The National Organization for Marriage continues to pretend the release of its damning race-baiting confidential memos last week is not a big deal, but it is now outraged that one of its tax returns was leaked, revealing that Mitt Romney had secretly given the group $10,000 to advocate for Proposition 8 in 2008. Today, NOM’s Brian Brown demanded a federal investigation of the Human Rights Campaign and the Internal Revenue Service for the memo getting out:

BROWN: It appears that someone with either the IRS or the HRC may have committed a federal crime by illegally obtaining and then releasing a confidential tax return of the National Organization for Marriage. It’s clear that the tax return was stolen, either from NOM or from the government. The Huffington Post article says that HRC claimed they received the document from a ‘whistleblower.’ But the term ‘whistleblower’ is completely inapt. We’re talking about a criminal who has stolen confidential tax return information. We demand to know who this criminal is, whether they work for the HRC or the IRS, and how they obtained confidential tax information filed only with the US government.

“Inapt” has become NOM’s go-to word for trying to play the victim — that and “vituperative.” Both Brown and Maggie Gallagher used the same outside-the-vernacular rhetoric last week in an attempt to distance the organization from its race-baiting tactics, so its use here is conspicuous.

At question is whether or not Romney’s gift to the organization was properly disclosed. As Sam Stein pointed out when breaking the story at the Huffington Post, there is no documentation of Romney’s donation in either his own PAC’s records nor in NOM’s publicly disclosed 990 forms. The Romney campaign admitted the donation had come from the Alabama chapter of his Free and Strong America PAC, but NOM’s leaked IRS filing shows the donation coming from a PO Box in Belmont, Massachusetts. There is considerable reason to believe that Romney’s donation was intentionally hidden in violation of non-profit disclosure laws.

NOM is clearly trying to shift the blame to deflect any investigation into its own wrongdoing. Whistleblowers expose the illegal activity of their employers, so the evidence suggests the term is anything but “inapt.”

The video game producer Electronic Arts (EA) has been inundated with letters from conservatives opposed to the company’s inclusion of LGBT content in recent games like Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic, including threats of boycotts and accusations about pressure from LGBT organizations. Showing no signs of capitulating to their demands, EA’s vice president of corporate communications, Jeff Brown, rebuffed the complaints as well as the anti-gay harassment that has plagued gaming message boards:

BROWN: Every one of EA’s games includes ESRB content descriptors so it’s hard to believe anyone is surprised by the content. This isn’t about protecting children, it’s about political harassment.

EA has not been pressured by any groups to include LGBT characters in our games. However, we have met with LBGT groups and sponsored industry forums to discuss content and harassment of players in online forums. In short, we do put options for same-sex relationships in our games; we don’t tolerate hate speech on our forums.

Unsurprisingly, one of the primary sources of the complaints is the one-man nothing-but-boycotts “group,” the Florida Family Association, which won itself national attention for its pressure to boycott advertisers on All-American Muslim last December. Most of FFA’s campaigns target LGBT-inclusive companies, and its only employee, David Caton, regularly fabricates the success of these efforts. Recently, FFA called for a boycott of EA and its subsidiary BioWare, suggesting they might add “Darth RuPaula“ — drag queen RuPaul as a sith lord — as a playable character kids could access in its games.

Not to be left out, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins also spoke out against the LGBT-inclusive game, suggesting “the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists!” (The irony is probably lost on Perkins that Emperor Palpatine and his servants were the villains in the Star Wars universe.) He called on his fellow social conservatives to add their public comments to the game’s website, the same forums Brown explained had to be managed for anti-gay hate speech.

The tactics of hate groups like FRC is to outright deny the existence of the LGBT community, as if the very reality that people are gay or bisexual is harmful to children. Perhaps Perkins or Caton can construct their own virtual reality that is straights-only, but EA should be applauded for making sure all of its players feel welcome in the gaming world.

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) has published a peculiar appeal to gay and lesbian voters in Bay Windows, New England’s alternative newspaper serving the LGBT community. The one-term senator who is in a close race for re-election against Elizabeth Warren, highlights his support for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but does not commit to advancing other equality priorities like federal employment nondiscrimination protections or marriage. “I don’t come before you with a checklist of items promising that I will be an advocate for you on each and every one of them,” Brown writes. “My opponent has already started down that road, promising to support everyone’s pet project. That’s not the way I have ever operated.”

Instead, Brown promises to get “this bad economy working again and creating jobs” — a welcome message to be sure — but one that won’t protect LGBT people from on-the-job harassment or unfair termination for being who they are. And in a community where 42 percent of LGB workers and an astonishing 90 percent of transgender workers have experienced some form of on-the-job discrimination, extending anti-discrimination protections to all is more than a mere “pet project” — it’s an outright necessity. Brown has said that “states should take care of” passing their own workplace protections, as Massachusetts has done, and refused to support a federal ban prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Confronted about his callous attitude towards LGBT priorities last month, a Brown spokesperson dismissed community concerns like marriage equality as a “social issue” and insisted that the senator is focused on the economy and job creation. But he hasn’t exactly shied away from “social” issues either. As a Massachusetts state senator, Brown voted twice in 2007 to ban same-sex marriage, opposed the right of gays and lesbians to adopt children, and even refused to participate in an “It Gets Better” video with the rest of the Massachusetts congressional delegation. And unfortunately, his “I don’t have to worry about you” attitude is on full display in the Bay Windows editorial, as he signs off with the kind of tone-deaf nugget that shows that he truly doesn’t understand his gay and lesbian constituents: “I recognize the liberty of every citizen to live as they choose, and it is from this diversity that we derive our strength as a nation,” he writes.