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Republicans/Conservatives starting to dismantle civil rights for minorities, LGBTQ

Pancho

By Pancho
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Pancho

Pancho 44475

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I believe a poster on Shaggy said the Republican Party was actually the party of inclusivity and diversity.  Who was that?

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/sessions/563006/

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But Sessions “has definitely been a force for a regressive approach to criminal justice,” says Inimai Chettiar, the director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “Since the day he set foot in office, he has one by one repealed the vast majority of items put forward by the Obama administration to advance reforms, not only in policing but with prosecutors and private prisons.”

According to Vanita Gupta, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division from 2014 to 2017, the pace and extent of retrenchment under the first year of Sessions’s tenure have been extraordinary. “This DOJ and Jeff Sessions are rolling back civil-rights progress and undermining fundamental American values of equality and justice in a fairly unprecedented manner,” Gupta told me. “Across every issue, from criminal-justice reform to voting rights to LGBTQ rights, the attorney general is advancing a vision of America that is narrow, and abdicating some of the Justice Department’s core responsibilities and mandate to ensure equal rights and access to justice for all.”

In his tenure as attorney general, Jeff Sessions has made it a point to end each of these policies. In fact, he has expressed deep suspicion of the very idea of criminal-justice reform, and of any scrutiny of police actions. Instead of the aggressive “patterns and practice” investigations of whole police departments, the DOJ has emphasized “local control and accountability” in its collaborative initiatives. The department has ramped up the surveillance of black activists—even as the ranks of white-supremacist extremism and hate crimes surge—and brought to bear a narrative that crime in America increased under previous reforms. Sessions has led the DOJ away from some of its most expansive voting-rights enforcement, and reinvigorated the War on Drugs. And he has placed undocumented immigration as a major part of the problem in all phases of his criminal-justice, drug, and voting-rights changes

 

https://www.buzzfeed.com/dominicholden/marriage-abortion-republican-state-laws?utm_term=.skx3JOgXw#.ibGzL8nX5

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Kansas Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer signed a law this month that allows taxpayer-funded adoption agencies to reject applicants, including gay couples and divorcees, based on their religious objections. A week before, Oklahoma Republican Gov. Mary Fallin signed a nearly identical law.

These new laws are reminiscent of a November 2015 law passed in Michigan, which Kristy and Dana Dumont sued over in federal court last fall because a publicly funded Catholic adoption agency allegedly refused to serve them for being gay. The couple’s first court hearing is in July.

Unlike Indiana’s religious freedom law, which became a national flashpoint in 2014 and was effectively rescinded due to the backlash, these narrower, targeted bills wind up on the books with little brouhaha. The encroachment has been largely overshadowed by the political hurricane of the Trump administration. The tailored religious objection measures don't attempt to repeal the right of gay couples to marry, but rather, they create a creeping body of law that says gay couples can be denied the accessories of marriage that society deems crucial to recognizing a union: adopting kids, wedding cakes, couples counseling, health care services.

To name a few examples of laws: A North Carolina law lets magistrates opt out of performing marriages, and a law in Mississippi protects those who discriminate on the basis of same-sex marriage in employment, business transactions, housing, and issuing marriage licenses.

Some of the bills reflect templates provided by the advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, much the same way Americans United for Life churns out model legislation to curb abortion.

In Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee, meanwhile, cities can no longer pass LGBT nondiscrimination ordinances — so a couple can get married, but it’s not explicitly illegal for them to be fired for their same-sex marriage.

Mary Bonauto, a leading civil rights lawyer who argued to legalize same-sex marriage at the Supreme Court, says that same-sex marriages are undermined by these laws.

----

An analysis by the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBT advocacy group, found 12 states now have targeted laws that protect people with religious objections, some explicitly opposed to same-sex marriage. Seven states have laws that ban teachers from discussing gay people or gay relationships — so the children of gay parents can never hear families like theirs recognized during school hours.

The immediate impact of these laws isn’t clear. How many people are actually turned away from adoptions or housing? Do these laws change behavior in states where there’s no law banning LGBT discrimination to begin with? Yet the lesson from abortion opponents is that laws can linger on the books for years, eventually leading to lawsuits that, in turn, create new national precedent at the Supreme Court.

“Folks on the right view the abortion strategy as a model to limit and obstruct same-sex marriage,” Douglas NeJaime, a law professor at Yale, told BuzzFeed News.

Religious recusals from performing abortions were initially considered a nonpartisan way to protect the conscience of doctors, he said, but they have ballooned in scope and have been weaponized to cover everyone from pharmacy workers to receptionists in order to block access to contraception, sterilization, and abortion.

Anderson, the Heritage Foundation researcher, called for religious recusal laws in regard to the Obergefell ruling that allow people to “lead our lives, rear our children, and operate our businesses and charities in accordance with our beliefs — the truth — about marriage.” He also invoked the Hyde Amendment, which blocks taxpayer funds from going toward abortion services.

Texas actually attempted that strategy to defund marriage licenses for same-sex couples in 2015. While the bill didn’t pass, Anderson also made it clear: This would be a multistate effort, over decades.

Conservatives don’t need to pass laws in all 50 states — or move quickly — to open the door for national precedent, as anti-abortion activists proved.

 

And just announced today in Texas as official stances of the Texas Republican Party.  here's a link to all of the endorsements and policy they've approved: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4517378-2018-RPT-Platform-for-Voting.html

http://www.outsmartmagazine.com/2018/06/texas-gop-approves-24-anti-lgbtq-platform-planks-including-support-for-ex-gay-therapy/

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Texas Republicans once again officially endorsed the dangerous, discredited practice of “ex-gay” therapy, including for “self-motivated” youth. They called on state officials to reject the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, and repeal Texas’ hate crimes law.

The 2018 platform also calls for the repeal of local nondiscrimination ordinances that protect LGBTQ people, and states that businesses and their employees should have a license to discriminate based on their religious beliefs.

The document opposes “all efforts to validate transgender identity,” and calls for banning trans military service, and requiring trans people to use restrooms in government buildings, including schools, based on the sex they were assigned at birth. It states that, “The official position of the Texas schools with respect to transgenderism is that there are only two genders: male and female.”

Amid backlash from some younger Republicans, delegates removed an especially heinous anti-gay sentence from the platform stating that, “Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental truths that have been ordained by God in the Bible.” However, the 2018 document remains as anti-LGBTQ as ever.

Principles

We believe in …

6) Self-sufficient families, founded on the traditional marriage of a natural man and a natural woman.

Business, Commerce and Transportation

14) Counseling and Therapy: No laws or executive orders shall be imposed to limit or restrict access to sexual orientation counseling for self-motivated youth and adults. [State]

26) Municipal Preemption: We encourage the Legislature to preempt local government efforts to interfere with the State’s sovereignty over business, employees, and property rights. This includes but is not limited to burdensome regulations on short-term rentals, bags, sick leave, trees, and employee criminal screening. We support preemption of city ordinances that dictate sick leave policies to private businesses. [Local]

Criminal and Civil Justice 

102) Hate Crimes: We urge the complete repeal of the Hate Crimes Law since ample laws are currently in effect to punish criminal behavior towards other persons.

Education Subcommittee

116) Campus Speech: We urge the Texas Legislature to recognize the rights of those on college campuses to practice their faith and their right to free speech. We further urge that the Texas Legislature write legislation to protect the right of anyone who steps onto college campuses, to prohibit college campuses from stripping away their First Amendment rights of free speech and practicing their religion. We support withdrawal of public funding from any college or university within this state that actively or passively discriminates or permits discrimination against the free speech of either students or guest speakers. Student groups shall have the unfettered right to elect their leaders, choose their members, and set their organization’s mission, purpose, and standard of conduct. [Federal, State]

121) Sexual Education: We demand the state legislature pass a law prohibiting the teaching of sex education, sexual health, or sexual choice, or identity in any public school in any grade whatsoever, or disseminating or permitting the dissemination by any party of any material regarding the same. All school districts, individual schools, or charter schools are prohibited from contracting with or making any payment to any third party for material concerning any of the above topics. Until this prohibition goes into effect, sexual education shall only utilize sexual risk avoidance programs and promote abstinence outside of marriage. [State, Local]

122) Extracurricular Opportunities: We encourage nonpublic school parents to create extracurricular opportunities for their children where they are not readily available and in a manner that they can be free from discriminatory testing, intrusive government oversight, or harmful school policies regarding mixed-gender students in bathrooms and locker rooms. We encourage the legislature to find ways to allow nonpublic school students’ participation. Any home school student that does not participate will be unaffected. [State, Local]

140) Gender Identity: The official position of the Texas schools with respect to transgenderism is that there are only two genders: male and female. [State, Local]

Health and Human Services

240) Gender Identity: We oppose all efforts to validate transgender identity. We call upon our legislature to enact laws prohibiting the use of hormones before the age of 18 in an attempt to change gender. We believe it should be illegal to remove healthy body parts in minors in an effort to try to transition to the opposite sex.

241) No Taxpayer Funding for Sex Change: We oppose the use of taxpayer funds for any type of gender dysphoria treatments or sex change operations and/or treatments.

256) Homosexuality: We believe there should be no granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior, regardless of state of origin, and we oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.

259) Conscience Clause: All persons and legal entities have the right of conscience, and should be protected under Texas law if they conscientiously object to participate in practices that conflict with their moral or religious beliefs. This includes, but is not limited to, abortion, the prescription for and dispensing of drugs with abortifacient potential, human cloning, embryonic stem cell research, eugenic screenings, euthanasia, assisted suicide, harmful futile procedures, and the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration.

National Defense and Border Security

275) No Gender Norming in Military: We oppose gender norming in the military. Transgendered persons should not serve in the military as a special class; no special considerations or medical treatment shall be required or offered.

State Affairs 

303) Religious Freedom for Business Owners: We support the removal of laws and regulations that are used to force business owners and employees to violate their sincerely held beliefs.

304) Public Accommodations: We support legislation at the state and federal level that concretely defines public accommodations as originally defined and understood in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that it prohibit any expansion of that legal definition by any federal, state, or local law to expand government control to restrict any First Amendment rights; and to proscribe any law that requires any private business or individual to create or provide a custom product or service, or any kind of expressive work, or enter into a contract, or be coerced into any speech that is not their own.

305) Religious Freedom of Speech and Practice: We call on the Texas Legislature to repeal the Johnson Amendment that assaults the free speech of pastors and religious organizations. We further resolve to protect the First Amendment rights of any citizen to practice their religion and exercise their right to free speech in the public square, as well as in religious organization affiliations.

310) Gender Identity Facilities in Businesses: We support enacting legislation in the State of Texas ensuring no government entity in the state be allowed to take it upon itself to define for any private business or private entity how it must segregate its restrooms, changing facilities, or showers; nor may any government agency be allowed to require businesses to profess, espouse, or adopt specific views on sex, sexuality, gender, or gender identity, other than to guarantee that views and positions on these matters are not used as a basis to deny access to public accommodations, as defined by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, nor to deny employment, or discriminate in employment decisions, solely on the basis of a person’s views on these matters.

311) Child Rights: We call on the Texas Legislature to pass legislation to protect privacy in public schools and government buildings as allowed by Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, by ensuring multi-use facilities, including showers, changing rooms, and bathrooms, are designated for and used only by persons based on the person’s biological sex.

312) No Sexuality Indoctrination: We call on the state legislature to pass legislation so that no public school or other educational institution may force, require, or pressure any child or student to profess, espouse, or adopt, or otherwise be indoctrinated without explicit parental consent, specific views on sex, sexuality, gender, or gender identity.

313) Gender Identity Pronouns: We oppose any attempt to criminalize and/or penalize anyone for the wrong use of pronouns.

316) Homosexual Behavior: We affirm God’s biblical design for marriage and sexual behavior between one biological man and one biological woman, which has proven to be the foundation for all great nations in Western Civilization. We oppose homosexual marriage, regardless of state of origin. We urge the Texas Legislature to pass religious liberty protections for individuals, businesses, and government officials who believe marriage is between one man and one woman. We oppose the granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior, regardless of state of origin. We oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.

317) Definition of Marriage: We support the definition of marriage as a God-ordained, legal and moral commitment only between one natural man and one natural woman

318) State Authority over Marriage: We support withholding jurisdiction from the federal courts in cases involving family law, especially any changes in the definition of marriage.

319) Overturn Unconstitutional Ruling: We believe this decision, overturning the Texas law prohibiting same-sex marriage in Texas, has no basis in the Constitution and should be reversed, returning jurisdiction over the definition of marriage to the states. The Governor and other elected officials of the State of Texas should assert our Tenth Amendment right and reject the Supreme Court ruling

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