My Gay Online

By Rick Santorum’s own admission, the Concord, New Hampshire, crowd he was addressing probably wasn’t going to be receptive to his conservative view on social issues.
“I’m surprised I got a gay marriage question at a college crowd; really that’s a shock to me,” he joked.
For the most part, his audience was booing, not laughing.
The issue sparked what was, at several points over the course of an almost hour-long question and answer session, a contentious back and forth between Santorum and New Hampshire college students on social issues.
“Well what about three men?,” Santorum responded to a female student who asked him about his position on gay marriage. “If reason says that if you think it’s OK for two, then you have to differentiate with me as to why it’s not okay for three.”
Santorum initially welcomed the exchanges with several students. Then he tried to move on to other subjects as the audience interrupted and cheered the questioners rather than the candidate. The former Pennsylvania senator said he welcomed the state’s legalization of same-sex marriage because it was decided by the legislature.
Defending Marriage
Still, he defended his position to keep marriage a union between a man and a woman: “Because I believe we are made the way God made man and woman and man and woman come together to have a union to produce children which keeps civilization going and provide the best environment for children to be raised,” Santorum said. “I think that is something society should value and should give privileged status over a group of people who want to have a relationship together.”
The reception was an anomaly of sorts for Santorum, who arrived in New Hampshire last night to large and receptive crowds fresh off his second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.
At his other events today, Santorum connected with his audiences, focusing on his economic prescriptions and his personal narrative of coming from a Catholic, working-class family with immigrant grandparents. So, it seemed an odd choice to address a crowd of students speaking about American exceptionalism and focusing on conservative social values.
Medical Marijuana
About 40 minutes into the questions, the audience clapped when another student asked Santorum whether, as president, he would allow state gay marriage and medical marijuana laws to operate without federal government interference.
“I don’t believe that we can have 50 definitions of marriage,” Santorum said. “Just to say that we should have 50 definitions of what life is. I don’t think that works either. I think there are certain things that are essential elements of society upon which society rests that we have to have a consensus.”
Pressed on his stance on medical marijuana, Santorum mistakenly identified the drug as a narcotic before being corrected by the audience.
“I don’t know my medical marijuana laws very well,” he joked. Still, he called the drug a hazard to society, and when someone shouted a question asking him how he formed that opinion, Santorum said: “I form that opinion from my own life experiences and having experiences, I went to college, too.”
The reference to what he may or may not have done during his days at Pennsylvania State University didn’t quell the majority of those in the audience, whose boos trumped any applause Santorum received at the end.

George Michael has launched a tirade of criticism on Twitter against a Christian group who prayed for his death whilst he battled life-threatening pneumonia last month.
The openly gay singer, who was taken ill at AKH hospital in Vienna, Austria last November, has been criticised by religious group Christians For A Moral America, who suggested the former Wham! star was suffering from AIDS and that he deserved to die because of his sexuality.
Taking to Twitter after ‘a few glasses of vino’ last night, George called the group “c**ksucking b***ards”.
He wrote: “Did you know that while I was fighting for my life in Austria there were a bunch of those lovely American ‘Christian’ organisations, who call themselves ‘Christians for a Moral America’, who were actually taking the time to pray for me to die?”

The new law allows same-sex and opposite-sex couples to enter into a civil union with the same state rights and responsibilities as traditional marriages.
The online process for applying for the unions was activated at midnight, allowing couples to submit applications, pay fees and receive civil union certificates online.
It makes Hawaii the seventh state in the nation to allow same-sex couples to enter civil unions.
The joint ceremony, arranged by the CU in Hawaii 2012 Committee, a coalition of representatives from more than a half-dozen lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy groups, was held at a private home in Aina Haina, the Star Advertiser said.
Limatoc-DuPonte, 57, said the evening was the culmination of a lifetime of hope.
“I’ve waited all my life to be able to get married,” she said. “I just knew that one day it was going to happen. Accepting people for what they are is a way of life in Hawaii. It’s who we are, so I knew this would be possible one day. I’m ecstatic that other couples will see us and know that they can have the same thing — and they won’t have to wait as long.”

Experts say many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender seniors fear discrimination, disrespect or worse by health care workers and residents of elder housing facilities — ultimately leading many back into the closet after years of being open.
That anxiety takes on new significance as the first of the 77 million baby boomers turns 65 this year. At least 1.5 million seniors are gay, a number expected to double by 2030, according to SAGE, the New York-based group Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders.
Recognizing the need, developers in Philadelphia have secured a site and initial funding for what would be one of the nation’s few GLBT-friendly affordable housing facilities. They hope to break ground on a 52-unit, $17 million building in 2013.
Anti-discrimination laws prohibit gay-only housing, but projects can be made GLBT-friendly through marketing and location. And while private retirement facilities targeted at the gay community exist, such residences are often out of reach for all but the wealthiest seniors.

Gays are also less likely to have biological family to help out with informal caregiving, either through estrangement or being childless, making them more dependent on outside services. And that makes them more vulnerable, SAGE executive director Michael Adams said.
“They cannot at all assume that they will be treated well or given the welcome mat,” he said.
Cities including San Francisco and Chicago also have projects on the drawing board. But the first and, so far, only affordable housing complex for gay elders to be built in the United States is Triangle Square-Hollywood in Los Angeles

Open since 2007, the $22 million facility has 104 units available to any low-income senior 62 and over, gay or straight, according to executive director Mark Supper. Residents pay monthly rent on a sliding scale, from about $200 to $800, depending on their income. About 35 units are set aside for seniors with HIV/AIDS and for those at risk of becoming homeless, Supper said.
The Triangle’s population is about 90 percent GLBT and it has a waiting list of about 200 people. The project’s developer, Gay & Lesbian Elder Housing, plans to build a second facility in Southern California in the next 18 months, Supper said.
But what took so long for the need to recognized? Chris Bartlett, executive director of the GLBT William Way Center in Philadelphia, noted that advocates spent the better part of two decades devoting their energy to programs for those affected by HIV or AIDS, which were decimating the gay community.
While AIDS remains a priority, Bartlett said, the crisis mentality has passed and allowed the community to focus on other things. He said he looks forward to the Way Center providing social services at the planned Philadelphia senior housing facility, in a sense repaying those who led the gay liberation movement.
“Don’t we owe it to them … to ensure that they have an experience as elders that’s worthy of what they gave to our community?” Bartlett said.
The Philadelphia group has been trying to get its project off the ground for about eight years but has been stymied by location problems, a tough economy and stiff competition for federal housing tax credits.
Rejected once for the credits, developers recently reapplied and hope for a different answer this spring, said Mark Segal, director of the Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Fund, which is spearheading the project. It’s planned for a thriving section of the city affectionately known as the Gayborhood.
“I’m extremely optimistic,” said Segal, also publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News.

However, Adams said the real solution lies not only in building more facilities, but in cultural competency training for staffers at existing elder programs. The Philadelphia Corporation on Aging, the private nonprofit that serves the city’s seniors, began offering such seminars to health care workers a couple of years ago, said Tom Shea, the agency’s director of training.
“They’re going to be seeing a diverse slice of the aging population in Philadelphia … and we need to be sensitive to all their needs,” Shea said.
Adams suggested that discrimination faced by today’s GLBT elders could diminish in the decades ahead, since he said opinion research shows that younger generations are less likely to harbor anti-gay biases than older generations.
“So we hope that the passage of time will provide part of the solution,” he said. “But of course, today’s LGBT elders can’t wait for that.”
Jackie Adams, 54, of Philadelphia, said being diagnosed with AIDS many years ago meant she never thought she’d live long enough to need elder housing. But now Adams, who was born male and lives as a female, is part of a local initiative focused on GLBT senior issues.
On a limited income after losing her job as an outreach worker for those with HIV, Adams said affordable, GLBT-friendly senior housing is badly needed. She is not related to Michael Adams.
“I would be incomplete if I had to go from wearing stockings and dresses to (work boots) and jeans,” Adams said. “I would like to be able to live in a community where I could fully be me.”

The North Carolina Family Policy Council’s use of a violent image to promote the state’s proposed amendment banning same-sex marriage has ignited controversy among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates.
The photograph, which can be found on page 13 of the winter 2012 issue of the organization’s Family North Carolina publication, shows a traditionally-dressed bride and groom being targeted by an unseen sniper. It illustrates an article titled “Marriage In Society’s Moral Crosshairs,” by Jacqueline Schaffer, J.D.
“Protecting traditional marriage by enshrining it in the State Constitution is not only socially beneficial, but it is also necessary to protect religious liberty,” Schaffer writes. “When the state sanctions a morally controversial lifestyle such as homosexuality, it will inevitably draw itself into conflict with the religious and moral beliefs of its citizens. Such conflict, however, is not hypothetical, and its outcomes are already well-documented.”
The image has sparked the ire of several bloggers. Writes Unicorn Booty’s Kevin Farrell: “Did the North Carolina Family Policy Council somehow sleep through that time Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head after Sarah Palin put her in a rifle’s crosshairs? Didn’t we come to the societal conclusion that crosshairs and gun imagery?”



A lawsuit by a Jewish U.C. Berkeley student claiming university officials did little to prevent the harassment of Jewish students during a protest event organized by Muslim student groups has been dismissed by a judge who noted that, while schools are allowed to crack down on offensive student speech, they have no legal obligation to do so.
Plaintiff Jesica Felber’s suit stems from the annual “Apartheid Week,” which is sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Students Association. During the week, protesters dress up in military garb, man mock checkpoints and ask students to state their religion before allowing them to pass.
Felber alleged that when she participated in a nearby counter-protest (“Israel Wants Peace Week”) holding a sign reading “Israel wants peace,” an Apartheid Week organizer hit her with a shopping cart.
The campus checkpoints were meant to echo those set up by the Israeli Defense Force throughout the West Bank, where Palestinians who want to pass though are required to undergo searches. Supporters of the checkpoints attest they’re a crucial method in deterring terrorists; however, critics claim they limit Palestinians’ freedom of movement and are a violation of their fundamental human rights
The suit also alleged this attack was part of a pattern of behavior during Apartheid Week, during which Jewish students were spit on and Israel’s government was equated to that of Nazi Germany.
While the university has previously disciplined the some of the event’s participants and even had Husam Zakharia, the student who hit Felber with the shopping cart, arrested in connection with the incident, Felber (who graduated last year) has accused university President Mark Yudof, who is Jewish, of allowing an anti-Semitic environment to flourish on campus.
“SJP and Zakharia have been involved in other incidents on campus to incite violence against and intimidate Jewish and other students,” stated the lawsuit. “Defendants knew of this history of incitement and intimidation yet took no reasonable step to adequately control Zakharia or other student members of the SPJ.”

However, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg didn’t see it that way. In his ruling, Seeborg noted Apartheid Week was an example of the type of “political speech” protected by the First Amendment.Seeborg said some courts have allowed public colleges to outlaw harassing speech and conduct that interferes with students’ rights, but schools have no legal duty to do so. The Muslim organizations receive campus funding on the same basis as other groups, the judge said, and any attempt to withdraw it would raise “serious First Amendment issues.”

Seeborg also rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that U.C. officials were deliberately indifferent to the threats they faced. He said campus police have arrested disruptive protesters, and the Berkeley administration “has engaged in an ongoing dialogue with the opposing parties in an attempt to ensure that the rights of all persons are respected, and to minimize the potential for violence.”
The suit sought damages along with a five-year ban of both of the groups that sponsored the protest and permanent revocation of their university funding.
“This is an abuse of the judicial process and an assault on free speech. The lawsuit is an attempt to try and intimidate the university into silencing a campus group with whom some may disagree politically,” said Students for Justice in Palestine in a statement.

The checkpoints are just one of the most visible elements in a decade-long, tit-for-tat struggle between supporters of Israel and Palestine on campus. It is waged through Palestinian movie nights and Zionist picnics; tables in Sproul stacked with literature quoting Edward Said and Theodor Herzl; and Palestinian “die-ins” and pro-Israel hip-hop shows. Ron Hendel, a professor of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies sums it up: “It’s a PR war.”
Felber is now a director at Jerusalem Online University, an online program designed to strengthen the bonds between American Jewish college students and Israel.
Earlier this year, U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into claims that U.C. Santa Cruz was fostering an atmosphere conducive to anti-Semitism.
While an anti-Affirmative Action bake sale held by a Berkeley Republican group elicited similar outrage, no legal action was taken in that case.

As more evidence surfaces that Ron Paul knew about the racist and homophobic messages of the 1980s and 90s newsletters he published, a former senior aide to the congressman has come forward with a lengthy statement attempting to absolve Paul of racism while detailing shocking incidents involving Paul and gay supporters.
Eric Dondero writes on Right Wing News that his former boss “is not all bigoted towards homosexuals” and supports their rights to do whatever they want in private. He is, however, “personally uncomfortable around homosexuals,” as the following story shows:

In 1988, Ron had a hardcore Libertarian supporter, Jim Peron, Owner of Laissez Faire Books in San Francisco. Jim set up a magnificent 3-day campaign swing for us in the SF Bay Area. Jim was what you would call very openly Gay. But Ron thought the world of him. For 3 days we had a great time trouncing from one campaign event to another with Jim’s Gay lover. The atmosphere was simply jovial between the four of us. (As an aside we also met former Cong. Pete McCloskey during this campaign trip.) We used Jim’s home/office as a “base.” Ron pulled me aside the first time we went there, and specifically instructed me to find an excuse to excuse him to a local fast food restaurant so that he could use the bathroom. He told me very clearly, that although he liked Jim, he did not wish to use his bathroom facilities. I chided him a bit, but he sternly reacted, as he often did to me, Eric, just do what I say. Perhaps “sternly” is an understatement. Ron looked at me directly, and with a very angry look in his eye, and shouted under his breath: “Just do what I say NOW.”
Dondero claims that while Paul is not an anti-Semite, he is “most certainly Anti-Israel” and wishes the Israeli state did not exist. But Paul has “no problem with” American Jews.
The controversial newsletters, which are filled with slurs against gays and African-Americans, have recently made their way back into the news cycle to haunt Paul’s presidential campaign. Paul has denied writing them, but as more old videos turn up showing Paul promoting and even taking credit for the newsletters, it will be hard for him to continue to deny involvement.

“The Salvation Army refused to help us,” Mr. Browning recalls, “unless we broke up and then left the ‘sinful homosexual lifestyle’ behind. We slept on the street, and they didn’t help when we declined to break up at their insistence.”
Mr. Browning’s boyfriend was wearing a “Silence = Death” AIDS pin on his jacket, which must have tipped off the Salvation Army worker. “He told us we needed to be saved,” Mr. Browning says. “If we were willing to attend church services, he could help. We would have to break up, only one of us could stay in the shelter, and if there was room for the other, he would have to be on the opposite side of the room, and we wouldn’t even look at each other.”
Now Mr. Browning, a writer and gay rights advocate, is using his blog to publicize a decade-old boycott of the Salvation Army. The boycott’s proponents say those who drop money into the Salvation Army’s ubiquitous red kettles at Christmastime, or shop in its thrift stores, often know little about the organization’s evangelical Christianity, its opposition to homosexuality, and its occasional attempts to influence public policy on gay rights.
On his Web site, Mr. Browning, whom the Christian magazine World recently called “the Red Kettle Menace,” encourages people to donate instead to other organizations, like the Red Cross or Doctors without Borders. When he passes by the red kettles, he sometimes drops in pieces of imitation money that he says have circulated among gay activists for about 10 years.
One version of the money looks like a real dollar bill, but its (obviously fake) denomination is three dollars, it carries a rainbow flag, and it bears the words, in small print: “When the Salvation Army ends its policy of religious bigotry and discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, then, and only then, will this be a real dollar bill.”
Greg Henchar, a Floridian who with his partner runs Rainbow411.com, a gay-friendly business directory, says he created the $3 bill a year ago. The blogger John Aravosis has published on his Web site a similar piece of red-kettle literature — he does not know who created it — that says “Voucher” across the top and begins, “This holiday season I am supporting organizations that do not discriminate in any way.” And about a dozen YouTube videos promote a Salvation Army boycott; the most popular, posted over a year ago, has been watched over 100,000 times.
The Salvation Army originated in a series of revival meetings led by the Methodist preacher William Booth in 1865, in the East End of London. Booth left the institutional church because he believed it did too little for the poor. Today, the Salvation Army operates in 122 countries, offering services including drug and alcohol rehabilitation, shelters and soup kitchens. Although Salvation Army missions lack many trappings of Christian churches — they do not offer communion, for example — they house nondenominational worship services, and their treatment programs rely on the Bible.
The Salvation Army’s “Position Statement” on homosexuality, found on its Web site, reads in part: “The Salvation Army does not consider same-sex orientation blameworthy in itself. Homosexual conduct, like heterosexual conduct, requires individual responsibility and must be guided by the light of scriptural teaching. Scripture forbids sexual intimacy between members of the same sex. The Salvation Army believes, therefore, that Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life.”
The Salvation Army does not employ registered lobbyists, but its leaders have occasionally made news by meeting with government officials. In 2001, The Washington Post obtained a Salvation Army document that said the administration of President George W. Bush had promised to honor a Salvation Army request: that religious charities receiving federal money be exempt from local gay antidiscrimination laws. The day the request became public, the Bush administration said it was being denied.
And in 2004, in response to a City Council ordinance requiring that organizations with city contracts offer benefits to gay employees’ partners, the Salvation Army threatened to stop operating in New York City. In 2006, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg did not have to enforce the ordinance, which had been enacted over his veto; the Salvation Army never left New York City.
George Hood, a Salvation Army spokesman, said all revenue from Salvation Army thrift stores is used locally. But he said a small percentage of money dropped into the red kettles finds its way to Washington — where it helps to pay the salaries of politically active staff members like Mr. Hood. Every local unit pays 10 percent of its revenue to a state or regional division — there are 40 divisions in the United States — and every division pays 10 percent of its revenue to one of four national territories, each of which foots a quarter of the national budget.
In other words, of a dollar dropped into a red kettle in New York City, a quarter of a penny ends up at national headquarters, where conversations with the government — not lobbying, Mr. Hood says — may take place.
Despite the boycott, the red kettles have had three straight record years for fund-raising, Mr. Hood says. As to the complaint of discrimination based on sexual orientation, he says it is against Salvation Army policy. “If they were legitimate clients looking for food, they should have been helped,” he says of Mr. Browning and his ex-boyfriend.
In a statement sent by e-mail later, Mr. Hood adds that “gay couples are to be treated in the same way we treat heterosexual couples.”
“Whether they are provided overnight lodging,” he says, “is determined solely on capacity and availability of beds.” Most beds in Salvation Army shelters are for men, but the Salvation Army has “been going through a transition of facilities over the past several years to expand bed space for women and also to isolate some private rooms for couples, whether they be homosexual or heterosexual.”

A Tennessee private school’s decision to ban any mention of homosexuality among its student body is raising more than a few eyebrows among parents.
Tennessee’s WREG News has an extensive report on the new ban at Rossville Christian Academy. A letter which was sent home to parents reportedly reads as follows:
“A staff member or student who promotes, engages in, or identifies himself/herself with such activity through any word or action shall be in violation of this policy. Should the administration determine a violation of this policy, the person involved will be subject to disciplinary action with the possibility of permanent dismissal. Any applicant who is not in compliance with this policy will not be admitted.”
Still, one parent, whose name was not disclosed, said they believed the ban at Rossville, a private school with about 300 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, is illegally aimed at one gay student. “My initial reaction is that it was specifically aimed at one person, and I felt very sad about that,” the parent said. “If my daughter spoke about someone who was gay is she going to be expelled for that or is she going to be put in detention?”
Though school officials have not commented on the policy, University of Memphis law professor Steve Mulroy said that, with no state or federal law preventing anti-gay discrimination, the stance is legal, and given that the academy is a Christian-based school, there may be even more protections in place.
Interestingly, as The New Civil Rights Movement points out, Rossville Christian Academy’s website notes that the school “exists to challenge a diverse student body through high academic standards, seeking to instill and inspire Christian virtues in a safe and nurturing environment.”
Last month, Shorter University, a Christian Baptist school located in Rome, Ga., mandated that its 200 employees sign a “personal lifestyle pledge” declaring that they reject homosexuality, premarital sex and adultery.

Cardinal Francis George, the Archbishop of Chicago, this week told a Chicago news station that he agreed with a local Roman Catholic church’s objections to the city’s recently-adjusted Gay Pride Parade route passing by its doors and warned that the parade could “morph into the Ku Klux Klan.”
George made the comment Sunday on Fox Chicago when asked about Our Lady of Mount Carmel’scomplaints that the parade passing by its Belmont Avenue location would force the church to cancel its morning mass. The church recently launched a petition urging the city to force parade organizers to adjust their plans.
“I go with the pastor,” George told Fox. “He’s telling us that he won’t be able to have services on Sunday if that’s the case. You don’t want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism.”
When the Fox host pointed out that George’s comparison was “a little strong,” the cardinal stood by his statement.
“It is, but you take a look at the rhetoric,” he continued. “The rhetoric of the Klu Klux Klan, the rhetoric of some of the gay liberation people. Who is the enemy? Who is the enemy? The Catholic Church.”
The cardinal’s comments came a matter of days before the Gay Pride Parade organizers announced Wednesday that the pride start time, originally pushed back to 10 a.m. in an effort to curb public drinking, overcrowding and other safety hazards, would revert back to noon in order to stay clear of the church’s Sunday mass, according to the Windy City Times.
LGBT Catholic group the Rainbow Sash Movement criticized Cardinal George as promoting a “doubled standard” in pushing for the parade to start later.
“One only has the look at the Chicago Marathon, and negative impact that race has on parishes such as Assumption Parish, St. Joseph’s Parish, Immaculate Conception Parish and St. Michael’s Parish just to name a few,” the statement read, as reported by the Windy City Times.
Other local LGBT and progressive leaders reacted with disappointed to Cardinal George’s controversial statement on Fox.
State Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) called the Cardinal’s choice of words “very unfortunate … we should all speak respectfully of each other.” LGBT advocacy group The Civil Rights Agenda executive director Anthony Martinez said he suspected the cardinal is “lashing out at the LBGT community over past matters and legislation that have now been resolved,” the Chicago Phoenixreports.
State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chicago) also weighed in on the statement, telling ChicagoPride.com, “The Cardinal’s unfortunate choice of words in comparing the LGBT community to the Klu Klux Klan is offensive. … I would hope an apology be forthcoming.”
Catholic leadership in Chicago and, more broadly, Illinois have had a tenuous year with the LGBT community, fighting battles concerning the state’s new civil union law, same-sex foster and adoptive parents and, most recently, the Illinois Catholic Conference launched a “Defense of Marriage” department with the hope of blocking any further steps the state might take toward recognizing same-sex marriage