Being from STL and designing The Gateway Mens’s Chorus’s website, this story is near and dear to our hearts.

For two men in St. Louis, it seemed like a romantic way to spend their 20th anniversary: a weekend in New York, with a marriage ceremony in Central Park on Friday and a Broadway show, “Priscilla: Queen of the Desert,” on Saturday.

But for one of the men, Al Fischer, 46, a teacher at a Catholic school, there were unforeseen consequences.

On Feb. 15, Mr. Fischer announced his joyful plans to colleagues at a staff meeting. His colleagues applauded, he said. He did not realize that an official from the Archdiocese of St. Louis was in attendance. The next day, Mr. Fischer was informed that he was fired.

Two weeks later, after news of his firing made headlines, he was terminated from his second, part-time job as music director for the Roman Catholic church where he and his partner, Charlie Robin, have worshiped for more than six years.

“I didn’t expect any of this,” said Mr. Fischer, who said that he and Mr. Robin had been open about their relationship, both at St. Ann Catholic School, where Mr. Fischer taught music, and at St. Rose Philippine Duchesne Church in Florissant, Mo. The pastors at both parishes knew the men were gay, Mr. Fischer said. “I didn’t understand it would be, ‘click, you’re done,’ but it was.”

The couple went ahead with their plans. They arrived in New York on Thursday and, after getting their paperwork in order Friday morning, were married in the afternoon at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park.

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A bill intended to help stop anti-gay bullying in schools nationwide would move closer to passage if President Obama backed it, according to a letter sent to him by 70 organizations.

The Student Non-Discrimination Act was proposed by Sen. Al Franken and has about a third of the Senate signed up as cosponsors. But it often takes 60 votes to get anything through there these days. So groups including the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network are calling on Obama to make clear his support for the bill.

“Your administration’s endorsements of both the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the Respect for Marriage Act provided those bills with critical momentum,” states the letter, which was first reported by the Washington Blade. Neither of those pieces of legislation has passed Congress but activists are hopeful that ENDA, which prohibits antigay discrimination in the workplace, and the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act are moving closer to success. The president regularly cites the bills as items Congress should pass.

“An endorsement of the Student Non-Discrimination Act would likewise be a clarion call for equality in our schools and better protections for vulnerable children,” the letter says. “And more importantly, it would make clear to all Members of Congress what the administration views as a necessary federal legislative solution to the serious problem of anti-LGBT discrimination and harassment in our nation’s public schools.”

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One of the main reasons we started 2miliongays.com was because of this very topic.

The group pushing to get Ellen DeGeneres fired from her job as a spokeswoman for JCPenney is giving up, according to an interview with a conservative website.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation sent a celebratory news release today with the headline, “You did it! ‘One Million Moms’ abandons call for Ellen to be fired.”

Monica Cole, director of the One Million Moms organization, which came up with the idea of boycotting JCPenney, tells  OneNewsNow that it’s time to move on. Still, Cole claims to “have heard back from so many of our members” who say “they will no longer shop there … as long as Ellen DeGeneres is their spokesperson.”

DeGeneres was so offended by a group calling for her firing just for being gay that she actually called out the “haters” on her show. “This time I’d like to talk about it because my haters are my motivators,” she said.

Cole ignores the huge outcry of support that DeGeneres received online. Nearly 200,000 people joined an upstart Facebook group called “1 million people who support Ellen for JCPenney,” more than four times as many people who “like” One Million Moms.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Katy Butler hasn’t forgotten what it was like to be bullied in the seventh grade, when a group of boys surrounded her, taunted her and broke her finger by slamming it into a locker.

Now 17, Butler has become the face of a campaign to change the rating of “Bully,” a documentary that tracks victims and perpetrators of bullying in American schools. The film, set for release this month, has been rated R for its language content.

Butler, along with distributors the Weinstein Co., wants the rating changed to PG-13 so more young people can see it.

“This could change bullying and save lives,” the high-school junior from Ann Arbor, Mich., said.

The Weinstein Co. appealed the R-rating, but the Motion Picture Association of America, which oversees movie ratings, declined to change it. That inspired Butler to start an online campaign on Change.org, a website that publishes community petitions and funded Butler’s trip to Los Angeles.

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sign the petition here