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The Religious Right Operative Who Helped Write Utah’s Nondiscrimination Law

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Was the nondiscrimination/religious freedom law in Utah really the “historic compromise” it’s being touted as, or a Trojan Horse for the Religious Right’s agenda? There now seems to be little doubt with the discovery that one of the law’s authors has spent years working with the country’s most prominent Religious Right leaders and groups to advance right-to-discriminate laws across the country.

After my article last week asserted that the much-hailed Utah LGBTQ rights law was really an attempt by the national Religious Right to gain legitimacy for their agenda to redefine religious liberty as a religious license to legally discriminate, many have begun looking into how the bill actually came into existence.

As Queer Nation recently pointed out, Robin Fretwell Wilson, a law professor at the University of Illinois, has a long history of seeking to develop loopholes in civil rights laws. In 2014, as the proposed RFRA in Arizona was causing national headlines for its provisions allowing both private and government individuals to opt-out of civil rights and public accommodation laws if done so for religious beliefs, Wilson and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) teamed up to send a letter to Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer, claiming the law was being “egregiously misrepresented.” ADF (formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund back when it was working as part of the legal team defending California’s Prop 8, which stripped marriage rights from same-sex couples), was one of the authors of the Arizona bill. Following massive protests and national outcry, that bill was eventually vetoed by Governor Brewer, but less than a month later a nearly identical bill became law in Mississippi and ADF has worked to pass similar legislation in over a dozen states since.

In 2008, Wilson teamed up with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty—the group behind the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby case—to co-edit their book Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts, where she claimed states must proactively pass “conscience clauses” for religious freedom—the right for individuals, business owners, and government employees to use their religious opinions to legally discriminate against others.[1]

Wilson was more explicit in an op-ed to The New York Times, following the state legislature’s passage of same-sex marriage in 2011. “Without such [individual religious exemptions],” Wilson argues, “groups that hew to their religious beliefs about marriage would be at risk of losing government contracts and benefits and would be subject to lawsuits from private citizens.” She goes on to claim that organizations receiving government funding should never be in danger of losing those tax dollars just because they discriminate against LGBTQ people.

In 2010, Wilson authored a paper in the Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy titled Insubstantial Burdens: The Case for Government Employee Exemptions to Same-Sex Marriage Laws, in which she lamented that (at that point) “not a single state has shielded the government employee at the front line of same-sex marriage, such as the marriage registrar who, if she has a religious objection to same-sex marriage, will almost certainly face a test of conscience.” She concludes with what she believes to be a fair scenario: “Same-sex marriage applications comprise a miniscule part of the overall workload in the local marriage registrar’s office. If that office is staffed by three clerks, Faith, Hope, and Charity, and only Faith has a religious objection to assisting with same-sex marriage applications, allowing Faith to step aside when no hardship will result for same-sex couples is costless.” This, of course, ignores the vast implications of allowing a publicly-funded government employee to deny civil rights to citizens—not to mention the real threat of “Hope” and “Charity” following “Faith’s” lead. Wilson also took it a step further in her 2014 paper, Marriage of Necessity: Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty Protections, where she advocates for the Religious Right to focus on inserting its corrupted view of religious freedom into state laws.

Wilson is also famous for co-writing an op-ed in The Washington Post in 2014 with Bradford Wilcox, claiming that if women want to stop being sexually abused, they should just get married. Co-author Bradford Wilcox is currently the head of the Religious Right’s “National Marriage Project.” But until 2012 he was a director at the Witherspoon Institute, where he played an integral role in the creation of the thoroughly-debunked study by Mark Regnerus, which claimed that children of same-sex parents turn out much worse than children of opposite-sex parents. Wilcox not only acted as an advisor on the project, but was a paid consultant.

And speaking specifically about the Utah law she helped write, Wilson went so far as to lay out that “if the religious right does not believe that they are going to have those [religious exemption] protections, it cannot push forward the other rights.”

Wilson’s true motives in writing Utah’s “compromise” SB296 law are clear.

LGBTQ supporters of the law are arguing that the religious exemptions in SB296 do not undermine the workplace/housing protections for LGBTQ people. But that misses the entire point of the critique of the bill. It didn’t matter what legalese actually went into the law. In fact, it behooved Wilson, the Mormon Church, ADF, and the other Religious Right actors to make the bill appear favorable to LGBTQ people who desperately need workplace and housing protections.

No, the real agenda was to obtain the endorsement of LGBTQ groups. The Religious Freedom Restoration Acts currently being pushed through state legislatures, particularly in the South, are vulnerable to court challenges. But now that the Religious Right has high-profile endorsements of their false framework of religious freedom and LGBTQ rights being opposed to each other, unfortunately, the ability of LGBTQ activists and organizations to oppose RFRAs and other efforts to codify discrimination—all dressed up in the language of “religious freedom”—has been curtailed.

 

Eric Ethington is a journalist, activist, and researcher. Originally from Utah, he now works in Boston for a social justice think tank. His writing, advocacy work, and research have been featured on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, CNBC, the New York Times, The Guardian, and The Public Eye magazine. Follow him on Twitter @EricEthington.

**Cross-posted with permission from Political Research Associates

[1] Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008.

 

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News

Butker’s ‘Traditional Values’ PAC Took Retiree Cash, Spent Most on Fundraising: Report

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December 6, 2024

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A political action committee founded by Harrison Butker—the pro-Trump NFL placekicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, whose highly controversial comments have led to allegations of bigotry, including antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, and sexism, along with anti-vax beliefs—has come under fire.

Butker’s Upright PAC was supposed to “promote and encourage Christian voters to vote, so that their voices are heard this November.” But according to reports, it appears to have taken in donations, and spent most of it on fundraising.

Butker, 29, a friend of Missouri far-right U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, was described as “the latest angry rich guy with a Pac,” in an opinion piece at The Guardian.

READ MORE: How Hegseth and Allies Are Waging War Against the US Military to Secure His Confirmation

His controversial views made major headlines this year when he delivered the commencement address at Benedictine college, a small Catholic school in Atchison, Kansas, back in May.

“Butker managed, in just a few minutes, to be homophobic, anti-abortion (saying that Joe Biden was responsible for ‘the murder of innocent babies’), and racist, railing against the ‘tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion,'” wrote Dave Zirin at The Nation. “He cried out against ‘things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media,’ which supposedly ‘all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.'”

“Butker was also antisemitic,” Zirin charged. “He threw down with a ‘Jews killed Jesus’ line, saying, ‘Congress just passed a bill where stating something as basic as the Biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail.’ Subtle as a blowtorch. But you won’t hear the right say a word about it while they’ll go full-House Un-American Activities Committee on college presidents over fabricated charges of the same.”

He attacked LGBTQ Pride Month as a “deadly sin.”

Butker also went after women, or more precisely, women who want to have careers outside the home—like his mother, a medical physicist, has. His mother also has not one but two university degrees.

“I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you,” Butker told the women graduates (full transcript here). “How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world…I’m on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation…and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker. I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she started living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.”

And he went after President Joe Biden, calling him “delusional.”

READ MORE: ‘Melania Grift’: Incoming First Lady Hawks Her Christmas ‘Collectibles’ in Fox Interview

“Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally,” Butker charged. “He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I’m sure to many people it appears that you can be both Catholic and pro-choice.”

“He is not alone, Butker said. “From the man behind the COVID lockdowns to the people pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America, they all have a glaring thing in common. They are Catholic. This is an important reminder that being Catholic alone doesn’t cut it.”

(GLAAD published this fact-check.)

On Friday, investigative journalist Roger Sollenberger reported: “Remember when Josh Hawley’s placekicker pal Harrison Butker started a PAC to promote candidates that support Christian values? Turns out it raised $36,000, gave $0 to candidates, and spent about $30K on fundraising fees.”

Sollenberger posted a link to this page at the Federal Election Commission.

He adds, “Most of the donors to Butker’s PAC say they’re retirees. One donor was unemployed three years ago and gave the pro-Christian group $475, listing her current job as an associate at Walmart.”

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) also investigated, saying, “we took a look. Butker’s PAC raised $36k from small donors. Guess how much it spent on its stated goal? Absolutely nothing.”

“But records show it spent more than $30k of that $36k, so where did the money go?” CREW asked. “$100 on office supplies. And all the rest spent on fundraising.”

And CREW notes, “A further search shows no records of Butker, the highest paid kicker in the NFL, making any political contributions himself.”

See the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Sympathy for Dictators’: Ex-NatSec Officials Warn on Gabbard, Want Closed Door Hearings

 

Image via Wikimedia

 

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How Hegseth and Allies Are Waging War Against the US Military to Secure His Confirmation

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3 days ago

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December 6, 2024

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Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News weekend co-host, angrily vowed that his battle to become Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense would not be “tried in the media,” but that is exactly what Hegseth and his allies are doing — and they’re attacking the reputation and credibility of America’s Armed Forces to make their case.

“I don’t answer to anyone in this group,” Hegseth told reporters on Thursday.

“None of you, not to that camera at all,” he said, as he began pointing. “I answer to President Trump, who received 76 million votes on behalf — and a mandate for change. I answer to the 50 — the 100 — senators who are part of this process and those in the committee, and I answer to my lord and savior. And my wife and my family.”

Earlier on Thursday, Hegseth in a social media post (below) attacked the U.S. Military and the current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, a decorated combat veteran who fought in two wars.

READ MORE: ‘Melania Grift’: Incoming First Lady Hawks Her Christmas ‘Collectibles’ in Fox Interview

“Maybe it’s time for a @SecDef who has… Led in combat. Been on patrol for days. Pulled a trigger. Heard bullets whiz by. Called in close air support. Led medevacs. Dodged IEDs. And understands—to his core—the power of this photo…because he’s been on that knee before.”

Hegseth was excoriated.

“Odd post,” remarked award-winning journalist Kevin Baron, the former Executive Editor at Defense One. “Lots of confrontational bravado but …the current SecDef Lloyd Austi[n] has literally done this and way, way more, leading larger and larger military commands all the way from West Point to the entire Iraq War and as COCOM… while Hegseth was a TV pundit.”

The Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe, who covers the U.S. Military, added, “This basic description also applies to Lloyd Austin, Jim Mattis, and Chuck Hagel,” all current or former Secretaries of Defense.

Moe Davis, the retired U.S. Air Force colonel, attorney, educator, politician, and former administrative law judge, quipped: “Maybe it’s time for a SECDEF who doesn’t have to pledge he won’t get knee-walking drunk if he’s confirmed and doesn’t have to get his mommy to go on TV to say ‘he’s no longer the reprehensible pervert he was a couple of years ago’ now that he’s the SECDEF nominee.”


Among the common attacks from Hegseth and his supporters is the claim the U.S. Armed Forces is no longer the world’s most lethal fighting force.

U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan made that suggestion to support Hegseth late last month.

“We need to get back to the core mission of the Dept. of Defense. That’s lethality. That’s winning wars. That’s peace through strength,” he declared. “I saw first-hand some of the woke stuff that was happening with regard to the Biden administration. You now, you had a Secretary of the Navy who was more focused on climate change than ship building. One of President Biden’s first executive orders wasn’t focused on lethality, winning wars, it was focused on transgender surgery for active duty troops!”

Sullivan insisted that America needs to “create the most lethal force in the world to deter wars and I think Pete Hegseth is very focused on that and I think that is a refreshing change, a critical change.”

“Lethality” appears to be Hegseth’s marching order, under the implication that America’s military is not lethal—a direct assault on the credibility of the Armed Forces.

READ MORE: ‘Sympathy for Dictators’: Ex-NatSec Officials Warn on Gabbard, Want Closed Door Hearings

“That’s what Donald Trump asked me to do: ‘Your job is to bring a war fighting ethos back to the Pentagon. Your job is to make sure that it’s lethality, lethality, lethality,’” Hegseth said Wednesday, CNN reported. “Everything else is gone. Everything else that distracts from that shouldn’t be happening.”

“Rather than leaning into controversial policies he has supported, such as banning women from combat roles, Hegseth told senators that his aim is to ‘make this military lethal again,’ the [transition team] official said.”

U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) also promoted the harmful suggestion that America’s fighting forces are no longer lethal.

“I enjoyed meeting with @PeteHegseth and hearing about his plans to achieve President Trump’s peace through strength agenda,” she wrote Thursday. “He is committed to putting our warfighters in the best position and returning the Pentagon’s focus to our force’s lethality.”

On Friday, Vice President-elect JD Vance continued the attack on America’s Armed Forces.

“For too long, the Pentagon has been led by people who lose wars. Pete Hegseth is a man who fought in those wars,” he declared, ignoring the history of highly-decorated warriors in charge of the Pentagon, including Secretary Austin.

U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) has been all-in on Hegseth and even suggested it’s time America overlook detrimental allegations—including Hegseth’s—for Senate-confirmable nominees.

On Thursday, on Fox Business he suggested that Hegseth’s accusers might be fictional. And he described Hegseth as “a warrior’s warrior. He’s somebody that the rank and file military men and women can look to and go ‘finally there’s somebody at the helm that represents us, not just the guys with stars on their shoulders.'”

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s bio from 2017, when he was given the Distinguished Graduate Award by the West Point Association of Graduates, includes this accolade: “Called a warrior and a ‘Soldier’s Soldier’ by many.”

See the social media post and video above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump May Balk at Hegseth Over Drinking History, Not Sexual Misconduct Allegations: Report

 

Image via Reuters

 

 

 

 

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‘Melania Grift’: Incoming First Lady Hawks Her Christmas ‘Collectibles’ in Fox Interview

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December 6, 2024

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America’s incoming First Lady, Melania Trump, in a rare public appearance, sat down with the “Fox & Friends” crew Friday morning to discuss how she is getting ready to return to the White House, how her husband, President-elect Donald Trump, is handling his second transition, and to promote her apparently for-profit business ventures, including her book, Christmas ornaments, NFTs, and other “collectibles.”

Other First Ladies have had careers after serving the American public in the White House, notably Hillary Clinton and Jacqueline Kennedy, but should she continue with this venture or others, Melania Trump may become the first First Lady who has a for-profit business during her time in the White House.

On Fox News, Trump was asked about the public programs she will focus on as First Lady.

She spoke briefly about her signature “Be Best” program, which she launched in May, 2018. It was widely mocked when she introduced it, and reports found some of it was a repackaging of existing federal initiatives around cyberbullying, including those from the Obama administration.

Trump then quickly moved to talking about what she said were her “Web 2” and “Web 3” businesses.

READ MORE: ‘You Answer to Us’: Hegseth Slammed for Saying He Only Answers to Trump, Senators, and God

“Well, when I was in the White House for four years, I established my Be Best initiative and I also successfully brought it overseas and around the world. It was very successful and after I left the White House, I established my Web 3 and Web 2 platforms where I design, where I have collectibles like ornaments every season, this is the third season. And many other collectibles that are available now.”

She then appeared to suggest some of the proceeds from those businesses go to support students, but she did not offer any specifics, nor do her websites. The website where she sells her Christmas ornaments does not appear to say anything about donations to charity.

“So with those, I have students from a foster community that I sponsor and I’m very proud of and we have many of them now, so their life changes because they will have an education,” Trump said.

Juliet Jeske, who runs Decoding Fox News, writes: “The money from the overpriced ornaments doesn’t go to charity. I went through her entire website. The profits go back to her.”

On her website, the Christmas ornaments sell for $75 each. The “USA Star” ornament is listed at $90.

“So this are the ornaments that they are available this season, this is the third season that I design and they are very special,” Trump told the “Fox & Friends” co-hosts. “For example, Lady Liberty, it was inspiration from my necklace that I bought when I was modeling in Paris. And now we have an ornament and we have also a necklace that it’s available on MelaniaTrump.com. So I, also, this one it’s the necklace and inspiration, the flower and they’re very patriotic this year. As you could see, it’s all red white and blue and I was inspired by that.”

READ MORE: ‘Sympathy for Dictators’: Ex-NatSec Officials Warn on Gabbard, Want Closed Door Hearings

“They discontinue, they retire, and this is available right now. And it’s a great gift and great collectible, actually.”

Attorney Michael Kasdan, an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law, remarked, “The Fox-Trump Home Shopping Network.”

Attorney Jeffrey Evan Gold, a CNN legal analyst, called it “Free advertising for Melania Grift.”

Last year, The New York Times reported, “In February 2022, Mrs. Trump started ‘Fostering the Future,’ a scholarship program for foster children aging out of the system. A person familiar with the program, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, would not offer details or disclose how many scholarships have been awarded, saying only that it was ‘more than two.’ No charity with the name Fostering the Future or Be Best is registered in Florida or New York.”

Hillary Clinton, who served as First Lady from 1993 to 2001, has authored nine books, including three during her eight years inside the White House. First Ladies Eleanor Roosevelt and Barbara Bush also authored books while serving in the White House.

For her first book, the 1996 New York Times bestseller “It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us,” Hillary Clinton donated all royalties to charity and took no money except to cover expenses, according to The New York Times. Similarly, for the other two books she wrote during her time as First Lady, Clinton donated the proceeds to charities, including the National Park Foundation and the White House Historical Association.

Barely weeks after Donald Trump’s first inauguration, in 2017, Melania Trump’s “representatives issued statements saying that the first lady ‘has no intention’ of using her public position for personal gain,” The Washington Post reported. The paper noted those statements came one day “after Melania Trump filed a lawsuit accusing a British news company of hurting her ability to build a profitable brand.”

Before Election Day this year, CNN reported Melania Trump’s publisher had requested the news network pay $250,000 for an interview.

PEOPLE magazine reported on Friday that “Melania Trump is gearing up for another four years as first lady and all the duties that come with the title, including decorating the White House for Christmas.”

“The ex-model wife of President-elect Donald Trump, 54, previously made headlines surrounding the holidays for her bold choice of Christmas decor — and because of leaked audio recordings where she griped about the responsibility of decorating 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.,” PEOPLE’s report notes.

“’I’m working … my a– off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a f— about the Christmas stuff and decorations?’ she was heard saying in a recording from 2018 that has recently resurfaced on social media. ‘But I need to do it, right?'”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

RELATED: ‘Unethical’ and ‘Corrupt’: Melania Trump Slammed Over Six-Figure Fee for Political Event

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