HRC skewers the liars at the National Organization for Marriage

This video should be required viewing:



Hat tip to Jeremy Hooper

Willow Palin's anti-gay controversy and other Wednesday midday news briefs

Willow Palin: Can see homophobic slurs from her house - Personally I could care less about Willow Palin. But I'm still rooting for a moose to chase her mother up a tree on that reality show. Hey, I'm not being mean. I said chase her up a tree. I didn't say I wished that the moose would catch her.

Sen. Levin to hold hearings on Pentagon's 'Don't ask, don't tell' report - This ought to be interesting.

Here’s the Student Editorial a Minnesota Catholic High School Felt the Need to Censor - Yet again the children are stepping out and up in spite of efforts to shut them down.

Breast Cancer Scare for Rosie O'Donnell - Send shout outs and prayers to to Rosie.

Twitter by Dan Choi comes across as a immature and not intelligent leadership

The above twitter was sent by Dan Choi, one of the leading lgbt activist fighting for the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and it has sent shockwaves throughout the lgbt community.

Some, frustrated by the seemingly nonexistent movement on DADT, have defended Choi. Others have called Choi out, saying his post was shrill and totally without thought.

I can't help but be in the latter camp.

That's not to say that I don't respect Choi and all he has done to bring attention to the awful policy of DADT. But unlike some in the community, I don't think that anything which will bring attention to our cause for equality is a good thing.

And I have to ask something which one of my colleagues brought up. Yes Obama needs to have pressure, but what about the rest of Congress? Sen. Carl Levin is talking about removing DADT from the Defense Authorization Bill.  Sen. John McCain has been moving the goal posts in terms of what needs to be done for him to not stand against repealing DADT.

In the fight against DADT, there has been too much anger centered on one person (the president) when there
should be more anger and more pressure centered around various others in the Senate.

Furthermore, so many lgbts like to cite the African-American civil rights movement as a standard bearer for what is being done now. But they tend to forget that every march, every speech, every statement put out then was the result of careful thought in terms of how this action will further the cause of equality.

And therein lies my problem with Choi's statement. For the record, I don't think Obama is the worst President ever in any regard. But that's besides the point.

Choi's statement comes across as desperate and shrill. It's less of a statement by a man who is a leader in the cause for equality and more of a statement akin to a child throwing a tantrum.

In the short term, he may be articulating the frustration that many lgbts have, but lgbts articulating rage and frustration are a dime a dozen.  A quick look at comments on facebook proves that point.

What we need is intelligent planning, careful strategy, and above all, perserverance in the face of those who will not yield. 

Choi's statement does nothing positive for lgbt equality. In fact, it reduces the integrity of our movement and paints us unfairly yet again as a people who are quick with the ugly words but slow with the measured intelligent action.

Anti-gay 'historian' David Barton demonstrates how the religious right distorts the truth, then plays the victim

David Barton (Glen Beck's favorite historian) is claiming that he is being picked on by "hypersensitive" gays and the folks at MSNBC.

If there's a group in America that is hypersensitive, it is homosexuals. I mean, they got a short fuse on everything. You're a homophobe, you're a whatever and anything you say or do, they interpret as coming after them.

And so they really have a short fuse and a great example is, remember back a few weeks ago we had Pastor Hutcherson on and remember that article he did in Townhall and WorldNetDaily - "Transexual, Transgender, and Transfast" - and he's talking about how the government thinks it should regulate that bad for our health, well it needs to read its own website and look what it says about homosexuality and how bad that is for health and yet they encourage that, they don't regulate it.

Well I now found out that we have a number of people who listen to "Wallbuilders Live" who I didn't know about: Alan Colmes and Keith Olbermann and MSNBC and all these folks. Because when we said that, they came after me in unbelievable ways.

MSNBC called and they had me posted on the front page and they were doing programs on what I said - I'm repeating Hutcherson, you know, I'm just reading an article. But it was so funny. They wanted me to come on NBC and appear on ... but I didn't want to talk to their twelve viewers so I left that.

 It's obvious that Barton's rendition of recent history is as bad as his rendition of old history.

For the record, the radio show he alluded to was where he did repeat Hutcherson's column (written in August by the way), making all sorts of inaccurate claims regarding the lgbt community as proof that "gay sex" should be "regulated." Barton used the piece to claim that if the government did not do this, then the country would eventually be destroyed.

Sen. John McCain sacrifices the last bit of his integrity to defeat DADT repeal Parts 1 & 2

Fast from quelling an uprising in his own household over his efforts to stop the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal, Sen. John McCain seems to be finding himself besieged with a voice he can't easily quiet like that of his wife, Cindy.

His own.

From Rachel Maddow comes this excellent smackdown:



And if that's not bad enough, The Daily Show is getting in on this Four Horseman style asswhipping:

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Sen. McCain, you know you deserve it. Whenever you leave the Senate, you will leave with your integrity highly diminished.

Porno Pete LaBarbera: Watch out for gay TSA agents! and other Tuesday midday news briefs

LaBarbera Worries Gay TSA Agents Are "Secretly Getting Turned On" At Airports - That's right. TSA scanners is a homosexual plot to feel up straight men.

School Bullying Policies Stir Gay Rights Debate - It's a debate that needs to take place. And we need to be as vocal as all get out to get our point across.

Social Conservatives Spar With Tea Party, Gay GOP Groups - The religious right vs. the tea partiers. And I hope neither one wins this war.

World Bank Won’t Decertify Abusive Faux Charity PFOX - This is a hot mess.

Freshman GOPer: Hey, Where's My Health Care? - Not necessarily an lgbt issue per se but funny nonetheless. A tea partier who won his election campaigning against Obama's health care bill whines about his Congressional healthcare taking a month to kick in. Talk about kicking in your inner Dolemite pimp (where's my healthcare, bitch!)

Massachusetts hate group angry at teachers who shared coming out experiences

From that "bastion of Christian fairness," the American Family Association's One News Now, comes this item:

A pro-family group is outraged that a high school in Massachusetts allowed an event on campus at which seven teachers spoke about how they "came out" as homosexuals.

Brian Camenker, president of MassResistance!, tells OneNewsNow a concerned mother first alerted his group of the panel discussion that took place at Concord-Carlisle High School in late October during which seven teachers shared their "coming out" stories and encouraged the reported standing-only audience to do the same.

"They also said that if kids want to discuss their homosexual issues, that their parents will not be informed of anything -- that it's completely private," Camenker reports. "And this was one of the things that really bothered this mother, that...if kids are involved with a dangerous and deadly behavior, the school isn't even going to tell their parents that it's going on."

The entire tone of the article, of which Camenker is the only source by the way, gives an impression of innocent students being "indoctrinated" by a supposed gay agenda.

Of course the truth of the panel discussion is slightly different than Camenker would have us to believe. From the Massachusetts publication The Carlisle Mosquito comes a more detailed version of the panel discussion:

Acknowledging recent national reports of the high-risk for suicide among gay teens, a panel of seven teachers agreed to come forward and talk about their personal experiences at a meeting held at the Concord-Carlisle high school (CCHS) on Friday, October 21. The gathering in the Little Theatre was standing room only. The event was hosted by Spectrum, the gay-straight alliance organization at the school.

Spectrum, with about 12 members of all sexual orientations, meets weekly at the high school on Wednesday afternoons. The teens discuss current events and questions about sexual orientation, gender identity and being an ally. The group was founded in 1992, as a response to Governor William Weld’s Safe Schools initiative aimed at helping lesbian, gay and bi-sexual teens. Spectrum has sponsored film viewings, health-week programs and special events – such as this panel discussion – at the high school. Adult sponsors of the group include guidance counselor Kelli Kirstein and social studies teacher Ben Kendall – well known for his humor and who identified himself at the meeting as “mostly straight.”

The seven speakers included special educator Amelie Atwater-Rhodes, science teacher Brian Miller, English teacher John Woodnal, English teacher Shelley Hull, health and fitness educator Nancy Slocum, physics teacher Kevin Pennucci and math teacher Peter Atlas. Kendall introduced the panel, and said that they were seated from youngest to oldest. He noted that the panel members had agreed to share their personal stories about coming out as gay or lesbian to emphasize that their lives improved as a result. He limited each participant to five minutes, but the speakers – encouraged by applause from the audience after each individual talk – continued on for much longer. The event stretched to an hour and a half before the gathering broke up for pizza.

The bottom line is whereas Camenker (and One News Now) tries to push the inane notion that homosexuality was "marketed" to students by teachers, the truth of the matter is that these teachers, alarmed about the recent suicides amongst lgbt youth, decided to not only come out but also share their personal stories as a way of telling lgbt youth that (forgive me for saying something that has become a cliche, albeit a positive one) that "it will get better."

These teachers should be commended.

Camenker, on the other hand, should be looked at warily. And everything he says should be taken with the smallest grain of salt. You see, Camenker's group, Mass Resistance, is one of 14 official hate groups named so by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

According to the SPLC, these groups do not simply speak against homosexuality.

(They) have engaged in the crudest type of name-calling, describing homosexuals as "perverts" with "filthy habits" who seek to snatch the children of straight parents and "convert" them to gay sex. They have disseminated disparaging "facts" about gays that are simply untrue — assertions that are remarkably reminiscent of the way white intellectuals and scientists once wrote about the "bestial" black man and his supposedly threatening sexuality.

In the case of Camenker and Mass Resistance, this includes:

Manufacturing a phony panic about "schools teaching children about homosexuality,"

Claiming in 2005 on Comedy Central's Daily Show that if given time, he would be able to connect gay marriage in Massachusetts to the "reduction" of the quality of life in the state, a spike in homelessness rates, or and a lowering the quality of the air in the state, or

Making a claim in 2006 that "gays were trying to get legislation passed to allow sex with animals" in Massachusetts.

Continuing a vindictive campaign of misinformation against the transgendered community (whom the organization refers to as "men in dresses) .

Most recently, the organization was key in manufacturing inaccurate claims about Obama appointee Kevin Jennings in an attempt to get him dismissed. The watchdog site Media Matters published a list of the lies Camenker and Mass Resistance spread about Jennings.

In one post, Media Matters goes on to say:

  . . .conservative commentator Dean Barnett has stated that the organization "verges on being a hate group." Camenker himself reportedly denied that gays and lesbians were targeted during the Holocaust and has compared the gay rights movement to the Nazis.

If I were a parent, I wouldn't have any problem with my child attending that panel discussion with the lgbt teachers. But I wouldn't let my child get anywhere near Camenker. I wouldn't want that hatred to rub off.