I don’t know how I missed last week’s news that director Steven Soderbergh is casting Michael Douglas to play Liberace in a biopic about the famously flamboyant Las Vegas showman. Matt Damon is set to play Liberace’s lover who sued him for palimony. Right up until his 1987 death from AIDS, Liberace denied his gayness. (The magazines were always depicting …

More progress from Brazil: Gay couples exist and we must give them legal recognition, the President of Brazil said yesterday. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also questioned why some politicians oppose gay rights but still take gay people’s taxes and votes. The President said he is in favour of civil unions. “We must stop this hypocrisy because we know they …

New York Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens), who is poised to take over the majority leadership role if Democrats take control of the state Senate in November, yesterday waffled when asked if he would vigorously pursue marriage equality when the day comes. Although he reiterated his personal support of gay marriage (a position that was in question back when …

Disgraced former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) will not face charges for sending lewd emails and instant messages to congressional pages, according to sources that say an official announcement is about to be released. Foley’s attorney, David Roth, has acknowledged that Foley sent the messages to the teenagers, but has maintained that the Florida Republican never had inappropriate contact with minors. …

Yesterday a Denver judge rejected a request to lower the charge in the case of murdered transwoman Angie Zapata, after her killer’s lawyer said that Allen Andrade was “provoked” into killing Zapata when she smiled at him after he demanded to know if she was male. Only when Andrade grabbed at Zapata’s crotch did he discover the truth. But when …

As predicted here a couple of days ago, check out the top story at the site of anti-gay marriage Christianist group Campaign for Children and Families. Because if we allow gay marriage, we will have a deadly train collision EVERY FUCKING DAY. (Image via – Good As You)

You may remember that during the 2006 Federal Marriage Amendment debate, Inhofe brought a giant photo of his family onto the Senate floor and crowed, “As you see here, and I think this is maybe the most important prop we’ll have during the entire debate, my wife and I have been married 47 years. We have 20 kids and grandkids. …

Answer: Arrrrr & B. You’re. Welcome. International Talk A Pirate Day is upon us again. Let the bad jokes commence.

Looking east on 42nd Street from Park Avenue. The next intersection is Lexington.

Perhaps driven by this week’s horrific financial news, Barack Obama’s polling numbers have him back in the lead (according to Gallup, at least) for the first time in two weeks. Separate Gallup tracking shows that consumer confidence has become significantly more negative as this week progressed, signifying that Americans are clearly paying attention to the major problems facing Wall Street …

….is my Sarah Palin baby name. Name generator here. What’s yours? I haven’t done one of those name generator thingies since I found out my Wu Tang Clan name was Dubious Mastabatah X.

The Anchorage Press covers Wayne Besen’s protest at the “ex-gay” conference endorsed by Sarah Palin’s church: [T]he culture wars are raging in Anchorage, too, with Love Won Out descending on the town and the opposition it sparked evident both outside on the sidewalk and in a gay-friendly church that last week hosted speakers who were outraged by this promotion of …

California Attorney General Jerry Brown’s rewording of Proposition 8 may be having an effect; a new poll shows that support for the marriage ban is down by 4%. The poll found that just 38 percent of likely voters support the measure, while 55 percent intend to vote no. That compares with 42 percent in support and 51 percent opposed in …

Hilarious or terrifying? Yesterday John McCain was interviewed on the Florida affiliate of Spanish radio network Union Radio. And in the interview McCain appeared not to know who the Prime Minister of Spain was and assumed he was some anti-American leftist leader from South America. After the interviewer presses him a couple times on the point and tries to focus …

Real Clear Politics has the complete transcript. Here’s what David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun had to say: Talk show host Sean Hannity and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin came together for what Fox News Channel promoted as an exclusive interview. But, in truth, what viewers saw was a carefully staged display of partisan political theater — from the executive-office …

Via the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel: Ralph Nader is back. The perennial presidential candidate will be on the Florida ballot in November. Nader’s name is anathema to many Democrats in Florida becuase they blame him for President Bush’s 2000 election. They argue that the votes he siphoned from Gore made Bush the winner in the state. With Florida’s electoral votes, Bush …

Three hot detectives go undercover at Obama headquarters….

Former Clinton supporter and major Democratic party figure Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild has defected to the McCain camp. In July she called Obama “elitist”, which is totally laughable for somebody with “Lady” in her title. Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild is an ardent Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter who raised scads of money for the New York senator’s failed presidential …

The Google phone comes out Sept. 23rd. Putting it firmly in a price point to compete with the iPhone, the Android-running HTC Dream will cost $199, according to the Wall Street Journal. The smartphone will also get an “aggressively priced” data plan from T-Mobile and receive some heavy Google branding. Some of the readers at Gizmodo find the Android “fugly” …

Via Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin comes word that the Mormon Church, already leading the fight against marriage equality in California, is now taking aim at Arizona: The campaign over whether marriage should be defined — and limited — in the state constitution could soon start to look like a fight between two politically polarizing groups: gays and Mormons. …