Category: Bigotry
OK Education Chief: “We Want The Bible In Schools” From JMG
Remember the governor of Oklahoma is a fervent fundamentalist Christian who has claimed the entire state for Jesus / his Christian god including the Native Peoples lands. He has used the office of Governor to push his religion on the entire state. The backstory of this Oklahoma Education Superintendent, Ryan Walters, is crazy. He is not qualified for the office except he is also a fervent fundamentalist Christian nationalist. The governor tried to have him hold the two highest positions over education but was blocked by that funny thing called laws. It is time to take seriously this sneak effort to get fundamentalist die hard Christian nationalists in to state office at all levels as they have taken over schools up to governors offices. They are the US Christian Taliban and the Christian moral police. They are going to force their religion on everyone, make everyone live by their church doctrines / religious views no matter what religion or lack of that people have. Just look at their insistence on Christian prayers and the Christian bible in public schools. They want to enshrine their church doctrines and religious convictions into state laws that everyone will be subject to and have to follow. Hugs
“Instead of allowing Biden and the unions to inject their ideology through graphic pornography like ‘Gender Queer’ and “Flamer,’ we want the Constitution, we want the bible in our schools where kids understand our nation’s history and what has made this country great. The reality is that the bible is a foundational document in our country’s history. Read the Founders, read their letters, listen to what these men and women said about why founding a country with the freedom of religion, the free exercise of religion was so important.” – Oklahoma Education Superintendent Ryan Walters, today on Fox Business.
Last week Walters declared that the infamous 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre should not be taught as having been caused by racism. Over 300 black people were murdered by white mobs and 10,000 were left homeless.
Last month Walters appeared here when he announced that Oklahoma’s public schools will soon have a mandatory daily prayer, the mandatory posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, and a mandatory high school course in “Western civilization.”
Walters, who was appointed state secretary of education by Christianist Gov. Kevin Stitt in 2020, faced calls to resign in 2022 after it was revealed that a Koch-funded group that advocates for privatizing public schools was paying him $120,000/year.
Stitt rejected calls for Walters’ resignation and attempted to reappoint him again earlier this year, but the state Senate refused to allow him to hold the elected superintendent and appointed secretary of education posts at the same time.
Christian Nationalists TERRIFYING Rhetoric is CREEPING into the Mainstream (And its getting WORSE)
Trans Rights: on their terms | The Serfs
This video shares a lot of information on the sex spectrum and the fact that sex determination is not binary. It does it without being overly technical or preachy. Hugs
While using the unpleasant drama (I started this script a few weeks ago) as a jumping off point I wanted to make a documentary about how liberation movements have to be one in which the oppressed people dictate the terms of their liberation.
Knowles: We’re Coming For The Right To Contraception
This is the same person who played a gay man hooking up with other men who now is super anti-LGBTQ+. This guy admits men like sex and don’t want the resulting pregnancies. But he still feels women shouldn’t have sex, that women shouldn’t like sex, or maybe he believes the old stereotype that women just don’t like sex. He seems to be an entitled white religious guy who don’t care what harm he causes to others as long as it benefits him. But the truth is the right is coming after contraception and no-fault divorce. They are serious about returning to a 1950s or even 1850s mentality and public acceptance. These people are the Christian version of the Taliban or Iranian moral police. But women like the gays / trans are not going to give up their rights and go into hiding or being submissive just to please stupid males. Hugs
Media Matters has the transcript:
The culture that treats sex very casually and that suggests that we have a right to sex absent the consequence of pregnancy, is going to be a culture that’s more likely to engage in abortion.
The culture that embraces radical individualism and selfishness and libertinism in one area of sexual matters is going to embrace it in another, and that’s going to result in abortion.
And furthermore, we’re all complaining about the Pride movement, and the Pride movement has become much less popular than it used to be. You’re seeing this in a drop — Gallup polling and the values survey that it gives out showed a significant drop in support for the Pride coalition in just one year.
So, a lot of people are turning on it. A lot of mothers, a lot of parents in schools — it’s how Glenn Younkin won in Virginia. It’s how Ron DeSantis won in Florida. You go all the way back to the beginning of the sexual revolution. And you go all the way back to contraception.
There were two cases, Eisenstadt and Griswold. First was Griswold in 1965. Then Eisenstadt comes around in 1972, the year before Roe v Wade. And Griswold finds a right to condoms within a marriage.
Where is that in the Constitution? I have no idea. But some libs on the court discovered that magically in 1965. But they said, but — there is no right to condoms outside of marriage. Then seven years later, the court discovers, oh, actually, there was more invisible ink in the Constitution.
And actually, there is a right to condoms outside of marriage. Okay. Maybe you like condoms. Maybe you don’t like condoms. I don’t know where you’re gonna find that in the Constitution.
I think a lot of people are beginning to notice that the contraceptive mentality is the beginning of the Pride mentality. Because the contraceptive mentality divorces sex from the consequences of sex.
It introduces a sterile sexual ethic, which is exactly what gave us the Pride movement. There’s no distinction here. If you can’t read between the lines, the conclusion that one draws is that condoms are kind of gay. To put it as bluntly as possible. Okay?
And people are beginning to realize, okay, if I don’t like this insane, anarchistic view of sex that is totally self-centered and divorced from any ends whatsoever, well, then maybe I gotta rewind it and ask what is the point of sex?
Which is why it’s not gonna be the patriarchy that’s coming for your consequence free birth control. It’s not going to be the men.
The men, frankly, are huge supporters of — of birth control and contraception because it allows them to have consequence-free sex. It’s gonna be those conservative women. That’s who’s coming for it.
I’ve been telling heterosexuals for years that the same people coming after us are going to be coming after them.
Here is Knowles in his gay sex scene.
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Adults are failing LGBTQ+ youth at school and beyond. Here’s how we can step up
Photo: ShutterstockThink back to when you were a teenager. While this time in our lives can often be filled with new experiences and self-discovery, it can also be deeply challenging and sometimes even painful. Time stretches on forever. You don’t have the full slate of freedoms that most adults take for granted. You are stuck in a microcosm of the real world, spending a good part of your life in a classroom with other young people doing their best to fit in – and feeling like you’re failing in some way.
These challenges of adolescence are even more acute for LGBTQ+ youth, who face an uphill battle to find acceptance in a world that often condemns the beauty of diversity and in many cases seeks to deny their very existence. Even before COVID-19 sent us into seclusion for the better part of the last three years – with devastating mental health consequences for many – LGBTQ+ youth were experiencing higher rates of depression and other forms of mental illness due to higher rates of bullying, harassment, and family rejection.
While young queer activists across the country – including It Gets Better’s incredible Youth Voices – are heroically speaking out against these attacks on their rights, their health and their very identities, they can’t win this fight alone. Right now, adults are failing LGBTQ+ students, and we urgently need to take bold, decisive action to support and protect them.
The first thing we can do to support our queer and trans youth is simple: listen. With the advent of social media, the escalating “culture wars,” and the lingering aftermath of COVID, the problems young people face today are different from those faced by earlier generations. My interactions with LGBTQ+ youth have shown me how deeply they have thought about the challenges they face and what they need to resolve them. We need to resist the urge to default to our own experiences, to say “you’ll understand when you’re older.”
We also need to speak out forcefully against anti-LGBTQ+ education policies, whether they restrict discussion of LGBTQ+ identity altogether, ban the use of preferred pronouns, or attempt to forcibly out trans students to their families. No matter what grades or ages these policies target, their intended message is clear: if you are LGBTQ+, you are not welcome here. Ensuring that queer youth feel empowered to express their identity, safely and on their own timeline, will have a massive, sustained impact on their overall wellbeing.
But LGBTQ+ youth need more than just our attention and our supportive words; they need our resources too. Specifically in schools, there is an almost endless list of priorities in urgent need of funding that would make an enormous difference for the day-to-day well-being of LGBTQ+ students.
Through It Gets Better’s 50 States, 50 Grants, 5000 Voices program, we were so proud to recently announce grants of up to $10,000 each to more than 70 schools across the U.S. and Canada. They cover a range of projects to uplift and empower LGBTQ+ youth, including educator training, inclusive curriculum, community art projects, Pride celebrations, and the priorities of local Genders and Sexualities Alliances (aka GSAs). The philanthropic community stepping up to fund more projects like these at schools across the country would be one of the single most effective, tangible actions to support LGBTQ+ youth we could take.
While the adults in the room argue about the nuances of parental rights in education, the right to healthcare for trans youth, book bans and curriculum restrictions, young LGBTQ+ people everywhere are serving up a counter strike fueled by their passion to create a better world – a world that celebrates diversity and understands its value. Adults should be honored to have a seat at that table to watch and learn – and to catalyze the passion of young LGBTQ+ people who are ready to pick up the banner to concretize their right to exist.
Brian Wenke is the Executive Director of leading LGBTQ+ non profit, the It Gets Better Project, and has led the global storytelling effort to empower LGBTQ+ youth since 2016. He has spearheaded multi-national campaigns to connect and engage with LGBTQ+ youth where they live, work, and socialize – and has successfully leveraged corporate and institutional partnerships to expand the It Gets Better Project’s reach, which now spans four continents and six major languages.
Russia wants to ban all trans healthcare and gender recognition
This is what the right / republicans / Christian Nationalists desperately want for the US. Notice how the Russian laws went, first they claimed they needed to protect the kids so the laws started out chipping away at LGBTQ+ rights until they finally outlawed any public / social LGBTQ+ representation. They outlawed LGBTQ+ people. Now they are removing trans people, denying them treatments needed to be who they know they are. Simply erasing them in society, as they did the gays and pride rainbows. Notice this time they used the excuse of saving the families, the traditional nuclear family of one man, a subservient wife, and how many ever kids. Again this is the goal of the right here in the US, reverting the US society to the 1950s / the Leave It To Beaver fiction. Hugs
Russia set to ban all gender-affirming healthcare. (Getty Images)
Russia has given initial approval to a bill that would outlaw gender-affirming healthcare for trans people of all ages.
The proposed bill reportedly bans any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person”, as well as changing gender markers on official documents like passports.
Senior politician Pyotr Tolstoy, who sponsored the bill, claimed on Wednesday (14 June) it would “protect Russia with its cultural and family values and traditions and stop the infiltration of the Western anti-family ideology,” the Associated Press reported.
Lawmakers also reportedly claimed the proposed law would prevent anybody registered as male from changing their gender in official documents to avoid the military draft.
It will now go to Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, where it must receive three readings to be signed into law. The bill was approved unanimously in its first reading, The Times reported.
The Russian bill follows similar efforts elsewhere in the world, including in the US, where several states are attempting to ban or limit gender-affirming care for young people.
According to Equaldex, Russian trans people can currently receive a certificate recognising their gender from a medical commission.
Trans rights activist Maxim, who spoke to AP about the potential law, explained that the current situation in Russia with regards to gender-affirming care is “unique in a good way”. Unlike some other countries, gender-affirming care or surgeries are currently not required to change the gender on legal documents.
Under the new law, trans people who have already changed their gender marker on their official documents will reportedly be able to continue receiving gender-affirming care, however those who have not yet changed their official gender marker will be banned from doing so.
The proposed bill comes after Russia voted to expand its notorious LGBTQ+ “propaganda” bill to cover all ages in November 2022.
The law, which previously only applied to under-18s, prevents any promotion of LGBTQ+ identities or same-sex relationships in Russian media.
Igor Kochetkov of the Russian LGBT Network explained the expansion of the bill represented “part of a broader attack on anything the government deems ‘western and progressive’.”
YouTuber Gela Gogishvili, who was arrested and detained in April along with his partner Haoyang Xu for allegedly violating the “LGBTQ+ propaganda” law, warned that the law was “working” in order to silence LGBTQ+ people in Russia.
“What it means is that, if you are queer, you have to be silent, and the propaganda is working because this is what will happen to you,” he said.
“You either have to be silent if you want to stay in Russia or, if you want to express all of this, you have to get out of Russia.”
