Everyone Is Welcome at Hamburger Mary's

The following article originally was published March 30, 2009, by Grand Junction's Free Press.

Everyone is welcome at Hamburger Mary's

"Homosexuality is seen as a violation of this natural, created order," State Senator Scott Renfroe said February 23 on the Senate floor. He called homosexuality an "abomination," a "detestable act" worthy of the death penalty in Old Testament scripture. He said that adultery and murder are also sins, and "all sin is equal."

Fast forward to March 24. Josh Penry, Senate Minority Leader whose name often comes up in discussions of possible Republican challengers to Governor Bill Ritter, spoke to the Denver Metro Young Republicans at Hamburger Mary's in Denver.

The restaurant's web page explains, "Hamburger Mary's franchises are 'open-air bar and grilles for open-minded people,' where guests enjoy a flamboyant dining experience. Everyone is welcome at Hamburger Mary's, but our concept is unique in that we are the ONLY national franchise actively marketing to the gay community."

Open-minded Republicans. Who knew?

Penry told Tim Hoover of the Denver Post, "I've got a traditional view on marriage, and a similarly traditional view that you shouldn't spend your life judging others. And so I don't."

Thomas James, president of DMYR, told Hoover that the group picked the restaurant for capitalistic reasons, not political ones: the burger joint offered a "suitable layout" at a "good location."

James added, "DMYR welcomes any individuals who share its five core principles: individual rights with personal responsibility, small and limited government, free-market capitalism, a strong national defense, and the rule of law."

We think it's a very good thing for Republicans to befriend homosexuals and for homosexuals to befriend capitalists. It could be a match made in heaven.

Ward Churchill: Another big story from Denver is that Ward Churchill appeared in court last week to get his job back at the University of Colorado.

The people who really deserved to be fired were those responsible for hiring Churchill in the first place. The entire premise of offering Churchill a job was that he was supposedly a Native American who would write leftist attacks on the United States. Churchill never had the appropriate credentials for the position. And there's not a shred of evidence suggesting he has any American Indian ancestry.

Search online for Churchill's "Winter Attack," and you will find that Churchill sold reproductions of a work that he had copied, with a few minor alterations, from the deceased artist Thomas Mails.

Churchill was a fraud before his job at CU, he was a fraud in getting that job, and he was a fraud as a professor, plagiarizing the work of others and fabricating "facts." The true scandal is not that Churchill fought to get his job back but that he ever landed the job in the first place.

Then of course Churchill compared the American victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to Nazis. He wrote of the destruction of the World Trade Center, "If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it."

In an added fraud, Churchill claims that his "right" to keep his job is protected by the First Amendment. It is not. The First Amendment forbids censorship, government restraint of free speech. The First Amendment does not require employers to provide the resources for employees to speak. For instance, you do not have the right to give a speech in your office promoting racism.

Churchill may have been protected by his employment contract -- again a problem that CU created -- but the First Amendment has nothing to do with job protection. True, because CU accepts tax dollars, more government protections apply. But just imagine how seriously the left would take Churchill's First Amendment claims if, for instance, a professor argued that homosexuals deserved to be beaten. Churchill's leftist supporters would be the first to demand a firing (and we would agree, again subject to contractual constraints).

Ah, but Churchill is cool, he has a persona, bangs a drum, wears a Che hat with sunglasses and poses with guns, and says things the left enjoys. And that is enough for young sycophants and feeble minded leftists to ignore Churchill's fraud and their own hypocrisy.

Bill 1984: Local Representative Steve King is a House sponsor of an atrocious bill that would collect DNA samples prior to criminal conviction, based only on arrest. The bill is officially numbered 241, but we call it Bill 1984 because of its Orwellian implications.

Nothing is more basic to our system of justice than the presumption of innocence, which Bill 1984 threatens. One thing the bill would do is give the police an incentive to arrest people on some pretext just to get a look at their DNA. We have enough Kings in the horror business, Steve.

Renfroe Should Resign Over Bigoted Remarks

In a just world, State Senator Scott Renfroe's constituents would rise up and throw the bum out of office. If he had a lick of sense, he would resign. Of course, if he had a lick of sense, he wouldn't have called homosexuality an abomination and a sin comparable to murder on the Senate floor in a blatant attack on church-state boundaries.

I have seen no sign of Renfroe's repentance, however, and so I call on the Republican Party of Colorado to publicly condemn Renfroe's remarks. It's the right thing to do, and it's also the prudent political move, if the GOP wishes to be taken seriously as a political force in Colorado.

At issue is a "bill to allow gay and lesbian state employees to share health benefits with their partners," reports the Denver Post. Here I do not wish to discuss the arguments for and against the bill, but only to condemn Renfroe's tirade against it.

Mike Littwin has written about the sorry affair for the Rocky Mountain News. And my good friends over at Progress Now Colorado, having actually discovered a wolf this time, have posted the entire speech on YouTube. Following is the complete transcript:

Transcript of State Senator Scott Renfroe's Speech to the Senate on February 23, 2009

Thank you madame chair. Members, I also come down here to oppose this bill. Look at some of the declarations in the bill, some of those arguments used here to do this, I guess.

Number One, is that there are employers that offer this are at a competitive advantage over those employers that do not offer such benefits. And, number one, employers, that's the private sector, and I believe in that choice, and the private sector should be allowed to do that. And businesses should have that opportunity to choose how they run their business and what they want to do.

The state, on the other hand, we are here to represent the people of Colorado, and do the state's business. And like Senator Brophy said, the state did actually speak almost directly to this issue two years ago, and the last three years we've had bills that contradict what the people of the state of Colorado voted on directly in 2006. So with that, I think that part of the declaration should be considered, in that what the will of the people was.

And, for me personally, I guess I oppose this bill because of what the vote of the people was. And then I also oppose this bill because of what my personal beliefs are. And I think that what our country was founded upon was those beliefs also.

You know, in the beginning, God created our Earth, and the structure for creation, when you have God, you have the Son, and then you have the Holy Spirit, you have that trinity. You also have that same trinity, which is in my opinion a mimic over to what we have within the family. You have the father, the husband, you have the wife, and then you have the children. And I think when you look at that scenario, that is what we were created for. And I think that's what the Bible says.

Through the whole beginning of Creation, it talks about how things were created, and that it was good, it was good, it was good. It says over and over, that it was good. Then we get to verse 18 in Genesis 2, "The Lord God said it is not good for man to be alone. And so he made him a helper, suitable for him. And that was woman."

And then if you go on, and talk about that, God blessed them and said, "Then be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds, over the sky, over every living thing that moves on the earth."

And then in Genesis 9 he said to Noah again, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." And I think that that goes back to this whole picture of family, which God created us for. And we need to honor that.

Homosexuality is seen as a violation of this natural, created order. And it is in a sense to God, the creator, who created men and women, male and female, for procreation.

Leviticus 18:22 says, "You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a female. It is an abomination."

Leviticus 20:13 says, "If there is a man who lies with a male as though to lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act, and they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltness is upon them."

Then Romans 1:18: "For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteous men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness."

And that's what we're doing here. We're suppressing the truth. The truth is what the family was created for in the beginning. That is the a husband, a wife, and children. And that is why we are here, and this goes against that. And this is just a continuation of the traction of the family.

And I say all that to back up my beliefs in where we're going with this. I believe government is here, we are here, to create the laws of our land, and when we create laws that goes against what Biblically we are supposed to stand for, I think we are agreeing or allowing to go forward a sin which should not be treated by government as something that is legal.

And that is what we are going to do with this, and what we've done in the past. We are taking sins and making them to be legally okay, and that is wrong. That is an abomination, according to scripture.

And I'm not saying that this is the only sin that's out there. Obviously we have sin, we have murder, we have all sorts of sin. We have adultery, and we don't making those legal, and we would never think to make murder legal.

But what I'm saying that for, is all sin is equal. That sin there is as equal to any other sin that's in the Bible, to having wandering eyes, to coveting your neighbor's things. Whatever you do, that sin is equal, and it can be forgiven because of that.

So with that, I think I need to go back and say that I stand in my belief, that this is wrong, and we should not condone it as a government. And I think the verses that I quoted you in Leviticus back that up in a strong way, and I'd ask you to vote no on this bill.

Renfroe here explicitly calls for the laws of Colorado to be based on Old Testament scripture. This, obviously, violates the separation of church and state. The proper purpose of government is to protect individual rights, not enforce religious dogma, whether or not the majority agrees with it. Murder and theft are properly illegal because they violate individual rights. Homosexuality between consenting adults does not. Moreover, many Coloradans reject Renfroe's religious views or his particular interpretation of Christianity.

For Renfroe to quote a religious text calling for the murder of homosexuals is outrageous, and it is wrong. It is no more appropriate than if a member of some other religion took the floor and read different texts calling for murder.

By Renfroe's account, the divine purpose of marriage is procreation. Never mind the fact that many heterosexual couples choose not to have children or cannot have them. Are their marriages similarly tainted in Renfroe's account?

Renfroe's claim that the 2006 election had anything to do with the bill at hand is nonsense. That year, voters banned gay marriage and voted against domestic partnerships. I think the majority was wrong on both counts, but that has no direct connection to extending benefits to the partners of state employees.

Renfroe's tirade illustrates why the Republicans are the minority party in Colorado. In attempting to impose their religious doctrines by force of law, such Republicans undermine individual rights and alienate mainstream voters.

Again I call on the Republican Party of Colorado to publicly condemn Renfroe's remarks. Whether the party does so will say a great deal about whether the party wishes to win competitive elections here again. And, more importantly, whether it deserves to win.