Monday’s edition of Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, features a front-page editorial attacking French Catholic magazine Temoignage Chretien (“Christian Witness”) for supporting marriage equality. The editorial claims that same-sex couples exist in “a different reality” because they are unable to conceive children, and goes on to claim that marriage equality is part of some socialist “utopia”:

Saying that marriage between a woman and a man is equal to that between two homosexuals is, in fact, a denial of the truth that affects one of the basic structures of human society, the family. We cannot base a society on these foundations without then paying a very high price as happened in the past when there was an attempt to achieve total economic and social equality. Why repeat the same mistake and chase after an unattainable utopia?

The editorial comes on the heels of Pope Benedict’s World Peace Day 2013 address claiming that marriage equality threatens “serious harm to justice and peace.” Though the Catholic Church has always condemned homosexuality as “sinful,” cries of “socialism” represent a new low for the Holy See’s desperation to oppose LGBT equality.

A former employee is suing the anti-gay Family Research Council for sexual harassment, citing the sexually suggestive comments of her supervisor, particularly in regards to birth control.

Moira Gaul worked as director of women’s and reproductive health for the FRC, an anti-gay hate group that claims to represent “traditional family values.” Her expertise is in abstinence-only education. But even for a woman ideologically aligned with such a socially conservative organization, the anti-woman rhetoric of her supervisor proved too much:

According to court documents first obtained and reported by journalist Evan Gahr, former FRC employee Moira Gaul, 42, filed a complaint in 2009 with the District of Columbia Human Rights Commission in which she accused her supervisor of gender discrimination. She claimed that her boss, the director of the Center for Human Life and Bioethics at the time, referred to the use of birth control pills as “whoring around,” addressed emails to her with the words “hi cutie,” pressured her to attend parties, and referred to her as a “young, attractive woman.”

“His attitude toward me and other women was rude, belittling, and at times, angry,” she wrote in the complaint.

Gaul’s supervisor’s comments are reminiscent of the assertion by Rush Limbaugh that young women’s rights activist Sandra Fluke was on birth control because she was having “so much sex.” FRC has been one of those groups most opposed to the contraception mandate requiring employers to cover contraception under the Affordable Care Act. The organization promotes abstinence-only sex education and is rabidly anti-gay.

The Huffington Post reports that the suit was originally settled back in 2009, but that it has re-emerged because Gaul and her attorney believe the FRC illegally retaliated against her for filing the original suit.

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO)

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) is departing the House at the end of this year, but he’s trying to force some of his odious anti-gay rhetoric into law before he goes. Earlier this year, he proposed an amendment to the defense budget that would create a “license to bully” for military personnel, essentially guaranteeing that anybody who has a problem with LGBT people can’t be disciplined for it, even if they’re engaging in blatant discrimination or harassment.

The House passed the amendment, but the Senate didn’t give the idea any consideration. Now that the bill is in conference, Republican leaders are trying to add it back in.

The conference is being negotiated by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), both of whom opposed the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) and have substantial anti-gay records. When McKeon assumed leadership of the House Armed Services Committee, he pledged to pass clean defense bills that were “not weighed down” by social issues, but for the past two years, he has done just the opposite, supporting anti-gay measures like Akin’s and others. Though none of the measures advanced by the House last year survived conference with the Senate, a House Democratic aide says McCain and McKeon are “pushing pretty hard” to get Akin’s through this year.

OutServe-SLDN’s Allyson Robinson points out that Akin’s measure would foster the kind of unit cohesion problems Republicans incorrectly claimed DADT repeal would cause:

ROBINSON: As a former military commander, I can tell you that allowing any service member to openly discriminate against a comrade in this way will compromise good order and discipline — the very thing supporters of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ falsely claimed was going to happen back when we repealed the law. The fact is, there are already strong protections for all service members, including chaplains, in place, and all this provision would do is create a license to discriminate. The next Secretary of Defense should not be saddled with a law that makes it harder for small unit commanders in the field to lead their troops.

Conference negotiations for the defense budget bill have been underway for several days already, and it’s unclear when they will conclude. Hopefully Congress will find a way to support the military without endorsing mistreatment of the gay, lesbian, and bisexual troops proudly serving their country.

East Aurora School Board

Illinois’s East Aurora School Board does not have the courage of its convictions, having once again given up on protecting transgender students. In October, the district innocuously passed a policy that would protect transgender students’ ability to identity with their authentic gender. The Illinois Family Institute, an anti-LGBT hate group, objected to the accommodations for “gender-confused teens,” and four days after passing it, the school board rescinded the policy.

Despite caving, there was hope that East Aurora would still do right by its trans students. The board formed an ad hoc committee to explore the issues with a goal of forming an alternative policy. However, when the committee met, over a hundred community members came to protest, claiming that protecting trans students was somehow “destructive” and that it would threaten the safety of other students if they were allowed to use the appropriate bathrooms. These arguments were of course spurred again by the Illinois Family Institute, which went so far as to encourage the bullying of trans students. The outcry overwhelmed the committee, which decided to put the transgender policy on hold. Now, they’ve abandoned it entirely.

The committee was not designed to be effective in the first place. Rather than focus on researching the policy, the committee allowed itself to be overwhelmed by public comment. The crowd was so against the effort that security had to be called to protect committee members. Anthony Martinez, executive director of Illinois LGBT advocacy group The Civil Rights Agenda, sat on the committee and described it as a “failure of leadership”:

MARTINEZ: I think it was a failure of leadership by the school board. I think the folks handling this from the beginning were out of their depth. You only have to look and see that the Ad Hoc committee never once discussed the matter of policy. All we did was sit and listen to people voice their displeasure.

Indeed, the school board’s failure was ever questioning itself in the first place or creating space for a hate group’s influence to play out. The end result was stirred up antipathy towards trans people with no real progress for the safety of the students at risk.

Crystal Dixon

Crystal Dixon was the associate vice president for human resources at the University of Toledo, until she was fired in 2008. She had written an editorial in the local paper claiming that LGBT people did not warrant the same civil rights as people of color, and the university felt her perspective violated her capacity to enforce its diversity initiatives. Dixon sued, claiming her rights to free speech and equality protection were violated, but a federal district court dismissed her suit in February of this year. She appealed, and now a three-judge panel from the Six Circuit has similarly ruled that the university had grounds to terminate her:

Dixon’s argument, however, ignores critical policies developed in and promoted by the Human Resources Department at the University.  Dixon’s public statement implying that LGBT individuals should not be compared with and afforded the same protections as African-Americans directly contradicts several such substantive policies instituted by the University. [...]

Although Dixon correctly contends that she never explicitly stated that the University diversity policies should not extend to LGBT students and employees, by voicing her belief that members of the LGBT community do not possess an immutable characteristic in the way that she as an African-American woman does, the implication is clear:  Dixon does not think LGBT students and employees of the University are entitled to civil-rights protections, even  though the University, in part through the Human Resources Department, expressly provides them.  In writing her op-ed column, Dixon not only spoke on policy issues, but also spoke on policy issues related directly to her position at the University.

Crystal Dixon’s loss here provides an important argument against “conscience” and “religious freedom” protections that conservatives often advocate for. Her values and desire to express them publicly directly contradicted with the expectations of her job. Others at the same university could have written the same editorial without endangering their jobs because their positions do not require them to enforce nondiscrimination policies and resolve disputes. Dixon wanted to have it both ways, but if she was not prepared to advocate for LGBT employees and students as she was for other protected groups, she shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place.

Last October, Jessica Aiken and Jenny Buntemeyer lost their son in utero. To add to their grief, the Iowa Department of Public Health (DPH) proceeded to erase Buntemeyer’s name from the death certificate because she was not the child’s “father.” The couple sued in February with support from Lambda Legal, arguing that because Iowa recognizes same-sex marriages, it has to recognize them both as parents, and a judge has now ruled in their favor.

Though DPH tried to argue that death certificates only represent biological connections, Buntemeyer and Aiken argued that a mother’s husband can be listed as the father without a proof of paternity. The judge agreed:

Biology is only minimally related to a Certificate’s statistical purpose and is completely unrelated to a Certificate’s documentary purpose.  Accordingly, biology alone is an insufficient justification to disparate treatment of a mother’s husband and a mother’s wife on a Certificate.  Since biology is the only relevant difference between a mother’s husband and a mother’s wife for purposes of a  Certificate, a mother’s husband and a mother’s wife are similarly-situated as non-gestational parents. [...]

DPH’s policy of refusing to register a mother’s wife on a Certificate is not substantially related to any important governmental objective. DPH has unconstitutionally interfered with a same-sex wife’s ability to receive the benefits of a Certificate. Therefore DPH must modify the Certificate form to comply with equal protection. DPH must also act consistently with its statutory duties. A categorical refusal to register a mother’s wife on a Certificate  violates equal protection.  DPH is required to modify its Certificate so as to identify both petitioners here as parents.

Cases like this demonstrate the burden still placed on same-sex couples despite supposed equality under the law. It seems fair to characterize DPH’s reluctance as simple laziness — if not incapacity — to redesign a simple form. The law requires that both members of a same-sex couple be recognized as a child’s parents, and that should hold true in death as in life. Buntemeyer should not have had to endure being physically erased from her son’s death certificate just because the forms are haven’t caught up with the law.

Social conservative heavyweight James Dobson dedicated his radio show this morning to discussing Friday’s shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and like Mike Huckabee and Bryan Fischer, concluded the shooting was caused by Americans “turning our back on God.” Specifically, he believes there are consequences to women getting abortions and marriage equality:

DOBSON: Our country really does seem in complete disarray. I’m not talking politically, I’m not talking about the result of the November sixth election;  I am saying that something has gone wrong in America and that we have turned our back on God.

I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn’t exist, or he’s irrelevant to me and we have killed fifty-four million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition.  Believe me, that is going to have consequences too.

And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.  I think that’s what’s going on.

Listen to it, via RightWingWatch:

It’s not surprising that these conservatives are championing their own self-fulfilling prophesies. They are clinging to values that are becoming increasingly obsolete, so in order to convince themselves that those points of view still have relevance, they attach meaning to every disaster that occurs, be it a shooting or a hurricane. As Hemant Mehta has pointed out, religious venues are no safer from such tragedies, so the exception Huckabee, Fischer, Dobson, and others anoint for themselves is a mere fabrication of superiority.

Rev. Paul Scalia

Now that the Supreme Court will be weighing in on the issue of same-sex marriage, the Justices’ biases on the basic principles of sexual orientation are under scrutiny — none perhaps moreso than Justice Antonin Scalia. Recently, he defended his comparison between homosexuality and murder, arguing simply that either can be morally condemned. He obtusely couldn’t understand why the gay Princeton student who asked the question wasn’t convinced by his response.

Insights into Scalia’s understanding of homosexuality (or lack thereof) can perhaps be found through his son, Rev. Paul Scalia, a Catholic priest in Arlington, Virginia. The younger Scalia has worked with the Church’s Courage ministry, which promotes “chastity” for gay Catholics using principles from ex-gay therapy. He has also spoken openly on the topic, and though he’s proven quite capable of reiterating the Church’s anti-gay teachings, a 2005 article reveals just how distorted the family’s view on homosexuality may be.

Writing about labels, Rev. Scalia compares identifying as gay to other school stereotypes like “preps,” “jocks,” and “geeks,” and argues that it’s unhelpful to young people to encourage them to embrace such labels. Challenging the notion that homosexuality even exists, he tries to distinguish between having “homosexual inclinations” or identifying as “a gay,” suggesting that some kids are “just confused.” Of course, his intention is to reduce homosexuality to “behaviors,” inferring that people with same-sex orientations are simply heterosexuals inclined to a special kind of sin. His true goal with this wordplay is to find a way to justify parents’ rejecting their gay children:

Granted, the more accurate phrases do not trip easily off the tongue. But what is lost in efficiency is gained in precision. Terms such as “same-sex attractions” and “homosexual inclinations” express what a person experiences without identifying the person with those attractions. They both acknowledge the attractions and preserve the freedom and dignity of the person. With that essential distinction made, parents can better oppose the attractions without rejecting the child. And as the child matures, he will not find his identity confined to his sexuality.

Further, opposition to homosexual attractions and actions makes sense only when it is rooted in the full truth of human sexuality. Gay school groups gain approval and support partly because heterosexual unchastity (contraception, masturbation, premarital sex, adultery, and all the rest) has compromised so many. Our culture’s deliberate separation of sex from procreation has destroyed our ability to articulate a coherent explanation of sexual ethics. Parents and educators have damaged the tools that would allow them to explain why homosexual activity is wrong.

For the Scalias, moral condemnation of homosexuality is just assumed, and the consequences of that judgment are par for the course. The consequences of family rejection for LGBT youth have been thoroughly documented, but for these men, rejecting “homosexual inclination” takes priority. Rev. Scalia relies on genetic uncertainty to conclude that homosexuality is not a “fixed, inborn orientation,” even though science does not doubt that is exactly how sexual orientation presents, regardless of its causes. He seeks to reject people for something that is wholly part of who they are and how they will lead their lives, ignoring that such an approach unquestioningly deprives them of life’s most basic sources of happiness and support: a loving partner and the opportunity to raise a family.

The phenomenon of “coming out” only exists because a culture that shuns homosexuality has demanded gay invisibility. The concept of “gay pride” came about not as flamboyant flaunting, but to counter the expectation of “gay shame.” These unique aspects to gay identities reflect the consequences of condemnation, not an impetus for them. Moral condemnation is not inherent; in the court of law, it must be justified beyond tradition and religious belief. Unfortunately, it seems Justice Scalia is not interested in such intellectual justice.

A small group of protesters attempted to enter St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican on Sunday as Pope Benedict was giving his weekly address. The protesters carried signs with messages like “Marriage for All,” “Homophobia = death,” and “Talk About Love.” Unfortunately, police confiscated their signs and forced them to leave the area.

The demonstration was a response to Pope Benedict’s World Day of Peace 2013 address, which claims that same-sex marriage is irrational and a “serious harm to justice and peace.” Several of the participants carried signs that read, “Gay unions don’t harm peace, weapons do.” Gianfranco Mascia, organizer of the protest, explained its purpose:

MASCIA: We find intolerable the assertion that gay unions are dangerous to the world. Weapons are much more dangerous. No to arms, yes to rights for everyone.

Watch a video of police offers taking the signs and evicting the protesters: