Virginia Republicans’ Racist Project

GOP Senator Tommy Norment, author of racist plan

Perhaps being a gay man makes me more conscious of discrimination since one never knows when one will encounter a homophobic bigot who cannot see beyond who I love to see me as a full and complete human. Thus, I am continually appalled when I see those who hold no shred of empathy for other people even if their skin color may differ.  Here in Virginia, the Virginia GOP not only lacks empathy for minorities.  The party's continuing agenda is to disenfranchise as many minority voters as possible.  Given the unequal rate at which minorities are arrested and convicted of crimes that cause them to forfeit their voting rights, it is no surprise that the Virginia GOP is strenuously opposing the restitution of voting rights to former felons who have served their time and paid any applicable fines.  Donald Trump may have helped to bring the Republican Party's growing racism into full view, but that racism has been alive and well in the Virginia GOP.  A editorial in the Washington Post looks at the Virginia GOP's racist agenda.  GOP State Senator Tommy Norment deservedly has a new one ripped for him.  Here are excerpts:

IN ABOUT 40 states, people convicted of serious crimes regain their voting rights upon discharge from prison or completion of parole. In a handful of others, convicts either are never disenfranchised or automatically regain their rights after a waiting period. These rules amount to an American consensus on what constitutes a reasonable and humane approach to redemption in a modern democracy.

In just four states are felons permanently barred from voting absent action by the governor. And in one of them, Virginia, lawmakers are considering an even more restrictive regime that would forever foreclose the possibility of redemption for tens of thousands of citizens.

For this essentially racist project, Virginians can credit the ethically challenged majority leader of Virginia’s state Senate, Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City). He filed legislation last week that would bar people convicted of violent felonies, in Virginia disproportionately African Americans, from ever having their voting rights restored.

It’s impossible to say precisely which offenses would trigger permanent disenfranchisement under Mr. Norment’s proposed constitutional amendment, which would leave it to the GOP-dominated legislature to define violent felonies. However, they might easily include categories of assault or drug crimes that might earn a young convict a few years in prison, followed by a lifetime banned from the voting booth.

Mr. Norment’s amendment would leave Virginia as an extreme outlier in terms of restoration of rights. It would strip the governor of any role in the process by automatically restoring voting rights for nonviolent felons — a category that would also be defined by lawmakers — after they had completed their sentences and paid court costs and restitution, which often amount to thousands of dollars.

For Mr. Norment, the bill is retribution against Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who has infuriated Republicans by attempting to restore voting rights to some 200,000 ex-convicts, nearly half of them African Americans and many of them disenfranchised decades after the completion of their sentences.

Before Virginia tightened its laws in response to a scandal involving former governor Robert F. McDonnell (R), Mr. Norment was notorious as the recipient of lavish hunting trips paid for by corporate bigwigs seeking favorable legislative treatment. Last year, it was reported that he was interviewed by the FBI for conduct arising from his personal relationship with a female lobbyist whose firm regularly pushed for legislation that he voted for and, in two cases, personally sponsored; he neither recused himself nor disclosed the relationship in a timely way.

Mr. Norment, who was charged with no crime, admitted to “exceedingly poor judgment” in the affair. Maybe his voting rights should be rescinded.

Jury Finds "Ex-Gay" Ministry Guilty of Consumer Fraud

Just recently Christopher Doyle, an "ex-gay" who has makes a living peddling the "ex-gay" myth authored an article that appeared in the Christian Post that would have readers to have believed that the lawsuit against Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) was going down in flames.  Like everything else that comes out of Doyle, the picture he depicted was utterly false and deliberately so.  To the contrary, JONAH lost the case and the jury found that it was guilty of fraud.  The same charge, of course, in reality equally applies to every other "ex-gay" ministry in America.  A piece in NJ.com details the historic win by the plaintiffs and counsel from the Southern Poverty Law Center.   Here are highlights:

A New Jersey jury on Thursday found a non-profit group that provides gay-to-straight conversion therapy guilty of consumer fraud for promising clients they could overcome their sexual urges by undressing in front of other men, pummeling an effigy of their mothers, and re-enacting traumatic childhood experiences.

In the first case in the nation to put the controversial practice on trial, the jury concluded that Arthur Goldberg and Elaine Berk, the founders of Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing in Jersey City and life coach Alan Downing to whom JONAH referred patients, "engaged in unconscionable commercial practices" and misrepresented their services.

The verdict requires JONAH and Downing to refund thousands of dollars paid by former clients Michael Ferguson, Benjamin Unger, Sheldon Bruck, Chaim Levin, and parents Jo Bruck and Bella Levin for the individual and group counseling sessions and the "journey into manhood" weekends in the woods. Downing charged $60 to $100 for group and individual sessions but shared 20 percent with JONAH to help defray its administrative costs.

After three hours of deliberations, the jury found Unger was entitled to $17,950; Chaim Levin was entitled to $650; his mother, Bella, $4,000; and Bruck's mother, Jo, $500.

But the victory has broader implications. The national civil rights legal advocacy group Southern Poverty Law Center filed the case to take a stand against conversion therapy — a frequent target of public criticism since the passage of same-sex marriage laws and other LGBT legal protections.
"This is a momentous event in the history of the LGBT rights movement," said David Dinielli, deputy director for the law center and lead attorney for the plaintiffs. "The jury agreed not only is this based on lies, but it is an unconscionable business practice."

The legal battle is not over, Dinielli said they would be asking the court for an injunction to stop JONAH from operating. They will also seek the payment of their attorneys fees, which is permitted under the consumer fraud act.

"This is something brutal based on lies, and it needs to stop," he said.

James Bromley, one of the plaintiff's attorneys, accused Goldberg of lying to his clients - three orthodox Jews and a Mormon- who were desperate to conform to the expectations of their religious communities to marry and have children. They were lured by Goldberg's false promise of the program's two-thirds success rate, but Bromley reminded jurors Goldberg testified that estimate was based on counselors' opinions. 

He [Bromley] asked the jury to recall the testimony of Carol Bernstein, former president of the American Psychiatric Association, who compared conversion therapy counselors "to amateur surgeons operating on the minds of young gay men."  "You never want to go under the knife with an amateur surgeon," he said.

These "ministries" need to be shut down nationwide  and therapists who engage in the voodoo like practices need to lose their licenses.  Let's hope that this is the first of many such lawsuits.

Is 'Ex-Gay' Group NARTH Rebranding?

In addition to Paul Cameron - a fraudulent "researcher" thrown out of every legitimate medical and sociological association to which he was a member in 1985 - and more recently the discredited Mark Regnerus, one of the principal sources of bogus, witch doctor like "therapies," faux research utilized by the Christofascists to claim gays "can change" is NARTH - the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.  Historically, NARTH has been funded by a who's who of anti-gay hate groups and has had ties to discredited frauds like Arthur A. Goldberg - the founder of JONAH - who is a former felon.  Now, after losing its non-profit status, NARTH seems to be re-branding and focusing on profit like so many other "ministries" and counseling centers like that of Michelle Bachmann's husband Marcus "Marcia" Bachmann.  A piece in The Bilerico Project written by Mike Airhart, with whom I had a wonderful lunch some time back in DC, looks at NARTH's latest ploys.  Here are excerpts:  

The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an ex-gay "think tank" that has provided junk-science arguments to the ex-gay and anti-gay political movements since 1992, appears to have evolved into a Utah for-profit corporation called Pilgrimage Resources - or, perhaps, a front for that corporation -- after NARTH allowed its non-profit status to lapse in 2012.

Yet NARTH still solicits donations on its website, inviting donors to become "partners" without telling them that their donation is non-tax-deductible and channeled to a business.

A leading champion of discredited "reparative therapy," NARTH falsely blames parents and child abuse for the development of homosexual orientation and promotes expensive "ex-gay therapy" (conducted by its "partner" therapists) to "cure" gay and lesbian persons of their presumed gender non-conformity. According to a Utah state government database, Pilgrimage Resources was registered as a corporation in February 2009 by David Clarke Pruden, NARTH's vice president of operations and the longtime president of the Mormon "ex-gay" group Evergreen. 

At about the same time, NARTH stopped filing required renewals of its non-profit status with the IRS, and in 2012 the IRS discontinued that status. Currently, NARTH's website channels all donations and resource purchases through Pilgrimage Resources.

We left messages for Pilgrimage Resources and NARTH, asking: 

"We would like to know why Pilgrimage Resources is registered as a corporation in Utah, what is the current status of NARTH as a registered state or federal non-profit organization, and why NARTH is channeling 'donations' through a corporation instead of a non-profit."

In addition to the anti-gay political propaganda goals of the  Christofascist hate groups, one of the big attraction of the "ex-gay" programs is the reality that they can be very lucrative as they prey on tortured, religiously brainwashed gays and, perhaps more importantly, their self-centered parents who are embarrassed to have a gay child. 

Read more at http://www.bilerico.com/2014/05/is_ex-gay_group_narth_rebranding.php#WL32qy8F07vxCySJ.99