I wrote the other day about Alan Chambers’ bizarre talk at the Liberty University G-H8 summit. In case that left you wanting more, here’s Rena Lindevaldsen of Liberty Counsel* speaking for almost ten minutes about how, if Fundamentalists have to abide by the law in our secular society, it’s somehow a violation of their freedom of religion. Uh huh. Just to clear things up: religious freedom doesn’t include the right to lord your beliefs over other peoples’ lives. Note that every complaint Rena has about non-discrimination laws involves conservative Christians feeling the need to use their religious beliefs as a club to hurt other people. THAT is the freedom our opponents fight for. They’re not fighting for the right to believe and worship as they please. They have that, and they’ll always have that, because no one has ever threatened to take it away!
No, these people are simply children who refuse to learn to play well with others, and if I was their preschool teacher, I’d have a really hard time passing them.
Anyway, Rena goes over the Religious Right’s Greatest Hits:
1. Catholic Charities wouldn’t abide by the law in Massachusetts, so they cried victim when they freely chose to close their doors, thereby throwing children under the bus.
2. The photographer in New Mexico who broke the laws of the state of New Mexico when she refused to photograph a same-sex wedding. Was she a photographer working in a religious institution? Oh hell, of course not! She just thought she should be able to deny her services to any groups/people she doesn’t like, much in the way restaurants denied service to African Americans before the law compelled them to do differently.
3. The couple running the bed and breakfast in Vermont who opened their space for weddings and parties, oh, except that one time when (!!!) a homosexshul couple wanted to have their wedding reception there, so they said no, and used their religious bigotry as an excuse to deny that service.
4. The YMCA had to allow gay couples to have family memberships! OH NO! The sky is falling, and it’s like lions are personally eating Rena Lindevaldsen’s flesh!
What tedious whiners!
Anyway, here’s the video, if you want to watch it. She moans and groans about transgender people, GLSEN, Kevin Jennings, PFOX and some other bullroar. But again, notice that NONE of the so-called “religious discrimination” she whines about involves their actual religious freedom. It’s ALL about religious people being denied the right to their own self-appointed moral pedestal over the rest of the population.
Over the past week or so, it’s been reported that Vaughn Walker, the judge in the Prop 8 trial, is gay. This shouldn’t matter, because those of us who understand how the judicial system works know that judges are charged with interpreting the law in light of the Constitution, and nothing more. Cries of “judishul activizms” from the Religious Right in gay rights cases are ringing more and more hollow, as straight white Republican-appointed judges around the nation are ruling in favor of our equality in increasing numbers. So, if Vaughn Walker rules in the plaintiffs’ favor in the Prop 8 trial, he’s simply joining a growing group of Republican appointees who agree that equal protection means equal protection for ALL American citizens. But of course, the Religious Right doesn’t see it this way.
So let’s tack off the Religious Right reactions to this revelation:
1. Matt Barber issued a hysterical press release, suggesting that Walker’s behavior during the trial has been “bizarre,” and that his (overturned) decision to allow cameras in the courtroom contributed to a “circus” atmosphere, which hurt the anti-gay side, because, like the cowards they are, they imagine themselves “victims” in the wake of the Prop 8 vote. Barber calls the judge’s sexuality a “conflict of interest,” because Matt Barber stubbornly and childishly clings to definitions of sexuality that have been disproven for decades. If I were being charitable, I would suggest that maybe all those years he spent groping and being groped by men in tight shorts resulted in some sort of long lasting head injury.
2. Brian Brown attempted to take a gentler approach, saying that regardless of whether Walker is gay or not, he’s still an “activist” judge, and that the deck has been stacked against the anti-gay side from the beginning. Apparently it hasn’t crossed his mind that the deck might have been stacked against bigotry and discrimination because reality is stacked against bigotry and discrimination.
3. Rick “Frothy Mix” Santorum farted out some sort of jumbled words where he claimed that Prop 8 voters had been harassed and blacklisted over their votes. The hysteria surrounding the aftermath of the Prop 8 vote would lead an uninformed observer to think there was some sort of bodycount among the Religious Right after that vote, but reality, of course, knows otherwise. Santorum also accused the judge of “rigging the trial.” Uh huh. TS at Instaputz replies, “It’s not every day that a former Senator accuses a Reagan and Bush-nominated federal judge of ‘rigging’ a trial.”
One need not rely on this disturbing item from NRO to conclude that American jurisprudence is in big trouble given the expanding number of judges who are, to use modern parlance, “openly gay” (which is to say: proudly practicing or inclined to practice perversion). If they regard their homosexuality as (part of) “who they are” and, by extension, view foes of homosexuality as akin to racists, it is difficult to imagine them being truly impartial on “gay”-related cases.
Having said that, given the ferocity with which many straight liberals promote homosexualist ideology today, there surely is plenty of left-wing judicial bias to go around without laying all or even most of the blame at the feet of America’s homosexual judges. A straight liberal who regards homosexuality as a pure “civil rights” issue is just as capable of being a reactionary, anti-religious bigot in his approach toward moral opponents of homosexuality as an openly homosexual judge.
Waaaah. Peter’s comment does start to expose the obvious problems with the Religious Right’s logic on this (he’s good for that, because he’s just not put together correctly). The NRO piece Peter links to is from Ed Whelan, and if you know NRO, you know it’s a fairly hysterical analysis, itself. These are the people, after all, who pay Kathryn Jean Lopez to fawn over 15 year old boys at anti-choice rallies and to mangle the English language on a daily basis, while Jonah Goldberg continues to suck at the teat of wingnut welfare, riding his mother Lucianne’s coattails all the way to the bank, writing columns about how global warming isn’t real because hey look, meteors! (For instance.)
Anyway, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam. I’m sure there are many more Religious Right luminaries going through the roof over this, and if you really want to know, may I suggest Google, but I personally can take only so much of their garbage before my brain cells start feeling threatened.
If you have a working brain, you already know the obvious flaw in the Religious Right’s logic. If being part of a minority group disqualifies a judge from presiding over any cases involving that minority group, then judges would have to recuse themselves from so many cases that our system would fall apart. For instance, Scalia would have to shut it, forever, about anything involving the Catholic Church. And again, this betrays a willful refusal to understand what the judicial system IS. I have no idea whether or not these Religious Right figures actually do understand what judges do — I mean, come on, we’re dealing with people who think Liberty is a real law school, for god’s sake — but their public stance is obviously to misinform an already civics-stupid culture about the role of judges in our society, because Religious Right figures don’t value the American system of governance like the rest of us do.
I could go on, but John Aravosis already smacked them all down quite thoroughly, so I’ll just excerpt what he said, and then you should click the clicky to read the rest:
If a gay judge is unfit to rule on a case involving gay people or the religious right, then using the far right’s logic, a straight judge would be just as biased towards straight people in any anti-gay discrimination case. But it’s worse than that. African-American judges would never be able to rule on civil rights cases – well, no one would really, since every human being is a member of at least one race, thus, under the religious right’s logic, we’d all either be a minority or the majority, making us a party to any civil rights suit. (Or perhaps Latino judges would be able to rule on discrimination cases involving African-Americans, it’s not entirely clear.) And Republican judges clearly couldn’t rule on political cases, nor could Democratic judges. Which means the entire Supreme Court, the entire federal judiciary, and really any judge who ever voted or who has any political views whatsoever, is ineligible from any case that involves politics. And female judges couldn’t preside over cases involving women, or men I guess, and so on.
And in fact, the religious right’s logic, to its illogical conclusion, means that conservative Christian judges also would not be permitted to preside over any case involving gays, non-Christians, Christians who aren’t members of some religious right sect, cases involving politics (since the religious right became a de facto subsidiary of the Republican party decades ago), cases involving discrimination (since the lead religious right groups routinely promote bigotry – in fact, their raison d’etre is to promote bigotry), any case in which a black person is involved (the religious right used to use the Bible to justify slavery (and still think slavery was a good thing for blacks), and the Mormons excluded blacks from the upper levels of their church up until the 1970s), and lots of other issues. And let’s not forget that the Southern Baptists were formed because they split with the north over slavery – the SB’s were for it. But hey, they apologized…. in 2009.
But see, they don’t actually believe that. The Religious Right, incorrectly, thinks that they should have an elevated place in society. They have done nothing to deserve that place, and in fact, have been a solid stain on American history, but they’ve convinced themselves otherwise. There is no “logic” to speak of in their statements. No, they believe, in general, that they should be the final arbiters of all law in this country, in direct contravention of the actual American system, which guarantees us freedom from the tyrannical notions of bigoted, white male supremacist fundamentalist religion. And as their numbers continue to decrease with each passing year, pronouncements of this sort will become more and more extremist. The good news is that the American public is greeting these statements more and more with a collective yawn of boredom.
A year after it helped launch the Uganda genocide legislation, Exodus is teaming up with Robert Knight, Matt Barber, and an attorney who affirmed child abduction by her ex-gay activist client. Joining with NARTH’s leading political activists “therapists” at Liberty University’s School of Law, their objective is simple: Convince the public that the Constitution’s Bill of Rights cannot survive so long as LGBT people have any rights at all.
Exodus International President Alan Chambers will headline a two-day conference and symposium Feb. 12-13. The events will criticize sexual honesty, reject mainstream psychiatry, deny the existence of sexual orientation, and assert that conservative Christians’ rights are incompatible with the rights of sexual and religious minorities.
According to the Liberty Counsel, a Christian Right legal-attack squad, the February 12 conference is titled “Understanding Same-sex Attractions and Their Consequences.” On February 13, the Liberty University Law Review will host a legal symposium entitled “Homosexual Rights and First Amendment Freedoms: Can They Truly Coexist?” Liberty University was founded by fundamentalist Jerry Falwell, and it is operated as a veritable police state where no dissent from the late Falwell’s ideology and lifestyle are permitted.
Chambers will tell fundamentalists — as he has done many times before — that same-sex attractions are caused by bad parenting and abuse, that public honesty about one’s orientation is sinful, and that recognition of the equality of religious and sexual minorities is demonic. (Read More)
They’re really batting a thousand down there. A third judge has ruled in favor of adoption rights for gay couples, calling Florida’s adoption ban unconstitutional:
“There is no rational connection between sexual orientation and what is or is not in the best interest of a child,” Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Maria Sampedro-Iglesia. She also called the anti-gay adoption law “unconstitutional on its face,” and that it could not be enforced.
“The permanent interests and benefit to all members of the adoptive household will be promoted by the adoption,” Sampedro-Iglesia wrote. Alenier “is a fit and proper person to adopt the child and has adequate resources and facilities to care for the child.”
Judge Sampedro-Iglesia’s ruling comes after a judge in Key West, Monroe Circuit Judge David J. Audlin, declared the law unconstitutional, after Audlin’s allowed a gay Key West lawyer, Wayne LaRue Smith, to adopt a boy he had been raising in foster care and Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman approved the adoption of two half brothers by a gay North Miami foster parent, Frank Martin Gill, after she too said the law was unconstitutional.
When judges all over the state are calling a law unconstitutional, it probably is! Just a thought. Also, it becomes hard to throw accusations of “judishul activizm” when judge after judge after judge declares a law unconstitutional.
Still throwing those accusations, though, is Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver.* It’s so sad when Christian Right attorneys try to “do law”:
Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, called Sampedro-Iglesia’s ruling “evidence of judicial activism’ that violates state law.
“A judge is not a legislature onto oneself,” Staver said. “Judges don’t have the ability to write laws any way they desire. They have to follow the rule of law, and this judge did not.”
That’s right, Matthew! Judges are not legislatures! Judges are charged with interpreting the law in light of, in this case, the Florida Constitution, though, which is where things get confusing, so I’ll go slow for you! If judges’ jobs were simply to “follow the rule of law,” regardless of what the Constitution said, then their branch of government wouldn’t really be very important, now would it? But, you see, Matthew, the judicial system** is set up to act as a check on the legislature, so that if the people’s representatives pass unconstitutional laws, like the anti-gay adoption ban, then, in theory, the judges are charged with striking those laws down.
Civics is so confusing, I KNOW!
*SERIOUSLY, where is Lisa Miller?!
**Do they teach the “judicial system” at Liberty???
The Only One Mommy Facebook group was created by Liberty Counsel attorney Rena Lindevaldsen and ex-gay activist Debbie Thurman to affirm the illegal activities of ex-gay activist Lisa Miller against daughter Isabella Miller-Jenkins and former partner Janet Jenkins.
Since 2004, with the help of Liberty Counsel, Miller has violated repeated court orders in Vermont and Virginia to respect Isabella’s visitation rights with Jenkins. And since Jan. 1, Miller has violated another court order requiring her to transfer custody to Jenkins. Instead, Miller abducted Isabella and went into hiding — presumably somewhere among fundamentalist churches that are allied with the Liberty Counsel.
The Facebook group’s activities in support of this kidnapping are now a legal liability — as is the Facebook group’s efforts to silence dissenters who care for the welfare of Isabella and Jenkins, not just Lisa and the Liberty Counsel.
So now Thurman has announced the hurried closure of this public group and the creation of a new, secret, invitation-only group. In a message to group members today, Thurman said:
Dear Folks,
I am letting you know about a major change. Only One Mommy is going defunct ASAP and will be replaced by a new group (still to be named) that will be created by Linda Wall. We want all members to know about the change so you can have the option of sending Linda a message (her FB profile is under Linda Marie Wall) to join the new group ASAP, if you wish to.
Linda Wall is the leader of Lighthouse Policy, a Virginia antigay fundamentalist project which rejects morality, freedom, civility, and religious freedom in favor of a Christian Right war against infidels, abortion, and homosexuality. Her project affirms the abduction and justifies it with Miller’s court-disproven defamations against Jenkins. Please contact Ms. Wall and politely challenge her efforts to aid and abet child abduction — and please consider reporting this activity on behalf of kidnapping to Facebook.
Vermont Family Court Judge William Cohen has given ex-gay activist Lisa Miller 30 more days to appear in court with her 7-year-old child or face a contempt of court finding and possible arrest, according to The Roanoke Times.
Since 2004, Miller has violated repeated court orders to permit visitation by her ex-partner, Janet Jenkins. Late last year, Miller was finally ordered to surrender custody of their daughter to Jenkins, to ensure that their daughter Isabella enjoys her right to know both parents.
Miller violated the custody order on January 1 and disappeared with Isabella, who is now on the missing-children’s list of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Miller’s lawyers at the Liberty Counsel claim not to know their client’s whereabouts, but one of the Liberty Counsel’s attorneys created a Facebook group which supports Miller’s abduction of Isabella and subsequent disappearance.
Since 2004, Miller has violated repeated orders to permit visitation by her ex-partner Janet Jenkins. First, Miller sought refuge in Virginia from Vermont’s family court system, which has jurisdiction over her former union with Jenkins. When Virginia’s Supreme Court effectively ruled last year that Vermont has jurisdiction, Miller continued to violate court orders defending the visitation rights of Isabella and Janet.
Miller’s illegal activities left Vermont with no choice but to transfer custody to Jenkins, effective January 1. Then, it seems, Miller began plotting to go into hiding with Isabella — with the affirmation of Liberty Counsel attorney Rena Lindevaldsen and ex-gay activist Debbie Thurman. The latter pair’s Facebook group affirms the apparent kidnapping as a fundamentalist “Christian” act of “civil disobedience.”
A hearing will be held Friday in Vermont to discuss next steps.
Liberty University Law School has withdrawn as a co-sponsor of next month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington because a Republican homosexual activist group is being allowed to co-sponsor the event.
Liberty University chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr., and Liberty Law School dean Mat Staver had penned a letter to CPAC organizer David Keene last month, requesting that he disallow the homosexual group GOProud from co-sponsoring the conference. The letter was also signed by other evangelical Christian leaders, including Gary Bauer of American Values. GOProud supports, among other things, same-sex “marriage” and repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
Staver reports that he never received a formal response to his complaint, so Liberty University is dropping its co-sponsorship. Liberty Counsel, however, will still have a booth at CPAC.
So really, they’re not taking their toys and going home, they’re just taking them into a corner and refusing to share them. Apparently it is that terrifying to have your name on a list of sponsors near a gay name — because what if one of the other sponsors thinks that means you’re gay too? Anyway, this temper tantrum from Liberty Law is predictable and lame, but at the same time, I agree with those questioning just precisely why GOProud would want to join forces with people who see them as less-than second class citizens, people who give aid, comfort and support to eliminationist policies aimed at LGBT people at home and abroad, etc. I know that “gay Republicans” have convinced themselves that the most important issues facing LGBT Republicans are keeping healthcare as “whites only” as they can, and wetting their pants over Nigerians who fail to make their underpants explode, because those failed underpants bomber boogeyman guys also aren’t fond of gays, but give me a break. This group doesn’t stand to add anything to CPAC that will benefit the majority of LGBT people. For whatever reason* they’re gay wingnuts, and they shouldn’t be surprised when the Barons of Wingnuttia react with open revulsion and fear to the idea of having their names on a list next to a gay group.GOProud is simply finding out what happens when you try to make nice-nice with people who hate your existence.
On the Facebook support group for “ex-gay” poster mom Lisa Miller, several people — including the group’s creator — are praying for the success of Miller’s ongoing contempt-of-court and the apparent kidnapping of her daughter, just days before Miller was due to turn over the seven-year-old Isabella to ex-partner Janet Jenkins.
Ex-gay activist Debbie Thurman, creator of the support group, today cheered the disappearance of Miller sometime earlier this month. Thurman’s blog called this apparent kidnapping an example of “true motherhood”:
So, the blogosphere and the mainstream media are now abuzz with the news that — gasp! — Lisa and Isabella Miller are nowhere to be found, just days before the court-mandated transfer of custody of 7-year-old Isabella to Janet Jenkins. Ya reckon?
Were I in Lisa’s shoes, I could only hope to have the faith and courage she has displayed for the past six years. …
Lisa obeyed God in seeking to raise Isabella in the Christian faith. Isabella learned Scripture, apologetics and the art of prayer at her mother’s knee and in church, to the extent that she found her Christian school Bible classes boring and “childish.” This is an intelligent, precocious 7-year-old, who knows her mind and can speak it. She would have given Janet Jenkins nightmares had she consented to live under the same roof.
I cannot answer the burning question on everyone’s lips: Where are Lisa and Isabella? Somewhere safe, I pray. How and when did they get there? Only God knows. ..
What happens now? A lot of frustration, recrimination and more lies on one side and a collective sigh of relief on the other. The courts still have a huge task set before them, meanwhile. Lisa and Isabella represent only one of many similar cases waiting to be resolved. We need precedents that honor the prevailing states’ rights, laws and constitutions. The majority of Americans overwhelmingly support traditional marriage. If the tyrannical minority wants to push against that, it can and will be met with civil disobedience. There is no other way.
Lisa Miller is a mother who would give up her life to save her child. Of that there is no doubt. She apparently has chosen to forfeit a large measure of her liberty, personal property and pursuit of happiness in assuring that child her God-ordained future, much as a group of patriots pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor more than two centuries ago to establish this nation.
I say God bless and long live Lisa and Isabella Miller. All who have known them are the better for it.
Thurman’s statement seems to confirm allegations that Miller is being used by Thurman and Christian Rightists at the Liberty Counsel as a test case for their Manhattan Declaration, which is a vow to violate any law that fundamentalists happen to disagree with.
Thurman’s statement and those of many others on the Facebook group are saturated with the false piety of people who believe themselves to be unaccountable to any law and answerable only to self-serving reinterpretations of the Bible.
Drew Taggart prays “that people ‘along the way’ are brave enough and smart enough to render the necessary assistance to Lisa and Isabella so this girl can be raised in a healthy environment. I just hope Lisa did her homework and did this disappearing act properly.”
In a subsequent defense of this statement, Taggart says:
I doubt she’ll ever see a day of jail. Once word of this gets out, millions of people are going to be outraged. And there are plenty of local and a few state law enforcement agencies around the country, who will not waste a minute trying to find her. William Cohen is a leftwing hack and this ruling is a joke. Without the support of law enforcement, especially wherever Lisa opts to call her new home, this ruling is going nowhere.
Several other deluded supporters “pray” that the state of Virginia is given a fundamentalist special right to ignore the family-law jurisdiction of other states and to harbor kidnappers and their children.
“Ex-gay” activist Debbie Thurman provided an update tonight, via Facebook support group, regarding fellow ex-gay activist Lisa Miller’s five-year bid to flout federal and state laws which protect children from exploitation and kidnapping by deadbeat and non-custodial parents.
Thurman said:
We have news to report from both Vermont and Virginia. First, Judge Cohen did not grant the requested stay of the Jan. 1 transfer of custody. Second, the Virginia Court of Appeals has asked for Liberty Counsel to file a supplemental brief by Jan. 4. The court will respond to the brief by Jan. 18. There will be no ruling on the latest appeal until after that.
As things stand, Miller — who for five years has violated Vermont family-court rulings that she must share visitation rights over her daughter — is required on Jan. 1 to turn over daughter Isabella to former partner Janet Jenkins, due to Miller’s refusal to obey previous court rulings.
Miller’s attorneys at the Christian Right’s Liberty Counsel view the case as an opportunity to turn U.S. states’ family courts against one another, allowing culturally fundamentalist states such as Virginia to disregard the rightful jurisdiction of other states (as well as the religious freedom of co-parents and children) and harbor people who claim that Jesus gives them special permission to be deadbeat parents.
Since Miller remains unwilling to comply with the courts of either Virginia or Vermont, we can expect more unfortunate drama in this case in mid-January.
Meantime, Thurman tonight offered a sickening dose of false piety: Sympathetic “Christmas” prayers for those who exploit Isabella, and cold silence to those who value child welfare and the rule of law.
According to the 
The 
“Ex-gay” activist Debbie Thurman provided an update tonight, via Facebook support group, regarding fellow ex-gay activist 
