This article has been updated.

A bipartisan amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act would require the Department of Defense to conduct an internal review of policies and prosecutions related to military members living with HIV.

Currently the military can try service-members with HIV under a variety of charges, including failing to obey an order for having unprotected sex, not disclosing an HIV-positive status, or for aggravated assault, wherein HIV is the factor for the more serious charge.

The amendment would be the first time Congress has voted on HIV-criminalization matters since the passage of the 1990 Ryan White CARE Act, which required states to certify they had a process to prosecute deliberate transmission of HIV.

Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) are expected to introduce the amendment Thursday evening, Lee’s spokeswoman, Carrie Adams, said in a phone interview.

The two lawmakers are also co-sponsors of the Repeal HIV Discrimination Act, which would push states to repeal HIV-specific statues in favor of laws that would only allow prosecution against HIV-positive persons if there is evidence of intent to infect and/or actual harm caused.

The amendment would require the Defense Department to issue a report no later than 180 days after the bill is signed into law. This report would have to demonstrate that prosecutions related to HIV exposure and transmission are based on a medically accurate understanding of the infection and treatment. It would also require the U. S. Military to review all recent prosecutions and make recommendations to improve the system to ensure that prosecutions are based on scientifically accurate risks.

These requirements match the National HIV/AIDS Strategy issued by the White House in 2010. The strategy called on states to review policies related to HIV criminalization. The United Nations Global Commission on HIV and the Law has also recommended the same thing, and the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) earlier this year unanimously approved a resolution calling for HIV criminalization to be made a priority in the implementation of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy.

One of the soldiers prosecuted by the military for allegations of exposure to HIV is Ken Pinkela. He was charged for an alleged incident in 2008, and was later convicted in a court martial. He is currently appealing that conviction.

In a phone interview, Pinkela said he supports the amendment, calling it “powerful.”

“These prosecutions show the insanity of how we are treating people with HIV,” he said.

Many HIV- and LGBT-advocacy groups support this amendment, including OutServe-SLDN, which represents LGBT military personnel and their allies.

“The amendment will protect service members and the public, as well as people with HIV, by ending the current disincentive to get tested for HIV and save taxpayer dollars by avoiding unnecessary or inappropriate prosecutions,” said OutServe spokesman Zeke Stokes in an email.

UPDATED at 7:15pm EST:

The amendment was approved by the House Thursday evening. Lee issued the following statement on the adoption of the amendment:

I’m so pleased that this is a bi-partisan effort and am proud that my colleague Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has joined me in this effort. Modernizing laws when it comes to our military is essential, and the laws that dictate the lives of our service members should reflect contemporary understanding of the science of HIV. I’m proud that the House has recognized this essential piece of working towards an AIDS-free generation, and my amendment would take an important first step in ensuring that our laws reflect current scientific understandings of HIV.

While political observers speculate on the factors shaping Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s thinking on whether or not to prevent the execution later this summer of convicted murderer Nathan Dunlap, civil libertarians are demanding to know how the procedure would be carried out.

In Colorado, capital punishment is administered by lethal injection. But the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has been asking for information detailing which drugs, protocols and training would be used in what would be the first execution in the state since 1997. The Department of Corrections has refused the group’s request.

On Tuesday, the ACLU filed suit in Denver District Court, arguing that information about the execution would facilitate public discussion about the death penalty here. Debate over execution by lethal injection often includes consideration of how the injection can be administered least painfully and of the ethical questions the procedure raises for the pharmacists supplying the drugs, for example.

“By refusing to disclose the details of the execution procedure, including the drug or drugs that may be used and how they are obtained, as well as information about the companies that may be supplying the chemicals, CDOC infringes, without adequate justification, on the public’s legitimate right to information about how its government operates with regard to one of its most serious undertakings,” said ACLU of Colorado Legal Director Mark Silverstein in a release.

The ACLU complaint cites the Colorado Board of Pharmacy Rules of Professional Conduct, which prohibits “any practice which detrimentally affects the patient” and state that a “pharmacist may not dispense a prescription drug or a controlled substance based on an order that does not list a specific patient.”

Dunlap was convicted of killing four people at a Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant in 1993. A judge decided his execution will take place in late August on a day chosen by the DOC.

Hickenlooper is under pressure to commute Dunlap’s sentence. One factor being raised is how race has played into sentencing in Colorado. Dunlap, like the two other prisoners on death row here, is African American in a state where, according to 2012 Census data, only 4.3 percent of the population is black.

he 'surf shack' Hollister storefront at Park Meadows Mall in Lone Tree, Colorado. (Via The Colorado Independent).

This story was originally published by The Colorado Independent.

A Denver-based federal judge has ruled that the entrances to hundreds of Hollister stores nationwide violate the Americans With Disabilities Act.

“They’re digging their heels in. They’ve been digging in their heels all the way,” said Julie Farrar, a named plaintiff in the four-year legal battle. The case grew from complaints filed against two stores in Colorado. It’s now a class-action suit targeting 248 Hollister stores around the country.

Hollister, like all of the Abercrombie brands, markets its clothing as a lifestyle. It sells a sort of gestalt approach to pre-teen and teenage existence. The stores feature surf-speak labeling. Girls find their clothes in the “Bettys” department. Boys find theirs in the “Dudes” department. The stores are fashioned in malls everywhere to look like surf shacks. They’re not weathered. The air isn’t salted. There’s no odd guy trolling out front with metal detectors. But they do feature steps leading up to what resembles a front porch.

According to a deposition of a company executive, the raised entrances were designed to create “an entry to a house in Southern California that you would walk up onto the porch or walk down into the porch, to enter, like you would do at a beach house.”

Hollister is a “fantasy of Southern California,” according to a 2013 report to shareholders. “It’s all about hot lifeguards and beautiful beaches. … Young and fun, with a sense of humor, Hollister never takes itself too seriously. Hollister’s laidback lifestyle and All-American image is timeless and effortlessly cool.”

Farrar wouldn’t likely describe anything about the Hollister experience as “effortless.”

A Denver policy analyst, Farrar was nudged by her 12-year-old daughter to wade into the retail “fantasy of Southern California.” She was willing, in other words, to move from small-wave to big-wave, even epic, price surfing, from $12.00 Target shirts, for example, to $39.50 Hollister “Huntington Beach Tops.”

But Farrar’s wheelchair couldn’t make it up the steps of the store at the Orchard Town Center in Westminster. That was a problem for Farrar, and now it’s a problem for Hollister.

The 23-year-old American with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in employment, transportation, public accommodation, communications, and governmental activities.

Hollister has argued that it complies with the law because the stores include side doors disguised as shuttered windows that are wheelchair-accessible. Plaintiffs say those doors often are blocked with tables stacked with merchandise.

In any case, Farrar had no intention of using a side entrance to shell out big bucks for her tween’s wardrobe.

“I would never go through a side door. It’s not something I would do. I’m philosophically opposed to that,” says Farrar, 45, who was born without a sacrum — the triangular bone at the bottom of the spine — and who started using a wheelchair when she was 12. She said that in school using a wheelchair meant she was effectively segregated from other students. She remembers her family being asked to leave restaurants, movie theaters, and shops because she “was considered a fire and safety hazard.”

Farrar is one of the original plaintiffs in the suit filed in 2009 by the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition over Hollister’s then two Colorado stores. The court ruled in 2011 that both stores — one at Park Meadows Mall and the other at Orchard Town Center — violated the ADA. The Orchard Town Center store since has closed. The steps in front of Hollister at Park Meadows Mall remain in place two years after Judge Daniel ruled them a violation of the law. Two newer stores, in Aurora and at Flatiron Crossing, are wheelchair accessible.

In 2012, the case grew into the class-action suit that targets 248 Hollister stores in the U.S. that feature the faux porch steps as a main entrance. That’s slightly more than half of the 483 Hollister stores nationwide.

The U.S. Justice Department has also weighed in on the case, noting that the Hollister stores were built long after the ADA was enacted and that the entrances violated both the spirit and letter of the law. Justice officials criticized the company for relegating people in wheelchairs to separate side entrances.

One of the chief goals of the ADA was integration. Excluding people like Farrar from the main entrance – and the Hollister surf shack porches – is no more permissible than it would be to exclude people based on race, plaintiff say.

In March, Judge Daniel ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.

“Because the Hollister stores with Raised Porch Entrances are in violation of section 12183(a), an injunction is mandatory to remedy the violation,” he wrote.

Daniel ordered the company to work with disability rights activists on wording an injunction that would provide accessibility by using one of three options at any given store.

One would be to flatten out the entrance and remove the steps. Another would be to provide wheelchair-accessible ramps. The third option is more complicated.

The company’s lawyers argued in court that the stepped porches aren’t discriminatory because they’re visual displays that all customers — even disabled ones — can enjoy. But if that’s the case, argued the plaintiffs, then Hollister should use the porches strictly as display windows and require all customers to enter through the side doors.

Neither the Abercrombie & Fitch public relations department nor a member of its defense team responded to The Independent‘s inquiries about the case.

More than two months after Judge Daniels’ order, there has been no agreement on the injunction and the plaintiffs are growing impatient.

Farrar’s frustration stems less from her desire to buy her daughter a pair of “Cheeky” swim bottoms or $59 “high-rise short shorts” than from a need, she said, “for the company to do the right thing.”

“These stores are designed to look shuttered and hidden, as if to keep out the riffraff,” she said. “I want people to know that, as a society, we have evolved over the past 25 years. Despite the fact that [Hollister]market[s] beauty and athleticism as a stereotype, the reality is they still need the rest of us people who are short, chubby and maybe with acne and wheelchairs.”

Or maybe not, says Paco Underhill, an environmental psychologist and author of “Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping.”

As Underhill explains, retailers specifically target shoppers of certain demographics by providing something more than manufactured products.

“If you don’t know what goes on behind the windows of Hollister, you’re probably not going to want to shop there.” There is a tribalism about the shopping experience, he says, “that’s not just about the acquisition of goods but a souvenir of the experience.” Climbing Hollister’s steps is typical of that kind of experiential marketing.

The corporation is unabashed about its exclusionary efforts. In 2006, Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries told Salon that his stores specifically don’t market to teens who are overweight, unattractive or outliers among their peers.

“Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either,” he said.

The clothing giant also made headlines in 2009 when an employee said she was moved from a sales position on the floor to one behind the scenes in the stockroom because her prosthetic arm didn’t comply with the company’s aesthetic standards.

Underhill, whose company Envirosell consults with businesses on matters such as “store planning,” “signage and display” and “windows,” finds it telling that disability-rights advocates targeted Hollister rather than what he said is “a long list of other retailers who have steps at their entrances.” If Hollister’s beach culture is, as he describes, a kind of tribe, disabled customers don’t feel like members.

“It’s no accident that they’re chasing down a surf brand chain and not some other company,” he says. “In my view, that’s a capricious application of the law.”

This story was originally published by The Colorado Independent.

Kiondre Davison (THE COLORADO INDEPENDENT)

Fourteen-year-old Kiondre Davison had a habit of acting up in school and running away from home. Social services officials stepped in to help. They sent him to El Pueblo Boys and Girls Ranch, a teen treatment center in Pueblo, Colo., that touts its “environment of safety and loving care.”

Davison – with an IQ of 62 and an array of developmental disabilities – bickered with staffers, fought with other kids, and exhibited what the center documented as a pattern of inappropriate behavior. Its form of treatment: forcing him to spend at least 25 consecutive days last year in one of its “reflections cottages” — spaces that, despite the pleasant name, Davison describes as “hell.”

“Reflection,” as practiced in many cases at El Pueblo, is a form of solitary confinement in a cement cell. For some teens at the center, state investigators have found, reflection means no school, outdoor exercise or interaction with other kids. Davison didn’t really understand why he was put into isolation or how long it would last. He says the three-and-a-half weeks or more he spent locked in solitude, unable to watch TV, read a book, or see his mom “seemed like five or six months.”

“I’m not so good with stuff like months and weeks,” he says. “All I know is it was long, real long, and it felt like the worst thing ever. I mean, ever.”

El Pueblo voluntarily has shut down its reflections cottages as Colorado’s Department of Human Services investigates how many kids besides Davison have been forced into isolation there. Following a complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado last month, state regulators issued a report on describing as well-founded ACLU allegations that:

• Kids are locked and placed in solitary confinement in El Pueblo’s “reflections cottages”
• Children have not been provided adequate education programs during their stays in “reflection”
• And youth in El Pueblo “are not provided recreation, exercise or outdoor activity.”

El Pueblo president and CEO Sherri Baca touts reflection as a way to “provide a clinical intervention for the residents in crisis.”

“The Cottages are an important element in the continuum of care available to our kids,” she said in a prepared statement, noting that her center looks forward to working with Human Services officials in their evaluation of its program.

The use of solitary confinement has come under scrutiny in several facilities in Colorado.

ADX, the federal supermax prison in Florence, is being sued for housing mentally ill prisoners in long-term isolation without psychological treatment. Colorado State Penitentiary and the Sterling Correctional Facility – two state prisons that use long-term solitary confinement – are making headlines after the shooting of Department of Corrections Director Tom Clements in March by a parolee who served long stints isolated in both prisons before being released directly onto the streets.

While corrections officials and civil libertarians debate the legality of long-term solitary confinement for adult convicts, there is far less ambiguity about the use of isolation in a facility such as El Pueblo, which is a treatment center – not a penitentiary – for kids. Many El Pueblo patients are sent there voluntarily by their families or placed there by social services officials for psychological care.
State regulations prohibit isolating children “except in emergency situations and only after all less restrictive alternatives have been exhausted.” The rules also say that isolation should not exceed two hours except in the most extraordinary cases and should end when the emergency passes.
In its report, the Department of Human Services confirmed that El Pueblo has held children in solitary confinement in non-emergency situations for much longer than two hours, in some cases for days or weeks at a time.

Documents show Davison was held in El Pueblo Cottage 4 for at least 25 days from February to March, 2012, without school lessons or recreation time. His stint there may have lasted longer. El Pueblo paperwork obtained by The Colorado Independent is incomplete.

Seclusion is not one of the many accepted methods mental health professionals use to treat troubled teenagers. Humans need social contact. Long-term isolation is known to traumatize children, whose brains are still developing. Established ethics guiding isolation policies apply even to animals. New federal guidelines require more relative space and social stimulation for laboratory animals than teens were being afforded in El Pueblo’s “reflections cottages.”

Of particular concern is imposing isolation on developmentally delayed kids. Davison is typical of such cases. He struggled to understand what was happening to him and so only loosely tied his actions at El Pueblo to the consequences they brought.

“They didn’t like me, I guess,” he says. “It must have been they didn’t like me.”

Documents show the staff perceived Davison’s behaviors as defiant and threatening. As he tells it, they would wrangle with him, often putting him in physical holds in their scuffles. He says they kneed him in the eye, back, and groin. The center’s own notes acknowledge times when staff escalated his behavior.

“They’d tell me ‘You ain’t nothing. You ain’t ever going to amount to nothing but dirt.’ They’d tell me that pretty much every day,” he says.

Davison spent much of his time rocking back and forth, pacing the floor, and wishing he could see his mom. When the solitude overwhelmed him, he says, he would punch the wall, bang his head against it, and try choking himself with a towel.

Davison says he had no blanket during much of his time in reflection and that the drinking fountain was too dirty to use.

The state report concluded that El Pueblo staff prevented children from leaving the reflections cottage rooms by threatening punishment and removal of privileges, as well as by physically holding and blocking the doors.

“Look, I know my kid’s no angel. But he sure didn’t deserve to be locked up in a cell by people who are supposed to be helping him,” says his mom, Leah Bolden of Colorado Springs, who, like other parents with kids in reflections cottages, demanded to visit her son but was turned away.

“He went in there the kid I knew, but when he came out, he was somebody else all together,” says Bolden’s older son, Joe Moore, 28. “Being alone like that so long changed my brother. It’s like it broke something inside him. I think it drove him crazy. I think it made his behavior way worse.”

Davison, now 16, is serving time at Spring Creek Youth Services Center, a state juvenile detention facility, for an assault that occurred at El Pueblo.

Scrutiny of El Pueblo is expanding beyond state regulators and the ACLU lawyers who brought isolation there to light. The Legal Center, a watchdog agency with a federal mandate and federal funding, is considering legal action to obtain educational services for young people held in facilities like El Pueblo, “including compensatory services, for students with disabilities who were denied appropriate services,” says director Randy Chapman.

With special rights to investigate institutional abuse, Chapman’s office has access to documentation that could more deeply reveal El Pueblo’s history of treatment.

The state has ordered El Pueblo to suspend operation of its reflections cottages until it comes into compliance with laws and until regulators approve a formal “clinical and educational foundation” plan for the rooms.

This story was originally published by The Colorado Independent.

Colorado’s Weld County Board on Monday renewed a 2010 policy that prevented county health clinics funded by the federal Title X women’s health program from dispensing Plan B emergency contraception to their mostly young and low-income patients.

The conservative commissioners behind the policy have argued Plan B aborts fertilized eggs, despite expert medical testimony to the contrary.

It’s a local version of a national abortion-politics debate, where outdated views of the science behind emergency contraception enjoy an ideologically useful afterlife.

Dr Mark Wallace, director of the Weld County Health Department, has offered testimony on several occasions to the board in which he explained that Plan B works by preventing the sperm and the egg from meeting, heading off fertilization, not by destroying fertilized eggs. Wallace’s position is the one advanced by the Office of Population Affairs behind Title X and the one supported unequivocally by current medical research.

At Monday’s public hearing, which drew dozens of county citizens, board commissioners also cited financial reasons for the policy decision, pointing to the loss of roughly $50,000 in private grant money this year.

It was the second time this spring that a board meeting attracted citizens opposed to the Plan B policy. At a meeting in March, commissioners told protesters to return in May, when the board would be considering renewing the more than $100,000 Title X grant.

At the March meeting, one member of the public asked the board to signal with a show of hands who among them still believed that Plan B caused abortions, despite expert testimony on the science and media coverage of the political debate. The commissioners declined to answer.

Citizens testifying in support of the policy on Monday, however, didn’t hesitate to voice their concerns with the drug.

The Greeley Tribune quotes Elizabeth Johnson of Eaton telling the board that, “depending on when it’s administered,” Plan B can abort a fertilized egg. “I recommend our commissioners err on the side of the conservative and remember that this is not a public opinion poll … and remember that tax dollars shouldn’t be supplied for an abortive agent.”

Weld County resident Pat Bruner told The Colorado Independent she thought the main motivation driving the board’s Plan B policy was moral objection to contraception. She said Commissioner Doug Rademacher was prodded into a revealing “sort of hissy fit” by the citizens protesting the policy.

Rademacher said he didn’t believe government should provide birth control to anyone. Then he asked the commissioners to vote against accepting this year’s Title X grant, a popular program that includes exams for breast and cervical cancer in addition to family planning services.

Rademacher later backed off that position and voted to accept the grant.

“If Title X was just for birth control, I would be voting that down,” The Tribune quoted him to say.

Bruner said she thought that Rademacher’s birth-control speech came off as a threat, which she said “felt inappropriate” coming from an official elected to represent the public.

“It was like a kind of blackmail, like if we didn’t stop talking about Plan B, then [the commissioners] would get rid of all public women’s health care.”

This story has been updated to include a statement from Gov. Rick Snyder’s spokesperson.

LANSING – Former U.S. Rep. Mark Schauer of Michigan will seek the Democratic nomination for governor, a source close to him confirmed Tuesday. The source spoke on background but is part of Schauer’s decision-making circle and is currently acting in an informal advisory position as the former lawmaker prepares for a run.

Schauer did not return calls seeking comment for this story. However, an elected official from Ingham County confirmed that Schauer had personally told him that he would seek the nomination.

The one-term congressman from Battle Creek has been mentioned as a possible candidate for months, with a growing chorus singing his praises and two recent polls showing he could likely oust Republican Gov. Rick Snyder in November 2014.

On Tuesday, Politico reported on a polling memo strategically leaked by the Democratic Governors Association, which shows Snyder losing to Schauer.

“The bad news for Snyder is that undecided voters are much more likely to split for the Democratic candidate: they voted for Obama over Romney by 24 points and they are 18 points more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than with the Republican Party,” [Democratic pollster Geoff] Garin wrote [in the leaked memo]. “After hearing a brief positive description of Mark Schauer’s background, voters prefer Schauer over Rick Snyder by 54 percent to 38 percent. When given this alternative to the incumbent, independent voters favor Schauer by 16 points.”

A similar poll by Lansing-based EPIC MRA in April had similar findings, reported MLive.com.

Snyder, a first-time governor and political neophyte, took a serious bruising in December, when he helped the Republican-controlled legislature pass a controversial “right to work” initiative without public hearings or much public discussion. He has also signed into law a massive tax cut, which shifted the burden of taxes from businesses to citizens by taxing senior pensions and eliminating the earned-income tax credit for lower income Michiganders.

Schauer served in Congress for one term, riding into office on the Obama sweep of 2008. He served Michigan’s conservative 7th congressional district, which includes Calhoun and Jackson counties. He was ousted from that seat in Tea Party sweep of 2010 by Tim Walberg.

Since leaving office, Schauer has been running the BlueGreen Alliance, a green-energy job consortium. He also worked closely with organized labor. In fact, during “right to work” protests in December, Schauer was pepper-sprayed by Michigan state troopers while attempting to move protesters away from the base of the state capitol.

Snyder’s office was not immediately available for comment.

UPDATE: Sara Wurfel, spokesperson for Snyder, emailed the following statement regarding this story:

I’d say both on reaction and any timing for 2014, that Governor is focused on sound policy, not politics. He’s working hard on completing the budget and several key initiatives that will help ensure Michigan’s comeback continues and that we invest in Michigan’s future and moving forward. No determination on his announcement/timing for any next steps beyond 2014.

Would also share that every stop we do, we come across Michiganders of all backgrounds, communities, small businesses who say that may not have agreed with everything he’s done, but they’re starting to see it make a difference and to keep going.

LANSING – State employees in Michigan can continue to receive health benefits for their significant others, even if they’re not married, and even if they’re gay. That’s because the Michigan Supreme Court on Thursday declined to hear an appeal from the attorney general’s office, which has been challenging a local body’s decision to offer health-care benefits to unmarried state employees, saying it violates the state’s anti-gay-marriage statute. According to Attorney General Bill Schuette, the policy treats married and unmarried couples differently.

But in January, a split appeals court panel ruled that the Michigan Civil Service Commission’s health-care policy was “unambiguously completely gender neutral” and therefore does not violate the constitutional ban on same-sex marriages or other civil unions.

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear Schuette’s appeal, the lower-court ruling stands.

The attorney general’s office did not respond to inquiries from The American Independent regarding this ruling; however, Joy Yearout, spokesperson for the department, told the Detroit Free Press, “We are disappointed with the ruling because Gov. (Rick) Snyder is correct that expanding state benefits costs the taxpayers millions when they can least afford it.”

Jay Kaplan, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, praised the Supreme Court’s decision, saying the lawsuit itself was “flawed” and “deserved to be dismissed.”

While state workers will continue to receive partner benefits, others employed by public agencies are not so lucky. That’s because last winter, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signed a law banning local government agencies from offering partner benefits to employees.

But certain agencies were exempt from this law, such as universities and the Michigan Civil Service Commission, because they have constitutionally protected autonomy.

The ACLU of Michigan is currently challenging this 2011 law in federal court.

“The ACLU is challenging the constitutionality of this law in federal court as violating the equal protection rights of LGBT employees and their same-sex partners,” Kaplan said in an email. “Although the state court decision has no legal binding precedent on federal courts, we believe that local governments, including public school districts also have the same autonomy to set the terms and compensation for its employees and that this should not be interfered with by the legislature.”

Emily Dievendorf, managing director of Equality Michigan, the statewide LGBT advocacy group, said that Supreme Court’s ruling “is an important step in our struggle for full relationship recognition,” but she said the state has not gone far enough to protect Michigan’s LGBT community.

“[I]t is not inclusive enough to resolve the matter of employee benefits for same-sex partners in committed relationships,” Dievendorf said in an email. “There is still a vital need to legally ensure that all committed and loving families have equal access to healthcare insurance and other critical employee benefits.”

This story was originally published by The Colorado Independent. 

A residential teen treatment center in Pueblo, Colo., is under fire for housing children in prolonged solitary confinement.

The El Pueblo facility treats at-risk adolescents, many with developmental disabilities and mental health conditions and many under the watch of Colorado’s Department of Human Services. The facility has two so-called reflection cottages – eight-room units used to isolate teens for days, week,s and, by some accounts, even longer.

“People need to know what’s going on in there. They need to know that they’re torturing kids,” said William Montez, whose 14-year-old daughter, Jasmine, spent what he believes was a month secluded in one of the cottages.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado has been investigating El Pueblo’s practice of isolating kids in what the group describes as “small concrete rooms with no other feature than a concrete slab for a bed.”

“Children in solitary confinement at El Pueblo are denied the opportunity to go to school, to speak with other kids, and to spend time outdoors,” according to the ACLU, “which is calling for the state to immediately end the center’s isolation practices or pull its license.”

“El Pueblo’s routine seclusion of children not only violates regulations promulgated by [Department of Human Services] Division of Child Care, but also likely violates the United States Constitution,” ACLU lawyers Rebecca Wallace and Mark Silverstein wrote in a letter last week to state Human Services chief Reggie Bicha.

The Department of Human Services sent a team of staffers to investigate earlier this month, and since has asked El Pueblo to shut down the two cottages while the probe is ongoing.

“We’ve had folks down there looking,” said Human Services spokeswoman Liz McDonough. “We’ve had folks down there looking.”

Jasmine Montez; image provided to The Colorado Independent by the Montez family.

State policy prohibits seclusion of children, except in emergency situations and only after all less restrictive alternatives have been exhausted.

Under Human Services rules, seclusion should not last more than two hours, except in the most extreme cases. It should end, the policy says, when the crisis passes.

El Pueblo president and CEO Sherri Baca criticized the ACLU for complaining to regulators before expressing concerns to her and for depicting her facility in ways that she said are incorrect. She said all children treated in the cottages are allowed schooling, outdoor recreation and interaction with other kids. She said the center’s “reflection spaces” are “crisis intervention cottages” that are “very clinical in nature” and effective for treating unruly teens.

“There are safety issues to keep them from harming themselves or others,” she said.

Baca objected to words like “seclusion” and “isolation” to describe conditions in the cottages.

“Honestly, those are not things that we’re allowed to do under our license,” she said. “Our children are never alone. It’s a facility in which staff are in direct line of sight with kids.”

Baca agreed to let the Independent tour El Pueblo but not the cottages. She would not say how long kids spend in what she referred to as “reflection,” nor whether El Pueblo has policies limiting lengths of confinement.

“It’s all based on clinical needs that change day to day,” she said.

Founded in 1960, El Pueblo is a private nonprofit sited on a 57-acre ranch. It is licensed to treat 160 kids, but, Baca said, the facility is currently treating about 75. El Pueblo offers residential treatment programs that average from four to six months, as well as day programs for boys and girls who have been kicked out of traditional schools.

Jasmine Montez was running away from home and skipping school when she stole a ChapStick from a Safeway. Authorities stepped in to say she needed institutional help.

“We did it to teach her a lesson, so she doesn’t mess up,” said her dad, William Montez.

A court motion filed in Jasmine’s case on March 29 suggests that seclusion is being used broadly as a form of induction for new clients, not just to manage crises.

The motion states that a Pueblo Department of Social Services worker acknowledged that juveniles transitioning to El Pueblo are placed for a mandatory minimum of two days in the reflection cottages before transitioning to non-isolation housing units.

The motion describes the cottage rooms in terms that evoke prison conditions.

“The children/detainees are not allowed to leave the locked unit to participate in [educational programming or recreational programming],” it says, and “Children/detainees are not provided access to a day room with chairs or any type of seating or cushioned seating”; and “Children/detainees have to ask permission to leave the concrete cell to use the bathroom.”

William Montez and Jasmine’s mother, Katherine Valdez, said their daughter spent two weeks locked down 23 hours a day in “reflection.” They said she spent another two weeks allowed to attend classes and socialize, while still having to return to the isolation room between activities. As they tell it, Jasmine broke her finger and El Pueblo failed to provide for treatment. They said the finger ultimately required surgery and that their daughter was isolated a second time for contracting a scabies infection that had spread through the facility.

“The state is saying we should trust these people to take care of our children. But they would put us, the parents, in jail for treating kids the way this institution does,” Valdez said.

Joshua Riddock shoplifted an ashtray, stole his grandfather’s car, was taking drugs and acting out at school when his family sent the 15-year-old to day school at El Pueblo last fall. A status report from his case manager reads that Riddock was “referred to the Reflection cottage on two occasions for 23-hour overnight stays. These referrals were made because of disrespect to a teacher and using profanity and [a] positive [test for marijuana].”

Joshua Riddock; image provided to The Colorado Independent by the Riddock family.

None of those transgressions justified solitary confinement, his advocates said.

“It’s hard to see how that amounted to an emergency situation,” said Ken Riddock, who has raised his grandson since Joshua was born with a meth addiction.

“They never gave him a mattress, a pillow, a blanket, pajamas. He was in the same clothes he was in the day before, fed a microwaved meal that was frozen on the inside,” added Mary Jane Riddock, Joshua’s grandmother and guardian. “He kept saying ‘Please Mom get me out of here, get me out of here, it’s a nightmare.’”

Months after his release, Riddock’s family said the now-16 year old with separation anxiety has nightmares in which he yells for his grandmother.

“I say ‘Yes, I’m here, Josh. Go to sleep.’ He has been a mess ever since he came home,” Mary Jane Riddock said.

Since the ACLU demanded the state end seclusion at El Pueblo, the group said several children have come forward about their experiences in “reflection.”

“I now have interviewed eight kids. Their stories are consistent,” ACLU staff attorney Rebecca Wallace told the Independent.

According to its website, El Pueblo opened satellite offices at the Children’s Hospital Colorado and in Colorado Springs in 2012. The site, featuring photos of handsome smiling teens, touts “a positive, cognitive behavioral model of treatment” that includes therapeutic interventions, anger management and daily living skills.

“There really isn’t a way to smear 53 years of good intervention for kids,” said Baca, the CEO. “But when people from the outside choose to make allegations that are inaccurate, it could weaken things. It really could.”

Kim Dvorchak, executive director of the Colorado Juvenile Defender Coalition, has fought to keep kids out of isolation in jails and prisons. Treatment settings, she says, should be no exception.

“Solitary confinement of children is harmful, inhumane, and not be tolerated,” she said. “These allegations are horrific, and the [Department of Human Services] needs to conduct a statewide review of all treatment centers.”

Becker filed a request for records last month through Florida’s Public Records Act, asking the school to turn over communications between Wright and other scholars and reviewers regarding the publication of the study.

Last summer’s publication of Regnerus’ explosive study – which found negative outcomes for children raised in same-sex households compared to children raised by married heterosexual parents – culminated in a widespread consensus that Regnerus’ study was methodologically flawed. Questions were raised about the political motivations of Regnerus’ conservative funders, as well as the seemingly rushed rate of publication.

As The American Independent reported recently, many of these suspicions were justified.

As Wright and others have noted in the past, the publication of Regnerus’ article in the June 2012 issue of Social Science Research was speedier than most. A mere six weeks lapsed between the paper’s submission and publication. Some of the articles published in the same issue took around a year between submission and acceptance.

“What we’re hoping is that the documents might shine some light onto the reason that it was rushed to publish,” Becker said in an interview with The American Independent.

He also said he wants to know more information related to who peer-reviewed the article and why the paper was accepted for review before the data collection had been completed.

Becker said the university denied his records request, arguing that the information he was seeking is the product of Elsevier, which publishes Social Science Research. But the Florida attorneys representing Becker in this case, Andrea Flynn Mogensen and Victor Chapman, have argued that the information in question “constitutes public records by law and UCF policy.”

In the lawsuit, the attorneys argued that the materials requested constitute university materials:

During the course of his research and editorial activities [with Social Science Research], Professor Wright utilizes UCF resources and materials, including, without limitation, UCF employees, students, computers, internet, e-mail, telephone, office supplies, and postage. … UCF supports, advertises and promotes the research and editorial activities of Professor Wright and the Journal on its website and in other promotional materials. UCF’s website states that it houses the Journal which Professor Wright is the editor of.

“These records are open to any citizen who wants to inspect them and we will vigorously enforce Mr. Becker’s constitutional right to obtain the records from UCF,” said Mogensen, a civil rights lawyer based in Sarasota, Fla., in a press release.

The University of Central Florida did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last year, following the media firestorm over the New Family Structures Study, Wright asked Southern Illinois University sociology professor Darren Sherkat, who sits on the journal’s board of advisory editors and was a fierce critic of the study, to audit the submission and review process for the Regnerus paper and a companion paper reviewing previous studies on same-sex parenting, authored by Louisiana State University professor Loren Marks.

In his audit report, Sherkat concluded that “neither paper should have been published, in my opinion.”

“Both papers have serious flaws and distortions that were not simply ignored, but lauded in the reviews,” Sherkat wrote. “Given that the reviewers were mostly comfortable conservatives, it is not surprising that the reviews were very positive, and contained minimal critique of the data, measures, or methods used in the studies.”

Yet, he ultimately determined there “were no gross violations of editorial procedure.”

“Obviously, the [peer] reviewers did not do a good job—because of both ideology and inattention—but the clear signal to the editor was ‘publish these papers,’” he wrote. “Still, once they were accepted there was an unseemly rush to publication (at least for the Regnerus paper), and that was justified based on the attention that these studies would generate. The published responses were milquetoast critiques by scholars with ties to Regnerus and/or the Witherspoon Institute, and Elsevier assisted with the politicization by helping to publicize the study and by placing these papers in front of the pay wall.”

On his website, Becker blogged about why he wants to see these records.

“My goal is simply to discover the truth: whether everything was above board and best practices and ethical standards were followed, or whether something more sinister occurred,” Becker wrote. “The documents I requested from UCF may help to answer these important questions.”

Becker is an openly gay journalist, who lives in Vermont. He has written for multiple outlets, such as The Huffington Post, The Advocate, and The Bilerico Project, often investigating LGBT issues. In 2011, Becker went undercover at a Christian counseling clinic co-owned by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and her husband, Marcus, posing as a conflicted gay man seeking therapy to change his sexual orientation to heterosexual. Becker exposed the clinic for agreeing to administer so-called “ex-gay” therapy, which is a discredited practice within the mainstream psychology community.

Got tips? Email them to Sofia[at]americanindependent.com.

Family Research Council logo, via {link url=

Opponents of marriage equality in Minnesota recently came under fire for comparing the campaign tactics of gay-rights supporters to the tactics of Germany’s Nazi Party in the lead-up to the extermination of approximately 6 million Jews and thousands of gay people and others during World War II. This is the second time in six months that such a comparison has been drawn during this campaign.

The Nazi link was embedded in a sample sermon distributed by the Family Research Council, an influential religious-right advocacy group based in Washington, D.C, which has been sending the sermon to pastors since 2006. The text has been used in battles over same-sex marriage in a half-dozen states. However, following outrage from Minnesota’s Jewish community, the group quietly stripped the Nazi reference from the sermon.

In an invitation on its website to attend an anti-gay-marriage event called “Stand for Marriage Sunday” earlier this month, a group called Minnesota Pastors for Marriage included the aforementioned sample sermon, which accused same-sex marriage proponents of using Nazi-like tactics. Minnesota Pastors for Marriage, which is fighting a proposed state bill that would legalize same-sex marriage, is funded by the Minnesota Family Council, a conservative Christian lobbying group affiliated with the Family Research Council.

The document titled, “Minnesota Stand For Marriage Sermon Starter,” reads, in part (emphasis added):

Homosexuals claim: “We were born this way; it is in our genes; God made us gay.” They cite old “gay gene” studies predominantly conducted by researchers who are homosexuals; studies that have been repudiated by credible research. Yet these same biased and discredited studies have been widely publicized by the liberal media as true and factual. They essentially practice Joseph Goebel’s [sic] Nazi philosophy of propaganda, which is basically this: Tell a lie long enough and loud enough and eventually most mindless Americans will believe it.

But shortly after news broke in Minnesota late last month that gay-rights and Jewish groups had condemned the group’s sermon, the Family Research Council edited the sermon to take out the offending section. The above passage was captured by ThinkProgress, which broke the story.

However, the Family Research Council missed a few versions of the unedited sermon including on the group’s affiliated “Watchmen on the Wall” website.

This sermon was included in a message from John Helmberger, CEO of the Minnesota Family Council and chairman of Minnesota for Marriage, and Kenyn Cureton, vice president of church ministries at the Family Research Council. Cureton authored the sermon starter.

The Family Research Council is a socially conservative organization co-founded by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson in 1983. The group has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group, because Family Research Council leaders have repeatedly attempted to link homosexuality with pedophilia.

“Same-sex ‘marriages’ could be performed in Minnesota as early as August 1, 2013,” Helmberger and Cureton wrote. “That’s why we are asking you to consider ‘Stand For Marriage Sunday,’ to convey a sense of urgency to your members to call both their state legislators ASAP and ask them to vote ‘No’ on Senate File 925 and House File1054. To help you with this, we have created “Stand For Marriage” materials. To view these materials, click on Sermon Starter, Stand For Marriage and Bulletin Insert.”

Stand for Marriage

The Stand for Marriage sample sermon appears to have been first published in SBC LIFE, the journal of the Southern Baptist Convention, in 2006, when Cureton, the sermon’s author, was vice president for convention relations for the Southern Baptist Convention, the world’s largest Baptist denomination.

By late 2006, Cureton had joined the Family Research Council as vice president for church ministries. According to his biography, the Stand for Marriage kit containing the sermon has been sent to more than 20,000 churches, “notably in California, Arizona, Florida, Maine, and North Carolina in support of their successful efforts to uphold traditional marriage.”

A version sent to pastors often contained a warning about its content.

“Pastoral Warning: I have preached messages like this many times and it never fails to offend somebody,” Cureton wrote. “In fact, I’ve had people walk out on me during the sermon, and others leave my church membership.”

He added: “There is no substitute for the pastor’s leadership from the pulpit, preaching the word of God without fear or favor, and applying it to burning issues such as abortion, the radical homosexual agenda, judicial tyranny, pornography, racism, gambling, etc. Remember, God’s word offends people. Don’t preach it if you can’t handle the consequences.”

Versions of Cureton’s sermon have been used in many of the state-based battles over same-sex marriage. His sermon was distributed to pastors in California during the battle over Proposition 8, which ended marriage rights for same-sex couples in that state.

According to documents filed with the U.S. District Court for Northern California in the federal lawsuit against Proposition 8, Cureton’s sermon was heavily edited for use in California, but the Nazi references remained.

West Virginia for Marriage, a project of West Virginia Family Policy Council, offered the sermon to pastors for the Stand for Marriage Sunday in 2009, when social conservatives were pressing for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in that state.

In New York state, a version of the sermon – without the Nazi reference – was used in opposition to a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in 2011.

The sermon was distributed to pastors last year in North Carolina, where voters approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The Cornerstone Conference Ministry Center still has the sermon available on its website, complete with Nazi references.

The Family Research Council also urged pastors to use the sermon just before the 2012 elections in Maryland, Washington, and Maine, where voters ended up approving marriage equality.

Cureton told The American Independent via email that the offending reference will remain deleted from future sermons. He declined to comment further.

Minnesota’s Jewish community responds

After ThinkProgress reported on the document on March 28, Minnesotans United for All Families, the primary lobbying force in support of the marriage-equality bill, quickly responded, calling the tactics “disgusting.”

“This just clearly shows that the folks at Minnesota for Marriage have no interest in a civil dialogue. They have no interest in an honest conversation about marriage,” Minnesotans United for All Families spokesman Jake Loesch told Minnesota Public Radio. “Making claims that anyone in any way is comparable to Nazi tactics is disgusting. It’s appalling and has no place in public square or in public discussion about what marriage is.”

But this was not the first time that gay-marriage opponents in Minnesota have likened the other side to Nazis.

Pastor Brad Brandon last year served as the director of church outreach for Minnesota for Marriage, when it was campaigning for a failed amendment to ban same-sex marriage, and toured the state with a PowerPoint presentation that included Nazi references.

“What I’m simply saying is that Adolf Hitler took away two fundamental rights from a group of people in order to suppress them,” Brandon, said according to audience recordings provided to local media outlets. “Those two fundamental rights are the same rights that are being taken away from the Christian community,” he added, alluding to the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Brandon and Minnesota for Marriage later issued a statement saying that his words were taken out of context and being used by opponents to make the campaign “seem to be extreme.”

And following the more recent Nazi reference, Minnesota for Marriage again accused opponents of using it as a distraction.

“The reality is that there are many, many people of faith who believe based on teachings from the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, and other religious texts that marriage is between one man and one woman,” Minnesota for Marriage spokeswoman Autumn Leva told the StarTribune, “This attempt to discredit Minnesota for Marriage is really a looking glass that allows Minnesotans to see that those attempting to force gay marriage on this state do not, in fact, care about people’s deeply held beliefs.”

That statement appeared to inflame tensions further, and leaders in Minnesota’s Jewish community pulled together a press conference on March 29.

Jewish Community Action released a statement saying that it “believes that to continually make analogous the tactics used to spread a message of hate and drive the near destruction of a people to a campaign which at its core is about love, commitment, and family, is ridiculous. To do it during Passover, a holiday that commemorates freedom from oppression, is shameful.”

Karen Yashar of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation told reporters: “This vile and repugnant comparison has no room in even the most heated and contentious political debates. The introduction of Nazi labels and comparisons into the American political debate sends a collective chill up the spine of the Jewish community… We call on Minnesota for Marriage to withdraw their statements, and once and for all refrain from using the Nazis or the Holocaust to make their case.”

“We are troubled by the fact that this is the second time in less than six months that Minnesota for Marriage has made reckless and historically inaccurate comparisons between Nazi Germany, and the tactics which it employed, and the proponents of marriage equality,” said Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), in a statement. “As we have in the past, the JCRC strongly urges advocates on all sides of deeply controversial issues to refrain from making Nazi comparisons. Such analogies are almost always inappropriate and are offensive to not only the Jewish community, but also the many gay people who were targeted and murdered by the Nazi regime.”

Shortly after the press conference, Minnesota for Marriage eventually apologized but without taking responsibility for the Nazi reference.

“Minnesota for Marriage regrets that statements considered by many to be offensive appeared on the website of a separate organization, Minnesota Pastors for Marriage,” the group said in a statement. “Although Minnesota for Marriage is not responsible for the content of that website, nor the content on the websites of other supportive coalition members, we nevertheless regret any hurt those statements have caused.”

The Minnesota Family Council followed suit, releasing a statement claiming ownership for the documents.

“Minnesota Family Council is responsible for the content of the Minnesota Pastors for Marriage website. We regret that a sermon and other materials received from another organization and posted to the Minnesota Pastors for Marriage website were not properly reviewed.”

The document in question may have been on the website for at least nine months. Bloggers had posted about it as early as June 2012.

The group said the documents had been removed from the website. Attached to the apology was a statement written by Pastor Jeff Evans of Minnesota Pastors for Marriage, which appeared to contradict the apology.

“This attack by Minnesotans United on marriage has very little to do with an ill-advised quotation but rather the continued assault on the religious liberties of pastors to proclaim the full counsel of God about marriage in their pulpits,” Evans said of Minnesota Pastors for Marriage. “Pastors need not apologize about passages in the Bible that some find offensive. On the contrary, pastors answer to their heavenly Father as to whether they speak and teach His Word to a world that needs to hear His good news.”

According to the Rochester Post-Bulletin’s editorial board, that apology may not be enough.

“The good news is Minnesota for Marriage and The Minnesota Family Council have been trying to distance themselves from the Nazi reference, saying that these materials ‘weren’t properly reviewed’ and stating the use of the Minnesota for Marriage logo on some of these documents was ‘unauthorized,’” the staff wrote. “But after-the-fact apologies won’t undo all of the damage that’s been done to these organizations’ credibility.”