The problem with the military is all those fags keep raping the ladies.

Uh-huh.

The American Family Association needs smarter bigots.

(h/t Karoli)

How to explain this one?

In wingers' warped little brains, being born black and gay are huge advantages in this country, because of welfare, affirmative action, and the "politically-correct" media.

As we all know, the real victims of bigotry and intolerance are white, conservative Christians.

This is big news in the sports world. Jason Collins becomes the first male professional athlete to come out of the closet and admit that he's gay to Sports Illustrated:

Major props, dude.

I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay.I didn't set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I'm happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn't the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, "I'm different." If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I'm raising my hand. My journey of self-discovery and self-acknowledgement began in my hometown of Los Angeles and has taken me through two state high school championships, the NCAA Final Four and the Elite Eight, and nine playoffs in 12 NBA seasons.
---

Why am I coming out now? Well, I started thinking about this in 2011 during the NBA player lockout. I'm a creature of routine. When the regular season ends I immediately dedicate myself to getting game ready for the opener of the next campaign in the fall. But the lockout wreaked havoc on my habits and forced me to confront who I really am and what I really want. With the season delayed, I trained and worked out. But I lacked the distraction that basketball had always provided.

The first relative I came out to was my aunt Teri, a superior court judge in San Francisco. Her reaction surprised me. "I've known you were gay for years," she said. From that moment on I was comfortable in my own skin. In her presence I ignored my censor button for the first time. She gave me support. The relief I felt was a sweet release. Imagine you're in the oven, baking. Some of us know and accept our sexuality right away and some need more time to cook. I should know -- I baked for 33 years.

It's really sad that more gay athletes haven't come out yet, but the climate in America hasn't given them the support to feel like they can survive this admission. Jason Collins is a very brave man and feels things are finally changing.

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With the tide finally turning against the homophobes in America, a seasoned sports reporter named Mike Freeman believes a current gay NFL player will come out.

While I've long believed I would not see an openly gay NFL player for decades, that might be wrong.

Based on interviews over the past several weeks with current and former players, I'm told that a current gay NFL player is strongly considering coming out publicly within the next few months -- and after doing so, the player would attempt to continue his career.

I'm told this player feels the time is now for someone to take this step -- despite homophobic remarks from San Francisco 49ers defensive back Chris Culliver and the controversy arising recently at the Indianapolis Scouting combine, when prospects were asked questions about their sexuality.

This player's true concern, I'm told, is not the reaction inside an NFL locker room but outside of it. The player fears he will suffer serious harm from homophobic fans, and that is the only thing preventing him from coming out. My sources will not say who this alleged player is.

There has never been an active openly gay player in a major American team sport, but the information I've gathered on the player in question comes from several current and former players.

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I read in wonderment this morning the absurd comments made by Justice Scalia in which he equated homosexuality to murder. It's all a big joke to get under your skin so he can make a point about his feeling against gays.

Are you laughing yet?

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia compared homosexuality and murder on Monday as he argued at a Princeton seminar that elected bodies should be allowed to regulate actions they see as immoral. "If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?" Scalia said, according to The Associated Press.

The justice's comments are sure to draw attention with the Supreme Court set to enter the debate over gay marriage in its coming term.
Scalia was asked about controversial comments he had made in the past that argued that the constitutionality of subjects like the death penalty, abortion or sodomy laws were all "easy" to decide by considering the Constitution as understood by its writers.

Scalia said that while he did not believe such hyperbole was "necessary," he did think it was "effective" in forwarding his argument that legislatures should be allowed to ban acts they believe to be immoral.

"It's a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the 'reduction to the absurd,' " Scalia said.

Scalia said he did not equate homosexuality morally with murder, but was making a point about the state's ability to regulate them.

"I'm surprised you aren't persuaded," he deadpanned to the audience member who asked him about his views.

With such cruelty on display by a sitting conservative Supreme Court Justice -- especially the man who is considered one of the leading intellectual lights of the conservative bloc of the Court, and the conservative movement generally -- it's no surprise that the same behavior repeatedly shows itself throughout the conservative universe. We know how Scalia will vote regarding the two new cases Chief Roberts has decided to take this year -- one on the Defense of Marriage Act and the other on California's Prop 8.

Society as a whole has long ago given up its persecution of gays for being who they are, but granting certain rights has been an uphill battle and homophobic strands still run deep. You would hope that a Supreme Court Justice might alleviate these tensions instead of exacerbating them. But it's Scalia.

Murray Waas broke an important story and one which goes to the very core of Mitt Romney's beliefs and who he really is.

It's been hard to figure out during this presidential campaign just what Romney wants to do as president. He was vehemently against same-sex marriage and parents after the law was passed in Massachusetts to legalize gay marriage in 2003. But it went deeper than that. He believed gay parents were unfit to be parents and that children born to same-sex couples could be developmentally impaired.

After presenting their proposal for revised forms to Romney’s chief of staff Beth Myers in May 2004, Department of Public Health officials were told by a Romney staff lawyer via e-mail that “there appear to be many complicated issues that should be discussed with many different communities before the changes are made.’’ The next month, Romney delivered remarks before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington in which he decried the state Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling and its effect on child-rearing. He outlined his misgivings about the request from the Registry of Vital Records.

“The children of America have the right to have a father and a mother,’’ Romney said in his prepared remarks. “What should be the ideal for raising a child? Not a village, not ‘parent A’ and ‘parent B,’ but a mother and a father.’’Romney also warned about the societal impact of gay parents raising children. “Scientific studies of children raised by same-sex couples are almost nonexistent,’’ he said. “It may affect the development of children and thereby future society as a whole.’’

Romney expressed similar beliefs during a speech in 2005 to socially conservative voters in South Carolina, as he was beginning to be viewed as a serious candidate for president.

“Some gays are actually having children born to them,’’ he declared. “It’s not right on paper. It’s not right in fact. Every child has a right to a mother and father.’’

The birth-certificates episode reflects a constantly evolving approach on gay rights for the former Massachusetts governor. Romney ran for Senate in 1994 promising to be a moderate champion of homosexual rights.

Mitt strongly believes that gay parents would hurt society as a whole. That's insane. I believe his Mormonism has a lot to do with his deep-seated hatred of gays.

After the Supreme Judicial Court ruling, he actively supported efforts in Massachusetts for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Those efforts never bore fruit.

Romney has to be judged by his actions; period. In the story itself, Waas also reports on how horrible Romney was to all the new gay parents in his state.

It seemed like a minor adjustment. To comply with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in 2003, the state Registry of Vital Records and Statistics said it needed to revise its birth certificate forms for babies born to same-sex couples. The box for “father” would be relabeled “father or second parent,’’ reflecting the new law.

But to then-Governor Mitt Romney, who opposed child-rearing by gay couples, the proposal symbolized unacceptable changes in traditional family structures.He rejected the Registry of Vital Records plan and insisted that his top legal staff individually review the circumstances of every birth to same-sex parents. Only after winning approval from Romney’s lawyers could hospital officials and town clerks across the state be permitted to cross out by hand the word “father’’ on individual birth certificates, and then write in “second parent,’’ in ink.

He lied when he ran against Ted Kennedy in 1994 promising to be a moderate champion of homosexual rights and he lied when he ran for Governor in 2002. Remember when he scored a perfect 100 on a Planned Parenthood questionnaire? In '02 Romney Supported Roe v Wade Decision and Spending State Funds For Abortion Services

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[H/t Heather]

The ever-clueless Steve Doocy this morning, talking about the Chick-Fil-A controversy:

DOOCY: Remember, it wasn't just people supporting Dan Cathy for his Christian values. ... People not only supporting his Christian values, and they are closed on Sundays. But also just the CEO's right to say what he thinks. You know, a lot of people wound up going -- I was reading in the New York Post today about how a lot of people went over to New Jersey to a Chick-Fil-A, and it wasn't to support the family-values thing, but to support his right to say something, because so many people on the left are so intolerant -- you gotta be able to say in this country what you think!

Of course, it never appeared to occur to Doocy that what the people who are raising an outcry about Dan Cathy's remarks are protesting is Dan Cathy's blatant and blind intolerance.

This is an old conundrum, or at least it appears to be one, raised time and again during the civil-rights struggles of the 1950s and beyond: Should the tolerant tolerate intolerance?

It's not really a conundrum, though, because the answer is a simple one: No. Tolerance and intolerance are diametrically opposed principles, like matter and anti-matter. One cannot exist in the presence of the other. People who are dedicated to the principles of tolerance have no place for intolerance: It is what they are fighting.

The people like Doocy who are on the historically wrong side of the Chick-Fil-A controversy should think back to the civil-rights era, when people voiced outrage at the intolerance of famous bigots like George Wallace and Lester Maddox and Orval Faubus. The people who organized boycotts of these bigots and the places they represented back then were similarly accused of "intolerance" at the time.

The lesson of that history remains a simple and clear one: One cannot end racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual intolerance by "tolerating" the people who practice it. They will only change when they are faced with becoming pariahs. It is no different today than it was fifty years ago.

Not that we could expect a dim bulb like Doocy to figure that out, either.

Ultra-conservatives really love the closet. And no, I'm not just talking in a Larry-Craig-kinda way. Sure, some of them who use it to protect themselves, but many more use it to protect their agenda.

You see, the closet can hide all sorts of truths among its shadows. Americans and any facts about America that don't fit the right-wing narrative can be disappeared in this enclosed recess--either bullied into silence or simply ignored--and conservatism can continue to prosper. Because, quite frankly, conservatives need a big enough closet to house a combo Imelda Marcos/Carrie Bradshaw shoe collection if they're to continue prospering after the economic, foreign policy, and social destruction they've wreaked upon this nation.

Right wingers can then tell you that gays and lesbians are some strange breed of misanthrope intent on intergalactic sexual dominion, because if you've never met anyone who is gay before, you just might believe it. Enough of us to sway an election might, all polling to the contrary, be convinced by television advertisements that most Americans want to cut Social Security, think closing the gun-show loophole is unimportant or believe the Citizens United decision makes any sense whatsoever. On all of these, by the way, the "progressive" or non-Ted-Nugent position polls at or north of approximately 70 percent in "swing states" and nationally, making people possessing these ideas the silent majority Richard Nixon once considered worthy of song.

So the protectors of the status quo will fight like hell to keep you and your ideas safely behind the folded khakis or under the Etch A Sketch, you can bet on it. It is what makes Sandra Fluke, Ellen DeGeneres and interviews with those who've lost their jobs due to Mitt Romney's machinations, in a word, dangerous. Human faces, especially, serve to blow up their myths. Because if we see people with which we can identify going through a crisis, or having made what for them was a sensible decision, then it might not seem unreasonable to us. (The principle holds true with humans but not cyborgs. Hence, the reason most of us react to Mitt Romney in much the same way we do to a malfunctioning fax machine)

All of which brings us to last week, at a progressive blogger conference in Providence, Rhode Island, called Netroots Nation. At this conference, former Microsoft software developer and current Congressional candidate from Washington State's 1st District, Darcy Burner, stood up and courageously spoke about the issue of abortion during a keynote address.

Most people don't know that 1 in 3 women have had an abortion (in fact I had no idea until last week), because the Right has successfully shamed women who made a legal, medically-based decision into hiding in those shadows in the closet. Burner, not one for running meek campaigns (a breath of fresh air among Democrats), asked women in the crowd to stand if they had had an abortion, and felt comfortable doing so. She proceeded to ask if everyone else would join them and stand up, showing support for the courageous women around them. Then, Burner rightly said, "this is how we change the stories in people's heads."

Right wingers, as well as other various confused souls, felt that closet door opening ever so slightly. And they knew they needed to kick it closed, lest others cross the threshold and not feel ashamed. Enter comical right-wing blogger Melissa Clouthier (who likes to keep "doctor" in her official title, so we might think she possesses some sort of guidance for us on these and other matters--and as a chiropractor, I'm just sure she's an expert on the uterus), who misquoted Burner and claimed the women in the hall were "celebrating" abortion.

Common sense was also lost on Joe Connelly of the Seattle Post Intelligencer, as he took to Clouthier's misquote and spin. And of course Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson's publication, The Daily Caller, got in on the mythmaking too. But after being fired from most known television networks founded since about 1973, I guess Carlson has to do something to keep his 4 names in the press.

Lucky us, being able, in real time, to watch 1000 Mesozoic-Era intellects bloom.

Burner, on the other hand, was doing what must be done in an age dominated by right-wing moneymen, pouring millions of dollars into everything from telling us Jesus was a car-elevator-owning hedge fund manager to global warming isn't happening.

This is why it is so important that Burner brought some sunlight to the truth. And we'd be all be the better for it if there were many more like her in our politics.

Follow me on Twitter: @cliffschecter

This column first appeared at Al Jazeera English

Laura's beginning to dominate my SRWT series, and today, she tickles two right-wing erogenous zones with one tweet: Obama hates the military (and by extension, America)—and just loves him some homos.

Wingnuts pulled the same stunt on June 6 two years ago ("Obama snubbed the Greatest Generation!")—but of course, it turns out that George W. Bush blew off D-Day quite often.

Bush administration commemorated D-Day in 2001 and 2004, but spent others in meetings and at least one concert. White House archives of June 6 for each year President Bush was in office only show Bush commemorating D-Day in 2001 and 2004.

IOKIYAR (It's OK If You're a Republican), as always.

In a groundbreaking ruling, a First Circuit Court of Appeals panel struck down DOMA, ruling that the federal government does not have authority to deny same-sex couples benefits if they are legally married in a state.

What makes this ruling different from others is the composition of the panel: Two conservative judges, one liberal. The author of the opinion, Judge Michael Boudin, is a well-respected Bush appointee who, according to ThinkProgress recommends clerks for Supreme Court clerkships.

Chris Geidner:

Judge Michael Boudin, appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush, wrote for the court: "[M]any Americans believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and most Americans live in states where that is the law today. One virtue of federalism is that it permits this diversity of governance based on local choice, but this applies as well to the states that have chosen to legalize same-sex marriage. Under current Supreme Court authority, Congress' denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest."The decision follows oral arguments that were held in the cases on April 4. Today's decision upholds U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro's July 8, 2010, decision finding the federal law defining marriage as consisting of only one man and one woman to be unconstitutional.

As ThinkProgress and Geidner note, the panel was unwilling to step on states who have amended their constitutions to ban same sex marriage:

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