Okay, conspiracy theorists, get this. The anti-gay NOM launched a bus tour awhile back, featuring rallies at various community areas. The rallies have been so sparsely attended that a lot of folks have wondered why NOM is doing this, and the HRC thinks they have an answer: they're trying to bait LGBTs into angrily counter-protesting, so the anti-gays can bolster their claims about being oppressed and intimidated.

Well, if that's the case, then their strategy backfired this week when a NOM supporter showed up at a protest with a sign advocating the lynching of gays. YIKES. So, at this point, NOM's supporters have definitely out-creeped anything that the LGBTs might have done.

Speaking of creepiness, Doug Manchester gave a bunch of money to Prop 8. The San Diego hotel owner became a target of boycotts by LGBTs and labor groups, but that does't matter much to Republigay organization Out Proud. Out Proud held a reception at the hotel this week, defying the boycott.

How about that Target kerfuffle? You've probably heard by now that Target gave $150,000 to a campaign backing Tom Emmer, the only candidate for governor in Minnesota who opposed marriage equality. The donation has caused a lot of ill will at a particularly sensitive time for Target, which is in the midst of attempting to open two stores in San Francisco of all places.

And lawyers all over the country were extra-busy this week. In Hawaii, they filed a lawsuit to stop the state from denying marriage benefits (if they won this case, it could be on grounds similar to an Arizona case in which it was ruled that arbitrarily denying benefits to gays is illegal). In Montana, the ACLU unveiled a shrewd new strategy for sidestepping constitutional marriage bans. If it works in MT, they'll probably use the same tactic in other states. And in New Jersey, gays suffered a setback when a court ruled that in order to challenge the state's marriage ban, they'd need to go through an extremely lengthy legal process. So, stay tuned ... for another few years.