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Obama: Be A Good Husband Regardless of Your Spouse's Sex

Virginia Republicans Nominate Rabidly Anti-LGBT Ticket

How A Birthday Turned One Lesbian Girl Into A Felon

NEWS FLASH

Limbaugh: ‘When Women Got The Right To Vote Is When It All Went Down Hill’ | Rush Limbaugh — the famously sexist radio host who got himself into hot water over his criticism of Sandra Fluke — believes that women’s suffrage destroyed the U.S. “When women got the right to vote is when it all went down hill,” Limbaugh said on his radio show Tuesday, “Because that’s when votes started being cast with emotion and maternal instincts that government ought to reflect.” The host tried almost immediately to recover from his blatant sexism, claiming that he had been joking. Listen:

Discriminating Athletic Club Will Now Serve Same-Sex ‘Households’

By Zack Ford on Jul 5, 2012 at 4:30 pm

Same-sex couples Will Trinkle and Juan Granados had purchased a family membership to the Roanoke Athletic Club so they could take their 2-year-old son to its outdoor pool. Less than two weeks later, their membership was revoked because, the club claimed, they were not a “family” under Virginia law. A viral Change.org petition and lawsuit from the couple received national attention, and now the club is changing its ways, announcing today on Facebook that it was changing its policy from a a “Family Membership” to a “Household Membership”:

In keeping with this goal, and in recognition of the many contemporary households that can benefit from our facilities through discounted membership fees, we are pleased to announce that we have expanded our Family Membership into a new Household Membership with the following criteria:

A household consists of a primary member and up to one additional household member that permanently lives in the household, and any of their dependent children under the age of 22 who also reside in the household on a permanent basis.

The change is a bit of a back-handed compliment. The Trinkle-Granados family can now enjoy its community’s resources just like other families — this is true. Unfortunately, it seems that in order to make this change, the owners of the Roanoke Athletic Club had to stop using the word “family” if it applied to same-sex couples, and they did so in a very public way such that all family memberships will be converted. The inherent stigma communicated to members — that gay “households” are preventing all “households” from being identified as “families” — suggests that the club could still be an unwelcoming place for the Trinkle-Granados family.

NEWS FLASH

Evangelist Lou Engle Will Recruit 100,000 Ex-Gays To Heal AIDS | Lou Engle, who organizes 12-hour anti-gay prayer rallies known as The Call, has a new plan for his radical right-wing agenda. He is going to recruit a “first wave” of 100,000 gay men and lesbians who have “come to Christ” that will reach out to other gays and lesbians with “radical salvations and healings of AIDS.” Watch him tell the members of The Ramp, his anti-gay youth ministry, that “this is the issue of your day”:

(HT: RightWingWatch.)

Justice

Over 750,000 Pennsylvanians Could Be Disenfranchised By Voter ID Law

By Guest Blogger posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jul 5, 2012 at 2:47 pm

Instances of voter fraud may be rarer than lightning strikes, but in Pennsylvania more than 758,000 voters may be disenfranchised this election season because lawmakers insist on solving the “problem” of voter fraud. Pennslyvania’s new voter ID law, which will take effect for the first time this November, may prevent 758,939 otherwise eligible voters, who do not currently have an acceptable ID, from voting.

A comparison, carried out by state officials, of registered voters and PennDOT ID databases show that only 91 percent of Pennsylvania’s 8.2 million voters have an acceptable voter ID. In Philadelphia, where voters will be hardest hit by the new law, 18 percent of voters lack proper ID. State officials had previously estimated that 99 percent of voters had acceptable IDs:

“What’s truly scary about this report is that it makes my case,” Allegheny County Controller Chelsa Wagner said. “About 10 percent of otherwise eligible Pennsylvanians are disenfranchised by the Voter ID law. That’s not an acceptable number of people to tell that they can’t vote.” Disenfranchised groups, Wagner said, include older residents, students and the poor.

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing to overturn the law, and Allegheny County Democrats said in June they would file a Commonwealth Court challenge.

Voter ID laws shift the electorate to the right by disproportionately disenfranchising poor, minority and student voters. Indeed, Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R) openly admitted that this is their purpose last month when he claimed that Voter ID “is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”

Nor is Voter ID a lone effort to disenfranchise voters. Republican politicians also pushed limits on early voting and registration efforts, and voter purge efforts that disproportionately affect voters who are more likely to vote democratic. New voter restrictions are also more likely to disenfranchise older voters.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, more than 5 million Americans could be disenfranchised by new laws making it harder to vote. Of the 12 likely background states, five have cut back on voting rights, and, taken together, the states that have restricted voter rights make up 171, or 63 percent, of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidential election.

–Alex Brown

UPDATED: Brad Pitt’s Mother DID Write Anti-Gay Letter

By Zack Ford on Jul 5, 2012 at 1:30 pm

UPDATE (4:30 PM): The Springfield News-Leader has changed its story again, including deleting the Opinion Page editor’s previous comment. According to a new editorial note posted on the letter:

To clear up earlier confusion, the News-Leader has verified the letter writer is the mother of actor Brad Pitt and local businessman Doug Pitt.

It’s entirely unclear what the paper confirmed to ThinkProgress earlier, nor how exactly it later confirmed that it was not the same Jane Pitt, only to now verify that it is the same Jane Pitt. We regret the confusion caused by the News-Leader’s mixed messages.

UPDATE (2:15 PM): Despite the Springfield News-Leader’s earlier confirmation to ThinkProgress that Brad Pitt’s mother had, in fact, composed the letter attacking President Obama and same-sex marriage (see below), the newspaper’s opinion-page editor has now clarified that it was written by a different Jane Pitt who does not have a familial connection to the famous actor. We regret the error.

The actor Brad Pitt has long supported the LGBT community, reiterating as recently as six weeks ago that he and Angelina Jolie still haven’t set a date for their wedding because they’re “still hoping for marriage equality in the States” before they do. His family, however, still lives in Springfield, Missouri and does not share his progressive values. In a letter to the Springfield News-Leader, his mother Jane Pitt wrote that as a non-Mormon Christian, she is still willing to support Mitt Romney for President because he is anti-choice and anti-marriage equality:

I think any Christian should spend much time in prayer before refusing to vote for a family man with high morals, business experience, who is against abortion, and shares Christian conviction concerning homosexuality just because he is a Mormon.

Any Christian who does not vote or writes in a name is casting a vote for Romney’s opponent, Barack Hussein Obama — a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for years, did not hold a public ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer, and is a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage.

The News-Leader has confirmed to ThinkProgress the authenticity of Pitt’s letter and her identity.

AJ Bockelman, executive director of LGBT advocacy group PROMO, responded that, “It’s great that Brad Pitt has been able to learn and grow from his experiences once he left the area, but for folks still living in Southwest Missouri, this sends a message that we still must do more to create acceptance for LGBT people and their families.”

NEWS FLASH

Virginia May Deny Trans Inmate Important Medical Care | According to Dr. Christina Gherghe, transgender inmate Ophelia De’Lonta needs to have sexual reassignment therapy to complete her transition, but Gherghe cannot mandate it. Now it’s up to the state of Virginia to provide De’Lonta with the proper medical care she needs for the sake of her own mental health, but Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is expected to oppose it. De’Lonta described such a denial of care as “torture”:

DE’LONTA: Refusing to provide effective treatment for a serious medical condition serves no penological purpose. It amounts to torture. I’m being tortured because I can’t receive the treatment I’m suppose to have. So, you just let me suffer. [...] They ‘re wanting taxpayers to see this as cosmetic. That this is ‘something she wants.’ I respect and admire their intelligence but this is a serious medical situation. Now that I have that from your specialist, somebody that you hired. If you don’t follow it then, you’re in violation.

Alyssa

Frank Ocean and the Future

By Alyssa Rosenberg posted from ThinkProgress Alyssa on Jul 5, 2012 at 11:50 am

It can be obscured under a grime of casual homophobia and sexism in their lyrics and music video imagery, but the most radical thing about the music collective Odd Future has always been their matter-of-fact inclusion of their lesbian producer, Syd tha Kid. She’s always been a full member of the group, rather than a sexually-available hanger on, and for all the language and imagery members of Odd Future throw around, in practice, the collective seems entirely comfortable with non-straight people. That perception is even truer today after Odd Future member Frank Ocean posted the story of his first love on his Tumblr, a lyrical, painful reminiscence of falling for another man who didn’t, or couldn’t bring himself to, return Frank’s affections. Tyler the Creator, Odd Future’s flashy frontman, was immediately supportive, tweeting “Proud of that nigga cause I know that shit is difficult or whatever.”

His Twitter bio, of course, still reads “I AM NOT A DYKE.” And it’s not as if his pride in Frank’s personal courage means Tyler recognizes (or wants to acknowledge) the contribution of casual vernacular homophobia to the fact that “that shit is difficult or whatever.” Dream Hampton wrote, in an open letter to Frank, “The 200 times Tyler says ‘faggot’ and the wonderful way he held you up and down on Twitter today, Syd the Kid’s sexy stud profile and her confusing, misogynistic videos speak to the many contradictions and posturing your generation inherited from the hip-hop generation before you.” That evolution, that untangling of contradictions, happens in fits and starts. Earl Sweatshirt, another Odd Future member, came back from an extended stay at a school in Samoa, during which he did volunteer work with rape and assault survivors, sobered about the casualness of rape imagery in his lyrics. Maybe the same thing will happen with Tyler. Maybe it won’t.

But whatever happens, Syd and Frank are here. They are visible. Tyler’s support for them is visible. Jay-Z’s tacit support is visible in letting Hampton publish her letter on his Life and Times site. And visibility is the long-term death of bias. I don’t really think that Odd Future will be the wheel that turns the entire ship of hip-hop (or R&B, the genre which Frank is more rooted in) here. It was never going to be that a major talent in a musical genre came out and the next day we woke up to the bloom of a thousand gay and gay-positive mix tapes. That’s too much freight to place on any one person, and far too much to expect of an entrenched industry with well-established norms, even if those norms do that genre harm. But at the end of Angels in America, Tony Kushner’s main character, Prior Walter, said something that I think gets this kind of event exactly right. “We won’t die secret deaths anymore,” he tells the audience directly. “The world only spins forward. We will be citizens…The Great Work begins.” There are all kinds of countries, and all kinds of citizenship to be claimed.

NEWS FLASH

Chaplains Aren’t Leaving Military Over DADT Repeal | Since Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed, Republicans have complained that allowing same-sex marriages on military bases somehow infringes on chaplains’ rights. Despite the outcry from outside the armed forces, there really are no concerns among the chaplains who serve. Some have opted not to officiate ceremonies while others have, but few, if any, have left or expressed any serious concerns specifically because gay and lesbian servicemembers can now be open.

Focus On The Family Objects To California Bill That Would Train Foster Parents On LGBT Youth

By Zack Ford on Jul 5, 2012 at 10:09 am

A bill advancing in the California legislature (AB-1856) would require anyone participating in the state’s foster care system to receive training “instruction on cultural competency and sensitivity relating to, and best practices for, providing adequate care” to LGBT youth. Family rejection is largely responsible for the epidemic of LGBT youth homelessness, and preparing foster parents to accept and support the young people they are charged to protect ensures that those kids don’t lose another home or experience abuse.

Focus on the Family is concerned that the bill will “drive Christian couples away” from becoming foster parents. The organization sought comment from anti-gay author Dale O’Leary, who believes that being gay is just confusion from being sexually abused as a child — and also apparently that all foster kids have been somehow “seriously damaged”:

OLEARY: It’s very scary because children in foster care have already been seriously damaged.  You don’t get into foster care because you’ve had a perfect life. A child who’s been sexually abused by a person of the same sex, (particularly if the child is a boy), is going to have doubts about his identity. And he needs help to get through that. If we push homosexuality on him, or these gender-identity ideas, it’s just going to confuse him… One of the outcomes of sexual child abuse is concern about one’s sexual attractions and identity.

The implications here are disturbing. First, Focus on the Family seems to be implying that Christian couples would refuse to ever love a gay or trans child. Secondly, though sexual abuse is certainly a concern in the foster care system, it’s quite dangerous to purport that all foster kids have been damaged by sexual abuse — there’s nothing to support such a generalization. Lastly, O’Leary’s conclusions that abuse leads to homosexuality are based entirely on the junk science of ex-gay therapy. The American Psychiatric Association concludes that “sexual abuse does not appear to be more prevalent in children who grow up to identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, than in children who identify as heterosexual.”

AB 1856 is a bill that can only help minimize stigma by raising awareness about how best to care for LGBT youth. Focus on the Family’s insistence on opposing it and spreading complete mythology shows that the organization cares much more about its harmful message than any real concern for children’s well-being.

NEWS FLASH

Justice Department Seeks Supreme Court Review Of DOMA | The Department of Justice has requested that the Supreme Court review two different cases challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, arguing in both that the law should be found unconstitutional as it has in lower courts. House Republicans defending the law made a similar request for review, but arguing the Court should overturn the other rulings and uphold “traditional marriage.” Meanwhile, Republicans attempted to delay another DOMA challenge while these cases proceed, but a district court judge in Connecticut ruled that such a stay would be unfair to its plaintiff, Joanne Pedersen.

The Morning Pride: July 5, 2012

By Zack Ford on Jul 5, 2012 at 8:34 am

Welcome to The Morning Pride, ThinkProgress LGBT’s daily round-up of the latest in LGBT policy, politics, and some culture too! Here’s what we’re reading this morning, but please let us know what stories you’re following as well. Follow us all day on Twitter at @TPEquality.

- The United Methodist Church in the Northwest has endorsed Washington’s Referendum 74, which upholds the state’s marriage equality law.

- Is One Million Moms altering the comments people submit with its form to companies it is protesting and boycotting?

- California conservative groups have until this weekend to finish collecting signatures to overturn the FAIR Education Act, which ensures that school curricula are LGBT-inclusive.

- A new poll finds that 62 percent of Canadians support full marriage equality.

- A trans student at an Ontario high school was named prom queen.

- Over half of gay teens in the UK are bullied at school and 99 percent of all students hear homophobic language in school.

- Spain’s Constitutional Court has delayed ruling on the country’s same-sex marriage law.

- A Swedish judge made a despicable ruling that a woman could not have been raped simply because she is transgender.

- Zimbabwe police are going to charge a gay rights group with insulting President Robert Mugabe.

- Frank Ocean of the hip-hop group Odd Future has come out as gay.

- The UK group Kaleidoscope Trust asks, What would it be like if it were illegal to be you?

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