Faux Christian Jack Phillips Again Proves He's A Bigot

Likely emboldened by the Supreme Court's refusal to squarely address the issue of whether claimed or feigned religious belief allows ones to be exempt from non-discrimination laws and public accommodation laws - and encouraged by the hate group, Alliance Defending Freedom ("ADF") - Jack Phillips, the owner of the infamous Masterpiece Cakeshop is back in federal court.  This time he is suing the State of Colorado and defending his refusal to create a cake to celebrate a milestone in the life of a sexual minority.   Let's be blunt.  Phillips is a self-centered bigot who sadly now feels he has a platform from which to encourage similar modern day Pharisees to insult and reject those they don't like. Meanwhile, his legal counsel at ADF won't be happy until homosexuality is re-criminalized.  Anything and anyone who challenges the Christofascists' Bronze Age myth based beliefs must be attacked and crushed. A piece in Politico looks at the new round of bigotry and pretense of martyrdom on display from Phillips.   Here are highlights:

Difficult decisions can be deferred, but not ultimately avoided. So it is that Jack Phillips, the owner of the famous Masterpiece Cakeshop is back in federal court, again defending his refusal to create a cake to celebrate a milestone in the life of a sexual minority.

This time, it’s a birthday cake celebrating a gender transition he’s declining to bake, and it’s not clear how the courts will balance the parties’ competing interests. That’s because of the Supreme Court’s dithering on the issue earlier this summer.

Just two months ago, the Supreme Court confounded expectations on all sides with its side-stepping decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. It looked like the case had nicely teed up the question of how to accommodate two competing interests. On the one side stood a gay couple that wanted to buy a wedding cake from a business that had an obligation under Colorado state law not to discriminate against them on the basis of sexual orientation. On the other stood the owner of the cake shop, Jack Phillips, who claimed that requiring him to create a cake in celebration of a same-sex wedding would violate his constitutionally protected rights of religion and free expression. How would the court resolve these competing claims?

It didn’t. . . . . The case didn’t even provide useful guidance for another case that was then before the court. A florist had refused to create an arrangement for the gay wedding of a couple she’d known for years, citing her religious belief. After sitting on the case for many months, the court finally decided not to hear it, vacated the judgment in favor of the couple, and directed the lower courts to resolve the matter in accordance with its Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. But that is no help at all, unless the case is also found to have involved anti-religious animus.

Now comes Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Elenis. Phillips, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian [hate] group that represents clients in lawsuits that involve challenges to religious freedom, contests a finding by Aubrey Elenis, the director of the Colorado Civil Rights Division, that there is “sufficient evidence” to support a claim of discrimination in the case.

Sardina revealed that she wanted the cake to have a pink interior and a blue exterior. Then she added that the colors were to celebrate her coming out as transgender on her birthday, some years earlier. At that point, Debi Phillips (Jack’s wife, and the co-owner of the cake shop) declined to create the cake because of the Phillipses’ belief that gender was biological, and immutable.

If that’s all there is to the case, it’s not hard: Sardina should win under the Colorado anti-discrimination law, which protects customers in certain enumerated classes—including sexual orientation and transgender status—from the denial of service in places of public accommodation (like a bakery). . . . . If she had told Debi Phillips that she wanted the blue/pink cake for a gender-reveal party, as a clever way of announcing that she was going to deliver boy/girl twins, we can safely assume the request would have been honored. The complaint admits that the “problem” with the cake is its association with a message the owners don’t agree with. But a pink/blue cake, without more, doesn’t send a “message” about gender transition.

It would be a different story if Sardina had also requested that Jack Phillips write “Happy Gender Transition Day!” because the government can’t compel a business owner to engage in speech he finds objectionable. But the simple act of creating a blue-pink cake doesn’t send any message at all—unless that message is that Phillips refuses to create a given cake for one class of people (those hosting gender-reveal parties) but not for others.

In short, Phillips’ refusal here is the very essence of discrimination, and the court should have no part of endorsing it. In the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, there was a lively exchange in concurring opinions between Justices Neil Gorsuch and Elena Kagan about this very question—whether Phillips’s right to freedom of expression would allow him to refuse to create a cake he knew would be used for a gay wedding, even if that cake were identical to a cake he might make for a “traditional” wedding.

Kagan’s position is that a business owner can’t refuse to bake a cake for one customer, but not another. That doesn’t mean Phillips would have to create a cake reading “I love gay marriage!”, but, as she noted, in the case before the court the couple “requested a wedding cake that Phillips would have made for an opposite-sex couple.” She properly rejected Gorsuch’s view that the controversial confection would have been “a cake celebrating same-sex marriage” because of its significance to the couple and Phillips alike. As Kagan noted: “It was simply a wedding cake – one … suitable for use at [all] weddings.” That’s the only interpretation of the law that can keep it from collapsing into a free-for-all, in which the mere invocation of free expression is enough to defeat any claim of discrimination.

If a business owner can refuse to serve one customer the exact same product that he’d willingly sell another based on an objection to the use to which the product would be put, we might just as well admit that anti-discrimination laws are toothless.

That doesn’t mean Sardina will win the case if it does get to the Supreme Court, though. With Kennedy out of the picture—and Brett Kavanaugh his likely replacement—the conservative justices will be more apt to grant review of close cases, knowing they have the five votes they need to roll back the court’s more progressive decisions.

[I]t’s easy to forget that the discrimination laws are in place for a reason, and that the same logic that would allow religious objectors to deny service to the LGBT community would also permit turning away a couple that wanted to celebrate an interracial wedding.

Personally, I wish decent people would simple boycott Phillips' bakery and allow it to wither away or limp along with only a bigoted Christofascist client base.  I'd prefer to have no cake than have one baked by a foul, self-centered, grandstanding bigot.

Huckabee Booted from Country Music Association Foundation

Sarah Huckabee Sanders learned to lie from one of the most proficient liars in the country, her father Mike Huckabee.  But not only is Huckabee a liar, he's a bigot as well, especially when it comes to LGBT individuals.  Like most Christofascists, we seeks to inflict his hideous version of Christianity on all Americans.  In Huckabee's world, only right wing Christian extremists have rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  Thankfully, the Country Music Association had enough of Huckabee's bigotry and he was booted from the board of its charitable arm, the CMA Foundation.  One can only hope that more and more organizations will see those like Huckabee for what they are: undesirable and and anti-American principles.  The Advocate looks at Huckabee's welcomed ejection from the CMA Foundation board.  Here are highlights:

Mike Huckabee’s homophobia has struck a sour note with the country music industry.

After outcry against his presence on the board of directors of the CMA Foundation — the charitable arm of the Country Music Association — the former Arkansas governor and failed presidential candidate resigned from the board today, one day after his election, reports Nashville newspaper The Tennessean.

“The announcement follows pointed criticism from members of the country music industry, as well as fans — much of it stemming from Huckabee's stance on LGBT issues,” the paper reports.

Among other anti-LGBT stances, Huckabee is a longtime opponent of marriage equality and has made offensive jokes about transgender people. He has likened marriage equality to U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous 1856 Dred Scott decision upholding slavery, and he once characterized gender-confirmation surgeries as strictly cosmetic, like implants for a woman who wants larger breasts.

He also opposes gun control and abortion rights, and he recently said his daughter, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is a victim of feminists who are seeking to discredit her.

While the country music industry may be one of the more conservative portions of the entertainment world, there are numerous country music executives, artists, and fans who are LGBT or allies, and they were quick to object to Huckabee’s election to the board of the foundation, which is “devoted to growing and supporting music education programs across the country,” according to The Tennessean.

“Huckabee speaks of the sort of things that would suggest my family is morally beneath his and uses language that has a profoundly negative impact upon young people all across this country,” said Jason Owen, a married gay father who is co-president of Monument Records and owner of Sandbox Entertainment, in an email to CMA officials, The Tennessean reports. “Not to mention how harmful and damaging his deep involvement with the [National Rifle Association] is. What a shameful choice.”

Whitney Pastorek, who manages Sugarland singer Kristian Bush, also objected to Huckabee’s presence on the board. “What a terrible disappointment to see [the CMA Foundation’s] mission clouded by the decision to align with someone who so frequently engages in the language of racism, sexism, and bigotry,” she told CMA executives via email.

Huckabee, a former Fox News Channel host, now has a talk show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, an evangelical Christian outlet. . . . He was not immediately available for comment on his resignation, The Tennessean reports.

No doubt Huckabee will claim that his a victim of "anti-Christian bigotry" when in fact he's the one who is the bigot.  Kudos to CMA for giving im the boot.  

Reflections on National "Coming Out" Day 2017 - Why It Still Matters

It has been 16 years since I commenced my "coming out journey when I first began to reveal to family and friends that I was gay after many years of internal strife and immeasurable amounts of self-hatred engendered by my Catholic upbringing.  Since that time, I typically reflect on the state of my own life and other members of the LGBT community on October 11th, National Coming Out Day.  Past illustrative blog posts can be found here and here. For those unfamiliar with the term, National Coming Out Day was first observed in 1988 as a form of activism to fight against homophobia and anti-LGBT discrimination.  It can be described as follows according to Wikipedia:

[A]n annual LGBTQ awareness day observed on October 11 and October 12 in some parts of the world.  Founded in the United States in 1988, the initial idea was grounded in the feminist and gay liberation spirit of the personal being political, and the emphasis on the most basic form of activism being coming out to family, friends and colleagues, and living life as an openly lesbian or gay person. The foundational belief is that homophobia thrives in an atmosphere of silence and ignorance, and that once people know that they have loved ones who are lesbian or gay, they are far less likely to maintain homophobic or oppressive views. 

Some now argue that the observance is no longer needed given the advances in LGBT rights.  In fact a thirty something college professor at a liberal university makes such and argument in a column in the Washington Post today.  I respectfully beg to differ.  Strenuously, despite the seeming good intentions of the author.   The reality is that today the LGBT community finds itself under unrelenting attack.  Last Friday a law became effective in Mississippi that makes anti-LGBT discrimination legal and gays can be turned away for business, hotels and public accommodations, and, of course fired from their jobs.  At the national level, the Trump/Pence regime has declared war on the LGBT community and is both rolling back legal protections and under the ruse of "protecting religious liberty" granting Christian extremists a license to discriminate akin to what is now fully legal under Mississippi's foul law.  Here in Virginia, we are faced with a Republican statewide ticket that, if elected, would bring such anti-LGBT discrimination to the fore in Virginia (GOP attorney general candidate John Adams would work to rescind same sex marriage rights).

While LGBT citizens may lead much safer lives in liberal states, large cities and university towns than was the case in 1988, things are still frightening in much of so-called fly over country and even in places like Southwest Virginia.  

As one of the linked posts notes, my coming out saga when I came to realize that I just could not continue to live my life as an actor on a stage if you will, pretending to be something that I was not through no choice of my own. I had to either to do something about my situation and “come out” or kill myself. I chose the former, unwittingly almost on National Coming Out Day.  Along the way, I did end up having two serious suicide attempts motivated by my desperation to escape some of the bigotry LGBT individuals face, including being fired from my law firm and the ruinous financial nightmare that was triggered.

I survived, but sadly, many LGBT individuals succeed in taking their lives on a near daily basis.  Often, they are only in their teens and see suicide is the only way to escape relentless bullying. It saddens me greatly to know that a number of gay teens will never know the freedom I have eventually found because they chose to end their lives.  They simply saw no other option thanks to the bigotry that still thrives in "red America." 
 

Just as disturbing is the reality that studies indicate that 40% of homeless youth are LGBT, perhaps the majority having been thrown out of their homes by their "god fearing" parents.  And yes, LGBT individuals continue to be fired from their jobs due to their sexuality or gender identity - I routinely get calls form those who have been fired.  All of this remains perfectly legal in Virginia and 28 other states.  Until these situations change and the laws change to provide full equal protection for every LGBT American, National Coming Out Day is still sorely needed.

On a personal note, I am largely at the place I imagined and envisioned in my mind's eye that I wanted to achieve when I started my coming out journey. I am married to wonderful guy who truly loves me, I now work at a law firm where my sexual orientation is not an issue - my burgeoning Hindu client base only care about me taking care of their legal needs and some have LGBT family members - and my husband and I are active activists in the LGBT community (see the photo above).  In short, I am  "totally out" and no longer feel the need to hide or apologize to anyone. It can "get better" and through National Coming Day we need to continue to make sure it gets better for every LGBT individual.   There is still so much work to be done.  There are literally lives to be saved.

Mike Pence's Ominous Extremist Shadow

While many are hoping for the quick impeachment of Donald Trump so as to save the nation from some ego motivated outburst that takes the nation to war, the main problem is that then we as a nation would be faced with a different menace:  Mike Pence, a true right wing Christian fanatic.  Even now, some suspect Pence as the puppeteer behind Trump's support for Christofascist policies, although much of that momentum could easily derive for Trump's willingness to pander to those who stroke his ego and appeal to his never ending narcissism.  A column in the New York Times looks at just how extreme and out of the mainstream Pence is in fact.  Here are column highlights that ought to send a shiver down the spines of sane and rational people: 

Do you think Donald Trump is just Mike Pence’s puppet?

Interesting idea, right? Particularly since the very idea would make our new president totally nuts. Hehehehe.

And it’s possible. Trump is not a man who concentrates on policy issues. So far, the parts of the job that have obsessed him most are crowd size and vote size. And yeah, the wall. But there has to be somebody behind the scenes deciding the non-ego questions. Pass the word that it’s Pence.

The best early evidence is reproductive rights.  Not an issue Trump seemed all that interested in during the campaign . . . . Yet one of the first things he did as president was to sign an order that will eliminate American aid to international health programs that provide information on abortion. . . . Trump’s targets global health in general. . . . . We’re talking about a potential loss of billions of dollars in American aid.

The only politician who would behave like that would be someone who had spent his entire career trying to impose his deeply held conservative religious values on people who had different beliefs.

That would be Mike Pence. This is the guy who, as a member of Congress, co-sponsored a bill that would allow hospitals to deny abortions to pregnant women who would die without the procedure. Whose war against Planned Parenthood when he was governor of Indiana led to the closing of five clinics. (None of them did abortions. They did, however, provide testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and one of the counties where a clinic was closed suffered a big H.I.V. outbreak.)

Pence, by the way, also voted against the Lilly Ledbetter act for equal pay for women. He once argued that having two working parents would lead to “stunted emotional growth” in children. In 2006, he said same-sex couples were a sign of “societal collapse.” I am just mentioning this for you to remember the next time you hear people say they hope President Trump is impeached.

The early Trump administration, however, looks as if it’s being run by somebody who can’t wait to jump into the abortion fray. Republicans in Congress are working away on defunding Planned Parenthood — an organization Trump once said he admired. And the Affordable Care Act, which guarantees women’s right to get birth control coverage in their health insurance, is of course target one.

I propose you also spread the word that the president has only gone on this anti-reproductive rights bender because he’s under Mike Pence’s thumb.

Trump is Helping to Sink Pat McCrory

Ever since he rushed to sign infamous HB2 into law, North Carolina governor Pat McCrory has been fighting for his political life and deservedly so.  The heinous law has caused boycotts against his state and triggered the decisions of corporations to forego expansion plans in North Carolina.  Down in the polls for his re-election effort, McCrory has resorted to lying about the state's economy and played the victim of progressive activists.  Now, Donald Trump's efforts to convince voters that the economy is terrible is running directly opposite to McCrory's effort to downplay the economic damage wrought by HB2.  A piece in Politico looks at how Trump is perhaps unwittingly helping in the effort to defeat McCrory next month.  Here are article excerpts:

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory is desperate to talk about his economic achievements after a year mired in contentious debate over social issues, including the state’s transgender “bathroom law.”

The only problem? Donald Trump keeps coming to town and telling voters how terrible the economy is.

It’s the most glaring example this year of the disconnect between Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric and the message of achievement that many Republican incumbents are trying to use to win reelection. . . . . the gap between McCrory’s “Carolina Comeback” theme and Trump’s doom-and-gloom assessments yawns particularly wide, as McCrory faces the toughest reelection challenge of any governor in the country in 2016.

McCrory’s TV ads open with text promising “the truth about North Carolina’s economy” before McCrory touts “one of the fastest-growing economies in the country,” one in which thousands of new jobs are announced “every month.” Yet earlier this month, Trump told attendees at a raucous rally in Greensboro that only under a Trump presidency would their “jobs come back” and “income go up.”

[M]ost Republican operatives said that Trump does McCrory no favors by harping on economic woes without citing the state’s successes, as it could further depress turnout in an already volatile political environment. What Trump would add to McCrory are voters who were already probably going to vote for Trump and McCrory,” said one national operative who works on governors' races. “But the rhetoric isn’t helpful. If voters hear a mixed message, it could keep them at home on Election Day.”

Trump’s negativity on the stump compounds the feeling that the state is on the wrong track, said Carter Wrenn, a local Republican consultant. He pointed to polling that says voters are not personally feeling an economic turnaround in their lives, so Trump’s comments “complicate McCrory’s life,” Wrenn said, because he believes voters “don’t separate North Carolina from the national message.”

[Trump] sucks the oxygen out of McCrory's message. I don’t think voters can hear all the negativity on the national level and believe the state has turned around.”

Cooper’s campaign capitalized on that feeling early, putting out an ad in August that asked voters to “raise your hand if your taxes have gone up, while those at the top are the ones getting the tax break,” flashing images of voters raising their hands. “And raise your hand if you’re working more for less.”

A High Point University poll in late September found that 60 percent of voters said it was more important to end House Bill 2’s economic impact than to enforce the law.

“McCrory’s message just doesn’t ring true with people because he’s got to face all the headlines around HB2, all the job losses from companies leaving and losing sporting events,” said Gary Pearce, a Democratic consultant in the state. “He’s singing the wrong key.”

It is important that McCrory is defeated.  A significant loss may at last convince some Republicans that prostituting themselves to the Christofascists is no longer good for their political survival.  I hope the Virginia GOP is watching how anti-LGBT extremism is having the exact opposite effect of what the North Carolina GOP had thought the bill would achieve for them.

The Truth the Public Needs to Know About Mike Pence

As I predicted last night prior to the vice presidential debate, Mike Pence, Donald Trump's fellow fascist, largely hid his virulent homophobia and Tim Kaine only addressed the issue in passing.  The most obvious thing about Pence's performance was his willingness to lie - a prevailing trait among Christofascist - and deny that Donald Trump had made all of the statements that Tim Kaine accused him of.  Never mind that Trump's vile statements about Muslims, minorities and women and/or praise of Vladimir Putin are all captured on video or Trump's own tweets.  (Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway's attempts at spin after the debate were equally false and made a tawdry whore look like the height of truthfulness in comparison).  Truth be told, Pence favors a form of Christian Sharia law - just like the Taliban and ISIS seek for Islam.  The man is dangerous.  A piece in Salon looks at the real Mike Pence who in many ways is a small scale clone of Trump.  Here are excerpts:

Most voters outside the Hoosier State know fairly little about Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a lifelong social conservative who served in Congress for 12 years, as governor for three years and is a favorite of the Koch Brothers.

As a young lawyer, Pence ran for Congress in 1988 and lost. When he ran again two years later, he used political donations to pay for his home mortgage, his personal credit card and grocery bills, golf tournament fees and his wife’s car payments, reports The Washington Post. While the payments were not illegal at the time, The Post reports “it stunned voters — and undermined Pence’s strategy to portray the incumbent, Rep. Philip R. Sharp, as tainted by donations from special-interest political action committees.” The article goes on to describe how the mistake transformed Pence politically and led to changes in national campaign finance policy.

During his 12 years in the House, Pence introduced 90 bills and resolutions, though none became law. “His interest was more in preventing things from happening — spending, taxing, expanding liberal social policy,” reports Hulse. He fought against several of President George W. Bush’s policies, including No Child Left Behind and the extension of Medicare Part D.

A post by the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Rothfeder — “Mike Pence’s Free Market Ideology: An Awkward Fit for Trump” — describes Pence as a “fervent anti-Keynesian” who “firmly opposes government spending on jobs programs and private-sector initiatives.” As a congressman, Pence voted against every federal stimulus package. As governor, he cut taxes for corporations and individuals. 

Pence is (surprise, surprise) a climate change denier — just like Trump. . . . “Pence helped kill Indiana’s successful energy efficiency program” and his incredibly low lifetime rating (4 percent!) on the League of Conservation Voters’ National Environmental Scorecard.

While Donald Trump now claims he never supported the war in Iraq, Pence supported it all along. On Libya, the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein writes, Pence “praised Hillary Clinton for her handling of the chaos” in the early days of civil unrest and backed the administration’s intervention. As time went on, however, Pence “soured on the mission.” Last week, Pence claimed that Clinton didn’t “send help” during the Benghazi attacks, which Politifact deemed false.

 In an interview with “60 Minutes” this past weekend Pence said he is in favor of “enhanced” interrogation techniques [i.e., torture] — just like Trump.

Before Trump’s VP announcement, Pence did not have the name recognition of someone like Chris Christie, but many may remember that in 2015 he signed into law Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which would have allowed businesses to refuse service to gay patrons based on their religious beliefs. After many businesses and others protested, Pence signed an amended version of the law that was intended to provide protection for sexual orientation and gender identity.Mother Jones’s Hannah Levintova reports on this and other anti-gay-rights bills he supported while in Congress.

This past March, Gov. Pence signed a measure “prohibiting women from obtaining an abortion because of the race, gender or disability of the fetus.” Indiana is the second state in the nation to implement such laws. While in Washington, Pence pushed for defunding Planned Parenthood and as governor slashed funding of clinics that provided STD testing, which led to an outbreak of HIV, Mother Jones reports.

Will Mike Pence Seek to Hide His Anti-LGBT Record Tonight?

The vice presidential debate starts in a little over an hour and one question in my mind is whether or not Donald Trump's  self prostituting stooge vice-president running mate will strive to appear falsely moderate and hide his history of homophobia and anti-LGBT bigotry.  For long time political junkies, it is common knowledge that Pence has made a career of opposing equal civil rights for LGBT Americans as most recently exemplified by his signing of Indiana's falsely named "religious freedom restoration " act ("RFRA") that brought near unanimous condemnation except from Christofacists.  As the photo above shows, Pence was surrounded by a gathering of religious extremists and hate merchants as he signed Indiana's RFRA.  A piece in Esquire looks at some of Pence's ugly record. Here are excerpts:

Digging up Mike Pence's past political work has become a sport in the brief time since he was named Donald Trump's running mate. Mainly, because he and Trump seem to be running different campaigns, despite the ticket they share.

The most recent finding is that Pence penned strong anti-LGBT letters in the 1990s during his time as head of the Indiana Policy Review. In 1993, he attacked gay leadership in the military, claiming:

Homosexuals are not as a group able bodied. They are known to carry extremely high rates of disease brought on because of the nature of their sexual practices and the promiscuity which is a hallmark of their lifestyle. 

Pence also took a very close look at sexual practices between men, arguing that was reason to exclude gay men from the ranks. He also claimed gay journalists could not remain unbiased because of the "pathological" nature of their "gaydom."
 Twenty years later, Pence signed into law Indiana's "Religious Freedom Restoration Act," which allows business owners to discriminate against LGBT employees and patrons. A year later, and he's running for vice president on Donald Trump's ticket. Good to know our civil liberties are under such vigilant protection.

Make no mistake.  Pence has opposed every advancement in LGBT rights, from supporting sodomy laws, opposing non-discrimination protections for LGBT citizens, opposing the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and, of course, opposing marriage equality.  As his signing of Indiana's RFRA shows, Pence believes in special rights for Christian extremists and, if he could, would make conservative Christianity the established religion of America.  His attitude towards the Founding Father's ideal of religious freedom for all is open contempt as shown by his historic track record.