Lost in all the hubbub last week about the National Equality March, Judy Shepard appeared on Ellen to talk about her son Matthew, how her life has changed and how far we’ve come. Unfortunately we still have a long way to go. Be sure to watch all the way to the end…

In a profanity filled tirade in NYC this week, Mickey Rourke lamented the use of the f-word… faggot that is. Warning, NSFW at all…

Pathetic human being. Can I have my money back for the Wrestler? I don’t care how much I enjoyed it. And we soon have to suffer him in the new Iron Man movie.

President Jarrett Barrios of GLAAD was swift to respond…

“This is a slur that, regardless of what Mickey Rourke has convinced himself that it means, is often the last word that gay people, and gay youth in particular, hear before they’re bullied, harassed or assaulted.

Rourke is showing himself to be painfully ignorant of how this vulgar, abusive slur feeds a climate of anti-gay hatred, intolerance and violence. Rourke either needs to figure this out, or media needs to stop giving him a platform for promoting these kinds of slurs.”

Rourke also received a lot of negative press last November when he threatened to break a “faggot” writer’s legs.

During a special one hour session last night on DADT, Rep, Louie Gohmert (R-TX) launched into another attack on the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill, perhaps forgetting where he was… Will spare you the quoting of Bible verses that followed…

The Human Rights Watch issued a report today condemning the violence committed against the LGBT community in Iraq, where it is suspected that hundreds have been murdered since 2004 as a part of a “social cleansing” campaign. From the Washington Post:

Although the scope of the problem remains unclear, hundreds of gay men may have been killed this year in predominantly Shiite Muslim areas, the report’s authors said, basing their conclusion on interviews with gay Iraqi men, hospital officials and an unnamed United Nations official in Baghdad.

“The government has done absolutely nothing to respond,” said Scott Long, director of the gay rights program at Human Rights Watch. “So far there has been pretty much a stone wall.”

Homosexuality was tacitly accepted during the last years of Saddam Hussein’s rule, but Iraqis have long viewed it as taboo and shameful.

Iraq’s human rights minister, Wijdan Salim, has expressed concern about the reported slayings, but few other government officials have addressed the issue publicly or indicated that they are disturbed by the reports.

CNN ran the following segment on the report.