The Democratic Party is beginning to embrace marriage equality in a significant way. This week, former President Jimmy Carter, a born again Christian who teaches Sunday school and just wrote a new book on the Bible, came out in favor of allowing gays to wed.

“Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality,” said President Carter. “In all of his teachings about multiple things -– he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.”

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the notorious Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that still relegates gay couples to second-class citizenship. But in May 2011, Clinton endorsed marriage equality.

“Our nation’s permanent mission is to form a ‘more perfect union’ — deepening the meaning of freedom, broadening the reach of opportunity, strengthening the bonds of community,” Clinton said. “That mission has inspired and empowered us to extend rights to people previously denied them. Every time we have done that, it has strengthened our nation. Now we should do it again, in New York, with marriage equality. For more than a century, our Statue of Liberty has welcomed all kinds of people from all over the world yearning to be free. In the 21st century, I believe New York’s welcome must include marriage equality.”

While at New York City campaign stops on Monday, Michele Obama said that LGBT people should vote for her husband because Supreme Court appointees will have an affect on “whether we can … love whomever we choose.”

Unfortunately, President Barack Obama is still “evolving” on this issue. Many people believe that he is simply waiting to be reelected before he makes the leap to a full-fledged supporter.

While I would absolutely love for the President to support marriage equality, it is not the end of the world if he waits until a second term. Michele is correct to suggest that the most critical component in securing such rights is ensuring fair-minded judges sit on the Supreme Court. If any one of the current GOP candidates were elected, it would almost guarantee that the high court would include an intolerant majority hostile to LGBT rights.

Even if Obama won and never evolved, nor lifted a finger to help with other LGBT issues, yet offered four years of friendly platitudes, tremendous progress would still occur. It would mean four more years of our families not being attacked from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This would buy enough time for the younger generation of voters to come of age, shifting public opinion decisively and overwhelmingly in our direction.

The alternatives are Rick Santorum who compares homosexuality to “man on dog” sex and the amorphous Mitt Romney who appears to be so craven that he will do virtually anything to please leaders of the extreme right. Such hostility in the oval office could produce major setbacks and create an unfriendly climate that leads to everything from anti-gay legislation to an increase in hate crimes.

And, there is always the possibility that Obama will make history by becoming the first sitting president to support marriage equality. This would produce worldwide headlines and create enormous momentum to an already impressive march toward justice.

Whatever position Obama ultimately takes, this will likely be the last Democratic presidential nominee to get LGBT votes and money without first embracing same-sex marriage. Now that Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter (and even Dick Cheney) are in favor, any future Democrat running for the nomination will look behind the times if they don’t support full civil marriage for same-sex couples.

The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart reported this week that President Obama may be signaling a new direction:

“For a man who maintains that he is “evolving” on the issue of same-sex marriage, President Obama is pretty evolved on the matter already. As a guest at Wednesday’s state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron, I know of at least two legally married same-sex couples in attendance…The Obama administration has “an unspoken tradition” of “seating a same-sex couple at the table.” The honor went to Chad Griffin and Jerome Fallon….Griffin is the incoming president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest civil rights organization for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community…”

Marriage equality is more than coming soon. In eights states and the District of Columbia it is already here. Social conservatives promised Americans that the sky would fall. It didn’t, so instead this ugly barrier is falling – with the former Democratic presidents accelerating the pace.

Last week, the Huffington Post reported on a new guide recently issued by Third Way, an “influential centrist Democratic group,” for the purpose of helping lawmakers previously opposed to marriage equality take a public stance in support of the cause without earning the dreaded “flip-flopper” moniker. (Not a bad idea, right?) The document advises these new equality supporters to share their personal stories and those of family members and friends, emphasize that marriage is about love and commitment rather than engaging in a sterile discussion about rights, and meet people – even those who currently oppose marriage equality – where they are, knowing that they, too, have the potential to “evolve” on the issue. So far, so good.

But the folks at Third Way lost me when I read what came next:

Lawmakers should also “exercise caution” in comparing the push for same-sex marriage to the civil rights movement and the fight for interracial marriage, the memo says. “This direct comparison can hurt more than it helps, by causing people to think about the differences between the experiences of African Americans and LGBT people, not the similarities.”

Now don’t get me wrong, if there’s one thing I despise most about our current national discourse, it’s the ridiculous abuse and ubiquitous misuse of the false equivalency meme. Both sides always share equal blame, we’re told. It isn’t polite to single out one person or party over another. Simple acknowledgement of a current political reality – for example, that American politics is being jolted ever further to the right by an increasingly deranged Republican Party – means the observer is biased or partisan (two terms with almost as much baggage as “flip-flopper”). The idea that it’s inappropriate for media outlets to consult certified anti-gay hate groups about LGBT rights issues in an effort to “hear from both sides” is not a matter of common sense, it’s some kind of agenda.

However, where LGBT issues and racial issues intersect, I must emphatically draw an equivalency in order to make a point that I’m particularly passionate about: people on both sides – liberal and conservative, pro-LGBT and anti-LGBT – actively avoid equating gay rights with civil rights. Some even go so far as to condemn those who make any association between the two. This avoidance is dishonest, insulting, and demeaning to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of all racial, ethnic, and cultural identities. It must stop immediately; there are no three ways about it.

Make no mistake – I am not suggesting that race, sexual orientation, and gender identity/expression are in any way the same. I am also not attempting to equate the collective histories of racial and sexual minority groups or the personal experiences of any members of these groups. To do so would be foolish. What I am saying – no, declaring – is that the struggle for African-American rights and the struggle for LGBT rights are two fronts in the same battle. Both involve a minority group singled out by the majority for discrimination, unequal treatment, and persecution on the basis of an intrinsic and immutable characteristic. Both movements arose when a critical mass of courageous people decisively pushed back against bigotry and institutionalized oppression for the first time. And in both cases, the work of achieving legislative, judicial, and cultural equality is ongoing. So while the details may be different, at a fundamental level, the fight for African-American civil rights and LGBT civil rights are both part of the same civil rights movement.

I can hear the naysayers now. One might say, “How dare you? We’ve been taken to America against our will, enslaved, whipped, raped, attacked with fire hoses, batons, and dogs, subjected to ‘separate but equal’ Jim Crow laws and medical experimentation, jailed, and lynched.” Another could retort: “Excuse me? We have been persecuted by religions and governments for centuries, imprisoned, castrated, lobotomized, queer-bashed, ‘correctively’ raped and subjected to other ‘separate but equal’ laws, forced into damaging ‘pray away the gay’ therapy, interred in concentration camps, stoned, and hanged.” But playing the my-group-has-suffered-more-than-your-group game – what prominent African-American lesbian blogger Pam Spaulding aptly terms the Oppression Olympics – is both futile and tiresome. No single group has earned the exclusive right to use civil rights language. Nobody is well-served when we construct hierarchies of oppression. After all, at the end of the day, you’re equally unemployed whether you’re fired for being trans or for being an African American. Hate crimes are just as evil whether they’re driven by the victim’s gender expression or their skin color. (The bruises hurt just as much, too.) And James Byrd, Jr. – murdered because he was black – is every bit as dead as Matthew Shepard, who was killed because he was gay.

I can’t even begin to tell you the verbal and logistical contortions I’ve heard many of my liberal, progressive, pro-LGBT friends put themselves through in order to avoid the mere appearance of an acknowledgement that the civil rights battles of sexual and racial minority groups are part of the same struggle. According to Spaulding, “any challenge to [the enforced separation of the two movements] amounts to stepping on the third rail,” and most people would rather spare themselves the shock, thank you very much.

In terms of the resistance to the “LGBT rights are civil rights” concept in the African-American community, I believe much of that can be attributed to the fact that homophobia remains embedded in large swaths of black culture. Last year, for example, Truth Wins Out broke the story of a violently anti-gay rant by comedian Tracy Morgan, who claimed during a stand-up routine that he’d stab his son to death if he ever came out as gay. Alveda King, a niece of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., compared marriage equality to genocide in 2010. And while some LGBT activists reeling from the 2008 passage of California’s Proposition 8 wrongly blamed African Americans, a January 2012 poll revealed a 30-point gap in support of marriage equality between white and black voters in Maryland, illustrating the continued existence of a major racial divide on LGBT issues from coast to coast. (I also often wonder if this divide might provide at least a partial explanation for President Obama’s apparent reluctance to “evolve” on marriage equality before the 2012 election, lest it cost him any support among a critically important constituent group.)

Thankfully this divide – along with the very idea that LGBT rights are unworthy of the term “civil rights” – is being increasingly challenged. Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald pointed out as early as 2004 that “this stinginess about the [civil rights] movement only arises when gays seek to embrace it.” The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart has written and spoken extensively on LGBT rights as civil rights, recently tangling with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on the issue. Leaders like Pam Spaulding, Melissa Harris-Perry, Rev. Al Sharpton, Julian Bond, Abp. Desmond Tutu, Dr. Sylvia Rhue, Ben Jealous, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, and Rev. Irene Monroe constantly challenge homophobia wherever they encounter it, including within African-American culture. Many of them also make consistent use of civil rights language when speaking about LGBT equality. But perhaps it was the late Coretta Scott King, who devoted her life to the same civil rights causes for which her husband gave his life, who said it best when she famously remarked in 2003:

“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people. . . But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream, to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”

So I respectfully but emphatically dissent with the well-meaning people at Third Way. We not only should compare the movement for African-American civil rights with the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights, but we must do so, because at the root, they are the same movement. Refusing to acknowledge this reality only serves to unjustly accommodate homophobic bigotry, reinforce artificially-constructed hierarchies of oppression, and distract us from our fundamental obligation to defend the rights of all our fellow human beings. Rather than dividing ourselves along lines of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity, we must stand up for one another, whether gay, straight, black, or white. After all, as my parents have reminded me since the days when I was small, “Who will speak if we don’t?”

This week, the vote we’ve been blogging about and waiting for for months will finally happen: the GOP-controlled New Hampshire House will vote on whether or not to repeal the state’s 2009 marriage equality law, despite the fact repeated polling has consistently shown that a clear majority of New Hampshirites oppose repeal. (So much for that whole “will of the people” thing…) It is unclear whether the GOP-controlled legislature has enough votes to override Democratic Governor John Lynch’s promised veto of the constitutionally questionable measure. Perhaps as a reaction to this uncertainty, the bill’s leading champion — Republican Rep. David Bates — recently attached an amendment to HB 437 that would place a nonbinding question relating to civil unions onto the November ballot, despite the fact that New Hampshire is not a referendum state.

Newspapers around the state have also been editorializing against repeal efforts, but the state GOP is pushing ahead, apparently more concerned with remaining in ideological lockstep with party extremists at the national level than attending to the concerns of their constituents in their home state.

The Concord Monitor ran a compelling editorial yesterday against the repeal bill and Rep. Bates’s amendment, written by Rick Russman, a former Republican state senator. It is worth reading in its entirety, but I’ve included the highlights below.

There are a number of problems with this, the most fundamental of which is that New Hampshire is not a referendum state. California is a referendum state, if that helps to put this into perspective. New Hampshire has the third-largest legislative body in the English-speaking world, and legislators here are closer to the voters than almost anywhere else. Taking this to the voters as a “nonbinding question” makes no sense, will cost money, and will waste the time of town and city clerks who will have to count and record the votes on a question that does not accomplish anything. There will clearly be a fiscal impact, but Bates has not acknowledged it. . .

Asked why his proposed ballot question should not simply – and more honestly – ask, “Do you support repeal of the 2009 Marriage Equality Act?”, Rep. Bates said that he likes his wording better. Putting an emotionally charged, leading question before voters and hoping they choose to support a minority point of view seems to me to be intellectually dishonest and disrespectful of the voters. . .

Have any voters been denied the opportunity to express their opinion on marriage equality? Has anyone been prevented from testifying on HB 437? Has there been a groundswell of public desire for a statewide referendum? Has the Marriage Equality Act of 2009 hurt any individual, family, business, nonprofit organization, city or town? Of course not. ”No” is the answer to all of these questions, and “No” is how responsible House members should vote on HB 437 and the Bates floor amendment.

Here’s hoping the New Hampshire GOP comes to its senses, listens to Rick Russman and the majority of that state’s voters, and votes down Bates’s unconscionably malicious, mean-spirited, hateful marriage repeal bill.

President Obama’s campaign office in North Carolina issued a statement today stating that the President opposes that state’s proposed constitutional marriage discrimination amendment, known as Amendment One. According to the News & Observer:

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.”

While TWO is a nonpartisan, nonpolitical organization, we have an obligation as an LGBT advocacy group to both condemn anti-LGBT extremism from political figures on all sides and give due credit to those politicans (again, on all sides) who respect, uphold, and protect LGBT people and oppose efforts to discriminate against us. President Obama has come out on the right side of North Carolina’s unconscionable marriage discrimination amendment and deserves credit for having done so. Furthermore, the next time you hear someone on the right (especially if they’re a brash blowhard like Chris Christie) justify their support of marriage discrimination by saying they’re in lockstep with President Obama, call shenanigans. While his “evolution” on marriage hasn’t happened as fast as any of us would like, attempts to draw an equivalency between the President’s position on marriage and that of virtually any high-profile national conservative are false and disingenuous.

From GetUp! Australia, the same organization that recently produced the “It’s Time” ad that went viral (and brings me to tears every time I watch it…):

Wish we’d start seeing these kinds of ads on television in the United States…

Ben & Jerry’s, the Vermont-based makers of divine ice cream, is one of the many reasons I’m proud to live in this state. (And while it’s far from the only reason, it may very well be the yummiest!) Not only do I love their products, but I’m also a big fan of their business model because of the major emphasis it places on social justice and environmental responsibility. I have a hunch that I’m probably not the only one in the TWO community who loves Ben & Jerry’s, but I digress. . .

Well, today — as though any of us needed another reason to love Ben & Jerry’s — the company went and did this: to show support for the push to legalize same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom, Ben & Jerry’s announced that it was renaming its Oh! My! Apple Pie flavor. The new name? Apple-y Ever After. Pints of the new flavor will come in containers displaying a wedding cake with ribbons of rainbow frosting and a cake topper featuring a gay couple.

Marriage equality is an issue that’s near and dear to Ben & Jerry’s. The UK already has “civil partnerships,” a form of relationship recognition for same-sex couples. But on their website, the company takes care to point out that marriage-by-another-name just isn’t good enough: “If you think that Civil Partnership is the same as marriage, think again!”

This is a company that really gets it.

And this isn’t the first time they’ve renamed a flavor to show their support for marriage equality either. In 2009, when the company’s home state of Vermont passed its marriage equality law, Ben & Jerry’s changed the name of Chubby Hubby to Hubby Hubby in celebration (raising the ire of conservative groups in the process, by the way).

That’s it — I’m ending my work day, walking to the grocery store, and buying a pint of Ben & Jerry’s to show my support for this wonderfully pro-LGBT company. (I know my husband will thank me when he returns home!) You should support them, too.

(Photo courtesy of the Advocate.)

Minnesota isn’t the only state facing a push to write marriage discrimination into its state constitution this year. The same battle is playing out in the state of North Carolina, and now, as Karen Ocamb reports, a marriage equality heavyweight has announced plans to campaign on behalf of amendment opponents:

Renowned conservative Republican attorney and marriage equality hero Ted Olson is going to Greensboro, North Carolina on April 1 for a rally to help defeat the antigay initiative Amendment One.   The proposed antigay constitutional amendment on the ballot for the May 8 Republican Primary would not only ban marriage rights for same sex couples but would prohibit recognition of all same sex unions.

Yup, you read that correctly. North Carolina Republicans want this victory so badly they’ve placed it on the ballot on the same day as the state’s Republican primary, juuuuust to ensure that voters from the virulently anti-gay right-wing GOP base — whom I’ve lately taken to calling “Stone Age conservatives” — turn out in droves to pass the amendment. As Ocamb points out, Olson’s appearance is intended to send a message to southern conservatives that support for marriage equality can and should be a bipartisan issue, and to counter the presence of several high-profile bigots:

The coalition campaign opposing Amendment One hope Olson’s appearance will move Republicans, considering the expected large turnout for the Republican Primary, and counter the National Organization for Marriage and Religious Right heavyweight Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, which has launched a “Values” bus tour that NC resident and blogger Pam Spaulding notes lures kids with candy to get attention for their antigay message.

While it’s looking like an uphill battle for marriage equality in North Carolina (hardly unusual for marriage discrimination amendments), opponents are buoyed by the results of a recent poll, which shows that 54% of North Carolinians don’t want to amend their state constitution to exclude same-sex couples from marriage or any other type of relationship recognition. Of course, there’s always that pesky social desirability bias, but it’s hard to deny that those numbers are a good sign and send a powerful message.

Karen’s entire article is worth a read. I highly recommend heading over to LGBT POV and doing just that!

If there was any doubt that homophobic bigotry is the official institutional policy of the Roman Catholic Church, there cannot be any longer.

National Public Radio and the Washington Post are reporting that Pope Benedict XVI dove smack dab into the middle of the battle over marriage equality today (miter, satin slippers, and all!) in an address delivered at the Vatican to a delegation of visiting bishops from the United States. In it, he forcefully denounced the “powerful” push to grant same-sex couples the freedom to marry in the United States.

From the NPR article (emphases mine):

The 84-year-old pope acknowledged his comments might sound anachronistic or “countercultural,” particularly to the young. But he told bishops to not back down in the face of “powerful political and cultural currents seeking to alter the legal definition of marriage.“

“Sexual differences cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the definition of marriage,” he said. . .

Benedict said a weakened appreciation for traditional marriage. . . had led to “grave social problems bearing an immense human and economic cost.” He didn’t elaborate on what the cost was.

Of course he didn’t, because that’s an outright lie.

The visiting delegation included bishops from Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota. It was led by Twin Cities Archbishop John Nienstedt, who has inserted himself more deeply into the battle over civil marriage in his state than perhaps any other Catholic bishop across the country. Nienstedt is the same prelate who injected a prayer for marriage discrimination into the Catholic Mass, turned the Eucharist — which is sacred to Catholics — into a weapon with which to marginalize and exclude LGBT people, and told the priests of his diocese that if any of them dared to oppose the Church’s efforts to write its discriminatory teachings on marriage into the state constitution, they had better shut up about it.

Pope Benedict’s words today, delivered to a group of bishops headed by one of the American Catholic Church’s most notorious homophobes, amount to nothing less than an official endorsement — no, a blessing — of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ all-out campaign of spiritual bullying and forceful political lobbying against American lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, couples, and families.

The leader of the religion into which I was born has just cloaked anti-gay hatred with the mantle of faith to an unprecedented degree and explicitly endorsed malicious religion-based bigotry in a way I never imagined possible.

I truly have no words to describe the level of my disgust. If I hadn’t already left the Catholic Church before I heard this news today, I’d be walking out the door at this very moment.

As our regular readers will know, the Southern Poverty Law Center released an expanded list of anti-gay hate groups earlier this week as a part of a wide-ranging report on the state of hate groups across America. The report found an alarming increase of nearly 60 percent in the number of active anti-gay hate groups between 2010 and 2011.

Organizations joining the ranks of SPLC-certified hate groups include Mission America, founded by Linda Harvey, whom TWO has dubbed “the most homophobic woman in America;” Public Advocate of the United States, headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia and headed by Eugene Delgaudio, whose anti-LGBT bigotry is so extreme that he refers to the Student Non-Discrimination Act – which would protect LGBT students against bullying and discrimination in public schools – as the “Homosexual Classrooms Act;” and Minnesota’s notorious You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide ministry, fronted by radically anti-gay pastor Bradlee Dean, a hair-metal rocker who travels to public schools across the country delivering vitriolic “faith-based” anti-gay lectures to teenagers.

The latest edition of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report also contains an authoritative article detailing the hate and misinformation coming from the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an “ex-gay” junk science group. This group is headed by radical extremist Joseph Nicolosi, whose theories on sexual orientation are so bizarre that he actually believes Bozo the Clown can turn people gay. NARTH has become the primary source for the faulty research and scientific distortions used by the religious right to justify their continued opposition to LGBT equality at a time when public opinion is swinging dramatically in the other direction. TWO’s Wayne Besen told the SPLC’s Ryan Lenz, “There’s no other play in the playbook except going back to the fire and brimstone.”

Minnesotans should take special note of the newly-expanded list. The inclusion of Bradlee Dean’s You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide International as an anti-LGBT hate group is notable because of the close ties between Dean, his organization, and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Before Dean dumped the notoriously anti-gay former presidential candidate for allegedly “going to the left,” she famously prayed for Dean’s traveling youth ministry to “multiply ten-fold,” helped the group raise funds, and made a guest appearance on Dean’s television show. Both Dean and Bachmann — whose husband’s Christian counseling clinic was busted for offering “pray away the gay” therapy last year by a Truth Wins Out hidden-camera investigation — are outspoken supporters of a proposed amendment that would write marriage discrimination into the Minnesota state constitution.

So-called “ex-gay” organizations have been at the forefront of the push for marriage discrimination in Minnesota, as documented in a recent report by Andy Birkey of the Minnesota Independent. Exodus International, the nation’s largest “ex-gay” umbrella group, has also decided to weigh in this summer, bringing its annual conference to St. Paul from June 27-30 – at exactly the same time that the debate over the proposed anti-gay amendment is expected to reach a fever pitch.

This is no coincidence. Truth Wins Out plans to be on the ground in Minnesota during Exodus’s road show, and we look forward to collaborating with local and state organizations to fight back against ‘ex-gay’ lies.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Wayne Besen
Phone: 917-691-5118
Email: wbesen@truthwinsout.org

New List Includes Notorious “You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide” Ministry Run by Hate Pastor Bradlee Dean

BURLINGTON, Vt – Truth Wins Out applauded the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) today for releasing an expanded list of anti-gay hate groups earlier this week as a part of a wide-ranging report on the state of hate groups across America. The report found an alarming increase of nearly 60 percent in the number of active anti-gay hate groups between 2010 and 2011.

Organizations joining the ranks of SPLC-certified hate groups include Mission America, founded by Linda Harvey, whom TWO has dubbed “the most homophobic woman in America;” Public Advocate of the United States, headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia and headed by Eugene Delgaudio, whose anti-LGBT bigotry is so extreme that he refers to the Student Non-Discrimination Act – which would protect LGBT students against bullying and discrimination in public schools – as the “Homosexual Classrooms Act;” and Minnesota’s notorious You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide ministry, fronted by radically anti-gay pastor Bradlee Dean, a hair-metal rocker who travels to public schools across the country delivering vitriolic “faith-based” anti-gay lectures to teenagers.

“We commend the Southern Poverty Law Center for so vigilantly monitoring anti-LGBT hate in America,” said TWO Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Truth Wins Out also congratulates the eleven extremist organizations newly added to the list of officially-certified hate groups, because we know all too well how hard each of them has worked to earn this dubious designation.”

The latest edition of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report also contains an authoritative article detailing the hate and misinformation coming from the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an “ex-gay” junk science group. This group is headed by radical extremist Joseph Nicolosi, whose theories on sexual orientation are so bizarre that he actually believes Bozo the Clown can turn people gay. NARTH has become the primary source for the faulty research and scientific distortions used by the religious right to justify their continued opposition to LGBT equality at a time when public opinion is swinging dramatically in the other direction. TWO’s Besen told the SPLC’s Ryan Lenz, “There’s no other play in the playbook except going back to the fire and brimstone.”

The inclusion of Bradlee Dean’s You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide International as an anti-LGBT hate group is notable because of the close ties between Dean, his organization, and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Before Dean dumped the notoriously anti-gay former presidential candidate for allegedly “going to the left,” she famously prayed for Dean’s traveling youth ministry to “multiply ten-fold,” helped the group raise funds, and made a guest appearance on Dean’s television show. Both Dean and Bachmann — whose husband’s Christian counseling clinic was busted for offering “pray away the gay” therapy last year by a Truth Wins Out hidden-camera investigation — are outspoken supporters of a proposed amendment that would write marriage discrimination into the Minnesota state constitution.

“Minnesotans should take special note of the SPLC’s newly-expanded list,” said John Becker, TWO’s Director of Communications and Development, who went undercover at Bachmann & Associates last year. “Virulently anti-LGBT extremist groups like the one led by Bradlee Dean will never be satisfied with simply excluding loving same-sex couples from marriage. These hate groups won’t stop until LGBT people are beaten back into second-class status in every aspect of society.”

So-called “ex-gay” organizations have been at the forefront of the push for marriage discrimination in Minnesota, as documented in a recent report by Andy Birkey of the Minnesota Independent. Exodus International, the nation’s largest “ex-gay” umbrella group, has also decided to weigh in this summer, bringing its annual conference to St. Paul from June 27-30 – at exactly the same time that the debate over the proposed anti-gay amendment is expected to reach a fever pitch. “This is no coincidence,” said TWO’s Becker. “Truth Wins Out plans to be on the ground in Minnesota during Exodus’s road show, and we look forward to collaborating with local and state organizations to fight back against ‘ex-gay’ lies.”

Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.

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