During an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle on Friday, Newt Gingrich was asked to explain what Republicans mean by the phrase “San Francisco values,” which the party often uses to describe Democrats’s support for liberal social policies like same-sex marriage. Gingrich responded by telling a story about his experiences in the city during the 1984 Democratic convention, when, while being interviewed by CBS News, the former Speaker was approached by “a transvestite”:

GINGRICH: CBS is interviewing me and this guy toses me this perfect softball, you know. “The Republicans are going to Dallas — which has the largest Baptist Church in the country. The Democrats are here in San Francisco, which has the largest gay movement in the country. Does this say something about the two parties.”

Literally at that moment a 6’2″ transvestite walks up to me and hands me an invitation to an exorcism of Jerry Falwell by Sister Boom. The guy from CBS says, ‘cut. I cannot send this to New York. They will never believe you didn’t stage this.’ I just cite that as some vague — I really mean the Sierra Club, which has gone off the deep end as a general rule. Basically very, very left-wing values.

Watch it:

As Raw Story notes, in 1984, “gay activist Sister Boom Boom and five members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence did perform a mock exorcism of actors dressed as Rev. Jerry Falwell and anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly in Union Square.” “They are here in the name or morality,” Sister Boom Boom reportedly the said of the two conservative icons. “To equate morality with sexual behavior takes a filthy, prurient mind.”

Our guest bloggers are Jerome Hunt and Aisha C. Moodie-Mills.

Today, a coalition of public policy and family advocacy organizations released “LGBT Families of Color: Facts at a Glance,” which sheds light on the disparate impact of outdated laws and family policies on LGBT families of color and their children. The publication explores the challenges that LGBT Families of color face on a daily basis and dispels the myth often perpetuated in the media that LGBT families are largely white and middle class.

According to “LGBT Families of Color,” there are roughly 2 million children in the United States being raised in LGBT families and 41 percent of these families are people of color. Both black and Latino same-sex couples are more likely to raise children than white same- sex couples. Black lesbians for example are twice as likely to be raising children as their white lesbian counterparts. The report also notes that:

Children of color, in particular, are more likely to be raised in diverse family configurations that include de facto parents and are more likely to be raised by LGBT parents. Therefore, antiquated laws have a disproportionately negative impact on children of color.

An alarming number of LGBT families of color are living in poverty. For example, 32 percent of children being raised by black same-sex couples are living in poverty compared to 7 percent of children raised by married heterosexual white parents. Yet many of these families, simply because they are LGBT, are denied access to safety net programs and federal and state tax benefits that would improve their economic situations.

LGBT families of color also experience higher rates of unemployment, or underemployment, which disrupts their access to quality healthcare since the majority of Americans rely on employer-sponsored health plans. Nonetheless, access to coverage does not always bridge the gap for these families, since most of these plans do not cover same-sex partners or their non-biological children. LGBT families of color, who are already economically insecure, may have to face the steep cost of purchasing private insurance to cover their families (or simply go without).

Stigma and discrimination further erodes these families’ overall wellbeing. The fact sheet touches on the dual burden of social stigma and discrimination LGBT families of color and their children face. These families are not only subject to racial/ethnic stereotypes and discrimination – they also face invisibility within the boarder communities to which they belong. Moreover, their children may be bullied or harassed based on their own race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity—or that of their parents.

Fortunately, some common-sense solutions can be employed that would help to eliminate or reduce the legal inequalities and social stigma that hurt LGBT families of color, especially their children. They include:

– Legally recognizing LGBT families of color via parental recognition laws at the state level; allowing same-sex couples to marry; and providing pathways to immigration and U.S. citizenship for binational and immigrant LGBT families.

– Providing equal access to government-based economic protections such as safety net programs by adopting a consistent and broad definition of family within these programs (i.e. domestic partners).

– Providing equal access to health care and health insurance, as well as medical decision-making authority for all families.

– Protecting LGBT families of color and their children with non-discrimination employment and public accommodation laws and anti-bullying policies.

Rick Santorum backed away from his claim that President John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech about the separation of church and state makes him want to “throw up” during an appearance on the Laura Ingraham radio show this morning. “I wish I had that particular line back,” Santorum told Ingraham, while insisting that the nation’s religious freedoms are being threatened by the Obama administration:

SANTORUM: [A]nd if you read President Kennedy’s text, while there were certainly some very important things and good things he said in that, there were some things that triggered in my opinion the privatization of faith and I think that’s a bad thing. I think we need to have a free exercise of religion in this country and it’s important for those First Amendment freedoms to be alive and well in America and I think they are threatened here in America as we’ve seen by President Obama, not by Rick Santorum.

Listen:

Santorum has taken a lot of heat for mischaracterizing Kennedy’s statements and claiming, “I don’t believe in an America where the separation between church and state is absolute.”

Asked about Santorum’s remarks during his press conference this morning, Mitt Romney said, “I respect President Kennedy and his expression of his own views. And I felt that his speech was an indication of those views. My speech was an indication of views that were somewhat different. Religion certainly has a place in the public square.”

Indeed, rather trying to stomp religion out of public life, Kennedy sought to encourage Americans to abandon divisive religious rhetoric. “I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end — where all men and all churches are treated equally — where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice — where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind — where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the law and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their work in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood,” he said. “I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me,” Kennedy added.

A recent poll found that 67 percent of Americans believe that there is a clear separation of church and state, while only 28 percent disagree with the sentiment.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) — a co-chair of President Obama’s re-election campaign — has announced her support for including marriage equality in the Democratic Party’s 2012 platform, creating some awkwardness for the Obama’s re-election campaign. “I’m proud to join Freedom to Marry’s ‘Democrats: Say, I Do’ campaign,” Shaheen said in a statement:

Along with the more than 20,000 Americans who have already signed the online petition, I call on the Democratic Platform Committee to affirm the freedom to marry in our party’s national convention platform this September. Any Democratic statement of core beliefs about the importance of families must include all our families, gay and straight. Our party has a long tradition of leading the charge on important questions of justice. Now is the time for the Democratic Party to stand up for the rights of same-sex couples and their families.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) — have also publicly thrown their support behind the effort. Meanwhile, President Obama insists that he is still evolving on the issue.

The pastor of a 15,000 member mega church in Houston, Texas is calling on Mayor Annise Parker (D) to resign over her promotion of same-sex marriage, the Houston Chronicle reports. In an email to the openly gay lawmaker, Pastor Steve Riggle of Grace Community Church writes, “Respectfully, if you cannot uphold the Texas constitution, then you should do the honorable thing and step down” and notes that the Constitution includes a a “voter-approved amendment banning same-sex marriage.”

Parker — who is one of the 90 mayors to support Freedom To Marry’s equality initiative — has responded to the pastor by saying, ”I do my duty to uphold the state Constitution and the U.S. Constitution. I swore an oath to that. I take that oath very seriously, but I have my First Amendment rights to free speech.” “We all have the right to do that and I’m sorry that they [Riggle and his supporters] don’t understand the Constitution.” Watch a local news segment on the story:

During a recent interview with SiriusXM’s Michelangelo Signorile, Parker also called on President Obama to evolve “faster” on marriage equality and argued that “the Democratic platform should promote same-sex marriage.”

Meanwhile, the website for Grace Community Church states, “Marriage is between one man and one woman. Any other definition of marriage is contrary to the clear teachings of the Holy Bible and hence against the expressed will of God,” and Riggle himself has long opposed Parker’s inclusive policies. In 2010, he condemned the mayor’s executive order prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, warning that women could be assaulted by cross-dressing men. “Forcing women in particular using city facilities to be subjected to cross-dressing men invading their privacy is beyond the pale and offensive to every standard of decency,” he said.