Yesterday, Current TV host Stephanie Miller allowed Salvation Army Major George Hood to claim his church organization is not anti-gay, though its record clearly demonstrates otherwise. Miller and Current TV colleague Bill Press had also launched a competition to raise money for the Salvation Army over the holiday season. In a written statement as well as on her show today, she has apologized for not thoroughly researching the organization’s anti-gay record and also ended the fundraiser, donating matching funds for what had already been collected to The Trevor Project:

Where I screwed up was in not doing more research about the Salvation Army’s long and checkered history involving LGBTQ people and our issues. I sincerely apologize for that.

When I returned from the Thanksgiving holiday, I learned a lot more — much of of it from friends like John Aravosis at America Blog and Michelangelo Signorile at Sirius OutQ — and I decided that, effective immediately, Talking Liberally and The Stephanie Miller Show would no longer be a part of the Salvation Army’s Online Red Kettle Campaign.

Please understand that I do believe the Salvation Army does much good work in the world and I also believe in redemption. I sincerely hope they will change their mission statement and policies regarding the LGBTQ community and I am very willing to continue that dialogue with them.

Through yesterday, your generosity has raised $1,150 for the Salvation Army in the Stephanie Miller Red Kettle.

I am now going to personally match that amount with a donation to the Trevor Project, whose work and mission I can endorse without any reservation. The Trevor Project provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ youth.

Listen to the clip from today’s show in which Miller explains that Hood was not telling the truth Tuesday:

NOM's odd graphic implying children of same-sex parents do worse in school.

Anti-gay activists have been championing Mark Regnerus’ “family structures” study since its publication earlier this year, claiming that it provides evidence that same-sex parents are not good for children. An internal audit by the journal that published it found its findings to be “bullshit” because Regnerus’s method was to count any child whose parent had a same-sex relationship at any point in time as part of the sample. He has since admitted that his study wasn’t even about gay parenting since only one individual was actually raised by same-sex parents for their entire childhood, but now conservatives are trying to apply the same fraudulent standard to other studies.

The National Organization for Marriage is today promoting a new conservative analysis of a 2010 study that found children of same-sex parents experience no academic disadvantage. The analysis pulls the same trick Regnerus used by adding back all the children who lived in unstable households, but then making a generalized claim about the children of same-sex couples:

The 2010 study had excluded children who were not biologically related to the head of household and who were not in the same home for at least five years. This reduced “the sample size by more than one-half.” The 2012 study explains that putting the children who had been in unstable households (lived at the same address less than five years) back into the sample increases the sample “by more than 80 percent.” This fact alone seems important. The new study’s conclusion is that “children being raised by same-sex couples are 35 percent less likely to make normal progress through school.”

Like in the Regnerus study, there may be some very compelling evidence that the stability of a family unit can impact a child’s well-being, but that is a completely independent variable from the gender of the parents. This is a gross distortion of the data to conflate committed intact same-sex families with unstable, inconsistent family structures.

In many ways, this tactic mirrors claims more prominent in the past (though still heard today) that gay men are more likely to be pedophiles. In his debates with John Briggs in 1978, Harvey Milk pointed out that statistically, the overwhelming majority of pedophiles identified as heterosexual. Briggs still argued that children would somehow be safer if the gay teachers were removed from the equation, a claim with no logical justification other than anti-gay bias. Just as sexual orientation is not a predictor for pedophilia, studies consistently show that it is not a predictor for how effectively children will be raised. Using these unstable family samples to suggest otherwise is simply a new spin on an old classic tactic to demonize gays and lesbians and deny them equal protections.

This morning, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) introduced the Stop Harming Our Kids (SHOK) resolution, which encourages states to follow California’s lead and protect minors from ex-gay therapy:

It is the sense of Congress that sexual orientation and gender identity or expression change efforts directed at minors are discredited and ineffective, have no legitimate therapeutic purpose, and are dangerous and harmful.

Congress encourages each State to take steps to protect minors from efforts that promote or promise to change sexual orientation or gender identity or expression, based on the premise that homosexuality is a mental illness or developmental disorder that can or should be cured.

The resolution notes that all mainstream medical organizations condemn ex-gay therapy as ineffective and harmful. Introducing it, Speier said that “any effort to change sexual orientation is not medicine, it’s quackery, and we should not be supporting it with taxpayer dollars.” In addition to advancing the resolution, Speier is also investigating whether federal taxpayer funds have been spent on conversion therapy with minors through Medicaid or TRICARE reimbursements. So far, she has found two instances of mental health professionals who advertise such services and who appear to be eligible for federal dollars.

On Wednesday, conservative Evangelical Pastor Rick Warren expressed regret for instructing his congregation to support Proposition 8, California’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. During an interview with HuffPost Live’s Marc Lamont Hill, Warren attempted to downplay his endorsement of the provision, claiming that he intended to communicate his private support to church members and was not trying to take a “public” position on the issue. Warren expressed regret for ever backing the measure:

WARREN:  I never made a single statement on Prop 8 until the week before. In my own church, some members say, “Where do we stand on this?” I released a video to my own members. It was posted all over like it was an advertisement. [...]

HILL: When your have a church of 20,000 people and you have a book that 32 million people have read and that 60 million people have accessed, to say, “I was just giving a message”—

WARREN: You’re exactly right, Marc, and I learned a lesson from that. What I learned from that is that anything I say privately is now public. And I actually learned from that mistake… Everyone took that to mean I was pontificating to the whole world.

HILL: If you could do it again, would you not have made that statement a week before Prop 8?

WARREN: I would not have. I would not have made that statement. Because I wanted to talk to my own people. As a duty, as a shepherd, I’m responsible for those who put themselves under my care. I’m not responsible for everybody else.

During the interview, Warren reiterated his opposition to same-sex couples — arguing that “It’s not a sin to love somebody, it might be a sin to have sex with them” — and suggested that he still backs the spirit of Proposition 8, just as he did in 2008. Then, Warren published his “private” video on his “News & Views” website for all of his followers to see and his comments were unsurprisingly picked up by the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow. The video is still preserved thanks to The American Prospect and RightWingWatch. Here again is that “private” video supposedly intended only for his 20,000 church members, in which Warren says, “If you believe what the Bible says about marriage, you need to support Proposition 8″:

Warren seemed to back away from his endorsement in 2009, telling Larry King that he “never once even gave an endorsement” of the proposition. Now that a majority of Americans consistently support marriage equality, he regrets that people actually paid attention to his anti-gay views.

Back in march, the Kentucky-based T-shirt printer Hands On Originals refused to print apparel for the Lexington Pride festival, claiming that as a Christian company, the order violated its values. The Gay and Lesbian Services Organization (GLSO) filed a complaint, and the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission has now ruled that Hands On Originals did discriminate in violation of local policies protecting sexual orientation.

Defending Hands On Originals, the Alliance Defending Freedom argued that the company shouldn’t have to “promote messages they disagree with,” including “that people should be ‘proud’ about engaging in homosexual behavior or same-sex relationships.” The Commission rejected this argument, noting that the company rejected the order not because of the message of the shirt — a stylized five marking the anniversary of Lexington Pride with a list of sponsors on the back — but because of the identity of the group ordering the shirts.

Hands On Originals also tried to argue that the situation was comparable to the Ku Klux Klan asking a black business owner to print shirts for a rally, but the Commission pointed out that the KKK is not a group within a protected class of people. Furthermore, the company has previously printed shirts with other designs that “could be interpreted as crude or in conflict with a person’s Christian beliefs.”

Though the T-shirt printer argued that it employs gay workers and has filled orders for gay customers in the past, the Commission pointed it out that that “does not eliminate the fact that they denied GLSO business based on their sexual orientation.”

The investigation is complete, but the case is ongoing. GLSO and Hands On Originals will now meet with an independent hearing examiner to determine possible compensatory damages. The law does not allow for punitive damages in such cases, but the GLSO is not seeking monetary damages anyway.

Megachurch pastor Rick Warren remains as ill-informed on gay identity as ever. Unfazed by the notion that there may be a biological cause for homosexuality, Warren told Piers Morgan on CNN this week that acting on same-sex attractions is no different from “punching a guy in the nose” or consuming arsenic:

WARREN: Here’s what we know about life. I have all kinds of natural feelings in my life and it doesn’t necessarily mean that I should act on every feeling. Sometimes I get angry and I feel like punching a guy in the nose. It doesn’t mean I act on it. Sometimes I feel attracted to women who are not my wife. I don’t act on it. Just because I have a feeling doesn’t make it right. Not everything natural is good for me. Arsenic is natural.

Watch it:

On CBS This Morning this week, Warren similarly defended his anti-gay positions by claiming that he can be “tolerant” and “accepting” without being “approving.” Though he may not act on his attractions to women who are not his wife, he seems to gloss over the fact that he did have the opportunity to act on his attractions to her by marrying her. By advocating against same-sex marriage, he works to prevent gays and lesbians from having the same security of a lasting partnership.

Warren has a long history of opposing marriage equality. Four years ago, he defended his support of California’s Proposition 8 by claiming that same-sex marriage is “equivalent” to incest, pedophilia, and polygamy. He also claimed that gays are “evil” and have “Christ-o-phobia.” Warren tries to offset his anti-gay beliefs by boasting his anti-AIDS work in Africa, but he has ties to conservative anti-gay leaders in Uganda who oppose using condoms to prevent transmission of HIV. The results of his particular efforts are unclear, but studies have shown that abstinence-only efforts have failed to lower HIV rates in Africa, and anti-gay stigma also contributes to the epidemic.