I'm not sure if you noticed this, but a couple weeks back, France legalized gay marriage. For a country whose major export is fashion and gourmet cuisine, this was somewhat overdue.

What's even odder about this is the fact that not only was there a pretty vocal group that opposed gay marriage, but they chose some rather . . . artistic ways of protesting. Just when you thought being against gay marriage couldn't make less sense, they somehow found a way.

Despite the fact that the measure has already passed, a half-naked streaker at the French Open decided to get in one last jab at gay marriage by running on the tennis court during the game, wielding a couple of flares. I'm as confused as you are, really.

According to Americablog, those men were actually members of a coalition formed by the French Catholic Church and a right wing political party called UMP. They're fighting gay marriage, but they're pretty late to the party, since gay marriage was legalized in France a month and a half ago. Apparently, that's not stopping them. The French who oppose gay marriage have different ways of showing their disapproval, but the Catholic Church/UMP coalition's preferred way is to send men in various states of undress out into the street to publicly protest, because that doesn't seem counterproductive at all. [SOURCE]

Oh, France. Even at your most homophobic, you're still delightfully gay. Come on, Canada, we need to step it up here! France is kicking our collective ass!

Normally, this would be the part where I'd overthink this for a paragraph before posting a meme, but fuck it. This shit makes no sense, and it's HILARIOUS. God bless you, stupid French protesters. Bless you and whatever ironic beliefs you hold dear. 

Twitter, like most forms of communication or entertainment, is roughly 99 percent pure unadulterated shit occasionally peppered with brilliance that rises above the minutia. Think of it this way: there are millions of Twitter users whose usernames include the word "swaggy" in them but only one @PattonOswalt. See what I mean? Sprinkles of genius, buckets of derp.

Unfortunately, the stupidity must be replicating or something, because according to Vocative, in the space of the past year, use of the term faggot has almost doubled. Which can mean only one thing: the stupid have learned how to reproduce via fission. Shit!

June is LGBT Pride Month, so it’s a good opportunity to take stock of the legions of Twitter users who continue to sling homophobic invective with pure, gleeful abandon.

According to numbers gathered by NoHomoPhobes.com, use of the inflammatory word faggot has risen dramatically over the past year, up from approximately 22,000 daily mentions to around 58,000, an increase of about 164 percent. (Small beans compared to the amount of tweets that go out world-wide, perhaps—but not without consequence.) 

The funny thing is, most of the instances where the word is used don't really have anything to do with the gay community. "Faggot" has become a catch-all term to describe any kind of annoyance, which is . . . somewhat troubling. Most people seem to use it without the intention of homophobia behind it, but at the same time, it's still a word loaded with anti-gay sentiments. No one really thinks about what they have to say or why they're saying it, so what inevitably comes out is, as I said before, 99 percent pure unadulterated shit.

[Image source: Vocative] 

There's a very good reason why there's no such thing as a Straight Pride Day. Well actually, there are two.

The first is that . . . Well, to put it bluntly, the queer community just knows how to throw better parties. You can't explain it; we just know how to put together everything from an elegant soirée to an old-timey box social, and we can do it in the space of five minutes with a budget of $3.57 and some lint.

The second reason, the real reason, is because literally every other day of the year is straight pride day. Society predominantly caters to straight people, and when we get a week thrown our way once a year, most people recognize it for what it is: a way to celebrate differences while still acknowledging that we're all part of the same crowd. We're all in this together, but we can carve out our own little niches here and there.

However, not everyone really gets that concept. A group called Straight Pride UK is currently campaigning on behalf of Straight Pride. Which is potentially cool, until you realize it's less about loving yourself and more along the lines of shaming gay people into being more normal.

Heterosexuals do not have equality, homosexuals have more rights then any sector of society. They have the right to take over city streets, dress ridiculously, and parade with danger and contempt. Straight Pride, is normal everyday people, dressed normally, walking normally, to raise awareness of being straight, and being PROUD to be heterosexual. [SOURCE]

Oh god, please let this be an incredibly clever satire.

How do you argue with something like that? Every day is straight pride. I don't want to belabour a point here, but when you consider that 76 countries have made being gay illegal (despite tons of scientific evidence proving it's perfectly normal) while being straight is legal in every country? Maybe you don't need a straight pride day quite as much as you think you do.

Does anyone remember when phones were just phones? You know, back when you just called someone, or texted someone, and that was it? Now, if your phone can't deliver a baby via C-section while finding your lost contact lenses, you own a brick. (Oh, and good fucking luck if you drop it. I slammed a car door on my first phone and sent it through the wash and it still worked. Meanwhile, you can cover an iPhone in bubblewrap and it'll still break in half if you so much as look at it funny.)

But back to the apps here. Some of them, like FindMyPhone or that one that lets you pay for Starbucks using your phone, are perfectly fine, but most of them are complete shit-ass travesties. Take, for instance, a brand new app that claims it can "cure" you of homosexuality in 60 days. Tellingly enough, there's no money-back guarantee on it. Anyway, AllOut responded by launching a petition against the app, since it's both blatantly homophobic AND probably a complete waste of money.

Gay 'cures'? There shouldn't be an app for that. But, there's a new one called "Setting Captives Free," available in both the Apple iTunes and Google Play stores, meant to teach you how to stop being gay.

It's a 60-day course that tells gay people they are not "born this way" and offers to help them find "freedom from the bondage of homosexuality."

These so-called treatments can cause terrible harm to lesbian, gay, bi, and trans people, or anyone forced to try to change who they are or who they love.

Apple and Google have policies against these kinds of apps but so far this one has escaped their notice. Sign now to tell them to drop this and all other gay 'cure' apps! 

The good news is that since the petition went up, Apple has already removed the app from its marketplace, while Google still has it up for some reason. I know, go fig.

There are many things a phone can do -- at this point, TOO many -- but I don't think iPhones can do the impossible. Nothing can magically stop you from being gay, so you might as well go back to using your phone for its intended use: playing Angry Birds while you're making a doody. 

Meet Michael Kinsley. He is the current editor-at-large of The New Republic, a former host of Crossfire and has been a political commentator since the 1970s. He also believes that he invented the concept of gay marriage and that opposing it doesn't necessarily make you a homophobe.

In a new piece on The New Republic, Kinsley surmises that opposing gay marriage doesn't necessarily make someone a homophobe, because some people just don't know better. The answer is simply to create positive public representations of sexual minorities and use logical, rational arguments to -- oh, wait, apparently the answer is to wait it out and let hindsight validate our positions for us.

The first known mention of gay marriage is an article (“Here Comes the Groom” by Andrew Sullivan) commissioned by me and published in this magazine in 1989. And I would bet that there is no one born before 1989, gay or straight, who didn’t, when he or she first heard the idea, go, whaaa? Many on reflection got used to the idea, and a majority of Americans now support it. The day will come, probably next Tuesday at the rate things are going, when previous opposition to the idea of same-sex marriage will seem bizarre and require explaining, like membership in the Ku Klux Klan in the youths of some old Southerners—are there any left?—on Capitol Hill. But we’re not quite there yet.

In all fairness, "Here Comes the Groom" is still considered a landmark print piece for its support of gay marriage, but the idea that gay marriage didn't really register on anyone's minds until he commissioned it . . . I don't think that's how that works. Especially when you consider that Denmark became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage that same year.

But back to the main point here. I get the basic gist of what he's trying to say here: we have to show an appropriate measure of compassion even to those we don't necessarily agree with. That being said, letting it slide because "they don't know any better" is something of an overcorrection. At this point, people SHOULD know better. People SHOULD be basing their opinions on scientific evidence. You don't make the world a better place by pretending nothing's wrong, or by refusing to correct something you know can be fixed. But Kinsley does make a point: you attract more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

Or as Wil Wheaton says, don't be a dick. 

[Image via dontbeadickday.com]