condition. It is a special kind of time. Wartime, by definition, is preceded and followed by “peacetime.” American history is thought to consist of the movement from peacetime to wartime and back again. In this conceptualization, wartimes always comes to an end.

Carl Matthes: Desmond Tutu, the former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and a Nobel Peace Price winner, has lent his name to the fight against homophobia saying, “Homophobia is a ‘crime against humanity’ and ‘every bit unjust’ as apartheid.” Brad Pitt, in a 2007 Vanity Fair interview of Tutu, remarked, “So certainly discrimination has no place in Christianity. There’s a big argument going on in America right now, on gay rights and equality.”

Rev. Irene Monroe: Within the African- American LGBTQ community, Black History Month has always come under criticism. And rightly so! The absence of LGBTQ people of African descent in the month-long celebration is evidence of how race, gender and sexual politics of the dominant culture are reinscribed in black culture as well.

Berry Craig: The union-haters must still be in hog heaven over an AFL-CIO-sponsored poll that showed most Massachusetts union households supported Republican Scott Brown over union-endorsed Democrat Martha Coakley in the special election to succeed the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Rev. Irene Monroe: It is my hope that the many conservative faith-based groups and organizations that are now part of Haiti’s earthquake relief effort will not discriminate against Haiti’s LGBTQ community as many of them did toward New Orleans’s queer communities during Katrina.

Anthony Samad: Gay rights actvists have this pressing need to tie King to their cause, to legitimize their movement. They can’t find adequate venues to engage the black community on the issue of gay marriage, so they hijack King Day programs where they can dominate question and answer periods by interjecting questions around gay marriage. And they never want to have a morality conversation, as critical as that conversation is to a conversion (and shift) of America’s cultural mindset.

Irene Monroe: While scientists explain Haiti’s recent natural disaster as an earthquake due to a fault it sits on along the border between two large tectonic plates – the North American plate to the north, and the Caribbean plate to the south – that slowly slide horizontally past each other, Robinson explains the disaster as “Something [that] happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it.”

Randy Shaw: In the Beltway, the Obama Administration frustrated key constituency groups and organizations by failing to push for transformative change. In the world where most people live and work, activists were not deterred by Obama’s inaction and instead seized upon the “Si Se Puede” spirit to build successful campaigns for justice.

John Delloro: With a rise in right-wing populism, I am worried. Our history tells us that immigration will become the key hot button issue these next coming elections and, in the past, hate crimes against AAPIs and Latina/os have consistently risen with increasing anti-immigrant sentiment, especially during low economic periods.

Anthony Asadullah Samad: In fact, I wonder if the White House will still be “the White House” when the Obamas leave. You know America got that thing about living where we’ve lived and leaving once we come to the neighborhood. They might come back eventually…but usually not immediately after we’ve been there.

Rosalio Munoz: As could be expected, the corporate media is building a mood of pessimism about the possiblities for progressive change, they did so for King and the movements he led, but he was undaunted and we shouldn’t be in this years struggles. Si Se Puede! ¡Feliz cumpleaños Martin!

Simon Balto: King understood that the problems of America involved much more than racial inequality, and—in answer to LBJ’s question—what he in fact wanted was “a radical redistribution of power.”

S. Blair Fox: The question isn’t whether Leviticus 18:22 is the word of God for Christians, but who the heck are we having sexual relationships with and why. This, of course, goes for heterosexual and homosexual relationships.

Adriane Lentz-Smith: To marvel ignorantly at a black man’s accomplishment is one thing; to lament all the “problems” that accompany finally fulfilling the constitutional promise of black citizenship quite another.

Tom Hall: Progressives do not need to believe in religion to understand that the values that Jesus taught and that Dr. King and Senator Kennedy lived, are beneficial to the world whether or not there is a God or an afterlife.

Robert Fuller: Within American society, it’s not the absolute income levels of states that determines their social well being, but rather the level of income disparity, as is the case with nations. Economic inequality and social dysfunction go hand in hand.

Rev. Irene Monroe: Sadly, Bayard Rustin, the gay man who was chief organizer and strategist for the 1963 March on Washington that further catapulted Martin Luther King onto the world stage, was not the beneficiary of King’s dream.

Paul Hogarth: For years, civil rights groups had carefully kept the federal courts out of gay marriage fights – and the prominent lawyers in Perry filed the suit without consulting them. But with most of marriage’s legal benefits coming under federal law, it was only a matter of time before the federal courts weighed in on this issue.

Sharon Kyle: Unless they’re compelled to address it, as Barack Obama was during the explosion of negativity around Rev. Jeremiah Wright, you can pretty much count on race not being discussed on the campaign trail.

Carl Matthes: Despite a lack of movement towards equal rights on the national political stage for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Americans (Where are you Democratic Liberals and Progressives when we need you?), there are three important LGBT gains as we enter 2010.

Carl Matthes: Those of us who want to see Prop 8 overturned have this remarkable chance to make our voices heard by calling for the trial to be televised in the interest of transparency and accountability. The Courage Campaign Institute, one of the principle organizations working to overturn Prop 8, is teaming up with CREDO Action to collect as many signatures as possible asking Judge Walker to televise the case.

Rev. Irene Monroe: Just as my enslaved ancestors could have never imagined an African American family residing in the White House, nor could my African American LGBTQ brothers and sisters who fought in the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in New York’s Greenwich Village imagine that one day a special invitation from the White House would openly welcome us in.