On the issue of gay marriage, Rumsfeld said that he doesn’t exactly know where he is in the debate. He does wonder what would come next if gay marriage were to be legalized. He specifically says, “two people? three people?” as if he’s wondering if polygamists will be the next group demanding the state recognize their marriages.

King then reminds Rumsfeld that he was a proponent of civil rights in the 60s. He responds to King by saying that he doesn’t necessarily view gay marriage as part of a larger civil rights agenda.

It should be noted that he doesn’t have any animosity towards homosexuals. In a previous question on the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, he says that its repeal was only a matter of time. He points out that homosexuals have served in the military for decades, and that they served their country well.

That being said, he thinks that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will be tougher in certain parts of the military. He predicts that it will be easier to implement openly gay service men and women in the Air Force and Navy, but cautions that implementation among ground forces may be a little trickier. In other words, he worries that unit cohesion, or the ability of a troop to work together as a whole, may be impacted negatively if soldiers respond negatively to openly gay squad mates.

You can watch the relevant part of the interview below:

[h/t: Salon]

The map was created by geography students at California’s Humboldt State University, the same group of people who brought us the post-election Twitter racism map back in November. Back then, they looked at racist tweets the focused on President Obama’s reelection and found that Mississippi and Alabama were the two hotbeds for such activity.

“Rather than focusing just on hate directed towards a single individual at a single point in time, we wanted to analyze a broader swath of discriminatory speech in social media, including the usage of racist, homophobic and ableist slurs,” say the researchers.

For instance, here’s the map of generally “homophobic” tweets, which are determined by the use of words like “dyke,” “fag,” “homo,” and “queer.”

And here’s the map of racist tweets – those containing the words “nigger,” “chink,” “wetback,” “gook,” or “spick”:

Of course, analysis like this is never going to be 100% accurate. Keyword analysis has inherent issues. For instance, the word “queer” is not always used in a derogatory, hate-filled manner. People could be tweeting out the word “fag” in another context, such as bemoaning its usage.

On the other hand, it’s hard to justify many used of words like “wetback” on Twitter. Sure, it’s not completely solid analysis, but it’s pretty close. You have to to imagine that the majority of people tweeting about fags, dykes, niggers, and chinks are doing so in a hateful manner.

But to completely cut out this sort of uncertainty, the researchers manually read and coded each tweets to judge the sentiment, “in order to address one of the earlier criticisms of our map of racism directed at Obama.” This way, they could know, for sure, whether a tweet that contained the word “queer” was actually posted in a hateful context.

Using DOLLY to search for all geotagged tweets in North America between June 2012 and April 2013, we discovered 41,306 tweets containing the word ‘nigger’, 95,123 referenced ‘homo’, among other terms. In order to address one of the earlier criticisms of our map of racism directed at Obama, students at Humboldt State manually read and coded the sentiment of each tweet to determine if the given word was used in a positive, negative or neutral manner. This allowed us to avoid using any algorithmic sentiment analysis or natural language processing, as many algorithms would have simply classified a tweet as ‘negative’ when the word was used in a neutral or positive way. For example the phrase ‘dyke’, while often negative when referring to an individual person, was also used in positive ways (e.g. “dykes on bikes #SFPride”). The students were able to discern which were negative, neutral, or positive. Only those tweets used in an explicitly negative way are included in the map.

You can check out the full interactive map here, where you can zoom in to see specific concentrations of twitter hate speech.

[Floating Sheep via MIT Technology Review]

In a radio interview on the Dan Patrick show, the subject of Jason Collins, who recently came out as the first openly gay NBA player, and gay players in the NBA became a topic. Barkley said he, and pretty much every other player, had played with a gay teammate during their time in the league:

Everybody did. Everybody played with a gay teammate, Dan. And it’ s no big deal. First of all, I think it’s an insult to gay people to think that they’re trying to pick up on their teammates. But everybody has played with a gay teammate… It’s obviously discussed, privately, because the problem is, Dan, unless somebody tells you they’re gay, you can’t say a thing about them being gay. Ya know, until somebody has the courage, and I think it takes great courage to come out, it’s kind of an unspoken word to be honest with you.

He used Collins to back up his claim saying that the Wizards center had played with six teams, so by extension, players on those six teams had played with a gay teammate. He also said that nobody knows a teammate is gay until they come out because “it’s none of your business.”

You can check out the full interview with Barkley below:

[Image]

“I’ve been saying the same thing for years – that there will be someone who comes out, it will be a great moment for sports – I would be honored if he was on my team,” Cuban says.

“I think things have changed significantly, and that the players would accept him,” he adds. “I don’t think there’s any question that even though all professional sports have had their homophobic missteps on the way, that it’s a new era/generation, and the player would be accepted.”

The interview comes on the heels of (and references) words from NBA great Magic Johnson, who shared his own support for gay players in sports in another interview (below).

It’s been interesting to see the creative ways people are using the red equal sign in their own ways. Appropriately, Martha Stewart Living went the cake route:

The post currently has nearly 14,000 likes and nearly 16,000 shares. The profile picture is still Martha Stewart’s face, however.

The red equal sign image started with the Human Rights Campaign, which posted it on their Facebook page. It’s a play on the campaign’s logo, which is traditionally yellow on blue.

It’s highly likely that many of the red equal signs will continue to penetrate your Facebook news feed throughout today, as the court will hear arguments on the Defense of Marriage Act. As previously reported, a number of tech companies, including Facebook itself (and Google), have filed an amicus brief arguing that the act is bad for business.

Mashable, which pointed to the Martha Stewart image has a slideshow of various brands that are showing their support.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie tried to walk the fine line between his constituents and the national Republican base on social issues this week. A significant portion of that base is highly religious and opposed to homosexuality. On the other hand, Democrats in the New Jersey have recently been criticizing the Governor for failing to take a stand on a bill making its way through the New Jersey legislature that would ban the practice of what is known as “gay conversion therapy” in the state.

The practice of “gay conversion therapy” is based on the belief that a person’s sexuality can be changed. Most often such programs in the U.S. are associated with fundamentalist Christianity. The American Psychiatric Association has condemned the practice as unethical.

This week, Christie finally took a position on the issue. Sort of.

A spokesperson for the governor told The Star-Ledger that Christie does not “believe in conversion therapy” and that he believes sexual orientation is determined at birth. However, the same spokesperson declined to say whether Christie would sign a ban into law. Christie has said that while he is generally opposed to bills that restrict parental decisions, the conversion therapy bill could be an exception.

Governor Christie still maintains his opposition to gay marriage, and in the past has vetoed a bill to legalize it. That position could change in the future, though, as Senator Rob Portman’s turnaround on the issue last week demonstrated.

When asked what he learned from scouting, Gates said, “How to tie knots, how to weave baskets, how to hike long distances without complaining too much, how to cook food in rainy, drizzly mountain places where we carried the food in twenty miles. It was fun.”

When asked which of those things he still does, he said he still ties knots every once in a while. “I haven’t weaved any baskets recently,” he admits, noting that he does go hiking with his kids.

When asked if the Boy Scouts should rescind its ban on gay members and leaders, Gates said, “Absolutely. Because it’s 2013.”

That got a lot of applause. Here’s the video:

Gates’ comments are getting quite a bit of attention, and perhaps his influence will have an impact on the Scouts’ position going forward. We’ll see. The organization has been polling members on their “attitudes” toward gay people.

Last month, an ad for Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite ereader featured a gay couple and made people on the internet argue, as these things tend to do. I guess only straight couples should be able to enjoy ebooks on the beach.

Anyway, it appears that Microsoft is following in Amazon’s footsteps. Their new ad for Outlook leaves no room for speculation concerning the company’s stance on marriage equality. Check it out:

Last month, Microsoft was one of the many tech companies (including Apple, Facebook, and Google) to sign amicus briefs supporting marriage equality. Later this year, the Supreme Court will decide two important cases on the topic – one involving California’s Prop 8 and one involving the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Microsoft was criticized way in 2005 for contemplating turning a pro-gay rights agenda into a neutral one. Eventually, the company decided to support a Washington gay rights bill.

“After looking at the question from all sides, I’ve concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “I respect that there will be different viewpoints. But as CEO, I am doing what I believe is right for our company as a whole.”

Since 2005, Washington has been on a path to marriage equality, eventually legalizing gay marriage last year.

“I’m throwing away my kindle. I cannot believe they included a straight couple in this commercial. GROSS!!” said one user.

That’s also what I thought when I first saw it. How reckless are you, Amazon?

(Update: Thankfully, tolerance is winning out. Troll comments are being successfully thumbed down into oblivion. Carry on.)

For just $99.95, plus $19.95, plus $9.95, plus $1.95, you can have the whole package – Andy Richter, the band, and Takei come to your house and persuade/threaten your family into accepting you for who you are.

“Welcome to the wonderful world of gay!”