And as we celebrate, let's be clear - these rights were won not by electing Democratic majorities into the state house and senate, but by the immense pressure that LGBTQ communities and activists have built for equality.

Late in the evening of Wednesday, March 27th the Arizona House Appropriations Committee voted, 7 to 4, to move forward to the House a bill restricting the right of transgendered people to use public bathrooms appropriate to the gender with which they identify. The original version of this bill, SB 1432, called the “papers please, bathroom bill,” would have made it a crime for a transgendered person to use a bathroom other than that for his or her birth gender.

In June, the Supreme Court will likely deliver historic decisions on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8, leaving many to wonder, “Is marriage the final frontier of gay rights?” The verdicts of these cases regarding same sex marriage will come following a season of huge steps forward for the LGBTQ movement.

On November 6, voters in four states delivered a historic defeat to the right-wing agenda of legalized hate and discrimination against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) people.

It would have been difficult to predict a year ago that a group of “third generation feminist punk rockers” calling themselves “Pussy riot” and dressed in brightly colored balaclavas and wooly stockings would not only become a symbol of the rapidly growing opposition to Putin but also the subject of his vindictive wrath.

Not only is 2012 the first year a U.S. president supported equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians, but this could potentially be the first year that voters approve same-sex marriage by a state popular referendum and/or that the Supreme Court rules on same-sex marriage.

The case of Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald, a 23-year-old African-American transgender woman who was attacked outside a bar in South Minneapolis, highlights both the abuse experienced as a way of life by many trans people and the all-too-prevalent official neglect they experience.

Yesterday, in a historic victory for the gay and lesbian rights movement, President Obama came out in favor of same-sex marriage rights. While this change in rhetoric is a positive step forward, we must step up our calls for real policy changes to end the continuing violence and legalized persecution facing LGBTQ people.

The legalization of same-sex marriage is shaping up to be a major battleground in the 2012 elections. Due to the activism and greater visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people, support for LGBTQ rights has been surging. So now this year both corporate parties, Republicans and Democrats, are exploiting this wedge issue from different angles for their own electoral gain and also to divert working-class anger away from unpopular economic policies.

The Republican-dominated Minnesota legislature is placing a constitutional amendment on the 2012 ballot that would ban same-sex marriage, setting the stage for a nationally significant showdown on LGBT rights. The question is before us: will Minnesota be just the next state in the long chain of electoral defeats for our movement? Or will we draw a line in the sand and build a mass movement uniting a majority of Minnesotans to say: “No Hate in Our State!”?

The growth of the LGBT movement and the winning of important reforms like the repeal of DADT have re-opened old debates on demands and strategy. For example, Bash Back!, a national network of anarchist queer activists, opposes the repeal of DADT and equalizing marriage laws on the grounds that “state recognition in the form of oppressive institutions such as marriage and militarism are not steps toward liberation but rather towards heteronormative assimilation” (from Bash Back! Points of Unity).

On December 18, 2010, the Senate voted to repeal the 17-year-old anti-gay policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT). President Obama signed the repeal into law on December 22, 2010, making it one of the few campaign promises he kept.

The military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy recently made headlines when U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips issued an injunction halting its enforcement. The Obama administration opposed Judge Phillips, just as they opposed overturning the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) last year. Obama’s Department of Justice issued a legal challenge and won a stay on the injunction, allowing for workplace discrimination at our country’s largest employer, the Department of Defense, to continue.

On October 14 in Minneapolis, 1,000 people gathered at a vigil in Loring Park to grieve the loss of students in the Anoka-Hennepin School District and talk about solutions to the national crisis of teen suicide. Across the country, vigils were held in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Austin.

Since getting elected with the support and money of the LGBT community, Obama has done little more than pay lip service to LGBT issues. He has consistently refused to support Gay Marriage (supporting only “civil unions”). In the more than a year that the Democrats have controlled the White House and Congress, the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA) - banning gay marriages from being federally recognized – has not been repealed, and the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would federally ban employment discrimination against LGBT people, has not been enacted. Even Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) - which bans LGBT people from openly serving in the military - has been slightly weakened but has not been repealed.