A rightwing lawyer explained how the fights for reproductive rights and for transgender people’s access to gender-affirming medical care are connected when it comes to the law.
Ohio’s House Families, Aging, and Human Services Committee Meeting held a hearing today about H.B. 454, which would ban doctors from providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth and requires teachers to out trans kids to their parents. All of the witnesses at the hearing supported the bill, and most were from religiously affiliated organizations.
Citing an abortion rights case, Matt Sharp of the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) testified to explain that courts actually might uphold the law even though it’s telling doctors to practice medicine in a sub-optimal way.
“Opponents challenged the law on several grounds, including that the law’s requirements conflicted with best medical practice,” Sharp said. “But the Sixth Circuit upheld the law and the authority of the legislature to pass it.”
“The court found that states can enact laws that limit medical procedures even when opponents claim that the laws were, quote, ‘directly contrary to medical profession custom’ and that certain medical groups did not consider them to be necessary.”
Sharp was referring to the 2019 appeals court decision in EMW Women’s Surgical Center v. Beshear, where a reproductive health care provider challenged Kentucky’s 2017 Ultrasound Informed Consent Act. The bill required people who wanted an abortion to have an ultrasound over 24 hours before the procedure and required doctors to allow the pregnant person to hear the fetal heartbeat and explain the images the ultrasound produced. They argued that it violated doctors’ freedom of speech.
A Trump-appointed judge, John K. Bush, wrote the majority opinion and said that the bill was fine because it “provides relevant information” that “gives a patient greater knowledge of the unborn life inside her.”
Effectively, Sharp argued that a court already said that doctors’ opinions on what’s best for patients can be overridden by legislatures and that courts will allow the same to be done to transgender people.
In case you didn't believe us when we said it originally, here is the guy from Alliance Defending Freedom explicitly linking HB 454 which detransitions all trans teens, with fetal ultrasound and anti abortion bills.
This has been well known for a century, maybe longer. People who have nothing, who are hungry, cold, hopeless will do whatever they can to get what they need, even crime. Let’s give them another way, we can easily afford it in this country if we stop robbing the public to funnel the money to the wealthy. Hugs
A new paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that removing cash welfare from children when they reach age 18 greatly increases the chances that they will face criminal justice charges in subsequent years.
Supplemental Security Income is a United States program that provides payments to people with disabilities who have low incomes. Children qualify for the program based on their disability status and their parents’ low income and assets. Until 1996 children automatically continued to qualify for the adult program when they reached 18 years old unless their incomes increased.
As part of changes made to US social welfare programs in 1996 the US Social Security Administration began to reevaluate children receiving SSI when they turned 18 using different, adult, medical eligibility criteria. The Social Security Administration began removing about 40% of children receiving benefits when they turned 18. This process disproportionately removes children with mental and behavioral conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Using data from the Social Security Administration and the Criminal Justice Administrative Records System researchers estimated the effect of losing Supplemental Security Income benefits at age 18 on criminal justice and employment outcomes over the next two decades. By comparing records of children with an 18th birthday after the date of welfare reform enactment on August 22, 1996, and those born earlier (who were allowed onto the adult program without review) the researchers were able to estimate the effect of losing benefits on the lives of the affected youth.
They found that terminating the cash welfare benefits of these young adults increased the number of criminal charges by 20% over the next two decades. The increase was concentrated in what the authors call “income-generating crimes,” like theft, burglary, fraud/forgery, and prostitution. As a result of the increase in criminal charges, the annual likelihood of incarceration increased by 60%. The effect of this income removal on criminal justice involvement persisted more than two decades later.
The researchers found that the impact of the change was heterogeneous. While some people removed from the income support program at age 18 responded by working more in the formal labor market, a much larger fraction responded by engaging in crime to replace the lost income. In response to losing benefits, youth were twice as likely to be charged with an illicit income-generating offense than they were to maintain steady employment.
While each person removed from the program in 1996 saved the government some spending on SSI and Medicaid over the next two decades, each removal also created additional police, court, and incarceration costs. Based on the authors’ calculations, the administrative costs of crime alone almost eliminated the cost savings of removing young adults from the program.
“Traditionally, economists talk about the income effects of welfare programs in the context of the formal labor market—that welfare discourages work,” said the paper’s authors, Manasi Deshpande and Michael Mueller-Smith. “What we find is that the income effect of welfare benefits can also manifest as reductions in criminal activity. In fact, in the SSI context, cash welfare has a much larger discouragement effect on criminal activity than it does on formal work.”
Direct correspondence to: Manasi Deshpande University of Chicago Department of Economics Saieh Hall for Economics 347 1126 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 mdeshpande@uchicago.edu
To request a copy of the study, please contact: Daniel Luzer daniel.luzer@oup.com
Please read this short article. It details how the drive to return the country to 1950s was driven mostly by one man who was disgusted by the 1960s and any changes to his white Christian male dominated society. He quickly spread his message of hate to the party to win elections. Now that segment of the party has shrunk to about 20% but are the driving force behind the entire culture wars the republicans are pushing. The goal is return to 1950 where they felt happy and in charge, sex was still icky, and done in only one way. That is the other thing, what do these people have against sex, it is really wonderful, they should try it. Also notice the way they attack trans people. No real mention of trans, they ignore trans boys / men, instead focus only on bodies of trans girls and fear. It is really interesting how the lives of the people do not to matter as long as these people get the political power and the religious power they want. Hugs
The recent blitz of anti-trans bills may not align with what many Republicans believe, but party lawmakers pursue them on behalf of their most important interest group.
When it came down to it, Rick Colby called on his spirituality in deciding how to support his transgender child, Ashton.
It wasn’t a guarantee. Colby had dedicated his life to Republican politics, starting in 1984 on the field campaign to reelect Ronald Reagan. Reagan and the Republican Party with him and in the decades following would push anti-LGBTQ+ policies. But Colby’s Methodist church by comparison preached inclusivity and empathy, a message that conflicted with what he was hearing from Republicans.
Colby went with Ashton to his first endocrinologist appointment. He held Ashton’s hand the following year as Ashton awoke from gender-affirming top surgery.
“You know, as a parent, you want to protect your child from the nastiness of the world,” Colby said. “I was so relieved as a parent that he was being accepted. And it was just wonderful.”
Survey after survey show that Americans support LGBTQ+ equality, and Republicans are no exception. Still, Republican-dominated states have seen a blitz of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation since 2020, particularly anti-transgender bills. That dissonance — between the reality of the electorate and the priorities of Republican lawmakers — may seem counterintuitive to many.
Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth professor who was raised evangelical, has spent much of his career researching those kinds of contradictions. His book, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of Religious Right traces the rise of the evangelical voting bloc from nonexistent in the 1960s to the single most important interest group for any Republican candidate in the 1980s. In a conversation with The 19th, Balmer said that rise was driving Republican support for anti-trans legislation now.
“They have an interest in keeping the base riled up about one thing or another, and when one issue fades, as with same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage, they’ve got to find something else,” Balmer said. “It’s almost frantic.”
Bob Jones University sign at entrance on Wade Hampton Boulevard, Greenville, South Carolina, United States. (John Foxe/Wikimedia) [CC BY-SA 3.0]
While many people believe that abortion was the issue that first galvanized evangelicals to the polls in the 1980s, Balmer points to a different issue. Paul Weyrich, an evangelical Christian who helped initially organize the “religious right,” had been testing out issues that would drive other evangelicals to the polls in the 1970s, Balmer says. Weyrich found it in Bob Jones University, a religious institution that was facing the loss of its tax-exempt status for refusing to racially integrate.
Weyrich’s strategy worked. In 1980, evangelicals – a group of denominations separate from mainline churches like Colby’s – flocked to the polls to back what had been billed as the freedom of a religious school to operate without government interference. Reagan backed Bob Jones University, with two-thirds of the evangelical vote, denied President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat and an evangelical himself, a second term. It cemented White evangelicals as the key ingredient to Republican wins.
Any Republican who wanted to cross the finish line would have to kneel at the feet of the evangelical base, Balmer says. Decades later, Donald Trump would initially campaign on welcoming LGBTQ+ people into his Republican platform, only to later adopt the ideology of the far-right evangelical base he needed to win.
While Trump appeared to start out a social moderate, far-right evangelical policies increasingly dominated his agenda. On the campaign trail, Trump briefly vowed to be an ally to queer Americans. In office, his administration made so many policy moves against LGBTQ+ Americans that advocacy organizations branded his leadership “The Discrimination Administration.”
The religious right’s fixation on “social issues” — abortion, religious-based education, LGBTQ+ rights — served two purposes. In addition to keeping evangelicals a cohesive voting unit, they also formed an ideological bedrock for the religious right. Before Weyrich died, he argued that conservatives should be fighting to return to family structures of the 1950s, a goal that has been picked up by leaders after him.
In his book The Next Conservatism, Weyrich wrote that the goal was to weed out “cultural Marxism,” and “restore a non-ideological American republic, which is what we had up until the wretched 1960s,” when women and Black and LGBTQ+ Americans pushed for and won greater rights.
After Reagan’s 1980 victory, Weyrich would continue to test issue after issue to keep evangelicals voting, including abortion. This idealized rewind to 1950s America would systematically challenge the basic rights gained by Black Americans, LGBTQ+ people and those with disabilities.
“As they were searching for different issues, I think they understood that any issue that had some sort of connection to sexuality or sexual behavior was going to work for them,” Balmer told The 19th.
The first issue was “sodomy laws,” which aimed to make gay sex illegal. The Supreme Court overruled the last of them in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas. Next came marriage equality, which was granted nationwide by the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling in 2015. Still, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, evangelical Protestants were the only major religious group as of 2020 that opposed same-sex marriage: just 34 percent of those surveyed support marriage equality.
The country, however, moved on.
“It’s staggering how quickly [marriage] disappeared as an issue,” Balmer said “And so, they almost frantically began looking for something else. And of course, the trans thing was the next thing on the horizon.”
Today, nearly 8 in 10 Americans back nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people, according to a poll from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute. That includes 65 percent of Republicans. A 2021 poll by PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll found that two-thirds of Americans opposed bills limiting the rights of transgender people.
Maps of states that have passed laws that would ban abortion if the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade almost mirror those that have passed anti-trans bans. Eleven of the 15 states with a sports participation ban for trans youth have also moved to curtail abortion rights.
Zein Murib, assistant political professor at Fordham University, says that overlap is no mistake.
“They’re saying, ‘Forget about rights. This is about bodies,’” Murib said. “This is about these bodies being in places where they again presumably do not belong. … You see them deploying scare tactics like, ‘men disguised as women in girls’ restrooms’ or ‘boys in girls’ locker rooms.’”
As 19th News found in an investigation in 2021, the vast majority of anti-transgender bills never use the word “transgender” at all. Lawmakers instead pitch the bills as critical to securing rights for women in sports and larger society. Those arguments fail to acknowledge transgender women, and advocates say they are increasingly out of touch with the general electorate.
Chris Bull is the editorial director of queer media firm Q.Digital and the author of the 2001 book Perfect Enemies: The Battle Between the Religious Right and the Gay Movement. Bull argues that Republican lawmakers have abandoned 80 percent of their voters to cater to a sliver of their voters.
“I think that the cliche of American politics is not holding anymore,” he said. “They’re really running base campaigns, that 20 percent of the electorate.”
Still, political scientists warn that the strategy to attack trans rights could backfire and cost them support among an increasingly diverse electorate. More Americans, like Colby, know transgender people than ever before. More than that, evangelicals are statistically shrinking as a voting block, while the number who support LGBTQ+ people continues to rapidly grow.
In the 2018 midterms, the Human Rights Campaign, with polling firm Catalyst, found that people they dubbed “equality voters,” those whose support for LGBTQ+ rights strongly influenced their voting choices, made up 29 percent of the electorate. White evangelicals made up 26 percent of the vote.
Please notice in this short article the references to protecting the children from the propaganda of LGBTQ+. This guy praises these laws that are more don’t say gay, outlawing any mention of the LGBTQ+ and the authoritarian strongman leaders that implement them. They want to outlaw the LGBTQ+ out of existence, and where do you think the US rabid right Republicans get these ideas. More and more as these laws pop up all across the world to either stop or roll back acceptance of the LGBTQ+ people / rights I remember how Brian Brown, Scott Lively, and other US religious figures went to developing nations and pushed for strict punishments for any same sex conduct, anti-LGBTQ+ laws, and helped elect politicians with religious views. Some big money person / groups are pushing this hate world wide. The haters are using the same laws and same talking points. Hugs
Miloš Zeman, president of the Czech Republic, vows to veto legislation that would give same-sex couples the right to hold civil weddings in the country. (Mateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto via Getty)
Czech president Miloš Zeman has said he plans to veto proposed legislation that would give same-sex couples the right to get married in the country.
The measure, which was drafted by lawmakers across the Czech political spectrum, was submitted to the parliament’s lower house on Tuesday (7 June), the Associated Pressreported.
Lawmakers have yet to set a date to debate the proposed same-sex marriage legislation. Yet the country’s president has said he is strongly opposed to the measure and will strike it down should it even land on his desk.
“I’d like to announce that if I really receive such a law to sign I will veto it,” Zeman said.
Miloš Zeman has served as the president of the Czech Republic since 2013. The president is considered a largely ceremonial role as the elected leader has limited executive powers, but he does have a considerable role in political affairs.
Zeman said that the Czech Republic passed a law in 2006 allowing same-sex couples to enter into registered partnerships, but he believed “family is a union between a man and a woman”, “full stop”.
Czech president Miloš Zeman said he believes “family is a union between a man and a woman”, “full stop”. (Getty/Mikhail Svetlov)
The registered partnership gives queer couples in the Czech Republic some rights similar to those of heterosexual married couples, but it stops short of placing same-sex couples on fully equal footing with their heterosexual counterparts.
Same-sex marriage remains illegal in the country because marriage is defined as a union between a man and a woman under the Czech Republic’s civil code.
Parliament started debating similar same-sex marriage legislation back in 2018, but the legislation stalled as lawmakers didn’t take a vote before last year’s general election. The measure had to then be re-submitted for debate.
Lawmakers in the Czech parliament’s lower house can override Zeman’s veto if they can reach a majority vote.
Miloš Zeman has often espoused anti-LGBTQ+ views in the past. Last June, Zeman said he finds trans people “disgusting” while discussing Hungary’s so-called LGBTQ+ ‘propaganda’ law, which bans any depiction or discussion of queer people in schools, the media and advertising.
Zema said he thought people who undergo gender-affirming treatments are “basically committing a crime of self-harm”.
“Every surgery is a risk, and these transgender people to me are disgusting,” he added.
I have heard of these studies before. But mostly it was from sites dedicated to LGBTQ+ issues. This is the first time I have heard these arguments put forth by an active preacher / priest. If you think the bible passages are against consensual homosexuality, please give this short video a listen. He clears that up well. Hugs
Charlie Kirk is launching Turning Point Academy – the first of what will be a network of private schools focused on a “classic, pro-American” curriculum and a rejection of critical race theory, “wokeism” and “anti-American ideas.”
Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, said the first “Turning Point Academy” will be in collaboration with Dream City Christian School – an existing Arizona private K-12 school that will welcome more than 600 students beginning in the fall of 2022.
Kirk said Turning Point Academy will adhere to “bedrock principles,” including to “never waver from the truth and to teach self-government and liberty to students” and to reject critical race theory, “wokeism, deconstructionism, queer theory, radical LGBT agendas,” anti-American ideas, and more.
After Charlie Kirk spent years telling parents to pull their kids out of public schools, now we learn why – a network of private schools to provide a true “patriotic education.” pic.twitter.com/d0ix0nOSXT
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) June 13, 2022
Here's Charlie Kirk along with Riley Grisar of LasVegas Turning Point USA (fired after appearing in video "We're gonna run the world! White Power! Fuck N*****s!") white supremacist Milo Yiannopoulos & the New Zealand #ChristChurch murderer all “playing the circle game.” 🙄 pic.twitter.com/KgUgYn2xbU
Last week, Turning Point USA removed a chapter president for making white supremacist comments. This is just one of many controversies the right-wing campus group has faced; we’ve been tracking those incidents and the group’s history here: https://t.co/sWAM8RP90n
I’m guessing within five years, we will hear about: — Teachers working unpaid, but with promises that God will provide for them. — Sexual, physical and mental abuse on teachers and students. — Funds were stolen, but no one knows how much because their finances were unaudited. — Children tortured because their parents suspect they are gay. — Students are learning calculus at age 10 but have the personality of a doorknob.
I agree with all but your last point. I am a high school math teacher and tutor students at the local public library two nights a week. The home-school students and those who attend fundamentalist schools are horrible at math. Many of their “teachers” are uncertified, many without college degrees. Most adults serve as monitors who force the students to sit at computers using automated Christian education software. The math content is repetitive and simplified, with more emphasis on calculation than application. There is no adult on hand to provide in-person explanation or clarification.
The Christian students come to me, sometimes in tears, when they realize that they are hopelessly unprepared for the SAT/ACT math sections, as well as Precalculus and Calculus.
As you know, learning the higher mathematics requires good teachers who know their subject well and have the ability to communicate the material to others.
And don’t even get me started on the “Christian” version of science!
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants his office to help defend Llano County officials being sued for restricting and banning books from their public library system. In a court filing, Paxton asked Austin-based federal district court Judge Robert Pitman to let the state intervene in the lawsuit, which was filed by seven Llano County residents.
If Pitman grants the motion, Paxton’s office could aid the county judge, county commissioners and library director in fighting the lawsuit. Books removed from the library include Maurice Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen” and Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants his office to help defend Llano County officials being sued for restricting and banning books from their public library system. #TXlegehttps://t.co/cNukzBOs92
When given a choice, Republicans show repeatedly, consistently they have no true principles. “Principles” are just a shield or a weapon to achieve the goal of power. They abandon those very same principles the very second it’s useful to do so. Do they care about the First Amendment now? No. Have they ever. Only when it’s ever been convenient to them.
But Republicans fight to the death over defending books that depict racist stereotypes and caricatures. They lost their collective little mind over Dr. Seuss books with clear racist overtones being taken off school shelves. Something anti-racist and educational, though? Suddenly banning books is fine. Patriotic, even.
Books removed from the library include Maurice Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen” and Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group”
In a society run by Texan GQPers, all public libraries will have the identical offerings as your local Christian bookstore and church waiting room, as well as the same propaganda as Stormfront.
I’m so tired of the cranky contrarians in the center and left who only see “cancel culture” as happening on college campuses or in civil rights movements. Will they call this out, but will the likes of Bill Maher continue to obsessively condemn trans folks who speak out against Dave Chappelle?
School districts across Ohio will be able to authorize teachers, principals and other staff to carry firearms into classrooms this fall after 24 hours of training.
The new law, signed Monday by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, will lower the required training hours for armed school personnel from about 700 hours to four scenario-based training hours, plus a maximum of 20 hours for first-aid training, history of school shootings and reunification education.
“In life we make choices, and we don’t always know what the outcome is going to be,” DeWine said at a news conference. “What this Legislature has done, I’ve done by signing it, is giving schools an option based on their particular circumstances to make the best decision they can make with the best information they have. That’s all any decision-maker can do.”
Ohio school districts are not required to allow staff to carry firearms under the law. House Bill 99 allows local boards of education to decide whether they want staff to carry firearms at all and how much training will be required.
DeWine said he directed the Ohio School Safety Center to require at least 24 hours of training and eight hours of requalification training each year. The move appeared aimed at eliminating confusion among lawmakers over whether the bill established a minimum number of training hours.
Private businesses that want to train school staff must also meet the 24-hour minimum to have their curriculum approved, DeWine said.
‘Do something’
Democrats and gun control advocates panned the new law, saying it won’t do enough to prevent gun violence and mass shootings. Law enforcement officials have also said 24 hours is not enough time to learn how to safely use a firearm.
Opponents argued DeWine walked back on promises to address gun violence after a gunman killed nine people in Dayton in 2019. The governor responded to cries of “do something” by unveiling a package of gun control reforms, but they never went anywhere in the GOP-controlled Legislature.
“I feel like a putz for believing him,” Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said. “He did something, alright. He gave in like a coward, and he made the problem worse.”
DeWine has signed three bills loosening gun restrictions since the shooting.
“It’s a complete bastardization of what people said in Dayton, frankly,” said former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, who is running for governor against DeWine. “This is not what the people of Dayton had in mind when they started chanting that.”
During Monday’s news conference, DeWine urged lawmakers to consider provisions of the 2019 legislation that would increase penalties for straw purchases and prevent people with severe mental health conditions from possessing a firearm.
DeWine touts school safety efforts
DeWine’s signature puts an end to years of debate over how many hours of firearm training Ohio teachers should have.
Parents in the Madison Local Schools district in southwest Ohio sued the district over its armed teacher program, arguing that the training required – about 24 hours – violated state law. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled for the parents in 2021.
The court ruled in a 4-3 decision that Ohio Revised Code required anyone authorized to carry a gun on school grounds to have 20 years of experience or peace officer training. DeWine argued the ruling made firearm training unmanageable for school districts that wanted to permit it.
But some law enforcement disagreed.
“I think it’s a horrible idea to arm our teachers,” Columbus Police Chief Elaine Bryant said. “There’s a lot of training that’s involved in that. It’s naïve to believe that is something we can put on them and expect them to respond to from a law enforcement perspective.”
The governor used Monday’s news conference to highlight other school safety initiatives that he’s rolled out since the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The new capital budget includes $100 million in grants that schools can use to upgrade building security. The state is also investing in training to help school staff identify behavioral health problems in students.
“We are trying to do and have been trying to do every single day things that people keep safer – keep kids in school safer but also these same children who go home to neighborhoods where there’s violent crime and repeat violent offenders,” DeWine said. “Their lives are important, too. All children’s lives are important.”
#BREAKING: Gov. Mike DeWine, joined by Lt. Gov. Jon Husted Monday morning, confirmed he has signed a bill that allows teachers and education staff to carry guns with training slimmed down from peace officer requirements. DETAILS: https://t.co/Dq6Fh9OwhZpic.twitter.com/0676jRWreW
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced Monday that he signed a bill permitting teachers to carry guns to school. The bill requires only 24 hours of training if school districts opt into the new legislation.
Republicans: teachers are communists who want to molest your kids and change their genders while listening to Bob Marley. Also republicans: we need to arm teachers.
Matt Sharp of ADFPhoto: Screenshot
