Police Officer Sues Breonna Taylor's Boyfriend For Leg Wound ... Seriously

Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly, a Louisville police officer involved in the murder of Breonna Taylor has filed a civil suit against Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker,  for emotional distress, assault and battery on the night she was killed murdered.

Jonathan Mattingly and two other officers entered Taylor's apartment early one morning on a No-Knock in an attempt to carry out a drug investigation. Kenneth Walker, who was asleep with Breonna Taylor at the time, and is a licensed gun owner, thought the officers were intruders, and fired a shot that hit Mattingly in the leg.

Again, hit him in the leg, while officers murdered Taylor.

The lawsuit claims that "Walker's conduct in shooting Mattingly is outrageous, intolerable, and offends all accepted standards of decency and morality."

Yes, the Black man who believed someone was breaking into his girlfriend’s home and fired at them, while his girlfriend was murdered offends decency and morality, but police officers who entered the home without even a knock, even though it was the wrong home, and the man they were looking for was already in custody, are the victims?

Bitches, please.

Jonathan Mattingly is a disgusting human being for thinking he should sue the man of the woman he helped murder because he took a bullet in the leg after entering their home without a sound.

Sorry, officer, but off is the direction in which you should fuck.

CBS News

Look Out For One Another

 After the other day’s story of Louisville, Kentucky police murdering Breonna Traylor in her home, I found another, far better, story about people in Louisville.

Jake Bland is the operations manager at Hometown Hauling, a refuse collection company in Louisville, and he’s also on the truck picking up his customers trash. One day, during his regular route, he noticed that there was no trash out in front of one house, owned by an elderly woman; in fact, it had been a couple of weeks since she’d put the garbage out.

But rather than move on to the next address, Jake called his dispatcher, Bernice Arthur, and voiced his concerns. Bernice then called the 90-year-old customer and was relieved that she answered the phone. Relief turned quickly to grief when the woman told her she hadn’t put her trash out in a few weeks because she didn’t have any:

"She just didn't have nothing to eat….and that's why she had no trash to put out there."

 The woman depended on public transportation to get to and from her local grocer, and because of a now limited public transportation schedule, and a fear of getting on a crowded bus with strangers—many unmasked—during a pandemic, she wasn’t able to get any food.

For ten days before Jake Bland came along.

Bernice said the woman told her that she had no family to help and Bernice cut her off:

“You have a family now.”

Bernice asked her to make a shopping list and, after his shift, Jake returned to her house and picked up the list, went shopping, and brought everything back to Mrs. W. And his company paid for the food.

Jake offered to help her put everything away, but Mrs. W told him to leave it in the garage to keep everyone safe.

Bernice and Jake have vowed to check on the many elderly and disabled customers that they have, and will continue to check on Mrs. W.

I wonder if all those people marching on state capitals because they want a beer and a haircut, or to get their hair and nails done, have given one thought to people like Mrs. W. Or are they too busy in their own little shallow worlds to think of others.

Luckily for several people, Jake and Bernice didn’t think like that.

DailyKos

Don't African Americans have the right to the Second Amendment?

If you thought the Ahmaud Arbery murder was horrifying, the police murder of Breonna Taylor and the arrest of her licensed-gunowner boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who “stood his ground” when the police barged into their apartment in the middle of the night, may be even worse.

Breonna and Kenneth were asleep when, just before 1AM on March 13, three plainclothes officers with the Louisville Metro Police Department arrived to execute a no-knock search warrant in a drug case. Hearing the noise, Breonna and Kenneth believed their apartment was being broken into; Walker, who has a license to carry and kept firearms in the home, called 911, grabbed a gun, entered the living room and began firing at the intruders, shooting an officer in the leg.

The officers began "blindly firing" more than 20 shots into the apartment. Breonna Taylor, a former EMT worker, was shot eight times and died. Walker was arrested and charged with assault and attempted murder on a police officer.

This all happened because  Louisville police officers, shown below, executed a no-knock search warrant on Taylor in a drug case involving a man who lived in a different part of the city … a different part of the city. Police claim that man was using Taylor’s apartment to receive mail, stash money or keep drugs, and claim that Taylor’s car was seen parked in front of a “drug house” connected to that man.

Breonna Taylor and Kenneth Walker had no criminal history or drug convictions, and no drugs were found in the apartment during the raid.

Better still, before the police busted into the Taylor-Walker home the very man they were looking for was already in custody.

And yet Breonna Taylor was murdered and Kenneth Walker was arrested in a ‘Stand Your Ground’ state … because they were sleeping while black?

Ask yourself what you would do, if you were sleeping in the middle of the night and heard someone trying to break into your home. If you had a gun would you use it? If you are white would the police just start shooting randomly into the house?

Or is that just Black Americans?

Kentucky Baptist Church Will Hold Its First Same-Sex Wedding

Color me stunned, but out there in Kentucky, a Baptist church, the Highland Baptist Church of Louisville, Kentucky, in fact, has agreed to marry two of its gay members, making it the first same-sex wedding for the congregation. 

In.Kentucky.

Those two members, David Bannister Jr. and Steven Carr II, have been together for six years and became engaged last summer in Washington DC weeks after the US Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act.  Then they returned home to Kentucky and took a deep breath and asked the pastor of their church, Joe Phelps, to marry them and he said he would.

"It takes courage to step out into the unknown. It's taking us courage to be one of the first churches to do this." — Pastor Phelps

Phelps says that when he first came to Highland Baptist in the late 1990s, there was a kind of ‘doesn’t ask, don’t tell’ policy regarding gay church members. But, that very next year, a gay couple's photograph appeared in the church directory and since then there has been a slow, but steady march to acknowledge and accept LGBT members, and their families, into the church. In fact, Highland Baptist ordained its first openly gay minister, Maurice Blanchard in 2012, and now Blanchard leads a gay ministry at the church.

"Inch by inch, it sort of begins to dawn on us. Over time, we've come to the realization that led us to today." — Pastor Phelps

In February 2013, a group of church deacons began to study the idea of allowing the pastor to perform same-sex ceremonies, but the group never came to any agreement. Then, in May 2014, a new group chosen to once again study the idea instantly, and unanimously, recommended the church begin offering same-sex weddings.  Actually, you could only all it a unanimous decision because no one in the church every voted on the idea; Pastor Phelps said it wouldn’t be right to pass judgment that way.

"To vote on it is to basically ask the question, 'Are gay people fully human like the rest of us?' I think spiritually and morally, that's a step we cannot take." — Pastor Phelps

And so, when David and Steven asked Pastor Phelps to officiate at their wedding, he was able to say yes, making Highland one of the first Baptist churches in Kentucky to hold a same-sex wedding.

And again. Baptist Church. Kentucky. Let that sink in for a spell.

And so David and Steven have set a wedding date for next May, and though they don’t see themselves as activists, they have hope that their wedding will make a statement.

"If people don't get the shades pulled back on LGBT people's lives, they won't learn. They won't see. So the onus is on us and our friends to talk with those around us. It would be very sad to us if we weren't able to have our church involved." — David Bannister

And in light of the fact that this past week a judge struck down Kentucky’s ban on same-sex marriages — a stay has been granted — David and Steven hope that by the time they marry, same –sex weddings in Kentucky, even at Baptist churches, will just be weddings at Baptists churches.

Still, what a wonderful stop for the Baptist church, and Kentucky.

via The New Civil Rights Movement

And Then There Were Two

Back in April, I posted about the Douglass Boulevard Christian Church, in Louisville, Kentucky, and how they were no longer sign marriage licenses for heterosexual couples when homosexuals couples are denied those same rights. See post HERE.

Well, it looks like another Louisville church is following suit.

The Reverend Dawn Cooley of First Unitarian Church in Old Louisville announced on her blog that, while she would continue to perform religious marriage ceremonies for both straight and gay couples, she would no longer perform the civil function of signing marriage licenses on behalf of the state, until same-sex marriages are legal in Kentucky.

And her congregation stood right by her side, asking her to refrain from signing marriage licenses "until such time as Kentucky ceases to discriminate against same sex couples with respect to civil marriage.”

Cooley says that heterosexual couples can choose to have their marriage license signed by a justice of the peace, or they could "choose not to have their licenses signed, and stand with gay & lesbian couples and not participate in civil marriage until it is a civil right."

You know, just when I grow tired of all those religious institutions, and I'm talking to you, Catholics, and Baptists, that would deny services to everyone rather than offer services to gay men and women, someone like the Reverend Dawn Cooley comes along and makes me see that not all religions spout their love rhetoric while practicing, tolerating, and endorsing hate.

Hats off to the Reverend Cooley, the First Unitarian Church in Old Louisville, the Douglass Boulevard Christian Church and its ministers, and the city of Louisville, for proving that god is love.

First Unitarian Church in Old Louisville Won't Sign Marriage Licenses

God Is Love: Douglass Boulevard Christian Church

Last week, in Louisville, Kentucky, the congregation of Douglass Boulevard Christian Church unanimously--you read that right, unanimously--voted to end the practice of signing marriage licenses because they give legal benefits to heterosexual couples that are not available to homosexual couples. 

And until marriage equality is the law of the land, Douglass Boulevard Christian Church ministers will only perform religious wedding ceremonies, which we all know are not legal without a signed marriage certificate.

Associate Minister Ryan Kamp-Pappan: "As an Open and Affirming Community of Faith, our membership is committed to treating homosexuals and heterosexuals equally. Our congregation believes it is unfair to provide different services and benefits to heterosexual couples than we can provide to gay and lesbian couples."

Senior minister, the Reverend Derek Penwell added, "Heterosexual couples enjoy a number of benefits that result from having state-sanctioned union. They may inherit property, adopt children together, visit one another in the hospital, and save thousands each year in taxes by filing as a couple. Ministers, as agents of the state, have the power to confer these benefits-and the imprimatur of normalcy-on heterosexual couples, but we do not have the honor to bestow these benefits on gay and lesbian couples."

The Reverend Chuck Lewis, Chair of Elders with the church, said, "In our attempt to live out God's call to pursue justice for all, the Elders of the congregation joined the Pastors in witnessing to the right for gay and lesbian persons to God's blessing on their union and witnessing to the Commonwealth toward ending the refusal to recognize these unions."

Douglass Boulevard Christian Church has been committed to seeking justice for all people since it was founded in 1846. In 2008, Douglass Boulevard Christian Church voted to become an Open and Affirming Community of Faith.

In 2011, God--if you believe in that sort of thing--was doing cartwheels and heaping praise ion the ministers and congregation at Douglas Boulevard Christian Church.

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