The Tide Is Turning

Slowly and there are setbacks but public opinion is turning against them in their hate against us and other minorities.

'State of crisis': Advocates warn of 'unprecedented' wave of anti-LGBTQ bills
Eight of these bills have already been enacted and 10 more are on governors’ desks, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
NBC News
By Jo Yurcaba
April 25, 2021


Hundreds of bills that target LGBTQ people have been filed in state legislatures, creating a “state of crisis,” advocates say.

The bills “attempt to erase transgender people and attempt to make LGBTQ people second-class citizens,” Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said during a news conference Thursday.

David said the number of bills, particularly those targeting transgender young people, is “unprecedented” and that 2021 is on track to “become the worst year for state legislative attacks against LGBTQ people in history.”
[…]
“Just to underscore the severity of these bills and the dangerous threshold we are about to cross: If these bills are enacted, it would mean that states will have enacted more anti-LGBTQ bills this year alone than in the last three years combined,” David said.

Why now?

Why all this zeal?

I believe that this is Trump’s legacy of packing the courts with anti-LGBTQ+ judges, judges whose names were supplied by the Alliance Defending Freedom and other anti-LGBTQ+ organizations and are now supporting the legislation against us.

Trump's Christian Judges March On
The president has packed the courts with judges friendly to the Christian right — and they could roll back LGBTQ rights as we know them
Rolling Stone
By Sarah Posner
October 9, 2020


[…]
Sealing a decades-long mission of the Federalist Society and allied advocacy organizations, Trump, aided by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is remaking the federal judiciary far beyond the Supreme Court. During Trump’s tenure, more than 200 judges have been confirmed to lifetime appointments in trial and appellate courts, including the Supreme Court. Trump has nominated more judges, and most consequentially, more appellate judges, than any other president since the process became hyper-politicized after the failed Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork in 1987. Many of Trump’s judges are young, too, often in their thirties or forties, meaning that the lifetime appointment affords them potentially many decades more on the bench than their predecessors.

More than a quarter of active federal judges now have been appointed by Trump, and several have shown they hold extreme views on religious freedom. Last year, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of two wedding videographers who said they would refuse to shoot at an LGBTQ wedding. In an opinion authored by David Stras, a Trump nominee, the court held that the state law barring discrimination against LGBTQ people infringed on the videographers’ rights.

Never before has the Christian right’s goals for the federal courts — eviscerating the separation of church and state, undermining LGBTQ rights, reversing Roe v. Wade, and expanding religious liberty rights for anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ Christians — been so tantalizingly within reach, raising the stakes ever higher for November’s election and putting judicial nominations front and center in the campaign to turn out the Christian right base for Trump’s reelection. Kelly Shackelford, president and chief counsel for First Liberty Institute, one of several Christian-right legal firms that have forged these religious-liberty arguments in the courts, recounted to a February 2020 gathering of the agenda-setting conservative Council for National Policy the millions of dollars the right has spent to ensure that Trump had the right list of potential judicial nominees from which to choose. “I am watching history change on its axis,” he said. “Every American alive, in my opinion, is about to have more religious freedom than they’ve ever had in their lifetime. And it’s because of what’s happening with the judges.”

Court House News had this to say about Trump’s appointees,

Republican lawmakers praised Juneau ‘s credentials, but Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, chose to focus instead on his membership with the conservative Christian nonprofit, Alliance Defending Freedom.

“The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated [the Alliance] a hate group,” Hirono said.

She went on to cite a report from the law center that says the nonprofit has supported recriminalizing homosexuality both in the U.S. and abroad; defended state sanction sterilization of transgender individuals abroad; and claimed “the homosexual agenda” will destroy Christianity and society.

Alliance Defending Freedom and other “Christian” organizations help Republican legislators draft legislation*, the East Idaho News wrote that,

Legislation modeled by Alliance Defending Freedom helped bill spread

Ehardt credited the Alliance Defending Freedom with helping spread the bill they worked on together from state to state via model legislation, where the substance of a bill remains the same, but certain language — such as the name of the state — is changed.

The Alliance Defending Freedom is an Arizona-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit that focuses on advocacy, training and funding legal cases. According to its website, it focuses on the issues of “religious freedom, sanctity of life and marriage and family.”

Southern Poverty Law Center classifies Alliance Defending Freedom, or ADF, as an anti-LGBTQ hate group.

“Since the election of President Trump, ADF has become one of the most influential groups informing the administration’s attack on LGBTQ rights,” SPLC officials wrote in their file for the alliance.

So they helped Trump pack the courts with anti-LGBTQ+ judges then they introduce anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and then they bring anti-LGBTQ+ court cases like the one in Connecticut against trans athletes.

The NBC News article ended with…

Oakley [State legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign] said the “tide may be turning” for anti-LGBTQ legislation, noting the two recent vetoes by Republican governors in Arizona and North Dakota. A recent PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll found that two-thirds of Americans are opposed to laws that would limit trans rights.

“Public opinion is absolutely on our side,” Oakley said. But she still doesn’t think it will be enough to prevent 2021 from breaking the record for the most anti-LGBTQ bills to become laws.
[…]
“It is not just the NCAA. We also need our entire nation,” David [President of the Human Rights Campaign] said. “We need every single person to make their voices heard and make sure that their voices are clear that these bills are inhumane and unacceptable.”

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Speaking of the Connecticut court case…

Judge Dismisses Complaint Against CIAC For Allowing Transgender Athletes To Compete
Connecticut News Junkie
By Christine Stuart
April 26, 2021


A federal court judge dismissed a lawsuit against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference that sought to prevent transgender female athletes from competing in girls high school sports. The plaintiffs, four cisgender females, said through their attorney that they would appeal the ruling.

“I conclude that the plaintiffs’ challenge to the CIAC policy is not justiciable at this time and their claims for monetary relief are barred and dismiss the action on this basis without addressing the other grounds raised in the joint motion,” U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chatigny wrote in a ruling released Sunday.
[…]
“I conclude that the request to enjoin enforcement of the CIAC policy has become moot due to the graduation of Yearwood and Miller, whose participation in girls’ track provided the impetus for this action,” Chatigny wrote. “There is no indication that [Alanna] Smith and [Ashley] Nicoletti will encounter competition by a transgender student in a CIAC-sponsored event next season.”

And don’t expect this case to disappear, this case is the prima donna of the ADF, they are using this case to drum up support against us in Republican legislatures.

The plaintiffs, through their Christian law firm, Alliance Defending Freedom, said they would appeal the ruling.

“It’s discouraging that the court ruled to dismiss my right to compete on a level playing field,” Chelsea Mitchell, one of the plaintiffs, said. “Today’s ruling ignores the physical advantages that male athletes have over female athletes. Female athletes like me should have the opportunity to excel and compete fairly. No girl should have to settle into her starting blocks knowing that, no matter how hard she works, she doesn’t have a fair shot at victory.”

My guess is that the appeal court and the Supreme Court will let this case die, they realize that this case is a “hot potato” that no one wants and this gives them an out.

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*Suppling draft legislation to legislators is very common, it is done all the time. The non-discrimination  gender identity/expression was supplied by a pro-LGBTQ+ legal non-profit. What is different is the vigor with the ADF and other right wing Christian organization supplying model legislation that is coupled with judicial appointments.