Montana

Personhood USA Seeks Referendums In More States After Losing In Mississippi

Submitted by Brian Tashman on November 10, 2011 - 10:45am

After a lopsided defeat in Mississippi, Personhood USA’s state affiliates said that they will continue to push for personhood laws throughout the country. The group is pushing to pass personhood laws or set up referendums in states including Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon and maybe even a second vote in Mississippi.

Personhood Nevada blamed the “liberal national media” for the defeat in Mississippi:

"We are disappointed with what happened in Mississippi, but we are moving forward with Personhood in Nevada," said Candy Best, spokeswoman for the state branch of the nationwide, religious-based organization that wants to end legal abortions. "They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us in Mississippi. Fear causes people to hesitate in doing the right thing."

Best on Wednesday blamed misleading reports by the "liberal national media" for the defeat of the Mississippi ballot question.

The personhood campaign in Ohio is also moving forward on their plans for a referendum:

Patrick Johnston, an Ohio physician and organizer of the movement in this state, said his group is not daunted by the measure’s third defeat, saying efforts to get it on the ballot in Ohio are undeterred.

“We are never going to give up,” Johnston said, “This is the greatest human-rights crisis in our generation.”

…

“We have science and divine law on our side. With God’s help, we will win through.”

In Montana, personhood advocates maintained that they have more momentum than ever to put a personhood amendment on the ballot:

The initiative is known as CI-108 in Montana, and more than 48,000 Montana voters would need to sign the petition for it to make it onto the November 2012 ballot.

This is the third attempt in Montana to get the measure before voters. Montana Pro Life Coalition volunteer, Cal Pastrow, says the petition had enough signatures last year, but the state determined that too many were invalid.

"We are going to turn in all the signatures a lot earlier, and we're going to do quality control ourselves before we turn them in to make sure we have enough qualified signatures from all the districts necessary. Plus, more and more people are getting on board with 'Personhood USA'. Here in Montana our email list and mailing list have both increased," Pastrow said.

A Republican state legislator in Alabama also thinks that a personhood law is “something that Alabamians would want”:

The defeat of amendment in Mississippi hasn't deterred Alabama State Senator Phil Williams from pushing for a similar proposal.

Williams got an similar bill through the Senate this past year, but it didn't come up for a floor vote in the House.

…

But, he said he'll probably substitute it with a constitutional amendment version that would require the approval of voters. Williams said he's confident that will happen, and that it will be upheld by the courts.

He said, "Number one, I think that this is a matter of state's rights, that we can do this, and, I think that this is something that Alabamians would want."

Senator Rusty Glover of Semmes said he's aware of the legislation, but wants to make sure it doesn't meet the same fate as the Mississippi version.

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Montana Legislature Moves to Stop Towns from Covering Sexual Orientation and Gender in Anti-Discrimination Laws

Submitted by Brian Tashman on February 22, 2011 - 4:49pm

The Montana State House is currently considering legislation that would prevent the city of Missoula from implementing an anti-discrimination ordinance that includes protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression. The legislation, proposed by Republican State Rep. Kristin Hansen, would prohibit local governments from going farther than state law in enacting protected classes, was passed out of committee after they rejected an effort to expand the state law. Since Montana does not have a statewide protection for sexual orientation or gender identity, Missoula’s more far-reaching anti-discrimination ordinance would be nullified if Hansen’s bill passes. The Missoulian reports:

The Republican majority on the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill Monday that would effectively overturn Missoula's 2010 ordinance banning discrimination against city residents based on their sexual orientation and gender.

House Bill 516 by Rep. Kristin Hansen, R-Havre, now moves to the House floor for debate this week.

It would prohibit local governments from enacting ordinances or policies that seek to protect residents from real or perceived discrimination based on their sexual orientation and gender as the cities of Missoula did through an ordinance and Bozeman did through a policy.

The panel voted earlier Monday to table HB514 by Rep. Edie McClafferty, D-Butte, which would have broadened the Montana Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination statewide based on gender identity or expression and sexual orientation. The move to table her bill came after the bill was rejected 14-6.

The debate over the bill was fraught with fear mongering from right-wing activists about threats to women and children if the ordinance was upheld and the “punishment” for gays and lesbians:

Leading the support for Hansen's bill were two Bitterroot Valley conservatives who were outspoken opponents of the Missoula ordinance last year.

Harris Himes, representing the Montana Eagle Forum, called the Missoula ordinance "unconstitutional on its face."

"There are those of us who would not to rent to gay and lesbian people for religious reasons," said Himes, a Hamilton pastor.

Pressed later by Rep. Ellie Hill, D-Missoula, what those religious reasons are, Himes said: "It is God himself who says that homosexuality is an abomination, and he has various punishments for that, too." Hill asked what those punishments are, and Himes quoted Leviticus saying that homosexuals "surely shall be put to death."

Dallas Erickson of Montana Citizens for Decency through Law, said, "This law in Missoula means that a person with a penis can now go into the showers where the people with vaginas have gone."

Erickson said he knows Ravalli County residents who won't take their children into Missoula businesses "because they don't know if they're going to confronted in the restroom with a different gender."

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Fighting For Their Right To Discriminate

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on April 12, 2010 - 11:06am

A few weeks ago we noted that an organization called NotMyBathroom.com was formed in Missoula, Montana in order to oppose a proposed city ordinance that would protect people from discrimination in their jobs and homes based on "actual or perceived ... sexual orientation, gender identity or expression."

The organization is associated with Concerned Women for America and the focus of its campaign is on the claim that the ordinance will make it legal for men to use women's restrooms, thereby leading to assaults on women and children.

While the group's effort is obviously aimed at stirring up fear in order to defeat the measure, CWA's Wendy Long admits that they have absolutely no evidence that anti-discrimination ordinances lead to such assaults and that their real mission is to fight the anti-discrimination out of fear that it'll eventually lead to marriage equality:

Even one of the most staunch opponents of those laws can't point to increases in frivolous lawsuits or sexual predation. Still, Concerned Women for America president Wendy Wright said such ordinances lead the country down the wrong track.

"We have a constitutional protection for religious freedom in our First Amendment," Wright said. "There is not a constitutional protection for sexual orientation, and yet judges and city councils and others are acting as if sexual orientation trumps religious freedom."

The Concerned Women aim to bring biblical principles to public policy, and the Montana office opposes the Missoula ordinance. It's one member of Notmybathroom.com, a group that formed to defeat the local ordinance in large part because of fear sexual offenders will prey on women and children in bathrooms and locker rooms.

Wright couldn't point to places that have counted increases in sexual offenses because of such laws, but she said such data is beside the point.

"It doesn't go back to numbers," Wright said. "It goes back to the issue that people will have legal rights that will trump other people's rights. The right of a woman or a girl to feel safe in a fitting room, a locker, a restroom, their rights will be trumped by a person who is claiming their sexual orientation right has legal protection."

She noted as troubling a couple of specific examples where transgender women fought for access to dressing rooms. In one Philadelphia case in 2008, a woman denied access to a fitting room planned to file a complaint against the department store, whose manager agreed to train employees to grant equal access.

Wright said one big reason Concerned Women opposes such laws is because the group does not want local ordinances to be used as stepping stones toward making gay marriage legal and teaching it in the public schools.

In essence, the less society tolerates discrimination against gays, the more likely gay marriage becomes ... and so groups like CWA must fight to protect the right to discriminate.

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Taking a Bold Stand for the Sanctity of Our Public Bathrooms

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on March 25, 2010 - 10:08am

I don't know what the Right's obsession is with protecting the sanctity of our public bathrooms, but they have recently been making it a centerpiece of their local efforts to fight proposed anti-discrimination ordinances.

They did it Colorado and now they are doing it in Montana to justify their bigotry:

An organization called NotMyBathroom.com announced this week its opposition to a city ordinance that would protect people from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity ...So far, the only other group willing to identify itself as affiliated with NotMyBathroom.com is Concerned Women For America, said [Dallas] Erickson. CWA representatives already have come out against the proposed ordinance.

...

The group fears the law would create "a government assigned sex," cost businesses money "to provide toilet facilities," and possibly "force ministers to perform homosexual marriages."

But NotMyBathroom.com chairman Tei Nash said the chief concern is the safety of women and children in public restrooms. He said the ordinance would give a man who "is female affirmed" the freedom to use women's restrooms.

"When he walks into the bathroom, you can't stop them," Nash said. "Is that going to surprise you and the kids? It probably is. Most women will be frightened to no end. Kids, too. They won't understand."

The argument seems to rest in part on the notion some predatory men are waiting for such an ordinance so they can attack women in bathrooms. Nash, though, said culprits will use the law as a cover and business owners won't be able to stop them.

"I don't mind saying this. It's not so much trans people. It's sexual offenders," Nash said. "This has already happened in Portland, and it's happened in Florida."

Laws protect people against sexual crimes, but Erickson also said he fears for people in the Bitterroot who come to Missoula and have to use bathrooms. Society should maintain the standard that people are born a man or a woman, he said.

"If you've got a peeping Tom that likes to see how the other side lives, all they have to do is say they're a woman today," Erickson said.

If there was ever a moment when the anti-gay Right jumped the shark, I'd have to say that NotMyBathroom.com just might be it.

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Another Loss In The Right’s Anti-Gay Legal Crusade

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on October 7, 2009 - 3:25pm

Over the last several months, we've been chronicling episodes in which Religious Right legal groups have stepped in to represent former lesbians who have decided that their former partners ought to have no access to the children they had raised together. Liberty Counsel has been active in several cases, as has the Alliance Defense Fund.

Today, the Montana Supreme Court decided another case in which the ADF was involved, regarding another custody battle involving two women who could not get married, as Montana does not grant marriage equality, and were unable to adopt children together, as state law apparently does not allow that either. One of the women, Barbara Maniaci, adopted two children and the two women raised them together for ten years until they split and Maniaci married a man and then decided that her former partner should not have access to the children.

The state Supreme Court diagreed:

The Montana Supreme Court Tuesday upheld parental rights for a Missoula woman who'd been part of a same-sex couple that cared for two adopted children, saying she's entitled to joint custody of the kids.

Supporters of the 6-1 decision hailed it as a victory for all parents, regardless of their marital status or sexual orientation.

"This is a victory for families in all shapes, sizes and colors," said Betsy Griffing, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana.

Justice James Nelson also issued a special concurrence, in which he wrote a blistering denunciation of discrimination against homosexuals.

"Naming it for the evil it is, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is an expression of bigotry," he wrote. "Lesbian and gay Montanans must not be forced to fight to marry, to raise their children and to live with the same dignity that is accorded heterosexuals."

And, predictably, professional anti-gay activists are outraged:

Jeff Laszloffy, president of the Montana Family Foundation, called the court's decision "egregious."

"Basically, what the court did in this decision is said that no longer does a parent have to be declared unfit for a third party non-parent to be able to abridge the natural parents' rights and authorities over that child," Laszloffy told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN). "Now you just have to prove that that child has a psychological connection to you. And you can apply for, fight for, sue for parental rights and it's a crapshoot, you might get them, you might not."

While Laszloffy said he believed the issue of homosexual "rights" was not the original impetus behind the case, he noted, "I'm sure that the Montana Supreme Court is always looking for cases to push the homosexual agenda."

Attorney Matt McReynolds with the Pacific Justice Institute, which filed an amicus brief in the case, agreed.

"It actually seems like the plaintiff was favored in this case just because she was a lesbian," Reynolds told LSN. "It's fairly shocking how the Court wouldn't allow this person who had left the lesbian lifestyle to be freed from it - her and her children.

"It's very disturbing that someone who wants to get out of this lifestyle can still be trapped in it for years to come ... by someone who has no legal or adoptive relationship with the children."

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Montana TEA Party Leader Taxed Too Much Already

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on June 16, 2009 - 1:02pm

Apparently, on July 4th we are going to be treated to another round of TEA Party lunacy:

American Family Association has Taxed Enough Already (TEA) Party rallies scheduled in 1,145 cities for July 4. The family organization is opposed to the spending policies promoted by President Obama. Such policies call for record spending and deficits.

“Our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be paying the bill for President Obama’s reckless spending spree,” said AFA Chairman Donald E. Wildmon. “Our national debt is already a trillion dollars, and the president is planning to spend trillions more. It is a crime and a sin to place this heavy debt on our children,” he stated.

For many of the protesters, these TEA Party efforts stem from ideology and partisanship, while for others they just might stem from more personal reasons ... such as owing the IRS $13,000:

A Bozeman political activist who persistently calls for the government to lower taxes had amassed an income tax debt of almost $13,000 before a bankruptcy judge relieved him of much of that burden, court records show.

Henry Kriegel, a radio talk show host and president of Montanans for Tax Reform, owed the Internal Revenue Service $10,326 in taxes, interest and penalties from taxes levied on him in 2003, the documents show. Last month, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Ralph Kirscher ordered the IRS to relieve Kriegel of the debt as part of a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filed by Kriegel earlier this year. Kirscher also ordered Kriegel to pay the IRS $2,547 in taxes and penalties from 2007.

Kriegel was at the forefront of the tax day tea party protest held April 15 in Bozeman, and he is helping to organize a subsequent protest planned for July 4 n demonstrations that protest high government spending, the growing national debt and taxes.

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Kriegel has been an ardent critic of the U.S. tax code. Montanans for Tax Reform advertises itself as being “about smaller government, less taxes and keeping more of your hard-earned money in your pocket.” Since 2002, the group has sponsored the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, a written promise to oppose tax increases that is signed by legislators and candidates for office.

He has a contract with Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform to lead monthly meetings of state and local taxpayer groups, social conservative groups, business groups and legislators to promote limited government policies.

While it may be ironic that it was the tax-payer-funded federal court system that wiped out an estimated $6,000 of Kriegel's debt to the IRS, he's not about to let that stop his anti-tax activism:

Kriegel said his own history with taxes did not dissuade him from speaking out publicly about the tax code.

“I don’t believe that disqualifies me from speaking out on the issues I believe in,” he said. “I could have taken the choice of cowering in the darkness or I could choose to speak out against the largest issues of our time.”

“Taxes are too high. Government is too large,” he said.

He said the tax day tea party and upcoming demonstration had little to do with taxes, saying the focus of the demonstrations is high government spending and the growing national debt.

And, he said, he plans to continue his activism.

“The tea party movement is much bigger than me. I don’t plan on backing down. I don’t plan on backing down at all,” he said.

Considering that the acronym "TEA" in the name stands for "taxed enough already," the idea that these protest aren't about taxes is laughable ... but not as laughable as the fact that a man who owed the IRS $13,000 in taxes and penalties is contracted to Grover Norquist's organization and leading local TEA Party efforts.

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AFA Claims Hate Crimes Bill Would Lead to Preachers 'Being Charged with Hate Speech'

Submitted by Anonymous on February 22, 2007 - 11:59pm

Plus “Polygamy will be legalized” and “Landlords will be forced to rent to homosexuals.” Focus urges opposition. Also: Hate crimes bill in Montana.

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States Reject Federal REAL ID Law

Submitted by Anonymous on January 31, 2007 - 5:50pm

Montana bill would ignore national ID requirements, Maine urges Congress to overturn it. Also: Hawaii, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Vermont and Washington.