Tag: anti-gay

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Donate to defeat anti-gay Amendment One in North Carolina

On September 13th, the North Carolina Legislature proposed an amendment to the Constitution that would ban legal recognition for all unmarried couples, strip protections and benefits from families across our state, hurt our business climate and economic development and put our children in danger.

The Coalition to Protect North Carolina Families is a coalition of groups, individuals and families dedicated to defeating this amendment at the polls on May 8 and protecting North Carolina from the harms it represents.

The Heritage Foundation, NOM and other anti-gay groups who fund these kinds of harmful amendments around the country are coming in with millions of dollars to try and misinform all of North Carolina about this amendment.

Protect All Families has launched a “moneybomb” to raise funds to help raise awareness and spread the truth about writing hate into the North Carolina constitution.

Please donate what you can to help Protect All Families by going here.

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US men arrested on Atlantis Cruise ship in Caribbean speak out

Two gay men from California have spoken about their ordeal that began onboard an Atlantis Cruise ship in the Caribbean:

The trouble began shortly after the cruise ship Celebrity Summit docked Wednesday morning at Dominica in the eastern Caribbean. Mayer and Hart were in their room when they got a call from a cruise ship official.

“We were summoned that the captain wished to speak to us,” Mayer said. “We were caught off guard.”

Three cruise ship officials and six Dominica police officers were waiting for them. After police interviewed both men separately, the assistant captain spoke, Mayer said.

“At this time, we are going to eject you from the ship. We have zero tolerance toward your behavior,” Mayer recalled him saying.

Police drove them to their headquarters, where they sat on a bench for nearly two hours without legal representation despite repeated requests, Mayer said.

After police took pictures and obtained fingerprints, a high-ranking officer began a nearly four-hour interrogation.

“He said: ‘You’re being arrested for being gay. We’re arresting you for the crime of buggery,’” Mayer said. “He said that other people said that we were engaging in homosexual sex. He repeated that several times. I told him I didn’t know why they would say that. I wasn’t doing that.”

Mayer said he was naked in his cabin and nearly naked on the balcony. “I was less partially clothed than I should have been.”

The two men were charged with indecent exposure and put in a five-by-eight-foot cell to await an appearance before a magistrate.

“The treatment was inhumane,” Mayer said. “We were detained for approximately 26 hours, and 19 of those locked in a cement cell, which had no running water, no toilet, no lights. It stunk of feces and urine. It was infested with cockroaches, ants and bugs.”

Mayer said police brought in government officials to look at them.

“They paraded many people by to look in on us as if we were some type of animal, which was quite humiliating,” he said. “People got great joy in the pleasure of taunting us.”

On Thursday morning, police drove them to the courthouse in the capital of Roseau, passing through an angry crowd, Mayer said.

“They were chanting and banging on the police vehicle. They were screaming things,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, other than in movies. Both my partner and I really feared for our safety.”

Once in the courtroom, Chief Magistrate Evaline Baptiste ordered the men to pay a nearly $900 fine after they pleaded guilty to indecent exposure. He called the two men “rogues and vagabonds.”

Police then drove them to the airport, Mayer said.

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Kirk Cameron still in damage control mode – blames Piers Morgan for asking questions

Kirk Cameron is worried his anti-gay comments will affect his new “movie” so he’s in damage control mode.

You may remember a couple of weeks ago he said on Piers Morgan’s show on CNN about homosexuality: “I think that it’s unnatural. I think that it’s detrimental and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization.”

His spin later was to say that that means he loves gay people and even has gay friends.

Now he’s giving interviews trying to clear the air.

On Fox News he said “I don’t change my feeling about the comments. What disheartens me (is that Piers Morgan took) “some answers, reduce[d] an important and personal and sensitive issue to a four-second sound bite and toss[ed] it into a community to start a political bonfire. [To] really upset people you’re saying you’re looking to protect…is disingenuous.”

What’s disingenuous is Kirk trying to say he blurted out a “four-second soundbite” when the discussion about the subject was actually almost three minutes. Kirk had plenty of time to be thoughtful and make his feelings clear. Which I think he did.  And Piers Morgan didn’t “toss” any sound bite out into a community.  Kirk said it – and the world heard.

Kirk also gave an interview to The Daily Beast where he said this:

“When my friend who came to me and said you’re the first person I’m telling this to, I’ve known you for 10 years, I’m gay. I could tell how difficult it was. It’s personal. It’s sensitive. It’s difficult. He was nervous what my reaction would be. I said, ‘Dude, you know me. I love you. There’s nothing you could ever tell me that would make me not love you and care about you.’ If Piers had asked me that: what do you think about homosexuals? What do you think about the gay community?”

On what he’d do if his son was gay:

“It does grieve me to think there are people misunderstanding my heart on an issue. If my kids came to me and said I’m gay, I’d say, ‘Son, I love you.’ That’s never at stake. Never, never, never at stake. We’ll talk and we’ll go through life together and we’ll work through our thoughts and feelings and we’ll come to what’s healthy. You’ll make your decisions and I’ll make mine.”

When Ramin Setoodeh asks about gay marriage, Cameron’s publicist interrupts: “I don’t mean to interrupt. I think we’ve gone enough into it. The gay marriage, I just want to stay away from it. It’s just so polarizing.”

And I think that says all you need to know. Kirk Cameron wants you know he loves gays, but let’s not talk about things that are “polarizing.”  He wants to give interviews hoping you’ll like him, but he can’t talk about the issue that started it all.

Got it.

UPDATE: After Kirk spent the day doing damage control, Piers Morgan tweeted an invitation to Kirk Cameron to come back on his show uncensored and discuss the gay issue.

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Dallas men beaten with bats after being perceived to be gay

Two Dallas men became the victims of an apparent anti-gay hate crime for their perceived sexual orientation when five men yelled homophobic slurs and attacked them with baseball bats, the Dallas Voice reported.

The police report says that while the victims were walking near an intersection around 2 a.m. a group of men called them “fags and sissy” from their car. After they verbally assaulted them, the five men got out of the car and attacked the two men with bats.

One of the victims was hit at least four times in the head and was knocked unconscious for a short time. The other man tried to defend himself but the suspects dragged him on the ground before he escaped.

Read more here.

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President Obama releases statement opposing anti-gay Amendment One in North Carolina

President Barack Obama today came out against the proposed constitutional amendment on North Carolina’s May 8th ballot banning same sex marriages and civil unions, weighing into a fight in a key battleground state.

His campaign issued a statement saying the amendment was discriminatory.

“While the president does not weigh in on every single ballot measure in every state, the record is clear that the President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same sex couples,” said Cameron French, his North Carolina campaign spokesman. “That’s what the North Carolina ballot initiative would do – it would single out and discriminate against committed gay and lesbian couples – and that’s why the President does not support it.”

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No Pride House at the 2014 Olympic Games in Russia

A Russian judge has ruled that the modern tradition of a Pride House in Olympic cities will not find a home at the 2014 games in Sochi. The judge determined that an inclusive spot welcoming international athletes would harm children and end Russia as we know it.

According to Gay Star News:

Plans for the Pride House were formulated by Russian gay activists following the 2010 Games in Vancouver, which featured a very successful Pride House.

But the dreams of repeating the success of Vancouver were scuppered last year when the Russian Ministry of Justice refused the registration of the NGO set-up to organize Pride House.

Pride House was first featured during the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010. And the Summer Olympics in London later this year is to have a Pride House too.

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Down Under: Homophobic campaign ad not going over well

Ugly politics happening down under as politician, Bob Katter, has begun running a nasty, anti-gay, homophobic ad. The ad is so disdainful that his gay half-brother has issued a rebuttal to the hate-inciting campaign ad.

The ad was meant to highlight the Liberal National Party leader’s personal support for gay marriage.

It was condemned as homophobic by gay and lesbian groups and the leaders of both major Queensland political parties.

It was also blamed for sparking a homophobic and racist graffiti attack on a Queensland minister’s office.

After speaking out against the commercial on Monday, Carl Katter – Bob Katter’s half brother – says he felt compelled to make a new advertisement with the activist group GetUp.

“It was sad, it was sick and I knew somebody had to respond,” he said in a statement.

Here is Carl Katter’s rebuttal:

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From GLAAD – Commentator Accountability Project

The GLAAD Commentator Accountability Project (CAP) aims to put critical information about frequent anti-gay interviewees into the hands of newsrooms, editors, hosts and reporters.

Journalists or producers who are on deadline often don’t have the time to dig into the histories of a commentator. Audiences need to be aware that when they’re not talking to the mainstream media, these voices are comparing the LGBT people to Nazi Germany, predicting that equal treatment of LGBT people will lead to the total collapse of society, and even making accusations of satanic influence.

The Commentator Accountability Project is bringing all of these statements to light, while calling attention to the sentiments behind them. We will show that the commentators who are most often asked to opine on issues like marriage equality or non-discrimination protections do not accurately represent the “other side” of those issues. They represent nothing but extreme animus towards the entire LGBT community.

Have you seen these anti-LGBT voices in your local media? Let GLAAD know today.

Below are just 9 of the many anti-LGBT leaders.  Click here for more info and a full list.

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Rosie O’Donnell on the homophobia of Kirk Cameron

Rosie O’Donnell calls Kirk Cameron out for his “unchristlike” shaming of gays.

Rosie says if homosexuality was unnatural to gay people, “we wouldn’t be gay.”

Cameron appeared on Piers Morgan’s CNN talk show and when asked his opinion of homosexuality, said it’s “unnatural.” He continued, saying, “I think that it’s detrimental, and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization.”

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Exposing Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council

MSNBC rejected this ad asking them to explain why they’ve invited Tony Perkins, a hate group leader who lies about LGBT people, onto their network 23 times in the past 16 months, more than any other network.

It’s a question 20,000 people of faith have demanded an answer to, but MSNBC has refused to answer and continues to give Perkins a national platform.

I watch MSNBC every day. And it has always confounded me that occasionally Tony Perkins pops up on the network. The Southern Poverty Law Center designated Perkins’ group – The Family Research Council – a hate group in 2010.

From the SPLC website: “In 2003, former Marine and Louisiana state representative Anthony Richard “Tony” Perkins became president of the FRC after a failed 2002 run for one of Louisiana’s U.S. Senate seats. Under his leadership, the group continues to peddle its false claims about homosexuality and has made combating the “homosexual agenda” a seemingly obsessive interest.”