At a high school journalism conference last month, Dan Savage called out the Biblical hypocrisy when scripture is used to justify anti-gay positions while similar verses are ignored. The National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown accused Savage of bullying and challenged him to a debate: “You name the time and the place and let’s see what a big man you are in a debate with someone who can talk back.” Savage accepted this debate, and today on his podcast outlined exactly what time and place Brown could meet him:

SAVAGE: Where? My dining room table. Place? Seattle, Washington. Here’s the deal. We can fill a room with my screaming partisans and your screaming partisans and we’ll both play to our respective peanut galleries and I think both of us have a little bit of grandstander in souls and we will work that and I think that will create more heat than light. And so what I’d like to do is challenge you to come to my house for dinner. Bring the wife. My husband will be there. and I will hire a video crew and we will videotape sort of an after dinner debate.

The trick here is you have to knowledge my humanity by accepting my hospitality and I have to acknowledge yours by extending my hospitality to you. And I’m willing to do that.

Mark Oppenheimer, a New York Times journalist who has profiled both Savage and NOM’s Maggie Gallagher, has agreed to moderate the debate, and Savage’s neighbor will cook the meal. Brown will be allowed to confirm the tape has not been edited before it’s released so that there is “no trickery.”

Brian Brown has yet to respond. Stay tuned.

World-famous Nike-endorsed boxer Manny Pacquiao recently spoke out against marriage equality, suggesting same-sex couples are violating God’s law:

PACQUIAO: God’s words first … obey God’s law first before considering the laws of man. God only expects man and woman to be together and to be legally married, only if they so are in love with each other. It should not be of the same sex so as to adulterate the altar of matrimony, like in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah of Old.

Pacquiao’s comments imply the annihilation of gays and lesbians, putting him in stark contrast with his primary sponsor, Nike. Not only does Nike have a 100 percent score on HRC’s Corporate Equality Index, but it has also been a vocal advocate for marriage equality. The Courage Campaign has now launched a petition calling on Nike to drop Manny Pacquiao for his offensive remarks, urging the company not to let its pro-equality reputation be tarnished by such a negative role model.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is often cited to condemn homosexuality, because in it, God destroyed the two towns after its citizens attempted to gang rape two male visitors who turned out to be angels — though little in the story resembles modern-day understandings of same-sex orientations or relationships. In his Examiner story about Pacquiao’s comments, journalist Granville Ampong also invoked Leviticus 20:13, which calls for men who lie with men to be put to death, confusing other outlets to believe Pacquiao had quoted it himself. Ampong has since clarified that he added the verse himself because of his own desire to emphasize his view of the Bible’s anti-gay perspective.

Pastor Leonard Cohen protesting in Boston, March 11, 2004.

President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality this week is a significant milestone in the inevitable arc toward its universality. Though conservatives have expressed outrage, their comments also reflect how much public opinion has shifted in even the last decade.

Consider the four comparisons below. In the left column is how various social conservative spokespeople responded in November, 2003 when the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. In the right-hand column, see how they (or their successors) responded this week to Obama’s announcement:

The players may not have changed much, but the rules have. There are certainly some conservatives whose anti-gay screeds continue to be explosive, but in general, it seems that changing public opinion has forced them to tame their rhetoric. Less than a decade ago, marriage equality threatened the survival of society, but now it’s just “disappointing” and “a mistake.” It won’t be long before even these timid responses alienate voters who understand that marriage equality is good for communities, good for families, and good for everybody everywhere.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has the back of the National Organization for Marriage. In a letter to IRS Commissioner Doglas H. Shulman this week, he called for an investigation into the leak of NOM’s 2008 Schedule B, which revealed some of the anti-equality group’s top donors, including Mitt Romney. Hatch’s letter parrots the same conspiracy-mongering rhetoric that NOM has been pushing:

The public 2009 and 2010 forms do not include confidential donor information.  Moreover, unlike the 2009 and 2010 public 990s, the 2008 Schedule B published by HRC and Huffington Post is a PDF document that appears to have been deliberately altered in a manner to obscure information that would identify its origins with the IRS.  First, the 2008 Schedule B appears to have been cropped in order to hide a stamp appearing across the top of each page that states, “THIS IS A COPY OF A LIVE RETURN FROM SMIP.  OFFICIAL USE ONLY.”  Second, a white rectangle appears diagonally across the middle of each page of the document at issue — a redaction that hides a number that appears to have been generated by the IRS.

Blogger David Cary Hart has already debunked NOM’s “proof” that the documents had to have originated from the IRS. When the Human Rights Campaign and Huffington Post originally reported on the leak, they attributed the document to a whistleblower within NOM. Because it seems that Romney’s contribution was not properly disclosed, it’s likely that NOM’s cries for an investigation are an attempt to distract attention from their potential lawbreaking.

Hatch faces a primary challenge from former Utah state Sen. Dan Liljenquist and has been swinging to the right to appeal to his base. Though polling overwhelmingly favors Hatch, this may explain why he’s endorsed NOM’s attempt to avoid taking responsibility for its misdeeds and its possible whistleblower.

NOM's Brian Brown

Opponents of marriage equality are not happy that Vice President Joe Biden expressed his support for marriage equality yesterday. They’ve taken to Twitter and other outlets today to mock the White House, accusing Biden of being off-message and reiterating their standard anti-gay talking points. Here’s a selection:

BRYAN FISCHER: President Obama is a homophobic bigot: won’t endorse gay marriage like the enlightened Joe Biden. http://ow.ly/aJYqJ

TONY PERKINS: Ok, Mr. Vice President, how about 3′s Company? Two Guys & a Girl? Sitcoms are the inspiration for this admin’s policies? I’m not laughing!

BRIAN BROWN: It’s always hard to know what Vice President Biden is doing whenever he speaks. He could be launching a trial balloon, or he could just be being Biden with his foot in his mouth again. Whether he realizes it or not, Biden is declaring war on  those 30 states in America that have adopted constitutional amendments defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman… What Joe Biden wants—genderless marriage that kowtows to the demands of gay couples—cannot exist alongside traditional marriage.

Such aggrandizing rhetoric unsurprisingly distorts the entire conversation on the freedom to marry. For simply wanting all couples to have the “same exact rights,” Biden is “declaring war” and promoting polygamy? Hardly.

Today, Reince Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee, spoke with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell about the kick-off of President Obama’s campaign. The conversation shifted to same-sex marriage and Vice President Joe Biden’s endorsement of equality over the weekend. In expressing the Republicans’ opposing position, Priebus split from Mitt Romney, suggesting that “individual states can make those decisions on their own,” whereas Romney has pledged to support a federal marriage amendment banning same-sex marriage nationwide:

PRIEBUS: I think Governor Romney and the Republican Party have been pretty clear. We believe marriage is between one man and one woman. We believe, ultimately, that you can’t federalize that kind of mandate, which is why we believe that individual states can make those decisions on their own, and they’re doing that across the country. So we’ve been clear.

Watch it:

Priebus also attempted to conflate Obama and Romney’s positions on the freedom to marry, which is laughable. By signing onto the National Organization for Marriage’s pledge, Romney has committed to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, advance a federal marriage amendment, and appoint anti-equality judges. In fact, Romney offers a three-tier system of marriage, opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples who are already married, and same-sex couples he wants to prevent from marrying. And even at the state level, like in New Hampshire, Romney supports rolling back marriage equality rights.

In stark contrast, the Obama administration has opposed state-level marriage bans (like in North Carolina and Minnesota) and has refused to defend DOMA, instead filing briefs supporting those who are challenging the discriminatory law. The President’s reluctance to support marriage equality in word does not detract from his clear efforts to advance it in action. The RNC, on the other hand, needs to figure out if it wants to be as anti-gay as its presumptive nominee.

Our guest bloggers are Melissa Dunn, an LGBT Research and Communications intern at the Center for American Progress and Aisha Moodie-Mills, advisor of LGBT Progress’ FIRE Initiative for racial equality.

Last week’s insensitive rant by Kevin Naff of the Washington Blade which trivialized race-based hate crimes, and the recent revelations of the National Organization for Marriage’s race-baiting tactics, have shed much needed light on the fallacy of the gay versus race debate. Both of these instances, ironically from opposite sides of the ideological spectrum—NOM being a conservative anti-gay organization and the Washington Blade an LGBT publication—promote the same disparaging myth. That gay = white, and that race and sexuality are mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed.

A new issue brief by the FIRE Initiative of the Center for American Progress suggests that this misguided pitting of race against sexual orientation and gender identity has long-lasting consequences for LGBT communities of color who live at the intersections of these identities, and are among the most vulnerable in our society. The brief, entitled “The State Of LGBT Communities of Color in 2012” argues that LGBT people of color have worse economic, educational, and health outcomes than both their heterosexual counterparts and white LGBT people.

For example, the average Latina/ Hispanic lesbian couple earns $3,000 less than Latino/Hispanic oppose-sex couples and black same-sex male couples earn more than $20,000 less than white same-sex male couples. And although white lesbians have a poverty rate of just 4.3 percent, black lesbians have a rate of 21.1 percent, Hispanics 19.1 percent, Native Americans 13.7 percent, Asian Pacific Islander 11.8 percent.

LGBT communities of color also face tremendous health care concerns and challenges accessing culturally competent health care that leads to poor health outcomes. Black lesbians for example are the most likely demographic to be obese, transgender women of color face elevated stress levels, and Latino gay men have dangerous rates of eating disorders. Further, LGBT youth of color have lower levels of educational attainment than white gay students or straight students of color. They are more likely to be bullied in school than their white peers and are more likely to think their teachers will not adequately address their concerns. They are also more likely to end up homeless and living on the streets.

These disparities stem from the compound effect of societal stigma and bias due to race and sexual orientation and gender identity that LGBT communities of color endure. These communities arguably suffer most at the hands of inequality, and have an equal stake in eradicating anti-gay policies. But they are rendered virtually invisible by the gay versus race rhetoric spread by NOM, and Naff, and a few others. Such divisiveness distracts from the real problems that many LGBT people of color of face and the real fight for equality that must be won.

Politico examines Mitt Romney’s campaign donors and discovers that some strongly disagree with the candidate’s opposition to same sex marriage:

Paul Singer, Dan Loeb and Cliff Asness — three hedge fund managers and major players in donor circles — each cut six-figure checks toward the landmark effort to legalize gay marriage in New York. Singer, the intensely-private head of Elliott Associates, has been especially active in donating to groups aimed at legalizing gay marriage in different states over the last five years, concurrent with his rise as one of the Republican party’s mot prominent bundlers and donors to party committees. According to a recent New York Times story, Singer has donated $8 million to pro-gay marriage efforts since 2007.

He’s also helped raise more than $1 million for Romney’s campaign, as well as donated another $1 million to the super PAC supporting the all-but-assured Republican nominee.
The New York moneymen and some other Republican movers-and-shakers — such as former George W. Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman, who came out two years ago and is now raising money from a broad swath of donors to push for gay marriage but who hasn’t made a presidential campaign endorsement — are at odds with Romney, who signed a pledge proffered by the conservative National Organization for Marriage promising to, among other things, support “sending a federal marriage amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the states for ratification.”

NOM of course endorsed Romney yesterday and told Politico that Romney enthusiastically signed the pledge “very early” to fight marriage equality in its early stages. “He’s been very clear in the debates of his position on tradition marriage. It’s a strong pledge, a strong statement and it’s time for people who believe that marriage is a union between one man and one woman to unite. Just because some donors may have a different view, doesn’t mean that’s going to have any effect at all.”

That seems to be the case for now, even as some observers predict that Romney may moderate his position as he transitions into the general election. After all, this is the same candidate who in 1994 met with the Log Cabin Republicans and pledged, “I’m with you on this stuff… I’ll be better than Ted Kennedy” and in 2002 told a meeting of gay equality proponents that he would “support everything that it calls for in terms of recognizing unions between people. But just don’t use the M-word.” He should have no trouble walking back to his old position.