Fox News Has A Nasty Anti-Gay Hangover. After months of championing anti-gay business owners and criticizing efforts to protect gay and lesbian customers from discrimination, Fox News is finally waking up to the consequences of its fear mongering campaign - and it doesn't like what it's seeing. Fox Drinks The Pro-Discrimination Kool-Aid The Supreme Court's historic decision to strike down Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 2013 left many anti-gay marriage activists reeling. Recognizing that their decade long fight against marriage equality was quickly becoming a lost cause, many anti-gay conservatives turned their attention to an issue that they believed might offer them more traction - the religious liberty of anti-gay business owners.
While opponents of marriage equality have long warned about businesses being forced to serve gay couples, it's only recently that the issue of protecting anti-gay business owners became a rallying cry for social conservatives. Fox News Deals With The Consequences. Bill O'Reilly Is Worried About "Homosexual Overtones" In The Girl Scouts. Bill O'Reilly criticized the Girl Scouts for hiring a spokesman who, according to O'Reilly, is a member of a "controversial punk band with homosexual overtones.
" During the February 19 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly interviewed Girl Scouts spokeswoman Kelly Parisi to discuss whether the organization had begun "leaning left. " O'Reilly questioned Parisi about the employment of Josh Ackley, a spokesman for the organization that O'Reilly claimed was a member of "a controversial punk band with homosexual overtones": O'REILLY: Let's get on to a spokesperson who I don't think works for you now but certainly did, was a member of a controversial punk band with homosexual overtones. ... [added space] When I saw that you guys hired, paid a guy in a punk band with homosexual overtones, I'm going 'is that a good choice for the Girl Scouts? ' The spokesperson in question is Josh Ackley.
It's not the first time O'Reilly has worried about homosexuality in a national scouting organization. Where is it illegal to be gay? 10 February 2014Last updated at 12:23 ET Millions of people continue to live in places that outlaw same-sex relationships and prosecute people for being gay. In five countries and in parts of two others, homosexuality is still punishable with the death penalty, while a further 70 imprison citizens because of their sexual orientation. Even where homosexuality is legal, many countries treat those in same-sex relationships differently, such as having an unequal age of consent or a ban on marriage. In Russia, host of the Sochi Winter Olympics, a law banning the promotion of "non-traditional" sexuality to under-18s was introduced last year. So, where is it illegal to be gay? Which countries allow same-sex marriages? Continue reading the main story Notes on the data: The map shows an overview of the legal status of gay people living in UN member states.
Source: UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the International Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans and Intersex Association.
Homophobia. Daily show, February 26, 2014. The Other 98% - Click LIKE if you know someone who should. When 'Religious Liberty' Was Used To Justify Racism Instead Of Homophobia. By Ian Millhiser "When ‘Religious Liberty’ Was Used To Justify Racism Instead Of Homophobia" “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”– Judge Leon M. The most remarkable thing about Arizona’s “License To Discriminate” bill is how quickly it became anathema, even among Republicans. The premise of the bill is that discrimination becomes acceptable so long as it is packaged inside a religious wrapper. Yet, while LGBT Americans are the current target of this effort to repackage prejudice as “religious liberty,” they are hardly the first.
God Of The Segregationists Theodore Bilbo was one of Mississippi’s great demagogues. Bilbo was also a virulent racist. Will open the floodgates of hell in the South. In 1901, Georgia Gov. Bob Jones. Where is it illegal to be gay? George Takei Writes Open Letter Calling Arizona A 'Jim Crow' State For Passing SB1062. On Friday, gay rights activist, acting legend and all-around awesome guy George Takei wrote an open letter to the state of Arizona regarding the passage of SB1062. The bill, ostensibly a ‘religious freedom bill’, is really nothing more than conservatives’ way of discriminating against gays and same-sex couples. Both chambers of the state’s Congress passed the bill along mostly party lines. Now, it is up to Republican Governor Jan Brewer to sign the bill into law. As of now, she has not made a move. Below is Takei’s letter in its entirety: Dear Arizona, Congratulations.
Takei’s letter emphatically tells Arizona and its citizens that if this bill gets signed into law, then the economic and societal impacts will be felt for a very long time. Takei also mentioned Kansas in his letter and for good reason. It all rests with Brewer now. Brewer has five business days to either sign or veto the bill. About Justin Baragona (277 Posts) Connect with Justin Baragona. Is the Right's "Religious Liberty" Campaign About to Backfire? At the state level, Republican legislating comes in waves. After the 2010 midterms, there was a big wave of voter ID laws. For a while, it seemed as if every Republican-controlled state in the union had suddenly decided to pass the exact same laundry list of provisions designed to minimize the turnout of Democratic voters. That was followed by a wave of anti-abortion laws, again eerily similar. Now there's a new wave: "religious freedom" laws designed to allow businesses to discriminate against gays. In some cases, the similarity of the laws is easy to explain: a group like ALEC writes model legislation, and that becomes the basis for laws all over the country.
Right-to-discriminate measures, which are mostly a case of conservatives getting a whiff of something that appeals to the tea party and then all trying to one-up each other. Ed Kilgore and Josh Marshall suggest that the "religious liberty" campaign represents a sort of Waterloo for right-wing nutbaggery. Watch a CNN commentator call Ken Cuccinelli a ‘homophobe’ to his face.