The father of Jadin Bell, who hanged himself in an Oregon schoolyard last month, said he had loved his son and accepted him for who he was: "I think we need more of that," said Joe Bell, whose 15-year-old son, Jadin, had been bullied before trying to take his life. "I don't want Jadin's death to be in vain," Bell said in a voice choking with emotion. "I want it to stand for something. I think we need to look at people for who they are and not who we think they should be."
Gay dad invites SCOTUS Justice Anthony Kennedy to dinner at his home: "If you come, you will meet my 10-year-old sons, who will likely impress you, given how personable, articulate, polite and bright they are…If you were to come to dinner with my family, you would also meet Jim. He is the man in my life…"
Cissy Houston won't be accepting Clive Davis' invitation to his pre-Grammy party.
HRC dissatisfied with Pentagon inaction on same-sex benefits: "There's no explanation for the delay. It's been over two years now since the President signed the repeal bill. Every day that goes by is another day of unnecessary sacrifice for our families," Human Rights Campaign vice president for communications Fred Sainz told BuzzFeed Friday evening.
Ukraine to ban discrimination against gays, rather than ban gay "propaganda"? "Ukraine's foreign minister Leonid Kozhara stated that a law prohibiting discrimination against gays will be adopted soon, in order to speed up visa entry harmonization with the European Union. During an interview with the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, Kozhara stated yesterday (7 February): ‘The issue of homosexuals is now generating strong controversy in Ukraine, but our government has already prepared a draft law and will soon submit it to the parliament…"
A bunch of cool minimalist posters for Oscar-nominated films.
FOX News accidentally uses photo of same-sex couple to illustrate article about the importance of heterosexual marriage.
Valerie Jarrett blogs on Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day: "I had the pleasure of meeting with leaders who are doing outstanding work to prevent new HIV infections and improve health outcomes for African-Americans. We shared stories and discussed the importance of engaging everyone in these efforts, including faith leaders, educators, athletes, entertainers, artists, scientists, healthcare providers as well as friends, families, and neighbors. This approach also reflects the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, which calls for a collective response to the ongoing domestic epidemic, and sets specific goals with regard to addressing HIV-related disparities among African-Americans."
One gay couple talks about their journey to adopting a child: "I wish we had known that we didn't need to worry about 'the what-ifs.' We didn't need to fit into a certain box to become parents and we didn't need to say this or that to become parents. All we had to do was be ourselves and everything else would happen when it is/was supposed to. Fortunately, we learned it very early on in our journey."
Ezra Miller: I was gay bashed. "One time I was at a show in New York City for a hardcore band. I was wearing a velvet green jacket, and I was doing sort of a swing step, kind of Lindy-hopping in the mosh pit. Then I walked out of the mosh pit, and I was standing in the back of the crowd, someone tapped me on the shoulder, and all I heard was the word, 'Faggot.' I got punched in the eye."
J. Justin Wilson and Steven Seigel write about how their Eagle Scout badges helped prepare them for marriage: "Although it has been more than a decade since we both earned our Eagle Scout badges, we can still recite that mantra from memory. So it seemed like an obvious choice for our marriage vows—those values embodied the essence of what we learned as scouts, and they continue to guide our conduct today. For us, earning our Eagle was about much more than learning to tie knots or build a fire in the rain. Although those are important skills scouts learn along the way, at its core, the Boy Scouts is about imparting the amorphous but critical skill of leadership. The basic premise of scouting is to build a future generation of leaders, to grow a cadre of young men who embody the moral and ethical virtues of a society and have the capacity to mobilize those values for good."
