The Earth has changed so many times and transformed heavily from when it first formed. How life came from non-life is still a big scientific mystery. However, we do have a current best guess for the beginning of life on Earth which we think is around 3.8 billion years ago. But before we get into that, let’s start from the beginning and take a trip back in time.
This is why it is important to keep LGBTQ+ symbols, books, information, and our presence in all communities. This is why the right / republicans want to destroy these same things. Somehow they think if kids don’t see it they won’t be LGBTQ+, but what they really want is LGBTQ+ kids to be afraid and unhappy. Someone once asked me why I thought it was OK for teachers to have rainbow flag stickers in their classrooms or on their classroom doors. This is why. Hugs
A beautiful story out of Paris, Arkansas (population 3,413) shows the power of representation and how it can have an incredible effect on a child’s life.
Stephanie Robertson, 52, received a Progress Pride flag last year from her son, Levi, 30, and she’s had it up throughout the month of June. Stephanie is a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve who currently works part-time as a support specialist for the Forest Service at Ozark St Francis National Forest.
“She was excited to hang it up for the first time this year and kept it hanging up outside her home all throughout June,” Levi told PinkNews.
In the last presidential election, 18.8% of residents voted Democrat while 78.3% voted Republican. It’s safe to say a pride flag isn’t something you see every day in that community. That’s why when a self-described “young LGBTQ+ person” saw the flag hanging from Stepanie’s house, it had a huge impact.
The child felt so welcomed by the flag that they put a letter in Stephanie’s mailbox. “She texted me yesterday and was like, ‘You’re not gonna believe the letter I found in our mailbox,’ and sent me a photo of the letter,” Levi told Pink News.
“Hello, this is probably kinda weird,” the letter began, “but I walk past your house every day and I’ve noticed your flag and I’m glad to know there is at least one ally in this little town – from a young LGBTQ+ person.”
The letter was written on a small legal pad and had several words crossed out.
The child’s words provide a small glimpse into what it’s like to live in a small town where people aren’t openly accepting of the LGBTQ community. For the child to learn that there is “at least one” ally in town has to mean the world to them. By hanging that flag, Stepanie showed the child that there was one safe place in their town where they are welcome to be their true self.
“I immediately called her and told her how profound and awesome it was that her hanging it made a child feel seen,” Levi said. “She agreed and kept saying how she couldn’t get over how sweet it was.”
Levi tweeted out a photo of the letter and it has received over 750,000 likes. The viral tweet is a great reminder of the impact that allies can have when they make themselves known through simple gestures such as flying a Pride flag.
It’s also a reminder that there’s still a lot of work to be done to make sure that LGBTQ children feel safe no matter where they live.
The child’s note has encouraged Stephanie to do even more for the LGBTQ community in Paris, Arkansas. “She’s going to find a Progress Pride flag window sticker for the front of her house to keep up all year,” Levi said.
Many thanks to Ali for sending me the link to this. I keep reading of adults asking how they explain gays and lesbians to their kids. It really is not hard, kids understand love and kindness unless they have been taught by adults it is wrong. Hugs.
Kids say the darnedest things, sure. But often they say the wisest things too.
Case in point—this viral video.
Hannah Lewis, a 32-year-old mom and LGBTQ advocate who goes by the name “Lesbimum” on TikTok and Instagram, shared a sweet exchange between her and a young boy after he asked if she had a boyfriend.
Their heartwarming conversation received nearly 2 million likes, and it really offers us all a glimpse into what the world can look like through the eyes of pure acceptance.
When approached with the question, Lewis chose to answer him plainly, rather than “hide who I am.”
No, she didn’t have a “boyfriend” and wasn’t interested in dating boys.
“Oh so you want to have a girlfriend,” the boy quipped.
When Lewis responded that, “yeah,” she wanted to have a girlfriend, the boy shared with her that he didn’t “know any girls who have girlfriends.”
Lewis then asked her young friend what he thought about girls being with each other. “And he was like, ‘well does that also mean that boys can have boyfriends?’” she recalled.
“Wow. Think how many more people can be in love now.”
What a simple, pure and profound thing to say.
“Honestly my heart melted,” Lewis said through tears, adding that “I swear kids are living proof that homophobia is a taught behavior.”
Many folks in the comments echoed Lewis’ sentiment:
“All prejudices are taught. Kids are blank canvases influenced by society, their family, friends, school etc.”
“I’m so glad I’m able to teach my brother and sister so much about different sexualities, races etc. as I have never been taught from my parents.”
“My heart EXPLODED.”
“’Think of how many people can be in love now’ ….. AMAZING VIEW POINT!!!! 🥰”
Whether hate, particularly homophobia, is socially learned or biologically inherited is a long-standing scientific debate. But it’s hard to hear this young boy’s point of view and not think that unconditional love must be the most natural thing there is. It certainly seems like the world would be a happier place if we did.
Facebook served warrant and forced to turn over chat messages between mother and daughter in Nebraska abortion case. So much for the right to privacy when it comes to pregnant people, am I right? Make no mistake, the “Party of Freedom” only wants freedom for white cisgender christian men with wealth. The modern conservative right is nothing but grotesque, power hungry, cowards who are afraid of everyone and everything that doesn’t believe and look exactly like they do. They make laws to oppress everyone while protecting themselves, which is exactly what Dobbs v Jackson is about – protecting white men in the workforce because these mediocre assholes can’t succeed without a boot on someone’s neck.
the marked difference between a progressive and a conservative
Grace Christian School in Valrico, FL has asked all LBGTQ students to leave immediately. This is probably not what Jesus would do. pic.twitter.com/qBg5k7WVGb
The moon is in the North Pole, where the day lasts 24 hours and the moon appears in only 30 seconds completely and blocks the sun for only 5 seconds and then disappears, a breathtaking view. pic.twitter.com/kJjkEzAeaq
@mrs.frazzled/TikTok; James Devaney/GC Images/Getty Images
After the Justice Department (DoJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued and acted on a search warrant at former Republican President Donald Trump’s Florida home and paid membership resort Mar-a-Lago, much has been written about what the federal law enforcement agency was looking for and what Trump might have done.
But perhaps the DoJ just isn’t using the right approach with Trump. California Kindergarten teacher Arielle Fodor—Mrs.Frazzled on TikTok—may have cracked the code.
Speak to Trump about the FBI raid like he was a 5-year-old.
The video went viral, racking up over 845k views on TikTok alone before jumping to other social media platforms.
When John Bolton says on Newsmax that we are safer under Biden then we would have been under Trump, the host loses his mind and they have an epic battle. I know people hate Bolton, but this is fantastic – he debunks every fake narrative they created about his foreign policy. pic.twitter.com/GdSr6pcfdv
Conservatives get offended when "obscene language" is used, like when Beto O'Rourke dropped an F bomb on a heckler while he discussed the Uvalde shooting.
Let’s be clear about what he is doing. Everything that has our hair standing on end are trial balloons and if he can get away with them uncontested he will do the exact and worse if allowed in WH. He is #45 on steroids
Just replace the word “woke” with “black people/women/immigrants/LGBT people/Jews” and you can hear what DeSantis is actually saying. This guy needs to be defeated in November. pic.twitter.com/tYPDmqPCGE
I keep posting on this subject of school officials outing kids for a reason. First this is not being pushed by teachers but instead by administrators, district level people, and school boards. All people that do not have daily contact with the students / kids and don’t know which ones have rough home lives or parents who would react badly to the news. The ones pushing this are really acting on misinformation and bigotry. This is going to get kids hurt and harmed. Some parents will throw the young kids out of the house, force some of them to live like hermits with no friends or social support, force some into conversion therapy which is simply torture to force a person to act differently because sexual orientation and gender identity cannot be changed even by torture. Or get the kids killed either by making them a target or by suicide. Look just a few years ago there was a college student who killed himself because his roommate recorded him having sex with another man and the gay student was terrified his parents and others would find out he was gay. Simple fact is if a kid who lives with these parents / people don’t think it is safe for them to come out to them, they are in the best position to know. It is a matter of personal rights that people should only come out to live openly as they feel comfortable doing. This mandatory reporting of an out kids to parents also destroys the students trust of their teachers and also denies the student resources they need to understand themselves and their world. Remember these laws that are implemented by maga republican governors also remove any books with information or characters that are LGBTQ+. It is plunging the LGBTQ+ back into the black hole void of the 1950s. Hugs
One teacher told her students not to come out to her: “I don’t want to come home every night and know that I may have contributed to one of my students being harmed.”
A June 12, 2022 protest of Don’t Say Gay law in New York City.Photo: Shutterstock
The Sarasota County School district adopted a new policy in the wake of the Don’t Say Gay law that requires teachers to out students to their parents if they identify as LGBTQ and to seek parental permission to refer to transgender students with the correct name or pronouns.
The new policy says: “If a student tells us that (they) are gay/gender questioning/trans, etc parent must be notified.”
A screenshot of a flow chart that illustrates the process a student must follow to be referred to with the correct name and pronouns was leaked to WUSF. It shows that a teacher must contact administration if a student asks the teacher to refer to them with a certain name or pronouns.
The administration will then contact the student’s parents to get consent for referring to the student correctly. If the parents don’t give consent, staff must deadname and misgender the student. If they do give consent, they have to meet with school administration to develop and sign a “gender support plan.”
School board member Bridget Ziegler, who supports the policy change, compared outing LGBTQ kids to informing parents that their child has been suspended.
“What if a child was saying, ‘Hey, my parents are really strict, I’m afraid to tell them that I got a suspension.’ Why is it different? It’s not,” she told the Herald-Tribune.
One teacher said that the plan changes how she interacts with students.
“I have several kids that are transgender that have preferred names,” said Gail Foreman of Booker High School. “And you know, we had to tell them, if you want to use your preferred name, I have got to call guidance, and they’re going to get a hold of your parents, and then your parents are going to meet with guidance. So guys, don’t say anything to me, if you’re not out at home.”
Foreman said that she doesn’t want to have to out students at all to their parents because of potential child abuse and suicide.
“If they get ahold of the parent, the parent comes into school, we believe everything’s all hunky dory, and that kid goes home,” she explained. “And then we get a call that the kid’s committed suicide, that kid’s in the hospital because the parent beat the snot out of them. I don’t want to come home every night and know that I may have contributed to one of my students being harmed.”
Derek Reich teaches history at Sarasota High School and said that the district told him he’s not even allowed to call students by nicknames without parental permission.
“This last week, our school district told us that look, Jonathan, whose government name is Jonathan, if you want to call him anything else — like his friends call him John, his parents call him John. If you want to call him by his nickname, John, you have to get a permission slip for him to call any student that wants to be called by something other than their official name on their birth certificate,” he said.
“So there are so many minor things that teachers are concerned about. If I can’t call Jonathan ‘John,’ when everyone in his family does without getting a permission slip signed, that’s a really difficult place to be as a teacher,” Reich added.
The Don’t Say Gay law was passed earlier this year and bans discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in younger grades and requires such discussions to be “developmentally appropriate” in older grades. The law has been criticized for being vague – instead of defining those terms, it simply allows parents to sue school districts if they feel that the law has been violated.
The law also prohibits schools from withholding certain information from parents.
Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf has signed an executive order on Tuesday directing state agencies to ensure that no taxpayer money goes toward the harmful practice known as conversion therapy. The order represents a significant step toward protecting LGBTQ+ youth from the practice.
“Conversion therapy is a traumatic practice based on junk science that actively harms the people it supposedly seeks to treat,” Wolf said in a statement. “This discriminatory practice is widely rejected by medical and scientific professionals and has been proven to lead to worse mental health outcomes for LGBTQIA+ youth subjected to it. This is about keeping our children safe from bullying and extreme practices that harm them.”
Wolf’s orders do not constitute a full ban on conversion therapy, but rather ensures the state does not support the practice. Local politics blog Billy Penn pointed out that many towns and counties do, however, ban conversion therapy at the local level, meaning that whether or not the practice is legal depends on where in Pennsylvania you are located.
The order directs all state agencies to protect state residents from conversion therapy, also misleadingly called “reparative therapy,” and to make sure no state funds are used to provide or reimburse agencies for conversion therapy. Wolf also directed the state government to investigate any reports of conversion therapy being paid for by state dollars and encourages the Department of State to tell people how to report licensed professionals that cause harm to LGBTQ+ people through conversion therapy.
The move makes Pennsylvania the 26th state to either fully or partially ban conversion therapy, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Twenty states and Washington, D.C. completely ban the harmful practice. Other countries have weighed whether to ban reparative therapy, with Canada banning it nationwide in December and the U.K. failing to ban it in April. Congress introduced a bill to ban conversion therapy in 2021, but the bill went nowhere. Meanwhile, this has been a banner year for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in state legislatures across the country, including Florida’s notorious “Don’t Say Gay” law, as well as bills banning gender-affirming therapy in Texas and Alabama.
According to a study earlier this year from LGBTQ+ suicide prevention organization The Trevor Project, 13% of LGBTQ+ youth report being subjected to conversion therapy, with 83% of those who underwent the harmful process being under the age of 18.
“Conversion therapy is causing horrific consequences for the mental health and well-being of a generation of young LGBTQIA+ individuals,” Wolf said. “But there is something very simple that we can all do to help. We can stand up and tell LGBTQIA+ youth that we hear them and we accept them exactly as they are.”
Mathew Shurka, a conversion therapy survivor and co-founder of Born Perfect, an organization aimed at ending the practice nationwide, called Wolf’s action a “critical step” in protecting LGBTQ+ Pennsylvanians. “LGBTQ kids and their families are targeted by so-called therapists causing lifelong harm,” Shurka said in a statement to NBC News. “This executive order demonstrates that our political offices have the power to protect our youth and it is their responsibility to do so.”
A June 12, 2022 protest of Don’t Say Gay law in New York City.Photo: Shutterstock
