Pastor Wiley Drake

The National Organization for Marriage is trying its best to rally support for its “March for Marriage” on March 26, which will have a full slate of religious anti-gay speakers. The group is even trying to pretend that inviting people is the same as having people attend to make it look like they have more support. But now it seems that NOM has a particularly despicable partner for the March, Southern Baptist pastor Wiley Drake, who regularly prays for people’s death, including President Obama.

Jeremy Hooper noticed not only that Drake is promoting the march, but that he shared an email exchange coordinating his support with the march organizers. In fact, he committed to bringing his Congressional Prayer Conference broadcast to the march, and the event coordinator seemed all too grateful for his support.

This is the company NOM seems all too happy to keep: religious leaders who are so opposed to liberal positions that they pray for the President’s death. Here’s an audio recording of Drake doubling down on such “imprecatory prayer” in a radio interview with Alan Colmes:

COLMES: You say you are praying for the death of somebody using imprecatory prayer…. I asked for whom else are you praying in that fashion and you said, President Obama. Are you praying for his death?

DRAKE: Yes.

COLMES: So you’re praying for the death of the President of the United States.

DRAKE: Yes. [...]

COLMES: You would like the President of the United States to die.

DRAKE: If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around, I am asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers that are throughout the scripture that would cause him death. That’s correct.

Listen to it:

It’s likely the candlelight vigils being held by people who support marriage equality will have a different tone.

A new report from Third Way finds that voters largely do not punish lawmakers for voting for marriage equality, regardless of political party. The study analyzed lawmakers in Washington and New York, the only two states where elected officials have faced re-election after addressing the issue of same-sex marriage. Of those who supported the freedom to marry, 97 percent of them who ran again won re-election. Two of the five who lost were under investigation for corruption or misuse of tax dollars, and one lived in a Washington district that voted to approve the marriage equality referendum, so it’s not likely her loss had much to do with the question of marriage.

The last two lawmakers on the list who ran for re-election and lost after supporting marriage equality were Republican New York Senators Stephen Saland and Roy McDonald. The National Organization for Marriage waged an expensive vengeance campaign against them, and while it had some impact, the net result as not in NOM’s favor. McDonald lost to his more conservative primary challenger, but he also raised less money than she did. Saland lost to an equality-supporting Democrat because he split his votes with a conservative challenger who stayed in the race after the primary election. NOM has claimed there are consequences for voting against marriage equality, but the only evidence that this is true is created by NOM spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in retaliation.

Supporting marriage equality does not have to be a political decision for lawmakers. Only NOM’s commitment to political bullying tactics stands in their way of continuing to win the support of their constituents.

According to just-released draft minutes, the tribal council of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians in Michigan became the third tribal nation in the U.S. to pass a marriage equality statute this week. Under consideration by the tribal council since last March, the new statute will allow the tribe to both recognize and perform same-sex marriage.  A similar measure failed last July by one vote. When the measure was first proposed, former Odawa Council Chairman Ken Harrington defended the equality effort:

HARRINGTON: We have our own constitution, our own court system, and our own government here, police force, etc, DNR, so it’s our right to express equality… In my mind, we’re all equal in our creator’s eye.

Marriage equality at Little Traverse is the latest in a larger movement by tribal members and tribal leaders to pass marriage equality measures.  In fact, a new tribal LGBT equality toolkit was just released last fall to help tribal leaders incorporate comprehensive protections for LGBT people and families into their tribal codes.  The Indigenous Ways of Knowing program, which released the toolkit, is now working on implementing with interested tribal leaders and their governments.

Our guest blogger is Erik Stegman, Manager for the Half in Ten campaign.

Massachusetts Rep. Colleen Garry (D) believes she knows trans kids' identities better than they do.

Several Massachusetts lawmakers are not happy with new guidance from the state’s Department of Education advising on how to respect transgender students in school, based on nondiscrimination law passed in 2011. Notably, they believe that allowing them to use the appropriate restroom is somehow going to infringe on other students’ privacy. To correct that, they are taking the brash step of proposing a bill that define students’ gender by their anatomy instead of by their actual identities. Here are some of the unfortunate anti-trans comments they shared with the Lowell Sun:

REP. COLLEEN GARRY (D): An anatomical male in a locker room could make girls feel uncomfortable and vice versa. The (2011) bill was not to accommodate locker rooms and bathrooms, but the commissioner took it upon himself to provide guidance to schools… This is guidance; it’s not regulation. It’s their interpretation of how schools should handle things.

REP. SHEILA HARRINGTON (R): Obviously we’re very sensitive to people with transgender issues, and we’re trying to be compassionate, but we want to be respectful of the privacy of all people.

REP. MARC LOMBARDO (R): It’s time we say enough to this radical social agenda promoted by the administration and use common sense to protect our children.

Transgender young people do not have “issues,” nor are they in any way a threat to any student. What these lawmakers are trying to do is to force an identity upon a trans students that they don’t have, thereby negating the entire purpose of a nondiscrimination law protecting them.

What needs to happen in both schools and apparently the legislature is some basic education about what it means to be transgender. Women have a legitimate reason to be concerned if there is, in fact, a man in their locker room, but that has absolutely nothing to do with a trans woman. Society may attempt to assign a gender based on a person’s anatomy, but the entire point trans people are trying to teach the world around them is that sometimes society gets it wrong. Forcing someone who is trans into the wrong facility or a separate facility they don’t require for their own sense of safety is a rejection of that person’s identity, and it’s government endorsement of that rejection that fuels anti-trans stigma.

GLSEN reported that in 2011, 63.9 percent of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed because of their gender expression. Thanks to these lawmakers, that number just jumped to 100 in Massachusetts.

Carly Rae Jepsen, the artist behind last year’s ubiquitous hit “Call Me Maybe,” has officially backed out of her commitment to the Boy Scouts of America’s (BSA) National Scout Jamboree because of the organization’s anti-gay policy. Jepsen said the following over three tweets this morning:

JEPSEN: As an artist who believes in equality for all people, I will not be participating in the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree this summer. I always have and will continue to support the LGBT community on a global level and stay informed on the ever changing landscape in the ongoing battle for gay rights in this country and across the globe.

Train, the other band booked for the Jamboree, similarly said this weekend that it would only perform at the summer event if the BSA changed its policy before then.

Both performers had been the target of a petition by out Boy Scout leader Derek Nance, calling on them to condemn the Scouts for their policy banning gay Scouts and leaders. At the end of January, the Scouts announced they were considering ending the policy at the national level, but as conservatives retaliated against the proposal, they delayed taking action until May. A February poll shows that 55 percent of Americans support lifting the ban on gay Scouts.

As expected, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly is continuing his smear campaign against Colorado House Speaker Mark Ferrandino (D), who is openly gay, because of his opposition to instituting “Jessica’s Law,” which imposes excessive mandatory sentences for first-time offenders of child molesters. As ThinkProgress reported this weekend, Colorado already has harsh sentencing for sex offenders and nobody — not even the law enforcement community or victims’ advocates groups — supports changing the laws. But that hasn’t stopped O’Reilly from pursuing his campaign against Ferrandino, who he plans to hold “personally responsible” for the bill’s defeat and for “protecting” perpetrators.

Last night, O’Reilly aired an interview featuring reporter Jesse Watters confronting Ferrandino on the street while he was walking his dog, accusing him of “not protecting the kids from sexual predators.” Ferrandino barely had an opportunity to speak as Watters launched a barrage of various cases in which molesters supposedly did not receive tough enough sentences:

WATTERS: You’re not protecting the kids from sexual predators in passing Jessica’s law. Why is that?

FERRANDINO: Well, no DA’s. The DA has actually opposed Jessica’s law. So have victim rights groups in Colorado. In 2009, the DA has come out in opposition to the bill. They haven’t supported it still. We have very strong laws.

WATTERS: You actually don’t have strong laws because let me give you a few examples. 800 times a guy just sexually assaulted a seventh grader and just got one year of work release. Ok? Another guy.

FERRANDINO: I can’t speak —

WATTERS: Another guy molested  —

FERRANDINO: Excuse me.

Before the exchange abruptly ended, Ferrandino managed to explain that Colorado’s laws “are tougher than Jessica’s laws” and that “we know what’s in Colorado’s best interest,” but Watters was not particularly interested in letting him make his case. If he ever did, it didn’t make it into the clip O’Reilly aired. In the discussion afterward, O’Reilly once again described Ferrandino as “a big gay marriage guy… big marijuana legalizer.” Watch it:

It’s hard to justify anything about this “campaign” of O’Reilly’s as journalism. It seems increasingly apparent that he is simply manipulating the fact that Ferrandino is gay to prey on viewers’ fears that the Speaker is thus somehow more likely to be endangering children.

A new poll from Middle Tennessee State University shows that a solid 62 percent of Tennesseans oppose marriage equality, while only 28 percent in favor. This opposition is significantly higher than is often found across several southern states. Nevertheless, 57 percent also oppose the odious “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which prohibits schools from discussing sexual orientation until after 8th grade — which includes related anti-bullying efforts — and only 31 percent support it. Additionally, 49 percent oppose the bill’s new provision requiring school officials to notify parents of students’ sexuality, while only 33 percent such a provision. Interestingly a position on marriage was not necessarily predictive of a position on the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation.

It seems clear that Tennessee is a particularly toxic place for LGBT people, but even so, even Tennesseans realize that the outright censorship of homosexuality and violation of young people’s privacy are wrong.