text: 'We Will Stand for the Freedom of Religion': Pence Brags Trump to Allow Adoption Agencies 'Right' to Ban LGBTQ Parents
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  ‘We Will Stand for the Freedom of Religion’: Pence Brags Trump to Allow Adoption Agencies ‘Right’ to Ban LGBTQ Parents
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  RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM
  ‘We Will Stand for the Freedom of Religion’: Pence Brags Trump to Allow Adoption Agencies ‘Right’ to Ban LGBTQ Parents
  Published
  on
  November 14, 2019 at 09:45 AM ET
  By
  David Badash
  Vice President Mike Pence this week attended a federal government event during which he bragged about the Trump administration’s latest attack on LGBTQ people. The vice president (video below) heralded a fast-tracked proposed policy from the Dept. of Health and Human Services that would reverse an Obama-era rule barring discrimination by adoption and foster care agencies against LGBTQ people and same-sex couples.
  The proposed rollback of that rule is expected to go into effect in just a few weeks, granting government protection to religious, faith-based, or any other adoption organization that wishes to claim a moral opposition to LGBTQ people from facing a loss of federal funding.
  “We will stand for the freedom of religion and we will stand with faith-based organizations to support adoption,” Vice President Pence told supporters at an HHS event Tuesday, as he pounded his fists on the podium, to cheers.
  “I couldn’t be more proud that at President Trump’s direction and with the strong support of leaders across foster care, adoption, and our faith communities, we’ve taken decisive action,” Pence bragged.
  That “decisive action” literally reduces the pool of prospective parents for large numbers of children who don’t have parents or homes.
  “More than 100,000 foster children are awaiting adoption, according to government data, but a constellation of religious agencies refuse to consider same-sex parents when placing these children,” NBC News reports. “Shortly before the end of his second term, President Barack Obama changed nondiscrimination rules governing adoption agencies to expand the definition of groups protected against discrimination to include LGBTQ people. Trump’s proposed rule change will undo that.”
  In fact, same-sex couples have far higher rates of adopting and fostering children than their different-sex couple peers.
  “A 2018 report from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that 1 in 5 of the estimated 114,000 same-sex couples raising children in the United States are raising adopted or foster children — significantly higher than the 3 percent of heterosexual couples doing so.”
  The latest discriminatory HHS rule Vice President Pence bragged about comes from Roger Severino, HHS’s Director of the Office of Civil Rights. Severino is known as a “radical” anti-LGBTQ religious right activist who previously served as CEO and counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a religious right non-profit that opposes separation of church and state. He also once served as the Director of the DeVos family’s Center for Religion and Civil Society in the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity.
  Watch Vice President Pence (video may be slow to load):
  RELATED STORIES:
  Texas Teams Up With Far Right Religious Law Firm to Sue for ‘Right’ to Use Foster Agencies That Discriminate Against Gays
  Federally-Funded Catholic Adoption Agency Blocks Same-Sex Couple From Fostering Migrant Children, Because Jesus
  HHS Being Sued Over Policy Giving Special Religious Rights to Healthcare Professionals Over LGBT People and Women
  Hat tip: Towleroad
  Video via Washington Blade/Facebook
  Related Topics:AdoptionLawLGBTQMike PenceNewsPoliticsReligion
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  RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM
  Marco Rubio Lashes Out Against Passage of Same-Sex Marriage Bill After His Attempt to Create Special Religious Rights Fails
  Published
  1 hour ago
  on
  November 30, 2022
  By
  David Badash
  U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) lashed out with a Bible verse Wednesday morning, after the Senate passed legislation protecting same-sex and interracial marriage, while rejecting his attempt to infuse special religious rights through an amendment that even some Republicans refused to support.
  The Respect for Marriage Act, which passed in a 61-36 vote Tuesday evening, will return to the House for a final vote before heading to President Joe Biden, who promised to sign it into law. Not included in the bill the Senate passed is Senator Rubio’s amendment, which he claimed was necessary despite the clear religious protections included in the legislation.
  The bill goes to great lengths to state it will have no impact on current religious liberty protections. Section 6 is actually titled, “No Impact on Religious Liberty and Conscience.”
  READ MORE: Republican Attempts to Create Special Religious Rights Fail as Bipartisan Historic Same-Sex Marriage Bill Passes Senate
  It states: “Nothing in this Act, or any amendment made by this Act, shall be construed to diminish or abrogate a religious liberty or conscience protection otherwise available to an individual or organization under the Constitution of the United States or Federal law.”
  It goes even further.
  “Consistent with the First Amendment to the Constitution, nonprofit religious organizations, including churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, nondenominational ministries, interdenominational and ecumenical organizations, mission organizations, faith-based social agencies, religious educational institutions, and nonprofit entities whose principal purpose is the study, practice, or advancement of religion, and any employee of such an organization, shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges for the solemnization or celebration of a marriage,” it reads. “Any refusal under this subsection to provide such services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges shall not create any civil claim or cause of action.”
  READ MORE: Marco Rubio Recorded an ‘Emergency Video’ After Pete Buttigieg Responded to His Anti-LGBTQ Attack. It Didn’t Go Well.
  Senator Rubio has been actively opposed to the bill from the start. In July he called it a “stupid waste of time,” suggesting he does not think the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the 2015 Obergefell ruling that made same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional – despite actively calling for the court to do so.
  Reminder: Marco Rubio has opposed same-sex marriage for years and even called for overturning the Supreme Court decision legalizing it. pic.twitter.com/oSkpNxi3V6
  — Florida Democrats (@FlaDems) July 20, 2022
  In addition to the video above, Florida Democrats this summer tweeted a video of a local news report showing Rubio preaching to campaign supporters that same-sex marriage is “sinful.”
  After saying protecting marriage equality was “a stupid waste of time,” Marco Rubio held an event yesterday to double down on his attacks on Floridians’ rights: pic.twitter.com/XC5ZIAlj5r
  — Florida Democrats (@FlaDems) September 2, 2022
  Last week in a press release Sen. Rubio called the bill “the insanity,” and falsely claimed the Respect for Marriage Act does not have religious protections.
  “This bill does not protect religious liberty,” Rubio said in a statement last week. “Nuns running orphanages will find themselves in court if it becomes law. That’s outrageous. No faith-based organization will be immune from the insanity. Christian. Jewish. Muslim. Everyone. Removing this private right of action is the only way to truly protect people and organizations of faith.”
  His amendment to create additional, special religious protections failed Tuesday evening, as did amendments from Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), and Senator James Lankford (R-OK).
  READ MORE: ‘Punditry, Not Leadership’: McConnell Slammed for Refusing to Say if He Would Support Trump in 2024
  Sen. Rubio, a frequently vocal opponent of LGBTQ people and their civil rights, has attacked people who opposed Florida Governor DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” legislation as “ridiculous.”
  During his failed 2016 White House run Sen. Rubio repeatedly promised he would not run for re-election. He used the Pulse Massacre, one of the worst and deadliest anti-LGBTQ hate crimes, to declare that the LGBTQ community needed him and launched a re-election campaign on the back of those massacred LGBTQ people.
  Rubio, who is known for posting passages from the Bible on many mornings, on Wednesday used Christian verse to lash out at the Respect for Marriage Act.
  “The law of the LORD is perfect,refreshing the soul. The decree of the LORD is trustworthy,giving wisdom to the simple,” he tweeted.
  The law of the LORD is perfect,refreshing the soul. The decree of the LORD is trustworthy,giving wisdom to the simple.
  Psalms 19:8
  — Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 30, 2022
  His tweet did not go over well. While some responded with a simple, “Amen,” others explained to the Senator who took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” that the Christian Bible is not the law of the land.
  “The ‘law of the lord’ was deliberately excluded from the US Constitution,” wrote one social media user. “There is only one law in the US and it’s not the law of the lord, it’s the law of the people.”
  READ MORE: RNC Taps Right Wing Extremists to Head Group Designed to Expand GOP Appeal in Wake of Midterm Losses
  History professor and author ￼Douglas M. Charles noted Rubio’s tweet had a small typo, and accused him of having a staffer do his work.
  “More empty-suitness from the epitome of empty suit senators,” Charles wrote. “These copy-paste BS tweets of his always have a spacing typo, which is how you know a staffer copy-pasted it rather than his being serious about it.”
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  RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM
  Mike Pence: Americans Have No Right to ‘Freedom From Religion’
  Published
  1 month ago
  on
  October 27, 2022
  By
  Brandon Gage – Alternet
  Former Vice President Mike Pence claimed during a Wednesday appearance on Fox Business that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution does not protect Americans from having other people’s faiths forced upon them.
  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” it states.
  In fact, there are no references to a supreme being anywhere in the Constitution, because the Founding Fathers were adamantly opposed to centralized religious power as well as requiring individuals to subscribe to any particular denomination.
  READ MORE: ‘God’s gonna cut you down’: How Republicans conspire with churches for power
  The concept of separation of church and state was sacrosanct to men like President Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in his 1776 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom that “setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time” and that “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.”
  Jefferson’s condemnation of forced faith in the document was unambiguous, further affirming that “no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
  President James Madison, in whose hand the Constitution was penned, concurred with Jefferson.
  “The settled opinion here is that religion is essentially distinct from Civil Government, and exempt from its cognizance; that a connexion between them is injurious to both; that there are causes in the human breast, which ensure the perpetuity of religion without the aid of the law,” Madison explained in an 1819 letter, noting that “a legal establishment of religion without a toleration could not be thought of, and with toleration, is no security for public quiet and harmony, but rather a source itself of discord and animosity.”
  READ MORE: White men refusing to share power is a silver stake piercing the heart of American democracy
  Benjamin Franklin took it one step further, arguing in 1780 that any religion that seeks to impose itself is simply “bad.”
  Yet Pence and host Larry Kudlow share an interpretation that strays wildly from what Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison clearly spelled out more than two centuries ago.
  “These lefties want to scrap religion, Mike Pence, and I think it’s a terrible mistake,” Kudlow griped.
  “Well, the radical left believes that the freedom of religion is the freedom from religion. But it’s nothing the American founders ever thought of or generations of Americans fought to defend,” Pence said.
  As mentioned, that statement is completely false. Jefferson even concluded in his treatise that “such act will be an infringement of natural right.”
  But Pence was not finished. He also suggested that the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority has a duty to side with one faith over another. Today, that means the GOP’s embrace of Christian nationalism.
  “You know, I said today here in Houston that the source of our nation’s greatness has always been our faith in God, our freedom, and our vast natural resources. And the good news is, that after four years of the Trump-Pence administration, I’m confident that we have a pro-religious freedom majority on the Supreme Court of the United States. And I’m confident that come Election Day, November the 8th, you’re gonna see that freedom majority around the country turn out and vote pro-freedom majorities in the House, and in the Senate, and in statehouses around the country,” Pence said. “So stay tuned, Larry. Help is on the way.”
  Watch below or at this link.
  Fox Business' Larry Kudlow: "These lefties want to scrap religion."
  Former Vice President Mike Pence: "The good news is, that after four years of the Trump-Pence administration, I'm confident that we have a pro-religious freedom majority on the Supreme Court." pic.twitter.com/GO1uW6FdPP
  — The Recount (@therecount) October 26, 2022
  Continue Reading
  RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM
  Florida Father Sues School for ‘Proselytizing’ in Favor of ‘Homosexual Lifestyles’ Under DeSantis Don’t Say Gay Law
  Published
  1 month ago
  on
  October 26, 2022
  By
  David Badash
  A West Palm Beach dad is suing his son’s public school district under Florida Governor Ron DeSantis‘ “Don’t Say Gay” law, claiming a teacher posted two rainbow pride flags and “proselytized” in favor of “homosexual lifestyles,” which he claims are against his religious beliefs.
  “Dr. Francisco Deliu’s 12-year-old son is in seventh grade at Emerald Cove Middle School,” which is part of the Palm Beach County School District, WPTV reports. He is suing the school district, the school board, the school, its principal, and the teacher.
  The lawsuit claims the father’s “substantive human rights” and “due process rights” were violated. It says he learned from his son “that his school is expressly and/or implicitly advocating for homosexuality as an alternative way of life. He disagrees and complains. The school dismisses his concerns without reasons. He takes the matter to the superior authorities. They ignore his grievances entirely. Meanwhile, his boy’s education suffers.”
  READ MORE: Who Are The 33 House Republicans Sponsoring the Vigilante Federal ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill?
  WPTV reports that “Deliu’s lawsuit claimed Emerald Cove Middle School is trying to ‘mold his child’s mind without his consent,’ adding that ‘there is no lawful authority that permits the Teacher, Principal, School, District and/or Board to teach, discuss or otherwise educate the students, including Dr. Deliu’s son, about gay pride, homosexuality or the like but especially not in a computer science course.'”
  “Deliu claimed the teacher’s actions are a violation of Florida’s ‘Parents’ Bill of Rights ‘law, which was passed and went into effect in 2021.”
  The lawsuit describes him as a “a married man who was baptized in, throughout his lifetime held and currently holds Christian-Orthodox religious beliefs. He is originally from Romania and was given refugee status in the United States of America in 1980 on the grounds of religious and political persecution by the Communist Ceaușescu regime.”
  “Dr Deliu and his son are both born, baptized and practicing Orthodox Christians. Their religion considers homosexuality a sin. Their sincere and genuine beliefs are that homosexuality is not in accordance with their Bible. Dr Deliu is a libertarian who lives by a ‘live and let live creed. He respects the rights of others, but also demands they not encroach upon his rights. He is against government intrusion upon his rights, especially in terms of how to raise his son,” the lawsuit reads.
  READ MORE: DeSantis Repeatedly Told a Story to Defend His ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Law. It’s Not True: CNN
  “Dr Deliu’s son was born in New Zealand and exclusively went to various private schools in New Zealand and Romania until the family returned to the United States of America in 2020 because of breaches of their human rights in Romania due to the Covid-19 lockdowns, mask, social distancing and vaccine mandates.”
  The lawsuit even laments that although his son “was a straight-A student in the 4th quarter…the school failed to give out any honor roll awards.”
  READ MORE: Watch: DeSantis Discusses and Signs ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill While Surrounded by Young Children
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