PRRI Survey: 72% of Americans Support LGBT Non-discrimination Protections

It what comprises bad news for the Trump/Pence regime and its war against LGBT Americans and the Christofascists (many of whom are also white supremacists) make up the GOP base, a new Public Religion Research Institute ("PRRI") survey shows 72% of Americans support LGBT equality under the civil laws and support laws that would protect LGBT people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodations, and housing.  In short, everything the Christofasists and their political whores in the GOP oppose.  Indeed, even in deep red states, more than 60% of voters support LGBT protections and raise the question of how much longer the GOP can ignore the popular will as that party prostitutes itself to Christofascists who embrace ignorance and have made hate and bigotry the face of Christianity to many in America (40% of the under 30 generation has left religion and cite anti-LGBT extremism as a leading cause for their exodus).  A piece in The Advocate looks at the survey findings.  Here are highlights:

There is broad support for LGBTQ equality across the U.S., despite how polarized the nation is on many other issues, according to survey results released today by the Public Religion Research Institute.

The survey, conducted from March through December of last year, found an overwhelming majority of respondents favoring inclusive nondiscrimination laws, while support for equal marriage rights is at an all-time high. There is majority opposition to allowing small businesses to refuse service to gay and lesbian customers, but that opposition has waned somewhat.

“Seventy-two percent of Americans — including majorities of both political parties, religious groups, and nearly every major demographic group — favor laws that would protect LGBT people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodations, and housing,” notes a PRRI press release. The level of support has remained largely stable since PRRI began asking the question in 2011. “Support for LGBT rights continues to be strong and expansive in all 50 states. Issues that in the recent past demarcated major political and religious fault lines now find broad agreement,” PRRI founder and CEO Robert P. Jones said in the release. In most states and the District of Columbia, at least two-thirds of survey respondents of respondents favor for nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people (the PRRI survey uses the term LGBT rather than LGBTQ). At its lowest levels, support dips below two-thirds in of Alaska (59 percent), Montana (62 percent), Louisiana (63 percent), Oklahoma (63 percent), Kentucky (64 percent), Alabama (64 percent), Wyoming (64 percent), West Virginia (64 percent), Tennessee (65 percent), and Arkansas (66 percent). This support comes when only 21 states have laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity; Virginia will join this group in July. The Equality Act, which would ban such discrimination nationwide, is stalled in Congress; the House has passed it, but the Senate has not voted on it and appears unlikely to, and Donald Trump has said he would not sign it. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, has endorsed it and said he would make it a priority, a stance shared by all those who sought the Democratic nomination. PRRI also noted that the intensity of support for marriage equality has risen, while the intensity of opposition has waned. Support is greater among women than men, among Democrats and independents than Republicans, and among younger people, although the 2019 survey marked the first time a majority of people age 65 and older — 51 percent — supported equal marriage rights. The survey was conducted via telephone, with more than 40,000 interviews on specific issues. PRRI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that conducts independent research at the intersection of religion, culture, and public policy.

The Christofascist are fighting a losing battle and the GOP is stupidly casting its lot with a dwindling portion of the population base.  

Trump Unveils More Anti-LGBTQ 'License to Discriminate' Plans

The Trump/Pence regime is continuing its attacks on the LGBT community and moving to grant a license to discriminate to religious - mostly conservative "Christian" - organizations that receive taxpayer funded support.  The goal is to (i) solidify evangelical support in advance of the 2020 presidential election, and (ii) prop up religious organizations that cannot survive financially without government funding, their respective denominations no longer being able to support their operations.  The Trump/Pence rule making is targeted to allow discrimination against not only LGBT individuals, but also those of other religions or no religion.  Stated another way, it is an effort to have a stated supported religion - conservative Christianity - in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.  A piece in The Advocate looks at this very dangerous and discriminatory agenda.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump’s administration has made yet another move to enable discrimination, including anti-LGBTQ discrimination, in the name of “religious freedom.”

On Thursday, National Religious Freedom Day, Trump announced his administration is issuing nine proposed rules that govern how faith-based nonprofits with government contracts interact with their clients, reversing regulations put in place under President Barack Obama.

Under the Obama-era regulations, these contractors “need to give beneficiaries notice of the providers’ religious character and the right to get services elsewhere,” The Washington Post reports. “The providers also have to make reasonable efforts to refer beneficiaries to another provider if the person receiving services is uncomfortable.” The Trump administration says these rules are unfair to faith-based providers because they don’t apply to secular organizations.

The newly proposed rules, which are subject to public comment before becoming final, would apply to organizations that provide a wide range of services through contracts with the departments of Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Labor, Agriculture, Education, Justice, Homeland Security, and International Development. Services offered by these contractors include substance abuse treatment, adoption and foster care placements, refugee resettlement, and much more.

[W]e are talking about government grants to the tune of millions and millions of dollars,” she explained. “And increasingly, they are excluding members of the public from receiving services based on who they are.”

The rules would indeed enable faith-based contractors to turn away people who are LGBTQ or follow a different religion, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. “We will keep saying this as long as we have to: Religious freedom is a fundamental right, but it does not confer a license to discriminate,” said Heather Weaver, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, in a press release. “Government-funded programs, including those operated by faith-based organizations, should not be able to discriminate against vulnerable people seeking help.

“The right to believe and to exercise one’s faith is a core American value. The right to discriminate with taxpayer dollars is not. These regulations would dismantle meaningful protections for beneficiaries of these federally funded programs and strip away basic notice requirements designed to ensure that beneficiaries know their rights to be free from discrimination and their right to an alternative, nonreligious provider. Taxpayer funds should not be used to allow discrimination.”

Today’s announcement comes on top of many other efforts by the Trump administration to establish a right to discriminate in the name of religion. In November, for National Adoption Month, HHS announced a new rule that would allow adoption agencies and other programs that receive HHS grants to reject same-sex couples and rainbow families on the basis of religious freedom. Other programs that stand to be affected include elder services, Head Start, refugee resettlement, HIV services, and programs for runaway and homeless youth.

The administration has finalized a so-called conscience protection rule allowing health care providers to opt out of procedures that offend their religious beliefs, but court challenges have kept the rule from going into effect. It also wants to eliminate provisions of the Affordable Care Act that ban anti-transgender discrimination and even allow homeless shelters to discriminate against trans clients.

Anyone who is not an evangelical "Christian" extremist should be very, very worried.  Yes, I have the word Christian in quotation marks because, in my view, the members of Trump's base are Christian in name only.  Look at Christ's social gospel message, and these people are the antithesis to that message.  Indeed, the make the Biblical Pharisees seem like good, upstanding people.

Sanders Is Only Major Candidate to Sit Out Both LGBT Forums

When it comes to LGBT issues, Bernie Sanders has never left me with a warm and fuzzy feeling. Indeed, the man comes across as perpetually angry and not the empathetic type. Now, Sanders is seemingly avoiding two candidate forums on LGBT issues - the only major candidate to do so.  His claims of "scheduling conflicts" sadly simply do not seem to ring true and one has to wonder why he is snubbing the LGBT community, a reliable segment of the Democrat Party base. Personally, I do not believe Sanders is electable for three reasons: (i) he is too far to the left on issues, (ii) he is too strident and appears unwilling to work with others, and (iii) he is simply not likable. All issues that could prove harmful in the 2020 general election. A piece in The Advocate looks at Sanders' slight to LGBT voters.  Here are highlights:

Progressive presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is the only frontrunner who will miss both events aimed at discussing LGBTQ equality and rights.

The rest of the frontrunners will be on hand Friday for an LGBTQ Presidential Forum, cosponsored by The Advocate in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And, according to CNN's schedule for the event, all of the heavy-hitters other than Sanders will also attend the Human Rights Campaign/CNN’s LGBTQ Town Hall slated for October 10 in Los Angeles. The senator from Vermont’s team has cited “scheduling conflicts” for both events.

Among those attending the LGBTQ Forum cosponsored by The Advocate and GLAAD are Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Sestak, and Marianne Williamson. Pose star Angelica Ross will host the event that features columnist Lyz Lenz of eastern Iowa newspaper The Gazette, One Iowa Policy Director Keenan Crow, and Advocate Editor-in-chief Zach Stafford as moderators.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has made over 100 actions to roll back rights and safety for LGBTQ people, including the trans military ban and his administration's support of allowing businesses to discriminate on the basis of sexual and gender identity.  

The candidates slated to attend the HRC/CNN Town Hall are Harris, Warren, Biden, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Booker, Tom Steyer, Beto O’Rourke, and Castro.

There have been three major Democratic debates in the past few months but moderators have not posed a single question regarding LGBTQ equality to the candidates.

A recent report highlighted how coverage of LGBTQ issues has "essentially vanished" from mainstream media outlets "after Trump was elected and have remained largely absent from coverage for the past three years."

Is Sanders taking LGBT voters for granted or does he simply not like us? Those are questions Sanders needs to answer.

Survey: Acceptance Of LGBTs Declines Among Young

The Stonewall Inn where some say the battle for LGBT
rights officially began.

In what ought to be disturbing news to all in the LGBT community and certainly LGBT rights organizations, a survey shows that for the second year in a row the percentage of Americans accepting of members of the LGBT community declined.  The decline included the younger Americans who heretofore have been more accepting.  The survey did not come to any set conclusion for the decline although references were made to the general normalization of hate and intolerance that has been a hallmark of the Trump/Pence regime and its pro-Christofascist, anti-gay policies. Personally, I believe fault also lies with organizations like Human Rights Campaign ("HRC") and Equality Virginia ("EV") here in Virginia.  In the case of EV, when not shaking down gay and lesbian Virginians for money, burning bridges with top pro-LGBT officeholders, EV's main activities are focused on the transgender community to the seeming exclusion of the rest of the LG and B components of the community. I am not anti-transgender, but other than the general need for non-discrimination laws, the issues of the transgender community are not synonymous with those of gays and lesbians. In an era where many now feel comfortable being open white supremacists, having LGBT rights organizations pretending that they are the same does a disservice to all of the involved groups. LGBTQ Nation looks at the disturbing survey findings:

A new survey shows that young people’s support for LGBTQ people has dropped for the second consecutive year.

The Harris Poll and GLAAD just released the results of their yearly survey in their Accelerating Acceptance report.

The survey was conducted this past January and involved 1970 respondents, including 1754 non-LGBTQ respondents. They were asked about whether they would be comfortable with an LGBTQ person in various situations, like having an LGBTQ doctor, their kid having an LGBTQ teacher, or a family member coming out.

Among non-LGBTQ people, 49% were comfortable in all the situations, the same percentage as last year. Two years ago, though, 53% of non-LGBTQ people were comfortable in all situations, a drop that coincided with the start of the Trump administration.

But the drop was more pronounced among 18- to 34-year-olds. 63% were comfortable in all the situations two years ago, 53% last year, and 45% this year.  Young men’s drop in support was even more dramatic. 62% were comfortable in all the situations two years ago, but now only 35% are. Support for LGBTQ people in each individual situation either stayed the same or dropped since two years ago. 34% of straight people said that they would be uncomfortable if their child learned about LGBTQ people at school. This year, 39% said they would be uncomfortable.

Among 18- to 34-year-olds, 39% said that they were uncomfortable in that situation, up from 27% two years ago. Young adults were 50% more likely to say that they would be uncomfortable if a family member came out this year compared to 2016.

“So it is surprising to see a notable erosion of acceptance for the LGBTQ community, which counters many of the assumptions we make about their values and beliefs. In this toxic age, tolerance – even among youth – now seems to be parsed out.”

“The sharp and quick rise in divisive rhetoric both in politics and in culture is now having a negative influence on younger Americans and coinciding with an alarming pattern of anti-LGBTQ violence and discrimination,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president of GLAAD.

“As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, LGBTQ people and allies must urgently address today’s cultural crisis by being visible and vigilant.”

New strategies and efforts are needed - as is new leadership at leading LGBT rights organizations, particularly Equality Virginia to which I have ceased all financial support.  I stopped giving to the even more out of touch HRC years ago.

Trump's Betrayal of Gays Is His Betrayal of all of America

Polls indicate that on issue after issue, Donald Trump is out of sync with a majority of Americans. That's one reason why his approval ratings have never gotten out of the low 40% realm - more often they are under 40%.  Indeed, Trump's approval is limited to small factions: right wing evangelical Christians and extreme right Catholics - the so-called Christofascists - white supremacists, and Republicans who according to Gallup surveys comprise only 30% of voters (thus, 89% approval by Republicans equates to only 26.7% of overall voters). The take away, therefore, is that when Trump and the sinister Mike Pence claim that they represent American values, they, in fact, do not. They represent a rump minority of Americans who are at war with modernity, science and knowledge, and who cling to racism and religious superstition. As a result, Trump is at war with a majority of Americans and their values. A column in the New York Times makes the case that the Trump/Pence war against LGBT Americans personifies this betrayal of the beliefs of the majority.  Here are column excerpts:

During the 2016 campaign, he spoke out against a North Carolina law forbidding transgender people to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity and said that Caitlyn Jenner could use the commode of her choice in Trump Tower.

And then, of course, there was his speech at the Republican National Convention, when he carefully enunciated “L.G.B.T.Q.,” pledged to protect those of us represented by that consonant cluster and, upon hearing applause, added, “I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said.”

I’m glad he enjoyed it. We L.G.B.T.Q. Americans aren’t enjoying him. Far from protecting us, he and his administration have stranded us, packing federal courts with judges hostile to gay rights, barring transgender Americans from military service and giving a green light to Americans who, citing religious beliefs, don’t want to give us medical care or bake us a cake. When several United States embassies — including the one in Berlin, over which Grenell presides — requested permission to fly the rainbow flag this month in honor of Gay Pride, the State Department said no.

It’s an ugly story, and it pretty much sums up Trump’s approach to governing. His treatment of gay people perfectly reveals the flabbiness of his convictions and his willingness to stand at odds with a majority of Americans if it pleases the smaller number who adore him. He’ll suffer our anger for their ardor. Decency and principle don’t enter into it.

And he is at odds with most of the country, very much so. Take the Trump administration out of the equation and the march toward gay equality continues apace. As gay and transgender Americans prepare to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising on June 28, we inhabit a state of cognitive dissonance, staring at a split screen: insults from the White House on one half of it, positive reinforcement from elsewhere on the other.

Democrats’ embrace of Buttigieg, the first openly gay politician to land in the top tier of presidential candidates, illustrates the trajectory beyond Trump. “As recently as five or 10 years ago, I think, a project like this would have been dismissed out of hand,” Buttigieg told me in a recent interview, referring to his campaign. “It was unsafe for Democrats to support same-sex marriage at the beginning of this same decade that we’re living in now.”

Being gay, Buttigieg said, hasn’t been any impediment to his bid for the White House so far. “It led to there being more interest and attention early on,” he said. “Perhaps the most interesting thing is how often it doesn’t come up — all the interviews in which it’s not mentioned. At this point, it’s safe to say that that’s most of the time.”

I was given an exclusive advance copy of a new report by the Victory Institute, a group that promotes L.G.B.T.Q. candidates. It found that the number of known L.G.B.T.Q. elected officials at the municipal, state and national levels in America rose 24.9 percent, to 698 from 559, over the past year. And while some of that is attributable to more politicians coming out, much is attributable to more being voted into office.

With the congressional elections last November, the number of openly L.G.B.T.Q. members of Congress rose to an all-time high of 10 — eight in the House and two in the Senate — up from seven. That same month Jared Polis in Colorado became the first openly gay person to win a governorship. He told me that his sexual orientation was absolutely not a factor in his race: “There might be some people who care about it, but they wouldn’t be considered swing voters, so they’re not relevant in terms of who you have to win over. It never comes up in terms of scrapping for the votes you need in the middle.”

In Chicago in April, Lori Lightfoot became the first openly gay person to win the mayoralty of one of the country’s three most-populous cities. “The fact that I could run as an out lesbian, married, in an interracial relationship, with a child, would have been unthinkable not that long ago,” she said when I spoke with her recently. “You can’t stop progress. You just can’t. It’s like trying to stop a ball from rolling down a hill.”

While media attention focuses on proposed state legislation to deny rights to L.G.B.T.Q. people, there are probably more examples of bipartisan pushes to protect or expand those rights.

According to Freedom for All Americans, an advocacy group, more than two dozen Republican lawmakers in 15 states recently sponsored legislation to protect gay or transgender people from discrimination. They include the chairman of the Republican Party in Florida and the State Senate majority leader in West Virginia. Republican lawmakers were crucially involved in blocking discriminatory measures proposed in Texas, Tennessee and Georgia, the group said. In South Dakota, where Republicans control both chambers of the Legislature, four different measures to permit discrimination against transgender people were defeated this year.

That reflects Americans’ values more accurately than the Trump administration does. In a Quinnipiac University poll in April, 92 percent of Americans said that employers should not be allowed to fire someone based on his or her “sexual orientation or sexual identity.” When Americans are asked whether a full spectrum of civil rights protections should be extended to L.G.B.T.Q. people, the number falls — but a majority of 53 percent still say yes. And in poll after poll, most Americans say that transgender people should be able to serve in the military, with 70 percent of them indicating support in one survey.

Yet the Trump administration keeps tugging in the opposite direction. Trump has nominated and the Senate has confirmed many jurists with explicit, unabashed hostility to gay and transgender rights, including, just days ago, Matthew Kacsmaryk, who received a lifetime appointment as a United States district judge for the Northern District of Texas.
 The choice of Kacsmaryk is hardly an aberration, said Sharon McGowan, the chief strategy officer and legal director for Lambda Legal, an advocacy group that has been tracking these appointments to the federal bench. “The arc of history may bend toward justice,” she told me, “but history will not be kind to those who are complicit in what has been happening over these past two years.” She meant in the White House, in the cabinet and on Capitol Hill, where a stubbornly retrograde social conservatism holds sway.
 Trump himself continues to murmur words kinder than his deeds, such as his tweet three weeks ago exhorting Americans to “celebrate LGBT Pride Month and recognize the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made.”

But the contributions Trump is focused on are the votes and donations from the so-called religious right, given in gratitude for his opposition to abortion and his anti-gay actions. “Because he doesn’t have the ability to broaden his support, he’s playing to a narrow base, and at the center of that base is this right-wing faction that’s often garbed in religion,” . . . “He’s throwing them any meat he can find.”

On issue after issue it’s like that: He doesn’t act or speak for the majority, but he accomplishes some narrower purpose, and gets away with it partly because gerrymandering, the structure of the Senate and the Electoral College have led to a government out of sync with the governed.

Trump is on the wrong side of history. But he doesn’t care — so long as it’s right for Trump.

The majority of voters need to end the nation's nightmare and vote Trump from office in 2020.  Meanwhile, here in Virginia, we need to vote out Republicans in November, 2019, and give control of the Virginia General Assembly so that Virginia can become a true progressive state. 

Reflections on the Pulse Massacre Three Years Later

Today - June 12 - is the third anniversary of the massacre at Pulse, and LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida.  Like so many in the LGBT community, I was stunned and sickened by the huge loss of life - Pulse is the largest deadly attack on LGBT individuals in American history.  Moreover, the massacre was a wake up call to many in the community that it is still dangerous, some times deadly so, to be LGBT in America.  In the intervening three years, things have decidedly not gotten better in many parts of the USA.  The Trump/Pence regime continues to wage war against LGBT rights and anti-gay Christofascist extremists hold sway at the White House.  Shockingly, today in Orlando an anti-gay pastor who condones the murder of gays announced a "make America straight rally" where pastors who cheer the execution of gays will rally in the very same  community where LGBTQ people were massacred three years ago.  Some take umbrage at my use of the term "Christofascists" yet in a telling coincidence, Iran's foreign minister defended that country's execution of gays in language nearly identical to that used by American Christofascists, including those announcing the horrible rally in Orlando: 

“Our society has moral principles,” . . . “And we live according to these principles. These are moral principles concerning the behavior of people in general. And that means that the law is respected and the law is obeyed.”

Make no mistake, the mindset is the same among this Christofascists and Islamic extremists in Iran. Hatred of others and a desperate clinging to antiquated writings by ignorant authors (in the case of the Koran, I would argue a mentally ill author) are the common thread. 

A piece in The Advocate reminds us of the horrors that occurred three years ago.  Here are highlights:

I remember waking up that morning at 7 am and reading the headline “20 DEAD” in a shooting that had ended just one hour and 46 minutes earlier. Regrettably, I remember accepting that 20 deaths was a “normal” number for our world, that 20 was a somehow understandable figure — a calculable loss that tracked with casualty statistics of other shootings at the time. Cold numbers.

But I lost it when the Orlando Police Chief revised his estimation from “not 20 but 50.” Fifty. Could you imagine that? Fifty people just like me.

Many other numbers didn’t make it into mainstream news reports. If these other facts and figures had made national headlines, we might all think about Pulse differently. For example, 90 percent of the victims were Latino, of whom a full 50 percent were Puerto Rican. Four Dominicans and three Mexicans were also murdered, and three Colombians were critically injured in this attack. Where were these numbers when we needed to feel them, when we needed to match them to the images we were seeing?

With 49 murdered in a three-hour timespan, Pulse remains the single deadliest incident of violence against LGBTQ people and their allies ever committed.

And yet, queer people of color are 1.82 times more likely to experience physical violence than queer white people. We make up only about 42 percent of the LGBTQ community, and yet, a full 73 percent of all LGBTQ homicides are committed against us. Ignoring these numbers is killing us.  These are the numbers we needed to see then, and we still do now.

Three years after Pulse, I want to remember the aerial footage of 10,000 Floridians lined up in the sweltering streets of Orlando, fanning off beads of sweat in the scorching summer sun as they waited to offer blood — their own biologies — to the victims of the night before. The temperature that day peaked at 90˚F, with a heat index pushing toward 100˚F, and yet the endless line of blood donors remained in place long after the sun had set. Staff at OneBlood’s main office kept their facility open until 3:00 a.m. and still had to turn donors away. These are the innumerable heroes I choose to remember. I want to remember the numbers that reveal unmatched heroism that night. I recall the story of Akyra Murray, the young woman who initially escaped the chaos but, who, at only 18 years of age, made the courageous decision to reenter the scene in search of her friend. Akyra found her friend, but she never made it out herself. She had just graduated high school ranked third in her class.

I want to remember Imran Yousef, the former Marine who, at 24 years of age, tore open a patio fence and helped an estimated 70 people escape the gunshots. I want to remember the unnamed hero who died blocking bullets from at least two survivors behind him. I want to remember Brenda Marquez McCool, a mother of 11 children who loved her son so much she died saving him.

I want to remember the 5,300 pints of blood donated in central Florida on June 12 alone and the 28,000 pints donated throughout the week. And in one victim’s particular case, rather than hate the individual who caused his pain, I want to remember the surgical team and the 214 donors whose blood helped save his life.

As the piece underscores, there are many, many good Americans.  But, the unifying thread for so many who are evil is racism and religious based homophobia - homophobia that continues to be fanned from pulpits across the nation and from the White House.  Religion - especially fundamentalist religion - remains an evil and curse on humanity.

Masking Hate Behind "Religious Freedom" Rhetoric

Donald Trump and the equally sinister Mike Pence have enthusiastically climbed on-board the Christofascists rallying cry of "religious freedom" as a means to gain special privileges for themselves and to mask their real motivation: hatred of others. The Trump/Pence regime has been relentless in its efforts to harm LGBT Americans, most recently filing briefs  with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that it is lawful to fire employees due to the sexual orientation, a move that sent many Christofascists into near orgasmic delight.  Sadly, many straights do not understand that gays and transgender citizens are not the only targets of the Christofascists.  Women and religious minorities likewise need to be concerned by the insidious use of claims of religious freedom to disguise hate and bigotry.   It is also necessary to note that claims of religious freedom can create public health threats as underscored by the measles outbreak in New York City centered on an ultra-orthodox Jewish community.   Religious beliefs should never be allowed to outweigh public safety issues or the civil rights of others.   Freedom of worship means exactly that: worshiping at religious services of one's choice and not having your tax dollars used to support an official state sponsored church.  A column in the New York Times and USA Today look at the effort to use the ploy of religious freedom in a way never contemplated by the Founding Fathers to harm other citizens and deprive them of equal civil rights.  First these excerpts from the Times piece: 

In 1976 I left a small Catholic grammar school, where we prayed aloud four times a day, to attend a large public high school where we didn’t pray aloud at all. The United States Supreme Court had banned school-sponsored prayer in 1962, but nobody was keeping me from praying. . . . I prayed all day long, and no one in my public school had any idea I was praying at all.

It has been decades since I prayed my way through high school, but all across the red states, conservative Christians are still challenging that 1962 decision, constantly pushing the limits of what “student-led” prayer in public school, which the ruling permits, really means. Earlier this year, a 17-year-old student in Louisiana sued her school district for beginning the day with a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Technically a student leads the prayer. In reality the student reads from a printout that school officials set beside the microphone.

Conservative Christians are forever trying to inject their personal religious beliefs into the public sphere. Here in Tennessee, the owner of a small-town bakery just outside Nashville recently reneged on an agreement to bake a wedding cake because the wedding in question involved two brides and no grooms.

It would be almost funny if it weren’t so unfair. It’s illegal for a store owner to discriminate against customers because they happen to belong to a group against which the shopkeeper harbors a personal prejudice. It’s illegal for a racist to open a restaurant that serves only white people. Prejudice cloaked in the robes of religious faith should follow the same precedent.

Only it doesn’t. In this country, citing religious or spiritual convictions is often a surefire way to get out of doing something you’re required by law to do. If your religion claims that homosexuality is sinful, this logic goes, then why should you be required to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple? If practicing birth control runs counter to your church’s teaching, then why should the health insurance you offer your employees be required to cover a vasectomy? And why, if your religion teaches you to forego vaccines that prevent viral illnesses, should you be required to vaccinate your children?

At this very moment, nature is providing the perfect response in the form of a measles outbreak the likes of which we have not seen in this country for a quarter-century. Of the 764 confirmed cases so far this year, the vast majority are clustered in New York City, primarily in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities where some view vaccines as a violation of kosher restrictions and a danger to children’s health.

Here’s what also exacerbates those numbers: failure of political will. Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared a public health emergency and closed some New York City public schools in response to the outbreak, but so far state lawmakers have refused to revoke the religious exemption for vaccination. All 50 states require children to be vaccinated before enrolling in public school, but the vast majority of them allow for similar religious or philosophical exemptions.

We live in an age of easy travel and widespread misinformation, and it’s long past time for lawmakers in this country to propose a much more reasonable definition of religious freedom. The Constitution protects my right to believe whatever I want to believe, including my right to shun science and modern medicine. It does not give me the right to expose innocent people to unnecessary suffering. . . . If you decide not to vaccinate your children, then they should not be allowed to take public transportation or go to public school.

Likewise, if you’re a baker whose religious convictions prevent you from baking a wedding cake for a gay couple, then you need to find a line of work that doesn’t involve selling wedding cakes from a public storefront. You can take your chances with natural family planning if that’s what your religious faith calls you to do, but you’ll still be required to offer your employees health insurance that covers birth control.

Religious faith is a private matter between a believer and God. But how a believer lives in community with other people is something different altogether. It’s time to stop giving believers a pass just because their beliefs happen to run counter to the laws of the nation they live in. Human lives may depend on it.

The op-ed in USA Today continues this theme and looks in particular at the Trump/Pence war against LGBT citizens motivated by Trump's desire to please Christofascists and Pence's own extreme and dangerous religious beliefs.  Here are excerpts:

Last week President Donald Trump took another hostile action against LGBTQ people. But you wouldn’t know that from many of the headlines. 

“Trump Administration Strengthens ‘Conscience Rule’ for Health Care Workers,” read the headline in the New York Times about a bill that would allow doctors, nurses, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, teachers and others to discriminate based on their religious beliefs. National Public Radio’s web site went with “New Trump Rule Protects Health Care Workers Who Refuse Care For Religious Reasons.”

It’s true that someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity are only two among several reasons such workers, under an expanded Department of Health and Human Services rule, may deny care to people based on religious grounds. And most reports did discuss the threat to LGBTQ people, in addition to the threat to other groups, such as women seeking reproductive health care.

But the coded language used by the Trump administration, couched in protecting religious beliefs rather than permitting discrimination against LGBTQ people . . . . Using this coded language to attack LGBTQ rights has benefited this administration as it continues to galvanize conservative evangelicals — who know exactly who is being targeted — while not alienating people who might see these efforts as an attack on civil rights.

But make no mistake: LGBTQ people are among the primary targets if not the main target of such efforts. It's part of religious conservatives' strategy to chip away at marriage equality and LGBTQ rights much as they have done on the issue of abortion rights for many years.

The effort to recast discrimination against LGBTQ people, and roll back rights that were hard won, has indeed been successful. The debate has shifted to issues such as “religious liberty” and “conscience.”

That’s why it’s important that the agenda of anti-LGBTQ forces, including the coded language they use, be fully exposed. Some of the Trump administration’s hostile actions, such as the president’s Twitter announcement in 2017 that’d be banning transgender people from the military, are so overt they can’t be papered over. But others are disguised as protecting religious freedom.

When Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in March, he claimed that “freedom of religion is under attack in our country.” He then portrayed himself and his family as among the victims.

In Virginia and more than half the states, absent a federal law such as the Equality Act recently re-introduced in Congress, there are no protections for LGBT people against such discrimination in employment and education. And yet, in polls Americans express broad support for these protections. Most Americans don’t see this as an issue of “religious liberty” — and many of them are people of faith themselves —  but rather as one of flat out discrimination.

It’s for that reason that Trump, Pence and others in the GOP speak in inexplicit ways to play to the evangelical base, while keeping the anti-LGBTQ agenda below the radar for anyone who would be turned off by blatant bigotry. But when you're the target, you get it. Many of us in the LGBTQ community understand their code and why their intent must be made clear.

Trump's brutal record of hostility to LGBTQ people, and his bowing to those determined to roll back LGBTQ rights, must be fully laid bare to voters before the 2020 election. As long as the administration is allowed to get away with vague statements and code language, it won't be.

Christofascists - it is far past time to stop using the misnomer "conservative Christians" - and in the case of the measles epidemic, ultra-orthodox Jews are in the final analysis intensely self-centered people who care nothing for the rights or very lives of others.  It is all about them and to Hell with everyone else.  The need to be recognized and treated as such.

Katie Couric and National Geographic Re-Releases "Gender Revolution"

With the Trump/Pence regime waging war against transgender individuals and trying to define them out of existence under federal law it is perfect timing for Katie Couric and National Geographic Channel to re-released their popular 2017 production of "Gender Revolution."   The production - which looks at the science and biology behind why some are born transgender - is available to all for free streaming on two popular platforms, their own Nat Geo, as well as YouTube (links to both are set out below).

 
For those unfamiliar with the documentary, it is a powerful, sensitive, honest and accurate representation of transgender and intersex people in their own voices - and provides clarity and focus about gender identity in significant ways. It puts the lie to so much of the ugly and cruel distortions and fabrications made by the Trump/Pence regime over the past two years. 

The takeaway is that no one chooses to be transgender - just as no one chooses to be gay or lesbian.  There is legitimate science and medical knowledge - things ignored by Trump/Pence, most of the GOP and evangelical Christians - that demonstrates that all must be treated equally and with dignity. 

If you have not seen this documentary, please watch it.  Also, please feel free to use and circulate this information as you choose.

 
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFc2E-0XQJU&t=705s
Nat Geo: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/gender-revolution-a-journey-with-katie-couric/

Thank you to Bob Witeck for sharing this information.

Pentagon Ignores Pride Month For 1st Time Since "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Repeal

The Trump/Pence regime continues to send messages to members of the LGBT community that they are less than full citizens and that our rights are subject to reversal and our humanity subject to diminution if not total negation.  The situation, of course, is the worse for transgender Americans on whom Trump and Pence have declared war to rally support from their knuckle dragging evangelical base.  For the first time since the repel of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the Pentagon is pretending that Pride month is not occurring.  Some will say what is the big deal, but when you are part of a community that has been denigrated and abused for many decades, if not centuries, you become very sensitive to signals that your rights may be under attack.  Twenty Nine states - including Virginia - have no employment non-discrimination or housing protections. I was was fired by my former law firm in the past for being gay and ultimately forced into bankruptcy as a consequence. After such an experience, believe me, you do pay attention to any backsliding in recognition of your rights.  The thousands and thousands of LGBT members of the military are likely paying close attention.  In this context, Trump/Pence is nothing less than a dangerous enemy.  The Washington Post looks at this development at the Pentagon.  Here are highlights:

Senior leaders at the Pentagon are distancing themselves from the Defense Department’s annual LGBT Pride Month celebrations, declining to formally acknowledge the observances for the first time since the practice became routine after President Barack Obama repealed the military’s ban on homosexuals serving openly.  The absence this year of an official Pentagon memo marking LGBT Pride Month has raised questions among service members and Defense Department civilian employees who are troubled by President Trump’s surprise proclamation last July that he would ban transgender people from serving in the military. Typically, the memo is distributed as LGBT Pride Month begins each June, effectively endorsing the observance and encouraging personnel to hold local events.  “It opens the door for LGBT service members, civilians and their allies on military bases to hold events recognizing Pride Month without having to ask for special permission or an exception,” said a former senior Obama administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the official’s dealings with the Pentagon. “It makes it known that there’s an authorization, that there’s support.” 

Even without an official observance memo, the LGBT employee group at the Defense Department held an event Monday at the Pentagon. Contrary to past years, though, no high-level department leaders made public remarks — another first since such events began in 2012, the year after the policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell” was repealed.

Air Force Maj. Carla Gleason, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon, declined to discuss why no observance memo has been issued this year, saying only: . . . We value all members of the DOD total force and recognize their immense contributions to the mission.”

The Defense Department Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity maintains a website publicizing the posters and memos designating 2018’s other official observances. As of Monday, it listed five: Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Holocaust Days of Remembrance, and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Trump’s transgender ban has yet to go into effect because of court challenges. In the meantime, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has recommended a new policy that disqualifies transgender people who require or have already undergone gender transition, and bans people with current or recent gender dysphoria except in rare circumstances.

Mattis’s policy recommendation marks a reversal of the Obama administration’s decision in 2016 to lift a ban on transgender men and women serving in the U.S. armed forces, though it grandfathers those currently serving.

To maintain the support of hate infused evangelicals, I suspect that there are few limits to the harm Trump and Pence would do to LGBT citizens. Like brown skinned immigrants at the border, we are viewed as less than human.  Only a fool would not be afraid.