From the May 7th edition of the Herald-Leader

Herald-Leader columnist Tom Eblen cheered on the witch hunt over a Christian businessman’s refusal to print T-shirts with a message that contradicts his religious views.

The man is being hauled before the Lexington Human Rights commission, which is being called upon to throw him into the political water to see if he floats.

Taking up his torch, Eblen added his voice to those of the Gay and Lesbian Services Organization and Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, who are chanting the political equivalent of “Burn him!”

The University of Kentucky, too, has added its increasingly anti-religious voice to the din. This is the same university that refused to hire a science professor on the grounds that he was an evangelical, resulting in a complaint to the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, which was completely ignored.

Eblen and the rest of the mob are arguing that the business, Hands on Originals, has violated the Lexington Fairness Ordinance, an ordinance which added coverage for sexual orientation to that for race, religion, gender and national origin in anti-discrimination laws governing housing, employment and public accommodations.

The ordinance prohibits a business from refusing to serve a person on the basis of his sexual orientation.

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By Martin Cothran

November 17, 2011

The number of editorialists now declaring that Gov. Steve Beshear has an electoral mandate or that Senate President David Williams received a vote of no confidence may just exceed the number of people who actually voted in the election. The polls last week were very lonely places, but the media house is now packed with pundits announcing confidently what it all meant.

A Herald-Leader editorial intoned that Williams’ agenda had been rejected and that Beshear had come closer to the “public pulse.”

Public pulse? The Herald-Leader might want to check its political stethoscope: If the election showed anything about a pulse, it was that, at least on the first Tuesday of November this year, the voting public didn’t have one. It was democracy on life support.

The editorial goes on to a litany of policy initiatives that voters, in an election they largely ignored, supposedly endorsed, a list that bears a striking resemblance to the paper’s own liberal positions.

The problem with David Williams, it says, was that his ideas were “unpopular and outside the mainstream.” I’m trying to comprehend the irony involved in the Herald-Leader lecturing someone else on being “outside the mainstream” in a state like Kentucky with a conservative electorate.

That the media would argue what voters were saying about issues in an election in which the chief issue was the governor’s refusal to debate them with his opponent is ironic, if not simply laughable.

If a sitting Republican governor had followed the strategy Beshear followed this year and refused to debate his Democratic opponent on the issues, reporters would have been forming the journalistic equivalent of lynch mobs. But since it was their boy doing the dodging, they simply looked the other way. In fact, the paper has placed itself in the preposterous position of Beshear himself, who thinks he has a mandate on the very issues he didn’t think important enough to discuss in public with his opponent.

And speaking of Republicans, Mitch McConnell biographer John David Dyche got in on the action, declaring at the Kentucky Hospital Association convention that the election “marks the end of the era of David Williams.” That analysis, too, is dead on arrival.

Only 28.6 percent of Kentuckians even bothered to come out and vote, and there is little evidence that they had anything particular on their minds. Editorialists who make grandiose claims about what voters were saying in an election in which the vast majority of registered voters didn’t bother to make their voices heard should at least have some proof that the voters were saying what they now declare they were saying.

The people who say that the election was a mandate for Beshear apparently didn’t notice that he received the votes of only 15.3 percent of registered voters. And those who argue that there was some kind of endorsement of Beshear’s first term need to contend with the fact that he received 155,307 fewer votes than he received in 2007.

This election contained no mandates. It didn’t even amount to a pat on the back. In fact, it seems to have been one big, collective, electoral yawn.

If the Herald-Leader and others in the Kentucky media are serious about engaging in political analysis, they should at least be able to tell the difference between voter decisiveness and voter despondency.

Martin Cothran of Danville is the senior policy analyst for The Family Foundation.

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By Richard Nelson – August 17, 2010

Advocates of traditional marriage were trampled earlier this month by a San Francisco judge who struck down California’s constitutional amendment which keeps marriage between one man and one woman. Judge Vaughn Walker apparently missed the memo about the seven million voters who support marriage between one man and one woman. Memos about the need for judicial restraint and the necessity for judges to recuse themselves in cases where there might be a conflict of interest apparently did not reach his desk either.

Over the last year, we’ve seen judges subvert the democratic process by substituting their personal preferences and policy choices for duly enacted laws. Most notably, in July, Federal District Judge Joe Tauro struck down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which garnered the votes of 427 Congressmen and was signed into law by then President Bill Clinton. Another federal court insisted that Ten Commandments displays are off limits in two Eastern Kentucky courthouses, perhaps a not-so-subtle indication that judges often confuse themselves with the Almighty Lawgiver Himself.

Judicial restraint is clearly in short supply these days, particularly on the federal bench, but now we’re finding that in this most recent case of judicial overreach, Judge Walker had a conflict of interest.

The biggest out-of-the-closet secret since the ruling is that Walker is in a relationship with another man—a detail which legal experts say should have led to his recusal. Walker failed to disclose his potentially disqualifying bias since it could benefit him and his partner should they choose to get married. Amazingly, Walker is now telling traditional marriage advocates that they cannot appeal the ruling because they lack standing. This is like a referee telling the ball team that since they are down at halftime, they cannot come back for the third quarter since they are losing. Such things happen when the referees are no longer objective and become allies with one of the teams.

Dale Carpenter, a University of Minnesota constitutional law professor told Fox News, “What Judge Walker’s ruling means is you can sponsor a proposition, direct it, research it, work for it, raise $40 million for it, get it on a ballot, successfully campaign for it and then have no ability to defend it independently in court, and then a judge maybe let you be the sole defender in a full-blown trial and then says, ‘by the way, you never can defend this.’ It just seems very unlikely to me the higher courts will buy that.” Carpenter, by the way, supports same-sex marriage.

Additionally, Judge Walker discredited the testimony of traditional marriage and family formation expert David Blankenhorn who was one of the two witnesses defending the marriage amendment (four other witnesses declined to testify because they feared for their safety). Blankenhorn’s testimony, according to Walker, “constitutes inadmissible opinion testimony that should be given essentially no weight.” Walker also took a swipe at the faith community when he said, “Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.”

Walker’s actions discredit the judiciary, which should be in the business of “calling balls and strikes” as Chief Justice John Roberts once said. When they get in the game and take sides, they become something other than a judge. The biggest losers in this sad story are the voters and the democratic process itself. Why vote if one judge can cancel the vote of seven million people? Why contribute to a cause if it’s likely to be defeated in court? Why care?

Walker’s actions were so egregious that the reliably liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put a hold on Walker’s ruling until December, thus preventing gay marriages from taking place this week. While Judge Walker once again opened the door to gay marriage in California, he cannot entirely overrule the verdict in the court of public opinion: marriage is between one man and one woman, and the democratic process is the most equitable way to decide such contentious issues.

Gambling our way out of the recession is no way to run a government
By Richard Nelson – May 15, 2009

Two seemingly unrelated stories by the Asssociated Press were widely circulated recently in Kentucky newspapers. One reported about the decline in state revenue, which could lead to a possible $1 billion budget shortfall in 2010. The other said that Churchill Downs plans to cut the number of racing days next season.

The operative words are “seemingly unrelated,” because something is brewing in Frankfort. Call it the perfect storm.

Tax revenues are down. According to story number one, the Department of Revenue received $113 million less this past April than the same month last year. It’s no surprise that when the economy is troubled, businesses close and tax revenue dries up.

Now for story number two. Churchill Downs says it will cut seven racing days from next year‘s spring meet, due mainly to stiff competition from tracks in other states that have casino gambling.

Or so they say.

Let’s see . . . the economy is suffering. Kentucky’s signature industry at a disadvantage because of an unfair playing field. A state legislature looking for new revenue sources. Add it up and it equals expanded casino-style gambling.

I may be jumping the gun, but I don’t think so. Aggressively working behind the scenes for casino expansion are House Speaker Greg Stumbo and Governor Beshear. So is the Kentucky Equine Education Project. There’s even talk of a special session this summer.

The first question to ask is why Churchill (or any horsetrack) deserves special treatment in this tough economy. Just about every business is hurting, including the largest employer in my home county, Johnson Controls, which recently closed its doors to 600 workers and left the county with a 15 percent unemployment rate. Louisville’s Ford Plant is laying off 360 workers and shutting down for two weeks this summer. Examples like this abound, but without exception, only wealthy horsemen are lining up for bailouts and political favors in the form of legalized slots these days.

Then again, the wealthy horse lobby has a history in political schmooze, going back in recent memory to BOPROT. Remember when 21 legislators and lobbyists were indicted for soliciting and receiving bribes to pass legislation favorable to the tracks? Several people went to jail (including then-sitting House Speaker Don Blandford) in the early 1990‘s for their part. In 2005, evidence of corruption emerged a year after the Kentucky Racing Commission was disbanded. If it seems like big gambling has a bad track record, it‘s because big gambling has a bad track record.

At the beginning of the 2002 General Assembly, Churchill Downs sent hefty campaign contributions to Kentucky legislators. Not quite illegal, but it didn’t pass the smell test, so several legislators returned the money. Their latest maneuver occurred just prior to the Kentucky Derby when they threatened to move Kentucky’s premier event if they don’t get slots.

Just to be clear, Churchill Downs is a multi-million dollar conglomerate; second largest simulcaster in the nation; owns several subsidiary companies and trades for nearly $40 per share on NASDAQ. Oh, and an estimated 95 percent of it is owned by people outside Kentucky.

Loyalties you ask?

Churchill Downs has become an organization that is not so much about horses as it is about money. Slots are a good idea if you own the business. They’re bad for everyone else, including horse racing enthusiasts. Slot machines act as a black hole to local economies, sucking discretionary dollars from the community and leading to compulsive and addictive behavior for many patrons. As for the horse tracks that have slots, yes, there are bigger purses, but race attendance drops. All the action is in the casino portion. Horses simply become overhead.

The economy is still suffering and tax revenues continue to drop, but it’s a mistake for the legislature to gamble our way out of this recession. Even if the proposal is good for a few wealthy horsemen, the fact is that too many Kentuckians will lose in the end.

Fiscal irresponsibility shackles families and future generations
By Richard Nelson

When I was growing up, my parents often told me that money doesn’t grow on trees. It was the usual response to my impulse for a toy, or some other non-essential item, while shopping with them. My parents, after all, were on a budget, so they prioritized and spent only what they could afford. It was a lesson that sank in as I grew older.

Unfortunately, it’s a lesson that’s been lost on a generation of politicians.

Within the past 90 days, the federal government has been spending money like its growing on Washington’s back forty: $1.5 trillion to “stimulate” the economy, a $410 billion “omnibus” spending bill and a proposed $3.5 trillion budget (1/2 trillion more than last year). Altogether, we’re nearing $11 trillion in national debt.

$11,000,000,000,000.

It’s enough to make your head spin and my calculator explode, which, by the way, only computes up to the tens of millions.

Too many of our leaders have discovered that deficit spending, while bad for future economic health, works well for their re-election chances. This is the grown-up version of the spoiled kid in the store who gets what he wants no matter what the cost. It doesn’t do much good for the relationship, but it sure does keep the kid quiet; at least until the next visit to the mall.

Throw in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and total future U.S. obligations are huge, unthinkably huge—especially in light of millions of baby boomers on the verge of retiring.

So who’s going to pay for all this? Our third president Thomas Jefferson once said, “The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” And this is today’s swindle: politicos weaseling into public office by delivering benefits and contracts to special interests and charging it to generations not yet born.

When CEOs do business this way, they go to jail. When politicians run our government this way, they somehow get re-elected. It’s like Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme cloaked in respectability.

More and more citizens are waking up, as evidenced by the Tea Parties held across the nation last week, and are seeing through the political diversion. American families, the most important shareholders in the government, are tired of seeing bridges built to nowhere. They’re fed up with pork and earmarks that patronize narrow special interests at the cost of the national interest.

Washington’s promise to solve every problem is getting old, and tolerance is growing thin for irresponsible politicians who are masters at shifting blame, while at the same time fully responsible for shackling future generations with insurmountable debt. And the criticism is bipartisan. (It was President Bush who popularized federal intervention in failing companies with a $700 billion bailout just before he left office.)

There are some in Congress who really believe they can spend their way out of the recession. This is like a shopaholic trying to spend themselves into prosperity with the help of a MasterCard. The only thing that prolonged deficit spending has ever done for a nation is to destabilize the economy and bring on inflation for working families and their children.

America’s families deserve a chance at freedom, and the next generation has a right to pursue happiness without paying for the excesses of this one. Somebody needs to tell Congress that the game is up. They should stick to expanding freedom and liberty and stop jeopardizing our economic future on the altar of their political ambitions.

Even first-graders know that money doesn’t grow on trees, and you can’t always get whatever you want.

Speech policy are intolerant of alternative viewpoints regarding homosexuality.
By Richard Nelson

When President-elect Barack Obama invited Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation, it created a firestorm of criticism by the gay community which is now calling for Obama to retract the invitation. Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), wrote Obama and said, “By inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.”

What Solmonese really meant was that those who agree with gay activists should have the only voice at the table. After all, Obama invited a gay marching band and Rev. Joseph Lowery, who favors same-sex marriage, will give the benediction. But that’s not good enough for Solmonese who is still smarting from the loss in California where 53 percent of voters kept marriage between two people of the opposite sex.

Warren, known more for his involvement in poverty relief and environmental care issues, is now a lightning rod, because he endorsed California’s marriage protection amendment just weeks before the vote. The strident opposition to Warren’s participation in the inauguration brings into focus what is really going on here; it’s a matter of what can be said regarding the hottest of social issues – homosexuality, and whether those who believe homosexuality is wrong should be allowed to say it.

Solmonese and company, concerned more about insulating homosexuals from opposition, than about the free-speech rights of Americans who disagree with them, apparently want to steer us down the same path Europe and Canada have trodden. And it’s a dangerous one for those who value free speech.

Last year, French legislator Christian Vanneste found himself in hot water when he said homosexuality was “inferior” to heterosexuality and would be “dangerous for humanity if it was pushed to the limit.” That statement landed him a nearly $4,000 fine.

Canadian Pastor Stephen Boisson was fined $5,000 last June afterwriting a letter to the editor criticizing homosexuality. The Alberta Human Rights Tribunal ordered Boisson to “… cease publishing in newspapers, by e-mail, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet… disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals….”

In 2006, John DeCicco, city councillor in Kamloops, British Columbia called homosexuality “not normal and not natural,” so the Human Rights Tribunal forced him to apologize to a homosexual couple who filed a complaint and pay them $1000.

In 2003, a Swedish hate crimes law was used to arrest Pastor Ake Green for preaching that homosexuality is a sin… in his own church. He was found guilty and sentenced to 30 days in jail (it was later overturned on appeal). So goes free speech in Europe. But what of it in the U.S.?

It was out of concern for his free speech rights to articulate the Biblical view on marriage and human sexuality that prompted Warren to support California’s marriage amendment. Warren said without the amendment “any pastor could be considered doing hate speech if he shared his views that he didn’t think homosexuality was the most natural way for relationships.”

Warren and his wife have both dedicated themselves to AIDS relief. But compassionate outreach to the gay community isn’t enough to pacify gay political leaders who fail to understand that Warren wasn’t invited to serve as Obama’s domestic policy advisor. He was invited to offer a prayer. And if he was in Sweden or France, he’d more likely be fined than allowed to pray at any president’s inauguration.

The debate over human sexuality has shed more heat than light in recent years. Disagreements there clearly are, but when unbridled emotions lead us closer to shutting down someone’s speech, then we’ve made a wrong turn as a nation. Including Warren in the presidential inauguration is a move in the right direction and sends the message thatdisagreement over the most controversial of issues doesn’t result in marginalization.

by Richard Nelson
(This article appeared in the Murray State University News on Nov. 25, 2008)

Somehow we’ve been conditioned to believe that pornography is a matter of free speech, personal freedom and privacy and that any restrictions would undo the First Amendment. People like Larry Flynt tell us that banning it could lead us down the wrong path. As if the path our pornified nation is already on could get any more jaded.

Pre-Hefner America perceived pornography to be incompatible with public decency and civility. Post-viagra America is now picking up the pieces. Study after study shows a clear connection between pornography use and sexual crime. According to Jan LaRue, attorney and pornography expert, “86 percent of convicted rapists have admitted to regular use of pornography; 57 percent admitted imitating pornographic scenes in the commission of their crimes.” Between 1960 and 1999 “forcible rape” increased by 418 percent according to the U.S. “FBI Index of Crime”.

Gene Abel of the New York Psychiatric Institute studied convicted rapists and found, “One-third reported that they had used pornography immediately prior to at least one of their crimes.” Charles Linedecker author of Thrill Killers, a Study of America ‘s Most Vicious Murders, reports that 81 percent of these murderers ranked porn as their primary sexual interest. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice reported 148,110 victims of rape or sexual assault.

The idea that porn is victimless is now about as convincing as saying that long-term exposure to carcinogens isn’t linked to cancer. Women become demeaned and devalued. They are objectivized as playthings whose sole purpose is to fulfill someone’s twisted fantasy. A certain percentage act on their fantasies, but nearly all porn addicts are hindered from developing healthy relationships with woman according to psychologist Gary R. Brooks, author of The Centerfold Syndrome. Brooks says that porn promotes distorted images of women and fosters an obsession with visual stimulation.

Listen to how it affected one former student at Eastern Kentucky University: “Many people think looking at pictures of naked women is a progressive thing to do. It’s progressive all right,” said Angie.* “It gets worse and worse. And soon watching is not enough.” Angie dropped by her boyfriend’s apartment on campus where she caught a glimpse of a sex scene on TV. She confronted him, but he said it “was just a guy thing.” Later that night that scene became Angie’s worst nightmare as her boyfriend raped her at gunpoint. Angie escaped with her life, but she still has scars.

Other women aren’t as fortunate as Angie.

In the 1980’s more than 30 women died at the hands of a porn addict whose descent into sexual deviancy began when he discovered dirty books in the neighbor’s trash. His name was Ted Bundy and violent sexual acts accompanied his murders.

Just before his execution in 1989 Bundy said: “There are those loose in [your] towns and communities, like me, whose dangerous impulses are being fueled, day in and day out, by violence in the media, in its various forms — particularly sexualized violence … . There are lots of other kids playing in the streets around the country today who are going to be dead tomorrow, and the next day, because other young people are reading and seeing the kinds of things that are available in the media today.”

How many more Ted Bundy’s are in the making right now? How many more vulnerable woman and children have to be exploited and hurt before something is done? Porn advocates can wrap themselves in the First Amendment all they want, but their vacuous arguments leave them just as exposed as the Emperor and his New Clothes.

It’s time to tell the charlatans that porn has no place in civil society.

*last name withheld “Defeating Depravity,” The Southeast Outlook, summer 2004