Texas adoption agency wants LGBTQ tax dollars, just not LGBTQ potential parents

Religious-based adoption agencies want LGBTQ tax dollars and the right to discriminate against the LGBTQ community.

This is going to come to a head soon and I think it may be in our favor. At least I hope.

From Raw Story:

A Texas adoption agency that receives federal taxpayer funds is refusing to allow a lesbian couple to become foster parents, and they’re citing their religious beliefs to support their discriminatory decision. 

Bryn Esplin and Fatma Marouf, who are married and are both professors at Texas A&M University, were told by the agency because they’re a same-sex couple they don’t “mirror the holy family,” and thus would not allow them to foster some of the thousands of migrant and refugee children the federal government is detaining.

The women pressed, saying that surely some of the 700 children under the agency’s care were LGBT and would benefit from being placed with a married lesbian couple, as The Daily Beast reports. 

Catholic Charities told them not a single child, out of 700, were LGBT. Statistically, that’s impossible.

 . . .they decided to sue the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which runs the agency, Catholic Charities of Fort Worth. The couple just won an important initial victory. The court says they have standing. They are suing charging violations of their First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, as Metro Weekly reports. 

Anti-LGBTQ group claims rugby player sacked for condemning gays to hell is the victim

Isreal Folau

On Wednesday, the hate group Family Research Council claimed that the "religious liberty" of athletes should is under attack:

In today's hyper-politicized climate, it seems that nothing can escape the relentless black hole of "woke" political correctness, not even sports. In a Speaker Series event at FRC, Dr. Jennifer Bryson gave example after example of how the LGBT agenda has strong-armed its way into sports, particularly soccer, where rainbow flags are featured on the jerseys of the U.S. men's and women's national teams, on team captain armbands, on shoelaces, and even on the ground where players are required to walk.  

 Are the athletes who make sports possible allowed to object to their jobs and religious beliefs being co-opted by a political cause? Nope. Just ask Jaelene Hinkle, who faced immense harassment after declining to wear an LGBT-themed jersey for the U.S. national team. Or Josip Brekalo, who was required to wear a rainbow-themed arm band as a team captain, but declined to. Or Isreal Folau, who was sacked by both the Australian national rugby team and his professional team for expressing his religious beliefs on Instagram.

Let's focus on one of their examples - the case of Isreal Folau. Below is the Instagram post he sent which got him into trouble.

As FRC related, he was dismissed for not only this but other past incidents of him making homophobic remarks.  He is now not only suing Rugby Australia but continuing to make homophobic remarks, such as claiming that Satan is behind transgender children.

These reasons are why his case is a bit more problematic to defend. Folau is talking about people. This isn't a case where someone is encroaching on his beliefs to believe. It is rather someone taking him to task for attacking groups of people. The first two examples FRC listed involve possible encroaching on someone's personal space (we don't know the entire story regarding those examples and FRC does have a history of playing loose with the truth for the sake of its narratives) in order to send a message their religion does not condone.

But in the case of Folau, this is someone sending out a message targeting a group of people. No one was forcing him to make a statement or take a position contrary to his beliefs.  But yet FRC - while careful not to detail what he said - claims that he is a victim of anti-religious discrimination. Would FRC feel that way if he had posted something which said Jewish people, Muslims, or people of other ethnicities are going to hell.

Doubtful. In fact, I doubt anyone would be attempting to defend his comments as expressions of  "religious freedom."

Folau's case underscores questions we are not asking about the concept of "religious liberty" as pushed by the conservative right and anti-LGBTQ industry. Other than supposedly protecting religious businesses, should it be used to protect people from the consequences of abusive speech? And if so, should it pertain to solely homophobic speech or would racist or even anti-Semitic speech be included ? And if not, then why?

I don't think FRC or anyone else on their side of the issue are willing to answer the question.

'GOP advancing another anti-LGBTQ nominee as potential judge' & other Wed midday news briefs

Republicans advance anti-LGBT pro-discrimination Christian extremist nominee for lifetime appointment - Well this is depressing.

How A Trans Woman Defied A Crime Family To Become Italy’s Leading LGBTQ Activist- Wow, this is an interesting story. 

Defending a Lie With More Lies Has Become Essential Doctrine - The blog The Slowly Boiled Frog has been doing some excellent work lately in calling out the anti-LGBTQ industry.

Joe Biden visits historic Stonewall Inn gay bar - Not bad, Mr. Biden.

Fox News omits LGBTQ voices while rolling out red carpet for anti-LGBTQ hate group.

Fox News personality Shannon Bream routinely misgenders transgender women while allowing her show to be a propaganda engine for the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom

When it comes to LGBTQ issues, Fox News Network doesn't seem to want to give us a voice. For all of the talk by its personalities of having a "debate," the network has always rolled out the red carpet for groups, such as hate group the Alliance Defending Freedom, working to undermine our equality while omitting our voices.

From Media Matters:

Fox News host Tucker Carlson hosted extreme anti-LGBTQ group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and its client Selina Soule, a high school athlete in Connecticut, during a segment in which ADF revealed that it has filed a Title IX complaint with the Department of Education on behalf of Soule and other students who object to competing against trans athletes. 

ADF’s decision to file a Title IX complaint is particularly troubling given that the organization has allies throughout the federal government, including within the Department of Education. The group’s former director of litigation projects, Thomas W. Stack, worked for ADF for two years before becoming a senior attorney at the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the office that “evaluates, investigates, and resolves complaints alleging sex discrimination.” Records indicate that Stack has previously been assigned to investigate complaints filed with OCR. 

Soule has been interviewed on both Fox & Friends and The Ingraham Angle last February, and she was highlighted on right-wing sites including The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal. Soule’s mother, Bianca Stanescu, also recently participated in a panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation advocating against transgender athletes. Heritage has hosted several panels advocating against transgender rights this year. 

ADF has repeatedly used Fox News to promote its cases and policy positions; the Carlson interview was at least the sixth ADF appearance on Fox this year. The reality is that Fox is the perfect place for groups like ADF to introduce their anti-LGBTQ work, because its standards for LGBTQ coverage are out of step with standard journalistic practices. The network frequently hosts anti-LGBTQ guests who work for or are associated with extreme groups, including Heritage Foundation, MassResistance, and Liberty Counsel. Fox hosts allow these guests to push extreme rhetoric and sometimes mirror their language. “Straight news” host Shannon Bream has repeatedly misgendered trans people in coverage, recently calling a trans women a “biological male who now identifies as a woman,” and Fox reporter Greg Palkot misgendered Chelsea Manning. Additionally, reporter Carley Shimkus incorrectly identified Olympic champion Caster Semenya as trans, feeding into the network’s fearmonger tactics about trans athletes.

The entire article and video deserves a read and you can do that here. When the most watched cable news network deliberately works to shut out the voices of the LGBTQ community while elevating voices determined to make us second-class citizens, you know we got problems.

'Hate group leader Tony Perkins becomes chair of US Commission on International Religious Freedom' & other Tue midday news briefs

We see you, Tony Perkins. You can't sanitize your homophobia.

FRC’s Tony Perkins Becomes Chair of U.S. Commission on International Freedom -Oh yeah. THIS is a mistake. 

Tony Perkins's history of homophobia part 1

Tony Perkins's history of homophobia part 2

Supreme Court Sends Oregon Wedding Cake Case Back to State - A very good and detailed article about the latest "religious liberty" case  SCOTUS dealt with.

50 years after Stonewall, NC town declares first LGBTQ Pride Day. Not everyone’s happy. - Sometimes you gotta change things one step at a time.

How to spot Real vs. Fake corporate support for the LGBTQIA+ community - Mark it down.

Pete Buttigieg part of a gay plot to destroy women . . . or something like that

Pete Buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg's run for the White House has really gotten the homophobes riled up all over America. And one of the best examples of that is the comments at the viciously far-right commentary and message board Free Republic.

Free Republic, a place so homophobic that I spray myself with a mixture of holy water and Lysol before going there, has more than once attacked Buttigieg for his sexual orientation and his "nerve" to run for president via the most awful and homophobic language regarding him his husband Chasten, parts of his anatomy, his bathroom habits, etc.

Buttigieg recently set the wolves off at Free Republic  this time via an article about how he and his husband would start a family at the White House should he get chosen as the Democratic nominee and win the election. I would caution folks (even those with strong stomachs) not to read the comments made about this, but one caught my eye because it simply had to be the wildest, simplest insane thing I have ever read. Just reading it made me dizzy:

What isn’t being stressed enough here, is the fact that homosexual men despise women & want to destroy them. They consider women’s vaginas & reproductive organs repugnant. They resent being characterized as effeminate, insisting that homosexual “love” is so hyper-masculine as to be beyond the comprehension of heterosexuals. (”Only a man knows how to make love to a man” yada yada.) 

Then in pretzel-logic, they are able to reconcile their revulsion for women with a bizarre insistence that they can BE women —even better women, in fact, than women— by mocking and mimicking women as they choose. 

Homosexual men feign friendships with extremely promiscuous women— in order to study & mimic them— yet are invariably hostile & conflicted toward their own mothers & mothers in general. 

This goes back to their hatred/envy of the woman’s life-giving ability. Transvestites & transsexuals are merely the extreme projection of these rationalizations.

As a woman, I find this personally insulting & even threatening, akin to fear of rape. My very sense of self & dignity is being taken from me and REDUCED, regarded as insignificant, not unique.

Damn, I want her drugs. Just not the dosage she is taking. Don't even try to make a logical argument out of this. This is not to say that misogyny doesn't exist in the gay community. It is yet another thing we need to combat.  But there is no logic in this mess. It's basically homophobia mixed with pseudoscience and bad theorizing. Or better yet,  "TERFs-on-acid" insanity.

 It just goes to show that whenever there is progress, someone is always attempting to impede it. We may scoff at this woman, but we should also remember that people like her vote. And enough people like her voting would put the LGBTQ community in a bad position.

Kind of like where we are now.

'Dads offer free hugs at Pride parade for kids rejected by their parents' & other Mon midday news briefs

Dads Offer Hundreds Of Free Hugs At Pride Parade For Kids Whose Parents Rejected Them - This was pretty cool.

Queer disability activist Andrew Gurza says a March of Dimes caregiver abused him in his own home - An important question needing to be asked. Are our disabled people being taken care of in a respectful manner? 

Homophobic Attack Victim Condemns Response To Photos Of Her - This is powerful. My heart goes out to these ladies for their bravery and decision to make a positive impact out of this ugly incident. 

17 Senate Dems demand answers from State Dept. on Pride flag ban - Voting counts. Getting people in who have your back means a lot.