Religious bigots come out swinging against LGBT students and anti-bullying legislation...

Yes, the provincial government has introduced tough new anti-bullying legislation. The legislation includes provisions which will ensure that LGBT students and their straight friends who wish to form Gay-Straight Alliance-type groups in all publicly-funded schools will be able to do so. Such groups help promote tolerance and acceptance for LGBT youth in environments that otherwise remain homophobic and hostile.

Today, the usual suspects of religious bigotry in Ontario came to Queen's Park to hold a press conference (sponsored and/or attended by Ontario PC MPPs Frank Klees and Lisa MacLeod) to demand that anti-bullying provisions designed to fight homophobia and violence against LGBT students and others be dropped.

Yes, so-called religious activists including Charles McVety of The Institute for Canadian 'Values', Rondo Thomas, of the Evangelical Association, and Jack Fonseca, of the Campaign Life Coalition, are fighting for more violence against LGBT youth in Ontario schools. Disgusting!

The legislation these bigots are attacking today allows Catholic boards to create gay-straight alliances without having to use the specific term. This isn't enough for these anti-gay/pro-violence religious advocates. According to them, allowing student-initiated clubs that promote acceptance and combat homophobia in high schools is somehow a violation of Catholic rights.

So trying to stop violence and promote acceptance goes against the Catholic faith? As a recovering Catholic, even I can't remember those pro-violence/anti-acceptance provisions of Catholic doctrine.

Shame on these bigots today fighting to maintain violence and harassment against LGBT youth in our public schools. Shame!

A great clip from 'Designing Women' on World AIDS Day...

This scene and this episode of 'Designing Women' meant so much to me when it first aired in the late 1980s.

I was a closeted teenager living in homophobic and AIDS-phobic times, quite used to sad depictions on television and elsewhere of effeminate, weak gay men dying like helpless victims from AIDS. I remember one particularly awful scene on 'St. Elsewhere' in which a nameless gay man dying of AIDS in hospital announced to his doctors that he's cured because he's decided he wasn't "gay anymore."

But this episode of 'Designing Women' showed a relatively masculine gay male character (played by the handsome Tony Goldwyn) who was passionately supported by his female friends.

I'm happy to share it here today on this World AIDS Day and I hope it brings a smile to your face!