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Jennifer Carroll Foy Announces Plan to Protect LGBTQ Rights In Virginia

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Jennifer Carroll Foy is currently running for Governor in Virginia. If elected, not only will she be Virginia’s first female governor, she’ll institute a detailed plan to protect the rights and advance the interests of LGBTQ Virginians.

More than a decade ago, 57 percent of Virginians approved a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as a union solely between one man and one woman. Although this ban on same-sex marriages and civil unions was invalidated by the 2015 Supreme Court decision to recognize same-sex marriages, Virginia’s constitution still begs to differ.

Five years after Obergefell v. Hodges, Virginia’s constitution has yet to be amended in order to ensure that marriage equality and the rights of LGBTQ individuals are protected regardless of current court precedent. However, for Jennifer Carroll Foy, it’s a priority.

“Until all of our rights are secure, none of our rights are secure. And so, ensuring that we address equity and equality in Virginia in a real substantive way is truly important to me,” said Carroll Foy.

Having dedicated her entire life to giving a voice to the voiceless, the former delegate has unequivocally displayed her support for the most vulnerable and underrepresented communities that lie within the Commonwealth. And as a current candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, she intends on expanding those efforts.

Carroll Foy has recently rolled out a new policy plan that outlines her goals of protecting the rights of LGBTQ communities against discrimination within the workplace, housing, public spaces, and the Virginia state constitution. “I’m here to fight just as vigorously for our LGBTQ+ community because they also need protection and to be treated as full class, first-class citizens,” she said.

Highlights of the plan include:

  • Amending the Virginia state constitution to be consistent with the Supreme Court 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, reinforcing that marriage equality is the law of the land. 
  • Eliminating the LGBTQIA+ “panic defense” method that upholds leniency for violence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. 
  • Instituting a statewide 100-day challenge to end LGBTQIA+ homelessness and to ensure that no person is without housing.
  • Championing a bill that clarifies the Virginia Human Rights Act by defining sexual and workplace harassment to include harassment based on an individual’s sexual orientation and gender identity.
  • Reviewing state-funded workforce development initiatives to ensure inclusive outreach, training, and hiring practices aimed at recruiting and retaining LGBTQIA+ employees.
  • Supporting legislation to establish a Virginia LGBTQIA+ Advisory Board to promote and address prominent economic, social, and educational issues for LGBTQIA+ constituents.
  • Continuing to declare every June as LGBTQIA+ Pride Month in Virginia, in order to further educate the public about the LGBTQIA+ movement.
  • Coordinating with the Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity to recognize LGBTQIA+ owned businesses and to ensure increased access to state-funded contracts.
  • Appointing an LGBTQIA+ liaison to gather recommendations to address barriers and challenges facing the LGBTQIA+ community and offer policy solutions.

Carroll Foy is not unfamiliar with making historic strides. She was one of the first women to graduate from Virginia Military Institute, and the first public defender ever to be elected to the Virginia General Assembly. And this year, she’s attempting to become the Commonwealth’s first female governor, and the first African-American woman to serve as governor in the United States. With this background, she’s aware that the values of all Virginians need to be reflected in order to lay a foundation for future progress.  

“We have work to do, because representation matters,” Carroll Foy said. “It shows that we’re able to bring a different lens, and our life experiences, to the bills and budgets that we create. That’s going to help the communities that have been the most harmed — and that’s what this is about. Virginians are looking for real change at this time, and change means a new leader with a clear vision and bold ideas on how to move Virginia forward.”

Photo via Jennifer Carroll Foy

SCOTUS Justice Alito Delivers ‘Tirade’ Claiming Same-Sex Marriage Infringes on Civil Rights of Anti-LGBTQ Americans

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He dissented on the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in favor of marriage equality, and now he’s furious that anti-marriage equality activists are being called out on their prejudiced views.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Thursday night in the company of his Federalist Society friends unleashed years of pent-up anger in a speech at the right wing group’s convention.

One of his many targets was the court’s landmark 2015 decision in Obergefell, which found that same-sex couples have the same constitutional rights and responsibilities as their different-sex couples peers. Alito dissented in that 5-4 decision.

Calling it “a grievance-laden tirade,” Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern writes that “Alito abandoned any pretense of impartiality in his speech.” He likens the conservative jurist’s speech to “a burn book for many cases he has participated in, particularly those in which he dissented.”

Alito did not mince words Thursday night, sharing his clear anger and offense as he delivered the keynote address to the Federalist Society 2020 National Lawyers Convention.

“You can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman,” Alito lamented, in a twisted version of the truth. “Until very recently, that’s what the vast majority of Americans thought. Now it’s considered bigotry.”

“That this would happen after our decision in Obergefell should not have come as a surprise,” he continued, noting that he could see “where the decision would lead.”

“I wrote the following: ‘I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes. But if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments employers and schools.’ That is just what is coming to pass.”

“One of the great challenges for the Supreme Court going forward will be to protect freedom of speech,” Alito warns, clearly concerned only for the freedom of speech of his fellow conservatives who oppose equality.

He laments, “that freedom is falling out of favor in some circles. We need to do whatever we can to prevent it from becoming a second tier constitutional right.”

In his Obergefell dissent, Alito warned the Court’s decision would lead to “bitter and lasting wounds.” Five years later, it seems, he meant his own.

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

Clarence Thomas Pens Scathing Attack Suggesting Same-Sex Marriage Must Be Overturned

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The opinion, co-authored by fellow Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, made the argument that marriage equality should never have been allowed, because of (you guessed it) “religious freedom.”

Former Rowan County, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis won’t get a hearing from the U.S. Supreme Court. A case against her, brought by several same-sex couples she refused to grant marriage licenses to, was rejected Monday by the country’s top court.

But ultra-conservative Justice Clarence Thomas took the opportunity to attack the court’s landmark Obergefell case, which found the Constitution allows same-sex couples the same rights and responsibilities of marriage as their different-sex peers.

Thomas, who has a direct line into the White House via his activist and lobbyist wife Ginni Thomas, slammed the decision, suggesting the case should be overturned, as Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern reports.

Why?

“Religious liberty.”

Thomas claims Kim Davis “may have been one of the first victims of this Court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision, but she will not be the last.”

His words are scathing, and a direct assault on equality.

“Due to Obergefell, those with sincerely held religious beliefs concerning marriage will find it increasingly difficult to participate in society without running afoul of Obergefell and its effect on other antidiscrimination laws,” claims Thomas, five years after the decision.

“It would be one thing if recognition for same-sex marriage had been debated and adopted through the democratic process, with the people deciding not to provide statutory protections for religious liberty under state law,” he adds. “But it is quite another when the Court forces that choice upon society through its creation of atextual constitutional rights and its ungenerous interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause, leaving those with religious objections in the lurch.”

At the time of the Obergefell decision, same-sex marriage was supported by six out of 10 Americans.

In the 2015 Obergefell case, Justice Thomas writes, “the Court read a right to same-sex marriage into the Fourteenth Amendment, even though that right is found nowhere in the text.”

Thomas is a textualist, or originalist, adhering to conservatves’ pseudo-theory created in the 1980’s that claims the Constitution is not a living document, written broadly to stand the test of time. Rather, they believe it must be interpreted as the Founders conceived, with the words being interpreted exactly as the document’s authors intended.

(Textualism, or originalism, has been called “a scam” and Thomas has been blasted for “his hypocrisy” surrounding it.)

“Several Members of the Court noted that the Court’s decision would threaten the religious liberty of the many Americans who believe that marriage is a sacred institution between one man and one woman. If the States had been allowed to resolve this question through legislation, they could have included accommodations for those who hold these religious beliefs,” Thomas writes.

“The Court, however, bypassed that democratic process. Worse still, though it briefly acknowledged that those with sincerely held religious objections to same-sex marriage are often ‘decent and honorable,’” he continues, “the Court went on to suggest that those beliefs espoused a bigoted worldview.”

Believing that LGBTQ people are not equal to non-LGBTQ people is the very definition of bigotry.

Justice Thomas uses the word “bigot” four times in his dissent, which was joined by Justice Samuel Alito.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is attempting to force through the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, giving the Court a 6-3 conservative super-majority.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image by Thomas Cizauskas via Flickr and a CC license

In Tennessee, A Fundamentalist Attorney Is Attempting To Undo Marriage Equality

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By sending letters demanding county clerks cease issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Tennessee attorney David Fowler is setting the stage for a lawsuit challenging marriage equality in Tennessee and beyond.

Last week, Tennessee attorney David Fowler sent a letter to all 95 of Tennessee’s county clerks demanding that they cease and desist issuing of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. His stated reasoning is that the clerks are violating Tennessee’s constitution.

Tennessee is only one of several states in the US that have anti-marriage equality clauses written into their constitutions; Virginia, as it happens, is another. However, in light of the federal precedent set by the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which made marriage equality the law of the land throughout the US, this should not matter. At the time of that decision, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery stated that Tennessee was required to abide by the Supreme Court decision regardless of the constitutional provision.

Nonetheless, Fowler is making the attempt to legally block same-sex marriages in Tennessee based on that exact constitutional provision. In an interview with the Washington Blade, Fowler rejected the statement of the Attorney General, stating, “It is indisputable that no court has declared the provision in Tennessee’s Constitution unconstitutional and enjoined its enforcement.” He then cited an obscure 1984 opinion by a previous Attorney General stating that a law must be considered constitutional “until it is declared unconstitutional by a court of competent jurisdiction.”

Of course, Fowler’s point here is invalidated by the fact that both the Supreme Court and Tennessee District Court Judge Aleta Arthur Trauger have released separate injunctions forbidding the enforcement of Tennessee’s constitutional provision against same-sex marriage.

David Fowler in 2012. Photo by Brian Stansberry, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia

Fowler, a former Republican state Senator for Tennessee, is in this case serving as general counsel for the Family Action Council of Tennessee’s Constitutional Government Defense Fund. That group is associated with anti-LGBTQ hate group Focus On The Family.

The letter gives a deadline of Feb. 17 for the Tennessee state government to comply with its demands. And while Fowler has not directly stated that he and the group plan to sue Tennessee’s county clerks, he did state in his letter to all 95 clerks that the ministers he represents are considering “what steps should next be taken by them… to be assured that they are not affirming a form of civil marriage contrary to their beliefs.” So legal action may indeed be forthcoming.

This would not be the first time Fowler has attempted legal action to invalidate same-sex marriage in Tennessee. In 2018, he sued Tennessee’s Williamson County, arguing that the Obergefell v. Hodges decision had invalidated all of Tennessee’s state laws concerning religion. That case was dismissed.

Nonetheless, this has to be concerning for the LGBTQ communities of both Tennessee and Virginia, as well as those of any other state with anti-marriage equality clauses still written into their constitution. During the Trump administration, the makeup of the Supreme Court has changed significantly, and there is some concern that a case like Fowler’s, if taken to a high enough court, could reverse the precedent set by Obergefell v. Hodges and bring all those anti-marriage equality clauses back to life.

National Center For Lesbian Rights legal director Shannon Minter dismissed these concerns in an interview with the Washington Blade, saying, “This is a political stunt, not a serious legal threat… If Fowler actually followed through on filing a lawsuit, it would be thrown out. Marriage equality is the law of the land, including in Tennessee.”

For our sakes, let’s hope Minter is correct.

Top Photo by Sixflashphoto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia