It has been an insane day for anyone trying to follow North Carolina Republicans’ tactics for passing a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. As WRAL pointed out on Twitter, the measure changed chambers, committees, bill numbers, content, and ballot date all in the period of about 75 minutes. Rather than the Senate debating it as was expected after Friday’s leak, the House took up the measure, passing it out of committee in about an hour this afternoon without taking any public comment. Majority Leader Paul Stam (R) said the “public won’t get to speak because they will get to speak at the ballot box.” The proposed ballot initiative has been rescheduled to a May vote because Speaker Thom Tillis (R) wanted to remove the argument that the amendment was politically motivated by being on the November ballot.

During the Rules Committee debate, Stam acknowledged that he worked with lawyer Austin Nimocks in developing the language of the amendment. Nimocks works for the Alliance Defense Fund, an anti-gay Christian group, and he recently testified before Congress in defense of the Defense of Marriage Act.

At this time, the bill is already being debated on the House floor. You can watch it below or follow our livetweeting:

John Stemberger, Florida’s leading anti-gay activist who also serves as president of the Florida Family Policy Council (FFPC), endorsed Rick Perry for president today, dismissing Michele Bachmann as unelectable and Mitt Romney as untrustworthy:

“This is a two man race between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. And there’s a growing consensus among evangelical leaders and, to some degree, among those in the tea party and pro-life Catholics that Rick Perry is the most trustworthy candidate on our issues,” Stemberger said.

“There are too many trust issues with Mitt Romney,” he continued. “The issue not that he is a Mormon. The issue is that he wasn’t Mormon enough. If he had been consistent with traditional Mormon values his whole career, that would make me feel a lot more comfortable about where he’s coming from. Perry is a lot more solid on our issues.”

The FFPC is Florida’s affiliate of the anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council. The group raises hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to oppose abortion rights, “the gay agenda,” and Islam. In 2008, it successfully led the charge to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions in Florida’s state constitution, relying on a “protect children” strategy to scare voters into voting for the ban. “Failing to ban gay marriage in the state constitution could result in the indoctrination of schoolchildren into a gay lifestyle,” Stemberger warned. “Florida schools might have to teach that gay weddings are the same as traditional unions if the proposal fails at the polls.”

Conservative groups in the African nation of Ghana have recently stepped up their attacks against gay and lesbian people, calling for their arrest and “rehabilitation.” Now, Joy Online is reporting that one member of Parliament is “blaming tourism for the introduction of homosexuality in the country”:

The NPP MP attributed the practice which he described as a growing trend in the country as indication of emotional and sexual slavery in Ghana.

Mr Balado Manu called on the executive to urgently initiate laws to curb the practice.

He asked the Tourism Ministry to develop a strategy which will reduce the negative impact of tourism on Ghanaians.

Balado Manu was responding to a statement by the Tourism Minister Akua Sena Dansua on preparation and the challenges facing this year’s PANAFEST and Emancipation day celebrations. The Ahafo Ano South MP disclosed that he is aware that some tourists visit the country for sex tourism.

Sexual contact between people of the same sex is illegal in Ghana and the country’s president — John Evans Atta Mills — recently made it clear that he has no intention of permitting “the practice of homosexuality and lesbianism.” During a recent speech, Mills claimed that homosexuality, drug abuse, armed robbery, child prostitution, rape, defilement, and other sex-related crimes were all contributing to the immorality prevalent in the society. At least one Ghana official, Nana Otu Akoto — the chief of Akwamufie in the Eastern Region — disagreed, telling a recent radio interviewer, “I am not a homosexual but I said we should legalize the homosexuality because it is real in Ghana. When something is real, you don’t drive it underground.”

The nation’s minister for justice and attorney general, Martin Amidu, has also declared that “homosexual acts engaged in privacy do not fall foul of the law, because one cannot tell what happens in people’s private life.” “It is illegal to invade the privacy of two rightful thinking adults to obtain evidence for prosecution purpose,” he said.

Rev. Livingston leads the St. Paul chapter of Courage (Faith in Action) pro-chastity ministries.

The Rev. James Livingston, a Catholic priest in the Twin Cities Archdiocese who leads a pro-chastity ministry, offers three options for gay and lesbian Minnesotans: be chaste, go through harmful ex-gay therapy, or go to Hell. That’s the gist of his column from yesterday’s Minnesota Star Tribute, “Some people can make the gay go away,” an attempt to correct a letter from an individual named Ron Bates who suggested otherwise. In his lie-ridden screed supporting the proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, Livingston suggests that “some people actually do” pray away the gay, while others “live lives of chastity and virtue by the grace of God.” With no psychological foundation or even a single example, he claims that “some people really do find developmental and environmental roots to their same-sex attractions” and “some find release from them through therapy” or “spiritual awakening.”

But Livingston doesn’t stop there. He makes it clear that being gay is a sin and a “weakness,” not unlike adultery, prison-worthy crimes, and alcohol addiction:

But what about the nerve root question that Bates addresses? What do you do when the “gay” just will not go away and your religious standards and traditions just seem to accuse, to point out what you can never do or be? Are the choices limited to either living in shame or just pitching the moral code out the window?

Many of us can relate in our own way. You were unfaithful and your spouse will not allow you to forget; you have a prison record that shows up every time you try to get a job; you have a weakness for alcohol or spending or food and your life is unmanageable.

Add your own weakness to the list. Regardless of how it got there, you want to move beyond it, but you can’t. Who among us is righteous and qualified to cast the first stone?

The problem with Catholic leaders like Livingston is that they are only concerned with their own beliefs about “spiritual” health, so they ignore and deny any research about what promotes psychological health if it compromises those beliefs. Contrary to his claims, nobody knows the exact roots of their own or anybody’s sexual orientation, but psychologists understand there to be a complex mix of genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation. The medical community agrees that any attempt to deny or repress one’s sexual orientation can cause psychological harm, but it is exactly that harm that Livingston advocates through his ministry.

Perhaps that is why the last line of his article may be his most offensive: “Minnesota citizens, you can support traditional marriage and be a friend to persons with same-sex attractions.” Trying to convince someone to hate who they are so you don’t feel guilty about voting against their rights isn’t really what “friends” do.

It is no secret that the Republican leadership of North Carolina’s legislature has been planning to vote on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage during a special session this week. Rather than vote on one of the two bills already introduced, however, the Senators tried late Friday afternoon to sneak the amendment onto today’s agenda as an attachment to a bill about term limits for chamber leadership. Unlike the previous version of the Senate bill, which banned same-sex marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships, the new version has been softened a bit to supposedly leave room for domestic partnerships. Pam Spaulding responds:

So what exactly is being amended in the bill? Oh guess what – they noticed that the all-encompassing permanent second class citizenship it would like to bestow upon its taxpaying LGBT citizens, is unpopular and bad for business. So now they want to soft-pedal a possibility of domestic partnerships, which is expressly forbidden in the current language of the bill. [...] It’s clear why this new language is being crafted. Given the recent polling that citizens, newspapers and businesses oppose an amendment that precludes any kind of recognition for LGBTs — yet still at large don’t favor marriage equality — this move is meant to somehow placate LGBTs, allies and North Carolinians who know better.

Despite this supposed weakening of the language, the new bill does not seem to be all that accommodating:

Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.

If one-man/one-woman marriage is still the “only domestic legal union” that will be recognized, how exactly does the additional language leave room for domestic partnerships? Law professors have condemned it as “vague and untested,” suggesting it may even “invalidate domestic violence protections” for unmarried couples. It may well be that the Republican leadership is trying to claim that this language is softer in hopes of swaying a few voters, but that their intention is no different than before.  What would stop them from changing their tune a day after voters approve the amendment, saying, “Oh, read the language, we absolutely meant to ban domestic partnerships with this”?

In addition to the various city and county leaders protesting the proposed amendment, one prominent North Carolina native is doing what he can to resist the measure. Openly gay Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes announced Thursday that he would help fight the amendment by donating $10 to Equality North Carolina for every new “Like” on their Facebook Page, up to $10,000. The page had 6,750 “Likes” at the time of Hughes’ announcement and has far surpassed his challenge with now over 15,000 Likes. Newly married country singer Chely Wright will also be lending her support at Equality NC’s rally against the amendment on Tuesday.