Shariah for the Christians? "Magic Negro" writ really large?

How to pander to BLM bullshit and riot ideology without scaring white folks.

Christian groups unveil new criminal justice reform push

A coalition of Christian groups including the Church of God in Christ and the National Association of Evangelicals is launching a new criminal justice reform push that seeks to rally believers behind policing changes grounded in biblical principles.

Set to be announced Wednesday, the Prayer & Action Justice Initiative has its roots in a campaign started in the aftermath of the coronavirus to help save small churches at risk of closing, with top contributors to that work now channeling their energy toward the criminal justice project. 

It is expected to include prayer gatherings, nonviolent protests and policy advocacy — all aimed at advancing the cause of racial equity in the justice system.

Sometimes bipartisan support means "Oh, shit."

Note the apparent extent of buy in from religious conservatives.

At the heart of the nonpartisan effort are a set of broad priorities that include some specific policy changes. 

For example, the initiative is calling for greater public disclosure of reports on use of force by law enforcement agents, deaths in custody and other metrics.

Other elements of its agenda include easing sentencing laws and limits on parole releases, as well as the use of faith-based prison programs and other infrastructure to help inmates prepare for life after release.

The project comes two years after President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill into law that moved ahead thanks in part to the support of some leading Christians, including evangelicals and Black ministry leaders. 

However, the changes that measure made were widely seen as only a beginning of work on the issue.

Among the Christian leaders backing the initiative are Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference as well as a past faith adviser to Trump, and Rev. Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, a speaker at this week's Democratic National Convention.

Naive and absurd

Evangelicals and other religious conservatives don't care a fig for his faith or his sincerity.

They care about judicial appointments and they want someone to stop and even reverse the decades long deterioration of the position of Christian faith and Christian morality in the culture and the law.

They will flat out prefer Trump the pussy-grabbing hypocrite and libertine who supports American clericalism to Biden the man of sincere faith who opposes it and will continue to undermine it.

Biden's bid touts faith, courts even religious conservatives

And if your day isn't bad enough, yet . . .

Florida teen dies after conspiracy theorist mom takes her to church event and tries to treat her with Trump-approved drug: report

I refer not to all that Raw Story browser killing trash but to the actual story of the mom and her daughter and what the mom did to the daughter.

Maybe soon we'll read of her arrest and trial for murder.

This mom shows better than most folks how far political beliefs are akin to beliefs about alien abductions and other internet bullshit.

A Florida mother allegedly took her high-risk teenage daughter to a youth group event at their church, tried treating the girl at home with unproven drugs when she got sick — and then hailed her as a patriot after she died.

Carsyn Davis died June 23, two days after her 17th birthday, after she contracted the coronavirus, reported the News-Press, but former Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones detailed shocking claims in a medical examiner’s report about her illness.

Wait, the kid was just under 17 at the time? And she played along with this insanity? Wow. That's got to be a story, too.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated the teen’s last two weeks in the medical examiner’s report, which Jones said shows her mother, Carole Brunton Davis, had taken her immunocompromised on June 10 to a church-sponsored event.

Editor’s note: Jones’ analysis of the medical examiner’s report suggested that Davis had intentionally exposed her daughter to the virus at the event, but there’s no additional evidence to support that claim.

Oops. Don't hold your breathe waiting for that arrest.

This is the church that hosted Trump

Of course it is.

Church warned to stop claiming COVID can be eliminated with air filtration

Trump's kind of Christianity.

Gantry's, too. And Sharon Falconer's.

The attorney general of Arizona issued a warning letter to a megachurch that claims its air filtration system "kills 99 percent of COVID within 10 minutes."

Attorney General Mark Brnovich sent the letter to Phoenix's Dream City Church on Thursday, saying that their claim -- which Brnovich said was not backed by any science -- may be illegal.

"In the absence of scientific evidence regarding COVID-19 specifically, statements suggesting that a product could provide nearly guaranteed protection from COVID-19 infections create a misrepresentation or a false promise. 

Misrepresentations and false promises are illegal under A.R.S. § 44-1522," Brnovich wrote.

The church, which can seat 3,000 people, had also claimed "when you come into [the church's] auditorium, 99 percent of COVID is gone" and "you can know when you come down here, you'll be safe and protected," according to his letter.

Dream City Church, which has six other locations, made some of the claims in a Facebook video ahead of hosting President Donald Trump this week.

A completely meaningless Trump event

Fallout Grows From Trump's Photo-Op At St. John's Church

DC Bishop on Trump's photo-op: This was a charade

The Inconceivable Strangeness of Trump’s Bible Photo-Op

Ruth Graham of Slate wrote:

But still photography does not do justice to the utter strangeness and cynicism captured by video of the same event. 

Upon arriving at the side entrance of the church building, the president paused and held the black Bible aloft in his right hand for several seconds. 

He briefly answered a few questions shouted by reporters, affirming that “we have a great country” and “it’s coming back strong.” 

He then walked several paces to his left to pose in front of the building’s stairway, holding the Bible with its spine out and then with its cover out, briefly glancing at the book as if in admiration. 

After several seconds of further posing, he gestured to several White House officials to join him, including Bill Barr, Mark Meadows, and Kayleigh McEnany.

. . . .

Trump’s slow walk to the church was not an event that began with a photo-op. 

It consisted of nothing but the photo-op itself. 

The president did not give a speech at the church. 

No clergy joined him. 

He did not read a passage from the Bible he held. 

When a reporter on the scene asked Trump if it was his own Bible, he replied, “It’s a Bible.” 

The president’s personal copy of the Bible, which he used to take the oath of office, is now located at the Museum of the Bible. 

It is not clear if he personally owns another copy.

Trump’s evangelical defenders generally do not claim he has a deep personal faith or even a competent grasp of Christian language and ideas. 

They support him because they believe he’s on their side, not because he is one of them. 

So perhaps it doesn’t matter that holding up a Bible in this manner for a photograph is not a Christian custom. 

Trump’s stilted poses are just the latest example of the president’s total inability to even pretend to be a practicing Christian. 

He has referred to the book of “Second Corinthians” as “Two Corinthians,” called Communion “my little wine and my little cracker,” and failed to name a favorite Bible verse. 

In 2015 he told an interviewer that he had never asked for forgiveness from God.

So the Duce ordered forces to attack peaceful protesters in front of a church to drive them off.

They tear gassed a priest in the process and drove off the clergy of that very church, too.

Neither he nor anyone else had contacted any church authorities or requested permission for this, or warned anyone to clear the area.

Neither city nor church authorities were advised of anything in advance.

So, the police attacked and drove off the people, then Trump walked across Lafayette Park from the White House and stood for a moment in front of the church.

He had gathered up a bunch of minions not previously alerted, and made them walk along with him.

They did not have speaking roles.

They were all mere props, themselves.

He did not go inside the church and he did not pray and he did not make a speech.

He held up a Bible and answered a few stray questions from the press as they made videos and took stills.

Then he walked back across the park to the White House, trailing his minions.

There was no occasion to mark, no special reason for him to go stand there, with or without a Bible, with or without an entourage.

If anything, this was a less opportune moment for such a meaningless event than an ordinarily quiet Monday, given the major events of the day.

That is actually what happened.

The White House video is just video of a walk with a musical background.

Nobody says a word on the sound track.

Today, Bozo did it again at a Catholic shrine.

Washington archbishop denounces Trump visit to Catholic shrine as 'baffling' and 'reprehensible'

Sunday is Hustle Day for the crooks and quacks of American Protestant Christianity

The rise, spread, and success of new Elmer Gantrys is an ample and never-ending flow.

Trump at Easter

Ah, the deep, deep faith of the pussy-grabbing crime boss racist in the White House who never in his life read the Bible or gave a damn about it.

Having it both ways or falling between two stools?

And get a load of this guy Jeffress.

Can't say his isn't the ole time religion and a true blue form of Christianity.

Trump plans to watch Pastor Robert Jeffress's Easter service remotely

President Trump said Friday he plans to remotely watch Easter Sunday services hosted by one of his most ardent evangelical supporters as the nation avoids large gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Trump told reporters at the daily White House COVID-19 briefing that he would watch Pastor Robert Jeffress’s services on a laptop. 

He said he has "great respect" for pastors who have insisted on hosting in-person gatherings in defiance of social distancing guidelines but urged them to let the virus subside.

"We have Easter Sunday, and I’m going to be watching Pastor Robert Jeffress, who’s been a great guy," Trump said. 

"And I’m going to be watching on a laptop. Now a laptop is not the same as being in his church or being in another church. It’s not."

. . . .

Jeffress is the pastor of First Baptist Dallas and a member of Trump's Evangelical Advisory Board.

He has been a staunch supporter of the president and has a history of controversial remarks.

During a 2011 interview on Trinity Broadcasting Network, Jeffress said the Bible claims “every other religion in the world is wrong.” 

He also suggested during a 2008 sermon that Mormons, Muslims, Hindus and Jews will be sent to hell. 

“Not only do religions like Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism — not only do they lead people away from the true God, they lead people to an eternity of separation from God in hell,” he said.

“Hell is going to be filled with good religious people who have rejected the truth of Christ.”

That's not going to work.

Job, 13:3 ff

But I would speak to the Almighty; I wish to reason with God.

If somehow it makes sense it's reason.

If it doesn't it's got to be faith.

Or despair.

So many surprises

That For Greater Glory is on Netflix, about this.

And that Peter O'Toole is in it, even in a absurd role.

Playing a martyred priest!

Liberals used to be for freedom of religion, and not only for freedom from it.

But not for many years, now.

Of course, it is not a surprise that so many critics panned it.

Remember The Passion, which was a really brilliant and moving film, and the reception it received from our contemporary liberal and Jewish critics?

In Mexico and elsewhere the cultural revolution against Christendom was quite forthright, violent, and frank, back in the day.

Coexistence, in that time, did not seem a viable option to enough of the population and the classe politique.

And the question is forced upon us.

How can we compare a society ruled by the traditional Christian sexual morality and one ruled instead by the post-Christian, liberal and libertarian alternative?

The latter, other things equal, would be much better for adults.

The former would be better for children, both born and unborn.

For openers.

When politicians turn moral philosopher

Someone once spoke of the concept of human rights as an essentially contested concept: whether there are any, what they are rights to or against, which rights truly exist and how we are to know that, whose or what's actions or behavior - if anyone's or anything's - are supposed to comport with, honor, guarantee, or fulfill them, and what all such talk could even mean.

Quite true, and that is because it is an empty concept, other than in its legal use, a mere mystification helpful in securing obedience or deference.

And it is abundantly clear that this is, has been all along, and must be a political contest, far too important to be left to the philosophers.

And so, of course, it never has been.

Trump’s Ominous Attempt to Redefine Human Rights

For the Trump administration to establish a “Commission on Unalienable Rights” to examine the meaning of human rights, as it did this month, is a little like Saudi Arabia forming a commission on multiparty democracy or North Korea a commission on how to end famine. 

It would be hilarious if it weren’t so ominous.

Announcing the composition of the new body, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the administration “takes seriously the founders’ ideas of individual liberty and constitutional government.”

. . . .
The administration has excised reproductive rights from the annual State Department Country Reports on Human Rights. 

It watered down a recent United Nations Security Council resolution on victims of rape in armed conflict. 

It has withdrawn from the United Nations Human Rights Council. 

The United Nations Human Rights Committee and Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination are both without a United States member.

So what is Pompeo’s game when he asks, “What does it mean to say or claim that something is, in fact, a human right?” and continues, “How can there be human rights, rights we possess not as privileges we are granted or even earn, but simply by virtue of our humanity?”

The author of the article, Roger Cohen, affirms his faith as a true modern liberal believer,

Modern human rights are grounded on the dignity inherent in every human being. 

They are not God-given rights, or Trump-given rights, and they apply to people of all faiths and to those who have none. 

That is not at all, and is flatly contrary to, what the Declaration of Independence, a key American founding document, says, though it is not at all contrary to every traditional, Enlightenment, or contemporary view of the question.

They include freedom of speech, the press, assembly and religion, and the “right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law,” as the Universal Declaration puts it. 

They involve combating discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, disability, gender or sexual orientation.

The United States, through the State Department and other means, has been a consistent advocate for these rights. 

The intention of Pompeo, an evangelical Christian whose beliefs infuse his policy, appears to be to turn back the clock.

In May, The Federal Register said the commission would provide “fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights.”

I am not suggesting that Pompeo wants to go back there, but the “natural” rights of 1776 are not the human rights the United States helped codify in 1948.

In 1995, Hillary Clinton declared, “Women’s rights are human rights” and, 16 years later, “Gay rights are human rights.” 

. . . .

As head of the commission, he has appointed Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard professor known as a zealous opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage. 

Other political opinions are represented, but the body is predominantly conservative and religious.

Cohen admits he really has no idea where this is going, but he is very alarmed and, given his politics, he probably should be.

It is doubtful this commission will endorse the idea the Founders or the founding documents contain or endorse half the rights currently urged by liberals, or even all the rights contained in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Nor is it likely to urge that we should endorse or support them, all the same, in any theoretical or practical way.

Here is more.

“International institutions designed and built to protect human rights have drifted from their original mission,” Mr. Pompeo said. 

“As human rights claims have proliferated, some claims have come into tension with one another, provoking questions and clashes about which rights are entitled to gain respect.”

The announcement, along with a blunt commentary by Mr. Pompeo that was published in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, raised worries among human rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers that Mr. Pompeo is moving to curtail State Department advocacy for some rights, particularly ones related to women’s health and reproduction and gay and transgender issues.

Some House Democrats are pushing a measure that would block State Department funding from being used for the commission, which falls under the agency’s policy planning office.

“This commission risks undermining many international human rights norms that the United States helped establish, including L.G.B.T.Q.I. rights and other critical human rights protections around the world,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, Democrat of New York and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Mr. Pompeo is an evangelical Christian who is open about how his religious beliefs help shape actions and policies. 

In March, Mr. Pompeo said the United States would withhold funding from foreign nongovernmental organizations that give money to foreign groups that perform abortions.

. . . .

Last month, officials in Washington told some American embassies not to fly gay pride flags after diplomats had asked to do so. 

By contrast, in 2011, Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, proclaimed in a speech that “gay rights are human rights.”

On Monday, Mr. Pompeo said: “What does it mean to say or claim that something is, in fact, a human right? 

"How do we know or how do we determine whether that claim that this or that is a human right, is it true, and therefore, ought it to be honored?”

A different view of the culture wars

Warsaw to Hold Gay Pride Parade Amid Fears and Threats in Poland

The largest pride parade in central and Eastern Europe was expected to bring thousands of people to the streets of Warsaw on Saturday, at a time when the gay rights movement in Poland is under siege by hate speech and a government campaign depicting it as a threat to families and society.

Diplomats from Canada, the United States and other Western nations will continue a tradition of joining the Equality Parade to show their support for what is considered a basic human right in many places. 

Warsaw’s mayor, Rafal Trzaskowski, was expected to join the parade for the first time.

While many Poles in Warsaw and other cities have grown increasingly supportive of the rights of lesbians, gay men, and bisexual and transgender people, a backlash is underway. 

In recent months, officials from the right-wing governing party, Law and Justice, have portrayed the rights movement, particularly calls for sex education stressing tolerance, as a threat to families and children.

Poland is to have 20 pride parades this year, a record number. 

In some cases, even centrist and left-wing mayors have tried to ban them, usually citing security concerns.

The Law and Justice leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, recently called the gay rights movement a foreign import that threatens the nation’s identity. 

In conservative areas, town councils have been declaring their municipalities “L.G.B.T. free.”

On the eve of the parade, a far-right journalist on public television, Rafal Ziemkiewicz, sent chills down the spines of the L.G.B.T. community with a Twitter post. 

“One must shoot at L.G.B.T.” people he wrote, before adding, “Not in the literal sense of course — but these are not people of good will or defenders of anybody’s rights, (the movement is) a new mutation of Bolsheviks and Nazis.”

Five Arrested in London Bus Attack on Two Lesbians

The British police said Saturday that they had made five arrests in the case of what they called a homophobic attack on two women who were assaulted and robbed on the deserted top deck of a double-decker bus in North London last month.

Four teenagers ages 15 to 18 were arrested on Friday on suspicion of robbery and aggravated grievous bodily harm, the Metropolitan Police of London said in a statement. 

On Saturday, a fifth person was detained, the police said.

. . . .

The attack took place around 2:30 a.m. on May 30 on a bus heading toward the neighborhood of Camden, according to the statement.

The women, sitting on the upper deck, were approached by “four males who began to make lewd and homophobic comments to them,” the police said. 

The two women were “punched several times” and robbed, the police said, and were treated at a hospital for facial injuries.

One victim described the attack in a Facebook post and in an interview with BBC Radio 4, identifying herself as Melania Geymonat. 

She said that she and her girlfriend, Chris, had been heading toward Camden after a date when a group of young men harassed them.

“We must have kissed or hugged or something like that, because right away they saw that we were together, so they came after us,” she said in the radio interview. 

Walk the Moon, Toni Braxton to headline Pittsburgh Pride on the Andy Warhol Bridge

Pittsburgh pride shows in rating among 20 top U.S. cities for 2019 LGBTQ retirement

A ‘Straight Pride’ parade is planned for Boston

R.I. Bishop Tobin’s stance against Pride Month spurs criticism

Waning clericalism in Ireland

Ireland Votes Overwhelmingly to Ease Divorce Restrictions

Ireland has voted overwhelmingly to ease restrictions on divorce, taking another step toward liberalizing a Constitution that was once dominated by the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

Official figures released this weekend showed that 82 percent of voters in referendum on Friday approved the change, with all areas of the country voting strongly in favor.

The results come on the heels of other major social shifts in the country: a 2015 vote to legalize same-sex marriage — the word’s first popular vote on marriage equality — and a referendum last year that repealed Ireland’s ban on abortion in almost all circumstances, including rape and incest. 

In October, the nation voted overwhelmingly to remove a ban on blasphemy from the Constitution.

Divorce was banned in Ireland by a 1937 Constitution strongly influenced by the Catholic hierarchy, and an attempt to overturn the ban in a 1986 referendum was soundly defeated by a 3-to-2 margin. 

The country made divorce legal in 1995, after a referendum deciding the issue with just over 9,000 votes of 1.63 million cast.

But the new law imposed strict conditions, including a provision that a couple must have lived apart for four of the previous five years before getting divorced.

The results of Friday’s referendum remove divorce regulations from the Constitution and place them in the hands of lawmakers. 

The government of Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, having consulted with other parties, said it would move to reduce the waiting period to two years.

This is the Republican Party

It's all about enabling legal enforcement of Christian sexual morality, despite the First Amendment and despite the right to privacy and despite the intolerable affront to individual liberty.

They blather endlessly about liberty and they proudly champion subjection of the country to the tyranny of Christian clericalism.

Alabama abortion ban: Republican senate passes most restrictive law in US

Alabama’s Republican-controlled state senate passed a bill Tuesday to outlaw abortion, making it a crime to perform the procedure at any stage of pregnancy.

. . . .

The measure contains no exception for rape and incest, after lawmakers voted down an amendment Tuesday that would have added such an exception.

The legislation makes it a class A felony for a doctor to perform an abortion, punishable by ten to 99 years in prison. 

Women would not face criminal penalties for getting an abortion.

. . . .

The bill has already passed the House. It must now be signed by Governor Kay Ivey.

Which states are seeking to make abortion illegal and who is behind it?

Subtitle: Alabama will debate the most restrictive abortion ban in the US as more than a dozen states this year tried to outlaw the procedure

It's not just abortion in peril

The GOP wants to make it possible for states to criminalize contraception and, though they won't admit it, not only to abolish gay marriage but criminalize gay sex.

The right to privacy was first asserted to be a right against state interference with one's sex life in Griswold, and Republicans have all along opposed it and everything Democrats have done with it to abolish laws criminalizing disobedience to the strictures of Christian moral theology relating to sex.

There is still the establishment clause, but it's clear as a bell no GOP court will ever agree that clause forbids the legal imposition by the federal government or by the states of Christian sexual morality, either.

In this as in all else, the Republican Party represents a radical minority of the people of our country absolutely insistent on imposing its will on the rest of us by hook or by crook.

Hence the importance of what happened in a case having nothing directly to do with abortion.

Supreme Court Liberals Raise Alarm Bells About Roe v. Wade

It's about stare decisis.

Hyatt made clear that the five conservative justices are perfectly content to overrule a precedent merely because they disagree with it.

. . . .

The doctrine of stare decisis directs judges, including Supreme Court justices, to adhere to prior decisions even when they think those prior decisions are wrong. 

Under the doctrine, justices shouldn’t overrule an earlier ruling unless several things are true: 

The decision is unworkable and has generated inconsistent results; it rests on outdated facts; and it represents an outdated mode of legal thinking. 

The court is also not supposed to overrule precedent where parties have relied on the decision to structure their lives.

Many legal scholars have identified stare decisis as a substantial obstacle to the overturning of Roe, since women have relied on Roe and it is not unworkable. 

Roe is also not an aberration — it is part of a long line of cases protecting rights that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. 

Nor does Roe rest on outdated facts; medical advances have made abortion safer, whereas maternal mortality rates in the United States have climbed.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who says she is pro-choice, invoked stare decisis to explain her votes to confirm the nominations of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the court. 

She pointed to the nominees’ promises to adhere to stare decisis in their confirmation hearings to ward off the suggestion that they would overturn Roe. 

People sometimes likewise suggest that Chief Justice John Roberts, who has a reputation for being an institutionalist, will display a strong commitment to stare decisis.

In Hyatt, however, the five conservative justices based their decision to overrule the earlier decision almost exclusively on their belief that it was an “erroneous precedent” that “is contrary to our constitutional design.” 

The justices’ lack of respect for precedent was evident in the amount of space the majority opinion devoted to stare decisis — a mere three paragraphs — and in what the court said about it.

That is what the Bible says.

If you don't like it your problem is with the Bible and the people who adhere to it.

Face that.

Your problem is with Christianity and the Christian God.

Franklin Graham to Buttigieg: Homosexuality 'sin' to be 'repentant of' not 'flaunted'

While Franklin Graham once spoke on behalf of a unified and mighty evangelical voting bloc, today the situation is complicated by shifting attitudes toward homosexuality that are segmented by political party and age. 

A poll conducted this year by the Public Religion Research Institute found that majorities of every religious denomination support extending nondiscrimination protections to LGBTQ people. 

A majority — 54 percent — of white evangelical protestants support extending such protections.

This religious group’s attitudes “are highly structured by party affiliation,” the poll found. 

The poll found that 47 percent of white evangelical Republicans support LGBTQ protections, compared to 58 percent of white evangelical independents and 71 percent of white evangelical Democrats. 

If Graham speaks for any group, it is perhaps for the slender majority of Republican-identified white evangelical Christians who oppose LGBTQ rights.

. . . .

Franklin Graham, son of the late Billy Graham, was a vocal critic of former President Bill Clinton’s sexual improprieties and wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Clinton’s Sins Aren’t Private” in 1998. 

But after President Donald Trump was accused of having an illicit affair with adult film actor Stormy Daniels, Graham told the Associated Press it’s “nobody’s business.”

It's like they're a different species or something

Republicans.

This holy roller bullshit works for them!

FL Governor DeSantis Announces Cabinet Meeting In Israel

They want a test case to get to the court ASAP, so it will overturn Roe ASAP

Republicans don't really care that 60% of the country wants abortion to remain legal.

Texas Lawmakers Are Considering The Death Penalty For Women Who Get Abortions

Texas lawmakers worked well into Tuesday morning as they listened to hundreds of Texans testify in support of a bill that would criminalize abortion and threaten the death penalty to any woman who undergoes the procedure.

In total 446 people testified in support of the “Abolition of Abortion in Texas Act,” or House Bill 896, which aims to outlaw all abortions “regardless of any contrary federal law, executive order, or court decision.” 

State Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R) introduced the bill in 2017, which would define abortion as murder which is punishable by death in the state of Texas.

“God’s word says, ‘He who sheds man’s blood, by man ― the civil government ― his blood will be shed,’” Sonya Gonnella, a supporter of the bill, testified in the hearing before the Texas House’s Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence on Monday.

After quoting the Book of Genesis, Gonella implored the committee to “repent with us” by passing the proposed legislation.

Lawmakers in the hearing, which wrapped around 3 a.m. on Tuesday, also heard from people opposed to the bill. In total 54 Texans, including women’s advocates and legal experts, testified against the bill, according to the Washington Post.

Was Beto talking about somehow flipping this state blue?

Really?

Looks fire engine red, to me.

Looks like Dayton, Tennessee in about 1925.

Populist (white) nationalism on the continent

Poland’s Populists Pick a New Top Enemy: Gay People

Poland’s governing party, Law and Justice, has seized on the declaration and the issue of gay rights in its campaigning for European Union elections in May and for national elections this fall.

Where the party once attacked migrants as a threat to the soul of the country, gay people have become its public enemy No. 1 in recent weeks.

It is part of a growing trend across eastern and central Europe, where nationalist and populist parties are increasingly turning to cultural issues — and attacks on gay people — to rally their faithful.

From Romania, where the government tried and failed to change the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, to Hungary, where homosexuals are vilified as a threat to traditional families, the letters L.G.B.T. are being scorned as part of a broader struggle against what the nationalists and populists call “European values.”

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Law and Justice and the most powerful politician in Poland, used the party’s convention in March to declare that this was a war Poland must win to survive.

. . . .

“I think that Poland will be a region free from L.G.B.T.,” said Elzbieta Kruk, who is running on the party’s list for a seat in the European Parliament. “I hope it will be.”

Somebody dreamed that Germany would be Judenrein, a while back, and we know how that worked out.

. . . .

Leading Polish figures in the Roman Catholic Church, itself reeling from revelations about sexual abuse by priests, have also joined in.

Ah, the same Polish Church that played so signal a role during and before the Holocaust is making Catholics the world over proud, again.

The Rev. Marek Dziewiecki, a well-known Catholic priest and educator, told a local radio station in a recent interview that the plus in “L.G.B.T.Q.+” stood for “pedophiles, zoophiles, necrophiles,” and that the ultimate goal was to “make people into infertile erotomaniacs.”

When some 1,500 supporters of far-right groups came to Czestochowa, Poland’s holiest site, this month, the Rev. Henryk Grzadko warned those gathered that Poland was experiencing a “civilizational invasion.”

. . . .

Rafal Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, who issued the tolerance declaration, said that while he had expected a cynical response from the government, he worried about the sort of propaganda state outlets had produced.

It was the same kind of bile, he said, that led a man to fatally stab the mayor of Gdansk, Pawel Adamowicz, on live television this year.

Matteo Salvini Announces New European Alliance of Far-Right Populists

Matteo Salvini, the anti-immigrant politician who is the most powerful figure in Italy’s government, on Monday announced the formation of a new European alliance of populist and far-right parties ahead of critical European Parliament elections in May.

“Others will join between now and the 26th of May,” the last day of voting, Mr. Salvini, leader of the League party in Italy, said at an event in Milan with allies from Denmark, Finland and Germany. 

“Our objective is to be the force of government and change in Europe.”

. . . .

Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Gathering party, did not attend the announcement on Monday, though she has signaled her support for the new group.

. . . .

“We are working for a big party for the new Europe,” said Mr. Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, whose efforts overlap with those of Steve Bannon, the former strategist for President Trump.

. . . .

Jörg Meuthen, a leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, said at the news conference that there were absent partners “who will join us soon.” 

Immediately after the elections in May, he said, the allied parties will form a new group in the European Parliament called the European Alliance of Peoples and Nations, the result of numerous meetings over recent months.

Olli Kotro, a member of the Finns Party who attended the event, was more cautious, saying, “It remains to be seen who will join us.”

While they share common ground when it comes to strong borders against migration and an emphasis on traditional, national identities, Europe’s far-right populists also disagree on many points of policy. 

Mr. Salvini’s German and Scandinavian partners lean toward free-market economics, while their French allies are more protectionist.

Mr. Salvini has argued repeatedly that other European Union members must take their fair share of migrants, but some countries, like Hungary, have slammed the door shut. 

And Poland does not share the warmth that Mr. Salvini and other populists have toward Russia.

What the Christian right is after

is illustrated in part by this Guardian report.

US fundamentalists spent £38m on European politics

US Christian fundamentalist groups have spent over $50m (£38m) in Europe over the past decade, and have dramatically ramped up campaigning in recent years, according to a report by the UK political website OpenDemocracy.

. . . .

The Alliance Defending Freedom, which campaigned in favour of a law in Belize making gay sex punishable by 10 years’ imprisonment, has tripled its spending in Europe to £1.5m annually.

It spends £430,000 each year lobbying EU officials, according to separate EU transparency data. It told OpenDemocracy it was “exclusively privately funded by people from all over the world, who care about human rights”.

Another of the organisations is the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, which has spent over £1.3m in Europe since 2008.

The group has previously co-sponsored a conference in Italy with the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, a Catholic organisation supported by the far-right campaigner Steve Bannon with plans to transform a former monastery into a “gladiator school for culture warriors”.

Several of the organisations are partners of the World Congress of Families, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for its campaigns against LGBT civil and human rights.

The WCF is organising a conference in Verona, Italy this weekend that is expected to be attended by several far-right European activists and politicians, including the Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right party the League.

Others scheduled to attend include a Nigerian activist who has compared gay people to the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, and a Ugandan politician who campaigned for gay people to be jailed for life or executed.

Are Evangelical Christians the stupidest of all Americans?

Watching a video on why Evangelicals support Israel.

Because God gave them that land and because as soon as Israel fills historic Israel again as a Jewish state the Apocalypse will begin.

So yay!

Yeah, I think they have to be the stupidest people in America.

Possibly in the world.

Mike Pence, how do you get yourself to believe this nonsense?

Or anyway say you do?