Like GLAAD promoting a telecom merger, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force has wound up in the dubious position of weighing in on gambling, a not terribly LGBT-specific issue.

Chris Geidner at BuzzFeed has been beating down the path of a fascinating story over this past week, exploring how and why the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force has gotten involved with the issue of gambling in Maryland. His latest post reports that an anonymous source funded a gaming mailer sent to Maryland Democrats on behalf of the task force's lobbying arm.

We feel like we've been to this rodeo before. In our Voice Pride Issue feature, we asked, "What does a telecom merger have to do with fighting gay defamation?" as we reflected upon how and why the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) supported a proposed AT&T merge with T-Mobile. And now, we must ask, what does being LGBT have to do with gambling in Maryland?

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nytimes.com

Hillary Dworkoski, seen right, outside of NYU's Chick-fil-A location.

When Hillary Dworkoski traveled from her home state of California to the bustling Big Apple for her first semester at New York University last year, she had never heard about chicken sandwiches and waffle fries. 'Chick-fil-A' was not in her vocabulary; neither was 'civic activism' or 'Dan Cathy.' She was an unknowing freshman in the Gallantin School for Individualized Studies, enjoying the wonders of living in New York along with the rest of NYU's Class of 2015. More »

Assembly wannabe Russell Gallo really wants a chicken sandwich.

Not everyone's in a huff over the anti-gay comments made by homophobic chicken peddler/Chick-Fil-A CEO Dan Cathy. Take GOP Assembly hopeful Russell Gallo, for example, who has now invited Cathy to open a restaurant smack-dab in the middle of Brooklyn.

Gallo wrote a letter to Cathy yesterday apologizing for comments made by mayoral hopeful/City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who urged Cathy to stay the hell out of New York City because his views on gay marriage don't jibe with the vast majority of Gothamites.

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For a guy who's hell-bent on imposing his will on just about everyone, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has taken a rather uncharacteristic stance in the ongoing flap over the outrage stemming from homophobic comments made by Chick-Fil-A CEO Dan Cathy -- especially for a guy who claims to be a staunch advocate for gay marriage.

During his weekly radio address this morning, the mayor said that trying to shut down a restaurant because of the opinion of its owner goes against the essence of the freedoms laid out in the Constitution.

Just to be clear, this is the same (ahem) freedom-loving mayor who wants to ban soda served in containers larger than 16 ounces, wants to hide baby formula from new mothers to persuade them to breast-feed, and who wants to rip the guns from the cold, dead hands of everyone on the planet (in other words, if the mayor wants to play the role of Constitutional scholar, he might want to get a refresher on the Second Amendment).

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www.toxichominid.com

Mike Huckabee -- before he shed a few pounds. Now he's urging people to eat at Chick-Fil-A. We have a feeling that if the former Arkansas governor follows his own advice, that second chin might make a come back.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is sick and tired of all the hate speech surrounding the ongoing flap over Chick-Fil-A CEO Dan Cathy's comments that he opposes the gayz tyin' the knot. But get this: the "hate speech" he's concerned with is against Cathy, not against the entire homosexual community Cathy offended with his idiotic ramblings.

Huckabee appeared on Fox and Friends this morning, where he discussed his push to get people to eat at Chick-Fil-A in protest of the protests against Cathy's homophobia. He said the following: "The hate speech [against Cathy] is getting out of control."

Hey, Mike -- how about all the "hate speech" against the homosexuals Cathy relegates to second-class citizens with his need to go public with his opinion that they don't have the right to legally love each other?

Cathy's a Christian, which apparently makes "hate speech" acceptable -- he went on to say that his urging people to eat Cathy's greasy (in our opinion, disgusting) chicken is to "show appreciation for chickens [and] that people are still Americans and even Christians can take a stand for what they believe in."

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Chris Johnson at the Washington Blade is reporting that the Democratic Party has approved a same-sex marriage equality platform plank for the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

Quoting outgoing, openly gay congressman Barney Frank, the Blade reports that a 15 member panel unanimously backed including language that supports the right for same-sex couples to marry. Despite President Obama's wink-wink, nudge-nudge stance about states' rights on marriage, the DNC plank sounds like it will mirror the administration's legal battle for full marriage equality at the federal level.

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Yesterday, we reported on the Chick-fil-A controversy that has been brewing across the country. Well, it looks like this story's heating up a bit.More »

www.funnyordie.com

Mike Seaver's not the only one...

Former "Growing Pains" star Kirk Cameron's douchebaggery apparently knows no bounds -- after saying in March that homosexuality was "unnatural and destructive," he has now declined an invitation from a gay New Jersey teen who wanted to sit down with the former "Mike Seaver" and politely explain that loving a fellow dude would not bring on the apocalypse.

Cameron currently is on a 35-stop "mass marriage-counseling" tour to let the world know how incredibly fucking awesome he is because he managed to find a bride. The tour will make a stop in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, tonight, where the co-chair of the Youth Caucus at Garden State Equality, the state's organization for LGBT civil rights, offered to meet with Cameron to discuss gay marriage -- which Cameron strongly (read: obnoxiously) opposes.

In an email sent to Cameron's manager, 17-year-old Corey Bernstein explained that he was brutally bullied for being gay, and offered to take the former child star out to lunch with other members of Ocean Grove's LGBT communities.  

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Steven Thrasher

Edith Windsor, the day after a federal court first ruled in her favor

Edith Windsor, the octogenarian lesbian widow who successfully sued the federal government for over chariging her $363,000 in estate taxes, wants to take her case to the Supreme Court.

According to a press release from the New York Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Windsor along with the ACLU and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison: "Edith 'Edie' Windsor, who sued the government for failing to recognize her marriage to her late spouse, Thea Spyer, asked the U.S. Supreme Court today to hear her challenge to the so-called "'Defense of Marriage Act' (DOMA)...In the meantime, Windsor will continue to defend her victory before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which has agreed to hear her case on an expedited basis."

Last month, the Voice reported about Windsor's victory in a federal district court here in New York. Although the Obama Administration has stopped defending DOMA, believing parts are unconstitutional, House Speaker John Boehner has directed the Bipartian Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) to keep defending it in federal court.

Asked by the Voice what she'd say to Speaker Boehner for seemingly wanting her to be the only person in America he wants to pay more taxes, she replied, " I think I'd rather not talk to him."

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In 1981, as the booming gay culture was being hit with the AIDS epidemic and a rising conservative culture in Washington, Barney Frank, a young Democrat from Massachusetts, entered Congress. Six years later, he became the first elected official on the Hill to voluntarily tell the public about his homosexuality. His statement shook the Moral Majority at the time and laid the path for more Representatives to announce that they would work on behalf of the American people and out of the closet.
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