'Gays are waging a 'jihad?' Who knew?' & other Friday midday news briefs

Ted Cruz: Gay Community Waging 'Jihad' Against Religious Freedom - We are? I failed to get that memo. Well that's ONE anti-gay Republican candidate for president . . . 

Santorum Says He'll Be A Strong Leader Because He Backed Gay Sex Bans - And when Santorum declares that he is running (cause you know he will), that will be TWO anti-gay Republican candidates for president.

 What The Religious Right Envisions As An Endgame After Losing The Fight Against LGBT Equality - And they will be two of the many reasons why the lgbt community and our allies can't start celebrating any victory. Regardless of how SCOTUS rules on marriage equality, the fight for total LGBT equality will be far from over.

 In SCOTUS brief, Idaho's GOP gov. claims marriage equality brings 'long-term harms to same-sex couples, their children, and society' - Speaking of which, here is another faulty SCOTUS brief just chock full of discredited junk by the folks who don't want marriage equality to become legal. 

 The absolute and abject humiliation of anti-gay activist Paul Cameron - a lesson for all anti-gay activists - Repeating this morning's post. Hopefully this will be the ultimate fate of many an anti-lgbt activist (or am I being too mean for wishing this?)  

Florida House Overwhelmingly Passes Religious ‘License To Discriminate’ Adoption Bill - And these folks aren't being the least bit shy as to why they passed this awful thing. Hopefully it will fail in the Senate.  

Obama applauds LGBT advocate during Jamaica speech - Go, President Obama!!

The absolute and abject humiliation of anti-gay activist Paul Cameron - a lesson for all anti-gay activists

In the 1980s, 90s, and even in the early years of this century, anti-gay activist Paul Cameron was the go-to guy for all sorts of anti-gay "research."

During that time, he was quoted in countless magazines, newspapers, and appeared on quite a few national programs such as Geraldo and Donahue. Even though organizations such as the Family Research Council and the American Family Association, probably knew that he had been discredited and exposed (by organizations such as the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association) for his faulty research techniques and wild generalizations about the lgbt community, they still cited his research  or distorted other research in order to justify his negative theories about the lgbt community.

But these days, things are different.Cameron's long record of shoddy work and lies against the lgbt community have made him somewhat of a pariah and a laughing stock.

While "true believers" such as Bryan Fischer, Peter LaBarbera, or Gordon Klingenschmitt have no problem with interviewing him or citing him by name, the more sophisticated anti-gay groups, such as the National Organization for Marriage, avoid him like the proverbial plague that he is.

Not that Cameron minds in any way, shape, or form. He still goes on whatever show will have him while pushing the same nauseatingly homophobic generalizations which made him popular over 30 years ago.

And based upon the above clip above, I mean any show. It is from January of this year on a radio  talk show called The Doghouse with host JV and Elvis.

'Mike Huckabee support group teaming up with anti-gay hate group for SCOTUS brief' & other Thursday midday news briefs

Mike Huckabee has questions to answer about a 'support group.'

In SCOTUS brief, Mike Huckabee support group insists homosexuality is 'significant public health risk' - The Family Research Institute is an SPLC-designated anti-gay hate group. This is mostly because its founder and head, Paul Cameron has been kicked out of or censured by several medical groups over the years, including the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association, for the blatantly hideous methodologies he uses to smear the lgbt community.  Among other things, Cameron claims that:

• Lesbians are more likely to die in car wrecks,

• Gay men molest children at a high rate and are more likely to be serial killers,

• Gay men stuff gerbils up their rectums,

• Gays and lesbians in the military are more likely to rape their heterosexual counterparts.

So why is a Mike Huckabee "support group" teaming up with this group to submit a brief  to SCOTUS against marriage equality?  It's definitely yet another thing to put on the list to ask Huckabee should he start again with the "intolerant, radical gay" lie. Or better yet, if he should run for president.

In other news:

Catholic students stage walkout to protest school’s refusal to hire gay teacher - I do LOVE the next generation.

White House supports bans on ‘ex-gay’ conversion therapy - This was announced last night. Isn't it awesome? 

Why Don’t We Have a National Ban on ‘Ex-Gay’ Therapy Yet? - Just in case you wondered . . . 

Sorry, GOP: Most Americans Support Gay People Over Businesses That Use Religion To Discriminate - And of course some people are trying to spin that poll another way.

 LGBT, Trans Organizations Call On News Networks To Improve Transgender Coverage - YES they should!

James Dobson, other anti-gay activists scared out of their skins about 50-state marriage equality

James Dobson

From People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch comes proof that the anti-gay right is panicking over the possibility of the Supreme Court ruling for marriage equality later this year.

James Dobson, the founder of the Religious Right behemoth Focus on the Family, warned in a recent conference call with fellow anti-gay activists (Editor's note - according to Right Wing Watch, this call included Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, Rick Scarborough of Vision America and Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality) that a Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality could lead to a full-blown civil war. After Janet Porter, the creator of a new “documentary” about how the gay rights movement will outlaw Christianity, discussed her “restraining order” campaign to convince Congress to strip the Supreme Court of its authority to rule on marriage cases, Dobson said that his fellow activists “need to be realistic about what we’re up against here.”

It gets even better as Dobson goes through a one-man rambling, hand-wringing spiel, divulging all sorts of good information about the supposed fear of Congress to tackle the marriage equality issue and who is opposed to the idea of calling for a "constitutional convention" should marriage equality become legal via SCOTUS.



Basically what we are seeing here is a man who helped to orchestrate the 2004 backlash against marriage equality (a backlash which got Bush re-elected) bearing witness to the possible collapse of all of his efforts. It's sort of like that Greek play, Oedipus the King, in which the main character Oedipus realizes that the actions he took to prevent a situation actually caused the situation to take place

One wonders if Dobson has any shred of introspection to realize that his massive efforts to stamp out marriage equality in 2004 actually helped the issue to become more prominent and worth fighting for by the lgbt community.

I doubt it. Most anti-gay activists are totally incapable of introspection, They are so busy pointing out the faults of others or engaging in fear mongering that they don't have time to examine their own faults or fears.

What happens when you tell a stranger that you are transgender?

From Buzzfeed comes an interesting video on what happens when you tell a stranger that you are transgender:



Some in the comments section have pointed out that transgender men can be seen to be more accepted than transgender women. Certainly that is a belief which we need to have more debate about. But still, this is a very interesting video.

News brief special - Anti-gay right caught lying about 'bakeries' & love of 'religious freedom'

Dear Tony Perkins, a BAD liar is of use to no one.

Editor's note - We all know that the anti-gay right are being highly deceptive when they whine about how marriage equality and lgbt equality in general will harm 'religious freedom.' As luck would have it, two present incidents not only call attention to how they use deception to push this idea, but also begs the question just how much do they believe in 'religious freedom' in the first place. The following news briefs illustrate my point:

1. The first incident has to do with a Colorado bakery being found not guilty by the the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies of violating a potential customer's rights by refusing to put anti-gay messages on a cake. The bakery still served the potential customer and offered to sell him the equipment so he could put the message on the cake.

Now in the eyes of the anti-gay right, this is equivalent of not serving a customer for being an lgbt, a so-called right of 'religious freedom':

The "Religious Freedom" Case That Wasn't -- Right-Wing Media's Slippery Slope Argument Debunked - But as shown by Media Matters, that idea is a false equivalency. 

Cake Wars the Sequel - HOWEVER, this doesn't prevent those on the right, such as the fake news site, Breitbart and anti-gay personalities like Todd Starnes and the so-called Alliance Defending Freedom from exploiting the case via a false narrative. In the eyes of these folks, repetition is a wonderful substitute for truth.  

Stop. Lying. Tony. Perkins. - And of course where would this false narrative be without Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council? The lie he pushed in this tweet is simply SAD. Are you slipping, Tony. 

2. Now the second incident is rather simple. For all of their talk about protecting the 'religious freedom' of folks who believe that homosexuality is a sin, one wonders how does the anti-gay right feel about protecting the 'religious freedom' of those who do NOT think that homosexuality is a sin? 

Does one have to ask?: 

 Perkins: LGBT-Affirming Christians Committing 'Heresy' - Heresy? I haven't heard that word since last week when I watched the documentary on why Mary Tudor of England had over 280 people burned at the stake. Apparently they were "committing heresy."  

Barber & Staver: Baptist College President Must Be Fired For Allowing Lesbian Pastor To Speak On Campus - The only "religious freedom" Matt Barber and Mat Staver believe in is for their beliefs. Sad.

The entire point of today's news briefs is this - We have to do more. I get constantly frustrated because it seems that the lgbt community waits for the anti-gay right to define the narrative. And when they are being blatantly hypocritical, we don't capitalize on it.

The only reason why the anti-gay right gets away with a lot of the stuff they do is because we let them.  It's not enough to KNOW that the anti-gay right is lying or being deceptive. We have to let people know. We have to aggressively educate people on what's really going on in this so-called culture war.

Lgbt activist Michelangelo Signorile on 'victory blindness' and why the fight for lgbt equality isn't over

Michelangelo Signorile

"Victory blindness is something we all succumb to at times. It's a term I use to describe the phenomenon in which we focus on the wins, so starved for validation, that we allow them to blind us to the continued bigotry we face. We become enthralled, intoxicated -- spellbound by even a little bit. The effect is that it obscures our reality -- literally our vision -- and it makes us lose our gumption, not wanting to rock the boat, fearful that we'll lose what we've gained and not get what little bit we think we need, when in fact we need a lot and we should be strong and confident knowing our allies will stay with us. In that chapter I use a vivid example, in a section titled "A Story of Victory Blindness," in which too many activists, claiming that we'd gotten a lot and had a banner couple of years, asked us to accept a situation that validated bigotry and urged us to be "magnanimous," fearful that the right would portray us as going too far -- but in fact this only allowed the backlash to grow because we seemed disjointed and that made us seem weak. We were and are still hated and despised by many -- despite having so many allies now -- and we have no rights in most states nor federal protections. So this is victory blindness, and it can have the terrible effect of actually allowing the backlash to grow because it telegraphs that we will back down." - LGBT activist Michelangelo Signorile on why the lgbt community must not rest on our laurels if the Supreme Court rules in our favor on marriage equality later this year.

 Signorile is promoting his excellently versed new book, , It's Not Over: Getting Beyond Tolerance, Defeating Homophobia, and Winning True Equality, which is officially out today.