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World boxing star Manny Pacquiao has drawn an outcry in the Philippines after publicly denouncing people in same-sex relationships as "worse than animals." Pacquiao, a high school dropout from a poverty-stricken rural family who went on to become a boxing legend, made the remark when he and other Philippine senatorial candidates were asked by the local TV5 network about their views on same-sex marriage. His remarks were posted online Monday by TV5, sparking criticism, including by some fellow Filipino celebrities. "It's just common sense," said the 37-year-old Pacquiao, who is currently a member of the House of Representatives. "Have you...

The Denial About Super Bowl 50 Having a Gay Agenda is Laughable! It all started with this simple statement. “How about this: God is Love. I believe we should have had a cross with the same words "Believe in Love" without the rainbow. Got a problem with that?” That’s what I wrote in response to an article written in the Huffington Post the day after the Super Bowl, entitled, “To Those Bothered By The 'Gay Agenda' At Super Bowl 50.” If you’re not in the know, a huge rainbow flag with the words, “Believe in Love” was prominently featured at...

New York is taking steps to stop therapists from trying to change young people's sexual orientation, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday, joining a number of states that have acted against what's known as gay conversion therapy. The Democratic governor's move, announced Saturday, comes as gay rights advocates have campaigned state by state with mixed results to try to ban a practice that major mental health organizations have repudiated. Using executive power in a state where legislative bids to ban the therapy have stalled, Cuomo announced planned regulations that would bar insurance coverage for the therapy for minors and prohibit mental...

(CNSNews.com) – A couple who hosts occasional wedding ceremonies on their New York farm have lost an appeal to overturn the $13,000 in fines levied against them by the state’s human rights agency, which ruled that their refusal to host a wedding for two women was discriminatory. On Jan. 14, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, upheld the agency’s order and the fines, a decision the Alliance Defending Freedom - which represented Robert and Cynthia Gifford - said amounted to confirming, “that the government can punish the Giffords for declining to coordinate a ceremony that conflicts with...

The Bishop of Stockholm has proposed a church in her diocese remove all signs of the cross and put down markings showing the direction to Mecca for the benefit of Muslim worshippers. Eva Brunne, who was made the world's first openly lesbian bishop by the church of Sweden in 2009, and has a young son with her wife and fellow lesbian priest Gunilla Linden, made the suggestion to make those of other faiths more welcome. The Bishop of Stockholm has proposed a church in her diocese remove all signs of the cross and put down markings showing the direction to...

Dr. Robert Spitzer, a Jewish American psychiatrist who played a leading role in establishing agreed-upon standards to describe mental disorders and eliminating homosexuality's designation as a pathology, died Friday in Seattle. He was 83. Gay-rights activists credit Spitzer with removing homosexuality from the list of mental disorders in the D.S.M. in 1973. He decided to push for the change after he met with gay activists and determined that homosexuality could not be a disorder if gay people were comfortable with their sexuality. At the time of the psychiatric profession's debate over homosexuality, Spitzer told the Washington Post: "A medical disorder...

The vestry opposed his position. Kentucky Bishop Terry White did not support him Fr. Erdman said he had no choice but to resign or contradict his conscienceThe Rev. Jonathan Erdman, rector of Calvary Church in Louisville, KY, is resigning because he could not in good conscience perform gay weddings. He will leave his church Jan. 10, 2016. The vestry of his parish had been trying to force him out since the Episcopal Church authorized priests to perform gay weddings, and Fr. Jonathan, a high churchman, said he would not do that. The vestry has the support of Kentucky Episcopal Bishop...

<p>Among the Christian Right, and most Republican presidential candidates, it’s now an article of faith that the United States is persecuting Christians and Christian-owned businesses—that religion itself is under attack.</p> <p>Why has this bizarre myth that Christianity is under assault in the most religious developed country on Earth been so successful? Because, in a way, it’s true. American Christianity is in decline—not because of a “war on faith” but because of a host of demographic and social trends. The gays and liberals are just scapegoats.</p>

A mother who spoke out against her daughter’s school imposing LGBT awareness week on its pupils has attracted the full force of liberal criticism, even being labelled ‘extreme’. The pupils at King Solomon High School were given rainbow badges to wear, and were told to dress in rainbow coloured clothes.Anna Erickson-Hull took to Facebook to speak out after her daughter Lily returned home from sixth form college sporting one.Anna wrote on the social media site: “You cannot force this filth on children…It is not lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender week in my house we will be serving the Lord as...

<p>OLONGAPO, Philippines (AP) — A U.S. Marine has been found guilty of killing a transgender Filipino after discovering her gender in a hotel in the Philippines last year.</p> <p>Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton was convicted Tuesday of homicide by first strangling Jennifer Laude and then dunking her head into a toilet bowl in the hotel they had checked into after meeting in a disco bar in Olongapo city, northwest of Manila. Court clerk Gerry Gruspe said Pemberton was sentenced to up to 12 years in jail.</p>

In a recent disquieting article for the New York Times, Choire Sicha investigates a curious new challenge for gyms: Some men want to shower and change without ever being publicly nude, and they expect their gyms to build locker rooms that accommodate that desire. Drawing upon the experiences of gym managers and architects, Sicha explains that over the last quarter-century, men have grown increasingly uneasy with being naked in the locker room. While older men generally remain comfortable being undressed among others, younger ones insist on maximum privacy, pining for a way to strip, shower, and change clothes without even...

Every once in a while, certain people from the dominant society will act as whistleblowers on white supremacy. Especially certain white people who themselves are marginalized within white society. Recently a gay/trans white man who goes by the name of Dakota Bracciale made a bold posting on his Facebook page regarding race. He warned Melanoid people that systematic white supremacy is so deep in this society, that no white people should be trusted. Here is his post in its entirety: An Open Letter to People of Color: Please do not trust white people. Every single one of us is racist,...

San Francisco police officer whose good looks earned him the nickname "Hot Cop of Castro" was on medical leave when he allegedly hit two pedestrians with his Dodge Charger, then abandoned his vehicle and ran away, police said. Officer Christopher Kohrs turned himself in to fellow officers at police headquarters Sunday, according to the San Francisco Police Department. He was arrested and later booked on suspicion of two felony counts of hit-and-run. Kohrs, a 7-year San Francisco police veteran, was off-duty at the time of the crash and on medical leave for an unrelated medical condition, police said. If Kohrs...

Author James Dawson has received backlash from parents for his guide to growing up LGBT, This Book Is Gay, claiming they no longer feel comfortable taking their children to the library if his book is on the shelves, reports The Guardian. In Wasilla, Alaska, after a 10-year-old boy picked up the book from the juvenile non-fiction section of the public library, his mother was "shocked to find it contained frank drawings and descriptions of gay sex acts inside". The mother launched an appeal after she was told by the local librarian that it was appropriately shelved, leading to dozens of...

Well, it’s that time again – time to get out the Christmas list and start hitting the stores. The problem is – what stores? For any Christian who wants to spend hard-earned dollars with family-friendly, Christian-affirming retailers, restaurants and service providers, the list is growing shorter all the time. I stopped shopping at Macy’s in 2011 after learning about the retailer’s grossly unjust policy against women. Macy’s management said “yes” to a transsexual young man’s demand to change in the women’s dressing room and rejected a Christian employee’s attempt to block his inappropriate access, even firing her because of her...

Many around me in the coffee shop nodded in agreement in support of welcoming Christian refugees and rejecting those of other faiths. It fits their narrative that they should help persecuted Christians. After all, despite the fact that American Christians are the most entitled and privileged people in the history of the planet, many feel persecuted.One of the more endearing customs of many of our small town Iowa churches on Sunday morning is story time. The pastor welcomes elementary and pre-school aged kids up front, where he or she sits with the children, and shares a parable. Often the pastor...

The White house announced on Friday that it would hold a screening of the upcoming transgender drama The Danish Girl and Amazon's transgender series Transparent next week as part of its new "White House LGBT Artists Champions of Change" program. In addition to the screenings on Monday, November 23, the White House will honor nine individuals "for their artistry in advocating for the LGBT community," according to a White House press release. The event will also mark Transgender Remembrance Day, currently observed on November 20.

The taxpayer-funded Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery has added a photo of a transgender sex worker to its “Struggle for Justice” civil rights exhibit.The photograph depicts Sylvia Rivera--described as having been a “trans woman sex worker”--along with her partner Julie Murray and activist Christina Hayworth. The photograph was taken at a rally prior to the 2000 Gay Pride Parade in New York City.“A forerunner in the fight against gender identity discrimination, Sylvia Rivera worked the dicey Times Square district as a trans woman sex worker after she was cast out by family as a teenager,” says the description of the...

An Alabama lesbian mother is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a ruling by the state’s highest court that it will not recognize her adoption of three children in neighboring Georgia.The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that Georgia courts violated their own state laws in granting the adoptions of the children she shared with her former partner and will not order custody or even visitation with the children. Lawyers for V.L., as the woman is identified in court papers, say the decision violates the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, which requires that states respect court judgments, including adoption orders,...

April Hoagland and Beckie Peirce, a Utah couple who married last year, went to a routine hearing Tuesday expecting to hear an update on how long it would be before they could adopt the baby girl they'd been raising as foster parents for three months. Instead, they were shocked and devastated when a judge in the central Utah city of Price ordered the child be removed from their home within a week and placed with a heterosexual couple, citing a belief that children are worse off when raised by gay couples. There were audible gasps in the courtroom, Hoagland said,...