LGBT myths revealed and debunked

This video about the debunking of LGBT myths may either make you laugh or have you saying "no kidding!" However consider that the totality of our struggle for equality has been and currently is people with money and influence believing these lies or fooling an enormous amount of folks to believe these lies and then conflating them with their faith. The question becomes how do we combat that?

'Anti-gay archbishop resigns in disgrace' & other Monday midday news briefs

Anti-gay Archbishop Nienstedt just resigned in disgrace.

Southern Baptist Manual Offers Suggestions on How to Get Around LGBT Anti-Discrimination Laws - How about just obeying the law? One thing has never changed in this world. Those who claim the loudest to be on the side of the angels do so in order to divert attention away from their horns and tails. 

44,500 People, Including Two Presidential Candidates, Vow To Defy The Supreme Court On Marriage Equality - Y'all, perhaps you should wait for the court to rule before making such plans. It's not like the ruling (if it goes on the side of lgbts) will force you to marry someone gay. 

 Archbishop John Nienstedt, Deputy Resign After Archdiocese Of St. Paul and Minneapolis Charged With Sex Abuse Coverup - No happy karma here. Just sad truth. I know an archbishop who directed so much attention to stopping gay couples from getting married, that he may have failed to protect the children from monsters, like he was supposed to. 

 Rupert Murdoch: LGBT Advocacy In Clinton Speech "Almost Fascist" - Murdoch accuses Hilary Clinton of saying something she never said. Just in case where you wondered where Fox News gets it from, look towards its founder.  

Rick Santorum Interviewed By Gordon Klingenschmitt, Colorado's Premier Anti-Gay Demon-Hunting Legislator - And there was no spontaneous combustion involved. Darn.

Family Research Council's Peter Sprigg - Marriage equality IS segregation

Peter Sprigg

Loving Day is an annual celebration held on June 12 and it commemorates the day the Supreme Court struck down laws against interracial marriage via the Loving vs. Virginia ruling.

The lgbt community has taken this day and the Loving vs. Virginia ruling to heart because it gives us hope that anti-marriage equality laws will be defeated in the same manner.

However, leave it to the Family Research Council, and one of its spokespeople, Peter Sprigg, to attempt to claim that laws against interracial marriage and laws against marriage equality are different.

And Sprigg's attempt at doing so should leave you scratching your head or laughing your proverbial butt off.

In a column, What Loving Means, Sprigg goes through the history of Loving Vs. Virginia and then compares that to what he seems to think marriage equality entails. It's a boring, legalese-filled piece until this hilarious sequence of paragraphs (bold emphasis added by me):

The clear purpose of the bans on interracial marriage was to build walls between two groups of people in society, blacks and whites. Such laws were designed to reinforce a system of racial segregation, keeping the races apart from one another.

In contrast, defining marriage as the union of male and female has exactly the opposite intent and effect. Rather than building walls between two classes of people, it creates a bridge across the most fundamental gap in humanity -- the gap between male and female. Bridging the divide of the sexes by uniting men and women in marriage is common to all human civilizations, and serves the good of society.

Interracial marriage does not change the definition of marriage, and laws against interracial marriage had as their only purpose preserving a social system of racial segregation.

Homosexual "marriage," on the other hand, changes the fundamental definition of the institution, and would form at least three segregated forms of marriage: male-only unions, female-only unions, and opposite-sex unions.

In addition to  me saying "that don't make a lick of sense," allow me to go into short detail as to why. In his first statement, Sprigg is accurate. Bans on interracial marriage were to enforce a system of segregation. But that's the only thing Sprigg gets correct.

The problem lies with his sleight of hand. Defining marriage solely between man and a woman does have the same effect as banning interracial marriage, particularly because gay couples do exist and these couples have children. Keeping the rights and privileges of marriage away from them and their children does in fact reinforce a system of inequality designed by animus to tell gays that they are second class citizens. Neither Sprigg nor anyone else on his side of the argument has been able to prove that such animus does not exist

Furthermore, there is the simple fact that allowing gays to marry does not prevent the "uniting of men and women together." At no time does allowing gays to marry prevent heterosexuals from marrying each other.

Which of course means that Sprigg's claim that marriage equality would create "three segregated forms of marriage" is just plain stupid. More than that, Sprigg comes across as a high school student spinning odd theories in order to fulfill a quota of words in a class writing assignment.

If that were the case and I was Sprigg's high school teacher, I would give him an "F" for that paragraph alone.

Hopefully the Supreme Court will be as strict of a teacher to Sprigg and all of those on his side of the marriage equality spectrum who would try to pass his hokum as any degree of truth.
 

'Survey - People of faith oppose 'religious liberty' laws' & other Friday midday news briefs

This booklet breaks down anti-gay lies

What Religious People Actually Think About Using ‘Religious Liberty’ To Justify Anti-Gay Discrimination - I hate to sound like Sarah Palin, but the media is not doing this job to get this news out. To hear them tell it, the only religious folks are those white Christian evangelicals who are always spouting against lgbt equality. THIS article is what I'm talking about when I say "nuance." 

 Seoul’s Pride Events Are Off To A Pretty Terrible Start - This is NOT good. The lgbt community in Seoul have been outdone by the anti-gay opposition in a huge way. They would never be able to do that here, but still . . . 

Teen Sues School District In Potentially Key Federal Case For Transgender Restroom Rights - I hope he wins. He certainly has my admiration. 

 'Oranges, Baby Powder, Handcuffs And Duct Tape': Inside The Trial That May End The Gay 'Cure' - I still have my eyes on this trial. The repercussions could be sweet!  

How They See Us: Unmasking the Religious Right War on Gay America - shameless plug time. If you haven't downloaded this free booklet on anti-gay propaganda, please do so. This link will take directly to it for you to download, read, share, etc. Michelangelo Signorile said it best. This is NOT over regardless of whether or not the Supreme Court gives us 50-state marriage equality. As we saw yesterday in North Carolina and Michigan, the anti-gay right and their supporters have already planned for that outcome and we shouldn't ignore them. They have the money, influence, and intelligence to conflate religious belief with anti-gay lies and propaganda. This short, but definitive, booklet on anti-gay propaganda breaks it down in a way it should have been broken down a long time ago.

Ben Carson's 'black vs. gay' gambit backfires in his face

Leave it to wannabe presidential contender Ben Carson to begin the dreadful "black vs. gay" argument again by declaring that gay rights aren't the same as civil rights because there was no segregation against gays.

Of course that would be excluding these "religious freedom laws" which the religious right and their cohorts are pushing through the state legislatures.

But aside from that, Carson is conveniently forgetting the presence of lgbts of color during segregation. One day, I am going to find that spaceship which folks like Carson seem to think people like me were on during segregation and other pivotal moments in black history.

But for now, I will console myself by enjoying how the 'black vs. gay" gambit blew up in Carson's face when Brianna Keller of CNN challenges him on it:



Related column - The Erasure of 'Gay' From Black History and the Black Community Must Stop

Michigan now making it more difficult for gay couples to raise children via bad adoption laws

Michigan Gov. Snyder slaps gay taxpayers in the face with new laws.

If my lgbt brothers and sisters thought that this so-called culture war was nearing the end thanks to a possible Supreme Court ruling for marriage equality (which hasn't even happened yet), they got a wake up call today.

North Carolina's "religious liberty" law regarding magistrates is bad enough, but thanks to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, not only will children be potentially denied good homes, but the state's lgbt community just got a huge slap in the face.

Now it is legal for Michigan's adoption agencies to not only imply to the state's lgbt community that they are not worthy of having families and raising children, but these same  adoption agencies can receive lgbt tax dollars for the privilege:

Michigan's governor signed legislation on Thursday allowing private adoption agencies to refuse to place children with same-sex couples on religious grounds, one of a series of Republican-backed measures at the state level targeting gay couples. Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, signed three bills into law a day after Michigan's Republican-controlled Senate approved the measures that had been advanced by the state House of Representatives.

 . . . The Michigan bills that were signed into law let faith-based agencies that contract with Michigan refuse adoption services to couples on religious grounds. The legislation does not specifically mention gay couples, but is considered a version of religious freedom acts considered in a number of states to shield businesses that may refuse services to same-sex couples from discrimination lawsuits. Child placement agencies that decline services to couples will be required promptly to provide prospective adoptive parents a list of other adoption agencies willing and able to serve them.  One bill amended the state's child protection act and the others amended other laws to add language on refusing service.

Freedom Michigan, a coalition of business and other groups supporting gay rights, said the law will make it harder for the more than 13,000 children in the state's adoption and foster care system to find nurturing homes.

The ACLU is already considering challenging the laws in court:

ACLU attorney Brooke Tucker said the group is looking at ways to challenge of the law on constitutional grounds."The constitution doesn't allow discrimination based on religion and you can't do that with state funds," she said. "We're looking at our legal options and especially looking to hear from people who will be adversely affected by this."

This is NOT the last we hear about this in Michigan and, unfortunately, in other states. The signal has been given and I am sure that other states will be attempting to follow.

How long will it be before our lazy media creates the false narrative of the "backlash" to the progression of lgbt equality?

'Trouble for lgbts in North Carolina & Michigan' & other Thursday midday news briefs

House overrides magistrate same-sex marriage veto - A law which allows county magistrates a "religious excuse" to refuse to perform marriages for any couples (i.e. same sex couples) has become law after the legislature overrode the Governor's veto. Ugh! 

Michigan Lawmakers Pass Bills That Could Allow Adoption Agencies To Reject LGBT Families - And then there is THIS thing. Will the Governor sign it? Regardless, when Michelangelo Signorile once remarked that "it's not over," if folks didn't believe it then, they had better believe it now.

  Report Attacks African Nations' Justifications For Anti-Gay Laws - The same lies and junk science which once had IMMENSE power in America has a greater deal of power in Africa.  

Ben Carson: Gay Rights Aren't Civil Rights Because Gay People Don't Have Separate Water Fountains - Oh stop it already! The segregation was a symbol of inequality, just like the sodomy laws, and the pogroms against Jewish people. For a person who is supposed to be intelligent, Ben Carson is a serious dumbass.  

Right-Wing Pundits Rail Against Gay Military Leaders - So much for respecting those who fight for our freedoms. 

22 Stunning Same-Sex Wedding Photos That Are So Full Of Love - Let's end these abysmal set of news briefs with something happy.