Earlier this month, GLAAD honored ABC Family for positively portraying LGBT characters in its annual Network Responsibility Index. “This year, ABC Family becomes the second network, cable or broadcast, to receive an ‘Excellent’ rating in this report due to the quality and diversity of its many LGBT impressions,” the group noted. “Of the 10 cable networks evaluated, ABC Family posted the largest increase (+18%) and ranked highest for LGBT-inclusive original content.”

The designation isn’t sitting well with the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, who is lashing out at the network for accepting the honor and accusing it of “indoctrinating children”:

PERKINS: Michael Riley, ABC’s chief executive, said he was “proud” to be honored. Celebrating homosexuality, he said, is “very important to us.” That’s a serious problem, considering that ABC Family is the highest-rated network for 12 to 34-year-olds. Most parents trust the channel, which used to be owned by Disney. But it’s a different story now that the network’s going out of its way to indoctrinate kids. That won’t change until you get involved. Contact ABC. Tell them what they gain by being gay-friendly doesn’t compare with what they’ll lose. And that’s viewers.

Listen:

[H/T: People For The American Way's RWW]

Joe Sudbay reports more startling developments in the case of Edie Windsor, who is challenging the constitutionality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Recall that last week, Paul Clement — the lawyer House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) hired to defend the law — filed a brief dismissing Windsor’s motion for summary judgment and identified the work of professional anti-gay activists without making them available for deposition. Windsor’s lawyers had filed a motion asking the Court to strike the hearsay documents and today they went a step further, submitting the affidavit of Professor Lisa Diamond, one of the authors cited by Boehner’s lawyers. Remarkably, Diamond claims that “Boehner’s crack legal team misconstrued and distorted her writings.” From Diamond’s affidavit:

BLAG misconstrues and distorts my research findings, which do not support the propositions for which BLAG cites them. Specifically, on p. 11 of their opposition to the motion of summary judgment, BLAG quotes the following statement from one of my papers: “…there is currently no scientific or popular consensus on the exact constellation of experiences that definitively ‘qualify’ an individual as lesbian, gay, or bisexual” — as support for their claim that sexual orientation is not immutable. This is incorrect. My quoted statement concerns the scientific and popular debate over the defining characteristics of LGBT individuals and it says nothing whatsoever about the immutability of sexual orientation itself. [...] Neither this article nor any of my other published work supports BLAG’s claim that ‘a high number of persons who expereince sexual attraction to members of the same sex early in their adult lives later cease to experience such attraction.

Read the full affidavit here.

The Minnesota Independent’s Andy Birkey reports that the Parents Action League (PAL) — a group that advocates for ex-gay reparative therapy — is now “circulating a petition to the Anoka-Hennepin School Board asking it to maintain a policy that limits discussions of LGBT issues in the classroom.” The Minnesota school district has some of the highest suicide rates in the country and is currently involved in a lawsuit alleging that its policy of not discussing homosexuality has contributed to severe bullying against LGBT students. “PAL’s petition asserts that LGBT people suffer ‘life-threatening health risks’ and a flier by the group warns of a ‘radical homosexual agenda,” Birkey writes. Below is the text of the petition:

Whereas homosexual behavior exposes participants to many life-threatening health risks; and whereas the classroom environment needs to be solely focused on academics; Therefore, we the undersigned citizens of Anoka-Hennepin School District No. 11 do whole heartedly support and desire that the School Board adhere to the following statement in the AH District 11 Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy: ‘Teaching about sexual orientation is not a part of the District adopted curriculum; rather, such matters are best addressed within individual family homes, churches, or community organizations. Anoka-Hennepin staff, in the course of their professional duties, shall remain neutral on matters regarding sexual orientation including but not limited to student led discussions.’

The group is also sending out these flyers:

Do you want your tax dollars used to promote a radical homosexual agenda in our public schools?

On February 9, 2009 the Anoka-Hennepin District #11 School Board passed the Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy (Neutrality Policy). This policy makes it clear that “Teaching about sexual orientation is not a part of the District adopted curriculum; rather, such matters are best addressed within individual family homes, churches, or community organizations. Anoka-Hennepin staff, in the course of their professional duties, shall remain neutral on matters regarding sexual orientation including but not limited to student led discussions.”

This policy strengthens the authority and rights of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their own children—especially on sensitive topics such as sexual orientation. The Gay Equity Team and other radical homosexual activists in our school district are fighting to overturn this policy.

PAL spokeswoman and representative Barb Anderson has previously blamed gay groups for the bullying encountered by LGBT students. “They are creating an environment where these children that are sexually confused suddenly become affirmed as a homosexual or that they are born that way, and then these kids are locked into a lifestyle with their choices limited, and many times this can be disastrous to them as they get into the behavior which leads to disease and death in some cases.” She added, “So, it’s really… They are the ones that are contributing to an atmosphere that can even increase bullying as more kids get into this kind of a lifestyle.”

Anderson is a top Bachmann donor and was instrumental in advocating for the neutrality policy. She and her husband, George Anderson of Crown Iron Works, have donated $13,400 and $9,200, respectively, and Crown Iron Works ranked as Bachmann’s 12th largest donor over her political career with $26,850 in total contributions.

Princeton University politics professor Robert George — the founding chairman of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage (NOM) — has announced that he will co-moderate Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-SC) The Palmetto Freedom Presidential Forum on September 5. The event is also being co-sponsored by George’s American Principles Project, a conservative group that kicked off this year’s boycott of CPAC to protest the participation of the Republican pro-gay rights group GOProud:

The Palmetto Freedom Forum will follow a unique format, designed to allow invited candidates to engage in a thoughtful, substantive discussion of their stances on the critical issues facing our country. Candidates will be featured on stage one-at-a-time and will engage in a question and answer session with three panelists: U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), U.S. Representative Steve King (R-IA), and Dr. Robert P. George, founder of the American Principles Project and a professor at Princeton University. The event will be moderated by David Stanton, a veteran of South Carolina presidential events and former local news anchor. [...]

Founder of the American Principles Project, Robert George, said, “The South Carolina presidential forum rests on a conviction—the belief that the way forward for our country is a renewed fidelity to the foundational principles of our civilization and the constitutional principles of our democratic republic. The forum will give those aspiring to the presidency an opportunity to demonstrate the depth of their understanding of our nation’s core principles, and the strength of their commitment to governing in accordance with them.”

George co-authored the 2009 Manhattan Declaration, a manifesto “developed after a New York meeting of conservative church leaders that “promises resistance to the point of civil disobedience against any legislation that might implicate their churches or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same sex marriage.” As a 2009 New York Times profile explained, George — the religious right’s intellectual leader — “argues that reason alone shows that heterosexual sodomy and homosexual sex are morally wrong, just as the Catholic Church, classical philosophers and other religious traditions have historically taught.” His declaration, meanwhile, encourages people to resist same-sex attraction. “[W]e pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God’s intention for our lives,” it says.

George has previously described homosexual behavior as “beneath the dignity of human beings as free and rational creatures” and argued that same-sex relationships have “no intelligible basis in them for the norms of monogamy, exclusivity, and the pledge of permanence.” Most recently, he even claimed that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo “shouldn’t be considered a Catholic because he signed marriage equality into law.”

Reports have indicated that invitations to the forum will only be extended “to Republican contenders polling at 5 percent support or higher in the RealClearPolitics.com poll average as of Aug. 22.” Under that standard, Huntsman and Santorum will likely be excluded from the event.

Last week, the Obama administration announced that it would review all 300,000 active deportation cases to ensure that they are consistent with the nation’s enforcement priorities. The case-by-case review will allow the government to focus its resources and efforts on high priority targets — individuals who pose a threat to public safety and national security or repeat immigration law violators — while exempting low priority groups, including binational same-sex couples, from deportation, the administration maintained. In a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano explained that the new approach would also allow immigration judges “to more swiftly adjudicate high priority cases, such as those involving convicted felons.” “This process will also allow additional federal enforcement resources to be focused on border security and the removal of public safety threats,” she said.

On Friday, an immigration judge in Denver, Colorado implemented the administration’s directive and halted the deportation of Sujey Pando — an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who is married to a U.S. citizen. As Pando’s attorney Lavi Soloway explains on his Stop the Deportations blog, the judge rescheduled the deportation hearing and specifically cited the review directive in her decision:

Because today’s hearing was intended to be a final decision day on Sujey’s deportation, the judge’s action was unusual; she spent 45 minutes methodically considering the procedural posture of the case. In the end, the Judge set aside the intended purpose of the hearing, citing developments including the Attorney General’s intervention in a similar case in May (Matter of Dorman) and noted that the issues involved in this case existed in a context that was “fluid” and “in a state of flux.” The Judge referred to events that occurred as recent as yesterday as having an impact on how to proceed.

The Denver Post notes that “Pando’s mother and stepfather brought her from Chihuahua, Mexico, into the U.S. when she was 16 and promptly kicked her out when she revealed she is a lesbian.” “Her mother, who has permanent residency status, obtained citizenship for her three sons, but not her daughter, because she is gay.” Pando married her longtime partner in Iowa in 2010.

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) prohibits the federal government from recognizing Pando’s same-sex marriage and prohibits the couple from petitioning the federal government for the same immigration benefits that are afforded to separate-sex couples. The Immigration Policy Center estimates that there are “approximately 36,000 same-sex binational couples living in the United States, and approximately half of these couples are raising children.”

Pope Benedict XVI was forced to cut short his anti-gay marriage speech in Madrid this weekend after “powerful winds and sheets of rain struck at a vast air base, whipping off his skullcap, shaking the stage and knocking over at least one tent.” He did get at least this much out:

“The Lord calls many people to marriage, in which a man and a woman, in becoming one flesh, find fulfilment in a profound life of communion,” he told the young pilgrims.

A Vatican spokesman said on Sunday as many as 1.5 million pilgrims had gathered to hear the pope. Marriage was a project for true love, deepened by sharing joys and sorrows, and marked by “complete self-giving”, said the pope.

“For this reason, to acknowledge the beauty and goodness of marriage is to realize that only a setting of fidelity and indissolubility, along with an openness to God’s gift of live, is adequate to the grandeur and dignity of marital love.”

The Pope has for years “pressed for a purge of homosexuality not merely as an act or a lifestyle but as an orientation,” calling it “an intrinsic moral evil” and “an objective disorder.”

Joe Sudbay reports that the Justice Department has filed a brief in support of Edie Windsor’s challenge to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Windsor was forced to pay exorbitant federal inheritance taxes after her wife passed away because the government could not legally recognize their 44-year relationship (the couple married in Canada in May of 2007 and their union was recognized in New York). Since President Obama announced that he would no longer be upholding the constitutionality of the Act, House Speaker John Beohner (R-OH) has hired former solicitor general Paul Clement to defend the measure from legal challenges.

In its brief, the government argues that Section 3 of DOMA — which defines “marriage” as a legal union between a man and woman for federal purposes — is inconsistent with the equal protections clause, “as it denies legally married same-sex couples federal benefits that are available to similarly situated opposite-sex couples.” The document reviews the the long history of “discrimination based on prejudice and stereotypes” against LGBT people from the federal and state governments and private parties, and articulates the following equality-affirming arguments:

1) DOMA IS GROUNDED IN ANIMUS TOWARD GAYS: “[O]ne of the goals of DOMA was to provide gays and lesbians with an incentive to abandon or at least to hide from view a core aspect of their identities, which legislators regarded as immoral and inferior. This record evidences the kind of animus and stereotype-based thinking that the Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against.”

2) ORIENTATION IS NOT RELATED TO ABILITY TO PERFORM: “Just as a person’s gender, race, or religion does not bear an inherent relation to a person’s ability or capacity to contribute to society, a person’s sexual orientation bears no inherent relation to his or her ability to perform or contribute.”

3) ORIENTATION IS AN IMMUTABLE CHARACTERISTIC: “Over ten years ago, in considering whether gays and lesbians constituted a “particular social group” for asylum purposes, the Ninth Circuit recognized that “[s]exual orientation and sexual identity are immutable,” and that “[h]omosexuality is as deeply ingrained as heterosexuality.” … “[E]fforts to change an individual’s sexual orientation are generally futile and potentially dangerous to an individual’s well-being.”

4) DISCRIMINATION ON ‘RELIGIOUS GROUNDS’ IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL: “And even if Congress’s opposition to gay and lesbian relationships could be understood as reflecting moral or religious objections, that would remain an impermissible basis for sexual-orientation discrimination…Discouraging homosexuality, in other words, is not a governmental interest that justifies sexual orientation discrimination.”

5) DOMA IS UNRELATED TO DEFENDING TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE: “Section 3 denies benefits to couples who are already legally married in their own states, on the basis of their sexual orientation and not their marital status. Thus, there is not the ‘substantial relationship’ required under heightened scrutiny between an end of defending ‘traditional’ marriage and the means employed by Section 3.”

6) GAYS MAKE GOOD PARENTS: “[T]here is no sound basis for concluding that same-sex couples who have committed to marriages recognized by state law are anything other than fully capable of responsible parenting and child-rearing. To the contrary, many leading medical, psychological, and social welfare organizations have issued policies opposing restrictions on lesbian and gay parenting based on their conclusions, supported by numerous studies, that children raised by gay and lesbian parents are as likely to be well-adjusted as children raised by heterosexual parents.”

7) DOMA HURTS CHILDREN: “Section 3 does nothing to affect the stability of heterosexual marriages or the child-rearing practices of heterosexual married couples. Instead, it denies the children of same-sex couples what Congress sees as the benefits of the stable home life produced by legally recognized marriage, and therefore, on Congress’s own account, undermines rather than advances an interest in promoting child welfare.”

8) ‘RESPONSIBLE PROCREATION’ NOT A MARRIAGE PREREQUISITE “[T]he ability to procreate has never been a requirement of marriage or of eligibility for federal marriage benefits; opposite- sex couples who cannot procreate for reasons related to age or other physical characteristics are permitted to marry and to receive federal marriage benefits.”

Read the full brief here.

Welcome to The Morning Pride, ThinkProgress LGBT’s 8:45 AM round-up of the latest in LGBT policy, politics, and some culture too! Here’s what we’re reading this morning, but let us know what you’re checking out too. Follow us all day on Twitter at @TPEquality.

- Since same-sex marriage went into effect July 24, roughly 1,400 gay couples have tied the knot in New York City, according to data obtained by The Post.

- Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will die quietly, military base commanders predict.

- NOM’s Maggie Gallagher wants Herman Cain to join Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney in signing its anti-gay marriage pledge.

- The nation’s two biggest auto insurance companies have announced that they will provide the equivalent reduced rate to same sex married couples as opposite-sex couples in the states that allow for same-sex marriage.

- A campaign to legalize gay marriage in Maine with a citizen’s initiative is off to a strong start, with proponents registering 10 percent of they signatures they need on day one.

- The New York Times offered two glimpses into the experiences of transgender people this weekend — the financial costs of transitioning and the experience of being the spouse of someone transitioning.

- What can bugs teach us about our own sexuality?

- Where DC’s same-sex couples are.

- North Carolina’s largest newspaper has called the proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage “a roadblock to change” and “wrong for North Carolina.”

- All four Florida GOP Senate candidates oppose marriage equality.

- National Organization For Marriage affiliate leader Jennifer Roback Morse offers three reasons for why she opposes marriage equality. No. 3: “Anal sex is icky.”

- Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dropped deportation proceedings against one married gay binational couple.

- Like many African nations, Sudan is having its own challenges with discrimination against the LGBT community.

- Salon takes a look at the experiences of asexual people.

- Country singer Chely Wright married her partner Lauren Blitzer this weekend in Connecticut.

- Liz Feldman has a few thoughts on gay marriage: