Mike Pence Continues to Promote the Myth of Christian Persecution

Two modern day Pharisees: Pence and Falwell.

To hear American Christofascists, one would think they are undergoing persecution just short of having their churches bombed and being fired from their jobs daily.  The reality is something far different: Christofascists are simply  seeing increased limits on their ability to persecute and mistreat others.  To say they don't like restrictions on their ability to inflict harm on and to marginalize others is an understatement. Hence, the ploy of claiming persecution and the false flag of religious freedom. Mike Pence, who I find a malevolent force, took the occasion of his address to graduating students at Liberty University - a blight on Virginia - to promote this dishonest myth.  Pence has used this lie previously in defense of his wife's work at an anti-gay "Christian" school.  As one Facebook friend rightly notes:

Nobody ridicules Pence for being Christian. They ridicule him for claiming to be "Christian" while he fights to disregard the marginalized, make the rich richer, turn away war refugees, steal kids from migrants and pretend that Christ shares his homophobia.

The same description certainly applies to Jerry Falwell, Jr., the president of Liberty University who is a Trump cheerleader and supports the GOP war on the poor agenda (and that's not counting his "pool boy" imbroglio).  USA Today looks at Pence's lies at Liberty University.  Here are excerpts (note how a movement is growing at one Christian university to block Pence giving the commencement address due to his failure to support true Christian principles):

The last time Vice President Mike Pence spoke at Liberty University, he used the backdrop of one of the world’s largest Christian schools to vouch for candidate Donald Trump’s faith credentials during the 2016 campaign. 

Pence, who has been facing criticisms of his own religious views recently, warned graduates that they have to stay strong against the challenges they’ll get from Hollywood, the media and the secular left. “Some of the loudest voices for tolerance today have little tolerance for traditional Christian beliefs,” Pence said. “Be ready.” “Throughout most of American history, it's been pretty easy to call yourself Christian,” Pence said. “It didn’t even occur to people that you might be shunned or ridiculed for defending the teachings of the Bible. But things are different now.”

Pence said the graduates will be asked not just to tolerate things that violate their faith, but to endorse them.

Pence didn’t specifically mention this, but he’s been a target on the presidential campaign trail, where Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg has gotten attention for questioning how Pence can square his faith with both his support for Trump and his opposition to gay marriage.

And the commencement address that Pence is scheduled to deliver next week at a Christian school in his home state has divided Taylor University. An online petition started by a Taylor alum complains that the address will make the school “complicit in the Trump-Pence Administration's policies, which we believe are not consistent with the Christian ethic of love we hold dear.”

A recent Morning Consult survey shows why Pence’s message Saturday that Christians are under attack might resonate with his audience.  The April survey asked people if they felt respected by various types of groups including late night comedians, people who work on Wall Street, national journalists, and college professors at elite universities. Less than 30% of white evangelical Protestants felt respected by any of those groups. But nearly two-thirds said that Trump respected “people like them.”   

The survey results document that two-thirds of evangelicals are fools.  Trump doesn't respect them - he merely recognizes that they are easily duped and easy con-artist targets. 

Trump/Pence Regime Green Lights Discrimination in South Carolina

Miracle Hill Ministries: anti-gay, anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic. 

I have long argued that evangelical Christians' feigned persecution by society and disingenuous bloviating about "religious liberty" has actually been part of a larger evangelical effort to legalize discrimination against who the falsely pious do not like.  While, LGBT citizens are a favored target, evangelical "religious liberty" seeks to legalize discrimination by taxpayer funded organizations on a much larger scale.  Eager to retain support from evangelicals - the largest support group for the morally bankrupt Trump -and Pence - The Trump/Pence Department of Health and Human Services has given the green light to discrimination by a right wing "Christian" organization in South Carolina to discriminate against gays, Catholics, Jews, and I suspect, if they are discrete, blacks, in making adoption and foster care placements.  Since the organization receives taxpayer funds, Trump/Pence is in effect forcing targeted taxpayers to support an organization that openly discriminates against them.  The situation parallels what the established Church of England enjoyed in colonial times that the Founding Fathers sought to prohibit through the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  Right Wing Watch looks at this travesty.  Here are excerpts:   

In a move that brought a startling clarity to the end game for “religious liberty” claims made by Religious Right political and legal groups, the Department of Health and Human Services last week granted a waiver from federal non-discrimination rules to South Carolina, allowing the state to continue funneling tax dollars to Miracle Hill, a child welfare agency that refuses to place foster children with Jewish or Catholic families—or anyone who doesn’t share Miracle Hill’s conservative evangelical religious doctrine. The waiver also applies to all other South Carolina faith-based foster care agencies.

“Under Miracle Hill’s policies, not only Jews are rejected” as potential mentors and foster parents, reported the Religion News Service. “Muslims, Hindus and atheists are also barred from fostering or mentoring children in the nonprofit’s programs; so too are Catholics.” Don’t even ask about same-sex couples, even if they’re Protestant. Miracle Hill has reportedly received millions of dollars from the state and federal governments.

What makes this development even more jaw-dropping is that at the very same moment the Trump administration is deferring to the far right and approving this taxpayer-funded religious discrimination, the right-wing Judicial Crisis Network is promoting a video dishonestly accusing Democratic senators of anti-Catholic bigotry over their questioning of judicial nominees.  A previous JCN ad attacking senators over their questioning of appeals court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was actually entitled “Catholics Need Not Apply.”

The smears against the senators are false, and reflect a strategy meant to smooth a path to the Supreme Court for Barrett, who some Religious Right leaders have called God’s anointed choice to fill the next vacancy. But in the case of Miracle Hill, an actual “No Catholics Need Apply” rule has been given formal approval by South Carolina’s governor and the Trump administration.

In pushing for broad religious exemptions from nondiscrimination laws, Religious Right groups have almost always made gay people and same-sex couples the bad guys—the ones religious social service agencies and business owners don’t want to be “forced” to serve. The idea that businesses could use the same principle to return to a time when it was legal to discriminate against, say, interfaith couples, is no longer theoretical.

Miracle Hill says it works with “Christian” families. But when it says “Christian,” it really means Protestants, and only those who meet the agency’s religious standards. No one else.

Allowing this kind of discrimination with tax dollars is a huge change. Federal civil rights rules have at times allowed religiously affiliated social service agencies to restrict staff hiring to people with similar religious beliefs. But that rule has never applied to the provision of services with taxpayer money. In other words, a church-affiliated charity that gets government funding to help feed or house poor people may be able to hire only Christian staff, but it couldn’t—at least up to now—feed only the right kind of Christian poor people.

And yet the Trump administration and its Religious Right cheerleaders characterized the waiver as a victory for religious freedom.

The Religious Right’s long campaign to redefine “religious liberty” has taken a core constitutional principle that is meant to be a shield protecting Americans’ free exercise of religion, and turned it into a sword against nondiscrimination laws. That sword, it is now clear, will not only be used to target LGBTQ people, but anyone who doesn’t embrace the Religious Right’s worldview.

Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, praised the Miracle Hill waiver, saying, “Culture wars shouldn’t stand in the way of those seeking to care for children in need.” But allowing state-funded agencies to reject an experienced foster mother on the basis of her religious beliefs—like a Jewish woman turned away by Miracle Hill—denies vulnerable children access to qualified care providers.

The Trump administration’s move makes both state and federal governments complicit in explicit discrimination against non-Christians and Christians who don’t meet conservative evangelicals’ approval. The Anti-Defamation League has rightly called it a “dangerous precedent.” That’s especially true in an era in which Christian nationalists and dominionists are committed to building more political power.

The Department of Health and Human Services was a top takeover target for Religious Right groups who helped put Trump in the White House. The new waiver is just the latest sign of the extraordinary and damaging influence on policy that Religious Right activists have in the Trump administration.

I'm sorry, but evangelicals are the least Christian, most morally abhorrent group going. Note the Southern Baptist Convention's ("SBC") lauding of the waiver.  But then, the SBC was created because it supported slavery and discrimination.  Some things seemingly never change.

Brett Kavanaugh Is A “Direct Threat” To LGBT People

Kavanaugh and Der Trumpenführer who has been waging a relentless war on LGBT Americans.

While I have been at times critical of the Human Rights Campaign ("HRC") because in the past it has at times put more emphasis on self-promotion and maintaining "access" to politicians by not putting the rights of its LGBT supporters first, when it comes to research, generally does a first class job. Today, HRC released a research piece that concluded that Brett Kavanaugh, Der Trumpenführer's nominee to replace Anthony Kennedy, is a "direct threat" to LGBT Americans.  Why?  Because, Kavanaugh seemingly does not believe in a constitutional right to privacy which is the principle that under grids not only Roe v. Wade, but also Lawrence v. Texas and even the Obergefell marriage ruling. Equally disturbing is Kavanaugh's deference to "religious liberty" claims that increasingly are being utilized by Christofascists to demand exemption from non-discrimination laws and public accommodation laws.  BuzzFeed looks at HRC's concerns.  Here are highlights:

h,The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBT advocacy group, has concluded that Judge Brett Kavanaug President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, is “a direct threat to the constitutional rights of everyday Americans and for the LGBTQ community in particular.”

In his dozen years as a federal appeals court judge, however, Kavanaugh has not heard any significant cases addressing LGBT issues and has said hardly anything about LGBT people. As a result, HRC’s opposition to his nomination — detailed in a new report to be released Tuesday, a copy of which was reviewed by BuzzFeed News — drew primarily on Kavanaugh’s opinions regarding reproductive rights and religious liberties, as well as the dearth of information about his work in the George W. Bush White House, to back up its conclusions about the threat the group says his confirmation would pose to LGBT Americans.

The fact that Kavanaugh would replace Justice Anthony Kennedy — the author of all of the Supreme Court’s key decisions advancing LGBT rights over the past 25 years — also appeared to figure into HRC’s stance.

The HRC report also expressed concerns about Kavanaugh’s views on the Affordable Care Act, voter ID laws, and federal agency power, as well as his rulings in employment discrimination cases.

“During his 12 years on the D.C. Circuit, [Kavanaugh] did not substantively address any of the Supreme Court’s seminal LGBTQ decisions in Lawrence v. Texas, Romer v. Evans, United States v. Windsor, or Obergefell v. Hodges, nor its discredited ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick,” the report stated. 

In the absence of opinions on LGBT-related cases, HRC pointed to speeches Kavanaugh gave “extensively praising” former chief justice William Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia — whom the group claimed “have some of the most pronounced anti-LGBTQ records of modern jurists.”

“Judge Kavanaugh’s record on reproductive rights, the right to privacy, and religious liberty indicates a potent combination of ideological views that could significantly and unnecessarily reshape constitutional doctrine and nondiscrimination protections as they apply to LGBTQ persons,” the group concluded.

The next five sections of the HRC report laid out the legal areas where the group argued that Kavanaugh’s opinions and other statements suggest he will be opposed to LGBT people’s interests.

·      Right to Privacy: HRC argued that Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinions in two reproductive rights cases — one involving an undocumented minor seeking an abortion and the other involving the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage opt-out procedures — signal a “critical and constrained perspective” on Roe v. Wade. His record, the report concluded, “suggests that he does not accept the enduring precept that the Constitution protects the right to privacy,” adding that this relates to LGBT issues as “the Court’s 2015 momentous marriage equality decision built upon this logic further.”

·         Religious Liberty: The group pointed to Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinion in the ACA case, which the majority of the DC Circuit judges called “a potentially sweeping” interpretation of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, and concluded that Kavanaugh “seems all-too-ready to carve out any number of other religious exemptions into statutory and constitutional law.”

·     Nondiscrimination Protections: Calling Kavanaugh’s opinion upholding South Carolina’s voter ID law “troubling,” HRC also noted that the judge repeatedly dissented in discrimination-related cases where his colleagues “upheld a claim or finding of discrimination.”

·         Separation of Powers: Citing his criticism of “independent agencies [as] … a headless fourth branch of the US government” in a case challenging the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the HRC report expressed concern that Kavanaugh’s reasoning “could regularly disempower federal agencies and narrow federal laws, which often serve as crucial bulwarks against LGBTQ discrimination.”

Finally, HRC echoed concerns expressed by Senate Democrats about records from Kavanaugh’s time in the White House — first as a lawyer in the counsel’s office and then as Bush’s staff secretary. Specifically, the group noted that records from Kavanaugh’s work in the Bush administration may include information regarding his views on LGBT issues.

“The years of 2001 to 2006 (when he served in the Bush White House), was an especially consequential period for the LGBTQ rights and marriage equality movement,” the report said. “This era included the Lawrence v. Texas decision, multiple pronouncements by President Bush about the institution of marriage and marriage-related amendments to the federal Constitution, and civil rights litigation and referenda at the state and circuit levels.”

As most readers will recall, the George W. Bus White House used anti-gay marriage initiatives and anti-gay animus in general as a means to rally the Christofascist vote in 2004.  What role Kavanaugh played in this anti-gay witch hunt and demonizing of LGBT Americans needs to be made public BEFORE any vote takes place on Kavanaugh's nomination. 

Sessions Announces New Anti-Gay Task Force Under Guise of "Religious Liberty"

The euphemism in today's Republican Party for rolling back LGBT rights is "protecting "religious liberty."  Of course, only one set of religious belief is protected under the Trump/Republican Party Agenda: extreme right wing Christian beliefs.  The religious beliefs and civil rights of all others falls before the Christofascists push to make their beliefs supreme and their ability to discriminate against others whether based on sexual orientation or, I suspect before their quest is over, race and skin color.  Pushing this Christofascist agenda is Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, and his ever foul Attorney General, Jeff Sessions - a man I have had the acquaintance of since the late 1970's. As CNN reports, Sessions - acting no doubt on Trump's orders so as to maintain the loyalty of his utterly immoral evangelic base - has announced a new task force to implement the Trump Justice Departments effort to grant special rights to Christofascists and exempt them from public accommodation and non-discrimination laws.  Here are article highlights (in reading the piece, be mindful that "religious groups" only encompass far right Christian groups):

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday announced the Department of Justice's creation of a "religious liberty task force" to "help the department fully implement our religious guidance."

Sessions said the goal of the task force will be protecting religious groups from persecution.

"The task force will help the department fully implement our religious liberty guidance by ensuring that all Justice Department components are upholding that guidance in the cases they bring and defend, the arguments they make in court, the policies and regulations they adopt and how we conduct our operations," Sessions said. "That includes making sure that our employees know their duties to accommodate people of faith."
 Sessions cited "a dangerous movement" aimed toward stripping away the First Amendment right to freedom of religion as a basis for forming the new task force.  "A dangerous movement, undetected by many, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom," Sessions said in his speech. "There can be no doubt. This is no little matter. It must be confronted and defeated."

Slate provides more context and notes that references to non-right wing Christian traditions appear to be merely disingenuous window dressing to deceive the gullible or to toss a talking point to militant Christofascists.  Here are excerpts:

Sessions mentioned the Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu religions and proclaimed that the DOJ would protect all adherents from discrimination. But in arguing that it was an “unease” over a “changing cultural climate” that motivated Trump voters and the administration’s religious-liberty policies, Sessions seemed to refer more to the complaints of the Christian right. “[Trump] said he respected people of faith and he promised to protect them in the free exercise of their faith,” Sessions said. “He declared we would say ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”

In October 2017, Sessions released a vague memo that instructed federal agencies to observe 20 “principles of religious liberty.” Activists for LGBTQ and women’s rights worried at the time that the proclamation gave broad permission for religious groups to ignore federal civil rights laws.

“Under this administration, the federal government is not just reacting—we are actively seeking, carefully, thoughtfully and lawfully, to accommodate people of faith,” he said. “Religious Americans are no longer an afterthought.”

Sadly, the rights of everyone other than Christofascists will now be an after thought and the concept of a secular civil society will be further undermined. Having followed the far Christian right for over two decades, the move is no surprise to me.  Literally no one in American society is more self-centered, selfish and uncaring to others than the "godly Christian" evangelicals.  They make a mockery of the Gospel message and, if America is lucky, will accelerate the exodus from religion by Millennials and others as Christianity as imposed by the Christofascists becomes something to be reviled and avoided. 

Trump DOJ Seeks to Argue In Favor of Anti-Gay Discrimination

The Justice Department under Attorney General Jeff Sessions is seeking
time to argue before the Supreme Court on behalf of an anti-gay baker.
(Photo by Gage Skidmore; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

As noted in numerous past blog posts, Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, made a pact with Christofascist leaders in June of 2016, whereby he promised to wage war against the rights of LGBT citizens.  While Trump has delivered on few of his campaign promises, he is delivering on his promises to the Christofascists.  The latest proof is the effort by the Trump Department of Justice to intervene and file a brief in a case now before the U.S. Supreme that seeks to exempt Christofascists from complying with anti-discrimination and public accommodation laws.  What those who are unfamiliar with Der Trumpenführer's anti-LGBT agenda may not understand is that the special rights that Christofascists seek are so expansive that it could be Muslims, Hindus, women using contraception, or unwed co-habitating couples who find themselves as the next targets of Christofascist discrimination. The Washington Blade looks at this unprecedented effort to support discrimination albeit under the smoke screen of "religious freedom.:  Here are excerpts:

The U.S. Justice Department under U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is seeking a time slot of 10 minutes before the U.S. Supreme Court to argue on behalf of a Colorado baker who wishes to refuse the sale of make wedding cakes for same-sex couples.

U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco filed the two-page request Wednesday before the Supreme Court in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

The request says the Justice Department “has a substantial interest” in the case because the U.S. government has an interest in “the preservation of federal constitutional rights of free expression.”

The request also argues the U.S. government has an interest in the case because the scope of Colorado non-discrimination law, which bars anti-gay discrimination in public accommodations, is similar to Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As noted in the request, the Justice Department has already filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case arguing that baking a wedding cake is inherently an act of expression protected under the First Amendment. Therefore, the ability of a baker to deny a wedding cake to same-sex couples for religious reasons should trump any state non-discrimination law.

The case came about after Phillips refused to make a wedding cake for Charlie Craig and David Mullins, a Colorado same-sex couple, in 2012 for their wedding in Massachusetts. An administrative judge ruled in favor of the same-sex couple — a decision the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld in 2015.

Although the Colorado Supreme Court had declined to review these decisions and let them stand, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari, or agreed to take up the case, in June.  Oral arguments are set for Dec. 5.

Hmm . . .  do you think Sessions would file a brief in support of me if I refused to prepare legal documents for Christofascists since I view them akin to the Pharisees condemned by Christ in the New Testament?  I suspect not because Sessions believes only Christofascists have rights of religious freedom.  The rest of us do not in the age of Trump.  

The Worst (and Best) Places To Be Gay in America

As noted in any number of posts on this blog, Donald Trump and Mike Pence are waging a continuing war against the rights and dignity of LGBT Americans.  They are joined in this effort by state level Republicans across the country. Here in Virginia, if the Republican ticket were to win in November, much of the anti-LGBT agenda of the GOP - especially that of extreme homophobe, John Adams, the Virginia AG candidate, would have no firewall to stop it.   Sadly, the quality of one's life often depends on where one lives - what state and at times even what locality in which you live.  In Virginia's so-called urban crescent, life is tolerable.  In Southwest Virginia where white supremacy and homobobia (the two usually are found together) reign supreme, it is a different world.  The driving force behind the anti-LGBT jihad: Christofascists who make up a large part of the GOP base and often closeted Republican elected officials - think Ed Schrock, Larry Craig, Ken Cuccinelli and perhaps even Mike Pence - who seem to believe that the best way to hide their secret yearnings is to abuse those who are openly LGBT.  A lengthy column in the New York Times (please read the entire piece and its graphics) looks at the reality of how different life can be depending on where one happens to live.  Here are highlights:

All my life I’ve loved Texas: those big skies, big steaks and big attitudes. I’m there several times a year.  But Texas doesn’t love me back. Certainly its lawmakers don’t, and lately they’ve been hellbent on showing that.

In June the governor signed a bill allowing child welfare groups to refuse adoptions that contradict their “sincerely held religious beliefs.” They can turn away gay men like me.

That same month, the Texas Supreme Court approved a lawsuit challenging the city of Houston’s provision of equal benefits to all married employees, including those with same-sex spouses. Although the United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015, Texas bucks and balks.

Not New York. My state loves me something fierce. What it did in June was finalize the design of a monument to L.G.B.T. citizens in downtown Manhattan. New York legalized same-sex marriage back in 2011 without any federal nudge.

There’s no such thing as L.G.B.T. life in America, a country even more divided on this front than on others. There’s L.G.B.T. life in a group of essentially progressive places like New York, Maryland, Oregon and California, which bans government-funded travel to states it deems unduly discriminatory. Then there is L.G.B.T. life on that blacklist, which includes Texas, Kansas, Mississippi and South Dakota.

The differences between states — and between cities within states — are profound, and while that has long been true, it’s much more consequential since the advent of the Trump administration, a decidedly less ready ally of L.G.B.T. people than the Obama administration was.

The federal government under Donald Trump won’t be rushing in to help L.G.B.T. people whose local governments fail to give them equal rights, a sense of belonging or even a feeling of physical safety. . . . . Immediately after his inauguration, references to the L.G.B.T. community were scrubbed from many federal websites, including the White House’s and the Department of State’s.

Plenty of the people he [Der Trumpenführer] pulled into his cabinet have long histories of pronounced opposition to gay rights. One of them, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, leads a Department of Justice that recently went out of its way to make clear, in court filings, that it did not consider L.G.B.T. people to be protected by a federal civil rights law that prohibits employment discrimination.

Without consulting or even alerting the heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, Trump announced a reinstatement of the ban on transgender people in the military, and he’s now finishing the orders for how the Department of Defense should enforce it — within six months. His first Supreme Court appointment suggests that if he is able to ensconce several more, the same-sex-marriage ruling could well be revisited and changed.

We’re at the mercy of our ZIP codes: Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are often affected most by their municipality, not their state. In Waco, Tex., the lone justice of the peace who presides over weddings recently admitted that she won’t do so for same-sex couples no matter the federal law. But Houston, just a three-hour drive away, has in instances been a pioneer: Annise Parker, its mayor from 2010 to 2016, is the only openly L.G.B.T. person ever elected to lead one of the nation’s 10 most populous cities. And Austin, the state’s capital, is practically Key West, Fla. — minus the coconuts.

Picayune, Miss., where an 86-year-old gay man passed away last year, leaving behind his 82-year-old husband. They had been together for half a century.  Although prior arrangements had been made with a local funeral home, it refused even to pick up the dead man’s body when it learned of his same-sex marriage, according to a breach-of-contract lawsuit by his husband that hasn’t yet been resolved.

South Carolina: another state that I love, another state that doesn’t love me back, and the home of Tommy Starling, 45, and his husband, Jeff Littlefield, 61. Starling told me that they live there, in the coastal community of Pawleys Island, because of Littlefield’s job in the insurance business, but they dream constantly of moving somewhere that doesn’t cast them as provocative social experiments, somewhere that doesn’t put and keep them on edge.

They had trouble trying to adopt in South Carolina, so they turned to California and to surrogacy to have their 11-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son. . . . . “But it’s getting exhausting,” he said, adding that the family’s occasional travel sustains him.

[R]esponses The Times received after asking L.G.B.T. readers to share their reflections on the freedoms and limitations of where they live. Readers were acutely conscious of the absence or presence of employment-related anti-discrimination laws in their cities or states. (Only 22 states have such laws governing all gay and lesbian workers, in both the public and the private sectors, while only 20, including New York, have them for transgender workers as well.) Readers mentioned the vigor, or laxness, with which their local governments patrolled against and prosecuted hate crimes.

And one after another, readers said they wished that a modest public gesture of affection wasn’t a potent magnet for stares, slurs or worse.

On the state level, the yardsticks for measuring respect for L.G.B.T. people include, recently, restrictions on “conversion therapy,” which attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. More and more mental health professionals are speaking out unequivocally about its dangers, and more and more state legislatures are outlawing it for minors. New Mexico, Nevada, Rhode Island and Connecticut did so in recent months; New Jersey, Vermont, Illinois, Oregon, California and the District of Columbia had previously done so. But that leaves 41 states without any such prohibition.

Alabama. In May, under the aegis of “religious freedom,” its governor signed a law that allowed taxpayer-funded adoption agencies to deny the placement of children in homes with gay parents.  The Alabama House voted 60 to 14 in favor of the bill, after which the Alabama Senate voted 23 to 9.

Fifty years from now — heck, maybe just 20 — that kind of thing won’t happen. There’s only one long-term trajectory here. But in the meantime, it’s not O.K. for the federal government to be as cold to L.G.B.T. Americans as the one we have now is, because some of those Americans live in Alabama — or Texas. And those places don’t exactly brim with love.

While far from perfect, Virginia - at least for now depending on the November election results - is tolerable, many states and cities are not.  That's one reason why the husband and I are selective as to where we vacation- New York City, Key West, Ft. Lauderdale, London, Paris, etc. - because we do not want to visit or give our money to places and communities that are hostile to LGBT people.    We are not alone in this and its why many areas will never see the economic boost that LGBT tourism can provide. 

Neil Gorsuch Proves He Is Anti-LGBT

Perhaps it is because I am an attorney and I have enjoyed writing appellate briefs in the past, including one to the Virginia Supreme Court equating anti-gay employment discrimination with impermissible - at least before the age of Der Trumpenführer - religious based employment discrimination (my former law school classmate then on the Court was none too pleased to even have to hear my argument since, I believe she knew I was right).  Or perhaps it is because I realize that court rulings have often moved forward the fight for LGBT equality.  Whatever the cause, I watch U.S. Supreme Court rulings that impact LGBT issues closely to see what allies or enemies we may have on the Court.  As Facebook friend and writer Michelangelo Signorile sets out in a piece in HuffPost, Trump appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch is showing his hand as an enemy of LGBT citizens.  More decisions will be coming and it is likely that Gorsuch will put disingenuous "religious liberty" claims - which in essence translate to special rights for Christofascist - ahead of basis civil rights for LGBT Americans.  As I always caution people, Hitler could be charming when he wanted to be.  That doesn't mean that he wasn't deranged and dangerous.  Personal one on one relationships are never guaranteed to be indicative of the lack of animus or contempt that people can hold toward a group as a whole.  Here are highlights form Michelangelo's piece:

Back in February, when Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, I wrote a piece: “Why Neil Gorsuch Likely Believes It’s Perfectly Fine To Ban Gay Sex.”

It brought out some Gorsuch defenders, including some of his students (at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where Gorsuch taught) and friends of Gorsuch, who responded to me on Twitter and elsewhere, some angrily, accusing me of wrongly portraying Gorsuch as a homophobe.

In fact, I did nothing of the kind, even pointing to the fact that Gorsuch had a former clerk to whom he reportedly offered support upon the former clerk’s same-sex marriage in 2014. My point was that whether he was a homophobe or not, Gorsuch is a constitutional originalist like the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whom Gorsuch revered. Scalia based his own opposition to overturning sodomy statutes ― and his other anti-LGBTQ opinions ― on originalism. 

[A] New York Times story, [came out] just as the organized campaign for Gorsuch by right-wing groups and the White House was gearing up, [entitled] “Gorsuch, Hard to Pigeonhole On Gay Rights, Friends Say.” I was quoted in the piece: 

Just this past week, the gay author and blogger Michaelangelo Signorile published a piece in The Huffington Post headlined: “Why Neil Gorsuch Likely Believes It’s Perfectly Fine to Ban Gay Sex.” In it, he argued that Judge Gorsuch “may be all mild-mannered and cuddly, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t in a heartbeat deny your very existence under the Constitution if you happen to be queer.”

The Times article seemed almost designed to counter those kinds of opinions ― which were based on Gorsuch’s judicial decisions and writings ― by presenting us with Gorsuch’s gay friends, who spoke glowingly of him as a person.

Christian Mammen, described as “a Democrat” and someone who “grew close” to Gorsuch when they were at Oxford together, was referred to in the piece as one of several friends who, rather than viewing Gorsuch as in the mold of Scalia, “wonder if his jurisprudence might be closer to that of Justice Anthony Kennedy who has carved out a name for himself as the court’s conservative defender of gay rights.”

But as I pointed out in a second piece I published later that day in response ― drawing upon the analyses of the highly regarded Supreme Court reporters, Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times and Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio, specifically on the histories of both LGBT rights and originalism at the Supreme Court ― this was naive at best, as Justice Kennedy is not an originalist: 

It’s not “everybody” else who has Gorsuch pegged as being like Scalia ― it’s Gorsuch who has willingly, unequivocally pegged himself that way. He gave a major speech about the importance of the late justice and his philosophy last year and, again, publicly adheres, like Clarence Thomas, to Scalia’s philosophy of originalism. Based on that and his decisions, the Times put Gorsuch on a chart as just to the right of Scalia, with only Thomas further to the right. And, much as Gorsuch’s gay friends would like to believe otherwise, Justice Kennedy is not an originalist. In fact, his sound rejection of originalism is what had him lead the court majority in ruling that gays are protected against discrimination in the Constitution, should not be criminalized, and most certainly have the right to marry.

And now we have the proof of just how wrong Gorsuch’s friends were, looking at the actions of the court this week. Gorsuch revealed a dangerous disregard for the Obergefell marriage equality decision, in a 6-3 ruling that overturned an Arkansas law that prevented both parents in a same-sex marriage from being named on the birth certificate when one gives birth to a child ― as is the case for heterosexual marriages in the state.

Gorsuch took pride in writing the dissent, joined by far-right Justices Thomas and Alito, clearly supporting flat out discrimination and ignoring precedent ― something even Justice John Roberts, who dissented in Obergefell but joined the majority in this case, would not do.

Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern, noting that Gorsuch is “everything that liberals most feared,” explained how Gorsuch is laying the groundwork to harm or even reverse Obergefell: 

On Monday, Gorsuch indicated that he opposes equal rights for same-sex couples, dissenting from a ruling that requires states to list same-sex parents on birth certificates ... That, alone, is startling: In Obergefell v. Hodges, the court held that the Constitution compels states to grant same-sex couples “the constellation” of “rights, benefits, and responsibilities” that “the states have linked to marriage,” including “birth and death certificates.” Obergefell, then, already settled this issue. Gorsuch’s dissent suggests he may not accept Obergefell as settled law and may instead seek to undermine or reverse it.

The court also announced it would take the case of a Colorado baker who was penalized for refusing to serve a gay couple ― a couple that wanted a wedding cake but hadn’t even yet discussed design with the baker, and were turned away when they simply identified they were having a same-sex wedding. Many legal observers believed that when the court didn’t take a similar case a few years ago that involved a wedding photographer in New Mexico, it was deferring to state sovereignty in states like Colorado and New Mexico where LGBT people are protected under state law against discrimination in public accommodations.

It takes four justices for the court to accept a case. It’s hard to believe that Gorsuch is even farther to the right on this issue than Scalia. But Scalia did have a reverence for states’ rights, while Gorsuch seems to have a fetishistic obsession with “religious liberty.” As I’ve described in looking at his opinion on Hobby Lobby while he was a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, he went much further than both Justice Alito, who wrote the Hobby Lobby decision for the Supreme Court, and Kennedy, who wrote a concurring opinion.

Last week I thought that the first case to be the test of the reach of Gorsuch ’s view of religious liberty might be the abominable Mississippi law that a federal appeals court allowed to go into effect ― considered the worst anti-LGBTQ law ever by many LGBTQ activists and legal experts.

But obviously that will likely be the second act, after the Colorado baker case. All of this is part of the long-term strategy I’ve written about, interviewing those on the right and attending their conferences, in which religious conservatives, dealt a blow by Obergefell, will now work ― as they did regarding Roe v. Wade ― to weaken the decision, and try to turn same-sex marriage into second-class marriage. 

As for my "friends" who voted for Trump and put this likely nightmare in motion, you are on notice that I WILL hold you personally accountable for the harm done to LGBT citizens. Your laziness in not becoming informed on Trump's promises to Christofascists and/or rote voting Republican are not acceptable excuses.   Saying "I did'nt know" or that "things will be alright" simply do not cut it.  Do not expect my forgiveness, be cuase it will not be forthcoming.