Thirty two years ago today at 10:55 AM, openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk was shot and killed in his office at City Hall in San Francisco. The message of hope that he preached, however, continues on, and his strategy of building coalitions and rejecting life in the Veal Pen is one progressives need to remember and repeat — that’s how you give hope.

Thanks, Harvey.

With the long anticipated retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens, it was important for President Obama to appoint and get confirmed a new justice so there would not only be a full compliment of justices on the court, but to insure the ideological balance of the court was maintained. By selecting Elena Kagan, Obama certainly did not pick the most qualified person for the job, nor did he maintain the ideological balance particularly as Kagan undoubtedly moved the court to the right at least to some degree.

The 9th Circuit has granted the request for stay in the Perry Prop 8 case.

Okay, the title may be a tad unfair to the fine folks in the 9th Circuit, some of whom I know, and almost all of whom I appreciate greatly (there is the Bybee thing). But this just flat out cracked me up. Now, as you know, Judge Vaughn Walker of the NDCA little more than a week ago issued his landmark decision in Perry Prop 8 case and just yesterday issued the much awaited decision to deny the Defendant-Intervenors’ Motion for Stay Pending appeal.

As expected, ProtectMarriage.com has filed an emergency stay of Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling in the Prop 8 trial with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The stay that Walker put on his ruling will expire on August 18 absent any action from the Ninth Circuit. Walker, who denied the stay motion to ProtectMarriage.com yesterday, doubted that the intervenors even had standing to appeal his ruling, even while they were allowed to argue the case in court.

Judge Walker has made his decision on the motion to stay his judgment in the Proposition 8 case.

So, the stay has been denied. But that judgment has been stayed, basically, for another week. At that point, Prop 8 is toast. But this gives the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals the ability to stay Judge Walker’s ruling within the next week. So that’s the next phase.

US District Court Judge Vaughn Walker will issue a ruling today on whether same-sex couples can immediately marry in California, or whether they will have to wait for the outcome of an appeal to his ruling overturning Proposition 8.

The right-wing is in overdrive attacking Judge Vaughn Walker’s bias, since they say he is ‘openly gay.’ Of course, Walker isn’t openly gay by any stretch of the imagination. But Michaelangelo Signorile perpetuates a dangerous stereotype, difficult to shed for men of my generation and Vaughn Walker’s, by calling these lies ‘smears’ in his otherwise excellent HuffPost article today. It’s not a smear to call someone openly gay, since there’s nothing wrong with being gay in the first place.

Judge Walker set an accelerated schedule for consideration of DI’s Motion For Stay in California’s Proposition 8 ban on marriage decision. The real defendant, the State of California, has already filed opposition to the stay, through the Attorney General, the Governor and the City of San Francisco.