Today is the anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death
NC Pastor Charles “Concentration Camp” Worley avoids the press
After his inflammatory remarks saying gays and lesbians should be put behind electrified fences until they die out, Pastor Charles Worley is avoiding any contact with the press or addressing his remarks.
Nine year old takes on Westboro Baptist bigots
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When nine-year-old Josef Miles spotted members of Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church doing their hate-mongering thing on the Washburn University campus in Topeka, he asked his mother, Patty Akrouche, if he could stage a small counter-protest to their message of intolerance.
With just a pencil and small notebook in hand, Josef took on the bigots with a succinct yet poignant proclamation: “God Hates No One.”
Let’s hear it for the boy! Winner winner winner!
(source)
Chris Matthews plays ‘hardball’ with Tony Perkins
LGBT activists have been waiting for this day for a long time. Finally someone confronts Tony Perkins on his anti-gay rhetoric and doesn’t stand down.
Congressman Barney Frank and Chris Matthews do not let Tony Perkins “off the hook” here.
The only show I can honestly say I don’t miss is HARDBALL with Chris Matthews. I think he’s smart, fair and experienced. I like him and I like his clarity.
Loved seeing this happen. Tony Perkins throws out phrases like “the social science doesn’t conclusively show…”
Blah, blah, blah… it’s all his own lies because there are enough people in the world that IF they hear something enough, then they believe it must be true.
One point I have to make here: Perkins says over and over again that social science shows children do better with a mother and a father as opposed to two mothers or two fathers – and he’s wrong. At the Prop 8 trial, over and over experts testified that studies show children of lesbian or gay couples develop and achieve just as well as the children of heterosexual couples. Tony Perkins’ “social science” is made up of the lies he WANTS to believe.
Enough Mr. Perkins. Enough.
North Carolina passes Amendment One, writes discrimination into state constitution
North Carolina has voted to constitutionally prohibit any domestic union other than a marriage between a man and a woman, the AP reports.
In doing so, voters have also banned civil unions and stripped same-sex couples of domestic partnership benefits. Voters have eliminated health care, prescription drug coverage and other benefits for public employees and children receiving benefits through domestic partnerships.
With a little over 43 percent of precincts reporting, support for the amendment was strong- with about 61 percent of North Carolina voters casting their ballots in favor of the amendment, and roughly 39 percent voting against it.
North Carolina is now the 30th state with a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
TV: The Loving Story
Filmmaker Nancy Buirski uses never-before-seen footage, photos, and present day interview to create an utterly fascinating, bittersweet documentary about Mildred and Richard Loving, a mixed-race couple who were legally married in Washington D.C. in 1958 but were arrested in their home state of Virginia and convicted of the felony crime of miscegenation.
The parallels between the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia and the fight for marriage equality today are undeniable. Forced to flee their home state of Virginia and live in exile in Washington, D.C . — or risk being arrested again for having violated the state’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 — Mildred and Richard Loving, a mixed-race couple, took the only route they could find to get back home: through the courts.
Buirski leaves it to viewers to draw parallels to today’s battle to legalize gay marriage in the U.S., but they’re unmistakable.
“The Loving Story” premieres on HBO February 14.
Sign of the day
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JC Penney stands by Ellen Degeneres – rebuffs hate group
Via GLAAD: Last week, retail giant J.C. Penney announced a new partnership with America’s favorite talk-show host, Ellen DeGeneres.
“We share the same fundamental values as Ellen,” noted the company’s President, Michael Francis. “At jcpenney, we couldn’t think of a better partner to help us put the fun back into the retail experience.”
Now, however, the anti-gay group “OneMillionMoms.com, a project of the American Family Association” – an organization designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) – has launched a campaign demanding that the retailer fire Ellen simply because she’s gay. According to SPLC, “hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”
“DeGeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store,” says the group.
But a majority of Americans disagree. Today, more people than ever celebrate the love of every family – gay or straight – and know that no person should be ridiculed, much less fired, simply for being who they are. Even today, Americans can be fired in 29 states for being gay and in 34 states for being transgender.
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Among her many accolades, Ellen received the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Daytime TV Host earlier this month. She has also served as a spokesperson for American Express and Cover Girl, among others.
Sen. Stacey Campfield asked to leave Knoxville restaurant
The internet is buzzing today after news spread that Tennessee Sen. Stacey Campfield was asked to leave a Knoxville restaurant in response to inflammatory, anti-gay comments on the Michelangelo Signorile Show on Sirius XM Radio.
Campfield sponsored a bill that would bar teachers from discussing homosexuality in the classroom, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and he recently said in an interview that it is “virtually impossible” to contract HIV from heterosexual sex and that AIDS originated by a man having sex with a monkey.
Martha Boggs, the owner of Knoxville’s The Bistro at the Bijou, asked Campfield to leave after he tried to dine at her establishment.
Following the incident, Boggs posted a status on her restaurant’s Facebook page which read, “I hope that Stacy (sic) Campfield now knows what it feels like to be unfairly discriminated against.”
Metropulse reports that Boggs later clarified her actions in an interview. “I didn’t want his hate in my restaurant,” she said. “I told him he wasn’t welcome here. … I feel like he’s gone from being stupid to being dangerous, and I wanted to stand up to him.”
Martha Boggs called in to the Michelangelo Signorile Show to discuss exactly what happened in her restaurant. You can listen to the interview above.
Good for Martha Boggs for standing up to a bigot.
And whenever you’re in Knoxville, make sure you eat at her restaurant.
Sh*t Homophobic People Say
Bigotry
noun, plural -ries.
1. stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one’s own.
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, do the math…