Tag Archives: Marriage Equality

News

Judge denies Human Rights Campaign co-founder’s offer to settle child sex abuse case

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Gay activist Terry Bean and Barack Obama
Gay activist and top Obama-donor Terry Bean (left) and Barack Obama

A follow up on the story about the criminal charges against Terry Bean – prominent gay activist, Democrat donor, and co-founder of  the Human Rights Campaign – from Oregon Live.

Excerpt:

A Lane County judge denied gay activist Terry Bean’s request Thursday to settle child sex abuse charges by compensating the underage victim.

Bean, 66, and his former boyfriend, Kiah Loy Lawson, 25, are accused of having sex with a 15-year-old boy at a Eugene hotel in 2013.

They each are charged with two counts of third-degree sodomy, a felony, and third-degree sexual abuse, a misdemeanor.

Bean, who lives in Portland and is a prominent political fundraiser, proposed a civil compromise that could result in the dismissal of the criminal charges. Had the request been granted, the criminal charges against Bean would have been dismissed.

Time to review who Terry Bean is, using my previous post about the initial filing of charges.

Let’s review the details of the original charges from Oregon Live:

The former boyfriend of Terrence P. Bean was arrested early Thursday on sex abuse charges stemming from the same alleged 2013 encounter with a 15-year-old boy at a hotel in Eugene.

Kiah Loy Lawson, 25, was arrested at 1:15 a.m. at the Portland Police Bureau’s Central Precinct and booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center shortly after 2 a.m.

He’s accused of third-degree sodomy and third-degree sexual abuse.

[…]The indictment charges Bean with two counts of third-degree sodomy, a felony, and one count of third-degree sex abuse, a misdemeanor, police said.

[…]Both Bean and Lawson are accused of having a sexual encounter with the same 15-year-old boy in a hotel in Eugene last year. They had arranged the encounter with the teen after meeting him via a website, investigators allege.

[…]Bean has been one of the state’s biggest Democratic donors and an influential figure in gay rights circles in the state. He helped found two major national political groups, the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, and has been a major contributor for several Democratic presidential candidates, including Barack Obama. He’s also a close friend of former Gov. Barbara Roberts.

Here is his biography from his web site:

Terry Bean is a native Oregonian, successful real estate developer, and President and CEO of Bean Investment Real Estate, a private company that trades and invests in commercial real estate as well as large residential complexes.  Along with these badges of honor, Terry Bean is often first recognized as a pioneer in the national civil rights movement, promoting full equality for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, queer/questioning communities. (GLBTQ)

Terry Bean is so well regarded as an activist that Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski declared August 23, 2008, to be “Terry Bean Equality Day” in recognition for the work he has done on LGBT rights causes since the 1970’s.

A pioneer in the movement, Terry Bean, started advocating politically for gay rights in the early 1970′s in Eugene, Oregon. Early successes resulted in the passing of a city gay rights ordinance, which, while was later overturned by voters, set the framework for grassroot organizations and strategies which quickly followed—establishing a pattern of victories which have continued well into the new millennium.

In 1979, Bean helped to organize the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, the first such highly visible effort to empower a minority while educating a majority.

After the march on Washington, Terry Bean turned his focus to the national level co-founding the Gay Rights National Lobby and the Human Rights Campaign Fund. These groups merged to become today’s Human Rights Campaign – HRC.

The Human Rights Campaign is the nation’s largest gay rights organization.

Barack Obama  supports the Human Rights Campaign:

Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign
Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign

Hillary Clinton also supports the Human Rights Campaign:

Hillary Clinton and the Human Rights Campaign
Hillary Clinton and the Human Rights Campaign

The Democrat Party is on board with the gay agenda.

News

Republicans introduce bill to protect natural marriage supporters

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Hillary Clinton and the Human Rights Campaign
Hillary Clinton and the Human Rights Campaign

Ryan T. Anderson writes about it in The Daily Signal.

He says:

[…][Congress] today introduced the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) to guarantee such a scenario never becomes “an issue.”

This bill, introduced by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, is good policy in part because it is so simple. It says that the federal government cannot discriminate against people and institutions that speak and act according to their belief that marriage is a union of one man and one woman. That’s it in a nutshell.

[…][G]overnment should respect those who stand for marriage and the First Amendment Defense Act would do so by specifically prohibiting bureaucrats from retaliating against individuals, family businesses, charities and schools because they refuse to change their deeply held views on what marriage is, no matter what the Supreme Court or politicians may say about it in the coming days.

Now you might be thinking, “everything is going to be fine for Christians” or “we can trust the Democrats to not act like Nazis”, but let’s not talk in generalities, let’s look at the facts with a specific example where the government went after Christians:

[…][I]n July 2014, Obama issued an executive order barring federal contractors from what it describes as “discrimination” on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The order contains extremely narrow accommodations of religious freedom and no exceptions for contractors who conscientiously judge sexual conduct to be relevant to their mission, purpose or bathroom policies.

Such radical changes in policy in effect exclude legions of taxpayers from being eligible for federal contracts funded with their own tax dollars because they hold conscientious beliefs about sexuality and biology that run counter to the administration’s.

Similar threats to religious freedom and conscience in licensing and contracts are mounting at the state level.

Facing coercion by state governments to place children with same-sex couples, faith-based adoption agencies in Massachusetts, Illinois and Washington, D.C., have been forced to end foster care and adoption services rather than abandon their belief that children do best with a married mother and father.

In those states, refusing to place children in same-sex households would have meant forfeiting necessary contracts with the state government for foster care services or, in some situations, even losing state licenses to place any children for adoption.

So, do you think that adopted children would be better off in a home where they have an adoptive Mom and an adoptive Dad? Well, there is a lot of evidence from studies showing that both moms and dads help a child’s development in different, complementary ways. But the Democrats think either moms or dads are dispensable to kids, and so yes, they do go after Christian organizations who put the needs of the children over the needs of selfish adults. And what happens to those organizations? They shut down. And what happens to those kids? They don’t get adopted.

We have an election coming up in 2016, and it will be a time for pro-marriage voters to consider where the candidates stand on religious liberty issues. Make sure you make it a priority to find out, and to get involved in getting pro-religious-liberty candidates elected.

News

Police will charge gay activist Adam Hoover with faking his own abduction

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This was reported by NBC News.

They say:

A suburban Cincinnati gay rights activist was charged with a misdemeanor early Tuesday after police say he falsely claimed online that he was kidnapped and thrown in the trunk of his car, NBC affiliate WLWT reported. In a post on Facebook and Twitter just before 12:30 a.m. ET, Adam Hoover alerted his friends and followers that he was in danger. He said he was using social media instead of dialing 911 because he didn’t want to be heard.

“Please help me I’m in the trunk of my ford escort red 2000 gbh 2812,” the 20-year-old wrote. “They said they are going to kill my family please call 911 I don’t want them to hear me.” He included his mother’s phone number and his family’s address. “Please please call. I don’t want to die,” he added.

The plea for help spread quickly on social media and sparked an immediate search in the Cincinnati area. But after investigating, Green Township police and the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office believe the kidnapping was a hoax. Authorities discovered Hoover’s car abandoned on a highway near the Ohio-Indiana border, WLWT reported. He was seen coming out of a nearby home with police and was unharmed, according to the station. Police didn’t immediately release a motive for why Hoover allegedly faked his own abduction.

What was interesting about this story is that the local paper considered spiking the story rather than make this gay activist look bad.

Newsbusters explains:

In its two reports on the story Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, the Cincinnati Enquirer posted the following introductory note:

We decided to publish this story because it dealt with a prominent local figure who posted claims in a very public setting. We understand and respect Mr. Hoover’s privacy, but we also believe it’s important to cover public figures and events that potentially have an impact on public safety resources.

By indicating that a “decision to publish” was made, the Enquirer has undeniably and outrageously admitted that it considered not reporting the results of a story which had already gone viral. Why?

It would seem that a factor contributing to that reluctance is that Hoover, according to local TV station WLWT, “is a founder of Marriage Equality Ohio, which he helped create in 2010.” (The Enquirer’s Wednesday report says that”Hoover started working for Marriage Equality Ohio in 2011 and has done most of the promotion work for the organization since then.”)

Thus, there appear to have been discussions in the Enquirer newsroom about how reporting on Hoover might hurt his cause. It’s also reasonable to believe that the paper was pressured by outsiders and/or parent company Gannett to either not cover Hoover’s hoax or to downplay it as much as possible. The introductory note at its two stories comes off as a de facto “Sorry, we wish we could ignore this, but we can’t, so please-please-please don’t hate us for it” apology to those who would have wanted the story suppressed.

If there was pressure to downplay the story, those who exerted it appear to have gotten their way, as headlines relating to Hoover disappeared quite quickly from the Enquirer‘s home page.

It’s hard to imagine that the Enquirer would have been so deferential if the person faking his abduction had been an advocate on the other side of the same-sex “marriage” issue.

So the headlines eventually disappeared from their web site. Interesting.

You can read about more fake hate crimes against gays from Life Site News.

There was another story like this one in the news, recently. This one concerns Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning.

Excerpt:

“After carefully considering the recommendation that (hormone treatment) is medically appropriate and necessary, and weighing all associated safety and security risks presented, I approve adding (hormone treatment) to Inmate Manning’s treatment plan,” Col. Erica Nelson, the commandant of the Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas, wrote in a Feb. 5 memo.

Formerly named Bradley Manning, the soldier was convicted of sending classified documents to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. Manning is serving a 35-year prison sentence and is eligible for parole in about seven years.

At Manning’s trial, her attorneys argued she had been disillusioned by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and believed the release of the documents, including diplomatic cables and military reports, should be seen by the public.

Manning sued the federal government for access to the treatment. The Army referred questions about Manning to the Department of Justice, which has been handling the case. Nicole Navas, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment, saying the government’s position is detailed in court filings.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Manning in the case, did not have an immediate comment on the Army’s memo.

Manning had asked for hormone therapy and to be able to live as a woman. Transgender individuals are not allowed to serve in the U.S. military and the Defense Department does not provide such treatment. The Department of Veterans Affairs, however, does provide the treatment for veterans.

That’s the same Department of Veterans Affairs that provides such poor care for veterans who actually fought in wars, rather than for people like Manning, who just gave away our military secrets. If the government is in control of health care, then the government gets to decide who gets treated. Their idea of who deserves health care might not be the same as the taxpayers who pay for it, but oh well.

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