And how do African-Americans feel about this 'birther' mess?

Granted, the media will probably never ask the African-American community how we feel about this birther mess, but I can safely say that this young man, Baratunde Thurston, pretty much sums it up not only for me but a wide majority of black folks:

Wanna piss off a birther? Check out this post

Please forgive me for getting distracted from lgbt issues for a quick second, but in honor of President Obama issuing his long-form birth certificate and officially becoming the first president to ever be racially profiled (oh come on, how many other presidents were put through this and they were white. I think we should have at least checked Nixon's birth certificate and DNA to see if he was part snake), I simply must repost this piece I ran a little while ago:






Related post:

Birtherism's 10 Most Embarrassing Moments

Historically black college to hold lgbt summit and other Wednesday midday news briefs

In Interview With Fischer, Fox Anchor Worries That Gay Couple In Glee Is "Product Placement" - Yep. That's how it happened with me. Or was it a Joan Crawford movie?

Spelman to host LGBT summit for black colleges - A historically black college holding lgbt summit. Awesome!

Mass. high court pick faces confirmation hearing - If confirmed, Barbara Lenk would be the first openly gay justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Sponsor Seeks To Revive Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill - And he is trying sooo hard too.

Church calls attention to its support of gays - Yes being gay IS a gift from God. Period.

Obama Birth Certificate Released By White House - In case you haven't heard.

National Organization for Marriage needs to get off of its phony cross

Brian Brown, president of NOM

The National Organization for Marriage says that it's going to investigate why the law firm handpicked by Speaker of the House John Boehner to defend DOMA decided not to take the case:

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a conservative organization fighting against the legalization of same-sex marriage, said Monday it would launch an "investigation" into the decision of the law firm King & Spalding to drop its defense of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

"We will convene a panel of legal experts and ethicists to determine if any rules of professional conduct have been violated, or if the firm has acted illegally in reaching their decision," NOM President Brian Brown said in a statement posted on their website. "We already know they have violated the moral imperative of acting in good faith and fair dealing. If our review concludes that the firm has violated any statutes or rules of professional conduct, we will initiate the appropriate disciplinary complaints."

Maggie Gallagher, chairwoman of NOM

At the same time, NOM is claiming that the lgbt community "bullied" the law firm into deciding not to take the case:

Same-sex marriage advocates have launched yet another campaign of cultural intimidation—pressuring the nation's top law firms in an attempt to silence and marginalize those who would stand for marriage and the Defense of Marriage Act.

If NOM really wanted to know the truth, they should read this very thorough article in the Huffington Post by Jennifer Bendery which points out that it was a combination of outside pressure and pressure from employees inside the firm (who were totally caught by surprise by the decision to defend DOMA) which led to the backtrack.

But who am I really kidding, really? NOM is simply exploiting this situation to get a moment in the spotlight and maybe even wrench some money from its gullible supporters (as if it doesn't get enough from mysterious money source which it fights tooth and nail not to reveal).

But here is the thing which bothers me.

For all of NOM's talk about intimidation, isn't this the same group which was part of a coalition that sent out a letter to 30 organizations during the Proposition 8 vote in California demanding that they support the effort to ban gay marriage in the state or "be outed as an opponent of traditional marriage"?

And didn't NOM spend over $235,000 on a recent campaign to recall three Iowa judges, not for any judicial malfeasance, but simply because those judges ruled against the state's defense of marriage act?

In terms of intimidation, NOM has written the book. Perhaps the group is upset because organizations whom it doesn't agree with are reading and editing that book?

Anti-gay hate group mad at Obama over no 'Easter Proclamation'

The American Family Association - named an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center - has come out with a new video attacking President Obama over what they call a disrespect of Easter, and by proxy, Christians:



In a statement, the AFA said the following:

This is consistent with other egregious examples of disregard for our Christian heritage on the president's part, such as omitting "Creator" from the Declaration of Independence, which he has done on at least three occasions.

The president has shown far more interest in promoting Islam than his own self-proclaimed Christian faith, the faith of our Founding Fathers.

The president has been devoted to issuing statements marking all major Muslim holidays, which are of no historical significance to the United States whatsoever. He has released statements in honor of Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Hajj and Eid-ul-Adha, holidays which most Americans cannot pronounce and certainly do not celebrate.

So apparently when they are not bashing lgbts, the AFA is practicing a bit of Islamophobia, i.e. making sure to exploit the ignorance of some Americans who see Obama as a Muslim (which translates to them as a threatening outsider determined to destroy the United States from within).

It's a cheap piece of junk from what is supposed to be a Christian organization. Steve Benen of The Washington Monthly point out:

The first is that the Obama White House didn't exactly ignore Easter. The First Family, for example, attended services yesterday. There's not only a big Easter Egg Roll for families at the White House today, but President Obama also hosted an Easter prayer breakfast last week, during which he told attendees the following:

"I wanted to host this breakfast for a simple reason -- because as busy as we are, as many tasks as pile up, during this season, we are reminded that there's something about the resurrection -- something about the resurrection of our savior, Jesus Christ, that puts everything else in perspective.

"We all live in the hustle and bustle of our work... But then comes Holy Week. The triumph of Palm Sunday. The humility of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. His slow march up that hill, and the pain and the scorn and the shame of the cross. And we're reminded that in that moment, he took on the sins of the world -- past, present and future -- and he extended to us that unfathomable gift of grace and salvation through his death and resurrection.

"In the words of the book Isaiah: "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."

Benen points out that Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Hajj, and Eid-ul-Adha didn't get that type of treatment.

Distorting science on Easter? For shame, Family Research Council

In a post this morning, I talked about a debate between the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins and Bernard Whitman of Faith in America. The two were debating on Fox News during Easter Sunday about an Arizona law which gives preferences in cases of adoption to married heterosexual couples.

My point was that Whitman bested Perkins in the debate by being aggressive and countering his talking point of "decades of studies favor homes with a mother and a father" with some facts of his own.

Now comes something new about this debate which may interest you. I alluded to the fact that Perkins addressed children in same-sex households by citing an Australian study (starting at 3:11) which supposedly said children do worse in same-sex households.

Perkins gave no background on the study. However, a facebook friend of mine, Christopher Mongeau, tracked down the study and discovered that it has been discredited by the American Psychological Association:

A study from Australia (Sarantakos, 1996) has been cited as demonstrating deficits among children raised by gay and lesbian parents in Australia compared to children raised by heterosexual couples. The anomalous results reported by this study--which contradict the accumulated body of research findings in this field--are attributable to idiosyncrasies in its sample and methodologies and are therefore not reliable. An expert reading of the Sarantakos article reveals that certain characteristics of its methodology and sample are highly likely to have skewed the results and rendered them an invalid indicator of the well-being of children raised by gay and lesbian parents in at least three respects:

1. The children raised by gay and lesbian parents experienced unusually high levels of extreme social ostracism and overt hostility from other children and parents, which probably accounted for the former's lower levels of interaction and social integration with peers (see pp. 25-26);

2. Nearly all indicators of the children's functioning were based on subjective reports by teachers, who, as noted repeatedly by the author, may have been biased (see pp. 24, 26, & 30); and

3. Most or all of the children being raised by gay and lesbian parents, but not the children being raised by heterosexual married parents, had experienced parental divorce, which is known to correlate with poor adjustment and academic performance.

Indeed, although the differences Sarantakos observed among the children are anomalous in the context of research on parents' sexual orientation, they are highly consistent with findings from studies of the effects of parental divorce on children (see, e.g., Amato, 2001, and Amato & Keith, 1991). Children Australia is a regional journal that is not widely known outside Australia. As such, it cannot be considered a source upon which one should rely for understanding the state of scientific knowledge in this field, particularly when the results contradict those that have been repeatedly replicated in studies published in better known scientific journals. In summary, the Sarantakos study does not undermine the consistent pattern of results reported in other empirical studies addressing this topic.

Now in all honesty, let me throw some caveats out. Maybe Perkins was talking about another study. Or perhaps Perkins was not aware of the problems with this study he cited.

But with the caveats, there is another thing which should be mentioned.

This isn't the first time Perkins has misrepresented legitimate science during debate. Last year on Hardball when he was debating the Southern Poverty Law Center's Mark Potok (on the charge that FRC is a hate group because it deliberately spreads distortions about the lgbt community), he misrepresented a study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior to make the false connection between homosexuality and pedophilia.

He also cited work from a religious right sham group, The American College of Pediatricians, to further back up this claim.

Hardball's host, Chris Matthews, later had to make a clarification regarding the American College of Pediatricians after emails and phone call complaints.

My grand point  - other than mock surprise that Perkins would have the temerity to lie on Easter Sunday - is to demonstrate yet again that Whitman won this debate. I know folks don't like to think about winners and losers when it comes to things like this, but to try and pretend that this isn't the case is a flight of fancy.

The battle over lgbt equality is a war between us and those who get paid handsomely to exploit the beliefs  and fears of Christians and other Americans regarding our community.

But then others have said Perkins won the debate because he was able to interrupt Whitman on some points. Unfortunately to some members of the lgbt community, a win over a religious right figure in a debate isn't a win unless that person is left in a quivering pool of sweat in the midst of a huge epiphany of how they have been wrong to demonize lgbts.

Folks, that ain't gonna happen. Perkins, Maggie Gallagher, Peter Sprigg, and the rest are media slick. They have been trained to be so. You are not going to shake them from their talking point so easily. But you can make what they say work for our side.

Whitman was able to do this not only because he was consistent and aggressive but, as you have read, he led Perkins to tell a sloppy lie which could work for us - that is if we as a community take the time and energy to publicly show it as yet another example of religious right distortion of legitimate science (God knows there have been so many).

To paraphrase the words of actor Peter O'Toole in The Lion in Winter, "to these aged eyes, that's what winning looks like."

Liberty University denies complicity in Miller kidnapping and other Tuesday midday news briefs

CA schools already teaching gay history - And I repeat - there isn't a thing wrong with that.

Liberty Counsel Asserts It Had Nothing To Do With Lisa Miller's Disappearance - I'm not saying a word. I will leave that to you.

Embarrassing Tennessee Senator’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Isn’t Enough! - I agree with this hilarious piece.

Republicans 4 Freedom:speaking for the rational wing of the party -- calls out the anti-gays - Good for them.