On May 22, the city of San Diego unveiled the country’s first Harvey Milk Street, named, of course, for the famous gay rights pioneer whose career in public office centered in San Francisco.

The Huffington Post blog above tells us why that’s important. The piece highlights different people’s reactions to the street naming and different perspectives on the significance of Milk’s contributions, including a quote from his nephew, Stuart Milk.

In a speech, longtime LGBT-rights activist and city commissioner Nicole Murray-Ramirez said:

This day has been a long time in the making. For over eight years community leaders have tried to name a street in honor of Harvey Milk. We have had many roadblocks over the years in trying to honor his legacy. When Mr. Milk stood for up equality, he did so for all people, not just the LGBT community, and he did this at a time when the government or family members could have a person committed to a mental hospital just because they were gay or lesbian. Now look how far we have come, when the two Christian churches on this block do not agree with the LGBT lifestyle, yet neither opposed changing the name of the street. For that we should give them a round of applause.

One Million Moms, our favorite anti-gay anti-JC Penney group, is newly furious over a JC Penney ad that displays a same-sex couple. These people are just becoming less relevant every day. More. 

TW: References to suicide, plus this is generally somewhat depressing - but the end does get uplifting! 

This Mother’s Day, it’s important to reflect on the things our parents teach us as well as the things our children teach us, even if these lessons come in difficult ways. 

You might remember Jamey Rodemeyer, the teenager who was bullied in high school for being gay and who died by suicide last year. For Mother’s Day this year, his mom Tracy wrote a column for the Huffington Post reflecting on what it will be like to spend the day without her son. 

While much of the article truly is heartbreaking, she gets to a crucial point: it’s okay to be different, and your family will stand by you no matter what. Some particularly nice moments:

For all the young people out there who feel that some days the world is against you, that you can do no right, that you can’t please anyone, or that no one loves you, least of all your parents, because they are always telling you what to do and what not to do and that your friends aren’t good enough for you, I will clue you in on a little secret: We parents we don’t have a secret society where we all get together and discuss how we can humiliate our children and how we secretly desire to make our children’s lives harder than they already are. Honestly, everything we do is out of love, and we want to protect and nurture our children and give them the guidance to become responsible, healthy, respectful individuals who will one day have families of their own. Being a parent is a hard job, and we want to be our children’s friends while at the same time teaching them, but sometimes being a parent is way more important than just being a friend.

And from the mouth of Jamey: “Love yourself, hold your head up high, and you will go far.” Don’t worry about the negative things that people may say about you. Be yourself, and love yourself. That is all that matters. We are all different, and we should all embrace those differences, because they make us all unique and special.

Such a tragic story even months after the fact, but I admire her courage for writing this. Happy Mother’s Day, Tracy. 

The cover of next week’s New Yorker. More. 

When certain conservatives denounce marriage equality, they cite their Christian faith. When President Obama announced his support for marriage equality, he cited his Christian faith. See a problem here?

This NPR piece looks at the division in faith communities over how best to interpret the Bible - literally or contextually? As many scholars point out, there are obvious dangers in taking the Bible word for word:

Russell says you take the Bible literally at your folly.

“When you read the Bible, you can find justification for almost anything,” she says, “including slavery, the subjection of women and an argument that the sun actually revolves around the earth.”

For many, the most prominent guiding principle of the Bible is to love thy neighbor, a basic rule taken by some to mean “love your gay neighbors and let them marry.” But others see the Bible’s condemnation of relationships beside one-man-one-woman-one-marriage (except for that whole polygamy thing) as reason enough to say no to marriage equality.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, especially those of you who identify with a Christian religion. What do you make of all this?

Leave it to U.K. media to create the coolest possible graphic explaining gay rights across the U.S.

No, but really. This interactive chart breaks down pretty much every valid gay rights issue and looks at how every state addresses it. Using different shadings of colors to signify progress on each issue, the chart looks at how each state handles marriage/unions, hospital visitation, adoption, employment, housing, hate crimes and education.

A quick glance at this chart shows that some regions are doing much, much better than others (get your act together, Southeast). If you ever have the freedom to move anywhere in the U.S., consider using this as a guide to what kind of rights you’ll have there!

Thanks to everyone who recommended I post this - there were a lot of you! 

Beth Darr, founder of the women’s social media site Lezzbook.com, died at home last week in Seattle. She was 34.

A public memorial project is being planned for Darr in June and her family suggests memorial donations to the It Gets Better Project, Pets Are Wonderful Support, or the World Wildlife Fund. From SheWired:

Lezzbook.com, which has 10,000 members, was preparing for a relaunch with a new editor at the time of Darr’s death. “Beth’s work will carry on, following a period of mourning and regrouping,”PQ Monthly notes.

Darr, a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and the Recording Academy Grammy Association Society, was also the founder of a music company, Illuminati Entertainment.

Thanks for your work, Beth. 

Musical artist Queen Latifah made all kinds of headlines yesterday when it was announced that she would be headlining the Long Beach Lesbian & Gay Pride Festival this month. Most commonly, tons of media outlets reported that with this announcement, Queen Latifah was officially coming out of the closet. 

It is not a huge secret that Queen Latifah has had semi-public relationships with women, and for this she’s long been suspected to be a lesbian. But straight celebrities perform at pride festivals all the time - as this post from the New Civil Rights Movement points out, Whitney Houston and Jennifer Lopez, among countless others, have performed at pride events as allies. From the post:

Reports that state that Queen Latifah has come out should take a moment to examine their journalistic standards and remind themselves that coming out is a personal choice, and unless there is a career component to it (read: possibly closeted gay journalists and their ability to credibly cover some LGBT-related stories, for example,) it’s unfair to pressure someone to come out or to say someone has come out when they have not.

Personally, I agree that it’s not fair or accurate to say that someone is coming out because they’re publicly committing to performing at a pride event. Everyone at their own pace, if at all. What say you?