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During what was otherwise a week of really good news when it comes to the LGBT community gaining acceptance and equal rights in states across the country, Rachel Maddow took another shot at PolitiFact during the final segment of her show this Tuesday evening -- for once again ruining the term "fact-checking."

Tennis star Martina Navratilova appeared on Face the Nation this Sunday and discussed the fact that twenty nine states still allow someone to be fired just for being gay, or if their employer believes they are gay, which is true, but PolitiFact decided to rate her claim as only half-true due to other protections or some "exceptions to the rule" as they called them.

As Rachel pointed out in her rant, that doesn't make what Navratilova said "half-true."

MADDOW: And this is why the very important concept of fact-checking has become pointless at a time in our country when we really need it to mean something. Because PolitiFact exists and has branded themselves the generic arbiter of facts and the paragon of fact-checking, and they are terrible at it.

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So much for this clown going away quietly any time soon after he stepped in it on Hannity's show last week. Rather than admit that some of what came out of his mouth during his interview with Hannity might (to put it charitably) be considered offensive by wide swaths of our population in the United States, Ben Carson decided to double down instead.

Ben Carson Goes On The Offensive, Lashes Out At "Racist" Critics:

Dr. Ben Carson has pivoted from apologizing "if anybody was offended" by his anti-gay comments to attacking his critics, some of whom he says are "racist[s]" who are trying to smear him as a bigot in order to silence him.

Carson, who has been lauded by the conservative media and treated to dozens of Fox News appearances over the past few months, lashed out at his critics during an April 1 interview on The Mark Levin Show. [...]

After LGBT medical students called for Carson's replacement as the commencement speaker for the class of 2013, he attempted to claim that he hadn't been "equating" gays with pedophiles or those who engage in bestiality, while apologizing "if anybody was offended." He also said he would be willing to step down as commencement speaker.

But on Levin's show, Carson went on the offensive, saying that the criticism he has received proves that he's right that "political correctness is threatening to destroy our nation because it puts a muzzle over honest conversation." He added that "the attacks against me have been so vicious because I represent an existential threat" to his critics, who he says "take my words, misinterpret them, and try to make it seem that I'm a bigot."

After Levin claimed that Carson has been "attacked also, in many respects, because of your race" because "a lot of white liberals" don't like black conservatives, Carson replied, "Well, they're the most racist people there are. Because you know, they put you in a little category, a little box, 'you have to think this way, how could you dare come off the plantation?'"

As the Media Matters post noted, he's right there in Rush Limbaugh territory now. Bravo Dr. Carson. I didn't think it was possible for this guy to marginalize himself any further or faster than he has already with his recent media appearances, but he's managed to do it with this interview. Quite an accomplishment, given Fox was just attempting to sell him as a presidential candidate anyone should take seriously not long ago.

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I can't take watching too much of Hannity's show and try to avoid it for the most part. It gives me the same physical reaction as Jon Stewart had when he endured an hour of torture waiting to hear an apology, only to get a non-apology from him at the end of his show.

I made an exception for this segment flagged by both Media Matters and Mediaite where Hannity was called out for propping up Dr. Ben Carson, only to end up making a pariah out of him in the end.

Hannity may not have liked it, and I'm not impressed that this debacle turned into a shoutfest, but his guest Leo Terrell is exactly right that not just Hannity, but Faux News in general has spent hours of their time propping up Ben Carson as the next great savior of the GOP, even though the man doesn't have any experience in politics. They're touting him as someone the right should take seriously as a potential presidential candidate.

As I noted in the post where Jon Stewart went after Carson, Hannity didn't do him any favors with the interview he gave him and Carson probably threw whatever political aspirations he might have had down the toilet with his remarks equating gay people to pedophiles and people who want to have sex with animals. Carson also didn't do himself any favors with his follow-up interviews on MSNBC and CNN.

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From this Sunday's Meet the Press:-- shorter Peggy Noonan -- You'll take the GOP's wedge issues away when you pry them from their cold, dead hands.

TODD: You know, Peggy, what's been interesting about this week is all of the big polarizing issues of the last two generations, culturally, all popped up in one week and one of it had to do with the Supreme Court and gay marriage, with abortion, this culture wars, normally when it comes back, it's something that's helpful to Republicans. Is it good this time for the conservative movement to have these issues out there?

NOONAN: I don't know. I think all of these cultural issues, as I guess we call them, have been major issues in America for almost half a century, really. The abortion argument was going on fifty years ago. Roe came forty years ago. It is hard to resolve these issues because they're not just cultural issues. They are moral issues and Americans feel differently about them. So I think one way or another, they'll probably be bubbling out there for a long time and it's not the worst thing.

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If you've got HBO and did not get a chance to watch their documentary, The Loving Story this week, it reairs in May. In the wake of the two hearings by the Supreme Court on gay marriage, the film serves as a stark reminder for how we're likely to be viewed by future generations for the rhetoric and animosity we're seeing to same-sex couples being allowed to be married today.

Here's more on the documentary from Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones: "The Loving Story": How an Interracial Couple Changed a Nation:

The most striking thing about Mildred and Richard Loving is that they never wanted to be known. They didn't want to change history or face down racism. They just wanted to come home to Virginia to be near their families. The Lovings weren't radicals. They were just two people in love—one of them a taciturn white guy described by one of their lawyers as a "redneck," the other a sweet, soft-spoken young woman of black and American Indian ancestry.

When the The Loving Story makes its national debut on HBO on Valentine's Day, it will be the first time many Americans have met this couple. They are the namesake of the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case that struck down the anti-miscegenation laws still on the books in 16 states some 13 years after school segregation was deemed unconstitutional. These laws constituted one of the last formal vestiges of the Jim Crow era, and this film shows for the first time what it took to bring them down.

Even as they changed America, the Lovings were never a household name. After getting married in Washington, DC, in June 1958, they simply returned to their home in Central Point, Virginia. Mildred was unaware, she said, of her state's "Racial Integrity Act," a 1924 law forbidding interracial marriage—although she later added that she thought her husband knew about it but didn't figure they'd be persecuted.

Just over a month after the Lovings' homecoming, police raided their place at 2 a.m., arrested the couple, and threw them in jail. Leon Bazile, a judge for the Caroline County Circuit Court, convicted them on felony charges. "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents," the judge wrote. "The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." Read on...

Mediaite had something interesting posted on the same topic, which is a quiz to see if readers can tell the difference between actual anti-interracial and anti-gay marriage quotes. As they noted:

Whether it’s condemning homosexuality as “unnatural” and “immoral,” or comparing gay relationships to “armed robbery” and “marrying your dog,” or simply “thumping the Bible” as the primary means to argument, many of the opponents of same-sex marriage sound an awful lot like those who so vocally opposed miscegenation, the marriage between races.

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UPDATE from Susie: After making a classic non-apology apology ("If I offended anyone" -- gee, ya think?), Dr. Ben Carson offered to withdraw as a graduation speaker at Johns Hopkins University:

"I think people have completely taken the wrong meaning out of what I was saying," the 61-year-old surgeon said in a telephone interview Friday. "First of all, I certainly believe gay people should have all the rights that anybody else has. What I was basically saying is that as far as marriage is concerned that has traditionally been between a man and a woman and nobody should be able to change that."

"Now perhaps the examples were not the best choice of words, and I certainly apologize if I offended anyone," he added. "But the point that I was making was that no group of individuals, whoever they are, whatever their belief systems, gets to change traditional definitions. The reason I believe the way I do, I will readily confess, is because I am a Christian who believes in The Bible."

The Bible, he explained, "...says we have an obligation to love our fellow man as ourselves, and I love everybody the same -- all homosexuals. Everybody who knows me knows I would never say anything to intentionally hurt someone."

Well! Isn't that "nice" of him? I wonder which traditional definition of marriage he's using. The one where King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, or something else?

***

Fox's new favorite, Dr. Ben Carson, who has come under fire this week for his remarks on Sean Hannity's show where he compared gay marriage to NAMBLA and bestiality, made an appearance on Andrea Mitchell's show on MSNBC and did a really lousy job of defending them, claiming that he was "taken out of context" and wasn't actually trying to equate all of those things.

Mitchell responded by reading Carson's words right back to him and correctly noted that he was equating those things when he used in the very same sentence, gay marriage along with "things that are illegal." Carson responded by claiming that it was not his intention for his words to be taken that way. Yeah, how could all of those silly viewers have gotten the idea he was equating gay marriage with men who want to have sex with boys and bestiality just because he rattled them off one after the other?

Carson has come under fire from his colleague at Johns Hopkins which Media Matters reported on here: "Nasty, Petty, And Ill-Informed": Ben Carson's Johns Hopkins Colleague Responds To His Marriage Equality Attack :

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Stephen Colbert had a field day with his hero "Papa Bear" O'Reilly and his flip flop this week on the issue of gay marriage.

Stephen Colbert On Bill O'Reilly's Gay Marriage Flip-Flop: 'Shaken To My Core':

Stephen Colbert opened Wednesday's "Colbert Report" with a declaration of something that disturbed him even more than what appears to be the imminent embrace of gay marriage by the Supreme Court: Bill O'Reilly's flip-flop on the issue, which he announced on his show Tuesday.

"I am shaken to the core," the faux conservative pundit said. "Last night, even Papa Bear let me down." [...]

But he was particularly offended that O'Reilly took a noncommittal stance about gay marriage, saying on "The O'Reilly Factor" that he does not "feel that strongly about it one way or the other."

This left Colbert aghast. "Bill O'Reilly doesn't feel that strongly about something? What's happening?! You're Bill O'Reilly! Read your f*cking contract!"

He rolled several clips of O'Reilly proclaiming his distaste for gay marriage over the years, including clips where O'Reilly compared gay marriage to "plural marriage" and the right to get married to ducks and goats.

But if O'Reilly is a man of consistent philosophy, Colbert's logic dictates, then his comparison of gay marriage to marrying a goat must have been a tacit endorsement of goat marriage, given his current feelings on gay marriage. And far be it from Stephen to get in the way of O'Reilly marrying a goat.

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With the Supreme Court weighing in on the issue of gay marriage this week and such sorry pronouncements like the one we heard from Justice Samuel Alito where he called the issue "newer than cell phones or the Internet," The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took his viewers though some of the "evolving" views we've seen from our politicians over the recent weeks.

Sen. Rob Portman has finally decided to make his support for gay marriage known now that his son has come out, along with an ever increasing number of Democratic Senators whose views have 'evolved" on the matter as well, but we've still got the likes of Senators Saxby Chambliss, Marco Rubio and Fox's great hype hope for the Republican party, Dr. Ben Carson to contend with among others.

Stewart was especially harsh in his response to Carson, who said this to Sean Hannity on Fox this week:

CARSON: Marriage is between a man and a woman. [...] No group — be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in beastiality, it doesn't matter what they are...

STEWART: Yeah, let me just stop you right there. It's not, you know, whether you're having sex with another consenting adult, or a horse, or a doughnut, it's all the same. Actually, that's not fair. As Dr. Carson explained, his problem isn't with gays.

CARSON: It’s not something that’s against gays. It’s against anybody who wants to come along and change the fundamental definitions of the pillars of society.

STEWART: Oh. You think we shouldn't mess with anything that's considered a fundamental pillar of society. Ideal for an editorial cartoon. Alright, here we go.... slavery, segregation and Jim Crow.

I'd say Carson just threw whatever political aspirations he might have had on a national level down the toilet with that interview if they weren't there already.

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The Last Word's Lawrence O'Donnell explained that not all Republicans agree with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the others in their party who believe that marriage is supposed to be between one man and one woman, such as St. Ronnie, Newt Gingrich and his fellow "serial polygamist" Rush Limbaugh.

O'Donnell also explained why Republicans might be having so much trouble finding a verse from the Bible that they'd be willing to quote on the subject.

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You've gotta' love these so-called "small government" Republicans who don't mind imposing their religious views on the rest of the country. Someone needs to explain to this wingnut that marriage is a civil right and that it is not a requirement that those who get married have children.

Here's Iowa's next potential candidate for U.S. Senate embarrassing his state yet again: Republican says marriage is like selling alcohol and cutting hair:

Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa said Tuesday that same sex marriage should be prohibited because the government had the right to regulate human behavior.

“The state’s require a marriage license,” King said. “A license is by definition a permit to do that which is otherwise illegal. Licenses are used to direct and regulate human behavior — a license to drive, a license to fish, a license to hunt, a license to cut hair, a license to do brain surgery, or a license to join the bar, or actually own a bar. And this is all a proper thing for our state to do because they are regulating and promoting certain kinds of activity and behavior.

“That’s why there is a marriage license,” he continued. “You have to meet the qualifications in the same fashion as all of the other licenses I have mentioned. Marriage is promoted by the states because that is the best way that we know how to promote the best of our culture and civilization into the next generation.”

Same sex couples should be excluded from this institution, according to King, because marriage is about “natural procreation” and children “need a mom and a dad.”