Pizza Hut springs into damage control over transphobic tweet
Not a good look, Pizza Hut.

www.queerty.com/pizza-hut-springs-damage-control-transphobic-tweet-20180809?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

Pastor who hates gay people busted for soliciting gay minor for gay sex… again
Timothy Lee Reddin is the pastor at Turner Street Baptist Church, where he regularly preaches about the evils of homosexuality.

www.queerty.com/pastor-hates-gay-people-busted-soliciting-gay-minor-gay-sex-20180809?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

Stephen Colbert Grills CNN’s Jim Acosta on What It Feels Like to Be Continually Accosted by Trump: WATCH

Wearing socks from the “Enemy of the People” collection, CNN reporter and frequent Trump target Jim Acosta joined Stephen Colbert to talk about the state of “fake news” CNN and covering Trump today.

Colbert first brought up Acosta’s recent confrontation with Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who refused to say that journalists are not the “enemy of the people.”

Said Acosta: “It’s not a big deal, right? Just say, you know, we’re not the enemy of the people. At the end of the day, you shouldn’t be referring to journalists as the ‘enemy of the people.’ We’re not the enemy of the people.”

Acosta said that when Trump refers to CNN as “fake news” he takes it as “he’s calling on me for a question.”

“We have had to be fact checkers in real time,” added Acosta. “These are some tough times…I don’t think we do ourselves any good, Stephen, if we shy away from these hard questions. And, you know, my goodness, the way I look at it is– and this is the debate I have with my fellow journalists when we talk about this is what if we just did nothing? Do we just sit back and do nothing in the face of that?”

Colbert then played a clip of Acosta getting attacked by a mob at Trump’s Tampa rally.

Replied Acosta: “They’ll ask me, ‘Why don’t you report the good things he does?’ I said, ‘Listen, we just talked about the jobs numbers last Friday. He had good jobs numbers last Friday.’ And they say, ‘Oh, okay. Well, do you like the president?’ And I said, ‘That’s not relevant. I don’t have to like the president of the United States. He doesn’t have to like me. We all have jobs to do.’ My sense of it, Stephen, is that a lot of these folks- they get their impression of what we do by watching other conservative outlets, they look at other conservative websites. And these folks are focused on the coverage of the president’s behavior more so than the president’s behavior. And to me, I think the president’s behavior is more newsworthy than our coverage. But a lot of these folks out there, they’re getting their sense of what we do twisted and warped by some people out there who just want to do the president’s bidding.”

Asked Colbert: “Do you worry that the president points at y’all so much and there’s a natural need to respond as a human being that you end up being the story when that’s not really the goal of your journalism?”

Replied Acosta: “We’re not supposed to be the story, you know. That’s not why I’m out there. I get accused of that from time to time, and my attitude is ‘Listen, I’m allowed to care about this country as much as anybody else.’ If you think that … you can take children away from their parents on the border and put them in cages, if you think you can demonize immigrants and call them rapists and criminals, if you think that you can distort the sense of reality that we all have on a daily basis by telling lie after lie and falsehood after falsehood and not face any hard questions, I think you’re just not living in the same United States of America that I live in.”

Quipped Colbert: “I thought you were going to say, ‘Then you might be Donald Trump.’”

Watch:

The post Stephen Colbert Grills CNN’s Jim Acosta on What It Feels Like to Be Continually Accosted by Trump: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Stephen Colbert Grills CNN’s Jim Acosta on What It Feels Like to Be Continually Accosted by Trump: WATCH

What Will Be Deleted From History? (Art)

www.advocate.com/art/2018/8/09/what-will-be-deleted-history-art

Jeff Sessions Slammed After Telling Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group ADF, ‘You Are Not a Hate Group’ – WATCH

Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke to the Alliance Defending Freedom, designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, in an address that was streamed live on Facebook (above).

Sessions told the group that it is not a hate group.

Said Sessions:

“They just call people names like hate group, does that sound familiar? I’m from Alabama the home of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a group that has done vital work…There were hate groups in the South and I suppose in the nation today there are some…certainly there are. They attack, in my region, the life liberty and the very worth of minority citizens…”

He added: “When I spoke to ADF last year, I learned that the Southern Poverty Law Center had classified ADF as a ‘hate group’ Many in the media simply parroted that as a fact…They have used this designation as a weapon and they have wielded it against conservative organizations that refuse to accept their orthodoxy and choose instead to speak for their conscience and their beliefs. They use it to bully and intimidate groups that fight for religious freedom, these constitutional rights of the American people.”

Continued Sessions, in a line that received a large round of applause: “You and I may not agree on everything — but I wanted to come back here tonight partially because I wanted to say this: You are not a hate group.”

The SPLC released a statement in response to Sessions’ assertion.

SPLC President Richard Cohen explained the designation in a letter to Sessions:

“In a manner analogous to how the Department of Justice defines hate crimes, we identify hate groups as those that vilify others because of their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability – prejudices that strike at the heart of our democratic values and fracture society along its most fragile fault lines,” Cohen wrote.

“Just as sincerely held religious beliefs would not be a defense to a hate crime prosecution, vilifying others in the name of religion should not immunize a group from being designated as a hate group, in our view.”

Cohen pointed to groups such as the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom – groups that regularly use their public platforms to demonize the LGBT community. Both, for example, “promote the myth that there is a link between homosexuality and pedophilia.”

“Linking the LGBT community to pedophilia as the FRC and the ADF have done is not an expression of a religious belief,” the letter says. “It is simply a dangerous and ugly falsehood. As you know, FBI hate crime data show that the LGBT community is the minority group most likely targeted for violent hate crimes.”

Cohen added: “The Alliance Defending Freedom spreads demonizing lies about the LGBT community in this country and seeks to criminalize it abroad. If the ADF had its way, gay people would be back in the closet for fear of going to jail. It’s inappropriate for the nation’s top law enforcement officer to lend the prestige of his office to this group. And it’s ironic to suggest that the rights of ADF sympathizers are under attack when the ADF is doing everything in its power to deny the equal protection of the laws to the LGBT community.”

The post Jeff Sessions Slammed After Telling Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group ADF, ‘You Are Not a Hate Group’ – WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Jeff Sessions Slammed After Telling Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group ADF, ‘You Are Not a Hate Group’ – WATCH