1st Amendment Games in Indiana

Yes, indeed, we can be too clever for our own ends. We're seeing it now in Indiana, where the poorly drafted and worse defined Religious Freedom Restoration Act has blown up. The Republican legislature should be embarrassed but is not. The Republican Gov. Mike Pence (a POTUS hopeful) should claw back the openly discriminatory law, but won't.

On today's Left Ahead show, I went on about it all. Assuming it comes over, the player below should have the 19-minute show.

Foolish attempts at cleverness constantly backfire, and not only at dinner parties. The most common and to the worst effects must be politically. In this case, numerous major companies and non-profits are pulling back on investments there. I also predict that this debacle ends Pence's shot at being the GOP POTUS nominee. He has been pitching himself as the guy who can appeal to moderates, independents and conservative Dems as well as his own party. Forget it, Mikey.

I talked about the winger media lie that the IN law is the same as the Federal version and those in many other red states. I noted the major differences, and which made it unacceptable to so many people and businesses.

I also predicted that wingers in and beyond IN won't stop, even after what should be a most obvious failure. They did this with marriage equality and continue to do so, even with the wide, dark shadow of the pending SCOTUS ruling making all their anti-gay paranoia and lies moot. They shall continue until there is no legal option for deceit...and cleverness.

With same-sex marriage battle lost — waiting only for the SCOTUS cymbal clap in June, wingers are pig piling on a new ploy. In numerous states, legislatures are pretending to protect religious freedom from the inevitable and fearful persecution from dem damn gays.

I kicked around Indiana's worst-in-class blunders in trying this ruse.

POTUS hopeful, Gov. Mike Pence (R, of course) signed a bill into law that pretty much lets anyone for any reason discriminate against LGBT potential customers. Poorly disguised as protecting citizen's First Amendment rights to exercise religion, it instead is an atavistic license to ignore statutes, case law and morality.

Pence seemed to figure the Hoosier lawmakers were being oh, so clever in patterning the bill after the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Wrong there. The RFRA was yet another cowardly and ill-considered Pres. Bill Clinton effort to appease wingers.Yet Indiana's version is worse, even legislatively malignant.

I got into the concepts of balancing exercise of religion with both commerce and respect as required by federal law. We can be very sure Pence and his minions are having similar discussions following the nationwide blowback to Indiana's overreach.

Lively Deadly at Mic

Many other nations have their own public loonies. As in the U.S., those have voice as politicians or actors or business owners. Our most local, current version certainly includes Scott Lively.

He is one of five who will appear on the MA ballot for governor on Nov. 4th. I'd write "God help us," but that is largely a figure of speech. Lively seems to think he has that market cornered,

Pix note: Above are two screen caps (fair use claimed) from WGBY's recent broadcast of a gubernatorial debate with the five candidates. The wide-eyed one at left was his finest, funniest moment when he answered a question about medical marijuana by shouting that he "inhaled...A LOT!" While ID'ing himself as a pastor, he admits to 16 years of alcohol and other drug abuse. The image on the right is of his more usual, studied expression.

Lively is plain about his ideas. They are on his campaign site, as well as his personal one. The latter includes PDF files of chapters of his widely debunked co-authored The Pink Swastika. The book postulates that the Holocaust in particular and Nazism more generally were direct products of a group of German homosexuals.

A hallmark of ingrained, intense bigotry is that its being like a tarp that can cover everything. You can take Lively's words to verify that. If you did not catch the debate, check the video on the link above in the Pix note. Scroll to the bottom of the article to play it.

In the spirit of religiosity, I confess. I have not contacted Lively to ask him to do a Left Ahead show. The Dems and independents have all been on (see archives). The Republican won't even return my calls or emails, likely terrified of "Left" in the show title. For Lively, I'm not at all confident I could be civil enough to let him express himself. I could end up doing a show in the style of Bill O'Reilly or Chis Matthews for him.

Square One, Square One

Lively is a good entertainer, as befits a self-described pastor. For example, near the end of the debate, he had the best shtick of the hour, riffing on what he said was his 16 years of drug abuse. Unfortunately, he plays the dour scold nearly always.

You can read his positions on his campaign site. They are extreme and very much out of sync with MA voters' views. While his team managed to get 10,000-plus registered voters to sign his ballot petitions, they'd be hard pressed to find 10,000 people here that really agree with his positions, which include:

• Abortion is the intentional killing of a living human being and should be criminalized...Since abortion is a form of homicide, it should bear similar punishment, depending on the severity of the particular crime.
• (W)e should abolish public-employee unions and return to the earlier model in which public service was a civic duty and privilege shared by the citizens.
• Since they (LGBT people) cannot prove that homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender is innate and unchangeable, we must assume for the sake of the children that these behavior-based lifestyles are acquired, and can be overcome. 
• Rather than rewarding those who gained (or gamed) their entry to the United States by cheating (I'm speaking now of the adults who have been here for a long time), it is time to ask the illegal immigrants to take all that they have learned about living in an orderly democratic society back to their homelands so they can recreate there what they have enjoyed here.
• We should dismantle the destructive feminist system of emasculating boys with pharmaceuticals and gender-blending social engineering tactics in public schools and the popular culture, and restore key elements of what feminists derisively call the “patriarchal society,” but which in reality is just respect for authentic male leadership.

Those are just samples from his positions. In the full context, those and such planks as the death penalty are more extreme.

During the debate, nearly every comment returned to what he termed his Biblical world view. That, of course, meant his particular take on carefully chosen verses to support his starting positions.

For example, he disdained LGBT rights and any mention of homosexuality during classes. Nothing else illustrated this so clearly as his off-the-road detour from the question about MA infrastructure. Consider:

I think there's a corrupt system we have right now and frankly I thank when we're talking corruption, we really need to be looking at the moral infrastructure of Massachusetts as well. We're killing unborn babies every single day in this state. We are promoting sexual perversion to the children in the public schools. Those kinds of things are corrupting us from the inside much worse than what's happening with our road system and our bridges.

He had started out touching on a bit of the infrastructure problem, suggesting that state contractors pay for bonds to cover cost overruns on bids. Yet he did not really address the infrastructure question the other four did. He brought in all manner of unrelated subjects, thoroughly muddying the waters and likely confusing listeners. He again also brought in his personal bugbear, homosexuals.

To his credit, Baker answered the next question and ended by taking Lively to task for his anti-gay allusion. Baker noted that his gay and married brother informed his views and feelings here, that he found the remarks somewhat offensive. Lively tossed out afterward, "I believe in the Bible, Charlie. I'm sorry that you don't."

Other oddments

I suggest listening to the debate, even if you just fast forward to Lively's answers. You'll hear that what was an idyllic agrarian MA has deviated from our Judeo-Christian to a Marxist perspective. Lively would aim to severely limit state government. "I would reverse that process. I would go back to localism," he said.

He would not increase funding for education, and in fact opposes universal pre-K. He believes that public schools, even before first grade are turning children over to government. He'd set up a voucher system that would include paying home-schooling parents.

He called climate change and global warming concerns "a scam." "The nonsense called global warming is a scheme of transnational elitists to institute a global taxation system," he said. He figures climate change can largely be blamed on the sun.

Those are glimpses of Lively's shadow world. Do listen to the whole debate and ponder his sites if you need more.

Back in the U.S.A.

Despite frequent victimization claims of repression by wingers and religious extremists, the U.S. is damned (that word again) loose in free speech. We let citizens and visitors make all manner of wild, unsupported, unsupportable claims. We don't have hate-speech laws like many European nations and Canada.

As states began enabling marriage equality, anti-gay sorts often claimed that it would mean preachers would be pulled from their pulpits and sent to prison for homophobic rhetoric. It hasn't, can't and won't happen here, but that does not stop the canard.

Instead haters like Lively can and do get on ballots. They almost always lose, but they can run, speak, and attract the votes and donations of like-minded loons. I think this is where we're supposed to agree it's a great country.

Hawaiian Anti-Gay Death Twitch

Sure, we knew they'd try. As threatened/promised, anti-marriage-equality sorts ran back to Hawaiian courts to try to block implementation of same-sex marriage after it became law yesterday. No dice, guys.

The AG had already said that the amendment passed in 1998 gave the legislature the power to define marriage. They did just that and came down for marriage equality.

Now the likely last word came from Circuit Court Judge Karl Sakamoto. He refused to issue a temporary restraining order. Instead, he plainly remarked, "After all the legal complexity of the court's analysis, the court will conclude that same-sex marriage in Hawaii is legal," SS marriages are set to start December 2nd. 

What Were We Thinking? Hawaiian Version

Marriage-equality legislation staggers along in Honolulu. Yesterday, after many (I think 29) amendment attempts, the House approved the bill, 30 to 19. Next it goes back to the Senate, who had previously voted for it...without these amendments.

The Senate should take it up Tuesday and will almost certainly make it law. Gov. Neil Abercrombie has pens screaming for him to use them and he's ready.

The few amendments that did pass are mostly silly, with one exception. The process in Hawaii mirrored the Connecticut debates and compromises five years ago.

The troublesome change is a fair capitulation to anti-gay clerical types and church pols. It gives loosely religious-institution groups the right to continue discriminating. Even in their for-profit activities, like facility rental, that are open to the public, they can use the we-don't-like-homosexuals trump card. This in effect alters the state public-accommodation laws to allow this.

The other amendments are benign and redundant. The gist is a triple-pinky-swear for clerics. The bill already let them say no to officiating at same-sex weddings. They can play the faith card at will. The amendment specifies that no one can bring any charges or lawsuits if this happens.

Watching hours of testimony before the House committees was stunningly familiar. The queue of several thousand who spoke in opposition did so too predictably. The gist of most was that their personal religious feelings should determine public policy. To the endearing credit of the moderator legislators, they did not ridicule or even point out the illegality and irrationality of those two-minute anti-gay tirades and whines.

Yet in the version tossed back to the Senate, the influence of the haters ("Don't dare call us haters!," they say) and bigots ("I am not a bigot," they say.) is obvious. As it was in CT and elsewhere, when the concessions that moderately impinge on gay rights in order to deliver some equality become part of the law, the anti-gay nasties appear largely placated.

I assume serious control issues here. They had called for defeat of the bill; no. They wanted to go back to the start and do another task force to delay everything for a year or more; no. They wanted every business operator to be able to discriminate as churches still can. In amendment after amendment, they did all they could to weaken the bill; with these few sops as exceptions, no.

Now their death twitch will be a lawsuit to overturn the law as soon as it gets the governor's sig. They simply cannot tolerate democracy. It's every procedure and trick in the book when they don't get to harm and hamper homosexuals. They'll eventually go away wailing. Who knows, they may try what they did here in MA, a ballot initiative and court challenge. Unfortunately for them, Hawaii only allows initiatives on constitutional amendments.

The anti-equality sorts thought they had done that with the vote to give the legislature the right to define and specify who could marry. Well, now that actually happened. They don't like that either.

Raised as a Christian, I remain confused when any religious types, particularly Christians contort to hurt people. They'll very selective go to Leviticus in the Old Testament and Torah to find scripture that supports their bigotry, while ignoring much scripture that would lead them to support equality. Particularly for Christians, they have a whole New Testament and a Messiah who preach against what they are about.

I am pretty sure in a few years and certainly within 10 or 20 that Hawaiians will be proud of their inclusive equality, almost to a person. That's happened elsewhere, as here in MA. When they come to and ask, "What were we thinking?," don't ridicule them. Just be glad they arrived at the right place.

Hawaii Anti-Gay Types Play the Game

Astonishing still how the anti-gay folk would harm, hamper and hinder homosexuals. As we saw a decade ago here, we now hear and see in Hawaii. With the special session to consider same-sex marriage in full, tedious hearings, debate and readings, the same shtick is on stage.

Those who don't like gay folk (or much stronger than don't like) go through the same scripted skits. Those include:

• Catch-22 logic — SSM mandated by courts fails due to activist judges, passed by legislature is not representative democracy rather somehow unfair, passed by plebiscite requires a second or third public vote, approved by multiple ways circularly turns back to court appeal
• Personal religious views trump all — ignoring state and federal constitutional and case law, anti-gay sorts say their feelings overrule rights of homosexual couples
• Time-out — despite years of discussions, hearings and trials, they claim there is not need to pass this law without restarting the whole process
• 1st Amendment paranoia — forget contradictory history proof and history in 15 US states, Canada and numerous European and Scandinavian nations, enabling SSM will absolutely force clerics to conduct SS weddings, force teachers to describe and condone gay sex acts, that parents rights will be crushed and blah blah

There are numerous other lunacies, but they are along the same lines.

One would think that Hawaiian legislators and voters would have at least a passing knowledge of SS info on the net, in papers and on TV over the two decades. Every one of their objections are total jive. In countries and states that have enabled marriage equality, no one is harmed and many are helped. Even the total disingenuous lies about the mad-dad (David Parker) case are so blatantly false that only the willfully ignorant would begin to accept them.

Yet. it has come to this again and again and again. The anti-gay folk know they are dishonest and dishonorable. They simply don't care.

The Beasts Who Cry Wolf

They're still at it. The anti-gay forces don't let history or reason or humanity or compassion deter them. Despite their lifetimes of doing their worst to hurt homosexuals, they continue to:

1. Predict certain martyrdom for themselves
2. Claim current and future cultural victimhood

Sure enough, immediately following the welcome but pretty benign Supreme Court decisions yesterday, fundy and winger airwaves, blogs and papers spewed out more of this craziness. Consider this recap of several examples put out by Yahoo News. Likewise, over at Boston's winger tabloid, the Herald, the least Christ-like columnist claimed victim status for the pro-Prop 8 voters.

In my insatiable news reading, politics watching and coming up on a decade of running a marriage-equality blog, I am very used to seeing and hearing this. I have never become inured. Sometimes these fools are amusing, other times pitiable, and occasional infuriating.

One odd aspect is the obvious I'm-not-a-bigot-but... one. Those folk can be plain silly, as in saying, "My nephew is gay and I love him. So that proves I"m not a hateful, prejudiced person." Others try to get Biblical and only end up looking intellectually feeble. By picking a verse or two from the early Old Testament and gainsaying all the contradictory verses, they utterly fail the religion references tests. When pointed to OT versions long used to justify human slavery, subjugation of women and physical abuse of children, they quibble instead of backing down.

The vast majority of People of the Book — Jews, Christians and Muslims — if you pardon the term, evolved as the scriptures did over the centuries. Leviticus is not good basis for a civilized and religious life.

I accept that most of those anti-gay folk who try to use scripture to justify their unjustifiable wackiness think differently. As noted in several posts in this blog, lefties and right wingers often have different brains. Wingers tend to be very literal, hence the vetting with a single Bible verse and claims they are only following the literal and perfect word of God. We won't get into the politics of the Councils of Nicaea and those of the Biblical-language-illiterate King James. Suffice it to note that anyone who points to an OT verse to justify taking a belt to a child or voting to deny rights to women or homosexuals is delusional in claiming that is the will of God.

Instead the conceit starting from at least the moment Vermont legalized civil unions that included homosexual couples is that this would be a zero-sum game. The idea is that anything allowed for a gay couple will mean something taken from all straight couples.

Huh?

Fairer, more rational and more inclusive

The asinine claim was first that slightly expanding the legal right to marry to two men or two women was at once redefining marriage and destroying different-gender marriage. Even President Obama and his missus, both lawyers, played at that when he was seeking election. They pretended not to understand the difference between marriage, which is the legal and binding contract of two people as controlled by each state, the DC and US territories, and religious ritual, which is the ceremonial icing on the matrimonial cake. Nearly half of couples have both, although only the civil marriage for which they get the license is legally marriage.

Comedians and columnists have had a great time ridiculing the redefining-marriage lunacy.Truth be told, both religions and legislatures have had a great time redefining marriage for centuries. In general, it's been by limitations, with flurries of expansion. Women are no longer considered male property and most marriages are not for solidifying family fortunes. The Chinese and African-American citizens are no longer forbidden from marrying white folk. Polygamy here is outlawed now, while still allowed in numerous Islamic states, as is polyandry is a few matriarchal groups mostly in Africa. The traditional polygamy of the Biblical patriarchs became against the law here. And most recently a slight tweak to allow homosexual couples to marry in some states has not so much redefined marriage as made it a little fairer, more rational and more inclusive.

The winger madness also turns to wild, unsupportable claims of discrimination. That's not against gay folk, which has been systemic and easily proven. Instead, the anti-gay sorts would have us believe:

• Protecting homosexuals will certainly mean persecuting anti-gay types
• Legalizing same-sex civil marriage will certainly mean anti-gay clerics will be forced to dirty their souls performing those unions
• Giving any gay rights will certainly mean anti-gay types will be charged with hate crimes at the worst and shunned by society at best

Where do they get this crap?

Facts are that we have an expansive protection for religion in our Constitution. It is deeply and widely supported in statute and case law as well. Fundies love to point to churches' side businesses, like adoption services, that bring in cash, accept federal and state money, and have to adhere to equal-rights laws. Likewise, church affiliated hospitals and such are not churches, rather businesses, that have to obey state and federal guidelines and laws. Churches and do discriminate wildly, irrationally and, well, unchristian-like. They can do so legally. They know they can't do it in their sidelines. Yet many claim discrimination. Huh?

So now after yesterday's two SCOTUS rulings, we see and hear more of the woe-are-we jive. "They" (not really defined) will come for the clerics next. "They" will abridge our freedom of speech from the pulpit and in the public square. "They" this. "They" that.

If I had the power to heal by touch, I would go from one anti-gay winger to another, laying on my hands and freeing them from hatred and fear.