Civil & Human Rights

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.

The GOP has a jobs bill: keep the womenfolk barefoot and pregnant!

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Back in early December, POLITICO Tiger Beat on The Potomac reported that "The National Republican Congressional Committee wants to make sure there are no Todd Akin-style gaffes next year, so it’s meeting with top aides of sitting Republicans to teach them what to say — or not to say — on the trail, especially when their boss is running against a woman." GOP men tutored in running against women.

The idea was so comical that Gary Trudeau featured it in his Doonesbury comic strip in December.

Doonesbury

Apparenlty the NRCC forgot to school their male members of Congress that they should also not say stupid things in open committee hearings with C-Span cameras rolling.

You can't make this shit up. Congressman’s New Jobs Plan: Deny Women Access To Abortion So They Can Make More Babies:

During a debate over an anti-abortion bill currently advancing in Congress, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) suggested that Republicans support restricting access to abortion because it will ultimately benefit the economy if women have more children. Goodlatte noted that carrying pregnancies to term “very much promotes job creation.”

Bipartisan ‘fix’ to the Voting Rights Act filed in Congress

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Ari Berman at The Nation reports, Members of Congress Introduce a New Fix for the Voting Rights Act:

Today Representatives Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and John Conyers (D-MI) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) will introduce legislation to strengthen the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision last June invalidating a critical section of the VRA. The legislation, known as “The Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014,” represents the first attempt by a bipartisan group in Congress to reinstate the vital protections of the VRA that the Supreme Court took away.

* * *

The Sensenbrenner-Conyers-Leahy bill strengthens the VRA in five distinct ways:

1: The legislation draws a new coverage formula for Section 4, thereby resurrecting Section 5. States with five violations of federal law to their voting changes over the past fifteen years will have to submit future election changes for federal approval. This new formula would currently apply to Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Local jurisdictions would be covered if they commit three or more violations or have one violation and “persistent, extremely low minority turnout” over the past fifteen years.

The formula is based on a rolling calendar, updated with a current fifteen-year time period to exempt states who are no longer discriminating or add new ones who are, creating a deterrent against future voting rights violations. It’s based on empirical conditions and current data, not geography or a fixed time period—which voting rights advocates hope will satisfy Chief Justice John Roberts should the new legislation be enacted and reach the Supreme Court.

The new Section 4 proposal is far from perfect. It does not apply to states with an extensive record of voting discrimination, like Alabama (where civil rights protests in Selma gave birth to the VRA), Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, which were previously subject to Section 5. Nor does it apply to states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that have enacted new voting restrictions in the past few years.

Federal Court in Oklahoma Rules in Favor of Marriage Equality

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In the reddest of the Red States, Oklahoma, the U.S. District Court has struck down that state's discriminatory ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, and ruled in favor of marriage equality. Oklahoma’s Ban on Gay Marriage Is Unconstitutional, Judge Rules:

EqualA federal judge in Oklahoma ruled Tuesday that the state’s constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage violated the federal Constitution, the latest in a string of legal victories for gay rights and one that occurred in the heart of the Bible Belt.

The state’s ban on marriage by gay and lesbian couples is “an arbitrary, irrational exclusion of just one class of Oklahoma citizens from a governmental benefit,” wrote Judge Terence C. Kern of United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, in Tulsa, deciding a case that had languished for nine years. The amendment, he said, is based on “moral disapproval” and does not advance the state’s asserted interests in promoting heterosexual marriage or the welfare of children.

“We’re jubilant, we’re over the moon,” said one of the plaintiffs, Sharon Baldwin, 45, who has lived with her partner and co-plaintiff, Mary Bishop, 52, for 17 years.

The two both work as editors at The Tulsa World newspaper and had just arrived at work on Tuesday afternoon when the city editor told them of the decision.

“We’re taking the day off,” Ms. Baldwin said.

Religious bigotry rears its ugly head in the Arizona Legislature

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Earlier this month I told you about the bill by Rep. Steve Montenegro (R-Litchfield Park) to make it illegal for government to “require a minister to solemnize a marriage inconsistent with a minister's sincerely held religious beliefs.” A solution in search of a non-existent problem. As I said at the time:

I commend Rep. Montenegro for trying to keep his measure as narrow as possible. The New Mexico wedding photographer case he cites is an example of an individual claiming an overly broad definition of "religious liberty" to essentially assert a license to discriminate against members of the public.Whitye-only 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." If this wedding photographer had refused services to African-Americans or Jews, or to Arab-Americans and Muslims instead of "the gays," he would have been rightly condemned as a bigot. A "get out of jail free card" for compliance with laws based upon the mere assertion of "sincerely held religious beliefs" leads to anarchy.

Rep. Montenegro's restraint is not shared by Arizona's most corrupt state senator, Steve Yarbrough (R-Chandler), who uses his position to write charter school bills to steer state funding to his Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization to benefit himself financially. It's like writing checks to yourself. Unbelievably, this allegedly does not violate Arizona's ethics rules for legislators. (See Steve Murtarore at the Arizona Eagletarian for the latest self-dealing by Sen. Yarbrough, regarding a KPHO Channel 5 investigation by Morgan Loew. Is Republican Sen. Steve Yarbrough's approach the only thing corrupt in the Arizona Legislature? and Will you tolerate Steve Yarbrough's brazen self-service?)