DADT officially dead.

On Tuesday, the US military, in response to repeal legislation passed by US Congress, officially rid itself of a long-standing policy preventing openly gay men and women from serving in military. The policy was called Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Previously, if someone was outed, he/she would be given the boot. Now, men and women can serve in the military as openly gay. This is an absolutely massive victory for gay rights. This video was posted on Tuesday, and already has over 2,000,000 hits. I dare you to watch it and not get a little choked up:

The horror!

Another from Modern Mechanix (click images to make larger):

And what about the men who aren't virgins?

New Spiderman gay?

From Mail Online (thanks for passing it along Rayka!):

Marvel Comics reveals the new Spider Man is black - and he could be gay in the future.

He started life as a white science geek living with his uncle.

But now to reflect the racial changes in America Spider Man has been given a makeover - as a half black half Latino teen.

Miles Morales has replaced Peter Parker as the face behind the famous webbed mask, Marvel Comics has revealed.

In the latest edition of the Ultimate Fallout series he pulls back the disguise and shows his face for the first time.

Fans will have to wait until the official Spider Man relaunch next month to find out how he came to be the superhero.

But another surprise could be in the pipeline after his creators said that in the future they would not rule out making him gay.

Read the rest of the article about Spiderman's future here.

Sex and secularism.

From the Daily Mail (and reported extensively all over the place):

Atheists have 'better sex lives than followers of religion who are plagued with guilt'

Atheists have far better sex lives than religious people who are plagued with guilt during intercourse and for weeks afterwards, researchers have found.

A study discovered that non-believers are more willing to discuss sexual fantasies and are more satisfied with their experiences.

Both groups of people admitted that they carried out the same activities such as masturbation, watching pornography, having oral sex and pursuing affairs.

But followers of religion did not enjoy the experiences as much due to the stigma created by their belief systems, the study found. It left them with intense feelings of regret after they had climaxed.

The findings emerged in the 'Sex and Secularism' survey of more than 14,500 people carried out by psychologist Darrel Ray and Amanda Brown from Kansas University.

All of the people who were questioned were found to have sex around the same number of times a week. They also became sexually active at similar ages.

But devoutly religious people rated their sex lives far lower than atheists. They also admitted to strong feelings of guilt afterwards.

Read the rest of the article, which includes a bunch more of the results, here.

Texas!

From ABC's Primetime: 

Gay parents dining at a restaurant with their children are berated and discriminated against by their waitress. Other customers witness the blatant gay bashing. Will they step in and defend the couple? What would you do? Subscribe for brand new episodes on the official WWYD channel!

Gay marriage update - good news!

In Canada, gay marriage has been legal across the entire country since 2005, making Canada the fourth country in the world to make it legal. In the States (and most other countries), the battle for gay marriage rights is still being waged. Historically, the public in the US has been strongly opposed to gay marriage, but that has slowly been changing. The latest polls show that for the first time, more people support gay marriage than oppose it. From The New York Times:

A poll from CNN this week is the latest to show a majority of Americans in favor of same-sex marriage, with 51 percent saying that marriages between gay and lesbian couples “should be recognized by the law as valid” and 47 percent opposed.

This is the fourth credible poll in the past eight months to show an outright majority of Americans in favor of gay marriage. That represents quite a lot of progress for supporters of same-sex marriage. Prior to last year, there had been just one survey — a Washington Post poll conducted in April 2009 — to show support for gay marriage as the plurality position, and none had shown it with a majority.

As we noted last August, support for gay marriage seems to have been increasing at an accelerated pace over the past couple of years. Below is an update to the graph from last year’s article, which charts the trend from all available public polls on same-sex marriage going back to 1988.

Read the rest of the article here.

On a related note, Prose Before Hos has put together "a handy graph [i.e., pie chart] for the confused," outlining the potential effects of legalizing gay marriage.