Awards Season: The Phobies

via The Advocate

#13 Senator Marco Rubio

Why him? Well, Rubio, a GOP darling, helped broker a deal in the Senate on comprehensive immigration reform while at the same time threatening to toss the same piece of legislation out if Democrats added help for same-sex couples who were being split up by outdated immigration rules:

"If this bill has in it something that gives gay couples immigration rights and so forth, it kills the bill, I’m gone; I'm off it, and I've said that repeatedly."

Rubio has also been accused of dropping his support for the nomination of William Thomas for a federal judgeship because Thomas is gay, and he was the keynote speaker for the Florida Family Policy Council’s annual fundraiser. Not only does the FPC support gay “conversion” therapy, the event honored one of the chief architects of the legal fight against the new bans on reparative therapies.

#12 Antonin Scalia

Justice Scalia has taken his homophobia on a speaking tour, arguing that judges shouldn't make decisions on what he sees as moral issues, not constitutional ones. Plus, he continuously claims that he hasn’t expressed his “expressed my view about gay marriage" though in his dissent in the Supreme Court's Defense of Marriage Act case, he said:

“As I have observed before, the Constitution does not forbid the government to enforce traditional moral and sexual norms. It is enough to say that the Constitution neither requires nor forbids our society to approve of same-sex marriage, much as it neither requires nor forbids us to approve of no-fault divorce, polygamy, or the consumption of alcohol."

Scalia seems aware of his role in trying to stop adoption of equal rights for LGBT Americans, but he doesn't care: 

"Maybe the world is spinning toward a wider acceptance of homosexual rights, and here’s Scalia, standing athwart it. At least standing athwart it as a constitutional entitlement. But I have never been custodian of my legacy. When I’m dead and gone, I’ll either be sublimely happy or terribly unhappy." 

I’m betting on unhappy.

#11 Louie Gohmert

Gohmert is a prime contender for the title of most homophobic member of Congress, and the Texas Republican is certainly one of the most outrageous and illogical. 

In his anti-gay rants this year, he linked marriage equality to bestiality and polygamy; he linked gay Boy Scouts to pedophilia; he linked hate-crimes laws to the end of religious freedom. And for good measure — of his insanity — he tossed gun control and evolution into the mix as well.

In one of his choice comments, he said that limiting the amount of ammunition a gun owner can buy is “kind of like marriage when you say it’s not a man and a woman anymore, then why not have three men and one woman, or four women and one man, or why not somebody has a love for an animal?”

Later he rhetorically asked believers in evolution, “How does the mating of two males evolve the species upwards?" 

#10 Scott Lively

Lively, a Massachusetts “minister” has exported homophobia around the world. 

He’s facing a trial for fueling anti-gay hate crimes in Uganda, and he’s spoken proudly of helping to inspire Russia’s “gay propaganda” law and continues to blame the anti-gay violence on The Gays:

“The ones that are doing it are butch homosexuals who are beating up effeminate homosexuals.”

He says the United States is moving toward “totalitarianism with a heavy gay emphasis,” and added that it won’t be the first civilization brought down by the gays: he has actually blamed The Great food in the Bible on same-sex marriage:

“We need to remember that in the time leading up to the flood what the rabbis teach about the last straw for God before he brought the flood was when they started writing wedding songs to homosexual marriage.”

Lively is currently running for Massachusetts governor as an independent.

#9 Bryan Fischer

Fischer is a radio personality and spokesman for the American Family Association, dubbed a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its consistent spreading of misinformation about LGBT people.

During this year alone, Fischer said striking down a portion of DOMA was worse than Trayvon Martin's death, praised India's courts for recriminalizing homosexuality and called for laws against sodomy to be reinstated in the United States, called Mary Cheney a "lesbian bigot" for standing up for her marriage, claimed that if Hillary Clinton wins in 2016 she would become the "first lesbian president," implied that gay Boy Scout leaders would try to molest the troops.

And he says all of that while saying — with an apparent straight face — because he has a deep concern for LGBT people.

"There's a sickness there, there's a pathology associated with homosexual behavior. You know these are not happy people. They are not well-adjusted people. It just breaks your heart to see what this perverted sense of homosexuality is doing to them. It's just destroying their humanity."

#8 Orson Scott Card

When his book Ender's Game was transformed into a Hollywood movie, Card could have helped protect the potential blockbuster from a threatened boycott by renouncing his antigay past, but he stayed silent.

No amount of money or risk to the livelihoods of others could persuade him to reconsider his belief that people are made gay through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse. He's not going to stop believing that "regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy."

It came as no surprise that the film bombed even though its backers went out of their way to ensure that Card wouldn't make a cent from the film.

#7 Pat Robertson

If we gave out an award for the single worst thing anyone said all year, Robertson would get it though it would be hard to pick which of his comments was 2013's most offensive.

There was his conspiracy theory about gay death rings; Robertson suggested that men in San Francisco wear very sharp rings that could cut you during a handshake and spread HIV.

He advised one 700 Club viewer to never "like" a social-media photo of a gay couple kissing because it would equate to condoning their relationship: "To me, I would punch 'Vomit,' not 'Like,' but they don't give you that option on Facebook."

He advised a parent whose son came out to investigate his sports coaches in case the son had been molested.

He told a viewer whose nephew had come out that he may have been molested, and the best fix is to show him the Bible.

He advised a woman to be wary of letting her children meet a lesbian friend of hers, as "you don’t want your children to grow up as lesbians."

Robertson denied he's antigay and said that he actually has "thousands" of gay fans who watch his show looking "to have a better way."

#6 Timothy Dolan

The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t have antigay doctrine; it just has a public relations problem, says Dolan, the archbishop of New York.

“I think maybe we’ve been outmarketed sometimes. We’ve been caricatured as being antigay.”

And not just because Dolan was a prominent opponent of New York State’s marriage equality law, and that he thinks “redefinition” of marriage is akin to totalitarianism and will lead us on the slippery slope to polygamy.

Dolan has also downplayed Pope Francis’s conciliatory remarks regarding LGBT people and emphasized that the church still considers “homosexual acts” to be sinful.

#5 Frigide Barjot

As France debated whether to legalize same-sex marriage and allow couples to adopt, comedian Frigide Barjot — the stage name for Virginie Tellenne — was often leading the massive protest rallies in opposition.

After France eventually passed the law, Barjot condemned the violence that erupted while also defending it with a well-what-did-you-expect-would-happen attitude. Those comments came after a pro-gay activist was left brain-dead in June by a beating from extremists.

"This extreme fight is the result of a power that for nine months has refused to listen to the French people. The president has caused extremism to grow by passing a law that the French didn't want, and in a manner that was authoritarian and undemocratic. When we refuse to act like a democracy, extremism grows. In a way, you could say that there was a death because of this denial of democracy."

Proving she’s just a media whore seeking attention, after marriage equality passed, she asked for police protection from the very anti-gay groups for whom she once spoke.

#4 Pacific Justice Institute

This California-based right-wing "Christian" organization came out swinging this year with a bevy of transphobic attacks.

In an effort to undermine California's recently passed Student Success and Opportunity Act, which guarantees trans students access to the facilities and sports teams that correspond with their gender identity, the Pacific Justice Institute targeted a transgender 16-year-old in Colorado, claiming she was "harassing" other female students in the bathroom.

When the school district and police confirmed that no such harassment took place, the institute amended its claim to contend that the mere presence of a transgender student in the bathroom constituted harassment.

The institute is a key player in the Privacy for All Students campaign, which aims to repeal California's trans student law. Privacy for All Students is trying to repeal that law through a voter referendum — though analysis of the signatures gathered for the initiative makes it not exactly promising that the initiative will qualify for the ballot. 

#3 Dictator Robert Mugabe

Mugabe is no stranger to this list; in 2012 he was named to the “45 Biggest Homophobes of Our 45 Years" list.

Mugabe's done everything from calling gays "worse than pigs and dogs" in 1995 to locking up a member of parliament in 2011 for publicly.

In 2012, he used a state-televised speech to say "to hell with you" to British prime minister David Cameron, who had said foreign aid might be tied to progress on human rights issues.

With foreign aid further threatened, Mugabe used a rally before thousands of people to order decapitation of gay men.

"If you take men and lock them in a house for five years and tell them to come up with two children and they fail to do that, then we will chop off their heads."

#2 The GOP’s Gubernatorial Ticket

It was a joyous day last month when the Tea Party Dream Team for Virginia governor and lieutenant governor — Ken Cuccinelli and E.W. Jackson — lost. And this was second big loss for Cuccinelli, who appealed all the way to the Supreme Court to reinstate a law against sodomy; that attempt failed in October.

In a debate in July, he opted to stand by a comment from 2009 that "same-sex acts are against nature and harmful to society."

That lines up with the views of his running mate, Jackson, who claimed that gays and lesbians have "perverted" minds and are "very sick people psychologically, mentally, and emotionally."

#1 Vladimir Putin

To hold the president of Russia responsible for every antigay incident in his country might be unfair, but it’s far less offensive than what's happening to LGBT Russians.

A neo-Nazi group is posting video of gay men it captures and then tortures and humiliates.

Someone threw poison gas into a gay nightclub in Moscow in November; the second time it had been attacked in a week. The first time men showed up with guns and shot at the front door.

Meanwhile, Putin touts his Olympic Games in Sochi, suggesting that maybe, maybe, the anti-gay laws won’t be enforced.

 In 2013, Putin signed a law banning any foreigner from adopting a Russian child if they come from a country supportive of marriage equality; the standard is so strict that only Italy is narrow-minded enough to meet the qualifications.

Putin famously signed the so-called gay propaganda ban this year, a law so vague that Olympians could be fined or jailed for kissing their partners. Putin told the International Olympic Committee that he will do "everything" to ensure guests are "comfortable" in Sochi, but he's banned protests of any kind there while the games go on.

This is the sort of thing that Pride parades were invented to combat, but in Moscow we are in year one of a 100-year ban on those, thans to a law passed in 2012.

The Russian parliament is on the verge of considering yet another anti-gay law that would order children with gay or lesbian parents to be taken from their homes.