GOP Extremist Narrowly Wins North Carolina 9th District

With North Carolina roughly 30 miles or less from where I set, like many in Southeast Virginia and along Virginia's southern border, I pay attention to North Carolina politics particularly since the state has veered to the far right and made itself hostile to LGBT individuals. Thus, seeing the architect of North Carolina's anti-transgender bathroom bill - who was backed by anti-LGBT and anti-Muslim organizations and white supremacist groups - narrowly win (after rallies by both Trump and Pence to rally the ugliest elements of the right) doesn't make me want to visit that state anytime soon. The loss for Democrats suggests that the party's base still doesn't grasp the need to get out and vote in every election, not just presidential elections.  That said, the silver liming may be that Dan Bishop barely squeaked by in a district Trump won by almost 12 points in 2016.  A piece in Politico looks at why Bishop's win should not necessarily make Republicans hopeful for 2020.  Here are highlights:

Republicans went all-in to keep hold of a key congressional district in a special election Tuesday, and they won — but they still have good reason to be concerned about the result.

While the GOP can celebrate the election of a new congressman, Dan Bishop, his 2-point victory in a district President Donald Trump carried by 12 points in 2016 continues a worrisome trend for the party, which suffered heavy losses in the 2018 midterms and has not seen the political environment improve as Trump gears up for reelection.

Tuesday’s results outlined the path to 2020 victory for both parties, cut along the fundamental trend of politics in the Trump era: cities and suburbs swinging more and more Democratic, while the president’s appeal brings exurbs and rural voters deeper into the GOP fold. Trump pushed harder on one side of the scale to win in 2016; Democrats pushed back on the other side to take the House last year. And next year, it will decide whether Trump gets another term or a Democrat takes the White House for four years.

Trump’s election-eve rally for Bishop brought thousands to Fayetteville on Monday night on the eastern edge of the district, and it’s hard to argue with results: McCready had carried the surrounding county, Cumberland County, by more than 4 percentage points last year. But Bishop won it by the narrowest of margins on Tuesday, also making improvements in neighboring counties far from the Charlotte suburbs where McCready was strongest.

“The rest of the party is going to live or die based on how the president, in ’20, performs,” said Patrick Sebastian, a GOP consultant in the state. “If Trump can win North Carolina by a point or two, that’s excellent news for party.”

Meanwhile, Democrats were quick to find the silver lining in McCready’s narrow defeat. Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), the chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee noted that there are nearly three dozen GOP-held House seats that are less Republican-leaning than North Carolina’s 9th District.

“We fell an inch short tonight, but it took more than $6 million in outside Republican spending and a last-minute Trump rally to scrape by in a district that the president carried by 11.9 points,” Bustos said.

“If we don’t connect with rural voters — if we don’t show up in 2020 and win these places back — then Trump wins,” Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, tweeted late Tuesday night.

Republicans were quick to trumpet the success of their coordinated effort — from last-minute visits from Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, all the way down to the congressional leaders and the constellation of official and outside groups and super PACs — in pushing Bishop across the finish line.

That may not be replicable in November 2020 all the way down the ballot. But Trump’s robust campaign operation — which he continues to build as Democrats fight for their party’s nomination — will be formidable, despite the president’s low political standing compared to past incumbents.

“We may not have won this campaign, but that does not mean we were wrong,” McCready said in his concession speech. “And as long as there are people who thrive off our division, there is still work to be done.”

Republican Appointees Are Corroding the Foundations of Democracy.

The main agenda of today's Republican Party is to retain power while thwarting the will of the majority of voters in the USA.  This agenda is being pushed in multiple ways, including voter disenfranchisement, gerrymandering and, increasingly, by politicizing the federal judiciary with unfit appointees who place political partisanship ahead above the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.  Frighteningly, with the U.S. Senate controlled by Republicans - who seemingly hold as much regard for American democracy as the Vichy French did for maintaining the democracy of the French Third Republic - it is near impossible for Democrats to block these ideologues who are set on thwarting the will of the people. A column in the New York Times looks at this insidious assault of democracy itself and the ruling of GOP appointee U. S. District Court Judge Reed O'Connor who issued a ruling striking down the Affordable Health Care Act.  O'Connor has previously issued rulings (i) upholding anti-transgender "bathroom bills," (ii) barring same sex couples from family medical leave benefits and (iii) and allowing physicians to refuse to treat LGBT individuals.  Here are column highlights:

The midterm elections were, to an important extent, a referendum on the Affordable Care Act; health care, not Donald Trump, dominated Democratic campaigning. And voters delivered a clear verdict: They want Obamacare’s achievements, the way it expanded coverage to roughly 20 million people who would otherwise have been uninsured, to be sustained.

But on Friday, Reed O’Connor, a partisan Republican judge known for “weaponizing” his judicial power, declared the A.C.A. as a whole — protection for pre-existing conditions, subsidies to help families afford coverage, and the Medicaid expansion — unconstitutional. Legal experts from both right and left ridiculed his reasoning and described his ruling as “raw political activism.” And that ruling probably won’t be sustained by higher courts.

But don’t be too sure that his sabotage will be overturned. O’Connor’s abuse of power may be unusually crude, but that sort of behavior is becoming increasingly common. And it’s not just health care, nor is it just the courts. What Nancy Pelosi called the “monstrous endgame” of the Republican assault on health care is just the leading edge of an attack on multiple fronts, as the G.O.P. tries to overturn the will of the voters and undermine democracy in general.

Rule of law depends not just on what is written down, but also on the behavior of those who interpret and enforce that rule. If these people don’t regard themselves as servants of the law first, partisans second, if they won’t subordinate their political goals to their duty to preserve the system, laws become meaningless and only power matters.

And what we’re seeing in America — what we’ve actually been seeing for years, although much of the news media and political establishment has refused to acknowledge it — is an invasion of our institutions by right-wing partisans whose loyalty is to party, not principle. This invasion is corroding the Republic, and the corrosion is already very far advanced.

I say “right-wing” advisedly. There are bad people in both parties, as there are in all walks of life. But the parties are structurally different. The Democratic Party is a loose coalition of interest groups, but the modern Republican Party is dominated by “movement conservatism,” a monolithic structure held together by big money — often deployed stealthily — and the closed intellectual ecosystem of Fox News and other partisan media. And the people who rise within this movement are, to a far greater degree than those on the other side, apparatchiks, political loyalists who can be counted on not to stray from the party line.

Republicans have been stuffing the courts with such people for decades; O’Connor was appointed by George W. Bush. That’s why his ruling, no matter how bad the legal reasoning, wasn’t a big surprise.

[I]t’s not just the courts. Even as Trump and his allies spin fantasies about sabotage by the “deep state,” the reality is that a growing number of positions in government agencies are being occupied by right-wing partisans who care nothing, or actively oppose, their agencies’ missions. The Environmental Protection Agency is now run by people who don’t want to protect the environment, Health and Human Services by people who want to deny Americans health care.

The same takeover by apparatchiks is taking place in politics. Remember when the role of the Senate was supposed to be to “advise and consent”? Under Republican control it’s just plain consent — there is almost literally nothing Trump can do, up to and including clear evidence of corruption and criminality, that will induce [GOP] senators from his party to exercise any kind of oversight.

So how do people who think and behave this way respond when the public rejects their agenda? They attempt to use their power to overrule the democratic process.

When Democrats win despite election rigging, they strip the offices Democrats win of power, as they did in Wisconsin. When Democratic policies prevail despite all of that, they use apparatchik-stuffed courts to strike down legislation on the flimsiest of grounds.

As David Frum, the author of “Trumpocracy,” warned a year ago: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” That’s happening as we speak.

So Pelosi was right about Reed O’Connor’s ruling being a symptom of a “monstrous endgame,” but the game in question isn’t just about perpetuating the assault on health care, it’s about assaulting democracy in general. And the current state of the endgame is probably just the beginning; the worst, I fear, is yet to come.

Voter Backlash to Trump, Bathroom Law Put North Carolina GOP at risk

Teachers protesting North Carolina GOP policies harmful to public schools.

Few states have witness the toxic policies that occur when Republicans control the state legislature than North Carolina where the GOP controlled legislature has pandered shamelessly to Christofascists while ignoring the interest of the business community, engaged in racially based gerrymandering and slashed public education funding.  The irony is that until a few years ago, North Carolina was largely a middle of the road state that prided itself on being open for business and moderation.  Then came the GOP/Christofascist effort to use anti-LGBT animus and promises to Christian extremists to take control of the legislature.  Now, the backlash to Republican over reach and foul policies may be about to sweep over the state, aid by large scale hatred of the Trump/Pence regime.   A Piece in the Washington Post looks at a trend that one can only hope will damage the North Carolina GOP severely in November.  Here are highlights:

APEX, N.C. — The owner of a small vodka distillery near this traditionally Republican enclave in suburban Raleigh says he is so fed up with GOP leadership in the state capital that he took leave from his job to try to defeat a state senator.

A popular local weatherman in the state’s Appalachian Mountains with no experience in politics threw himself into a race to unseat a four-term GOP member of the state House.

And the daughter of a legendary former governor is taking her first crack at a run for office by challenging a Charlotte-area state House Republican with a promise to renew the legacy of her father, Jim Hunt, as a champion for education funding.

An unusual political battle is raging across North Carolina, where national and state Democrats have recruited an army of candidates and are pouring millions of dollars into a campaign to loosen a years-long Republican grip on a state legislature that has turned an otherwise evenly split state into a bastion for some of the country’s most conservative laws. Among them: a limit on transgender access to bathrooms that was ultimately repealed under pressure from business leaders, congressional district maps that courts have ruled were designed to curtail the voting power of African Americans and education spending levels that have sparked mass protests at the state Capitol.

The campaign reflects an often-overlooked subplot of the Democratic Party’s broader push to engineer a “blue wave” across the country in the November midterms — tapping into voter anger over President Trump as well as Republican policies on school funding, taxes and health care to chip away at GOP dominance in state capitals.

And Republican candidates must contend with President Trump’s unpopularity among Democrats as well as unaffiliated voters, whose numbers have been growing dramatically in recent years.

While they [Democrats] face steep odds in their quest to win the legislature outright, some Republicans here have begun to acknowledge their party appears increasingly likely to lose the veto-proof supermajorities that have been key to much of their success in thwarting [Governor] Cooper. For that, Democrats must pick up just four seats in the House and six seats in the Senate.

“If you’re a Republican and you’re not nervous, you should be,” said Carter Wrenn, a longtime GOP operative in the state who made his name working for the late senator Jesse Helms.

Democrats sense a potential voter backlash over what they call Republican overreach on a range of issues — from the bathroom bill and gerrymandering to a new push by GOP lawmakers to block the governor’s power to appoint judges, the state electoral board and other executive-branch panels. Democrats have recruited candidates to run in all 170 legislative districts for the first time that anyone can remember, with the party’s Break the Majority political committee hiring 70 full-time field organizers and banking nearly $6 million — enough to put its spending on par with state Republicans for the first time in a decade.

Indivisible, the grass roots organization that formed after Trump’s election, has launched a “Flip NC” campaign targeting 20 seats in the House and 10 in the Senate.

For Democrats to succeed this year, they will need voters like Marla Sloane, 60, a registered Republican who runs an Internet business selling novelty items from her home. Sloane showed up last week at a meet-and-greet for Searcy, the Democrat running for Senate.

“I don’t hear any state Republicans saying, ‘We’re standing up against ‘Trump,’” said Sloane, who voted for GOP presidential nominees John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 but could not get herself to vote for Trump. “I think this is a very scary time in America where we’re trying to make sense out of crazy. And I don’t see anyone standing up at the state level saying, ‘This isn’t right.’”

I hope the Democrat effort succeeds.  Similar hatred for Trump and racist and Christian extremist backed policy in large part set the stage for the Democrat sweep in Virginia in 2017.

Did Gillespie Lie to the Northern Virginia Chamber?

GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie, a/k/a Enron Ed, seemingly will say anything to win endorsements even if it involves lying.  Desperate to secure the endorsement of the Northern Virginia Chamber, Gillespie privately promised to veto any anti-transgender bathroom that might come to him if he is elected governor next month.  That promise, of course, is directly opposite of the promise Gillespie has made to the Christofascists who weld huge influence within the GOP base in Virginia, best embodied by The Family Foundation ("TFF"), a virulently anti-gay, anti-transgender which vigorously opposes any legal protections for LGBT Virginians and which, if given its way, would bring back the sodomy laws struck down in 2003 by the Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.  It is most disturbing that the leadership of the Northern Virginia Chamber fell for Gillespie's lie - or was all they cared about Gillespie's promised tax cuts that would most favor large corporations and the wealthy?  Don't be surprised when Gillespie breaks his promise after TFF president Victoria Cobb takes him to the woodshed tomorrow, if not sooner. The Washington Post looks at how Gillespie duped the Northern Virginia Chamber:

Republican Ed Gillespie won the endorsement of an influential Northern Virginia business group after privately assuring members that he would oppose any bills dictating which bathrooms transgender people must use — a new promise that shocked conservative backers.

The gubernatorial candidate “vowed to oppose bills like North Carolina’s HB2 that would threaten Virginia’s reputation as an open and welcoming Commonwealth,” Jim Corcoran, president of the Northern Virginia Chamber, said in a written statement announcing the endorsement by its political action arm, NOVABIZPAC.

In an interview Friday, Corcoran said Gillespie promised to oppose similar legislation two weeks ago, during a private interview with the 25-member board. He said that position factored into the board’s decision to back Gillespie over his Democratic rival, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, who has long supported LGBT rights. Corcoran said Gillespie made the vow after the board expressed concerns about HB2.

“We stated that we are an open and welcoming state here, we don’t want anything that is going to persuade persons that this is not a conducive place to do business,” Corcoran said.

But when the General Assembly considered a bathroom bill in January, Gillespie did not come out clearly for or against it. Rather, his campaign issued a statement that seemed aimed at having it both ways — echoing concerns raised by the bill’s advocates and taking a swipe at an Obama administration restroom directive, while also suggesting the matter should be left up to localities. Gillespie used stronger language — with no nod to local control that could be construed as opposition to state bathroom bills — at a Republican gathering in Amherst in April. This isn’t about bathrooms alone,” he [Gillespie] said, repeating warnings about co-ed showers and hotel stays. “And the fact is, we have to make clear, that we are going to protect our children from that. We are not going to allow for that to happen.”

If those statements were meant to convey Gillespie’s opposition to bathroom bills, that was lost on Don Blake, president of the Virginia Christian Alliance. He was surprised and upset to learn that Gillespie was promising to oppose that sort of legislation.

“It’s a very dangerous thing to speak out on positions that offend your base,” said Blake, who said he worked hard on Gillespie’s unsuccessful U.S. Senate bid in 2014.

“I’ve spent . . . a lot of time with him, talking about his Catholic faith, and he believes in the same things I believe in. He’s pro-life and pro-marriage,” he said. “To make a statement like that to get an endorsement from a business group will disappoint a lot of people. . . . It weakens your support. It doesn’t mean the base won’t go vote for him, but they may not put up yard signs and make phone calls.”

The PAC also endorsed state Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel (R-Fauquier) over former federal prosecutor Justin Fairfax (D) in the race for lieutenant governor. And it backed Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D), who is running for reelection, over Republican challenger John Adams. . . .

Given Gillespie's career as a lobbyist, often lobbying on behalf of crooked corporations and unsavory types, it should come as no surprise that he'd be only too happy to lie to the Northern Virginia Chamber .  Anyone who believes Gillespie's promise is a fool.   Look at the anti-LGBT policies of Der Trumpenführer if you want to know what Gillespie really stands for.

Pro-Trump Evangelical Leaders Release Anti-LGBT Statement

As Donald Trump, a/k/a, Der Trumpenführer, continues his anti-LGBT policies, a core group of evangelical Christians who have supported Trump with few exceptions have worked to ratchet up anti-LGBT hysteria, including by pushing for so-called bathroom bills to target transgender students.  Now, these same hate merchants have released an anti-LGBT manifesto that seeks to further malign and denigrate LGBT individuals.  I'm sure one side motivation is to use this latest assault on LGBT citizens to raise money, the true god of these individuals, by further hyping the treat that LGBT individuals pose to the safety of women and children and "religious liberty" which translates as the right to abuse whomever one desires. A piece in Huffington Post looks at this latest message of hatred.  Here are story excerpts:

A coalition of over 150 evangelical leaders released a manifesto on Tuesday reiterating their belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Titled the “Nashville Statement,” the document also asserts that God created two distinct sexes, that sex should only occur within the bounds of heterosexual marriage, and that “it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism.”

The statement emerged out of a meeting convened by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood on Friday at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission’s annual conference in Nashville. It consists of 14 statements of affirmation and denial relating to human sexuality.

For instance, Article 7 of the statement reads:

WE AFFIRM that self-conception as male or female should be defined by God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption as revealed in Scripture.  WE DENY that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.

Nashville mayor Megan Barry tweeted Tuesday criticizing the coalition for using her city’s name in a statement of exclusion.

Among the signers were many prominent and influential evangelical leaders, including Steve Gaines, president of The Southern Baptist Convention, Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. Perkins was also reportedly one of the architect’s behind President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender service members. Though several Christian denominations, including the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), have affirmed same-sex marriage in recent years, the Southern Baptist Convention has been squarely and unwaveringly opposed to anything other than heterosexual marriage. [C]ritics in the Christian community noted the bizarre and even “callous” timing of the document’s release and warned that it would do more harm than good:
 "To release it in the direct aftermath of Charlottesville, in the throes of Harvey, is a gross example of pastoral & leadership malpractice." “I am confident that future generations will look back at this resolution and see it as despicable as we do former Southern Baptist statements promoting slavery and segregation.”  

Meanwhile, Ann Coulter - who looks like an anorexic drag queen - used using Twitter to insinuate that “Houston electing a lesbian mayor” is a more likely explanation for Hurricane Harvey than climate change.

The Southern Baptist Convention has a long and ugly history.  Its treatment of LGBT people is in many ways a continuation of its support for slavery and then the Jim Crow laws.  If one isn't a white, heterosexual evangelical Christian, you aren't entitled to civil rights or deemed human.  It's a horrible denomination and, thankfully, its membership is falling.  

The Real "Gay Agenda"

One hears ad nausea from the Christofascists - who ARE seeking special rights to discriminate and be above the law - about the so-called "gay agenda."  These "godly folk" who are motivated mostly by hatred of others and a fear of modernity itself - science and knowledge that raise questions as to the truth of the myth based world view must be stamped out - project on gays what they themselves are guilty of.  For gays, all we want is (i) to have the same rights as others, and (ii) to enjoy the same level of safety from violence and bigotry that Christians have enjoyed for over two centuries in America.  There truly is no other "gay agenda."   A column in the New York Times by a transgender author looks at the aspects of this gay agenda as Christian zealots in Texas seek to enact a special anti-transgender law through a special session of the Texas legislature.  Read the piece and decide who is really seeking special rights.  It's not the LGBT community.  Here are excerpts:

My wife and I spent the morning riding our bicycles to the beach. It was a beautiful day. Seals dived in the surf, a couple played Kadima with their grandchildren, and Deirdre and I lay in the sun.

We celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary this summer. Our sons are in their 20s now. One is working as an actor. The other is an engineering student, researching the effects of lasers on glass. Both of them called us that day, to say hi, and that they loved us.

Meanwhile, in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott opened a special session of the Legislature, during which Republicans will attempt to portray me, and transgender people like me, as sexual predators. The legislature is expected to vote once again on a bill to restrict which bathrooms transgender Texans can use.

Somehow, during my time in the ladies room, the republic had failed to collapse.

I hear a lot about the “gay agenda” in my work as an advocate for L.G.B.T. people. Sometimes I hear that we are agitating for “special rights.”

Which — let’s be honest — is true. I do want special rights.

I want the special right, for instance, to not be beaten or murdered by ignorant bigots. At least 15 transgender women have been killed so far this year for the crime of being themselves.

I want the special right not to be fired from my job. In 28 states, it’s perfectly legal to terminate an employee because you don’t like the gender of the person that he or she is in love with. In others, gay employees are protected, but trans ones aren’t. In some states, it is even illegal for local governments to pass or enforce anti-discrimination laws.

I want the special right to not be homeless. In this country, an estimated 1.6 million young people experience homelessness each year; 40 percent of them are L.G.B.T. A third of the homeless queer young people ran away from home because they faced physical, emotional or sexual abuse.

I want the special right to be able to turn on the television, or go to the movies, and see, maybe just once, a person like myself on the screen. I mean someone other than a murder victim in a crime show, or a straight, cisgender actor getting a trophy honoring his bravery for pretending — ineptly — to be someone like me, or trans people being interviewed on talk shows as if gender transition is something as distant as the moon . . . .
I want the special right to open up the newspaper and not have to read one more clever “think piece” in which the humanity of people like me is held up for public debate.

What I want above all, is the special right to be left alone, and to be considered half of just one more unextraordinary American couple — just as the two of us were as we sat at the bar watching the ocean and drinking our beers.

You’d think that most of this would be common sense — that protecting American citizens from violence and unemployment and homelessness would be something we’d all agree upon. You’d think that respecting the privacy and humanity of some of the country’s most vulnerable souls would be a common goal.

But then, maybe you didn’t know that in the last six months the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services have already withdrawn or revised policies or proposals meant to protect L.G.B.T. Americans. Maybe you didn’t know that the governor and lieutenant governor of Texas feel that the state is so endangered by the prospect of leaving transgender people alone that they felt it necessary to call a special session of the Legislature to enshrine discrimination against us into state law. Maybe you didn’t know that Vice President Mike Pence has said that gay parents like me bring about “societal collapse” and the “deterioration of marriage and family.”

But you should.

The number of Americans who continue to have no idea that 28 states allow gays to be fired at will simply for being LGBT is staggering.  Here in Virginia, the vast majority support unemployment non-discrimination protections yet every year bills that would add such protections are defeated by Republicans yielding to the demands of The Family Foundation, Virginia's largest hate group which masquerades as a "Christian" "family values" organization.  Are hatred of others and the desire to have the freedom to mistreat others "family values"?  When you hear the bleating of Christofascists about special rights, please remember that it is they, not the gays, who are demanding them. 

 

GOP Bills in Arkansas Would Make It "Illegal to be Transgender"

With all the serious and pressing issues facing states and the nation, one would think that Republicans would have more important things to do than continue their anti-transgender jihad.  But that assumption would be wrong in many states - including Virginia, home of Side Show Bob Marshall - but especially so in Arkansas where pending GOP bills would make being transgender more or less illegal and set individuals up for fines and jail time.  Can't you just feel the "Christian love" behind these bills introduced to pander to Christofascists?  A piece in Salon looks at the anti-transgender animus at work.  Here are excerpts:

The clock is ticking on a trio of bills that LGBT advocates in Arkansas claim would make it effectively “illegal to be transgender” in the state.

Republicans have until March 31, which marks the end of the 2017 legislative session, to pass House Bill 1986, Senate Bill 774 and House Bill 1894 before these proposals are tabled for the year. SB 774, known as the Arkansas Physical Privacy and Safety Act, is similar to North Carolina’s controversial HB 2. It forces trans people in the state to use public restrooms that correspond to the gender listed on their birth certificate when entering government buildings and other entities owned by the state. That legislation is currently awaiting a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

That bill has been opposed by the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau, which has warned that legalizing discrimination could trigger massive economic backlash in the state. After passing HB 2 exactly a year ago, North Carolina has lost an estimated $600 million in revenue . . .

The bathroom bill, though, is just the tip of the iceberg. Further legislation being pushed by conservative lawmakers threatens to target trans individuals by making it extraordinarily difficult to be in public at all.

Often referred to as the “bathroom bill lite,” HB 1986 actually goes further than the Physical Privacy and Safety Act by allowing individuals to bring charges against trans people for “indecent exposure.” Such actions are already a crime under Arkansas law, but HB 1986 would expand existing law on the subject. The bill defines indecent exposure as an instance in which an individual “knowingly exposes his or her sex organs to a person of the opposite biological sex: (A) In a public place or in public view; or (B) Under circumstances in which the person could reasonably believe the conduct is likely to cause affront or alarm.”

“If a transgender man has top surgery, his chest could be viewed as a sexual organ, according to the the language used on the bill. Anywhere his chest is in public view — like at a public pool or going to a spa — he could be in violation of the law and be arrested.”

Under HB 1986, trans people could face a hefty fine, as well as jail time, if another individual feels that the alleged assailant has exposed themselves in a way that would cause “affront or alarm.” If convicted of indecent exposure, transgender folks in the state would be subjected to a $2,500 penalty, in addition to a maximum sentence of a year in prison.

A third anti-trans bill has been reintroduced after being voted down by the House Committee on Public Health, Welfare, and Labor earlier this month. HB 1894 would bar transgender people from amending their birth certificates to match their gender identity. “If I decided I don’t want to be white, well, do I get to pick my race?” asked Representative Mickey Gates, who authored the legislation, . . .

Should this bill become the law of the land, it would be next to impossible for any trans person in Arkansas to escape the aforementioned cycle of legal harassment and criminalization. Gwen Fry, president of the Arkansas Transgender Equality Coalition, argued that these bills are an attempt to “legislate the trans community out of existence.”

Religious Views on Gender Laws Are at Odds With Science

A few weeks ago Katie Couric did an excellent documentary on the National Geographic Channel called "Gender Revolution" that looked at the science on transgender individuals.   The show should be mandatory viewing for every Republican member of Congress, every Republican in state legislatures, and every right wing hate spewing "Christian" pastor (Christian is in quotation marks since these pastors are the antithesis of Christian behavior).  Among other things, the show looked at medical science's knowledge of in vitro development of fetuses and how hormones influence not only outward physical gender, but also how one perceives their gender internally.  It is this hormonal influence and interplay that causes some to be born outwardly one gender when internally they deem themsevlse the opposite gender of their bodies.  Something similar happens to gays and lesbians that causes what the "godly folk" deem to be sinful attraction to those of the same sex. Science and medicine tell us that there is nothing "wrong" about these attractions and internal feelings of gender.  They are natural phenomenon and no "choice" is involved in such individuals love or view themselves.  Only religion - specifically Abrahamic religions that trace their origins to myths propounded by uneducated Bronze Age herders - says that same sex attraction and/or gender identity are wrong.  Sadly, rather than admit these truths and the reality of the source of their beliefs, the  "godly folk" who are in my view desperate to maintain their make believe fantasy world, reject science and medical knowledge and cling to ignorance.  In the process, they condemn gays, lesbians, and the transgender.  A column in Time bu a judge and former Justice Department official looks at the fallacy of applying religious belief to the issue of gender.  Here are highlights:

A person’s biological sex seems simple but is deceptively complex. It appears to be binary: An XX chromosomal pair is female, and an XY chromosomal pair is male. Doctors look at a newborn’s genitalia, pronounce the baby a boy or a girl, and the birth certificate reflects that sex assignment.

Deep-seated religious beliefs, cultural constructs, the regulation of sports (such as the rules confronted by Texas high-school wrestler Mack Beggs) and recent laws are premised on the bedrock belief that each of us is either a man or a woman. Yet the reality is that today in the United States alone there are approximately one million people who — from the moment of birth — cannot clearly be defined as either male or female.

This physiological truth is unrelated to whether someone is straight, gay or transgender. Many individuals are born with sex chromosome, endocrine or hormonal irregularities, and their birth certificates are inaccurate because in the United States birth records are not designed to allow doctors to designate an ambiguous sex. Countless people likely have no idea that they fall into this group. The more we learn about our DNA, the more that biological sex — from the moment of conception — looks like an intricate continuum and less like two tidy boxes. This understanding makes it virtually impossible for judges to consistently apply a law that permits or prohibits conduct based on whether someone is a man or a woman.

On February 22, the Trump Administration reversed the Obama policy [on transgender students]. Since President Trump was elected, Alabama, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming lawmakers have introduced legislation that would determine access to public restrooms and changing rooms based on one’s assigned sex at birth.

The most prominent case that has been in the crosshairs of this debate is G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board (“Grimm”), which challenges a Virginia school board’s policy that requires students to use bathrooms according to biological sex.

Many people share the ubiquitous notion that biological sex falls into two, mutually exclusive categories. In 2009 my perspective changed when I read an article written by a woman who learned shortly after marriage that she and her husband couldn’t have biological children because she had an XY chromosomal pairing. While she looked like a woman, and she and her parents had always believed she was female, from a genetic standpoint she was a man. The article was published the year after California passed Prop 8, a version of DOMA.

I was curious whether her situation was an obscure medical anomaly that was statistically and legally irrelevant. It wasn’t. A regularly cited 1991 study of nearly 35,000 newborn children found that 1 in 426 did not have strictly XX or XY chromosomes. In addition, the World Health Organization reports that 1 in every 2,000 births worldwide are visibly intersex, because the child’s genitals are either incomplete or ambiguous, which equates to five newborn Americans a day. This represents a sizable U.S. population that cannot be ignored by the law.

If such individuals have the right to equal protection, to privacy and to use a public restroom, what clear and science-based legal principle can our judiciary employ to determine whether they lawfully used the correct bathroom? Reliance on a birth certificate might appear to be a legitimate method to establish sex. But birth certificates are surprisingly fluid documents. They are amended regularly to add or remove parents due to adoption or because DNA results reveal paternity that is inconsistent with the original record. They are also amended to address biology.

In 2016, I received a request from parents seeking to change the name and sex of their baby’s birth certificate. The parents were initially informed they gave birth to a daughter. Genital irregularities and months of additional tests revealed that from a chromosomal and hormonal standpoint their child was, while not strictly genetically male, more “properly" categorized as a son. I granted their request to modify the birth certificate to designate the child as male. The new birth certificate replaced the original, yet neither was precisely accurate from a biological perspective.

The United States’ stringent adherence to a two-sex paradigm is inconsistent with science and incongruous with the historic and modern understanding of sex throughout many regions of the world. Dating back to 2000 B.C., three or more sexes can be found in classical Greek, Sanskrit and Hindu texts. Currently, numerous countries recognize a third or indeterminate sex including Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, Nepal and New Zealand. If the bill introduced into the California state legislature in January 2017 passes, California will be the first state in the U.S. to recognize a third, non-binary gender, for birth certificates and driver’s licenses.

Neither DOMA nor HB2 reference gay or transgender individuals, but there is little doubt that both laws were designed with those populations in mind. When the Obama Administration announced its opposition to HB2, several states swiftly voiced disapproval. Then Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (now the Administrator of the EPA) sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education stating, “Your determination thus elevates the status of transgender students over those who would define their sex based on biology and who would seek to have their definition honored in the most private of places.” The Trump Administration guidance letter reversing the Obama Administration’s policy referenced the ruling of a federal district court in Texas that “held that the term ‘sex’ unambiguously refers to biological sex.”

Ironically, Trump's and Pruitt’s arguments are perhaps the most compelling ones against HB2 and similar sex- and gender-based legislation. Our biological variability means that a two-bathroom, based on two-sex approach is inadequate — and that’s before judges ever get to the issue of gender identity.

In the United States, judges are obligated to see the world through a secular lens. They must apply the law without the influence of any religious construct or political agenda. If modern science recognizes that sex has countless natural permutations, and if birth certificates, physical observation and even chromosomal testing cannot reliably categorize every individual as either male or female, then our judiciary cannot be required to make gender findings antithetical to that reality.

When legislators blur the lines of church and state and enact laws that permit or prohibit conduct based on biologic gender as only male or female — whether it is for the purpose of authorizing marriage or designating the use of public bathrooms — they place an impossible burden on our judiciary, and ultimately on our country and all of its people.

NBA and NFL Warn Texas that "Bathroom Bill" Could be Costly

One would think that the example of what happened to North Carolina after passage of HB2 - a heinous anti-LGBT, anti-civil rights bill backed by Republicans prostituting themselves to Christofascists - would chasten even the most whore like Republicans, but Texas Republicans seem hell bent to suffer similar economic consequences.  Now, both the NFL - which threatened that there would be no more Super Bowls held in Texas - has been joined by the NBA in issuing warnings to the state legislature.  Rational people would heed such warnings, but rationality and Christofascists and their political whores in the Republican Party are mutually exclusive.  LGBT Nation looks at the new NBA warnings to Texas.  Here are highlights:

The NBA is warning Texas over a proposed “bathroom bill” targeting transgender people that is similar to a North Carolina law that prompted the league to move the All-Star Game out of that state.

The NBA on Friday joined the NFL in suggesting that Texas will be overlooked for future big events if lawmakers pass a bill requiring people to use bathrooms that correspond to the sex on their birth certificate.

NBA spokesman Mike Bass says an environment where people are treated “fairly and equally” weighs heavily when the league chooses host locations. Texas has three NBA teams and has hosted three All-Star Games since 2006.

Charlotte was originally supposed to host the All-Star Game on Sunday. But the NBA moved the game to New Orleans after North Carolina adopted its “bathroom bill” last year.

It’s not as if Texas has not been warned before, either.

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, a Republican, has voiced his opposition to the bill, calling it unequivocally bad for business.

This is a view shared by the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau, whose president Phillip Jones told lawmakers economic fallout is inevitable.  “This is not speculation. This is facts, based on what we’ve seen first-hand,” he said.

Virginia Anti-Transgender "Bathroom Bill" Killed in Committee

With America entering a national nightmare today, there is a scarcity of positive news for LGBT Americans, especially in light of the who's who of homophobes that have been nominated by Der Fuhrer for his cabinet.  But there was piece of welcomed good news out of Richmond yesterday:  Del. Bob Marshall's bathroom bill that targeted transgender individuals and would have required public school personnel to "out" LGBT students to their parents was killed in committee. Remarkably, the committee was GOP controlled so the take away is that despite the batshitery underway in Washington, DC, Virginia Republicans did pay attention to the self-inflicted economic damage North Carolina suffered as a result of the passage of HB2.  The bill's patron, Bob Marshall, has a bizarre obsession with LGBT Virginians and has publicly stated that he'd love to drive us from Virginia.  Marshall isn't "conservative" - he's just plain mentally disturbed. The Washington Post looks at yesterday's welcomed development.  Here are excerpts:

A Virginia lawmaker blasted fellow Republicans as “disgusting” cowards Thursday for rejecting his bill to regulate the use of bathrooms and locker rooms in schools, highway rest stops and other government-owned buildings.

“You campaign one way and come down here and kill things silently,” Del. Robert G. Marshall (Prince William) fumed at members of a GOP-controlled House subcommittee after they used an unrecorded voice vote to dispatch with his bill.

Marshall had proposed legislation similar to what passed with great controversy in North Carolina last year.  . . . . He softened the measure somewhat as the House General Laws subcommittee took it up in an afternoon hearing, proposing an amendment to strike the word “original” from the legislation. The amendment would have allowed those who undergo sex-reassignment therapy or surgery and who have their birth certificates changed to reflect that to use the bathroom associated with their gender identity.

Marshall said the purpose of the bill was to protect women and girls from predatory men who might pretend to be transgender to gain access to areas where women are undressed. . . . Dubbing his bill the “Physical Privacy Act,” Marshall bristled at its more common description as the “bathroom bill.” 

A handful of conservative and liberal activists testified for and against the measure. Then, with no discussion among the subcommittee’s five Republicans and two Democrats, Del. Barry D. Knight (R-Virginia Beach) moved to lay the bill on the table. The action kills the bill unless the subcommittee reverses itself within a week’s time, Marshall said.

Marshall had never expected the bill would become law, at least not under Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who had vowed to veto it if it got to his desk. But he hoped to pressure Republican leaders to let it get to the floor of the House.

One of the most vocal conservatives in the General Assembly, Marshall has often accused Republican leaders of killing his social-issue bills to avoid controversy.

Republicans aren't avoiding controversy - they have simply finally awoken to Marshall's insanity and want nothing of it.  Chalk a defeat for the hate merchants at The Family Foundation who I am certain had a hand in this bill.

Trump is Helping to Sink Pat McCrory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NBA Pulls All-Star Game Out Of Charlotte Due to HB2

NBA commissioner

The ongoing self-prostitution of North Carolina Republicans to Christofascist extremists continues to inflict financial harm on the state of North Carolina and its metropolitan areas in particular.  Now, the NBA has followed through on its threat and is moving the 2017 All Star games from Chrarlotte in light of the North Carolina GOP's continued refusal to repeal HB2 which wiped out civil rights protections for LGBT individuals and others.  Hate, bigotry and the embrace of ignorance carry an economic price - something I hope Virginia Republicans are learning from North Carolina's self-inflicted harm.   Here are highlights from the Huffington Post:

The NBA has pulled the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte in protest of North Carolina’s House Bill 2 (HB2), otherwise known as the “bathroom bill,” the league announced on Thursday.

“While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2,” the league said in a statement. 

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver had previously warned in April that the league would pull the All-Star Game out of Charlotte should HB2 not be altered, but had not set a deadline for the state to do so. The NBA and Charlotte Hornets were reportedly working with lawmakers to alter the bill to the league’s satisfaction in the weeks leading up to the decision.

The league has not finalized where it will host the All-Star weekend instead, but said it will make a decision “in the coming weeks.” The Vertical reports that the league is zeroing in on New Orleans as a potential alternative.

Gov. Pat McCrory (R), a staunch defender of the law, rebuked the NBA and “left-wing special interest groups” who have criticized the law.

In a joint statement, the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ civil rights organization in the country, and Equality NC, a North-Carolina-based LGBTQ advocacy organization, praised the NBA for taking a stand against bigotry. 

“Today the NBA and Commissioner Silver sent a clear message that they won’t stand for discrimination against LGBTQ employees, players or fans,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in the statement. “Every day that HB2 remains on the books, people across North Carolina are at risk of real harm. We appreciate the leadership of the NBA in standing up for equality and call once again on lawmakers to repeal this vile HB2 law.”

Perhaps, ironically, canceling the All-Star Game will most adversely punish Charlotte, a city that had tried to protect transgender people before the HB2 was signed into law. The city passed a resolution just one month before to protect the transgender community from discrimination. The anti-LGBT state law made it so the city could not follow through.

In its statement, the league left open the possibility that it award the 2019 All-Star Game to Charlotte, should North Carolina resolve the issue to the league’s satisfaction. The NBA apologized to fans in North Carolina for the decision.