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LGBTQ Virginians Have Cause To Worry About Daniel Gade

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Gade, the Republican candidate competing against incumbent Democrat Mark Warner to represent Virginia in the United States Senate, has a history of anti-LGBTQ views that should give LGBTQ Virginians pause.

A candidate with a history of anti-LGBTQ comments and a platform that supports discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is vying for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Daniel Gade, the Republican candidate running against incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Warner, opposes additional protections against discrimination, and has sought endorsements from anti-LGBTQ activists.

Gade hasn’t previously held political office, but spent years serving the U.S. Army in Iraq, where he lost his right leg and was awarded the Bronze Star. He retired in 2017 at the rank of lieutenant colonel. Gade worked on veteran’s issues, disability policy, and military healthcare in President George W. Bush’s administration, and was nominated by President Donald Trump to be a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but declined the position due to the “toxic political climate in Washington.”

Gade’s platform on LGBTQ issues contrasts with Warner’s platform and voting record in the Senate. Warner has a record of voting in support of LGBTQ rights 100 percent of the time, including co-sponsoring the Equality Act in 2019.

“Discrimination has no place in our nation’s laws, and it has no place in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Warner said in a statement. “I was the first Virginia Governor to ban discrimination in state employment based on sexual orientation, and I recognize that while we’ve made tremendous strides in the journey towards equality, work still remains. That’s why I’m a proud supporter and original co-sponsor of the Equality Act.”

Senator Mark Warner. Photo via Facebook

Gade’s rhetoric during his candidacy has made clear his opposition to equal protection for LGBTQ Virginians. He publicly opposed the Equality Act during a speech in Virginia Beach in January 2020, which included anti-transgender rethoric. 

“Freedom of worship, not freedom of religion,” Gade said. “And what does that look like? It looks like a bill sponsored by Mark Warner with the greatest name ever. I mean the Equality Act today. We’re all for equality, right? …but Equality Act would erase 50 years of women’s rights gains since the 1960s by putting men in women’s locker rooms, by putting men in women sports, just on their word that they now self-identify as woman. OK, it’s a bad bill.”

In 2017, before Gade declined his nominated position on the EEOC, Lambda Legal director of strategy Sharon McGowan told NBC News that Gade’s appointment alongside Janet Dhillon would be a “huge loss” to LGBTQ advocates and discimination cases. Gade and Dhillon testified before the Senate that they’re “personally opposed to workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” but declined to confirm that they’d support the Obama-era EEOC policy that makes this type of discimination illegal under civil rights laws. 

In 2013, Warner voted against the amendment to permit employment discrimination by businesses owned by religious organizations, a policy that Gade expressed support for in a speech in August 2019, when he said that bakers should be legally permitted to refuse to bake a cake for gay clients, citing religious liberty. 

“Those principles may actually come in conflict with other people’s principles,” Gade said. “So if you’re a baker who doesn’t want to bake the wedding cake for somebody who’s violating what you believe are important spiritual laws, the left would make you bake the cake and they would make you bend the knee to that ideology.”

In response to an iVoterGuide questionnaire, Gade said that he “strongly disagrees” that sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression should be considered protected classes under anti-discrimination statutes. He “strongly agrees” that businesses and institutions should be able to engage in discrimination against people whose marriages fall outside the traditional “one man and one woman” standard. 

Additionally, Gade has said that he supports the removal of all federal funding to Planned Parenthood, a medical provider that not only supports women’s reproductive health access to abortions but is a committed primary caregiver of affordable healthcare to transgender individuals. Warner’s voting record on multiple bills shows his support of Planned Parenthood and women’s reproductive health. 

“As Virginia’s Senator, I’ve voted against partisan attacks on Planned Parenthood, which would reduce access to health care in our country, and I’m proud to have earned their endorsement in the 2020 election cycle,” Warner said in a statement. 

Gade is endorsed by E.W. Jackson, a far-right anti-LGBTQ pastor who has said the “Homovirus” is destroying America and warned that if Pete Buttigieg was elected the country would become a “homocracy.” Gade and Jackson spoke at an event held by the Family Foundation, an anti-LGBTQ group that has opposed bans on conversion therapy and anti-discrimination measures. The Family Foundation is a donor to Gade’s campaign.

Gade’s anti-LGBTQ policies should be concerning to those who wish for equality. If Gade is elected to the U.S. Senate, he seems likely to be a destructive force against the rights of LGBTQ Virginians. 

Top Photo via Daniel Gade/Facebook

The Fairness For All Act: Why Does A Supposedly Pro-LGBTQ Bill Face Such Fervent LGBTQ Opposition?

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Utah Republican Chris Stewart’s new “compromise” bill, the Fairness For All Act, doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny.

Last Friday, Utah Republican Congressman Chris Stewart introduced a new bill in the House Of Representatives. Entitled the Fairness For All Act, the bill seeks to ban discrimination against LGBTQ people in employment, housing, education, and public accomodations. However, the same day it was released, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) posted an article on their blog entitled “The Fairness For All Act is an Affront to Existing Civil Rights Protections.” If your first thought is, “Wait, what?” you’re certainly not alone.

However, examination of the fine print contained in the Fairness For All Act, as well as the context in which was introduced, starts to make all of this much clearer. And as it turns out, HRC is right, as they so often are.

Rep. Stewart’s bill is a response to the Equality Act, a bill that passed in the Democratic-majority House Of Congress mainly along party lines (five Republicans also voted for it). That bill’s purpose was straightforward: end the ongoing confusion over whether or not the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s prohibition of discrimination on basis of “sex” did or did not cover LGBTQ people facing discrimination on the basis of their gender identity or sexual orientation. The Equality Act would add discrimination on basis of gender identity and sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act’s list of prohibited discriminations, and also ensure that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act could not be used as a justification for such discriminations.

The Equality Act, which enjoys widespread popular support as well as the support of LGBTQ advocates, has not been able to gain traction in the Republican-controlled US Senate. And now Stewart’s Fairness For All Act is being presented as a more acceptable alternative, one that could potentially gain bipartisan support and enshrine LGBTQ anti-discrimination protections into our country’s law.

However, the Fairness For All Act, while adding the same sort of protections to federal law that the Equality Act would ensure, carves out a significant exception for religious organizations, as well as allowing small businesses like the infamous anti-LGBTQ wedding cake bakers to engage in discrimination against LGBTQ people on the basis of religious freedom. The act would not curtail any aspect of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and would allow religious higher education facilities like Brigham Young University to retain tax-exempt status despite vocally opposing marriage equality.

Another way in which the act would allow for anti-LGBTQ discrimination, according to the Washington Blade, is its requirement that a business must have “15 or more employees for each working day in each of 20 or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year” before anti-LGBTQ discrimination prohibitions apply. That means you can still be discriminated against legally in any business that has 14 or less employees; for example, if you need your car repaired, the fact that the average repair shop has around five full-time employees means that you’re likely to be at the mercy of the notoriously right-wing car industry, which would be well within its rights to offer you higher rates or substandard repair due to your sexual orientation or gender identity.

Car repair. Photo by Maxime Agnelli on Unsplash

Yet another way is in its exemption of religiously-affiliated adoption agencies, thereby allowing organizations who only wish to allow adoption by hetero couples to continue refusing adoptions by same-sex couples.

Backers of the Fairness For All Act include the Mormon church, as well as several other religious organizations and the editorial page of the conservative Washington Examiner. “I’m excited about the solutions that are embodied in the legislation, because I think that those are the exact ideas that we’re going to need to pass federal civil rights for LGBTQ people,” Tyler Deaton, senior adviser at the American Unity Fund, told Vox.

However, LGBTQ advocacy organizations like HRC, GLAAD, and Lambda Legal, as well as other advocacy organizations including the NAACP, the National Fair Housing Alliance, the National Partnership For Women and Families, and several others released a joint statement on Friday, December 6 condemning the Fairness For All Act.

In the statement, the groups called the Fairness For All Act “an affront to existing civil rights protections that protect people on the basis of race, sex, and religion and creates new, substandard protections for LGBTQ people with massive loopholes and carve-outs, and upends critical federal programs that serve children in need.” They also argued that “Our nation’s existing civil rights framework already strikes the right balance when it comes to the government’s interest in protecting religious freedom and advancing nondiscrimination, and it is wrong to put into law a different system of protections for LGBTQ people and their families. This legislation would create a “double whammy” for anyone at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities: a Black lesbian or Transgender Jewish woman, for example, could see many of her existing rights erased or rolled back, ostensibly to protect her.”

Of course, quite a few conservative groups hate the Fairness For All Act too, including the Heritage Foundation, who say the bill does not “promote the common good,” according to Vox. If anything, this proves that weakening our own rights in order to placate the conservatives of the country will gain us little in the eyes of many who are dead set on opposing our civil rights. Therefore, if we’re going to push for anything, it seems worthwhile to push for legislation that protects LGBTQ people in as many situations as possible, rather than accepting a watered-down compromise that will leave us open to quite a bit of discrimination even if it is signed into law by Donald Trump.

Top Photo: Chris Stewart’s press conference announcing the Fairness For All Act, via the Seventh Day Adventist Church of America/Twitter

‘Ex-Gay’ Group Goes To DC To Lobby Against Equality Act

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The group of “ex-gay”/”formerly transgender” people, members of CHANGED and Church United, claim LGBTQ people aren’t discriminated against, and that conversion therapy isn’t being practiced anywhere in the US.

A small group of so-called “ex-gay” and “formerly transgender” people are spending time in Washington, D.C. this week to lobby against two bills that, given the current president, have zero chance of becoming law any time soon. What they actually are doing is engaging in a disinformation campaign that flies in the face of facts.

15 members of CHANGED and of Church United, who call themselves “formers,” are lobbying against the Equality Act and the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act, as NBC News reports. The Equality Act would expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to ensure it provides protections for LGBTQ people in areas such as housing, credit and banking, employment, public accommodations, and more. The Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act would ban harmful and dangerous conversion therapy, a pseudo-science that purports to change its subjects into cisgender heterosexuals.

Among their provably false positions: LGBTQ people don’t face discrimination.

“Despite federal hate crimes data and academic research to the contrary, the ‘formers’ question the existence of anti-LGBTQ discrimination,” according to NBC News.

“I live in Portland [Oregon] and I don’t see the discrimination that LGBTQ people talk about,” Kathy Grace Duncan, a member of Changed who formerly identified as a transgender man, told NBC News. “They’re asking for certain rights in this legislation, but these are rights that they already have.”

Jim Domen, founder of Church United, identifies as formerly gay. He said, “Sexual behavior should not be a protected right.”

Domen goes on to claim, falsely, that were the Equality Act to become law, a “super class” of LGBTQ people would be created “at the expense of people who are not.”

“The Equality Act treats sexual preference as an elevated class and would strip people of religious freedom,” Domen says.

Domen and Duncan have a different take on banning conversion therapy. While they appear to oppose it, they also say it isn’t being practiced.

Why?

They say they’ve “never met” anyone who has been subjected to it.

“I do think conversion therapy should be banned,” Duncan said, “but first we need to prove that it’s actually happening.”

Despite their claims, conversion therapy is being practiced. It is dangerous, has been linked to suicide, and major medical associations have denounced it. Anti-LGBTQ discrimination exists – one need merely look at the recent U.S. Supreme Court case argued earlier this month to see it.

Substituting personal experience or belief for facts helps no one.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM

Franklin Graham Is Upset About Taylor Swift’s Support Of The Equality Act

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Graham accused Taylor Swift of “pushing the LGBTQ agenda down the throats of the American people” with her pro-Equality Act MTV speech.

Evangelical Christian Franklin Graham is back attacking the LGBTQ community, this time taking social media swings at the Equality Act and singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. The legislation, which passed the House but will never see the light of day under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, would basically just expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for LGBTQ people.

But not according to the far right wing North Carolina-based religious extremist.

Graham was angry over the award-winning Swift’s comments urging the White House to support the Equality Act, when she spoke at the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs).

“Regardless of who we are, regardless of how we identify, at the end of this video there was a petition – and there still is a petition for the Equality Act, which basically just says we all deserve equal rights under the law,” Swift said on stage, irking Graham.

“Shame on Taylor Swift for using her platform to try to push the socialist left’s so-called Equality Act, which has nothing to do with equality, but is about pushing the LGBTQ agenda down the throats of the American people,” Graham wrote on Facebook, using the same language as President Trump frequently uses.

Evangelical Christian Franklin Graham is back attacking the LGBTQ community, this time taking social media swings at the Equality Act and singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. The legislation, which passed the House but will never see the light of day under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, would basically just expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for LGBTQ people.

But not according to the far right wing North Carolina-based religious extremist.ADVERTISING

Graham was angry over the award-winning Swift’s comments urging the White House to support the Equality Act, when she spoke at the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs).

“Regardless of who we are, regardless of how we identify, at the end of this video there was a petition – and there still is a petition for the Equality Act, which basically just says we all deserve equal rights under the law,” Swift said on stage, irking Graham.

“Shame on Taylor Swift for using her platform to try to push the socialist left’s so-called Equality Act, which has nothing to do with equality, but is about pushing the LGBTQ agenda down the throats of the American people,” Graham wrote on Facebook, using the same language as President Trump frequently uses.

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“When she received an award for her LGBTQ pride-themed music video at the MTV awards last night, she did a pitch for the Equality Act,” Graham continued, falsely calling it “the most crushing threat to religious liberty in our nation’s history.”

Graham, in typical fashion, claims the Equality Act would allow “perverted men access to women’s private spaces like dressing rooms and restrooms,” and allow “biological males to take over girls’ and women’s athletic competitions.”

He then wrongly claims the Equality Act is “about trying to force those of us who don’t agree to accept and approve the LGBTQ lifestyle,” and he warns defiantly, “I’m not going to accept that.”

Graham and his supporters should know being LGBTQ is not a “lifestyle,” and supporting equality is not socialism.

Here’s Taylor Swift’s performance of “You Need To Calm Down” on this year’s MTV VMAs. This one’s for you, Franklin.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via Facebook

Senator Calls Equality Act Unnecessary, Says It “Divides Our Nation”

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Utah Republican Mike Lee previously authored the First Amendment Defense Act, which attempted to legalize many forms of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

A U.S. Senator is speaking out in opposition after the House of Representatives passed the historic Equality Act Friday afternoon. The legislation expands existing civil rights laws to protect LGBTQ people in areas including employment, housing, banking and credit, education, public accommodations, federally-funded programs, and jury service.

Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, who won his seat as the Tea Party movement rose to power, took time Friday to attack the passage of the Equality Act, which won just eight Republican votes in the House. And he’s getting scorched, mocked, and slammed on social media for his remarks.

In December, Lee blocked the renomination of a lesbian to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and said her views on marriage were “radical.”

Today he says the legislation, which heads to the Senate but has little chance of being brought to the floor for a vote, is unnecessary – that LGBTQ people don’t need protection because Americans are becoming more “tolerant.”

Lee, a religious extremist, thinks legislation protecting certain groups of people is “counterproductive” and divisive. Yet when the Supreme Court was getting ready to rule that same-sex couples have the right to marry, he authored a bill providing special religious rights to people of faith to allow them to discriminate against LGBTQ people, and especially same-sex couples.

Lee’s sweeping First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) would have allowed employers to deny spousal and parental rights, including those given under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act. It would also allow non-profits and even government contractors the right to discriminate against anyone who is LGBTQ.

Senator Lee, who once was rumored to be on President Donald Trump’s list of possible Supreme Court nominees, opposes same-sex marriage. He’s said so very clearly: “I do not support gay marriage.”

Here’s how some are responding to Senator Lee’s remarks on the Equality Act:

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via Facebook

Shocker Of the Year: Trump Opposes The Equality Act

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President Donald Trump opposes adding the LGBTQ community to the list of groups protected by the Civil Rights Act. We wish we could say we were surprised.

I’m making a rule: sarcasm is permissible in news headlines if I’m fed up enough. And like a lot of you out there, I am fed up.

President Donald Trump, who took office back at the beginning of 2017 despite the state of Virginia’s best efforts (continued condolences to all of us), campaigned on a pro-LGBTQ platform. Remember that? “Thank you to the LGBT community!” and all that rot?

Well, if we didn’t know it was bullshit then (and more fool us if we didn’t), we sure found out once he took office and his administration immediately began making moves like gutting Civil Rights Act protections that had been interpreted by the previous administration to apply on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity — most notably in the case of transgender children who went to school one morning and found out the US Department of Education didn’t have their back anymore.

And then there was the ban on transgender people in the military. Don’t even get me started on that one. Let me merely say we are still fighting that battle, and move on.

Now, to top it all off, word has come via the Washington Blade from sources within the administration who’ve made it clear that Donald Trump hates the Equality Act.

The Equality Act, which is scheduled for a floor vote in the House of Representatives on Friday, amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to remove all the gray areas around discrimination against sexual orientation and gender identity. Previous attempts to cover such discrimination under the Civil Rights Act have revolved around a legal interpretation of the word “sex” — which ultimately depends on what the administration in power want it to mean.

The Equality Act would amend not only the Civil Rights Act but the Fair Housing Act to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in a wide variety of situations, including employment, housing, education, public accomodations, and more.

In an email, a senior Trump administration official (we don’t know which one) told the Blade, “The Trump administration absolutely opposes discrimination of any kind and supports the equal treatment of all; however, this bill in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights.”

The “poison pills” the official seems to be referring to would be nothing more than a simple requirement that people couldn’t fire a gay or trans person for being who they are, couldn’t refuse to rent to them or, most critically, to give them medical treatment, due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Such prohibitions are currently in place for racial minorities, ethnic minorities, women, and religious groups of all kinds, among others.

The Washington Blade points out that Trump made statements when he campaigned for the Reform Party’s nomination for president in 2000 that supported adding sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act. However, that was nearly two decades ago by now, and over his past two and a half years as the actual president, he’s been largely supportive of anti-LGBTQ causes that have cloaked their discrimination in the rhetoric of “religious freedom.”

And of course, the public debate around the trans military ban has made it eminently clear where he stands on the subject of transgender and non-binary people.

So really, this news is not a surprise. It’s just another in a long line of consistent anti-LGBTQ policy from the Trump White House, which will presumably continue until such a time as we vote him out. But it has the possibility of really disrupting potential legal gains for the LGBTQ community — assuming the Equality Act could pass both houses of Congress (which, of course, is by no means guaranteed), it would face an almost-certain veto at the presidential level. At which point all of the legally-justified discrimination we’ve faced since January 2017 would be free to continue as it has for the past two years.

Looks like this administration isn’t going to take its boot off our necks anytime soon, y’all.

Photo via Donald Trump/Twitter