Eyes Right Blog

Conscience Clause Expansion Would Permit Harassment of LGBTQ Servicemembers

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Representative Fleming (R-LA)

Representative Fleming (R-LA) who recently proposed an expanded “conscience provision”

Should military personnel have a license to discriminate? Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) thinks so.

As part of the Fiscal Year 2014 Defense Authorization Act, Fleming recently proposed an expansion to an existing “conscience provision.” Rep. Fleming argues that this expansion would allow all military service members to freely express and act in accordance with their moral beliefs. Commanding officers would only be allowed to intervene when there is an apparent threat of “actual harm.”

This expansion would essentially enable any servicemember to harass an LGBTQ colleague without repercussion, simply by claiming it is in accordance with their religious convictions. While the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) allows LGBTQ individuals to serve openly, this “license to discriminate” could force LGBTQ servicemembers back into the closet to avoid hate speech, discrimination, and other forms of mistreatment.

A statement from the White House condemned the deeply troubling implications of the amendment, stating: “By limiting the discretion of commanders to address potentially problematic speech and actions within their units, this provision would have a significant adverse effect on good order, discipline, morale, and mission accomplishment.”

Representative Fleming’s “conscience provision” is part of a long-standing right-wing agenda manipulating “religious liberty” arguments to justify discrimination. During the 1960s, those who opposed the gains made during the Civil Rights movement claimed that integration was against their religion in order to deny African-Americans equal access to services and interracial couples the right to marry.  The LGBTQ community is now confronting similar attacks in the workplace, and the “conscience provision” is advanced to legally sanction harassment within institutions like the military and public education. Read More →

Profile: Tony Perkins

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TonyPerkinsTony Perkins is the president of the Washington D.C.-based Family Research Council (FRC), a Christian lobbying group that describes a LGBTQ lifestyle as “unhealthy” and “destructive” to “individuals, families, and societies.”  The FRC, perhaps the most powerful right-wing Christian presence in Washington, with strong connections to its grassroots base, is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Perkins is one of the most influential Christian Right voices in Washington. His good looks and skillful delivery of carefully constructed messages and arguments render him a popular figure on the Christian Right and a dangerous megaphone for scapegoating a variety of marginalized groups, from LGBT people, immigrants, single parents, and sexually active youth.

In his mission to “reclaim the culture of Christ” Perkins feels free to demonize LGBT people.  Perkins identifies homosexuality as a source of mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, child molestation, and immoral behavior in general. He maintains the belief that homosexuality is a sin and that it can and should be cured through the love of Jesus Christ.  He continually cites pseudo-scientific evidence from groups like the American College of Pediatrics (a discredited organization) to bolster his arguments.

In a 2010 response to several cases of anti-gay bullying that led gay teens to commit suicide or experience depression, Perkins said it was not “inacceptance” that led young gay and lesbian children to suffer, but that depression and suicide were the mental consequences of being gay. “We know from the social science that [homosexuals] have a higher propensity to depression or suicide because of that internal conflict,” he said.

Perkins was one of many right wing evangelicals to denounce the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The Huffington Post quoted Perkins as saying, “Today is a tragic day for our armed forces. The American military…has now been hijacked and turned into a tool for imposing on the country a radical social agenda. This may advance the cause of reshaping social attitudes regarding human sexuality, but it will only do harm to the military’s ability to fulfill its mission.

Perkins argues that religion, particularly Christianity, is under attack by secular institutions. He simultaneously believes those who practice the religion of Islam are a danger to America. He has called the LGBTQ rights movement an act of cultural and corporate terrorism. Because he appears less strident than the older anti-gay spokespeople, like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Louis Sheldon, he is able to deliver their same messages to their audiences without sounding shrilly alarmist.

This profile is part of a series on key anti-LGBTQ opponents adapted from Political Research Associates’ Resisting the Rainbow report.

How Fetal Personhood Laws Promote Rape Culture

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SONY DSC

Photo by William Murphy from flickr.com

During Wednesday’s hearing on Arizona Representative Trent Franks’s proposed 20-week abortion ban, Franks claimed “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.” Using the same pseudo-scientific reasoning as Todd Akin (who infamously said pregnancy by “legitimate” rape was unlikely because “the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down”), Franks joined the ranks of conservative rape-deniers who privilege “fetal personhood” over a pregnant person’s autonomy.

Similarly in 2012, Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Murdock said, “When life begins with that horrible situation of rape, that is something God intended to happen.” Murdock was supported by Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas who said it is a “gift from God.” Although Franks backtracked and clarified his meaning later on Wednesday (“I’m talking about the incidences where pregnancy from rape results in an abortion after the sixth month or beyond are very rare”), his attitude is indicative of a knee-jerk hostility on the Right toward sexual assault survivors and people seeking abortions.

Contrary to Franks’s assumption, pregnancy from rape represents a significant minority of unwanted pregnancies in the U.S. A 1996 study of rape-related pregnancies estimated that 32,000 pregnancies each year were due to sexual assault – with a majority of assaults committed by someone known (often related) to the survivor. Of the survivors who became pregnant, thirty-two percent did not know they were pregnant until the second trimester. Fifty percent of pregnant sexual assault survivors sought abortions.

In the current ultraconservative political climate, “fetal personhood” arguments have gained political traction (fetal personhood laws have advanced in North Dakota and Arkansas) and function as a way to reduce the pregnant person to a host status and imbue fetuses with human rights. Put simply, a fetus’s interests always trump those of the pregnant person.

Defending Reproductive Justice, a recent publication of Political Research Associates, explains that rape exemptions put antichoice activists on the defensive because “prochoice advocates sometimes point to rape exemptions as evidence that opposition to abortion is based on a desire to control women’s sexual freedom, rather than concern for the fetus.” In other words, rape exemptions expose inconsistencies in the Right’s opposition to abortion. Further:

The lack of concern for rape survivors’ rights is part of the Right’s broader failure to take the country’s rape problem seriously. Would murder or any other violent crime be similarly painted as “something God intended”? The right-wing perspective that supports controlling a woman’s body when it comes to reproductive health decisions feeds the fundamental lack of respect for the right to bodily autonomy that enables rape culture.

The mainstream discourse on abortion has shifted significantly rightward now that lawmakers are debating whether to allow rape exemptions. The conversation about rape exemptions, while critical, reframes the debate on reproductive justice in conservative terms. Progressive activists must expand the debate outside the confines of a worthy/unworthy abortion dichotomy to demand that abortion be accessible (legally, financially, and geographically) to sexual assault survivors and everyone else who seeks abortion care. Only when people have full control of their reproductive capabilities can a semblance of gender justice be achieved.

Right-Wing Fabricates “Dangers” of Increased Access to Emergency Contraception

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The Justice Department recently decided to comply with a judge’s order to allow minors to purchase emergency contraception without a prescription or age restriction. While reproductive rights and justice groups applaud this progress for women’s health, antichoice groups denounce the decision, also claiming to have women’s well-being in mind.

Human Life International, a Christian Right antichoice group, issued a press release soon after the news became public. Despite the fact that medical experts such as American Academy of Pediatrics agree the pill is safe and have recommended that the pill be made available to teens of all ages, HLI president Father Shenan J. Boquet called the decision “dangerous and a threat to the health of young women and unborn life.”

Emergency contraception works by preventing ovulation. It contains the same hormone found in normal contraceptive pills, but at a higher dose. If taken within 72 hours, the pill drastically decreases the chances of pregnancy; it has no effect on existing pregnancies. Yet in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, Father Boquet suspects subterfuge, saying that “Plan B is most likely not a contraceptive at all, but an abortifacient pill.”

Beyond the false claim that the pill will harm unborn life, HLI and many other conservative groups claim to be worried about the safety and health of girls. Access to emergency contraception will send “the dangerous message that there is a ‘safe’ way to avoid the natural consequences of risky sexual behavior,” says Boquet, “… leading young women to objectify themselves for use by men.” Evidence has shown, however, that access to emergency contraception does not increase sexual activity among teens, nor does it decrease use of normal contraceptives. Read More →

Profile: Peter LaBarbera

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Peter LaBarbara

Peter LaBarbera is president of American’s For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), a single-issue group whose only goal is “…devoted exclusively to exposing and countering the homosexual activist agenda.” He has held official positions at conservative anti-gay organizations like Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council. Establishing his own organization, however, has revealed his single-minded focus on the evils of homosexuality and his ability to get his fringe ideas repeated by less extreme spokespersons.

LaBarbera views increased tolerance and acceptance of LGBTQ people as America’s backsliding. On the Janet Mefferd Show he said homosexuality “is Satan’s point of attack on the United States of America, including the church.”  He as often stated pedophilia is the cause for same-sex attraction. He views homosexuality as a pervasion of Juedo-Christian morality. He has also called for parents to remove their children from public schools that have anti-gay bullying programs. He believes they attempt to convert children to homosexuality. LaBarbera has purposed sodomy bans that the Supreme Court ruled unlawful.

LaBarbera fears gay judges will undermine religious liberty and proposes a homosexual litmus test for federal judges. In an article he wrote, he asserts “I think it’s time that the public be informed if a politician or a high court nominee has a special interest in homosexuality — that is, they are practicing homosexuality or maybe they once practiced homosexuality.”

LaBarbera attacks LGBTQ civil rights issues with an almost singular fervor among his anti-homosexual peers. He often cites bogus scientific data and draws slanderous conclusions to fit his agenda. He and his organization have a well-earned spot on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups. Recently the IRS revoked AFTAH’s nonprofit status for failing to file required statements about its budget for three consecutive years. Despite AFTAH’s consistent false claims, Glenn Beck and other well-known conservatives often refer to its materials, bringing LaBarbera’s marginal ideas to the mainstream.

This profile is part of a series on key anti-LGBTQ opponents adapted from Political Research Associates Resisting the Rainbow report.

Profile: Maggie Gallagher

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maggie gallagherMargret Gallagher is an anti-LGBTQ pundit and president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, which advocates a hard-line conservative agenda on marriage, sex, divorce law, and pregnancy. She is well-known as a co-founder of the the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).

Gallagher has said, commenting on a federal judge ruling Proposition 8 unconstitutional, “The case for gay marriage is ultimately rooted in a rejection of common sense and core ideas about the natural family, including that children need a mother and father.”  She believes the mainstream media gives same-sex marriage advocates a pass and thinks polls showing increased support for marriage equality are inaccurate. “I don’t believe those polls. One thing that is happening is that people are afraid to say what they really think about marriage,” she said in an interview.”  This is a common reaction to growing public support for LGBTQ rights—the suggestion that conservative men and women are afraid to voice their opinion for fear of public ridicule.

In 2007, Gallagher co-founded the National Organization for Marriage, a nonprofit that she describes as “fighting to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it.” The organization operates nationally to oppose gay marriage, especially when pro and anti state legislation marriage bills are on the ballot. NOM has ties to the Church of Latter-Day Saints, Focus on the Family, and the Knights of Columbus—all organizations with anti-LGBTQ stances. In 2012, she stepped down from the board at NOM. She currently serves as a senior fellow with the American Principles Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the fundamental principles on which the U.S. was founded.

Gallagher has said that marriage is primarily for reproduction and child rearing and that homosexual men and women should not raise children. She has said, “Polygamy is not worse than gay marriage, it is better. At least polygamy, for all its ugly defects, is an attempt to secure stable mother-father families for children.” Because Gallagher believes heterosexual marriage is the pillar of democratic civilization, she often links same-sex marriage with social disorder and has not hesitated to connect same-sex marriage with the end of Western civilization.

This profile is part of a series on key anti-LGBTQ opponents adapted from Political Research Associates’ Resisting the Rainbow report.

What the Denial of Miranda in the Boston Bombings Means for Us All

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Muslim communities across the United States have watched with trepidation to see what the fallout from the Boston Marathon bombings will be. Likewise, civil libertarians have anticipated that the Justice Department and the FBI would seek ways to suspend normal criminal procedures, on the basis that they need to gather intelligence about terrorist organizations. Similar discussions took place in 2010, following Faisal Shahzad’s attempt to set off a bomb in Times Square.

The Miranda warnings, which the Supreme Court deemed a necessary shield against the abuses of law enforcement in its 1966 Miranda v. Arizona ruling, inform individuals of their right to remain silent and their right to an attorney when subjected to custodial interrogation. Otherwise, their statements may not be used at trial. This was designed to deter law enforcement from subjecting individuals to coercive questioning. The Supreme Court has created a public safety exception that allows law enforcement to forego the reading of Miranda rights in emergencies. The Obama administration expanded this exception to terrorism-related cases in a secret 2011 memorandum.

Though Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had no known links to terrorist organizations, the Department of Justice indicated that it intended to question him “extensively” on matters likely to exceed the scope of questioning around undetonated explosives, as the goal was “to gain critical intelligence.” Tsarnaev was then interrogated for 16 hours, while he was strapped to a hospital bed with life-threatening injuries, before being informed of his Miranda rights.

What was the basis for the denial of the Miranda warnings? Boston officials had indicated that the emergency was over. And law enforcement acknowledged the absence of information linking Tsarnaev and his brother to any designated terrorist organizations. Given these facts, it is hard to imagine what kind of case, once designated as an act of terrorism, would not qualify for dispensing with Miranda. And one is left to conclude that the motivation for the denial has to do with Tsarnaev’s connection to Islam. The implication is that Islam, in and of itself, can be associated with terrorist organizations. Time will tell if this departure from normal criminal procedures will apply in cases involving non-Muslims. But the expansion of prosecutorial authority seems to go in only one direction.

It might seem as though little is at stake here for Tsarnaev. While he is entitled to a presumption of innocence, the televised, play-by-play nature of the pursuit for him, once he was identified, might make a guilty verdict a foregone conclusion. With the death penalty now on the table, the statements that Tsarnaev made in the course of his interrogation may mean the difference between life and death. The Supreme Court has not explicitly ruled on this issue, but at least two appellate courts have said that statements obtained in violation of Miranda may still be considered at the sentencing phase—even if they were excluded from trial, and even if they are in the context of a capital case.

Without knowing the potential consequences of his statements, of which the government was likely aware, Tsarnaev was apparently misled into believing that he had nothing to lose by cooperating. In the hands of government agents, he relied on the expectation that law enforcement would behave lawfully.

After the unprecedented lockdown of the entire Boston area, which heightened the public’s sense of terror, law enforcement agencies were well-positioned to push for an exception to Miranda. But they have not shown how the exception was warranted as a means of protecting public safety, or even as a means of gathering intelligence about so-called terrorist organizations. In forfeiting Tsarnaev’s rights in this instance, we lose a lot more. We further legitimize the discriminatory treatment of Muslims in criminal proceedings, and we eviscerate Miranda, which safeguards every citizen’s rights. Let’s fervently hope that the court Tsarnaev appears before will recognize what the Obama administration has failed to see: If Tsarnaev does not have these rights, perhaps eventually no one will.

To learn more about the Muslim Defense Project, visit http://www.nlgnyc.org/mdp. Special thanks to MDP members Bina Ahmad and Deborah Diamant for their contributions to this essay.

Slavery and Holocaust Used to Defend 20-Week “Fetal Pain” Bill

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Rep. Trent Franks addressing Arizona Republicans. Photo: npr.org

Rep. Trent Franks addressing Arizona Republicans. Photo: npr.org

Last week, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Arizona) introduced a bill that would prohibit abortion access nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy – with no exceptions for rape, incest, or health of the mother — based on the scientifically unsound claim that fetuses have developed the ability to feel pain by then.

Initially applicable only to Washington D.C., Rep. Franks broadened the scope of the D.C. Pain-Capable Unborn Protection Act (HR 1797) on Wednesday to affect all fifty states in the U.S. The bill’s introduction followed a ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that deemed a similar 20-week ban in Arizona unconstitutional. Nevertheless, Franks and eight members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution (a group with no female members) considered the law on Thursday.

Speaking with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and antichoice activist Lila Rose on Thursday, Rep. Franks compared the antiabortion movement to the abolition of slavery and the Holocaust. He said, “We are the ones that rushed into Eastern Europe and arrested the Holocaust, we are the ones that said no more to slavery after thousands of years, and by the grace of God, we’re going to be the ones that say that we’re going to protect our own children.”

Franks’s invocation of the Black abolitionist struggle and trauma of the Holocaust equates abortion with genocide and slavery, a right-wing framework designed to evoke emotional and moral outrage from people who, rightly, abhor racially-based violence. Appropriating progressive rhetoric and others’ heritage of suffering to advance the antiabortion agenda attempts to shroud the antichoice movement with historical legitimacy and righteousness. Furthermore, this framework puts antiabortion activists, ostensibly, in solidarity with antiracist struggles.

Under the guise of racial justice, antiabortion activists have developed legislation introduced in sixteen states that prevents abortions based on race and sex discrimination. Antiabortion advocates use the language of nondiscrimination to advance their decidedly reactionary agenda of preventing abortion access from several angles. For example, in April the “Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act” (HB 845) was passed in Florida, which requires a person performing an abortion to sign an affidavit confirming they are not terminating the pregnancy based on the fetus’s potential race or sex. Champion of the bill, white Rep. Charles Van Zant (R-Keystone Heights) claimed, “In America alone — without the Nazi Holocaust, without the Ku Klux Klan — Planned Parenthood and other abortionists have reduced our black population by more than 25 percent since 1973.” Black members of the House in Florida were insulted and Rep. Cynthia Stafford of Miami said the premise that white antiabortion legislators were trying to protect women and Black children from discrimination was a “bald faced lie.”

Barriers to abortion access promoted under a facade of justice obscure the Right’s underlying goal of ending abortion access altogether. This type of insidious legislation conceals the Right’s strategy of erecting so many bureaucratic hurdles and obstacles that abortion providers limit their services, for fear of being on the wrong side of the law, and people (especially immigrants and people of color) are discouraged from obtaining legal abortions.

International Day Against Homophobia: Have You Seen God Loves Uganda?

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The documentary God Loves Uganda, which depicts the role of American conservative evangelicals in generating vicious antigay campaigns in Uganda, has received acclaim at film festivals across the continent. PRA expert Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma–featured throughout the film discussing the role of U.S. Christian Right leaders in whipping up antigay fervor and pushing for passage of the “kill the gays” bill in the Ugandan parliament–has been attending and speaking at many of these screenings since the film’s Sundance debut. Today, for International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia, Kaoma joins the film at the Washington National Cathedral in D.C.

The film draws on much of Kaoma’s original research and reporting, as found in his PRA articles and reports, the 2012 Colonizing African Values and 2009 Globalizing the Culture Wars. PRA exposed U.S. Christian Right figures Scott Lively and Rick Warren’s role in the creation of the infamous Uganda bill–garnering major media attention and continuing to inform global understanding of homophobic campaigns in the U.S. and in Africa. PRA is proud that this investigative work has been utilized by African LGBTQ groups struggling for human rights such as Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ). Read More →

Crisis Pregnancy Centers Target Black Communities

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This is an excerpt of an article originally published at Colorlines.

Last December, Care Net—the nation’s largest network of evangelical Christian crisis pregnancy centers—featured a birth announcement of sorts on the website of its 10-year-old Urban Initiative. Under the headline, “Plans Underway for Care Net’s Newest Center in Kansas City, Mo.!” a block of upbeat text described how a predominantly white, suburban nonprofit called Rachel House had “made contact” with “various African American pastors and community leaders,” who helped them “plant” a “pregnancy resource center” in a predominantly black, poor section of downtown Kansas City.

Evangelicals have long approached their anti-abortion work with missionary zeal. But over the past four years, national anti-abortion strategists have designated “urban” and “underserved” women and babies as a priority for saving. In practice, these terms tend to be euphemisms for “black” and, to a lesser extent, “Latina.”

Because crisis pregnancy centers are independently run and unregulated, it’s hard to say for sure how many there are in the United States. In a frequently cited 2010 report, the Family Research Council, a Christian right organizer and think tank, says there are more than 1,900 centers in the country affiliated with three major networks: Care Net, Heartbeat International and the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates. An entire section of the report is devoted to the “urban” work of pregnancy centers. “The concentration of abortion facilities in urban, minority and poorer areas of the U.S. is well-known,” the report declares.

The “concentration” claim has already been thoroughly debunked, but many anti-abortion activists still believe deeply in it. It’s that belief, in part, that’s stirred outrage over the gruesome story of Kermit Gosnell’s Philadelphia clinic in recent weeks. Gosnell is being prosecuted for conducting illegal, dangerous late-term abortions, and rightwing pundits have argued that mainstream media ignored the story because it drew unflattering attention to abortion providers in poor, black neighborhoods. The implication is that anti-abortion activists care more about poor women of color than do the Planned Parenthoods of the world.

In its 2011 federal tax filing, Care Net reported spending nearly $1 million trying to “educate inner-city communities” and develop centers in “underserved areas.” In talking about this work, Care Net typically promotes North Philadelphia’s black-owned Hope Center as a model. But Rachel House offers a window into a different story, one that has unfolded in a series of headline-grabbing controversies over the past three years.

Fueled by a race-baiting, national marketing campaign and the missionary-like evangelism of its affiliates, Care Net has turned the complex reality behind black abortion rates into a single, fictional story. In that story, poor black women who have abortions are the unwitting victims of feminists and morally deficient reproductive healthcare providers, embodied in sadists such as Gosnell. Crisis pregnancy centers, in this fable, are the best place those women can go to be saved. Read More →