This is the most critical thing in Utah for the elected officials to get to. What are there, 10 or 15 trans people in the state? So rather than fix kids going hungry in the summer when school is out, rather than fix medical care for poor people, rather than tackle homelessness, they are worried about who is peeing in what bathroom. Something that doesn’t matter. When you go into a public restroom it is not for a social gathering! If you are trying to see or determine what is someone else’s pants, you are a pervert and you are wrong. If you buy into the garbage that a trans person in a bathroom is just there to attack a cis female, weird they never seem concerned about trans boys attacking cis boys in bathrooms, but if that is your worry, don’t. It doesn’t happen! Facts are pesky things, the people being assaulted in bathrooms are trans people and cis women accused of being trans people. The ones doing the attacking … yes bigots, vigilante cis people thinking they have a right to police who gets to use the bathroom. This is a created panic issue by right wing religious haters who can not stand that trans people, people who are different, exist. This is all about enforcing homogeneous, forcing people to fit the right mold, to have only the correct people in society / public. About rejecting the modern age to force everyone to return to what was acceptable in the distant past. It is no different than the Amish demanding that everyone act just like them. Hugs. Scottie
The Senate spent days deciding just how anti-trans they wanted the law to be.
Utah’s Republican-dominated Senate approved a revised version of an anti-trans bathroom bill Thursday, following days of flip-flopping over just how anti-trans they wanted it to be. The state House must now sign the revised version before heading to the governor’s desk to become law.
The initial version of H.B. 257, passed by the Utah State House last week, included a provision banning transgender people from entering bathrooms and other “sex-designated privacy spaces” that align with their gender identity in “publicly funded and publicly owned” buildings unless they have updated their birth certificates and can prove that they have undergone gender confirmation surgery. Violations of the law would have been punishable by up to six months in jail.
The dangerous measure fits with the state’s long history of policing private matters.
As journalist Erin Reed noted, that version of the law would have applied to airports, convention centers, park buildings, recreational centers, public administration buildings, colleges, universities, and public schools.
On Wednesday, Utah state Sen. Dan McCay (R) introduced an amended version of the bill in the state Senate. As KUER reported, that version only applied to “government-owned and operated” buildings, like public schools, universities, and government buildings.
McCay’s version retained the original bill’s ban on transgender locker and changing room access as well as the ban on bathroom access in K–12 schools, but did away with restrictions on who can enter sex-designated bathrooms in other government buildings. McCay said the amended bill focused instead on “the actions of those who commit lewd and offensive behavior in a privacy space” and was “no longer related to gender or identity.”
But McCay reversed course on Thursday, introducing a new draft of the bill minutes before the Senate began its final discussion of HB 257, KSL.com reported.
The latest version restores the original’s prohibition on trans people entering bathrooms that align with their gender identity in government-owned buildings, while also narrowly defining “male” and “female” in state code according to biological sex assigned at birth.
While the bill does not include any enforcement mechanism or criminal penalties for violations of the bathroom ban, it does include enhanced criminal penalties for anyone who commits multiple crimes in a restroom as well as additional criminal penalties for anyone who commits crimes in a bathroom that does not align with their biological sex.
“Instead of making this about enforcement, we define what bathrooms are and we define who belongs in what bathroom and how to, I guess, qualify to be in one bathroom or another,” McCay said. “And I think that definition makes it very clear.”
The Senate approved H.B. 257 Thursday by a 21–8 vote, with only two Republicans joining Democrats in voting against it.
As the Senate voted, around 100 people gathered on the Utah Capitol steps to voice their opposition to the bill, urging Gov. Spencer Cox (R) to veto it.
H.B. 257 will return to the House for approval before reaching Cox’s desk. But as KSL.com noted, both critics and supporters expect the bill to face legal challenges.
Wow, the rush to the past is not slowing down even as Florida reaches the edge of the cliff. Anything that threatens right wing fundamentalist Christian world view must be banned, removed, buried along with the regressive indoctrination taught. What is the republican idea of real history? That slaves benefited by being slaves? Rapes and beatings were free for them, I guess? How did we get here, to this point?
The US was not always a backwards country. We started out with a radical idea, a representative democracy. Let the people have a say in how things are run. Other countries took this idea and made it great for the public. The future US kind of tried to pull it together, had a major set back with entrenched racism, which we are still dealing with today. Then a period of growth for some, oppression for others. Then the Enlightenment of the New Deal where again the people, the public welfare mattered. Yes we struggled as each generation challenged the generation before them to expand and grow, open up society so more people could share in it equally. Then we had a pivotal moment. A black man was voted in to the highest office in our country, the Presidency. The right / those that couldn’t accept equality lost their collective minds. And overnight racism became vogue again, became acceptable to be publicly voiced by some people. Leaders of political groups on the right, and religious leaders also on the right rallied their followers to push the idea that racism is not wrong as was held true for 40+ years and these people pushed back on the gains in equality of the blacks.
Well that worked so well for them that racism was extended back to mean anyone not white. Yes all brown people were deficient and inferior along with basically born bad, especially brown people at the southern border who wanted only to come to the US to work and share the “American dream”. Well that got a mob boss thug wannabe elected president who gave his followers permission to throw all decency away and revert back to the lowest common denominator they could be. Racism was joined by bigotry against anyone different, openly being crude, rude, and thuggish became OK for them. As long as it was towards others, not them. They demanded they and only them be given back the celebrated highest position in society / the country with everyone else being made lessor with many fewer rights. They want a return to a distant past before enlightenment, and with the added boost of recreating a fictitious history that never was, which is that the US was founded as a Christian country. With a racist bigoted moron leading the way, the right surged into office propelled by the idea of taking back the country to something worse for most people but great for a minority. The minority that was to be given a higher station loved it, and with the majority not paying much attention, managed to get into positions of authority over schools.
Now they used that authority to attack all areas with the full force of racism, bigotry, and forced religious indoctrination. Christianity only though, no other religion was acceptable. They removed books or media that had any member of society they disliked, they did the same for any ideas expressed they disagreed with. Freedom became only for them, white cis straight Christians, all others had no freedom. Parent’s rights were twisted to mean only the rights of white cis straight Christian racist bigots, and those rights included forcing every child to be indoctrinated with the right wing racist bigoted Christian teachings regardless of the child’s parents wishes. A complete authoritarian take over was what they tried.
It was noticed because like all bigots they were not quiet about the damage they were doing once they got the authority to do it. They aggressively rammed their backwards oppression on everyone. History has shown when they tried this same shit in the past, it was quickly stopped so they tried to create laws cementing their ideas in place. But the public which was still a progressive majority woke up, and started fighting back. They took back a lot of the school boards, they took back as many positions as came up for vote. The only ones they couldn’t fix were the ones not yet up for vote, like Governor and state officials. Which brings us to now, today in Florida where educational classes on subjects long thought important for the growth of students is being removed to further the forced indoctrination of right wing political racism, bigotry, and Christianity along with a made up fictional history. Hugs. Scottie
Two quotes from the article.
“Sociology is the scientific study of social life, social change, and the social causes and consequences of human behavior, which are at the core of civic literacy and are essential to a broad range of careers,” the association said in a statement to the New York Times.
“Failure to prioritize the scientific study of the causes and consequences of human behavior is a failure of Florida’s commitment to providing high-quality civics education and workforce readiness,” it added.
Students should be focused on learning the ‘truth,’ rather than be ‘radicalized by woke ideologies in the college classrooms,’ said education commissioner
Published 01/26/24 10:05 PM ET|Updated 01/26/24 10:05 PM ET
Ron DeSantis: On a mission to reshape education.Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ so-called “anti-woke” crusade has now removed sociology as a core class from all 12 of the state’s public universities.
The Board of Governors voted to make the change on Wednesday. A core sociology course was also removed earlier this month from all 28 Florida public colleges, meaning that Florida students will no longer be able to chose sociology to fulfill their core class requirements.
What the board refers to as a “factual history course” is replacing Principles of Sociology in the universities in what is widely seen as the start of a general rout of sociology classes.
When discussing sociology late last year, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. said that “students should be focused on learning the truth about our country instead of being radicalized by woke ideologies in the college classrooms.” He also said the subject had been “hijacked by left-wing activists.”
The Board of Education has promised the history curriculum will include an examination of the “horrors” of slavery, even though the same board pressed lower schools to teach that slaves — who lost their freedom, were beaten, raped and forced to labor for their masters — benefited from slavery because they learned work “skills”
Florida has one of the country’s largest public university systems, with more than 430,000 students.
The latest change is part of a sweeping reorganization of education in Florida from top to bottom. Under DeSantis’ sweeping book censorship, at least one district has banned dictionaries from their schools’ libraries because they contain the word “sex.”
The American Sociological Association called the decision to dump the core sociology class “outrageous,” and one informed by a “gross misunderstanding” of sociology as somehow “radical.”
“Sociology is the scientific study of social life, social change, and the social causes and consequences of human behavior, which are at the core of civic literacy and are essential to a broad range of careers,” the association said in a statement to the New York Times.
“Failure to prioritize the scientific study of the causes and consequences of human behavior is a failure of Florida’s commitment to providing high-quality civics education and workforce readiness,” it added.
"The decision to remove sociology from Florida's core curriculum is a tragic blow to students’ intellectual freedom. It will prevent generations of students from being introduced to subject matter that is uniquely suited to address complex challenges."https://t.co/JxhDw5B9Sg
— American Association of University Professors (@AAUP) January 25, 2024
Florida will no longer allow a sociology course to count toward students’ graduation requirements at state universities, replacing it with a class officials say will teach “factual history” in a decision critics say was fueled by political motivations. https://t.co/FyEhQt9CVv
Well, it’s done. Now all state colleges AND universities will be removing #sociology from the gen ed curriculum. Summer intro courses are now on hold anticipating tanking enrollments & grad student instructors are the first to be axed. Thanks #Florida. https://t.co/DmuIxOTXud
The American Sociological Association condemns the State University System of Florida board's decision to cut sociology from core course requirements as "a failure of Florida's commitment to providing high-quality civics education and workforce readiness." https://t.co/DHRdeGt7CF
FOOLS…my sociology course in school required us to float theories in class, while using statistical databases to prove them. It was like two courses in one, and highly illuminating for dispelling old assumptions.
I refuse to believe in a book that SUPPOSEDLY has all the answers to life that was written by a bunch of people who didn’t know where the sun went at nigh…
I like the chapter in the “factual history” textbook where Jesus and George Washington free all the babies in the basement of Comet Ping Pong, lock up Hillary Clinton and then travel to Kentucky to comfort the citizens of Bowling Green in the wake of Al Sharpton’s horrific massacre.
The helicopter was in the shop so they needed an airstrip. There were some wooden teeth smashed into the air intake valve and the repair parts were still on order at the time of the attack. Everyone knows this is the reason helicopters didn’t get used again until after WW2.
Again look at the date. A year after the last video of a boy abused by Israeli authorities, and they blinded another boy. If you were his parents, wouldn’t you want justice? The Israelis kept him in a prison and denied him needed medical care. Even his doctor couldn’t convince them to help the boy. They let him go blind, they wanted to hurt him as an example of what happens if you don’t obey your masters. I am angry! I have lost online “friends” after saying that Gaza was an open air prison. So-called critical thinkers couldn’t see that constant mistreatment will drive people to lash out any way possible. Hugs. Scottie
23,973 views Jul 19, 2018
Israeli prison authorities denied Hassan Tamimi his medication, which made him fall into a coma and lose his eyesight.
Notice the date. 6 years ago. This is why Hamas attacked Israel. The Israeli military has been mistreating the Palestinians and abusing their children! Watch the video, see how a slight teenager was blindfolded, handcuffed, manhandled by 20 soldiers, then look at the other children at the end of the video, little kids not even teens yet, crying and being yanked along by soldiers. Remember that these people have no rights, no due process. They are treated worse than chattel. If it was you, your family, your children … would you fight back? Would you want a government that threw missiles and killed those hurting you? Hugs. Scottie
61,021 views Dec 29, 2017
Fawzi al Juneidi, the 16-year-old Palestinian who was recently arrested by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Hebron has been released. A photo of him blindfolded and arrested became a symbol of ongoing Palestinian protests sparked by Trump’s Jerusalem decision. Al Juneidi is out on bail and must appear before the military court again on January 14.
Hi all. Remember that I said that as they age some people couldn’t accept the changes in society, so long for a prior time when they felt more comfortable with the way things were. I got some push back on that. Well Beau explains that phenomena far better than I did. He says that the republicans base their policies on the core age group of the party’s memories growing up of TV shows from 10 to 15 years before. He also shows how the attempt to return to a fictitious past won’t work, and that the rights attempt to deny the rights / existence of the LGBTQIA simply is doomed even as they try ever harder. Please watch the video, I watched it three times. Got more out of it each time. Hugs. Scottie
What is it with this time in history that we have such a hard push by one political party to remove rights and remove protections from individuals. For most of this country’s history, we moved toward expanding rights, to removing barriers and expanding opportunities for oppressed people. Now the right / republicans are all about denying healthcare rights for women and trans people, denying the right to equal treatment in services, public spaces, housing, and even in expressing publicly support for the oppressed. For example, taking away reproductive rights from women, and making illegal medically approved gender affirming best practices promoted by all the major medical associations. Allowing public businesses to refuse services to anyone they think is gay or trans or has a religion the businesses disagree with, such as wedding planners, restaurants, home renters, adoption services, and even restricting movies / books based on dislike for LGBTQIA characters or plots. Why do the republicans need to promote hate, why not just live and let live? Hugs. Scottie
Iowa Republican lawmakers have again proposed removing protections against discrimination for transgender people from the Iowa Civil Rights Act — and this time a key committee chair says he’s open to the conversation.
GOP lawmakers, who hold majorities in the Iowa House and Senate, have filed several bills over the past few years seeking to remove gender identity as one of the protected classes in the state’s civil rights law. But those bills have not received hearings.
This year, Rep. Steven Holt, R-Denison, has scheduled a subcommittee hearing on House File 2082, which would remove gender identity protections from the civil rights law and add gender dysphoria “or any condition related to a gender identity disorder” to the definition of a disability that would be protected under the law.
“I just want to hear a conversation about it,” Holt said. “I want to have a subcommittee and hear a conversation about it.”
In 2020, Holt used his position as Judiciary Committee chair to kill a similar bill that would have removed gender identity protections from the civil rights law.
The hearing, where the public can speak to lawmakers about the bill, will be held Wednesday at noon in room 102 of the Iowa State Capitol.
Keenan Crow, the policy and advocacy director for One Iowa, a group that advocates for LGBTQ rights, called Holt’s position “alarming.”
“Whenever you have somebody who’s willing to have a conversation about removing the civil rights of an entire class of people, that’s not a good conversation to be having,” Crow said. “Those rights should not be up for debate. Transgender people should be able to rent houses, get credit cards, get loans, go buy a sandwich, rent a hotel room, just like anybody else should be able to.”
The Iowa Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, ancestry, disability and gender identity. Lawmakers added the protections for gender identity in 2007 when Democrats held the Iowa Legislature and governor’s office.
People who fall under one of the protected classes in the civil rights law are protected from discrimination in employment, wages, public accommodations, housing, education and credit practices.
Holt said he believes transgender people would still have protections under Iowa and federal law even if lawmakers stripped gender identity out of the civil rights act.
“I think there’s plenty of other places in federal and in state law that would prevent discrimination,” he said. “Because I think we should all be opposed to discrimination based upon someone’s skin color or gender identity or whatever the case may be.”
Holt called it “an interesting concept” to look at specifying that gender dysphoria could qualify as a disability that merits protection. He pointed to a U.S. Supreme Court decision last summer that found people with gender dysphoria are protected under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Crow said because that court decision is already on the books, adding gender dysphoria as a disability wouldn’t provide any additional protections. But it could harm low-income transgender Iowans who can’t afford to go to the doctor to receive a diagnosis, they said.
“Now they don’t have any housing protections and a landlord can literally just say, ‘no, I don’t want you in my space, you’re transgender,'” they said. “And there’s nothing that that person can do about it. So this is an extremely dangerous, extremely harmful bill.”
Holt didn’t guarantee that the bill would advance beyond the subcommittee hearing, but said he believes it’s time to have a conversation.
“I still have concerns about this, but I at least want to have the conversation and see where it goes,” Holt said.
Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8169. Follow him on Twitter at @sgrubermiller.
Same here. Ever since a black man became president I’ve seen nothing but an escalation in hate in this country. It’s like a huge swath of this country decided that anyone who is not white, straight, male and Christian is subhuman and need to have their rights taken away. I am disgusted with my country.
Welcome to the white fundamentalist maga paradise, Florida. The purge is well on the way. Again the goal is to remove / wipe out all representation of LGBTQIA from public society. Also part of the goal is to return black / brown people to a lower stature and keep them there. To stop any integration or upward movement of the minority groups. These people demand a return to the time whenwhite males were automatically in charge, Christianity was the assumed only real religion and all things Christian were good, women were subservient to males and functioned to do for men in the home / public / bedroom, blacks knew their place and stayed there, and the LGBTQIA were not seen or heard of terrified of being found out. That is the world these people are fighting to have. Florida is well on the way. They have basically outlawed the teaching of acceptance or inclusion of any group not dedicated to white people or Christianity. They have removed any representation of LGBTQIA or racism from schools. They have rewritten history, legislated being cis, being straight until adult, legislated having a small groups of bigoted racist parents over ruling all other parents on what school age kids can do, read, see, say, and do medically. They call anything not right wing fundamentalist maga is indoctrination. Welcome to Florida, a state run by Christian Taliban with help from the moral police. Hugs. Scottie
The Florida Board of Governors voted to prohibit using state funding for public university programs or activities that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
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Students at the University of North Florida protested the imminent closing of the school’s four diversity centers, including the campus LGBTQ center, on Wednesday.
The protest took place the day the Florida Board of Governors, the governing body of the State University System of Florida, voted to prohibit funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs and activities at the state’s public universities. The vote comes several months after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a measure into law banning all of the state’s public higher education institutions from using state or federal funding for diversity programs.
UNF, in Jacksonville, will close its Office of Diversity and Inclusion — and, with it, its interfaith, intercultural, women’s and LGBTQ centers — to comply with the new law, President Moaz Limayem said in a letter to the university community Wednesday night.
Limayem said the four university centers will be “phased out” immediately but added that registered student organizations that aim to promote diversity will remain active on the university’s campus and that no staffers will lose their jobs. He did not weigh in on student protests or on his views about the state policy.
“We want UNF to be a place where all people feel safe and welcome, and where there is no place for hate,” Limayem said. “This semester, we will begin seeking ways to reinforce UNF’s values in everything we do, and we will review and expand resources as necessary to ensure success for all members of our campus community.”
Cassandra Edwards, a spokesperson for the university system, said in an email Thursday that Florida “will remain focused on high-quality education for our students and not allow indoctrination.”
UNF student Lissie Morales was among the protesters, many of whom were waving rainbow Pride flags and shouting: “What do we do? Stand up, fight back!”
“The center provided me friends; it provided me education to learn more about my gender and sexual orientation,” Morales told NBC affiliate WTLV of Jacksonville. “In regard to the turnout, it warms my heart to see people care about something as much as I do, especially when it comes to the LGBT center, because it was one of the reasons why I came to UNF in the first place.”
In 2022, UNF was among 40 institutions on Campus Pride’s list of best universities for LGBTQ students.
Carlos Guillermo Smith, a former Florida House Democrat who is a policy adviser at the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Florida, called the new state law “a rubber stamp for Ron DeSantis’s agenda of censorship and surveillance.”
“The Board of Governors had the opportunity to hit the brakes, but instead, shamefully followed their censorship agenda off a cliff in service to DeSantis’s failed political ambitions,” Smith said in a statement Wednesday.
A representative for DeSantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The regulation comes as Florida continues to build on its reputation for enacting anti-LGBTQ laws and legislation aimed at limiting diversity initiatives.
Dozens of UNF students attend a rally in support of the school’s LGBTQ center. WTLV
Florida made national headlines when it enacted what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law in 2022, which limited the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools in kindergarten through third grade. DeSantis signed a bill last year that expanded the law to apply to students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Last year, Florida lawmakers prompted outcry for blocking an Advanced Placement course on African American studies from being taught in high schools.
Since the start of the year, Florida lawmakers have introduced roughly a dozen anti-LGBTQ bills. They include a sweeping measure that would force Floridians to sign an affidavit when they apply for new driver’s licenses and state IDs to certify that the gender markers on their birth certificates will match their new IDs. Another bill would allow some published accusations of homophobia and transphobia to be considered “defamation per se.”
Student protests over Florida’s policies about LGBTQ issues have also become common. In November, students at a high school in Coconut Creek, about 15 miles north of Fort Lauderdale, staged a walkout after their principal and other school staffers were reprimanded for letting a transgender girl compete on the school’s girls volleyball team.
Students at the University of North Florida protested the imminent closing of the school’s four diversity centers, including the campus LGBTQ center. https://t.co/gt8e8q3kS4
Exactly! My whole youth was steeped in the straight world, I knew not one gay person and had zero history of the gay movement, yet I still turned out gay.
Same for the rest of us. This is how we can tell that the evangelicals are completely, utterly delusional; and why they’re a minority now in the US. Dems need to vote them out. If they refuse the evangelicals will begin their new Spanish Inquisition.
The War on Women’s Rights The War on LGBT Rights The War on Voting Rights The War on Oversight The War on Accountability The War on the Elderly The War on The Arts
From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling cast, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible.
They forget about that whole pesky “separation of church and state”. If the Roberts court is a “traditionalist” court, more states should be challenging the unconstitutional legislation passed in many States (esp the Federal Gov as this is setting up a State vs Federal legal battle), otherwise the Supreme Court will have to justify their reason for overturning Roe and much more. Not that it matters but it’s important for the public to understand.
Photo: Shutterstock
Stephen Gruber-Miller
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