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RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM

Roy Moore Calls for Return to 1960’s Morality: ‘We Had the Pledge of Allegiance” – Now ‘We Have Drag Queens Teaching Kindergarten’

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Wanting to take America back to the 60’s and 70’s Moore strings together a ridiculous list depicting a United States that was deeply disturbing.

Alabama Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore went on a lengthy, far right wing tirade, telling supporters last week he wants to take the country back to the morality America had in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Moore, who was credibly accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct, including child sexual assault, delivered a long list of changes the nation has seen in the past 60 or so years. He lamented that back then the nation had the Pledge of Allegiance (as it still does), but now the country has drag queens teaching kindergarten children – as if that were bad.

““We have got to go back to what we did back in the sixties and seventies back to a moral basis,” Moore told members of the Huntsville Republican Men’s Breakfast group, as the Alabama Political Reporter noted (video below). “We did not have a national healthcare system. You know when Obama passed this thing rising all our costs and business started going down the tube everybody said it was going to be repealed. You never hear anybody in Congress talk about it now.”

“Our indebtedness was $22 trillion. Back in the sixties and seventies it was much lower. It was a sixth of that. Abortion was not legal when I went to Vietnam. It was passed later. It was oked later. We had abortion laws in our country and our state. We did not have same sex marriage. We did not have transgender rights. Sodomy was illegal. These things were just not around when my classmates and I went to West Point and Vietnam,” the 72-year old Moore said, implying somehow that civil rights are to blame for out of control Republican spending over the years.

“Back then there was no mention of socialism,” Moore said. “Today we find socialism on the table in Congress. We have Democrats, the Squad, arguing that we should be a socialist nation. They don’t even understand what happened in Argentina. They don’t understand that we are a great nation because we are based on capitalism and growth,” Moore added, not understanding there are different types of socialism.

“Our education system, that is something that really gets me, because back when I was in school in 1965, we had prayer in school,” Moore lamented. “We had prayer before our football games. The Ten Commandments could be displayed in school up until 1980. In 1980 when the Supreme Court outlawed it. They said if posted copies of the Ten Commandment have any affect at all it would cause children to read them. Meditate on that perhaps to venerate and obey them and this is impermissible under the Establishment Clause? I am going to tell you that it’s not impermissible to view the law upon which our nation is founded.”

Moore was removed twice from his elected position as the State’s Supreme Court chief justice. The first time it was over his refusal to remove from public property a monument of the Ten Commandments he had installed.

“We had the Pledge of Allegiance,” Moore continued. “We said the Pledge of Allegiance. We had morning devotionals. I know most of you in here over the age of sixty probably remember days like that. We are continually under attack from atheists and secular humanists who want to take those laws from us.”

“We have drag queens teaching kindergarten children in this state and this community,” Moore decried, adding that “in Huntsville in Mobile they taught kids and they dress them up in drag.”

“Where does this come from? Gender identity is being taught in California to young kids and parents have no choice but to let their kids be taught that.”

“The U.N. You don’t hear any talk about the U.N.,” Moore said. “In our backyard we have an organization in our backyard that intends to take away our rights. They hire kids to go out and protest our economic conditions. We have got to wake up. They don’t stand for us and we are maintaining them.”

It is unclear why Moore thinks the United Nations “intends” to take away Americans’ civil rights, or how they even could.

“When I went to school the Constitution was highly regarded,” Moore said, despite having lost his job over refusing to respect the Constitution. “Now we have kids who undermine our Constitution and impeach our President simply because they do not like his politics. That is not constitutional, and we should know that.”

There are no children who are impeaching President Donald Trump, nor could there be. The people’s duly-elected representatives are engaged in a thoughtful investigation into this president’s abuses of the rule of law and unconstitutional acts, which are mandated by the Constitution.

Watch a portion of Moore’s remarks (begins at the (1:42 mark):

 

Hat tip: Joe.My.God.

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News

Lone Dissenter Calls Texas Supreme Court Transgender Ruling ‘Cruel, Unconstitutional’

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texas supreme court

The lone justice to dissent called the Texas Supreme Court ruling to uphold the ban on gender-affirming care for minors “cruel” and “unconstitutional” Friday.

The Texas Supreme Court, currently made up of all Republican justices, decided 8-1 to uphold a ban on providing gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers, to transgender people under the age of 18. The Court said that it did “not attempt to identify the most appropriate treatment for a child suffering from gender dysphoria,” claiming it to be a “complicated question” for doctors and legislators.

The Court ruled that even though “fit parents have a fundamental interest in directing the care, custody, and control of their children free from government interference,” that interest is bound by “the Legislature’s authority to regulate the practice of medicine.”

READ MORE: Republican Gov. Mike DeWine Vetoes Anti-Trans Bill After Talking to Families With Trans Kids

“[W]e conclude the Legislature made a permissible, rational policy choice to limit the types of available medical procedures for children, particularly in light of the relative nascency of both gender dysphoria and its various modes of treatment and the Legislature’s express constitutional authority to regulate the practice of medicine,” Justice Rebeca Aizpuru Huddle wrote.

Justice Debra Lehrmann, the only justice to dissent, was clear in her disagreement. She wrote that the decision means “the State can usurp parental authority to follow a physician’s advice regarding their own children’s medical needs.” Lehrmann identified that gender-affirming care can be “lifesaving.”

She also mocked the idea that the Court’s ruling didn’t “deprive children diagnosed with gender dysphoria of appropriate treatment.” Lehrmann pointed out that by upholding the law, it “effectively forecloses all medical treatment options that are currently available to these children … under the guise that depriving parents of access to these treatments is no different than prohibiting parents from allowing their children to get tattoos.”

“The law is not only cruel—it is unconstitutional,” she wrote, calling the ban a “hatchet, not a scalpel.”

Lehrmann also put the lie to the claims by anti-LGBTQ activists that surgery is common for transgender minors.

“Indeed, the leading medical associations in this field do not recommend surgical intervention before adulthood. Without a doubt, the removal of a young child’s genitalia is something that neither the conventional medical community nor conscientious parents would condone,” she wrote. “Moreover, medical experts do not recommend that any medical intervention … be undertaken before the onset of puberty.”

Lehrmann is correct. Prior to puberty, transgender care is basically limited to social changes. For example, wearing gender-affirming clothing and using appropriate pronouns, according to Advocates for Trans Equality.

Puberty blockers can be prescribed for those who are starting puberty. Puberty blockers are safe, according to Cedars-Sinai, and are not only used for transgender youth. A common purpose is to stop precocious puberty, which affects 1 in 5,000 children, including children as young as 6. For both transgender youth and kids going through precocious puberty, puberty blockers are known to improve patients’ mental health, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Puberty blockers are also fully reversible. However, in terms of trans youth, a study published in The Lancet found that 98% of those on puberty blockers went on hormone replacement therapy upon turning 18. But even for those few teens who realize after being on puberty blockers that they aren’t trans, all they have to do is stop taking them, and their puberty will progress as normal.

 

 

 

 

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BIGOTRY

Rep. Tim Walberg Tells Uganda to ‘Stand Firm’ on ‘Kill The Gays’ Law Ted Cruz Called ‘Horrific’

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Tim Walberg Uganda Kill The Gays Law

Representative Tim Walberg (R-MI) delivered a speech in Uganda to defend the country’s President Yoweri Museveni and the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023, better known as the “Kill the Gays” law.

Walberg traveled to Uganda in October to attend a national prayer breakfast organized by the Fellowship Foundation, also known as The Family, which also covered the cost of his trip, according to TYT. In the speech, transcribed by the blog Take Care Tim, he told the attendees to “stand firm” in the face of criticism.

“Whose side do we want to be on? God’s side. Not the World Bank, not the United States of America necessarily, not the UN. God’s side,” Walberg said. “I think as we go on here, it says, ‘So I will deliver you from the hand of the wicked, And I will redeem you from the grasp of the violent.’ – Who’s gonna do that? God is gonna do that. Your esteemed President, his excellency, President Museveni needs a nation that stands with him and says, though the rest of the world is pushing back on you, though there are other major countries that are trying to get into you and ultimately change you, stand firm. Stand firm.”

READ MORE: Mike Johnson Once Agreed to Speak at ‘Kill the Gays’ Pastor’s Conference – Until an NCRM Report

Walberg made it clear he knew his view would be unpopular in the United States.

“Now, this will probably get back to the national media in the United States, and I expect some pushback, but I’m not gonna give in to them. … I know that your President is a warrior. I like that about him. We’re in a battle, folks. We are in a battle,” he said.

Though Uganda has had homophobia enshrined in its legal code since it was a British protectorate, the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 is a drastic escalation. Previously, homosexuality was punished with life in prison, according to the Advocate. The new law allows the death penalty for those convicted of “aggravated homosexuality.” It also bans “promotion of homosexuality,” much like Russia bans queer “propaganda”.

The law is so draconian that Republican Senator Ted Cruz—no ally to the queer communitycondemned it. In May, shortly after Museveni signed the law, Cruz called the law “horrific” on X, formerly Twitter.

This Uganda law is horrific & wrong. Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ is grotesque & an abomination. ALL civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse. #LGBTQ,” Cruz tweeted.

Attempts to pass a similar bill to the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 started in 2014, with a bill also called the “Kill the Gays” law. That form of the bill was built by anti-LGBTQ activist Scott Lively, who previously claimed then-President Barack Obama was secretly gay.

While it didn’t go into effect then, the bill and ones like it kept popping up on Uganda’s parliamentary agenda. Earlier this year, President Joe Biden threatened to cut nearly $1 billion in annual aid to Uganda if the bill passed.

A previous version of this story credited Salon with the initial reporting; Salon had republished the article from TYT. The sourcing has been corrected; NCRM regrets the error.

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RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM

If States Start Designating ‘Christian History Month’ You Can Thank This Far Right Christian Nationalist Group

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When the National Association of Christian Lawmakers held its annual conference at Liberty University last month, the event featured a “para-legislative session” at which state legislators and religious-right activists proposed and discussed various resolutions and sample legislation.

Among the speakers at the session was Allan Parker, president of religious-right organization The Justice Foundation, who urged the lawmakers in attendance to return to their states and introduce resolutions declaring the month of June to be “Christian History Month.”

“I think people are feeling it’s time for Christian History Month,” Parker said. “I hadn’t thought about when but I’m going to suggest June because it’s also Celebrate Life Month. The life of this nation was founded on a Christian worldview [and] if we preach all this and teach it in June, we’ll be ready for the Fourth of July with a true understanding of what it means.”

“You have the authority to create celebratory months and recognize things,” Parker reminded the gathered lawmakers.

Parker’s comments make it clear that religious-right leaders would use any state-designated “Christian History Month” as an official vehicle for promoting false and exclusionary Christian nationalist versions of American history, the kind promoted relentlessly by right-wing activists like David Barton, his son Tim, and pastors like Jackson Lahmeyer and Jack Hibbs.

The NACL was founded by unabashed Christian nationalist and former Arkansas state senator Jason Rapert, who is quite open about his intention to do everything that he can to ensure that Christians who share his far-right worldviewtake authority” over every aspect of this nation.

Christian nationalists like Rapert believe that the country was founded as an explicitly Christian nation and that right-wing Christians must do everything they can to keep it that way, including making laws align with their particular religious and political worldview, one that is not shared by many Americans and even many Christians.Via the National Association for Christian Lawmakers, Rapert is putting this talk into action, using his organization advance so-called “biblical” legislation in statehouses throughout the country that would roll back abortion rights and the rights of LGBTQ Americans, defund public libraries that offer LGBTQ-friendly materials, and now perhaps push states or localities to honor Christian History Month.

It is surely no coincidence that LGBTQ Pride Month is already celebrated in June in the United States, a fact that drawn increasingly hostile responses this year from anti-equality activists as right-wing political leaders have escalated their rhetoric targeting LGBTQ people and their supporters.

 

This article was originally published by Right Wing Watch and is republished here by permission.

Image via Shutterstock

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