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Mississippi's New Anti-LGBT Bill Claims That Women Can Be Fired for Wearing Pants |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=25345"><span class="small">Zack Ford, ThinkProgress</span></a>
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Thursday, 31 March 2016 13:42 |
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Ford writes: "Many states have considered bills that enable discrimination against the LGBT community, but Mississippi's proposed legislation is perhaps the most explicit in this regard. HB 1523 spells out in storied detail all of the different ways that a person should be able to mistreat people for being LGBT without consequences from the government."
Methodist chaplain Reverend Chris Donald speaks at a protest of the anti-LGBT bill last week. (photo: Rogelio V. Solis/AP)
Mississippi's New Anti-LGBT Bill Claims That Women Can Be Fired for Wearing Pants
By Zack Ford, ThinkProgress
31 March 16
 any states have considered bills that enable discrimination against the LGBT community, but Mississippi’s proposed legislation is perhaps the most explicit in this regard. HB 1523 spells out in storied detail all of the different ways that a person should be able to mistreat people for being LGBT without consequences from the government.
The bill does not pretend to be neutral; it only protects people with anti-LGBT religious beliefs and nobody else:
The sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions protected by this act are the belief or conviction that:
(a) Marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman;
(b) Sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage; and
(c) Male (man) or female (woman) refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth.
Assessing what kind of discriminatory situations this would enable is easy, because the bill spells those out as well. So long as individuals are motivated by “a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction,” any of the following behaviors would have the endorsement of the government:
- Religious organizations can decline to solemnize any marriage or provide any services related to recognizing that marriage.
- Religious organizations can refuse to hire, fire, and discipline employees for violating the organization’s religious beliefs.
- Religious organizations can choose not to sell, rent, or otherwise provide shelter.
- Religious organizations that provide foster or adoptive services can decline service without risking their state subsidies.
- Any foster or adoptive parent can impose their religious beliefs on their children.
- Any person can choose not to provide treatment, counseling, or surgery related to gender transition or same-sex parenting.
- Any person (including any business) can choose not to provide services for any marriage ceremony or occasion that involves recognizing a marriage, including:
- Photography
- Poetry
- Videography
- Disc-Jockey Services
- Wedding Planning
- Printing
- Publishing
- Floral Arrangements
- Dress Making
- Cake or Pastry Artistry
- Assembly-Hall or Other Wedding-Venue Rentals
- Limousine or Other Car-Service Rentals
- Jewelry Sales And Services
- Any person can establish “sex-specific standards or policies concerning employee or student dress or grooming,” and can manage the access of restrooms and other sex-segregated facilities.
- Any state employee can openly express their beliefs without consequence.
- Any state employee can choose not to authorize or license legal marriages by recusing themselves from those duties.
Protect Thy Neighbor, a project of Americans United for Separate of Church and State, outlines several hypotheticals for how this discrimination might play out — including impacts beyond the LGBT community. For example, an adoption agency could refuse to place a child with a family if the parents lived together before they were married. A counselor could refuse to help an LGBT teen who called a suicide hotline. A car rental agency could refuse to rent a car to a same-sex couple for use on their honeymoon. And a corporation could fire a woman for wearing pants (though this would likely still be illegal under Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act).
Anybody who takes advantage of any of these opportunities to discriminate would be protected from any tax penalty, any loss of contract or grant, any loss of benefit, any fine or penalty, any license or certification, any custody award or agreement, or any setback in employment.
Furthermore, these protections extend even if the disagreement does not involve the government as a party. In other words, anybody can cite their religious beliefs to justify their discriminatory behavior if sued by the victims of that discrimination. When they do, they are entitled not only to victory in court, but compensatory damages as well.
Currently, no city in Mississippi has banned anti-LGBT discrimination under law, but several have at least passed resolutions opposing such discrimination, including Jackson, Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Greenville, Magnolia, Oxford, and Hattiesburg. Should any of those cities ever pass enforceable laws, those laws would be voided by HB 1523, which preempts any municipal law that might conflict with it. All of the above forms of discrimination would become legal in the state no matter what laws a city passed.
This bill has already made significant progress through the Mississippi legislature. The House approved it last month by an 80-39 vote and the Senate is taking it up Wednesday.
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FOCUS: Why the Major Media Marginalize Bernie |
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Thursday, 31 March 2016 11:53 |
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Reich writes: "Some Sanders supporters speak in dark tones about a media conspiracy against Bernie. That's baloney. The mainstream media are incapable of conspiring with anyone or anything. The real reason the major media can't see what's happening is because the national media exist inside the bubble of establishment politics, centered in Washington, and the bubble of establishment power, centered in New York."
Robert Reich. (photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times)
Why the Major Media Marginalize Bernie
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
31 March 16
  ernie did well last weekend but he can’t possibly win the nomination,” a friend told me for what seemed like the thousandth time, attaching an article from the Washington Post that shows how far behind Bernie remains in delegates.
Wait a minute. Last Tuesday, Sanders won 78 percent of the vote in Idaho and 79 percent in Utah. This past Saturday, he took 82 percent of the vote in Alaska, 73 percent in Washington, and 70 percent in Hawaii.
In fact, since March 15, Bernie has won six out of the seven Democratic primary contests with an average margin of victory of 40 points. Those victories have given him roughly a one hundred additional pledged delegates.
As of now, Hillary Clinton has 54.9 percent of the pledged delegates to Bernie Sanders’s 45.1 percent.That’s still a sizable gap – but it doesn’t make Bernie an impossibility.
Moreover, there are 22 states to go with nearly 45 percent of pledged delegates still up for grabs – and Bernie has positive momentum in almost all of them.
Hillary Clinton’s lead in superdelegates will vanish if Bernie gains a majority of pledged delegates.
Bernie is outpacing Hillary Clinton in fundraising. In February, he raised $42 million (from 1.4 million contributions, averaging $30 each), compared to her $30 million. In January he raised $20 million to her $15 million.
By any measure, the enthusiasm for Bernie is huge and keeps growing. He’s packing stadiums, young people are flocking to volunteer, support is rising among the middle-aged and boomers.
In Idaho and Alaska he exceeded the record primary turnout in 2008, bringing thousands of new voters. He did the same thing in Colorado, Kansas, Maine, and Michigan as well.
Yet if you read the Washington Post or the New York Times, or watch CNN or even MSNBC, or listen to the major pollsters and pundits, you’d come to the same conclusion as my friend. Every success by Bernie is met with a story or column or talking head whose message is “but he can’t possibly win.”
Some Sanders supporters speak in dark tones about a media conspiracy against Bernie. That’s baloney. The mainstream media are incapable of conspiring with anyone or anything. They wouldn’t dare try. Their reputations are on the line. If the public stops trusting them, their brands are worth nothing.
The real reason the major media can’t see what’s happening is because the national media exist inside the bubble of establishment politics, centered in Washington, and the bubble of establishment power, centered in New York.
As such, the major national media are interested mainly in personalities and in the money behind the personalities. Political reporting is dominated by stories about the quirks and foibles of the candidates, and about the people and resources behind them.
Within this frame of reference, it seems nonsensical that a 74-year-old Jew from Vermont, originally from Brooklyn, who calls himself a Democratic socialist, who’s not a Democratic insider and wasn’t even a member of the Democratic Party until recently, who has never been a fixture in the Washington or Manhattan circles of power and influence, and who has no major backers among the political or corporate or Wall Street elites of America, could possibly win the nomination.
But precisely because the major media are habituated to paying attention to personalities, they haven’t been attending to Bernie’s message – or to its resonance among Democratic and independent voters (as well as many Republicans). The major media don’t know how to report on movements.
In addition, because the major media depend on the wealthy and powerful for revenues, because their reporters and columnists rely on the establishment for news and access, because their top media personalities socialize with the rich and powerful and are themselves rich and powerful, and because their publishers and senior executives are themselves part of the establishment, the major media have come to see much of America through the eyes of the establishment.
So it’s understandable, even if unjustifiable, that the major media haven’t noticed how determined Americans are to reverse the increasing concentration of wealth and political power that have been eroding our economy and democracy. And it’s understandable, even if unjustifiable, that they continue to marginalize Bernie Sanders.
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FOCUS: Obama Is a Lousy Media Critic |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=6853"><span class="small">Frank Rich, New York Magazine</span></a>
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Thursday, 31 March 2016 10:46 |
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Rich writes: "Presidents are notoriously thin-skinned and myopic press critics. Even John Kennedy canceled his White House subscription to the GOP-leaning New York Herald-Tribune in a moment of pique. Obama is no exception."
President Barack Obama. (photo: Getty)
Obama Is a Lousy Media Critic
By Frank Rich, New York Magazine
31 March 16
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: Obama's media criticism, the GOP's Second Amendment extremism, and the box-office success of Batman v. Superman.
 ddressing an audience of reporters and editors at a journalism prize ceremony this weekend, President Obama censured the coverage of the presidential campaign, saying that reporters' inability to be critical of candidates, and their caving to the economic pressures of their industry, had tarnished the "American brand" in the eyes of world leaders. Do the president's comments matter?
Presidents are notoriously thin-skinned and myopic press critics. Even John Kennedy canceled his White House subscription to the GOP-leaning New York Herald-Tribune in a moment of pique. Obama is no exception. His underlying theme, that the press helped enable Trump by not fact-checking his ludicrous claims and that it gave a free pass to Bernie Sanders (whose name went unmentioned) by not doing a reality-check on his policy wish lists, is false.
As the press critic Jack Shafer pointed out in Politico, the continuing drum beat that the media empowered Trump, a thesis particularly prevalent among liberal commentators echoed by the president, just isn’t borne out by the facts. If anything, as Shafer writes, the media all but “unified in an attempt to destroy him.” All the major newspapers, including Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, have been doing major investigations of Trump’s business interests and practices for months now. Fox News, in the on-air form of Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace, has been tough on Trump. National Review devoted an entire issue to pillorying him; most major conservative pundits rail against him as much as their liberal counterparts. And while much is made of Trump’s $2 billion bounty of free media, the truth is that he gets a lion’s share of television time and other so-called “earned media” because he earns it: Unlike Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, he never limited his exposure to the press but seized virtually every invitation handed him to go on the air and mouth off unscripted. Unlike most of his opponents, he was also canny enough to make news at his rallies — even if the news was appalling. As Shafer says, Trump is “the most charismatic and controversial candidate” in the field: “The idea that a hard-hitting cable news host can take down a demagogue is a fantasy that exists only in the dramatic works of Aaron Sorkin.”
The press is hardly flawless in its coverage of this campaign. It has consistently underestimated Trump’s appeal and success. But for Nicholas Kristof to piously claim, as he did in a Times column last weekend, that everyone in journalism should share in the “shame” of Trump’s rise is offensive. Though certainly Kristof deserves his share: Early this month, he wrote a column in which he interviewed an “imaginary” Trump voter rather than deigning to interview a real one. Had he talked to an actual Trump voter, he might have learned that investigative pieces about Trump University, fact-checking, and op-ed attacks are not going to deter any of them from rallying behind their man. As Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post put it in a column implicitly rebuking Kristof’s: “Blaming ourselves for Trump’s rise is just another way to ignore the voters who have made him a favorite for the GOP nomination.”
Early this week the Secret Service put an end to some Americans' hopes that open-carry firearms would be allowed at the Republican National Convention, after a petition in favor of it (perhaps serious, perhaps satirical) had attracted more than 50,000 signatures. Will the failure of the presidential candidates to take up this cause affect how pro-gun voters see them going forward?
It should. In a year in which everyone is debating what constitutes “a real Republican,” surely there could be agreement on this point: The one stand that unites all Republican factions is a bedrock belief in an unbridled Second Amendment. Republicans support guns in schools. They support guns in church. They support guns at the mall. So of course they should support guns at their own convention. It makes no sense that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich have all hedged on this issue. As the petition pointed out, Cruz and Kasich, in keeping with NRA doctrine, have both called for the elimination of “gun-free zones.” Trump has promised to end “gun-free zones” at schools and military bases on his first day in office. So why did none of these candidates stand tall for the freedom to pack heat in the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland? Rather than sign the petition, they came up with wussy excuses. Trump, for example, said he wanted to read the petition’s “fine print” — when has he read the fine print on anything?
It’s not too late for them to man up. Yes, the oppressive federal government, in the form of Barack Obama’s jack-booted Secret Service, has defiled the Second Amendment by disallowing firearms at the RNC, but the candidates can and should fight back. If Cruz could shut down the government to try to stop funding Planned Parenthood, surely he could use the same tactic to bring the Secret Service to its knees. Kasich, as governor of the state where the convention is being held, should take the fed’s curtailing of the Second Amendment to court. For his part, Trump can reject Secret Service protection at the convention and entrust his safety instead to his fearless campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was charged with a misdemeanor (no doubt unjustly, just as he was yesterday) after bringing a gun into a House office building while working as a Hill staffer in 1999.
As Trump has said, there may be riots at the convention. True Second Amendment advocates say that the best defense against hooliganism is a good offense, so the more guns, the better. Live free or die.
Despite lousy reviews, Batman v Superman had a very good weekend at the box office, pulling in more than $400 million worldwide. What's a reviewer to do when a movie is essentially critic-proof?
One unassailable point that Obama did make in his press critique was his observation that “the curating function” of journalism — the application of editorial standards by gatekeepers — “is diminished in this smartphone age.” This cuts both ways, of course. More undifferentiated crap than ever, from rumors to out-and-out falsehoods, can pass for “news.” But at the same time, news consumers have more freedom to assemble their news and opinion diet than they did in the distant age of print and three-network television. The fall of the gatekeepers has taken a toll even on the lowly field of arts criticism — a field in which I toiled for some two decades. It’s debatable whether critics ever had the power to make the hits or flops attributed to them in those days — I, for one, failed to stop Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Starlight Express despite throwing myself on its tracks — but now more than ever, everybody is a critic on any social-media platform he or she wants to be.
The mainstream-media critics hated Batman v Superman (Rotten Tomatoes average: 29 percent). Entertainment-industry reporters speculated that it would underperform at the box office on opening weekend. A viral video meme of “sad” Ben Affleck, looking forlorn as “The Sound of Silence” plays in the background, had nearly 20 million views on YouTube last time I looked. But none of this mattered as the movie itself closes in on a half-billion-dollar international gross in its first week.
Movie-ticket buyers, like voters, have their own ideas, and have no qualms about defying received opinion from the “experts,” whether in the media or elsewhere. The screenwriter William Goldman’s famous Hollywood axiom, “Nobody knows anything,” is more applicable than ever to our entire culture in this strange year of 2016.
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The Sexism in American Politics |
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Thursday, 31 March 2016 08:27 |
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Streisand writes: "Why is it that today even a woman as impressive as Hillary Clinton is judged not by her merits and extensive resume alone, but held to a pernicious double standard?"
Hillary Clinton. (photo: Bloomberg/Getty)
The Sexism in American Politics
By Barbara Streisand, Reader Supported News
31 March 16
 hy is it that today even a woman as impressive as Hillary Clinton is judged not by her merits and extensive resume alone, but held to a pernicious double standard?
Twenty-two years ago, I had the honor of introducing Hillary Clinton at a Humanitarian Award dinner, given by The Elie Wiesel Foundation. I said of her then and it holds true today, “There is no one in this country who would deny the competence, intellect, stamina, warmth and courage of Hillary Rodham Clinton... But the criticism of Hillary Clinton has again demonstrated that the strong, competent woman is still a threatening figure in our culture. ...A man who graduated high in his class at Yale Law School and made partnership in a top law firm would be celebrated. But a woman who accomplishes this is treated with suspicion... Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of the acclaimed biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, said of Hillary Clinton, ‘I don’t think there is a First Lady who has been treated as rudely and meanly except for Eleanor Roosevelt.’” Both of these women boldly risked the scorn of “those threatened by the image of a woman carrying the fight for social justice into the public arena.”
It seems that nothing much has changed. It’s been 24 years since I said in a speech for Women in Film, “Men and women are clearly measured by a different yardstick. And that makes me angry. Of course, I’m not supposed to be angry. A woman should be soft-spoken, agreeable, ladylike, understated. In other words, stifled. Language gives us an insight into the way women are viewed in a male-dominated society.
A man is commanding, a woman is demanding.
He’s assertive - she’s aggressive.
He strategizes - she manipulates.
A man is forceful - a woman is pushy.
He shows leadership - she’s controlling.
A man is a perfectionist - a woman’s a pain in the ass.”
It’s been decades since those speeches, but there is still outright sexism in much of the commentary on Secretary Clinton’s campaign. The Women’s Media Center and Media Matters have done wonderful work documenting the explicit - and more importantly since it’s often unseen - implicit sexism of the political and media punditry. After Hillary Clinton won five primaries on March 15th, Fox News’ Brit Hume tweeted, she’s shouting angrily in her victory speech... “What’s she mad at?” When MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough tweeted she should, “Smile. You just had a big night,” should we have been surprised? Hillary Clinton has a great smile and smiles often. So does Barack Obama. So does Bill Clinton. But no one would tell those two men to smile.
Hillary Clinton is dealing with our current reality rather than the delusions of reality TV. Karen Weaver, the new mayor Flint, Michigan said in dealing with the water crisis that Hillary Clinton “has actually been the only candidate, whether we’re talking Democratic or Republican, to reach out and talk with us about, ‘What can I do? What kind of help do you need?’” It’s one thing to talk about something and another thing to do it. Clinton gave Weaver a roadmap on how to get the results.
The Republicans will neither cooperate with President Obama nor admit the good he has done for this country: the rising stock market, the creation of 14 million private-sector jobs including 72 months of steady job growth, lowering the deficit, the extension of health insurance to millions through the ACA and lowered health care costs, and his thoughtful foreign policy after the disasters of George W. Bush. The candidates on the right deny these achievements and intentionally obstruct Obama’s progress. The Republicans in the Senate will not even do their job to hold hearings and vote for a Supreme Court Justice. Just before the nomination was announced, Senator Orrin Hatch told the press, “[Obama] could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man... He probably won’t do that.” Chief Justice Roberts, a GOP appointee, has warned of the dangers of politicizing the nomination process and has praised Judge Garland’s legal scholarship. Meanwhile Senator Mitch McConnell has essentially said the NRA will have veto power over any Court appointment.
The rise of Donald Trump as a likely GOP nominee is at once terrifying and a joke that isn’t funny. I notice the press doesn’t even call him out on his own lies or his refusal to answer questions. If you repeat a lie loudly and long enough, people may come to believe it is true. Is the press partially responsible for the rise of Trump in its greed over his temporary ratings boost? And what would the press say, for instance, if Hillary Clinton displayed anything like the crassness of Donald Trump in debates? Or his staggering lack of knowledge on foreign or domestic policy?
Voters should weigh the substance of what a candidate has to offer: his/her policies, his/her agenda, his/her experience, knowledge and demeanor in dealing with world leaders. The time has also come for voters, media, political talking heads and all of us to stop holding any politician to a different standard because she happens to be a woman. All voters should stand in agreement on this issue if no other.
Around the world, even in some countries younger than the United States, they’ve proudly elected female leaders: Golda Meir, Indira Ghandi, Benazir Bhutto, Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel to name a few. Why does it seem so odd to have a female president here?
There is some heartening news. A very recent CNN/ORC poll “finds Clinton would start the general election contest with an edge over Trump on several potential presidential qualifications, with the former Secretary of State widely seen as better able to handle the responsibilities of being commander in chief, more in touch with the middle class and more often aligned with Americans’ views on important issues.”
This is a good sign because it is time we grew up as a nation. We should stop being afraid of women, and meet them on a level playing field without resorting to name calling and sexist condescension.
Hillary Clinton isn’t afraid. It’s about time that a woman with strength, experience and compassion leads our already great nation in this time of global insecurity. If the pundits or certain GOP candidates are afraid of that, maybe they should just try smiling more.
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OME ARIZONA residents 
