NAACP Reaches Out To Gay Rights Groups, Log Cabin Republicans Honour Texas Representative Sessions And Senator Cornyn, Illinois Democratic Senators Burris And Durbin Condemn Republican Colleagues For Failing To Debate DADT, Iowa Justice Who Originally Ruled State’s Gay Marriage Ban Unconstitutional Condemns Bob Vander Plaats

The Washington Post on new efforts by former head of the NAACP Julian Bond and the organization’s current president Benjamin Jealous to reach out to gay rights groups, although the NAACP has yet to support or oppose same sex marriage rights. Jealous will be in New York Wednesday to encourage members of the city’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center to attend a rally in October in Washington for jobs and justice, Jealous saying “The NAACP is opposed to discrimination in all its forms. We recognize that many of our members are also members of the LGBT community, and just as the LGBT community counts on us to stand with it for basic civil rights protections, so we count on the LGBT community to stand with us in our unified struggle for broader civil rights agenda.” Julian Bond, who addressed the National March for Equality organized last fall by gay rights groups, has drawn comparisons between the battle for marriage equality to the civil rights movement of the 1960’s which bond help lead. The NAACP invitation is important since a majority of its membership is African-American – the group having a historic tie to the African-American religious community – and any attempt to bring that segment of the population into the struggle for gay rights is significant.

Republican Representative Peter Sessions (Texas) and Republican Senator John Cornyn (Texas) are scheduled to receive an award Wednesday evening presented to them by the Log Cabin Republicans, the GOP gay advocacy group, according to the Dallas Morning-News, the award for Republican leaders “who have served their nation with distinction in the model of the late Senator Barry Goldwater.” Both Sessions and Cornyn were condemned by the far-right fringe of the GOP for attending the event and accepting an award from a group that advocates for gay marriage and a full repeal of the American military ban on openly gay service members, however, despite their differences (neither men support same sex marriage or a repeal of DADT), they agreed to attend, although Cornyn will not in attendance, since a scheduling conflict will prevent him from appearing in person. An aide will accept the award, and Cornyn will speak via a taped video message.

Illinois Democratic Senators Ronald Burris and Richard Durbin, both of whom voted to allow debate on the defense authorization bill that included a provision to repeal the policy prohibiting openly gay service members, condemned their Republican colleagues, according to the Peoria Journal-Star. Burris said he was “especially disappointed by my colleagues on the right who refuse to even debate this extremely important issue of national security, simply because they want to put politics before policy,” adding that allowing gays and lesbians to serve was an issue of “fairness and basic equality.”

Judge Robert Hanson, a Polk County Iowa District Court justice who first ruled that the state’s ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional, said Tuesday that the group led by Republican failure Bob Vander Plaats attempting to unseat the three state Supreme Court justices for their role in ruling that the ban was indeed unconstitutional is “misguided” and “an abuse” of the system, the Waterloo-Cedar Valley Courier reports. “The activity that is advocated by these TV commercials that are now airing, in my view, demonstrates a complete misunderstanding, a complete misunderstanding of the role of the judiciary in our form of government,” adding that in 2007 when Hanson ruled to strike down the 10 year old gay marriage ban in the matter of Varnum v. Brien, he evaluated whether the ban met constitutional requirements for due process and equal protection in a civil contract, and that “The determination was made that it was not fair to single out that group of people – homosexuals – and deny them the opportunity to participate in that kind of a relationship.”