Here in Rhode Island, even the state’s most liberal critics of the Republican Party were a bit surprised yesterday when the state’s Republican governor, Donald Carcieri, vetoed legislation allowing LGBT couples to make funeral arrangements for loved ones.

Despite being the leader of a fairly liberal state, Carcieri pandered to the most extreme of conservative Catholic donors and went out of his way to accuse gay couples of destroying traditional marriage.

“This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue.

“If the General Assembly believes it would like to address the issue of domestic partnerships, it should place the issue on the ballot and let the people of the State of Rhode Island decide,” he wrote in a letter to lawmakers that was quoted by The Providence Journal.

Carcieri’s attitude has long been echoed by Christian Right organizations such as Exodus International, which strives to undermine the constitutional rights of LGBT couples by any means necessary: Opposition to marriage equality, opposition to civil unions, opposition to equal protection under existing hate-crime and discrimination laws, and opposition to equal protection under anti-bullying programs. Like Carcieri, Exodus boasts of having gay family members and friends, as if that (illogically) excuses the indecency and brutality of their antigay policies.

Carcieri was already unpopular even among some Republicans due to his pandering to Rhode Island’s non-existent antigay evangelicals and his inept destruction of the state’s finances. Carcieri fled this predominantly Catholic state briefly last month to seek support from a Massachusetts affiliate of Focus on the Family. Yesterday, Carcieri reinforced widespread disenchantment with his gubernatorial incompetence when he also vetoed a bill that would have prevented the governor from selling U.S. senate seats to the highest bidder, another bill that would promote green jobs in a state facing 14 percent unemployment, and yet another bill that would (gasp!) require lenders to give borrowers advance notice that they’ve been foreclosed.

Carcieri sees his future happening outside Rhode Island, somewhere in the vicinity of the Know-Nothing Sarah Palin-Rush Limbaugh-Tony Perkins celebrity circuit. But if he thinks that crowd has room for yet another sixtyish white male budget-busting talking head, he may wish to rethink.

Exodus International already is struggling with the same problem: How to become ever-more famous by becoming increasingly extreme in a crowd of fame-seekers.

Exodus has been playing that political game with the Christian Right a bit longer than Gov. Carcieri.

In 2003, Exodus spokesman Randy Thomas cozied up with his backers among the Christian Right when he condemned the U.S. Supreme Court’s legalization of sodomy, telling Christianity Today:

“This ruling gives validity to the gay community,” Thomas said. In addition to potentially redefining the family, it further solidifies their position as a political and social force.”

In 2005, Exodus involuntarily detained two gay youths — Zach Stark and Lance Carroll — in its Tennessee ex-gay boot camp. That made great headlines, telegraphing to the Christian Right that Exodus could be as brutal and righteous as anyone. Randy Thomas later borrowed a tactic from the same Christian Right by telling a Big Lie while counting upon public amnesia: “I and everyone I know, have no desire to force others into our line of thinking.” Exodus continues to detain youths and young adults like Bryce Thompson to this day, incommunicado and without legal aid or a patient’s bill of rights.

In 2006, Randy Thomas and Exodus friend Dawn Vedeto condemned a New Hampshire measure to afford that state’s LGBT couples some basic medical and financial options, saying that they were “saddened” because “as same sex marriage or any other sin becomes more widely accepted, those that are truly looking for healing and wholeness can become more discouraged than ever. Healing is possible, I am a living example of that, but I am sure most of those who live in New England and struggle with same sex attraction don’t know that.”

In other words, it seems, LGBT couples who wish to make medical or financial arrangements should be treated by courts and government offices like sinners, not citizens of the United States — and furthermore, apparently, New England should be treated like a foreign country to be ethnically cleansed by righteous conquistadors from the south.

Also in 2006, Exodus affirmed a court ruling that it is not the role of courts to uphold constitutional rights, but merely to interpret laws — no matter how unconstitutional those laws are. Randy Thomas — who spent much of that election year cheerleading for the GOP  — described the constitutional rights of LGBT persons as “obvious degradation of our society.”

Since 2007, Exodus has gradually assumed control of the Christian Right’s “Day of Truth,” a campaign Exodus and preacher Ken Hutcherson to shout down and silence opponents of antigay bullying in public schools.

This year, Exodus board member Don Schmierer co-keynoted the launch conference for a campaign of antigay vigilantism and execution in Uganda. He told Ugandan parents that they were to blame for their adult children’s homosexuality. He also stood alongside one U.S. ex-gay activist who accused the world’s homosexuals of being responsible for the Jewish Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, another U.S. ex-gay activist who uses magic to cure homosexuality, and a Ugandan ex-gay activist who declared that his country’s LGBT citizens were all pedophiles for whom life imprisonment was much too lenient.

In the race toward hatred, what lies next for people like Carcieri and his friends at Exodus and across the Christian Right?

By Wayne Besen

Only ten years ago, it looked like gay people would not be able to marry until the cows came home. With an Iowa Supreme Court victory and the state legislature approving marriage in Vermont, gay couples will soon be coming home to their cows — with marriage licenses in hand. The farm teams have brought us major league victories and reinvigorated the GLBT marriage movement.

“Today we have overridden the governor’s veto,” Vermont Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin said in a written statement released by the Human Rights Campaign. “I have never felt more proud of Vermont as we become the first state in the country to enact marriage equality, not as the result of a court order, but because it is the right thing to do.”

It feels odd to be partying like it’s 1999 in 2009. Just several long months ago, the GLBT movement suffered a stinging marriage defeat in California. But, our short period of tribulation was swiftly followed by surprising jubilation. It was downright shocking to see hog-wild homosexuals dancing in the streets of Des Moines. For anti-gay organizations, the once easy game of whack-a-marriage is feeling more like whack-a-mole. They can’t be sure where marriage equality will pop up next. (Read More)

The Family Research Council today criticized a joint New York Times op-ed by the antigay advocate David Blankenhorn and gay libertarian Jonathan Rauch, in which both authors recommend a compromise federal civil-unions law that would preserve robust rights for religious organizations and individuals to deny recognition of such unions.

David Link of the libertarian-leaning Independent Gay Forum points out:

The compromise tests the veracity of the claim that religious believers worry civil recognition of same-sex relationships will invade their belief system through the enforcement of civil rights laws which require gays to be treated equally. The right has been able to scare up a few anecdotes about this misuse of civil rights laws: a wedding photographer forced to photograph a lesbian wedding; a same-sex couple who wanted to take advantage of a church-owned gazebo, which the church offered for use to the public; and churned them into a froth of paranoia about governmental intrusion into religion.

I’m with Jon in offering this proposal up publicly. I am happy to let the right know that we are dedicated to stopping this cascade of anecdotes. If they want additional assurance that the first amendment’s separation of church and state means what it says, I will be on the front lines to add a statutory “and we really mean it” clause.

But I don’t think anyone will take us up on this offer, since I don’t think this is really their worry. It is not the first amendment they are concerned with, it is the fourteenth. It is equality that is the problem for them. Any government recognition at all of same-sex couples is more equality than they can bear.

I think Link is correct: FRC has effectively admitted that it respects neither the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and freedom of religion, nor the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee that all Americans shall receive equal protection under the law.

Much like its allies at Exodus International, the Family Research Council opposes any specific law that explicitly gives lesbian and gay couples hospital-visitation and estate rights that married heterosexual couples take for granted.

That’s why FRC today jeered Sean Penn for referring in his Oscar acceptance speech to enemies of gay couples as “haters”: because, when someone opposes hospital visitation, they really are guilty of hate.

And that’s also why FRC and the anti-family Hawaii Family Forum rallied opposition to state civil-union legislation which would explicitly allow Hawaii gay couples to share health benefits, gain hospital-visitation rights, and apply to adopt children. Hospital visitation, in particular, is a right that hospitals frequently disregard no matter how extensive a gay couple’s legal preparations have been.

FRC encourages antigay Hawaiians to “continue flooding senate offices with phone calls and emails” that oppose humane treatment and true family values.

Outraged that Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. believes gay Utahns should be treated almost-equally under the law, antigay Utah protesters wore T-shirts that declared:

“Homosexuals are anti-species.”

Why are antigay protesters obsessed with sex, and so hateful toward fellow Americans?

Source: Salt Lake Tribune. Hat tip: Box Turtle Bulletin

As noted by TWO, Richard Cizik, Washington lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals, resigned his post last week because of controversy over his nationally broadcast support of gay civil unions. The NAE and right-wing political organizations are applauding his departure with words both questionable and unkind.

During a Dec. 2 interview on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air,” Cizik told host Terry Gross that he voted for Barack Obama in the Virginia primary and said Christians should not fear supporting pro-choice and pro-LGBT candidates. Cizik also said that his views on marriage were “shifting” and that he supports civil union.

The comments made by the lobbyist — formally known as NAE’s vice president for governmental affairs — caused a huge stir in evangelical Christian circles and the controversy led him to resign his job. In a statement to the organization’s board members, the association’s acting president Leith Anderson explained his departure, saying Cizik’s radio remarks caused “a loss of trust in his credibility as a spokesperson among leaders and constituencies.”

It turns out that Cizik’s views are evolving even more. For years, he has been one of the rare evangelicals banging the drum for addressing climate change. The DC-based Institute on Religion & Democracy’s Mark Tooley told OneNewsNow that “Cizik has been very outspoken and in some ways ‘off the reservation’ for the last five or six years in terms of his global warming activism, which the board of NAE had initially somewhat disavowed — but that had not discouraged him.”

Cizik’s civil-union support was an apparent step too far from the reservation. “The National Association of Evangelicals has official positions strongly supporting traditional marriage and opposing same-sex marriage, and certainly by implication same-sex civil unions,” Tooley said. “So it seemed to be a very clear case where Cizik was ignoring the very obvious and official positions of his own organization, for which he is supposed to be the chief spokesman and lobbyist in Washington.”

Evangelical support for Cizik’s resignation is voluminous, the criticisms harsh.

Ingrid Schlueter, co-host of evangelizing radio show Crosstalk America said, “Those who are at war with God, the author of life, should be publicly confronted by evangelical Christians. Instead, they are aided and abetted in their evil by craven leaders like Cizik.”

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council is expectedly meanspirited: “This is the risk of walking through the green door of environmentalism and global warming – you risk being blinded by the green light and losing your sense of direction. How else can you explain enthusiastic support for what will probably be the nation’s most pro-abortion, anti-family president in our nation’s 232 year history?”

Janice Shaw Crouse, director and senior fellow of Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute, takes a broad swipe: “I think, perhaps, my dear friend Rich has been inside the Beltway for too long and has swallowed too much of the NPR and Vogue magazine Kool-Aid.”

I suppose the nasty talk has to be over-the-top. After all, Cizik has the ear of millions of Americans. People listen to him. You can see it in the responses on the FRC blog, where faithful Christians responding to Perkins’ statement wonder why caring about the environment or supporting Barack Obama contradicts their beliefs. Time magazine even named Cizik one of the world’s 100 most influential people this year. That’s a lot of clout to for the evangelicals to overcome.

Consider the response of NAE supporters of Cizik — and there are many of them. According to US News and World Report, “a coalition of roughly 60 evangelical leaders (mostly of the non-Christian right variety) has written to … Leith Anderson pushing for a successor [who, like Cizik, is] not beholden to the Christian right… [one] who embraces more progressive causes like combating global warming.” Read the full letter here.

David Gushee, a college professor and progressive evangelical activist who helped write the letter to Anderson, said this in an interview with USNWR:

I think Leith and the executive committee are going to take their time and let the furor over this die down. I personally think they need to find somebody who can promote all seven of the policy commitments in the NAE’s Health of Our Nation statement. There’s one on sanctity of life and one on climate change and one on poverty. There are always pressures from the right that the two fundamental issues of our time should be abortion and homosexuality. I think there will be pressure to hire somebody to make those the top priority.

I can tell you from some feedback that if the NAE makes the mistake of rolling back to the classic Christian right agenda, they would lose support of a lot of people who are currently happy to be working with them.

Yes, this comes from within the NAE.

The good news for Cizik, if he is sincere in his evolution, is that his message is being heard across the nation. It’s evident in the growing support for legal recognition of same-gender couples and for humane and just treatment of LGBT citizens. It is reflected in the fact that an increasing number of people are realizing that “gay” isn’t something that needs to be prayed away. Even the vote that passed California’s obnoxious and un-American Proposition 8 was a close one. Cizik is but one of many Americans who are slowly but surely understanding that being a Christian does not require denying compassion and equality to LGBT people.

Let’s hope this good man is snapped up by a progressive evangelical organization so that his vast influence — and his personal evolution — can continue. And let’s hope those questioning evangelicals continue searching their hearts and minds.

The Rutland Herald reported last week:

A contempt of court hearing in a case between two women, a former lesbian couple, could have ended Monday with judge-ordered jail time for the biological mother of a child conceived during the pair’s civil union in Vermont.

Instead, it ended with a rare conversation between Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins, who dissolved their civil union half a decade ago.

Miller and her attorneys have frequently touted her departure from “the lesbian lifestyle.” However, in a LifeSiteNews interview related to the hearing, Miller seems to indicate that she was never really attracted to women.

Since 2004, Miller has violated numerous court rulings in Vermont and Virginia granting Jenkins visitation rights with their daughter, who was born in 2002.

(Read More)

Ruling on a technicality, the Virginia Supreme Court on June 6 rejected “ex-gay” activist and veritable fugitive Lisa Miller’s use of the state as a shelter from Vermont family court rulings. The court upheld an appellate ruling which recognized Vermont’s jurisdiction and implicitly acknowledged ex-partner Janet Jenkins visitation rights with daughter Isabella, whom they jointly agreed to conceive.

(At left, Janet, Isabella, and Lisa Miller-Jenkins prior to dispute)

The dispute began in 2003, when Miller — dissatisfied with her civil union to Jenkins — took Isabella and fled to Virginia. She acknowledged Vermont’s jurisdiction by dissolving the civil union there and seeking child support. But Miller did not count on Vermont recognizing Jenkins’ visitation rights.

By 2004, Miller was claiming to be “ex-gay” and violating Jenkins’ visitation rights. (To this day, Miller has deceived the public and capitalized upon religious-right support by claiming to be ex-gay while declining to state whether she has any attraction to men whatsoever.)

In exchange for legal representation of questionable competence, Miller gave exploitation rights over Isabella to the religious-rightist Liberty Counsel, which has sought to use Miller’s flight from justice to undermine both Vermont family law and the federal Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act which protects children from parents who cross state lines to evade custody rulings.

A Virginia Court of Appeals ruling (PDF) eventually reversed a lower Virginia court’s violation of Vermont and federal law. Miller and the Liberty Counsel then waited too long to appeal and missed a deadline. Miller continued to violate Vermont visitation orders. When Jenkins sought to file a final Vermont court order for enforcement in the Virginia courts, the Liberty Counsel saw an opportunity for a fresh round of litigation. In the view of New York Law School professor Arthur S. Leonard, the Virginia Supreme Court was not fooled by the Liberty Counsel’s second round of litigation; it was clearly the same old dispute being reopened ad nauseum.

According to The Rutland Herald:

Miller’s attorney, Mathew Staver, said his client “has not lost her courage or her resolve” and will pursue other legal options. Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of the law school at the late Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, said he hopes to raise the issue of Virginia’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex unions in a new proceeding.

Liberty Counsel’s ongoing defense of ex-gay kidnapping underlines a religious-right commitment to fundamentalist lawlessness and subversion of family values.

For more information:

• Jurist: Legal News and Research (University of Pittsburgh)
• Virginia Supreme Court ruling (PDF)
• Equality Virginia FAQ
• Equality Loudoun comments on Virginia antigay Delegate Bob Marshall’s war against the daughter
• Lambda Legal press release

Lisa Miller and her partner, Janet Jenkins, exchanged vows in a civil union ceremony eight years ago in Vermont. Through artificial insemination, Lisa conceived and gave birth to Isabella in 2002. In 2003, Lisa adopted an ex-gay sexual identity, took Isabella and fled to Virginia, where she found an activist judge willing to violate Vermont child-custody and visitation orders.

From Vermont’s perspective, Lisa is now a law-breaking fugitive who has turned her daughter into a political pawn in the culture wars.

In late 2004, Vermont Family Court Judge William Cohen named Janet as a legal parent of Isabella as a consequence of the civil union.

Since then, Lisa has flouted Vermont family law and constitutional precedent in which states (such as Virginia) may not override other states’ jurisdiction and court rulings in matters of family law. Even as she violated the law, lived as a fugitive in Virginia, and sought to sever Janet’s ties to Isabella, Lisa won child support from Janet.

On Thursday (April 17), the Virginia Supreme Court will rule hear arguments in the custody dispute.

Focus on the Family has weighed in, supporting Lisa’s violations of Vermont family law and implicitly favoring a “special right” of antigay states to disobey the court rulings of states that have jurisdiction over a marriage, civil union, or child custody.

For more information:

Men’s News Daily
The Virginian-Pilot
PinkNews