Justin's Political Corner

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced a comprehensive immigration reform bill that will provide a path to citizenship for the nation’s 11.1 million undocumented immigrants, passing the measure in a vote of 13 to 5. Three Republicans — Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — joined the Democrats on the panel to support the legislation after considering 200 amendments over five days.

The vote came following an emotional debate over a pro-LGBT provision that would have recognized, for purposes of immigration, married same-sex couples. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) withdrew the amendement after Republican senators, including members of the so-called Gang of 8, signaled that they would abandon the underlining bill if it was included. “If you redefine marriage for immigration purposes [by the amendment], the bill would fall apart because the coalition would fall apart,” Graham said. “It would be a bridge too far.”

The full Senate is expected to debate the bill on the floor next month. Earlier on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pledged to “vote for the motion to proceed so we can get on the bill and see if it we’re able to pass a bill that actually moves the ball in the right direction.”

h/t: Igor Volsky at Think Progress Immigration

Former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis told ThinkProgress this week that they support marriage equality. With their endorsements, every living former Democratic presidential nominee is now on record in support of same-sex marriage.

Every other living Democratic nominee had previously made their support explicit.

The list includes:

• 1. Former President Jimmy Carter (1976 and 1980). Carter said last year “Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things — he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.”
• 2. Former Vice President Walter Mondale (1984). Mondale, who invoked civil rights legend Hubert Humphrey as he campaigned against last year’s proposed Minnesota marriage inequality amendment, said in an e-mail that he not both “opposed the constitutional amendment that would prevent legalizing gay marriage and I supported the legalization of gay marriage adopted this past week in Minnesota.
• 3. Former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis (1988). Dukakis confirmed his support to ThinkProgress in a May 12 e-mail.
• 4. Former President Bill Clinton (1992 and 1996). Clinton announced his support for marriage equality in 2009 and has actively campaigned for it since. Clinton had previously signed the anti-gay 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.
• 5. Former Vice President Al Gore (2000). Gore delivered a “forceful endorsement” of marriage equality in 2008, saying “gay men and women ought to have the same rights as heterosexual men and women — to make contracts, to have hospital visiting rights, to join together in marriage.”
• 6. Secretary of State John Kerry (2004). Kerry told the blog Blue Mass Group in 2008 that he “absolutely” supported civil marriage equality. He explained his evolution in a 2011 Boston Globe op-ed entitled “Politicians have the right to evolve on gay marriage.”
• 7. President Barack Obama (2008 and 2012). President Obama made his historic announcement one year ago, telling ABC’s Robin Roberts: “I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

Former Senator George McGovern (D-SD), the 1972 Democratic nominee, also endorsed marriage equality prior to his death last year. He told the Daily Republic last May: “I’m a ‘conservative’ when it comes to marriage. I think if two people love each other, are living together and having sex, they ought to get married.”

Follow Think Progress on Tumblr at: http://think-progress.tumblr.com/

H/T: Think Progress LGBT

AARP strives to serve the interests of all people over the age of 50, and that includes members of the LGBT community. The organization has a webpage dedicated to AARP Pride, with resources related to issues like marriage equality’s legal benefits, nondiscrimination protections in nursing homes, and unique health concerns like HIV. Because of AARP’s inclusiveness, the American Family Association is specifically targeting the retirement group for contributing money to the “homosexual agenda.” AFA Executive Vice President Buddy Smith offered this warning:

SMITH: When you reach the age of a person like myself and you begin to get information from the AARP saying that they will represent you and your values and standards, you’d better be careful. This group is a very, very powerful Washington lobby, and you just may be very surprised and disappointed to see those things that they are promoting and those things they are opposing.

Be very careful that you know what your fees are going for because the AARP is not on your side. If you are a Christian and believe in Biblical values, you can pretty much count on the fact that everything that you are in favor of, the AARP is opposing.

LGBT older adults face many unique challenges, especially in regards to their very economic well-being. Because of discrimination and alienation throughout their lifetime, as well as their inability to claim partner benefits like Social Security, LGBT older adults are much more likely to be living in isolation and poverty.

H/T: Zack Ford at Think Progress LGBT

In many of the states that have waged marriage equality fights recently, opponents have often coalesced around a coalition consisting of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the state’s Catholic conference, and the state’s “family policy council” affiliate of the Family Research Council. In Illinois, however, these typical players have not united in the same way, seemingly in part because the state social conservative group is the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), a hate group in its own right associated with the American Family Association.

IFI’s rhetoric is quite a bit more brazen than what anti-gay groups have used in other states, which may have scared away its would-be allies. 

Today marks three months since the Illinois Senate passed the marriage equality bill, and with only three weeks left for the House to pass it, here’s a look at some of IFI’s rhetoric that is dominating the opposition:

• Today, IFI posted numerous photos from its rally this weekend, including a sign that reads, “The crime against nature will never be equal.”
• Speakers at the rally included ex-gay advocate Linda Jernigan and another hate group leader, Peter LaBarbera, who told the crowd that homosexuality is “unnatural and wrong,” citing HIV rates among men who have sex with men as evidence of “the dangers of homosexuality.”
• In February, IFI’s Laurie Higgins wrote that gay people shouldn’t even be allowed to teach because they’ll put pictures of their partners on their desk that students will see.
• In fact, IFI believes that parents should pull their children from any classroom that attempts to create a safe environment for LGBT students.
• IFI has claimed gays and lesbians already have equality because they can marry the opposite sex like everyone else; same-sex marriage is thus a demand “to be treated specially.”

This extreme rhetoric extends beyond the talking points conservatives have traditionally used in these fights, which tend to focus on supposed protections for children, gender norms, and the institution of marriage. By openly condemning homosexuality as unnatural and curable through therapy — as well as enabling the bullying of LGBT youth — IFI sets itself apart.

H/T: Zack Ford at Think Progress LGBT

In an email to members of his Pray In Jesus Name Project yesterday, Gordon Klingenschmitt said that Religious Right activists must become “the voice” of the “abused kids” raised by same-sex parents, who he says are “not only recruited into but used as pawns for the homosexual agenda.”

Klingenschmitt responded to Justice Kennedy’s statement about the need to remember the “voice of those children” who “live with same-sex parents” while hearing the Proposition 8 case by arguing that “those abused children really wanted one mom and one dad, they just didn’t know better having been misled by California Judges who impose homosexual parents upon innocent kids, against their will, and against the will of California voters.”

He also claimed that Christians cannot support politicians who favor legalizing same-sex marriage and warned that gay rights advocates are bent on “taxing heterosexuals more to pay homosexuals to engage in immorality” and “reward their acts of sodomy.”

h/t: Right Wing Watch

Despite calls from LGBT and immigrant rights groups, the draft immigration reform legislation released by the Senate “Gang of 8” doesn’t include provisions that would allow same-sex couples to access the nation’s visa and immigration system. 

Under the current immigration system, individuals cannot sponsor a same-sex partner or spouse for a family visa, effectively forcing many families into exile abroad. This is codified by the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which is now under review by the Supreme Court, and activists have been pushing lawmakers to include provisions expanding rights to gay couples in the immigration bill.

The immigration bill also allows citizens and permanent residents in America to sponsor children, parents, and spouses from abroad to come to the country as “registered provisional immigrants,” the same limited legal status that would be made available to existing undocumented immigrants in the United States if it passes. But people in same-sex relationships would not be able to sponsor their spouse or partner under this provision. A recent studyestimated that there are 267,000 undocumented LGBT immigrants in America today and another 637,000 who are legal immigrants.

LGBT and immigration activists think they have a strong chance of adding protections later through the amendment process, however. Especially now that the majority of the Senate openly endorses gay marriage.

As the LGBT community continues to challenge discrimination and win their cases — be it discrimination by florists, bed & breakfasts, or T-shirt printers — conservatives have portrayed themselves as victims, claiming that recognizing LGBT people equally violates their religious beliefs. Their rhetoric has increasingly suggested the need for a backlash, which is exemplified in a new op-ed from Fox News contributor Pat Buchanan. Writing for the extremist site WorldNetDaily, Buchanan argues that the advent of LGBT equality could mean the so-called “culture wars” might have to become literal with conservatives brazenly violating the law.

Buchanan juxtaposes LGBT rights with the racial civil rights movement, openly admitting that religious leaders will have to preach “principled rejection” and encourage their congregations to disobey laws. He believes “treating black folks decently” is the Christian thing to do, but the same can not be said for the LGBT community.

Such civil disobedience would be a sight to behold: individuals marching demanding their right to discriminate. It would not likely live up to the nation’s creed as King intended. Fifty years ago today he wrote, “The goal of America is freedom,” and Buchanan and his fellow conservative Christians cannot change the fact that the inclusion of LGBT people is required to achieve that goal.

Bill O’Reilly recently got into a little hot water with the religious right. The abrasive talk show host dared to suggest on his show, “The O’Reilly Factor,” that the anti-gay movement would be better off using secular arguments against same-sex marriage than resorting endlessly to biblical ones. “The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals,” O’Reilly argued, adding, “And the other side hasn’t been able to do anything but thump the Bible.”

Since the beginning, the Christian right has been aware that the First Amendment makes it impossible for them to use “God said so” to justify legislation. They’ve spent decades grafting secular reasons onto what are fundamentally attempts to foist their views on the rest of the country, often going out of their way to conceal the religious origins of their policy ideas. In response, I created this list of what the religious right wants; what nonsense secular reason they give for wanting it; and the actual, true reason, usually down to chapter and verse.

1) What they want: A rollback on environmental protections. This is but one of many ways the religious right has merged its interests with that of corporate America.

The secular reasons they give: Many on the Christian right scoff at the science of global warming. Sadly, Americans in general are resistant to the science of global warming, but white evangelical Christians are even worse than the general public. Pew Forum found in 2009 that 47% of Americans accept the science of climate change, but only 34% of white evangelicals. The objections the religious right offers are fed to them by oil industry lobbyists, such as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council calling global warming theory “speculative.”

The unconstitutional, actual religious reasons: They justify this to themselves religiously coming and going. The fundamentalist Cornwall Alliance claims that belief in climate change is anti-Christian, because it “rests on and promotes a view of human beings as threats to Earth’s flourishing rather than the bearers of God’s image” and implies that God’s creation is “the fragile product of chance, not the robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting product of God’s wise design and powerful sustaining.” On the other side of it, as Ben Jervey of GOOD argued, 41% of Americans believe Jesus Christ will usher in Armageddon before 2050. If you believe the world is about to end, it seems pointless to make huge sacrifices to preserve its health into the future.

2) What they want: For the government to take money from the public school system and give it to private schools in the form of vouchers. They’ve had remarkable success at this by hijacking the larger, secular debate over education.

The secular reasons they give: The claim is that “school choice” creates competition among schools that improves educational outcomes. Public school charter systems are seen as an inadequate alternative, because they are supposedly not flexible enough.

The unconstitutional, actual religious reasons: They want the government to pay for the religious indoctrination of children. Even though the vouchers can, in theory, be spent on private secular schools, the way the program works in places like Louisiana makes it clear that this is about government-sponsored religious education.

3) What they want: No Equal Rights Amendment. While this battle to prevent the Constitution from being amended to give women equal rights, which the right won, was mostly fought in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Christian right-controlled legislatures occasionally take time to vote against it today.

The secular reasons they gave: In many ways, Phyllis Schlafly used the battle against the ERA to invent the modern conservative strategy of making bad faith secular arguments to advance a religious agenda. As Rachel Maddow recounts, Schlafly and her comrades claimed the ERA would mandate unisex bathrooms, make it illegal for women to be housewives, and destroy families.

The unconstitutional, actual religious reasons: The Bible is pretty clear that women are not equal to men, calling them “the weaker vessel” (1 Peter 3:7) who must live “in silence” to “not usurp authority over man” (1 Timothy 2:12), because women are to basically worship their husbands, “and he shall rule over thee” (Genesis 3:16).

4) What they want: A ban on gay marriage. Often cast as “protecting” traditional marriage.

The secular reasons they give: The argument presented in favor of Prop 8 before the Supreme Court is that marriage was established to make sure children are raised by the parents who created them through sexual intercourse, and that expanding it to include gay couples (it’s already expanded to include stepfamilies and infertile couples) would redefine it in a way that would cause vague damage the anti-gay lawyer refused to describe.

The unconstitutional, actual religious reasons: The Old Testament harshly condemns homosexuality, saying, “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death” (Leviticus 20:13). Christian fundamentalists have downgraded this simply to mean that their government shouldn’t endorse marriages that go against right-wing religious teachings.

5) What they want: To end the teaching of evolution in schools. This battle has been going on since at least the 1920s, and every time it comes around, the religious right gets a little better at hiding its religious motivations behind secularist claims.

The secular reasons they give: The current strategy is to claim that evolutionary theory is scientifically controversial, and therefore schools should “teach the controversy.” Clearly, they hope to give students reason to doubt the theory of evolution. In reality, there is no controversy. As the National Center for Science Education has stated, “There is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism of evolution.”

The unconstitutional, actual religious reasons: For Biblical literalists, evolution is an uncomfortable topic because the Bible says God created the world in the space of six days. While evolution correctly holds that human beings are primates who evolved from a common ancestor, the Bible teaches that God made them out of “the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7). Why that is supposed to be less demeaning is hard to say.

6) What they want: To restrict access to abortion and contraception. Everyone knows the religious right has it out for abortion rights, but recently attacks on contraception access have also been increasing.

The secular reasons they give: Abortion is “baby-killing,” it’s unsafe for women, and it causes breast cancer and suicide. Emergency contraception is really “abortion” and birth control pills are unsafe. Telling kids just to abstain from sex is the only public health strategy we need. Condoms don’t work to prevent HIV. 

All of these claims are lies, as is the secular pose that anti-choice activists take when promoting these lies.

The unconstitutional, actual religious reasons: Right from the beginning, the Bible is big on the idea that a woman’s role is to be frequently pregnant, whether she likes it or not. “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children” (Genesis 3:16). He commands it again to Noah: “And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein” (Genesis 9:7).

So, in a very real sense, even when Bill O’Reilly is right, he’s wrong. He’s not wrong to say that social conservatives would do well to come up with secular arguments for their positions, instead of tell a country with strict protections for religious freedom to obey their interpretation of the Bible. He’s just wrong to think they don’t already know that. After all, they wrote the instruction manual.

h/t: AlterNet

There has been a lot of speculation as to what actually transpired when Roger Gorley was arrested away from his husband Allen’s bedside in a Missouri hospital earlier this week. Despite the fact Roger and Allen have granted each other power of attorney for medical decisions, the Research Medical Center claimed that Roger was “disruptive and belligerent,” arguing that is why the police arrested him and removed him from the facility.

Here is a breakdown of the family’s circumstances and what transpired in that hospital room according to Amanda:

The Couple’s Background

• Allen suffers from severe depression and is currently undergoing electro-shock treatment (ECT) twice a month because his medications are no longer allowing him to function normally.
• Allen has specifically excluded his family from having any say over his medical decisions because they have not been understanding of the impact of his depression.
• Not only have Roger and Allen granted each other power of attorney, but they are known throughout the hospital as a proud gay couple because they are regularly there for Allen’s treatments.
• Allen’s family has not been supportive of his relationship with Roger.

How Allen Was Admitted On Tuesday

• Amanda was taking care of Allen while Roger was at work at Tuesday, but when they returned home from a few errands, Allen’s brother Lee and sister Pat were waiting at the door with paramedics and police.
• Due to Allen’s sluggish state, the police determined he was a “danger to himself” and decided to take him to the hospital against his will. Rather than taking him to St. Luke’s Hospital in Lee’s Summit, the local hospital where his regular doctors are, they took him to the Research Medical Center in Kansas City, which he only goes to for his ECT. They ignored Amanda’s attempts to explain Allen’s medical needs and procedures.
• Amanda called her father, Roger, and urged him to get to Allen’s side immediately. When he arrived at the hospital, Lee was also there.

The Family Confrontation

• Lee asserted that he was not going to allow Roger to make decisions for Allen and that he would instead. This enraged Roger, who replied, “No you won’t! This is my husband.  I know what he wants and needs. You are never around.  You need to leave.”
• The nurse informed Roger that because of his agitated state, he needed to leave. When he explained that he intended to stay with his husband, she replied, “I know who you two are. You need to leave.” Refusing to acknowledge their legal relationship, she called the police to have Roger forcibly removed.
• Allen, who was in and out of consciousness, objected as he was able, saying, “I want him here.”
• A follow-up story from Fox 4 suggests that Roger and Lee were having a loud fight, but doesn’t otherwise contradict this account.

The Violent Arrest

• The Kansas City police ordered Roger to leave, and when he did not comply, they considered this a refusal to cooperate and began to forcibly remove him. When Roger refused to let go of the gurney’s railing, an officer began karate chopping his wrists to get him to release.
• The police then wrestled Roger to ground, knocking his glasses off his face, his hearing aids out of his ears, and nearly breaking his wrist in the process. They put a knee to his back and wrenched his wrists around to arrest him. They changed his handcuffs four different times.
• The police assumed because Roger is gay that he must have HIV. The brutal struggle had drawn blood, and one officer was so disturbed that he insisted on using gloves to handle Roger and refused to even take back his handcuffs.

The Aftermath

• It took three hours to process Roger at the station and bail him out of jail.
• He was fined $600 for disorderly conduct and trespassing. Fox4 confirmed this from a police report.
• According to Amanda’s account, he was also issued a restraining order prohibiting him from stepping foot on the hospital grounds to see his husband.
• Later, the hospital finally asked Lee to leave as well, at Allen’s request.

The hospital’s statement on Thursday claimed that there was no restraining order, and according to Amanda’s last update, this was the first information indicating Roger could see Allen again since his arrest on Tuesday. Aravosis confirms via Amanda that the hospital did allow Roger back in to see his husband Thursday night, but only after he “showed up and threw a fit.” She says her family is considering its options and has been talking with the local ACLU as they plan a response. Federal officials are similarly gathering evidence and intent to respond “in a speedy manner.”

With these details, both the hospital’s and police’s actions seem more suspect, not less. At the foundation of the story remains the fact that Roger and Allen’s relationship was treated as inferior. Because they did not have a state-recognized marriage, they were regarded as legal strangers despite even having set up the available legal protections for each other. Roger, in turn, was subjected not just to discrimination but police brutality and legal consequences. This tragic story speaks volumes about the consequences of continuing to deny same-sex couples the right to marry and how they continue to be treated as second-class citizens. Notably, not one conservative organization has mentioned this story since it broke.

Previously: http://justinspoliticalcorner.tumblr.com/post/47704463635/missouri-man-arrested-at-hospital-for-refusing-to-leave#.UWiEfbVwofU

h/t:  Zack Ford at Think Progress LGBT

A gay man was arrested at a hospital in Missouri this week when he refused to leave the bedside of his partner, and now a restraining order is preventing him from any type of visitation.

Roger Gorley told WDAF that even though he has power of attorney to handle his partner’s affairs, a family member asked him to leave when he visited Research Medical Center in Kansas City on Tuesday.

Gorley said he refused to leave his partner Allen’s bedside, and that’s when security put him in handcuffs and escorted him from the building.

I was not recognized as being the husband, I wasn’t recognized as being the partner,” Gorley explained.

He said the nurse refused to confirm that the couple shared power of attorney and made medical decision for each other.

“She didn’t even bother to look it up, to check in to it,” the Lee’s Summit resident recalled.

In a 2010 memorandum, President Barack Obama ordered hospitals that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding to allow visitation rights for gay and lesbian partners.

For its part, Research Medical Center insisted that it does not discriminate based on sexual orientation.

Gorley cannot currently visit his partner at all due to a restraining order issued after his arrest on Tuesday.

h/t: Raw Story

Editor’s note: Chris Kluwe is a punter for the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League. He is an ambassador for Athlete Ally, an organization working to end homophobia in sports, as are Brendon Ayanbadejo of the Baltimore Ravens and Scott Fujita of the New Orleans Saints.

(CNN) — “Don’t be a distraction.”

These words are pounded into every single NFL player’s head from the day he enters the league until the day he leaves (and I would imagine it holds true for just about every professional sport).

The same message, over and over and over — “The team comes first,” “Sacrifice your personal goals to win,” “Only be judged by what goes on between the lines” — which is why I find it unsurprising that there are no openly gay athletes in any of the big four professional sports leagues in the U.S.: the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB.

The message is pushed on us so hard, in fact, that players run the very real risk of losing their jobs if the team deems them too much of a distraction, and unfortunately it seems gay players feel that being comfortable with who they are has to take second place to keeping their jobs.

This isn’t right.