Alabama Lawmakers Now Want To Eliminate Marriage Licenses

The political insanity in Alabama continues GOP lunatics who control both houses of the state legislature want to eliminate marriage licenses so that homophobic probate court judges will have no need to issue licenses to same sex couples.  The idiocy is part of the Christofascists' agenda of undermining same sex marriage granted in the Obergefell ruling in 2015.  One can only hope that if the bill is signed into law - a likely event given the idiot who holds the governorship at present - Alabamians will encounter problems when they venture outside of their knuckle dragging state.  Imagine Mobilians having to travel to Pensacola, Florida to make sure they have marriages that will be fully recognized out of state.  Having lived in Alabama years ago, I cannot help but wonder at times how insanity has metastasized in Alabama - but then I realize the cause: the rise of the Christofascists in the Republican Party.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at this latest batshit craziness in Alabama:

Conservative [Christofascist] Alabama lawmakers are now taking serious aim at marriage law, wasting no time since passing an extreme measure eliminating nearly all abortions in the state. 

On Friday, the Alabama legislature sent a Republican-backed measure to the desk of Gov. Kay Ivey (R) that would aid officials who oppose same-sex marriage.

Under existing state law, couples are required to obtain a marriage license from a probate judge and hold a ceremony to “solemnize” the union. If Ivey signs the measure introduced by state Sen. Greg Albritton (R), the solemnization requirement would be eliminated and it would become the responsibility of couples themselves to record their own union.

Probate judges would simply be required to pass those records along to a state office and could not reject any marriage for which all paperwork is in order. That means judges who personally oppose same-sex marriages would be able to distance themselves from such unions.

In Alabama, some probate judges stopped issuing marriage licenses altogether after the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling because the judges did not want to be forced to issue licenses to same-sex couples. That has meant that some Alabama couples are required to travel to other counties to obtain a license.

But even as the measure would functionally eliminate barriers to marriage equality, Albritton referenced religious objections to same-sex unions in discussing his bill.  Under it, “a minister who has an objection to a particular marriage ceremony, they don’t have to do it,” he said.

Alabama’s political leadership is notoriously hostile to LGBTQ rights; the state’s public television station recently refused to air an episode of the children’s cartoon “Arthur” featuring a same-sex wedding.

“I think it’s far less about good governance and more about protecting folks that don’t want to do their jobs.”  The bill was propelled through the state House and Senate largely with Republican support, although some Democrats voted for it.

Note that I lined through "conservative" at the outset of the article quote.  It is far past time that these politicians be called out for what they truly are: religious extremists - or the political whores of religious extremists.  There is nothing conservative about being a religious fanatic. 

George H.W. Bush: Failing on HIV/AIDS and Enabling the "Religious Right"

George H.W. Bush with Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Last week the media engaged in an orgy of overkill in the coverage of the funeral of George H.W. Bush which at times seemed more like a royal funeral than that of an American politician.  Yes, compared to the current occupant of the White House, Bush 41 looks almost saintly, but in their rush to gush over Bush, many in the media completely ignored Bush's failings and the lives harmed and the political damage done to the nation.  One huge failing was on Bush's policies during the HIV/AIDS crisis, first under Reagan and then later under his own administration.  The second major failing (which dovetails with the first) was his enabling the rise of the perversely labeled "Religious Right" and its ultimate takeover of the Republican Party.  Learning from history requires that both good and bad be remembered so that previous errors do not repeat themselves. This was utterly lacking in most of the funeral coverage.  First a piece in Huffington Post looks at Bush's failure to those with HIV/AIDS.  Here are excerpts:

It’s no surprise that after the death of former president George H.W. Bush we’re seeing media pundits, advocates and popular historians promote a rosy view of his tenure as president. In the era of Donald Trump, there’s a tendency to portray every Republican leader of the past in a nostalgic, sugar-coated way. I saw a tweet from Yahoo News with a quote from the well-known historian Jon Meacham, describing Bush as a man who “believed that he was not a Republican president — he was a president,” noting that “there’s something very old-fashioned about that.” Perhaps that was what Bush “believed,” but it was far from the truth. Bush was as captive to the evangelical right on social issues — and thus a decidedly Republican president — as was his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, who cultivated religious conservatives as a potent political force and bowed to their anti-LGBTQ agenda as the AIDS epidemic mushroomed in the 1980s.  Reagan’s history of callously ignoring the epidemic while thousands died is well-documented. Bush, at the outset of his term, promised a “kinder, gentler” presidency than the man he’d served under as vice president. He even gave a speech on the AIDS epidemic in 1990, which was long on compassion but short on strategy and commitment to funding. During the speech, in fact, Urvashi Vaid, an invited guest and then the executive director of the prominent National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, now the National LGBTQ Task Force, took the unprecedented and heroic act of standing up and holding a sign, “Talk Is Cheap. AIDS Funding Is Not.” 

Bush, in the end, bowed to the same extremists Reagan did when it came to AIDS and LGBTQ rights. As The Washington Post noted, Bush allowed evangelicals to mature as a movement within the GOP after Reagan brought them in, rather than pushing back.

[I]t took years of work by the indefatigable Democrats Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. Henry Waxman, and was too little, too late. By that point, nearly 10 years into the epidemic, 150,000 cases of people with HIV had been reported in the U.S., and 100,000 people had died due to AIDS.

Infamously, Bush had said in a television interview that if he had a grandchild who was gay he would “love” the child but would tell the child he wasn’t normal. And like Reagan, he stocked his Cabinet with anti-gay zealots. Health Secretary Louis Sullivan, also protested by ACT UP for his terrible response to HIV, joined forces with evangelical leaders to cover up a government-funded study on teen suicide that found LGBTQ teens were at much higher risk.  

And after Buchanan, who Bush offered a prime slot at the Republican National Convention in Houston, gave his infamous “culture war” speech, declaring there is a “religious war” in this country, and attacking, among others, the “militant homosexual rights movement,” Bush refused to denounce the speech and instead publicly denounced same-sex marriage, which was nowhere near a reality at the time. 

If Bush had come into office with perhaps a vague ambition that he might move away from the harsh Reagan years, with its religious morality crusade, he left the presidency having paved the way for his own son’s even more anti-LGBTQ administration, firmly ensconcing religious conservative power within the Republican party.  And that, of course, is the same party that now proudly claims Donald Trump as its leader.

As this above quote notes, the Washington Post looked at Bush's role in cementing the rise of Christofascists within the GOP - the same GOP now dominated by hate-filled Christofascists and white supremacists.  Here are article excerpts:

Unlike his son George W. Bush, the elder Bush, a lifelong Episcopalian, was less known for his religious faith. He was certainly not thought of as a champion of the religious right, the powerful political movement most associated with his predecessor, Ronald Reagan.

Yet it was Bush, the moderate establishment Republican whose family helped found Planned Parenthood, who secured the religious right’s permanent place in American politics. While historians largely credit Reagan’s presidency with helping religious conservatives move from the shadows of American public life into its spotlight, it was the Bush presidency, particularly its disappointments and defeat, that entrenched the religious right as the center of the Republican Party and guaranteed its ongoing influence.

Shortly after Reagan’s win in 1980, the conservative activist and key architect of the religious right Paul Weyrich told the incoming vice president that he better become a stronger advocate against abortion and for school prayer once in office. “I am not intimidated by those who suggest I better hew the line,” Bush shot back. “Hell with them.” Political reality, however, soon curtailed Bush’s independent streak. . . . . [Bush] They also made clear to Bush his need to realign his positions with the conservative wing of the party, which was ascendant, in part because of the rise of cultural issues that were scrambling the party coalitions. At the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston, 300 of the 2,200 delegates belonged to the Christian Coalition, and more than 40 percent of the delegates identified as evangelical Christians. With that presence, the GOP’s platform committee produced one of its most conservative platforms ever, with absolutist positions against abortion and homosexuality. While Bush never fully embraced the religious right, he did cater to it from time to time, understanding how essential members were to his political fortunes. His choice of the conservative evangelical Dan Quayle as his vice president and his nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court were both intended to appease religious conservatives. . . .  But Bush’s strategic courting of the religious right also laid the groundwork for its eventual takeover of the party.

When Bush lost his reelection bid in 1992, critics pointed to the tent revival feel of the Houston convention as the reason that moderate and independent voters had fled the GOP. But for the religious right, the defeat was a victory of sorts. . . . . And they ambitiously planned to recruit more conservative candidates for office and bury the moderate wing of the party by continuing to build their control of the GOP from within.

By 1994, a study found that the religious right had become “dominant” or “substantial” in 21 of the GOP’s state parties. Two years later at the Republican National Convention in San Diego, Christian Coalition members made up more than half of the convention’s delegates.

Right Wing Lunacy Reigns at CPAC

Wayne LaPierre, NRA propagandist ,at CPAC

If one wants a front row seat observing what's wrong with America, a good place to start is at CPAC - the Conservative Political Action Conference - which might better stand for Crazy People Acting Crazy.  The confab is featuring a who's who of hate merchants and, of course, gave a prominent speaking platform to Wayne LaPierre of the NRA who wants every school in America turned into a "hardened site" with heavily armed teachers (the NRA is a "presenting sponsor of the event). Anything rather than adopt common sense gun control measures and a ban of assault weapons. LaPierre clearly puts gun manufacturers' profits ahead of America's school children.  As NPR noted, LaPierre ended his speech, to a standing ovation, by reprising comments he made just over five years ago after the mass-shooting tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut : "To stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good guy with a gun."

Also featured as a speaker is French Fascist Marion Maréchal-Le Pen who compared Brexit and the French anti-gay hate group La Manif Pour Tous with the election of Trump, citing all three as examples of the global rise of the right.

In attendance too is the falsely named "Constitution Party" which wants to turn America into a theocracy based on that unhinged group's reading of the Bible.  As might be expected, gays are high on the target list of the Constitution Party:

The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence  . . .  We reject the notion that homosexuals, transgenders or those who are sexually deviant are deserving of legal favor or special protection, and affirm the rights of states and localities to proscribe offensive sexual behavior. We oppose all efforts to impose a new sexual legal order through any courts or legislatures.  Finally, we oppose any legal recognition of homosexual or civil unions. 

Among other "key issues" for the Constitution Party  - and CPAC attendees generally are the following:

• end federal funding of public education
• no infringement on gun ownership
• end binding precedent of court rulings on non-parties to the litigation
• the privatization of Healthcare and Social Security, with Social Security being phased out
• American withdrawal from the United Nations
• anti-immigrant policies

These people are NOT mainstream and are downright frightening.  Oh, and did I mention that the majority of CPAC attendees are Trump supporters?

Republican's Conniption Fits Over Outing of AG Candidate John Adams

No, Republican Attorney General candidate John Adam's hasn't been outed for being gay - although he does seem a tad bit hysterical LGBT rights and same sex marriage, something that often is a signal of a self-loathing closeted Republican (think former Congressman Ed Schrock who I helped "out" in 2004).  No, instead, both the Washington Post and Richmond Times Dispatch (the pieces were noted in previous posts on this blog) did pieces on Adams that exposed him as a Christofascist religious extremist and just possible and anti-woman racist.   As a result of the coverage, the Republicans over at Bearing Drift - which touts itself as "Virginia's Conservative Voice" - are having absolute conniption fits.  One column attacks the Washington Post piece while remaining mysteriously silent on the Times Dispatch piece which was similarly unflattering to Adams unless one is perhaps one of the KKK protesters in Charlottesville yesterday.  In typical GOP fashion, the piece claims that direct quotes of Adams "were taken out of context," yet the clear take away of both Adams and Bearing Drift is that they believe a majority mob rule with minorities - including gays - relegated to a situation where they should be grateful for whatever crumbs of legal rights the majority might throw their way.  The Equal Protection Clause of the U.D. Constitute seemingly doesn't exist in Adams' universe.  Here are excerpts from the apologist piece at Bearing Drift:

This week, Washington Post columnist Laura Vozzella tried to sew together a mismatched tapestry of half-truths and out-of-context quotes from Republican nominee for Attorney General John Adams. The article attacked everything from his views on social issues to something he said to a newspaper in 1994. Simply put, Democratic AG candidate Mark Herring has the Washington Post doing his job for him.

Virginia voters passed a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage. It’s the law, and if you are the Attorney General of Virginia, the AG has to defend the laws that have been passed by the voters.

I believe the way the Supreme Court chose to basically legislate gay marriage into existence isn’t how laws are supposed to be passed. Laws are supposed to be passed by the legislative branch, signed by the executive branch, and tested for constitutionality by the judicial branch. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about marriage or marriage rights.

That’s the main point of Mr. Adams’ argument — that the first problem is that anyone who believes in limited government should have issues with the way gay marriage was legislated from the Supreme Court. The second problem is that Virginia voters had a law on the books and Mark Herring did nothing to defend it.

In response to the author, I would point out that, in my opinion, Adams' approach to the law not only ignores the U.S. Constitution but also seemingly ignores Rule 3.3 of the Rules of Professional Conduct governing all attorneys licensed in Virginia, which provides in part as follows:

(a)  A lawyer shall not knowingly:

(1) make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal;

(2) fail to disclose a fact to a tribunal when disclosure is necessary to avoid assisting a criminal or fraudulent act by the client;

(3) fail to disclose to the tribunal controlling legal authority in the subject jurisdiction known to the lawyer to be adverse to the position of the client and not disclosed by opposing counsel; or

(4) offer evidence that the lawyer knows to be false. If a lawyer has offered material evidence and comes to know of its falsity, the lawyer shall take reasonable remedial measures.

Religious belief does not equate to scientific, objective fact. The unfortunate truth is that Virginia has been on the wrong side of history many times since the founding years of the nation.  Far too many past attorney generals supported some of Virginia's darkest deeds.   We do not need an attorney general who thinks the majority gets to dispense rights to minorities as it sees fit and is willing to parrot ridiculous - and untrue - Christofascist lies.   Truth be told, John Adams is an extremist and he needs to be exposed as such to Virginia voters. I cannot help but wonder if Adams' law firm, McGuire Woods, will not come to regret Adams' candidacy before its over.