Victim Or Victimizer? Catholic Church, Diaz’s Gay Equality Intolerance
Victim Or Victimizer? Friend or foe?
Hard at work painting itself as the victim in a public debate on marriage equality, The New York State Catholic Conference, along with New York State Senator and Reverend Rubén DÃaz, are instead victimizing the gay community.
Guest post by New York City-​based novelist and freelance journalist Scott Rose, who frequently writes about human rights.
The New York State Catholic Conference, which bills itself as “the official public policy voice of the Catholic Church in New York State,” knows absolutely no shame in its efforts to perpetuate sexual orientation apartheid in New York State. Last week the Catholic Conference published a press release titled, “A Note on Intolerance†in which it painted itself and New York State Senator and Reverend Rubén DÃaz, Sr. — a Pentecostal minister and sadistic opponent of LGBT civil rights — as victims of hysterical and vulgar attack from the marriage equality movement. In fact, gay rights foes are, indeed, the bullies. Merely consider which group has full, equal, constitutionally-protected civil rights, and which does not.
I sent the author of that press release, Richard E. Barnes — who, coincidentially, was quoted Sunday in an AP article, “Some gay-rights foes claim they now are bullied” – and other leading figures in the Catholic Conference an e-mail, objecting that their presentation of information surrounding the marriage equality movement was calculated to smear gay people. I specifically offered to help to do what Mr. Barnes had not at all done – that is, to present within the press release a well-reasoned, intellectual statement explaining just what about state-sanctioned sexual orientation apartheid in the matter of marriage is so hurtful, backwards and ignorant. I did not receive the courtesy of a reply.
The appearance is that the New York State Catholic Conference, whose web site states it “was founded to translate Catholic teachings into action in the public policy arena” — in clear, direct conflict of the U.S. Â Constitution’s separation of church and state –Â wants to keep attention centered on that handful of LGBTers who in outrage and frustration over being oppressed, do something goofy, like decide to hold an F*!% Ruben DÃaz Festival.
The core issues surrounding marriage equality have nothing whatsoever to do with such diversions. For that matter, the arguments involving marriage equality, as a politician like New York State Senator and Reverend Rubén DÃaz presents them, also have nothing to do with those core issues. DÃaz and his anti-gay co-conspirators in the Catholic Conference have their minds closed shut, like safes with nothing but cobwebs and anti-gay vindictiveness inside. The arguments they present against equality have all been resoundingly debunked.
To cite but one example from the Catholic Conference’s press release, they allege that marriage equality would take away their “religious liberty.†That is absolute hooey. The Catholic Church has a special interest in keeping gay people oppressed. Its noxious set-up in the past has been to persecute gays and lesbians over their sexual orientation as they are growing up, drive them to the utter depths of social despair and then offer to them as the only apparent workable option for living out their lives a sexless enslavement to the Church.
The nuns in particular get hidden away, doing the dirty work and the laundry for the men up through to those towards the top of the hierarchy like the Catholic Conference’s Barnes who exploit them to live cushy privileged existences. Where anti-gay bigotry is eliminated, where gay people’s long-term relationships are validated, where gay youth are shown hope for love and intimacy in their futures, the Catholic Church loses many potential candidates that it otherwise might have been able to terrorize into becoming slavish priests or nuns.
The Catholic Conference’s press release duplicitously alleges that the organization has a “love for all of God’s children, gay or straight.†Exactly what, according to these duplicitous anti-gay bullies, are the gay and lesbian people that these Catholics allegedly love supposed to do upon reaching a marrying age? Force themselves into impossible relationships with heterosexuals? Resign themselves to permanent second-class citizenship with a mate? Part of what caused the bullycide of Tyler Clementi when he jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge last year was Tyler’s knowledge that his society irrationally hated him so strongly for who he was that it would not permit him to marry a man.
What, incidentally, but not insignificantly, is the source of anti-gay bullies in our schools? Anti-gay bullies do not grow under cabbages, nor do they come from families that teach good strong acceptance values. Anti-gay bullies in the schools come from households where parents teach children fraudulent notions that there is something inherently “wrong†with homosexual human beings. The way the unrelenting anti-gay bully the Pope states it, actually, is that homosexual people are “objectively disordered.†That is rich, coming from a man who maintains his grip on power by alleging belief in a “virgin birth.â€
The Catholic Conference’s press release also attempts to make all LGBT people accountable for supposed credible threats made against Diaz. None of those threats, however, have come from any leader of the push for marriage equality, such as Governor Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Michael Bloomberg or Senator Thomas Duane. By contrast, during an anti-gay hate rally DÃaz held in the Bronx on May 15, his co-conspirator in anti-gay oppression, the Reverend Ariel Torres Ortega, hollered at an anti-LGBT mob that God says that gay people are “worthy of death.†Not only has Diaz not apologized for that, he and his associates have tried to excuse it away, with any number of repugnantly disingenuous defenses of it.
The arguments that Ruben DÃaz and Richard Barnes would make against Cuomo, Bloomberg and Duane in their defenses of equality do not bear intellectual scrutiny. The intellectual bankruptcy of DÃaz’s and Barnes’s anti-gay bigotry, furthermore, is thrown into heightened relief against all the religious leaders today — not to mention, Whole churches! Whole branches of Judaism! – that favor marriage equality. It bears repeating here that in 2009, Saqib Ali, the first Muslim Delegate in the Maryland General Assembly, explained why he voted for marriage equality. “I recognize that I represent people of all faiths and no faith at all. If I tried to enforce religion by law – as in a theocracy – I would be doing a disservice both to my constituents and to my religion.â€
DÃaz is to be condemned for more than just endorsing the idea that God says gays are “worthy of death.â€Â He calculatingly scheduled his May 15 anti-gay hate rally on the same day as this year’s annual New York Aids Walk, so people would not be available to protest at his anti-gay hate rally — forcing some to choose between their love of their brand of religion and their love of a loved one. More heterosexual than lesbian women are living with HIV or AIDS, yet lesbians of course give priority to participating in the AIDS walk over protesting DÃaz’s anti-gay hate rally. The New York State Catholic Conference should be ashamed of its attacks on LGBT New Yorkers and equally ashamed of its preposterous presentation of the maliciously anti-gay Reverend-Senator DÃaz as a victim.
Diaz and the Church are not the victims. Indeed, they are the victimizers.
(Image, top: Catholics at the Capitol, buttons from a March, 2011 religious lobbying effort by the New York State Catholic Conference.)
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U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon late Tuesday afternoon issued an indefinite postponement of the court date in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump on Espionage Act charges, in the indictment commonly referred to as the classified documents case.
Claiming it would be “imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court,” along with other matters, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, wrote: “the Court finds that the ends of justice served by this continuance…outweigh the best interest of the public and Defendants in a speedy trial.”
Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports, “It may be months before we know the new schedule.” Trial had been slated to begin May 20.
“With 13 days before her trial was supposed to kick off, Judge Cannon finally says what has been obvious to every legal journalist I know: She’s not just canceling the existing trial date; she’s also not picking a replacement,” MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin reports.
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The 37 count indictment was brought after Trump removed well over 1000 items, including hundreds of classified documents, out of the White House, retained then refused to return them, allegedly violating several statutes under the Espionage Act.
“Trump mishandled classified documents that included information about the secretive U.S. nuclear program and potential domestic vulnerabilities in the event of an attack,” according t0 the federal indictment, Reuters reported last year.
The trial now is not expected to conclude before the November presidential election this year.
“This is news but it’s hardly unexpected,” declared professor of law, former U.S. Attorney, and MSNBC contributor Joyce Vance wrote. “Judge Cannon seems desperate to avoid trying this case. This isn’t justice. defendants aren’t the only ones with speedy trial act rights, we the people have them too.”
“After the election,” professor of law and former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter commented, “if Trump wins Jack Smith gets fired, the case gets dismissed, and Judge Cannon is ready for SCOTUS.”
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Attorney and author Luppe B. Luppen noted, “Judge Cannon’s rationale for indefinitely postponing Trump’s classified documents trial is that a large number of pretrial motions remain unresolved—a state of affairs she has literally engineered by failing to resolve them.”
Professor of law and noted election law expert Rick Hasen asked: “Is it too cynical to believe that Judge Cannon timed the announcement of the postponement of a Trump classified documents trial to take away from the salacious sex details from Stormy Daniels’ testimony today?”
National security attorney Brad Moss served up a “silver lining to Cannon not setting a new trial date: she isn’t blocking the DC or Georgia election cases from resuming in the late summer/early fall, pending SCOTUS ruling on immunity.”
Foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst David Rothkopf added, “Justice delayed is justice denied. Both the defendant and the public have the right to a trial ‘without unnecessary delay.’ (Sixth Amendment.) When does Jack Smith seek a remedy for the problem Judge Cannon clearly represents? Tick freaking tock.”
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Last month Donald Trump falsely told reporters Justice Juan Merchan had blocked him from attending his youngest son’s high school graduation, refusing to give him the day off from his required attendance at his New York criminal court case.
Justice Merchan had actually told Trump he would take the request under advisement, but Trump quickly ran to reporters painting the judge as heartless.
On April 15 Trump said, “it looks like the judge will not let me go to the graduation of my son who’s worked very, very hard and he is a great student.”
“It looks like the judge isn’t going to allow me to escape this scam. It’s a scam trial,” Trump alleged.
The Associated Press reported, “Trump then furthered his criticism of the judge on his Truth Social platform, writing in one post both that he ‘will likely not be allowed to attend’ and that ‘the Judge, Juan Merchan, is preventing me from proudly attending my son’s Graduation.’ He wrote in another post less than two hours later that he is ‘being prohibited from attending.'”
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None of that was accurate.
Last week Judge Merchan granted Trump the day off from court to attend his son’s high school graduation.
But The Lincoln Project and others on Tuesday posted the announcement for “Minnesota’s 2024 Lincoln Reagan Dinner With Special Guest DONALD J. TRUMP” on Friday, May 17, 2024.
Trump, as The New Republic notes, will be the headline speaker at the event in Saint Paul, Minnesota, which starts at 5:00 PM.
The fundraiser offers supporters the opportunity to spend $100,000, which grants them “10 VIP Dinner Seats | 10 VIP Reception Passes | 3 Photo Opportunities with President Trump.”
Or, for example, for $50,000, a supporter can get a “Chairman’s Host Table – 10 VIP Dinner Seats | 10 VIP Reception Passes | 1 Photo Opportunity with President Trump.”
Trump plans to attend a fundraiser on the day of Barron’s graduation.
Wonder what Judge Merchan thinks when he sees this. pic.twitter.com/d74ms3FhP1
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) May 7, 2024
KARE reports “the visit is expected to be the former president’s first trip to Minnesota of the 2024 election cycle.”
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Trump has strong motivation to head to Minnesota.
Over the weekend, as NBC News reports, “Top officials for former President Donald Trump’s campaign believe they can flip Democratic strongholds Minnesota and Virginia into his column in November, they told donors behind closed doors at a Republican National Committee retreat Saturday.”
Barron Trump’s graduation from Oxbridge Academy in Palm Beach, Florida reportedly will be the same day, May 17. Depending on timing, It’s possible Trump could fly from Florida to Minnesota to get to the fundraiser by 5 PM.
Watch Trump’s remarks from April 15 below or at this link.
In a clear attack on the executive branch, the judicial system, states’ rights, and the rule in law in America, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson vowed on Tuesday to use all the powers of Congress at his disposal to end all four current criminal prosecutions of ex-president Donald Trump.
Johnson’s remarks late Tuesday morning came at the exact same time Stormy Daniels was giving sworn testimony about her alleged sexual relationship with Trump in a Manhattan Superior Court case. The presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee is on trial for 34 felonies related to falsification of business records when he allegedly paid hush money to the adult film star then covered up those payments in what prosecutors say was election interference.
“President Trump has done nothing wrong here and he continues to be the target of endless lawfare,” Speaker Johnson told reporters Tuesday during an official House news conference (video below). “It has to stop. And you’re gonna see the United States Congress address this in every possible way that we can, because we need accountability. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s bigger than President Trump. It’s about the people’s faith in our system of justice. And we’re gonna get down to the bottom of it. All these cases need to be dropped, because they are a threat to our system.”
Johnson’s remarks also come as he faces an ouster threat from far-right MAGA Republican Christian nationalist Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Speaker, who repeatedly has said he speaks to Trump frequently, spent the weekend at the ex-president’s Florida resort and residence, Mar-a-Lago. He also traveled there just weeks ago as Greene’s threats were heating up. Trump and Johnson held a joint press conference on “election integrity,” an image some say was a show of strength and support from the leader of his party.
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Johnson’s job is being protected by Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and the vast majority of the Democratic caucus, who have promised to protect him should Greene call up her motion to vacate.
Claiming Republicans are “trying to keep steadying hands on the wheel here and keep the legislative branch moving and operating in the best interest of the people,” Johnson also alleged: “one of the things that is also in jeopardy right now is our judicial branch. And it’s our system of government itself. And I don’t think we can say often enough here how much of that has been abused under this administration, and with local prosecutors, state prosecutors, and at the federal level, who are using lawfare. They’re using our judicial system to go after political opponents.”
The Speaker continued his targeting, declaring Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “case should never have been brought.”
“If there’s ever been an example of lawfare. Everybody can look at that and see, the trial is being orchestrated by Democrats, supporters of President Biden who are trying to make a name for themselves. I mean, they’re they’re pretty open about that. They used it in their campaign flips. We’ve got a Democrat District Attorney, a Biden donor judge, whose daughter is a Democratic political consultant and has clients that use the case in their solicitation emails to raise money.”
Justice Juan Merchan, CNN reported last month, made a $15 donation to the Biden campaign, amid a total of $35 total in 2020.
Johnson also called Justice Merchan “a well known Democrat” who “is pursuing an indefensible gag order on President Trump,” and “trying to override President Trump’s constitutional right to defend himself against the constant smears of his political opponents.”
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Pointing to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump in the Espionage Act case, often called the “classified documents” case, Johnson called it “the weaponization of our justice system.”
He called all the cases against the ex-president “a clear attempt to keep Donald Trump in the courtroom and off the campaign trail. That’s what this is. It’s an election interference. It is borderline criminal conspiracy and the American people see right through it.”
Watch a short clip of Johnson’s remarks below or at this link.
Johnson: President Trump has done nothing wrong… it has to stop and you’re going to see the Congress address this in every possible way because we need accountability. All these cases need to be dropped because they are a threat to our entire system pic.twitter.com/Vvg6pQRU52
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 7, 2024
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