And the bigots strike again.  This time they’re after one of our country’s limited excellent public school teachers.

A Southwestern High School English teacher has been suspended after reports he had students in his classes to read an article about homsexuality in the animal kingdom.

Delong is said to have allowed students to read the article “The Gay Animal Kingdom” from the June 7, 2006, edition of Seed magazine. Seed magazine is a science and culture publication.

The article by Jonah Lehrer talks about the research of Joan Roughgarden, a biology professor at Stanford University who said she has documented homosexual societies among the more than 450 animal species.

School district secretary Pat Milner said a special School Board meeting has been set for 6 p.m. Monday at the district office in Piasa to discuss personnel/employee discipline.

God forbid we introduce an article about science in a school!  The community including many of Delong’s former students have rallied around him and have even created a Facebook group in his honor.

Several Billboards that quote passages from the Bible seemingly affirming homosexuality have appeared across the Texas interstate, and predictably so, it’s angered a number of Christians who’ve driven by them.

Christine Lutz was traveling down Interstate-30, just east of Fort Worth, when she came face to face with a billboard containing a pro-gay message. “I cringed. I was disgusted at the same time,” she said. The billboard angered Lutz so much, that she fired off a stern e-mail. “I said how dare you take the scriptures and twist it to fit your needs,” she recalled. There are four billboards with similar pro-gay messages along I-30 that have started a debate among Christians in North Texas. Rev. Jon Haack, with Promise Metropolitan Community Church, said, “If we go back to the gospel readings, we don’t find anything within those texts that discriminate or exclude against gay and lesbian people.

Gay and lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people are part of God’s creation too.” Rev. Haack is with one of five local churches sponsoring the billboards that advocate gay acceptance by all Christians. One billboard reads, “The early church welcomed a gay man.” Another one reads, “Jesus affirmed a gay couple.”

There are more examples at the group’s website.  The Billboard are supposed to run for the rest of September.   Personally I would rather people stop believing in fairy tales and taking their cues from a book written by a bunch of men from the Bronz Age none of us will ever meet, but I suppose I’ll take the more tolerant brand of Christianity if I can get it.

I’ve discussed homophobia as it related to race before, and I’ve also said that I disagree with the notion that the black community is no more homophobic than any other community.  I think the deep-rooted misogyny that runs rampant in the black community combined with the masculinity issues and the influence of the southern baptist church all converge to create the problem we have.

Here’s a video of a conference in Atlanta discussing a number of issues related to homosexuality in the black community.

I think the gentleman in the glasses made the most poignant remarks, but what stuck out to me the most was the idiot in the audience who seemed to think he made a “choice” to be heterosexual.

For those of you not familiar, Dustin Lance Black is the Oscar-winning screenwriter of the Gus Van Sant directed Harvey Milk film called Milk, that starred Sean Penn and James Franco. He gave a very moving speech at the Academy Award Ceremony that actually got removed from the telecast in several Asian countries because he talked about homosexuality.

As it turns out, Mr. Black may have a sex tape–one which is dated in 2006 before he became famous, and it’s being shopped around by an agency called Starzlife, the website for which is maybe not so incidentally shut down at the moment.

Lance was scheduled to appear as the Grand Marshall in the New York City Gay Pride Parade and some are thinking it’s possible he may pull out.

Perez Hilton has all the NSFW pictures.

I suppose this disappoints me, only because it will confirm stereotypes about gay people and their sexual behavior to many homophobes who refuse to see us as more than just sexual deviants, but at the same time plenty of heterosexual male celebrities have had sex tapes and have not been vilified by the media at all. Not to mention in this case, it was made before Black was even a celebrity to begin with. Human beings are sexual beings, and yes that includes gay people. And the fact that he had sex, and happened to photograph it for film it four years ago, does not take away from his value and worth as a person or as a gay rights advocate.

Below is his moving speech from the Oscar ceremony.