Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyPosts Tagged As: Liberty Institute
April 22nd, 2011
The FBI has released a criminal complaint in association with its arrest of Timo Miller for his efforts in sneaking Lisa Miller and her absconded daughter Isabella out of the country. Miller has been traced to Nicaragua, and has been receiving shelter and care from individuals affiliated with Liberty University, Thomas Road Baptist Church, and Liberty Counsel.
For example, the complaint notes that “one of the elders of the local church” (presumably Thomas Road) had packed items to be sent to Miller in Nicaragua. Further, the complaint notes the connection between the man who owns the house Miller has been staying in and Liberty University.
It is too early to know who knew what, but this does raise again the possibility that Isabella’s kidnapping and Lisa’s criminal flight out of the country was not organized without the knowledge of the Falwell empire.
It further raises questions about what certain individuals knew and whether they obstructed justice. For example, evidence is provided that on September 22, 2009, Miller took Isabella and flew from Canada to Mexico and then to El Salvador. On the following day she flew to Nicaragua, where they now are residing.
On December 4, 2009, Debbie Thurman posted “A Note From Lisa” which is presented as a direct message from Lisa Miller to those who support her criminal activity. Although Thurman has repeatedly claimed that she has no knowledge about Millers’ whereabouts, she has not adequately explained how she came to possess this note nearly two months after Miller fled the country.
Right Wing Watch notes that the connection to Mat Staver and Liberty counsel should trouble the organization:
How it is that Liberty Counsel’s most high profile client kidnaps her daughter and flees the country and the organization insists for more than a year that it has no idea where she is … only to have it turn out that she is reportedly living in a home owned by the father of an admin assistant in Staver’s very own office?
September 23rd, 2010
Liberty Institute. Brief signed by (from left) Justin Butterfield, Hiram Sasser, Kelly J. Shackelford (lead counsel), and Jeffrey Mateer (not pictured).
A collection of “family” groups have given their opinion to the Ninth Circuit about Judge Walker’s findings in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. They include:
Liberty Institute
Association of Maryland Families
California Family Council
Center for Arizona Policy
Citizens for Community Values
Cornerstone Action
Cornerstone Family Council
Delaware Family Policy Council
Family Action Council of Tennessee
The Family Foundation
The Family Policy Council of West Virginia
Family Policy Institute of Washington
Florida Family Policy Council
Georgia Family Council
Illinois Family Institute, Independence Law Center
Iowa Family Policy Center
Louisiana Family Forum Action
Massachusetts Family Institute
Michigan Family Forum
Minnesota Family Council
Missouri Family Policy Council
Montana Family Foundation
New Jersey Family First
New Jersey Family Policy Council
North Carolina Family Policy Council
Oklahoma Family Policy Council
Oregon Family Council
Palmetto Family Council
Pennsylvania Family Institute
Wisconsin Family Action
WyWatch Family Action
You might get a chuckle from their opening line:
Liberty Institute is a non-profit law firm dedicated to the preservation of civil rights and the promotion of individual liberty.
Now that’s good comedy.
Basically the premise of this amicus brief is that finding Proposition8 to be unconstitutional violates the rights of Californians to be self-governed and to rant and rail about “activist judges”. It reads not as a legal document but more like a political tirade.
At times throughout our nation’s history, courts have subjugated the will of the people to the judges’ own desires, often with disastrous results. Doing so is anti-democratic and ignores that self-governance is an important and essential part of liberty. Such actions by unelected judges disregard that the Bill of Rights provides that those powers not granted to the United States are reserved to the states and the people.
They go on quite a bit about how courts are “the elite few” and how “Judicial activism impose the views of the “enlightened” judiciary on the masses”. Now maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think that insulting the judiciary will endear yourself and your ideals with, ahem, judges.
Then, in what can I can only imagine was conceived while on meth, they threaten revolution if they don’t get their way. I kid you not.
They quote the Declaration of Independence and then say,
In significant part because of the Crown’s removal of the legislative power from the people and vesting of it in persons unconstitutionally qualified to legislate, and because true governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” the colonists considered that “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. If the district court’s decision to abolish the citizens of California’s laws and to invest itself with the power to legislate for the people of California is upheld, the “new Guard” is but following the old and we have come full circle.
I’ve always known “family” groups to be a bit out there, but this is colossally stupid.
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On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
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Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
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Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.
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