I get the Triangle Community Center’s newsletter and the first article was…
“Don’t Say Gay” Comes to Connecticut
A lot of folks have been (justifiably) incensed at the legislative attacks on the LGBTQ+ communities in places like Florida and Texas. But did you know that there are leaders right here in Connecticut who seek to erase and deny the humanity of people who are not straight?
Last month, the Greenwich Board of Education adopted a new Title IX policy, which they insist complies with the federal requirement that bars discrimination on the basis of sex—a definition that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled includes the spectrum of gender identity and sexual orientation. In fact, the original draft of the Greenwich policy specifically prohibited “discrimination or harassment on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.”
Yet the version of the policy passed last month conspicuously removes any language referring to gender identity and sexual orientation. The Board was quick to note that “this policy covers all students, whether or not certain language is included.”
So, if the policy does indeed cover all students, and if the language referencing sexual orientation and gender identity was in the original draft, then why go through the trouble of removing it from the final version?
It almost seems as though the Greenwich Board of Education wants to pretend that the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t exist. If the substance of the policy remains the same, as they say, then the only effect of removing the language about gender identity and sexual orientation is the linguistic pseudo-erasure of the LGBTQ+ community in Greenwich Public Schools. The action of removing any reference to gender identify and sexual orientation mimicks Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law; it is a way to pretend our community doesn’t exist.
This sounds more like a Red state than a Blue state and the city’s First Selectman is not happy,
First Selectman Fred Camillo asserted last June that Greenwich "has always been a leader in ... standing for equity for everybody." We appeal to the Greenwich Board of Education to restore references to gender identity and sexual orientation in their Title IX policy to reflect that commitment to equity. This simple language update would help codify Greenwich as a town where the LGBTQ+ community can feel safe and welcome, especially at a time when we are under attack in so many other parts of the country.
It just goes to show you nowhere is safe from their hate.
Back in January, the Greenwich Board of Education voted along party lines on a policy codifying Title IX, which meant it failed to pass.
Andreana Bellach of Shipman and Goodman, an attorney hired by the district, explained that the board was required by law to adopt a policy in compliance with Title IX.
A heated discussion ensued about trans athletes competing in sports, with the four Democratic members voting in favor and the four Republicans voting against.
At the time, Republican Cody Kittle said, “I don’t think we’re doing any harm. We’re just allowing something like that to play out and if down the road we say, you know this is costing too much in lawyers, or causing other issues, we can re-evaluate it.”
Yeah, you don’t see any harm because you are a Lilly white straight male.
The result was the language was amended to remove the statement, “Discrimination or harassment on the basis of sex includes discrimination or harassment on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.”
The new language added, “The Board agrees to comply with Title IX of the Education amendments of 1972 and the Regulations as amended in the Final Rule promulgated pursuant thereto.”
MAGA Republicans are alive here in the Nutmeg state. That is just about the same language that Trump’s Department of Education used back in 2020, totally ignoring the ruling by the Supreme Court earlier that year.
“As I’ve [A parent and educator] watched the Title IX student policy discussion unfold over the last 6 months, I have at many times been speechless, angry, and unsure if I really heard what I did, and overall ashamed that these conversations are happening at the meetings of the governing body of our schools. “
One thing that clued me in on why the Republicans hate us so much,
“Schools need to be grounded in science and facts, not political social justice and progressive garbage.”
– Kristen Nieminski
Is that they still believe after all these years that we chose to be trans, or gay, they don’t believe in the science.
Yes, even liberal Connecticut this still can happen… VOTE!
Save a life, it just may be your child’s life that is saved.
Kathy Barnette, a largely-unknown Pennsylvania Senate candidate, has been surging in support among Republican voters in recent polls with just days to go until next Tuesday's primary election.
But a review of the conservative commentator's public statements, including on social media, reveals a candidate with a history of Islamophobic and homophobic positions that may imperil Republicans' general election chances in the race to replace retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.
Over the last several years, Barnette has called for the banning of Islam in America, falsely claimed that former President Barack Obama is Muslim, voiced support for a business owner who posted a "No Gays Allowed" sign in his front window, and declared that "homosexuals LEAD with their sexual preference" and should "leave [the] immorality in the bedroom."
And the conservatives are eating it up!
Let me count the ways this all is against the Constitution… but the Republicans don’t let a little thing like the Constitution stop their hate.
She is so far to the right that even the MAGA chief guru is against her,
Highlighting the angst Barnette has caused among the GOP, former President Donald Trump criticized Barnette's candidacy in a Thursday afternoon statement.
Are the electorate getting tied of all this negativity?
But as Insider's Jake Lahut recently reported from a Trump rally near Pittsburgh, there are signs that Republican voters in Pennsylvania have grown weary of the barrage of primary ads on the local airwaves and are not taking Trump's cues when it comes to supporting Oz.
Oz was even met with boos upon his introduction at the rally. But Barnette could bring an even greater world of headaches to the GOP.
You know I suspect that Connecticut voters are also getting tired of the excessive barrage of ads from the billionaire gubernatorial Republican candidate and it seems like that it is the same garbage from the last election… promising the world but never says how he is going to do it, just pie in the sky promises.
Meanwhile down in Louisiana they are not content to going after trans children now they are after all of us.
The Louisiana House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to revive a bill that would prohibit "topics of sexual orientation or gender identity in any classroom discussion or instruction in kindergarten through grade eight."
The legislation, which critics have dubbed the state's "Don't Say Gay" bill, had been been killed last week in a House education committee bipartisan 7-4 vote.
But on Tuesday, Republican Rep. Raymond Crews used a rare legislative procedural tool, “Committee of the Whole,” which allowed for a full House vote to advance or deny the education committee's decision. The House then voted 55-39 to resurrect the measure.
It is like we’ll see Florida and raise you, making it to the eight grade instead of third grade.
Officially titled the Parental Rights in Education law, the country's first so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill originated in Florida earlier this year and was signed into law in March. The measure bans teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity “in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards." It will take effect on July 1.
[…]
Louisiana's measure goes further than the Florida law: It also forbids public school employees from discussing their "own sexual orientation or gender identity with students in kindergarten through grade twelve."
So it is like Louisiana legislators never heard of the First Amendment!
It is very sad that the Republican party believes that their only way to win elections is on the deaths of trans children. Here in Connecticut I have been told that the number of trans high school athletes are less than twenty out of over a thousand high school athletes, and I imagine that in Texas the number is also relatively small.
More than 335 bills that would negatively affect LGBTQ+ Americans are currently being considered by state lawmakers across the country, the Human Rights Campaign said Tuesday in a weekly update of “bad bills.”
At least 10 states this year have signed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation into law, the HRC said, including Alabama, whose gender-affirming care ban went into effect Sunday.
Seven states this year have signed transgender athlete bans into law — and more are coming, the HRC said.
Keep in mind, trans people are something like only 0.5 to 1 percent of the population, so all these laws are targeting a minority of a minority. Why?
The article goes on to say this about trans athletes.
Proponents of these measures have argued that inherent “biological differences” exist between males and females, and transgender women and girls hold an unfair advantage over cisgender female competitors. Legislators in favor of transgender athlete bans regularly invoke the recent victories of Lia Thomas, a swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania who in March became the first transgender woman to win a national Division I title.
WAIT A MINUTE!
All throughout my life high school sports was sold as building character, leadership skills, and teamwork. So what they are saying is that trans are not worthy to learn those skills?
Or has sports become more about winning? Winning at all cost.
Or some have said it is college scholarships that are important. Well less than one percent of high school athletes receive scholarships and of those a small sliver goes on to the pros. So if it all about going on to the pros then the whole high school sports programs are to send maybe 4 or 5 high school athletes to go on to the pros to make millions. Does that seem fair to you? That we deny trans athletes the right to learn life skills because we want to send a half a dozen students on to the pros?
The opposition to the anti-trans sports bills say…
But those opposed to these bills say they are solutions to nonexistent problems that put the mental health and well-being of transgender children at risk. Transgender athlete bans passed this year are “further isolating trans kids and preventing them from having the same opportunities as their friends,” the HRC tweeted Monday, “and more are close to passing.”
And if this is all about teaching life leadership skills, then what is it teaching? That discrimination against marginalized peoples is okay? That bullying minorities is okay? That winning is the only thing that matters?
This isn’t about sports, this is about stirring up hate and anger to get the conservative to get out and vote and donate.
The Assistant Secretary for Health has spoken out on the anti-trans bills popping up in Republican states.
The highest ranking transgender official in U.S. history will give a speech in Texas Saturday, urging physicians-in-training to fight political attacks against young trans people and their families.
Adm. Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health, will make a speech in Fort Worth at the Out For Health Conference at Texas Christian University.
In prepared remarks shared exclusively with NPR, she writes: "Trans youth in particular are being hounded in public and driven to deaths of despair at an alarming rate. Fifty-two percent of all transgender and nonbinary young people in the U.S. seriously contemplated killing themselves in 2020. Think about how many of them thought it was better to die than to put up with any more harassment, scapegoating and intentional abuse."
Political attacks against trans young people are on the rise across the country. Over 100 anti-trans bills have been introduced in state houses this year, according to an analysis by Freedom for All Americans and the Guardian. Many of these legislative attacks use scientific language to justify their political aims, she says. In her prepared remarks, she concludes: "The language of medicine and science is being used to drive people to suicide."
We need to stir up our base to go out and vote this fall!
If you do not vote then you are giving your implicit consent to the attacks on us by the right-wing bigots.
With horror, the Michigan state senator, a Democrat, read an email accusing her of "grooming" children. The email was sent by a fellow senator, Republican Lana Theis, who was soliciting funds from her supporters for her reelection campaign.
In that email, Theis wrote that children are "under assault in our schools" by what she called "progressive mobs trying to steal our children's innocence."
And then it got personal.
"She accused me by name of grooming and wanting to sexualize kindergartners," McMorrow tells NPR. "I mean, my heart absolutely sank."
McMorrow says she kept thinking about her 1-year-old daughter, Noa.
You have to understand the origins of the word “grooming” and it is…
"You know, grooming is the act of befriending a child for the purpose of molesting them," she says. "Just the most horrific, disgusting, vile accusation that can be thrown at you."
Lately, that accusation has been thrown at those who support LGBTQ rights —teachers, companies, politicians — in addition to McMorrow: "Grooming" has become an incendiary buzzword of right-wing rhetoric, weaponized in the fight over anti-LGBTQ legislation.
It is a vile term that the Republicans and conservatives are using just for political gains. Not only that but are causing emotional harm to people who are victims of child abuse. USA Today reported that...
Some conservatives have begun using words like "grooming" often associated with child sex abuse.
Such rhetoric hurts the LGBTQ people, particularly gay men who have long been accused of predatory behavior.
Careless use of words connected to child sex abuse diminishes the experience of survivors, advocates say.
One word features in a lot of recent right-wing rhetoric, and that word is grooming.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT")
TUCKER CARLSON: They're grooming 7-year-olds and talking to 7-year-olds about their sex lives.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE INGRAHAM ANGLE")
LAURA INGRAHAM: This isn't programming. This is propaganda for grooming.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
J D VANCE: If you don't want to be called a groomer, don't try to sexualize 6- and 7-year-old children.
INSKEEP: OK. That was Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham of Fox News, along with Ohio U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance, just a few of those who've been pushing a baseless accusation. NPR's Melissa Block reports it is a smear with a history.
Republicans are not running a campaign about the issues instead they are running their campaigns on issues that are wedge issues and using transphobia and homophobia to create fear.
We have seen this since the 1970s Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign and the 1950s with the Lavender Scare and. NBC News had an article on Bryant last month in it they said,
Action had to be taken, and a campaign to limit the legal rights of LGBTQ people — all in the name of protecting children — was enacted. A woman who spoke at this hearing said it was her right to control “the moral atmosphere in which my children grow up.” That woman was Anita Bryant, formerly Miss Oklahoma and a white, telegenic, Top 40 singer who was well known for her Florida orange juice commercials (“A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine!” she’d say). Bryant spearheaded an anti-LGBTQ campaign of such impact that its echoes can be heard in today’s rhetoric. The year was 1977.
[…]
“It’s a contemporary version on these older attempts to annul homosexuality,” said Lillian Faderman, author of “The Gay Revolution,” among other queer history titles.
“In the present environment, you can’t go after homosexual teachers anymore,” Faderman said. “We have too many allies. And so Florida has found another way to do it by this ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, which doesn’t go after homosexual teachers precisely. But the idea is the same. That is, that homosexuality is a pariah status, and it shouldn’t be discussed in the public schools.”
What happened to Shoemaker [Shoemaker was an employee of the National Security Agency who was fired because he was gay.] in 1980 was the continuation of a policy launched nearly 30 years earlier, in 1953. Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450, the investigation, interrogation and systematic removal of gay men and lesbians from the federal government became policy. Known as the “Lavender Scare,” the policy was based on the unfounded fear that gay men and lesbians “posed a threat to national security because they were vulnerable to blackmail and were considered to have weak moral characters,” says historian David K. Johnson. According to him, this aspect of American history has largely been overlooked.
The Republicans are at it again Transphobia & Homophobia 2.0.
But thanks to social media it is more robust than the 1970 attempt to stir up hate against us is on steroids.
The school board had made it clear that they couldn't change school policy and that the stickers would remain.
However, new information came to light during a public comment, where they all agreed the images would not be covered.
"The enthusiasm from students that happen to be here today, this made me realize and think that looking at yearbooks and comments, who is to say that one comment is better than the other," Abby Sanchez, the vice chair with Seminole County Public Schools said.
"We should be able to voice our concerns and we shouldn't have anyone take that right away from us," Sanchez said.
Seminole County School Board members rejected that plan Tuesday night, voting 5-0 to order smaller stickers that don't cover up the page's words and pictures while explaining that the March protest over the Florida Parental Rights in Education bill outside Lyman High School was unauthorized.
It was a good compromise, both got what they wanted but not everything. The school board agreed not to cover up the protest photos just the comments, while the students got to keep their photos of the protest against the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
Just about every school in Connecticut has a Gay Straight Alliance (Something like 120 towns out of 169 towns in Connecticut.) and some towns and cites have multiple GSAs. Back in 2019 I wrote about GSAs and only 3 states had over 50% GSAs in their schools and Connecticut was one of them.
When I graduated from grad school many of the students (Both undergraduate and graduate.) wore rainbow shawls. I know a lot of students had rainbows around them in yearbook pictures. Heck I’m am probably in one of the yearbook pictures from 2017 when I was invited to speak along with the state senator at a GSA function for the bill to ban conversion therapy so there is a good chance that one of the students took a picture that ended up in the yearbook. But down in the authoritarian state of Florida it is kaput. Nein. Verboten.
Yearbooks at a central Florida high school won’t be distributed until images of students holding rainbow flags and a “love is love” sign while protesting the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law can be covered up.
District officials said they don’t want anyone thinking that the school supported the students’ walkout.
Lyman High School Principal Michael Hunter said in a statement Monday that “pictures and descriptions” documenting a student walk-out in March in response to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law should have been “caught earlier in the review process.”
The bill, signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.
“Rather than reprinting the yearbook at substantial cost and delay, we have elected to cover that material that is out of compliance with board policy so that yearbooks can be distributed as soon as possible,” the principal’s statement said.
[…]
Lawrence noted that the yearbook dedicates a separate page to the school’s Gay Straight Alliance Club and elsewhere shows students at a pride march and holding rainbow flags. He said those depictions do comply with the policy.
I would hate to be the faculty advisor, they will probably be looking for a new job right about now.
“This really shouldn’t be happening because all we did as journalists was document what was happening at our school on our campus,” Skye Tiedemann, one of the yearbook’s editors-in-chief, told the Sentinel. “To have that covered up isn’t right. ... This is censorship.”
You want to bet that the editors and faculty advisor are being blamed for it by the administration? While the students will have none of that…
Students at the school in Longwood, which is near Orlando, have created a hashtag “#stopthestickers,” which is circulating on social media. They also planned a peaceful protest at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Seminole County School Board, WKMG reported.
[…]
State Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from the Orlando area, said in a letter to school board members that she was disappointed by the decision.
“Students were empowered to craft a yearbook that reflects their lived experience of the academic year and did so with professionalism — sharing a piece of history on Lyman’s campus, one that should be reflected upon,” Eskamani said. “Not censored.”
Then we have this down in Virginia, where the governor is a Trump wannabe, where if you take out a book from the school library it gets reported to your parents.
A Virginia school board is considering a proposal that would require schools to notify parents of students’ “self-identification” — spurring worries that teachers will be forced to reveal the gender identity or sexuality of LGBTQ students without their consent.
The resolution, slated for discussion by Orange County Public Schools at a board meeting Monday, was proposed by board member Chelsea Quintern in compliance with a state law signed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) in April that says Virginia school districts must notify parents whenever instructional materials include sexually explicit content and must provide alternative, non-explicit materials if requested.
Citing the law, the Orange County resolution says that “students shall not be subjected … to curriculum, materials, and discussions relating to sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other sexually explicit subject without explicit consent from their parent(s).”
A second provision adds that “the Orange County Public School Board requires schools to notify parents of healthcare services and involvement in critical decisions affecting students’ physical, mental and emotional well-being; including, but not limited to self-identification.”
So now being gay or trans is considered to “affecting students’ physical, mental and emotional well-being” and I say outing a student who may or not be LGBTQ+ does more to stigmatize a child and cause harm emotional harm to the child than being LGBTQ+.
As for the resolution that requires reporting students’ self-identification to parents, the teacher said it has left “students really enraged” and teachers feeling “rage and a deep sadness.” He said teachers in the district estimate that at least 80 percent of students who are members of the Gay-Straight Alliance club are “not out to their parents.”
When I hear people say that there are no differences between the Democrats and the Republicans I point out things like these incidents.
The opinion of the Texas attorney general and a new Alabama law — both seeking to criminalize health care for transgender youth — are based on either blatant lies for political purpose or the use of outdated and discredited evidence, according to a panel of medical professionals who specialize in the care of gender dysphoria and pediatrics.
“The medical claims are not grounded in reputable science and are full of errors of omission and inclusion. These errors, taken together, thoroughly discredit the attorney general opinion’s claim that standard medical care for transgender children and adolescents constitutes child abuse. The Alabama law contains similar assertions of scientific fact, and these too are riddled with errors, calling into question the scientific foundations of the law,” the scholars declared.
Did you have to notices that this was in the Baptist News? That was what caught my eyes about the article, where it was published, the article goes on to say.
The stakes in this battle are exceptionally high, as Republican politicians are working to deny health care for transgender children and teens and to make criminals of the physicians, counselors and parents who seek such care for them. Nowhere has this been more contentious than Texas, where the inflammatory legal opinion issued by the attorney general Feb. 18 led Gov. Greg Abbott to call medical care for transgender minors “child abuse” and to ask other state agencies to immediately investigate anyone found to be engaged in such.
Transgender identity has become the latest flashpoint in Republican and conservative evangelical tactics to generate outrage in the nation’s culture wars, even though transgender persons represent less than 1% of the population and are considered among society’s most vulnerable persons.
The full weight and power of the Republicans are directed against, you have to ask why? Why are they lying and stirring up hate against us?
Paxton’s opinion and the Alabama law “falsely claim that current medical standards authorize the surgical sterilization of transgender children and adolescents. In fact, present medical standards state that individuals must be the age of majority or older before undergoing surgery on genitals or reproductive organs.”
Paxton’s opinion and the Alabama law “ignore the substantial benefits of medical care for transgender children and adolescents, care which has consistently been shown to reduce gender dysphoria and improve mental health. The best scientific evidence shows that gender dysphoria is real, that untreated gender dysphoria leads predictably to serious, negative medical consequences, and that gender-affirming care significantly improves mental health outcomes, including reducing rates of suicide.”
This is an all out attack of a cultural war directed us, their lies are generating hate that results in physical attacks against us, hate crimes against trans people are breaking records, last more violence was directed at us than ever before.
The article ends with…
The repeated errors and omissions in the attorney general opinion are so consistent and so extensive that it is difficult to believe that the opinion represents a good-faith effort to draw legal conclusions based on the best scientific evidence,” the doctors state. “It seems apparent that the attorney general opinion is, rather, motivated by bias and crafted to achieve a preordained goal: to deny gender-affirming care to transgender youth. The same is true of the scientific claims made in the Alabama law.”
But that wasn’t the only news article in the Baptist News yesterday.
Being transgender and Christian doesn’t have to create distress, trans minister Donnie Anderson said during a webinar held to familiarize churches with that segment of the LGBTQ community.
“I hope young people today, and other people as well, will never have to struggle with the question I struggled with, and which I know others struggle with: that … I can either be authentically who I am or I can be a person of faith, but I can’t be both. I’m here as living testimony to the fact that you can be both,” said Anderson, interim minister of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in New Bedford, Mass., during “Welcoming the Transgender Community,” a May 4 virtual panel discussion presented by the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists.
Anderson, who also serves as an AWAB board member, was joined on the panel she moderated by Erica Saunders, among the first openly transwomen ordained into Baptist ministry and pastor of Peace Community Church in Oberlin, Ohio, and by Dante Tavolaro, rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Greenville, R.I.
[…]
The panelists also shared suggestions for individuals and congregations interested in becoming welcoming of transgender persons.
Tavolaro advised churches to be prepared for the learning curve that comes with a welcoming and affirming ministry. “Accept and know and come to terms with the fact that you are going to fail. You’re going to mess things up. You’re going to get stuff wrong. Knowing that up front will help you be prepared to be corrected and to help keep a posture of openness and to continue to learn and not get defensive.”
There was also another article in the Baptist News this was from 2018,
I recently met a lovely young family in the northern suburbs of Dallas. They told me they previously attended a large Baptist church there – until their high school son became their daughter.
The mother was committed to her volunteer work in the church, and when she told the pastor who supervised that ministry area that her child was transgender, the pastor said: “That’s fine. We love everybody here. But it’s still a sin.”
[…]
Even among Christians who appear kind or progressive, too often the existence of someone who identifies as transgender gets chalked up to “sin.” No doubt that’s the root reason so many Christians happily pile on against transgender persons and their family members about bathrooms and schools, because in their heart of hearts, they don’t understand transgender identity and simply default to thinking it is a sinful lifestyle choice.
But the author is not having any of this “sin” stuff.
Here’s the problem with even a literal reading of that passage: Transgender persons will tell you they are not “men” putting on “women’s” clothing or “women” putting on “men’s” clothing. Instead, they are declaring an identity much deeper than clothing; they are saying that they are dressing outwardly to match who they know they are on the inside. This is not cross-dressing, which is not the subject of this column. Cross-dressing is about finding pleasure in wearing certain clothes. Being transgender is about finding mental and spiritual peace by aligning outward presentation with inner being.
[…]
Some people today identify as “gender fluid,” meaning they find in themselves bits of both male and female identity and cannot definitely say they are one or the other. While this may sound unsettling to some of us on first hearing, a return to Genesis might help. There we also learn that God created both “night” and “day” and that God separated “land” from “sea.” Yet we have no problem understanding the existence of dawn and dusk or marshes and everglades. Also, the point of Genesis 1 is inclusion, not exclusion. The ancient text tells us that God created everything: “and,” not “or.”
[…]
There’s an easy way to remember why this is wrong: Transgender identity is about who a person is. It is about their fundamental being as humans created by God in God’s image – an image that God has declared to be good.
So there are many affirming churches out there, done paint all religions with a broad brush. We need all the allies that we can get and when we have a church defending out back they carry more weight when they back us than we can.
As I have said many times when we were trying to pass the non-discrimination we had a strong religious backing including an Episcopal bishop.
It is coming to bite them in the ass. Their holly grail banning abortion that they just won is causing major companies second thoughts on which horse they are backing.
Republicans have always said that they are pro-business but corporate businesses are starting to question that when the Republicans attacked Disney and now the Republicans are stepping on Citigroup’s toes over abortion rights. But with all the anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion laws being passed corporate America is saying “Wait a minute! We want to hire the best employees and they don’t want to go to conservative states.”
After a supreme court decision that overturns Roe v Wade was leaked and signaled the impending end of federal constitutional protection for abortions, a trickle of companies have slowly started to announce policies that provide abortion access for their employees. But while the protections may keep employees and consumers happy, the threat of retaliation from conservative lawmakers looms.
Citigroup, one of the biggest banks in the US, quietly started covering the travel expenses of employees who want to get an abortion but are banned from getting one in their home state.
The Republicans are hopping mad over that!
Conservatives in Congress asked House and Senate administrators to cancel its contract with the company, which issues credit cards to lawmakers to use for work-related flights, office supplies and other goods. A state lawmaker in Texas, infuriated by Citigroup, introduced a bill that would prevent companies from doing business with local governments in Texas if they provide abortion-related benefits to their employees.
“Citigroup decided to pander to the woke ideologues in its C-suite instead of obeying the laws of Texas,” said Briscoe Cain, the Texas state representative who introduced the bill, in a statement. “We will enact laws necessary to prevent this misuse of shareholder money and hold Citigroup accountable for its violation of our state’s abortion laws”.
All of a sudden the Republicans are telling them how to run their businesses.
Over the last few years, corporate America has started to become more vocal on various issues that have gotten the attention of conservative lawmakers, including voting rights and LGBTQ+ issues. But conservative politicians have gotten bolder at fighting back against what they consider to be “woke capitalism”.
But the Republicans haven't woken to that fact yet… that they are butting into how companies run their businesses in supposedly "business friendly" states.
“We are at the moment everyone’s cried wolf about. It’s here, but there was also a lot of headwind,” she said. “What companies can do with a stroke of a pen to mitigate some of the harm is important, but the larger issue is getting out of this structural whirlpool that we’re in.”
The Republicans have just “woke” the sleeping giant but they haven’t figured it out.
Abortion Is a Business Issue Women make up half of the work force, but the issue’s divisiveness has led many companies to keep quiet on the issue for now. The New York Times By Andrew Ross Sorkin, Vivian Giang, Stephen Gandel, Lauren Hirsch, Ephrat Livni, Jenny Gross and Anna Schaverien May 4, 2022
After a Supreme Court draft ruling showed that Roe v. Wade may be overturned, many of America’s corporate leaders reacted with silence. Abortion is a business issue: Women make up more than half of the work force, and those who were unable to get abortions were less likely to be employed full time six months after denial of care, according to a 2018 paper.
But abortion is also one of the most divisive topics in American politics, and the state of public opinion on the issue is complex. Most Americans support at least some access to abortion, and most support restrictions that Roe v. Wade does not permit. Companies choosing to offer new policies to support employees seeking abortions — or choosing not to — risks dividing customers, employees and clients.
[…]
Companies may start treating reproductive health as an employee benefit to attract talent. “We want to be able to recruit and retain employees wherever they might be living,” Yelp previously told DealBook. But that search for talent is complicated. Restrictive abortion laws have the biggest effects on low-wage workers, who cannot as easily afford to travel out of state for an abortion, and many of their employers, such as at Walmart and Kroger, are headquartered in Republican-led states. “If they’re facing enough of a labor shortage that they think it’ll matter in terms of hiring people at the rate that they want,” said Amanda Shanor, an assistant professor of constitutional law at the Wharton School, “then they might do something.”
And if like many Republicans start passing laws banning companies from paying for abortions and travel you might start seeing businesses start thinking twice about moving to conservative states because it will be affecting their bottom line in not being able to hire the best talent.
The news this week caught corporate America off-guard, resulting in a barrage of worried emails and phone calls trailing into the night as corporate officials grappled with the realization that the slew of state abortion laws were simply dress rehearsals for a bigger nationwide policy shift.
“The communication with corporate parties has just been nonstop,” said Jen Stark, senior director at Tara Health Foundation, an investment firm focused on gender and racial equity. “Companies that were gearing up for impact in June are feeling the reality set in now.”
[…]
Businesses with workers coast-to-coast might face logistical hurdles to providing equal access to health care in Texas vs. California. Entire parts of the country might be ruled in or out for new development and investment. Some companies might struggle to attract new hires to states with abortion bans, while other employees might seek out work only in those same areas.
“This issue is going to force a lot of companies to take a side,” said Laura Gitman, chief operating officer of the nonprofit business consultancy BSR.
To quote Jimi Hendrix, “Click bang, what a hang, your daddy just shot poor me.” the Republicans don’t know yet that they shot themselves in the foot.
2004 before I came out, I’m in incognito at a marriage equality rally.
When marriage equality passed in Connecticut all the celebrations and the partying!
And then the money dried up. Donations stopped to Love Makes A Family and they closed their doors. We got what we want… goodbye.
But the problem was the conservatives didn’t stop, they came out with a long range plan to overthrow equality and we are now seeing the fruits of that effort pay off for them as they packed the Supreme Court.
A leaked draft of the U.S. Supreme Court’s forthcoming opinion on abortion says that the rights to gay marriage and same-sex partner intimacy may be safe — but only for now.
On Monday, Politico released a document that shows the court is poised to overturn the right to abortion decided in the 1973 landmark Texas case Roe v. Wade. Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday confirmed the leaked document’s veracity, but said it does not represent the court’s decision or the ultimate position of any justice.
If it proves to be the final version, or close to it, the opinion would not only uphold a Mississippi ban on abortions at 15 weeks but also overturn Roe and trigger even stricter bans in other states, including Texas.
Constitutional law experts believe the draft opinion also sheds light on the future of LGBTQ rights in this state and across the country. In the document, Justice Samuel Alito makes clear that the decision would apply only to abortion and that it should not be read to have any effect on previous rulings upholding gay unions and striking down bans on gay sex.
You can bet your sweet bippy!
We are on the radar of the conservatives.
This hand picked conservative Supreme Court by the Republicans who put the Bible before the Constitution loves the phrase “State Rights” and I see the handwriting on the wall they we are on the path to rollback our rights for the first time since the Supreme Court Dread Scott decision.
“Once you pull one string, the others become much more loose. The binding is really threatened,” Kreis said. “All of our rights, all of our civil liberties, they rise and fall together. They’re intertwined.”
While the fabric of LGBTQ rights would not unravel immediately, Kreis said it would be much easier for anti-gay advocates to fray it around the edges as Roe falls. If the right to privacy is lost in the abortion setting, for example, states could argue they have an interest in imposing their will on other private medical decisions, like treatments for transgender patients, especially children and adolescents.
“We’re in for a very ugly few months, few years,” Kreis said.
Say goodbye to the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, say goodbye to the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.
What a horrible hodgepodge the court is going to make if they overturn marriage equality!
Can you imagine a couple is married in Connecticut and move to Texas were marriage will probably be banned what a legal nightmare that will create. Then what about if a person has an abortion in another where it is legal, could they be prosecuted for murder if it was legal in the state where they had an abortion?
Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution is called the “Full Faith and Credit Clause” which says that states have to recognize a contract from another state… marriage is a contract so Texas will have to recognize their marriage.
It is coming… mark my words and we better be ready for it. Our rights are not a done deal.
The Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade sent shock waves throughout our country when it was leaked this week. If the ruling stands, abortion access would be decimated in huge swaths of the country, and the rights of Americans everywhere will depend on whether they happen to live in a blue state or in a red state. Beyond being a violation of the human rights of pregnant people, limiting access to abortion is an imposition of governmental Christianity on us all.
And it infringes on the religious liberty of every American Jew.
For Jews, it is no exaggeration to say that access to abortion services isn’t just tolerated, it is a religious requirement, and has been for thousands of years.
[…]
The Torah couldn’t be more explicit: A fetus is not the same as a human life.
The Talmud, a central religious text for Jews written over 1,400 years ago, makes this even clearer by stating that “a fetus is considered a part of the pregnant person’s body, equivalent to their thigh.”
[...]
Jewish legal rulings from the last 1,000 years additionally make it clear that there are other circumstances beyond a pregnant person’s life being in physical danger where an abortion must be performed. Judaism also recognizes personal well-being, mental health and all sorts of other situations where a person might choose to terminate a pregnancy.
In a bill introduced this past week, a Louisiana lawmaker describes human life as "created in the image of God" and seeks to make abortion a homicide from the moment of fertilization – sparking concerns from reproductive rights advocates that such a law would also jeopardize access to contraception and fertility treatments.
Debates around abortion often center around the issue of when life begins, and adjacent religious and moral questions. It came up during oral arguments last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a major abortion case currently before the Supreme Court.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Mississippi's solicitor general to explain his view that the state should be allowed to ban abortions, calling it a religious question that's been debated since the beginning of time.
"It's still debated in religions," she said. "So when you say this is the only right that takes away from the state the ability to protect a life, that's a religious view, isn't it?"
[…]
A variety of views
Polls suggest that while a majority of Americans support abortion rights and oppose overturning Roe, views on abortion are often closely tied to religion.
Jewish, Buddhist, Unitarian and non-religious Americans express some of the strongest support for abortion rights in surveys. Within Christianity, there's a wide variety of views.
Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics & Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank, opposes abortion. As a Catholic, Anderson believes that human life begins at conception.
[...]
Margaret Kamitsuka, an emeritus professor of religion at Oberlin College, argues there's significant ambiguity about abortion in the Christian tradition. She notes it's never mentioned in the Bible.
"Which is quite stunning," she said, "because pretty much every other moral issue is talked about – from divorce to gluttony and robbery and so on."
The topic of religion was brought up in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case currently before the Supreme Court.
Amicus briefs in the Dobbs case before the Supreme Court have come from a wide variety of faith groups — with widely varying positions. A brief from the Freedom from Religion Foundation and other groups argues that religion is "at the heart" of anti-abortion laws, and that "government has no business requiring citizens to comply with the religious beliefs of those who are in power."
So in other words if a state says abortion is murder and life begins at contraception then the states will be tramping on the religious beliefs of millions of people. If the courts decide in favor of the states then the courts will be endorsing the Christian religion.
This is what happens when the court puts the Bible ahead of the Constitution.
Churches I believe can be divided in to two types… Affirming and Non-affirming. And they can be in the same religion or denomination, different sects can have different views about us. For an example there are sects within the Episcopal religion that are accepting of us and others that want to damn us to hell. We had an Episcopal Bishop testify in favor of the trans non-discrimination bill.
In the Rev. Cedric Harmon’s religious tradition, the prayers offered at church almost always start the same way. Worshippers acknowledge God and then give thanks for life, health, strength and safety, four blessings that every human needs.
“We thank God for those blessings and recognize how core they are,” he said.
The Rev. Harmon reminds people of those prayers when they question why the Black church should fight for LGBTQ civil rights protections. He tells them to stop feeling like gay and transgender Americans are seeking special treatment. What they want, he says, are the same basic blessings you ask for at church.
“The legislation we’re talking about would guarantee access to housing, health care, food and employment — blessings that everyone should have the ability to enjoy,” the Rev. Harmon said during an April 27 webinar titled “The Black Church and LGBTQ Rights.”
[…]
In the past, many Black churches chose silence over difficult conversations. Not too long ago, the only time you’d hear church members talk about LGBTQ issues was in secret, behind closed doors, Anderson said.
I see two facts here, the first is that the affirming churches are afraid of stepping up and saying that that they support us. Second, it is like the debate on marriage equality where the mainstream media loves conflict. Having religious leaders on the news that supported marriage equality didn’t sell ads but having anti-marriage clergy on sold ads. They don’t want everyone signing Kumbaya instead they rather have a Jerry Springer type people on the news, with all the shouting and shoving.
As of 2021, nearly 8 in 10 Black Protestants (78%) supported laws that would protect members of the LGBTQ community from discrimination, but just 55% supported same-sex marriage, according to Public Religion Research Institute.
Despite that strong level of support for LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections, the Black church’s engagement with modern gay rights debates is still relatively low. Through their participation in the panel and their regular work, Anderson and the other speakers are working to disrupt the status quo.
1) This week's featured artists, The Beatles, invite us to get up and dance to a song that was a hit before your mother was born. Do you enjoy the oldies? How old must a song be before you consider it "old?"
If is was popular before I was born.
2) Paul McCartney knew bandmate John Lennon's mom, Julia, and credits her with introducing him to the ukulele. Do you recall any of your childhood friends' mothers with fondness?
Yes. We had a great neighborhood.
The kids in the neighborhood (about 6 kids) would fly down on our bicycles and descend on one of our homes to play. Rainy days would find us in one of our basements, sunny days would find us playing hide and seek.
3) Paul's own mother, Mary, tried to instill in her son a sense of pride in his appearance and saw to it he always left the house in a clean, ironed shirt. Paul says that, to this day, when he smells fresh laundry, he thinks of his mum. Is there a scent or sound that reminds you of someone you love who is no longer with us?
Lilacs. We had a lilac bush in our year it smelled so nicely in the spring, that is why I planted one under my bedroom window… and it is starting to blossom.
4) George Harrison was the only member of the band to have any formal musical training. His mother, Louise, supported her son's musical ambitions and made sure he got guitar lessons. Did you take music classes as a child?
I did but I dropped out because I can carry a beat.
5) Ringo Starr was a sickly and often hospitalized little boy. His mother, Elsie, took a job as a barmaid so she could work at night, leaving her days free during visiting hours. When were you most recently in a hospital? Were you an admitted patient, there for an outpatient procedure, or visiting someone?
Outpatient for the most fun medical test… a colonoscopy (NOT!)
6) Mother Winters always gave our own Crazy Sam peppermint tea to calm her stomach. Do you have any tried-and-true home remedies to share?
For a sore throat, a shot of brandy mixed with honey.
7) Sam's mother always tips 15% in restaurants. Sam has worked in food service and is more judgmental, tipping between 10% and 25%, depending on the quality of the service. What's your tipping policy?
20% I like it when they put the amount on the check so I don’t have to stand there to figured it out.
8) Sam's mother still gets the Sunday paper because of the sales fliers. She makes separate lists for each store, picking up grocery and household items where she knows they are on sale. Sam thinks her mother's strategy is a waste of time and gas and prefers one-stop shopping (even better, online one-stop shopping). Are you more like mother or daughter?
I remember one time my sister-in-law said to my brother and me… “Good grief! You two are Lu and Ellie!” (Our parents)
9) Sam is celebrating Mother's Day with her mother's favorite, Hershey Bars. Would you prefer classic milk chocolate, dark chocolate or chocolate with almonds?
Yes. I’ll take them all!
A little known face dark chocolate has almost as much caffeine as coffee, a dark chocolate candy bar is enough to start my heart to pitter patter and skip beats.
Down in Alabama the new anti-trans healthcare law is being fought in court. The law bans healthcare to trans children and is the product of the Republican legislature.
Alabama's new transgender care felony faces federal test A doctor testified that it would be devastating for transgender kids if Alabama outlaws the use of gender-affirming medications for adolescents Associated Press By Kim Chandler May 5, 2022
A doctor testified Thursday that there will be devastating consequences for transgender adolescents if Alabama outlaws the use of gender-affirming medications for them, and that their medical providers would face jail time for providing standard care.
The testimony came in a federal court hearing as families with transgender children seek to block enforcement of the Alabama law banning the treatments. The Alabama Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, which is set take effect on Sunday, makes it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison for medical providers to give puberty blockers and hormones to people under age 19 to help affirm their gender identity.
Lawmakers, who approved the bill this spring, said it is needed to protect children and that decisions on the medications should wait until adulthood. The legislation is part of a wave of bills in Republican-controlled states regarding transgender minors, but it is the first law to put criminal penalties on the doctors who provide the treatments to them.
[…]
The Alabama attorney general's office, in defending the law, has argued that the treatments are motivated by ideology and that the science is unsettled. “If the court enjoins this act, Alabama children face irreversible damage from unproven, sterilizing, and permanently scarring medical interventions pushed by ideological interest groups,” lawyers for the state wrote.
The Republicans and the conservatives know what they are doing puts young lives at risk but as I have said many time they don’t care… votes and donations are more important than our lives. They know that the preponderance of evidence shows that proper healthcare saves lives.
Twenty-three medical and mental health organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, have asked to file a brief in the case urging the judge to enjoin the law. “Gender-affirming medical care is the well-recognized, accepted standard of care for adolescents at risk of or suffering from gender dysphoria,” an attorney wrote in the motion.
The legislature heard testimony from doctors of the harmful affects of denying proper health care to trans children, the Montgomery Advertiser reported that,
Both Hawkins and Dr. Morissa Ladinsky, an associate professor at the University of Alabama Birmingham who works with transgender children, used their testimony to stress the multiple steps needed to diagnose gender dysphoria and the benefits of medication in treating. Hawkins described multiple assessments and discussions to determine whether a youth is suffering from the condition. Medications, she said, are not given to pre-pubescent children, and recommendations for medicine require consultations with teams of medical professionals and family approval.
Hawkins said the advent of medications to treat gender dysphoria had made it possible for mental health professionals to work with transgender youth and families to improve their quality of life.
[…]
During cross-examination, Alabama Deputy Solicitor General Barrett Bowdre pressed Hawkins on the efficacy of medication treatments and the potential risks of taking them, referring to studies from the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. Bowdre also suggested at points that diagnoses of gender dysphoria might not be accurate.
"At present, there are no brain studies or blood tests to determine whether someone has gender dysphoria," he said. "It depends on the patient report and what the family tells us."
But if puberty blockers are so dangers as the state contends that why do they still allow them? The article reports that “The law does not ban the use of hormones and puberty blockers for other situations.” if they drugs are so dangerous why do they allow them in other medical situations?
Face it these bills and laws are just for political gain the expense of our lives.
Why we in the trans community should be worried over the leaked rough draft of the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade. It could lead the way in striking down all non-discrimination laws!
It looks like the court has blinders and is focused on the 'Originalism' and not on the whole of all the amendments.
CNN reported that (The highlighted text is my emphasis)…
In the draft opinion, Alito writes that Roe “must be overruled.”
“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” Alito wrote. He said that Roe was “egregiously wrong from the start” and that its reasoning was “exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.”
He added, “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s representatives.”
“That is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand,” he said, according to the draft.
Their argument doesn’t hold water, the Ninth Amendment states,
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Now I am not a lawyer but it seems to me that the 9th that our rights are not limited to those spelled out in the Constitution, that it seems like the justices conveniently forgot about the amendment.
NBC News looked at the legal arguments that the leaked draft stated…
1. The opinion claims that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in our nation’s history and tradition.
“Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for the right to obtain an abortion. Zero. None.” Alito thereby claims that there is no historical basis for a right to abortion. Even assuming Alito did not distort the historical record with some cherry-picked law office history — the pejorative term historians give to the error-prone historical analyses of lawyers and judges in cases — his claim is rubbish.
Rights can be stated at different levels of generality. The right to homosexual sodomy is a narrow formulation; the right to choose your intimate partner is a broader formulation. Stated narrowly, as Alito did with the right to abortion, the historical record may not support the right. Stated slightly more broadly, it becomes more obvious that the right is deeply rooted in our nation’s history and tradition. The right to make medical decisions is deeply rooted in our nation’s history and tradition. So, as previous Supreme Courts have noted, is the right to bodily autonomy, as well as decisional autonomy — such as the right to make major life decisions like whom to marry and whether to have children. These are not listed in the Constitution, but as the Ninth Amendment states: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
The article goes on to to debunk justice Alito stated...
2. The opinion relies on history and tradition alone to determine our rights.
3. The opinion reaffirms that pregnancy discrimination is not sex discrimination.
4. The court casually dismisses the equal protection clause.
“[W]e briefly address one additional constitutional provision that some … have now offered as yet another home for the abortion right: The Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.” Although it is obvious to millions of women, Alito rejected out of hand the idea that abortion rights have much to do with equality. Yet as Planned Parenthood v. Casey recognized, without the right to control their reproduction, women cannot participate as equals in the social, economic and political life of the country. Alito devotes only a brief paragraph to this crucial aspect of why the right to abortion should be constitutionally guaranteed, and his main argument for dismissing it is that Geduldig and its progeny preclude it — despite the clearly flawed reasoning of Geduldig.
They also glanced over the Ninth Amendment.
5. The opinion claims there is nothing wrong with letting legislatures determine abortion access.
6. The opinion puts many other rights at risk.
7. The opinion violates the principle of separation of church and state.
“There is ample evidence that the passage of [anti-abortion] laws was … spurred by a sincere belief that abortion kills a human being.” But the view that an embryo or a fetus is a human being and that abortion is murder is ultimately a religious view, and not a universal one at that. Rather, it is the deeply held belief of a vocal and powerful subset of Christians; in Reform Judaism, for instance, an abortion may be religiously mandated.
8. The opinion engages in shameless hypocrisy.
“In interpreting what is meant by the Fourteenth Amendment’s reference to ‘liberty,’ we must guard against the natural human tendency to confuse what that Amendment protects with our own ardent views about the liberty that Americans should enjoy.” Yet that is exactly what Alito’s opinion does: It overrules decades-old precedent to impose conservative justices’ anti-abortion views because they finally have the votes to do so.
Then we have this did the justices perjure themselves at the Congressional hearings on their appointments?
Four years ago, at the Senate confirmation hearing that would send Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, asked the judge, point-blank, how he’d rule on a woman’s right to an abortion.
“Can you commit, sitting here today, that you would never overturn Roe v. Wade?”
Kavanaugh’s expression didn’t change as he quickly replied, “Senator, each of the eight Justices currently on the Supreme Court, when they were in this seat, declined to answer that question.”
It was a practiced non-answer Kavanaugh deployed repeatedly as he dodged questions on Roe during his 2018 confirmation hearing, according to a Globe analysis of all 300 references to the landmark ruling he faced over dozens of hours of questioning.
But Senator Collins said,
Senator Susan Collins, a moderate, pro-abortion rights Republican from Maine, suggested to the Globe that she felt the justices, who Politico reported are among the five justices poised to overturn Roe, misrepresented their views in private discussions she had prior to voting to confirm them if they do vote to gut the precedent. She told reporters at the time that she believed Kavanaugh agreed with her that Roe was “settled law.”
[…]
“I will tell you what my view right now is, which is, it is an important precedent of the Supreme Court that has been reaffirmed many times,” Kavanaugh said of Roe during the trial. " Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed Roe. So Casey now becomes a precedent-on-precedent. It is not as if it is just a run of the mill case that was decided and never been reconsidered, but Casey specifically reconsidered it, applied the stare decisis factors, and decided to reaffirm it.”
[…]
Both recognized Roe as Supreme Court precedent, and that future cases, including Planned Parenthood v. Casey, reaffirmed a woman’s right to an abortion. In these answers, the judges did not seem overtly hostile to those precedents.
“I will tell you what my view right now is, which is, it is an important precedent of the Supreme Court that has been reaffirmed many times,” Kavanaugh said of Roe during the trial. " Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed Roe. So Casey now becomes a precedent-on-precedent. It is not as if it is just a run of the mill case that was decided and never been reconsidered, but Casey specifically reconsidered it, applied the stare decisis factors, and decided to reaffirm it.”
As for Gorsuch…
“Senator, again, I would tell you that Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, is a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed,” Gorsuch said.
He would later say in the trial: “All precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court deserves the respect of precedent, which is quite a lot. It is the anchor of law. It is the starting place for a judge.”
So what do you think did they perjure themselves?
For the conservatives any court cases that do not got their way is an “activist court” so that means that they can ignore precedents because in their views.
So, what’s next?
Marriage equality?
Gay sex?
Us?
Interracial marriage?
Title VII?
Title IX?
The Civil Rights Act of 1964?
You do know that the evangelical Christians and the Republicans have us in their sights. They want to control ever aspect your life including who you love and how you identify.
HRHRHR
Here in Connecticut the governor signed the bill to prevent cooperating in investigations and prosecutions of reproductive healthcare providers in the state from other states that have banned reproductive healthcare.
Under the bill, state and local agencies in the state of Connecticut, which codified the Roe v. Wade decision in state law in 1990, would be prevented from cooperating in investigations and prosecutions of abortion providers in the state. The bill also modifies the state’s extradition statutes and prevents an out-of-state patient’s medical records from being disclosed.
Even through the talk is about abortion this bill also covers us, the bill has a board definition of reproductive healthcare (I wrote about it here.).
~~~~~~~~~~
Where do I stand on the issue.
I believe that the government should have no say in what you do to your body, that government has no in your personal religious beliefs. I believe that life begins when the fetus can live on its own.
I personally am against abortion except to prevent the mother's death because there are so many ways to prevent pregnancy. But I will not block a persons right to chose.
You know that the Republicans and the conservatives have been passing laws, calling us “groomers,” and worst but now they are going suicide crisis hotlines!
Conservatives pushing anti-LGBTQ “grooming” attacks have turned their attention to the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that provides counseling for teens.
In late April, conservatives began to circulate a cartoon from the Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention program for LGBTQ youth, according to its website. The cartoon explains that those who want to chat with a counselor can do so with the ability to quickly exit and erase browser history. The feature is meant to help those with anti-LGBTQ parents. Similar protections are provided by domestic abuse services.
But a number of conservatives — many of whom hyped concerns about the teaching of race in school — have recently recirculated it as proof that the nonprofit is engaging in grooming. One of the leading critics has been author and commentator James Lindsay, who published a book criticizing critical race theory (the study of racism in U.S. systems and policies) last year before pivoting to a series of YouTube videos about “groomer schools.”
Are these people sick or what? They don’t care who they hurt,
“Only a matter of time until solid evidence of serious wrongdoing emerges regarding the Trevor Project. They don't mobilize to protect anything unless there's something really bad going on there that they don't want anyone to find out. Mark my words,” wrote Lindsay on Twitter, later adding, “Groomer Project posing as suicide prevention.”
[…]
The article aimed to attack the organization for not providing more information about how to de-transition but contains numerous examples of a counselor repeatedly asking the parent, who is pretending to be a 15-year-old, about whether she has self-harmed or attempted suicide.
My thoughts are that they will do a “sting operation” and secretly record the phone conversation.
Suicidal thoughts were even more prevalent among transgender and nonbinary youth, with 53% reporting that they had seriously considered suicide in the past year.
Marlene Matarese, a clinical associate professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Social Work, said that in addition to suicidality, LGBTQ youth also have disproportionately higher rates of behavioral health issues including depression, anxiety and substance use.
But these wackos don’t care, they are motivated by their hate for all things LGBTQ+ and want us wiped off the face of the earth.
They don’t want us to be able to find help, they don’t care the harm they are doing they have their political agenda they are pushing.
Hannah Wesolowski, NAMI’s [National Alliance on Mental Illness] chief advocacy officer, told Yahoo News that organizations like the Trevor Project provide much-needed support to LGBTQ youth, whose increased rates of mental health conditions and suicidality are tied to the discrimination, harassment and rejection they often face, not just from their peers but also from their families.
“There are too many people right now who are telling these kids ‘there’s something wrong with you,'” said Wesolowski. “They need to hear that there isn’t anything wrong with them. And they need to have support and hear the message that they’re loved, they’re accepted, they’re respected, and that they’re not alone.”
~~~~~~~~~~
They attack anyone who supports us, Michigan Sen. Mallory McMorrow is a target of their lies and hate.
Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow spoke with John Yang about her powerful floor speech this week in which she defended herself against false accusations of “grooming” children from a GOP colleague. McMorrow spoke passionately about her responsibility to defend people who are less privileged as a white, Christian woman – and why that made her a target.
[…]
State Sen. Mallory McMorrow:
So, these attacks we have seen about grooming or marginalization, they impact the LGBTQ community, the Black community. It is really targeting marginalized groups, marginalized people.
And what I meant when I said I am the biggest threat is, I am not a member of a marginalized community. I am a straight, white, married, Christian, suburban mom. And if more people like me, who are not in a minority group, who are not under attack stand up and call it out as hateful, hollow nonsense, then we take away its power.
[...]
John Yang:
Why do you think the Republicans are doing this sort of thing in general? And why do you think they're singling you out?
State Sen. Mallory McMorrow:
It is — it's pulling this language from QAnon conspiracies.
It started in the darkest corners of the Internet, this idea that the government is run by a satanist cabal of pedophiles. And we saw what happens, when a gunman opened fire at a pizza parlor in D.C., believing that there were pedophiles there trapping children in the basement, based on this lie.
But now this conspiracy is being pulled out in the open. And it is being used by one of our country's two major political parties as the official policy, the official attack, the — and we have to stop it.
So, why me specifically is, yes, I'm one of the people who walked out of the speech, but, also, I'm not particularly shy about expressing my opinions about these things. I host a livestream every week. And I talked about why I walked out of the invocation.
So I think it was a signal to anybody like me who dares to stand up with the marginalized community that: We're going to paint you as one of them. You're no longer one of us. You are one of them. You are something dark and dirty and evil. And we have to take our identities back.
We have a very rocky past as we approach Pride month maybe we should look at our History.
Gays were removed back in the early seventies but it took decades for us to be removed from the DSM as a psychiatric disorder but we still are in the DSM as an uncomfortable feeling.
They thought he’d wear a mask that was a little more subtle. Something like the Lone Ranger, just a piece of cloth around the eyes. But no.
Introduced to the room as Dr. Henry Anonymous, wearing a wig and a tuxedo three sizes too big, and speaking through a microphone that distorted his voice, Dr. John Fryer stood in front of a crowd of psychiatrists at their annual meeting donning a garish Richard M. Nixon mask he and his lover had modified.
It was 1972, and he masked himself in order to say the following words: “I am a homosexual. I am a psychiatrist.” His declaration changed the world.
It has been 50 years since Fryer’s speech, a moment that was central to removing homosexuality from the list of mental disorders, the impact of which contributed to the progression of LGBTQ rights through the next several decades.
[…]
When activists began increasing pressure on the American Psychiatric Association, in the early 1970s (“Stop talking about us and start talking to us!” was the activists’ refrain), Fryer thought it was “a fool’s errand,” according to an interview with the public radio program and podcast ”This American Life” in 2002, a year before his death. He said he wished the activists would “shut up” and that he was embarrassed by them.
Meanwhile back at the trans community we didn’t have any champions fighting for us…
The World Health Organization removed “transsexualism” from the International Classification of Diseases, a diagnostic manual of illnesses used by most countries around the world.
The change was announced earlier this week as part of the newest version of the manual, the ICD-11. The removal of “transsexualism” means transgender people will no longer be classified as having a mental illness by the WHO, an international public health agency run by the United Nations. The diagnosis of “transsexualism” was renamed “gender incongruence” and moved from the “Mental and Behavioral Disorders” chapter to the “Conditions Related to Sexual Health” chapter.
“This is a historic move,” Sam Winter, a public health professor at Australia's Curtin University, told NBC News via email. “An end to a classification that was a historical artifact, had little basis in science, and had massive consequences for the lives of trans people.”
Winter is a member of the WHO Working Group on Sexual Disorders and Sexual Health, which advised the organization on ICD-11. He said the new language — "gender incongruence" — focuses on “how the person identifies” and enables “the diagnoses to be used with non-binary people as well as those who identify as boys/men and girls/women.”
The updated ICD does not remove diagnoses for trans people entirely. Winter said to do so would be counterproductive.
"Quite a few trans people seek substantial ongoing healthcare — it can be life changing, or even life saving. So we need a diagnosis.”
So… We are left in limbo. If we want healthcare we need to be diagnosed with something, in this screwy world of insurance.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton relied on false claims, exaggerations and errors to conclude that gender-affirming medical care constitutes child abuse, a report by university-level medical experts has concluded.
Paxton's legal opinion on transgender care, issued in February, formed the basis of Gov. Greg Abbott's directive requiring Child Protective Services to investigate all reports of families with children who are receiving gender-affirming care.
But the report published Monday by medical and legal experts at Yale University and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center said Paxton's opinion was so full of errors and false claims that it appeared to have been "motivated by bias" and crafted to reach a predetermined goal: denying medical care to transgender youths.
"The repeated errors and omissions in the AG Opinion are so consistent and so extensive that it is difficult to believe that the opinion represents a good-faith effort to draw legal conclusions based on the best scientific evidence," the report's executive summary said.
Hey! We could have told you that they fudged the data, we know that all of the medical association believe treating trans children saves lives. But we also know that the Republicans knew that and did let a little think facts get in their way.
The rest of the article tears apart Abbott's and Paxton’s lies.
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The next article is from the Oregon Health and Science University…
“There’s already a body of evidence that shows gender-affirming care has many benefits, such as improving mental health and reducing suicidality,” says Dy, an assistant professor of urology and of plastic and reconstructive surgery in the OHSU School of Medicine, and also a surgeon involved in the OHSU Transgender Health Program.
“But a critical perspective is missing from medical literature,” she adds. “Now is the time to dig in and truly center transgender patient perspectives about what effective and successful gender-affirming care looks like. Community-informed research is needed to more accurately define and measure care outcomes.”
[…]
Much of what gender-affirming care is today has been determined by the medical community — whose members are largely cis-gender and cannot fully understand the nuances of what transgender patients need. Dy identifies as cis-gender and actively pursues the perspectives of her trans and non-binary colleagues and patients to inform her own work; she wants those experiences to help shape other researchers’ and clinicians’ work, too.
With support from the nonprofit Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, she co-founded the Transgender and Non-Binary Allied Research Collective, or TRANS-ARC, in 2019. The collective seeks out trans and non-binary patient perspectives to shape research related to gender-affirming genital surgeries. Dy and her colleagues encourage researchers to engage with transgender community members early and often, and ultimately embed trans and non-binary people along each study’s steps. They say every research detail should be evaluated through the trans lens and that everything — from which topics should be studied to which survey questions should be used — should be considered in partnership with trans community members.
Hopefully research like this will go a long way to debunk the trash that the Republicans are putting out. The problem is that longitudinal research by its very nature takes time which we don’t have.
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The last article is about court rulings in Indiana and birth certificates there which for those who are born there are almost impossible to change.
The ability of transgender Hoosiers to change the gender marker on their birth certificate, and potentially all past gender marker changes, are in limbo due to divisions among the state's appellate judges and continuing inaction by the Indiana General Assembly.
In 2014, a three-judge panel of the Indiana Court of Appeals first ruled transgender Hoosiers are entitled to seek a court order to amend their birth certificate to match their gender identity, so long as the change is made in good faith and not for an unlawful purpose.
The Court of Appeals last year extended authorization to seek a birth certificate gender change to the parents of a transgender child, in keeping with the fundamental right of parents to make important decisions for their minor children, so long as the trial court determines such a change is in the best interest of the child.
How to determine the best interest of a transgender child was the subject of a subsequent 2021 Court of Appeals decision that rejected the presumption that a parent's unopposed decision automatically is in the child's best interest, and instead recognized the state also has an interest in any child's well-being, and medical evidence of gender dysphoria, or another condition, may be required before a birth certificate gender change is permitted.
And it doesn’t look good for those born in Indiana with the Republicans controlling the government,
The Republican-controlled General Assembly likewise has not acted to clarify birth certificate gender changes.
[…]
Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb vetoed House Enrolled Act 1041 March 21. Lawmakers are due to return to the Statehouse on May 24 to consider overriding the governor's veto and enacting the proposal into law notwithstanding his objections.
Meanwhile, Appeals Judge Paul Mathias said with more than 38,000 transgender Hoosiers potentially affected by the uncertainty over birth certificate gender changes, and no law addressing the issue, it's the responsibility of the judicial branch to fashion a solution.
So we are in limbo and are at the mercy of the courts. It looks like Indiana Supreme Court will decide our fate this fall.
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