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LGBT

Hate Group Leaders Rally Against U.S. Embassy’s ‘Gay Agenda’ In Prague Pride Parade

By Zack Ford on Aug 15, 2012 at 11:10 am

Anti-gay activists join forces in a coalition known as the "World Congress of Families."

This weekend, Prague began its second LGBT pride festival, which the U.S. embassy supported as an opportunity to “reject discrimination while embracing tolerance and respect for the dignity of all persons around the world.” The embassy’s support has sparked a backlash, however, and a broad coalition of anti-gay leaders and groups sent a letter condemning the embassy for advancing the “gay agenda” and “stigmatization and marginalization” of those who oppose marriage equality. Here’s an excerpt:

  • Regarding “gay rights,” those caught up in this lifestyle have the same rights as other citizens. This does not include the “right” to force others to validate a lifestyle they find objectionable, for religious or other reasons. It also does not include the right of men to marry men and women to marry women.
  • The foregoing pseudo-rights do not advance human freedom and dignity but debase them.
  • We can not imagine a worse form of cultural imperialism than Washington trying to force approval of the “gay” agenda on societies with traditional values.

The letter features a veritable who’s-who of hate group leaders and purveyors of anti-gay stigma, including:

  • Brent Bozell (Media Research Center/For America)
  • Scott Lively (Author of The Pink Swastika who evangelizes anti-gay rhetoric in Uganda)
  • Benjamin Bull, Piero Tozzi, and Roger Kiska (Alliance Defending Freedom)
  • Linda Harvey (Mission America)
  • Jim Garlow (Renewing American Leadership)
  • Peter LaBarbera (Americans for Truth About Homosexuality)
  • Tim Wildmon (American Family Association)
  • Matthew Staver (Liberty University Law School/Liberty Counsel)
  • Bill Donohue (Catholic League)
  • Tom DeLay (former House Majority Leader)
  • Brian Camenker (MassResistance/Parents Rights Coalition)
  • Tom Shields (Coalition for Marriage and Family)
  • Matt Barber (Liberty Counsel Action)
  • Robert Knight (American Civil Rights Union)
  • Lou Sheldon and Andrea Lafferty (Traditional Values Coalition)
  • Jennifer Roback Morse (National Organization for Marriage’s Ruth Institute)
  • Mike Huckabee (former governor of Arkansas)
  • Alan Keyes (former UN ambassador)
  • Alveda King (King for America)
  • Diane Gramley (American family Association of Pennsylvania)
  • Richard Land (Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission)

Some of these anti-gay figures may differ in the extremity of their rhetoric, but by signing onto this letter together, they demonstrate that they all believe homosexuality is a “lifestyle” choice that is “objectionable.”

The United States has committed to fighting LGBT discrimination and criminalization across the globe, but the Czech Republic already has sexual orientation nondiscrimination protections that exceed those in the U.S.

Security

Top Slovakian Official On Romney’s Missile Defense Attack: ‘People Have Moved On’

By Ali Gharib on Jul 26, 2012 at 6:02 pm

Slovakian Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak

Since Mitt Romney is not taking on any of the difficult situations the U.S. finds itself in around the world — he’s not visiting Afghanistan, for instance — his tour of European countries and Israel is instead focusing on promoting longstanding U.S. alliances. Though he’s already stumbled on his first stop in London, the theme was designed to go something like this: Mitt Romney will restore U.S. alliances spurned by the Obama administration.

One example Romney constantly holds up is the Obama administration’s decision to cancel land-based missile defense systems in Europe and instead focus on ship-borne systems and interceptor radars placed directly in the Middle East. Obama’s spurning “began with the sudden abandonment of friends in Poland and the Czech Republic,” Romney said at his VFW speech this week. “They had courageously agreed to provide sites for our anti-missile systems, only to be told, at the last hour, that the agreement was off.”

But it turns out that the Eastern European allies themselves don’t feel so spurned by President Obama’s decision, and some even support the new plan put in place. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal in Washington on Thursday, Slovakian foreign minister Miroslav Lajcak, who is also a deputy prime minister, said changing missile defense plans was a non-issue for his government:

People have moved on. We are in a different situation now. We are discussing a different project. I see no reason to revisit discussions from three years back.

In fact, this has been a non-issue for quite sometime. The Polish foreign minister said at the time of the new missile defense configuration announcement: “When President Obama announced the new configuration of the system, we did say that we liked the new configuration better, but I think you didn’t believe us.”

Lajcak went on to give the Journal an explicit endorsement of the Obama missile defense plan, lauding its NATO auspices rather than the abandoned Bush administration’s bi-lateral approach with host countries. While Romney said in his speech that Obama was bowing to Russia — whom he considers the U.S.’s “number one geopolitical foe” — Lajcak, in the Journal’s words, said “the U.S. and its European allies must continue to try and explain the defense plan to Russia, which remains skeptical.”

Romney’s tour theme may be falling flat so far, but at least he didn’t — like his adviser making the same attack — refer to Czechoslovakia in his speech. (HT: Blake Hounshell)

NEWS FLASH

Czech Dissident And President Václav Havel Dies At 75 | Václav Havel, a dissident of Communist rule over Eastern Europe who rose to serve as the first president of Czechoslovakia and, later, the Czech Republic, died at his country home at 75 years of age. Repeatedly jailed by the Communist government, his release from his final detention in 1989 heralded the overthrow of the Communist order. Havel, a writer and philosopher who said words were a “mysterious, ambiguous, ambivalent, and perfidious phenomenon,” still believed in the ability of words to triumph for good. “Is the human word truly powerful enough to change the world and influence history?” he asked when accepting a German peace prize in 1989. His own life is a testament to the resounding answer: Yes.

By Ali Gharib on Dec 18, 2011 at 2:45 pm

Yglesias

Czechoslovak Monetary Divorce

By Matthew Yglesias on Feb 26, 2010 at 10:01 am

Prague Castle

Prague Castle

Tyler Cowen is looking into the dissolution of monetary unions. One recent case is the 1993 “Velvet Divorce” of the Czech and Slovak Republics. The basic mechanics of the switch. The countries had divided back in January, but maintained a single currency for a little bit, though the Czechs insisted on splitting up since they thought the Slovak economy would be weaker:

The current bank notes will be exchanged for stamped ones in the ration 1:1 since Thursday 4 till Sunday, February 7 at all post offices and detached sections of the Czech Savings Bank. During those days the banks will stop withdrawal from accounts and deposit books. Till Sunday only not-stamped bank notes are valid in the Czech Republic.

Stamped notes with the value of 100, 500, and 1000 crowns together with not stamped notes of lower value (10,20,50 and coins) will be valid since Monday, February 8. On the same day the Czech currency will be enriched by the first Czech 200 crown bill with the portrait of J.A.Komensky.

Every citizen aged 15 and more can exchange money to the value of 4000 crown, a person below 15 can exchange maximum 1000 crowns. The exchange will be certified in the identity card.

Persons who will not be able for serious reasons exchange money can do so within the following 6 months. If someone has at home more than 4000 crowns, he can deposit it in the Savings Bank of send through post to his own addresse where it will be delivered already stamped.

The situation in Slovakia was basically the same. Anticipation that the Czech Koruna would appreciate relative to the Slovak one meant “thousands of Slovaks rushed across the Czech border to have their old notes stamped as Czech.” Key to making this work is that at the time I believe the České Spořitelna bank was still a state-owned monopoly so capital controls could be applied in a straightforward and effective matter with ease.

Yglesias

Czechs Likely to Ratify Lisbon Soon

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 8, 2009 at 3:48 am

The last real chance for Euroskeptics to defeat the Lisbon Treaty would be for Czech President Vaclav Klaus to refuse to sign the thing. In theory, a lone holdout can sink the treaty. In practice, the Czech Republic can’t hold off all the pressure from the rest of Europe. But all the Czechs would really need to do is delay signing the thing until the UK’s general election, at which point David Cameron’s Conservative Party will almost certainly come in. The Tories have promised to hold a referendum on Lisbon; but only if it hasn’t been ratified by all 27 EU members already. Now, though, it looks like the Czechs are going to give in to pressure to move quickly and head the Tories off at the pass:

The Czech PM, Jan Fischer, has told EU leaders he fully expects his country to ratify the EU’s Lisbon Treaty by the end of this year. [...] The Czech Republic’s Europe Minister, Stefan Fule, told the BBC he thought the Czech ratification could come in “weeks rather than months”.

Good news, I would say.

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