LGBTQ news and entertainment
Some news items I think worth your time: • What To Watch: Andrew McCarthy reunites with Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, and more for the new doc-film BRATS (on Hulu), which explores how being labeled “The Brat Pack” in the 1980s impacted their acting careers. Continue reading “New Doc-Film Looks Back At ‘Brat Pack’ + More News”
The Department of Justice has issued this statement from Attorney General Merrick Garland celebrating the LGBTQ community as the country recognizes Pride Month.
“As we recognize Pride Month and celebrate the LGBTQI+ community, the Justice Department renews its commitment to protecting the rights of every person to live free from discrimination and persecution based on who they are or who they love. The Justice Department is proud to stand in defense of the rights to which LGBTQI+ individuals, and all people in our country, are entitled.”
The DOJ goes on to list its efforts to protect the LGBTQ community including prosecuting hate crimes, combatting discrimination, and defending transgender youth:
The Justice Department works every day to ensure the rights of LGBTQI+ people are recognized and protected. Members of the LGBTQI+ community must be able to live their lives free from discrimination, harassment, violence, and threats of violence.
The Justice Department prioritizes addressing threats and discrimination against LGBTQI+ people in the workplace, at doctor’s offices, in their schools, communities, and more.
Prosecuting hate crimes based on LGBTQI+ status. As recent FBI statistics confirm, hate crimes are on the rise, including hate crimes targeting members of the LGBTQI+ community.
The Justice Department is pursuing those who commit acts of hate based on sexual orientation or gender identity to the fullest extent of the law.
There’s much more at the link. https://twitter.com/TheJusticeDept/status/1666876302308016129
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland (screen capture)
Attorney General Merrick Garland (screen capture)
(image via Depositphotos)
It’s the first major action the Biden administration has taken in response to the wave of voting restrictions that Republican-led states have sought to impose in the wake of President Biden’s election.
In a major policy speech earlier this month, Garland pledged to make voting rights a top priority, doubling the number of enforcement staff dedicated to protecting the right to vote.
The lawsuit is being overseen by Kristen Clarke, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Pamela Karlan.
Garland also announced Friday that DOJ is launching a task force to investigate and respond to threats against election officials.
Good. https://t.co/vxwPOQfj6Q
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 25, 2021
Attorney General Merrick Garland (photo: Public Domain)
The Justice Department in a court filing Tuesday said it can “vigorously” defend a religious exemption from federal civil rights law that allows federally funded religious schools to discriminate against LGBTQ students, a move that surprised some LGBTQ advocates who said the wording went further than just an obligation to defend an existing law.
In the filing, the Biden administration said it “shares the same ultimate objective” as the conservative Christian schools named in the case.
“What this means is that the government is now aligning itself with anti-LGBTQ hate in order to vigorously defend an exemption that everyone knows causes severe harm to LGBTQ students using taxpayer money,” said Paul Carlos Southwick, director of the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, which filed the case in March on behalf of dozens of current and past students at conservative religious colleges and universities. “It will make our case harder if the federal government plans to vigorously defend it like they have indicated.”
The case at hand, Hunter v. the U.S. Department of Education, involves 40 LGBTQ students from religious colleges and universities who have filed suit against the government for providing funding to schools with discriminatory policies. The schools, however, are playing the First Amendment rights card saying they have a right to discriminate against queer students via their traditional religious beliefs about sexuality and gender. While it sounds like the Justice Department has thrown us under the bus, over on Michelangelo Signorile’s website LGBTQ civil rights lawyer Jillian Weiss took a look and says this may not be as bleak as it seems:
“As I read the brief, DOJ is trying to prevent religious colleges from taking over the case. They would certainly argue outlier positions that a newly conservative Supreme Court would love to scoop us.
“Sure, 28 USC 1681(a)(3) is bogus: “this section shall not apply to an educational institution which is controlled by a religious organization if the application of this subsection would not be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization.”
“But I would prefer Garland’s DOJ to handle this any day of the week rather than the proposed religious intervenors.”
Judge Merrick Garland (photo: public domain)
The Senate voted to confirm Merrick B. Garland on Wednesday to serve as attorney general, giving the former prosecutor and widely respected federal judge the task of leading the Justice Department at a time when the nation faces domestic extremist threats and a reckoning over civil rights.
Mr. Garland was confirmed 70-30 by senators, with 20 Republicans joining all 50 Democrats in supporting him. He is expected to be sworn in at the Justice Department on Thursday.
Five years after Senate Republicans refused to grant him a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Merrick Garland has just been confirmed as President Biden’s attorney general.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 10, 2021
NBC’s Pete Williams notes that Merrick Garland’s 70-30 confirmation is one of the largest votes in favor of an attorney general nominee in recent history, with the exceptions of Holder and Reno. @MSNBC
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 10, 2021
Judge Merrick Garland (photo: Public Domain)
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| Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York |
THIS will never happen.
According to The Washington Post, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Shumer has privately urged Donald Trump to nominate shunned federal Judge Merrick B. Garland to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.
You’ll recall Garland was President Obama’s nominee in 2016 who was blocked from consideration by Senate Republicans.
Trump had called Schumer on Tuesday afternoon for a Supreme Court-centered conversation that lasted less than five minutes, according to a person familiar with the call. Schumer, the person said, pressed the president to name Garland to succeed Kennedy, arguing doing so would help unite the country.
Schumer also warned the president that nominating a jurist who would be hostile to Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion, and to Obama’s signature health-care law, would be “cataclysmic” and damage Trump’s legacy, the person added, requesting anonymity since they were not authorized to speak publicly.
“Perhaps the most consequential issues at stake in this Supreme Court vacancy are affordable health care and a woman’s freedom to make the most sensitive medical decisions about her body,” Schumer wrote in a New York Times op-ed earlier this week. “The views of President Trump’s next court nominee on these issues could well determine whether the Senate approves or rejects them.”
Garland still serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.
Coincidentally, that’s the same court as the current leading candidate on Trump’s list for the replacement spot on the high court, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh.
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| Judge Merrick Garland |
Buzzfeed’s legal eagle, and 2014 National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association “Journalist of the Year,” Chris Geidner interviewed President Obama today in the Roosevelt Room of the White House to discuss SCOTUS nominee Judge Merrick Garland. This was President Obama’s first-ever “Facebook Live” interview. From Buzzfeed:
Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to the nation’s highest court after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February. Garland currently is the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Top Republicans have said they would not consider any nominee and maintain that they will not hold hearings or a vote for Garland — not necessarily because of his positions, but because, they say, the next president should decide who is nominated.
