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The anti-LGBT sentiment from religious conservatives has reached a new high with a Jacksonville, Florida Baptist Church making members sign an oath of confirmation in anti-LGBT relationships as part of church membership.
First Baptist Church in Jacksonville's Senior Pastor Heath Lambert has been an outspoken proponent of 'traditional' family values and now the church has given members until March 19 to sign the 'Biblical Sexuality Agreement' oath or to immediately resign their membership. Lambert says he doesn't care what members do, and that real Christians do not have a problem with it.
According to Lambert, he did not make the decision on his own — that the entire congregation wanted to move forward with the agreement.
The First Baptist Church 'Biblical Sexuality Agreement' states:
"As a member of First Baptist Church, I believe that God creates people in his image as either male or female, and that this creation is a fixed matter of human biology, not individual choice," the Agreement continues. "I believe marriage is instituted by God, not government, is between one man and one woman, and is the only context for sexual desire and expression."
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The Agreement cites the Book of Genesis along with Corinthians, Matthew and Romans.
"It means to rule out all sorts of sexual sins," Lambert said in an interview with WJXX. "It means to rule out pornography and polygamy and fornication and adultery and homosexuality."
A decade ago the First Baptist Church made news in Jacksonville by publicly opposing a newly proposed city ordinance that protected the citizens of Jacksonville from being fired solely based on their sexual identity. The ordinance ended up passing years later.
The church sent shuttles of members to speak against the ordinance.
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GOP House passes bill opening more public land to development if reserve oil is tapped
January 28, 2023
U.S. House Republicans passed a bill Friday to force the White House to make more federal land and waters available for oil and gas development if the president orders the withdrawal of more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The bill, passed 221-205, mostly along party lines, would strip the president’s power to remove oil from the reserve unless the U.S. Energy Department has a plan to allow new leasing on federal lands and waters for oil exploration.
The vote comes after a volatile two years for gas prices, which have spiked and fallen in response to several factors. President Joe Biden sought to reduce price spikes by selling record amounts from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the federally controlled stockpile of crude oil housed in underground salt caverns along the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Texas.
The bill would require that the percentage of federal lands and waters opened to leasing is the same as the percentage of oil drawn from the reserve, with a limit of 15%.
All Republicans who voted were in favor, while only one Democrat, Jared Golden of Maine, cast a ballot to pass the bill. Eight members did not vote.
The measure is unlikely to become law, as Biden has already pledged to veto it — even in the unlikely event the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate were to send it to his desk.
House Democrats largely dismissed the measure as an unserious messaging bill.
GOP hammers on Biden energy policy
The Republican message, voiced repeatedly by members over two days of debate, was that Biden mismanaged the country’s energy agenda in his first two years in office.
The 2 ½-page bill itself deals narrowly with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters.
Republicans criticized the use of emergency reserves.
“The bill today will help ensure this vital American energy asset — and American security interests — will not be drained away for non-emergency, political purposes,” the bill’s chief sponsor, Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state, said on the House floor Thursday.
“It provides a path towards making energy more affordable for Americans, who are looking to us to help ease the pain at the pump.”
The bill’s requirement that Strategic Petroleum Reserve withdrawals are offset by additional leasing responds to an order in the early days of the Biden administration — later reversed in federal court — to pause new oil and gas leases on federal lands.
But the debate Thursday and Friday quickly morphed into an airing of wider GOP grievances against the administration’s energy agenda.
They said the need to raid the emergency supply was emblematic of the administration’s misguided policy to limit oil and gas development.
Biden blocked the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline that was to run from Canada through Montana en route to U.S. refineries, they said. He sought to import oil, sometimes from adversarial countries, while stifling domestic production, they said.
Biden’s moves proved he had “an intentional plan to destroy America’s oil industry,” Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Rome said.
Bill shows ‘no real vision,’ Democrats say
Democrats dismissed the measure as frivolous and counterproductive. If enacted, it would only take a tool away from presidents of either party to deal with future oil supply volatility. That would result in less available oil, not more, they said.
“There is no real vision for Republican energy policy,” Energy and Commerce ranking Democrat Frank Pallone of New Jersey said. “They are reduced to defending their oil and gas interests and attacking President Biden’s successful efforts to lower gas prices for Americans.”
“The bill would significantly weaken a critical energy security tool, resulting in more oil supply shortages and higher gas prices for working families,” Biden’s statement of administration policy said. “This Administration’s use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has been essential to protecting our energy security and to lowering gas prices for Americans.”
One criticism centered on the idea that more leases don’t necessarily lead to more oil reserves.
Energy companies already hold thousands of leases of federal lands and waters that are not being used for oil exploration. Auctioning more leases would do little to increase short-term oil supply or drop the price of gas, Democrats said.
“There is no relationship between opening up more federal lands for the production of oil and gas and the price that Americans pay at the pump,” Colorado Democrat Diana DeGette said. “None. And instead of helping to bring down prices for consumers, what this bill does is it really makes it harder for future administrations to respond.”
Among the dozens of failed Democratic amendments was one from Nevada’s Susie Lee that would have barred leasing of lands deemed to have low potential for oil and gas.
Democrats and environmentalists generally oppose oil companies leasing lands with little potential, saying that those lands would be better used for conservation or recreation.
Second bill this year on reserve
The measure was the second bill the House has passed this year related to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The first was a measure barring sale of the reserve crude oil to China or state-backed Chinese companies. That bill passed Jan. 12 with broad bipartisan support.
Republican U.S. Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming and Susan Collins of Maine have cosponsored a similar bill, as did Ted Cruz of Texas. None yet have Democratic cosponsors.
Barrasso has also introduced a bill similar to the one the House passed Friday.
56 votes on amendments
The House took two days, Thursday and Friday, to consider the bill under a modified open rule, a process that has become rare in recent decades and doesn’t restrict any relevant amendments filed by a certain deadline.
Members filed nearly 150 amendments and voted on 56, rejecting most of them. Others were ruled not germane to the bill and did not receive votes.
Of those that passed, several restricted or opened specific areas for oil exploration.
Amendments offered by Republicans Matt Gaetz of Florida and Nancy Mace of South Carolina stipulated that existing restrictions on drilling off the coasts of those states would still be in effect if the bill became law.
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican, authored a successful amendment that would require any plan for additional leasing under the bill would include identifying portions of the Thompson Divide in her district to be leased.
Another Boebert amendment lifted the cap on total lands and waters offered for leasing from 10% to 15%.
The House adopted an amendment from New Jersey Democrat Josh Gottheimer requiring that any drawdown from the reserve not be sold to China, Iran, North Korea or Russia.
The amendment would expand the bill the House passed two weeks earlier that barred only sales to China.
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.
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Dems ready to OK new 2024 primary voting calendar — despite uncertainty in two states
January 28, 2023
WASHINGTON — The full Democratic National Committee is set to vote in just days about a decision to ratify a new lineup of five states that would lead the nation in primary voting for Democratic presidential candidates in 2024.
But approval of the new calendar at a meeting scheduled for Feb. 4 in Philadelphia won’t be the last step in what’s become a contentious process.
Democrats in New Hampshire will still need to get their Republican-controlled state government to change a law that says the state must schedule its primary ahead of similar contests and to expand access to early voting — both of which GOP lawmakers have said they won’t do.
Georgia Democrats also will need to get their GOP secretary of state to change the state’s presidential primary date to match the DNC’s requirements — a similarly unlikely feat.
If the two states’ Democrats don’t, in fact, get Republicans to follow along with the DNC’s plan, waivers will become void, moving New Hampshire and Georgia back into the so-called regular window that begins in March.
The waivers allow the five states to vote before the regular window if those states implement the dates and policies the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee detailed during its December meeting.
New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan said Thursday that the “state law is very clear that we will go first.”
“There is a way for us to make sure that we are honoring all the values of the Democratic Party with New Hampshire going first,” Hassan said. “And it’s really important that the DNC develop a proposal that is actually one that all of the participants can meet.”
Time extended
The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which originally approved the new slate of early voting states in December, voted this week to give New Hampshire and Georgia through June 3 to show the national party that the states were moving to match the DNC’s vision.
Similar extensions weren’t necessary for South Carolina, Nevada, or Michigan, which have met the requirements to get the waiver, allowing the three states to vote early without incurring the wrath of the national party.
The Rules and Bylaws Committee, which is spearheading the process, is expected to meet again shortly after the new June 3 deadline, according to an individual familiar with the process who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
During that meeting, panel members are likely to discuss whether New Hampshire and Georgia have met the requirements needed to vote early, or if the waivers the full DNC will vote to approve next week have become void.
New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said Thursday the extension until June 3 is unlikely to change much.
“Well, I appreciate that they provided the extension. Sadly, I don’t think it’s going to make much difference because the Republican governor and the Republican legislative leadership have been very clear they don’t intend to make the changes that the DNC has requested,” Shaheen said.
“And I think it’s unfortunate for the DNC to put at risk Democratic elected officials in the state, because of those rules,” Shaheen added.
Waivers would become void
If New Hampshire Republicans don’t take steps during the next four months to match the proposed Feb. 13 primary election day and expand access to early voting, then the waiver the DNC is set to approve Feb. 4 would become void automatically.
That would mean New Hampshire no longer has the DNC’s approval to vote ahead of the regular window, which begins the first Tuesday in March.
If the state were to hold its Democratic presidential primary ahead of that benchmark, the DNC would bar Democratic presidential candidates from campaigning in the state, including placing their name on the ballot. The DNC would also strip New Hampshire Democrats of half of their delegates.
The same would be true for Georgia’s Feb. 20 waiver, though Peach State voters aren’t as tied to the “first-in-the-nation” primary distinction that New Hampshire has clung to for years.
Georgia voters tend to head to the primary polls a bit later in the process, casting their ballots on June 9 for the 2020 presidential primary, March 1 during the 2016 primaries and March 6 for the 2012 primary.
So if Georgia doesn’t complete the steps outlined in the waiver a DNC panel approved in December and extended this week, the state would likely just vote during the so-called regular window that begins the first Tuesday in March.
Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff said Thursday that his home state moving up in the presidential primary voting process would be beneficial, though he deferred to the secretary of state when asked if the additional time would move the needle.
“It would be great for Georgia and Georgia would benefit from being earlier in the process,” Ossoff said. “So we will see how the process plays out.”
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.
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