Kind of Good & Bad News

Two articles this morning caught my attention, the first is about our favorite punching bag… Facebook and the other is from across the big pond.

Facebook axes political ad saying trans athletes will 'destroy girls sports'
The ad is part of a $4 million swing-state campaign by the conservative American Principles Project.
NBC News
By Sydney Bauer
September 16, 2020


A political ad that takes aim at transgender participation in high school sports has been rejected by Facebook as a paid advertisement and will have a “fact-check” label applied to it if posted organically on the social platform.

The move comes after LGBTQ rights groups condemned the ad, along with two others run by the conservative American Principles Project, and PolitiFact, an independent fact-checking project within the nonprofit Poynter Institute, said that the sports ad in particular was “missing context and could mislead people.”

The ad features a male runner easily winning a race against female competitors, in an apparent swipe at transgender inclusion policies, while decrying the support of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., for the Equality Act, which the ad says would “destroy girls sports.”

That was the good news but the bad news in the article…

The sports ad is part of a larger $4 million campaign from the Michigan-based American Principles Project, or APP, that featured two additional spots denouncing access to gender-affirming health care for people under the age of 18.

The article doesn’t say if all of the 4 million dollar campaign will be on anti-trans ads, I hope not.

A number of conservative groups say transgender girls have an innate advantage in sports because of being assigned male at birth, despite rules in place by both the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the International Olympic Committee that allow trans athletes to compete without restriction after medically suppressing testosterone levels.

I have a bad feeling that they will use us as a wedge issue.

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The French high court has issued a ruling on trans parents and it wasn’t good.

French court rules transgender woman cannot be recognised as child’s mother
France’s highest court ruled Wednesday that a transgender woman cannot be officially recognised as the biological mother of the child she conceived with her wife, in a ruling described as “scandalous” by her lawyer.
France 24
September 16, 2020


To become one of the six-year-old girl’s two legal mothers, the 51-year-old transgender woman would have to adopt her, the Cour de Cassation ruled.

Born male, the applicant was recognised as a woman by French authorities in 2011. She then had a child with her wife in 2014, having not undergone the operation to have her male reproductive organs removed.

She has fought ever since to be recognised as the child’s second mother, not father.

In 2018, an appeals court in the city of Montpellier ascribed her the status of “biological parent”, a new category.

But the Cour de Cassation threw out most of that ruling on Wednesday, and refered the case back to a lower court for a new hearing.
[…]
“The ruling is a considerable step backwards towards a concept of parenthood that was believed to be long buried,” said Bertrand Perier of the APGL association of gay and lesbian parents.

Same-sex marriage in France has been legal since 18 May 2013 and if they allow two mothers or two dads on the birth certificates why don’t they allow a trans woman be listed as a co-mother?

I think that they will have better luck when they appeal to European Court of Human Rights.