ANOTHER liberal dingbat! (Yay.)
If the Young Republicans are the future of the GOP, some of the party’s grownup activists really ought to be worried. The YRs’ current Queen, Catherine Whiteford, has aligned the group with Black Lives Matter, carbon tax advocacy, and NeverTrumpism, among other beauties.
Whiteford ran for the state House in 2018 in Raleigh and got slaughtered. She parachuted into Concord to pursue an open House seat in 2022. She lost the primary, but she and her Raleigh-based GOPe allies were clearly responsible for losing the seat to the Dems.
Now, we find her name atop an op-ed piece (clearly written by someone on Team Tilli$$$) glorifying the federal Respect For Marriage Act. The op-ed contains TOO many big words to have been written by her.
(Tilli$$$ must really have seen some putrid poll numbers. He and his team are doing cartwheels to defend his vote for and support of this legislation.)
Whiteford and other Tillis allies want us to believe this federal legislation protects churches and their congregants from leftist judges and radical gays. The Alliance Defending Freedom – a group of very sensible, very wise legal eagles — has another take:
[…] While the bill’s proponents seemed to acknowledge the objections to the Respect for Marriage Act by virtue of offering an amendment, their amendment failed to address the bill’s problems in a substantive way.
Here are the major issues with this amended final version:
1. There are no real protections for religious individuals or organizations.
The amendment added a new section to the Respect for Marriage Act that purports to address religious liberty and conscience concerns.
But rather than adding any new concrete protections for religious individuals and organizations threatened by the Respect for Marriage Act, the new section simply states that those Americans whose beliefs are infringed can invoke already existing legal protections, like the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). As such, this new provision did not fix the bill’s negative impact on religious exercise and freedom of conscience. Those targeted under the bill will be forced to spend years in litigation and thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees to protect their rights.
2. The amendment leaves numerous religious social-service organizations vulnerable.
The amendment added language that confirms that churches and religious organizations would not be forced to solemnize or celebrate a marriage against their sincerely held religious beliefs.
Unfortunately, this provision addresses a non-problem while ignoring the true threats to religious individuals and organizations. No one thinks the Respect for Marriage Act requires churches to solemnize marriages, and churches have not been forced to do so under other laws.
The real problem is that the bill can be used to punish social-service organizations that work closely with government—like adoption or foster placement agencies that serve their communities in accordance with their religious belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. The amendment did nothing to help such organizations.
3. The amendment fails to address concerns over nonprofits’ tax-exempt status.
The amendment added a new section that attempts to address concerns about the tax-exempt status of nonprofits that live out their beliefs about marriage.
Once again, the amendment failed to substantively remedy this problem. When the IRS determines whether an organization is “charitable” under the Internal Revenue Code, it asks whether the entity’s conduct is “contrary to public policy” or violates a “national policy.”
If the Respect for Marriage Act were enacted, the IRS could rely upon the bill to conclude that certain nonprofits are not “charitable.” The amendment’s new provision does nothing to prevent this.
Despite claims to the contrary, the new version of the bill utterly fails to meaningfully address the serious religious freedom problems with the Respect for Marriage Act. The inclusion of provisions that purport to address religious freedom concerns may be a sign that senators heard the criticisms of the bill. Unfortunately, their response to the concerns amounts to little more than window dressing.
The bottom line
Congress is prioritizing virtue-signaling over protecting the freedom to hold decent and honorable beliefs about marriage. This unnecessary bill pays lip service to legitimate religious freedom concerns while undermining the First Amendment.[…]
This whole discussion is not about compromise or coexistence.
Tillis got involved in this because a bunch of DC gays paid him a lot of money prior to his 2020 reelection. He sold us out.
We told you earlier about a church in Durham that is getting stomped on by local activists for daring to insist marriage IS between a man and woman. As far as the lefties are concerned, you must submit or be crushed. No middle ground. No sir or no ma’am.
Send Tillis a message at the state convention. UNELECT his boy Whatley as state GOP chairman. Tillis wants to run for governor, which would be a lead anchor on the whole GOP ticket in NC, and if Whatley is still in office, it will encourage Tillis to run.
NEVER TILLIS, NEVER WHATLEY.
Waste of time. Better for conservatives to walk away whole and form their own NC Conservative Party or link up with the NC Constitution Party.. No reform from within will happen. Only those in denial cannot see this.
“Carthago delenda est.”
If North Carolina election law allowed cross-endorsements like New York does, I would be all for a North Carolina Conservative Party. That means that if Republicans run a conservative, then the Conservative Party can nominate him, too, and votes for him / her from the Republican and Conservatives tickets are added together on election night. This creates an incentive for Republicans to nominate candidates who can also get the Conservative nomination, But when Republicans nominate a liberal like former US Senator Jacob Javits, the Conservative Party is free to nominiate their own candidate as they did with Jim Buckley who then beat Javits and the Democrat in a three way race.
If it does not, then a new party is just a gift to the Democrats to split the vote and let the Democrats walk right in.
The Constitution Party was a joke, both locally and nationally. In West Virginia, with a solid conservative running for US Senate as GOP nominee, the Constitution Party split the vote by nominating a wealthy coal mine owner who had gone to prison for safety violations that had killed a number of his mine workers.
This is where i am, too. These gutless, spineless frauds calling themselves Republicans will never stand up for REAL CONSERVATIVES. If the Patriot Party doesn’t materialize here, the Conservative Party will do.
Actually, Tim Moore is much more responsible for the loss of my seat to the Democrats. In order to avoid yet another redistricting lawsuit, he made a deal to let the Democrats redraw the district I was vacating so that a Democrat could win. Although the vote was close, that effort succeeded. Of course, the carpet-bagger from Raleigh, Catherine Whiteford, who moved to Concord just to run for my seat, would have been just as bad as the race baiting BLM supporter who won in November. Thank goodness enough people saw through her and rejected her carpet-bagging efforts in the primary. Many of us are hoping she will just move on. I am deeply disappointed that some YR’s who had supported me in the past have gone astray with her.