Portside

The DOJ’s new anti-gay legal posture just got shut down in federal court.

The Chicago Dyke March, the annual gay rights march without corporate sponsorship has anti-racist core values. In the march's Jewish contingent were Jews who were Zionists, and anti-Zionists, but who supported gay and Palestinian rights. There was an incident involving a few who did not support Palestinian rights, and a massive debate and controversy has evolved. Here are statements from Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, supporting the position of CDMC.

Black History Month is a time for looking back on the civil rights movement and the lives of its pioneers. One of them was a man whose name is far less widely known than those of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks or James Farmer. He was Bayard Rustin, whom some have sought to celebrate in recent years as an unsung hero of the movement, one who never received his due recognition because he was gay.

Can disruptive social movements change the world or are we better served by take-it-slow, wait-a-year-or-more-to-speak-up, incremental change? Mark and Paul Engler make a case for the former, arguing in their new book, This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century, that supposed pragmatism often stands in the way of genuine progress. The grand slogan of Paris, 1968 -- "Be realistic, demand the impossible" -- is sage and sober advice.

Portside's posts did not go out as scheduled Saturday and Sunday. Our service provider, May First, upgraded all of their servers Saturday, to prevent coordinated hacking and DOS - Denial of Service attacks. Unfortunately there were conflicts between the new server software and the software that Portside uses to send posts. We have identified the problem, and are now working to correct it. Below is an Index of the posts that were posted to our website over the weekend.

A new history deepens our understanding of the origins of the gay rights movement and the transformation it has brought about.

A gay-to-straight “conversion therapy” provider found by a New Jersey jury to have violated the state’s consumer fraud protections will permanently cease operations and dissolve its corporate entity as part of a settlement that precludes an appeal of a jury’s verdict in the landmark lawsuit.

The Rowan County, KY, clerk's office issued a marriage license to Will Smith and James Yates this morning. Five of the six deputy clerks in the office say they will comply with the court order to give out licenses while county clerk Kim Davis is in jail. Kim Davis' husband Joe, meanwhile, remains defiant. “Just because five Supreme Court judges make a ruling, it’s not a law," he said.