NY Archbishop on Catholics: 'We're Not Anti-Gay, We're Pro...Marriage'

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan told the New York Post this week that same-sex marriage advocates are "asking for trouble" in their quest for equality.

Said Dolan: "We believe that human beings are hard-wired with a sense of right and wrong. It's sort of in our DNA. And there are certain things that deep down we just know, because nature, and nature's God has implanted that sense within us. That's what philosophers, not even Catholic ones, like Aristotle, call natural law. There's an in-built code of right and wrong that's embedded in the human DNA...Hard-wired into us is a dictionary, and the dictionary defines marriage as between one man, one woman for life, please God, leading to the procreation of human life. And if we begin to tamper with the very definition of marriage, then we're going to be in big trouble. We're not anti-gay -- we're pro the most basic definition of marriage."

Watch the interview, in which Dolan says "we're not against gays" and "the Catholic church would defend the human dignity of gay people," AFTER THE JUMP...

News: Kevin Spacey, Pope AIDS, Tattoo, Baz Luhrmann, Denmark

Tireless self-promoters Ted Haggard and wife Gayle to appear on Divorce Court. Gayle: "This is part of Ted's journey. It's made him a better man. I see what has happened as a divine rescue."

Companion can't pull Kevin Spacey away from  Big Penis Book  in London.

Details on that book here.

ACLU files suit against high school in Corona del Mar, California for cultivating homophobic environment, charging violations of state and federal equal protection laws and citing cancelation of Rent musical as evidence.

Nathaniel Frank's investigation into the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, Unfriendly Fire, reviewed by the NYT.

Furor erupts over seminar on sexuality in Morocco: "Moroccan observers said it was unlikely that Moroccan authorities would allow the association to hold such activities and blamed foreign support. Moroccan sex researcher Hassan Serrat said Moroccan homosexuals are a small group and cannot organize such activities on their own. 'They are definitely getting foreign support especially from British and Spanish gay rights associations,' he told AlArabiya.net."

Anger after UK tattoo parlor advertises numbing cream "exclusively for poofters".

Project Runway contestant arrested for assaulting boyfriend with a laptop (and possibly apples, water, and a cat as well).

Are you jealous of RuPaul's boogie (possibley NSFW)?

Human rights groups demand investigation into murder of Colombian LGBT activist Alvaro Miguel Rivera, who was killed by unknown men in Cali, Colombia on March 6.

More gay book awards announced. Publishing Triangle lists its nominees. Main fiction selections have zero overlap with this year's nominees in the Lambda Literary Awards.

Vatican revises Pope's statement on condoms and AIDS: "According to journalists present, he originally said the AIDS problem 'cannot be overcome with the distribution of condoms which, on the contrary, increase the problem'. But in the Vatican's version, his words became: 'The scourge cannot be resolved with the distribution of prophylactics; on the contrary, the risk is of increasing the problem.'"

Baz Luhrmann struts his beefcake.

Anti-gay hate crime on University of Cincinnati campus: "Cincinnati Police have reported two felonious assaults that occurred on March 6, 2009, at 4:20a.m. in the 2500 block of Clifton Avenue. The victims were walking home when one of the victims stopped to talk to the suspects, who were friends from high school.  Upon hearing that the other victim was a homosexual, the suspects became aggressive and attacked both individuals." Student protest today.

Denmark gives adoption rights to same-sex couples.

Massachusetts anti-gay group brags about halting civil unions in Hawaii.

The latest from Aussiebum.

Jake Gyllenhaal may have put a ring on it.

NYC City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has avoided New York on past St. Patrick's Days because of the parade organizers' discriminatory policies toward gays and lesbians, writes about her holiday this year, at the White House: "I told him and Mrs. Obama that I was the first Irish, first woman, and first openly gay Speaker of the New York City Council. I told the President how grateful the Irish-American Community is for his strong and continued support of the peace in the North of Ireland. I then expressed my desire that he support issues of full LGBT equality, and suggested that a good early action would be to support a recent federal court ruling in San Francisco, requiring benefits to be extended to the same sex partners of court employees."

Pope Embraces Anti-Gay Holocaust Denier, Launches YouTube Channel

Pope Benedict has launched his very own Catholic propaganda channel on YouTube.

The Pope has also pardoned the excommunications of four bishops including British Bishop Richard Williamson, who is a Holocaust denier, a 9/11 truther, thinks women should neither be educated nor wear trousers, and is "violently" anti-gay, writes Andrew Sullivan:

"God did not wait for the founding of the Catholic Church to instill in men the horror of this sin, but he implanted in the human nature of all of us, unless or until we corrupt it, an instinct of violent repugnance for this particular sin, comparable to our instinctive repugnance for other misuses of our human frame, such as coprophagy."

Sullivan notes that in a letter from 1997 to his friends and benefactors, Williamson goes so far as to mock gays in a passage spelled out to mimic lisping:

"Oh, but Our Lord had chawity, (unlike thumwun we know who wath tho nathty to Pwintheth Di!). Our Lord loved thinnerth, and faggotth, and tho thould we!!"

Watch a short clip of Williamson, in which he states that he believes the Nazi gas chambers did not exist, AFTER THE JUMP...

Vatican: Priest Candidates Having Less Gay Sex

In October, the Vatican advised that candidates for the priesthood should undergo psychological testing "to screen out heterosexuals unable to control their sexual urges and those with strong homosexual tendencies."

This just in from the AP:

"A Vatican office that evaluated U.S. Roman Catholic seminaries says the schools have made improvements in halting what they call 'homosexual behavior' among students. The Vatican also says seminaries are doing well in teaching about celibacy and are generally effective in screening candidates for the priesthood. The Vatican ordered the seminary review in response to the clergy sex abuse crisis to see whether the schools had contributed to the problem."

Sent via press release from the Department of Wishful Thinking.

News: Roland Burris, iPod, Matt Dillon, Arkansas, Johnny Hazzard

Blagoblah: Roland Burris and his monument to himself.

REPORT: Apple launching large-form iPod Touch. "...expect a large screen iPod touch device to be released in the Fall of ‘09, with a 7 or 9 inch screen. Prototypes have been seen and handled by one of our sources, and Apple is talking to OEMs in Asia now about mass production."

SPEED: Matt Dillon arrested.

Sacha Baron-Cohen takes swipe at Madonna in gay Bruno film: "A major plotline sees Bruno and his boyfriend 'Diesel' adopting an African baby called David, who they then parade around the chic fashion capitals of the world."

29 plaintiffs: ACLU files lawsuit to strike down Arkansas ban on adoption and foster parenting by unmarried couples.

SPEEDO: Last year was white, this year it's black for Giorgio Armani.

Rick Warren: what will he pray?

Scientists: Moods spread like ripples through friends and family. "How grumpy people feel can be influenced not only by the state of mind of those closest to us, but also by friends of friends that we have never met like ripples from "pebbles thrown into a pond" , claim scientists. Professor James Fowler of the University of California, said each 'unhappy connection' decreased the chance of a person being happy by seven per cent. However, the effect works both ways with each 'happy connection' increasing the chance of a person's happiness by nine per cent."

Vatican does damage control over homophobic Pope remarks.

Ryan Gosling wants you to know about the room where he sleeps.

Johnny Hazzard is gay adult film acting's Top Chef (site NSFW).

Harvey Milk School students see Milk: "...the new movie 'Milk,' on the life of one of the first openly gay politicians to hold office in the United States, has given students at the nation's first public school dedicated to teaching gay, lesbian and transgender youths a glimpse into the leader's legacy, connecting them to a history many never knew. 'When it finished, I just felt so proud that I go to his school,' said Matthew 'Matty' Agostini, 18, who watched an advance screening with classmates from Harvey Milk High School. 'After he died, when they showed the people marching and there was a long line of people holding candles, I remember thinking if I was there, I would have been walking too.' Orville Bell, a teacher at the school, said after watching the movie, "I almost felt like screaming into the audience, 'I teach at that school!'"

The latest fall of a member of the Phoenix family.

German tennis pro Nicholas Kiefer, who we've featured here before, shows us what training is all about.

Lawsuit claims culture of homophobia in California Parks system: "Attorneys for California state park ranger Jennifer Donovan filed the civil suit December 16 in San Diego County Superior Court against the plaintiff's employer, the California Department of Parks and Recreation and several co-workers. The lawsuit describes an embattled employee enduring numerous incidents of homophobic slurs, harassment, and discrimination by her Southern California co-workers based, at least in part, on her sexual orientation."

ARIZONA: Backers of gay marriage ban filed donor list improperly. "The backers of the successful ballot proposal to constitutionally ban gay marriage did not get the occupations of the majority of those who contributed to the campaign despite a state law requiring them to gather that information. But the state's top election official said Monday that the wording of the law allows them to get away with that."

Billie "Glinda the Good Witch" Burke to be subject of book: "I devote a chapter to Billie's role as Glinda and to the genesis and symbology of the character. I also explore the facts and the fiction behind accounts of Billie's marriage to philandering husband Florenz Ziegfeld, her alleged relationship with director Dorothy Arzner, and show a very different side to the actress many erroneously suppose was as dithery in person as her best known comic role, Clara Topper."

Minnesota senator requests $500K earmark for Christianist program tied to 'ex-gay' ministry.

Pope Compares Gays to Destruction of the Rainforest

Both will apparently destroy humankind.

Reuters reports:

"Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction. '(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed,' the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration. 'The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.'....The pope said humanity needed to 'listen to the language of creation' to understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behaviour beyond traditional heterosexual relations as 'a destruction of God's work'. He also defended the Church's right to 'speak of human nature as man and woman, and ask that this order of creation be respected'."