Monday Morning Male Beauty

George Will Predicts Marriage Equality Win in Supreme Court

Conservative columnist George Will has likely earned himself hate and derision from the Kool-Aid drinking set and many within the gay-hating elements of the Republican Party.  Why?  Because Will has said that he believes that the GOP appeal of rulings striking down the Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA") will likely lose at the U. S. Supreme Court.  As often noted on this blog, DOMA has no reason for its existence other than religious based discrimination against same sex couples and the Christianist desire to keep LGBT Americans inferior under the civil laws.  And religious prejudice does not justify disparate treatment of citizens under the Equal Protection Clause no matter how strong the Christianist animus towards gays.  Here are highlights from an article in The Advocate that looks at Will's prediction: 

Conservative commentator George Will predicts that if the Supreme Court must decide on the legality of same-sex marriage, then it will side with equality.

"What about gay marriage?" host George Stephanopoulos asked Will. "I wonder if Justice Kennedy sticking with the conservatives this time around on health care means that he will free himself up to approve gay marriage."

Will said Justice Kennedy is "much misunderstood" because his rulings falsely appear to put him all over the idealogical map.

"People say he's somehow squishy or unprincipled," Will said. "I think he's driven in both directions by a constant compass, and that is he's a libertarian. And the libertarian dimension of him may cause him to be the fifth vote — there won't be six — but to be the fifth vote for gay marriage."

Will's opinions carry weight among a certain set of opinion-makers. He sparked headlines, for example, when he wrote a column in 2009 saying flatly that it was time for the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan.

The likelihood that the court will decide on marriage equality is increasing. For the first time, House Republicans on Friday appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. And the court could opt to hear the Proposition 8 case out of California if that is also appealed.

It goes without saying that I hope that Mr. Will's prediction proves accurate.

Mitch McConnell: Covering 30 Million Uninsured is "Not the Issue"

Yesterday Mitch McConnell pretty much exposed the lie that the GOP is the party of "family values."  The same goes for the GOP's supporters amongst the modern day Pharisee set generally labeled as "conservative Christians."   During an appearance on Fox News Sunday McConnell basically admitted that the GOP had no plan as to how to assure health care coverage to the 30 million who will gain coverage under the Affordable Healthcare Act.  Worse yet, he stated that covering such individual - which includes families and children - isn't an issue.  Sadly, McConnell and his party are more concerned about protecting pharmaceutical companies and the health care industry than needy Americans.  The later, in the GOP's eyes are disposable trash.  Here are highlights from a Washington Post column:

Mitch McConnell’s appearance today on Fox News Sunday was remarkably revealing — it showed as clearly as you could want that the Supreme Court decision is finally forcing Republicans to declare what, exactly, they would replace Obamacare with if they realize their goal of repealing it entirely.

Pressed by Chris Wallace to say what he would do to insure the 30 million people who will get insurance under Obamacare, McConnell at first dodged the question, instead launching into a litany of complaints about the law.  .  .  .  Asked the question again by Wallace, McConnell actually laughed, and said he’d “get to it in a minute,” before claiming the best thing we can do for the health system overall is to get rid of the law and all of its “cuts” to health providers. He labeled Obamacare a “monstrosity” and vowed that there would not be a “2,700 page” Republican reform bill.

Asked a third time how Republicans would insure those 30 million people, McConnell said: “That is not the issue. The question is how you can go step by step to improve the American health care system.”

[E]ven Wallace saw McConnell’s quote in far less charitable terms:

WALLACE: You don’t think the 30 million people who are uninsured is an issue?

MCCONNELL: Let me tell you what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to turn the American health care system into a western European system.

It’s worth pointing out that this is basically Mitt Romney’s position, too. The Romney campaign has acknowledged that he would not replace Obamacare with across-the-board protections for people with preexisting conditions. And the New York Times recently took a look at the alternatives Romney has proposed, and concluded that they would deemphasize the goal of “reducing the ranks of the uninsured.”

As the conversation turns to the specifics in the law, and to the fact that Republicans wouldn’t replace them with anything, Republicans’ best hope will be that the law’s generalized unpopularity will enable them to persuade the American people that the question of whose policies would actually cover the uninsured is “not the issue.”

The growing moral bankruptcy of the GOP will soon be challenging that of the Catholic Church hierarchy and the Vatican.

Judge Orders Kansas City Diocese to Turn Over Intrenal Sex Abuse Documents

Less than a week after the first member of the Catholic Church hierarchy was convicted of felony child endangerment  in Philadelphia a judge in Missouri has ordered the Kansas City diocese to turn over internal reports and documents concerning sexual predatory priests.  It is a likely safe bet to assume that as in Philadelphia internal diocese documents will confirm that bishops and their henchmen covered up for and enabled predator priests to prey on additional children and youths.   The truth is that the Catholic Church hierarchy is a disgusting cesspool that needs to be cleansed all the way to the throne of St. Peter.  If you or I had done a fraction of the things done by the hierarchy to protect child rapists, we'd be in prison currently.  Deference and special privileges for the Catholic hierarchy need to end now once and for all.  Here are highlights from the San Francisco Chronicle on developments in Kansas City:

The Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph has to provide prosecutors with information about the diocese's investigation into past reports of priests accused of abusing children, a Jackson County judge has ruled.

Jackson County Circuit Judge John M. Torrence, who is overseeing a case against Bishop Robert Finn and the diocese, also said in a ruling Wednesday that the diocese must turn over documents from the independent investigation into the case of the Rev. Shawn Ratigan that the diocese commissioned.

Ratigan has pleaded not guilty to state and federal child pornography charges and remains jailed.  Finn and the diocese are charged with misdemeanor failure to report suspected abuse to the state after learning of suspected child pornography on Ratigan's computer. Finn has acknowledged learning about the photos in December 2010, six months before Ratigan was arrested. The trial is scheduled for September.

[A]ttorneys for the diocese countered that records of interviews by U.S. Attorney Todd Graves' law firm are protected by attorney-client privilege. The judge disagreed, however, saying the diocese publicly announced Graves was conducting the 2011 investigation and said that it would issue a public report when the investigation was concluded.

"The attorney-client privilege does not apply to communications intended to be disclosed to third parties or those which are in fact disclosed," Torrence said in his ruling.

Torrence also said that while information about the diocese's investigations into alleged misconduct regarding five other priests is relevant to the state's current case, the information could not be photocopied and must be returned to the diocese's lawyers within 10 days of the case being completed, The Kansas City Star reported

As I said, all bets are that a pattern of cover up and protection of child molesters will be confirmed by the documents to be turned over to the Court.  Sadly, until every bishop/cardinal in every diocese across the nation (actually, across the globe) is forced to turn over such internal documents, we will never know the full magnitude of the moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy.

University of Texas Opens Inquiry of Regnerus Gay Parenting Study

UPDATED:  I missed this article earlier:  200 Ph.D.s and M.D.s and professionals in sociology, psychiatry and other relevant fields have sent a letter to James Wright, editor of “Social Science Research,” the journal where Regnerus’s study was published with a companion piece by the known anti-gay bigot Loren Marks. Here's a sampling from the letter:

As researchers and scholars, many of whom with extensive experience in quantitative and qualitative research in family structures and child outcomes, we write to raise serious concerns about the most recent issue of Social Science Research and the set of papers focused on parenting by lesbians and gay men. In this regard, we have particular concern about Mark Regnerus’ paper entitled “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study.”

While the presence of a vibrant and controversial public debate should in no way censor scholarship, it should compel the academy to hold scholarship around that topic to our most rigorous standards. We are very concerned that these standards were not upheld in this issue or with this paper, . . . .

In this letter, we detail the specific concerns that lead us to request that you publicly disclose the reasons for both the expedited peer review process of this clearly controversial paper and the choice of commentators invited to submit critiques. We further request that you invite scholars with specific expertise in LGBT parenting issues to submit a detailed critique of the paper and accompanying commentaries for publication in the next issue of the journal.

We question the process by which this paper was submitted, reviewed, and accepted for publication.

As I said, I hope that this is the beginning of the end of Regenerus' career.  Or at least in legitimate academia. *
* 
I have been very critical of the right wing funded and extremely flawed gay parenting "study" conducted by Mark Regnerus (pictured at right) of the University of Texas.  The study used very flawed samples for supposed children of gay parents and, in fact, had all the hallmarks of a Christianist propaganda piece aimed at maligning and denigrating gays and lesbians as parents.  The study has been condemned both by gay rights organizations and mental health organizations.  Now, faced with almost universal condemnation except from anti-gay hatr groups, the University of Texas has opened an investigation into Regenerus' study.  One can only hoe that the university will take appropriate disciplinary action against Regenerus who haw certainly harmed the university's reputation as a serious academic institution. Here are highlights from The New Civil Rights Movement:

Between January, 2011 and June of 2012, Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas, Austin, plotted, carried out and then had published a “study” of dubious scholarly merit, alleged to show, but not actually showing, that homosexual parents are dangerous to children.

Funding for the Regnerus study was arranged through the National Organization For Marriage‘s Robert P.George along with George’s anti-gay-rights colleagues at The Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation. George is an author of the anti-gay NOM pledge signed by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

This reporter mailed a Scientific Misconduct complaint about Regnerus to University of Texas President William Powers, Jr. on June 21.  On June 25, UTA Research Integrity Officer Dr. Robert Peterson told me in an e-mail that he will be conducting an inquiry as per university policy.  

“The purpose of the investigation is to: explore in detail the allegations; examine the evidence in depth; and, determine specifically whether misconduct has been committed, by whom, and to what extent. The investigation also will determine whether there are additional instances of possible misconduct that would justify broadening the scope beyond the initial allegations.”

The very name of the Regnerus’s project, “The New Family Structures Study,” is deceptive — and is an anti-gay bigot dog whistle — in ways characteristic of Regnerus’s funder NOM’s Robert George of the Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation.

Because of that, and for reasons elaborated below, this reporter insists that for its Scientific Misconduct inquiry of Regnerus, the University of Texas, Austin must examine in its investigation, and provide, copies of all written communications, and notes, such as of phone conversations, and all other documentation of the relationship between Mark Regnerus and The Witherspoon Institute from the time those two parties first considered a study about children of gay parents, to include the time that Witherspoon gave Regnerus a $35,000 “planning grant” and subsequent to when the plan had been formulated and Witherspoon approved Regnerus for his full study funding.

Regnerus’s claim that the probability-based web panel that he used is the best of all existing sampling methods for surveying gay fathers and lesbian mothers is false, totally and utterly false. For his sampling, Regnerus relied on the company Knowledge Networks to find his survey respondents through Knowledge Networks’ existing panelist system, which is based on a combination of random digit dialing sampling and address-based sampling.

To sum this point up; 1) Regnerus likely misleads when he asserts he compared young adult children of gay parents to young adult children of “intact biological families;” 2) In the study itself, and in his public promotions of the study, Regnerus likely misleads when he states that he would not by any means have been able to survey an adequate sampling of young gay adults substantially raised by gay parents up through the 1990s; and 3) Regnerus likely misleads when he states that he used the best existing survey method for surveying young adult children of gay parents.

Regnerus’s funder Robert George of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage is obsessively concerned with “the legal boundaries of marriage.” Robert George has written a draft for a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages throughout the nation. He does not like to see gay parenting study results with good child outcomes, as they are work against his known, ferocious anti-gay political goals. George’s aims in arranging for the funding of Regnerus’s study precisely match the concerns expressed in Regnerus’s introduction.

Regnerus has been promoting his study as evidence against expansion of legal recognition of gay couples’ relationships. In one of his Slate articles, Regnernus wrote that gay-rights “advocates would do well from here forward to avoid simply assuming the kids are all right,” and then, after barely paying lip service to the notion that marriage recognition could perhaps help children being raised by gay parents, he ends his article by saying that the New Family Structures Study  “may suggest that the household instability that the NFSS reveals is just too common among same-sex couples to take the social gamble of spending significant political and economic capital to esteem and support this new (but tiny) family form while Americans continue to flee the stable, two-parent biological married model, the far more common and accomplished workhorse of the American household, and still—according to the data, at least—the safest place for a kid.”

Robert George’s Witherspoon Institute – a Regnerus funder — has devoted a stand-alone site to the Regnerus and Marks studies – where the Regnerus Slate article with the aforementioned offending quote is at the top of the site’s list of study-related articles “From the Web.”

Again, a thorough investigation is needed and, if worse case suspicions are confirmed about the seemingly deliberately biased nature of Regenerus' study,  Regenerus ought to be dismissed from the University of Texas faculty.  From what I've seen to date, Regenerus is little better that the long discredited Paul Cameron who first decided the outcome he wanted and then manipulated the "study sample" to achieve the result he had preordained.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli's Growing Legal Losing Streak

As regular readers already appreciate, I view Virginia Attorney General Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli to be a dangerous, delusional menace to the Commonwealth of Virginia.  Worse yet, he's a religious extremist.  And if one is an LGBT Virginian, the man should send shivers down you spine and scare the living day lights out of you because this man wants to be Governor of Virginia.  Kookinelli would make Bob "Taliban Bob" "Governor Ultrasound" McDonnell look like a flaming liberal.  Yet Kookinelli's record as Virginia's top attorney has been one of a growing list of legal debacles where he has filed lawsuits based on lunatic far right ideology only to go down in flames every time.  Thursday's health care ruling but the U. S. Supreme Court is yet the latest example of Kookinelli being flat ass wrong on his legal analysis.  Based on Kookinelli's continually flawed legal skills, he should not be attorney general much less governor.  A piece in the Washington Post examines Cuccinelli's trail of failed lawsuits. Here are excerpts:

When it comes to high-profile legal cases, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II reminds me of Teddy  .   .  .  .   the oversized, foam-headed Teddy mascot who “competes” against other presidents in fourth-inning footraces at Nationals Park.  Teddy, famously, has never won. With two new, major court defeats last week, Cuccinelli’s record is almost as woeful. 

With these latest reverses, it’s clear that Cuccinelli’s legal crusades serve primarily to win him right-wing acclaim and not to actually roll back the allegedly tyrannical liberal legislation he decries.

The ambitious Virginia conservative, who’s running for governor, lost big on Thursday when the Supreme Court upheld President Obama’s health-care reform act. Cuccinelli (R) had become a nationally known tea party champion by rushing in 2010 to be the first state attorney general to file suit against the law, acting just minutes after the president signed it. 

He suffered another setback on Tuesday when a federal appeals court in the District slapped down a legal case against the Environmental Protection Agency.

[Cuccinelli's]  he’s had a remarkable number of losses on closely watched cases [suits against UVA on climate change and a lawsuit against Mellon Bank] .   .  .  .  .  The twin defeats last week, however, were landmarks. For Cuccinelli and other conservative legal activists, health care and climate change have been marquee issues in which they sought to portray the Obama administration as trampling on the Constitution and threatening American liberties.  Now they’ve had their day in court – and lost. 

The reverses feel particularly dramatic because the tea party’s rhetoric about the stakes has been so apocalyptic. In his initial response to the health-care ruling, Cuccinelli called it “a dark day for the American people, the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Consider the extremity of that statement. A Supreme Court decision written by a conservative chief justice supposedly threatened “the rule of law” just because it upheld a moderately liberal social program that Cuccinelli viewed as unjustified.  

“It’s a nice spin, but a loss is a loss,” said Carl Tobias, a constitutional law professor at the University of Richmond. 

The setback in the EPA case was even more resounding. Cuccinelli argued that the EPA was wrong to rely on outside scientists to help it conclude that human activity is leading to global warming.

The court mocked that contention.

So far, regardless of the legal outcomes, Cuccinelli’s courtroom drives have worked for him politically. He’s the darling of the Virginia Republican conservative base.  .   .   .   .    At some point, though, symbolism alone will not be enough. It may work at the ballpark for Teddy, who’s celebrated as lovable. But for a politician, in the long run, voters aren’t going to respect a loser. 

What is truly disconcerting is the amount of state resources Cuccinelli has squandered in pursuing frivolous lawsuits which do not sxcite anyone outside of the Kool-Aid drinking, Bible beating GOP base.  Meanwhile, legitimate issues go unaddressed.  Cuccinelli has in effect been using state funds to run a de facto GOP primary campaign.  He ought to have to reimburse Virginia for these squandered resources.

Bain Capital Attack Ads Make Inroads for Obama

Click image to enlarge

Living in Virginia - one of the so-called battleground swing states - the presidential campaign ads are relentless of late and will likely only become more overwhelming.  Candidly, the lies in Mitt Romney's ads tend to make me yell at the television.  Sadly, many who don't follow politics all the time may not fully realize just how disingenuous Romney's ads are in fact.  In contrast, Obama's ad strike me as more honest.  And the one's that have victims of Romney's work at Bain Capital are particularly effective as they depict the victims in front of shuttered factors or discussing their lose of health care benefits and/or pension.  Apparently, I'm not the only one who views the Obama ads as effective and accurate in exposing Romney's utter disregard for the middle class.  A New York Times article looks at their effectiveness in swing states.  Here are some highlights:

Propelled by a torrent of blistering television advertisements, President Obama is successfully invoking Mitt Romney’s career at Bain Capital to raise questions about Mr. Romney’s commitment to the middle class, strategists in both parties say, as the candidates engage in a critical summer duel to set the terms for this fall.
 

Despite doubts among some centrist Democrats about the wisdom of attacking Mr. Romney’s business career, millions of dollars in negative commercials painting him as a ruthless executive who pursued profits at the expense of jobs are starting to make an impact on undecided voters in swing states, according to strategists from both sides. 

The strategists agree that the ads are having an effect but differ on whether Mr. Romney is suffering any substantial damage. 

While the sense of worry and alarm that has hung over the White House for weeks is dissipating, and with his supporters relieved by the Supreme Court decision on Thursday to uphold most of his health care law, Mr. Obama faces new challenges in the period from now to the conventions at the end of the summer. 

People close to the Romney campaign say it could close its June fund-raising books having collected an additional $100 million, possibly more, a tally that would exceed all expectations and further extend the overall Republican financial advantage in the race. 

And Mr. Obama’s aides acknowledged that, whatever they do, they still must contend with a troubled economy, with monthly reminders in the unemployment and job creation reports, the next of which comes out on Friday. 

Mr. Romney’s aides said in interviews that their strategy depends on keeping their candidate close to Mr. Obama in the polls until at least the Republican convention at the end of August. They hope to then begin to pull away with a relentless case that Mr. Obama has not been up to the job of fixing the economy — and that Mr. Romney has the experience and know-how to lead the nation to recovery.

But Mr. Romney’s strategy of avoiding clashes on issues other than the economy and minimizing his risks — he has no public events scheduled until the Fourth of July — is starting to draw criticism even from some fellow Republicans, who are urging him to take more specific stands and set out a more positive agenda.

Mr. Obama, by contrast, has put other big issues in front of the nation on his terms, most notably same-sex marriage and illegal immigration, displaying the advantages of incumbency, energizing crucial voting groups and moving public attention at least temporarily away from jobs. 

But even as they have tried to expand the playing field of issues, Mr. Obama’s aides said they would not let up on their efforts to challenge the core of Mr. Romney’s campaign, his claim to be a better economic manager. 

“We’ve got to make sure people fully appreciate Mitt Romney is not some safe alternative,” said David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the president. 

Mr. Obama’s acute focus on Bain has drawn complaints from Democrats,  .   .  .  . But recent Quinnipiac University polls found slight shifts in Mr. Obama’s favor on the question of who would do a better job handling the economy in Ohio, and that he was roughly even with Mr. Romney on the question in Pennsylvania. 

In the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 33 percent of swing state respondents said that hearing or reading about Mr. Romney’s business record had made them view him more negatively, as opposed to 18 percent who said it made them view him more favorably. 

Even with the political terrain newly settled by the Supreme Court’s decision, neither side expects the campaign to move beyond its dogfight status before the party conventions and the debates.

“It’s going to be very close,” Mr. Plouffe said in an interview. “We’re not looking for — and don’t expect — seismic movement.” 

In my view, Romney is a very dangerous alternative and the reality is that but for Republican obstructionism and GOP controlled state governments that have been slashing state employee ranks, the economy would be doing far better.  The GOP has truly been seeking to destroy the economy - with no concern for the families damaged in the process - solely in an effort to harm Obama.  Needless to say, it makes me sick.

The Criminalization of Gay and Transgender Youth

This blog has looked at the plight of homeless LGBT youth before - there are an estimated 800-1,000 or more in the south side of Hampton Roads alone.   Homeless all too often caused by parents who discard their children solely because the children don't measure up to the intolerant and ignorant religious beliefs of their parents.  Beliefs kept alive by institutions such as the Southern Baptist Convention, the Catholic Church, the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, etc.   But this discarding of young lives leads to more than a struggle to survive on the streets or living with those who will take them in such as a blogger friend of mine in South Carolina.  Sadly, these youths all to often end up being criminalized by their circumstances and a criminal justice and judicial system too often under the rule of homophobic bigots (I can name two such judges on the Norfolk Circuit Court alone).  A piece by the American Center for Progress looks at this disturbing situation.  Here are excerpts:

Gay, transgender, and gender nonconforming youth are significantly over-represented in the juvenile justice system—approximately 300,000 gay and transgender youth are arrested and/or detained each year, of which more than 60 percent are black or Latino. Though gay and transgender youth represent just 5 percent to 7 percent of the nation’s overall youth population, they compose 13 percent to 15 percent of those currently in the juvenile justice system.

These high rates of involvement in the juvenile justice system are a result of gay and transgender youth abandonment by their families and communities, and victimization in their schools—sad realities that place this group of young people at a heightened risk of entering the school-to-prison pipeline.

Despite the disproportionately high rates of gay and transgender youth entering the juvenile justice system, our nation’s schools, law enforcement officers, district attorneys, judges, and juvenile defenders are not equipped to manage the unique experiences and challenges that these young people face. As a consequence, the system often does more harm by unfairly criminalizing these youth—imposing harsh school sanctions, labeling them as sex offenders, or detaining them for minor offenses—in addition to subjecting them to discriminatory and harmful treatment that deprives them of their basic civil rights.

Why gay and transgender youth end up in the juvenile justice system

Family rejection, homelessness, and failed safety nets

Research shows that gay and transgender youth entering into the juvenile justice system are twice as likely to have experienced family conflict, child abuse, and homelessness as other youth. This trend is partly due to the fact that youth today “come out” at younger ages, often to families that may not accept gay and transgender people. Since these youth still depend on their families to meet their material needs, family rejection can leave them emotionally and physically vulnerable, particularly if they find themselves cast onto the streets with nowhere to turn for support.

Interfamily conflicts stemming from parents’ refusal to accept a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity often result in the first contact these young people have with the justice system. According to the Equity Project, prosecutors frequently file charges against these youth for being “incorrigible” or beyond the control of their parents or guardians, based largely on the parent’s objections to their sexual orientation. This practice unfairly criminalizes gay and transgender youth because of their identity rather than because of their behavior.

Out of despair and a need for survival, homeless gay and transgender youth are more likely to resort to criminal behaviors, such as drug sales, theft, or “survival sex,” which put them at risk of arrest and detainment. These youth are also at an increased risk of detainment for committing crimes related to homelessness, such as violating youth curfew laws and sleeping in public spaces.

Family rejection, which sets off a tragic chain of events for many gay and transgender youth, is at the core of these issues.

Biased school discipline policies

Unfortunately, schools do not always provide a reprieve for youth experiencing family rejection. According to the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s School Climate Survey, 84 percent of gay and transgender students report being verbally harassed, 40 percent physically harassed, and 19 percent physically assaulted.  What’s more, gay and transgender students report astonishingly low levels of confidence in their school administrators

In fact, school officials in many ways exacerbate these problems and place further stress and burden on gay and transgender youth by disproportionately doling out harsh school sanctions against them for minor disciplinary infractions.

Hidden among these school discipline data are thousands of gay and transgender youth who bear a double burden of disparate impact. A groundbreaking study published in 2010 in the medical journal Pediatrics revealed that gay and transgender youth, particularly gender nonconforming girls, are up to three times more likely to experience harsh disciplinary treatment by school administrators than their heterosexual counterparts.

For many students, suspension and expulsion are the first steps toward time behind bars. This is equally true for gay and transgender youth. Black boys and gender nonconforming girls similarly experience disproportionately harsh punishments and juvenile justice system referrals in schools, but the latter are rendered all but invisible because sexual orientation and gender identity are not included in the federal school discipline data cited earlier in this report. 

Unfair criminalization by the system

Once in the juvenile justice system, gay and transgender youth are too often denied basic civil rights, wrongly categorized as sexually deviant simply because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender nonconformity, and even labeled as sex offenders. They are also subjected to the biases and discrimination of law enforcement agents, judges, and other justice system officials that leave them vulnerable to abuse and neglect.

Classification as sex offenders

Gay and transgender youth who end up in the justice system are at-risk of being labeled as sex offenders, regardless of whether they have actually committed a sexual crime. Gay and transgender youth “are more likely to be prosecuted for age-appropriate consensual sexual activity” than their heterosexual counterparts—a lopsided application of the law, which has devastating consequences for gay and transgender youth who would be required to register as a sex offenders in 29 states if convicted. 

Many gay and transgender youth charged with nonsexual offenses are also unfairly treated as sex offenders and ordered by the court to undergo sex offender treatment programs or sex offense risk assessments simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This misguided categorization by the courts has led gay and transgender youth, innocent of violent crimes or sex offenses, to be placed in restrictive punitive settings for high-risk youth and to be given longer stays in out-of-home placements.

These restrictive settings not only hinder rehabilitation efforts, they perpetuate the stigma that being gay or transgender is wrong.

Gay and transgender youth are most at-risk of detainment by default by the juvenile justice system as they are more likely to be estranged from their families and lack parental support, which leaves them to fend for themselves. As a consequence, these youth are subjected to criminal incarceration while they await foster or group home placements.

Discriminatory and harmful treatment:Segregation and isolation of gay and transgender youth

From the moment gay and transgender youth enter a detention facility they are at risk of being inappropriately classified and housed. Transgender youth, for example, are often placed according to their birth sex rather than by their gender identity in an effort to force transgender youth to conform to societal norms. Doing so can be psychologically devastating and leave them vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse. Additionally, youth facility staff often view them as threatening or sexually predatory, harmful stereotypes that taint placement decisions and influence the treatment of transgender youth.

Unsafe reparative or conversion therapy

Gay and transgender youth have been subjected to reparative or conversion therapy to change their sexual orientation by both social workers and the courts, even though so-called reparative or conversion therapy has been condemned by every major health organization, including the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Sadly, the juvenile justice system is rife with examples of misguided interventions. One judge hospitalized a gay youth to stop his same-sex attraction, while another judge with the parent’s approval, had a young lesbian who was caught in a sexual act with another girl placed in a private hospital to be “treated and diagnosed for this behavior.”

 The inclination to change a youth’s sexual orientation or gender identity or force him or her to conform to “social norms” hinders general mental health and causes severe psychological distress. This type of “counseling and other services are virtually worthless [for gay and transgender youth] because they either ignore or criminalize the youth’s sexuality.”

This sad state of affairs exists and is perpetuated in the final analysis because of religious based bigotry and discrimination.  A circumstance the Christianists want to maintain as evidence by the writings of David Virtue in the preceding post.  The Center for American Progress goes on to make recommendations and proposals which are worth reading.  Unfortunately, until religion and religious based bias is driven from the juvenile justice system and drive from the courts many of these needed changes will not occur.  Especially in states like Virginia where the GOP controlled General Assembly strives to make life a living Hell for LGBT individuals.  Yes, I'm anti-conservative religious belief because it yields such foul and harmful fruits.

The Persecution Complex of Far Right Christians

The hysteria of the Christofascists would almost be humorous but for the emotional and physical harm their strident, hate based religious poison continues to do to so many.   And the irony is that as people - gays and our supporters in particular finally say "no more" to the special rights and privileges too long allowed to far right Christianity (including virulently anti-gay Catholicism), it is these former victims of the Christofascists who are accused of intolerance and even "McCarthyism.   It's obvious to me that the "godly Christians" who feel persecuted must be looking in the mirror when such preposterous claims are made.  By their definition, anything that restricts their ability to ride rough shod over others and inject their foul prejudice into the civil laws is "intolerance."  An example of these alternate universe of the hate merchants can be found on the inappropriately named "Virtue Online" which describes itself as "the voice of global orthodox Anglicanism." Here's a taste of the batshitery:

It should be apparent by now that the pansexual steamroller lurching over the Episcopal Church and, indeed, America itself, is grinding godly men and women, as well as trampling whole institutions into the ground.  We have not seen its like since the McCarthy era.

The parallels with homosexual activism in the US and Europe is now obvious and should be apparent to all.  It is couched in the language of "homophobia", "hatred", "intolerance", "bigotry", "Fundamentalism" and "fear-mongering." The list goes on and on.

There is nothing and no one the homosexual hate lobby will not take on in their effort to cram their radical agenda down the throats of every man, woman and child on the planet. They have declared war on any organization or individual who dares to oppose its hate-filled agenda, writes culture warrior Bill Muehlenberg.

They have seduced a president who calls himself a Christian, whose declaration of support for homosexual marriage has won the hearts of pansexualists (at the most 1.7% of the population) and cowed faithful Christians (Catholic and Protestant) across America who DARE to stand up and shout "male and female made He them...God does not make mistakes nor has He changed His mind."

Consider what sexual McCarthyites are doing to the Salvation Army, The Boy Scouts, or this newspaper headline, "If you're eating Chick-fil-A, you're eating anti-gay." Orthodox seminaries, Roman Catholic institutions, evangelical pastors and ministries working to offer healing to men and women with same-sex attractions are targeted and blasted with the help of one of the most well-heeled, well-funded gay PR and media machines in the world.

No matter how wonderful and charitable and philanthropic and helpful a group or person may be, if they do not fully grovel before the homosexual militants, they will be targeted and treated with utter contempt and disgust by the bullies of the "tolerance" brigade. These thugs excel in intimidation, harassment, bullying and hate.

The putrid ecclesiastical sores of spiritual HIV/AIDS have now totally infected the Episcopal Church. It is creeping ever so fast into all the mainline Protestant denominations as, one by one, they roll over to sodomy in the name of inclusion and diversity. Only the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox churches, the Southern Baptist Convention, the myriad small Anglican, Presbyterian, Lutheran breakaways and nondenominational Bible churches are hold outs. In most cases, Scripture has been abandoned as normative and declared irrelevant to the discussion.

Overthrow the Christian moral system and you will have overthrown Christianity itself. Therefore, those who are pushing for the institution of same sex marriage are ipso facto pushing for the elimination of the Christian religion." Absolutely.

When rites for the blessing of same sex marriage is passed at General Convention in a few short weeks, The Episcopal Church will not only seal its own fate and future, it will hammer yet another nail in the coffin of the Western foundations of Christianity, foundations that are being eroded almost daily in the Culture Wars.

Given David Virtue's level of hysteria, one can only ponder as to (i) what in his childhood inflicted so much psychological damage and (ii) whether he's not one of the closeted gay homophobes identified in the University of Rochester study earlier in the year.  His support of the "ex-gay" myth would certainly suggest that such is the case.  When the mere fact that others are allowed to live their lives as they choose and to love who they choose is so terrifying, to me suggests deep psychological damage on Mr. Virtue's part.