The Crap Tank Center For American Progress Promulgates More Propaganda To Proffer More Profit Trafficking Tiny Humans

The religious exemption in adoption has nothing to do with what one likes to do in the bedroom, it is about chattel law.

You cannot split the ownership of a child.

In chattel law, the mother has a position of law but the father, depending on the situation, has a different position in law.

One must always keep in mind that there are no constitutionalities in child welfare, like due process, equal treatment under the law being guilty until proven innocent, and the phenomenon of anonymous reporters being able to submit evidence, that can never be challenged, even if one is lucky enough to have legal representation of an attorney who actually thinks violating civil rights is just pro forma when it comes to dealing with "The Poors" (always said with clinched teeth.

Same sex unions indicate the legal dilemma of unspecified rights under chattel law.

Seriously.

Besides, if you place a legal ban on adoptions based upon one's identity, then you can do the upsale on tiny humans in the re-homing experience.

No one regulates the after market of public adoptions.

But that is not why I am upset.

The crap tank called the Center for American Progress is excreting more propaganda for the industry of trafficking tiny humans and I wish to capture all facets of the propaganda for SCOTUS.

The only "child welfare crisis" is that all these Child Placing Agencies and Crap Tanks traffic tiny humans.

North American Council on Adoptable Children which is a 501c3 based in Minnesota.

NACAC promotes and supports permanent families for children and youth in the U.S. and Canada—especially children and youth who are or have been in foster care and those with special needs.

Voice for Adoption sounds like a campaign finance lobbying otherwise known as money laundering operation

"Voice for Adoption (VFA) develops and advocates for improved adoption policies. Recognized as a national leader in special needs adoption, VFA works closely with federal and state legislators, as well as other child welfare organizations, to make a difference in the lives of the 112,000 children in foster care who are waiting to be adopted and the families who adopt children from foster care."

Religious exemption laws exacerbating foster and adoption 'crisis,' report finds

Laws allowing child placement agencies to deny LGBTQ prospective parents are worsening the current “child welfare crisis,” according to a new report.

Religious exemption laws allowing child placement agencies to deny LGBTQ prospective parents from fostering or adopting are exacerbating the current “child welfare crisis,” according to a new report from the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP), Voice for Adoption and the North American Council on Adoptable Children.

“Turning away LGBTQ prospective parents by asserting a religious exemption or taking advantage of a lack of state nondiscrimination law is a violation of this group’s rights,” the report states. “It also negatively affects the already strained child welfare system, ultimately harming the children in its care.”

“CHILD WELFARE CRISIS” The crisis is manufactured to maintain the industry of trafficking tiny humans.

In 2017, there were about 443,000 children in foster care across the U.S., according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Each year, some 50,000 children are adopted through the U.S. child welfare system, but about 20,000 others “age out” before being placed with an adoptive family, according to HHS.

In addition to helping place more children in permanent homes, the CAP report claims taxpayers could save hundreds of millions of dollars by removing barriers blocking LGBTQ people from becoming adoptive parents.

“Each child adopted from foster care, even with adoption assistance support, reduces state and federal spending by almost $29,000 annually when compared with those children who remain in foster care,” the report states. “If the child welfare system finds adoptive families for just 1,000 ten-year-old children who would otherwise have aged out of foster care at 18, a rough estimate suggests it would save $230 million of taxpayer money over eight years.”

The report warns that turning qualified prospective parents away will add unnecessary stress to “an already stressed system,” and it notes LGBTQ people represent a an “important subgroup of potential parents.”

“Same-sex couples raising children are seven times more likely to be raising a foster child and seven times more likely to be raising an adopted child than their different-sex counterparts,” the report states, citing data from the UCLA’s Williams Institute. “They are also more likely to adopt older children and children with special needs, who are statistically less likely to be adopted.”

Despite the needs of children in the child welfare system and the willingness of LGBTQ prospective parents, the report notes there are significant barriers in place that are preventing them from being matched.

“WAIVER TO DISCRIMINATE" This is nothing but propaganda to distract from the money laundering and campaign financing to continue profiting from the trafficking of tiny humans.

At present, 10 states — Alabama, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia — have laws allowing religiously affiliated placement agencies to turn away LGBTQ parents, and even refuse to place LGBTQ children.

Frank J. Bewkes, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress and one of the report’s authors, told NBC News these religious exemption laws “reduce the pool of qualified parents.”

“We are not in the position to turn any qualified parents away,” he said. “That is not in the best interest of children … [There are] too many people in care and not enough homes to take them in.”

The report cites researchthat demonstrates children raised in same-sex households are just as emotionally and physically healthy those raised by straight couples.he first legislation to allow religious exemptions for child placement agencies was passed in North Dakota in 2003, which allowed agencies to refuse to participate in placement that violated the agency’s “written religious or moral convictions or policies,” and still receive government contracts. But after nearly a decade without other states following suit, such laws have been gaining momentum. Two states passed such a law between 2012 and 2016, three did so in 2017 and four in 2018 alone, according to CAP.

These laws have the potential to affect not only LGBTQ prospective parents but any prospective parent who does not fit the agency’s definition of a suitable family. In March of this year, South Carolina made headlines when Miracle Hill, the largest foster agency in the state, turned away Beth Lesser and her husband for being Jewish, referring them to a different agency.

“To say we can go somewhere else is like saying you can’t use this state-funded hospital, but you can go to the one down the street,” Lesser told the Greenville News.

Earlier this week, 75 civil rights, child welfare and faith organizations sent a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar asking him not to grant South Carolina’s request to exempt Miracle Hill from federal nondiscrimination law.

“Granting South Carolina’s request would upend HHS’s responsibility to ensure that states are properly caring for the nation’s children by explicitly permitting a provider to put its own interests ahead of the best interests and explicit rights of the children in its care,” the letter states. “In addition, an exemption would sanction taxpayer-funded discrimination by organizations providing a government service, violating a host of constitutional and statutory protections.”

Currey Cook, an attorney at LGBTQ civil rights group Lambda Legal said the implications of granting “a waiver to discriminate” for organizations funded with taxpayer dollars, such as Miracle Hill, “are enormous.”“To allow faith-based agencies to put their beliefs ahead of the wellbeing of children in the state’s care is not only unconstitutional, but more importantly, it is harmful to the very children agencies are paid by the government to care for,” Cook said.

These religious exemption proposals are also being introduced at the federal level. In July of this year, Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., unsuccessfully introduced an amendment to the 2019 appropriations bill that, had it passed, would have slashed 15 percent of the federal funding for child welfare services programs to states that enforced nondiscrimination protections in child placement.

Similarly, Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wy., and Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., introduced last year the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act, which aims to prevent the federal government from taking action against any child welfare agency that “declines to provide, facilitate, or refer for a child welfare service that conflicts with the provider's sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.” The bill is still pending in the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources.

In a statement supporting the bill, Rep. Kelly called it “100 percent inclusive and child-focused” and noted that “faith-based organizations have historically played a heroic role in caring for our country’s most vulnerable kids.”

“There is no good reason why any of these care providers should be disqualified from working with their government to serve America’s families simply because of their deeply-rooted religious beliefs,” Kelly said in the statement. “When it comes to helping kids and making families stronger, all service providers – religious or otherwise – should have a seat at the table. That’s what this bill is about."

Bewkes cautioned that we have not seen the last of religious exemption laws. He said he expects a “ramping up” of proposed legislation in the next legislative session. “This is one of the battlegrounds for LGBTQ equality,” he added.

The lion's share of U.S. states no have explicit protections for LGBTQ prospective parents, according to Movement Advancement Project(MAP), an LGBTQ think tank. Three states (California, New Jersey and Rhode Island) and the District of Columbia prohibit discrimination by adoption and foster care agencies and officials based on both sexual orientation and gender identity, and an additional six states (Oregon, Wisconsin, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland and Nevada) offer some adoption and foster care discrimination protections based sexual orientation alone, according to MAP.

THE COURTS

Recently, religiously affiliated child placement agencies and LGBTQ prospective parents have been turning to the courts to decide their fate as foster and adoptive parents.

In Philadelphia, Catholic Social Services is suing the city for the right to receive government contracts even if it refuses to place children with LGBTQ parents, in violation of the city’s nondiscrimination policy. Thus far a federal judge has rejected the Catholic Social Services’ request for a preliminary injunction, holding that the city’s nondiscrimination law does not violate the organization’s rights.

And in Texas, a lesbian couple was turned away by a foster agency because they did not “mirror the holy family.” Lambda Legal is suingthe HHS and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on behalf of the couple for “unlawful funding” of child welfare organizations that accept federal dollars but refuse to work with same-sex couples. The case is still pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

CASE STUDIES: TEXAS & MICHIGAN

The CAP report undertakes case studies of Michigan and Texas, two large states that have adopted relatively broad religious exemption laws. Bewkes described the situation in these states as “pretty bleak,” and the report describes an acute placement crisis in each of them.

“Nationwide, 28 percent of youth had been in foster care for two or more years in fiscal year 2016,” according to the CAP report, which cited HHS data. “In that same period, 38 percent of Texas youth and 52 percent of Michigan youth had been in care for two or more years.”

In Texas, which has had a religious exemption law for child placement agencies since 2017, the number of foster and adoptive homes working with licensed child placement agencies has decreased nearly 40 percent from 2012 to 2017, according to data from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

And in Michigan, which has had a religious exemption law for child placement agencies since 2015, the number of licensed foster homes dropped by more than 20 percent from 2012 to 2017, according to data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

The report also highlights how LGBTQ-accepting agencies in these states may be inaccessible to some prospective parents because of geography.

“We found they are actually spaced quite far apart,” Bewkes said of LGBTQ-accepting agencies. “If you’re in El Paso, there are no agencies that have explicit policies that are welcoming. You’d have to drive 350 miles to Lubbock, Texas, to find an agency that is welcoming,” he said, adding, “that’s in a different time zone.”

RECOMMENDATIONS

CAP ended its report with recommendations for the federal government, state governments and state-licensed child-placing agencies to help address the current “child welfare crisis.”

The organization recommended that a law be passed at the federal level that “explicitly prohibits state-licensed child placing agencies that receive federal funding, or that contract with those that do, from discriminating against or turning away qualified LGBTQ prospective foster or adoptive parents.” And, in the absence of federal protection, CAP recommended that “state legislatures should pass into law explicit nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ prospective parents — both adoptive and foster.”

The report also recommended that LGBTQ-welcoming child-placement agencies make their policies explicit by, for example, posting nondiscrimination policies to websites, as these are often the first place prospective parents go when considering fostering or adoption. The report also encouraged states and child placement agencies to increase their recruitment efforts to all prospective parents, especially those who identity as LGBTQ, as this population has a higher propensity to foster and adopt.

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Conyers: President Obama’s Support for Gay Marriage A Courageous Stand

     

(WASHINGTON) – Today, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) applauded President Obama’s support for marriage equality for same-sex couples.  Ranking Member Conyers is an original cosponsor of H.R. 1116, the “Respect for Marriage Act” which would repeal the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA).  As Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee during the 104^th Congress, Representative Conyers opposed DOMA in 1996.      

               

U.S. Representative
John Conyers, Jr.

“I commend President Obama for his support of marriage equality.  The right to choose whom to marry is not just a civil right, but a fundamental human right.  That is why I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 and support its repeal today.  And it is why  I strongly support President Obama taking a stand on this important moral issue.  President Obama and Vice President Biden have taken courageous, sound, and appropriate positions supporting equal rights for all Americans.”

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Michele Bachmann Supports Lesbians

Michele Bachmann signed the Susan B. Anthony List??????

If Susan B. Anthony was a lesbian,

and Michele has a strong aversion to lesbians,

then, Michele Bachmann supports lesbians.

Hmmmmmmmmm..........  any takers on this argument?

Bachmann reveals miscarriage to explain abortion stance

CAPTION

By Andy Dunaway, AP

GOP presidential candidate GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann revealed she once had a "devastating" miscarriage, which ultimately helped shape her views on abortion.

The Minnesota congresswoman disclosed the miscarriage Wednesday night at a town hall meeting in South Carolina, according to CNN and Politico, in response to a question about abortion.

"After our second was born, we became pregnant with a third baby," Bachmann said, referring to her husband, Marcus. "It was an unexpected baby, but of course we were delighted to have this child. The child was coming along and we ended up losing our child. And it was devastating to both of us, as you can imagine if any of you have lost a child."

Bachmann said the experience "changed us forever," leading her and her husband to help raise 23 foster children along with five biological children. She frequently discusses her children on the campaign trail, such as when she introduced herself to the nation during the first GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire.

"We made a commitment that no matter how many children were brought into our life, we would receive them because we are committed to life," Bachmann told the South Carolina audience.

Bachmann recently signed an anti-abortion pledge by the Susan B. Anthony List, which states that candidates will appoint judges and Cabinet officials who are against abortion, sign legislation banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and cut off taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood.

The pledge was also signed by GOP presidential hopefuls Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. Bachmann criticized rival Mitt Romney for not signing the pledge.

Romney, who once supported abortion rights but now does not, has said the pledge would have unintended consequences.

Michele Bachmann: My Kids are Crazy About Glee

Michele Bachmann: My Kids are Crazy About Glee

Photo: Stephen Lovekin/Getty ImagesJustin Bieber disappointed U.S. representative and potential presidential candidate Michele Bachmann at last night's Time 100 by not showing up — she'd brought copies of his book to sign for one of her older sons, who is a special-ed teacher. But she did delight her other, younger children (she's taken care of 23 foster kids over the years) by meeting another popular teen icon and singer. At the event last night, at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Bachmann and her husband posed with Glee star Darren Criss and e-mailed the pictures to their children. "We looked for Chris Colfer," she said, but they didn't find him. "We don’t watch TV, generally speaking. But the kids were thrilled. What kids don’t watch Glee?" Well, maybe the children of potential presidential candidates who think God sent them to stop gay people from having equal rights? Maybe Bachmann doesn't know that the main message of the popular teen hit is tolerance, respect, and equal treatment — particularly for gay people. She doesn’t watch TV, after all.


I wonder if she will loose any endorsements or financial backing on her campaign for this.  If anyone has the photos of Marcus and Michele with Chris, please, by all means, send them to me..... please!!!!! 


I bet Marcus was tickled, though (snicker).

Michele Bachmann's Unrivaled Extremism

A few dozen people showed up at the town hall for the April 9 event, and Bachmann greeted them warmly. But when, during the question and answer session, the topic turned to same-sex marriage, Bachmann ended the meeting 20 minutes early and rushed to the bathroom. Hoping to speak to her, Arnold and another middle-aged woman, a former nun, followed her. As Bachmann washed her hands and Arnold looked on, the ex-nun tried to talk to her about theology. Suddenly, after less than a minute, Bachmann let out a shriek. "Help!" she screamed. "Help! I'm being held against my will!"

Arnold, who is just over 5 feet tall, was stunned, and hurried to open the door. Bachmann bolted out and fled, crying, to an SUV outside. Then she called the police, saying, according to the police report, that she was "absolutely terrified and has never been that terrorized before as she had no idea what those two women were going to do to her." The Washington County attorney, however, declined to press charges, writing in a memo, "It seems clear from the statements given by both women that they simply wanted to discuss certain issues further with Ms. Bachmann."

Lots of politicians talk about a sinister homosexual agenda. Bachmann, who has made opposition to gay rights a cornerstone of her career, seems genuinely to believe in one. Her conviction trumps even her once close relationship with her lesbian stepsister. "What an amazing imagination," marvels Arnold. "Her ideology is so powerful that she can construct a reality just on a moment's notice."

Belief is the key to understanding Michele Bachmann, who announced her presidential candidacy during Monday's Republican debate. Her impressive performance, which catapulted her close to the front of the presidential pack, surprised some, who perhaps expected her to be as inarticulate as Sarah Palin, to whom she's often compared. But in Minnesota, even those who don't like her politics say she shouldn't be underestimated. "The fact that she's not a heavy lifter, the fact that she's relatively unconcerned about the substance of legislation, does not mean that she's not crafty, that she's not intelligent and she's not fast," says former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson, a Republican. Her ideological radicalism should not be mistaken for stupidity.

On Monday, Bachmann didn't talk a lot about her religion. She didn't have to—she knows how to signal it in ways that go right over secular heads. In criticizing Obama's Libya policy, for example, she said, "We are the head and not the tail." The phrase comes from Deuteronomy 28:13: "The Lord will make you the head and not the tail." As Rachel Tabachnick has reported, it's often used in theocratic circles to explain why Christians have an obligation to rule.

“Michele Bachmann says certain things that sound crazy to the general public,” says Frank Schaeffer. “But to anybody raised in the environment of the evangelical right wing, what she says makes perfect sense.”

Charlie Neibergal / AP Photos

Indeed, no other candidate in the race is so completely a product of the evangelical right as Bachmann; she could easily become the Christian conservative alternative to the comparatively moderate Mormon Mitt Romney. "Michele Bachmann's a complete package," says Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition wunderkind who now runs the Faith and Freedom Coalition. "She's got charisma, she's got an authentic faith testimony, she's a proven fighter for conservative values, and she's well known." She's also great at raising money—in the 2010 cycle, she amassed a record $13.2 million in donations. (Bachmann's office didn't respond to requests for comment.)

Bachmann, who was born in Iowa, was in high school in Anoka, Minnesota, when she was swept up in the wave of evangelical Christianity then surging through the country. "People were coming to the Lord left and right," she said in a recent speech. A pretty cheerleader, she was a member of student government and was elected to the homecoming court. But her family life was unsettled. Her parents divorced in 1970, and her father disappeared from her life and those of her three brothers. When she was in high school, her mother remarried, to a man with five children of his own. Working-class Democrats, the family went to a Lutheran church regularly, but it wasn't until she was born again at 16, she has said, "that the Gospel finally made sense to me."

After graduating from high school, Bachmann went to Israel with the evangelical youth group Young Life. Then, at Winona State University, she joined the evangelical Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, where she met her husband, Marcus Bachmann. At the time, the evangelical movement was not particularly political. Indeed, according to Randall Balmer, who is both an evangelical and a historian of American evangelicalism at Columbia University, it was the born-again Jimmy Carter who first marshaled the era's newly awakened Christians. "He brings them into the political arena. There's no question about that," says Balmer. "And the great irony is that they turned so rabidly and rapidly against him four years later."

That's exactly what happened with Bachmann, who campaigned for Carter in 1976—she and Marcus even went to one of his inaugural balls—but soon tacked sharply rightward. A key moment in her political evolution, as for many of her generation, was the film series How Should We Then Live by the theologian Francis Schaeffer, who is widely credited for mobilizing evangelicals against abortion, an issue most had previously ignored. A Presbyterian minister, Schaeffer argued that our entire perception of reality depends on our worldview, and that only those with the right one can understand the true nature of things. Christianity, he argued, is "a whole system of truth, and this system is the only system that will stand up to all the questions that are presented to us as we face the reality of existence." Theories or assertions from outside this system—evolution, for example—can be dismissed as the product of mistaken premises.

This accounts for some of the bafflement that occasionally greets Bachmann's statements. "Michele Bachmann says certain things that sound crazy to the general public," says author Frank Schaeffer, Francis Schaeffer's son and former collaborator. "But to anybody raised in the environment of the evangelical right wing, what she says makes perfect sense."

Bachmann honed her view of the world after college, when she enrolled at Coburn Law School at Oral Roberts University, an "interdenominational, Bible-based, and Holy Spirit-led" school in Oklahoma. "My goal there was to learn the law both from a professional but also from a biblical worldview," she said in an April speech.

At Coburn, Bachmann studied with John Eidsmoe, who she recently described as "one of the professors who had a great influence on me." Bachmann served as his research assistant on the 1987 bookChristianity and the Constitution, which argued that the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy, and that it should become one again. "The church and the state have separate spheres of authority, but both derive authority from God," Eidsmoe wrote. "In that sense America, like [Old Testament] Israel, is a theocracy."

Eidsmoe, who hung up the phone when asked for an interview, is a contentious figure. Last year, he withdrew from speaking at a Wisconsin Tea Party rally after the Associated Press raised questions about his history of addresses to white-supremacist groups. In 2010, speaking at a rally celebrating Alabama's secession from the Union, he claimed that Jefferson Davis and John C. Calhoun understood the Constitution better than Abraham Lincoln.

Reading Eidsmoe, though, some of Bachmann's most widely ridiculed statements begin to make sense. Earlier this year, for example, she was mocked for saying that the Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly" to end slavery. But in books by Eidsmoe and others who approach history from what they call a Christian worldview, this is a truism. Despite his defense of the Confederacy, Eidsmoe also argues that even those founders who owned slaves opposed the institution and wanted it to disappear, and that it was only Christian for them to protect their slaves until it did. "It might be very difficult for a freed slave to make a living in that economy; under such circumstances setting slaves free was both inhumane and irresponsible," he wrote.

After graduating from Coburn in 1986, Bachmann went on to get a degree in tax law from William and Mary School of Law in Virginia, while her husband studied psychology and counseling at Regent University, the school founded by Pat Robertson. His thesis was about the harmful effects of day care on children. "[T]he best interests of the public would be served if one parent did not work outside of the home unless it was absolutely essential," he wrote.

Nevertheless, when Bachmann's children were small, she worked at the IRS while Marcus got his Christian counseling business up and running. Finally, in 1992, she said, "I realized my lifelong dream, which was to be a full-time mother of children at home." That same year, she received her foster-care license.

Bachmann often says she has "raised" 23 foster children. That may be a bit of a stretch. According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, Bachmann's license, which she had for 7 1/2 years, allowed her to care for up to three children at a time. According to Kris Harvieux, a former senior social worker in the foster-care system in Bachmann's county, some placements were almost certainly short term. "Some of them you have for a week. Some of them you have for three years, some you have for six months," says Harvieux, who also served as a foster parent herself. "She makes it sound like she got them at birth and raised them to adulthood, but that's not true."

Yet Bachmann clearly had some of her foster children long enough to enroll them in local schools, and it was through them that she got involved in school politics. While she taught her own children at home before sending them to private Christian schools, state law required foster kids to go to public school. Seeing their curriculum, she became convinced that "politically correct attitudes, values, and beliefs" had supplanted objective education. She helped found a charter school but soon left the board amid allegations that she was trying to inject Christianity into the curriculum. Then, in 1999, she decided to run for the local school board.

School board elections in Stillwater, Minnesota, had been nonpartisan affairs, but when Bachmann ran as part of a slate of five Republican candidates, culture war issues were injected into the race. "I remember being called by someone and asked where I stood on abortion," says former school board member Mary Cecconi. People felt that it was "sullying the process, that the partisan aspect doesn't belong at the local level," says Bill Pulkrabek, a Republican county official who helped organize Bachmann's slate. It was the only election Bachmann ever lost.

But the race served as her springboard into the statehouse. In 2000, she challenged incumbent state Sen. Gary Laidig, a moderate, for the Republican nomination. Bachmann, says Pulkrabek, had an extraordinary ability "to motivate activists and delegates to action." She won on the first ballot.

In the statehouse, Bachmann made opposition to same-sex marriage her signature issue. Both she and her husband, by all accounts her most trusted political adviser, believe that homosexuality can be cured. Speaking to a Christian radio station about gay teenagers last year, Marcus, who treats gay people in his counseling practice, said, "Barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined, and just because someone feels this or thinks this, doesn't mean that we're supposed to go down that road."

In 2004, Bachmann gave a speech warning that same-sex marriage would lead to schoolchildren being indoctrinated into homosexuality. She wanted everyone to know, though, that she doesn't hate gay people. "Any of you who have members of your family in the lifestyle, we have a member of our family that is," she said. "This is not funny. It's a very sad life. It's part of Satan, I think, to say that this is gay."

      

And so, in April 2006, when the Minnesota Senate judiciary committee met for a hearing on Bachmann's proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, Helen LaFave, Wronski, and several relatives including Cielinski were all in the gallery. "I wanted Michele to put a face to this whole thing," says Cielinski. "These were family members she was hurting." They didn't intend to talk to the press—LaFave has always shied away from media attention—but journalists quickly learned who they were and surrounded them. (LaFave declined an interview request, citing concern about the effect of the controversy on her 87-year-old father, who is still married to Bachmann's mother.)She was clearly talking about her 51-year-old stepsister, Helen LaFave, who had lived with her partner, Nia Wronski, for more than 15 years. As Bachmann became the public face of opposition to same-sex marriage, her relationship with her stepsiblings grew strained. "Helen always liked Michele, always," says Linda Cielinski, one of Bachmann's other stepsisters. "They lived together as teenage girls. They were very close at that time." Bachmann's anti-gay activism, Cielinski says, "was a hit to the gut."

The ensuing brouhaha further tore at the family. In a Star Tribune story headlined "Bachmann, stepsister hold opposing views," Bachmann claimed that she'd polled her siblings and stepsiblings, and that six of the nine agreed with her. Her stepbrother Mike LaFave was horrified. "The reality was she hadn't taken a family vote count, nor would my family ever do such a thing," he says. "I just find it terrible that when Michele was taken by surprise by a question she wasn't prepared for, the first thing she did was throw not only my sister but her whole family under the bus."

Over the years, several letters from disgruntled Bachmann relatives have appeared in local newspapers, though they usually don't mention their relationship. "I have a suggestion for Michele Bachmann, R-Stillwater, since she's interested in watching gay people," Cielinski wrote in a letter published in the Pioneer Press in 2005. "Instead of hiding behind bushes with a security guard, go to the grocery store, a PTA meeting, ballgames, concerts, church, the movies, or take a walk around the lake…[T]hey are our friends and family members who have added so much to our lives." Bachmann never responded.

None of this is likely to sour her many devoted fans. Indeed, it's precisely her unwavering ideological commitment that endears her to them. "She's not afraid to say things that other people on the right are probably thinking, but they're just too wimpy to say," says Pulkrabek, who supports Bachmann's presidential ambitions. "She says these things and she promotes these views because she really believes them."

Michele Bachmann, gay-curing theocrat

AP/Jim Cole

Michele Bachmann

Michelle Goldberg's Daily Beast/Newsweek piece on Michele Bachmann's history and faith -- a strain of born-againism associated with crackpot history, opposition to science, and virulent intolerance of gays and lesbians -- shows precisely how out-there Bachmann is, even though the congresswoman these days pretends to be run-of-the-mill hard-right-winger. (Yes, her current extremism represents a moderation of her former incarnation.)

The piece begins with a wonderful recounting of the time she accused lesbians of kidnapping her and holding her hostage in a bathroom, because some ladies were talking to her. Minnesotans may know much of this already, but people familiar with Bachmann only from liberal blogs or cable news are missing the evangelical extremism that informs her every public statement. She talks like Ron Paul now, but she's Pat Robertson at heart. Her spiritual influences and advisors explicitly advocate theocracy and are obviously responsible for her garbled and twisted impression of American history.

A couple of newsy bits: Her 23 foster kids, a topic she mentions all the time? She doesn't ever go into detail about how many she has or had at any time, or for how long she fostered them:

Bachmann often says she has "raised" 23 foster children. That may be a bit of a stretch. According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, Bachmann's license, which she had for 7 1/2 years, allowed her to care for up to three children at a time. According to Kris Harvieux, a former senior social worker in the foster-care system in Bachmann's county, some placements were almost certainly short term. "Some of them you have for a week. Some of them you have for three years, some you have for six months," says Harvieux, who also served as a foster parent herself. "She makes it sound like she got them at birth and raised them to adulthood, but that's not true."

(However many she has at a time, foster kids are a good way to make some tax-free cash from the Minnesota government, and they're not evenBachmann's sole source of free government cash.)

It's likely that her husband's clinic is at least in part dedicated to "curing" gay people:

Both she and her husband, by all accounts her most trusted political adviser, believe that homosexuality can be cured. Speaking to a Christian radio station about gay teenagers last year, Marcus, who treats gay people in his counseling practice, said, "Barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined, and just because someone feels this or thinks this, doesn't mean that we're supposed to go down that road."

This is the beyond-the-pale stuff that makes Bachmann so, so much worse than Sarah Palin, to whom she is regularly compared.

Bachmann has also lied about her own family's support for her anti-gay activism. Members of her extended family have written letters to Minnesota papers criticizing her, without identifying themselves as being related to her.

She is, really, a pretty awful piece of work.

Federal LGBT Youth Summit

June 6, 2011
Washington, DC
Remarks as prepared for delivery 
Hello, and thank you all for being here today.

I want to thank Pam Hyde our Administrator at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for that introduction and for the amazing work she does protecting and improving the mental health of millions of Americans.

I also want to recognize Bryan Samuels and David Hansell from the Administration on Children and Families for their inspiring work with LGBT youth.

It’s my honor to welcome you to the first ever Federal LGBT Youth Summit. It’s great to see such a big crowd for this important event.  It’s also great to see so many students and young people awake before 9AM during the summer!

The goal of this summit is to bring together youth along with leaders from non-profits, advocates and the federal government to take on the issues facing LGBT youth in our country.

As the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, I lead a department that touches millions of Americans every day and our responsibilities are wide ranging.

We provide health care to seniors, we fund research to find new cures and medical breakthroughs and we give young children a place to start their educations.

We also have a responsibility to Americans of all ages to provide the health care and safe, nurturing communities they need to thrive.

And since President Obama took office he has led a commitment, shared by all of us in the Administration, to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans have a chance to reach their full potential.

But unfortunately, we know that too often the needs of LGBT people, particularly young people – are not met.  At least not as well as they should be.

On Wednesday I met with a young man named Caleb Laieski. Caleb shared with me the story of his being bullied in school.  He experienced many of the same things that boys and girls of every age and sexuality experience in school.  Taunting, name-calling, being pushed and shoved, and just being ignored.  All because of his perceived sexuality.  When he was a freshman in high school, an older boy threatened to stab Caleb.  He complained to his school and they did nothing.  A few months later, the same bully drove his car onto the sidewalk where Caleb and his friends were standing.

That was the last straw for Caleb, shortly after that he dropped out of high school and got his GED.  Still for others, the outcome can be much worse. While meeting with Caleb, he told me about a close friend who committed suicide after being tormented at school just because of who she was or who people thought she was.

No young person should feel like the only way to stop being bullied is to take their own life.  And no teen should feel like they have to leave school and compromise their whole future because of the cruel actions of others.  As a mother, it breaks my heart. And it stiffens my spine.

But what makes Caleb’s story special is what he did next.  Caleb first worked with his own school district to change its policies around bullying and harassment by including clear protections for LGBT students in the student handbook.  Then he sent a letter to every school district in Arizona asking them to do the same thing.   Since then he’s gone to his state Legislature in support of a bill to stop bullying of all kinds in Arizona schools.

And now Caleb has decided to come here to Washington and spend a month advocating and educating Members of Congress and the Administration to support the Student Non-Discrimination Act, a bill that would prohibit discrimination against public school students on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.   Caleb told me he’s here to speak for LGBT youth who can’t speak for themselves.  Caleb is actually with us here today.  Caleb would you stand and be recognized…

Caleb, and young people like him, should not have to stand alone.  That’s why this President and his administration have continued finding ways to help LGBT youth live free of violence and thrive in every stage of their lives.  This is especially true at HHS where this kind of work is vital to our mission.

It led us to partner with the Departments of Education, Agriculture, Defense, Interior, and Justice to form a Federal Interagency Task Force on Bullying to create ways to decrease bullying and to establish programs and ideas to aid victims.

And last summer we brought together 150 top state, local, civic and corporate leaders and youth for the first-ever National Bullying Summit.

Some of us also did our small part individually by joining the “It Gets Better” campaign and sending supportive video messages to LGBT youth.  I made one, and so did President Obama, Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

And in March, President Obama held the first White House Conference on Bullying Prevention. I was so proud to be at the White House that day as we launched a new website called StopBullying.gov, a one-stop shop where kids, teens, parents and educators can go online to learn about preventing or stopping bullying.

We know that as strong as a child or young adult might be, they are still dependent on the adults around them to accept them and show them that there is nothing wrong with who they are. Their parents.  Their teachers. Their neighbors. Their mayors, governors, Senators, Congressmen, and, yes, their President.

A study our department is releasing today found heightened levels of “unhealthy risk behaviors” like tobacco use, substance abuse, and suicidal behavior in LGBT youth. But we know that these behaviors are not a result of who these young people are, they are a result of the discrimination, bullying, violence and poor relationships at home they can experience in their day to day lives. That’s a tragedy. And that’s why we need to continue to build support for LGBT youth and create the protective environments needed to reduce these behaviors.

We want to get our programs and services to a place where we are no longer just reacting to problems facing LGBT youth.  Taking the example of people like Caleb, we know that we can do better to address the many needs of LGBT youth.

That means access to a health care system that understands the unique needs of LGBT adults and youth.

The health reform law, the Affordable Care Act, is a historic step towards creating that system.  It prohibits insurers from denying coverage to children just because they have a condition like asthma or diabetes and it extends that protection to everyone in 2014.  It also allows those of you who have recently graduated from high school to stay on your parent’s health plan until age 26. And beginning in 2014, the law will bring health care coverage to 32 million Americans who are currently without insurance.

But the Affordable Care Act is just the start.

In March of this year, on the order of the President, our department completed a report on recommendations to improve the lives of LGBT Americans.  It included suggestions to improve the ability of doctors and nurses to relate to LGBT patients, to enhance the ability of local agencies to support LGBT populations, and to make sure that domestic violence and anti-bullying resources are accessible to LGBT communities.

At the same time many of our agencies continue to work every day to improve the lives of LGBT youth.

For example, we’re working within our child welfare system to place LGBT foster children in loving homes.

And just recently, we released a report with recommendations for providing the best possible care in shelters for homeless LGBT youth.

And along with our department’s LGBT Coordinating Committee, we’ve also created a new workgroup within our department to address the behavioral health needs of LGBT youth and their families.

So we’ve been working hard at this.

But as all of you know, ensuring a bright future for LGBT youth doesn’t just happen here in Washington.  All around the country we see bright spots.  The L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center is creating a model to protect and care for LGBT youth in the foster care system.  Their hope is that the model could be spread nationally.  GLSEN shows us a model for Gay, Lesbian and Straight collaboration to make schools a better place for all students, gay and straight.

These successes show us that there is a lot more we can do.

I want to close by talking directly to the students and young adults here today.  First, I want to thank you for making the extraordinary choice to become advocates and leaders at such a young age. I sincerely hope you continue on this path. A path that may take some of you back here to Washington. Every day that I go to work, I benefit from the talents of a remarkable group of leaders who are gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender.  I see the next crop of those leaders with us today.

I know that by working together we can create a safe and nurturing environment for LGBT youth.  And we can build communities where every child – gay, lesbian bisexual, transgendered or straight, has the opportunity to succeed in any way they can imagine.  That way, it truly can get better.
Thank you for letting me join you today.