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A special education teacher from Sullivan, Indiana is joining a group of students, parents and other Christians in the community who are calling for a prom that bans LGBT people because she says they have no "purpose in life."

WTWO-TV reported that the group met at Sullivan First Christian Church on Sunday to discuss creating a prom that only allowed straight students as an alternative to the inclusive prom at Sullivan High School.

"We don't agree with [homosexuality]," special education teacher Diana Medley told the station. "It's offensive to us."

Sullivan High School student Kynon Johnson explained that the group want to "get more people to follow what they believe" by providing a "good prom."

"We believe what the Bible says, it says that it's wrong," student Bonnie McCammon insisted. "And we love the homosexuals, but we do not condone what they're doing."

But not everyone agrees. Jim Davis, a Christian who lives in Sullivan, said that Jesus did not condemn anyone, including LGBT people.

"He come here to save the world, not to condemn it," Davis observed. "Love them as a person, you don't have to love what they do because they may not, I mean, the gays may not like the bad things you make mistakes at."

Medley, however, disagreed because she believes homosexuality is a choice for LGBT people.

"I don't believe they were born that way," she opined. "I think life circumstances made them choose that. I think God made everybody equal... I have kids come to me because of their sexual preference. And they know I don't agree with it, but care about you. And the same thing for special needs. God puts those people in our life for special reasons."

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via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Love made history in Seattle on Thursday.

In the predawn darkness 300 couples got licenses that will allow them to marry their same-sex partner.

The event began at 12:01 a.m. as men and women stood in line to take advantage of the marriage law that the Legislature passed early this year and voters approved in November.

They formed an eager, festive crowd, with couples young and old braving a night-time chill and wee-hours wait for the chance to make history at the normally dull King County Administration building. Supporters cheered for them with roses, coffee, hand-warmers and serenades of "Going to the Chapel."

The licensing marathon was expected to last more than 18 hours. By 6 a.m., more than 300 licenses had been issued.
....
Nationally known sex-advice columnist Dan Savage and his partner were also among the first couples to pick up a marriage license.

"It's really a remarkable journey we've been on and such a remarkable sea change," he said. "And not just for gay people, but straight people have changed, too. It's gotten better for us because straight people have gotten better about us."

King County issued 1,889 marriage licenses to heterosexual couples during July. It expects to equal that number in the first three days of licensing.

"The marriages will be the real fun," said George Bakan, editor-in-chief of Seattle Gay News. On the other side of James Street, City Hall will play host to 142 marriage ceremonies on Sunday, the first day that same-sex couples can get hitched.

Dan Savage is planning something special on Sunday at City Hall.

On Sunday, Dan Savage, gay columnist and founder of the It Gets Better Project, plans to host a mass same-sex wedding inside Seattle City Hall, reports Towleroad. Savage teamed up with set designer Jen Zeyl to create beautiful, intimate settings more than 140 couples wanting to get married at City Hall, and will be orchestrating the mass weddings free of charge.

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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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Dan Savage, creator of the It Gets Better Project, gave a talk about anti-gay bullying at a conference for high school journalists a couple of weeks ago, which after just being upped to YouTube has caused an uproar through the usual channels as an attack on the Bible, this time by "rightist rag" Citizen Link, a James Dobson outlet.

Towleroad details the manufactured outrage, where some High School journalism students were so offended by Savage they walked out.

A great brouhaha is stirring in the nation's conservative publications over comments Dan Savage made two weeks ago while addressing the JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention. The convention was entitled "Journalism On The Edge," which you'd think would prep participants for a certain amount of edginess in the presentations. Alas, the audience was not prepared for edginess. Savage's subject was to be bullying, and he got right to the point:

The Bible. We’ll just talk about the Bible for a second. 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.

Savage's full remarks below the fold, about 3 minutes of his nearly 90 minute presentation.

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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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Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum's wife, Karen, on Monday accused the gay community of vilifying her husband.

At an event with mothers in South Carolina, a woman, who said her son was gay, told the candidate that she felt guilty for supporting him due to his opposition to gay rights.

"I still have that sense of guilt because his friends react to what they hear," the woman explained. "Help me. How do I deal with that?"

Karen Santorum spoke up in defense of her husband.

"As Rick's wife, I have known him and loved him for 23 years," she said. "I think it's very sad what the gay activists have done out there. They vilify him. It is so wrong. He loves them. What he has simply said is marriage shouldn't happen."

"As far as hating, it's very unfortunate that has happened," Karen Santorum added. "A lot of it is backyard bullying, where people will come up to us and they'll say something. And we'll ask them to give us an example, and they can't even provide one example as to why they took the position they took."

After Santorum compared homosexuality to "man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be" in an interview with The Associated Press in 2003, gay activist Dan Savage created a website redefining the former Pennsylvania senator's last name as "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex."

For years, Google has returned Savage's website as the top search result for "Santorum."

"The Internet allows for this type of vulgarity to circulate," the candidate complained to Roll Call last year. "It’s unfortunate that we have someone who obviously has some issues. But he has an opportunity to speak."

Speaking to CafeMom's "Moms Matter 2012" on Monday, Santorum said he was "doing what I'm called to do, which is to love everyone and accept everybody."

"This is a public policy difference," he said. "And I think the problem is that some see that public policy difference as a personal assault, that because I believe that marriage, which has existed before governments existed -- marriage existed from the very beginning of time -- it's the way we were meant to be."

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Keith Olbermann takes us through a list of some of Rick Santorum's greatest hits of the last year after his win this week in the Iowa caucuses. Keith was joined by blogger and author Dan Savage who reminded everyone that Rick Santorum gay bashing isn't Santorum's only hobby. As Savage noted, "the straight bashing is part and parcel for Santorum too."

If Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum isn't careful, he could have a new Google problem on his hands.

In a Funny or Die video released Wednesday, sex columnist Dan Savage threatened to unleash a new definition for the word "rick" if Santorum decided to attack gays during his presidential campaign.

In 2003, Savage launched a successful campaign to get his definition for "santorum" at the top of Google search results after the then-Pennsylvania senator compared homosexual sex acts to polygamy and sodomy.

"I've already come up with a new definition for 'rick' just in case you don't behave yourself," Savage warned. "If you can get all the way through this campaign without man-on-dogging us, I will tear this definition up."

"So, the ball is in your court, Richard John Santorum. Leave us gays alone or I change the definition of 'rick.' It's not like you can start going by Dick Santorum, is it?"

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Keith talks to columnist Dan Savage about the hateful anti-gay rhetoric coming from the opponents of the repeal of DADT and Savage makes a great point about what we're seeing now.

Olbermann: Is there something you think particularly about gay's serving in the military that these people don't like or is it as you're suggesting, this is like a time line which wherever they encounter "the gay"... these bizarre straight people, presumably straight people, who knows, have to over react just because this is the latest battlefield, no pun intended?

Savage: Well first that's a really great point. Who knows who's lifting these people's luggage, these folks who are sort of paranoid about people being fellated in their sleep. I'd like to see what's going on in their heads. I think they're projecting, some of them. Whenever they're on the verge of losing they trot out these desperate nightmare scenarios and they really are on the verge of losing the last two final issues when it comes to gay rights such as service in the military and marriage.

Savage was spot on with that remark. Every one of these anti-gay bigots strikes me as just another self-loathing closeted gay hypocrite who can't resolve their own issues with trying to fight off "teh gay" since they've been told their own natural impulses are a sin. And then we have John McCain who is simply pandering to the far right as he worries about getting reelected since he's got wingnut J.D. Hayworth running against him.

On to the other bigots that Keith talks about. We've got Peter Sprigg.

Family Research Council: End Of DADT Means More Gay Rape In The Military:

Here's how the Family Research Council envisions things going if Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed: first, more straight soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines will be fellated in their sleep against their will. Then, commanders afraid of being labeled homophobes will refuse to do anything about it. Eventually, the straight service members will quit out of fear. Read on...

And next we have Cliff Kincaid.

Far Right Christian Group Warns That ‘Gay Blood’ Will Destroy Our Military If DADT Is Repealed:

Today, right-wing hate-monger Cliff Kincaid’s group America’s Survival launched a repulsive fear campaign against repeal, warning that “disease-tainted gay blood threatens our troops.” The group’s abhorrent video — and the 60 page report that accompanies it — present ludicrous stereotypes of gay men and women, going so far as to claim that “open and active homosexuals into the U.S. military could very well result in the spreading of deadly HIV-tainted blood throughout the ranks”. Read on...

And then there's Bryan Fischer from the AFA.

AFA's Fischer Outdoes Himself:

It was about a year ago that I wrote a seemingly throwaway post about the fact that Bryan Fischer had been promoted from his position running the Idaho Values Alliance, the state affiliate of the American Family Association, to a position as director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy with the AFA itself and the host of a daily two-hour radio program for the organization.

Since then, Fischer has proven himself to be among the most radically right-wing figures within the contemporary Religious Right movement.

Just last week he declared on his radio program that "God is obviously looking for is more Phinehases in our day," approvingly citing a story from the Book of Numbers about a man who killed two people with a spear for engaging in sexual immorality.

But yesterday he managed to outdo himself once again, declaring that Adolf Hitler was gay and that he surrounded himself with gay soldiers because only gays were willing to be savage and brutal enough to carry out his agenda.

Dan Savage laid waste to all of those kooks, and I completely agree with him about what the basis of their problem is. They're all badly in need of just coming out of the closet and being done with it. One of these religious anti-gay wingnuts they failed to mention here is James Dobson. If he isn't every bit as gay as his buddy Rent-Boy-Rekers I'll be shocked. Anyone who recommends showering with your male children and that them seeing your penis size is going to keep away "teh gay" has got some really serious issues.

I hope to hell the Congress finally repeals DADT. It's long overdue. Every one of these anti-gay bigots needs to be asked how many men they've had sexual relationships with when anyone has them on for an interview.

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Keith talks to Dan Savage about Carrie Prejean wanna' be Miss Beverly Hills Lauren Ashley's statement that "God wants gays put to death". Dan talks about how dangerous this type of over heated rhetoric is because it gives justification for others to gay bash as well and can unfortunately as we all know too well lead to violence.

Dan asks here as he did in his blog what other parts of the Bible these people would like to take literally:

The same God that allegedly scribbled out that stern warning for the gays—a God who wishes us only the best!—also condemned to death all young women who aren't virgins on their wedding nights. So a follow-up question for Miss Beverly Hills: Are you a virgin? If not, should you be put to death? And a former Miss California—Carrie Prejean—isn't a virgin. Should she be put to death? Would you like to cast the first stone?