Tennessee Church Kicks Out Family For Supporting Lesbian Daughter

The Christofascists go on and on about the importance of heterosexual marriage and raising children, but in truth, they care little or nothing for married couples who don't tow the official line of denomination dogma and they would have parents throw their gay children on the trash heap.  As Bob Felton at Civil Commotion likes to point out, obedience to the cult and the ignorant, unscientific writings from 2500 years ago trumps all else, including family ties.  The recent behavior of a church in Tennessee underscores this reality.  A family that had been church members for three generations has been expelled from church membership because they family has supported their lesbian daughter.   The Tennessee Free Press has details.  Here are highlights:

Collegedale's decision to grant benefits to same-sex couples was a victory for Kat Cooper, a gay detective who championed the months-long effort that made the Chattanooga suburb the first city in Tennessee to offer benefits to same-sex spouses of its government employees.

Cooper's mother, Linda, stood by her side throughout the process. She held tight to her daughter's hand at a July meeting over the issue. And the two embraced after the City Council's 4-1 vote on Aug. 5.

But those small acts of support translated into collateral damage that left Linda Cooper and other relatives separated from their church family of more than 60 years. 

Leaders at Ridgedale Church of Christ  met in private with Kat Cooper's mother, aunt and uncle on Sunday after the regular worship service. They were given an ultimatum: They could repent for their sins and ask forgiveness in front of the congregation. Or leave the church.

Their sins?  "My mother was up here and she sat beside me. That's it," said Kat Cooper. "Literally, they're exiling members for unconditionally loving their children -- and even extended family members."

But the family's support of Kat Cooper was as good as an endorsement of homosexuality, said Ken Willis, minister at Ridgedale Church of Christ.

Linda Cooper's parents were practically founding members of the Dodds Avenue congregation, Hunt Cooper said. Her father was a church elder and his picture still hangs on the wall there. Kat Cooper grew up helping her grandfather clean the pews and helped her grandmother hang bulletin boards for Sunday school.  "This is not just some casual church they dropped in on," he said.

Hunt Cooper said his family rejects the notion that being gay is a lifestyle choice. And his wife, along with her brother and sister, believed repentance would be hypocritical. So the decision to leave, devastating as it was, was a simple one.

"There's no sin to repent for," he said. "And she's not going to turn her back on her daughter."

Good for the Coopers!!   Conservative Christianity has become a pervasive evil.  It's fruits are hate, bigotry and hypocrisy.  The world will be a better place when it ceases to exist.

Thursday Morning Male Beauty

Why the GOP May Lose Virginia’s Statehouse

The more one knows about GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli and his equally extreme running mates - E.W Jackson, in my opinion needs to be in a mental ward - the more one should be disturbed by the fact that this trio of crazies (pictured above) were even nominated.  This year's GOP statewide ticket speaks volumes about just how far the Republican Party has fallen.  Ignorance, bigotry and frightening religious extremism and a contempt for the U. S. Constitution are deemed virtues in today's GOP.  And with luck, Virginians will defeat these extremists in November and save Virginia from retreating into a lapse back to the 1950's or earlier.  An story in The Daily Beast looks at why the GOP may crash and burn in November.  Here are highlights:

The conventional wisdom on the Virginia gubernatorial race can be summed up in a single sentence: Terry McAuliffe is too weak to beat anyone other than Ken Cuccinelli, who likewise is too weak to beat anyone other than Terry McAuliffe. This, however, is a little unfair to McAuliffe.

Tea Party-favorite Cuccinelli is a rigid extremist, whose slavish devotion to his ideology has made him vulnerable in a state that prides itself on political independence. Which is why, if the latest poll from Quinnipiac University is any indication, the conventional wisdom is wrong—McAuliffe is stronger than expected, and Cuccinelli is much weaker than anyone imagined.

According to Quinnipiac, McAuliffe leads Cuccinelli by six points among likely voters, 48 percent to 42 percent. This is big news. So far, Quinnipiac is the only pollster to look beyond registered voters, where Democrats have an edge. The likely voter pool, by contrast, is smaller, whiter, and in the case of Virginia gubernatorial elections, much older. If past elections are any guide, a likely voter poll should have given Cuccinelli a small advantage over his opponent. For now, however, he’s at a significant disadvantage.

There’s more. At the same time “the Macker” is winning almost every Democrat (only one percent opposed), Cuccinelli is losing six percent of Republicans.  And indeed, recent news suggests that the state’s GOP establishment—or at least, a portion of it—has turned against the attorney general, repelled by his extremism and rigidity.
Cuccinelli has one other problem, and that’s his connection to the “gifts” scandal that has engulfed Gov. Bob McDonnell with questions, controversy, and a federal investigation. 

As always, it’s still early, and there are a lot of things that can change. Right now, however, the conventional wisdom doesn’t look so wise. The Virginia gubernatorial race isn’t one weak candidate against another, it’s one weak candidate against a disaster of an opponent, representing a Virginia Republican Party on the verge of collapse.

Turn out is critical and it is crucial that every sane Virginian, every woman who wants control over her own body, ever minority voter who fears disenfranchisement, and every gay who doesn't want to be re-criminalized needs to get out and vote against the GOP ticket in November.  We cannot sit back and assume that Cuccinelli, et al will lose.

NSA Gathered Tens of Thousands of Americans’ E-mails

With each passing day we seem to discover more details on just how extensive domestic spying on American citizens has become - and how national politicians from Barack Obama on down have been less than honest about just how badly the privacy of citizens has been violated.  Whether the extent of the abuses is due to a run away National Security Agency or our elected officials knowingly allowing the abuses to take place, average citizens ought to be seriously disturbed.   It is particularly disturbing that government officials seemingly were deliberate lying to the court which supposedly protects Americans from domestic spying abuses.  If one thinks that they have any privacy in America, they need to think again.  The Washington Post looks at the latest revelations on the gathering of citizens' e-mails.  Here are excerpts:

For several years, the National Security Agency unlawfully gathered tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans as part of a now-revised collection method, according to a 2011 secret court opinion.

The redacted 85-page opinion, which was declassified by U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday, states that, based on NSA estimates, the spy agency may have been collecting as many as 56,000 “wholly domestic” communications each year.

In a strongly worded opinion, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court expressed consternation at what he saw as a pattern of misleading statements by the government and hinted that the NSA possibly violated a criminal law against spying on Americans. 

“For the first time, the government has now advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe,” John D. Bates, then the surveillance court’s chief judge, wrote in his Oct. 3, 2011, opinion.

“The court is troubled that the government’s revelations regarding NSA’s acquisition of Internet transactions mark the third instance in less than three years in which the government has disclosed a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program,” Bates wrote in a scathing footnote.

[T]he NSA collects more than 250 million Internet communications each year, the opinion said. The vast majority — 91 percent — are obtained from Internet providers such as Google, Yahoo and AOL through a program code-named PRISM.

“By expanding its Section 702 acquisitions to include the acquisition of Internet transactions through its upstream collection, NSA has, as a practical matter, circumvented the spirit of [the law],” Bates wrote. “NSA’s knowing acquisition of tens of thousands of wholly domestic communications through its upstream collection is a cause of concern for the court.”

The newly released opinion also reflects Bates’s frustration with the court’s inability to independently verify the NSA’s assertions, a sentiment underscored in a recent statement made to The Post by the current chief judge, Reggie B. Walton.

Bates continued: “Contrary to the government’s repeated assurances, NSA had been routinely running queries of the metadata using querying terms that did not meet the required standard. . . . The Court concluded that this requirement had been ‘so frequently and systematically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall . . . regime has never functioned effectively.’ ”

FISA Section 702, as written, is insufficient to adequately protect the civil liberties and privacy rights of law-abiding Americans and should be reformed.” 

Ironically, my son who can be a bit of a computer geek had told me several years ago that all of this was happening.  I did not believe him at the time.  Obviously, now I do.

More Wednesday Male Beauty

Republican Insanity Is Increasing

As noted many times, I am a former Republican from a family of now former Republicans.  Indeed, my maternal grandparents were loyal Republicans long before many of today's most loud mouthed GOP demagogues were even born.  Yet I get incredibly vile e-mails and comments on posts - which I do not publish since I don't wish to give virulent haters a platform - which call me a flaming liberal and that are filled with four letter words and all kinds of explicatives.  To my mind it is all further proof that the Republican Party base is becoming even more deranged, delusional and untethered from objective reality.  The GOP base learned nothing form the 2012 debacle. A piece in The Daily Beast makes the same argument.  Here are highlights:

If you’d asked me six months ago whether the Republican Party would manage to find a few ways to sidle back toward the center between now and 2016, I’d have said yes. But today, on the basis of evidence offered so far this year, I’d have to say a big fat no. With every passing month, the party contrives new ways to go crazier. There’s a lot of time between now and 2016, but it’s hard to watch recent events without concluding that the extreme part of the base is gaining more and more internal control.

Let’s start with this recent party meeting in Boston. As with the previous winter meeting, the Republican National Committee was trying to spin inclusiveness as the theme and goal. But what real news came out of the meeting? Go to the RNC website. Before you even make it to the home page, you’ll be presented with a petition imploring you to “Hold the Liberal Media Accountable!” and “Tell CNN and NBC to drop their planned programming promoting Hillary Clinton or no 2016 debates!” 

As an “issue,” this is totally absurd. How many voters are going to walk into the booth on Election Day 2016, if Clinton is the Democratic nominee, thinking, “Gee whiz, I never cared that much for Hillary until I saw that wonderful biopic about a year ago, which is what sealed it for me!” Ridiculous. Besides, has anyone stopped to wonder whether Clinton herself wants these movies aired?

The driver is hatred of all news organizations that aren’t Fox News, which in turn reflects hatred of reality itself, hatred of the unhappy truth that there are facts in this world that can’t be neatly arranged behind a worldview of rage and racial resentment. Soon enough, the GOPers are going to get themselves to the point where the only debates are on Fox, moderated, as Reince Priebus suggested last week, by the likes of Sean Hannity. The Pravda-ization of the party, a process that’s been under way since Fox first took to the air back in 1996, will be complete. The kinds of questions candidates will likely be asked on Fox, and the kinds of answers they’ll know will be expected of them, will drive the party even further rightward.

 Now let’s turn to Congress. Six months ago, I might have thought the party could roll with immigration reform. In truth, I was a skeptic from day one, let the record show. But there were plenty of days when I doubted myself. Not much doubt today. . . . The GOP will do the bidding, to whatever it extent it can, of the extremists.

Conservative Myra Adams wrote on the Beast over the weekend that she didn’t see how a Republican could get to 270 electoral votes in 2016. She’s correct about that, but she may be wrong in assuming that most of these people even care anymore if they win. I think many would prefer to win, sure, all things being equal, but only on their narrow terms. And if they don’t, there is great glory in losing because of principle, and then once again purifying the party of its sellouts and squishes like Petelos. How much worse can they get? A lot.

Not to sound like a broken record, but as a former GOP City Committee member, I track the start of the GOP's descent into insanity to when the Christofascists were welcomed into the GOP out of short term expediency with no thought to what the long term damage would be.  By definition, the Christofascists are driven by religious extremism and a deliberate rejection of modernity and knowledge in favor of the half baked writings of ignorant nomads from 3000 years a go.  The handwriting was on the wall, but the GOP establishment refused to see it.

New Mexico Atorney General Will Not Challenge Issuance of Gay Marriage Licenses

New Mexico has never enacted an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment.  As a consequence, in view of the absence of a constitutional prohibition, the Ana County Clerk Lynn Ellins decided to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples earlier today.  The bigger news, however, is that New Mexico Attorney General Gary King told reporters that he does not plan to challenge said marriage licenses, since he believes the bans on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional.  Towleroad has details on the unfolding events in New Mexico.  Here are highlights:

After Doña Ana County Clerk Lynn Ellins decided to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples earlier today, state Attorney General Gary King told reporters that he does not plan to challenge said marriage licenses, since he believes the state's current ban on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional. In another bit of possibly good news, King also told press that he would not challenge any other county clerk should they make the same decision, although he did warn that the licenses could be ruled invalid if the state Supreme Court deems the decision unlawful.

King's decision comes after a prior legal challenge to New Mexico's ban on same-sex marriage, another one that he has chosen not to defend. According to the Associated Press, same-sex couples in Las Cruces have already started taking advantage of the decision. "I was in a coffee shop grading dissertations when my partner sent me an email saying, `you want to get married?'" said Char Ullman, 51. "I went home to brush my teeth and headed to the courthouse."



Meanwhile, the New Mexico Supreme Court has been asked to streamline and expedite all pending challenges to the state's mariage equality ban, partially thanks to Jen Roper and Angelique Neuman. Roper reportedly suffers from terminal brain cancer, and wishes to tie the knot with her partner before she passes. 

At present, New Mexico's Republican Governor Susana Martinez has yet to issue a comment on today's events.

From a legal perspective, I believe that Attorney General King is 100% on the money.  Hopefully, New Mexico wall join the list of pro-gay marriage states.  Meanwhile, we can expect the Christofscists to attack Mr. King.

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

White House Tap Dances Around UK Intimidation of The Guardian

Personally, I find it some what hard to believe that the British government would have sought to threaten the UK newspaper The Guardian and demand all data in the paper's possession relating to the leaks by Edward Snowden without the knowledge of or a request from the U.S. Government/White House.  After all, the materials involved cam from America's spy system, not the UK's.  Yet the White House is trying to feign surprise and claim that nothing like that could happen here in America.  I for one don't believe it and Barack Obama is continuing to sully his reputation and integrity (or what integrity any politician has nowadays).  Raw Story looks at the White House's tap dancing routine.  Here are excerpts:

The White House distanced itself from Britain’s handling of the leaked NSA documents when representatives said it would be difficult to imagine the US authorities following the example of Whitehall in demanding the destruction of media hard drives.

As a former lord chancellor said the Metropolitan police had no legal right to detain the partner of a Guardian journalist at Heathrow airport under anti-terror laws, the White House suggested it would be inappropriate for US authorities to enter a media organisation’s offices to oversee the destruction of hard drives.

The White House – which on Monday distanced Washington from the detention of David Miranda – intervened for the second time in 24 hours after the Guardian revealed that senior Whitehall figures had demanded the destruction or surrender of hard drives containing some of the secret files leaked by the US whistle blower Edward Snowden.

Asked at his daily briefing on Tuesday whether President Obama’s administration would enter a US media company and destroy media hard drives – even to protect national security – the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said: “That’s very difficult to imagine a scenario in which that would be appropriate.”

The intervention by the White House came after the British government embarked on an aggressive offensive to justify the treatment at Heathrow of the partner of the Guardian journalist Greenwald.  Theresa May, the home secretary, confirmed that she was given advance notice of Miranda’s detention as she praised the police action on the grounds that he possessed sensitive documents that could help terrorists and “lead to a loss of lives”.

But May received a setback when Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the former Labour lord chancellor who was involved in introducing the anti-terror legislation used to detain Miranda, said the police had no right to detain him under the Terrorism Act 2000. Miranda was held for nine hours at Heathrow on Sunday under schedule 7 of the act, which allows police to detain people at ports and airports even if they are not acting suspiciously.

Falconer added: “What schedule 7 allows an examining officer to do is to question somebody in order to determine whether he is somebody who is preparing, instigating or commissioning terrorism. Plainly Mr Miranda is not such a person.”

Former shadow home secretary David Davis said No 10′s confirmation that David Cameron was given notice of the detention of Miranda meant that ministers had, in effect, approved of his treatment. 

It is no coincidence that both America and the UK alone of western democracies have police state-like domestic surveillance and spying operations that are on a level equal to Russia and China.  Apparently, the U.S. Constitution's protections for the citizenry mean nothing to Obama and others in Washington.  The ruse of fighting terrorist and national security needs have been used before to usher in dictatorship.  One need only look at 1930's Germany.

The Brain Drain at Virginia Colleges and Universities

Backwardness and bigotry do have their price.  And it is often an economic price but it can also involve the less tangible loss of talent to more progressive areas.  Here in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia there is an ongoing loss of young college educated individuals.  They go off to college and never come back because the area is lacking in progressive ideas and opportunities.  Instead, they flock to Washington, D.C., New York and other progressive meccas which also offer more job opportunity.  And in Southwest Virginia, companies do not want to relocate to that backward region that makes even Hampton Roads look progressive in comparison.  Now, Virginia's backwardness and anti-gay fixation is harming the state's flagship public colleges and universities which are seeing top academics leave for institutions of learning in more progressive, gay friendly states.  The Washington Post condemns what is happening and calls on Virginia to drag itself out of the 19th century and provide domestic partner benefits to same sex couples (gay marriage is, of course, the real solution).  Here are editorial highlights:

NOT LONG AGO, a tenured professor at the University of Virginia’s College of Arts and Sciences moved to a university in New York because her same-sex partner, diagnosed with cancer, couldn’t get covered by her health insurance in Virginia. A physician at U-Va.’s medical school decamped for an Ivy League school because state law doesn’t recognize her relationship with her partner or their children, so she couldn’t get them coverage.

How many more talented minds have to leave before Virginia takes concrete action to protect publicly employed academics and thus the quality of their universities? 

In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling earlier this summer that the federal government must treat same-sex marriages the same as heterosexual ones, gay and lesbian academics are weighing a new set of incentives to leave public universities and colleges in the commonwealth.

“We already have lost valued gay and lesbian faculty to our competitors who do not discriminate,” Mr. Trammell told The Post’s Nick Anderson in an interview. “With changes in federal benefits soon available to legally married gay couples, we will lose more.”

A number of Virginia’s public university presidents pushed for the state to address this very problem in 2009. They have been ignored by Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) and the outspoken anti-gay rights attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli II (R).

U-Va., an academic powerhouse, is one of eight so-called “public Ivies.” It tied for second place in this year’s U.S. News & World Report rankings of the nation’s public universities. Unless the university fixes this situation quickly, its standing and prestige may suffer.  

[T]here is troubling evidence that the state may face an accelerating brain drain of gay academics. And when they leave, in many cases they take their grant funding with them. For example, he detailed how a tenured professor in Virginia Commonwealth University’s pharmacology and toxicology department moved to a private nonprofit research institution in North Carolina that offered full benefits to her partner of 20 years. When she left, she took along her grant of more than $1 million — a loss for Virginia and a win for North Carolina.

Even in states that, like Virginia, don’t recognize same-sex marriage, some public universities have expanded health-care benefits to include same-sex couples. The University of Missouri, for instance, recently adopted a more inclusive plan. There’s no reason that Virginia shouldn’t be able to do the same — especially at Thomas Jefferson’s university.

Naturally, the closeted Ken Cuccinelli vehemently opposes any recognition of same sex couples and has claimed that Virginia's public colleges and universities cannot provide non-discrimination protections to LGBT employees.  Should Cuccinelli win in November, expect the exodus from Virginia to accelerate.