Ethan Crumbley, who 11 months ago penned in his journal “I will cause the biggest school shooting in Michigan’s history. I have fully mentally lost it,” pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree murder and terrorism charges for the bloodshed he vowed to carry out at Oxford High School four days after his parents bought him a gun.
In a packed courtroom filled with the victims’ grieving families, Crumbley, 16, took responsibility for the murders of his classmates, Tate Myre, 16, Madisyn Baldwin, 17, Hana St. Juliana, 14, and Justin Shilling, 17, and the injuries he caused to seven others who were struck by his bullets.
In entering his guilty plea, Ethan dropped a bombshell that may hurt his parents in their separate criminal case, telling the judge that the gun he used in the shooting was easily accessible. “It was not locked,” Ethan said in court, contradicting his parents’ claims that the gun was properly stored in a secure area.
Read the full article. Crumbley’s parents, you will recall, let authorities on a manhunt after the shooting.
Ethan Crumbley admits guilt to murder in Oxford High School shooting https://t.co/Y6jO14n7hg
In my last post I wrote about watching this video, yet I was so upset I forgot to include the link. Here is the link and story. Damn he looks so young to me, how can he understand what life in prison means? His world view and education seem so limited, and his answers while looking down seem to me he is drugged. Well in his position I would need to be highly drugged to even stand there.
My heart is breaking. My thoughts on his future, the pain in his life now. I am not talking just emotional pain because I know the families that lost their children are going through that also. I am talking the physical / emotional pain of being raped and being scared every day of your life of being attacked. The parents of the murdered kids won’t face that and damn it that is not what a justice system in an advanced first world country should be about. There is a reason the US has a large recidivism rate and countries like Norway don’t. They treat their criminals like people, they treat their prisoners with respect as they do the entire population of their country. They make sure to understand the reason why the prisoner did what they did and tailor the sentence to fix that. The US has become a very vengeful sadistic place. Even our congressional republican office holders want to hurt the others, they brag about humiliating and harming them. My Dogs That Love Gravy, how does that make us a better country? It drives us to the level of Afghanistan and Iran with the Taliban / moral police. I stopped throwing up and Ron went to take a nap. But I am still so upset and my mind won’t stop or settle, I keep reliving the abuse I took for 17 years on a loop, while thinking I got paroled / released after 17 years but Ethan has his entire life to suffer it, no matter how long he lives. I cannot deal with that; I cannot imagine my life if my abuse and fears had continued until today or I died. I would beg for death. Death would be a mercy. Go to go my stomach starting to roil writing this and if I start throwing up again Ron will unplug the computers. Hugs
This morning I watched the Ethan Crumbley hearing where he admitted to the killings and the judge told him the possible sentences. He will get life with no parole in prison. He is 16 years old. He committed the murders at 15 years old. He killed other kids, no minimizing that.
But the US justice system is not about rehabilitation, it is about vengeance and punishment. Mostly punishment. The fact is with for profit prisons and every effort at cost cutting the people in prison live in some of the most horrible conditions they cannot escape from no matter how well they may try to improve themselves and they can never redeem themselves. We have all heard the stories of food so bad that it has bugs in it, mold all over the bread or other items, meats that are green and slimy that shouldn’t ever be consumed. That is just the food. The stories about non-existence of healthcare with lack of any medications. Then there is the conditions that prisoners are forced to live in that exploit them at every turn. If they want any comfort they must buy it at often highly inflated prices, but the only access to funds for most is prison set up labor, where often the prison hires out the prisoner as slave labor with no rights for a huge profit to the prison authorities but only pennies for the prisoner, but what choice do they have? Earn nothing and suffer with no ability to have anything including food that is not unfit to eat, or do the slave labor knowing how badly you are being abused. But the worst thing I think is beyond the constant lifelong every second of your life having someone tell you what you can do, must do, not do, no rights for any movement except that approved by someone else. You are an adult treated like a 3 year old. But add to that is the living conditions. For profit prisons are notorious for making the living conditions as unpleasant as possible to save money, so they give no temperature controls making prisoners either swelter in the unbearable heat or suffer the cold with no way to keep warm or leave to get warm. One more thing you have no body privacy. Other people have the right to see and inspect your genitals and look into your anus any time they want, the people in charge have the right to watch you shower. This 16 year old boy will be made to be nude in front of other people and display himself on his return to his prison despite being under constant observation of law officers the entire time. Plus if you look at the video he is in a jumpsuit with his feet / legs shackled together and his cuffed to his waste. They did release his right hand so he could raise it to swear the oath.
What has me crying, emotionally upset, and torn up barely able to deal with my thoughts. This boy has been in jail for 11 months. He committed the crime at 15 and he is now 16. He will be in some prison for the rest of his life. His only out will be either killed or a natural death 60 years from now. During that time his life will be hell. Pure punishment. He is young and kind of cute with longish hair … I know what he will face, I had it done to me. He will adjust and try to deal but others will take their pleasure out of his body and he won’t have any way to stop them. Unlike me he cannot escape or hide from the abusers. He faces constant physical violence and danger of harm. I know what it is like to be stabbed while eating, more than once a fork was embedded in my body. Mostly my hand or arm. From an early age I learned supper at the table was dangerous and got used to looking for the signs of violence about to happen and sliding quickly under the table. I got really good at quickly dropping under the table and trying to shut out what was happening above. Not that if I was the target being under the table was safe, but it gave me avenues to try to escape. I was so undernourished and thin because who can eat knowing that at any time the adults at the table will start throwing things and hitting each other or coming after me for something. One doctor who examined me said I was so underdeveloped I would be lucky to be over 5 foot tall as an adult. This will be Ethan’s life for the next 60 years. I was able to eat at school and hide from supper, but for him to do that he has to do the slave labor to buy food that is not provided. He faces constant threats of abuse from other prisoners, the guards that are said to protect he will also be a threat to him, he wont have access to medical health or needed mental health, he will suffer and suffer for a lifetime of maybe 60 years. And some people think that is justice.
An update and ending. I had more to write on this but I think you get my point you can look up anything you need to, I just got done throwing up which woke Ron from his nap. He came out and wanted to know why I was sick and crying. When I tried to tell him but really couldn’t he wanted me to shut the computers off. He did not know the specifics, but he was sure it had to do with something on either computer. He asked me repeatedly to shut them off and play Halo on the Xbox. I like Halo, it makes me feel better as I get to be the ultra strong hero stopping the bad guys. But in this Ron doesn’t understand. My retreating into fantasy will help me right now, but it wont help anyone of the people in the broken prison system in the US, it wont help Eathan who is a kid his parents destroyed and set up for this. I have a suspicion more will come out, the parents did not flee and lie so because they bought the gun, that makes no sense. I suspect there was a much worse home life for Ethan that will come out. Not that it will matter for him now, our vindictive hateful society will have their revenge. I just wish they would add one more death to the total lost that day, his life also was lost forever it will just take him longer to die.
One more thought. For those that have a weird view that death is worse than a lifetime of rape, punishment, abuse, harm, pain, hurt, being scared, having to use a toilet in the open, having to shower in front of everyone, and all the rest … what is your mental defect. Many times in my childhood I felt death was better. I just never got to the point of doing it simply because I did not know how. I did put some effort into it, but back then no internet. Death even in the bible is the dead no not nothing! Damn that is better than some of the things I mentioned above.
Anyway, this is week we have to vote and the state for the first time I have lived here did not send out a sample ballot for our voting district. They only have a county wide version of the ballot online. This is the first year the republicans have been in charge of our county voting and they are making it as hard as possible to find information on any of the things on the ballot. I was to look up all the judges that need retention and other provisions on the ballot that fills nearly three pages in a PDF file. Most of this won’t be on my ballot but I have no way to know. But with my mind / emotions the way they are right now it is a struggle to even think or concentrate? Damn I want to go hide in my bed. But my mind keeps going back to the life this poor bastard will have. I don’t agree it is justice or in any way what is best for society. If we really want him removed from society just kill him. Don’t give him a sentence of 60 years of punishment. That if revenge, that is sadistic. That is not what humans should do.
Ok I am done, drained of any ability to say more. Best wishes and hugs to all. I am not even going to proof read this for mistakes, what is then it is. I feel the pain in every part of my body and all my fear responses are wanting me to flee but where would I flee to? Hugs
Many people have bought into the right wing talking point that trans people are a new fad. But the truth is just like sexual orientation people have been born with a different gender than their birth identified sex for as long as there have been people. Another right wing talking point shown to be incorrect and wrong. Hugs
Republicans seeking to restrict children’s lives claim trans youth are a ‘new phenomenon’. Jules Gill-Peterson explains how medical archives prove them wrong
Jules Gill-Peterson: ‘Children and youth have been finding access to trans medicine and transition as long as there has been medical transition.’ Photograph: Courtesy Jules Gill-Peterson
Republican lawmakers pushing to restrict transgender children’s lives have repeatedly argued that trans kids are a “new phenomenon” and that gender-affirming treatments and policiesare “experimental”.
But Jules Gill-Peterson, a professor of gender, sexuality and women’s studies at the University of Pittsburgh, has found extensive evidence of trans youth in the US living as themselves and fighting to transition in decades-old archival documents. The records from American hospitals and clinics date back to the early 20th century, with examples across the US well before the existence of contemporary language on trans identity.
Trans kids on the Republican bills targeting them: ‘I’m not a problem to society’
Read more
Why was it important to you to research the history of trans kids?
In the past 10 years, we’ve seen this sudden visibility of trans kids. There’s a lot more representation. But the common refrain is, “Trans people are so new” and “Trans kids, my gosh! They didn’t even exist until recently.” And I started to think about what happens when you’re part of a group that gets framed as brand new. There’s this cloak of caution and fear around trans kids, this idea that “We don’t know what it means for a child to transition”. That “this is all an experiment”. I had a sense as a historian that these ideas were probably not true and wanted to do historical research that would challenge this, by showing that trans kids have been around for a long time.
How far back were you able to find documentation?
What I uncovered in the research is that children and youth have been finding access to trans medicine and transition as long as there has been medical transition – as far back as the 1930s and 40s. But even prior to that, children certainly lived trans lives where they would socially transition in childhood. I found evidence in the US that families and communities would accept children as a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth, let them go to school, use the correct bathroom, all of the things that are being fought over now. We can see that 70 or 80 years ago, we were actually in a more progressive place in some areas.
What pieces of evidence were particularly telling?
I found handwritten letters from trans kids to a famous endocrinologist, Harry Benjamin, who was known for providing trans healthcare. In the 60s and 70s, they would say, “I’m X years old. I’m a transsexual. I read about that in the news” or “I looked up your work at a library, and it describes who I am”. They were from all over the country and they would ask if Dr Benjamin could see them, send them hormones, give them a permit to wear the clothes they wanted, talk to their family or teacher. It was young kids knowing really clearly that they were trans and going toe-to-toe with medical professionals. Suddenly, I had not only proof that kids were trans, but that they contacted doctors and tried to transition the best they could. It speaks to the remarkable ingenuity and resilience that trans young people have had for a really long time. And it’s pretty unimpeachable evidence that this is not a new social phenomenon. It’s not some trendy thing that kids are picking up now.
Are there specific stories that stuck with you?
One of the other incredible archival finds was this woman Val, a trans woman who in the 1950s was trying to get surgery in Wisconsin. In the hospital, she did an interview with a psychologist and talked about her childhood, growing up in the early 1930s in a small town in rural Wisconsin. She says from as far back as she could remember, she knew she was a girl. There was no trans language in that household, but her parents accepted her. There was an understanding of what that meant, socially, without any need for a medical diagnosis. So her family raised her as a girl and arranged for her to go to school as a girl. Now, there are dozens of bills that claim we have to restrict trans kids because “we’ve never seen kids like this before”, but in reality we can look almost 90 years ago and see a trans kid who was accepted by her family.
What did you learn about who has actually had access to care throughout the history of trans medicine?
One of the biggest lines of difference was racial. White trans people were seen as having a problem in their gender development that could be corrected, and in fact must be corrected because of this inherently racist idea that white civilization must have its gender norms. So right from the start, we see that white trans kids get way more access to medical care.
‘It helps me be myself’: trans kids on the healthcare Republicans want to deny them
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Black trans children in particular are almost completely shut out. Instead of receiving medical care, they are much more likely to be arrested or institutionalized, put in the foster care system or juvenile detention. And they are much more likely to be diagnosed as delusional, schizophrenic or something else that blatantly ignores what they know about themselves.
How does that legacy of exclusion tie into the current efforts to outlaw gender-affirming treatments?
Most trans people do not have access to gender-affirming care. They never have, it’s never been the reality. We’re not even close. It’s primarily upper-middle-class and white well-educated families that actually have the time and the money to access care. So we’re now facing the proposition of banning forms of healthcare that almost no trans kids even have access to. The possibility of making things better and righting historical wrongs will stop with these bills.
And it’s a direct continuation of this history that is also a racial history. There is a lot of disposable income and time required to get care. If you have a trans kid, you need to advocate constantly and show up and testify against the bills. So working-class families, families of color, people with less resources are way less able to do what it takes right now to access pediatric gender-affirming care.
Why do you think trans kids in particular have become such a culture war target?
Mainstream LGBT organizations for a long time weren’t trans-inclusive, and trans activists long warned that focusing on gay marriagewould leave behind other LGBT people who are vulnerable and wouldn’t be protected by marriage – like trans people and youth. And that seems to really have come true. Trans rights have been turned into a wedge issue. And children are really easy targets, because we don’t grant them the privilege to speak for themselves and defend their own interests. So they are used as pawns.
How trans children became ‘a political football’ for the Republican party
Read more
Rightwing conservatives have been recycling the same language that we saw 15 to 20 years ago around gays and lesbians – the language of “child endangerment”, “grooming”, “pedophilia”, the need to “protect children” and “protect schools” through really restrictive laws. The focus on children is part of a coordinated effort and it’s not just in the US. We see it in the UK where there is no real access to gender-affirming treatments if you’re under 18. There’s a media campaign to shift the discourse to focusing on children’s transitions with all sorts of moral panics. It’s a really disturbing coalition, because you’ve got rightwing white supremacist evangelicals, but you also have politicians in the mainstream and people on the left who are trans-exclusionary and claim to be feminists. It’s a perfect storm.
How do you think people should be responding to Arkansas passing the first trans healthcare ban in the US this week?
This should be a wake-up call for a lot of folks. It’s no longer hypothetical. This is the time for people to reach out to the governor of Arkansas, but also to get involved in their own states and ask what they can do now before we see another passage of one of these bills. We should also be thinking more broadly, so we’re not just reacting over and over again to these bills. In some ways trans healthcare is analogous to reproductive rights and abortion. If you make it illegal, the need for care doesn’t go away. So we should be thinking about how we make this kind of care available to young people and how to show up for these children and their families, and not just make these laws the be-all-end-all.
This is far more invasive and serious than the way it started, which was an attack on trans kids. Now the drive is to only allow materials, books, and teaching a hard right ideology from the 1950s. What next for parents’ rights in school, the right of racist white parents to have their white children not be in classrooms with black students? Is that also going to be the next step in regressing the country? The right of Christian kids to not be in classrooms with kids who are not Christian? Where does a single bigoted parents demands stop? Notice one of the proud book ban women brags about taking away other parents rights to let their kids read the books with the forbidden knowledge in them, it is not about controlling their children it is all about controlling yours. They already teach their child racist bigoted regressive stuff, they feel they must prevent other parents from teach their children tolerance, acceptance of LGBTQ+, and diversity as a good thing. These people cannot have any kids getting that message. It has long passed the time this is scary; this is US Taliban and moral police territory. The article is a bit long but not bad, and it is a highly informative important read. The last paragraph sums it up nicely. Hugs
“The goal is to have the most conservative counties determine what the rest of the state has access to. It’s to allow a conservative ideology to hold rank over the rest of us,” said the project’s co-founder, Stephana Ferrell. “That’s what all of this is about. The attack on teachers, the banning of books—they need parents to not trust public education, so that they’re fed up and take taxpayer dollars into the for-profit education sector.”
‘A PLEASURE TO BURN’
Florida’s Education Department has quietly selected right-wingers for a book-banning council that’ll re-train public school librarians.
Brooke Leigh Howard
Reporter
Jose Pagliery
Political Investigations Reporter
EXCLUSIVE
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
In the name of “curriculum transparency,” Florida’s Republican-controlled state government has appointed several anti-gay and anti-mask conspiracy theorists to take charge of a new effort at public schools: banning books.
This hastily assembled censorship council—tasked with retraining public school librarians to abide by new restrictions—is the latest ploy in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crusade to upend the state’s education system.
But the council was also staffed under suspicious circumstances, with the state Education Department ignoring its own call for official candidates from local school districts and instead filling most of the slots with right-wing activists who have a history of proposing book bans. One was even nominated by a religious activist with close ties to the DeSantis administration a week before the department publicly called for candidates, according to government emails, hinting at secret coordination between them.
“It calls into question the process that the Florida State Board of Education is trying to implement. It raises significant transparency questions,” said Megan Uzzell at Democracy Forward, which obtained those government emails.
While the “parent workgroup” is only getting started, the Education Department’s recent meeting in Orlando last week revealed how the state is positioning itself to spread those controls from school libraries to teachers’ classrooms.
As the meeting ended, Clinton McCkracken, the head of the Orange County teachers union, made a comment to another parent: “I don’t know what to tell my teachers.”
The recent episode began with an Aug. 12 memo from Education Department senior chancellor Jacob Oliva. The memo called for local school districts to nominate “parents of students in K-12 schools for representation on a workgroup”—one charged with creating mandatory “training” that would guide librarians statewide on how to follow new library censorship rules signed into law by Gov. DeSantis earlier this year. School districts had a week to submit the names of qualified nominees.
The Education Department passed on nearly 100 potentially qualified applicants with relevant experience, records show. In Brevard County alone, it ignored the five submissions made by the bipartisan local school board, including the nomination of a former elementary school assistant principal, the director of Eastern Florida State College’s tutoring centers, and the administrator of a local scholarship fund.
Instead, the department went with a woman who nominated herself: Michelle Beavers.
While other candidates have teaching experience, Beavers’ bona fides consist of right-wing activism. She leads the local chapter of Moms for Liberty, a MAGA contingent that has antagonized her school board for years over mask mandates—and allied with DeSantis for his recent attempt to outlaw critical race theory in schools.
Since then, Beavers has been actively seeking to ban books. In March, she emailed a Brevard County assistant superintendent about what was then the 19th title on her growing list of targets: the coming-of-age comic book This One Summer, which mentionslesbians and shows teenagers engaging in typical crude humor.
Beavers thanked the assistant superintendent for her “efforts to get this material vetted and hopefully out of our minors hands.” In other emails, Beavers identifies herself as the “head of the Library Book Committee,” explaining that she built a “comprehensive report” that reviews all of the “offensive items” in certain books. She warned about “books that are porn” and opposed a parent opt-out program in a specious and sweeping statement full of grammatical errors.
“These books violate the law, it’s a felony. So why would you try and still defend there [sic] existence by letting parents opt out?” she wrote.
Beavers and the other three appointed parents are now in a working group that is finalizing the presentation that will be used to train school librarians statewide.
The Sanctity of DeSantis
The marching orders come from the top. In March, Gov. DeSantis said parental rights should be at the helm of a child’s education.
“We are not going to let politicians deny parents the right to know what is being taught in our schools. I’m proud to sign this legislation that ensures curriculum transparency,” the governor said in a statement at the time.
“While teachers, school administrators, and school board members have a tremendous amount of authority over what and how our kids are taught in school, at the end of the day, parents—not schools—are responsible for raising children,” added Florida state Republican Senate Leader Wilton Simpson.
“The state has created a situation that is harming students.”
— Clinton McCkracken, head of the Orange County teachers union
Last week’s Education Department meeting was the latest example of the encroaching restrictions, when it unanimously voted to implement rules guaranteeing so-called “parental rights.” The department determined that parents must be notified if their child uses a school restroom or locker room that does not correlate with the child’s sex assigned at birth.
Meanwhile, censorship measures that initially targeted school libraries were extended to individual teachers’ classroom collections, which must now “be reviewed by a district employee holding a valid educational media specialist certificate,” according to Florida’s state website. The board also decided that educators could lose their teaching certifications if they do not comply with the state’s Parental Rights in Education law.
Bad Apples
At Wednesday’s meeting, state education board member Grazie Pozo Christie, a senior fellow for The Catholic Association, cited the need “to hold teachers accountable” for those she called “some bad apples.”
Teachers already suffer through poor working conditions, low pay, and staff shortages—being subject to state review of classroom books adds even more to their plates, McCracken, the Orange County teachers union head, said in an interview with The Daily Beast.
“The board voted… to require that all of those books have to be cataloged now. Which, of course, is an arduous task for teachers who may have hundreds of those books. So, in effect, for a lot of those teachers, that means that those classroom libraries won’t be available to students any longer until we can figure out how to manage that,” he said. “Laws like this are created to demonize public education.”
McCracken criticized how the meeting was scheduled in a way that would conflict with teachers’ work schedules and low salaries: 9 a.m. on a school day at a hotel with a hefty price tag for paid parking.
Despite emotional testimonies from concerned teachers, the board didn’t budge.
Teachers who have taken years to build their classroom book collections—available to students who can’t always take solo trips to the library—will now be burdened with the task of indexing their own shelves for so-called content restrictions, McCracken said.
“The classroom library has been an amazing tool for teachers to be able to inspire kids to read,” McCkracken said.
“So what are those kids going to do if the libraries aren’t there?” he asked. “They’ll have less access to important material that would inspire them to read and to learn. The state has created a situation that is harming students.”
Book Burning Training
The little-known and quickly assembled “work group” developing this book ban training is a pivotal part of this effort—which makes it all the stranger that the Education Department engaged in what critics are calling a bad faith effort to staff it.
Two parents who applied for Florida’s Department of Education media workgroup told The Daily Beast they raised their hands because they were interested in the books being challenged in schools.
“I’m very familiar with the research of psychological research for children, where it can be disruptive to introduce some of the pornographic material early or over-sexualized material early,” said Hillary Earle, who applied for the media group after seeing an announcement on the neighborhood app NextDoor.
Despite her years of academic and mediation accolades, as well as an endorsement from a school board member, Earle didn’t know she wasn’t selected for the media workgroup until her interview with The Daily Beast.
“This is the first I’m hearing of it,” she said. “I haven’t received anything: a phone call, an interview, anything.”
By contrast, Scott Rooke received a Brevard County school board member endorsement after expressing previous interest in children’s reading material. But he only discovered he wasn’t selected by way of a blog, Account Baloney. He immediately recognized the names of two Moms for Liberty members who did make it: Michelle Beavers and Jennifer Pippin.
The parent-membership seems slanted from the start when I just saw those two names,” he said.
The woman that took his place, Pippin, was not officially recommended by a school district. Instead, emails show, her name was submitted by Keith Flaugh, a childless conservative activist whose “Florida Citizens Alliance” has closely advised DeSantis for years on reforming public schools to combat “cultural Marxism” and “LGBTQ values” in favor of “Judeo-Christian family values.”
When discussing proposed training for librarians and media center employees at a recent working group meeting, Pippin, who drove and sat in her car for the duration of the meeting, chimed in to remind everyone, “I’m not a media center specialist,” noting she didn’t even understand some of the abbreviations being used in the mandated materials she intends to craft.
A third MAGA mom now on the book banning work group is Jamie Merchant, a member of “Mamas for DeSantis” whose summer reading included the book Crimes of the Educators, a call to demolish American public schools written by two known conspiracy theorists—one of whom runs a website that warns about “cancer deaths from the COVID jabs.”
Contentious Consensus
By all accounts, the panel tasked with developing the oncoming mandatory librarian training for the Education Board is a slow-moving train wreck. When the group reviewed the PowerPoint slides at their recent meeting last week, the department’s director of instructional materials, Amber Baumbach, punted on presenting what would obviously be the most controversial and contentious material.
Faced with questions about disagreements, the group director revealed that the Education Department might soon get two versions of the presentation—in what critics like Stephana Ferrell with Florida Freedom to Read Project expect to be a sane version and one that caters to the crazies. The DeSantis administration—which has already spent considerable energy attacking “woke” culture—would decide which option to take.
“If we can’t reach a consensus…it is possible for us to route two different versions of the training,” one of the options that we have is to provide two different points of view,” Baumbach said.
The working group is scheduled to meet again publicly this coming Tuesday, when it will present the slides that address what these conservatives deem offensive material—and is expected to spark more protests from worried parent groups already battling these book bans, like Florida Freedom to Read Project.
“The goal is to have the most conservative counties determine what the rest of the state has access to. It’s to allow a conservative ideology to hold rank over the rest of us,” said the project’s co-founder, Stephana Ferrell. “That’s what all of this is about. The attack on teachers, the banning of books—they need parents to not trust public education, so that they’re fed up and take taxpayer dollars into the for-profit education sector.”
A much better visual report than the first written one I posted. This shows just how really bonkers this whole thing is. Hugs
Michigan high school student defends her mural which parents called satanic and anti-Christian because it contained a Genshin Impact character and a person wearing a transgender flag t-shirt. The Majority Report crew discusses outraged comments made by parents, like “fix their brains” and how such attitudes by the Right were once parodied years ago.
Many thanks to Ali for dropping a note about this and the link in a comment. I find many of the people who read the blog have great suggestions of news they found that I missed. This article on silencing the teaching of abortion is similar to the don’t say gay laws in republican controlled states, it is about making something / people disappear from society and keeping it / them hidden with no information about them available to the people effected by / needing the information. Think of it, if you can control the information students at all levels get you can direct the culture in any way you wish. No freedom of expression creates what is happening in China and other authoritarian places where the people have only lock step ideas because it is all propaganda driven by the political class / government. It is a scary time where the republican party / right wing wants to deny advances in society in all categories such as medical, biological, knowledge of the planet, basically the right / republicans want to drive the country back to what they feel was a simpler time when they were in charge and people were not bothered by things different from them. Got news for them, they will have to go back much farther than the 1950s to find that, the idea that the 1950s were the great social golden age where the stereotypes they love were true … is completely wrong. That time was horrible for any minority or those who were not white cis men. Women had little or no rights, blacks / non-whites were without rights and being killed or harmed with impunity, kids were mistreated with no way to complain or stop it, people were dying of health issues we have solved now, and lastly the fact that forced patriotism of kids being made to recite the pledge and forced Christian prayer in schools / public events did not make things better all it did was make clones who felt obligated to go to church and give money while hating it at the same time. I did not live then, but I thank the Dogs That Love Gravy I did not.
Now one last thing, lets talk about what is meant by “woke”. The right is trying to demonize the word. I keep hearing interviewed right wingers saying they have to stop the left pushing woke in schools. While I don’t really know of anyone on the left that uses the term I can tell you what it means. Ready for this. That scary word is another way of saying “to be nice”. Yup that is all it is about or means. It means not using slurs, not trying to hurt other people’s feelings, it is not being deliberately cruel or mean. So when people claim I am being woke, I think them. I want everyone to understand the goal of the right, which is to make the cruelty of the regressive times they claim were better a reality again. I am woke as much as I can be, where ever I can be, when and to as much as I can be … because I love being nice to others. Hugs
Seeking to control what can be taught at public universities—including abortion—is dystopian and grim. It’s what conservatives have always wanted.
As we’ve seen in Idaho and Florida, expect more public university systems in red states to start being tentative, worried, and self-censored when talking about reproductive rights. Cage Rivera/Rewire News Group illustration
With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, conservatives scored a victory decades in the making: controlling pregnant people’s bodies. They’re not satisfied with just that, though. The next step is to control any speech they don’t like.
Just as ever-shifting abortion bans leave people unsure as to the laws that govern them, there’s now a distinct lack of clarity as to what can and can’t be said—and what can and can’t be taught—in schools.
Witness the dual speech and behavior controversy that has roiled the University of Idaho. In 2021, the state passed the “No Public Funds for Abortion” law, prohibiting public university employees from “counseling in favor of abortion.” That’s painfully vague, but definitely inhibits speech. For instance, can you talk about ectopic pregnancies in a biology class without implying abortion? Things got even more opaque following the reversal of Roe in June, when Idaho’s near-total abortion ban kicked in. The university provided guidance to employees that they could now face felony charges if they provided birth control to students.
Two weeks later, everything got reversed. Sort of. University President Scott Green complained that the memo issued to employees “quickly took on a life of its own with misinformation.” He then proceeded to, ostensibly, reassure employees, but those reassurances were vague. To his credit, Green made clear that the university can continue to offer birth control, but he didn’t directly address whether people could or could not “counsel in favor” of abortion. All he really said was that current academic freedom policies had not been changed and that the university cannot and does not prosecute people.
Neither of those reassurances gets at the heart of the issue: Can employees talk about abortion without running afoul of state law?
A similar story is unfolding at the state university system in Florida. The University of Florida may be hiring Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) to be its president. Sasse is a big fan of “religious liberty” when it comes to dismantling the line between church and state, so his hiring likely doesn’t bode well for a university already under siege by conservative elected officials. The state recently asserted in a court document that curriculum and in-class instruction are government speech—not individual speech—and therefore it can regulate what public university teachers say.
The document was filed in a lawsuit regarding the constitutionality of the state’s “Stop WOKE Act,” which at root prohibits professors from teaching about the country’s pernicious history of racism. The state even tried to extend these speech restrictions to private companies, but that got tossed out by a federal court.
Seeking to control what people teach at public universities is impossibly dystopian and grim. It’s also the logical endpoint of what conservatives have wanted forever: public money free from the conditions that used to go along with taking public money—that religious institutions shouldn’t be funded with taxpayer dollars and groups that receive public money shouldn’t be able to discriminate.
Dismantling that line between church and state and enshrining bigotry into law has been quite a successful project of religious conservatives. They prevailed in an Iowa case where a student group at a public university, taking public dollars, excluded a gay student from leadership and won in court. They scored their biggest victory this past Supreme Court term in Carson v. Makin: The justices ruled that K-12 private religious schools can get public tuition money. And it’s just this sort of thing that allows a Christian K-12 school in Florida to take $1.6 million in public money while having a policy that they will expel LGBTQ students.
Conservatives have always embraced schools like Bob Jones University and Liberty University that completely control their students’ behavior and speech. The former went up to the Supreme Court in 1983 to fight for the right to receive IRS tax-exempt status while maintaining a policy of only admitting white students. The university lost. Bob Jones University also banned interracial dating until 2000.
Rolling back abortion rights is just the latest weapon in the religious right’s ever-growing arsenal. When you control what people can do, it’s just a short hop to controlling what they can say. When bans prohibit “aiding or abetting” an abortion, such as that in Texas SB 8, it directly leads to controlling speech. For example, can you donate to an abortion fund if you live in Texas? In theory, that should never be restricted. Donating money is free speech and is therefore protected under Citizens United v. FEC and is one of the sacred tenets of modern conservatism.
But modern conservatism has become very comfortable with “free speech for me, but not for thee,” and they’ve captured enough of the federal courts that they’ll continue to get their way. Meanwhile, expect more public university systems in red states to start being tentative, worried, and self-censored when talking about reproductive rights or racial justice. Idaho and Florida may have started this trend, but it certainly won’t end there.
Republicans will do absolutely nothing to go after rapists, nor traffickers, nor abusers, nor predators, nor guns, nor violence towards women, nor violence towards children/students because they support white patriarchal controls.
In their world, white men must control all, without any criticism, without any compromise, all while claiming to being a victim.
In this state they are demanding the female athletes tell them all about their menstruation schedule. Yes they want the girls in school at all ages to tell them when they have their periods, how long it lasts, any issues they have during it, and especially they are required to report any delays in their schedule and when it goes back to normal. I wonder why?
I don’t normally feel the need to add my thoughts to Joe.My.God posts, he does a great job and covers it all. In this case I want to point out several things. Reading each section, you see that the republicans / right wing is clearly equating drag, which is simply dressing up in a costume, with sex. More important they are trying to equate it with active sex with kids. Please tell me how reading to kids in a costume is sexual? What if I dressed up as a Klingon and read to kids, would that be sexual? Because what the right / republicans are trying to do is also equate drag with transexuals. Yes they want you to think trans person when you read drag. That is what they did with CRT, change what people think when they hear it. What they want is when you find out there is a drag queen story hour you think trans women reading to kids, which again is not sexual or wrong but it is the rights way of making it seem dirty and sexual. Think of it reading stories to kids in public with their parents and other adults present is being made to see like a sexual orgy by the right. Why? Because it is a political wedge issue and being used by the republicans to drive their base and the religious right to the poles. It stirs up anti-trans hate, makes people angry at the LGBTQ+ because it creates an image in their minds that again kids are being sexual used. It also validates the religious people who think that all the non-1950 traditions are sinful. Again in a room in public with other adults present including the child’s parents / guardians is a sexual performance involving the kids. To these people simply the idea of a guy dressed in “woman’s” clothing is sexual and a sin that makes their god cry!
Clothing has no damn gender people. Men wore dresses for a long time, men in some cultures wear skirts, and in some native cultures people go nude, and who doesn’t like a damn toga party. This is not about the clothing or the cloth. It is about gender roles and privileges of each gender. Men must have all the rights and be in charge while women must be submissive and give men their bodies and serve them. Men rule and women obey. That is what this is really about. Think of it why is it always trans women that the right gets so upset about? They never mention trans men. Because in their minds any male that would give up their god given right to rule over and take what they want from the other gender is crazy and ill. Plus by a man with all his rights becoming a woman with no rights screws up their idea of what the world must be. Trans men don’t bother then because women don’t matter to them and they figure they will put them in their place soon enough.
The second thing I want you to notice is that in order to vilify drag queens a “Christian” is repeatedly lying about seeing a drag performer showing their genitals. That never happened. The “Christian” altered the video they showed and reported to police to try to frame the drag performer. The police said they viewed other footage and had the altered video checked. The performer did not do what the “Christian” claimed. However after being called out on it, the “Christian” still keeps making the claim everywhere anyone will listen to them. They are going on right wing media claiming the performer did it even though it is proven wrong because the right knows their people won’t check the facts and most simply don’t care. The right prefers their feelings to facts.
This is about being moral police, let’s be honest. This has nothing to do with kids. This is entirely about the idea that some people hate the idea of men dressing like women. Yet as I keep saying that has been something done throughout history especially from the start of the TV era to today where one of the most popular shows is RuPaul’s Drag Race, which I believe is in its fourteenth season. So why is this so important now? Religion, has anyone noticed a surge in the right trying to regain traditional gender roles while forcing more religion down everyone’s throat? This is part of the Christian nationalist push. This is what the right wants, to push their view of right and wrong based on the religious morality of 2,500 years ago that promoted slavery. The right wing in the US is fast becoming the US Christian version of the Taliban. Stop them now before they come for everything else that they object to in our society! Hugs
A bill that would ban drag performances in all public venues will be introduced in the first days of the next session of the Idaho Legislature in January, Idaho Family Policy Center President Blaine Conzatti told the Idaho Capital Sun.
Conzatti and other conservative activists around Idaho and across the country have protested against events in public spaces that feature drag queens, including drag queen story hour events at public libraries.
“No child should ever be exposed to sexual exhibitions like drag shows in public places,”he said. Conzatti also cites a drag performance in Coeur d’Alene in June as another example of public indecency, when a performer was accused of exposing himself during a Pride in the Park event.
A drag performer has sued a blogger who falsely accused him of indecent exposure and posted doctored footage of him online. Eric Posey, a Kootenai County resident whose stage name is Mona Liza Million, performed June 11 at the Pride in the Park celebration in Coeur d’Alene. The next day, blogger Summer Bushnell published an edited video of Posey’s performance on her Facebook page. Posey’s pelvic area is blurred out in the edited video, implying nudity.
Bushnell claimed that Posey exposed himself to the crowd. She called for Posey’s arrest in her Facebook post, urging the public to contact police and the Idaho Attorney General’s Office. The Coeur d’Alene City Prosecutor’s Office reviewed the edited video, as well as other unedited videos and photos. Prosecutors announced in July that the evidence shows Posey did not violate any state or local law.
Idaho GOP chair and state Rep. Dorothy Moon did not address questions about whether the state party supported the proposal, but she told VICE News in an email that the Idaho GOP is “opposed to the sexualization of children, including ‘family-friendly’ or ‘all-ages’ drag shows.”
The events she is referring to include drag queens reading children’s books to kids at public libraries; Conzatti’s comments, moreover, indicated the proposal would apply to drag shows in public spaces even for adults.
Idaho, like much of the country, has also seen an uptick of violence towards LGBTQ+ people in general. In June, Coeur d’Alene police arrested dozens of white supremacists who allegedly planned to disrupt the city’s Pride festival,.
The Idaho Family Policy Center, an affiliate of the hate group Focus On The Family, is also the main driver of an abortion ban in Idaho. Conzetti knows his claim about that drag performer is a lie, but happily parrots the lie to local media in the name of Jesus.
It's not just about kids anymore: A rightwing Idaho think tank reportedly helped draft a bill to prevent even adults from performing or watching drag in public spaces. https://t.co/IW6o7AhY1B
I’d like to say this violates the First Amendment, and it does, but I don’t trust it in the hands of the courts today. This is clearly eliminationist and will lead to far more horrifying efforts to erase LGBT people from society.
I’ve been saying for years that the only difference between these people and the Westboro Baptists is that Westboro at least has the balls to come out and say they want us dead. These people want the same, but they know they have to be diplomatic if they want to get on TV and have the public accept them as expressing just another point of view that one might happen to disagree with – as opposed to being the genocidal fascists they are.
When I was in college, I got funny looks for saying we should be more afraid of people like Tony Perkins than Fred Phelps. But I was right.
Well, polls have shown that if these Christian bastards ever figured out how to identify LGBT people in the womb, they’d be all pro abortion in those instances.
That’s exactly what my father told me! “Your mother and I are opposed to abortion. But had we known that you’d lead a gay lifestyle, we would have aborted you.”
As we’ve seen in Idaho and Florida, expect more public university systems in red states to start being tentative, worried, and self-censored when talking about reproductive rights. Cage Rivera/Rewire News Group illustration
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