"UNITY" has been a bit fractured ever since the National Association of Black Journalists pulled out

Earlier this week, the Voice went on SiriusXM's Michelangelo Signorile Show to talk about our experiences at the UNITY convention.

As we noted, this was the first UNITY without the official participation of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). It was also the first UNITY with the participation of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA). Many members of NABJ still attended, including NABJ president Gregory Lee, who we interviewed.

NABJ's departure from UNITY and NLGJA's inclusion were not directly related to each other. Yet as we wrote, there was the appearance that the two were linked because of the timing, and there were feelings of unease between some members of both groups (particularly in that the name was changed from "UNITY: Journalists of Color" to simply "UNITY: Journalists").

We also reported that several people at UNITY told us that, though NABJ had not departed because of NLGJA, they had been the only group to vote, in the past, against NLGJA joining. (In the embedded audio of our post, current NABJ president Gregory Lee addressed this.)

But two other reputable sources contacted us to counter this claim. We updated our last post with a note from John Yarwood, former UNITY board member, to say it was not mathematically possible for NABJ to be the sole group to have blocked NLGJA.

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Over the past couple of years, we've had the chance to report about stop and frisk, the controversial NYPD practice of stopping hundreds of thousands of black and Latino young men each year. We've also gotten to report about the fight for gay equal rights on a number of fronts. The two previously disparate beats intertwined unexpectedly on Monday, when the NAACP and multiple LGBT organizations announced a press conference to be held at the Stonewall Inn to join forces against police profiling.

The more we thought about it, the more we realized this was a natural point of alliance for both race oriented and LGBT civil rights groups. We discussed this, and talked about the Voice's reporting in both areas, on Tuesday on Michelangelo Signorile's Sirius radio show.

Take a listen.

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Steven Thrasher

Mike Signorile on the air yesterday

We're approaching, if not looking in the rearview mirror at, a watershed moment in American civil rights history. A majority of the American public now supports marriage equality for same-sex couples.

And, despite what detractors have been saying and predicting, this includes black people, too. An increasingly wide array of black political, cultural, and even military leaders -- Barack Obama, General Colin Powell, Congressman John Lewis, Mayor Cory Booker, Governor Deval Patrick, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Congressman John Conyers, Rev. Al Shaprton, Mayor Michael Nutter, Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver, and entertainers Will Smith, Jay-Z and 50 Cent, to name a few -- have come out for marriage equality.

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A fascinating story on WNYC this morning: a new report finds that the city's largest private employer is the nonprofit sector.

When we wrote our cover story "The Nonprofit 1 Percent," we saw that there are some lucrative posts at the top of some of the city's nonprofit organizations. But we didn't learn, until WNYC reported today on a study by the Fiscal Policy Institute, that nonprofits are the main private employers for workers of all kinds in the city. They play a huge role in the city's private workforce, especially in the outer boroughs and among female workers and workers of color.

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When Rush Limbaugh called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute" on his radio show Feb. 29, it sure seemed like the end of an era might be upon us.

Public outcry prompted sponsors to pull support from the show, leaving many to wonder whether the conservative stalwart would have much longer to lash out against liberals and ladies.

To be fair, Rush did damage control issue an apology, but many saw the mea culpa as meaningless -- worthy of all-out mocking.

But as bad as Rush's gaffe might be -- and to be clear, it is bad -- you have to wonder: could this bolster Limbaugh's languishing career?

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Our man Randy Cohen

It's been six months since the New York Times Magazine replaced Randy Cohen, the four-time Emmy Award winner who wrote the Ethicist column for 12 years and made the rounds as a congenial moral-principle purveyor everywhere from NPR to Oprah. Since his winter departure, the former Letterman writer has been trying to develop A Question of Ethics, a call-in audio show of "moral advice without a lot of damn moralizing." The long-term goal appears to be shaping the project into something public radio would sponsor, but in the short-term, Cohen's taken to crowdsourced-fundraising site Kickstarter in the hopes of financing a kind of radio-show demo, three-months' worth of weekly 10-minute podcasts.

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I think this is a classic story, like there is probably an episode of Glee or Vampire Diaries or Rubicon or whatever, where two people do some work together and when it really comes down to it, the work could've been better, but it is really long, so instead of actually reading it, everyone is just sort of like, "Looks good! Great job, Foster!" And because the Foster character is way better looking or has a sexier radio voice or whatever, he gets all the credit and the other half of the team is like, "Just happy to be involved!" But then all of the Hollywood producers start calling and Ryan Seacrest wants a radio interview and, of course, they all gravitate toward the star, while the other guy is brooding or getting bitter, and you can't really blame the really excellent guy for lapping up the attention, but at a certain point it's like, come on! And then it all culminates in this really explosive NPR interview and the leading man is almost completely unrecognizable and speaking in this new Famous Voice and just really working it, while the other guy is blogging on a Saturday.

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This week in the Voice, staff writer Steven Thrasher caught up with a few of the three million illegal immigrants who were famously granted amnesty by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, the last time an amnesty was signed into law. Now, not only can you read his piece -- Ronnie's Kids: The Bright Side of "Amnesty" -- but you can also hear him go live with it, too.

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