Eleven States Sue in the Name of Bigotry.

11

AUSTIN, Tex. — The Obama administration on Wednesday faced its first major challenge to its directive this month about the civil rights of transgender students in public schools, as officials in 11 states filed a lawsuit that tested the federal government’s interpretation of the statute forbidding sexual discrimination.

The states, including Alabama, Georgia, Texas and Wisconsin, brought the case in a Federal District Court in North Texas and said that the Obama administration had “conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process and running roughshod over common sense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”

[…]

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, repeating a pledge from the days of Texas independence, called the issue a “come-and-take-it moment.” He said that the state was prepared to vigorously defy the directive and that it would not be cowed by the administration’s pledge to withhold federal funding for non-compliance.

“He says he’s going to withhold funding if schools do not follow the policy,” Mr. Patrick told reporters. “Well, in Texas, he can keep his 30 pieces of silver. We will not yield to blackmail from the President of the United States.”

Full Story Here. UPDATE: The ACLU has weighed in on this bit of mass hysteria.

However, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that is impossible because they will lack standing in court.

“The Supreme Court has made clear that one cannot sue an agency just because they disagree with the agency’s guidance,” the ACLU said in a press release Wednesday. “If these attorneys general disagree with the agency’s interpretation of what the federal ban on sex discrimination means, they can make that argument to the court when it arises in a real case.”

Instead, the ACLU said that this is nothing more than a “political stunt” from conservative states.

James Esseks, director of the ACLU’s LGBT Project said the Texas-based lawsuit is “an attack… on transgender Americans, plain and simple.” He also believes “the real targets here are vulnerable young people and adults who simply seek to live their lives free from discrimination when they go to school, work or the restroom.”

Full Story Here.

Mary Lou Bruner, Loser.

Texas State Board of Education District 9 candidate Mary Lou Bruner (WFAA/screen grab)

Texas State Board of Education District 9 candidate Mary Lou Bruner (WFAA/screen grab)

Remember Ms. It’s A Theory, Theories Are Unproven Bruner?   Well, she’s not going to be sitting on the Texas Board of Education this year. All I can say is that I’m grateful for the outbreak of sanity (no doubt temporary, but still) that ousted her.

Texas voters on Tuesday decided the state’s school board should not include a retired teacher who claimed President Barack Obama was a gay prostitute and said dinosaurs might still be around if Noah had more room on his biblical ark.

Mary Lou Bruner, 69, an arch-conservative with a penchant for conspiracy theories, lost by 18 percent to fellow Republican Keven Ellis in a primary race for the board that sets policies for the nation’s second-largest school system, unofficial Office of the Secretary of State results showed.

[…]

Bruner has blamed U.S. school shootings on the teaching of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in classrooms and said Noah loaded dinosaurs on the ark to escape the biblical flood. “The dinosaurs on the ark may have been babies and not able to reproduce.

It might make sense to take the small dinosaurs onto the ark instead of the ones bigger than a bus,” she said on Facebook.

“Texas escaped an education train wreck tonight,” said Kathy Miller, president of the government watchdog group Texas Freedom Network, in a statement.

While the comments brought her ridicule in some parts of the country, in East Texas they also vaulted her to the top in a March primary, where she won 48 percent of the vote.

Bruner, who taught elementary school and special education for 36 years, had toned down the rhetoric recently and had been commenting only on her platform for the seat on the 15-member state school board that oversees the educational system and approves textbooks for some 5 million public school children.

Full Story Here.

Transgendered Orders from White House.

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Bill O’Reilly and Donald Trump had a nice little chat about that whole transgender business, which didn’t take long to devolve into the same old, same old. “Eh, this bathroom thing isn’t necessary”, “this isn’t human rights”, and “shockingly expensive”. I’ve run right out of eyerolls, they need new lines.

Trump told the Fox News host that he supports leaving the issue of transgender rights up to the states. “You know Obama’s getting into a very tricky territory,” he said, referencing the guidance issued by the Obama administration. “The amazing thing is so many people are talking about this now and we have to protect everybody even if it’s one person… but this is such a tiny part of our population.”

O’Reilly asked Trump if he provided gender-neutral facilities in his properties. “No, we don’t have that,” replied Trump. “I hope not. Because frankly it would be unbelievably expensive nationwide. It would be hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Trump did not elaborate on how he arrived at this estimate, nor did he acknowlege that in many cases, gender-neutral bathrooms could be established simply by removing gender-specific signs from doors. Additionally, allowing transgender people access to the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity, as Trump previously advocated, costs nothing.

[…]

Trump said he wasn’t sure about whether trans rights are “human rights,” but providing gender-neutral restrooms would be “an unbelievably expensive thing to do,” he told O’Reilly. Instead, the country should be “spending money on other things,” said Trump. “Frankly, the number of people we’re talking about is really a small number. Again protect them — but it’s a very very small number,” said Trump.

Full Story Here. Watch Trump discuss transgender rights, begining at 4:09.

https://youtu.be/IUq70p-PnV0

Trump’s Christian Liaison is…

Frank Amedia, an extremist asshole of the worst kind. Calling him a flaming doucheweasel would be a compliment.

Frank Amedia.

Frank Amedia.

Donald Trump has appointed a “liaison for Christian policy” — a minister who has said AIDS is caused by “unnatural sex” and threatened to withhold relief from Haitian earthquake surviviors if they continued to practice voodoo.

Frank Amedia, pastor of Touch Heaven Ministries, arranged a meeting earlier this month between Trump and several other ministers, Time reports. They discussed the “erosion of religious liberty,” the magazine notes, along with Israel and immigration — the latter being a focus of Trump’s presidential campaign, with his call to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and his plan to deport all undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

Catering to the religious right, on the other hand, has not been a priority for the presumptive Republican nominee, and he has made some missteps in his references to the Bible. But now with Amedia, he’s joined up with a representative of the conservative Christian fringe.

[…]

In 2010, Amedia was in Haiti distributing food to earthquake survivors, but said he might make further aid contingent on Haitians giving up the practice of voodoo. “We would give food to the needy in the short term, but if they refused to give up voodoo, I’m not sure we would continue to support them in the long term because we wouldn’t want to perpetuate that practice,” he told the Associated Press in a story quoted by Right Wing Watch. “We equate it with witchcraft, which is contrary to the Gospel.” He later tried to walk back the comments, saying AP had not told “the full story,” but still appeared willing to cut off aid if Haitians did not embrace Christianity, according to Christianity Today magazine.

[…]

Go to Right Wing Watch for more on Amedia, including his role in the bribery case; he was never charged, but admitted to attempted bribery in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

Some other ministers who met with Trump have similarly extremist views. Rick Joyner of Morning Star Ministries has blamed gay people for Hurricane Katrina and likened Trump to Christ. Sid Roth has said homosexuality will cause a nation to “vomit out” its people. Mario Bramnick, pastor of New Wine Ministries Church in Florida and a representative of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, last year hosted a meeting that called for the “mobilization” of Christians in response to the “demonic shift” brought to the nation by the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling.

The Full Story is Here. Here’s a sample of Mr. Amedia:

21.

Chester A. Arthur, 20th president of the United States, viewed cultural diversity as a threat to the country.

Chester A. Arthur, 20th president of the United States, viewed cultural diversity as a threat to the country.

Chester A. Arthur viewed cultural diversity as a threat to America.

The 20th president of the United States, Arthur took office in September 1881, after the assassination of James Garfield. He inherited a country still wrangling over civil rights for African Americans, and bristling with anti-immigration sentiment.

The animosity was particularly pronounced in the West, where large populations of immigrants and Native Americans lived, said Tom Sutton, a professor of political science at Baldwin Wallace University and author of a chapter about Arthur in the 2016 bookThe Presidents and the Constitution.

“The country was growing more diverse, more industrialized, and out West, we were starting to get to the end of the development of the frontier,” Sutton said. “Arthur wanted consistency in population. He had this idea that everyone needed to be assimilated into American society, and those who couldn’t assimilate were excluded.”

[…]

The federal government used similar anti-immigration language to exclude Native Americans, who were not considered citizens. Indians were required to go through a naturalization process similar to that of immigrants in order to qualify for the same rights and protections as other citizens.

“Arthur wanted what he thought was best for Native Americans—this idea that they needed to be assimilated into American society,” Sutton said. “In terms of citizenship, we continued to treat them as foreign nations, so they had to go through a naturalization process.”

This applied even to Indians born in the United States who voluntarily separated themselves from their tribes.

In 1880, a Winnebago Indian born on a reservation in Nebraska tried to register to vote. In a case that reached the Supreme Court in 1885, John Elk claimed he surrendered his tribal allegiance and was therefore a U.S. citizen. His claims were denied, and the high court ruled that Indians were not considered citizens until after they had been “naturalized, or taxed, or recognized as a citizen either by the United States or by the state.”

Arthur, who had natural empathy for the plight of American Indians, did little to protect them from oppression. Instead, he viewed assimilation as the answer to what he called the “great permanent problem.”

Full Article Here.

Courting the New Evangelicals.

The Economist Intelligence Unit ranked victory for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at 12 on an index where the current top threat is a Chinese economic "hard landing" rated 20 (AFP Photo/Jim Watson).

The Economist Intelligence Unit ranked victory for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at 12 on an index where the current top threat is a Chinese economic “hard landing” rated 20 (AFP Photo/Jim Watson).

…Buoyed by his support from deeply religious voters during the Republican primary, the thrice-married Trump has been meeting privately in Manhattan’s Trump Tower with top members of the evangelical community for months, peppering the conversations with fundraising appeals.

At one recent meeting with Trump, evangelical leaders noted how he often flashes a signature hand gesture, with a thumb out and a finger point to the sky, as he enters and exits rallies.

“You see athletes do it all the time and it’s their chance to point to the sky, to thank God for their success,” said Pastor Mark Burns, CEO of a Christian television network based in South Carolina. “Trump does this all of the time, too. He’s giving reverence to the man upstairs.”

“Even with Mr. Trump’s billions of dollars, he too still submits himself to God,” said Burns, who has become a top Trump surrogate and a staple on the campaign trail, frequently introducing the candidate at rallies. “We should all chip in to help him out. You know, even a billionaire needs some cash flow.”

[…]

“Preliminary discussions” are happening within evangelical circles to help Trump raise money—particularly in new age evangelical circles, where many of the leaders have become best-selling authors, top-selling Christian musicians and even minor-celebrities in their own right, Burns said.

And Trump is even beginning to make inroads with more traditional evangelical donors who backed religious conservative candidates who have now dropped out of the presidential race.

Foster Friess, the billionaire who supports Christian conservative causes, told Bloomberg Politics that he predicts conservatives will eventually rally behind Trump.

Full Story Here.

It’s a theory, theories are unproven…

Texas State Board of Education District 9 candidate Mary Lou Bruner (WFAA/screen grab)

Texas State Board of Education District 9 candidate Mary Lou Bruner (WFAA/screen grab)

Mary Lou Bruner. Again. Ugh. This woman makes most extreme Christians seem downright liberal. She is running, once again, for the state school board in Texas. She doesn’t care for her competition, Keven Ellis, who is of the opinion that religious instruction should take place at home, not school. Mary Lou probably thinks that makes him a demon in disguise.

During a Sunday face-off between Ellis and far-right opponent Mary Lou Bruner on WFAA’s Inside Texas Politics, both candidates made their case to voters for the May 24th runoff for the GOP nomination.

Ellis argued that schools needed to be properly funded, but that the district had a responsibility to see that money was spent wisely.

Bruner, who has warned that pre-K programs indoctrinate children into the “homosexual agenda,” called for slashing “special programs” and early childhood education.

[…]

“Ms. Bruner has said that she wants creationism taught in science class,” Inside Texas Politics host Bud Kennedy noted. “And that her views represent those of the district. Are you Christian enough to represent this district?”

“Yes, I am,” Ellis insisted. “I’ve taught Sunday school and Bible quiz in my church in 20 years. And I believe it’s my responsibility to teach my faith to my children. The catch of when you get religion in school is whose religion is going to be taught?”

Bruner disagreed: “When we only teach theory — it’s a theory, theories are unproven — but in the science class, if only one theory is taught then we’re teaching a religion. It is the religion of atheism.”

Via Raw Story.

Egyptian Artists Work Around State Oppression And Censorship.

Ollah - installation by Hossam Dirar (2015)

Ollah – installation by Hossam Dirar (2015)

 

Division (2013) installation by Hossam Dirar (Photo via Hossam Dirar)


Division (2013) installation by Hossam Dirar (Photo via Hossam Dirar)

In times of chaos, artistic expression can be cathartic. But artist expression in a place like Egypt can be insalubrious while working under an oppressive political regime.

“In recent years, the Egyptian arts and culture sector has faced debilitating repression,” the Arterial Network, a non-profit network of artists and activists building democratic arts practices in Africa, noted in December. “Prohibitive restrictions affecting the freedom of artists and journalists are ongoing.”

The Egyptian government passed a law that debilitated certain art-funding NGOs in 2014, and in December of last year, police raided and closed a gallery and a theater in downtown Cairo without giving an official reason. Some artists have also been banned from traveling abroad to receive awards for their work.

Crackdowns on the arts have led many Egyptian artists to avoid addressing politics altogether. “Most of the art since 2011 has avoided talking about political points, aside from a handful of artists,” Dirar told ThinkProgress.

“The current system is perhaps the worst in terms of attacking [or] not accepting people’s voices, whether artistic, political or social,” he said. “There can be no opposition; the state rejects opinions and ideas that differ from their own. The artist finds himself in a tight spot. If you like the system and choose to defend it, you’re fine, but if not, if you vocalize dissatisfaction, if your commentary does not match theirs, you could end up in jail for life.”

Politics may be taboo or risky, but artists throughout history have found ways to be subversive or rebellious to oppression. But for some artists, avoiding politics is impossible. Their impact casts a shadow over society and affects the calculated behavior of every individual Egyptian. To avoid repression, Egyptian artists create social and political commentary using Aesopian methods.

Justin Salhani has the Full Story at Think Progress. It’s a great read. What can I say? Artists must create, it’s not a matter of what we do, it’s what we are. These are artists working in highly dangerous circumstances, going ahead with making a statement and sharing that expression with others at personal risk.

Ollah Project.

Republicans: Who cares if your baby is brain damaged?

The Zika virus is a flu-like disease that is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito (AFP Photo/Luis Robayo)

The Zika virus is a flu-like disease that is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito (AFP Photo/Luis Robayo)

As the Zika outbreak grows in the US, President Obama is blasting Republicans for planning to go on Memorial Day vacation before passing needed funding to combat this potential public health crisis.

President Obama spoke to the press after being briefed about the Zika outbreak by public health officials.

The President said:

So we’ve got to get moving. And what essentially NIH and CDC have been doing is taking pots of money from other things — universal flu funds or Ebola funds or other funds — just to get the thing rolling. But we have to reimburse those pots of money that have already been depleted and we have to be able to sustain the work that’s going to need to be done to finish the job.

So bottom line is Congress needs to get me a bill. It needs to get me a bill that has sufficient funds to do the job. They should not be going off on recess before this is done. And certainly this has to get done over the course of the next several weeks in order for us to be able to provide confidence to the American people that we’re handling this piece of business.

If I’m a young family right now, or somebody who’s thinking about starting a family, this is just a piece of insurance that I want to purchase. And I think that’s true for most Americans. And understand that this is not something where we can build a wall to prevent — mosquitoes don’t go through Customs. To the extent that we’re not handling this thing on the front end, we’re going to have bigger problems on the back end.

Obama also urged the American people to tell Congress to do their jobs.

[…]

Republicans would rather go vacation than pass the needed funding to combat the outbreak of a virus that causes brain damage in infants. The Republican Congress is once again placing the priorities of the American people last.

Look what has happened to that mighty republican value of saving the unborn children – they don’t seem to care at all if there is no ungodly woman to punish. They don’t seem to be the least bit disturbed to use this as a way to punish the president, acting like temperamental toddlers, running off to vacation land while people are left to deal with the potential fallout from the Zika virus. Thanks, Republicans.

Via Politicususa.

No Birth Certificate, No School.

Tim Damos / News Republic.

Tim Damos / News Republic.

Like many educational institutions, St. John’s Lutheran School in Baraboo uses federal tax dollars to pay for certain programs, such as free and reduced-price lunches for disadvantaged students.

The funds for those programs are taken from all U.S. taxpayers, without discrimination. And federal civil rights protections say that any student who legally qualifies for the programs can participate, regardless of race, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation.

But taxpayers whose children are homosexual or transgender may not be able to take advantage of those programs, at least not at St. John’s. That’s because officials at the private religious school say they have the right to discipline students for making what they refer to as “sinful choices.”

[…]

In the letter, Breitkreutz outlined new rules that required parents to provide a birth certificate and sign a parent handbook agreement prior to enrollment.

The birth certificate allows the school to know the child’s born gender, and the handbook agreement — which apparently was recommended by the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod — lists discretions for which a student can be disciplined and expelled, including homosexuality.

[…]

“If we cannot legally refuse students who are struggling with homosexuality or gender identification, we must maintain our right to hold to the truths of God’s Word,” Breitkreutz wrote. “In other words, although we do not have the right to refuse admittance to people choosing an outwardly sinful lifestyle, we do maintain the right to discipline and dismiss students for these choices.”

Full Story Here. St. John’s Principal Letter. St. John’s Parent Handbook. Freedom From Religion Foundation Complaint.

So, they’ll accept any child, until they decide to toss that child out. They claim this isn’t discriminatory, as they aren’t looking to ‘weed’ anyone out, no. They just really need those birth certificates. You might want to avoid the comments section on the main article. “Being Christian [as opposed to be any flavour of queer] isn’t a sin.” No, it isn’t, but perhaps it should be.

Maroon 5 says No to NC.

maroon-5-x750

Maroon 5 will not be spending “One More Night” in North Carolina anytime soon, making an announcement today that may have fans in the Tar Heel state in “Misery.”

The Grammy-winning pop-rock group cancelled two shows in the state in response to anti-LGBT House Bill 2.

“This was a difficult decision for us to make as a band,” the group wrote in a statement on their website. The band wrote that they don’t want to “penalize our fans in North Carolina by not performing for them, but in the end it comes down to what we feel is morally right.” Full Story Here.

And, Target is standing firm with their commitment to diversity.

target-ceo-brian-cornellx750

Target CEO Brian Cornell told Fortune magazine on Wednesday that the retail chain’s decision to allow transgender customers and staff to use the bathroom that most closely corresponds with their gender identity hasn’t hurt sales.

“To date we have not seen a material or measurable impact on our business,” Cornell said. “Just a handful of stores across the country have seen some activity and have been impacted.”

[…]

In a May 11 interview with Kelly Evans of CNBC’s Squawk Box, the CEO stated, “We’re going to continue to embrace our belief in diversity and inclusion, just how important that is to our company. … We want to make sure we provide a welcoming environment for all of our guests, one that’s safe [and] one that’s comfortable.”

Full Story Here.

Ben & Jerry Want You

Credit: Ben & Jerry's.

Credit: Ben & Jerry’s.

Ben & Jerry’s unveiled a new social justice campaign — and a punny ice cream flavor to go with it — alongside the NAACP at a North Carolina rally on Tuesday.

The new flavor, Empower Mint, is a peppermint base with fudge brownies and swirls. The new campaign, “Democracy is in Your Hands,” is aimed squarely at the fallout from two Supreme Court cases: Citizen’s United and the 2013 gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

“We believe that these two things — the money in our political system and the attempt to disenfranchise certain segments of our voting population — are profoundly corrosive to our democratic system. And it is creating policies that are promoting deep inequities in our society,” Chris Miller, Ben & Jerry’s Social Media Activism Manager, told ThinkProgress by phone from the flavor’s premiere in North Carolina.

Full Story Here.

Oklahoma: Trans-access a State of Emergency.

The Oklahoma State Capitol. (KOKH/Keaton Fox)

The Oklahoma State Capitol. (KOKH/Keaton Fox)

Oklahoma has joined the party by declaring a state of emergency to block Obama’s directive.

Lawmakers have done so by introducing two pieces of legislation, which will be considered by May 27. First, Senate Bill 1619 would allow students to only use bathrooms based upon their gender at birth. This would render Obama’s directive powerless and also includes the following language:

“It being immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health and safety, an emergency is hereby declared to exist, by reason whereof this act shall take effect and be in full force from and after its passage and approval.”

The law would allow parents to sue school districts who don’t comply, based upon a request for a religious accommodation. Then legislators introduce Senate Concurrent Resolution 43, which actually calls for articles of impeachment against President Obama over the bathroom directive. One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. John Bennett, explains the rationale:

“This directive to schools is not only unlawful, but the breadth of overreach in this instance by the Obama Administration is shocking. We are working on legislation that would protect our citizens by not requiring our kids and women to share a facility with anyone who ‘identifies’ as a gender that they were not born. We are going to do everything we can to protect our women and children.”

Via Uproxx, Ktul, and Raw Story.

This comes after Oklahoma’s stunning disregard for, well, everything, by passing a bill making performing an abortion a felony. I think this graphic should be up everywhere Oklahoma is being discussed:

oklahoma-sign

Via Politicususa.