Rude comment at 'Religious Liberty' Summit reveals ignorance & desire to erase LGBTQ taxpayers

The Heritage Foundation's Emilie Kao's rude comment about gay couples demonstrates her ignorance of history

If you want to pinpoint just how mean spirited and callous the mindset behind the creation of a "religious liberty task force," look no further than comments by one of the speakers at the so-called "religious liberty summit" on Monday which was held to announce its creation:

From Chris Johnson of The Washington Blade:

. . . other speakers on the panel railed against efforts to uphold LGBT rights as they face compromise in the name of religious freedom, including Emilie Kao, director of the Richard & Helen DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at the anti-LGBT Heritage Foundation. 

Kao was critical of litigation filed by the ACLU against the Michigan law enabling Catholic adoption agencies to refuse placement to LGBT families over religious objections. 

Asserting same-sex couples seeking to adopt face no problem in access to adoption, Kao said the plaintiff in the lawsuit drove past four other adoption agencies to reach St. Vincent’s Catholic Charities, which she said “still holds the belief that they should put every child with a mother and father.” 

“The lesbian couple says they were personally offended by St. Vincent’s not placing a child with them,” Kao said. “I think it’s important for us to recognize that throughout the history of our country and the Supreme Court’s cases, we have always protected the right of people to follow their religious beliefs, and we’ve never protected the right not to have your feelings hurt.”

Kao's callous words was merely another way to evade one of the actual issues of the Michigan case, which is St. Vincent and another adoption agency which discriminates against gay couples, is receiving taxpayer funds. Lots of taxpayer funds:

Documents provided by the ACLU show the state entered into a three-year contract with an option year with Bethany Christian Services for different amounts including up to $6.8 million and with St. Vincent up to for $4.1 million.

Also, I would like to point out just how not only rude, but highly inaccurate Kao's comments were. Perhaps she was attempting to project some false wit or cleverness. What she actually succeeded in doing was to show either her basic or deliberate ignorance of history.

Jeff Sessions, DOJ create task force to promote (anti-LGBTQ conservative Christian evangelical supremacy) . . . er . . . religious liberty

The reality Jeff Sessions and the religious right want to create. They will fail.

In case you haven't realized it, this means war.

The following just happened this morning:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that the Department of Justice is creating a "religious liberty task force."

Sessions said the task force, co-chaired by Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio and the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, Beth Williams, will help the department fully implement the religious liberty guidance it issued last year. 

The guidance was a byproduct of President Trump’s executive order directing agencies to respect and protect religious liberty and political speech. Sessions said on Monday that the task force will “ensure all Justice Department components are upholding that guidance in the cases they bring and defend, the arguments they make in court, the policies and regulations they adopt, and how we conduct our operations.”

Do NOT be fooled.

'NBC spotlights GOP attack on LGBTQ families' & other Fri midday news briefs

As evidence supporting LGBTQ families mounts, legal hurdles loom - Thank you NBC for putting the spotlight on the GOP's "religious liberty" anti-gay adoption bill. I still have one problem with the coverage. I know it sounds cold, but I really do believe that how gay taxpayers are erased by this bill should be considered. Children need good families, no matter if they are LGBTQ families or heterosexual families. AND LGBTQ taxpayers shouldn't have to give our hard earned tax dollars to entities which discriminate against us. We are being told that we should pay for a service that we can't have because we are supposedly inferior. If my gay dollars is good enough for an entity to have, then giving me respect should also be a must.

Related post - You don't get to call me a sinner AND help yourself to my gay tax dollars

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Media Matters exposes the homophobia that hate group Alliance Defending Freedom is hiding

Reading and sharing information like this about hate group Alliance Defending Freedom is vital for the LGBTQ community to win this so-called culture war.

The LGBTQ community will never make any definitive steps in attaining equality unless we publicly acknowledge to that there is a deliberate effort to undermine our safety and dignity as American citizens. And this effort is being undertaken by several religious right groups with deep pockets and very little scruples for being honest.

Our battle is not with religious beliefs in general nor ordinary individuals. Our battles are with groups and personalities who work diligently undermine our equality. Enough pussyfooting. Enough nonsensical discussions about Gays vs. Christianity. That was never the argument.

It was always:

 Gays vs. The Family Research Council

Gays vs. the American Family Assocation

Gays vs. the Liberty Counsel.

Gays vs. the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Gays vs. every group, organization, paid personality, pundit, and talking head who claimS to be "pro-family," "pro-Christian," or "pro-morality."

For over 11 years, I have, via this blog, one failed self-published book, and one online booklet, tried to expose these folks myself in my own inimitable fashion AND get our community and our leadership to step up in calling these folks out.

I've succeeded a lot in the former more than I have in the latter. But I am also glad to note that I have not been alone. Other blogs, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and organizations such as Media Matters did a lot to focus on this situation. And granted, it may not be as popular as internal arguments, cute little academic terms and esoteric language, and other  ways some of us in the LGBTQ community have wasted time, this work is very necessary.

 And that's why I am thrilled at the new project published by Media Matters.

An interactive research book on the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom

“The extremism of anti-LGBTQ powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom” is an interactive research book outlining the anti-LGBTQ positions of the influential legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). These positions were identified through extensive review of public statements by ADF and its representatives, reports on the group's legal and political activities, and publicly available materials created by the group. Information regarding significant portions of ADF's legal and political advocacy work is not publicly available; the group may hold additional positions or engage in additional activity that it refrains from commenting on publicly.

Click here to download the interactive PDF version of this report.

The following below is a smaller facsimile of the report:

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Bryan Fischer’s Answer To Global AIDS Crisis: No Sex For Gay Men - Ah yes. The man who almost singularly got the American Family Association designated as a hate group. 

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Moving from cakes to housing and adoption - 'religious liberty' is being weaponized to discriminate against gays

So many of us repeated the simple fact that "religious liberty" or "religious freedom" as defined by the anti-LGBTQ evangelical right was not simply about a cake or a bakery or participation at a same-sex wedding. Those trite things were merely the beginning of a plan to codify anti-LGBTQ discrimination by using religion as a weapon.

According to a recent events,  things have moved steadily from businesses supposedly not wanting to participate in same-sex weddings. We are now talking about senior living communities who don't want to house gay couples:

A St. Louis County senior community has denied housing to a married lesbian couple who have been together for nearly four decades because of the couple's sexual orientation, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court. 

Mary Walsh, 72, and Bev Nance, 68, both of Shrewsbury, say the Friendship Village senior living community, which has locations in Sunset Hills and Chesterfield, denied occupancy to the couple to live at the Sunset Hills community in 2016 because their relationship violated its cohabitation policy that defines marriage as "the union of one man and one woman, as marriage is understood in the Bible," according to the lawsuit.
The policy, the suit says, violates the Fair Housing Act and the Missouri Human Rights Act. It names Friendship Village and its parent company FV Services Inc. as defendants. The couple is represented by the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Washington D.C.-based firm Relman, Dane & Colfax. 

Walsh and Nance were married in Massachusetts in 2009 but have been together for 37 years, their suit says. They tried to move to Friendship Village in July 2016, got on a waiting list and paid a $2,000 deposit but were later told they couldn't because of the "longstanding policy." Friendship Village continues to enforce the "cohabitation policy" that has denied housing to other same-sex couples, the suit claims. 

And let's not forget the laws in Kansas, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, as well as a bill moving through the House of  Representatives which contains an amendment that, under the grounds of "religious liberty," allows foster care and adoption agencies to discriminate against gay couples while still being able to receive tax dollars.

Today, 40 Democratic Senators targeted the amendment:

In a letter to Senate appropriators, the senators slammed a House Republican proposal passed earlier this month that would shield taxpayer-funded adoption and child welfare agencies that refuse to provide services to children and parents on the basis of religion, LGBTQ status, or family structure. The senators urged the Senate Appropriations Committee not to include this dangerous proposal in the upcoming appropriations bill. 

“Allowing child welfare agencies to close the door to willing and fully qualified foster and adoptive parents due to a difference in religious belief opens the door to taxpayer-funded discrimination and deprives vulnerable children of safe and loving homes,” the senators wrote. “We strongly encourage you to reject this language and instead, support federal laws and regulations barring discrimination, and protect the rights of all qualified parents who answer the call to foster and adopt children in foster care.” 

The proposal would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to withhold federal funding from states that prevent child welfare agencies from denying services to LGBTQ parents or children, penalizing states with existing nondiscrimination policies. Late last week, over 100 child advocacy organizations sent a letter to Congress opposing this proposal. 

Wyden was joined on the letter by Sens. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.; Mazie K. Hirono, D-Hawaii; Tom Carper, D-Del.; Chris Coons, D-Del., Maggie Hassan D-N.H.; Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Dianne Feinstein D-Calif.; Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.; Tim Kaine, D-Va.; Tina Smith, D-Minn.; Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Angus King, I-Maine; Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.; Kamala Harris, D-Calif.; Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Michael Bennet D-Colo.; Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; Jack Reed, D-R.I.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc.; Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Tom Udall, D-N.M.; Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.; Cory Booker, D-N.J.; Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Robert P. Casey, Jr., D-Pa.; Bob Menendez, D-N.J.; Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev.; Jon Tester, D-Mont.; Mark R. Warner, D-Va.; Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.; Ben Cardin, D-Md.; Amy Klobuchar D-Minn., Gary Peters, D-Mich.; Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.

And I am certain that there will be more instances to come in which the anti-gay evangelical right will weaponize religious beliefs  against the LGBTQ community. You can count on that.

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