In a ceremony at the White House today, Barack Obama honored slain gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk and lesbian tennis great Billie Jean King with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Obama on Harvey Milk:

“His name was Harvey Milk. And he was here to recruit us. All of us.  To join a movement and change a nation. For much of his early life he had silenced himself. In the prime of his life, he was silenced by the act of another. But in the brief time in which he spoke, and ran and led, his voice stirred the aspirations of millions of people. He would become after several attempts, one of the first openly gay Americans elected to public office, and his message of hope, hope unashamed, unafraid, could not ever be silenced. It was Harvey who said it best. “You gotta give them hope.”

Complete list of recipients below the clip. Obama speaks of Milk around the 8:08 mark.

Medal of Freedom Recipients

Nancy Goodman Brinker
Founder of Susan G Komen for the Cure, a prominent US organisation that raises money for breast cancer research

Dr Pedro Jose Greer Jr
Physician and founder of organisations that provide medical care to Miami’s poor and homeless

Stephen Hawking
Cambridge University physicist and author of popular science books. Hawking is severely disabled from motor neuron disease.

Jack Kemp
Republican politician and retired professional football player who passed away in May. A longtime member of the House of Representatives, Kemp was the party’s 1996 vice-presidential candidate.

Senator Edward Kennedy
Younger brother of President John F Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy, Kennedy is known as a “liberal lion” in the US Senate for his championing of healthcare reform and civil rights.

Billie Jean King
Retired professional tennis player and one of the first openly lesbian sports figures. King defeated former number one player Bobby Riggs in the celebrated 1973 “battle of the sexes” match.

Reverend Joseph Lowery
Civil rights leader and co-founder with Martin Luther King Jr of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Lowery gave the benediction at Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Joe Medicine Crow
The last living war chief of the American Indians of the US Great Plains, according to the White House, and the author of seminal works of American Indian culture and history. While a soldier in the second world war, Medicine Crow stole 50 Nazi SS horses from a German camp.

Harvey Milk
The first openly gay elected official of a major city, Milk, a San Francisco supervisor, was assassinated in 1978. He is revered as a founder of the gay rights movement.

Sandra Day O’Connor
The first woman on the US supreme court, appointed by President Ronald Reagan.

Sidney Poitier
The first African-American to win an Oscar for best actor, Poitier starred in the first mainstream movies to portray romantic interracial relationships.

Chita Rivera
A prominent Hispanic singer and actress, Rivera played Anita in the film of West Side Story. She has won two Tony awards and been nominated seven more times.

Mary Robinson
First female president of Ireland, and a former UN high commissioner for human rights.

Janet Davison Rowley
A Chicago geneticist and cancer researcher, Rowley identified the genetic basis of leukaemia, lymphoma and other cancers.

Desmond Tutu
A South African anti-apartheid leader and Anglican archbishop emeritus. Won the Nobel peace prize in 1984 for his efforts at racial reconciliation.

Muhammad Yunus
Pioneer of microloans – small, low-interest loans to the poor extended without collateral. Yunus won the Nobel peace prize for his Grameen Bank’s efforts in his native Bangladesh and elsewhere.

Tulsa mayoral candidate Anna Falling is making a creationism exhibit at the Tulsa Zoo the centerpiece of her campaign, taking precedence over more traditional issues like violent crime, city budgets and infrastructure problems.

“It’s first,” she said to calls of “hallelujah” at a rally outside the zoo. “If we can’t come to the foundation of faith in this community, those other answers will never come. We need to first of all recognize the fact that God needs to be honored in this city.”

Falling, who has founded several Christian nonprofit groups and is a former city councilor, also said the next mayor needs to appoint people to boards, authorities and commissions who will “honor God.”

“We will also look for people who want to characterize the origins of both man and animals in a way that honors Judeo-Christian science that proves God as the creator,” she said.

When asked whether she meant that she would recruit Christians to serve the city, Falling said she was talking about “people committed to their churches.” When asked whether she meant Christian churches, she said, “churches, yes.”

I suspect folks who attend synagogues or mosques are simply out of luck.

From Falling’s blog:

What are we doing today to recognize the Creator and call upon Him to intervene in our city struggles? How are we to pursue the Creator’s plans for us – plans to prosper us and not to harm us? Unless God’ s people come together in this city to under gird our leaders and our city in prayer – we will continue to decline as a community.

More in the video below:

You can find out more about Anna Falling or leave her a comment on her blog.

After months of contentious debate, the Anchorage Assembly approved a city-wide ordinance yesterday making discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal.

The 7 to 4 decision came down Tuesday night after the assembly heard from more than 600 people who signed up to testify throughout the summer.

The evening was emotional even before the decision, but this time it came from the other side of the testifying podium — the assembly members themselves.

After months and months of listening to public testimony on the controversial anti-discrimination ordinance, it was the assembly’s turn to talk — and they rivaled the emotion of the 600 speakers before them.

“The rest of the people in this community deserve equal rights just like the rest of us,” said assembly member Elvi Gray-Jackson.

“We need to treat each other well in this world, and we don’t, and I wish we did,” assembly chair Debbie Ossiander said.

Mayor Dan Sullivan has seven days to veto the ordinance. Hopefully this will be the first of many positive steps forward in a post Palin Alaska.

Over the weekend 70,000 strong gathered on the streets of Tel Aviv for the victims of a violent attack at an LGBT youth center last week which left two dead and several injured.

President Shimon Peres was among speakers at the meeting on Yitzhak Rabin Square outside the city hall.

“The shots which struck this proud community affected us all as human beings, as Jews and as Israelis. The man who targeted the two victims targeted all of us,” Peres said.

Two people died when a masked, black-clad gunman opened fire on the group of young gays and lesbians at the entrance to the community centre in the heart of Israel’s commercial capital late on Saturday August 1.

“Everyone has the right to be different and proud. No one has the right to interfere in other people’s lives so long as everyone respects law and order,” Peres said.

“I came to share your tears after the death of two young innocents. Be strong and courageous,” he said.

While the perpetrator remains at large, authorities are holding Shmuel Preimark, an Israel soldier who made threats toward those attending the rally.

The threats were made shortly before Saturday evening’s rally in Tel Aviv in memory of the victims of a shooting attack on a gay and lesbian youth club in the city one week earlier.

Several hours before the start of the rally, the suspect allegedly posted a message on a gay Web forum, threatening to hurt the rally’s participants.

The soldier is suspected of writing, “Expect more victims among the gays, this time something bigger” and “a second attack on the community soon. Be ready. Don’t say we didn’t know.”

Video from the rally below: