The kiss at Chico’s was not the only public display of affection that turned into a national news story. On July 17, after two men were kissing in Salt Lake City’s Main Street Plaza and were detained by Latter Day Saints security guards and cited for trespassing and “groping.” Video was found of the arrests being made, but does not include the kiss. Like the Chico’s incident, there were conflicting stories among the authorities and the accused on the amount of affection being shown.
A couple of weeks prior, another controversy brought attention to the gay community and law enforcement officials in Texas. On June 28, exactly 40 years after the Stonewall raids in Brooklyn, six arrests were made in Fort Worth’s Rainbow Lounge Bar, with police citing public intoxication. The event sparked protests in an area of the DFW metroplex.
Nationally, issues such as gay marriage and the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy are setting off critiques of the Obama administration by gay activists and supporters, with writers calling him a “notorious gay-ignorer”, and a “flip-flopper.”, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has kept a vigilant eye on the status of the policy, including a segment in which she highlighted a shift in Obama’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” platform on his website. (Her coverage of the issues has it’s own critics.) It will have a Senate committee review this fall.
Bloggers and columnists are also weighing in on either side of the issue, either criticizing or in support of Obama. Bess Watts in the Democrat and Chronicle writing: “As a lesbian, an Army veteran and a union president who promotes equity for all workers, I don't know how to respond to President Obama's call for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people to ‘be patient’ with his lackluster efforts toward equal rights for gays.” Obama’s retractors are met with counterarguments. “It is totally beyond my understanding why we do not give him the time to learn the territory, deal with the most pressing issues of the State, dumped on him by his disastrous predecessor,” wrote Jason Wittman in the American Chronicle, while Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: “The president and I feel like we’ve got a lot on our plates right now and let’s push that one down the road a little bit.”
Some argue against the notion that the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” or the Defense of Marriage Act would hinder health care reform. “That is a fallacious argument. Most of those likely to vote for healthcare reform are likely to support gay rights, and vice versa,” wrote Arturo Mora, a Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist.
The marriage topic has sparked debate, seeing gains in one state and struggles in another. Vermont legalized gay marriage through legislation, the first state to do so, overriding the governor’s veto. And five years after gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts, the state is suing the federal government over the Defense of Marriage Act, saying that it "constitutes an overreaching and discriminatory federal law." The other states that have legalized gay marriage are Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine and Iowa.
On July 30, the president announced that the award of freedom would be given to Harvey Milk, the slain San Francisco city supervisor and Billie Jean King, an openly lesbian Olympian.
Internationally, a gunman entered a Tel Aviv gay support center, killing two people, which lead to a manhunt and the closure of the city's gay clubs. Hundreds held a candlelit vigil in memory of the victims.
