I can’t come up with a headline to do this justice. I had to stop to blog something I just discovered: a $50,000 donation to one of Gary Bauer’s anti-gay PACs. Base8 entry says it all:
Czech, Jeffery Joseph (Jeffery J. Czech & Associates) 14111 Freeway Dr #400 Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670 Phone: (562) 802-2159 / (714) 522-5553 Fax: (562) 802-1142 www.jeffczech.com office@jeffczech.com
Oh, the irony! The supreme hypocrisy! The scumbagginess! He plops fifty grand down to defend the world against loving, monogamous gay couples — and he’s Octomom Nadya Suleman’s lawyer!
Toxomom has received nothing but well-deserved national vilification for her repulsive attempt to turn the circumstances of her disgusting little experiment into “opportunities” to support her in a lifetime of easy living.
I guess the only Plan B she’s got left is to reveal the name of the spermdonor. A man who should certainly be responsible for the kids he agreed to procreate, if not for the ones he had not agreed to.
And what about making the sociopath of a doctor who was instrumental in this monstrously unconscionable act?
And finally what about Jeff Czech? A supposed advocate for the children who gets a percentage of every dollar they make. And a Christian Fundamentalist Marriage supporter who makes his buck off the backs of in-vitro fatherless babies by the dozen plus.
The Pride of Orange County, that one.
Who is going to haul his inept whatever into some legal organization that oversees the lack of ethics so shoddily dealt?
(Actually, he’s out of San Diego County, but “ICanHas” is right about everything else.)
AMERICANS UNITED TO PRESERVE MARRIAGE (ANTI-GAY) Jeffrey Czech Self Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670 08/25/2008 - $50,000.00
Ted Olson to Make Opening Statement in Prop. 8 Trial
Trial on Unconstitutionality of Prop. 8 Begins in U.S. District Court; Plaintiffs To Testify First
SAN FRANCISCO — January 11, 2010 — The federal trial over the unconstitutionality of Proposition 8 will begin Monday, January 11 with an opening statement by attorney Theodore Olson, who with David Boies is leading the legal team assembled by the American Foundation for Equal Rights to litigate the case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Opening statements will be followed by testimony from Kris Perry, Sandy Stier, Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, who comprise two couples who wish to be married but who were denied marriage licenses because of Proposition 8.
• Visit http://www.equalrightsfoundation.org for updates regarding potential broadcast of trial, photos, any available footage, court filings, live tweets from the courthouse and more.
Olson and Boies notably represented George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore respectively in the 2000 Supreme Court case that decided the presidency.
At trial, Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, will weigh witness testimony, a multitude of documents and other evidence, and arguments presented by some of the nation’s most distinguished attorneys.
“This unequal treatment of gays and lesbians denies them the basic liberties and equal protection under the law that are guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” the plaintiffs’ suit states.
According to the suit, Prop. 8:
• Violates the Due Process Clause by impinging on fundamental liberties.
• Violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
• Singles out gays and lesbians for a disfavored legal status, thereby creating a category of “second-class citizens.”
• Discriminates on the basis of gender.
• Discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.
Olson and Boies will also point out the “crazy quilt” of separate, unequal and unconstitutional classifications of people that Prop. 8 has compelled the California government to create:
• Opposite-sex couples who have full marriage rights
• Same-sex couples who have no marriage rights
• Same-sex couples married between May and Nov. 2008 whose current marriages are recognized, but who will be unable to remarry if widowed or divorced
• Same-sex couples married in other states who may petition California for recognition.
The defendants have the burden of demonstrating that Prop. 8 is narrowly drawn to serve a compelling government interest. Olson and Boies will demonstrate at trial, however, that the initiative fails to advance even a single legitimate interest. Tellingly, when asked by Chief Judge Walker at an Oct. 14 hearing to identify any harm to opposite-sex marriage that would result from marriage equality, the defendants’ attorney answered “I don’t know.”
The case against Prop. 8 has proceeded with uncommon speed toward trial. In an order issued after the first hearing in the case, Chief Judge Walker stated: “Given that serious questions are raised in these proceedings … the court is inclined to proceed directly and expeditiously to the merits of plaintiffs’ claims. … The just, speedy and inexpensive determination of these issues would appear to call for proceeding promptly to trial.”
“More than 30 years ago, the United States Supreme Court recognized that marriage is one of the basic rights of man,” the suit states, referring to the Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia.
Chad Griffin, board president of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, noted that near the time when the Supreme Court struck down interracial marriage bans with its 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, a Gallup poll found that 73 percent of Americans did not approve of interracial marriage.
While Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown were named defendants in their official capacities, along with other state and county officials, Prop. 8 is being defended in court by a prominent conservative organization, the Alliance Defense Fund. Gov. Schwarzenegger earlier filed a brief that did not dispute the unconstitutionality of Prop. 8, and called for swift action by the courts. Attorney General Brown, the state’s chief law enforcement officer, filed a brief agreeing with the plaintiffs’ position that Prop. 8 is unconstitutional.
The ACLU, Lambda Legal, and National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) are participating in the case as amici (friends of the court) in support of the plaintiffs. The City and County of San Francisco, led by City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Chief Deputy City Attorney Therese Stewart, are supporting the plaintiffs’ team as co-counsel, with a specific focus on the negative impact Prop. 8 has on government services and budgets. Herrera and Stewart led the legal battle toward the California Supreme Court decision that struck down California’s previous same-sex marriage ban.
Olson is a former U.S. Solicitor General and is widely regarded as one of the nation’s preeminent constitutional lawyers, and has argued 55 cases in the U.S. Supreme Court. Boies ranks as one of the leading trial lawyers of his generation, having secured landmark victories for clients in numerous areas of the law. This is the first time they have served alongside each other as co-counsel.
Kris Perry and Sandy Stier have been together for nine years and are the parents of four boys. Perry is Executive Director of First 5 California, a state agency that promotes education and health for children under five. She holds a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an MSW from San Francisco State University. Stier is Information Technology Director for the Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services Agency. She is originally from Iowa and is a graduate of the University of Iowa. Perry and Stier first tried to marry in 2004, after the City of San Francisco began issuing licenses. They live in Berkeley, CA.
Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo have been together for eight years. Katami is a fitness expert and business owner who graduated from Santa Clara University before receiving his graduate degree from UCLA. Zarrillo is the General Manager of a theater exhibition company. A native of New Jersey, Zarrillo graduated from Montclair State University. Having wanted to marry each other for more than two years, they considered options including traveling to other states for a “civil union,” but felt any alternative fell short of marriage. They live in Burbank, CA.
They have issued the following joint statement: “We and our relationships should be treated equally under the law. Our goal is to advance the cause of equality for all Americans, which is the promise that makes this nation so great.”
The New Jersey Senate Jan. 7 voted down “The Freedom of Religion and Equality in Civil Marriage Act,” the bill that — if signed by Gov. John Corzine — would have made the Garden State the sixth state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage.
After hours of debate, the Senate saw an end vote of 20 against, and 14 for. There were 4 abstentions and 2 senators absent.
Garden State Equality, the grassroots organization fighting for same-sex marriage in the state, aim to continue the fight. …
Prior to the vote, the Senate heard remarks from Senator Sandra Cunningham (D). A descendant of African American slaves, Cunningham detailed America’s “history of inequity for black people” and said, “I cannot in good conscience not support anyone’s fight… to have a kind of life that we all want to have.
“All of us have a right to dignity, a right to love, and a right to respect.”
UPDATE: All the Maine donors (including those from outside Maine) have been imported into Base8. While we are researching each record as you read this, these records are mostly raw data and unsorted — but they are now searchable (and much easier to read).
• The data that follows is taken from the Maine Commission on Government Ethics & Election Practices (PDF file), and sorted for easy reading.
• Yes, there are Proposition 8 donors here; I’ve been working with the raw data for so long, I recognize a number of names without needing to cross-check.
• Of greatest interest will be the cash donations, but the expenditures reveal some interesting information as well. I’m not going to include expenditures (or in-kind contributions) in this post, but I encourage you to browse through the Maine.gov records.
While no one can fault a pizza parlor or a bagel shop for doing business with the Stand for Marriage Maine bigots, the expenditures list includes a number of businesses that (we can only surmise) knew exactly what sort of bigots they were accommodating, such as hotel catering services, designers and printers of banners and other anti-gay materials, those who made in-kind contributions, etc. We would never patronize any establishment that made money at our expense, by accepting business from professional homophobes.
A1. Bragging that you’re cheating on your wife with two other women, then saying it was all “just talk,” dragging one of your so-called conquests through the mud along with you; or:
A2. Listening to one of your cohorts, who’s on the Committee on Utilities and Commerce, brag about cheating on his wife with two other women, one of of whom is a utilities lobbyist, and and not reporting the conversation, especially when both of you are on the Assembly Ethics Committee.
Poor Brian Brown. It has not been a good week for him and his Mormon front group, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).
With two more states (Maine and Iowa) considering investigations of his organization for improper reporting of campaign contributions and money laundering, plus the on-going ten month investigation by the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC Case #08-735), Brian went on the offensive on Friday and sent out the email below to all his supporters and the media.
LOS ANGELES — September 9, 2009 — After California Assemblyman Michael Duvall (R-Orange County) was caught making obscene boasts about sex with married lobbyists on a live microphone in committee meeting, the 700,000-member Courage Campaign called on Attorney General Jerry Brown to investigate.
Or, at least, on a hot mic, describing the lurid details (details so lurid, even we won’t repeat them here) of his affairs with two female married lobbyists.
“One works for a firm which represents utility companies,” notes KCAL — which is no small detail: Duvall was the vice chair of the Committee on Utilities and Commerce, which oversees regulation of public utilities in California. You don’t have to be psychic to see an ethics probe in Duvall’s future!
While we put together Duvall’s inevitable entry for the Conservative Babylon Hall of Shame, get a load of the report from KCAL-9 in L.A., below.
The [Washington] Post recently featured a story by reporter Monica Hesse that ran on the front of the Style section while she was on vacation. The day before returning, she logged on to check e-mails — and wept.
She was buried by an avalanche of messages angrily attacking her lengthy Aug. 28 profile of Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the group leading the fight against legalization of same-sex marriage.
Hesse was stunned. She had expected to hear from anti-gay-marriage conservatives who might view the story as “snide.”
Instead, she heard from liberals who support gay marriage, accusing her of writing a puff piece about someone they believe fosters prejudice and intolerance. The story was shallow and one-sided, they complained.
Scores also contacted the ombudsman. It’s “one of the biggest pieces of crap The Post has published in recent memory,” wrote District resident William Grant II. “What’s next, a piece on how a KKK leader is just ’someone next door’ and ‘really a nice person’?” …
Much more at the link, including quotes from our friend Fred Karger.
Oh, and Hesse is bisexual. And she still doesn’t get it.
Keep weeping, Monica, until you do.
You have no quarter here.
Harsh? Tough. I’m tired of this. Tired of capitulaters. Tired of apologists. Tired of morons-in-denial — from “gay” Republicans to spineless Democrats — who think if we just “reach out” and make nice, the haters will be nice back.
“Reaching out” gets you one thing: your hand lopped off at the wrist.
AUGUSTA, ME — September 1, 2009 — Jonathan Wayne, Executive Director of State of Maine Commission of Governmental Ethics and Elections Practices, sent a strongly worded four page letter to Stand for Marriage Maine PAC (SFMMP) and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), seeking more information on the charges of “money laundering” against them in their campaign to repeal Maine’s same-sex marriage law.
The letter sent to Joseph Keaney, Stand for Marriage Maine PAC’s Treasurer and Brian Brown, NOM’s Executive Director, called upon both organizations to respond in writing by September 17, 2009 “…concerning whether the Commission should conduct an investigation.”
Letter Sent to Maine Election Officials Warning of Money Laundering by National Organization for Marriage (NOM) & Others
LOS ANGELES, CA / AUGUSTA, ME — August 13, 2009 — Californians Against Hate founder Fred Karger sent a letter today warning top Maine election officials of possible money laundering by opponents of same-sex marriage.
The organization trying to overturn Maine’s same-sex marriage law, Stand for Marriage PAC recently turned in 100,000 signatures to place the question on the November ballot. These gay marriage foes hope to repeal LD 1020 — the law passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor allowing same-sex marriage in Maine.
Of the $343,689.50 raised to pay the Brighton, Michigan-based National Petition Management, Inc. to collect the signatures, only $400, or a mere .001 of that total came from individuals. The remaining $343,289.50 was given by various religious organizations and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) gave nearly half of that total, $160,000. The remainder came from Catholic organizations ($150,000) and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family ($31,000).
“It sure looks like they are trying to hide the donors in their latest effort to strip away marriage equality,” said Fred Karger. “There is no way these organizations like NOM and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland had all this money sitting in their treasuries (except for possibly Focus on the Family). They went out and raised it expressly for this campaign. It’s very expensive to hire these signature gathering firms to collect 100,000 signatures in a short period of time.”
We’ve been hearing the rumors (and so have many of you, judging by the number of Google queries for “Doug Manchester” and “divorce” we’ve been getting for months), and now we have the facts: Doug Manchester — the hotelier who donated a whopping $125,000 to Proposition 8, who has been suffering the backlash via a boycott of his properties (by gay folks and union workers and lawyers and other groups who don’t cotton to propping up the bigot brigades with their hard-earned money) for more than a year (and he is suffering), and who tried to buy off the LGBT community with a token donation to HRC (which was rejected; well done, HRC) and hotel credits for queers — is getting a D-I-V-O-R-C-E from his wife (and $1,000 Prop H8 donor), Elizabeth:
Not, mind you, that M&A goes to any great lengths to explain why Beck’s accusation that Barack Obama “has a deep seated hatred for white people or white culture” (whatever “white culture” is supposed to be) is “ridiculous”; rather, the real point of the piece is: “[W]hat makes Glenn Beck’s comments more harmful is that he claims he is an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Church does not need this type of publicity or association,” especially since the “post Proposition 8 media spin has already harmed the Church’s image painting Mormons who stood for religious principle as propagating hate and intolerance and being on the fringe.”
“Mormons … propagating hate and intolerance and being on the fringe”? Doesn’t sound like “spin” to us.
…has reversed its decision to sponsor a Rhode Island rally held by a U.S. group that opposes same-sex marriage, after encountering fierce criticism for the move.
The August 16 event, organized by the National Organization for Marriage, is billed as a “Celebrate Marriage & Family Day.” Held in suburban Providence, the rally is to include speeches, a cookout and a ceremony in which married couples are invited to renew their vows. …
In a flyer for the event, Tim Hortons was listed as a sponsor, and was promptly criticized. …
No, actually, we do not have a problem. ‘Cause, folks, it’s clear I’m not part of “we” unless I’m forking over the bucks, or lending another warm body where they need one, solely on their terms (no matter how asinine this warm body-’n'-brain may think those terms are).
Twenty-six hours ago, I dropped this email to Equality California:
In his Advocate piece, “Was Obama a One-Night Stand?,” Dan Savage swings and misses as many times as he hits — but when he connects, it’s a solid thwock! of leather against ash.
But when he misses, he misses by a mile.
Give it a read, and then come back and see if you wouldn’t call the same strikes I do.
The blockbuster article from The Nation is too complex to excerpt coherently, so just read on — and then, after the jump, take a look at a very abbreviated map that explains just a few more reasons we detest everything Erik Prince (and, in fact, his entire, theocratic, un-American family) stands for.
Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha has announced his party will propose a law legalising same-sex marriage.
It is an unexpected move in a country that is still one of the most conservative in Europe and where homosexuality was illegal until 1995.
Mr Berisha acknowledged the proposed law might provoke debate but maintained that discrimination in modern Albania had to end. …
In a predominantly Muslim country with almost no open homosexual community, the announcement by a conservative PM has taken people by surprise.
Goran Miletic, a Belgrade-based human rights lawyer, working partly on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues said it was an important step forward for the country. …
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