Some U.S. Embassies Hoist Rainbow Flags in Defiance of Trump

The Trump/Pence regime has been steadily pushing to make right wing evangelical Christianity the de facto established religion in America.  The religious freedom rights and beliefs of others simply do not matter and, if they offend the self-centered, hate-filled, divisive views of Christofascists, they are subject to being undermined and trampled upon. Trump/Pence trumpets support for "religious freedom," but that freedom only applies to white, far right evangelicals who through policies and Department of Justice initiatives are being placed above the laws that bind the rest of the populace.  Nowhere is this more true than in the area of LGBT rights where Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo, both far right "Christians," seek to convince Trump to roll back rights and to dish out slights wherever possible. Part of that agenda this year was banning U.S. embassies from flying rainbow flags during June, which is Pride month.  As the Washington Post reports, a number of embassies are defying the Trump/Pence regime's order.  Here are article excerpts:

Since the State Department began rejecting all embassy requests to hoist rainbow flags outside the mission buildings during LGBTQ Pride Month this year, some U.S. diplomats have been finding ways to defy, or at least get around, the new policy.

The facades of the U.S. missions in Seoul and Chennai, India, are partially hidden behind large rainbow flags, while the embassy in New Delhi is aglow in rainbow colored lights. The website for the embassy in Santiago, Chile, shows a video of the chief diplomat raising a rainbow flag last month for the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.

The Vienna embassy’s website features a photo of a rainbow flag flying below Old Glory on a mast jutting from the building, a statement by Diplomats for Equality and a story about a professor lecturing on the visibility and growth of LGBT rights.

U.S. diplomats in Jerusalem joined a March for Pride and Tolerance, and several ambassadors have tweeted photos of themselves in local Pride parades or standing outside the embassies surrounded by employees holding up letters spelling PRIDE.

“This is a category one insurrection,” said one diplomat, who like others interviewed about the sentiment over the rejections, which were not made in writing, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired.

A practice routinely approved for most of the decade at many embassies now requires top-level approval from the State Department. But this year, as first reported by NBC News, all requests were nixed.

In 2011, the Obama administration directed agencies involved with foreign policy to promote LGBT rights, a striking policy for an agency that, up to the early 1990s, considered homosexuality a security risk and cause for termination. . . . . By 2016, approvals were left up to each ambassador or chief of mission.

That process changed last year, after Mike Pompeo became secretary of state. An evangelical Christian who believes marriage should be defined as between a man and woman, Pompeo has said gay employees will be respected and treated like everyone else. But he has downplayed some symbols of LGBT rights, while introducing several new panels and envoys specializing in religious freedom issues.

The advisory cable that came out last year said diplomats are required to obtain top-level approval from approval from the State Department’s Office of Management to fly a rainbow flag.

Some gay employees in the foreign and civil service say the ban on flying the rainbow flag is just the tip of an iceberg of slights.

“Day by day, a death by a thousand cuts, our rights as lgbt+ Americans are being eroded with the removal of a guidance here, the rewriting of a policy there, or just the quiet disappearance of a web site,” Robyn McCutcheon, a transgender woman who has served in several posts abroad, wrote in her blog “Transgender at State,” lamenting what she has observed throughout the government in the past two years. “It should come as no surprise that this erosion would happen also at the U.S. Department of State.”

“We fly below the radar,” one employee said. “We survive because they don’t realize we’re here.”

Expect things to get even worse as Trump steps up anti-LGBT efforts to maintain the support from evangelicals and ultra-right wing Catholics, all of whom want to take America back to the 1950's, including new Jim Crow laws and gays being forced to hide from sight. 

Karen Pence Again Proves She's a Self-Centered Hypocrite

Karen Pence - Hypocrite badly
in need of gay friends for fashion advice.

As readers may recall, Karen Pence, the wife of the sinister Mike Pence, works at a school that bars gays and their children.  She also proudly parades around supporting other aspects of Christofascist hatred towards others while putting on a show of feigned piety. Thus, it is no surprise that she got her (likely ugly) panties in a wad over Pete Buttigieg’s comments this week (i) challenging “the Mike Pence’s of the world” for believing homosexuality is a choice, and (ii) noting that the form of "Christianity" practiced by evangelicals bears little resemblance to Christ's social gospel message.  Ms. Pence whined that people should not be attacked for their religious beliefs no matter how toxic and hypocrisy laden and that children need to learn that at a young age that it is "okay what faith people have," again, no matter how toxic and hate driven. Meanwhile, she thinks it is perfectly fine for evangelicals to abuse and attack those, including gays, who do not share her blind allegiance to Bronze Age myths. 

Sadly, Ms. Pence is the face of Christofascists' self-centered and hypocrisy-filled belief system.  They want one standard of tolerance and respect for themselves but see no one else as deserving similar respect or tolerance. Plainly put, she is not a nice individual no matter how much she pretends otherwise.

Ellen DeGeneres Doesn't Speak for the LGBT Community

Perhaps I am more sensitive because I have had anti-gay expletives directed at me and been fired for being gay.  Or perhaps I reject absolution for insincere apologies/contrition - something the Catholic Church granted to countless predator priests.  The bottom line is, I do not believe Kevin Hart should be forgiven for his past anti-gay statements and I believe the only thing he is sorry about is that he lost the gig hosting the Oscars in February.  Thus, Ellen DeGeneres doesn't speak for me or, I suspect many others in the LGBT community when she granted Hart absolution.  Indeed, the blow back DeGeneres is receiving is well deserved.  No one anointed her to speak for the rest of us and, if Hart is invited back to host the Oscars, I may well choose to NOT watch the show. A piece in the Washington Post properly takes DeGeneres to task.  Here are excerpts:

Who died and made Ellen DeGeneres the gay pope?

In December, comedian Kevin Hart’s appointment to host the 2019 Academy Awards drew renewed attention to his hateful and damaging comments about gay people. The academy asked Hart to apologize: he refused and bowed out just days after the initial announcement. Many LGBTQ people cheered the withdrawal as the right move.

But now, in an interview that aired Friday on her daytime talk show, DeGeneres has absolved Hart of his ugly history. DeGeneres, who is gay, shared during the interview that she’d even interceded to ask the Oscars organizers to reconsider Hart as host.

Et tu, Ellen? As strange as this spectacle may seem, it’s actually in keeping with DeGeneres’s brand of nice. It’s a value she has sought to spread through the world, long signing off her show by telling her audience, “Be kind to one another.” Kindness means giving second chances, and giving second chances apparently means allowing Hart, who in 2011 tweeted that if his son played with a dollhouse he would “break it over his head & say n my voice ‘stop that’s gay,’ ” to host the most prestigious event in American cinema — one that’s also known as the Gay Super Bowl for its celebration of fashion and drama. On the set of DeGeneres’s show, anyone who thinks otherwise is simply a hater.

But that loud Internet crowd, which appears much larger than DeGeneres has allowed for, has it right. Niceness doesn’t require people to be pushovers. And kindness doesn’t mean forgiving people who’ve done bad things without being sure they understand what happened and are committed to making things right. DeGeneres’s unilateral dispensation to Hart on behalf of the LGBTQ community (and her kneecapping of Hart’s critics) truncates that process. That’s bad for all the LGBT people she claims to represent. And it’s bad for Hart, who gets to skip over the part of the process where he becomes a better, more empathetic person.

Hart made a halfhearted apology when he announced he was stepping down as host. But he hasn’t made any clear amends to LGBTQ people, and he certainly doesn’t seem to have atoned for his words. How can he, so long as he views the criticism of his past words as “slander on my name”?

More important, even if Hart had more fully repented, his sins are not DeGeneres’s to forgive.

Hart’s remarks were directed to queer people of color, who are generally much more vulnerable than their white counterparts. A 2017 poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard showed that LGBTQ people of color are twice as likely to have experienced discrimination in hiring and police interactions as white LGBTQ people, and that they are six times as likely to not call the police in a threatening situation so as to avoid reprisal.

Really, no single person is qualified to offer the forgiveness of all of queer America. But a white cisgender woman who is widely beloved and obscenely wealthy to boot is particularly ill-suited to try to muster such papal authority. For DeGeneres to think herself licensed to dispense this pass to Hart suggests that the only real indulgence here is her own.

Tucker Carlson's Ugly Racist, Anti-LGBT Track Record Has Advertisers Fleeing

I first remember seeing Tucker Carlson years ago before he went fully over to the dark side, if you will, and joined Fox News.  I do not remember the name of the news show, but I do remember how Carlson wilted and exhibited out right fear when Rachel Maddow - who was in her pre-big time, prime time show of her own - would be on the show and literally destroy Carlson who lacked even a basis command of facts and statistics on a par with Maddow.   Since moving to Fox News - Faux News on this blog - Carlson has increasingly embraced the white supremacist message of Der Trumpenführer and his hideous base.  With Carlson now facing the loss of 17 advertisers (and counting) in the wake of his racist anti-immigrant commentary, it is worth remembering that Carlson is a homophobe as well as a racist.  A piece in The Advocate looks at Carlson anti-gay history.  Here are excerpts:

Tucker Carlson Tonight is the latest Fox News program facing the wrath of advertisers after spreading lies, hate, and fear — 17 advertisers have now pulled spots from TCT after the show's host defamed immigrants.

As Trump's presidency goes up in flames, Carlson has been working to distract and rile his viewers by denouncing the migrant caravan, where refugees are seeking asylum at the U.S./Mexico border. Instead of advocating compassion for these desperate individuals, Carlson slanders them. The talking head said mass immigration “makes our country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.” Following initial criticism to that comment, Carlson said in another episode that “huge swaths of the (border) region are covered with garbage and waste … that degrade the soil and kill wildlife.

Corporations have wisened up to Carlson's dangerous dehumanizing of migrants. Ancestry.com, Bowflex, CareerBuilder, Chase United MileagePlus Explorer Card, IHOP, Indeed, Just for Men, Land Rover, Minted, Nerd Wallet, Pacific Life, ScotteVest, Smile Direct, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, TD Ameritrade, Voya Financial, and Zenni have all pulled their ads from TCT.

"There's no mistaking it: Tucker Carlson's words were ugly, inaccurate, and un-American, and advertisers did the right thing by ending support of him and his show," Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD's president and CEO, said in a press release. "Current and future advertisers must also remember Carlson's pattern of peddling misinformation about and frequent attacks on other marginalized communities, including LGBTQ Americans.

GLAAD reiterated Carlson's long history of attacking not only immigrants, but the LGBTQ community. Carlson has called transgender people "crazy," denied their gender identity, described gay people as "unhappy," requested Saturday Night Live "[make] fun of transgender bathrooms," claimed pro-LGBTQ school curricula is "weird" and indoctrinates children, said a gay man worshipped Hillary Clinton "like Judy Garland," called it "fascism" for a Christian baker to make a gay couple a cake, bragged about beating up a gay man, declared "transgender privilege" is real, dismissed the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" as a "sideshow issue," and declared Moonlight only won the Best Picture Oscar because of "political correctness."

Yes, I do not like Carlson.  He embodies what's wrong with white, conservative America and advertisers are fools if they support talking heads like Carlson and turn their backs on the growing majority of Americans. 

Is Trump Opening the Door to an Anti-LGBT Backlash?

Previous posts have looked at the anti-gay animus held by many of Der Fuhrer's cabinet nominees, in particular Jeff Sessions and Betsy DeVos.  And then there is Mike Pence, a virulent homophobe with a document ed record as an enemy of LGBT rights.  With LGBT rights having been scrubbed from the White House and Department of Labor websites within minutes of Trump's swearing in, the question now is whether Trump is intentionally opening the door to an anti-LGBT backlash. If so, he will be keeping promises made to a who's who of Christofascists that helped swing 81% of the evangelical Christian vote to a man who is the antithesis of true Christian values.  A column in the Washington Post contemplates what lies ahead.  Here are excerpts:

“Love it. We can say Fag again.”

That comment, from “Tired-n-Ariz,” was posted on a CBS news story about the disappearance of the LGBT rights page from WhiteHouse.gov shortly after Donald Trump took the oath of office on Friday.

It’s dispiriting that despite Trump’s campaign promise that he’d be a “better friend” than Hillary Clinton to the LGBT community, Day One of his presidency had a different headline: “Gays erased.” Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court marriage equality case, was deeply disheartened. Trump and the GOP “will pretend that we don’t exist while they work tirelessly to strip away all the gains we’ve made toward being equal citizens of our nation,” he said.

Even worse, news articles that pointed out the disappearance of the page prompted a flood of inflammatory comments like Tired-n-Ariz’s.  It seems that many Trump supporters know they don’t need a filter anymore; they’re now empowered to name-call and deploy slurs once considered unacceptable.

“Saturday Night Live” host Aziz Ansari captured this new zeitgeist in a biting skit . . . . “As soon as Trump won, [these people were] like, ‘We don’t have to pretend like we’re not racist anymore! …We can be racist again, wooo!’ ” Or anti-LGBT. Or misogynistic. For those folks, Ansari had a message: “Please go back to pretending. You’ve got to go back to pretending.” 

 Michelangelo Signorile, author of “It’s Not Over: Getting Beyond Tolerance, Defeating Homophobia, and Winning True Equality,” sees things in a similar light, telling me that Trump’s “attacks on so-called ‘political correctness’ have given license to people to express their bigotry.”

Indeed, many of those commenting on the CBS news story returned repeatedly to the idea that the drive for LGBT acceptance and equality is a result of “all this politically correct crap,” as “boogerhillbill” posted. 

[T]he right to marry the person you love and take on the rights and responsibilities that come with the marriage contract is not a special right. Nor is the right to create a loving family; the right not to be fired from your job because of your identity; the right to visit your spouse in the hospital and make medical decisions on their behalf when necessary. These are the basic rights that heterosexuals currently enjoy; we don’t want more, but we do we want the same.

 

WhiteHouse.gov is a reflection of the new president’s values, policies and priorities, and the erasure of LGBT issues from the site is a warning to us about our exclusion from his worldview. 

Let me leave you with the words of 21-year-old Elizabeth Hadfield, who lives in Durham, N.C. She told me: “As a trans woman, I am rendered worthless and invisible by those who I make uncomfortable via my very existence. The disappearance of the LGBT page from the White House website is just another attempt to render us invisible.”

As I said, sometimes a webpage is not just a webpage.

Are HGTV's Joanna and Chip Gaines Typical Anti-Gay Hypocrites?

One of the favorite tactics of anti-gay Christian zealots - hate merchants is actual a more appropriate term - is to the claim that they and their ignorance and hate based beliefs deserve to be treated with respect and tolerance even as they spread lies and hatred about LGBT citizens who are merely seeking the same civil rights that heterosexuals have enjoyed for centuries. Somehow in the bizarre world of the Christofascists their efforts to criminalize other citizens and strip them of civil rights deserves the same "tolerance" as the efforts of those who seek to end discrimination, mistreatment of others, the discarding of children by their "godly Christian" parents, and oppose to quack "experts" who claim that sexual orientation is as choice and can be "changed" if one merely resolves to "stop sinning."  If nothing else, the recent presidential election has served to unmask many who are seemingly more motivated by hatred of others, a desire to hold onto white privilege, and to inflict their religious views on all (for these folks, religious freedom only applies to them and no one else). Now, thanks to BuzzFeed we have learned that "Fixer Upper" stars Joanna and Chip attend a church headed by a stridently anti-gay pastor who opposes gay rights and support "ex-gay" conversion therapy that is condemned by every legitimate medical and mental health association in America,  As the piece also pointed out, the Gaines, unlike many of the remodeling and flip shows on HGTV, do mot work with same sex couples.  Here are highlights from the BuzzFeed piece:

Chip and Joanna Gaines’ series Fixer Upper is one of the most popular shows on HGTV. The couple has recently graced the cover of People magazine; their book, The Magnolia Story, has been on the New York Times’ best-seller list for five weeks; and they were the subject of a long profile in Texas Monthly that credited them with revitalizing the city of Waco, Texas, where the show is set and where their businesses are located. The couple are riding a wave of success, largely due to their charm and appeal. 

They are also, as they detail in The Magnolia Story, devout Christians — Joanna has spoken of and written about her conversations with God. (God told her both to close her store to spend time with her children, and then to reopen it a few years later.) Their church, Antioch Community Church, is a nondenominational, evangelical, mission-based megachurch. And their pastor, Jimmy Seibert, who described the Gaineses as “dear friends” in a recent video, takes a hard line against same-sex marriage and promotes converting LGBT people into being straight.

So are the Gaineses against same-sex marriage? And would they ever feature a same-sex couple on the show, as have HGTV’s House Hunters and Property Brothers? Emails to Brock Murphy, the public relations director at their company, Magnolia, were not returned. HGTV’s PR department did not respond to initial emails and calls. Two days after this story was published, they released the following statement: “We don’t discriminate against members of the LGBT community in any of our shows. HGTV is proud to have a crystal clear, consistent record of including people from all walks of life in its series.”
 Seibert clearly does not offer any wiggle room on the issue, as he says emphatically in his sermon: “Business leaders, you will have to be clear about who you are. And you will have to be willing to stand to lose even a deal or two or 

While Joanna and Chip Gaines have yet to directly respond to requests for comment, the usual suspects and "news" outlets like Breitbart, The Federalist and The Christian Post to name a few are rallying to the Gaines' defense and attacking the author of the BuzzFeed piece while fanning the flames of the carefully manufactured myth that American Christians are being persecuted.  Anything rather than admit the truth that what is really happening is that many - perhaps a majority in society - are finally saying "enough!" to the Christofascists' persecution of others.  In the sick minds of the Christofascists, being challenged about their centuries of mistreatment and persecution of others somehow equates to persecution.

As for Joanna and Chip Gaines, until they have the spine to publicly respond to the allegations, the husband and I will no longer be watching their show (which until now had been a favorite).  Their silence seems to be an admission that they support their pastor's foul and scientifically false views.  Yes, the Gaines are free to believe such horrible lies if they choose and attend a church that preaches hate - they reportedly attend the church this past weekend - but the rest of us are equally free to change channels when their show comes on and to avoid purchasing any merchandise connected to them.  Whether the Christofascists like it or not, freedom of religion is a two way street and Joanna and Chip Gaines may be about to receive a harsh lesson in that reality if they do not disclaim their church's toxic anti-gay lies.  They might even want to have a chat with the Benham brothers who destroyed their own careers.

From my own experience, sexual orientation is not a choice.  Embracing ignorance, anti-science myths, and hatred towards others in contrast is 100% a choice. 

Donald Trump and the Incurious Mike Pence:

While The Donald is claiming that he has not yet selected his VP running mate, most speculation is that it will be Indiana governor Mike Pence - a man who is no friend to the LGBT community and who set off a fire storm with corporate America when he signed Indiana's falsely named "religious freedom" law last year.  Naturally, given the GOP's most extreme and anti-gay platform every, Pence is the choice of most Christofascists, including those here in Virginia who often rally under the flag of The Family Foundation, a hate group in all but formal designation.  A piece in Salon looks at Pence and why he is a perfect fit for Trump's racist and xenophobic agenda.  Here are excerpts:

A lowly pool has been reduced to four B-list candidates: Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, and Jeff Sessions, three of whom found their way to Indianapolis on Wednesday (Christie reportedly spoke with Trump over the phone). You could make a case for all four. As I wrote last week, both Newt and Christie are plagued by scandals (much like Trump) and have bottomed out as politicians. Neither has much to lose at this point, which makes joining Trump’s dumpster fire campaign less risky. Sessions is a largely unknown conservative senator from Alabama. An anti-immigration culture warrior, he was among the first Republicans to publicly endorse Trump. But he’s the obvious outsider here. Of the final four, Sessions seems least likely to get the nod.

Although it’s still unofficial, The Washington Post is reporting that Pence is the pick. If true, that makes the most sense for Trump, and here’s why.
 First, we have to remember that Trump’s campaign is essentially a TV production. As such, he needs a hype man, someone who can pump propaganda without overshadowing the star of the show. . . . The Republican nominee wants an “attack dog,” but not someone who can upstage him. Both Gingrich and Christie, in their own ways, are capable of this.

Pence, however, appears quite comfortable playing second fiddle, and he clearly wants the job. He’s prostrated himself before Trump, lobbying about as hard as any candidate I’ve seen. And his Twitter feed is littered with over-the-top pleas. . . . Normally, VP nominees feign indifference, dismissing inquiries or referring reporters to the presidential candidates. The idea is to express interest without careening into desperation. But this is not how Pence rolls. . . . Right out of the gate, Pence lavished praise on Trump, making it all about him.
 If Pence believes Trump is the greatest leader since Reagan, why did he endorse Ted Cruz for president 10 weeks ago? Trump “never turned his back on Main Street”? We know Trump loves “the poorly educated,” but I doubt that’s what Pence means by “Main Street.” We know Trump has outsourced much of his labor in order to cut costs and avoid paying American workers a livable wage. Was that a boon for “Main Street?” We know that Trump inherited $40 million dollars from his father and has now convinced hordes of working-class whites that he feels their pain and knows their struggle. Perhaps that’s what Pence is referencing here. . . . The goal was to show Trump how effectively he can wag the pom poms. On that score, he succeeded. There’s another, perhaps more obvious reason why Pence wants this job: He might lose his. After his disastrous attempt to impose the anti-LGBT Religious Freedom Restoraction Act on Indianans in 2015, Pence’s popularity has plummeted. Even the business community turned against him. According to a May poll, his approval rating is down to 40 percent, with only 60 percent of Republicans supporting his re-election. The Indiana GOP would be happy to dispense with Pence and make way for a more attractive candidate.

In any event, a man this shameless in his pursuit of the nomination suits Trump well. Trump likes lackeys, and he appears to have found one in Pence. And because he’s staring down defeat in his home state, a VP nomination is an escape hatch for the Indiana governor, a chance to skirt failure and boost his national brand. Pence is also a safe pick with less baggage than Newt and Christie and a fair amount of experience on Capitol Hill. In addition to bowing to Trump, he’ll appeal to social conservatives and bring message discipline to a campaign without any.

So Pence might not be the sexiest pick for Trump, but he’s the safest. And considering the paucity of respectable candidates willing to stand on a stage with Trump, this is as good as it gets.

Kasich and McCrory Confirm They Are Bigoted Assholes

Sunday morning news shows today underscored the reality that both North Carolina's mental midget governor, Pat McCrory, and GOP presidential candidate John Kasich are nothing more than bigoted assholes and more or less harbor anti-gay animus.  Kasich went to far as saying that gays need to :just get over it" when it comes to the discrimination that they face.  Meanwhile, the brain dead McCrory could not even correctly name the Human Rights campaign and suggested that positive support for HB2 from a tiny black Christian group outweighed the outrage over the heinous law being voiced by 160 large corporate organizations, many of which bring vast amounts of revenue to his state.  Having been once fired for being gay, I can assure Kasich that it is not something one just gets over.  Not when it puts your children at risk and forces you into bankruptcy.  The man is an utter asshole.  Here are highlights from The New Civil Rights Movement on Kasich's unbelievable batshitery:

Republican Gov. John Kasich on Sunday told LGBT people who face discrimination they should just get over it. The third-place GOP presidential candidate who is the sitting governor of Ohio also told people of faith who oppose same-sex marriage and LGBT people to "pray for" them. Both comments were made under the guise of uniting the nation.

CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" asked Kasich if there are any steps he "would take to try to stop states from passing" anti-LGBT, so called "religious freedom" laws. The Ohio governor responded, "No, I wouldn't," then admitted that he hadn't even "thought about" it.

"There is a legitimate concern for people being able to have their deeply held religious beliefs, religious liberty," Kasich continued. "But there's also people who we shouldn't be discriminating against. We need to have a balance," he insisted.

"If you don't like what somebody's doing, pray for them," the governor suggested. "And if you feel as though somebody is doing something wrong against you, can you just, for a second, get over it, you know, because this thing will settle down."

He went on to call the fight for equal civil rights for LGBT people "a wedge issue that can be exploited by people on both sides," and concluded that "we need a united America, not a divided America.  

Let's take away Kasich's income, allow his children to be bullied, and have him turned away from businesses and see how quickly he "just gets over it."

As for Pat McCrory, the man seemingly is a complete simpleton or is at least doing all he can to come across as one as Think Progress reports after McCrory appeared on Meet the Press today.  Here are excerpts:

Gov. Pat McCrory (R-NC) went on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday to defend the sweeping anti-LGBT law he signed last month. It did not go well for him.

Over the nearly 10-minute interview host Chuck Todd hammered at McCrory’s widely-debunked talking points.

Todd began by highlighting how much the law has already hurt the Tar Heel state economically, noting that 160 companies have called for the law’s repeal. “Bloomberg, Capital One, United Airlines, Williams-Sonoma — that’s just on Friday,” he observed, adding that the law has cost state that at least $39.7 million in lost revenue already. He asked McCrory if he has any regrets about signing the law.

McCrory responded that he would “always call out government overreach,” like Charlotte’s law, blaming “the left” for passing a mandate on “every private sector employer” in the city. He then boasted that while the business community has criticized him, people at “an African American buffet restaurant” in the small city of Hamlet, NC had thanked him protecting them.

 What passes for intelligence in today's Republican Party is truly frightening!!

Ted Cruz Reveals His Hate Group Based "Religious Liberty" Plan

Throughout his presidential campaign Ted Cruz has courted the ugliest elements of the far right Christian groups and spokesman.  As part of this self-prostitution effort, Cruz has set up a Religious Liberty Advisory Council.  Not surprisingly, Cruz's council includes a who's who of anti-gay extremists and those who want a Christian Theocracy to replace the existing government of the United States.  Chairing Cruz's advisory council is hate group president Tony Perkins who, besides being virulently anti-gay, also has white supremacist ties.  Think Progress has details on this frightening advisory group.  Here are excerpts:

In his bid for the presidency, Ted Cruz (R) has consistently surrounded himself with some of the most extreme social conservatives in the country. In addition to appearing beside these individuals at various events, he also recruited a Religious Liberty Advisory Council — what Fox News’ Todd Starnes calls a “faith-based Justice League.”

Through Starnes, Cruz unveiled this week just what kind of ideas this council has developed to protect “religious liberty.” Given the fact that his council consisted of representatives from only the most conservative iterations of Christianity, the 15-point list is unsurprisingly dedicated to privileging Christian beliefs and enabling discrimination against the LGBT community and women.

For example, one of the recommendations is to “rescind Executive Order 13672 – an order that requires certain federal contractors to not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”  The council also recommends that Cruz “direct all federal agencies to stop interpreting ‘sex’ to include ‘sexual orientation’ and/or ‘gender identity.'” This would gut essential protections that LGBT people — and particularly members of the transgender community — are relying on.

The LGBT community isn’t the only target; Cruz would also finally have the opportunity to strip away important protections for women under Obamacare. His “religious liberty” advisers would have him “direct the Department of Health and Human Services to eliminate its requirement that all employers include coverage for all FDA-approved contraceptive methods and sterilization procedures.” This would make it even harder for women to access birth control than the Hobby Lobby case has already made it.

Other suggestions include protecting religious organizations from the IRS if they engage in political speech, expanding school prayer to the fullest extent possible, and ensuring that military chaplains can condemn homosexuality and women who have sex outside of marriage without consequence.

None of these ideas is surprising, however, given who serves on Cruz’s committee. His council’s chair is Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBT hate group. “These are the policies that he is going to pursue,” Perkins promised Starnes. “He is absolutely committed to the issue of religious liberty.”

With Ted Cruz as president, it seems the only religion that will have any liberty is his particular conservative brand of evangelical Christianity.

Franklin Graham: Keep Satanic Gay People Away From Your Children

Franklin Graham, a professional Christian who would be a complete no one but for his famous - or infamous, depending on one's view of those who have made themselves wealth peddling religion -  is continuing his relentless denigration and demonizing of LGBT individuals.  In his latest message of hate, Graham is urging "Christians" to keep gays away from their children and away from their churches.  Like so many of the self-anointed "godly folk," instead of furthering the Gospel message of Christ, Graham's message is one of pure hate and judgment of others.  Right Wing Watch looks at the latest poison Graham is disseminating.  Here are highlights:

Last year, Franklin Graham joined James Dobson at an event in Colorado where the two warned against allowing gay people into churches because, according to Graham, they are representatives of "the Enemy" who wants to "devour our homes" and "devour this nation." 

On his radio program today, Dobson played excerpts from his discussion with Graham at the event, in which called for Christians to keep their kids away from gay people and to take over school boards across the nation in order to remove gay-friendly programs. 

"We have allowed the Enemy to come into our churches," Graham said. "I was talking to some Christians and they were talking about how they invited these gay children to come into their home and to come into the church and that they were wanting to influence them. And I thought to myself, they're not going to influence those kids; those kids are going to influence those parent's children."

"What happens is we think we can fight by smiling and being real nice and loving," he continued. "We have to understand who the Enemy is and what he wants to do. He wants to devour our homes. He wants to devour this nation and we have to be so careful who we let our kids hang out with. We have to be so careful who we let into the churches. You have immoral people who get into the churches and it begins to effect the others in the church and it is dangerous."

Graham then went on to lament that "homosexuality is taught to be okay" in schools and "that is why I want to get the school boards back" before insisting that he loves gays and therefore feels obligated to tell them that "you cannot stay gay and call yourself a Christian."

That eventually promoted Dobson to rail against the entire LGBT agenda by once again absurdly misunderstanding bisexuality.

"You know what the 'B' stand for?" Dobson asked. "Bisexual. That's orgies! That is lots of sex with lots of people!"

Being gay is not a choice - I know this all too well having tried to deny reality and "pray away the gay" for 37 years.  However, being and ignorance embracing, bigoted asshole like Dobson and Graham IS a choice.  Sadly, these two men - and so many other professional Christians - put shaking down the ignorant and gullible for money so as to maintain their very comfortable lives ahead of truth, honesty and treating others as Christ commanded.  The Pharisees of the New Testament are exemplary individuals compared to Graham and Dobson.

 

Marco Rubio Whines Over Being Rightly Called a Bigot

Marco Rubio has been shamelessly prostituting himself to Christofascists in the Republican Party based and making promises to assist in rolling back LGBT rights, including marriage equality, if elected president.  Now, the disingenuous crybaby is whining over the fact that he is rightly being called out as a bigot due to his pledge to aid in discrimination against LGBT citizens and rolling back our rights. The tawdriest whore has more integrity than Mr. Rubio.  Pink News looks at Rubio's protestations over being called out as the bigot that he is in fact.  Here are excerpts

US Senator and Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio  was once considered a moderate in his party, but has tacked right hard in recent weeks on LGBT issues, claiming that God’s law “trumps” the Supreme Court on equal marriage. 

Rubio – still trailing Donald Trump for his party’s nomination – recently outlined plans to demand a Supreme Court ‘do-over’ on same-sex marriage after rigging the court with new right-leaning justices, potentially voiding thousands of existing marriages.

He has also pledged to repeal Barack Obama’s landmark Executive Order outlawing homophobic and transphobic discrimination among federal contractors – the only federal law that currently protects workers from being sacked for being gay or trans.
However, Rubio is very upset that just because he plans to systematically dismantle gay people’s right to marry and work without being discriminated against, people think he’s some kind of bigot.

He told CBS Face the Nation: “People who hold traditional values are often described as bigots and haters. Everybody on the left [calls them that] if you do not support their definition of marriage.

“Certainly the President has on occasion said that people who don’t support same-sex marriage are wrong… but I’ve been called a bigot for not supporting the definition of marriage.

Rubio is both a douche bag and a bigot.