Pope Donald the Worst?

 

 Just when I thought I was inured to the fly-paper tackiness of TrumpWorld, they succeed in flabbering the brutal hell out of my gaster. The above AI portrait of the prick as a pontiff honestly did get posted by the White House account on the Truth Social site, and despite the usual formulation of "disappointed but not surprised", I think I'll actually chuck this one into the "surprised but not disappointed" bin.

You see, the knob-glazers surrounding the president have run off with a passion after "buy Greenland" and "make Canada the 51st state", so why not humor yet another megalomaniac delusion of the slowly rotting Turnip-in-Chief? 

I should have expected as much when Sen. Graham spoke as if Trump as Pope was a real possibility:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suggested that the more than 230 Catholic Cardinals in the conclave “keep an open mind” about considering President Donald Trump for the papacy.

“I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next Pope,” Graham posted Tuesday on X. “This would truly be a dark horse candidate, but I would ask the papal conclave and Catholic faithful to keep an open mind about this possibility! The first Pope-U.S. President combination has many upsides. Watching for white smoke…. Trump MMXXVIII!”

Graham showed support for the idea after President Trump was asked by a reporter if “he had anyone in mind” to succeed Pope Francis after he died at the age of 88.

People assumed he was joking. Nay, nay. He was planting seeds. 

Idolatry and the Ten Commandments

 

The theocrats want to put the Ten Commandments in schools for the children's own good. The mere presence is supposed to imbue them with morality. Or would it? I think it isn't about moral instruction of young people so much as a moral win for them. Essentially--it pretty much boils down to letting the children of lesser gods know who is top dog around here. Yahweh. The Storm God of the Near East. You really don't need to venture too far from the first Commandment, or the second, depending on which tradition you follow (because different versions of the Ten commandments exist) to realize that an explicitly "Judeo-Christian" symbol is being put in schools to tell everyone the religious preferences of the dominant culture: "Put no other God before me."

We are told he is a jealous god in the Holy Bible. As a kid, this struck me as weird--who is he jealous of if he's the only game in town? (That, along with "Who the heck is he talking to at creation?" was enough to drop a pretty big silver piece about the traditions that preceded it and the hard work of scrubbing out the "other guys".) But that's not really it, is it?

We are also told humans were made in God's image--it's the other way about. God is jealous because he was made in ours. He throws tantrums--like drowning the world except for one family, or destroying whole cities--not because it is godly, but because the threat of violence is something humans understand: "Someone in power is angry--let's behave for God's sake!" 

Memorial Day

 

In memory of those who have served and lost their lives in the name of freedom, this grateful nation should never forget that sacrifice, nor support tyranny abroad, or support the rule of tyranny here. For those who would support and commend dictators from the land of the free or wish for a day-one dictator in this nation themselves, desecrate the sacrifices of the brave.

Theocrat Chat with Tommy Taterhead

 

I beg this very stupid man's entirely irrelevant pardon, but how does he think in this day and age that folks in Central American have not heard about Jesus? Just hordes of uncontacted tribes "with languages nobody heard before" I guess. https://t.co/n1LFvvPmJE

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) March 1, 2024

There is a lot going wrong here in just a few brief sentences. The first thing I take issue with is that we need "God" in government at all. Individuals might take something from having the presence of a deity in their lives and have comfort and strength in their faith, but government itself--our government, is made of laws. Our country's population is made up of people with many different faiths. I think that the First Amendment to our Constitution is the remedy against the sectarian wars and religious persecutions our forefathers were well aware of in Europe--and Tuberville here completely demonstrates why the Christian nationalist desire to get God in government is folly.

Whose God? Because the various immigrants crossing the border aren't ignorant of the concept of God. It seems to me that Tuberville is concerned that they might be followers of the "wrong" God. All of my ancestors came from countries where Protestants and Catholics clashed. Does Sen. Tuberville think Papists follow the Whore of Babylon? Or has he been misguided into thinking "foreigners" are probably some sort of untutored heathens? Is he unaware that Protestant evangelism has penetrated Central and South America? The same religion, roughly, he himself follows? 

This is a man who should be very careful indeed whom he considers to be untutored. I've met many a non-Christian whose grasp on theology is very likely better than the Senator's grasp on anything. 

The Haunting of the House on the Hill

 

The thing that alarms me about the new Speaker of the House is he's explicitly against the separation of church and state in a way that a lot of Republicans just aren't that outspoken about. They very well might well be theocrats to some degree: they just aren't that obviously so. Ted Cruz's dad is Seven Mountains dominionist. We don't talk about it that much. Josh Hawley has some Christian nationalist vibes. 

But Mike Johnson is just a flat-out a denier of the separation of church and state, to the extent that he credits supernaturalism (God's providence, or anointing) for the raising up of leaders (including an embrace of the historical revisionism of David Barton regarding the subject). It's a problem: the halls of Congress really should not be haunted by assorted head spooks like the various religious notions of its members. We elect leaders by popular choice: that means that the people vote for them, not that they are picked by someone's idea of the cosmic creator of all the things. I could suggest an empirical experiment of the success of God doing the things by inviting all the Bible-believers to stay home on election day, and I would probably find myself shocked! by their lack of faith that works aren't actually getting electoral things done IRL. 

Johnson is like the Forrest Gump of theocracy: he took down his podcasts so we wouldn't know how fringe he is. His wife, who is all about the LGBT conversion, took down her website, too.  Almost as if people might be horrified at what their actual beliefs are. But he's been associated with crisis pregnancy centers. His "adoption" of his 14 year old son at age 25 while still unmarried via the troubled Young Life Ministries is suspect as hell. 

Republicans Don't Care About Your Family

 

Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg had sharp words for the Republicans opposing a bill codifying the right to same-sex marriages, urging them to support the legislation's passage in the Senate after it won bipartisan House approval. https://t.co/mBKJi45Egb

— ABC News (@ABC) July 24, 2022

Republicans demonstrated with their vote in the House against supporting same-sex or interracial marriages that they don't care about all of our American families. After all, House Republicans also failed to support access to contraception.  They don't care if lack of access to abortion means that a pregnant person dies, or that pregnant people can't move freely across the country to access their right to bodily autonomy according to their own conscience. 

It has to be finally admitted--they don't care about your family. Republicans chatted quite comfortably with a gay man and then right afterwards told him his family did not matter to them. They don't care about his family, and his young children. They don't care about his parental rights and those of his spouse. 

They would not care about your family, that you made via IVF, because it offends the anti-abortion people. I want you to know that. 

If you are Jewish or gay, they would probably prefer you not adopt because you aren't the right sort of people to raise kids. Marjorie Taylor Greene considers adoptive parents "fake" and thinks they are a danger to children. 

All Lies and Jest

 

The funny old thing about the First Amendment is that you can say what you want to say, and while the federal government can't prosecute you (unless your speech was sedition or fraud, and like, we are definitely going to see some cases about those kinds of things, right?) for the things you say, other people can criticize the hell out of you. And that is what is happening to a father of four from Oregon, who decided that "Let's Go Brandon" was part of his Christmas message to the White House. 

And I am all about Jared Schmeck's First Amendment rights--he exercised the heck out of it for the opportunity he had. It was the rhetorical equivalent of saying "Bababooey" and accomplishes nothing to advance the MAGA mindset, It was something akin (not to be ableist, I hope) to political Tourette's syndrome, in that he spontaneously behaved in an asshole manner according to his politics, and we can assume his upbringing otherwise would not have him wishing people get fucked in answer to Christmas well-wishes. 

But because I'm me, I do think it funny that he's shocked that he isn't greeted with universal high-fives, but is getting static from other people just exercising their free speech, and I also wonder if he ever considered that making Christmas a whole political to-do kind of made the White House call less a cool thing for his kids and more like a resignation to accept this is their dad now, the guy who did the thing. 

Of course Schmeck, a former Oregon police officer who resigned for reasons he doesn't want to talk about and who is now employed by the family business, thinks he is the persecuted one here. I don't want him persecuted. I think his pluck is revelatory, but not damaging to our democracy or anything--we have greater threats. But he thought he'd be more universally applauded for his MAGA cult catch-phrase. And he thinks telling us he's Christ-following now changes whether people find what he said disturbing.

Some people will. But if I say Trump can eat shit and die, people will criticize me for that, no matter how genuinely I mean it, or even if he somewhat deserves to swallow his own words and face the consequences of them in the figurative way I might have meant what I said. This is the consequences of my free speech. I will be criticized, and I accept that my whole online life. A long online life. 

So what I'm saying is, he isn't a free speech martyr because here he is! Still good. And he said what he wanted to say, and maybe discovered not everyone agreed with him. Oh, careless speech, there are sometimes reactions. This is called a conversation! Despite all lies and jest still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. But I want to think we can do better.  

Schmeck can do better and I hope he has the opportunity. But no, he isn't a free speech martyr, and I wish him both a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, because I am exactly that kind of commie asshole. 

Speaking of McCarthyism

Just to follow on from the preceding post, where I noted that Sen. McConnell is a bit off with respects to what McCarthyism is, I regret to inform that Sen. Ted Cruz probably knows exactly what it is, because he's basically practicing it with his proposition that Antifa be treated as a domestic terrorist organization. And for what it's worth, President Trump also seems to be onboard with the notion (even if people who understand these things somewhat better than Trump find it ridiculous at best, chilling at worst). 

Demonization of anti-fascists (remember, folks, the "fa" in Antifa stands for "fascism" and fascism is bad!) is happening at a very awkward time--it has been reported that white supremacist violence is on the rise, but Antifa, as a response to white supremacy, which takes several forms including nonviolent action, is the movement being singled out. What grips me about this is that there are numerous loose groups that protest fascism and racism (not a single, centralized organization) but there is a good probability that language that simply calls this activity "left wing activists" or "affiliated with Antifa" will be used to target any "fellow traveler". (One might recall that HUAC looked into civil rights groups, but kept their paws off the Klan.)

I don't like the implications of it--and with McConnell crying about McCarthyism, I guess I'm just saying it seems to me to be a case of one side accusing the other of the very thing they'd like to do.  And I guess I could just be misreading red meat for a red scare. Except there's also this denunciation of socialism proposed by Sen. Steve Daines.  For some reason, he associates socialism with lack of freedom as opposed to being an alternative to unregulated free market capitalism, but again, this is a denunciation specifically of "the left". 

An Argument for Religious Freedom

Recently, Franklin Graham, the late Rev. Billy Graham's Islamophobic and homophobic scion, challenged Pete Buttigieg for referring to himself as a gay Christian because to Graham, it is not possible to be both Christian and gay. 

This is not news to millions of gay people who actually consider themselves Christian--of course, they've heard at one time or another that they are imperfect in their beliefs if they don't also hate themselves. It might be news to Graham that their religion, and freedom to practice it, is no less valid than his own and that it isn't actually up to Graham to decide who gets to call themselves a follower of Christ.

I don't follow religion, myself, and struggle with the textual smarty-pants tendency to point out this passage or that to refute the fine print gatekeepers who want to reserve their own slice of heaven, for the price of striking off others for whatever scape-goatish reason they are so inclined. It's truly not my god and not my book, and as far as one person's interpretation of it goes, it's probably not even my business--but to that extent, it isn't really Graham's business to monitor someone else's religious rectitude, either, as if only one version of the Bible even existed. 

What we do have in common, as Americans, is the First Amendment. It seems that Graham would prefer to have his interpretation of religion override what others hold to be true, and even would ask that the government agree with his interpretation to limit the rights of others to follow their non-harmful life choices, such as marrying a consenting, adult partner.   But religious guidelines can dictate what to eat and what to wear and how to discipline one's children and on and on--the problem is to what extent any religious person's mere opinion should hold weight over another person's pursuit of happiness. 

Or maybe it isn't a problem at all--Graham just wants to cause trouble. Pete Buttigieg is as free to be a gay Christian as Graham is to be a bigoted one because he accepts Christ as central to his faith. I'm a happy little atheist because why not? But that sort of assumption that freedom of religion can mean freedom from having one's rights impinged by another's religious view isn't as common as I suppose it ought to be. I can't help but think about the times I've seen Tony Perkins or Brian Brown or some other "true religion" type being treated as if their view--imposing a specifically scriptural interpretation on LGBT people's right to marry, adopt, or even exist, as if they were perfectly ordinary--and not actually peculiar sectarian extremists trying to impose a sort of Christianism on other folks. Especially when this kind of judgment and imposition of religious bigotry does societal harm. 

Now That It's Official, I Officially Can't Stand Mike Pence

Although it was undoubtedly true before--what with Mike Pence being historically absolutely terrible for queer rights and for reproductive freedom, I really didn't want to unload on poor old Johnny Quest's dad-looking probably one-term governor from Indiana (?), where being wretched actually doesn't break you (I am looking at you, Mitch Daniels, you pimp-handed skinflint) but might actually make you a household name of some kind. It seems too cruel to walk all over the reputation of a (since when is Indiana a swing state?) favorite son from part of the daggone heartlands? After all, Dan Quayle was a Senator from Indiana and too damn dumb to spell "potato" and he managed to be Vice-President. For one term.  So why the hell shouldn't Mike Pence, a man once described (hey, thanks Bowtiejack!) by an associate as having less brains than a salad, be a credible running mate for the current GOP nominee for president?

Great question! Because he isn't your run of the mill kind of stupid, that's why. Because he just signed on to be the running mate of a guy he did not endorse during the primary, and whose main policy stances he pretty much opposed.  The attack ads, they cut themselves. This is a guy who managed to economically flatten Indiana with a religious freedom bill, only to walk it back and alienate the religious conservatives he was intending to succor.  That's a special kind of stupid. It isn't climate-denying kind of stupid, and it isn't cigarettes don't kill kind of stupid (disclaimer: one of my grannies was a heavy smoker who died of emphysema and congestive heart failure) --it's "This dumb political stance benefits exactly nobody and is just twisted and unconstitutional so--doing I'm totally doing it"  until he wasn't. Heh.

He doesn't believe in evolution and he was kind of big on the Iraq War, continuing to say there were WMDs there long after lots of folks were giving that right the heck up.  His vendetta against Planned Parenthood resulted in an HIV epidemic, but what does this asshole care? He once wanted AIDS funding to go towards gay conversion therapy, which is a monstrous torture cluster that mostly makes queers hate themselves, and doesn't convert anyone to anything but a wreck.

He is a goddamn garbage nightmare candidate, and yet he was probably also Trump's best choice (Gingrich being out where  the buses don't run and Christie being, well, himself), and the best carrier of the current GOP platform's flag.  Pence is all that is wrong with the "modern" GOP--but boring as hell so it somehow doesn't look as tragic. Trump sets all that is boring on fire. There isn't a damn thing I can say in this world that does worse to Pence's career than being on Trump's racist-ass ticket. So I feel free as can be to talk about Pence like he should be. He's a hot mess on new shoes.

Discrimination Hits my Hometown

Monday morning, apparently, some jerk in a red pick-up truck bowled a pig's head onto the steps of the Al-Aqsa Academy mosque in my very own hometown. It's pretty clearly symbolic--pork is not halal but haram. So this act was using a little bit of knowledge about Islamic tradition to try to defile a mosque. It was pretty disgusting, but it is only mildly intimidating--still, I think this is a bad sign regarding what utter irresponsible bullshit is going around in the presidential race.

Mayor Nutter, who is about as mild-mannered and cool a cat as you can find, referred to Donald Trump just recently as an asshole. He isn't wrong--in fact I admire his restraint in not referring to him with Charles Pierce's winning sobriquet of "ambulatory pilonidal cyst". (I think one of them kept Rush Limbaugh out of 'Nam. Thus, good for exactly nothing, ever.) My man for the PA Senate race, John Fetterman, called Trump a jagoff. Yup. This, too, sounds about right.

See, leadership is a funny old thing. You can lead bigoted asshats to support your mouthy hide by yapping it up, but at the end of the day, you are responsible for the permission slips you went and wrote to all the delinquent-ass SOB's who took the perfectly generic insinuations you made and then decided to hit up actual people and threaten them, personally. And if you do not understand or accept that responsibility--you are not any kind of real leader, because in the real world, words mean things and policies have consequences.

Ben Carson is Against Anti-American Stuff

For people who are pretty much just soaking in how much of Donald Trump's appeal is outright fascism, I don't want you to miss how his number two in the polls, Ben Carson, is dead-set against, um, anti-American stuff.

Carson said Saturday that he would support monitoring "a mosque or any church or any organization or any school or any press corps where there was a lot radicalization and things that were anti-American."

Asked Sunday if people might take his use of "anti-American" to mean he supported restricting liberties, Carson said, "I think anybody with normal intellect knows exactly what I'm saying."

Carson has also faced criticism for suggesting that the U.S. should refuse to admit Syrian refugees, to ensure that no Islamic extremists who would do harm slip into the country.

Last week, Carson likened blocking potential terrorists posing as Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. to handling a "rabid dog."

Funny old thing, the public record, he's also said he would use the Department of Education to make sure that professors wouldn't radicalize anybody by using some kind of anti-American stuff. (Because learning American history could make you join ISIS.) This would reinforce a code of speech Carson approves of, which is not either the same thing as "political correctness", which, he would have you know, is how Nazi Germany got started. And if you think, for example, that waterboarding is torture and just should not be done, why, that's more of that "politically correct" foolishness. Take your "normal intellect" and make of that what you will.

So, for the record, "politically correct" is that evil thing that happens when you do not agree with the worldview of Ben Carson. You should probably be monitored for that, and if you keep it the hell up, maybe there's a place for waterboarding in your future. Which isn't a bit like Nazi Germany, at all, at all.

Huckabee's a Few Chips Short of a Bag

Via Steve Benen, I actually don't think there is anything surprising about Mike Huckabee wanting a boycott on Frito-Lay for their partnership with the It Gets Better Project. It might not look presidential to get into a fight with a bag od Rainbow Doritos, but from where Huckabee stands, in the polls and in life, the culture war is what it's all about. The striking point isn't the hypocrisy between Huckabee's support for a boycott in the instance, while calling a similar sort of strike on Chick-Fil-A over their support for anti-LGBT groups economic terrorism--that's just expected. I mean, all's fair in love of one's own voice and the culture war, am I right?

No. The striking thing, leaving aside the exception that Huckabee takes with potty-mouth and dis-respecter of religions, Dan Savage, for hurting religious fee-fees, is that Huckabee disapproves of the company's involvement with the It Gets Better Project, which focuses on supporting LGBT kids in the face of bullying, and was formed in reaction to a wave of LGBT kids committing suicide in despair of their situation. On some level, Mike Huckabee does not agree that LGBT kids should be supported even when they are facing the prospect of being bullied to death.

One could try to break down, specifically, what part of this mission bothers him. Is it that life is made bearable for LGBT youth, who he has a callous lack of concern for? Or is it that he simply feels that harassing a "sinner" to their breaking point is the God and Constitution-given right of any Christian child (and their parents)? Does that even matter?

For a child contemplating their sexual orientation or gender identification, this isn't a trivial matter, no matter what an ignoramus like Huckabee thinks. A young person is struggling to become an adult, and they don't just have the regard of their peers to consider--but the treatment they might face from an unenlightened school faculty, or from their own parents. Kids have been turned out of their family homes because of their identity. This isn't about some "name-calling" or fragile adolescent feelings--this is a matter of life or death for LGBT kids. This is about them being able to survive their vulnerability.

So am I saying Huckabee's signing on to this boycott is basically supporting picking on the vulnerable? You know, I think I am.

This Saudi Arabia Thing--I Might not be Off, Here.

When I talked about the crackdown that seems to be happening regarding Saudi Arabia and dissidents, like the treatment of Raif Badawi and Ali al-Nimr, I suggested their crackdown on dissidents wasn't without a potential threat to their existence--after all, there are signs, They are pumping oil like mad even if that's like beating a horse you know has a tumor. So reading this prediction of a collapse in Saudia Arabia of the current government is pretty interesting. My basic belief is that, because so many Middle Eastern people today being young and having access to internet through phones and such, they want more access to liberty. And they will find a way.

I felt the same way regarding the idea of a "Green Revolution" for Iran though. I'm very romantic about the idea of a positive democratic wave happening in the Middle East. We aren't so separated in our needs or our likes, once the voice of radicalism is bypassed. I don't think Saudis are so generally fond of their repression than Iranians or any other culture held back by religion.

I know this too, means a destabilization, but the fall of a regime that won't even let ladies drive or be out of the house without male escorts is hard to prop for.

Does God Authorize her Paycheck?

Refusing to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples may feel like a "heaven or hell" issue for Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis and something she's doing under "God's authority", but at the end of the day, I think the issue really is, if she can't do her job, then in might be in the best interest of her conscience if she simply step down. I tend to agree with this Slate piece that suggests that her lawyers are driving this thing to a "martyrdom" for their client.

Arresting the WBC?

One of the most understandable impulses upon hearing that the always-inappropriate haters of Westboro Baptist Church are coming to disrupt funerals in your community with their brand of nastiness is exactly what LA Governor Bobby Jindal wants to do--he wants them arrested.

I sympathize, because really, they seem like awful people, and it bothers me that they use their religion to get in the faces of others at a burial--I consider that a kind of sacred space that they are violating.

But he does know how WBC will respond, I hope? Because this is what they do: they will sue. They will claim that their freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and civil rights were violated all to heck.

They've won in court with those claims before. Non-violent protests pinning them a distance away from the mourners staged by civilians seem to work, but arresting them, I'm afraid, just gives them exactly the kind of attention they crave.

They pretty much are awful people, though.

There is a Very Good House Bill Regarding Blasphemy Laws

I don't usually say many good things about Congress, but recently, I read about a bill I very much approve of--a resolution in favor of calling for the repeal of blasphemy laws worldwide.  Now, I know that such a resolution doesn't mean that all nations will decide they need to dump their current blasphemy laws, but as a statement of principle, it's one I'm very in favor of. And one that human rights activists, atheists, agnostics, and free speech fans alike can get behind.

The text of the resolution makes note of the murder of Rashid Rehman. It might as well be talking about Walid Abu al-Khair,  the lawyer of Raif Badawi. The jurisprudence behind a blasphemy or sedition conviction is very like a Potter version of pornography--the powers that be know it when they see it. Which means that blasphemy charges are very much politicized, and the use of them is not about defending the faith, so much, as defending the local political machine.

You bet I find that appalling. Consider the case of the recently murdered bloggers of Bangladesh. In part, their murders are about a scrum of militants who wanted blasphemy laws imposed to protect their Islamic ideal of government.

I have never found this kind of politicization of religion in any way fair. To my mind, sanctifying religious argument is a bit like lese majeste, in that it means that the status quo can't be safely argued, which denies people the right of openly criticizing the very structures that govern them. I may not like to see certain political figures lampooned in certain lazy and stereotypical ways--but I respect the right of people to do so.

I think blasphemy laws are especially ludicrous when found in majority Christian nations. Actually, that any professed Christian should be in favor of blasphemy laws or capital punishment, in light of the Crucifixion, has always struck me as really strange.

Saudi Arabia Should Free Raif Badawi

The freethought blogger, Raif Badawi, remains in a Saudi Arabian prison to eventually fulfill a sentence of 1000 lashes altogether combined with ten years incarcerated. 

That is, he will expect to be physically tortured and held a prisoner for having done the sort of thing I take for granted whenever I point out that imaginary friends can't grant absolution for heinous acts or that religion is generally coupted by greed, sensuality, politics, or just plain being fake to begin with.

The nation of SA is altogether too be-heady at the moment, it seems.

"The Left" is Actually Obsessed with Cake

Sen. Ted Cruz has addressed LGBT rights again, and once again the best way I can describe our differences is "cake or death."

What Cruz has to say about "the left" and our weird support of gay rights is:

"Is there something about the left — and I am going to put the media in this category — that is obsessed with sex?" Cruz asked reporters at an event in Beaumont, Texas, according to the Texas Tribune.

"ISIS is executing homosexuals — you want to talk about gay rights?" Cruz continued. "This week was a very bad week for gay rights because the expansion of ISIS, the expansion of radical, theocratic, Islamic zealots that crucify Christians, that behead children and that murder homosexuals — that ought to be concerning you far more than asking six questions all on the same topic."

Cruz railed against "mandatory same-sex marriage" and criticized a reporter for asking about his views on gay marriage, according to the Texas Tribune.

Nobody on the left gives two damns about what consenting adults (key words, "consenting" and "adults") do in their private time. What we are concerned about is a public issue--how LGBT people's rights are respected in employment, in commerce, in not being harassed in schools, workplaces, or the street, and in being able to form property contracts with the partner of their choosing. It's not the sex--after all, Lawrence v. Texas used equal treatment under the law to invalidate anti-sodomy laws that discriminated specifically against LGBT people, and the accomplished attorney Cruz should be well aware of that case. The movement for equality is about rights that extend beyond the bedroom, but do not extend beyond those that straight people already enjoy.

If Santorum Enters the Race, It's Like I Get All the Hits

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.