Video: "NOM's Assault on the Family'

From Rob Tisiani of Waking Up Now. Just watch:

H/T Alvin McEwen, who saw it on GoodAsYou.org. Jeremy says, "Maggie, you hurt people. You just do. Sorry. But you do. And you could stop. If you wanted. But you don't. Or at least won't." She won't. She's obsessed with hating gays. Read More...

Signorile on the 'outrageous hypocrisy' of the corporate media when it comes to naming who is gay

Mike has a post at Huffington noting that the San Francisco Chronicle decided to report that Judge Walker is gay because it was an "open secret." Over the past week, many in the right wing media have used that info. to attack Walker's Prop. 8 decision and the traditional media dutifully reported those attacks. Yet, there are many "open secrets" about gay politicians, many of whom are conservative and anti-gay. But, for some reason, that's off-limits:

But the outrageous hypocrisy here on the part of the corporate media -- and one that shows how they are manipulated by the right -- is the fact that, even with proof and evidence, news organizations refuse to report on the secretly gay sexual orientation of conservative, anti-gay politicians and public figures when the argument for their exposure is made from the left. When Kirby Dick's much-discussed documentary Outrage hit theaters in 2009, and later premiered on HBO (for which the film has now been nominated for an Emmy), many media organizations wouldn't report on the conservative Republican politicians who were claimed to be gay in the film, like Florida Governor Charlie Crist or California Congressman David Dreier, though there was a plethora of sources and witnesses in the film -- far beyond just "open secret" reporting.

The Washington Post noted in its review that it would not name names, and National Public Radio censored a review on its website. At the time, NPR's ombudsman Alicia Sheppard claimed in an interview on my Sirius XM radio program that reporting on public figures' undeclared sexual orientation was against NPR policy and vowed -- after I pointed out that this was hypocritical in light of others they have named in the past -- that she would police all future revelations on NPR.

Well, there was NPR last week, in an "All Things Considered" report, jumping on the bandwagon, like the Washington Post and others, reporting on Judge Walker as "openly gay" in the context of the criticisms against his ruling. The only difference was that this time the claims were coming from right-wing smear artists, whom the mainstream media are only too eager to accommodate.

There are still too many people in the media who operate like there's something wrong with being gay. And, they "protect" politicians -- and others in the media -- who are gay. It is outrageous hypocrisy. Read More...

Sharron Angle doesn't want money tainted by the gays, but she's been taking it anyway

Remember how we learned on Friday that Nevada's GOP/Teabagger Senate candidate Sharron Angle hated the gays so much that she didn't want campaign contributions from any entity with ties to from teh gay?

Yeah. Well guess who is taking money with gay ties? Yep. Sharron Angle.

Via Steve Freiss at the Daily Beast:

Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston, who first noticed and reported the response after it was overlooked in an Associated Press exclusive on the questionnaire itself, also noted on Friday that Angle had already received $5,000 from the Senate Majority Fund PAC that included funds from Intel.

In addition to that, however, Angle has accepted $5,000 from the Alamo PAC, Bluegrass Committee, Free & Strong America PAC, Rock City PAC, Tenn PAC and Senate Victory Fund PAC as well as $2,000 from the Hawkeye PAC. All of these, according to the Federal Election Commission’s website, received money from companies that include 3M, Abbott Laboratories, Amazon.Com, UPS and others. Some companies that gave to those PACs, such as Anheuser Busch and Pepsico, have created gay-specific advertising that has been placed in gay-targeted media as well.

There's more gay tainted money. Let's see if she gives it back. Read More...

Very conservative California paper on why marriage equality is inevitable

And why the judge was right to intervene. The San Diego Union-Tribune editorial:

But the public will, like the law, is an evolutionary thing; there is little doubt that, despite the passage of Proposition 8 two years ago, voter sentiment in California has been steadily moving toward greater acceptance of same-sex marriage.

The position of this editorial page has likewise been evolutionary, having moved from support for civil unions and opposition to gay marriage some years ago, to support for same-sex marriage and opposition to Proposition 8 in 2008.

We have also expressed serious reservations about achieving this societal evolution by court directive rather than the democratic process of legislative action or a public vote. But we recognize that the courts are also part of the democratic process of checks and balances and have on many, many occasions served as an important protector of the rights of minority citizens.

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Director of Nixon museum is gay, not Republican, and Canadian

Sort on an interesting side note. Read More...

When these young people 'tell,' the Obama admin. is doing the right thing and ignoring the law

Not gays, immigrants.

Someone ask Treasurer Andy Tobias over at the DNC why the Obama administration can ignore federal law, and let these kids stay, even when they've openly admitted that they're here "illegally" (we call that "telling" in civil rights vernacular), but when gay service members "tell" (and even when they don't tell at all), the Obama administration tells us they simply must follow the letter of the law and kick those soldiers out, lest we be perceived as a country of lawlessness. Why not let both stay? That would involve Obama actually keeping his promises to gays and immigrants.

And, these kids, the DREAM activists, aren't just telling. They're telling, among others, Obama and members of Congress. Check out this letter to Obama today from UCLA student David Cho. Watch his video, too. "Coming out" as undocumented sounds like "coming out" as gay. Or read Mohammad Abdollahi's letter to Obama, which Nick posted a couple weeks ago.

It's not like the Obama administration is keeping its promises to gays or immigration advocates. The Obama administration has deported more undocumented people than the Bush administration. And the President's promises to pass immigration reform - first last year, then this year - have gone about as far as his promise to repeal DOMA and pass ENDA.

But that leaves unanswered the issue of why Tobias, among other administration apologists, such as White House lobbyist Robert Raben, keep lecturing the gay community on how we have to accept the Obama administration's insistence on enforcing DOMA and DADT, and defending those bigoted laws in court, because the President simply has no choice - he must uphold the rule of law.

Except apparently he mustn't. And he doesn't. On a pretty regular basis. Except when it comes to our civil rights. Read More...

Ted Olson's impressive performance on FOX

Yesterday, a couple of the Sunday shows were actually kinda fun to watch. We've already posted the debate between David Boies and Tony Perkins. Boies demolished Perkins and his lies on CBS.

But, things even went well on FOX. It helped that the guest was Ted Olson who understands the ways of FOX. Igor Volsky posted the video of Olson's interview with Chris Wallace. Olson was very, very impressive. Wallace thought so, too. From Igor:

Throughout the interview, host Chris Wallace attempted to trip up his guest with a series of familiar Republican talking points, all of which Olson repudiated.

Wallace asked Olson to identify the right to same-sex marriage in the constitution and wondered why “seven million Californians” “don’t get to say that marriage is between a man and a woman.” Olson replied that the Supreme Court has ruled that marriage was a fundamental right and pointed out that the constitution made no explicit mention of interracial marriage either. He stressed that under our system of government, voters can’t deprive minority groups of their constitutionally guaranteed protections and reminded Wallace that in the 1960s, “Californians voted to change their constitution to say that you could discriminate on the basis of race in the sale of your home; the United States Supreme Court struck that down.”

When Wallace pressed the point further, likening same-sex marriage to abortion and noting that “the political process in the case of same-sex marriage was working” since states had been deciding the issue on a “state-by-state basis,” Olson asked Wallace how he would like it if Fox News’ right to free speech was decided in such a manner

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Here's a surprise: FRC's Tony Perkins lied on FTN yesterday

As David Boies said in the great video face-off Joe posted yesterday, of Boie vs. the Family Research Council's Perkins, the religious right simply lies. And they know that on TV they can get away with it, but when they did it in a court room, on the witness stand, they got stung.

One of their usual big lies, which the ironically fey religious right leader, Perkins, repeated on Face the Nation yesterday: That there's no evidence that gay parents are good for kids. First off, it's an interesting twist on an old argument, that belies how badly the religious right is doing. They used to say that the evidence showed straight parents were better, and gay parents were bad. Now that they've been caught in that lie, they claim that there isn't enough evidence showing gay parents are good. Only problem? Yes there is.

Media Matters has pulled together the quotes from the scientific organizations proving FRC's lie. Read More...