QUEER QUOTE: Heterosexual Supremacist Orrin Hatch (R-UT) Says Something Nice About #LGBT Youth For #Pride

Today's Queer Quote is from Senator Orrin Hatch, who has announced his retirement (after 42 years!) and will not be seeking re-election to the United States Senate. His seat is likely to be filled by Mitt Romney (2012 GOP nominee for President).

On Thursday, in celebration(!) of LGBT pride month, Sen. Hatch tried to support LGBT youth by saying on the Senate floor:

“No one should ever feel less because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. LGBT youth deserve our unwavering love and support. They deserve our validation and the assurance that not only is there a place for them in this society, but that it is far better off because of them. These young people need us—and we desperately need them. We need their light to illuminate the richness and diversity of God’s creations. We need the grace, beauty and brilliance they bring to the world.”

This is the same guy who said (in 1977):

“I wouldn't want to see homosexuals teaching school anymore than I'd want to see members of the American Nazi Party teaching school."

As the Washington Post put it. "The Times, they are a changin'"!

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Theocrat Roy Moore Loses U.S. Senate Race in Alabama

Hmmm, count one electoral win for the godless in Alabama last night. Roy Moore, an unrepentant theocrat who was twice removed from his elected position as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for his refusal to follow the law of the land (once for placing a huge monument to the Ten commandments on state property and once for refusing to enforce the same-sex marriage decision Obergefell v Hodges) lost a special election to Democrat Doug Jones last night.

Born-again and evangelical Christians voted for Moore at the astonishing rate of 80% to 13% while "everyone else" voted 76% to 22% for Jones. How does this voting pattern align with "christian" values?

Other demographics of the vote are also interesting:

This shows that white people overwhelmingly voted for Moore, despite the controversial allegations involving sexual misconduct with minors. It was Black people who were an eye-popping 30% of the electorate and voted for Jones (or against Moore) at the rate of 97 to 3 for Black women and 92 to 7 for Black men.

These exit poll data show the stark differences in the electorate. People under 40 voted for Jones, while people over 40 voted for Moore, but not in as large numbers (and voters over 40 were a large fraction of the electorate, at 75%).

Hat/tip Friendly Atheist

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: In Mississippi, New Law Says Religion Trumps Civil Rights

What a shocker! More bad news out of Mississippi regarding civil rights and the equal treatment of all its citizens. Governor Phil Bryant, A Republican, signed House Bill 1523 into law on Tuesday. The bill, which goes into effect in July, is titled "Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act" and purports to provide people with "sincerely held religious beliefs" the right to deny services and public accommodations to certain people. But it is also to support only certain religious beliefs, such as:

The act states that the government cannot penalize an individual, organization, or business for acting according to the following "sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions": that "marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman"; that "sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage"; and that "male (man) or female (woman) refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth."

It looks flagrantly unconstitutional as well as discriminatory to me. It will be interesting to see if the response to Mississippi's bill mirrors the negative response North Carolina and Indiana have received for enacting similiarly bigoted legislation.

WHOA! North Carolina Enacts Statute Explicitly Enabling LGBT Discrimination Statewide

Wow! The North Carolina legislature passed and the Republican Governor signed into law HB 2, a measure which would ostensibly overturn a recently passed Charlotte, NC ordinance which provided public accommodations protections based on gender identity.

However the law enacted not only overturns the Charlotte ordinance but also ordinances that protected LGBT people in 7 other municipalities and allows discrimination in employment and public accommodations based on sexual orientation or gender identity anywhere in the state of NorthnCarolina.

The ACLU of North Carolina made the stakes around this legislation starkly clear:

“The manner in which legislators passed the most extreme anti-LGBT bill in the nation – voting hours after it was unveiled without adequate public debate – flies in the face of fairness and democracy. Legislators have gone out of their way to stigmatize and marginalize transgender North Carolinians by pushing ugly and fundamentally untrue stereotypes that are based on fear and ignorance and not supported by the experiences of more than 200 cities with these protections. Transgender men are men; transgender women are women. They deserve to use the appropriate restroom in peace, just like everyone else."

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

QUEER QUOTE: Anti-Trans Initiative Fails To Quality For CA 2016 Ballot

Good news! Previously we had reported that some haters had been circulating petitions in California to try to literally regulate the access to urination facilities of transgender people with their so-called "Privacy for All" act.

Today comes news that this ballot measure has failed to qualify for the 2016 ballot! The Washngton Blade reports

A social conservative group seeking to place an anti-transgender initiative on the 2016 California ballot announced Monday it failed to collect enough signatures by the deadline to make it happen. 

The initiative, dubbed the “Personal Privacy Protection Act,” sought to prohibit transgender people from using restrooms in government buildings consistent with their gender identity and would have allowed businesses to do the same. 

The anti-trans coalition, known as Privacy for All, needed to submit 365,880 signatures by Monday to qualify the measure for the ballot. Nowhere in the organization’s statement does it say how many signatures it did collect. 

The coalition is supported by the Sacramento-based Pacific Justice Institute and other groups in California that passed Proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage in the state.

Today's Queer Quote is from Kris Hayashi, the executive director of the Transgender Law Center:

"This initiative was a poorly veiled attack on transgender people that sought to undermine that freedom and single out for harassment anyone who doesn’t meet stereotypes of what it looks like to be male or female. Today Californians have made clear these types of discriminatory attacks on transgender people and our families, communities, and neighborhoods have no place in our state."

This is the same group that was behind Proposition 8 and also tried to repeal the Student Success and Opportunity Act (AB 1266) which makes it clear that students can participate in all student activities regardless of their gender identity or gender expression. Because they have lost so dramatically on the question of marriage equality, these heterosexual supremacists have taken to targeting the most vulnerable group in the LGBT coalition: the transgender community.

Hat/tip to Joe My God

QUEER QUOTE: VP Biden Calls Out Homophobic GOP Presidential Candidates

Vice President Joe Biden appeared as the keynote speaker at the Human Right Campaign's National Gala last night and in his speech reiterated and explained his support for full LGBT equality. This excerpt is today's Queer Quote:

“I strongly support the equality act and it will pass. The American people think the law already prevents an employer from  firing someone because they are LGBT The American people already think it’s illegal to deny you housing. the American people already think what the act calls for. The problem is, they don’t know that it’s still legal in so many places, so the one way, if you could change this overnight, would be to infuse in every mind in America that there are still 31 states that can deny you employment, and housing, etcetera….Let them know! The American people are already with you.”

“There are still homophobes left. Most of them are running for president I think.”

Interestingly, a few hours before Biden's speech, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton made some news of her own in an address to staffers and volunteers at HRC by obliquely calling out homophobes Kim Davis and Mike Huckabee.

“We assure [gay youth] it gets better, but it can still be really hard to believe that especially when you turn on the TV and you see a Republican candidate for president literally standing in the courthouse door in Kentucky calling for people to join him in resisting a Supreme Court ruling, celebrating a Kentucky clerk who’s breaking the law by denying other Americans their constitutional rights.”

Hat/tip to TowleRoad

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Rogue Kentucky County Clerk Demonstrating Necessity Of Church-State Separation

In case one needed more evidence of why the separation of church-state is so important, the ongoing saga of  Kim Davis (the rogue Rowan County, Kentucky clerk) who has been refusing to issue marriage licenses despite exhausting all her possible legal avenues. (The United States Supreme Court denied her request for a stay on an order from a federal district court judge to issues marriage licenses on Monday night.)

On Tuesday, Davis responded to a question asking what authority she was using to continue denying marriage licenses to duly qualified married couples by saying "God's authority."

Davis and her Deputy Clerks have been ordered to appear in court on Thursday to explain to federal judge David Bunning why she should not be sanctioned (held on contempt of court) for not following his court order. Maybe this saga will be over soon and the proper relationship between church and state will be restored.

SATURDAY POLITICS: Texas Sup Ct Tells Houston "Repeal Equal Rights Measure Or Place On Ballot"

The Texas Supreme Court issued a ruling yesterday handing opponents of Houston's Equal Rights ordinance (HERO) a victory when it said that the City Council must decide by August 24th to either repeal the measure or place it before voters for a vote on the November 2015 municipal ballot. The Houston City Council enacted HERO last summer with openly lesbian Mayor Annise Parker's strong support. This is a shocking ruling because earlier the religious extremists who opposed HERO had turned in double the number of signatures needed to pace the measure on the ballot but more than half of those petitions were deemed invalid by the City Attorney. However the City Secretary had certified that there were enough signatures and it is this certification that the Texas Supreme Court has said must be obeyed. The court suspended the non-discrimination ordinance, and gave the city counvil 30 days to decide to repeal the ordinance or place it before voters.

In response to the Republican-dominated state high court ruling, Mayor Parker issued a statement which said:

"Obviously, I am disappointed and believe the court is in error with this eleventh hour ruling in a case that had already been decided by a judge and jury of citizens. Nonetheless, we will proceed with the steps necessary for City Council to consider the issue. At the same time, we are consulting with our outside counsel on any possible available legal actions. Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance is similar to measures passed by every other major city in the country and by most local corporations. No matter the color of your skin, your age, gender, physical limitations, or sexual orientation, every Houstonian deserves the right to be treated equally. To do otherwise, hurts Houston’s well-known image as a city that is tolerant, accepting, inclusive and embracing of its diversity. Our citizens fully support and understand this and I have never been afraid to take it to the voters. We will win!"

Of course t's always a bad idea to be forced to vote on the civil rights of other people but if that's what the haters want, we will be ready!

EEOC Rules Sexual Orientation Employment Discrimination Is Barred By Federal Law

Another bad day for heterosexual supremacists! We will have to start calling the summer of 2015 "rainbow summer"! Buzzfeed's Chris Geidner is reporting that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has (finally) ruled that sexual orientation is covered under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This means that nationwide, under federal law, you can not be discriminated against based on your sexual orientation. The EEOC had previously ruled in 2012 that gender identity or expression was covered under the term "sex," which meant that discrimination against transgender individual was illegal under federal law.


Geidner explains:

The commission found that sexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination for several reasons. Among the reasons, the commission stated, is because sexual orientation discrimination “necessarily entails treating an employee less favorably because of the employee’s sex” and “because it is associational discrimination on the basis of sex.”   

After a review of the case law regarding similar challenges to employment practices alleging a violation of Title VII where the initial understanding of the law would not have included that coverage, the commission stated, “The courts have gone where the principles of Title VII have directed.”

“Our task is the same,” the decision found. “We therefore conclude that Complainant’s allegations of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation state a claim of discrimination on the basis of sex. We further conclude that allegations of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation necessarily state a claim of discrimination on the basis of sex.”

This is a huge deal! This means that in the  28 states which do not have state laws containing protections against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, LGB people will have access to the EEOc process based upon federal law. This issue will become more salient as now that marriage equality is the law of the land nationwide, people's marital status may "out" them in the workplace, thus causing them to be subject to anti-LGB animus in many jurisdictions. This EEOC decision will provide many people with some measure of protection and recourse. However, we should not forget that LGBT people will still be able to be discriminated against in housing, credit, education and public accommodations in more than half the states.

STUDY: 52% Of Tweets Against SCOTUS Obergefell Ruling Were Religion-Based

An analysis of over 25,000 tweets by Crowdflower in response to the June 26th United States Supreme Court ruling Obergefell v. Hodges striking down state-based bans on same-sex marriage indicate that the majority of opposition is based in religion. Of course, the decision was about civil marriage licensed by the state, not religious marriages but people who believe in a mythical, omnipotent, omniscient "sky god" are not exactly the same group of people to recognize reality or reason.

Other key findings in the CrowdFlower report include:

SUPPORT OUTWEIGHED CRITICISM 4 TO 1 

Although overall Twitter sentiment was 55% positive, 32% neutral, and 13% negative, with neutral tweets excluded, positive opinions outweighed negative opinions 80% to 20%. 

WOMEN WERE MORE SUPPORTIVE THAN MEN 

While 86% of women and 72% of men were in favor of the Supreme Court ruling, 14% of women and 28% of men opposed it. 

THE EAST COAST HAD THE MOST SUPPORTERS 

Massachusetts (96% approval), New Jersey (87.3% approval), and New York (86.8% approval) were most vocal in their support of the Supreme Court ruling. 

SOUTHERN STATES HAD THE MOST OPPONENTS 

Although these three states still had more supporters than detractors, Alabama (50% disapproval), North Carolina (35.1% disapproval), and Virginia (31.5% disapproval) had the most naysayers. 

OVERALL SENTIMENT WAS POSITIVE IN ALL STATES 

For all states with a significant volume of tweets, the majority of sentiment was positive.

Are the heterosexual supremacists in theGOP looking at these numbers? Read 'em and weep! EVERY state was positive:

Boom!

QUEER QUOTE: Judge Rules "Sodomite Suppression Act" Patently Unconstitutional

Well, well! Score one for common sense. A violently homophobic proposed California ballot measure known as the "Sodomite Suppression Act" has been found unconstitutional by a Superior Court judge so that Attorney General Kamala Harris does not have to process it for circulation before voters. The judge's order is the source for today's QUEER QUOTE:

1. The proposed initiative titled the "Sodomite Suppression Act" (the "Act") is patently unconstitutional on its face;
2. Any preparation and official issuance of a circulating title and summary for the Act by the Attorney General would be inappropriate, waste public resources, generate unnecessary divisions among the public and tend to mislead the electorate; and
3. The Attorney General is relieved of any obligation to issue a title and summary for the Act.

Just in time for LGBT Pride month!

QUEER QUOTE: President of The Gambia Threatens All Gay Men With Murder

The heads of African countries are notorious for their virulent homophobia, but even among that group, today's Queer Quote, which is this statement by the President of the Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, is pretty horrendous:

"If you are a man and want to marry another man in this country and we catch you, no one will ever set eyes on you again, and no white person can do anything about it."

President Jammeh also said "If you do it [in the Gambia], I will slit our throat." He apparently said the words in a local language (Wolof). In 2013, Jammeh has been quoted saying this:

Homosexuality is anti-god, anti-human, and anti-civilization. Homosexuals are not welcome in the Gambia. If we catch you, you will regret why you are born. I have buffaloes from South Africa and Brazil and they never date each other. We are ready to eat grass but we will not compromise on this. Allowing homosexuality means allowing satanic rights. We will not allow gays here.

How much do you want to bet there are gay men having sex in the Gambia RIGHT NOW? It never ceases to amaze me how homophobes think that by making a statement like "We don't have any gays in Iran" or "We will not allow gays here" that they think it actually has an impact on whether gay people actually exist in that country or not. Of course, what they are really trying to do is enforce the cultural norms of their society and to mandate universal compulsory heterosexuality.

Gaytterdämmerung II: SCOTUS Hears Oral Arguments In Obergefell v Hodges

Source

Today is the day that many people have been waiting for. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments about two questions that will decide whether same-sex couples will be able to get married in every state in the nation, and secondly, whether when they are married in a jurisdiction that allows it, will other jurisdictions be forced to recognize those marriages. If it seems like we just recently had a significant case from the Supreme Court on same-sex marriage,we did, but it was two years ago. I was actually in DC at the time so I went by the Court to witness the spectacle of wheat happens before a major case.

In those cases, Proposition 8 ended up being held to remain invalidated (Hollingsworth v. Perry) and the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was struck down (United States v. Windsor).

Today's case was Obergefell v Hodges and you should read the always excellent SCOTUS blog for complete coverage and a plain-english explanation of what happened. Apparently, no one is very sure of what the final decision will be. That really, can be considered something of a win for the heterosexual supremacists because they have spent the last 18 months or so losing literally dozens of cases before federal judges who have been striking down bans on same-sex marriage using the United States Constitution and the reasoning contained in Windsor.

If the Court does decide that there is NOT a fundamental right to marry for same-sex couples *and* that states do not have to be forced to recognize marriages from one state that could not be performed in their state, then the Washington Post has a good map and explanation of what the state of play could be.

Only 11 states have enacted marriage equality through "majoritarian democratic" processes so far, so it would mean that there would be battles going on in 39 different states to change the law. This would potentially include California, where Proposition 8 is not the law of the land due to a District Court decision that would no longer be valid if the Supreme Court issues a ruling that changes the legal landscape. You can bet that heterosexual supremacists would start litigating to have Proposition 8 re-instated and LGBT activists would rush to collect signatures to have a 2016 vote on the question.

The 21 states whose marriage laws have been struck down by lower federal courts and where couples have been getting married legally would suddenly have their marriages thrown into limbo (although it is more likely than not those marriages would be deemed valid, but it might take another Supreme Court case to resolve that issue).

Let's hope the Justices do the right thing and realize that there is no harm to opposite-sex couples when same-sex couples are allowed to marry.

Hat/tip to Scotus Blog and Joe.My.God

Haters Propose Initiative To Regulate Where Gender Non-Conforming People Can Pee

Now that heterosexual supremacists and religious fundamentalists have realized they have lost the culture war completely on the question of marriage equality they are moving on to other issues, like "religious freedom" and protecting people who believe they have a constitutional right to deny services and public accommodations to other people due to their "sincerely held beliefs" about marriage. Oh and proposing ballot measures to require executions of homosexuals.

One of these issues the homophobic conservative right is pivoting to is about gender-nonconforming people and bathrooms. You think LGBT people are interested in the genitals of other people? We are nowhere as interested as the Pacific Justice Institute, which is so obsessed with the issue they want to have a multi-million dollar ballot campaign in the heat of a presidential campaign to discuss the politics and biology of sex and gender. What could go wrong, right?

They have filed the "Personal Privacy Protection Act" with the California Attorney General which would amend the California code to include the language:

 Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a person shall use facilities in accordance with their biological sex in all government buildings. 

So, yes, basically they want to make sure that only people with the "right" plumbing get to pee in the right places. Why do they care? Because they want to demonize people they do not like as predators.
This issue of gender-neutral bathrooms enrages (and befuddles) me because isn't it everyone's experience at home that all bathrooms can be used by all people of any gender? Why shouldn't that be the case in public? Why shouldn't ALL bathrooms be private? The idea of "group" bathrooms (i.e. urinals) is the atavistic notion that should be abolished, not the idea that people who and gender-nonconforming or transgender have to get the permission of the state to determine which bathroom to use in a public bathroom. That is insanity. They are convinced that sex is a binary despite all evidence to the contrary that not only is SEX not binary, neither is GENDER. However, they want to put into state law a definition of biological sex that reads:

 Biological sex means the biological condition of being male or female as determined at or near the time of birth or through medical examination or as modified by Health & Safety Code § 103425. 

But what happens if someone's sex is indeterminate (intersexuals) or someone's sex NOW is different from what their sex was determined to be "at or near the time of birth"? I guess no public bathroom for you, if the PPPA is passed by California voters.

One of the proponents of the measure named Kevin Snider is quoted in the Los Angeles Times claims that people who don't believe in the "biological reality of two sexes" are "science deniers." I would definitely put myself in the camp of many people who think there may be atleast five sexes! I think Mr. Snider needs to read up on the latest scientific research on the nature of sex and gender:

Sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary — their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions — known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs) — often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD.

But, sure, let's have a conversation about which side is denying science and data. Spoiler alert, it is not going to be the group which thinks that sexual orientation can be changed by "therapy."

QUEER QUOTE: CA Proposed Ballot Measure Would Authorize Death Penalty For "Sodomites"

Wow. Now this is some pretty crazy stuff, even for heterosexual supremacists. A religious zealot has filed a proposed ballot measure called the "Sodomite Suppression Act" with the Attorney General of California that says "any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purpose of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or any other convenient method."

Matt McLaughlin filed the measure and paid the $200 fee required to get the ballot measure in the system. He then has to collect the signatures of 5% of the votes cast for Governor in November 2014. Because turnout was so low, the magic number is a mere 366,000 valid signatures to qualify an initiative statute for the statewide general ballot. I suspect we will see quite a lot of crackpot ballot measures filed seeking to make the November 2016 ballot.

Hat/tip to Joe Jervis

QUEER QUOTE: The Text Of What Anti-Gay Legislation Looks Like In A Post-Marriage Equality Era

Realizing that they have essentially completely lost the fight over marriage equality, heterosexual supremacists and homophobes and people who do not believe that LGBT people should enjoy the same civil rights as other targeted minorities have found a new way to enshrine discrimination against LGBT people in state law.

Here is the text of the West Virginia's copy-cat bill of the Arkansas law that was enacted earlier this week which prohibits and invalidates any ordinance in the state that protects LGBT people from discrimination.

It's called the West Virginia Intrastate Commerce Improvement Act (HB 2881) and is today's Queer Quote:

(a) No county, municipality or other political subdivision may adopt or enforce a local law, ordinance, resolution, rule or policy that creates a protected classification or prohibits discrimination on a basis not contained in state law.
(b) Any local law, ordinance, resolution, rule or policy adopted before the operative date of this act that violates subsection (a) of this section shall be null and void.

Notice how similar this text is to Arkansas' Senate Bill 202:

14-1-403. Prohibited conduct.
(a) A county, municipality, or other political subdivision of the state shall not adopt or enforce an ordinance, resolution, rule, or policy that creates a protected classification or prohibits discrimination on a basis not contained in state law.
(b) This section does not apply to a rule or policy that pertains only to the employees of a county, municipality, or other political subdivision.

I have no doubt that this will be a popular idea among Republicans in many other state legislatures. It will be interesting to see how LGBT advocacy organization react. What's amazing to me is that the sponsors of these legislation are still using the language of "no special rights" that first became popular over 25 years ago and was thought to have ben neutralized by the Supreme Court decision Romer v Evans striking down a Colorado ballot measure that explicitly prevented the enactment of ordinances that protected LGBT people. The difference now is that the "no special rights" crowd are no masking their anti-gay bigotry in the notion of "uniformity." In other words if a state does not have state protections for LGBT individuals then that condition should be uniform, and local municipalities and cities should not be allowed to have local ordinances doing so. Because otherwise LGBT people would have the "special right" of being able to sue someone if they were prohibited access to public transportation, denied service in restaurants and private businesses or fired from a job or denied housing because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Do you really think in 2015 a majority of Americans believe the right to not face discrimination because of an identity characteristic is a "special right"? Good luck with that.

Arkansas Enacts Bill Voiding and Prohibiting Local Civil Rights Ordinances

The Arkansas legislature (with strong Republican majorities)  has passed, and the Governor has allowed to become law without his signature, SB 202 "the Intrastate 30 Commerce Improvement Act," which basically freezes the number of categories that can appear in any non-discrimination statute in the state to the categories that appear in the state code. Surprise, surprise "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" do not appear in the state code and thus can not be categories of anti-discrimination anywhere in Arkansas. If a local jurisdiction did have such a statute, SB 202 voids it and prevents any local ordinances with new categories in the future.

Of course, the heterosexual supremacists are targeting LGBT activists, as part of the backlash for the successful fight for marriage equality. You can bet your bottom dollar they will not be stopping at Arkansas; there are TWENTY NINE states which do not have state laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

This is what four national LGBT civil rights organizations said about SB 202:

Recalling Colorado’s fatally flawed Amendment 2, which years ago explicitly targeted lesbians, gay men and bisexuals (and not heterosexuals), many are asking whether SB 202 is a similarly unconstitutional denial of equal protection. When the Supreme Court struck down Amendment 2 in Romer v. Evans, it underscored that the case record revealed anti-gay “animus” propelling the popular vote and no legitimate government reasons for precluding local nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people, and for no one else. 

The sponsors of SB 202 have used sweeping language that raises many legal questions but the bill amounts to a transparent attempt to hide from the courts the blatantly discriminatory reason why it was adopted. This law and other unacceptable ones like it intentionally harm LGBT people and other minority group members. When it can be shown that a law has been passed to facilitate discrimination, that showing creates a presumption that the law is unconstitutional. There is nothing but discriminatory intent here. And no valid public interest can possibly be served by allowing private businesses to discriminate based on sexual orientation, gender identity or other characteristics that might be covered by local ordinances. 

One of the legally and pragmatically wrong-headed things about this bill, which business and community leaders have been stressing to Governor Hutchinson, is that local governments are supposed to be independent “laboratories of experimentation.” Local control allows policies to be tested, with the good ones proving their worth and the bad ones failing. In many states where state-level nondiscrimination laws now protect LGBT people, those laws passed following local equal opportunity ordinances. People in those communities saw for themselves that those local ordinances created no problems for businesses, but instead had positive impacts — expressing a welcoming, safe and responsible environment for everyone. SB 202 seeks to kill that time-tested process, aiming to make it that much harder to ensure fair treatment for LGBT people throughout the state.

This could be the beginning of a very nasty set of stealth anti-LGBT pieces of legislation that will sweep through states that have Republican (anti-LGBT) legislative majorities and Republican governors, which after the 2014 election is a generational high.

Local LGBT Ordinance Repealed By Fayetteville, AR Voters

Hmmm, now that the fight over marriage appears to be coming to a close there is increased focus on other aspects of the gay rights agenda that most people thought had been settled a long time ago: should LGBT people have equal access to public goods and services, housing, employment, credit, et cetera? Simply said, are gay rights civil rights? (And by "gay" here I mean "LGBT.")

In many states there are no state laws against discriminating against individuals based on sexual orientation or gender identity. There is no federal law banning discrimination in these areas either, so many activists have started enacting local ordinances (like the one enacted in Houston earlier this year) to protect LGBT individuals from rank discrimination based on characteristics that have nothing to do with their ability to do a job, rent an apartment or access services from local businesses or governments.

However, there are many people who not only feel that their religious beliefs about LGBT people should be informative (if not determinative) of public policy in this area but also that the Government is abridging their religious beliefs by enforcing equal treatment under the law based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity. These people are the same people who thought that it was a brilliant idea to put the marriage rights of their fellow citizens up for a vote and now want to do the same thing with basic civil rights as well.

Anyway, this week there was another skirmish in the upcoming kulturkampf on this issue when a local ordinance in Fayetteville, Arkansas was repealed just months after it was enacted, thanks primarily to political activity by conservative and religious leaders.

The vote was surprisingly close (less than 500 votes out of 14,000 cast) but the bad guys won. Keep Fayetteville Fair responded:

Fayetteville voters decided to repeal a city wide anti-discrimination ordinance in a special election Tuesday night. Keep Fayetteville Fair and its supporters have campaigned the past several months, encouraging a vote against the repeal of the ordinance. 

More than 7,000 people voted against the repeal and stood behind the idea that employees should be judged on their merits nothing more, nothing less. The ordinance would have protected Fayetteville residents from being fired from their job, denied housing, or kicked out of a restaurant simply because of their race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. 

“We have a very strong local volunteer and support team who worked hard to try to keep this ordinance in place,” Anne-Garland Berry, campaign manager said. “Fayetteville is a city filled with inclusive, accepting citizens. Unfortunately, the repeal of this ordinance tells our visitors that we do not treat everyone with respect and only allocate freedoms to certain groups of people.” 

The campaign would like to thank all its supporters and volunteers who put in countless hours to keep our city fair. Including others who stood up for fairness, Rep. Greg Leding, Alderman Matthew Petty and Mayor Lioneld Jordan.

Hat/tip to Max Brantley

Now There Are 30!! Federal Judge Strikes Down Alaska Ban On Marriage Equality!

According to Freedom to Marry, on Friday October 10 there were 29 states (not 27, as I declared in a blog post published that day) where same-sex couples can get married. Then, Freedom to Marry summarized the state of play thusly:

In 29 states - CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, ID, IA, IL, IN, ME, MD, MA, MN, NC, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OK, OR, PA, RI, UT, VA, VT, WA, WV and WI, plus Washington, D.C. - same-sex couples have the freedom to marry.  

In an additional six states - AK, AZ, KS, MT, SC, and WY - federal appellate rulings have set a binding precedent in favor of the freedom to marry, meaning the path is cleared for the freedom to marry there.

As of Sunday evening, even that number (29) is out of date, since Alaska's ban on same-sex marriages was struck down by a federal judge in Hamby v. Parnell just hours ago. As Joe Jervis notes, that brings the number of marriage equality states to 30. Last week at this time the number was 19!

The judge demolishes the state's arguments in his written opinion and delivers  the coup de grace to all heterosexual supremacists with this quote:

In sum, any relationship between Alaska’s same-sex marriage laws and the government interests asserted by Defendants is either nonexistent or purely speculative. Alaska’s same-sex marriage laws are a prime example of how “the varying treatment of different groups or persons is so unrelated to the achievement of any combination of legitimate purposes that we can only conclude that the legislature’s actions were irrational.” Refusing the rights and responsibilities afforded by legal marriage sends the public a government-sponsored message that same-sex couples and their familial relationships do not warrant the status, benefits, and dignity given to couples of the opposite sex. This Court finds that Alaska’s same-sex marriage laws violate the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment because no state interest provides “exceedingly persuasive justification” for the significant infringement of rights that they inflict upon homosexual individuals.

Bizarrely, Gov. Sean Parnell (R-Alaska) announced that he is going to appeal this ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which just announced on Tuesday that it was striking down Idaho's and Nevada's bans on marriage equality. Isn't insanity doing the same thing over and over again and hoping to hey a different result? Then again, Parnell is running for re-election so maybe he feels like he needs to appear as if he is "defending marriage."

Hat/tip to Joe Jervis

SCOTUS Denies Cert In Important Anti-LGBT Rights Case

Good news out of the United States Supreme Court today! The high court decided not to hear arguments in the case of Elane Photography v. Willock where the New Mexico State Supreme Court had ruled that the denial of photographic services  to a same-sex couple who wanted their commitment ceremony  by a private firm violated the state's anti-discrimination ordinance. The private company who denied the services appealed the unanimous state Supreme Court ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying  that being forced to photograph the same-sex commitment ceremony violated their religious beliefs and should trump the public accommodations section of New Mexico's human rights law.

Slate reports and analyzes this case:

"The court has: A) reaffirmed the status quo [the justices still haven't stated that religious objections can be used to override anti-discrimination laws], and B) relieved gay rights activists, who dearly hoped the court would stay away from this case. It's just too messy. By my count, it involves at least four separate issues: Hybrid rights [i.e., free speech rights combined with free exercise rights]; compelled speech; photography-as-speech; and a religious objection to anti-discrimination statutes. It's just too much for one case."

LGBT groups are definitely happy that SCOTUS took a pass on this case, because the question of whether religious freedom can trump anti-discrimination statutes has still not been addressed by the high court. And with the Court currently considering whether corporations have religious freedom exercise
rights which exempt them from Obamacare provisions, this a question people in favor of LGBT equality are not confident would turn out the way we want.

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God