Antigay Pastor Wasn't Masturbating, Just Had Pants Open

By Advocate.com Editors

The antigay pastor who was arrested Monday for allegedly masturbating in a park in front of children held a press conference today to apologize for his actions — and say he wasn't masturbating, he just had his hand down his unzipped pants.

"That Friday I was reclined in the chair in the van, and I had opened my pants and I had my hand in my underwear," Grant Storms said. "I'm not a pedophile. I'm not a child molester, and I don't go exposing myself to children."

Storms also apologized for his purity marches and campaigns against gay people, saying he hopes "they can find it in their heart to forgive me."

Watch Storms speak on Towleroad.com.

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Half of All Men Have HPV

Half of all men may be infected with human papillomavirus, or HPV, researchers in Tampa, Fla., said Monday.

Because HPV causes anal, penile, and head and neck cancers in men, in addition to cervical cancer in women, the discovery may bolster the argument that vaccinating boys against the virus is necessary, Reuters reports.

The H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute studied infection rates among more than 1,100 men aged 18-70 in the U.S., Brazil, and Mexico. Fifty percent had HPV at the time the study began.

Over time, it was shown that men became infected with HPV at about the same rate as women, who are currently being urged to receive the vaccine Gardasil against the virus at an early age. However, researcher Anna Giuliano told Reuters that while women are able to naturally fight the virus, men are not as inherently able.

The full study was published in The Lancet

ORIGINAL SOURCE

Top Men Responsible for the Defense of Marriage Act Cheated on Their Wives

You’d have to go back to the Jim Crow era to find a law as imbued with bigotry and hatred as DOMA, the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which Pres. Clinton signed into law in 1996. It’s back in the news now because Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week that the administration would no longer defend it in court.

It’s adulterers — not gays — who are the real threat to traditional marriage
DOJ has made it clear, however, that the Legislative Branch is free to defend DOMA in upcoming hearings, which would put Speaker Boehner and his tea party bosses in the same position as the defenders of Proposition 8, California’s anti-gay constitutional amendment. The Prop 8 defenders lost in federal court last year because their “expert” witnesses’ biblical-based testimony that gay marriage should be illegal because homosexuality is a sin was deemed inadmissible in court and because they were unable to provide any evidence that same-sex marriage harms society.  READ MORE HERE...

Influential Gay Rev. Dies at 68

By Michelle Garcia

The Reverend Peter Gomes, one of the most prominent theologians in the U.S., died Monday in Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, succumbing to complications from a stroke in December. He was 68.

Gomes, who was gay, was the first black minister of Harvard's Memorial Church, according to Reuters. He was named one of the seven most distinguished preachers in America in 1979 by Time magazine. In his career, Gomes was awarded 39 honorary degrees, wrote several best-selling books, and taught classes for Harvard's school of arts and sciences and divinity school.

"To generations of Harvard students, he was a wise counselor and an admired teacher who presided at every commencement," Harvard president Drew Faust  said in a statement Tuesday. "To many of his faculty colleagues, he was a cherished conversationalist and a steadfast advocate of Harvard’s best traditions. But to me, and I suspect to many others, Professor Gomes was first and foremost a trusted advisor and a true friend."

Gomes spent the early part of his career as a conservative Republican, and he had participated in the inaugurations of presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. A gay bashing on the Harvard campus prompted him to come out in 1991. He changed his political affiliation in 2006 to support current Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat who became the first African-American governor of Massachusetts.

After coming out, Gomes became a vocal advocate for gay marriage and became known for his tome The Good Book: Reading the Bible With Mind and Heart, in which he wrote about how the Bible is used to discriminate, notably against gay people.

"If Jesus came today, the people he would be most interested in dealing with would be homosexuals, racial minorities," Gomes said in a 2007 interview on NPR, Reuters reports.

Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry and author of Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry, told The Advocate that Gomes's contributions to the fight to legalize marriage equality were integral.

"In my book, Why Marriage Matters, I quoted again and again Reverend Peter Gomes's passionate eloquence in defense of the freedom to marry.  'Our whole constitutional history has been the enlargement of rights, not their restriction,' Reverend Gomes told  Massachusetts state senators, manifesting his moral witness for justice as he did throughout his life his religious vocation," Wolfson said. "We need more voices like his, in the clergy and in the corridors of power, and his and he will be missed."

Watch an interview below in which Gomes makes the conservative argument for legalizing marriage equality.



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AFA's Lawyer: DOMA Is Unconstitutional

By Michelle Garcia

The American Family Association's in-house attorney says that while he and many members of his organization believe that marriage should be reserved only for heterosexual adults, the Defense of Marriage Act is "probably unconstitutional."

Pat Vaughn appeared on the Tuesday edition of the AFA Report to talk about President Barack Obama's recent directive to the Department of Justice to stop defending the 15-year-old law barring federal recognition of state-sanctioned marriages or civil unions for same-sex couples.

Cohost Ed Vitagliano asked Vaughn whether former House speaker Newt Gingrich is right to say Obama's actions were an "impeachable offense." Vaughn replied, "I think that Newt Gingrich is an astute politician and he is playing this for all it's worth. I think that marriage is defined by God as between a man and a woman. However, the Defense of Marriage Act is probably unconstitutional, particularly ... if you attempt to apply it so that to say that a marriage conducted in one state is not in effect in another. That clearly violates the Constitution."




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