Connect with us

News

Breaking-Exclusive: Activist Admits Her Testimony To Senators On Texas Anti-Gay Bill Was False

Published

on

A leader of the anti-gay organization Concerned Women for America has admitted her testimony to the Texas Senate over a bill that would shield clergy and churches from same-sex weddings was not true.

Last week lawmakers on a Texas Senate committee heard testimony on SB 2065, a bill designed to shield clergy members and churches from performing same-sex weddings. While the First Amendment already provides this protection, this bill would allow clergy members who are employed by the state as justices of the peace or county clerks to refuse to marry same-sex couples. Texas lawmakers are engrossed in a battle against their LGBT constituents, and this month over two dozen anti-gay bills before them, including one that would literally defund same-sex marriage in the Lone Star State.

LOOK: Texas Lawmakers Begin Week Focusing On Anti-Gay Bills By Voting To Shield Clergy And Churches

On Monday, May 4, Beverly Roberts, an Area Director for Concerned Women for America, delivered testimony before Texas Senators. Concerned Women for America (CWA) is a right wing religious anti-gay, anti-abortion activist group that opposes same-sex marriage, a woman’s right to choose, the teaching of evolution in schools, feminism, pornography, stem cell research, and advocates for school prayer.

The mission of CWA is to protect and promote Biblical values among all citizens – first through prayer, then education, and finally by influencing our society – thereby reversing the decline in moral values in our nation,” its website states.

“I have a question for you,” Roberts, in red in the photo above and video below, told the Texas Senators as she began her testimony. “Is it necessary for a couple to be married by a minister to be legally married?” she asked.

“If not, why are homosexual couples in states where same-sex marriage is legal, demanding that ministers perform their marriage ceremonies?”

“Should we not consider these to be hate crimes?,” Roberts continued. “Are these not instances of targeted bigotry? Are these couples not engaging in the same bullying tactics they profess to deplore? Why are they attacking a minister when they don’t even need him to perform their marriage? So again I ask you, who are the bullies, the bigots and the haters?”

The New Civil Rights Movement reached out to Roberts via email on Monday, asking her to point us to “the story or stories you testified about,” as, to our knowledge, there are no actual instances in reputable news reports of same-sex couples demanding that ministers perform their marriage ceremonies.

In an email response received Monday night, Roberts effectively admitted that her testimony was false.

“My testimony did not relate to a specific instance,” Roberts told NCRM in her email, adding it was “to put a law into place ahead of a possible Supreme Court Ruling requiring all states to perform same-sex ‘marriages.'”

“We know that, given the tactics of the LGBT community, it would not be long before they started suing churches and ministers who decline to do their ceremonies,” Roberts wrote. “They just move incrementally as they force their agenda on the rest of us and we have begun to fight back.”

And yet, Roberts clearly asked Texas Senators, “why are homosexual couples in states where same-sex marriage is legal, demanding that ministers perform their marriage ceremonies?” while being unaware of any same-sex couples who, to her knowledge, have demanded that ministers perform their marriage ceremonies. All she could offer NCRM was, “We know that, given the tactics of the LGBT community, it would not be long before they started suing churches and ministers who decline to do their ceremonies.” That is not an instance of it having happened.

In her email Roberts included a link to an article in the Washington Times about last year’s story from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where right wing blogs and websites falsely claimed one same-sex couple had demanded ministers who own a wedding chapel marry them, but those reports were proven false long ago, as NCRM reported in, “Almost Everything You’ve Been Told About The Idaho Wedding Chapel Story Is A Lie,” and “Entire Hitching Post Controversy Is False: ACLU Finds Chapel Falls Under Religious Exemption.”

It’s important to note that Roberts pointed to the Washington Times story not as an example – although it would have been false – of same-sex couples demanding that ministers perform their marriage ceremonies, but rather, as she wrote in her email, in relation to “the ordinance that I was using as an example for what is to come.”

After Roberts’ testimony, and the testimony of others, including pastors who compared same-sex marriage to bestiality and pedophilia, as John Wright at Towleroad reported, the committee passed the bill 5-1. Yesterday, the Texas Senate passed the bill, 21-10. It is awaiting a vote by the Texas House.

The New Civil Rights Movement reached out again to Roberts today asking if she had anything additional to add. We have not received a reply.

Related:

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

Texas Anti-Gay Lawmaker And Gay Son Suffer Fallout Over Anti-Discrimination Bill

Texas Attorney General Sues Feds To Stop Same-Sex Spouses From Taking Care Of Each Other

 

Image: Screenshot via Lone Star Q/YouTube
Video from an article at Towleroad by John Wright

 

Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

Extremist Group Targets Florida High School’s Yearbook Over Inclusion of LGBTQ Students Section

Published

on

The publication of a Florida high school yearbook that included an LGBTQ section has drawn rebuke from a conservative group, The Orlando Sentinel reports.

Lyman High School’s 256-page yearbook includes two pages that highlight the school’s LGBTQ students and features gender identity terms such as “genderfluid” and “nonbinary.”

The Seminole County Public Schools in response to the criticism is offering to issue refunds or reprint the yearbook without the LGBTQ section that the conservative Seminole County Moms for Liberty claims is offensive.

“They shouldn’t have any sexual definitions in a yearbook,” the group’s chapter chair Jessica Tillmann told The Sentinel.

“This is a yearbook that goes to every student as young as 14.”

The school’s yearbook is stirring controversy for a second straight year after the district in 2022 considered putting stickers over photos of a student walkout protesting the so-called “don’t say gay” law, the report said.

The Sentinel’s Skyler Swisher reports that “An LGBTQ+ section in this year’s yearbook includes a picture of members of the student’s Gay-Straight Alliance, definitions of key LGBTQ+ terms, a passage on the evolution of pronouns and a profile of a student who advocates for the LGBTQ+ community.”

Danielle Pomeranz, the school yearbook’s faculty advisor, isn’t on board with the district’s decision to remove the LGBTQ content.

“They are definitions,” Pomeranz told The Sentinel.

“They are not teaching anything about sex at all. … Nobody is teaching anybody about sex acts. It is ridiculous.”

Pomeranz has since resigned from her position in the district, citing in part the Sunshine State’s political climate and an unsupportive district, the report said.

“We’ve always had the LGBTQ+ spread in there,” she said.

“Our job as journalists and members of the yearbook staff is to provide coverage of the entire school and that includes all of the communities, including the LGBTQ+ community.”

Read the full article here.

Image via Shutterstock

Continue Reading

News

Watch Live: President Biden to Deliver Rare Address to the Nation on Bipartisan Debt Ceiling Agreement

Published

on

President Joe Biden will make a rare address to the nation Friday evening, to share with the American people the results of successful negotiations with Republicans to avert what could have been not only a national but global economic disaster had the debt ceiling crisis not been averted.

Biden is being credited for smart and savvy negotiations while keeping out of the public eye and allowing Republicans to control the narrative, while steering the agreement to one best for the American people.

Even Speaker Kevin McCarthy “conceded that he had been impressed with Biden’s negotiating team during the talks, calling them ‘very professional, very smart’ and ‘very tough at the same time,'” HuffPost reported Wednesday.

Many extremist House Republicans were hoping for a default, and over the past several weeks they made clear they did not understand what the consequences would have been.

RELATED: ‘Objectively Amazing’: Economists Cheer ‘Extraordinarily Robust’ and ‘Close to Unprecedented’ Jobs Report

Watch President Biden below at 7 PM ET, or at this link.

RELATED: ‘Republicans Got Outsmarted by a President Who Can’t Find His Pants’: GOP Congresswoman Throws Debt Ceiling Tantrum

Continue Reading

News

FBI Agrees to Brief Top House Oversight Leaders on Unsubstantiated Allegation Against Biden

Published

on

Under threat of a contempt of Congress referral against FBI Director Chris Wray, the Bureau has agreed to allow a briefing for the top Republican and top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee on a years-old unsubstantiated allegation, which has been called a second-hand tip, accusing then-Vice President Joe Biden of a supposed wrongful act.

The existence of the lone, unclassified document, called an FD-1023 form, until recently was not even verified by the FBI.

Chairman Jim Comer (R-KY) and Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) “will receive a briefing from the FBI and review the FD-1023 form behind closed doors in a secure SCIF, a sensitive compartmented information facility at the Capitol rather than going to FBI headquarters, as the bureau had initially offered,” CNN on Friday reported.

READ MORE: Classified Pentagon ‘War Plans’ Document Trump Bragged About in Audio Recording Is Missing: Report

“While the document contains the allegations made by an unnamed whistleblower, it doesn’t provide proof that they are true, people briefed on the matter said. The FBI and prosecutors who previously reviewed the information couldn’t corroborate the claims.”

Chairman Comer, who has been accused of using his position on the powerful Oversight Committee aid Donald Trump’s efforts to regain the presidency, late last month appeared to validate that accusation.

The unverified FD-1023 form “has origins in a tranche of documents that Rudy Giuliani provided to the Justice Department in 2020, people briefed on the matter said,” CNN notes.

“According to Comer,” CNN adds, the FD-1023 form, “dated June 30, 2020, says [a] foreign national allegedly paid $5 million to receive a desired policy outcome, based on unclassified and legally protected whistleblower disclosures.”

On Thursday, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who has teamed up with Chairman Comer, came under fire for admitting he does not care whether or not the accusations against President Biden are true or not, he wants to pursue them regardless.

READ MORE: Classified Pentagon ‘War Plans’ Document Trump Bragged About in Audio Recording Is Missing: Report

CNN earlier this week reported that even then-Attorney General Bill Barr questioned the validity of the alleged document.

“The allegations of wrongdoing by the then-vice president, many originating from sources in Ukraine, were dubious enough that Attorney General William Barr in early 2020 directed that they be reviewed by a US attorney in Pittsburgh, in part because Barr was concerned that Giuliani’s document tranche could taint the ongoing Hunter Biden investigation overseen by the Delaware US attorney.”

Ranking Member Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, in a statement this week characterized the FD-1023 as containing “unsubstantiated, second-hand claims,” and called it a “tip.”

Raskin has also accused Comer of being determined to send a contempt of Congress referral for Director Wray to the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

“It is increasingly clear that Committee Republicans have always planned to hold Director Wray in contempt of Congress to distract from the obvious fact that they do not have evidence to support their unfounded accusations against President Biden. This latest political maneuver underscores Chairman Comer’s determination to use the Committee to help former President Trump’s reelection efforts and pander to extreme MAGA Republicans.”

Last month, The New Republic reported, the “House GOP accused Joe Biden and his family … of engaging in business with foreign entities—but were unable to provide any actual evidence linking the president to any wrongdoing.”

“House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer released a 65-page memo detailing a sprawling investigation into Biden and some of his relatives, particularly his son Hunter Biden. Nowhere in the massive document was there a specific allegation of a crime committed by Biden or any of his relatives.”

 

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.