South Carolina Senator’s Bill Would Legalize Religious Anti-Gay Marriage Discrimination
A South Carolina state senator’s legislation would allow state employees to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Meet Lee Bright. In 2009, he took his seat as a South Carolina Republican state senator, having left his prior employment as the head of his father’s trucking firm. On a campaign disclosure – Bright tried, and failed, to unseat U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham – he reported “owing 29 creditors between $1.4 million and $3.1 million,” according to The State.
Now 44 years old, Bright is on a mission to expand the right of South Carolinians to discriminate against LGBT people.
Bright moving toward his anti-gay goal by filing a bill last week that would exempt any employee who works for the State of South Carolina from having to do their job by issuing a marriage license to any same-sex couple. That state employee, should Sen. Bright’s bill pass and become law, merely has to claim they have a sincerely-held religious belief against same-sex marriage and they almost literally get a “get out of jail free” card.
“At the end of the day I want to know I did all I could, and I think it’s something we need to do to protect these judges so they can serve in these honorable positions without feeling like they betrayed their faith,” Bright said.Â
But it’s not as if Bright has an internal fairness doctrine operating and wants to help or protect LGBT people, or judges whose faith supports same-sex marriage. “Faith” isn’t necessarily the driving force behind Bright’s bill.Â
In January, Bright called for judges whose rulings support marriage equality to be impeached.
“Congress ought to stand up and do its job and impeach one of these federal judges,” Bright told a Tea Party group. “And I think when you do that, being a federal judge is a pretty good gig, and I think if you’ll impeach just one, the rest of them will do the right thing. And they’ll do it out of necessity, because self-preservation is an instinct that so many folks have.”
And in April, Bright railed against what he claims is “indoctrination” of college students into “the homosexual agenda.”
Sen. Bright was on C-SPAN with Family Research Council Action leader and reality TV star Josh Duggar, and announced, “we’ve got the homosexual agenda on the full march in our institutions of higher ed and we’ve gone from education to indoctrination, so we are in a fight — they have seized the educational establishment and we’ve got to take that back and we’ve got to get folks involved in that or otherwise that’s our next generation.”
Here’s Bright delivering an offensive speech on the floor of the South Carolina Senate, railing against LGBT people.
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Image via Facebook
Hat tip: Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
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During an appearance on MSNBC, former Watergate attorney Jill Wine-Banks warned Donald Trump he could end up in pre-trial detention if he doesn’t tone down his rhetoric about his criminal indictments.
In a segment with host Ayman Mohyeldin on the former president’s attacks on prosecutors, including Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and special counsel Jack Smith, Wine-Banks suggested sanctioning Trump financially would be ineffective since he would just pay the fines with his supporter’s donations.
As the expert explained, Trump is putting the judges in a tough spot if they decide to jail the former president, but that he may leave them no choice.
According to Wine-Banks, Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s Washington D.C. federal trial, is “up to the task” of handling the former president’s attacks.
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
“I think that she can handle it, but she is in a very difficult position because putting him in custody has to be a last resort,” she explained. “He may push her to that, but he will see it as a political advantage, and so she has to be careful not to give him that advantage. But there is a limit to what she can do to enforce his compliance with what her reasonable requirements for his release are.”
“She can penalize him with a monetary fine but his supporters are paying his legal bills already so it doesn’t hurt him and he doesn’t care about them and their money,” she added. “And so I don’t know how much benefit in terms of his compliance it would be to fine him if he doesn’t obey the fine. She said she would move to trial date up but she can only move it up so far without denying him due process and the adequate time to prepare, and he knows that and she knows that.”
“So there’s a very limited amount of things that she can do other than incarceration, and I think that that may have to be if he — you know [political consultant] Stuart Stevens is right: he can’t control himself,” she elaborated. “And so if he goes way beyond the bounds and is clear in his threats and provoking his supporters to create violence in response to these threats, I think that he will have to be shut up by being incarcerated, and we have an example of Eugene Debs who ran for president from jail and so it is possible that he can continue his campaign from jail.”
Watch below or at the link.
Image via Shutterstock
On Saturday morning the Miami Herald called out Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for a story he told during Wednesday’s Republican Party debate about an abortion where he got the facts entirely wrong in order to make his anti-choice point.
At issue was a tale about a woman he called “Penny” who survived an abortion.
The Florida governor told a national TV audience, “I know a lady in Florida named Penny. She survived multiple abortion attempts. She was left discarded in a pan. Fortunately, her grandmother saved her and brought her to another hospital.”
According to the Herald, DeSantis got the story wrong even down to the woman’s name.
ALSO IN THE NEWS: Trump launches overnight attack on Jack Smith for making him ‘look as bad as possible’
As the Herald’s Julie K. Brown wrote, “Critics of the governor flocked to social media to suggest the “Penny” story was made up or wildly embellished. Supporters countered that liberals were triggered by an ugly truth.”
She continued, “Penny is real and her last name is Hopper. But DeSantis failed to note key details from her remarkable story: The person who tried to end Penny’s life in the womb was not a doctor or even an illegal abortion provider — it was her father. And his effort to abort his daughter with a coat hanger took place almost two decades before the Supreme Court’s seismic Roe v. Wade decision, which established a woman’s right to an abortion.
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
Brown added that her debunking of the DeSantis’ story “is based on previous recorded statements made by Hopper, newspaper clippings, public records and an interview with a family member who after speaking to a journalist at length asked not to be identified. She confirmed that Hopper’s version of events has been told in family circles for years.”
You can read more here.
OPINION
‘Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow’ Didn’t Indict Trump, ‘Regular People’ Did: Fox News Host Destroys ‘Two-Tiered’ Justice Claims
A Fox News host destroyed conservative claims that Donald Trump‘s criminal indictments show there’s a “two-tiered” system of justice being used against Republicans.
Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal co-host on the conservative cable channel’s popular afternoon show, “The Five,” reminded her right-wing counterparts on Friday that Trump was indicted in four different jurisdictions by “regular people,” while pointing to a new poll that finds majorities of Americans believe he is guilty of the federal crimes he has been charged with and if convicted believe he should be imprisoned.
“Donald Trump was indicted in four jurisdictions around this country, by juries of regular Americans in New York, in D.C., and Atlanta, and in South Florida, where he calls home,” Tarlov said. “This wasn’t Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow sitting there. It was regular people who listened to the evidence that was brought before them.”
“When you say that people are rallying behind him, his diehard base is, but the average American isn’t,” she continued.
“There’s new polling out today. 62% think that he committed a crime, including 67% of independents. 61% think that he must stand trial before the election. Why? Because you don’t want to put someone in office who’s going to jail, and 59% think that the DOJ is being fair.”
“That shoots straight through the argument that this is a ‘two-tiered’ system of justice,” she continued. “If you don’t like that Joe Biden is fundraising off of it, you know, Donald Trump is doing the same thing, he’s having his moment. Mitch McConnell even – remember he fundraised off of ‘Cocaine Mitch.'”
Watch below or at this link.
Jessica: 62% think he committed a crime including 67% of independents. 61% think that he must stand trial before the election. 59% think that the doj is being fair. That shoots straight through the argument that this is a two-tiered system of justice. pic.twitter.com/xeZ1gKH5WL
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 25, 2023
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