Friday, November 30, 2012 5:27:55 AM
American Horror Story: ‘Ex-gay’ evangelical formed murderous cult, police say
November 26, 2012 By Fred Clark
The headline in The Kansas City Star seems innocent: “Secrets of Tyler Deaton’s prayer group emerge [ http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/17/3923048/prayer-groups-secrets-emerge.html ].”
But those “secrets” refer to allegations of prolonged cruelty, manipulation, assault, abuse and murder. Some may want to avoid reading more of this story, which reads like one of those horrifying texts of terror from Genesis or the book of Judges. It ends the same way those stories do, with an innocent woman tormented and left for dead.
The Star’s Joe Robertson and Donald Bradley report:
Tyler Deaton gathered his followers one more time to his wife’s Kansas City funeral.
It was Nov. 6, and they wept for Bethany Deaton, dead at 27. … While Deaton spoke in calm and assuring tones, at least one of his closest inner circle apparently was starting to come undone.
Three days later, investigators say, 23-year-old Micah Moore would go to police and uncork the terrible secrets that allegedly occurred over several months at a Grandview home where Deaton and other members of his religious group lived.
Witnesses told of a clan of young adults making sex part of their religious experience, of men in the group sexually assaulting Bethany over months, and of Deaton’s role as their “spiritual leader.”
But Moore’s darkest admission, according to court records, was that Deaton feared Bethany was about to reveal the group’s secrets.
Moore confessed that he had murdered Bethany and tried to make it look like suicide, and, according to court documents, he said Deaton told him to do it.
Robertson and Bradley paint a portrait of Tyler Deaton as a charismatic, dogmatic and driven young man. He gathered a core of followers while attending Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and led them to Kansas City, to study at the International House of Prayer (Wayne Besen provides some background on IHOP at Truth Wins Out [ http://www.truthwinsout.org/opinion/2012/11/31968/ ]):
“He believed God could fix things,” a student said.
That included, Deaton told people, fixing himself.
One of his group’s stark positions on Scripture was that homosexuality was wrong. Deaton’s stance against it weighed heavily because members said he had “struggled with being gay.”
“He struggled with it, but he overcame it,” a member of his group at Southwestern said. “It was a victory.”
Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin [ http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2012/11/21/51154 ] notes that this idea of “victory” or “deliverance” from being gay is part of IHOP’s religious teaching. And here’s IHOP leader Mike Bickle sharing his view [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/mike-bickle-warns-homosexuality-opens-door-demonic-realm ] that homosexuality “opens the door to the demonic” and to “flaming missiles of the Evil One.”
I suppose Bickle and the folks at IHOP would say that is what happened to Tyler Deaton, and thus, as a result of his “opening the door to the demonic”:
Bethany was sexually assaulted over a period of months while drugged with someone else’s prescription anti-psychotic, witnesses in the house told authorities. This was happening, the witnesses alleged, in a period of time that male members in the house were involved in sexual relationships with Deaton, one saying it was part of a “religious experience.”
An alternative possibility is that Deaton was stressed past his breaking point by a delusional “therapy” that promised miracles it could never deliver.
Take someone under that sort of strain, then teach him to embrace the duplicity and dishonesty of such delusions, and then train him to view the world as a Manichaean struggle between good and evil. That’s a powerful recipe, but not for anything good.
A friend of many of the people who went to Kansas City is haunted now, remembering the close friendship and like-mindedness she saw in Moore and Bethany.
“They were both introspective, quiet-mystical people,” she said.
She watched them go from Southwestern, the same as so many others year after year, to join the evangelical adventure.
“It’s like they believed they were going into a storybook,” she said. “They were going to be equipped for the end times. For them it was heroic.”
Here’s the local KCTV 5 news report [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmrbZ9_PLyw (next below)]
Copyright 2012, Patheos
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/11/26/american-horror-story-ex-gay-evangelical-formed-murderous-cult-police-say/ [with comments]
===
Ex-Gay Pastor Charged with Molestation on Males
http://onkneesforjesus.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpovuM283Ao
===
Marriage Cases Thrust Supreme Court Into Gay-Rights Fight
Same-sex couple Shani Lyons, left, and Melanie Franklin hold their marriage certificate as they pose for family photos after their wedding ceremony in this October 15, 2008 file photo at City Hall in San Francisco.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
By Greg Stohr - Nov 27, 2012 11:00 PM CT
The U.S. Supreme Court is raising the stakes in the same-sex marriage debate as it considers taking up the issue for the first time, testing momentum built by advocates through electoral wins in four states this month.
The justices are scheduled to confer privately on Nov. 30 on 10 pending appeals, including clashes over the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act, which blocks gays from receiving federal marriage benefits, and a California ballot measure that outlawed same-sex nuptials there in 2008. The high court may say as early as that afternoon which cases it will consider.
Supreme Court involvement would come as gay marriage has seen a surge in public support since 1996, when the Defense of Marriage Act was approved 342-67 in the House of Representatives and 85-14 in the Senate and signed by President Bill Clinton. By Jan. 1, same-sex couples will be able to wed in nine states and the District of Columbia, and President Barack Obama has said he backs that right.
“Even if the court avoids ruling on the big question -- whether gays and lesbians are entitled to marry -- these cases will still be hugely important,” said Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law. “They will establish standards and rules that will impact future gay-rights cases.”
Previous Supreme Court cases provide few hints as to how the court will rule. Although Justice Anthony Kennedy, who may cast the deciding vote, backed gay rights in 1996 and 2003 rulings, neither case involved marriage.
Olson, Boies
Advocates on both sides say the court is all but certain to review the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that two federal appeals courts have said is unconstitutional. Less clear is whether the justices will take up the potentially more sweeping fight over California’s Proposition 8.
The challenge to that ballot measure is being pressed by Theodore Olson and David Boies, the lawyers who faced off against each other at the Supreme Court in the Bush v. Gore case that resolved the 2000 presidential election deadlock. They filed the suit with an eye toward winning a Supreme Court ruling establishing same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.
The California case “would be an opportunity for the court to go on the record for the first time” on that issue, said Jane Schacter, a Stanford Law School professor who teaches constitutional and sexual-orientation law. The question is “whether they want to engage with the underlying issue of whether same-sex couples have a right to marry.”
Landmark Victories
Voters this month approved gay marriage in Washington, Maryland and Maine -- the first states to give such consent at the polls -- and rejected a bid in Minnesota to amend the state constitution to bar the practice.
The Obama administration announced last year that it would begin opposing the Defense of Marriage Act in court, leaving congressional Republicans led by House Speaker John Boehner to spearhead the defense.
Opponents say the law, known as DOMA, unconstitutionally bars legally married gay couples from getting the same federal benefits as opposite-sex spouses. Under the law, people in same- sex marriages can’t file joint federal tax returns, claim exemption from estate taxes, receive Social Security survivor benefits or obtain health insurance as the spouse of a federal employee.
“This is an arbitrary law,” said Mary Bonauto, a Boston lawyer with the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders whose clients include seven gay Massachusetts couples and three surviving spouses challenging DOMA. “It is arbitrarily treating one group of married people as unmarried.”
Congress Right
Supporters of the law say it promotes traditional marriage and by extension makes it more likely that children will grow up in a nurturing environment.
“Of course, Congress has the right to define such a fundamental institution,” said Brian Brown, president of the Washington-based National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex nuptials. “This is a question for the representatives of the people. Congress represents the people.”
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the New York-based 2nd Circuit both rejected the measure. Ruling in the Massachusetts case, the 1st Circuit pointed to “a lack of any demonstrated connection between DOMA’s treatment of same-sex couples and its asserted goal of strengthening the bonds and benefits to society of heterosexual marriage.”
The 2nd Circuit broke new legal ground by saying that laws discriminating against gays, like those targeting racial minorities and women, should get especially rigorous scrutiny from the courts. The Supreme Court has never adopted that approach.
Aging Widow
The 2nd Circuit ruling was a victory for 83-year-old New York resident Edie Windsor in her fight against a $363,000 estate tax bill imposed after the 2009 death of her spouse, Thea Clara Spyer. Windsor and Spyer were married in Canada in 2007, a marriage the 2nd Circuit concluded would be recognized under New York law.
Although both sides in the case are asking the high court to rule on the marriage law, they disagree about which of the eight pending appeals the justices should take up.
Congressional Republicans are asking the court to review the 1st Circuit decision. That case probably would disqualify Justice Elena Kagan, who played a role in the Massachusetts litigation when she was Obama’s top courtroom lawyer.
Proposed Alternatives
The Obama administration, while not saying directly that it would like to have Kagan involved, has proposed alternatives for the court to consider, including the Windsor case. The administration says the court also could take up a suit pressed by same-sex couples in Vermont, Connecticut and New Hampshire or a California lawsuit by a federal court employee seeking to have her spouse enrolled on her government health-care plan.
The legal battle over DOMA doesn’t affect a separate provision in the law that says states can refuse to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions.
Supreme Court review of California’s Proposition 8 is less of a sure thing. Voters approved the initiative in 2008 as a way to reverse a decision by the California Supreme Court, which five months earlier had said the state constitution guaranteed the right to gay marriage.
Lawyers Olson and Boies, who sought constitutional protection for gay marriage, instead won a narrower ruling with limited applicability beyond California’s borders. A federal appeals court said Proposition 8 unconstitutionally stripped same-sex couples of a right that they had once enjoyed -- and that heterosexual couples would continue to possess. Gay marriage is on hold in California while the litigation plays out.
Defining Issue
Supporters of Proposition 8, led by former state Senator Dennis Hollingsworth, are appealing to the Supreme Court. They argued that the lower court’s reasoning was a “suggestion that any experiment with the definition of marriage is irrevocable.”
Olson and Boies are urging the Supreme Court to reject the appeal, even as they said in court papers that it touches on “the defining civil rights issue of our time.”
Olson said in an interview that, should the court take up the case, he would make both California-specific arguments and broader contentions that could establish same-sex marriage rights nationwide. Marriage, Olson said, is a “fundamental right that cannot be taken away from citizens on the basis of their sex or sexual orientation.”
Some gay-rights advocates say they worry that a high court review of Proposition 8 might lead to a split decision, with the justices striking down DOMA while upholding the California initiative.
Rights Champion
Justice Kennedy has been a champion of gay rights in past cases, writing the 2003 decision that said states can’t criminalize gay sex acts. Overturning the convictions of two men in Texas, he wrote that “the state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.”
Kennedy, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, also wrote the court’s 1996 decision striking down a Colorado constitutional amendment that barred cities and counties from enacting anti-discrimination laws to protect gays.
Even so, he underscored in 2003 that he wasn’t passing judgment on gay marriage, saying the case “does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter.”
He and his colleagues might decide to bide their time to see whether more states legalize gay marriage. Lawmakers in New Jersey, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois and Minnesota all plan to revisit the issue next year.
“You’ve got the political forces throughout the country very engaged in this,” Schacter said. “Things are changing very quickly. They may just continue to let this percolate.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at skomarow1@bloomberg.net
©2012 BLOOMBERG L.P.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-28/marriage-cases-thrust-supreme-court-into-gay-rights-fight.html [with comments]
===
Fischer: If Gays Aren't Discriminated Against, Christians Will Be
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-if-gays-arent-discriminated-against-christians-will-be
Bryan Fischer says gay marriage will mean the end of the First Amendment and warns that if gays are not the ones being discriminated against, Christians will be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpwCCWdZb8Y
===
Pat Robertson Foams At The Mouth About Gay People
Pat Robertson Foams At The Mouth About Gay People
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDNWPm7lc78
===
Fischer: Criminalize Homosexuality
Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association calls for the re-criminalization of homosexuality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF9J__0rT50
===
Pastor Beats Up Own Gay Son in Church
more Christian love from the South
http://onkneesforjesus.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwUTjidH0p0
===
Fischer: Only Eyewitness Testimony Can Determine The Age Of The Earth
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-only-eyewitness-testimony-can-determine-age-earth
Bryan Fischer and Terry Mortenson of Anwers In Genesis explain that scientists can never determine the age of the earth because they weren't there and only the Bible provides reliable eyewitness testimony.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_90E-gqrTw
===
Glenn Beck Puts Obama In 'Urine,' Makes 'Obama In Pee Pee' Art Piece (VIDEO)
Posted: 11/28/2012 8:21 am EST Updated: 11/29/2012 4:34 pm EST
It was a slow news day on Tuesday, and so Glenn Beck decided to put a bobblehead figurine of President Obama inside a jar of his own urine -- or "urine," as the liquid must accurately be labeled.
The stunt was preceded by a tour through art history, as Beck, with velvet blazer and a pipe clenched in his teeth, pointed out that the medium has always been controversial and even featured nudity, like in the Sistine Chapel. And the First Amendment gives people the right to make scandalous art, right? Then he painted over nude images while speaking in a French accent, because it was Tuesday, we guess.
The hook to all of this was a Boston artist who painted Obama being crucified [ http://global.christianpost.com/news/crucified-obama-painting-displayed-at-boston-gallery-still-controversial-85662/ ].
Beck said he didn't like the painting, but he wanted to support the artist's right to do it. So he unveiled what he called "Obama in Pee Pee," which was just about what it sounded like -- except that Obama was in a jar filled with beer, technically, making it a whole lot less shocking. Beck said he would sell it on his website for $25,000.
The jar was put up for auction on Ebay, which later removed the item on Wednesday morning. Beck tweeted the news [ https://twitter.com/glennbeck/status/273828517999939584 ], writing, "#ObamainPeePee was up to $11k before our @ebay injustice…"
Ebay said it removed the listing because the item "contained bodily fluid." The site prohibits the sale of certain items, including "human remains and body parts [ http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/remains.html ]," on its website.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story suggested that the listing was deleted due to the Ebay's "offensive material" policy. The company said it actually removed the listing because it violated its policy prohibiting the sale of "human remains and body parts."
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/28/glenn-beck-obama-urine_n_2203697.html [with embedded video of the Beck segment (original at http://www.video.theblaze.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=25507121 ), and comments]
November 26, 2012 By Fred Clark
The headline in The Kansas City Star seems innocent: “Secrets of Tyler Deaton’s prayer group emerge [ http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/17/3923048/prayer-groups-secrets-emerge.html ].”
But those “secrets” refer to allegations of prolonged cruelty, manipulation, assault, abuse and murder. Some may want to avoid reading more of this story, which reads like one of those horrifying texts of terror from Genesis or the book of Judges. It ends the same way those stories do, with an innocent woman tormented and left for dead.
The Star’s Joe Robertson and Donald Bradley report:
Tyler Deaton gathered his followers one more time to his wife’s Kansas City funeral.
It was Nov. 6, and they wept for Bethany Deaton, dead at 27. … While Deaton spoke in calm and assuring tones, at least one of his closest inner circle apparently was starting to come undone.
Three days later, investigators say, 23-year-old Micah Moore would go to police and uncork the terrible secrets that allegedly occurred over several months at a Grandview home where Deaton and other members of his religious group lived.
Witnesses told of a clan of young adults making sex part of their religious experience, of men in the group sexually assaulting Bethany over months, and of Deaton’s role as their “spiritual leader.”
But Moore’s darkest admission, according to court records, was that Deaton feared Bethany was about to reveal the group’s secrets.
Moore confessed that he had murdered Bethany and tried to make it look like suicide, and, according to court documents, he said Deaton told him to do it.
Robertson and Bradley paint a portrait of Tyler Deaton as a charismatic, dogmatic and driven young man. He gathered a core of followers while attending Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and led them to Kansas City, to study at the International House of Prayer (Wayne Besen provides some background on IHOP at Truth Wins Out [ http://www.truthwinsout.org/opinion/2012/11/31968/ ]):
“He believed God could fix things,” a student said.
That included, Deaton told people, fixing himself.
One of his group’s stark positions on Scripture was that homosexuality was wrong. Deaton’s stance against it weighed heavily because members said he had “struggled with being gay.”
“He struggled with it, but he overcame it,” a member of his group at Southwestern said. “It was a victory.”
Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin [ http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2012/11/21/51154 ] notes that this idea of “victory” or “deliverance” from being gay is part of IHOP’s religious teaching. And here’s IHOP leader Mike Bickle sharing his view [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/mike-bickle-warns-homosexuality-opens-door-demonic-realm ] that homosexuality “opens the door to the demonic” and to “flaming missiles of the Evil One.”
I suppose Bickle and the folks at IHOP would say that is what happened to Tyler Deaton, and thus, as a result of his “opening the door to the demonic”:
Bethany was sexually assaulted over a period of months while drugged with someone else’s prescription anti-psychotic, witnesses in the house told authorities. This was happening, the witnesses alleged, in a period of time that male members in the house were involved in sexual relationships with Deaton, one saying it was part of a “religious experience.”
An alternative possibility is that Deaton was stressed past his breaking point by a delusional “therapy” that promised miracles it could never deliver.
Take someone under that sort of strain, then teach him to embrace the duplicity and dishonesty of such delusions, and then train him to view the world as a Manichaean struggle between good and evil. That’s a powerful recipe, but not for anything good.
A friend of many of the people who went to Kansas City is haunted now, remembering the close friendship and like-mindedness she saw in Moore and Bethany.
“They were both introspective, quiet-mystical people,” she said.
She watched them go from Southwestern, the same as so many others year after year, to join the evangelical adventure.
“It’s like they believed they were going into a storybook,” she said. “They were going to be equipped for the end times. For them it was heroic.”
Here’s the local KCTV 5 news report [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmrbZ9_PLyw (next below)]
(via Joe Jervis [ http://joemygod.blogspot.com/ ]). And here’s IHOP’s “Statement Regarding Tyler Deaton [ http://www.ihopkc.org/ihopu/regarding-the-death-of-bethany-deaton/forerunner-christian-fellowship-regarding-tyler-deaton/ ].”
Copyright 2012, Patheos
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/11/26/american-horror-story-ex-gay-evangelical-formed-murderous-cult-police-say/ [with comments]
===
Ex-Gay Pastor Charged with Molestation on Males
Published on Nov 9, 2012 by OnKneesforJesus4
http://onkneesforjesus.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpovuM283Ao
===
Marriage Cases Thrust Supreme Court Into Gay-Rights Fight
Same-sex couple Shani Lyons, left, and Melanie Franklin hold their marriage certificate as they pose for family photos after their wedding ceremony in this October 15, 2008 file photo at City Hall in San Francisco.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
By Greg Stohr - Nov 27, 2012 11:00 PM CT
The U.S. Supreme Court is raising the stakes in the same-sex marriage debate as it considers taking up the issue for the first time, testing momentum built by advocates through electoral wins in four states this month.
The justices are scheduled to confer privately on Nov. 30 on 10 pending appeals, including clashes over the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act, which blocks gays from receiving federal marriage benefits, and a California ballot measure that outlawed same-sex nuptials there in 2008. The high court may say as early as that afternoon which cases it will consider.
Supreme Court involvement would come as gay marriage has seen a surge in public support since 1996, when the Defense of Marriage Act was approved 342-67 in the House of Representatives and 85-14 in the Senate and signed by President Bill Clinton. By Jan. 1, same-sex couples will be able to wed in nine states and the District of Columbia, and President Barack Obama has said he backs that right.
“Even if the court avoids ruling on the big question -- whether gays and lesbians are entitled to marry -- these cases will still be hugely important,” said Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law. “They will establish standards and rules that will impact future gay-rights cases.”
Previous Supreme Court cases provide few hints as to how the court will rule. Although Justice Anthony Kennedy, who may cast the deciding vote, backed gay rights in 1996 and 2003 rulings, neither case involved marriage.
Olson, Boies
Advocates on both sides say the court is all but certain to review the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that two federal appeals courts have said is unconstitutional. Less clear is whether the justices will take up the potentially more sweeping fight over California’s Proposition 8.
The challenge to that ballot measure is being pressed by Theodore Olson and David Boies, the lawyers who faced off against each other at the Supreme Court in the Bush v. Gore case that resolved the 2000 presidential election deadlock. They filed the suit with an eye toward winning a Supreme Court ruling establishing same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.
The California case “would be an opportunity for the court to go on the record for the first time” on that issue, said Jane Schacter, a Stanford Law School professor who teaches constitutional and sexual-orientation law. The question is “whether they want to engage with the underlying issue of whether same-sex couples have a right to marry.”
Landmark Victories
Voters this month approved gay marriage in Washington, Maryland and Maine -- the first states to give such consent at the polls -- and rejected a bid in Minnesota to amend the state constitution to bar the practice.
The Obama administration announced last year that it would begin opposing the Defense of Marriage Act in court, leaving congressional Republicans led by House Speaker John Boehner to spearhead the defense.
Opponents say the law, known as DOMA, unconstitutionally bars legally married gay couples from getting the same federal benefits as opposite-sex spouses. Under the law, people in same- sex marriages can’t file joint federal tax returns, claim exemption from estate taxes, receive Social Security survivor benefits or obtain health insurance as the spouse of a federal employee.
“This is an arbitrary law,” said Mary Bonauto, a Boston lawyer with the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders whose clients include seven gay Massachusetts couples and three surviving spouses challenging DOMA. “It is arbitrarily treating one group of married people as unmarried.”
Congress Right
Supporters of the law say it promotes traditional marriage and by extension makes it more likely that children will grow up in a nurturing environment.
“Of course, Congress has the right to define such a fundamental institution,” said Brian Brown, president of the Washington-based National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex nuptials. “This is a question for the representatives of the people. Congress represents the people.”
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the New York-based 2nd Circuit both rejected the measure. Ruling in the Massachusetts case, the 1st Circuit pointed to “a lack of any demonstrated connection between DOMA’s treatment of same-sex couples and its asserted goal of strengthening the bonds and benefits to society of heterosexual marriage.”
The 2nd Circuit broke new legal ground by saying that laws discriminating against gays, like those targeting racial minorities and women, should get especially rigorous scrutiny from the courts. The Supreme Court has never adopted that approach.
Aging Widow
The 2nd Circuit ruling was a victory for 83-year-old New York resident Edie Windsor in her fight against a $363,000 estate tax bill imposed after the 2009 death of her spouse, Thea Clara Spyer. Windsor and Spyer were married in Canada in 2007, a marriage the 2nd Circuit concluded would be recognized under New York law.
Although both sides in the case are asking the high court to rule on the marriage law, they disagree about which of the eight pending appeals the justices should take up.
Congressional Republicans are asking the court to review the 1st Circuit decision. That case probably would disqualify Justice Elena Kagan, who played a role in the Massachusetts litigation when she was Obama’s top courtroom lawyer.
Proposed Alternatives
The Obama administration, while not saying directly that it would like to have Kagan involved, has proposed alternatives for the court to consider, including the Windsor case. The administration says the court also could take up a suit pressed by same-sex couples in Vermont, Connecticut and New Hampshire or a California lawsuit by a federal court employee seeking to have her spouse enrolled on her government health-care plan.
The legal battle over DOMA doesn’t affect a separate provision in the law that says states can refuse to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions.
Supreme Court review of California’s Proposition 8 is less of a sure thing. Voters approved the initiative in 2008 as a way to reverse a decision by the California Supreme Court, which five months earlier had said the state constitution guaranteed the right to gay marriage.
Lawyers Olson and Boies, who sought constitutional protection for gay marriage, instead won a narrower ruling with limited applicability beyond California’s borders. A federal appeals court said Proposition 8 unconstitutionally stripped same-sex couples of a right that they had once enjoyed -- and that heterosexual couples would continue to possess. Gay marriage is on hold in California while the litigation plays out.
Defining Issue
Supporters of Proposition 8, led by former state Senator Dennis Hollingsworth, are appealing to the Supreme Court. They argued that the lower court’s reasoning was a “suggestion that any experiment with the definition of marriage is irrevocable.”
Olson and Boies are urging the Supreme Court to reject the appeal, even as they said in court papers that it touches on “the defining civil rights issue of our time.”
Olson said in an interview that, should the court take up the case, he would make both California-specific arguments and broader contentions that could establish same-sex marriage rights nationwide. Marriage, Olson said, is a “fundamental right that cannot be taken away from citizens on the basis of their sex or sexual orientation.”
Some gay-rights advocates say they worry that a high court review of Proposition 8 might lead to a split decision, with the justices striking down DOMA while upholding the California initiative.
Rights Champion
Justice Kennedy has been a champion of gay rights in past cases, writing the 2003 decision that said states can’t criminalize gay sex acts. Overturning the convictions of two men in Texas, he wrote that “the state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.”
Kennedy, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, also wrote the court’s 1996 decision striking down a Colorado constitutional amendment that barred cities and counties from enacting anti-discrimination laws to protect gays.
Even so, he underscored in 2003 that he wasn’t passing judgment on gay marriage, saying the case “does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter.”
He and his colleagues might decide to bide their time to see whether more states legalize gay marriage. Lawmakers in New Jersey, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois and Minnesota all plan to revisit the issue next year.
“You’ve got the political forces throughout the country very engaged in this,” Schacter said. “Things are changing very quickly. They may just continue to let this percolate.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at skomarow1@bloomberg.net
©2012 BLOOMBERG L.P.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-28/marriage-cases-thrust-supreme-court-into-gay-rights-fight.html [with comments]
===
Fischer: If Gays Aren't Discriminated Against, Christians Will Be
Published on Jun 6, 2012 by RWWBlog
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-if-gays-arent-discriminated-against-christians-will-be
Bryan Fischer says gay marriage will mean the end of the First Amendment and warns that if gays are not the ones being discriminated against, Christians will be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpwCCWdZb8Y
===
Pat Robertson Foams At The Mouth About Gay People
Uploaded by godhatesgluttons on Nov 22, 2008
Pat Robertson Foams At The Mouth About Gay People
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDNWPm7lc78
===
Fischer: Criminalize Homosexuality
Uploaded by RWWBlog on Aug 30, 2011
Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association calls for the re-criminalization of homosexuality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF9J__0rT50
===
Pastor Beats Up Own Gay Son in Church
Uploaded by OnKneesforJesus4 on Oct 3, 2011
more Christian love from the South
http://onkneesforjesus.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwUTjidH0p0
===
Fischer: Only Eyewitness Testimony Can Determine The Age Of The Earth
Published on Nov 21, 2012 by RWWBlog
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-only-eyewitness-testimony-can-determine-age-earth
Bryan Fischer and Terry Mortenson of Anwers In Genesis explain that scientists can never determine the age of the earth because they weren't there and only the Bible provides reliable eyewitness testimony.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_90E-gqrTw
===
Glenn Beck Puts Obama In 'Urine,' Makes 'Obama In Pee Pee' Art Piece (VIDEO)
Posted: 11/28/2012 8:21 am EST Updated: 11/29/2012 4:34 pm EST
It was a slow news day on Tuesday, and so Glenn Beck decided to put a bobblehead figurine of President Obama inside a jar of his own urine -- or "urine," as the liquid must accurately be labeled.
The stunt was preceded by a tour through art history, as Beck, with velvet blazer and a pipe clenched in his teeth, pointed out that the medium has always been controversial and even featured nudity, like in the Sistine Chapel. And the First Amendment gives people the right to make scandalous art, right? Then he painted over nude images while speaking in a French accent, because it was Tuesday, we guess.
The hook to all of this was a Boston artist who painted Obama being crucified [ http://global.christianpost.com/news/crucified-obama-painting-displayed-at-boston-gallery-still-controversial-85662/ ].
Beck said he didn't like the painting, but he wanted to support the artist's right to do it. So he unveiled what he called "Obama in Pee Pee," which was just about what it sounded like -- except that Obama was in a jar filled with beer, technically, making it a whole lot less shocking. Beck said he would sell it on his website for $25,000.
The jar was put up for auction on Ebay, which later removed the item on Wednesday morning. Beck tweeted the news [ https://twitter.com/glennbeck/status/273828517999939584 ], writing, "#ObamainPeePee was up to $11k before our @ebay injustice…"
Ebay said it removed the listing because the item "contained bodily fluid." The site prohibits the sale of certain items, including "human remains and body parts [ http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/remains.html ]," on its website.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story suggested that the listing was deleted due to the Ebay's "offensive material" policy. The company said it actually removed the listing because it violated its policy prohibiting the sale of "human remains and body parts."
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/28/glenn-beck-obama-urine_n_2203697.html [with embedded video of the Beck segment (original at http://www.video.theblaze.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=25507121 ), and comments]
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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