In recent days, ThinkProgress has identified the most pro- and anti-LGBT members of the U.S. House of Representatives. While in this Congress anti-gay forces have been relatively quiet in the Senate — only Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) has proposed an overtly anti-LGBT bill or resolution — Senators in support of equality have proposed sixteen bills pro-LGBT bills since the start of 2011. Eleven Senators have sponsored or co-sponsored at least ten of those measures.

Senators Daniel Akaka (D-HI), John Kerry (D-MA), and Patty Murray (D-WA), tied for the honor of most pro-LGBT Senator: they put their names on 13 of the 16 bills each. Akaka, a fourth-term Senator who will retire at the end of 2012, authored the Health Equity and Accountability Act of 2012 (a bill to improve tracking of health data for LGBT people and other minority groups). Murray, a fourth-term Senator, spells out on her LGBT issue webpage that “Equal protection under the law is a fundamental right in our country. No one should suffer discrimination because of their race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.” And Kerry, now in his fifth term in the Senate, is chief sponsor of the Reconnecting Youth to Prevent Homelessness Act of 2011 (which seeks to help at-risk LGBT youth) and the HOME Act of 2011 (which protects LGBT citizens from housing discrimination).

Eight other Senators — seven Democrats and one independent — signed on to at least 10 pro-LGBT proposals, putting them just behind Akaka, Kerry, and Murray. They are:

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There’s something wrong with a message that requires spin, covering up, and censorship, and the decision by Jitters & Bliss Coffee to step into the National Organization for Marriage’s pathetic Starbucks boycott is exemplary in this regard. Yesterday, NOM gave J&B some free press, promoting the company as a Starbucks alternative that maintains a “neutral corporate position on marriage.” This is, of course, except for partnering with the most vocal and rabid anti-equality organization in the country and trying to profit off their dismal protest. “Neutrality” is code for invisibility and continued oppression of the gay community.

Jitters & Bliss has shown just what a scam NOM is trying to pull under the guise of this “neutrality” through the astounding mismanagement of its Facebook page today. Earlier today, J&B was censoring pro-equality comments, blocking posters who added such comments, and ultimately shut down its page for a period of time. The page rebooted this afternoon with the following message and comment, which have also since been deleted:

In light of Jitters & Bliss Coffee paid advertising on NOM website, our position has not changed. Like many companies we are NEUTRAL on the gay marriage issue. We respect our customers’ diverse views on it as with the many other issues facing our nation today. Yes, we are paying advertising on NOM, and would do so on gay sites too (with a NEUTRAL, inclusive position). Our nation is diverse as is our customer base. “God Bless you, and the USA!”

Please, no posts!

The post was obviously rife with lies. First of all, J&B is clearly doing more than “advertising,” seeking to profit off anti-gay stigma by giving money to NOM to get free publicity in NOM’s own materials. Secondly, the company clearly doesn’t respect diverse views if it’s deleting pro-equality comments from its page and trying to censor feedback in general. Both its Facebook page and Yelp page are continuing to receive negative comments because of its NOM alliance, turning the scheme into a PR disaster that it clearly is unprepared to manage. At the time this post was published, the Facebook page has again been pulled from public view.

Plenty of businesses have already learned that supporting their LGBT employees and customers is good for business. When NOM launched a protest of General Mills for its support of nondiscrimination protections and marriage equality, the company responded by offering water to the protesters, unfazed by their efforts. The fact that J&B has had to respond to detractors with censorship and lies demonstrates just how quickly an anti-equality position will compromise customers’ trust.

Despite the fact that about 2 million children are being raised by LGBT parents in the United States, those children don’t always have legal relationships to the parental figures who care for them. State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) is seeking to partially address the issue of parental rights by amending California’s current two-parents-per-child law to allow judges to recognize multiple parents in the cases where it would best serve the children.

Ed Howard, the senior counsel for the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law, told the Associated Press that SB 1476 is ultimately designed with the best interest of today’s children in mind:

HOWARD: It’s not us who have changed the nature of families; families have done it on their own. It is cruel to prevent judges from ruling a way that protects kids in favor of an abstraction of what a family used to look like.

Leno believes that his bill “brings California into the 21st century” by recognizing that — thanks to adoption, surrogacy, and remarriages — modern families now take on many different forms in addition to the traditional two-parent household. For example, under the proposed bill, a lesbian couple who conceived a child with the help of a sperm donor could list the child’s biological father as a legal parent if he remained an active presence in the child’s life.

SB 1476, which has already passed the state senate and is now making its way through the Assembly Appropriations Committee, was inspired by a 2011 court case in which the state took custody of a young girl after her two mothers were unable to care for her. The appellate court ruled that the girl’s biological father did not count as a third legal guardian under California’s existing law.

Despite conservative criticism that the bill would dole out parental status at random, Leno maintains that all parents would have to meet the state’s existing standards for legal parenthood under his bill.

The FDA has approved OraSure, the first-ever at-home HIV testing kit. It allows individuals to swab their gums and obtain test results in less than an hour. Still, the FDA notes that regardless of the outcome, the test’s results should not be overly trusted:

A positive result with this test does not mean that an individual is definitely infected with HIV, but rather that additional testing should be done in a medical setting to confirm the test result. Similarly, a negative test result does not mean that an individual is definitely not infected with HIV, particularly when exposure may have been within the previous three months.

In many ways, OraSure presents a catch-22. Because of the privacy and convenience it affords, many more individuals will hopefully use it to test their status. Unfortunately, the technology is not perfect: one out of every 12 tests performed in HIV-infected individuals returned false negative results. A negative OraSure result could create a false sense of security and dissuade people from ever getting a more reliable test that can’t be self-administered.

Last week, ThinkProgress identified seven anti-LGBT Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives who sponsored or co-sponsored five or more of the ten most anti-gay bills introduced so far this Congress. But while they and 137 colleagues were promoting discrimination, 183 Representatives have signed on as backers of at least one of 27 pro-LGBT proposals over that time.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) has sponsored or cosponsored 23 of the bills, making her statistically the most pro-LGBT member of Congress. An eighth-term representative from the Bay Area, Lee authored the proposed Real Education for Healthy Youth Act of 2011 (an LGBT-inclusive sex education bill) and the Health Equity and Accountability Act of 2011 (a bill to improve tracking of health data for LGBT people and other minority groups). She is listed as a co-sponsor on 21 other proposals including measures to ban employment discrimination, to stop bullying in schools, and to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. Her official House website includes a page highlighting her support for LGBT equality and highlighting her status as a founding member of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, of which she is currently a vice chair.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) equaled Congresswoman Lee’s score, also backing 23. But because residents of the District of Columbia are not given full representation in Congress, she is only permitted to vote in committees. All six non-voting delegates to Congress backed at least two pro-LGBT measures.

Ten other Representatives — all Democrats — signed on to at least 20 pro-LGBT proposals, putting them just behind Lee and Norton. They are:

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