We Are In A Battle For Our Lives

Trump is systematically erasing not only us but everything LGBTQ+ including research on anything  on us.

Hundreds of LGBTQI+ Resources Censored by the Trump Administration

According to new analysis by the Center for American Progress, more than 350 LGBTQI+ pages, policies, and guides have been removed from the websites of the White House and federal agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Center for American Progress

By Caleb Smith

February 13, 2025

During the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Education’s website hosted an LGBTQI+ resources webpage, which provided a comprehensive list of fact sheets and guides focused on the needs of LGBTQI+ students. Less than one week into the new Trump administration, a sanitized error message took its place, with no hint of the content that was erased.

Censorship is a common thread in the far right’s political attacks against the LGBTQI+ community. In March 2022, for example, Florida passed a law banning the discussion of educational content related to sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Over the past several years, efforts to ban LGBTQI+ books have been on the rise. This theme characterized Donald Trump’s first presidential term, with key LGBTQI+ articles, reports, and even public apology letters removed from the websites of the White House and federal agencies. It’s clear that this new administration will act no differently in attempting to restrict access to LGBTQI+ resources.

Last week I was looking for stuff on a blog post I was writing and Google listed the website  as a reference a CDC on trans health... Gone. NBC News reported,

Government agencies scrub LGBTQ web pages and remove info about trans and intersex people

The State Department’s web page providing adoption information to LGBTQI+ prospective parents now addresses only “LGB” people.

Feb. 3, 2025

By Jo Yurcaba

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people have long been grouped together and referred to more broadly as LGBTQ or a similar abbreviation, like LGBTQI, which includes intersex people. Now, however — just two weeks after President Donald Trump signed multiple executive orders targeting trans people — the websites of several government agencies are lopping off the back half of the abbreviation or completely removing web pages that mention LGBTQ people.

A page on the State Department’s website that had, up until last week, provided information for “LGBTQI Travelers” now addresses only “LGB Travelers.” Similarly, a State Department web page providing “Resources for LGBTQI+ Prospective Adoptive Parents“ now just says “LGB Prospective Adoptive Parents.”

The website of the Social Security Administration, an independent federal agency, formerly had a page about “Social Security for LGBTQI+ People”; it has now been updated to “LGBQ People,” removing the mention of transgender people and those who are intersex, meaning those who are born with physical traits that don’t fit typical definitions for male or female categories.

We have been the focus of Trump's animosity but it spills over to the rest of the community...

Trump’s War on Gay, Lesbian, and Trans People

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is gay and married. Hello?

The American Prospect

by Robert Kuttne

July 1, 2025

When Donald Trump ran for president last year, he signaled that he would not be far-right on social issues. He tried to defuse the issue of abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade by saying that it was now up to the states, as if this preserved rights. He refused to say whether he personally opposed abortion.

And on LGBTQ rights, the Republican platform, at Trump’s request, did not propose ending marriage equality. All of this was a classic Trump feint.

In other words... he lied. He told the voters what they wanted to hear and then he did what he said he wouldn't!

Trump has used supposed DEI excesses to attack gay and lesbian people per se, much as he has used the DEI ruse to purge Black people from senior posts. He has banned trans people from serving in the armed forces. Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth changed the name of the US Navy ship named for Harvey Milk, the gay San Francisco mayor who was gunned down in his office in 1978. Milk was a navy veteran.

That’s only the start. The Trump administration has also destroyed PEPFAR, the global initiative to combat HIV/AIDS, a personal priority of George W. Bush, which used to provide lifesaving medication to 20 million people. The pending Medicaid cuts would deny treatment to the 40 percent of HIV-positive people who now rely on Medicaid for their treatment.

As I said last week diseases do not care your what politics, your sexual orientation, your gender identity, how rich you are. They are an equal opportunity infector!

The website Forward asked a very interesting question...

Is the Trump administration’s website censorship the internet age version of Nazi book burning?

After Trump ordered an end to “gender ideology” in the US, information on trans people began to disappear

By Mira Fox

February 6, 2025

Essential research on HIV, tobacco use and contraceptive use was removed from the CDC website in January. Information on safety while traveling and international adoption vanished off the State Department’s site. A page on LGBTQI+ inclusion disappeared from the Justice Department. Even an educational page on workplace discrimination was missing from the Labor Department’s site.

All of this information and research was hastily altered or scrubbed entirely from the internet in response to one of President Trump’s many executive orders, issued moments after he took office, declaring there to be only two sexes, male and female, as assigned at birth, and ordering an end to “gender ideology.” Another executive order targeted Diversity, Equity, Inclusion efforts. In response, federally funded agencies rushed to comply.

[...]

A pioneering queer institute, wiped from history by the Nazis

This isn’t the first time an authoritarian leader has come into power and, as one of their first moves, destroyed information about transgender people.

In 1933, following a proclamation of “action against the un-German Spirit,” Nazi youths attacked the Institute for Sexual Research, a pioneering research center in Berlin, run by Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. It was the first facility focusing on gender and sexuality; its library was full of groundbreaking research on gender-affirming procedures, hormone therapy and fertility; it also functioned as a cultural hub for feminist activism around suffrage and abortion and even a boarding house for notable thinkers such as Walter Benjamin.

But the Nazis espoused a Volkisch ideology, promoting heterosexual families that operated along strict gender norms — women as mothers and homemakers, men as breadwinners and laborers. They emphasized working the land, and traditional village life. The institute, and the liberal society it nurtured, posed a clear threat. The Nazi students occupied the building for four days before burning its entire library, wiping out decades of research and liberal, queer culture.

Computers make rewriting history so much easier! Find & Replace! Find LGBTQ and replace it with LGB! So much easier than doing it by hand like in the novel "1984"

“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” — 1984

Schillace sees Trump’s executive orders levying censorship against “gender ideology” and “DEI” work operating by similar logic to the Nazi campaign against anything that didn’t conform to a straight, Aryan ideal.

The Nazis burned far more books than just one library full of transgender research. They burned anything they felt was “degenerate,” whether because it expressed an opinion that went against Nazism or because it was simply aesthetically problematic — too modern or abstract, not traditional enough. Un-German became a catchall word that could be deployed against any group, painting them as an enemy of the nation.

Similarly, says Schillace, the Trump administration has “created the sense that there’s an enemy. They like to go after DEI, but they use the term DEI the way the Nazis used ‘un-German,’” she said. “It’s a nice big umbrella they can throw lots under. It’s their clarion call to say we get to decide what’s OK in this nation.”

This is the same thing that Putin did in Russia! This is the same thing Viktor Orbán did in Hungary, and now Trump.

What messages does this send?

• Marginalization: Increases isolations of the LGBTQ Community
• Public Safety: Green lights violence against the community
• Mental Health Implications: With the stoppage of funds for Suicide Hot line will lead to more deaths in community. (We need the hot lines because of the hate directed at us,)
• Scapegoating and Creating "Enemies Within": Direct people attention away from the real problems. 

The American Prospect ends with...

While the current administration claims to value free speech, their actions tell a different story. These pages contain key information for LGBTQI+ communities and those who work with them, and their removal marks a gravely concerning restriction of vital information. Now, where there used to be hundreds of detailed resources, there is just one message: “404 Page Not Found.”

One future depends upon the voters, right now the future does not bode us well, the polls show the country split right down the middle... It is like a lighting bolt splitting the country in half.

Banning The Ban.

Banning The Ban.

There is a bill in the Connecticut to ban the banning of books because of a protected class. In other words… you cannot ban a book on slavery because that is racist. You cannot ban a book about LGBTQ+ people.

There’s a revolution happening in children’s publishing—you can thank the book bans

Publishers are fighting back on book bans by flooding the market with books representing diverse points of view.

Fast Company

BY ELIZABETH SEGRAN

April 22, 2024

Nikkolas Smith knows a thing or two about book bans. The illustrator has created five picture books over the last three years—four of which have been yanked off library shelves. There’s I am Ruby Bridges, about the civil rights icon; That Flag about the confederate flag; Born on the Water, which explores slavery; and The Artivist which features a child supporting trans kids. 

Book bans aren’t new; the practice is centuries old. But over the past four years, right-wing organizations have been on a crusade to remove books from school libraries and classrooms. Last school year, these groups challenged more than 3,000 titles. The top reasons for contesting books is that they deal with LBGTQ+ issues or shine a light on racism. As someone who tackles both of these issues in his work, Smith has gotten used to his books being challenged. “In many cases, librarians don’t even bother buying them, because they know parents will contest them,” he says. “They don’t even have a chance to be banned.”

Banning a book because there is a sex scene in it is one thing but banning a book because two boys are holding hands is another thing altogether. 

Smith isn’t alone. Publishers, writers, and progressive organizations across the children’s book industry aren’t letting the book bans hold them back. Instead, they’re turning the bans into a rallying cry to publish even more diverse characters and points of view. Indeed, over the last five years, there has been a steady increase in books by and about people of color. And people are finding creative ways to make sure these books get out into the world.

You shouldn’t be able to ban a book because there is a trans child in the book. And they even banned “The Diary of Anne Frank!” 

“This parent didn’t want the book to make children dislike German people,” she says. “I was teaching 250 kids a day and this was just another problem I had to deal with. It meant that I was no longer really free to teach what I felt was important.”

I keep coming beck to the musical South Pacific, “You got to be Carefully Taught,”

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,

You’ve got to be taught from year to year,

It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear—

You’ve got to be carefully taught!

And the conservative don’t want racially integrated school because they might have a Black or a Latina or an Asian friend.

Book banning only accelerated as the Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate movements spread across the country. “They began pursuing an agenda of silencing the voices of marginalized communities and erasing their stories from library shelves so that young people could not access them,” Caldwell-Stone says.

Think about the children.

That is what the right-wing conservatives say all the time. But that is only for parents who want to ban the books for stop the integration of school. The Century Foundation writes,

The Center for American Progress’s (CAP) recent research brief, “The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers,” highlights a dark period in the history of voucher programs. Following Brown v. Board of Education, many Southern states established voucher, or “tuition grant,” programs for white students to attend segregated private schools when public school systems were ordered to desegregate. The brief argues that it is crucial to acknowledge and learn from this historical context when considering education policy today, in particular, as civil rights protections tied to federal funding were established during that difficult era.

[…]

Earlier this year, The Century Foundation documented several schools in North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship program that openly discriminated against students by religion and LGBTQ status, charged additional fees that excluded poor children from gifted and dual enrollment programs, employed racially and religiously discriminatory dress codes, and used textbooks that—among other things—offered sympathetic portrayals of the KKK and whitewashed slavery. We should not expect for federal involvement to improve this civil rights dilemma, as U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has testified before Congress that states should “set up the rules around that.” And while the data on voucher student achievement is complicated, the most recent studies of three of the largest programs—Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio—and in the nation’s only federally funded program in Washington, D.C., showed that students accepting a voucher and transferring to a private school fared worse academically than their counterparts who did not. Clearly, none of these issues benefit black people.

Think how a Black, or Asian, or Muslim, or a trans student feels what they cannot find any book about people like them in the library, how it must make them feel… dirty, that somehow they are bad. What about straight children? Bullying in schools is skyrocketing as they pick on minorities 

I believe that the ultimate goal of the Republicans is to do away with public school as we know it and only those who can afford private education will have an education beyond Reading Riting, and Rithmetic.

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HB5417: AN ACT CONCERNING PUBLIC SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

The bill reads in part...

43 (c) Each local or regional board of education shall provide a reason

44 for the removal or restricted access to any library material belonging to

45 the collection of a school library or media center as a result of the process

46 prescribed by the policy established pursuant to subsection (b) of this

47 section. No board shall remove or restrict access to library material

48 because of any of the following:

49 (1) Partisan content or views contained in any library material;

50 (2) An author's race, nationality, gender identity, sexual orientation

51 or political or religious views;

52 (3) The personal discomfort, morality or political or religious views

53 of a member or members of the board;

54 (4) An author's points of view concerning current events, whether

55 international, national or local;

56 (5) The race, nationality, gender identity, sexual orientation or

57 political or religious views of a protagonist or other characters or as

58 otherwise represented in the library material; or

59 (6) The content of the library material is related to sexual health and

60 addresses physical, mental, emotional or social dimensions of human

61 sexuality, including, but not limited to, puberty, sex and relationships

62 based on the age, development and grade level of students.

This bill will not prohibit banning of books because of sexual conduct or vulgar language.

This morning I am at the Legislative Office Building lobbying for this bill and other pro-LGBTQ+ bills. If you are a Connecticut resident please call your legislator to support the bill (You can find you legislator here.).

 

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Well that plan went out the window.

 

Last night I was laying on the couch watching the streaming of my grandnephew's high school concert and after it was over I went to sit up and my back just went out. I've been on a heating pad and doing back exercises since.

Some Take Aways

First results of the 2022 US Trans Survey has just been released and some of their findings are,

Data were collected over a 48-day period, from October 19 through December 5, 2022. The sample included 92,329 respondents, including 84,170 adults (18 and older), from all fifty states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and U.S. military bases overseas.

This makes it the largest needs trans assessment survey ever.

The USTS was approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB), which is an entity intended to protect the rights and welfare and ensure confidentiality of individuals participating in a research study. The study underwent an extensive full-board review by the University of California, Los Angeles, North General IRB, which included review and approval of the study design, questionnaire, and all recruitment materials leading up to the launch of the survey and throughout the fielding period in English and Spanish. As required by the IRB, the survey began with a study information sheet describing aspects of the study and participants’ rights in the study. Participants were required to consent to taking the survey at the end of the information sheet and before beginning the questionnaire.

[…]

The USTS was approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB), which is an entity intended to protect the rights and welfare and ensure confidentiality of individuals participating in a research study. The study underwent an extensive full-board review by the University of California, Los Angeles, North General IRB, which included review and approval of the study design, questionnaire, and all recruitment materials leading up to the launch of the survey and throughout the fielding period in English and Spanish. As required by the IRB, the survey began with a study information sheet describing aspects of the study and participants’ rights in the study. Participants were required to consent to taking the survey at the end of the information sheet and before beginning the questionnaire.

The survey was anonymous, and maintaining privacy and confidentiality in the collection and maintenance of survey data was an important component of preserving participants’ anonymity. The IRB required the research teamto ensure that confidentiality protections were in place for the study and demonstrate sufficiency of data security protocols. The research team also obtained a Certificate of Confidentiality from the National Institutes of Health, which could be used to legally refuse to disclose information that may identify respondents in any federal, state, or local civil, criminal, administrative, legislative, or other proceedings, such as if there is a court subpoena.

I include this about the IRB because it is important to show that the survey respondents are protected from state inquiries. And their anonymity of the respondents is guaranteed.

I have certificate of completion of the NIH training on working with human subjects have worked on another survey that researced HIV/AIDS in the trans community and had to go before the IRB.

Here are some more of the demographic finds,

Gender:
Thirty-eight percent (38%) of respondents identified as nonbinary, 35% identified as a transgender woman, 25% identified as a transgender man, and 2% identified as a crossdresser.

Intersex status:
Five percent (5%) of respondents reported they were born with a variation in physical sex characteristics or had an intersex variation or Difference of Sex Development, 72% reported they were not, and 23% reported that they did not know.

Health Insurance:
Eighty-seven (87%) percent of respondents had health insurance coverage.„ Approximately 1 in 4 respondents (26%) had at least one issue with their insurance company in the last 12 months, such as being denied coverage for hormone therapy, surgery, or another type of health care related to their gender identity/transition; gender-specific health care because they were transgender; or routine health care because they were transgender.

You know how the conservatives are always harping in regrets?

Nearly all respondents (94%) who lived at least some of the time in a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth (“gender transition”) reported that they were either “a lot more satisfied” (79%) or “a little more satisfied” (15%) with their life. Three percent (3%) reported that transitioning gender made them “neither more nor less satisfied” with their life, 1% were “a little less satisfied,” and 2% were “a lot less satisfied” with their life.

Nearly all respondents (98%) who were currently receiving hormone treatment reported that receiving hormones for their gender identity/transition made them either “a lot more satisfied” (84%) or “a little more satisfied” (14%) with their life. One percent (1%) reported that hormones made them “neither more nor less satisfied” with their life, and less than 1% said that they were “a little less satisfied” or “a lot less satisfied” with their lives after receiving hormones.

Nearly all respondents (97%) who had at least one form of surgery for their gender identity/ transition reported that they were either “a lot more satisfied” (88%) or “a little more satisfied” (9%) with their life. One percent (1%) reported that surgery made them “neither more nor less satisfied” with their life, less than 1% were “a little less satisfied,” and 1% were “a lot less satisfied” with their life.

That sure doesn’t sound like there were many regrets! The next section is a little depressing…

Income, Employment, Workplace Experiences,
and Housing Stability

• More than one-third (34%) of respondents were experiencing poverty.
• The unemployment rate among USTS respondents was 18%. „ More than one in ten (11%) respondents who had ever held a job said they had been fired, forced to resign, lost the job, or been laid off because of their gender identity or expression.
• Nearly one-third (30%) of respondents had experienced homelessness in their lifetime.

Experiences In Restrooms

• Four percent (4%) of respondents were denied access to a restroom in a public place, at work, or at school in the last 12 months.
• In the last 12 months, 6% of respondents had been verbally harassed, physically attacked, or experienced unwanted sexual contact when accessing or using a restroom.

Harassment and Violence

• Nearly one in ten (9%) respondents reported that they were denied equal treatment or service in the last 12 months because of their gender identity or expression.
• Nearly one-third (30%) of respondents reported that they were verbally harassed in the last 12 months because of their gender identity or expression.
• More than one-third (39%) of respondents reported that they were harassed online in the last 12 months because of their gender identity or expression.
• Three percent (3%) of respondents reported that they were physically attacked in the last 12 months because of their gender identity or expression.

The summary goes on for a total of 22 pages and there is one last topic that I want to mention is,

• Forty percent (40%) of respondents had thought about moving to another area because they experienced discrimination or unequal treatment where they were living, and 10% of respondents had actually moved to another area because of discrimination.
• Nearly half (47%) of respondents had thought about moving to another state because their state government considered or passed laws that target transgender people for unequal treatment (such as banning access to bathrooms, health care, or sports), and 5% of respondents had actually moved out of state because of such state action.
• The top 10 states from which respondents moved because of state laws targeting transgender people for unequal treatment were (in alphabetical order): Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

This greatly saddens me, why in the United States do people have to flee a state in order to have all the rights everyone else is entitled to? Why do people have to flee from their state in order to get proper healthcare?

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And speaking of discrimination and having anger issues...

Missouri Republican candidate torches LGBTQ-inclusive books in viral video

Valentina Gomez, who is running for Missouri secretary of state, lit two books on fire, including an LGBTQ guide for teens and a sex education book.

NBC News

By Jo Yurcaba

Feb. 7, 2024

A Republican candidate for Missouri secretary of state posted a viral campaign video Tuesday lighting LGBTQ-inclusive books on fire with a flamethrower.

“This is what I will do to the grooming books when I become secretary of state,” Valentina Gomez, 24, of St. Louis, said in the video on X, Facebook and Instagram before she lit at least two books on fire. “These books come from a Missouri public library. When I’m in office, they will burn.”

Gomez added “MAGA” and “America First” in the text of her post on X.

[…]

“You want to be gay? Fine be gay. Just don’t do it around children,” the statement said. “Stop putting books in libraries about sexualization, indoctrination and grooming of children. Children need to learn mathematics, science, developing their people skills, getting fit, while protecting their innocence. Not learning the ideologies that the radical left loves to push on children. I am against all drag shows around children, pride flags in classrooms, teachers with pronouns, people wanting to ‘change’ genders, and people that can’t even define what a woman is. If genitals don’t define gender, how does removing them affirm it. I only fear God.”

Ask yourself, who is stirring up the anger and animosity against us?

Who are the real groomers who wants to tell everyone what to think, what to read, what to say, and what religion to believe in?

Banned In Boston

Used to mean that it was a good sexy book to read because of the "Puritans" history of Boston, but now Boston is playing second fiddle to the right-wing conservatives, they want to ban everything! But mostly us.

Half of challenged books return to schools. LGBTQ books are banned most.

After parents object, books with LGBTQ themes and characters are most likely to go

The Washington Post

By Hannah Natanson

December 23, 2023

Almost half of books challenged at school are returned to shelves, but titles with LGBTQ characters, themes and stories are most likely to be banned, according to a Washington Post analysis of nearly 900 book objections nationwide.

School officials sent 49 percent of challenged titles back to shelves, The Post found, a discovery some interviewed for this story hailed as proof the national alarm over book challenges has been overblown — although librarians warned of a severe burden on employees forced to spend months defending titles. The next most-common outcome, in 17 percent of challenges, was for a book to be placed under some form of restriction. Libraries might require parental permission or limit the youngest students from checking out a given title.

[...]

The Post analyzed the types of books challenged to determine what titles were most likely to be removed, restricted or retained. Books about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer lives were 30 percent more likely to be yanked, The Post found, compared with all targeted books. By contrast, books by and about people of color, or those about race and racism, were 20 percent more likely to be kept available compared with all targeted books.

"Banned in Boston" used to mean the book had much sex in them for the puritans. But now it is political views that are trying to ban books.

But books that the conservatives want to ban are being challenged...

“In a public system, challenges are appropriate, reviewing challenges is appropriate and, in some small number of cases, keeping those books out of circulation is probably appropriate,” said Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow studying K-12 education at the American Enterprise Institute. “It sounds like the system is working as it should.”

In interviews, librarians across the country said they were heartened by the rate of returns — but cautioned that the success can come at a high cost. Defending books from challenges is equivalent to a “second full-time job,” said Martha Hickson, a New Jersey school librarian who fought attempts to ban five LGBTQ books in the 2021-2022 school year.

But still it disturbing that they are being banned in the first place.

Books should not be banned because they are about subject matter is about race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other protected classes. Back when Boston banned books it was because the books were too sexy or to violence not because the book was about Black history, or has a trans character.

This Is Not A Democracy… This Is What Dictators Do.

Control the education and you control the mind.

‘That's authoritarianism’: Florida argues school libraries are for government messaging

Public school libraries are “a forum for government speech,” not a “forum for free expression,” according to a legal brief.

USA Today

By Douglas Soule

December 4, 2023

Florida’s government is arguing that school districts have a First Amendment right to remove LGBTQ books.

That stands the First Amendment on its head! This is right out of 1984’s Doublespeak.

Or any book, for that matter.

It’s a contention that First Amendment experts and advocates call extreme and chilling. But the state maintains the books on school shelves represent protected government speech. Public school libraries are “a forum for government speech,” it says, not a “forum for free expression.”

“Public-school systems, including their libraries, convey the government’s message,” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody wrote in a legal brief.

That argument is also being made by lawyers for the school boards in Escambia and Lake counties.

This goes way beyond book banning, this is censorship!, something right out of Putin’s playbook.

Those suing accuse the defendants of violating students’ First Amendment right to receive information as well as unconstitutionally removing books because of LGBTQ and race themes. The defendants, meanwhile, say school library content decisions can’t infringe on the First Amendment — because they’re protected by it.

Welcome to the new Republican party where controlling the people is their number one goal.

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When does two gay penguins equal Hitler? This is really insulting! LGBTQ+ were forced into gas chambers! And DeSantis compares us to the Nazis... Shame on him, that is f**king disgusting! Shame! Shame!

Ron DeSantis’ team compares book about gay penguins to Nazi propaganda

Florida’s attorney general, and Ron DeSantis staffer, Ashley Moody has compared a children’s book about gay penguins to Nazi propaganda. 

Pink News

By Sophie Perry

December 5, 2023

The Republican, who serves under controversial governor Ron DeSantis, made the comparison in a court filing relating to a legal challenge over LGBTQ+ book bans. 

The Escambia County School Board is currently facing a lawsuit from publishers and authors after it pulled a number of LGBTQ+ titles from public school libraries, including Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s popular And Tango Makes Three – about a real-life same-sex penguin couple. 

The lawsuit claims the First Amendment rights of authors and publishers is being violated by the board, echoing a similar legal challenge filed against the Lake County school district in June. 

In the latest filing, Moody rebuffs the notion that freedom of speech is being violated and claims public schools make “value-based judgments” every day about which materials pupils have access to, “based on viewpoint”. 

She went on to say: “They exclude materials such as Nazi propaganda because they disagree that Nazis were wonderful, regardless of any educational value the materials may have. 

“Viewpoint-based educational choices are constitutionally permissible because public-school systems, including their libraries, convey the government’s message.”

These Republicans are sick! Sick! Sick!

The authors and publishers argue that school libraries are public forums and therefore the government cannot restrict access to materials “based on viewpoint”. 

Disgusting! Gays were sent to the concentrations camps and to the gas chambers! It is vile!

Further more the book is about the book is about two gay penguin there is nothing wrong the book it is the dirty minds of the Republican that make it in their minds wrong. I say again these people are sick and they should go to see a psychiatrist to be treated for having an abnormal obsession with LGBTQ+ people.

It Is Working!

It is having the desired effect, it is having the effect that the Republicans want… forcing us back into the closet and creating fear.

The banning of books, the harassments, the vandalism, the bullying, and the anti-LGBTQ+ laws are all taking a toll on LGBTQ+ students.

From book bans to 'Don’t Say Gay' bill, LGBTQ kids feel 'erased' in the classroom
Facing limiting legislation, book bans, harassment and more, gay and transgender youth say they are being “erased” from the U.S. education system.
NBC Out News
By Matt Lavietes
>February 20, 2022


Students have repeatedly vandalized Pride posters at Spencer Lyst’s high school in Williamson County, Tennessee. Teachers have skipped over LGBTQ issues in class textbooks. Trans kids in his state have been legally barred from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity. Parents have called on school officials to remove books about sexual orientation and gender identity from the county’s elementary curriculum. And while leading his school’s Pride club at a September homecoming parade, Lyst and other LGBTQ students were booed by a group of parents.

“I’m so used to it, but it shouldn’t be something I have to think about,” Lyst, 16, said of the near-constant feeling of being attacked at school because of his identity.

He even said it’s “difficult” to walk into the school bathroom for fear of what or who “might be in there.”

“Like, can I go to the bathroom or am I going to get hate for just existing?” he said. 

Lyst’s school experience is a far cry from an isolated case.

And it is not just Tennessee, it is spreading all over the Republican states in a full court press on our rights, forcing us back in the closets, all around nation even in blue states they are attacking our books, our right to assemble, our rights of free speech.

Since the start of the school year, school officials in states across the country have banned books about gay and trans experiences, removed LGBTQ-affirming posters and flags and disbanded gay-straight alliance clubs. In school districts throughout the nation, students have attacked their queer classmates, while state lawmakers have filed hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills with many seeking to redefine lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students’ places in U.S. schools. 

“There is no separating any of these things,” Mary Emily O’Hara, the rapid response manager at LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, said at a media briefing on Monday. “What we’re seeing here is anti-LGBTQ groups, on a national level, making schools the new battleground across the board, across various kinds of school policies and various forms of legislation. Schools are the target right now for the anti-LGBTQ movement.”

In the majority of cases, conservative school officials, lawmakers and parents say LGBTQ issues do not belong in school because they are “political” and “not age-appropriate” for students. Conversely, queer youth and their families, along with LGBTQ and ally teachers, say they feel they are being “erased” from the U.S. education system.

[…]

DeSantis has found a weak spot, and that weak spot is children,” she added, suggesting that DeSantis is supporting the measure for political gain.

The Republicans are attacking most vulnerable, the children. They don’t care the harm that they are doing to the children. They don’t care that this violate our Frist Amendment rights.

“I felt that my community was under attack, that they were trying to silence LGBTQ+ experiences and voices within our community,” Petocz, who is gay and led a student protest in response to the book’s removal, said. “We’re already a minority. Why are you trying to suppress this critical information within our libraries, you know? These books are critical to providing a sense of identity.”

Books about race, sexual orientation and gender identity have historically been challenged in schools, but over the last several months, school libraries have seen a surge of opposition.

In the fall, as book bans started to take off in counties across the country, national groups — including No Left Turn in Education and Moms for Liberty — began circulating lists of school library books that they said were “indoctrinating kids to a dangerous ideology” to rally support. 

The bans then became a talking point in the contentious Virginia governor’s race, where the Republican candidate, former private equity executive and political newcomer Glenn Youngkin, made education a central issue of his campaign and swept to victory. 

They call the books pornographic but there is no sex in the books. However, most people haven’t even read the books so when they hear pornography they think the worst and they think in all the graphic details, while in reality it is only holding hands or a kiss.

They are targeting LGBTQ+ books, books about Black, and slavery and they have created a vocal and angry minority of conservative parents. The New York Times wrote,

“The politicalization of the topic is what's different than what I’ve seen in the past,” said Britten Follett, the chief executive of content at Follett School Solutions, one of the country’s largest providers of books to K-12 schools. “It’s being driven by legislation, it’s being driven by politicians aligning with one side or the other. And in the end, the librarian, teacher or educator is getting caught in the middle.”

[…]

The advocacy group No Left Turn in Education maintains lists of books it says are “used to spread radical and racist ideologies to students,” including Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Those who are demanding certain books be removed insist this is an issue of parental rights and choice, that all parents should be free to direct the upbringing of their own children.

Others say prohibiting these titles altogether violates the rights of other parents and the rights of children who believe access to these books is important. Many school libraries already have mechanisms in place to stop individual students from checking out books of which their parents disapprove.

This divisive politics is not good for the country, it is tearing us apart! At a school board here in Connecticut over changing the school mascot got so heated that a parent and a board member got into a tussle, the parent wanted to keep the mascot and both of them were arrest. Now what does that teach the children in the room?

This is a battle of ideologies, those that want to limit what children are taught and those that believe children should have the tools to learn and make their own decisions.

Banned In Georgia

Is becoming the new “Banned in Boston” Boston used to be know a prude city with its Puritan history well the South is taking over for Boston in banning books.

Movement would ban LGBTQ books, online materials from school libraries
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Ty Tagami
January 2, 2022

Younger students may not find the same support if lawmakers make it easier to ban books and materials from school libraries.

A national movement targeting materials considered obscene is gaining traction in Georgia. It has won powerful support in the Georgia General Assembly that convenes this month. House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, a Republican from Milton, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in November that “children should be shielded from age inappropriate materials” and that she is writing legislation to accomplish that in schools.

Jones said she wants a uniform statewide process for filtering online materials accessible through schools. And she said she wants to give parents more influence over selections. She isn’t specifically identifying transgender issues, but others are.

When former State Schools Superintendent John Barge announced in November that he was campaigning for his old job, he said schools are not the place for “talking to children about, you know, they can be whatever gender they want to be.”

And Noelle Kahaian, director of the anti-obscenity group Protect Student Health Georgia, testified at the Georgia General Assembly last spring for legislation that would standardize the process for banning materials. She also wants an exemption for school librarians removed from a state law that allows prosecution of people who provide “harmful” materials to minors. (The law focuses on visual representations involving sex.)

Kahaian said materials involving transgender issues do not belong in public schools. She thinks they are fueling a “social contagion” of children questioning their gender. “Any ideology, especially surrounding sexuality, should be the parents’ domain,” she said.

And so it begins…

In Iowa,

LGBTQ advocates: Book banning is precursor for rocky legislative session
Iowa Capital Dispatch
By: Katie Akin 
December 8, 2021

As school boards around the Des Moines metro debate the inclusion of certain queer books in school libraries, LGBTQ advocacy groups are preparing for attacks in the upcoming legislative session.

Iowa school boards in recent weeks have seen spirited debates over allowing books with sexual content — including many with LGBTQ themes — in school libraries. Several districts have removed “Gender Queer,” a graphic memoir by Maia Kobabe about gender dysphoria and sexuality. The comic book depicts scenes of masturbation and sexual fantasizing in a larger narrative about discovering one’s identity.

[…]

Becky Smith, executive director of Iowa Safe Schools, said that she has closely observed the movement “remove books that contain either subject matter or characters or storylines of either students of color, Black and Brown stories, or stories around LGBTQ identities specifically.” 

In Tennessee,

Tennessee GOP wants to ban books that 'promote' LGBT lifestyles from school libraries
Insider
By Canela López 
March 26, 2021


Bruce Griffey, a Republican member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, drafted and introduced the bill before he was removed from the Education Instruction Subcommittee on March 25.

[...]

"The promotion of LGBT issues and lifestyles in public schools offends a significant portion of students, parents, and Tennessee residents with Christian values," Griffey wrote in the bill. 

[…]

The proposal to ban LGBTQ+ books and educational materials from schools has legal precedent, as state lawmakers have attempted to pass similar bills since the 1990s, according to the National Coalition Against Censorship. 

NPR reported,

More Republican leaders try to ban books on race, LGBTQ issues
By Deepa Shivaram
November 13, 2021


In the latest call from Republican leaders to ban certain books in schools, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is telling his state's department of education to investigate a graphic novel on queer identity being available at a school's library. He says the content in the book is "sexually explicit" and "pornographic."

[...]

In a Virginia county, two school board members want to burn the books

In Virginia's Spotsylvania County, the school board recently voted to remove books in school libraries that had any "sexually explicit" material.

One book in particular that caused outrage is Adam Rapp's 33 Snowfish, with a storyline that includes drug addiction, prostitution and violence.

[...]

During Banned Books Week, Readers Explore What It Means To Challenge Texts

Two school board members, Rabih Abuismail and Kirk Twigg, went on to say they would like to see the banned books burned.

[…]

Book burning was a practice perpetuated in Nazi Germany in order to oppress authors and ideas that were in opposition to Nazi ideology.

From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,

Beginning on May 10, 1933, Nazi-dominated student groups carried out public burnings of books they claimed were “un-German.” The book burnings took place in 34 university towns and cities. Works of prominent Jewish, liberal, and leftist writers ended up in the bonfires. The book burnings stood as a powerful symbol of Nazi intolerance and censorship.

German students and Nazi SA members plunder the
library  of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Director of the
 Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin

Also May of that year,

LGBTQ Institute in Germany Was Burned Down by Nazis
The resources and data at Institut für Sexualwissenschaft were never replaced.
Teen Vogue
By Lucy Diavolo
September 20, 2017


On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was officially appointed chancellor of Germany. His rise to power ushered in Nazi control of the country and led to the horrors of the Holocaust. Among those targeted by the Third Reich were lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. LGBTQ people would be sent to concentration camps alongside Jews, the disabled, and many more — but one of the Nazis's first shows of force against Germany’s LGBTQ community was an attack on information.

On May 6, 1933, Nazi demonstrators raided the libraries of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, a German name that roughly translates to the Institute of Sexology. The Institute was a privately operated research space for studies of human sexuality. More than 20,000 books were taken from shelves and burned days later in the streets by Nazi youth groups.

This is the Republicans pushing their hate to create wedge politics, to divide our country and want to create an authoritarian government .