In which I respond to Kathy Stein calling me a liar on the Senate floor

Isn't there some rule about calling someone a liar and misrepresenting the truth in doing it?

The Governor's veto of the Religious Freedom Act, HB 279, was overridden tonight by both chambers of the General Assembly. A number of interesting arguments were made by the opposition, among which were that it was a secret plot to overturn the 2004 Marriage Amendment (Kelly Flood), and that it would cost too much to defend (by the not-so-fiscally conservative Mary Lou Marzian).

Then there was Sen. Morgan McGarvey, who made what seemed to me a serious and well-intentioned attempt to address the legal issues, but got a few of them wrong anyway. It would have been good if he had taken these up at the committee meeting where they could have been discussed.

But perhaps the most interesting comment of the night (to me anyway) was when Kathy Stein took the Senate floor to oppose the veto override and accused me of "bearing false witness." That's King James English, folks, for lying.

Maybe we should just be glad that she's read the King James Bible.

In any case, she said the sponsor and supporters had claimed that the bill had nothing to do with local gay rights ordinances, but that I had "let my hand slip" (a metaphor in the same category as "that train has set sail") by admitting that it really was about gay rights ordinances: "He comes right out and says that this is about gay rights."

Stein then waved my March 21 press release in the air. There it was, in eleven point type, for everyone in the chamber to see.

What the press release in her hand actually said was that the opposition of gay rights groups to the Religious Freedom Act (not the bill itself) could doom gay rights ordinances because the opposition of these groups to the bill would be taken (I think rightly) as an indication that these ordinances would be used to threaten to religious freedom. Why else would a higher standard of religious freedom hamper these ordinances?

It also cited a case in Lexington in which a T-shirt company was charged with violating the city's gay rights ordinance because it refused to print a T-shirt for a gay rights event because it was in conflict with the owner's religious beliefs. But that is not a problem with the gay rights ordinance; it is a problem with the misapplication of the gay rights ordinance. The ordinance prohibits discrimination against gay persons. But the company didn't do that. It didn't have anything to do with a gay person. It had only to do with the message it was being asked to print.

That misuse of the ordinance was a violation of someone's religious freedom. In fact, it was gay rights groups who said these ordinances wouldn't threaten people's religious freedom--the same ones who are now persecuting the T-shirt company for the owner's religious beliefs.

What was that about bearing false witness?

If you roll the tape back, you will see very clearly that it was the ACLU and the Fairness Alliance who did their best to make this into a gay rights issue. It was these groups these groups who set up the religious freedom vs. gay rights dichotomy,  not me. They put religious people around the Commonwealth on notice that their freedoms could not be allowed to stand in the way of the Tolerance and Diversity agenda.

Again, the opponents of the bill did this through their own rhetoric: It had little to do with the bill. In fact, Sen. Stein did her best to contribute to this narrative. Then she goes and blames me for it?

My only contribution was to point out that, in pitting gay rights against religious freedom, they (not the bill) were threatening their cause.

So, Senator, tell me where I lied. Maybe you just made a mistake--and let your hand slip.

The misguided opponents of the Religious Freedom Act and their discontents

House Bill 279, the Religious Freedom Act, passed the Kentucky State Senate tonight midst warnings of universal doom from several Democratic opponents. Kathy Stein (D-Lexington) gave a rambling floor speech argued that the bill would do everything from protect men who abuse their wives to protecting discrimination against Blacks--at least in South Carolina barbecue restaurants.

It's hard to credit Stein, who is a lawyer and surely knows better, with sincerity. Does she really not know that, for example, civil rights related to race are considered a compelling interest in federal law?

In the floor debate over this bill, the opponents were unable to produce a single case from 1938 to 1990 when the strict scrutiny test re-installed with HB 279 was in effect, or since 1993 when it was re-instituted at the federal level or in Kentucky until October 25 of last year when it was abandoned by the Kentucky Supreme Court where any of the depredations they warned of ever occurred.

There weren't any of the blatant smears like those leveled by State Rep. Kelly Flood (D-Lexington) on the House floor. Maybe we should just be thankful for that.

But as usual, the gay rights advocates who are always claiming that people hate them were accusing those who supported this bill with ... hate. Funny how you just never feel the love from these champions of Tolerance and Diversity.

Just check out the Twitter feed on this bill. It's a bunch of people who are apparently completely ignorant of the law and apparently don't check out the bogus claims of the Fairness Alliance and the ACLU on these things.

It's pretty pitiful.

Kelly Flood's glass house on clergy sexual abuse

When the Religious Freedom Act, House Bill 279, came to the floor of the Kentucky House Friday, State Rep. Kelly Flood (D-Lexington) insinuated that the bill had something to do with protecting pedophile priests. She railed on about the children who had been harmed by clergy sexual abuse, making special mention of the fact that she was an ordained Unitarian Univeralist minister, as if that somehow exempted her from her own indictment.

I mean, don't we all wish that the Catholic Church was more like the Unitarian Universalist Church in this regard? Don't we all know that the problem with clergy sexual abuse is unique to the Catholic Church and doesn't affect churches like, say, the Unitarian Universalist Church?

Uh oh. Wait a second ... As it turns out, it does! Who would of thunk it. Certainly not Kelly Flood.

Apparently Flood is unaware of the clergy sexual abuse controversy within her own church. Here is Rev. Lynn Strauss, a Unitarian Universalist minister, commenting on the problem:

We too have a history of clergy sexual abuse and misconduct. Our Association, for too long, also refused to see and respond to the truth of abuse of power by some of our ministers.

People in glass houses ... Oh, never mind.

And of course HB 279 has literally nothing to do with protecting clergy sexual abuse--in the Catholic Church or the Unitarian Universalist Church, or any of the multitude of other denominations that have had this same problem—a problem which is the consequence of having to rely for its supply of priests from the somewhat morally suspect pool of candidates known as homo sapiens.

Maybe Flood could submit legislation requiring churches to expand their pool of candidates for the ministry beyond its current limitations which restrict it to human beings.

All in the interests of diversity, you know.