Whoa… Stepping Away.

Some Republicans are getting nervous and are stepping away from “The Donald.”

‘Just Not Right’: A GOP Governor Confronts Trump’s Lies
For Gov. Mike DeWine, the attacks on Haitians near his Ohio hometown are personal – and so is the cost of Trump’s and J.D. Vance’s vicious demonization of legal immigrants.
Politico
By Jonathan Martin
September 30, 2024

On a rainy Sunday afternoon, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and his wife of 57 years, Fran, are sitting by themselves seven pews back from the alter of the soaring St. Raphael’s, a parish named for the patron saint of travelers. The gothic revival church was built in the 19th Century to accommodate the influx of Irish and German migrants here. But after its regular morning mass, St. Raphael’s now holds an afternoon service in Creole for the 21st Century travelers who’ve come looking for opportunity in Ohio: Haitians.

Neither DeWine speaks, and few in the sanctuary even know the governor is in their presence until after the homily. That’s when a Haitian layman, speaking his native language, recognizes the visitor and necks crane to glimpse of one of the few white people present before the congregation collectively rises to give him an ovation. DeWine stands long enough to acknowledge the ovation, offers an appreciative wave and quickly sits back down. It’s his second consecutive Sunday attending the afternoon service at St. Raphael’s, but he’s heartened this time to see more Haitians worshiping with him: few showed up the previous week because they were so frightened.

[…]

One of the Haitians, whose name I won’t use, summons the courage to speak broken English to the governor and his wife: “What do they think about the Haitians in Springfield and USA?”

DeWine doesn’t hesitate. “Look, people that want to come here and want to work and that are legal, which you are, we welcome you. Everybody, their family came from somewhere. My family, on my father’s side, came from Ireland back in 1840s.”

Then he repeats himself to make his message clear — “So we welcome you.” Then he asks the migrants, their colleagues and their employer what their challenges are.

In another Politico article they write,

Some battleground state Republicans say they’re worried they see little evidence of Donald Trump’s ground game — and fear it could cost him the election in an exceedingly close race.

In interviews, more than a dozen Republican strategists and operatives in presidential battlegrounds voiced serious concerns about what they described as a paltry get-out-the-vote effort by the Trump campaign, an untested strategy of leaning on outside groups to help do field work and a top-of-the-ticket strategy that’s disjointed from the one Republicans down the ballot are running.

Trump and JD lies are hurting the Republicans, the voter see all the lies and they don’t like it!

Opinion: Trump's GOP excuses racists, loons and criminals. There's no bottom anymore.
What matters here is less the racist rant of a decidedly doltish dipstick like GOP Rep. Clay Higgins and more the ease with which Trump-era Republicans excuse the monsters in their midst.
USA Today
By Rex Huppke
September 30, 2024


The bar for “behavior Trump-supporting Republicans will excuse” is now set so low it’s subterranean.

This past week, a Haitian nonprofit organization in Springfield, Ohio, filed citizen criminal charges against Donald Trump and JD Vance over their dishonest and dangerous diatribes about the city’s Haitian community.

Rep. Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana, responded to that filing by posting this on social media:

“Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters … but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP. All these thugs better get their mind right and their a-- out of our country before January 20th.”

That’s pure, uncut racism. There’s no other way to spin it or excuse it. And yet, it was spun and excused by the Republican Party. Democrats in the House called for censure, but the GOP shut that down.
Many Republicans are getting fed up with Trump’s race baiting. They are starting to realize that the new Republican party is not the party of Reagan. Trump keeps on going off the dark end, he is being call out for his racism,

It means you excuse GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance for fabricating racist claims about legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets.

It means you excuse the chaos, threats and hatred that have upended Springfield in the wake of those insidious comments.

It means you excuse Trump’s increasingly vile, xenophobic lies, like this one from a Thursday speech, again putting a target on Springfield: “You have to get them out, we have to save our country, you have to save these towns. They flooded the job market with low-wage migrants, but in many cases migrants that also have horrible criminal records, murder, drug dealing, so many different things, a lot of human traffickers, and it’s mostly human traffickers in women.”

Many Republicans are saying enough is enough! It is one lie after another… just endless lies.

Emhoff: Trump vow to protect women ‘is yet more lies and more gaslighting’
The Hill
By Sarah Fortinsky
September 29, 2024

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff said former President Trump’s vow to protect women “is yet more lies and more gaslighting,” in a Sunday interview on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki.”

In a discussion about abortion rights, Emhoff said it was “wrong” that his 83-year-old mother “is somehow going to enjoy more rights” than his daughter, and he blamed the situation on Trump.

“This is all because of Donald Trump. He ran on a platform of women should be punished for seeking an abortion. He said that. There’s video. He ran on a platform of appointing Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, They did just that. And he is for a national abortion ban,” Emhoff told Psaki.

“Make no mistake, where he says I will be the protector of women, that is yet more lies and more gaslighting,” he continued.

And remember, 50% of the people are going to vote for him!

They are laying the ground work for “voter fraud!” FactCheck.org reports,

Trump’s Latest Bogus Claim About Mail-In Vote Fraud in Pennsylvania
By Robert Farley
September 20, 2024

Former President Donald Trump cited the dubious results of a poll commissioned by a conservative group as the foundation for his latest claim of rampant voter fraud among mail-in voters.

“An interview by Tucker Carlson of an election expert indicates that 20% of the Mail-In Ballots in Pennsylvania are fraudulent. Here we go again!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Sept. 8.

Here we go again, indeed. Trump has repeatedly made false claims about voter fraud, continuing to say the 2020 election was “rigged,” despite the fact that his own aides, including his attorney general, told him his claims were baseless.

I don’t know how anyone can vote for a chronic lair. How can you trust him? He tailors his messages to different audiences, he tells them what they want to hear and it often results in contradictions.

This is not the “Old” Republican party… this is the “MAGA” Republican party!

It needs more than saving to vote, you need to make sure all your friends vote… your very life may depend upon who wins this November. This election is going to depend on who can get enough people to vote for them. Yeah, you are like “Well Duh!” of course it is going to be depended upon the votes. We need to make sure everyone of your friends vote even if you have to take them to vote.

Vote Harris/Walz and the Democratic line! Vote for honesty and integrity, vote Blue!

She Can Afford It.

But what about those that cannot?

Trans children are going to other states for their medical care and if they can't travel they are turning to black market hormones.

Her state bans gender-affirming care for teenagers. So she travels 450 miles for it
NPR Heard on All Things Considered
By Selena Simmons-Duffin
September 27, 2024

In the future, Veronica sees herself in a big city.

“I like chaos and spontaneousness,” she says, and she doesn’t get much of that in her town surrounded by farmland outside of Des Moines. It’s slow and boring, she says. Matching rows of ranch houses line wide manicured streets, with SUVs parked in the driveways.

Veronica is 17. She has two more years of high school, then she can graduate and leave.

Hers is not just the usual adolescent wanderlust. This Iowa town has turned out to be a punishing place to be a transgender teenager. Her mom, Emily, has fought to change her name in the high school’s system. There's no good option for which bathroom to use at school. Emily says neighbors and classmates have made cruel comments.

[…]

Iowa was part of a wave of states that passed laws related to transgender young people in the last two years. Currently, 26 states have laws on the books banning gender-affirming care for trans teens, and an estimated 110,000 trans teenagers live in states with bans in effect. Virtually all major U.S. medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, support access to gender-affirming care for young people.

You want to guess on what party controls those 26 states? You want to guess how many Republican states there are?

For now, the family is rooted in Iowa. Veronica is the oldest of four children – her parents are divorced and the kids are at their dad’s house in the same neighborhood half the time. All their grandparents live in Iowa, too.

So when Iowa’s gender-affirming care ban took effect last year, the family made a decision: Veronica and her mom would travel out-of-state every few months to keep getting the care Veronica needed.

Yep, those are the Republican family values… tear the family apart… drive the family apart from all their friends.

When Iowa’s ban took effect, Veronica was taking puberty blockers. By that point, she had been out as trans to her friends for three years – out to her parents and siblings for two. She had also developed an eating disorder so severe she has gone to residential treatment twice.

[…]

The "pause" in gender affirming care, as Iowa's governor put it, was at odds with Veronica's own biological timing. After the ban became law, the family got a message from the clinic explaining that they needed to stop Veronica’s gender care. Her doctors said if she couldn’t find a way to keep getting puberty blocker shots on time out of state, she would have restarted testosterone-driven puberty. That would have meant bodily changes like voice deepening, the growth of her Adam’s apple, facial hair, shoulder-broadening and more — some of which could be changed later with surgery or other procedures, some of which would be permanent.

That is the Republican way… have government looking over your shoulder at your medical decisions!

September’s appointment was their third one in Minneapolis. Her mom thinks intervening now will help Veronica look more like someone who was born female when she’s older, which will hopefully make her safer — less likely to be the target of violence or discrimination for being a trans person.

But she is lucky that she can travel out of state but what about those that cannot travel? Briton has also stopped treating trans youth and they found that…

Concerns as cross-sex hormones available online for just £11 a month
Experts fear children questioning their gender may turn to hidden economy to obtain hormones illegally
The Guardian
By Nicola Davis and Sarah Marsh
3 May 2024

Cross-sex hormones designed to masculinise or feminise a person’s body are available to buy online for less than £11 a month, with experts warning that growing numbers of under-18s may turn to the medicines hidden economy.

Last month the landmark Cass review of children’s gender treatment in England concluded there was a lack of reliable evidence supporting the use of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers by young people questioning their gender identity.

As a result, provision of cross-sex hormones to under-18s is under review. The report said that while they can still be made available to patients from the age of 16, they should only be prescribed with extreme caution and a strong clinical rationale for not waiting until an individual reaches 18. The recommendations apply to the NHS and the private sector.

While trans adults are often prescribed such hormones, it is illegal to supply the drugs in the UK to adults or under-18s without a prescription.

Guardian research found online pharmacies in places ranging from India to Hong Kong and Portugal offering hormone treatments without a prescription, typically ranging from around £10 to £30 for 28 days’ supply of a starting dose of feminising hormones.

The Republicans in their myopic view of the world probably never even thought that they would be driving trans children to self-medicate, they just want to wave the law and tell their base… “See what we did we banned those horrible trans child!”

But what they really did was drive it underground.

The NPR article goes on to report,

Three of the four states bordering Minnesota have gender affirming care bans for youth — Iowa and North Dakota and South Dakota. Minnesota has gone in the opposite direction. Minnesota’s legislature passed a “trans refuge” law last year, and since then, hundreds of trans people and their families have moved to the state.

But not every family can move. Even traveling for appointments is difficult, with airfare or gas expenses, hotels, taking time off work.

Once again the Republican states taketh away and the Democratic states giveth.

My body, my choice!
My body, my choice!
My body, my choice!

Vote Blue, vote Harris/Walz, vote the Democratic line.

 

---

 

The far-right conservatives are spreading around the world...

 ‘Earthquake’: Austria’s far-right Freedom Party wins election
The far right might struggle to form a coalition because most other parties have said they will not work with it.

Al Jazeera

30 Sep 2024

 

 

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) has topped the country’s national elections in a historic victory but is likely to struggle to find partners that would enable it to form a governing coalition.

The FPOe won 28.8 percent of votes, beating the ruling conservative People’s Party (OeVP) into second place at 26.3 percent, according to near-complete results.

 

[...]

 

 Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) has topped the country’s national elections in a historic victory but is likely to struggle to find partners that would enable it to form a governing coalition.

The FPOe won 28.8 percent of votes, beating the ruling conservative People’s Party (OeVP) into second place at 26.3 percent, according to near-complete results.

The world is getting to be a scary place, once again just like in the 1930s the world looked for scapegoats to cure the economic woes. This time we are it... all the world problems are caused by them gays! They ignore the obvious... that the top 1% control almost half of the world's wealth.

 

Cuckoo Award

You just can’t make these things up! How does that saying “Something Olde, Something New, Something Borrowed… how about borrowing a family?

Childless GOP Candidate Borrows Family for Weird Photo Shoot
Anti-abortion Republican Derrick Anderson, who is running for Virginia’s seventh congressional district, appears to be trying to appeal to women using a bizarre tactic.
Daily Beast
By Mathew Murphy
September 29, 2024

It looks like a family holiday snap, except that the woman and children posing with Republican Derrick Anderson are not his wife or his offspring.

[…]

Anderson, who is childless, engaged to be married, and lives alone with his dog, decided to borrow the wife and children from a longtime friend, in an apparent effort to appear as a family man.

So it is with great honor I bestow today’s Cuckoo Award to Mr. Anderson one of many he received for this fiasco.

His decision to pose with a family that was not his own was widely mocked on social media.

How Old Is He?

Ten? Twelve?

It is getting old on more and independent voters, they are seeing his childish, bullying behavior and are turning away from him. The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital writes,

Problematic Child Behavior
He publicly bullies and mocks other kids in a hurtful way.  “He has been called into the principal’s office many times for mocking and harassing kids who were really vulnerable and more fragile than him – like kids with disabilities. Charles denied this and said he was ‘only having some fun,’ and they didn’t get his humor. He saw a Facebook streaming of kids abusing a disabled boy, and he went into school the next day, and at lunch mimicked a kid with Cerebral Palsy. Most of the kids were shocked, but it didn’t phase him. He also repeatedly posts or tweets nasty comments about kids from other countries, religions, kids with mental illness. And when we ground him, which we try to do – not always successfully – he just has another excuse, or says that they deserve it because they were mean to him. It does not make any sense.”

Need I write more?

Trump says Harris was born ‘mentally impaired’ and complains about small rally venue: Live
Trump and Walz are expected to attend separate college football games on Saturday night
Independent
By Oliver O'Connell, Katie Hawkinson, and Ariana Baio
September 28, 2024

Former president Donald Trump asserted Vice President Kamala Harris was “born mentally impaired” in the first few minutes at his Wisconsin rally on Saturday afternoon.

"Joe Biden became mentally impaired, Kamala was born that way,” Trump told a room of rallygoers in Prairie du Chien while criticizing the administration’s position on immigration.

The former president falsely asserted, once again, that Harris was appointed “border czar” and allowed migrants to cross the border and commit violent crimes.

“Only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country,” Trump said.

There is no evidence of mass “migrant crime” happening across America nor any indication Harris was born with a disability that impacts her mental or cognitive functioning.

[…]

Trump uses blatantly derogatory language to describe migrants
Trump used words like “disgusting”, “animals”, “hoodlums”, “thugs” and “invasion” to describe the influx of migrants to the United States during a rally on Saturday in Wisconsin.

The former president, who is campaigning on an anti-immigration platform, told rallygoers that migrants would take their “culture” away from them and criticized migrants in Springfield, Ohio for not speaking English.

Trump often claims migrants are creating widespread violent crime – something there is no evidence of – and that more violent crime will occur if mass deportations don’t happen and the US–Mexico border isn’t “closed.”

We can add “racist” to childish behavior.

Trump's insufferable traits remind me of my immature teenage self | Opinion
I don’t want that person to be president of the United States. I don’t want anyone with those values to be president.
Cincinnati.com
By Tom Romano
January 11, 2024

Like the Trump I’ve come to know since 2015, however, I, at 18 years old, was blustery, callous, disrespectful of women, self-interested with little regard for others, certain that my opinions were right despite my shallow understanding of an issue. I had a volatile temper and lashed out when something didn’t go my way. I benefitted from privilege without acknowledging it, without even realizing it. Trump has these traits in abundance.

Here is another thought… look at how he treated his VP,

Donald Trump’s laughably childish threat to Mike Pence
CNN
By Chris Cillizza
September 15, 2021

Donald Trump is, at root, just an overgrown kid. And not in any good way.

Trump’s childishness shines through in an excerpt from the soon-to-be released book by authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa detailing the then-President’s attempts to cajole then-Vice President Mike Pence into overturning the 2020 election.
When Vice President Pence refused to do the “Donald’s” bidding,
 “When Pence did not budge, Trump turned on him.

“‘No, no, no!’ Trump shouted, according to the authors. ‘You don’t understand, Mike. You can do this. I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this.’”

Start here: As an adult, can you imagine ANY circumstance in which you would tell another adult “I don’t want to be your friend anymore”? Like, taking all of politics and the stakes out of this, and it’s just not the sort of thing a normal adult would say to another adult.

And yet, the President of the United States did say exactly that to the vice president of the United States with the fate of the 2020 election (and the broader health of democracy) in the balance.

The reason is simple: Trump is deeply childish.

Consider it: He is remarkably self-focused. He wants what he wants when he wants it. And when he doesn’t get what he wants, he throws a temper tantrum.

His presidency is littered with evidence of this behavior.

Me? I’m voting for the adult running in this year’s election… Vote Harris/Walz!

 

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There was no 11 AM post because I been trying to figure out a new software program for editing videos... Nikon's NX Studio. I went up to Mt Snow on Friday to go leaf peeping but... there was no color, all the leaves were mostly green.

 

Here is a photo from the top of Mt Snow looking north, that body of water is Somerset Reservoir, the mountain to the north of that is Stratton.

Cuckoo Award

This the award goes to an Instagram post… oh this is a goody. It right up there on the Loony Tune list, did you know that hurricane Helene was the results a government secret project.

Hurricane Helene was the product of intentional weather modification.
Politifact
By Loreben Tuquero
September 27, 2024

Hurricane Helene was not a product of weather modification. That’s Pants on Fire!

Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, killing at least 40 people and leaving a four-state swath of destruction.

Before the hurricane’s impact, a social media user said in a Sept. 25 post that it was human-made. "So, today we’re going to hit on this hurricane that’s going up into Florida and maybe figure out who’s causing it," the narrator said as an image of the storm’s projected path appeared behind him.

He cited a 1947 hurricane named "King" and said it had the "exact same path" as Helene. Hurricane King was the subject of an experiment conducted by the U.S. Air Force and General Electric Co. called "Project Cirrus."

"Hurricane Helene? Weather modification?" the caption read.

Cuckoo, cuckoo… bring on the padded room.

Taking The Day Off.

I over did it yesterday leaf peeping and as usual I'm paying for it with my back.

So I am playing hooky today while I rest up.

Holding Us Hostage With Medical Bills!

Up in Idaho they are suing the APA and passing draconian anti-trans laws!

Becoming a political symbol: Transgender Idahoans talk about the realities of anti-trans health care laws
Northwest Public Broadcasting
By Rachel Sun
September 23, 2024

Julia Keleher had spent about a decade helping other transgender people access health care that affirms their gender identity before they started seeking it for themself a few years ago.

Keleher, who is nonbinary and uses she or they pronouns, said they often worked providing resources to transgender college students through their work at the University of Idaho’s LGBTQA Office. But until they were in their 30s, Keleher didn’t know medical transition could be an option for them.

That changed four years ago, when they read an article about low-dosing, or “microdosing” testosterone. The process is sometimes undertaken by nonbinary individuals who are assigned female at birth to achieve less than maximal masculinizing effects.

[…]

The state now faces a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two transgender Idaho inmates, who say the law is a violation of their Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment.

Idaho had already passed a total ban on gender-affirming care for minors in 2023 — but the new law affects adults.

Roughly 7,000 Idaho adults are estimated to be transgender, according to the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. The same institute estimates that across the U.S., approximately 21% of all transgender people in the country are Medicaid recipients.

The Republicans are rabid to force us back in the closet. They want nothing to do with us.

The Supreme Court has let the ban on our healthcare continue until the trail.

U.S. Supreme Court allows Idaho to enforce gender care ban while lawsuit plays out
SCOTUS sides with state to allow enforcement of gender-affirming care ban for youth. Poe v. Labrador lawsuit remains ongoing.
Idaho Capitol Sun
By: Mia Maldonado
April 15, 2024

The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed Idaho to enforce House Bill 71, a law banning Idaho youth from receiving gender-affirming care medications and surgeries.

In an opinion issued Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the state of Idaho’s request to stay the preliminary injunction, which blocked the law from taking effect. This means the preliminary injunction now only applies to the plaintiffs involved in Poe v. Labrador — a lawsuit brought on by the families of two transgender teens in Idaho who seek gender-affirming care.

Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision enforces the gender-affirming care ban for all other transgender youth in Idaho as the lawsuit remains ongoing in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Idaho Statesman interviewed a number of trans people about living in Idaho.

Over 8,000 transgender and nonbinary people live in Idaho, according to estimates from the Williams Institute. They include students, fast food workers, artists, cooks, readers, a prison worker, musicians and grocery store clerks. They’re karaoke junkies, video game players and runners. And they’ve been targeted by a series of laws Idaho legislators passed in the past four years that limit their identities in public life and restrict their access to medical care.

[…]

Many Republican elected officials in Idaho have continued to dismiss transgender identities, and a few have grown more vocally opposed. That includes Gov. Brad Little, who last month stood on the Capitol steps and reiterated his commitment to protecting “female athletes” by supporting the law that banned transgender women from participating.

Idaho Statesman reporters interviewed 14 people in the Treasure Valley who have felt inhibited by the state’s laws or fear they soon will be.

“Most of the time, I’m scared sh-tless,” Bonnie Violet Quintana, a 44-year-old transgender woman who grew up in Idaho, told the Statesman. “I’m scared to take the trash out or go check the mail … and part of that is because of the legislation and the laws, and all the extra complications.”

Scared of our government! You know where else they are scared of their government? North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, and Afghanistan. The Republicans are in good company.

My body, my choice!
My body, my choice!
My body, my choice!

Vote Harris/Walz! And the Democratic line on the ballot!

Your Papers Please.

What are you going to do if your ID doesn’t match gender? How are you going to vote? And that is what the Republicans want, they want you to be too scared to vote!

More than 210,000 transgender voters could have problems casting ballots in this year’s election
The Hill
By Brooke Migdon
September 10, 2024

Restrictive voter identification laws in some states could make it more difficult for transgender Americans to cast ballots in November’s general election, according to a report released Tuesday by the Williams Institute.

Upward of 210,000 voting-eligible transgender adults are likely to face barriers to voting this fall because they lack identity documents that match their gender and live in states with strict voter ID laws that conduct their elections primarily in person, according to the report, including an estimated 91,300 who could face disenfranchisement in states with rigid photo ID requirements.

Thirty-six states require or request that voters show some form of identification at the polls, such as a valid driver’s license, state-issued identification card or military ID. In nine states — Kansas, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia — voter ID laws require voters to present photo identification to cast their votes.

[…]

According to Tuesday’s Williams Institute report, voters in 27 states will face new restrictions for the 2024 general election that were not present for the 2020 general election.

Nearly 173,000 transgender adults live in states with the strictest voter identification laws, according to the report, accounting for roughly a fifth of transgender Americans eligible to vote in the 2024 elections. An estimated 276,500 trans adults lack identity documents that correctly reflect their chosen name or gender identity, though not all of them live in states with voter ID laws.

They are placing all types of barriers in our way to vote. They know most trans voters vote Democratic and they are throwing all type of junk in our way. KERA News reports that down in Texas,

Voting, privacy, safety: How will the state’s new ID rules affect transgender Texans?
By Stella M. Chávez
September 23, 2024

Last month, Texas became the largest state to block transgender people from updating the sex listed on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates.

The policy change, which was not announced in public, took many people by surprise. State officials released some basic information about the decision. But many questions remain unanswered.

The Texas Newsroom filed records requests and interviewed state officials, LGBTQ advocates and legal experts to better understand the potential effects of the new policy.

The change should not hamper the ability of transgender Texans to vote, according to local and state election officials. But it’s still unclear whether they will encounter new problems opening a bank account, updating their health insurance or dealing with other everyday tasks that require an ID. The legality of the policy has also been thrown into question. As of now, however, the change remains in effect unless and until a lawsuit is filed.

Meanwhile, many transgender Texans are caught in legal limbo. In interviews, they said it feels as though the state is creating a list to keep track of them — but to what end?That says a lot! Afraid of their own government keeping a list on them (Where else did LGBTQ+ people need to register?*) and when they vote we are afraid we will be denied the right to vote.

Newsweek writes,

Only one of the 35 states that will require ID to vote in November's presidential election has specific guidance for poll workers on how to apply the rules for transgender Americans, raising concerns they could be disenfranchised because of changes to their names or appearance.

A Newsweek analysis of poll worker manuals and other instructions from states shows that only Rhode Island has specific guidance relating to trans voters. The other states contained no mention of transgender voters in guidance documents seen.

[...]

"States should provide guidance for poll workers, especially in states with photo ID requirements, to make sure it is clear that a person's gender differences or presentation does not affect their right to vote."

I have only had a very minor problem voting, the guy at the door checking IDs looked at my driver’s license, looked at me and looked like he just bit into a lemon. But my gender and name were changed, I can just imagine how it will be to vote… but don’t let the Republicans bully you, VOTE!

 

And vote Blue to save a trans person’s life.

*Camera Atlas Obscura writes,

Katharina T., a resident of Berlin in the early 20th century, had a deep voice and masculine appearance, and preferred to wear men’s clothing at home and in public. In 1908, they—there’s no record of which pronoun Katharina preferred—went to visit the sexual reformer and “sexologist” Magnus Hirschfeld, to apply for official documentation that would allow them to wear men’s clothing in public: a “transvestite pass.”

Perhaps dozens of these passes were granted by German police between 1909 and 1933, the year Adolf Hitler became chancellor. The term “transvestitism” at that time encompassed people of all gender identities, from those who occasionally wore men’s or women’s clothes on weekends, to those who today might well identify instead as transgender, a term that was not in common usage at the time. Cross-dressing individuals were vulnerable to arbitrary decisions of the police, usually according to how well they “passed.” While it wasn’t illegal to cross-dress, per se, the practice often led to charges of being a “public nuisance,” which could mean six weeks’ imprisonment or a fine of 150 marks—and police were “often keen to exercise their extensive regulatory powers,” writes historian Kate Caplan in “The Administration of Gender Identity in Nazi Germany,” a 2011 paper in History Workshop Journal.

Later we were sent to the concentration camps and the gas chambers!

When we were trying to pass the gender inclusive non-discrimination law, a Republican legislator proposed requiring us to register with the DMV that we are trans! You can read about the  “The Scarlet Letter” here.

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If all goes as planned, I should be up in Vermont leaf peeping today!

Before I Came Out, I Believed The Lie!

Then I got to know lesbians, gays, bi, queer and trans.

What was the lie? That we had no morals, that we jumped from bed to bed, had group sex… we were just sex fiends.

Then I met my first lesbians (At least the first that I knew about.), they were together for over 15 years and they had a 10 year old daughter.

I now know a gay couple that were together for fifty years and it was in death that they parted. But they had ten years of married life together.

Yeah, there are some who hop bed to bed but you will find the same thing in the straight community.

I read a lot of comments on articles in Yahoo or other media and you still see the lie today. They still believe that we do not form long term relation ships, they still believe the lie. They believe that we choose to be trans or gay or lesbians. They think that we wake up one morning and “Gee I want to be (___Fill in the Blank___) so I can be beaten up or shot!”

Even through you can see in the animal kingdom around us, gay horses, cow, monkeys, and all other mammals. They ignore their eyes. They listen to false profits telling them to hate us while they pass around the collection plate. They listen to politicians whose rhetoric stir up their anger so they vote him who will protect them from from our scourge.

It is just one of the “Big Lies” the Republican are pushing.

Vote on the Democratic line. Vote Blue!

Another Victory For The Right.

Another victory for those who hide the bigotry behind their religion. This is from one of the organization that is trying to make us a Christian Nation… the ADF. The same people who are helping Republicans pass anti-trans laws.

Christian Healthcare Centers v. Nessel

Description:  Michigan’s civil rights law, which state courts recently reinterpreted to include sexual orientation and gender identity, now requires religious organizations like Christian Healthcare Centers to hire people who do not share their faith, to prescribe cross-sex hormones to facilitate efforts to alter a patient’s biological sex, and to use pronouns that do not accord with a person’s biological sex. All of this violates Christian Healthcare Centers’ religious beliefs and undermines its ability to provide safe healthcare to the needy and the rest of the community.

6th Circuit delivers religious freedom victory to Michigan faith-based nonprofits
ADF attorneys represent Christian Healthcare Centers, Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish challenging discriminatory state law
Friday, Sep 20, 2024

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled Friday to allow the cases of a faith-based medical nonprofit and a parish and Catholic school to continue. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing Christian Healthcare Centers and Grand Rapids-based Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish and several of its families asked the court to uphold the Michigan ministries’ constitutionally protected freedom to operate as religious organizations consistent with their beliefs in two separate cases.

“The Constitution is clear: Religious organizations have the freedom to operate and serve their communities according to their beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel Bryan Neihart, who argued before the court on behalf of Christian Healthcare Centers. “Rather than respecting Christian Healthcare’s religious motivations to provide quality care to all members of the community, Michigan state officials threatened to punish the ministry for living out its faith. And in the case of Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish, government officials can’t target faith-based organizations simply for adhering to their religious beliefs as both a federal district court and the U.S. Supreme Court have concluded in other cases. The 6th Circuit was right to allow these cases to proceed. Michigan officials should respect religious organizations’ constitutionally protected freedom to follow the very faith that has motivated them to serve others.”

I really don’t care about what their religious beliefs are but it seems to me that for them an oath means nothing them… their doctors took an oath to heal the sick, not just the people who believe in their faith.

The case was about;

Religious Groups Seek Protection From LGBTQ+ Discrimination Law
Bloomberg
By Eric Heisig
June 11, 2024

A Sixth Circuit judge on Tuesday seemed unpersuaded that three Christian organizations have standing to sue to prevent Michigan officials from enforcing the state’s anti-discrimination laws against them.

The organizations said they have a credible fear of facing state action for operating according to their religious beliefs as they pertain to LGBTQ+ issues in making employment, education, and medical decisions.cou

The religious freedom cases are the latest in a slew related to LGBTQ+ rights that courts across the country have reckoned with in recent years.

If a trans woman hurt in an auto accident is brought to them will they turn us away? As more and more hospitals are bought up by religious organization will we find ourselves locked out of healthcare?

They see it as a victory to god, I see it as them doing the work of satan.

Will we have two sets of healthcare, one for the believers and one for the non-believers?

Good News!

Preserving our history. In the past we have been written out of history, well now more then ever we have been saving out history. Around the country, around out states, and in the colleges we have been saving our history.

Northeastern’s Digital Transgender Archive expands to the West Coast
The university’s free, publicly available archive of trans history will soon have a lab in Oakland, providing rich opportunities for faculty and student researchers to expand the DTA’s reach.
Northeastern University’s Global News
By Cody Mello-Klein
September 24, 2024

Northeastern University’s Digital Transgender Archive is heading to the West Coast.

Courtesy of a $500,000 Mellon Foundation grant, the DTA, a free, publicly available archive of more than 10,300 digitized historical documents telling the histories of trans people, will be opening a new lab on Northeastern’s Oakland campus.

K.J. Rawson, DTA project director and professor of English and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Northeastern, says that although the archive is completely digital, the DTA has lab space in Boston where researchers, including Northeastern co-ops, work. Having a West Coast lab “opens up so many more possibilities,” Rawson says.

[…]

“As a researcher, it’s hard for me to even fathom it being possible in other institutional contexts, and the way that it can open up the project is just so exciting to me,” Rawson says.

For over ten years I have been doing a workshop on trans history at the old True Colors conference, and I have submitted a new workshop proposal for the new True Colors conference.

I attended a number of workshops on LGBTQ+ history but they were really just L&G history when I asked a professor (with a PhD in history) giving the workshop why no trans history she replied that there wasn’t any. (Translated from LG speech to Trans speech: I never looked because I didn’t feel it important enough.) Then at Pride event in the state on the anniversary of Stonewall, that had pictures of the Stonewall heroes they didn’t trans people in the uprising! WHAT! What about Sylvia Rivera?

Then the final straw that broke the camel’s back… In 2008 ENDA had the trans inclusion yanked from the bill, Rep Barney Frank (D-MA) said the trans community hadn’t put the effort in to be included!

So I created a PowerPoint for our history that I gave each year at the True Colors and hopefull at the next conference in 2025.

Back to the archives. LGBTQ+ archives are the new “In-thing” many libraries around the world are now adding LGBTQ+ sections to their archives.

I have been donating my historic trans material to the Central Connecticut State University’s Elihu Burritt Library and last Friday I was invited to the award’s ceremony for activist friend.

A bunch of senior activists

Our history is important! In the past we were lumped in with “Gays” and our history was lost. I urge you to donate your books and historic material to archives.

Piled Higher and Deeper

A pig pile of states are coming after our healthcare! They are all part of a legal campaign against puberty blockers. 67,000 doctors are wrong, Republican politicians are right.

20 state AGs challenge American Academy of Pediatrics over puberty blockers guidance
KCBY Ch 11
by JACKSON WALKER
September 24th 2024

Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador on Tuesday led a coalition of 20 state attorneys general in demanding the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) retract recommendations to give puberty blockers to children diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

The letterincluded signatures from, among others, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. Also signing on were Arizona state Senate President Warren Petersen and Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma.

The letter condemned AAP's president Benjamin Hoffman and president-elect Susan Kressly for issuing “misleading and deceptive” statements claiming the use of puberty blockers is "reversible." This claim, the letter reads, is “beyond medical debate.”

Telling parents and children that puberty blockers are 'reversible' at the very least conveys assurance that no permanent harm or change will occur,” it reads. “But that claim cannot be made in the face of the unstudied and ‘novel’ use of puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria.”

The state officials also called out the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which AAP cites to back up its advice. WPATH recently came under scrutiny for allegedly removing age restrictions for a variety of transgender procedures at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services.

What do the right-wing news pundits have to say about the lawsuit? (But first take your blood pressure pills)

'Abusive': Pediatrician group's support for trans therapies rebuked by state AGs
'Parents should be able to trust that a doctor’s medical guidance isn’t just the latest talking point from a dangerous and discredited activist agenda,' Idaho AG
Fox News
By Jamie Joseph
September 24, 2024

A group of attorneys general across the country are demanding that the nation's leading pediatric organization rescind its support for transgender procedures – such as puberty blockers and surgeries – on children.

Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador sent a letter Tuesday to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) accusing the organization of abandoning "its commitment to sound medical judgment."

"That halt on what is fairly described as medical experimentation on children is long overdue – particularly since the majority of children initially diagnosed with gender dysphoria desist and 'grow out' of the condition by the time they are adolescents or adults," the letter reads. "It is abusive to treat a child with biologically altering drugs that have an unknown physiological trajectory and end point. It is also inhumane to endorse such experimentation without a confident safety profile, especially if more times than not, it proves to be medically unnecessary."

Ah yes, just like other right-wing conservatives they lie through their teeth. “Medical experimentation” even though it has been used for over forty years to stop early puberty they still call it “experimental.”

The Catholic News Agency writes,

Sent on Tuesday, the eight-page-long letter criticizes the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) for renewing its 2018 policy statement in support of cross-sex treatments for children.

“When it comes to treating children diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the AAP has abandoned its commitment to sound medical judgment,” the letter claims.

In particular, the attorneys general, all Republican, assert that the AAP’s promotion of hormonal puberty blockers as a “reversible” treatment for children suffering from gender dysphoria violates state consumer-protection laws.

According to the attorneys general who signed on to the letter the claim that puberty blockers for children are reversible “is misleading and deceptive and requires immediate retraction and correction.”

Is there a doctor in the house… nope all we got are lawyers but they know more better than 64,000 doctors!

In a statement shared with CNA by the Idaho attorney general’s office on Tuesday, Labrador said: “It is shameful the most basic tenet of medicine — do no harm — has been abandoned by professional associations when politically pressured.”

The AGs are digging for muck…

Notably, the state attorneys general are also demanding that the AAP turn over all its guidance to pediatricians and parents regarding gender dysphoria and suicide. The letter also requests that the AAP turn over all its communications with the Biden administration regarding its 2018 policy statement as well as any communications regarding cross-sex hormonal treatments and transgender care.

The AGs case revolves around the flawed Cass Report, Yale Law writes about the Cass study…

As researchers and pediatric clinicians with experience in the field of transgender healthcare, we read the Review with great interest. The degree of financial investment and time spent is impressive. Its ability to publish seven systematic reviews, conduct years’ worth of focus groups and deeply investigate care practices in the UK is admirable. We hoped it would improve the public’s awareness of the health needs of transgender youth and galvanize improvements in delivery of this care. Indeed, statements of the Review favorably describe the individualized, age-appropriate, and careful approach recommended by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and the Endocrine Society. Unfortunately, the Review repeatedly misuses data and violates its own evidentiary standards by resting many conclusions on speculation. Many of its statements and the conduct of the York SRs reveal profound misunderstandings of the evidence base and the clinical issues at hand. The Review also subverts widely accepted processes for development of clinical recommendations and repeats spurious, debunked claims about transgender identity and gender dysphoria. These errors conflict with well-established norms of clinical research and evidence-based healthcare. Further, these errors raise serious concern about the scientific integrity of critical elements of the report’s process and recommendations.

In the short time since its release, the Review has been used to justify restrictions on healthcare for transgender youth. In March 2024, the NHS announced that it would deny puberty-pausing medications to those under age 18 outside of a research setting. In June 2024, the NHS Health Secretary cited the Review as the rationale for emergency regulations that criminalize the supply of puberty-pausing medications to new patients under 18 in England, Scotland, or Wales. This ban, which applies only to the treatment of gender dysphoria, labeled these medications as a “serious danger to health.” These medications remain freely available for other pediatric health needs, of which precocious puberty, endometriosis, and fertility preservation prior to chemotherapy are some.

These are not doctors but lawyers with a political agenda, they don’t care about the truth but rather advancing their party’s ideology.

The Cass Review has already been cited in U.S. legal battles over transgender rights. It is likely to feature heavily in the months and years to come. From 2022 through 2024, twenty-five US states enacted legislation that bans gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth. Litigation is ongoing in at least ten states, and the nation’s highest court has agreed to hear one case, United States v Skrmetti, in the fall 2024 term. Other nations’ health ministries are anticipated to use the Cass Review to inform their own policies on access to youth gender care.

The right continues a full-court press, another right-wing media,  the Washington Stand by the Family Research Council (Which the SPLC lists as a hate group) writes,

Readers may be surprised by this novel approach to the policy debate over gender transition procedures for minors, as the AAP surely was too. After all, what connection is there between state attorneys general and the AAP to make this letter anything more than a hollow messaging stunt?

Helpfully, the letter makes the connection: the claim that puberty blockers are “reversible” is “scientifically unsupported and contradicts what is medically known,” it states. Therefore, it “raises questions under most state consumer protection laws.” For example, Idaho law prohibits “[e]ngaging in any act or practice that is otherwise misleading, false, or deceptive to the consumer.” This law directly applies to “statements made by medical trade associations, like the AAP,” and it indirectly applies to AAP statements that “are connected to commerce and reach consumers,” the letter explains.

Of course their claim of “puberty blockers are ‘reversible’ is ‘scientifically unsupported and contradicts what is medically known’” is the false claim 40 years of using puberty blockers for precocious puberty disproves their claims that they are not reversible. Science for Georgia writes,

Puberty blockers are irreversible.

This is not true.

Puberty blockers are reversible and once the use stops, puberty resumes. Puberty blockers are also not meant to be taken permanently and are just one treatment in a standard of care.

Using puberty blockers for gender-affirming care is “highly experimental”
This is not true.

Off-label uses of medication are extremely common in medicine and pediatrics. For example, 85% of more than 55,000 children admitted to pediatric intensive care units in the USA were treated with at least one off-label medication (the average number was 4·5), and these medications included neurological, antimicrobial, and cardiovascular drugs.

For puberty blockers more specifically, the FDA approved their usage for precocious puberty in the 1990s. Currently, one in every five to ten thousand children experiences early puberty.

[…]

Puberty blockers cause irrevocable harm to bone density.
A reduction in bone density is a possible side effect of puberty blockers that some people experience, but with medical care, bone density can be addressed.

Hormone changes during puberty are a significant catalyst in bone growth and mineralization. There is a long-term detriment to bone density as an impact of long-term pubertal suppression. This is because pubertal suppression is not supposed to last throughout the entirety of adolescence. When patients shift from pubertal suppression to cross-sex hormone therapy, problems of bone density are mitigated.

This is a serious medical concern that is monitored by the patient’s medical team, but physicans are primed to be aware of new or worsening bone density issues. There are also other protective regimens such as exercise, Vitamin D, and calcium that can be used to combat any serious side effects.

But facts get in the way of the Republican pogrom against.

A Roof Over Our Head.

That is what many of us cannot afford. For LGBTQ+ seniors many of us have only Social Security to live on and Section 8 housing. Yes there is low income housing but when you are LGBTQ+you end up alone and isolated.

North Texas’ first LGBTQ-affirming affordable senior housing opens its doors
Income-restricted living center adds 84 units in Dallas’ Oak Lawn neighborhood, a longtime refuge for the LGBTQ community
The Dallas Morning News
By Maria Salette Ontiveros
September 11, 2024

Jack McCroskey marveled at the affordable senior housing center that became his new home. At a Tuesday event marking the opening of Oak Lawn Place, the 75-year-old retired nurse said he was “amazed” at the work put into making the apartment community a space inclusive of LGBTQ seniors.

“It’s beautiful,” McCroskey said. “I thought it would feel like a nursing home, but it’s really a retirement community.”

For McCroskey, the move was motivated by the cost of living and a desire for a sense of community since most of his friends have passed.

“A lot of my friends are gone,” he said. “But now I have a new community here.”

Oak Lawn Place, an income-restricted, 84-unit living center, opened its doors this week, providing an affirming sanctuary for seniors seeking affordable housing and support for the LGBTQ community.

And Texas isn't the only community that has LGBTQ+ senior housing,

Ground broken for LGBTQ-focused senior housing in Pittsburgh
The Mosaic Apartments will be the first such housing complex in western Pennsylvania and the second in the state overall.
The Advocate
By Trudy Ring
May 24 2024

Ground has been broken in Pittsburgh for what will be the first LGBTQ-focused senior housing complex in western Pennsylvania and the second in the state overall.

Groundbreaking took place Thursday for the Mosaic Apartments in the city’s Oakland neighborhood, which is home to the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, along with museums, health care providers, and an eclectic mix of shops and restaurants. The 48-unit complex will open in the fall of 2025, according to local media.

The affordable housing development is a project of Presbyterian SeniorCare Network, which was approached about seven years ago by the Persad Center, a provider of LGBTQ-affirming mental health services.

In Colorado,

LGBTQ+ senior-housing proposal moves to City Council
Denver North Star
By London Lyle
September 17, 2024

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An attempt to rezone a 31-acre property at 3821-3897 Steele St. and 3800-3840 York St. in Denver has, after much discussion at the city’s Land Use, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee (LUTI), moved on for consideration by Denver City Council.

At stake is the future of a proposed LGBTQ+-affirming, affordable, senior-housing development and a new, mixed-use zoning designation for York Street Yards.

The rezoning, if approved, paves the way for a land swap between York Street Yards and Fred Glick, an adjacent resident and property owner, to free up space for an approximately 75-unit housing development on the northeastern-most portion of what is now York Street Yards.

[…]

The proposed housing project has received overwhelming community support, with 76 of 78 letters sent to the city endorsing the proposal.

Glick, who serves as vice-chair of the Denver Planning Board but recused himself from decision-making when the rezoning was before that entity in May, expressed surprise at the repeated delays and the issues being debated during LUTI discussions. He clarified that the proposed rezoning involves a small area, about 23,000 square feet, transitioning from a planned unit development (PUD) to an industrial mixed-use zone (I-MX-5).

Then we have the new LGBTQ+ senior housing in Boston…

LGBTQ senior housing opens up in Hyde Park
Boston 25
By Natalie Khait
July 2024

A first-of-its-kind housing community is opening in Hyde Park.

The Pryde is a vibrant LGBTQ+ affirming affordable housing community for seniors aged 62 and older.

The historic former William Barton Rogers Middle School will feature 74 mixed-income rental homes, on-site amenities and supportive services, and a 10,000-square-foot foot Community Center run by LGBTQ Senior Housing, Inc.

That is what we need here! Low income housing for LGBTQ+ seniors!

We also need LGBTQ+ centers to step up for our seniors, they need to get out of the house

Some other ideas for senior LGBTQ+ beside housing: Game day (board games), Bowling league, movie day, and other things to get us out of the house and with others.

---

Guess which party doesn’t want LGBTQ+ senior housing?

While I was researching this post I found this on a Democrat’s web page…

Despite Republican Attacks, Pressley, Warren, Markey Deliver Funding for The Pryde LGBTQ+ Senior Housing in Boston
After GOP Callously Stripped Funds from Earlier House Appropriations Bill, Pressley Teamed Up with Warren & Markey to Advance Funding & Pass Into Law

Today, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Senator Edward J. Markey (D-MA) applauded the final passage of $850,000 in federal community project funding for The Pryde, an affordable housing development for LGBTQ+ seniors in Hyde Park. The funding was included in the most recent series of government funding bills and was passed after Rep. Pressley worked closely with Senators Warren and Markey to secure the funding after Republicans callously stripped it from a House appropriations bill last summer.

    “Republicans did everything they could to target, attack, and dehumanize our LGBTQ+ siblings and deny our communities the resources they deserve—but we made sure they didn’t have the final word,” said Congresswoman Pressley. “With the cost of housing skyrocketing and one-third of LGBTQ+ seniors living in poverty nationwide, this project will help LGBTQ+ elders in the Massachusetts 7th get the affordable housing and community space they need while affirming their dignity and humanity. I promised our community that we wouldn’t stop fighting for them, and I was proud to partner with Senators Warren and Markey to reject Republicans’ cruelty and get this done.”

    “With this funding package, we sent a clear message to Republicans – we won’t let them get in the way of the LGBTQ community getting the resources they deserve,” said Senator Warren. “Senator Markey, Representative Pressley, and I fought hard to bring this funding to Hyde Park. Our LGBTQ seniors deserve affordable housing that embraces their identities with dignity and compassion.”

    “We have a moral responsibility to ensure everyone has affordable and safe housing, including vulnerable community members such as seniors and LGBTQ+ people,” said Senator Markey. “I am proud to have secured this $850,000 in funding for the Pryde, Boston’s first LGBTQ senior housing development with Congresswoman Pressley and Senator Warren, which will support the safety, security, and wellbeing of all residents. These investments are critical in supporting elders aging with dignity, grace, and surrounded by community.”

    “This Community Project Funding will help us keep our promise to our future residents, as well as to the Hyde Park community and the LGBTQ+ community of greater Boston, that The Pryde and our Community Center will be richly resourced, joyful, caring and welcoming places where our elders and the community will be embraced, supported and celebrated,” said Gretchen Van Ness, Executive Director of LGBTQ Senior Housing, Inc.  “In other words, where our elders will be home. Our community could have no better advocates than Congresswoman Pressley and Senators Warren and Markey. Congresswoman Pressley understands the critical need for LGBTQ-affirming senior housing, programs and services, and despite enormous backlash, she has never stopped fighting for The Pryde and our LGBTQ elders.”

One party cares about the people, the other party only cares about themselves!
Vote on the Blue line!

The Good Old Days

Everyone always talks about the “Good ‘ld Days” but were they better back then when I first started coming out around the turn of the century.

You know it is hard to say mainly because the Tale of Two Cities” says in the beginning…

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

That was true in Dickens times and true now. Here in Connecticut it was the best of times when I came out, the CHRO (Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities) just ruled on Jane Doe find that we were covered by the Connecticut non-discrimination statutes.

There were trans people in the news and they were portrayed as humans, and not low life living in the gutters. The outlook was rosy and trending in the right direction.

We could get married by a loophole… as long as our birth certificates showed were the opposite gender of our marriage partner we were legally married. Or if you were already married our marriages were still legal! So we could work the system and be in a same-sex marriage.

We could change our legal documents in most of the states, you see at the time even the Republicans were behind changing our birth certificates because we could become productive members of society with the change!

But then there was a climate change… Then Trump came out of the swamp and he focused the spotlight focused on us.

First they started with “Men in the women’s bathroom” but that lie didn’t stick.

They went back and tweaked it a little and in Massachusetts there was a question on the ballot, Question 3, that granted us our rights (As if human rights should be voted on.) was soundly passed by over two thirds of the voters.

Now they are back again for another dip at the well. Their slogan this time is about defending women, but it seems to be gaining traction.

So over the twenty-four years I have seen the climate change from welcoming to down right hostile. Designed to give the wrong image of us, they still believe that this is all a choice and that somehow we have brainwashed the APA, AMA, AAP, and all the other medical profession associations into defending us.

So what does all this boil down to?

There is a candidate who wants to:

Strip us of our healthcare,
Take away all our legal protections,
Make it a criminal offense for doctors to treat trans youth, and
Forbid birth certificate changes.

There is another candidate who voted on bills that:

Require doctors to treat us,
Require insurance to cover us,
Granted us the rights that all others already have,Allowed us to change our legal documents, like passports, and birth certificates.

 

Vote for Harris & Walz! Vote Blue across the ballot!
 

Battle Of The AIs

Okay I have been checking the AIs to see if there is any biases in the different Artificial Intelligence bots so I asked them... 

What does project 2025 say about transgender people?

ChatGPT wrote:

Project 2025 has been associated with conservative efforts to influence policies on various social issues, including those affecting transgender individuals. It generally promotes traditional views on gender and may support policies that limit the rights of transgender people, such as restrictions on gender-affirming care and participation in sports.

The initiative often reflects broader conservative sentiments that oppose the recognition of transgender identities. For a comprehensive understanding, it’s best to consult specific documents or statements directly from the project. If you have more specific questions or need further clarification, let me know!

---

Perplexity wrote:

Answer
Project 2025 takes an extremely hostile stance toward transgender people and LGBTQ rights in general. Some key points about its approach to transgender issues include:

• It aims to "eradicate transgenderism from public life".
• The project equates being transgender or "transgender ideology" with pornography and claims it should be outlawed.
• It calls for cutting all federal funding for gender-affirming care for both children and adults.
• The plan suggests banning the collection of data on gender identity by government agencies like the CDC, claiming it "legitimizes the unscientific notion that men can become women (and vice versa)".
• It proposes prohibiting schools from using names or pronouns for students that differ from their sex assigned at birth without parental permission.
• The project calls for classifying educators who spread "transgender ideology" as sex offenders.
• It aims to restrict online information about transgender identity and close telecommunications/tech firms that spread information about being transgender.
• The plan would redefine "sex discrimination" narrowly to only refer to biological sex assigned at birth.

Overall, Project 2025 takes an extremely anti-transgender stance, seeking to eliminate recognition and rights for transgender people across government policies and public life. Its proposals would severely restrict access to healthcare, education, and basic civil rights protections for transgender Americans.

Plus it listed the references.

---

Microsoft Copilot Chatbot wrote:

Project 2025, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, outlines a series of conservative policy proposals for a potential future administration. The project has significant implications for transgender individuals and the broader LGBTQ+ community. Here are some key points:

•     Gender-Affirming Care: Project 2025 aims to cut federal funding for gender-affirming care for both children and adults.
•     Legal Stance: The project equates being transgender, or what it terms “transgender ideology,” to pornography and suggests it should be outlawed.
•     Workplace Protections: It urges the next conservative president to ignore the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

These proposals reflect a broader agenda that could significantly impact the rights and freedoms of transgender individuals in the United States.

If you have any specific questions or need more details, feel free to ask!

Plus it also gives the references

---

Gemini wrote:

Project 2025 is a conservative policy agenda that holds strongly anti-transgender views.

 Its recommendations often seek to:

•     Restrict access to gender-affirming care: This includes medical procedures and hormone therapies.
•     Roll back protections for transgender people: This involves efforts to repeal laws and policies that protect LGBTQ+ individuals from discrimination.
•     Promote a narrow view of gender: The agenda often promotes a binary understanding of gender and seeks to limit the recognition and acceptance of transgender identities.

These policies are seen by many as harmful and discriminatory, as they can lead to increased rates of mental health issues, suicide, and discrimination among transgender individuals.

Would you like to know more about Project 2025 or its specific policies regarding transgender people?

I still like Perplexity best, I like the fact that it give its references (Microsoft also listed its references.) and it seems like the most complete answers. So what answer do you like best? Do you agree with any of them? Any biases?

Cuckoo Award

Boy I can’t keep up with all the bloopers that the candidates are make. Good ol’ JD made the Cuckoo Award again, this time claiming that eggs are $4 a dozen while standing in front of the egg display in a grocery store and the prices are visible!

JD Vance mocked for another botched photo opp — as he blames Harris for eggs costing $4 while standing in front of a $2.99 display
Vance was at a supermarket in Reading, Pennsylvania with his sons to illustrate how grocery prices have been impacted by ‘Kamala Harris’s policies’
The Independent
By Rhian Lubin
September 23, 2024

JD Vance was roundly mocked online over a trip to the supermarket where he bemoaned the steep price of eggs — and botched the photo opp.

The Republican vice presidential nominee stopped by a supermarket in Reading, Pennsylvania, with his sons over the weekend to illustrate how grocery prices have been impacted by “Kamala Harris’s policies” when he claimed a dozen eggs cost $4.

The problem? When footage of the visit emerged, Vance was quickly called out by viewers who spotted the price tag of a dozen eggs behind him was actually $2.99.

“Looking at the prices here, things are way too expensive and they’re way too expensive because of Kamala Harris’s policies,” he told shoppers.

He was interrupted by his son, who pointed at the egg cartons behind him. “Let’s talk about eggs,” Vance continued. “Because these guys actually eat about 14 eggs every single morning,” the Ohio senator said, pointing to his sons.

Actual I should start a Dumbo Award for JD.

The Times They Are A Changin’

They really are!
 

Even with all the negativity coming out of the Republican party we still are making progress. That’s why the Republican are freaking out and going to those draconian extremes.

Will Ferrell urges straight cis fans to watch his new trans film: ‘You’ll be surprised’
Pink News
By Marcus Wratten
September 23, 2024

Anchorman star Will Ferrell has urged fans to watch his new documentary film Will & Harper, in which he and his trans friend, Harper Steele, embark on a cross-country road trip.

Will & Harper begins with Steele telling Ferrell, her friend of 30 years, that she is transitioning.

The duo met on Saturday Night Live in 1995, when Ferrell joined the cast as a comedy newcomer and Steele was writing for the sketch show.

In their new two-hour film, they take a trip over two weeks and use it as an opportunity to ask each other important questions, and establish what their friendship will look like going forward. It’s also a chance for Steele to visit some of the macho haunts she used to love in and around her home town, such as dive bars and dirt racetracks, to see if she’s still welcome.

It was only a few years I was writing about the lack of trans people in the movies, now I am glad to see more movies about trans people and trans people in movies.

Will Ferrell Says Trans Community’s Support of ‘Will & Harper’ Has “Blown Us Away”
Ferrell and longtime friend Harper Steele, who recently came out as a trans woman, go on a cross-country road trip in the Netflix doc.
Hollywood Reporter
By Kirsten Chuba
September 20, 2024

When longtime friends Will Ferrell and Harper Steele — a former head writer at Saturday Night Live who came out as a trans woman in 2021 — decided to film their cross-country road trip documentary Will & Harper, it came after several months of discussing whether to open up their personal lives on camera.

“The ultimate selling point, I don’t want to sound like a politician or altruistic, but there were a lot of trans bills, a lot of legislation being introduced, legislation across every state, across the country and it’s still looking a little restrictive and maybe a little dire for trans people,” Steele told The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s L.A. premiere on Thursday. “I don’t know if this movie is going to change hearts and minds, but you have to try to do something with your life and we felt like this might be useful.”

Yeah, you will probably hear a lot of negative bull coming out the usual naysayers but how many straight people will watch it and walk away thinking what so bad about us, they are just like us.

 “Harper loves to do these cross-country road trips, she’s done hundreds of them, and since she had transitioned she hadn’t done any,” director Josh Greenbaum explained. “Will realized that and she was kind of lamenting the fact that she wasn’t sure if she felt safe, so the idea really started there because Will said, ‘Why don’t I fly to New York and I’ll be by your side for your first cross-country road trip as Harper.'”

Wow!

This reminds me of when Lauren Graham in Gnome escorts a just out trans girl into the bathroom for the first time.

 

 

A Nation Divided By Two Sets Of Laws.

Can you imagine a nation where people do not have to obey the law just by saying the magic words but they only work for some.

“Religious Freedom” is really the freedom to ignore the laws but if you are not a Christian it is discrimination! Can you imagine this happening to anyone else but LGBTQ+ people. Can you imagine a landlord saying “I don’t rent to Blacks!” but it is perfectly legal to say “I don’t rent to f*gs.” just by saying the magic words… “It is against my religious beliefs.”

Religious freedom, LGBTQ rights collide in lawsuit over Colorado’s universal preschool program
Catholic preschools seek exemption from state non-discrimination rules; case could reach U.S. Supreme Court
The Denver Post
By Ann Schimke
September 22, 2024

At a time when the U.S. Supreme Court has opened the door to greater public funding for private religious schools, a lower court ruling in Colorado could have big implications for the separation of church and state in education.

At the center of the case are two Catholic preschools in suburban Denver that want exemptions from state non-discrimination rules based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The parishes that run the preschools sued the state last year because they didn’t want to have to admit LGBTQ children or children from LGBTQ families if the preschools joined Colorado’s popular new state-funded preschool program.

After a trial in January, a federal judge largely ruled in the state’s favor in June. But the preschools are now appealing — and the case could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Colorado lawsuit is one of several similar cases unfolding across the country.

If the Catholic preschools win, it’s possible Colorado children could be shut out of some preschools because of their or their parents’ identities.

Here is a case where our tax money is being used and it is to discriminate against us! Our tax money should be used for all of the people not just a select few. First off why is tax money being given to a religious organizations and second why are they able to discriminate people in violation of the law.

It is as simple as Trump. Trump’s Supreme Court is packed with justices who put religion before the Constitution! Before Trump’s Court there was a test that was used to determine if the law violated the First Amendment, it was called the “Lemon Test” where…

The Supreme Court for nearly four decades used the three-pronged Lemon test to evaluate whether a law or governmental activity violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. However, by 2022, the court had largely abandoned the test as a way to measure compliance with the First Amendment’s prohibition on government “establishment of religion.”

But Trump’s court tossed that out!

 In 2022 in Kennedy v. Bremerton, a case involving a high school football coach’s group post-game prayers, the authoring Supreme Court justice, Justice Neil Gorsuch, ruled instead that the establishment clause “must be interpreted by ‘reference to historical practices and understandings.’ ” Gorsuch believed that the lower courts had created a “vice between the Establishment Clause on one side and the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses on the other.” He associated such conflict with the three-part Lemon test.

But now we have a court that has bent over backwards to recognize only one religion. Take Florida for an example a number of religions have said that the abortion ban interferes with their religious beliefs.

Religious Freedom Arguments Underpin Wave of Challenges to Abortion Bans
In lawsuits challenging state abortion bans, lawyers for abortion rights plaintiffs are employing religious liberty arguments the Christian right has used for decades.
The New York Times
By Pam Belluck
June 28, 2023

For years, conservative Christians have used the principle of religious freedom to prevail in legal battles on issues like contraceptive insurance mandates and pandemic restrictions. Now, abortion rights supporters are employing that argument to challenge one of the right’s most prized accomplishments: state bans on abortion.

In the year since Roe v. Wade was overturned, clergy and members of various religions, including Christian and Jewish denominations, have filed about 15 lawsuits in eight states, saying abortion bans and restrictions infringe on their faiths.

Many of those suing say that according to their religious beliefs, abortion should be allowed in at least some circumstances that the bans prohibit, and that the bans violate religious liberty guarantees and the separation of church and state. The suits, some seeking exemptions and others seeking to overturn the bans, often invoke state religious freedom restoration acts enacted and used by conservatives in some battles over social issues.

The lawsuits show “religious liberty doesn’t operate in one direction,” said Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at University of Texas at Austin.

Slate writes…

Which Religion Counts in America
A brief in a case out of Indiana shows exactly how fundamentalist Christian beliefs trump everything else in the courts these days.
By Dahlia Lithwick
March 09, 2023


When the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, it overruled Roe v. Wade and allowed state legislatures to criminalize abortion care for the first time in half a century. What the court also did was hand off a fundamentally theological issue to elected state representatives. Around the country, states began to pass abortion bans that often featured explicitly religious claims about when human life begins. This led religious objectors to file lawsuits claiming that their own religious freedoms were being burdened by the states’ new laws.

In Missouri, for instance, religious leaders are challenging a draconian state ban that was passed as lawmakers claimed, variously, that “life begins at conception and that is built into our legislative findings,” and that they were motivated “from the Biblical side of it.” A related lawsuit, on different constitutional grounds, was filed in Indiana, with plaintiffs including a group named Hoosier Jews for Choice and five women who challenged the abortion law under the state’s religious freedom statute arguing that it burdens their own religious beliefs.

And it is not all Christian sects because some mainstream Christian do not prohibit abortions.

Are we going to become like Afghanistan? Or Iran? That is what the far right want. Don’t believe me? Read this in Project 2025. "Blueprint for Christian Nationalist regime change"

One Nation, One Set Of Laws For Everyone!

Vote Blue to keep religion out of government and out of our lives.
Our religion, our choice.