Kaitlyn Hunt (Credit: Free Kate Facebook Page)

A Florida family says their 18-year-old daughter was charged with a felony and expelled from high school as a result of a consensual, same-sex relationship with another student.

Kaitlyn Hunt started dating a female classmate at the beginning of the school year when she was 17 and the girl she was dating was about three years younger. According to an account posted to Facebook by Kaitlyn’s mother, in February, shortly after Kaitlyn turned 18, she was arrested on felony charges at the behest of her girlfriend’s parents. The specific crime was “sexual battery on a person 12-16 years old.”

Kaitlyn’s mother believes the charges were motivated by anti-gay animus:

They were out to destroy my daughter, they feel like my daughter “made” their daughter gay. They are bigoted, religious zeolites [sic] that see being gay as a sin and wrong, and they blame my daughter.

But Kaitlyn’s problems did not end there. Her girlfriends’s parents appealed to the school board and had her expelled from Sebastian River High School. Kaitlyn’s mom reports that the State Attorney, Brian Workman, has offered Kaitlyn a plea deal “of two years house arrest and one year probation.” Kaitlyn has until next Friday to accept the plea deal or face a trial.

The family has started a petition calling on the state attorney to drop the charges against Kaitlyn.

An activist suing to end Belize’s beyond-outdated ban on same-sex sexual activity has been subjected to an escalating pattern of death threats as his case comes closer to resolution, according to report in The Guardian.

Caleb Orozco is an openly gay man in a country that criminalizes his existence. Belizean law says that “every person who has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any person or animal shall be liable to imprisonment for 10 years;” the statute defines sex between between consenting same-sex adults as being one such unnatural act. Orozco and his organization (the United Belize Advocacy Movement) succeeding in pushing a legal case against the ban on same-sex activity to the nation’s highest court on Wednesday.

As the Central American nation’s most visible campaigner for LGBT equality, Orozco has received death threats before. Last year, Orozco “suffered a violent physical assault which required extensive dental surgery.” But as the legal argument continues, the threats have gotten more vicious:

Death threats against Caleb Orozco, the gay rights campaigner attempting to overturn laws that criminalise homosexuality in Belize, have escalated during the four-day courtroom hearing, his lawyer has claimed.

The high-profile challenge to the Caribbean state’s colonial-era “anti-buggery” legislation has stirred up resentment of the gay community, according to Lisa Shoman.

“There has been a visible increase of threats and violence against Mr Orozco and against all homosexuals in Belize,” she told the local News 5 TV channel in the capital Belize City.

“There are threats for killing, burning, shooting; you name it. It has to stop. We are all Belizeans. We can agree to disagree without getting violent about it.”

Even in a part of the world that’s not known for being ahead of the curve on LGBT rights, Belize’s law marks it as an unusually bad place to be gay. While neighboring Mexico has constitutionally mandated marriage equality, the LGBT communities in Belize’s other neighbors — Honduras and Guatemala — have been frequent targets of anti-gay discrimination and violence. But even those two countries don’t ban same-sex sexual activity.

The most prominent defender of Belize’s law is Scott Stirm, an American pastor who runs the anti-gay group Belize Action. According to the Guardian, he defends the ban as “a good law that protects human dignity.”

Chris Broussard (Credit: USA Today)

An ESPN sportscaster went on the air on Monday to publicly gay-bash Jason Collins, the NBA player who came out Monday morning in an emotional op-ed, the first active male player of a major American sport to come out.

Speaking on ESPN’s Outside The Lines, Chris Broussard said that he would “not characterize [Collins] as a Christian.” He made the comments in front of his openly gay colleague, LZ Granderson:

BROUSSARD: Personally, I don’t believe that you can live an openly homosexual lifestyle or an openly, like premarital sex between heterosexuals. If you’re openly living that type of lifestyle, then the Bible says you know them by their fruits. It says that, you know, that’s a sin. If you’re openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be, not just homosexuality, whatever it maybe, I believe that’s walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ. So I would not characterize that person as a Christian because I don’t think the bible would characterize them as a Christian.

Watch it:

Granderson reacted strongly to Broussard’s comments, saying, “I really don’t need Chris or anyone else telling me if I’m a Christian because Jesus tells me I am.”

Broussard has previously written that he believes the NBA is “ready” for the first out player. But in that same essay, he also said it would make him “a little uncomfortable” to shower with a gay teammate. He also cast his doubt that being gay is biological, writing, “there are many scientists on both sides of the genetic debate, and I believe a truly objective person would admit the biological evidence for homosexuality is far from definitive.”

Frigide Barjot promised 'blood' in response to marriage equality passing.

As the French National Assembly prepares to vote on final approval of marriage equality, anti-gay violence has severely escalated. Multiple guerrilla rallies by opponents of the law have taken place over the past few days, resulting in vandalized cars, assaulted journalists, and even death threats to lawmakers. A 24-year-old gay man was brutally beaten Saturday night after leaving a club with his boyfriend in the latest example of how the opposition is directly targeting gay people.Police have already made over 100 arrests over the past week.

Now, the president of the National Assembly has received a death threat:

Claude Bartolone, the Socialist president of France’s Assemblée Nationale (lower house of parliament) on Monday received a threatening letter containing gunpowder and demanding he defer a parliamentary vote, expected to definitively legalize gay marriage on Tuesday.

The one-page letter, signed by “an intermediary of law enforcement,” warns Bartolone that “our methods are more radical and more swift than protests”, according to French magazine L’Express.

The document concludes with the statement “You wanted war, and you’ve got it.” [...]

“Allowing marriage for all would be the same as destroying all marriage,” the letter says, before making the chilling threat: “If you were to carry on regardless, your political family will have to suffer physically.“

The National Organization for Marriage, which has direct ties to the French opposition through a newly (and somewhat secretly) launched International Organization for Marriage, has tried to downplay the level of violence. In an email last week, NOM’s Brian Brown claimed that “peaceful demonstrations” were taking place and blamed the violence on supporters of marriage equality — without much evidence to support it. Indeed, French President François Hollande has spoken out to condemn the homophobic violence specifically, which NOM has yet to acknowledge.

Given both chambers of Parliament have already approved the legislation and this week’s final vote is merely a technicality to resolve some amendments, marriage equality is coming to France. But thanks to groups like NOM stirring up conservatives, equality could come accompanied by uncontrolled anti-gay violence.

Watch a EuroNews clip highlighting the past week’s anti-equality protests:

On Wednesday night’s Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert addressed the new song from Brad Paisley and LL Cool J, “Accidental Racist,” which happens to be, apparently, accidentally racist. Colbert described the song as “uniting all of us… to join our voices as one and declare, ‘This song sucks!’” He was so inspired by it that he wrote his own “awful” song to bridge the gay marriage divide. Joined by openly bisexual actor Alan Cumming, Colbert borrows Paisley’s tactic of playing dumb to avoid responsibility for homophobia. Cumming retorted, “If you don’t judge my parades, I’ll forget what you said about monkeys and AIDS,” a reference to the beliefs of Tennessee Sen. Stacey Campfield (R), sponsor of the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Watch it:

This post has been updated to correct that Alan Cumming identifies as bisexual.

Police clash with violent anti-equality protesters Wednesday night. (Photo credit: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP)

The French Parliament prepares for its final vote on marriage equality next week, and opponents of marriage equality have promised violence and homophobic attacks have begun to increase. French President François Hollande has denounced these reactions:

HOLLANDE: Homophobic acts, violent acts have been committed. The right to protest is recognized by our constitution and accepted by the French. But no protest must degenerate.

On Wednesday, several thousand protesters took to the streets of Paris, leading to cars and public property being damaged, as well as police officers and journalists being attacked. Wednesday night, four people carried out an attack at a gay bar, punching the bar manager, throwing chairs through windows, and causing other material damage. On Monday, 70 anti-gay protesters were arrested for attempting to set up a campsite outside the National Assembly.

Marriage equality has already passed in both chambers of Parliament — next week’s vote in the National Assembly is merely a final technicality to address minor amendments made in the Senate. Opponents are planning to nevertheless proceed with their march on May 26th, demanding the law be withdrawn.

Wilfred de Bruijn, France's 'Face of Homophobia'

The vote to finalize France’s marriage equality bill has been expedited to next week, but opponents are going to fight it — literally. Frigide Barjot, leader of the anti-same-sex marriage group Manif pour tous, promised violence in response to its expected passage:

BARJOT: This is a disgrace. The French people don’t want this law, and what do they do? They speed up its passage. [President François] Hollande wants blood, and he will get it. We live in a dictatorship. The President of the Republic has guillotined us.

Members of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), France’s current minority conservative party, similarly suggested such a reaction. UMP deputies Christian Jacob and Hervé Mariton did not mince their words:

JACOB: The President of the Republic is risking a violent confrontation with the French people.

MARITON: [Passing the same-sex marriage bill is] an incitement to civil war.

Violence has already been an issue in France due to the same-sex marriage bill. When opponents held their most recent march, a group attempted to challenge police barricades and violate the march’s route and were met with tear gas. In general, gay rights groups have expressed concern about increasing levels of violence against the LGBT community, including one man, Wilfred de Bruijn, whose severe injuries have led to him being nicknamed “the face of homophobia.”

Interestingly, new details suggest a significant relationship between France’s anti-equality movement and the National Organization for Marriage, as was previously suspected. NOM has yet to condemn these promises of violence.

Dr. Ben Carson, the latest apple of the Tea Party’s eye, made yet another appearance on the friendly airwaves of Fox News on Tuesday to gripe about the Obama administration, denounce the liberal media, and equate gay couples with pedophiles and proponents of bestiality.

Carson, who stumbled onto the national stage and into the Republican Party’s heart almost two months ago after he gave a speech in front of President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast in which he called for a regressive tax system that punishes the poorest Americans, was a guest on Sean Hannity’s show yesterday, and ended the interview on the most hateful of notes:

CARSON: My thoughts are that marriage is between a man and a woman, it’s a well-established uh, fundamental pillar of society. No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA [the North American Man/Boy Love Association], be they people who believe in beastiality, it doesn’t matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition. So it’s not something that’s against gays, it’s against anybody who wants to come along and change the fundamental definitions of pillars of society. It has signifcant ramifications.

The segment ended shorty afterward, leaving Hannity with no time to clarify whether Carson, himself a black man, would have also been opposed to the 1967 Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia, a decision that redefined the same “fundamental pillar of society” as something that could not be inhibited by race.

Carson’s comments also puts him at odds with every major medical association in the country. Both the American Medical Association’s code of conduct and the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic Statistical Manual contain strong and unambiguous language on homosexuality as neither a medical nor psychological condition but rather a perfectly healthy and biologically-rooted lifestyle, and remain critical of anyone who suggests otherwise.

He is also far from the first Republican to equate homosexuality to things like pedophilia. Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, state lawmakers and conservatives everywhere have all sought to paint the LGBT community and pedophiles with the same brush, even as their own party is pulled in the direction of equality.

The First Chamber of the Mexican Supreme Court of Justice ruled Wednesday that homophobic epithets are not protected under the nation’s “freedom of expression” laws. The case dealt with two rival journalists who publicly criticized each other’s work using such words as “maricones” (“faggots”) and “puñal” (“faggot rapist/predator”). According to a press release from the Court (translated by Andrés Duque), such language is discriminatory even if it is used jokingly:

The First Chamber determined that homophobic expressions or — in other words the frequent allegations that homosexuality is not a valid option but an inferior condition — constitute discriminatory statements even if they are expressed jokingly, since they can be used to encourage, promote and justify intolerance against gays.

For this reason, the Chamber determined that the terms used in this specific case — made up of the words “maricones” and “puñal” — were offensive. These are expressions which are certainly deeply rooted in the language of Mexican society but the truth is that the practices of a majority of participants of a society cannot trump violations of basic rights.

In addition, the First Chamber determined that these expressions were irrelevant since their usage was not needed in resolving the dispute taking place as related to the mutual criticism between two journalists from Puebla. Therefore it was determined that the expressions “maricones” and “puñal”, just as they were used in this specific case, were not protected by the Constitution.

The Supreme Court of Canada similarly ruled last month that anti-gay rhetoric is a violation of the country’s hate speech laws.

These landmark rulings by the America’s North American neighbors come as the United States Supreme Court prepares to hear two cases related to same-sex marriage.