The Right Wing Is In A Tizzy Again

Or an alternate tile… “So What Else Is New?” What got them all worked up is a proposed bill to stop harassment of trans residents in nursing homes.

'This Criminalizes Speech': Tucker Battles Dem on Bill to Jail People Who Misuse Transgender Pronouns
Fox News
Tucker Carlson Tonight
August 28, 2017

Tucker Carlson debated a Democratic strategist who supports a California bill that would suggest jail time for elder care workers who "willfully" misuse pronouns when referring to transgender residents.
[…]
"It doesn't sound very American," Carlson said. "You go to jail if you say something someone doesn't want you to say."

Biro [Democratic Strategist] said the bill is essentially a way to extend the Patient Protection Act to cover transgender individuals.

He said 28 percent of transgender elders in nursing homes suffered such harassment from their providers.

Carlson said Biro was ignoring the principle of free speech for political reasons.

"You can be put in prison for saying what you think is true," he said of the bill. "This bill criminalizes speech."

"If you use the wrong pronoun, you can be put in jail. That's grotesque."

Yeah but… there are exceptions to “free speech” such as yelling fire in a crowded space.

The American Bar Association has a webpage devoted to the First Amendment in schools which can apply to nursing homes.

To assess whether there is a violation of a harassment policy, three critical elements must all be present:

• Targeting of a protected class (gender, race, religion, etc.);
• Unwelcomeness of harassing behavior or verbal, written, and/or online conduct; and
• Deprivation of educational access, opportunities, rights, and/or peaceful enjoyment therefrom.

Okay, the last bullet is key “Deprivation of educational access, opportunities, rights, and/or peaceful enjoyment therefrom.” In a nursing home you could argue that they are deprivation of the nursing home access, opportunities, rights, and/or peaceful enjoyment therefrom.

The ABA website goes on to say…

To summarize, merely offensive harassing speech is protected speech. Speech that rises to the level of discriminatory harassment is not protected speech. Examples of such speech are rare and unusual. Most school and campus speech is going to be merely offensive unless it is repetitive or widespread, which does, we should acknowledge, become more likely when disseminated online.

So if a nursing home resident merely says it once or twice, maybe a dozen times it is free speech but if they follow you around and keep calling you names it can cross the line to become hate speech and harassment and fall under the proposed law.

---

A follow up on yesterday’s post about the teacher reading “I Am Jazz” to the students, of course Fox News had to add their two cents.

Exclusive: Parents Speak Out After Children Upset By Transgender Kindergarten Lesson
Fox News Insider
August 28, 2017

Two parents of children who were taught a Kindergarten lesson on transgender people spoke out to Martha MacCallum after their kids told them about the curriculum.

The parents asked that their identities remain anonymous in fear of retribution by folks in the community who disagree with them.

The lesson was reportedly taught because a boy in the class was transitioning to become a girl.

You can read my thoughts in yesterday’s blog.