GOP Chairman Suggests Mike Huckabee Should Be Party’s Ambassador On Gay Rights

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has been pressing the GOP to be more accepting of gay people, arguing that harsh rhetoric alienates young voters and jeopardizes the party’s future. But on Friday, Priebus took a big step backward, telling the National Review that the party should take its cues about social issues from former Arkansas governor and Baptist Minister Mike Huckabee:

Priebus cited former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas as an example of someone who could be “a model for a lot of people in our party” in terms of discussing issues like marriage and abortion. “I always tell people: Listen to Governor Mike Huckabee,” he said. “I don’t know anyone that talks about them any better.”

Huckabee — a hard line opponent of marriage equality and abortion rights — uses a warmer and more congenial tone about gay people and women than firebrands like Rick Santorum or Rick Perry, urging conservatives to respect gays and women, even as they organize to deny them legal protections and benefits or access to a full spectrum of health care services. But as the public grows more accepting of same-sex relationships and Roe v Wade, Huckabee’s positions and rhetoric about these issues is out of sync with the nation as a whole and will not serve the party well as it seeks to grow and appeal to more voters:

On Marriage Equality:

– Being gay is a public health risk. “I feel homosexuality is an aberrant,unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk”

– Being gay is a sin. “Well I believe it would be — just like lying is sinful and stealing is sinful. There are a lot of things that are sinful. It doesn’t mean that a person is a horrible person. It means that they engage in behavior that is outside the norms of those boundaries of our traditional view of what’s right and what’s wrong. So, I think that anybody who has, maybe a traditional worldview of sexuality would classify that as an unusual behavior that is not traditional and that would be outside those bounds.”

– Marriage equality will lead to polygamy. “If we change the definition to a man or a man and a woman and a woman, why can’t we accommodate a man and two women or a woman and three men.”

On Abortion:

– Supported Todd Akin. “The Party’s leaders have for reasons that aren’t rational, left [Akin] behind on the political battlefield…Is this what the party really thinks of principled pro-life advocates?”

– Would ban abortion even in cases of incest or rape. In 2011, Huckabee traveled to Jackson, Mississippi to raise money for the Yes on 26 campaign, “in support of the Mississippi Personhood amendment, a referendum on the November ballot that would ban abortions in the state” even in cases of rape or incest.

– Compares abortion to slavery. “What are we saying to the generation coming after us when we tell them that it is perfectly OK for one person to own another human being?” Huckabee said. “I thought we dealt with that 150 years ago when the issue of slavery was finally settled in this country, and we decided that it no longer was a political issue, it wasn’t an issue of geography,it was an issue of morality. That it was either right or it was immoral that one person could own another human being and have full control even to the point of life and death over that other human being.”

House GOP To Supreme Court: Gay People Are Too Powerful To Get Equal Rights

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

For nearly two years, House Republicans paid conservative superlawyer Paul Clement $520 an hour to defend the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act in federal court — and then sent the bill to the American taxpayer. In total Clement has now cost the American people up to $3 million for his efforts on behalf of this unconstitutional law. Last night, we taxpayers finally found out what we were paying for — a 60 page brief explaining why the justices should leave marriage discrimination untouched.

As decades of precedent establish that the Constitution should provide a shield to minority groups when prejudice leaves them without adequate recourse to the political process, Clement includes a section discussing just how very powerful and completely capable of vindicating their rights at the ballot box gay men and lesbians have become. Same-sex marriage is supported by President Obama and Vice President Biden! Less than half of Congress filed a brief agreeing with them! A magazine once wrote an article about how influential the Human Rights Campaign is! For the first time in history, an entire 1 percent of the Senate is openly gay!

After touting the immense political clout of a group that, after 226 years of American democracy, finally managed to elect a single person to the upper house of Congress, Clement then drops this line:

In short, gays and lesbians are one of the most influential, best-connected, best-funded, and best organized interest groups in modern politics, and have attained more legislative victories, political power, and popular favor in less time than virtually any other group in American history. . . . Gays and lesbians not only have the attention of lawmakers, they are winning many legislative battles. And the importance of this factor in the analysis cannot be gainsaid. . . . [G]iven that the ultimate inquiry focuses on whether a group needs the special intervention of the courts or whether issues should be left for the democratic process, the political strength of gays and lesbians in the political process should be outcome determinative here.

One can only wonder what Paul Clement might have written if Virginia had hired him to defend their practice of racial marriage discrimination when it was before the justices in 1967. “Negro leaders meet often with the President and with Congressional leaders, and indeed, President Johnson himself signed two major laws pushed by the Negro lobby. Negro groups not only led a widely attended rally on the National Mall, but they routinely organize well-attended sit-ins, marches and other events that garner press attention and national sympathy. Recently, a Negro march at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama even sparked the President of the United States to give a speech endorsing the Negro lobby’s agenda before a joint session of Congress.”

Because, of course, if the fact that gay people have won a few political battles lately were reason to deny them the equal protection of the laws, then the same would also be true about African-Americans and women. Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act two years before Virginia lost its marriage discrimination case in the Supreme Court. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 promised equal treatment to women in the workplace — a promise still denied to gay men and lesbians — seven years before the justices first recognized that official discrimination against women violates the Constitution. Political victories do not cancel out Americans’ constitutional rights, they augment them, and Clement is simply wrong to suggest otherwise.

Ultimately, the sheer absurdity of Clement’s argument exposes why his claims must not prevail at the Supreme Court. The Constitution of Seneca Falls and Selma is also the Constitution of Stonewall. Clement’s argument would deny all three.

Pawlenty: Gays Shouldn’t Have The Power To Decide What To Do With The Body Of A Deceased Partner

By Amanda Terkel If you’re straight and your husband or wife dies, you have the power to decide what to do with your loved one’s body and how to carry out their wishes. However, if you are a gay man or woman in Minnesota — a state that doesn’t recognize marriage equality — you won’t have that option, thanks to Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R). Explaining his veto of the bill, Pawlenty simply said there “is no actual need” to give same-sex couples equal end-of-life rights. From his official statement on Saturday:

The bill addresses the categories of individuals who under the law shall be given priority for purposes of determining the disposition of the remains of a deceased person. Currently a person can, by executing a will, designate who shall be empowered to control final disposition of his or her remains. The bill therefore addresses a nonexistent problem.

Marriage — defined as between a man and a woman — should remain elevated in our society a special level, as it traditionally has been. I oppose efforts to treat domestic relationships as the equivalent of traditional marriage. Accordingly, I am opposed to this bill.

Ann Kaner-Roth, executive director of LGBT advocacy group Project 515, responded that Pawlenty’s “comment that the proposed legislation is unnecessary shows he is out of step with the experiences of real Minnesotans. … The language in this bill reflects closely language already used by Minnesota’s leading businesses.” Additionally, a person in a heterosexual marriage is not required to have a living will in order for his or her spouse to carry out end-of-life wishes, so it’s unclear why one should be necessary for same-sex partners. The bill would also have given “surviving partners the right to sue those responsible should their partner be killed.”

As a new Center for American Progress report on the needs of LGBT elders finds, Minnesota is considered a “legal stranger” state, where “same-sex partners (or members of families of choice) in these states effectively have no chance to be designated as surrogate medical decision makers for their incapacitated partners/loved ones.” LGBT elders therefore generally need an advanced health care directive (AHD), which includes a living will and a health care power of attorney:

In practice, to protect themselves, LGBT elders must remember to carry their AHDs with them at all times — if an individual is rushed to the hospital without these documents, a loved one can still legally be denied access (see sidebar on page 40). Finally, problems may arise when an elder travels out of state, as one state may not always recognize the health care directive of another state.

Additionally, obtaining an AHD can be difficult, since many elders are unaware or do not have the means to secure one, and “medical providers and long-term care facilities often ignore or challenge the AHDs of LGBT people.” (HT: Joe Sudbay at AMERICAblog)

Update In Rhode Island last year, Gov. Donald Carcieri (R) vetoed a similar bill.

Attempting To Strip Gays Of Hate Crimes Protections, Oklahoma Removes Protections For Race/Religion Instead

By Igor Volsky In October, President Obama signed The Matthew Shepard Act, expanding the reach of the 1969 hate crimes law to “authorize the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute certain bias-motivated crimes based on the victim’s actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.” Previously, the law only allowed for the federal prosecution of anyone who “willingly injures, intimidates or interferes with another person, or attempts to do so, by force because of the other person’s race, color, religion or national origin.”

State lawmakers in Oklahoma argued that the Shepard Act would trample on the free speech rights of religious leaders “who preached out against the lifestyle of the victim who was attacked.” On March 10, the Oklahoma state Senate thought it was passing a bill prohibiting “local and state law enforcement agencies from sharing information about hate crimes with federal authorities if the state of Oklahoma did not recognize the crime as a hate crime by its own statutes.” Oklahoma state law does not recognize “sexual orientation or gender identity” as a special class and fails to provide gay and lesbians with hate crimes protections.

But in trying to strip gays and lesbians of protection, the Oklahoma State Senate inadvertently cited the wrong section of the U.S. code. The bill stripped rights under Title 18 U.S. Code Section 245, but protections for sexual orientation and gender identity is actually under Section 249. From the bill:

Section 24A.12. Except as otherwise provided by state or local law, the Attorney General of the State of Oklahoma and agency attorneys authorized by law, the office of the district attorney of any county of the state, and the office of the municipal attorney of any municipality may keep its litigation files and investigatory reports confidential, except they shall keep their litigation files and investigatory reports confidential upon request of any federal agency when such request is made for the purpose of an attempt to investigate or prosecute an individual or individuals pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Section 245, except for those records of any individuals convicted pursuant to Section 850 of Title 21 of the Oklahoma Statutes.

Section 245 of the Code refers to race and religious protections. Therefore, Oklahoma actually passed a statute allowing state law enforcement officials to keep information about crimes motivated by race or religion out of the hands of federal authorities.

“The bill in its current form doesn’t take away rights from gays and lesbians,” Oklahoma State Senate Minority Leader Andrew Rice explained. “It takes away rights for religion and race.” Rice said the error occurred during the creation of the bill. “This is most likely a legislative error or at least a typo,” he said. “Gay and lesbian citizens should be upset because someone tried to take their rights away, but minority groups should be concerned that their rights have already been voted to be taken away by the Senate.” “People who consider themselves Jewish, black, even Christians should be outraged,” he added. The bill will likely be modified before it is voted on in the House.

NCAA pulls Focus on the Family ad over complaints about the group’s homophobic positions.

By Amanda Terkel After trying to reach out to football fans by airing an ad during the Super Bowl, Focus on the Family is now targeting college sports. This week, LGBT blogs reported that NCAA.com was running a Focus on the Family banner advertisement. The site has now pulled the “Celebrate Family. Celebrate Life” ad, citing concerns by NCAA members over Focus on the Family’s homophobic positions:

The NCAA made the decision after some of its members – including faculty and athletic directors – expressed concern that the evangelical group’s stance against gay and lesbian relationships conflicted with the NCAA’s policy of inclusion regardless of sexual orientation, [NCAA spokesman Bob] Williams said. [...]

Williams said the decision to pull the ad was based not on the message but on the messenger.

Advertisers “should be generally supportive of NCAA values and attributes and/or not be in conflict with the NCAA’s mission and fundamental principles,” according to NCAA standards. The NCAA may exclude ads or advertisers “that do not appear to be in the best interests of higher education and student athletes.”

On Monday, Pat Griffin, a former professor and consultant to the NCAA on LGBT issues, wrote, “Focus on the Family is a right-wing Christian political organization that not only opposes a woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion, they also are one of the most powerful national opponents of civil rights for LGBT people. … Now they want to impose their values on the NCAA tournament and college basketball fans and the NCAA and CBS are inviting them to. They are rolling out the red carpet and I am deeply offended by the NCAA’s complicity in this.

CPAC Conference Dissolves Into Right-Wing Civil War Over Gay Rights

By Zaid Jilani Late last year, the pro-gay rights Republican organization GOProud announced that it would co-sponsor the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), prompting a right-wing backlash which forced conference organizers to deny the organization a speaking spot during the conference. Today, Alexander McCobin, a member of Students for Liberty, an offshoot of the Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) Campaign for Liberty, took part of his speaking time to thank conference organizers for allowing GOProud to co-sponsor the conference, noting that Students for Liberty asks its members to be “socially tolerant and fiscally responsible.” McCobin was immediately met with angry boos and heckling by the audience: MCCOBIN: In the name of freedom, I would like to also thank the American Conservative Union for welcoming GOProud as a co-sponsor of this event. (loud boos) Not because of any politics, but because of the message that it sends: If what you truly care about is freedom, limited government, and prosperity, then this symbol is a step in the right direction, and look to the student movement for support! (heckling) The typical Student’s response is to be socially tolerant and fiscally responsible. Students today recognize that freedom does not come in pieces. It is a single concept that we must defend at all times. Watch it: A few minutes later, Young Americans for Freedom activist Ryan Sorba approached the podium and slammed GOProud and engaged in a hostile shouting match with pro-gay rights students in the audience, singling out Executive Director of Young Americans for Liberty Jeff Frazee: SORBA: I want to condemn CPAC for bringing GOProud to this event! (loud booing) I love it. I love it. Guess what. Guess what. Alright. Civil rights are granted in natural rights. Natural rights are granted in human nature. Human nature is a rational substance in relationship. The intelligible end of reproductive act is reproduction. Do you understand that? Civil rights when they conflict with natural rights are (yelling) No YOU sit down. The lesbians at Smith College protest better than you do. The lesbians at Smith College protest better than you do. Alright? Bring it. Jeff Frazee, guess what, you just made an enemy out of me, buddy. Yeah you, guess what. YOU just made an enemy out of me, thanks a lot. Watch it: Yesterday, the anti-gay rights National Organization for Marriage criticized the presence of GOProud at the conference in a news release following a joint appearance on CNN, prompting an acerbic response from GOProud executive director Jimmy LaSalvia. “When the cameras were rolling they were very nice,” LaSalvia said. “Now that the cameras aren’t rolling, rather than walking 20 feet over to us, they fire off a news release. What kind of man can’t walk across the row to deliver a message? I just have a question for them: Who’s the pansy at CPAC? What wusses. Just come over. Don’t play nice if you’re not going to be nice.”