Words hurt.

Words carry enormous meaning and impact.

In the culture war over LGBT rights, words matter. So do deeds and actions.

Make no bones about it, but the culture war is far from won by the LGBT community despite significant gains on the legal front or in the hearts and minds of a majority of Americans.

A vast, loosely connected coalition of fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Mormons, Catholics and other like-minded religious groups have joined far-right fringe groups to fight against gay rights. And they don’t fight fair.

LOS ANGELES – The new TV season brings some disappointing news, a decrease in the number of scripted LGBT characters, according to GLAAD.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation today released the 16th annual “Where We Are On TV” report, a comprehensive review of scripted LGBT primetime characters in the 2011-12 television season.

A day after getting booted off a Southwest Airlines jet for "excessive" PDA, "The L Word" star Leisha Hailey and her girlfriend Camila Grey are insisting that they shared "an innocent kiss" and did not deserve such poor treatment by the airline.

The airline said in a news release posted on its website: “Our crew, responsible for the comfort of all Customers on board, approached the passengers based solely on behavior and not gender. The conversation escalated to a level that was better resolved on the ground, as opposed to in flight.”

In the latest news from homophobic Russia: Moscow police have stopped investigating the bashing of a lesbian journalist; Moscow authorities refuse to register LGBT NGOs; and another Russian region wants to outlaw LGBT and pro-gay organizing.

But, in good news, 'liberal' St Petersberg held a successful LGBT festival.

Elena Kostyuchenko is a well-known Russian journalist who recently came out as lesbian in her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.