Bent Alaska tweets the news, data from the 2010 U.S. Census on same-sex married couples, a “This Gets Better” video, and more in this edition of Bent News.

Tweeting the news

• Bent Alaska has added (we think) Selective Tweets to our FB profile (as well as page), so we can share news when we’re out & about. #

Bent Alaska has added the Selective Tweets app to our Facebook profile, so we can easily share news with our Facebook friends when we’re out and about — merely by adding a simple #fb hashtag to any tweet we wish.  You can also follow us directly on Twitter @bentalaska.

But what if you’re not on Facebook or Twitter?  We’ve also added a plugin called Twitter Tools to our blog, which will automatically creates a daily post from our tweets.  And suddenly Bent News is reborn: a daily (at least when we tweet) summary of some of the interesting stuff we’ve found around the web.  As we’re able, we’ll also supplement it with other news, photos, videos, etc., to try to make it interesting & informative.  Our Bent News posts will post the day after the tweets were made.

Let us know how we’re doing!  Write to us at bentalaska [at] gmail [dot] com.

Census data on same-sex married couples

• Census Bureau reports 131,729 same-sex married couples, and 646,464 gay couples in the country overall. http://t.co/NdHUdImC #

One of our Facebook friends asked, “Was there a category for LGBTQ persons overall?”  Our answer:  Not yet. Single people couldn’t self-identify as LGBTQ on the 2010 Census, so there’s no data on how many of us live in the U.S. We’ve got to get that added for 2020!

There’s a campaign by the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGTLF) to do just that, called Queer the Census (Facebook page). In its blog post about the Census Bureau’s newly released data on same-sex couples, the Task Force writes,

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force played a key role in getting the U.S. Census Bureau to report the number of married same-sex couples in the 2010 census, and continues to work with policymakers to ensure lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people are included in a broad swath of federal surveys and data collection.

See the U.S. Census Bureau’s official press release on the data.

Other tweets

• Biblical arguments for LGBT equality? Yes. @LambdaLiterary reviews God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality http://t.co/nPGV8TRw #
• Right wing claims TX student’s religious freedom being violated by teacher he harassed b/c he thinks teacher is gay http://t.co/i4lAVL2H #

Shared on our Facebook wall

“All the bullies I’ve known were insensitive jerks.” — so says Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia in this video for the It Gets Better Project. Watch: