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Tuesday, October 09, 2018

This post is for you, Douglas Gary Wardlow.

Source: http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html

Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

[...]Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.


Article 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Italics added. The suggestion of healthcare as a right is inescapable. The right to be left alone and free of bigotry is inescapable. Of particular interest, Article 25,

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Douglas Gary Wardlow, can you read? More important, can you comprehend?

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An undated item from John Lesch, clear in its context, quoted in full:

Today’s Vote on Gay Marriage

I grew up in a pretty strict Catholic family. Nothing bad was said about gay folks, but there was an understanding that gay was not a good way to be. My family thought what most other folks did at that time – that being gay was a choice. Growing up, I made the same gay slurs as any other teenage boy. We played “smear the queer” in the back yard, a game where you threw the football to another player. In this game, whomever had the ball was the target for everyone else, not just to tackle, but to demolish – unless he threw the ball to someone else first. So, no, it was not good to be “the queer.” Honestly I cannot even imagine why they called the game that. I suppose it was the only word a teenage boy could think of that rhymed with “smear.” Regardless, the first context in which I ever understood the word “queer” was with that game. At the same time “gay” was, of course, an adjective used in place of “stupid” or “lame.” Why? I suppose for similar reasons as “queer” was used in the schoolyard game.

I grew up thinking I did not know any gay people. When you think you don’t know any gay people, ensuring that their equal rights are observed is the furthest thing from your mind. This mentality held true not only for my peers’ sexual orientation, but also their other qualities. I never considered whether I went to school with any Jewish or Muslim folks. In retrospect, I am sure I did, but my failure to actively consider their role in my life made me less prone to consider whether they were being treated fairly under the rules I took for granted. High school only reinforced my opinions on people who were different. I went through my junior and senior years of high school at Holy Name Seminary. I was contemplating the priesthood. I am not sure how many of my classmates were, but we all lived together in a big building in Madison, Wisconsin.

Then I got to college. When I went off to college, I lived in a house with a dozen other men. Several of them, halfway through my freshman year, came out as gay. I was shocked. But I had lived with these guys for half a year so my shock was limited to the realization that my gaydar was completely nonfunctional. Some young men who are insecure about their sexuality or about their feelings, might be extremely threatened by such a revelation. I was lucky enough not to be counted in that number. So I instead sought to understand. I asked the typical (and, in retrospect, annoying) questions like, “How did you know when you were gay?” They were pretty understanding about it. One of the men who came out was named Tony. In that first year of college, Tony pissed me off quite a bit. He was incessantly challenging all the opinions I had absorbed over the course of my sheltered adolescence in Fortress Suburbia, and in high school where I lived with white, observant Catholic males all with pretty much the same opinions (except for Alex Ullenberg, after whom Alex P. Keaton’s character could have been modeled).

Something else happened my freshman year. I got a call from Matt Pickos. Matt was my best friend in high school. Holy Name being a boarding high school, I rarely returned to Minnesota during the school year. Often, Matt invited me to come home with him over the weekends to hang out, so Matt and I became very close. I spent a lot of time cruising the back roads of Edgerton, Wisconsin, with Matt – getting in trouble, meeting girls, crashing cars (yes, that happened). Even back at school, Matt and I were inseparable. Sometime in my senior year, Matt developed an intense dislike for me. I never knew why. All of a sudden, we stopped hanging out, he stopped asking me to come home with him on the weekends, and ignored me in the dining hall. It continued through graduation where Matt, as the director of the yearbook staff, saved the one screwed up copy of the yearbook…for me.

So in that phone call from Matt in my freshman year of college I felt we had a lot to catch up on. I told him that a few guys in the house I lived at came out as gay. “Can you believe that?” I said. Matt responded, “John, you’re such an idiot. I’m gay.” I am sure I responded with something awkward and moronic. Matt and I still did not talk much after that. Our lives had changed. College changes so much. Even after Matt’s revelation, it took me years to realize how that played into Matt’s sudden anger toward me in high school. It felt like the fury of a man scorned, but I was too young, too naïve, to know what it meant. Most of this would not matter much in the context of current policy decisions facing the Minnesota legislature, but there is one additional reason it matters to me. Later that year, after Matt’s call, I got another call from Jason Phelps, a mutual high school friend of ours. Jason told me Matt was dead. Dead by his own hand. I went to Matt’s funeral. I was there with our other classmates. We approached the casket and I still remember what he looked like. He didn’t look like Matt at all. He had changed his appearance, as is the choice of so many freshmen. Matt looked gay. He looked like what would then, in the early 90s, have been the caricature of a gay man. Matt had struggled with so many things in his life. Being gay in a strict Catholic world was only one of them. But I often think how things would have changed for Matt if he had the same hope for happiness as I did. Like I said, Matt had his share of problems, so maybe it would have helped, maybe not. Regardless, I think about Matt a lot. We all thought of ourselves as tough. But Matt walked as a stranger in a strange land, with a toughness that none of us could know, with a silence that cost him so much.

So in that context, in my freshman year of college where it seemed my world had suddenly turned gay, I sought to learn a little more about all those who helped me understand those things from which I had been shielded for my entire life. Tony and Juan, my freshman house mates, were my partners in extended philosophical discussions about God and the nature of the universe, about human nature and service to the people in the poor neighborhood where we lived. Sometimes the conversation turned to sexual orientation, but infrequently. When it did, they were pretty matter of fact about it. It was just a part of who they were, just as liking girls was only a part of who I was. I learned to really respect Tony’s opinions, perspectives and challenges. I also saw him hazed and ridiculed by our own housemates. It was his reaction to that which I noticed more than anything. Tony had come out as gay in a hostile environment. It takes cojones to do that. It takes energy. Constant energy. And it is energy like his that is the reason we are here on the MN House floor today. We are here, voting on this bill, because people like Tony decided to take a risk on people like me.

So when I cast my vote today, I will do so on behalf of the hundreds of gay men and women I know who want to marry the person they love and be recognized as such with the same honor as I was when I married my sweetheart, Melissa, last September. I will cast my vote on behalf of all of them. But when I cast that vote, I will do so thinking of Matt and Tony, because they are the ones who struggled against the tide through which I so casually waded on my way to adulthood. So here goes, Matt and Tony, this one’s for you.

Learning IS feasible. Compassion is a virtue. Respect of others who differ is a trait of an educated person.
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In short: Don't be an asshole, despite ADF indoctrination that way. Avoid the stupidities of those seeing Bogeymen allover while having lesser capability and lesser education than you have been fortunate to have utilized.

And in saying that, I admit to seeing a vile Bogeyman afoot, and perhaps that is a personality defect. But I doubt it.

Beyond that, Douglas Gary Wardlow, have a nice day.

_________UPDATE__________
Look next to Article 23(1)
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

There is Douglas Gary Wardlow's ADF scalp on his tentpole. Using Hobby Lobby as a springboard, friend Wardlow prevailed as listed lead counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, Scottsdale, AZ, in EEOC v. RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes, Inc., 201 F. Supp. 3d 837 (E.D. Mich 2016); revd; EEOC v. RG &. GR Harris Funeral Homes, Inc., 884 F. 3d 560 (6th Cir. 2018), the appellate reversal indicating the case was argued by Wardlow, Oct. 4, 2017, thus proving he was still doing ADF bidding against worker rights on that date (see, ThinkProgress, "Is Alliance Defending Freedom a hate group? Just look at their work. -- If there's a way of discriminating, they support it. By: Zack Ford, Aug 18, 2018, 9:03 am).

Hatred of worker rights is not new to Wardlow, see Crabgrass here and this link (search= 3009). Also on the sidebar, at the Dave Thompson image.

Moreover, the reversal of that learned trial judge's finding novelty in Hobby Lobby, a new decision then, is absent in anything and everything Wardlow's posted online about himself. But is that a surprise to anybody? The man can sure edit his history, perhaps another post maybe needed on that theme.

A cert. petition is pending, ThinkProgress in the above linked item writing:

Employment discrimination

The next case ADF is attempting to get before the Supreme Court epitomizes its prejudice. ADF represents Michigan’s R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, who fired employee Aimee Stephens for being transgender. Stephens sued, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in Stephens’ favor this spring, concluding that Title VII’s nondiscrimination protections on the basis of sex must recognize transgender people for their gender identity.

But ADF wants the Supreme Court to overturn that opinion. In their cert petition, they argue that a ruling in Stephens’ favor will somehow “change what it means to be male and female,” which will have “widespread consequences.” This includes the wild claim that respecting trans people for who they are somehow “forbids employers and public schools from administering sex-specific policies like dress codes, living facilities, locker rooms, and restrooms based on sex.” Recognizing trans women as women also “impedes women’s advancement,” they argue, because opportunities for women (like playing in the WNBA) “must be opened to males who identify as women.” Perhaps unbeknownst to ADF, the WNBA already allows trans women to play.

ADF demonizes Stephens, suggesting that allowing her to follow the women’s dress code will “disrupt the healing process of grieving families.” The funeral home owner was also “concerned that female clients and staff would be forced to share restroom facilities with Stephens,” as if she’s somehow a threat just because she’s transgender.

If ADF convinces a conservative-majority court with their fear-mongering — which might not be that difficult given the current makeup of the bench — there will be nothing protecting transgender people from discrimination in the 30 states that have no explicit employment protections on the basis of gender identity. The inevitable legal interpretation of such a decision will likewise trample on similar efforts to protect transgender students under Title IX. It could set back LGBTQ rights by decades.

[links in original] See scotusblog.com. You simply have to love after the Starr/Kavanaugh crucifiction of Clinton and Lewinsky and joking about, "it depends on what you mean by sex," ADF clowns make a similar showing, but different in detail. Most people would commonly believe that the dignity each human deserves should have the 1964 act read expansively, in today's world. See: opening two preamble paragraphs, here and word search the item "dignity."

The 255p petition for cert filed JULY 20, 2018, does not list Wardlow as with ADF in its petitioning, although consultation may have been at play, the Wardlow private practice in Prior Lake perhaps ginning up a bit of barbarous cash flow; per a bit of attorney-client action. At 255 hairsplitting pages, make the guess "quite a bit of cash flow."

Given the Roberts batch of brigands, newly bolstered in number and anchored now further in its ways, a barbaric tortuously "reasoned" outcome can be foreseen.

That's about all for now.

____________FURTHER UPDATE____________
A new discovery reopens the post: Doug Wardlow writes, for FOX, and gets wrong the meaning of "dignity," and "self-evident" in a screed against the humane moods of today. The term "throwback homophoic candidate" most surely fits.

If there is anything that can help get-out-the-vote for DFL candidates in November, it is this creep being on the ballot. People, please show up in droves, and vote Ellison, no matter how much dirt the Parker-Monahan combo throws in hope it sticks. We face an existential need to hold the barbarians at the gate at bay.

____________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
And there is the Annie Lennox song. For Douglas Gary Wardlow. No, not that one, although it fits.

This one.