These are difficult times. Most everyone we know is cutting back. Some of us are looking for work, myself included. But for many these times are especially tough, like those struggling with HIV and AIDS. A situation made worse by Gov. Schwarzenegger’s threat to slash $80 million in AIDS/HIV funding, which would be used for prevention, education, testing, treatment and housing.

This weekend is AIDS Walk 2009 in San Francisco, and we will walk as we do every year. If you are able, please consider making a gift, no matter how small, to continue the fight against AIDS, and to help make up the difference for those who are unable to give. The AIDS Walk is our community’s single most powerful and enduring response to the AIDS epidemic, as the struggle against this disease is far from over. Every 9 1/2 minutes someone becomes infected with HIV. In the U.S., one in five people already infected don’t even know. And in San Francisco alone, 25,000 live with HIV every day.

If you are unable to give, please consider walking with us instead. The greater our visibility, the louder our message.

If you would like to sponsor Inside, Looking Out by making a donation, visit http://aidswalksanfran2009.kintera.org/inlookout. Thanks!

It’s been almost 31 years since Dan White took Harvey Milk from us, and who knows where we would be now if he were still with us. Harvey’s courage and wisdom would have guided us though the AIDS crisis here in San Francisco and the growing gay rights movement that followed. He would have been 79-years-young today.

Even though Governor Schwarzenegger has yet to sign a bill instituting Harvey Milk Day, there’s no reason why we can’t celebrate it. California Ripple Effect put together a great list of things we could do to honor Harvey’s memory…

• For starters, let’s make it official. Make sure you’ve added your name to the petition urging Gov. Schwarzenegger to sign Harvey Milk Day into law at www.eqca.org/HarveyMilkDay.
• If you’re in Sacramento, you can join your LGBT Caucus on the North Lawn of the Capitol for a Harvey Milk birthday celebration tomorrow from 11:30 to 1 p.m.
• A grassroots group has also organized candlelight vigils tomorrow night across the state to mark the occasion.
• If you want to tuck in with a good movie, or organize a screening for your friends, there are two excellent Oscar-winning flicks about Harvey Milk’s life, the documentary Times of Harvey Milk and Gus Van Sant’s Milk starring Sean Penn.
• Finally, wish those you see tomorrow a “Happy Harvey Milk Day”. This is a great opportunity to share his story with someone new if they don’t know it.

I’ll close with Harvey’s famous “Hope” speech, used so eloquently in the video below. And where ever your are Harvey, Happy Birthday!

SaveCalifornia.com is a pro-family, anti-gay group leading an effort to derail SB 572 which would institute an official Harvey Milk Day here in California. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to serve in political office, and was later gunned down by former city council member Dan White at San Francisco City Hall in 1978.

SaveCalifornia.com is urging concerned parents to send an email to Governor Schwarzenegger which describes all the horrible things that will happen to their children if SB 572 is passed, including:

SB 572 pressures public schools — from kindergarten on up — to perform “suitable commemorative exercises” promoting what homosexual activist Harvey Milk believed in: the entire homosexual, bisexual, and transsexual agenda and anti-religious values.

If SB 572 becomes law, schoolchildren would have positively portrayed to them homosexual experimentation, homosexual “marriages,” sex-change operations, and anything else that’s “in the closet.”

All doors of sexual experimentation MUST be opened: “If a bullet should go through my head let that bullet go through every closet door.”

SaveCalifornia.com is led by anti-gay bigot Randy Thomasson. There’s plenty of dirt on him over at goodasyou.com so I won’t repeat it here.

Milk screenwriter Lance Black testified in Sacramento today supporting SB 572. To counter SaveCalifornia.com, please sign this petition at Equality California urging the governor to support Harvey Milk Day.

To get an unpleasant taste of what SaveCalifornia.com is all about, watch the video below:

[pro-player width=’480′ height=’200′ type=’FLV’ image=’https://inlookout.com/video/savecalifornia.jpg’]https://inlookout.com/video/savecalifornia.flv[/pro-player]

Melissa Etheridge wrote an interesting piece for the Daily Beast concerning Proposition 8.

“Okay. So Prop 8 passed. Alright, I get it. 51% of you think that I am a second class citizen. Alright then. So my wife, uh I mean, roommate? Girlfriend? Special lady friend? You are gonna have to help me here because I am not sure what to call her now. Anyways, she and I are not allowed the same right under the state constitution as any other citizen. Okay, so I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes because I am not a full citizen. I mean that would just be wrong, to make someone pay taxes and not give them the same rights, sounds sort of like that taxation without representation thing from the history books.”

While I appreciate Etheridge’s sentiment, I have mixed feelings about her approach. The state didn’t take away our right to marry, the people of California did (with the Mormon and Catholic churches aiding and abetting). Twice the California legislature passed a same-sex marriage bill and twice Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. But to the Governor’s credit he was against Proposition 8 and voted against it.

I think our time is better spent shining a spotlight on the Mormon and Catholic church’s involvement and putting their tax exemption status on the table. Hitt’em in the pocket book where it hurts.

To learn more visit How to file an IRS 501(c)(3) for the the LDS Church