RVA Mag

Richmond, VA Culture & Politics Since 2005

Menu

Pence Brags About Trump Allowing Adoption Agencies ‘Right’ to Ban LGBTQ Parents

|

Topics: , , , , , ,

“We will stand for the freedom of religion,” Vice President Mike Pence said, defending the Trump administration move to allow adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples.

Vice President Mike Pence this week attended a federal government event during which he bragged about the Trump administration’s latest attack on LGBTQ people. The vice president (video below) heralded a fast-tracked proposed policy from the Dept. of Health and Human Services that would reverse an Obama-era rule barring discrimination by adoption and foster care agencies against LGBTQ people and same-sex couples.

The proposed rollback of that rule is expected to go into effect in just a few weeks, granting government protection to religious, faith-based, or any other adoption organization that wishes to claim a moral opposition to LGBTQ people from facing a loss of federal funding.

“We will stand for the freedom of religion and we will stand with faith-based organizations to support adoption,” Vice President Pence told supporters at an HHS event Tuesday, as he pounded his fists on the podium, to cheers.

“I couldn’t be more proud that at President Trump’s direction and with the strong support of leaders across foster care, adoption, and our faith communities, we’ve taken decisive action,” Pence bragged.

That “decisive action” literally reduces the pool of prospective parents for large numbers of children who don’t have parents or homes.

“More than 100,000 foster children are awaiting adoption, according to government data, but a constellation of religious agencies refuse to consider same-sex parents when placing these children,” NBC News reports. “Shortly before the end of his second term, President Barack Obama changed nondiscrimination rules governing adoption agencies to expand the definition of groups protected against discrimination to include LGBTQ people. Trump’s proposed rule change will undo that.”

In fact, same-sex couples have far higher rates of adopting and fostering children than their different-sex couple peers.

“A 2018 report from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that 1 in 5 of the estimated 114,000 same-sex couples raising children in the United States are raising adopted or foster children — significantly higher than the 3 percent of heterosexual couples doing so,” reported NBC News.

The latest discriminatory HHS rule Vice President Pence bragged about comes from Roger Severino, HHS’s Director of the Office of Civil Rights. Severino is known as a “radical” anti-LGBTQ religious right activist who previously served as CEO and counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a religious right non-profit that opposes separation of church and state. He also once served as the Director of the DeVos family’s Center for Religion and Civil Society in the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM. Video via Washington Blade/Facebook. Hat tip: Towleroad

Federal Judge Overturns ObamaCare’s Transgender Protections, Because Jesus

|

Topics: , , , , , ,

The same judge who ruled the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional has now ruled that religious freedom is more important than transgender people receiving medically necessary health care.

A U.S. District Court judge in Texas has overturned the protections written into ObamaCare for transgender people, ruling they violate the religious rights of healthcare providers who hold religious beliefs that oppose the existence of transgender people.

On Tuesday Judge Reed O’Connor, appointed by President George W. Bush, “vacated an Obama-era regulation that prohibited providers and insurers who receive federal money from denying treatment or coverage to anyone based on sex, gender identity, or termination of pregnancy,” The Hill reports.

That regulation also mandated healthcare providers perform medically necessary services for transgender patients.

O’Connor is known as the same federal judge who ruled the entire Affordable Care Act unconstitutional last year. According to The Hill, his ruling in this case is likely to be appealed.

The Trump administration is supporting a large group of Republican state attorneys general working to strip protections from people with pre-existing conditions, and ultimately, have ObamaCare voided by the courts.

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

‘The Colour Purple” Actress Loses Role for Homophobic Comments

|

Topics: , , ,

British actress Seyi Omooba isn’t apologizing but doubling down, suing for “discrimination” because people don’t want to hire her now that they know about her intolerant beliefs. Oops.

Sometimes we really, really can have nice things, y’all. Especially when it is in the form of homophobic people getting haunted by the ghost of Facebook Past.

This week British Actress Seyi Omooba was fired from her role as Celie in The Color Purple at The Curve Theater in Leicester, United Kingdom, when a 2014 Facebook post in which she made homophobic remarks surfaced. The irony that her character falls in love with a woman is hardly lost on us — though it may be on her.

“I do not believe you can be born gay, and I do not believe homosexuality is right, though the law of this land has made it legal doesn’t mean it’s right,” she wrote in her post, according to LGBTQNation. “I do believe that everyone sins and falls into temptation but it’s by the asking of forgiveness, repentance and the grace of God that we overcome and live how God ordained us to, which is that a man should leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh.”

She has now claimed religious discrimination – shocking – and is planning to sue. Apparently she has not gotten any new roles or auditions since the post has surfaced. Despite the theater and her manager insisting that she retract the post and apologize, Omooba has refused… because it is against her religion.

Because it is against a religion that promotes loving thy neighbor. Apparently you’re supposed to love your neighbor, but only if they fit into certain criteria. I always forget about that footnote when I go back and read from BS 1:1. However, Omooba does want you to know that it is okay because she has gay friends.

“I have support from actors that I’ve worked with, including those in same-sex relationships, who say that even though they don’t agree with my views, they know that I’m not hateful or malicious,” Omooba clarified.

Oh, no, you’re not hateful or malicious at all. You just believe that anyone different than you is less deserving of rights or to be treated as a human being. I’ll go grab the tiniest violin that I have while you prepare for your next role.

Oh. Wait…

Photo via Facebook

Arizona Supreme Court Delivers Victory To the Forces of Discrimination

|

Topics: , , , , , , ,

Anti-gay Christian conservatives are falling all over themselves to discriminate against gay weddings. And courts keep on letting them.

The Arizona Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of a calligraphy and wedding invitation company whose owners claim their religion forbids them to sell to same-sex couples. Brush & Nib Studio owners Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski are represented by Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF also wrote their business operating agreement, according to ABC 10, before filing the lawsuit on the couple’s behalf.

The court ruled 4-3 that the City of Phoenix “cannot apply its Human Relations Ordinance … to force Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski … to create custom wedding invitations celebrating same-sex wedding ceremonies in violation of their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

This is a narrow ruling in that the court noted that its decision applies only to custom wedding invitations.

“We do not recognize a blanket exemption from the Ordinance for all of Plaintiffs’ business operations.”

“Duka and Koski’s beliefs about same-sex marriage may seem old-fashioned, or even offensive to some. But the guarantees of free speech and freedom of religion are not only for those who are deemed sufficiently enlightened, advanced, or progressive. They are for everyone. After all, while our own ideas may be popular today, they may not be tomorrow,” the court added.

At issue is the City of Phoenix’s six-year-old anti-discrimination ordinance, which ADF attacked in court.

The lawsuit was first filed in 2016. Duka and Koski are not suing because they have been accused of discrimination. They are preemptively suing for the “right” to reject lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender customers. The business owners lost a 2017 judgment and appealed in 2018.

The Southern Poverty Law Center includes the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) on its list of anti-gay hate groups. SPLC in 2017 reported Brush & Nib is also a vendor on Etsy, and “voluntarily and willingly agreed to the vendor terms of service for the site, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

AZ Central notes that the state’s Supreme Court “has been packed by Gov. Doug Ducey with judges to his liking.” Ducey is a Republican.

Like many local non-discrimination ordinances, Phoenix’s bans discrimination “based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or disability,” AZ Central adds.

Next month the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in three cases of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Their ruling will have historic effects.

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

Mike Pence Blasted For Appearing with Anti-LGBTQ Extremists Three Times in Five Days

|

Topics: , , , , , , ,

The Vice President continues to be blatant in his support for the erosion of LGBTQ rights, and his support of those who work against us.

Vice President Mike Pence has spent three of the past five days appearing at conferences and on stage with anti-LGBTQ extremists, including one who calls gay people “terrorists” and compares them to ISIS, as well as a group that appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-gay hate groups. Some are starting to notice and call him out for it.

“Less than a week after appearing at an Erick Erickson-sponsored conference, and a day after appearing with anti-LGBTQ extremist Sam Brownback, Mike Pence continues his anti-LGBTQ crusade with an appearance at an event organized by the anti-LGBTQ hate group the Alliance Defending Freedom,” the Human Rights Campaign says in an email. HRC points to the Vice President’s “close ties” to ADF, a group that HRC says “is among the most horrific of any group operating in the United States.”

The Vice President late Tuesday morning addressed the ADF, a group that successfully represented an anti-gay Christian baker at the U.S. Supreme Court and works to deprive LGBTQ people of their civil rights, while offering false narratives. Pence, speaking at the Ritz-Carlton in Arlington, Virginia, bragged that he and the Trump administration have “taken action to protect the conscience rights of doctors and nurses and healthcare providers,” and “gone to court to protect the right to religious expression in the public square,” while praising the ADF for being “there every step of the way.”

The Trump administration claims it is working to decriminalize homosexuality around the world (there do not appear to be any public reports on its progress) and yet the Vice President is bragging about his work with the ADF, a group that, according to HRC, “believes in the re-criminalization of homosexuality in the U.S. and across the globe.”

ADF also “has advocated for the sterilization of trans people,” and its “extremist views have found their way into Trump administration and state legislative actions.”

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

|

Topics: , , , , , , ,

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