WASHINGTON — Lawyers for President Obama are quietly drafting first-of-their kind guidelines barring workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees, officials said Tuesday.

The guidelines will be in an updated federal handbook for managers and supervisors to be distributed and posted online in the next couple of months, and they could also be included in other materials for managers. They will list transgender people — those who identify their gender differently from the information on their birth certificates — as among several groups protected by antidiscrimination laws.

Though transgender men and women are not believed to make up more than a fraction of a percent of the federal work force, their inclusion in the discrimination guidelines is seen as a breakthrough by transgender and gay rights advocates.

“The president is making a very clear statement that transgender people won’t be discriminated against,” said Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, a group that has been talking with the White House about the new provisions.

The provisions will help give transgender workers avenues within the federal government to protest a job action as discriminatory, though Ms. Keisling added, “There is also a very important symbolic value to that, from our point of view.”

Read more >>  New Protections for Transgender Federal Workers – NYTimes.com.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – As exhibitions go, the New York Public Library’s “1969: The Year of Gay Liberation” could hardly have chosen better timing.

With debate raging over same-sex marriage across the United States, the library in midtown Manhattan opened the exhibit on Monday to mark the 40th anniversary of the so-called Stonewall riots that triggered the modern U.S. gay rights movement.

Photos, documents, clippings from the gay media and other artifacts illustrate what was a shocking development at the time: homosexual men and women coming out of the closet to demonstrate for their civil rights, often at great risk.

The free exhibit will run at the main branch all of June.

NY exhibit on gay rights hits amid marriage debate | Reuters .

SAN FRANCISCO — After more than 30 years together, Brent Lok and Wade French have accumulated more than a few possessions, including a hilltop home, an impressive collection of Asian art and, alongside their diplomas, vacation photos and family portraits, a framed marriage license, dated June 17, 2008.

On Tuesday, Mr. Lok and Mr. French will discover what that license means in the eyes of the law, as the California Supreme Court hands down its decision on Proposition 8, the voter initiative passed in November that outlawed same-sex marriage. Previously, in May 2008, the court legalized same-sex marriage, and since the election, several groups have sued, saying the proposition’s revocation of that right was unconstitutional.

THE most potent word in our new president’s lexicon — change — has been heard much less since his inspiring campaign gave way to the hard realities of governing. But on Tuesday night, the irresistible Obama brand made an unexpected and pointed cameo appearance on America’s most popular television show, “American Idol.” In the talent competition’s climactic faceoff, the song picked for one of the two finalists, Adam Lambert, was Sam Cooke’s soul classic, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

….

“This is a civil rights moment,” Wolfson said, “and Obama has not yet risen to it.” Worse, Obama’s opposition to same-sex marriage is now giving cover to every hard-core opponent of gay rights, from theMiss USA contestant Carrie Prejean to the former Washington mayor Marion Barry, each of whom can claim with nominal justification to share the president’s views.

In reality, they don’t. Obama has long been, as he says, a fierce advocate for gay equality. The Windy City Times has reported that he initially endorsed legalizing same-sex marriage when running for the Illinois State Senate in 1996. The most common rationale for his current passivity is that his plate is too full. But the president has so far shown an impressive inclination both to multitask and to argue passionately for bedrock American principles when he wants to. Relegating fundamental constitutional rights to the bottom of the pile until some to-be-determined future seems like a shell game.

Read more >> Op-Ed Columnist – La Cage aux Democrats – NYTimes.com.

 Dan Gurley, a former field director for the Republican National Committee, oversaw anti-gay campaigns for the RNC. He has since been the subject of an “outing” campaign, and he appears in Kirby Dick’s new film Outrage.

Gurley now works for Equality North Carolina, a statewide group dedicated to securing equal rights and justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. He joins Fresh Air host Terry Gross to talk about his work with the RNC, and life after.

Read more and listen to Dan Gurley, From RNC Staffer to LGBT Activist

In his new film Outrage, Academy Award-nominated director Kirby Dick (This Film Is Not Yet Rated) turns his camera on some of the nation’s most powerful policymakers — politicians, in both legislatures and executive suites, who live what some say are closeted gay lives while chalking up what activists describe as deplorably anti-gay voting records.

Read more and listen to >> Kirby Dick’s ‘Outrage’ – In The Political Closet, Dark Shadows Lurk : NPR.