On Monday, prosecutors announced that they had reached a plea deal with Brandon McInerney, a 17-year-old student who shot and killed Larry King in February of 2008 for acting flamboyantly. Under the terms of the agreement, McInerney will spend 21 years in prison, until he is 38 years old, and avoid a second trial.

But during the Nov. 22 edition of his radio show, Rush Limbaugh suggested that Oxnard middle school — which the two boys attended — was partly responsible for King’s killing because school authorities were interested in promoting a homosexual agenda and had not done enough to dissuade King from dressing in women’s accessories, wearing makeup, and flirting with male students:

Now we’re told in Newsweek that an assistant principal was encouraging this kid to be flamboyant because it furthered an agenda. I wonder what that agenda could have possibly been? Anybody want to take a wild guess? Back in 2008, the parents and brother of Larry King, the kid who was shot, claimed that the school was allowing him to wear makeup and feminine clothing, and that this was a factor leading to his death. [...]

Is it any wonder that parents get a little worried when they send the little tykes off to school, because I’ll tell you, folks, what’s happening, especially in these blue states, what’s happening in these public schools, the last thing going on is what we’ve all thought of as traditional education. There is education taking place, and there are agendas that are being promoted, but they’re not what you and I were taught in school. So now a confused 17-year-old is dead because the school, “Ah, there’s nothing we can do. There’s nothing that we can do about this. So sorry.”

Major League Baseball announced today that its new Collective Bargaining Agreement will prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The NFL made the same change back in September. While the protections don’t automatically change the atmosphere of locker rooms, it ensures that should a player come out, his career will not be in jeopardy. There are currently no openly gay baseball players in the MLB.

Joe.My.God. points out that the San Francisco Giants became the first professional sports team to make an “It Gets Better” video this past June. Many other baseball teams have followed suit, including the Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox, Philadelphia Phillies, Baltimore Orioles, and Tampa Bay Rays. Watch them:

The primary reason the Southern Poverty Law Center describes groups like the Family Research Council as “hate groups” is for the stigmatizing untruths they spread about the LGBT community. At FRC, Peter Sprigg exemplifies this effort, having openly admitted on MSNBC that he believes “gay behavior” should be criminalized. In FRC’s latest publication, “Debating Homosexuality: Understanding Two Views,” Sprigg repackages some of the group’s most harmful rhetoric in an attempt to justify condemnations of gay people by simply disregarding the very identities that inform equality efforts.

Sprigg’s basic premise is that social conservatives see gay people through the paradigm of “homosexual conduct,” with little concern for what attractions a person actually identifies with. Of course, he still argues that people are “not ‘born gay,’” that sexual attractions can be changed through ex-gay therapy, and that anyone with sexual attractions is better off “abstaining from engaging in homosexual conduct,” none of which is true. The document also includes an unnecessary aside trying to draw connections between homosexuality and child sex abuse, a link that carries no scientific merit. This is all standard-fare propagandizing for groups like FRC.

This new publication emphasizes the way anti-gay groups see these issues as only being about gay sex and the diseases it might spread. They don’t see love, they don’t see relationships, they don’t see families — they don’t see real people. Most tellingly, Sprigg claims complete ignorance that both the physical and mental health “consequences” of “homosexual conduct” might be caused by the very stigma FRC spreads:

Those who believe in the “gay identity” paradigm, however, offer a single, simplistic answer for the high rates of mental illness among homosexuals—they claim that societal discrimination is the cause. While this claim has theoretical appeal, it cannot merely be accepted as an article of faith—it must be empirically verified. For example, if mental health problems among homosexuals were caused by discrimination, one would expect that they would be much more severe in places with higher levels of “discrimination,” and much less severe in places where homosexuals are widely accepted.

And this is exactly what study after study has shown. Here are just a few highlights of studies ThinkProgress has reported on over just the past eight months:

• A community’s conservative anti-gay attitudes increase the risk for teenage suicide.
• Family rejection contributes to health consequences and suicide risk.
• Anti-gay bullying and victimization leads to long-term health consequences.
• Anti-gay stigma can contribute to suicidal thoughts that last a lifetime.
• People are happier if they come out and are not judged negatively for being gay.
• Employees who are supported to come out in the workplace flourish in their careers.
• Employees who come out improve the productivity of their coworkers.
• The presence of a Gay-Straight Alliance in a school mitigates gay students’ depression and improves their ability to succeed in higher education.

In this publication, Sprigg goes out of his way to declare that gay people should only be understood by the kind of sex they have. As long as groups like FRC refuse to see the LGBT community for the authentic, loving, family-raising human beings they are, their lies will continue to harm the very lives gay people are trying to lead.

Russian LGBT equality activists gathered in St. Petersburg on Sunday to protest an anti-gay propaganda measure that calls for a fine of up to $1,600 for “public actions aimed at propaganda of pederasty, lesbianism, bisexuality, and transgenderism among minors.” The measure, which has passed the first of three readings, is intended to limit any public discussion or display about the LGBT community. Lawmakers are considering similar legislation in Moscow and have even suggested that the St. Petersburg rules could be extended to other regions or into federal legislation.

In the video below, police officers ask the protesters for their personal documentation, but the activists then turn the tables and request to see the police officer’s credentials and a copy of the protest codes. Watch it:

Meanwhile, LGBT groups are also challenging the spread of anti-gay legislation in European courts. On Monday, lawyers for activist Nikolai Baev sent a letter to the European Court of Human Rights asking the body to review his pending case against an ant-gay propaganda law in light of the recent push to extend such measures. In his complaint, Baev argues that penalties against the promotion of homosexuality violate his right to freedom of expression guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Baev also charges Russian authorities with violating Article 14 of the Convention, which prohibits discrimination, including sexual orientation.

The case stems from an arrest in 2009, when Russian authorities found Baev and another activist guilty of promoting homosexuality to minors. The two had been holding signs that read, “Homosexuality is normal” and “I am proud of my homosexuality. Ask me about it.” The case had been referred to the European court two years ago.