Earlier this week, The American Independent reported that Intel was one of the Boy Scouts of America’s largest corporate donors in 2010, giving over $700,000 to local troops and councils as matching grants for employees’ volunteer work. Scouts for Equality founder Zach Wahls responded by launching a Change.org petition calling on the computer chip maker to cease financial support for any group, like the Boy Scouts, that discriminates against people based on their sexual orientation.

Today, Intel clarified to ThinkProgress that it has already adjusted its policies to prevent such donations in the future. The company first launched its Involved Matching Grant Program three years ago, offering donations to organizations for which employees volunteer, but there was originally no mechanism to ensure that they aligned with Intel’s nondiscrimination principles. As checks were being cut at the end of last year, Intel realized that many were going to organizations — including, but not limited to, the Boy Scouts — that were out of step with those principles. This year, for the first time, prospective recipients of Intel grants will have to sign a statement confirming that they do not discriminate based on creed or sexual orientation, and any groups that cannot do so will be ineligible for funding.

Intel’s Chief Diversity Officer, Rosalind Hudnell, provided the following statement to ThinkProgress:

HUDNELL: Intel and the Intel Foundation give millions of dollars annually to great organizations doing valuable service around the globe. Intel has not provided funding to the National Boy Scouts of America organization.  The $700,000 in funding from the Intel Foundation was donated to local Boy Scout troops or councils where our employees volunteer their time, through our volunteer matching grants program.

In an effort to recognize our employees commitment to the communities we call home, Intel expanded its volunteer matching grants program in 2009.  Through it, Intel matches the amount of time employees’ volunteer with non-profits with dollars from the Intel Foundation. Due to significant growth in the number of organizations funded, earlier this year we revisited our policies associated with the program, and applied new rigor that requires any organization to confirm that it adheres to Intel’s anti-discrimination policy in order to receive funding.

Intel is committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and to supporting the communities in which we live and work.

Under the policy, the growing number of Boy Scout troops and councils that refuse to abide by BSA’s discriminating policy would still be eligible for Intel’s funding. Hopefully, the company’s ongoing commitment to its employees and their volunteer work will help more troops shift to a policy of inclusion.

Our guest blogger is Crosby Burns, Research Associate for the LGBT Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress.

Maj. Shannon McLaughlin and her wife Casey are suing for military benefits to protect their family.

Yesterday our nation celebrated the one-year anniversary of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), marking the first time in our nation’s history gay men and women have been able to serve their country openly, honestly, and without fear of punishment.

Unsurprisingly, the transition to open service has proceeded smoothly over the past twelve months, despite doomsday predictions by supporters of the gay ban. In fact, the Palm Center, a research institute at the University of California Santa Barbara, found that DADT repeal has “enhanced the military’s ability to pursue its mission.”

One year later our armed forces are stronger thanks to the honorable service of openly gay men and women. Our military no longer turns away Americans willing to serve their country because of their sexual orientation. Our military no longer forces out otherwise qualified troops — including those with “mission critical” skills such as engineers or Arabic linguists — simply because they are gay. And our military no longer squanders millions of taxpayer dollars to enforce a flawed policy that asks troops to lie about who they are.

Even in a post-DADT world, however, not all is equal for gay and lesbian troops.

Unfortunately, these servicemembers are denied access to the same benefits afforded to their straight counterparts. The primary reason for this inequitable access is the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law that defines marriage solely as the union between one man and one woman. Under this exclusive definition, same-sex couples — even those who are legally married — cannot access a range of federal benefits normally afforded to married couples, including government programs and tax breaks.

For gay members of the armed forces, DOMA’s restrictive definition of “spouse” prohibits the government from offering a number of benefits to same-sex partners (and potentially to their children) because those benefits are governed by federal laws . These include critical services, such as health  insurance, housing allowances, and other benefits designed to help troops weather the stresses of repeated deployments and military life.

Other benefits, however, are not directly linked to federal law and are instead governed by Pentagon regulations that, but that continue to tie certain benefits to the government’s restrictive definition of “spouse” under DOMA. Benefits in this category include access to legal services, on-base commissary and shopping privileges, and access to deployment and relocation assistance programs.  In the case of these benefits, the Pentagon can act now to immediately provide them for gay servicemembers.

For gay servicemembers to receive these benefits, the Pentagon must revise its regulations to ensure equitable access  regardless of the gender of servicemembers’ spouses. And the Pentagon is doing just that. Following the legislative repeal of DADT, the Pentagon began reviewing which benefits it could legally extend to servicemembers’ same-sex partners and spouses under existing laws. That review is ongoing.

With open service now a reality for one full year, the Pentagon should quickly complete its review and immediately extend all benefits possible under current law to gay servicemembers and their families. Until then, gay servicemembers will continue to serve their country, often putting themselves in harm’s way, while being denied the same benefits and privileges that are afforded to straight troops and their families.

Similarly, senior military officials should support efforts to repeal DOMA, both in Congress and in the courts. Only the end of DOMA will allow gay servicemembers to have equal access to all military benefits to which they are entitled.

Eleventh in a series examining how anti-LGBT Senate candidates have worked to hurt the cause of equality.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ)

In late August, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) won his party’s nomination for the open seat of retiring Sen. Jon Kyl (R). He faces former George W. Bush administration Surgeon General Richard Carmona (D), a former independent. Unlike Carmona, who is a strong supporter of LGBT equality, Flake has has voted against the LGBT community at nearly every opportunity.

Over his twelve years in the House of Representatives and this Senate campaign:

1. Flake voted against marriage equality and even domestic partnership benefits for same-sex couples. In 2004 and 2006, he voted for a constitutional amendment requiring “marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.” Last year, he backed an amendment reaffirming the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act. He also voted for a 2007 amendment restricting the District of Columbia government from using any federal funding to provide domestic partnership benefits, a 2011 amendment reaffirming the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and a 2004 bill of questionable constitutionality to strip federal courts of the right to review whether DOMA is unconstitutional. Last August told constituents he believes marriage should be a state issue, but reaffirmed his support for keeping DOMA — which prevents the federal government from recognizing marriages from states that opt to allow marriage equality. He also co-sponsored a resolution condemning the Obama administration for the Department of Justice’s refusal to defend DOMA in court.

2. Flake thinks it should be legal to fire someone just for being transgender. Though he was one of 35 Republicans in the House to vote for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2007 (after voting to kill the measure moments before in a procedural vote), but did so only after protections for transgender Americans had been removed from the measure. He refused to support the 2010 transgender-inclusive version of the bill because he claimed those protections made it “too nebulous” and said he thought gender-identity protections would be “too difficult to implement for business owners to respond to.” Worse, he refused to even adopt a non-discrimination policy against LGBT discrimination for employees in his own Congressional office.

3. Flake voted against Hate Crimes protections for LGBT Americans. In 2004, 2007 and 2009, he voted against adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the federal hate crimes laws.

4. Flake boasted of a 100 percent rating from a designated hate group. His 2006 campaign website boasted of a 100 percent rating by the Family Research Council. As recently as 2010, the group endorsed his re-election with “True Blue” status. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated FRC as a hate group for its record of “false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science.”

5. Flake had to apologize for calling himself a “pansy” in an interview. After spending a week alone on a deserted island, he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he took the trip because he “felt like a pansy.” A spokesman later said Flake “didn’t realize that that word can have a negative connotation” and that “he apologizes if anyone took offense to it.” His office posted a version of the interview on YouTube, with that section cut out.

Watch the redacted video of the interview:

Even after voting to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Flake’s Human Rights Campaign score — a zero for his first three terms in Congress — rose to just 20 percent for the 111th Congress.

Flake’s election to the U.S. Senate would be a huge threat to LGBT people and families.

The Catholic Church continued its crusade against marriage equality in Washington state this week with a video from Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain. Using religious language to determine what should determine state law, Sartain stokes fears that society will fall apart completely if same-sex couples are allowed to marry:

SARTAIN: To suddenly change the God-given and time honored understanding of marriage would be a very harmful thing for our state and for the world. Put simply, it is not in the compelling interest of the state to change the definition of marriage. There are many ramifications for such a redefinition. Suffice it to say, should marriage be redefined in our state the very foundational nature of marriage for the good and strength of human society would be harmed beyond repair.

Watch it (via On Top Magazine):

Suffice it to say, claiming that the Church isn’t anti-gay, just pro-straight, is no more convincing than white supremacists claiming they aren’t anti-black, just pro-white.

Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council are still not convinced that repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” won’t have longstanding consequences for the military, regardless of what studies have shown. In yesterday’s Washington Update from FRC, Perkins claims that fallout is coming, it just might take a couple decades:

In the last few days, I’ve fielded plenty of calls from reporters asking, “Where’s all the fallout that FRC predicted?” And I’ll tell you what I told them. It’s impossible to gauge the full effect of sexualizing the military in one year. But make no mistake–the repercussions have begun. We’ve witnessed it in the decline of religious freedom, the censoring of chaplains, the embrace of same-sex “marriage,” and the special treatment for homosexual soldiers. [...]

Has America’s military completely collapsed in the first year after repeal? Of course not–our service members are too professional to let that to happen. But these challenges are only a non-story because the media won’t tell the story. We need only look at no-fault divorce in the 1970s to recognize that radical shifts in public policy take decades to fully manifest. No one can honestly deny the impact that no-fault divorce has had on children and the institution of the family. Within 20 years of the introduction of no-fault divorce, we saw the acceleration of cohabitation, single-parent homes, and unintended pregnancies. By the time Americans recognized their mistake, it was too late. Let’s hope the same isn’t true for our brave men and women in uniform.

The “repercussions” Perkins references include a limit on the size of tattoos servicemembers can have, efforts to minimize the imposition of Christian ministry and evangelism by officers, allowing soldiers to wear their uniforms in Pride parades just like they do in other parades, and soldiers marrying their partners. None of these is really a bad thing, let alone a consequence of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Perkins was wrong before repeal, he’s wrong now, and he’ll still be wrong decades from now.

Chuck Darrell campaigning with the National Organization for Marriage.

In a stunning attempt to co-opt not only Christianity, but all of organized religion, the spokesperson for Minnesota for Marriage has claimed that all religious people support the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. After the group held a religious rally — at which Minneapolis/St. Paul archbishop John Nienstedt incredulously said the amendment is “not intended to be hurtful or discriminatory to anyone” — Chuck Darrell explained that only the nonreligious could oppose the anti-gay measure:

DARRELL: There should be very little doubt that the vast majority of churches with members will support the amendment. And the marriage amendment campaign focused on turning them out. Amendment opponents will have to find a whole lot of atheists if they want (to) win.

Just like the Maine campaign, Minnesota for Marriage is attempting to pit religion against LGBT people. Contrary to Darrell’s claims, hundreds of religious leaders in Minnesota oppose the discriminatory amendment, including Catholic priests, Episcopalians, and Jewish Rabbis. Of course, anybody who appreciates not imposing one religion’s harsh “values” upon an entire state of people has reason to oppose the amendment, whether they believe in God or not.