The death of a Marine by stabbing last month has been ruled a hate crime, according to the case’s lead prosecutor. 

Michael Poth stabbed Philip M. Bushong on Capitol Hill’s Barracks Row after yelling an anti-gay slur. He had just seen Bushong hug a gay male friend, though Bushong himself was straight. Poth and Bushong are both U.S. Marines.

Poth was charged with second-degree murder while armed. After reviewing video footage of the incident, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Liebman has also ruled it a hate crime. Poth will stay in jail on the murder charge.

So, so sad. We have a lot of work to do. 

A priest in Denmark has refused to bury a deceased woman after discovering that she was a lesbian.

The priest refused to hold the funeral, making the absurd claim in front of the woman’s elderly partner of more than 30 years. The woman’s daughter watched this happen as well, and was rightly outraged.

“I thought, can it really be true that we should be ashamed of it?,” the deceased woman’s daughter, Kirsten Østergaard, told homotropolis.com. “I looked at my mother’s life partner and she was completely silent — and then I became really upset on her behalf. It’s a terrible situation to put her in.”

The priest has since apologized for his actions, but that doesn’t make up for the trauma he caused this family, not in the slightest. Remember back in February, when a priest in the U.S. refused a lesbian communion at her mother’s funeral? Why is this BS still happening in the world? 

I love this because I immediately knew exactly what it meant. 

A morning show DJ in Cleveland made a comment about a caller that has GLAAD up in arms, and rightfully so.

When a man wrote in to the radio station to talk about how his daughter was gay, Dominic Dieter, a DJ for WMMS, reportedly said: “You should get one of your friends to screw your daughter straight.”

Here’s GLAAD’s response:

Aaron McQuade, GLAAD’s director of news and field media, released the following statement: “It was appalling and dangerous for this show to tell a father that he should have one of his friends rape his daughter. That’s essentially how Dieter responded to this listener, and this is no laughing matter in a world where people are too often the victims of violence and sexual assault based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation. And Dieter gave this vile advice to everyone who was listening, including educators, parents and children — sending the message that it’s okay to physically or sexually abuse people who are perceived to be gay.”

I am absolutely sickened that people like this exist. This man should be off the air for life.

EDIT: Someone responded to this post with the following:

“Yes, because people should lose their job because they have an opinion that you find offensive. Sterling logic.”

Nope, people should lose their jobs for proposing sexual violence as a means of changing someone’s sexual orientation. But maybe that’s just my opinion.

The results of a recent study show that, among other factors, a person’s inner turmoil about their own non-heterosexuality could play a huge role in that person being homophobic.

In the April Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the study uses “modern methods” to explore a well-established Freudian concept that people block unconscious desires by adapting an opposite view of them (i.e. acting like you hate something you really love).

People who came from “controlling homes” where bias against LGBT people was rampant were more likely to suppress same-sex attraction, which therefore was more likely to manifest itself in outward homophobia. More on the methods:

Among those methods: studies that measure discrepancies between what people say about their sexual orientation and how they react during split-second timed tasks. Study subjects — four groups of about 160 college students each, in the USA and Germany — also rated the attractiveness of people in same-sex or opposite-sex photos and answered questions about the type of parenting they experienced growing up, from authoritarian to democratic, as well as homophobia at home.

Researchers also measured homophobia — both overt, as expressed in questionnaires on social policy and beliefs, and unconscious, as revealed in word-completion tasks.

Other experts have said this is hardly a way to measure sexual orientation, also saying it gives too much power to an individual’s parents and doesn’t pay attention to how they think about themselves. Still, this is fascinating and not at all shocking. What say you?

Ugandan gay rights activist David Kato’s death was attributed partially to a “hit list” encouraging people to target gay rights supporters, and now a similar list may be circulating in Liberia.

A group called the “Movement Against Gay’s in Liberia” [sic] distributed fliers listing people who support gay rights and encouraging people to “go after them using all means in life,” with someone going as far as threatening to “get them one by one.”

The law in Liberia doesn’t address homosexuality by name, but “voluntary sodomy” is punishable by up to a year in prison. Bills under consideration would implement harsher punishments for same-sex sex and make marriage equality illegal.

The U.S. government, particularly the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia, has been pretty quiet on all of this. That should change. We can’t let this go by unaddressed; we can’t afford not to react.

Talk show host Carson Daly is the most recent celebrity to come under fire for making a homophobic joke without realizing its implications. It happens all too often with public figures, and usually when it does happen, a lengthy apology ensues.

But is that enough? The Huffington Post poll linked above wants to know if people who make public anti-gay gaffes should be expected to do more than just apologize for their speech.

I can see both sides to this: on one hand, actions speak louder than words, and getting actively involved with the LGBT community is a great way to show you mean what you say. On the other hand, do we expect celebrities to log volunteer hours or march in pride parades? What can we realistically, reasonably ask of them?

What say you? Is an apology enough?

In an ongoing series of allegations against the extremely anti-gay National Organization for Marriage, documents were found that show the organization’s racist, homophobic strategy for repealing marriage equality in Maine, among other anti-marriage equality campaigns. 

HRC obtained and circulated the documents this week, and they’re shocking. I can’t phrase NOM’s strategy any more clearly than they already have, so here’s an excerpt from this New York Times blog:

“The strategic goal of the project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks — two key Democratic constituencies,” the memo says, describing an initiative called the “Not a Civil Right Project.”

The project’s goal, according to the memo, was to recruit blacks who opposed same-sex marriage to represent the group, and then “provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots.”

This is HUGE. Stay tuned for updates as this evolves - it’s going to be around for a while. 

After a mere two months, Indiana will no longer offer license plates that benefit an LGBT youth group in the area.

Republican lawmakers demanded the plate be removed on “contractual grounds” after legislation targeting the youth group failed. It seems publicizing the sale of “low-digit special group license plates” is illegal, and so the Indiana Youth Group and a couple of other organizations lost their license plate privileges. There are more details about the legal stuff at the article above.

In just under two months, 669 plates had already been issued, with the Indiana Youth Group making $25 from each. The group’s application for a license plate had previously been turned down several times.

Oh, this is so upsetting. This group worked so hard for license plates, essentially pioneering the concept, only to get shut down by some homophobic state senators. If you’d like to help the Indiana Youth Group make up some of the money they are basically losing, feel free to donate here.