President Obama knows how to take a joke—even a gay one.

At a recent POTUS appearance at Franklin Barbecue in Austin, Texas, cashier Daniel Rugg Webb took the opportunity to declare "equal rights for gay people!"

Without missing a beat, Obama asked Webb, "Are you gay?"

Thrown for a moment, Webb quickly responded, “Only when I’m having sex!”

The President laughed, then, realizing there was a group of children nearby, said, “Not in front of the kids!” The two men then bumped fists.

“We are an anti-gay state. [Rick Perry is] kind of primitive in his social beliefs," says Webb. "Even Obama laughing at something as, hopefully, acceptable as sexuality can show the difference.”

A game developer has released an open-source game that allows players to re-create the experience of coming out.

Nicky Case explains that his Coming Out Simulator 2014 is semi-autobiographical: “This game includes dialogue that I, my parents, and my ex-boyfriend actually said. As well as all the things we could have, should have, and never would have said."

In the game, the player negotiates coming out to his parents over the course of an evening, with various dialogue options offering different levels of openness.

Reddit Alerts, which monitors keywords on reddit for commercial brands, dug through nearly 150,000 posts from early 2012 to April 2014  and reports a dramatic drop in the use of the words “fag” and “faggot,” from 1.6 per 1,000 in January 2012 to 0.28 per 1,000 in April.

“Part of [the drop] comes from genuine belief that the word shouldn’t be used," says Aakil Fernandes, the study's author. "Another part of it comes from a growing respect for political correctness or as some suggest – fear of its consequence.”

Based in Washington State, the Friends New Underground Railroad (FNUR) has helped fund safe passage for at least 107 people, who mostly travel in small groups on back roads to safe houses in neighboring countries like Rwanda. From there, some refugees have moved on to South Africa, Sweden and beyond.

"This is work we would prefer not to do. We are doing it because we were asked to by people who had direct threats on their lives," says one organizer, who took the pseudonym Levi Coffin II in honor of a Quaker associated with the original Underground Railroad. "Names were read out over radio stations, with broadcasts calling for their arrests, imprisonment, castration, and sterilization. They have been many incitements to mob violence. People have been burned out of their homes (and burned themselves), thrown out of their jobs, expelled from schools. Hospitals are refusing to treat LGBTQ individuals."

While he's grateful they've been able to help individuals, Coffin doesn't call the project a success. "It is not a win. It is not an answer. It is what we can do."

Randall Hall, an American married to Englishman Stuart Wales, became a British citizen this year and expected a “straightforward interview” when he applied for a passport last month in Essex.

“I told [the agent] 'I am here with my son Samuel and that he has an older brother but that my husband is looking after him,'" recalls Hall. "And when I used the term 'husband,' that’s when you could see something immediately changed in her. She began to fixate on questions about my family."

In front of Hall's 4-year-old son, the agent began an invasive and disrespectful line of questioning:

She said 'Is this your biological child?’ And when I said no she said: ‘Is it your partner’s biological child?’ And when I explained that we are family through adoption she said: ‘Oh, so that’s why you’re able to have children."

She then asked ‘What do the children call their birth mother?’ and ‘What does the birth mother think about all of us?’ and ‘Aren’t the children confused by it all?'

Then she said: ‘What do you think people make of you when they see you walking down the street with your kids?'

She said: ‘You must have had relationships with women in the past, though?’,

[When I stopped her] she became indignant and said, ‘We can ask anything we want, regardless of whether or not it makes you feel uncomfortable.' It was clear she was trying to humiliate me – a way to get me to say if I’d had sex with a woman.

She said I could refuse to answer but my lack of response would be noted and then proceeded to try to get me to answer, through a variety of questions, whether I or Stuart had previously been sexually active heterosexually.

I have never felt so violated or humiliated. Her questioning was clearly homophobic, designed to put me in my place. We moved here because of the promise of a tolerant society.

A spokesperson from the Home Office says such questions are "inappropriate" and the passport agent has been suspended pending an investigation.