Memorializing a man regularly referred to as a “giant” is a nearly impossible task. But nothing says more to me about the character of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy than the way he stood with the LGBT community at the outset of the AIDS epidemic. 

When Kennedy took over the chairmanship of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in 1987, our nation’s political elite had all but ignored AIDS for the bulk of the decade. In the intervening years between July 1981, when The New York Times ran its first article on the disease, and June 1987, when Ronald Reagan gave his first speech on the subject, more than 20,000 people had already died of AIDS in the United States.

Kennedy made AIDS a top priority in the Health committee, helped to secure $1.2 million in funding for AIDS research in 1988, and introduced and ultimately passed what became known as the Ryan White CARE Act, the largest federal program to provide critical medical treatment for people living with AIDS. 

But Kennedy’s contributions were as notable for what he blocked as for what he passed.

“What people don't understand unless they were there during the darkest days in the '80s,” recalls LGBT activist David Mixner, “is that he stopped amendment after amendment proposed by [North Carolina senator] Jesse Helms -- some of the most draconian, hateful amendments imaginable.”

From measures that would have criminalized health care workers who knew they were HIV-positive and failed to tell their patients before surgery to allowing doctors to test patients for HIV without consent to criminalizing blood donations from HIV-positive people, Ted Kennedy was there to slay them all.

“One thing I have to say, we talk about how Clinton let us down on DOMA and ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ and now we're eight months into Obama and we haven’t gotten jack from him -- Ted Kennedy never let us down. Ever!” says Mixner. 

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An upcoming documentary about Playboy founder Hugh Hefner reveals information about his earlier years, including his early advocacy for gay inclusiveness.

When Esquire rejected a science-fiction short story by Charles Beaumont that depicted a world where heterosexuals were in the minority, Hefner accepted the piece and published it in a 1955 edition of Playboy, then still a relatively new publication.

After letters of outrage at Beaumont's "The Crooked Man" poured in, Hefner addressed readers. "If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society," he wrote in response, "then the reverse was wrong, too."

Even now, the twice-divorced 83-year-old entrepreneur, famous for his numerous romantic exploits over the years, tells The Daily Beast that gay marriage isn't hurting anyone.

"Without question, love in its various permutations is what we need more of in this world," he said. "The idea that the concept of marriage will be sullied by same-sex marriage is ridiculous. Heterosexuals haven't been doing that well at it on their own."

The documentary, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

Utah governor Gary Herbert (pictured) said on Thursday that he does not believe sexual orientation should be a protected class from discrimination in the way race, gender, and religion are, reports the Associated Press.

"We don't have to have a rule for everybody to do the right thing. We ought to just do the right thing because it's the right thing to do and we don't have to have a law that punishes us if we don't," said Herbert at a KUED news conference, according to the AP.

Herbert, a Republican who served as lieutenant governor to Jon Huntsman, took over this month after Huntsman left to take an appointed position as U.S. ambassador to China.

Last year, Huntsman supported a package of legislative proposals, which did not pass, to protect LGBT people from discrimination. He also expressed support for same-sex civil unions.

Herbert appears to hold a different attitude. He said that naming sexual orientation as a protected class against discrimination would put Utah on a “slippery slope” and burden the government with “minutiae.”

"Where do you stop? I mean, that's the problem going down that slippery road. Pretty soon we're going to have a special law for blue-eyed blonds ... or people who are losing their hair a little bit," Herbert said, according to the AP. "There's some support for about anything we put out there. I'm just saying we end up getting bogged down sometimes with the minutiae of things that government has really no role to be involved in."

Despite his statements, Herbert declined to commit to a position on a Salt Lake City ordinance likely to be adopted that would ban discrimination against LGBT people in employment and housing. Republicans in the state legislature have suggested they may attempt to block the ordinance.