Here's further proof that every single that happened at this year's MTV Video Music Awards was a culturally significant moment worth pondering (or that every culturally significant moment worth pondering happened at the VMAs).

Elisa Chan, a San Antonio city councilwoman who was exposed last week for saying homophobic garbage in a closed-door meeting back in May, responded to the backlash today by saying it's her right to say homophobic garbage. While this is true, it is probably not the best route for Chan to take in order to win over her growing legion of critics.

San Antonio City Councilwoman Elisa Chan is entangled in a homophobia scandal after a former aide secretly recorded her and other staffers bashing gays as "disgusting" and saying gay marriage is a slippery slope toward legalized incest and bestiality.

“People are changing their behavior to protect themselves...They don’t wear rainbow pins anymore, they don’t hold hands outside.” This series of mini-profiles of gay people living in anti-gay Russia is essential reading.

"Like anyone I'm afraid of being arrested but also I'm not afraid of being arrested... If it takes me getting arrested for people to pay attention and for people to lobby against this law then I'm willing to take it." — Bad-ass figure skater Johnny Weir on competing in the Sochi Olympics in anti-gay Russia

In a poignant and powerful plea for immediate action, living legend Stephen Fry has called on the International Olympic Committee to institute an "absolute ban" on the Winter Games set to take place next year in Russia.

"I'm not homophobic. Because I have a character say the word 'faggot' or 'homo' that does not mean that I'm homophobic. Martin Scorsese is not racist. The characters are people he grew up with, characters in the mean streets — that's those people talking, not him." - Spike Lee

By far the most viral story of this past weekend is Florida mommyblogger Katie Vyktoriah's terrifying tale of bigotry encountered at a local Walmart.

Dan Savage’s #DUMPRUSSIANVODKA boycott (particularly Stoli) to protest the government-sanctioned oppression of gays in Russia is in full swing. Should you participate? Or keep guzzling the stuff?

As the LGBT community ramps up its protest of Russia's recently enacted "gay propaganda" law, the lawmaker responsible for its existence released a statement saying Olympic athletes and tourists will be subject to its penalties.

Baton Rouge police officers have been going undercover and arresting gay men for agreeing to have consensual sex, charging them with an "attempted crime against nature." The U.S. Supreme Court invalidated this crime more than a decade ago.

The following video, widely circulated on social media, shows a Russian teen being tortured by a Neo-Nazi gang that suspects him of being gay. It seems likely that the clip—like the photo above, taken at a St. Petersburg gay-rights rally in June—will become iconic for the same reasons the famous photographs of Emmett Till's corpse did when they were published in Jet in 1955: It's excruciating to endure and potentially galvanizing because of it. Says Spectrum Human Rights Alliance:

Alan Turing, a genius codebreaker who helped the Allies defeat the Nazis only to be chemically castrated by his own country for homosexuality, will be posthumously pardoned by the UK, almost 50 years after he took his own life.

In his new book, Out In The Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier, Lance Corporal James Wharton who served under Prince Harry in the British armed forces recalls the time "Lieutenant Wales" saved him from being "murdered" by six other soldiers in an anti-gay attack.

Yesterday, LA Weekly's Patrick Range McDonald created a bit of an e-gay stir with an essay whose headline wondered, "Is L.A. Gay Pride an Outdated, Adolescent Mess?" Los Angeles' Gay Pride weekend kicks off today, hence the question. The answer, according to McDonald? "An unqualified yes."

A "crazy preacher lady" who was doing her crazy preacher thing on the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus this week spent three hours ranting about damnation this and damnation that until the student body decided it was time for her to go away.

Setting Captives Free, a "non-denominational" Christian ministry named after a verse from the Old Testament, peddles in self-help courses it claims can cure you of all that ails you: Drinking, smoking, pornography. Even homosexuality.

What is Marine Corps boot camp really like? According to an email that a current recruit sent to a bunch of his friends, it's a lot of being called a "faggot" by your drill instructors. And, if you happen to be brown-skinned, a lot of being called "terrorist." Not to mention "beast mode" workouts.

More than 100 mourners turned up on Saturday night to a candlelight vigil for Mark Carson, the 32-year-old gay man shot and killed by a homophobe early Saturday morning in New York City. Carson's murder, which is being treated as a hate crime, is the latest and most violent in a recent string of anti-gay attacks in the city, a place whose progressive leanings have yet to fully overpower a resilient streak of homophobia.

After months of deliberations over the topic of its much-despised ban on gay and lesbian members, the Boy Scouts of America are finally preparing to end the longstanding policy.