This Georgia story is wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin. A substitute math teacher is accused of putting a hit on a student (what is the deal with these subs?). Suspect Randolph Forde got into an argument with one of his charges after he asked him if he were gay. Why the math teacher needed to know this is not clear, but I have my theories (and all of them involve something illegal considering how the student is 16).

Anyway Forde and the student get into an argument over the question. The nosey pedagogue (feeling jilted perhaps?) allegedly goes to another student and says there is someone who needs to be no more. He writes the name of the student on a piece of paper and hands it to the high-school version of Brother Mouzone (that reference only makes sense if you watch The Wire). This being high-school though, a place where there are never any secrets, the word spreads and the kid who “caused” all of this mess finds out.

“He says, ‘Ma, you’re not going to believe this but Mr. Forde offered another student money to kill me,’” said the young boy’s mother Marcia Killebrew.

Forde’s lawyer says it was all a big joke and no one’s name was on any piece of paper.

Sure. Okay. I’ll take that, but I still want to know why he needed to know the kid’s sexuality. Wait a minute. Maybe I don’t.

I’m coming late to this, but here is a question: when is the Atlanta Police Department going to start firing people? As most of you know on September 10 there was a police raid at the Atlanta Eagle. According to authorities they invaded the bar because there were complaints of sexual activity. The tips were sent to the mayor’s office and Crime Stoppers. Why anyone would leave a tip of a crime at the office of the mayor is a tad bit sketchy, and Georgia Equality wants some answers from Mayor Shirley Franklin.The police are going to have to come up with answers also because the complaints filed by bar patrons—no one was arrested—show police officers who have no idea how to deal with the public. In the grievances officers are high-fiving each other like a they just scored a touchdown, loudly proclaiming how they are not fans of gays or gay sexuality.

The most bizarre charge is the detention of an Atlanta Eagle employee. He lives above the bar, wasn’t working the night of the raid, but the police pounded on his door anyway.

“He opened the door to two cops who asked if anyone was having sex there. They asked why there was a bed and he said it was because he lives there. He was made to come downstairs and was arrested with the other employees. He recalled hearing comments like ‘You people are despicable.’”

So having a bed in an apartment is now despicable. Glad that was straightened out.

The owners of the Atlanta Eagle are not going into the good night quietly. Here is their Facebook page and there is a rally this week-end. If you are in Atlanta throw them your support.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it: police misconduct, no matter who it happens to, is of supreme importance to gays and lesbians.

(Atlanta) The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday tossed out a trial judge’s order that banned children in a divorce case from having any contact with their father’s gay and lesbian friends and partners, and added strong language calling the restriction an abuse of the judge’s discretion.

The court’s unanimous opinion, written by Justice Robert Benham, concluded that the Fayette County judge’s order “flies in the face of our public policy that encourages divorced parents to participate in the raising of their children.”

It was applauded by gay rights advocates in Georgia who viewed the ruling as a commonsense answer to a decision they say was rooted in decades-old misconceptions about gays and lesbians.

The top court’s stern language seemed to surprise the father’s attorney, who said he was encouraged the justices didn’t take an easier route by simply ruling that they wouldn’t interfere with a parent’s rights.

“That’s a strong message. That was more than I expected,” said the attorney, Hannibal Heredia. “It made me feel that they wanted to have that out there — they’re putting their necks on the line.”

The ruling stems from the bitter 2007 divorce of Eric Duane Mongerson and Sandy Kay Ehlers Mongerson, who were married 21 years and had four children.

In court arguments, Sandy Mongerson’s attorney claimed the father subjected the children to an “array of violent, sexual, abusive and wholly inappropriate conduct” during a trip to Arkansas and contended the father was in a series of affairs with other men while still married.

Fayette County Superior Court Judge Christopher Edwards awarded Sandy Mongerson custody of the couple’s three minor children in the final divorce decree, and her ex-husband was granted limited visitation.

The judge also issued a blanket order banning Eric Mongerson from “exposing the children to his homosexual partners and friends.”

Edwards said in his ruling that he was not judging the father based on his sexual orientation, but that his decision was meant to reflect “the trauma inflicted upon the children” during the trip to Arkansas.

The Georgia Supreme Court, though, flatly disagreed. The 10-page ruling concluded Edwards had no evidence that the ban was needed, and that his ruling assumed the children would suffer harm from contact with gays and lesbians associated with their father.

Without such evidence, Benham wrote, “the trial court abused its discretion when it imposed such a restriction on (the) husband’s visitation rights.”

Sandy Mongerson’s attorney, Lance McMillian, said the mother does not plan to appeal.

“My client is interested in putting it behind her,” he said. “Other than that, we don’t have anything to say about it.”

Georgia’s gay rights groups, meanwhile, were more effusive. Jeff Graham of Georgia Equality praised the top court’s ruling as a dose of “common sense and fair mindedness.”

“It clearly does show that if justice is to rule in what’s in the best interest of the child, rulings based upon prejudice and bias are not in the best interest of the child,” he said.

Sears, the nation’s first black female chief justice of a state supreme court, announced this week she will join the New York-based Institute for American Values when she retires June 30.

She has declined to address speculation about a possible nomination to succeed retiring Justice David Souter, who will leave the Supreme Court when it ends its current session in June. Sears has appeared on several lists of possible candidates to succeed Souter, according to officials familiar with President Barack Obama’s deliberations.

Obama publicly supports civil unions and aides say he believes that committed gay and lesbian couples should receive equal rights under the law. He does not, however, personally support gay marriage; he believes that states can make their own decisions about marriage.

In announcing her future plans, Sears said her role at the institute would build on her work with the Georgia Supreme Court toward “strengthening the institution of marriage” by working to reduce the nation’s divorce rate.

Gay rights advocates, who enthusiastically supported Sears’ re-election bid against a conservative in 2004, said they felt betrayed that she will be working part-time for the New York-based think tank.

Institute president David Blankenhorn, critics point out, wrote in 2008 that changing the definition of marriage to accommodate gay couples “definitively undermines” the institution of marriage. Blankenhorn, however, has said he doesn’t oppose Congress supporting civil unions if states can have exceptions allowing religious groups not to accept them.

Jeff Graham, executive director of the gay rights group Georgia Equality, said Sears’ decision to join the Institute for American Values is “something that’s very troubling, concerning and at the very least disappointing to me.”

State Rep. Karla Drenner, the state’s only openly gay legislator, said she felt “betrayed.”

“I don’t understand her committing her energies to an organization that doesn’t believe in equality for everybody,” Drenner said.

Gay rights groups eagerly backed Sears in 2004 when she faced Grant Brantley, a conservative who earned the endorsements of Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue and other state GOP leaders. She has also drawn criticism from conservatives for siding with an opinion that overturned the state’s law against sodomy.

Sears, who has not taken a public stance on same-sex marriage, said the institute takes no position on same-sex marriage and has a number of scholars on both sides of the issue.

“Blankenhorn happens to be on one side of this issue, and there are those on the other side,” she said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Sears, who was once divorced but has since remarried, said she is joining the group to continue her push for reducing unnecessary divorces, a topic she has embraced since she became chief justice in 2005. In a recent interview, she said the 2007 suicide of her brother, who was in the grips of a painful divorce, further inspired her work. “It made it very personal,” Sears said.

Blankenhorn is a self-described “lifelong Democrat” who wrote “The Future of Marriage,” which discusses his belief that children need a mother and a father.

In an interview Thursday, Blankenhorn said same-sex marriage is one of dozens of issues the institute studies and there is no “litmus test” on where members of its board of directors fall on the contentious topic.

“I have my position that I have, and I have plenty of colleagues with different positions,” he said. “The ethos at this organization is that we have different positions and we’re actively involved in bringing people together.”

He said Sears had made it clear she won’t take a public stance on same-sex marriage – an issue that might come before her for judicial review.

Blankenhorn has drawn praise from some prominent supporters of gay marriage as someone who is looking for middle ground on the contentious topic.

Jonathan Rauch, a guest scholar with the Brookings Institution who wrote “Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good For Gays, Good For Straights, And Good For America,” called Blankenhorn a “uniquely constructive force” in the debate. “He’s trying to carve out a new center,” Rauch said.

In 2006, Sears joined a unanimous decision that upheld Georgia’s same-sex marriage ban. The court didn’t rule on the merits of the ban. It just dismissed a challenge that claimed the law violated a rule governing the number of issues on a ballot measure.

The provision was part of a divorce ruling involving Eric Mongerson and his former wife, Sandy Ehlers.

In granting the divorce and establishing visitation rights to Mongerson’s three minor children in 2007, Fayette County Superior Court Judge Christopher Edwards ruled that neither parent could have “overnight company with a member of the opposite sex, or with any person deemed to be a paramour, unrelated by blood or marriage, in the presence of a child.”

But Edwards did not stop there.

“Additionally, defendant is prohibited from exposing the children to his homosexual partners and friends,” he wrote in his ruling.

In appealing to the state Supreme Court Mongerson’s attorneys assert that “[t]here was no evidence presented that and the court made no finding that exposing the parties’ children to any of Appellant’s homosexual friends would adversely affect the best interests of the children. Therefore, such a prohibition on appellant’s homosexual friends is an abuse of discretion.”

But lawyers for Ehlers dispute the argument claiming that the oldest daughter had testified she had “found one of my dad’s magazines that had nude men in it doing things to each other.”

Her attorneys also argue that the discovery their father is gay “has been ‘emotionally difficult’ for the children who continue to go to counseling as a result.”

A friend of the court brief submitted this week by Lambda Legal says the prohibition should be struck down.

“The Court should do what it always does in divorce cases with custody issues, which is to focus on the needs of the children — placing a blanket ban on “exposure” to gay people hardly helps a gay dad maintain his relationship with his children,” said Beth Littrell, a Lambda Staff Attorney in Atlanta.

“What the ban does do is perpetuate prejudice and stigma against an entire group of people based solely on their sexual orientation, and that is just plain wrong.”

The brief went on to say that the ” order hinders Mongerson’s ability to maintain his relationship with his children as he is under a court order to treat other gay people as pariahs based solely on their sexual orientation.”

The Jan. 19 event in Georgia is the day before the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, who has chosen Warren to give the inaugural invocation. Warren had backed the recent Proposition 8 ballot measure banning same-sex marriage in his home state of California.

On Monday, the inaugural committee announced that Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the world Anglican Communion, would lead prayer at the Lincoln Memorial on Jan. 18 for one of Obama’s kick-off inaugural events.

Warren, pastor of the 20,000-member Saddleback Church in Southern California and author of the best-selling “The Purpose Driven Life,” will appear on Monday at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached from 1960 until his death in 1968.

President-elect Barack Obama did the minimal in yesterday’s Georgia run-off for Senate. He recorded a radio ad and kept his team in the state. But he did no  visits (although other Democratic big hitters from Bill Clinton to Al Gore went to Georgia in support of challenger Jim Martin).

Staying above the fray was a good move for Obama. Sure for the inside baseball types it was a sign of cowardice, and kept the Democrats away from a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, but ultimately Obama needs to hold on to all the good will he’s got. That is what the occupant of the White House lives on (that and a little bit of luck). Don’t believe? Go ask the guy who is residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue right now.

High approval ratings come about when a president is seen as not some partisan hack. Sure we expect our commander-in-chief to push for policy, but he/she also has to show a vision that is beyond political party.

Obama knows this. Why do you think he talked about Ronald Reagan so much in the election? There are MANY things I can say that irked about Reagan, but he knew how to make the public love him.

None of this bodes well for most of us at this site because it means when it comes to gay stuff Obama is going to be cautious. But you knew this.

PS: RIP Odetta.

“We can’t be lulled into complacency,” Broun said. “You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing [Obama] to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential.”

I’m not saying he’s Hitler but he is. A request to all political junkies, no matter what side: let’s put a 200 year prohibition on comparing our political enemies to Nazis or Fascists.

The unanimous ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court on Monday found that the two unsuccessful candidates for Riverdale City Council failed to produce evidence of fraud, misconduct or illegality.

Michelle Bruce landed one of four council seats in 2003 in a campaign to attract more jobs and residents to Riverdale. But she faced several opponents when she ran for re-election in 2007, and eventually lost her seat.

Georgia Fuller and Stan Harris sued last year, saying Bruce misled voters by identifying herself as a female. The complaint identified Bruce as “Michael Bruce” and asked a judge to rule the November election results invalid.