City Paper’s Loose Lips columnist, Mike DeBonis, has the run-down on a D.C. gay marriage timeline:

In the Blade, Lou Chibbaro Jr. runs down some of the challenges facing a ballot referendum banning gay marriage in the District. They are many: For one, 21,000 signatures is a lot.

Meanwhile, in WaTimes, Gary Emerling examines how gay-marriage advocates are “re-evaluating their strategy.” Pretty much everybody says it’s all about timing. Emerling manages to get one minister on the record, the Rev. Derrick Harkins of Nineteenth Street Baptist, who says he doesn’t think a bill “would be met with great enthusiasm on the part of the African-American church.”

A group of ex-gays—people who claim they were once gay, but have turned straight—are now also claiming they’ve been snubbed by the D.C. Office of Human Rights, The Blade’s Lou Chibarro, Jr. reports:

Parents & Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays, a national group known as PFOX, last week announced it was “suing” the D.C. Office of Human Rights to overturn a decision that ex-gays do not belong to a protected category under the city’s Human Rights Act.

Well, that depends by what you mean by “suing.” According to Chibarro, “An office spokesperson called the PFOX announcement inaccurate, though, and noted the group filed a petition, not a lawsuit, before the D.C. Superior Court to appeal the 2005 decision.”

PFOX fired back, calling the petition “a lawsuit of sorts.”

The fake lawsuit “stems from a decision to dismiss a complaint that PFOX filed against the National Education Association,” which said that the NEA “discriminated against “ex-gays” as a class by denying a PFOX application to maintain an exhibit booth during a 2003 NEA convention.”