Vigilance

Health Care Reform Passes the House

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:01:00 +0000

This was a tough fight, won by the good guys.

Teabaggers Fighting Health Care, and Sanity

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 16:19:00 +0000

Looking out there this morning it's hard to believe that just a few weeks ago we had snow almost up to our waists. With its ancient inevitability nature brings us back from the desolation of winter. Somebody said it was seventy-five yesterday. How soon before you hear people complaining that it's too hot?

This morning we see headlines like House is expected to pass historic healthcare overhaul. This really is a big deal. Only a month ago the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people, opening the way for big business to out-influence real humans at every step of the way, and now Congress is taking a stand against big corporations, on behalf of real humans. That headline comes from the LA Times, and it starts like this:

The hard-fought measure would be a victory for President Obama - and, he says, for the American people.

Maybe the President is grandstanding in the most cynical way when he says this isn't about politics, but the fact is, he has let the other party run him into the ground over this. A lot of Congressmen in both houses are going to pay dearly for taking a stand on this bill, which the Republicans and Fox News have painted in the darkest colors as socialism and worse, government takeover of our personal choices. But it looks like the votes are there, the Democrats are putting their foot down, they're saying, We were elected to change things and we're going to do it as long as we are here. And maybe the American people would prefer, in the end, to have gigantic corporations making their health decisions for them, maybe the healthy majority doesn't want to share the risk with sick people, and maybe when the smoke clears the Republicans will be elected to run things the usual way again.

March 16th, the teabaggers organized a "Code Red" demonstration at the White House out of desperation at the momentum that the health care package seemed to be picking up. About three hundred people showed up, in other words the event was a failure. I suppose the most publicity they got was THIS VIDEO of teabaggers mocking a man with Parkinsons disease, throwing dollar bills at him and calling him names. They seem very agitated in this video.

There was a documentary filmed that day as well, an interviewer asked people how they felt about specific provisions of the health care bill HERE. As you see, they don't really know what's in the bill except that it's a socialized government takeover and Obama wants to turn America into Ameristan.

This past Friday the Citizens for Responsible Whatever, and I assume lots of other rightwing groups, sent out an urgent email that said:

Obama's Healthcare Take-Over must be stopped. It's not over yet. We need everyone to show up at the rally tomorrow at 12 noon. Come early or stay late to visit your Representative's office.

Yesterday's demonstration was more of a success for fringe groups like the CRW. The New York Times reports:

They might want to think about renaming it the Nastea Party.

Democrats were angered, shocked and disappointed after reports that some Tea Party activists let more than their opinions on health care reform be known today, calling revered civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) n——- and openly gay Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank a f——-.

And racism and gay-bashing apparently wasn’t all. Add anti-Semitism to the list.

A staffer in Rep. Anthony Weiner’s office reported a stream of hostile encounters with tea partiers roaming the halls of Congress. The less harmful stuff was mockery. But they left a couple of notes behind. One asked what Rahm Emanuel did with Weiner in the shower, in a reference to mess around ex-Rep Eric Massa. It was signed with a swastika, the staffer said. The other note called the congressman “Schlomo Weiner,” among other hate-filled words.

Rep. Jose Serrano was so disturbed, he called to relay his own unpleasant encounter with a Tea Party activist who accosted him outside, when Serrano went for a stroll near the rally.

“The Capitol there was pretty ugly,” Serrano sad. “They were shouting, ‘Don’t take away my Medicare, we don’t want socialism, you’re throwing our country away.’”

“There was a person who saw me go by, and called me a bunch of things, and ended calling me an elitist pig with a cutesy haircut,” Serrano, of the Bronx, said.

It wasn’t the words so much that bothered the congressman, but the tone and attitude.

And the words heard by Lewis were especially distasteful to Serrano. Lewis is a widely respected member of Congress who had his skull fractured by police in a 1965 civil rights march in Selma, Ala.

“He’s the conscience of the Congress,” Serrano said.

It all reminded him of the worst reactions to the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war protests. It was the kind of reaction, he said, that you get “whenever you’re trying to do something really important.” Make That the Nas-Tea Party

Some of them were threatening violence. Think Progress showed photos of people holding signs that said, "If Brown can't stop it, a Browning can," with a silhouette of a pistol. Talking Points Memo reports:

Things are getting pretty heated in the Capitol with crowds of anti-Reform/Tea Party activists going through the halls shouting slogans and epithets at Democratic members of Congress.

As our Brian Beutler reports, a few moments ago in the Longworth office building, a group swarmed a very calm looking Henry Waxman, as he got on the elevator, with shouts of "Kill the bill!" "You liar! You crook!"

Not long before, Rep. Barney Frank got an uglier version of the treatment. Just after Frank rounded a corner to leave the building, an older protestor yelled "Barney, you faggot." The surrounding crowd of protestors then erupted in laughter. Menacing

The LA Times disclosed:

A congressman who was spat on by a protestor on Capitol Hill says he is declining to press charges, but turns out the Capitol Police say they made no arrests.

Missouri Democrat Emanuel Cleaver was making his way through a group of angry protestors when the incident occurred. It was one of several ugly incidents in a day of protests against President Barack Obama's health care overhaul measure, which faces a House vote on Sunday.

Cleaver, who is black, was also one of several lawmakers who faced racial epithets as they walked to the Capitol to vote. Sgt. Kimberly Schneider of the U.S. Capitol Police said in an e-mail later: "We did not make any arrests today." Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., won't press charges after being spat on by Capitol Hill protestor

There may have been 20,000 people at yesterday's event, it was more successful by far than the one earlier in the week.

A few years ago, Tea Party types were beginning to have influence in our little suburban county, the school district was begining to take them seriously, and somebody had to stand up and deal with them, and that was us. Lots of communities let those groups taste power, and now they are running around threatening to shoot people, waving Confederate flags, spitting on Congressmen, calling people names, yelling that they want their country back. I think it is pretty clear to the rest of us that they must not have "their country" back. They had it for eight years, and things did not work out.

Today's health care reform vote is an important one. Some Democratic Congressmen are holding out for details they want, and in fact I don't think the bill as it is written is anybody's ideal. I expect some hold-outs to switch and vote for it -- health insurance has become a ghoulish scam, and I don't think a legislator can vote against reform in good conscience, just because the bill doesn't contain his or her pet feature. It's not a done deal, we don't even know if they'll vote today, but it does seem likely. I doubt that Nancy Pelosi will call for a vote if it won't pass, so she might wait. But it's coming.

Notes From the Health Care Reform Front Lines

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:49:00 +0000

This might be the week that Congress holds a historic vote to reform health care. We have made a few comments here on the blog about the issue, but it is not exactly our focus. We are more of a community group and we seem to emphasize education and LGBT topics. I think our readers can probably guess where we stand on health care, it is not an official TTF mission or anything but many of our officers and board members are active in politics and community affairs not strictly limited to this group's core focus.

Our president, Christine Grewell, has been active in the health-care reform movement, and readers here might like to know what she has been doing. So I asked her to write up something for the blog describing some of the activities she has been involved in. The following is her report:

I first got involved in the health care issue back in early September, when MoveOn.org was looking for people to tell others about their problems with the broken health care system. Several of us with stories of mistreatment by our health insurance companies spoke to a group of about two hundred people, including Ike Leggett, Jamie Raskin, Sheila Hixson and other community leaders, in Silver Spring. Shortly after that many of us participated in a protest in front of the White House, and later in September I again told my story at a "funeral for Big Insurance" in Rockville (video HERE).

January 26th I was part of a big demonstration at the US Chamber of Commerce office in Washington, DC. About 20 health insurance survivors came to Washington DC to tell our stories to the Chamber of Commerce and to ask them to stop advertising on behalf of the companies that caused us such grief. Leslie Boyd was there for her 30 year old son who died because he couldn't get coverage due to a childhood pre-existing condition. Heather Mroz was there because at 24 years of age, she is now $480,000 in debt because her health insurance company retroactively rescinded her health insurance coverage to 2 months before premature twins were born. The Chamber of Commerce is acting as a front group for the insurance companies, spending millions of dollars to maintain the very profitable status quo. There's video of that protest at the Washington Post web site HERE. (The Post spelled my name wrong HERE and described me as a real estate agent, which I am not.)

Later that same day, after the march at the Chamber of Commerce, I testified in a hearing on Capitol Hill chaired by Congressman John Conyers.

Then on the 30th several of us health insurance survivors stood out in the snow in Baltimore outside the meeting of the Republican Caucus, as you can see in the video HERE.

A group of Pennsylvanians marched from Philadelphia to Washington, DC, between February 17th and 24th in honor of Melanie Shouse, a health care reform activist who died January 30th of breast cancer after she could not afford the cancer treatments that would have saved her life.

February 23rd I met Melanie's March in College Park and then on the 24th marched with them in DC to the Dirksen Building, where we met with a group of Senators including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senator Tom Harkin, Senator Chris Dodd, Senator Bob Casey, and Senator Sherrod Brown. Video from that meeting is found HERE. As you can see, it was a very enthusiastic group, there was already a lot of momentum to this movement, which is growing even stronger now as Congress comes near to voting.

March 9th, 24 health insurance survivors participated in the "citizens arrest" of insurance company executives at the Ritz Carlton in DC. Five thousand or so people marched to the building, chanting and listening to speeches. Some were taken away by the police but released without arrest. Video HERE and HERE. I was honored to meet and talk with Dr. Howard Dean at that event.

The next day, March 10th, all 24 of us survivors testified in a hearing for the House of Representatives. I was accompanied by Congressman Chris Van Hollen, as part of a panel moderated by CIGNA executive turned whistleblower Wendell Potter. Ed Schultz from "The Ed Show" was there, and he had Leslie Boyd and Heather Mroz from the hearing on his show that night. Video HERE. Marcelas Owens, an 11-year-old from Seattle whose mother died because of lack of insurance coverage, testified with his grandmother in that panel, and now is being slammed by Rush Limbaugh as "an 11-year-old kid being forced to tell this story all over just to benefit the Democrat Party and Barack Obama." Michelle Malkin called him a "kiddie human shield." You wonder how cynical somebody has to be to criticize a kid who is trying to help other people keep their mothers after he lost his. Lawrence O'Donnell subbing for Keith Olbermann had Marcelas on his show this week, countering the conservatives' allegations (video HERE). There were a number of Congressional Representatives at the meeting, and afterward the survivors went to individual Congressional offices to talk with people, not all of them friendly to health care reform. I visited the offices of Representatives Cantor and Ney.

That, people, is grassroots activism, starting in a park in Silver Spring and ending up speaking to Senators and Congressmen.

As the vote draws near and the decibels are ratcheting up, it is time for everyone to make their views clear to their people in Congress. The phone number for the Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121. Call up, get your Representative's or your Senator's office on the line, tell them what you want them to do.

Dumb Video from Mass Resistance

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:44:00 +0000

A couple of years ago our Montgomery County, Maryland, County Council passed a bill prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity. It was an innocuous thing, a couple of words added to the usual race religion national origin etcetera, but a certain tiny element in our community tried to make it into something it wasn't. They asserted that transgender people are dangerous somehow, that they are a sexual threat. They tried to assert that if you couldn't discriminate against transgender people, the inevitable result would be sexual predators and pedophiles hanging around in women's restrooms, molesting women and children with no legal consequences. Of course the premises are incorrect and that didn't happen.

Sometimes the doctor is wrong when a baby is born. There are many ways it can happen, sometimes a boy is raised as a girl or vice versa, and at some point that person may decide to take responsibility for correcting the mistake. If the decision is made after puberty the individual may have features that correspond to the sex they do not identify with, for instance a woman may have a deep voice or whiskers or a man may have developed breasts and a woman's figure, and so the transition may seem awkward or confusing to others, it may make someone uncomfortable struggling with pronouns and appropriate gender roles. Most of us can get over that, but some small number of people simply find it unacceptable and frightening that anyone would make the decision to live as the person they really are.

A bunch of those people, apparently, live in Massachusetts. There is a group up there that calls themselves Mass Resistance, their main thrust is that they oppose gay and transgender people, in the most ignorant way.

This week Mass Resistance posted a video on YouTube. Last year these creepy people went to the Tiffany Club of New England’s (TCNE) annual conference, one of the largest transgender conferences in the United States, in Peabody, Massachusetts, and took video of people going in and out of the bathrooms. This is a conference that addresses the needs of transgender people, from sessions on surgical options and family support to legal and spiritual topics.

The video can be seen HERE. It is a grainy thing, probably done with a cell phone, you can just imagine these people cruising the halls of the Peabody Marriott, taking shocking footage of transgender people going into the bathroom and getting on elevators and eating and other shocking things.

The explanatory text at YouTube says this:

Transgender madness in Massachusetts: The Peabody Marriott Hotel hosted the annual "First Event" transgender conference on January 15-17, 2009. These photos and videos illustrate the insanity that will descend on all of America . . . unless this sexual radical movement is stopped: Seven-foot men in dresses using the women's restroom. Hundreds of cross-dressers swarming the hotel, upsetting other guests (who were not forewarned). A transgender rock concert.

This is what protecting "gender identity and expression" really means.

Mass. Bill H1728 (now before the Legislature) would punish any opposition to such madness with fines and jail time. Even schools would be opened up to cross-dressing children, transgender restrooms and locker rooms, and sports teams. Employers would be subject to new non-discrimination regulations. (At the federal level, ENDA would force this on the country if passed.)

You almost can't read this without feeling all sarcastic inside. I will try to suppress the urge.

The video alternates between amateurish text screens and amateurish recorded video from the conference. First there is a title screen giving the name and location of the conference. Then we see a pile of snow outside what is apparently a hotel.

Next, text:

This is what you will see across America...

unless this radical movement is stopped

That radical movement being, we assume, people who transition to their subjective sex.

Next we are shown a screen with a picture of a poster that says "Welcome to the Peabody Marriott." The camera zooms in on the poster. There are crowd noises. The camera turns to some blurry people walking around.

Text with a blurry, dark photo behind it:

Man in miniskirt with blond hair

There is a photograph of a woman standing there with papers in her hand, talking to someone.

Text with another picture behind it:

Tall man in pink jacket with another man (long hair) at his side ...

Uh, I see a lady in a pink jacket. There are other people in the picture.

Now a screen of text:

Other hotel guests had not been told the transgender group would be having a conference there that weekend. (That would have been "discrimination"!)

If I may refer to a personal experience here ... the worst hotel stay I ever had was in Indianapolis one time when the hotel was full of a convention of Seventh Day Adventists. Those people were up and down the halls all night yelling and stomping around, they'd be sitting on the floor in the hall when you opened your door, spilling food on the floor, they jammed the lobby making noise, it was terrible. Other guests were not told that the Seventh Day Adventists would be there. In fact, I have never heard of a hotel telling guests what groups are planning conferences during their stay. It's not discrimination, it just doesn't make sense. "All right, Mister Jones, that will be a party of four, two adults and two children, two double beds, nonsmoking, on January Seventeenth. We will be having a wedding reception in the banquet room and the Southeastern Iowa Agricultural Engineering Association will be holding their annual budget meeting that day in the conference center. Will that still be acceptable to you?"

Next there is a picture of a lady in a skirt and sweater, it looks like, conservatively dressed, possibly with a bag on her arm, and text:

Elderly cross-dresser

Ah, now they are getting to the juicy part. A black screen with stern black san-serif text set in an ominous purple cloud.

Several young girls were seen in the company of transgender men. (Workshops included "trans youth">)

The following clip shows a young girl entering an elevator with a man dressed as a woman.

The camera careens around the room, over the ceiling, finally settling on a couple of girls getting into an elevator. The taller one appears to be texting on a cell phone. You know, transgender people have families, they have children. These two people look like family to me, or friends. I would say sisters, maybe it is a parent and child, I can't tell. I think we are supposed to think it is a sexual predator and "his" victim, and it certainly is not. Some people get off the elevator. I wonder if they know they are being videotaped by lurking conservatives.

Next, a screen of text, now black text on a blue cloud...

Many of the men dressed as women were well over 6' tall, and some almost 7' tall.

I am choking down the sarcasm here, ok? Give me some credit. Why would it matter how tall a transgender person is?

And let's make this clear. When they say "men dressed as women" or when they call these women "transgender men" or "male cross-dressers" they are merely insulting the attendees of the conference. Gender is not binary, it is a continuum, and there are people who do not fall neatly into one category or the other. The reasonable resolution is to refer to them by the label they prefer. Maybe it's just politeness, but it's as good a rule as any.

Next they show a still photo of someone walking in the hallway, with this text:

A huge man about to use the women's restroom.

Another screen...

This fellow almost hits his head on the door frame.

Now a screen of text:

In the following video, very large men in women's clothing are proudly and openly using the women's restroom in the hotel lobby.

The scene starts with a long shot of a row of phones and a door, then we have a close-up of the door, which says "Women" on it. Then there is video of some men and women standing around talking, then two women go into the ladies room, one comes out, another goes in, some people walk by. Text appears in front of the scene that says:

The cleaning lady in the following scene provides a good sense of scale...

A woman who we assume is the cleaning lady opens the door and walks in. She appears to be about five feet tall. The women going into the ladies room did not almost hit their heads on the door frame, BTW.

Somebody comes out of the ladies room, and -- ooh, this is exciting! -- a tall woman enters the restroom! She also does not almost hit her head on the door frame, but she may be five foot ten or so, which is pretty tall for a woman. A lady is standing in the hall, the cleaning lady pulls her cart over and stands beside her. They appear to be the same size. Other short women walk past, and another lady goes into the ladies room. Most of the crowd appears to be women. A bald man walks through the group. I wonder if there is something sinister about him. If there is, I can't spot it in this video. Almost everyone is nicely dressed, I don't see any blue jeans here, lots of expensive-looking dresses.

Aha! They have spotted something. Text appears on the screen:

Looks like the cleaning lady has brought in reinforcements.

And sure enough, we see two probably-Hispanic women in uniforms enter the ladies room. One appears to have towels, maybe paper towels, in her hand. Are transgender women supposed to be messier than cis-women or something? I don't get this part.

A man in a turtleneck sweater walks past. He is walking fast. There is no text noting that he is freaked out and scared to death by all the scary weirdos surrounding him. Maybe he's not.

The restroom door seems to be propped open, and we see the cleaning-ladies' cart pass back and forth. Ooh! Ooh! A tall woman! Did you see that?!?!

Two men walk by. One is wearing a hat. Does that mean something? The other one has a uniform and a patch on his arm. He might be a Trans Nazi officer. Or hotel security.

This is the most boring video in the world. Imagine that you are at a conference, watching people standing in the hallway conversing between sessions, and now and then one of them goes to the bathroom. That's what this is.

More shocking text:

Festivities that weekend included a pool party, a banquet, and a rock concert by a transgender band.

Let me note that sexual ambiguity has been central to rock music since Elvis and Little Richard.

Next we see still pictures from the banquet. This is about as dull as life gets. It appears that a Mass Resistance person may have paid to register for the conference and attend the banquet, so they could get these shocking photos of some people eating.

Then there is a screen of text:

I'm the biggest punk rocker there is. I tell all the kids in college -- "You got a tattoo, you got piercings ..."

Then you hear the sound, with a blurry video playing behind this text:

... I got a big set of tits! See if that pisses your parents off!"

This apparently is the person in the band saying these things. Weird to think that there would be an outrageous rock musician.

And OMG -- transgender people dancing! The band is playing a kind of heavy-metal version of "Blitzkrieg Bop" by the Ramones with a screaming lead guitar, well whatever. The video is edited, going from song to song, now they are doing a kind of frantic version of "Suspicious Minds" by Elvis Presley, hey that is kind of cool, maybe my band can learn that one... And that's it. A couple of screens of credits. One screen says:

OPPOSE
"Transgender Rights"
Bill H1728
in Massachusetts

and gives a URL for more information.

I don't know what to say here. These Mass Resistance people seem to live in a different world from me, that's my best way to understand it. They went to a conference for transgender people and saw transgender people there. The Mass Resistance people took video at this conference and literally said "These photos and videos illustrate the insanity that will descend on all of America . . . unless this sexual radical movement is stopped ..." Like if this nondiscrimination bill passes in Massachusetts, public places will be filled with transgender people, tall women and short men, women with deep voices and men with high ones, tall people going into the ladies room and short ones going into the men's room.

I hate to point out the obvious here, but the only way that can happen would be if there are millions of people out there who secretly feel they are living as the wrong sex, and would switch if only discrimination were outlawed. That's the only way this can make sense. Otherwise, where are all these "men in dresses" supposed to come from?

It seems to me that most people are comfortable with the sex they were assigned at birth. I don't think that if the stigma against sex-changing was removed everyone would do it. A few more people might transition if there was no prejudice against it, if your family and friends and employer and people on the street would not turn against you, but most people would not want to. It is very clear to me that there will never be a world such as Mass Resistance envisions, where most people walking around have transitioned from one sex to the other. This was a conference specifically for transgender people.

People who support Mass Resistance seem to live in a different world from me. That's my best way to understand it. They live in a world where it is creepy and scary to make the hard decision to live true to your real nature, and not creepy and scary to sneak around making movies of people going in and out of the bathroom.

Now Two of Them Want to Impeach Gansler

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:59:00 +0000

The Gazette had a story yesterday about other Republicans ... well, maybe one ... joining anti-gay Delegate Don Dwyer in calling for the impeachment of Maryland state Attorney General Doug Gansler, after Gansler issued an opinion that Maryland should recognize marriages, including same-sex marriages, from other states.

ANNAPOLIS — Del. Don Dwyer Jr. has some company in his quest to impeach Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler over an opinion he issued on same-sex marriage.

Del. Joseph C. Boteler III on Monday issued a news release calling on State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh to initiate charges of "willful neglect of duty" against Gansler (D).

Boteler (R-Dist. 8) of Carney sent a letter to Rohrbaugh on March 10 asking about the process for moving forward with impeachment charges in court.

In a March 8 letter in response to a question from Dwyer, Assistant Attorney General Kathryn M. Rowe wrote "to have the Attorney General removed for willful neglect of duty, the State Prosecutor or the State's Attorney would need to bring charges in the appropriate jurisdiction."

Boteler said he would support Dwyer in his attempt to bring impeachment charges to the floor of the House of Delegates. GOP looks for new inroads on Gansler impeachment

Can they do that?

It seems not. Marc Korman at Maryland Politics Watch has the analysis:

Delegate Dwyer has expressed an interest in introducing articles of impeachment against the Attorney General. But even a cursory review of Article V of the Maryland Constitution reveals that the General Assembly cannot remove an Attorney General. Article V, Section 1 of the Constitution specifically says that the Attorney General is subject to removal “for incompetency, willful neglect of duty or misdemeanor in office, on conviction in a court of law.” The conviction in a court of law is the central element there, meaning the legislature is not the major actor.

Article III, Section 26 of the Constitution does reserve the sole power of impeachment to the House of Delegates and it is not clear to authorities if Attorneys General fall under the provision. The other statewide elected officials, the Governor and Comptroller, have specific impeachment and removal provisions about them in the Constitution that reference the General Assembly. The Attorney General does not.

Assuming that the Attorney General can be impeached under the General Assembly’s impeachment power, they cannot be removed by the legislature based on Article V. So perhaps Delegate Dwyer can impeach the Attorney General, but it would be meaningless as the sole power to remove him belongs to a court. The Attorney General and Impeachment

Back to The Gazette:

Each year, Dwyer introduces a bill calling for a statewide voter referendum on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

Boteler said while he had heard from constituents about the opinion, "It's really not about the issue. It's about an oath of office that we all take."

The opinion could set a precedent for the Attorney General to rule on other matters, Boteler said.

"We need to be careful we don't go down a slippery slope where the Attorney General can make decisions on what is law, what is not law," he said.

Critics have said Gansler is circumventing the legislature and ignoring a 2007 ruling against same-sex marriage by the Court of Appeals and a 2004 opinion by his predecessor, J. Joseph Curran Jr. (D).

Gansler has said the opinion was not politically motivated, but was simply a response to Madaleno's request and he released the opinion when it was finished.

Yes, this is one of the things an Attorney General does, it's part of the job. There is an ambiguous law, the legislature can ask him what he thinks it means. He doesn't change the law, but his explanation can guide jurists in deciding cases.

A little more from The Gazette:

"The House Speaker has publically [sic] stated that he will rule the charge out of order citing the opinion that the Attorney General cannot be impeached as the authority for the out of order ruling," Dwyer wrote in a news release last week.

Dwyer said this week he expects House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Dist. 30) of Annapolis will call on House Parliamentarian Kathleen M. Dumais (D-Dist. 15) of Rockville to rule on the impeachment article Dwyer intends to bring.

In a letter on Monday to Del. Brian McHale (D-Dist. 46) of Baltimore, the House chairman of the Legislative Ethics Committee, Dwyer asked that the Speaker "appoint a non member [sic] to preside as Parliamentarian."

"In order for the Parliamentarian to rule fairly and objectively on a question, a legitimate Parliamentarian is never a voting member of the organization or governing body," Dwyer wrote.

It sounds like the rules are pretty clear. It is notable that Boteler issued a news release rather than a motion in the legislature.

The Gazette might be blowing it a little out of proportion to say that "the GOP" is trying to impeach Gansler. The GOP of course would like any Democrat to lose their position or be embarrassed publicly, but so far it appears that two legislators have said something. This might gain them some prestige in their districts, it wouldn't be good for a politician from our county but it might work somewhere else. There is no chance Gansler will be removed from office for responding to a request from the legislature for an opinion.

Good Quote

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:28:00 +0000

Dave Rattigan at ExGay Watch has a good post up about PFOX's attempt to have "ex-gays" included in Disney's nondiscrimination policy. By the way, that attempt failed. Here is the crucial concept.

In the public square, the ex-gay message is rarely heard without accompanying slander of gays and their relationships. If indeed this is a sexual orientation, it is a tragedy – not to mention an anomaly – that it is an orientation defined overwhelmingly by hatred of and opposition to another sexual orientation. PFOX’s Disney Stunt Is About Protecting Ideology, Not Orientation

The Teabagger in the Judge's House

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:30:00 +0000

This just seems ... creepy. The LA Times:

As Virginia Thomas tells it in her soft-spoken, Midwestern cadence, the story of her involvement in the "tea party" movement is the tale of an average citizen in action.

"I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you," she said at a recent panel discussion with tea party leaders in Washington. Thomas went on to count herself among those energized into action by President Obama's "hard-left agenda."

But Thomas is no ordinary activist.

She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court.

In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative "core principles," she said. Justice's wife launches 'tea party' group

There is something about the Supreme Court, those should be venerable, wise monoliths of intellect who weigh every piece of evidence against the ponderous dimensions of liberty and history. You hate to think they're married to nuts -- worse, you hate to think they are privately nutty themselves.

The move by Virginia Thomas, 52, into the front lines of politics stands in marked contrast to the rarefied culture of the nation's highest court, which normally prizes the appearance of nonpartisanship and a distance from the fisticuffs of the politics of the day.

That's the way I think of them, or used to. Now they're sitting there muttering under their breath while the President speaks, and dinner conversation at home is about the latest "facts" revealed on Fox.

Her biography notes that Thomas is a fan of Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, author of "Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America."

"She is intrigued by Glenn Beck and listening carefully," the bio says.

Supreme Court justices are appointed for life.

School Books to Promote Conservative Religious Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:51:00 +0000

We will not pass judgment on the state of Texas, it's a big place and has a lot of different kinds of people. But there are a lot of conservative folks down there, and they expect to get their way. Now they are re-writing school textbooks to fit their Conservapedia-like worldview.

The problem with that is that Texas is such a big state, such a big customer to the publishers, that books are written to meet Texas standards and then distributed all over the country. Here's the AP reporting.

AUSTIN, Texas - A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded yesterday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history, and economics lessons that, if approved in a final vote, will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.

Teachers in Texas would be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards would describe the U.S. government as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic," and students would be required to study the decline in value of the dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard.

Decisions by the board - made up of lawyers, a dentist, and a weekly newspaper publisher among others - can affect textbook content nationwide because Texas is one of publishers' biggest clients. Texas board would tilt textbooks to the right

Yeah, they're a little bit crazy down there, and normally that's fine for them. But our kids are going to be getting these same textbooks.

"We have been about conservatism vs. liberalism," said Democrat Mavis Knight of Dallas, explaining her vote against the standards. "We have manipulated strands to insert what we want it to be in the document, regardless as to whether or not it's appropriate."

After three days of impassioned debate, the board gave preliminary approval to the new standards with a 10-5 party-line vote. A final vote is expected in May, after a public-comment period that could produce additional amendments and arguments.

Ultraconservatives wielded their power over hundreds of subjects, introducing and rejecting amendments on everything from the civil rights movement to global politics. Hostilities flared and prompted a walkout Thursday by one of the board's most prominent Democrats, Mary Helen Berlanga of Corpus Christi, who accused her colleagues of "whitewashing" curriculum standards.

I would like to see a list of the things they wanted to include. Since I just linked to Conservapedia, I went to that site and looked around. It really is pure nuttiness, they are re-defining the world in some kind of terms that have nothing to do with reality. And it's not a joke. People like that are getting publishers to re-write textbooks so that American children are indoctrinated into the fantasy-land of the ultraconservative religious right.

By late Thursday night, three other Democrats seemed to sense their futility and left, leaving Republicans to easily push through amendments heralding "American exceptionalism" and the U.S. free-enterprise system, suggesting it thrives best absent excessive government intervention.

Republican Terri Leo, a member of the powerful Christian-conservative voting bloc, called the standards "world class" and "exceptional."

Board members argued about the classification of historic periods (still B.C. and A.D., rather than B.C.E. and C.E.); whether students should be required to explain the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its impact on global politics (they will); and whether former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir should be required learning (she will).

"Some board members themselves acknowledged this morning that the process for revising curriculum standards in Texas is seriously broken, with politics and personal agendas dominating just about every decision," said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which advocates for religious freedom.

And your kid's school is going to buy these books and your kid is going to learn this stuff.

Prom Canceled When Girl Invites Girl

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:05:00 +0000

In our Maryland county we have to deal with a small cell of hardcore haters who spew a lot of venom but are viewed in the community as oddballs and outsiders. It's probably good to remember sometimes that there are places where those people are the majority, and things really happen their way.

Like, say, Itawamba, Mississippi.

Jackson, Miss. (CBS/AP) When Constance McMillen fought the law, the law canceled the fight.

With the backing of the ACLU, McMillen fought an Itawamba County school board to be able to take her lesbian partner and wear a tuxedo to the Itawamba County Agricultural High School prom, in the small town of Itawamba, Miss. about 20 miles east of Tupelo.

The school board responded Wednesday by announcing they were canceling the entire prom, scheduled for April 2. Constance McMillen Wanted to Take Her Girlfriend to the Prom, So the School Board Canceled it

Now, that's fair! Cancel the prom for everybody so that two girls don't dance together.

A Feb. 5 memo to students laid out the criteria for bringing a date to the prom, and one requirement was that the person must be of the opposite sex. The ACLU told board members the restriction violated the students' rights and not allowing McMillen to wear a tux violated her expression rights.

McMillen almost didn't return to school Thursday for fear of retribution by her classmates who had just lost their prom because of her.

"My daddy told me that I needed to show them that I'm still proud of who I am," McMillen said. "The fact that this will help people later on, that's what's helping me to go on."

I imagine peer pressure can get pretty intense at Itawamba County Agricultural High School. It is great to see her dad backing her up, it is great to see young people fighting for what's right and not backing down.

McMillen said she did feel some hostility toward her on campus, explaining, "Somebody said, 'Thanks for ruining my senior year."'

I wonder how many people complained to the school board that actually canceled the prom, instead of blaming Constance for failing to homogenize adequately.

I notice the Facebook group Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom! has 18,169 fans so far. Woops, I waited an hour to post this. The group has 25,024 fans now.

[ Update, Saturday morning, 143,385 fans. ]

[ Update, Saturday 3:50 PM, 163,858 fans. ]

Husbands and Husbands

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:47:00 +0000

In case you haven't seen the great little video of this cute kid absorbing the fact that his two uncles are married to each other.

Kid seems to have the right idea, he takes it all in stride.

[Update: they have removed this video from YouTube. Too bad, it was working when I posted it. Let me know if you find a good copy somewhere...]

Heterosexualness In Danger

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:16:00 +0000

The Examiner had two stories recently that hit on topics near and dear to us here at TTF.

The first is nearest and dearest, because it features a character we got to know at the 2005 CRC Hate Fest. I'm talking about Maryland Delegate Don Dwyer, whose rhetoric was so over-the-top that the CRC leadership had to issue a statement distancing themselves from him. Here's his money quote from that event:

I’ve been accused of spreading hate and fear among the churches throughout the State of Maryland. Guilty as charged. I am spreading hate and fear. I am spreading the hate of the homosexual activist and I’m spreading my fear of what’s going to happen to this great state and our great nation if people of this world do not take a stand.

Our old friend Don is very upset that the state Attorney General has issued an opinion that tends to undermine the spreading of hate and fear.

The Examiner let him write a column on the subject...

Just six years after then-Maryland Attorney General Joe Curran issued his official opinion on the recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriage, the state’s current top legal officer, Doug Gansler, has overturned it.

In doing so, Gansler not only bypassed the long standing practice of referring to standing opinions from previous attorney generals, he also usurped the power of the Maryland General Assembly. The immediate effect of this opinion is far-reaching. It nullifies Maryland’s current law that states “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid in this state.” Del. Don Dwyer: Maryland's attorney general should be impeached

He goes on... I'm skipping through.

Irrefutable evidence exists proving Gansler violated his oath of office by offering partial and prejudiced testimony in his official capacity. He is not constitutionally authorized to offer partial and prejudice testimony under the cloak of his elected office.

He has unabashedly supported not only the recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages, but now also overtly advocates for Maryland to start performing them. In his testimony in the Maryland Senate in 2008, he fully outlined what he thinks is his job as attorney general:

“The role of the Attorney General is not just to enforce the law, but to seek justice in every case.” He went on to say “It would be hard for me to have this job knowing that there is something so wrong in our society and just ignore it and be able to come down and at least testify on behalf of this bill.”

Gansler’s action on the same-sex marriage issue is in direct conflict with the intent of the Oath of Office to which he swore his allegiance. It is also a grave injustice to the citizens of Maryland.

The column concludes:

I am preparing articles of impeachment based on the offenses outlined here. One can only hope that this process will not be circumvented for political expediency.

Dwyer's statements here are one hundred percent predictable. He is making a name for himself as a spreader of hate and fear of the homosexual agenda, and this is just the kind of thing he always says.

Let me say, The Examiner is a doubly doubtable source of information. For one thing, the newspaper itself is not very good. I remember when they reported on some action by our Montgomery County, Maryland, school superintendent, and showed a picture of the superintendent and school board from Montgomery County, Virginia. The paper is rabidly and often humorously conservative, biasing news stories in surprising and innovative ways. The second factor is that they have blogs online that are apparently unmonitored and unregulated, and when you read on their Internet site it is not always clear what is a news story and what is a blog or opinion piece. While some of The Examiner's blogged stories are very interesting, you can't trust the quality of anything you read on their site.

So here is The Examiner telling us about a bill that has been introduced to ban same-sex marriages.

ANNAPOLIS - Maryland lawmakers used racism and religion to argue over whether to allow same-sex marriage in the state in a House hearing Thursday.

"Heterosexualness is in danger," said Del. Emmett C. Burns Jr., D-Baltimore County. "I never thought I would live to see this day."

Burns held up a copy of Thursday's Washington Post and pointed to a picture of two men kissing.

Del. Benjamin S. Barnes, D-Anne Arundel, sponsor of a bill that would legalize gay marriage in Maryland, asked Burns: "Does it make you angry to see two men kissing?"

"It's disgusting," Burns replied.

Several gay couples in the packed hearing room gasped; others shook their heads.

Del. Don H. Dwyer Jr., R-Anne Arundel, meanwhile, nodded his head. Lawmakers battle over gay marriage

Quick, call the authorities! Don't let them take my heterosexualness away from me!

Apparently these guys think that most straight people are strongly tempted to become involved romantically with someone of their own sex, and only refrain from doing that because there are laws saying that people with matching plumbing cannot marry. That is the only way that marriage between same-sex couples could threaten, never mind endanger, heterosexualness. Which is, by the way, a word I am coming to love.

Another Headline

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:09:00 +0000

Fox News: Anti-Gay Lawmaker Reportedly at Gay Club Before DUI Arrest

A California state senator who reportedly has voted against every gay rights measure since he took office eight years ago was charged with driving under the influence on Wednesday, reportedly after leaving a gay nightclub in Sacramento...

Front Page Headline

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:39:00 +0000

The Washington Post -- you just can't get any more balanced that this.

Here's what you got on our front porch this morning. Front page headline today, below the fold:

Democrats' ethical lapses could imperil hold on power

Online they changed it for their more sophisticated Internet readers: Massa resigns; Democrats' ethical lapses could threaten hold on power

Yeah, those Democrats are so unethical... I'm so glad I pay to get this newspaper delivered to my house. It is so informative.

The Post: Democrats Share the Blame for GOP Bad Behavior

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:36:00 +0000

I've mentioned a few times here about how the Washington Post has been getting worse and worse. Perfect example this morning.

This week a slide show produced by the Republican Party got out to the public. Politico broke the story Wednesday:

The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on “fear” of President Barack Obama and a promise to "save the country from trending toward socialism."

The strategy was detailed in a confidential party fundraising presentation, obtained by POLITICO, which also outlines how “ego-driven” wealthy donors can be tapped with offers of access and “tchochkes.”

The presentation was delivered by RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart to top donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Boca Grande, Florida on February 18, a source at the gathering said.

In neat PowerPoint pages, it lifts the curtain on the often-cynical terms of political marketing, displaying an air of disdain for the party’s donors that is usually confined to the barroom conversations of political operatives.

The presentation explains the Republican fundraising in simple terms.

"What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House, or the Senate...?" it asks.

The answer: "Save the country from trending toward Socialism!”

Manipulating donors with crude caricatures and playing on their fears is hardly unique to Republicans or to the RNC – Democrats raised millions off George W. Bush in similar terms – but rarely is it practiced in such cartoonish terms.

One page, headed “The Evil Empire,” pictures Obama as the Joker from Batman, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leaders Harry Reid are depicted as Cruella DeVille and Scooby Doo, respectively. Exclusive: RNC document mocks donors, plays on 'fear'

(BTW, you can see the slide show itself HERE.)

Oh, and here's the funny part.

The 72-page document was provided to POLITICO by a Democrat, who said a hard copy had been left in the hotel hosting the $2,500-a-head retreat, the Gasparilla Inn & Club. Sources at the event said the presentation was delivered by Bickhart and by the RNC Finance Chairman, Peter Terpeluk, a former ambassador to Luxembourg under President George W. Bush.

Ambassador to Luxembourg -- I love that. So the Republicans just left this thing lying around and Politico ended up with it.

Maybe you saw Howard Dean on Keith Olbermann's show last night, with Lawrence O'Donnell hosting. Dean's usually pretty good with the talking points, he puts his message out there where he wants it, but last night he was just stammering. His message was, "I can't believe this."

And it‘s astonishing to me—what is so astonishing is not that they are propagandists. They‘ve been doing that since Lee Atwater. What‘s astonishing to me is that they‘d turn the fire hose on their own people. They just don‘t respect anybody who disagrees with them and they really believe that they are entitled to run the country just because of their far-right views. And it‘s just—I‘m shocked. I really am. That would never happen at the DNC.

You know, you can‘t even ask me what would you do if that happened at the DNC. It never would, because we fundamentally respect other people. In fact, when I was chairman, we actually even reached out to respect evangelical Christians because we thought we could get some of their votes and we did.

I‘m stunned. I just can‘t believe that this party is so open about how contemptuous it is for the very people they work for ultimately which is the American people.VIDEO

OK, you may or may not like Howard Dean and you know he's a good Democrat speaking on behalf of the party, but the truth is -- this Powerpoint talk was presented by high-ranking Republican officials, it represents their philosophy of campaigning, and, importantly, there is nothing like this to be found in any Democratic rally or backroom meeting.

So here's what gets me. This morning you have the Washington Post talking about how the Republicans are trying to control the damage from this thing. Here's how their story starts. I want to direct your attention to the first sentence of the second paragraph of this article.

National Republican leaders scrambled Thursday to control damage caused by an internal party document that caricatures President Obama as the Joker and stokes fear of socialism to raise money in a critical election year.

The 72-page PowerPoint presentation reveals the blunt appeal to emotion that both parties use to motivate donors and prefer to keep private. But its release online and consequent cable chatter became an unwelcome distraction for Republicans, because the strategy it outlined fit squarely with Democrats' portrait of the GOP as the party of "no." Republicans try to control damage from fundraising document

Excuse me -- both parties use?

BOTH PARTIES ? ? ?

We await the release of the corresponding documentation of the Democrats' appeals to fear and their mockery of their own donors.

The Melting

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:11:00 +0000

Got up this morning and went outside to pick up the paper, and it is unmistakable -- spring is near. It's only going to be in the forties today but you can smell it, you can feel it, you can hear it.

I don't think it ever got very cold this winter but how many times did it snow? It seemed like there was snow on the ground the whole time, sometimes several feet of it. Everybody's had enough. Now lawns have turned to mud and sidewalks are clear, there are still mountains of black snow where the plows piled it up but those are diminishing, too. A sparrow was sitting on the bird house this morning, planning how to design a nice nice for its family, a crow flew overhead with a twig in its beak, headed no doubt for some noisy rookery nearby.

It is so fun this week to see the pictures and read the stories about the couples who lined up for the first day of marriage licenses in the District of Columbia. Watch THIS VIDEO and look at those happy faces! People are so emotional they almost can't talk. Amanda Hess at The Sexist blog interviewed couples in line and has some of their stories. It really is fun to read.

We send special cheers to Terrance from Republic of T blog, who is an occasional participant in TTF community affairs and was twelfth in line with his partner Richard.

These are happy days for residents of our area. Gay and lesbian couples can marry legally in DC, and their marriages will be recognized in our state of Maryland.

And so the snow melts all around us and hateful attitudes melt away in the sunshine of love.

Marriage Licenses in DC Tomorrow -- Supreme Court Will Not Intervene

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:11:00 +0000

Late breaking news story.

Chief Justice John Roberts has just released an opinion refusing to block D.C.'s same-sex marriage law from taking effect tomorrow. Opponents of the law had asked the Supreme Court to step in and issue a temporary delay so they could hold a city-wide referendum on the issue before the law took effect.

Lower courts had ruled against them, and Roberts said he saw no reason for the Supreme Court to step into such a local matter involving the referendum process.

As a result, gay couples can start applying for marriage licenses in D.C. tomorrow. Opponents still can pursue a ballot initiative to overturn the same-sex marriage law.

Roberts' decision can be read here. Supreme Court Refuses to Block D.C. Gay Marriage

The Post: Why Blue Maryland Lags

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:55:00 +0000

You would think Maryland would lead the nation in progressive issues, for instance ensuring rights for minorities, but that is rarely the case. The Washington Post had a thoughtful article this morning discussing this apparent anomaly in light of state Attorney General Doug Gansler's recent opinion (read it HERE) that Maryland law does recognize marriages -- even same-sex marriages -- that have been granted in other states.

It doesn't seem like a big deal, say some people are married in a state where the age of consent is younger than ours, what are we supposed to do, make the husband sleep on the couch until they both meet the Maryland standard? Same thing, a couple gets married in a more progressive state, one of them gets a job transfer to Maryland, what are we supposed to do, un-marry them because they're both men or both women? Somebody has to decide, and Gansler made what appears to be a fair and kind of obvious decision.

But Gansler has gone against Maryland tradition, even Maryland Democratic Party tradition.

On paper, the declaration last week by Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D) that the state would begin recognizing same-sex marriages from other places might have seemed right in line with a state ranked as having the nation's largest percentage of left-leaning voters.

In reality, it violated the way Maryland politics works.

Even though Democrats hold a 2 to 1 advantage among voters and dominate both houses of the General Assembly, lawmakers in Annapolis are a more conservative lot than their counterparts in other deep-blue states. Powerful Democrats in the legislature hold onto their jobs for decades by moving slowly, not setting trends.

The state's brand of liberalism is explained in part by geography and in part by culture. Democrats are hesitant to embrace many progressive social policies, lest they upset the state's many Catholics, evangelicals and others with deep religious convictions.

And although parts of Montgomery County are every bit as left-leaning as Boulder, Colo., and Berkeley, Calif., African Americans in Baltimore and Prince George's County -- the state's other Democratic strongholds -- tend to be more socially conservative. Rural Democrats, particularly in the southern and western parts of the state, identify more culturally with Virginia than with Takoma Park. Same-sex marriage opinion was politics unusual in Maryland

It is sometimes easy to forget, and helpful to recall, that the Mason-Dixon line is north of us.

And here The Post is referring to Takoma Park as if it were an enclave of old hippies. Which is, well, pretty accurate. Mellow place, Takoma.

Skipping slots and corporate taxes ...

"We are more comfortable, seemingly, waiting for other states to tiptoe into territory that is trendsetting to see what the reaction is before we step up and do the same thing," said Del. Heather R. Mizeur, a Montgomery County Democrat and one of the state's few openly gay lawmakers.

"We are a Democratic state, but in the big-tent sense, we have a lot of conservative Democrats, and we do things in a very measured sense."

Against such inertia, Gansler's decision to press ahead on gay rights not only got ahead of the curve but jumped the cautious political track on which Maryland lawmakers remain most comfortable.

Gansler used a request from Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr., another openly gay Montgomery Democrat, to reverse an opinion and direct state agencies to begin offering same-sex married couples the same rights afforded heterosexual ones.

Gansler insisted that his decision was not playing politics and was right, given that the state has respected less-scrupulous contracts than out-of-state same-sex marriage licenses. Gansler's critics, however, insist that he intended to circumvent the legislature.

That's a kind of weak criticism, it's the Attorney General's job to specify how laws should be prosecuted. This is definitely ambiguous and needed interpretation (thanks Rich!), and once asked, you knew he was going to go one way or the other with it.

Gansler's gambit:

The decision sets up a likely showdown in the state's highest court, and Gansler said he thinks his opinion has provided a successful road map for same-sex couples to win such cases.

If voters become more comfortable with same-sex marriage over the next four years, the move could prove a shrewd one for an attorney general already positioning himself to run for governor in 2014. If not, he could be cast as too liberal even in his party's own primary.

Too liberal for the monkey-monks in charge of the party, maybe, I doubt this would make him appear too liberal for the people who live in this state.

Here's the part that has been bothering me for a long time.

The other Democrats who hold statewide office and who are likely to seek the nomination haven't supported same-sex marriage.

I think if you sat down and had a beer with any of these so-called Democrats you would find that they are perfectly comfortable with the concept, but don't feel that their constituents are ready for it.

To which I would say one thing: lead. Don't drag along behind the curve, get ahead of it, affect history, set an example for your constituents. Don't let the Family Blah Blah groups run the rhetoric into the sewer, seize the opportunity and make a name for yourself by doing the right thing proactively.

More immediately: In an election year with the seats of not only O'Malley but all 188 state legislators up for grabs, Gansler's decision exerts new pressure on Democrats with tenuous holds on the state's more conservative districts. The state's Republican Party has made clear that a primary focus in November will be to pick off five seats to break the Senate's filibuster-proof majority. At least some of those Democrats are likely to face committee votes on same-sex bills in coming weeks.

"We have a long history of pragmatic politics," said Del. John L. Bohanan Jr., a powerful Democrat who represents Southern Maryland and who often votes against bills introduced by his more-liberal colleagues. "You've got the rural areas that offset some of the more progressive areas, and because of that . . . there are some issues that you'd think we'd be a lot further ahead on than we are, which I think is appropriate."

Bohanan then described an exchange that often typifies some of the tension within the state's Democratic majority: "Somebody said in [the] Appropriations [Committee] the other day that, 'Well, you know California has passed this bill already,' and I said, 'Some of us believe that if they've done it, then we run in the opposite direction.'"

Because what -- you don't want to be like California?

A recent Gallup poll found that 57.7 percent of Maryland voters are Democratic or left-leaning, the highest percentage in the country aside from the District.

The party's power is centered in the middle of the state, in Baltimore and the heavily populated Washington suburbs of Montgomery and Prince George's counties. Democrats win in rural areas, too, but often by toeing conservative lines on immigration and crime issues.

Religion also plays a moderate role. A strong arc of Catholic voters resides throughout Howard and Anne Arundel counties, boosting the legislature's ranks of Catholics to 53, or almost a third of lawmakers. Catholics are only outnumbered by the half of Maryland lawmakers who identify themselves as Protestant.

"Maryland's electorate, and therefore its lawmakers, are different than in other blue states," said Del. Emmett C. Burns Jr., a pastor and Baltimore County Democrat who authored a House bill that failed last month to ban recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages.

Although Burns's bill failed, a similar measure against recognizing out-of-state same-sex marriages remains active in the Senate.

...

That bill has 10 co-sponsors: five Republicans and five Democrats. Three -- including Sen. Norman R. Stone Jr. (D-Baltimore County), the lead sponsor -- represent fairly conservative districts. The other two -- Sens. Anthony C. Muse (D) and Douglas J.J. Peters (D) -- hail from Prince George's.

The Democratic co-sponsors underscore the diversity of views within the party in the all-important Senate. Liberal legislation can pass the House but often dies there. Democrats dominate the chamber, holding 33 of 47 seats, but there is little consensus on social issues.

In recent years, conservative Democrats have sided with Republicans on several other divisive issues, including stem-cell research.

Maryland was one of the first states to approve funding for stem-cell research, but it remains one of the last sticking points each year in the budget.

Stem cell research seems to me to be a sound-bite issue. There is no rational argument against the use of stem cells, which have amazing potential for curing intractable diseases. There is a vague and easily overstated religious objection, which is that cells may come from aborted embryos. And that's it.

Maryland was one of the first states to approve funding for stem-cell research, but it remains one of the last sticking points each year in the budget.

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) said he wasn't sure how much debate Stone's measure would get, saying he considered the House as having already dealt with it. Miller said bills to pass same-sex marriage also haven't gone anywhere in the Senate because "it would be very difficult to get past a filibuster."

Still, Miller, who on many occasions has tried to curtail debate on social issues since he began presiding over the Senate in 1987, said his members' views on the latest hot-button social issue, same-sex marriage, are just one slice of being a Maryland Democrat.

"We're not going to tolerate a litmus test for people who belong to the Democratic Party," he said.

Excuse me, but it appears that he is saying "being a Democrat means nothing."

Finally, the article makes it personal.

Jennifer Kali, 31, recently gave birth to a daughter and plans to travel with her partner, Karen, from their Silver Spring home to get married in the District next week. Maryland already gives same-sex couples many rights, "but this could be huge," Kali said, referring to Maryland potentially recognizing her marriage.

"The fact that we're even talking about it," Kali said, "is a big deal."

And the fact that we're only talking about it is a big deal, too.

Reaction to Gansler's Decision

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:26:00 +0000

Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler yesterday finally ruled that Maryland recognizes same-sex marriages from other states. That doesn't mean you can get married in Maryland, but if you get married somewhere else it's legal here.

Of course the reaction goes both ways. The Washington Post blog summarizes the situation. They quote the Baltimore Sun:

Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler on Wednesday morning released a long-awaited opinion saying same-sex marriages performed in other states could be recognized by Maryland's legal system.

Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr., a Democrat, asked in May asked if such marriages could be recognized. "The answer to that question is clearly 'yes,'" Gansler wrote in a 40-page document.

The opinion does not enable same-sex couples to wed here. It also does not carry the weight of law, but is meant to guide judges and state agencies.

"What we say in this opinion is a prediction, not a prescription" as to how a court would interpret the law, Gansler wrote. Same-sex marriage opinion quickly draws fire, praise

So now it's just a matter of waiting to see how long it takes for a case to come to court. There are lots of same-sex couples in Maryland who have married in other states and consider themselves to be married, but their relationship has not been recognized legally.

There is a bill in the legislature that would negate this ruling. A Baltimore Democrat, Norman Stone, introduced it.

Stone said he's concerned that with Washington, D.C., set to begin permitting the unions next month, Maryland couples will simply marry there and then continue living here. Stone believes that if people "strongly believe in same-sex marriages, they should go live in those states" that allow it. A hearing on his bill is set for next week.

Wow, wouldn't that be terrible if people who love one another were allowed to marry? They'd better patch up this loophole real fast!

The Post blog also notes that Don Dwyer is against it. We know Dwyer from his rabid speech to the Citizens for Responsible Curriculum's 2005 "hate fest" at Johns Hopkins' Rockville campus. He came to our county to crusade against a fair and objective sex-ed curriculum here.

We understand that Del. Don H. Dwyer Jr., an Anne Arundel County Republican, is so dismayed that he's seeking Gansler's impeachment. Other lawmakers say it's now more important than ever for the legislature to decisively weigh in on the matter.

That would be the way they think, impeach the Attorney General for making a difficult decision that they don't agree with.

Meanwhile, supporters of same-sex marriages are again pursuing legislation that would allow those unions to be performed in this state. The bill has broad support, particularly among members of the House Judiciary Committee, which will consider it March 12. But legislative leaders doubt the effort will make it through both chambers.

Many, including Equality Maryland, praised Gansler's opinion. Freedom to Marry also has kind words for Gansler.

House Speaker Michael E. Busch, a Democrat, said he had not reviewed Gansler's opinion but reiterated his stance that same-sex couples should be permitted civil unions. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, a Democrat, said he personally believes that marriages should be between a man and a woman but said that as a lawyer, he understands the basis of Gansler's opinion.

"I believe the state must give full faith and credit to the laws of our sister states," Miller said.

[Del. Emmett] Burns [who opposes same-sex marriage] said he expetcs Maryland voters to one day decide for themselves whether the state should allow same-sex marriages.

"It is going to end up on referendum, and I am going to win," he said.

Weird that they want a referendum to decide this civil rights matter. The nutty right wants to impose the norms of the majority on everybody. Except in Congress.

Well, clearly this is not finished. It is an important ruling, and it will certainly be tested in court, where an important factor will be the luck of the draw -- what judge you get. It does seem though that a state is obligated to respect the laws of another state, and it is patently absurd to tell a couple that they are married in this place but not in that one.

Showernut Ugliness Continues

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:53:00 +0000

Somebody forwarded a newsletter to me from the group that now apparently calls itself Maryland Citizens for Responsible Government. The email came from their president Ruth Jacobs, and the subject line was:

CALL NOW-Stop "MD BATHROOM BILL"

Here's the meat of the email.

There was a terrible rape on the Takoma campus of Montgomery College in January. A guy crawled into the stall of a ladies restroom in a quiet building and attacked a student for an hour. It was a terrible crime, and the college community was shocked by it.

Dr. Ruth Jacobs and her group want you to believe that that rape had something to do with the Montgomery County Council unanimously passing a bill prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity in employment and other things.

This is evil, people, this is hate in its purest form. The rapist was not transgender, nor did he pretend to be. He went into the women's restroom to attack somebody, he didn't go in disguised as a woman or justifying his presence there by claiming to be transgender. He is a violent criminal who went into the restroom to commit a crime.

Yet Ruth Jacobs and her group hate transgender people so much that they will use this horrible crime to justify discrimination against them.

PFLAG/RYA Letter to School Board About PFOX

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:55:00 +0000

Metro DC Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and the Rainbow Youth Alliance (RYA) sent this letter this week to the Montgomery County Public Schools' Board of Education.

The Honorable Patricia O'Neill, President
Mongtomery County Board of Education
Montgomery County Public Schools
850 Hungerford Drive
Rockville, Maryland 20850

Re: Flyer distribution by PFOX

Dear President O’Neill:

Fliers from Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) recently were distributed to Montgomery County high school students. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020404535.html) (“Potomac high-schoolers get note saying therapy can turn gays straight”). These fliers (a copy of which is attached) were distributed in accordance with official MCPS policy, which was modified to be consistent with the decision in Child Evangelism Fellowship v. MCPS, 457 F.3d 376 (4th Cir. 2006). The PFOX fliers tell students that gay people can become straight through "therapies.” We know that the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held, in Child Evangelism Fellowship, that the MCPS flyer distribution program was a "quasi public forum," as to which there could be no "viewpoint" discrimination.

But, if MCPS wishes to continue the distribution program in its high schools, does Child Evangelism Fellowship require MCPS to distribute fliers that advocate doctrines relating to health that are in direct conflict with the consensus of the mainstream medical and mental health community? Alternatively, if the United States Constitution requires allowing the PFOX distribution in the event that MCPS maintains a distribution program for MCPS high schools, would it be better public policy to terminate the high school distribution program altogether?

The Metro DC Chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) asks this second question, even though PFLAG has itself utilized the program since 2006, and plans to distribute its own fliers (in conjunction with the Rainbow Youth Alliance) this coming April. (A copy of that flyer is attached). It is imperative that the dangerous assertions set forth by PFOX not be distributed under MCPS auspices. By asserting that people can decide to change their sexual orientation, PFOX promotes a doctrine that has been discredited by every American mainstream medical and mental health professional association. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), in a report available at http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;113/6/1827, states that the American Psychiatric Association has found that "homosexuality [is] . . . not a mental disorder." The AAP further concludes that “sexual orientation is not a choice; that is, individuals do not choose to be homosexual or heterosexual," nor is it something "that voluntarily can be changed." Indeed, the American Medical Association explicitly opposes “therapies” based on the incorrect premise that gay people are ill or that they should change their sexual orientation. See AMA Policy Number H-160.991 Health Care Needs of the Homosexual Population, available at http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/14754.html.

In fact, MCPS itself provides as a resource for pupil personnel workers the American Psychological Association's Just the Facts About Sexual Orientation and Youth: A Primer for Principals, Educators, and School Personnel. This publication was developed expressly for school personnel and is endorsed by 13 other organizations, including the American School Counselors Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the AAP. It explicitly states that "the nation's leading professional medical, health, and mental health organizations do not support efforts to change young people's sexual orientation through therapy and have raised serious concerns about the potential harm from such efforts." http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/just-the-facts.pdf at pp. 8 and 9.

PFOX is not a benign organization; the contrary is the case. One of its board members is Peter Sprigg, who served as a representative of PFOX on the Board of Education’s Citizens Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development from 2007 to 2009. Just a few weeks ago, on February 2, 2010, Mr. Sprigg stated, on MSNBC's Hardball program, that he advocates the criminalization of “gay behavior”: At the end of discussion on the inclusion of gays in the military (specifically, at the 8 minute, 38 second mark) (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alvin-mcewen/frcs-peter-sprigg-support_b_446854.html ), Mr. Sprigg was asked by host Chris Mathews if "gay behavior" should be outlawed. Mr. Sprigg responded that "I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior." Then Mr. Mathews, presumably to make certain that Mr. Sprigg understood what he had just said, asked, "So we should outlaw gay behavior?" Mr. Sprigg replied, "Yes."

It may be regrettable that Mr. Sprigg currently is one of 15 members on the Citizens Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development, whose responsibilities include the review of materials for health classes that may address matters of sexual orientation. (We recognize that none of the appointments made in 2009 were based on organizational affiliation.) But it is far worse than regrettable for his views and those of the organization he represents to be propagated under MCPS auspices. While we are fully aware of the fliers’ mandated disclaimer (which is in small, fine print at the bottom of the PFOX flyer), we have heard enough complaints regarding the unnecessary hurtfulness of the PFOX fliers that we strongly believe the fliers have no legitimate place in MCPS.

Moreover, the history of negative mental health outcomes from such “therapies” could open up MCPS to legal liability. For example, suppose a 14-year old ninth grader, who recognizes he is gay but is under enormous peer and other pressure to be straight, receives the flyer and as a consequence seeks out a therapy endorsed by PFOX? The student may not know that the promoted therapy has been deemed dangerous by the AMA. As the therapy fails to change his feelings, he becomes more and more depressed, leading to suicide. See Report of the American Psychological Association Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation, http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/therapeutic-response.pdf, at p. 42 (“attempts to change sexual orientation may cause or excerbate stress and poor mental health in some individuals, including depression and suicidal thoughts”). Would there be a wrongful death lawsuit that could succeed against MCPS, particularly since MCPS is already in possession of the information discussing the dangers? It is not at all clear that the required disclaimer on the flyer would insulate MCPS from such liability.

Whether MCPS may, consistent with the Child Evangelism Fellowship decision, bar the PFOX fliers without eliminating the flyer distribution program in the high schools altogether may be an open question. But what is not an open question is that PFOX promotes medically discredited therapies that are dangerous to children's health.

We stand ready to work with the Board of Education and MCPS to find ways to deal with this threat to students’ well-being.

Sincerely,

David S. Fishback
Advocacy Chair, Metro DC PFLAG
Olney, Maryland

Stephanie Kreps
Co-founder, Rainbow Youth Alliance
Secretary, Metro DC PFLAG
Gaithersburg, Maryland

Local Connections to the Uganda Kill-the-Gays Law

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 02:02:00 +0000

I don't think we have talked at all here about the anti-homosexuality law that is being considered in Uganda. That's mostly because it's, well, it's Uganda, it's halfway around the world. But it does affect us, what's happening over there even has several connections to our Montgomery County and our public school district.

Uganda is considering a law that will make homosexuality a capital offense. The effort seems to have backing from some American groups -- you should see World Net Daily's video HERE. (I especially love the grand finale: "Like the great Doctor King told us, the moral arm of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Ugandans, stay on the right side of history.")

Surprisingly, there are several connections between what is going on in Uganda and goings-on in our public school district. Former PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays) president Richard Cohen sent his staffer Caleb Lee Brundidge to Uganda to attend a conference to plan and promote the kill-the-gays law. Cohen's book is widely quoted by the leaders of the Ugandan anti-gay campaign -- Cohen is a Marylander from PG County who has been involved in our county's sex-education curriculum development, speaking to the MCPS Board of Education in 2005, when he was president of PFOX. Watch Rachel Maddow spell out the connection between Cohen and the Uganda campaign, and give him a chance to explain himself, HERE and HERE. Cohen is no longer president of PFOX, but PFOX still refers people to him for counseling and promotes his events.

The Montgomery County School District sends PFOX literature home with schoolchildren four times a year, and has appointed a PFOX board member who believes homosexual behavior should be criminalized to his third term on the citizens committee that advises the district on sex-ed policies.

A therapist for Cohen's organization, Caleb Lee Brundidge, was one of three Americans who addressed the recent anti-gay Family Life Network conference in Uganda (listen to him HERE). He had previously addressed our Montgomery County Public Schools Board of Education in 2005, under the name Lee B. Brundidge, in order to influence the school district's decisions regarding classes on sexual orientation. He told the board, "I am here to tell you that ex-gay people exist, and I am one of them." Richard Cohen's International Healing Foundation's "therapists" page says (HERE) that Brundidge had moved from Atlanta, Georgia to New Jersey, then to Maryland, and on to Phoenix, Arizona. Most news accounts describe him as living in Phoenix.

Even as American bigots are motivating and supporting the Ugandans in making homosexuality a capital crime, the movement in Uganda seems to be encouraging American bigots. I don't think it is coincidental that MCPS sex-ed adviser and MoCo resident Peter Sprigg told Chris Matthews on Hardball recently that homosexual behavior should be against the law. Subsequently, Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan has said he, too, thinks it should be criminalized, and Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association has also gone on record as saying that homosexuality should be criminalized. They are not calling for the actual killing of LGBT people, as Uganda is considering, but only jailing them. (The World Net Daily video I linked above does suggest that capital punishment is what the Founding Fathers intended.)

PFOX is the ultimate passive aggressive organization. They never say anything negative about gay people, they just offer them "change" and argue that everybody should have "self-determination," as if you can determine your own sexual orientation -- as if some individuals "self-determined" to become gay and lesbian. PFOX has not gone on the record as saying that they support Uganda's efforts to kill gay people. But last month they posted on their blog the most bizarre news story. They got this from a site called AllAfrica.com. I hate to rebroadcast this kind of ugliness here, but this is what PFOX considers a blogworthy news story in January 2010:

23 March 2009

Kampala — A man shocked parents on Sunday when he confessed to recruiting school children into homosexuality as part of a programme to promote the practice in Ugandan schools.

George Oundo said funders gave them "much money" and training abroad and that he would target mostly the needy children who had problems of tuition and pocket money and "others who like outings."

Oundo warned parents to know their children's friends. Homosexuals, he added, were targeting mostly children "because they are easy to initiate and they like easy things".

Oundo said he got seriously involved in promoting homosexuality in 2003. "I was taken to Nairobi for training," he said. "I used to supply pornographic materials in form of books and compact discs showing homosexuality to young boys in many schools," he explained.

The training, he said, was facilitated by Gay and Lesbian Coalition. "I also got the pupils' telephone contacts. We used to meet with both girls and boys in schools during ceremonial parties," he asserted.

He said he only stopped his activities after becoming a Born-again Christian. He told all this to about 50 parents attending a seminar at Hotel Triangle, Kampala on Sunday. It was organised by Family Life Network, a local charity which promotes family values. Uganda - Homosexual Admits Recruiting School Children

Yes, the original article was written in March, 2009.

PFOX added a note at the top of the blog post:

Will Rachel Maddow discuss this on her show?

Actually, I would love to see Rachel Maddow discuss the fact that PFOX, claiming to be friends of gays, is republishing this kind of article, which is a perfect example of the kind of paranoid fantasy entertained and loved by the most strident gay-hater. There are people who really think this happens, that huge, well-funded organizations of gay people are actively recruiting children to join their shadowy and evil "lifestyle," not only in faraway Uganda but right here in the USA. Such a belief is cited as justification for violence, there is no reason to publish such an article beyond inciting prejudice and discrimination. And here is PFOX actively stirring the pot, going halfway across the world to Uganda to find an article describing the paranoid hater's most vivid fantasy. Friends of gays, not so much.

There have been some apologists, by the way, who have tried to say that Uganda's law won't really kill gay people. Yes it will. Under the law they can kill you for letting a gay couple use your apartment, or for not ratting a gay friend out to authorities, lots of things. Ex-Gay Watch this week linked to an excellent video that goes through the text of the law, highlighting terms and their definitions, which can be lost in the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo. Watch this:

Also, I should point out that Warren Throckmorton has been following the Uganda situation very closely, almost obsessively I thought, but he is justified, this is an important developing situation. Warren doesn't always see things our way, you might say, but he provides a lot of links and keeps track of what's going on, he even has the occasional interview with someone involved in the situation.

Uganda is not half a world away, what's happening in Uganda is closely linked to what's happening in our little county, in our little school district.

2k+ Posts

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:01:00 +0000

By the way, I just noticed, this is the 2,005th post on this blog since we started in December, 2004.

A Subtle Wording Effect

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:39:00 +0000

The Family Blah Blah groups love to put the word "gay" in quotation marks, as if it were jargon or a euphemism. And they love to use the word "homosexual," emphasizing the x in sex so you have to think about sex when you think of gay people. It's a subtle way to make it sound dirty.

A recent survey shows that it works. This is interesting, a really good survey methods experiment.

A CBS News / New York Times poll looked into the question of gays in the military. They compared some numbers to 1993, when Bill Clinton first proposed "Don't Ask Don't Tell." As expected, a majority 59 percent favor "homosexuals in the military" now, compared to 42 percent in 1993.

The survey authors did something cool here. They asked the question two ways. They asked some respondents how they felt about "homosexuals serving in the military" and they asked others how they felt about "gay men and lesbians serving in the military." Here are the results:

FAVOR OR OPPOSE _______ SERVING IN MILITARY?
                 Homosexuals        Gay Men & Lesbians
Strongly favor      34%                        51%
Somewhat favor      25                         19
Somewhat oppose     10                          7
Strongly oppose     19                         12

That is a beautiful effect. People are much more tolerant of gay men and lesbians than they are of homosexuals. Seventy percent of people favor letting gay men and lesbians serve in the military, eleven percentage points more.

I have always wondered what kind of effect a subtle linguistic barb like that really has. It's like the Republicans talking about the "Democrat Party," you know they're just being jerks about it but you wonder if it has any effect. The religious right loves to call gay and lesbian people "homosexuals," half because gay people don't like it and half because they like to think it's all about sex. You can see that this kind of wording really does have the desired effect, gay men and lesbians get a much higher approval rating than homosexuals.

Time for MCPS to Take Responsibility

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:07:00 +0000

PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays) is an organization that sues people to protect the rights of those chimerical people who have decided not to be gay any more -- "ex-gays." The organization consists basically of Regina Griggs, who has a gay son and who wishes with all her heart that people could just change their sexual orientation. There is a board of directors, which includes our county's Peter Sprigg, who believes that homosexual behavior should be against the law, and PFOX has some friends, including a few in our county.

A few years ago, PFOX began exploiting a legal loophole which enabled them to get Montgomery County Public Schools to distribute their anti-gay literature to students. An evangelical organization had sued the school district because they wouldn't pass out the group's flyers. The school district thought it would be be a violation of the Constitution's Establishment clause, forbidding government promotion of religion, and the group said refusing was a violation of the Free Speech section, and the group won in court. Suddenly a school's decision about whether to distribute someone's flyers became a legal issue, and the district came up with a policy that said that they would distribute any flyer that met certain criteria. Besides school announcements, the PTA, and on-campus clubs, the schools would distribute flyers put out by nonprofit organizations if the flyer had a disclaimer on it and was not hate literature. PFOX is a nonprofit, and they saw the opportunity to recruit gay teenagers through the schools.

At first everybody just shrugged and said, well, they have the right to express themselves, this is fair, etcetera. Some schools set up special trash cans on PFOX flyer days, which coincided with report cards, so students could throw their anti-gay materials out immediately. All the same, school staff spent time handling the flyers, classroom time was taken to hand them out. The information on the flyers was in direct contradiction to the health curriculum, it was in direct contradiction to the schools' antidiscrimination policies, but taxpayer-paid staff spent work time, and students spent time that could have been used for learning, on the flyers.

A couple of weeks ago the flyers went out again, and now people in the county are getting fed up with it. Hateful groups like PFOX exist, we know that, the question is why are the schools giving our county's kids their literature?

This week PFOX stepped up its counteroffense. World Net Daily gives PFOX's side of it:

A campaign has been launched in Montgomery County, Md., to classify the speech of advocates for people who choose to leave the homosexual lifestyle as "hate speech," which then could be banned under a new law signed last year by President Obama.

"Hate speech is unwelcome in Montgomery County Public Schools," said an e-mail to the offices of Regina Griggs, national director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays, known as PFOX. "I would like to ask that you immediately cease distribution of your flyers at our public schools.

"We intend to pursue every method possible to protest your actions if you choose to continue," the message warned. Christian speech targeted as 'hate': 'Gays' pledge to 'pursue every method' of protesting school flyers

This is great. If this had been a real newspaper, the story would have started with "Somebody sent PFOX an email message ..." World Net Daily, though, presents it as if a communique from the Gay People's Party had been released. They never do tell you who the email was from, it could have been anybody. One email equals "a campaign."

This article describes PFOX as "advocates for people who choose to leave the homosexual lifestyle." First of all, can you tell me what a "lifestyle" is? Can you tell me why "gay" is put in quotes? Have you ever heard of a person who chose to "leave the homosexual lifestyle" and did it? Is there some reason that someone like that needs an advocate -- they're straight now, what's the big deal? The ex-gay frame is a cruel hoax to make you think that gay people have chosen their sexual orientation and can choose to change it, with the subtle message between the lines that they should change their sexual orientation. Really, if change is possible, doesn't that mean that straight people can become gay, too? PFOX only advocates change in one direction. The important truth is that some people naturally have feelings for members of their own sex, nobody knows why really, it's just a statistical fact that some proportion of the population will feel that way. If there are "ex-gays," none of them apparently live in the Washington DC area.

PFOX is gearing up for the inevitable. There is pressure to have them classified as a hate group, officially. And while they have the Constitutional freedom to say what they do, if it is classified as hate speech the school district has a reason to refuse to distribute their materials. (And by the way, regardless of what WND says, the nation's new hate crime law has nothing to do with it, that will only apply when violence has been done.)

PFOX is walking a fine line here, their hateful message is disguised in a clever way, they say they are parents and friends of gay people right in their name, for crying out loud! They just want to help unhappy people stop doing unhealthy things, don't ya know? And all those thousands of people who have "left the homosexual lifestyle," who will speak for them? This is fine-tuned passive aggression, they can say that all they want to do is help quote-gay-unquote people but they are no gay person's friend. The ordinary citizen walking around doesn't understand how any of this works, it sounds plausible, what with AIDS and all, that somebody would want to stop being gay. But there is no question about it, PFOX's message is intended to undermine the rights of LGBT people, to turn the love they feel for their partners into a dirty thing, a feeling you wouldn't want to have. For straight people, an important component of the message is that gay people have chosen to be that way.

The school district might be backed into a legal corner, and they might not. If the flyers can be classified as hate speech then the schools don't have to hand them out -- but who does the classifying? Ah, the answer there is easier than you'd think -- some responsible person classifies it. Maybe the school district's legal department issues a decision, maybe the Superintendent looks at the flyers and says it is hate speech, maybe the school board discusses it and classifies the literature as hateful. A responsible person, that's what we're looking for.

The problem is not that PFOX is saying these things, there have always been people saying these things. The problem is that our taxpayer-supported public schools are delivering this message to our county's children. We entrust the lives and minds of our kids to the school from the moment they get on the bus until the moment they get off it again, and we expect them to be safe from physical and psychological danger, we trust the schools to enlighten their minds through education. And the school district is giving them intellectual poison.

I know what the solution is here, but I don't expect anybody in the school system to go for it. At the bottom of every flyer is a disclaimer like this:

(These materials are neither sponsored nor endorsed by the Board of Education of Montgomery County, the superintendent, or this school.)

I say, take the disclaimer off. The school should only distribute information that it endorses. Let them be responsible for their actions.

Let the school principal, the Board of Education, the Superintendent of Schools, and home-room teachers be responsible for what they give the children. Consider the quotes from principals who have said things like "If I had my druthers, [the flier] would not have gone out." Why is the principal not held responsible for the literature his school is giving to the students entrusted to him? Give the guy his druthers! Take the disclaimer off all the flyers, and let the school district take responsibility for the information it is giving to our students.

Ah, you say, they're afraid of lawsuits. Yes, there is an inevitable lawsuit if they refuse to distribute the PFOX hate literature. The schools have a little problem with bullying, I wonder where the kids picked that up? Okay, PFOX is going to sue, the school district will have to fight back. If there is a legitimate reason that the school district should have to give anti-gay materials to schoolchildren then PFOX will win and the case will only be wasted money. Is it really possible that distributing hateful literature is a legitimate function of a public school? Okay, back if down a step or two, is it really possible that distributing every group's opinion is a legitimate function of a public school? Of course not, the school is there for education, it is patently absurd for them to be giving children a message that is the direct opposite of what they are taught in class.

This is a moment when we need leaders. Somebody at the top needs to identify this as something indecent and wrong and put a stop to it. The school district is hiding behind a legal opinion instead of acting like grown-ups and confronting the issue.

It may motivate MCPS to know that a lot of parents and citizens are really getting upset by this. We hear from them, we see their listserv discussions, people are not happy. It may motivate MCPS to know that this is getting attention at the national level as well, LGBT advocacy groups are paying attention and discussing what actions they should take. We used to have an elite school district, one that was admired around the country, now people are looking at us like we were some backwoods podunk place that wants to make sure gay and lesbian people know they are not welcome.

It is time for somebody at MCPS to take responsibility for these flyers and put a stop to them.

Grade Hackers and Kinky People: Two MoCo Stories

noreply@blogger.com (JimK) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:48:00 +0000

These two stories don't have anything to do with each other and nothing to do with TeachTheFacts but they have brought national attention to our little suburban county home in the last couple of weeks, and I have ignored them with all the snow and flyer business. I am talking about the grade-changing scandal at Churchill High School and the controversy over a kinky party house in Bethesda.

The latest news about the grade hackers came from last week (the whole school district has been shut down since then):

At least seven students at Churchill High School in Potomac, Md., will be punished for their roles in a grade-changing scheme.

The Montgomery County state’s attorney has yet to decide if charges will be filed.

Even more students could be implicated as the investigation continues, according to Joan Benz, Churchill’s principal. She updated parents, students and staff in a letter sent on Friday.

Benz said the students who’ve been singled out were able to get the user IDs and passwords of Churchill teachers.

They allegedly hacked into the school’s computer system and charged money to improve grades of some students. They also are accused of lowering grades for students that they didn’t like.

The scheme was detected more than a week ago. However, a source told News4 that it might have been going on for two and a half years. Seven Students Punished in Grade Changing Scheme

As I understand it somebody put a USB keylogger on a couple of teachers' computers. This would be a small device that you plug the keyboard cable into, then plug the device into the computer, so everything that is typed on that keyboard goes through this device and is saved until the device is retrieved later. A kid could slip this onto a computer pretty easily in a chaotic classroom or during a break, and you could retrieve the teacher's password for the grading system easily. It also sounds like the school was not serious about making teachers change their passwords occasionally, so a good password would get you into the system for years.

Everybody knows that kids know more than grown-ups about computers, so it was perhaps a little bit of a bad idea to put the whole grading system online with no hard-copy back-up. As it is, nobody really knows how many grades were changed, because there's nothing to compare it to.

I imagine that we will have the full range of opinions about this in the TTF community. It is a serious offense that can probably result in the guilty parties' expulsion, and it might be seen as a normal kind of thing that kids will do if they can get away with it. I'm curious to find out how people are seeing this.

The other story that has gotten national coverage is the brouhaha over a house in Bethesda where a guy was having parties for kinky people. I think this story first broke on the Maryland Politics Watch blog. First they published some letters from the kinky-house's neighbors to the County Council, which was fine, and then they published a satirical follow-up that didn't really work, saying that some County Council members had been busted there and so on.

Some neighbors had written letters to the Council complaining ... here's what one letter said (cribbed from MPW):

It has come to our attention that a renter at 6304 Tone Dr. who calls himself "British Lucky Paul" is using the house for regularly scheduled "sex parties" advertising "bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism (BDSM)." His website features pictures of the house, himself and some party participants and also is linked to many other BDSM websites. In addition to parties at the house, he is offering "keyholder positions open too if you just need a regular place to play".

Some people were concerned about an adult business being run in their neighborhood -- the guy was charging admission to his parties -- and basically I think the whole idea just freaked them out a bit.

From The Post:

"BDSM" is short for "bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism." Velvet whips, leather hoods, six-inch stiletto heels, that kind of thing. If you were into the BDSM scene and periodically threw BDSM parties in your home -- as Pickthorne, a burly, jovial Briton, does in the castlelike 3,600-square-foot McMansion he rents at 6304 Tone Dr. -- you'd attract quite a crowd.
...
"Kinky people" is the accepted term for folks who derive erotic pleasure from BDSM. "An amazing cross-section of humanity," says Pickthorne's friend Susan Wright, founder of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. "Men, women, transgender, heterosexuals, gays, bisexuals. Every ethnicity. White-collar and blue-collar. It's really very, very diverse -- though we do have an unusually high percentage of lawyers. I don't know why."

Anyway, you can imagine what Pickthorne's non-kinky neighbors think of all this. Fed up, they convened a meeting in someone's living room last week, then fired off indignant e-mails to County Council member Roger Berliner (D), whose district includes their Merrimack Park subdivision.

"I share your sense of outrage that a sex club is operating in your lovely neighborhood," Berliner wrote back. "I want you to know that my office has been advised that our County has moved aggressively to put an end to this blight on your community."

The county moved, all right. Pickthorne received a written warning from a zoning inspector Monday. But hold on. Suppose Pickthorne stops charging admission, as he says he might? Suppose he complies with the inspector and holds all BDSM gatherings as strictly noncommercial functions in accordance with Section 59-C-1.31? What then?

"Well," Berliner says on the phone, hesitating. "Certainly one has to respect everyone's constitutional rights." Montgomery County sex-party host must role-play by the zoning rules

This Post story is quite entertaining, and educational.

Of course there's no law against having parties at your house, as long as you don't charge people for them, and there's not even a law against having sex in your house, again if you don't charge for it. Pickthorne was charging admission to his parties, and he got a warning from the county. He told The Post that he used the money to pay for party supplies and donated whatever was left to the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom -- this does not seem extremely different from a campaign fund-raiser at somebody's house, at least in principle. Granted, some of the details do differ.

Again, I'll bet you find the full range of opinions in the TTF community from "those people are disgusting" to "what was that address again?" I don't know anything about this stuff but it seems obvious to me that kinky consenting adults are free to do whatever it is they do in private, just like the rest of us. I saw the guy's web site, and his invitation asked people to dress normally and not make make a lot of noise when they arrive and leave.

Oddly, The Post reports that the neighbors are upset that this situation got publicized. Apparently they thought that Councilman Roger Berliner was going to deal with the situation quietly, shut down this place and nothing said. Unfortunately for them we live in a free and open society where their communications with elected officials are public records and where the government can only punish someone who actually breaks a law, and they can't do it in secret. I don't know why they wanted to keep their complaint under wraps, one guy said something about the parties affecting real estate values in the neighborhood. Also, just a guess, I'll bet this character's parties are going to be bigger than ever now that everybody knows about them.