Understanding Events in Iran - What Not to Do

Students attend a protest at Tehran University.

Watching the anti-government protests in Iran, one cannot help but wonder if by some seeming miracle the protests can succeed in regime change.  Realistically, the short term answer may be no, so the question becomes one of what can American policy do to aid the protesters.  Launching a war on Iran as Donald Trump and Nikki Haley - who has destroyed many f my initial positive thoughts about her - seem wont to do is likely NOT the answer.  One need only look at how Stalin used Hitler's invasion to rally popular support to "defend mother Russia" to know that providing an outside enemy would play right into the regime's hands (not that Der Trumpenführer knows any history or has any connection with the real world that isn't clouded by his narcissism).  Plus, despite the understanding of the Trump/GOP base, Iran is not a nation of "camel jockeys" and the nation, if unified by an eternal foe could make the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan look like a cake walk.  An op-ed in the New York Times gives some insights likely lost on the White House and those seeking to the ignorant GOP base.  Here are excerpts:

In Iran, the obstacles to success are daunting. Whereas most Middle Eastern countries are ruled by secular autocrats focused on repressing primarily Islamist opposition, Iran is an Islamist autocracy focused on repressing secular opposition. This dynamic—unarmed, unorganized, leaderless citizens seeking economic dignity and pluralism, versus a heavily armed, organized, rapacious ruling theocracy that espouses martyrdom—is not a recipe for success.

And yet, against this inauspicious backdrop, Iran’s mushrooming anti-government protests—although so far much smaller in scale than the country’s 2009 uprising—have been unprecedented in their geographic scope and intensity. They began December 28 in Mashhad, a Shiite pilgrimage city often considered a regime stronghold, with protesters chanting slogans like “leave Syria alone, think about us.” They soon spread to Qom, Iran’s holiest city, where protesters expressed nostalgia for Reza Shah, the 20th-century modernizing autocrat who ruthlessly repressed the clergy. They continued in provincial towns, with thousands chanting, “we don’t want an Islamic Republic” in Najafabad, “death to the revolutionary guards” in Rasht, and “death to the dictator” in Khoramabad. They’ve since spread to Tehran, and hundreds have been arrested, the BBC reported, citing Iranian officials.  

What triggered these protests is a subject of debate—some evidence suggests they were initially encouraged by hardline forces to embarrass President Hassan Rouhani—but what has fueled them have been the same grievances that power anti-government protests everywhere: rising living costs, endemic corruption, fraud, mismanagement. In Iran, add to that bitter cocktail both political and social repression, all conducted from the moral pedestal of Islamist theocracy.

While these grievances have been festering for years and indeed decades, among the dozens of factors that distinguish today’s protests from 2009 is the smartphone. In 2009—when an estimated 2 million to 3 million Iranians protested silently in Tehran—fewer than 1 million Iranians owned such a device, and few outside Tehran. Today, an astonishing 48 million Iranians are thought to have smartphones, all of them equipped with social media and communication apps.

But while Iranians have a much better understanding how elsewhere is living, the rest of the world has had a less clear idea of how Iranians are living given Tehran’s effective distortion of Western media coverage. Since 2009 and even before, the dogged professional journalists covering Iran—including The Wall Street Journal’s Farnaz Fassihi, The New York Times’s Nazila Fathi, Newsweek’s Maziar Bahari, Reuters’s Parisa Hafezi and Babak Dehghanpisheh, and dozens more—have been intimidated, expelled, and in some cases imprisoned. The few journalists remaining in Iran rightfully worry about their personal safety. Many of the best Iranian writers, scholars, and artists of their generation have been similarly banished from Iran.

The Iranian government has the highest per capita execution rate in the world, treats women as second class citizens, persecutes gays and religious minorities, and stifles free speech. While there is a natural inclination among decent people everywhere to want a peaceful civil rights movement to succeed in Iran, there are ample reasons to believe it will not. The regime’s coercive apparatus—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Bassij milita—are organized, armed, and abundant, and well-practiced in the brutal science of repression. Opponents of the government, in contrast, are unarmed, leaderless, and rudderless. In addition, Iran has at its disposal tens of thousands of Shia militiamen—including Lebanese Hezbollah—it has been cultivating for years and in some cases decades.

In the weeks and months to come, expect the regime to grow ever more repressive. Iran’s security forces thrive when there is insecurity. Some Iranians even fear the IRGC has allowed the protests to fester as a pretext for expanding their authority in the name of national security.  

It is only natural that popular agitations against a regime whose official slogan is “Death to America” will elicit strong support from U.S. politicians. The question, as always, is what is the most constructive way for Washington to “support” such protests? . . . . What’s more important than public statements are U.S. policies that can inhibit the regime’s coercive capacity and their ability to black out communications.

One concrete suggestion is to make it clear that companies and countries around the world complicit in Iran’s repressive apparatus—including those providing censorship technology—will face censure from the United States. The United States should also mobilize global partners that do have working relations with Iran—including Europe, Japan, South Korea, and India—to add their voices of concern and condemnation to Tehran’s repression. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has been noticeably silent.    

Given the opacity of the Iranian system and its inaccessibility to independent investigation, the days and weeks ahead are eminently unpredictable. Khamenei and his IRGC backers appear firmly entrenched from thousands of miles away, but we also know from history that authoritarian stability can be a chimera. In August 1978, the CIA confidently assessed that the Pahlavi monarchy in Iran “is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation.”

Two-thousand-five-hundred years of Persian civilization and a century-long quest for democracy offer hope about the irrepressible Iranian will for change. But the Islamic Republic’s four-decade history of brutality suggests that change will not come easily, or peacefully, or soon. 

Despite Recent Bills, Are Anti-LGBT Forces Losing?

After the euphoria of last years Supreme Court marriage ruling in Obergefell v. Hughes, the recent successes of the Christofascist in pushing their tawdry whore-like supporters in the Republican Party to enact anti-LGBT laws that grant special privileges to animus motivated "conservative Christians" has been frightening.  Indeed, but for its Republican governor, Virginia would be saddled with a heinous license to discriminate law.   Longer term, however, these successes may be paving the way for the ultimate defeat of Christofascist backed candidates.  Two pieces look at the possible longer term loss on the part of Christofascist forces.  One appears in The Daily Beast.  The other is in The State, one of South Carolina's largest newspapers.  The State piece is interesting because (i) it shows GOP Governor Nikki Haley arguing that a North Carolina-like law is not needed in South Carolina, and (ii) looks at the Spartanburg Chamber of Commerce's plan to actively campaign against and anti-LGBT Republican.  Here are excerpts:

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley said Thursday that a proposed law to limit the bathrooms that transgender people can use is not needed.

Haley said her office has not received any complaints about the issue, adding South Carolinians are respectful to people of different backgrounds.

“I don’t believe it’s necessary,” the Lexington Republican told reporters. “There’s not one instance that I’m aware of.

“When we look at our situation, we’re not hearing of anybody’s religious liberties that are being violated, and we’re again not hearing any citizens that are being violated in terms of freedoms,” she said. The S.C. Chamber of Commerce will campaign actively against state Sen. Lee Bright, a Spartanburg Republican seeking a third term this year, chamber president Ted Pitts said Thursday. The chamber had concerns about Bright’s Senate performance before he introduced his transgender bill, Pitts said. Bright has three GOP primary challengers.

“Sen. Bright is trying to create a political crisis that doesn’t exist to save his political career,” said Pitts, a former chief of staff to Haley. “Meanwhile, our state has real issues we need to address, including crumbling roads and a (workforce) skills gap. We’ll be working on electing serious senators next year who will be focused on addressing the state’s infrastructure and workforce needs, and limiting government’s role in our lives.” 

Haley also questioned whether Bright’s proposal, introduced Wednesday, could win passage in the Senate before the May 1 deadline for a bill to cross over to the S.C. House for consideration. “Nothing is going to happen with the bill this year.”

Frankly, it sounds as if Haley is positioning herself to veto the bill if it becomes necessary.  The piece in The Daily Beast expands on the blow back to Christofascist/Republican overreaching.  Here are highlights:

North Carolina’s Republican legislature and governor used what they thought would be their best tactic to repeal anti-discrimination ordinances, one that that worked in Houston and elsewhere: that pro-LGBT laws would let men use women’s restrooms.

And yet, the only way North Carolina could pass the law was in a bizarre special session, passing a bill that no one seems to have read. The bill was so overbroad, it was like putting out a match with a fire hose. And it was passed like a midnight massacre, suddenly and taking everyone by surprise.

This may seem like a victory, but in the long run, it will go down as a loss. The reaction has been swift, from Fortune 500 companies to religious leaders to celebrities. (Among others, PayPal just canceled plans to expand in the state.) The law has been widely condemned, and Gov. Pat McCrory is on the defensive. What he presumably hoped would help shore up his base now threatens to alienate the moderate voters he needs to win reelection this year.

But their defeat goes even further: Even within their own false context, they’re losing. This is not the way trans advocates wanted to have a public conversation about gender identity, but here the conversation is, and, not unlike same-sex marriage, trans people are persuading people simply by telling the truth.

There are little transgender girls out there, kids like Coy Mathis who were born biologically male but who have dressed like girls, played with “girl toys,” and understood themselves to be girls since as long as they could talk. And there are butch transgender men like the bearded, country-boy-looking James Sheffield, whose Twitter post to Gov. McCrory—“It’s now the law for me to share a restroom with your wife”—has gone viral.

Thanks to North Carolina’s odious, ignorant law, these folks are now able to tell their stories to wider audiences. And when they connect, on a human level, with reasonable people willing to listen, they are their own best advocates. 

The second tactic of the Right has been to talk about religion.  The Christian right can no longer directly demonize gays and transgender people, so it has to lie and even the lies are backfiring.

In the wake of last year’s loss on same-sex marriage, the Christian Right has begun to act tactically, attacking what it perceives to be the LGBT equality movement’s weakest links. And yet amazingly, this strategy is backfiring. Not only is the right failing to make their easiest cases, they are hardening opposition in those very cases, losing key battles in the areas of transgender rights and religious freedom.

Under clear First Amendment precedent, no church could ever be compelled to host any wedding of any sort. The government can’t make an Orthodox synagogue host an interfaith wedding, and it can’t make a Catholic church host a gay wedding. This is how it is, how it should be, and how it’s going to stay.

But the Right’s attempt to move out from there to include for-profit businesses (bakers and otherwise) has run into trouble, most recently in Georgia, where the Republican governor, Nathan Deal, vetoed a “religious freedom” bill that would have enabled businesses to discriminate for religious reasons, under heavy pressure from dozens of large corporations including the National Football League.

Ultimately, though, what the left has that the right doesn’t have is truth. I’m not naïve enough to think that’s enough to win every battle but it certainly does help. Just as gay men are not getting married in order to more effectively recruit youngsters to homosexuality, trans women are not transitioning in order to spy on the ladies room. There are actually facts of the matter, and they’re almost all on one side.

That, I think, is why these tactics are backfiring. For an ostensibly religious movement, they’re awfully cynical maneuvers. And sometimes, lying to folks is a bad idea.

 Sadly, the most common trait of the "godly folk" is their willingness to deliberately lie and their hatred towards anyone the deem "other" - a list that includes blacks, Hispanics, LGBT individuals, non-Christians, etc., etc.  Indeed, the hate just about everyone but their fellow extremists.

Obama: Stop Bigotry and Fear-Mongering

In his last State of the Union address, Barack Obama in many ways called out the hate merchants of the Republican Party and challenged their appeals to hate, bigotry and fear mongering.  His address was followed by a mealy mouthed response from Nikki Haley who, while sane and rational compared to Sarah Palin, continued the very lies that Obama had condemned.  Haley was followed by remarks from Ted Cruz that I honestly could not stomach watching.  Overall, Obama's address was fact based and calm - something unheard of in today's Republican Party.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post's assessment of the speech:

PRESIDENT OBAMA took the biggest stage in politics Tuesday night aiming to calm a fearful nation and offer realistic ways to fix the country’s worsening politics. In his final State of the Union address, Mr. Obama acknowledged that partisanship has worsened during his presidency and accepted a share of blame — but said correctly that goodwill and leadership alone cannot repair the situation. It will take systemic reform, he said, to change the tone and substance of American governance.

“We’ve got to end the practice of drawing our congressional districts so that politicians can pick their voters, and not the other way around,” he declared; gerrymandering makes Congress less responsive to the will of the majority of Americans. Mr. Obama insisted that Congress should find ways to restrict the untoward influence of money in politics. And he said it should be easier for Americans to vote. 

His recommendations are apt in a campaign season veering toward disaster. Mistrust of institutions, pessimism about the future, fear of terrorism, and resentment of economic inequality have voters considering handing the government to bloviators who offer simplistic and often offensive “solutions.” 

The facts do not suggest that the country is nearing collapse or self-destruction, as the rhetoric on the campaign trail so often implies. And even for very real problems, populist outbursts — bashing immigrants, the Federal Reserve, China and other easy targets — will not help. Mr. Obama pushed back against bigotry in the GOP campaign — and fear-mongering in his own party.

Mr. Obama also sought to offer reassurance on threats from abroad, saying, correctly, that the Islamic State does not pose an existential threat to the United States. He sketched a way to manage failed states and a turbulent Middle East by “mobiliz[ing] the world to work with us and mak[ing] sure other countries pull their own weight.” 

The United States faces serious problems. But overstating them only contributes to the likelihood of continuing Washington dysfunction or, worse, electing a demagogue who really would bring disaster. Mr. Obama was right to make that case.

South Carolina's Herald: Challenge of Gay Marriage Ruling was Futile

Republican politicians consistently prostitute themselves to the Christofascists in the party base by embracing every anti-gay measure that comes down the pike no matter how wrong it may be or how wastefully of state funds the eventual legal battles to preserve religious based discrimination may be.  South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Attorney General Alan Wilson are but two examples.  With South Carolina now under court order to pay the legal fees of the plaintiffs in that state's battle against gay marriage bans, the editorial board of the Herald has let loose on Haley and Wilson's waste of taxpayer money merely to pander to religious extremists.  Here are editorial highlights: 

The decision by Gov. Nikki Haley and S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson to launch a futile challenge to a federal appeals court ruling on gay marriage turned out to be costly for state taxpayers. And that came as no surprise to the many legal experts who had advised against the challenge.

[F]our of those states [in the 4th Circuit] announced they would stop defending challenges to the state’s gay-marriage ban. But Haley and Wilson took the opposite tack, pledging to fight on for South Carolina’s ban.

A variety of legal experts said at the time that continuing the fight would be a waste of the state’s time and money. They said the effort was doomed to fail, and they were right.

In October the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the 4th Circuit ruling to stand. Then, in late June, the Supreme Court issued its 5-4 ruling that made same-sex marriage legal nationwide.

And last week the bill came due for South Carolina. A federal judge ordered Wilson to pay $130,600 in legal fees for a couple who challenged the state’s gay-marriage ban. Judge Richard Gergel also awarded them the full $4,700 they sought in other court costs and fees.

This, of course, does not account for the time and money Wilson and his office spent on the challenge – resources that could have been used for something worthwhile.

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/opinion/editorials/article30940170.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/opinion/editorials/article30940170.html#storylink=cpy

What is more irksome is that the state’s case was hopeless from the start. Wilson was under no obligation to carry the challenge forward. He could have dropped it, as his North Carolina counterpart, Attorney General Roy Cooper, did.

By all appearances, the appeal was little more than an effort to appease opponents of gay marriage in the state. It was a political decision, not a practical one, and taxpayers had to pay for the charade. 

While their no-surrender stance might have resonated with a segment of voters, it was an unnecessary and expensive gesture.  For politicians who claim to be careful stewards of the state’s resources, this was money down the drain.

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/opinion/editorials/article30940170.html#storylink=cpy

Taxpayers ought to demand that Haley and Wilson personally reimburse the state for the moneys they needlessly squandered. 

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/opinion/editorials/article30940170.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/opinion/editorials/article30940170.html#storylink=cpy

Why Taking Down the Confederate Falg is Important to LGBT's

Some might question why the current debates and arguments over the flying of of the Confederate flag in South Carolina and elsewhere has any bearing on LGBT rights.  But it doesn't take much examination to discern that those who support the state sponsored display of the Confederate flag are (i) largely one and the same people who supports same sex marriage bans and opposition to LGBT rights, and (ii) using the same arguments of "tradition" and state rights to justify hate and discrimination and the undermining of the U.S. Constitution.    Scratch the surface of the leadership of Family Research Council, The Family Foundation here in Virginia, and many other "family values" and "Christian" political action groups and you quickly find former segregationists and white supremacists.  A post in Huffington Post makes this case.  Here are highlights:

The Civil War wasn't about slavery. That's what I was told by teachers, family, friends, churchgoers and casual motorists at gas stations throughout my childhood in rural Alabama. Black and white had nothing to do with it, they said. States' rights, they would all echo. States' rights, yes, now that was the real reason--usually punctuating that last bit by spitting out a wad of chewing tobacco.

When you are white in the South, what you learn about the Confederate flag--which gets slapped on everything from pickup trucks to cakes to state houses--is that it is a flag of honorable defense against a tyrannical invader. It is meant to invoke a feeling of legacy for our ancestors who died in some great struggle for their definition of liberty.

[T]he survival of states' rights rhetoric in today's contemporary political landscape. During the oral arguments of Obergefell v. Hodges, both the counsellors and justices seemed as easily distracted as mayflies--hopping from one sour line of questioning to the next. However, one telling quote did stand out, from U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.:

"You may have many states, perhaps most states, in which gay couples can live with equal dignity and status," he said, "but you will have a minority of states in which gay couples will be relegated to demeaning, second-class status, and I don't know why we would want to repeat that history."

Those states that believe in enforcing marriage as a procreation-centered union and that assert their right to deny recognition to those who marry outside their lines are ever so slightly retracing the same lines that divided this country between free and slave states more than a hundred years ago--which took the country's deadliest war in its history to erase. 

White LGBTs can never fully know the painful past the Confederate flag holds for our brothers and sisters of color. However, we do know how the rhetoric it represents threatens our future. We are one country, with one flag, and we live by one promise: liberty and justice for all. The call to take down the flag is our call, too. Not just as supporters of the black community, but as members of our own community. A handful of states say they have the right to dictate our lives, our families and our happiness because they still believe in the awful patchwork of states' rights arguments that nearly brought our nation to the brink. Taking down that tattered flag is a symbol that LGBTs stand with the black community, and as importantly, stand for themselves as citizens of this Union.

The New Indian-American Lobby

The party of angry white men - i.e., the Republican Party - may have a new lobby to face that will not sit well with its Christofascist/Tea Party base: Indian-Americans, a group I am acquainted with through my numerous Indian-American clients (some of whom were at a  White House gathering last month).  Like other minority groups, these immigrant and native born Americans subscribe to the so-called American dream and want to have more input into policy issues.  In the last presidential election, they voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama for obvious reasons.  Today's GOP is a party of exclusion and if one isn't a white, heterosexual conservative Christian, one truly is not welcomed.  A piece in Politico Magazine looks at the growing political ambitions of this demographic.  Here are highlights:

November wasn’t kind to the political power of Indian-Americans. In the hundreds of congressional and gubernatorial races across the country, only five Indian-American candidates were on the ballot. Three lost. Representative Ami Bera, incumbent Democrat from California, left Election Day trailing by thousands of votes only to secure a narrow victory during a recount. Two of Indian-Americans’ biggest victories were the electoral equivalents of shoo-ins—California Attorney General Kamala Harris and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Come next month, Indian-Americans will have only one elected representative in Washington—the same number that they have in the current Congress.

But this electoral thumping obscures the truth behind the curtain: The nation’s three million Indian-Americans are increasingly looking to flex their political muscles, and they have one very clear advantage to bring to the money-driven world of modern politics: They’re one of the wealthiest ethnic groups in the United States. According to a 2013 Pew Survey, Indian-Americans’ median household income sits at $88,000, the highest of all Asian-American subgroups (the U.S. average at-large is a relatively paltry $49,800).

Indians as a whole have a long way to go before they can be seen as an influential group in politics.  But he has a very clear benchmark in mind as he tries to navigate his educated and wealthy ethnic group towards political power: Jewish-Americans. “We’re learning a lot from the Jewish diaspora here and what we have noticed from the Jewish diaspora is that they’re willing to contribute, invest, and write checks,” Rangaswami told me. “Because of the size of India, we could become a much larger community [than the Jews] in terms of population and also in terms of diversity.”

Anand Shah believes that Indian-Americans will likely replicate this path—uniting around certain causes close to the heart of the population, like the well-being and future of India itself. USINPAC, the largest Indian-American lobbying organization, was lauded for its highly successful lobbying of Congress to pass the U.S.-India Nuclear Treaty in 2008 (after President Bush first negotiated it in 2005), but has not boasted any landmark victories since. U.S.-India relations cooled notably in recent years as the U.S. began to court China more formally and many Indians have been irked over a lack of visas for highly-qualified Indian engineers.

Much like Jewish-Americans, Indian-Americans currently lean heavily towards the Democratic Party—in 2013, a Pew Survey claimed that 65 percent of Indian-Americans identify as Democrats, while only 18 percent identify as Republicans. Yet as a group, there’s reason to believe that Indian-Americans votes are up for grabs.

Paul Kapur, a professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School who focuses on U.S. policy towards South Asia, argues that because neither party has yet “really reached out to Indian-Americans … they’re not really captured by one party or the other.” Kapur says that Indian-Americans’ overwhelming support for Obama may stem from the president’s association with the third world.

[F]or Indians who come from a country with a cacophonous democracy filled with numerous coexisting religious, linguistic and ethnic groups, keeping social values private and out of the public sphere is the norm. In India, much of family law differs for Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, and thus many Indian immigrants are likely perplexed by evangelicals’ efforts to codify aspects of their faith in broad-sweeping legislation.

Jindal and Haley have formidable barriers that could keep their stories from resonating with Indian-American donors in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street. Around 80 percent of Indian-Americans are Hindu and Jindal and Haley have both converted to Christianity (Jindal was raised a Hindu and Haley a Sikh). Both Jindal and Haley have Americanized their first names—Jindal was born Piyush and Haley, Nimrata—and both of their home states contain small Indian-American communities that pale in size, wealth and importance to those in California, New York, New Jersey and Texas.

Unsuccessful Democratic candidate Ro Khanna in California’s 17^th district in the heart of Silicon Valley also claims that the GOP’s outdated views on science could push Indian-Americans in tech, engineering and medicine towards Democrats for years to come. “Jindal…doesn’t believe in evolution,” Khanna told me. “The Indian-American community believes in science.” . . . . Khanna believes that Republicans who do not recognize the threat of climate change, deny evolution, or dither on so-called “Net Neutrality” could face significant barriers in courting Indian-Americans.

From my experience, this is a community that doesn't suffer fools or bigots.  The GOP has much to learn if it wishes to truly court this growing voting block. 

Fourth Circuit Rejects South Carolina Attempt to Delay Same Sex Marriages

As noted before, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and that state's attorney general have been refusing to recognize the binding precedent of the ruling of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Schaefer v. Bostic and squandering taxpayer money in the process.  All so that they can prostitute themselves to the Christofascists who hold inordinate sway in the GOP base in South Carolina.  Today, the 4th Circuit basically bitch slapped South Carolina and refused to delay the effective date when same sex marriages will begin.  The 4th Circuit's ruling can be found here.  Lambda Legal has details in a press release:

Today, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied the State of South Carolina’s motion to stay last week’s U.S. District Court ruling striking down the state’s discriminatory marriage ban, setting the stage for marriages to begin for same-sex couples  at Noon on Thursday, November 20. 

South Carolina’s Attorney General filed a motion for an emergency stay to delay marriages following a ruling by the U. S. District Court for the District of South Carolina striking down the state’s discriminatory marriage ban in accordance with the Fourth Circuit’s earlier decision striking down a similar ban in Virginia.

"The end game is clear - marriage will soon be available for same-sex couples in South Carolina. This is a great victory for same-sex couples and their families because it removes one more hurdle to finally walking down the aisle," said Beth Littrell, Senior Attorney in Lambda Legal’s Southern Regional Office based in Atlanta.

“We urge the Attorney General  to stop trying to delay the inevitable - their actions are damaging to families they were elected to protect,” said South Carolina Equality lawyer Malissa Burnette, partner at Callison Tighe & Robinson.

Lambda Legal and South Carolina Equality represent Colleen Condon and Nichols Bleckley who applied, and paid, for a marriage license in Charleston County soon after the U.S. Supreme Court last month declined to review rulings out of three federal appellate circuits - including the 4th Circuit - invalidating discriminatory marriage bans in five states. However, before they received their marriage license, South Carolina’s Attorney General asked the South Carolina State Supreme Court to step in and halt the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The South Carolina Supreme Court effectively stopped state court judges from issuing marriage licenses or weighing in on marriage equality pending an order from federal court. Last week U.S. District Court Richard Gergel struck down the discriminatory marriage ban, but delayed enforcement of his order for one week - until Noon on November 20 - to give the State a chance to appeal. Today’s ruling affirmed Judge Gergel’s order, allowing marriages to begin.

Greenville News: Drop Fight Against Gay Marriage

In a desperate attempt to prostitute themselves to the Christofascists elements of the Republican Party base, Republican elected officials are continuing opposition to same sex marriage despite the reality that the battle has been lost.  Among these willing political whores are South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Attorney General Alan Wilson who refuse to concede that the 4th Circuit ruling in Bostic is binding precedent and that any appeal from the ruling of U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel in Charleston is futile and will only serve to waste taxpayer funds.  The Greenville News has come out with a main page editorial calling on the Governor and Attorney General to stop their continued opposition.  Here are editorial excerpts:

South Carolina’s constitutional ban on gay marriage fell last week when U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel of Charleston ruled that the U.S. Constitution provides same-sex couples with the right to marry. Gergel’s decision was as expected as it is firmly grounded in constitutional law as it has evolved.

A continued legal fight by S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson will be futile and expensive.  Furthermore it will encourage false hope among state residents who don’t want the terms of marriage redefined, while it also will continue to deny gay couples the marriage license they clearly want and are allowed in 33 other states.

The other states in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals moved quickly to accept the October decision authored by 4th Circuit Judge Henry Floyd in a case involving a legal challenge to Virginia’s ban on gay marriage.

The 4th Circuit ruling was written by Judge Floyd, a South Carolinian. The judges found that Virginia’s ban on gay marriage violated the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the 14th Amendment by preventing same-sex couples from marrying and refusing to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.

The final paragraph of the ruling is worth repeating:

“We recognize that same-sex marriage makes some people deeply uncomfortable. However, inertia and apprehension are not legitimate bases for denying same-sex couples due process and equal protection under the law. Civil marriage is one of the cornerstones of our way of life. It allows individuals to celebrate and publicly declare their intentions to form lifelong partnerships, which provide unparalleled intimacy, companionship, emotional support, and security. The choice of whether and whom to marry is an intensely personal decision that alters the course of an individual’s life. Denying same-sex couples this choice prohibits them from participating fully in our society, which is precisely the type of segregation that the Fourteenth Amendment cannot countenance.”

The 4th Circuit’s ruling flowed naturally from legal precedent that has followed fundamental changes in our society.
[T]hese court decisions and state laws affect only civil marriages. Religious institutions still enjoy the right to determine who they will marry and what type of marriage they will recognize. 

[I]f the Constitution protects the rights of gay couples legally married in some states, that same Constitution surely must allow for nationwide recognition of gay marriage.The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to consider challenges to rulings from the 4th Circuit and two other circuits. A different ruling in the 6th Circuit ensures the Supreme Court will have to address this issue again, but the result seems inevitable. A right to gay marriage has been recognized in many states in the country, and that right cannot now be taken away. 

South Carolina leaders, including Wilson and Gov. Nikki Haley, have an opportunity to provide leadership at this time by helping the people who elected them understand that this battle against gay marriage is over. And it is.