Saturday, July 08, 2023
Who Will Entitled White People Blame Next?
Last week, the right-wing justices on the Supreme Court killed affirmative action in colleges and university admissions. These five men and one woman are political hitmen. They are zealots and ideologues who were and remain totally committed to their mission. There was no evidence or facts that likely would have changed their minds; The outcome was a fait accompli. Their decision to end affirmative action was part of a larger political judicial massacre: that same week the right-wing majority voted to void President Biden's student loan forgiveness plan and to make it legal to use religion as a justification to discriminate against gays and lesbians (and by implication Black and brown people and members of other marginalized groups) – in violation of the country's civil rights laws.
In all, today's right-wing revanchist-controlled Supreme Court is doing the work of returning American society to the Gilded Age (if not before) as part of a neofascist revolutionary political project to end the country's multiracial democracy and pluralistic society.
In her dissent Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is the first Black female Supreme Court Justice in the history of that institution, focused on the absurd reasoning and claim that American society is fundamentally "colorblind":
With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces "colorblindness for all" by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country's actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America's real-world problems.
No one benefits from ignorance. Although formal race-linked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today's ruling makes things worse, not better. The best that can be said of the majority's perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain.
Of course, Donald Trump, the twice-impeached ex-president and presumed 2024 Republican presidential nominee felt compelled to issue a statement in response to the Supreme Court's decision to kill affirmative action. On his Truth Social disinformation propaganda platform, Trump celebrated that: This is a great day for America. . . . declaring that "his" justices are "gold."
Trump's statement in response to the SCOTUS affirmative action decision is rife with white racist lies, white rage, distortions and abuses of historical facts, white racist fantasies and white victimology, prejudice, white supremacy, anti-rationality, ignorance, intellectual dishonesty, and a deeply held belief that any outcome in American society where a white person (or white people as a group) do not automatically "win" or otherwise get their way is somehow unfair and unjust. The unifying thread in Trump's statement and the racist imagination it represents is white entitlement. It is what American Studies scholar George Lipsitz has compellingly described as "the possessive investment in whiteness."
Unfortunately, Donald Trump is not just speaking for himself. He is a fountain and mouthpiece for White America (the not so "silent majority") writ large and the delusional and paranoiac belief that somehow it is white people, not Black and brown people, who are the "real victims" of racism in America. In the world as it actually exists white people in America control every major political, social, and economic institution, and by extension the vast majority of the country's income, wealth, and other resources.
Donald Trump said that the Supreme Court's decision was a "great day for America." Who is included in his "America"? Who was it in fact "great" for? Most certainly not the Black and brown Americans and others who will be denied a fair opportunity . . .
The greatness that Trump is yearning for as the leader of the neofascist MAGA movement and larger white right is to end America's multiracial pluralistic democracy by returning the country to the "good old days" when Black and brown people were second-class citizens, women were not considered equal to men, and gays and lesbian people were disappeared from mainstream public life.
Trump's "merit-based" society is white privilege and white power and white domination unrestrained and unchecked. America has never been a "merit-based" society. Moreover, Trump himself is a living embodiment of how American society is not "merit based". Trump inherited and was loaned large sums of money from his father that he in turn used to start his business(es). He gained admission to Wharton Business School, most certainly not based on intellectual merit or ability, but because of family connections. One of Donald Trump's professors at Wharton described him as "the dumbest goddamned student" he ever had. In many ways, Donald Trump's entire life is a story of the types of privilege and other unearned advantages afforded to rich white men in America.
He has also convinced himself that ending affirmative action programs will make America "competitive with the world." The actual data shows, however, that more diverse and inclusive groups, organizations and societies are more dynamic, innovative, successful and prosperous.
In this 2020 interview, sociologist Joe Feagin explains how what he describes as "the white racial frame" distorts how (most) white people understand the realities of race and racism in American society: For centuries, that white racial frame has provided a dominant worldview from which most whites (and many others) regularly view this society. . . . Especially important is that this broad white framing has a very positive orientation to whites as generally superior and virtuous (a pro-white subframe) and a negative orientation to various racial "others" substantially viewed as inferior and unvirtuous (anti-others subframes).
In her book "White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide", historian Carol Anderson highlights the power of white rage and the harm it causes Black and brown people: The trigger for white rage, inevitably, is Black advancement. It is not the mere presence of Black people that is the problem; rather, it is Blackness with ambition, with drive, with purpose, with aspirations, and with demands for full and equal citizenship. It is Blackness that refuses to accept subjugation, to give up.
I wonder who white folks will now blame for their life failures and other frustrations and disappointments now that affirmative action in higher education — and soon across American society — is dead? Who will they rage against when they and/or their "best and brightest" and so "very smart" and "special" and "unique" children don't get admitted into their first choice of a college or university? When they, who of course are the "best at their job", are not promoted because a "minority" supposedly "took my spot!"
Will that frustrated white entitlement shrivel and explode or will it become something else? I know the answer. It will be the same one that it has always been for centuries in America. Nonetheless, the question still demands to be asked because of what the answer reveals about the character and nature of American society and the enduring power of the color line in these horrible days of the Age of Donald Trump and beyond.
Much the same narrative applies to LGBT rights - anytime we advance in acceptance and equality, white evangelicals and Christofascists view it as a loss of their power and privilege.
Friday, July 07, 2023
Youngkin Continues His Assault on LGBT Youths
If he could have his way - something that could happen if Democrats fail to retain control of the Virginia Senate in November - I suspect Glenn Youngkin would quickly move to turn Virginia into a mirror image of DeSantis' Florida. In the meantime, Youngkin is doing all that he can to erase LGBT youths from Virginia's public schools and is quietly stripping away programs and resources that aid LGBT youth, including suicide prevention resources. This effort is wrapped in the smoke screen of "parents' rights" that views children as chattel property of their parents who they are free to mistreat and abuse if children do not conform to their parents 12th century views of human sexuality and social views - a mindset pushed by religious extremists at groups like The Family Foundation, one of Virginia's most pernicious hate groups that descends from the "Massive Resistance" effort to block desegregation and which continues to peddle the discredited myth that sexual orientation is a "choice." Never mind that all of the legitimate medical and mental health experts refute this myth. Youngkin ignores the reality that (i) LGBT youth have a much higher suicide risk - often because of their parents - and (ii) 40% of homeless youth are LGBT usually because their homes are so toxic and non-accepting and seemingly wants to make matters for Virginia's LGBT youth. All so that Youngkin can court the Christofascists within the GOP base. A piece in the Washington Post looks at Youngkin's latest effort to harm LGBT youths in Virginia. Here are highlights:
The administration of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) quietly took down LGBTQ+ youth resources from a state website after a conservative media outlet questioned the links, records show, building on a pattern of removals derided by public health employees who say their work is being politicized.
Within hours of an inquiry from the Daily Wire, a dozen resources, including a live-chat online support group for teens, were removed from the state health department website at the direction of a Cabinet-level agency, according to emails obtained under the state’s open records law.
The presence of the materials — and their subsequent disappearance on May 31 — generated two headlines and a flurry of online reaction from conservative readers of the outlet, co-founded by right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro. The decision elicited concern from department leaders who had not been consulted and began emailing their higher-ups asking why this had happened — again
Youngkin’s administration has at least three times in the year and a half since he took office removed information from the website without consulting its own subject-matter experts, records show, stripping public health resources on abortions, sexual health and pregnancy among other issues as he remakes state policy after eight years of Democratic control.
Youngkin spokesperson Macaulay Porter framed the decision to remove LGBTQ+ youth resources as part of the governor’s emphasis on parents’ rights, a focus that helped him win in 2021 amid politically charged grievances over critical race theory, . . . the history of systemic racism that teachers have said is not in Virginia public schools’ curriculum.
“In Virginia, the governor will always reaffirm a parent’s role in their child’s life. Children belong to their parents, not the state,” Porter said in a statement. . . . Sexualizing children against a parent’s wishes doesn’t belong on a taxpayer supported website.”
Discussions about children’s sexuality and gender identity have been at the heart of a conservative backlash to LGBTQ+ rights this year, with commentators and far-right agitators claiming that gay and transgender people are “grooming” children by, for example, holding story time while dressed in drag, or allowing children to discuss gender identity in school.
The Daily Wire inquiry was mainly focused on two programs: Queer Kid Stuff, a resource for children and families that launched its video series in 2016 with a piece exploring the question, “What Does Gay Mean?” and Q Chat Space, which offers live, facilitated chats for LGBTQ+ teenagers. Neither site requires adult permission to use, which some conservatives say they find troubling but LGBTQ+ experts say is essential for youth who need support and are not comfortable bringing their questions to a family member.
[P]arents are not the enemies,” said Todd Gathje, a lobbyist for the Family Foundation, which has advocated against LGBTQ+ rights.
The LGBTQ+ rights group Equality Virginia called taking down the resources “craven and politically motivated.”
“This is part of a pattern with this administration, where it’s more important to appeal to an anti-LGBTQ+ political base rather than serve LGBTQ+ Virginians in any capacity,” Narissa Rahaman, executive director of Equality Virginia, said in a statement.
The three documented instances when Youngkin officials have removed online public health resources involve the same office in the Virginia Department of Health, records show: the Office of Family Health . . . Employees in that division in 2022 told The Washington Post that their work on maternal health disparities had been dismissed by Youngkin’s first health chief, Colin Greene, who in comments to them and to The Post questioned the role of structural racism in public health. The Democratic-controlled Senate in February ultimately ousted Greene . . .
I’m very concerned that staff were directed to remove the webpage without engaging [subject matter experts] in response to a politically motivated inquiry, yet again.”
The first came in February 2022, when Greene directed the manager of the web team remove from the sexual health FAQ page the question, “Where can I learn more about sexual health and pregnancy/STI prevention?” and the answer that recommended an online chatbot powered by Planned Parenthood and two other sites with information catered toward teenagers, records show.
Upon learning of the Daily Wire questions, two subject-matter experts, including Yeatts, floated a draft reply that said “VDH’s webpage includes information for all people, including transgender youth, and strives to include information consistent with best public health practices,” adding: “LGBT people are at increased risk for violence.” . . . . Walker Harris wrote back saying that because her team manages the content on the website, she hoped their “subject matter expertise” would be considered in an agency response. . . . Records indicate the response was never sent.
Sadly, for many LGBT youths their parents are the enemy and young lives may well be lost do to Youngkin's removal of resources in an effort to please the ugliest elements of the GOP base and the "Christian Taliban" at The Family Foundation.
Thursday, July 06, 2023
The Supreme Court Has Unleashed Racism and Homophobia
There is a recurrent theme in American history: the clawing back of hard-won progress. And the Supreme Court last week used the most specious of arguments to do so with affirmative action.
In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that affirmative action — in this case, the use of race as a factor in university admissions — cannot stand because “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” But, of course, neither the court nor America itself has any desire to eliminate all of it. Reading that line was like having someone spit in my face.
What the court was really signaling was that it intended to let racial imbalances born of both historical and current injustices be locked in and go unchecked. Affirmative action, however imperfect, is at least an acknowledgment of racialized imbalance and injury, and an attempt to lessen their effects.
The court, with this decision, was washing its hands of racial discrimination that is not overt, conscious and codified, knowing full well that American racism, having evolved into ever more elegant forms for centuries, no longer requires articulated animus in order to be brutally effective. Enslavement evolved into convict leasing and then to mass incarceration. Lynching evolved into a racially skewed death penalty apparatus. Poll tests and literacy tests evolved into racial gerrymandering, voter ID requirements and restrictions on the day, times and methods of voting,
The evolved forms may not be as blunt as the ancestral ones, but they do keep the spirit, and in many cases the actuality, of racial imbalance and oppression very much alive.
Citing an older case, Roberts wrote that “when a university admits students ‘on the basis of race, it engages in the offensive and demeaning assumption that [students] of a particular race, because of their race, think alike.’”
This, too, is a fallacy. Race is meaningless. But, living in a society where racism is rampant and chronic, a society in which you have — by virtue of race — had to navigate that racism, has meaning. And anti-Black racism is a particular, virulent form of racism with a long history and deep roots in this country.
Different Black people will experience and deal with that racism in different ways. Such is the varied nature of humanity. Even the Black conservatives who downplay or dismiss the pervasiveness of American racism will discuss their experiences navigating it.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in great detail about navigating race and racism in his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.”
Yet in Thomas’s unseemly attempts, in his concurrence, to clip the wings of the only other Black justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson — who wrote a vigorous dissent — and to deride what he calls her “race-infused worldview,” he exposes the flimsiness of his argument.
Thomas writes: “Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them.” But, of course, the anti-Black barriers are confronted only by Black people.
He continues: “And their race is not to blame for everything — good or bad — that happens in their lives. A contrary, myopic worldview based on individuals’ skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism.”
This is reductive absolutism meant to shut down debate. The argument has never been that people who face racism are simply ribbons in the wind, blown about and powerless against it. It is, rather, that racism is real and must be dealt with; that for Black people, a birth certificate is a conscription card into a war as old as the country about racial equity and equality.
Thomas condemns Jackson’s views as “an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through barriers, rather than consign themselves to permanent victimhood.”
In theory, this stigmatic psychological injury is the same, in the inverse, as one of the rationales the court in 1954 offered in its opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, arguing that “to separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”
Both versions of the argument are suspect.
The psychological ramifications flow not from how one feels about how one is viewed but from inequity produced by the greater ability of some families to accrue and transfer wealth; in material harms produced by the increased likelihood of discrimination in employment, banking, health care and the criminal justice system; from discriminatory urban planning and the underresourcing of particular schools.
Since Brown, the hearts-and-minds ideology has flipped to focus not so much on harm to Black people as it does on the imperative of winning over white people as a way of persuading them to abandon anti-Black racism.
But at this point, attitudinal changes are little more than feel-good, figurative gestures. It’s like trying to solve global warming by individually recycling your grocery bags and buying organic bananas.
The court takes the absurd position that racism must be ignored for racism to be overcome. That view doesn’t put racism on a leash; it grants it license.
Wednesday, July 05, 2023
Reclaiming Real American Patriotism
Nostalgia is usually an unproductive emotion. Our memories can deceive us, especially as we get older. But every so often, nostalgia can remind us of something important. As we celebrate another Fourth of July, I find myself wistful about the patriotism that was once common in America—and keenly aware of how much I miss it.
I experienced the jolt of a feeling we used to think of as patriotism: the joyful love of country. Patriotism, unlike its ugly half brother, nationalism, is rooted in optimism and confidence; nationalism is a sour inferiority complex, a sullen attachment to blood-and-soil fantasies that is always looking abroad with insecurity and even hatred. Instead, I was taking in the New England shoreline but seeing in my mind the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I felt moved with wonder—and gratitude—for the miracle that is the United States.
How I miss that feeling. Because usually when I think of West Virginia these days, my first thought tends to be: red state. I now see many voters there, and in other states, as my civic opponents. I know that many of them likely hear “Boston” and they, too, think of a place filled with their blue-state enemies. I feel that I’m at a great distance from so many of my fellow citizens, as do they, I’m sure, from people like me. And I hate it. . . . . my mind kept returning to another summer, 40 years ago, in a different America and a different world.
I spent the summer of 1983, right after college graduation, in the Soviet Union studying Russian. I was in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), a beautiful city shrouded in a palpable sense of evil. KGB goons were everywhere. (They weren’t hard to spot, because they wanted visiting Americans like me, and the Soviet citizens who might speak with us, to see them.) I saw firsthand what oppression looks like, when people are afraid to speak in public, to associate, to move about, and to worship as they wish. I saw, as well, the power of propaganda . . . .
I was with a group of American students, and we were eager to meet Soviet people. The city is so far north that in the summer the sun never truly sets, and we had many warm conversations with young Leningraders—glares from the KGB notwithstanding—along the banks of the Neva River during the strange, half-lit gloom of these “White Nights.” Among ourselves, of course, our relations were as one might expect of college kids: Some friendships formed, some conflicts simmered, some romances bloomed, and some frostiness settled in among cliques.
If, however, we ran into anyone else from the United States, perhaps during a tour or in the hotel, most of us reacted as if we were all long-lost friends. The distances in the U.S. shrank to nothing. . . . . It is difficult today to explain to a globalized and mobile generation the sense of fellowship evoked by encountering Americans overseas in the days when international travel was a rarer luxury than it is now. But to meet other Americans in a place such as the Soviet Union was often like a family reunion despite all of us being complete strangers.
Today, many Americans regard one another as foreigners in their own country. Montgomery and Burlington? Charleston and Seattle? We might as well be measuring interstellar distances. We talk about “blue” and “red,” and we call one another communists and fascists, tossing off facile labels that once, among more serious people, were fighting words.
I am not going to both-sides this: I have no patience with people who casually refer to anyone with whom they disagree as “fascists,” but such people are a small and annoying minority. The reality is that the Americans who have taught us all to hate one another instantly at the sight of a license plate or at the first intonation of a regional accent are the vanguard of the new American right, and they have found fame and money in promoting division and even sedition.
These are the people, on our radios and televisions and even in the halls of Congress, who encourage us to fly Gadsden and Confederate flags and to deface our cars with obscene and stupid bumper stickers; they subject us to inane prattle about national divorce as they watch the purchases and ratings and donations roll in. Such people have made it hard for any of us to be patriotic; they pollute the incense of patriotism with the stink of nationalism so that they can issue their shrill call to arms for Americans to oppose Americans.
Their appeals demean every voter, even those of us who resist their propaganda, because all of us who hear them find ourselves drawing lines and taking sides. When I think of Ohio, for example, I no longer think (as I did for most of my life) of a heartland state and the birthplace of presidents. Instead, I wonder how my fellow American citizens there could have sent to Congress such disgraceful poltroons as Jim Jordan and J. D. Vance—men, in my view, whose fidelity to the Constitution takes a back seat to personal ambition, and whose love of country I will, without reservation, call into question. Likewise, when I think of Florida, I envision a natural wonderland turned into a political wasteland by some of the most ridiculous and reprehensible characters in American politics.
I struggle, especially, with the shocking fact that many of my fellow Americans, led by cynical right-wing-media charlatans, are now supporting Russia while Moscow conducts a criminal war. These voters have been taught to fear their own government—and other Americans who disagree with them—more than a foreign regime that seeks the destruction of their nation. . . . Now, thanks to the new rightists, an even worse and more enduring anti-Americanism has become the foundational belief of millions of American citizens.
I know that such thoughts make me part of the problem. And yes, I will always believe that voting for someone such as Jordan (or, for that matter, Donald Trump) is, on some level, a moral failing. But that has nothing to do with whether Ohio and Florida are part of the America I love, a nation full of good people whose politics are less important than their shared citizenship with me in this republic.
[L]ike it or not, we are bound to one another in one of the greatest and most noble experiments in human history. Our destiny together, stand or fall, is inescapable.
Tomorrow, we can go back to bickering. But just for this Fourth, I hope we can all try, with an open spirit, to think of our fellow Americans as friends and family, brothers and sisters, and people whose hands we would gratefully clasp if we met in a faraway and dangerous place.
Tuesday, July 04, 2023
Ron DeSantis’s Rush to Homophobia
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at one point seemed to represent a new generation of Republican leadership.
During his first year as Governor of Florida, he visited the Pulse memorial and told gay lawmakers like Carlos Guillermo Smith and shooting survivors they would “have no problem” with his governance of LGBTQ+ issues, whatever other differences they had. Yet as he runs for president, DeSantis has rapidly built up a robust anti-LGBTQ record, including signing a bathroom segregation bill into law.
He’s also restricted access to trans health care, threatened business licenses for venues allowing minors into drag performances, and enacted an infamous “don’t say gay” law that forbids classroom instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation.
As DeSantis ramps up homophobic rhetoric in his quest for the GOP nomination, he’s now attacked Trump for, of all things, promising in 2016 to protect LGBTQ+ Americans from terrorist attacks like the Pulse shooting. A video distributed by the DeSantis campaign attacks Donald Trump for allowing transgender contestants into beauty pageants and allowing Caitlin Jenner into the women’s room at Trump Tower. Moreover, it revels in the scorn from the LGBTQ community that DeSantis has drawn the past two years.
Nearly a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed marriage equality, the rush to the far right raises a shocking question. Is this how the 2024 Republican nomination for president will be decided?
The latest video promoted by the DeSantis team seems to have unleashed a public debate on the right over whether homophobia remains a value to which conservatives must cling.
“I spent the last 7 years of my life working with Trump to make the GOP a more welcoming place for gays WHILE ALSO being anti-groomer, anti-woke and pro religious liberty,” tweeted out conservative activist David Leatherman. “I’ve even worked WITH DeSantis on this agenda. This ad is a slap in the face, and makes any LGBT person supporting DeSantis look like an absolute idiot.”
Of note, the ad was originally distributed by the Twitter account @ProudElephantUS, an unabashedly pro-DeSantis account that in recent days attacked actor Christopher Moltisanti for criticizing a Supreme Court decision allowing service providers to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people.
The post releasing the video makes clear a desire for DeSantis to attack LGBTQ+ people on all matters.
Other conservative consultants make clear they badly want to make limits on LGBTQ+ rights a central plank of the presidential election. Spence Rogers of Go Right Strategies tweeted a wish list of anti-queer policies he wants the GOP to champion.
-Ban gay adoption -Ban drag queen story hour -Ban grooming in schools -Death penalty for pedos -Ban corporate grooming”
But other Republicans see room for tolerance of queer rights — to an extent. Rod Thomson, a Republican communications consultant in Florida, said there needs to be a delineation between gay and lesbian rights and what he sees as a “trans agenda.”
Jenner, who is supporting Trump, felt the video distributed by the campaign went too far. “DeSantis has hit a new low. But he’s so desperate he’ll do anything to get ahead - that’s been the theme of his campaign,” she tweeted. “You can’t win a general, let alone 2028 by going after people that are integral parts of the conservative movement!”
[M]any gay Republicans now wonder if the DeSantis strategy attacking all things Pride will damage the entire GOP brand.
“Team DeSantis is now using gays and lesbians as a wedge issue to divide the Republican Party,” Leatherman wrote. “And smearing Trump for being the most pro gay Republican in history. Apparently it’s no longer about protecting children, it’s going after gays.”
SCOTUS's Made Up Anti-Gay "Free Speech" Case
Legal scholars pushed back on former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal's claim that the Supreme Court may be compelled to reexamine a recent case after evidence surfaced that the claim at the heart of the case may have been fabricated.
In the federal lawsuit filed preemptively seven years ago by Lorie Smith, the graphic artist cited a request from a man who says he never asked to work with her, according to the Associated Press. But Smith cited a man named Stewart in 2017 court documents including a website service request from him, which detailed his phone number and email address.
When Melissa Gira Grant, a writer for The New Republic, contacted Stewart, he said that no such thing had happened. Stewart told the outlet that he was not gay, has been married to a woman for 15 years and is a web designer himself.
The Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favor of the Christian web designer in Littleton, Colo., who argued that free speech protections allowed her to reject designing wedding websites for same-sex couples.
Katyal suggested that the Supreme Court should revisit the ruling given the evidence.
"The Supreme Court has a procedure to seek a rehearing, so to say, 'Hey Supreme Court, there's a new fact that emerged and we need you to revisit your ruling,' so that's possible. The Supreme Court can also on its own ask for a briefing on this new question on whether this case is made up," Katyal told MSNBC.
"Conservatives right now are defending the decision saying that Roe v. Wade, Roe wasn't pregnant at the time of the decision and that's different," he continued. "Roe was pregnant at the time of the filing of the complaint so she was having the exact problem that she was trying to remedy, namely seeking an abortion because she was pregnant. Here, this web designer has never once done a website for an LGBT couple. It's the exact opposite situation it's totally hypothetical and made up. I think the Colorado attorney general should consider bringing a rehearing petition before the U.S. Supreme Court."
But legal scholars pushed back on Katyal's argument.
"I think this is a nonstarter," former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor, told Salon. "The Court glossed over standing in this case because a plaintiff is permitted to make a facial challenge to a law on the ground that yet violates the First Amendment."
"If the allegations about fabrication are true, then the lawyers may have an ethics problem to address with their state bar, but it will not affect the outcome of the case," McQuade added.
Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan, told Salon that parties are "free to file a motion for reconsideration or rehearing," but ultimately, it will be up to the court to decide whether to do anything about it.
"Attorneys are subject to judicial discipline & discipline from bar organizations if they lie to the court," Litman said.
"But it would be a mistake to let that obscure the central fact that the entire case was based on entirely hypothetical 'worries' that the web designer claimed to have about how the state's officers might come after her under the state anti-discrimination laws if a same-sex couple were to ask her to design a wedding site for them and if she were to refuse," Tribe said. "In my view, the disgraceful fact, which in no way depends on the falsity of the allegations about the fellow who supposedly asked Lorie Smith to design a website for a same-sex wedding, is the very fact that the Supreme Court's majority was willing to render what amounted to an advisory opinion that it would never have done but for its eagerness to denigrate same-sex marriage and LGBTQ rights generally and that, under Article III, it had no business doing."
In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, Smith claimed that a state anti-discrimination law prevented her from entering the wedding website business. The law would not allow her to publish a message on her website that let her express her religious beliefs. The statement read: "I will not be able to create websites for same-sex marriages or any other marriage that is not between one man and one woman. Doing that would compromise my Christian witness and tell a story about marriage that contradicts God's true story of marriage—the very story He is calling me to promote."
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing on behalf of the majority, stated that a lower court had determined a reasonable assumption based on Colorado's actions in previous cases involving same-sex marriages. The majority of the court concluded that the state of Colorado could not legally require her to create websites that conveyed messages conflicting with her belief that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
Sherrilyn Ifill, former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said that the claim in the case "is potential fraud on the Court," which "warrants investigation, potential vacatur & disciplinary proceedings."
"It also should be seen as a consequence of the Court's apparent zeal to hear this case which did not meet standing even w/o fraud," Ifill tweeted. In another tweet, she added that attorneys "are prohibited by ethical & procedural rules from making misrepresentations to the Court. If this story about 'Stewart' was made by her lawyers in briefs, or at arguments, it's a serious issue."
Sadly, "Christians" like the plaintiff in this case are anything but the decent people they pretend to be. As for the Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys, they need to lose their law licenses.
Monday, July 03, 2023
The Shrinking Baptist Convention Doubles Down on Culture Wars
No one could accuse the Baptists of excessive cheeriness. Or underplaying their challenges. Over the clanking of silverware and the smell of breakfast sausages on the sidelines of a major gathering of Southern Baptists here, several hundred pastors and other churchgoers welcomed a roster of speakers ruminating on a “teetering” nation, “sexual insanity,” “all this trans stuff” and the specter that the country’s largest Protestant denomination was on a “road to insignificance.”
“We are living in dark and perilous times in America,” read the billing for a night with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, “as our culture descends into a spiritual abyss ...”
Not long ago, during Donald Trump’s presidency, white evangelical Christians had taken comfort in the idea that their interests carried weight at the highest levels in Washington, in conservative Supreme Court appointments and otherwise. Even if it had taken some rationalization for them to get behind a thrice-married former casino owner who botched basic religious conventions and was eventually indicted for his alleged role in a scheme to pay hush money to a porn star, the Trump years were good years for these Baptists. . . . “In the West Wing, you couldn’t walk very far without bumping into bona fide, born-again believers and followers of Jesus.”
Since then, it seemed that everything else, quite literally, had gone to Hell. As nearly 13,000 delegates, known as messengers, arrived here recently for the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention and side events like that evening’s gathering — hosted by Liberty University in partnership with the Conservative Baptist Network, a more conservative group — it was an open question if they could do anything about it.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade, the signature accomplishment of the religious right, had become a major liability for the GOP, contributing to losses in a series of elections. In December, the Democratic president, Joe Biden, signed legislation codifying same-sex marriage into law — with the support of 39 Republicans in the House and 12 in the Senate.
There was the transgender rights movement, which pastor after pastor complained they saw seeping into their pews. A panel conversation one afternoon entitled “Re-Forming Gen Z: Sexuality, Technology and Human Formation” . . . . included how best to respond to a teenager who insists on a preferred pronoun and how to “navigate conversations with a teen who believes in God but also thinks that same-sex attraction is OK.”
“Things have changed in America,” Tim Wilder, the pastor at a church in Osceola County, Fla., near Disney World, told me as we rode alone in a dark shuttle bus back from a day of meetings at the city’s convention center to a nearby hotel one night. “I believe we’re in an anti-Christian nation.”
White evangelicals are a relatively small part of the nation’s overall population, about 14 percent. But they play an outsize role in the Republican Party, to which they have been fused since the days of Ronald Reagan. . . . in general elections, they are a central part of the GOP’s base. In 2020, about 28 percent of the electorate identified as white born-again or evangelical Christian. Of those voters, more than three-quarters went for Trump.
That’s the reason every major Republican presidential contender appeared the other day at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority 2023 conference in Washington, D.C., and why Sen. Josh Hawley, speaking at the event, was probably telling the truth when he said, “There is no future for the Republican Party without Christians.”
The problem for the Republican Party, and for the church, is that religious affiliation has for years been fading. In 2020, Gallup found church membership in the United States fell below a majority for the first time. The percentage of Americans who say religion is “very important” is down more than 20 points from when Gallup first asked about it in 1965. . . . the Southern Baptist Convention, still the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, lost nearly half a million members last year.
“The Southern Baptist Convention is officially a denomination in decline,” Chuck Kelley, a former president of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, told me when we met in the lobby of the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel. . . . Kelley said the convention had “kind of turned away from evangelism to focus on the social issues.” . . . for the last four or five years, what has been the conversation at the Southern Baptist Convention?”
He ticked through some of the points of focus: A sexual abuse scandal that roiled the SBC, critical race theory, the role of women in the church and Trump. “Not,” he said, “the Great Commission.”
When I asked him what kind of influence Southern Baptists could hope to have on elections anymore, he said, “We don’t matter as much,” repeated the line and added, “We’re getting smaller.”
The big topic of conversation — the reason messengers rushed to find seats in the convention hall and one man said to another, “We should have brought popcorn” — was whether to uphold the ouster of one of the denomination’s largest megachurches, Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., for having a female pastor. At a time that it’s losing membership, I wondered, why would the denomination kick out one of its largest and best-known churches . . . Nearly everyone that I ran into felt that Warren’s church — while free to do what it liked — had no right to remain, in Southern Baptist Convention parlance, “in friendly cooperation” with the SBC. . . . Warren’s appeal had been rejected 9,437 to 1,212.
Speaking to reporters after the vote, Warren said that because there are other Baptist churches with female pastors — exactly how many is unclear — “this is going to be an inquisition now, and it’s probably going to go on for 10 years.”
“We continue to be the ‘shrinking’ Baptist convention,” he said. “It’s not really smart when you’re losing a half million members a year to intentionally kick out people who want to fellowship with you.”
Rather than moderate, the response of MAGA diehards has been to focus on invigorating the base — which is what members of the Southern Baptist Convention seem to be doing, too.
The week they met in New Orleans, messengers not only refused to re-admit Saddleback and a church in Louisville, Ky., . . . . they also approved an amendment to their constitution declaring churches have “only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture,” a measure that will continue to saddle the SBC with controversy before a ratification vote next year. Separately, it approved a measure condemning gender-affirming care.
“My impression,” said John Green, a longtime scholar on religion and politics and author of the book Religion and the Culture Wars, “is that they have gone further to the right.”
He said, “Same-sex marriage is the law of the land. On many other issues, they don’t feel like they’re getting their way. The new activism around transgenderism is deeply troubling to them. And what often happens in these sorts of situations is the activists double down, and they become more conservative, because in their perception, the stakes are now higher.”
Sunday, July 02, 2023
Liberal Media Bias: Another Right Wing Myth
Allegations of media bias are ubiquitous among Republicans. When Donald Trump was asked in June about the federal prosecution against him for illegally retaining classified government documents, he attacked the "fake news" media for their "continuation of the witch hunt" against him "that's been going on for literally seven years."
Such attacks are hardly new for Trump, who in May reportedly became angry with questions from NBC News reporter Vaughn Hillyard about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's criminal investigation, tried to grab Hillyard's phone and then told aides to "get him outta here."
The assault on press freedom is also nothing new for the Republican Party. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, now a presidential candidate, recently endorsed a legislative effort to curtail press freedom by designating anonymous news sources as "false" for legal purposes in defamation cases and eliminating the "journalist's privilege" protection, which shields reporters from having to identify anonymous sources in defamation lawsuits.
Not to be outdone, Trump weighed in on the question of how to punish journalists, suggesting that reporters who published the leaked Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade should be prosecuted, incarcerated and then raped in prison.
These developments are part of a larger right-wing assault on media freedom and the right of journalists to critically report the news. These attacks are driven by the assumption that the media has a liberal bias, and is responsible for routinely purveying "fake news" and systematically manipulating the public as a result.
The response from much of the public, including the GOP base, is what one would expect, with rising distrust of the news media. Recent polling finds a majority of Americans agree that "the news media fuels political division," with 61 percent of Republicans, 36 percent of independents and 23 percent of Democrats agreeing that the media are "hurting democracy." Half of Americans think that national news outlets "intend to mislead, misinform, or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting."
These narratives warning of media manipulation and pernicious liberal bias can create a separate reality for much of the public, independent of whether there is evidence of any such pervasive bias in media content and effects. As a scholar of political communication, I've spent the last 20 years studying the question of media bias in politics. My own scholarly work, looking at decades of reporting on various public policy issues, has uncovered little evidence historically of a pervasive liberal or pro-Democratic bias in the news.
As reporters themselves acknowledge, and as I find in my research, it is more accurate to speak of a pro-official bias in the news, in which reporters privilege whatever party is in power in Washington at a given time. None of this evidence necessarily matters, however, when the prevailing narrative in American political culture — particularly among Republican officials, right-wing pundits and much of the public — is that the media is purveying biased "fake news."
[I]t's worth looking at the facts. For example, in my own research examining more than 160 polling questions between the mid-2000s and the mid-2010s, I found virtually no evidence of liberal media effects for consumption of various outlets such as CNN and MSNBC, which are commonly attacked for their purported bias.
Consumption of news MSNBC only had a significant association with liberal political attitudes on various questions 15 percent of the time, and this was true just 10 percent of the time for CNN. Rather, the primary culprit when it came to indoctrination effects was Fox News, with consumption of that channel's news significantly associated with holding right-wing beliefs 60 percent of the time, even after controlling for respondents' partisanship and ideology, among other factors.
I updated my polling analysis to include the years of Trump's presidency — and the findings largely reinforce my previous research. Although there is certainly evidence of increasing polarization "on both sides," such polarization is still primarily a right-wing phenomenon, testifying to highly asymmetrical media effects that appear to favor GOP indoctrination efforts.
[T]here is definitely reason for concern about "both sides" when it comes to the rise of echo chambers in American media. Clearly. liberals and Democrats are gravitating toward certain news sources, and conservatives and Republicans toward others. . . . . None of these trends are encouraging in a country that considers itself a democracy — at least if democracy requires an informed citizenry willing to consider different sources of information and views contrary to those they already hold.
Beyond the echo-chamber question, there's the matter of whether consuming these venues has an indoctrination effect on viewers. Here, the evidence suggests that Americans should primarily be concerned about the power of right-wing outlets like Fox News.
What we see here, in fact, is dramatic evidence of partisan indoctrination in the news — and it's primarily a right-wing phenomenon. In just four of the 20 survey questions was consumption of CNN associated with forming liberal political attitudes, after statistically taking into account viewers' partisan and ideological predispositions. The findings are stronger for MSNBC, with consumption associated with holding liberal attitudes for nine of the 20 questions. This is certainly evidence of indoctrination in favor of liberal values, significantly more than I found in the previous decade.
But far and away the strongest evidence of indoctrination is observed among consumers of conservative media. Consumption of Fox News was associated with holding conservative opinions an overwhelming 90 percent of the time — in 18 of the 20 questions surveyed. This is a far higher rate than during the decade preceding Trump, when Fox News viewership was correlated with forming conservative attitudes 60 percent of the time. These results tell us that partisan indoctrination has become overwhelmingly asymmetrical in the Trump era.
The evidence explored here calls into question Republican claims that the "liberal media" is the leading indoctrination force in American politics and communication today. That role is reserved for the GOP's primary arm of mass communication, Fox News, which is crucial in mobilizing the party base to support conservative political causes.
But we shouldn't only be concerned about indoctrination. There's also the question of rising support for authoritarianism, and of public outrage being stoked against specific media outlets seen as overly critical of Trump. That rising anger is what fuels the Republican attack on press freedom, an assault that should be deeply concerning to anyone with a basic commitment to freedom of expression and constitutional democracy.
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