LGBT Issues & History

Long before the policy barring gays from serving openly in the military ended, Air Force 1st Lt. Josh Seefried started OutServe, a network of gay troops on Facebook. Seefried and his partner talk about what it's like being a gay couple in the military — and about new challenges facing gay troops.

Dan Savage is an advice columnist who spawned a worldwide movement after hearing one too many times about anguished gay teens committing suicide. Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, talk about their "It Gets Better" project, which now has over 10,000 video submissions.

A study of five U.S. allies who ended bans on gays openly serving in their militaries showed that the wide-scale disruptions feared by opponents had never materialized, says historian and study author Nathaniel Frank. He discusses his finding and what they suggest for efforts to end the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

The film The Kids Are All Right stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a couple whose two teenage children have decided to track down their moms' anonymous sperm donor, played by Mark Ruffalo. Director Lisa Cholodenko explains how her own experiences inspired the film.

In California, lawyers are two weeks into a landmark federal court case challenging California's Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in that state. Margaret Talbot has been blogging about the trial for The New Yorker's Web site, and she has written about it in this week's issue of the magazine. A veteran journalist and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, Talbot writes about family life, women's work, children's culture, and politics and moral debates as they intersect with science and law.

Intended as a productive if imperfect compromise, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has resulted in thousands of discharges — many of them involving service members with critical skills. Historian Nathaniel Frank says it's time the ban was ended.

Seven years after being discharged from the U.S. Army under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," openly gay veteran Alex Nicholson is the executive director of Servicemembers United, an advocacy organization he founded.

Gay rights activist Rodger McFarlane was involved in the earliest efforts to combat the transmission of AIDS during the 1980s. McFarlane, who was 54, died May 15. According to his bother, the cause of death was suicide.

Once, Dan Gurley oversaw anti-gay campaigns for the Republican National Committee. Now he works for Equality North Carolina, a statewide group dedicated to securing equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

In Outrage, the Oscar-nominated director looks into the hidden lives of some of America's most powerful policymakers — closeted gay legislators and executives with voting records that activists decry as virulently anti-gay. He says it's a film about hypocrisy.