Congressional Republicans Push for "Religious Liberty" Executive Order

With no legislative accomplishments in the first almost 100 days of the Trump/Pence regime despite Republican control of Congress and the White House, a move is again afoot to push through a falsely described "religious freedom" executive order which would, in effect, allow right wing Christians to ignore non-discrimination laws and target members of the LGBT community and perhaps cohabitating unmarried couples, women on contraception and even non-Christians for discrimination. The movement underscores the bankruptcy of Trump/the GOP that a rushed executive order to legalize discrimination - at least until a court strikes it down - would be viewed as an "accomplishment" by  Christofascists and the core of the GOP Base.  A piece in USA Today looks at this latest foul effort:

Dozens of Republican lawmakers are asking President Trump to scale back Obama-era protections for gays and lesbians in order to make good on a campaign promise to protect religious liberty.

In early February, Trump was reportedly considering an executive order that would reverse former president Barack Obama's orders prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians in the federal workforce or by federal contractors. But the order was never signed.

A group of 51 members of the House wrote to Trump this month to "request that you sign the draft executive order on religious liberty, as reported by numerous outlets on February 2, 2017, in order to protect millions of Americans whose religious freedom has been attacked or threatened over the last eight years." The letter has not been publicly released but was obtained by USA TODAY.

[O]n Monday, a senior White House official told USA TODAY that some sort of policy to protect religious liberty is still in the works, but that the president is trying to find middle ground. The official did not want to publicly discuss a policy that is still under development.

Beyond the workforce protections, the widely circulated draft order would have eliminated the contraceptive mandate that requires religious institutions to provide health insurance for birth control. Republicans lawmakers are also pushing for the order to allow for doctors to refuse to perform abortions based on religion. They also want to see protections for religious non-profits to be able to express political opinions without losing their tax-exempt status.

The letters signatories, all men except for Missouri Rep. Vicky Hartzler, include some of the Republican caucus’ most conservative members.  A similar letter was sent by Senate Republicans earlier this month.

[N]ot everyone sees religious liberty protections as necessary or even positive. Laura Durso of the progressive Center for American Progress told USA TODAY that freedom of religion is already protected by the First Amendment and any efforts to get additional protections will create "a license to discriminate across a wide range of federal programs."

JoDee Winterhof,  senior vice president for policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, said if Trump went forward with the leaked order it would “allow an unprecedented expansion of tax-payer funded discrimination.”

As I have sad before, if one is LGBT and votes Republicans, it's akin to a early 1920's German Jew voting for the Nazi Party.  It is insanity and self-destructive.  If I am hurting feelings, I am not sorry. It is far past time for "gay Republicans" to stop deluding themselves and focus their votes and money on defeating every Republican elected official. 

Self-Loathing Gays Married to Women Ask SCOTUS to Uphold Marriage Bans

Former "ex-gay" John Paulk - who has now denounced conversion therapy -and his delusional former wife

There are many things in life that are not a choice: skin color, the nation of one's birth, eye color, and sexual orientation are but a few.  But one thing that is totally a choice is one's religious affiliation and beliefs.  One can choose to embrace knowledge and science - modernity, if you will - and walk away from religious fairy tales and religious inspired bigotry as surveys suggest one third of Catholics have done and as Millennials are doing. Those who hysterically cling to religious dogma that demeans and condemns them are, in my view, suffering from severe psychological issues that candidly make me question the state of the mental health and sanity.  Nowhere is this mental illness more on display than in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by “same-sex attracted men and their wives.”  Both the husbands and the wives in such marriages need a serious mental health intervention because they are living in a complete fantasy world that they sadly want to force on others (isn't that always the conservative Christian goal?).  A piece in Slate looks at this utter batshitery.  Here are excerpts:

There are a lot of terrible arguments against same-sex marriage, but this may be the worst: The Supreme Court must not protect gay couples’ marriages, because doing so would demean marriages between gay men and their wives.

That, in a nutshell, is the argument put forth in an amicus brief recently filed by a group who call themselves “same-sex attracted men and their wives.” These men don’t claim to have become straight through conversion therapy—though a group of self-proclaimed ex-gays did file their own deeply sad and strange brief. Nor do they claim to be bisexual. Rather, these men admit that they’re “same-sex attracted,” but insist that “a Constitutional right to same-sex marriage can only come at the cost of marginalizing and demeaning the marriages and families” of gay men married to straight women. And that risk, they say, is reason enough for the court to rule against marriage equality.

Confused? Let the same-sex attracted men walk you through their reasoning. The gay couples suing their states for recognition argue that gay marriage bans “disfavor and demean their very identities and existence” by excluding them from marriage. But “that could only be true if the marriages of [gay men and straight women] are fakes and shams”—which, these men assert, is simply not the case.

These testimonies are designed to disprove the notion that gay people can only have fulfilled marriages by wedding someone of the same sex. In United States v. Windsor, the court held that a federal gay marriage ban “degrade[s] and demean[s]” gay people by sending them a message that their relationship is not “worthy of dignity.” The brief confronts that powerful idea head-on by arguing that, in fact, same-sex relationships are less worthy of dignity, since gay people always have the option of marrying straight people.

The “same-sex attracted men and their wives” brief proudly shouts what all these other briefs can only whisper: Same-sex marriages don’t deserve “equal dignity.” You can decide for yourself why these men are so desperately eager to prove to the court that their marriages aren’t “fakes and shams.” But give them credit for saying what their allies cannot—and, ironically, filing what may be the most honest anti-gay-marriage brief yet.

I was in the closet for 37 years and it took a lot of self-deception and lying to myself to make it work as long as it did (even thought I was filled with self hate and self-loathing), but these men and their equally insane wives take self-delusion to stratospheric heights.  Delusion and psychosis seem to be among the "fruits" enjoyed by the godly folk.