Category: Anger

Republican lawmakers introduce bill to put parents who support their trans kids in prison for life

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/10/republican-lawmakers-introduces-bill-put-parents-support-trans-kids-prison-life/

State Rep. Beau LaFave clearly doesn’t understand what trans gender is, what gender is, and how it doesn’t mean having sex.   I wish these law makers on the right would take the time to learn something about the subject they are regulating before they write stupid laws.    In this case these lawmakers seem to think getting elected makes them smarter and know more about medical treatment than the doctors / scientist in the major medical organizations which all support affirmative transgender care.  What they are really saying is their politics come before the medical care prescribed by doctors to their patients.    Hugs

One of the bill’s sponsors said it’s “insane” that kids can have a gender identity “when it is illegal for them to have sex.”
 
By  
Guard turning keys to a jail cell
Photo: Shutterstock
 

A Michigan bill seeks to brand gender-affirming parents and doctors as child abusers and even proposes life in prison as a possible consequence for facilitating gender-affirming care.

H.B. 6454 would amend the penal code to state that child abuse includes when someone “knowingly or intentionally consents to, obtains, or assists with a gender transition procedure for a child.”

The bill includes any hormones or puberty blockers in its definition of “gender-transition procedure.” Puberty blockers are reversible medications that delay the onset of puberty so that trans youth can have more time to explore their gender identities before the permanent effects of puberty occur and they have been shown to decrease lifelong suicide risk for trans people who want them.

State Rep. Beau LaFave (R), one of the lawmakers who introduced the bill, told The Hill that kids shouldn’t transition until they are old enough to have sex.

“People are abusing these children. The idea that we would be making potentially life-altering changes to 11-, 12-, 13-, 14-, 15-year-old kids when it is illegal for them to have sex is insane. I mean, they’re not responsible enough to smoke a cigarette until they’re 21.”

“Gender affirming care is medically necessary and life-saving care for transgender youth,” Equality Michigan executive director Erin Knott said in a statement. “Medical decisions belong to trans youth, their parents, and their doctors.”

Should the bill pass, Michigan would become the second state to make gender-affirming care a felony, after Alabama – though a judge has blocked part of Alabama’s law from taking effect.

Republicans across the country continue to advocate for laws banning youth from receiving gender-affirming care, even though multiple studies show that transgender youth experience high rates of suicidality, and that access to affirming healthcare often leads to significant improvements in their mental health and quality of life.

In August, anti-LGBTQ Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced a bill at the federal level that would make providing gender affirming care for transgender minors a class C felony, ban federal funds—including Medicaid funds—from being used for gender affirming care for transgender people, ban medical schools from teaching about gender affirming care, stop health care plans under the Affordable Care Act from funding gender affirming care, and ban anyone found to have performed gender affirming care from immigrating to the U.S.

 
 

MTG Threatens McCarthy: I Better Get “Lots Of Power” – JMG

MTG Threatens McCarthy: I Better Get “Lots Of Power”

The New York Times reports:

“There’s going to be a lot of investigations,” Marjorie Taylor Greene said, describing what she anticipates if the Republicans regain the House majority this November. “I’ve talked with a lot of members about this. My style would be a lot more aggressive, of course,” she told me, referring to McCarthy.

“For him, I think the evidence needs to be there. But I think people underestimate him, in thinking he wouldn’t do it.”

“I think that to be the best speaker of the House and to please the base, he’s going to give me a lot of power and a lot of leeway,” she predicted in a flat, unemotional voice. “And if he doesn’t, they’re going to be very unhappy about it. And that’s not in any way a threat at all. I just think that’s reality.”

Read the full article.

thatotherjean • 19 hours ago

Reason 12.732 why we have to make sure Republicans are in the minority in both the House and Senate in November. Because nuts like MTG are determined to punish somebody for something. They don’t know why, but they will make something up to intimidate Democrats and influence their low-information base. Republicans want Fascism so badly they can taste it–so long as they’re the ones in power. VOTE like democracy depended on it, because it does.

Pollos Hermanos ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ • 19 hours ago

What could possibly go wrong?

Thumbnail

Raising_Rlyeh • 19 hours ago

The House, if we lose it, will grind to a halt and the goldfish-brained populace will blame Biden.

Darreth Raising_Rlyeh • 18 hours ago

They’ll do it with the help of the MSM. The MSM will cover the GQP’s framing and messaging ENDLESSLY and that will be the only political message the vast majority of the public will hear. Then the MSM will help elect a GQPer to occupy the WH in ’24.

Max-1 🔫+cult(R)=☠️ • 19 hours ago

REMEMBER:
One of America’s two main political parties sought to overthrow the Government. That party is being treated with a legitimacy that belies the truth: They sought to upend our way of life.

Smokecrown Max-1 🔫+cult(R)=☠️ • 18 hours ago

They still seek to upend our way of life.

The_Wretched • 19 hours ago

“And that’s not in any way a threat at all.”
underscoring how it’s totally a threat

Chuck in NYC The_Wretched • 19 hours ago

I’m not sure she is as powerful in that caucus as she thinks she is. Nancy’s removing her from committees was likely completely OK with McCarthy, but this will be interesting to watch if they do get back control of the House.

Glenn • 19 hours ago

It’s very common for sophomore congressmen to be given lots of power – NOT. McCarthy needs to borrow Pelosi’s balls for a few days and put this harpy in her place.

Darreth Glenn • 18 hours ago

McCarthy won’t make any mistakes. He needs to inject maximum punishment into the system, maximum distraction for the MSM to endlessly cover and splash into everyone’s minds, and stir up as much controversy as possible. The point will be to grind to a halt the levers of gov’t so that they can state every day that the problem and the fault of the stoppage lies squarely with Biden and any other Dems who are still in power.

amy cuscuriae • 19 hours ago

More frightening than this dimwitted, belligerent Greene woman, are any voters who cast ballots for her: gullible, stupid and, most of all, mean.

Paula • 19 hours ago

She and Coach Gym would make a real pair on a committee.
Can you even imagine the bullshit?

MD AG Nominee: God’s Laws Supersede Everything – JMG

MD AG Nominee: God’s Laws Supersede Everything

We need to make sure these Christian nationals do NOT win and get into power.    This is running to be the top law enforcement official in the state, yet he said what he thinks his god wants is above the laws of the country.     Hugs

The Washington Post reports:

Michael Peroutka has made clear that if he is elected, his view of Christianity will determine his decisions. And he has said that as attorney general he will not support laws enacted by the legislature if he believes they are in conflict with his understanding of God’s law.

He elaborated on many of these positions at the Turning Point USA forum, repeatedly returning to the idea that laws created by men and women are not legitimate unless they are in accordance with God’s law.

And Peroutka has said he wouldn’t disavow his association with the League of the South, which has been categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. At a League of the South conference in 2012, he sang “Dixie,” calling it “the national anthem.”

Read the full article.

Peroutka has appeared a JMG over a dozen times in the last decade for anti-gay and racist stunts, including when he headlined a rally for anti-gay Kentucky clerk Kim Davis.

The League of the South is best known for burning the Israeli flag, making Hitler salutes, and calling the Holocaust the “Holohoax.”

You may also recall that the League Of The South recently celebrated the 150th anniversary of the assassination of “tyrant” Abraham Lincoln and provided the signage for anti-gay rallies in Alabama.

Peroutka was the largest financial backer of now-former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore’s successful campaign to be returned to the bench.

He last appeared on JMG in August when he declared 9/11 to have been an “inside job.”

 

Blackburn: Biden’s “Cabal” Wants To Keep COVID Going – JMG

Blackburn: Biden’s “Cabal” Wants To Keep COVID Going

I am stunned at the projection of the republican party / right wing.    Also they don’t even bother to try to stick to reality, saying the most wild things they can think of or have heard.   The fact that a large section of the right loves and believes these wild of the wall things because the right has ruined the public education system in the US.   Why do you think wealthy people send their kids to private schools?   Because they deliberately destroyed public education so they have a steady stream of uneducated workers who won’t be able to advance and will work for low wages in any conditions.   Plus uneducated people with no idea of history are much easier to control.   I fear for the country if we cannot turn around the republican drive to make the US a whole owned company of the wealthy.   People are still dying of Covid, more in red states that the governors deny the value of vaccines / masks.      Hugs

“You just can’t make these things up. He said very definitively more than once that COVID is over and the pandemic is over.

“And because of that now – the team behind him, what I call that cabal in the White House – they have to keep this pandemic going so that they can spend more taxpayer money the way they want to.

“And, they think it helps them in the elections, having more people vote via mail-in ballot, making certain that they have that power and control. That’s what this is all about, always has been from day one.” – Sen. Marsha Blackburn, today on Fox.

As you may have noticed, “cabal” is Blackburn’s favorite word. She’s used it to describe the CDC, the FBI, teachers unions, and others.

 

 

Trump’s CDC Changed Covid Reports Under Political Pressure, Panel Finds

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-17/trump-s-cdc-changed-weekly-reports-house-covid-panel-finds

We knew this even though the trump people denied it.   DeathSantis did the same thing.   Horrible waste of life because of pride and ego.    Over 81 thousand people have died of Covid already and more still dying because they didn’t get the vaccines / boosters.  The Florida surgeon general claims the vaccines are more harmful than Covid itself in what is laughingly called a joke of a study, which was not a study in any sense of the word.    Hugs

 

Donald Trump

Donald Trump Photographer: Chris Kleponis/Polaris/Bloomberg

Donald Trump
Donald TrumpPhotographer: Chris Kleponis/Polaris/Bloomberg
Updated on
 

The CDC bowed to the Trump administration’s demands to change the editorial process of its weekly scientific journal after warnings from then health secretary Alex Azar to “get in line,” a House investigation found.

The pressure faced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report‘s procedures was one of several instances of political interference by former President Donald Trump’s aides that the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis identified in a report released Monday. The report was provided to Bloomberg Law ahead of the official release.

The latest subcommittee report details widespread attempts by Trump-era political appointees within the Department of Health and Human Services to interfere with the CDC, including tampering with the science and misuse of the agency’s quarantine authority in a way an agency division director described as “morally wrong.”

The CDC declined to comment on the report.

“This prioritization of politics, contempt for science, and refusal to follow the advice of public health experts harmed the nation’s ability to respond effectively to the coronavirus crisis and put Americans at risk,” Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), chairman of the subcommittee, said in a statement.

“As we continue to recover from the coronavirus crisis, we must also continue to work to safeguard scientific integrity and restore the American people’s trust in our public health institutions,” he said.

Azar and other political appointees called for MMWR editorial process changes in May 2020 out of concern the findings put Donald Trump’s White House at a political disadvantage, the congressional panel said. The changes granted political appointees at HHS access to summaries of what was coming out in the MMWRs for the first time, which the committee said “ultimately precipitated HHS officials’ attempts to interfere with the MMWRs over the following months.”

Azar told Bloomberg Law Monday that he “never pressured” Trump’s CDC director, Robert Redfield, “to modify the content of a single MMWR scientific article.”

“I always regarded the MMWR and other peer-reviewed scientific publications as sacrosanct,” Azar said in an email. “Indeed, I worked directly with Dr. Redfield to ensure that processes were in place to protect the integrity of the peer-review process for the MMWR when an internal CDC procedural defect was identified in early May 2020.”

Voice of CDC

The MMWR has long been considered the “voice of the CDC” and serves as the agency’s essential source for disseminating information quickly to inform public health and evidence-based decisions that drive policy. It was a report in the MMWR that in part prompted Anthony S. Fauci to pivot his career toward HIV research in 1981.

 

The allegations stem from former CDC Chief of Staff Kyle McGowan and Deputy Chief of Staff Amanda Campbell’s testimony to the House panel, in which they said Azar warned that “if the CDC would not get in line, then HHS would take control of approving the publication of the MMWRs.” McGowan and Campbell, who joined the agency during the Trump administration, left several months after those May 2020 allegations and started their own consulting firm.

“The committee’s report reflects a serious and fair look at what happened,” McGowan wrote in an email which included Campbell in the response.

Political appointees successfully changed or held up at least five MMWR reports and tried to interfere with at least 19 different reports out of concerns they would harm Trump politically, McGowan and Campbell said in the subcommittee report.

The report marks the culmination of a two-year investigation by the House panel and offers new details of allegations into how the Trump administration handled the Covid-19 response. The CDC historically has prided itself on making science-based, data-driven decisions to protect the public health, but the House panel concluded political interference caused lasting harm on CDC’s morale and credibility in the nation’s public health institutions.

Redfield told a Senate panel more than two years ago, “At no time has the scientific integrity of the MMWR been compromised, and I can say that under my watch it will not be compromised.” But Redfield told the House coronavirus committee that the Trump administration “compromised” CDC guidances on Covid-19. He said the process for developing coronavirus policy “got complicated” and gave him “PTSD,” or post-traumatic stress disorder. It also gave the White House budget outfit veto power, he said.

The House investigation also concluded the Trump administration blocked the CDC from holding its weekly press briefings for several months after Nancy Messonnier, who was then the CDC’s longtime immunization director, cautioned in February 2020 that a significant disruption could happen and the nation should prepare.

 

The former administration also installed political appointees who attempted to downplay the severity of the virus and misused its quarantine authority under Title 42 to close the southern border. CDC’s quarantine and global migration director, Martin Cetron, told the House panel that agency staff didn’t write the Title 42 order, allegedly saying, “It’s just morally wrong to use a public authority that has never, ever, ever been used this way. It’s to keep Hispanics out of the country.”

The Biden administration recently expanded Title 42 and coupled it with a humanitarian parole program under new rules aimed at stemming the flow of migrants from Venezuela.

The House report from the CDC marks the third in a series from the coronavirus subcommittee. A report released in August found similar attempts by the Trump administration to interfere with the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to withdraw authorization of a Covid-19 treatment because it didn’t work. The first report released in June examined a controversial herd immunity approach to managing Covid-19 that would have sidestepped mitigation measures.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeannie Baumann in Washington at jbaumann@bloombergindustry.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Cheryl Saenz at csaenz@bloombergindustry.com

(Updated with a statement from McGowan and Campbell in the 12th paragraph)

Let’s talk about the most important midterm issue….

Gay teen exposes horrific bullying in viral TikTok video

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/10/gay-teen-exposes-horrific-bullying-viral-tiktok-video/

Imagine how scary it would be for anyone to be boxed in by cars with their little sister / family member with them, unable to leave and threatened by a group of angry people.  People this is what the right wants, their enforcer thugs to threaten and terrorize the gays and the family of gay peoples.   This is right out of the Russian playbook.   My god, not only did the teachers and school let the kid be harassed at school which begs the question of how can a gay / lesbian / trans person get a quality education if they are worried about their safety.   Hard to concentrate on the lesson if you are worried about being attacked and hurt.   This is why LGBTQ+ kids need to see rainbow flags and to have teachers with rooms they can feel safe in or got to if they are feeling threatened.   Seriously one respected person who reads the blog asked why rainbow pride stickers need to be on classroom doors or up in the classrooms.   This is why.  The point of the republican / right wing media attacks is to drive hate and anger at the LGBTQ+ community.    They want this response.   Remember the Florida legislator who wrote the don’t say gay bill said he did it because he was angered that gay / trans kids were being accepted by other kids and not targeted for abuse / harm.   He wanted to see these LGBTQ+ kids beaten up, abused / hurt. demonized because it turns out he is a highly religious Christian.   Son of a bitch!  His gods feelings come before the feelings of living kids.   Bastard!   The longer the Republicans in office and the right-wing media push the evils of the LGBTQ+ kids the more abuse the kids thought to be gay are going to face.    Which again is what the republicans / right wing wants.  Do you know what would have happened to me if someone had come up to my father and told him I was a faggot?   More bruises, broken bones, pain, and rapes.   This shit is serious.   Religious families will grill the kids and the kids will face going to conversion therapy or being thrown out of their homes.  Again these attack were on the decline before trump and DeathSantis.     Hugs

“I’m sick of being silent about it, so I finally spoke up.”
 
By  
Gay teen exposes horrific bullying in viral TikTok video
Landon Jones Photo: Screenshot
 

A California high school student’s TikTok post exposing the anti-LGBTQ bullying he’s been subjected to has gone viral.

Earlier this month, 18-year-old Landon Jones posted the video, which shows two separate instances of anti-gay bullying caught on camera. One incident, recorded by Jones in August, shows a group of young men surrounding his car in the parking lot of a Starbucks.

“This f**king fa***t,” one of the young men says.

In the video, Jones says the group apparently followed him and his sister to the Starbucks, surrounding his car so that he could not leave, while yelling slurs and threats.

The second incident was captured on Jones’s family’s home surveillance camera, shows a young man approach the front door of his house in the dead of night.

“Does Landon live here,” the teen asks when Jones’s father answers the door.

“Yeah, why?” Jones’s father says.

“Someone said to come up here because he’s a fa***t!” the young man shouts as he runs off.

@allclearforlandon

#lgbt #fyp #hatecrime

♬ original sound – Landon Jones

 

“I remember being up in my room, hearing it, and I heard what he said. I immediately jumped out of bed and walked outside to see what was happening,” Jones told NBC News. “I had no sleep that night. I was honestly really upset. I was crying.”

“I have been called ‘fa***t’ countless times at school, and it literally doesn’t bother me at all,” Jones says in the TikTok video. “But the fact that they came to my house does.”

Jones said that was a turning point. On October 1, he shared the post on TikTok. The clip has received 1.4 million views and over 12,000 primarily supportive comments.

“I’m sick of being silent about it, so I spoke up finally,” Jones said.

He said that at least two of the young men involved in both incidents attend El Toro High School in Lake Forest, California where Jones is a senior. His parents told NBC News that they are unaware of any action the school has taken in response to the harassment.

But a spokesperson for the school district provided a statement saying that Saddleback Valley Unified School District and El Toro High School “together with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD), immediately launched a comprehensive investigation to uncover the facts of the incidents.”

“We can confirm that the person seen in the surveillance video of the incident that took place at a private home is not a student in SVUSD,” said Wendie Hauschild, the school district’s director of communications and administrative services. “Due to the confidentiality that we are required by law to uphold for our students, as well as other minors, SVUSD is unable to share further information regarding the results of the investigation. SVUSD remains steadfast in its commitment to create inclusive, supportive, and safe environments for all students on our campuses.”

An Orange County sheriff’s spokesperson said that a school resource officer has spoken to “individuals that may or may not have been involved in this incident” or “possibly have knowledge of the incident.” While the young man who approached Jones’s home has not been identified, the officer said that the investigation remains ongoing.

Jones, meanwhile, has transitioned to virtual schooling as a result of bullying at El Toro High School.

 
 

 

Florida surgeon general’s COVID vaccine study is politics dressed up as science

https://www.postguam.com/forum/florida-surgeon-general-s-covid-vaccine-study-is-politics-dressed-up-as-science/article_85b03f44-4d05-11ed-ad74-471dfb766884.html

Remember this is the same administration / surgeon general that Tildeb used to promote anti-trans nonsense.   Politics dressed up as science.   For those that did not believe me about Tildeb using fringe science and right-wing talking points, I give you this as exhibit 1!  I keep trying to tell people they medical science is in, the studies done, and trans gender affirmative care is the recommended best practices for kids.    Hugs

Florida surgeon general’s COVID vaccine study is politics dressed up as science

LADAPO: Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, left, and Gov. Ron DeSantis are seen at a news conference in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Jan. 6. Joe Cavaretta/Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service

This far into the pandemic, tens of millions of Americans have received mRNA COVID vaccines, following vast medical trials. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration continue to review the safety of the vaccines, part of what the CDC calls “the most intense safety monitoring efforts in U.S. history.”

But somehow, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo knows best. Armed only with a skimpy “analysis” done by the state Department of Health — an analysis that is not peer-reviewed, has no named authors and has been blasted by the medical community — he warned last week that men ages 18-39 shouldn’t get the Moderna or Pfizer COVID shots, citing a higher risk of heart-related deaths.

The analysis itself states it should be considered “preliminary” and “should be interpreted with caution.” And yet the stance that Ladapo took on Twitter was far from cautious, insisting that “FL will not be silent on the truth.” Twitter initially pulled down Ladapo’s post, but then restored it

Hand-picked doctor

Ladapo, of course, is Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hand-picked surgeon general, and the Harvard-trained doctor knows it. He seems intent on carrying out the governor’s increasingly anti-vax agenda. Ladapo has promoted Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as legitimate treatments for COVID — they are not — and said in March that the state is against COVID vaccines for children. (The vaccines are considered safe and effective for children.) He vowed that Florida would “reject fear” when it comes to public health policy.

Reminder: More than 81,000 Floridians have died of COVID.

This latest report Ladapo is pushing has holes large enough to drive a car through. No amount of calling the resulting criticism an example of cancel culture — which is what a Florida DOH spokesman tried to do — will change that.

For one thing, it’s missing so many key details in the “methodology” section that Daniel Salmon, the director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, said he can’t even figure out what the department actually did.

“If you were to submit that to any decent journal, it would be almost certainly rejected quickly,” Salmon said in the Miami Herald. “I think it’s irresponsible for a state government agency to put out something like that without sufficient detail.”

 

(We can’t ask the study’s authors because Ladapo refused to divulge them, calling that question a “fake” issue during a Washington Post interview.)

Salmon, who is leading a large global study looking into myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — and the coronavirus vaccine, said the benefits of the vaccines still outweigh any risks. He was far from alone in criticizing Florida’s position.

Jason Salemi, a University of South Florida epidemiologist, told the Herald the study failed to focus on both risks and benefits, looking only at risk. “It’s not a complete picture,” Salemi said. “It’s taking one part of it and using that seemingly in isolation to make a recommendation.”

The Washington Post — because Ladapo’s claims have attracted national attention — spoke to more than a dozen experts on vaccines, patient safety and study design who had concerns with the Florida analysis. Concerns included a too-small sample size, using data from death certificates that are frequently inaccurate and skewed results because the study tried to exclude anyone who had COVID or died from it.

Particularly telling: Ladapo said in The Washington Post interview that he hoped his mentors at Harvard University would support the methods used in the Florida study. The opposite happened. Health economist David Cutler said the Florida report was deeply flawed, he hoped it wouldn’t discourage people from getting vaccines and that Ladapo was wrong to base Florida’s vaccine policy on it.

He went further: “If I was a reviewer at a journal, I would recommend rejecting it,” Cutler told The Washington Post.

Vaccine disinformation has real consequences — and Ladapo’s post has been shared hundreds of thousands of times. A revealing study by Yale University researchers published last month found higher COVID death rates for Republicans compared to Democrats, after vaccines were available.

And there is hesitancy — or at least malaise — when it comes to the most recent booster shot. The new bivalent COVID boosters are widely available, and yet only about half of Americans have heard much about the shot, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. About a third of adults said they had gotten the booster or planned to.

COVID is still with us. There are vaccines that save lives. But people such as Ladapo, with his privileged platform in Florida, can do real damage. His assertions amount to a political position disguised as science and cloaked in the state flag. The danger is that some people may forgo the lifesaving vaccine because Florida, and Ladapo, told them to.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Let’s talk about Social Security shenanigans….

Trans student was voted Homecoming Princess in a cruel prank. She refuses to step down.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/10/trans-student-voted-homecoming-princess-cruel-prank-refuses-step/

I wonder if the parents who called the school were anti-trans parents claiming it was a prank to get the school to undo her election as Homecoming Princess.    Think how many kids voted in a large school and how could the prankers be a large enough group to swing the election to one person?   Seems to me the callers were upset either their daughters lost the vote or that a trans girl won.   So starting a rumor is the morally superior position?  The saddest part of the story is that some of the kids were swayed by transphobia to not walk with her as the escort as tradition required.   This is what the hate rhetoric of the right does, it teaches intolerance while further spreading the hate that spawns it.      Hugs

“The negativity empowered me because it made me realize that they are going out of their way to notice me. They’re noticing how bold I am.”
 
By  
Cass Steiner
Cass Steiner Photo: Screenshot
 

A trans high school student in Cincinnati refused to let a cruel prank bring her down.

Cass Steiner is a sophomore at Mariemont High School and was recently voted Homecoming Princess by her classmates. She was thrilled to be the school’s first trans Homecoming Princess. Her entire family was celebrating.

“Originally, I was really, really, really excited,” Steiner told Fox 19. “Just the thought that I had a chance to make history here.”

Her mother, Kat Steiner, added that she “was absolutely thrilled” for her daughter – until the school counselor spoke to Cass. The counselor told her that some parents had contacted her to let her know Cass’s victory was potentially part of a prank by students.

“It kind of brought down my spirits a little bit,” Cass said.

“Your heart just breaks,” Kat added.

But Cass wouldn’t give in to bullies. The school apologized and gave her the chance to step back from her role as princess, but she said no.

“I don’t think that it was truly a joke,” she said. “I think that part of it really was genuine and that a lot of people have my back and do support me. That’s what gives me hope.”

Cass believes that several of her classmates have noticed how much happier she is since she has embraced her true self.

“I think it’s really empowering because finding myself as a whole was really hard, but now that I’m here and a better version of myself, I’m so much happier, and people in my class and my peers have noticed that.”

She told WLWT that holding onto her title shows her classmates she is proud of who she is.

“If anything, hearing the negativity empowered me because it made me realize that they are going out of their way to notice me. They’re noticing how bold I am.”

“If you did vote for me with negative intentions thank you because I still won the vote and I’m willing to advocate for my community as a whole,” she said.

And her community is advocating along with her. Students and parents showed up at the homecoming parade holding signs to support her. One read, “You are more than a princess. You are a QUEEN!” Another said, “We love our warrior.”

Parent Erin Satterwhite organized the group of supporters.

“Cassie’s story, it just spoke to me as a mom,” Satterwhite said. “And this is an inclusive, kind, supportive community and I wanted that message to be shared and not the original message that was shared.”

And because other members of the homecoming court refused to be Cass’s escort, the principal walked with her.

“Having those people escort me and be there for me is really empowering and showing that the school is there for me,” Cass said. “And they are 100 percent supportive.”