Pride organizers are trying to focus on the event as a celebration instead of a political rally:

"It's not a shame to be gay anymore," said Daniel Kupsovsky, a festival spokesman. "Prague, unlike most of the Eastern European capitals, will not create Pride as a protest, but as a celebration of tolerance - and a street party, because we feel there is not much to protest about."

But someone forgot to tell Czech President Vaclav Klaus this Pride isn't political.

Then, he condemned a statement in support of Pride signed by 13 ambassadors to the Czech Republic.

Ladislav Bátora, the Czech Education Ministry head of human resources, also spoke out against the festival: "This event is organized by groups of homosexuals and lesbians whose demands against the Czech public significantly exceed the framework of mere tolerance."

The political controversy surrounding Prague's Pride is certainly a stark reminder that the United States doesn't hold a patent on anti-gay politicians. It also speaks to the limits of "tolerance" as a frame for queer and trans folks' political demands. The event is being framed as "The Festival of Tolerance," but this doesn't dissuade the hate mongers who aren't even willing to tolerate an annual party. The language we use doesn't much matter to homophobes. To them, LGBT people existing in public at all is too much of an affront.

Congratulations and good luck to everyone at Praque Pride this week, and a big STFU to anti-gay Czech politicians.

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Bachmann participated in the service at Point of Grace Church in Iowa with her husband Marcus - the guy with the fetish for "disciplining" gay "barbarians." She spoke to the congregation and read a bible passage.

Then Pastor Jeff Mullen launched into a half hour sermon, which included this gem:

"We inherently know that homosexual behavior is immoral and unnatural."

"God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness," Mullen said, reading from the book of Romans.

Bachmann left a church with anti-Catholic views shortly before beginning her presidential campaign. But her campaign released a statement about her attendance at yesterday's service that showed no hints of an attempt to distance herself from anti-gay and ex-gay messages. Which doesn't come as much of a surprise, since Bachmann's running on anti-gay hate.

It's disgusting to see a presidential candidate advocate for bigotry, and it's sad to see churches that still promote hatred toward other people. With Bachmann, we've got someone committed to homophobic politics and to claiming legitimacy for her bigotry because of her religion. Which to my mind is an affront to all queer people and all decent people of faith who don't want their beliefs used to harm others.

The way we typically talk about the gender spectrum doesn't tell the whole story for me. In Trans 101 trainings we'll draw a straight line with male at one end and female on the other. Often this is accompanied by a sexual orientation spectrum and a presentation spectrum with masculine and feminine as the ends.

First of all, I don't buy the notion that all of human gender diversity can be placed on a line between male and female. I think we're barely learning how to think and talk about gender beyond the binary in this particular moment, but I certainly don't think everyone who lives outside the male/female binary is somewhere on an androgyny spectrum between those two poles.

More importantly, a straight line doesn't communicate what I usually want to talk about in regards to gender - how it actually functions in the world. It's a visualization that's missing an axis for power.

Neither of these boxes are very solid - people can fall out at any time. A small change in presentation - how you wear your hair or the color of your clothes or how you hold you wrists - can get you kicked out. Actions can impact people's perception of your gender, like who you sleep with or if you hold the door open for someone else. Gender intersects with other categories like race, class, and geography to impact how we're perceived and treated by others. And shifting cultural constructs of gender can change what's considered acceptable.

Outside these two boxes is everyone who doesn't fit. We don't even belong in the box patriarchy's set aside for people to be oppressed based on gender, the "acceptable woman" one. We're the gender rebels who refuse to conform. Trans people who've been excluded even if our own identities do actually fit within "man" or "woman." Femme boys and butch dykes. People who are pushed out because of intersections with race, ability, weight...

So many people don't meet the very narrow definitions being used by our culture of what's acceptable behavior, dress, etc. for both categories. As a result we're kept from accessing power and resources to varying degrees. Trans people are seen as breaking the rules of gender in such an extreme way that we lose our humanity in some people's eyes, lose our rights to work, shelter, and freedom from violence. I think the impulse to keep marriage rights from gay people comes from the same place - homophobia's a fear of breaking with the rules of gender, which dictate who you're supposed to be sexually attracted to.

Most of us fail to conform to the compulsory gender binary, the forcing of all people into the boxes "man" and "woman," at some point. Trans people often know especially well what it means to be forced into a box you can't fit, but anyone who's ever been policed for their gender presentation knows what this exclusion is like.

Oh hey, tons of us are being totally screwed over! Not exactly the happiest topic. But I like looking at the way so many people are excluded by the compulsory gender binary because it suggests a place for solidarity. We all have the potential to fail to fit the binary at any time. I see this as a place we can unite, where we can recognize the similarities between our experiences and work against gender oppression in solidarity or in ways that will benefit all of us. If everyone could hold the memory of some gendered bullying in middle school or being told they had to change their presentation for a job I think we'd see a lot more understanding of the experiences of those who are most marginalized based on gender.

This suggests a politics to me. We need to work against the construction of two essential gender boxes, the forcing of everyone into one or the other, and against the linking of power and resources to these boxes. We need to work for the liberation of people who have failed to conform. This is one underlying question I ask about a political cause or campaign - does it work to undo the forcing of all people into two limiting gender boxes? Does it undo the relationship between gender and power? If so it's probably something I want to work on.

There's a flip side to being excluded from the binary - those boxes are prisons that limit people's activity, their ability to be themselves in a way that makes them happy. Pressure to conform is something we all have to struggle with to some degree - obviously it's easier for some people than others. But the people outside the boxes are having all the fun, doing gender on our own terms, living in ways that feel right for us. We've really got to change this system, because right now we're linking getting oppressed with doing your own identity honestly (and hopefully fabulously). Which is bull.

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I write regularly at Feministing.com, a blog and community for young feminists. We are the most-read feminist publication online or off, which is pretty exciting for a site that started in 2004 to fill a need for a space explicitly for young feminist voices. Our main page hosts content by a team of bloggers I'm proud to call my friends. They form the most genuine feminist community I know, offering each other support and encouragement with heavy doses of snark. And they also do amazing writing about a range of issues. The diversity of our voices and the very broad stroke with which we define what's covered as "feminist" are some of my favorite things about our blog.

We also host an active community of folks who write on our Community and Campus blogs, which give feminists online spaces to communicate and connect.

I joined the team at Feministing following up a dust up about trans issues on the site that we sometimes jokingly refer to as "transplosion." Interestingly, my relationship with Bilerico also began in connection with a controversy around trans issues on this site, when our two blogs collaborated on a panel on responding to blog controversies at Creating Change in 2010.

I bring up this history because it speaks to some of what I love the most about blogs and their potential for social change. No, not call-out culture - I think critique is often the easy default online, and we can often be harsh with people in a way that doesn't encourage growth. But I do think there's a value in raising issues in a productive way that pushes for change, and I think the internet is ideal for that.

I blog because I'm excited about its potential for consciousness raising. In this setting I can return to a single topic and interrogate it from a new perspective in a number of posts. I think this makes blogs a great space for intersectional analysis and centering traditionally marginalized issues and voices. I can be in conversation with other thinkers and change makers, learn from their perspectives and improve my own analysis in the process.

Just recently Feministing was at the center of a conversation about who has abortions after myself and others at a reproductive justice conference brought up the point that people who are not women, including trans men and gender non-conforming folks, need access to the procedure. This conversation about a marginalized community and issue wouldn't be nearly so public and broadly impactful if it hadn't made its way to the blog.

Feministing has become a better blog because we've expanded the topics we cover, because the team has deepened our analysis and learned about new things. I imagine folks working here at The Bilerico Project would say the same thing.

I'm not just online for the conversation - the notion of "slacktivists" is pretty amusing to me when the feminist blogosphere has gotten two offensive ad campaigns pulled in just the last few weeks - one about , the other about, well, a talking vagina. Yeah, we get shit done.

Though I don't think blogs will ever replace face-to-face organizing, I believe it gives change makers a new set of tools to work with. I'm thrilled by the potential of blogs to change minds and bring new issues to people's attention. And I'm excited to jump into the conversation today at The Bilerico Project!