There was some unhappiness with my blog post over the weekend about the results in the Houston mayoral runoff election. The winner, city Controller Annise Parker, is openly gay, and Houston thus becomes the largest U.S. city ever to have a gay mayor.

Of course, just as there was more to Thurgood Marshall than simply being the first African-American on the Supreme Court, or with Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the court ... there is certainly more about Parker than simply her sexual orientation, and I wrote that. But there is history involved here, and I think it is worth mentioning, even though some people didn't like my focus.

The issue of gay politics is far bigger than the election of a new mayor in Houston. Same-sex marriage may become law in the nation's capitol, as the D.C. city council voted yesterday to ok the measure, which now goes to Congress for final approval. If foes of same-sex marriage fail to sway Congress during the 30-day review period, the District will become the sixth jurisdiction in the country to have that law in place ... joining Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts and (as of next month) New Hampshire.

But when the issue comes before the voters — as we saw last month in Maine, and before that, in California — it is always defeated. And state legislators who approved the measures in the aforementioned states could expect to see same-sex marriage emerge as a key issue in 2010.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is our focus for this week's Political Junkie segment on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

Plus, there's also Joe Lieberman and the health-care legislation pushing its way through the Senate. President Obama suggests bringing all the prisoners from Guantanamo to Illinois in exchange for Rod Blagojevich. Tiger Woods has been named the AP's Athlete of the Decade, and for good reason; he may be approaching Wilt Chamberlain's record. And I'll be reading all 22 million e-mails from the Bush era that have suddenly surfaced.

Join host Neal Conan and me every Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET for the Junkie segment on TOTN, where you can often, but not always, find interesting conversation, useless trivia questions and sparkling jokes. And you can win a Political Junkie T-shirt!

If you must, you can hear last week's program — which focused on Obama's Afghanistan policy and the response to it by the left — here.

If your local NPR station doesn't carry TOTN, you can hear the program on the Web or on HD Radio. And if you are a subscriber to XM/Sirius radio, you can find the show there as well (siriusly).

Tags: Heard On NPR