As Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan meet in Danville, Kentucky tonight for their lone head-to-head debate, millions of LGBT Americans are celebrating National Coming Out Day. While it is unclear whether issues relating to equality will be among the topics discussed tonight, it is worth remembering that Biden and Romney have starkly different views on LGBT civil rights.

Here’s where they stand:

	Paul Ryan	Joe Biden
Marriage	Ryan is a fierce opponent of granting any legal rights to same-sex couples. Ryan twice voted for a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. He supported a same-sex marriage ban in his home state, and claimed that preventing same-sex couples from getting married was a “universal human value.” He even voted to prevent any funds being used to implement or enforce a domestic partnership benefits law passed by the DC City Council to give health care benefits to same-sex couples and voted for a 1999 amendment that would have overruled the District of Columbia’s elected city council and prohibited any funding for the “joint adoption of a child between individuals who are not related by blood or marriage.”	Biden supports marriage equality. In May, he explained on Meet the Press “I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men marrying women are entitled to the same exact rights. All the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that.”
DADT	Ryan voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the policy which prevented gays and lesbians from serving openly in the armed forces.	Biden campaigned for repeal of the policy. He was one of just 33 Senators in 1993 supporting a resolution against codifying the discriminatory policy.
Hate Crimes	Ryan voted against hate crime protection for LGBT Americans.	Biden co-sponsored and supported hate crimes protections for LGBT Americans.
ENDA	Ryan believes that employment discrimination protection for LGBT people should be left out of the hands of the federal government. While he did (after much hand-wringing) once vote for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2007, the fact his congressional office employment policies do not include protections for sexual orientation is worrying enough. Saying that it “changes the equation,” Paul Ryan indicated his support for gay and lesbian discrimination protection would diminish if it also included for transgender employees. “It makes it something you can’t vote for,” he said.	Biden voted for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in the Senate in 1996 and co-sponsored the 2003 version of the bill.

Earlier this month, Ryan told Focus on the Family president Jim Daly that if elected he and Mitt Romney “will protect traditional marriage and the rule of law and we will provide the Defense of Marriage Act the proper defense in the courts that it deserves.” Obama and Biden have a section on the White House website highlighting their support for LGBT civil rights.

Watch Biden’s It Gets Better video:

Though his party’s official platform calls for a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage, a Republican congressional candidate in California is bucking that position in favor of equality.

Appearing at a League of Women Voters forum in California’s newly-formed 47th congressional district, Republican nominee Gary DeLong was asked to name an example of an idea where he disagreed with his party. He cited three: he’s pro-choice, pro-environment, and pro-marriage equality. “I support gay marriage. They don’t,” said DeLong:

MODERATOR: What is your record on supporting ideas or legislation that you believe in but your party was opposed? How would you handle going against your party’s position and what issues might be involved or have been involved?

DELONG: [...] There’s a number of things I disagree with the Republican Party on. I’m pro-choice. They’re pro-life. I support gay marriage. They don’t. I come from a coastal city. I’m very environmentally-oriented. Candidly, the Republican Party is not. There are many, many things I disagree with the Republican Party on.

Watch it:

Though Republicans as a whole remain staunchly opposed to LGBT rights, there have been a few pro-equality voices emerging recently. For instance, Republican leaders have helped raise money for Richard Tisei (R), an openly gay man running in Massachusett’s 6th congressional district. And in a recent interview with ThinkProgress, Tea Party Rep. Scott Tipton (R-CO) said he supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which makes it illegal to fire an employee for being LGBT.

In the current Congress just one Republican — Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) — is on the record supporting marriage equality.

DeLong’s Democratic opponent, Alan Lowenthal, also supports marriage equality.

California’s 47th congressional district, which comprises parts of Anaheim and Santa Ana, is considered a swing district.

On this Wednesday, National Coming Out Day, the Human Rights Campaign released the results of a survey of 10,000 LGBT youth aged 13-17. The study found that while almost all (91 percent) of LGBT teens are out to their close friends, fewer are out in school (61 percent) and to their families (56 percent). Respondents who were out at school and to their families reported higher levels of happiness than those who didn’t:

Those who are out to immediate family are more likely to report being happy (very/pretty happy) than those who are not out—41% of those out to immediate family report being happy; 33% of those not out to immediate family report being happy. Those who are out at school are more likely to report being happy (very/pretty happy) than those who are not—40% of those out at school report being happy; 33% of those not out at school report being happy.

Those who are not out to immediate family are more likely to report being unhappy (pretty/very unhappy) than those who are out—21% of those who are not out to immediate family report being unhappy; 16% of those who are out to immediate family report being unhappy. Those who are not out at school are more likely to report being unhappy (pretty/very unhappy) than those who are out —21% of those who are not out at school report being unhappy; 16% of those who are out at school report being unhappy.

The family happiness numbers appear to be related to the fact that being out to close family members helps LGBT youth feel comfortable with their home lives. The survey found that “youth who are out to their immediate family are twice as likely as youth who are not out to say they have an adult in their family they could talk to if they were sad.”

Though coming out at school is on balance good for LGBT youth’s psychological well-being, according to the report, it’s not without risks. Sixty percent “of youth who are out at school have experienced [verbal] harassment; 46% of youth who are not out at school have experienced such harassment.” This finding explains why 40 percent of teens reported staying in the closet because they were afraid of “being treated differently or judged” or bullying.

Anti-gay groups have pushed bullying and eduction guidelines that promote a climate of hostility and ignorance among students towards their LGBT peers. Another HRC study examining the same data as the above study found strong evidence that bullying and discrimination explained their relatively high levels of unhappiness.

Politicians on both of the Atlantic, former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Lord George Carey, launched into remarkably similar diatribes about the catastrophic effect of marriage equality on Western civilization earlier this week. Lord Carey, who served as the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991-2002, intimated that labeling anti-gay politicians “bigots” was the first step towards Nazi-style totalitarianism to a Tory audience Monday afternoon:

Remember the Jews in Nazi Germany. What started against them was when they were called names. And that was the first stage towards that totalitarian state. We have to resist them. We treasure democracy. We treasure our Christian inheritance and we want to debate this in a fair way.

On Tuesday, Senator Santorum suggested that Archbishop Carey was fighting a losing battle, telling an anti-marriage equality organization in Washington state (where equality is on the ballot in November) that “a secular revolution, a Godless revolution” explains “why [Europe is] declining and dying.” Santorum went on to suggest that marriage was the “most important” issue in the United States, arguing that equality would cause the United States to go the way of Europe:

This issue will destroy and undermine the church in American more than any other movement…[American secularization would] destroy the institutions of America’s foundation, destroy the American family.

Carey and Santorum both assume that equality will have these pernicious affect in part because it has damaged marriage in general; “plundering,” in Carey’s words, “disentegrate” in Santorum’s. Of course, the evidence from European countries and American states with marriage equality suggests quite the opposite. Equality legislation also generally contains broad religious exemptions for anti-gay churches.

Carey’s invocation of Nazism also, as Guardian writer Martin Robbins notes, takes on an extra layer of offense given the mass slaughter of LGBT Europeans by the fascist regime.

Maryland Marriage Alliance Chairman Derek McCoy told the Chesapeake Christian Fellowship that children of same-sex couples do not fare as well as children of opposite-sex couples because they are not God’s “best.” And his source for this claim was the widely-debunked Regnerus “study.”

As first noted by Jeremy Hooper on Good As You, McCoy told the congregation:

If you look at statistics, I’m telling you, if you look at statistics, you look at understanding and how things work, kids fare better with a mom and a dad. There is a recent study out there, called the Regnerus study, but basically it’ll tell you straight up—largest sample study and it’s taken a long time to get out there—but it’ll tell you about kids that are being raised in these homes, they are not fairing as well. Now I could go down the stats, you say “we’ll that’s not true.” No I’m telling you, they did a statistical study on this stuff. And they’re just not fairing as well. Because, guess what. It’s not what God created, it’s not his best.

Listen to the audio here:

The faulty “study” McCoy cites has been widely condemned by professors, therapists, and physicians. Mark Regnerus failed to draw a distinction between children raised by same-sex couples and children who believed at sometime before their 18th birthday their mother or father had “ever ha[d] a romantic relationship with someone of the same sex.” The study was funded by right-wing organizations and the majority of its subjects grew up in the 70s, 80s, and 90s — when same-sex relationships were more heavily stigmatized and not recognized in any state.

The American Psychological Association has consistently determined that there is “no scientific evidence that parenting effectiveness is related to parental sexual orientation: lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children.”