How Marriage Inequality Fans Bullying and Homophobia

I have long argued that the far right and the Christofascists in particular eagerly support laws that discriminate against LGBT citizens because such laws allow them to point to the laws as proof that their religious based hate and bigotry is mainstream and correct.  Hence the Christianist struggle against the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and opposition by "godly Christians" to every law that would ban anti-gay discrimination in the work place, in housing and accommodations, etc.   The more the laws discriminate against gays, the happier the Christofascists will be.  This same phenomenon carries over into the struggle for same sex marriage.  While the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") disingenuously claims it is trying to "protect marriage" the fact that NOM and its allies are increasingly pushing the "ex-gay" myth and the fraudulent work of Paul Cameron, the more clear it becomes that the agenda is something else far beyond "protecting marriage."  It's about fanning homophobia and setting an atmosphere where anti-gay bullying is seen as perfectly proper.  After all, if the law deems gays as inferior, then bullies can feel justified in their abuse of LGBT individuals.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at how this legalized discrimination creates support for rampant homophobia and the deadly bullying that goes hand in hand with it.  Here are some highlights which seem equally applicable in America:

On May 17 we marked the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO). It reminded me of the president of Ireland's recent address, speaking at a youth conference in March. President Higgins spoke of the "appalling, destructive reality of homophobia."

President Higgins went on to state, "The idea that any young person could be driven, not just to lower self-esteem, exclusion, isolation, loneliness, but self-destruction itself, is an appalling blight on a society." His words are chilling. His words are true. The president was deservedly commended for his condemnation of the harsh actuality we face as a society. But we're missing something.

Bullying comes about through a lack of empathy inside, displayed outwardly as intolerance. Anti-gay bullying and the denial of marriage equality are not mutually exclusive in that sense. People are bullied because they're perceived as different. We blame the bully, possibly the parents. We want to hold someone accountable. But we need to look at the wider picture. We need to consider the fact that the law treats citizens differently. The law perceives some of us differently. The bullies aren't blind. Whose lead are they following?

The Constitution of Ireland sets out our bill of rights. Article 40.1 makes a guarantee that "[a]ll citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law." And therein lies the problem. The problem is the fact that where the issue of marriage equality is concerned, the emphasis is placed on our gender, on our sexual orientation, whereas marriage laws should be about us as human beings, as "human persons," in line with Article 40.1.

The law doesn't embrace who they are, not fully. Article 40.1 becomes conditionally operational and is precluded from being relied upon in certain circumstances. The family provision, Article 41, goes one step further and even operates to deny a right: the right of marriage. What message is this sending down the line? It's a very strong message. It comes from on high. It comes from the top. It comes from the very document our heroes of history fought to establish, for Ireland, for the people, for all of us.

We're a progressive country. We pride ourselves on embracing all types of people. Why, then, do we stop short of embracing all types of families? How can we teach these youngsters to accept themselves when we know they're going to grow up without full acceptance from society, from the law? The mainstream, and indeed the law, is not reflecting equality. It's not reflecting reality. It's excluding certain people, and it is having a damaging effect.

As I said, the enemies of the LGBT community understand the importance of the law treating us differently.  It sends a strong message in support of bigotry and discrimination.  All based ultimately on religion.  Something all of us are supposed to be able to practice as we wish.  Until anti-gay laws are eliminated and marriage equality is allowed nationwide, the promise of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution remains a farce and America is a fraud when it claims to champion freedom of religion.  It doesn't.  It champions a fear and hated based version of Christianity.

Virginia School Division Votes to Remove Ten Commandment Display

Facing a likely loss in federal court, the Giles County School Board voted unanimously yesterday to remove a display of the Ten Commandments that had been part of a display on American government and morality.  For readers not in the know, Giles County is in the far west of Virginia - a region of Virginia still in many ways akin to something out of the old movie "Deliverance" even though that movie was supposedly set in Georgia.  Its a part of the state that not surprisingly has difficulty attracting new and progressive business - a problem not helped by the local religious extremism and rejection of modernity.  I'm sure The Family Foundation's dominatrix like president will be raising Hell with the Virginia GOP about this example of the "persecution of Christians."  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:  

A copy of the Ten Commandments will soon be taken down from a hallway wall at Narrows High School, where it has hung during a year and a half of controversy and litigation.

The Giles County School Board voted unanimously Thursday to replace the commandments with a copy of a page from a history textbook that mentions the Ten Commandments in conjunction with American government and morality.

Giles County residents who have shown up en masse at earlier meetings in support of the commandments display were not in attendance for the vote, and it was unclear how it would play among that segment of the community.

The school board's 5-0 vote, taken with little discussion during a sparsely attended special meeting, comes less than a month after a federal judge raised pointed questions about whether the commandments display violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

A motion approved by the board read: "In light of the recent controversy, and legal proceedings, and the substitution of this Roots of Democracy document in the place of the text of the Ten Commandments, this board will not approve the posting of the text of the Ten Commandments in our schools unless and until the courts provide further clarification of the law in this area."

It was not clear how the vote might affect mediation sessions ordered last month by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Urbanski. Urbanski is presiding over a lawsuit in which a student at Narrows High School asked that the commandments be taken down, saying they amount to a governmental endorsement of religion.

The commandments were first placed in Giles County schools in April 1999 in response to the Columbine school shootings.  In December 2010, they were taken down after a complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  Facing heat from the community, the school board voted to put the display back up, then took it down again on legal advice.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that similar displays in Kentucky courthouses were unconstitutional, and that posting the Ten Commandments alone in a school violates the First Amendment's mandate that government not endorse religion.

Time and time again the far right in Virginia believes that it can ignore U.S. Supreme Court rulings.  Just maybe they are beginning to get the message that they are not above the law and the Constitution.

Republican Extremism and the Decline of American Politics

Seemingly across the country the biggest obstacle to addressing the nations problems (and here in Virginia, Virginia's many problems including transportation) is Republican intransigence and an effort to turn the clock back to some mythical 1950's version of America that never existed in fact.   In the GOP's mythical America, white males rule supreme, women, blacks and non-Christians all know their place, and gays are invisible if they know what's good for them.  The irony is that to the extent any form of the "Ozzie and Harriet" middle class world worshiped by the GOP actually existed, much of it stemmed from the financial security that unions had brought to many families - the exact security that the GOP seeks to destroy.  A column in The New Yorker looks at the threat the GOP poses to responsible government.  Here are excerpts:

At least since President Obama’s Inauguration, political observers have been taking note of the Republican Party’s trend toward the right, and away from compromise. “After 2010, it was impossible for a fair-minded person who knew what was going on in Washington and around the country to maintain the fiction that there was an equivalent extremism, and polarization, and ugliness on both sides,” George Packer says in this week’s Political Scene podcast. But there was an impulse among pundits and citizens alike to believe that Democrats, too, bear some of the blame for the country’s polarization, an impulse only now beginning to fade.

Packer traces the polarization back to Newt Gingrich. Starting with his Speakership, Packer says, Republicans have been exhibiting a “willingness—even an eagerness—to use every tactic short of law-breaking to demonize the opponent on the way to winning power.” And that, of course, includes this election.

“With Mitt Romney, there’s the extremism about taxes and about the Catholic Church and its conflict about contraception,” Davidson says. “And then there’s the ugliness as well in things like birtherism and in Mitt Romney’s flirtation with Donald Trump.” 

Packer believes President Obama—who, he notes, “has always been skeptical of hard ideological lines,”—will have trouble in the current landscape. His lack of ideological stance “means that he’s having to start from scratch in assembling a clear argument that opposes the extremism” of the G.O.P.

Beyond this election, even if Romney loses, Packer predicts that Republicans will not relent, but will continue to bog down government and prevent a return to respectable politics. He quotes Barney Frank’s idea for a Democratic Party-wide slogan: “We’re not perfect, but they’re nuts.”

I would add to the analysis of causes for the growing GOP extremism the rise of the Christofascists as the puppet masters of the party.  When those who utterly reject science and who seek to impose a far right Christian theocracy take charge, there is no compromise.   When hate filled people who claim to have God on their side steer the party, extremism is the only result that can be expected.  Unfortunately, the mainstream media remains afraid of exposing the true ugliness of conservative Christianity in this country.  This needs to change NOW.

North Carolina GOP Seeks to Ignore Climate Change

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse BEFORE it was moved 1800 feet to save it from erosion and rising sea levels

In yet another example of today's Republican Party is the party of ignorance and backward thinking, Republicans in the North Carolina legislature are pushing a bill that would have that state ignore the realities of climate change and rising sea levels even though the state's Outer Banks region and areas on Pamlico Sound is constantly beset with a battle against the rising ocean levels.  The GOP simply wants to pretend the problem doesn't exist.  Just like they want gays to cease to exist.  Fear of change - especially changing demographics - seems to trump any and every logical approach to a changing objective reality.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at this head in the sand approach.  Here are highlights:

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are circulating a bill which would limit their state agencies’ ability to calculate sea-rise levels, a proposal that one member of the state’s Coastal Resources Commission science panel has termed “bad science.”

The bill has not yet been introduced, but the language in the version being circulated would make the Division of Coastal Management the only state agency allowed to produce sea-level rise rates, and only at the request of the Coastal Resources Commission, and then only under the following conditions:

These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time period following the year 1900. Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise.

In other words, instead of taking into account global warming to predict higher seas, as expected by most scientists, the bill would have the state rely only on the historical record. 

Rob Young, a geology professor at Western Carolina University and a member of the CRC’s science panel, told the North Carolina Coastal Federation (NCCF), an environmental advocacy group, that the bill runs counter to the findings of the National Academy of Sciences and “every major science organization on the globe.”  .   .  .   .  Young pointed out that other states are planning on a sea-level rise of at least three feet. 

According to the NCCF, the CRC’s science panel drafted a report in 2010 that advised the state to prepare for a sea-level rise of up to 55 inches by 2100. The report said that a 39-inch rise was likely. Those findings were disputed by NC-20, an advocacy group that represents businesses and coastal counties. NCCF reports that, using the standard of the proposed bill, the state would be anticipating a 12-inch rise in sea level by 2100.

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U.S. Justice Department Demands GOP Stop Purging Voter Rolls in Florida

I noted recently who GOP Florida Governor Rick Scott and his GOP political have launched an effort to purge "unqualified voters" from the voting rolls in Florida.  By coincidence - wink and nod - those targeted for purging almost without exception seem to be Democrats and minorities.  Elderly whites and far right Bubbas have been unaffected.  Apparently, the GOP knows that its platform and policies cannot win a majority of voters, so it's necessary to knock opposition voters of the voting rolls.  All of this is done, of course, to protect against "rampant voter fraud."  The problem is the numbers from past elections demonstrate that there is no rampant voter fraud to be protected against.  The entire agenda is aimed at stifling anti-GOP votes so that the GOP can steal the election in Florida - a must win state for Mitt Romney.  Thankfully, the U. S. Justice Department has demanded that Florida cease the Scott?GOP directed voter purge.  One can only hope that charges will be filed against the state of Florida and ideally, Scott personally, to make sure this kind of outrage stops.  Here are highlights from Talking Points Memo:

The Justice Department sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner Thursday evening demanding the state cease purging its voting rolls because the process it is using has not been cleared under the Voting Rights Act, TPM has learned.

DOJ also said that Florida’s voter roll purge violated the National Voter Registration Act, which stipulates that voter roll maintenance should have ceased 90 days before an election, which given Florida’s August 14 primary, meant May 16.

Five of Florida’s counties are subject to the Voting Rights Act, but the state never sought permission from either the Justice Department or a federal court to implement its voter roll maintenance program. Florida officials said they were trying to remove non-citizens from the voting rolls, but a flawed process led to several U.S. citizens being asked to prove their citizenship status or be kicked off the rolls.

“To enable us to meet our responsibility to enforce federal law, please inform us by June 6 of the action that the State of Florida plans to take concerning the matters discussed in this letter,” Christian Herren, chief of the voting section of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, wrote in the letter obtained by TPM. “Specifically, please advise whether the State intends to cease the practice discussed above, so that the Department can determine what further action, if any, is necessary.”

The DOJ letter can be seen here.

1st Circuit Rules Portion of Defense of Marriage Act Unconstitutional

I have long maintained that the federal Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA") serves no legitimate governmental purpose other than to illegally enshrine a particular homophobic set of religious beliefs in the nation's civil laws - something clearly in violation of the 1st Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom to ALL citizens.  While it declined to strike down DOMA on the basis that it violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, it did rightly find that DOMA is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause because it discriminates against same sex couples without furthering any legitimate governmental purpose.  Needless to say, the Christofascists are shrieking and spewing spittle as they rant about "activist judges"  while their boot licking puppets in the GOP are likewise whining and wringing their hands in feigned dismay.  The 1st Circuit's opinion can be found here.  Here are some highlights from the Washington Post: 

A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional because it denies equal rights for legally married same-sex couples, making it likely that the Supreme Court will consider the politically divisive issue for the first time in its next term.

The decision by a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit in Boston was a big win for President Obama, who recently said he supported states allowing gay men and lesbians to marry.

The decision by a panel made up of judges nominated by presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton did not address whether the Constitution provides gays and lesbians a fundamental right to marriage. It also did not address a part of DOMA that says states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

Some gay rights activists have felt that the limited question in the DOMA case made it a more attractive and incremental issue for an increasingly conservative Supreme Court than asking the justices to recognize a fundamental right of gays to marry.

The case presents only “the question of how the federal government treats people once they are married in their states,” said Mary L. Bonauto, who argued the case for a group called the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD).   “We think this is a very solid decision to go before the Supreme Court.”

The decision by the Obama administration not to defend DOMA — a law that was signed but now disavowed by Clinton — promped an angry response from House Republican leaders. They hired Paul D. Clement, who was solicitor general in the administration of George W. Bush, to defend the law in court.

 While the congressional record on the act is “filled with encomia to heterosexual marriage,” the opinion states, Congress did not explain “how denying benefits to same-sex couples will reinforce heterosexual marriage.”  And the Supreme Court has ruled, the panel said, that “moral disapproval” is not adequate to justify discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Boudin’s decision, which was joined by Chief Circuit Judge Sandra L. Lynch and Circuit Judge Juan R. Torruella, was the first time an appeals court has agreed with a challenge to DOMA.  But it is part of a string of legal decisions that gay-rights activists have won on same-sex marriage. Two U.S. District Court judges in California have found the same section of DOMA considered by the Boston court to be unconstitutional, and those cases will soon be considered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.

If the Christofascists cannot accept religious freedom for ALL citizens  as required by the Constitution, how about we ship them all to Iran where they can conduct a crusade against Islam. There, they will either prevail or end up being treated as they have willingly and maliciously treated others.

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