Monthly Archives: April 2014

This week in anti-gay temper tantrums

We-dont-discriminate-stickerFirst up: Oral arguments in Bostic v. Schaefer before the Fourth District Court of Appeals are scheduled for May 13. The court will be hearing the appeal of Judge Arenda Wright Allen’s ruling that struck down Virginia’s anti-marriage Marshall-Newman amendment.

The Virginia “Family” (not yours) Foundation, in anticipation, is holding a 40 day “fast.” Don’t be alarmed, though. They won’t starve, or even lose any weight. The word “fast,” according to the clarification that appears on their website, and contrary to its common meaning, “does not translate” to “hunger strike.” It only means temporarily giving up something you kind of enjoy, like Diet Coke. Yes, Diet Coke is actually the example they cite. This word salad, apparently intended to explain the aforementioned desperate action, also appears:

Our state and nation are mired in a morass of confusion and post-modern thinking that does not believe in absolutes nor that any truth can even be known..

Huh? A bizarre statement, until you realize that it perfectly describes their own post-modern thinking. Martyrdom is just not what it used to be.

Next, from the Magnolia State: As you might imagine, Mississippi, like Virginia, has no civil rights provisions protecting LGBTI people from discrimination. Unlike, for example, in New Mexico, it is perfectly legal for the proprietor of a Mississippi business or public accommodation to refuse service to someone on the basis of their actual or perceived gender presentation or sexual orientation. It’s also perfectly legal to fire someone, deny them housing, deny them a bank loan, or any other form of discrimination that would be prohibited if it were on the basis of race, nationality, or religion.

That wasn’t enough for those in the state who see imaginary violations of their constitutionally protected religious freedom in every shadow, however. Earlier this month, the state legislature passed a bill, similar to the one famously vetoed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, that reiterates the “right” to discriminate that anti-gay bigots in Mississippi already enjoy, and effectively expands their “right” to discriminate against anyone else they dislike as long as they claim the discrimination is motivated by a “sincerely held religious belief.”

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Religious freedom is for everybody

idologo400A funny thing happened when those who find marriage equality so upsetting started loudly complaining about alleged violations of their religious freedom: People whose religious freedom actually is being violated stepped forward.

As reported here last month, the first ever Witness for Love held in Loudoun County drew a number of local clergy, who testified to being barred from performing the rites of marriage for same gender couples in accordance with their faith. Many people don’t realize that Virginia law includes a provision that makes it unlawful for an officiant to perform a marriage ceremony unless the couple has a legal marriage license. This provision does exactly what it sounds like it would do: It erases the supposed distinction between ‘civil’ and ‘religious’ marriage by restricting religious marriage celebration to what is permitted by civil law.

While no clergy or denomination ever has, nor ever will, be required to perform the rites of a same-gender marriage, an interracial marriage, an interfaith marriage, a marriage involving a divorced person, or any other marriage that fails to meet their particular religious criteria, those clergy and denominations that actively seek to celebrate the marriages of same gender couples in their communities are instead required to treat those couples as if they are unworthy of such celebration. That requirement (unlike the make-believe scenarios of anti-gay activists) is a very real and grievous violation of religious conscience. It unmistakably, to use the current language of the anti-gay crowd, “violates their sincerely held religious belief” in the equal dignity and humanity of their LGBT parishioners. Today, one of those denominations finally filed a lawsuit seeking the restoration of First Amendment rights to its clergy.

In what is believed to the first-ever challenge by a national Christian denomination of a state’s marriage laws, the UCC filed the lawsuit Monday morning, April 28, in U.S. District Court in Charlotte, N.C.

Under Amendment One, which passed in late 2012, it is a crime in the State of North Carolina for clergy to officiate a marriage ceremony without determining whether the couple involved has a valid marriage license. United Church of Christ ministers interested in conducting a religious marriage ceremony for same-gender couples could face up to 120 days of jail and/or probation and community service if found guilty, since North Carolina marriage laws define and regulate marriage as being between only a man and a woman. As lead plaintiff in this lawsuit against the State, the United Church of Christ asserts that these laws are unconstitutional and violate clergy’s First Amendment rights.

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Peace Officers

Coming from the South Bronx, we had some reservations about the cop on the beat, even if he was your uncle, but when I became a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, I worked with the most dedicated public servants in law enforcement.

Michael “Scotty” Gray was from DEA, and a former Marine who sought to fight in every military action he could after ‘Nam from 1974 when I first met him until he was rebuffed when he sought to serve in the second Iraq war.

A young prosecutor learns from the best agents.

Scotty was one of those loyal agents and, after all, a Marine’s motto is “semper fi.” Continue reading

Board gets a failing grade on schools

One Student’s Plea for saving Lincoln Elementary School!

One Student’s Plea for saving Lincoln Elementary School!

Our Loudoun County Board of Supervisors is poised to close four community schools to save what they spent on the Redskins – two million dollars.

The Board calls this “budgeting.”

I call it government mismanagement, preferring games over grades, and fail the Board for its gross mishandling of a core governmental function, how we rightly educate our children.

In 2012, our football sycophantic Board of Supervisors promised to pay Danny “Redskin” Snyder two million dollars to sell Loudoun as the home of the Redskins; in the bargain, the County got game tix, and a classy suite like political big shots crave to watch pro ball games.

(Not to be too much of a buzz kill, but don’t the Redskins now rehearse their winning team form in Richmond, and not Ashburn?)

Now we want to close these four elementary community schools in Aldie, Hamilton, Hillsboro and Lincoln, the oldest of these founded in 1840 and the newest in 1922, because these closures will save the County two million dollars of a school budget shortfall of thirty eight million dollars, because the proposed budget was irresponsibly shrunken by the Board, making these misguided cuts by our School Board “necessary.”

Outgoing School Superintendent Hatrick, to his credit, fired away, rightly charging in the most forceful language that this Board has created an “artificial crisis,” as 2,000 more students enter our countywide school system, and “willfully chosen not to listen to the public, not to listen to the School Board about the funding that is needed for next year for this school system.” Continue reading

Vote for easy target Bob Marshall on April 26

bobMarshallTea

Retiring Congressman Frank Wolf is the patriarch of Loudoun’s Christianist right. The patronage system he developed will continue if we don’t stop it. The powerful, detail oriented politician who brought “The Colson Center for Christian Worldview” to Loudoun also brought us spy agency jobs, labyrinthian development, crazy supervisors and school board members, and gridlock. When he retires, he’s going to stick around, continuing his Chuck Colson influenced work, insuring that government directed ideological finance penetrates every aspect of our lives.

In this vacuum, the Washington Post reports that “Northern Virginia [GOP] lurches to the right,” but even the best exposure in the world won’t be enough to win this battle. Barbara Comstock, Wolf’s hand-selected successor, has the backing, power and money of the Republican establishment. For example, she is endorsed by Tim Phillips of Americans For Prosperity who specializes in phony grass tops organizations and dirty attack ads. Even so, the primary is not a wrap. Bob Marshall is running TEA Party attack ads that appeal to the rightmost fringes of the right, reminding voters that Comstock took direction from Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” and voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 primary.

Whoever wins the Republican primary, the congressional race will be exceedingly ugly and hateful. But with Marshall, we won’t need to work too hard to show what a crackpot he is. It happens every time he opens his mouth. He’s proud of it.

So we need your help to insure the “real” TEA Party candidate represents Virginia’s GOP 10th CD. Get out and vote for Bob Marshall. He’s no TINO, and he can be counted on to remind voters of this every step of the way.

 

The sweet scent

Blossoms_bloomingWhile running on a dirt road, up a slight hill, the Kelly green of the forest floor nearby, a soft breeze washed over me and there was the sweetest scent, I imagined, from the fruit trees nearby.  Ah, finally, the sweet smell of spring, an antidote for the sickness of mind that is modern society.

We’ve heard the metaphor in politics, invoking “spring,” the network herd of media mimics murmuring thoughtlessly the word “spring,” repeating it again and again as if it were true, misapplying this glorious time of year to mid-East street protests, armed conflict, American air strikes, AK-47s fired in the air, blood leaking through the dirt, improvised bombs, cries of pain, and needless death.

Such dystrophic destructive events cannot be compared — however you may stretch and pull a poetic metaphor — with spring’s awakening of that renewable life dormant through the cold and hard seasons until the moment when the sweet scent drifts in the air anew.

Of course, much of our public dialogue is imprecise, unfocused and misleading if not a lying whopper to lull the mind to sleep or to misdirect our attention from what really matters to what we can fear or hate.  It is this sickness of mind we must cure.

When I was young, I played a Seabee in South Pacific, and heard over and over in rehearsal the lyric how you have to be taught, carefully taught, how to hate and fear.

Much of our public dialogue is about hate and fear. Continue reading

Love at the County Courthouse

Photo: Leesburg Today

The Rev. Don Prange, Pastor of Lovettsville’s St. James Church, appeared outside the Loudoun County Circuit Courthouse to witness love, the love of same sex couples, committed to a union that the court and the laws of Virginia fail to recognize or allow.

Had these couples gone first to the Clerk’s Office and asked to file a marriage certificate, they would have been rebuffed.

Episcopal Priest, Daniel Velez Rivera, said, “God has made us equal in his image” but the law doesn’t recognize persons made in his image as equal.

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Scary Seeds

Off Mountain Road, in Loudoun County, Todd Morrison has a small farm and, when he first moved in, and they sprayed herbicide, everything turned brown in the field in front of his house except the soy; he got concerned.  We should all be concerned.

What was in the soy that remained unaffected by the herbicide spray?

The truth was the soy seeds had been genetically modified and that began Todd’s quest to understand what that meant, finishing up with his campaign against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and in favor of organic and community farming, not just on his place but throughout the Loudoun County area.

Todd learned that seeds have been modified with DNA from bacteria, viruses, other plants, even animals.  In other words, there is even a cross-species GMO hybrid created (plant with animal) with this genetic engineering.  There is also mounting evidence that GMOs bring with them health problems.

Worse yet, if you’re trying to avoid GMOs, Todd reported, that 80% of our processed food has GMOs.

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