House leadership today was forced to drop language from the Defense Department authorization bill that would have made sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability protected categories under the current federal hate crimes law. While the stand-alone hate crimes bill supposedly enjoys wide support from Democrats and moderate Republicans in the House (and was, in fact, added to the bill by the Senate), the fight to include the language failed because many liberal Dems always vote against authorizing the Department of Defense (and wouldn’t change their votes) and because many conservative Dems and Republicans didn’t support the legislation and/or its inclusion in the defense bill. Although the bill supposedly has all this broad support (which one would think would make it easy to pass), there’s no word when or if the House will vote on it. Pelosi says, that she’s “strongly committed” to the bill, though, so I’m sure it will be really soon. [CNN]

On Monday, Michelle Bruce, the transgender City Council member in Riverdale, Georgia about whom we previously reported, prevailed in the lawsuit brought against her by Georgia “I Only Ran to Get the Queer Out of Office” Fuller. Fuller sued saying that Michelle has misled voters about her gender, but the suit was thrown out of court by the judge.

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Meet Michelle Bruce [courtesy of R.O. Youngblood and Southern Voice]. Four years ago, she was elected to the City Council of Riverdale, Georgia (population: 15,000). This year, she faced 2 competitors for that coveted slot, and, although she garnered the most votes, she faces a runoff in 11 days. Why do we care? Well, the 3rd place finisher, Georgia Fuller, is suing, claiming Michelle misled voters about her gender. We explain more after the jump.

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