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Anti-Gay Texas State Lawmaker: Marriage Equality Doesn’t Exist (Audio)

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Democrat Responds To Homophobic Lawmaker: ‘Them’s The Rules, Bubby’

Anti-gay Texas Tea Party state Rep. Cecil Bell is in serious denial about same-sex marriage. 

During a panel discussion in Austin last month, Bell claimed that despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, marriage equality doesn’t exist in Texas.

Bell, (R-Magnolia), the author of failed legislation seeking to undermine the high court’s ruling, has also called for the impeachment of justices who were in the majority. He made the comments in response to a question about why he doesn’t consider Obergefell to be the law of the land. 

“In fact, our Constitution has in place provisions that say the court cannot make law,” Bell said. “So, the very laws that you’re talking about enforcing don’t exist, and the Supreme Court cannot create those laws. In order for a clerk in Texas or in any other state to have the legal authority to issue a same-sex marriage license, the state Legislature will have to act to affirm that legal right. Otherwise we have granted to the federal court system through the Supreme Court or a lower federal court the lawmaking provisions that are specifically withheld from the court.” 

Bell’s statement drew a strong rebuke from state Rep. Rafael Anchia, (D-Dallas), a staunch LGBT ally who was also a member of the panel. 

“There’s this new case, I don’t know if any of you have seen it, it’s called Marbury v. Madison,” Anchia said sarcastically, referring to the iconic 1803 case that cemented the Court’s mandate of judicial review. His comment elicited laughter from the audience.

“It kind of puts in place the judicial branch’s ability to interpret the law, and then we do have supremacy principles. Again, not very well known out there, but them’s the rules, Bubby, and that’s where we sort of end up. It’s interesting when my esteemed colleague says there are no laws in place and we should respect the constitutional principles here. Well, the constitutional principle is the 14th Amendment, and that’s what being discussed. Do people have equal protection under the law? And to me, it’s kind of straightforward in that respect.” 

Bell responded that the 14th Amendment was intended to give freed slaves equal rights, not legalize same-sex marriage. He suggested that Anchia wanted to “throw out the Constitution.”

“It may be, ‘Them’s the rules, Bubby,’ but the truth of the matter is, that’s not what our forefathers said, that’s what this generation says,” Bell said. 

LOOK: Anti-Gay State Rep. Cecil Bell Thinks Texas Sovereignty Is A Thing, Totally Trumps Federal Law

Anchia, who’s Latino, noted that the 14th Amendment also protects his civil rights, even though they weren’t contemplated at the time.

“There are a number of different groups that are covered by the 14th Amendment despite what gave rise to the ratification in 1870,” Anchia said. “I kind of like the 14th Amendment. I would not throw that out, because it protects me against bigots.”

“I think bigots have used religion to discriminate against people for a long time,” Anchia added. “Religion has been used as pretext to discriminate against African-Americans, against women, against gay people, for a very long time.”

Anchia also held up a photo of John Stone-Hoskins, who successfully sued Texas in the wake of Obergefell after he was denied an accurate death certificate for his late husband. Anchia said he was supposed to have lunch with Stone-Hoskins on the day of the panel discussion, but Stone-Hoskins died in early October. 

“When you talk about people wanting to delay and demure and fight against the implementation of civil rights, it has real impact on real people, and this is one of them,” Anchia said. 

When Anchia asked what people like Stone-Hoskins should do when they’re denied civil rights, Bell said they should “continue to live the way they’re living.”

“The do have civil rights,” Bell said. “They have the freedom to speak. They’re not a privileged class, which is the effort here.” 

The panel also featured Brantley Starr, deputy Texas attorney general; Jonathan Saenz, president of the anti-LGBT hate group Texas Values; and Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir, a marriage equality supporter who issued a license to a same-sex couple in February under a court order.

Starr was asked about anti-gay Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton‘s post-Obergefell opinion encouraging county clerks to defy the ruling. 

“He was saying if clerks have religious objections, state law allows them to delegate to others in their office,” Starr said. “He was simply encouraging people to recognize those longstanding rights of the employees and the clerks themselves, and not necessarily telling offices they should shut down and not issue licenses.” 

DeBeauvoir responded that Paxton’s opinion created confusion among clerks. One Texas clerk, Hood County’s Katie Lang, was sued for refusing to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple, resulting in a $40,000 settlement. 

“Many county clerks around the state read his letter to say, ‘I’m free of this now, I don’t have to do this,'” DeBeauvoir said. “With all due respect to the attorney general, he did those county clerks no favor at all.” 

Saenz suggested that DeBeauvoir should have been jailed for issuing a same-sex marriage license in February, comparing her to Kentucky clerk Kim Davis. He alleged that same-sex marriage supporters want to punish people for exercising their religious liberties.  

“It’s a dangerous environment that we live in,” Saenz said. 

DeBeauvoir responded that during her 29 years in office, she’s followed the law despite her personal beliefs. 

“I was required to discriminate against my fellow brothers and sisters and not issue marriage licenses when it was a matter of civil rights,” DeBeauvoir said. “Kim Davis was not thrown in jail for something about her religious obligations. She was thrown in jail for violating the law, for taking over her office and using it as a tool to impose her religious beliefs on everyone else in her county.” 

Listen to the full discussion below. 

https://soundcloud.com/texas-tribune-festival/ttf15-gay-rights-states-rights

 

EARLIER:

Lawmaker Totally Certain His Unconstitutional Bill Will Override Supreme Court Marriage Ruling

GOP Lawmaker Pushes Bill To Defund Same-Sex Marriage

Texas Legislator Throws a Tantrum Trying To Stop Marriage Equality

  

Image: Screenshot via Agendawise/YouTube

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OPINION

Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

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6 hours ago

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April 26, 2024

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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”

“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”

“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”

READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”

Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”

She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.

On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.

Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.

“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”

The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.

“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”

“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.

“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

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10 hours ago

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April 26, 2024

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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

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12 hours ago

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April 26, 2024

By

Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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