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: Pete Sessions
June 15th, 2016
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) joined the growing Republican consensus to refuse to acknowledge that Sunday morning’s attack in Orlando was against a gay night club. Sessions chairs the House Rules Committee which yesterday blocked an amendment proposed by Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) to restore President Barack Obama’s Executive Order prohibiting anti-LGBT discrimination among federal contractors. When National Journal reporter Daniel Newhuser asked Sessions whether the shooting might change his mind on the anti-discrimination measure, he got this response:
Asked Rules Chair Sessions if Orlando shooting changes calculation on LGBT Maloney amdmt. He argued Pulse was not a gay club.
— Daniel Newhauser (@dnewhauser) June 14, 2016
“It was a young person’s nightclub, I’m told. And there were some [LGBT ppl] there, but it was mostly Latinos” https://t.co/c5qvdSk0kF
— Daniel Newhauser (@dnewhauser) June 14, 2016
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)
Sessions’s office tried to explain it away in the classic “taken-out-of-context” sort of way:
Sessions’ communications director, Caroline Boothe, told TPM that Newhauser’s quotes were correct but “taken out of context without the background information.”
“What my boss meant to say was that there weren’t only gay individuals at the club but people from all walks of life were present,” Boothe said.
She added that “at the end of the day we’re all Americans” and said Sessions’ heart grieved for everyone.
Before the attack, Pulse’s web site described the club as “Orlando’s Premiere Gay Night Club” and “Orlando’s hottest gay bar located in the heart of downtown.” Today, the site has been taken down and replaced with a simple statement in response to the shooting: “From the beginning, Pulse has served as a place of love and acceptance for the LGBTQ community.”
September 23rd, 2010
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a social conservative who does not support marriage equality or repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, headlined a cocktail fundraiser for gay group Log Cabin Republicans last night. (Standard Times)
Texas Sen. John Cornyn told a Republican gay and lesbian group that he was amazed at some of the controversy surrounding his appearance at the group’s fundraising event Wednesday evening.
“I guess perhaps it speaks to the times we find ourselves in where people are so unwilling to find grounds of commonality where we do agree despite some honest differences and firmly held differences of opinion,” Cornyn told about 60 guests at the Log Cabin Republicans Political Action Committee.
Cornyn spoke on the issues on which he agrees with the group.
And he said he knows they all agree, as loyal Republicans, on the importance of limited government, lower taxation, free trade and common-sense laws that facilitate economic development, economic growth and job creation.
Cornyn was not scheduled to stay for the subsequent dinner, which featured five Congresspersons who are allies of Log Cabin. Rep. Pete Sessions, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, was unable to attend due to a scheduling conflict. He sent an aide with a speech he recorded for the group, which was played at the dinner.
The funds raised at the reception featuring Cornyn will be used to further Log Cabin’s goal of advancing the message of gay equality within the Republican Party.
September 22nd, 2010
A Republican gay-rights group presented Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) with a leadership award Wednesday night despite his vote against a repeal of the ban on allowing openly gay people to serve in the military nearly 24 hours before the event. …Neither Cornyn nor Sessions appeared in person to accept their awards.
Cornyn did appear and speak at a pre-dinner reception, which was attended by only 60 people and closed to the press. I don’t know whether he was given his trophy at that time when nobody from the press was there to see it, but we hear that all the gays sang a lovely round of “Happy Birthday” for Mrs Cornyn. That moment of festivity occurred just one day after Sen. Cornyn voted to continue to keep LGBT people from serving in the military. After about 45 minutes, he then ducked out without commenting to the press.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
The leadership awards that LCR gave to Sessions and Cornyn are named for Barry Goldwater, who had no problem speaking his mind in support of gay rights. This action is a blight upon his good name, especially considering that Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) was sitting right there at that very dinner. She was a founding member and remains the only Republican member of the LGBT Equality Caucus, where she serves as a vice-chair. She cosponsored the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act; she was the lead cosponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act; she is a sponsor of the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act; she actively supports repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and she voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment. Plus, she didn’t use the Republican Caucus meeting as an excuse to skip the dinner despite being the senior Republican woman in the caucus. She was honored with the Spirit of Lincoln Award, but if anyone deserves a leadership award named for Barry Goldwater, it’s her. Not the cowards who couldn’t be seen accepting it six weeks before the election.
Update: Chris Johnson at the Washington Blade caught up with Rep. Ros-Lehtinen after the LCR dinner:
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) told the Blade following her remarks at the National Log Cabin Republicans annual dinner in D.C. that she doesn’t know what will happen with pro-LGBT legislation as she took a dig at the current Democratic majority for not moving forward.
“I don’t know what will happen with Republicans,” she said. “I know what’s happening now. I don’t really get an opportunity to get to vote on those [bills] very often on the floor.”
Asked whether she thinks pro-LGBT legislation would advance in a Republican-controlled House, Ros-Lehtinen replied, “The Democrats are in control. I don’t know that they’ve gone forward. … I guess you should ask [U.S. House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi why they haven’t gone forward.”
Republicans are expected to gain control of the House in this year’s mid-term elections.
September 22nd, 2010
Roll Call reports that Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) will not make it to tonight’s Log Cabin Republicans dinner after all, saying that he needs to attend a House Republican Caucus meeting instead. Sessions’ home town paper The Dallas Voice finds that explanation “convenient.” They also note that Sessions’ spokesperson, Emily Davis, “mysteriously became unavailable after we identified ourselves as being from the gay paper, and she hasn’t gotten back to us.”
Sessions was to be honored by the gay Republican group with the Barry Goldwater Award, despite holding positions on gay rights that were at odds with those of the late Senator who was popularly known as “Mister Conservative.” Since he will be a no-show, does he still get the award? Because if so, that would be a neat trick. He would get an award from a gay rights group without the embarrassment of having a photo taken of him shaking hands with a gay rights advocate six weeks before an election.
September 20th, 2010
The Log Cabin Republicans have announced a slate of awardsthat they plan on handing out at their National Dinner on Wednesday. Among those to be honored is Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), for providing inspiration for the name of Box Turtle Bulletin.
Okay, not quite. LCR will award him the Barry Goldwater Award “which recognizes leaders in the Republican Party who have served their nation with distinction in the model of the late Senator Barry Goldwater.” Sen. Goldwater, who was famoulsy supportive of his gay grandson, famously denounced the 1993 “Don’t ASk, Don’t Tell” policy, saying “You don’t need to be straight to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.” Cornyn, on the other hand, is famously un-Goldwaterlike in his opposition to overturning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Sharing Goldwater Award with Cornin will be Representative Pete Sessions (R-Dallas), Chairman of the Republican National Congressional Committee. He holds a similarly un-Goldwaterlike position on DADT. “I think it’s a slap in the face to the members of the military to be driven down a road that is driven by a political agenda from the left in this country rather than a wise policy,” he said on the House Floor last May.
The Senate will conduct an important cloture vote tomorrow on the Defense Appropriations Bill, which contains language which would begin the process of repealing DADT. Sen. Cornyn will almost certainly vote against cloture. He and Sessions will then receive their awards on Wednesday. Sen. Goldwater will roll over in his grave shortly afterwords.
Featured Reports
In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.
When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
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”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
At last, the truth can now be told.
Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.
Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.
Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.
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.
“Google” is a trademark of Google Inc.
© Box Turtle Bulletin. All Rights Reserved.
Posts 
Posts via daily email: