I Just Don’t Know Anymore.

 It seems like they are trying to out do each other… who can come up with the most anti-LGBTQ law. It is like they are in competition. I have seen an increase in news article criticizing the politicians for their animosity toward us, but that only seems to wind up DeSantis and Abbott to persecute us even more.

Republicans are even saying that they want to change the state’s Constitution so they can defund school libraries! MSNBC reported that,

Republicans who control the Missouri House have passed a budget that doesn’t give its public libraries a single cent of state money. The lawmakers were angered that the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association had the temerity to challenge a law Missouri lawmakers passed last year removing certain material deemed too sexually explicit from school libraries.

You see the Missouri constitution requires libraries to be funding by the state, so the Republicans they can push their ideology onto the people and censor what they can read and see!

They want to control your minds.

Stop and think for a second. The Republicans are saying that they don’t want their children to read books on LGBTQ+ or Black history and they want the books to be taken off the shelves. But what they are really saying is that they cannot control their own children so they are banning books that everyone else are reading to keep their own children from reading them.

The Miami Herald published an article on bills that may restrict Pride parades.

The bill has drawn criticism from Democrats, drag queens and LGBTQ advocates who worry the broad definitions in the bill will make businesses fearful of hosting drag shows.

But even more so, critics worry the effort will foster harassment and hateful rhetoric against the LGBTQ community.

“Beyond policy, GOP lawmakers have used these bills as vehicles to push bigoted and dehumanizing rhetoric about our community,” said former state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando Democrat running for the state Senate in 2024.

But I think that is their goal to bring about unrest and violence against us to force us back in the closet.

According to the Tallahassee Democrat,

"I've never been to a Pride parade. It's not my thing, not my group," Rep. Randy Fine, R-Palm Bay, said in an interview. "But I have seen photos and videos from these things where you see participants behaving in ways that would not be appropriate in front of his bill."

While the proposal wouldn't inherently bar a Pride parade from happening, Fine said Thursday, those tasked with enforcing the law "would focus on the conduct of the folks in the parade ... so it will be up to folks to make sure they follow the law." He hadn't yet added Yarborough's amendment to his bill but said he's "absolutely supportive of the concept."

He has never seen a Pride parade but he wants to ban them! I hold the media culpable in this, when they show a Pride parade what do they show? The families marching? Nope. The over the top drag queens, and the Republicans are calling that lewd behavior when there is nothing sexual about it. It is all in the Republicans dirty minds.

Then we have a little thing called the First Amendment and something called the “freedom if speech” that the Republicans seem to have a hard time understanding that it is a two way street. That not only does it protect their “free speech” but also our “free speech.”

The American Bar Association has this to say about our First Amendment rights…

Transgender people are entitled to the same protections. Measures that target a transgender person’s disclosure of their transgender status (one’s right to state “I am trans”) for adverse treatment are content-based restrictions on speech. Further, a person’s right to define and express their gender through their appearance (for example, the right of both a transgender or cisgender women share to wear a dress or a suit and express themselves in accordance with their identity) is protected free expression. Courts increasingly have acknowledged the First Amendment principles at stake with respect to policies denying transgender people the ability to live openly in accordance with their gender identities or chilling their protected speech and expression.

[…]

LGBT people engage in protected First Amendment speech and expression by speaking or acting in ways that affirm their identities. The First Amendment not only protects that speech but also prevents the government from passing laws or regulations that might “chill” that speech, meaning policies that cause LGBT people to self-censor their speech and expression about their sexual orientation or gender identity in order to avoid adverse treatment. There remains a great deal of work to do to secure equality for LGBT people in America, and the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause provides just one more useful tool for fighting against government actions that discriminate against LGBT people. This constitutional protection is an important shield against policies that harm the LGBT community and impair the possibility of equal treatment and protection of the laws for all Americans.

Pride parades were the result of oppression of our community and now once again history repeats itself and once again they are trying to criminalize us.

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And in Franklin Tennessee, a ray of sanity by the mayor.

Despite fierce resistance, Tennessee town's annual Pride festival gets a lifeline
City leaders in Franklin, a Nashville suburb of roughly 85,000 people, issued a permit for its annual LGBTQ Pride festival Tuesday evening.
NBC News
By Matt Lavietes
April 12, 2023

City leaders in Franklin, Tennessee, a suburb 30 minutes outside Nashville, narrowly approved a permit for the municipality's LGBTQ Pride festival this year, countering fierce opposition for what has typically been a procedural formality.

Casting the tie-breaker in a 5-4 vote on Tuesday night, Franklin Mayor Ken Moore called for unity among community members.

[…]

The resistance to grant a permit for this year's Pride festival in Franklin, a city of roughly 85,000 people, echoes a nationwide backlash against LGBTQ people, or what community opponents called queer "lifestyles

"It is important that we continue to learn who our neighbors are in Franklin," Moore said to a room filled with hundreds of city residents. "The same First Amendment that we’re talking about tonight for religious groups also applies to the Pride group, and they do have that opportunity to express themselves, and they have the opportunity, if they want, to apply to use our parks."

Exactly these conservatives and right-wingers are always quoting the “First Amendment rights” but they can’t seem to get that concept through their thick skulls.