The Bilerico Project | Daily experiments in LGBTQ

I had the honor of attending today's signing ceremony for the legislation repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell. Several other Bilerico Project contributors were there too - so many, in fact, that it got dizzying to keep turning around and hugging each one.

But the part that really made my head spin was watching our President speak about the LGBT community and knowing that this time - this time - it wasn't lip service. We weren't added to another bill that would pass in spite of our inclusion. The President demanded this legislation, led the military to support it, our community orgs finally came together, and Congress passed a bill that was solely for the benefit of gays and lesbians. We were not an afterthought. We were the main attraction.

After the jump I've put a few of the photographs I took at the ceremony. Poor Joe Mirabella flew in from Seattle just to cover the event for us and less than 24 hours later is back in the air winging it home. I'll leave it to him to cover the event for you in detail; I just wanted to share some of my pictures and the video of the ceremony.

I witnessed history being made today. I wish all of you could have been there with me.

The last one is one of my favorites. It's a screencap sent to me by Father Tony. He grabbed it from his TV and sent it in asking, "Isn't that Jerame and Joe Mirabella?" You can see President Obama still shaking hands about four people behind them.

All of my photos were taken with my iPhone so some of them are a little blurry from the zoom. You can clickety any of them to embiggen. I'd also suggest checking out the photoset Joe Mirabella put online of all the snapshots he took today. He'll cull them out for the best ones for his post.