Who are you? No really, stop and think about that. And think about what makes you who you are.
Who are you? What defines you? How do you see yourself? And why?
Debi Jackson had to confront this when her daughter came out to her. She was 4 at the time, and she already knew she's a girl. Debi Jackson did a Google search, realized her daughter is indeed a transgender girl, and then moved quickly to provide her daughter with the love & support she needed.
If only more people had the insight and compassion of Debi Jackson. Students like Jayce Marcus, Domaine Javier, & Christian Minard now have to fight against discrimination at the very institutions of higher learning that are supposed to provide a safe & supportive environment for them. Trudy Kitzmiller & Kristen Skinner had to threaten legal action to just to obtain proper customer service at the West Virginia DMV. And Mia Henderson was found murdered in Baltimore yesterday.
And now, LGBTQ Americans must ponder a new threat to equality. Last month, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling in the Hobby Lobby case that caused epic confusion. And now that 5 Supreme Court Justices seem to believe that corporations have license to do a number of things under the guise of "religious freedom", several LGBTQ civil rights organizations have decided to back away from the current version of ENDA in Congress due to its religious exemptions. In addition, they're urging President Obama to refrain from including religious exemptions in his executive order barring federal contractors from discriminating against LGBTQ workers.
Think about that. It's 2014. And still, millions of Americans must worry about things like whether they can live as "normal" families, whether they can hold a job, whether they can stay in school, and even whether they can manage to live another day.
Who are they? Who are these people? We are people. We are workers. We are students. We are veterans. We are DREAMers. We are parents. We are families. We are Americans, Americans with Constitutional rights.
Who are you? Are you a mere "political issue"? Or are you a real human being who deserves real respect?
Showing posts with label Hobby Lobby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hobby Lobby. Show all posts
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Monday, June 30, 2014
This Is Why Elections Matter.
This morning, the US Supreme Court decided to tinker with workers' right to unionize... And the very survival of the American labor movement... And women's rights at work... And employers' ability to dictate their workers' health care decisions.
Both decisions were allegedly narrow, but they have the potential to set very dangerous precedents. Oh, and both decisions were 5-4. Who could have guessed the Roberts Court is so extremely ideologically divided?
In Harris v. Quinn, the 5 conservative Justices ruled in favor of a handful of home health care workers who did not want to pay union dues to enjoy the benefits of union negotiations. In order to curb "free riders", non - union workers were required to pay some sort of reimbursement fees to the unions for negotiating higher pay and better benefits for them. But now, 5 Justices (guess who!) just punctured a hole in this arrangement.
Now, they claim there's a separate class of workers who are "public employees" but are not really "public employees". Confused yet? Try Andy Kroll's Mother Jones primer for Harris. Suffice to say, today's ruling doesn't completely eviscerate the American labor movement... But it does bruise workers and threatens more pain ahead.
And then, there's Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. Once again, we have a 5-4 ruling. Once again, we have a troubling precedent that threatens workers' rights. And once again, we have theoretical "religious freedom" valued over real women's health.
In Hobby Lobby, 5 Justices (guess who!) ruled that "closely held corporations" (essentially family run enterprises) can claim "religious objections" when denying workers contraception and other forms of reproductive health care. Strangely enough, some progressives are breathing sighs of relief today because this rather jumbled ruling actually gave plenty of room for the federal government to step in and provide reproductive health care to affected workers. The ruling was also designed to be narrow enough to avoid threatening other health care benefits (like blood transfusions and vaccinations) and/or legalizing workplace discrimination.
Still, this sets a frightening precedent. What if the hardest of hard-line conservative Justices just had one or two more votes on the Supreme Court? The message from Justice Samuel Alito (who authored both majority opinions) seems to be that he's waiting for just this to go even further in the direction of undoing the entire past century of progress on workers' rights and women's rights.
Here's a helpful hint: This is why elections matter. Presidents appoint and Senators confirm Supreme Court Justices. And there's a good chance we'll see at least one more vacancy this decade. Imagine the difference one vote could have made today.
This is why elections matter.
Both decisions were allegedly narrow, but they have the potential to set very dangerous precedents. Oh, and both decisions were 5-4. Who could have guessed the Roberts Court is so extremely ideologically divided?
In Harris v. Quinn, the 5 conservative Justices ruled in favor of a handful of home health care workers who did not want to pay union dues to enjoy the benefits of union negotiations. In order to curb "free riders", non - union workers were required to pay some sort of reimbursement fees to the unions for negotiating higher pay and better benefits for them. But now, 5 Justices (guess who!) just punctured a hole in this arrangement.
Now, they claim there's a separate class of workers who are "public employees" but are not really "public employees". Confused yet? Try Andy Kroll's Mother Jones primer for Harris. Suffice to say, today's ruling doesn't completely eviscerate the American labor movement... But it does bruise workers and threatens more pain ahead.
And then, there's Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. Once again, we have a 5-4 ruling. Once again, we have a troubling precedent that threatens workers' rights. And once again, we have theoretical "religious freedom" valued over real women's health.
In Hobby Lobby, 5 Justices (guess who!) ruled that "closely held corporations" (essentially family run enterprises) can claim "religious objections" when denying workers contraception and other forms of reproductive health care. Strangely enough, some progressives are breathing sighs of relief today because this rather jumbled ruling actually gave plenty of room for the federal government to step in and provide reproductive health care to affected workers. The ruling was also designed to be narrow enough to avoid threatening other health care benefits (like blood transfusions and vaccinations) and/or legalizing workplace discrimination.
Still, this sets a frightening precedent. What if the hardest of hard-line conservative Justices just had one or two more votes on the Supreme Court? The message from Justice Samuel Alito (who authored both majority opinions) seems to be that he's waiting for just this to go even further in the direction of undoing the entire past century of progress on workers' rights and women's rights.
Here's a helpful hint: This is why elections matter. Presidents appoint and Senators confirm Supreme Court Justices. And there's a good chance we'll see at least one more vacancy this decade. Imagine the difference one vote could have made today.
This is why elections matter.
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