According to her own parents, she’s not a particularly gifted athlete, but the middle schooler is now banned from playing on the field hockey team she helped create.
“Kentucky’s a national embarrassment today, and it’s shameful that lawmakers would prioritize attacking one trans seventh grader, rather than the real issues facing Kentuckians,” he said. “It’s a sad day in our Commonwealth.”
Wells, who testified against the bill in February, agreed.
“It’s disgusting that this bill is even suggested,” she told legislators. Because of the passage of SB 83, Wells will be barred from playing on the team she helped to create.
Kentucky’s Republican-controlled House and Senate overrode a veto by Gov. Andy Beshear (D) to enact a law barring transgender girls from playing on middle and high school girls’ sports teams. The governor had vetoed Senate Bill 83 the prior week, saying that it likely violates Constitution’s equal rights protections.
Proponents of the bill insist it is necessary to ensure that cisgender girls don’t lose opportunities to competitors who are transgender. But there is no evidence of risk to cisgender athletes, and the state’s only known trans female athlete is actually responsible for increasing athletic opportunities for girls in Kentucky.
“Transgender children deserve public officials’ efforts to demonstrate that they are valued members of our communities through compassion, kindness, and empathy, even if not understanding,” Beshear wrote in a statement.
Despite the rhetoric of trans athletes dominating women’s sports, state efforts to ban transgender youth from participating in athletics are often legislating against an exceptionally small number of students. Kentucky’s actions echo those in Utah, where legislators likewise overturned a veto by the state’s governor to push through a ban on trans athletes that applies to very few students. According to Gov. Spencer Cox (R), only four transgender youth are currently competing in athletics in the state.
“Four kids and only one of them playing girls sports,” Cox said. “That’s what this is all about. Four kids who aren’t dominating or winning trophies or taking scholarships. Four kids who are just trying to find some friends and feel like they are a part of something. Four kids trying to get through each day. Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few. I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live.”
One troll’s story of secretly “crushing [hormone] pills” into her daughter’s cereal in the morning to force them into being transgender went viral among gullible conservatives.
An internet forum where people pretending to be parents forcing their children to be transgender has gotten shut down after it was found to be full of fake stories.
As the U.S. plunges even deeper into a moral panic over children who are supposedly being forced to transition, some anti-transgender people are reacting to the fact that that never happens by making up stories about it and trying to pass them off as real.
“Anyone else have trouble convincing your teen kids to continue transitioning?” user “Funkyduffy” wrote on the subreddit r/TransParentTransKid. “My 15-year-old daughter (AMAB) has started refusing her estradiol so I’ve been crushing the pills and putting it in her cereal in the morning.”
Reddit is a largely anonymous internet platform where most users create unidentifiable handles and connections between users aren’t the focus, a contrast to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This makes it easier and more accepted for people to create temporary profiles to say whatever they want on various forums called subreddits.
One such subreddit, r/TransParentTransKid, was started last August when some users decided to post fake stories to it to promote the negative stereotype that parents and schools are forcing kids to be transgender. In reality it is common for schools and parents to be obstacles to trans kids expressing their identities while it’s unheard of for schools and parents to impede cisgender kids the same way.
The user who called for the subreddit’s creation said that it would be “filled with stories about how our real/adoptive children magically learned they were also trans after finding out about their parents,” according to Reuters.
According to another subreddit, r/AgainstHateSubreddits, r/TransParentTransKid was shut down for violating Reddit’s rules because they were “engaged in promoting hatred of transgender people, as well as targeted harassment.”
But the stories still spread outside of Reddit to rightwingers who were all too willing to believe them.
“This is fucking child abuse and I’ll die on this Hill,” wrote libertarian author Justin O’Donnell on Twitter, posting a picture of Funkyduffy’s fake story. He got almost 46,000 likes for it.
Ian Miles Cheong – who has a history of posting misinformation about trans people online and even riling Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) up – shared the story with the words “Good parenting.”
The story comes as conservative politicians and activists are claiming that there is a massive effort by schools and parents to turn children transgender.
For example, Rep. Greene said in February that there are “these mothers that think [having a trans child] is like having a handbag. They need to have a boy, a girl, and a trans child like as if they’re some kind of accessory.”
Funkyduffy’s story may have been one that pushed her to believe that such parents exist.
“I have never – not once – heard of a child being forced to transition,” said the ACLU’s Gillian Branstetter. “The exception is intersex children who are frequently forced into surgeries, yet every effort to ban gender-affirming care exempts those surgeries.”
I have never–not once–heard of a child being forced to transition. The exception is intersex children who are frequently forced into surgeries, yet every effort to ban gender-affirming care exempts those surgeries.
New York Attorney General Letitia James urged a judge Friday to “coerce” former President Donald Trump into complying with a subpoena demanding searches of three of his mobile devices and multiple document storage sites.
Trump failed to meet a court-ordered March 31 deadline to turn over subpoenaed material, claiming he had none of the documents demanded by James’ office as part of its investigation into his company’s financial practices. A week later, James asked the judge overseeing her office’s investigation to issue a contempt citation and fine Trump $10,000 per day until he complied with the subpoena.
“The Court should put an end to Mr. Trump’s intransigence and subterfuge,” attorneys working for James wrote in the Friday evening filing.
Wild that he can just do his God-King act and ignore a subpoena like the laws of mere mortals don’t apply to him. Put him in jail. He’ll probably refuse to pay those fines since we’re just making it look like he’s above it all by asking way too nicely for him to please comply.
Those people with their “New York values” are now trying to shove books down everyone’s throat.
Wow so blatant. As I said the Republican’s are sure there is voter fraud because they are the ones doing it. And in the case of a rich connected guy like Meadows they think they are owed it.
“We found the voter fraud! It’s rich guy voter fraud by Mark Meadows, voter fraud ‘expert,’” says Mehdi Hasan on reporting that Meadows was registered to vote in three states at once.
Chaz Stevens of Deerfield Beach has requested that Miami-Dade and Broward County public schools ban the Bible.Photo by Tetra Images/Getty Images
Since July of 2021, more than 200 books have been banned in various school districts across Florida, the state with the third-highest number of school book banning incidents in the U.S. This comes as the Florida legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis have passed House Bill 1467, which allows members of the public to challenge and ban books available in school classrooms and libraries, and a swath of “anti-woke” legislation purportedly aimed at empowering parents to protect their children’s impressionable minds.
With that in mind, local political stunt activist Chaz Stevens of Deerfield Beach has taken it upon himself to add another book to the lengthy list: the Bible. This week, in letters sent to superintendents in eight school districts in Florida — including Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS) and Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) — Stevens, an avowed atheist, petitions the districts to ban the Christian Bible from classrooms and libraries, citing its inclusion of inappropriate topics.
“If they’re gonna ban books, then the whole library should be in play. My hope — and it’s a longshot — is that they will apply their own standards to themselves and ban the Bible,” Stevens tells New Times.
Free-speech and literary-expression advocates have been sounding the alarm about what they see as a bureaucratic, authoritarian attack on education in Florida, particularly after recent news that the state rejected 54 math textbooks from the curriculum for allegedly containing prohibited topics such as “Critical Race Theory.” When the state went so far as banning math books, Stevens says, he was inspired to use the same bureaucracy to strike back against the conservative wave with an operation he calls “Eff Off Jesus.”
“I wish to file such an objection, requesting the Miami-Dade County Public School system immediately remove the Bible from the classroom, library, and any instructional material,” Stevens writes in his request addressed to MDCPS Superintendent Jose Dotres on April 19. “And, as is often the case with banned books, I ask your agency lay flame to that giant stack of fiction in a pyre worthy of a Viking sendoff.”
Stevens cites age inappropriateness, social-emotional learning, mentions of bestiality and rape, and “wokeness” as reasons to ban the Bible. Each reason is accompanied by a corresponding Bible excerpt. (A copy of Stevens’ letter is attached at the end of this article).
“With the constant babbling concerns about teaching Critical Race Theory, should we not take stock of the Bible’s position on slavery? I am concerned our young white students will read such passages and wake up to civilization’s sordid past,” Stevens writes, followed by a passage from Ephesians that speaks of slaves and servants obeying their masters.
Though book-banning incidents have been recorded in seven Florida school districts, none has been documented in South Florida’s school districts.
But at least one South Florida school district has received Stevens’ letter. “We acknowledge receipt of the subject letter. District staff will review it and respond accordingly,” Elmo R. Lugo, a spokesperson for MDCPS, tells New Times via email.
BCPS Superintendent Vickie L. Cartwright’s office could not immediately comment as to whether the agency received the request and how it intended to address it.
“They better not fucking ignore me,” Stevens warns. “If they ignore me, doesn’t that tell you something? The government can’t pick and choose religion, but can they choose which books they review for banning and which ones they don’t?”
Since July of 2021, more than 200 books have been banned in various school districts across Florida, the state with the third-highest number of school book banning incidents in the U.S. With that in mind, local political stunt activist Chaz Stevens of Deerfield Beach has taken it upon himself to add another book to the lengthy list: the Bible.
This week, in letters sent to superintendents in eight school districts in Florida — including Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS) and Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) — Stevens, an avowed atheist, petitions the districts to ban the Christian Bible from classrooms and libraries, citing its inclusion of inappropriate topics.
Stevens cites age inappropriateness, social-emotional learning, mentions of bestiality and rape, and “wokeness” as reasons to ban the Bible. Each reason is accompanied by a corresponding Bible excerpt.
Stevens first appeared on JMG in 2013 when his Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans Festivus pole went on display in the Florida Capitol.
We heard from him again in 2015 when he applied to place a rainbow Festivus pole topped with a mirror ball at the Arkansas Capitol.
Also in 2015, he was approved to place a similar rainbow Festivus pole at the Florida Capitol.
Stevens has fought to have “Satanic prayers” included among Christian invocations at county commission meetings.
An atheist in Florida finally introduced a formal petition to ban the Bible in some schools. And the logic makes perfect sense: if you’re going to ban books for having adult/inappropriate content, you have to start with the Bible, which has rape, slavery, genocide, and much more.
As Florida is ramping up its book banning push — going so far as to ban "woke" math texts in schools, a South Florida atheist wants to add another book to the ban pile: The Christian Biblehttps://t.co/D1IXV1051w
Remember, conservatives don’t believe in rape. In their mindset, women are: 1. Property of men, and; 2. Asking for it by going outside their houses, showing any skin, being in public after sundown, etc.
Don’t forget the parts about the “how-to” instructions for owning slaves. Don’t forget the parts about the “how-to” instructions for creating a miscarriage (abortion).
Ya love that juicy little tidbit where two daughter’s get daddy drunk and then have sex with him .Good wholesome family fun Hey death sentences Stuff that in your ditty bag
Ezekiel 23:20 – There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.
1 Samuel 18:25 – Saul replied, “Say to David, ‘The king wants no other price for the bride than a hundred Philistine foreskins, to take revenge on his enemies.’” Saul’s plan was to have David fall by the hands of the Philistines.
1 Samuel 18:27 – David took his men with him and went out and killed two hundred Philistines and brought back their foreskins. They counted out the full number to the king so that David might become the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him his daughter Michal in marriage.
For the anti-abortion folks, I recommend this lovely little passage. Oopsie!
Hosea 13:16 – The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.
“There’s one thing that I know for sure, and this is the raw truth: The raw truth was on Nov. 3, 2020, President Donald Trump won the election.
“We’re still waiting on the election to be corrected, and we’re not going anywhere. That election was rigged. It was stolen.
“But I got news for you, and I got news for you watching on television: There’s thousands of people in this room that say, ‘We’re taking our nation back!’
“There is an agenda that’s not Democrat versus Republican. The agenda that’s in our nation right now is good versus evil—and I’m not calling any party evil although you can figure out probably where I’m coming from.
“If you’re not willing to give up your nation to a woke agenda that’s not left, it’s liberal—it’s so far liberal, it’s out to destroy the very fabric of this nation, rip your children away from your families.
“They want to educate your children. They want to take your kids from you. They don’t want you to do anything that resembles Christianity or stand up for what’s right or stand up for what’s truth.” – Gene Bailey, at a massive Christian nationalist rally at Oral Roberts University.
The rally was attended by many nationally and locally elected Republicans and candidates. Brace yourself before watching the clip starting at 3:00.
These wingdoodles won’t stop, nor shut up until they get a theocracy. And then boy howdy, don’t yah know the fight will be on to decide which faction of xtianity will rule our country.
So now it’s good vs evil, the ultimate “other.” Fanning the flames of fear and loathing to extinguish any hope of democracy in the future. Feels like I’m watching my country die right in front of me.
and these folks would have been the same ones that attended the Madison Square Garden Nazi Rally … The folks now are scarier because they are even more indoctrinated …
Always remember that when you pray, close your eyes and squeeze them as tightly as you can because that intensifies the prayers and really gets God’s attention before he dismisses all of you.
Normally I do not post these compilations of the shows, but this time the shows information on the different topics is important to share. For those using CC I watched it with the CC on for a bit and it was spot on even to the point of getting the person being interviewed stutter between words. It should be OK.
The Justice Department recently noted the violation of rights and disturbing conditions inside Mississippi’s largest prison, Parchman. The DOJ’s report found the prison fails to protect prisoners from violence or provide adequate mental health care. Parchman is just one example of why reforms are desperately needed in state prisons nationwide, which disproportionately incarcerate black and brown people.
An abortion clinic escort in Nebraska looks out for bombs to keep patients entering the building safe. See how she’s using TikTok to confront the anti-abortion protesters surrounding the clinic.
12-year-old Fischer Wells is the only known transgender youth athlete in Kentucky.Photo: Fairness Campaign
Scottie's Playtime 