The Westboro Baptist Church has announced plans to picket the funerals of the children slain in 
the horrible school shooting in Connecticut. They believe the shootings are God's judgment on the nation, and put out a horrible video stating why (YouTube pulled it as hate/harm speech, but you can watch it here). Hacker group Anonymous has taken out the Westboro website and published all the personal details of the church members, and claim that they will take further action to stop the certified hate group.
Meanwhile, if social media is to be believed, gun shops are doing record business this weekend in the wake of the massacre, though some say it's just normal Christmas business.
Senator Diane Feinsteinhas announced plans to introduce a ban on assault weapons the first day that the new Congress is back in session, modeled on the previous assault weapon ban that expired in 2004.
Meanwhile, as has become their pattern, the National Rifle Association's Twitter feed has gone silent since the shooting. After the Aurora, CO shooting, it was quiet for ten days, but most mass shootings only merited a one day interruption.
Provocateur Brian Moylan spent three days in a male chastity device as research to see what it was like living in a male chastity device. This is obviously NSFW, but oddly fascinating.
Having torpedoed Ambassador Rice as a candidate to replace Secretary of State Clinton next year, Republicans are set to give an easy confirmation to Senator John Kerry in her place, mostly because they tend to give easy confirmation to fellow senators, but also because they believe that Scott Brown can take Kerry's seat and rejoin the Senate.
A group of Anglican vicars is vowing to defy the Church of England and bless same-sex weddings in welcoming churches.
Some men are born with two penises, and somehow, this has never come up in my life, or in any "video" I've ever viewed.
Donnie Andrews, the hitman who inspired the character of Omar on The Wire, has passed away at the age of 58.
Taiwan's Ministry of Justice is researching the idea of marriage equality in the relatively liberal Asian nation. I can almost see it, when I visited more than 10 years ago, they had a thriving gay scene and my hotel had no problem getting me to and from the bars. It wasn't that way everywhere I went.
Rep. Barney Frank, who is retiring at the end of the current Congress has signed with power agentAri Emmanuel to hook him up with paid speaking gigs on cable television, universities and book deals. "I'm hoping to get paid well to do what I do now for nothing."
More than 60,000 people marched in the streets of Paris to support marriage equality. The march was smaller than the 100,000 that marched against equality, but still impressive.
The Hobbitfinished the weekend with $85 million, which is still a December record, but shy of the $90 million that had been projected.
According to Focus on the Family, people only identify as gay to make a political statement. “First of all, we need to understand that 'gay' and 'lesbian' really are – to use the language of feminist studies people – a cultural construct. 'Gay' and 'lesbian' are very new kinds of things. Yes, there's always been homosexuality in human experience, but it was typically something that heterosexual … did to another person. 'Gay' and 'lesbian' are really sort of sociological or political statements or identifications. … It's the signing on to a political sexual sort of agenda… There are lots of people who have homosexual or same-sex orientations that just don't identify themselves as 'gay' or 'lesbian' because again 'gay' or 'lesbian' is a social political sort of identity.”
Harry Styles makes almost a disturbingly good Christmas elf
Sean Melton and Josh Dixon of the U.S. National Gymnastics Team wish us happy holidays
Have I been doing it wrong all these years?
Yigit Pura says that after 12 hours in the kitchen, he's camera shy
Our corporate cousins at NewNowNext noticed that a billboard across from the office alternated between a few interesting images. First you'd have a family scene from the Mormon church displayed.
Very friendly for Times Square
Then an ad for Manhunt Mobile would pop up
So Buzzfeed took it to the logical conclusion
Days of Our Lives'Freddie Smith says he got this ornament from WilSon fans
Gareth Thomas makes one heck of a genie
Arrow's Colton Haynes likes karaoke. Who knew?
I'm about to do something entirely out of character for me. I'm going to praise Saturday Night Live. They managed to be both classy and funny at different points this week. The cold open brought a children's chorus singing "Silent Night" which seemed perfectly appropriate after the deadly school shootings, and the kids seemed thrilled to get to shout "Live from New York, it's Saturday night!" at the end.
The funniest sketch of the year for me was "The Royal Doctor" with Martin Short attempting to explain etiquette to the physician that would be overseeing Duchess Kate's pregnancy. With all the protocols in place for dealing with the royal family, you can almost imagine that something like this exists. I could have done without the bit at the end, but I had genuine laughs all through this piece.
I'm not a fan of "Girl You Wish You Hadn't Met at a Party" but there's just one line in the middle that saved this edition for me. It just came out of nowhere, and could easily have been written for Brittany on Glee.
Keeping with a holiday theme, the Charlotte LGBT chorus busted out "God Bless You Chick-Fil-A" and managed to lampoon two conservative sacred cows at once, which is quite a feat.
Finally, most of us (especially those of us spending 10 hours/day in a mall) are completely sick of Christmas music by now. But if all Christmas music was like Dropkick Murphys'"The Season's Upon Us" we'd all be raising a glass and toasting the holiday.
