Bea Arthur has lost a long battle with cancer at 86. An icon in the gay community, she is famous for her stage, television and film roles, but is best known for her work as the title character in the 70s sitcom Maude and later as one of the Golden Girls.

Some of my favorite clips below…

History of the World Part I (2 minutes in)

From the show Maude:

From the show The Golden Girls:

Rest in peace Bea. You will be missed.

Opening at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival this week, OUTRAGE is a new gay- themed political documentary by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Kirby Dick. As described on the film’s website…

A searing indictment of the hypocrisy of closeted politicians who actively campaign against the LGBT community, OUTRAGE boldly reveals the hidden lives of some of our nation’s most powerful policymakers, detailing the harm they’ve inflicted on millions of Americans, and the media’s complicity in keeping their secrets.

And from an early review of the film.

Where Dick’s film truly succeeds is in laying consequences at both men’s feet. For [Ed] Koch, it was silence during the exploding AIDS crisis… [Charlie] Crist, who has shown himself to be a moderate, or even liberal-leaning, Republican on a variety of issues – as well as a craven opportunist – is shown backing both a gay marriage amendment as well as that state’s unique law prohibiting adoption by gay parents.

Set against both men’s stories, Dick, working with his editor Doug Blush, unleashes a succession of news reports detailing hate crimes against gays and lesbians, ending with a 14-year old shooting a 15-year old at Oxnard High School in California.

It’s here that the film makes its powerful, and frankly compelling, closing argument – as Kirby Dick draws a line from the DC political closet to the death in Oxnard.

Watch the trailer.

Dan Choi, co-founder of KnightsOut, a group campaigning to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t tell (DADT) spoke recently to PinkNews.co.uk on how the firing of gay linguists may have undermined national security in the lead up to 9/11.

“On Monday, September 10th 2001, a message was intercepted by the State Department: tomorrow is zero hour. Despite its simplicity, nobody was able to translate it. Any of the dozens of linguists already discharged for being gay at the time would have done so easily.”

Choi, a former infantry platoon leader for the New York Army National guard, has been outspoken against DADT since coming out of the closet on the Rachel Maddow Show In March:

Since the introduction of DADT in 1994, over 1200 services members have been ejected from the military, including 60 Arab linguists.

President Obama spoke yesterday on resisting injustice and intolerance at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Day of Remembrance Ceremony, an annual commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust. From Obama’s speech…

“To this day, there are those who insist the Holocaust never happened, who perpetrate every form of intolerance — racism and anti- Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism and more — hatred that degrades its victim and diminishes us all.

Today and every day, we have an opportunity as well as an obligation to confront these scourges, to fight the impulse to turn the channel when we see images that disturb us or wrap ourselves in the false comfort that others’ sufferings are not our own. Instead, we have the opportunity to make a habit of empathy, to recognize ourselves in each other, to commit ourselves to resisting injustice and intolerance and indifference…”