Queerest News Ever--March 2010

Health Care Insurance reform has been approved by the House and Obama has signed the bill into law. But House representative Tammy Baldwin pointed out that some specific provisions for LGBT people which address access to care and discrimination issues were excluded from the final version. There is still hope, according to Baldwin, who says that while the bill while lacks the proposed protections, it "keeps the legislative door open" to future changes.

In other medical news, a study which appeared March 18th in the New England Journal of Medicine indicates that gays and lesbians have been systematically excluded from studies of sexual health without any concrete reasons being provided for this omission.

The federal Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD) is conducting a study of housing discrimination against LGBTs and are enlisting the help of queers in New York, Chicago and San Francisco for ideas on how the study should be conducted.

A judge has issued a warrant in the strange custody case of former lesbian couple Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins. The two were joined in a civil union in 2000 and gave birth to daughter Isabella in 2002 through insemination. They moved from Virginia to Vermont to raise their child. When Isabella was a year old, Miller took her and moved back to Virginia. There she became a born-again Evangelical Christian and proceeded to deny Jenkins all visitation rights. In 2009 Judge Cohen tired of Miller's refusal to grant Jenkins access to the child and charged her with contempt. He then ordered Miller to turn over custody to Jenkins. Instead of complying, Miller took off with Isabella and hasn't been seen or heard from since.

In other parenting news, being a lesbian couple can disqualify your child from attending pre-school in Boulder Colorado's Sacred Heart of Jesus Church because that church holds that gays are sexually "disordered" and " inherently evil."

Mississippi teenager Constance McMillen who caused the administation to cancel the entire high school prom rather than allow her to attend wearing a tuxedo with her girlfriend by her side, has won her fight in court, although the high school sponsorer prom won't be reinstated, a private non discriminatory prom will take its place. She was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.