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LGBT

Better Know An Anti-LGBT Senate Candidate: Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI)

By Josh Israel on Aug 14, 2012 at 3:50 pm

Former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI)

Former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI)

Second in a series examining how anti-LGBT Senate candidates have worked to hurt the cause of equality.

With his primary win last Tuesday, nine-term former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) will be the Republican nominee against incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D). Unlike the incumbent, who has had a solid record in support of equality, Hoekstra has consistently worked to oppose the LGBT community on every major issue.

Over 18 years in Congress, his unsuccessful 2010 campaign for Michigan governor, and this Senate race:

1. Hoekstra actively pushed anti-LGBT bills. At least nine times, he signed on as a co-sponsor of anti-equality measures including the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, a proposal to amend the U.S. constitution to prevent states from voluntarily recognizing same-sex unions, and a radical proposal to take away the right of same-sex couples to challenge discriminatory laws in state or federal courts.

2. Hoekstra backed an effort to restrict same-sex adoption. In 1999, he voted in favor of an amendment adding a rider to the District of Columbia Appropriations Act that would have prohibited “any funding for the joint adoption of a child between individuals who are not related by blood or marriage.”

3. Hoekstra has been a virtual zero on LGBT rights. He earned a zero rating from the Human Rights Campaign, voting against LGBT equality 100 percent of the time, in the 104th, 105th, 106th, 107th, 108th, 109th, and 110th Congresses. In the 111th Congress, he earned just a 10 percent score after voting against one anti-gay procedural motion.

4. Hoekstra has not even practiced non-discrimination personally. In addition to voting against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, he refused to even adopt a non-discrimination policy against LGBT discrimination for employees in his own Congressional office. He also voted for an amendment in 1998 that would have effectively nullified President Clinton’s executive order prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in the federal civilian workforce.

5. Hoekstra proudly boasts of awards he received from a designated hate group. His Senate campaign site highlights that he voted 93 percent of the time with the Family Research Council (FRC). His 2010 gubernatorial campaign site biography page noted that he received both the “Family, Faith and Freedom Award” and “True Blue Award” from the organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated FRC as a hate group for its record of “false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science.”

6. Hoekstra has proudly promoted his anti-LGBT backers. In this Senate campaign, he said “I could not be prouder to announce the endorsement of Rick Santorum. This is a major endorsement and shows that our campaign continues to build momentum.” In his 2010 gubernatorial campaign, Hoekstra ran an ad in which Focus on the Family Founder and anti-LGBT activist James Dobson praises him for supporting “traditional marriage.”

Listen to the Dobson endorsement ad:

Hoekstra has often attacked judicial rulings in favor of LGBT equality as “egregious judicial activism,” finding it inexplicable that courts could rule in favor of equal protection when he “firmly” believes marriage “is uniquely and essentially the union of one man and one woman.”

Hoekstra’s record is not just one of opposing LGBT rights, but one of actively seeking to take them away. His election to the U.S. Senate would be a huge threat to LGBT people and families.

Related Posts

Election

Michigan Senate Candidate Calls Lilly Ledbetter Pay Equity Law A ‘Nuisance’: ‘It Shouldn’t Be The Law’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Apr 13, 2012 at 2:58 pm

At a campaign event yesterday, former GOP congressman and current Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra said the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 should not be law because it interferes with job creation. The law has been in the news lately after presumed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney hedged on his support for it earlier this week. But Hoekstra, who is running against Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), was clear.

When an attendee asked Hoekstra if he would “work to repeal” the law — which empowers women to hold employers accountable for pay discrimination — Hoekstra replied, “It shouldn’t be the law“:

“Will, you know, will repealing it be a priority? If you came back and said, you know, that’s really the thing that’s hurting my business the most. My guess is there are other things that we can do that have a higher priority in terms of what I, what I believe might need to be done. I think you know we need to create — that thing is a nuisance. It shouldn’t be the law,” replied Hoekstra.

Listen to it:

Hoekstra joined most of the rest of his party in voting against the Ledbetter act in 2009, and also in 2007 when Republicans killed it. (HT: Amanda Terkel)

Climate Progress

Sen. Stabenow Jumps On Climate Denial Train

By Brad Johnson on Mar 31, 2011 at 11:25 am

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) has joined the pro-polluter frenzy sweeping the U.S. Senate, introducing legislation to permanently cripple Clean Air Act rules on global warming pollution. The small business legislation, the SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2011 (S. 493), introduced by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), is being used as a vehicle for senators who wish to prevent regulation of greenhouse pollution from oil refineries, coal-fired power plants, heavy industry, and other major emitters. Stabenow has added her amendment to three others intended to hamstring the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of carbon polluters.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has introduced amendment 183, the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, first introduced by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK). The amendment is cosponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Pat Toomey (R-PA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Mike Johanns (R-NE), Rob Portman (R-OH), and Johnny Isakson (R-GA). The amendment calls for:

– The permanent prohibition on Clean Air Act regulation of greenhouse gases, other than the existing motor vehicle rules

– Repeal of the greenhouse gas endangerment finding and reporting requirements

– Preventing any future California waiver for tailpipe greenhouse emissions

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has introduced amendment 215, the EPA Stationary Source Regulations Suspension Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND). The amendment calls for:

– A two-year suspension of stationary source regulations of carbon dioxide and methane.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) has introduced amendment 236, which has three elements:

– Forbidding regulation of greenhouse gases from a emitter that doesn’t also produce other regulated air pollution

– Codification of the EPA tailoring rule that establishes a 75,000 ton CO2e/year threshold for regulation

– Excluding regulation of biofuel greenhouse emissions related to land-use changes, or of any greenhouse emissions from other agricultural activities

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) has introduced amendment 265, which has four elements:

– A two-year suspension of stationary source greenhouse gas regulations

– Preventing any future California waiver for tailpipe greenhouse emissions

– Excluding regulation of biofuel greenhouse emissions related to land-use changes, or of any greenhouse emissions from other agricultural activities

– Allocating $5 billion to the Advanced Energy Project tax credit

Votes on some combination of these amendments is expected as early as Thursday afternoon.

Update

Stabenow has introduced an new version of her climate-denial legislation as amendment 277. NRDC’s David Doniger has the details.

Yglesias

Is Debbie Stabenow Vulnerable?

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 30, 2011 at 10:46 am

Rachel Weiner profiles the Michigan GOP’s search for a challenger to Senator Debbie Stabenow:

The fundamental question is just how much that political environment will impact Stabenow. After winning in 2000 with just 49 percent, Stabenow cruised to a 16-point win six years later against Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard.

While polling suggests Stabenow’s numbers are in dangerous territory, running with President Obama on the top of the ticket should help Stabenow drive African-American turnout. (No Republican presidential candidate has carried Michigan since George H.W. Bush in 1988.) Stabenow also has $2 million in the bank as of the end of 2010, putting her towards the top of the pack of vulnerable senators in cash.

“I don’t think 2012 is going to be 2010,” said Bill Ballenger, a pundit and former Republican lawmaker.

It seems to me that you have two different cases here. One is one in which the economy is doing so poorly that Barack Obama loses a state where he got 57 percent of the vote in 2008. In a scenario like that, clearly Stabenow is in big trouble if faced with a reasonable opponent. Another is a scenario in which Obama joins Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry in carrying Michigan. There it’s hard to see why Stabenow could possibly lose since there’s precious little sign coming out of recent state-level politics that the Michigan GOP is interested in nominating moderates. They seem to have (not necessarily wrongly) decided to go with a strategy of nominating hard-core conservatives in a moderately liberal state, losing most of the time, but achieving dramatic right-wing policy advances when they do win.

Climate Progress

Stabenow Bill Would Make Toothpicks, Chopsticks Eligible for Climate Subsidies

By Brad Johnson on Nov 29, 2009 at 3:51 pm

ToothpicksA new bill proposed by Michigan senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) would give the timber industry carbon credit for cutting down old growth forests and turning them into toothpicks, chopsticks, desks, plywood, sofas, pencils, and other wood products – and throw in billions of dollars on top of that to incentivize spraying of pesticides, oil production, and coal mining.

Despite these drawbacks, the bill, entitled The Clean Energy Partnerships Act (S. 2729), does contain some strong environmental provisions – like incentives for organic agriculture and assurances that farmers, foresters and conservationists who’ve taken early action to reduce climate pollution don’t get their funding cut off.

But these gains could easily be undermined by the bill’s kitchen-sink approach to offering offset credits, as well as its total exclusion of the rigorous scientific, environmental, and social standards for crediting that are contained in the Kerry-Boxer and Waxman-Markey legislation. These key standards include protections for biodiversity and use of native, non-invasive species in forestry activities. Unless the authors of the overall climate bill take a critical look at Stabenow’s provisions, instead of just swallowing them whole, they risk significantly undermining the integrirty and aims of the overall legislation.

The bulk of the problems in Stabenow’s bill comes from the list of activities that would be eligible for lucrative offset credit. Many of these activities are already included in the Kerry-Boxer legislation, but with a critical difference: Kerry-Boxer recommends them for consideration by an Advisory Board and the president, whereas as the Stabenow bill requires their initial inclusion.

Particularly worrying is the mandate for crediting:

forest management resulting in an increase in forest carbon stores, including harvested wood products.

The theory here, long pushed by the timber industry, is that sofas, desks, baseball bats, yachts and other “harvested wood products” store the carbon that was once in trees – and they should get paid for transfering carbon from storage in a tree to storage in a 2 X 4.

Unfortunately, they neglect to mention that creating wood products requires an extraordinary amount of energy – everything from driving trucks into a forest, running chainsaws, trucking the logs back out of the forest, cutting and processing them (the biggest energy expenditure), dousing them with veneer and other energy-intensive chemicals, shipping them to a store and then getting them to a customer’s house – or into your Chinese food delivery bag. They also don’t usually highlight how much wood is lost in the shipping and manufacture process, or the degree of decay that occurs in landfills. The Wilderness Society’s Ann Ingerson did a comprehensive analysis of carbon storage in wood, “Wood Products and Carbon Storage: Can Increased Production Help Solve the Climate Crisis?” and found that in many cases, the emissions required to produce a piece of finished wood far exceeds the carbon stored in it – though that’s just one of the ways in which logging and manufacture of wood products produces emissions.

The industry also neglects to remind Members of Congress that they already get paid for selling wood products, and don’t exactly need subsidies to cut down trees. Read more

Politics

Kyl Asserts ‘I Don’t Need Maternity Care’ In My Health Policy; Stabenow Shoots Back ‘Your Mom Probably Did’

By Amanda Terkel on Sep 25, 2009 at 1:27 pm

Today, the Senate Finance Committee debated Sen. Jon Kyl’s (R-AZ) amendment to prohibit the federal government from “defining the health care benefits offered through private insurance.” Kyl tried to make his case by citing the unnecessary expense of maternity care. He was quickly smacked down by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI):

KYL: I don’t need maternity care, and so requiring that to be in my insurance policy is something that I don’t need and will make the policy more expensive.

STABENOW: If I could just interject once with my colleague — I think your mom probably did. (LAUGHTER)

KYL: Over 60 years ago my mom did. (LAUGHTER) You notice I wasn’t too specific with regard to that.

Watch it:

Of course Kyl doesn’t need maternity care; he will never be a mother. As Igor Volsky notes at the Wonk Room, Kyl’s amendment “would prohibit the government from defining which benefits should be included in a standard benefit package and would permit health insurance companies to design policies that exclude higher-cost beneficiaries.”

Maternity care, in fact, is a perfect example of why Kyl’s amendment is so bad. Most individual health insurance markets don’t cover maternity care. In fact, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, only 14 states have a requirement for such coverage, and the number of plans without maternity coverage continues to rise dramatically. Anthem Blue Cross — which has been actively fighting health care reform — considers pregnancy optional and therefore not necessary to insure:

“The point of insurance is to insure against catastrophic care costs. That’s what you’re trying to aggregate and pool for such things as heart attacks and cancer,” said an Anthem Blue Cross spokesman. “Having a child is a matter of choice. Dealing with an adult onset illness, such as diabetes, heart disease breast or prostate cancer, is not a matter of choice.”

“A well defined minimum benefits package would compel health insurers to provide basic services to all Americans,” adds Volsky. “The Kyl amendment, which ultimately failed, would have allowed the industry to continue profiting from discriminatory practices.”

Climate Progress

Democratic Senators Make Pollution Lobbyist Demands

By Brad Johnson on Jun 11, 2008 at 11:48 am

Ten Senators letterTen Senators letter

The ten Democratic signatories: Debbie Stabenow & Carl Levin (MI), Mark Pryor & Blanche Lincoln (AR), Evan Bayh (IN), Sherrod Brown (OH), Jay Rockefeller (WV), Jim Webb (VA), Claire McCaskill (MO), and Ben Nelson (NE). Download the letter.

As the New York Times noted today, ten Democratic senators echoed polluters in a letter sent to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) about her filibustered climate change legislation last Friday. The senators, nine of whom supported cloture to end debate and vote on amendments, wrote, “We commend your leadership in attempting to address one of the most significant threats to this and future generations; however, we cannot support final passage of the Boxer Substitute in its final form.” Their letter continues:

To that point we have laid out the following principles and concerns that must be considered and fully addressed in any final legislation.

The senators’ letter uses practically the same talking points and specific policy demands as the industry polluters who fought to kill the legislation, in particular the industry lobbying groups American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). A review of the letter reveals the Boxer substitute (S. Amdt. 4825 to the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, S. 3036) already made concessions to these parochial and fossil-industry demands:

Polluter Talking Point #1: “Contain Costs and Prevent Harm to the U.S. Economy.” Read more

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