A Louisville Tea Party supporter continues to flood us with emails stating the Louisville Tea Party is not anti-gay as previously reported. The Tea Party movement is no doubt as diverse as the Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian parties, each have anti-gay segments among their ranks.

Robyn Deane, dressed in a red raincoat, jeans and heels, glanced at her handwritten notes before peering at the crowd gathered outside Virginia’s Capitol to promote the rights of gay and transgender state workers. For years, Deane, a man who is in the process of becoming of woman, had considered revealing her lengthy but largely unknown connection to Governor Robert F. McDonnell (R).

The Argentine Republic on Thursday became the first nation in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage, turning aside protests from the Roman Catholic Church to give gay couples the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts. It was not immediately clear if the provinces will accept the Federation’s legalization of same-sex marriage.

Hawaii Republican Governor Linda Lingle yesterday vetoed legislation that would have permitted same-sex civil unions, ending months of speculation on how she would weigh in on the contentious, emotional debate.

Transgendered people in the United States will be able to get their new gender recognized on their passports without having to undergo gender reassignment surgery. The new policy is based on recommendations from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, widely recognized as a leading authority on transgender issues.

House District 28 representing a portion of Louisville in the Kentucky House of Representatives is a hotly contested race, with no pro-LGBTI candidates. In this election, when the Kentucky General Assembly failed to pass a budget, which will cause a lot of Kentucky’s Government to shut down on June 01, 2010, no pro-gay candidate is running for office in House District 28.

The U.S. Supreme Court this week will hear a case from the State of Washington that could decide whether signing a petition for a ballot measure is a private, political act or whether the names of those signers can be made public. Gay rights activists and conservatives are switching sides on the issue of privacy in a case stemming from efforts to release the names of those who signed petitions for Referendum 71, in which traditional-marriage supporters sought to overturn an expanded state domestic-partnership law that grants “everything but marriage” benefits to gay and lesbian couples. The referendum passed at the ballot last fall.

A group of LGBTI protesters disrupted and temporarily halted a speech U.S. President Barack Obama was delivering Monday night at a Los Angeles fundraiser for U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer. Several minutes after Obama took the stage, several activists from the group GetEQUAL began shouting and expressing anger about the slow pace of progress on repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to address ways to allow more “humane enforcement and application” of a policy that has seen thousands of homosexuals forced out of the military, the Pentagon said on Tuesday. “I think he is prepared to offer a way ahead on that subject this week. So stay tuned,” said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand joined 17 U.S. senators in calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to overturn a ban on gay men donating blood. Many states criminalize gay men donating blood. The senators said that while hospitals and emergency rooms are in urgent need of blood products, “healthy blood donors are turned away every day due to an antiquated policy and our blood supply is not necessarily any safer for it.”