Women

Google Chrome featured the anti-bullying “It Gets Better Project” in its new ad, and now the ex-gay ministry Exodus International is outraged. Alan Chambers, the president of Exodus, is upset that Woody from Toy Story is featured in Google’s ad sending an anti-suicide message to bullied LGBT youth, with Woody saying, “you’ll be fine, partner.” Chambers condemns the ad, which also includes stories from celebrities, a police officer and gay parents, in The Christian Post, saying that the answer to anti-gay bullying is for gay youth to become “ex-gays” like him:

Children all over the world, including my two children are fans of ‘Toy Story’ and to see a character like that endorsing something that at this point children have no need to know about, it’s disappointing,” he told The Christian Post.

Chambers, who overcame homosexuality and is now a father of two, suspects that if the commercial airs while he and his children are watching a show and “if they happen to see that and ask questions and if they get the full understanding of what the commercial is actually about, we will have to have the conversation. It’s not something I plan to talk to my kids, 5 and 6, about.”

“For organizations like Exodus International, which has thousands of men and women like me who have lived a gay life, it obviously didn’t get better living a gay life for them. I would say that today it has become radically better,” he said.

“I think that we have to promote the stories of people who have found an alternative to homosexuality but I think that at the same time the church has to do a better job at addressing issues related to bullying and violence and how kids have been treated at public schools.”

• Alan Colmes: Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield Defends His “Don’t Say Gay” Bill.
• David Neiwert @ Crooks and Liars: Rick Santorum: Gays already have enough rights.
• Rachel Tabachnick @ Talk 2 Action: Pro-Voucher Astroturfing: Campaigns Across Nation Coordinated by DeVos, Funded by a Few Mega-Donors.
• Tanya Somanader @ Think Progress: Allen West: Liberal Women Are ‘Neutering American Men.’
• Steve Benen: Even For Fox, A Cheap Attack.

• Right Wing Watch In Focus: The ‘Green Dragon’ Slayers: How the Religious Right and the Corporate Right are Joining Forces to Fight Environmental Protection.
• Justin Elliott @ Salon: Trig Trutherism: The definitive debunker.
• Robin Marty @ RH Reality Check: Man Who Wants Full Abortion Ban In Louisiana Once Advocated Sterilizing Poor Women.
• Joe.My.God: Hate Groups Unite On DOMA Letter Campaign To Congress.
• Tim Murphy @ Mother Jones: Anti-Sharia Bill Sponsors Are Kind of Clueless.

Ed Whalen is back with another nonsensical article, arguing in the National Review that since Judge Vaughn Walker, who was appointed by George H. W. Bush, is openly gay, his decision to overturn Proposition 8 should be vacated and he should have been disqualified from ruling on the case in the first place. Using Whalen’s logic, white judges should be barred from ruling on cases involving white people, female judges should not be allowed to rule on cases involving women, and Jewish judges should be prohibited from ruling on cases involving Jews or Judaism:

In taking part in the Perry case, Judge Walker was deciding whether Proposition 8 would bar him and his same-sex partner from marrying. Whether Walker had any subjective interest in marrying his same-sex partner — a matter on which Walker hasn’t spoken — is immaterial under section 455(a). (If Walker did have such an interest, his recusal also would be required by other rules requiring that a judge disqualify himself when he knows that he has an “interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”) Walker’s own factual findings explain why a reasonable person would expect him to want to have the opportunity to marry his partner: A reasonable person would think that Walker would want to have the opportunity to take part with his partner in what “is widely regarded as the definitive expression of love and commitment in the United States.” A reasonable person would think that Walker would want to decrease the costs of his same-sex relationship, increase his wealth, and enjoy the physical and psychological benefits that marriage is thought to confer.

…

Now that Walker has finally disclosed facts that would have warranted his disqualification from Perry, the appropriate remedy is for the Ninth Circuit — or, if necessary, the Supreme Court — to vacate Walker’s judgment upon a request by Prop 8 proponents. As the Supreme Court ruled more than two decades ago in Liljeberg v. Health Services Acquisition Corp. (1988), where a district judge has violated section 455(a) by deciding a case that he should have disqualified himself from, it is “appropriate to vacate the judgment unless it can be said that [the losing party] did not make a timely request for relief, or that it would otherwise be unfair to deprive the prevailing party of its judgment.” In that case, the losing party did not learn of the facts requiring disqualification until ten months after the court of appeals had affirmed the district court’s judgment, so the question was whether the judgment that had become final on appeal should nonetheless be set aside. The Court found the request for relief to be timely, as the delay was attributable to the judge’s failure to disclose the facts requiring disqualification. A request now by Prop 8 proponents to vacate Walker’s judgment would indisputably be timely (and would clearly not involve any unfairness to the Perry plaintiffs), as the appeal on the merits is still pending, and Walker has only now revealed the information requiring his disqualification.

Bryan Fischer is doubling-down on his previous comparison of House Speaker John Boehner to Pontius Pilate and Nazi apologists over the budget deal which includes funding for Planned Parenthood, and is now suggesting that the Republican leader was “was more of afraid of answering to the Washington Post than he was of answering to God.”

While Planned Parenthood by law is prohibited from receiving federal funding for abortion services, Republicans originally wanted to stop the organization from receiving support for its work in a wide variety of women’s healthcare. Under the compromise deal between Boehner and President Obama, Planned Parenthood’s funding was secured and a vote to defund the organization failed in the Senate. Fischer, the AFA’s Director of Issues Analysis, now claims that Boehner “sold out” the Tea Party to the “pro-death” Obama by having the government to “continue to pay Planned Parenthood to run their chambers of horror” and has allowed “the wicked to pollute the stream”:

The president was so committed to his pro-death platform that he was willing to see our soldiers go without pay. Think about that for a moment. It was more important to Mr. Obama to pay people to dismember babies in the womb than to pay the men in uniform who protect our liberties. Paying abortionists was more important to the president than paying soldiers.

Why did the speaker crumple while the president stood strong? The likeliest explanation is simple: the fear of man. The speaker has always seemed deathly afraid of a government shutdown, surrendering up his hole card before anyone had even anted up.

He seemed paralyzed at the thought that he would be blamed for a government slowdown, and everybody in the room knew it. He apparently was more of afraid of answering to the Washington Post than he was of answering to God. The Proverbs says, “The fear of man lays a snare” (Prov. 29:25),” and the speaker fell into a trap of his own making.

The speaker is afraid of the wrong people. Instead of fearing the New York Times, he should be living in mortal fear of the Tea Party. The Tea Party cannot help but feel they have been sold out, their pro-life convictions abandoned in exchange for a mess of pottage, a $352 million reduction in actual government outlays. That’s about what we will now continue to pay Planned Parenthood to run their chambers of horror.

I have no doubt that the speaker is a good man. He’s decent, upright and wanted to do the right thing. But the Scriptures also say, “Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked” (Prv. 25:26). When a good and upright man surrenders his principles under pressure from the wicked, the stream is polluted just as much as if he gone to the water’s edge and dumped the toxins in himself. Weakness is as deadly as malice. Allowing the wicked to pollute the stream when it is in your power to stop it is little different than doing the deed yourself.

While one anti-choice group is using President Obama’s image to attack legal abortion as black genocide, others are coming out saying that President Obama is advocating the extermination of African Americans because he is pro-choice. The abortion as “black genocide” myth is gaining increasing prominence in the anti-choice community, and the Family Research Council even asserted that Planned Parenthood was responsible for Washington D.C.’s shrinking black population.

Jim Sedlak of the American Life League, a champion of the radical personhood laws, argued that statistics showing that black women have a disproportionate number of abortions is proof that the black community is targeted by abortion providers. After D.C. mayor Vince Gray was arrested for protesting the budget deal that prevented the city from using local tax dollars to help low-income women access reproductive healthcare, Sedlak said that that “Margaret Sanger would be proud of her elitist black disciples” like Obama and Gray, asking, “with leaders like the president and the DC mayor, is it any surprise this black genocide continues?”:

With those statistics in mind, the American Life League said it is surprised that “America’s first black president drew a bizarre line in the sand declaring he would shut down the government of the United States to keep federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the organization that aborts over 125,000 black children nationwide each year.”

“The president of the United States champions aborting over one-third of the next generation of African-Americans as empowerment,” said Jim Sedlak, vice president of American Life League. “We do not. We see it as the worst bigotry of low expectations. Margaret Sanger would be proud of her elitist black disciples. We are not.”

Based on its calculations, ALL says Planned Parenthood is responsible for the death of at least 126,601 black unborn children each year.

“With leaders like the president and the DC mayor, is it any surprise this black genocide continues? It needs to stop and the place to start is with the total defunding of the organization where it began: Planned Parenthood,” Sedlak concluded.

Upon hearing the news that the budget compromise includes funding for Planned Parenthood, the reactions from anti-choice groups have ranged from resigned to resistant as there will only be a separate vote on defunding the women’s health group that is likely to fail in the Senate. The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer likened Speaker John Boehner to Pontius Pilate and Nazi apologists over the deal, and now the AFA’s President Tim Wildmon said Boehner “failed pro-life Americans.” In an email message to members, Wildmon urged activists to demand their representatives and senators vote to defund Planned Parenthood. But he also asked members join him “in praying for Barack Obama” because “this man should repent before God Almighty” for his pro-choice views. Wildmon writes:

With the budget compromise including funding for Planned Parenthood, There is still time to let your congressman know how you feel about the budget deal struck between President Barack Obama, Sen. Harry Reid and Speaker of the House John Boehner which DID NOT exclude Planned Parenthood (PP) and National Public Radio (NPR) from receiving federal tax dollars. The AFA believes that it is long past time to defund Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives $350 million in taxpayer funds while aborting 324,000 babies a year.

On behalf of AFA, I have expressed to Speaker Boehner's office how disappointed we are that he gave in to Obama on the matter of tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood. The decision was Boehner's to make and -- for whatever reason and for whatever good he may have accomplished in this deal otherwise -- on the insistence that Planned Parenthood be defunded, he failed pro-life Americans. There is no other way to put it.

…

P.S. For Barack Obama's part, this man should repent before God Almighty for defending and advancing the evil practice of killing unborn babies. He is by far the most pro-abortion president America has ever had. Will you join me in praying for Barack Obama today?

• PFAW: Republicans Set to Deny Preventative Healthcare to Women.
• Justin Elliott @ Salon: Right-wing publisher: We run "some misinformation."
• Warren Throckmorton: Was the Jefferson Bible an evangelism tool?
• Good As You: RSVPing for Dobson's paper anniversary.
• Talk 2 Action: Scarborough's Annual Anti- Separation Gala.
• Igor Volsky @ Wonk Room: Bachmann: God Told Me To Introduce Constitutional Amendment Prohibiting Same-Sex Marriage In MN.
• Sarah Posner: A Little Note To Pat Robertson.

As we have previously noted, right-wing activists have waged a year-long smear campaign against legal scholar Goodwin Liu, who was nominated by President Obama to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last year. Liu’s nomination was not acted on in the last Congress; he had his second confirmation hearing on March 2, 2011, and on April 7, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved his nomination.

In the wake of that approval, Religious Right activists are ramping up their rhetoric and demanding that Republican senators block Liu’s confirmation. On Sunday, the Oak Initiative, a dominionist Religious Right group led by self-proclaimed apostle Rick Joyner, sent activists an email alert urging them to contact their Senators and urge opposition to Liu’s confirmation. On Monday, Concerned Women for America posted an interview with Mario Diaz, CWA’s Policy Director for Legal Issues, who repeated the litany of charges right-wing activists have been hurling at Liu since his nomination in February 2010, calling him the nominee of the “extreme radical left.”

It’s worth noting one more time that Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, has publicly endorsed Liu’s confirmation and slammed the smear campaign against him:

However, for anyone who has actually read Liu's writings or watched his testimony, it's clear that the attacks--filled with polemic, caricature, and hyperbole--reveal very little about this exceptionally qualified, measured, and mainstream nominee. ..

He’s not the only conservative legal luminary to endorse Liu. So have Ken Starr and Clint Bolick.

But that hasn’t kept right-wing activists, led the National Review’s Ed Whelan, from waging an all-out rhetorical attack on Liu. Some on the Religious Right are trying to take things further: at the Freedom Federation’s Awakening conference at Liberty University this past weekend, the Family Research Council’s Ken Blackwell said they’d be calling people into the streets of Washington D.C. to stop the nomination.