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FACT President Blasts Attorney General's 'Bathroom Bill' Opinion
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FORMER SENATOR AND PRESIDENT OF FACT, David Fowler:
Attorney General Slatery's opinion regarding the risk to the state of losing Title IX funding if House Bill 2414 passes puts forth a carefully worded legal position that only the trained lawyer can decode to deconstruct the fear of the federal government it engenders.
It essentially regurgitates legal arguments made by the Obama administration that were flatly and unequivocally rejected by the only two courts to actually rule on them. For some inexplicable reason, the attorney general does not even discuss these two cases! A first-year law student would get in trouble for writing a brief that ignored relevant persuasive authority as if it did not exist.
In the face of these two decisions, it is, therefore, more than a bit disingenuous for the attorney general to say, "There is no settled precedent to provide guidance as to how a court may ultimately rule."
People need to know that these words are legal "code language" for "the U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled," but that does not mean that there is no legal precedent in support of House Bill 2414. The two cases the attorney general failed even to discuss are persuasive precedent the state can use to support House Bill 2414, made more persuasive by the strong language the courts used to condemn the Obama administration's arguments.
Moreover, the attorney generals for South Carolina, West Virginia, Arizona, and Mississippi have submitted friend of the court briefs in support of the decision from Virginia upholding a law like House Bill 2414.
That Tennessee's attorney general didn't even mention these favorable legal decisions and the opinion of his colleagues from other states that support the position in House Bill 2414 is a great disservice to the members of the Legislature and the public.
The misleading nature of these omissions is compounded by the fact that the attorney general instead cites settlement agreements, not court decisions, entered into with the U.S. Department of Education. A settlement agreement only means that the school districts decided not to litigate the clear meaning of the word "sex" in Title IX and just go along with what the Obama administration wanted. Settlement agreements have no persuasive value as a matter of law, unlike the court decisions that have actually ruled in favor of sex-designated bathrooms.
Thankfully, the attorney general did mention that, by law, no money can be withheld from a state until the state loses its legal arguments, and then only if it doesn't come into compliance with that ruling within 30 days. By law, no money can be withheld during this process, and no money can be withheld retroactively.
In other words, contrary to the general impression the opinion tends to create, legislators need to understand that there is little risk that the state will lose any Title IX money so long as it complies with whatever the U.S. Supreme Court might someday say the word "sex" means. No one needs to run around like their pants are on fire as if there is some immediate, real threat to Tennessee losing Title IX funds.
But the bottom line is that Tennessee cannot be held hostage by what the Supreme Court might possibly say at some point about the meaning of the word "sex" when the law, as it exists right now, is clearly in support of House Bill 2414.
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THE OVERHAULING OF STRAIGHT AMERICA
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 Yesterday I was listening to the radio when the 'Bathroom Bill' was being discussed. I think a caller asked about when all the LGBT debate got started. The response included the Supreme Court Decision on "same-sex marriage" last summer.......
But this has been going on for a long time. The seminal article that I recall reading was written in November 1987. I think I read it in the early 90s. A few years later the authors did expand it into a book: Marshall Kirk, Hunter Madsen: "After the Ball -- How America will conquer its fear and hatred of Gays in the 1990s". (Plume, 1990), ISBN: 0452264987.
I want to encourage you to read every word of the 'marketing plan' to see how expertly it has been carried out. It is really eye-opening.
By Marshall Kirk and Erastes Pill
The first order of business is desensitization of the American public concerning gays and gay rights. To desensitize the public is to help it view homosexuality with indifference instead of with keen emotion. Ideally, we would have straights register differences in sexual preference the way they register different tastes for ice cream or sports games: she likes strawberry and I like vanilla; he follows baseball and I follow football. No big deal.
At least in the beginning, we are seeking public desensitization and nothing more. We do not need and cannot expect a full "appreciation" or "understanding" of homosexuality from the average American. You can forget about trying to persuade the masses that homosexuality is a good thing. But if only you can get them to think that it is just another thing, with a shrug of their shoulders, then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won. And to get to shoulder-shrug stage, gays as a class must cease to appear mysterious, alien, loathsome and contrary. A large-scale media campaign will be required in order to change the image of gays in America. And any campaign to accomplish this turnaround should do six things.
[1] TALK ABOUT GAYS AND GAYNESS AS LOUDLY AND AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE.
The principle behind this advice is simple: almost any behavior begins to look normal if you are exposed to enough of it at close quarters and among your acquaintances. The acceptability of the new behavior will ultimately hinge on the number of one's fellows doing it or accepting it. One may be offended by its novelty at first--many, in times past, were momentarily scandalized by "streaking,'' eating goldfish, and premarital sex. But as long as Joe Six-pack feels little pressure to perform likewise, and as long as the behavior in question presents little threat to his physical and financial security, he soon gets used to it and life goes on. The skeptic may still shake his head and think "people arc crazy these days," but over time his objections are likely to become more reflective, more philosophical, less emotional.
The way to benumb raw sensitivities about homosexuality is to have a lot of people talk a great deal about the subject in a neutral or supportive way. Open and frank talk makes the subject seem less furtive, alien, and sinful, more above-board. Constant talk builds the impression that public opinion is at least divided on the subject, and that a sizable segment accepts or even practices homosexuality. Even rancorous debates between opponents and defenders serve the purpose of desensitization so long as "respectable" gays are front and center to make their own pitch. The main thing is to talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome.
And when we say talk about homosexuality, we mean just that. In the early stages of any campaign to reach straight America, the masses should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure to homosexual behavior itself. Instead, the imagery of sex should be downplayed and gay rights should be reduced to an abstract social question as much as possible. First let the camel get his nose inside the tent--only later his unsightly derriere!
Where we talk is important. The visual media, film and television, are plainly the most powerful image-makers in Western civilization. The average American household watches over seven hours of TV daily. Those hours open up a gateway into the private world of straights, through which a Trojan horse might be passed. As far as desensitization is concerned, the medium is the message--of normalcy. So far, gay Hollywood has provided our best covert weapon in the battle to desensitize the mainstream. Bit by bit over the past ten years, gay characters and gay themes have been introduced into TV programs and films (though often this has been done to achieve comedic and ridiculous affects). On the whole the impact has been encouraging. The prime-time presentation of Consenting Adults on a major network in 1985 is but one high-water mark in favorable media exposure of gay issues. But this should be just the beginning of a major publicity blitz by gay America.
Would a desensitizing campaign of open and sustained talk about gay issues reach every rabid opponent of homosexuality? Of course not. While public opinion is one primary source of mainstream values, religious authority is the other. When conservative churches condemn gays, there are only two things we can do to confound the homophobia of true believers. First, we can use talk to muddy the moral waters. This means publicizing support for gays by more moderate churches, raising theological objections of our own about conservative interpretations of biblical teachings, and exposing hatred and inconsistency. Second, we can undermine the moral authority of homophobic churches by portraying them as antiquated backwaters, badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology. Against the mighty pull of institutional Religion one must set the mightier draw of Science & Public Opinion (the shield and sword of that accursed "secular humanism"). Such an unholy alliance has worked well against churches before, on such topics as divorce and abortion. With enough open talk about the prevalence and acceptability of homosexuality, that alliance can work again here.
[2] PORTRAY GAYS AS VICTIMS, NOT AS AGGRESSIVE CHALLENGERS.
In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be cast as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to assume the role of protector. If gays are presented, instead, as a strong and prideful tribe promoting a rigidly nonconformist and deviant lifestyle, they are more likely to be seen as a public menace that justifies resistance and oppression. For that reason, we must forego the temptation to strut our "gay pride" publicly when it conflicts with the Gay Victim image. And we must walk the fine line between impressing straights with our great numbers, on the one hand, and sparking their hostile paranoia-"They are all around us!"--on the other.
A media campaign to promote the Gay Victim image should make use of symbols which reduce the mainstream's sense of threat, which lower it's guard, and which enhance the plausibility of victimization. In practical terms, this means that jaunty mustachioed musclemen would keep very low profile in gay commercials and other public presentations, while sympathetic figures of nice young people, old people, and attractive women would be featured. (It almost goes without saying that groups on the farthest margin of acceptability such as NAMBLA, [Ed note -- North American Man-Boy Love Association] must play no part at all in such a campaign: suspected child-molesters will never look like victims.)
Now, there are two different messages about the Gay Victim that are worth communicating. First, the mainstream should be told that gays are victims of fate, in the sense that most never had a choice to accept or reject their sexual preference. The message must read: "As far as gays can tell, they were born gay, just as you were born heterosexual or white or black or bright or athletic. Nobody ever tricked or seduced them; they never made a choice, and are not morally blameworthy. What they do isn't willfully contrary - it's only natural for them. This twist of fate could as easily have happened to you!"
Straight viewers must be able to identify with gays as victims. Mr. and Mrs. Public must be given no extra excuses to say, "they are not like us." To this end, the persons featured in the public campaign should be decent and upright, appealing and admirable by straight standards, completely unexceptionable in appearance--in a word, they should be indistinguishable from the straights we would like to reach. (To return to the terms we have used in previous articles, spokesmen for our cause must be R-type "straight gays" rather than Q-type "homosexuals on
display.") Only under such conditions will the message be read correctly: "These folks are victims of a fate that could have happened to me."
By the way, we realize that many gays will question an advertising technique, which might threaten to make homosexuality look like some dreadful disease, which strikes fated "victims". But the plain fact is that the gay community is weak and must manipulate the powers of the weak, including the play for sympathy. In any case, we compensate for the negative aspect of this gay victim appeal under Principle 4. (Below)
The second message would portray gays as victims of society. The straight majority does not recognize the suffering it brings to the lives of gays and must be shown: graphic pictures of brutalized gays; dramatizations of job and housing insecurity, loss of child custody, and public humiliation: and the dismal list goes on.
"... In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be cast as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to assume the role of protector."
[3] GIVE PROTECTORS A JUST CAUSE.
A media campaign that casts gays as society's victims and encourages straights to be their protectors must make it easier for those to respond to assert and explain their new protectiveness. Few straight women, and even fewer straight men, will want to defend homosexuality boldly as such. Most would rather attach their awakened protective impulse to some principle of justice or law, to some general desire for consistent and fair treatment in society. Our campaign should not demand direct support for homosexual practices, should instead take anti-discrimination as its theme. The right to free speech, freedom of beliefs, freedom of association, due process and equal protection of laws-these should be the concerns brought to mind by our campaign.
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TENNESSEE'S BATHROOM BILL
The Senate bill, SB 2387, will be in Senate Finance, Ways, and Means Committee, today at 8:30am.
This bill faces a huge uphill battle, especially if the members of this committee do not hear from YOU!
Please make your voice heard by calling or emailing. Click on link above, then on the picture, for the contact information for each senator.
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Convicted Sex Offender Leads Transgender Rights Effort in North Carolina
The homosexual leader of efforts in North Carolina to allow men to use women's bathrooms is a convicted and registered sex offender, according to documents made available to Breitbart News.
Chad Sevearance is president of the Charlotte Business Guild, which describes itself as "a network of LGBT professionals, business owners, employees and individuals in the Charlotte area who meet to nurture a network of business contacts; encourage fellowship and support among community business, professional and charitable pursuits; and provide and promote positive role models in the LGBT community."
Sevearance and his group have taken a lead role in seeking the right to allow males to use the restrooms and showers of females, including those of little girls, which is described by advocates as nothing more than nondiscrimination measures. Sevearance was quoted in the Charlotte Observer saying that because a recent bathroom "nondiscrimination ordinance" bill did not pass, "someone can ask me to leave a restaurant because I'm presumed to be gay or transgender."
In 1998, Sevearance worked as a youth minister and in that capacity allegedly lured younger men to his apartment to spend the night where Severance showed them pornography and tried to talk them into sex. One boy testified that he woke up to find Severance "fondling him." Severance was convicted on one charge of sexual molestation of a minor.
As a result of his 2000 conviction, Sevearance must register with the police on a regular basis for a minimum of ten years. His most recent mug shot and registration took place at the end of last year.
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