Mike Pence Promises To Fix Indiana Law So It Bars Discrimination
WASHINGTON — Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) said Tuesday he will back an amendment to the state’s new “religious freedom” law clarifying that it does not allow businesses to deny service to anyone, and insisted that he never intended to discriminate against members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

“That is so offensive to me as a Hoosier,” Pence said during a press conference in Indianapolis, casting himself, the GOP-controlled General Assembly and the new Religious Freedom Restoration Act as victims of “mischaracterizations” perpetrated by the media and the law’s opponents.

“I don’t believe for a minute that it was the intention of the General Assembly to create a license to discriminate, or a right to deny services to gays, lesbians or anyone else in this state. And it certainly wasn’t my intent,” he added. “But I can appreciate that that’s become the impression — not just here in Indiana, but all across this country. And we need to confront that.”

RFRA would allow any individual or corporation to cite religious beliefs as a defense when sued by a private party, potentially opening up the door to businesses turning away gay and lesbian customers for religious reasons.

Pence said he wants the General Assembly to move legislation this week that would make it clear that businesses are not allowed to deny services to anyone. He continued to insist, however, that he does not support adding protections explicitly barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

“I never supported that,” said Pence. “I want to be clear. It is not on my agenda.”

But without such protections, many members of the LGBT community believe Pence isn’t going far enough. Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said Pence needs to back such language in order to ensure that LGBT individuals are truly protected.

If @GovPenceIN wants this to go away, adding protections for all Hoosiers needs to GET on his agenda.

— Chad Griffin (@ChadHGriffin) March 31, 2015

As a member of the House of Representatives, Pence — who retired from Congress in 2012 — received a 0 percent rating on LGBT issues from HRC.

Pence and his state have faced significant national backlash since he signed RFRA last week. The governors of Connecticut and Washington have imposed bans on state-funded travel to Indiana, and several events scheduled to be held in the state have been canceled. Organizers of Gen Con, which has been called the largest gaming convention in the country, are considering moving the gathering from Indiana as well.

Nearby cities like Chicago are capitalizing on the controversy, with Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) trying to lure Indiana-based businesses into his city.

HUFFPOST READERS: If you live in Indiana, we want to hear about how this law is affecting you. Email your story or any tips to [email protected]. Include your name, the city you live in, and a phone number if you’re willing to be contacted by a reporter.

www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/31/indiana-religious-freedom_n_6977170.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Six Reasons Why Indiana’s Antigay Law Is Even Worse Than You Imagined

Indiana is getting a well-deserved black eye for the passage of a law that makes it perfectly fine to discriminate against LGBT people if Jesus tells you to. (For the record, Jesus doesn’t.)

But a lot of the brouhaha over the new law fails to capture just how awful it really is. In fact, much of the coverage makes it seem as if the Indiana law is not very different than other religious liberty bills, except for the blowback the state is getting.

Not true.

Here are six reasons that Indiana’s full-frontal attack on equality is far worse than anyone could have imagined.

1. It allows corporations to discriminate for religious reasons. There are a lot of existing state laws (and a federal law) meant to protect people exercising their religious belief. But as Garrett Epps at The Atlantic points out, Indiana’s law not only abandons the usual limits to religious expression, but it actually extends the right to discriminate to for-profit companies. If a major corporation in Indiana decides it wants to fire all of its LGBT employees on the grounds that the company’s faith requires those employees to be indigent, the law is on the company’s side. This isn’t a case of protecting elderly homophobic florists. This is a case of empowering major businesses to do as they please in the name of religion.

2. The law protects bigots facing civil suits. Epps also notes that the religious liberty defense must be accepted in civil suits. It’s one thing if the government decides to bring suit against someone for housing discrimination. It’s entirely another if a couple sues a landlord for the same reason. But under the Indiana law, the same defense can be used by the landlord in either case. Why is this a big deal? Because it’s meant to respond to a New Mexico court ruling involving a photographer who refused to take pictures of a same-sex ceremony. In that ruling, the court rejected the photographer’s claim that she was protected under that state’s religious liberty law on the grounds that the state was not a party in the lawsuit and therefore the law wasn’t applicable. The Supreme Court upheld that ruling, which is something the Indiana law is explicitly trying to prevent from happening in that state.

3. Gov. Mike Pence is supposed to be a moderate. Yes, the man whose appearance on television Sunday was the type of natural disaster usually confined to the Weather Channel is not part of the GOP far right. In fact, he’s angered Tea Party types for being too much of a squish. Yet somehow this man of the middle thought it was perfectly okay to sign into law a bill that enshrines discrimination. It’s a sign of how far the Republican party has veered to the right (and how much he wants to be on the national ticket) that Pence would feel comfortable putting pen to paper in this case. (That’s also why supposedly moderate Jeb Bush has also endorsed the law.)

4. This is the bill that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed last year. Jan Brewer was hardly the type of politician who would be carried aloft through adoring crowds at the Pride Parade. After all, this is a woman who ran a gay-baiting campaign against an opponent. But Brewer decided that the religious liberty bill passed by her state legislature went too far and did the right thing (for the wrong reasons) and vetoed the measure. A bill has to be pretty repulsive to be too strong for the likes of Brewer.

5. The Indiana law will become the rallying cry for the religious right in the 2016 campaign. Indiana will be the standard against which all the candidates will be measured. Every Republican candidate will have to genuflect before the Indiana law as the one that must be followed–or refuse to do so at his own peril. That means the antigay right will have a totem with which to charge back into battle, as it refights the culture war.

6. It’s a sign of the ongoing backlash against marriage equality. This may seem obvious, but the form that the backlash has taken was not a given. There were many different ways for opponents of marriage equality to respond, from resignation to protest. Instead, they chose to go a route where it became clear that they see discrimination as the only possible recourse and, even worse, as an acceptable option. For all the talk about knowing they are fighting a lost cause, religious conservatives are showing that they will pull out all the stops when it comes to opposing LGBT rights. If that means coming across as complete bigots, they don’t care. They have nothing left to lose. And under those circumstances, you can expect some pretty ugly fights to keep surfacing. Indiana is one example.

It won’t be the last.

JohnGallagher

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2015 Trans 100 Honors Positive Work By Transgender And Gender Non-Conforming People Nationwide
While much work is left to do, we’ve happily seen unprecedented growth for mainstream transgender visibility in the past several years. Now, it’s time to once again honor those who are doing fighting to make this visibility possible.

The Trans 100 is an annual event that celebrates the excellence of 100 people working to advance transgender political and social rights. While so much of the typical media focus tends to be on negative stories surrounding transgender identity, The Trans 100 is an attempt to shift the coverage of transgender issues to what’s working.

“It has been an amazing year for us at The Trans 100. Every year, the nomination list gets longer and the selection process harder,” Crispin Torres, co-director of The Trans 100, said in a statement sent to The Huffington Post. “We are seeing the original vision of the trans 100 come to life: That if trans folks begin seeing more folks like themselves out in the world, not just surviving, but thriving, we can flip the script from trans survival to trans empowerment.”

A press release for The 2015 Trans 100 notes:

The Trans 100 is not an award ceremony. It is not a list of the “Best” or the “Most Important” trans people. It is not a popularity contest and there are many individuals absent from the list who are doing excellent work. More are no longer with us.

To quote The Trans 100 Co-Founder Jen Richards, The Trans 100 “is an intentionally curated list of out trans people who are working on trans issues in the United States and having a positive impact.”

The Trans 100 2015 event, which took place in Chicago on Sunday night, was hosted by performance artist and educator Precious Davis and educator and activist Myles Brady. It included keynote speeches given by “The Matrix” and “Cloud Atlas” co-director Lana Wachowski and media advocate and strategist Tiq Milan, and featured performances by musician and Against Me! lead singer Laura Jane Grace and hip-hop rapper Rocco Katastrophe.

Head here for more info about the 3rd annual Trans 100 and here to download the full list of honorees.

www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/30/2015-trans-100_n_6969702.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Disciples of Christ Church Reconsiders Indianapolis for Annual Convention

In a strongly worded letter to Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, ministry leaders of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) expressed concern over the state’s recent passage of dangerous anti-LGBT legislation.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/disciples-of-christ-church-reconsiders-indianapolis-for-annual-convention?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Advocates Mobilize to Stop Georgia's Anti-LGBT 'Religious Freedom' Bill: VIDEO

Kyler Geoffroy

www.towleroad.com/2015/03/georgia.html

Rachel Maddow on the 24 Pilots Over the Past 20 Years Who Have Deliberately Brought Down Planes: VIDEO

Andy Towle

www.towleroad.com/2015/03/maddowgermanwings.html

Flaunt Your Flora! Men’s Floral Print Underwear Is A Hot New Trend

Men’s apparel designed with floral prints became a prominent style about a year ago. Embraced by the younger generation of guys, modern floral prints took on the attitude of modern hipsters. But not entirely, because floral prints also found there way into formalwear — most notably on ties and button-down shirts, some of which used the floral for bold cuff and collar accents. Now in Spring 2015, floral print underwear is blooming across some of The Underwear Expert’s most admired brands.

There are 10 pairs of floral print underwear and one floral swim brief featured in this exclusive photo shoot by Jerrad Matthew. Modeled by Adam Powell, each look waters the prints with masculine touches.

The Jor Garden Brief and the Croota Garden Grove 02 Boxer are coincidentally the shoot’s darkest pairs. Jor’s design uses a black waistband and seams to contrast a floral print that rocks a deep green/bold pink contrast. Croota earns style points by applying their floral look against a navy underwear body. Navy is the thinking man’s “basic” color. It’s handsome without even trying, and even better with touches of white, red and light blue flowers.

On the lighter side of the spectrum is the Dirt Squirrel Floral Boxer Brief and Oiler & Boiler’s Nantucket Paradise Boxer. These looks do the opposite of the darkest pairs and trade black and navy for white and light blue. Rather than tone down the flowers, these color bases make them blossom. After all, flowers do need light to grow.

You can see more of this photo shoot on The Underwear Expert.

Photo Credit: Jerrad Matthew Exclusively for The Underwear Expert.

Underwear Expert

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Mother Opens Grindr, Finds Her Husband’s Headless Torso In Their Bathroom

It was one thing for Patrick to catch Kevin using it in the riveting season finale of Looking this week, but in the forums of parenting resource MumsNet, a different sort of Grindr user was being outed.

And unlike Kevin, this loader of more guys chose to use a photo taken in the ‘ensuite bathroom’ he shares with his wife. She was understandably shaken to discover her tile countertop (not to mention her husband’s headless torso) on display for the neighborhood gays to tap on. That profile advertising his lust for ass didn’t help the situation.

User bonniescot123 wrote:

Hello. Hands shaking. Today I found my DH on Grindr.Without a doubt it is him. Posing in our ensuite bathroom. Confronted him. Says it is not him but refuses to let me see his phone. He is refusing to talk to me. Two children. 7 and 10. I am 43. Dont know what to do. Please some advice.

While Bonnie does seem to be in shock, it is initially unclear what made her download the app onto her phone in the first place. She says she “had doubts,” but that’s it.

She later wrote:

I don’t know for a fact if he has done the deed but his profile message indicated he has and was actively looking for a nice ass. There have been signs over the years and he has always denied and made me feel paranoid. We continued to have a physical relationship. I do feel sad for him. For us both and the kids. He is being a complete dick but I still love him.

Sadly, her husband doesn’t seem to budge and do the right thing — open up to his wife and tell the truth for the first time in his life.

But even amid her anger, Bonnie understands what is at stake:

Thank you everyone for the advice. He has been living with this huge burden and I have no intention of destroying him or his reputation so long as he plays fair. I dont know if I can face a solicitor and have no savings to pay for one. I am going to take tomorrow off work as sick leave. Just cant face going in. Cant help wishing I was still in the dark but that is no way to live. Why could he not face up to his sexuality. He has checked out though and I deserve better.

h/t GailyGrind

Dan Tracer

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Indiana House Passes Anti-LGBT Religious Discrimination Bill

The Indiana House of Representatives today voted in favor of a sweeping bill allowing individuals to use religion as an excuse to discriminate against LGBT people and other minorities
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/indiana-house-passes-anti-lgbt-religious-discrimination-bill?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed