LGBT Activists Call for Removal of Anti-Gay Human Rights Commissioner

Virginia Beach is rapidly gaining national and international media attention due to the horrific anti-gay and anti-transgender remarks made by  a member of the City's Human Rights Commission. For a city that depends so heavily on tourism dollars, being perceived as intolerant and unwelcoming can be a kiss of death and Commissioner LaKendrick El toxic Facebook Posts are rapidly undue years of city efforts to enhance the city's image nationally and internationally. In an unusual display of unity, area LGBT organizations and activists have unanimously called for El's removal - something that seemingly is supported by a majority of the members of Virginia Beach City Council.  The Virginian Pilot is  reporting on the controversy that is generating animosity among elements of the city's population.  So far, there is no word on whether El will resign or be removed by City Council.  Here are article highlights (note El's comments about "special rights" - something that it is actually Christofascists and other right wing religious extremists are seeking for themselves): 

Leaders in Hampton Roads’ LGBT community called for the removal of a member of Virginia Beach’s Human Rights Commission on Thursday following comments he posted on Facebook saying homosexuality was an “abomination” and that transgender people suffer from a mental illness.

It’s unclear what sparked the series of Facebook posts by LaKendrick El on Monday. El did not respond to a message from The Virginian-Pilot seeking comment.

El’s posts are not publicly viewable, but screen shots provided to the Pilot by the advocacy group Hampton Roads Pride show that he shared a 2017 news story about a transgender woman in Wyoming who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in a bathroom in a private home [El may have quoted a false Fox News story about this occurence].

“This is why we need to stop giving men in dresses passes,” El wrote. “I have daughters and I won’t accept them sharing a restroom with a grown man suffering from this mental illness.”

In a separate post less than 15 minutes later, El suggested that gay and lesbian people are getting special treatment, although he did not specify in what way.

“Stop promoting sexuality to our children. Two men or women together is an abomination according to my faith,” he wrote. “Stop promoting your sexual behavior expecting special treatment based on who you’re having sex with.”

LGBT advocates expressed dismay that a member of a human rights commission would express such views. Stacie Walls-Beegle, executive director of the LGBT Life Center in Norfolk, said El’s comments are especially harmful to those struggling to understand their sexuality.

El’s comments also drew the ire of his fellow commission members, the city’s mayor and a majority of city council members.

“The Virginia Beach Human Rights Commission was founded to institute, conduct and engage in educational and informational programs for the promotion of mutual understanding and respect among citizens and the fulfillment of human rights," Mayor Bobby Dyer said at a news conference.

“We believe the public comments of Brother LaKendrick Coburn El are contrary to these basic goals that are the core of the Human Rights Commission, and it is no longer appropriate for him to serve in this capacity."

The commission’s chairwoman, Sylvia Nery-Strickland, said El’s comments do not reflect her group’s position.

“I am deeply saddened at the anguish and pain affecting LGBT community,” she said. “I understand how hurtful these comments are. … These comments stand in start contrast to the public position of the Human Rights Commission."

I would also note that time and time again when political figures and right wing religious figures are stridently anti-gay, it's usually only a matter of time before they are exposed for being sexual predators or engaging in the type of sex they are outwardly condemning. Think former congressman Ed Shrock, Tim Haggard, and an endless parade of Republican office holders this blog has noted over the years.

Life in Virginia's Sickest and GOP Supporting Counties

Grundy Virginia

Over the weekend in Richmond for the inaugural events for the Democrat slate led by Ralph Northam, there were an abundance of people from Virginia's so-called urban crescent that extends from Fairfax County, Arlington and Alexandria southward through Richmond southeast to the cities of Hampton Roads.   These are the areas of Virginia that vote Democrat and oppose the reverse Robin Hood agenda of the Republican Party which, if House Speaker Paul Ryan were to have his way, would include drastic cuts to public support, including disability payments and Medicaid (actually, every city in Virginia other than Lynchburg and Waynesboro and a handful of tiny "cities" in southwest Virginia voted for the Democrat ticket in November, 2017).   Not present in any significant numbers were those from the rural areas of Virginia that supported both Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie who in reality espouse policies that, if enacted would cause major harm to the very same rural areas.  Coincidentally, the same day that Ralph Northam and his ticket mates were sworn into office, I came across an piece in The Atlantic  from 2015, that focused piece on life in America's sickest counties, ten (10) of which are located in Southwest Virginia.   

The county most spotlighted in the piece was Buchanan County, Virginia.   Ironically, despite its severe dependence on federal disability payments, Medicaid payments and remote area medical clinics, Buchanan County voted over 80% for Donald Trump in 2016, and 75.94% for Ed Gillespie this past November.   Trump's tax bill slashed taxes for the wealthy and large corporations, few if any of which are found in Buchanan County, and will fuel Republican desires to slash the social safety net spending.  Gillespie, had he been elected championed a similar tax cut in Virginia that would have left Virginia with a $1.5 billion deficit which would have likewise brought spending cuts in programs that aid an already desperate area of Virginia.  Both votes are yet further displays of the irony that rural regions vote against their own economic interest typically because GOP candidates play upon the residents' racism, homophobia and general rejection of knowledge and modernity itself.  How residents expect to turn their regions around economically when their bigotry and backwardness make them anathema to modern and progressive businesses.  A further irony is that newly inaugurated Governor Northam - a pediatric neurologist by profession - whom Buchanan County rejected last November has pledged spend time working in the RAM clinics mentioned in the cited article.  Here are excerpts from the piece in The Atlantic:

Remote Area Medical ("RAM) was founded in 1985 by Stan Brock, a 79-year-old Brit who wears a tan Air-Force-style uniform and formerly hosted a nature TV show called Wild Kingdom. Even after he spent time in the wilds of Guyana, Brock came to the conclusion that poor Americans needed access to medical care about as badly as the Guyanese did. Now Remote Area Medical holds 20 or so packed clinics all over the country each year, providing free checkups and services to low-income families who pour in from around the region.

Inside, the clinic’s patrons looked more or less able-bodied. Most of the women were overweight, and the majority of the people I talked to were missing some of their teeth. But they were walking and talking, or shuffling patiently along the beige halls as they waited for their names to be called. There weren’t a lot of crutches and wheelchairs.

Yet many of the people in the surrounding county, Buchanan, derive their income from Social Security Disability Insurance, the government program for people who are deemed unfit for work because of permanent physical or mental wounds. Along with neighboring counties, Buchanan has one of the highest percentages of adult disability recipients in the nation, according to a 2014 analysis by the Urban Institute’s Stephan Lindner. Nearly 20 percent of the area's adult residents received government SSDI benefits in 2011, the most recent year Lindner was able to analyze.

[F]ive of the 10 counties that have the most people on disability are in Virginia—and so are four of the lowest, making the state an emblem of how wealth and work determine health and well-being. Six hours to the north, in Arlington, Fairfax, and Loudoun Counties, just one out of every hundred adults draws SSDI benefits. But Buchanan county is home to a shadow economy of maimed workers, eking out a living the only way they can—by joining the nation’s increasingly sizable disability rolls.

Just about everyone I spoke with at the Grundy clinic was a former manual worker, or married to one, and most had a story of a bone-crushing accident that had left them (or their spouse) out of work forever.

In October, the sun-dappled mountains blazed with red and orange as the leaves turned. If you wanted to send someone a postcard to convince them of the merits of Virginia, this would be it.

But if this place has the scenery of the Belgian Ardennes, it has the health statistics of Bangladesh. People here die about five years earlier than they should. About a third of people smoke, and a third are obese. A quarter of the people live in poverty, compared with about 11 percent in the rest of the state.

These Appalachians, many of them former coal miners, are among the nearly nine million American workers receiving disability payments today, compared with 1.4 million in 1970. Spending on the program has risen nine-fold over the past four decades. Clusters of recipients can be found from California to Maine, though as Lindner points out, the states with the highest numbers tend to be in the South and Southeast.

Critics say the program’s expansion is partly driven by Americans who are perfectly capable of working but are unwilling to do so. Since the mid-1980s, government spending on the elderly and disabled has ballooned, even as tightened eligibility rules have slashed welfare aid for needy mothers and children.

But visiting a place like Grundy reveals a more complicated picture. There are undoubtedly some who exaggerate their ailments in order to collect their checks. But many of the coal workers here have experienced horrific on-the-job accidents and can’t go back to the mines. Other residents have been battered by diabetes, obesity, and tobacco. Others still suffer from severe depression and intellectual disabilities that would preclude most kinds of work. And most importantly, there are no other options here: no orthodontist’s office where someone can work the front desk; no big firms brimming with entry-level secretarial jobs. It’s not even clear how a person would go about calling around for a job here: My iPhone stopped working a few miles outside the county line.

Locals blame the town’s economic slump on the decline of coal, which they in turn blame on the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations. Several yards were dotted with campaign signs urging passers-by to “Stop Obama/Vote Gillespie.” (Sixty percent of Buchanan county voted for Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate for Senate, though he lost in the state overall.)

The population of the county has shrunk by about 15,000 people since that year [1978]. In May alone, 188 workers were laid off in a mine near Grundy. The industry has been slammed by the newfound natural gas reserves and is expected to contract further by 2020. Still, coal remains the largest private employer in Buchanan, and its heavy impact continues to be felt even by those who no longer work in the mines.

Compare all of this with Arlington County, 400 miles away in the northern part of the state, which has one of the nation’s lowest rates of disability. Only 1 percent of people in Arlington are on disability, and it’s regularly ranked one of the overall healthiest (and richest) counties in the nation. Here, there are well-paved bike routes and a Metro-accessible Whole Foods. People complain when they can’t take their tiny dogs into Starbucks.

Virginia, in other words, is a state divided not only by politics, professions, and mountains, but also by how run-down its citizens are. While Buchanan county’s fortunes have been inextricably tied to coal, those of Northern Virginia are hitched to the government.

An outmigration of the young and talented has left behind an aging population that is ill-equipped to deal with a changing economy. Thirty-two percent of Buchanan's residents never graduated from high school, compared with 15 percent nationwide.

Because getting to a doctor is hard and expensive, people self-medicate with prescription painkillers, alcohol, and tobacco. Eventually, said Smiddy, the pulmonologist, “they become dysfunctional. They're weaving behind the car. They're setting the stove on fire. It's not that they're bad people. They’re probably faith-based people, family people. Most are just trying to function.”

The problem is, even if society were to decide that there should be fewer people on disability, that the system has become too bloated with sneaky pretenders, it isn’t clear what a fifth of the population of Grundy would do to survive. It’s entirely possible that some of the town’s residents are faking their disability claims, but it’s hard to imagine that most of them are. People who are rolling in undeserved government dough generally don’t line up at the crack of dawn to get their teeth fixed in an elementary school cafeteria.

The problem, as Smiddy sees it, isn’t just that the economy is limited, or that the region’s education and medical systems could use an overhaul. The county’s health has been so poor for so long, he says, that locals have set their expectations too low. And once everyone—the people, their employers, their doctors, the government—accepts that bleak vision, it hardens into reality. It makes it so there’s no life after coal.

Yes, Southwest Virginia allowed itself to become wholly dependant on the coal industry which is now dying no matter what promises Der Trumpenführer maymake.  But two other things are at play: 32% of the population never finished high school and much of the population is described as "faith based."  The result is ignorance and bigotry that make the area unattractive to many who might otherwise travel to the region and enjoy its natural beauty (the husband and I would certainly never go there).  As far as new businesses, and uneducated population makes it almost impossible to sell the area.  Sadly, much of the populace refuses to look in the mirror and acknowledge that they are a large part of the problem and that until behavior and attitudes change, things will only continue to get worse.  Understand, I am not unsympathetic to the plight of the people of the region.  I simply cannot grasp how the vote for politicians who espouse policies which will only end up hurting them more while rejecting modern values that are allowing other parts of Virginia to flourish.

The Right Wing Christian Plan to Gut the Civil Rights Laws

On December 5, 2017, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of  Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, one of the Christofascists most audacious efforts to undermine the nation's state and federal civil rights  laws. Aiding in the effort is Alliance Defending Freedom, a certified hate group, which is now a leading group of "Christian" lawyers litigating cases that aim to grant special rights to discriminate to right wing extremist Christians.  While members of the LGBT community are the initial targets of the Christofascist effort to discriminate, the precedent would open the flood gates for other forms of discrimination as long as "religious belief" could be claimed as a justification.  Two pieces look at this Christofascist effort and its potentially insidious consequences.  Both put forth explanations of why it is crucial that the Court rules against the plaintiff in the case who sees himself above the law.  First, these highlights from The Nation which also looks at how Republicans are prostituting themselves to these "godly folk":

On a sunny morning in September, Representative Vicky Hartzler, a Missouri Republican, held a press conference with four of her congressional colleagues to announce their support for Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker. The conservative Christian and “cake artist” had been found in violation of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law when he refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Phillips is now the plaintiff in one of the most closely watched cases on the Supreme Court’s docket this term, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Hartzler had just spent a good part of her summer pressing for a ban on transgender people in the military because she believes they constitute a “domestic threat.” She was one of 86 Republican lawmakers who had just signed onto an amicus brief supporting Phillips’s novel claim that baking and decorating a wedding cake is constitutionally protected artistic expression. Phillips has also argued that he should not be required to deploy his creative talents on behalf of a same-sex couple, because doing so would violate his religious beliefs.

Nearby, Phillips stood quietly with his attorney, Kristen Waggoner of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which has mushroomed over the past few years into a Christian-right powerhouse. Founded 24 years ago because, as its longtime president Alan Sears once put it, “the homosexual agenda threatens religious freedom,”. . . . ADF has positioned itself at the very center of the efforts to curtail LGBTQ rights under the guise of religious freedom.

The preparation of the congressional amicus brief was led by Ted Cruz, the Texas senator and former GOP presidential contender; Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican once rumored to be under consideration by Donald Trump for a Supreme Court seat; and Representative Mike Johnson, a freshman Republican from Louisiana and a rising conservative star.

The involvement of Cruz, Lee, Johnson, and other congressional leaders is just one mark of ADF’s remarkable ascent. . . . . Noel Francisco, Trump’s solicitor general, is an ADF-allied attorney, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions consulted with ADF when drafting Department of Justice guidance on religious-freedom issues. At the state level, at least 18 ADF-affiliated lawyers now work in 10 attorney-general offices; all of them were appointed or elected in the past five years. And in just one year, Trump has nominated at least four federal judges who have ties to ADF—Amy Coney Barrett, recently confirmed to the Seventh Circuit; Kyle Duncan, nominated to the Fifth Circuit; and Jeff Mateer and Michael Joseph Juneau, both nominated to district courts.

At the core of Masterpiece Cakeshop is a radically revisionist idea: that laws protecting the civil rights of historically marginalized groups can violate the free-speech rights of the people who refuse to serve them.

An ADF victory on either claim in Masterpiece Cakeshop, which will be argued before the Supreme Court on December 5, could not only create new precedent but also erode advances in LGBTQ rights, ushering in enduring consequences for LGBTQ people and other protected classes. “We know the possible hurtful effects from the endless examples of how same-sex couples and LGBT individuals have been refused service or turned away in the cases that we’ve litigated,” said Jenny Pizer, law and policy director at Lambda Legal, a national LGBTQ-rights organization.

Pizer said that discrimination occurs in a multitude of public accommodations, including medical, legal, lodging, retail, even access to schools. In its Masterpiece Cakeshop amicus brief, Lambda documented more than 1,000 incidents of LGBTQ people being refused service.

If the Supreme Court were to accept ADF’s religious-infringement claim, Pizer said, “the vulnerability to arbitrary rejection” experienced by LGBTQ people would be present at “any moment during the day when we go through our daily lives—we work, we have to buy food, we have to live somewhere, we have to be able to access medical care, we have to be able to ride transportation services.” And if the Court were to accept ADF’s free-speech claim, Pizer continued, any vendor could simply claim that his or her work is “part of my living my faith, and my faith says I must not make this for you because if I make this for you, I am accepting you, and there’s something about you to which I object on religious grounds.” A ruling supporting either argument would leave “such an enormous hole in the civil-rights laws, there’s really nothing left.”

Note the pernicious way in which ADF is infiltrating the legal system, including federal court appointments made by Donald trump who promised the moon to Christofascists back in June, 2016.  A column in the New York Times likewise looks at the dangerous and disingenuous arguments being made by Christofascists in Masterpiece Cakeshop.  Here are column excerpts:

At first glance, the Masterpiece Cakeshop case — for which the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments on Dec. 5 — looks easy. In 2012 Charlie Craig and David Mullins attempted to buy a wedding cake at Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo. The owner, an evangelical Christian named Jack Phillips, refused to sell them one. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission found Phillips liable for sexual-orientation discrimination, which is prohibited by the state’s public accommodations law. State courts have upheld the commission’s decision.

The reason the nation’s high court is giving the case a second glance is Phillips’s First Amendment claim that he was not, in fact, discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, but on the basis of a particular message: endorsement of same-sex marriage.

Put aside the plausible objection that treating cakes as speech — especially cakes without writing, as in the Masterpiece case — abuses the First Amendment. And put aside the even more plausible objection that whatever “speech” is involved is clearly that of the customers, not of the baker: As law professors Dale Carpenter and Eugene Volokh explain in a Masterpiece brief, “No one looks at a wedding cake and reflects, ‘the baker has blessed this union.’ ”

Finally, put aside the objection that “It’s just cake!” That could be said to any of the parties in these disputes, and it doesn’t alter the deeper rationale for anti-discrimination laws, which are about ensuring equal access in the public sphere — not just for cakes, flowers, and frills, but for a wide range of vital goods and services.

Phillips’s objection was about to whom it was sold; a user-based objection. The gay couple never even had the opportunity to discuss designs with Phillips, because the baker made it immediately clear that he would not sell them any wedding cake at all. Indeed, Masterpiece once even refused a cupcake order to lesbians upon learning that they were for the couple’s commitment ceremony.

Business owners generally have wide discretion over what they do and do not sell . . . . By contrast, business owners generally do not have discretion over how their products are later used: A kosher bakery may not refuse to sell bread to non-Jews, who might use it for ham-and-cheese sandwiches.

In his defense, Phillips has pointed out that he refuses to sell Halloween cakes or demon-themed cakes; he analogizes these refusals to his unwillingness to sell gay wedding cakes. In other words, he maintains that his turning away the gay couple was about what was requested, not who was requesting it.

The problem with this retort is that “gay wedding cakes” are not a thing. Same-sex couples order their cakes from the same catalogs as everyone else, with the same options for size, shape, icing, filling, and so on. Although Phillips’s cakes are undeniably quite artistic, he did not reject a particular design option, such as a topper with two grooms — in which case, his First Amendment argument would be more compelling. Instead, he flatly told Craig and Mullins that he would not sell them a wedding cake.

We’ve seen Jack Phillips’s First Amendment argument before. Back in 1964, when Maurice Bessinger of Piggie Park BBQ fought public accommodations laws that required him to serve black customers equally, he invoked his rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Bessinger noted that he was happy to sell black customers takeout food; he simply did not want to be complicit in what he saw as the evil of integrated dining. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected this argument.

[T]he underlying principle from Piggie Park holds in the case at hand: Freedom of speech and freedom of religion do not exempt business owners from public accommodations laws, which require them to serve customers equally. The Court should uphold the commission’s decision and rule against Phillips.

Amicus Brief Arguments Pile On Against Anti-Gay Baker in SCOTUS Case

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a who's who of anti-gay extremists have filed briefs in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission,  now before the United States Supreme Court,  arguing that discrimination against same sex couples - and LGBT individuals in general - is perfectly legal.   Countering these right wing Christian based arguments are amicus briefs filed by an array of progressives and those who believe that equal protection laws apply to everyone.  As Think Progress reports, among those joining in anti-discrimination briefs are more than 200 members of Congress, over 150 mayors, 19 states, more than 35 major national businesses (including Apple, Amazon, Citi, Lyft, and Levi), hundreds of celebrity chefs and restaurateurs (including José Andrés, Anthony Bourdain, Padma Lakshmi, and Carla Hall), and nearly 1,300 faith leaders.  Besides supporting the concept of equal protection and public accommodations laws in general, some of these briefs have laid out the harm that will arise from granting Christofascists special rights and exemptions from the laws that bind the rest of us.  Here are more highlights from Think Progress:

Many of the briefs reinforce arguments made by the ACLU and Colorado Civil Rights Commission that this is a straightforward discrimination case, and that no matter how artistic cakes are, they don’t justify an exemption to equal protection. Others, however, expand on the arguments by emphasizing just how many consequences there would be if the Court decides to allow Phillips’ discrimination.

ThinkProgress reviewed all 44 of the briefs and found that many people’s fates are tied to the rights of the same-sex couple in this case.

Consequences for religious libertyConservatives argue that Masterpiece Cakeshop is a case about the freedoms of speech and religion. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, defending Phillips’ right to discriminate, recently explained that he “has a religious view and he feels that he is not being able to freely exercise his religion by being required to participate in a ceremony in some fashion that he does not believe in. So we think that right is a fundamental right and ought to be respected as we work through this process.”

But as many of the amicus briefs argue, a ruling in favor of Phillips would decimate religious freedom. That’s because opening the door to discriminating against LGBTQ people would likewise opening the door to discriminating against religious minorities and atheists, groups already quite vulnerable to discrimination.  . . . . other religious minorities like them, are legally protected from discrimination on the basis of religion across the country, but if the Supreme Court sides with Phillips, it would gut those protections.

Consequences for the militaryAmong the justifications for Phillips’ discrimination is the fact that other bakers were available to provide Craig and Mullins with a cake. Besides the fact that this argument disregards the harms of discrimination, it also ignores the fact that not every community has as many bakeries as the Denver metro area. As a result, allowing for this kind of discrimination will actually have a disparate impact on members of the military.

Moreover, “many military installations are located in areas within the United States in which local attitudes towards LGBT identities and relationships are less accepting.” . . . .  And that’s only taking into consideration the anti-LGBTQ discrimination such a decision might allow for, let alone the servicemembers with other kinds of identities that would also face unavoidable discrimination in such isolated areas.

Consequences for childrenA group of child and family law scholars explain that discrimination against adults has consequences for their kids. In fact, there is already a litany of examples of how children have suffered as a result of anti-LGBT discrimination against their parents:

In Michigan, a pediatrician refused to treat an infant based solely on the fact that the child had lesbian mothers. In Kentucky, a judge refused to hear adoption cases of children involving LGBT adoptive-parents-to-be. In Tennessee, a nondenominational private school rejected enrollment for a pre-kindergartener and his 8-month-old sister after discovering that the children had two dads.

Overlapping with the military concerns, the negative impact on these children would be far more severe in small or rural communities where services are limited. “These services include access to health and dental care, childcare, educational facilities, grocery stores, and a myriad of day-to-day activities that most people ‘take for granted.’

Again, these arguments only speak to the children of same-sex couples, but given how a ruling for Phillips could open up other forms of discrimination, plenty of other families could be impacted, such as interfaith or interracial couples and their children.

Consequences for people with disabilitiesMany different groups are concerned that a religious justification for discrimination will upend their current protections, including a massive coalition of disability rights organizations. Together with Former Congressman Tony Coelho (D-CA), author of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), they warn the Supreme Court that people with disabilities are prime targets for discrimination.

“Many faiths have at least some citable, scriptural basis for shunning people with disabilities,” they note, adding, “In practice, disability discrimination is often motivated by sincere religious belief.”

Consequences for businesses and communitiesThough conservatives might argue that Phillips’ case is about a business’ right to run itself, a victory for Phillips would actually be very bad for businesses of all sizes — as well as the communities in which they reside.

A brief from groups like Main Street Alliance and the American Independent Business Alliance points out that allowing for discrimination “would lead to an impractical and unmanageable patchwork that would inhibit economic growth. When consumers have reason to worry that some businesses lining Main Street may refuse to serve them, the entire business community suffers.’

Big businesses are similarly concerned about the economic implications. If some businesses can discrimination, “This confusion regarding which companies can opt out of generally applicable laws will disrupt business by creating unpredictability in the marketplace.” If businesses can refuse service to customers, they can also refuse service to other businesses.

Consequences for women

Though many groups stand to lose out if religiously-motivated discrimination becomes legal, women would likely be one of the most immediately vulnerable groups. That’s the case that a massive coalition of women’s groups make in their brief.

“For much of this nation’s history, women were treated as inferior citizens under law,” the belief explains. “Women’s secondary status often was rooted in genuinely held religious beliefs about sex-based hierarchy and women’s role within the family.” Those gender roles have not faded in many conservative religious traditions, and they often inform those traditions’ opposition to LGBTQ equality.

If Sessions and the right wing religious extremists prevail, the rest of us will suffer harm, either directly or indirectly.  The only ones who would benefit would be Christofascist who would be granted a license to discriminate against anyone they claim offended their religious beliefs.

New Studies: Swing Trump Voters Motivated By Racism and Religious Bigotry

I have taken a lot of abuse by "conservatives" and Republican friends/acquaintances for my continued position that racism and its first cousin, religious based bigotry, were the key components in Trump's Electoral College win, despite his almost 3 million loss in the popular vote.  Trump as seemingly been a racist for most of his life going back decades ago here in Norfolk, Virginia when the Trump companies were sued by the Justice Department for anti-black housing discrimination.  Thus, who better than Trump to play to closet racists who had voted for Barack Obama because of their economic concerns which overrode their racism and religious bigotry.  Two new studies indicate that - as I have consistently argued - Trump/the GOP played their cards to appeal to these voters' racism/religious animus to swing a critical number of Obama voters to Trump.  Specifically, Trump lies to these voters on what he intended to do on healthcare and other issues when, based on what the GOP has attempted to date, these promises were never going to be realized.  A piece  in Slate looks at the study findings:

. . . . .[v]oters who supported Barack Obama in 2012 only to back Trump in 2016. Its lessons have far-ranging implications not only for diagnosing Trump’s specific appeal but for whether such an appeal would hold in 2020.

Two reports from the Voter Study Group, which conducted the survey, give a detailed look at these vote switchers. . . . . One, from George Washington University political scientist John Sides, looks at racial, religious, and cultural divides and how they shaped the 2016 election. The other, from political scientist Lee Drutman, takes a detailed look at those divides and places them in the context of the Democratic and Republican parties. Starting in different places, both Sides and Drutman conclude that questions of race, religion, and American identity were critical to the 2016 outcome, especially among Obama-to-Trump voters.

Whether or not they identified with a party, most people who voted in the 2016 election were partisans. “Approximately 83 percent of voters were ‘consistent partisans,’ ” writes Sides. In other words, they voted for the same major party in both 2012 and 2016. This is the typical case. But about 9 percent of Donald Trump’s voters had backed Obama in the previous election, equivalent to roughly 4 percent of the electorate. Why? The popular answer, or at least the current conventional wisdom, is economic dislocation. But Sides is skeptical. He concludes that economic issues mattered, but no more or less than they did in the 2012 election. The same goes for views on entitlement programs, on trade, and on the state of the economy in general.

What changed was the importance of identity. Attitudes toward immigration, toward black Americans, and toward Muslims were more correlated with voting Republican in 2016 than in 2012. Put a little differently, Barack Obama won re-election with the support of voters who held negative views toward blacks, Muslims, and immigrants. Sides notes that “37 percent of white Obama voters had a less favorable attitude toward Muslims” while 33 percent said “illegal immigrants” were “mostly a drain.”

Nonetheless, writes Sides, “the political consequences in 2016 were the same: a segment of white Democrats with less favorable attitudes toward these ethnic and religious minorities were potential or actual Trump voters.”

Drutman plots the electorate across two axes—one measuring economic views, the other measuring views on identity—to build a political typology with four categories: liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and populists. Liberals, the largest single group, hold left or left-leaning views on economics and identity. Libertarians, the smallest group, hold right-leaning views on economics but leftward beliefs on identity. Conservatives are third largest, with right-leaning views on both indices, while populists—the second largest group—are the inverse of libertarians, holding liberal economic views and conservative beliefs on identity.

Most populists, according to Drutman, were already Republican voters in the 2012 election, prizing their conservative views on identity over liberal economic policies. A minority, about 28 percent, backed Obama. But four years later, Clinton could only hold on to 6 in 10 of those populist voters who had voted for Obama. Most Democratic defectors were populists, and their views reflect it: They hold strong positive feelings toward Social Security and Medicare, like Obama voters, but are negative toward black people and Muslims, and see themselves as “in decline.”

This is a portrait of the most common Obama-to-Trump voter: a white American who wants government intervention in the economy but holds negative, even prejudiced, views toward racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. In 2012, these voters seemed to value economic liberalism over a white, Christian identity and backed Obama over Romney. By 2016, the reverse was true. . . .

[T]here’s another way to read the data. Usually, voters in the political crosscurrents, like Drutman’s populists, have to prioritize one of their chief concerns. That’s what happened in 2008 and 2012. Yes, they held negative views toward nonwhites and other groups, but neither John McCain nor Mitt Romney ran on explicit prejudice. Instead, it was a standard left vs. right ideological contest, and a substantial minority of populists sided with Obama because of the economy. That wasn’t true of the race with Trump. He tied his racial demagoguery to a liberal-sounding economic message, activating racial resentment while promising jobs, entitlements, and assistance.

The good news for Democrats—and the even better news for the populist left—is that unless Trump makes a swift break with the Republican Party, his combined economic and identity-based appeal was a one-time affair. In 2020, if he runs for re-election, Trump will just be a Republican, and while he’s certain to prime racial resentment, he’ll also have a conservative economic record to defend. In other words, it will be harder to muddy the waters. And if it’s harder to muddy the waters, then it’s easier for Democrats—and especially a Democratic populist—to draw the distinctions that win votes.

The bottom line?  If you want to see a likely racist and religious bigot, look a Trump voter in the face. Don't be fooled by their feign religiosity or  adherence to "Christian values." The truth is that they are morally bankrupt.

New Survey: Rural America is Racist and Out of Touch With Reality

A new Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey of rural Americans confirms several things that I have long believed to be the case: (i) rural Americans tend to be much more racist than urban residents, (ii) even though they are the largest recipients of federal safety net spending, they think those who are "other" are the ones living off the dole, and (iii) rural Americans believe "Christian values" are under attack because there are more restrictions on their ability to persecute others.  Again, rural red states - especially those with white populations - receive far more federal funding that they contribute to Washington and they contribute far less to the national budget than the large cities and blue states that are the economic engines for the nation's economy. One can only assume these people get their "news" from Fox News, Breitbart, or their right wing "Christian" pastors.  It would almost be funny that these people who are the largest drain per capita on the federal government think minorities are the ones playing the system if it did not disclose an insidious deep seated racism that unfortunately goes hand in hand with much of rural America and conservative Christianity.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

The political divide between rural and urban America is more cultural than it is economic, rooted in rural residents’ deep misgivings about the nation’s rapidly changing demographics, their sense that Christianity is under siege and their perception that the federal government caters most to the needs of people in big cities, according to a wide-ranging poll that examines cultural attitudes across the United States. The results highlight the growing political divisions between rural and urban Americans. While urban counties favored Hillary Clinton by 32 percentage points in the 2016 election, rural and small-town voters backed Trump by a 26-point margin, significantly wider than GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s 16 points four years earlier. But popular explanations of the rural-urban divide appear to overstate the influence of declining economic outcomes in driving rural America’s support for Trump. The survey responses, along with follow-up interviews and focus groups in rural Ohio, bring into view a portrait of a split that is tied more to social identity than to economic experience.

“Being from a rural area, everyone looks out for each other,” said Ryan Lawson, who grew up in northern Wisconsin. “People, in my experience, in cities are not as compassionate toward their neighbor as people in rural parts.”

In the poll, rural Americans express widespread concerns about the lack of jobs in their communities. Two-thirds of rural residents rate local job opportunities as fair or poor, compared with about half of urban residents. Nearly 6 in 10 rural residents say they would encourage young people in their community to leave for more opportunity elsewhere.

Rural areas have experienced a weak recovery from the Great Recession, with the total number of jobs down 128,000 from pre-recession levels. Suburban and urban counties have each gained about 3 million jobs, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Rural Americans express far more concern about jobs in their communities, but the poll finds that those concerns have little connection to support for Trump, a frequent theory to explain his rise in 2016. Economic troubles also show little relation to the feeling that urban residents have different values.

Rural voters who lament their community’s job prospects report supporting Trump by 14 percentage points more than Clinton, but Trump’s support was about twice that margin — 30 points — among voters who say their community’s job opportunities are excellent or good. Trump also earned about the same level of support from those who say they don’t worry about paying their bills as those who couldn’t pay their bills at some point in the past year.

Most rural residents say they think key elements of Trump’s economic agenda would help their local economy. Large majorities of rural residents say infrastructure investments, better trade deals, a crackdown on undocumented immigrant workers, lower business taxes and deregulation are “very” or “somewhat” important to boosting jobs in their communities. The largest fissures between Americans living in large cities and those in less-dense areas are rooted in misgivings about the country’s changing demographics and resentment about perceived biases in federal assistance, according to the poll.

Rural residents are nearly three times as likely (42 percent) as people in cities (16 percent) to say that immigrants are a burden on the country.

“They’re not paying taxes like Americans are. They’re getting stuff handed to them,” said Larry E. Redding, a retired canning factory employee in Arendtsville, Pa. “Free rent, and they’re driving better vehicles than I’m driving and everything else.”

The poll reveals that perceptions about abuse of government benefits often go hand in hand with views about race.

When asked which is more common — that government help tends to go to irresponsible people who do not deserve it or that it doesn’t reach people in need — rural Americans are more likely than others to say they think people are abusing the system. And across all areas, those who believe irresponsible people get undeserved government benefits are more likely than others to think that racial minorities receive unfair privileges.

That sense of division is closely connected to the belief among rural Americans that Christian values are under siege. Nearly 6 in 10 people in rural areas say Christian values are under attack, compared with just over half of suburbanites and fewer than half of urbanites. When personal politics is taken into account, the divide among rural residents is even larger: 78 percent of rural Republicans say Christian values are under attack, while 45 percent of rural Democrats do.

The other irony, of course is that it is rural America's racism and religious based bigotry that prevents new and progressive businesses from locating to their areas. Until they let go of their 1950's beliefs, they will be increasingly fall by the wayside and continue their downward social and economic death spirals.  I'm sorry, but I find it hard to have sympathy for these people. With the Internet and other avenues to access truthful information, they have chosen to embrace ignorance. 

Bermuda Supreme Court Legalizes Gay Marriage

The Reefs - a Bermuda hotel once owned by friends

Equality has finally won out in Bermuda as the island nation's Supreme Court struck down bans on same sex marriage.  Sadly, as is the case in a number of Caribbean island nations - although Bermuda is in the Atlantic Ocean - ignorance embracing and reactionary religious beliefs were for too long allowed to deprive others of civil rights.   The husband and I were in Bermuda as part of a cruise in 2015 and found the country to be beautiful and an attractive destination but for its legalized discrimination against same sex couples.   What was the most ironic is that the country desperately wants in increase is tourism industry which has declined due to the growing popularity of cruises yet had a "Not Welcome" sign of sorts for LGBT tourists - a group that has been documented to stay longer and spend more than straight tourists.  The Royal Gazette looks at this welcomed development:

A gay couple have won a landmark legal ruling that paves the way for same-sex marriage in Bermuda.

Bermudian Winston Godwin and his Canadian fiancé, Greg DeRoche, embarked on their fight for equal rights after the Registrar-General rejected their application to marry on the island.

They took their case to the Supreme Court, arguing that the Human Rights Act took primacy in Bermuda and protected their right to marry.

Yesterday a packed courtroom in the Dame Lois Browne-Evans Building erupted into spontaneous applause after Puisne Judge Charles-Etta Simmons ruled in the couple’s favour.

“The common law definition of marriage, that marriage is the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, and its reflection in the Marriage Act section 24 and the Matrimonial Clauses Act section 15 (c) are inconsistent with the provisions of the Human Rights Act as they constitute deliberate different treatment on the basis of sexual orientation,” Mrs Justice Simmons said.

“In so doing the common law discriminates against same-sex couples by excluding them from marriage and more broadly speaking the institution of marriage.

“On the facts of this case the applicants were discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation when the Registrar refused to process their notice of intended marriage.

“Same-sex couples denied access to marriage laws and entry into the institution of marriage have been denied what the Human Rights Commission terms a “basket of goods”, that is rights of a spouse contained in numerous enactments of Parliament.”

She added: “The applicants are entitled to an Order of Mandamus compelling the Registrar to act in accordance with the requirements of the Marriage Act and a Declaration that same-sex couples are entitled to be married under the Marriage Act 1944.”

Mr Godwin described the ruling as a big step in the right direction and told The Royal Gazette that he and Mr DeRoche would be resubmitting their application to marry to the Registrar-General “within days”.

“It has been a long time coming,” he said. “This ruling, although it was in our favour ... there is still so much more to do in Bermuda.

“Hopefully, this brings forward hope and courage for those who were or are afraid to speak up or come out. This is a moment we are proud of and will never forget.”

Meanwhile, yesterday’s 48-page judgment was welcomed by the Rainbow Alliance who declared the ruling as victory for all same-gender loving people in Bermuda. The group said “history has been made and love has won”.

Senator Jeff Baron, the Minister of National Security, added: “Today’s ruling affirms that equality is for all — regardless of who you love, what you look like or who you pray to. And equality, when it’s real, isn’t conditional. Let’s acknowledge that there’s a tremendous amount of work to do, right here at home, to move barriers and heal our community. Let’s keep working together, let’s build this community of supporters and champions for equality.

“And despite hurtful attacks let us reach across and engage the most sceptical citizens and show them that Bermudian values; values of love, respect and inclusiveness, can be found in every corner of this island.”

Jamaica needs to take heed of what has happened in Bermuda and end its legalized homophobia.  I'd love to go back to Jamaica, but that will not happen until that countries anti-gay laws change. 

Transgender Boy Wins Texas State Girl's Wrestling Title

Unlike I suspect most virulently anti-transgender Christofascists, I know a number of transgender individuals socially - on April 1, 2017, I will share the stage with two of them as I receive my "Outstanding Virginian" award in Richmond - and in my legal practice I regularly assist those who have gone through transition and sexual reassignment treatments to amend their birth certificates to conform to their reassigned sex.  What might be shocking to hate and bigotry driven Christofascists is the reality that these transgender individuals are just every day people trying to make it through life just like the rest of us, but who have struggled with a burden that few of us can fully imagine, the difficulty of which is underscored by the greatly increased suicide rate among transgender individuals.  They are not predators or perverts - indeed, most pedophiles and sexual predators are HETEROSEXUAL males. What is tragic is that what most drives these individuals to see death as preferable to living is the abuse, hatred and rejection they so often experience.  Especially form the self-anointed "godly folk."  

Why such hatred on the part of the Christofascists?  I have my theory that applies to the rest of the LGBT community: we threaten their house of cards religious belief system and their desire to have a set of "rules" that they can follow without ever having to think and make their own moral decisions. Our very existence reminds them that they may be building their lives on a myth and fantasy world and for that were are hated.  In this rush to banish us from the world so that they can pursue an unthinking and ignorance embracing existence, the Christofascists ignore the fact that once transitioned, transgender individuals are truly no longer their birth sex.  

Seeking to force transgender individuals to continue to pretend that they are still their birth sex leads to idiotic and ridiculous results.  A situation in Texas demonstrates the stupidity and bigotry of the Christofascist mindset.  Here are excerpts from the Washington Post:

CYPRESS, Tex. — Booed and bloody, Mack Beggs dropped to his knees to celebrate. He was, after four wins and two days and all the rest, a state champion.

In a 12-2 victory against Chelsea Sanchez in the 110-pound classification, Beggs ended a highly controversial and dramatic weekend by becoming the first transgender participant to win a Class 6A girls’ state championship in Texas high school wrestling.

“I just witnessed my sport change,” a longtime Texas wrestling coach said moments after Beggs, a 17-year-old junior at Trinity High in Euless whose transition from girl to boy began two years ago and now includes testosterone injections, won a championship. The victory was seen as equal parts unavoidable — quick and noticeably strong, he entered the tournament unbeaten in 52 matches against girls — and contentious. The University Interscholastic League, which oversees sports in Texas public schools, ordered Beggs to continue competing in the girls’ division despite heavy uproar and a lawsuit earlier this month in a Travis County district court.

 [T]he tournament ended a week in which President Trump revoked federal guidelines allowing transgender students to use public restrooms that match their gender identity; it played out in a sprawling and culturally diverse state divided over a controversial “bathroom bill” similar to the one roiling North Carolina.

[W]ith Beggs cruising to a state championship, the hundreds here had no choice but to confront one of the nation’s most divisive and highly charged issues.

“She’s standing there holding her head high like she’s the winner,” said Patti Overstreet, a mother of a wrestler in the boys’ division. “She’s not winning. She’s cheating.”

James Baudhuin, the attorney suing the UIL over Beggs’s participation in the girls’ division, has a daughter who had wrestled against Beggs and, at least before the suit, was among his friends.

The ordeal grew complicated, on and off the mat. Baudhuin himself said he was so conflicted that, though he’d filed a petition to keep Beggs off the mat, he would nonetheless be cheering for Beggs to win the championship.

“The 16 girls who are in [Beggs’s] bracket have been put in a very, very unfair situation because of the grown-ups,” Baudhuin said. “To me, this is a complete abject failure of leadership and accountability from the people who regulate sports in Texas. They’re doing wrong by Mack, and not just these 15 girls but all the other girls she wrestled all year.”

Then there is the experience of Beggs himself. . . . . “I want to be somebody,” he said long before all this; before the boos and the cameras; before his coach whisked him on and off the arena floor to minimize Beggs’s visibility; and before a tournament run that sparked an arena, a state and a nation to confront a subject that previously could have been avoided. “Somebody who does something — not just a page in a book. I want to be a book.”

Two years ago, Beggs pointed a camera at himself and described a childhood of struggle and confusion — before, he said, discovering a word that simplified what he had experienced: transgender.

As time passed, attorney Baudhuin said, Beggs requested to wrestle against boys, though because UIL guidelines determine athletes’ gender based on their birth certificate, that request was declined (citing privacy, the UIL would not discuss that request or Beggs’s specific case) . . . 

All of this controversy and unpleasantness could have been avoided had the  University Interscholastic League accepted modern medical and mental health knowledge.  That, of course, would have outraged the Texas Christofascists who would have had to confront their willful ignorance and desperation to avoid thinking and accepting modernity.  

“Religious Freedom" Laws Legalize Bigotry

One of the most serious threats facing freedom of religion for all Americans is the falsely named "religious freedom" bills pending in numerous state legislatures and in Congress under a bill ridiculously entitled the "First Amendment Defense Act" ("FADA") which destroys the religious freedom of everyone except Christofascists who would be in effect placed above the law.  Indeed, Christofascists would be allowed to ignore non-discrimination laws and public accommodation laws at will so long as they claimed to be acting in accord with their religious beliefs.  In his testimony before Congress, Rabbi David Saperstein summarized what these toxic laws permit:

This legislation would give many individuals, organizations, and corporations who claim a sincere religious belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage the right to deny employment and service to anyone they believed violated those beliefs:  individuals or families of LGBTQ people , unmarried mothers; divorced parents. If this is passed, we could expect to see discrimination in a range of areas where now it is barred.

While not cited, even one's use of contraception would be a basis for discrimination.  It is NOT just LGBT individuals who would be targeted, although we are obviously a primary target.  

A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at the disingenuousness of arguments that FADA would not legalized discrimination.  Here are article highlights:

National Review writer Alexandra Desanctis on Wednesday published a piece purporting to explain how recent conservative efforts to defend “religious freedom” aren’t really about discriminating against LGBT Americans.  Desanctis goes on to misrepresent almost every legislative and executive action she discusses. I can’t speak to any “malicious” intent of the author, but a cursory examination of her contemporaries reveals a lopsided tendency to use religion to justify anti-LGBT discrimination, then fall eerily silent when the religious freedom of non-Christians is threatened. The weaponized kind of “religious freedom” at issue in President Trump’s draft executive order is precisely the modern mutation of this foundational principle, which undoubtedly deserves to be placed in scare quotes, as publications ranging from New York magazine to the Wall Street Journal do.

Desanctis implies that “religious freedom” bills and the executive order are concerned only with marriage. And while the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges did directly deal with marriage equality (tossing a single sentence in Justice Kennedy’s masterful opinion to the anti-equality concerns of religious objectors), nearly every legislative effort billed as a protection of religious liberty since then has reached far beyond the county clerk’s office.

Desanctis herself mentions the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) as one prominent example of legislation introduced “to protect religious Americans who believe in heterosexual marriage.” Apart from neglecting to note that FADA does not protect religious Americans who believe in marriage equality (because they do exist), Desanctis declines to mention that the bill, as introduced last year, included provisions that would allow faith-based discrimination against LGBT people, single mothers, and people of minority faiths.

Not only do religious freedom bills in general concern themselves with more than just marriage, but even the leaked draft order does so as well, explicitly targeting the validity of transgender identities by claiming that gender is an immutable characteristic defined by biology, anatomy, and a doctor’s declaration at birth.

By definition, the Americans who reject this biological essentialism are those who have experience with someone (or perhaps are themselves someone) whose gender identity differs from that which they were assigned at birth. Everyone else—indeed, the vast majority of Americans—are unlikely to critically analyze this provision, since most people’s sex assigned at birth corresponds with their internal sense of gender identity. This fact, however, has no bearing on the continued existence of trans people in America.

[I]n 30 states, it is expressly legal to fire someone because they are transgender. In 28 states, an employee could marry their same-sex spouse on Sunday, then be fired on Monday for putting a wedding photo on their desk. These aren’t hypothetical dilemmas—real people lose their livelihood every year because a supervisor didn’t approve of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

So while Desanctis points out that there is currently no law directly approving anti-LGBT discrimination, the policies she’s advocating for in her piece would change all that. The draft executive order, FADA, and similar “religious liberty” efforts nationwide would create a blanket license to discriminate, provided one claims their “sincerely held religious belief” has been offended. But even here, it’s important to note that the word “religious” is intended to mean “conservative Christian.”