Wine may represent the blood of Jesus in church, but whine is the religious right’s drink of choice these days. Having lost the culture war, their latest tactic is to falsely cast themselves as martyrs who are defending the faith and the right to free speech against an increasingly totalitarian majority. Perhaps the biggest crybaby is the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg. He seems to believe that anyone who stands up to his vitriolic hate speech and toxic lies is guilty of intolerance.

However, what professional victims like Sprigg really object to are people who are no longer cowed into silence and are finally standing up to bullies. There was a time, not too long ago, when Sprigg could spew misinformation and get away with it. He could demonize gays and dehumanize atheists and there was little opposition. Thankfully, this dynamic has changed. Sprigg and his fanatical fibs are regularly met with facts that expose his ugly bigotry. As a result, support for his incoherent and irrational positions on social issues has eroded. He sees this as a great conspiracy against fundamentalist Christians rather than acknowledging that the American people have soundly rejected his bogus arguments.

A CNN article by John Blake summarizes the paranoia of the Values Victim Caucus:

We’ve heard of the “down-low” gay person who keeps his or her sexual identity secret for fear of public scorn. But Sprigg and other evangelicals say changing attitudes toward homosexuality have created a new victim: closeted Christians who believe the Bible condemns homosexuality but will not say so publicly for fear of being labeled a hateful bigot.

Sprigg is not a victim but an aggressive victimizer. The only reason that he is labeled a “hateful bigot” is that he has engaged in hateful and bigoted speech. Laughably, the FRC spokesman couches his disdain for gay and lesbian people in the language of love. According to the CNN article, “Sprigg … says his condemnation of homosexual conduct does not spring from intolerance but a desire to protect gays from harmful conduct.” The extreme right seems to forget that the Internet exists and that their words are recorded for posterity, forever making them look like a horse’s posterior. If Sprigg is so concerned about the health of my family, why did he tell MSNBC’s Chris Matthews in 2008 that he wanted to “export” LGBT people from the U.S.? Why did he say on the same show, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior”? How is persecuting gay people, banishing them from the country where they were born or imprisoning them good for their physical or mental health? Such inconsistency and insincerity is why people have rejected the message of fake Christians like Sprigg.

If one wants to see real Christians who are attacked for their beliefs, look at those who are bold enough to stand up for LGBT equality. Pastors who act on their moral consciences and stand with their gay parishioners are often castigated and lose their churches. Anyone who doesn’t adhere to the party line is attacked or excommunicated. For example, after former Green Bay Packers safety LeRoy Butler tweeted his support for Jason Collins, the NBA player who came out as gay last month, a Wisconsin church allegedly disinvited him from an upcoming speaking gig. Why isn’t Sprigg defending the right to free speech of this particular Christian? Were Butler’s words not conservatively correct enough for Sprigg’s taste? And last September, Maryland state legislator Emmett Burns wrote to the owner of the Baltimore Ravens demanding that he silence linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo for speaking out in favor of marriage equality. Where was Sprigg when Ayanbadejo’s right to free speech was under attack?

In an op-ed that discusses the marginalization of mainstream Christians, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni asks an important question:

But what about the morals and the God of people whose religions exhort them to be inclusive and to treat gays and lesbians with the same dignity as anyone else?

…

[T]here’s a religious center. A religious left. There are Christian moderates and Christian liberals: less alliterative and less dogmatic, but perhaps no less concerned with acting in ways that reflect moral ideals. We should better acknowledge that and them.

And we should stop equating conventional piety with certain issues only and sexual morality above other kinds.

People like Sprigg apparently aren’t satisfied with simply being one voice in a cacophony of voices in the public square. They seem to believe that it is their God-given right to have dominion, and that their opinions are more important than everyone else’s. Such complainers are not victims of limited freedom of speech, as they falsely claim; they are simply on the losing end of greater exercise of the right to free speech, with the vast majority of people rejecting their debunked theories and archaic ideas.

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When I moved into my current apartment, I was moving in with my other half. We'd been dating for some time and had decided to take that bold step many couples make and simply move in together. We found an apartment, small and slightly dingy though it may appear, that suited our needs. As the only women in the building we felt a little odd. Surely people would see on the tenant board the information about two women living together and assume we were a couple.

Not too long after moving day, my partner met the man in the flat above in the hallway. They ended up speaking briefly and he invited us to both head up for tea and coffee later that day. With only £20 to our name at the time we were delighted. Heading upstairs I met him for the first time. He seemed a friendly enough neighbour to have and so we sat down and began speaking. Since he and I both have facial piercings we started on the topic of body modification. My partner made a comment about how I didn't want her to get any sort of facial piercings because I find her to have such a classically beautiful face.

But before I could even respond our new neighbour, utterly unabashed, said: "Yeah and, to be fair, it's her face you've got to sit on".

The sheer crudeness and forward tone of this comment left me speechless. I found myself appalled and fighting the urge to throw my tea over him or to leave right then. From a man I'd only known for about five minutes I'd like to say I was shocked by this comment but the truth is I'm not shocked at all.

You see, I'm pretty sure if my partner and I had both been male or if we were a heterosexual couple such a comment wouldn't have surfaced.

Queer women, and their relationships, have been so highly fetishised that throughout my entire dating life I've been followed by volleys of inappropriate and intrusive questions:

• "Which one of you is the man?"
• "How do you guys, you know, do it?"
• "Isn't that gross?"
• "How do you feel anything?"
• "I just don't get how you have sex. How does it work?"

Just stop.

Stop right there unless you want me to come and pry into your sex life. You probably won't like it either. You may see it as a harmless comment, you may simply be curious about their lifestyle, but these questions are bothering and alienating.

It is none of your business what a couple gets up to in the privacy of their bedroom, or their office at work or their garden shed or Disneyland or wherever it is they like to have sexual intercourse. Secondly it is none of your business about what they get up to at all. Not all couples have sex and making forward comments to assume that they do may just act as a sharp, neon light above their heads saying 'Asexuality? You don't have sex? Oh, I see. You aren't like the rest of us then. You're different' and sadly asexuality isn't often taught during sex education. This is problematic as it leaves those who don't develop sexual urges towards others to feel incredibly isolated or estranged from societal norms.

If I had a pound/dollar for every comment I'd had from a man saying they want to 'get in between' my partner and I in bed, or told me I was some sort of 'abomination' by a stranger, or heard some guy say they want to try to 'turn' us to make us straight my rent would be paid this month.

The most appropriate way of approaching such a situation is to see how much conversational freedom a couple or individual allows. If they are open and candid about their sex lives then it's possible to ask them questions if you find appropriate and non offensive phrasing. If not then just remind yourself that it is none of your business what they do or do not do. There are plenty of educational sources online that promote a sex positive education.

The sad thing is that a lot of these questions stem from ignorance that could be easily avoided with a wider and less restricted sexual education during puberty. When I was young asexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality and anything considered different from 'the norm' could not be discussed. This has produced many people clueless to issues the LGBTQ community must face. Members of the LGBTQ community, queer women in particular, do not exist to act as an embodiment of your personal fetish.

We love, we live and we deal with the stupid questions as best we can.

My recent post on dumping someone by text proved to be pretty divisive. It seems that many people prefer a face-to-face break-up or, at the very least, a phone call.

It's a common fallacy that bad news like this is better in person, or coming from a disembodied voice at the end of a telephone. Perhaps it seems more personal, or means more, because it's perceived that tapping in a few digits, then delivering a knockout blow over the phone and waiting distractedly for the stunned reply, in some way takes more effort or is more respectful than sending a carefully worded text (or email if you're feeling jazzy or are Christopher Ewing in Dallas).

While I believe texting the kiss-off can empower the recipient much more than a surprise attack via a voice call - at least then the dumpee can think about crafting a response rather than blurting out hysterical reactions they will almost certainly regret later - I'll give the humble telephone the attention it deserves as a device for despatching paramours.

Pick your time carefully
When guys and gals in the 1960s and 1970s used the phone to chuck their lover under the bus, they had to rely on the landline, that dinosaur of the telecommunication age, to deliver the dismissal. That meant having a vague idea of when their future ex would be home and, if they were kind and considerate (which you really should be unless ending a toxic or abusive relationship), whether they would have anyone around them to comfort them. Now, of course, we have mobile phones - or 'cells' if you're reading this somewhere exciting like Manhattan or, erm, Anchorage - so you can get your dump on any time you like.

Even though your unfortunate dumpee is always contactable, keep your head in the 1960s. Nobody wants to be in the supermarket or at a club when they receive the news that the chords of their parachute into lifelong companionship have been severed. Nor do they want to be in the middle of dinner, arguing with their mum, on the toilet, appearing on reality television (my long overdue sympathies to Kevin Federline there) or at work when the news comes through.

Before you make THE call, you need to find out where they are. So, either send a text (see, even the heartless SMS has a role to play here) to see what they're up to, or give them a short call, before inventing some distraction which means you'll have to phone back later. You do, of course, run the risk of spooking them if you act distracted or sound ready to deploy your weapons of mass rejection right here and now. Keep this text or call fairly light. Save the plummeting anvil for the main event. No need to stress them out unnecessarily before you end it. Kindness is key.

I don't know how to say this...
Well, you really should. Starting off by saying that you're not sure what to say is a total cop-out, because it leaves the recipient in a brief state of frenzy. Are you going to announce a death? Reveal a lottery win? Tell them you have met someone else? Confess to a bank robbery? If you can't find the exact words straight away, do some stalling - and drop a few clues along the way - with a slightly more telling "Look, I've been thinking..." and make sure you say this in a SAD voice and are somewhere quiet, not in the queue for a bar with all your friends.

There'll then be a brief pause while the cogs whirr in your almost-ex's mind. You should struggle on, however, and say things aren't really working out for you and that you think you should both break up. Yes, the 'both' is key here, as you need to make it sound like this would be mutually beneficial.

"I want to break up with you" or "I'm breaking up with you" somehow seem colder than "I think we should break up". While it's you who's ruining everything and casting them back out into the kingdom of the singles, by introducing a 'we', you are giving the dumpee the chance to consider any doubts they have had about you themself. If you can, lead them to think it's the right decision - one that may have even been reached mutually were the discussion to go on much longer.

Hanging up on you
So you've said the words, but what now? Do you just hang up and leave them to their feelings? Do you let them air their emotions - which could range from a barrage of abuse and grievances to heartfelt, uncontrollable pleas to change your mind? It's your call, but bear in mind how emotionally charged the response will be. Do you trust yourself not to go back on it if they manage to convince you with tears and tales of all the good times? If you are going to cut the call short, do it kindly. Maybe even agree to talk it over in more detail some other day.

State your reasons for the break up, sure, but at least sugarcoat it to a degree. Nobody wants to hear that their laugh is too loud or their personal hygiene is akin to that of a wild boar. If things haven't been working out and you haven't felt fully into it or you want to be by yourself, then just say - put the responsibility on yourself, not them. You're walking away from it all, anyway; you may as well take the flack (unless they were really objectionable, of course).

And once the call is over, put the phone down and leave them alone. No late-night texts, no drunken regrets. Step away from rants on Facebook and save your saccharine apologies or sincere wishes for the future. Let them get over you. And you, of course, need to get over it too.

So, y'know, get over it.

If you're really stuck, give this a listen before you call. (Or, if you're just plain mean, play it down the phone.)

There are some dates you feel you should go on, even if you really ought not to. Maybe it's because somebody incredibly handsome has deigned to ask you out, or perhaps you are lonely, and your diary tells you this coming Friday is a blank space, its page a polar landscape.

Whatever the reason, sometimes we say yes when we should be raising the drawbridge in an emphatic no. Johnny, 28, is such a no. But his square jaw and icy blue eyes draw me in, and he pets my vanity like I'm a cat drunk on all the milk in the world - he contacts me first and tells me he likes my smile. I'm flattered enough that I set aside my misgivings about his profile - one of his 'absolute musts' is that his date be a "keen cyclist". I'm keen as mustard about plenty, but freewheeling around on a metal, bulimic horse with pedals isn't one of them. I enjoy it when I'm doing it, but I'm not a confident cyclist, especially in London. But his missives are so charming and touchingly direct, like an awkward Head Boy asking me to dance at a school disco, that I am sucked in to whatever it is he is doing. It feels wrong, fake somehow.

Finally, he asks me out for a drink. I hesitate.

At last: "It says on your profile you want to go out with a cyclist. I am not one."

The reply: "Oh that? No, it's fine. I don't know why I said that; it's silly." I can almost hear him laughing as he types that. Almost. It's a hollow laugh.

On the actual night of our date, I fall victim to traffic and am a few minutes late. As I bound up to the pub, I spy a few cycles tied to the lone lamppost outside. They seem to be twisted around each other in an inextricable tangle, a frenzied orgy of metal, chain and oil. I wonder if one belongs to the guy awaiting me inside. He is sitting directly opposite the door to the pub, staring ahead intently. He seems annoyed at my tardiness, which I would understand, except I texted to let him know and, let's not forget, it wasn't intentional. I apologise in mock breathlessness - I didn't run that fast to get there - and despatch myself to the bar to get us drinks, in the hope it will our oil on his Atlantic mood. When I return, he has thawed somewhat, but his jaw still seems set. Perhaps if he were to relax it, the entire bottom half of his face would come crashing down, like a pelican's bill.

On some men, a brusque nature can be quite attractive. Everybody wants to be the one to force the clam and find the pearl, after all. On others, however, it is wearing, and my brightness feels forced, like a battered spouse trying to keep the peace. Any jokes I make are met with a kind of half-smile, half-sneer, and his own conversational attempts don't seem to run to much more than sullen critiques of the world in general. I put it down to the same awkwardness I spotted in his emails, and resolve to try a bit harder - he's really good looking and his chest - straining beneath his shirt - looks like it might be fun to wander over. I decide to take things back to his comfort zone, then; I will take the whining child to Disneyland. I broach the subject of cycling.

Suddenly, he comes alive. His biggest relationship, it seems, isn't with the guy who worked in PR with wandering eyes and hands and dumped him last year, but his two-wheeled lover. He has had most of the best experiences of his life behind those handlebars, he says, and loves that he never knows where his next adventure will take him. There is something touching about that. I almost envy him his fanaticism, and it's clear his passion for pedalling has served him well physically, if nothing else.

With the fire well and truly in his belly and a previously unforeseen sparkle in his eyes, he turns to me and says: "So do you cycle?"

I cough, embarrassed. I made it clear I didn't cycle in the email and he said it was fine. Should I point this out? He obviously forgot. I'll play along. "No, not really."

He looks disappointed, like, immediately. As if I trod on his puppy's head or broke the crushing news about Santa Claus.

"What does 'not really' mean?" he asks, incredulous.

"Well," I begin cautiously. "I mean, I haven't really ridden a bike regularly since I was at uni."

He is wide-eyed. "And that's what? Twenty years ago?"

My eyes shrink to slits as the diss registers. "Thirteen, actually. I haven't needed to ride a bike since then. And I'd be uncomfortable riding a bike around London."

"Don't you mean you'd be scared?"

I sigh. "Yeah, if you like. Scared. That's not too weird, is it? There are loads of accidents."

"Not if you're careful. You just have to own the road."

I roll my eyes. "A juggernaut hurtling around the Elephant and Castle roundabout begs to differ," I reply.

"Wouldn't you at least try?"

"I did," I say. "I hired a Boris bike for the first time recently. It was horrible."

"Why?" he says, with a definite sulk.

"I felt nervous and out of control; I'm not a confident road user. Why put myself and others at risk?"

He leans back in his chair. "So basically you're a chicken?"

I search his face for glints of humour, or signs this is a wind-up. It isn't. I feel suddenly very tired. I don't have an answer for him.

He continues: "Look, like I said on my profile, I am really into cycling. It's important that anyone I, er, anyone I share my, um." He falters. "Anyone who goes out with me needs to cycle, really."

They'll also need nerves of steel. I sip my drink and consider my answer. What witticism can I throw back? Whither my bag of jokes and pithy putdowns? It's empty; I can't be bothered.

Finally, I speak: "Yeah. Well, I don't. Pretty much ever." Another sip. "I run, though."

He laughs with a final sneer. "Pah. I don't think you running alongside my bike like a dog is really going to work, do you?"

No, Johnny. No, I don't.

On leaving the pub, I wait dutifully while he untangles his bike from the spaghetti junction at the lamppost. I don't know why I wait. What do I want, I wonder. Once he has freed his iron-framed boyfriend, he gives me a lascivious look.

"I could just push it along if you wanted to go on somewhere," he says, as if we have just spent the most thrilling hour of our lives together. He goes on: "Or, actually, I've got some gin back at mine."

I see. He wants to check out my saddle, after all. I look from him to his bike. I wonder which would give the most satisfying ride. I sigh and begin walking. In the opposite direction.

On arriving home, I turn out the lights and go to the window, as I sometimes do when I first get in after a date. I look out at the buses hurtling by, filled with people, and the taxis and the passers-by and the drunks and the hubbub, and I cast my eye back over my empty kitchen, my shadow long and lonely against the tiled wall. I am envious of them all in a way, but at least I didn't go home with Johnny. I will always have that.

I look out of the window again, and see a lone cyclist zooming down the road. The lights change, and he quickly mounts the pavement to avoid them. A woman at the crossing shouts after him: "You stupid twat!"

Exactly.

Stats: 28, 5'10, blond/blue, London
Where: Shoreditch, London
Pre-date rating: 7.5/10
Post-date rating: 3.5/10
Date in one sentence: One drink good, two wheels bad.

As millions celebrate Easter, I need to ask my fellow Christians to wake up to the terrible fact that far too many LGBT youth are being abused and rejected in Christian homes.

Many conservative Christians are increasingly preoccupied with fighting against the equal treatment of LGBT people in our society. And no one suffers more harm from this fight and the intolerant climate it creates than the LGBT children of too many of these Christians. As the director of the Ali Forney Center, the nation's largest organization providing housing and support to homeless LGBT youths, I see the reality of this harm in the faces of the thousands of desperate and frightened teens who turn to us for help after being driven from their homes and reduced to homelessness.

The stories these youth tell us about the religion-based abuse they endure from their parents are heartbreaking and deeply disturbing.

I think about the 15-year-old boy from rural Delaware whose father, a minister in the Church of the Nazarene, attacked him when told his son was gay, tried to strangle him, and then immediately banished him from their home. Or the 17-year-old girl whose Pentecostal parents drove her out into the back woods of New Jersey and tossed her out of the car. I think of the 16-year-old boy from Connecticut whose Catholic mother, upon learning he was gay, called a priest who made him lay the floor and attempted to "drive the demons out of him."Or the boy from New Hampshire whose Baptist parents told him that God is so disgusted by homosexuals that he "vomits them out."

Again and again we hear young people tell us tales of torment and abuse in their homes. Told that they are disgusting, that they are sinners, that they are abominations. Made to hate themselves. Made to wish that they were dead.

In recent weeks, I have filmed several of the young people who receive care at the Ali Forney Center talking about the religious abuse and family rejection they endured in their Christian homes. The stories they tell of physical and verbal abuse and the destructive toll taken on their young selves are very hard to hear, but it is important that we listen.

A recent study by the Family Acceptance Project on the impact of family rejection of LGBT youth found that parents who identify as "strongly religious" were significantly more likely to reject their children. According to research by the Center for American Progress, there are an estimated 300,000 homeless LGBT youth in our country, and the leading cause of their homelessness is family rejection.

It doesn't have to be like this. Jesus Christ never spoke a word of condemnation against homosexuals. Churches don't have any need to condemn LGBT people, or fight against our equal treatment in our country. A growing number of church communities have chosen to be affirming and supportive of LGBT people. I have the joy of experiencing this directly in the numerous church groups who send volunteers to cook in our shelters and collect clothing and even Christmas gifts for our young people.

A healthy society prioritizes the safety of children. Decent people do not stand by in silence when children are being abused. We need to recognize that the condemnation of LGBT people in churches leads to the abuse and rejection of LGBT children in far too many Christian homes. As Christians, commanded to love one another, we need to demand that this climate of rejection stops. We need to educate our communities and our religious leaders about the terrible harm being done to LGBT youth in the name of God.

I ask you to pray for the hundreds of thousands of LGBT youths suffering the terror and degradation of homelessness on the streets of our nation. And I ask you to pray for the even greater number of LGBT teens battling despair and hopelessness as they suffer abuse and rejection in their homes.