I can’t say “You wouldn’t believe” because you would believe anything coming out of Florida. But now… but now I think people will start to believe that this is really a vendetta against us.
Two Florida chapters of nationwide medical organizations will be issued subpoenas.Tampa Bay TimesBy Romy EllenbogenApril 25, 2023A Florida House committee voted Monday to authorize sending subpoenas to the Florida chapters of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association, which have both issued guidance in support of gender-affirming care for transgender children.House Speaker Paul Renner said he wants the House to examine how the organizations adopted their recommendations. He questioned whether the guidelines were the result of scientific analysis or whether “the integrity of the medical profession has been compromised by a radical gender ideology that stands to cause permanent physical and mental harm to children and adolescents.”Saying that organizations in favor of gender-affirming care have so far fought “vigorously” to avoid any “meaningful inquiry or disclosure” about how they reached their standards, Renner directed the House Health and Human Services Committee, led by chairperson Randy Fine, R-Palm Bay, to begin an investigation.The House Health and Human Services committee voted 13-6 on Monday to authorize Fine to write and issue subpoenas for the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Florida Psychiatric Society, a branch of the American Psychiatric Association.Subpoenas from the House can go only to Florida organizations. Fine said he would have liked to subpoena other groups, like the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.[…]Rep. Ashley Gantt, D-Miami, said she worried the subpoenas were reminiscent of the Johns Committee, a legislative committee that sought to investigate communists and LGBTQ+ people in Florida universities.Rep. Fentrice Driskell, the House Democratic leader, said that since the House has already passed its bill dealing with medical care for transgender children, the subpoena doesn’t serve a legitimate purpose.“We’re very concerned this could be a political witch hunt,” she said.
The Johns Committee according to the University of Florida,
From 1956 to 1965, the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee threatened civil liberties in the Sunshine State. Led by Senator Charley E. Johns, the committee operated in a McCarthyite manner, seeking to discover communist connections among integrationist organizations and purge academic liberals and so-called "subversives" from educational institutions.When the committee had failed to demonstrate communist involvement within the NAACP or the academic community, a desperate Charley Johns sought to extend his committee's life by searching for a weaker enemy and "committee agents soon monitored lavatory stalls and private bedrooms rather than city buses." The University of Florida was the first academic target chosen in the search for homosexuals in 1958. At least 15 UF professors and more than 50 students left after being interrogated by investigators. Even though the committee's tactics violated state law, UF administrators did not attempt to halt the investigations and went so far as to allow university police officers to serve as investigators and tape interrogations with professors and students.
Hmm… history is repeating itself.
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| Cartoon by Don Addis |
That was the big question back in the 50s with Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s hearings, according to the Senate history,
Wisconsin Republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy rocketed to public attention in 1950 with his allegations that hundreds of Communists had infiltrated the State Department and other federal agencies. These charges struck a particularly responsive note at a time of deepening national anxiety about the spread of world communism.[…]A dispute over his hiring of staff without consulting other committee members prompted the panel's three Democrats to resign in mid-1953. Republican senators also stopped attending, in part because so many of the hearings were called on short notice or held away from the nation's capital. As a result, McCarthy and his chief counsel Roy Cohn largely ran the show by themselves, relentlessly grilling and insulting witnesses. Harvard law dean Ervin Griswold described McCarthy's role as "judge, jury, prosecutor, castigator, and press agent, all in one."
It took a Boston lawyer for the Army to bring the hearings to a close with the famous line,
As an amazed television audience looked on, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy's career: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy also started to investigate us, the LGBTQ+ community which resulted in the Lavender Scary. OutHistory wrote that,
Most America’s know the story of Senator Joseph McCarthy and how he set off a “red scare” when he famously charged in 1950 that the US State Department and other government agencies had been infiltrated by communist agents. But few Americans know that McCarthy also charged that the government had been infiltrated by homosexuals, and that they posed a threat equally as grave to national security. This fear that gay men and lesbians could be blackmailed into revealing state secrets resulted in a systematic campaign to identify and remove all government employees suspected of homosexuality. In this book, David Johnson argues that a parallel “lavender scare” permeated American cold war culture. But it also helped launch a new civil rights struggle.
President Eisenhower signed an executive order that…
In 1953, the pressure to strengthen security procedures became codified when newly elected President Eisenhower signed executive order 10450, which expanded Truman’s loyalty program to include issues of character and suitability. For the first time, “sexual perversion” was included in the list of behaviors that would exclude one from holding a job with the federal government or receiving a security clearance from a federal contractor. Agencies set up new policies and procedures for detecting and removing men and women suspected of being gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Applicants were personally interviewed to look for subtle signs of homosexuality, such as gender non-conformity. Invoking the notion of “guilt by association,” investigators checked whether an employee’s friends or roommates were gay. Some were placed under surveillance to determine whether they frequented gay bars or associated with “known homosexuals.” Local police agencies were encouraged to clamp down on local gay meeting places and then share their arrest records. Investigators vigorously interrogated civil servants about their private sex lives and offered a “lie-detector” test as one of the only means of establishing their innocence. Thousands lost their jobs or resigned under pressure. A small number were driven to suicide.
And now history is coming around again!
We are becoming the piranha again, we are the root of all the troubles in the country, we are the scapegoats with what is wrong. And do you want to guess what party McCarthy was member of? OutHistory wrote,
Based on little evidence, the attacks represented a way for Republicans, the minority party at the time, to attack the Democrats and the New Deal agencies they had created as centers of immorality.
Edward R Murrow delivered a stinging editorial about McCarthy’s tactics,
The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it – and rather successfully. Cassius was right. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”Good night and good luck.”
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