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The following comments were posted to www.washingtonblade.com.

Re: “Prop 8 trial begins Monday”

In bringing Prop. 8 to trial, we should remember the old Chinese proverb, “Be careful what you wish for.”

While I feel as strongly as most readers here about the need for marriage to be available to us, I cannot help but think that it will hurt us if we try to bully the will of the people through legal tricks. Consider the abortion issue as an example. It was getting close to being made legal in some places and situations with general support when the courts intervened and made an edict. Now it remains a chasm in our public thought. If abortion laws had changed in most places through legislative action, and bills to change them failed several times it would be considered a dead issue in the political world. Only the “gadflies” would be pushing it.

Public opinion is evolving in our favor now that more people are out of the closet, and thus more people understand us as just regular harmless folks who care about their loved ones and their country.

Even basic rights for us, such as employment non-discrimination have gone from about 20 percent public support in the 1980s to 80 percent today. Almost every poll shows stronger support for our rights from younger people in both parties and of many religious traditions.

We need to build on this trend and educate people and we need to be examples of solid couples and good citizens so this can all get resolved in our favor democratically. — Sam Brown

Re: “Two more D.C. ballot measures proposed to ban same-sex marriage”

I had my suspicions so I went back in THOMAS and looked it up. Sure enough, there were three House signers on the amicus brief who were in office in 1993 when the D.C. statehood bill was voted on: Roscoe Bartlett (Md.), Jack Kingston (Ga.), and Don Manzullo (Ill.) All voted NO in 1993 on the HR.51.

So much for their commitment to D.C. residents getting the right to vote on important matters. — Don

I find it amusing that there is at least one not-so-closeted gay Republican who signed this amicus brief and that all but one voted against giving D.C. residents a real congressional seat in the voting rights bill. The so-called GOP Big Tent continues to smell of its own elephant dung! — DC John

Re: “D.C. Jail guards accused of beating gay inmate”

Let me see if I understand this. An inmate of the D.C. Jail, injured in an altercation with guards on December 17, is being held in “protective custody” and is not able to have visitors (or one presumes be seen or have his injuries seen or photographed) “until Jan. 27 at the earliest”?

Excuse me? I don’t care if this guy is a hustler, a drug addict, a thief or whatever. We fought to put an end to this sort of thing decades ago. It seems to me that in a lot of ways, things are going backwards rather than forwards in the District. — Michael

No matter what someone’s past is or what they are in jail for this does not give them the right to beat someone. No matter what he did in the jail or to the guards once he was restrained that should have been the end of it. You do not get to break the law just because you are a prison guard. They [allegedly] did this because John is white and gay, this was a hate crime. — Dee

Re: “Arrest warrant sought in lesbian parental custody dispute”

Maggie Gallagher: You are deluded to think that you control the levers of a supernatural universe, as is anyone else who believes a single word from your lying mouth. Then, you meddle with the lives of innocent children like Isabella, forever helping to screw with their secure future and a loving parent.

Then, you put visions of demons and fairy-tales of made-up gay conspiracies in the heads of people who don’t know any better (because they don’t know any gay people). And how is it that you and NOM claim to know more about gay issues and families, than all the gay people who say you’re full of it, like me? Could never figure that one out. — Peter the Saint

Maggie Gallagher talking about unjust laws is a scream! She is one of the preeminent instigators of unjust laws against the LGBTI community. — Mykelb

Re: “Two Senate retirements means two losses for LGBT people”

It will be easier to have someone who is pro-LGBT in the seat without Chris Dodd running, which would have handed the seat to a heterosexist Republican. — libhomo