Alvin McEwen has a great, very important petition at Change.org that you should all check out.  In it, he is petitioning the United States Congress to subject Religious Right testimony on LGBT issues to a high level of scrutiny, based on their pattern of cravenly distorting actual research in order to further their anti-gay agenda:

In June of this year during a Congressional hearing on the Defense of Marriage Act, Sen. Al Franken exposed Focus on the Family’s Tom Minnery’s attempt to inaccurately cite a study to defame same-sex households.

Earlier this year during another Congressional hearing on DOMA, National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher committed the same distortion – i.e. inaccurately citing a study to defame same-sex households. Gallagher’s group (NOM) has also been called out twice by the Pulitzer Prize winning site Politifact for inaccurate negative statements it has made about the gay community.

The Family Research Council was declared as an official anti-gay hate group last year by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its tendency to spread propaganda about the gay community such as gays molest children at a high level and same-sex households harm children.

However, the head of the Family Research Council – Tony Perkins – is frequently called as a Congressional witness on many occasions from discussing issues of gay equality to the selection of Supreme Court justices.

That’s just three examples. Alvin points out at his blog that, though Tom Minnery was called out, Maggie Gallagher and Tony Perkins got away with it, and that this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Religious Right distorting the work of real, honest researchers.  That petition, again, is at Change.org, so check it out and sign it.

The other petition comes from Kathy Baldock, and focuses on the pride celebration in Charlotte, North Carolina.  If you’re not familiar with Kathy, she is a straight, evangelical woman who spends her days fighting for dignity and respect for LGBT people within the church.  At Charlotte Pride, as usual, the vehemently anti-gay activist Michael Brown has planned a counter demonstration called “God Has A Better Way.”  Brown has a distinct pattern of pretending that he is reaching out in love to LGBT people, and somehow managing to send some of the most grotesque, hateful messages possible to the gay community.  Kathy explains a bit more about the message of the God Has A Better Way people:

The stated beliefs of the backers of GHABW * with respect to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are:

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are a deviation from God’s best, God’s intentions and His design.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people can change orientation and be heterosexual with no negative effects.

If they do not succeed in orientation change, they should remain celibate in order to identify as Christians.( “Gay Christian” is always placed in quotation marks to dismiss the existence of gay Christians.)

The majority of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are inherently unhappy, unhealthy, sexually immoral or rebellious to the will of God.

Transgender people would best follow God’s plan by using hormonal therapy, prayer and counseling to overcome the issue of gender identity. Sexual reassignment surgery should never be used as an option.

Acting on same sex attraction is sinful and indicative of non-submission to God.
Same-sex attraction is a behavior, not an orientation.

In your face hateful, as usual.  These people, of course, claim that they are bringing this message in “love,” but Michael Brown has shown repeatedly that his concept of “love” is warped at best.

Sign Kathy’s petition to ask the group to cancel their nasty little counter rally here.

I mentioned a few minutes ago that Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family admitted in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on DOMA this morning that kids of same-sex couples are put at a disadvantage by laws that discriminate against their parents. This exchange led by Sen. Al Franken is must-see teevee, as Al calmly produces one of the studies that Focus has cited to support their belief that same-sex parents are inferior, explains that it doesn’t remotely say what Focus claims it says, and ends by asserting that based on such misrepresentations, Minnery’s entire testimony is suspect. This is what happens when the Religious Right goes under the microscrope, y’all!

Beautiful!

[h/t JCole]

I am not a gay conservative…to say the least. And I’ve questioned in the past the wisdom of GOProud, the gay conservative group, participating at CPAC along with groups that want to legislate away their dignity. I still question that wisdom. They’ve been sending out reports from CPAC along the lines of “Nobody has beat us up yet, so that means conservatives aren’t bigots after all!” They’re also stupidly suggesting that because Dick Cheney got a standing ovation, that the wingnuts are somehow supportive of gays because Dick Cheney supports gays.

It’s pathetic. Newsflash: Wingnuts like Dick Cheney because Dick Cheney is a torture-mongering ghoul, and wingnuts are weak people, so they feel strengthened by the idea of torturing people, as long as they don’t have to personally exhibit any strength or courage of their own.

Anyway. I don’t care how nice people are to the gay CPAC-ers; what matters is what policies they support. Lots of people are nice to people they hate, especially Southerners, who I would imagine are overrepresented at Winguttapalooza. It’s so ingrained in our culture that we have code phrases that express disdain while always being able to claim the mantle of gentility. (“Bless her heart.”) So personally, the fact that the gay conservatives haven’t been shot at yet at CPAC isn’t impressive.

Also, they’re dealing with the fact that the GOP line on their dignity and existence is that they shouldn’t have any. Consider this quote from Chris Plante, who’s running the National Organization for Marriage (nom nom nom) booth just a few feet away:

“Gays and lesbians have the right to live as they choose, but they don’t have the right to redefine marriage for the rest of us,” Plante said.

Uh huh, right. And believe me, NOM is more welcome there than GOProud is. Again, I don’t care now nice and polite CPAC-ers are to the gays in their midst. The fact that gay conservatives are impressed and excited to be included without having to wear pink triangles is pathetic and reveals the self-loathing and the deeply ingrained beliefs in their own inferiority that we’ve always seen in them.

Meanwhile, an insane press conference happened, featuring Elaine Donnelly, Queen of the 101st Chairborne Brigade, and Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family (who apparently can’t pronounce the word “debacle”), who projected their pathetic Fear of the Gay onto our brave troops as they came out in opposing DADT repeal. Also speaking were know-nothing Tony Perkins and David Keene, who organized the entire conference. Oh, also, there was an old retired admiral who probably had to be helped onto the stage, testifying about his 1930′s version of reality. Watch it if you want, but you’ll lose a few brain cells.

All of that being said, though, this video of Jimmy LaSalvia, the King of the Gay Wingnuts, is pretty funny:

ZING! The boys at the NOM booth are total pansies! On that, we agree.

Anyway, so there you go. Jimmy LaSalvia made a funny and nobody’s been gay-bashed yet at CPAC. Glad to see, again, that they’re persevering in their quest to win the gay rights battles of the 1970′s.

UPDATE: Okay, so all of that being said, this video is also funny. Ryan Sorba, a hysterical and likely closeted anti-gay activist, decided to take to the stage and condemn CPAC for inviting GOProud to the event, and he was received poorly by some in the room. What I notice is that at the beginning, some were booing him, and some were cheering him, but as his childish tantrum grew more hysterical, the boos got louder. Mike Madden at Salon’s War Room opened his report on this by saying, “Turns out CPAC isn’t quite the place for insane jeremiads against homosexuality.” I would suggest, rather, a more balanced reaction, because if you click on the link above to watch the aforementioned press conference, you’ll see that there is indeed a place for insane jeremiads against homosexuality at CPAC. It seems to me that what’s become socially unacceptable, even in CPAC, is the kind of frothing, unhinged anti-gay ranting that’s the hallmark of Ryan Sorba’s “career.” I guarantee you that, for a lot of people in that room, their issue is not the content of Sorba’s tirade, but rather the unfiltered nature of it, because they know that their bigotry is not acceptable in intelligent society. So NOM and Elaine Donnelly and Tom Minnery are fine with them. The rhetorical equivalent of playing with your dingleberries on stage, as exhibited by Ryan Sorba, is not.

Pretty funny, though.

If you missed the event he’s referencing, where the students at Smith College exposed Sorba for the embarrassment he is, click the clicky and laugh.