The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, sometimes referred to as the Matthew Shepard Act, made significant progress today passing 15-12 in the House Judiciary Committee, despite GOP members efforts to ammend the bill with frivolous amendments and gutting the “gender identity” language from the bill entirely.

Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), praised the committee vote in the Washington Blade:

“Laws ultimately reflect a nation’s values, and this legislation, once passed, will send a strong message that America rejects all forms of hate violence, including bias-motivated crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” she said. “This committee vote marks the beginning of the end of a long-fought battle.”

There was protracted discussion in committee Wednesday and Thursday of several amendments to the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The measure is intended, among other things, to allow the Justice Department to assist in the prosecution of hate crimes committed against LGBT people that result in death or serious injury.

Amendments offered by the committee’s Republican members, though, sought to include unborn children, military members and pregnant women in the measure. Another proposed amendment sought to strip passages regarding “gender identity” from the bill. The amendments were voted down.

The bill may come up for a vote on the House floor as early as next week.

Hate crimes legislation has languished under Republican leadership since 1997, even after the death of Matthew Shepard, a college student who was murdered in 1998 for being gay. But now with a Democratic Congress and President the bill has a legitimate chance of becoming law.

Recently, Matthew’s mom Judy Shepard made an impassioned plea for the bill’s passage. Watch.

For more information visit http://www.FightHateNow.org.

It’s been difficult these past few days with the blog and all—more on that tomorrow—and I’ve almost let Earth Day pass me by without so much as a sidelong glance. But I’m reminded just now of one of the Earth’s most passionate advocates who unfortunately is no longer with us, who called this world ‘a pale blue dot.” I am of course referring to Carl Sagan, the well-known astronomer and bestselling author of Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. In his followup A Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, there is an eloquent passage where he describes the view of Earth from beyond Saturn, as seen through the lens of the Voyager 1 space probe.

The piece, set to music and video below, reminds us that our planet is little more than a point of light in vast, encompassing cosmos… but it is our “point of light,” and it’s the only one we’ve got. Perhaps the implied message is that we better take care of this place we call Earth, because if we don’t, no one else in the universe will even notice… when we are gone.

I know you’ll probably be reading this the day after Earth Day, but this will still be just as important and definitely worth the time.

I’ll close with another quote from Carl Sagan, as relevant today as it was almost 30 years ago…

“Our own planet is only a tiny part of the vast cosmic tapestry, a starry fabric of worlds yet untold. Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours. In every one of them, there’s a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical branch-point in the history. What we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or stupidity we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars.”

Happy, belated, Earth Day.

On tonight’s Miss USA Pageant, Miss California was asked by Judge Perez Hilton if other states should follow Vermont’s lead by legalizing same-sex marriage. Here’s her answer.

[pro-player height=”0″ width=”0″ image=”http://inlookout.com/site/video/misscalifornia.jpg”]http://inlookout.com/site/video/misscalifornia.flv[/pro-player]

Miss California is actually Carrie Prejean, a junior at San Diego Christian College. Her favorite bible verse is Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” That strength must have forsaken her tonight. Honestly I’m not sure how much of the judging is done in advance, but could her homophobic answer have cost Prejean the crown?

Perez Hilton responds, as only Perez can…

UPDATE: Pageant audience reactions from AP…

Some in the audience cheered, others booed. The answer sparked a shouting match in the lobby after the show.

“It’s ugly,” said Scott Ihrig, a gay man, who attended the pageant with his partner. “I think it’s ridiculous that she got first runner-up. That is not the value of 95 percent of the people in this audience. Look around this audience and tell me how many gay men there are.”

Charmaine Koonce, the mother of Miss New Mexico USA Bianca Carla, argued back.

“In the Bible it says marriage is between Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve!”

It just keeps getting better and better…

Frank Rich in yesterday’s NY Times seems to think so, where he guts the infamous NOM video “Gathering Storm” and explores the movement’s waning support in the face recent gay marriage victories in Iowa and Vermont.

Far from terrifying anyone, “Gathering Storm” has become, unsurprisingly, an Internet camp classic. On YouTube the original video must compete with countless homemade parodies it has inspired since first turning up some 10 days ago. None may top Stephen Colbert’s on Thursday night, in which lightning from “the homo storm” strikes an Arkansas teacher, turning him gay. A “New Jersey pastor” whose church has been “turned into an Abercrombie & Fitch” declares that he likes gay people, “but only as hilarious best friends in TV and movies.”

Yet easy to mock as “Gathering Storm” may be, it nonetheless bookmarks a historic turning point in the demise of America’s anti-gay movement.

What gives the ad its symbolic significance is not just that it’s idiotic but that its release was the only loud protest anywhere in America to the news that same-sex marriage had been legalized in Iowa and Vermont. If it advances any message, it’s mainly that homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead.

And Rich closes with this zinger…

“It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid.”

Read the full NY Times essay. And in case you missed Colbert’s hilarious take on “Gathering Storm…”