Barney Frank

During the convention, I had the pleasure of meeting Nick Langewis of Front Page Q. Here is some of his coverage:

After speaking in front of a crowd on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama, wife of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and Illinois Senator Barack Obama, appeared in front of an audience of over 600 at an LGBT caucus meeting, including delegates and members of the media alongside Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), at a delegate luncheon Tuesday.

"I am honored and thrilled," Obama opened to applause. "I could stay here all afternoon."

"I'm particularly glad to be here on a week that commemorates some of the great strides our nation has made towards equality and justice," she said. "It's been five years since Lawrence v. Texas and 39 years since Stonewall, but still, we've got work to do before we achieve equality in the LGBT community. And although we know that we've got a lot of work to do, this week we're going to celebrate how far we've come, and how deep our shared capacity is to break through any barriers that stand in our way to the progress of this nation."

To see the entire speech, click here.

Day three of the Democratic National Convention began with Autumn and Pam joining me and my sister* Karri for breakfast at a restaurant down the block from the Big Tent. We were quite impressed with the coffee...

We left Pam at the Big Tent, for she had to give her presentation on being a straight ally.  Autumn had a number of transgender activists she wanted to interview and I hustled along to be her videographer.  It was a little weird that of all the panels a scheduling conflict would keep me away from, it was the one on being a straight ally.

The event Autumn and I attended was the LGBT Caucus.  San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom took the podium just literally minutes after learning of the death of Del Martin.  He was visibly shaken and took a couple of minutes to compose himself.  The room fell silent, but as Mayor Newsom spoke, he expressed the feeling of many that it was a blessing that Del was able to finally marry her partner of 5+ decades.