Today in Disgusting People (Updated)

You may have heard that the Boys Scouts of America has filed for bankruptcy. Perennial hate-monger Tony Perkins, of course, is ready to fix blame. Via Joe.My.God.:

It’s one of the saddest, most predictable “I-told-you-so” moments of our generation. The Boy Scouts, where future moon walkers and presidents learned the virtues and value of leadership, has finally collapsed. Turns out, the decade of compromise hasn’t been kind to the Scouts, who turned in their moral compass seven years ago to chase the approval of critics it could never win. Now, deep into the BSA’s self-imposed identity crisis, the group is filing for bankruptcy — an unhappy ending we all warned was coming.

For those who knew the Scouts through their proud and honorable days, the demise has been slow and painful. But this is what comes of throwing up your hands on a century of conviction: irrelevance and, ultimately, insolvency. For 103 of its 110 years, the Boy Scouts were a pillar of principle — not that it was easy.

As most of us know, the fight to live out your beliefs in this world can be an exhausting one. The Scouts spent years in court just for the freedom to stick to their moral code. They won — but to the organization’s dismay — the battle didn’t end. Waves of LGBT activists kept coming. The pressure built and built until finally, in 2013, under the leadership of Rex Tillerson, headquarters gave into the lie that compromise would be their salvation. Seven years later, the irony is: there’s nothing left to save.

As Joe points out:

. . . today’s bankruptcy filing comes in response to thousands of lawsuits filed over alleged sexual abuse that happened long before openly LGBT persons were allowed to participate. In almost all of the cases, the alleged abuse took place decades ago in Boy Scout chapters operated by Christian churches.

There's a lot more information on that in the comments, which are worth reading.

Update: Here's a report on what's actually happening, without the moral posturing.

Today's Must-Watch

Just happened across this. It's worth sharing, not only for Bregman's remarks, but especially for the remarks of Winnie Byanyima, who follows him and who happens to be the executive director of Oxfam International-- she's passionate and right on target:

For some reason, I haven't been invited to Davos this year. Was it something I said? 🤔pic.twitter.com/6Qmrup7HrB

— Rutger Bregman (@rcbregman) January 20, 2020

With thanks to commenter Doug105 at Joe.My.God.

Today's Must-Read: Remember Joe McCarthy?

Digby gives a good overview of the Nunes memo shenanigans and coming attractions. This part summarizes the attitudes of the hard-core Nunes adherents quite nicely:

It's true that a few others have joined that chorus, signaling that at least a handful of Republicans don't want to be associated with the notion that this memo "vindicates" the president. (Notably, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was not among them.)

Chairman Nunes is undeterred. Axios reported on Sunday:

The House Intelligence chair and his team have told members and associates they've found other examples of politically motivated "wrongdoing" across various agencies, including the FBI, the broader Justice Department, and the State Department . . . Republicans close to Nunes say there could be as many as five additional memos or reports of "wrongdoing."

One wonders if Nunes has any knowledge of that time in 1950 when a senator named Joseph McCarthy pulled out a "list" he claimed had the names of 200 people in the State Department whom he accused of politically motivated wrongdoing. It didn't end well.

I'm sure there will be more memos forthcoming -- Trump's gotten so much mileage out of this one that it makes no sense to stop. And of course, there will be more rebuttals, which Fox News and the base will ignore and the New York Times will find some excuse to discount.

At any rate, read the whole thing -- it's deja vu all over again.

OK, This Is Funny

Trust Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) to pinpoint the problems with Trump/RyanCare:

"But members also are having problems with people back home, and that's the problem. It's the people back home who are being very vocal, who are in a lot of these conservative groups that do not understand the bill because it has not been sold properly to them. That's the real problem. Not the President. Not whether they do or don't want to vote," Sessions said. "The people back home are not sold on what we're doing yet, and that's partially my fault also. I’ve tried to take the time to explain to the American people why we're doing this, but we recognize it's back home voter, not Washington, D.C. voter."

Trans.: The propaganda mill isn't working.

Gee, for some reason people don't believe Trump or Ryan. I wonder why.

Today's Must-Read: A Twofer

There. I'm being very up front about it this time.

Two posts in my morning reading started building links between themselves. (Well, OK, I did it, but it's just the way my mind works: it's right-brain thinking, in which your mind makes connections that are not obvious to rational -- i.e., left-brain -- thinking. It's the way an artist thinks.)

At any rate, the first is Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo on the "Deep State," President Bannon's chief bugaboo:

The deep state is the latest "fifth column" narrative of betrayal from within. Conservative radio host Mark Levin alleges Obama and the Democrats have “squirreled their appointees into the bureaucracy” to engage in a "silent coup" against Trump. But for the Trump administration the narrative functions rather neatly as a preemptive explanation for his administration's own failures. Andrew Sullivan sees Trump's unsupported accusations of wiretapping against President Obama and attacks against the press as "designed to erode the very notion of an empirical reality, independent of his own ideology and power." Peter Beinart believes that deep state rumors are a diversion that will allow Trump to dismiss as partisan hackery any findings by the Justice Department that his administration has ties to the Russian government.

(Emphasis added.)

The portion I emphasized ties in very neatly to this article by David Roberts at Vox, via Digby, which, in spite of the headline is not about climate change denial:

Indeed, the climate fight has long since moved past the stage when it was about the facts.

Allow me an analogy. Imagine you’re playing a basketball game. A member of the other team travels. The referee calls the travel, but the opposing player just shrugs and says, “I don’t care.” He refuses to surrender the ball and just keeps going. Then his team starts putting extra players on the court, fouling at will, and pelting your team with refuse. The referee continues calling violations, but the other team simply disregards him. They start appealing to their own referees, friends of theirs in the stands. “Bob says there was no foul.”

At that point, the dispute is no longer about what happened in this play or that play. The facts are not at issue. The dispute is over the authority of the referee. The question is whether both teams will honor the referee’s calls, and if not, how the game can be played at all and what “winning” means under the circumstances.

If it’s not obvious, the referee in this analogy is science.

Roberts does us the favor of extending that analogy:

But in a sense, climate denial is just the tip of the (melting) iceberg. The right’s refusal to accept the authority of climate science is of a piece with its rejection of mainstream media, academia, and government, the shared institutions and norms that bind us together and contain our political disputes.

Trumpism is just the flowering of a process that has been underway for a couple of generations, and which we're seeing in all sorts of contexts -- climate change denial, "fake news," "alternative facts," "Christians" rejecting the authority of the law, the press' "both sides do it" mantra, and on and on. Ascribing it to emerging fascism is almost too trite -- it's the erosion of the very foundations of civilization.

And we can thank "conservatism" when it all comes tumbling down.

Footnote: This is a prime example of the tactics conservatives use:

Aiming to erode public trust in the Congressional Budget Office ahead of its report this week expected to show that the GOP's Obamacare repeal bill will cause millions of people to lose their health insurance, Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials are rewriting the history of the CBO's analysis of the Affordable Care Act.

"They were way, way off last time in every aspect of how they scored and projected Obamacare," White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters. "If you look at the number of people they projected would be on Obamacare, they were off by millions.

"

On "Deplorables" (Updated)

I couldn't agree more with Josh Marshall's comments:

Let me take a moment to address this "basket of deplorables" comment because I think it's critically important to get this right. Hillary Clinton has simply said what is the premise of most election coverage of the 2016 campaign: a big chunk of Trump supporters are haters. Racists, misogynists, people who are angry at the social and demographic changes in the country that most Americans see as progress. They want to stop it in its tracks and they want payback for what has happened already. To emphasize the point, this is not just what she and likely the great majority of her supporters believe. It has been the premise of most reporting on the campaign and validated by a vast cache of public opinion data confirming these points.

It may have been easier not to say this and left herself vulnerable to a faux-populist counterattack. But she did say it. She cannot unsay it. And since it is not only basically true but in fact a matter of central importance to the entire election, it is truly critical that she not back down.

Add in the tribalists -- the hard-core Republicans who put party over country -- and you've got Trump's base.

Should she have said it? It's hard to know what to answer -- Marshall's comment about faux-populist rage has an element of truth -- a big element of truth -- but she's going to get that no matter what she says about anything. And I think it's about time that the Democrats started hitting harder, if you know what I mean: I'm tired of the party that demonstrably is working for the good of the country as a whole being on the defensive. And the thing about the right wing -- like any other bullies, if you stand up to them, they'll fold.

And as for her "apology":

I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong,” Clinton said in a statement. . . .

Maybe you have to have a life-long of in-your-face attitude, but I read that as "I regret saying only half -- that was wrong."

The Clinton campaign came out with this statement yesterday afternoon:

“Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that's never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ -- that was wrong. But let's be clear, what's really ‘deplorable’ is that Donald Trump hired a major advocate for the so-called ‘alt-right’ movement to run his campaign and that David Duke and other white supremacists see him as a champion of their values. It's deplorable that Trump has built his campaign largely on prejudice and paranoia and given a national platform to hateful views and voices, including by retweeting fringe bigots with a few dozen followers and spreading their message to 11 million people. It's deplorable that he's attacked a federal judge for his ‘Mexican heritage,’ bullied a Gold Star family because of their Muslim faith, and promoted the lie that our first black president is not a true American. So I won't stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign. I also meant what I said last night about empathy, and the very real challenges we face as a country where so many people have been left out and left behind. As I said, many of Trump's supporters are hard-working Americans who just don’t feel like the economy or our political system are working for them. I'm determined to bring our country together and make our economy work for everyone, not just those at the top. Because we really are ‘stronger together.’”

Clarify -- don't apologize.

Update: Just ran across this, by Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic:

One way of reporting on Clinton’s statement is to weigh its political cost, ask what it means for her campaign, or attempt to predict how it might affect her performance among certain groups. This path is in line with the current imperatives of political reporting and, at least for the moment, seems to be the direction of coverage. But there is another line of reporting that could be pursued — Was Hillary Clinton being truthful or not?

(Emphasis added.)

And, as Coates goes on to demonstrate, she was.

It's sobering to realize just how far from reality the media have drifted, when no one -- well, almost no one -- is asking that basic question. But then, according to one of the sock-puppets scheduled to moderate the presidential debates, fact-checking is not their job.

Really? Since when?

They Don't Give Up

There's a new "study" out that purports to debunk the "liberal" narratives on sexual orientation and gender identity. David Hart, at the Slowly Boiled Frog, points out some of the problems:

 Ryan T. Anderson writes at Heritage Foundation's blog:

A major new report, published today in the journal The New Atlantis, challenges the leading narratives that the media has pushed regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.

Co-authored by two of the nation’s leading scholars on mental health and sexuality, the 143-page report discusses over 200 peer-reviewed studies in the biological, psychological, and social sciences, painstakingly documenting what scientific research shows and does not show about sexuality and gender.

Back the fuck up.

There is nothing new about this and it is not a major report. Major reports are published to peer reviewed scholarly journals. The New Atlantis is not peer reviewed and it is a project of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. EPPC is a conservative Catholic organization headed by Ed Whelan with an assist from  George Weigel. The authors did not engage in an independent investigation of anything. Rather, this is a cherry picking of existing research to suit a predetermined ideological conclusion.

Those two “leading scholars” are Lawrence S. Mayer (who is out of his depth on sexuality — he is a biostatistician-epidemiologist) and Paul R. McHugh. McHugh insists that transgender people do not exist. Everyone involved in this, … paper is a Defender of the Faith™, as is Ryan Anderson.

Hart's points, although rather vehemently stated, are valid: The New Atlantis is not a scholarly journal -- it doesn't seem to publish origina research, it is not peer reviewed, there seems to be no mechanism for vetting submissions other than ideology: It is an organ of the Catholic Church, ultimately, through several layers. Just skimming through on my own, it appears that the authors have followed the path so beloved of anti-gay "Christian" voices -- cherry-picking data and using it to support their predetermined conclusions, while ignoring any data that doesn't. I call it "Faith-Based Science." It's the sort of thing that got Paul Cameron (remember him? He's the guy whose work is still being cited by the likes of Tony Perkins, although they no longer mention him by name -- he's that radioactive) kicked out of every professional organization he belonged to.

Anne Hilt has a more detailed rebuttal. She concludes:

In the end, we must ask why McHugh and Mayer went to such lengths to produce such a long and deeply flawed paper for a journal that isn’t even peer reviewed. First and foremost, it provides a scientific veneer for the public policy goals of their church. Ultimately this paper is about using cherry-picked science to justify religious views rather than an actual review of what the research suggests should be best practice. This public policy work was put in to practice when much of this same paper was used in a deposition in support of HB2. They have somehow contorted themselves to twist the commonly accepted answer of , “it’s complex” into “there’s no evidence.”

In this they have gone against all current medical wisdom, standards of care, and practice. There does not appear to be any awareness or concern that such a contrarian position which could cause so much harm to so many people requires an extraordinary level of proof.

This paper does not suffice as such when it cuts so many corners, resorts to logical fallacies, and claims without either evidence or citation. A solution of “more reparative therapy” is far less supportable than their claims about the biological origins of gender identity. In the end, they have forgotten their vow to “do no harm,” while advocating against both civil and human rights for highly vulnerable minorities.

I have to confess, I simply don't understand the motivations of people who do things like this. I really can't find a point of entry on that. I can understand it better on the part of the Church: it's a matter of power and influence, and the Church has been losing ground steadily over the past few decades, as more and more people come to see that reality and Church doctrine have very little to do with each other. And the Church's behavior during the sexual abuse scandals did nothing to help: it's hard to take seriously as a moral arbiter an institution that is so obviously morally bankrupt.

I am, as it happens, deeply offended by anyone calling this sort of garbage "science." I big portion of my education has been in science, specifically psychology, and this kind of thing is one of the worst perversions there can be, in my book. Not to mention the complete lack of ethics involved.

At any rate, this "study" is now being touted everywhere by the right wing, and as Hilt notes, has already been used in an amicus brief. One only hopes that the opposing counsel can lay hands on someone who knows what they're talking about to rebut it.

Today In Disgusting People

This is a United States Senator:

“In his role as President, I think we should pray for Barack Obama. But I think we need to be very specific about how we pray,” Perdue told the audience at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, D.C. “We should pray like Psalm 109:8 says, that says, ‘let his days be few.’”

After waiting a beat, Perdue said, “And let another have his office,’” drawing laughter from the audience.

I guess that's the sort of thing "Christians" find funny.

However, when you look at the rest of that verse:

As observers on Twitter quickly pointed out, the full Biblical passage is significantly more ominous.

“May his days be few; may another take his office,” the cited section reads.

“May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow! May his children wander about and beg, seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit!” the next section continues.

Do I really need to say anything?

Oh, there's this:

Perdue spokeswoman Caroline Vanvick said in a statement to Bloomberg that the Georgia senator "in no way wishes harm towards our president."

Bull.

Today's Must-Watch

Frank Schaeffer, in case you didn't know (I didn't), is the man who, with his family, created the "pro-life" movement as a political force. Here's a portion of an interview with Samantha Bee. It's very revealing. (It's also fairly profane, so be warned.)

I realize that I've gotten pretty cynical about the religious right and their motives, but Shaeffer offers this bit of validation: he admits he was in it for the money.

Via Gaius Publius at Hullabaloo.

Weasel du Jour (Update)

That would be Pat McCrory, staunch guardian of North Carolina's bathrooms. The man's really a piece of work. I'm sure you've heard this one:

Speaking to CNN host Jake Tapper on Wednesday, McCrory accused Democrats of starting a fight over transgender bathroom rights by passing an ordinance in the City of Charlotte that allowed transgender people to visit public restrooms that correspond to their gender identity.

"I think that this was an argument that we didn't need to have," McCrory opined. "But this is an agenda by the far left. And for some reason, the national media is saying the far right brought this up. I had no interest in this subject."

"Shame on you, for making me hit you!"

North Carolina, for the first time in something like 150 years, has a legislature full of bullies, headed by their bully-in-chief, McCrory. (Seriously -- this is the first time Republicans have been in control of the state government since, I believe, 1870.)

Tapper pointed out that transgender children "have a very difficult time fitting in, they have very high suicide rates."

"What are you telling the teachers at schools in North Carolina where, say, a 12-year-old who identifies as a girl, though her birth certificate says boy, what do you tell teachers about her if she's using the girl's bathroom?" the CNN host wondered.

McCrory argued that the solution was to "make special circumstances" by allowing the transgender girl to use a segregated bathroom.

"But now the Civil Right Division of the U.S. Justice Department has deemed those types of arrangements to be discriminatory," McCrory remarked.

Does the phrase "separate but equal" ring a bell, Governor?

Here's video, if you can stand it. The man turns my stomach.

Credit to Tapper for not giving him a pass.

Update:

And the First Runner Up is: Governor Phil Bryant (R-Mississippi [no, not Alabama, but close]):

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant complained Christians are still being bullied in his state because not everyone agrees with their interpretation of a law that permits discrimination against LGBT people.

Bryant insisted the law was intended to prevent discrimination against Christians by allowing them to deny service, housing, medical treatment and some government documents to LGBT people or even unmarried couples — so long as they claim a religious objection.

The ACLU is challenging portions of the law that permit discrimination against same-sex couples by arguing the law violates the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, and Bryant complained the civil rights group was “bullying” Christians in his state, reported Right Wing Watch.

Seriously -- allows them to deny medical treatment?!?!?

There's this psychological mechanism known as "projection". . . .

Today's Must-Read

This somewhat lengthy post by Digby, especially the commentary on the Washington press corps vis-a-vis Paul Ryan:

But this desire to turn right wingers into statesmen based upon very little evidence is a common phenomenon among media observers. Perhaps it's because they can't believe the ego-driven ineptitude and/or ideological extremism could possibly be as bad as it seems so they look for any small sign of competence and run with it in the vain hope that they'll awaken from this nightmare and the Republican party will be normal again. If so, no Washington figure has benefited from this phenomenon more than House Speaker Paul Ryan.

For years he has been the up and coming "it boy" of the Republican caucus, leader of the young guns, the captain of the "deep bench" of new leadership that was going to lead the Party to the promised land.

Ryan is, as far as I'm concerned, the type specimen of the empty suit. As for his accomplishments (aside from budgets that didn't add up -- literally):

Paul Krugman memorably tried to remind everyone that Ryan had always been less than meets the eye:

The fact is that Ryan is and always was a fraud. His plan never added up; it was never, contrary to what people who should know better asserted, “scored” by the CBO. What he actually offered was a plan to hurt the poor and reward the rich, actually increasing the deficit along the way, plus magic asterisks that supposedly reduced the debt by means unspecified.

His genius, if you can all it that, was in realizing that there was a role — as I said, that of Honest, Serious Conservative — that self-proclaimed centrists desperately wanted to see filled, so that they could demonstrate their bipartisanship by lavishing praise on the holder of that position. So Ryan did his best to impersonate a budget wonk. It wasn’t a very good impersonation — in fact, he’s pretty bad at budget math.

And now you know why the Eagles' "Hotel California" reminds me of Washington. (If you need a refresher, scroll down to yesterday's "Culture Break" post.)

Today in Disgusting People

, or, "Today in 'Christian' Love," or, "Today in Compassionate Conservatism" -- take your pick. This:

A program designed to help ex-felons who served time for drug offenses went into effect September 1st in Texas.

Texas soon will allow tens of thousands of residents convicted of drug crimes to receive food assistance from the federal government, joining almost every other state in ending a ban that once covered the entire nation.

Because it makes sense that if ex-convicts are able to feed themselves and their families, there's less incentive for them to return to their old habits. I mean, let's face it -- getting a job these days is not easy for anyone, and it's worse if you've got a record.

But never fear -- Fox News to the rescue:

Morning fearmongerer [sic], Brian Kilmeade presented the story with the intro,

'Hey, thousands of felons are receiving food stamps ON YOUR DIME.'

He interviewed a run-of-the-mill Texas Republican, Matt Rinaldi, who represented the compassionate Conservative opinion that giving aid to the downtrodden is just enabling them. Rinaldi identifies as a Roman Catholic, who apparently eschews the Gospel of Jesus. He identifies with the Tea Party, who wants stronger border security and expanded Second Amendment rights. . . .

Rinaldi gave the usual shtick, why should drug dealers get aid when single mothers, who have done everything by the book, are getting the same assistance?

Hmm . . . how many of those single mothers have never been married? And what book is he talking about?

For some reason, I keep coming up with a parallel between the conservative attitude toward former convicts and children: you're OK if you're someplace where we can keep you under control, like prison or your mother's uterus, but once you're out on your own -- well, you're on your own.

To Fox's credit, they did have a rational person on the show presenting the other side of the story. But Kilmeade's lede is pretty thoroughly reprehensible.

"Christian" Exercise Routines

They seem to favor doubling down, backtracking, and dodging. Remember Pastor Ben Bailey of Tennessee, who was steadfast in his contention that gays deserve to be stoned?

“God does not approve of homosexuality or gay marriage,” he insisted. “The scripture says… that is vile, unnatural and deserving of a penalty… It’s an abomination that under the Old Testament deserved stoning.”

Well, it seems he wasn't really condoning the murder of gays:

"We do not believe in stoning homosexuals," Bailey tells WTAE. He says the New Testament doesn't teach that, "and I didn't teach that in the video."

However, if you look at his church's website and his own sermons, you're likely to be scratching your head over the cognitive dissonance.

"Did you know that the New Testament says that homosexuality is a sin against God and nature?," the text of a sermon given by Bailey reads. "In Romans 1:26-29 we are told that homosexuality is immoral and ungodly, and that people who engage in such will receive the eternal punishment that is due to them if they do not change their ways."

Sounds like he's dodging here. Apparently, his faith isn't strong enough to weather the blowback from his disgraceful and inflammatory statements. But he's doing it out of "love" -- at least, the "Christian" version of love, which no rational person would recognize as anything positive.

If you read the article at the link, the guy sounds pretty incoherent. Perhaps the video is clearer:

It strikes me how easy it must be to be a "Christian" -- you don't have to take responsibility for anything, if you screw someone over Jesus will forgive you (and you don't have to worry about the effect of your actions on those you've harmed), and you never have to question anything in the Bible -- you just have to pick the parts that suit your own agenda.

Must be nice.

Finally (Update)

A newspaper willing to tell it like it is. The Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader has published a blistering editorial on Kim Davis and her battle for "religious freedom":

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis has chosen to prolong her moment in the limelight by defying a federal judge's order to issue marriage licenses to legally qualifed people who apply for them.

U.S. District Judge David Bunning kindly but firmly told Davis Wednesday that in our system her religious beliefs don't trump the rights of the taxpayers who pay her almost $80,000 annual salary. . . .

No doubt county clerks and their staffs over the decades have often looked at people applying for marriage licenses and questioned both the wisdom and the likely sanctity of the proposed union. Certainly they've often known things about the couple that many religions would frown upon. But we've never heard of a clerk denying a license to a divorced person, a philanderer, someone who's abused a partner or neglected children. It's easy to imagine the outrage and chaos that would ensue if clerks began morality-testing prospective opposite-gender spouses. But that's exactly the right that Davis is demanding. She wants to pick and choose, based on her beliefs, which legally qualified couples will get marriage licenses.

The real target, though, is Liberty Counsel, acting as Davis' attorneys:

Liberty's attorneys know they can't win the case in Rowan County. Same-sex marriage is legal since the Supreme Court's June 26 decision and it's Davis' job to issue marriage licenses.

So, why is Liberty Counsel marching alongside Davis in this losing cause? It takes a lot to keep that marketing machine humming and those executives paid, and the only way to keep those donations coming is to stay in the news. For that purpose a losing cause is just as good as, perhaps better than, a winning one.

That comes after a summary of Liberty Counsel's executive salaries and expenses -- excuse me, $600,000 for someone to send e-mails?

Read the whole thing. It's delicious.

(Apologies -- somehow, I forgot to provide the link. It's there now, so I've bumped this one up.)

Now That's Chutzpah

It take a special kid of moxie for a government official to sue the governor for directing her to do her job:

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, who is being sued for refusing to issue marriage licenses because of her opposition to gay marriage, is now suing Gov. Steve Beshear for allegedly infringing on her religious freedom.

In her lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, Davis blamed Beshear for instructing the state's 120 county clerks to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in June striking down Kentucky's same-sex marriage ban and legalizing gay marriage nationwide.

I'm almost speechless. She blames Beshear for instructing the county clerks to comply with a Supreme Court decision. Sorry, Ms. Davis, that should be automatic.

Liberty Counsel is representing her (big surprise). Here's a choice example of their reasoning:

In an interview, Davis' attorney said Beshear misinterpreted the Supreme Court's decision in the marriage case. The court ordered all states to recognize same-sex marriage, but it did not require every local official to do so, said Roger Gannam, a lawyer with the Liberty Counsel, a religious advocacy group.

WTF? If she's not an agent of the state, then she's nothing.

And here's another good bit:

It goes further to explain that the licenses cannot be issued without her name, "Thus, every marriage license must be issued and signed in the county clerk’s name and by the county clerk’s authority. In other words, no marriage license can be issued by a county clerk without her authorization and without her imprimatur."

So, she's the only one who can issue a marriage license in Rowan County, but she doesn't feel like doing it for same-sex couples, because Jesus. (And I'd love to hear what Jesus has to say about this.)

This is another battle in the ongoing "Christian" war against the Constitution. Davis is arguably involation of the Establishment Clause, by imposing a religious test on who may avail themselves of the services of the county clerk. And appealing to state law, as she does -- she claims protection under Kentucky's "religious freedom" law -- in order to flout a Supreme Court decision, is just unbelievable. Well, it would be if it were real lawyers arguing this, rather than Liberty Counsel.

I'm going to enjoy watching this one play out.

Remember That Pizza Joint in Indiana?

The one that announced it would not cater same-sex weddings, even though 1) no one had asked them to, and 2) who in the hell would serve pizza at their wedding banquet?

Someone came up with the perfect response:

 

Not To Confuse Anyone With Facts, Or Anything

Remember Aaron and Melissa Klein, the Oregon bakers who have vaulted to "Christian martyr" status after the state found them in violation of Oregon's anti-discrimination law? They've been fined $135,000, which the usual suspects are taking as evidence of persecution for failing to "participate" in a same-sex wedding by not selling the couple a cake.

Well, that's not really the reason they were fined:

However, the ruling shows the bakery owners had made Laurel and Rachel Bowman-Cryer the victims of persecution and makes clear the payment was compensation for damages and not a fine or civil penalty, reported the blog Love, Joy and Feminism.

The ruling shows the Kleins “brought the case to the media’s attention and kept it there by repeatedly appearing in public to make statements deriding” the couple who filed the complaint.

“It was foreseeable that this attention would negatively impact (the Bowman-Cryers), making (the Kleins) liable for any resultant emotional suffering experienced by (them),” the agency found.

Not only that, as the blog explains, the bakery owners shared the couple’s personal contact information – which led to death threats that nearly caused them to lose custody of their foster children.

Read the post at Love, Joy and Feminism. It's pretty arresting. And here's the agency's order.

It just seems to me that if you're going to play the "Christian martyr," you should avoid persecuting others.

Marriage News Watch: June 22, 2015

We're down to the last few days before the Supreme Court rules on marriage. In the mean time, the National Organization for Marriage is asking all of the GOP presidential candidates to sign an anti-equality pledge. Let's take a look at just how crazy this pledge gets.

Here's the text of NOM's "marriage pledge," courtesy of Good As You:

Of course, most of the Republican candidates are vowing to fight on, no matter what the Court rules. Here's Jeb! on the subject:

Many in the Republican Party have hinted that they would rather the issue simply went away. And while they might prefer that the court not invalidate state laws limiting marriage to heterosexual couples, they would welcome a decision that settled the question once and for all.

But with the court expected to rule before the end of the month on whether gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right to marry, one of the looming questions for Mr. Bush and the other Republicans running for president is how aggressively they should respond to that ruling.

In his comments to the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference, Mr. Bush, the former governor of Florida, said he was not content to let the defense of traditional marriage fade away.

“It’s got to be important over the long haul, irrespective of what the courts say,” he said.

Of course, the basic question is, "What are they defending 'traditional marriage' from?" If the Court rules in favor of gay couples' right to equal protection, "traditional marriage" isn't going to disappear.

There's a deeper question here, and this comment by Bush throws it, I think, into some relief:

“In a country like ours we should recognize the power of a man and a woman loving their children with all their heart and soul as a good thing, as something that is positive and helpful for those children to live a successful life,” he said.

According to Pink News, he went on to say:

“And while there are people who disagree with this, we should not push aside those who do believe in traditional marriage.”

My first reaction was to wonder "Who, specifically, disagrees with this?" But there's some subtext here that falls into what I call "The 'Christian' Fallacy": the idea that there is only one option, and that is the one approved by whoever is speaking. It's the logical endpoint of a worldview that admits of only one possibility, itself an idea erroneous on its face: anyone who stops to think about it will realize that there are any number of pathways to a given place.

This also comes into play in regard to those poor, persecuted "Christians" who are only trying to bake "Christian" cakes or arrange "Christian" flowers. Aside from the fact that they're trying to set themselves above the law based on their cherry-picked "religious beliefs," they're not being persecuted. Their just being told to mind their own business.

Of course, if you've gotten to be as cynical as I am about politicians and why they say what they say (and never forget, the various avatars of Anti-Gay, Inc., are politicians one and all), a war always makes it easier to raise money.

"Religious Freedom"

For some. This article by Eric Ethington on Utah's "breakthrough" gay-inclusive civil rights legislation lays the whole strategy out very clearly:

That's why, when just a few weeks ago Oaks held a press conference to announce that he and the Mormon church were ready to endorse a statewide nondiscrimination law for LGBTQ people if only the leaders of the local LGBTQ community would sit down and negotiate a “compromise,” many were suspicious.

Oaks was up front about what he was looking for. He and other leaders of the Mormon church enumerated the religious exemptions they wanted included with a nondiscrimination law, including a right for government and health care workers to deny service to LGBTQ people.

SB296, the bill that resulted from those negotiations, was hailed by equality groups and the Mormon church as a “historic compromise” of nondiscrimination and religious freedom. The bill does indeed ban workplace and housing discrimination against LGBTQ people in Utah. But buried underneath those important protections, is a small clause guaranteeing the right of individuals to express faith-based anti-LGBTQ views at work.

This is similar to bills passed in other states, which include similar provisions, although not as explicit, allowing "people of faith" to avoid obeying laws they don't like -- specifically, ant-discrimination laws.

Maggie Gallagher's on board with this, among others. In a laughable attempt to establish that sexual orientation is a choice, she inserted this little nugget:

The place to rest our case for equal treatment of traditional believers is that actions are choices, choices which in a free society must be subject to moral reflections, not policed as if they were skin color, something over which the individual has no control.

(Emphasis added.)

That gives the whole game away, although Gallagher, still trying to present herself as the "reasonable" face of anti-gay bigotry, is doing her part to reinforce the "Christian martyr" mantra.

Ethington's essay is a "must read." Gallagher's is garbage.

This Needs to Happen More Often

Democrats need to nail their Republican colleagues to the wall more often. Barbara Boxer:

Some highlights:

The Center for American Progress, states it would cost more than $50 Billion to deport the entire population that the president is protecting.

And here's the deal - I've never heard of a Republican (and I will stand corrected if any Republican corrects me) I've never heard of a Republican complaining when President Eisenhower used his executive order power to help immigrants, when President Nixon did the same thing to protect immigrants, when President Ronald Reagan, their hero, protected immigrants, when George Bush Sr. protected immigrants, when George W. protected immigrants, they all used their authority.

Show me one Republican that stood up and said, 'Oh, this is outrageous! Let's impeach the president!' But it's President Obama. And they're annoyed because he won twice. Sorry. Sorry. Wake up and smell the roses. He IS the President. And he is doing the right thing for America, because he loves America. So I say to my Republican friends. There's a presidential race coming. Forget this last one. Get over it. Okay? Let's work together. Listen, I served with five presidents. I'm a strong Democrat. Everyone will tell you that. But I respect the office of the presidency. If I didn't agree with Ronald Reagan, I came down here and said it. But we had the respect back and forth. If we lost, we lost. And we moved on. And that worked both ways. I know what it is not to like the policies of a president. I get it. But don't overdo it and make it so personal. Get on with it.

Grow up. Do your job, you know? Do your job! Have respect for the office of the presidency.

Don't suddenly say executive orders are bad when the president you don't like does it, but you don't say one word when a Republican president does the same thing!

Offhand, I'd say she's a little annoyed. It's worth watching the whole clip.

Via Crooks and Liars.