thedailyblog--2019-03-28--All employer-assisted migrant workers deserve a chance to have a pathway to residency

We are a union of 7000 financial members. We estimate that up to one-quarter of our members could be on a temporary work visa. We cover workers in fast food, hospitality, hotels, call centres and security. We also have members in English Language Schools.  Unite Union believes it is necessary to review the entire system of employer-assisted temporary work visas with a view towards its elimination.  Bonded temporary labour always results in exploitation, and always depresses wages for permanent residents.  Permanent residency shouldn’t be based on elitist criteria so we have doctors driving taxis while the Chinese construction workers we desperately need have no chance of staying beyond a certain period.  All current temporary work visa holders, especially those under the current Essential Skills category, should have the right to change employer and gain permanent residency eventually if they desire to.  No employer should have the right to apply for an employer-assisted temporary work visa in the future.  The vulnerable, precarious status of temporary visa workers under the essential skills system has been used to undermine the wages and conditions of workers in this country. This was true, for example, in the fast food industry when managers were able to transition to permanent residency.  This can only be prevented if all workers have full legal rights as workers, including the right to change their jobs.  The current discussion document asks for comment on the system carried over from the last government requiring lower-skilled workers to leave after three years.  The new proposal will allow partners to come if they have an employer-assisted temporary work visa as well rather than as of right as before. The proposal also restores the right to bring their children.  The maintenance of a three-year limit will probably lead to people only coming if they are so poor and desperate that even three years would seem to be worthwhile. But creating a system of indentured labour where businesses are recycling people every three years is just extraordinarily inhumane. The probability that workers brought here will be exploited mercilessly because they are so desperately vulnerable should be obvious.  On one level, this new proposal can seem more humane. It will allow two people to make money for the three years they are allowed here and not break up families. But it is still unfair to throw them out after three years when they want to stay and their skills are still needed.  They will have invested in creating homes in this country. Their kids will be going to school and made new friends and learned a new language. Just when people begin to get good at the jobs they have, form friendships and relationships, they are told they must leave. What is the purpose or sense in replacing them with another short term visa holder who must start from scratch to learn the job and come up to speed?  Temporary work visa holders should be able to renew their visas. But the longer they stay the crueller it becomes to keep them from ever being able to transition to permanent residence.    If a system of temporary visas is maintained then a three year limit should be maintained – for remaining temporary. If an employer wants to renew their visa, that should be seen as a qualification for permanent residence, not a chance to throw them out. We support being able to renew their visas – even if on a temporary basis. But our preference is that the desire for the employer and the employee to renew the temporary visa should be enough evidence of the need for the position to be filled permanently and the worker doing the job should have the right to transition to permanent residence as quickly as possible if they so desire.    The current system of having a three-year limit will most likely lead to a major drop in numbers coming from some countries we currently get people from either as students or on temporary work visas. There will probably be an increase in those who do come being from other countries where the aspiring migrant worker is so desperate they will be wide open to even worse abuse and exploitation when they get here than currently happens.  It will also create enormous incentives to game the system by any means necessary once they are here. The policy will see a jump in the number of people inflating their salaries by refunding the boss in some way to pretend they are an “executive chef” or whatever and now have the salary or skills for a job leading to permanent residency.  Canada has just abandoned a similar system for those reasons. They had one based on being able to work four years and then leaving for four years. A parliamentary inquiry recommended that it be abandoned in late 2016. The parliamentary report also recommended eliminating employer specific visas and offering a pathway to residency for less skilled workers. (See Parliamentary Committee Recommends 21 Changes to Temporary Foreign Worker Program )  Adopting the worst features of a failed Canadian programme is not a way forward.  Need for an amnesty for those brought here under false pretences  There are probably at least a few tens of thousands of workers and students in this country have been brought here under false pretences.  Many who came as students have been conned into paying thousands of dollars towards courses that they hoped would open the door to jobs and the chance for permanent residence.  The promises have proved to be nothing more than a fraud for most. But it is a fraud perpetrated by the government, seemingly as a way to subsidise tertiary education and reduce the government’s need to fund that sector properly.  These students and workers have often had the rules changed on them after they arrived. Many have studied and worked here for up to a decade and made New Zealand their home.  In October 2016, the previous government announced their goal was to reduce the overall permanent residence number from 100,000 over two years to 95,000. To achieve that 5% reduction they added 20 points to the skilled work visa number required, increased the English Language requirement, and stopped new parental visas for two years  It is actually difficult to change this permanent residence number much from year to year. It is made up of skilled workers who qualify – as well as refugees, family reunification, parents, investors, Pacific quota, Samoan quota, and a dozen more categories. It is certainly difficult to reduce it significantly without impacting on the key variable which is the skilled worker category.  To achieve the 5% overall reduction the changes did eliminate significant categories of semi-skilled workers who were able to access residency in the past in these roles. We will leave aside the value judgements being made around the skill of a low-paid nurse aid in aged care versus a high paid advertising executive.  The additional requirement that all jobs must meet the new then $49,000 (now adjusted to $52,000) income threshold to qualify for permanent residence lead to an additional significant barrier for those who have come under the old rules. Most workers in many of the categories currently using large numbers of migrant workers would never get paid $49,000. The result was that most current essential skills visa holders in jobs in New Zealand can’t ever qualify for permanent residence.  The changes made resulted in thousands of workers who are here as chefs, nurse aids, hospitality and retail workers being stopped from ever getting the chance to access permanent residence. For example, it eliminated 90% of the people working here as chefs from being able to access permanent residence.  However, if chefs and other less skilled workers can no longer have the possibility of transitioning to permanent residence there will inevitably be a collapse in the number of these people coming to New Zealand and an exodus of many already here.  It was probably the impact of these changes that brought about the absurd situation where there was a significant drop in the numbers qualifying for permanent residency under the skilled workers’ category in 2018.  According to a Radio NZ report: “Overall new resident numbers fell from 47,684 to 37,948 in the last financial year and almost three-quarters of the change was down to a decrease in skilled immigrants.” They also reported that “While resident numbers fell, temporary work visas were on the rise, up 4000 to more than 230,000.”    That was an extraordinary result from a National government claiming to be a friend of migrants in the build-up to the last election. (Newshub reported on March 13 that the current Minister of Immigration ordered a reduction of residence visas by 600 a month. If that is true he deserves to be sacked. The inevitable misery imposed on thousands of families legally in the country who should be able to access residency will be simply awful.)  Thousands of skilled and semi-skilled workers who would have qualified before having the rules changed on them after they had come to work in New Zealand have now missed out on any chance of residency.  In the previous government’s plan, they had a proposal for what they had called an “amnesty” for a group of workers on in the South Island as a one-off pathway to residency for around 4,000 temporary migrant workers and their families.  In the words of the then Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse:”  “Many of these migrants are already well settled in New Zealand and make a valuable contribution to their communities.  “It will also enable employers to retain an experienced workforce that has helped meet genuine regional labour market needs.  “My National colleagues in the South Island have advocated strongly on behalf their constituents throughout the development of this policy, so I’m pleased the Government has been able to deliver on our commitment to enable this cohort of migrant workers to remain in their communities.”  It is obvious that many of these workers will be working on dairy farms run by friends of the National Party who have lobbied their MP’s to keep these workers in the country. But it a sensible and fair proposal but it does not go far enough.  Unite believes that we could go even further in our humanitarianism. We believe that as a country we can and should be more generous to the group of people who have come under the old rules and hoped to be able to transition to permanent residence. At the very least, the “amnesty” being allowed for South Island dairy farm workers from the requirement to meet the new points or income thresholds for permanent residence should be extended to the whole country and not restricted to the dairy industry. The situation in aged care is just as desperate for example.  How this is done is a practical matter. The following are some suggestions.  Creating a register of those already here who want permanent residency  We should do a register of those who are here studying and working who would like to be able to apply for permanent residence. Employers who already have staff working in essential skills categories will be offered the chance to offer permanent ongoing employment. Employers should be banned from employing anyone on a temporary visa until the existing pool of those who are here have been employed permanently and gained residency. Workers being offered permanent work would immediately become eligible for permanent residency.  Nearly all the problems associated with the abuse and exploitation of migrant workers could be fixed by improving their legal status as permanent residence applicants.  We have 150,000 workers here at any one time on a temporary work visa. We have 100,000 fee-paying students. The government issues nearly a quarter of a million temporary work and student visas a year. It is obvious the New Zealand economy needs more labour than can currently be provided by its existing permanent resident population.  This problem can’t be fixed by having a massive “temporary” population that is if fact a permanent part of the workforce and that is weakly protected and prone to becoming super-exploited migrant labour.  It is correct for the government to insist that employers and industries that want to import migrant labour need to be registered and approved in some way, even if that labour has the right to change “approved” employer and achieve permanent residency over time.  These employers need to have a plan to train and develop skills in this country to meet their needs.  As a country, we should aim to eliminate the 4% unemployment level as being seen as “normal” or, even worse, as necessary for some reason. Employers should be forced to employ people they would not look at in normal times. This should include young people who have never had a job, adults who have been forced out of the job market for prolonged periods, former prisoners and so on. These people should be given a wraparound programme of work, study, apprenticeships and training that aims for everyone to have work who needs it.  Employers and industries that want to import labour should be required to enter a strategic plan with the unions, government and local councils for the education and training services that will be needed to achieve these goals.  As part of the strategic plans for their regions and industries, there should be targets for employing and training Kiwis who are permanent residents alongside any labour brought in from abroad.  There should be a parallel fair pay agreement in these industries that starts all wages at the living wage. This is also a sign of the proof that is needed to show that the market in this sector or region is so short of labour that the employer is willing to pay above the minimum wage to attract labour. It needs to be an industry-wide agreement so all employer have to pay the same rates so as not to give a competitive advantage to poor employers unwilling to pay a living wage.  What is the real problem we have?  Over this last few years, there has been a surge in net arrival numbers for the category of people who tick a box saying they are going to stay for a year or longer versus those who say they are going to leave for a year or longer. This is not a particularly scientific number as it measured people’s intentions on a form when they arrived, but it did give a picture of population flows. It had recorded a net gain of over 70,000 a year for the year ended December 2017.  It appears this was so unscientific it amounted to little more than a guestimate. By using records of people’s actual movements rather than simply their intentions, the actual number looks like it was at least 10 to 20,000 less than that. The official number now for November year 2018 is a net gain of 43,400. That new measure probably peaked at 53,800 in the 2016 November year.  Parties that want to reduce the number of permanent and long-term (PLT) net arrivals to New Zealand from the current number can also support this humanitarian policy being proposed towards those already here. No one would actually notice if 20,000 or 40,000 people actually living and working here happily was given the chance of permanent residence. It wouldn’t necessarily make any difference to the PLT number if future admissions were adjusted down as a consequence.  New Zealand usually loses a portion of its residents each year. This has averaged around 20,000 net loss since the mid-1980s. Non-New Zealand residents averaged a net gain of 30,000. The overall net gain each year for most of the past several decades was around 10,000 – modest number by any measure.  There have been three main drivers of the increase in net PLT arrivals over departures in recent years. One was a relatively sudden swing around from average net losses of New Zealanders of around 20-30,000 a year over several decades. However, New Zealand resident movements rose to a net loss of around 40,000 in 2012 and then dropped to near zero in 2016.  Second, was the government’s desire to boost the so-called export education sector which they did by loosening entry restrictions and allowing the students greater work rights once here. 2012 to 2016 saw student visas grow from 60,000 to 80,000 a year.  Third, was an expansion of temporary work visas for relatively unskilled work. The temporary work visa numbers went from 120,000 to 170,000 over the same period.  It has little to do with the intake of permanent residents which has been in the 40-50,000 category for over 15 years. This was true also during the period when New Zealand First leader Winston Peters was in government from 1999-2008 despite his reputation for being less friendly to immigration.  The failure to distinguish between those being admitted as permanent residents, those who come as students or temporary workers and those who come and go on a permanent or long-term basis, has been one of the means that anti-immigrant sentiment is promoted.  The growth the PLT net arrivals has been used by politicians to blame “immigrants” for social problems that exist in society.  What the surge in PLT net arrivals was a sign of was the fact the government actually had no overall plan for the country. They appeared to simply want to let the market work whatever miracles it could without consequences being considered. The education sector wants students – let them come. Bosses want cheap labour – let it come. Tourism wants a boost – relax visa controls. The economy needs a boost – remove all controls on foreign capital.  This surge in net gains has coincided with a property boom in Auckland in particular. Transport also seems almost permanently gridlocked in Auckland as well. It is easy to blame “uncontrolled” migration as at least in part causing these problems.  The fundamental cause of these problems is that property is simply a speculators playground and public transport has been starved of meaningful funding (except for an addiction to motorways) for decades.  Migrants are not to blame for either situation. The previous government simply refused to “plan” for the future of Auckland because any form of planning is an example of socialism. They waited for “the market” to perform its miracles. But the market produces property bubbles and motorways for trucks and cars, not public housing and public transport which is what was needed in massive quantities.  Total PLT gain is only around 1.0% of the total population. Problems accessing health, education, housing, jobs or the transport gridlock in Auckland are signs of much deeper failures in the economic system and government policy over the decades. By pointing the finger of blame on the migrant, the failures of the capitalist system to deliver decent housing, jobs, health care and public transport can be ignored.  Once a country starts down this road, however, it becomes addicted to the fix. Most tertiary institutions and many secondary schools simply could not function without the fix of overseas students and their money. Many minimum wage industries couldn’t function with the fix of cheap and vulnerable labour from overseas.  New Zealand has been able to use a privileged position internationally to attract students to study and work in this country. We are a developed, English-speaking country that has had a net migration loss of its own residents over several decades.  New Zealand has used the fact that we usually lose one percent of the population each year to Australia and elsewhere to have a category of visas that allowed permanent residence after studying and working in New Zealand.  The hope of eventually getting permanent residence was critical to the operation of the system.  Around 20% of those who start as students or on a temporary work visa managed to obtain permanent residence eventually. Points were awarded for studying here and getting job offers. Almost half of the skilled worker category of around 20,000 a year who transition to permanent residency were former students. The percentage of former students qualifying was increasing as a percentage of the total while the skill level was declining.  The desperation of many to achieve that goal allowed employers and shoddy educational institutions to take advantage of them.  That is what makes it a system of exploitation. The export education and temporary work visa system needed the possibility of permanent residence for some to make the system of exploitation work.  The government should abandon the institutionalisation an endless cycle of three-year permits that force people to leave for at least a year at the end of each cycle. This is just nuts. Just when people begin to get good at the jobs they have, form friendships and relationships, they are told they must leave. That is a form of indentured servitude. But it is not a solution to just extend that time by another three years, as proposed by the Council of Trade Unions, without their being a pathway to residency.  The scandals and horrors we have seen in workplaces and private training establishments over recent years will continue.  The number of permanent residence numbers could be increased significantly and still bring down the net PLT flows if that is considered necessary.  As a first step, all “temporary” workers who are in New Zealand should have full legal rights – including the right to change jobs.  Whatever the number that is being allocated for permanent residence each year, priority should be given to those who are here working and studying and include all levels of skills that are required in the country.  Giving them the status of permanent residents will mean they can also stand up and fight for their rights. It is their deliberate employment in a status as dependent workers that allows the abusive forms of exploitation that is too often reported in the media to happen.  The government appears to be adopting a policy that simply sees these workers as labour input digits, not human beings.  It is time to do abandon the permanent use of “temporary” labour that lacks the full rights that those with permanent residence have.


thedailymirror--2019-03-14--Real Living Wage campaign reveals its 5000th employer in wallet-boosting move for low-paid worker

'Real' Living Wage campaign reveals its 5,000th employer in wallet-boosting move for low-paid workers

Some 5,000 employers have signed up to pay their workers the “real” Living Wage, campaigners revealed today.  At least 180,000 workers have had a wallet-boosting pay rise from the accredited firms, with over £800million extra put back into workers’ pockets as a result of the campaign.  The 5,000 milestone was passed as Manchester University agreed terms with the Living Wage Foundation.  Living Wage Foundation director Katherine Chapman said: “We’re delighted to welcome the University of Manchester as the 5,000th member of the movement of employers, organisations and people committed to a real Living Wage.  “It shows that businesses continue to recognise the importance of a wage that truly covers the cost of living, and the value this provides for workers and their families, as well as businesses.  “By going further than the Government minimum, the University of Manchester is helping to set the bar for others in the region and the sector.  “We encourage employers who can afford it to step up and pay a real Living Wage.”  The commitment to pay the voluntary rate will see staff, including third-party contractors, receive a minimum hourly wage of £9.  The Government’s legal minimum wage is £7.83 for workers aged 25 and over, sinking to £7.38 for those aged between 21 and 24.  The number of accredited Living Wage employers has more than doubled since the Government’s higher minimum wage, which it branded the National Living Wage’, was announced in 2016.  Manchester University’s vice-chancellor, Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, said: “The University is a major employer in the city and we take our responsibility to promote good working practises extremely seriously.  “Social responsibility is a core goal of our university, and by becoming accredited with the Living Wage Foundation we have a real opportunity to influence policy in a national forum and have conversations about the benefits that good pay and working conditions bring to individuals and wider society.”  Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said: ”It’s great to see an organisation as high-profile as The University of Manchester become the latest Living Wage employer in the city-region.  “As good as this news is, there are still too many workers who are paid less than the real Living Wage struggling to keep their heads above water.  “In the North West alone, around a quarter of all workers earn below the real Living Wage, with about 265,000 people in Greater Manchester earning too little to live on.”  “In one of the world’s richest nations, it should be a source of national shame that so many working people are worrying about putting food on the table, with some forced to use foodbanks.”


theguardianuk--2019-01-15--When escaping an abusive employer is a crime the trap Britain sets for Filipino domestic workers

When escaping an abusive employer is a crime: the trap Britain sets for Filipino domestic workers

You see them sometimes in the kitchens and nurseries of wealthy people – women, mostly Filipino, rarely introduced by name. They come to the UK with a promise of income and regular hours, working as housekeepers or nannies to send money back home to their own families; but for many of them the reality is shockingly different.  There are nearly 19,000 people on overseas domestic visas in the UK, according to a Freedom of Information request from the Home Office seen by the Guardian; and together they make up, like the Windrush generation, a population of migrants under threat.  As part of Theresa May’s “hostile environment” policies as home secretary, the UK government changed the law in 2012 so that migrant domestic workers (MDWs) could only come to the UK on a non-renewable six-month “tied visa” – one that bound them to a single, named employer. This means that if their employer is exploitative or abusive, their main means of escape – moving to another employer – is closed to them.  Mel, a 36-year-old domestic worker from the Philippines, describes being brought to London in 2009 by a Saudi family. Her contract guaranteed her a £1,500-a-month salary; in fact, she was paid nothing. She worked most days from 6am until at least 1am and slept in the laundry room. After four years, she managed to escape with the help of a Filipino friend who was a member of the Voice of Domestic Workers (VODW), a grassroots self-help group. Since then she has been undocumented, working as a volunteer for VODW, which supports her.  “Why should escaping from an abusive employer be a crime?” she asks, but five years after she fled her host family, the law caught up with her. At 7.45am on a cold morning in December, Mel heard a loud knock on her front door. She opened it to find four immigration officers. They arrested her and spirited her away in a white van to Becket House, an immigration reporting centre near Tower Bridge in London, where she was photographed, fingerprinted and invited to return voluntarily to the Philippines. Just going back home is not an option for Mel and the women like her: her earnings would be so meagre that there is no way that she could support her children.  The contract that Grace, 45, also from the Philippines, signed with the Kuwaiti family who brought her to the UK was for £1,200 a month, she recalls. She was paid just £220. Like her fellow domestic workers, she sent most of her earnings back home. Grace went abroad to lift her four children out of poverty – “to give food to your kids, pay for school uniform, books, transport – and hospital”. She worked seven days a week – no days off or holidays. What if she got sick? “You needed to get up!” she says. Grace wasn’t allowed out unaccompanied; when, two months after she arrived, her employers went to France on holiday, they locked her in the house alone for a week. A cleaner from a neighbouring house, hearing her sobbing, put a ladder up against the back balcony, enabling her to escape with her possessions in a black sack. Grace is now undocumented and dependent on “good Filipinos giving me odd jobs” to get by.  Lucy, 46, weeps as she talks of her three children, aged 27, 18 and 13, whom she hasn’t seen for seven years, as a consequence – she says – of her employer pretending to renew her visa, but never doing so. Her husband back in the Philippines, who had diabetes, urged her to come home but, as she was taking her case to the high court, “I said let’s wait – and then he died. We’d been married for 23 years.” Lucy’s appeal failed. “I went crazy, I was thinking of suicide. Now I’m OK, but it’s so sad.” Lucy is now working “underground”, for an employer who is aware of her situation but pays her a living wage.  Before 2012, an MDW could renew their visa over a period of five years and then apply for indefinite leave to remain and ultimately British citizenship. This was the route taken by Marissa Begonia, a VODW founding member and coordinator.  After lobbying by VODW, the trade union Unite and Kalayaan, a charity for domestic workers, the government commissioned an independent review of the UK’s domestic visa policies in 2015. Attaching the visa to a specific employer, the review found, increased these women’s vulnerability to exploitation, while living outside the law “increases their vulnerability to further abuse”. The report’s author, James Ewins, recommended an unconditional right for migrant domestic workers to change their employer and the right to apply for an annual extension of their visa for a maximum of two-and-a-half years.  The government rejected this recommendation. All it did, in 2016, as part of the Modern Slavery Act, was slightly modify the harsh restrictions it had introduced in 2012. A MDW now could change employer, but only within the six-month original visa period, which could not then be extended. In reality, most workers have to leave – or go underground.  In 2011, the UN International Labour Organization introduced the Domestic Workers Convention to improve the living and working rights of domestic workers. It has been ratified by 26 countries – including Ireland, Germany and Italy – but the UK is not among them. Meanwhile, migrant domestic workers in the UK remain mostly unprotected by laws that the rest of us take for granted – they are not covered by health and safety laws, for example, or the Working Time Regulations 1998, and employers often don’t comply with the national minimum wage – as Mel and Grace know only too well.  When VODW polled its members, it found that, of the 500 who responded, 76% had experienced verbal or physical abuse, and that they worked on average 91 hours a week. Some had even had their passports confiscated by their employers. Because of the hidden, private nature of the work and because many are unable to speak English, these women are socially isolated. There are few examples of true modern slavery, but these are undoubtedly some of them.  “Their status as workers is blurred by the language – like ‘maids’ or ‘domestic servants’ – that’s used to describe them,” says Joyce Jiang, a lecturer at the University of York and researcher into the experiences of immigrant workers. Many of these women have had to leave their own children to look after those of their employers – and because of the intimate nature of the work, they are often seen as “labourers of love” or “part of the family”, which obscures how little they are paid.  I asked the Home Office whether it planned to change the rules regarding MDWs, to allow these women, many of whom have lived and worked here for years, the right to stay legally. It pointed me to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), a framework for identifying and supporting victims of human trafficking that, since 2016, also encompasses slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour. The MDWs who go down this route successfully can get a two-year visa, after which they must return home. But it’s an imperfect solution, says Begonia. “You need to have been raped, beaten or starved to death to get it. If you’re not paid for months, is that not abuse or servitude?”  Those in abusive workplaces who don’t apply fall back on the services of VODW. Begonia, Grace and the others constitute a remarkable rescue service. They distribute cards written in Tagalog, Hindi and Indonesian offering help and a phone number. When called, they go to a MDW’s home, wait outside and then escort them to safety. “Sometimes they don’t even know the address, so we tell them to look for an envelope that has it. Or if they’re working in a hotel, we tell them to phone reception,” says Begonia. VODW has rescued 80 women in this way.  Now, in collaboration with Jiang and the film-maker Tassia Kobylinska of Goldsmiths, University of London, VODW has produced a video and exhibition, My Home Is Not My Home. As part of the project, funded by the University of York, Kobylinska worked with a group of migrant domestic workers, teaching them how to frame images and record audio so that they could document their lives on their phones. The exhibition includes an MDW’s white uniform, a job contract, the clothes that one MDW wore when escaping and letters from their children. “To put these things in a gallery makes them valuable. We hope that this will bring into the public domain what has festered behind closed doors. It can be used in evidence as part of their campaign [to remain here],” says Kobylinska.  Begonia herself trod this path. “It was the most difficult and painful decision of my life to leave my children behind when they were one, two and three. I wanted so much to be a normal mother who could look after them physically – but my sister was their mother, really, and not me … what kept me going was the dream that we could one day be together again.” For her, the story has a happy ending. She has become a formidable voice for MDWs – lobbying parliament, speaking at the UN on behalf of VODW, for which she works part-time (she is still a domestic worker the rest of the time). Her three children now live with her and work in the UK.  Of the others, Mel has been referred to the NRM. Lucy and Grace, however, remain undocumented. For them, in every sense, the UK is far from home.  Some names have been changed. My Home Is Not My Home runs from 16 to 26 January at L’Etrangère, 44a Charlotte Road, London EC2


theguardianuk--2019-10-09--The US decision on LGBT workers could turn employers into the gender police | Arwa Mahdawi

The US supreme court has sex on the brain. It started hearing arguments yesterday in three blockbuster cases concerning LGBT job discrimination. In each case, the judges are basically pondering whether the word “sex” in Title VII – the section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits employment discrimination – extends to sexual orientation and gender identity. At present, Title VII prohibits an employer from firing someone on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex and national origin”.  These cases are, to put it mildly, a huge deal – and not just for LGBT people. The ruling will have serious implications for straight people who don’t comply with gender norms. It could allow employers to fire women who don’t wear heels or makeup. It could allow companies to discriminate against men who are not considered manly enough. It could give employers a green light to act as the gender police.  In 1989, the supreme court heard the case Price Waterhouse v Hopkins, in which the plaintiff said she had been denied a promotion because her employer thought she was “too macho”. In its ruling, the court said it was illegal to discriminate against someone for failing to conform to gender stereotypes. But this decision could in effect be overturned if the court finds sex protections don’t extend to gay or trans people. After all, as articulated in another case, homosexuality is “the ultimate case of failure to conform” to gender stereotypes.  Perhaps you don’t live in the US. Perhaps you think none of this affects you. Well, you are wrong. The wide-ranging implications of the supreme court’s decision in these cases should serve as a reminder that we can’t draw a line between feminism and the fight for gay liberation or trans equality. LGBT rights are human rights – we are all in this together.


theintercept--2019-10-08--The Trump Administration Is Fighting at the Supreme Court to Let Employers Fire Queer and Trans Work

The Trump Administration Is Fighting at the Supreme Court to Let Employers Fire Queer and Trans Workers

concerning the protection of LGBTQ workers went before the Supreme Court for oral arguments on Tuesday. In each, the government is attempting to fundamentally roll back sex discrimination law as it applies to gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, trans, and nonbinary people — but potentially to all workers who might pose a challenge to traditional gender conformity. Yet, as these cases progress, it should be impossible to think of them apart from the threats of harm already facing trans people in this country. Transgender individuals currently experience unemployment at a rate three times higher than that of the cisgender population; for trans people of color, the rate is four times higher. According to a 2015 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality, 30 percent of transgender people reported being fired, denied a promotion, or experiencing mistreatment in the workplace due to their gender identity in the previous 12 months alone. Thirty percent of transgender people reported being homeless at some point in their lives.  The Supreme Court cases, for which oral arguments began Tuesday morning, all concern whether Title VII, a key provision in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination in the workplace because of “sex,” covers LGBTQ individuals. One case involves 58-year-old Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job at a suburban Detroit funeral home after coming out as a trans woman to her employer. In another landmark case, justices heard appeals in separate lawsuits filed by gay men who were fired after their sexual orientation became known to their employers. During Tuesday’s oral arguments, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts already vocalized the sort of reactionary sentiments that are likely to inform their thinking in these cases, which will likely not be decided until next summer. Gorsuch, while noting that there are strong arguments favoring the LGBT workers, wondered whether the justices should take into account “the massive social upheaval” that might follow a ruling in their favor. Meanwhile, Roberts raised concerns about employers with religious objections. The court’s makeup in these cases, as in so many others, bodes ill for justice — despite decades-old legal precedents standing in favor of the plaintiffs. The Title VII statute does not explicitly name discrimination over gender identity and sexual orientation — a legislative issue unlikely to change under the Republican-controlled Senate. Yet LBGTQ individuals have been able to rely on Title VII protections in the courts for over two decades. “Going back to 2000, federal appeals courts have ruled that anti-trans discrimination is a form of sex discrimination that violates federal law, providing a remedy for trans workers fired for who they are,” wrote James Esseks, director of the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & HIV Project, in a statement. “These cases will affect more people than the Supreme Court’s decision about the freedom to marry, and they potentially implicate a broader range of contexts in which LGBTQ people may face harm, if the Court green-lights discrimination.” measure, LGBTQ discrimination is discrimination based on sex. “It’s hard to see how firing someone for being LGBTQ doesn’t involve the person’s sex. You can’t even describe being trans or gay without talking about the individuals’ sex,” wrote Esseks. His colleague, ACLU attorney Chase Strangio, who is on the legal team representing Stephens, echoed this point on Chris Hayes’s podcast. “It’s so intuitive,” he said, to situate trans protections in the legal framework of sex discrimination because “you can’t actually describe a trans-ness without thinking about sex as a category.”  Whether one understands the categorizations of “sex” as entrenched social constructs or conservatively believes they are essential, biologically determined differences, it is undeniable that firing someone because they are trans or queer is a decision made based on the basis of sex and assumptions made about the way individuals belonging to a presumed given sex are expected to live and behave. This idea of discrimination based on “sex stereotypes” falling under Title VII is hardly new and forms a considerable basis of the plaintiffs’ arguments in the Supreme Court this week. In 1989, the court agreed, as a plurality, that Title VII also protected a cisgender woman who had been fired from her job as an accountant at Price Waterhouse because she didn’t dress and act as women were expected to. The justices jointly wrote that the point of Title VII law was “to strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women resulting from sex stereotypes.” The ways these individuals whose sexual orientation does not align with “sex stereotypes” — that is, straightness — is immediately obvious. To be trans is to definitionally challenge the ur-”sex stereotype” — namely, that we are and must remain the sex that we are assigned at birth.  It would be difficult for Trump’s Justice Department to conjure an argument whereby anti-gay and trans discrimination could be found to not relate to sex stereotyping. Which is why the tack the government is taking in the current Supreme Court cases seeks to dismantle the precedent against sex stereotyping discrimination altogether. As the ACLU’s Strangio explained it, the Justice Department’s “argument in the lower court and what their brief suggest to me is that they’re advocating for a world in which employers can fire a woman for being gender-nonconforming as long as they fire a man for being gender-nonconforming as well.” That is, the government’s response to claims of specific discrimination is to make discrimination itself more expansive. If the court rules that discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes is legal, anyone who doesn’t conform to an employer’s view of stereotypical femininity or masculinity could be at risk. But it should not be a condition for caring about LGBTQ workers that cisgender and straight workers could also face discrimination. To understand that the government is fighting for employers to erase and decimate the means of survival for queer, trans, and nonbinary people is enough for us to support the plaintiffs in these cases, and the communities they represent who are already imperiled.


vox--2019-02-07--Is employer-sponsored insurance really a good deal for workers

Is employer-sponsored insurance really a good deal for workers?

Jessica Salfia knew the pay wasn’t going to be great when she became a teacher in Martinsburg, West Virginia, but she did have really good health coverage. She felt like she could go to see any doctor she wanted. The copay for an emergency room visit was just $15. She had three kids over the years, and health care was one thing Salfia didn’t feel like she had to worry about.  “The one thing about being a public schoolteacher was you knew that was taken care of,” Salfia, a teacher of 16 years, tells me. “But in the last four to six years, it’s been death by a thousand cuts.”  The state legislature kept cutting taxes, and copays for teachers kept going up — eventually costing Salfia and her family $100 just to show up at the emergency room or urgent care. On top of that, their health plan started to restrict which specialists they could see. Suddenly, some teachers had to travel as far as five or six hours to see a doctor.  Salfia’s daughter’s sore throat quickly spiraled into a $650 bill, as the rest of the family got sick. “My husband and I had to sit down and decide what bills we’re gonna pay or what bills we’re not gonna pay,” Salfia says.  The West Virginia teachers went on strike over rising health care costs, eventually securing a pay bump and a freeze on insurance premiums. But their plight reveals the cracks, increasingly difficult to ignore, in the bedrock of American health care: employer-sponsored insurance.  Half of all Americans get health insurance through their jobs. That’s by design. Doctors and hospitals in the mid-20th century saw a rash of government-run systems being set up in Europe and they lobbied hard to avoid one of their own, vastly preferring private coverage. Employee benefits were exempted from wartime price controls during World War II, giving employers an incentive to offer them at a time when it was nearly impossible to offer raises. Labor unions got on board too, sensing an opportunity to expand the safety net for workers without needing to pass another massive piece of social reform so soon after the New Deal.  But employer-sponsored insurance did not deliver a health care utopia. More than 30 million people still lack health coverage. Premiums and out-of-pocket costs for employer-sponsored plans have been rising steadily.  “Right now if you look at a lot of the labor disputes that go on, very often they have to do with health care. They have to do with employers saying, hey, you know what, we’re raising deductibles, raise your copayments,” Medicare-for-all proponent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told Vox in 2017. “What we can say to those workers is they will be better off financially and that their business that they work for will be better off financially.”  In a great historical irony, the evident faults of employer-sponsored insurance are helping fuel a new appetite for Medicare-for-all, a single-payer system where everybody gets health coverage from the government. But the work-based system, for all its flaws, could also be the biggest barrier to enacting single-payer. Shifting 160 million people from the coverage they currently get through their jobs to a new government plan is a lot of disruption — and disruption, especially in health care, has historically made a lot of Americans nervous.  If Medicare-for-all is ever to become more than a campaign slogan, its proponents must solve that riddle.  Medicare-for-all has become incredibly popular among the Democratic base, but the primary problem it will face is that many people are fine with the insurance they have today. They might not love it, but they are familiar with it, and for the people who don’t incur regular medical bills but want to be protected from an emergency, the benefits you receive through work-based insurance are probably sufficient.  “It’s a real barrier to doing anything big,” says John Holahan at the Urban Institute, who helped create a proposal explicitly designed not to disrupt work-based insurance. “Most people with employer plans are reasonably happy with them.”  When Vox conducted focus groups on single-payer, led by opinion researcher Michael Perry, one recurring concern we heard was from people who mostly like the insurance they have and were worried about losing it under Medicare-for-all.  “I wouldn’t like that,” Richard M., a federal official who gets his insurance through his work, said when told he would have to give up his insurance. “I like having an option. And I mean at this stage, I’m working full time, I should have an option.”  The polling bears out this sentiment: 83 percent of people with employer-sponsored insurance said in March 2016 that they thought their health insurance was excellent or good, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The status quo is powerful in American health care — while there are problems, people are worried about big changes that could upend the system they rely on today.  The recent furor of Sen. Kamala Harris’s call to eliminate private insurance underscored this political challenge. Polling has repeatedly shown that if you tell Americans that a national health insurance program would end private coverage entirely, support drops significantly.  Employer health insurance does a few things quite well. It does cover a lot of people. It helps spread risk around — companies, particularly larger ones, are almost by default a useful mix of healthy and sick people, helping to spread costs around, because they were not formed for the purpose of providing health insurance.  The price for insurance in the employer market has always been significantly less than buying insurance in the individual market. So its costs are lower, at least compared to what has been the alternative in this country for a long time, and people usually get pretty good benefits.  But Sanders and other stalwart single-payer proponents see health care as fundamentally different from other commodities and believe the government should guarantee health coverage. Their proposals would move every American out of private insurance and into a new government plan. (Supplemental private coverage would be permitted under Sanders’s bill, but the government’s benefits would be so generous that it’s hard to imagine much of a private market remaining.)  Medicare-for-all supporters argue the current system isn’t really working all that well anyway. Their evidence: Out-of-pocket costs are rising, millions of people are still uninsured, and yet America still somehow spends more money on health care than any developed country.  Other Democrats and left-leaning think tanks — cognizant of how deeply ingrained work-based insurance is in our health care ecosystem and of how allergic many Americans are to massive change — have introduced more incremental approaches, like Medicare buy-ins or a supercharged Obamacare that melds with Medicaid. Most of those plans would let private companies continue offering insurance.  Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon progressive with stated presidential interests, co-sponsors Sanders’s Medicare-for-all bill — but he has also introduced his own narrower proposal with Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut to give people the option to buy a government plan.  “You have folks who will say, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t have a choice,’ and they will provide resistance,” Merkley tells me. “And, of course, the private insurance companies, which would be replaced, will put up massive resistance.”  The other argument made in favor of employer-based insurance is that it’s a constant experiment in how to better structure benefits and deliver health care. Hundreds of private companies are (the argument goes) constantly working to figure out how to offer insurance at a lower cost while still providing quality health care to their workers.  “A debate we’re constantly having is what’s the right way to cover the services we cover?” Paul Fronstin, who oversees the health insurance program at the Employee Benefits Research Institute, tells me. “My concern about moving away from the employer system is you lose that. Where does the innovation come from?”  But other experts are skeptical — they don’t see much evidence yet that employers are actually spending a lot of time or resources on these initiatives. “They haven’t proven that successful at improving health or managing costs,” Caroline Pearson, a senior fellow at NORC-University of Chicago, says. “What they’re investing in hasn’t shown any return yet. Behavior change is really hard. Frankly, we have no idea how to do it well.”  Salfia noted that the West Virginia school system tried to set up a wellness program at the same time as it was shrinking doctor networks and increasing copays. Teachers would be rewarded if they exercised or ate healthy or went to the doctor. They just had to wear a tracking device and upload the data to an online platform — in a state where many people still lack access to broadband Internet or cellphone service.  “The whole thing was crazy,” she says. The program was eventually dropped.  What happened in West Virginia isn’t that different from what’s happening in companies across the country. As health care costs rise, workers over the past decade have been asked to pay more and more money out of their own pockets, as their businesses shift toward less generous benefits.  “Our system is a policy disaster. If there weren’t some strong locked-in features of our system, nobody would accept it,” says Jacob Hacker, who studies health policy at Yale University. “It’s a great system when people had something closer to lifetime employment and employers were providing good benefits, but it’s a really crappy system when that’s not true.”  New data from the Commonwealth Fund shows that the percentage of workers who do receive insurance through work but are nevertheless considering underinsured — meaning they could still have to spend a significant amount of their own income on medical care in a given year — has nearly tripled this century.  You can pick plenty of other metrics to illustrate the deteriorating state of employer-sponsored insurance. For example, the percentage of workers whose plan has a deductible of more than $1,000 has increased significantly, from 34 percent to 51 percent, since 2012, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.  “When times are tough, employers start to cut back on the generosity of their benefits,” Fronstin says. “Deductibles go up. People are paying more money out of pocket.”  The foundation of our work-based insurance system — that health insurance benefits are tax-free to companies and workers — also makes the problem worse.  The economics are pretty straight-forward: Employers save on taxes when they spend money on health care instead of wages. They provide more generous insurance than they would if benefits were taxed and because the benefits are more generous, employees use more health care.  “That makes health care more expensive and makes the health care market bigger,” says Austin Frakt, a health economist at Boston University.  Health care spending for job-based insurance increased by 44 percent from 2007 to 2016, according to researchers at the Health Care Cost institute. Its growth rate was consistently higher than that of Medicare or Medicaid, the major government insurance programs.  Making matters worse, from a progressive economic perspective, the current system favors large employers and higher-income employees.  “The higher the tax bracket of the employee, the bigger the subsidy, which accounts for hundreds of billions of dollars each year,” Stanford University’s Victor Fuchs wrote in JAMA recently. “Perversely, most of the tax subsidy is received by employees with above average incomes.”  This is the opening for single-payer supporters: While you might be used to the health insurance system we have now, it isn’t nearly as good a deal as you might think it is and a single-payer program would be more equitable.  A surprising number of Americans might be persuaded by the argument: Kaiser found in June 2018 that 20 percent of people with work-based insurance said they’d had problems in the past year paying their medical bills. Just because you’re technically covered doesn’t mean you can’t face onerous medical bills. Medicare-for-all offers a coverage guarantee and nearly eliminates out-of-pocket costs.  One development to watch is whether businesses themselves come to decide that they might be better off under single-payer. This is an argument that I’ve heard from Medicare-for-all supporters who won House races this year, like Katie Porter in Orange County, California. It’s also an argument that Sanders, the godfather of single-payer, has made.  Companies have found it worth their while to offer insurance for the better part of a century. Good benefits help attract good workers. The benefits are tax-free. “They’ve felt there was a lot of value for them to offer it,” says Fronstin.  But these days, the cost of covering workers is going up for companies — the average employee contribution rose from $3,300 in 2007 to $5,700 in 2017, but the average employer cost also went up, from $8,800 to $13,000 — and administering health care benefits requires staff, time, and money.  Companies are at least starting to ask the question, Fronstin says: “Are we doing better than Medicare-for-all?”  “That’s the thing they have to wrestle with,” he adds, “which they’ve never really had to wrestle with before.”  One of the promises of Obamacare was that it might loosen the ties between work and health coverage. It hasn’t. Some people see that as a sign of the current model’s strength.  “There’s no indication that the employer market is at a breaking point,” Pearson says.  When President Obama and Democrats in Congress settled on a health care plan, they largely left big employer plans alone. That was a political calculation, but Democrats still reaped the whirlwind of more than 4 million canceled insurance plans that didn’t meet the new standards they set. Transitioning to single-payer in the near term requires canceling plans for 160 million people.  Work-based insurance is so untouchable that, though economists to the right and left agree its tax benefits should be limited, both Democrats and Republicans ended up ducking the issue when it came time to actually pass a health care bill. The ACA’s ‘Cadillac’ tax on high-end insurance plans, a different means to similar ends, has never actually been enforced; Congress has, on a bipartisan basis, repeatedly delayed it. House Republicans caved with just the whiff of industry pressure in 2017, quickly pulling such a provision from their plan.  Single-payer supporters see this as another failure of the ACA and the need for more ambitious reforms. They condemn a system that tethers people to their jobs, even if they don’t like them, strictly so they can hold on to their insurance.  “You also talk to people who say, ‘You know, I really don’t like my job, I really hate my job, but I go to my job because my wife is ill and I have to make sure that I have good coverage to take care of her.’ Is that a way to run an economy?” Sanders told Vox. “So there are a lot of reasons why I think we need to do what virtually every other country has done, and get private insurance companies out of the essential health care.”  There is a foundational question here, one often lost in debates about premiums and health care expenditures and uninsured rates or rates of growth: Should your employer be allowed to decide what kind of health insurance you have?  The Trump administration has recently relaxed the ACA’s requirement that all insurance plans cover contraception, allowing even major Fortune 500 firms to refuse to cover birth control over any religious or moral objection.  One anti-abortion Christian woman told the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings about how her faith-based health plan, contracted through her church-affiliated employer, refused to pay for her IUD. She and her husband cut back on their student loan payments to cover the $1,200 bill.  “I have experienced firsthand what it is like to struggle to afford birth control when someone else’s religious beliefs deny it to you,” Rev. Alicia Baker Wilson told senators earlier this year.  Single-payer skeptics talk a lot about freedom and choice, which they say would be lost under Medicare-for-all. Many Americans seem to genuinely share those concerns.  But freedom and choice can also be compromised when your employer decides how much you must pay for health care or what kinds of medical services you can get covered.  As Jacob Hacker put it, drawing on the language so often deployed by Medicare-for-all supporters: “Our system will not create health care as a right.”


renegadetribune--2019-04-05--Anti-European Jews and Christian Churches are Causing and Fueling the Non-White Immigrant Invasion i

Anti-European Jews and Christian Churches are Causing and Fueling the Non-White Immigrant Invasion in the United States

Anti-European Jews and anti-European Christian churches are aiding the non-white immigrant invasion into America and the Jewish media is covering for them by not reporting their involvement.  South Texas Church groups have been providing direct transport for illegals into the United States. They then send them to Latino communities, if caught they provide them with asylum application paperwork before being forced to let authorities take them, they give them legal counsel and set them on the most time wasting course with the intention that they will then be put into the month long bureaucratic stifled processes of immigration enforcement and ICE.  Leading this effort is HIAS. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Closely behind HIAS is a conglomeration of Christian church organisations. There is a huge coalition of over 50 US church associations, note that is not 50 churches but 50 entire associations of multiple or hundreds of churches each, equalling tens of thousands of volunteer, advocates and human-traffickers in all but name. Vehicles involved in this ‘illegal smuggling have been seen, some of their vans are marked with ‘TFC’ and operated by ‘the Family Church’ a non-governmental non-profit Christian group operating in South Texas, this however is just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the Christian groups operate in unmarked vehicles numbering in the thousands. They have been transporting illegal migrants from the caravan routes of Guatemala directly.  Here is a list of some (but not all) of the key groups that supported Amnesty constantly, from 2009 onwards. There are smaller groups in addition to these main lobbying and legal powerhouses including the ADL, ACLU, HIAS, NAACP plus the less well publicised subversive Christian organisations who are the willing executioners and race-traitors (as a result of their Christian faith) who enthusiastically collaborate with the Jewish attack on European mankind.  Groups included in the above link include:  Assemblies of God, Brethren In Christ Church, Christian Reformed Church in N. America, Church of the Nazarene, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), Missionary Church, the National Council of Churches, the Presbyterian Church, the United Methodist Church.  Beyond this list is the huge coalition of over 50 Christian churches. And countless unregistered NGOs, informal Christian volunteer groups and Christian networks. In addition to this there are migrant networks of Latino Catholics in the illegal underground societies which exist parallel to our own, with their own immigration authorities it seems: the aims of which are to import more Latinos like themselves. Christian ministers and organisations are fully in the know about these and refuse to inform ICE of their whereabouts on religious grounds… These are the enemies within that collaborate with the Jewish establishment and Jewish owned Media.  And just look at some of the opinions of the smaller, niche Christian media along with the Christian groups given support by the established Jewish media:  These nut-jobs literally think that migrants are ‘going to their promised land’ by immigrating to America, that somehow their Jewish Yahweh is causing it (Christians worship the same deity as Jews, sometimes calling it Jehovah instead, or just covering up the fact by saying ‘God’ or ‘the lord’ Yahweh by the way is the same name of the Jew’s pre-Monotheistic God of War, they ‘circumcised’ all their other Gods and Goddesses out of their religion, except their God of war… should tell you something about their intentions). The insane consequences of these Christian’s views is clear to see: White Replacement in direct accordance with Jewish aims.  The Jewish media is forced to acknowledge the existence of the huge migrant caravans, but there is a numerically far more significant threat: the hundreds of thousands of individual and small groups that are ‘bussed’ into America and through South Texas in particular by migration-zealots of the Judaized Christian faith. Their Jewish colleagues in HIAS operate a similar enterprise but the complicit and direct, willing, enthusiastic involvement of Christian and particularly of Catholic churches in assisting migration must be exposed.  The Christian right cannot talk about this as it is true that their faith is cucked towards undermining the racial coherence of all nations:  “you are to love those who are foreigners,”   -(Deuteronomy 10:19)  and principles that “you are all one”   -(Galatians 3:28)  Ensuring that “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born”   -(Leviticus 19:34)  And that their former Jewish-tribal deity: “loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.”   -(Deuteronomy 10:18)  Oy vey! It does serve the Jewish anti-European agenda well!  From the Pope to the local Church groups, Christianity is racially subversive in all situations, especially where more than one racial group exists in close proximity to another.  Note the whole narrative of Pence of welcoming ‘Christian refugees from Syria’ who are all non-whites. These Christians and what they are doing is never reported on but in fact supported by the Jewish media, whose own tribal groups are leading in this field and to whom this Christian collaboration is a welcome gift to the Jewish agenda of replacing whites.  Additionally we then see entire non-white Christian initiatives formed by the Christian migrants the so-called ‘White Christians’ helped migrate into the US. These ‘White Christians’, to whom being white is secondary or non important, care nothing for European Americans’ racial future but only for Christianity detached from any racial loyalties. One of these subsequent Latino organisations is the ‘Kino Border Initiative’, operating on the US-Mexico border and openly providing assistance (encouragement and motivation) to migrants from Mexico and Latin America to cross into the United States. The Kino Border Initiative leadership is entirely non-white. They are supported as colleagues by the established American religious associations, even though their bent is clearly racial, they take advantage of the cucked, self-deceiving, Jew-God worshipping color-blind Christian establishment and the Jewish media just revel in it. They mention these groups more often than they mention HIAS. HIAS is the number one group for facilitating migration into the United States (behind only the federal government).  Catholic Church groups have been up with HIAS demanding amnesty for decades in America.  Back in 2010 this was proved beyond all doubt. The national US Conference of Catholic Bishops announced their full, canonical support for amnesty. Since way back in 2013 the Catholic Church has continually since then been pressuring the US Congress to pass immigration ‘reform’ i.e. amnesty for these non-white invaders. Since 2014, all the way until 2019 and still in effect right now, the Evangelical Immigration Table has pushed for a full, not just partial but a full amnesty bill. This proves that it is not just Catholics. Many of these groups, alongside HIAS, were responsible for much of the congressional lobbying that caused all of the prior Amnesty bills from the ones passed under Bush Junior to Obama. And we all know that it was this same coalition of Jewish subversives and willing, collaborating Christians who pushed for ‘love and reconciliation’ between Blacks and Whites in Loving V. Virginia (the case that overturned the ban on interracial breeding) and the Jewish pushed, Christian accepted 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (note how Christians always seem to ‘forgive those that tresspass against us’…). The Church benefited directly from an increase in devout, low-IQ, non-questioning Christian devotees from Mexico and wider Latin America…  We know that Pope Francis has routinely advocated for white replacement but the argument that ‘oh this is just the current subversive pope’ is nullified when you realise that even the prior Pope urged all Catholic communities in the United States to :  This article originally appeared on EnglishNews.org and was republished here with permission.

religious institutions and state relations


rferl--2019-01-05--Bartholomew Signs Tomos Granting Independence To New Orthodox Church In Ukraine

Bartholomew Signs 'Tomos' Granting Independence To New Orthodox Church In Ukraine

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has signed a decree granting autocephaly, or independence, to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, ending more than 330 years of Russian religious control in Ukraine.  The ceremony on January 5 in Istanbul, which is considered the spiritual headquarters of Orthodox Christianity, was attended by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.  The decree, or "tomos," will now be handed over to the head of the new Ukrainian church, Metropolitan Epifaniy, on January 6, completing the two-day spiritual ceremony.  Bartholomew said Ukrainians could now enjoy "the sacred gift of emancipation, independence, and self-governance, becoming free from every external reliance and intervention."  Poroshenko thanked the patriarch "for the courage to make this historic decision" and said it was "a great day" for Ukrainians.  Vladimir Legoida, a Russian Orthodox Church spokesman, denounced the decree as "a document that is the result of irrepressible political and personal ambitions."  It had been "signed in violation of the canons and therefore not possessing any canonical force," Legoida said in a statement on January 5.  "It is a great honor for me to visit Istanbul, where a long-awaited event will take place tomorrow," Poroshenko wrote on Facebook, referring to the official handover of the decree.  Poroshenko predicted that the move will open a "new era in Orthodox history."  "We pray for peace and unity," he added.  Bartholomew announced the decision to recognize Ukraine's request for an autocephalous church in October.  In December, Ukrainian Orthodox leaders agreed on the creation of a new national Orthodox church and elected the 39-year-old Epifaniy to head that church.  Russia long opposed such efforts by the Ukrainians for an independent church, which intensified after Russia seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and began supporting separatists shortly thereafter in Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.  The announcement by Bartholomew, who is considered the leader of the 300-million-strong worldwide Orthodox community, came amid deepening tension over efforts by Ukrainian Orthodox churches to formally break away from Russia’s orbit.  It also prompted the Russian Orthodox Church to announce days later that it was ending its relationship with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in protest.


rferl--2019-01-31--Putin Blasts Kyiv For Blatant Interference In Orthodox Church

Putin Blasts Kyiv For 'Blatant Interference' In Orthodox Church

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine’s government of “blatant interference” in the Orthodox Church in Ukraine after a new national institution split from Moscow’s patronage.      Speaking at a Russian Orthodox Church event attended by Patriarch Kirill in Moscow, Putin said on January 31 that the push for the new church was rooted in "the struggle for power" and provoked "animosity and intolerance."      “Russian authorities believe that any interference in the affairs of the church is absolutely unacceptable,” Putin said.      In early January, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine was granted independence, or autocephaly, ending more than 330 years of Russian religious control in Ukraine.      Russia long opposed such efforts by the Ukrainians for an independent church, which intensified after Russia seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and began supporting separatists shortly thereafter in parts of Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.      “We have always respected the independence of church life, particularly in a sovereign neighboring state. Nevertheless, we reserve the right to respond and do everything possible to protect human rights, including freedom of religion," Putin said.      “It is a blatant interference in church life and those who initiated it seem to have learned from the godless people of the last century, who expelled believers from churches and prosecuted the clergy," he added.


rightwingwatch--2019-09-17--ADF Cheers SCOTUS Weakening Church-State Separation Urges Court to OK Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination

ADF Cheers SCOTUS Weakening Church-State Separation, Urges Court to OK Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination

The Alliance Defending Freedom, the religious right legal giant pushing a conservative culture war agenda around the world, held a symposium on Monday afternoon at which its lawyers celebrated Supreme Court decisions weakening church-state separation and discussed cases coming before the court in October in which ADF and its allies are urging the court to rule that job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is not prohibited by federal civil rights laws. The symposium was held in the Washington, D.C. office of Jones Day, one of the largest law firms in the U.S, right across the street from the grounds of the U.S. Capitol.  The first panel, moderated by New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak, discussed religious conservatives’ recent win in a case involving a huge cross-shaped World War I memorial on public land in Bladensburg, Maryland—and what the decision might mean for the religious right’s efforts to undermine church-state separation by further dismantling the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. (People For the American Way’s affiliate PFAW Foundation had joined a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the memorial was unconstitutional.)  The panel featured ADF Vice President of U.S. Litigation David Cortman and Jones Day Associate Kaytlin Roholt, who was part of the legal team that worked on the Bladensburg cross case and who served as special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. A dissenting point of view was provided by Charles Rothfeld, a lawyer at the law firm of Mayor Brown who has argued 31 cases before the Supreme Court.  The court’s complicated ruling in the case—with seven separate opinions signed onto by varying groups of justices—allowed the cross to stand given that it had been in place for a century, but reaffirmed how messy First Amendment cases can get. The ruling and the opinions are examined in People For the American Way’s report on the court’s 2018-2019 term, which noted that the court’s decision weakened church-state separation without going as far as the religious right pushed them to. “The damage could have been far worse,” the report notes, “and in their separate opinions, the conservatives made clear their intention to eventually make it so.”  At the ADF symposium, Roholt said the ruling, in which seven justices voted to allow the cross to stay, was a sign of how far the court has moved on Establishment Clause cases. ADF’s Cortman agreed, reviewing the shift in language from court rulings in the 1940s and 1950s that talked about the importance of protecting a “high” and “impregnable” wall between church and state, to the Supreme Court back-tracking in the 1980s and 1990s, to the shifts we are seeing from the current court.  All the panelists agreed that the Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence—and the so-called “Lemon Test” created by the court in 1971—is in tatters. They also agreed that it’s a challenge for the court to come up with a single rule or test that will work for different kinds of Establishment Clause cases. Panelists said that the three-prong Lemon test, sometimes tinkered with and sometimes basically ignored in later cases, has left government officials and lower courts without clear guidance for determining when an action by the government violates the Establishment Clause. The Lemon test asks whether there is a secular purpose for a government action, whether the action has the primary effect of promoting or inhibiting religion, and whether it creates too much entanglement by government with religion.  Some religious right groups have urged the court to replace Lemon with a “coercion test” which would define coercion so narrowly that it would allow expansive government involvement with, promotion, and funding of religion unless an action actually compelled people by law into belief, observance or financial support for a particular religion. Loyola Law Professor Jessica Levinson has written that Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion in the cross case embraced a form of coercion test.  Rothfeld, who filed a brief on behalf of legal historians and law professors supporting the cross challengers, argued that there is strong historical evidence that founders like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were deeply suspicious of sectarian expression by government and government officials. He said that the “wishy-washy” and “confusing” outcome in the case was a kind of success, because it meant the conservative court didn’t yet embrace one of the more radical positions promoted by religious right groups. He warned that tests proposed by religious right legal groups to replace Lemon are ahistorical and could lead to an “alarmingly close” association between government and religion—and not just religion in general but particular religions.  Moderator Liptak asked the panelists whether, in the wake of the Bladensburg ruling, it would be constitutionally appropriate for a government today to erect a cross-shaped memorial, given the increasing religious diversity of people serving in the U.S. armed forces. Liptak said he spoke to members of the American Legion who were adamantly in favor of protecting the Bladensburg cross but did not think a similar memorial would be appropriate today. Roholt and Cortman argued that such a memorial would be constitutional.  During a Q&A portion of the session, a questioner asked whether ADF supports the position taken by Justice Clarence Thomas that the Establishment Clause doesn’t apply to the states—and that Alabama, for example, could declare evangelical Christianity its official religion. Cortman didn’t give a clear answer. He said Thomas is right to say that it was not, as written, meant to apply to the states. He added that while the Court might have been wrong to apply the Establishment Clause to the states under the incorporation doctrine, the court did so and therefore it applies. Pressed by Liptak about whether the court was right to incorporate, Cortman said that was more of a “philosophical question” rather than a legal question.  In truth, it is very much a legal question as long as Thomas is pressing his view in his concurring and dissenting opinions, as he did in the Bladensburg cross case. A recent conservative book about Thomas argues that Thomas has laid out a “road map” to return the U.S. to the “Framer’s Constitution,” and that President Trump’s judges are giving him the judicial “troops” to carry it out. According to author Myron Magnet, Thomas “has blazed a trail to liberty that future justices can follow. And he is patient in waiting for the Court to catch up.”  The panel also discussed Espinoza v Montana Department of Revenue, a case the Supreme Court will be considering this term. In that case, the legislature created a voucher-like tax-credit scholarship program that allowed businesses and individuals to get a tax credit for giving to nonprofit scholarship organizations. The state’s Department of Revenue, citing a provision in the state constitution banning “direct or indirect” public funding of religious schools, prohibited students from using scholarships to attend religious schools and then the program was eliminated altogether. The state Supreme Court sided with the state. But the U.S Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, which could threaten many state constitutional provisions barring public support for sectarian schools.  Right-wing groups are hoping that the court will use the Montana case to expand on its 2017 ruling in Trinity Lutheran, in which the court said the state of Missouri was wrong to deny a church the ability to apply for a state-funded program to help improve the safety of playgrounds. That ruling included a footnote saying it was restricted to the facts of that specific case, but right-wing advocates like the ADF’s Cortman hope the court will use this case to erase that limiting footnote. In June, an education writer at Forbes wrote that the case could “change the face of public education” and noted that a huge array of right-wing and religious conservative groups had been “urging SCOTUS to take this case and run with it.”  During Q&A, a questioner asked whether the lawyers on the panel consider marriage equality to be settled law. “It is until it’s not,” said the ADF’s Cortman. Rothfeld said he believes it is, and that he would be “shocked” if Roberts voted to reverse marriage equality.  But in fact anti-equality groups are eager for a conservative-dominated Supreme Court to reverse the marriage decision. At the time of the decision, ADF called it “a huge blow to democracy,” and the group’s website says it “remains committed to promoting the truth that marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman.” Cortman said courts are already pushing back against states that have gone “too far, too fast” and are punishing small business owners who run afoul of nondiscrimination laws by refusing to provide wedding-related services to same-sex couples.  A second panel at the symposium focused on cases concerning civil rights laws in the upcoming term. ADF and other religious right groups are urging the Supreme Court to rule that job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is not prohibited by federal civil rights laws, specifically Title VII provisions that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex.  The panel focused in particular on a case in which a funeral home cited its gender-specific dress code policy in refusing to accommodate an employee’s gender transition. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which considers discrimination on the basis of gender identity to violate acivil rights prohibitions on sex discrimination, sued the funeral home on behalf of the employee, Aimee Stephens.  Religious right groups, joined by the Trump administration, are urging the Supreme Court to side with the employer. ADF’s Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch, who was on the panel, will argue the case for the funeral home owner. Brian Burgess, a partner at Goodwin Law, took the opposing view. When panel moderator Amy Howe, a journalist who covers the Supreme Court, noted that Bursch had been speaking carefully about the case, he said he would not be using any pronouns in his argument to avoid misgendering Stephens but also to avoid embracing the employee’s preferred pronouns because that would get into the merits of the case and whether sex is malleable or objectively fixed.  Two other cases that will be argued on the same day—October 8—raise similar questions about whether discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation violates laws against sex discrimination. Dozens of organizations have weighed in on both sides of these cases.  Freedom for All Americans reported that more than 2,000 organizations and individuals have filed friend of the court briefs in the three cases. People For the American Way Foundation joined the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and other allies in filing an amicus brief in support of Stephens, who was fired from the funeral home. Earlier this month, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights President Vanita Gupta and Lambda Legal Chief Strategy Officer and Legal Director Sharon McGowan took part in a SCOTUSblog symposium and explained why Title VII must cover sexual orientation and gender identity.


rightwingwatch--2019-09-27--Robert Jeffress Theres No Constitutional Separation of Church and State and Thank God Trump Unders

Robert Jeffress: There’s No Constitutional Separation of Church and State and Thank God Trump Understands That

Robert Jeffress, one of President Donald Trump’s most vocal evangelical Christian supporters, told a gospel music gathering in Tennessee this week, “There is no such thing as a separation of church and state in the Constitution.”  Jeffress was asked whether the Constitution mandates that public discourse be “totally secular.” Jeffress began his response by saying that the separation of church and state doesn’t exist in the Constitution and that the First Amendment was intended only to prevent the establishment of a state church that could coerce people to worship.  As he got rolling, Jeffress became more emphatic and agitated about 20th Century Supreme Court rulings on church-state separation.  “We have allowed the secularists, the atheists, the humanists to hijack our Constitution and pervert it into something our forefathers never intended,” he said.  As the audience stood and cheered, Jeffress added, “And I’m gonna say this. I’m gonna say this, and it may cost me some book sales, but I’m gonna say it anyway.”  “Thank God,” he shouted, “we have a president like Donald J. Trump who understands that.”  Jeffress went on to predict Trump’s place in history:  I don’t like seeing my friend under attack like he is under right now, but I don’t like the prospect of what’s going to happen in America if we allow the left to seize control of this country again. And I believe one of the great ironies of history is gonna be this: When the historians look back, they are gonna say with great surprise, that it was a secular, billionaire real estate tycoon from New York City who became the most pro-life, pro-religious liberty, and pro-Israel president in history.  Video of Jeffress’s remarks were distributed by a public relations firm promoting the National Quartet Convention, which describes itself as “Gospel music’s largest annual event.”


russiainsider--2019-01-04--The West Has a Pro-Homosexual Motive in Backing Poroshenkos Outlaw Church

The West Has a Pro-Homosexual Motive in Backing Poroshenko's Outlaw Church

It's not just to weaken ties to Russia, it's to sexually subvert the Ukraine and normalize LGBT in Ukraine, even giving it the Christian stamp of approval  In the aftershock of US President Donald Trump’s bombshell decision to pull American troops out of Syria and to draw down US forces in Afghanistan, plus the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis and Brett McGurk, the Special Envoy to the anti-ISIS Coalition [sic: never mind who created ISIS in the first place … ], we are already seeing progress. The Syrian flag has been raised over Manbij as the Kurds scramble for protection from Damascus against threatening Turkish forces.  We’re not out of the woods yet though. Given the “orgy of shrieking and caterwauling,” “the horrifying collective scream” emanating from Washington, a pushback from the Deep State and the bipartisan Washington establishment is inevitable and possibly imminent. A false flag chemical attack blamed on the Syrian government but perpetrated by the jihadists (and likely cooked up with assistance from the British MI6) remains a looming danger. Also unpredictable is the next move by Israel, whose jets operating in Lebanese airspace struck targets near Damascus following Trump’s withdrawal order. In turn, Syria and Russia responded by considering extension of air protection to Lebanon and declaring that future Israeli strikes on Syria will prompt counterattacks on targets inside Israel. The danger of escalation should not be underestimated.  But the big worry remains Ukraine. Given the more than two-year long Russiagate witch hunt, the most toxic smear against Trump’s Syria withdrawal is that it’s a big “gift” to Russian President Vladimir Putin. As shown by the unanimous western response to the November Kerch Strait incident, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko knows he can do pretty much anything and any Russian response will be blamed on Russia.  Poroshenko has a menu of options. He can go back the well at the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, a tempting possibility if the British (who are at the root of Russiagate and are at least as desperate to prevent a Washington-Moscow détente than Poroshenko is) are dumb enough, or cynical enough (they don’t call them Perfidious Albion for nothing), to risk the lives of sailors of Her Majesty’s Navy on a confrontational stunt where Moscow has an overwhelming preponderance of power. Likewise, Poroshenko could launch an attack on the Donbas. Kiev’s forces recently occupied most of the “gray zone” separating forces at the Minsk agreement ceasefire line. There are also concerns over reports of chemicals stockpiled at Mariupol (hey, if a chemical provocation works in Syria, why not Ukraine?).  But the most likely proximate avenue for Poroshenko may be an attack on the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is an autonomous (self-governing) part of the Russian Orthodox Church. Following what some are already calling the Robber Council of Kiev on December 15, which purported to create an “autocephalous” (independent) church headed by “Metropolitan” Epiphany (Dumenko) from a merger of schismatic groups, Poroshenko and the Ukrainian parliament are moving with alacrity to strip the canonical Church of its legal status and turn its property over to Dumenko’s bogus church (which actually isn’t independent at all but is subject to the Patriarchate of Constantinople). Lists of monasteries for seizure are being prepared. Canonical clergy are investigated and harassed by the SBU, Ukraine’s successor to the old Soviet KGB. Any resistance or disorders these actions will provoke are already being blamed in advance on – you guessed it – Putin and the canonical Church.  Where is the US government, that great proponent of human rights and religious freedom? Cheering it on of course. On the day of the Robber Council, the US Embassy in Kiev tweeted out its congratulations in English and in Ukrainian (not in Russian of course, the language of Untermenschen).  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo placed a personal call to Dumenko as the “newly elected head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine Metropolitan Epifaniy.” US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch extended her congratulations to Dumenko in person. When the trouble starts, there’s no mystery as to on whose side the US government, or at least the State Department, will come down.  One might well ask why? Aside from the obvious impropriety of the United States’ taking sides in a question of the Orthodox Church’s internal governance, why is the State Department so committed to promoting a transparently political power grab by Poroshenko, the schismatics, and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople?  The short answer is that it is strictly geopolitics. From the point of view of the State Department, the Russian Orthodox Church – and hence the canonical autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church – is nothing more than an instrument of the Kremlin’s soft power. According to one person rather new to the relevant issues but nonetheless considered authoritative by the State Department:  ‘The Church, for its part, acts as the Russian state's soft power arm, exerting its authority in ways that assist the Kremlin in spreading Russian influence both in Russia's immediate neighborhood as well as around the globe. The Kremlin assists the Church, as well, working to increase its reach. Vladimir Yakunin, one of Putin's inner circle and a devout member of the ROC, facilitated in 2007 the reconciliation of the ROC with the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile (which had separated itself from the Moscow Patriarchate early in the Soviet era so as not to be co-opted by the new Bolshevik state), which reconciliation greatly increased [Patriarch of Moscow] Kirill's influence and authority outside of Russia. Putin, praising this event, noted the interrelation of the growth of ROC authority abroad with his own international goals: “The revival of the church unity is a crucial condition for revival of lost unity of the whole 'Russian world', which has always had the Orthodox faith as one of its foundations.”’  But unfortunately there is even more to it than that.  The authors of the current US anti-Russia, anti-Orthodox Church policy know, or at least instinctively sense, that the revival of Russia’s Church-State symphonia after a hiatus of eight decades is not just a political alliance of convenience but is the source of deep spiritual, moral, and social strength. This is reflected, for example, in Putin’s warm remarks on the dedication of a Moscow monument to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the acknowledged godfather of Russia’s restoration as a Christian country, on the centenary of the writer’s birth.  In Russia’s reborn symphonia, President and Patriarch speak as one:  ‘At the height of the Cold War, it was common for American conservatives to label the officially atheist Soviet Union a “godless nation.” ‘More than two decades on, history has come full circle, as the Kremlin and its allies in the Russian Orthodox Church hurl the same allegation at the West. ‘“Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a recent keynote speech. “Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.” [ . . . ] ‘Mr. Putin’s views of the West were echoed this month by Patriarch Kirill I of Moscow, the leader of the Orthodox Church, who accused Western countries of engaging in the “spiritual disarmament” of their people. ‘In particular, Patriarch Kirill criticized laws in several European countries that prevent believers from displaying religious symbols, including crosses on necklaces, at work. ‘“The general political direction of the [Western political] elite bears, without doubt, an anti-Christian and anti-religious character,” the patriarch said in comments aired on state-controlled television. ‘“We have been through an epoch of atheism, and we know what it is to live without God,” Patriarch Kirill said. “We want to shout to the whole world, ‘Stop!’”’ [“Who's 'godless' now? Russia says it's U.S.: Putin seizes on issue of traditional values,” by Marc Bennetts, The Washington Times, January 28, 2014]  Such sentiments can hardly sit well with Western elites for whom the same-sex partnerships decried by Putin (and placed by him on a moral level with belief in Satan) are esteemed as a mark of social enlightenment. That’s why an inseparable part of the “European choice” the people of Ukraine supposedly made during the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity” is wholesale acceptance of “European values,” including the kind of “Pride” symbolized by LGBT marches organized over Christian objections in Orthodox cities like Athens, Belgrade, Bucharest, Kiev, Odessa, Podgorica, Sofia, and Tbilisi. (Note that after the march in Odessa in August of this year a priest of the canonical Church targeted by Poroshenko cleansed the street with Holy Water.)  It is hard to assess exactly how significant the moral/sexual component of undermining Orthodoxy in Ukraine is, but there is no denying it is a factor. There is a curious consistency between advocacy for non-traditional, post-Christian sexual morality and support for the schismatic pseudo-Church sponsored by Poroshenko and Patriarch Bartholomew.  To start with, the relevant US government officials cheering the church schismatics are also up-front and visible in Ukraine in their advocacy of the LGBT agenda. The US Embassy Kiev website displays Pompeo’s declaration on behalf of all Americans that “The United States joins people around the world in celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) Pride Month, and reaffirms its commitment to protecting and defending the human rights of all, including LGBTI persons.” As of this writing, the press release describing the Secretary’s call to “Metropolitan” Dumenko appears just below the “Pride Month” message.  Ambassador Yovanovitch has really gone the extra mile – literally. Not only did she tweet out her Pride message, she also participated in the parade (and took 60 Embassy personnel and family members with her!) proudly marching behind the American flag. Your tax dollars at work! (Must watch video posted by HromadskeUA, an “independent” Ukrainian media outlet reportedly funded by, among others, the US Embassy, the Canadian Embassy, and George Soros’s International Renaissance Foundation, though the cited HromadskeUA financial reports no longer seem to be available.) Both Yovanovitch’s remarks in the video and the posted text draw an explicit connection between the “freedom” of the 2014 regime change and the new sexual morality (Google autotranslation from Ukrainian):  The locals were quick to make the same connection. “KyivPride,” a local LGBT advocacy group supported by (surprise, surprise) the US Embassy, the Canadian government, the German embassy, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and Freedom House were quick to hail creation of the new pseudo-church, no doubt reflecting the deep piety of the group’s members. As posted by OrthoChristian.com, The organization posted a message on several platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, reading:  ‘KyivPride congratulates all LGBTI Orthodox believers on the formation of a united and independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church and reminds everyone that love does no harm to others! Also remember that article 35 of the constitution of Ukraine states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of personal philosophy and religion. This right includes the freedom to profess or not to profess any religion.” Human rights above all!’


talkingpointsmemo--2019-03-21--Even A Church Is Dunking On Trump For His McCain Comments

The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. clapped back at President Donald Trump Thursday, with a spokesman clarifying that no funerals held there, including the late Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ), require the approval of a President.  “Washington National Cathedral was honored to host the funeral service for Senator John McCain. All funerals and memorial services at the Cathedral are organized by the family of the deceased; only a state funeral for a former President involves consultation with government officials,” said Chief Communications Officer Kevin Eckstrom in a statement. “No funeral at the Cathedral requires the approval of the President or any other government official.”  Trump took credit for giving McCain the “funeral he wanted” during a speech on Wednesday, proceeding to complain that he wasn’t thanked for the ceremony.  The funeral McCain wanted excluded Trump from the proceedings but included former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, a rebuke that, along with McCain’s no vote on the Obamacare skinny repeal, Trump just can’t seem to shake.