COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — You might have thought that a conference with the title “Conservative Call to Action” would feature lots of talk of small government, of Ronald Reagan, of the need to defend traditional values and a capitalist economy. But that would be yesterday’s conservatives.

Instead, at the event held Saturday in this famously conservative town that is home to the nation’s biggest concentration of Christian Right organizations, rabid Florida pastor Terry Jones, whose televised burning of Korans set off riots overseas that left several people dead, claimed that he didn’t hate Muslims at all — and then went on to rant that Islam “makes Nazism, fascism look like charity.” He was joined by other “conservatives” who warned that the universities are brimming with “commies,” that all liberals are evil, that President Obama only won re-election through “massive voter fraud,” and that the president’s health care plan is “Marxism to the core.”

Symptomatic of the shift of a broad swath of the conservative movement to outright paranoid fantasy was the appearance of Dinesh D’Souza, who was once a respected commentator on the right. D’Souza began to run off the rails with a 2010 Forbes magazine article that he expanded into a book and then into a 2012 film, “2016: Obama’s America.” The article was pilloried by more old-fashioned conservatives, including Daniel Larison, who described it in The American Conservative as “the most ridiculous piece of Obama analysis yet written.” The article, book and film argue that Obama is motivated by a dream of undermining Western power. ( continue to full post… )

Proud heterosexuals — a small and nameless handful of them, anyway – are on the march. And they’re not being very nice about it.

Back in June 2012, the Facebook page “Heterosexual Awareness Month” (HAM) was created to “celebrate heterosexuality.” According to the page’s administrators, who are anonymous (though one goes by “Dr. HAM”), July is “Heterosexual Awareness Month.” The page’s mission is to “educate the world, commemorate our heritage, celebrate our culture, and liberate our people.” The site goes on to say that Heterosexual Awareness Month is meant to highlight straight people’s “growing struggle of the rights and related civil rights put in jeopardy.”

The page includes status updates, images and comment threads that range from mild to genuinely offensive. And though Dr. HAM told the Huffington Post in December that “I would like to say we are not about hate in any way,” the facts seem to pretty plainly belie him. HAM moderators have posted comments about “the gay agenda” and baselessly linked homosexuality to pedophilia. They have posted Photoshopped images like the one of a gay pride marcher whose sign has been altered to read, “My Butt Hurts.” One post compares the “fertile garden” of heterosexuality to the “toxic waste zone” of homosexuality. Another urges gay people to stop “acting like animals” and “evolve already.” HAM allows most anyone who agrees with it to post comments. But you will be banned, it says, if you post “accusations of racism” or if you call women derogatory names. Comments supportive of LGBT people do appear on the threads, but are typically followed by anti-gay responses. ( continue to full post… )

A New Hampshire lawyer who works with a virulently anti-gay Christian right organization has been found guilty of child pornography charges after videotaping a 14-year-old girl having sex with two men on multiple occasions.

Lisa Biron, 43, of Manchester faces a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison after a jury convicted her yesterday after deliberating for less than an hour.

Biron, arrested by the FBI last November, was accused of eight felony counts involving the videotaping of men having sex with the girl. She also allegedly made a cellphone video of herself having sex with the girl. ( continue to full post… )

Students at an Alabama high school who openly engaged in “white power” salutes — including a 17-year-old accused last week of planning to bomb the school and carry out a racist massacre —could have been expelled under district rules, a school board member and a former principal told Hatewatch.

But instead of reporting the neo-Nazi salutes and shouts of “white power” carried out at various times over the past four months at Russell County High — sometimes reportedly in front of teachers, staff and school security cameras — the conduct apparently went unreported and nothing was done about it. ( continue to full post… )

Weeks before Derek Mathew Shrout allegedly started building improvised hand grenades in his military family’s home, before the 17-year-old was arrested for plotting to use the devices against black and gay students and a teacher, he was committing racist acts in full view of everyone at an Alabama high school.

Two of his former friends say that Shrout – sometimes wearing his Junior ROTC U.S. Army-issued uniform – repeatedly performed stiff-arm sieg-heil salutes and shouted “white power” at Russell County High School in Seale, Ala., where he apparently intended to carry out the attacks. The community is some 20 miles from the U.S. Army’s sprawling Fort Benning, Ga., compound, where the suspect’s father is stationed. ( continue to full post… )

When the word came in last night that Barack Obama and the Democrats had won national elections in a decisive victory, millions of Americans went to bed, satisfied that even if their candidate didn’t win, democracy had survived. The results made it clear that this election had in no way been stolen.

But not so at Ole Miss, which last month marked the 50^th anniversary of deadly segregationist riots. Shortly after midnight, several hundred mostly white students protested furiously, reportedly yelling anti-black racial slurs and throwing rocks at passing cars. An Obama/Biden campaign sign was burned before campus police broke up the crowd in Oxford. There were apparently no arrests or injuries.

The reaction to the re-election of our first black president from the radical right — and that seemed clearly to include some University of Mississippi students — ranged from sputtering rage and name-calling to calls for a new Southern secession, mass emigration to Europe, or even the break-up of the United States. There was one thing large numbers seemed clearly to agree on: The changing racial demographics of our country, expected to lose its white majority by 2050, was key to the result. ( continue to full post… )

Even before the winds of Hurricane Sandy began to moderate, conspiracy theorists of a variety of bents got busy explaining the real meaning of the storm. Because, of course, a monster storm can’t just come from something like “weather” or “climate.” No, a storm like that just must be the product of nefarious or, perhaps, spiritual forces too big for most of us to understand. And so, while millions of Americans deal with the aftermath of what has become the largest Atlantic tropical storm in recorded history, lots more are busy explaining what’s behind all that wind.

Here, gathered over the last few days, is a sampling of their views. ( continue to full post… )

Bryan Fischer, the gay-bashing, truth-challenged spokesman for the American Family Association, went one rant too far Tuesday for CNN anchor Carol Costello.

“And we know from the CDC and from the FDA, not part of the vast right-wing conspiracy, that homosexual behavior,” Fischer gushed excitedly, “has the same health risks associated with …”

“That’s just not true,” Costello said, cutting him off before he could insert his foot any further in his mouth. “I’m going to end this interview now, sir. I’m sorry because that’s just not true.” ( continue to full post… )

The headline is sensational and does what headlines are supposed to do – it grabs your attention:

“California Bans Heterosexuality.”

After my initial shock, I settled down and read the story under the headline and quickly learned, to my great relief, that the Golden State hasn’t really banned heterosexuality – at least not yet. ( continue to full post… )

Psychologist Paul Cameron has been bashing LGBT people for at least 30 years. His continued demonization of LGBT people and the shoddy and suspect research methods he uses to advance his claims have earned his Family Research Institute (FRI) a place on the SPLC’s anti-LGBT hate group list. They have also earned him censure from a number of professional organizations and harsh critiques of his work (try here, here, and here for starters). In spite of all that, Cameron’s pseudoscience is still widely used to disparage LGBT people, especially by the religious right, and he still finds venues for his articles, some of which aren’t pay-to-publish. ( continue to full post… )