Surprise!

Supreme Court says federal law protects LGBTQ workers from discrimination

Happening now.

Gorsuch and Roberts hand the liberals a surprise win on LGBT rights.

Federal civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender workers, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The landmark ruling will extend protections to millions of workers nationwide and is a defeat for the Trump administration, which argued that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act that bars discrimination based on sex did not extend to claims of gender identity and sexual orientation.

The 6-3 opinion was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's four liberal justices.

This outcome is all the more odd as the government's reading of the portion of the law prohibiting discrimination based on sex as prohibiting only discrimination against an employee or job applicant on account of being male or not being male, or on account of being female or not being female - is surely correct as a fair reading of the actual wording of the thing, understood as it normally would have been at the time of adoption, and indeed as it normally would be understood even today.

That fact, generally urged by conservatives, is nevertheless flatly denied by liberals.

(Don't you love it when liberals piously insist everyone is entitled to his own opinions but not his own facts?

Or when they with equal piety - but still falsely - protest that alternative facts are not facts but untruths?)

So Gorsuch and Roberts?

Neil Gorsuch, one of the Trump appointees, wrote the sweeping decision that extended federal employment protections to gay and transgender workers.

He is proving to be more of an ideological wildcard than many on the left expected.

Chief Justice John Roberts, another Republican-appointed justice who has at times defied predictions, joined to give the ruling a comfortable 6-to-3 margin.

Both are sure to face an uproar from conservatives quarters.

It's difficult to overstate the significance of the decision. 

While the court is establishing a long history of decisions expanding gay rights, this is the first time it spoke directly about the legal protections for transgender individuals.

That the ruling comes out just days after the Trump administration announced it was removing transgender health-insurance protections only puts the issue in stark relief.

Transgender rights is becoming a political battlefield, and a majority of the Supreme Court just announced which side it's on.

Update later that same day.

MSNBC reports Gorsuch wrote that though protection of homosexuals and trans people was doubtless not the intention of the congress that passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that doesn't matter because according to the meaning of the words discrimination on account of sex covers discrimination on account of sexual orientation or trans status.

CNN

"An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids," Gorsuch wrote.

"There is simply no escaping the role intent plays here: Just as sex is necessarily a but-for cause when an employer discriminates against homosexual or transgender employees, an employer who discriminates on these grounds inescapably intends to rely on sex in its decisionmaking," the opinion read.

. . . .

But the ruling was also sharply criticized by the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, whose president issued a blistering statement about Gorsuch, who replaced the late Justice Antonin Scalia.


"Justice Scalia would be disappointed that his successor has bungled textualism so badly today, for the sake of appealing to college campuses and editorial boards," said Carrie Severino, a former clerk of Justice Clarence Thomas. 

"This was not judging, this was legislating -- a brute force attack on our constitutional system."

So Gorsuch simply drank the liberal Kool-Aid on the language of the statute.

Alito and Thomas call bullshit.

Kavanaugh is not impressed, either.

Surely a novelty is the spectacle of a conservative judge so egregiously violating his own alleged principles not in order to reach a result required by conservative ideology - as Scalia himself so often did - but to reach one condemned by it and required instead by liberal ideology.

Haters gotta hate, and I don't mean J. K.

My granddaughters love her books, as did my late wife.

And the earlier movies, at least, were fun.

J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues

To think that only four hundred years ago people burned each other and each other's books for the wrong spin on substitutionary atonement, the wafer, or the incarnation.

Voltaire and the other sages of the Enlightenment taught Europe and America to call those people fanatics and to condemn them for their odium theologicum - their theological hate.

Rowling has been "much banned" in religious schools for the distinctive and contra-Christian mythology of her books.

She has now acquired a quite new set of enemies.

I am so out of touch I had to look up "trans man" to find it's female to male, either transgender (a matter of psychology and identification) or transsexual (a matter of reproductive organs).

What can one say?

Activists defiant as Uganda proposes death penalty for gay sex

The Ugandan government's plan to reintroduce a bill that could impose the death penalty for homosexuality is being met with defiance from the LGBTQ community in the East African nation, activists told CNN.

Ugandan Ethics Minister Simon Lokodo, in an interview with local media Thursday, said present laws criminalizing gay sex - which in theory can come with a life sentence - were not tough enough.

When asked by a presenter on local NTV why the bill is being introduced now, Lokodo said, "The penal code only criminalizes the act [gay sex]. ...Now we're saying anything, like recruitment, promotion, exhibition...amounts to committing a crime against that law."

The author of the article didn't bother to explain what that even means, or why (or exactly to whom) it matters

But he did make clear it's an endorsement of the most absurd imaginable layer of PC.

My guess is this actually costs her votes, the better known it becomes.

'She/hers': In progressive move, 3 presidential hopefuls add pronouns to their bios

Truly, this year it looks like the Dems are headed straight for a re-run of the McGovern campaign.

And it's by no means just the pols.

Think of all those Times articles using feminine pronouns to refer to gender-dysphoric men who have decided they are "really" women because . . .  well, because.

It's now liberal/PC dogma.

People's actual sex is irrelevant.

They get to tell us what pronouns to use to refer to them, and we have to obey or we're wicked and evil bigots, the most cruel of narrow-minded blah, blah, blah.

Dale Peck's suppressed piece on Mayor Pete

My Mayor Pete Problem

His problem is that Pete is way too centrist (he refuses to reject capitalism, for instance) and not bursting into flames.

That seems to be about it.

Oh, and the tone is snarky and pissy and, uh, fagotty.

So (1) why did anybody want to force TNR to take this down from their website and (2) why did they do it?

Mary Pete and I are just not the same kind of gay. 

(For those of you wondering about “Mary Pete”: a couple of months ago I asked Facebook what the gay equivalent of Uncle Tom was, and this was the answer at which we collectively arrived.) 

. . . .

Mary Pete and I have a lot in common, but at a certain point we came to a fork in the road and I took the one less traveled and he took the one that was freshly paved and bordered by flowers and white picket fences and every house had a hybrid in the driveway and some solar panels on the ceiling, but discrete ones, nothing garish, nothing that would interfere with the traditional look of the neighborhood or the resale value of your home.

By which I mean: Mary Pete is a neoliberal and a Jeffersonian meritocrat, which is to say he’s just another unrepentant or at least unexamined beneficiary of white male privilege who believes (just as Jay Inslee believes he’s done more for women’s reproductive rights than Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar) that he can make life better for all those people who are not like him, not because he knows anything about their lives but because he’s smart and nice and well-meaning, and when smart nice well-meaning people run things everything works out for the best. 

That’s just, you know, logical. 

It’s like, science. 

Like Kirsten Gillibrand, he believes in “healthy capitalism,” which is a bit like saying you believe in “healthy cancer”: Yeah, you can (usually) treat it, but wouldn’t you rather be cured?

Most of what I dislike about Mary Pete was expressed in this Current Affairs article, which does a good job of using his own words (mostly from, ugh, Shortest Way Home, his memoir pretending to manifesto) to damn him. 

Shortest Way Home conjures a young Harvard student who thinks the word “edgy” is sufficient to describe both proto-Dumpster fascist Lyndon LaRouche and Noam Chomsky. 

His description of Harvard Square takes in those actors who belong to the school; the homeless people who live there are invisible to him, or, even worse, not worth mentioning. 

He seems perfectly content to dismiss left-wing student activists as “social justice warriors” despite the fact that this phrase is paradigmatic in right-wing discourse. 

He speaks fondly of his time at McKinsey, a company regularly described as one of the most evil corporations in the world. 

He joined the military long after 9/11 could sort-of-but-not-really be invoked to justify the U.S. propensity to go to other countries and kill lots of people. 

By 2007 it was no longer possible to pretend that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were anything other than failed, murderous exercises in empire-building and/or revenge, but despite the fact that these were the only places he was likely to serve he signed up anyway. 

And though he loves to talk about the notes he left his family in case he didn’t come back, by all accounts his chances of seeing combat were as low as they could be—but boy, he sure got a lot of cute pictures in uniform out of it!

Every move is simultaneously cynical and morally oblivious.

. . . .

Like Obama, Buttigieg seems always to be saying that the United States is the only place where someone like him could’ve succeeded, and that he wants everyone to enjoy the same peculiarly American successes that he’s had. 

But unlike Obama (whose naïveté was at least partly a pose), Buttigieg’s biography belies the idea that his success was either hard won or particularly unlikely. 

He’s lived the life of a comfortably middle-class white male, but he acts as if it’s his natural gifts (by which he means his intelligence and his ability to speak seven languages and play the piano, although they’re actually his whiteness and maleness and financial security) that have raised him above from the rabble.

. . . .

Free education? 

Why, that’s unfair to the working class! They’ll end up paying for the education of all those millions and millions of billionaires’ children! What are we, czarist Russia?

And so on and on.

Just as a lot of blacks thought O wasn't black enough, alienated enough, angry enough, or radical enough - pretty much that he should've been more like, and publicly more like, Rev. Jeremiah Wright - there is no doubt a lot of gays see Mayor Pete as way, way too tame.

So, that fact needs to be suppressed?

And the reaction of the lame-stream press was pretty weird in its own way.

NBC News:

New Republic magazine pulls down homophobic op-ed about Pete Buttigieg by an openly gay literary critic

Homophobic?

The New Republic has retracted a vulgar and homophobic op-ed about Pete Buttigieg by openly gay literary critic Dale Peck.

The magazine had published the piece, titled “My Mayor Pete Problem,” on its website on Friday.

In the piece, Peck described Buttigieg as “the gay equivalent of Uncle Tom,” and he referred to the presidential candidate as “Mary Pete” throughout the column.

Peck argued that because Buttigieg waited until his early 30s to come out as gay, he would be too preoccupied with sex and drugs to be an effective president. 

The piece also crudely speculated about intimate details of Buttigieg’s personal life.

Almost immediately, social media erupted in widespread condemnation.

. . . .

Hours later the op-ed was taken down and replaced by an editor’s note saying: “Dale Peck’s post ‘My Mayor Pete Problem’ has been removed from the site, in response to criticism of the piece’s inappropriate and invasive content. 

We regret its publication.”

The New Republic's editor, Chris Lehmann, added separately in a statement, "The New Republic recognizes that this post crossed a line, and while it was largely intended as satire, it was inappropriate and invasive."

Satire? Of what? How?

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?”

You know, you may say you're a girl, but we both know you're not.

Actually, I sympathize with these bathroom bans.

Unenforceable (would door guards be posted to - ahem - frisk people at the entrances?) but good symbolism.

I am not in the least interested in licensing persecution of these folks, but such bans are not persecution.

GOP House nominee compares his anti-LGBTQ bigotry to saving Jews from the Holocaust

Likewise, I oppose and deplore as absurd mockery gay marriage.

But these are not half so serious to me as my opposition to abortion.

And yet none of these individually, nor all of them collectively, are deal breakers for me.

On social as well as class issues, voters are faced with two opposing teams increasingly committed to extremes.

One party favors abortion on demand for the whole term of the pregnancy and is apt to favor infanticide on demand as soon as they dare, while the other favors a nearly total prohibition of abortion and would never in human imagination favor infanticide.

I am closer to the Republicans; forced to choose I will choose their position.

One party favors gay marriage, adoption by same-sex couples, women in combat, and even greater absurdities in deference to sexual outlawry, post-modernist feminism, and gender revolutionism while the other would turn back the clock on the law regarding all things sexual to 1950.

I am about equidistant from both, though I find the Dem position far less cruel though much more absurd.

Forced to choose I will choose the Dems position.

With the GOP and increasingly against the Dems I favor capital punishment and long sentences.

To my knowledge there is not any actual, formal issue position of the contemporary GOP regarding race that I do not agree with.

I would prefer that whites remain a politically dominant demographic majority in the US, since I have no wish that I, my family members, or my near descendants suffer the greater or lesser indignities of minority status.

Sometimes I sympathize with the libertarian view that private economic agents ought not to be subject to government-enforced nondiscrimination.

And I generally sympathize with the legal toleration of racially, religiously, or otherwise exclusive private clubs, such as men-only or whites-only country clubs.

I am pro-capitalism (and anti-socialism and anti-Communism) without being personally a capitalist, and favor the careful sort of free-trade/fair-trade, globalizing deals favored by O and Hillary and center-left Democrats as well as Republicans.

And I would much prefer the American security forces use torture, if necessary (and useful), to prevent a serious radiological, let alone a genuine nuclear, attack on the US, or maybe on anyone, though I would also prefer that the police eschew it and not return to the third degree as a tool for choking out false confessions in preference to actually trying to find out and punish the truly guilty.

Forced to choose, I prefer a system in which education is overwhelmingly in private hands, and some of it religiously affiliated in one way or another, rather than that education be overwhelmingly - much less entirely - in the hands of state agencies committed to an official view of anything or an official secularism.

Why do I vote for Democrats, every single time?

Because they have built and today defend over a century of progressive achievements in aid of the common people nearly all of which have benefitted, do benefit, or will benefit myself and my wife and my immediate - however stupidly ungrateful - family.

While Republicans have opposed those achievements every step of the way and to this day would tear them all down if they could, putting myself, my wife, and my immediate family in a perilous fix.

Why am I a registered Democrat?

So I can vote in my state's closed primaries.

People have been saying it for years

Women playing men's sports is of interest disproportionately to lesbians, and not that much to anyone, women included.

Lesbians as players more than as fans, but really both.

Part of why women athletes are paid less than their male counterparts is that the fan base isn't anywhere near as large.

And it's a good reason.

Men mostly want to watch men.

As do women.

Androgyny Is Now Fashionable in the W.N.B.A.

They are looking like the lesbians they are and for so long pretended not to be.

PS.

Women in the police, women in the fire department, women in the military, especially women in combat arms.

We always knew it but for the longest time nobody was allowed to say so.

Well, men weren't allowed to say so.

Still aren't, really.

Maybe Trump will say it for us and get a bump up to 43% from his current ceiling of 41.

(And yet.)

Is that still allowed by the PC fanatics?

Can people regret blindness in their children?

If it were possible, would people be allowed to cure or seek cures for blindness?

And what about sexual orientation?

Ann Widdecombe one-woman show pulled after gay therapy remark

Parents often regret not having, or having too few, grandchildren.

Not exactly an unrelated thing, is it?

Or is that, too, no longer allowed?

Wanting your own children and grandchildren, yours by blood, yours by sperm and ova, flesh of your flesh, rather than somebody else's by adoption.

PC so often seems to run against nature, what has emerged from the sculpting of humans and human desire by evolution.

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

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.

Trump, Bolton, Pence do NOT propose sanctions on Brunei

Brunei’s Royal Barbarity and Hypocrisy

The Times calls for action by "governments and multinationals that do business with the wealthy sultanate".

Besides the barbarity of the penalties, there is the danger that the law could nudge neighboring Islamic giants Malaysia and Indonesia toward tightening their own national or regional versions of Shariah laws targeting homosexuals. 

Conservative Muslim politicians in both countries were quick to voice their support for Brunei’s law. 

Beyond that, there is the fact that Sultan Hassanal enjoys his absolute dominion and his obscene treasure, including a gold-plated Rolls-Royce and a 1,788-room palace, because the world outside buys his oil. 

That gives his clients — including Britain, Brunei’s former colonial master — a measure of responsibility and leverage.

That celebrities are taking action is good, but governments and multinationals that do business with the wealthy sultanate have an obligation to look for ways to persuade Sultan Hassanal and other beneficiaries of Brunei’s oil riches that they best quickly bring their laws into compliance with their human rights obligations and abandon vicious punishments for blameless behavior.

The Guardian calls for state action by the UK

Brunei defends killing gays by stoning them to death

Brunei defends death by stoning for gay sex in letter to EU

Brunei has written to the European parliament defending its decision to start imposing death by stoning as a punishment for gay sex, claiming convictions will be rare as it requires two men of “high moral standing and piety” to be witnesses.

In a four-page letter to MEPs, the kingdom’s mission to the EU called for “tolerance, respect and understanding” with regard to the country’s desire to preserve its traditional values and “family lineage”.

The cheek of the bastards, asking the EU to show tolerance, respect, and understanding to them regarding their decision to deny both to gay men in the most violent manner possible.

The new penal code, which also provides for the amputation of thieves and whipping of people wearing clothes associated with the opposite sex, was brought in on 3 April, despite international condemnation.

But in the letter, the kingdom claimed the outcry is due to a misconception that it wanted to clarify.

“The criminalisation of adultery and sodomy is to safeguard the sanctity of family lineage and marriage to individual Muslims, particularly women,” it said.

“The penal sentences of hadd – stoning to death and amputation – imposed for offences of theft, robbery, adultery and sodomy, have extremely high evidentiary threshold, requiring no less than two or four men of high moral standing and piety as witnesses, to the exclusion of every form of circumstantial evidence.”

. . . .

The letter was sent before a vote last week in which MEPs backed a resolution by a show of hands strongly condemning “the entry into force of the retrograde sharia penal code”.

The parliament also called on the EU to consider asset freezes, visa bans and the blacklisting of nine hotels owned by Brunei Investment Agency, including the Dorchester in London, Beverly Hills hotel and the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles.

Celebrities including Elton John and George Clooney have called for the hotels to be boycotted.

. . . .

Homosexuality has been illegal since the country broke from British rule, but before the recent move to a more conservative interpretation of Islam, it was punishable by jail.

Britain, France, Germany and the UN are among those who have condemned the hardening of the kingdom’s laws.

It looks like the EU and the UN are leading on this.

The only reference I find to US reaction is some no name State Department fellow wagging a finger.

Trump, Pence, and the other heavies are conspicuously quiet.

Mayor Pete on growing up gay

A kind of war

In a speech before an audience of LGBT rights supporters on Sunday, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, did not describe being gay as something he always believed was acceptable. 

Nor did he dismiss lingering questions about his viability as a presidential candidate in a country in which three in 10 adults still say they have some reservations or would be very uncomfortable with a gay candidate, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in February.

Instead, he described wrestling with his sexual orientation as “a kind of war” — one he said he was only able to win when he came home from serving in Afghanistan. 

As a youngster in high school and college, he said, the situation was very different.

“If you could have offered me a pill that could make me straight, I would have swallowed it before you could give me a swig of water,” Buttigieg said at the LGBTQ Victory Fund’s annual brunch. 

“It’s a hard thing to think about now. If you had shown me exactly what it was that made me gay, I would have cut it out with a knife.”

. . . .

On the trail, Buttigieg has emphasized how he and his husband are similar, not different, from heterosexual couples across the country, hoping to defuse an issue that evangelicals and other opponents of same-sex marriage could raise if he becomes the nominee. 

Taking direct swipes at Vice President Mike Pence, he said his marriage last year to schoolteacher Chasten Buttigieg had made him a better man, “and yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God.

“That’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand: That if you have a problem with who I am, your quarrel is not with me,” Buttigieg said. 

“Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”

I wonder if Pence would reply like a traditional Catholic that no one is responsible for his sexual orientation, but only for his actual sexual behavior.

That is a view developed and expounded by a clergy that for centuries has proclaimed clerical celibacy and apparently has mostly lied about it.

Anyway, Pete's remarks have not pleased all gays.

Not those for whom wild promiscuity and the most debauched raunch is essential to their understanding of what it is to be gay.

But others are on his side.

Made me laugh

Irish PM Brings His Boyfriend To Pence's Residence and Talks about love and God

Pence actually invited them.

He must have been gagging.

Learn something every day

LGBTQ Methodists on Whether the United Methodist Church Will Ever Affirm LGBTQ People

To many LGBTQ Methodists and ex-Methodists, the General Conference vote is par for the course considering the UMC’s history of division when it comes to social issues. 

“Part of this is because of our history,” says Methodist seminary student Rebecca. 

“We are a church that is the result of many years of church splits and mergers.”

Rebecca, who goes by they/them pronouns, tells Religion Dispatches that, despite having the word “United” in the title, the UMC is a diverse denomination that formed from multiple separate denominations, and has churches throughout the world.

. . . .

When it comes to LGBTQ issues, Rebecca explains the debate is nothing new. 

“The decisions of the 2019 General Conference for the most part did not add much discriminatory language to the Book of Discipline,” they said. 

. . . .

Raised a fundamentalist Baptist, Rebecca and their partner thought they were finished with church until they both attended a late-night Methodist church service on a whim. 

They both quickly fell in love with the Methodist tradition.

They pronouns.

Two points.

First, these folks are abandoning the traditional singular possessive pronouns and adjectives as well as nominative and objective singular pronouns.

Second, people into this are not just making an odd decision how to use pronouns about themselves or others.

They think they can tell you what pronouns to use in writing about them.

Apparently the author of the article quoted above agrees.

And it all started with using singular they to replace use of masculine pronouns and adjectives as generics.

You remember.

"Somebody left his car" and the like began to annoy women, a few decades ago.

This is news to me, too.

Genderqueer

Seems to me their history and anthropology are about as reliable as the stuff produced in Black Studies departments, black Egyptians and all.

Chicken is healthier than burgers, so . . . .

Dean resigns over university's choice to not allow Chick-Fil-A

A dean at a New Jersey university resigned saying the school's decision to not consider bringing Chick-fil-A to campus because of its opposition to the LGBTQ community made her feel "like I had been punched in the stomach."

Cynthia Newman, former dean of Rider University's College of Business Administration, said her views as a "very committed Christian" and the fast food chain's views "mirror" one another.

. . . .

Rider University, located outside Trenton, had sent a survey last year asking students which restaurants they would like to see on campus. 

In November, Newman said, a second survey was sent but did not include Chick-fil-A as a choice. 

The university said at the time the restaurant was taken off the list because of its opposition to the LGBTQ community and their values do not align with Rider's values.

If you click through to the original report you will read that a majority of students replied to the first survey that they wanted Chick-Fil-A.

The administration didn't like that answer.

"I felt like I had been punched in the stomach when I read that statement because I am a very committed Christian," Newman told the website. 

"I really felt it very personally."

Chick-fil-A has donated millions over the years to groups that oppose same-sex marriage. 

In 2012, the company's chief operating officer criticized same-sex marriage, prompting some politicians to block the chain from expanding in certain areas.

She said when the university released "talking points" to staff about what they should say to anyone critical of the decision instead of an apology, she couldn't adhere to them.

"I am not willing to compromise my faith and Christian values and I will not be viewed as being in any way complicit when an affront is made to those values," she said.

Bail set at $ 100 K

'Empire' Actor Jussie Smollett Arrested On Charges Of Filing False Police Report

He staged a fake hate crime.

His lawyers are bullshitting and they haven't got a prayer.

A spokesperson for the Chicago prosecutors gave a pretty detailed account of how it all went down, citing a ton of proof.

Hilariously, MSNBC invited Rev. Al Sharpton to comment on a fake hate crime.

Tawana Brawley, much?

Sort of like inviting Mengele to deplore anti-Semitism and the kidnapping of people to be used in horrific medical experiments.

And they invited in a black, gay guy to paper over the fraud story with about ten minutes of complaining that hate crimes happen all the time and when reported the victims are brushed off.

And then he droned on for another ten minutes, accusing the Chicago police of lying and deceptive practices and homophobia and racism and on and on.

The MSNBC newswoman just let him let fly.

Fox says it's 'considering our options' after 'Empire' star's arrest

The studio and network behind Fox's "Empire" say they are considering their options, following the arrest of television actor Jussie Smollett.

"We understand the seriousness of this matter and we respect the legal process," 20th Century Fox Television and Fox Entertainment said in a statement to CNN on Thursday. 

"We are evaluating the situation and we are considering our options."

The company's statement came hours after Smollett was arrested on suspicion of filing a false report.

. . . .

Early on Wednesday, before official charges had been made against Smollett, Fox Entertainment and 20th Century Fox TV stood by Smollett saying he continued "to be a consummate professional on set" and assuring that "he is not being written out of the show."

Why people hate the PC Police - aka Social Justice Warriors

Could it be that, to this day, though maybe not much longer, most American boys are both straight and white?

So if you're going to do a story on one to illustrate circumstances common to many, most, or all?

And what if you're going to do several stories, each focusing on one?

So, if one is white and straight, that's not OK?

So many people with shitty, hateful opinions write them up and the Guardian gives them a megaphone - if they're the right sort of shitty, hateful opinions.

Was the backlash to Esquire’s 'An American Boy' cover story deserved?

As everyone jumps to censure Esquire for its perceived racism, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia for deciding to use a straight, white boy to represent what it means to be an American right now, they are missing that the idea to check in on the state of boys – even white boys – in a landscape that is quickly shifting for men, is sound.

Much of the outrage centered on the choice of the teenage boy. 

Despite Esquire’s announcement that this would be the first in a series of profiles, and that the series would include boys of different races and sexualities and genders, leading the series off with a particularly Aryan-looking lad was a tactical mistake. 

The angry response was inevitable.

And utterly deplorable, racist, misandrist, and full of shit.

Is this really just about a relentless mom?

A mom who cannot accept that her son is gay?

Or, of course, it could be just what she and the prosecution claim.

Kevin Spacey pleads not guilty