EL PASO: Hate Group Loses Bid To Recall Mayor Over Domestic Partners Law

A coalition of anti-gay Christian groups headed by Pastor Tom Brown (above) has lost their bid to recall El Paso Mayor John Cook over the domestic partners insurance provision he ordered reinstated. The reason that the haters lost? They cheated.

The Eighth Court of Appeals on Friday unanimously ruled that the recall group had violated the law in its petition drive. The court ordered Municipal Clerk Richarda Momsen to decertify the recall petitions and ruled that no recall election using them can be held. The order states, "Having instructed the City Clerk to decertify the petitions, no election thereon may be called or held." The court also ruled that County Court 3 Judge Javier Alvarez abused his discretion in denying Cook's request for an injunction. "The trial court was required to apply the law to the facts. We find the trial court failed to do so here," the order states. Pastor Tom Brown, Word of Life Church and others are trying to recall Cook and City Reps. Susie Byrd and Steve Ortega because all three officials voted to restore health benefits for gay and unmarried partners of city employees after voters passed a ballot initiative in November 2010 repealing them.

The 2010 ballot initiative was so badly worded that it not only rescinded domestic partners provisions, it ended such benefits for retired police and fire department employees.

Nuke Your Nabe

Via NPR here's a handily terrifying interactive map where you can test-bomb nukes on your neighborhood.

The explosion creates a series of concentric circles, color-coded to show the zone where everything is incinerated, the space where most things get emulsified or crushed, the space where radiation is lethal, the space where people are poisoned by radiation, the space where they are badly burned — concentric circles of destruction. The effects are chilling and fascinating. When I tried out some of the more powerful bombs, I was stunned by their destructive power. I had no idea.

When it comes down to it, I've always been in the "the living will envy the dead" camp. I'd rather be instantaneously vaporized than live without expanded cable. So to speak.

#1 Twenty Years Ago Today

Neil Young probably never envisioned having a #1 dance chart hit, but two years after its initial 1990 UK release, America met a pre-Sarah Cracknell Saint Etienne via their cover.

Birds Of A Feather

The evil mayor of Troy, Michigan loves Frothy.

NEW YORK CITY: Churches Win Temporary Stay On Public School Evictions

The 160 churches that operate virtually free in New York City's public schools have been granted a temporary reprieve from the eviction ordered by a federal court of appeals.

Alliance Defense Fund says the temporary restraining order is in effect for 10 days while the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York more fully considers constitutional arguments about the city’s unique-in-the-nation prohibition on worship services in vacant public school buildings on weekends. As ADF senior counsel Jordan Lorence puts it, “Churches help communities; evicting churches hurts communities. Empty buildings offer nothing to communities that need hope.”

Andy Humm reports at Gay City News that anti-gay Christian groups are operating a "church planting" network intended to indoctrinate children attending public schools.

The congregation’s legal argument relied on the Supreme Court’s Good News v. Milford Central School ruling that allowed religious meetings in schools. In “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children,” published last month, Katherine Stewart argues that the “real mission” of Good News Clubs in schools is to “convert children to fundamentalist Christianity and encourage them to proselytize to their ‘unchurched’ peers, all the while promoting the false but unavoidable impression among the children that its activities are endorsed by the school.” She also documents how leaders “of the church-planting movement have declared their ambition to turn all 1,200 of New York City’s schools into churches.”

As an example of the type of churches granted the above-cited reprieve, here's what the Village Church, which operates out of PS 3 on Hudson Street, has on its website.You read that right. An "ex-gay" ministry affiliated with Exodus is operating in New York City public schools. And YOU are paying for it. Why not just charge us for the rope used to hang us?

Miami TV Reports On Rise In LGBT Youth Homelessness

THIS you can lay squarely on the doorsteps of the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, the Catholic Church, etc. Igor Volsky has more at Think Progress.

Freep This FRC Poll

I suggest "other." And do have some fun entering your totally real personal information.