Marine who lost leg in Iraq booed by right-wing Christians

Eric Alva, who lost his leg serving in Iraq,
was booed by right-wing Christians
for speaking out in support of a proposed
San Antonio ordinance to ban anti-gay discrimination.

A Marine serves downrange in Iraq; comes home after losing his leg; and after rehab speaks out and stands up for anti-discrimination protections to include sexual orientation, gender identity and veteran status at a hearing at the City Council chambers in San Antonio, Texas this week.

Said Eric Alva, " I already spoke and even some of the religious groups even booed me as I spoke. Such disrespect as they preach the word of God."

Caught wind of this from the Wisconsin Gazette.

Righwinger "Councilwoman Elisa Chan went on an anti-gay tirade while discussing the ordinance privately in her office on May 21. James Stevens, a 28-year-old aide to Chan, secretly recorded her hateful remarks and released the audio to the San Antonio Express-News."

From Eva Ruth Moravec of the San Antonio Express-News. Said Eric Alva, age 42:

"I said that if this ordinance doesn't pass, I could be fired from a job and even thrown out of a restaurant, and people started to boo me. I was real hurt by that. It was unbelievable."

Alva was the first American injured in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He received a medical discharge and was awarded the Purple Heart. His prosthetic leg was visible Wednesday, under his khaki shorts. News of Alva's 3-minute speech spread via social media that night.

Yes, America just melts under the love and compassion of rightwing Christian love.

On a positive note, the anti-bias, pro-equality measure is expected to pass.

Dumb Ron Johnson: Gov Shouldn’t Prevent Employers from Discriminating Against Gay People

Damn, Ron Johnson is dumb.

Scott Keyes and Adam Peck have the story at ThinkProgress.

Why Obama Matters in History

They took your lives; they could not take your pride

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

- RFK
Day of Affirmation Address, 6/6/66,
University of Capetown, Capetown, South Africa

City of Blinding Lights
(Paul Hewson; Dave Evans; Adam Clayton; Larry Mullen)


.

Hate in America

Update II: See the big hate.
- Paul Krugman

Update: Can right-wing hate talk lead to murder? Two terror events in two weeks makes me wonder if media extremists might turn down the ugly rhetoric for a bit. - Joan Walsh

Another hate crime. This act a white supremacist murdering a man at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

This is why we need the Southern Poverty Law Center. Why we need to become vigilant against racial profiling and all acts of racism and hate.

Why we need to constantly confront the ignorant among us.

The appeal to racism, bigotry and hate is a staple of the Republican Party, and not just isolated American whacks. You can bet this murderer is not a big fan of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the civil rights movement, and likely not a voice against racial profiling.

Since the inception of Nixon’s Southern Strategy in 1968, continuing through Reagan’s 1980 campaign kick-off in Philadelphia, Mississippi [the site of the murder of civil rights workers, Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney, 16 years earlier], right on up to Bush and McCain, playing on the bigotries in America has been standard GOP fare.

Instead of the ignorant and hateful being politically marginalized, the GOP sees a political opportunity that they have never stopped using. The results are plain and ugly.

Here in Wisconsin, for most Wisconsin GOP writers, Milwaukee talk radio, and the Republican Party, the Civil Rights movement never happened.

So it's no stretch for them to obstruct black voters, disenfranchise gays, and play on the fears and prejudices of the ignorant who comprise the base of today's Republican Party.

As always the civil rights movement will stand tall against the ignorant masses of the GOP; it's just too bad that these haters find so much comfort in a major American political party.

Fla Court Rules Gays Get Equal Protection, Adoption Ban Unconstitutional

Has Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Cindy S. Lederman been getting too much sun or is she seeing the light?

Judge Lederman ruled on a legal case challenging a Florida law that bans lesbians and gays from adopting, finding the statute unconstitutional.

The case raises the big question Republicans are pondering as they decide which way forward for their battered Party: Embracing ignorance and authoritarianism or some manner of qualified libertarianism.

[Pictured above-right is Martin Gill with the two brothers he hopes to adopt in Florida.] From the ACLU:

Judge Lederman "struck down a Florida law that bars lesbians and gay men from adopting. The court granted adoptions to a gay man, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, who has been raising two foster children since 2004," reads a ACLU press release.

"The court ruled that the ban violated the equal protection guarantees of the state constitution because it singles out for different treatment gay people and the children they raise for no rational reason. The court also found that the ban denies children the right to permanency provided by federal and state law under the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997."

In 2005, the US Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to the Florida law. So, the US Supreme Court that ruled an equal protection violation in Bush v. Gore did not get to rule on a violation in this case.

The case will likely end up in the Florida Supreme Court where four of the seven members were appointed by the late Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles.

We'll get there.

Times are changing, ultimately, such discriminatory laws as Florida's adoption law and the many anti-gay marriage statutes and state constitutional amendments will go the way of laws banning inter-"racial" marriage that were struck down in Loving v. Virginia, (1967) on equal protection grounds by the the US Supreme Court.

Change is gonna come, and likely the GOP will be left behind.

See - Trial Court Decision and Order (11/25/2008) RE: [Frank Martin Gill] John Doe and James Doe for the language of the decision by Judge Lederman.

- via mal contends