LGBTQ Non-Discrimination Bill Advances in General Assembly

Like many LGBT Virginians I am watching the progress of bills in the Virginia General Assembly that would at long last end anti-LGBT discrimination and make me and others equal citizens under the law and protect us from being fired for who we are - something I suffered with devastating financial consequences.  As the Washington Post reports, legislation that would bar anti-LGBT discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodation, and credit applications is moving forward.  It's a bill Governor Northam has said he highly supports during personal conversations.  Sadly, most Virginia Republicans continue to support discrimination, most likely because they continue to prostitute themselves to hate groups like The Family Foundation (which in addition to being anti-LGBT has segregationist antecedents).  Here are article excerpts:  

A General Assembly subcommittee advanced a bill Thursday that would prevent discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in housing, public accommodations, employment and credit applications.

Lawmakers suggested expanding the focus of a bill introduced by Del. Delores McQuinn, D-Richmond, that would update the Virginia Fair Housing act to prevent discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in housing.

McQuinn’s bill was rolled into HB 1663, patroned by Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax. Sickles’ bill, called the “Virginia Values Act,” includes additional protections against discrimination for LGBTQ Virginians in employment, public spaces and credit transactions and also outlines a process for civil action in a discrimination case.

The Virginia Fair Housing Law currently prevents housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, elderliness, familial status and disability. Sickles’ bill would add “pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity” or status as a veteran, to current law.

Equality Virginia, a group that advocates for LGBTQ equality, said the legislation is a step in the right direction and praised the delegates’ work.

“These protections are long overdue and an important step forward for Virginia’s LGBTQ community,” Vee Lamneck, executive director of Equality Virginia, said in a statement.

Similar bills have been introduced by both chambers in previous sessions. Though praised by the ACLU and LGBTQ advocacy groups, such bills passed the Senate with support from some Republican senators, but never could advance out of Republican-led House subcommittees.

Capital News Service reached out to Republicans who voted against previous legislation to gauge their support for the current bill, but none responded.

Sickles said in a statement that discrimination has no place in Virginia. “All Virginians deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, including LGBTQ people,” Sickles said.
Advocates expect HB 1663 to be heard in committee Tuesday. The companion bill sponsored by Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, is expected to be heard in a Senate committee the following day.

“In Virginia, although a gay couple can get married on Sunday, the sad reality is they can get fired on Monday, evicted on Tuesday morning and denied a hotel room Tuesday night,” Ebbin said in a press release. “This isn’t a theoretical issue, discrimination is happening today.”

The Unfinished Struggle for Gay Rights

Here in Virginia LGBT citizens can be fired for being LGBT and can face fully legal discrimination in housing.  Meanwhile, poll after poll reveals - both in Virginia and across America - most Americans believe that anti-LGBT discrimination is illegal even as the Trump/Pence regimes works to convince a rightward leaning U.S. Supreme Court that anti-LGBT discrimination should be fully legal and outside the protections of existing civil rights laws. In Virginia in November, 2019, the state of affairs can change if control of the Virginia General Assembly shifts to Democrats and Republicans are voted out of a majority in the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates.  In 2020, the same opportunity for change exists if (i) Trump is not re-elected, and (ii) Republicans lose control of the U.S. Senate. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the unfinished work to be done in the area of LGBT rights and the mess that exists in a majority of states where gays can marry on the weekend and be fired on Monday for being gay.  

To me, the ultimate irony is that civil rights laws are supposed to protect against immutable characteristics such as skin color, country of one's birth, age, sex.  Medical and medical health knowledge tells us that sexual orientation cannot be changed - despite the lies disseminated by Christofascist proponents of "conversion therapy."  Indeed, of currently protected categories, only one is NOT immutable: religion.  People can and do change religious affiliation all the time while others leave it entirely based on things ranging from Christian hypocrisy to the reality that neither science nor historical evidence confirm the gospel narratives.  If any category deserves not non-discrimination protection, it is religion. embracing myths and ignorance is a choice. One's sexual orientation is not. The Equality Act passed by the House of Representatives which contains no religious exemptions recognizes this simple reality. Here are article highlights:

Roughly half of Americans think federal law bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Despite four years of nationwide same-sex marriage, despite rapidly growing cultural acceptance for LGBTQ people, despite extensive annual Pride celebrations—these Americans are wrong. Now that all of this summer’s glitter floats have been dismantled and the rainbow confetti has been cleared, lawyers, legislators, and judges have turned back to the ongoing fight over whether federal law does, and should, specifically protect LGBTQ people from being fired, denied a rental lease, or refused service because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
 This year will mark several important milestones in the battle over LGBTQ discrimination. In the spring, the House of Representatives passed the Equality Act, a sweeping bill that would prohibit anti-LGBTQ discrimination in all aspects of public and commercial life, without any religious exemptions. While the bill has basically no chance of gaining traction in this Senate, if Democrats sweep Congress in 2020, it will likely be high on the party’s priority list. In the fall, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case R. G. & G. R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC & Aimee Stephens, about a former funeral director who was fired after coming out to her employer as transgender. The justices will consider whether existing workplace protections in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 already cover discrimination on the basis of gender identity.

And yet, the legal status of LGBTQ rights remains murky. As the movement has gained cultural momentum, activists have largely moved away from a posture of compromise—they believe they can win full protections for LGBTQ people in any context, without exceptions. A small but significant group of conservative religious leaders has been working the middle ground, trying to build support for a bill that would protect LGBTQ people but leave space for institutions, such as Christian colleges and Catholic hospitals, to operate according to their religious teachings. But they’ve faced resistance from their right, with prominent pastors and conservative legal groups opposed to any kind of bill that would mark sexual orientation and gender identity as special legal categories.

As America has largely moved on from its gay-rights moment, with many Americans believing everything got taken care of with same-sex marriage, legal advocates on both sides have been left with bitter disagreements about where the country should go next—and the possibility that the status quo will perpetually remain in place.

[Lying and dishonest] Conservative advocates argue that LGBTQ people face little to no discrimination, and that their identities have been normalized . . . . Ask LGBTQ people themselves, however, and they consistently see discrimination in their daily lives: A recent study from the Williams Institute at UCLA found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people reported much higher rates of being bullied, fired, or denied a job, promotion, or lease compared with heterosexual people. Still, these experiences can be subtle or hard to document. And the incentives for bringing a formal, legal complaint vary wildly, depending on where someone lives: 20 states fully prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, while 28 states don’t. “Because it doesn’t look just like Jim Crow,” said Doug NeJaime, a law professor at Yale University who focuses on LGBTQ legal issues, conservatives argue that “it then doesn’t merit attention.” But, he said, “there’s lots of reasons why discrimination against LGBT people looks different than other forms of discrimination … [That] doesn’t mean it’s not discrimination that needs to be remedied.”

In the past 30 years, the Supreme Court has ruled sex stereotyping illegal; declared sodomy bans unconstitutional; struck down state measures blocking civil-rights protections for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals; and, of course, legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states. But even as the inevitability of legalized gay marriage was becoming clear in the early 2010s, “the narrative really began to take hold that you could be married on Sunday and fired on Monday and lose your housing on Tuesday,”. . . . This question has been particularly fraught for transgender people, such as the plaintiff who will go before the Supreme Court this fall. Ironically, as LGBTQ rights have expanded, it has become harder for advocates to make their case to the public. Before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, “people could see very clearly the fact that same-sex couples couldn’t get married,” McBride said. “People have a more difficult time understanding the way civil rights work in our country, the absence of protections.” The movement has also developed powerful allies from Wall Street to Hollywood, and those alliances have been used against advocates. . . . “The irony about antidiscrimination laws is: Vulnerable groups don’t get protected until they’re actually … [able to] muster the political power to gain momentum.”

Still, that momentum has redoubled the resolve of LGBTQ activists. Maybe they won’t win at the Supreme Court this time, or get nondiscrimination legislation passed through this Congress. But, they believe, theirs is a cause of progress. They will eventually win it all.

And that has left a number of their opponents very, very nervous.

When the Equality Act passed in the U.S. House of Representatives this spring, there were no amendments on the floor—it was just an up or down vote. . . . The legislation won the vote of every Democrat in the House who participated in the roll call, along with eight Republicans—a clear sign of its broad support. The bill also sent another message: The days of compromise are over.

In recent years, claims of LGBTQ rights have been repeatedly brought into direct conflict with claims of religious conscience. Just this week, the Trump administration proposed a new rule that would allow federal contractors to make hiring and firing decisions based on their religious beliefs and practices; progressive advocates believe the rule will be used to target LGBTQ people.

The Equality Act specifically bars any group from using the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, known as RFRA, to try to opt out of the bill’s protections.

For religious groups and institutions that teach that homosexuality is a sin, and that men and women were created as such by God, the prospect of this kind of legislation is worrying. “It would be years of litigation . . . Hoogstra has been part of a coalition pushing an alternative to the Equality Act called Fairness for All. Her organization, along with groups such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Seventh-day Adventists, believes federal LGBTQ discrimination protections are inevitable—the Equality Act’s passage “was a proof point,” Hoogstra said. They want the final law, whenever it passes, to reflect their needs. . . much like exceptions that were written into parts of the original Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

When the evangelical World Magazine broke the news that the CCCU and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), which claims to represent roughly 45,000 churches, had voted to support the Fairness for All effort, a prominent group of conservative religious leaders signed a letter of condemnation. . . . The signers included Franklin Graham, the evangelist Billy Graham’s son, who has been known to make inflammatory comments about homosexuality; but also Russell Moore, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s political arm, who is often seen as a moderating voice in the evangelical world.

If the Democrats make a full electoral sweep in 2020, holding on to the House, taking back the Senate, and winning the White House, it seems likely that the Equality Act will be on their agenda—and it’s unlikely the party’s leadership will be open to finding a middle ground. Meanwhile, the groups totally opposed to this kind of legislation are preparing for legal war.

The story of the LGBTQ movement has lately been one of triumph, but it’s not clear whether that will continue. Graham, of Georgia Equality, told me he believes some kind of federal legislation will eventually protect LGBTQ people from discrimination, “but I’m not optimistic that it will happen quickly,” he added. In this political environment, the possibility of moderation and dialogue seems almost antiquated. “It really feels,” he said, “like everything is a battle for the soul of the nation.”

My take away?  If one is LGBT or has family members or friends who are LGBT allies, the course of action is simple: vote a straight Democrat ticket in Virginia in 2019 and in the 2020 federal elections.  Religious based bigotry and ignorance has harmed lives for centuries.  It's time to make it illegal. 

Trump's Racism Is Nothing New

For the second weekend in a row Donald Trump has been tweeting racist rants directed at non-white members of Congress and, by extension, all non-whites.  Yes, his white supremacist coddling base loves it, but decent people ought to find Trump's behavior appalling and dangerous. Some argue that Trump is merely playing to his base, but a look at Trump's life and business career make it clear that he has been a racist for a long, long time and that we are merely glimpsing the real Donald Trump. Lest we forget, Trump's father was arrested for participating in a KKK march in Queens, New York in 1927.  His anti-minority mindset never changed and was a constant in his business efforts and handed down to his son.  A piece in New York Magazine reminds us of this reality.  Here are excerpts:

For the second July weekend, President Trump has tweeted offensive slanders about nonwhite Democratic House members who anger him. The latest installment involves claims that Representative Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, comes from a district that is a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.

Yet these impulsive thumb-rants amount to some of the most important and revealing communications of Trump’s presidency. For one thing, they convey the beliefs that have undergirded his career. As Victor Blackwell points out, Trump reserves terms like “infest” and “infestation” — which most people use only to describe diseases or vermin — exclusively for nonwhites. As much hate as he might generate for a target like, say, the mainstream media or transnational institutions, he would never describe the New York Times as an infestation.

Trump’s professional career began in his father’s and his systematically discriminatory housing empire. Excluding African-Americans was the basis of the Trump business model. He did not merely engage in periodic acts of discrimination, but insistently violated federal law and went to war with the Department of Justice rather than amend his ways. Trump’s association of African-Americans with crime and filth, and the assumption they must be cordoned off from other Americans, is a conviction so deep it cannot be uprooted.

As Michael Cohen testified, Trump once commented to him as they drove through a poor Chicago neighborhood, “only the blacks could live like this.” This is a window into to Trump’s obsession with urban blight. It is not a rousing call for better municipal governance curiously misdirected at the wrong branch of government, as he and his supporters tried to suggest in their post-tweet clean-up. It is an expression of his belief that urban poverty is a reflection of black inferiority. . . . He is saying that Cummings is black, the kind of person who would live that way, as a means of discredited him via his race.
 Trump has brought his lifelong patterns of thought with him to the presidency. One of the many oddities of his term in office is that he never observed the traditional break between campaigning and governing, and as a result never adopted even the pose of representing the entire country.

Since he continues to go to war against his enemies in perpetual campaign fashion, and since many of his enemies are domestic, this places Trump in the strange position of frequently disparaging parts of his own country. This is surely unique in American history. American presidents simply do not call American cities filthy and dangerous. George W. Bush may not have enjoyed much support in places like Baltimore, but he wouldn’t go around calling Democratic neighborhoods disgusting hellholes. It does not occur to Trump that the patriotic requirements of his office require representing the whole of it.

It is not merely that Trump is unfit for his job. He refuses, almost literally, to be president of the United States.

Virginia Republicans Kill LGBT Bills, Give Amazon the Finger

Anti-gay bigot Del. Jason S. ­Miyares (R- Virginia Beach)

One hears Republicans ad nausea claiming to be the party of business and economic growth yet yesterday a small cabal of  Republicans on the House of Delegates General Laws subcommittee (i.e., Delegates Fowler, Wright, Knight, Bell, Richard P., Miyares) voted to kill four pro-LGBT bills and prevent them from getting a vote by the entire committee much less the full House.  And this was done in an atmosphere where Amazon is under growing pressure to turn down sites for its second headquarters with 50,000 jobs and a $5 billion investment. One of the bills killed would have afforded non-discrimination protections in housing. Another would have protected state employees from employment discrimination.  The excuse for action?  The usual bull shit about "protecting religious liberty" as if protecting bigots isn't a form of attack on those with differing religious beliefs.   With today's GOP, it is all about self-prostitution to the modern day Pharisee Christofascists.  The rights of so-called "Nones," Hindus, Muslims and others not subscribing to Christofacist hate and bigotry simply do not matter.  The lesson from this is that LGBT Virginians, their allies and Millennials MUST get organized and turn out at the polls in November, 2018, and again in November, 2019, and defeat Republicans in every election contest possible.  Locally, Del. Jason S. ­Miyares (R-Virginia Beach) and Barry Knight (R-Virginia Beach/Chesapeake) need to be targeted for defeat in 2019.  The Washington Post looks at yesterday's disgusting event.  Here are highlights:

Bills meant to protect gay and transgender people from housing and employment discrimination died in a Republican-dominated House panel Thursday, prompting jeers of “Shame!” from activists who packed a Capitol hearing room.

On a straight party-line vote, members of a General Laws subcommittee voted 5 to 2 to kill four bills, some of which had already cleared the Republican-controlled state Senate, which tends to be more socially moderate than the House.

“The vast majority of fair-minded Virginians support these long-overdue protections that were passed with strong bipartisan support in the Republican-controlled Senate,” said Marty Rouse, national field director of the Human Rights Campaign. “House Republican leaders are completely out of step with what voters made clear at the ballot box in November.”

Opponents of the bills contend that they could have interfered with religious freedom, with some suggesting that religious institutions such as Liberty University could be forced to let gay couples occupy its dorms for married students.

Only one Republican on the panel spoke to the measures before the votes. Del. Jason S. ­Miyares (R-Virginia Beach) said he was torn between the desire to “treat everybody with dignity and respect” and the need to protect religious freedom. He said he would be willing to work toward a compromise, but not this year. The four bills were all brought by Democrats, Sens. Adam P. Ebbin (Alexandria) and Jennifer T. Wexton (Loudoun) and Dels. Marcus B. Simon (Fairfax) and Mark H. Levine (Alexandria). Ebbin and Levine are two of only a few openly gay lawmakers. Last month, Gov. Ralph Northam (D) signed an executive order shortly after his inauguration banning such discrimination in government employment. One of the bills would have codified that into law. Jeff Caruso of the Virginia Catholic Conference said the bills could force faith-based colleges and organizations to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs. . . . Bill Janis of the Family Foundation suggested the measures were unnecessary because the largest employers in Richmond already prohibit anti-discrimination in hiring. 

Note the toxic influence of the Catholic Church which remains an enemy of LGBT individuals and The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading hate group, to whom Virginia Republicans bow and genuflect. 

The Coming Trump/Pence War on LGBT Americans

As the previous post noted, the number of LGBT Americans is growing as is their acceptance by larger and larger portions of the general population.  Indeed, 68% of Americans now support same sex marriage or some form of legal recognition of same sex relationships.  The exception to this trend?  The Christofascist and falsely named "family values" organization, many of which are certified hate groups, and, of course, scamvangelists like Pat Robertson and similar carnival barkers who use religion to fleece the ignorant and gullible while enriching themselves.  Sadly, Mike Pence is himself one of these religious extremists and Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Fuhrer, sold his soul to the Christofascist leadership in exchange for evangelical support.  Trump is now keeping his bargain with these foul people by way of his cabinet nominees and legislation he has promised to support. Ben Carson displayed the war about to be launched against the LGBT community when he said he opposed "extra rights" for LGBT Americans.  Seemingly, in Carson addled mind, being treated equally and not being subjected to discrimination for which other demographics already enjoy have legal protections constitutes "extra rights."  Unfortunately, Carson is the norm among Trump's cabinet appointees.  LGBTQ Nation looks at Carson's disturbing view of LGBT citizens and taxpayers.  Here are excerpts:

Ben Carson was asked about his position on LGBT housing discrimination and said he opposed “extra rights” for LGBT people.

In confirmation hearings for the Housing and Urban Development Secretary-nominee  on Thursday, Senator Sherrod Brown pressed Carson on whether he believed the HUD had “a duty” to take actions to reduce anti-LGBT discrimination.

“Of course, I would enforce all the laws of the land,” Carson responded. “And I believe that all Americans regardless of any of the things that you mentioned should be protected by the law. What I have mentioned in the past is the fact that no one gets extra rights. Extra rights means you get to redefine everything for everybody else. That doesn’t seem very fair to me.”

Later, in response to a question from Senator Cortez Masto, Carson said he would “absolutely” protect the LGBTQ communinity from discrimination.

It is unclear what exactly Carson meant in his answer. There is no statutory law that prohibits housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and discrimination on the basis of gender identity is only actionable under the Fair Housing Act’s ban on sex-based discrimination. Discrimination is only prohibited by the HUD’s Equal Access Rule that bans discrimination in FHA-backed loans.

The term “extra rights” is also unclear in this context. Carson defined it as “to redefine everything for everybody else,” an apparent reference to same-sex marriage rights, which the HUD does not regulate.

Norfolk Was Part of 1970's Federal Discrimination Suit Against Trump

One thing that came up so far during the presidential debate is Donald Trump's racist track record which dates all the way back to the 1970's both in New York City and here in Norfolk, Virginia. Trump tried to blow the matter off, but the past behavior is in keeping with Trump's current raging racism and propensity to pander to white supremacists.  A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at Trump's discrimination against black Americans here in Hampton Roads, Virginia.  Yes, the Trump companies settled the matter under a settlement that included regular monitoring of rental practices for a number of years.  Here are highlights:

Forty-five years ago this summer, a Mrs. Jones walked into the office of the Oakdale Apartment complex near Wards Corner. The morning newspaper had carried an ad for the rental units, which were owned by Trump Management. The company president was a New York businessman, Donald Trump, according to a federal court filing.

No vacancies, the apartment manager told Mrs. Jones. A unit might come available in a month. Jones and her husband could fill out an application, if they wished.

Shortly after Mrs. Jones left the office, Ellis and Klara James entered and similarly asked about renting an apartment. The manager offered them one immediately and said they could move in the following week.

The difference between the couples: The Joneses were black, and the Jameses were white.

The July 1971 incident, described in federal court papers, was one of numerous examples of “testing” by an organized group of open-housing activists. They had been battling for years against discriminatory practices in Hampton Roads that blocked blacks and Filipinos from renting or buying homes in what some viewed as whites-only neighborhoods.

The long-ago incident might have been forgotten except that it resurfaced in this year’s presidential campaign. The New York Times revisited the case in an Aug. 27 report that noted the Justice Department sued Trump Management in 1973, accusing the firm of discriminating against blacks. The now Republican presidential candidate was its president and his father, Fred Trump, its chairman.

The second Norfolk incident, according to a filing in the housing lawsuit, involved Richard Foard, a black man assigned to Norfolk Naval Station.

Foard told the FBI he had attempted in June 1973 to rent a two-bedroom unit at Ocean Air Apartments in Ocean View after learning about it from a white man, who had just rented an apartment.

Ocean Air’s rental office declined to show Foard a model apartment and told him to come back in a month or two if he wanted to fill out an application, the court document said.

The new reports about the past litigation come to light at the same time Trump has been attempting to persuade more blacks to vote for him, arguing he can do more to address issues affecting African Americans than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. 

The Trumps signed a consent decree two years after the suit was filed that did not include any admission of guilt. It did include stipulations that the company file with the federal court regular reports for several properties, including the two apartment complexes in Norfolk, listing the number of people by race seeking housing.

The two Norfolk properties cited in the suit were among several in Hampton Roads owned by Fred Trump and the family firm. Trump’s real estate holdings in the region date to World War II.

Why Blacks Loathe Donald Trump

A Black Lives Matter sign outside a rally for Donald J. Trump in Des Moines, Iowa.

There are many segments of American society that hate Donald Trump.  For starters, there are Hispanic voters who take umbrage at Trump's depiction of them as would be rapist and criminals.  Then, of course, there are women voters who view - correctly, in my opinion - Trump as a foul sexist pig.  The there is the LGBT community which rightly sees Trump's promises to leading Christofascists as an ominous threat.  And then there are blacks who according to some polls support Trump the least of any demographic.  A column in the New York Times looks at why Trump is so despised by black voters.  Here are column highlights:

So now Donald Trump is campaigning for the black vote. (Long, awkward pause.)

Like so much of what Trump has said and done, this new outreach forces writers like me to conduct scatological studies, framing Trump’s actions in their historical and intellectual absurdity.  But, here we go.

Trump, who got a shocking 1 percent of support among black voters in a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, has been urged to reach out to black voters.

A day after The New York Times published an article pointing out that “the Republican nominee has not held a single event aimed at black voters in their communities, shunning the traditional stops at African-American churches, historically black colleges and barber shops and salons that have long been staples of the presidential campaign trail,” Trump ventured to a suburban town outside Milwaukee that is 95 percent white and 1 percent black to tell the black population of America — a population that has been consumed in recent years by a discussion of police misconduct and extrajudicial killings — that “the problem in our poorest communities is not that there are too many police, the problem is that there are not enough police.”

The speech was tone deaf, facile and nonsensical, much like the man who delivered it.

Then within hours of making that speech, Trump shook up his campaign in part by naming Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, the campaign’s chief executive.  This is the same Breitbart that the Southern Poverty Law Center referred to in an April “Hatewatch” report:

“Over the past year however, the outlet has undergone a noticeable shift toward embracing ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas — all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’”

“The Alt-Right is a loose set of far-right ideologies at the core of which is a belief that “white identity” is under attack through policies prioritizing multiculturalism, political correctness and social justice and must be preserved, usually through white-identified online communities and physical ethno-states.”

How are you reaching out to the black community when you step on your own message with such an insulting hire?

All of black America is looking askance at Donald Trump. He has no credibility with black people, other than the handful of black staffers and surrogates who routinely embarrass themselves in their blind obsequiousness.

Trump has demonstrated through a lifetime of words and actions that he is no friend of the black community. . . . . He erupted like a rash onto the public consciousness on the front page of The New York Times in 1973 because he and his father were being sued for anti-black bias at their rental property.

This is the same man who took out full-page ads blaring the headline “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” in New York City newspapers calling for the execution of the Central Park Five, a group of teenagers made up of four African-American boys and one Hispanic boy, who were accused and convicted of raping a white female jogger in the park. A judge later overturned the convictions in the flimsy cases and in 2014 the Five settled a wrongful conviction suit with the city for $41 million.

Trump is the same man who stepped into presidential politics by becoming the embodiment of the Birther movement, relentlessly demanding to see President Obama’s birth certificate.

This is the same man at whose rallies African-Americans have been verbally and physically assaulted.

This is the same man who has scandalously maligned Muslims, apparently not realizing that it’s estimated that approximately one-fourth of the 3.3 million Muslims in this country are African-American.

Donald Trump is the paragon of racial, ethnic and religious hostility. He is the hobgoblin of retrograde racial hegemony.  And this is the man who now wants to court the black vote? Puh-leese …,

The Challenges That Remain After Marriage Equality

Living in a state like Virginia it is easy to be reminded that winning marriage equality was anything but the last battle in the struggle for legal equality for LGBT individuals.  In Virginia and many other states, members of the LGBT community can be fired at will with zero state law protections, we can be discriminated against at will in housing, and we daily see Republican political whores of the Christofascists (in Virginia its usually The Family Foundation that pulls the GOP puppet strings) ranting about the need to protect "religious freedom" which translates into special rights for Christofascists and a license for them to discriminate however they want as long as they dress their bigotry in smoke screen of religious belief.  A main editorial in the New York Times looks at all the issues that have yet to be resolved.  Here are highlights:

It’s tempting to regard last month’s Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage as the coda of the gay rights movement.

Yet the marriage equality victory should not be regarded as the final battle, or even a clear sign that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans are on the cusp of enjoying full equality under the law. They are not.

Discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation remains an everyday challenge in many parts of the country. Currently, 31 states lack comprehensive laws that protect gay and transgender Americans from being fired, evicted or denied lines of credit.

Last week, lawmakers in the House and the Senate introduced the Equality Act, a bill that would broaden legal protections by amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to explicitly cover sexual orientation and gender identity. 

While federal courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have found that gay and transgender workers are protected under federal law, the bill would offer an important layer of protection in the workplace and beyond. Many Americans still worry that being out to colleagues and bosses could jeopardize their job security or career advancement.

The law would protect transgender students who are waging humiliating battles against school systems that have allowed hysteria to dictate policies on the use of public restrooms. It would make it harder for landlords to turn down prospective tenants who are gender nonconforming. To those who live in the country’s large, liberal cities, these scenarios might seem like aberrations. In much of the country, though, they are an everyday reality for thousands of Americans.

The Democratic lawmakers sponsoring the Equality Act realize the bill might have little chance of passing while both chambers of Congress are controlled by Republicans. (It was introduced with no Republican backers.) It is nonetheless a worthy piece of legislation that establishes what more is needed to ensure full equal rights.

Today, a broad majority of Americans support protecting gay and transgender workers from employment discrimination. Nearly two-thirds of likely Republican voters and 90 percent of Democrats recently told pollsters that they support such protection. There is every reason, moral and political, to be on the right side of this issue.

But, of course, GOP elected officials are not on the right side of the issue.  They still support hate and bigotry  as they pander for the votes of the Christofascists who have no place in polite and decent society. 

Next Fight for Gay Rights: Discrimination in Employment and Housing

As noted yesterday, one of the somewhat overlooked aspects of the Obergefell ruling on Friday was the statement that sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic.  This may prove powerful in the next stage of the gay rights battle: gaining nationwide protections from employment and housing discrimination.  Here in Virginia, LGBT individuals can be fired at will by anti-gay bigots and the victim of the discrimination has ZERO legal protections under state law (as I found out personally when a Virginia Beach based law firm - the initials of the name are WR -forced me out for being gay).  Likewise, LGBT Virginians have no state law protections from housing discrimination.  For the most part, the situation is no better in 28 other states. We can sadly expect the Republican Party to oppose such protections every step of the way as it continues to whore itself to Christofascists. A piece in the New York Times looks at these coming battlefield issues.  Here are highlights:

Exhilarated by the Supreme Court’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, gay rights leaders have turned their sights to what they see as the next big battle: obtaining federal, state and local legal protections in employment, housing, commerce and other arenas, just like those barring discrimination based on race, religion, sex and national origin.

The proposals pit advocates against many of the same religious conservatives who opposed legalizing same-sex marriage, and who now see the protection of what they call religious liberty as their most urgent task. These opponents argue that anti-discrimination laws will inevitably be used to force religious people and institutions to violate their beliefs, whether by providing services for same-sex weddings or by employing gay men and lesbians in church-related jobs.

Nationally, anti-discrimination laws for gay people are a patchwork with major geographic inequities, said Brad Sears, executive director of the Williams Institute at the School of Law of the University of California, Los Angeles. “Those who don’t live on the two coasts or in the Northeast have been left behind in terms of legal protection,” he said.

As they push for more state and local safeguards, rights advocates are also starting a long-term campaign for a broad federal shield that would give sexual orientation and gender identity protected status under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The goal is to achieve overlapping local, state and federal laws, an approach that has proved effective in curbing other kinds of discrimination, said Sarah Warbelow, legal director at the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group. Visible laws can not only permit lawsuits, she said, but also deter employers and others from biased behavior.

Although a majority of states lack such protections, federal orders and court decisions, especially in employment, are gradually offering more safeguards.

[T]he Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charged with enforcing federal law in the workplace, has determined that discrimination against gay men, lesbians and transgender people amounts to illegal sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and it is bringing or endorsing lawsuits under that provision.

That application of existing law is still being tested in court and is more established for transgender workers than for gay and lesbian workers. In the past two years, the agency has successfully pursued 223 cases involving gay or transgender people who faced workplace harassment or other discrimination, gaining settlements or court orders, . . . .

“People are going to realize that you can get married in the morning and be fired from your job or refused entry to a restaurant in the afternoon,” Mr. Merkley said. “That is unacceptable.”

But the effort will take years, he said, because it appears unlikely that Republican committee heads in Congress will advance such a bill.

In the emerging state-by-state battles for anti-discrimination laws, the strongest opposition has come from conservative religious groups . . . 

The major gay and civil rights groups are united in their opposition to “religious liberty” bills, a priority of conservative Christian advocates, which would allow religious vendors to refuse to serve gay couples or wedding celebrations.

“Religious liberty does not authorize discrimination,” said James D. Esseks, the director of gay rights issues at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“It’s profoundly harmful to walk into a business open to the public and be told, ‘No, we don’t actually serve your kind here,’ ” he said. “That’s not how America works.”

When Whites Just Don’t Get It - Racism's Poison Lingers

I don't go to court often in my legal practice (truthfully, I avoid it whenever possible), but when I do go, it is usually for a commercial client whose business has received some sort of summons for a code violation.  Since these are technically criminal charges, one finds them self sitting in criminal court watching a parade of charges, many drug related.  It doesn't take long to notice that blacks, especially young black males are charged at an astonishing high rate, generally by white police officers.  Likewise, it doesn't take long to also note that the white defendants generally get less severe punishments (often because their more affluent parents have retained legal counsel), again, often at the hands of white judges.  To claim that something egregious isn't going on is to be purposely blind.  Yet, many Americans refuse to face the reality that our criminal justice system disproportionately targets blacks and treats them far more severely.  A column in the New York Times looks at this phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

WHEN I write about racial inequality in America, one common response from whites is eye-rolling and an emphatic: It’s time to move on.

But we in white society should be equally ready to shoulder responsibility. In past articles in this series, I’ve looked at black/white economic inequality that is greater in America today than it was in apartheid South Africa, at ongoing discrimination against African-Americans in the labor market and at systematic bias in law enforcement. But these conversations run into a wall: the presumption on the part of so many well-meaning white Americans that racism is a historical artifact. They don’t appreciate the overwhelming evidence that centuries of racial subjugation still shape inequity in the 21st century.

Indeed, a wave of research over the last 20 years has documented the lingering effects of slavery in the United States and South America alike. For example, counties in America that had a higher proportion of slaves in 1860 are still more unequal today, according to a scholarly paper published in 2010. The authors called this a “persistent effect of slavery.”

One reason seems to be that areas with slave labor were ruled for the benefit of elite plantation owners. Public schools, libraries and legal institutions lagged, holding back working-class whites as well as blacks.

Whites often don’t realize that slavery didn’t truly end until long after the Civil War. Douglas Blackmon won a Pulitzer Prize for his devastating history, “Slavery by Another Name,” that recounted how U.S. Steel and other American corporations used black slave labor well into the 20th century, through “convict leasing.” Blacks would be arrested for made-up offenses such as “vagrancy” and then would be leased to companies as slave laborers.

Job and housing discrimination also systematically prevented blacks from accumulating wealth. The Federal Housing Administration and other initiatives greatly expanded home ownership and the middle class but deliberately excluded blacks.

That’s one reason why black families have, on average, only about 6 percent as much wealth as white households, why only 44 percent of black families own a home compared with 73 percent for white households.

The inequality continues, particularly in education. De jure segregated schools have been replaced in some areas by de facto segregation.

Those of us who are white have a remarkable capacity for delusions. A majority of whites have said in opinion polls that blacks earn as much as whites and are as healthy as whites. In fact, black median household income is $34,598, compared with $58,270 for non-Hispanic whites, according to census data. Black life expectancy is four years shorter than that of whites.

[O]ne element of white privilege today is obliviousness to privilege, including a blithe disregard of the way past subjugation shapes present disadvantage.  

If we whites are ahead in the relay race of life, shouldn’t we acknowledge that we got this lead in part by generations of oppression? Aren’t we big enough to make amends by trying to spread opportunity, by providing disadvantaged black kids an education as good as the one afforded privileged white kids?

Can’t we at least acknowledge that in the case of race, William Faulkner was right: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook: I'm Proud to Be Gay

Many have long conjectured the Apple CEO Tim Cook is gay, but Cook has always refrained from publicly "coming out" or discussing his sexual orientation.  That is until now.  In a piece in Business Week, Cook not only comes out, but goes on to say that he is proud to be gay.  It's a feeling I understand having shed all of the religious brainwashing that had damaged me growing up and made me feel ashamed of who I am. Our enemies seek to marginalize us and make us feel shame.  We must resist that temptation and stand up proudly for who we are.  Here are highlights from Cook's essay:

Throughout my professional life, I’ve tried to maintain a basic level of privacy. I come from humble roots, and I don’t seek to draw attention to myself. Apple is already one of the most closely watched companies in the world, and I like keeping the focus on our products and the incredible things our customers achieve with them.

At the same time, I believe deeply in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, who said: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’ ” I often challenge myself with that question, and I’ve come to realize that my desire for personal privacy has been holding me back from doing something more important. That’s what has led me to today.

For years, I’ve been open with many people about my sexual orientation. Plenty of colleagues at Apple know I’m gay, and it doesn’t seem to make a difference in the way they treat me. Of course, I’ve had the good fortune to work at a company that loves creativity and innovation and knows it can only flourish when you embrace people’s differences. Not everyone is so lucky.

While I have never denied my sexuality, I haven’t publicly acknowledged it either, until now. So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.

Being gay has given me a deeper understanding of what it means to be in the minority and provided a window into the challenges that people in other minority groups deal with every day. It’s made me more empathetic, which has led to a richer life. It’s been tough and uncomfortable at times, but it has given me the confidence to be myself, to follow my own path, and to rise above adversity and bigotry. It’s also given me the skin of a rhinoceros, which comes in handy when you’re the CEO of Apple.

The world has changed so much since I was a kid. America is moving toward marriage equality, and the public figures who have bravely come out have helped change perceptions and made our culture more tolerant. Still, there are laws on the books in a majority of states that allow employers to fire people based solely on their sexual orientation. There are many places where landlords can evict tenants for being gay, or where we can be barred from visiting sick partners and sharing in their legacies. Countless people, particularly kids, face fear and abuse every day because of their sexual orientation.

So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.

The company I am so fortunate to lead has long advocated for human rights and equality for all. We’ve taken a strong stand in support of a workplace equality bill before Congress, just as we stood for marriage equality in our home state of California. And we spoke up in Arizona when that state’s legislature passed a discriminatory bill targeting the gay community. We’ll continue to fight for our values, and I believe that any CEO of this incredible company, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation, would do the same. And I will personally continue to advocate for equality for all people until my toes point up.

Kudos to Cook.  Each of us can make a difference by living openly and honestly.  I does open minds and change hearts - and save lives.  I can imagine that spittle flying in Christianist circles.  We had best brace ourselves for an Apple boycott by the One Million Bitches Moms and other hate merchants.

Will The DOMA Decision Have a Ripple Effect?

Justice Anthony Kennedy

One thing is clear in the wake of yesterday's Supreme Court rulings on gay rights: there is still a great deal of work to be done in states like Virginia where legal recognition of gay relations is banned by the state constitution, where gays can be fired at will from their jobs and where we still face housing discrimination and all too often homophobic judges.  Thus, while yesterday gave rise to reasons to celebrate, the reality here in Virginia is that little has really changed.  LGBT Virginians remain second class - fourth class? - citizens.  Will the DOMA ruling help to set a movement for change in motion?  A piece in Politico looks at this question.  Here are excerpts:

The Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decisions managed to do the impossible: get gay rights advocates and conservative Justice Antonin Scalia to agree.

Writing for the majority striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, Justice Anthony Kennedy was unsparing, declaring that the law’s “purpose and effect [is] to disparage and to injure” those in same-sex marriages, subjecting them to “a stigma” that “humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples.”

Kennedy insisted this kind of language wasn’t meant to support marriage equality litigation in future state-by-state fights, but the justice often seen as the intellectual leader of the court’s conservative wing wasn’t convinced.

“By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition,” Scalia warned. 

Precisely, say the prospective challengers.  “Scalia’s dissent is absolutely on the money,” American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero told POLITICO. “It’s going to open the floodgates for litigation applying equal protection standards to laws discriminating against LGBT people.”

“It gives me great joy” to find agreement with Scalia, gay rights activist and Clinton White House adviser Richard Socarides said. He said Kennedy’s withering condemnation of the motivations of same-sex marriage opponents and his lamentations about the impact of discrimination on the children of same-sex couples will be a major boon for the gay rights cause.  “I think the language is going to be extremely useful because it’s very powerful and it makes clear the court takes a very dim view of laws targeting gay people,” Socarides said.

However, Kennedy’s majority opinion in the DOMA case falls short of something both gay groups and the Obama Administration asked the court to do: explicitly declare that government classifications based on sexual orientation are subject to “heightened scrutiny” by the court.

Romero called the ruling “huge” and “a tipping point, but said the ACLU will be hedging its bets on the legal impact of the decision. The civil liberties groups is pressing on with litigation in some states but also mounting a significant legislative effort to legalize gay marriage in many of the 37 states where it is not legal, and in many cases, banned.

The ACLU has hired Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, a top adviser to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 campaign, to build GOP support in the states for legislation to make gay marriage legal. “There’s support for marriage equality among Republicans ranging from moderates to the Tea Party,” Romero said, offering a pitch that casts the issue as one of “limited government.”

Romero noted that the DOMA case the court decided Wednesday left intact a portion of the 1996 law that says states can’t be forced to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. He said that means marriage rights in every state remain critical even if same-sex couples have more and more places they can tie the knot.

In short, the battle continues, although there are many days I'd like to just leave Virginia and move to a place where the boyfriend and I could be fully equal.  Sadly, many gays don't have the luxury of being able to pick up and move.   Hence we remain in backward rat holes like Virginia.

Puerto Rico Legislature Passes Sweeping LGBT Nondiscrimination Bill

Virginia, which at the time of the founding of the United States was the home of some of the most enlightened thinkers in the country, now finds itself falling further and further behind the modern world and now upstaged by Puerto Rico in terms of protecting the rights of all its citizens.  Of course, if the GOP triumvirate of insanity gets elected in November, things will be even more reactionary and opposed to religious freedom.   Once again, who would have believed 20 or 30 years ago that Latin America and now Puerto Rico would have more respect for freedom that one of the cradles of the American Revolution.    Huffington Post looks at events in Puerto Rico.  Here are highlights:

International lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates are praising Puerto Rico's decision to advance "sweeping" nondiscrimination measures.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's blog reports that the Puerto Rican House of Representatives approved the bills May 24, which protect LGBT people in employment, housing, governmental services and public accommodations, as well as add sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to the island’s domestic violence laws, respectively. 

Anti-discrimination bill SB 238 and HB 488, the domestic violence measure, now move to Gov. Alejandro García Padilla, who has vowed to sign them into law, according to the Washington Blade.

Among those to support the bill beforehand was Ricky Martin.   "The same rights for each and every citizen of Puerto Rico, that's what we are asking and that's what we hope to achieve, the country's justice and peace that we want to achieve," the singer said in a statement cited by E! Online. "Puerto Rico has to join all the countries in the world that are at the forefront of the issue of human rights and equality."

In Virginia in contrast, LGBT citizens have ZERO - that's right, ZERO - nondiscrimination protections.  It's a travesty, not to mention an embarrassment.  Yet, The Family Foundation and it's knuckle dragging, moronic followers pat themselves on the back for their piety and religiosity.  These people are horrible!!