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Rights Activists Alarmed as Pompeo Installs Anti-Gay Anti-Abortion Activist to Head New Commission on “Natural Law”

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Pompeo hopes to redefine the entire concept of “human rights,” and to do so he’s hired a woman with a decades-long record of anti-LGBTQ activism.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday announced the formation of a new commission that will take a “fresh look” at human rights through the lens of “natural law,” and civil and human rights advocates are outraged. In preliminary filings the State Dept. noted the Commission will explore “our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights.”

“Natural law,” is religious right wing extremist code for anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ rights, especially marriage for same-sex couples.

Critics are outraged.

The director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program weighed in:

Secretary Pompeo, a known right wing Christian extremist in his own right, has named Mary Ann Glendon, a professor who is also his former mentor, to lead the “Commission on Unalienable Rights.”

Glendon is an anti-abortion, anti-gay Catholic activist who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See (the Vatican) under President George W. Bush. She is also known for her opposition to the use of condoms to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS.

“I hope that the commission will revisit the most basic of questions: What does it mean to claim something is, in fact, a human right?” Pompeo told reporters Monday, adding, as Yahoo News notes, that “words like rights can be used for good or evil.”

Glendon should understand Pompeo’s remarks. She penned a 2004 op-ed supporting a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. In a unique twist of language she claimed the amendment “should be welcomed by all Americans who are concerned about equality and preserving democratic decision-making.”

And in a shocking move Glendon chastised the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize to the Boston Globe for its work exposing pedophile priests. She reportedly said, “If fairness & accuracy have anything to do with it, awarding the Pulitzer to the Boston Globe would be like giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Osama bin Laden.”

Anti-gay hate group leader Tony Perkins was briefed on the Commission before it was officially announced, CBS News reports.

A State Dept. official says the Commission is a “personal project” of Secretary Pompeo’s, and Politico reports the Commission “was conceived with almost no input from the State Department’s human rights bureau, people familiar with the matter say, effectively sidelining career government experts who have focused on human rights policy and history across numerous administrations.”

As extreme as Glendon is, the preliminary proposed Chair was Robert P. George, a Princeton professor who co-founded the extremely anti-gay National Organization For Marriage (NOM).

Meanwhile, Amnesty International issued a scathing rebuke to Pompeo and his new Commission. In “Trump Administration Commission on Unalienable Rights Politicizes Human Rights for Hate,” the human rights organization’s national director of advocacy and government affairs, Joanne Lin, said:

“This administration has actively worked to deny and take away long-standing human rights protections since Trump’s inauguration. If this administration truly wanted to support people’s rights, it would use the global framework that’s already in place. Instead, it wants to undermine rights for individuals, as well as the responsibilities of governments.”

“This approach only encourages other countries to adopt a disregard for basic human rights standards and risks weakening international, as well as regional frameworks, placing the rights of millions of people around the world in jeopardy.”

“International agreements, like the Universal Declaration for Human Rights, have been upheld by prior administrations over the last 71 years, regardless of their party. This politicization of human rights in order to, what appears to be an attempt to further hateful policies aimed at women and LGBTQ people, is shameful.”

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

WATCH: Fox & Friends Celebrates Signing of New Texas Anti-LGBTQ Law by Eating and Defending Chick-fil-A

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The “Fox & Friends” crew celebrated Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s signing of the anti-LGBTQ “Save Chick-fil-A” bill into law by eating and praising the chicken fast food, and defending the Christian retailer by misrepresenting opposition to the bill and to the company.

The “Save Chick-fil-A” law now makes it illegal in Texas for the government to take “adverse action” against anyone or any entity for their “sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction, including beliefs or convictions regarding marriage.”

It was created in response to the San Antonio city council barring Chick-fil-A from opening a restaurant in its airport, based on the company’s multi-million dollar support of anti-LGBTQ organizations, including an anti-gay hate group.

But that’s not the story “Fox & Friends” told its viewers Wednesday morning.

“The area lawmakers said no” to Chick-fil-A opening in the San Antonio airport, co-host Ainsley Earhardt said, “because there’s some controversy with this restaurant, what their beliefs are on LGBT, so they voted no.”

(It’s not “LGBT.” It’s “LGBT people.”)

And the issue is not the company’s beliefs, but their massive multi-million dollar financial support of anti-LGBTQ organizations that discriminate against or work to harm LGBTQ people.

“Even if you disagree with the restaurant’s politics it doesn’t mean I’m necessarily not going to like their food,” Earhardt added as she began to eat the Chick-fil-A from the table.

Co-host Brian Kilmeade was more to the point.

“Every time you try to stop Chick-fil-A, you help Chick-fil-A.”

Watch:

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

State Dept. Quietly Creates Commission Focused on ‘Fresh Thinking’ About ‘Natural Rights’ – Code for Anti-LGBTQ

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The U.S. State Dept. on Thursday quietly published a notice in the Federal Registerannouncing it creating a new commission to provide “fresh thinking” about “natural law and natural rights,” which is the religious right’s code for anti-LGBTQ.

The “Commission on Unalienable Rights” will “provide fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights,” the notice states.

Politico reports human rights activists are “surprised,” and “privately said they worry that talk of the ‘nation’s founding principles’ and ‘natural law’ are coded signals of plans to focus less on protecting women and LGBT people.”

In fact, Christian extremists, anti-gay hate groups, and other factions of the religious right often argue against LGBTQ civil rights, including same-sex marriage, as violations of “natural law.”

The newly-formed Commission on Unalienable Rights will directly advise Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It appears it may be headed by his Director of Policy Planning, Kiron Skinner, whose name appears at the bottom of the notice.

Pompeo is a far right religious extremist who has openly stated the function of politics is to “fight these battles” because there is a “never-ending struggle” until “the rapture,” as The New York Times has reported. He has also said the Bible “informs everything I do.”

Skinner is a highly-accomplished and noted scholar who recently caused an international stir. Professor Skinner at a public forum on national security told attendees that America’s upcoming competition with China would be especially bitter, as Foreign Policy reported, because, she said, “it’s the first time that we will have a great-power competitor that is not Caucasian.”

The Trump administration has a horrific record on human rights here in the U.S. and internationally. At home, Trump has now rolled back or rescinded every protection for transgender people codified under President Barack Obama, including but not limited to evicting transgender Americans from the U.S. Armed Forces. He and has administration are working to remove hard-won protections across the board for LGBTQ people and women. Internationally, the President repeatedly praises and protects dictators who are responsible for the murder of their own people. Just one example: Trump’s claim that he and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un “fell in love.”

But Trump has also prioritized defending, promoting, and even creating special rights for Christian conservatives over U.S. law and over decades of U.S. foreign policy.

The Commission on Unalienable Rights appears to be the next step in the process.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image by U.S. Dept. of State via Flickr 

New HUD Policy Proposal Would Let Homeless Shelters Refuse Access To Trans People

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This callous move affects a population significantly more likely to experience homelessness than the general population.

On Wednesday, Trump’s Department of Housing And Urban Development (HUD) released a proposal for a revised rule that would pave the way for homeless shelters to refuse accomodation to homeless people on the basis of gender identity. The proposed rule would rescind the Obama-era Equal Access Rule, which provided accomodation in accordance with a person’s gender identity.

The new rule allows homeless shelters to consider “the individual’s sex as reflected in official government documents,” as well as “privacy, safety, practical concerns” and “religious beliefs.” This list contains more than one possible opportunity for a shelter to refuse accomodation to a transgender person. For one thing, many transgender people struggle to have their government documents reflect their gender identity, as fees and legal processes often act as roadblocks, especially for lower-income trans people more likely to need the help of a homeless shelter in the first place. Some states require expensive surgeries before they will change an individual’s gender markers on birth certificates and other government documents. And some states won’t allow gender marker changes for any reason.

Then, too, there is the ever-present spectre of “religious freedom” as a license to discriminate. With many homeless shelters run by religious organizations, this proposal opens the door for such shelters to bar all transgender individuals, or to force them to take shelter based on their birth sex — a situation which puts trans women in particular at high risk.

This move by HUD comes only one day after HUD Secretary Ben Carson told Congress that he had no plans to change the Equal Access Rule. In answer to a question from Virginia Democratic Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton, Carson said, “I’m not currently anticipating changing the rule.”

In response to the proposal released the following day, Wexton tweeted in reference to Carson, “He either lied to Congress or has no idea what policies his agency is pursuing. Either way, it’s unacceptable.” On Thursday, Wexton introduced a bill that would block HUD from implementing the rule.

The 2015 US Transgender Survey by the National Center For Trans Equality (NCTE) stated that 30 percent of respondents had experienced homelessness at some point in their lifetimes, while 70 percent of respondents who had stayed in homeless shelters reported harassment, physical or sexual assault, or being kicked out as a consequence of their transgender status.

On Wednesday, NCTE Director Mara Keisling released a statement condemning the rule. “This is a heartless attack on some of the most vulnerable people in our society,” Keisling stated. “The programs impacted by this rule are life-saving for transgender people, particularly youth rejected by their families, and a lack of stable housing fuels the violence and abuse that takes the lives of many transgender people of color across the country. Secretary Carson’s actions are contrary to the mission of his Department and yet another example of tragic cruelty of this administration.”

Texas’ Anti-LGBTQ ‘Save Chick-Fil-A’ Bill Is Very Close To Becoming Law

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This “religious freedom” bill is the latest in a long string of bills intended to protect companies who support anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

A couple of weeks ago, word had it that the bill working its way through the Texas legislature, known as the “Save Chick-Fil-A” bill, was all but dead. However, this week has shown that there’s still life in the old beast after all. And for LGBTQ people in Texas and the US as a whole, this is not good news.

As with bills in Virginia’s own bicameral state legislature, there was both a House version and a Senate version of the Save Chick-Fil-A bill. After Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives used a parliamentary maneuver to kill the bill, everyone expected that to be the end of the story. However, the Senate version of the bill passed the Texas Senate on Thursday, and now that version has been sent on to the House for its approval.

A vote on the House Of Representatives floor Monday saw the bill pass 79-62, with only one Republican voting against it. However, reconciliation of the House and Senate versions of the bill must still take place before it can go on to Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Parliamentary procedures — gotta love ’em. If nothing else changes, though, Abbott is expected to sign the bill once it reaches his desk.

This measure, one of the many “religious freedom”-related laws and statutes we’ve seen over the past several years, seeks to bar municipalities within Texas from taking “adverse actions” against individuals or companies due to their “religious beliefs.” The bill was initially proposed by Representative Matt Krause, a Republican and Liberty University Law School alumni who has been called “Texas’ Most Homophobic Legislator” by Equality Texas.

The bill got its popular name, the “Save Chick-Fil-A” bill, due Krause’s initial inspiration to put the bill forward: San Antonio’s City Council rejecting Chick-Fil-A’s attempt to open a location at San Antonio International Airport. This decision by the council was due to what San Antonio councilman Roberto Treviño called their “legacy of anti-LGBTQ behavior.”

But as NBC News points out, much of the language in Krause’s bill is taken from model legislation created by Project Blitz, an initiative of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation designed to get “religious freedom” bills introduced into as many state legislatures as possible. Incidentally, the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation was started by former Virginia Congressman J. Randy Forbes, who, in the run-up to the 2014 Congressional election, put significant pressure on the National Republican Congressional Committee to deny funding to gay Republican candidates for office around the country.

According to NBC News, Krause’s “Save Chick-Fil-A” bill bears a strong resemblance to Project Blitz’s “Marriage Tolerance Act,” a piece of model legislation included in the group’s 148-page “playbook” distributed to Republican legislators. Of course, none of the legislators sponsoring the bill were willing to comment about that resemblance. Of course.

Texas’ legislative session closes in one week. In the remaining time left to them, the state’s legislature must reconcile the slight differences between House and Senate versions, then have one more vote by each branch of the legislature, before the bill can go to the Governor’s desk. Will they make it?

Let’s all cross our fingers.

Photo: Texas state Capitol building, by Daniel Mayer, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia

Trump Plan Grants Doctors Special Religious Rights to Deny Care to Transgender Patients, Women Seeking Abortions

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As if doctor visits didn’t give us enough reason to worry as it is.

The Trump administration is finalizing details on its plan to grant special religious “rights” to medical professionals who claim a moral objection to providing care to transgender patients, or women seeking an abortion, among others.

The new rules would roll back Obama-era protections, according to a report by Politico.

The Trump administration’s so-called “conscience regulations” would extend far beyond those two scenarios.

The proposal, which would directly impact the Dept. of Health and Human Services, “would give HHS ‘a lot more authority and power’ to effectively remake and enforce existing conscience protections, said Katie Keith, a Georgetown University law professor who’s studied the regulations,” Politico notes.

For instance, a medical school receiving federal funds could not deny admission to applicants who refuse to perform abortions; providers could not require staff to inform patients about services like sterilization procedures or advance directives rejecting end-of-life care; and doctors and nurses would gain further protections to refuse providing services like vaccinations.

The forthcoming HHS nondiscrimination rules are the latest example of President Donald Trump violating a campaign pledge to protect the LGBTQ community, advocates for transgender people say. The administration’s ban on transgender troops took effect just weeks ago, and the health department reportedly tried to effectively eliminate the federal definition of “transgender.”

It’s possible the “conscience regulations” might extend to those who practice harmful “reparative” or “conversion” therapy, a pseudoscientific practice falsely purports to turn LGBTQ straight.

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