In July 1994, during the Second Session of the 103rd Congress, Sen. Barbara Boxer and seven other United States senators came to my aid. North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, informed of my first-of-its-kind position as a gay employment counselor for the federal government, pushed through the Senate an amendment to an appropriations bill that…
I had an exciting front row seat to the sexual scandal that led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998. The 2016 presidential campaign reminds me of the Clinton/Lewinsky affair and my long days and late nights at my Capitol Hill office. Just before the sordid sexual scandal broke, a female colleague at…
Cos for Alarm Los Angeles (AP) Bill Cosby, who likes to be known for his tennis as much as his comedy, was showing off his tennis form yesterday at the Los Angeles Tennis Club, but his best shots were still in the humor department. He was asked a variety of questions on several aspects of tennis-among…
Now is the time for all good transgender Americans to come to the aid of their country. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter recently announced the military would no longer discriminate against transgender troops. All LGBT troops can serve openly without concerns over expressions of their sexuality. “This is the right thing to do for our…
July 19, 1994, Rev. Richard C. Halverson began the U.S. Senate’s legislative day with prayer. After reading from Isaiah about “perfect peace,” he briefly sermonized about the U.S. Senate being a “formidable area of controversy, conflict, compromise, where unnumbered agendas converge.” Later that day I found myself in the Jesse Helms Agenda. No, this was…
Veteran journalist Eric Sevareid wrote a 1963 opinion that almost perfectly captures the essence of the presidential campaign of 2016. “Sin and Statecraft,” is how Sevareid titled his commentary on the sex scandals that rocked London, Rome and the delegate’s lounge at the United Nations in New York during the summer of 1963. Sevareid was…
Late GOP Sen. Jesse Helms, North Carolina, was fond of the word “pervert” when it came to LGBT people. He intended, of course, “pervert” as a noun not a verb. To be clear, when Helms referred to me and my federal colleagues as a “bunch of perverts” he meant we were federal workers who practiced…
If North Carolina GOP Gov. Pat McCrory wanted support for his state’s HB 2, a law that would require a person to use a public restroom based on birth sex rather than gender identity, he need look no further than the LGBT community. Gay rights groups, always inclusive of bisexuals, resisted transgender inclusion for decades….
Contributor Note: July 19, 1994, Sen. Jesse Helms, in a fiery speech recorded by C-SPAN and The Congressional Record, moved to fire Mr. Patterson from his US government job for “promoting the gay agenda” in the federal workplace. Gov. Pat McCrory responded to the call of North Carolinians when he signed HB 2 into law….
If leading GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump had endorsed North Carolina’s law requiring people to use bathrooms based on their biological sex rather than gender identity, it would have put his hotels at an economic disadvantage in the marketplace. Mr. Trump’s announcement, breathtaking to some in the GOP, is an important political moment in the…
