(Found at
WVaBlue)
The WV legislature is considering a bill to add sexual orientation to classes protected under the Human Rights and Fair Housing acts. The Senate passed it. The House is looking it over now.
Opponents are trotting out the old "homosexuality is a choice" spiel.
From
AP:
"You are subject to homosexual acts in prison today, whatever the reason, but as soon as people go out of prison, many of them never return to that lifestyle," said Ray Lambert of the West Virginia Family Foundation.
I don't think I have to add anything to that one. It speaks for itself.
But wait, there's more!
Lambert warned that the bill would have the state following the lead of California, where "Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has recently put into law and mandated that homosexuality be taught from kindergarten up through grade 12 as an acceptable lifestyle.
Which is an interesting way of spinning the record:
Schwarzenegger signed a measure into law in October that would bar discrimination based on a student's sexual orientation, and require teachers and administrators to enforce anti-bias laws to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender students. Christian groups have sued to overturn the law, which advocates argue clarifies the 1999 addition of sexual orientation to California's hate-crimes law.
By the way, The West Virginia Family Foundation is an
affiliate group of The American Family Association, a fringe organization whose members, when not preoccupied with
determining the sexuality of cartoon characters, spend their time
celebrating in print natural disasters that kill hundreds.
Not all of the coverage has been concerned with the failures at the federal or state level. The American Family Association's Agape Press published praise for the hurricane's destruction as an instrument of God's mercy, in that it "wiped out rampant sin".
In further bizarre and twisted coverage, Rev. Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans, said "God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there -- and now we're going to start over again." Furthermore “New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now," Shanks says.
And then there was was this
little number they ran through Agape Press regarding the Sago mining disaster in W.Va., which I'm sure most will think reflects moral values:
Conservative Christian leader Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council said yesterday that, although millions of prayers were being offered across the nation, he was struck by the irony of the situation, which he feels demonstrates a sad truth about America. "We often turn to God only when we feel like nothing else can be done," Schenck notes. "And, in the Bible, God rebuked nations who only turned to Him in their most extreme moments of need."
But sadly, the Christian activist observes, "That has been our tradition in the United States. Whenever we find ourselves in a situation where we get to the end of our own resources, we turn to God." Schenck says it is ironic that a culture that tries to banish God from its existence seeks His intervention under circumstances like the tragedy that unfolded in West Virginia this week.
Labels: Civil rights
