Wayne Besen

There has been much talk about a potential backlash at the polls against President Barack Obama for his endorsement of same-sex marriage. But we also can't discount the possibility of what I call "whiplash" -- which is the president's support causing many people to fundamentally rethink this issue before Election...

Reparative therapy, which seeks to "cure" homosexuality, is a destructive form of consumer fraud, where avaricious practitioners try to profit off their victims by instilling a deep sense of shame and guilt. There is not one shard of evidence supporting such efforts, while there is a long trail of blood...

With Barack Obama's evolution on marriage equality increasingly untenable following Vice President Joe Biden's statement of support on NBC's Meet the Press, the president finally took the big leap yesterday and said, "I do." In an interview with ABC's Robin Roberts, Obama made history as the first sitting president to...

While the world waits to see whether President Barack Obama's position will "evolve" on gay marriage before Election Day, one thing is certain: His party's evolution has already taken place.

Obama is probably the last Democratic presidential candidate who can win the nomination without voicing full-throated support for marriage...

On April 20 Invisible Children will hold a worldwide rally to draw attention to murderous Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) founder Joseph Kony. The event is called "Cover the Night," but when one looks a bit closer at the shady right-wing extremists this group cavorts with, a more appropriate name...

On Tuesday the courts allowed the Human Rights Campaign to unlock an explosive cache of secret records from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). What they revealed is that there is no gutter too filthy, no swamp too slimy, and no cesspool too sickening for the leaders of NOM to...

The Democratic Party is beginning to embrace marriage equality in a significant way. This week, former President Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian who teaches Sunday school and just wrote a new book on the Bible, came out in favor of allowing gays to wed:

Homosexuality was well known...

So, I'm watching the roundtable on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos and instead of being able to concentrate on the talking heads, I'm distracted.

Why?

Because at the bottom of the screen, ABC is running non-stop Tweets from viewers. It was remarkably annoying and a real impediment to enjoying...

When people think of anti-gay places, the gay mecca of New York City does not often come to mind. However, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish community is a hotbed of homophobia, where LGBT people are shunned, abused, rejected, and told they must change their sexual orientation to be accepted.

Chaim Levin, 22,...

When former Focus on the Family leader James Dobson told The Daily Oklahoman in 2004 that "[h]omosexuals ... want to destroy the institution of marriage" and added that "it will destroy marriage" and "destroy the Earth," reasonable people dismissed him as a crank. And, for the record, six...

When Chicago Archbishop Cardinal Francis George recently compared the LGBT community to the Ku Klux Klan, he probably thought that there would be a limited pushback against his offensive remarks. Instead, his ugly smear was immediately met head-on with outrage and disgust. The way in which the LGBT community rapidly...

The Roman Catholic Church's toxic obsession with homosexuality manifests itself in countless ways. The most recent anti-gay outburst came from the Chicago Archbishop, Cardinal Francis George, who foolishly compared the LGBT community to the Ku Klux Klan.

George's offensive remarks came during a dispute over the scheduled starting time of...

In June I penned a column, "The Fall of the Ex-Gay Myth," which predicted that so-called "ex-gay" programs would crumble from internal rot. "It's time for the discredited 'ex-gay' myth to simply go away and be rightfully viewed as an experiment that was tried and failed," I wrote at the...

Hillary Clinton's soaring speech on international LGBT issues was game changing. A historic address of this magnitude was desperately needed to counter the rising tide of backwards and barbaric nations that had recently been persecuting LGBT people to distract from their glaring problems.

"I want to talk about...

I knew Russia was likely to embrace homophobia the moment I read that approximately 1.25 million Russians have emigrated from the nation in the past decade. Population experts say that the mass exodus is comparable in size to the migration following the Bolshevik Revolution.

This...

"Please, come join us," insisted an attractive college student flashing her bright Aquafresh smile.

Before I was able to decline her friendly invitation I was gently pulled into a large prayer circle of 30 or so Charismatic Christians. "I'm sorry my hand is sweaty," the girl said with a...

In recent years, the Roman Catholic Church has veered hard right and become politically active in opposing abortion rights and marriage equality in America. For example, they played a key role in thwarting marriage for same-sex couples in Maine and have refused to give communion to pro-choice politicians such as...

The field of contemptible anti-gay activists has long been overcrowded, like a room full of teenagers frenetically rushing a concert stage. In this cacophony of crazy, it is quite a feat to rise above the din. Yet radio host and Mission America President Linda Harvey is making a name for...

Poor Herman Cain.

He is now in the awkward position of trying to slither out of a mushrooming sexual harassment scandal by parsing words such as "agreement" vs. "settlement." This led conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer to ask whether he was being "Clintonian."

But there actually was a simple...

Earlier this month, Herman Cain told the protesters occupying Wall Street that "if you don't have a job... blame yourself." I hope he takes his own advice and accepts personal responsibility if he loses his job as a presidential candidate. This morning Politico dropped the bombshell that may well derail...