Alright, let’s see what we have today.
First up, pay attention because this is really important. Remember the anti-gay bakers that refused to bake a cake for a lesbian couple? They got sued because of they harassed the couple, drug their name through the mud and released their contact information, leading to even more harassment and death threats. They’ve been claiming that they’re the real victims and have raised over $450,000 dollars (the fine was $135,000). Likewise, a county clerk is Kentucky is refusing to do his job (by not issuing marriage certificates to same-sex couples). The governor has personally talked to him to tell him to either resign or do his job. But he’s claiming religious freedom. Now we just wait to see how much money he’ll raise for himself once he gets fired. The cycle just keeps repeating.
I’ve been on my soapbox for years about the role institutionalized discrimination plays in the epidemic of youth LGBT suicides, and a Methodist pastor, fired for being gay, says the same thing.
Awesome bookends featured by Nerdist:
Republican Senators killed a bill aimed at decreasing bullying in schools. Because they hate the gays.
A judge in Texas will follow the law and marry gay couples, but they have to sign a document saying the understand how much he hates them first.
The sculpture featured in the end credits of “Avengers: Age of Ultron” was a physical prop!
Checking into the American Horror Story: Hotel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YTSI5LYCi0
Coke puts six men in a dark room so they can talk. It’s been done before, but it’s still a cool concept.
XKCD takes on the images of Pluto, and it’s an awesome map!
The real price of being gay and belonging to an evangelical church. Long, but worth a read.
Now it turns out that evangelicals had a third condition for their pet gay celibates: They had to reject gay sex, gay relationships, and gay marriage not just for themselves but for all gays and lesbians.
It’s been a great few weeks for LGBT rights, first marriage equality, then added protections for LGBT seniors, the final vestige of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell coming down by allowing transgender servicemembers, and now, what is probably the biggest victor, and set to help more people in very practical ways than even marriage: employment protections:
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that existing civil rights law bars sexual orientation-based employment discrimination—a groundbreaking decision to advance legal protections for gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers…. The independent commission addressed the question of whether the ban on sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars anti-LGB discrimination in a complaint brought by a Florida-based air traffic control specialist against Transportation Sec. Anthony Foxx. The ruling—approved by a 3-2 vote of the five-person commission—applies to federal employees’ claims directly, but it also applies to the entire EEOC, which includes its offices across the nation that take and investigate claims of discrimination in private employment.
Make no mistake, this will end up before the courts, but this is a huge deal, one that we’ve been fighting for for even longer than marriage and has failed in every single session of Congress. This is huge.
