FRC's Tony Perkins: Gay kids know they are 'abnormal,' that's why they kill themselves

This is the man the Washington Post, incredibly, gave space for an op ed on bullying.  The same man who for years has promoted the "Nazi" science of a known "hate group."  You now know all you need to know about America's religious right.

And no Tony, gay kids kill themselves because of people like you. Read More......

White House threatens gay orgs before key DADT meeting - don't mention DADT ct cases or meeting is over

So much for that "charm offensive." I guess in the Obama administration, threatening your allies is about as charming as it gets.

Kerry Eleveld at the Advocate has obtained a White House email to gay organizations participating in today's high-level DADT summit at the White House.  The summit was hastily called as part of the White House's larger "charm offensive" to woo the left pre next week's elections.

In the email, the White House liaison to the gay community, Brian Bond, outright threatened our key national organizations that if any of them dare mention the DADT court cases - the ones the Obama administration keeps defending and appealing, even though they don't have to - the White House will immediately end the meeting.

Charming. Read More......

Colorado's GOP/Teabagger Senate candidate links being gay and alcoholism

There was a lot of gay-related news coming from today's "Meet the Press."

Remember how we kept hearing that teabaggers don't really care about social issues? Not quite.

The latest anti-gay attack comes from Colorado's teabagger Senate candidate, Ken Buck. He was on "Meet the Press" today and espoused his belief that being gay is a choice. Apparently, that's because "you can choose who your partner is." And, somehow, he managed to bring alcoholism into his explanation. Not kidding. The Wonk Room got the video:

Buck's answers to the gay questions warrant the headline in the article about today's debate in the Denver Post:
"Buck's remarks on homosexuality loom after Meet the Press debate"

It's not a choice. And, Buck gets added to the growing list of teabaggers who are unabashed homophobes -- along with Paladino, Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell.

If you live in Colorado, please don't let your friends and family vote for this homophobe. Elect Michael Bennet. This is a close race and Buck's homophobia should hurt him. Pollster.com shows Buck leading 48.2% - 44.1%. Nate Silver's model has the projected results favoring Buck: 49.8 - 47.5. But, it looks like Bennet is moving in the right direction. Read More......

Pres. Palin is going to look to Obama for guidance on whether she should be evil? Seriously?

From AMERICAblog Gay:

There's increased chatter, as the spies would say, from the Obama administration and from administration apologists about the notion that the President simply has to appeal our DADT & DOMA victories in court lest a future Republican president refuse to appeal legal challenges to Obama's health care reform bill or the Hate Crimes bill.

The President's near fanatical desire for "bipartisanship at all costs" is by now legendary. He seriously seems to believe that by giving something to the GOP for nothing, the Republicans will at some future date return the favor. And, not surprising to anyone born before yesterday, they never do. But he keeps trying. He keeps scaling back his promises, keeps caving on key legislative provisions at the drop of a hat, keeps putting conservative Ds and Rs in charge of his major policy priorities, from health care reform to the budget deficit, and keeps ceding more and more power to his Secretary of Defense on DADT, as though Robert Gates were the boss of Barack Obama - all in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, one of these opponents will be nice to him since he was nice to them.

But it hasn't worked out very well because life doesn't work that way, at least not in Washington, DC. The Republicans are never "nice" to Democrats because Democrats ceded ground first. To a Republican, you didn't give them a peace offering, you conveyed weakness. How many campaign promises does he have to self-sabotage before the President understands that the goody-two-shoes school of political diplomacy simply doesn't work in this town?

The notion that President Sarah Palin is going to look to Barack Obama for guidance on what to do on health care reform is laughable. And the notion that any Republican is going to give a damn about Obama's positions on gay rights when deciding whether to once again bash the gays is preposterous.

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Obama will appeal DOMA, i.e., he will defend anti-gay law he claimed was 'abhorrent' - but that was during the campaign when he supported the public option, opposed offshore drilling...

Brilliant way to motivate the base, only three weeks before a crucial election. Read More......

BREAKING: Federal judge orders Obama admin. to stop DADT discharges immediately. Will Obama comply, or side with the bigots?

A huge story.

A federal judge has just ordered the Obama administration to immediately cease all "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" discharges.

Will President Obama obey the rule of law, obey a federal judge, obey his conscience and his own political promises? Will he finally take this opportunity, dropped in his lap like manna from heaven, to end DADT as he promised repeatedly? Or will "lawyer Obama" find some absurdly convoluted, heartless, and esoteric legal reason to oppose the judge, appeal the ruling, to yet again break yet another political promise, and give DADT the chance to live yet another day?

Great presidents rise to the occasion. His decision will tell you what kind of president Barack Obama is.

More on AMERICAblog Gay. Read More......

Wash Post Post publishes anti-gay screed by man who promotes known hate group's anti-gay 'Nazi' science

Well isn't that embarrassing. The Washington Post's Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn just published an "opinion" piece - in its "faith" section, no less - by the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, a man whose anti-gay activist organization has for years been promoting the "Nazi" science (that's what the Southern Poverty Law Center calls it) of a known "hate group" that is listed alongside the Klan on the SPLC Web site. The group's Nazi science is about bashing gays. And what did the Post permit the "faith expert" to write about?  Anti-gay bullying.  Seriously.

Much more over at AMERICAblog Gay. Read More......

Now that several gay kids are dead, the Mormons arrive to rub salt in the wounds

Typical. Pathetic. Read More......

America's leading homophobe tries to distance herself from the recent rash of gay youth suicides

I could write something, but I'd rather quote Joe:

STFU, Maggie Gallagher. Read More......

Jane Hamsher on what anti-gay policies say to LGBT youth

Jane explained quite eloquently that anti-gay policies and rhetoric affect young LGBT people. And, she's right "The President should do whatever he can to stop that.":
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Rutgers freshman jumps off bridge after roommate secretly films him making out with guy, puts film on Twitter

A horrific story.

18 year old Tyler Clementi, a freshman at Rutgers University in New Jersey, reportedly jumped off a bridge to his death after his roommate secretly set up spy cameras in his dorm room, filmed him making out with another guy, and then posted the videos on Twitter.

The roommate also invited his Twitter followers to come watch Tyler, live, via hidden camera during a second date. The day after, Tyler announced on Facebook that he was going to kill himself, and shortly thereafter jumped off a bridge to his death.

NorthJersey.com has a timeline:

Sept. 1: Fall semester begins at Rutgers. Dharun Ravi and Tyler Clementi are roommates in Davidson dormitory on Busch Campus.

Sept. 19: Twitter feed from Ravi: “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with another dude. Yay.”

Sept. 21: Twitter feed from Ravi: “Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes, it’s happening again.”

Sept. 22, around 8 p.m.: Friends say Clementi sends a Facebook update: "Going to jump off the GW Bridge. Sorry."

Later that hour, Clementi commits suicide by jumping from the George Washington Bridge.

Not that it should matter, but Tyler was apparently a good kid, and an accomplished violinist:

Clementi was a member of the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra 2010-2011 season as a violinist. At the annual Ridgewood High School ceremony in June 2010, the senior won the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra Scholarship, the Orchestra Parents Association Award, and the National School Orchestra Award. He has been recognized by the Friends of Music that supports music in the Ridgewood public schools for his community activities.

Diane Wade, a violinist with the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra, sat next to Clementi and said he was one of the most gifted student players she had encountered in many years playing with the orchestra.

“He was so incredibly talented – I could not believe how good he was for such a young boy,” Wade said. “Such a nice kid all the way around…As a parent, he was the way you want your kids to be – polite, courteous, serious about the work he was doing and a hard worker.”

This is what it means to be gay in America in 2010. I think a lot of people who aren't gay, and even many who are, like to think that we're all rich and live in big welcoming cities where being gay is about as big a handicap as being left-handed. We say we want our civil rights, but I think a lot of people think we've got things pretty good, and behind closed doors, they probably call us whiners too.

And I'm sure our lives are pretty good, and just as good as straight people's, except for the part about not being able to get married, have children in many states, keep a job - oh yeah, and that nagging desire to kill ourselves because so many of us grew up thinking we were horrible people who would never be loved, or find love.

I think it's this kind of attitude that leads people to lecture us about "keeping the long view in mind" with regards to getting our civil rights.  I wrote in response, just yesterday, "to paraphrase Keynes, in the long view we're all dead."

Gay civil rights isn't a "social issue." It's our lives. A lot of us, myself included, grew up thinking we'd never see the age of 30 because we'd have to kill ourselves once people found out we were gay. A lot of people have no idea how hard it is to grow up being gay. To grow up thinking God made you wrong. Thinking you will never find love. Thinking your own family and friends will disown you once they know who you really are. And hearing the President of the United States - one of the "good" guys - say that you don't deserve the right to marry the person you love.

And when politicians make promises to us, break promises to us, then lecture us to "stop whining" because the other guy would hurt us even worse, it really hits a raw nerve. It suggests that they don't think our struggle is a struggle. They don't think it's as important as the "important" issues the country faces. It tells us that they think we're just another special interest, no different than the corporate lobbyist trying to get another tax break.

Until kids like Tyler Clementi stop killing themselves, we will continue to whine. We'll whine about bad politicians who try to pass legislation hurting us, and "good" politicians who say the right thing, but can't seem to find the time to fit our civil rights into their busy schedules.

We can't wait any longer. And we won't.

PS See Dan Savage's new YouTube channel "It Gets Better." It's an effort to stop gay youth from killing themselves, and something Dan started last week, before this latest suicide even happened.

Finally, someone set up a Facebook page in Tyler's memory.  Please stop by. Read More......

Congress.org deconstructs the DADT lobbying effort. And it ain't pretty.

From Congress.org, via AMERICAblog Gay:

Many activists involved in the issue say a large part of the blame goes to the Human Rights Campaign, the most well-funded and politically connected gay rights group in the country. They say it did not act quickly enough, did not spend enough money on the issue and failed to pressure Democratic leaders to take action before the elections.

"If you're solely riding on being a voice at the table and remaining at the table, eventually you're going to have to show us results," said Servicemembers Legal Defense Network spokesman Trevor Thomas, a former employee of the Human Rights Campaign. "I don't know how you're going to do that when we lose the House to the Republican leadership."

For its part, the leadership of the Human Rights Campaign maintains that it worked hard to repeal Don’t Ask Don't Tell and believes the policy could still be overturned by Congress in the coming months.

Joe has a lot more about this on AMERICAblog Gay. Read More......

Gay donations are down this election year

I can't say I'm surprised. When you're out of power, you can get away with running simply on how bad the other guy is. But when you're in power, you need to show how good you are too.

A lot of gay people aren't feeling very good about this President or this Congress. They'd both been warned a year and a half ago that the relationship was heading south, and the White House in particular didn't do much about it - and what they did do was pretty fairly botched (coming up with a weak-tea DADT compromise and then even not fighting for its passage).  To be fair, the Senate hasn't exactly been a badge of courage either (at least the House passed the DADT compromise, though it would be nice to see ENDA this year too).

It may be selfish.  But when it's your civil rights on the line - your right marry, to have a job, to have children, and to spend the rest of your life with the person you love - you have the right to be a little selfish. Read More......

Have you heard the one about the Democrat who said he'd keep his gay rights promises?

A snippet from a larger post I just wrote on AMERICAblog Gay.

President Obama promised us during the campaign that he would repeal DADT and DOMA, and pass ENDA. He's done nothing to advance the latter two, and on the former, he blew it off for over a year, finally came up with a crappy last-minute compromise, and then hardly lifted a finger to get it to passed. And it didn't.

At this point, anyone who tells you that they're going to pass the DADT compromise during the lame duck session (i.e., after the November election but before the new Congress gets seated in January), is either naive or simply lying to you. This Congress and this President wouldn't even hold a vote on the health care reform bill - the President's #1 campaign promise - after we lost Senator Kennedy's seat and before Scott Brown was seated. Do you honestly believe that Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress care more about passing gay rights legislation than they did about health care reform?

All three of Barack Obama's most important promises to the LGBT community - DADT, DOMA, ENDA - are now dead in the water, in large part due the White House's own malfeasance and neglect. And you're expected to wipe the tears, open your wallets, and once again go to polls and vote for the same people who weren't competent enough - who didn't care enough - to keep their promises to you the first time around.

That'll show them who's boss.

Read More......

Christine O'Donnell's long history with the 'Pray Away the Gay' movement

What else would you expect from a seemingly sex-obsessed Handmaiden? Looks like Christine O'Donnell has a long history of activism in the most obsessed of the sex-obsessed right wing — the Pray Away the Gay organizations.

Here's Rachel Maddow on O'Donnell's involvement with this Christian underbelly:



Note Rachel's point about O'Donnell being familiar to Movement insiders (3:30 in the clip). She's is a Movement professional with a 10-year history of activism, a person very much like Monica Goodling in her involvement.

She's committed, a lifer it seems; and one with apparent criminal tendencies (aren't they all). She's both a mirror and an inverse of Carrie Jean Prejean. All this story needs is a sex-tape, and you could bank it as complete.

O'Donnell is also another whom the gods appear to have made mad. That should be our lever if she wins.

GP Read More......

GOP filibusters Defense bill, while we're in 2 wars, then accuses Dems of playing politcs with national defense

They're good. John McCain has been politicizing the Defense bill for months in an effort to convince Arizona voters that he really is a conservative Republican. And now that we're a little more than a month away from the election, the entire GOP is trying to bring down the defense bill in order to score political points by hurting Latinos and gays. Incredibly, the Republicans are now claiming, after all that, that it's Democrats who are politicizing the Defense bill a month before the election.

More on AMERICAblog Gay. Read More......

DNC drops Obama's promise to repeal DOMA, fails to mention marriage, then gets all weasel-y on DADT repeal

WTF is wrong with these people? Read More......

Majority Leader Harry Reid is moving the Defense bill with DADT language

Joe just attended a press conference that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid held on the Hill to discuss the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" compromise legislation that is included in the Defense Bill. Here's Joe's video. You can read the rest of Joe's report here.

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Fierce indifference

An excerpt of a much larger piece I wrote over at AMERICAblog Gay:

With the imminent demise of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" compromise that did not, in any case, repeal DADT (even though the NYT and other lazy journalists like to claim it did), and the imminent demise of the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives, President Obama is about to have accomplished a record zero of his top promises to the gay community. A record that, if we lose the House, will likely remain at zero for the next six years, if the President is so lucky as to win re-election.

It's becoming increasingly clear that Barack Obama is not an agent of change. He's not out to fundamentally transform our government or our country, and he's never going to be anyone's fierce advocate. If gay voters want to hand their money and their ballots over to someone who won't keep his major promises, who won't significantly advance the cause of their civil rights, who will outright work against those promises as we attempt to advance our civil rights in courts of law, but who at least won't be as big a bigot as John McCain, then they are certainly welcome to support him with all their hearts and wallets. I for one am not feeling an overwhelming desire to donate another $1,000 to, or raise another $43,000 for, a candidate who promises me the moon and then seems almost embarrassed of me the morning after the election.

Perhaps it is naive. But I expect politicians to at least try to keep their major promises. I never said they have to succeed. But they have to at least TRY. Our fierce advocate seems fiercely indifferent. And I fear that an increasing number of Democratic voters now share his indifference.

Read More......

FBI (that would be Obama's FBI) concludes not a hate crime for two Marines to knock a gay guy unconscious for supposedly winking at them

Apparently the injury wasn't serious enough, the FBI and local police concluded. Mind you, they hit him in the head and knocked him unconscious. Not a serious injury. Read More......