The National Organization for Marriage today hailed the supposed “droves” of people who showed up to defend high school history teacher Jerry Buell’s “freedom of speech.” A past “Teacher of the Year,” Buell made national headlines this week after he was suspended for comments he posted on Facebook about how news of marriage equality in New York made him “almost throw up.” He also referred to same-sex marriage as a “cesspool.” Whether or not “droves” showed up is unclear in this completely unbalanced coverage from Fox 35 in Orlando, which only featured interviews with people defending Buell:

If Fox 35 had bothered to do an accurate report on the significance of Buell’s comments, they might have talked to someone from GLSEN, who would’ve pointed out the severe negative consequence of an anti-gay environment in schools. As of 2009, nearly two-thirds of students felt unsafe in school because of their sexual orientation. In fact, at the time of the study, 30 percent of LGBT students had missed a day of school within the last month just because of safety concerns. Students who were more frequently harassed because of their sexual orientation or gender identity had grade point averages half a grade lower and reported higher rates of depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem.

NOM and Fox 35 and all the other anti-gay conservative groups out there are free to paint the now-reinstated Buell as a victim of a First Amendment violation, but the real story here is how toxic his class environment must be for those students who are already out as LGBT or are struggling to come out. It would be naive to assume that student success and safety are the primary concerns for these “family” groups.

The Advocate’s Lucas Grindley argues that Rick Perry’s comparison of homosexuality to alcoholism in a 2008 book could damage his candidacy for president, particularly if the 2010 senate campaign of Colorado Republican Ken Buck (R) is any indication. Buck was waging a credible challenge to Sen. Michale Bennet (D-CO), but made a very similar alcohol-homosexuality connection during a nationally televised debate on Meet the Press and those remarks may have distracted from his focus on the economy:

Washington, D.C., politics site The Hotline named the gaffe to its list of “Moments That Made the Midterms” because Buck’s entry into social issues seemed to diminish the Tea Party candidate’s standing with centrists.

Just as Perry tried in his book to claim he’s “no expert on the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate,” Buck later tried to distance himself from his own words, saying he is “not a biologist.” The actual experts on the subject, such as the American Psychiatric Association, stopped listing homosexuality as a mental illness long ago. And researchers have suspected that sexuality is at least rooted in biology.

After the 2010 debate, The Hotline reports, Buck said, “I wasn’t talking about being gay as a disease. I don’t think that at all and I hope that no one would be that insensitive to try to draw that … I certainly didn’t mean it that way.”

Still, Perry is not alone. Republican presidential candidates from Michele Bachmann to Mitt Romney continue to make offensive and homophobic remarks in debates and on the campaign trail, despite the public’s growing acceptance of gay people. It’s unlikely that these positions will resonate with a constituency beyond the party’s social conservative base, since, as Paul Thornton notes in today’s Los Angeles Times, “the radical ideas espoused by Bachmann, Perry, Santorum and others are [already] held up not for genuine consideration but for scorn.” “Perry’s and Bachmann’s views aren’t weighed against President Obama’s ‘evolving’ stance on same-sex marriage; rather, they are simply ridiculed. It says as much about our society as it does the candidates.” And if that’s the case, then Buck’s candidacy was the first in what may be a long line of Republican contenders who will pay a political price for their homophobia until they learn to accept and respect the LGBT community.

In June, we wrote about a study that found that if LGBT employees came out at work, they were much more likely to “flourish” and advance in their careers than those who stay closeted. A new UCLA study shows that the positive impact isn’t just on the out individual, but on that individual’s coworkers as well:

Although those in favor of policies such as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell argue that allowing gay individuals to serve openly hurts performance, the studies presented here find the opposite effect. Instead of harming performance, we find that individuals working with openly gay partners actually perform better on both cognitive and sensory motor tasks than individuals left to wonder about the sexual orientation of their partners. These results suggest not knowing the identity of one’s interaction partner may be more harmful to performance than knowing the identity— even a stigmatized identity — of one’s interaction partner.

It’s unclear the exact reason for the effect, but the researchers suspect that not knowing a person’s sexual orientation can be a mental distraction from the task at hand. They also point out that participants in the study had a relatively low level of anti-gay prejudice, so the results might not be the same in a less accepting climate.

Nevertheless, the study has important implications for issues such as the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the passage of non-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The results contradict the idea that “imposing” non-discrimination rules are “bad for business,” unless of course conservatives wish to argue that higher productivity is also “bad for business.” If employees are not scared of being fired for their identities, everybody benefits.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, a hate group, said today that homosexuality is “man shaking his fist in the face of God” as he complained that marriage equality advocates try to “silence” opponents:

PERKINS: They will not be satisfied until those who hold to a traditional, natural view of marriage are completely silenced….They are so intent on accomplishing this that anyone and everyone who would challenge them must be silenced. And we are seeing this in the media, and now we’re seeing this into the marketplace. It’s an effort to stigmatize, to marginalize and ultimately to cause people to self-censor. [...]

I don’t think you can look at homosexuality and what is taking place without examining the spiritual dynamics here. This is essentially man shaking his fist in the face of God and saying, “I don’t need you,” that “We will do it our way.” It is the height of humanism.

Listen:

(HT: People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch.)

Andy Towle reminds us of the homophobia still prevalent among the Boy Scouts of America, pointing to this report about how the organization removed a lesbian mother, Denise Steele, as a scout master of her son’s troop after becoming aware of her sexual orientation:

The issue of Steele being a lesbian didn’t arise until one weekend in June during a camping trip to Assateague Island. The camping trip was from a Saturday to a Monday, and Steele needed to work Monday so she asked Funk to pick her up from the campsite.

After both departed, one of the other assistant scout masters, Skip Inabinett, started questioning who the woman was who had picked up Steele.

After discovering that Steele’s partner had picked her up, Inabinett felt that she should be removed as an assistant scout master. In an email that Inabinett sent to a close personal friend of Steele’s and whose son was also in the troop, he stated, “If what you said about Denise Steele being an active sexual is true, do you feel comfortable talking with her about stepping down/resigning as an ASM … as her friend, this may be an opportunity for you to share with her about Christ’s love and the need to believe that as sinners we cannot get to heaven on our own and that we need a savior.”

More communication between both Steele and Inabinett went on for the next couple of weeks. The conversations centered around how Inabinett thought Steele’s lifestyle choice was a sin.

The Boy Scouts prohibit atheists, agnostics, and “avowed” homosexual people from leadership roles, and its right to discriminate has been repeatedly upheld by state and federal courts. In 2004, the organization adopted the following policy statement: “Boy Scouts of America believes that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations in the Scout Oath and Scout Law to be morally straight and clean in thought, word, and deed. The conduct of youth members must be in compliance with the Scout Oath and Law, and membership in Boy Scouts of America is contingent upon the willingness to accept Scouting’s values and beliefs. Most boys join Scouting when they are 10 or 11 years old. As they continue in the program, all Scouts are expected to take leadership positions. In the unlikely event that an older boy were to hold himself out as homosexual, he would not be able to continue in a youth leadership position.”

Yesterday, Eric Fehrnstrom — a senior campaign adviser to Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Mitt Romney — admitted that he was behind the “joke” twitter account setup to poke fun at and act as the alter ego of Democratic Senate candidate Alan Khazei, @CrazyKhazei. The account offered off-color commentary about the news of the day for at least a month, but its author was only discovered when Fehrnstrom accidentally tweeted a ‘@CrazyKhazei’ Tweet from his personal handle.

One of the tweets responded to criticism of Brown’s decision not to participate in an ‘It Gets Better’ video with the Massachusetts Congressional delegation in July. Brown was the only member who declined to take part in the shoot, explaining that his “main focus right now is on creating jobs.” @CrazyKhazei, aka Eric Fehrnstrom, had this to tweet about the story:

@CrazyKhazei: I promise to devote all my time in office to making gay videos. Shame on Scott Brown for focusing on jobs!

In an effort to deflect criticism from Brown for not participating in the video, the National Republican Senatorial Committee had attacked the project’s founder, Dan Savage, as “lewd, violent, and anti-Christian.” As Savage pointed out in a response, he is “not the IGB project,” and moreover, “not a single GOP elected official can bring himself or herself to make a video.”