Oppose the Demonization of Gays and Minorities in Virginia's 2017 Elections

Vote for Ralph Northam on November 7, 2017 (as well as the rest of the Democrat ticket)

I left the Republican Party shortly after I came out.  It was obvious to me at the time that the Christofascists were ascendant in the Party and that there was no place in the GOP for anyone who believed in the separation of church and state - something I stated in my letter of resignation - much less for anyone who is LGBT.  Things have only worsened in the years since that time.  Today's Republican Party is only welcoming to white, heterosexual, ultra-conservative Christians who use the Bible daily to condemn members of the LGBT community and, in my view, justify the separation of the races with whites being the only ones entitled to full civil rights much less treatment as fully human.  In the current statewide races, gays and minorities are being demonized by the Republican ticket with Ed Gillespie running deliberately untrue ads that pander to racists.  Meanwhile, AG candidate is an anti-gay extremist who is just as hysterically anti-gay as Ken Cuccinelli and Rick Santorum (both of whom I believe are closeted gays since they are a tad too hysterical about gay sex to be straight men secure in their own sexuality).   A column in Huffington Post looks at the disturbing tactics of Gillespie and Adams who are both running campaigns fueled by hate and bigotry.  Here are excerpts:

No 14-year-old kid should live with these crippling fears, yet that is the reality facing thousands of high schoolers across the country. For undocumented students, every deportation they see on the news is a daily reminder of their precarious legal situation. Every act of violence against an LGBTQ friend or neighbor reminds them that their safety is constantly at risk just for expressing who they are and how they love. And since last November, the stakes for people of color, immigrants and LGBTQ Americans have never been higher.

Virginia’s gubernatorial race makes it clear that these threats aren’t just coming from the White House, but are right here in the Commonwealth. Following in the footsteps of Donald Trump, Ed Gillespie is running a xenophobic and homophobic campaign that makes it clear how much we have to fear from a Gillespie administration.

Throughout his campaign, he has aired hateful, fear-mongering ads that criminalize people of color and make erroneous links between immigrants and MS-13 gang violence. He has also consistently opposed LGBTQ rights, from opposing marriage equality to supporting anti-trans legislation. John Adams, who is running for attorney general, is just as dangerous. During his campaign, he has spread lies that all undocumented students are getting in-state tuition benefits in Virginia or that the Supreme Court decision granting marriage equality is “totally made up.”

No matter what Gillespie says, hate is not a Virginia value. His opponent, Dr. Ralph Northam, is the only candidate for governor who has Virginia’s true values at heart ― values like opportunity and justice for all. Instead of working to divide us by our differences, Northam has fought his entire life to make Virginia a more supportive, welcoming place for all people, no matter their color, race, sexual orientation or immigration status. Now more than ever, we need a leader for our state who will be steadfast defense against the discriminatory policies emanating from the Oval Office, as well as a fearless advocate for LGBTQ and immigrants’ rights. Ralph Northam is that leader.

October 11 marked National Coming Out Day, an annual reminder of the journeys many of us have taken to come out . . . . I reminded people why it was important to vote for Ralph Northam, along with Justin Fairfax (candidate for lieutenant governor) and Mark Herring (candidate for attorney general).

What did I tell them? No matter your politics, we can all agree on one thing: no one should ever have to live in fear.

No one should have to live in fear.  I hope that "friends" as well as my clients and the husband's clients who voted for Trump - who is aggressively attacking the LGBT community - will take the opportunity this November to make amends and vote to protect our civil rights and lives by voting for Ralph Northam, along with Justin Fairfax (candidate for lieutenant governor) and Mark Herring (candidate for attorney general).  Again, no one should live in fear and see their civil rights and basic humanity under attack.

Virginia Democratic Mailer Correctly Links Gillespie to White Nationalists

The campaign of GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie is having conniption fits because a Virginia Democratic Party mailer correctly links Gillespie to white supremacists. Having viewed many of Gillespie's ads that have definite racist undercurrent to them, combined with his refusal to condemn Donald Trump's apparent embrace of white supremacists in Charlottesville back in August, 2017, and his effort to court Corey Stewart supporters who rallied to Stewart's openly racist and pro-Confederate campaign, I believe that the mailer is accurate.  No doubt some of my Republican "friends" who continue to stick their heads in the sand - or elsewhere where the sun doesn't shine, if you want my candid opinion - will whine and feign false outrage just like Gillespie, but the sad reality is that today's Republican Party IS a racist party and Gillespie - as are AG candidate John Adams and Lt. Governor candidate Jill Vogel - is pandering to white supremacists and religious extremist.  He has no chance of winning without their strong support.  Sometimes, the truth hurts and, if my Republican "friends" do not like being tied to white supremacists, they have two options on November 7th: stay home and do not vote, or vote for the Democratic ticket.  It's really very simple.  If you vote for candidates of a party with a racist, anti-minority agenda, then look in the mirror and face the reality that perhaps you are in fact a racist even if you are not donning KKK robes regularly. The Washington Post looks at the mailer and the GOP's feigned outrage.  Here are excerpts:

Virginia’s heated election cycle is becoming increasingly nasty, with the statewide Democratic ticket sending out a new mailer linking Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie and President Trump to the torch-bearing white nationalists who descended on Charlottesville over the summer.

In August, violent clashes between white supremacists in Charlottesville rallying to defend a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and counterprotestors left one woman dead and two state troopers died when their helicopter crashed.

The mailer features images of both Republican men above a photo of the white supremacists with the text, “On Tuesday November 7th, Virginia Gets To Stand Up...To Hate.”

The back of the literature features a prominent image of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam, along with Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark Herring, with the message “This is our chance to stand up to Trump, Gillespie, and hate.” All three Democrats approved the ad, and the Democratic Party of Virginia paid for the mailer. Gillespie’s campaign condemned the mailer, which was first reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Northam campaign spokesman David Turner countered that the mailer was fair because Gillespie did not explicitly condemn the president’s response to the Charlottesville unrest. Democrats pummeled Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, for not joining members of his own party, including Virginia U.S. Reps. Barbara Comstock and Scott W. Taylor, in directly criticizing Trump’s reaction. . . . Ed Gillespie should be willing to call out Donald Trump when he’s wrong and because he won’t, he gives voters a clear choice on Nov. 7.”
 [I]n September, Gillespie began airing ads that aimed to link MS-13 gang violence to Northam, while using images of Latinos in a way Latino groups call racist and inflammatory. And another ad suggests Northam wanted to restore gun rights to violent felons. Both parties are also trading barbs over mailers targeting against Latina candidates.

Oh, and lit's not forget that the entire GOP ticket supports voter ID laws and other GOP efforts to disenfranchise minority voters under the lie of preventing nonexistent voter fraud.   Gillespie, et all deserve the label given to the, plain and simple.

Extremist John Adams Attacks Mark Herring for Not Defending Unconstitutional Gay Marriage Ban

As I have noted in a number of posts and in my columns in VEER Magazine, Republican Attorney General candidate is a religious extremist.  He thinks his far right wing beliefs should be binding on all and indeed has given his services without charge to support Christofascist who believe their claimed religious beliefs put them above the law.  In the last debate against incumbent Attorney General Mark Herring who is running for reelection, Adams repeatedly attacked Herring for refusing to defend Virginia's unconstitutional ban on same sex marriage.  In Adams' view, Herring should have followed the example of previous attorney generals that defended Jim Crow laws and  and Virginia's ban on interracial marriage that was eventually struck down by the United States Supreme Court after the Virginia Supreme Court twice upheld the ban, citing religion as one of the justifications.  In attacking Herring Adams displays an ignorance that even a first year law student would not engage in: the United States Constitution supersedes the Virginia Constitution and if a provision of the Virginia Constitution violates the United States Constitution, then it should not be enforced or defended.  Because of his reactionary religious beliefs, Adams ignores this basic principle.  This fact alone underscores that Adams is unfit for the office of attorney general.  The Virginian Pilot looks at the debate.  Here are highlights:   

Attorney General Mark Herring's refusal to defend Virginia's ban on gay marriage was his signature act during his four-year term. Now it's the key point of contention in his re-election campaign against Republican challenger John Adams.

At a debate Friday in Leesburg, Adams said it was dereliction of duty when Herring switched the state's legal position in a lawsuit challenging the ban once he took office in 2014. A federal judge who struck down Virginia's ban cited Herring's switch as a compelling factor in her analysis.

Adams attributed Herring's decision to a political calculation, noting that Herring actually voted for the gay marriage ban a few years earlier when he was a state senator.

Herring, who received national attention when he announced his decision to oppose the gay-marriage ban in court, said his position was ultimately vindicated by the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down gay-marriage bans as unconstitutional.

Herring said he considered the fact that Virginia was on the wrong side of history in the civil rights era when the state argued to keep segregated schools, and didn't want to make the same mistake.  "It was the right thing to do," Herring said.

Herring, in his opening statement, said Adams would not protect abortion rights and would oppose gun safety measures. He said Adams worked as a lawyer in private practice to weaken rules protecting coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act.  "John is fixated on conservative social issues," Herring said.

Adams' biggest lie of the evening was when he said this:
  

"I am running to get politics out of the attorney general's office," he said. "I'm not running to limit anybody's rights."

Adams is running to limit the rights of LGBT Virginians, women and of course, minorities since he strongly supports Republican efforts to disenfranchise minority voters.  In my opinion, Adams is a dishonest, vicious and very dangerous man.   Vote for Mark Herring on November 7, 2017.

The GOP Is No Party for Honest, Honorable Men

A column in the New York Times hits a home run in my view when it comes to looking at the rank dishonesty and moral bankruptcy of today's Republican Party. There was a time when the Republican Party prided itself on honesty, education, respect for science and honorable behavior.  That was the Republican Party of my grandparents and parents and even my days as a GOP committee member.  Now, neither I nor my ancestors simply would recognize today's Republican Party compared to what it once was.   What happened? As I have noted many times before, the defining change in the GOP took place when the evangelical Christians - the Christofascists, if you will - hijacked the party base.  Numerous studies have found that the Christofascists lie with abandon and take the view that anything that furthers their theocratic agenda is justified, including lying constantly and deliberately.  

Now, that mentality permeates the Republican Party.  Donald Trump and Mike Pence personify this deliberate dishonesty. Sadly, many other Republicans, including Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan have also embraced outright lying and dishonesty.  But the dishonesty is not limited to the Republican Party at the national level.  In the current Virginia election campaigns, all three of the Republican statewide candidates are lying  and know full well that they are lying.  Ed Gillespie whines about the cost of Confederate monument that will cut funds for public education, but totally ignores his proposed tax cuts that would leave Virginia with a 1.4 billion budget deficit which would be catastrophic to public education funding.  As long as the wealthy get a huge tax cut, trashing public education is perfectly fine with Gillespie.  GOP Attorney General candidate John Adams is no better than Gillespie.  It recent ads, Adams whines that Democrat Mark Herring is lying about him even though Herrings ads about Adams' shady clients is 100% accurate.  The same dishonesty plagues GOP Lt. Governor candidate Jill Vogel.  Like the leaders of Christofascist "family values" organizations, nowadays, if a Republican's lips are moving, the safest assumption is that they are lying.   Here are column highlights:

According to a new CBS News poll, almost 60 percent of the American public believes that the current Republican tax plan favors the wealthy. Some people see this number as a sign that the plan is in trouble; I see it as a sign that Republican lies are working far better than they deserve to.

For the plan does indeed favor the wealthy — overwhelmingly, undeniably. It’s shocking that as many as 40 percent of Americans don’t realize this.

It’s not difficult to see how the plan is tilted toward the very top. The main elements of the plan are a cut in top individual tax rates; a cut in corporate taxes; an end to the estate tax; and the creation of a big new loophole that will allow wealthy individuals to pretend that they are small businesses, and get a preferential tax rate. All of these overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, mainly the top 1 percent.

There are also some measures affecting middle-class families, but they’re relatively small change — and some of them would actually raise taxes. Over all, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that by 2027 almost 80 percent of the gains from the plan would go to the top 1 percent, just 12 percent of the gains to the middle 60 percent of Americans — and that more than a quarter of middle-class families would actually see their taxes go up.

The questions we should be asking instead are why Republicans are pushing this so hard, and how they can hope to get away with it.

Bear in mind that there is essentially no popular constituency demanding tax cuts for the rich. By a large margin, the general public wants to see taxes on corporations and the wealthy go up, not down; even Republicans are divided, with only a modest margin in favor of cuts.

Yet tax cuts for the rich are the overriding objective of the modern G.O.P. They were the principal motivation for the attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, since that would also mean repealing the high-income taxes that pay for it; from Republicans’ point of view, depriving millions of health care was just a minor side benefit. And now tax cuts for the wealthy are pretty much the only thing left on the G.O.P.’s legislative agenda.

In fact, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the hope for tax cuts is the main thing keeping congressional Republicans in line behind Donald Trump. They know he’s unfit for office, and many worry about his mental stability. But they’ll back him as long as they think he might get those tax cuts through.

So what’s behind this priority? Follow the money. Big donors are furious at missing out on the $700 billion in tax cuts that were supposed to come out of Obamacare repeal. If they don’t get big bucks out of tax “reform,” they might close their pocketbooks for the 2018 midterm elections.

[H]ow can an administration that pretends to be populist, to stand up for ordinary (white) working people, sell such elitist policies?

The answer is a strategy based entirely on lies. And I mean entirely: The Trump administration and its allies are lying about every aspect of their tax plan.

I’m not talking about dubious interpretations of evidence or misleading presentation of the facts — the kind of thing the Bush administration used to specialize in. I’m talking about flat-out, easily refuted lies, like the claim that America has the world’s highest taxes (among rich countries, we have close to the lowest), or the claim that estate taxes are a huge burden on small business (almost no small businesses pay any estate tax).

[C]an they really get away with this? A lot depends on how the news media handles it. If an administration spokesperson declares that up is down, will news reports simply say “so-and-so says up is down, but Democrats disagree,” or will they also report that up is not, in fact, down? I wish I were confident about the answer to that question.

One thing we know for sure, however, is that a great majority of Republican politicians know perfectly well that their party is lying about its tax plan — and every even halfway competent economist aligned with the party definitely understands what’s going on.

What this means is that everyone who goes along with this plan, or even remains silent in the face of the campaign of mass dissimulation, is complicit — is in effect an accomplice to the most dishonest political selling job in American history.

Do not fall for Republican lies at either the national level.  Instead, send a loud message to the GOP. Get out and vote a straigh Democrat ticket on November 7, 2017 - Ralph Northam for Governor, Mark Herring for Attorney General, and Justin Fairfax for Lt. Governor.  Then follow through and vote Democrat in the 2018 mid-term federal elections. 

Under Trump/Pence, It’s Church Over State

The regime  of Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, and Mike Pence is relentlessly striving to place far right Christian beliefs above the laws that govern the rest of society.  Since last week, real or feigned extremist religious belief allow companies to role back contraception coverage in their employee health insurance plans and allows individuals to make a mockery of non-discrimination laws that bar discrimination based on religion or religious belief.  Yet, now, if one is LGBT and does not adhere to Christofascist dogma, you can be fired, denied service and refused accommodations and housing by the self-anointed "godly folk."  The irony on the war on contraception coverage is that it will increase the number of unwanted pregnancies and increase demand for abortions, something the same "godly Christians" to whom Trump and Pence are prostituting themselves also claim to abhor with even more fervor.  As numerous studies have shown, the USA has the highest unwanted pregnancy rate of any advanced industrial nation specifically because of the restrictions on access to contraception and the lunatic abstinence only sex education programs so loved by Christofascists.  Everyone who believes in religious freedom and equality under the laws should be concerned.  Today it's contraception and gays, but tomorrow it could be those who are Jewish, non-Christian who the Christofascists also dislike and hate. An op-ed in the New York Times attacks this exultation of one religion over the civil rights of citizens and the law.  Here are excerpts:

Saudi women are gaining the right to drive. American women are losing the right to employer-provided birth control.

The first development signifies a theocratic kingdom’s bow to the inexorable onslaught of modernity. The second is a cynical bow to the forces of reaction against modernity.

It would be too far a stretch to see in Saudi Arabia even the glimmer of the emergence of civil society. But it’s not much of a stretch to see in the rules issued by the Trump administration last week the fraying of civil society as the United States has known it. Ours is a diverse society in which all are expected, with limited and precisely defined exceptions, to abide by the rules that apply to all. The alternative, as Justice Antonin Scalia observed decades ago, “would be courting anarchy.”

The new rules, which went into immediate effect, create exceptions that are anything but limited. They are, in fact, there for the taking. Any “entities” that claim not only religious but also “moral” objections to birth control are entitled to refuse to comply with the federal contraception mandate that until last Friday was enabling 55 million women to receive birth control without charge as part of their work- or college-related health insurance coverage.

The list of religious objectors includes churches and religious orders (which from the beginning have been completely exempt from the mandate anyway); nonprofit organizations; a “closely held for-profit entity;” a “for-profit entity that is not closely held” (including publicly traded companies); and ”any other nongovernmental employer” along with institutions of higher education.

We are talking, in other words, about the American workplace.

It’s hard to overstate the radical nature of what has just happened. Just three years ago, in the Hobby Lobby case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Obama administration could not impose the mandate on a closely held for-profit business owned by a family with religious objections to birth control.

Now the Trump administration has played the Supreme Court justices for chumps. The accommodation, carefully worked out and fought over, is a thing of the past. In its place is a flat-out exemption, with no requirement that women be offered any alternative route to coverage.

The administration says the average price of a year’s birth control is $584. That’s probably low . . .  but that’s not really the point. Others have called attention to the administration’s truly astonishing effort to show that birth control really isn’t all that important and may even be counterproductive. Statements like the one on page 46 of the religious exemption document, “Contraception’s association with positive health effects might also be partially offset by an association with negative health effects,” are hogwash, the result of careful cherry-picking of the literature, some of it quite dubious.

The real point is that the Trump administration has outsourced a crucially important building block of national health care policy, enabling a fanatical fringe of the Republican base to exercise raw political power, clothed in religiosity under cover of the grandiloquently named Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That 1993 law, passed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities and signed by President Bill Clinton, is the object of growing buyer’s remorse on the part of liberal and moderate Americans — and should be.

The Obama administration did as the Supreme Court said and offered the accommodation as Justice Alito described it. But a group of religiously affiliated nonprofits, mainly but not exclusively Catholic-run schools, colleges, nursing homes and other social service organizations, refused to accept it. Not good enough, they said, claiming that they would still be complicit in the sin of contraception, even if the employees’ receipt of the benefit required no action on the employer’s part beyond notifying the government that it was opting out. Only the complete exemption offered to actual churches would suffice.

Extending the rescission to employers with “moral” objections has no statutory basis. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act at least requires a claim that has something to do, however implausibly, with religion.

Conservatives, even the publicly pious ones, don’t seem to have a problem with limiting the size of their families. (Vice President Mike Pence has two children, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has three. Need I say more?) The problem they have is with what birth control signifies: empowering women — in school, on the job, in the home — to determine their life course. That’s what they don’t want to normalize. It comes as no surprise which side Donald Trump is on. . . 

Women in Virginia should be very worried.  Republican attorney general candidate John Adams is a religious freedom fanatic and a darling of Christofascists.  If elected, he would champion special rights for Christian extremists over the rights of all others.  Get out and vote for Mark Herring for attorney general, Ralph Northam for Governor, and Justin Fairfax for Lt. Governor.  The extreme Trump/Pence must be stopped. 

Message to Business Groups: Oppose Anti-Gay AG Candidate John Adams

Herring supports equality, Adams opposes it and wants special rights for Christofascists

Four years ago we saw right wing, anti-gay GOP extremist Ken Cuccinelli running for Governor of Virginia.  Thankfully, he went down to defeat and the Commonwealth dogged a very serious bullet. This year we have a slightly more polished but no less extreme candidate running as the Republican candidate for Attorney General.  Like Cuccinelli is largely driven by one thing: his religious extremism and animus towards LGBT citizens.  His ads falsely talk about "taking politics" out of the office of the Attorney General, yet, if elected, his agenda would amount to granting special rights to Christian extremists and persecuting Virginia's LGBT citizens. Adams would become ayatollah in chief for Christofascists organizations like The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading hate group. Compounding Adams' unfitness for office is his affinity for pandering to special interests.  Indeed, much of his legal career has, in my view, been devoted to protecting big banks and ruthless corporations and white collar criminals.  A piece in MetroWeekly looks at an appeal being made to business organizations to reject Adams.  Here are highlights:  

Equality Virginia Advocates, the political action arm of Equality Virginia, is calling on the political action committees of various pro-business groups not to endorse Republican Attorney General candidate John Adams in his bid to unseat AG Mark Herring.

Specifically, EVA wants the Northern Virginia Business PAC, the Hampton Roads Business PAC, and the Northern Virginia Technology Council PAC to weigh and carefully consider whether the anti-LGBTQ statements made by John Adams would send a hostile message to LGBTQ Virginians and their families.

In a letter to the three political action committees, EVA argues that Adams’ on-the-record statements not only opposing marriage equality but LGBTQ rights in general — as well as his urging the Virginia General Assembly to impeach Mark Herring for refusing to defend the commonwealth’s ban on same-sex marriage — are inconsistent with the groups’ purported claims of supporting candidates that will foster a “pro-business” environment.

LGBTQ advocates say, any perceived hostility towards LGBTQ people may make businesses second-guess relocating to or expanding operations in the commonwealth, particularly in light of the backlash that North Carolina received after it passed its controversial HB 2 law, complete with provisions that encouraged discrimination against LGBTQ people.

“Groups supporting Adams for Attorney General will be sending a hostile message to LGBT employees and hurting Virginia’s business-friendly reputation,” EVA writes in the letter to the political action committees. “It is our belief that Adams would use the Attorney General’s office to pursue his own personal anti-equality agenda.”

Given Virginia’s longstanding reputation as a low-tax, business-friendly state (with Democrats and Republicans generally towing the line), the PACs’ decisions on who to endorse are always a politically contentious issue. 

In 2013, the Northern Virginia Business PAC endorsed Herring, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (now running for governor) and Gov. Terry McAuliffe, all Democrats, for office. However, the Northern Virginia Technology Council PAC eagerly endorsed gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, whose LGBTQ record was well-publicized from his stint as both state senator and as Attorney General. Both decisions were roundly criticized by partisans on both sides.

Nonetheless, EVA wants to make its opposition to Adams clear to any business PACs that would think about endorsing him, rather than endorsing Herring, or refusing to issue an endorsement altogether.

Adams has made clear that he will pursue efforts to undermine equal rights as Attorney General. He has continued to vocally oppose marriage equality, even after the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges,” the letter reads. “He has aggressively criticized efforts to protect the rights of transgender individuals, including his apparent support for the widely criticized ban on military service.

“And earlier this year in a speech, he argued for allowing archaic state sodomy laws. These laws, which have been rejected by most Republicans and Democrats for many years, would make it a crime to be gay in Virginia,” EVA writes. “Adams is not just opposed to advancing gay rights, he wants to allow government to actively persecute gay Virginians simply because of who they are. An Attorney General with this type of discriminatory and outdated agenda would send a terrible message about Virginia’s business climate.”

Yes, that's right, Adams wants to bring back the sodomy laws as a means to prosecute Virginians for being gay. 

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. 

The Toxic Fruits of "Values Voters"

As the previous post noted, GOP attorney general candidate John Adams believes that his beliefs and "values" should be imposed on all Virginians.  His attitude is shared by much of the increasingly extreme GOP base and certainly the extremists at The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading hate group, which dictates much of the Virginia GOP's policy on social issues.  The mind set shows two things, in my view: extreme selfishness and a callous disregard for the lives of others.  Like it or not, conservative Christians are among the most selfish and self-centered individuals that one will meet.  Only their beliefs matter to them and they care nothing of the consequences they inflict on others.  A column in HuffPost provides a good response to individuals like John Adams and the hate merchants at The Family Foundation.  Here are highlights:

Pride month has come and gone.  . . . . There are still large swaths of the population committed to quelling that powerful tide—people who would rather stop the surge than learn to swim; those for whom either religious conviction or willful ignorance provide a convenient, yet increasingly insufficient, refuge. For such people, the rationale for voting against LGBTQ rights often comes down to one maddeningly flawed quip: “It goes against my values.”

Here’s the problem with the values argument in relation to LGBTQ rights: it’s not about you.

It’s not about your belief structure or what your interpretation of any religious text seems to say.

It’s not about unsubstantiated fears of how public restrooms are utilized.

It’s not about maintaining your comfort level at the expense of others.

It’s not about your perception of what love, marriage, and families should look like.

It’s not even about the overwhelming science that demands legitimization of LGBTQ individuals.

It is not about you. Full stop.

What it’s actually about is ensuring that all American citizens are given the opportunity to live their lives to the fullest extent possible. It’s about affording everyone the wealth of governmental protections marriage guarantees, including end-of-life decision making, insurance benefits, visitation rights in medical facilities, parental rights safeguards, and the ability to file joint tax returns. It’s about recognizing that the human condition exists upon a continuum of biological differences and that one’s ability to understand those differences is not required for extending respect and acknowledgement. It’s about granting dignity to those who have been denied it their entire lives. It’s about decency.

LGBTQ individuals are not asking for anything more than the same freedoms heterosexual cis-gendered Americans have always been granted. They have no agenda other than to be recognized as fully human—a remarkably simple request. And while absolute acceptance is the end goal, nobody is seeking to upend your worldview overnight. It’s unnecessary because, frankly, they do not need your approval to exist, to thrive. They do, however, need your vote.

When you refuse to do so, you aren’t simply following your religious conviction or personal belief structure. You are doing more—far more.

The reality is, using your values as an excuse to vote against LGBTQ rights causes genuine harm. And when viewed through the lens of self-righteousness, it becomes all-too-easy to ignore the real-world implications.

Your values insist that good people die without loved ones by their side. They ensure that an overstretched foster system retain children who might otherwise find fulfillment and purpose in loving homes. They cultivate a system of violence and bullying that results in a suicide rate for LGBTQ youths four times higher than that of their peers. Those same youths are often rejected by their own families, forced onto the streets and left to fend for themselves. Your values foster the kind of environment in which 66% of transgender individuals are victimized by physical and sexual assault, despite the factually inaccurate depictions of them as perpetrators of such assaults.

If, indeed, your values compel you to perpetuate so much tragedy, violence, and heartbreak, are they really as admirable as you have been lead to believe? Is the very real suffering of the LGBTQ community worth the satisfaction of having voted your conscience? If so, I see nothing of merit in the so-called values you seek to defend. They ring hollow and disingenuous.

As for my own, they demand I look beyond myself. They insist on being fully, unconditionally supportive of anyone who seeks to find fulfillment and live authentically. Because society can only benefit from a world in which self-acceptance is encouraged and love flourishes. I intend to continue working toward that kind of world.

Religion and "religious values" cause immeasurable harm on a daily basis.  Sadly, the Christofascists of the Republican Party base see only themselves as fully human.  The rest of us simply don't matter. Indeed, they'd prefer if the rest of us simply died and disappeared.  WWJD?

Republicans to Use Virginia AG Race to Attack LGBT Rights

John Adams with Jill Vogel and Ed Gillespie - be very afraid

This fall's Virginia elections are likely to draw much more national attention than in other years and, frighteningly, rolling back LGBT rights and reversing the legalization of same sex marriage appears to be one of the preferred talking points of the GOP attorney general candidate, John Adams.  Adams may come across as a more polished version of Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli, but he is every bit as much of an extremist as Cuccinelli.  Especially on the issue of LGBT rights. Among the knuckle draggers of Virginia rural areas and so-called Tea Party activists - actually Christian extremists hiding under a different label - the message resonates and it will be critical that progressives and the LGBT community not discount the danger Adams and the rest of the Republican ticket pose to basic civil rights.  Not only is Adams and anti-gay extremist, but he is also a huge fan of voter ID laws aimed at disenfranchising as many minority voters and Democrat leaning voters as possible.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the extreme agenda Adams and his fellow ticket mates will be pushing. Here are excerpts:

John Adams, the prominent Richmond lawyer who wants to be Virginia’s next attorney general, is no fan of the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage across the country.

“Totally made up, totally made up,” he told a Tea Party gathering in Virginia Beach last year. “Not in the constitution anywhere.”

But the Republican also told the crowd they had to live with the high court’s ruling unless one of two things happens. Either Virginia secedes from the union, something that did not work out so well 150 years ago. Or the court gets a big makeover.

“I’m an optimist,” he said. “I clerked for Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. You give me four more Clarence Thomases, we’re good. OK? I’m not kidding. We’re good. Because they will fix that court in a minute.”

Adams is running as both blunt conservative and strict adherent to the rule of law. The premise of his campaign is that Herring is neither – that the sitting attorney general has bent the law to advance a liberal agenda . . . Herring, of course, flatly disagrees with that notion. He won election four years ago promising to “take the politics out of the office,” a swipe at the activist tenure of his conservative Republican predecessor, Ken Cuccinelli II.

As attorney general, Herring went on to advance gay rights and abortion access, offer in-state tuition to certain illegal immigrants and to tighten gun control. Herring contends all of his moves were grounded in the law.

Virginia’s race plays out as national forces have politicized the office of state attorney general around the country. Herring and other Democratic attorneys general are branding themselves as the “resistance” to President Donald Trump, much as Republicans cast themselves as a firewall against President Barack Obama’s “overreach.”

Ahead of Virginia’s November election — the nation’s only attorney general’s contest in 2017 —the Republican Attorneys General Association voted early this year to scrap a long-standing “gentlemen’s agreement” with its Democratic counterpart to stay out of contests with an incumbent.

Long regarded as head of the state’s law firm and sometimes as Virginia’s top cop, the attorney general has evolved in recent years into a high-profile, highly politicized figure, said Bob Holsworth, a longtime Richmond political analyst.  “Cuccinelli began the change,” Holsworth said, referring to the attorney general who filed the first suit against “Obamacare,” investigated a university climate scientist and played hardball with the state Board of Health over abortion.

The Herring-Adams contest could grab more of the spotlight than usual. Republicans plan to play up the down-ticket race since Herring is more of a lightening rod than the low-key Northam.  “Mark Herring fires up our base,” House Speaker-designee Kirk Cox (R-Colonial Heights) said with a mock shudder.

And Democrats are zeroing in on Adams’s conservative views as they try to paint the Republican ticket as too far right for a changing Virginia. Gillespie treads lightly on social issues, as does the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, Jill Holtzman Vogel (Fauquier). Adams speaks far more frankly.  . . . Adams volunteers his personal opposition to gay marriage on his web site.

Democrats say Adams takes after someone else: Cuccinelli. They have seized on pro bono, friend-of-the-court briefs Adams wrote supporting the rights of two organizations – the Hobby Lobby retail chain and the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of Catholic nuns – to be exempted from an Obamacare birth-control mandate due to religious objections.

“He did it on his own, in his spare time,” Herring said in a June 17 debate with Adams in Virginia Beach. “That’s where his passion is, in taking people’s rights away from them.” . . . Adams said his only interest was in protecting religious freedom [the right's code name for license to discriminate laws].

Do not be fooled by Gillespie's and Vogel's relative silence on far right issues.  While not voicing Adams' views, they will nonetheless pursue them if elected to office.  Virginia's women, minorities, non-Christians and gays should be terrified by all three of these candidates. 

Mark Herring's Opponent for AG is a Right Wing Zealot

Herring's opponent would set Virginia back by decades

Virginia has been on the wrong side of history many times since its golden era during the founding years of the nation.  Support for slavery and going to war to protect the institution is one such blot of Virginia's history.  So to are the Jim Crow laws which saw Virginia lead the way in steadily taking away the rights of black voters and, hand in hand with those laws was the "Massive Resistance" movement to close down public schools rather than integrate them with all races.  Then of course, there was Virginia ban on interracial marriage that had to go to the United States Supreme Court twice before the court in disgust overturned the Virginia Supreme Courts rulings supporting the ban in Loving v. Virginia.  When he took office, Attorney General Mark Herring did not to repeat that foul history by defending Virginia's ban on same-sex marriage.  He also has shown an adversion to Virginia Republicans' efforts at voter ID laws aimed at disenfranchising minorities and other likely Democrat voters. 

Herring's opponent in the 2017 statewide Virginia elections, Republican John Adams is the polar opposite of Herring.  He supported the ban on same-sex marriage and has stated that "“I have a religious faith that tells me that marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. That’s what I believe.”  He also supports voter ID laws that have little or nothing to do with perverting voter fraud, but which instead , as noted above, are aimed at stopping "those people" from voting, so draw your own conclusions as to whether "racist" applies to Adams.  The Richmond Times Dispatch has a lengthy piece on Adams which should make your blood run cold if you are not a heterosexual, white conservative Christian. As you might guess, he is also big on "religious freedom" laws - laws that allow Christian extremists to ignore non-discrimination laws based on alleged "religious belief." His vision of religious freedom does NOT include religious freedom for gays, Muslims, Hindus or other non-Christians despite his posturing  And yes, he supported the toxic Hobby Lobby decision (he worked on the case for Hobby Lobby) and counts as friends a who's who of right extreme wing Republicans.    Adams is so toxic that the haters at The Family Foundation must be having near orgasms. 

Ironically, his campaign website has a section called "Defending Our Valuers."  A quick read makes it very clear that "our values" are white Christofascist vales.  Do NOT sit out this election.  Mark Herring must be re-elected.  Having John Adams as attorney general would be nothing short of a disaster and would reprise the insanity of when Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli held that office.  We do NOT want to go backward in time.

Separation of Church and State? Not on the GOP Campaign Trail.

In a op-ed in the Washington Post Jonathan Turley looks at the disturbing move - particularly by Republican candidates - to erase the concept of the separation of church and state in the nation's politics. Obviously, as a gay man, I find the trend because it seems to be Christianist views that are being promoted even as more of the population moves - now 20% - has walked away from institutional religion completely. Turley presents the true view of the Founding Fathers on the need to keep religion out of politics and then contrasts it with the growing theocratic movement in the GOP as well as some of Barack Obama's pandering to those whose hallmark trait is intolerance towards other (e.g., BFF Rick Warren who I frankly regard as a lying crook). I don't know what the answer is in ending this trend, but I believe the theocratic Bible beaters need to be relegated back into the political wilderness and treated like a crazy relative locked away form public view. Here are some column highlights:

On Oct. 7, 1801, three men wrote to the new president of the United States on behalf of their Baptist congregation in Connecticut. The letter from the Danbury Baptist Association is most famous not for its content but for the response it generated from Thomas Jefferson, who described“a wall of separation between Church & State.” The Baptists’ letter, however, deserves far greater consideration, particularly in our current political climate.

Some 210 years ago, this deeply religious group stepped forward to denounce faith-based politics and “those who seek after power and gain under the pretense of government and religion.” As reflected in the letter, it is a struggle that has existed from the nation’s founding, with politicians periodically calling upon the faithful to testify through their votes.

Now, religious and even sectarian pitches have become commonplace and expected on the campaign trail, even as more Americans identify themselves as secular or non-denominational. The fears of the Danbury Baptists appear to have been realized, with political campaigns, federal programs and judicial decisions moving away from a clear separation of church and state.

On any given night, listening to the [GOP] presidential candidates could easily lead voters to believe that they are listening to a campaign for an ecclesiastical rather than presidential office.

[F]ormer senator Rick Santorum and Rep. Michele Bachmann have spoken out against the very notion of separation of church and state. Bachmann told a large youth ministry group a few years ago that religion is supposed to be part of government

Like his Republican counterparts, Obama has denounced secularists — and, implicitly, their view of complete separation of church and state. He has chastised people who object to the religiosity that has become the norm in American politics.

This is all a far cry from Jefferson, who refused to issue Thanksgiving Day proclamations because he thought it would violate the establishment clause. Later, Andrew Jackson also declined to declare days of Thanksgiving or fasting out of the same concern. The 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, signed by John Adams and approved by George Washington and the Senate, included a statement that “the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”

One problem with mixing religion and politics is that it quickly becomes a competition for demonstrating fealty to the faith, including promises of favoritism for mainstream religions or, conversely, discrimination against minorities.

Despite polls showing that 66 percent of Americans support “a clear separation of church and state,” those Americans do not seem to be motivating politicians or shaping politics. Indeed, Democratic strategists believe that secularists have nowhere to turn — which means Obama can court religious voters without fear of losing others’ support. The result is that the 34 percent who do not support separation seem to drive the political agenda.

[F]aith-based politics can become faith-based laws that enforce morality codes, expand public subsidies for religious institutions or sideline religious (or non-religious) minorities. Most important, our political-religious climate threatens to replace a campaign for the best policies with a contest of the most pious.

Even as the world recoils from the extremism of religious-based groups and political systems in places such as Iran and Pakistan, the United States is gradually erasing the bright line that has existed for decades between religion and government. While religious instability and strife in countries around the globe should reinforce the values of separation and the message of the Danbury Baptists, instead politicians are selling themselves as the Judeo-Christian answer to a troubled world; confident, as Perry put it recently, that “He has me here at a time such as this.”

Politicized piety is at the heart of the 2012 campaign. We need to rebuild the wall between church and state that has long protected us from ourselves. The question is: Do we have enough faith in secular government to get it done?

Again, I find the trend of pandering to Christianist both frightening and dangerous. Truth be told, these are not nice people but rather zealots who seek to generate hatred and division while building a quasi-theocracy. They need to be opposed on every front.

The Faith of the Founding Fathers

The Christianists love to blather ad nausea about America having been founded as a "Christian nation." The only problem, of course, is that the claim is not true and as we have seen before such as in the preamble of Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom - which is still a part of the Code of Virginia but which consistently ignored by Christianists and Republicans, including my former classmate, George Allen, who talks of Jeffersonian principles even as he prostitutes himself to the religious right - Jefferson had nothing but contempt for the intermixing of religion and the dispensing of civil legal rights. A post at Right Wing Watch adds to the list of inconvenient facts that show the lie of Christianists like David Barton who try to twist history to fit their theocratic agenda. Here are some post highlights:
*
John Adams, on the other hand, is held up as a paragon of what it means to be a true Christian and a statesmen. But, for some reason, the Religious Right never bothers to mention that, like Thomas Jefferson, Adams did not believe that Jesus was God or that he died for the sins of mankind and actually mocked the idea:
*
[Adams] could not accept the historic Christian belief that Jesus Christ was God or that his death atoned for the sins of the world: "An incarnate God!!! An eternal, self-existent omnipresent Author of this stupendous Universe suffering on a Cross!!! My Soul starts with horror, at the Idea." Adams thought the notion of "a mere creature, or finite Being," making "Satisfaction to the infinite justice for the sins of the world" was a "convenient Cover for absurdity." These doctrines were not part of the pure and undefiled teachings of Jesus as found in the Gospels, but were rather created by the leaders of the early Christian church who "misunderstood" Jesus' message and thus presented it in "very paradoxical Shapes."
*
There is one major problem with Potts's story of Washington praying at Valley Forge - it probably did not happen. While it is likely that Washington prayed while he was with the army at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-1778, it is unlikely that the story reported by Potts, memorialized in paintings and read to millions of schoolchildren, is anything more than legend. It was first told in the seventeenth edition (1816) of Mason Lock Weem's Life of Washington. Weems claimed to have heard it directly from Potts, his "good old FRIEND." Potts may have owned the house where Washington stayed at Valley Forge, but his aunt Deborah Potts Hewes was living there alone at the time. Indeed, Potts was probably not even residing in Valley Forge during the encampment. And he was definitely not married. It would be another twenty-five years before he wed Sarah, making a conversation with her in the wake of the supposed Washington prayer impossible. Another version of the story, which appeared in the diary of Reverend Nathaniel Randolph Snowden, claims that it was John Potts, Issac's brother, who heard Washington praying. These discrepancies, coupled with the fact that Weems was known for writing stories about Washington based upon scanty evidence, have led historians to discredit it.
*

The surest defense to revisionist history is an accurate knowledge of history - something that is given an abysmally low priority in our public schools and which plays directly into the hands of those who would subvert the U. S. Constitution such as Barton.

More on the "Christian Nation" Myth

David Ignatius has a good op-ed piece in the Washington Post that looks further into the real views of the Founding Fathers of this nation on religion in politics. Not surprisingly, he points out that they would be shocked and/or disgusted with the religiosity that now saturates US politics. While this is a US political issue, it has relevancy to other nations such as the United Kingdom where the US Christianists are trying to plant there poisonous version of Christianity. The deliberate Christianist distortions of US history illustrate that they will knowingly tell lies and untruths to further their extremist anti-democratic agenda. Here are some highlights from the column (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/26/AR2007122601486.html?hpid=opinionsbox1):

A bracing text for this Christmas week is the famous correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Their letters are a reminder that the Founders were men of the Enlightenment -- supreme rationalists who would have found the religiosity of much of our modern political life quite abhorrent.

It's not that these men didn't have religious beliefs: They were, to their deaths, passionate seekers of truth, metaphysical as well as physical. It's that their beliefs didn't fit into pious cubbyholes. Indeed, the deist Jefferson took a pair of scissors to the New Testament to create his "Jefferson Bible," or, formally, "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," which cut out the parts he regarded as supernatural or misinterpreted by the Gospel writers.

My Christmastime reading of the Adams-Jefferson letters was prompted by this year's most interesting political speech but one I also found troubling -- Mitt Romney's Dec. 6 speech on "Faith in America." It was a fine evocation of our twin heritage of religion and religious freedom, until he got to this ritual denunciation of the bogeymen known as secularists.

Anyone who reads Adams and Jefferson -- or for that matter, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton or other voices of the American Enlightenment -- can make their own judgment about what the Founders would say about Romney's broadside against secularism. My guess is that their response would be something like: "That is bunkum, sir."

Many of the Founders liked to speak of the "God of Nature," notes Garrett Epps, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Oregon. Adams used this term in a June 20, 1815, letter to Jefferson: "The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by His own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?" Adams mistrusted priests and kings, but he was also skeptical of the revolutionary philosophers who had overthrown them in France. He spent his life looking for a middle ground.

Jefferson spoke in a May 5, 1817, letter of "true religion" as based on "moral precepts, innate in man," and the "sublime doctrine of philanthropism and deism taught us by Jesus of Nazareth." He contrasted this true faith with "sectarian dogmas." If the sectarian version prevailed, warned Jefferson, then he might agree with Adams's speculation that "this would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it."

[L]et us recall this caustic Nov. 4, 1816, missive from Adams: "We have now, it seems, a national Bible Society, to propagate King James's Bible through all nations. Would it not be better to apply these pious subscriptions to purify Christendom from the corruptions of Christianity than to propagate those corruptions in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America?"

The Founders certainly believed in God, but for most of them, their faith was a deeply private matter, as Jefferson put it in a Jan. 11, 1817, letter, a subject "known to my God and myself alone." Indeed, they found loud, public displays of religiosity a profanation of this inner and spiritual practice of religion. Adams, the more conventionally "religious" of the two, insisted in a Sept. 14, 1813, letter that there is "but one being who can understand the universe, and that it is not only vain but wicked for insects to pretend to comprehend it."