hunter of justice

Conference of Catholic Bishops launches new organization to fight equality, preserve special treatment for religious entities

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has created a new DC-based lobbying group to fight what it calls an "unprecedented assault" on the right "to proclaim the truth of religious freedom." Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the USCCB, announced the new campaign in a letter identifying the perceived threats to religious liberty that justified "a new moment in the history of our Conference."

Most of the declared threats were policies dealing with either lgbt rights or access to abortion and contraception. In addition to the new New York marriage equality law, the letter cites the Justice Department's decision to stop defending the constitutionality of DoMA. Even worse, the letter says,

the Department started filing briefs actively attacking DOMA’s constitutionality, claiming that supporters of the law could only have been motivated by bias and prejudice.  If the label of "bigot" sticks to us—especially in court—because of our teaching on marriage, we’ll have church-state conflicts for years to come as a result.

The Dolan letter also criticizes the HHS announcement that health insurance policies offered through new health reform systems would be required to cover birth control, federal rules that could require a Catholic charitable organization to provide abortion and contraception services to trafficking victims and condom distribution in HIV-prevention programs abroad, as well as the Justice Department argument in EEOC v. Hosanna-Tabor that churches should be required to follow anti-discrimination in employment laws.

"We're not hiring your K Street lobbyists," Archbishop Dolan told Roll Call. "We'll hire a constitutional lawyer who can really look carefully at these issues, and hire a policy advocacy person who can advocate the church's position."  

The lgbt blogosphere is full of news about right-wing religious nuts, some of them currently seeking the Republican nomination for President, spouting various now out-of-touch slogans about gay people being sick or evil.  It's easy to laugh and dismiss them. The USCCB's action, however, should not be dismissed or ridiculed. These people may be wrong, but - especially in Congress - they are credible, widely respected, and powerful. Not to mention financially capable of mounting a more sophisticated effort than the Family Research Councils of the world can dream of.

This creation of a permanent satellite advocacy organization, a commitment that marks another more reactionary step by the USCCB, an organization that has led advocacy efforts for poor people even as it has fought against reproductive rights for women and equality for lgbt people. Until last year, for example, the Conference was neutral on ENDA. It is now officially in opposition, and terminated its membership in the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights over these issues.

With public opinion running in the opposite direction on their doctrines related to sexuality, religious conservatives are seeking to reframe the debate about lgbt equality - whether in the workplace or in marriage - in less invidious, more intellectually respectable terms. They want the public to see these disputes as being about lofty concepts of religious freedom rather than about using the power of the state to enforce their claims of moral superiority.  If only.

[Correction: This new entity is not the first permanent satellite advocacy group created by the USCCB; the Committee for a Human Life Amendment was created earlier.]

HUD investigates pregnancy discrimination in mortgages

From Women's e news:

When Olivia Salvador tried to close her mortgage loan in March, she hit an unexpected snag. "My husband and I were unable to close due to my being on maternity leave," said Salvador, of Oakland, Calif. "Though I was preapproved for my loan, though I was employed and though my leave was federally protected, I was told that in the eyes of my lender, I was unemployed, and thus didn't meet the financial qualifications for my loan. We had to bargain for extra time with our seller and had to wait until after my leave to buy our home."

Complaints such as these were brought to light by the New York Times in a series of stories written by Tara Siegel Bernard in July.

In response, MomsRising, the Seattle-based advocacy group, e-mailed its one million members and received about 120 similar e-mail complaints. The organization then forwarded these to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Now HUD is investigating whether lenders are denying mortgages to women who are pregnant or on maternity leave in violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1973.

"We've received seven formal complaints so far and anticipate fielding more," John Trasvina, HUD's assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity, told Women's eNews recently. "Such reports are profoundly disturbing and require immediate action." Trasvina said press coverage by the New York Times and other publications, combined with pressure from MomsRising, spurred the investigation.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--the two Washington-based, government-sponsored mortgage giants that back most conventional home loans--tightened their lending rules earlier this year. Since then, lending-rights advocates say borrowers with potential dips or gaps in income are having trouble getting mortgages. That can mean injured workers collecting disability insurance or those who have recently lost jobs or work hours.

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director of MomsRising, thinks pregnant women are bearing the brunt of stricter lending practices. "Tighter guidelines are affecting many mortgage applicants," she said. "But the problem is that they're affecting women who are pregnant or on maternity leave in disproportionate numbers."

Lambda settles Benitez case

Last year, Lambda Legal won a decision in the California Supreme Court that a private medical practice could not assert the religious beliefs of its doctor-owners as a defense to a claim that a lesbian had been denied services because of her sexual orientation. Yesterday, rather than take the case to trial, the defendants agreed to settle with the plaintiff, Guadalupe Benitez.  Mucho kudos to lead counsel Jenny Pizer.

From the San Diego Union Tribune:

A long-running lawsuit between an Oceanside lesbian couple and two doctors that pitted the civil rights of same-sex couples against religious freedom for physicians has been settled. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. It ends a lawsuit filed in 2001 by Guadalupe Benitez against Drs. Douglas Fenton and Christine Brody at North Coast Women's Care in Vista.

Benitez alleged that the doctors told her they would not inseminate her because their religious convictions – they are Christians – prohibited them from doing the procedure for a lesbian couple. Benitez went to another doctor, got pregnant and had a child with her partner, Joanne Clark. The boy is now 7. The couple also have 4-year-old twins....

  ... [T]he doctors and the couple released a joint statement in which the doctors said they were sorry that Benitez and Clark felt they were being treated differently because of their sexual orientation. The doctors said they want “all of their patients, including those who are lesbian and gay, to feel welcome and accepted in their medical practice, and are committed to treating all of their patients with equal dignity and respect in the context of the highest quality of medical care.”

The doctors contended as the case went on that they declined to do the procedure because Benitez was unmarried – not because of her sexual orientation. But there was also evidence in the case early on that the doctors had acknowledged that they did not inseminate her because she is a lesbian....

“It was a really hard thing to go through, but it was worth it because we have hopefully paved the way for other people, and made sure that this is not going to happen to someone else,” [Benitez] said....

The state's civil rights law ... allow[s] doctors to opt out of some kinds of medical procedures, such as abortion. But if a physician does offer to do certain procedures, they must be made available to all, said Jennifer Pizer of Lambda Legal, an advocacy group for same-sex rights.

While the exact amount of the settlement is private, Pizer said it was enough so that the couple's children “will be able to have whatever type of education they want to have in the future.” ...

Bristol Palin, baby bumps and American teen culture

 The Observer

How a small US town hailed its teen mums

Elizabeth Day

Mariely Robles is proud of her baby bump. She wears low-slung, pink tracksuit bottoms and a tight T-shirt so that her stomach, stretched smooth with child, protrudes nakedly over her waistband. At the convenience store where she is buying soda with her friend, she rests one hand on her tummy. A small, yappy dog dressed in shorts is slung over her right arm. 'He's called Bambi,' she says, with a sweet smile.

Mariely is 16. Her baby - a girl - is due in little more than a fortnight. 'I am happy about it,' she says in a quiet voice. 'I chose to have a baby.' Why? She looks at me vacantly, a smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose. 'Because ... I guess I want to be a mother.'

It is as good an answer as any you will find in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It is an answer that resounds far beyond this small working seaport, an answer that criss-crosses the length and breadth of a country where teenage pregnancy is worn as a curious badge of honour. In America it seems that young motherhood has become something to be proud of, a status symbol that is preferable to abortion, and an ethical choice that speaks of family values rather than family breakdown. Over recent weeks it has even become something of a vote-winner. When John McCain's vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, revealed that her 17-year-old daughter was expecting her first child it contributed to a 4 per cent Republican lead in the polls....

In a country with a strong evangelical streak, there are a growing number of social conservatives who are, like Palin, fervently anti-abortion. Increasingly teenage motherhood is seen as a responsible social decision rather than the shameful consequence of a regrettable mistake.

According to Dr Mike Males, a sociologist and senior researcher at the Centre on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco, young motherhood is now viewed as a viable strategy for women lower down the socio-economic scale rather than as evidence of a dysfunctional society. 'Because poorer groups tend to die younger, having babies early in life may ensure that grandparents and extended family members will be alive and healthy enough to help raise children,' he said. Males cites a 2005 study that found that former teenage mothers who are freed from child-raising duties by their late twenties or early thirties have, by the age of 35, 'earned more in income, paid more in taxes, were substantially less likely to live in poverty and collected less in public assistance than similarly poor women who waited until their twenties to have babies'.

The sub-text is clear: that, far from being victims of deprivation and ignorance, young girls are choosing to become mothers in a society that increasingly celebrates teenage parenthood as the wholesome alternative to abortion. Not everyone agrees. In the days after Palin announced that Bristol was expecting, Democratic bloggers accused her of exploiting her own daughter to further her 'regressive' pro-life policies.

Is Bristol Palin's pregnancy to be applauded, or is it evidence of an uncomfortable cultural shift that has seen a substantial and irreversible erosion of women's rights over the past decade? Mariely Robles might not realise it yet, but her baby bump is fast becoming a political issue.

Single, pregnant, and Minister of Justice

The Observer

A very Gallic view of single motherhood
Janien DiGiovanni

The most famous woman in France today is the mysterious French Minister of Justice, 42-year-old Rachida Dati, who is nearly six months' pregnant. Rien de grave: nothing serious. Here in France, being a single mother is no big deal. More than 50 per cent of the children born are conceived out of wedlock. Instead, the big deal is that Dati is keeping the papa secret.

No one cares that she is single, even if all of Paris is blazing with rumours about who provided the DNA. No one yet has stepped forward. Dati has made it clear her private life is 'complicated' and she is keeping quiet.

Good for her. Although of North African origin, where traditionally women are kept in their well-harnessed place, Dati is a modern French woman. My sources at the Elysée Palace say she drinks and sleeps around happily - in other words, she behaves like any male politician.

The fact that, at 42, she finds herself happily pregnant - she says it is 'fundamental' to have a child - and has decided to raise it alone are steps ahead for French feminism.

Across the Atlantic,...  Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's 17-year old daughter Bristol is also famous for being pregnant. Unlike Dati, we all know who the father is - Levi Johnston, 18.... [A] shotgun wedding is being planned.

Britain, where teenage pregnancy is the highest in Western Europe, falls somewhere between the two cultures. It's not quite so relaxing to be a single mother in London as it is in Paris, but it's not as stigmatised as it is in America. Which is incredible, given that we are in the 21st century and women in America have had the vote since 1920. In France, women did not vote until 1944....

Even Sex and the City could not cure Americans of their staid views on single motherhood. The smart, feisty and financially independent lawyer Miranda had to go ahead and marry the bartender and professional loser Steve just to placate the viewers after she had her baby....

[H]ere in France, Dati has been photographed looking glamorous and confident. She's going about her business with a neat little bump and a power haircut, briefcase tucked sagely under her arm. Her pregnancy (the result of a one-night stand it is rumoured) is deemed utterly normal....