Marriage, Santorum explained is an “intrinsic good” in which gay and lesbian people should not be allowed to partake in:

SANTORUM: You’re not entitled “to special treatment under the law…[Marriage is] not a right, it’s something that has existed since the beginning of human history as an institution where men and women come together for the purposes of forming a natural relationship as God made it to be. And for the purposes of having children and continuing that civilization. It is an intrinsic good…And as a result of that, we extend a privilege. We extend certain privileges to people who do that because we want to encourage that behavior. [...]

Two people who may like each other or may love each other who are same-sex, is that a special relationship? Yes it is, but it is not the same relationship that benefits society like a marriage between a man and a woman.

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Scott Lively

Obviously, that was not the only absurd claim he made during his hour long presentation, as he also found time to go after the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN ) and accuse them of creating Gay-Straight Alliances in schools are part of an effort to seduce lonely kids and recruit them into homosexuality:

“These are activist clubs in the public schools in which these teenagers … many of these kids, when you see the kids that get wrapped up in this, they’re the misfits, for the most part, they’re the kids that don’t have friends in other places, they’re chubby or they have a bunch of acne or they’re socially awkward and then the Gay-Straight Alliance Club reaches out to these kids and brings them in and then they start adopting a gay identity,” said Lively.

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“When you see the gay pride parade going down the street in the major cities, what banner are they flying over them? They’re flying the banner of the rainbow. What is the rainbow? The rainbow is God’s covenant with man never to destory the Earth by water again … So there’s an enormous warning there and, at the same time, we’re also given a clue as to what’s happening with apostasy in the modern age when people will raise the rainbow flag — and there’s a passage in Isiah, I forget the chapter and verse, that says “they parade their sin like Sodom.”

“And that is what is exactly going on with people who have defined themselves by this particular behavior and lifestyle. They parade their sin like Sodom. And they do it under the rainbow banner almost as if they’re saying “God, you can do nothing to us” because they don’t believe that Sodom was destroyed because of homosexuality so they aren’t learning the lesson from that.”

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David Luttrell, Metro Pulse

Stacey Campfield

Appearing on the Michelangelo Signorile Show on Sirius XM radio, State Senator Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) — author of Tennessee’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would prohibit teachers from mentioning homosexuality in kindergarten through 8th grade classrooms — also asserted that the lifespan for gays and lesbians is “very short,” telling listeners to “Google it yourself.”

“Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community — it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.”

“My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex…

[...]

“What is the average lifespan of a homosexual? It’s very short … Anybody out there who’s listening – your twelve listeners on your show, you have them Google ‘average homosexual lifespan.’ It’s very short.”

Defending his remarks in an interview with WBIR-TV on Friday, Campfield said, “I’m not a historian on AIDS, but I’ve read and seen what other people have read and seen and those facts are out there.”

Dr. Jacques Pepin, author of the book “The Origin of AIDS,” called Campfield’s assertions “kind of funny,” in the sense of being strange and not fully factual, reported the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

Pepin said that it is generally accepted that the initial transmission of AIDS from chimpanzees to humans occurred in Central Africa, probably 1921, when a hunter who killed a chimp contracted the virus while butchering the animal for food.

In parts of Africa, Pepin noted, about 30 percent of the population is infected with HIV, mostly through heterosexual intercourse.

Campfield has cited a 1988 advice column as the basis for his belief that HIV can not be contracted through heterosexual sex.

Campfield’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill passed the state Senate last year, and is now awaiting a vote in the Tennessee state House.

The bill would prohibit public elementary and middle school teachers from providing instruction, material or counseling that discusses sexual orientation other than heterosexuality. Campfield claims the bill is necessary because homosexuality is a “learned behavior.”

Cynthia Nixon and Christine Marinoni

“I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice.

“And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.

“A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.”

She doubled down in an interview with the Daily Beast, but in a way that helped clarify where she’s really coming:

“I don’t pull out the “bisexual” word because nobody likes the bisexuals.

“Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals… but I do completely feel that when I was in relationships with men, I was in love and in lust with those men. And then I met Christine and I fell in love and lust with her. I am completely the same person and I was not walking around in some kind of fog. I just responded to the people in front of me the way I truly felt.”

The negative reaction from gay blogs seems understandable, but perhaps unwarranted. Undoubtedly, as the gay community argues in courts across the country that homosexuality is immutable and ex-gay therapy is harmful and ineffective, having a prominent celebrity and activist say she “chose” to be gay is a little off-message. But I think it’s pretty clear that’s not what she meant, and so the real problem is that even within the gay community, we still have a very shallow understanding of sexual identity.

The bottom line is that there is a big difference between sexual orientation and sexual identity, even if it usually goes unnoticed. In other words, the language a person uses to describe how they identify does not have to perfectly align with what their natural attractions actually are.

The Williams Institute estimates that about 3.5 percent of the population identify as LGBT, but as many as 11 percent of Americans report having same-sex attractions. I think Nixon’s comments make it pretty clear that she did not choose her attractions to women — nor her attractions to men — she merely chose to identify primarily as a lesbian.

Of course, the other factor is persistent biphobia (and inherent at its root, sexism) in both the straight and gay communities. Cathy Renna has highlighted that women’s sexuality is much more fluid than men’s, which makes E.J. Graff’s observation that most of the comments against Nixon have come from gay men fairly unsurprising. The impulse is still to fit people into neat little boxes, and some — again, often men — refuse to believe bisexuality even exists.

By the way, science says it does. As Tyler Lewis has pointed out here before, this problem extends into the media, allowing for very few authentic portrayals of bi men. Nixon’s comment that “nobody likes the bisexuals” speaks for itself.

If the LGBT movement is fighting for the right of all people to own their identities free from discrimination, we should be better role models for celebrating that ethic.

“Do they believe that if they change the definition of marriage being between one man and one woman, what is going to stop two men one woman, two women one man, one man against a horse, one man with a boy, one man with anything,” he asked.

Hutcherson is one of the state’s most outspoken opponents of same-sex marriage and has recently compared Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) to President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin for endorsing marriage equality.

Watch the exchange:

On a recent appearance on LaBarbera’s radio show, Wooden called homosexuality a “wicked, deviant, immoral, self-destructive, anti-human sexual behavior” and should make people “literally gag.” Wooden added that gay men have “to wear a diaper or a butt plug just to be able to contain their bowels” by their “40s or 50s” as a result of “what happens to the male anus.”

Today, Wooden appeared on LaBarbera’s show and stood by his claims, going as far as to say that gay men regularly shove objects such as cellphones, baseball bats and animals up their anuses and that he personally knows a gay person who “literally died in diapers” because he “literally lost control of himself.”

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“Even the homosexual lobby knows, those who are pro-homosexual, they know that they cannot win the argument describing what it is that these people actually do to each other, the objects, the animals in certain cases, the little gerbils,” Wooden said.

“Thank God I’m a human being! Because if you talk about what it is that these people actually do, they can’t win the argument.”

Citing the stories of “ex-gays,” Perkins argued that gays and lesbians will always have “an emptiness within them” and will never be content with having the right to marry, as “they are operating outside of nature and outside of God’s plan and design.”

He went on to say that gay rights advocates ultimately want “the indoctrination of our kids.” Perkins has previously said that gay youth are more likely to commit suicide not as a result of “inacceptance” but because they intuitively know they are “abnormal” and even blamed “the homosexual movement” for suicides.

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Mitt Romney

The revelation comes two weeks after Romney said in New Hampshire that he opposed discrimination against LGBT Americans.

But according to CNN, Romney donated to the extremist group Massachusetts Family Institute, as well as the Becket Fund. The Massachusetts Family Institute received $10,000 from Romney in 2006, while the Beckett Fund received $25,000 in 2009. The donations came from the Tyler Charitable Foundation, set up and funded by the Romneys.

The Massachusetts Family Institute has long been a vocal opponent of marriage equality, and believes sexual orientation is a choice that can be cured. From their website: “Our compassion is for those struggling with same-sex attraction and we encourage the healing of individuals who wish to change their choice of lifestyle…”

The group also is ruthless in its dedication to distorting programs intended to reduce bullying and make schools safer, more welcoming environments for all students. It says gay-straight alliances may violate the Constitution and parental rights, and says associated programming pushes a radical, pro-homosexual agenda.

Romney also gave a significant sum of money to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which describes itself as a nonprofit, nonpartisan, interfaith group dedicated to protecting the expression of religious traditions.

The group is vehemently anti-marriage equality, and has argued that allowing committed same-sex couples to marry would trigger a wave of litigation for religious organizations objecting to performing or recognizing such ceremonies in states across the nation.

The organization also compared pro-equality demonstrations during the time when Proposition 8 was a hot-button issue in California to the actions of the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda.

The second openly gay guest is Lorelei Kilker, an environmental chemist who was part of the government’s class action suit to secure equal wages for women.

Courtesy Ginger Wallace

Ginger Wallace

Wallace, reached by phone Tuesday morning, said her partner of 11 years, Kathy Knopf, will be with her at the White House reception and then will watch the speech with other spouses at the White House.

Wallace, 43, said the White House asked Servicemembers United leader Alex Nicholson for names of openly gay service members to consider to be honored with the invitation. In addition, Wallace had been the subject of an article in the Washington, D.C. gay newspaper, the Washington Blade, in early December. The article noted that Knopf would be participating in Wallace’s promotion ceremony. Then, that article was quoted a few weeks later by White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett in a Huffington Post piece on the anniversary of President Obama’s signing of the bill to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

“I could not be more honored or proud,” said Wallace, Tuesday morning. “I’m representing thousands and thousands who have served or are serving…. But it’s truly not about us. It’s about all the gays and lesbians who have served, and those who served and we’re not as fortunate as I to have full careers, and those who will serve in the future. And it is about our families and partners.”

Wallace is currently in training for deployment to Afghanistan this spring to serve as an adviser to senior officials in the Afghan government and military.

Lorelei Kilker could not be reached at deadline today, but a White House advisory notes that she is an analytical chemist for an environmental lab.

“In October of 2011,” notes the advisory, “Ms. Kilker was one of a class of women who benefitted from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) investigation of alleged systematic sex discrimination at her former employer that resulted in the award of back wages and significant remedial relief, arrangements that were achieved through a cooperative process between the employer and EEOC.”

An EEOC press release October 3, 2011, identified Kilker as having been an employee of Western Sugar Cooperative when she brought to the EEOC’s attention practices by the company that resulted in female employees being denied the same training, desirable work assignments, and promotions as its male employees. Kilker filed a lawsuit on behalf of herself and other women at the company and, with the intervention of EEOC, Western Sugar agreed to make “significant remedial relief.”

The advisory notes that Kilker has a domestic partner and two children and that they live in Brighton.

OLYMPIA, Wa. — Ken Hutcherson, Washington’s leading anti-gay pastor, ranted against same-sex marriage in his testimony before the Senate Government Operations Committee this morning, arguing that by approving marriage equality, lawmakers would have to assume that they “know better than God”:

HUTCHERSON: I think that you are saying, as a committee and as a legislature that you know better than God, since you think that it is a very minded, bigoted, not understanding and loving thing to limit marriage to one man and one woman…If you pass this bill you’re just as narrow minded, you are just as bigoted and you’re just as unloving to everything and everyone who wants to get married outside of one man and one woman, two men and two women. But since you think God is not smart enough to make it fair, you’re saying that you’re smart enough to make it fair.

Watch it:

Jennifer Roback Morse, president of the Ruth Institute, also condemned same-sex couples for filing “petty” complaints of discrimination, including lawsuits against Bed & Breakfasts that refuse to rent a double rooms to gays and lesbians. “They would have gladly rented them separate rooms, but that was not good enough,” she remarked. Watch it:

Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) announced her evolution toward same-sex marriage and pledged to legalize the practice before the end of the legislative session. The state legislature is reportedly just one vote away from approving the measure.

Two other witnesses argued that gay people live short life spans and likened gay relationships to The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA):

So what is the cause of AIDS, according to Fischer? Well, it is the thousands of sexual partners that gay men have coupled with the fact that they need to take “poppers” in order to have that much sex. It is these poppers, Fischer says, that destroy the immune system and “96% of the people who engage actively in homosexuality” use these drugs:

According to Fischer, “the average homosexual has hundreds of sexual partners over the course of a lifetime. Hundreds. Some of them have between 500 and 1000 and there are any number of homosexuals, and they admit this in their own literature, have more then a 1000 sexual partners.”

AFTAH, along with other anti-gay organizations, is incensed that the SPLC classified them as “anti-gay hate groups.”

One of the activists joining them was North Carolina pastor Patrick Wooden, one of the chief organizers for the North Carolina amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Not that the SPLC needed further proof of AFTAH’s demonization of gays and lesbians, but while appearing on LaBarbera’s radio show, Wooden told LaBarbera that homosexuality would “most certainly mean the extinction of the human race.”

He claims that the medical community is suppressing the truth about the medical problems of homosexuals as it would make people “gag and no one would want to be in a lifestyle like that,” arguing that by the time gay mean reach their middle ages they “have to wear a diaper or a butt plug just to be able to contain their bowels” because of “what happens to the male anus.”

Listen:

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In a passionate, sermon-like speech about building unity, King said she didn’t care if people were Hindu, Buddhist, Islamist, were from the North side or the South side, were black or white, were “heterosexual or homosexual, or gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender” — that all people were needed to create unity.

LGBT people who attended the rally said they were shocked that King – who has a long anti-gay past — actually acknowledged the community in a public speech, but said they were also glad because it shows people can evolve.

Rev. Maressa Pendermon, a minister with LGBT-inclusive Unity Fellowship Church, said she at first intended to tune out King because of her anti-gay past, but decided to pay attention one more time.

For her father’s vision to be realized we’ve got to come together across boundaries and then she got in preacher mode. Then she said ‘heterosexual or homosexual,’ and then backed up and said ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.’ We need all of us,” Pendermon said.

There’s always room for growth,” Pendermon said, describing her reaction to King’s words. “People grow and people change. Sometimes we don’t let them. I wasn’t expecting that. And I was already ready to shut down but I challenged myself to listen and I’m glad I listened.”

Pendermon and her church were part of a counter protest in 2004 at the same intersection where today’s rally took place. In 2004, King was an elder at Bishop Eddie Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church and the two led a march of thousands through the streets of Atlanta to protest, among other issues, gay marriage. She has also said that her father “did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage.”

Craig Washington, a founder of the Bayard Rustin/Audre Lorde breakfast where LGBT activists and allies gather before participating in the MLK march, said he was “surprised and actually excited” by King’s words.

It reminded me that people can and do shift attitudes. They do evolve,” he said. “What Bernice’s turnabout …spoke to is potential to change. We still have to remember they too are human.

I was like, ‘What?’ I clutched pearls. I sure did. I was not prepared to applaud Bernice King today and she gave me something to applaud,” Washington said.

Paulina Helm-Hernandez, the LGBT honorary grand marshal for today’s march and rally, said she also was surprised to hear King’s inclusive words.

“I thought it was great. First time I’ve ever heard her say lesbian, gay, bi and trans out loud,” she said. “She said homosexual at first and then corrected herself. It takes a lot of grace to do something like that when you’re on a roll.”

Whether King was sincere and genuine with her words remains to be seen, Helm-Hernandez said.

“I feel like in coming years that will be telling what she said was genuine. I hope so,” she said.

King was recently named CEO of the King Center after she left New Birth following Eddie Long’s sex scandal in which he was sued by young men who accused him of coercing them into sexual relationships.