The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Texas sodomy law unconstitutional in 2003, but Texas Values ‐‐ the Austin lobby arm of the religious‐right group Liberty Institute ‐‐ apparently still wants gay and lesbian couples to be thrown in prison. In an email to activists Friday, the group characterizes efforts to take the state’s sodomy law off the books as “undermin(ing) our foundational values.” And the extremist group is attacking any Republican who supports that repeal or other measures that treat gay and lesbian Texans with the same rights and dignity as everybody else.
The email ominously asks whether Texas Republican are “supporting the homosexual agenda” and goes on to attack state Rep. Sarah Davis, R‐Houston, for supporting equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans. It then warns that “two priority bills of the homosexual lobby , SB 1316 and SB 538, have both been passed out of committee in the Senate.” SB 538 would repeal the state’s sodomy law, which remains on the books despite the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling against it a decade ago. SB 1316 would treat the relationships of gay and lesbian teens the same as those of heterosexual teens. Under current Texas law, a gay teen who has consensual sex with a younger teen could be imprisoned for a felony offense. That’s not the case for heterosexual teens who are over 14 and within 3 years in age.
The sneering email from Texas Values continues:
“With the media continuing to push their agenda and ‘evolved’ politicians continuing to undermine our foundational values, it is becoming even more important for Texans to remind their elected officials why they serve and who they are accountable to.”
How extreme is Texas Values? While polls now suggest that a majority of Americans support marriage equality for gay and lesbian families, Texas Values wants to turn the clock back and criminalize the relationships of same‐sex couples. Much like the old segregationist George Wallace, the extremists at Texas Values are shouting: “Discrimination now! Discrimination tomorrow! Discrimination forever!” But even Wallace eventually acknowledged that he had been horribly wrong.
It seems like this week would show us waht is important to our country, safety from being blown up, generating jobs, fresh water, health care and food for our country. I am thinking who my adult neighbor loves or has sex or wants to marry would be at the very bottom of my list.
It seems this group may not be blind to the fact that they are in a minority; rather may think that they are the select few to whom media and political leaders should be listening because everyone else is wrong. But the Texas Values and similar groups are blind, and deaf, to reasonable public policies.
to and whose narrow values believe should be
They sound just like Taliban fundamentalists.
Liberty Institute – quite the misnomer.
This TFN article highlights an issue that needs to be of great concern to all Americans, and I sincerely hope that TFN and other activist groups around the nation will put it front and center on their agendas along with other key issues, primarily because it often feeds directly into those other key issues. I am not talking about LGBT rights but rather the growing belief in many conservative state governments that they have the authority to nullify federal law and that they further have the authority to pass state laws designed to override and undo federal laws.
The constitution of the United States and the U.S. Supreme Court have made it clear that they do not have any such right or authority. I am a citizen of Tennessee and the United States of America. Our favorite son, President Andrew Jackson, was the first to state, “Our federal union, it must be preserved.!!!” This statement was made in the context of the then arising “quack legal theory” that states have the right to nullify federal law. Nullification theory (in all of its forms) ranks right up there with gods from outer space, Atlantis the Lost Continent, and green men from Mars.
As a citizen of Tennessee, I have a message for Texas conservatives, and I want it to be heard loud and clear right here. State nullification of federal law in all of its forms is blatantly illegal. It is also treason plain and simple. The American South, by its own admission in documents that were written at the time, claimed that this nullification nonsense was the primary reason for the secession treason that led to the American Civil War. Texas and the rest of the South had its ass beaten to a pulp in that war and has still (150 years later) not fully recovered from it. Nullification was wrong then. Nullification is wrong now. Nullification will always be wrong in this country.
As was the case in 1861, most of the wealth, money, and power in the United States is still concentrated in what we call “blue states” today. The “red states” may have more geographic area, but much of it is wilderness land that is sparsely populated. It is highly unlikely that the Confederate States of America will ever be reconstituted, and it would most likely lose a war yet again. Therefore, nullification will be the “crackpot dream condition” of a few rogue states where conservative treason and arrogance are allowed to take center stage above common sense and prudence.
I side with Andrew Jackson. “Our federal union, it must be preserved!!!” Both I and most loyal American citizens (make no mistake about it) shall be in favor of using the military forces of the United States to put down, with spilled blood if necessary, any and all nullification treason that arises in any state law in an effort to abrogate the established rights of American citizens under federal law and the U.S. constitution. If I were 18 again instead of 60, I would join the U.S. Air Force and gladly participate in the carpet bombing of Dallas-Fort Worth, were it necessary to keep Texas in the union and restore its full submission to federal law.
I think the conservative crackpots in Texas would be utterly surprised and truly astounded at the vast majority of people in the other 49 states that believe firmly and strongly in the words I have written above. “Our federal union, it must be preserved!!!” Andrew Jackson was right, and I stand with him.
Just sayin’.
Charles, do you also want to carpet bomb Denver and Seattle, since Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana use in violation of federal law?
Just askin’. Our union must be preserved.
You must not be a very good reader Heidi. I said:
“If I were 18 again instead of 60, I would join the U.S. Air Force and gladly participate in the carpet bombing of Dallas-Fort Worth, were it necessary to keep Texas in the union and restore its full submission to federal law.”
To the best of my knowledge, the federal government has not yet made a policy determination that Seattle and Denver need to be carpet bombed.
Constitutionally, the Colorado decision on marijuana is just as wrong-minded with regard to nullification as anything RWNJ Texans might do in a roughly analogous nullification vein.
Heidi. I want to leave you with a message voiced to me in the past by several different Christian fundamentalists who had stopped long enough to take the temperature and blood pressure of their own assorted causes:
“All is lost.”
I want that to sink in Heidi:
“ALL IS LOST.”
By the way Heidi, I was glad to hear that you were finally able to acquire soft dinner rolls so your toothless grandfather in Switzerland could chew them without gum pain. If you would like to bring him over, I think Obamacare could arrange a nice set of dentures for him that would allow him to eat his favorite crusty French bread—or would you just like to keep the old man’s mouth sore and suffering so you don’t have to pay an extra tax dollar to help him?
They want to keep these obscene laws on the books, but refuse to raise state revenue to fund infrastructure and public schools. And they wonder why reasonable people are disgusted with conservatives.
The TFN moderator is no doubt studying my last post carefully and trying to figure out if I really know Heidi personally and whether I am talking about her real grandfather who is now living without teeth in real life Switzerland.
No. The old Shirley Temple movie version of “Heidi,” where Shirley played the part of little Heidi, makes a big deal out of her poor old grandfather who had lost all of his teeth and suffered greatly trying to chew his food, particularly suffering great pain when trying to chew hard, crusty bread. One of Heidi’d great quests in the movie was to one day obtain soft bread rolls so her poor old grandfather would no longer have to suffer so much at meal time.
Heidi was obviously a no good for nothing liberal creep for having such merciful and sentimental thoughts about the old. Most conservative Republicans I know about would have wanted the old poot to quit eating because of the pain, starve to death, and thus take another lazy bum off the Medicare and Social Security rolls so his monthly check would be freed up for a 50 percent private sector investment in silicon derivative stocks and a 50 percent investment towards policing the proper location of every American penis each Saturday night.
why don’t they just get their own ranch like Yearning for Zion, and live they way they want, and leave everyone else alone?????
Because Katherine. They need to save you. The Jesus that lives down at your church is unable to do that. Instead, you must be saved by their special viewpoint Jesus, but only after He has been passed through a special filter of theirs known as “right doctrine.”
Right doctrine? What makes it right? Classic answer: “It’s right because I believe it is and say it is.”
Uh-huh. Trouble is. That is what they all say. Whose exclusively right doctrine are you going to believe?
There’s something fundamentally (pun intended) wrong with people who are so intensely interested in other people’s sex lives.
Betty. I have a friend in South Carolina who said it best at dinner one night. They come over to Knoxville to visit every once in a while, and we all went out to dinner at Calhouns Bar-B-Q just before Christmas. We were having a nice discussion, and then the subject of Islamic terrorism, Christian fundamentalists, and other over the edge groups/types/individuals came up. His father, who I believe is dead now, was an official with the Southern Baptist Convention for many years in North Carolina.
Here was the striking thing that my friend said over dinner:
“Tracer. If you look all across the great expanse of human history in all parts of the world, one theme runs true. Wherever you see war, death, deprivation, human agony, neglect, terror, and so forth, the cause is almost always ZEALOTS of one kind or another. ZEALOTS have always been the key problem. Zealots are the primary problem even now.”
He was speaking of Islamic fundamentalist zealots, Christian fundamentalist zealots, conservative evangelical zealots, racist zealots, nationalistic zealots, anti-science zealots, genocidal zealots, anti-semitic zealots. Selfish zealots. You name it. The whole problem is ZEALOTS.
Y’all remember that.
Well said Charles.
Is Texas so friendly to Christianist terrorists, then?
I think so Pete. Whenever a gay teenager gets bullied, beaten up, or killed by some redneck conservative, the local Christian fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals will publicly state that they are appalled. However, their rhetoric suggests it much more likely that they acquire a smug internal feeling, say to themselves, “Yep, the wages of sin is death,” and walk away with the feeling that proper justice was applied to the young person in question and that God is smiling down from heaven and approving everything that happened and everything that they think and feel.
God is only a callous God to the extent that they see themselves in him.
These fundamentalists have more of Baal in them than Jesus. Where’s Elijah when you need him?
If most of the red state wingnuts in Tennessee were to read the thread of posts above, they would say:
“Them TFN people. The things they izza sayin’ and a doin’. Why hits jist awful.”