The Arizona state senator receiving widespread attention as a result of her call for mandatory church attendance is, surprise surprise, an ardent Religious Right lawmaker.
While debating a bill on allowing people to bring concealed weapons into public buildings, State Sen. Sylvia Allen criticized the legislation’s opponents by maintaining that individual souls — not guns — are the real source of gun violence. “Probably we should be debating a bill requiring every American to attend a church of their choice on Sunday,” she said.
She later insisted that her remarks didn’t amount to a serious proposal, asserting that she wishes America would just return to the 1950s, which she said was a much more moral time in the country.
Allen is the very same lawmaker who defended uranium mining in her state by insisting that the earth is a mere 6,000-years-old:
She also proposed that the state enable the creation of a volunteer border militia and pushed for a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, warning that gay marriage would harm children and destroy Social Security:
Since the beginning of recorded history the foundation and continuation of all societies has been the family; father, mother, and children. When the Pilgrims stepped off the Mayflower they were in family unites. Even the Native Americans formed their society around a father, mother and children.
Over 1,049 federal laws in many categories, including Social Security, welfare, veterans, taxation, etc are based on the man-woman marriage relationship. Society has set up our laws to protect the children and to provide in the case of a spouse dying. All of that would change if same sex marriage gets its foot hold and demands are then placed upon government and businesses for benefits. Our already overburdened Social Security system could not survive.
This is not about mere tolerance, allowing people their sexual preference and living with who they want, they can already do that, but same sex marriage is about forcing all within our society regardless of religious or traditional beliefs to accept radical changes which will have far reaching consequences. Consequences that change the very core of our society and how it functions. The loser will be the children who must endure the selfish desires of adults.
Activist judges and a small percentage of Americans have forced the people to use the Constitution to protect marriage and all that it means to the continuation of our society. If ever the family is to be restored and protected it must start with the very definition of what marriage is.
Allen even offered a bill to protect her son-in-law who was under investigation for harassing female inmates while working in a country prison:
Last year, then-Navajo County Supervisor Allen tried to interfere with an internal investigation into her son-in-law’s conduct with female inmates in the Navajo County jail.
This year, Allen has moved on to the state Senate where she sponsored a bill aimed at ensuring that others don’t have to endure what she sees as a witch hunt against her son-in-law.
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“She was interfering in the investigation,” Navajo County Sheriff K.C. Clark told me this week. “At one point, I had to go to the county attorney and say if she gets in my way, I’m going to book her for interfering in the criminal investigation.”
Allen’s son-in-law, Timothy Hunt, was working as a detention officer in Navajo County jail in April 2014, when a former inmate alerted authorities to possible questionable conduct with female inmates while working nights, according to county records.
Hunt was reassigned to a desk job while an investigation was launched – a point that didn’t please Supervisor Allen, who immediately texted Sheriff Clark.
“I need to talk to you about what is going on in the jail,” she texted on April 29. “The commander put up a note in the control room telling EVERYONE that Tim Hunt was not allowed into the jail this was before he got to work then they made him sit out front all day not telling him why he was being investigated. He was humiliated and no one said WHY.”
Hunt would soon find out why, if he didn’t already know.
As part of an independent investigation into his activities, six women claimed that he made sexually suggestive remarks and gestures to female inmates and passed along cigarettes and matches to one female inmate in exchange for oral sex.
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Several weeks later, the independent investigator sustained four of the five allegations against Hunt, finding that “the preponderance of evidence” suggests among other things that he provided cigarettes to an inmate after she performed a sex act on him in a shower.
“Despite Hunt’s denial of wrongdoing, there was significant consistency between the accounts of the witness female inmates, and there is no credible evidence of any conspiracy,” the investigator wrote, in a June 25, 2014, report to the Navajo County Sheriff’s Office.
In July, Hunt took a polygraph test and was deemed “not truthful” when he denied engaging in oral sex with a female inmate, according to the polygraph report.
He later resigned and the file was sent to the Yavapai County Attorney’s Office, to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.
Allen, meanwhile, ran for the state Senate, to replace the late Sen. Chester Crandell, and in January became a member of the Arizona Legislature and the Senate pro tempore no less.
Enter Senate Bill 1467. Allen’s bill would strengthen the rights of law enforcement officials who face disciplinary proceedings. It was a surprise to many in the law enforcement community, given that the Peace Officers Bill of Rights was just passed last year and didn’t take effect until Jan. 1.
Among Allen’s proposals: to allow full-blown appeals trials rather than summary reviews if an officer is disciplined and to get rid of polygraph examinations.
Like the one her son-in-law failed.
