But as a daughter of privilege – her dad was a powerful Democratic state senator, and she had all the benefits of a comfortable upbringing and a good education – Jenny Durkan also recalls what someone once told her: “You’re the most non-diverse diverse person I know.”

“I don’t think I can fully appreciate how important it is to many people to have someone in a role like this who is gay,” Durkan said this week in an interview with The Associated Press. “The more people are able to see people in situations where pretty soon that’s an invisible characteristic, the better it is for the entire community.”

Gay rights activists say her appointment reflects a growing acceptance in the U.S. as well as the attitude of President Barack Obama’s administration. Earlier this month, Obama nominated an openly gay police sergeant to be the U.S. marshal in Minneapolis; she would be the first openly gay U.S. marshal.

Lambda Legal, a national organization that promotes equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, says it knows of no other openly gay U.S. attorneys in the nation’s 93 judicial districts.

“We see it as really sort of a respectful acknowledgment that it is important to have all sorts of people represented in government,” Lambda Legal spokesman Jason Perez Howe said.

Durkan, 51, has been named to the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, where she will head a subcommittee on cybercrimes and intellectual property. The FBI is building a new cybercrime center in the old federal courthouse in Seattle, and the U.S. attorney’s office here has done novel work in prosecuting such cases.

Before being confirmed by the Senate a month ago, Durkan performed a wide variety of civil litigation and criminal defense work, and was active in bar associations. In 2002 she traveled to Morocco to train female candidates for parliament.

She has been Gov. Chris Gregoire’s personal attorney and confidante, and represented the Democratic Party when Gregoire’s 133-vote re-election win was confirmed in court.

Durkan has said she did some of her most satisfying work using lawsuits to force institutional reform – such as changes in how the King County Jail handles mentally ill prisoners after one who had been recently released stabbed a firefighter to death.

One month into her new job, she believes a similar approach could make the U.S. attorney’s office more effective in areas such as environmental regulation and corporate oversight – areas that received less attention as fighting terrorism became the Justice Department’s top priority after 9/11.

“Rather than just doing reactive cases where the government’s being sued, we have to start thinking about how we can use our affirmative powers to enforce the priorities of the department and the communities,” Durkan said.

To that end, she’s spoken with local prosecutors, state and federal agencies and the governor’s office about bringing those groups together to coordinate better responses to environmental crimes, for example.

“There’s no question terrorism remains the number one threat to this country, and we don’t want to minimize that,” she said. “But we’ve also seen in the last three years that there are other threats to our country and people’s well being. Financial crimes almost brought our country to its knees.”

Ultimately, she said, she hopes to be judged on how the U.S. attorney’s office handles those threats – not on her sexual orientation.

“In this region I don’t think it’s very remarkable that you have someone who is gay in a position of authority, because it’s woven throughout our culture and has been,” Durkan said. “In other parts of the country it might be, but I think a generation from now it will be a footnote.”

1. Dear  John Hodgman: please marry me. We can raise nerdy children.

2. Youtube is my week-end crack.

3. When will Pride events be over?

4. You and your lovah might be counted in the upcoming census!

5. Solitude becomes me.

6. This picture makes me worry about what will happen in Iran.

7. Looks like gay marriage will get voted on in New York. Empire State Pride Agenda thinks this is a good idea. What will happen is any one’s guess.

8. Americans winning a soccer match/game?! Get out!

9. When did New York City turn into Seattle? Nothing against the Emerald City but I’m not prepared for days and days and days and days of rain.

10. A Senate apology for slavery? Meh.

Philip Irvin, a self-proclaimed civil rights leader who was thwarted in his attempts to create a city-sponsored group of ex-gay employees, asked earlier this month for the names of employees associated with the department’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning and Friends Club. Members of the club sued to prevent their names from being released claiming it would violate their privacy.

“The city sympathizes with the concerns that plaintiffs have expressed,” Assistant City Attorney Gary T. Smith said in court documents. “Nonetheless, the city believes that the Public Records Act obligates it to disclose the records at issue.”

Read the full Seattle-Post Intelligencer story here.

The FBI and Homeland Security are participating in the investigation into who made the anonymous threats at 11 gay bars, but are referring all questions to Seattle Police.  The police department will say little except that it takes the threats seriously.

Police patrols have increased in the Capitol Hill area where the bars are located.

The threats were made in typewritten letters received by the bars on Tuesday. The weekly newspaper The Stranger received a 12th letter saying it should be “prepared to announce the deaths of approximately 55 individuals.”

Despite the threats, business at the bars has shown little sign of slowing down, although many patrons say they are more vigilant. Tonight, an ad hoc group will hold a Capitol Hill Pub Crawl. The group on its Web site is urging gays and their supporters to attend.

The site also reminds people going to bars to look out for each other and “never leave your drink unattended or accept a drink from a stranger.”

Ricin is a poison found naturally in castor beans. It can be in the form of a powder, a mist, or a pellet, or it can be dissolved in water or weak acid.

If made into a partially purified material or refined into a terrorist or warfare agent, ricin could be used to expose people through the air, food or a liquid.

While law enforcement is tight lipped about the investigation, some people within the city’s LGBT community say they suspect the threats came from someone who is gay.

They cite a line in the threatening letters loosely taken from the poem “A Display of Mackerel” by openly gay writer Mark Doty. The poem was published in Doty’s book, Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2008 National Book Award for Poetry.

“The targets won’t care much that they’ll be dead and nearly frozen, just as, presumably, they didn’t care that they were living,” the letters said.

Doty told The Seattle Times that he wrote the poem in 1994 as a meditation on the nature of the self and mortality after his partner died of AIDS.

Some, including Dan Savage, the editorial director of The Stranger, say the reference to the poem suggests the letters came from someone who is gay.

“It’s a gay self-hater,” Savage told The Times.

“Somebody who was seriously interested in killing a bunch of people at a gay bar wouldn’t announce the method of the attack in advance.”

Yesterday columnist Dan Savage wondered who sent the ricin letters to eleven gay bars in Seattle and he thinks he knows the culprit. Oh there is no address and faded high-school picture; Savage is good, but he’s no Hercule Poirot. He’s convinced the terrorist threats came from a gay man.

As Savage notes, the letters lacked the type of Bible thumping condemnation usually associated with Christians who wish to engage in violence.

“The letters strike me as having been written by a very bitter man—by someone who came out, expected that gay life would a glorious cycle of song, and was shocked to discover that gay life—just like straight life—comes with no guarantees,” Savage wrote.

One of Savage’s readers pointed to a line the letter writer used that is plagiarized from a poem called “A Display of Mackerel.” Poet Mark Doty included that in his collection Atlantis, written after his lover died of an HIV related illness.

A bitter literate gay man who  wants to get back at other gays because life isn’t what he expected? Jeesh! I miss 2008 already.

The threats were made in letters received by the bars on Tuesday and have been turned over to police. Seattle weekly newspaper The Stranger received a 12th letter saying it should be “prepared to announce the deaths of approximately 55 individuals.”

Seattle police forensics investigators are examining the letters and the FBI and Homeland Security have been notified.

Ricin is a poison found naturally in castor beans. It can be in the form of a powder, a mist, or a pellet, or it can be dissolved in water or weak acid.

If made into a partially purified material or refined into a terrorist or warfare agent, ricin could be used to expose people through the air, food, or water.

In the 1940s, the U.S. military experimented with using ricin as a possible warfare agent. In some reports, ricin has possibly been used as a warfare agent in the 1980s in Iraq and more recently by terrorist organizations.

“We are actively investigating and coordinating with the FBI and other federal partners,” Seattle police said in a statement. “We encourage the community to be alert for suspicious activity and call that activity in to 911 immediately.”

The letters make no mention of a reason for targeting the gay bars and were not signed.

“I have in my possession approximately 67 grams of ricin with which I will indiscriminately target at least five of your clients,” the letters said. “I expect them to die painfully while in the hospital.”

Police said that if the sender is found he or she will face hate crime charges. Federal terrorism charges also are possible.