Civil Marriage Rights Wrongly on the Ballot

Next week voters in four states - Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington State - will decide whether or not LGBT citizens in those states merit equality under the civil laws.  That's right, under the civil laws, not the dogmas of various anti-gay religious denominations.  The civil rights of a minority group should never be on the ballot for a majority to dispense or withhold as it may frivolously choose based on ignorance, bigotry and/or antiquated religious belief.  Yet that's where we are in the supposed land of liberty and religious freedom.  And leading the charge in support of inequality and the subversion of the U.S. Constitution are the Roman Catholic Church - and institution lead by men many of whom ought to be behind bars for obstruction of justice - and knuckle dragging Christianists who would rather cling to ancient texts written by nomadic herders.  They are little more than a less violent version of the Taliban - the Christian Taliban, if you will.  The New York Times looks at the ballot initiatives in these states and urges support for the principals of the Constitution and passage of marriage equality.  Here are editorial highlights:

The freedom to marry is a fundamental right that should not have to be won or defended at the ballot box. In fact, ballot initiatives are a bad way to write or rewrite laws of any kind. Unfortunately, that is the reality of American politics, which is why same-sex marriage measures on the Nov. 6 ballot in Maine, Washington, Maryland and Minnesota could turn out to be pivotal in the struggle for marriage equality. 

Although recent polls of likely Maine voters are encouraging, the outcome is still far from certain. Historically, polls on such ballot tests have been misleading, and anti-marriage forces are waging a loud propaganda campaign. They are running television commercials suggesting that marriage-equality opponents would be unfairly “fired, sued, fined and punished” if the referendum passes, and that it is possible to treat gay and lesbian couples fairly while still excluding them from the right to marry. It would help if the state’s two supposedly moderate Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, who is retiring, would stand up against forces of intolerance within their party by publicly supporting the referendum.

In Washington State, voters will be deciding whether to let stand the authorization of same-sex marriage handily approved by the Legislature and signed into law by the state’s Democratic governor, Christine Gregoire, in February. As in Maine, opponents of marriage equality are trying to make the fallacious argument that marriage equality would somehow harm heterosexual couples. 

The state’s Roman Catholic leaders have played a vocal role in trying to turn out a big “no” vote by Catholic parishioners. But major corporate players in the Seattle area, including Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks, are supporting the measure. That is an encouraging development for the future of the issue nationwide.

If the law is approved by voters, the victory will owe much to the vigorous campaigning of Mr. O’Malley, the momentum created by President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality and efforts, including by the N.A.A.C.P., to bolster support among blacks, who make up nearly 30 percent of Maryland’s residents. 

The issue before Minnesota voters is whether to double-down on the state’s existing law outlawing same-sex marriage by enshrining the antigay ban in the State Constitution. With polls showing a tight contest, it is hard to believe that a majority of Minnesotans would opt to place their state so sharply on the wrong side of fairness.

Sadly, fairness has nothing to do with the motivations of the opponents of same sex marriage.  Their religious traditions are now best known for ignorance, fear and hatred of others as they seek to inflict their religious beliefs on all.  The good news is that younger Americans are leaving these religious traditions in droves.  If there is such a thing as justice, one can only hope that some day the rights of Christians will be put on the ballot as they become a smaller element in the larger society.  These people need to be treated as they have treated others.  It is far past time that religion and religious denominations cease receive undeserved privileges and deference under America's laws.

 

More Tuesday Male Beauty

Dwight Eisenhower's Granddaughter Endorses Obama

It seems that more and more former moderate Republicans are throwing up their hands in disgust and simply walking away from the GOP which seemingly now requires that one be a far right religious extremist, a white supremacist, a self-centered and greed driven scrooge,  or have had a lobotomy to be a party member.  As I have noted many times I and my family of moderate Rockefeller Republicans left the GOP years ago in light of the party's growing insanity and outright nastiness.  Now, Susan Eisenhower (pictured at right), granddaughter of the late President Dwight Eisenhower, has formally announced that she is endorsing Barack Obama for reelection (and that she has left the GOP).  Here are highlights from her website on her decision to back Obama:

Four years ago, I left the Republican Party of which I was a lifelong member and became an independent. Not long after, I supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election for president. I made this decision determined to look at the issues not as a Republican or a Democrat, but as an American.

It is through that lens that I consider my choice in the 2012 election. Like many other voters who crossed party lines to vote for Barack Obama in the last election, I have watched the 2012 campaign carefully and listened closely to what the candidates have said. I believe that President Obama should be re-elected.

Obama was elected and took office, building on a number of stabilization programs initiated by the Bush administration. He took many other vital steps that reestablished our economic footing, including saving America’s automobile industry.

In the last four years, and despite the global downturn, America has come back from the brink. While pain is still being felt in far too many sectors of the economy, from a macroeconomic standpoint the situation in the United States is better than it is among our allies. According to the International Monetary Fund, today the United States is poised for 3 percent growth, which would make our economy the strongest of the other richest economies, including Canada and Germany.

Other influential studies, cited in a recent column by Fareed Zakaria, show that debt in the U.S. financial sector, relative to GDP, has declined to levels not seen since before the 2000 bubble. And consumer confidence is now at its highest levels since September 2007. The housing market is also slowly coming back. While there is still an enormous amount to do to assure a recovery, the president deserves credit for a steady hand during this dangerous and unpredictable time.

The Obama Administration has also been responsible for decimating the top leadership of al-Qaeda and introducing biting sanctions on Iran. Today the president has significant experience in managing foreign relations, experience that GOP candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, do not have.

As a result of this campaign I am more confused than ever about what Mitt Romney stands for. I know little of his core beliefs, if he even has any. No one seems to agree on what they are, and that’s why I do not want to take a chance on finding out.

Given Romney’s shifting positions, he can only be judged by the people with whom he surrounds himself. Many of them espouse yesterday’s thinking on national defense and security, female/family reproductive rights, and the interplay of government and independent private enterprise. In this context, Barack Obama represents the future, not that past.

Barack Obama’s record as president has not been perfect, and there have been frustrations for all of us during this time. Nevertheless, I believe that he deserves four more years in the White House. If the voters on November 6 give him that chance, we should expect and demand, if necessary, that members of both parties work closely with him to find a way to avert the “fiscal cliff” and other pressing and possibly destabilizing problems.

Would that more rational conservatives would recognize the systemic sickness of today's GOP.  Only by repeated  crushing electoral defeats will the GOP perhaps as a party find a way to exorcise itself of the religious extremists, jingoistic nationalists and shape shifting corporate vultures who now hold sway.

Maine Anti-Gay Marriage Supporter Arrested in Prostitution Scandal

Once again we are seeing a shining example of the hypocrisy of some of the members of the conservative Christian crowd who oppose gay civil rights as they claim to be motivated solely by a desire to "protect the sanctity of marriage."  In this case the hypocrite is Donald Fortin, age 59, of 83 Skillings Woods Road, Turner, Maine, who has been charged with Engaging a Prostitute following an ongoing police department investigation of a prostitution ring out of a Kennebunk Zumba studio.  Fortin is the owner and president of Fortin Construction which on its website describes the company as a "Christian family owned company."   Moreover, he is a contributor to anti-gay  Protect Maine Marriage and family values GOP state senator Garrett Mason.  Maine's Majority has released the following Press Release:

Portland, ME - A review of campaign finance filings has found that the name of one of the men charged in the ongoing Kennebunk prostitution scandal matches that of a large contributor to the effort to defeat the state's same-sex marriage ballot measure and a maxed-out donor to Garrett Mason (R-Lisbon Falls), a Christian conservative and staunch opponent of marriage equality.

According to state records, on October 15, 2012, Donald Fortin of Turner personally donated $1,000 to Protect Maine Marriage and $350 to Mason through his business, Fortin Construction.[1] On June 21, Fortin also made a personal contribution to Mason in the amount of $350.

On October 25, the Kennebunk Police charged Donald Fortin of 83 Skillings Wood Road in Turner with Engaging a Prostitute. The same address is also found on the corporate filings of Diamond Developments of Maine, LLC (owned by a Donald Fortin) as well as a campaign contribution report by a Cynthia Fortin, who also gave $350 to Mason's campaign on October 15.

“We feel that the public deserves to know about this kind of hypocrisy," said Maine's Majority director Chris Korzen. "If Donald Fortin the campaign donor is indeed the same Donald Fortin in the Kennebunk Police press release, he cannot get away with actively promoting a conservative political agenda while engaging in behavior that is so blatantly at odds with his stated values. Furthermore, Protect Maine Marriage and Garret Mason must do the right thing and return these contributions.”

 Obviously, Fortin doesn't place much sanctity of his own marriage.  Whenever I see a business mentioning religion on its website, I usually take that as a good warning to hold on to your wallet.  Nonetheless, I feel sorry for his sons pictured on the company website who are no doubt embarrassed by their father's behavior and hypocrisy.

Why Democrats Need to Politicize Hurricane Sandy

Republicans - especially those within the Kool-Aid drinking Tea Part element of the party - love to talk about about the need for "smaller government," motivated primarily by what I view as greed.  They want to slash government agencies and services so that they can hoard more money for themselves. Their attitude is to Hell with the best interests of the nation not to mention the unfortunate who may find themselves needing assistance through no fault of their own.  

In this current presidential election the "starve government" charge is being led by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan - two spoiled, amoral brats who were born to wealth and as a result protected from the everyday trials and financial worries that haunt us regular Americans. They promise to slash government so that the wealthy can enjoy more tax cuts.  But when confronted about specifics, their "plans" resemble a pile of Jell-o that lacks substance and any coherent framework.  Enter Hurricane Sandy and the massive damage that has been inflicted up and down the East Coast from North Carolina to New England.  Now, Mitt Romney is being challenged about his past pledges to gut FEMA and federal emergency relief agencies/programs.  And low and behold, he's shape shifting and trying to disavow his past statements and positions since he knows voters will be appalled by his callousness and willingness to allow citizens to suffer even more when hit by natural disasters such as Sandy.  

The man is a heartless liar who can empathize more with a rich friend who just saw his/her horse lose a dressage event than he can with families who have lost their homes.  He and Ryan need to be challenged.  A piece in New York Magazine makes the case for politicizing Hurricane Sandy's aftermath and exposing the agenda for what it is.  Here are excerpts:

Disasters are inherently political, because government is political, and preventing and responding to disasters is a primary role of the state. But there is an innate tension in overtly politicizing a disaster. 

What you are going to see over the next week is an overt effort by Democrats to politicize the issue of disaster response. They’re right to do it. Conservatives are already complaining about this, but the attempt to wall disaster response off from politics in the aftermath of a disaster is an attempt to insulate Republicans from the consequences of their policies.

Funding for FEMA is something the parties wrangle over, with Republicans pushing to limit the agency’s budget, and Democrats pushing back. FEMA has to fight for its share of a constricted pot of money for domestic non-entitlement spending, a pot of money that the Republicans propose to radically constrict. How radically? Romney’s budget promises require shrinking domestic non-entitlement spending as a share of the economy by about two-thirds.

The Republican proposal to eviscerate this wide array of public functions is one of the underdiscussed questions of the election. Republicans have defended it using a very clever trick. They don’t explain how they would allocate the massive cuts to all these programs. When President Obama explains what would happen if those cuts were allocated in an across-the-board fashion, Republicans scream bloody murder. And when any single one of those programs enters the political debate, they can deny plans to make any specific cuts: They won’t cut education, they won’t cut support for veterans, and so on.

[T]he most concrete statement of Romney’s view of disaster spending came in a Republican debate last summer. John King, the moderator, asked Romney whether FEMA needed to be devolved to the states. Romney agreed and went farther:

The GOP is the party arguing for splurging on a long vacation at the beach rather than repairing the roof. Naturally, they want to have this argument only when it’s sunny and never when it’s raining. There’s no reason to accommodate them.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

Sandy Slams New York - New York Times Slams Romney

New York City took a pummeling from former hurricane Sandy with tremendous damage, including seven flooded tunnels crossing the East River, as the New York Times describes in part here:

Bridges remained closed and seven subway tunnels under the East River remained flooded.

The storm was the most destructive in the 108-year history of New York City’s subway system, said Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, in an early morning statement. “We are assessing the extent of the damage and beginning the process of recovery,” he said, but did not provide a timetable for restoring transit service to a paralyzed city. 

As the storm lashed the city, waves topped the sea wall in the financial district in Manhattan, sending cars floating down streets. West Street, along the western edge of Lower Manhattan, looked like a river. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, known officially as the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel in memory of a former governor, flooded “from end to end,” the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said, hours after Governor Cuomo of New York ordered it closed to traffic. Officials said water also seeped into seven subway tunnels under the East River.  

By early Monday evening, the storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes, stores and office buildings. Consolidated Edison said that as of 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, 634,000 customers in New York City and Westchester County were without power. Con Edison, fearing damage to its electrical equipment, shut down power pre-emptively in sections of Lower Manhattan on Monday evening, and then, at 8:30 p.m., an unplanned failure, probably caused by flooding in substations, knocked out power to most of Manhattan below Midtown, about 250,000 customers. Later, an explosion at a Con Ed substation on East 14th Street knocked out power to another 250,000 customers. 

Reports from New Jersey suggest huge damage across that state.  In short, devastation extends from North Carolina through New England.  The situation is a strong statement as to why the federal government needs to remain in the disaster response business.  Even though Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would eliminate FEMA and federal response programs.   No doubt Romney "I'm a Liar" Romney will deny that he ever made the proposal - even though it was caught on video.  In its lead editorial, the New York Times eviscerates the out of touch and uncaring Romney on this issue. Here are editorial highlights:

Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of “big government,” which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it. At a Republican primary debate last year, Mr. Romney was asked whether emergency management was a function that should be returned to the states. He not only agreed, he went further. 

“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” Mr. Romney not only believes that states acting independently can handle the response to a vast East Coast storm better than Washington, but that profit-making companies can do an even better job. He said it was “immoral” for the federal government to do all these things. . . . .

It’s an absurd notion, but it’s fully in line with decades of Republican resistance to federal emergency planning. FEMA,  . . . . .

The agency was put back in working order by President Obama, but ideology still blinds Republicans to its value. Many don’t like the idea of free aid for poor people, or they think people should pay for their bad decisions, which this week includes living on the East Coast. 

Over the last two years, Congressional Republicans have forced a 43 percent reduction in the primary FEMA grants that pay for disaster preparedness. Representatives Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and other House Republicans have repeatedly tried to refuse FEMA’s budget requests when disasters are more expensive than predicted, or have demanded that other valuable programs be cut to pay for them. The Ryan budget, which Mr. Romney praised as “an excellent piece of work,” would result in severe cutbacks to the agency

After Mr. Romney’s 2011 remarks recirculated on Monday, his nervous campaign announced that he does not want to abolish FEMA, though he still believes states should be in charge of emergency management. Those in Hurricane Sandy’s path are fortunate that, for now, that ideology has not replaced sound policy.  

Let's be clear.  Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are not only a danger to the country, they are a threat to decency and morality.  Romney/Ryan need to be defeated next week.

More Monday Male Beauty

Exposing More Romney Lies About the Auto Industry

Mitt Romney continues to spin lies about both what he wrote in his November 18, 2008, op-ed in the New York Times and what Barack Obama has done to revive the U.S. auto industry.  Signs like this need to not only blanket the Mid-West by every state.  An Obama ad adds this:

When the auto industry faced collapse, Mitt Romney turned his back. Even the conservative Detroit News criticized Romney for his 'wrong-headedness' on the bailout. And now, after Romney's false claim of Jeep outsourcing to China, Chrysler itself has refuted Romney's lie. The truth? Jeep is adding jobs in Ohio.

 Here are highlights from Chrysler's statement:

Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation. A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments. 

Catholics Defy Bishops and Pray for Gay Marriage

I often want to pull my hair out over the way ion which far too many Catholics continue to not only listen to but also give deference to the morally bankrupt, criminal cover up conspirators of the Catholic Church hierarchy.  With the Catholic bishops leading the current charge to deprive LGBT citizens  the civil rights enjoyed by others, it is refreshing to see that some Catholics have seen the light and are giving the bishops the figurative middle finger in defiance of the bishops hate filled agenda.  A case in point is Catholics in Seattle, Washington who have held a pray service voting for the affirmation of gay marriage on November 6th.  The Seattle Post Intelligencer looks at the event which I hope will become something common:  Catholics openly saying "No" to the foul hierarchy.  Here are story excerpts:

The folk mass hymns and gospels were familiar, the response "And with your spirit" recited Sundays in church by millions of Catholics, but the 120 faithful gathered outside Seattle's St. James Cathedral on Sunday afternoon were praying for a cause their bishops are campaigning against.

Mobilized by Catholics for Marriage Equality, they celebrated a "Liturgy of Love," praying for the recognition of same-sex unions and the passage of Referendum 74, which would legalize marriage between persons of the same gender.

"I would just say the God I have come to know is not one to tell people they are not equal," said Robert Gavino, a Seattle University student.

John House, a parishoner at Our Lady of Sorrows parish in Snoqualmie, added: "Catholics believe Christ's primary message is one of love, and Catholic social teaching teaches us that God loves everybody. We are standing up for centuries of Catholic social teaching."  They are also standing against their bishops.

We disagree, said those on the steps of St. James Cathedral.  "I find (bishops' claims) perplexing:. Nothing about marriage equality in the state of Washington is any infringement on liberty. This is about civil marriage and civil law," said John Morfield, a longtime parishoner at St. Mary's Catholic Church.

And Barbara Guzzo, organizer of Catholics for Marriage, argued that the bishops have brought "anguish, division and sadness" to the faithful, "particularly those with a gay person in their families, the hurt that this has caused."

Fr. John Whitney, S.J., pastor of St. Joseph Church, has encouraged discussion and helped a recent meeting to promote reconciliation between those who share the bishops' passionate opposition and those who back Referendum 74. "Authority never supplants conscience," he told parishoners in a recent "e-blast."

But stridently conservative bishops across the country have brought politics to the pulpit -- and delivered dictates of what belongs in the consciences of those in the pews.

State Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, present at St. James on Sunday, is a practicing Catholic and chief sponsor of marriage equality in the Legislature. Murray said he was outside the cathedral as a demonstration of his faith.  "I think any time we show solidarity with those on the margins of our society, it is an expression of our faith," said Murray. "We (gays) are certainly on the margins . . . at least in the hierarchy's structure."

Sadly, nowadays the Catholic bishops have become one of the biggest obstacles to the fulfillment of the Gospel message.  The principal message is one of hate and division and exclusion.  Their true gods are power, money and control over others.  The true message of Christ is nowhere on their radar screen.