Virginia Joins Federal Court Challenge to Trump's Muslim Travel Ban

As the legal challenges to and wide spread condemnation of Donald Trump, a/k/a, Der Fuhrer's continue to grow, especially in the wake of Trump's firing of the acting Attorney General for refusing to enforce his illegal action, the Commonwealth of Virginia has now joined the expanding number federal court challenges.  Both Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (pictured above) and Governor Terry McAuliffe back Virginia's challenge which is adversely impacting Virginia businesses, university faculty members, and, of course, university students.  The Washington Post looks at this development and the manner in which the rights of those already holding valid visas have been trampled.  Here are article highlights:

The Commonwealth of Virginia intervened Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by attorneys for two Yemeni brothers who arrived at Dulles International Airport on Saturday and were quickly put on a return flight to Ethiopia in response to President Trump’s ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Tareq and Ammar Aqel Mohammed Aziz had been approved for permanent residence status in the United States, where they planned to join their father. Their attorneys say they were coerced, with no legal counsel present, to sign papers they didn’t understand, giving up visas they had worked for years to secure.

Fifty or sixty other legal residents were similarly detained at Dulles, the attorneys allege, saying that many were likewise unfairly persuaded to sign away their right to stay. A lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union in California reported similar scenarios at Los Angeles International Airport.

The lawsuit, in federal court in Virginia, is among several filed across the country challenging the president’s ban.

At a news conference Tuesday, Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) called Trump’s executive order “sweeping, poorly understood and chaotically implemented,” and said it “led to the violation of the constitutional and statutory rights of numerous residents of Virginia.”

He justified Virginia’s interest in joining the lawsuit by saying the executive order affects “numerous” residents of the state, especially students and staff at colleges and universities. As a result, he said, the state would face difficulty in attracting students and faculty, and would suffer financial damage.

Herring said that more than 100 students at Virginia Commonwealth University alone are either unable to leave to visit their families or return to campus from overseas.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who stood beside Herring for the announcement, said he had been “receiving calls from folks throughout the commonwealth” since the executive order last Friday. “I have been notified by scores of companies who are now worried about their employees,” he said. “This is not the United States of America that we know.”

[W]hen [Tareq and Ammar Aqel Mohammed Aziz] they arrived at Dulles, the brothers were handcuffed and their immigration paperwork was seized, their attorneys said. They were given documents to sign and allegedly told that if they did not, they would be removed from the country and barred from coming back for five years. They were not allowed to see legal counsel.

Under pressure, their attorneys said, they signed the documents without realizing that by doing so they had renounced their legal U.S. status. Agents stamped “canceled” on their visas and told them to get on a flight at their own expense to Ethi­o­pia, where they had stopped on their way from Yemen, the attorneys said.

On Saturday night, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema issued an order guaranteeing access to attorneys for all legal permanent residents detained at Dulles and barring the removal of those residents for seven days. But the Aziz brothers had already been sent to Ethi­o­pia. And in their most recent court filing, their attorneys said that after the judge’s order was issued, customs officials at the airport continued to bar access on the grounds that the people they had stopped were in “processing,” not “detention.”

“The full impact of President Trump’s ban remains unclear because the government has not complied fully and transparently with a valid temporary restraining order issued by a federal court,” Herring said. 

I continue to feel like I am watching things unfold much as 1930's Germans who opposed Hitler observed their nation descend into dictatorship and the trampling on civil rights become the norm.   

Federal Judge Blocks Part of Trump’s Immigration Order

While Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Fuhrer seemingly views himself as another Vladimir Putin who can rule by dictatorial fiat, last evening a federal court threw a wrench into Trump's immigration order that panders to the Islamophobia and racism that motivates much of today's GOP base.  Trump may have no regard for the U.S. Constitution - which I suspect he has never bothered to read - the federal courts (at least until subverted by Trump and Senate Republicans) strive to uphold the rule of law and protect the constitutional rights of ordinary people.  The New York Times has highlights on this breaking story (updates will follow as more information becomes available):

A federal judge blocked part of President Trump’s executive order on immigration on Saturday evening, ordering that refugees and others trapped at airports across the United States should not be sent back to their home countries. But the judge stopped short of letting them into the country or issuing a broader ruling on the constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s actions.

Judge Ann M. Donnelly of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, ruled just before 9 p.m. that implementing Mr. Trump’s order by sending the travelers home could cause them “irreparable harm.”

Dozens of people waited outside of the courthouse chanting, “Set them free!” as lawyers made their case. When the crowd learned that Judge Donnelly had ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, a rousing cheer went up in the crowd.

While none of the detainees will be sent back immediately, lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case expressed concern that all those at the airports would now be put in detention, pending a resolution of the case. Inviting the lawyers to return to court if the travelers were detained, Judge Donnelly said, “If someone is not being released, I guess I’ll just hear from you.”

One can just imagine the tweet shit show that will be gushing forth from Der Fuhrer in the wake of the judge's order.  One can only hope that Trump will further display his mental instability.  It is important to realize that the ACLU brought this case challenging Trump.  Please consider making a recurring contribution to the ACLU which we will need now more than ever to fight for the rights of all Americans and the rule of law. 

The Battlegrounds for LGBT Rights Under Trump

As I have indicated in a number of posts, the inauguration of Donald Trump will set in play numerous assaults on the rights and dignity of LGBT Americans.  Without sufficient mobilization of LGBT individuals and our allies, we are likely to the enactment of license to discriminate laws at the state level and a broad reaching denigration of LGBT rights and protections at the federal level under the deliberately disingenuously named "First Amendment Defense Act" which would allow individuals, businesses and even government employees to discriminate at will against LGBT citizens merely by claiming that to do otherwise offends their religious beliefs.  Thankfully, the assault against LGBT citizens will dovetail with the larger Republican assault on women's reproductive rights and the social safety net, particularly in the realm of healthcare as the GOP moves to fulfill a long held dream of voucherizing Medicare and making draconian cuts to Medicaid.  These efforts will make LGBT citizens, women, the elderly and even health care providers and hospital systems allies in resisting the GOP onslaught.  A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at the coming battle grounds and what must be done in the Age of Trump.  Here are some article excerpts:

As Inauguration Day nears, and as our new, orange-tinted reality sets in, it behooves all Americans who believe in fairness and equality to take stock of what we’re up against — because that’s how we’ll be able to resist it.

On the campaign trail, Trump hurled insults at groups which, combined, represent a vast majority of Americans. He insulted women, Muslims, Mexicans and Latinos, African-Americans, people of color, members of the press, people with disabilities, and career politicians whom he denounced as “crooked.”

That means it’s not at all hyperbolic to issue a warning call to each of those groups who will, in all likelihood, have their freedom targeted by the incoming administration.

But even though the President-elect was relatively quiet on LGBT issues during the campaign trail (aside from a couple mangled acronyms he managed to spit out and a lukewarm response to marriage equality), his cabinet appointments make clear that we cannot afford to “wait and see” just how Trump’s team dismantles LGBT rights. Instead, we must use the resources at hand to anticipate the onslaught we are about to step into — giving us the best chance of emerging with dignity, sanity, and faith in this American experiment.

Prepare to Oppose the First Amendment (Defense Act)First and foremost, the so-called First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) is all but certain to become law. Although the precise language has yet to be seen in this year’s Congress, the text of the bill introduced in the 114th Congress sought to prohibit the federal government from taking “any discriminatory action” against a person (defined to include for-profit and nonprofit corporations) who “acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.” The bill offered no similar protections for other views about marriage or sexual relations.

FADA is arguably the clearest and most present danger for LGBT Americans, particularly because it exemplifies the ways in which the bedrock principle of “religious freedom” has been weaponized to block the advance of LGBT equality.

[B]arring some truly unexpected outbreak of empathy in the newly empowered Republican Party, it’s safe to assume the sweeping legislation will become law early on in Trump’s presidency. The president-elect has signaled his support for the bill, promising Catholics in a September statement that he will sign the bill into law. Once FADA becomes law (and perhaps before), it’s reasonable to assume similar “turn away the gays” bills will be introduced in state legislatures, likely under the guise of “religious freedom.”

Take Care of Our Health CareLike most of Trump’s cabinet nominees and advisers, the potential Secretary of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price, has a long history of opposing LGBT-inclusive policies. Price, specifically, is a staunch opponent of the Affordable Care Act, and is expected to be a key figure in the yet-to-be-announced plan to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. And Price is no friend to the gays. According to LGBT media watchdog GLAAD’s “Trump Accountability Project,” the Georgia Republican scored a zero (out of 100) on the Human Rights Campaign’s Congressional Equality Scorecard, voted against repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and in favor of amending the Constitution to ban marriage equality. More relevant to this discussion and Price’s potential tenure as the nation’s chief healthcare official, though, is the fact that he has defended false equivalencies between pedophilia and homosexuality as nothing more than harmless “Christian beliefs regarding proper sexual ethics.”

But what about the millions of Americans who aren’t transgender? Well, any of those citizens who have a uterus or plan to make their own decisions about when or if they want children need to pay attention, as the National LGBTQ Task Force’s executive director Rea Carey explained when Price’s nomination was announced. “Let’s be quite clear: if confirmed, Price’s decisions will impact the health and social services of millions of people — especially the most vulnerable populations who rely upon access to quality, affordable, culturally competent care. If confirmed, Tom Price would steer HHS in a dangerous direction that’s motivated by profit and the desire to control our bodies.”

Get Ready to Fight the Department of JusticeIn his excellent piece for the Winter 2017 issue of The American Prospect, former Justice Department attorney and current University of Michigan law professor Samuel R. Bagenstos raised a terrifying possibility: President Trump’s Department of Justice may use the muscle that agency developed under Obama to suppress voting rights, privatize education, and strip away existing civil rights protections.

If Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, is confirmed, the fate of American civil rights law is effectively sealed, given that Sessions was considered too racist to be a federal judge in the ‘80s. Naturally, Sessions has also consistently opposed LGBT rights, and could even use his sway as Attorney General to try to convince the Supreme Court to reconsider marriage equality.

[A] generous, inclusive interpretation of civil rights law is unlikely to continue in a Trump administration. In fact, Bagenstos warns, where LGBT people have found an ally in the DOJ for the past eight years, we may now find a powerful foe. Bagenstos aptly points to G.G. v. Glouchester County School Board, the case out of Virginia where a transgender boy sued his school for the right to use the boy’s bathroom, after the school barred him from using the appropriate facilities on campus. . . . That case is currently pending before the Supreme Court, and could be heard by a full panel of justices — including a Trump appointee.

But the battle is just beginning, Bagenstos writes: . . . there is a substantial prospect that the Civil Rights Division will take an affirmatively anti-LGBT-rights position and intervene to make religious-freedom or free-speech arguments on behalf of the defendants in LGBT discrimination cases brought under state laws.

Which brings us to the final and overarching point of how to agitate for equality in Trump’s America:

Get to Your StatehousesWhile it may seem counter-intuitive to focus a national resistance on regional or state offices, the truth is that local elections matter, and local politicians are often easier to access than high-ranking administration officials. So yes, participate in the Women’s March on Washington if you feel called to, and phone-bank the hell out of every preposterous nominee Trump and the Republicans riding his coattails offer. But also participate in Lobby Days organized by your favorite local advocacy group, and make it a priority to meet your elected officials. If you feel comfortable doing so, introduce them to your family, and force them to look into the faces of the real people their decisions will impact. And when lawmakers try to pull a fast one, take a page from the good people of North Carolina and shout and yell and disrupt and sit-in until uniformed officers drag you away. And then go back again the next day.

It takes dedication, persistence, and a stubborn refusal to ever back down. It seems only fair that those of us feeling targeted by Trump and the GOP in general return the favor they offered to President Obama, and aim to make Trump a one-term president.

Congressional Republicans essentially wrote the playbook on how to be the most obstructionist, least productive legislative body in American history, so I say we borrow that book and use the tactics right-wingers perfected to defend the messy, complicated, frustrating glory of this country.

Would MLK Have Supported Marriage Equality?

Martin Luther King's widow, Coretta Scott King, made it clear before her death that she supported LGBT equality.  Moreover, she stated that her late husband would have supported the movement for LGBT equality.  What King himself thought we will likely never know with definitive certainty.  He was shot down in 1968 and never really expressed his views on LGBT equality, although one of his right hand men,  Bayard Rustin, was a gay man.  I believe that King would support today's movement for LGBT equality.  Today, while driving between the law firm offices today, I heard most of King's truly amazing speech when he came out against the Vietnam War (I love satellite radio). Based on his compassion for and statements about the Vietnamese people, I believe that he would have supported LGBT equality for similar reasons.  My blogger and activist friend, Rev. Irene Monroe, who I met at the 2008 LGBT blogger summit in Washington, D.C., has a piece in The Advocate that looks at this question.  Here are excerpts:

This Martin Luther King Jr. holiday reminds me how Alabama has always been a troubling state when it comes to upholding the civil rights of its denizens.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s civil rights activism began in the unwelcoming “Heart of Dixie” in 1955 when on a cold December evening, Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white passenger, birthing the Montgomery bus boycott. The boycott was the first of what would be many historic marches and protests that would catapult King onto a national stage. His acts of civil disobedience in the 1950s and 1960s helped elevate the country’s moral consciousness as Alabama struggled with theirs. Sadly, in 2016, Alabama is still struggling.

When, on January 8, the Mobile County Probate Office resumed issuance of marriage licenses, I was asked by an editor, “What would be MLK’s thoughts about the modern LGBTQ movement and the place of people of color in it?” As I comb through numerous books and essays learning more about King’s philandering, his sexist attitude about women at home and in the movement, and his relationship with Bayard Rustin, I too wonder, Would King today be a public advocate for LGBTQ rights?

King’s now-deceased wife would say yes.

In 1998, Coretta Scott King addressed the LGBT group Lambda Legal in Chicago. In her speech, she said LGBTQ equality and civil rights were the same. 

“I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King’s dream to make room at the table of brother and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people,” she said.

Speculations on what King's views would be vary within African-American LGBTQ communities. But an overwhelming number in these communities look more to Bayard Rustin — then and now — than to King as a spokesman for supporting our civil rights.

“I tend not to worry much about what MLK would do. I tend to look at someone such as Bayard Rustin as one prime driving force in civil rights and other activism. Rustin was there before World War II. And he never wavered, always looking for something new. It was Rustin who schooled King in Gandhi’s ideas. Rustin has simply said that the GLBT movement is the inheritor of civil rights activism in the U.S. I’ll stick with Bayard,” a blogger wrote me.

In the civil rights movement, Rustin was always the man behind the scenes, and a large part of that had to due with the fact that he was gay. Because of their own homophobia, many African-American ministers involved in the civil rights movement would have nothing to do with Rustin, and they intentionally spread rumors that King was gay because of his close friendship with Rustin.

We must understand King within the historical context of the homophobic black church; because of his association with it, I cannot envision him endorsing marriage equality. But I, like so many within the African-American community — straight or gay — cannot fathom King marching against same-sex marriage as his youngest daughter, Rev. Bernice King, did.

King was assassinated over a year before the Stonewall riots. Gay rights had not reached the level of being a bona fide national issue yet, and for King to have made a major public pronouncement regarding LGBTQ rights would have been historically premature. Note the flak he took even for speaking out against the Vietnam War — it was charged that he was overstepping his role and the war was not his issue.

“Had [King] lived long enough, he would have taken some form of enlightened viewpoint regarding gay/lesbian rights,” a friend told me emphatically. “Personally, I speculate that probably he and his wife had private conversations regarding this issue, and I believe that Coretta’s unwavering support of GLBT rights throughout the rest of her life reflects the direction of those discussions.”

Ann Dearsley-Vernon: Saying Good Bye to a Legend

Ann Vernon

On December 13, 2015, Ann Dearsley-Vernon, a fixture in the local arts community died of a stroke after a night at the symphony.  Due to the holidays and family members living out of the country, her memorial service was postponed until tonight at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk where she worked for 28 years after being hired by Walter Chrysler himself.   The arts and equality were two constants in Ann's life.  I first met her in the summer of 2006, when I first got involved in Equality Virginia's Legends Gala committee - a committee I served on for a number of years and co-chaired in 2008 (meetings used to be held in my Norfolk law office conference room). Ann was the first Legends honoree and was always an inspiration and a true lady in the most positive sense of the word.   At  the memorial service tonight, at Ann's request, any donations received were to be divided between Equality Virginia, the Chrysler Museum and Hope House, a local charity that aids individuals with disabilities to enable them to live independently to the maximum extent possible. A piece from WVEC-TV 13 looked at Ann's early ground breaking efforts in promoting equality and civil rights.  Here are highlights:

In 1960, when America was embroiled in the Civil Rights movement, Ann and a couple of friends from Greensboro Women's College walked into a Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina up to the lunch counter to eat.  Ann was a graduate student in fine arts.

They noticed African-American students were not being served. Ann and her friends gave up their seats to African-American students.

This incident went down in the history books as helping to launch the sit-in movement -- a series of non-violent protests at other eateries across the South that refused to serve African-Americans. It rejuvenated Civil Rights efforts led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We had no idea it would be so important,"Ann said. "We thought it was the right thing to do."

Ann and her friends were yelled at and were threatened by people who were angry at what they did. Ann says someone even pressed a knife against her back. . . . She and her friends were escorted out of Woolworth by a group of African-American student-athletes from the NC A&T football team, who linked arms to protect them.

Doing what is right can be scary and can put one at risk.  Ann never seemed to show fear and she was as ardent in her support for LGBT equality as she was for civil rights in the 1960's.  I feel blessed to have known her and been counted among her friends.   The husband and I last saw her at a fund raiser event on the first Saturday in December and enjoyed her always charming company.  May I always be as fearless in doing what is right as Ann was daily.

Ann at left in 1960

Sunset at the doors of the Chrysler Museum tonight

Obama: "Religious Freedom" Does Not Justify Denial of Civil Rights

In sharp contrast to Pope Francis' anti-gay batshitery, Barack Obama made it clear that the self-centered smoke screen of "religious freedom" does not give one the right to deny others their civil and constitutional rights.  At least not in America.  Not in the America envisioned by the Founding Fathers.  Perhaps in pre-Revolution France or in the halls of the Vatican populated by bitter old men in dresses.  LGBTNation looks at Obama's remarks at a Democratic fundraiser over the weekend.  Here are highlights:

Freedom of religion isn’t reason enough to deny any American their constitutional rights, President Barack Obama said Sunday as he addressed members of the LGBT community, one of his major sources of political and financial support.

Speaking at a Democratic Party fundraiser, Obama said it’s important to recognize that some parts of the country remain uncomfortable with same-sex marriage and that it will take time for them to catch up to the majority of Americans who support such unions.

But while Americans hold dear the constitutional right to practice their religion free from government interference, he said that right can’t be used to deny constitutional rights to others.

“We affirm that we cherish our religious freedom and are profoundly respectful of religious traditions,” Obama said during remarks that were interrupted by repeated applause and cheers. “But we also have to say clearly that our religious freedom doesn’t grant us the freedom to deny our fellow Americans their constitutional rights.”

“And that even as we are respectful and accommodating genuine concerns and interests of religious institutions, we need to reject politicians who are supporting new forms of discrimination as a way to scare up votes. That’s not how we move America forward,” he added. That was an apparent reference to some of the Republican presidential candidates.

Obama got some of his biggest cheers and loudest applause when he said “we live in an America where ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is something that ‘don’t exist.'” Obama lifted the Pentagon policy that barred gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

“And tonight, thanks to the unbending sense of justice passed down through generations of citizens who never gave up hope that we could bring this country closer to our founding ideals … we now live in America where our marriages are equal as well,” he said.

If Christofascists want the right to discriminate against others, then the trade off should be that others are free to openly discriminate against Christofascists .  I suspect that if that were the legal trade off, the Kim Davis' of the nation might change their stance overnight.

Obama Ties LBJ's Civil Rights Legacy to LGBT Americans

In a speech at the Civil Rights Summit at Johnson's presidential library in Austin this week marking the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act, Barack Obama tied the civil rights legislation spearheaded by Lyndon B. Johnson with today's struggle for full LGBT equality.  While the Christofascists - and their trained circus dog minions within the ranks of black pastors - disingenuously whine that the civil rights movement of the 1960's is not synonymous with push for legal equality and non-discrimination protections for LGBT citizens, it is telling that the ancestors of today's hate merchants similarly used the Bible to justify racism and anti-black discrimination.  MetroWeekly looks at Obama's comments (which sadly would be more meaningful and believable if Obama would sign an executive order ENDA).  Here are highlights:

President Barack Obama embraced Lyndon B. Johnson's civil rights legacy Thursday in a speech that credited the former president with helping to open the doors to equality for countless Americans, including those who are LGBT. 

"Because of the Civil Rights movement, because of the laws President Johnson signed, new doors of opportunity and education swung open for everybody -- not all at once, but they swung open," Obama said. "Not just blacks and whites, but also women and Latinos; and Asians and Native Americans; and gay Americans and Americans with a disability. They swung open for you, and they swung open for me. And that’s why I'm standing here today -- because of those efforts, because of that legacy."

Obama's speech at the Civil Rights Summit at Johnson's presidential library in Austin marking the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act was not the first time the nation's first African-American president has tied the Civil Rights movement to the LGBT-rights movement.

"We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall," Obama said during his second inaugural address, repeating a phrase he used during a Barnard College commencement speech in May 2012.

When Obama marked the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington last August, he said that those who came to Washington in 1963 pushed the nation forward. "Because they marched, America became more free and more fair -- not just for African Americans, but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native Americans; for Catholics, Jews, and Muslims; for gays, for Americans with a disability," Obama said. "America changed for you and for me."

Where Obama has come up short — in refusing to sign an executive order protecting LGBT federal contractors from workplace discrimination — he has faced heightened criticism, in large part because of how out of character it is from his broader civil rights record. That proposed executive order, which Obama once supported as a candidate for president in 2008, is based on Executive Order 11246, which has been expanded by a number of presidents to prohibit federal contractors from discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

In light of the setting for Obama's speech today, it is worth noting that executive order was first signed by President Johnson.
 
Obama's LGBT-rights legacy is certainly not lost on the president. And arguably nor is the work left to be done.

I am not ungrateful for the pro-gay things that Obama has done, but it would indeed be nice if he followed through on something he pledged to do 8six years ago.

When ‘Religious Liberty’ Was Used To Justify Racism Instead Of Homophobia

KKK members marching into a Baptist church

From following a number of anti-gay "family values" organizations for many years and reading the inflammatory rants and deliberately false information on their websites, I long ago came to recognizes that these organizations are comprised of leaders and members who are either former segregationists and/or their descendants.  Tony Perkins, the head of Family Research Council, has clear ties to white supremacy organizations and has spoken at their gatherings.  And like the segregationists of a half century ago, today's anti-gay forces are trying desperately to use the cloak of "religious freedom" to ennoble and justify their hate and bigotry.  Think Progress has a piece that looks at how the same claims we are hearing today were used decades ago to justify out right racism and anti-black discrimination.  What I continue to find shocking is the way in which black pastors refuse to recognize that they are being used by the same forces who supported "segregation forever."  Here are article excerpts:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

– Judge Leon M. Bazile, January 6, 1959

The most remarkable thing about Arizona’s “License To Discriminate” bill is how quickly it became anathema, even among Republicans. Both 2008 GOP presidential candidate John McCain and 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney called upon Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to veto this effort to protect businesses that want to discriminate against gay people. So did Arizona’s other senator, Jeff Flake. And former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. 

The premise of the bill is that discrimination becomes acceptable so long as it is packaged inside a religious wrapper. As Arizona state Rep. Eddie Farnsworth (R) explained, lawmakers introduced it in response to instances where anti-gay business owners in other states were “punished for their religious beliefs” after they denied service to gay customers in violation of a state anti-discrimination law.

Yet, while LGBT Americans are the current target of this effort to repackage prejudice as “religious liberty,” they are hardly the first. To the contrary, as Wake Forest law Professor Michael Kent Curtis explained in a 2012 law review article, many segregationists justified racial bigotry on the very same grounds that religious conservatives now hope to justify anti-gay animus. In the words of one professor at a prominent Mississippi Baptist institution, “our Southern segregation way is the Christian way . . . . [God] was the original segregationist.”

Theodore Bilbo was one of Mississippi’s great demagogues. After two non-consecutive terms as governor, Bilbo won a U.S. Senate . . .  Bilbo proclaimed during his successful reelection campaign in 1946. He was a proud member of the Ku Klux Klan, telling Meet the Press that same year that “[n]o man can leave the Klan. He takes an oath not to do that. Once a Ku Klux, always a Ku Klux.” During a filibuster of an anti-lynching bill, Bilbo claimed that the bill

will open the floodgates of hell in the South. Raping, mobbing, lynching, race riots, and crime will be increased a thousandfold; and upon your garments and the garments of those who are responsible for the passage of the measure will be the blood of the raped and outraged daughters of Dixie, as well as the blood of the perpetrators of these crimes that the red-blooded Anglo-Saxon White Southern men will not tolerate.

For Senator Bilbo, however, racism was more that just an ideology, it was a sincerely held religious belief. In a book entitled Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization, Bilbo wrote that “[p]urity of race is a gift of God . . . . And God, in his infinite wisdom, has so ordained it that when man destroys his racial purity, it can never be redeemed.” Allowing “the blood of the races [to] mix,” according to Bilbo, was a direct attack on the “Divine plan of God.” There “is every reason to believe that miscegenation and amalgamation are sins of man in direct defiance to the will of God.”

In 1901, Georgia Gov. Allen Candler defended unequal public schooling for African Americans on the grounds that “God made them negroes and we cannot by education make them white folks.” After the Supreme Court ordered public schools integrated in Brown v. Board of Education, many segregationists cited their own faith as justification for official racism. Ross Barnett won Mississippi’s governorship in a landslide in 1960 after claiming that “the good Lord was the original segregationist.” Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia relied on passages from Genesis, Leviticus and Matthew when he spoke out against the civil rights law banning employment discrimination and whites-only lunch counters on the Senate floor.

Although the Supreme Court never considered whether Bilbo, Candler, Barnett or Byrd’s religious beliefs gave them a license to engage in race discrimination, a very similar case did reach the justices in 1983.  Bob Jones University excluded African Americans completely until the early 1970s, when it began permitting black students to attend so long as they were married. . . . As a result, the Internal Revenue Service revoked Bob Jones’ tax-exempt status.

When Bob Jones’ case reached the Supreme Court, the school argued that IRS’ regulations denying tax exemptions to racist institutions “cannot constitutionally be applied to schools that engage in racial discrimination on the basis of sincerely held religious beliefs.” But the justices did not bite. In an 8-1 decision by conservative Chief Justice Warren Burger, the Court explained that “[o]n occasion this Court has found certain governmental interests so compelling as to allow even regulations prohibiting religiously based conduct.” Prohibiting race discrimination is one of these interests.

Ultimately, the question facing anti-gay business owners, even if the bill Brewer vetoed had become law, is why it is acceptable to exclude gay people simply because of who they are, when we do not permit this sort of behavior by racists such as Bilbo or Byrd? And there is another, equally difficult question facing advocates of the kind of sweeping “religious liberty” protected by the Arizona bill — why should we allow people to impose their religious beliefs upon others?

I recommend a read of the full article.  In answer to the last  last question posed above, there is no reason why we should allow one set of people - the Christofascists - to impose their religious beliefs on others.  In fact, for the state to do so is a violation of the United States Constitution which guarantees religious freedom to all citizens, not just Christofascists.

Obama Says World Must Stop Persecuting People for 'Who They Love'

In a speech at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama found an opportunity to support LGBT equality and to challenge the world - especially African nations to which America Christofascists are exporting homophobia and hatred - that stop persecuting gays.  No doubt Obama's remarks will only intensify the hatred he faces from white Christofascist/white supremacists in America.  Here are excerpts from his speech:

For the people of South Africa, for those he inspired around the globe - Madiba’s passing is rightly a time of mourning, and a time to celebrate his heroic life. But I believe it should also prompt in each of us a time for self-reflection. With honesty, regardless of our station or circumstance, we must ask: how well have I applied his lessons in my own life?

It is a question I ask myself - as a man and as a President. We know that like South Africa, the United States had to overcome centuries of racial subjugation. As was true here, it took the sacrifice of countless people - known and unknown - to see the dawn of a new day. Michelle and I are the beneficiaries of that struggle. But in America and South Africa, and countries around the globe, we cannot allow our progress to cloud the fact that our work is not done. The struggles that follow the victory of formal equality and universal franchise may not be as filled with drama and moral clarity as those that came before, but they are no less important. For around the world today, we still see children suffering from hunger, and disease; run-down schools, and few prospects for the future. Around the world today, men and women are still imprisoned for their political beliefs; and are still persecuted for what they look like, or how they worship, or who they love.

We, too, must act on behalf of justice. We, too, must act on behalf of peace. There are too many of us who happily embrace Madiba’s legacy of racial reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing inequality. There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people. And there are too many of us who stand on the sidelines, comfortable in complacency or cynicism when our voices must be heard. 

The full transcript of Obama's speech can be found here.

GOP/Conservatives on the Wrong Side

With world leaders and dignitaries gathering in South Africa to remember Nelson Mandela, it is timely to remember the wrongheadedness and bigotry of many conservatives and Republicans towards Mandela.  That knack at being on the wrong side of history, however, extends to many other things that rang from opposition to the civil rights movement to recent efforts to disenfranchise voters and efforts to stigmatize and harm LGBT individuals.  Bigotry and opposition to equality have become the hallmarks of today's conservatism and, of course the GOP.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this history which is certainly not something to be proud of if one is a decent and moral person.  Here are excerpts:

The Beast’s estimable Peter Beinart already laid bare the rancid hypocrisy of today’s Republicans honoring Nelson Mandela. Joan Walsh delivered a similarly biting critique of the “right-washing” of Mandela going on right now. American conservatives loathed the man when it mattered. This leads us to a broader question that Beinart and Walsh didn’t have the space to get into, so I’ll pick it up from here: When has the American right ever—ever—been on the right side of history?

The answer is almost never. Indeed, history is an unfolding, and more or less constant, vindication of the people who were thinking ahead, who weren’t happy with things the way they were and saw they had to change, and who have been on the side of personal liberation and de-concentration of political power. Those people are virtually by definition liberals and reformers and radicals.

Consider the great political earthquakes throughout history and imagine the contemporaneous—not retrospective, as we are seeing in these phony paeans to Mandela, but in-the-moment—conservative posture. The conservative position was wrong nearly every time—not just wrong, but often morally shocking from our later perspective.

Do you support the American Revolution? I should hope so. You would not have, however, had you been a conservative in 1785.

How about the abolition of slavery? I reckon you’re on board with that. Well, Lord knows you wouldn’t have been if you’d been among the 1860 conservatives who started a war over it (and whose apologists today insist the Civil War was not about slavery).

In terms of domestic politics, few polemical tasks are easier than demonstrating how wrong conservatism has been about pretty much everything in all of American history. Eradication of child labor? Why, an imposition on business owners to run their factories as they saw fit, you socialist! Giving women the right to vote? Women?! They simply don’t possess the logical faculties to be entrusted with such a responsibility, and anyway where will it end—I suppose you’ll be suggesting that black people get the franchise next? Segregation. Miscegenation laws. Immigration. Civil rights. The environmental movement. Conservatism’s record: wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.

It’s amazing how one hears the same hideous arguments, always swaddled in alleged morality and always—always—totally immoral. A hundred years ago, biblical thunderers screamed that their pact between their conscience and their God couldn’t possibly allow them to consider the marriage of a white person to a “colored” one to be valid. Today, our thunderers say exactly the same thing about gay people. We should no more tolerate a “religious exemption” for those who oppose same-sex marriage than on race. It is bigotry, period and end of story. History one day will determine as much, and our anti-gay thunderers will look every bit as hateful as the racial ones of yesteryear do now.

So let’s turn to foreign policy. Here, I admit things get a little more complicated, but only a little. There have been two great questions on foreign policy in the last century, the questions of fascism and communism. On the former, the American right’s record is one of deep shame. Most of American conservatism actively attacked Roosevelt for getting us into war. If America First had had its way, in Amsterdam, Oslo, and Paris they’d be speaking German today, or at least would have for a long time.

Mandela is another case in point. There is no question that some, maybe many, in the African National Congress were communists. But does anyone think for a second that the ANC would have said no to American help had it been forthcoming?

The conservative record is one of tragedy and moral nullity. Even so I would say we do need a conservative tendency in ours or any society as a check against reformist over-zeal. So conservatives should certainly be involved in our arguments. It’s just that they should also lose most of them, as history shows they’ve done a good job of doing.

Racism Is Over, According to the RNC

Sunday was the 58th anniversary of Rosa Parks' arrest which helped trigger an upsurge int he civil rights movement.  And shockingly, the Republican National Committee sent out messages claiming that racism is over - even as the GOP in Virginia and elsewhere welcomes white supremacists to its ranks and works diligently to disenfranchise minority voters and bring back aspects of Jim Crow.  The hypocrisy is stunning!  Mother Jones looks at this GOP batshitery and hypocrisy.  Here are highlights:

Sunday is the 58th anniversary of Rosa Parks' arrest. The Republican National Committee took to Twitter to celebrate the civil rights icon . . . .It's a weirdly phrased tweet, given that racism is still a huge problem in America, and elsewhere. For the record, the RNC's actual statement on Rosa Parks is much better and less awkward. The statement acknowledges that earlier this year, a bronze statue of Parks was unveiled in the US Capitol's National Statuary Hall (which is full of white supremacists).

But if you're looking for something that is actually terrifying and appalling, just remember that this Supreme Court seems to think that racism in America is over.

How Racism Caused The Government Shutdown

I grew up through high school in Central New York State (Syracuse area) and did not come to Virginia until I started going to college at the University of Virginia literally only a few years after the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Loving v. Virginia.  At the time, in many ways I felt like I had moved to a foreign land, especially on issues of race and how blacks were treated.  Thankfully, over the last 40+ years, things have changed in many parts of Virginia and other parts of the Deep South.  But in other areas of the South, things have changed very little.  Visit Martinsville, Virginia and many parts of Southern states ranging from Alabama to Kentucky, and the mindset has changed little from that evidenced by far too many whites displayed in the book and movie, The Help.  What does this have to do with the GOP's forcing of the federal government shutdown?  A lengthy piece in Think Progress (it is worth a full read) lays out the case that racism - and not just against Barack Obama - that underlies the behavior of today's GOP which has become a party dominated by reactionary Southerners.  Here are highlights:

This isn’t an article about how Republicans shut down the government because they hate that the President is black. This is an article about how racism caused the government to shut down and the U.S. to teeter on the brink of an unprecedented and catastrophic default.

I understand if you’re confused. A lot of people think the only way that racism “causes” anything is when one person intentionally discriminates against another because of their color of their skin. But that’s wrong. And understanding the history of the forces that produced the current crisis will lay plain the more subtle, but fundamental, ways in which race and racism formed the scaffolding that structures American politics — even as explicit battles over race receded from our daily politics.

The roots of the current crisis began with the New Deal — but not in the way you might think. They grew gradually, with two big bursts in the 1960s and the 1980s reflecting decades of more graduated change. And the tree that grew out of them, the Tea Party and a radically polarized Republican Party, bore the shutdown as its fruits.

In 1938, Sen. Josiah W. Bailey (D-NC) filibustered his own party’s bill. Well, part of his party — Northern Democrats, together with Northern Republicans, were pushing an federal anti-lynching bill. Bailey promised that Southern Democrats would teach “a lesson which no political party will ever again forget” to their Northern co-partisans if they “come down to North Carolina and try to impose your will upon us about the Negro:”

Just as when the Republicans in the [1860s] undertook to impose the national will upon us with respect to the Negro, we resented it and hated that party with a hatred that has outlasted generations; we hated it beyond measure; we hated it more than was right for us and more than was just; we hated it because of what it had done to us, because of the wrong it undertook to put upon us; and just as that same policy destroyed the hope of the Republican party in the South, that same policy adopted by the Democratic party will destroy the Democratic party in the South.

Bailey’s rage at the affront to white supremacy was born of surprise. Until 1932, the South had dominated the Democratic Party, which had consistently stood for the South’s key regional regional interest — keeping blacks in literal or figurative fetters — since before the Civil War.

But the Depression-caused backlash against Republican incumbents that swept New Yorker Franklin Roosevelt into the White House and a vast Democratic majority into Congress also made Southerners a minority in the party for the first time in its history.
[T]he New Deal not only benefited blacks, but brought them to a position of power in the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, “the GOP’s ties with chambers of commerce, manufacturers’ associations, real estate groups, farm lobbies, and other organizations opposed to the increased government oversight of private enterprise that would come with fair employment and other civil rights legislation encouraged the GOP’s drift toward racial conservatism.”

Republican economic libertarianism, together with its gradual embrace of traditionally Southern “states rights” arguments to as weapons in the war on the New Deal, set the stage for the eventual white flight from the Democratic Party.

And Southern Democrats, without whose votes the New Deal never could have happened, were willing to sacrifice their commitment to economic liberalism on the altar of white supremacy.
Hence the famous Dixiecrat revolt of 1948, when Strom Thurmond and likeminded Southerners temporarily seceded from the Democratic Party over Harry Truman and the Democratic platform’s support for civil rights. The tacit bargain that Katznelson documents during the Roosevelt Administration, in which the Northern Democrats would get their New Deal if the Southern Democrats got their white supremacy, became untenable.

But the Dixiecrats weren’t ready to migrate en masse to Party of Lincoln just yet. Something needed to happen to make the Republican Party shed its commitment to leading on civil rights wholesale. That “something” was the rise of the modern conservative movement.

[I]t wasn’t until Barry Goldwater and the rise of the modern conservative movement that this marriage was formally consummated. Goldwater lost all but six states — Arizona, his home, and five Deep South states. It was the first time the GOP had prevailed at the presidential level in the South in the party’s history. Republicans have held the South since..

By the Johnson-Goldwater election, it had become clear that overt racism and segregationism was politically doomed. Brown v. Board of Education and LBJ’s support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act saw to that. As this scary recognition dawned on Southern whites, they began searching for a new vehicle through which to shield themselves and their communities from the consequences of integration. The young conservative movement’s ringing endorsement of a minimalist federal government did the trick  . . . 

These “rights” included “the ‘right’ to select their neighbors, their employees, and their children’s classmates, the ‘right’ to do as they pleased with their private property and personal businesses, and, perhaps, most important, the ‘right’ to remain free from what they saw as dangerous encroachments by the federal government.”

Kruse traces this language through white resistance to desegregation from the 40s through the 60s, using a detailed examination of “white flight” in Atlanta as a synecdoche. In the end, he finds, “the struggle over segregation thoroughly reshaped southern conservatism…segregationist resistance inspired the creation of new conservative causes, such as tuition vouchers, the tax revolt, and the privatization of public services.” The concomitant rise of the modern conservative movement and the civil rights movements’ victories conspired to make Southern whites into economic, and not just racial, conservatives.

The more politically active blacks became, their data suggest, the more whites flocked to conservative Republicans as a counter. So from 1964 on, conservative white Southerners voted against Democrats at the presidential level. But the en masse formal switch in party identification until Reagan.

We all know what happens next. The Southern conservative takeover of the Republican Party pushes out moderates, cementing the party’s conservative spiral. This trend produces the Tea Party, whose leading contemporary avatar — Ted Cruz — engineers the 2013 shutdown and risk of catastrophic default.

So we can draw a tentatively straight line between the last 80 years of racial politics and this week’s political crisis. Aside from being an interesting point of history, what does that tell us?
First, that the shutdown crisis isn’t the product of passing Republican insanity or, as President Obama put it, a “fever” that needs to be broken. Rather, the sharp conservative turn of the Republican Party is the product of deep, long-running structural forces in American history.
Second, and more importantly, the battle over civil rights produced a rigidly homogenous and disproportionately Southern Republican party, fertile grounds for the sort of purity contest you see consuming the South today.

One 2005 study that measured racial animus found that Southern whites were “more racially conservative than whites elsewhere on every measure of racial attitudes ordinarily used in national surveys.” And Obamacare is a racially polarized issue. Brown University’s Michael Tesler found, in 2010, that there was an astonishing 20 point higher racial gap on health policy in 2009 than there was in the early 90s. In Tesler’s experiments, subjects’ responses to statements about health policy were “significantly more racialized” when the statement was attributed to President Obama than President Clinton. So it’d be implausible, to put it mildly, to say that modern racism has nothing to do with the shutdown fight.

As someone  who has lived in the South for 40+ years and who spent close to a decade involved in the Republican Party, I believe this analysis is 100% on point.  Racism and religious extremism - these folks STILL use the Bible to justify segregation - are indeed the under currents that have driven the GOP to its current insane state.  Having a black man in the White House has only made the extremism and racism bubble to open view more fully.

The Insane Attempt By the GOP to Claim Martin Luther King, Jr.

Being a black Republican makes even less sense than being a gay Republican, particularly in this era when the GOP across the country is working diligently to disenfranchise blacks through voter ID laws and challenges to the Voting Rights Act (at least with gays, the GOP isn't trying to deprive us of our right to vote, although I am sure some in the Christofascist base of the GOP would relish that concept).  Yet, despite this blatant attack on blacks, in the fantasy world of today's GOP, some Republicans - including blacks who ought to know better - are trying to claim the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this batshitery.  Here are excerpts:

Republicans, who got just 6 percent of the African American vote in 2012, saw this week’s 50th anniversary celebration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s March on Washington passing them by. So they held their own commemoration. They sent an invitation “far and wide,” as one party official put it, asking black conservatives to lunch at party headquarters. About 150 accepted the invitation for chicken, cheesecake and cheeky suggestions that the late civil rights leader would have supported the causes of today’s conservatives.

Unfortunately, the Party of Lincoln discovered that its technical capability was still rather 19th century. The wireless sound system failed, and the microphone picked up only every few words. . . . . . After a pause, the audio troubles were fixed for the rest of the event. But there remained a good deal of static in the message that came out over the next two hours. Those speaking to the group agreed on the desirability of appropriating King and the anniversary, but they proposed different and contradictory ways. 

Bob Woodson, a conservative activist, got a standing ovation after he said “We should not wait for evil to wear a white face before we get outraged” and urged his listeners to condemn “corrupt” black politicians. “I think if Dr. King were alive today, he would step on some of these sacred issues.”

It’s anybody’s guess what King would do, but it seems a bit of a stretch to think he would do what T.W. Shannon, speaker of the Oklahoma House, told the audience. 

“The key to fulfilling the dream” of King’s, he said, included “quality education for all our children whether in public or private schools,” a “limited government” and curbing a “ferocious appetite for bigger government.” The dream, he went on, must be protected from “contaminants of government dependence, class warfare, socialism and any other pollutant that would muzzle the ring of freedom.”

RNC officials who spoke  . . . . were less creative in attempting to turn King into a conservative Republican. Sharon Day, RNC co-chairman, noted that it was a Republican Congress that passed the women’s suffrage amendment — in 1919. Reince Priebus, RNC chairman, made the requisite references to the party’s birth and the Great Emancipator.

 Actions speak louder than words and the GOP effort to recreate a modern version of the Jim Crow laws makes a mockery of King's legacy.

Bayard Rustin to Receive Presidential Medal of Freedom

Speaking of learning from history, President Obama is taking a step that one can only hope will open the eyes of some of the cretin like black pastors who continue to be the willing water carriers - dare we say trained circus dogs? - for white supremacist leaning anti-gay organizations.  He has announced that Bayard Rustin - Martin Luther King's gay right hand man who organized the 1963 march on Washington - will receive a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.   Sadly, Rustin has been largely hidden from the history of the Civil Rights movement because of his sexual orientation.  A piece in Bilerico Project looks at the news.  Here are excerpts:

The White House announced today that the venerable Bayard Rustin -- a pioneer in the African-American and LGBT civil rights movements, confidante and advisor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington -- will be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation's highest civilian honor.

A press release from the White House notes that the award, which will be presented in a ceremony later this year, is given to individuals who have "made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."

The press release gives the following biography for Rustin:

Bayard Rustin was an unyielding activist for civil rights, dignity, and equality for all. An advisor to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he promoted nonviolent resistance, participated in one of the first Freedom Rides, organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and fought tirelessly for marginalized communities at home and abroad. As an openly gay African American, Mr. Rustin stood at the intersection of several of the fights for equal rights.

LGBT organizations reacted with praise. HRC:

"Bayard Rustin's contributions to the American civil rights movement remain paramount to its successes to this day," said HRC President Chad Griffin. "His role in the fight for civil rights of African-Americans is all the more admirable because he made it as a gay man, experiencing prejudice not just because of his race, but because of his sexual orientation as well."

Rustin was active in the struggle for civil rights for sixty years, from organizing early freedom rides in the 1940s, to serving as key advisor to Dr. King, to helping found the A. Philip Randolph Institute. But his advocacy was far from limited to the rights of African Americans. He worked to end apartheid in South Africa, fought for the freedom of Soviet Jews, worked to protect the property of Japanese Americans interned during World War II, and helped highlight the plight of Vietnamese "boat people." And in the 1980s, he also spoke up for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, testifying in support of anti-discrimination legislation in New York. "Bayard Rustin dedicated his life to advocating for fairness and equality and overcame prejudice to help move our nation forward," added Griffin.

It is sad that Rustin did not receive the recognition he deserved while he was living.

Gary Bauer: Blacks Should Be Grateful "Every Major Goal of Dr. Martin Luther King Has Been Reached"

Gary Bauer

The batshitery and outright lies of the far rights seemingly knows no bounds.  We've just seen a man who deems himself "white" literally get away with murdering a black youth, black males suffer from sky high arrest rates and incarceration rates totally disproportionate with their percentage of society, blacks suffer far higher unemployment and poverty rates that whites, etc., yet former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer - who looks like Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels in my view - just had the audacity or insanity (take your pick) to say that African Americans should be happier than every that "Every major Goal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has been reached."  Is the man delusional or does he simply not give a damn about black Americans?

Goebbels

Right Wing Watch looks at at Bauer's disingenuous batshitery.  Here are highlights:

In an email to supporters of his Campaign for Working Families today, Gary Bauer wondered why African Americans are still so upset about racism and continue “falling through the cracks” when “every major goal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been reached.”
In the email — “Will Holder Persecute George Zimmerman?” — Bauer laments that discussions on race can’t happen in America because “it inevitably degenerates into another round of bashing non-minorities and an indictment of America’s past sins.” Social services, “‘gangsta’ culture” and a lack of patriotic education, Bauer claims, are the real culprits for problems in the black community.
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/bauer-african-americans-should-be-more-grateful-every-major-goal-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-ha#sthash.1obuXRx0.dpuf

In an email to supporters of his Campaign for Working Families today, Gary Bauer wondered why African Americans are still so upset about racism and continue “falling through the cracks” when “every major goal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been reached.”
In the email — “Will Holder Persecute George Zimmerman?” — Bauer laments that discussions on race can’t happen in America because “it inevitably degenerates into another round of bashing non-minorities and an indictment of America’s past sins.” Social services, “‘gangsta’ culture” and a lack of patriotic education, Bauer claims, are the real culprits for problems in the black community.
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/bauer-african-americans-should-be-more-grateful-every-major-goal-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-ha#sthash.1obuXRx0.dpuf

In an email to supporters of his Campaign for Working Families today, Gary Bauer wondered why African Americans are still so upset about racism and continue “falling through the cracks” when “every major goal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been reached.”

In the email — “Will Holder Persecute George Zimmerman?” — Bauer laments that discussions on race can’t happen in America because “it inevitably degenerates into another round of bashing non-minorities and an indictment of America’s past sins.” Social services, “‘gangsta’ culture” and a lack of patriotic education, Bauer claims, are the real culprits for problems in the black community.

Bauer has the gall to then go on blathering about how God teaches us that all of us  are "created equal with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."  But Bauer leaves out any reference to his opposition to equal rights for gays, blacks, immigrants and basically every minority group.  The man is a nasty and disgusting weasel.