He talks about all of it here. Bullying. The bigots who are going after JC Penney and Ellen DeGeneres. Teen suicide. How Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann are the worst people in America. All of it. I don’t care whether you like Howard or not, take twelve minutes right now.

Here at Truth Wins Out, the epidemic of LGBT teen suicides in Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin school district has been on our radar for a long time.

Nonetheless, you need to head over to Rolling Stone and read this article about what LGBT kids go through in Michele Bachmann’s district every day, largely because local evangelicals have waged an all-out war on the area’s LGBT population. This blatant bigotry only serves to intensify the bullying that’s par for the course for LGBT teenagers at schools across the country. In Anoka, homosexuality is forbidden from even being discussed. Teachers and administrators do not intervene when LGBT students are harassed by their peers because they fear being fired for violating a district policy requiring them to stay “neutral” on, and banning positive references to, LGBT people and issues. And the culture of shame and fear that “Christian” fundamentalists (many of them from the same conservative church that Bachmann attended until just last year) have created around lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identities  is so pervasive that LGBT teens feel scared and unsafe within the walls of their schools.

And they’re killing themselves because of it. So many, in fact, that the state of Minnesota declared the Anoka-Hennepin school district a “suicide contagion area.” After one of the suicides — that of Sam Johnson in 2009 — students in the district’s GSAs participated in the Day of Silence. In this GLSEN-sponsored event, participants spent the day in silence to illustrate the silencing effect of the anti-LGBT bullying that led to the loss of several of their peers.  The response? Local evangelical churches organized a so-called “Day of Truth” event; their kids showed up at school wearing shirts telling their peers they could pray away the gay and engaged in anti-gay proselytizing in the hallways. (At that time the “Day of Truth” events were sponsored by Exodus International; it’s now been shifted to Focus on the Family and re-branded as a so-called “Day of Dialogue” in a transparent attempt to soft-pedal anti-gay bigotry.)

The way local evangelical “Christians” have doubled down on– not merely shown coldhearted indifference to, but doubled down on — the persecution of LGBT people, even in the wake of so many suicides, is pure evil.

Read, too, about Tammy Aaberg. Her son Justin was an Anoka High School student who committed suicide in 2010 due to anti-LGBT bullying, and his death turned her into an activist. Readers who know me know I have a soft spot in my heart for equality moms (including, I’m proud to say, my own). Hell hath no fury like a mom fighting for her LGBT child. But I have nothing short of awe for moms like Tammy Aaberg and Judy Shepard who fight for a child whom they’ve lost. I don’t know how they do it, but I admire their strength.

This is why the fight for our equality is so important. Slowly but surely, we’re building a world where no more Judy Shepards have to bury a child murdered for being gay, where no more Tammy Aabergs have to discover their baby boy dead in his bedroom because he couldn’t take another day of being bullied for his LGBT identity.

Please, read and share this article and resolve to keep fighting.

Tragically, Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi committed suicide last fall after being outed by his roommate. His death was a starting point in what has become a rallying cry for the LGBT community and our allies in stopping the bullying and humiliation that so sadly leads far too many gay kids to take their own lives.

His older brother James is also gay, and has written his little brother a series of beautiful, sad letters, published by Out. Please read it all, and have tissue handy. I’ll excerpt some of it here, and then click over.

James describes the moment when he realized that his younger brother was also gay, and how they eventually came out to each other:

I ’m not sure when I first realized my younger brother was gay. I think I knew he was for as long as I knew I was. I had no idea how to bring it up; it was just something we left dangling in the air, unsaid. I was open about my sexuality with friends, but around my family there was this barrier that felt unbreakable. It slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t the only one, that I had a brother who was also gay — my baby brother, whom I had always felt protective and paternal toward. I knew I was in a position to be a confidant, a role model. But I wasn’t ready to do any of that. It would have made it much less lonely for me to grow up with an older brother who had gone through and understood everything I was dealing with — and I wanted to be that for Tyler.

[...]

It was the Fourth of July. We had spent the day at the movies, the diner, the fireworks. So many opportunities, and I kept chickening out. That night, I found him in the house listening to Katy Perry, and I saw that, if I couldn’t do this now, something was really wrong with me. I overthought it — because it ended up being this simple.

Me: “I’m gay.”
Tyler: “Oh. Me too.”

Heh. Now a few excerpts from the letters:

Pipsqueak,
You were one noisy kid. I remember walking inside and the most beautiful sounds of Tchaikovsky and Mozart would waft through every room. And I hated it.

Remember how I used to bang on your door and scream at you to stop being so loud? It was so unfair that I had to listen to your noise all the time — why couldn’t you just pick up a quieter hobby!? I would refuse to attend your recitals and concerts because I had to listen to you play all the damn time at home. Wow, do I regret that.

It is so quiet now. You were really talented; it was a gift. I’m not sure I ever told you that… maybe you didn’t care. It’s not like you needed my validation; I know nothing about classical music and you knew you were the shit when it came to that damn violin. I just feel really bad for not telling you how awesome you are, how much I respect your skills and dedication. I regret not listening to every note with open ears, not going to more concerts. Fuck you for making me feel bad; it’s not fair that you did that to me. But I would tell you now if I could, I really miss the noise!

About all the publicity surrounding Tyler’s death:

I wonder what you would think, seeing all the commotion you’ve caused. It is surreal and meaningless to see you as a mere story on The New York Times, a brief glimpse at a life with none of the detail. You were a typical college freshman, trying to adjust to a dorm room, make some friends, meet a cute guy, and enjoy your independence, and no one noticed. The headlines tell of how you were violated and ridiculed; your last moments are a cautionary tale, a scandal, something to sell and entertain.

You are on every talk show, newspaper, and blog, being held up as the issue du jour for the masses to “care about,” like they ever read you a story or wiped away your tears or spun you around in the air until you were dizzy. I wish it didn’t take you dying for your soul to know peace. I wish you could read the hundreds of letters we got, hear the thousands who rallied and marched for you, know the millions who followed your story on the 6 o’clock news. You were never alone; it just felt like it.

Having a younger brother who is close to me, I can’t handle the beginning of this letter:

Little Peanut,
I always thought that, between you and I, you were the stronger one.

That entire letter is amazing, but I don’t want to spoil it by merely excerpting it. Nor do I want to spoil the rest.

Take a few minutes.

[h/t David Badash/photo via Out Magazine, courtesy of James Clementi]

This is hilarious. Tennessee’s Stacey Campfield, author of the state’s now infamous “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, who last week explained, among other things, that AIDS is the result of a gay pilot having sex with a gay monkey, and who has an entire state’s progressives laughing and cheering after he was thrown out of a Knoxville restaurant this weekend, was interviewed by David Pakman today, and the interview is so full of goodness that I have decided to live-blog it. Let’s watch together!

0:30 Why is homosexuality harmful, Stacey? Well, he says that as long as you are having heterosexual sex with people who are not addicted to drugs or gay or “from Africa,” you should be fine. New campaign slogan for Stacey: don’t have sex with Africans!

1:40 David points out that anti-gay wingnuts are really fixated on what happens when two men have sex. [Note to Stacey: your chances of catching HIV through lesbian sex are basically nil.]

2:25 Stacey says homosexuality is harmful because the average homosexual lives nowhere near as long as the heterosexuals. David points out that Stacey got his info on that one from a widely discredited fraud named Paul Cameron.

2:45 Stacey prattles on awhile about how insurance is more expensive for gays, due to gay, before getting to his main point, which is that

3:40 Animals who are gay are not actually gay, because they don’t have buttsex. Stacey has never seen two animals having anal sex, therefore it does not exist. One wonders how much time Stacey Campfield has spent, with binoculars, trying to catch members of the animal kingdom having anal sex, and then one shudders.

4:40 David: “So when animals have gay sex, it’s more of an S&M thing?” Stacey: “Oh, I don’t know why they’re having gay sex, because I’m not an animal mind reader. Stacey: “If you get online you can learn all about animal S&M.” [Paraphrased quotes.]

5:20 Stacey says anti-gay bullying is no big deal because we already have bullying laws. I guess the kids who kill themselves are just collateral damage. Stacey brags that Tennessee’s schools are 46th in the nation. Take that, four other Southern states!

6:45 We don’t need to talk about heterosexuality in school either! It’s not just gayness that we need to remain mum about. All sex bad!

8:00 Do people choose to be gay? Stacey: “well, the activity is a choice.” We all use Activity Period differently, I guess…

8:25 Hahaha, Stacey, you got kicked out of a restaurant in your hometown for being such an unrepentant, misinformed, hateful bigot. Do you feel like you were unfairly discriminated against? Does this make you sort of possibly understand what discrimination is like? Stacey claims he wouldn’t go to a restaurant that refused to serve gays.

But I guess one where gays are welcome but bullied relentlessly is all good, right, Stacey?

I’d like to remind everyone, quickly, that Stacey also got kicked out of a University of Tennessee football game a while back, due to the fact that he was wearing a Mexican wrestler mask, despite the fact that it had been well-publicized that for the safety of all in the stadium, masks were not allowed for this Halloween game. But Stacey wanted to wear it, dangit! So he made the cops chase him around the stadium for a while and whined before they finally got tired of it and booted him. His maturity level doesn’t seem like it’s improved in the years hence.

Michelangelo Signorile interviewed Stacey Campfield, the temper tantrum-throwing, belligerently stupid Tennessee legislator who authored the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would prohibit teachers and counselors from even mentioning gayness in Tennessee schools, and Stacey came ready to reassure everyone that he hasn’t read even one book since the last time he was interviewed in the national media. Oh, these are some doozies, they are.

It’s gay kids’ own fault for being gay when they, you know, blow their brains out:

“That bullying thing is the biggest lark out there.”

“There are sexually confused children who could be pushed into a lifestyle that I don’t think is appropriate with them and it’s not for the norm for society, and they don’t know how they can get back from that. I think a lot of times these young teens and young children, they find it very hard on themselves and unfortunately some of them commit suicide.”

Nice of him to add the word “unfortunately.”

Just because things happen in nature, doesn’t mean they should be discussed in school:

“[Homosexuals] do not naturally reproduce. It has not been proven that it is nature. It happens in nature, but so does beastiality That does not make it right or something we should be teaching in school.”

Bestiality happens in nature. Wow. Is it “bestiality” when beasts are doing it with each other, Stacey?

Half of all plays are about gays. Stacey Campfield really pays attention to the theater, you guys:

“Homosexuals represent about 2 to 3 percent of the population yet you look at television and plays and theaters, it’s 50 percent of the theaters, probably more than that, 50 percent of the theaters based on something about homosexuality.”

And now, the dumbest thing Stacey Campfield has ever said:

“My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex…very rarely [transmitted].”

Far be it from an average Tennessee wingnut to be able to pick out Africa on a globe, but it’s stunning that the man seems blissfully unaware of the fact that the sub-Saharan African AIDS epidemic involves lots and lots of heterosexual sex.

Stacey also believes that AIDS entered the human race when a pilot had sex with a monkey, though, a story which I thought had been debunked for so long that even wingnuts understood it was an urban myth. Apparently not in Tennessee. Mike debunks all that in his piece, and Stacey said other stupid things in the interview, so click.

So sad. News has been circulating the past couple days of the suicide of eighth grader Phillip Parker from Gordonsville, Tennessee:

A Gordonsville boy’s parents say bullying caused their son to take his own life. Phillip Parker, 14, died this week. His parents said he was constantly bullied for being gay.

More than 100 people gathered in Gordonsville on Saturday night, grieving the loss of Phillip.

“He was fun, he was energetic, he was happy,” said Gena Parker, Phillip’s mother.

To his many friends, Phillip was known as the boy who told everyone they’re beautiful.

“He kept telling me he had a rock on his chest,” said Ruby Harris, Phillip’s grandmother. “He just wanted to take the rock off where he could breathe.”

Phillip’s family said they reported their concerns over their son’s bullying to Gordonsville High School on multiple occasions, but the bullying by a group of students just got worse.

Like many kids who are bullied, it seems that Phillip did his best to shoulder the burden alone, so his family didn’t really know the extent of what he was going through. This past weekend, representatives from the Tennessee Equality Project met some current and former teachers at Phillip’s school, and what they found was sadly unexpected. The bullying in school was systemic, and on top of that, Phillip heard religious bullying from pastors, and presumably from fellow churchgoers:

While attending Saturday’s conference, H.G. Stovall and I met a former teacher who knew Phillip while he attended Gordonsville Elementary School. Tears flowed as she told us that Philip had endured years of anti-gay bullying at the school and that bullying in general at Gordonsville Elementary School often goes unaddressed by faculty and staff. She knew of several students who had to transfer to other schools to escape the harassment. This educator also knew Phillip had endured anti-gay preaching from the pulpit of his church.

[...]

We were able to speak to one of Phillip’s teachers. Sadly, she confirmed the same stories we had heard the day before about Philip’s experience at school and at church. She recalled learning that his pastor had recently told him to “pray the devil out him, so he could be straight.” His teacher also remembered that beneath his inner turmoil Philip was always smiling and would often tell his peers how beautiful they were.

For a while now, I’ve been making the point, probably at least once a week, that the message of the Religious Right to LGBT people IS bullying, and it’s not just the icing on the cake. Without the messages coming from the pulpit and from other adults who unfortunately command respect, kids in the schoolyard wouldn’t automatically equate “gay” with “bad,” and wouldn’t feel such a license to make another child’s life a living hell over their sexuality. Sure, kids will always be kids, and no anti-bullying program will eliminate all schoolyard taunts. But the sooner we make the solid connection, as a society, that the kind of bullying that causes gay and questioning kids to feel such despair that they end their young lives, comes directly from adult bullies like the pastor who urged Phillip to “pray away the gay” [to think that people think we're being hyperbolic when we use that phrase...], the sooner we’ll reach a time when I won’t have to write articles about kids killing themselves every damned week.

One year ago, this video wouldn’t have been made.

[h/t Towleroad]

California teen EricJames Borges, a Trevor Project intern, killed himself this week after a lifetime of relentless assaults on his physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health that included an attack in school, an exorcism by his mother, and an expulsion from his home.

American culture and the people in his life failed EricJames. Words fail me.

[h/t Towleroad]

Unless you are one of our youngest readers, you probably are at least vaguely aware of the late 1980′s/early 1990′s sitcom Empty Nest. If you are not familiar at all, the most important things you need to know are that it was funny, they were The Golden Girls‘ next door neighbors, and also they had a dog named Dreyfus who was awesome.

Anyway, Kristy McNichol, who played the daughter Barbara on the show, and who also starred on the 70′s era show Family, has come out as a lesbian after years away from acting.

Kristy McNichol has been out of the public eye for 20 years. Now she’s chosen to come out – to try to help kids who are being bullied.

McNichol, 49, who has lived with her partner Martie Allen, also 49, for the past two decades, decided to make a statement about her sexuality and share this photo because she is “approaching 50″ and wants to “be open about who I am.”

She “is very sad about kids being bullied,” her publicist Jeff Ballard tells PEOPLE. “She hopes that coming out can help kids who need support. She would like to help others who feel different.”

It’s so sad that so many people are coming out for that reason, but at the same time, it’s always a good thing when those of us who are invisible make ourselves known. Kristy McNichol being a lesbian might not be revolutionary knowledge for today’s thirteen year-olds, but the more people just like her are honest and forthcoming, the more that those kids will know that they’re not alone.

Most importantly, this is what Dreyfus, the dog from the show, thinks about Kristy being a lesbian:

Just can’t be bothered by the information.

[h/t Towleroad]

Since Evan and I have been blogging about it for some time now, TWO readers are likely familiar with the attacks on marriage equality in New Hampshire.

In case anyone needs a refresher, New Hampshire’s entire legislature flipped from Democratic to Republican control in the Tea Party-fueled red tsunami of the 2010 midterms. One unfortunate result of that was that the state’s marriage equality law, which made New Hampshire the fifth state to grant same-sex couples the freedom to marry when it took effect in January 2010, came under assault from anti-gay extremist elements of that state’s GOP. Despite polls decisively showing widespread opposition to repeal among citizens of the Granite State and editorials from several of the state’s major newspapers calling on lawmakers to end their mean-spirited efforts, Republican politicians have pushed ahead in their attempt to strip away existing rights from their LGBT constituents and spit in the face of the nearly 1,800 same-sex couples who have married there since the law was enacted. (So much for the whole “will of the people” thing, huh?)

According to the Nashua Telegraph, the state House of Representatives is expected to take a vote on the repeal measure very soon after the January 10 presidential primary. Just two years after New Hampshire lawmakers granted lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people the simple dignity of being able to marry the person they love, that precious freedom is in serious jeopardy.

Enter Craig Stowell. Craig is a Republican and a former Marine. He also happens to have a brother, Calvin, who is gay (and a Twitter phenom, but I digress). Bucking his party, Craig became the co-chair of Standing up for New Hampshire Families, the group working to preserve, protect, and uphold the state’s marriage equality law. He also launched a Change.org petition calling on the legislature to do the right thing and leave the law alone. Change.org always asks petition creators why their particular action is important, and Craig’s explanation brought tears to my eyes:

My brother and best friend, Calvin, was tormented all the way through high school because people knew he was gay. There were nights that I worried I may wake up and he wouldn’t be there any longer; crushed by the misery he was forced to endure. When New Hampshire extended marriage to gay and lesbian couples, two years ago, he finally felt accepted. He finally felt like he belonged. Since that day 1,800 loving and committed gay and lesbian couples have married.

Today, the right to marriage is under attack in New Hampshire. If HB 437 passes, same-sex couples will no longer be allowed to marry. This mean-spirited attack is nothing more than state sponsored bullying. The bill actually goes on to allow discrimination in employment and housing based on sexuality.

When I enlisted in the Marines, I took an oath to defend freedom and liberty. In 2004, I went to Iraq to do just that. As the co-chairman for Standing Up for New Hampshire Families, I am now defending my brother’s freedom here at home, and I hope you will help me by telling legislators to vote NO on HB 437.

Two recent polls have shown that Granite Staters overwhelming support marriage equality. One poll coming from the University of New Hampshire shows support at 62 percent. It should be obvious that the majority of New Hampshire believes this is a settled issue.

When my wife Berta and I were married, Calvin was right there by my side as my best man. I want the opportunity to be his best man when he finds the person he wants to marry. With your help, I know we can ensure that freedom will still be there when he does.

Once you can see your computer screen again through the tears and have swallowed the lump in your throat, please join me in heading over to Change.org and signing Craig Stowell’s petition. All of us at Truth Wins Out (along with so many others) have said for a long time that equality is not and should not be a partisan issue. The courageous and heartwarming actions of people like Craig Stowell give me hope that the day will come when that’s truly the case.