LGBTQ Rights Are In Danger Of Being Rolled Back

My relationships with a number of "friends" who voted for Donald Trump remained strained as some of my worse fears of a Trump/GOP victory continue to be realized.  Why?  The answer is simple: such people have set in motion what may prove to be extremely harmful to me personally and virtually every LGBT American.  Already, Trump and his regime have rolled back a number of LGBT non-discrimination protections.  Sadly, I suspect that the worst is still to come and I believe that many in the LGBT community and among our straight allies underestimate the harm that Der  Trumpenführer and his Christofascist and evangelical Christian seek to inflict.  It is worth remembering that while anti-Semiticism was common in pre-Nazi Germany, few Germans would have dreamed that Hitler and his regime would murder millions of Jews.  Then, like now, it was believed that public opinion would prevent such a wholesale murder of millions.  Justice Neil Gorsuch has shown himself to be an extreme enemy of LGBT equality.  Here in Virginia GOP attorney general candidate, John Adams, is equally hostile towards LGBT citizens. Can LGBT Americans safely rely on growing public acceptance to protect them?  A piece in HuffPost, which I sadly agree with, argues that we cannot.  Here are column highlights:

I’ve many times discussed “victory blindness,” brought on by the seduction of big wins for civil rights and which has had many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people believing they’ve “arrived” ― that LGBTQ rights are secured ― while not seeing the perils ahead.

From as far back as 2014, watching the way that anti-LGBTQ forces were organizing for the future, I was worried about how the LGBTQ community would get too caught up in the anticipated win at the Supreme Court on marriage equality that was coming down the pike in 2015.

The onset of the Trump administration has certainly been a clarion call to snap out of it. And so many queer people have seen the threat and joined the Resistance.

But some recent exchanges and interactions I’ve had lead me to believe that many people, queer and straight, still believe that LGBTQ rights are secure and advancing. They point to public opinion polls, to cultural changes and to progress even in the most conservative corners of the country.

One person, educated in the history of the LGBTQ movement, told me that he couldn’t believe that the Supreme Court would undo something that the majority of Americans now supported ― marriage equality ― and implied a lot of the sounding of the alarm was for the conspiracy-minded.

I find this thinking to be naive and enormously dangerous.

It often doesn’t matter what the majority of Americans believe ― over 90 percent support universal background checks on gun purchases, after all, but we can’t get the legislation passed. The Supreme Court has handed down ruling after ruling that reversed precedents and defied the majority of Americans’ beliefs on voting rights, corporate money in politics, immigration and so many other issues. What is happening in our country right now is clear: a powerful minority is in control and is trying to get the fix in so that it can rule from the minority for a long time to come. 

Let’s look at the facts:

Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch  wrote a dissenting opinion two weeks ago regarding Arkansas and birth certificates for children of same-sex couples, defining himself as the new hardline leader on the court for religious conservatives and inviting lower courts to view the Obergefell marriage equality decision not as settled law, but as open to interpretation, possibly allowing for religious or other exemptions for those opposed to marriage equality.

Days later the Texas Supreme Court refused to see Obergefell as settled, sending a case back to a trial court. Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern, in a piece headlined, “Marriage Equality Could be in Peril,” laid out the case last week for the how marriage equality, with Gorsuch in the lead and Justice Kennedy perhaps retiring at any time and replaced by another anti-LGBTQ conservative, could be overturned.

Mississippi last year passed the most far-reaching anti-LGBTQ law we have seen and just a few weeks ago a federal appeals court ruled that the law should be allowed to take effect. The law allows for businesses and government employees to decline service to LGBTQ people, and that includes bakers, florists, county clerks and and other government employees, based on religious beliefs. It allows for discrimination in housing and employment against same-sex couples or any individual within a same-sex couple.  . . . The law allows mental health professionals and doctors, nurses and clinics to turn away LGBTQ individuals. It also allows state-funded adoption agencies to turn away LGBTQ couples. With several of the Supreme Court’s conservatives seeming to welcome these exemptions, expect other states to move in the same direction and, again, with Gorsuch on the court and Kennedy perhaps retiring at any time soon, it’s frightening to think what the court might decide about such exemptions.

Texas joined Michigan, South Dakota and Mississippi in allowing bans on adoption to same-sex couples by state-funded adoption agencies. In the cases of both Texas and South Dakota, the laws were passed this year and seemed to fly under the radar of all the attention on Donald Trump. But they, too, get at that same issue of allowing exemptions to same sex-marriage, turning same-sex marriage into second-class marriage. Again, look for more states to follow this lead.
The Trump administration has thrown transgender students overboard, withdrawing guidelines on protecting trans students that were put in place by the Obama administration for schools nationwide. And the Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, sees no problem with giving federal dollars to schools that discriminate against gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender students. 

Trump’s cabinet and undersecretaries include some of the most ardent foes of LGBT rights, from Housing Secretary Ben Carson and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price and his director of the Office of Civil Rights at HHS, Roger Severino . . . .

Trump has essentially made LGBTQ people invisible. There was no presidential Pride proclamation in June, let alone a White House reception. Two surveys by HHS about older Americans and disabled people have removed questions about sexual orientation, refusing to collect vital data. And the Census Bureau dumped plans to finally include information about sexual orientation and gender identity in the 2020 census. 

This is a vigorous attempt at a full-scale rollback by religious conservatives who’ve been part of Trump’s and the GOP’s base, and it’s already had some success. There is no denying it. Many are woke to it. But I’m afraid far too many LGBTQ people are not, still wanting to revel in victories, pointing to polls and to progress globally.

The United States, however, is right now led by an authoritarian whose party ― always hostile to LGBTQ rights ― has so far given him free rein to engage in destructive behavior against anyone and everyone.

None of us can believe any of the rights we’ve fought for are safe. But more importantly, we need to wake up and see that they are already being stripped away right before our eyes.

When Trump won the 2016 presidential election as a result of the Electoral College's failure to do its duty as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, I noted that emigrating from America might be an option that the husband and I might end up pursuing.  We have taken no action on this as yet, although we are remodeling our master bathroom - doing much of the work ourselves - to make the house more salable if things should come to needing to move.  We have no intention of making the same mistakes made by 1930's German Jews who failed to flee Germany while they had the opportunity. We will watch and wait, but have no intention odf sticking our heads in the sand as to what is happening - right before our eyes. 

More Monday Morning Male Beauty

Trump's Surrender of American Power and Influence

Donald Trump - like perhaps a majority of his supporters in my opinion - is basically a know nothing.  He doesn't read, gets his "news" primarily from Kook-Aid serving Fox News, dislikes briefing reports if they are more than a single page, and in general appears to have little interest in doing the work required to be president.   Combine this with his inward looking "America First" narrative that belittles other nations and is blind to the importance of foreign trade in projection American power and it is a recipe for disaster.  A column in the Washington Post by an economist equates Trump's policies to date as a huge surrender of American power and influence across the globe.  Here are column highlights:

President Trump’s foreign policy, such as it is, rests on a massive and apparently indestructible contradiction. Trump wants the United States to remain the “essential” nation, the best embodiment of Western ideals of freedom and democracy, while at the same time deliberately alienating many of our traditional allies, whose support the United States desperately needs. American leadership becomes difficult, if not impossible.

It is hard to straddle this contradiction, because it reflects a basic misunderstanding of the American “greatness” that Trump so avidly pursues. To Trump, this greatness is mainly measured in economic terms: the number of added jobs; the trajectory of wages; the rate of economic growth. It is a nostalgic and unrealistic yearning for the economic dominance the United States enjoyed in the 1950s and 1960s.

The truth is that American greatness then and later was never about dollars and cents alone. Prosperity was a means to an end, not an end in itself. The greater objective was to promote democracy and mixed economies, with power divided between the market and government. To advance this vision, the United States advocated open trade and provided a military umbrella. The latter created a geopolitical shield against instability.

Trump sees the costs of these programs as showing that past U.S. leaders were willing to sacrifice the interests of ordinary Americans to meaningless global cooperation. . . .  these complaints, they were (and are) fundamentally misleading. The notion that Americans simply abandoned their own interests for Japan’s, Germany’s or South Korea’s — to select a few obvious countries — is counterfactual. . . . Our economic and political interests were served by a prosperous and increasingly democratic global system.

As “grand strategy,” the post-World War II American conception of the world order largely succeeded. The global economy grew richer. A wealthier Europe established stable democracies. The Soviet Union collapsed. America benefited from all of this.

But as Trump has surely discovered, running an outward-looking, internationalist foreign policy is hard when your domestic policy is nationalist and inward-looking. Abroad, the balancing act has backfired. . . . A recent Pew Research Center poll of 40,448 respondents in 37 countries finds a big drop in favorable views of the United States. 

As a result, it’s harder for Trump to lead internationally. Foreign leaders can more easily oppose him without suffering adverse domestic political consequences. He has made it even harder by antagonizing other countries by withdrawing from the Paris agreement on climate change. There was no need; all the pact’s goals are voluntary.
He quit the Trans- Pacific Partnership — a trade agreement with 11 other Pacific Rim nations; many economists consider this a blunder, because Asian economies are among the fastest-growing. And last week, Europe and Japan announced they’re negotiating a trade agreement that covers 40 percent of world trade and excludes the United States. Being outside these agreements would weaken U.S. exports. Further, the European Union warns it might retaliate against the United States if Trump restricts Europe’s steel exports.

What we’re witnessing is extraordinary: a voluntary surrender of power and influence. . . .  history suggests that trade and geopolitics go hand in hand. To deal with North Korea, Trump needs allies to make economic sanctions tougher or to support military action. He has precious few because he has been so careless in abdicating responsibility for the global trading system.

Putting an ignorant narcissist in the White House will likely cost America dearly.  Bigots and white supremacists may feel empowered and free to swagger, but the country as a whole will be the loser. 

Trump's Apparent Willingness to Collude with a Hostile Government

A post yesterday looked at a newly disclosed meeting with a likely Russian intermediary by Donald Trump, Jr. - who has always struck me as perhaps the most dimwitted of Der Trumpenführer's children - Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort.  While the verdict is out on whether or not the trio received damaging information on Hillary Clinton from the Russian go between, the episode demonstrates one thing clearly: Trump and his campaign were more than willing to collude with Russian agents.  When added to the now discovered list of secret meetings - meetings that Trump operatives initially lied about - the picture that emerges is anything but comforting.  It would be a sweet irony if this meeting sets in motion events whereby Trump, Jr., aid in the fall of his toxic father.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the ongoing collusion investigation.  Here are excerpts:

Since his presidential campaign was first alleged by critics to have colluded with the Russian government to undermine Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump has been consistent—and unusually so—in steadfastly denying it. Now it seems clear that if his denials are true, it is because Trump’s advisers were unwilling to collude. And that confirmation comes, surprisingly, from Trump’s own son and namesake, Donald Trump Jr.

On Saturday, The New York Times reported that Trump Jr. met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer at Trump Tower in early June 2016. Trump Jr. initially told the paper that the meeting had covered only a dispute over adoption related to the Magnitsky Act, an American law meant to punish the current Russian regime for human-rights abuses. But three unnamed White House aides briefed on the meeting later told the Times indicated that Trump Jr. had taken the meeting after being promised damaging information about Clinton.

Trump Jr. then changed his story. . . . . Trump Jr. brought his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to the meeting.

In other words, Trump Jr. admitted (while acknowledging a prior lie) that he was open to receiving damaging information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian; he was just frustrated that she didn’t seem to have it. If there was no collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump inner circle, it was not because top Trump aides were against it.

Trump Jr.’s admission here is remarkable. Donald Trump’s tendency to speak unwisely remains one of his greatest weaknesses—his threat to release apparently fictive tapes resulted in a special-counsel investigation that has rocked his still-young presidency—and his children are a chip off the old block. (Eric Trump has admitted, contra claims of separation, that he continues to talk business with his father.)

It is possible that, as Trump Jr. says, he did not know the identity or background of the  lawyer with whom he was meeting. The Trump family has a history of failing (or simply declining) to do due diligence in its business projects. Trump Jr. got into hot water during the campaign when he appeared on a white supremacist’s radio show; he claimed he did not know the man’s views. The president has also posted material from social-media users who espouse abhorrent views, apparently without vetting them, as recently as last week. Manafort, who has extensive connections to Kremlin-tied politicians and businessmen, might have been more likely to be aware of who Veselnitskaya was.

Trump Jr. claims that Veselnitskaya provided no actual incriminating information about Clinton, but it’s impossible at this point to know whether this is true, especially given Trump Jr.’s unreliable accounts.

In any case, Wikileaks began dumping a cache of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee on July 22, a month and a half after the June 9 meeting.  The top U.S. intelligence agencies have all concluded that Kremlin-connected hackers were responsible. On July 24, Trump Jr. appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and said that the suggestion that Russia was trying to hurt Clinton was “disgusting” and “so phony.” On July 27, Donald Trump publicly pleaded with Russia to hack and release Clinton’s personal emails.

The revelation about the meeting with Veselnitskaya is the first concrete evidence of attempts at collusion during the presidential campaign. But it also, crucially, an instance of the scandal reaching into Trump’s family—his closest ring of advisers.

The family tie becomes important if Trump Jr.’s second account of his meeting is taken at face value, which is admittedly challenging. He wants the public to believe that he, Kushner, and Manafort met with a Russian who claimed to have damaging information about Trump’s opponent, but did not tell the candidate himself; that this happened even though Trump Jr. and Kushner are close to Trump Sr., and that Trump was at Trump Tower, the site of the meeting, that day, where he lunched with Manafort. In other words, it is difficult to believe that Donald Trump did not learn about the meeting soon after it happened.

The president seems likely to face a difficult choice in the near future. Trump will have to either cut loose family members, including his own son and his son-in-law, a White House senior adviser; or else he will have to take his chances by sticking with them. It is one thing for Trump to distance himself from Manafort (even if it’s laughable to claim, as Sean Spicer did, that the campaign manager “played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time”). For Trump, who values both his status as president and his family, that is a nearly impossible dilemma. Kushner’s financial dealings are already one subject of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The fact that three White House advisers spoke about the Veselnitskaya investigation to the Times suggests some of the president’s associates have few compunctions about throwing his son under the bus.

Trump’s modus operandi throughout his life has been to break rules and then beg forgiveness. . . . The president, a political newcomer, seems to be under the impression that he can do the same in his new line of work. But as I have written before, there’s no option to declare bankruptcy in politics. Nor will Robert Mueller agree to an out-of-court settlement if he decides the president (or his family members) have committed crimes.

The problem for Trump is that this first suggestion of real collusion comes after a mountain of other circumstantial evidence, including the investigations into Kushner and Manafort; Flynn’s duplicity about his meetings; and Sessions’s failure to disclose meetings. It also comes after Trump tried to pressure then-FBI Director James Comey to drop an investigation into Flynn, and then fired Comey, citing the Russia investigation.

This welter of circumstantial evidence, along with the possible weaknesses in the case, are why an independent investigation by Mueller is so important to understanding what happened. Instead of welcoming the inquiry as a chance to clear his name, though, Trump has criticized Mueller and mused about removing him. That, too, raises questions.

Church of England: Ban "Ex-Gay" Conversion Therapy

By far a minority of states in the United States - but nonetheless, a growing number - have banned fraudulent "ex-gay" conversion therapy for those under 18 years of age.  The practice has been a cash cow for the bogus "ministries" and "Christian counseling centers" who have  marketed the "ex-gay" "change programs."   Moreover, the myth that they have sought to maintain (namely, that sexual orientation is a choice) has long been used as a political weapon by Christofascists to oppose LGBT non-discrimination laws and ordinances.   I have been actively working to show how dangerous and fraudulent these programs are since 20013.  An article here looks at the take down of Michael Johnston, one of the leading "ex-gay" poster boys of the Christian Right.  Now, the Church of England is call for the fraudulent practice to be banned in the United Kingdom.  A piece in The Guardian looks at this surprising and most welcomed development.  Be assured that Tony Perkins of FRC, Victoria Cobb of The Family Foundation in Richmond, Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage and similar charlatans are likely shrieking at this news.  Here are excerpts from The Guardian:

The Church of England has called on the government to ban conversion therapy and has condemned the practice, which aims to change sexual orientation, as unethical and potentially harmful.

At the end of an emotional debate in which two members of the C of E synod described their experiences as spiritual abuse, the church’s governing body overwhelmingly backed a motion saying the practice had “no place in the modern world”.

Conversion therapy is usually described as an attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Some churches in the C of E and other denominations have encouraged LGBT members to take part in prayer sessions and other activities to rid them of their “sin”.

Proposing the motion, Jayne Ozanne – who underwent conversion therapy resulting in two breakdowns and two spells in hospital – said conversion therapy was “abuse from which vulnerable adults need protecting”.

It was “discredited by the government, the NHS, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of General Practitioners and many other senior health care bodies,” she said.

Quoting from a statement issued earlier this year by the UK Council for Psychotherapy and other bodies, she said: “Exclusion, stigma and prejudice may precipitate mental health issues for any person subjected to these abuses.”

John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, said conversion therapy was “theologically unsound, so the sooner the practice of [it] is banned, I can sleep at night”.

Paul Bayes, the bishop of Liverpool, said LGBT orientation was neither a crime nor a sin. “We don’t need to engage people in healing therapy if they are not sick.”

Fenella Cannings-Jurd, a student at Durham university, said she found it hard to believe that “in 2017 we are seriously debating the pros and cons of conversion therapy”. It was “by and large” seen as a violation of basic human rights, she said.

The final vote, after a complicated series of amendments, was 298 to 74, with 26 abstentions. The motion had the backing of all three houses of the synod, the bishops, clergy and laity.

Speaking before the debate, Ozanne said she wanted the church to make a clear public statement. As the established church “we can encourage other denominations and faiths to consider their positions on this”, she said.

Conversion therapy was particularly prevalent in minority ethnic Pentecostal denominations, and in some extreme cases young people were sent back to their family’s country of origin for “corrective rape”.

"Corrective rape" - I suspect that Jesus would not have been an advocate of such batshitery and violent abuse.  I tried to "pray away the gay" for 37 years and I can assure you, it does NOT work.  Kudos to the Church of England.  Hopefully, more American denominations will follow the example and condemn this fraudulent practice which epitomizes right wing Christians' embrace of ignorance.

Monday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Trump Jr. Admits He Met With Kremlin Connected Russian Lawyer

It would seem that pathological lying must be genetic.

As one blogger friend commented, the never ending Russiagate saga sounds increasingly like a Tom Clancy novel - or perhaps, David Baldacci's Absolute Power - with new Trump-Russia meetings during the 2016 presidential campaign.  The latest is Donald Trump, Jr.'s admission that he met with a Kremlin connected Russian attorney.  Also in attendance were Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner. Making matters worse, the attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, has been high profile in fighting sanctions against Russia and actually produced compromising information about Mrs. Clinton which was being sought after by the Trump campaign.   Sound like collusion?    Yet, Trump, Jr., and Kushner seemingly had very convenient amnesia about the meeting until confronted by the New York Times.   I am sorry, but one does NOT suddenly forget about such meetings despite the lies of Trump, Jr., and Kushner.  Here are highlights from the Times article on the latest shoe to drop in the Russiagate story:

President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.

The meeting was also attended by his campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in confidential government documents described to The New York Times.

The Times reported the existence of the meeting on Saturday. But in subsequent interviews, the advisers and others revealed the motivation behind it.

The meeting — at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trump clinched the Republican nomination — points to the central question in federal investigations of the Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.

[T]he episode at Trump Tower is the first such confirmed private meeting involving his inner circle during the campaign — as well as the first one known to have included his eldest son. It came at an inflection point in the campaign, when Donald Trump Jr., who served as an adviser and a surrogate, was ascendant and Mr. Manafort was consolidating power.

It is unclear whether the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, actually produced the promised compromising information about Mrs. Clinton. But the people interviewed by The Times about the meeting said the expectation was that she would do so.

When he was first asked about the meeting on Saturday, Donald Trump Jr. said only that it was primarily about adoptions and mentioned nothing about Mrs. Clinton.  But on Sunday, presented with The Times’s findings, he offered a new account. In a statement, he said he had met with the Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which his father took to Moscow. “After pleasantries were exchanged,” he said, “the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the president’s lawyer, said on Sunday that “the president was not aware of and did not attend the meeting.”

Lawyers for Mr. Kushner referred to their statement a day earlier, confirming that he voluntarily disclosed the meeting but referring questions about it to Donald Trump Jr. Mr. Manafort declined to comment. In his statement, Donald Trump Jr. said he asked Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner to attend, but did not tell them what the meeting was about.

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, one of the panels investigating Russian election interference, said he wanted to question “everyone that was at that meeting.”

“There’s no reason for this Russian government advocate to be meeting with Paul Manafort or with Mr. Kushner or the president’s son if it wasn’t about the campaign and Russia policy,” Mr. Schiff said after the initial Times report.

Ms. Veselnitskaya’s clients include state-owned businesses and a senior government official’s son, whose company was under investigation in the United States at the time of the meeting. Her activities and associations had previously drawn the attention of the F.B.I., according to a former senior law enforcement official.

[I]n an interview with The Times in March, he [Trump, Jr.]denied participating in any campaign-related meetings with Russian nationals. “Did I meet with people that were Russian? I’m sure, I’m sure I did,” he said. “But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly none that I was representing the campaign in any way.”

Ms. Veselnitskaya represents powerful players in Russia. Among her clients is Denis Katsyv, the Russian owner of Prevezon Holdings, an investment company based in Cyprus. He is the son of Petr Katsyv, the vice president of the state-owned Russian Railways and a former deputy governor of the Moscow region. In a civil forfeiture case in New York, the Justice Department alleged that Prevezon had helped launder money linked to the $230 million corruption scheme exposed by Mr. Magnitsky by putting it in real estate and bank accounts. Prevezon recently settled the case for $6 million without admitting wrongdoing.

Ms. Veselnitskaya and her client also hired a team of political and legal operatives in the United States. The team included Rinat Akhmetshin, an émigré to the United States who once served as a Soviet military officer and who has been called a Russian political gun for hire.

It would seem that Donald Trump, Jr., shares some traits with his father such as pathological lying.  

Republican's Conniption Fits Over Outing of AG Candidate John Adams

No, Republican Attorney General candidate John Adam's hasn't been outed for being gay - although he does seem a tad bit hysterical LGBT rights and same sex marriage, something that often is a signal of a self-loathing closeted Republican (think former Congressman Ed Schrock who I helped "out" in 2004).  No, instead, both the Washington Post and Richmond Times Dispatch (the pieces were noted in previous posts on this blog) did pieces on Adams that exposed him as a Christofascist religious extremist and just possible and anti-woman racist.   As a result of the coverage, the Republicans over at Bearing Drift - which touts itself as "Virginia's Conservative Voice" - are having absolute conniption fits.  One column attacks the Washington Post piece while remaining mysteriously silent on the Times Dispatch piece which was similarly unflattering to Adams unless one is perhaps one of the KKK protesters in Charlottesville yesterday.  In typical GOP fashion, the piece claims that direct quotes of Adams "were taken out of context," yet the clear take away of both Adams and Bearing Drift is that they believe a majority mob rule with minorities - including gays - relegated to a situation where they should be grateful for whatever crumbs of legal rights the majority might throw their way.  The Equal Protection Clause of the U.D. Constitute seemingly doesn't exist in Adams' universe.  Here are excerpts from the apologist piece at Bearing Drift:

This week, Washington Post columnist Laura Vozzella tried to sew together a mismatched tapestry of half-truths and out-of-context quotes from Republican nominee for Attorney General John Adams. The article attacked everything from his views on social issues to something he said to a newspaper in 1994. Simply put, Democratic AG candidate Mark Herring has the Washington Post doing his job for him.

Virginia voters passed a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage. It’s the law, and if you are the Attorney General of Virginia, the AG has to defend the laws that have been passed by the voters.

I believe the way the Supreme Court chose to basically legislate gay marriage into existence isn’t how laws are supposed to be passed. Laws are supposed to be passed by the legislative branch, signed by the executive branch, and tested for constitutionality by the judicial branch. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about marriage or marriage rights.

That’s the main point of Mr. Adams’ argument — that the first problem is that anyone who believes in limited government should have issues with the way gay marriage was legislated from the Supreme Court. The second problem is that Virginia voters had a law on the books and Mark Herring did nothing to defend it.

In response to the author, I would point out that, in my opinion, Adams' approach to the law not only ignores the U.S. Constitution but also seemingly ignores Rule 3.3 of the Rules of Professional Conduct governing all attorneys licensed in Virginia, which provides in part as follows:

(a)  A lawyer shall not knowingly:

(1) make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal;

(2) fail to disclose a fact to a tribunal when disclosure is necessary to avoid assisting a criminal or fraudulent act by the client;

(3) fail to disclose to the tribunal controlling legal authority in the subject jurisdiction known to the lawyer to be adverse to the position of the client and not disclosed by opposing counsel; or

(4) offer evidence that the lawyer knows to be false. If a lawyer has offered material evidence and comes to know of its falsity, the lawyer shall take reasonable remedial measures.

Religious belief does not equate to scientific, objective fact. The unfortunate truth is that Virginia has been on the wrong side of history many times since the founding years of the nation.  Far too many past attorney generals supported some of Virginia's darkest deeds.   We do not need an attorney general who thinks the majority gets to dispense rights to minorities as it sees fit and is willing to parrot ridiculous - and untrue - Christofascist lies.   Truth be told, John Adams is an extremist and he needs to be exposed as such to Virginia voters. I cannot help but wonder if Adams' law firm, McGuire Woods, will not come to regret Adams' candidacy before its over. 

Trump, Palin, the KKK - Today's Republican Party

As Joe Jervis reports. Sarah Palin, a/k/a the idiot of Wasilla, always an attention whore, praised Donald Trump's tweet that repeated a white supremacist meme that hearkens back to the Nazi era: "We must secure the existence of our people & a future 4 white children." It is a mind set that has grown over the years in the Republican Party to a point that it is sadly, mainstream in the party.  All made respect least in racist circles - by Der Trumpenführer, arguably the foulest individual to ever occupy the White House.  The tweet certainly leaves little room for non-whites in Trump's America.  Meanwhile, yesterday Charlottesville, Virginia, probably the most liberal city in Virginia witnessed a gathering of KKK members protesting the city's proposed removal of a statute of Robert E. Lee from a public park.  Even some 45+ years ago when I began my undergraduate days at the University of Virginia, such a gather of Klan members would have been unthinkable.  But not in Trump's America. The Washington Post looks at events in Charlottesville where fortunately a much larger counter protest turned out.  Here are excerpts:

A rally here by the Ku Klux Klan and its supporters to protest the Charlottesville City Council’s decision to remove a statue honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee encountered a loud and angry counterprotest Saturday afternoon.

Members of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which is based in Pelham, N.C., near the Virginia border, gathered at Justice Park, situated in a quiet, leafy residential neighborhood in downtown Charlottesville. They shouted “white power,” and some wore white robes. . . . approximately 1,000 counterprotesters who greeted them with jeers. Attempts by Klan leaders to address the crowd were repeatedly drowned out by boos and chants. Some of the Klan members arrived armed, carrying handguns in holsters at their belts.

The rally was held about a block away from Emancipation Park — the renamed Lee Park — where the statue of Lee astride a horse still stands.

“It is important for me to be here because the Klan was ignored in the 1920s, and they metastasized,” said Jalane Schmidt, a professor at the University of Virginia who has been among those leading the call for the Lee statue removal. “They need to know that their ideology is not acceptable.”

“I teach about slavery and African American history, and it’s important to face the Klan and to face the demons of our collective history and our original sin of slavery. We do it on behalf of our ancestors who were terrorized by them.”

The Klan says the city’s decision to remove the Lee statue is part of a wider effort to get rid of white history.

“They’re trying to erase the white culture right out of the history books,” Klan member James Moore said Thursday.

Brandi Fisher, of Ridgeley, W.Va., drove hours to attend the rally.

“I don’t agree with everything the Klan believes, but I do believe our history should not be taken away,” said Fisher, 41. “Are we going to remove the Washington and Jefferson memorials because they were slave owners?”

Charlottesville is already planning for another protest next month. Several white nationalist groups have a permit for an Aug. 12 rally also calling for the council’s decision on the statue to be reversed.

My New Orleans born grandmother would have had a two word term for the KKK protesters: white trash.  In her mind, white trash was the lowest thing one could be.  But not nowadays in the Republican Party.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty