The River Valley Equality Center is a support group for LGBT people and their allies in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Recently, the organization scheduled a fundraiser at the Sisters Gourmet Bistro, but now the restaurant has canceled the event because owner Richard Hodo opposes the group’s support of LGBT equality, just like he opposes the KKK’s white supremacy:

HODO: I called them and told them that I — we’re not going to have that at Sisters, we had no plans for that and there were no reservations to hold any kind of fundraiser or anything like that. I told them that I do not support their cause, that if they want to do that that’s their business. I do not care, but I don’t support their lifestyle and their cause.

What I told the lady on the on the phone, look I said if the KKK came here and wanted to hold a fundraiser rally and all that, I wouldn’t allow that either. This is a private club and I have the right to refuse service to anyone.

It’s unclear how Hodo was able to cancel the event if there was supposedly no reservation to cancel. To raise awareness about his discrimination and offensive comparison to the KKK, the group will hold a demonstration on the street corner by his restaurant later this month. The River Valley Equality Center formed just last year and is trying to raise enough money to obtain non-profit status. (TP: Queerty.)

Civil unions sponsor Sen. Pat Steadman (D) speaking before supporters in May 2012.

Just now, the Colorado Senate voted 21-14 to approve Senate Bill 11, which would create civil unions for same-sex couples. This was the second of two readings, with a final vote expected on Monday. During the debate, several Republicans attempted to add various amendments that would create special religious protections for adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples, but none of them passed. Denver area political reporter Eli Stokols pointed out that last year’s civil unions bill had such protections, but House Republicans went out of their way to block that bill from passing.

The bill is expected to advance quickly through the House this year. Not only did Democrats win control over the House, but they also elected openly gay Representative Mark Ferrandino (D), the bill’s sponsor, as Speaker of the House. A November poll found that 70 percent of Coloradans support legal recognition for same-sex couples.

Focus on the Family’s Glenn Stanton stopped by Truth in Action Ministries radio this week to discuss marriage equality. He didn’t provide any particular new arguments about why same-sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to receive the same governmental protections as other married couples, but he did offer some fiery new condemnations:

STANTON: This is a really pernicious lie of Satan to say that the gender part of humanity doesn’t really matter because the gender part of humanity is really denying the distinct God imaging in each of us as males and females. We need to understand that as Christians. That’s the biggest thing. [...]

These are not advocates of marriage; they’re advocates for redefining marriage. They know that making gender any irrelevant part of the equation really does redefine not only marriage but the family itself if not humanity completely.

Listen to it (via RightWingWatch):

It’s odd to think that all of the “family” groups claim to support marriage, but ignore that same-sex couples want to do the very same thing. Creating a stable home environment for raising a family is exactly why the LGBT community is advocating for full marriage equality. Somehow in Stanton’s mind, if same-sex couples act like everybody else it’ll “redefine humanity completely,” but maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

The thought of a school banning any conversation about LGBT diversity is disconcerting, but teaching untruths about sexual identities is even worse. That’s exactly what has been taking place in seventh-grade classrooms in Maryland’s Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) system, just outside Washington, DC. Health classes have been showing a video called “Acception” that promotes harmful ex-gay therapy under the guise of an anti-bullying message:

The 21-minute anti-bullying video, called “Acception,” at first appears to promote the acceptance of gay children. In the video, four students are assigned a project on homophobic bullying, with the group splitting up to study the issues of bullying and the origins of homosexuality. Two of the students encounter a cavemen parable about the origins of bullying, but the teens researching same-sex attraction soon find themselves in a different kind of scientifically dicey territory. While the video initially explores gay teenagers being bullied and a young man coming out to his parents, it soon features a student talking about how his once-lesbian cousin used therapy to become attracted to men. Then, the students in the video “watch” an interview with a gay-to-straight therapist.

In the following clip from the film, a woman talks about how depressed she was when she was coming to terms with her same-sex orientation because she was too afraid to tell anybody. When she finally admitted to her family, they “helped” her, essentially by forcing her to not be gay if she wanted to be accepted by them. Then magically, her same-sex feelings went away:

Disturbingly, nobody in the school district seems to understand what’s problematic with this message. In fact, the infamous ex-gay therapist Richard Cohen, who was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association in 2002, sits on the PGCPS Health Council for some inexplicable reason. The district’s recently retired supervisor for health education, Betsy Gallun, thinks students deserve to learn about ex-gay therapy and she “feels very badly that it’s coming under scrutiny.” A district spokesman explained that the district has now pulled the video, but only “because there was too much focus on alternative lifestyles.”

Ex-gay therapy has been roundly condemned by all major medical organizations as being at best ineffective and at worst quite harmful. Encouraging young people to reject their own identities is tantamount to shaming them for being who they are. That proponents of this quackery are making decisions in a school district is inexcusable. Talking openly about LGBT issues has been found to make schools safer for LGBT youth, but educators have to actually be informed about what is valid support for sexual diversity and what is blatant anti-gay propaganda.

Navy Senior Chief Jonathan Franqui and husband Dwayne Beebe

The Pentagon is set to announce that it will extend some partner benefits to gay and lesbian service members as early as today. While the Department of Defense is unlikely to find a way to offer full health-care coverage and more than 93 other spousal benefits granted by Congress while the Defense of Marriage Act remains in effect, outgoing Defense Secretary Panetta must seize the opportunity to extend these benefits to same-sex military spouses to the fullest extent possible under the law.

The checklist of 11 benefits Secretary Panetta can and should extend to same-sex military spouses include:

• Allowing same-sex dual-military spouses to be considered for joint duty assignments to assure that their families will not be forced to separate as a result of the military’s need to routinely relocate personnel. As the regulation is currently written, same-sex spouses are not eligible for joint duty assignments, so they are at increased risk of separation when they receive orders for a new duty station.
• Issuing explicit guidance that states a same-sex spouse cannot be prevented from visiting a spouse or a child in a military hospital because that couple’s marriage isn’t recognized by the federal government. Current Pentagon regulations allow military health treatment facilities that do not participate in Medicare to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.
• Issuing military identification cards to same-sex partners of military personnel so they can shop at military commissaries, and access gymnasiums, movie theaters, and other family support programs on bases and posts that are freely available to heterosexual spouses. Military regulations currently do not allow a same-sex spouse to obtain such a military identification card and bar these military family members from taking advantage of on-base benefits and support programs.

Since the 2011 repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” military families headed by same-sex spouses have been barred from accessing these legally available benefit programs and support services.  In his last days before leaving office, Defense Secretary Panetta can and must extend benefits to same-sex military spouses. Doing so would not only uphold the strong civil rights record he has accrued at the Defense Department, but would also send a clear message to Congress and the Supreme Court that we must ensure that all our military members — gay, straight, male, or female — are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.

Our guest bloggers are Robert Avruch, intern for CAP External Affairs, and Katie Miller, Special Assistant for LGBT Progress.