After the Supreme Court issued a collective “whatever” to Bishop Harry Jackson and his whiny appeal to force a vote on marriage rights in the District of Columbia, which runs up against the District’s nondiscrimination policies, the National Organization for Marriage has decided that maybe the new House of Representatives [now with lots more bigots!] can help them hurt gay families in the nation’s capital:
Jackson and his supporters took their case to the Supreme Court after the D.C. Court of Appeals said that the board was within the law in making such a decision. Jackson, a minister at the Hope Christian Church in Belstville, said the court’s split decision (5 to 4) gave him reason to hope.
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the nation’s most vociferous opponent of gay marriage, says it will work with Congress to strike down the law.
“With a pro-marriage majority in the new Congress we will explore a number of avenues to force the District to fulfill their constitutional responsibility to voters,” NOM President Brian Brown said in a statement. “As the four Court of Appeal justices who dissented in this case made clear, the District of Columbia owes it to the voters to allow them to decide the critical issue of marriage which has existed since before there was a District of Columbia.”
When you’re filled with such bigotry and prejudice that you spend your entire life trying to hurt gay families everywhere in a malignant game of whack-a-mole, you have problems. Therapy recommended.
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up a case seeking to force the Washington, D.C., government to hold a referendum on the city’s gay marriage law.
The high court declined to hear an appeal filed on behalf of opponents of a March 2010 law that made the District of Columbia the sixth jurisdiction in the United States authorizing gay and lesbian couples to marry.
The justices did not comment on the action. Their refusal to take up the case leaves in place an appeals-court decision upholding an earlier rejection of the planned referendum. The court ruled that the city was justified in rejecting the referendum because it sought to authorize a form of discrimination barred by the city’s Human Rights Act.
“Today’s action by the Supreme Court makes abundantly clear that D.C.’s human rights protections are strong enough to withstand the hateful efforts of outside anti-LGBT groups to put people’s basic civil rights on the ballot,” said Joe Solmonese, president of Human Rights Campaign, in a written statement.
This is why wingnuts don’t like the judicial branch. It’s one thing to convince a bunch of yahoos to vote against gay people’s fundamental rights, but in courts of law, they have to actually be able to back up their arguments. In this case, the Supreme Court simply said “nah, we’re busy.” As I said, too bad, so sad!
If you’ll remember, Bishop Harry Jackson, who doesn’t seem to really live in the District of Columbia, has his panties in a wad because the DC City Council won’t allow a popular referendum on their equal marriage law, arguing that it violates the District’s Human Rights Act. The appeals court agreed. Now it’s up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the case is even worth hearing:
According to the court’s public docket, the nine justices scheduled a private conference among themselves for Friday to discuss the case known as Jackson v. the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics. Under longstanding court rules, the justices usually announce a decision on whether to accept or reject a case on the Monday following such a conference.
“Generally, if a case is considered at a conference, viewers can expect that the disposition of a case will be announced on an Orders List that will be released at 10 a.m. the following Monday,” the court’s website says.
[...]
Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of a Beltsville, Md., Christian church, and other same-sex marriage opponents filed a petition with the Supreme Court Oct. 12 asking the court to consider hearing the case in a process known as a petition for a Writ of Certiorari. The case consists of their appeal of a lower court ruling that rejected their contention that the city must allow voters to decide the marriage question in a ballot initiative.
The D.C. Court of Appeals upheld the Board of Elections and Ethics’ decision to bar Jackson and his supporters from organizing a ballot initiative on grounds that, if approved, the initiative would violate the city’s Human Rights Act. The Human Rights Act bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.
If the SCOTUS rejects the case, the lower court’s ruling will stand and Harry Jackson will probably start crying, but he will live through the ordeal.
In case you missed this, it’s sort of funny, in that intense schadenfreude kind of way. Joe Sudbay:
The homophobic organization’s candidate for DC City Council in Ward 5, Delano Hunter, got thumped. Incumbent Harry Thomas Jr. defeated Hunter by a 3 to 1 margin. Here is the latest breakdown courtesy of DCist:
Ward 5 Council
Harry Thomas – 62.05%
Delano Hunter – 20.07%
Kenyan McDuffie – 13.77%
Joe points out that, in NOM’s mind, they were going to show the DC City Council that citizens didn’t want marriage equality by helping Delano Hunter win. The District of Columbia told them to get bent.
UPDATE: SO this came across my Twitter feed and it didn’t even occur to me to look at the date. This poll came out last year! That being said, it’s there. We’ve been talking about the tipping point a lot the past couple of weeks, and really, it’s an ongoing process. These years, themselves, are the tipping point. So we’re going to have a poll here that looks good, one there where we’re under by a couple of points, and then, in the next couple of years, it’s going to break off in our direction for good. The rest of the post stands.
A new ABC News/Washington Poll has been released was released last year, and something has changed:
Take gay marriage, legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut and now Iowa, with Vermont coming aboard in September. At its low, in 2004, just 32 percent of Americans favored gay marriage, with 62 percent opposed. Now 49 percent support it, vs. 46 percent opposed – the first time in ABC/Post polls that supporters have outnumbered opponents.
More than half, moreover – 53 percent – say a gay marriage held legally in another state should be recognized as legal in their own state.
The surprise is that the shift has occurred across ideological groups. While conservatives are least apt to favor gay marriage, they’ve gone from 10 percent support in 2004 to 19 percent in 2006 and 30 percent now – overall a 20-point, threefold increase, alongside a 13-point gain among liberals and 14 points among moderates. (Politically, support for gay marriage has risen sharply among Democrats and independents alike, while far more slightly among Republicans.)
The tide has turned. There is no reasonable indication that these numbers won’t continue to rise and rise. Maggie Gallagher and everyone who thinks like her has lost. Last night, Argentina welcomed marriage equality. Today, a DC Court of Appeals told Harry Jackson and Tony Perkins to shove off in their quest to put minority rights up to a vote. And now we have our first poll with a majority of Americans expressing support for full marriage equality for LGBT citizens. (The bigots are having a really bad day!)
The fight, of course, is not over. The professional anti-gay set will get more extreme in their rhetoric over the coming years, and there’s a possibility that they’ll incite violence from the lowest common denominators of our society. But the war is, essentially, won. Now we just have to stay engaged as it plays out to its conclusion. The crazy thing is that it’ll be done without one fundamentalist losing her rights to be as bigoted as she wants.
Regina Griggs of PFOX was, completely by mistake, given a certificate of appreciation by DC Mayor Adrian Fenty. You could tell it was a mistake by looking at the certificate, as it mentioned “outstanding contributions” to the community. Now, having been embarrassed in public (again), she’s asking stupid, loaded questions (again) about the matter:
“Is the mayor saying that ex-gays who apply for ceremonial certificates or D.C. government jobs will be refused because of their sexual orientation?”
Uh, no.
If “ex-gays” are real (they’re not), then they’re “straight” and as such are protected under nondiscrimination ordinances. Also, this was rescinded from Regina Griggs, who, to my knowledge, does not claim to be “ex-gay” herself, but rather has chosen to parlay her emotional problems stemming from her own gay son into trying to kill off in everyone that which she thinks she caused in her child.
So.
Simple answers to simple questions, this has been.
Here’s crazy Rob Schenck (most well known for running around DC and anointing doorways with oil, for some hocus pocus purpose or another) reacting to the advent of marriage equality in the District of Columbia:
“Let me remind everyone that there’ nothing new about what happened today at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia Marriage Bureau. In fact, it’ very old. Thousands of years ago, the world at the base of Mount Sinai looked very much like Indiana Avenue, NW, the street outside the Marriage Bureau office. Actually, it was far worse. On the Day of Pentecost, when the Christian Church was born at Jerusalem, Greco-Roman athletes competed in the nude and engaged in homosexual acts to titillate insatiably wild crowds.”
I had no idea they hired go-go boys for the event.
Hawt.
Then he gets all weird, though:
Worse, Roman men of stature kept wives to sire children by, but young boys as sexual play toys.
Sounds like Catholic priests, if you get rid of the “wives” part.
Temple prostitutes were used and abused as an act of worship. It was into this kind of moral abandon that the Jews first taught God’ moral code and Christians later were called to evangelize.
So here’s the thing, which should be encouraging for those of us on the side of fairness and equality. Only a person who is either extremely sheltered or abjectly stupid would look at what happened today in DC, as loving couples who have been together for years and years came and celebrated the legal recognition of their love, and see anything remotely resembling naked Greco-Roman wrestling, temple prostitution, pederasty, or anything of the sort. Talking Points Memo compiled a photo gallery from today in DC. Look through it and then tell me how insane Rob Schenck is in the comments section. Here are a couple of the photos and then click the above clicky to see the rest.
Oh, the debauchery.
(Photo credits: 1. Jeff Malet, maletphoto.com, 2. Newscom/rollcallpix)
The Archdiocese of Washington has decided to drop its foster care program over a dispute on pending same-sex marriage law with the District of Columbia.
The decision, posted late yesterday on the archdiocese’ Web site, announced that the archdiocese had ceased its 80-year-old program Feb. 1, the day the city’ contract expired with Catholic Charities, the church’ social services arm.
(…)
Catholic Charities, which runs more than 20 social service programs for the District, transferred its entire foster-care program — 43 children, 35 families and seven staff members — to another provider, the National Center for Children and Families.
Priorities! It’s amazing to me that the Catholic Church still laughably considers itself the one true church, because they don’t seem to know their Bibles very well at all! The Bible mentions same gender marriage exactly, um, zero times, and gay sex six times. Even then, the condemnations involve rape, coercion, domination, and tribal practices, so it’s not really “sexytime” they’re talking about anyway. But that same book has a whole buncha verses about caring for the downtrodden, with a particular emphasis on orphans.
But then again, I guess if the Catholic church can’t keep the kids under close priestly supervision, they’d rather not deal with them at all.
Can we finally stop pretending they’re a moral authority on any subject?
It is time to admit that the gay community has a gigantic Pope problem. Under the leadership of Benedict XVI, the Vatican has become an implacable foe of liberalism, modernity and basic rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Rome has eagerly jumped with both feet into America’ culture wars and is working on a global scale to punish or purge ideological dissenters within the church. This aggressive activism presents a formidable new front in the fight for parity — one with considerable political clout and financial resources.
Last week, a coalition of totalitarian religious activists and radical clerics joined forces to unveil the “Manhattan Declaration” at Washington’ National Press Club. This rambling manifesto, written by former Watergate felon Chuck Colson, called for “Christians” to disobey laws they didn’t fancy and to ignore civil rights laws that protected GLBT people from discrimination. It was a dishonest document filled with historical revisionism that promoted theocracy, encouraged anarchy and supported the dissolution of the rule of law. It falsely portrayed right wing Christians as victims, even as they pledged to work tirelessly to deny equality to those who would not adhere to their sectarian church rules.
An extreme manifesto of such breathtaking cynicism and insincerity is no surprise coming from what passes for “leaders” in today’ evangelical circles. It was striking, however, that more than 15 key American Catholic leaders signed on to the “Manhattan Declaration”. Signatories included heavyweights such as Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York and Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, DC. This was clearly a call to arms and a powerful signal that the Roman Catholic Church is taking the gloves off to fight political battles in America.
This hands-on involvement from Rome has passed the “trend” stage and appears to be official policy. Consider the significant involvement the Catholic Church had in stripping marriage rights away from GLBT couples in a Maine referendum held earlier this month.
In the same manner, on June 11, the Washington, DC Archdiocese threatened to abandon the homeless and quit charity work in the District if it had to comply with anti-discrimination laws. Catholic Charities had the audacity to believe it was entitled to collect $8.2 million in tax dollars meant to serve all DC residents, and then still get to handpick whom it deems worthy of assistance.
Catholic involvement with arch-conservative politics is growing by the day. In May, Catholic groups tried to stop President Barack Obama from speaking at a Notre Dame commencement ceremony because of his pro-choice position.
Earlier this month, Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin put the clamp on Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), banning the lawmaker from communion because he is pro-choice. This was reminiscent of The St. Louis Archbishop refusing to give communion to John Kerry during his presidential campaign.
The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has suddenly begun to steer GLBT Catholics to 12-step programs that promise to “cure” homosexuality or support them in a lifelong celibacy. The Catholic Diocese in Sioux Falls, South Dakota urged its 128-thousand members to oppose an attempt to bring legalizing embryonic stem cell research to a public referendum. (I guess the sacrosanct “people’ right to vote” on controversial social issues only applies to same-sex marriage)
In fighting back, we must remember that the Vatican is launching these attacks from a position of weakness. It has yet to recover its moral authority from public exposure of rampant child sexual abuse scandals that cost the Church billions of dollars in legal settlements.
The Vatican appears to be acutely aware it is losing its worldwide market share. It is basically defunct in the Middle East, where the religion began, and on life-support in Western Europe, where it once prospered. In Africa, Rome competes with Islam and Anglicanism for a shrinking slice of the pie. (Who can forget that while in Africa the Pope said condoms could make the AIDS crisis worse.) South America, one of its few remaining strongholds, is losing Roman Catholics to evangelical faiths by the millions.
Instead of competing against the conservative evangelical brand, Pope Benedict has decided to embrace it, shaping a conspicuously political Catholicism that embraces extremism and drives out dissenters. The Vatican has become so doctrinaire that it recently launched an invasive probe into the lives of America’s 60,000 nuns to enforce anachronistic rules. In January, Benedict welcomed back excommunicated Bishop Richard Williamson who denied that millions of Jews died in Nazi death camps.
Fortunately, Benedict is a cold, unsympathetic figure and the majority of American Catholics often ignore his edicts. The strategy for the GLBT community should be to stand up to Rome and help mobilize mainstream Catholics to fight back against an authoritarian Pontiff who is hell-bent on making the Catholic Church as unpopular and unappealing as His Holiness.
This weekend I attended the National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association meeting in DC. On Friday evening I went to an exciting party. There were no closeted right wing hypocrites in line for dry martinis – as Mike Rogers and Michelangelo Signorile were in the house!
