Rhode Island’s celebration of the Supreme Court‘s historic decision allowing same-sex couples to marry across the United States was also a history lesson about the long battle for full LGBTQ acceptance in our state. Organizer Kate Monteiro spoke eloquently and introduced a steady stream of speakers, but more importantly she paused to remember those who didn’t live long enough to see this day, those who are only spoken of “in the echoes of the wind.”

We live in a better world because of their work and sacrifice.

The celebration was held at the Roger Williams National Memorial, because, explained Monteiro, this is where “religious freedom in the United States was born” and where Belle Pelegrino and the ’76ers first met to demand the right to march in Providence with a sign saying ‘I am gay.'”

“We stand at the top of a very, very high hill,” said Monteiro, “we have carried that pack and we have wanted for water and struggled and slipped and we stand at the top of a hill. And the view is beautiful. It is absolutely splendid. And just a little bit further is the next big hill. Because we are not at the top of the mountain, never mind the other side of the mountain.”

“Tomorrow, in 29 states, someone can be fired for being gay or lesbian, let alone transgender. (That, thank you, is 32 states)… That’s wrong, we need to change it, that is the mountain.”

“Can you imagine if we could go in time and bring Roger Williams here today?” asked Rodney Davis to laughs, “but when you boil it down and get to its purest sense, Freedom, Liberty and Justice was the reason why he came here…”

From a religious perspective, affirmation of same-sex marriage is fundamentally about love and the recognition of the dignity of all people.  The bible teaches that God created every human being in the divine image and every one of us is a manifestation of God’s goodness and beauty.   All couples have the potential to be holy and they deserve our support and encouragement.  Biblical teaching is clear that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our hearts and to love one another as we love ourselves.

As pastors, we value all the families in our congregations and we are pleased that the hurt and the stigma that always comes with inequality has been removed.  Jesus taught a message of love and inclusion.  We can only be pleased that the Supreme Court of the United States, through reasoning with a totally secular perspective, has concurred.

We remember fondly the many advocates who have given voice to a demand for justice.   We recall with gratitude the legislators in the Rhode Island General Assembly who took a reasoned stand for fairness and a supportive Governor who signed the bill.

We pray for people of conscience who may struggle with this decision.  We call for mutual respect, civility and understanding among all people of faith.  Reacting with rejection and negation will not lead to a healing solution.  Tolerance requires respect not agreement.  Let us embrace each other lovingly in a spirit of humility.  Especially in Rhode Island, where tolerance is in our cultural DNA.

Given that, was the Supreme Court correct to allow an employers religious beliefs to dictate an employees health care coverage? Is Obamacare working? Does the government belong in the health care industry? Justin Katz, Bill Rappleye and I debate these questions and more this week on Wingmen.

News, Weather and Classifieds for Southern New England

One question Katz seems loath to answer is whether he believes a fully-privatized health care market would provide care for poor people. I’d love to read an Anchor Rising post on how fully-privatized health care market would somehow trickle down health insurance to poor people.

First Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman David Cicilline critiqued the high court’s reasoning. Now Providence Mayor Angel Taveras and Lt. Gov. hopeful Warwick Rep. Frank Ferri have also weighed in.

Here’s Mayor Taveras’ statement:

I am deeply disappointed in today’s Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby case. Giving employers the right to decide what type of contraception a woman should have access to is outrageous and sets a dangerous precedent that allows for discrimination. Corporations are not people, and their rights should not trump a woman’s right to receive contraceptive health care coverage.

Ferri, a Warwick state representative running for lt. governor has an interesting take. He’s a small business owner who owns and runs a bowling alley. In a fundraising email Ferri said:

Today’s decisions by a conservative majority of the US Supreme Court to impede women’s access to healthcare and curtail the rights of unions to represent their members should serve as an important reminder of what’s really at stake in this election.

As a small business owner, I would never presume to influence my employees’ health care decisions. That is just wrong.

I’m angry about the Court’s rulings, but being angry isn’t enough. We need to organize and work to make sure a conservative court and right-wing politicians don’t turn back the clock on all the progress we’ve made over the last two decades.

I’m proud to be the only candidate in this race to put his name on the line to defend a woman’s right to choose. When I’m Lt. Governor, our office will unabashedly fight to support women and working families, and stand up to the right wing politicians who will surely look to capitalize on today’s rulings.

The controversial SCOTUS decision sent ripples through progressive Rhode Island today. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse also released a statement critical of the high court.

Here is Cicilline’s full statement:

Women, not their bosses, should be in charge of their own personal health care choices. While much work remains, we have made tremendous progress in affording women full equality over many years and this decision rolls back that progress by limiting women’s access to contraceptive health care services.

The Affordable Care Act is designed to ensure women have access to quality, affordable health care, including contraception and family planning — services that are critical to a woman’s health care needs. In fact, an overwhelming majority of women use birth control or contraceptives at some point in their lives and the idea that they should be denied access to these basic health care services because their boss finds it religiously objectionable is ridiculous. While today’s ruling will not undo all the benefits under the Affordable Care Act that allow millions of women to access birth control, it wrongly dictates that a CEO’s religious beliefs outweigh a woman’s right to access affordable contraception. This unfair discrimination contradicts the values of a majority of Americans and has no place in the 21st century. Importantly, today’s decision also sets a bad precedent encouraging other for-profit corporations to deny health care coverage to their employees based on their owners’ religious beliefs.

I am deeply disappointed with the Supreme Court’s ruling and will continue working to stop attacks on women’s access to complete health care services and to advance women’s basic rights. This fight is not over.

To many millions of people, prayer is an important part of their lives. It can be a meditative and calming practice, and a direct path to accessing the mind and grace of a God. It can be a deeply moving process of extreme intimacy and importance.

Ceremonial prayer, by contrast, has long been acknowledged as religiously meaningless. As Justice Kennedy says in his decision,

Ceremonial prayer is but a recognition that, since this Nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be under­ stood by precepts far beyond the authority of government to alter or define and that willing participation in civic affairs can be consistent with a brief acknowledgment of their belief in a higher power, always with due respect for those who adhere to other beliefs. The prayer in this case has a permissible ceremonial purpose. It is not an uncon­stitutional establishment of religion.

Such prayers are not attempts to secure the favor of a God, they are merely acknowledgments of the fact that some people can’t perform ordinary tasks without first rooting themselves in the mythology of their ancestors. If the prayers were true attempts to contact a God, then they would run afoul of the Supreme Court decision. The prayers, in the context of government meetings, must be ceremonial, or they become illegal.

This state of affairs poses the true believer an ethical dilemma. When participating in the prayer, the true believer must go through all the motions of prayer without actually engaging in real prayer. They must, in effect, pretend to be praying, because the kind of prayer permitted by law must be ceremonial by nature. (Now, this is doubly confusing from an atheist perspective, because prayer is viewed as attempted communication with an imaginary being. The law now mandates that believers pretend to attempt communication with an imaginary being, which just seems a step too far.)

People of many religious faiths might take exception to the idea that they must, for secular purposes, play-act elements of their faith in a secular public forum. Some take their religion very seriously, and to perform prayer cermonially may violate their conscience. These people, when confronted with such a dilemma, might pray for real, not just pretend to.  In such cases, even though it will be impossible to prove or to demonstrate, the First Amendment will be violated, according to the Supreme Court.

Some people of faith will therefore have an impossible decision: They can either betray their God by falsely praying or betray their country by truly praying, an impossible conundrum the concept of separating church and state was invented to avoid. The First Amendment was born out of a desire to protect the conscience of American citizens. In this respect, Greece versus Galloway was a very unfortunate decision for religious believers.

Atheists and Humanists by comparison, won’t have it that bad. Would we have preferred to have ceremonial prayer simply done away with? Certainly. We do not want to feel pressured to violate our consciences by pretending to pray. We don’t like the idea that when we show up at a legislative hearing to plead our case that we can immediately be marked as outsiders because we refuse to participate in the prayer.

A different outcome in Greece v. Galloway would have protected the consciences of the nonreligious and religious alike, but Kennedy’s decision contains the interesting caveat that ceremonial prayer must always be done “with due respect for those who adhere to other beliefs.” The decision also mandates that the prayers do not “denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation, or preach conversion.” Finally, local governments must make “reasonable efforts to identify all of the congregations located within its borders” and welcome an invocation by anyone who wishes to give one, regardless of their faith.

This means that the State of Rhode Island, as well as all its cities and towns, must open their ceremonial prayer process to “all of the congregations located within its borders” and this includes, for purposes of the law, nonbelievers. Already the American Humanist Association has started a registry for people certified to do secular invocations. Humanists and atheists across the country are signing up, ready to enter town halls and other legislative bodies with the intention of offering ceremonial platitudes that do not “denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation, or preach conversion.”

We already have at least two Humanists/atheists ready to deliver ceremonial invocations in Rhode Island, and we’ll have many more lined up soon.

May heaven help those who try to stop us.*

*not an actual prayer

Bold and continuing campaign finance reform in our nations capitol began in Washington, D.C., in 1971 and continued until 2002. The 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act required the disclosure of donors’ identities and the amounts they contributed to federal election campaigns.

A little known Supreme Court decision that, at its heart, concluded that the spending of money equals free speech was handed down in 1976. A Supreme Court majority held that a key provision of the Campaign Finance Act, which limited expenditure on election campaigns was “unconstitutional”, and contrary to the First Amendment.

The leading opinion viewed spending money as a form of political “speech” which could not be restricted due to the First Amendment. The only interest was in preventing “corruption or its appearance”, and only personal contributions should be targeted because of the danger of “quid pro quo” exchanges.

The 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act – better known as the McCain-Feingold Act after the bill’s primary sponsors, Republican John McCain and Democrat Russ Feingold – strengthened restrictions, but did nothing to challenge or reverse the Supreme Court’s previous rulings.

Essentially, the Citizens United case boiled down to this.

According to the U.S. Constitution, corporations are afforded the same rights as people, and therefore should be given the same protections as individuals when it comes to political donations. This decision, by correlation, asserted that the spending of money equates to the exercise of our First Amendment rights to free speech. While the Supreme Court’s decision may be true to the letter of U.S. law, it raised a widespread concern amongst Americans as to whether corporations should, in fact and practice, be afforded the same rights as people, and whether the spending of money constituted free speech.

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Just this week, the Supreme Court dealt another blow to campaign finance reform advocates in the McCutcheon v. FEC ruling. In essence, the decision did not affect federal campaign finance laws, save for one small factor. Prior to the decision, individuals and PACs were forced to abide by a hard-and-fast limit on aggregated donations to political candidates or PACs in support or opposition to particular legislation or candidates.

Let’s look at it this way.

Prior to the McCutcheon decision, there was a limit as to what I could donate to any and all political campaigns within an election cycle. That cap was $123,200. I could spend that total in any way I saw fit, as long as  I abided by current FEC guidelines of  $2,600 per federal candidate in each primary and general election or $32,400 per PAC in each cycle.

While the Supreme Court’s decision did not eliminate the $2,600 or $32,400 guidelines, it did declare the cap of $123,200 unconstitutional. This means I can donate $2,600 to any candidate in any state, and $32,400 to any PAC in any state, without restrictions, up to infinity dollars.

If I had the money to do this, I would, but therein lies the rub.

I don’t.

You don’t.

98 percent of the people in the U.S. don’t.

The McCutcheon decision has basically told big time donors that they can start buying candidates and PACs throughout the country, and in turn buy legislative influence.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court has rightly ruled in both of these cases. As they stand, the only way to rescind these decisions is to amend the U.S. Constitution to say plainly that corporations are not people, and spending money is not free speech. This is where the nationwide movement to amend the U.S. Constitution comes into play.

Amending the U.S. Constitution is no small task. 38 of the 50 states must ratify an amendment. Our first step in Rhode Island is to amend our own constitution. As it stands, the Rhode Island chapter of the Move(ment) to Amend has bills before both the R.I. Senate and House. On their face, these bills do nothing, but when combined with bills in other states, we send a loud and clear message to the U.S. Supreme Court, and our legislators in Washington.

CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE.

SPENDING MONEY DOES NOT CONSTITUTE FREE SPEECH.

Please, for the sake of our country, and our children and grandchildren, sign the petition to amend our Constitution today.

The New York Times called it “a sequel of sorts” to the highly controversial Citizens United ruling.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a staunch advocate for campaign finance reform in the other direction, said in an email, “This is a step in the wrong direction for democracy. With these limits now gone, wealthy donors will be able to give millions of dollars directly to candidates and political parties. Money is getting more and more of a voice in Washington, while the voices of hardworking American voters matter less and less in our elections.”

But Sam Bell, who is running for Gordon Fox’s seat in the House, said there’s at least some evidence that our democracy can survive without limits on campaign donations from individuals. Here’s what he wrote in an email:

Campaign finance laws will be completely gone soon enough. But I’d like to offer some words of comfort: Things are pretty bad right now.  Big money already controls our politics.  Sure, it’s going to get worse.  But honestly, this is a battle we’ve already lost.  Before you get too discouraged, I encourage everyone to take a look at Oregon and Virginia.

Oregon is a moderately blue state, one that Obama won by twelve points.  Virginia, he won by 3 points.  Democrats control the Oregon state legislature and governorship.  In fact, Oregon was one of the first state legislatures to elect a progressive as Speaker (current US Senator Jeff Merkley).  Democrats have the governorship and a razor-thin majority in the Virginia Senate, although the House is solid red.  Compared to other swing states, that’s actually not so bad, especially considering Virginia only holds its elections in odd-numbered years, where Democrats are at an even worse turnout disadvantage.  Those states aren’t such horror stories.  And yet both of them have no campaign finance restrictions whatsoever. Corporations can actually give money directly to candidates. So even when things get much, much worse, all hope is not lost.

In total, 12 states have no limits on the amount of money individuals can give to candidates. They are: Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Virginia. See how all the state handle it here.

The Supreme Court heard challenges to California’s Proposition 8 today, and tomorrow it will hear arguments against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  (The audio and transcript , if you have time to check them out!)

Let’s hope that Chief Justice John Roberts kept his gay cousin in mind during the Prop 8 argument, as she was in attendance with her partner, in seats reserved for guests of the justices.

Four Democratic senators reversed their stance on DOMA in the past several days, but unfortunately, not everyone sees the significance of this civil rights issue and have a change of heart.  There are many who refuse to even call it a “civil rights” issue.  What happened at the RI State House last week played out once more near the Supreme Court today, at an anti-gay marriage rally, when African-American pastor Rev. Bill Owens said, “I marched in this same location years ago.  They are trying to say they are suffering the same thing we suffered. They are not. … Not even close.”

Engaging in “Oppression Olympics” serves absolutely no one, and I am grateful to see public displays of solidarity in all communities across the country, and a million examples of Love for every hateful word spoken.

The most recent example (which you learned about first from RI Future), a cross that a car wash owner put on a strip of city-owned land that he has long taken care of, is an interesting example: is it a religious symbol, a memorial or an act of protest? The business owner, Peter Montaquila, told WPRO yesterday he put it up to stand in solidarity with the Woonsocket Cross, also a less-than-Constitutionally-clear case.

But issues of legality are relatively easy to sort out … the danger is that the non-legal battle lines are being drawn in the sand – and the situation is getting tense. Montaquila, like the owner of the flower shop who refused to deliver a bouquet to Jessica Ahlquist when she won her case against a religious symbol in Cranston West High School, said he doesn’t want to do business with those who don’t agree with him on this issue. Could we start seeing signs in business windows: “We don’t serve atheists.”

Politicians, like Rep. John McLaughlin of Central Falls, and shock jocks like John DePetro, are fanning the flames with angry rhetoric against those who see a line between church and state.  Their colleagues should call them out and implore them to be leaders rather than instigators.

People take both their religion and their Constitution protections very, very seriously and this is the third such nasty fight over the nexus of the two in a year here in Rhode Island. Someone should step and act like a leader before something really ugly happens.

Speaking of John DePetro, he is inviting some interesting karma picking on Gov. Chafee’s 18-year-old son for having a party … the mean-spirited talk show host could find himself in a similar situation someday…

Don’t believe a word Curt Schilling says about Gov. Chafee’s public comments about solvency crippling the company … the Associated Press reports that 38 Studios was already considering bankruptcy by the time the story went public.

AP reporter Laura Crimaldi obtained the confidential documents that led to this very telling development. Unfortunately for Rhode Island, today is her last day with the Providence bureau as she is moving on to a job with Boston Globe … what a way to go out Laura and best of luck in Beantown!

Speaking of great local reporting … no one covered the local effects and reactions to the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act better than Ted Nesi yesterday (check out his blog for a variety of different stories). We pick on Ted often because of the pro-business/pro-establishment bias he sometimes displays, but it’s also well-worth pointing out that he is far and away the most talented journalist covering the Ocean State.

One more note about local reporting … here is Kathy Gregg’s lede from her story yesterday on campaigns for seats in the State House: “How many Rhode Island lawmakers will return to the State House next year without having to face an opponent? The answer is: very few.”  And here is the lede on her story today: “One out of five General Assembly incumbents is running unopposed.”

Is 20 percent “very few”? On the contrary, we think it’s a great many. Perhaps the Projo can report this yet another way tomorrow…