Colorado’s Focus On The Family Seeks A Constitutional Right to Discriminate Against All Including LGBT Community

How do religious zealots determined to terminate all rights afforded those they disagree with, have sworn to oppose and find reprehensible go about stopping them? They gather signatures to put an amendment on their state ballot proclaiming that they and all other religious people are being persecuted and need the protection of a constitutional amendment to protect them from these nefarious individuals and laws that impinge upon their religious freedoms. Let me introduce you to Focus on the Family.

Many of us tend to claim a state where we were born, raised or moved to at some time in our life. I’ve always claimed Colorado to be mine. While born in Kansas, I grew up, hit puberty, went through elementary, junior, senior high and college in this state and always thought I would grow old and die there. Maybe I still will—only God knows. And speaking of God….

Whether you believe in Him or not, it is of no import to me. I was not placed here on this earth to judge your religious belief systems. And if you have no religious beliefs or if they differ from mine, that, too, is of no import—to me and shouldn’t be of any importance to anyone else, either. But that cannot be said for a group that finds deep roots in my home state of Colorado, Focus on the Family.

Focus on the Family opened its Welcome Center in 1994 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and proclaims that over 3 million people have walked through their doors during the past two decades. They claim a passion—a passion that involves the family. Their family consists of a “husband and wife [who] are committed to loving and caring for one another for a lifetime.” And while this would lead one to believe that they might demand a couple to remain in a marriage despite the desire to divorce, this is really not their family focus. While they attempt to counsel couples, they readily admit that their church’s divorce rate is “comparable to that of the culture at large.” No, Focus on the Family is focused on that man and woman thing and as part of their core beliefs they trumpet the call to all Christians “to defend and protect God’s marriage design and to minister in Christ’s name to those who suffer the consequences of its brokenness.” (Emphasis added).

They proclaim it is their passion that “all people are of infinite value, regardless of age, development, appearance or ability” (original emphasis) but it is clear this value does not include gay marriage or any other partnership rights or any rights whatsoever for or between individuals of the same sex. These same-sex people are broken and their brokenness needs to be stopped. And this group intends to try, again, in my home state of Colorado, to stop the Gay!

As ashamed as I am to admit to this, in the early 1990s, Colorado passed a referendum, “Amendment 2,” an amendment to the Colorado state constitution that declared that all cities, towns and counties in the state could take no legislative, executive or judicial action to recognize gay and lesbian citizens as a protected class. Following a state trial court’s permanent injunction preventing the amendment from taking force and effect, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled it violative of the United States Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause finding that it could not withstand the strict scrutiny test that forms the basis of review of the Equal Protection Clause in the case brought before the Court.

It was appealed to the United States Supreme Court and in the decision of Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), SCOTUS ruled in a 6-3 decision that “Amendment 2” couldn’t even withstand the simpler rational basis test let alone the strict scrutiny test asserted to apply by the Colorado Supreme Court. Justice Kennedy (the same Kennedy who wrote the majority opinion in Citizens United) wrote the majority opinion and Justices Scalia, Rehnquist and Thomas dissented. Kennedy rejected the State Court’s argument but found ‘Amendment 2′ to be unconstitutional declaring that under this amendment: “Homosexuals are forbidden the safeguards that others enjoy or may seek without constraint,” and implied that “Amendment 2” was created with “a desire to harm a politically unpopular group.”

So let’s pretend you are Focus on the Family–what do you do to get around this Supreme Court opinion that is keeping you from defending God’s marriage design and preventing you from fixing all this brokenness that is spreading across the United States? Flip it. Make it all about YOU and how YOU need to stop state government from interfering with YOUR religious freedom and YOUR religious organization. “It isn’t about the persecution of gays and their rights, it’s about persecution of family values and Focus on the Family’s basic religious tenets.

And so in March, 2012, after several prior attempts by other religious groups failed, Focus on the Family set about circulating petitions throughout Colorado seeking to place on the ballot an initiative stating that government may not directly or indirectly burden a person or organization by withholding benefits, assessing penalties or excluding a person or group from government programs or facilities.

Now just exactly what would that allow individuals and organization to do in my home state? Simply stated, any and every individual or organization could discriminate in the name of any purported religious belief against anyone. One could claim that their religious belief prevents them from distributing birth control. Anyone could refuse to provide food, clothing, housing or employment to ANYONE simply by claiming it is against their religious beliefs. Let your imagination be your guide. There is no limit to the discrimination-–racism—bigotry that this amendment would not support. No one would be safe and nothing would prevent the unGODly impact that this ballot measure will have on my home state and its citizens.

Dear Focus on the Family: You preach that we are all children of God, created in his image and yet, you are trying to make God in your own hate-filled image. You are attempting to quash all rights that the LGBT community and just about any other non-Christian believer have by claiming your religious freedoms are being attacked. No one is attacking you. This is a typical bullying tactic whereby the bully jumps up and down and paints the victim as the aggressor. This is and always will be about your hatred towards individuals and groups that are different from you. If the courts in Colorado are unable to stop you before November, than the citizens that I call my family need to rise up as one voice and stop you before you spread your bigotry ‘in the name of God.’ Amen.

For those that would like to help stop this attack and join the fight to keep this initiative off the November ballot, visit One-Colorado.org.

President Obama to Travel to North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa, Calling on Congress to Prevent Student Interest Rates from Doubling

 

WASHINGTON, DC – On April 24-25, President Obama will travel to North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa to launch an effort to get Congress to prevent interest rates on student loans from doubling in July. More than 7.4 million students with federal student loans will see their interest rates double on July 1 unless Congress steps in to keep them low. For each year Congress allows the rate to double, the average student with these loans racks up an additional $1,000 in debt. At a time when Americans owe more on student loans than credit cards, President Obama believes we must reward hard work and responsibility by keeping interest rates on student loans low so more Americans get a fair shot at an affordable college education, the skills they need to find a good job, and a clear path to middle class.

On Tuesday, President Obama will visit the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Colorado at Boulder. On Wednesday he will visit the University of Iowa. At each stop he will speak with students about the critical need for Congress to act.

The White House will also kick off a social media effort using Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, centered around the hashtag #DontDoubleMyRate.

The President’s student loan interest rate efforts will continue throughout the spring and early summer until Congress passes legislation to keep interest rates low and continue to give students the chance to get the college education they need for the jobs of today and tomorrow.

Additional details about President Obama’s trip, including press credentialing information, will be released as they become available.

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Budget deficit to top $1 trillion for 4th straight year

While most political types are tweeting out stories on the Hilary Rosen-Ann Romney flap -- see our OnPolitics post -- several Republicans are trying to spotlight another story.
The federal budget deficit is on track to top $1 trillion for a fourth straight year.

The Treasury Department said this week that the deficit for March -- the halfway point of the fiscal year -- totaled $198.2 billion; for the half-year, the total deficit stands at $779 billion, though that is down 6.1% from this time last year.

The Congressional Budget Office forecasts a deficit of $1.17 trillion for the 2012 budget year that ends Sept. 30 -- again, an improvement from last budget year's red ink of $1.3 trillion.

Obama and aides say much of that deficit results from George W. Bush-era tax cuts; they say Republicans are blocking their efforts to close the deficit because they oppose higher taxes on wealthy Americans.

GOP lawmakers such as House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, are tweeting out an Associated Press story on new deficit numbers.

The AP reports:

Democrats and Republicans are offering voters stark choices on how they would deal with the country's budget problems.
The budget approved by the House late last month calls for deep cuts in Medicare and other programs and a new round of tax cuts that would most benefit wealthy Americans. Obama has called that "thinly veiled social Darwinism" and a radical vision for the country.
Obama's budget request in February called for $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade, through spending cuts and tax hikes on the wealthy. Republicans have rejected the tax increases. They want deeper cuts in government programs.
The House-passed budget has no chance of winning Senate approval, setting the stage for gridlock until after the November elections.
The government last recorded a surplus in 2001. The deficits returned after President George W. Bush won approval for broad tax cuts, pushed a major drug benefit program for seniors and launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The deficits grew further under Obama as the Great Recession reduced tax revenue as unemployment rose and income fell. The budget gaps have topped $1 trillion in each of his first three years in office. Obama and Democrats pushed for more emergency spending to support the economy, including extending federal unemployment benefits and cutting Social Security taxes.

U.S. Issues First Anti-Gay Hate Crime Indictment In Kentucky Attack Case

A U.S. federal grand jury has issued the first-ever indictment to charge a violation of the sexual orientation section of the federal hate crimes law.

An email statement from the U.S. Justice Department noted that a federal grand jury in London, Ky., returned a three-count indictment charging David Jason Jenkins, 37, and Anthony Ray Jenkins, 20, for kidnapping and assaulting Kevin Pennington, an openly gay man. Both are also reportedly charged with conspiring with each other and with other unnamed individuals to commit the kidnapping.

The statement, also cited by Talking Points Memo, continues as follows:

The indictment alleges that on April 4, 2011, the two defendants kidnapped and assaulted Kevin Pennington because of Pennington’s sexual orientation. According to the indictment, the defendants enlisted two women to trick Pennington into getting into a truck with the defendants, so that the defendants could drive Pennington to a state park and assault him. According to the indictment, the defendants then drove Pennington a secluded area of the Kingdom Come State Park in Kentucky and assaulted him.

The indictment charges the men with committing a hate crime in violation of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded federal jurisdiction to include certain assaults motivated by someone’s sexual orientation. This case marks the first federal hate crime charging a violation of the sexual orientation provision of the statute.

The Lexington Herald-Leader cites a court document that claims Jenkins' wife Alexis and sister Mable, cheered on the attack, yelling gay slurs such as "Kill that faggot."

Pennington also told the paper that he was able to run away during the attack, hiding in the woods until the four stopped looking for him.

As the email statement stressed, an indictment is only an accusation, and the defendants are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.

 

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'War over women' kicks off Obama-Romney race

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama and his certain Republican opponent in November, Mitt Romney, shifted to full general election mode Wednesday, portraying each other as threats to future American progress as their campaigns engaged in a "war over women" indicative of what to expect for the next seven months.

A day after his path to the GOP nomination cleared by chief rival Rick Santorum's withdrawal, Romney sought to reverse a gender gap problem by attacking Obama's economic policies as bad for women.

According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday, Romney trails well behind Obama among women voters -- a result also seen in recent Gallup and CNN/ORC polls. Obama had the support of 57% of women, compared with 38% who said they backed Romney, while Romney had the backing of 52% of men, compared with 44% who backed Obama, the survey found.

In a speech in Delaware at a woman-owned small business, Romney referred Wednesday to a Democratic attack line that Republicans were waging a "war on women" through socially conservative policies involving abortion, health care and other issues by saying: "The real war on women is being waged by the president's failed economic policies."

"Now the president says, 'Oh I didn't cause this recession.' That's true," Romney said. "He just made it worse, and made it last longer. And because it lasted longer, more and more women lost jobs, such that in his three-and-a-half years, 92.3% of the people who lost jobs have been women. His failures have hurt women."

However, the nonpartisan website PolitiFact.com rated the 92.3% job loss statement "mostly false," saying it included figures from the beginning of the Obama administration, before his policies could take effect.

In addition, PolitiFact.com said the figure failed to reflect a historical pattern of recessions first causing unemployment in traditionally male-dominated industries such as construction, and then later affecting fields with larger percentages of female workers.

The Romney campaign later provided a copy of a letter it sent to PolitiFact.com that challenged the "mostly false" rating.

An analysis of federal labor statistics shows that the Romney claim is technically true but lacks important context.

The number of nonfarm-employed women from January 2009, when Obama took office, to March 2012 fell far more than the number of employed men in that period. The total job loss for the period for both men and women combined was 740,000. The number of women who lost nonfarm jobs in that time span was 683,000, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That amounts to 92.3% -- the figure Romney cited. However, the statistic does not reflect that men constituted a much larger chunk of the job loss pie in the year leading up to Obama's inauguration.

In the 2008 calendar year, men lost a total of 2.7 million nonfarm jobs, compared with 895,000 jobs lost for women. Men made up 75.4% of the 3.6 million jobs lost that year.

Romney's claim also does not reflect that the job losses for women began in March 2008, almost a full year before Obama took office. At that point, women held a total of 67.3 million nonfarm payroll jobs, the highest level of female employment of the Bush administration.

From that high point, the number of women with nonfarm payroll jobs fell for 23 consecutive months, spanning from the final 10 months of the Bush administration and first 13 months of the Obama administration. Since February 2010, women have actually gained 863,000 jobs.

Meanwhile, a Romney adviser initially hesitated when asked if Romney supported the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act that expands workers' rights to sue in the event of a pay discrepancy between a man and a woman.

"We'll get back to you on that," Romney Campaign Policy Director Lanhee Chen told reporters. A Romney campaign statement afterward said the candidate supported pay equity for women, but it did not specifically say he backed the 2009 Ledbetter law.

The Obama campaign immediately fired back, issuing a statement from Ledbetter that criticized Romney for failing to "stand up for women and their families."

"Anyone who wants to be president of the United States shouldn't have to think about whether they support pursuing every possible avenue to ensuring women get the same pay for the same work as men," Ledbetter said in the statement.

A Romney campaign official later said that the candidate had no plans to change the current pay equity laws if elected.

David Axelrod, the senior adviser to Obama's campaign, called it a "tough day" for Romney's efforts to repair damage with women voters stemming from the Republican primary campaign. Axelrod dubbed the those efforts the "Mitt Rehab with Women Tour" in a Twitter post.

Obama, meanwhile, continued his push for Congress to pass a tax measure that would ensure that millionaires -- like Romney -- pay a higher tax rate than middle-class workers.

"It's just plain wrong that middle-class Americans pay a higher share of their income in taxes than some millionaires and billionaires," Obama told a White House event, flanked by millionaires who support the proposed measure.

Republicans want to cut taxes for the wealthy, which would mean cutting spending on programs that spur economic growth and benefit the middle class, senior citizens and the poor, Obama argued.

"They want to double down on some of the inequities that already exist in the tax code," he said, adding that such a step means "either you've got to borrow more money to pay down a deeper deficit, or you've got to demand deeper sacrifices from the middle class and you've got to cut investments that help us grow as an economy."

Citing "significant" deficits and the need to be competitive in the 21st century's "technologically integrated economy," Obama said: "We can't afford to keep spending more money on tax cuts for wealthy Americans who don't need them and weren't even asking for them."

In a swipe at GOP economic policy, Obama added: "In America, prosperity has never just trickled down from the wealthy few."

Also Wednesday, the Obama campaign released a video highlighting Romney's conservative stances on issues such as abortion rights, health care reform and immigration reform. The video concludes with Romney's declaration on the campaign trail that he was "a severely conservative Republican governor."

The competing messages were attempts by both sides to frame what is expected to be a close and vicious general election campaign in a favorable perspective.

Obama portrays Romney and Republicans as protectors of the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, while Romney and his party say Obama has stifled economic recovery and failed to effectively tackle deficit reduction.

Romney still needs to win several hundred delegates to clinch the GOP nomination, but Santorum was his top remaining challenger, and Tuesday's announcement that Santorum suspended his campaign leaves Romney's path free of obstacles.

However, Romney's campaign still struggles to generate enthusiasm among the GOP conservative base, which questions his more moderate stances as Massachusetts governor.

Sources said Romney wants Santorum -- who had strong support among social conservatives, including Christian evangelicals -- to quickly endorse his campaign. While Romney and Santorum aides said the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania will work to defeat Obama, it was unclear when or if Santorum would offer a full-throated endorsement for Romney.

In his announcement Tuesday that he was suspending his campaign, Santorum never mentioned Romney.

"I expect when I finally become the nominee, and I hope that happens soon, that we'll be campaigning together, we'll be working together," Romney said Wednesday. "We share very much the same beliefs about the course the nation must take and the fact that under this president, America is not going in the right direction."

Santorum has consistently said Republicans needed a true conservative candidate -- himself -- to defeat Obama, and he has relentlessly attacked Romney's support for health care reforms in Massachusetts that included a mandate for coverage similar to the 2010 federal health care law despised by conservatives.

Romney said he would try to attract Santorum's evangelical and socially conservative supporters by leveraging appearances with the former candidate.

"We campaign together and make sure we see these people and get a chance to talk to them about issues that all Americans care about," Romney said. "I think you see our party, and you will see our party more united than it's been in a long, long time, in part because President Obama has taken America in such a different course than we have ever gone as a nation before."

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the other Republican challengers who trail far back, said they intended to stay in the race to the GOP convention in August.

The Obama campaign immediately took aim at Romney after Santorum's announcement, with campaign manager Jim Messina saying it was "no surprise that Mitt Romney finally was able to grind down his opponents under an avalanche of negative ads."

"The more the American people see of Mitt Romney, the less they like him and the less they trust him," Messina said in a statement. "While calling himself the 'ideal candidate' for the tea party, he has promised to return to the same policies that created the economic crisis and has alienated women, middle-class families and Hispanic Americans."

CNN's latest estimate of the GOP delegate tally shows Romney with 659, Santorum with 275, Gingrich with 140 and Paul with 71. It takes 1,144 delegates to clinch the nomination.

New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware vote on April 24, in addition to Pennsylvania. In all, 231 delegates are up for grabs in the five states.

The goal now for Gingrich and Paul is to prevent Romney from reaching the 1,144-delegate threshold before the convention. On Wednesday, though, Gingrich spent time explaining how a technical glitch caused his campaign to bounce a $500 check for Utah primary election fees.

Obama and Biden hit swing states to push tax plan

Washington (CNN) – President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden tag team Thursday as they continue their push for the so-called "Buffett Rule," and they're making their pitches in crucial battleground states.

As the vice president heads to Exeter, New Hampshire to give a campaign speech in favor of the legislation that would mandate that Americans earning more than $1 million per year pay a 30% tax rate, the president stays at the White House but is expected to tout the proposal in interviews with local television stations in four other swing states.

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Obama will speak with local television anchors from Columbus, Ohio, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Saint Louis, Missouri, and Reno, Nevada.

GSA cancels Las Vegas conference

WASHINGTON -- The GSA scandal has claimed its first victim in Las Vegas.

A one-day trade show meant to connect government officials with clean-energy vendors at a modest off-Strip hotel was canceled this week by the General Services Administration in the fallout over the extravagant 2010 conference that was held 10 miles away at the M Resort in Henderson.

The cancellation left executives at the Hampton Inn Tropicana lamenting on Wednesday.

The GreenUP 2012 Training Conference and Vendor Showcase at the hotel on Dean Martin Drive, near Interstate 15 and Tropicana Avenue, was budgeted by the federal agency at less than $3,000 for perhaps 100 people.

The hotel will collect a cancellation fee the GSA must pay for calling off the show less than 30 days from its April 25 date, but it still will lose money on refunds to exhibitors who bought booth spaces.

Hotel sales and marketing director Mitchell Hirschman said he loses the opportunity to showcase the space to the 18 or so companies that were planning displays and that might have supplied return business.

Also lost, he said, is a chance to demonstrate his venue as a role model for gatherings done right.

"First of all, it was going to be an excellent event, let's start out on the positive," Hirschman said. "It was being done correctly."

He added: "The beauty of the conference is that it was not exorbitant. They wanted specifically to show that a meeting could be run with as little effort as possible, and effort meant money and it meant the amount of people that you need, and so forth. It had no frills."

Hirschman said he was surprised to get the cancellation call Tuesday. It was explained that the GSA was doing an internal investigation, and as with any investigation, future events were being stopped.

"I thought they should have kept it, if you want to know the truth," he said. "It was a meeting being done the right way, and they should have left this one. It kills me, but that's the way life is."

GSA spokesman Adam Elkington confirmed that the Las Vegas show was canceled as part of a review that acting administrator Daniel Tangherlini ordered after stepping in to clean up following the agency's Western Regions Conference. The agency's inspector general's office detailed thousands of dollars of waste and other questionable spending in the four-day October 2010 conference, which cost $823,000 to plan and execute.

Recordings from the conference showed GSA employees performing in skits and music videos, some of which lampooned the agency and joked about spending taxpayer money. In some clips, workers and supervisors banter about drinking and partying.

The GSA is compiling a list of conferences that are being called off as part of the agency's scrubbing of its calendar.

Among the meetings already canceled was a series of four small-business conferences scheduled over the next year, including a two-day session in September at the M Resort.

Small-business conferences in Honolulu, Phoenix and Oakland, Calif., also were axed.

Tangherlini was appointed acting administrator April 3, a day after the inspector general's report was released and administrator Martha Johnson resigned. Tangherlini told employees on his first day that he was reviewing all planned GSA conferences that involved travel "or substantial expenditures of public funds."

On Wednesday, Tangherlini continued a cleanup mission. He and Brian Miller, the GSA's inspector general, sent a memo to more than 12,000 agency employees, urging them to speak up if they see inappropriate activities by reporting it to supervisors or calling anonymously to the agency's hotline.

"One of the more troubling aspects of this incident is that people did not report this improper conduct or take action to stop it," the officials wrote in reference to the Las Vegas conference.