Senator Cory Booker for New Jersey has spoken out against President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for Attorney General, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. It was the first time a US Senator has testified against a Cabinet pick, and he was supported by Representatives Richmond and Lewis. All three pointed out Sessions’ history of viciously opposing the civil rights of women, LGBT people, and people of colour.
Booker referenced Martin Luther King Jr.
Booker quoted Martin Luther King Jr., “The arc of the moral universe does not just naturally curve toward justice, we must bend it,” and added that “America needs an Attorney General who is resolute and determined to bend the arc,” and does not believe that Sessions’ track record signifies any attempt to do so.
Sessions has spent his entire career quashing the rights of minority groups. Black Assistant US Attorney Thomas Figures, who worked with Sessions in the 1980s, says that he used to call him “boy” around the office, and claims Sessions called NAACP “un-American” and said he supports everything about the KKK except the fact they smoke weed.
Sessions tried to defend himself
While Sessions made an attempt at sounding pro-LGBT rights by claiming he would maintain “the statutes protecting” them, as it turns out, there are in fact startlingly few US federal laws that protect LGBT rights. And not to mention Sessions voted against all of the ones that actually are in place.
He was against the Violence Against Women Act in 2013, which prevented battered women’s shelter from turning away LGBT survivors of domestic abuse.
Instead he wanted to get rid of the parts about sexuality and gender identity. Sessions said publicly that he does not believe LGBT people suffer from discrimination when he voted against their inclusion in the Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009: “I’m not sure women or people with different sexual orientations face that kind of discrimination.” The facts prove this wrong: LGBT people are equally as likely to suffer domestic violence as heterosexuals, and transgender women of colour are the minority group that statistically suffer the most hate crimes.
The Centre for American Progress’ research shows that 10% of American workers who lose their jobs claim they were fired due to their sexuality, and yet no federal laws forbid the firing of an employee for this reason, and Sessions is quite happy with that, since he voted against it in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
Trump and Sessions are working on a new act that allows discrimination
The First Amendment Defence Act will allow workplaces to discriminate against LGBT people on the grounds of their religious beliefs about marriage, and Trump has promised to sign it the second he’s sworn into office, with Sessions promising to sign it right after. So, a lesbian could be fired for keeping a picture of her wife on her desk.
The Human Rights Campaign have given Sessions a zero rating in terms of equality. He says same-sex marriage “goes beyond what I consider to be the realm of reality,” and pledged to push Congress “again and again” to repeal the same-sex marriage legislature, and Trump is going to let him decide whether or not gays can still get married.
Sessions has promised to “consider” bringing back the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, whose purpose is to crush the creative expression of LGPT people, such as Allen Ginsberg’s trial in 1957 for his poem “Howl,” in which he wrote about gay sexual acts.
Sessions, who once threatened to cut financing for the National Endowment for the Arts because it funded the first film to be directed by a gay black women, “Watermelon Woman,” will be replacing Loretta Lynch, a passionate advocate for LGBT quality who managed to get same-sex marriage legalised nationwide. It’s like Donald Trump replacing Barack Obama...
