Shirley Phelps-Roper Loves the New 'Sodomite Rainbow House' Across the Street from Westboro Baptist: VIDEO

Yesterday I posted about the new 'Equality House' painted up right across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.

Shirley Phelps-Roper loves it:

“I love it,” she said. “What he does is he keeps the eyes of the whole earth on this message. Now everyday all people are thinking about is God will not have same sex marriage.”

The church even put out a statement.

"We thank God for the Sodomite Rainbow House. It is right across the street from the ONLY church that loves people enough to tell them the Bible truth about the filthy, soul-damning, nation-destroying sin of sodomy...The Sodomite Rainbow house helps shing a bright spotlight on this!"

Watch CNN's Jeanne Moos interview the house's new owner, AFTER THE JUMP...

Kansas Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Lesbian Mother's Rights

In what is being called a groundbreaking decision, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled Friday that the nonbiological mother of two children who was in a long-term lesbian relationship can have the same parental rights as the biological mother. 

The case involves Kelly Goudschaal (who carried the children after undergoing artificial insemination) and her former partner, Marci Frazier. The Kansas City Star reports:

The couple had signed a co-parenting agreement that stated Frazier’s “relationship with the children should be protected and promoted,” and that they intended “to jointly and equally share parental responsibility.” After they separated, Goudschaal began limiting Frazier’s visitations and moved with the children to Texas.

Frazier filed a legal action seeking to have the parenting agreement enforced. After a trial, Johnson County District Judge Kevin Moriarty found that joint custody was “in the best interests of the children.”

Goudschaal was granted residential custody. Frazier was ordered to pay monthly child support and was granted “reasonable parenting time.”

As for the court's decision:

The Supreme Court said in Friday’s decision: “We have declared that the public policy in Kansas requires our courts to act in the best interests of the children when determining the legal obligations to be imposed and the rights to be conferred in the mother and child relationship.”

The court said that “what Goudschaal really wants is to renege on the co-parenting agreement without regard to the rights of or harm to the children, all in the name of constitutionally protected parental rights. “Surely, her constitutional rights do not stretch that far.”

Not enforcing the parenting agreement would deny the children the opportunity to have two parents as children in a traditional marriage would have, according to the court.

“The agreement is not injurious to the public because it provides the children with the resources of two persons, rather than leaving them as the fatherless children of an artificially inseminated mother,” the court ruled.

Kansas Presses Sperm Donor to Pay Child Support to Lesbian Couple

William Marotta, a Kansas sperm donor who answered an online ad placed by a lesbian couple three years ago, is now being pressed by the state to provide child support. The state says that despite the fact an agreement was signed waiving his rights, the man is responsible based on the fact that a doctor was not used for the insemination.

The AP reports:

Marotta, a 46-year-old Topeka resident, answered an online ad in 2009 from a local couple, Angela Bauer and Jennifer Schreiner, who said they were seeking a sperm donor. After exchanging emails and meeting, the three signed an agreement relieving Marotta of any financial or paternal responsibility.

But instead of working with a doctor, Marotta agreed to drop off a container with his sperm at the couple's home and the women successfully handled the artificial insemination themselves. Schreiner become pregnant with a girl.

Late last year, after she and Bauer broke up, Schreiner received public assistance from the state to help care for the girl.

The state says Marotta is responsible for $6,000 that the child's biological mother received through public assistance and future child support.

Kansas Dems A-Okay With State Rep. Jan Pauls' Anti-Gay Politics

Here's a reminder that not all political members toe the party line: Kansas State Rep. Jan Pauls, a Democrat who has been office for over 20 years, has rejected the national party's endorsement of marriage equality.

"The Democratic national platforms have never been that important in local or state politics. We’re a little different here," she said, according to Back2Stonewall. "I think most Kansans' concerns are not that the homosexuals want equal rights but superior rights. That’s what makes this issue so difficult."

Rep Pauls' husband, Ron Pauls, is even worse, saying "homosexuals don't know how to love". "Homosexuals are all about the sex," he claims. "Pretty soon you won’t be able to quote Bible verses from the pulpit if they’re against homosexuality."

The Kansas Democratic Party apparently isn't keen on toeing the line, either: they're backing Pauls' reelection campaign. She was very nearly defeated during the primary by an openly gay man named Erich Bishops.

News: Orionid, DADT's Legacy, Adele's Son, Ireland

Tonight is the best night to see the annual Orionid meteor shower.

The group American Atheists are taking on Mormonism's membership clauses. The church responded thusly, "This group seems not to know that there have been black members of the Church since our earliest history, and there are many faithful gay members of the Church today." Black men simply couldn't be ordained as lay priests until 1978.

Police in Brookfield, WI, are looking for Radcliffe Haughton for his alleged role in the shooting at a spa today. Seven people were shot, three have died and police are disarming explosives Haughton reportedly left behind. [Update: Haughton was found dead from a self-inflicted gun shot wound.]

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Madonna's Erotica, a review of what it's all about.

National Organization for Marriage operative Frank Schubert's anti-equality crusade is big business: "Schubert collected $958,594 for his anti-equality work in North Carolina earlier this year. In the four marriage ballot states, Schubert has collected $967,567.88 in Washington; $492,680 in Maryland; $303,307.69 in Minnesota; and $200,043.46 in Maine. While these funds are likely used to pay for advertising, it’s unclear what percentage is lining Schubert’s pockets."

Full trailer of the Osama bin Laden flick Zero Dark Thirty.

Adele welcomed her first child this weekend, a baby boy. No name has been released.

SNL takes on the second great presidential debate.

An interview with Australian electopop band Van She.

Bureaucratic legacy: Servicemembers Legal Defense Network will spend the next few years removing "dishonorable discharge" and other DADT labels that remain on the records of servicemembers kicked out for being gay.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights and the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson are trying to stop a right-wing lawsuit that wants to overturn California's ban on "ex-gay therapy" for minors.

More on late Sen. George McGovern's ahead-of-his-time politics, from Bruce Miroff: "Mr. McGovern’s 1972 campaign is indelibly associated with the mass movements of the late 1960s — the antiwar movement above all, but also feminism and the nascent movement for gay liberation. As a son of a Methodist minister, growing up in small prairie towns during the Depression, he was an unlikely spokesman for the political and cultural aspirations of an emerging 'counterculture.' ... His sense of fairness and tolerance made him open to new cultural forces alien to his upbringing, even when some of their issues — especially abortion — left him uncomfortable."

In case you were wondering, Ted Haggard, the right-wing pastor caught with his pants down in 2008, has shifted gears and now believes that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

"Is Obama the 'wrong' kind of Christian?"

As you probably guessed, Paranormal Activity 4 won top slot at the box office with $30 million.

The marijuana legalization fight faces some key votes next month: "Voters in Colorado, Washington state and Oregon are set to vote Nov. 6 on whether to legalize and tax marijuana sales, raising the possibility of a showdown with the federal government, which views pot as an illegal narcotic."

Irish Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore reiterated his support for marriage equality at the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association conference: "As I have stated elsewhere, the right of same-sex couples to marry is not a gay rights issue, it is a civil rights issue, and one that I support."

The CrossPoint Church in Hutchinson, Kansas, booted long-time congregant and band member Chad Graber because he's gay. "He switched from struggling with his sin to embracing it," said senior pastor Andy Addis.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/10/21/3876912/church-cites-scripture-in-barring.html#storylink=cpy

Man Sues Kansas School District For Failing To Stop Homophobic Bullying: VIDEO

A Kansas man filed a lawsuit against the Blue Valley School District that alleges school officials turned a blind eye to bullying he endured because of his perceived sexual orientation.

In addition to having his nose broken on a number of occasions and being called homophobic slurs, the unidentified man, who graduated in 2010, was allegedly doused in urine by abusive classmates and had his hand forced on a burner during cooking class. And administrators, he claims, did nothing.

KCTV has more:

"His reports were met with indifference, inaction, or where some action was taken, the action was wholly inadequate and ineffective," according to the lawsuit.

"A few sympathetic teachers" passed on the reports to administrators, but either nothing was done or administrators "made inadequate and feeble attempts to discipline students, only to knowingly permit the physical and emotional assaults and harassment to continue," according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiff suffered emotional and physical trauma, and as a result his grades suffered. He attended classes at another facility to escape the abuse, the lawsuit claims. He still experiences physical pain and post-traumatic stress disorder issues, and is receiving counseling.

"The harassment was so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it effectively deprived (the plaintiff) of access to educational benefits or opportunities provided by the school district," according to the lawsuit.

Watch video of the report AFTER THE JUMP.