Way to go Colorado! This is a big step in the right direction. People have the exact same rights - no matter what. We all have the same inherent rights whether we're gay, straight, white, black, yellow, or from mars....well, maybe not mars.

I think the big issue is gay marriage. Politicians use this issue to grandstand on all sides, but the reality is quite simple - people will only have equal rights when we get the government OUT of the marriage business...

Some interesting reading on this:

"Here's How to Defend Marriage" - click here

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When I was in typing class in the 10th grade of high school--still one of the most useful classes I have ever taken at any point of my formal education--that was a practice sentence we used which apparently covered the keyboard pretty well. But the sense of it was not the point then, but boy is it ever now!

The Naderesque nonsense of there not being "a dime's worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats," is very clearly nonsensical here in the issue of gay, lesbian, bi, and transgender rights. One party does seem to have a lock on discrimination, intolerance, bigoty, irrational hatred, exclusion and all the other wonderful "family values" of the Ann Coulters and the Rush Limbaughs, the Falwells and the Robertsons, the Dobsons and Phelpses of this land of ours. Which one might that be, pray? Got a clue?

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Even Virginia, which last fall passed a very discriminatory gay-marriage amendment to the Constitution (although by a MUCH smaller margin than was predicted), there was progress in the state legislature.

First, there were NO directly anti-gay bills, a HUGE change from previous legislative sessions in the last decade.

Second, a hopsital visitation bill, that includes the right of GLBT patients to designate acceptable visitors including partners, over the objections of ANY family members, passed the state legislature unanimously and was signed into law by Governor Kaine.

Also, non-discrimination bills for state government employees and local ordinance enabling made it further in committees than ever before.

Baby steps. It takes a while, but it's progress.

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Last weekend, the funeral for a Marine killed in Iraq brought together a disparate group of people – gay community members, bikers, members of local peace groups, and police officers – against a common “enemy” – the radical, gay-bashing Westboro Baptist Church, who came from Kansas to protest the funeral. (If you’re not familiar with Westboro – they roam the country disrupting military funerals and upsetting the grieving families and friends of fallen service members in order to further their hate-filled message – that our servicemen and women are being killed as God’s punishment for America’s tolerance of the gay, lesbian, and transgendered community.) Folks used broomsticks and bed sheets to shield funeral-goers from those nasty-assed radicals. It was a wild success – the Westboro contingent couldn’t get close to the funeral – so they left.

And where did this happen? Northern Colorado. I couldn’t be more proud of my fellow Coloradans….

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This is great news for Colorado and the country. There is still, however, a long way to go to bring Colorado forward. The problem is that this state is maybe one of the most divided in the nation. The progressives have huge opposition in groups like Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs; the evangelicals that run the Air Force Acadamy near there; the Promise Keepers used to be very strong there, although I am unsure if that is still so; Tom Tancredo and his anti-immigrant movement; and lots of wealthy conservative enclaves throughout the state. I grew up there and went to undergraduate school in Boulder, but now I can't stand to be there because the divisive energy makes me physically ill. I literally have to distance myself in order to remain sane.
So, go get 'em, Colorado progressives! You are fighting a battle that I couldn't stomach. You need all the support this country can muster. This is one of the states that deserves alot of political attention because it is so divided it flips from red to blue and then back depending on how worked up people get about the issues. I support you from afar and miss my beautiful home state very much.

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I too am a Colorado exile. While the state I live in now has its own problems, Colorado, the state I spent half my life in, just didn't seem like home anymore. It felt like it had migrated south/southeast to the Bible Belt. I also agree with another poster that we need to get behind the Democratic Party until we garner enough of a liberal movement in this country to perhaps become a two party system of Demograts and Progessives. Now that would be worth celebrating.

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