Best News Bloopers Of 2012

Two Republican members of the U.S. House have announced their support for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal law that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

U.S. Rep. Charles Bass of New Hampshire on Thursday became the third GOP House member and the second within the past week to support the Respect for Marriage Act, legislation that would repeal DOMA. Bass’ support is largely symbolic, however, as on Nov. 6 he lost his re-election bid to Democrat Ann McLane Kuster.

Reps. Charles Bass (left) and Richard Hanna.

Last week, U.S. Rep. Richard Hanna, a first-term incumbent from upstate New York, also announced his co-sponsorship of the bill in a statement provided to The Advocate.

The 9 Wildest Things Fox News Said In 2012

Episcopal Church Break-Up Over Gay Clergy Leads To Colossal Legal Battle

A schism in the Episcopal Church over gay clergy has lead to one of the largest church-property disputes in U.S. history.

The Texas Supreme Court will decide who owns more than 50 Fort Worth-area churches, since the Fort Worth Episcopal diocese is no longer affiliated with the mother church. (The regional group left over the ordination of openly gay New Hampshire bishop Gene Robinson and other “liberal” moves.)

Conservative Bishop Jack Iker, who led the schism five years ago, claims his diocese holds the deeds to all church properties, which are valued at more than $100,000. But the national church filed a lawsuit in 2009, claiming the breakaway group couldn’t just take the land and buildings with it. 

A district judge had originally given Iker 30 days to turn over the deeds to the national church, but that order was put on hold as the Fort Worth sect files an appeal.

The War on Christmas

America's Best Christian, Mrs. Betty Bowers, FoxNews' embedded reporter in the War on Christmas, is back from the battlefield: A local mall.

Katy Perry Rejected Antigay Rhetoric And Became an Ally

Pop singer Katy Perry accepted an award for being an ally for LGBT youth from The Trevor Project in Los Angeles during the organization's annual gala, Trevor Live.

In the video, she describes how her own thoughts about the LGBT community have evolved, and she explains how meaningful her time spent volunteering for The Trevor Project has been.

"I grew up in a very intolerant environment," she said. "For a long time, I was told that people who were lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender or questioning were an abomination. But when I started to ask questions, it was hard to find an answer that made rational sense from the bubble around me."

Same-Sex Marriage and Lack of God in Schools Cause of Sandy Hook Shooting

Several conservative Christian leaders across the nation are trying to make sense of Friday's deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., which lead to the murders of 26 people — 20 of them children — and they're pointing the finger at a "Godless" nation that they believe is too accepting of liberal evils like abortion and marriage equality.

It all started with former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Just hours after news of the massacre broke on Friday, Huckabee said the tragedy should come as no surprise to a culture that has "systematically removed God from our schools." Huckabee clarified his statements on his Fox News program Sunday, saying he didn't really think that prayer in schools would have prevented the massacre, "but we've created an atmosphere in this country where the only time you want to invoke God's name is after the tragedy," according to The Huffington Post. 

The antigay American Family Association's Bryan Fischer echoed Huckabee's claims, telling listeners on his AFA radio show that God could have protected the victims of the massacre but declined to do so because "God is not going to go where he is not wanted," according to video posted on LGBT blog Towleroad.  

On Monday, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson took to the airwaves to blame America's acceptance of marriage equality and abortion specifically for the violence in Connecticut. Speaking on his morning radio show, Dobson outlined a litany of sins that he said have driven God away from America. 

Gender-Neutral Easy-Bake Oven Announced By Hasbro Following 13-Year-Old's Petition

Hasbro says it will soon reveal a gender-neutral Easy-Bake Oven after meeting with a New Jersey girl who started a campaign calling on the toy maker to make one that appeals to all kids.

McKenna Pope, 13, of Garfield, N.J., got more than 40,000 signatures on her online petition at Change.org and the support of celebrity chefs including Bobby Flay, who backed her call for Hasbro to make a gender-neutral oven and to include boys in the ads.

She was prompted to start the petition after shopping for an Easy-Bake as a Christmas present for her 4-year-old brother, Gavyn Boscio, and finding them only in purple and pink.

Hasbro invited McKenna and her family to its Pawtucket, R.I., headquarters to meet with its Easy-Bake team, and on Monday, they drove to Rhode Island from New Jersey. During the meeting, Hasbro executives showed off a prototype of their newest Easy-Bake: one that's black, silver and blue.

Hasbro has been working on the new color scheme and design for about 18 months, and decided to invite McKenna to see it and offer her thoughts, said John Frascotti, Hasbro's chief marketing officer.

McKenna said the company is doing everything she asked, including putting boys in the ads.

USMC Captain Matthew Phelps Proposes To Boyfriend At White House

: Over the weekend U.S. Marine Corps captain Matthew Phelps proposed to his partner, Ben Schock, at the White House. On his blog Phelps, who’s a board member at the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, thanked the Obamas for “lending” their home for the occasion. “The only thing on my mind was making it a memorable and unforgettable night for Ben,” he added.

Pope Denounces Gay Marriage As End Of Society In World Day Of Peace Message

"There is also a need to acknowledge and promote the natural structure of marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the face of attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different types of union. Such attempts actually harm and help to destabilize marriage, obscuring its specific nature and its indispensable role in society.These principles are not truths of faith, nor are they simply a corollary of the right to religious freedom. They are inscribed in human nature itself, accessible to reason and thus common to all humanity. The Church’s efforts to promote them are not therefore confessional in character, but addressed to all people, whatever their religious affiliation. Efforts of this kind are all the more necessary the more these principles are denied or misunderstood, since this constitutes an offence against the truth of the human person, with serious harm to justice and peace.”

– From Pope Benedict XVI‘s message for World Day of Peace 2013 (on January 1) entitled “Blessed Are the Peacemakers,”

Gay Marriage Ahead Of Supreme Court Hearings

The Supreme Court is just now getting around to hearing cases on gay marriage, which makes one thing very clear: progress is super slow.

Jon Stewart put a very fine point on it Thursday night with his "LGBTQ Watch: S#@t Just Got Real Edition", where he top-lined the Prop 8 and DOMA cases that will soon go before the nation's highest court.

ILLINOIS LAWMAKERS PUSHING FOR JANUARY VOTE ON MARRIAGE EQUALITY

There's big marriage equality news developing in Illinois, where pro-equality lawmakers say they may vote on a proposed law during January's lame duck session, the period before freshly elected legislators enter office.

From Chicago Business:

After counting heads and consulting with legislative leaders, the chief sponsors of a bill to permit same-sex couples to get married in the state this morning disclosed they intend to push for a vote in the General Assembly's lame-duck session, which will occur over two weeks just after New Year's.

And, in an indication of how big a campaign the pro side is launching, they've hired the firm founded by top presidential adviser David Axelrod to help them with media, organization and outreach to potential supporters, including corporate officials.

“I’m Not Saying Jesus Was Gay, But…”

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Fresh Squeezed Take On Ex-Gay Therapy

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Justice Antonin Scalia’s 7 worst anti-gay statements

On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear two landmark cases on marriage equality. Yesterday, Justice Antonin Scalia reminded us again why gay rights advocates, to put it mildly, aren’t counting on his vote.

Scalia is the Supreme Court’s most outspoken opponent of gay rights. He led the dissent to the two major gay rights decisions of his tenure on the Court, the decisions to strike down Texas’ criminal sodomy law and to overturn Colorado’s ban on local anti-discrimination measures.

Here are seven of his most egregious anti-gay statements:

• Compares bans on homosexuality to bans on murder: On Monday, Scalia asked a gay law student, “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?”
•  …and to bans on polygamy and animal cruelty: In his dissent to the Colorado case,Romer v. Evans, Scalia wrote, “But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible--murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals--and could exhibit even 'animus' toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of ‘animus’ at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct, the same sort of moral disapproval that produced the centuries old criminal laws that we held constitutional in Bowers.”
• Defends employment and housing discrimination: In his dissent to Lawrence, the decision that overturned Texas’ criminal sodomy law, Scalia went even further, justifying all kinds of discrimination against gays and lesbians: “Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive. The Court views it as ‘discrimination’ which it is the function of our judgments to deter.”
• Says decision on “homosexual sodomy” was “easy” because it's justified by long history of anti-gay discrimination: In a talk at the American Enterprise Institute earlier this year, Scalia dismissed decisions on abortion, the death penalty and “homosexual sodomy” as “easy”: “The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion,” he said. “Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state.”
• Says domestic partners have no more rights than “long time roommates”:  In his dissent in Romer, Scalia dismissed the idea that a law banning benefits for same-sex domestic partners would be discriminatory,saying the law “would prevent the State or any municipality from making death benefit payments to the ‘life partner’ of a homosexual when it does not make such payments to the long time roommate of a nonhomosexual employee.”
• Says gay rights are a concern of “the elite”: In his Romer dissent, Scalia lashes out at the majority that has upheld gay rights: “This Court has no business imposing upon all Americans the resolution favored by the elite class from which the Members of this institution are selected, pronouncing that 'animosity' toward homosexuality is evil. “
• Accuses those who disagree with him of supporting the “homosexual agenda”: Lifting a talking point straight from the far right, Scalia accused the majority in Lawrence of being in the thrall of the “homosexual agenda”: “Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.”

GROUP OF SCIENTISTS BELIEVE THEY HAVE UNLOCKED HEREDITARY QUESTION OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY

A group of scientists from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis say they believe they have the answer to why people are gay, and believe it is an "epigenetic" one linking fathers to lesbian daughters and mothers to gay sons. And they say they can prove whether their theory is right within six months, US News reports:

Long thought to have some sort of hereditary link, a group of scientists suggested Tuesday that homosexuality is linked to epi-marks — extra layers of information that control how certain genes are expressed. These epi-marks are usually, but not always, "erased" between generations. In homosexuals, these epi-marks aren't erased — they're passed from father-to-daughter or mother-to-son, explains William Rice, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California Santa Barbara and lead author of the study.

Justice Scalia Says Constitution is “Dead, Dead, Dead, Dead”

Scalia spoke Monday at Princeton University in New Jersey, where gay freshman Duncan Hosie asked about his dissent in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, in which he compared laws that ban sodomy to those prohibiting bestiality and murder. The question received more applause than Scalia’s speech, according to the Associated Press.Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia dismissed the notion of the U.S. Constitution as a “living document” that changes with the times, instead describing the bedrock of American law as “dead, dead, dead, dead” in advance of major decisions about marriage equality.

"I don't think it's necessary, but I think it's effective," said Scalia of the bans. He said that he was not equating sodomy with murder, but rather drawing a parallel between the prohibitions on both acts.  

"It's a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the 'reduction to the absurd,'" he told Hosie, who is from San Francisco. "If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?"

Scalia answered questions following a lecture to promote his new book, Reading Law. As for the law, Scalia said the Constitution was already “flexible” enough, in his view.

"My Constitution is a very flexible one," he said. "There's nothing in there about abortion. It's up to the citizens. ... The same with the death penalty."

"It isn't a living document," he said. "It's dead, dead, dead, dead."

DOMA Will Be Overturned

Yesterday, conservative pundits and strategists alike proclaimed the anti-gay marriage sentiment in America is “quite literally…dying” and it’s just “common sense” to embrace same-sex marriage. Now, Maggie Gallagher has proclaimed that she believes DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 that bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, will be overturned by the Supreme Court.

“I think [Justice Anthony] Kennedy will overturn DOMA (perhaps joined by Roberts) and then uphold the right of states to refuse to accept gay marriage (i.e. uphold Prop 8),” she writes in response to a lazy David Blankenhorn blog post.

Illinois governor hopes marriage equality bill goes forward next month

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn told reporters Monday he hopes Illinois lawmakers will send a marriage equality bill to his desk during the early January lame duck session.

Lately, LGBT rights activists have been signaling that a bill will be called to vote during the brief period of time before the newly-elected state legislators are sworn in Jan. 9 — as soon as they know it has enough votes to pass.

“I hope that bill goes forward,” Quinn said when asked about the bill, reports the Chicago Tribune. “It’s the House that probably the key arena at this time, and I think we’ll see how the members look at that issue. They should study it carefully and vote their conscience.”

NOM's Brian Brown is 'Very Happy' That the Supreme Court Took the Prop 8 Case

NOM's Brian Brown tells FOX News he is looking forward to having the Supreme Court "correct some wrongs that happened" in the 9th Circuit Court by taking the Prop 8 case. Elizabeth Wydra, the chief counsel for the Constitutional Accountability Center, comes on and tells Brown how the Constitution works
.

'THE OPPOSITION TO GAY MARRIAGE IS DYING'

More polls are showing popular opinion shifting toward marriage equality. Public Policy Polling found majorities in Oregon (54%) and New Jersey (53%) and a near majority in Illinois (47%) support extending marriage to same-sex couples. In Illinois, 58% of people under 45 years old say yes to gay weddings. Meanwhile, Politico found 40% of Americans support letting gays and lesbians marry. Again, young people are leading the way.

From today's Politico survey: "A full 63 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds backed marriage...It dropped off to 36 percent support among both 30-to-44-year-olds and 45-to-59-year-olds. Only three in 10 seniors supported gay marriage."

Asked about such numbers and the Supreme Court's decision to hear two cases on marriage equality, journalist George Will broke it down like this: all the seniors brought up pre-gay rights are kicking the bucket.

"There is something like an emerging consensus," he said on ABC News' This Week. "Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying. It’s old people."

MERCK FOUNDATION SUSPENDS FUNDING TO BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA OVER ITS ANTI-GAY POLICIES

The Merck Foundation has joined Intel and UPS in cutting off funds to the Boy Scouts of America over the group's anti-gay policies

The Merck Foundation's Brian Grill penned a letter outlining the decision, which reads in part:

"The Merck Foundation believes that it is critical to honor and support a foundational policy of diversity and inclusion in all funding decisions. Recently, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) restated its policy that excludes members on the basis of sexual orientation. The BSA’s policy of exclusion directly conflicts with the Merck Foundation’s giving guidelines.

We know that many of you have personally contributed to the BSA and that this decision may be upsetting to some of you. However, we cannot continue to provide support to an organization with a policy that is contrary to one of our core beliefs. We remain ready and willing to re-consider our funding position in the event that the BSA were to revise its policy."

Prop 8 attorneys confident court will strike down marriage ban

The organizers behind the lawsuit challenging California’s Proposition 8 are excited and optimistic about the prospects for a Supreme Court ruling against the anti-gay measure as one attorney on the team said he hopes the Obama administration will assist in the effort.

Ted Olson, a co-counsel in the Prop 8 lawsuit, made the remarks during a conference call on Friday in response to a question from Politico’s Josh Gerstein. Olson said a friend-of-the-court brief from the Justice Department would have “great effect” in the effort to overturn Prop 8.

"I would hate to predict what the United States government is doing, but given the stand the president of the United States and the attorney general of the United States made with respect to marriage equality, we would certainly hope that they would participate,” Olson said. “And I’m quite confident that if they did participate, they would support our position in this case because the denial of equal rights is subject to close scrutiny by the courts and cannot withstand that scrutiny.”

UC BERKELEY STUDENT GOVERNMENT DEMANDS SCHOOL BAN SALVATION ARMY FROM CAMPUS FOR ITS BIAS AGAINST GAYS

The UC Berkeley Student Government has passed a resolution demanding that the school ban the Salvation Army from campus over its bias against gays, Campus Reform reports:

The resolution, cleared on November 14, accuses the charity of openly discriminating against gay individuals.

“Salvation Army church services, including charity services, are available only to people ‘who accept and abide by the Salvation Army’s doctrine and discipline,’ which excludes homosexuality,” reads the bill, SB 176.

In the resolution, the student body also demands school administrators revoke the Salvation Army’s permit, which currently allows them to collect donations on the Berkeley campus.

“Allowing the Salvation Army to collect donations on campus is a form of financial assistance that empowers the organization to spend the money it raises here in order to discriminate and advocate discrimination against queer people,” it adds.

GOP Should Give In To Obama On Taxes: 'We Lost The Election'

Supreme Court to Hear Prop 8, DOMA Cases

The Supreme Court will hear marriage equality cases including the challenge to Proposition 8 and an elderly lesbian widow’s challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act.

The high court indicated its plan in orders released Friday afternoon,SCOTUSblog reports.

The court has been asked to hear 11 petitions related to marriage equality, including cases about Proposition 8, same-sex domestic partnerships in Arizona, the Nevada constitutional ban, and eight challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act. The cases challenge the section of the 1996 law that prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

Chad Griffin is now president of the Human Rights Campaign but co-founded American Foundation for Equal Rights, the group that brought the Prop. 8 court challenge.

"The passage of Proposition 8 caused heartbreak for so many Americans," Griffin said in a statement, "but today’s announcement gives hope that we will see a landmark Supreme Court ruling for marriage this term."

HRC also applauded the possibility DOMA could fall.

“I am confident that the Justices will find this law patently unconstitutional and the federal government will get out of the business of picking which marriages it likes and which it doesn’t," said Griffin.

Bullying Led To Gay Michigan Teen's Suicide

Josh Pacheco was a junior at Linden High School in Fenton, Mich., where he loved theater, his Advanced Placement history class, and his friends and family, his mother Lynette Capehart told Michigan Live. But the "sensitive" teen was also the target of relentless antigay bullying, which his parents believe led the 17-year-old to commit suicide on November 27.

Pacheco came out as gay to his mother just two months before he died, Capehart told MLive. Capehart and her husband, Pacheco's stepfather, didn't know the extent to which their son was bullied, being shoved into lockers and harassed both in and outside of school. Their first indication was when Pacheco returned from a homecoming dance on October 6 in tears, but wouldn't elaborate on why he was upset.

"He was having problems with bullying," Capehart said. "He didn't really want to tell us very much. It was very disheartening to me."

Uganda Kill The Gays Bill Vote Is Next On Parliament’s Agenda

Uganda’s “Kill The Gays” bill is the next order of business on Parliament’s agenda, according to the body’s “order list.” Ugandan Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga has promised the bill will pass as an early “Christmas gift” for Uganda’s Christians.

Mexican Supreme Court strikes down gay marriage ban

The Supreme Court of Mexico issued a unanimous ruling Wednesday afternoon that paves the way to universal marriage rights in the country.

The actual ruling won’t be published for a little while, but the gay rights advocates who brought the case are proclaiming that today’s ruling “opens the door to equal marriage in the whole country.”

The court ruled on behalf of three same-sex couple seeking to marry in the southern state of Oaxaca. The court had already ruled in 2010 that gay marriages performed under a Mexico City ordinance had to be recognized nationwide. With this precedent, the remaining bans on gay marriage in most Mexican states could quickly fall.

This ruling does not immediately eliminate marriage statutes limiting unions to a man and a woman—the Mexican Supreme Court doesn’t have the power to strike down state laws like that en mass as the United States Supreme Court does. But the lawyer who brought the case, Alex Alí Méndez Díaz, said before the ruling that victory would mean the beginning of the end for bans on same-sex marriage.

The court’s ruling that the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutionally discriminatory is partly based on a February ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that governments can’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, Karen Atala Riffo y Niñas v. Chile.

This case could have repercussions outside of Mexico—by expanding this precedent to include the right to marry, courts in other Latin American countries that recognize the Inter-American Accord on Human Rights could follow this precedent and determine that marriage rights are also protected in their countries. And the Inter-American Court itself could be more likely to recognize a right to marry—a case brought by three couples trying to strike down Chile’s ban on gay marriage has already begun making its way through the international judicial system.

Robert E. Lee ‘Rolling Over’ In His Grave

Pat Robertson announced three historic Generals must be “rolling over” in their graves upon hearing the news that West Point hosted its first same-sex wedding.

“General Douglas MacArthur, rolling over in his grave. Ulysses S. Grant, rolling over in his. Robert E. Lee, rolling over in his,” was all Robertson had to offer.

Robertson made his remarks of his 700 Club TV show, after the lead-in announcer commented it was a “sad day” to see the gay wedding, almost suggesting the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was related to gay marriage becoming law in New York.

Maine could begin issuing marriage licenses to gay couples on Dec. 29

Maine's same-sex marriage law is expected to take effect on December 29, and it's likely that that some marriage licenses will be issued on that date, even though it falls on a Saturday.

According to Maine's Secretary of State's office, the Nov. 6 certified election results -- including the ballot measure that legalized same-sex marriage -- were signed off on by Gov. Paul LePage (R) last Thursday. Under Maine statutes, the measures will take effect thirty days afterwards.

In Portland, the state’s largest city, logistics are being considered for offering special hours to ensure couples can get their marriage licenses on the day the new law goes into effect.

There’s no waiting period in Maine, so marriages could take place immediately after the license is issued, according to Kim McLaughlin, president of the Maine Town & City Clerk’s Association.

“The long wait for marriage for same-sex couples in Maine is almost over,” said Betsy Smith, the executive director of EqualityMaine. “Before the end of this year, all loving and committed couples in Maine will be able to stand before their friends, family and community and make a lasting vow to be there for one another.”

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Warwick Rowing Calendar

Warwick Rowing 2013: Brokeback Boathouse from Progressive Media on Vimeo.

For the fourth year running, Warwick Rowing's Senior Men have stripped off to reveal all. Following the club's most successful season in it's 44 year history, the boys are proud to produce yet another calendar for your enjoyment.

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Marriage Equality in the South

In January of 2013, the Campaign for Southern Equality will be traveling across multiple Southern states for Stage 4 of the WE DO Campaign. The WE DO Campaign involves LGBT couples requesting -- and being denied -- marriage licenses in their hometowns across the South in order to call for full equality under federal law and to highlight the harms of current state laws.

Nothin But Love

The fight for equal marriage shows its face in singer-songwriter Brendan James' new music video "Nothin But Love" from his new album Hope in Transition

‘Bare The Musical’ With Travis Wall Stands Up To Bullying

Choreographer Travis Wall and the team of “Bare The Musical,” and representatives from the Tyler Clementi Foundation and Athlete Ally talk about bullying and homophobia.