The Best and Worse States to Live if You are LGBT

Last weeks ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County granted federal employment non-discrimination protections to LGBT Americans nationwide and some have suggested perhaps the gay rights movement has finished its work and accomplished its goals. My response to this ludicrous suggestion is "hell no" since there remains huge amounts of work to be done at the state level and even with the newly granted federal protections, I suspect in many red states and even rural areas of some blue states being LGBT will continue to be a potentially life threatening situation.  Thus, the questions becomes what states should one consider moving to or visiting on vacations if you are LGBT and want to have some sense of safety and legal protections.  USA Today is reporting the results of a national survey of states ranking the states from worse to best places for LGBT citizens.  The rankings include laws protection LGBT citizens and is slightly out of date because it uses 2019 laws  which, as a result does not include the panoply of laws enacted in Virginia this spring.  As a result, per the survey, Virginia earns a 35th place ranking (hopefully, this ranking will move up markedly next year.  Not surprisingly, Alabama wins the worse place ranking and surprisingly, Mississippi ranks a number of rungs higher, thereby depriving Alabamians the often cited saying "thank god for Mississippi" for saving them from last place.  Below are the rankings of several states.  Take the time to read the entire piece, especially if you are thinking of relocating - both individually or moving a business - or traveling domestically during the coming year.  Here are article excerpts:

Across the United States, Americans have increasingly embraced equal treatment and access for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) Americans over the last decade. According to a Gallup poll in 2019, 63% of Americans supported same-sex marriage, compared with about 44% in 2010.  Some cities are more welcoming to the LGBTQ community than their respective states – Austin, Texas, is one example – but, in general, entire states (rather than just cities within them) are moving toward  protecting and empowering their LGBTQ residents.

In acknowledgement of Pride month, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the states most and least welcoming to the LGBTQ community. We created an index of three measures – hate crimes motivated by gender and sexual orientation reported per 100,000 people, laws protecting the LGTBQ community, and the percentage of each state's population who identifies as LGTBQ – to identify the best and worst states for LGBTQ people.

While there has been no doubt progress toward equality, anti-equality activists and politicians still have a lot of influence – in some states more than others. In Texas alone, 19 anti-LGBTQ bills were filed in 2019. In Iowa, transgender health care benefits were removed from the state’s medical plan. Across the country, 102 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced, and seven became laws. 

Even though the U.S. – and the world – is slowly becoming a more welcoming place for LGBTQ people, there are still many places where same-sex relationships are considered criminal behavior. 

50. AlabamaBased on its relatively small LGBTQ population and lack of progress passing laws that protect LGBTQ communities, Alabama is the worst state in the nation for LGBTQ Americans. Unlike the vast majority of states, which have mandatory hate crime reporting laws, Alabama police jurisdictions do not participate in reporting of hate crimes motivated by gender or sexual orientation.

In fact, the state has very few laws that positively affect LGTBQ residents, and plenty of rules that negatively affect LGBTQ communities. For example, in 2017, Gov. Kay Ivey signed legislation that would permit religious agencies to deny placing an adopted child in LGBTQ families. Alabama also restricts inclusion of LGBTQ topics in schools, and the state is one of 26 states that criminalize behaviors that carry low or negligible risk of HIV transmission (such as anti-sodomy laws). Such laws are considered archaic and frequently lead to abuse and discrimination against HIV-positive individuals and harms public health efforts.

49. WyomingJust 3.3% of Wyoming's population identifies as LGBTQ, the ninth lowest such share of any state. Relatively low numbers of LGBTQ state residents could reflect lower likelihood of identifying as LGBTQ and a generally less hospitable state for the community.

Wyoming is the state where Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was beaten and left to die in the town of Laramie in 1998, in an incident that shocked the nation. There have been other incidents against gay people in recent years, and a gay man who was bullied committed suicide in 2016. Tragic incidents such as these are unfortunately common across the country, but considering the general inhospitable environment in the state, including lacking laws that would protect basic LGBTQ civil rights, these incidents take perhaps additional meaning in Wyoming. Still, there are people in Wyoming who continue to struggle for equal rights under the law. The cities of Casper and Cheyenne held their first pride marches in 2017.

35. VirginiaUntil very recently, Virginia was not making progress toward equality for the LGBTQ community. In April 2020, a few months after the HRC latest report was published, the state passed several laws that provided anti-discrimination protections to the LGBTQ community, making Virginia the first state in the South to do so. The state made it easier for people to update the gender marker on their birth certificate. The laws will take effect July 1.

While progress has been made, LGBTQ residents still face challenges that non-LGBTQ residents do not. Virginia has legal provisions that allow adoption and foster care agencies to turn away prospective LGBTQ parents on the grounds of religious freedom. The state does not have laws protecting students from discrimination in schools based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

3. New YorkNew York has special significance to the LGBTQ community, as the Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York City helped spark massive changes in the nation's understanding of LGBTQ issues and paved the way for more equality to the LGBTQ community.

Today, New York ranks as one of the best states for LGBTQ people. In the last decade, the state legislature has passed 30 laws protecting the rights and safety of its LGBTQ residents. The state has some of the most comprehensive non discrimination laws of any state.

2. VermontVermont ranks as one of the best states for LGBTQ people. It provides better access to CenterLink pride centers than any other state. Vermont has an estimated 26,000 LGBTQ people and three pride centers.

The state also has some of the most comprehensive health and safety laws for LGBTQ residents among all states. It ensures that transgender people cannot be excluded from health care. Vermont also collects data on the health and well being of LGBTQ youth and adults. It also has extensive nondiscrimination laws.

1. NevadaNevada ranks as the best state in America for LGBTQ people. It has a relatively low share of hate crimes motivated by gender identity or sexual orientation. It also has nearly all laws suggested by the HRC for LGBTQ rights, including nondiscrimination laws, parenting laws, statutes against hate crimes, and those ensuring protections for health care access.

Nevada passed 34 laws protecting the rights and safety of its LGBTQ residents from 2009 to 2019. The state also has no laws considered infringing on these protections, according to the HRC.

To identify the best and worst states for LGBTQ people, 24/7 Wall St. created an index of three measures: hate crimes reported per 100,000 people, laws protecting LGTBQ communities, and the percentage of each state's population who identify as LGTBQ. Each of these three measures were weighted equally in the index.

State laws affecting LGBTQ communities came from the Human Rights Campaign’s 2019 State Equality Index, which defined such laws as positive or negative to LGBTQ Americans. The Equality Index classified each state into one of four categories: “high priority for basic equality,” "building equality," "solidifying equality," “working toward innovative equality.” 24/7 Wall St. assigned scores to each of the categories that could be normalized for the index. States that were labeled a “high priority for basic equality” received the lowest score, while states that were “working toward innovative equality” were ranked higher on our list.

Refusal of Interracial Couple Shows Dangers of "Religious Freedom" Exemptions

Wedding Hall that refused an interracial couple due to "Christian belief."

Having followed various right wing "Christian" organizations and prominent "professional Christians" - e.g. Tony Perkins of Family Research council - I have long believed that not only are these folks anti-gay and anti-abortion (even as they kick children to the gutter once they are born), but they are also racist and anti-anyone who doesn't have white skin.  Thus, I believed it was only a matter of time before some followers of this toxic form of religious belief showed their hand and would demand the right to discriminate against blacks and/or interracial couples based on their "deeply held religious belief."   Sure enough, the owners of a wedding hall in Mississippi rejected an interracial couple and cited their "Christian religious beliefs" as justification for refusing to allow a mixed race couple to have their wedding at the venue.  Yes, lots of sputtering and denials of what was meant ensued, but the first statement showed the real mind set of many of these "godly Christians," especially in Deep South states like Mississippi which typically ranks dead last among the 50 states in numerous categories. More troubling is the fact that this is precisely the type of bigotry and discrimination that the Trump/Pence regime seeks to legalize under the euphemism of protecting "religious freedom."  A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at what happened and the danger that it exposes, namely that Christian extremist want to be above the law and able to discriminate at will.  My personal prediction: we are already headed down that road and four more years of Trump/Pence would lead to the legalization of such racial discrimination if bigots cite "religious belief" as their justification. Here are article highlights:

The owner of a Mississippi wedding hall, Donna Russell, made news last week for refusing to provide space for an interracial marriage due to her religious beliefs. Russell was caught on film stating that “First of all, we don’t do gay weddings or mixed race, because of our Christian race—I mean, our Christian belief. . . .”

It took twenty years after the Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, banning state laws against interracial marriage, for Mississippi to amend its constitution and remove the amendment prohibiting miscegenation. Loving nullified all state laws in 1967, but Mississippi clerks and courts refused to perform or honor interracial marriages for years after. Even in 1987, a bare majority of 52% of Mississippians voted to remove the language from the state constitution.

Currently, Mississippi has the distinction of having one of the broadest explicitly anti-LGBT laws in the country: the state permits state-licensed child welfare agencies to refuse to place and provide services to children and families, including LGBT people and same-sex couples, if doing so conflicts with their religious belief; it permits state officials to decline to marry couples of whose marriage they disapprove; and it likewise permits medical professionals to decline to serve LGBT clients.

In a fiery opinion from 2016, U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves issued a temporary injunction halting Mississippi’s broad anti-LGBT law from going into effect, finding that “It is not rationally related to a legitimate end.” But the Governor appealed to the Fifth Circuit, who held that the plaintiffs who challenged the law lacked standing (the ability to show an injury stemming from the law). The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, effectively letting the Circuit Court’s approval stand and the law to go into full effect.

As the Christian right, bolstered by evangelical donors and the Trump administration, continues to undermine justice for LGBTQ people through religious exemptions based on a narrow theology, rhetoric like that of the Mississippi wedding hall owner gives one pause for thought. In states where same-sex marriages neither need to be solemnized nor honored, are interracial marriages far behind? And if people like Donna Russell believe their refusal to honor interracial marriages is rooted in faith how solid is the holding in Loving?

In fact, this “slippery slope” argument was brought up during oral arguments for Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission by Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, when the former asks: “Same case or not the same case, if your client instead objected to an interracial marriage?”

To which the Cakeshop’s lead counsel, Kristen Waggoner replies: “Very different case in that context.” Waggoner is trying to make a very specific argument here: that marrying someone of your same gender is a choice, is speech, is not a right guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment’s right to Equal Protection under the law because, in her view, and in the view of Alliance Defending Freedom, there is nothing there to protect. ADF, and Waggoner, are arguing that asking a baker to make a cake to celebrate your marriage to someone of your same gender is closer to asking a baker to make a penis cake for a bachelorette party. The inference, in other words, is that being gay is a choice and therefore that the “message” these two men were trying to convey was the choice to marry someone of the same sex, a kind of message a business ought to be able to reject.

But what of those, like Donna Russell, who believe that interracial marriage is as wrong as same-sex marriage, regardless of legal or theological justification?

There aren’t current data on state-by-state support for interracial marriage, but while 18% of all newly married people in urban areas are married to someone of a different race, only 3% of newlyweds in Jackson, Mississippi are married to someone of a different race, the lowest percentage in the country. Discrimination on the basis of race is prohibited by federal statute, and states are explicitly prohibited by federal case law from banning marriage for interracial and same-sex couples. But, with conservative Christian legislators, litigators (like the Alliance Defending Freedom, who drafted Mississippi’s anti-LGBT statute), and judges growing in power and number, how slippery is the slope of religious exemptions? And are the exemptions merely codifying what’s already taking place? 

Of course this mindset which is common in Mississippi is precisely why new and progressive businesses avoid Mississippi like the plague.  Hopefully more business will pay heed and scratch Mississippi - and similar states - off the list of potential locations for new plants and operation centers. Bigotry needs to carry a heavy price even when wrapped in the smoke screen of feigned religious belief. 

States Progressives and Liberals May Want to Avoid

Click image to enlarge.

When the husband and I travel, we generally try to avoid conservative states and countries since there typically is a strong correlation between what passes as "conservative" and being anti-gay or at least less than gay friendly. Why go somewhere where you are not liked and why spend your money to boost an local economy comprised of bigots. A new Gallup survey has come up with a map that shows the most reactionary states and those that are more liberal.  Thankfully, Virginia now falls into the "less conservative than average" category with the larges component of the population describing themselves as "moderate."  Not surprisingly, the states to avoid include the remainder of the Old South, the northern Great Plains states and Utah.  Check out how your state ranks here.  Here is a summary of the findings (yes, Mississippi is a place to avoid): 

Nationally, the conservative advantage in ideological identification is nine percentage points, and reflects a narrowing of the conservative-liberal gap from 21 points in 2004.

These findings are based on aggregated data from Gallup's 2018 tracking poll in which respondents were asked to indicate whether they describe their political views as liberal, moderate or conservative.

States in which the conservative-liberal gap is 20 points or greater are considered "highly conservative." The "more conservative than average" states have gaps of between 15 and 19 points. "About average" states' residents prefer the conservative description by seven to 14 points, and those with gaps of zero to six points are considered "less conservative than average."

The number of states in which more residents identify as liberal than as conservative is down slightly from nine in 2017. Many of the changes are within the margin of error for the state's sample -- states that barely tilted liberal in 2017 barely tilted conservative in 2018 -- so it is unclear how meaningful these changes are.

Mississippi ranked as the most conservative state in 2018, with 50% of residents identifying as conservative and 12% as liberal, for a gap of 38 points. Twenty-nine percent of Mississippians said they are moderate, and 9% had no opinion.

Massachusetts was the most liberal state in 2018, with 35% of its residents describing their political views as liberal and 21% as conservative. Massachusetts was the first state Gallup measured with more liberal than conservative identifiers (in 2008) and has been the state most consistently leaning more liberal than conservative.

16 States Want Gays to Be Exempt from Civil Rights Protections

Anti-LGBT animus is alive and well 16 states - most in the South/Bible Belt - except for Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska and Maine (thanks to its lunatic GOP governor) - where the attorneys general have filed briefs urging the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that companies can fire workers based on their sexual orientation and gender identity without violating federal workplace discrimination laws.  The goal is the reversal of the EEOC position that firing gays or transgender is all about sex and sexuality and, therefore, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is applicable.  The filing is motivated by Jeff Session's Justice Department position that ‘sex’ under the terms of Title VII does not mean anything other than biological status as determined at birth which is in direct opposition to the EEOC position.  As Joe Jervis notes, the brief was co-authored by Nebraska Deputy Attorney General David Bydalek, formerly policy director of the vociferously anti-gay Nebraska affiliate of Focus On The Family.  One can only hope that progressive corporations and businesses take not and avoid these states.  Here are highlights from Bloomberg:

A group of 16 states urged the U.S. Supreme Court Aug. 23 to rule that companies can fire workers based on their sexual orientation and gender identity without violating federal workplace discrimination law.

The states, led by Nebraska Attorney General David Bydalek, asked the justices to overturn an appeals court decision against a Michigan funeral home that fired a transgender worker. They said Congress didn’t intend the ban on sex discrimination in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to cover bias against lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender employees.

“The States’ purpose is to note that ‘sex’ under the plain terms of Title VII does not mean anything other than biological status,” Bydalek wrote.

The friend-of-the-court brief is the latest development in a legal debate that has divided courts and exposed a rift within the Trump administration. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says LGBT bias already is banned, but the Justice Department disagrees.

The EEOC successfully sued on behalf of Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job at R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes after telling a supervisor she was transitioning to a woman. But the agency must get the Justice Department’s approval if it wants to participate in the case at the Supreme Court level.

A total of 13 Republican attorneys general, including those representing Texas, Alabama, Kansas, and Utah, signed on to the brief. Three GOP governors— Matthew Bevin (Kentucky), Paul LePage (Maine), and Phil Bryant (Mississippi)—also joined in the court filing.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide in the coming months whether to take up the case. It’s also been asked to consider two other cases testing whether sexual orientation bias is a form of sex discrimination banned under the existing law.

Laws in 20 states and Washington, D.C., directly ban employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. That includes bans in Utah and Maine.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 2017 became the first federal appeals court in the country to conclude that transgender bias is a form of sex discrimination under Title VII when it said Harris Funeral Homes violated the law by firing Stephens.

The Worst (and Best) Places To Be Gay in America

As noted in any number of posts on this blog, Donald Trump and Mike Pence are waging a continuing war against the rights and dignity of LGBT Americans.  They are joined in this effort by state level Republicans across the country. Here in Virginia, if the Republican ticket were to win in November, much of the anti-LGBT agenda of the GOP - especially that of extreme homophobe, John Adams, the Virginia AG candidate, would have no firewall to stop it.   Sadly, the quality of one's life often depends on where one lives - what state and at times even what locality in which you live.  In Virginia's so-called urban crescent, life is tolerable.  In Southwest Virginia where white supremacy and homobobia (the two usually are found together) reign supreme, it is a different world.  The driving force behind the anti-LGBT jihad: Christofascists who make up a large part of the GOP base and often closeted Republican elected officials - think Ed Schrock, Larry Craig, Ken Cuccinelli and perhaps even Mike Pence - who seem to believe that the best way to hide their secret yearnings is to abuse those who are openly LGBT.  A lengthy column in the New York Times (please read the entire piece and its graphics) looks at the reality of how different life can be depending on where one happens to live.  Here are highlights:

All my life I’ve loved Texas: those big skies, big steaks and big attitudes. I’m there several times a year.  But Texas doesn’t love me back. Certainly its lawmakers don’t, and lately they’ve been hellbent on showing that.

In June the governor signed a bill allowing child welfare groups to refuse adoptions that contradict their “sincerely held religious beliefs.” They can turn away gay men like me.

That same month, the Texas Supreme Court approved a lawsuit challenging the city of Houston’s provision of equal benefits to all married employees, including those with same-sex spouses. Although the United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015, Texas bucks and balks.

Not New York. My state loves me something fierce. What it did in June was finalize the design of a monument to L.G.B.T. citizens in downtown Manhattan. New York legalized same-sex marriage back in 2011 without any federal nudge.

There’s no such thing as L.G.B.T. life in America, a country even more divided on this front than on others. There’s L.G.B.T. life in a group of essentially progressive places like New York, Maryland, Oregon and California, which bans government-funded travel to states it deems unduly discriminatory. Then there is L.G.B.T. life on that blacklist, which includes Texas, Kansas, Mississippi and South Dakota.

The differences between states — and between cities within states — are profound, and while that has long been true, it’s much more consequential since the advent of the Trump administration, a decidedly less ready ally of L.G.B.T. people than the Obama administration was.

The federal government under Donald Trump won’t be rushing in to help L.G.B.T. people whose local governments fail to give them equal rights, a sense of belonging or even a feeling of physical safety. . . . . Immediately after his inauguration, references to the L.G.B.T. community were scrubbed from many federal websites, including the White House’s and the Department of State’s.

Plenty of the people he [Der Trumpenführer] pulled into his cabinet have long histories of pronounced opposition to gay rights. One of them, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, leads a Department of Justice that recently went out of its way to make clear, in court filings, that it did not consider L.G.B.T. people to be protected by a federal civil rights law that prohibits employment discrimination.

Without consulting or even alerting the heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, Trump announced a reinstatement of the ban on transgender people in the military, and he’s now finishing the orders for how the Department of Defense should enforce it — within six months. His first Supreme Court appointment suggests that if he is able to ensconce several more, the same-sex-marriage ruling could well be revisited and changed.

We’re at the mercy of our ZIP codes: Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are often affected most by their municipality, not their state. In Waco, Tex., the lone justice of the peace who presides over weddings recently admitted that she won’t do so for same-sex couples no matter the federal law. But Houston, just a three-hour drive away, has in instances been a pioneer: Annise Parker, its mayor from 2010 to 2016, is the only openly L.G.B.T. person ever elected to lead one of the nation’s 10 most populous cities. And Austin, the state’s capital, is practically Key West, Fla. — minus the coconuts.

Picayune, Miss., where an 86-year-old gay man passed away last year, leaving behind his 82-year-old husband. They had been together for half a century.  Although prior arrangements had been made with a local funeral home, it refused even to pick up the dead man’s body when it learned of his same-sex marriage, according to a breach-of-contract lawsuit by his husband that hasn’t yet been resolved.

South Carolina: another state that I love, another state that doesn’t love me back, and the home of Tommy Starling, 45, and his husband, Jeff Littlefield, 61. Starling told me that they live there, in the coastal community of Pawleys Island, because of Littlefield’s job in the insurance business, but they dream constantly of moving somewhere that doesn’t cast them as provocative social experiments, somewhere that doesn’t put and keep them on edge.

They had trouble trying to adopt in South Carolina, so they turned to California and to surrogacy to have their 11-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son. . . . . “But it’s getting exhausting,” he said, adding that the family’s occasional travel sustains him.

[R]esponses The Times received after asking L.G.B.T. readers to share their reflections on the freedoms and limitations of where they live. Readers were acutely conscious of the absence or presence of employment-related anti-discrimination laws in their cities or states. (Only 22 states have such laws governing all gay and lesbian workers, in both the public and the private sectors, while only 20, including New York, have them for transgender workers as well.) Readers mentioned the vigor, or laxness, with which their local governments patrolled against and prosecuted hate crimes.

And one after another, readers said they wished that a modest public gesture of affection wasn’t a potent magnet for stares, slurs or worse.

On the state level, the yardsticks for measuring respect for L.G.B.T. people include, recently, restrictions on “conversion therapy,” which attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. More and more mental health professionals are speaking out unequivocally about its dangers, and more and more state legislatures are outlawing it for minors. New Mexico, Nevada, Rhode Island and Connecticut did so in recent months; New Jersey, Vermont, Illinois, Oregon, California and the District of Columbia had previously done so. But that leaves 41 states without any such prohibition.

Alabama. In May, under the aegis of “religious freedom,” its governor signed a law that allowed taxpayer-funded adoption agencies to deny the placement of children in homes with gay parents.  The Alabama House voted 60 to 14 in favor of the bill, after which the Alabama Senate voted 23 to 9.

Fifty years from now — heck, maybe just 20 — that kind of thing won’t happen. There’s only one long-term trajectory here. But in the meantime, it’s not O.K. for the federal government to be as cold to L.G.B.T. Americans as the one we have now is, because some of those Americans live in Alabama — or Texas. And those places don’t exactly brim with love.

While far from perfect, Virginia - at least for now depending on the November election results - is tolerable, many states and cities are not.  That's one reason why the husband and I are selective as to where we vacation- New York City, Key West, Ft. Lauderdale, London, Paris, etc. - because we do not want to visit or give our money to places and communities that are hostile to LGBT people.    We are not alone in this and its why many areas will never see the economic boost that LGBT tourism can provide. 

How Republicans Are Destroying North Carolina

I've noted on a number of occasions how Gov. Brownback and his band of Republican troglodytes have done much to destroy the state of Kansas - all, of course, as they claim to be merely imposing dogma on all the state's citizenry.  But just south of the border  a similar campaign of destruction is underway in North Carolina.  The goal there has been to inflict the GOP's reverse Robin Hood agenda on the state and to grant special rights to knuckle dragging Christofascists with no concern for the damage being done.  An op-ed piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at the North Carolina's agenda which ought to make Virginian's terrified of what GOP wins in Virginia in 2017 might do to this state.  Here are op-ed highlights:

The governor and General Assembly have:

• Tragically refused to expand Medicaid. Merely to show disdain for President Obama, they’ve denied health care to a half million poor Tar Heels though the federal government would pay almost all the fare. Hospitals have closed, tens of thousands of jobs have been lost, over $30 billion in federal funds are surrendered and a thousand or more of us die each year as a result of one of the most cruel and indefensible decisions in N.C. history.

• Enacted the most aggressive voter suppression law in a half century. The central purpose of North Carolina’s monster voting law — imposing a biased ID requirement, limiting early voting and eliminating same-day registration, out of precinct voting and early first-time registration — is to make it harder to cast the franchise. It is foundationally un-American.

• Launched an internationally derided war on LGBT people. Beginning with Amendment One, followed by a discrimination-abetting religious exemption law, the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of state dollars to pursue already-concluded litigation and, most famously, the passage of House Bill 2, Republicans have inflicted enduring wounds on North Carolina merely to prove they despise the LGBT community.

• Moved systematically and pervasively to dismantle the public schools. Through teacher and teaching assistant layoffs, reductions in pre-K programs, massive budget cuts, the expansion of charters, the introduction of vouchers, the (attempted) elimination of tenure, the closing of a celebrated teaching fellows program, the creation of a destructive A-F school grading system and, now, the adoption of achievement school districts, the General Assembly has worked to lay waste to public education.

• Initiated the nation’s most appalling crusade against poor people. Despite burgeoning poverty and hunger rates, enacted the sharpest cut to unemployment compensation in history, ended the earned income tax credit, drastically cut food-stamp eligibility, abolished legal aid appropriations, sharply reduced child care subsidies and greatly increased regressive sales taxes — all to cut taxes for the wealthy. As if it’s no longer thought unworthy to steal from the poor.

• Violated the personal liberty, constitutional privacy and bodily integrity of NC women. Enacted not only the infamous “motorcycle” abortion bill and the nation’s longest waiting period, but also passed a shocking mandatory sonogram law — enlisting a woman’s body, physician and pocketbook in a coercive campaign to intimidate her from the exercise of constitutional rights. Requiring doctors to mouth a state-mandated script, like Stalinist apparatchiks, contrary to their perception of the best interests of their patients.

• Abused legislative power to limit necessary and traditional prerogatives of public and private institutions. Warming to totalitarianism, the General Assembly has threatened, coerced and (sometimes) restructured courts, municipalities, county commissions, universities, community colleges, regulatory commissions, administrative agencies, school boards, unions, legal services programs, corporations, academics, civil servants, lobbyists, journalists and citizens unwilling to bend to the will of its leaders.

• Opened the door to degradation of the environment and natural resources. Sought (notoriously) to limit research on climate change, revoked tax credits for renewable energy, enthusiastically embraced fracking and off-shore drilling, crushed funding for state parks and environmental enforcement, repealed state rules more protective than federal counterparts, crafted sweetheart deals with donors/polluters and changed the Department of Environmental Quality’s mission to “customer service” — seeking to become the least regulated state in the union.

• Embraced government by perjury. Electoral participation was suppressed to stop non-existent voter fraud, HB2 protected against fanciful transgender assault, local elections were overturned to assure democratic accountability, abortions were restricted out of a newly discovered concern for women’s health and tax cuts for the rich were reportedly designed to create prosperity for the poor. It’s hard to see why any political ideology demands its adherents constantly lie about their motivations.

• Perhaps most distressing, ruled as a white people’s party. From their veto-proof legislative caucuses, without a single black member, they repealed the racial justice act, eliminated race discrimination lawsuits, racially gerrymandered legislative districts, made it harder for African-Americans to vote and increased racial segregation in the public schools. Knowing they won’t be able to govern as a white party in a decade, they’ve been in a hurry.

Rarely have so few inflicted so much, so quickly, on so many, with so little justification. Revolution born in malice.

Federal Judge Guts Mississippi License to Discriminate Law

It's been a truly bad day for the Bible thumping crowd.  Between the Supreme Court ruling today striking down Texas' anti-abortion laws and last weeks ruling upholding affirmative action, many among the "godly Christian" white supremacist crowd must be truly having the vapors if not falling down in conniption fits.  Now, as icing on the cake, a federal judge has largely gutted Mississippi's license to discriminate law that made it open season for gay bashing.  In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves held that Mississippi clerks of court cannot cite their own religious beliefs to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.  Oh, the horror!! Christofascsts will not be above the law!!  Kudos to Jude Reeves.  I hope this is the beginning of a line of cases that will hold the "godly folk" to the letter of the law like everyone else.  If performing a CIVIL law marriage so offends their sensibilities, there is a very easy solution: resign from your position as clerk.  The full ruling can be found here.  Here are excerpts from Towleroad on the decision:

A federal judge in Mississippi has ruled that county clerks cannot cite their own religious beliefs as a valid legal reason to deny issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The ruling guts part of Mississippi’s HB 1523, one of the worst religious freedom bills to be passed to date in the United States.

The AP reports: 

[U.S. District Judge Carlton] Reeves is extending his previous order that overturned Mississippi’s ban on same-sex marriage. He says circuit clerks are required to provide equal treatment for all couples, gay or straight.

Mississippi’s religious objections measure, House Bill 1523 , was filed in response to last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage nationwide.

Reeves has not yet ruled in two other lawsuits seeking to block all of the religious objections law, including provisions that could affect schools’ bathroom policies for transgender students.  HB 1523 is set to go into effect this Friday.

The case was argued by Roberta Kaplan, who won the historic Supreme Court DOMA case.  Kaplan, who is representing the Campaign for Southern Equality, argued HB 1523 violates First Amendment separation of church and state. She told CSE after today's ruling, "Judge Reeves reaffirmed the authority of federal courts to say what the United States Constitution means."

It is far past the time that undeserved deference to feigned religious belief as an excuse for bigotry and discrimination cease forever.  In America, the Constitution and the rights it insurers to ALL CITIZENS (not just white Christofascists) is the law of the land.  The Bible, the Koran, and any other half-baked "book of scripture") takes second place.  It is really that simple. 

The Mason-Dixon Line of Progress and Modernity

I have written in the past about the economic cost of embracing backwardness and bigotry.  Here in Virginia, the region of the state that has most strongly embraced backwardness and bigotry is Southwestern Virginia and southern portions of the state extending west from Emporia.   And what is its economic status of these regions?  They are economic basket cases in decline, both economically and socially.  The growing parts of Virginia that have the strongest economies have rejected the racism, celebration of ignorance, and anti-modernity that defines the declining parts of the state.   The decline of the textile and furniture industries and coal have had a severe impact on the regions in economic decline, but their refusal to move into the 21st century have helped to guaranty that new industries  and innovators have decided to locate elsewhere. As a column in the New York Times notes, there is similar divide developing in America.  Not surprisingly, the region embracing backwardness and bigotry includes much of the South, and the Bible Belt in particular.  Increasingly conservative Christianity and progress and prosperity are mutually exclusive.  Here are column excerpts:

Inside the ancient town hall of Siena, Italy, the walls hold a series of magnificent 14th-century frescoes showing the effects of good government and bad. One side depicts a prosperous city-state, where justice and tolerance prevail in the Tuscan countryside. The other is ruled by a horned, fanged figure, the streets deserted and scary.

We saw our own version of this allegory with the two Americas this week — one going backward, the other stepping into tomorrow. We saw a retreat to bigotry in states dooming themselves to decline. And in other states, we saw a way for people to get around a do-nothing Congress controlled by Know-Nothing throwbacks.

First, the good. On Monday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed a bill that will eventually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, lifting the earnings of 2.3 million New Yorkers, and he authorized one of the strongest paid parental leave laws in the nation. On the same day, Gov. Jerry Brown of California put his signature to a $15 minimum wage plan in the most populous state. Then San Francisco became the first place in the United States to require businesses to provide paid leave for new parents.

What had seemed impossible just a few years ago is now rolling through cities and states led by forward-looking politicians. Together, these changes amount to a “revolution in the workplace,” as one exultant activist put it. But let’s not get too excited: The United States remains the only developed country in the world that does not mandate paid parental leave.

Now, the bad. Following North Carolina’s lead, another state, Mississippi, passed a law allowing people and institutions to deny services to gay people. With this measure, Mississippi, already one of the poorest states in the nation, ensures that good job providers will stay away.

Next door, in Alabama, the embattled Republican governor signed a bill earlier this year preventing cities from raising the minimum wage. This after Birmingham dared to dream of a day when its lowest-paid workers could make $10 an hour.

Nearly all the states with the highest percentage of minimum wage workers — full-time jobholders making $290 a week, before taxes — are in the South. These are also the same states that refuse to expand Medicaid to allow the working poor to get health care. And it’s in the same cradle of the old Confederacy where discriminatory bills are rising. Don’t blame the cities; from Birmingham to Charlotte, people are trying to open doors to higher wages and tolerance of gays, only to be rebuffed at the state level.

Essentially, this Republican-controlled block has decided that it’s better to be poor, sick and bigoted than prosperous, healthy and open-minded. And its defense is precisely that: The region is too economically distressed and socially backward to accept progress, so why change? Discrimination, as they see it, is just another term for religious freedom.

Lifting wages for low-end workers and bringing the United States into the 21st century on family leave should be no-brainers. And yet, Congress refuses to move on President Obama’s call for paid parental leave for federal employees, and will not raise the minimum wage beyond the paltry $7.25 an hour.

Being LGBT is not a choice.  Embracing ignorance and clinging to childhood religious brainwashing is a choice.  These regions that embrace backwardness deserve to decline.  Hopefully, smart, progressive people will flee for more enlightened regions and these cesspools of ignorance and bigotry will become increasingly marginalized - which is precisely what they deserve.  

U.S. Supreme Court Unanimously Reverses Alabama’s Anti-Gay Adoption Ruling

As if members of the LGBT community needed any more proof of how important it is that an anti-gay Republican NOT be elected to the White House in November, yesterday, the United States Supreme Court unanimously reversed an Alabama Supreme Court decision refusing to recognize a lesbian mother’s prior adoption of her three children. As a result of the ruling, the adoptive mother's rights to the children were restored.  The sad truth is that in a majority of states LGBT individuals and same sex couples continue to face bigotry and discrimination - always at the hands of god professing Christians and their political whores - with the federal courts being the only ultimate source of protection.  A press release from the Center for Lesbian Rights looks at this very important ruling.  Here are highlights:

(Washington, DC, March 7, 2016)—Today, the United States Supreme Court unanimously reversed an Alabama Supreme Court decision refusing to recognize a lesbian mother’s prior adoption of her three children in Georgia. Today’s summary reversal restores V.L. full rights as an adoptive parent.

“I am overjoyed that the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Alabama court decision,” said the adoptive mother, V.L. “I have been my children’s mother in every way for their whole lives. I thought that adopting them meant that we would be able to be together always. When the Alabama court said my adoption was invalid and I wasn’t their mother, I didn’t think I could go on. The Supreme Court has done what’s right for my family.”

“The Supreme Court’s reversal of Alabama’s unprecedented decision to void an adoption from another state is a victory not only for our client but for thousands of adopted families,” said National Center for Lesbian Rights Family Law Director Cathy Sakimura, who is representing V.L. “No adoptive parent or child should have to face the uncertainty and loss of being separated years after their adoption just because another state’s court disagrees with the law that was applied in their adoption.”

V.L and E.L. were in a long-term same-sex relationship in which they planned for and raised three children together, using donor insemination. To ensure that both had secure parental rights, V.L., the non-biological mother, adopted the couples’ three children in Georgia in 2007, with E.L.’s support and written consent. When the two later broke up, E.L. kept V.L. from seeing the children, fighting her request for visitation, and arguing that the Georgia adoption was invalid in Alabama, where they live.

In September 2015, the Alabama Supreme Court issued an order refusing to recognize V.L.’s Georgia adoption and declaring that it is “void.” 

Before this ruling, no state supreme court had refused to recognize a same-sex parent’s adoption from another state—or any out-of-state adoption—based on a disagreement with how the court issuing the adoption interpreted its own adoption laws. Under the United States Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, states are required to respect court judgments, including adoption orders, issued by courts in other states. V.L.’s request said “this Court’s review of the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision is urgently needed” because “the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision flouts a century of precedent on the Full Faith and Credit Clause and will have a devastating impact on Alabama adoptive families.”

In December 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the Alabama court’s decision, allowing V.L. to have visitation with her children while the Court considered her case.

Kansas Teacher Won’t Resign After Showing Anti-Gay Bullying Film

Conway Springs Middle School - things are rotten in Kansas

In a recent post I noted how a new study has documented that children raised in religious homes are less kind and less generous than those raised in secular homes, thus disproving the myth that religion is a positive force for better social behavior.  Events in Kansas show where these children get their nastiness from: their parents and churches. After seeing disturbing anti-gay behavior in his classes, Tom Leahy, a teacher at Conway Springs Middle School, showed the movie Love Is All You Need? in which same-sex relationships are conventional and a young girl is picked on for being heterosexual. The film culminates in the fictional heterosexual protagonist killing herself as a result of the bullying.   As one might expect, the "godly folk" went ape shit and demanded Leahy's resignation.   Leahy has decided that he will not cooperate and will force the school system to face the situation head on and hopefully in the process show the ugliness of the "godly Christian" crowd and the hate and bigotry that define them.  Here are highlights from The Raw Story:

Kansas schoolteacher says he has changed his mind about resigning after showing a graphic anti-bullying short film to his history class, which led to vociferous complaints from parents.
The Wichita Eagle reported that Tom Leahy, a teacher at Conway Springs Middle School, was expected to hand in his resignation after showing Love Is All You Need? to three eighth-grade history classes (which would normally contain children aged 13 to 14). The 19-minute satirical film depicts a society in which same-sex relationships are conventional and a young girl is picked on for being heterosexual. The film, directed by Kim Rocco Shields and produced in 2011, culminates in the fictional protagonist killing herself.

Leahy has been on leave since 21 October and was expected to resign at a Conway Springs school board meeting on 9 November. Yesterday, he cancelled a joint press conference with the school superintendent and said he did not plan to resign . He told the Eagle: “There’s a lot of people who don’t want me to give up on this. People I don’t even know … I’d like to have the chance to tell [the school board] my side of things.”

Leahy said he decided to show the film after some of his students demonstrated disturbing anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender behavior during a history class exercise in which different groups were asked to draw up a bill of rights for their fictional “colony”. He said: “I was expecting fairly positive kinds of colonies … But it just kind of got twisted around … Then the issue of gay v straight came up, and a lot of them were not allowing gays into their colony and stuff like that … There were some hard feelings. Kids were getting upset.”

According to Leahy, parents’ complaints were made to the school principal and superintendent, focusing on the graphic nature of the film’s ending and a scene emphasising the Catholic church’s inflexibility.

On being contacted by the Eagle, superintendent Clay Murphy said he couldn’t comment directly because it was a personnel matter.

The hypocrisy of these parents, of course, is that their little darlings see all kinds of graphic violence all the time on television and in movies.  The real issue is that this movie challenges the religious faith fantasy world these folks live in and shows that their self-proclaimed piety is a lie and that they are actually modern day Pharisees. If you want to find someone truly decent and moral, more often than not, you will not find them in the church pews, especially in right wing and "conservative" denominations.

Trump, Alabama and the ghost of George Wallace

Donald Trump continues to play to the racism that has become one of the strongest undercurrents of today's Republican Party.   Not surprisingly, he found a sizable audience in Mobile, Alabama last night, albeit only about half the numbers Trump had boasted about prior to the event.  I lived in Mobile for four years over three decades ago and in many ways the state is more extreme now than it was back then.  I continue to wonder what is being added to the drinking water.  Perhaps the only good news is that Trumps cavalcade of racism drew a smaller crowd than expected.  Perhaps there is still hope for Alabama.  Here are highlights on the spectacle from Politico:

MOBILE, Ala. — It was immigration, not segregation, that brought some 20,000 southerners — far fewer than predicted — out for Donald Trump on Friday night, but the ghost of George Wallace loomed large.

Wallace, an avowed segregationist, was the last presidential candidate to win electoral votes as a third-party candidate. The threat of Trump doing so, propelled by a hardline immigration stance that many have condemned as racist, looms over the Republican Party now as it did over the Democratic Party then, even as the enthusiasm of his following, for once, fell far short of expectations.

Trump also panned birthright citizenship as a bad deal for the U.S., saying, “We’re the only place just about that’s stupid enough to do it.” Trump’s recently released immigration plan calls for ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, according to the legal consensus, though Trump disputes that point.

Trump invited Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, one of Congress’s most ardent immigration hardliners who helped the businessman craft his immigration plan, to the podium, where the two embraced.

He also attacked his favorite punching bag, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, on the issue. “ Jeb Bush, ugh,” said Trump, pausing for dramatic effect, before calling the former governor “totally in favor of Common Core, weak on immigration.”

There were also vestiges of Wallace’s Alabama, including on the sample editions of “The First Freedom” newspaper one man handed out to drivers as they entered the parking lot. The paper’s front page included a story about “black-on-white crime in South Carolina” and an editor’s note about German media’s silence about “the actual programs these peaceful ‘neo-nazis’ stand for.”

The vast majority of supporters where white: of over 1,000 people waiting to enter on the east of the Ladd Peebles Stadium at 5 p.m., eight were black.

Marty Hughes, 47, wore a camouflage hat with Confederate flag detailing and said he liked Trump’s stances on immigration and taxes. He called the removal this year of Confederate flags from government property across much of the South “stupidity” and said he didn’t think a President Trump would stand for it.

[T]he city said it expected 40,000 supporters at the rally, but various media outlets estimated that the total was in the ballpark of 15-20,000, leaving the stadium looking less than half full.