North Carolina: GOP Extremism Unrestrained

If one wants to see what the GOP agenda for America, North Carolina offers a pretty good glimpse as a GOP controlled legislature and GOP governor run rampantly out of control and enact far right dream legislation that does everything from further restricting abortion to disenfranchising a significant percentage of voters.  Voters in Virginia would be wise to look southward to see what a GOP victory in Virginia in November would usher in.  A piece in the New York Times looks at what is happening in North Carolina - things that should have been foreseen by the cretins who either stayed home on election day or who stupidly believed GOP lies.  Anyone familiar with today's GOP base should have seen all of this coming.  Here are article excerpts:

When Pat McCrory, a Republican former mayor of Charlotte, was elected governor last year, he pledged to “bring this state together,” and to focus on bread-and-butter issues amid an ailing economy.

But with Republicans controlling all branches of the state government for the first time in more than a century, the legislature pushed through a wide range of conservative change. The Republicans not only cut taxes and business regulations, as many had expected, but also allowed stricter regulations on abortion clinics, ended teacher tenure, blocked the expansion of Medicaid, cut unemployment benefits, removed obstacles to the death penalty, allowed concealed guns in bars and restaurants, and mandated the teaching of cursive writing. 

Just this week, Mr. McCrory signed into law strict voter identification requirements, prohibiting same-day registration and cutting early voting.
Lawsuits have been filed — including one on Monday by the N.A.A.C.P. — and protests are taking place almost weekly in Raleigh, the capital, and other cities, leaving North Carolinians across the political spectrum worried that the state’s often-hailed political pragmatism may have given way to the ideological warfare of Washington. 

[I]n the 2010 elections, a cycle deeply unfavorable for Democrats nationwide, North Carolina Republicans won both houses of the legislature for the first time in a century. More critically, they also won control of redistricting. One year later, they drew districts guaranteeing safe seats for a Republican majority for years to come. 

In 2012, with Ms. Perdue’s late decision not to run again, Mr. McCrory won the governor’s office easily. Naming Mr. Pope as his budget director, he promised an agenda focused on economic growth, even pledging not to sign into law new restrictions on abortion. But Republicans in the legislature were not interested in half-measures. 

Doug Clark, a columnist for The News and Record of Greensboro, welcomed the partisan change, but he now sees the state’s Republican leadership as fostering “extreme partisanship and abuse of power.” He questioned why the legislature, after passing laws governing abortion, guns and voter identification, and frequently trying to exert control over issues traditionally left to local governments, never got around to passing the governor’s plan to overhaul job recruiting. 

While the number of North Carolina voters over all has risen since 2008, the number who are registered as either Republicans or Democrats has shrunk.  Unaffiliated voters now make up more than a quarter of the voting population. 

“Honest, I’m not much into North Carolina,” said Cyril Seacat, 78, who moved here decades ago to work in a Glen Raven-owned mill and was sitting in his truck outside a Walmart. “I don’t think they’re doing much of anything right.”

More Tuesday Male Beauty

ABA Unanimously Passes Resolution Condeming "Gay Panic" Defense

Time and time again we have sadly seen those who murder gays use the "gay panic defense" - i.e., that they panicked and flipped out and acted unintentionally - to justify murder and convince juries to acquit them of what is by any other standard noting less than cold blooded murder.  Now, the American Bar Association ("ABA") has adopted a resolution condemning the "gay panic defense" and seeking to have its use curtailed.  It goes without saying that the "godly Christian" folk will be condemning the ABA just as that constantly condemn gays.  Here are highlights on the ABA's action via The Edge:

As reported in the ABA Journal, yesterday during the annual meeting of the American Bar Association in San Francisco, the House of Delegates - the ABA’s governing body, unanimously passed a resolution urging federal, state, local and territorial governments to pass legislation curtailing the availability and effectiveness of the use of "gay panic" and "trans panic" defenses by criminal defendants.

In a press release issued by the National LGBT Bar Association, executive director D’Arcy Kemnitz said "The ABA’s adoption of this measure sends a clear message to state legislatures that legal professionals find no validity in the sham defenses mounted by those who seek to perpetuate discrimination and stereotypes as an excuse for violence." Further stating, "The ’gay panic’ and ’trans panic’ defenses have been used to try and excuse some of the most heinous violence exacted against innocent victims. State legislatures should immediately move to enact the ABA’s recommendation by passing laws banning ’panic’ defenses."

The full language of the adopted resolution reads as follows:

RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges federal, state, local and territorial governments to take legislative action to curtail the availability and effectiveness of the "gay panic" and "trans panic" defenses, which seek to partially or completely excuse crimes such as murder and assault on the grounds that the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity is to blame for the defendant’s violent reaction. Such legislative action should include:

(a) Requiring courts in any criminal trial or proceeding, upon the request of a party, to instruct the jury not to let bias, sympathy, prejudice, or public opinion influence its decision about the victims, witnesses, or defendants based upon sexual orientation or gender identity; and

(b) Specifying that neither a non-violent sexual advance, nor the discovery of a person’s sex or gender identity, constitutes legally adequate provocation to mitigate the crime of murder to manslaughter, or to mitigate the severity of any non-capital crime.

 The theory of "gay panic" goes back to 1920 when the term was first coined by psychiatrist Edward J. Kempf in his textbook "Psychopathology", in which he describes an acute, brief reactive psychosis suffered by the target of unwanted homosexual advances.

"Gay panic" has been used as a defense in recent years on a number of high profile assault and murder cases, most notably the 1995 trial of Jonathan Schmitz, who killed his friend Scott Amedure after learning, during a taping of "The Jenny Jones Show," that Amedure was sexually attracted to him. Schmitz confessed to committing the crime, but claimed that Amedure’s homosexual overtures angered and humiliated him. Three years later, the defense would be used during the trial of the two men accused of killing university student Matthew Shepard. The strategy proved ineffective or inadmissible and in both cases, ended with convictions for the defendants.

"Too many people have hidden for far too long behind baseless ’panic’ defenses," Kemnitz said. "Judges, lawmakers and juries must demand that these practices come to an end and juries must be provided with instructions advising juries to make their decisions free of improper bias and prejudice. Today’s ABA resolution is an important first step towards realizing that goal."

The reality is that anyone who doesn't have issues with their own sexual orientation - which rules out Ken Cuccinelli - isn't going to react violently to the discovery that some one is gay or that said individual finds them attractive.  The defense is in a word bullshit.

National Organization for Marriage Cheers Russia's Anti-Gay Laws

I've often said that the dishonesty of the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") knows no limits.  While claiming to be solely concerned with "protecting the sanctity of marriage," NOM in fact promotes reparative therapy - which is condemned by EVERY legitimate medical and mental health association in America - and promotes anti-gay lies.  Now, totally revealing its true agenda, NOM is praising Russia's anti-gay laws and providing a glimpse of what the Christofascist would do in America if they were allowed to do so.   Here are  highlights from Gay Star News:

Rev. William Owens, a religious liaison for the US group National Organization for Marriage, is proudly defending Russia's anti-gay propaganda laws.

According to the site Right Wing Watch, Owen emailed members of the Coalition of African-American Pastors; CAAP, like NOM, is against same sex marriage.

Owens also went after LGBT organizations who are calling for a boycott of the Sochi Winter Olympics..

'I believe that this is just another one of their ploys to cover their real intent, which is to force the acceptance of a lifestyle that is a clear violation of American values and moral law.'

Owens ends his email with an assertion that the US is in steep moral decline and in need of pray.

'I must declare to you that our nation is in trouble. We must pray without ceasing for our nation and we ask for your support to help us stay in the fight.'

As reported by Right Wing Watch, after the Supreme Court's decision on the Defense of Marriage of Act, Owen promised anti-gay marriage advocates 'are going to fight to the end, we are not going to give up, we are going to fight like we fought to get civil rights...'

Owens is in my view - like so many Virginia black pastors who act as water carriers and flunkies for the white supremacists at The Family Foundation - shows his ignorance and stupidity by supporting organizations that are as much anti-black as they are anti-gay.  He might just as well stencil "I'm a cretin" or "I'm a moron" on his forehead.  But meanwhile, it remains imperative to expose NOM's lies, hypocrisy and true anti-gay agenda.

Rev. William Owens, a religious liaison for the US group National Organization for Marriage, is proudly defending Russia's anti-gay propaganda laws.
According to the site Right Wing Watch, Owen emailed members of the Coalition of African-American Pastors; CAAP, like NOM, is against same sex marriage.
- See more at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/national-organization-marriages-religious-liaison-hails-russias-anti-gay-laws130813#sthash.SNwMwCaS.dpuf

Rev. William Owens, a religious liaison for the US group National Organization for Marriage, is proudly defending Russia's anti-gay propaganda laws.
According to the site Right Wing Watch, Owen emailed members of the Coalition of African-American Pastors; CAAP, like NOM, is against same sex marriage.
- See more at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/national-organization-marriages-religious-liaison-hails-russias-anti-gay-laws130813#sthash.SNwMwCaS.dpuf

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

Willaim & Mary Rector Warns Virginia on Gay Marriage Ban

William & Mary is one of Virginia's academic jewels and is also the second oldest university in America with only Harvard being older.  As such, William & Mary competes on a high level for the best faculty and researchers.  And now, William & Mary's outgoing Rector is warning that Virginia's ban on gay marriage will harm William & Mary and by extension, Virginia's other top colleges and universities because top academics simply will not want to take positions that would require moving to a socially backward, anti-gay state.  Ken Cuccinelli and his equally insane GOP ticket mates may scoff, but bigotry does carry a price.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post: 

Jeff Trammell, a D.C. lobbyist and gay Democratic activist, was elated when the Supreme Court ruled in late June that the federal government must treat legally married gay couples the same as married heterosexual couples.

But as the outgoing leader of the College of William and Mary’s governing Board of Visitors, Trammell also worried that the ruling would make Virginia’s vaunted public universities less attractive for gay academics.

The high court decision adds “a substantial incentive for our gay and lesbian faculty and staff to leave the Commonwealth’s public universities and colleges,” Trammell wrote to other Virginia higher education leaders in a June 26 e-mail, hours after the ruling was issued.

Trammell had earlier noted — in a letter on June 11 — that the presidents of the University of Virginia, George Mason University and William and Mary had pushed for the state to allow public universities to offer domestic partner health benefits in late 2009. That effort stalled after Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) took office in January 2010.

We already have lost valued gay and lesbian faculty to our competitors who do not discriminate. With changes in federal benefits soon available to legally married gay couples, we will lose more. Two able individuals told me [recently] that they are leaving for another state — one a top professor [in a science-technology field] and another a university administrator just recruited to Virginia a few years ago.

At a minimum, the state should immediately allow our public colleges and universities to offer health insurance and other equal benefits to the same-sex partners of their faculty and staff. The commonwealth is undervaluing our universities and their attractiveness to businesses that prize education. Everyone, Democrats and Republicans, needs to come together to end this discrimination.

Some gay and lesbian faculty and staff — including at the University of Virginia, George Mason, Virginia Commonwealth, Virginia Tech and William and Mary — have sent me their stories: senior professors whose partners had cancer and no health insurance; researchers who left the commonwealth, taking major grants with them; faculty who, unlike their straight colleagues, are paying out of their pockets for costly individual policies for their partners and who resent the discrimination; young professors and administrators who are looking to leave the state; and so forth.

Obama’s Empty NSA Reforms

Americans continue to live in a nation where domestic spying on civilians and breaches of privacy rival those of communist China and Putin's Russia and despite Barack Obama's talk of reform, things on this front are not about to be reigned in.  It is disturbing that the only safe approach in America is to assume that everything one does on the Internet or via electronic communications is being intercepted and read by government agents.  We have no true privacy.  The Nazi regime would be envious of the level of surveillance that watches Americans' every move.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Obama's meaningless promises of reform. Here are excerpts:

President Obama’s message about the government’s massive electronic surveillance programs came through loud and clear: Get over it.

The president used more soothing words in his pre-vacation news conference Friday, but that was the gist. With perhaps the application of a fig leaf here and a sheen of legalistic mumbo jumbo there, the snooping will continue.  Unless, of course, we demand that it end.

The modest reforms Obama proposed do not begin to address the fundamental question of whether we want the National Security Agency to log all of our phone calls and read at least some of our e-mails, relying on secret judicial orders from a secret court for permission. The president indicated he is willing to discuss how all this is done — but not whether.

Snowden’s disclosures do look increasingly like whistle-blowing, by the way, rather than espionage or treason. If administration officials really welcome the discussion we are now having, shouldn’t they thank Snowden rather than label him an enemy of the state? 

As part of its public relations campaign, the administration released a 22-page white paper outlining its legal rationale for collecting and keeping a detailed log of all our domestic phone calls. The document depends on novel definitions of words whose meaning, I always thought, was fairly clear.

Only an infinitesimal fraction of the billions of phone call records being stored in the NSA’s computers will actually have anything to do with terrorism or espionage. The government argues that it must have the entire haystack to find these few needles. Therefore, every piece of hay — your lunchtime call to your spouse, say, or your evening chat with an old friend — is relevant to an investigation.

Which investigation might that be? On this question, the administration argues there is no need to be specific. “An investigation” is taken to mean, roughly, any investigation designed to prevent terrorist attacks.

[T]he Fourth Amendment, which prohibits searches without suspicion. Without informing us, the judges of the secret intelligence court have construed the amendment to permit the collection of vast, unprecedented amounts of private information about individuals who are not, the government admits, under any suspicion.

Proceedings before the court are not adversarial; only the government side is presented. Obama acknowledged that this “may tilt it too far in favor of security, may not pay enough attention to liberty.”

I’ll believe Congress is serious when it clarifies the Patriot Act and other laws to spell out that the Constitution still applies. The NSA’s capability to obliterate privacy is rampaging ahead. The law desperately needs to catch up.

I continue to find this all pervasive spying on citizens frightening.  It has all the earmarks of Nazi Germany and other totalitarian regimes.  There is currently no one who reins in out of control spying. And there are no limits on the government's ability to label one a suspect or subversive.

Russia Confirms Anti-Gay Law Will Be Enforced at Olympics

Russia seemingly is striving to create an impasse with western public opinion and  to force the International Olympic Committee to either repeat the moral bankruptcy it displayed in 1936 or to move the 2014 Winter Games.  How else to explain the new statement by Russia's Interior Ministry that the country's new anti-gay laws will be enforced during the games and that both athletes and tourists will be arrested under the draconian laws backed by the Russian Orthodox Church.  IT IS TIME TO MOVE THE GAMES. Here are highlights from state controlled RIA Novosti:

MOSCOW, August 12 (R-Sport) – Russia's Interior Ministry, which controls the police force, confirmed Monday that the country's controversial anti-gay law will be enforced during the Sochi 2014 Olympics.

Confusion has reigned over how the country intends to act during the February 7-23 Winter Games after President Vladimir Putin signed legislation in June that bans the promotion of homosexuality to minors.

Minister Vitaly Mutko to insist no one is exempt from the law.

Many have raised concerns about the vague definition of promoting homosexuality to minors.
IOC president Jacques Rogge said last week he would ask for clarification on the issue before his organization takes a stance.

Some gay advocacy groups backed by public figures such as British writer and TV star Stephen Fry have called for a boycott of the Games, though world leaders including US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron have insisted it's the wrong way to tackle the issue.

If the IOC repeats the gutlessness it displayed in 1936, I for one will not watch a single competition on television and I will avoid the network broadcasting the event as well as the products of its advertisers.  I hope others will join me in this endeavor and that a loud message is sent to NBC and advertisers.  

New Study: Religious People Are Less Intelligent than Atheists

As the title to this post suggests, this topic was just too good to pass up and the referenced study confirms my own personal belief: fundamentalist Christians are less intelligent than both atheists and more intelligent individuals.  I would go further and posit that for the deeply religious who are more intelligent, they obviously have deed psychological issues that make them predisposed to cling to ignorance and closed mindedness (Ken Cuccinelli is a case in point as he battles his closeted self-loathing).  Here are highlights from Yahoo News: 

Religious people are less intelligent than non-believers, according to a new review of 63 scientific studies stretching back over decades.

A team led by Miron Zuckerman of the University of Rochester found “a reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity” in 53 out of 63 studies. Even in extreme old age, intelligent people are less likely to believe, the researchers found - and the reasons why people with high IQs shun religion may not be as simple as previously thought.

Previous studies have tended to assume that intelligent people simply “know better”, the researchers  write - but the reasons may be more complex.

For instance, intelligent people are more likely to be married, and more likely to be successful in life - and this may mean they “need” religion less.
The studies used in Zuckerman's paper included a life-long analysis of the beliefs of a group of 1,500 gifted children - those with IQs over 135 - in a study which began in 1921 and continues today.

Even at 75 to 91 years of age, the children from Lewis Terman’s study scored lower for religiosity than the general population - contrary to the widely held belief that people turn to God as they age. The researchers noted that data was lacking about religious attitudes in old age and say, “Additional research is needed to resolve this issue.”

As early as 1958, Michael Argyle concluded, “Although intelligent children grasp religious concepts earlier, they are also the first to doubt the truth of religion, and intelligent students are much less likely to accept orthodox beliefs, and rather less likely to have pro-religious attitudes.”

The paper, published in the academic journal Personality and Social Psychology Review, said “Most extant explanations (of a negative relation) share one central theme—the premise that religious beliefs are irrational, not anchored in science, not testable and, therefore, unappealing to intelligent people who “know better.”  

“People possessing the functions that religion provides are likely to adopt atheism, people lacking these very functions (e.g., the poor, the helpless) are likely to adopt theism,” the researchers wrote. 

I am not anti-religion per se, but I do believe that it is important to understand that for millennium, religion has been used as a means to control and exert power over the less intelligent.  Russia is a classic example.  For centuries the Russian Orthodox Church used religion and religious dogma that depicted the Tsar as second only to God as a means to keep the serfs and peasantry under control.  The high Church clergy and the aristocracy lived in luxury while the peasantry lived largely in abject poverty.  Now, under Putin, we see the Church once again being used to control the masses and focus attacks on those the leadership has deemed to be unworthy.  In the process, of course, the Church hierarchy will bolster its own power and wealth.   Christ and the Gospel message are (and will remain)  nowhere in the picture.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

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Dedicated to Douglas