This viral gay marriage proposal happened in 2013, just two short years after the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." A gay military couple has reportedly never before been included in the Defense Secretary's holiday message for the troops.
 |
| Barber |
 |
| Rep. Scalise |
Twelve years before he was elected by his colleagues as House Majority Whip, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) spoke at a conference hosted by white supremacist group European-American Unity and Rights Organization.
Louisiana political blogger Lamar White Jr. dug up a number of posts on Stormfront, one of the original white supremacist websites, that place Scalise at the 2002 gathering. According to one user who attended the conference, Scalise -- then a state representative -- spoke to the organization at a workshop "to teach the most effective and up-to-date methods of civil rights and heritage related activism."
According to another Stormfront post, the National/International EURO Workshop on Civil Rights was held from May 17 to 18, 2002, at the Landmark/Best Western Hotel in Metairie, Louisiana. The conference was also listed on an Anti-Defamation League list of extremist events for that year.
. . . given the public’s general lack of familiarity with transgender people and their experiences, it hasn’t been hard to get voters more concerned with the prospect of wig-donning criminals sneaking into public bathrooms.
The myth has been used to attack all kinds of pro-LGBT protections -- city non-discrimination ordinances, federal employment law, and school diversity policies. It’s not unusual for anti-LGBT conservatives to simply rebrand broad non-discrimination laws as “bathroom bills” – phrasing that was unfortunately often adopted by news outlets.
That trend was strong in 2014, with conservative media outlets like Fox News regularly peddling “bathroom bill” talking points to attack non-discrimination laws like the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance.
But the “bathroom bill” horror story appears to have lost some of the weight it once carried. Houston, San Antonio, Miami-Dade County, Plano, Springfield, Missouri, and other cities all enacted non-discrimination laws protecting transgender people from discrimination in public accommodations. The Cleveland City Council is currently considering an ordinance that would explicitly repeal the bathroom exemption of its non-discrimination law -- a proposition that would have been dead in the water just a few years ago. Schools across the country have adopted policies allowing transgender students to use the locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity, and the Department of Education’s official recommendation for public schools is now in line with that position.
Recently, reflecting on the story of the birth of Christ, I realized something... When Jesus came into the world, it was with nothing. No money. They had to move to a new city. His father, Joseph, had to start a new business. They didn't even have a home to stay in as he came into our world. But the one thing God did give him — seemingly the one thing God thought His only begotten Son could NOT do without — was a loving mother and father to care for and protect Him. It underscores the foundational importance of the mission that NOM has undertaken – to defend marriage and work to ensure that every child in our society, as much as it is possible, enjoys the love of his mother and father. We are winding down our year-end, $200,000 matching gift campaign. To date we have raised almost $60,000 toward our goal. If you haven't yet made a gift that will be matched dollar-for-dollar, please prayerfully consider making a generous contribution of $35, $50, $100, $500, or even a major gift of $1,000 or more to help NOM close the year on firm financial footing so we can provide marriage with the best defense possible in this pivotal coming year. We tend to think of Christ magically moving from an infant to an adult, with only scant glimpses of him as a teen. But the reality is that in assuming the human form, Jesus experienced the unique contributions of a father and a mother in his life. For years, Jesus learned how to live, act, feel, work, care and love by absorbing the unique gifts of his father and his mother, who represent the two halves of humanity. The Holy Family is the perfect example for the human family — a man and a woman coming together in love for each other, and to provide the ideal environment for any children born of their union. That is what marriage is, and the story of Christmas perfectly models it for us.
Brian Brown of NOM
Michigan House and Senate adjourned without final passage of license to discriminate bills! #MiLeg #MiStareDown pic.twitter.com/uLjb1345rc
— Equality Michigan (@Equality_MI) December 19, 2014
The Justice Department will now interpret the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as protecting transgender government employees from discrimination, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Thursday.
In a memo, Holder wrote that the "best reading of Title VII's prohibition of sex discrimination is that it encompasses discrimination based on gender identity, including transgender status." Holder said that while Congress "may not have had such claims in mind when it enacted Title VII, the Supreme Court has made clear that Title VII must be interpreted according to its plain text."
In a statement, Holder called the move an “important shift" that "will ensure that the protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are extended to those who suffer discrimination based on gender identity, including transgender status."
FRC Senior Fellow for Policy Studies Peter Sprigg released the following statement:
"Parents are deeply concerned that giving a special status to transgender persons will lead to troubling situations for their children, and religious leaders are left unsure how this arbitrary new rule will affect hiring within their ministries. This is another example of the Obama administration circumventing the role of Congress in imposing its own radical re-interpretation of the law. It seems safe to assert that not a single member of Congress in 1964 would have believed that they were granting special rights to people who want to reject or change their biological sex.
 |
| Jindal |
Jindal has now been forced to personally address the issue, which he has predictably done by side-stepping criticism of the AFA's bigotry and instead accusing "the left" of attacking Christians:
"Let's be clear about what this is. This is an opportunity for people across denominational lines to come together to pray," Jindal said. "It's not a political event, it's a religious event." He said that while he respects the rights of protesters, religious groups have the right to express their beliefs and should not be barred from being able to hold the event on the LSU campus. A protest is planned while the event is taking place at the campus's Pete Maravich Assembly Center, and critics are urging LSU not to allow the prayer rally to happen. "Christians have the right to rent, to pay for a hall at a public university so they can come together and pray," Jindal told reporters at an economic development announcement in New Orleans. Asked if he agreed with the American Family Association's agenda, Jindal sidestepped that question and said, "The left likes to try to divide and attack Christians."
 |
| Jindal |
LSU students, faculty and other activists have come out against the event, called “The Response,” largely because it’s being paid for by the American Family Association, a controversial conservative religious group that opposes gay marriage and other lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights efforts. A protest has been planned in response to The Response, and a petition has gained hundreds of signatures in just a matter of days. The Southern Poverty Law Center has described the Tupelo, Mississippi-based AFA as “some of the most hateful anti-gay voices in America” and has classified the organization as a hate group.
Jennifer LeClaire - LeClaire is the editor of Charisma magazine, where she routinely warns that Halloween is demonically evil and that gay superheroes are corrupting your children's souls. She has repeatedly told gay athletes to stay in the closet and repent and warned that the fight for gay marriage is a Satanic plot to send people to Hell.
EW Jackson - a Religious Right activist and former GOP candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia who has asserted that the push for gay rights has killed more black men than the KKK and said that gay men and women are "perverted," "degenerate," and "frankly very sick people psychologically, mentally and emotionally." He has warned that gay marriage will lead to bestiality and said that there is a "direct connection" between homosexuality and pedophilia. The definition of marriage can never change, Jackson has declared, because "America was ordained by Almighty God."
Marchers voicing their opposition to #RFRA pic.twitter.com/sceDqSFuFP
— Progress Michigan (@ProgressMich) December 16, 2014
Michigan Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville expects a religious freedom bill, which would allow people the right to refuse service based on their faith, to die in the legislature without a vote, according to his spokesperson.“He does not expect the bill to come up for a vote in the senate before the end of the term,” said Richardville’s spokesperson, Amber McCann.
The state’s GOP-controlled house of representatives passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) along party lines on Dec. 4. The bill is now in the state senate, where Richardville, a Republican, sets the agenda. Michigan’s legislature session adjourns this month.
“He does not feel the need to rush any bill through for a vote,” McCann told BuzzFeed News. “RFRA is not a priority for Senator Richardville.”
Critics have dubbed the measure the “right-to-discriminate bill,” arguing it would grant people sweeping discretion to discriminate against any sect of society they choose on religious grounds.
Greg Quinlan, PFOX’s conspiratorial and extremist spokesman, defended the billboard in an interview today with the far-right outlet WorldNetDaily, insisting that that his group just wants gay people to know that “the truth that homosexuality is destructive to someone.”
“The billboard speaks to the scientific fact that to quote the American Psychiatric Association, ‘there still remains no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality,’” Quinlan told WND. “There is zero evidence that a person is born a homosexual. In fact, Dr. Francis Collins of the human genome project with the National Institute of Health, who was appointed by President Clinton to do the project said homosexuality was “not hard-wired.’”
 |
| PFOX's inaccurate billboard highlights the organization's willingness to lie. |
The billboard appeared recently beside I-95 in Richmond, Virginia, according to NBC affiliate WWBT. The sign depicts two males, one dressed in a suit and the other in a white T-shirt, and says: "Identical twins: One gay. One not. We believe twin research studies show nobody is born gay."
“PFOX’s billboard underscores the groups scientific illiteracy and shows that ‘ex-gay’ activism is about demagoguery and marketing, rather that truth and results,” said Besen. “In reality, twin studies prove that there is a genetic link to sexual orientation. It is stunning that PFOX would pay for a billboard to showcase its ignorance and incompetence.”
. . . anti-gay activists consistently distort research. They point to twin studies and say, “if homosexuality was truly genetic, the concordance rate for identical twins would be 100-percent.” Scientists say that this is a gross misunderstanding of the research. According to Dr. Eric Vilain, Professor of Human Genetics, Pediatrics and Urology at UCLA, and the Director of the Institute for Society and Genetics:
“All sorts of traits that are clearly genetic do not show 100% concordance [in twins]. I’ll give you examples, if people look at obesity. Or autism, looking at twins. There is undeniably, no one will even challenge that there is a genetic cause for both obesity and autism.The twin studies do not show that it is 100% genetic. They just demonstrate that there is a genetic influence. There could be other influences on sexual orientation. Some of them might be environmental. For instance, the older brother effect [studies showing the more older brothers a boy has, the more likely he is to be gay] is an environmental influence. That’s what has happened in the past, in the same womb seems to influence the sexual orientation of future pregnancies. So, it is certainly not an all or nothing phenomenon.”