Home Depot feeds the American Family Association a big plate of crow

Last week, the American Family Association claimed that its boycott against Home Depot was successful.

AFA was boycotting the company because Home Depot has been very supportive of the lgbtq community, even publicly supporting pride events and providing booths for children during those events.

AFA claimed the following:

AFA spokesman, Randy Sharp says “We’re seeing some movement. It appears that the Home Depot is pulling back from their support of homosexual activism. Over the course of the last three years, we’ve seen a reduction in the number of gay pride events that they’re sponsoring and participating in. However, we want to be cautious.”

However, Samantha F. DeVaney, a representative of Home Depot, said that this was not true:

We have never changed our commitment to diversity and inclusion of all people, and we have no intention of doing so. Nor have we changed our apron policy or the guidelines for our Foundation?s charitable giving.

So today, AFA is now admitting that it was wrong about its Home Depot boycott:

American Family Association, which heads up a boycott against Home Depot, reported earlier this month that the national retailer appeared to be pulling back its support of homosexual activists, noting the home improvement chain participated in just four "gay pride" events in 2011 -- down from at least 16 such events in 2009 and 2010. Furthermore, AFA reported that Home Depot ordered its employees to stop wearing their orange aprons to homosexual-themed events.

But AFA's director of special projects, Randy Sharp, now says his organization spoke too soon. "Once we brought that to light, Home Depot made a public statement to everyone who contacted them and said [essentially] 'No, we haven't changed any policies. When it comes to homosexuality, homosexual marriage in our culture, we will continue to support it financially.

I hope that fried crow tastes good, Mr. Sharp

Washington State close to getting marriage equality, religious right getting fits

By now, everyone has heard the good news:

Washington's Legislature has enough votes to legalize gay marriage with a statement from Democratic Senator Mary Margaret Haugen Monday who said she will support the measure, becoming the 25th vote needed to pass the bill out of the Senate. The House already has enough support, and Gov. Chris Gregoire has endorsed the plan.

Haugen's announcement came has hundreds of people filled the capitol to advocate for and against gay marriage. State senators began considering the bill during a morning committee hearing.

In a statement, Haugen said, "I know this announcement makes me the so-called 25th vote, the vote that ensures passage. That's neither here nor there. If I were the first or the seventh or the 28th vote, my position would not be any different. I happen to be the 25th because I insisted on taking this much time to hear from my constituents and to sort it out for myself, to reconcile my religious beliefs with my beliefs as an American, as a legislator, and as a wife and mother who cannot deny to others the joys and benefits I enjoy."

And if and when this vote goes through, we know what will happen next. The National Organization for Marriage will push a referendum. And my guess is that the man in the following video will receive a star role:



That's Pastor Ken Hutcherson. And yes his testimony stank. And it was muted too. Based on past experiences, I was expecting more. Earlier this week, he compared the governor of Washington state to John Wilkes Booth, the murderer of President Abraham Lincoln, simply because she publicly supports marriage equality.


For many of us, Hutcherson will live in infamy due to a following comment during a sermon in 2008 castigating men he termed as "weak" or "effeminate:"

"God hates soft men" and "God hates effeminate men . . . If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I'd rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end." 

He later claimed that this is a joke, proving that his sense of humor is as lacking as his testimony in the video above.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that the process in Washington state ends in our favor. And also that not one of us holds the door open for Hutcherson.

'Wingnut claims that license plates can make children gay' and other Monday midday news briefs

MD police official: Transgender rights bill did not lead to rapes, assaults in public restrooms - Confirming something we all knew.

Ken Hutcherson likens Gov. Gregoire to President Lincoln’s Assassin - Great. One black pastor claims that gay men wears diapers, while another one is comparing a governor to Abraham Lincoln's assassin because she supports marriage equality. I swear if it weren't for the sexual coercion charges and the hypocrisy, Eddie Long would look like a saint compared to these two.
  
Gov. Christie Nominates Openly Gay Justice - I generally loathe Gov. Chris Christie, but sometimes he has a good head on his shoulders.

Indiana Wingnut Worried License Plate Will Make Kids Gay, Give Them AIDS - Oh for the love of . . . By the way, for you edification, the "wingnut" in question, Micah Clark, once bragged about citing the discredited work of junk scientist Paul Cameron during a hearing and sidestepping a legislator who quizzed him on it.
  
Ask NOM about its partnership with 'diaper pastor' Patrick Wooden - Lastly - and yes this is important - if you have not emailed or tweeted the National Organization for Marriage's cultural director Thomas Peters on why the organization is allying with the "diaper pastor" Patrick Wooden, please do so. The link gives an overview of the story and both his email and twitter address.

Ask NOM about its partnership with 'diaper pastor' Patrick Wooden

 Last week, North Carolina pastor Patrick Wooden shocked a lot of people with his blatantly inaccurate comments that gay men have so much sex that they require surgery and diapers.

But while folks either laughed, rolled their eyes, or gagged in disgust, it's important that we all don't miss an important connection here.

Wooden is one of the pastors who is teaming up with the National Organization for Marriage to pass that awful anti-family, anti-marriage equality amendment in North Carolina.

According to Brian Tashman of Right Wing Watch:

. . . Wooden is no fringe figure, and is actually one of the major spokesmen for the campaign to pass an amendment to North Carolina’s constitution outlawing same-sex marriage.

Wooden was “the main speaker for the rally organized by the conservative North Carolina Family Policy Council where he shared the stage with National Organization for Marriage president Brian Brown and Randy Wilson, the Family Research Council’s National Field Director. He also spoke at a press conference alongside Republican House Speaker Pro Tem Dale Folwell and Kevin Daniels of the right-wing Frederick Douglass Foundation in support of the bill, and Wooden is spearheading outreach to African American voters on behalf of Vote for Marriage NC the umbrella group led by NOM, the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, NC Values Coalition and the Christian Action League.

Wooden is not NOM's only questionable alliance. Presently the organization is teaming up with the Minnesota Family Council in that state to pass an anti-marriage equality amendment. MFC was discovered to have material on its webpage accusing the gay community of pedophilia, bestiality, and the consuming of bodily wastes.

NOM did not issue a comment about this controversy, yet the organization is always quick to claim that those who share its beliefs are being unfairly labeled as bigots.

So one wonders where does NOM stand on Wooden's words regarding gay men and diapers.

I sent the following letter to Thomas Peters, NOM's cultural director. It reads as follows:

Dear Mr. Peters,

Your organization, the National Organization for Marriage, claims that it simply wants to protect marriage and that those who share your view that "marriage is the union between one man and one woman" are in danger of being unfairly labeled as "bigots."

However, one has to ask the question that if you do not want the label of  "bigot," then why does your organization team up with those who slander the gay community, such as Patrick Wooden of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, NC. In a recent interview, Mr. Wooden said the following about gay men:

The God of the Bible made the human sperm, the God of the Bible designed it and it was not designed to be emptied into an area that is filled with feces, there is nothing for it to germinate with, it will most certainly mean the extinction of the human race. My belief is that if the medical community would just step forward and just would share with the American people what happens to the male anus, the problems that homosexuals have with their rectums, the damage that is done, the operations that are needed to sew up their bodies if you will, and how many of the men don’t even give these stitches time to heal before they are back out there practicing that wicked behavior. Some are bleeders, men who are not turned off by ingesting the feces of other men.

Now while Mr. Wooden does assert that it is his personal opinion, as I understand it, he is teaming up with your organization in an effort to pass an anti-marriage equality amendment in North Carolina. Furthermore, he did share the stage at a rally last year with NOM's president, Brian Brown and he is spearheading outreach to African American voters on behalf of Vote for Marriage NC the umbrella group led by your organization, the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, NC Values Coalition and the Christian Action League.

My question is where does NOM stand on Mr. Wooden's comments. Do you reject them and will you continue to work with him in your campaign to pass this amendment?

Respectfully yours,

Alvin McEwen
Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
charlekenghis@aol.com

Mr. Peters' email address is tpeters@nationformarriage.org and you can twitter him on @AmericanPapist

Please feel free to email him and ask him where does NOM stand on Wooden's comments. And above all, DO NOT BE RUDE. Regardless of how you feel about NOM, this is a serious issue and should not be approached with frivolity or anger.

If you twitter him, simply ask "Where does NOM stand on P. Wooden's diaper comments?"

Feel free to share whatever email or twitter message you may have sent.

NOM wants Newt to 'save' marriage? Hilarity ensues

Of all the stories spinning about Newt Gingrich's victory in the SC Republican primary, the strangest has to be the congratulations he received from the National Organization for Marriage. From the NOM president Brian Brown, courtesy of the organization's blog:

It is now clear that the Republican Party will nominate a candidate who is strongly committed to preserving marriage as the union of one man and one woman," Brown said. "We have succeeded in making the preservation of marriage a key issue in this race, and we will continue to do so throughout the primary season, and into the general election against President Obama."

NOM is dancing in the streets because Gingrich was one of the candidates to sign it's silly "Marriage Pledge."

However, NOM seems to omit the simple fact  that Newt Gingrich is a man with sordid history of marriage rivaling that of Henry VIII of England.

In all honesty, it is not known whether or not NOM has commented on Gingrich's three marriages or the interesting stories coming from those three marriages such as:

He cheated on his first wife with his then second wife.

He cheated on his second wife with his now third wife. And this was going on while he was pursuing the impeachment of Bill Clinton chiefly because of indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky?

He also allegedly wanted an open marriage with his second wife because he felt that there was " more than enough Newt" to go around.

And I won't even mention the ugliness about the divorce proceedings during the cancer of his first wife.

The fact that NOM wraps its homophobic talons around Gingrich regardless of his controversial marital history speaks to the further lack of integrity of the organization's message. And makes one wonder does NOM really want to preserve marriage or keep it away from those allegedly "dirty homosexuals" regardless of assurances by former NOM head Maggie Gallagher that NOM is not interested in being anti-gay?

I mean come on. Are gays and lesbians really putting marriage in danger or does the danger truly lie with the fact that some folks - one who shall remain nameless - can't keep it in their pants.

It's obvious that if Gingrich is interested in, as NOM claims, preserving marriage as the union between one man and one woman, he seems to think that he is exempt from the rule.

And it's even more obvious that NOM's silence regarding his, shall we say, indiscretions is signalling that the organization is turning a blind eye to his past behavior.

I knew NOM was fake, highly hypocritical, and full of empty platitudes but DAMN!

Know Your LGBT History - Barbara Jordan

It's been said that had former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan (1936-1996) not become ill, former president Bill Clinton would have picked her to serve on the United States Supreme Court.


It would have been one hell of a pick:





Jordan was born in Houston’s Fifth Ward to Rev. Benjamin M. Jordan and Arlyne (Patton) Jordan.

Jordan attended Wheatley High School Houston, where one of the nation’s few African-American female attorneys, Edith S. Sampson, spoke and inspired Jordan to become a lawyer. This was a difficult ambition at the time, because only one law school in Texas admitted African-Americans.With the support of her father, Jordan graduated magna cum laude from Texas Southern University in 1956 and from Boston University Law School in 1959. She passed the bar exams in Massachusetts and Texas before returning to Houston to open a law practice, only the third African-American woman to be licensed in Texas.

Jordan campaigned for the Texas House of Representatives in 1962 and 1964.Her persistence won her a seat in the Texas Senate in 1966, becoming the first African American state senator since 1883 and the first black woman to serve in that body. Re-elected to a full term in the Texas Senate in 1968, she served until 1972. She was the first African-American female to serve as president pro tem of the state senate and served for one day as acting governor of Texas in 1972.

In 1972, she was elected to the United States House of Representatives, becoming the first black woman from a Southern state to serve in the House. She received extensive support from former President Lyndon Johnson, who helped her secure a position on the House Judiciary Committee. In 1974, she made an influential, televised speech before the House Judiciary Committee supporting the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

'Bigot says that gay men have lots and lots and LOTS of sex' and other Friday midday news briefs

Fischer: 'Poppers' and Promiscuity Cause AIDS - Don't let the headline fool you. Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association is saying that gay men have thousands of sexual partners. He claims that we admit this "in our own literature," but of course he doesn't say which literature. Now before you get angry - and you should - we should look at Fischer's claim scientifically. Now according to people like him, we are only one to three percent of the population. But yet also according to people like Fischer, we have thousands of sexual partners. Now there are only 365 days in a year which means that according to Fischer, a gay men has sex over three times a day with a different partner. It leaves me to ask the question where in the heck do we find the time to "indoctrinate children," "imprison Christians," and plot the general downfall of America? Answer - Bryan Fischer needs Jesus.

Jumping Beyond The Broom: Policy Priorities Outside Of Marriage Equality - A piece we ALLL need to read AND take into account. LGBTQs of color need more than marriage equality.

More Than 70 American Mayors Announce Coalition to Support Marriage Equality: FULL LIST, Statement - This is truly awesome.

Tony Perkins: Social Conservatives Are ‘Not Judgmental’ - And in other news, Elizabeth Taylor left me all of her diamonds in her will.

Lincy Pandithurai, Texas Nurse Practitioner Who Harassed Lesbian Veteran, Removed From Job - Sorry honey but you have to go. And I DARE anyone to defend what she did.