Transgender restriction bills advanceYou remember that the Republican mantra was “Get Government Out of Our Lives!” well that seems to be true only if you are a white evangelical Christian cisgender straight person.
Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee have passed HB 112 and HB 113, largely along party lines.
Montana Free Press
By Mara Silvers
January 22, 2021
HELENA — Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee this week passed two bills that would restrict transgender youth and athletes in Montana by barring them from receiving gender-affirming medical care and prohibiting trans women and girls from participating on women’s sports teams.
House Bill 112, pertaining to athletics, and House Bill 113, which prohibits medical professionals from treating gender dysphoria, were the subject of intense debates before the committee Monday. Lawmakers voted Thursday to pass HB 112 and took action on HB 113 Friday morning, after accepting a substantial amendment to the bill that includes more detail on prohibited treatments and penalties for providers. The bills will now advance to a full vote on the House floor.
However, one Republican stood up for their old pre-Trump values.
In both instances, Rep. Mallerie Stromswold, R-Billings, was the only member of her caucus to vote against the measures. In an interview Friday after the vote on HB 113, she said she does not believe the Legislature should interfere with personal decisions in these instances.Amen sister.
“My whole political ideology lays with the fact that I don’t think we should control people’s lives,” she said. “I really just don’t understand why people are so threatened by other people’s decisions that they feel the need to control them. This decision isn’t hurting us in any way.”
One of the first things that President Biden did was to block Trump’s last ditch attempt to further marginalize us.
Biden DOJ nixes last-minute Trump administration memo on LGBTQ rights
A Supreme Court ruling last June concluded that a half-century-old prohibition on sex discrimination in employment applies equally to discrimination against gay and lesbian workers as well as those who are transgender.
Politico
By Josh Gerstein
January 23, 2021
The Justice Department has taken its first major step under President Joe Biden to reverse the Trump administration’s resistance to expansion of rights accorded to LGBTQ Americans.
Greg Friel, the lawyer just named to oversee the Justice Department’s civil rights division on a temporary basis, issued a directive Friday revoking a 22-page memorandum a Trump appointee released earlier this week taking a cramped view of a major Supreme Court decision last year that longstanding federal law protects LGBTQ individuals from discrimination at work.
“I have determined that this memorandum is inconsistent in many respects with the E.O.,” Friel wrote to civil rights division colleagues. “I plan to confer with Department leadership about issuing revised guidance that comports with the policy set forth in the E.O. As part of that process, we will seek the input of Division subject matter experts.”
The Executive Order that he is referring to is…
Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual OrientationBut what really stood out in the EO was,
JANUARY 20, 2021
PRESIDENTIAL ACTIONS
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy. Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love. Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports. Adults should be able to earn a living and pursue a vocation knowing that they will not be fired, demoted, or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes. People should be able to access healthcare and secure a roof over their heads without being subjected to sex discrimination. All persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.
Discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation manifests differently for different individuals, and it often overlaps with other forms of prohibited discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of race or disability. For example, transgender Black Americans face unconscionably high levels of workplace discrimination, homelessness, and violence, including fatal violence.As far as I know this is the first time intersectionality has been mentioned when talking about discrimination.
Apology not accepted.
An apology after you got caught being a bigot is not an apology rather it is a hope to CYA.
PA state rep mocks transgender Biden nominee on Facebook, apologizesHe is still a bigot but a bigot who got called out for his bigotry. It was the public outcry that caused him to apologize, not because he realized that it was wrong to belittle another person.
WTVD ABC Ch 11 News
By AP
January 23, 2021
HARRISBURG, Pa. -- A Pennsylvania legislator shared on Facebook an image mocking the appearance of the state's recently departed health secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender woman who has been nominated to serve in the Biden administration, and then offered a general apology Saturday.
State Rep. Jeff Pyle, a Republican from Armstrong and Indiana counties in western Pennsylvania, said on Facebook that he "had no idea" the post mocking Levine "would be ... received as poorly as it was" but that "tens of thousands of heated emails assured me it was."
[…]
Pyle, who was first elected in 2004, cited a conversation with the Democratic leader in the state House "who explained the error of my post." He stressed that he did not come up with the meme but merely shared it, though he said he should not have done so.
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