Tag Archives: Civil rights

And you think this is a virtue?

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Crossposted at Equality Loudoun.

It’s not online, but Leesburg Today has a piece on a recent Community Levee Association essay contest, and the winning essay is on their site. CLA president Chris Stevenson tells the Leesburg Today “we thought there were pretty good deep insights into marriage, especially for a 12th grader.” The author makes a strong case for the emotional difference between marriage and something that falls short, disputing the idea “that cohabitation is a reasonable substitution for marriage.”

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Loudoun Out Loud at St. James

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Crossposted at Equality Loudoun

Sunday, May 22 at 11:00 am
St. James United Church of Christ
10 East Broad Way, Lovettsville

Loudoun Out Loud, the PFLAG support group, has now been meeting since January (See interview with Lori Stevens here, and Living in Loco has more links). Not only does LOL facilitate two monthly support group meetings – one for LGBTQ youth and one for family/allies – they have also provided appropriate resource materials for use in Loudoun County Public Schools, partnered with locovore eatery American Flatbread to raise funds for PFLAG, collected bikes for Bikes for the World as an Earth Day project, hosted a screening of the film Bullied, and probably more I don’t know about yet.

Lori Stevens and some of the youth will be sharing the stories that have brought them together to create this much needed group – and the public is welcome.

Right on schedule, Virginia advances

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Crossposted at Equality Loudoun.

Today’s Washington Post:

Virginians are closely divided over whether gay marriage should be legal, according to a new Washington Post poll, a striking result in a state that overwhelmingly agreed to amend its constitution to ban gay marriage just five years ago.

Forty-seven percent of Virginians say gay couples should be allowed to legally wed, and 43 percent are opposed, according to the poll. Fifty-five percent of Virginians say gay couples should be able to legally adopt children.

The results mirror a dramatic and rapid shift in national public opinion about gay rights in recent years.

Dramatic indeed. Here are the national trendlines, via Nate Silver:

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YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE

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Today is the last day to comment on new rules the State Department may impose on people seeking new passports.

The U.S. Department of State is proposing a new Biographical Questionnaire for some passport applicants: The proposed new Form DS-5513 asks for all addresses since birth; lifetime employment history including employers’ and supervisors names, addresses, and telephone numbers; personal details of all siblings; mother’s address one year prior to your birth; any “religious ceremony” around the time of birth; and a variety of other information. According to the proposed form, “failure to provide the information requested may result in … the denial of your U.S. passport application.”

Submit your comments to the State Department

(Via Shakesville. No word on WHO those “some people” would be.)

The inevitable result of “it”

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Crossposted at Equality Loudoun

What you will see below is the result of people being told they should see other people as “it.”

A woman is violently assaulted in a Baltimore McDonalds, dragged across the floor, repeatedly kicked in the head until she has a seizure, and is left to convulse in a corner while employees watch and record the assault on their phones. They can be heard laughing and encouraging the assailants in the background. One posted his video on the internet later, to entertain his friends. You can hear one of them near the end, warning the assailants “police on their way. Y’all better get out of here.” The only person who attempts to help the woman is an elderly female customer.

Warning: The video is extremely violent and disturbing. I’m reposting it because it’s important that people understand the consequences of their careless, self-centered actions.

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The new “normal”

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Repeat after me: Our Rs are kinder and gentler than this R

I was initially heartened at the near-unanimous condemnation of the pathetic little Pamela Geller-inspired protest we saw last Thursday night outside the LCRC meeting (photos below the fold). As I noted in comments, there was only one LCRC member (or at least a frequent attendee of meetings and events) who affirmatively joined the protest, plus a few others who appeared friendly with the protesters, while most just walked by or chose a different entrance.

As the incident has developed though, I now have to ask: Is it the assault on religious freedom itself to which these seemingly anti-religious bigotry Republicans object, or is their objection only to what they perceive as a misdirected assault on religious freedom?

One LCRC leader, by way of explaining what was wrong with the protest, informed me that target David Ramadan “isn’t even a practicing Muslim.” This may or may not be true – but that’s hardly the point, is it? Continue reading →

An assault on religious freedom and decency

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If true, this is very sad news for our Republican friends, and even more so for Loudoun County. Several local Republican activists report receiving an email calling for some sort of anti-Muslim demonstration – tonight, at the Government Center in Leesburg – in protest of a campaign event for David Ramadan. Ramadan is a well-known Republican running for the proposed 87th House district. The rhetoric suggests something similar to the protest captured in this video:

Ramadan is being described as a “solid conservative” by an otherwise rather diverse assortment of Loudoun conservative activists. One could only imagine how beyond the pale those behind this “ANTI-SHARIAH TASK FORCE” must be – except that the names Dick Black and his apparent tea party acolyte Joann Chase (also vying for the 87th seat) are mentioned in the email. Continue reading →

Bob Marshall chooses personal prejudice over children. Is anyone surprised?

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Crossposted at Equality Loudoun.

Bob Marshall, not getting his way

It’s not enough for Bob Marshall that same sex couples have to move outside the state temporarily in order for both to be adoptive parents – in Virginia, second parent adoption or adoption by unmarried couples is illegal, so we have families in which one parent is literally a legal stranger to their own child. Think about what that means for a child’s security, if something were to happen to his or her legally recognized parent.

In 2005, Bob Marshall shared the embarrassment with Dick Black of having “Adoption: Prohibited if Homosexual” basically laughed out of the Senate after Black flew the disgraced Paul Cameron in as an “expert witness.” That wouldn’t have been enough, either – and the truth is that nothing will ever be enough for this obsessive oddball, short of our complete elimination. As he let slip to the Leesburg Today back in 2006, “This is a springboard. If they get this [defeat of the Marshall-Newman anti-marriage amendment], they are getting other things.” By “other things,” he refers to the freedom to live our lives with the same safety and security as everyone else. That amendment never had anything to do with marriage. Its purpose, as I explained here, was simply to create more danger for gay and lesbian couples, to discourage us from living openly and visibly – because it’s exactly that visibility that is driving the rapid shifts in public opinion toward support for equality.

It’s that same purpose that leads Mr. Marshall to have a hissy fit about this revision to the Virginia Department of Social Services regulations: Continue reading →

Look around you

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Look at your family, your friends, your co-workers, the people in your volunteer groups, the members of your church.

How many of them have a different skin color/language/sexual orientation from you?

This morning, at church, we had a discussion of racism and how to better integrate our church. And another member reminded us of something a former minister at the church said several years ago: that Sunday morning is the most segregated time of the week in America.

Well, that’s not true for me. Our church is actually better integrated than my workplace or the places at which I volunteer (in terms of ethnic background).

So here’s a question for you: what is the most segregated time of the week for you? What is the most integrated?

Irony alert – can I get a witness?

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Back in 2005, a new program designed to remove impediments to cooperation between local Arab, Muslim and Sikh communities and law enforcement agencies was presented to the FBI. The Partnership for Prevention and Community Safety (PfP), “developed with considerable input from law enforcement and local communities, quickly gained the support it needed within the agency and was green-lighted for funding.”

But then a powerful member of Congress stepped in and, with one blow, killed the initiative. According to those with knowledge of the program, the congressman acted at the behest of an influential and strident anti-Muslim propagandist. This week, in an ironic twist, that same congressman is slated to speak at a congressional hearing looking into the allegation that American Muslims are insufficiently cooperative with law enforcement.

The “powerful member of Congress” was Frank Wolf. Continue reading →