This week, the Gay-Straight Alliance Network released a new study evaluating the effectiveness of implementing LGBTQ-inclusive curricula in schools. Previous studies have already shown that having an inclusive curriculum helps make schools safer for LGBTQ students, but this study shows that other factors can impact just how effective the inclusive classes can be.

For example, if teachers do not have the proper resources, including professional development, supplemental instructional materials, or updated textbooks, the LGBTQ curriculum was more difficult to implement. This is especially true in the absence of administrative and community support, requiring teachers to shoulder the burden of the materials to implement the lessons. Though California’s FAIR Education Act is now law, schools there have not taken the necessary steps to produce the new resources. In addition, the study found that LGBTQ-inclusive curricula that are implemented school-wide across multiple subject areas had a much bigger impact than curricula introduced in just one class.

The study concludes that more must be done to study the impact and implementation of LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum, recruit a coalition of stakeholders to support that implementation, and provide the tools and resources necessary to do so. Read the full study.

For reasons that remain unclear, cable news networks continue to provide airtime to the Family Research Council, neglecting to recognize that it has been designated as a hate group for its anti-gay views, let alone the fact that it hardly represents mainstream Christianity. Today was no exception, as FRC’s Peter Sprigg was invited on CNN to join the chorus of conservative objections that Pastor Louie Giglio will no longer be participating in President Obama’s Inauguration because of his anti-gay views. Sprigg attempted to claim that Christians are the victims, but fortunately, Truth Wins Out’s Wayne Besen was there to set the record straight:

SPRIGG: The world we live in, unfortunately, is increasingly marked by the enforcement of intolerance in the name of tolerance, exclusion in the name of inclusion, and forced uniformity in the name of diversity. It’s contradictory, it’s downright Orwellian, and yet people actually make these statements, unbelievably, with a straight face. [...]

BESEN: Peter, I find it ironic that you’re embracing diversity. I mean you called for the imprisonment of gay people and said we should export homosexuals out of the United States and suddenly you’re for tolerance? I’m a little confused here.

SPRIGG: [silent laughter] Well this is about Pastor Giglio and President Obama, it’s not about me.

Watch it:

Jeremy Hooper is right to celebrate this as a victory for GLAAD’s Commentator Accountability Project, which seeks to expose the anti-LGBT records of conservative spokespeople whose positions are typically not given proper context by the news outlets that interview them. Sprigg’s presence on CNN is the quintessential example of this whitewashing, because as Besen pointed out, his positions are seemingly even more anti-LGBT than Pastor Giglio’s. Sprigg has proven time and time again that he does not even have the most basic understanding of sexuality but does have a significant antipathy toward the very existence of gays and lesbians. He has no authority to speak about LGBT issues, and CNN should learn from this interview not to provide a pedestal for his bigoted point of view again.

The owner of The Stingray Café in New Bern, North Carolina apparently has a penchant for informing his gay customers of his anti-gay views. Lesbian couple Ariel and Shawnee McPhail had a meal at the Café on December 4, but did not leave empty handed. As they were exiting, owner Ed McGovern handed them the following poorly written letter:

God said in the last days that man and wom[a]n would be lover of self, more [than] the lover of God.

That man and woman would have unnatural [affection] for one another. Then, the coming of the Son of Man, who is Jesus. So please, look at your life. See how it hurt[s] everyone around you. And ask the Lord to open your eye[s] before it [is] to[o] late.

The Love of Christ

P.S. my daughter also was gay. It destroy[ed] her life and my grandson.

McGovern said he wrote the letter because he did not approve of the McPhails’ kissing and confirmed that he has done something similar for a lesbian couple in the past. The McPhails say they weren’t kissing — just holding hands — but that’s besides the point.

McGovern’s letter epitomizes the kind of harassment and condemnation that gay couples experience throughout their daily lives, merely for basic activities like going to restaurants together. No member of another targeted group would be expected to tolerate an offense like this, and it’s time an exception stop being made for the LGBT community.

Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady has taken a lot of heat for his support of marriage equality, but he’s not backing down. When the state legislature was considering a marriage equality bill during the lame duck session, Brady was calling lawmakers of his own volition encouraging them to support it. Now, members of the state GOP committee are calling on him to resign, and even the National Organization for Marriage has promised a $250,000 vengeance campaign against any Republican who supports the freedom to marry.

Brady calls Illinois’ ban on same-sex marriage the state’s “last condoned discrimination.” He believes, “We need to change the brand or the image of the party of this group of angry, old white guys, and that’s what we look like right now.” And despite his detractors, Brady has the support of the state party’s highest-ranking elected official, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who has expressed his “full confidence” in Brady’s leadership.

Nova Colliander with her 'intergender' partner Vio Szabo.

Sweden has taken a long-overdue step to end the requirement that transgender people who wish to update their sex identification on legal documents undergo sex reassignment surgeries that require them to sacrifice their ability to have children. This is thanks to a court judgment that now applies to the whole country circumventing the sterilization law, which is set to be rewritten and removed from the books by July 1, 2013. Sixteen other countries in the European Union require transgender citizens to undergo the surgery, which many trans people do not want or require.

Last year, liberal and moderate members of Sweden’s Parliament were prepared to change the law, but were initially blocked by conservative political groups led by the Christian Democrat Party. Nova Colliander, a trans woman opposed to the sterilization requirements, expresses the pain of sacrificing her reproductive ability and her bitterness that it’s taken so long to change the policy [edited via Google Translate]:

COLLIANDER: It was an assault, a rape. The state gave an ultimatum I had to accept. The alternative was to die, which I felt so strongly. I do not know how many wills I wrote as a child… I am terribly disappointed that it took so terribly long.

Being transgender is considered embarrassing and unimportant in society. They would rather hide us, it’s hard to even talk about us. Therefore, it has taken time… It’s lucky that I can feel joy for others. Otherwise I would have been driven to madness by the bitterness.

Sweden has an infamous history of eugenic sterilization that took place between 1934 and 1976, with over 21,000 forcibly sterilized and another 6,000 coerced into a “voluntary” sterilization. A governmental inquiry into the misdeeds of the past ended in 2000 that paid out damages to the victims. Sex identity changes remained the last form of forced sterilization in the nation, but it remains unclear if the government will consider a new set of reparations.