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It Gets Better Project

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The founder of a group that opposes LGBT rights says that educators working to stop discrimination against lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual students in Massachusetts schools are like "Nazi concentration camp guards."

MassResistance President Brian Camenker on Tuesday told VCY America radio host Jim Schneider that new Massachusetts Department of Education guidelines protecting transgender students were actually doing "harm to kids by encouraging this."

"When you talk to some of these ex-trangenders, the horrible things that it does to them is just astounding," he insisted. "It's insanity. A boy cannot change his sex. Your DNA does not change. And you can call yourself something different, you can dress differently, you can take hormones, you are always a boy."

"And these school administrators, you know, you think of them as like the Nazi concentration camp guards must have been like, where they're doing this horrible evil, and, you know, they're just taking orders or something... they believe in it," Camenker added. "And people need to rise up because it's only going to get worse."

As early as 2005, the MassResistance founder argued that the LGBT movement had similarities to the Nazi movement.

"The Big Lie technique (like other remnants of Nazism and the Nazi movement) has been a focus of the homosexual movement since it coalesced in the late 1980s and began to use the media on a large scale," Camenker wrote. "The Big Lie was first described by Adolph Hitler in his writings, and later refined and put to use on a large scale by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda."

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)



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Authorities in Oklahoma on Monday were unable to confirm if bullying was involved after a 15-year-old male killed himself with a gun in a Cowetta school bathroom.

Speaking to reporters at press conference, Superintendent Jeff Holmes explained that a "ninth grade student at Cowetta Intermediate High School died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound" soon after school began on Monday morning.

Coweta Police Lieutenant Donnie Krumsiek praised the school faculty for their response, saying that "unfortunately a life was lost but it could have been a lot worse."

"You've seen the same coverage I have, school shootings where multiple lives are lost," Krumsiek told reporters. "We're very fortunate that didn't occur today."

Several reporters noted that witnesses had said bullying may have been a factor in the student's death, but Krumsiek said he had no evidence to support that claim and Holmes refused to release any personal information regarding the victim.

"We do have a bullying policy," Holmes remarked. "There's zero tolerance for bullying in each of our schools -- starting from elementary school on up -- have extensive character education programs and a component of each of those would be suicide prevention."

"I'm not going to comment on the student," he insisted, noting that the principals and counselors described the ninth grader as "a very fine young man."

Holmes said he was not yet sure if criminal charges were possible if bullying was suspected in the case.

"We want parents to know that we care about their kids, we care about every single one of their kids," the superintendent added as he choked up. "That's all I have at this point."



Brit Hume: Romney Gay Bullying Story Is 'Nothing'

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Fox News' senior political analyst on Sunday dismissed a Washington Post story which revealed that presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had assaulted a gay classmate in 1965.

"Look, this was not a prank," Brit Hume admitted. "This was hazing and it was mean. There was no doubt about it and I don't have any doubt about the basic truth of the story. The problem with the story dating from high school was that it was the utter failure of the Post to connect it to anything else in Romney's life or career."

"If it were a story that this is where you get the first example of the mean streak that Romney has shown or the tendency to take advantage of people who are in a weaker position -- there was nothing," he added. "I think it was much ado about not very much."

In an report published by the Post last week, Matthew Friedemann, who described himself as a “close” friend when Romney attended the prestigious Cranbrook School in 1965, said that the future Massachusetts governor picked on John Lauber, "a soft-spoken" gay student, for his long bleached-blonde hair.

“Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair,” the Post's Jason Horowitz wrote. “Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.”

Hume blasted editors at the paper for thinking the story was a "big deal."

"You have to wonder what kind of news judgement these people have if you really think that?" the Fox News contributor opined. "The story, if it were played on an inside page at much less length, might have been appropriate -- the way it was handled, ridiculous."

"This was 5,000 words of nothing," Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot agreed. "It was about his high school years. 'Oh, he went to an elite prep school. Oh, he was a happy-go-lucky guy. He was a leader of the prankster group.' So what?"



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Declaring that she was not a "witch" did not work for failed Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, but a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday advised presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney that his new slogan should be "I am not a bully."

Former Cheney counselor Mary Matalin told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that an incident where Romney was accused of assaulting a gay man in high school "didn't happen" -- even though the candidate does not dispute events depicted in a Washington Post report last week.

Matalin recommend that Romney defend himself with the following campaign ad: "I'm Mitt Romney. I'm running for president of these United States. I am not a bully. That's a politically motivated tactic to distract you and dismiss me. I'm not going to let that happen. I'm going to cross this country talking about my economic plan to get you working again and get the government working for you. I'm Mitt Romney and I approve this message."

The message is similar to an ad that tea party favorite Republican Christine O'Donnell created during her 2010 bid to become a senator from Deleware.

After HBO comedian Bill Maher released a 1990s video clip of O'Donnell admitting she "dabbled into witchcraft," her campaign responded with a high-mocked commercial where she declared, "I am not a witch."

On Sunday, former Christian Coalition Chairman Ralph Reed insisted that The Washington Post's story on Romney's prep school years proved how "desperate they are to tear this guy down."

"What ever you think of him politically, turning around Bain consulting, building Bain Capital -- one of the most respected private equity organizations in the nation -- turning around the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, outstanding job as governor of Massachusetts -- this is the kind of man that you want your daughter to marry, this is the kind of guy that you would want to be a business partner with."

"Here's my concern," Reed continued. "If this is what we're going to do to candidates, George, who's going to want to serve? Who's going to want to put their name on the ballot if they know people are going to be dumpster diving in your high school or prep school."

"I don't think that there's anything new with looking at candidates," Politico's Maggie Haberman pointed out. "I think there has been a complaint among Republicans privately -- Democrats talk about it more openly -- that Mitt Romney has not done much in terms of his own biography and defining himself. He's done it in bits and pieces. He does have a story to tell and if you're not telling it, someone else fills it in."

Current TV host Elliot Spitzer argued that the story of Romney bullying a gay classmate was not relevant because "no one thinks he's mean spirited or a bully."

"I don't think he's a nasty guy," Spitzer opined. "I like him. I don't mind saying that. I think he's a good, decent person with whom I disagree. He's not a bully, therefore this story is out of context."



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Fox News host Steve Doocy on Monday suggested that sex columnist Dan Savage was "bullying" Christian journalism students with a speech where he said that Bible passages about homosexuality were "bullshit."

Savage, who created the anti-bullying "It Gets Better" project, became a target for conservative websites like Fox News and World Net Daily after he spoke to the National High School Journalism Convention in Seattle earlier this month.

"We'll just talk about the Bible for a second," Savage told the students. "People often point out that they can't help it -- they can't help with the anti-gay bullying, because it says right there in Leviticus, it says right there in Timothy, it says right there in Romans, that being gay is wrong."

"We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people. The same way, the same way we have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation. We ignore bullshit in the Bible about all sorts of things."

A YouTube video of the event shows several students leaving the room at that point in the speech.

Savage concluded his remarks by inviting the students to return: "[Y]ou can tell the Bible guys in the hall that they can come back now, because I'm done beating up the Bible. It's funny, as someone who's on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible, how pansy-assed some people react when you push back."

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Sutter Union High School journalism adviser Rick Tuttle said he gave his students permission to walk out.

"So, he was supposed to have an anti-bullying message," Doocy noted. "But it seemed like he was bullying some of the Christians, didn't it?"

"Oh, sure," Tuttle agreed. "They were basically a captive audience and he had the bully pulpit, if you would say so -- so to speak. ... This is what we teach kids to do when they are being bullied, to walk away. And that's what they did."

Towleroad's Brandon K. Thorp wrote it was "too bad" that the Christian journalism students walked out just because they didn't agree with the message.

"They're supposed to be journalists, and we in the journalism biz must often dirty our ears with others' distasteful utterances," Thorp explained. "While Savage might have profitably avoided the use of profanities (which, when used to describe allegedly sacred documents, tend to make believers less than receptive to whatever might come next), what he said was materially true, and good journalism students of any creed ought to know it."

Savage has said that he stands by his remarks, but later apologized via his blog for using "pansy-assed" to describe the walk-out as "insulting, it was name-calling, and it was wrong. And I apologize for saying it".

(h/t: Mediaite)



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Anti-LGBT rights televangelist Pat Robertson on Tuesday told Christian students that bullying their gay and lesbian classmates was wrong even if they "think that these practices are an abomination."

A CBN viewer named Douglas posed this question to the TV preacher: "What would you say to a school that has gay and LGBT students being bullied by the Christian kids?"

"Well I think that’s terrible and Christians shouldn’t do that," Robertson explained. "I mean, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, blah, blah, blah. You know, Christians shouldn’t do that. They ought to act in love."

"You might disagree, you may think that these practices are an abomination, you can think all sorts of things, but you need to love. And you need to reach out to these kids in love," he added.

"Bullying is wrong. Period," co-host Terry Meeuwsen agreed.

"Amen," Robertson said. "Schools shouldn't permit that either."

(h/t: Think Progress)



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LGBT students at Brigham Young University, a school with close ties to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are speaking out in a new video about their religion, which forbids gay sex.

The campus group Understanding Same-Gender Attraction (USGA) recently created the video to speak out about the difficulty of being gay or lesbian at a Mormon school.

Several of the 22 students in the video confess that that they had thought about taking their own life. In fact, 74 percent of LGBT students at Brigham Young have contemplated suicide, and a remarkable 24 percent have actually tried to kill themselves.

A 2007 clarification to the BYU honor code first allowed students to admit that they were gay or lesbian. And in 2010, LGBT advocacy was first allowed on campus.

But straight students at the school continue to have more rights than LGBT students, who can't kiss or express affection in public.

(H/T: Gawker)



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A pastor who claims to be a "former homosexual" says that sex columnist Dan Savage should be arrested for his role in launching an anti-bullying campaign to help young LGBT people.

In a recent interview with Americans For Truth About Homosexuality Radio Hour host Peter LaBarbera, pastor DL Foster suggested that Savage's "It Gets Better" campaign had actually made LGBT suicides worse.

"It’s really indicative of the character of these individuals, this individual Dan Savage, is also the creator of the so-called anti-bullying It Gets Better charade," Foster said. "You know, homosexual kids are still killing themselves after believing his message."

"I think he—personally—I think he should be arrested for propagating this lie to—for these kids to have this false promise without any sort of information on what is ‘it’ anyway? It’s really so vile to me that it disturbs me to even talk about it," the pastor added.

In his book, "Touching a Dead Man," Foster claims that God cured him of homosexuality in 1990 after 11 years of living as a gay man. He went on to found Gay Christian Movement Watch and Witness for the World Ministries to lead "the way out of homosexuality to holiness."

(H/T: Right Wing Watch)



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Lady Gaga dedicated a performance of her hit single Hair to Jamey Rodemeyer, a gay 14-year-old Buffalo-area high school freshmen who killed himself after enduring years of bullying over his sexuality.

"We lost a Little Monster this week," Gaga told a crowd at the iHeartRadio Festival Saturday. "I wanted to dedicate this song to him tonight because he was really young."

"I wrote this record about how your identity is really all you've got when you're in school... So tonight, Jamey, I know you're up there looking at us, and you're not a victim. You're a lesson to all of us. I know it's a bit of a downer, but sometimes the right thing is more important than the music."

"I just wanna be myself / And I want you to love me for who I am," Gaga sings. "I've had enough / This is my prayer / That I'll die living just as free as my hair."

The singer announced last week that she wanted to meet with President Barack Obama and urge him to press for laws making bullying a federal hate crime.

Rodemeyer, who had been a big Lady Gaga fan, even thanked her in his final blog post. In a YouTube video posted earlier this year, the teen had said how much he loved the singer.

"Lady Gaga, she makes me so happy, and she lets me know that I was born this way," he explained.

Police are considering harassment, cyber-harassment or hate crimes charges for the students who bullied Rodemeyer.



HBO's Bill Maher had a message of hope Friday for closeted lovers of big government: "It gets better."

"Yes, there are millions of people in the world just like you in nice places like Switzerland and Sweden," he said. "They enjoy high standards of living and freedom and they're socialists. Studies show they're happier than we are and that's not surprising because the only difference between American socialism and European socialism is European socialism works."

"Where as our tax dollars go towards military bases in Germany, subsidies to oil companies, building bridges to nowhere, wars and putting half of Cheech and Chong in prison, they get universal health care," Maher explained.