Civil & Human Rights

Virginia is for lovers: Marriage Equality cases on the docket

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

EqualThe Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals is being asked to put the Utah and Oklahoma marriage equality cases on a parallel track, as expected. Tenth Circuit is asked to put Oklahoma and Utah marriage equality cases on a parallel track. Briefs are due in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case of Sevcik v. Sandoval later this month.

Media attention is about to turn to the state of Virginia, where a high profile case led by the Prop. 8 "Dream Team" of David Boise and Ted Olson is scheduled for a hearing on January 30. Va. quickly emerging as key in gay marriage fight:

Almost overnight, Virginia has emerged as a critical state in the nationwide fight to grant gay men and women the right to wed.

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Two federal lawsuits challenging the state’s constitutional ban on gay marriage are moving forward, and a hearing on one of the cases is scheduled for Jan. 30.

With the recent court gains in Utah and Oklahoma, gay rights advocates are heartened by the new mood in Virginia. Symbolically as well, they say, the challenges of the state’s gay marriage ban resonate because of the founding state’s history of erecting a wall between church and state and a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision involving a Virginia couple and a past taboo: interracial marriage.

“Virginia is one of several important battlefronts where we have the opportunity now to build on the momentum, embrace the public’s movement in favor of the freedom to marry and end the discrimination,” said Evan Wolfson, founder and president of New York-based Freedom to Marry, which seeks to have same-sex marriage bans struck down nationwide.

The Arizona Daily Star’s creative headline writer strikes again!

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

ScreenshotI almost spit out my coffee this morning when I opened up the fishwrap newspaper this morning. The print edition headline on the front page of our sad small-town newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, reads "Setback for AZ's voting ID effort" — on Martin Luther King Day, no less.

A quick Google search reveals that no other newspaper publishing this Howard Fischer report used this politically biased headline. Most used "Citizen proof request rejected by federal eelction commission." The Sierra Vista Herald used "State bid to change federal election law rejected." Hell, even our sad small-town newspaper did not use this politically biased headline in its online version: Panel rejects AZ's bid to require proof of citizenship for voting. All factual headlines.

The headline should read "A victory for voting rights," or "GOP voter suppression rejected."

Arizona Legislature Opens: Watch ‘State of the Hate’ Address (video)

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by Pamela Powers Hannley

January 13 marked the opening of the Arizona Legislature’s 2014 session. Since Governor Jan Brewer took over the helm, this day of speecheshas evolved into a day of protest.

Citizens for a Better Arizona (CBA) organized a major demonstration on the capitol plaza for the opening day. Chanting “stop the hate”, approximately 150 CBA supporters  brought attention to Brewer’s failure to protect the children of Arizona on multiple levels.

Late in 2013, Arizonans learned that more than6500 Child Protective Services (CPS) cases have gone uninvestigated. While the administrator in charge of CPS has said that his regular reports to the governor and the legislature included the large number of uninvestigated cases, Brewer has been acting shocked since the news broke. During her state of the state address on the opening day, Brewer announced that she has disbanded CPS and created a new agency that will report directly to her.

Calling attention to the CPS scandal, CBA activists moved their protest inside the capitol building and tried to go up to the 8th floor, where the governor’s offices are, to deliver dozens of stuff animals, representing the children who were lost in Arizona’s CPS system. (Watch CBA’s protest and interaction with capitol police in the video below.)

At Monday’s action, CBA also urged Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne to stop their attacks on DREAMers and allow them to drive legally. Watch the video after the jump.

EAC files its response in proof-of-citizenship case

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Arizona Attorney General Tom "banned for life by the SEC" Horne and Secretary of State Ken "Birther" Bennett are in U.S. District Court in Kansas, Kris W. Kobach et al. v. United States Election Assistance Commission (13-4095-EFM-DJW) suing the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and threatening to impose a two-tier system for voting in Arizona and Kansas based upon whether you registered to vote with the Arizona voter registration form or the federal motor-voter form (NVRA). The Judge in his Order Remanding Matter to EAC for Final Agency Action (.pdf) gave the EAC until January 17 to respond to the order of the Court.

The EAC filed its response just minutes before the midnight deadline. Read the richly detailed 46-page EAC Final Decision on Proof of Citizenship Requests (.pdf). A bullet point summary of the EAC analysis follows:

  • Congress specifically considered and rejected proof-of-citizenship requirements whn enacting the NVRA.
  • The requested proof-of-citizenship requirements are inconsistent with the EAC's NVRA regualtions.
  • The requested proof-of-citizenship requirements are inconsistent with the EAC's prior determinations.
  • The Supreme Court's Inter-Tribal Council opinion guides the EAC's assessment of the states' requests.
  • The states' requested proof-of-citizenship instructions would require applicants to submit more information than is necessary to enable election officials to assess eligibility.
  • The requested changes would undermine the purpose of the NVRA.
  • The requested proof-of-citizenship requirements are not similar to Louisiana's request for modifications to the state-specific instructions.
  • The decision by the Federal Voting Assistance Program to grant Arizona's request has no bearing on the state's requests to the EAC.

CONCLUSION: "For the foregoing reasons, the Commission DENIES the States’ requests."

In short, go pound sand.

That didn’t take long: Religious bigotry bill clears senate committee

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Earlier this week I posted that Religious bigotry rears its ugly head in the Arizona Legislature. Arizona's most corrupt state senator, Steve Yarbrough (R-Chandler), is carrying this religious bigotry bill, SB 1062 (.pdf), for Mullah Cathi Herrod and her Christian Taliban at the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP). While the bill is ostensibly about "hatin' on the gays," Yarbrough "acknowledged there may be individuals who have religious beliefs about unmarried women, or even employing people who do not share their same beliefs."

JesusFacepalm2Got that? If you are not one of the Christian Reconstructionists and Dominionists of the CAP who want to impose a Christian theocracy in the United States — which would include Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and the hundreds of other religious beliefs and sects, and non-believers alike, all of whom are protected by the First Amendment from state-sanctioned establishment of religion or interference with the free exercise of their religion — this bill would grant a "get out of jail free card" for compliance with civil rights laws based upon the mere assertion of "sincerely held religious beliefs," not just for a religious institution, but for individuals and corporations or any business (because "corporations are people my friend").

Apparently they never learned that "hate is not a Christian value." All the CAP does is hate.

As I pointed out, "This is a slippery slope which can easily be abused to discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, sex and religion simply by invoking the "magic words" that it is "my sincerely held religious beliefs."" It is a bald-faced attempt to eviscerate the civil rights acts hiding behind the gossamer thin veneer of "religious freedom" to be a discriminatory bigot. A nearly identical bill passed the Arizona Legislature last year but was vetoed by Governor Jan Brewer.