Box Turtle Bulletin

Family “Research” Council Withdraws Support for Modified FADA

Ahead of yesterday’s shameful hearing, where House Republicans commemorated the one-month anniversary^* of the Pulse gay night club massacre in Orlando by exploring options for legalizing anti-gay discrimination with the so-called “First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), the bill’s sponsors apparently made a very odd addition to the bill’s language:

Sec. 3. PROTECTION OF THE FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF AND MORAL CONVICTIONS

(A) IN GENERAL. — Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Federal Government shall not take any discriminatory action against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person believes, speaks, or acts in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction that —

(1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of —

(A) two persons of the opposite sex; or
(B) two individuals of the same sex; or

(2) extramarital relations are improper.

You see the clever change, don’t you? If someone wants to discriminate because they don’t believe in opposite sex marriages, they’d also be free to discriminate without any fear of government “discrimination” against them. Because, you know, there are tons of people that strongly disagree with the Supreme Court ruling upholding marriage equality for opposite-sex couples, right?

Of course, this is a sham and a pretty bizarre one at that. But on the off chance that someone somewhere might actually decide that they don’t to bake a man-woman wedding cake, the Family “Research” Council has withdrawn its support for this legislative masterpiece:

Unfortunately, the proposed language of FADA was changed late last week by bill sponsors in response to criticism to make it protect the view that marriage is the union of “two individuals of the same sex” as well as the view that it is “two individuals of the opposite sex.” The hearing made clear that this “two views” approach has done nothing to mitigate opposition to or win support for FADA.

The Court’s ruling and the Obama administration is already promoting such views, but natural marriage supporters are not protected from government punishment at all. Rep. Bonnie Waston Coleman’s (D-N.J.) commented that this “two views” version of FADA, which was meant to appease the Left, is a “facade”. It is unfortunate that the bill sponsors decided to affirm the Court’s redefinition when it is clear the Left does not want a live and let live policy which the original version of FADA supported.

That policy and reference to FADA’s nondiscrimination protections for supporters of natural marriage was added in two places to the conservative GOP platform! Members of Congress should not be asked to implicitly affirm the Supreme Court’s illegitimate decision in Obergefell v. Hodges in order to protect religious liberty or conscience rights, a message that was clearly articulated in the GOP platform this week. Because of the weakened language of the bill FRC has reluctantly withdrawn its support for FADA.

They are right of course in one sense: this change makes the bill even worse than the original bill by allowing more people to discriminate. But that explains only part of their objection. The other part they couldn’t have made any clearer: to them, “live and let live” was never going to be a two way street. It’s right there in black and white.

^*I’ve tried avoiding the contradictory phrase “one-month anniversary.” I really have. Believe me. It makes no logical sense. But everyone else is using it, so I’m throwing in the towel. File this under: choosing your battles.

Family “Research” Council Gearing Up for GOP Floor Fight Over Anti-LGBT Platform Provisions

Moments ago, FRC Action, the political action wing of the Family “Research” Council, sent out the following email blast to try to head of a floor fight at the Republican Convention next week:

LGBT Activists Attempt to Hijack GOP Platform

When the gavel fell in Cleveland yesterday evening, delegates at the Republican platform committee had succeeded in crafting one of the most conservative GOP platforms in modern times. Not all were celebrating the clearly enunciated conservative principles that underscored the party’s pro-military, pro-life, pro-natural marriage, pro-religious freedom stands. In the concluding moments of the platform gathering, a small group of delegates were engaged in an outright deceptive effort to derail the platform and potentially the convention. After repeated efforts to redefine marriage for the Republican party and interject special LGBT provisions in the platform, an effort was launched to create a Minority Report promoting items for an LGBT agenda, under the guise of creating a preamble for the platform from the 1860 Republican platform.

As soon as the proceedings concluded, the initiators of this effort announced to CNN that 37 delegates had signed on to a call for a Minority Report that would circumvent the process and put the platform onto the floor of next week’s convention and potentially derailing the GOP gathering. David Barton was one of the delegates that was misled into signing the resolution. He wrote a letter to delegates last night explaining what took place and urging others who may have been lied to, to remove their names from the resolution.

The use of such deception is not surprising, given the tactics of LGBT activists. Social media, fueled by anti-Christian organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center, has been abuzz that I added language to the GOP platform that has embraced “reparative therapy” for homosexuals. Nothing provides a clearer example of both their dishonesty and their self-absorption. Here is the exact language that I added to the platform under the subsection of “Protecting Individual Conscience in Health Care:”

“We support the right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children. We support the right of parents to consent to medical treatment for their minor children and urge enactment of legislation that would require parental consent to transport their daughters across state lines for abortion.”

The subcommittee adopted the language without any opposition — even from a LGBT activist who was on the subcommittee and leading the effort for Paul Singer, the wealthy Republican donor.

Despite the deceptive and desperate attempts by those who want to undermine the Republican Party’s longstanding support for the traditional family values which have made America the envy of the world, the GOP’s stand for these values is stronger than ever.

Here is a bit more information that I am pretty confident you will not read in media reports. Those attempting to change the party’s stand on marriage and morality repeatedly claimed that they represented the next generation, and that the party could not hold these views and survive. What was interesting is that with the exception of maybe one delegate making those claims, they were my age or older. But in contrast, those who passionately and successfully advanced natural marriage and traditional values in the platform were mostly conservative millennials. Once again, I challenge you not to believe what the media and the Left claim about the next generation. Keep training them up to stand firm in the truth.

Stay tuned. I’ll have more from Cleveland as the FRC Action Team continues to represent you and the values that make America — America.

You can read some background about how the “therapy for their minor children” clause made it into the final draft of the platform here. Dallas Morning News has more background:

And taking a page from the Texas Republican Party’s platform, Louisiana delegate Tony Perkins proposed language endorsing so-called “conversion” or “reparative therapy.”

The practice, which has been widely criticized by doctors and therapists, seeks to “cure” homosexuals through analysis and, oftentimes, prayer. The new platform language, which the committee approved, does not actually explicitly mention the practice, but says parents should be allowed “to determine the proper treatment or therapy” for  their children.

After the meeting, Perkins said the language would extend to any “physical, emotional” therapy.

According to Time’s Zeke Miller, the clause was slipped in even though Perkins had missed a deadline to pre-file the amendment:

GOP platform subcommittee passes amendment calling for legislation restricting bathroom use by biological sex

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) July 11, 2016

.@Reince meeting with @tperkins on margins of platform meeting was about Perkins’ call to endorse ‘conversion therapy.’

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) July 11, 2016

Perkins missed deadline to pre-file amendment, can bring it up from floor (but RNC doesn't want it) https://t.co/P3uC1kJ9XA

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) July 11, 2016

.@tperkins introduces conversion therapy amendment, which passes the GOP Platform subcommittee.

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) July 11, 2016

Language: "We support the right of parents to determine the proper treatment or therapy, for their minor children."

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) July 11, 2016

GOP Endorses “Most Anti-LGBT Platform in the Party’s 162-Year History”

As Time reported:

On Tuesday morning, the first openly gay member of the Republican Party’s platform committee said she was offering amendments to see “just how far this committee is willing to go to avoid a single positive reference to the LGBT community.”

According to reports, the platform committee went about as far as they could. The committee voted twice yesterday — exactly one month to the day after the Orlando massacre at the Pulse gay night club — to erase the gays from the worst mass shooting on American soil in a century. For example, under “War on Terrorism,” the platform now reads:

War on Terrorism

We are a nation at war! Islamic extremists have declared war on our Nation and the civilized world. The terrorist’s attack on the LGBT community in Orlando on June 12th ads to the long list of hundreds of attacks of war against the United States…

The strike-out “on the LGBT commiunity” was a proposed amendment to the platform which was rejected by the platform committee. That move builds on a predominantly-Republican theme of refusing to say our name. In another statement on “radical Islamic terrorism,” the platform committee rejected a mention of “LGBT individuals, Christians, Jews and women” as being “a target of violence and oppression.”

The New York Times political reporter Jeremy Peters reports: “Jim Bopp, a delegate from Indiana, said the Republican Party had always rejected ‘identity politics.’ Arguing against the measure, he said, ‘Obviously, there’s an agenda here’.” Peters continues:

But nearly every provision that expressed disapproval of homosexuality, same-sex marriage or transgender rights passed. The platform calls for overturning the Supreme Court marriage decision with a constitutional amendment and makes references to appointing judges “who respect traditional family values.”

“Has a dead horse been beaten enough yet?” asked Annie Dickerson, a committee member from New York, who chastised her colleagues for writing language offensive to gays into the platform “again and again and again.”

Additional provisions included those that promoted state laws to limit which restrooms transgender people could use, nodded to “conversion therapy” for gays by saying that parents should be free to make medical decisions about their children without interference and stated that “natural marriage” between a man and a woman is most likely to result in offspring who do not become drug-addicted or otherwise damaged.

The Family “Research” Council’s Tony Perkins, who is a Louisiana delegate to the platform committee, was in a celebratory mood going into yesterday’s final meeting ahead of the convention. In a email blast to supporters:

The marriage plank was strengthened with language explaining why children deserve a mom and dad. Religious liberty text was added protecting businesses and military service members. …

We are also pleased that the party is now on record standing with the 23 states that are suing President Obama over his bathroom & locker room edict. These amendments were overwhelmingly adopted. There were a handful of LGBT activists and sympathizers who opposed language highlighting the privacy and safety concerns related to the president’s locker room decrees as well as the party’s clearly stated view that natural marriage is the cornerstone of society. Some in the media attempted to seize on this as evidence of a divided party. Far from it. My prediction is that Republicans will leave Cleveland with a solid platform and will unite around the party’s nominee for the purpose of saving America for the next generation and beyond.

Log Cabin Republicans were outraged:

There’s no way to sugar-coat this: I’m mad as hell — and I know you are, too.

Moments ago, the Republican Party passed the most anti-LGBT Platform in the Party’s 162-year history.

Opposition to marriage equality, nonsense about bathrooms, an endorsement of the debunked psychological practice of “pray the gay away” — it’s all in there.

This isn’t my GOP, and I know it’s not yours either. Heck, it’s not even Donald Trump’s! When given a chance to follow the lead of our presumptive presidential nominee and reach out to the LGBT community in the wake of the awful terrorist massacre in Orlando on the gay nightclub Pulse, the Platform Committee said NO.

Peters said the platform that emerged from yesterday’s meeting “amounts to a rightward lurch even from the party’s hard-line platform in 2012.” With the public moving steadily toward support for marriage equality and non-discrimination protections for LGBT people, moderate Republicans say they have enough signatures to demand a vote on their proposals to take to fight over the party’s anti-LGBT planks to all 2,475 delegates on the Convention floor, which should make for some compelling must-see TV.

Canada’s Anglican Church Allows Same-Sex Marriage

Getting to that headline took some doing. Earlier today, it had been reported that the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada had very narrowly turned down a resolution authorizing same-sex weddings taking place in Anglican churches. According to the rules the Church sets out for such changes, the resolution was just one vote shy of meeting the threshold needed for approval. But then…

Questions about the integrity of the voting process in which Anglicans narrowly rejected a resolution to allow same-sex marriage emerged Tuesday, leading to a stunning reversal of the result.

Some members stood up to say their votes had not been recorded during voting late Monday — when passage of the resolution failed by a single vote.

“That is an issue of concern,” said Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the church. “We cannot leave this synod with this kind of confusion.”

To pass, the resolution required two-thirds of each of three orders — lay, clergy and bishops. The clergy failed to reach that threshold by one vote that was apparently not counted because it was counted in the lay order.

The error was discovered after delegates requested a detailed hard copy of the electronic voting records.

After examining the voting records, Archbishop Hiltz declared that the same-sex marriage resolution had passed. Several bishops said that they planned to implement the resolution immediately, noting that the current marriage canon doesn’t specifically prohibit solemnizing same-sex marriages. The resolution still requires re-affirmation by the 2019 Synod before it can become church law.

Mississippi Governor Asks Judge To Allow State To Begin Enforcing Right-To-Discriminate Law

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R)

Last night, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant filed a notice (PDF: 56KB/3 pages) saying that he will appeal a federal judge’s injunction preventing a state right-to-discriminate law from going into effect. He also filed a motion (PDF: 56KB/3 pages) with Federal District Judge Carlton Reeves asking the judge to stay his injunction so the law could be enforced.

Mississippi’s so-called “religious freedom” law, HB 1523, would allow individuals, religious organizations and businesses to deny services to LGBT people based on “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.” The law also would allow county clerks to selectively refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on those same grounds. Judge Reeves issued a very lengthy injunction (which actually read more like a final court ruling) in which the court found that Mississippi’s law “was the State’s attempt to put LGBT citizens back in their place” after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned bans against same-sex marriage nationwide last year in Obergefell v. Hodges.

In the memorandum accompanying both filings (PDF: 109KB/9 pages), Gov. Bryant argues that “the state is likely to succeed on appeal” due to arguments that were already made in earlier filings with Judge Reeves’s court: that “none of the plaintiffs have standing” and that HB 1523 is constitutional. Judge Reeves had already dealt extensively with those arguments in his injunction.

Gov. Bryant’s memorandum also asserts, “The State will suffer irreparable injury absent a stay because the Court’s injunction,” although he does not explain what that injury entails. He also asserts that “a stay pending appeal is in the public interest because the statutory policy of the Legislature ‘is in itself a declaration of the public interest’… If the Court agrees with the State that it is likely to prevail in its appeal, then a stay pending appeal is by definition in the public interest.”

Bryant also asserts that HB 1523 isn’t harmful to the plaintiffs:

The plaintiffs have not even alleged, let alone produced evidence, that they will suffer discrimination at the hands of public or private actors if HB 1523 is allowed to take effect. And the “offense” that they have taken from Mississippi’s decision to protect the conscientious scruples of those who oppose same-sex marriage is not a legally cognizable harm.

Ordinarily, the Mississippi Attorney General’s office would be expected to appeal the injunction, but Attorney General Jim Hood (D) announced that his office hasn’t decided whether to do so. His  statement however strongly suggested that he would not be inclined to appeal, saying that “the churchgoing public was duped into believing that HB1523 protected religious freedoms.”

The GOP Will Mark The One-Month Anniversary of the Pulse Night Club Massacre with a Hearing to Legalize More Anti-LGBT Discrimination

I kid you not:

Tuesday’s congressional hearing on a federal “religious freedom” bill that would enable anti-LGBT discrimination is “disturbing,” a White House spokesperson said Monday.

Jeff Tiller, a White House spokesperson, made the remarks in response to an email request from the Washington Blade to comment on the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform’s controversial hearing on the First Amendment Defense Act.

“We strongly oppose attempts to roll back non-discrimination protections for LGBT Americans,” Tiller said. “It’s disturbing that congressional Republicans plan to hold a hearing tomorrow on discriminatory, anti-LGBT legislation. President Obama remains firmly committed to promoting and defending the equal rights of all Americans, including the rights of LGBT Americans.”

A coalition of 70 groups has called on Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) to cancel the hearing, which is set to take place on the one-month anniversary of the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., claiming the lives of 49 people and wounding 53 others.

The so-called “First Amendment Defense Act” will allow businesses and individuals to circumvent federal protections against anti-LGBT discrimination and allow businesses to withhold marriage benefits from same-sex couples for religious reasons. The bill was introduced by Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) House and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) in the Senate.

Witnesses set to testify for the bill include Kelvin Cochran, a former Atlanta fire chief who was fired for distributing a book he wrote, titled Who Told You That You Were Naked?,  to his subordinates (including, presumably, LGBT subordinates in the department) which purportedly presented “the Biblical view” of homosexuality, adultery and other sexual topics. Other witnesses include a representative from the anti-gay Alliance Defending Freedom and a political science professor from the Witherspoon Institute.

Those set to testify against the bill include former Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA); Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit which overturned state bans on same-sex marriage nationwide, and a law professor from the Columbia University’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law.

Reports: Draft Republican Platform To Include Support for Ex-Gay Therapy

According to Zeke Miller, political reporter for Time magazine, a Republican Platform Subcommittee on Healthcare, Education, and Crime, has approved a plank offered by the Family “Research” Council’s Tony Perkins:

An amendment offered by the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins offered support for the controversial practice of “conversion therapy” for children who identify as LGBT.

“We support the right of parents to determine the proper treatment or therapy, for their minor children,” the amendment said. Perkins originally drafted a more explicit embrace of the practice, but amended the text after consultations with top RNC officials. Perkins’ amendment, which passed the subcommittee, also calls for legislation to require parental consent for minor women to cross state lines for the purposes of obtaining an abortion.

Perkins is an official GOP delegate from Louisiana.

The subcommittee also recommended platform amendments calling internet porn “a public health crisis,” and it reportedly strengthened language opposing marriage equality. Miller doesn’t say what the new language consists of. He also reports that a separate Subcommittee on Restoring Constitutional Government has approved its own language opposing same-sex marriage. Miller also reported on the debate over the so-called “bathroom bills”:

The subcommittee also considered several “bathroom” amendments following the ongoing controversy in North Carolina which requires transgender individuals to use bathrooms as their birth gender, rather than how they identify. “I think this takes us to a dark place,” (New York delegate Annie) Dickerson said. “It shrinks our tent. We should be about addition not subtraction,” she added. West Virginia National Committeewoman Melody Potter disagreed, speaking in favor of amendments to echo the North Carolina law, which has sparked a backlash in the state, “nobody wants to discriminate against anybody, but I think it’s an issue of safety.” The measure ultimately passed.

Dickerson is a longtime fundraiser for Paul E. Singer’s conservative think tank that has been pushing for more support for LGBT equality in the Republican Party.

Dallas Morning News reporter Lauren McGaughy adds that “the same subcommittee approved platform language that opposes prekindergarten, supports the teaching of the Bible as a literature elective in all public schools and calls for a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution” to “give parents the right to direct their children’s education, a tacit critique of the English language and math standards known as Common Core.”

The full Platform Committee is set to begin taking up subcommittee recomendations later this afternoon, with the final draft expected to be completed tomorrow afternoon.

GOP Draft Platform Includes Call for Watered-Down Marriage Amendment, Support for Anti-Trans Lawuits

This seems confusing, since CNN is reporting that the draft Republican Platform no longer language calling for a constitutional amendment to declare marriage as between “one man and one woman.” But the report then goes on the misread the platform’s draft language. Fortunately, the New York Times has reprinted the draft language in full:

The data and the facts lead to an inescapable conclusion: that every child deserves a married mom and dad. The reality remains that millions of American families do not have the advantages that come with that structure. We honor the courageous efforts of those who bear the burdens of parenting alone and embrace the principle that all Americans should be treated with dignity and respect. But respect is not enough. Our laws and our government’s regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman and actively promote married family life as the basis of a stable and prosperous society. For that reason, as explained elsewhere in the platform, we do not accept the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal, whether through judicial reconsideration or a constitutional amendment returning control over marriage to states.”

This does represent a change of sorts. Prior Republican platforms called for the adoption of the Federal Marriage Amendment which would have had the effect of outlawing same-sex marriage throughout the country. This draft platform is calling for a different sort of constitutional amendment “returning control over marriage to the states.” That is, if a Republican President is unable to pack the court with enough anti-marriage conservatives to overturn the Windsor and Obergefell decisions. It also, indirectly, appears to call for the establishment of a “defense of marriage act” of some sort in saying that governmental regulations should only recognize opposite-sex marriages.

The draft platform also includes language opposing the Obama Administration’s efforts to eliminate anti-transgender discrimination in the nation’s public schools via Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972:

That same provision of the law is now being used by bureaucrats — and by the current president of the United States — to impose a social and cultural revolution upon the American people. Their agenda has nothing to do with individual rights; it has everything to do with power. They are determined to reshape our schools — and our entire society — to fit the mold of an ideology alien to America’s history and traditions. Their edict to the states concerning restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities is at once illegal, ominous, and ignores privacy issues. We salute the several states which have filed suits against it.”

The draft platform is still undergoing amendments and revisions today as various platform subcommittees continue their work.

Lots of Trans Legal News: One State Adds, One State Defends, Ten More States Sue

NOTES: In states other than Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee, local jurisdictions may provide additional anti-discrimination protections beyond those provided by state law. On June 30, a federal judge issued an injunction preventing Mississippi’s so-called “religious freedom” law from going into effect.

First, let’s start with the good news: on Saturday, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker (R) signed a transgender rights bill into law. Massachusetts’s anti-discrimination law had previously protected against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in housing and employment, but there was a special carve-out for public accommodations for its gender identity provisions. This new law, which goes into effect October 1, eliminates that carve-out and allows transgender people to use the restrooms and changing facilities consistent with their gender identities rather than their identified gender at birth:

The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) will adopt policies to enforce its provisions, a statement from the governor’s office said.

“No one should be discriminated against in Massachusetts because of their gender identity,” Baker said after signing the bill Friday.

“This compromise legislation extends additional protections to the commonwealth’s transgender community, and includes language to address the public safety concerns expressed by some by requiring the attorney general to issue regulations to protect against people abusing the law.”

And there’s more good news: Washington state’s comprehensive anti-discrimination laws have prohibited sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations for more than a decade with nary a problem with any of it. Last December, the state’s Human Rights Commission clarified that law by issuing new regulations ensuring access to restrooms and changing facilities according to an individual’s gender identity. That clarification produced a backlash, which led by some conservative Republicans to roll hack the regulations. When that effort failed in the state Senate, anti-LGBT campaigners filed Initiative 1515 (PDF:19KB/8 pages), which would have restricted access to public school’s “private facilities” to those who are “biologically” male or female. It would also allow people to file lawsuits against school systems that allow access to facilities based on gender identity.

The campaign backing I-1515, Just Want Privacy, had until last week to turn in 246,000 signatures that would be needed to get the initiative on the ballot. Last Thursday, campaign officials notified the Washington Secretary of State Office that they were cancelling their appointment to turn in the petitions.

But it’s not all good news for the pro-T camp. Ten more states, led by Nebraska, filed a federal lawsuit on Friday seeking to halt the Obama Administration’s trans-rights rulings to Title VII and Title IX funding and its recent to schools instructing them to develop anti-discirmination policies protecting transgender students which would include allowing them to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. According to Buzzfeed’s Chris Geidner:

The Nebraska-led lawsuit contains many of the same claims raised in the Texas-led lawsuit, often repeating the same exact language as appeared in the Texas complaint.

Despite naming the same defendants as in the Texas-led lawsuit, however, the Nebraska-led lawsuit appears to focus on protections relating to transgender students — asserting that students have the right under federal law to use a restroom in accordance with their gender identity. Nonetheless, it does name the Education, Justice, and Labor departments, as well as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as defendants and asks for relief against all of those agencies’ transgender-inclusive policies.

Nebraska’s attorney general, Douglas Peterson, is joined in the suit against the Obama administration by the attorneys general of Arkansas, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

The lawsuit has been assigned to be heard by U.S. District Court Judge John Gerrard, nominated to the bench by President Obama in 2012. Gerrard previously had served as a justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court.

With this filing, exactly half of all states are involved with federal lawsuits challenging the Obama Administrations pro-trans policies.

Miserere Nobis

In the past ten years— Six Amish girls went to school. Six people went shopping at the mall. Thirty-two students went to college. Nine more went shopping at the mall. Six attended a meeting at City Hall. Six more students went to college. Two people went to see kids putting on a musical at church. Thirteen went to classes in an immigration center. A nurse cared for seven residents in a nursing home. Thirteen went to work at an Army base. Eight went to work at a beer distributor. Five went to a supermarket to meet their Congresswoman. Five were in an IHOP. Eight were at a hair salon. A teenager almost made it home from 7-Eleven. Three students went to high school. Seven more students went to college. Five black men were just out and about in Tulsa. Five people went for coffee. Twelve went to see a movie. Six Sikh worshipers went to pray. Five people were afraid of their co-worker. Twenty elementary school children went to school; so did six teachers. Three went to cheer on the runners; one police officer guarded a campus and another gave chase. Thirteen people went to work at a Navy Yard. One young man heard voices. One man sold loose cigarettes. Another was buying a toy BB gun. Another shoplifted a box of Swisher Sweets. One young man saw visions. So did another. A woman was disoriented and delusional: sometimes she couldn’t stop turning on and off the lights. One man was going down a stairwell. A twelve-year-old played in the park. Two police officers sat in their patrol car. One young man reached for a pill bottle. Another took pills and saw visions. Another was naked. Another was “screaming and yelling,” and that was before he was mauled by a police dog. One man ran away. Another rode a bicycle. Nine people studied the Bible. Four went to work at an Armed Forces recruitment office; another went on duty at the Navy Reserve. A woman failed to use her turn signal. Fourteen people attended an office party. Three Muslim men were at home. Eight family members slept. Forty-nine people danced. A man sold CDs. Another had a broken tail light. And five police officers were protecting a friendly, peaceful protest. Ora pro nobis.

Another Regnerus-Like “Research” Paper On Gay Parents Making the Rounds

Paul Sullins, defending a flawed paper by Mark Regnerus in 2013.

The Federalist website is giving this research significant play:

The study by sociology professor Paul Sullins found that “[a]t age 28, the adults raised by same-sex parents were at over twice the risk of depression as persons raised by man-woman parents.” In addition, there was an “elevated risk associated with imbalanced closeness and parental child abuse in family of origin; depression, suicidality, and anxiety at age 15; and stigma and obesity.”

Given these findings, Sullins concluded that “[m]ore research and policy attention to potentially problematic conditions for children with same-sex parents appears warranted.” This study is significant, Sullins writes, because other studies that have “reported ‘no differences’ in well-being” most often use “psychometric measures of depression or anxiety,” which has led to “a lapse in policy attention to the potential needs of such children.” Sullins’ research challenges the “benign findings” of these other studies.

“Reanalyses have confirmed, not surprisingly, the presence in such samples of strong ascertainment bias, social desirability bias, and/or positive reporting bias” in studies that have concluded there are no differences between children of same-sex couples and those of opposite-sex parents.

Let’s go to that paper, shall we? First of all, the good thing here is that the paper, published in the Egyptian journal Depression Research and Treatment, is available online for free. That’s also the bad thing, which I’ll get to later. Second, this paper has many of the same problems with the widely-panned 2012 paper by Mark Regnerus that purported to show that children of parents in same-sex relationships fared significantly more poorly than children who were raised in homes by their biological opposite-sex parents. In fact, Regnerus’s paper found no such thing, although he did his best to make his turd look nice and shiny.

Like Regnerus’s paper, Sullins says that he based his research on a nationally-represented sample from the US National Survey of Adolescent to Adult Health. He combed through 15,701 respondents, at ages 15, 22, and 28. But like Regnerus, Sullins quickly ran into a problem. Remember, Regnerus could only find two same-sex couples in his sample who had actually raised their children as a couple. Two! So he stacked the deck by re-defining “children,” “raised,” “by,” and “same-sex couples.” Sullins had a similar problem: out of a sample of 15,701 respondents, he could only find 23 adolescents raised by just 20 same-sex couples, “consisting of 17 lesbian partners and 3 gay male partners.”

And what do we know about those families? Not much. We don’t know how much time those children spent with their same-sex parents. We don’t know whether they spent the most formative periods of their lives with opposite-sex parents who then got divorced, or whether they were children of a single parent who had gone through multiple parters over time. We know nothing about the stability, or lack there-of, of either the opposite-sex or same-sex parenting that these children experienced.

But let those numbers sink in: Sullins is basing his entire eight page on those tiny numbers. Twenty same-sex couples.

Out of how many? In 2013, Gary J. Gates at the Williams Institute combed through census data and found that “more than 111,000 same-sex couples are raising an estimated 170,000 biological, step, or adopted children.” Sullins found just twenty out of 111,000 couples. That would be about 0.018% of the total. Which means that if this were a poll, Sullins’s margin of error would be, at best, plus or minus 18.4 percent at a 90% confidence level.

Click to enlarge.

But let’s also look at it a different way. The Standard Error (SE) that Sullins calculated for outcome measures of the children of those twenty same-sex couples is huge when compared to the the data set for opposite-sex couples. What this means is that it only takes one or two individual adverse scores coming from one or two dysfunctional families to throw off those averages. When you see such large swings in the data, you know right away that you need a larger sample to get a clearer picture of what’s going on. Any small sample can sweep up significant anomalies that diminish or disappear once the sample size gets larger. A sample size of 2,000 gay- or lesbian-led families could decrease that standard error by a factor of ten. At least then, you’d start to look at something that can approximate the rest of the 109,000 same-sex couples raising children. Running the numbers again, an opinion poll of 2,000 respondents would have a margin of error of ±1.8%.

How does this scale up to the 111,000 same-sex couples raising children? Well, because it’s supposed to be a peer-reviewed paper — more on that in a moment — Sullins covers himself here somewhat:

Limitations. Despite the signal strengths of Add Health as a large nationally representative longitudinal dataset and notwithstanding the strong significance for contrast effects reported above, the very small size of the sample of children raised by lesbians imposes important limits and prompts great caution regarding the conclusions of this study. As with all observational studies, causal inference is not possible. Moreover, many subtle distinctions and pathways of influence simply cannot be addressed with only 20 cases, and unobserved differences between the parent comparison groups may well confound some or all of the child differences observed. In particular, the lack of useful measures for parent mental distress, depression, family history of violence, alcohol consumption, and substance abuse precluded examination of important familial risk factors which may be associated with child distress. For these reasons, the findings of this study should be considered only provisional and exploratory until and unless they are confirmed by further research.

I wonder if Sullins would be so careful when he’s interviewed about this. Somehow, I doubt it. After all, he’s a research fellow at the Marriage and Religion Research Institute, which is an arm of the Family “Research” Council.

So how did a paper with such sweeping conclusions make it into a professional journal? Well the biggest problem with professional publishing these days is that there are literally thousands of medical and social science journals around the world begging for papers to fill their issues. A few are influential because they can attract the best of the best. And because they can attract the best of the best, they can by very selective about which papers they publish. Many of them reject far more papers than they publish. Other journals however are left fighting over scraps.

Cairo-based Hindawi Publishing Corporation, which publishes Depression Research and Treatment, has been criticized for using spam email to solicit manuscripts (PDF: 111KB/2 pages). What’s more, it’s a pay-to-publish journal, charging its authors about US$1,000 as an “article processing fee.” Truly reputable journals don’t rely on charging authors to submit their manuscripts for their profits, not when they can charge a subscription or they sell the articles on a per-article basis because the quality of their content justifies the price.But Hindawi is among the new class of “Open Access” free journals, which advertises its bug as a feature. It gives away its articles for free, in exchange for charging authors exorbitant “fees” on the front end. Naturally, this creates an incentive  to publish more articles already paid for by authors –especially from those who can’t get their papers published elsewhere — with little regard to whether the article has any merit in the first place.

And Hindawi goes a step further. They increase their profit margins by not employing editors for their journals. Editors fill a critical function. An editor is ordinarily a recognized subject matter expert who can act as a gatekeeper to ensure the quality of the journal’s content. More critically, that editor is also tasked with overseeing the peer-review process, which involves knowing which reviewers are qualified to review a paper. Instead, the editorial role at Hindawi is handled by staff members at the company’s headquarters in Cairo, which leaves the most critical task of peer review in the hands of those who may know little or nothing about the paper’s subject. That is, if Hindawi actually has a peer review process. Many open access journals use the practice of publishing now (and collecting the author’s “processing fee”) and letting people ask questions later.

Those problems at Hindawi are evident not only with Sullins’s paper itself, but with the overall reputation of Depression Research and Treatment. Among the 1,061 psychology journals listed at Scimago Journal and Country Rank, Depression Research and Treatment is ranked at number 380. From a top-to-bottom perspective, they can at least brag that they’re in the top half. Unfortunately, Hindawi’s poor publishing practices have become far more common in the publishing world as newcomers to professional publishing scramble to find manuscripts to publish.

So the real question is this: what do other professionals think of the kinds of papers that Hindawi publishes in Depression Research and Treatment. One key measure is to count how many times other researchers cite papers in a given journal when they’re writing their papers. Articles in the top twenty psychology journals are cited, on average, 8.8 times for each paper. For the top fifty, each paper on average gets 6.1 cites. For Depression Research and Treatment, that average is just 1.7.

So there you have it: Sullins had to pay $1,000 to publish a flawed paper using flawed methodology in a pay-to-publish journal with no editor to oversee a questionable peer-review process, and that is generally ignored by his peers.

Texas Leads 13-State Lawsuit Against Obama’s Transgender Bathroom Directive

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a coalition of thirteen states in a lawsuit filed against the Obama administration. The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction against directives from the Justice Department and the Education Department which warn that Title IX funding may be withheld from school districts and colleges that discriminate against transgender students. The particular point of contention among conservatives is whether schools can be compelled to make restrooms and changing rooms available to transgender students according to their gender identity:

The coalition, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, has already filed suit against the Obama administration to seek a permanent block of the directive. Wednesday’s request, if approved, would affect not just these states but public schools across the country.

The states filed the case in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Texas. Harrold Independent School District, just northwest of Wichita Falls, is the official plaintiff on behalf of Texas, but most of the attention in the Lone Star State has fallen on the Fort Worth Independent School District.

There, the superintendent incurred the wrath of Paxton, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other Republican leaders for setting local rules that would allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice.

Last week, Paxton issued a nonbinding opinion that the new guidelines for transgender students violate state law by relegating “parents to a subordinate status” in being informed about their children. He also said Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Kent Scribner illegally enforced the rules without the school board’s input.

Scribner countered that the school district’s guidelines for transgender students had been approved by the district five years ago, long before the current controversy.

The thirteen states joining the lawsuit are: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.

Philly Archbishop: No Communion For You!

Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput has a reputation for being one of the more hardline Catholic prelates in North America. He officiated the opening mass for the annual conference of Courage, the Catholic ex-gay ministry, in 2014. He has also co-sponsored the National Organization for Marriage’s futile and poorly-attended “March for Marriage” rallies Washington, which drew dozens to the nation’s capital to protest against marriage equality. So this latest directive from the Philly Archdiocese shouldn’t surprise anyone:

Divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, as well as cohabitating unmarried couples, must “refrain from sexual intimacy” to receive Holy Communion in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput has asserted in a new set of pastoral guidelines.

Released Friday, the guidelines instruct clergy and other archdiocesan leaders on implementing Amoris Laetitia, a major document on family that Pope Francis issued in April.

His six-page instruction, which appears on the archdiocesan website, may be the first of its kind issued by the bishop of any American diocese in response to Amoris Laetitia, Latin for “the joy of love.”

Acknowledging that it is a “hard teaching,” Chaput goes on to say that Catholics in same-sex partnerships, those remarried without a church annulment, and cohabitating persons may not serve on parish councils, instruct the faithful, serve as lectors, or dispense Communion.

Allowing persons in such “irregular” relationships, “no matter how sincere,” to hold positions of responsibility would “offer a serious counter-witness to Catholic belief, which can only produce moral confusion in the community,” according to Chaput.

Amoris Laetitia is the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation that was the product of the 2014 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family. The Synod opened on a very positive note, with Pope Francis calling on the gathered bishops to provide a welcoming space for gay people in the church. The draft report placed before the bishops proposed: “Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities?” That stunning proposition was met with fierce pushback from conservative clerics, resulting in a final report that obliterated any recognition of those “gifts and qualities.” Instead, the final version in Amoris Laetitia simply said (PDF: 1.2M/264 pages):

Don’t Get Excited: The Homophobic Cardinal’s Resignation Was Nothing But Routine Housekeeping

Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez

The Washington Blade picked up a report that has played out all over Spanish-language media but hasn’t made much of an appearance in the English language news outlets:

The Vatican announced on Monday that Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez of the Archbishop of Santo Domingo.

The Holy See said in a statement that the pontiff has named Monsignor Francisco Ozoria Acosta of the Diocese of San Pedro de Macorís as López’s successor.

LGBT media and blogs are, rightly, very interested in this development. López Rodríguez’s extreme homophobia is pretty notable in the Catholic Church, which is really saying something. When President Barack Obama named Wally Brewster, an openly gay and married man, Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, López Rodríguez called him a maricón (faggot) and pajaro (bird, another Spanish perjorative for a gay man) in an interview. After Ambassador Brewster criticized corruption in the Dominican Republic, López Rodríguez said, “That man needs to go back to his embassy. Let him focus on housework, since he’s the wife to a man.”

So when we see a report about a Catholic Cardinal — whose powerful position influences the future direction of the Church, in part, by deciding who the next pope would be — it’s tempting to try to examine Pope Francis’s accepting López Rodríguez’s resignation for signs of a push-back against the Church’s more anti-gay elements. The Blade article makes no attempt to draw any such inferences, but a number of high-profile bloggers have, naturally, juxtaposed this development against Pope France’s comments last week acknowledging that the church “must apologize” against gay people.

Now maybe Pope Francis did choose to accept López Rodríguez’s resignation because he saw in it an opportunity to push out one of the church’s worst homophobes. And maybe Pope Francis did it for other reasons that had little to do with López Rodríguez’s open anti-gay bigotry.

But the way I see it, there are far more reasons to interpret this as simply ordinary housekeeping and not one scintilla more. The official Holy See statement announcing López Rodríguez’s resignation says it was tendered “in accordance with canons 411 and 401 § 1 of the Code of Canon law.”

Canons 411 and 401 deal with the mandatory retirement age of 75 for all bishops in the Church. Upon turning 75, bishops are required to tender their resignations to the Vatican. The Vatican, however, is under no obligation to accept those resignations, and if it does decide to accept a resignation, there’s no requirement that says it has to do so in any kind of a timely manner.

In fact, it’s not at all unusual for there to be a delay of several years between a bishop’s resignation and the appointment of his successor. According to Canon Law, the bishop’s office ends immediately upon the Pope’s accepting the resignation, and so it is standard practice to hold off doing so until a successor can be named. That successor then is the acting bishop until his formal consecration.

López Rodríguez was born in 1936, which means he turned in his resignation four years ago in 2011 (He was born October 31). If he had turned 75 yesterday and the Pope accepted his resignation today, then you could definitely read something into it. But this resignation and naming of a successor has been years in the making, which makes it all perfectly routine and normal. The other thing that’s normal: when López Rodríguez turns eighty in October, he will still be a Cardinal, but he won’t be able to participate in any future conclave after that to select the next pope.

NC Lawmakers End Session By Making A Tiny Change to HB 2 — To Limit Its Impact To Straight People

For months, North Carolina Gov Pat McCrory (R) has been  promising change to HB 2, the state law that blocks all anti-LGBT discrimination ordinances in the state, and which criminalize transgender people’s ability to use public restrooms according to their gender identity. National outcry over the discriminatory legislation has resulted in millions of dollars in lost business and high-profile cancellations of events and concerts in the state. The National Basketball Association has threatened to pull its planned 2017 All Star Game from Charlotte if the law weren’t changed.

And so the legislature changed the law, just before ending its session yesterday:

Gov. Pat McCrory had been seeking the action for months. HB2, best known for requiring transgender people in government facilities to use bathrooms matching the gender on their birth certificates, also blocked a path that North Carolinians had to file state-court discrimination claims.

Though lawmakers’ action Friday restores that path, it comes with a statute of limitations shorter than before — one year instead of three years.

“As we said from the beginning, there was never an intent to limit the right of anybody to seek redress in state court,” House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters.

The House passed the change 85-15, and the Senate passed it 26-14 to send it to the governor.

House speaker Tim Moore (R-Cleveland Co.) actually said with an straight face: “I certainly hope that the NBA will keep the All-Star Game here. The process I don’t think lends itself to (passing) legislation perhaps that they might want to see. I hope that they – and frankly every business that had concerns about discrimination arguments – see fixing this issue with access to state courts as fixing that.”

Yup. All fixed.

The House also voted 89-32 to raid the state’s disaster relief fund to the tune of %500,000 to defend HB 2 in court. The bill passed the Senate on Thursday and is headed to McCrory for his signature. State Attorney General Roy Cooper (D), who is running against McCrory for Governor, has said he will not defend the law in court.