Theo Zwanziger

The outgoing president of the German soccer federation, Theo Zwanziger, called on gay players today “to have the courage to declare themselves” by coming out. The captain of Germany’s team, Philipp Lahm, responded by doubling down on comments he made in August discouraging players from making such disclosures:

LAHM: Football is like being the gladiators in the old times. The politicians can come out these days, for sure, but they don’t have to play in front of 60,000 people every week. I don’t think that the society is that far ahead that it can accept homosexual players as something normal as in other areas.

By humoring the perceived homophobia, Lahm is reinforcing the very stigma that might make it difficult for players to come out in the first place. Much as the U.S. military policy of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell required gay troops to lie to keep this jobs, Lahm’s negative message is a strain on the trust and teamwork he should be promoting as captain. If he is the team’s leader, he should take the initiative of promoting a more welcoming lockerroom instead of catering to the homophobic status quo.

Zwanziger, however, believes that Lahm is tolerant, saying, “If that’s how he sees the situation, I am not going to be the one to criticize him.”

This afternoon, CNN profiled binational gay couple Mark Himes and Frederic Deloizy — who have been living together for 22 years and have 4 children, but are facing deportation because the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) does not allow the federal government to recognize their California marriage. Deloizy is a French national who has spent the past two decades “in and out of the United States leapfrogging from one visa to another” and is facing deportation after his final visa expired in September. Since DOMA defines marriage as “a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” on the federal level, Himes’ Green Card application on behalf of his husband will likely be denied.

“It’s very difficult,” Deloizy explained. “What we’ve tried to do is not share it with the children. They’re not completely aware of the situation. We’ve been fighting and another day is another day with our family.” Watch it:

Lavi Soloway, the couple’s lawyer, called on the Obama administration “to take action to protect this family” and “make sure that the Green Card petition that Mark filed for Fred is not denied and it could put this case on hold and make sure that they could begin to build a secure future for their family.”

The Obama administration is no longer defending the constitutionality of DOMA and has announced that it would review all 300,000 active deportation cases to ensure that they are consistent with the nation’s enforcement priorities. At the end of last year, Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) did close a deportation case involving a married same-sex couple,” but some Democratic lawmakers have expressed frustration that the policy language for reviewing deportation proceedings does not include a specific reference to same-sex couples.

In The Real Romney, out today, Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman chart Mitt Romney’s devolution from embracing equal rights for gays and lesbians in 1994 and 2002 to falling in line with the anti-gay bigotry of religious social conservatives in order to win the GOP presidential nomination at the end of his term as governor. Romney’s shift betrayed his LGBT allies in the state — including gay groups who endorsed his campaigns — and frustrated those who saw Romney’s support for equal rights as an extension of his father’s strong embrace of civil rights for African Americans. It’s a parallel Romney himself made in private meetings with gay and lesbian groups, only to abandon the comparison when the time came to swoon Christian Evangelicals.

In 1994, Romney met with the Log Cabin Republicans and pledged, “I’m with you on this stuff… I’ll be better than Ted Kennedy.” Romney promised, in writing, to fight for “full equality for America’s gay and lesbian citizens,” co-sponsor a federal employment nondiscrimination act, and characterized Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as “the first in a number of steps that will ultimately lead to gays and lesbians being able to serve openly and honestly in our nation’s military.” He told Richard Weld, the group’s founder, that marriage equality was “not appropriate at this time” and insisted that marriage should be left to the states.

Romney continued his somewhat welcome embrace of gays and lesbians while serving as head of the 2002 Utah Olympics. He approved an amended workplace nondiscrimination policy that covered sexual orientation and “later reached out to Salt Lake’s gay community as part of the committee’s effort to enhance diversity in the Olympic workforce.”

As a gubernatorial candidate in 2002, Romney told a meeting of gay equality proponents that he would “support everything that it calls for in terms of recognizing unions between people. But just don’t use the M-word.” He promised to “promote tolerance and fight discrimination….[and] proposed a thorough review of state laws to see where lifelong gay and lesbian relationships were negatively affected, and how the state could change its practices to make them nondiscriminatory.” “At a very young age, my parents taught me important lessons about tolerance and respect,” he told gay equality groups. “I have carried these lessons with me throughout my life and will bring them with me if I am fortunate enough to be elected governor.” Romney’s campaign distributed flyers at a gay pride parade and he promised to strengthen laws against hate crimes, expand funding for AIDS treatment and prevention and “said he would look to both ‘protect already established rights and extend basic civil rights to domestic partnerships.’”

Still, from the very beginning there were signs that the embrace of gay equality represented a calculated attempt to win over votes in a moderate to liberal state, rather than a principled belief in civil rights. Several 1994 accounts published in the Boston Globe reported that just before launching his senate run, Romney told an audience of Mormon Church members that homosexuality was “perverse” and “reprehensible.” In 2002, his wife Ann and son Tagg “alarmed Romney’s gay supporters” by endorsing a state constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman and “withheld domestic-partner benefits such as bereavement leave and health care coverage from the gay and lesbian partners of public employees.” Romney “quickly distanced himself from his family’s decision, saying he did not support the proposed ban” and the measure ultimately died.

As he prepared to make a run for national office, those initial seeds of doubts blossomed into a public repudiation of the cause for equality. By 2005, Romney “adopted a wholly new tone on gay rights” and railed against the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. He lobbied Congress to pass a federal amendment outlawing the practice and questioned the fitness of gays and lesbians to serve as parents. “Some are actually having children born to them,” Romney said of gay couples before a nationally televised address to South Carolina Republicans in February 2005. He also dismissed his 1994 letter to the Log Cabin Republicans as, “Well, okay, let’s look at that in the context of who it’s being written to.” Romney ultimately “sought to amend Massachusetts’s antidiscrimination laws so a Catholic adoption agency could deny placements to gay couples” and “eliminated the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, a panel that funded programs for gay teens and their schools.”

Today, the former Massachusetts governor holds a more moderate positions that still fall short of his earlier advocacy. He says he wouldn’t reinstate the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy or strongly lobby for a Constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage. But he continues to pander to the right, criticizing President Obama’s decision to stop defending the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and telling a gay veteran in New Hampshire that he would support the repeal of same-sex marriage in the state. In its place, he would institute a complicated three-tier system for married gay couples.

An example of ex-gay literature promoted on PAL's website.

A small group of parents in Minnesota’s bullying-riddled Anoka-Hennepin School District not only want to prevent the school from offering any support for LGBT students, but have resolved to reverse decades of history and promote an explicitly anti-gay agenda. Andy Birkey, writing for The Colu.mn, has reprinted the full resolution put forth by the Parents Action League (PAL), the group most vocally opposed to changing the district’s “neutrality” policy that prevents teachers from talking about LGBT issues. Here are some excerpts of its offensive claims and recommendations:

And whereas school officials would be liable for violating parental rights by subjecting a child to homosexual and related conduct indoctrination…

And whereas legal liability exists for the tort of negligence if it is proved that homosexual activists and organizations were granted access to students under responsibility and that students suffered physical or mental harm…

1. A new division within the student support services and a special section on the District 11 website devoted to student of faith, moral conviction, ex-homosexuals and ex-transgenders…

3. That District 11 administrators and staff work closely with pro-family and ex-homosexual and ex-transgender organizations to provide ongoing training to school counselors, school nurses, social workers, school psychologists, prevention specialists, student learning advocates and a number of secondary principals and principals….

4. Provide professional development opportunities in which philosophical, pedogogical, and political assumptions of GLBT advocacy are critically examined.

7. Provide the history of gay-related immune deficiencies and acquired immune deficiencies and the medical consequences of homosexual acts.

The candor of PAL’s resolution reveals that the group is actually advocating harm against LGBT people. These statements are full of misinformation and smears against gay people and the importance of helping young people understand the nature of sexual orientation. PAL believes that gay people are dangerous and intend to indoctrinate, that students should be exposed to harmful ex-gay therapy, and AIDS is still a gay disease. Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID) is a name that hasn’t been used to describe HIV/AIDS in over 25 years, and PAL’s use of it is particularly offensive, aside from being obviously inaccurate as well.

It’s important to remember that the president of PAL is Barb Anderson, who is a researcher and spokesperson for the Minnesota Family Council, one of the primary proponents of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Minnesota. The vile language in this resolution is just the latest evidence that those opposed to LGBT equality have malicious intent and wish to further stigmatize young people who have been bullied.