Notice how these bills are written as vague as possible to include anything the right doesn’t like. Remember, gender and sex includes more than trans or gay people, it also includes all the hetero straight people. They have gender and they have sexual relationships. But of course the people behind these bills don’t mean the straight hetero kind as it is “normal” right. They only mean that icky kind they don’t like. Who cares that gay and trans people exist, let’s make any mention of them illegal, just like Russia did. Remember when the president of Iran said they don’t have gays in Iran, as that is a western disease? They just force all gay men to become women and as for lesbians, well women have no rights so they are forced into relationships with me. That is what these bills in Florida and other red states comes down to, the forcing the end of LGBTQ+ people out of society and back into hiding again. The writers of these bills don’t care about the health or well-being of the gay or trans kids, it is about pushing their religious church doctrines of moral correctness on everyone else. Same with the attempts to ban everything their religion hates, it is about forcing every person in these red states to live by strict Christian church doctrines and standards. Fuck you if you have a different idea or way of living, you will live by our demands, by our church morals because we are the Christian Taliban. Hugs
Indiana’s governor on Thursday signed a bill that will require schools to notify a parent if a student requests a name or pronoun change at school, one of the final bills approved in a legislative session that had targeted LGBTQ+ people in the state, especially students. Critics worry the law could out transgender children to their families and erode trust between students and teachers.
It also prohibits, from prekindergarten through third grade, instruction on “human sexuality,” something that is not defined in the bill. Holcomb said in a statement Thursday,“I also just believe its commonsense that sex education should not be taught in prekindergarten through third grade.” GOP bill author Rep. Michelle Davis said the law will “ensure Hoosier parents are in the driver’s seat when it comes to introducing sensitive topics to their kids.”
The bill’s author, Rep. Michelle Davis [photo], has appeared on the Family Research Council’s daily podcast. Republicans hold supermajorities in both Indiana chambers.
Indiana’s governor signed a bill that will require schools to notify a parent if a student requests a name or pronoun change at school, one of the final bills approved in a legislative session that targeted LGBTQ+ people in the state, especially students. https://t.co/RxHIq56mtm
⚠️Governor Holcomb today signed HB 1608, the "Don't Say Gay" bill, into law. This law attempts to erase LGBTQ voices, histories, and lived experiences from schools.
Our attorneys are assessing the law, and we will do everything in our power to protect LGBTQ rights.
Because of its incredibly vague language censoring discussions on “human sexuality"—a term with no definition in state code—HB 1608 could be used to: ❌silence any mention of LGBTQ people ❌ban books with LGBTQ characters ❌fire LGBTQ teachers ❌bar Pride flags in classrooms
LGBTQ students and teachers deserve safe, inclusive schools—not censorship and discrimination based on who they are.
HB 1608 does nothing but harm. LGBTQ people have always existed in Indiana, and we won't allow their stories and identities to be erased. https://t.co/SVAedNVshi
“I also just believe its commonsense that sex education should not be taught in prekindergarten through third grade.”
First off, where in the hell was “sexuality” being taught in K-3, and secondly, does this now mean you can’t refer to your teacher as Mr., Miss, or Mrs. as they all explicitly imply gender, and Mrs. implies that there is a sexual relationship somewhere.
Oh that’s ok. When you talk about straight people you talk about good, normal people
When you talk about LBGT, you talk about straight people who have sodomy because they’re sick snd evil
I guess there will be mass arrests on the first day of kindergarten when the teacher shows the children where the (gasp!) boy’s and girl’s restrooms are.
They’re just working their way toward making us illegal in the literal sense – it’s only a matter of time before they try to get Lawrence v. Texas overturned.
And Santos thinks if gays and lesbians abandon trans people the MAGAts will leave us alone I don’t think he really thinks that. He’s just helping the fascists in their attempts to divide us up into as small groups as possible so that they can stamp on each in turn.
Sadly there are some that will agree with that message, thinking that they are the good upstanding ones, and those trans / drag queens / kinky people / whoever are ‘making us look bad‘.
(I’m also not sure why the message included TQIA+ as the ‘others’. What do they have against questioning people? Most of us were at some point. Asexual / Aromantic people are no threat to anyone. They can’t pretend that Intersex people are ‘making a bad choice’ like they try with the rest of us, since they were obviously biologically born that way! Just looks like a transparently lazy way to split the community.)
No surprise here. Indiana is a racist hater State that flies under the radar. Our politicians are pussies and are usually a year or two behind the others. Today, I am putting my Rainbow Flag out and keeping it there.
Our local GOP rep decided to not seek re-election because she was so disgusted with her fellow colleagues in that party She and her husband are now independents. She refused to endorse any GOP candidate for her seat.
Often overlooked in media discussions of this wave of anti-LGBT legislation is the fact that some kids will attempt — or succeed in — suicide on account of the hate directed to them.
The Republicans engaged in this campaign of hate are murderers, pure and simple.
Do we have any progressive straight allies paying attention to this wave of homophobic bullshit? Are there any wealthy or powerful gays in the fight or we still just in the “tsk tsk” stage of a fascist overthrow?
He kiddies if you want to be an ally, change your name. If you’re Susie, ask to be called Susan. If its Malik, ask to be called Mallie. If your name is Billy, asked to be called Mister Smith. There are plenty of name changes that are not gender related. While this puts a burden on the teachers, it will point out the ridiculousness of this law.
What happened to parent’s rights? Why can just one parent stop a field trip to see a play because they object to any children seeing an actor in a female role, yet a parent has no rights to help their child socially transition? The only parents who have rights are maga republican parents. This is the state that the king wannabe governor calls the “free state of Florida”? This is the enforcement of a Puritan religious belief and view of Christian morality. This is enforcing a dress code on the entire public to agree with church doctrine of how the bible says to dress. This is real child abuse to separate children from loving parents following the medical advice of doctors, following the approved accepted best practice from the major medical organizations including the AMA and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is the largest professional association of pediatricians in the US. But what do doctors know compared to religious conservatives who get their medical information from a book written 2,500 years ago before people even knew about germs. Think of what the republicans are doing and have managed to do in the last two years. They have set the country and civil rights back 100 years and have set child labor laws back 150 years. Every poll says what the republicans are doing is unpopular and unliked by the majority, the republicans don’t care. Why, because they want to rule the people, not serve the public. Hugs
The Florida legislature passed a bill Thursday that will let the state take transgender minors away from their families if they are receiving gender-affirming care.
The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 26–13, mainly along party lines, and the House shortly after by a vote of 83–28, again along party lines. The measure now goes to the desk of Governor Ron DeSantis, who has previously expressed support for it and will likely sign it into law.
If he signs it into law, the measure will allow the state to take custody of a child if they have been “subjected to or [are] threatened with being subjected to” gender-affirming care, which includes puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy.
“Parents have the right to raise their children as they see fit, and government intervention should be a last resort,” Senate President Kathleen Passidomo [photo] said in a prepared statement Friday.
“Unfortunately, all too often we are hearing about treatments for gender dysphoria being administered to children, often very young children. That’s just wrong, and we need to step in and make sure it isn’t happening in our state.”
The bill’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Clay Yarborough, appeared here in March for his bill banning minors from public drag shows.
He first appeared on JMG in 2010, when as a member of the Jacksonville City Council he declared that gays, Muslims, and atheists should not be permitted to hold public office, otherwise God will smite the fuck out of the country.
One of the many, many reasons I pleaded with the American public to care about family separation. It was just a matter of time before it came for all of us
The bill that would grant Florida the power to seize trans-identifying children receiving or likely to receive treatment for gender dysphoria is sponsored by Republican state senator Clay Yarborough, who is a follower of Christ. @Clay_Yarboroughhttps://t.co/rp83mxCzFNpic.twitter.com/7mWED7xNva
100% horseshit, its all made up to attack trans people. period. Its a start too, they’re not going to stop with trans kids. Next it will be taking children from gay couples and we need to know thats where its going.
Kids are being operated on. Approximately 1.5% of breast augmentation surgeries are preformed on girls under the age of 18. Thousands of cisgender girls receive “gender affirming” surgery every single year.
Funny how no Republicans are writing laws to take those girls away from their parents.
I’ve been tired of the Florida bashing but now I’m feeling the same way. Fuck this state. I want to get the fuck out of here ASAP. I just hope I can sell my home quickly. This place has become a quagmire of insanity. It’s horrible for all of the good LGBTQ+ people who choose to live here, including myself.
Parents, get your Trans kids out of the state now. I am sure they included provisions to detransition the children too. You know he’ll sign it. Anything to hurt someone.
You can bet Florida is going to eventually be setting up contracts with “ministries” to “counsel” the trans kids they steal from their parents to pray away the trans.
These people are mostly religiously driven, and they use fake or misleading information from debunked failed studies to push their hatred. They chose their name to confuse people who mistakenly think they are the highly-regarded American Academy of Pediatrics. They are behind a lot of the misinformation about abortion. One of their main targets right now is trans children. This includes pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder, one that’s capable of spontaneously causing others–à la the dancing plague–to adopt similar thoughts and behaviors. There is a lot more in the article. How ever since I reloaded my computers the classic editor is not working like it use to allowing me to color in the pages easily. I have to figure out if it is a setting on my security programs or if WordPress changed the editor. Hugs
A Google Drive left public on the American College of Pediatricians’ website exposed detailed financial records, sensitive member details, and more.
PHOTOGRAPH: ROHANEH/GETTY IMAGES
A DOCTORS’ ORGANIZATION at the center of the ongoing legal fight over the abortion drug mifepristone has suffered a significant data breach. A link to an unsecured Google Drive published on the group’s website pointed users last week to a large cache of sensitive documents, including financial and tax records, membership rolls, and email exchanges spanning over a decade. The more than 10,000 documents lay bare the outsize influence of a small conservative organization working to lend a veneer of medical science to evangelical beliefs on parenting, sex, procreation, and gender.
The leaked records, first reported by WIRED, offer an unprecedented look at the groups and personnel central to that campaign. They also describe an organization that has benefited greatly by exaggerating its own power, even as it has struggled quietly for two decades to grow in size and gain respect. The records show how the College, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as a hate group, managed to introduce fringe beliefs into the mainstream simply by being, as the founder of Fox News once put it, “the loudest voice in the room.”
The Leak
A WIRED review of the exposed data found that the unsecured Google Drive stored nearly 10,000 files, some of which are compressed zip files containing additional documents. These records detail highly sensitive internal information about the College’s donors and taxes, social security numbers of board members, staff resignation letters, budgetary and fundraising concerns, and the usernames and passwords of more than 100 online accounts. The files include Powerpoint presentations, Quickbooks accounting documents, and at least 388 spreadsheets.
One spreadsheet appears to be an export of an internal database containing information on 1,200 past and current members. It contains intimate personal information about each member, including various contact details, as well as where they were educated, how they heard of the group, and when membership dues were paid. The records show past and current members are mostly male and, on average, over 50 years old. As of spring 2022, the College counted slightly more than 700 members, according to another document reviewed by WIRED.
Data visualization: DataWrapper
The breach exposes some material dating back to the group’s origin. It includes mailing lists gathered by the group of thousands of “conservative physicians” across the country. (One document outlining recruitment efforts states in bold, red letters: “TARGET CHRISTIAN MDs.”) The ongoing recruitment of doctors and medical school students seen as holding Christian views has long been its top priority. The leaked records indicate that more than 10,000 mailers were sent to physicians between 2013 and 2017 alone.
While the group’s membership rolls are not public, the leak has outed most if not all of its members. A cursory review of the member lists surfaced one name of note: a recent commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, who after joining in 2019 asked that his membership with the group remain a secret. (WIRED was unable to reach the official for comment in time for publication.)
The SPLC’s “hate group” designation, which the College forcefully disputes, haunted its fundraising efforts, records reveal. A barrage of emails in 2014 show that the label cost the group the chance to benefit from an Amazon program that would eventually distribute $450 million to charities across the globe. Amazon would deny the College’s application, stating that it relied on the SPLC to determine which charities fall into certain ineligible categories.
A strategy document would later refer to a “unified plan” among the College and its allies to “continue discrediting the SPLC,” which included a campaign aimed at lowering its rating at Charity Navigator, one of the web’s most influential nonprofit evaluators. One of the group’s admins noted that despite SPLC’s label, another charity monitor, GuideStar, listed the College as being in “good standing.”
The College’s GuideStar page no longer says this and appears to have been defaced. It now reads, “AMERICAN COLLEGE OF doodoo fartheads,” with a mission statement saying: “we are evil and hate gays :(((”
The Google Drive containing the documents was taken offline soon after WIRED contacted the American College of Pediatricians. The College did not respond to a request for comment.
The Talk
Leaked communications between members of the group and minutes taken at board meetings over the course of several years speak loudly about the challenges the group faced in pursuing its deeply unpopular agenda: returning America to a time when the laws and social mores around family squared neatly with evangelical Christian beliefs.
Many of the College’s most radical views target transgender people, and in particular, transgender youth. The leak, which had been indexed by Google, includes volumes of literature crafted specifically to influence relationships between practicing pediatricians, parents, and their children. It includes reams of marketing material the College aims to distribute widely among public school officials. This includes pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder, one that’s capable of spontaneously causing others–à la the dancing plague–to adopt similar thoughts and behaviors.
This is one of the group’s most dubious claims. While unsupported by medical science, it is routinely and incuriously propagated through literature targeted at schools and medical offices around the US. The primary source for this claim is a research paper drafted in 2017 by Lisa Littman, a Brown University scholar who, while a medical doctor, was not specialized in mental health. The goal of the paper was to introduce, conceptually, “rapid onset gender dysphoria”—a hypothetical disorder, as was later clarified by the journal that published it. Littman would also clarify personally that her research “does not validate the phenomenon” she’d hypothesized, since no clinicians, nor individuals identifying as trans, had participated in the study.
The paper explains that its subjects were instead all parents who had been recruited from a handful of websites known for opposing gender-affirmative care and “telling parents not to believe their child is transgender.” A review of one of the sites from the period shows parents congregating to foster paranoia about whether there’s a “conspiracy of silence” around “anime culture” brainwashing boys into behaving like girls; insights plucked in some cases straight from another, more insidious forum (widely known for reveling in the suicides of the people it has bullied).
A 2021 prospectus describing the group’s focus, ideology, and lobbying efforts encapsulates a wide range of “educational resources” destined for the inboxes of physicians and medical school students. The materials include links to a website instructing doctors on how to speak to children in a variety of scenarios about a multitude of topics surrounding sex, including in the absence of their parents. Practice scripts of conversations between doctors and patients advise, among other things, ways to elicit a child’s thoughts on sex with the help of an imaginative metaphor.
While the material is not expressly religious, it is clearly aimed at painting same-sex marriage as aberrant and immoral behavior. Physicians lobbied by the group are also told to urge patients to purchase Christian-based parenting guides, including one designed to help parents broach the topic of sex with their 11- and 12-year-old kids. The College suggests telling parents to plan a “special overnight trip,” a pretext for instilling in their children sexual norms in line with evangelical practice. The group suggests telling parents to buy a tool called a “getaway kit,” a series of workbooks that run around $54 online. The workbooks methodically walk the parents through the process of springing the topic, but only after a day-long charade of impromptu gift-giving and play.
These books are full of games and puzzles for the parent and child to cooperatively take on. Throughout the process, the child slowly digests a concept of “sexual purity,” lessons aided by oversimplified scripture and well-trodden Bible school parables.
Another document the group shared with its members contains a script for appointments with pregnant minors. Its purpose is made evidently clear: The advice is engineered specifically to reduce the odds of minors coming into contact with medical professionals not strictly opposed to abortion. A practice script recommends the doctor inform the minor that they “strongly recommend against” abortion, adding “the procedure not only kills the infant you carry, but is also a danger to you.” (Medically, the term “fetus” and “infant” are not interchangeable, the latter referring to a newborn baby less than one year old.)
The doctors are urged to recommend that the minor visit a website that, like others shared with patients, is not expressly religious but will only direct visitors to Catholic-run “crisis pregnancy centers,” which strictly reject abortion. The same site is widely promoted by anti-abortion groups such as National Right to Life, which last year held that it should be illegal to terminate the pregnancy of a 10-year-old rape victim.
The Professionals
The effort to ban mifepristone, which the Supreme Court paused last month pending further review, faces significant legal hurdles but could ultimately benefit from the appellate court’s disproportionately conservative makeup. Most of the legal power in the fight was supplied by a much older and better funded group, the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has established ties to some of the country’s most politically elite—former vice president Mike Pence and Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett among them.
A contract in the leaked documents dated April 2021 shows the ADF agreeing to legally represent the College free of charge. It stipulates that ADF’s ability to subsidize expenses incurred during lawsuits would be limited by ethical guidelines; however, it could still forgive any lingering costs simply by declaring the College “indigent.”
In contrast to the College’s some 700 members, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)–the organization from which the College’s founders split 20 years ago–has roughly 67,000. The rupture between the two groups was a direct result of a statement issued by the AAP in 2002. Modern research, the AAP said, had conclusively shown that the sexual orientation of parents had an imperceptible impact on the well-being of children, so long as they were raised in caring, supportive families.
Data visualization: DataWrapper
The College would gain notoriety early on by assailing the positions of the AAP. In 2005, a Boston Globe reporter noted how common it had become for the American College of Pediatricians “to be quoted as a counterpoint” to anything the AAP said. The institution had a rather “august-sounding name,” he wrote, for being run by a “single employee.”
Internal documents show that the group’s directors quickly encountered hurdles operating on the fringe of accepted science. Some claimed to be oppressed. Most of the College’s research had been “written by one person,” according to minutes from a 2006 meeting, which were included in the leak. The College was failing to make a splash. In the future, one director suggested, papers rejected by medical journals “should be published on the web.” The vote to do so was unanimous (though the board decided the term “not published” was nicer than “rejected”).
A second director put forth a motion to create a separate “scientific section” on the group’s website, strictly for linking to articles published in medical journals. The motion was quashed after it dawned on the board that they didn’t “have enough articles” to make the page “look professional.”
The College struggled to identify the root cause of its runtedness. “To get enough clout,” one director said, “it would take substantial numbers, maybe 10,000.” (The College’s recruitment efforts would yield fewer than 7 percent of this goal in the following 17 years.) Yet another said the marketing department advised that “the College needs to pick a fight with the AAP and get on Larry King Live.” Another board member, the notes say, felt the organization was too busy trying to “walk the fence” by neglecting to acknowledge that “we are conservative and religious.”
The discussion between Sam, Emma, and the crew as they break down what this woman is really saying here is the important part of the video. Notice the woman says she spent all her time on the floor praying but it seems she neglected to talk to the very doctors who could have given her daughter the help she really needed. Yes a book written 2,500 years ago has the updated medical knowledge to treat gender issues of teenagers today. This woman wanted a religious womanly future for her daughter, she did not care what the daughter felt or what was going on in the daughter’s body. The only things she was worried about was her god and her daughters continuing to be in her god’s good graces. As she says at one point, she wanted her daughter to have a shining womanly future. It seems the daughter was rejecting the woman’s religious views, and that couldn’t be allowed. Hugs
Montana Republican State Representative Kerri Seekins-Crowe made controversial remarks during a floor debate on a bill that would ban transgender youth from participating in school sports.
Seekins-Crowe said that she would rather her child died than be transgender. Seekins-Crowe’s remarks were met with widespread condemnation. Many people called her remarks hateful and transphobic. Some people also called for her to resign from her position.
Seekins-Crowe’s remarks are a reflection of the deep-seated transphobia that exists in Montana and across the country and that transgender people are still facing discrimination and violence. They are also a reminder that there is still much work to be done to achieve equality for all people, regardless of their gender identity.
If you care about abortion rights, Nazis flouting the swastika in public supporting one party telling you what that party really is about, If you care about religious zealots pushing their church doctrines on others,
This is all about forcing their religious views on others, despite the medical evidence they are wrong. People are born gay, conversion therapy won’t work. But more important, being gay is not a sickness needing a cure. These people do such harm in their attempt to push their hate and the hate of their god on to everyone else. These are the Christian Taliban and the Christian ISIS missionaries. They demand the right to oppress others, and since they lost that right in most developed countries they are trying to prevent acceptance in the undeveloped countries from ever taking hold. They came their god is all powerful and that their god creates every person individually, so why does their god keep making gay and trans people? Hugs
WTF is happening in the US? This idea of the US being founded as a Christian Nation is a complete fiction, yet there are so many republican governors and legislators pushing it. When did the bible become more important than the constitution? I remember that shit being push on James when he was a teen and he is now 3o years old. We have a serious problem that generations since the 1980s have grown up being taught this fiction as fact. This was done through homeschooling and church schools. This fiction was / is promoted by churches to increase their political power and the income from adding more asses in pews. I have to tell you this drive to turn the US into a theocracy is terrifying to me and should be to others. We have seen it happen in other countries where a fundamentalist religion get governmental power, and they use it to wipe out personal freedoms in order to establish a religious doctrine enforced by the power of the state. Look at Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan. Those restrictive laws entrench the political power and funds of the religious leaders but restrict any kind of growth or advancement for the public. I can not imagine how devastating it would be for the US people to be forced to live according to the dictates of people who think morals and science was at its peak 2,500 years ago. Hugs
“Oklahomans, we have a clear choice in front of us. When it comes to our schools, do we want the radical ideology in our classroom that pushes gender theory? That pushes graphic pornography in order to push a social experiment on our kids?
“Or do want the US Constitution? Do we want documents like the Federalist Papers and the bible? So that our kids understand our history and how our government was put together?
“Those core fundamental principles have made us the greatest country in the history of the world. Real Americans know that we’ve got to support our kids by giving them a great understanding of our history.
“Radical leftists and Biden administration, they would prefer to sexualize our kids.” – Oklahoma superintendent of public schools Ryan Walters.
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.
Walters last appeared on JMG in October 2022 when he called for reeducating all teachers with “Christian patriotic history” in a program operated by Michigan’s far-right Hillsdale College.
OK Superintendent of Schools says the Biden Admin is pushing graphic pornography and gender theory in schools to sexualize our kids, but he says students should be taught from important historical documents like the Bible. pic.twitter.com/fxum2wn3xx
Oklahomans, we have a clear choice in front of us. When it comes to our schools, do we want the radical ideology in our classroom that pushes gender theory? That pushes graphic pornography in order to push a social experiment on our kids?
Are people so stupid that they think teachers are hauling out their Honcho magazines into the classroom? That’s what Sunday school is for.
That’s what gets me. People eat this crap up with absolutely no proof of any of it. And hey, what happened to the kitty litter in the classrooms issue?
Please remember that what the republicans say this is about and what is really happening it two different things. The republicans claim she violated decorum by claiming that she accused them of killing kids. That is not at all what she said. She said if the republicans pasted the bill denying trans kids medical assistance would cause kids to try to commit suicide, which is true, so the people passing the bill would have blood on their hands. No one doubts the validity of that statement. But this was the opening they used with republicans claimed victimhood and talked of how badly they were being abused by being accused of having kids blood on their hands. Yes the big bad in charge republicans were the victims here.
What this really is about is the fact Rep. Zooey Zephyr is trans! And the republicans want her gone! That is what this is about. They don’t care her constitutes not only voted her in to office to represent them, they have increased their support for her after this happened. So they are trying to make her life so miserable, hoping she will just go away. That is what the anti-trans and anti-drag people bills are about, trying to make those people so miserable they will just go away. It is what red states with the don’t say gay laws are doing in schools, just trying to make gay / trans kids just hide and go away. How proud the republicans must be to make people hide who they really are just so republicans can feel good in their lives.
Please note every act the republicans took was to make her life miserable which included locking her out of the work areas and bathrooms. She is forced to work and vote representing her voters from a public hallway, so this week some hateful people made sure to show up and occupy the only seating available, causing an elected official to be forced to stand all day and work from a food counter. This is not democracy people! This is one party trying to make those they don’t like to disappear from the public. Hugs
Republicans moved to sideline Zephyr further by canceling some meetings of the two committees on which she serves and moving the bills they were to hear to other committees, Democrats said.
She spent the first day of her exile last week battling to use a bench in a statehouse hallway. Her key card to access Capitol entrances, bathrooms and party workspaces was deactivated, according to the lawsuit.
Zephyr spoke briefly during a House Judiciary Committee meeting Monday morning. The full House — minus Zephyr — reconvened in the afternoon. Zephyr cast votes from a statehouse snack bar because several people occupied the bench.
Read the full article. As you can see in the photo below, the bench seats three people and the evil bitches have a fourth woman on standby as a seat-filler for bathroom breaks.
@ZoAndBehold works from the lunch counter outside the House of Representatives chamber today because a group of women have been occupying the bench she used last week. #mtlegpic.twitter.com/ImMaYdaioS
I agree. What the slave state legislatures like Montana’s are doing is trampling on any and all minorities’ civil rights. She didn’t break decorum. She was very measured and impeccable with her word. She never raised her voice. Her crime was that she told them the TRUTH. People will die. There IS blood on their hands.
I’ve tweeted to Montana Dems, the Montana ACLU, and Montana Pride with a plea for allies to come tomorrow and hold the bench for Zooey. I added that a couple of drag queens would be a nice touch.
Joe, I’d like to see someone bring in a comfy folding chair for her, even though both state houses would vote, and the governor would sign, a bill banning them on capitol grounds the next day.
I was just looking for that photo, that is EXACTLY what I was reminded me of. I hope they know they are on the WRONG side of history on this issue, and will be shamed for many years.
This is interesting. It lays the plan of the Christian Nationalists out clearly with their goal of RULING the rest of us. Hugs
Ahn told the faithful that Trump’s victory would be their victory: “We’re going to rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ.” Ahn has long been explicit in his quest to have Christians conquer the mountains of influence — to become the “head not the tail” in directing government and culture. “Once we do get to the head, then all of a sudden we can make decrees and declarations,” he explained in a 2010 interview. “When you get to the top,” he said, “you can start doing some radical things for the Lord.”
Why Are So Many Democrats Backing an Accused Christian Nationalist?
Derrick Peterson claims he’s running “to represent diversity in its purest form,” but his Christian nationalist affiliations suggest otherwise
“I’M NOT A Christian nationalist,” Derrick Peterson, a leading school board candidate in Portland, Oregon, tells Rolling Stone.
It’s an unusual declaration. But Peterson is an unusual politician.
In the biography he touts, Peterson is a career law enforcement officer — a Black man who spent 35 years rising through the ranks of the local sheriff’s department, before making an unsuccessful election bid for sheriff in 2022.
But Peterson has other credentials that he does not trumpet. He’s a commissioned “apostle” in the church of a Christian-nationalist preacher who rejects the separation of church and state as a myth “from the pit of hell,” and who traveled to Washington, D.C., to back president Trump on Jan. 6, 2021.
In 2020, Peterson was also named to the board of that church’s anti-abortion activist organization, 1Race4Life, whose members pledge to always “vote pro-life” and to “defend the sacred covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.” (Peterson now disputes this affiliation.)
This second set of bona fides present Peterson as an uneasy fit in uber-progressive Portland, where abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights are politically sacrosanct. But on the strength of his public credentials, Peterson has been endorsed by a wide swath of the city’s center-left establishment, including by The Oregonian, the Willamette Week alt weekly, as well as by a gay city commissioner, the progressive county DA, prominent local Black politicians, and the Willamette Women Democrats.
Is Peterson a stealth candidate — poised to secure a victory for the religious right in the beating heart of blue-state liberalism?He disputes this notion, telling Rolling Stone: “I have no hidden agendas.” But a leading scholar of the charismatic Christian movement that holds up Peterson as one of its own, calls the candidate’s explanations “hard to square.”
Nationally, school boards have emerged as a front line in America’s culture wars — with high stakes for the hearts and minds of young Americans. Right wingers are pushing into school governance in an effort to stymie evolving social norms on gender and sexuality as well as to block a factual accounting of America’s dark history of enslavement and genocide. School boards can set local standards on everything from banning books; to forcing trans students to use the wrong pronouns or the wrong bathrooms; to muzzling teachers from discussing their own racial and gender identities with students.
This cultural fight goes hand-in-glove with a rising tide of Christian nationalism that seeks to remake America according to fundamentalist biblical standards, in hopes of hastening the second coming of Christ. Christian nationalists have raised alarm at the “grooming” of a younger generation in public schools — a move away from God’s truth orchestrated by what they perceive as “demonic” forces.
For his part, Peterson — a registered Democrat — claims he’s been the victim of a misunderstanding. He hotly contests that he was, in fact, on the board of the anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion 1Race4Life — and that his name and likeness were misappropriated. “I am not affiliated with this group, nor does it reflect my views on marriage equality and reproductive health,” he said in written answers to Rolling Stone’s questions. “My view is that everyone has the right to make their individual personal choice about what they do with their own body. I have also been an active advocate for LGBTQ+ rights.”
Despite appearing on 1Race4Life’s website since 2020, Peterson claims he only became aware of his disputed board membership last week and “took action to have my picture, name, and information removed immediately.” 1Race4Life did not return Rolling Stone’s inquiries about Peterson. (The entire website is currently down at press time, though its social channels are still active.)
1Race4Life is a project of the ministry of Ché Ahn, a leading Christian nationalist, affiliated with the New Apostolic Reformation. NAR preachers come out of the Charismatic or Pentecostal tradition that believes in “gifts of the spirit” — including speaking in tongues and the performance of miracles. NAR ministries also hold that prophecy is not a bygone biblical artifact, rather that we live in a new age of “prophets” and “apostles” who receive direct messages from God and help exert His authority here on Earth. Many adherents believe that it is the job of Christians to seize control of government and culture to bring the world into biblical alignment so that Christ can return and reign over the Earth.
1Race4Life was Ahn’s response to the uprisings after the George Floyd murder — seeking to channel the emotions around the value of life into protecting the unborn. 1Race4Life describes itself as “an apostolic network of ethnically and culturally diverse, pro-life Evangelical leaders committed to seeing the end of abortion on a local, state, and national level.”
Along with Peterson, the 1Race4Life board included top Christian nationalist figures including Lance Wallnau. Wallnau is a chief promoter of the Seven Mountains Mandate, which calls on Christians to attempt a national takeover by capturing the seven pinnacles of culture — including religion, entertainment, government, and education.
“It’s implausible to me that Derrick Peterson had no idea that he was getting placed on this board with all these brand-name people in that independent charismatic world,” says Matthew Taylor, Protestant Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies who is writing a book on the role of religion in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Ahn has long been explicit in his quest to have Christians conquer the mountains of influence — to become the “head not the tail” in directing government and culture. “Once we do get to the head, then all of a sudden we can make decrees and declarations,” he explained in a 2010 interview. “When you get to the top,” he said, “you can start doing some radical things for the Lord.”
Ahn was a based Trump supporter who insisted that the 2020 election was stolen through “egregious fraud.” He spoke at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 5, 2021, insisting that Trump was going to stay in the White House and that America would be a “red nation in perpetuity.” Ahn told the faithful that Trump’s victory would be their victory: “We’re going to rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ.”
“We are here to change history,” dominionist “apostle” Ché Ahn told “Stop the Steal” rally a day before the insurrection. He predicted that "we’re gonna rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ.” pic.twitter.com/KlqDUqFlYc
Peterson now says, “I do not support the political agenda of Ché Ahn.” He insists: “I do not follow his appearances or have contact with him. This is the first time I heard about his appearance in D.C. I do not condone the acts that happened that day. I support democracy.”
Peterson did confirm to Rolling Stone, however, that he was commissioned in 2020 as an “apostle” in Ahn’s Harvest International Ministry (HIM). Today, Peterson downplays the position as if it were a service award: “I was honored for my community work as an apostle, an honorary title.” He adds: “I was being recognized for the authority I carried based on my position at work, the community, and as a long time DEI instructor. This included my ability to network, galvanize, and bring people together.”
Taylor, the expert in NAR theology, finds this explanation far-fetched. “I can’t speak for Peterson’s perception of it, but HIM does not [commission apostles] ad hoc or willy-nilly. They want to invest in these people as leaders in their network.” Peterson was named a “marketplace apostle” which in the NAR context, Taylor says, is someone who “advances the Kingdom of God outside of church.” It is a designation, Taylor adds, that “puts you in the upper tier of religious leaders.”
Peterson claims his intersection with Ahn was fleeting: “I attended one meeting and have not been involved with that church since.” Yet Peterson has since traded on his “apostle” credential, preaching at churches in the Pacific Northwest directly linked to Ahn, including the New Harvest Church outside of Tacoma, Washington.
That church’s “Statement of Faith” refers to Christians being “empowered to influence” the seven “cultural mountains”; touts “our mission to subdue the enemy and bring the Kingdom of God to the Earth”; and compares gay marriage to incest and pedophilia.
During a guest sermon in September 2020, Peterson gently corrected the church pastor who said Peterson was “not an official ordained minister” by touting that he’d been “officially commissioned as a marketplace apostle.”
Peterson’s sermon that day called on Christians to assert their power: ”It’s time to rise up and take your place — take your authority — walk in the majesty of Jesus Christ, of God, what He has given you.” He called on Christians to “get out of your seat” and begin “knocking” on the doors of power.
The service — held at the height of the George Floyd protests in Portland — closed with the church’s official pastor taking the stage with Peterson and leading a prayer to call on God to “cancel” what the pastor called “the demonic power inspiring those riots.”
Peterson’s name has also been scrubbed from the web page for Ché Ahn’s church that announced his commissioning as an apostle. “Who is he calling to get those pages pulled down, if he really doesn’t know what is going on?” asks Taylor. “The whole thing just doesn’t track.”
Following the money, Peterson’s political ambitions have been funded with donations from a pair of preachers, including a fellow apostle in Ahn’s network, and a Wichita, Kansas, minister who is the lead translator of a controversial version of the New Testament that Ahn touts as “the Bible of choice for the next Jesus people movement.”
For his part, Peterson tells Rolling Stone that his only objective in running is “to represent diversity in its purest form,” adding that “as a school board member, I will be committed to further helping my community, schools, and youth.”
Peterson does have competition in the vote-by-mail race, which wraps up May 16. He faces longtime school teacher Patte Sullivan, who — ironically — threw her hat into the ring before Peterson declared for the race, aiming to prevent Portland from becoming part of the national trend.
“I signed up sort of the last minute,” she said in an endorsement interview with Willamette Week last week, before Peterson’s unusual affiliations became public. “I heard on the radio that there were school board positions opening, and the back of my mind I said, ‘Oh school board — that’s where the right wing sneaks in.’ ”
