Fourteen years ago, on October 12, 1998, 21-year-old Matthew Shepard died after a vicious anti-LGBT hate crime in Laramie, Wyoming. His murder galvanized the LGBT community and its allies to push for stronger legal protections against similar acts of terrorism.

In the years since Shepard’s death:

• The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act became law. The bill, enacted in 2009 after years of effort, was named for Shepard and for James Byrd, Jr., a 49-year-old African American dragged to his death the same year — chained to a pickup truck because of his race. The law created a federal criminal law prohibiting many attacks committed because of the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person. Additionally, 13 states and the District of Columbia have state hate crimes protections for LGBT citizens and an additional 18 states have protections against hate crimes based on sexual orientation. Most have been enacted since 1998. Wyoming, however, remains one of just five states with no hate crimes protections at all.
• States are combating bullying. In its 2011 National School Climate Survey, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) found that “81.9% of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 38.3% reported being physically harassed and 18.3% reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation. But since 2002, the number of states with anti-bullying laws has grown from 9 to 49.
• LGBT acceptance has grown enormously. As recently as 2001, 53 percent of Americans believed “gay and lesbian relations” were morally wrong, according to Gallup. Now, that number has declined to just 42 percent. The percentage of people supporting marriage equality for same-sex couples has grown from 35 percent in 1999 to 50 percent in May 2012.
• Shepard’s story continues to be told worldwide. The play The Laramie Project, which tells of his story and its aftermath, has been performed over 2,000 times around the world. A 2002 film version aired on HBO.

Over the past several weeks, ThinkProgess LGBT has highlighted 12 anti-LGBT Senate candidates running in the 2012 elections. Each has worked to hurt the cause of equality and each is running against an opponent with a record of support for LGBT Americans.

Here are the ThinkProgress Anti-LGBT Dirty Dozen:

ARIZONA: Rep. Jeff Flake (R). 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. 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.”

FLORIDA: Rep. Connie Mack IV (R). A May campaign press release touted a “Social Conservatives for Mack Coalition” including several leaders of the 2008 Florida anti-gay marriage amendment proponents’ group. The text slammed Mack’s then-primary opponent for allegedly being “an early and vocal supporter of the gay agenda.” Mack’s lone pro-LGBT vote over his House career was a 2009 procedural vote during consideration of the hate crimes bill.

HAWAII: former Gov. Linda Lingle (R). In 2010, Lingle vetoed a civil unions bill that passed the state legislature, arguing that it was “essentially marriage by another name,” and should be decided by referendum. Making matters worse, she invited LGBT activists to attend her announcement ceremony, only to devastate them with her decision. Donald L. Bentz, executive director of Equality Hawaii, told ThinkProgress that Lingle made “an inhumane spectacle.” In a 1997 interview, she argued that marriage discrimination will always be permissible because it is currently popular, saying marriage equality “cannot ever be adopted in Hawaii because the people don’t support it. They simply don’t support it.”

MASSACHUSETTS: Sen. Scott Brown (R). In 2001, he told the Boston Globe it was “not normal” for two women to have children. His comments — focused at then-State Sen. Cheryl Jacques and her domestic partner Jennifer Chrisler — also belittled Jacques’ “alleged family responsibilities.” While he later backed off of what he called a “wrong choice of a word that is probably going to crucify me,” Brown has to this day never directly apologized to Jacques and Chrisler. Brown refused to be in the Massachusetts delegation’s “It Gets Better” anti-suicide video and was one of just three state senators to oppose repeal of a 1913 anti-interracial marriage law that then-Gov. Mitt Romney used to prevent out-of-state same-sex couples from marrying in Massachusetts.

MICHIGAN: Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R). At least nine times, he signed on as a co-sponsor of anti-equality measures including the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, a proposal to amend the U.S. constitution to prevent states from voluntarily recognizing same-sex unions, and a radical proposal to take away the right of same-sex couples to challenge discriminatory laws in state or federal courts. In his 2010 gubernatorial campaign, Hoekstra ran an ad in which Focus on the Family Founder and anti-LGBT activist James Dobson praises him for supporting “traditional marriage.”

MISSOURI: Rep. Todd Akin (R). He argued on the House floor that marriage is only “about a love that can bear children,” and warned that “anybody who knows something about the history of the human race knows that there is no civilization which has condoned homosexual marriage widely and openly that has long survived.” He called Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal “an eclipse of reason” and “the imposition of somebody’s social agenda that they want to impose on the military,” and criticized President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality as an “unquenchable desire to tear down the traditional family unit brick by brick.”

MONTANA: Rep. Denny Rehberg (R). In 2008, after Idaho’s Sen. Larry Craig (R) plead guilty to lewd conduct involving a male police officer in a Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport restroom, Rehberg decided to leave a care-package for Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID). On a congressional trip to the Middle East, Rehberg reportedly left “a stuffed sheep with gloves attached to it, a Village People CD, books on cross-dressing and sign language and a T-shirt that reads, ‘My senator may not be gay, but my governor is Butch.’” The governor of Idaho’s name is C.L. “Butch” Otter. A spokesman claimed “no offense was intended,” Rehberg boasted that he was proud of the travel package and “spent a bit of time putting the things together.” At his Senate campaign kickoff, he told supporters: “I will never, ever, ever be ashamed to stand for the life of the unborn child and the sanctity of traditional marriage.”

NEVADA: Sen. Dean Heller (R). In 2006, Heller said on his campaign website that he “supports traditional marriage between one man and one woman and will work to defend Nevada values in Congress.” This year, he reaffirmed his belief that “marriage is between one man and one woman” and said he “would not support changing that.” But, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “I don’t want it to be the issue in the campaign. I truly don’t want this to be the issue.” He has a zero rating from the Human Rights Campaign for his House tenure.

NEW MEXICO: former Rep. Heather Wilson (R). Throughout her career, Wilson has repeatedly noted that though she tolerates LGBT people, she doesn’t much like having to do so. “With respect to homosexuality,” she told ABC News in 2006, “there are things I’m willing to tolerate that I’m not willing to approve of.” She has also opposed anti-bullying laws, comparing anti-gay bullying to mere “teasing.

OHIO: State Treasurer Josh Mandel (R). Mandel told a Tea Party rally in July that he would “protect the sanctity of marriage,” adding that “this is a fight that I will never, ever back down.” In May, he told the conservative Human Events that “Ohioans demonstrated in ’04 their support for traditional marriage when they overwhelming voted for an amendment saying just this. That’s my position, and it is an issue in this [Senate] race.” As a state representative, Mandel voted against a bill to made it illegal to discriminate against LGBT Ohioans in hiring, firing, and housing decisions based purely on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Ironically, a Mandel spokesman claimed in 2011 that “Josh has always opposed discrimination against any American citizen.”

VIRGINIA: former Sen. George Allen (R). In a 1994 radio broadcast, then-Gov. Allen told listeners that he didn’t want his children “even seeing the news of some of these things here, thinking that, this is acceptable behavior.” He added: “I don’t think this is acceptable behavior… and as a matter of government policy I don’t think we should condone that sort of behavior.” In the same broadcast, he praised Virginia’s unconstitutional Crimes Against Nature law –which made private consensual sex between same-sex adults a felony — saying “It’s against the criminal law in Virginia, that homosexual acts are illegal, and I think should stay illegal.” Perhaps unaware that President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law in 2009, on Allen’s current campaign website he bizarrely promises to “vote against adding sexual orientation to federal hate crimes statutes, as he did in 2005.”

WISCONSIN: former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R). Thompson’s opposition to LGBT equality dates back nearly three decades. In his successful 1986 campaign to for Governor of Wisconsin, he repeatedly pledged to eliminate his predecessor’s Council on Lesbian and Gay Issues. Dick Wagner, who co-chaired the council, told ThinkProgress that Thompson did not reauthorize the Council on Lesbian and Gay Issues but “did continue the Bicycle Coordinating Council.” During a 2007 Republican presidential primary debate, Thompson was asked whether employers who believe “homosexuality is immoral” should be allowed to fire gay employees. Thompson forcefully responded that “business people have to make their own determination” on whether to fire employees based on sexual orientation. A day later, he reversed himself, saying “I didn’t hear the question properly and I apologize.”

With the first pro-marriage equality President’s reelection vote and four states’ referenda coming up in less than 40 days, the ad war over equality is heating up. ThinkProgress has put together a handy guide to some of the misleading and false claims that you’ll see on the airwaves from now until November 6th.

First up, an advertisement from “God Said,” an anti-Obama group whose avowed goal is splitting African-American voters from the President:

Aside from its nakedly theocratic appeal and false implication that religious African-Americans uniformly oppose equality, the ad’s basic contention is that gay couples can’t fulfill the biblical mandate to “be fruitful and multiply.” Ostensibly that would also mean sterile couples who adopt children shouldn’t be able to get married either, but thankfully this highly literal view of Biblical marriage is by no means universally shared among people of faith.

The next ad, from Washington State’s anti-equality group PreserveMarriage, picks up on the theme that gay families aren’t real marriages:

Of course, it is about equality: civil unions are a separate-but-unequal solution that fails to provide full equality for LGBT couples. Moreover, the ad’s suggestion that equality has led to the legal persecution of anti-gay churches is not only false, but also a means of shifting the debate away from the rights owed to LGBT Americans as free and equal citizens.

The final ad, from Maryland, goes all-in on the “equality hurts children” argument:

There is no credible evidence that same-sex parenting hurts children and a wealth of evidence suggesting it doesn’t.

The transparent weakness of the arguments in these ads against marriage equality helps explain the massive swing in public opinion over the past few years — anti-equality advocates simply have nothing persuasive to say to the majority of Americans who solidly support marriage equality.

On Friday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I)announced that he had given a $250,000 donation to Maryland’s marriage equality campaign. Maryland residents will vote on a referendum — known as Question 6 — this November that would legalize same-sex marriage. If Question 6 passes, Maryland will be the first state to legalize marriage equality through the ballot box — though Washington and Maine could also join the ranks, as voters there will weigh in on a similar referenda on Election Day.

In an email to supporters of Question 6, Bloomberg said:

I do not believe that government has any business telling one class of couples that they cannot marry. The 14th Amendment guarantees us all equal protection under the law, and that’s what Question 6 does — it treats all citizens equally under the law, while protecting religious liberty at the same time.. . . The next great barrier to full equality under the law is marriage equality. There is no doubt in my mind this barrier will fall, just as so many others have.

This is not Bloomberg’s first donation in support of same-sex marriage, however. In 2011, the billionaire mayor gave the maximum donation of $10,300 to four Republican state senators who voted in favor of New York’s marriage equality law, helping three facing primary challenges win reelection. (The fourth retired.) Bloomberg also gave the maximum amount to five Democratic legislators who voted in favor of the measure.

Bloomberg says the law, which generated $259 million in economic benefits for NYC in its first year alone, “made our city more open, inclusive and free — and it has also helped to create jobs and support our economy.” Experts estimate marriage equality would benefit Maryland’s economy by over $90 million annually.

– Greg Noth

Bryan Fischer, director of Issues Analysis at the American Family Association and right wing radio host said Thursday on his radio show that the U.S. Constitution and the “homosexual agenda” cannot coexist. As such, he argued, the only way to preserve liberty, freedom, and the First Amendment was to defeat the “forces of homosexual activism.”

Right Wing Watch notes that Fischer told listeners:

We in America are gonna have to choose between the homosexual agenda and liberty, because we cannot have both. We have to choose between the homosexual agenda and freedom. We have to choose between the homosexual agenda and the Constitution, because we cannot have both. We have to choose between the homosexual agenda and the First Amendment, because we cannot have both. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m telling you, we have got to understand we cannot give an inch, we cannot give one centimeter, we cannot give one millimeter to the forces of homosexual activism. We cannot accommodate, we can’t compromise, we can’t find middle ground, they cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be compromised with, they cannot be dialogued with, they can only be defeated.

Watch the video:

It is comments like this the demonstrate exactly why the American Family Association has been designated an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Amazingly, in recent years, Rep. Steve King (R-IA), former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and even Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have all done interviews with Fischer despite his shocking history of similarly hateful and dishonest comments.