Northam: Business Reopenings Must Use Science, Data and Testing

Here in Virginia, Governor Ralph Northam - the only governor who is a doctor and who, knowing him as I do, actually cares about Virginians unlike the occupant of the White House and Virginia Republicans - is resisting Der Trumpenführer's calls to rashly "reopen" the economy and gamble with individuals' lives. Recent polling shows that 76% of Virginians believe Northam is doing a good job, with the other 24% likely representing the Christofascists and white supremacists who make up the majority of the Virginia GOP's core base. Infections and deaths in Virginia are still rising with the peak projected to come during the next three to four weeks.  Clearly, this is NOT the time to end social distancing and allow crowded gatherings of people to resume.  A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at Northam's handling of the crisis despite the irresponsible voices calling to reopen all businesses (note the reference to The Family Foundation, a Christofascist hate group in league with Virginia Republican lawmakers) .  Here are article excepts:

The calls for Virginia’s governor to come up with a plan for reopening the state sooner rather than later are growing louder — from [Republican] elected officials, advocates and residents — and President Donald Trump’s new guidelines to state leaders are likely to cause more voices to join the chorus.

But the pressure to release such a plan comes as Virginia appears to be deep in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic, with the Department of Health reporting the largest increase in cases on Friday, up 602 from the previous day. The state appears not to have yet reached a peak in cases that health officials have projected will come between late April and late May.

At least 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment since the start of the pandemic, with over 410,000 filing in Virginia. Northam on Wednesday extended closures for nonessential businesses such as movie theaters and gyms to May 8, even as his stay-at-home order remains in effect until June 10. In statements, on phone calls and on social media, Republican state lawmakers say it’s time to get back to work and are asking Northam to begin the process of reopening Virginia. But Northam and health officials have warned that reopening anything too soon could overwhelm hospital capacity and do more harm than good.

“I assure you, I want to get back to a place where all businesses can be open, and we will get there, but we have to do it with deliberation, using science, data and testing to make sure we do it safely,” Northam said Friday at a press conference in Richmond. “Otherwise, cases will spike, we’ll be right back where we started, and all the sacrifices people have already made will have been for nothing.”

[T]he number of confirmed cases in Virginia has surpassed 7,000, but less than 1% of Virginians have been tested for COVID-19 as testing kits and personal protective equipment continue to be difficult to come by.

Most Virginians seem to think Northam — a pediatric neurologist who treated wounded soldiers during Desert Storm — is doing a good job managing the coronavirus pandemic. A Virginia Commonwealth University poll released Tuesday showed 76% of respondents approved of his handling the crisis.

On Monday, state officials unveiled a new University of Virginia coronavirus model that projected if social distancing restrictions are lifted on June 10 and the state returns to a “halfway” version of normal, the forecasted peak would come around mid-August, with median projections showing more than 10,000 confirmed cases a day.

The UVA researchers stressed that social distancing has significantly slowed the spread of the coronavirus, avoiding the worst-case scenarios that earlier projections showed. Lifting such restrictions too soon, they warned, could quickly lead to a second wave. Northam said Friday that staffing, testing kits and personal protective equipment remain hard to come by, and that’s partly as a result of a lack of guidance from the federal government.

“Do we have enough (personal protective equipment) to say that if there’s a flare up, or if that curve sharpens, we have the supplies necessary not only for the hospitals, but for the first responders, our nursing homes? We’re not there yet,” he said.

Sen. Steve Newman, R-Bedford, called Northam’s strategy “simple-minded thinking” on a video call with the Family Foundation, a conservative pro-life organization [sadly the media never calls TFF what it is in fact], on Thursday. On a call organized by the Democratic Party of Virginia on Tuesday, Dr. Wendy Klein, an associate professor at VCU’s Department of Internal Medicine, said any attempts to reopen the economy should be done in small steps and only if robust testing and contract tracing is available. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican whose administration has coordinated closely with Northam’s and Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s staff during the coronavirus pandemic, said plans to move into a “recovery” phase would be laid out in greater detail next week, The Baltimore Sun reported.

Hogan said the recovery phase would include four necessary steps: a goal of 10,000 tests a day; increasing hospitals’ capacity to treat COVID-19 patients; boosting the state’s supply of personal protective equipment; and building a 1,000-person operation to trace the contacts of sick people, The Sun reported.

"Unite the Right" Flops - While the Progressives Turn Out in Force

The pathetically small turn out of "Unite the Right" extremists.

The much ballyhooed "Unite the Right" in Washington, DC, was a spectacular flop with only a few dozen (at best) alt-right and neo-Nazis showing up.  The flop was on the scale of the National Organization's last "March for Marriage" that utterly failed to deliver on the hundreds of promised participants, Instead, only a couple of dozen religious extremist showed up.  Already the Unite the Right organizers are making excuses for the pitiful turnout, including whining that "people were too afraid to come."  The obvious take away is that the racists and neo-Nazis prefer to mass only when unsuspecting communities are unprepared and law enforcement is not forewarned and ready/able to stop the extreme right violence.  Meanwhile, peaceful counter protesters showed up en mass and dominated.  The lesson is that the alt-right is a form of vermin that crawled out from under some rock and is not representative of a majority of Americans.  Those of us who are decent and moral must unite to counter the hatred and bigotry that is the stock in trade of  much of the Trump/Pence base.  Here are excerpts from a piece in the Washington Post:

One year after the clashes between white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, the two groups were expected to meet again, this time in Washington. The counter-protesters showed up. The racists did not.

Much of the coverage of Sunday’s Unite the Right rally, organized by white nationalist Jason Kessler, will focus on the feeble turnout. And it really was pathetic: Instead of the several hundred the organizers and law enforcement expected, only a couple dozen showed. Even though Metro and local police pulled out all the stops to protect the white supremacists — including a private subway entrance for Kessler and Co. — WUSA reported that Unite the Right members “say people were too afraid to come out today for the rally.” Sure. But we also shouldn’t forget the remarkably large turnout for the counter-protests. Sunday was as much a victory for the left as it was a disappointment for white supremacists.  . . . . The home-field advantage was clear: When a counter-protest speaker asked how many attendees were from Washington, much of the crowd raised their hands. Republicans may hold the power in Washington, but on Sunday the city’s residents sent a very different message.

In the wake of the far right’s flop and the left’s success, it’s worth looking at how both media and law enforcement have treated white nationalists and those protesting them. Police sheltered the Unite the Right attendees from when they arrived at Vienna Metro station in Virginia, through the rally where they were protected by multiple rows of fencing to after the rally when the attendees were loaded into vans and driven away. That law enforcement wanted to avoid violent clashes is understandable. But contrast this with how other protests are often handled both in the District and across the country. As the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer noted, “In Ferguson, black protesters had police snipers trained on them. In DC, the Nazis get a police escort.” If Black Lives Matter is going to be treated as potential troublemakers, white supremacists should at least face the same suspicion.

As for the media, on Friday National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” gave Kessler seven minutes of airtime (during which, among other things, he ranked races by intelligence). That’s 15 or 20 seconds for every rally attendee — certainly not the ratio that the groups protesting Kessler got or will get. This is not to say Kessler and others like him should be ignored — especially while a white nationalists’ favorite occupies the Oval Office. But the next time white supremacists try to grab the media spotlight, news outlets would do well to remember this pitiful turnout before handing them a platform.

It is crucial that the far right not be given a platform from which they can spew hate and lies even if Der  Trumpenführer counts them among the core of his political base.  

Catholic Cardinal Preyed on Men Seeking Priesthood

McCarrick with George W. Bush and John Roberts.

While most of the media's focus is on Trump's open acts of treason in Helsinki, another story revealing the depths of the depravity of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy is laid out in detail in a piece in the New York Times.  The piece looks at how the behavior of Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington, DC, was ignored by Church officials who received numerous warnings that the cardinal was sexually abusing seminarians.  The Church condemns normal, loving same sex relations, yet covers up the misdeeds of psycho-sexually deformed clerics, damaged by the Church's bizarre dogma on sexuality. Anything rather than discard the warped 12th century beliefs so loved at the Vatican.  Here are article highlights (read the full article and note how the less than saintly John Paul II ignored warnings about McCarrick):  

As a young man studying to be a priest in the 1980s, Robert Ciolek was flattered when his brilliant, charismatic bishop in Metuchen, N.J., Theodore E. McCarrick, told him he was a shining star, cut out to study in Rome and rise high in the church.

Bishop McCarrick began inviting him on overnight trips, sometimes alone and sometimes with other young men training to be priests. There, the bishop would often assign Mr. Ciolek to share his room, which had only one bed. The two men would sometimes say night prayers together, before Bishop McCarrick would make a request — “come over here and rub my shoulders a little”— that extended into unwanted touching in bed.

Mr. Ciolek, who was in his early 20s at the time, said he felt unable to say no, in part because he had been sexually abused by a teacher in his Catholic high school, a trauma he had shared with the bishop.

“I trusted him, I confided in him, I admired him,” Mr. Ciolek said in an interview this month, the first time he has spoken publicly about the abuse, which lasted for several years while Mr. Ciolek was a seminarian and later a priest. “I couldn’t imagine that he would have anything other than my best interests in mind.”

Bishop McCarrick went on to climb the ranks of the Roman Catholic hierarchy — from head of the small Diocese of Metuchen to archbishop of Newark and then archbishop of Washington, where he was made a cardinal. He remained into his 80s one of the most recognized American cardinals on the global stage, a Washington power broker who participated in funeral masses for political luminaries like Edward M. Kennedy, the longtime Massachusetts senator, and Beau Biden, the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Suddenly, last month, Cardinal McCarrick was removed from ministry, after the Archdiocese of New York deemed credible an accusation that he had molested a 16-year-old altar boy nearly 50 years ago.

He is the highest-ranking Catholic official in the United States to be removed for sexual abuse of a minor.

But while the church responded quickly to the allegation that Cardinal McCarrick had abused a child, some church officials knew for decades that the cardinal had been accused of sexually harassing and inappropriately touching adults, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times.

Between 1994 and 2008, multiple reports about the cardinal’s transgressions with adult seminary students were made to American bishops, the pope’s representative in Washington and, finally, Pope Benedict XVI. Two New Jersey dioceses secretly paid settlements, in 2005 and 2007, to two men, one of whom was Mr. Ciolek,

[W]hile the church has made strides in dealing with sexual abuse of children, it has largely avoided a reckoning over sexual harassment and abuse suffered by adult seminarians and young priests at the hands of their superiors, including bishops.

Because bishops have control over priests’ assignments and complete loyalty is expected by the church’s clerical culture, seminarians and priests can be especially vulnerable to sexual harassment by their superiors.

Now, after the fall of Cardinal McCarrick, some Catholics are saying that the church is on the verge of confronting its own #MeToo moment, akin to the wave of painful truth-telling that has swept through other workplaces, schools and Hollywood. In 2000, Pope John Paul II promoted Archbishop McCarrick to lead the Archdiocese of Washington D.C., one of the most prestigious posts in the Catholic Church in America. He was elevated to cardinal three months later.

At least one priest warned the Vatican against the appointment. The Rev. Boniface Ramsey said that when he was on the faculty at the Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University in New Jersey from 1986 to 1996, he was told by seminarians about Archbishop McCarrick’s sexual abuse at the beach house. When Archbishop McCarrick was appointed to Washington, Father Ramsey spoke by phone with the pope’s representative in the nation’s capital, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, the papal nuncio, and at his encouragement sent a letter to the Vatican about Archbishop McCarrick’s history.

Do not hold your breath waiting for the Vatican to clean house of individuals like McCarrick as it needs to do so badly. 

White House: Expect "Greater Enforcement" of Recreational Marijuana Laws

As I have noted on this blog and in my VEER Magazine column, rigid enforcement of marijuana laws against recreational users costs Virginia (and other states) millions and millions of dollars each year.  Worse yet, a marijuana conviction leaves young offenders with permanent criminal records that make securing good paying jobs in the future difficult, if not impossible. And as a crowning glory, such laws are disproportionately enforced against minorities who not only are arrested more frequently but who often cannot afford legal counsel who can facilitate a lesser sentence.  In short, enforcement of such laws creates an underclass and permanently stigmatizes countless young individuals.  So what is Der Trumpenführer proposing?  A crack down and stepped enforcement of federal marijuana laws.  Funny how the issue of transgender rights should be left to the states, but not marijuana laws.  Oh, and meanwhile, Trump wants to revert back to the use of private, for profit prisons.  One cannot help but wonder if he owns stock in such operations.  Here are highlights from Time on this wrongheaded effort:

The Trump Administration will step up enforcement of federal laws on recreational marijuana in states where its use is legalized, the White House said Thursday.

Asked about the conflict between federal laws barring recreational marijuana and the handful of states that allow it, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the Administration would change direction from the more permissive approach under President Obama.

"I do believe you'll see greater enforcement of it," Spicer told reporters Thursday during the White House briefing.

It would represent the latest policy shift from the Obama Administration, which declined to enforce federal laws in states that legalized weed, such as Colorado and Washington, as long as the states regulated the marketplace. As he prepared to leave office, former President Obama came out in favor of legalizing marijuana.

Spicer repeatedly linked the use of marijuana to the nationwide opioid abuse epidemic, suggesting without offering proof that marijuana is a gateway drug to more serious substances.

Earlier in the briefing, Spicer touted the president and the GOP's commitment to deferring to the states over the federal government on controversial issues.

“We are a states’ rights party," he said while discussing a reversal of Obama-era guidance on transgender student bathroom use.

Let's be clear, Spicer and his boss are a**holes.  Oh, and did I mention that marijuana convictions often disenfranchise the disproportionately number of blacks who are prosecuted?  It all fits nicely with Trump's white supremacist agenda. .

National Pride March Coming to Washington, DC, in June

In the wake of the Women's March in Washington, D.C., there has been a great deal of talk of the need to have regular protests and demonstrations against the regime of Der Fuhrer and his Republican henchmen who seemingly view much of the citizenry in the same manner the Nazi concentration camp guards viewed the death camp inmates.  With this in mind - and in view of the anti-LGBT jihad likely to soon to be unleashed by the Trump/Pence regime - plans are underway for a National Pride March that will coincide with D.C. Pride the weekend of June 11, 2017.  The Washington Blade looks at the developing plan.  More details are on the March's Facebook page here. Here are highlights from the Blade:

A gay activist in New York City has set in motion plans for a “mass” LGBT march on Washington on June 11, which he hopes will be similar to last week’s Women’s March on Washington that drew hundreds of thousands of people.

David Bruinooge, 42, a Brooklyn, N.Y., resident who has friends and relatives in the D.C. area, said he was inspired to create a Facebook page announcing the march on Jan. 21 while he was watching the Women’s March on Washington at home on television.

He said he intentionally chose June 11 for the march because it’s the same day that D.C.’s Capital Pride Festival is scheduled to be held on Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. near the U.S. Capitol. Bruinooge said his thought was the march would start in the morning and end at the site of the Pride festival.

Ryan Bos, executive director of the Capital Pride Alliance, which organizes the D.C. Pride events, including the Pride Parade set to take place on June 10, said he has spoken with Bruinooge and expects that Capital Pride officials will collaborate with the march organizers so the march and the D.C. Pride events will complement each other.

Bruinooge said that at Bos’s suggestion, he has changed the name of the march from Gays on the Mall, which he initially announced on Facebook, to the National Pride March.

He acknowledges he and others working on the march will have a significant amount of work to do logistically, including obtaining permits for street closings. He said he’s hopeful that Capital Pride officials will provide support and consider the march to be a joint Capital Pride project.

And, yes, the husband and I will make plans to attend.

Evengelical Propaganda - the "Museum of the Bible"

While Syrian children are dying while fleeing civil war and religious extremism, American evangelicals - in particular, the founders of Hobby Lobby - are squandering millions of dollars building a massive propaganda vehicle in Washington, D.C., just a short way south of the National Mall.  For me, it's a symbol of the misplace values of the "godly folk" whose only real agenda is to force their childish beliefs on all of us whether we like it or not.  For these folks, the Gospel message of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and sheltering the homeless doesn't exist.  Instead, the engage in conduct that makes the Pharisees of the Bible sound upright and the height of morality.  The Washington Post looks at this travesty being built in the nation's capital.  Here are excerpts:

To many in the scholarly community, the museum seems like an oversize piece of evangelical claptrap. Some academics and curators also worry about the origins of its collection — the more than 40,000 biblical artifacts were amassed in a remarkably short time by Hobby Lobby President Steve Green.

Why did Green want to turn his private collection into a museum? A number of academics have questioned his family’s motives. “I don’t expect the Bible Museum to be anything other than a tax-deductible kitsch attempt at spreading Christian fundamentalist propaganda,” archaeologist Dorothy King said. In an interview with NPR, Jacques Berlinerblau, a professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University, questioned the location of the museum, two blocks south of the Mall, where it might overlook periodic rallies opposing abortion or same-sex marriage, offering brick-and-mortar moral support to conservative causes. Sarah Posner concurred, writing in Talking Points Memo: “The museum will be a living, breathing testament to how American evangelicalism can at once claim it is under siege from secularists, the LGBT rights movement, or feminism — yet also boast of acquiring a prime private perch, strategically located at the nation’s epicenter of law and politics.”  

There also have been questions about what approach to the Bible the museum will take. Green has promoted a public school curriculum based on the Bible as a factual historical text. Another ideological red flag: Museum President Cary Summers consulted for the Creation Museum in Kentucky, which teaches creationism as fact, with didactic material showing dinosaurs and humans living side by side on a 6,000-year-old planet Earth. The Summers link has prompted unflattering comparisons of the two museums.

The Green family’s initial public line on the Museum of the Bible seemed to confirm some of the concerns. The museum’s 501(c)(3) filing in 2011 declared that its mission would be “to bring to life the living Word of God, to tell its compelling story of preservation, and to inspire confidence in the absolute authority and reliability of the Bible.”

Beyond the possible motives for the Museum of the Bible, some scholars question the collection itself. Green began spending heavily on it in 2009. He had amassed more than 30,000 items by June 2010 and has added 10,000 more since.

That 40,000 number, however, is suspicious to Roberta Mazza, a leading scholar and professor at University of Manchester in Britain. The UNESCO convention controls the export of antiquities and makes it bureaucratically difficult to legally sell abroad objects that were excavated after 1970. Mazza wonders how Green managed to collect so much “in such a brief period of time and in the context, in theory, of a strictly regulated antiquities market?” 

Heightening their skepticism, Mazza and other scholars identified one item in the Green Collection — a Coptic papyrus fragment with lines from Galatians 2 — that was once advertised on eBay by a seller who was later banned from the site for allegedly selling looted antiquities.

Apparently mindful of skeptics, the Greens hired David Trobisch, a prominent liberal academic, to head its collection.  If Trobisch doesn't sell his soul for money, then the museum will document that there is no "official version" of the Bible and that the text was re-written at will over the centuries after first being authored by ignorant goat and sheep herders in the case of the Old Testament.  If done right, the museum would show that the Bible is anything but the "inerrant word of god."  I suspect, however, that this is not the Greens' agenda to tell the truth.  Propaganda is the real goal, in my view.

Same Sex Weddings: Spend Less and More Innovative

As same sex couples marry in growing numbers - our friends are getting married in droves it seems and we attended a wedding last weekend and have another one this weekend - one phenomenon that is appearing is that we gays spend less but have more innovative weddings. I like to think a case in point is the husband and my own wedding in Washington, DC, which used the Kennedy Center roof terrace for the site of the actual ceremony.  In a few weeks we will be having a family reception and then likely two more receptions for  differing groups of friends rather than one massive event.  Like many same sex couples, we wrote our own vows.   The Advocate looks at the findings of a survey on innovative aspects of same sex weddings.  Here are highlights:

A new survey conducted by The Knot in partnership with The Advocate finds that one year after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling and marriage equality's spread across the country, same-sex couples are starting new traditions.

With a wave of new U.S. states with marriage equality in the past year, most same-sex couples (82 percent, up from 70 percent in 2013) are making it very clear to attendees that their ceremony is a wedding, by calling it this term in invitations. A minority of same-sex couples label their event a celebration (7 percent), a commitment ceremony (4 percent), or a civil union (2 percent).

Among engaged same-sex couples, 58 percent indicated there was a formal proposal (and for 38 percent of this pool, it was a surprise occasion), compared to straight couples, who had a much higher proposal rate of 94 percent. A sizable portion of same-sex couples (38 percent) mutually decided to wed.
77 percent of respondents in same-sex couples did not ask the family’s permission before getting engaged. . . . . Conversely, 71 percent of straight fiancés did ask the family's permission. And 26 percent of same-sex couples said that, of all the possible surprises that were involved with wedding planning, they were most pleased to learn that their families were accepting and willing to help them throughout the process.

In planning their matrimonies, same-sex couples are spending less on average ($15,849) than straight couples ($29,858). However, same-sex couples tend to invite fewer guests, meaning the amount spent per person is only slightly less ($205) than in a straight couple’s wedding ($220).  . . . .only 13 percent of straight couples are paying for their weddings out of their own pockets, compared to 85 percent of same-sex couples.

Some 81 percent of same-sex couples indicated that they would not hire a wedding planner. So they're being very hands-on when deciding how to adopt traditions.

Same-sex couples are far less likely than straight couples to have a religious service or officiant. Only 38 percent of those who responded to the survey said they would include a religious element to their wedding, favoring either a justice of the peace (23 percent) or a family member or friend (21 percent) to conduct the proceedings. By contrast, 63 percent of straight couples favored a religious service. In this vein, more same-sex couples (49 percent) are writing their own vows, although 29 percent said they did or would incorporate a religious component to the speech.

The practice of having one partner change a last name after marriage is not being adopted by most same-sex couples. Only 23 percent of gay couples and 41 percent of lesbian couples are going with this practice, with 54 percent keeping their own names and 15 percent creating a hyphenated surname. In contrast, 79 percent of straight brides-to-be marked “I'm changing my name to his.”

Washington, DC Wedding Reconnaissance Trip

Yesterday my partner and I drove up to Washington, DC, on a reconnaissance mission to Washington, DC, to confirm the venue for our wedding ceremony in late April as well as confirming a restaurant venue for dinner the evening before.  We plan to have our ceremony on the top terrace level of the John F. Kennedy Center followed by brunch at the Terrace Restaurant at the Center.  Weather permitting, we will have the ceremony at the corner of the terrace that overlooks the Lincoln Memorial with the Potomac River in the background and Virginia in the further background beyond the river.  The image above shows the view with my partner in the photo (yes, it was quite cold with occasional flurries in the air).  We've also picked out a great restaurant for the dinner festivity the evening before.  One thing that struck me is the reality that we will be spending a good bit of money that will help the Washington, DC, economy rather Virginia's.  And we are only one of the many couples from Hampton Roads making the trip to either Washington, DC, Maryland, New York or Delaware to marry.  Financially, Virginia and Virginia businesses are losing a great deal of money.  All because the Christofascists are trying to hold Virginia back in the 19th century.  Bigotry does indeed carry a financial price.

We stayed at our friend's townhouse in Old Town Alexandria.  After completing the fact finding mission, we had dinner in the DuPont Circle gayborhood followed by a visit to Freddie's Beach Bar and Restaurant on the Virginia side of the Potomac near Crystal City.  The place was rocking an Freddie, the owner was great as were the drinks and wait staff.  We are told that the Sunday Brunch is awesome. The bartenders were all most attractive.  As for the crowd, there were younger and older, gay and lesbian, and even a number of straight couples there to enjoy the music and fun atmosphere.  If readers are going to be in Northern Virginia and don't want to have to drive back after partying in the District, Freddie's offers a wonderful alternative.  It was great for us since we could be back in Old Town in just minutes.  We will definitely be return patrons whenever we are in Northern Virginia.

The last things that struck me from the visit were (i) how rapidly Northern Virginia is growing and how ethnically diverse it has become - all bad news for the Republican Party of Virginia and its Christofascist puppet masters.  As Virginia's urban areas grow and Northern Virginia grows, it will become harder and harder for the Virginia GOP races.   The toxic policies that the Virginia GOP is peddling are simply becoming anathema to educated and urban voters.

Justice Ginsburg To Officiate At Same-Sex Wedding

Expect the far right and the Christofascists to foam at the mouth at this news: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will become the first Supreme Court justice to officiate at a same-sex marriage today. Kudos for Ginsburg who truly understands that religious based bigotry of all kinds - be it anti-gay or anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim - has no place in the nation's civil laws.  It is always ironic to me that those on the far right who scream the loudest about religious liberty are always the ones leading the charge to deprive others of their Constitutional right to freedom of  - and from - religion.   As always, the hypocrisy is mind numbing.  Here are highlights from The New Civil Rights Movement on the nuptials that Ginsburg will preside over:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will become the first Supreme Court justice to officiate at a same-sex marriage on Saturday. The 80-year old jurist who is considered the head of the progressive wing of the Court will marry Michael M. Kaiser and John Roberts (ironically, no relation to the Chief Justice). Roberts is an economist, and Kaiser is the president of Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where the ceremony will be held.

Calling it a “gala wedding” that “brings together the nation’s highest court and the capital’s high society,” the Washington Post reports the wedding “will mark a new milepost in recognition of same-sex unions.”

Ginsburg seemed excited during a recent interview about being the first member of the court to conduct such a ceremony and said it was only a logical next step.

“I think it will be one more statement that people who love each other and want to live together should be able to enjoy the blessings and the strife in the marriage relationship,” Ginsburg said.

She added: “It won’t be long before there will be another” performed by a justice. Indeed, she has another planned for September.

Ginsburg and Kaiser are close friends. She is perhaps the Supreme Court’s most ardent supporter of the fine arts, especially opera. Kaiser has been at the helm of the Kennedy Center since 2001 and is an internationally recognized expert in arts management and one of Washington’s most civic influential leaders.

“I can’t imagine someone I’d rather be married by” than Ginsburg, Kaiser said in an interview.

National Equality March - October 10-11, 2009

I've joined a new blogger group - National Equality March Bloggers, a/k/a NEM Bloggers - that has as a goal disseminating timely and accurate information concerning the October 10-11, 2009, event scheduled in Washington, D.C. Among the group are some of my compatriots from last December's LGBT Blogger Summit as well as media people fro NEM and the organizer of last weekends National Kiss In. After a rocky start and whining by self-anointed leaders of LGBT rights organizations, support for Cleve Jones' call for a march is growing. Organizations United Together (OUT), a federation of LGBT and allied organizations dedicated to achieving equality and justice for LGBT Floridians has just announced that it endorses the March.

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And Pam's House Blend reports on other groups signing on to the event (which the boyfriend and I will be attending):

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Major national LGBT organizations including the Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC) have endorsed the march as have local and state grassroots organizations like Join the Impact Chicago, One Struggle One Fight and Freedom Democrats of Miami-Dade.

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October 11 has been observed as “National Coming Out Day” since 1988. As well, this year commemorates the 30th anniversary of the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. “We’re marching this October to demand action from the Federal government to protect our rights in all fifty states,” said Kip Williams, one of the organizers. “Real equality can only come from the President, the Congress and the Supreme Court.”

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“We’re tired of compromises and delays.”...Lt. Dan Choi, also a member of the march steering committee, is working to ensure a strong presence by LGBT and straight veterans at the march. “The majority of Americans reject discrimination in the armed forces, it’s time for Congress and the Administration to move on this and all issues of equality for LGBT Americans.”

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Some have asked what will the March accomplish or debated if it would undermine local efforts. Personally, I believe a national march could well help activist in every state to feel empowered and make them realize that this is a national struggle, not one just limited to certain states or localities. Lisa Neff at 365gay.com has these reflections:

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On Oct. 11, our community again will march on Washington to demand equal rights. Participants in National Equality March will celebrate the strides over three decades, the leaps in 30 years. We certainly are not marching from the same place we were in 1979.

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But marchers also will make known that their governments treat them as second-class citizens and that they are challenging unconstitutional laws and questioning unacceptable policies for our military, our workplaces, our schools and our families. You might hear arguments that the march being planned will divert resources from the fights in the states.

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The argument of limited resources is deeply flawed. We, as a movement and community, have not begun to tap our full potential. How can anyone seriously claim that if a person goes to Washington for a weekend in October that he or she is spent out and has nothing left to give a state gay rights organization or a local GLBT center? I would argue the opposite. Marches energize some, radicalize others and connect many to people and organizations and campaigns and causes.

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And, on Oct. 12, marchers will return to their hometowns, their home states, the districts and territories, powered to campaign for the demand made on Oct. 11. The march will be the forum for issuing the demand for equal rights. The demand will not be won that day, but in the days that follow, with our community nourished for the fight.

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The other thing the March will hopefully do is put faces on the unnamed "gays" that our opponents denigrate daily with a broad brush. Viewers of television coverage or print stories will hopefully be pushed along the way to realizing that we are people too and not some nameless "other." Will the Christo-fascists hysterically bloviate about the March? Most assuredly, but there will be others who watch and learn. I still remember as an eleven year old watching Martin Luther King's march on Washington in 1963 and his now immortal "I Have a Dream" speech. It will make a difference.

October 11, 2009 National Equity March on Washington

Varying LGBT organizations have been nay saying Cleve Jones' call for a march on Washington, D.C, this coming October. On October 11, 2009, to be exact. One of the main arguments against a march is that the funds involved could be better used on local LGBT civil rights endeavors. While this perhaps true, by the same token a march on Washington might energize LGBT Americans who to date have sat on the sidelines and never been involved politically. In Virginia, it has been the passage of anti-gay legislation that has made a number of LGBT Virginians finally wake up and get off their butts. At present, we have a President who promised real change and to deliver on a number of promises for increased rights for LGBT Americans. To date, that President, Barack Obama, has delivered absolutely nothing. Maybe those broken promises combined with seeing other LGBT citizens engaged and demanding equality will cause others to awaken politically. Of course there are other reasons for supporting the march as well. Fellow Bilerico blogger Bill Browning has a post that looks at why a march makes sense:

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I choose to believe Hope's retention is meant to be comforting and not a bane to our existence. In that spirit, I've decided to whole-heartedly endorse Equality Across America and the National Equality March.

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It's clear now that this is our strongest and best opportunity to make a communal statement that will resonate. Going to Washington does not take away or diminish other efforts. Consider the IMAX experience versus the Netflix version. The impact of what you see on widescreen can never be entirely duplicated at home.

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The reach of the march extends far beyond the individual in-your-face. It is a show of solidarity and force, a statement that is in proportion in its volume to the need for such a statement. The communal voice has been silent since the loss in California. That voice was heard in the wake of Prop 8, but not since. It's time for that voice. While the idea may have been the province of only a few people in its inception, it is now, in its full discussion, owned by many.

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Gay, Inc. is not the enemy of the grassroots movement. The young new activists and online media gurus are not diametrically opposed to established lobbying efforts and infrastructure. We have to find a way to bring all of our best activists, strategists and lobbyists together in a way that allows them to work in conjunction while checking our egos at the door.

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I'm putting my own reservations aside in favor of Pandora's last and best gift to humanity. None of us can open this box on our own. This time to pry the lid open, it's going to take all of the muscle and determination of our community. After all, we too are "All Gifted." It's time to take Hope out of the box and use it.

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Personally, I plan on going to Washington and the boyfriend no doubt will go with me - as will a number of people I know from the Hampton Roads area. I am tired of being a second class citizen and having my rights diminished solely because I do not subscribe to the fear and hate based religious beliefs of the Christianists who have for far too long controlled the lives of others in total abrogation of the right to freedom of religion promised to all citizens under the U. S. Constitution. Damn right I'm going to Washington to voice my demands for equality.

LGBT Blogger Summit Weekend

Today is going to be a crazy day as I run from meetings and then travel to Washington, D.C., to attend the LGBT Blogger Initiative Summit in Washington, D.C. The event kicks off this evening at the Human Rights Campaign headquaters (I wonder if anyone has read my complaints about HRC on this blog?) for a happy hour reception with HRC senior staff, directors and coordinators of the event, as well as others attending the summit and staff from one of the sponsor organizations. The schedule is pretty exhaustive so I doubt I will have much time to blog until my return to the Tidewater area on Sunday night. From some of the people I now know are attending (e.g., Pam Spaulding, Mike Rogers and a number of Bilerico Progect contributors), it should be a pretty amazing experience and allow for incredible networking opportunities.

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The boyfriend is going to D.C., for the weekend with me and we hope to have a chance to indulge in a little of the D.C. nightlife. While not one of the most obscure areas in the LGBT world, the greater Norfolk area is not a bright center of the gay universe, so it should be fun spending the weekend in a far more progressive area among with many kindred spirits.

National LGBT Blogger Initiative Summit - Update

I have received the preliminary schedule of events for the National LGBT Blogger Initiative Summit that I will be attending in Washington, D.C., this coming weekend. I am really excited to be going and hope to meet some folks like Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend, one of my daily reads, and catch up with Mike Rogers. The summit is made possible through the generous support of Jonathan Lewis and various LGBT community and corporate sponsors, including but not limited to the Victory Fund, HRC, NGLTF, Microsoft, Bolthouse Farms, and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.

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I still do not know who all of the attendees will be, but I have received e-mails from a few folks who will be attending from various parts of the country. One thing I hope to gain from the experience is how/what I can do to take this blog to a higher level and hopefully make a bigger impact in the cause of gay rights. God knows, so much needs to still be done particularly in states like Virginia where LGBT citizens have no legal protections.

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The boyfriend will be going to D.C. with me and despite the busy schedule I hope the two of us will get to enjoy a little bit of time as a couple at a few of the local venues. He's such a sweetheart that I would not think of going without him.

National LGBT Blogger Initiative Summit

Almost a month ago I did a post on the National LGBT Blogger Initiative Summit to be held in Washington, D.C., on the weekend of December 5-7, 2008. The goal of the initiative which was the brainchild of by Mike Rogers of PageOne Q and BlogActive.com is to support training and grants for "the country's leading and emerging online voices." The program, was established with a leadership gift of $50,000 from Jonathan Lewis of the Progressive Insurance family. While I figured that it was a long shot, I applied for the summit through the website. I just found out that I have been selected to attend! Wow!
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I have registered for the summit and am still waiting on more details about the agenda for the summit, not to mention who else will be attending. I am very, very excited to have made the selection cut and to have what I beleive will be a wonderful experience. One of my goals is to take this blog to a higher level and I hope this program will help me to achieve that goal. I believe blogs and the information the Internet offers can make a huge difference over time for the benefit of the LGBT community and democracy in general. I will share more information as I receive it.