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Michele and Marcus Bachmann want to talk to you about homosexuality and that pesky FAMiLY LEADER pledge.

Erin Gibson really has Michele’s vacant stare down, doesn’t she?

Special bonus video: the The final installment of Bryan Safi’s That’s Gay, from the recently cancelled program Infomania.

While lesbian and gay couples across New York married in near-record numbers Sunday, anti-gay activists ramped up messages of violence.

At a National Organization for Marriage rally of mostly bused-in marchers, christian Reverend and State Senator Ruben Diaz declared, “Today we start the war!”

Not to be outdone, NOM Chairwoman Maggie Gallagher later appeared on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcast Network to tell their fake newscaster that “It’s going to be a bloody mess in New York,” followed glibly by “it’s kind of an exciting time.”

This is hardly the first time NOM and their allies have resorted to messages of violence when challenged (NOM organizers seemed to approve of this sign with two nooses seen at a rally in Indianapolis nearly a year before Sunday’s New York rally.), and it surely won’t be the last.

(Major ups to Good As You’s Jeremy Hooper for being on hand and doing such a thorough job reporting on the NOM rally.)

Today, marriage equality came to New York. Across the state, LGBT couples who have been waiting for years, some even decades, are finally receiving a portion of the civil rights guaranteed to all people by the US Constitution. In New York City, the 24-hour waiting period has been waived and over 800 couples will be married today alone.

An unknown couple at City Hall in Manhattan
(Image by flickr user erin m. Click for link.)

As images of this historic day make their way across the internet, I can’t help but think of Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown. These two National Organization for Marriage leaders have made it their life’s work to keep what’s happening today from happening anywhere in the United States.

Myron Levine and Philip Zinderman, married after 51 years together
(Image by Reuters. Click for link.)

We’re often forced to argue abstract concepts, but today we have a chance to deal in concrete examples of what we’ve been fighting for, and what Maggie and Brian hate.

Marcos A. Chaljub and Freddy L. Sambrano
(Image by Reuters. Click for link.)

Here, then, are just a few of the hundreds of couples married in New York today. Pictured below is the first LGB couple married in Manhattan, Phylis Siegel and Connie Kopelov, mothers and grandmothers who have been together for 23 years.

Phylis Siegel (76) and Connie Kopelov (84)
(Image by Jason DeCrow for AP. Click for link.)

I was surprised to find myself getting pretty emotional while going through these wedding pictures. I’m usually a robot around weddings, but these lovely people, and thousands more like them, are doing today what was considered an unattainable goal just a generation ago. And while federal rights are still withheld from these people thanks to DOMA, and we still have plenty of fights ahead of us, this is a major victory.

Unknown couple with NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn
(Image by flickr user erin m. Click for link.)

Remember, these images of joy and celebrations of civil rights are the kind of thing that makes Brian Brown cry. He was at the New York State House during the Senate vote last month and started sobbing uncontrollably when the Senate voted to acknowledge the civil rights of a minority group.

Our happiness makes him cry.

For today, though, I’m not worrying too much about Maggie, Brian, NOM, or others like them. Today is for joy, fairness, and in the grander scheme of things, victory.

Today, equality came for lesbian and gay people. Today, equality came for bisexual and transgender people. Today, equality came for straight people.

Today, equality came for America.

Pastor Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church has come under fire for a facebook message earlier this month asking “So, what story do you have about the most effeminate anatomically male worship leader you’ve ever personally witnessed?”

Oh yes he did.

The now-deleted post brought new attention to Driscoll’s terribly unchristian homophobic and transphobic (not to mention misogynistic) attitude.

Author Rachel Held Evans blogged about this after seeing an open letter to Driscoll from self-identified straight-and-effeminate blogger Tyler Clark, in which he said:

The Church has been terrible to gays and lesbians. You have surely spent enough time talking with gay people in your community to know that the image of Christians tends to be a hateful one. In the same way that you want church culture to be more welcoming to blue-collar dudes, it also needs to be more welcoming to the gay and lesbian community. Your language—most recently including your Facebook post about “effeminate anatomically male worship leaders”—doesn’t help this.

Your language is not only hurtful to gay men. It is hurtful to many straight men. As a man who has always been intimidated by more traditionally masculine men, your words tell me that I am not welcome in your church or among your friends.

When you put out a call on Facebook for people verbally attack “effeminate anatomically male” men, I find myself back in high school—shoved against a locker, with the bullies calling me a faggot.

Mark Driscoll has since issued a non-apology buried under a mountain of misdirection and code words, but I think it’s important to note that this is nothing new for Driscoll.

On top of all the examples Held Evans mentioned in her post, here’s part of a promotional video Driscoll made in 2006. (cued to 1:54)

I got a feeling you got around Paul when he was a young guy, you got around John the Baptist or Elijah, I mean these dudes seem pretty rough to me. You know, they don’t seem like church boys, you know, wearing sweater vests and walking around singing love songs to Jesus. Guys like David are well known for their ability to slaughter other men.

I’ve gotta think these guys were dudes: heterosexual, can win a fight, punch you in the nose dudes. And the problem in the church today, it’s just nice, soft, tender, chickified church boys.

60% of Christians are chicks, and the 40% that are dudes are still sort of chicks.

It’s funny that he should mention David, who was a musician, cried an awful lot, was the runt of the litter, and had a male lover in Jonathan, whose love for him was “deeper than the love of women.”

Secondly, the ability to win a fight does not infer heterosexuality, and the lack of such ability does not infer homosexuality. I know some gay “dudes” who would kick his ass and make him beg for mercy.

Did you ever wonder why people like Mark Driscoll hold anything that isn’t hyper-masculine in such contempt? He lets that one slip in the next few sentences. (same video, starting around 2:37)

He even put it on the correct wrist.

I mean, it’s just sad. You walk in, it’s sea foam green and fuchsia and lemon yellow. The whole architecture and the whole aesthetic is real feminine, and the preacher’s kind of feminine, the music’s kind of emotional and feminine. And we’re looking around going, “How come we’re not innovative?”

Because all the innovative dudes are home watching football, or they’re out making money, or climbing a mountain, or shooting a gun, or working on their truck. They look at the church and they’re like, “That’s a nice thing for women and children.”

To be clear, I am not suggesting that Mark Driscoll is a closet homosexual. On the contrary, he doesn’t set off my gaydar even a little. I just think he’s an extremely image conscious, in shape, attractive man whose fashion sense tends toward rough trade, and that maybe he’s gotten grief over it.

Whatever the reason, bullying (more correctly, abuse) from a church leader is just plain irresponsible and reckless.

In all sincerity, pray for the gay and/or effeminate boys (and men) in Driscoll’s church. He’s declared open season on them, and other kids (and some adults) in the congregation of over 7,500 will surely jump at the chance to show “Pastor Mark” how much of a “dude” they are.

May God have mercy on his soul.

Some surprisingly candid video from Think Progress yesterday showing FAMiLY LEADER CEO Bob Vander Plaats, who wants you to know that he totally doesn’t hate gays, whooping it up over a fag joke. Because fag jokes are hilarious, that’s why.

VANDER PLAATS: You wouldn’t believe how many people call us who grew up in Iowa or have Iowa ties [...] and they say that they’re the butt of a lot of jokes, around the office place (?) about “Iowa, you know how those guys are.” …

[Oddly eager laughter from one attendee]

VANDER PLAATS: So, uh…

ATTENDEE: You know what my wife says? She says: Iowa, the state where you can’t smoke a fag, but you can marry one.

[Laughter]

VANDER PLAATS: Oh shoot, that’s pretty good, that’s pretty good. Oh shoot.

Oh shoot, indeed.

None of this comes as a big surprise, by the way. After all, FAMiLY LEADER is officially associated with the anti-gay Focus on the Family and certified hate group Family Research Council, and last year partnered with certified hate group American Family Association as well as the hate group watch-listed National Organization for Marriage to get three Iowa Supreme Court Justices kicked off the bench for ruling in favor of civil rights.

The question now is whether major media will pick up this story or let Vander Plaats, a three-time gubernatorial candidate in Iowa with some political clout in the state, pretend it didn’t happen next time his group becomes newsworthy.