House GOP’s Anti-Gay Supreme Court Brief Reads Like 1950’s Racist Propaganda
The House GOP on Tuesday filed a 60-page brief in the Supreme Court that addresses the upcoming DOMA case of Edie Windsor, and it reads like 1950’s racist propaganda.
READ: Republicans File Brief in Support Of DOMA – Gays Are Doing Fine Without Any Help
DOMA, by the way, is the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 that bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.
The brief, filed by John Boehner‘s hand-picked private attorney, Paul Clement — whom Boehner has secretly authorized to receive up to $3 million to defend DOMA — addresses the question:
Whether Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, 1 U.S.C. § 7, violates the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Clement, who has never, ever won a same-sex marriage case since Boehner hired him at the rate of $520 an hour to work for the “BLAG,” the House of Representatives’ Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group that has as its majority Republicans not Democrats, has decided that “traditional marriage” must be defended for these reasons:
“Gays and Lesbians Are Far from Politically Powerless.”
“DOMA Rationally Preserves Each Sovereign’s Ability to Define Marriage for Itself at a Time When States Are Beginning to Experiment with the Traditional Definition.”
“Congress Rationally Proceeded with Caution When Faced with the Unknown Consequences of an Unprecedented Redefinition of Marriage, a Foundational Social Institution, by a Minority of States.”
“Sexual Orientation Is Not an “Immutable†Characteristic.”
Among others, of course.
And look out, because the LGBT community is omnipotent!
More than twenty years ago, the Seventh and Ninth Circuits recognized that “homosexuals … are not without growing political power,†and that “[a] political approach is open to them†to pursue their objectives. Ben-Shalom, 881 F.2d at 466; accord High Tech Gays, 895 F.2d at 574. Whatever the limits of that conclusion two decades ago, there can be no serious doubt that the political power of gays and lesbians has increased exponentially since then.
…
In short, gays and lesbians are one of the most influential, best-connected, best-funded, and best- organized interest groups in modern politics, and have attained more legislative victories, political power, and popular favor in less time than virtually any other group in American history. Characterizing such a group as politically powerless would be wholly inconsistent with this Court’s admonition that a class should not be regarded as suspect when the group has some “ability to attract the attention of the lawmakers.â€
And this, which can only be described as the “shuck and jive” of Paul Clement’s anti-gay animus:
There is no precedent for creating a suspect class that is based on the class’ propensity to engage in a certain kind of conduct.
Not only is sexual orientation different from every recognized suspect class in that it is based on a propensity to engage in certain conduct, the cause of that propensity is not well understood.
A “propensity to engage in certain conduct”? Really? I’d like you to take a moment, pause, and reflect on what Attorney Clement might be suggesting there.
Other reasons Clement gives for denying same-sex couples the benefit of marriage that is the birthright of heterosexual couples?
1. Providing a Stable Structure to Raise Unintended and Unplanned Offspring
2. Encouraging the Rearing of Children by Their Biological Parents
3. Promoting Childrearing by Both a Mother and a Father
Curiously, Clement notes that when DOMA was passed, in “the Senate supporters included then-Senator Biden; then-Minority Leader Daschle; current Majority Leader Reid; and current Judiciary Committee Chairman Leahy. In the House, Rep. Hoyer, the Current Minority Whip, supported DOMA.”
All those have in some manner, if not specifically, come out in support of same-sex marriage. Daschle lost his seat after fighting a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
Later, Clement quotes Jonathan Rauch, identifying him as a gay marriage supporter, which he was not — but now is.
Perhaps extremely disgusting is the argument Clement cites, from 1996:
As Senator Gramm observed, without DOMA, state recognition of same- sex marriage will create
a whole group of new beneficiaries—no one knows what the number would be—tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, potentially more—who will be beneficiaries of newly created survivor benefits under Social Security, Federal retirement plans, and military retirement plans…. [I]t will impose … a whole new set of benefits and expenses which have not been planned or budgeted for under current law.
And:
If the federal government were forced to recognize same-sex marriages, Sen. Byrd noted, “it is [not] inconceivable that the costs associated with such a change could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions … of Federal taxpayer dollars.â€
[Bolding ours]
Clement writes, “in 1996 when it appeared that states soon would begin experimenting with changing the traditional definition [of marriage], the federal government was under no obligation to follow suit.”
In what other venue, issue, etc., does anyone refer to changing a law as “experimenting”?
Is ensuring First Amendment rights “experimenting”? Are anti-fracking laws labeled “experimenting”? Are laws ensuring children receive certain levels of education classified as  “experimenting”?
Why is same-sex marriage called “experimenting”?
And then this, what amount to their final argument: gays are already too powerful:
Creating new suspect classes takes issues away from the democratic process, and this Court has wisely refrained from recognizing new suspect classes over the last four decades. Homosexuality would be a particularly anomalous place to eschew that reluctance, as gays and lesbians have substantial political power, which has grown exponentially with each election cycle. Nor do the other factors this Court has looked to support recognizing a new suspect class here. To the contrary, with an issue as divisive and fast-moving as same-sex marriage, the correct answer is to leave this issue to the democratic process. In that process, there is a premium on persuading opponents, rather than labeling them as bigots motivated by animus. And the democratic process allows compromise and way-stations, whereas constitutionalizing an issue yields a one-size-fits-all-solution that tends to harden the views of those who lose out at the courthouse, rather than the ballot box. In the final analysis, the democratic process is at work on this issue; there is no sound reason to constitutionalize it.
And then this: Government must defend traditional marriage and exclude same-sex couples from the institution because heterosexuals are irresponsible:
The link between procreation and marriage itself reflects a unique social difficulty with opposite-sex couples that is not present with same-sex couples— namely, the undeniable and distinct tendency of opposite-sex relationships to produce unplanned and unintended pregnancies. Government from time immemorial has had an interest in having such unintended and unplanned offspring raised in a stable structure that improves their chances of success in life and avoids having them become a burden on society.
Ian Millhiser at Think Progress makes the case as well:
One can only wonder what Paul Clement might have written if Virginia had hired him to defend their practice of racial marriage discrimination when it was before the justices in 1967. “Negro leaders meet often with the President and with Congressional leaders, and indeed, President Johnson himself signed two major laws pushed by the Negro lobby. Negro groups not only led a widely attended rally on the National Mall, but they routinely organize well-attended sit-ins, marches and other events that garner press attention and national sympathy. Recently, a Negro march at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama even sparked the President of the United States to give a speech endorsing the Negro lobby’s agenda before a joint session of Congress.â€
Because, of course, if the fact that gay people have won a few political battles lately were reason to deny them the equal protection of the laws, then the same would also be true about African-Americans and women. Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act two years before Virginia lost its marriage discrimination case in the Supreme Court. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 promised equal treatment to women in the workplace — a promise still denied to gay men and lesbians —seven years before the justices first recognized that official discrimination against women violates the Constitution. Political victories do not cancel out Americans’ constitutional rights, they augment them, and Clement is simply wrong to suggest otherwise.
Read the entire brief, below:
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Over the weekend independent 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. spoke at a fundraiser for a far-right anti-government group in Erie County, New York – a slice of the country that had a large proportion of residents arrested and charged for crimes related to the January 6 insurrection. Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist and vaccine denialist, increasingly is embracing the far-right.
“That group, Constitutional Coalition of New York State, has founders who not only have ties to Donald Trump but are also connected to the stop-the-steal movement through their activist network, which includes groups that had a presence at the Capitol on Jan. 6,” The Daily Beast reported Friday. “It’s yet another instance of Kennedy—who is mounting one of the most well-funded third-party presidential threats in decades—serving as a peculiar bridge between his own anti-establishment movement and Trump’s.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center includes the Constitutional Coalition of New York State (CCNYS) on its page of anti-government groups. Political Research Associates, which detailed the high proportion of January 6 residents arrested and charged, included the Constitutional Coalition of New York State in its February report on “The Rise of the Far Right in Western New York.”
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“If you don’t think the government is lying to you, you’re not paying attention,” Kennedy told attendees at the CCNYS fundraiser, The Buffalo News reports.
“CCNYS founders Nick and Nancie Orticelli are also affiliated with the Watchmen, a nearby militia who Nick has encouraged his social media followers to join. The Watchmen had several members at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and one member, Pete Harding, is still facing charges for violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds,” The Daily Beast noted. “Nancie Orticelli has also hosted the Watchmen’s founder, Charles Pellien, on her weekly radio show on several occasions.”
One of Kennedy’s goals in traveling to New York was to get on the ballot for the November presidential election. Various polls show him taking votes from both President Joe Biden and ex-president Donald Trump, but Kennedy currently has only qualified to be on the ballot in three states, Utah, Michigan and Hawaii, the newspaper reported.
But The Washington Post on Thursday reported The American Independent Party of California, which has a history of “far-right ties,” and “backed segregationist and former Alabama governor George Wallace in 1968, nominated Kennedy for president.”
Kennedy “said this week that he has qualified to be on the ballot in California and will accept the nomination of the American Independent Party, which has a history of associating itself with far-right figures and individuals who have expressed racist views.”
Some news reports and RFK Jr. himself say the Trump campaign was actively courting Kennedy, attempting to convince him to consider being the ex-president’s 2024 vice presidential running mate.
“That MAGA dalliance with Kennedy could be coming back to bite the Trump campaign, some Republicans close to the former president worry,” The Daily Beast also reported.
“’They can only blame themselves,’ a Trump-aligned strategist told The Daily Beast, requesting anonymity to speak candidly about private conversations about the risk Kennedy poses, ‘because they cozied up to him and thought it was funny.’”
Watch WIVBTV’s report on Kennedy’s trip to New York below or at this link.
READ MORE: Trump Won’t Commit to Accepting Election Results if He Doesn’t Win State He Falsely Claims He Won
Since at least 2012 Donald Trump has been engaging in election denialism. Now, a tenet of the Republican Party, the refusal to accept official election results they don’t like is ingrained in a large number of his followers.
“I think that the powers that be on the Democratic side have figured out a way to circumvent democracy,” Darlene Anastas, 69, of Middleborough, Massachusetts, told NBC News. The network “spoke to more than 50 Trump supporters, most of whom said they don’t believe Biden can win legitimately in November.”
“Poll after poll,” NBC also reported, “has found that a large proportion of the Republican electorate believes the only reasons Joe Biden is president are voter fraud and Democratic dirty tricks, buying into former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election.”
NBC spoke with 72-year old George Crosby, from Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, who said, Democrats “cheat like crazy” (video below).
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“I think they cheated before, and I think they’re going to try to do it again, because they’re a bunch of communists,” Fitzwilliam added.
38-year old James Russon of Eagle Mountain, Utah told NBC, “There’s no way Biden could legally … win without unfair means.”
“He added that the only way Biden could prevail would be through ‘cheating’ or ‘a lot of deceased people voting.'”
62-year old Randall Minicola of Las Vegas said it would be “impossible” for Biden to win. “I don’t think he’s got a following. I mean, you look who’s behind him — the only thing he’s got is ghosts behind him. That’s what I believe. Where’s the supporters then? Are they in the basement with him? I don’t think so.”
NBC News did not report on where these particular GOP voters got their information or how they came to believe these claims, but it did note the “possibility of another election in which large numbers of Republicans refuse to accept a Biden victory has also been stoked by influential conservatives.”
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Trump’s election denialism is so strong that in 2020 CNN published “A list of the times Trump has said he won’t accept the election results or leave office if he loses.”
Election denialism continues to be spread throughout the right.
“A senile man is not going to get elected in the most powerful country in the world unless there’s fraud,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in March, NBC noted. Carlson, a purveyor of conspiracy theories, has spoken very positively about Russia and its authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin, and against Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Numerous studies and fact checks have found mail-in voting to be safe and secure, with little opportunity for fraud, yet just last week Carlson, like Trump, was claiming massive election fraud. Undermining Americans’ faith in democracy was a main goal of Russian President Putin’s 2016 attack on the U.S. elections, according to a 2017 report issued by a group of U.S. Intelligence agencies.
But just last week Carlson claimed, “About one in five mail-in ballots in the last election was fraudulent, handing Biden the presidency. We know this because the people who committed the fraud have admitted it in a new poll.”
A portion of NBC’s report from Thursday also appears in this January 2024 NBC News video.
Watch the video below or at this link.
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News
Trump Won’t Commit to Accepting Election Results if He Doesn’t Win State He Falsely Claims He Won
Falsely claiming he won the state of Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential election Donald Trump is now refusing to commit to accepting the 2024 results for the Badger State this November.
In an interview with Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Trump appeared to dance around the issue, declaring he would only accept the official results “if everything’s honest.”
“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results,” Trump told the paper’s Alison Dirr and Molly Beck in an interview Wednesday. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”
“But if everything’s honest, which we anticipate it will be — a lot of changes have been made over the last few years — but if everything’s honest, I will absolutely accept the results,” he said.
The Journal Sentinel reports Trump “offered similar conditions when asked the same question by news outlets in 2016 and 2020.”
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“I’d be doing a disservice to the country if I said otherwise,” he said.
In that interview Trump once again falsely claimed he won Wisconsin in 2020, a state President Joe Biden actually won by more than 20,000 votes.
“If you go back and look at all of the things that had been found out, it showed that I won the election in Wisconsin,” Trump told the newspaper. “It also showed I won the election in other locations.”
Trump’s “Big Lie,” that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him, along with his support for the January 6, 2021 insurrection, have been central to his 2024 campaign.
“Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the last presidential election in Wisconsin and his new comments placing conditions on when he would accept the results of the next election come as Republicans are seeking to persuade GOP voters to restore their trust in the state’s system of elections and embrace absentee voting,” the Journal Sentinel reported. “There’s no evidence to support that Wisconsin’s election was tainted by cheating or fraud in 2020. The results have been confirmed by recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties that Trump paid for, court rulings, a nonpartisan state audit and a study by the conservative legal firm Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty, among other analyses.”
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In October of 2016, weeks before Election Day, during the final presidential debate, Trump was asked if he would make the commitment “that you will absolutely accept the results of this election?”
“I will look at it at the time,” Trump replied. “I’m not looking at anything now, I’ll look at it at the time.”
He then went on to sow doubt about the credibility of the election.
Trump’s refusal to accept election results stretches back more than a decade, even before he ran for president.
After he refused to accept his loss in 2020, ABC News reported “Trump has longstanding history of calling elections ‘rigged’ if he doesn’t like the results.”
“On election night in 2012, when President Barack Obama was reelected, Trump said that the election was a ‘total sham’ and a ‘travesty,’ while also making the claim that the United States is ‘not a democracy’ after Obama secured his victory.
“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!” Trump wrote on Twitter
One month later, in December of 2012, Trump tweeted, “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.” Ironically, four years later he became president after losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, but winning the Electoral College.
Watch the video above or at this link.
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Trump Won’t Commit to Accepting Election Results if He Doesn’t Win State He Falsely Claims He Won
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RFK Jr., Embracing Far-Right, Spoke at Fundraiser for Anti-Government Group With J6 Ties
RFK Jr., Embracing Far-Right, Spoke at Fundraiser for Anti-Government Group With J6 Ties
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