A new poll shows Houston City Controller Annise Parker leads her main opponents in the race to become the city’s next mayor, though most respondents to the 11 News/KUHF Houston Public Radio poll of likely voters remain undecided.

“The numbers show Annise is well-positioned to win, but they also show that money will be extremely important in this race,” said Shawn Werner, a deputy political director at the Victory Fund, which has endorsed Parker.  ”The high number of undecided voters will shrink as candidates get their messages out through mail, tv and radio ads, and that’s very expensive to do.  So it’s really important that campaigns raise enough money to stay competitive.”

According to 11 News:

“The vast majority of voters are still undecided about who to vote for,” said 11 News political expert Bob Stein. “They’re simply unfamiliar with the candidates.”

In the poll, Houston Controller Annise Parker leads among the four main candidates, with 13.2% of respondents telling us they plan to vote for her. Former city attorney Gene Locke is behind Parker, but within the margin of error, at 9.6%. City Council member Peter Brown has 5.2% support, and Harris County Board of Education member Roy Morales has the backing of 2.8% of likely voters.

To learn more about Annise Parker and how you can be a part of her groundbreaking campaign, go here.

The following is a guest commentary by Sen. Matt McCoy of Iowa.

As an openly gay legislator, I’ve never been more proud of my state than when the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in favor of the freedom to marry this April.  Iowa is a special place, with a history of civil rights leadership and common sense values.

Last year, my fellow fair-minded legislators and I were able to stop four successive attempts to undermine the unanimous decision by the Court.  Legislative leadership in both the Iowa Senate and the Iowa House threw their full support behind the ruling, even asking what took so long.  With support from allies like the Victory Fund and One Iowa, we successfully framed the debate in the weeks after the decision.

Still, I knew it was only a matter of time before big money out-of-state extremists set their sights on Iowa.  This week the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) started flooding rural Iowa with nearly $90,000 worth of ads trying to scare Iowans into voting for an anti-gay legislative candidate.

This is not an isolated effort, but an organized and well-funded assault on civil marriage equality across the country. The same extremists that bankrolled ballot initiative efforts in Maine and California are now spending money to buy an election in Iowa.

NOM refers to their “Reclaim Iowa” campaign as a “targeted intervention” into Iowa politics.  Who exactly is it that plans to “reclaim” my state?  I doubt these divisive ads are being funded by Iowans.  More likely, they are funded by out-of-state extremists in an attempt to overturn Iowa’s marriage laws.

Perhaps the most troubling part of this is that NOM has not been forthcoming about the source of their funds.  NOM has a history of funneling money into anti-gay measures across the country, while promising to keep their donors hidden.

I hope you agree with me that Iowans deserve to know who is influencing their elections.  NOM has made clear this is only the beginning of their foray into Iowa politics.  We can expect a renewed effort in the 2010 election by anti-equality legislators who seek to amend the Iowa Constitution.  In return for their support, NOM is prepared to spend huge sums of money to elect hostile legislators in 2010.

Please take a moment to sign One Iowa’s petition calling on NOM to disclose who is funding their anti-gay campaigns in Iowa and across the country.

It will take a national effort to protect the freedom to marry in Iowa and across the country. Thank you for your continued support.

Courtesy of 365gay, this story profiles the work of Congress’ first openly transgender person to work as a senior staff member on the Hill.  Diego Sanchez was hired by Barney Frank, who faced criticism from the transgender community about his effort to pass ENDA in 2007.  Sanchez has made passing an trans-inclusive ENDA his top priority.

Sanchez is a longtime activist who worked for the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts and was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention last year before joining Frank’s staff. Back in 2007, he was among a minority of transgender activists who accepted Frank’s tactical decision to drop gender identity from that version of ENDA.

“He’s called on the entire community since then to lobby, work – and the community has said, ‘OK, we’ve got one game plan, and it’s Barney,’” Sanchez said. “There’s broader support this time.”

Eight openly gay and lesbian candidates earned the endorsement of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund in August.  A total of 76 openly LGBT candidates have been endorsed by the Victory Fund so far this year.  The newly-endorsed candidates are:

Simone Bell–Georgia House of Representatives

Fred Chang–Port Orchard, Wash. City Council

David Cicilline—Mayor, Providence, Rhode Island

Daniel Dromm–New York City Council

Rosie Mendez—New York City Council

Eric Morrow–East Point, Ga. City Council

Ken Reeves–Cambridge, Mass. City Council

Amaad Rivera—Springfield, Mass. City Council

A map of all currently endorsed Victory Fund candidates is available here.

In 2002, Richard Madaleno became the first openly gay person elected to the Maryland General Assembly.  Write’s Madeleno in today’s Washington Post:

It was important to me to be straightforward about who I was while not being pigeonholed as “the gay guy.” I immersed myself in my role as a public servant, focused on my constituents and worked hard. As time passed, people began to see me as “the budget guy,” or as an advocate for education, addiction treatment or developmental disability programs, or simply as Rich. My colleagues also came to know my husband, Mark.

Madaleno and his husband are registered to receive the few domestic partnership benefits provided under state law currently, but he’s seeking the more than 400 state benefits offered only to legally married couples.

This year and last, with 52 of my colleagues, I introduced legislation to allow people to enter into civil marriage contracts regardless of gender. Unfortunately, this bill has yet to appear on a voting list in either chamber. This legislative inertia doesn’t have to be the end of the story, as I will explain in a moment. But, at a personal level, it has caused me to rethink this basic aspect of my public service: Until more legislators are willing to stand with me, there is no question that I must speak on behalf of my family and the thousands like us. As Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Truth ….. must be clothed with flesh and blood, or it cannot tell its whole story.”

Madaleno has introduced the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act.  Read the full op-ed here.