“Geography Of Hate” Maps Racist and Homophobic Tweets

As reported by ABC News, a new Twitter study by assistant professor Monica Stephens and Humboldt State University measured racist and homophobic tweets in the United States. The result is the “Geography of Hate” shown above. To read more, click here.

Gay Parades Banned In Moscow For 100 years

Nikolay Alexeyev has been campaigning for years for the right to stage gay parades in Russia

Moscow’s top court has upheld a ban on gay pride marches in the Russian capital for the next 100 years. Earlier Russia’s best-known gay rights campaigner, Nikolay Alexeyev, had gone to court hoping to overturn the city council’s ban on gay parades. The Moscow city government argues that the gay parade would risk causing public disorder and that most Muscovites do not support such an event. To read more, click here.

Oppression of LGBT People in Russia Draws Condemnation

Injured Gay Protestors Surrounded By Russian Police

A recent law signed by President Vladimir V. Putin has ignited international condemnation. The new law, nominally aimed at “protecting” children by banning “propaganda on nontraditional sexual relationships,” is widely understood as an effort to suppress homosexuality and Russia’s fledgling gay rights movement. Russia remains a country where discrimination and even violence against gay people are widely tolerated. To read more, click here.

Hip Hop Artist Takes on Homophobia

Macklemore is a hip-hop artist whose biggest hit is about the second-hand shops where he buys clothes. But he’s also becoming famous for another song, Same Love, which promotes acceptance of LGBTQ people. To read more about Macklemore click here.

You can watch the YouTube video of Same Love below.

A Closet By Another Name

Daniel Mendelsohn, writes about the “coming out” of Anderson Cooper, CNN reporter and talk show host. In a New York Times op-ed piece, Mehdelsohn criticizes Cooper for not sooner speaking up about being a gay man:

You can’t claim to be comfortable with being gay while trying to keep it a secret: When you conceal your sexuality, you’re buying, however unconsciously or reluctantly, into the notion that there is, at some level, something wrong with it.

To read the full article, click here.

Boycotting a Cookie

The makers of Oreos posted on their Facebook page a special cookie in honor of gay pride. Some commenters have gone so far as to proclaim that eating Oreos is now a sin. Click here to read the comments on BuzzFeed

A Rage Cartoon, “Adam and Eve,” From Beyond Diversity

Study: Culture to Blame for Racism, Sexism, Homophobia

A study led by Paul Verhaeghen, a professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Psychology, found that facets of U.S. culture, such as literature, movies, television, radio and the internet, may contribute to the problem of racism, sexism and other “isms” by exhibiting the same stereotypes that society tries to snuff out. To read the story in Science Daily, click here.

Gen Silent: LGBT Elders Go Back Into the Closet

Vist the filmmaker’s website at by clicking here.

Regional Acceptance of Same-Sex Relations

A University of Chicago study shows wide variations in the regional acceptance of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. Acceptance is highest in New England, where 27 percent of adults say they think homosexual relations are “always wrong.”  To read more about this CBS News story, click here.

Wrestler Promotes LGBT Support Among Athletes

Wrestler Hudson Taylor

Hudson Taylor, an All-American wrestler and coach at Columbia University, wants to eliminate homophobia from all levels of sports. To learn more click here.

“I Don’t Care If You’re Offended”

In an article from his blog, Fineness & Accuracy, Scott Madin talks about the difference between saying something that is “offensive,” and saying something that harms others because of racism, sexism, homophobia, and the like. The article adds clarity to the “you’re-being-offensive-too” argument often made when people are rebuked for remarks that reinforce oppression. To read the article, click here.

Push(back) at the Intersections: How About Some -isms with Your Feminism?

What do Mary Daly, Margaret Sanger, Nellie McClung, Martha Griffiths, Gloria Steinem, Geraldine Ferraro, Julie Bindel, Robin Morgan, Germaine Greer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Janice Raymond, Sheila Jeffreys, and Beth Elliott have in common? According to s. e. smith, “All of these ‘leading lights’ of the feminist movement are contributors to a long and not very proud history of dragging -isms into the feminist movement.” To read smith’s article, click here.

Report: Catholic Attitudes On Gay and Lesbian Issues: A Comprehensive Portrait from Recent Research

Catholics are more supportive of legal recognitions of same-sex relationships than members of any other Christian tradition and Americans overall. Nearly three-quarters of Catholics favor either allowing gay and lesbian people to marry (43%) or allowing them to form civil unions (31%). Only 22% of Catholics say there should be no legal recognition of a gay couple’s relationship. To read the full report from the Public Religion Research Institute read here.

Microaggressions Blog

Microaggressions are brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities—whether intentional or unintentional—that communicate hostile attitudes, slights, or insults toward members of marginalized groups, including people of color, women, and members of the LGBTI community. The Microagressions blog collects and publishes reader-submitted descriptions of microaggressions and the impact the microaggressions had on the people who endured them.  Here are two examples:

Look at her. That’s no fair. Why do I have to walk? She’s taking advantage.

—I’m a wheelchair user in a large museum. I felt like my struggles with accessibility were nothing and the young, able-bodied man who said this expected pity.

* * * * * * *

Excuse me, do you speak English?

—Man at the bus stop. I am an Asian American woman. I was reading Jane Austen. In English.

To read the many posts on the blog and perhaps to submit your own, click here.

Joel Burns Tells Gay Teens, “It gets better.”

“Stereotype Threat:” Creating Poor Performance

Stereotype threat refers to the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s own group. Research shows that stereotype threat causes decreased performance and distancing from the stereotyped group. Click here to go ReducingStereotypeThreat.org to read more.