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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Marc Stein: Oscar laughed. “Why of course they can’t call it heterosexual marriage! That would make them appear like bigots. They would sound as if they endorse discrimination. They would seem prejudiced. They would be saying openly that they think heterosexuality is superior to homosexuality. And besides, if they called it ‘heterosexual’ marriage it would be too easy to ask questions about why the state has to confer so many special rights and privileges on heterosexual marriages in order to get people to marry heterosexually.

With the Episcopal Church’s urban landscape changing, the denomination has opted to pour its support, money, and energy not into these historic black churches but instead into developing urban Latino churches.

For me, however, the joy in this moment in the history of the Episcopal Church is that the Church continues to crawls toward inclusiveness, albeit haltingly and in spite of opposition.

The Washington data is really a microcosm of what we already know: that AIDS in America today is a black disease,” said Phil Wilson, founder of the Black AIDS Institute, an HIV/AIDS think tank that focuses exclusively on AIDS among black Americans.

The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) is the largest African American church and largest Pentecostal church in the United States. And as the largest denominational black church in the country, it is also the loudest in rebuking homosexuality. But using many of the gospel music industry mega-stars from COGIC, the church’s charismatic worship style shouts to a black gay male queer gospel aesthetic every Sunday. The church is conflicted with itself.

If I have grandchildren, I have some hope that the world they enter will allow them to make the simple and profound choice to love whom they wish. Films like The Campaign will provide the historical blueprint and record of how the fight was waged, how battles were won–and lost.

In Maine, we lost in ways that lay the groundwork for an eventual victory. Maine may be the oldest state in the nation, but California is 46th. It will only be a matter of time.

While many in the LGBTQ community now gasp at the reality of Rev. Bernice King being at the helm of SCLC, I gasp at SCLC’s audacity to still call itself a civil rights organization.

Witch-hunts have always created moral panic, mass hysteria, and public lynching of society’s most vulnerable and marginalized.

If Morehouse is to continue to be the jewel of black academia, nurturing the talents and gifts of its exceptional black men, it must ask itself to what degree does its tradition hinder its goal.

Musical lyrics promoting the killing of people should never be the chorus of any tune. That, however, is not the case for Buju Banton, a reggae singer whose music promotes the violent murder of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

But as one of the most vocal critics of the National Equality March that took place in Washington this weekend, Frank has many LGBTQ Americans nationwide wondering if he has become a bureaucratic gatekeeper.

It had to be frustrating for Sunday’s rally organizers President Obama get a standing ovation from HRC at a gala event for simply repeating his unfulfilled campaign pledges on gay rights. This smacks of the type of lack of political accountability that can kill progressive change.

Anti-LGBT organizations like Ron Prentice’s ProtectMarriage.com are trying to convince Schwarzenegger to veto SB 54, the Marriage Recognition and Family Protection Act (Leno, D-San Francisco).

I have faith – and I have faith in America. That is why I am marching to support President Obama in his goals of creating a more perfect union for all of America – and to support our legislators in passing legislation that will save all of our children from religion-based bigotry.

But I have to ask myself, what if my children are gay? How would I react? Does my back story provide me with the emotional armaments to love them regardless without the taint of disappointment or disgruntlement?

An idea that was once thought of as an anathema to black queer identity — marriage — in our LGBTQ communities, is being celebrated and on the rise. And many of us are now proudly walking down the aisle to tie the knot.

In August, Caster Semenya of South Africa became a world champion, posting the year’s fastest time in a women’s 800-meter race. Critics and rivals said that she could not be a woman. Elizabeth Reis, a historian of intersexuality, explains what’s involved in this issue.

These multiple family structures, which we have had to devise as models of resistance and liberation, have always shown the rest of society what really constitutes family.

Civilization didn’t collapse when traditional Jews had multiple wives in Biblical times or when Moslems had four wives as permitted by the Quran, or when Utah was founded by men with plural wives. Civilization didn’t collapse with the end of legally enforced segregation. And it hasn’t collapsed in the states which allow same-sex marriage.

On August 8, Northeast Los Angeles will join many Southern California areas celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride.

President Obama was the one that was most in tuned to both the welfare of the Gay citizenry and the liberal views I hold near and dear. I campaigned for him, he won, and now it seems my role, and that of all his supporters is to support him.

Marriage equality groups are determined to fight hard regardless of when “the movement” decides on a 2010 or 2012 date, but I’m hazy on who exactly will make that decision.