Anti-Gay Groups Furious Tony The Tiger Appeared At Atlanta Pride: Today In Gay
Anti-gay activists are choking on their Frosted Flakes that Kellogg's Tony the Tiger recently appeared in the guidebook for Atlanta Pride.
An ad reads “At Kellogg, we’re an evolving culture that respects and accepts employees’ sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression so that all employees can be authentic and fully engaged.”
Commentors on the American Family Association Facebook page indicate the faithful are not happy: "Stop trying to force us to accept and affirm a sinful lifestyle and stop trying to bully us into giving them special rights, said one poster. "Their use of a cartoon tiger to MARKET a sexual lifestyle to children is atrocious," added another. (h/t: JoeMyGod)
Back in 2011, Kabir Ahmed, 32, was part of a group protesting the Pride parade in Derby, chanting “Gays. gays, gays, we hope you die of AIDS”.
He was also jailed in 2012 for handing out leaflets that called for the hanging of gay people.
“We are living in a society and if we don’t stop it something like a tsunami will happen here, something on that scale," he said at the time.
More recently Ahmed left England for Iraq, where he joined ISIS. On Sunday he carried out a suicide bombing in the city of Baiji, where he drove a truck full of explosives into a convoy, killing eight people and himself.
Sage Lovell, a 16-year-old in Marietta, Georgia, recently became the first trans teen in the state elected to homecoming court.
Even better, Sage has the support of her parents, classmates and school: Her dad, Joseph, escorted her onto the football field during homecoming last month, when they received thunderous applause from the crowd.
“With her being very strong about who she wanted to be and let her own self out,” says mom Maureen in a clip from GLAAD’s All Access web series. “That gave me strength to face whatever we needed to face.”
On July 4, 1965, 40 well-dressed gay and lesbian protesters picketed outside Independence Hall in what's been billed as the first organized gay-rights protest in America. (Earlier incidents, like the 1959 riot at Cooper's Donuts in L.A. were unplanned and initiated by police violence.)
Subsequent "Annual Reminders" were held annual through 1969.
The LGBT 50th anniversary celebration will take place July 2 to 4, 2015, and includes panel discussions, receptions, and a one-hour salute on Independence Day.
"Some people are surprised to see us here, but we're eager to change perceptions," said a rep at the agency's booth.
The political party of Polish President Petro Poroshenko is introducing legislation making it illegal to discriminate against LGBT people.
“We support safety guarantees for the LGBT community and criminal liability for discrimination based on sexuality,” the Petro Poroshenko Bloc said in a recent statement.
In July, police in the city denied a permit for a Pride march, claiming safety concerns. Just a few weeks ago, Kiev's historic Zhovten cinema was devastated by arson while it was showing a gay film. Two days later, men in camouflage tried to ambush a screening of another LGBT film.
Critics have complained the government hasn't enacted human-rights laws in line with the rest of the European Commonwealth.
“It seems that not everyone understands human rights. Not everyone understand that LGBT rights are human rights and we are not talking about something special for one community,” said Amnesty International's Tetyana Mazur.
HRC is putting muscle into an campaign to get Christians in Southern states to come around to the idea of LGBT equality.
"All God’s Children" PSAs will air in Mississippi on Monday, with others planned for Alabama, Arkansas and other Dixie states.
One moving spot features Mary Jane Kennedy, a 61-year-old “Bible-believing born-again Christian” and mother of two gay sons. Another includes 25-year-old Justin Kelly, an openly gay Iraq war veteran.
“The values that are already in place in Mississippi are what we’re looking for," says Kelly. "To be friendly, to be open, to have conversations.”
The commercials start airing two days before a federal court hearing about Mississippi's ban on same-sex marriage.