• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

RVA Mag

Richmond, VA Culture & Politics Since 2005

Menu RVA Mag Logo
  • community
  • MUSIC
  • ART
  • EAT DRINK
  • GAYRVA
  • POLITICS
  • PHOTO
  • EVENTS
  • MAGAZINE
RVA Mag Logo
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Sponsors

McEnany: Trump Trying to Ban Citizenship of Same-Sex Couples’ Kids Has ‘Nothing to Do’ With Sexual Orientation

New Civil Rights Movement | September 7, 2020

Topics: anti-LGBTQ discrimination, double standards, Kayleigh McEnany, LGBTQ adoption, surrogacy, Trump administration

Despite the fact that the Trump administration has only tried to block citizenship for children of same-sex parents, Trump’s press secretary claims the policy has nothing to do with anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany says the Trump administration’s attempts to ban U.S. citizenship from same-sex couples’ children born overseas via surrogacy has “nothing to do with the sexual orientation of the parents.” The Trump State Dept. has only worked to block citizenship of these children when American same-sex couples are the parents.

“A federal judge in Georgia last week was the latest to rule against the administration … denying gay couples citizenship for their children born overseas by a surrogate,” The Washington Blade’s Chris Johnson told McEnany.

“So that pertains to surrogacy and had nothing to do with the sexual orientation of the parents,” McEnany, reading from prepared remarks, replied.

“And this administration and president will proudly stand on a record of achievements, like India, leading a global initiative to end the criminalization of homosexuality throughout the world, launching a plan to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, and easing a ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men.”

“A federal judge has ruled the interpretation of that law is not correct and that there’s statutory and constitutional concerns,” Johnson countered, before the press secretary, who has a history of anti-LGBTQ comments, interjected.

The “global initiative to end the criminalization of homosexuality” has accomplished nothing because it does not exist; “launching a plan” is not implementing a plan or seeing success, neither of which the administration has done. And “easing a ban on blood donations” was done only because of the coronavirus pandemic. And it did not end the ban.

Watch:

Kayleigh McEnany again tried to paint the Trump admin as pro-LGBTQ+ when challenged on a recent anti-LGBTQ+ policy pic.twitter.com/pPZ3ArMnZ5

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 31, 2020

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

Trump DOJ Urges Supreme Court to Let Religious Adoption Agencies Discriminate Against LGBTQ Families

New Civil Rights Movement | June 8, 2020

Topics: adoption, Antonin Scalia, Catholic Social Services, Civil Rights Act, Department of Justice, LGBTQ adoption, Noel Francisco, Trump administration

As far as the US Justice Department is concerned, forcing cities to work with discriminatory religious groups is the American way.

President Donald Trump’s Dept. of Justice is telling the U.S. Supreme Court it should allow religious and faith-based adoption agencies discriminate against LGBTQ families.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco has filed a strongly-worded 35 page amicus brief in a case claiming that Catholic Social Services is being denied their First Amendment rights after signing a contract with the City of Philadelphia to provide adoption and foster services – and to not discriminate.

Philadelphia dropped the religious non-profit after it said it would not allow same-sex couples, married or unmarried, to adopt or foster children. Catholic Social Services could continue to operate as it chooses, but the City of Philadelphia would no longer place children with it. In this suit, CSS is essentially saying that it has a First Amendment right to taxpayer-funded placements of children.

In the brief, Francisco and other DOJ attorneys, including Eric Dreiband, actually criticize a Philadelphia Human Services Commissioner for what they call “an impermissible lack of neutrality,” after she told Catholic Social Services “they should be following ‘the teachings of Pope Francis’ as she understood them.”

The DOJ goes all-out against those remarks, calling them “unconstitutional,” and claims they represent an “overt hostility toward religious belief,” an “animosity to religion or distrust of its practices,” and an “impermissible hostility to religion” – despite admitting a lower court noted the Commissioner was educated as a Jesuit and was “simply making ‘an effort to reach common ground.’”

The DOJ uses the word “hostility” in its brief 25 times.

“The U.S. government isn’t a party to the case, known as Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, so the brief is completely voluntary,” The Washington Blade reports. “In justifying the brief before the Supreme Court, the filing makes the case the Justice Department has a compelling interest to intervene.”

The Supreme Court accepted the case in February. The far right wing Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is representing Catholic Social Services.

Francisco has represented the Trump administration in telling the Supreme Court the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect gay people in the workplace from discrimination. As Solicitor General he has also asked the Supreme Court to rule that firing an employee simply because they are gay is legal, and that it is legal under federal law for employers to fire transgender workers merely for being transgender.

Francisco clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who represented the court’s animus against LGBTQ Americans and same-sex couples for decades. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Lumen Christi Institute, which says it works “to renew our civilization by forming leaders for a global society in need of Christian wisdom.”

In years past anti-gay activists and the Catholic Church have falsely claimed the Catholic Social Services adoption agency in Boston was “forced” to shut its doors in 2006 because it refused to allow LGBTQ people adopt. In reality, its board members voted to allow LGBTQ people to adopt, but it chose to close rather than allow same-sex parents adopt.

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

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

Marilyn Drew Necci | December 10, 2019

Topics: anti-LGBTQ discrimination, Chris Stewart, Civil Rights Act, Equality Act, Fairness For All Act, Human Rights Campaign, LGBTQ adoption, US Congress

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

sidebar

sidebar-alt

Copyright © 2021 · RVA Magazine on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Close

    Event Details

    Please fill out the form below to suggest an event to us. We will get back to you with further information.


    OR Free Event

    CONTACT: [email protected]