The line up for Cyndi Lauper’s Home For the Holidays benefit concert have been announced and this year’s roster is shaping up to be rather interesting. For the past four years Lauper has produced the concert series in collaboration with her True Colors Fund, an organization dedicated to raising awareness about homeless, queer youth.

“I am astounded by the artists who continue to give of their time and talent each and every year and I am so excited by the line-up who are joining us in December,” Lauper exclaimed in a statement. “The concert plays such an important role in supporting the True Colors Fund’s work to ensure that no young person is homeless again because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

In addition to Salt-n-Pepa, Natalie Maines, and Sufjan Stevens, 50 Cent will lend his talents to this year’s show. Curtis Jackson, better known by his stage name, has a storied history of fending off rumors about his sexuality in addition to lashing out at the gay community.

In 2010 Jackson drew heat from Truth Wins Out over a series of tweets relating about oral sex that were interpreted as homophobic. Jackson suggested that men who do not perform oral sex on women should kill themselves, a message that particularly ill-timed considering that 19 year-old Tyler Clementi had recently killed himself after being publicly outed as gay.

“The other night I made a joke about a blow job,” Jackson explained. “My male followers enjoyed it. So I then went on to joke about women receiving the same.”

“[Somehow] they turned a simple joke about oral sex into a anti gay statement. I have nothing against people who choose and alternative life.”

In an interview with Playboy back in 2004, Jackson said:

“I ain’t into fa**ots. I don’t like gay people around me, because I’m not comfortable with what their thoughts are. I’m not prejudiced. I just don’t go with gay people and kick it – we don’t have that much in common. I’d rather hang out with a straight dude. But women who like women, that’s cool.”

Home For the Holidays will take place on December 6th.

Former senator and likely presidential candidate Rick Santorum has said the only reason young people support gay rights is because they have never heard any arguments to the contrary, reports Right Wing Watch.

Speaking yesterday during an interview with Tony Perkins, president of listed hate group Family Research Council, Santorum said that the anti-gay lobby is losing in the battle for LGBT rights because “[LGBT activists] have effectively silenced the church on a lot of those issues and young people don’t even know what the opposing view is on these issues.”

On the issue of pastors in Houston suing the city for rejecting their petitions to repeal a non-discrimination ordinance, Santorum said:

“I really believe in this subject matter at hand with the gay community that a Judeo-Christian worldview cannot survive with a worldview that is as rabidly secular as this movement is.

“One is going to battle the other and I can tell you that the statists, these secular statists, do not want the competition that comes from the church and so they are going to do everything they can to marginalize them, to force them out of the public square to be quiet.

“They’re going to use, as they have, the Johnson amendment, try to use the IRS and the tax code to do so, they’re going to use every lever of power the government has to keep this competition of ideas silent so they can win the argument.”

Listen to the interview, AFTER THE JUMP…

Last year, Santorum claimed that same-sex marriage would “discourage” straight couples from marrying.

A federal judge in Kansas who was set to hear a challenge to the state’s ban on same-sex marriage today has canceled the hearing, the Associated Press reports:

ACLU attorney Doug Bonney said U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Crabtree is considering whether to reschedule the oral arguments or decide the case based on the parties’ written arguments.

Bonney said he told Crabtree during a 30-minute conference Thursday that the ACLU did not have time to review the state’s written response to the lawsuit because it had just been filed.

This is separate from the case scheduled to be heard before the Kansas Supreme Court on November 6.

Kansas remains the only state in the Tenth Circuit without marriage equality.