Liberty Counsel Behind Anti-LGBT Bills in 20 States

Mike Huckabee, Kim Davis and Mat Staver (Fox News)

Mike Huckabee, Kim Davis and Mat Staver (Fox News)

The lawyer who represented Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis after she refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses told CBS News that his group was also behind anti-LGBT legislation being pushed in at least 20 states.

After governors in North Carolina and Mississippi recently signed laws limiting the rights of LGBT people, CBS News began investigating why so many anti-LGBT bills were cropping up in state legislatures around the country.

The network found that the conservative group Liberty Counsel had placed lawyers in all 50 states to draft legislation and advise lawmakers on how to rein in the rights of LGBT people in response to a Supreme Court ruling which legalized same-sex marriage in 2015.

CBS determined that bills tied to Liberty Counsel have been filed in at least 20 states so far.

“Well I certainly want to push back against that [same-sex marriage] ruling,” Liberty Counsel founder Matt Staver told CBS News. “It was a wrong ruling. It has no basis in the constitution.”

Full Story Here.

Judo Jesus and The Spitter

I’ve often written about the Red River Clinic  in the comments at Pharyngula. It’s the last clinic standing in ND, and they always have anti-choicers hanging about. (Any and all pennies you might have to contribute to keep the clinic open would be more than appreciated). Then there’s Jesus, but for a change, he’s on the right side…

IMG_0265

Nik Severson

In this Forum file photo, Fargo police responded to a disturbance between Tyson Kuznia, left, and Nikolaus Severson, right, outside the Red River Women’s Clinic in downtown Fargo, N.D. on Sunday, October 25, 2015.

FARGO – A judge has ordered a Fargo man to pay a $400 fine for fighting someone outside the downtown Red River Women’s Clinic last year.

In October, Nikolaus Severson was goading anti-abortion protesters picketing outside the only clinic that performs abortions in North Dakota when a passer-by spit in his face.

Severson “grabbed the victim, threw him to the ground and sat on him,” prosecutor Ian R. McLean said in Municipal Court on Thursday, April 14.

[…]

Tyson Kuznia, who spit on Severson before being tackled, was also ordered to pay $400 and granted a deferred imposition of sentence when a Municipal Court judge found him guilty Jan. 14 of a misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

Kuznia said he felt compelled to spit on Severson because Severson was harassing anti-abortion protesters.

[Gosh, those anti-choice protesters, not harassing anyone, no, not at all, nope.]

Severson irritated the anti-abortion protesters for several days, holding up signs like “F— these haters.” In an interview late last year, Severson said he has no stance on abortion because he is not a woman. But he said, “I just don’t like people using God to shame women.”

Full Story Here.

Cool Stuff Friday

First up, absolutely stunning macro shots of some awesome insect architecture: Macro Photographs of Nature’s Tiniest Architects by Nicky Bay. Be sure to click the link so you can see all of the photos. All I have is “Wow!”

Arctiine moth pupa (Cyana sp.)

Arctiine moth pupa (Cyana sp.)

Bagworm Moth

Bagworm Moth

Next, a lake of mirrors. This left me speechless. A Photographer’s Digital Journey to Produce a Lake of Shattered Mirrors.

“Impact” by Erik Johansson, image provided by artist.

“Impact” by Erik Johansson, image provided by artist.

Swedish photographer Erik Johansson had a vision for a digital photograph of a lake shattering like a mirror, an image he wanted to produce as accurately as possible. To achieve this effect for Impact, Johansson bought 17 square meters of mirrors, found a boat and a model, and posed all three in a stone pit until he got the best shot for the final image. Several months of planning, shooting, and editing later and he has an entire video that documents the tasks that lie far beyond the many hours he spent in Photoshop.

Sometimes

I must work. How I love the smell of turpentine in the afternoon. It would be really good if I could remember that I need to stock up on black oil paint. Time for a note. Back to work.

Work

Aaaaand got the second canvas finished up today:

Work1

This is the swarf that will go on the 2nd canvas:

Swarf

Goodbye, South Carolina

CEO Anthony Watson (Photo via Uphold.com)

CEO Anthony Watson (Photo via Uphold.com)

Now just the proposal of a so-called “bathroom bill” in South Carolina has sent one gay chief executive officer is packing his jobs for California.

Anthony Watson, CEO of Uphold, describes himself as an “openly gay, British CEO,” according to The State. He’s decided to take his financial services company, which has handled $830 million in transactions since 2014, to Los Angeles instead of sticking it out.

“I have watched in shock and dismay as legislation has been abruptly proposed or enacted in several states across the union seeking to invalidate the basic protections and rights of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) U.S. citizens,” he wrote on the company’s website Tuesday.

Watson specifically called out South Carolina senator Lee Bright who dimly announced his bill last week which would require people to use the bathroom of the gender assigned to them at birth.

[…]

“I mean, years ago we kept talking about tolerance, tolerance, and tolerance, and now they want men who claim to be women to be able to go into bathrooms with children. And you got corporations who say this is okay,” Bright said on the senate floor.

Yesterday, I said in comments that I didn’t think the people proposing and passing these bills were stupid. I do believe I’ve had a change of mind about that. This is a special kind of dim. Full Story Here.

Today’s LGBT roundup, and there’s some good news for a change!

Louisiana Gov. Bans Anti-LGBT Bias in State Employment, Services.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has come through on a promise to issue a pro-LGBT executive order — the first in the state to offer transgender people some legal protections against discrimination — and to repeal an anti–marriage equality one issued by his predecessor, Bobby Jindal. Full Story Here.

Breweries Are Fighting Bigotry With Beer.

Bummed by anti-LGBT legislation in North Carolina? Here’s a novel way to fight it: Drink beer.

Thirty-six breweries in the Southern state have banded together to brew Don’t Be Mean to People: A Golden Rule Saison.

[Read more…]

15.

James Buchanan took office in 1857, and viewed Indians as collateral damage. Whitehouse.gov

James Buchanan took office in 1857, and viewed Indians as collateral damage. Whitehouse.gov

Uniform federal Indian policy was almost nonexistent when James Buchanan took office in 1857.

The country was on the brink of the Civil War, and the federal government had abandoned any pretense of Indian policy, leaving the “Indian system” to the mercy of dishonest and greedy Indian agents who largely earned their positions as rewards for political service. Corruption penetrated the federal government, funneling illegally obtained money to officials at many levels.

As the South threatened to secede from the Union, the only cohesive Indian policy Buchanan entertained was the belief that they needed to be quarantined on reservations, said Jean Baker, a history professor at Goucher College and author of the 2004 biography, “James Buchanan.”

In April 1858, the Yankton Sioux ceded 11 million acres in southeastern South Dakota. Chief Struck-by-the-Ree, whose name appears on the treaty, warned his people that they had little choice but to abandon their land. (Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum)

In April 1858, the Yankton Sioux ceded 11 million acres in southeastern South Dakota. Chief Struck-by-the-Ree, whose name appears on the treaty, warned his people that they had little choice but to abandon their land. (Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum)

Buchanan oversaw 11 treaties with Indian nations, acquiring millions of acres of land in New York, the Dakotas and Kansas, and sending Indians to live on reservations. In April 1858, the Yankton Sioux ceded 11 million acres in southeastern South Dakota. Chief Struck-by-the-Ree, whose name appears on the treaty, warned his people that they had little choice but to abandon their land.

“The white men are coming in like maggots,” he said. “It is useless to resist them. They are many more than we are. We could not hope to stop them. Many of our brave warriors would be killed, our women and children left in sorrow, and still we would not stop them. We must accept it, get the best terms we can get and try to adopt their ways.”

Full article here.

Sorrow Like A River: Forcing the World to Listen

Valentine’s Day has become the official day for Native women to recognize and memorialize the missing and murdered women and girls whom they believe government leaders in the United States and Canada too often ignore. Jolene Yazzie

Valentine’s Day has become the official day for Native women to recognize and memorialize the missing and murdered women and girls whom they believe government leaders in the United States and Canada too often ignore.
© Jolene Yazzie. https://rewire.news/article/2016/04/05/sing-our-rivers-red-march-casts-light-intergenerational-crisis/

‘Sing Our Rivers Red’ March Casts New Light on Intergenerational Crisis is the first article about the ongoing effort to see justice done when it comes to Indigenous women being assaulted and murdered. There continues to be great difficulty in this, because very few people care when indigenous women go missing, or have been raped, or end up as a corpse, tossed away like a bit of trash.

Valentine’s Day has become the official day for Native women to recognize and memorialize the missing and murdered women and girls whom they believe government leaders in the United States and Canada too often ignore. They began holding an annual march in 1992, after an Indigenous woman was found murdered and dismembered in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighborhood.

For Native communities, the border between the United States and Canada is nonexistent; many tribal communities, including Blackfeet, Ojibwe, and Mohawk, straddle the border and have members in both the United States and Canada. They are asking why only Canadian officials have begun exploring violence against Native women.

Canadian Indigenous women’s groups began calling attention to the high rates of missing and murdered women and girls in the 1990s, when Indigenous women and girls started going missing along the now-dubbed Highway of Tears, a 450-mile length of the Yellowhead Highway 16 in British Columbia. Between 1989 and 2006, nine women were found murdered or went missing along the highway, which passes through and near about a dozen small First Nations communities.

Many Indigenous people believe that the number is actually much higher: Indigenous people often resort to hitchhiking along the remote highway that has little public transportation.

Mary Annette Pember Supporters in the Sing Our Rivers Red march carry signs as they walk under the Veterans Bridge along the Red River in Fargo, North Dakota. The bridge underpass has been the site of several sexual assaults of indigenous women.

Mary Annette Pember
Supporters in the Sing Our Rivers Red march carry signs as they walk under the Veterans Bridge along the Red River in Fargo, North Dakota. The bridge underpass has been the site of several sexual assaults of indigenous women.

The second installment on this story is Sorrow Like a River: Forcing the World to Listen.

Most advocates for missing and murdered indigenous women are motivated by the loss of family member or friend as well as ongoing stories of loss in their communities.

When Makoons Miller Tanner works on her volunteer blog, she often thinks of her grandmother, who passed away in the 1940s, long before she was born. “She was in her 20s when she was killed. The authorities declared her death to be the result of her hitting her head on a rock after a seizure. This for a woman with no history of a seizure disorder,” Miller Tanner said. “She hit her head on that rock nearly 75 times.”

Her family still speaks of the hurt and anger over the injustice surrounding her grandmother’s death. After hearing the story repeated many times, she grew determined to contribute somehow to helping others find justice for their loved ones.

There’s no excuse for the lack of interest. There’s no excuse for the lack of investigation. There’s no excuse for the lack of advocates. This is a blight of shame on those who turn their backs, on those who avert their eyes.