As the great Tip O’Neill once said: “All politics is local.”
It seems that our down-the-Bay neighbor, Santa Clara, has a gen-u-ine homophobe running for city council:
Santa Clara’s council races … may include echoes of a second issue larger than local politics: gay marriage.
One of [councilmember Jamie McLeod’s] two challengers, Ciaran O’Donnell, has attended city council meetings to protest gay marriage and picketed outside county headquarters in San Jose on June 17, the first day gay and lesbian couples were allowed to marry in Santa Clara County. McLeod is one of a handful of openly gay elected officials here.
“I think it will be probably a painful race for the LGBT community, and also for my partner, when they hear the focus of the discussion,” McLeod said Monday.
O’Donnell, a software engineer, could not be reached for comment.
So, who is this O’Donnell character, who thinks he’s better than we are?
Ciaran O’Donnell is the previous owner of a defunct domain for an apparently defunct Santa Clara-based software consulting business, Joseph Media Tools. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, we can see that if the design of the Web site was any reflection of the quality of services offered, it’s little wonder Joseph Media Tools is dead.
According to the 2006 version of the archived site, “Joseph Media Tools was established in July 2002 in Santa Clara (California, USA) and began operation as a full time consulting business three months later.” The plan was to incorporate in 2004, but a search of California business entities shows no “Joseph Media Tools” registered as either a corporation or LLC (limited liability company)… so, it looks like that idea never took off — nor did the stated goals to “achieve profitability by October 2004″ and “build up name recognition.”
Wading further through the nearly-unreadable “about” page, we also learn that Joseph Media Tools was named for St. Joseph the Worker. So, we’ve got a Catholic here. No problem with that — although anyone compelled to marry his religiosity with his business doesn’t get my business. (I’m actually grateful for the born-again business owner who displays an ichthys on his storefront or in his Yellow Pages listing; I consider it a warning to stay away.)
O’Donnell also, ever-so-helpfully, tells us that “San Jose in Spanish means St. Joseph.” (Gee, ya think maybe those of us who live here might know that already?)
Finally, we find O’Donnell’s biography:
Dr. Ciaran G. O’Donnell, is a native of Glasgow Scotland. He began attending the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada in 1973 at age 16 receiving a Bachelor of Mathematics with a computer science major in 1979. On graduation he accepted a position as researcher at INRIA (Institut National de Recherche d’Informatique et Automatique). In the summer of 1980 he implemented YACC during a two week visit to Chicago, a feat then considered impossible. His UNIX version 7 port began at INRIA was used as the basis for most French designed UNIX systems. As a full time independent consultant between 1982 and 1991 he developed an optimizing compiler for the Motorola 88000, managed a team of 3 engineers, implemented UNIX ports for several major customers (one sold 30.000 copies) and specified and financed the development of his own UNIX based work station. From 1992 and 1995 as a professor at ENST (Ecole Nationale Superieure he Telecommunications) he published and managed five Ph.D candidates. …
Boring stuff? Yeah… but it’s worth noting that O’Donnell was born, and spent the first 38 years of his life, overseas. “So?” you ask. “You got a problem with foreigners?” Heck, no — it’s no secret that I’m completely pro-immigrant (I wouldn’t be here myself if my great-grandparents didn’t get offa da boat at Ellis Island), so that’s not the issue.
Allow me to digress (as usual).
After spending my young adulthood living all over California, I returned, some 17 years ago, to the town I grew up in. My family has lived in the Bay Area (from San Francisco to Gilroy) since the turn of the 20th century, and my parents lived in this town since 1948, when the land where Yahoo! and Google and Sun Microsystems now stand was endless acres of fruit orchards. (In fact, I grew up on an apricot orchard, which no longer exists.)
In the 1970s and 80s, my still-small but now-tony ‘burb was discovered by the nouveau riche, and today my neighbors include Hollywood celebrities, sports stars, and high-profile business moguls living in multi-million-dollar mansions — while I’m here only because my blue-collar, immigrant family has always been here. (In other words, I could never afford to buy my way in now.)
At not-quite-47, I’m older than all but one member of my city council, and have lived here far longer than any of them.
The point: Aside from the reddish political climate I’m always bucking in my town, there’s little that ticks me off more than some newbie who moves in and, within months, starts writing letters to the local paper and showing up at city council meetings to tell us old-timers what’s wrong with our town, and how he’s got the solutions to all its perceived problems.
The real point: I wouldn’t dream of moving to another country at nearly forty years old, and trying to impose my “American values” on that country, at any point during the rest of my life. Oh, I might have the right to try in any number of Western, democratic nations, but I wouldn’t have the audacity to, say, move to France, and inform the populace that my 21st-century Yankee Doodle Dandyism (which, incidentally, wouldn’t exist at all were it not for the French Navy) trumped their 200 years of enlightened, secular democracy.1
That’s the issue. Ciaran O’Donnell is trying to impose his “values” — wherever and however they may have (d)evolved — on a place with which he has precious little history. He has the right, but when his “values” infringe directly on my rights, then that’s where I draw the line in the sand.
This guy is attempting to hurt me, hurt my wife, and hurt every other gay and lesbian American, directly, deliberately, and personally. He’s the neighborhood newbie who’s moved in and is telling us old-timers, who have spent our entire lives fighting for our equality (and our very lives), what’s wrong with our town, and how he’s got all the answers to “problems” which exist nowhere but in his own diseased imagination.
That’s when I say: If you don’t like what’s happening in California… Well, I’d like to say “Love it or leave it,” but more to the point would be: “If you want a country run by religion, move to Iran.”
Back to O’Donnell’s bio:
The focus of Dr. O’Donnell work has been in low level systems software and hardware, specifically operating systems, compiler technology, and parallel architectures. Dr. O’Donnell holds six patents in the areas of computing technology, has published in PACT conferences and elsewhere, and has taught courses at IBM. His Ph.D thesis in compiling for superscalar architectures is available for downloading at this web site. He obtained a Masters degree in computing systems from the University Pierre et Marie Curie in 1981 and his Ph.D from ENST in 1994. He is a member of the ACM and the IEEE consultants network.
Well, that’s impressive. None of that makes up for his abominable lack of Web-design skills — but then, I know absolutely nothing about “compiling for superscalar architectures,” either. Still, it’s too bad O’Donnell didn’t stick to what he does well.
OK, OK, enough snark. For now.
Dr. O’Donnell has been living in Santa Clara since 1998. He is active as an officer in council 10180 of the Knights of Columbus and is a sponsor of other activities including Help One Child and Save The Children.
And there you have it: the Knights of Columbus. That explains everything.
For you non-Catholics2 (and Catholics who never really paid attention, which is, like, most Catholics), the Knights of Columbus is the world’s largest Catholic fraternal (literally, men-only) organization — and the most virulent, mean-spirited, radically right-wing, aggressively anti-gay faction of Catholics in the United States.
The Knights operate under a veil of secrecy that makes Freemasonry look practically transparent, employ war-like imagery worthy of— well, OK, I won’t go there, wear archaic uniforms with fuzzy Napoleonic hats, and answer to a “Supreme Knight.”
The Knights also operate entirely within the framework of the Dark Ages dogma that saw a steady stream of homos, scarlet women, left-handed vegetarians and other sundry heretics roasting over an open fire for hundreds of years. (The way some Catholic apologetics justify burning at the stake tells me there are more than a few who would like to see the practice revived.)
You and I might find it tragically ironic that the KoC is named after the imperialistic, Native American-slaughtering, anti-Semitic, convert-’em-or-kill-’em, delusional end-of-timer Catholic crusader Christopher Columbus3 — but the Knights see nothing tragic or ironic about it.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the Knights are among the biggest backers of Proposition 8, the anti-marriage equality amendment slated for the California ballot this November. Just this past Monday, the Knights ponied up $1 million (a drop in the bucket for these fatcats, who are rich beyond words by way of an extremely lucrative insurance program) to the anti-equality brigades who are trying to strip gay Californians of our right to legal marriage.4,5
So, back to Ciaran O’Donnell: Here you’ve got this super-intelligent computer dude with very little street smarts and zero compassion, who’s such a far-right fundy Catholic that he’d fit right in at a BBQ at Mel Gibson’s dad’s house, and who — I can only surmise — prefers the United States because Canada and France were too liberal for him.
What else can one deduce?
The United States is a puritan’s paradise, after all; ours is the last “modern” nation that puts up with such blatant, shameless, and societally-sanctioned attempts to destroy the Constitution and turn our democratic republic into a theocracy. O’Donnell must be in heaven here.
And now, the rest of the story — or, why Ciaran O’Donnell must not be allowed, in any official capacity, to pollute the Santa Clara City Council with his particularly noxious brand of poison.
From the San Jose Mercury News, June 18, 2008, “Same-sex marriage opponents fear damage to social fabric“:
While same-sex marital bliss blossomed on the 10th floor of the Santa Clara County building on West Hedding Street on Tuesday morning, Ciaran O’Donnell stood out front, holding a handmade watercolor protest poster, a lonely sentry trying to keep this gay new world at bay.
“I’m saddened and disturbed by what’s happening in there,” said O’Donnell, a 51-year-old computer engineer from Santa Clara lifting a sign with the message that “Gay Marriage is a Fairy Tale” high above his head.
“Fairy tale”? Are the “faggot” jokes soon to follow?
Same-sex marriage “fundamentally undermines our value system and the way we have raised children since evolution got started.”
“Since evolution got started”? What in the name of Charles Darwin is that supposed to mean? And just when did evolution “get started,” Ciaran? Sometime after Genesis 1:1 — say, about six thousand years ago?
It was a morning of unfortunate and uncomfortable history for O’Donnell, a lone public surrogate for millions of Californians opposed to the concept of gay and lesbian knots being tied throughout the state.
Lone nutcase, if you ask me. Oh, we’ve got more than our share of jerks out here in sunny California, but most of them don’t pull the Fred Phelps act on the courthouse steps all by their nasty little lonesomes.
“This is a question of the public good,” he said, while several lesbian couples shouted obscenities at him as they left the building. “We are social animals and we need structure, like marriage between a man and a woman, to survive.” …
Hey, Mister Ph.D., the “human species is doomed because gay marriage will make straight people run away and be gay!” crapola (or is this the “marriage is for the sole purpose of procreation” crapola?) is so passé — and stupid: Have you noticed that the animal kingdom continues to procreate quite nicely in harmony with all the natural homosexual activity going on within? Or are you trying to tell us that if we allowed animals of the same sex to marry one another, procreation would stop dead?
Whatever path your twisted ill-logic takes, can’t you come up with something more original? (Well, judging from your atrocious Web site “design,” I guess it should be obvious you’ve never bothered your brain with a single, original thought of its own, as that would require creativity.)
(Again off the topic of O’Donnell for a moment, there’s a fascinating little nugget buried in this news article: “But religious postulation [against marriage equality] is too easy — both for gay-marriage opponents to espouse and for its supporters to mock, said Peter Sprigg, who prefers a public-policy tack. As a vice president for policy with the Family Research Council, Sprigg is counting on the highly publicized gay weddings this week to fuel support for November’s measure, defining marriage in California as a union between a man and a woman. Sprigg says focusing on individual couples, gay or straight, is missing the larger point.” Stop right there. I know what Sprigg said, but on first (and second, and third) reading, this is what I’m hearing: “Don’t focus on individual couples. Don’t put a human face on this issue. We’ve got to keep the enemy faceless.”)
Also from the Merc (same day), “A historic ‘I do’ in California:
Still, software engineer Ciaran O’Donnell, the only protester outside the Santa Clara County building Tuesday morning, felt he had to do something to express his disapproval of gay marriage.
“It’s a question of the public good and the balance of power,” said O’Donnell, 51, from Santa Clara. “I’m out here just standing up for what I believe.”
“Balance of power?” What you really mean is that you want all the power.
Well, Ciaran, you’re not going to get it. This is still the United States of America, and, like it or lump it, I am still as Good As You. Maybe better, since I’m not devoting my life to ruining yours.
I trust the voters of Santa Clara to see right through you and your destructive, anti-American agenda, and vote accordingly.
What else we know about Ciaran O’Donnell:
• He was once a senior member of the IEEE Consultants’ Network of Silicon Valley (CNSV) of Sunnyvale, California.
• In 2004, he was secretary of the Santa Clara Valley Section of the IEEE (PDF). In 2005, he was vice chair of the group, and by this time was working for Conexant Systems in Cupertino (PDF).
• He is (currently, we think) employed as a staff software engineer (small picture at link) by Santa Clara-based Intelleflex (and has an interest in Big-Brother RFID chips).
• He belongs to the Sunnyvale French Language Meetup Group, the South Bay Spanish Conversation Group, and, oh, yes, the San Jose Pro Marriage Amendment Meet-Up Group, which, as of this writing, has had eight meetups so far (at 2102 Ardis Drive, San Jose, CA 95125; the fools made the group private, but the residential address where they meet, they left public!)… with a total of seven members — *snort!*. (You can see another, clearer picture of O’Donnell at any of the above Meetup links).6
• He has a Classmates.com page.
• He’s way smart about computer science theory so boring it would put Blaise Pascal into a coma.
• He’s interested in cloning, genetic engineering and/or stem cell research.
• In 2003, he made a donation to El Retiro (a.k.a. the Jesuit Retreat Center) in Los Altos — but gave less than $100 (PDF).
• The street address for Joseph Media Tools is a private residence in Santa Clara.
1 Bad example, actually; if I moved to France (which I wouldn’t do, because my French sucks, and they’ve got enough problems with foreigners without another stupid American there), I’d be hard-pressed to find anything to complain about as far as politics goes.
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2 I’m an ex-Catholic (by choice; I haven’t been excommunicated yet, but I expect to be any day now), so don’t jump on me for any criticism of the church; I’ve got “Catholic cred.”
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3 I’m an Italian-American, and, frankly, I don’t know whether I’m more ashamed to share my heritage with Christopher Columbus or Benito Mussolini. It’s a draw, I guess… but then there are all those Inquisition-era Popes… In any case, I hate Columbus Day, and wish it would be abolished. There is nothing to celebrate about a murderous religious tyrant — and one so stupid he thought he’d found India when he was tooling around the Caribbean.
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4 It should also come as no surprise that the Knights of Columbus were responsible for injecting those two little words “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance. That was in 1954, which, despite the act’s inherent hostility toward non-believers, is just a blip on the Catholic timeline of persecution — but a milestone in the Knights’ neverending mission to carry on the ignoble tradition of the early church: to utterly annihilate any wall of separation between church and state (and anyone, for that matter, who tries to stand in their way); to create not merely a “Christian nation,” but the Catholic empire that once nearly was. As far as the Knights are concerned, the Crusades never ended.
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5 Here’s another story about the Knights of Columbus and their war on gay folk (links to quote sources follow):
In 2003, Tracey Smith and Deborah Chymyshyn, a lesbian couple in Canada, were looking for a wedding venue. They booked a rental hall owned by the Knights of Columbus, and a contract was signed — but the couple didn’t realize at the time that the Knights were a Catholic organization (believable; many Catholics themselves have no clue who the Knights are), and Sandra Hauser, the wife of one of Smith’s co-workers, “who booked the hall for the couple, testified that it didn’t occur to her that they were marrying each other, saying she believed they could have been friends or mother and daughter” (completely unbelievable, unless this Hauser woman is totally stupid).
Somebody finally figures out that Smith and Chymyshyn are lesbians, the Knights cancel the contract — “weeks after [Smith and Chymyshyn] had already paid their deposit and sent out their wedding invitations” — and, next thing you know, the Knights, in exchange for reimbursing costs, want the couple to sign “a legal waiver releasing the Knights from further obligations.” That prompts the brides-to-be to file a complaint with the human rights tribunal of British Columbia.
While the tribunal is mulling things over, David Hauser (husband of the dull-witted woman who booked the hall) is insisting Smith and Chymyshyn must have known the hall was owned by the Knights, and that the Knights are Catholic, and — get this — that the women booked the hall deliberately, just to make a political statement and embarrass the Catholic church!
Hauser: “These weren’t a couple of young people who made a simple mistake. To me, the plan to book a Catholic hall and then lodge a human rights complaint was just another attempt to gain acceptance for the gay rights agenda.”
And: “‘In retrospect, they picked a time when they knew I would be at work to call my wife Sandra, who shows the hall when I am unavailable,’” Hauser said. He is convinced the entire fiasco was orchestrated before the event.”
Yeah. Right. Uh-huh. We queers are getting married just to embarrass bigots like you, Hauser. As if you needed our help to look like a complete ass; you’re doing a bang-up job, all on your own. (Oh, and nice backhanded slap at The Little Woman, too, Dave-O.)
And: “Hauser did not suspect anything when he read the names on the rental agreement, because he only knew Tracey at work by her first name.”
Excuse me for a moment while I clean the spray of a coffee spit-take off my monitor… There’s, that’s better. Now, Dave-O, you expect us to believe that Smith and Chymyshyn absolutely, positively knew who the hall belonged to, yet you absolutely, positively, could not have known the last name of your co-worker, and you didn’t question, for even one fleeting second, the name “Tracey” for a man? Would you have accepted a “Marion” at face value? How about a “Leslie”? A “Carol”?
And tell us, Dave-O: How did your wife address the two women when they met? Did they not give their names? Is The Little Missus such an idiot that she didn’t make the connection between the Tracey Smith standing in front of her and the Tracey Smith on the rental agreement?
(Geez, these Radical Wrongies must think everyone is as stupid as they are.)
Anyway…
In the end, the tribunal ruled that church organizations have the right to deny the use of facilities for purposes in conflict with the organization’s “core religious beliefs” (and, contrary to the hysteria-mongering of the Radical Religionists, we agree wholeheartedly with the tribunal about this), but that “the Knights did so in a way that affronted the same-sex couple’s dignity, feelings and self-respect and should pay them $1,000 each, as well as reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses to compensate for their injuries.”
So, that’s all well and good. Except… the story doesn’t end there.
In a totally unrelated matter, David Hauser was sacked from his job at Costco for “reasons directly related to … workplace performance or employment”; Costco told radical-religionist rag LifeSiteNews.com that it could not elaborate further “without violating our own confidentiality rules which protect our current and former employees,” but was never “influenced in [the decision to fire Hauser] by any unrelated activity outside the course of employment.”
But, of course, when the Radical Righties got hold of the story, it was twisted into “news” stories and blog posts screaming hysterically about Christian persecution at the hands of “very opnely gay … homosexual actvists” who “set up” Hauser and the Knights. Meh! You know the drill by now — but for your edification and masochistic entertainment, here’s just a few choice screamers:
Gay Brownshirts on the March!
Catholic and Enjoying It!
Costco Fires Catholic Who Denied Knights of Columbus Hall for Lesbian “Marriage”
Man Struggling to Support Three Small Children Faces Loss of Home
LifeSiteNews.com
Costco Persecutes Catholic Father Before Christmas
Catholic Light
Costco fires K of C member over refusal to rent hall for lesbian wedding
Bettnet.com
Persecuted for Christ’s sake, will the church help?
Sunny Days in Heaven
Costco fires employee for denying K of C hall to lesbians
De Civitate Dei
Homosexual Activists in Europe, Canada Using Government to Silence Opposition
How Soon Before It Hits the U.S.?
Center for American Cultural Renewal
Finally, this follow-up, from a site so hysterically anti-gay, it makes Pat Robertson look like an ally:
BC Human Rights Chief Commissioner “a motorcycle-riding lesbian”, Georgia Straight
Mary Woo Sims is an example of a Homosexual Activist converting one of our Government positions into a stronghold of Homosexual Activism. … Our Courts -particularly Family Courts - are reported to be similarly occupied.
(Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Whoever’s behind that last cesspool of a site is such a whackjob, I feel extreme pity for Canada — but a wave of relief that said whackjob doesn’t live in my backyard.)
Anyway, about Hauser’s claims of persecution, Costco told LifeSiteNews.com simply:
“The [original LifeSiteNews.com] article regarding our former employee in Canada repeats a false accusation against our company.”
We believe Costco. And not just because we got a fantastic deal on an infrared space heater there last winter.
Here’s the kicker: Hauser himself, in one of his many whining sessions with LifeSiteNews.com, offers a clue about the real reason for his dismissal (when he could have kept his mouth shut):
Hauser’s very openly gay boss, Mike Checko, who Hauser claims was a friend of Smith’s, fired Hauser. Hauser contends that his firing was completely without cause. He said his letter of release cited “violence in the workplace,” allegedly committed in early August 2004. Hauser related that he and his wife were on vacation for two weeks during the early to mid-weeks of August. Another homosexual co-worker alleged in writing that Hauser had said he wanted to meet a fellow worker outside after work for a brawl.
“The workplace was absolute trouble for me — the manager of the 225 employee Costco warehouse constantly badgered me about it [the rental-hall issue].” Hauser said the homosexuals in management at the store “constantly tried to lure him into arguments.”
Poor baby! The Vast Homosexual Conspiracy has set its sights on you, Dave-O! First those nasty ‘mos set you up to play the fool on the hall issue, and then they set you up and got your fired. Pardon my French, but: Damn, Dave! You’re ever so much smarter than we are! You’ve figured out Teh Homosexual Agenda: to destroy the lives of good, honest, peaceful, loving, tolerant Christians like you, one at a time. Why, I bet you’ve even figured out that our Vast Homosexual Network has permanently blackballed you, and you’ll never, ever work again! Bwahahahahahaha!
(You know, I bet Dave-O is just the sort of “Christian” paranoiac who thinks the Jews control all the banks. If only we queers had as much power as they ascribe to us.)
Sources:
Mainstream news, neutral:
B.C. tribunal awards lesbian couple damages
CTV.ca, November 30, 2005
Christian, anti-gay, but saner than most:
Mixed reactions greet tribunal’s ruling in hall rental case
Interim, January, 2006
Christian, rabidly, hysterically, insanely, frothing-spittle-at-the-corners-of-their-twisted-lips anti-gay:
Photos of Port Coquitlam, B.C. Knights of Columbus Hall Dispute Lesbians’ Claims
LifeSiteNews.com, December 9, 2005
Costco Replies to Numerous Complaints Regarding Fired Knight of Columbus
LifeSiteNews.com, December 21, 2005
Read more about the Knights of Columbus and other right-wing extremist Catholics, and their neverending crusade against equality and freedom:
Roman Catholic Rightists: Organizations Press For Anti-Liberal Causes
John M. Swomley, The Human Quest, July-August, 1996
The extreme religious sect which fuelled the passion of Mel Gibson
George Kerevan, The Scotsman, March 20, 2004
Bush Activates Right-Wing Base
Feminist Majority Foundation, August 4, 2004
Man facing bomb charges to be arraigned
Baltimore Sun, June 10, 2006
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6 Before any of these enemies of freedom wise up, those of you following the connections of Prop 8 backers take note: Meetup.com is a treasure trove of information. Go to the main page for the “San Jose Pro Marriage Advocates”, take a look under “Meetup topics,” and click the link “Pro Marriage Amendment.” Now scroll down and look under the heading “Waiting for a new Pro Marriage Amendment Meetup Group.” There you’ll find “3 San Jose Pro Amendment Advocates” who “have signed up to be invited when a new Pro Marriage Amendment Meetup Group starts.” Two are using what one can reasonably assume are their real names; one has her picture posted.
NO, I do not advocate harassing anyone — but I do believe that if these gay-bashers are so firm in their convictions and proud of their bigotry, there’s not a thing in the world wrong with identifying every last one of them. Me, I like to know which of my neighbors hate me. And I also like to know where the people who hate me are employed, so I can avoid patronizing those businesses. Why contribute even one thin dime to people who are going to use my own money against me?
I don’t have the time or inclination to check out these three Meetup members, but I’m sure their neighbors will recognize them (at least two of them).
(Isn’t it amazing [and pathetic] that there are people who have nothing better to do with their sorry lives than organize actively against my happiness? If they were such good Christians, they’d be out feeding the homeless instead of plotting to reduce me to permanent second-class citizenship. And people who think their happiness depends on my pain should be spending their time figuring out what’s wrong with their crappy marriages and fixing them, instead of blaming their misery on my joy.)
For more fun with Meetup, play with the search engine. I typed just the word “marriage” into the “Topic or Interest” field, then asked for anything within 100 miles of Zip code 95125. The second hit (right after the San Jose group) was the Sacramento iSupportMarriage Meetup Group — which is not private, and links to the profiles of some 33 equality-haters.
Also of interest: A link to the profiles of another ten equality-haters waiting for a local Traditional Values Coalition Meetup Group to start. (And, oh, looky! One — who also belongs to Meetup groups for Savage Nation, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Dennis Prager, et al. — lives about two miles from me. Gosh, a gen-u-ine, equal-opportunity-hatin’ dittohead freeper right in my own backyard!)
For even more links, check out the “Greetings” members sometimes leave on others’ profile pages.
I swear, you could spend the rest of your life researching connections just through Meetup alone. Well, I could. And if each of us could chip away one small piece of the anti-gay monolith at a time, through identifying the people actively working to curtail our American birthright, then we’ll “starve the beast” — and I’m not talking about taxes.
Posted by: Sapphocrat
Filed under:
California,
Canada,
Catholicism,
Civil Rights,
Election 2008,
Europe,
Homophobia,
Marriage Equality,
Radical Religious Right,
United Kingdom & N.I.
August 7, 2008
ACLU Reminds “America’s Toughest Sheriff”
That He’s Not Above The Law
PHOENIX — August 7 — The American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion yesterday to hold Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio in contempt for disobeying a court order that would allow women prisoners in Maricopa County to obtain timely, safe, and legal abortions. In addition, today’s motion asks the court to provide additional safeguards for women prisoners seeking abortion care.
“Arizona courts have clearly ruled that prison officials cannot stand in the way of the medical needs of women prisoners,” said Brigitte Amiri, a staff attorney for the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. “It’s regrettable that we need to take extra steps to ensure that Sheriff Arpaio follows the law.”
At issue in the original case was an unwritten Maricopa County Jail policy prohibiting jail officials from transporting a prisoner to obtain an abortion unless she first got a court order. In August 2005, the Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County, struck down the unwritten policy, holding that it violated women’s reproductive rights and served “no legitimate penological purpose.” The Arizona Court of Appeals upheld that decision; both the Arizona and the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
In May of 2008, prison officials defied the courts by continuing to enforce the unwritten policy when a woman prisoner, “Mary Roe,” requested transportation for an abortion. When Roe’s lawyer spoke with Sheriff Arpaio’s Deputy Chief, John McIntyre, who had been involved in the original case and knew the court’s decision, he failed to tell her that inmates must be transported for abortion care without a court order. It took the ACLU’s intervention to ensure that prison officials followed the law; still, their initial non-compliance delayed Roe’s abortion by four weeks.
“The courts have already confirmed our position that Arizona prison officials cannot ignore the medical needs of prisoners simply because they do not agree with the decision to end a pregnancy,” said Alessandra Soler Meetze, Executive Director of the ACLU of Arizona. “Now, given the disregard of the court ruling by Sheriff Arpaio and his staff, it appears that we need to spell out the law more clearly to protect future women detainees.”
The motion asks the court to require the jail to post signs in both English and Spanish informing prisoners of their right to be transported. In addition, all employees would be required to sign a statement acknowledging that they have been informed of the law.
Today’s case is Doe v. Arpaio, CV2004-009286. Lawyers on the case include Amiri and Talcott Camp with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, and Dan Pochoda of the ACLU of Arizona.
To read the ACLU’s motion, visit: www.aclu.org/reproductiverights/…
Further reading:
Overthrow Arpaio
Ill-treatment of inmates in Maricopa County jails, Arizona
In June 1997 an Amnesty International delegation visited Maricopa County, Arizona, to collect information on the treatment of inmates in the local jails and the conditions under which they are kept. The visit followed concern about allegations of ill-treatment of prisoners and the death of inmate Scott Norberg in Madison Street Jail on 1 June 1996, after he was placed in a restraint chair.
Amnesty International
Iceland 5, Arpaio 0
Iceland’s supreme court has upheld the decision of a lower-court judge who had refused to extradite Connie and Donald Hanes to Maricopa County because of conditions in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jails.
Tony Ortega, Phoenix New Times, October 23, 1997
Sheriff runs female chain gang
“I got meal costs down to 40 cents a day per inmate. It costs $1.15 a day to feed the department’s dogs. Now, I’m cutting prisoners’ calories from 3,000 to 2,500 a day,” the sheriff said during a recent tour of his tent city.
Reuters, October 29, 2003
Dog Day Afternoon
Sheriff Joe’s goons launched an assault to make a misdemeanor arrest. The Raid left a burned house, a terrified neighborhood and a dead dog
John Dougherty, Phoenix New Times, August 5, 2004
Jailhouse Webcams: Courts aren’t seeing their way clear
A federal appellate court, in the case of Demery v. Arpaio, has ruled that the use of Webcams in prisons violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution by constituting improper punishment of pre-trial detainees. As such, the particular county sheriff in the case, and presumably sheriffs in other counties, no longer can invite the entire world into their facilities via Webcams to view activities and circumstances of pre-trial detainees.
Eric J. Sinrod, USA Today, September 1, 2004
‘It was a hotbed of violence’
British stockbroker Shaun Attwood spent two years in the Maricopa County Jail system for money laundering and drugs offences. Here, he shares his experiences of human rights abuses in the US prison system run by the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Guardian Weekly, August 1, 2007
Breathtaking Abuse of the Constitution
Joe Arpaio, Andy Thomas and Dennis Wilenchik hit New Times with grand jury subpoenas
Michael Lacey, Jim Larkin, Phoenix New Times, October 18, 2007
Jury awards $9M in jail death
Carol Agster had little to say Friday after walking out of a federal courthouse in downtown Phoenix. The 72-year-old Scottsdale woman let the $9 million verdict she had just won against Maricopa County, the sheriff ’s office and Correctional Health Services do the talking.
Gary Grado, East Valley Tribune, March 25, 2006
Local attorney speaking out against Sheriff Arpaio
Attorney Michael Manning represents several families who claim their loved ones died in MCSO custody, and he blames the guards. In an article posted online and given to 12 News, Manning also accuses the Sheriff’s office of destroying evidence. He also said the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors ignored repeated warnings from consultants that said the jails were inhumane and unsafe.
Melissa Gonzalo, 12 News, April 14, 2008
New Times owners sue Sheriff Joe Arpaio, County Attorney Andy Thomas and lawyer Dennis Wilenchik
When New Times’ “fair criticism” became too much … Arpaio, Thomas and Wilenchik “flexed their politicial muscle in the form of a conspiracy. They abused their governmental authority by attacking the press, punishing free speech, demeaning the role and function of an impartial prosecutor and an independent judiciary, perverting the grand jury process, and serving notice to citizens who read news on-line that neither their identities nor their reading habits are safe from the reach of vindictive government officials and their confederates.”
Paul Rubin, Phoenix New Times, April 28, 2008
Sheriff Joe wants to read Phil Gordon’s e-mail
Sarah Fenske, Phoenix New Times, May 15, 2008
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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