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Gay Marriage, Abortion Aren’t Problems. Child Homelessness, Poverty Are.

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Throughout the year in the United States, an estimated two million children will be homeless, over three million will be living without either of their parents. 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ. At least half a million U.S. children live in foster homes. States that offer marriage equality also have the lowest rates of child homelessness.

Republicans and social conservatives — including the Tea Party — spent the better part of the past year railing against President Obama’s fiscal and social policies, and crowing about “jobs, jobs jobs!” Perhaps rightly so, as the Congress last year did little directly to create jobs programs. But at least they didn’t pretend they were.

In the run up to the 2010 election, the Republican mantra was “jobs, jobs jobs!,” and Republican and Tea Party candidates and incumbents all promised the American people once they were in charge they would focus solely on “jobs, jobs jobs!” They used the term “jobs-killing” as an adjective attached to anything-Obama more times than Sarah Palin has Facebook friends.

Yet, here we are, almost one-quarter of the way through 2011, and the GOP has passed not a single bill that will create a single job. Not one. Instead, Republicans at the local, state, and federal level have spent their time focused on making it as difficult as possible for a woman to get an abortion or any reproductive health services, they have focused on union-busting, making creationism the law of the land in schools, ending federal coverage for low-income child immunizations, taking families who go on strike off food stamps, defunding “Obamacare,” defunding NPR, defunding Planned Parenthood, supporting DOMA in court, voting to take away rights of LGBT public employees and their spouses, voting to ban same-sex marriages, and killing the EPA.

Read: “The GOP’s War On Women And Children

The past seven days must have held considerable angst for social conservatives, religious leaders, and the politicians who pander to these extremists. Polls and studies have rolled in, finding great majorities and pluralities supporting marriage equality and the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), even among conservatives. Even among Catholics and Christians and Protestants. Even among almost every single demographic group in the country.

Old, young, white, non-white, college-educated, high school educated, men, women, northern, eastern, southern, western, you name it — the American people have spoken and they have said not only do they want the government to repeal DOMA, but they want the government to allow same-sex marriage, and to stop addressing social issues and focus on jobs. And they want their religious leaders out of their bedrooms, doctor’s offices, pharmacies, and classrooms.

(What is also staggering is the vast disparity between what the American people in general actually want, and what their political representatives and religious leaders are actually doing.)

Here, at The New Civil Rights Movement, we posted the news about the Vatican’s speech to the United Nations this week, during which the Holy See bemoaned what it classifies as the “vilification” of people who speak out against same-sex marriage. Interestingly, this prompted a rather curious debate in the comments section, fueled by one conservative and several regular readers.

Some of the comments from the anti-marriage equality conservative were about “traditional marriage” creating “socially licensed male/female homes,” and another curious one about marriage: “A marriage license equates children like a fishing license equates fish. The requirements for a fishing license doesn’t require you to catch fish, but people who apply for one hope to catch fish. Most people who get married hope to have children.”

You can imagine what followed.

When I started to jump in to defend my position, it dawned on me, much as it dawned on me earlier in the week when I decried our bombing Libya, in a tweet, “Great. Shock and awe in #Libya. America again steps in. Where are the jobs, Mr. Gaddafi?,” what the hell are we doing?

My point is simply this.

Much like the overwhelmed employee who is so far in over his head he doesn’t know what part of his job to do first, America is playing whack-a-mole — and losing, badly, I might add — in her job of caring for her people, and making their lives, and the world, better.

And so, the time has come to say this: Don’t talk to me about the “evils” of what conservatives call “gay marriage,” or the “evils” of abortion, until you have solved the problems of child homelessness, child hunger, child poverty, education, and jobs.

Republicans are now doing everything they can to constrict a woman’s right to abortion and reproductive services. What do they think will happen to all those unwanted children? They’re not thinking, but you and I know many of these children will end up unwanted, and become wards of the state, at an increased cost to taxpayers.

How is it that the same people in Congress who want to end abortion are the same people who want to take away food stamps, education, and health care from children? Does the so-called “sanctity of life” only exist in the womb? Could there be anything less responsible that this?

Call it GOP logic. Make it your sole goal to cut taxes and end abortion and see what you get.

Nevermind the increased costs of human suffering that goes along with all this. Never mind that it’s just plain wrong.

Add to this lunacy the conservative’s desire to end the teaching of evolution, and substitute “creationism,” as well as reduce spending, by the billions, on children’s education, and what will we have in a decade? In two decades?

A lot more unwanted children, poor, sick, and ignorant.

Who is forced to care for unwanted poor, sick, and ignorant children?

The taxpayers.

And what do Republicans want to do? Cut taxes.

Do you see where we’re going here?

Now, on top of all this illogical, inhumane stupidity, the GOP, the Tea Party, and social conservatives want to stop same-sex couples from marrying, and adopting children.

Why?

Because homosexuality, according to them, is “evil,” unnatural,” and against the will of God. (Bull, but this is their “thinking.”)

I’m pretty certain those same Bible-thumpers who are against same-sex couples marrying and raising children are the same ones who are all for cutting taxes, reducing the amount of money spent on schools, education, unionized teaching professionals, healthcare, and so on, and so on, and so on.

(Now, back to all those polls. Just a reminder: The majority of Americans, no matter how you slice it, want DOMA dead and same-sex couples to be able to marry. Sadly, no one’s been able to get politicians to understand what the American people want.)

So, let me recap.

There’s a group of people in America who’s life’s mission is to:

  • Cut taxes
  • Cut government spending on healthcare
  • Cut government spending on education
  • Cut government spending on the arts
  • Cut government spending on news and information services
  • Stop the government from regulating pollution-causing industries
  • Stop the government from reacting to climate change
  • Stop the government from regulating food, toys, business in general
  • Teach creationism
  • Teach abstinence-only sex education
  • End abortion
  • End teenagers’ access to contraception
  • Stop same-sex couples from marrying
  • Stop same-sex couples from adopting

And I’m sure a great many more things.

What will we get from all this?

Sadly, many unwanted children, who will not be immunized, who will not receive proper health care, who will not be properly fed, who will not be properly educated, who will end up having more sick, un-educated, and unwanted children of their own, all of whom will not be cared for at all because the state won’t pay for them because Republicans want to cut taxes.

And yet, we have loving, willing, desperately-wanting same-sex couples ready and able to raise children, create families, and get married.

See my point?

Conservatives talk about the “fact” that children must be raised in a family headed by a mother and a father. Well, first of all that’s not necessarily true.

Two long-term studies recently published found just the opposite. In fact, one of them, a twenty-five year-long and vigorously peer-reviewed study published in the journal Pediatrics, found that adopted children raised by lesbian parents are better-adjusted and do better in school than their opposite-parented peers. Add to this the fact that we now have, “a study of gay dads that finds they are more likely than straight ones to focus on parenting over career, at least when their children are young.”

Children deserve to to be raised in a loving home by adults who can teach and raise them well, provide for their material, social, educational, and emotional needs and development. Whatever that looks like, I know that as a stipulation it far exceeds what possibly a majority of children face today.

Now, look at these clips from recent news stories:

Four years ago, 1 in 10 Americans struggled with hunger. A year later, it rose to 1 in 8. Today, it’s 1 in 6. That’s 50 million Americans, including 17 million children — and contrary to popular opinion, only 10 percent of these people are homeless.”

Families with children make up 47 percent of the homeless population in the Dallas metropolitan area.”

Almost 50 million Americans are without health insurance– 3 million more than a year ago, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  The report finds one in five people were uninsured during some portion of the last 12 months.

Nearly two-thirds of all the inmates interviewed on Feb. 25 said they dropped out of high school before they graduated, and fewer than half of those dropouts have a diploma or a GED.”

Evangelicals are the only major religious group where a majority opposes the federal government’s efforts to reduce childhood obesity, a Pew Research Center survey shows.”

Over 20 percent of children live in poverty, and over 36 percent of the extremely poor are children. Also, over half of the children in this country under age 6 who live in a household where there’s a single mom are poor.”

Air Pollution as an Emerging Global Risk Factor for Stroke

Air Pollution Called Health Peril. Linked To Cancer, Other Diseases.”

(Oh that last one? It’s from 1962, the year I was born. I guess we haven’t learned much in 49 years.)

Even if conservatives succeed at denying same-sex couples the right to marry (don’t worry, they won’t!) same-sex couples are still going to be raising children, forming families, and living our lives. And there’s nothing those anti-marriage equality social conservatives can do about it.

But the fact remains. There’s a new war in America. I don’t mean Libya. Right here at home, the Republican war on women and children, on gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people, on minorities, on Muslims… the list goes on. So does the evil of the GOP. Until we vote them out of office and make damn sure, in the mean time, they know they can’t get away with their social agenda of hate any longer.

Republicans are waging war on the wrong targets. The LGBTQ community, women, and children aren’t the enemy, they’re the solution.

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OPINION

Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

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Right-wing talk radio show host Hugh Hewitt is facing backlash after declaring former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who was ousted after her hiring cost NBC News a tumultuous five days, a “normal” person who has “never denied the election.”

Last summer, The Washington Post‘s Philip Bump reported McDaniel “is still elevating 2020 election skepticism,” and “won’t say the election was fair.”

“I don’t think he won it fair. I don’t. I’m not going to say that,” McDaniel had said to CNN.

“CNN teased an upcoming interview between host Chris Wallace and Ronna McDaniel,” Bump wrote. “In the clip, Wallace asks McDaniel when she stopped being an ‘election denier’ — that is, someone who espouses skepticism about the validity of the election results. And, surprise! McDaniel never stopped.”

Bump also explained the danger in election denialism: “McDaniel won’t say Biden was legitimately elected because the base doesn’t want to hear it — but the base doesn’t want to hear it in part because leaders such as McDaniel won’t simply admit without qualifications that Biden won.”

READ MORE: Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

“Establishing a system in which any loss can easily be framed as illegitimate means establishing a system in which no loss is accepted as valid,” Bump continued. “It means institutionalizing the idea that elections are inaccurate gauges of public opinion and, therefore, that the winners of those elections have no mandate to serve.”

On Wednesday Hewitt, a Washington Post columnist and former Reagan White House aide, said on Fox News that McDaniel “is a fine Republican. She is not an election denier. She has never denied the election.”

Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh responded to that clip.

Bullshit Hugh. With Trump, she pressured MI canvassers to not certify the results; with Trump, she pressured other state attorney’s to sue & invalidate results in MI, PA, & WI; she worked with Trump on the fake electors scheme; she lied about charges of voter fraud well after those charges had been debunked. No major party chair in American history has done more to dispute a legit election. Shame on you,” Walsh wrote.

Media Matters’ Eric Kleefeld, also responding to that clip: “Somebody who helped coordinate fake electors and passed a resolution calling Jan. 6 ‘legitimate political discourse’ is not normal, and we must at all steps refuse to treat them as such.”

READ MORE: Greene Says She Won’t Take Responsibility if Johnson Loses Speaker’s Gavel Before Election

Hewitt had also told Fox News, “I don’t know who is going to keep MSNBC informed of what normal people think, because Ronna McDaniel is about as normal as they come. She’s a Michigan mom, she’s been in the job seven years. She represents the Republican Party.”

McDaniel, it could be said, does not represent the Republican Party, not the MAGA America First Republican Party of today, neither literally nor figuratively. Donald Trump engineered her ouster and installed his handpicked replacements, including his daughter-in-law and Michael Whatley, a right-wing attorney who was part of the Bush recount team during the contested 2000 presidential election.

The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), blasted Hewitt, calling him “an utter disgrace,” while adding, “shame on those like the Washington Post who showcase him.”

Adam Cohen, vice chair of Lawyers for Good Government, pointedly responded to Hewitt: “Hate to tell you this, but normal people don’t try to foment a coup, or deny the truth about election results Like Ronna McDaniel did.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

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Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

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Last year House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer acknowledged former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House advisor Jared Kushner had “crossed the line” when he accepted $2 billion in foreign investment funds from the government of Saudi Arabia as he started up a private investment firm just months after leaving the White House.

Now, Chairman Comer says he will not open an investigation into any possible wrongdoing, Huffpost reports, despite top Democrats alleging Kushner engaged in “apparent influence peddling and quid pro quo deals.”

On Tuesday, the top Democrat on Comer’s Oversight Committee, Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, and Democrat Robert Garcia, the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, formally requested Comer “convene a hearing regarding Jared Kushner’s apparent influence peddling and quid pro quo deals involving investments in exchange for official actions and to examine the resulting threats to our national security.”

“This Committee cannot claim to be ‘investigating foreign nationals’ attempts to target and coerce high-ranking U.S. officials’ family members by providing money or other benefits in exchange for certain actions while continuing to ignore these matters,” Raskin and Garcia wrote. “We therefore urge you to work with us to finally investigate Mr. Kushner’s receipt of billions of dollars from foreign governments in deals that appear to be quid pro quos for actions he undertook as senior White House adviser in Donald Trump’s Administration.”

READ MORE: Greene Says She Won’t Take Responsibility if Johnson Loses Speaker’s Gavel Before Election

The American people are deeply concerned about these business dealings and Mr. Kushner’s apparent influence peddling. We must address
those concerns with a fair, impartial, and public process to understand the truth and to institute meaningful reforms to safeguard public confidence in our executive branch.”

The two Democrats in their letter say their “request comes in light of allegations that Jared Kushner is pursuing new foreign business deals, just as Donald Trump becomes the presumptive Republican nominee for the presidency. Last year, well before these new allegations came to light, Chairman Comer had already conceded that Jared Kushner’s conduct ‘crossed the line of ethics’ and promised that the Oversight Committee would ‘have some questions for Trump and some of his family members, including Jared Kushner.'”

Raskin and Garcia paint a picture of “Kushner’s pattern of profiting off of his time in the White House.”

Citing The New York Times (apparently this article), they write, “Jared Kushner was closing in on investments in Albania and Serbia, leveraging relationships he built during his time as a senior adviser in his father-in-law’s White House. Reportedly, Mr. Kushner is considering an investment on the site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense.”

“Mr. Kushner is reportedly being advised by Richard Grenell, another former senior Trump Administration official who served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany and, concomitantly, as ‘special envoy for peace negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo.’ Mr. Grenell reportedly ‘pushed a related plan’ for redevelopment of the same site during his time in the Trump Administration.”

READ MORE: Trump Says He Thinks He’s ‘Allowed’ to Accept Foreign Money to Pay Fines

“In pursuing investment opportunities in Albania, Mr. Grenell and Mr. Kushner have been openly leveraging their relationship with Edi Rama, the Prime Minister of Albania. While Commander-in-Chief, President Trump received unconstitutional payments from Prime Minister Rama and other senior Albanian government officials who spent thousands of dollars at theTrump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., over three separate stays,” Raskin and Garcia write.

They also allege, “Mr. Kushner successfully overruled State Department officials, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, to make President Trump’s first foreign trip as President to Saudi Arabia. Mr. Kushner personally intervened to inflate the value of a U.S.-Saudi arms deal and to finalize the deal President Trump signed, which was worth $110 billion. Mr. Kushner
also provided diplomatic cover and support to the Crown Prince after the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, an American permanent resident and journalist. Mr. Khashoggi’s murder was assessed by American Intelligence to have been approved by the Crown Prince himself.”

Despite their extensive allegations, Chairman Comer is refusing to open an investigation.

“Unlike the Bidens, Jared Kushner has a legitimate business and has a career as a business executive that predates Donald Trump’s political career,” Comer said, as HuffPost reports. “Democrats’ latest letter is part of their playbook to shield President Biden from oversight.”

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Greene Says She Won’t Take Responsibility if Johnson Loses Speaker’s Gavel Before Election

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Despite filing a motion to vacate the chair last week, which could end Mike Johnson’s short term as Speaker, and despite pummeling him in the press, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) says she will take no responsibility if House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries becomes Speaker of the House before the November election.

Appearing on right-wing media Tuesday, the far-right Georgia Republican targeted Speaker Johnson again, telling GOP voters Johnson stabbed them “in the back.”

Johnson “has a duty and responsibility to care for our conference,” Greene told Real America’s Voice. “That means not force us to vote on full-term abortion, funding the trans agenda, DEI funding, 300 million to the Ukraine war, and many other horrific far-left funding wishlist items that the Democrats were thrilled with.”

“He shouldn’t make us vote on that in order to pay our military soldiers. That’s outrageous. It’s also an election year,” she continued, “and that means that Republicans are out trying to get re-elected and he forced our Republican conference, those that voted for this basically walked the plank for him and that is outrageous.”

READ MORE: $500 Per Second: Ronna McDaniel Reportedly Has a Few Expectations

After talking for several minutes about how Johnson “broke” and “violated” the rules by holding votes to keep the government from shutting down, she insisted her attacks are “not personal against Mike Johnson.”

“I filed the motion to vacate basically issuing a pink slip saying you’re going to be fired, we will not tolerate this any longer. And Republican voters all over this country agree with me,” she insisted.

In October, after Kevin McCarthy was ousted by his own party as Speaker of the House, CBS News reported its new polling “shows the American public wants the next Republican speaker to prioritize federal spending cuts, but also work across the aisle with Democrats and stand up against the ‘MAGA’ movement.”

Declaring, “Our conference needs a new Speaker of the House,” Greene insisted her actions have no effect on Republicans, who increasingly are exiting Congress early.

She also insisted that pinning a possible Speaker of the House Hakeem Jeffries on her is merely “twist” and “spin.”

READ MORE: ‘Absurd & Dangerous’: Truth Social Made Donald Trump Billions Today

“This is simple math,” she said. “The more Republicans like Mike Gallagher that resign and leave early, guess what that means we have less Republicans in the House. So every time a Mike Gallagher or Ken Buck leaves that brings our members down and brings us dangerously closer to being in the minority. It’s not Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

“I am not going to be responsible for Hakeem Jeffries being Speaker of the House. I am not going to for a Democrat majority taking over our Republican majority. That lies squarely, squarely on the shoulders of these Republicans that are leaving early because they don’t have the intestinal fortitude to handle the real fight, and the responsibility that comes with leadership at the end of our Republic when our country is nearly destroyed and when our Constitution is being ran through a paper shredder. So no one is going to blame that on me.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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