Thank you Ali for sending this link. I saved this author to my morning read file. The work below is not done by me I am only sharing it and all credit and support should go to the author at the link above. Hugs
Debunking one of the more bizarre anti-trans arguments making the rounds among pundits.
“Nobody in my life was particularly enthused that I turned out to be a man,” Liam told me. “My ex-girlfriend actually took my phone out of my hands when I was scheduling my first HRT consultation and hung up the phone. My mother cried. My father is still in a state of mourning.”
Liam (not his real name) is a trans man in his late teens who began transitioning a couple of years ago. He says he did not receive a lot of support from family, medical professionals, or peers.
An activist holds a sign calling for federal protection of transgender rights, in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on April 1, 2023. (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
Contrary to what some anti-trans pundits would have you believe, Liam’s experience as a trans youth has been sadly typical. It’s far from the fictitious anti-trans narrative that we live in an affirming-to-a-fault society with an out-of-control left-wing medical establishment hellbent on “transing” cis lesbian and gay children.
For instance, on Twitter, Andrew Sullivan wrote, “A gay friend confided in me the other day: ‘If I’d been born twenty years later I would have been put on puberty blockers.’ Protect gay kids from the TQIA+ extremists.”
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Sullivan’s evidence here doesn’t even rise to the level of anecdote; his friend is making up a story, not reporting on anything that actually happened to him. And in fact, there is overwhelming evidence—from studies, from experts, from parents and children—that Sullivan’s friend is wrong. People are not pushed to be trans. Instead, trans people in our society face many social barriers to transition and little encouragement.
Not even anecdotes
Sullivan’s tweet is just a tweet. But full-length articles claiming a crisis of cis lesbian and gay “transing” aren’t much more rigorous.
David Moulton, writing in Tablet, claims, “The interests of legacy gay rights organizations have increasingly become divorced from their traditional constituents, gay men and lesbians” and as evidence points out that the Human Rights Campaign is using the word “transgender” more than lesbian and gay in its annual report. That probably has to do with an assault on trans rights. HRC’s report details and pushes back against attacks on LGBT people. When states are passing hundreds of anti-trans bills, you say “trans” a lot. (“When bigoted lawmakers took aim at transgender youth, our volunteer-based organization defended them with determined vigor.”) The use of the term is evidence of how much discrimination there is against trans people, not the opposite.
Similarly, Katie Herzog argues that the decrease in lesbian bars is a sign that the trans and nonbinary establishment has made lesbianism uncool or embarrassing. But couldn’t the issue just be that lesbians are more accepted now and, as a result, feel more comfortable going to mainstream venues?
Both Moulton and Herzog are trying to pit trans people against cis lesbian and gay people by framing support for trans people as inherently homophobic. It’s a tactic picked up with glee by straight transphobes like Graham Linehan, who has penned condescending odes to “our baby homosexuals.” It’s also embraced by active homophobes like the Family Research Council.
Trans youth face enormous stigma
Moulton and Herzog cobble together a bunch of anecdotes and vague accusations based on little more than their discomfort with an LGBT movement that includes trans people. But when you actually look at the extant evidence, the suggestion that cis lesbian and gay people are being oppressed by a trans establishment is ludicrous.
In the first place, there is a strong correlation between transphobia and homophobia; researchers found that “homophobia is likely to always be the ‘best’ predictor of transphobia and these two constructs probably share a common foundation.” Where transphobia and homophobia diverge, however, the evidence that trans people face serious stigma, and often worse stigma than cis gay or lesbian people, is extensive.
Most obviously, Republicans and conservatives across the country are pushing more than 400 draconian anti-trans bills through state legislatures. These bills criminalize trans health care, force trans youth to detransition, criminalize trans use of public bathrooms, force schools to out trans youth to their parents, and more. While these bills may harm gay and lesbian and gender nonconforming youth in some ways, they are particularly framed as an attack on trans people–hardly a sign that trans identities are seen as more acceptable and legitimate than gay or lesbian ones.
Young trans people demonstrate in the center of Rome for the rights of trans people, organized by the Gender x movement, on April 1, 2023, in Rome, Italy. (Photo by Simona Granati – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
Homeless statistics mirror the current public anti-trans panic. Homophobic parents often throw their children out of the house or make life so miserable for them that they leave home. As a result, according to the Trevor Project, 23% of cis queer youth report experiencing homelessness or housing instability at some point in their lives. Those figures are however even worse for trans youth; 38% of trans women, 39% of trans men, and 35% of nonbinary youth said they had experienced homelessness.
Similarly, thanks to widespread social stigma, queer youth often experience severe mental distress and mental illness. According to the Trevor Project, 1 in 3 cis queer youth contemplated suicide in the past year, and 1 in 10 cis queer youth attempted suicide in the same period. Those are horrible numbers. But statistics for trans youth, again, are even worse. More than half of trans and nonbinary youth contemplate suicide, and almost 1 in 5 reports making a suicide attempt.
It’s also worth noting that researchers have found that “many if not most trans people are LGBQ following transition.” Liam, for example, had thought of himself as a lesbian before transition, but after coming out as a trans man, he also realized he was bisexual.
“I just never entertained the idea of being with a man until after I was presenting as a man,” he told me. “Being a straight girl was the farthest thing from myself that I could imagine.” If there is a sweeping plot to turn gay people straight by forcing them to be trans, that plot failed spectacularly with Liam. Trans people do not transition because they want to be straight. They transition because they are trans.
“I have never in my entire career encountered a parent who pushed their child to identify as trans”
Daniel Summers, a Boston-area primary care pediatrician, confirmed that in his experience, parents are “notably more comfortable with their children being lesbian or gay than trans.” Even supportive parents of trans kids see it as a challenge, he said; that’s not the case for supportive parents of lesbian and gay children. “I have never in my entire career encountered a parent who pushed their child to identify as trans if they did not already identify that way themselves,” he concluded. “Not once, for any reason.”
Kelly Storck, a therapist who has provided gender-affirming care in St. Louis for 15 years, agreed. Acceptance of gay and lesbian identity has improved slowly over the years, but, “most of my clients, regardless of age, still hold a lot of fear around having a gender that’s different than their assigned sex,” Storck emphasized. She added that her clients often have an “overwhelming fear of rejection from their families and peers.” That’s not what you’d expect if there were a successful coordinated campaign to make cis gay and lesbian people adopt trans identities.
Clara Baker, a parent of four in Bar Harbor, Maine, told me her son transitioned when he was three, and is now 12. Baker’s mother was a feminist scholar, and Baker was very familiar with third-wave feminism and gay rights. But she was “really ignorant” of trans issues. “My first thought was, if I let him wear boy clothes, will I turn him into a boy?” she said.
In order to deal with her son’s dysphoria, she educated herself and got him the care he needed, but “there was a ton of resistance from health care providers, family members who were super educated…” Even logistically, there were major barriers, since she had to drive an hour to an endocrinologist to get monthly blood tests. “I was so without support,” she said.
Young trans people participate in a demonstration in the center of Rome for the rights of trans people organized by the Gender X movement, on April 1, 2023, in Rome, Italy. (Photo by Simona Granati – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
Sam (not his real name) an author and journalist, told me he had, himself, resisted when his son came out as trans at 15. Sam had close friends who were gender critical, and he read some feminist anti-trans books. “We had arguments about it,” he said, “where I’d say, ‘Do you think you’re erasing your female identity?’” Eventually, though, he said he realized that his concerns were “just because I was more comfortable with lesbian and gay people [than with trans people]. And so that was on me.”
Sikh freelance journalist Veerender Singh Jubbal was the one exception among those I interviewed; he said that his parents had more context for trans identity than for bisexual identity. In India, there is an established category of “Hijra” to refer to people who are trans or intersex and are viewed as a third gender, Jubbal said. As a result, he said, his parents, “definitely know more stuff in regards to transgender issues than queer issues.” That’s the “opposite” of North America, where people are more comfortable with queer identities that are not trans.
From the perspective of a culture that does, to some degree in some situations, treat trans identities as less stigmatized than some cis queer ones, Jubbal can say with some certainty that the US does not see things that way.
A pretext for discrimination
“With my mother assuming and my father asserting that I was in fact a lesbian (though I had told the both of them about my crushes on boys as a kid) it was incredibly hard to find myself until I moved out,” Liam told me. His experiences with the medical establishment were disheartening and discouraging as well. “I found a lot of the questions superficial,” he said. “If I hadn’t answered that I only own five shirts, would I have been rejected from medical transition? It left me wondering why it was necessary for me and other trans people to present in such a binary way to receive proper medical treatment.”
When you look at the research or speak to clinicians, parents, or young people themselves, it is clear that no one is being pushed to be trans. Instead, trans people face persistent discrimination and resistance from family, friends, doctors, and politicians when they try to be true to themselves.
The claim that trans people are somehow infecting cis gay and lesbian people is part of that discrimination. Framing trans people as a danger to themselves and others creates the pretext for anti-trans legislation, for parental rejection, for the denial of medical care. Building that foundation of bigotry empowers Christofascists, homophobes, and reactionaries. In the long run, and even in the short run, it will not help any LGBT youth, cis or trans.
___
Where indicated, some names have been changed to allow interviewees to speak freely.
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We all have seen drag. We all grew up with it. From Red Skeleton to Bob Hope, and so many more up to the 1970s Flip Wilson’s Geraldine who was amazingly popular. People love drag as it is simply dress up. It is Halloween at anytime. Drag is not a threat to society nor to anyone, not even children. What the right wants to make it is a boogieman they can use as a cudgel against others and something to rally up their base because their voting base works only on anger and rage. The right wants everyone to forget their fun drag memories and now think of any guy in a dress acting in drag as a “drag queen story hour reading to kids making them gay and trans” and also they want to make “all drag is trans people” so to spread the hate their base has for trans people to people playing dress up. Heck in their minds trans people are people playing dress up. Wow, how fucked up is that they will deny all medical science to keep their bigotry. Hugs
Knowing a trans or nonbinary person significantly reduced the chance that someone would say that they’re a threat.
A new poll found that a majority of Democratic, independent, and even Republican likely voters believe that there is “too much legislation” aimed at reducing LGBTQ+ rights at the state level.
Theprogressive polling firm and think tank Data for Progressconducted a survey of 1220 participants and asked about the 429 bills presented at state legislatures attacking LGBTQ+ rights. Most of the bills are aimed at transgender youth, and 17 have already become law this year.
Here are all the anti-trans bills that have become law in 2023
Republican lawmakers have worked round the clock to pass oppressive bills targeting gender-affirming care, bathroom usage, drag shows, and trans students.
72% of Democratic voters agreed with the statement that there is “too much legislation. Politicians are playing political theater and using these bills as a wedge issue,” and only 20% agreed that it’s “the right amount of legislation. Politicians are dealing with a real danger that needs to be addressed.” 65% of independent voters agreed that there is too much anti-LGBTQ+ legislation this year.
The more surprising result – considering how the vast majority of lawmakers voting for these bills are Republicans – was that 55% of Republican voters agreed that there is too much anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Only 33% said that there is the “right amount” of such bills.
The survey also asked if people believed that being transgender is a “natural phenomenon that has occurred throughout history” that’s “normal” or if they believed that being trans is a “new phenomenon created by our modern woke culture” that will “harm our children.” Most Democrats (78%) and most independents (58%) agreed that being trans is natural. Only 34% of Republicans agreed that being trans is natural, while a majority (55%) said that it’s a new phenomenon.
While Republicans lag on that issue, Data for Progress noted that a majority of all likely voters (57%) said that being trans is natural, which could indicate that attacks on trans youth might not be the potent electoral winner that many Republican strategists believe it is.
While state Republican lawmakers have been introducing anti-transgender legislation for over a decade, there was an explosion of such legislation in 2021, just several weeks after Donald Trump’s loss in the general election. Democrats accused Republicans – many of whom had never shown any concern for the state of girls’ and women’s sports – of using transgender kids to distract from the GOP’s less popular positions on the COVID-19 pandemic and the economy.
Part of the reason that such a strategy could work is that transgender people make up a small percentage of the population and many people don’t think they know anyone who is transgender. Only 36% of Democrats, 39% of independents, and 25% of Republicans said that they know someone who is trans or nonbinary, and a majority of each group said that they didn’t.
And knowing a trans or nonbinary person decreases the chance that someone will see them as a threat. Among likely voters who know someone trans or nonbinary, 78% said that trans people are not a threat to straight families and 66% said that they’re not a threat to children. Among people who don’t know anyone who is trans, though, those numbers dropped to 52% and 41%, respectively.
Most Democratic voters (54%) and independent voters (63%) believe that Democratic elected officials should be doing more to fight anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. The survey didn’t ask what they believe Democrats should be doing.
When it comes to drag bans, a majority of Democrats (68%) and independents (55%) said that they had seen a drag performance either live or on TV. 53% of Republicans, though, said that they have never seen a drag performance at all.
I just watched a break-down of this on the Sam Seder’s The Majority Report. The mother was anti-trans to begin with and did not want their child to transition. The article written by a report from an organization created by well known transphobic Bari Weiss, who is a right wing hack who first came to fame trying to get professors who supported Palestinians fired, is complete wrong and filled with anti-trans bias. When the teen the article was based on tried to correct the lies written, the writer Emily Yoffe told them they had no say in it and published the misinformation, including dead naming the teen. Lies, myths, and fringe unscientific conspiracy theories are what these anti-trans haters use to influence the public. The saddest part of this is they are hurting the very people they pretend to be helping, just like crisis pregnancy centers claim to be helping pregnant people while they are really just pushing a right wing ideology to deny others the right to live their lives as they wish, but instead force all others to live by their right wing ideology based in some idea of 1950s social myths of morality. Hugs
The Missouri teen says their mother misrepresented their story in an anti-trans piece published by Bari Weiss’s ‘Free Press.’
A Missouri teen has refuted their mother’s account of being “bullied” into allowing her child to go on puberty blockers.
On Monday, The Free Press, a conservative outlet founded by former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, published a story based on Caroline Miller’s claims that she was pressured by doctors at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital to allow her then-14-year-old child to receive a pharmaceutical implant that would deliver the puberty blocker Supprelin for two years. According to the Free Press piece, Miller and the child’s father were both informed of potential side effects, and after some initial resistance on Miller’s part, both parents signed off on the implant.
Hormone therapy improves mental health for trans youth
Researchers tracked 315 trans and non-binary young people in what is reportedly the largest study in the U.S. to date.
But Miller claims that within months of receiving the implant, her child’s mental health declined, their grades dropped from “all As and Bs to a report card dotted with Ds and Fs,” and they expressed “suicidal thoughts.” Blaming all of this on the puberty blocker, Miller revoked her consent and demanded that the implant be removed. Doctors declined, saying that they needed both parents to sign off on the removal.
In an April 4 tweet, Miller said she was contacted by The Free Press after reaching out to a lawyer. She gave the outlet permission to report on her child’s treatment. The resulting story, by writer Emily Yoffe, identified Miller’s child as “Casey” and misgendered them throughout.
On Tuesday, the now 16-year-old “Casey,” whose real name is Alex, took to Twitter to refute the Free Press story. In a long tweet thread, Alex, who uses they/she pronouns, said that their mother’s account is based on “false perceptions that my mom has about the doctors and clinic.”
Alex says that Miller informed them of the story only after speaking with Yoffe. “When I read the draft I was disgusted with what the reporter and my mom had made my experience out to be,” they wrote.
After speaking with Yoffe, Alex says they were told they had no say in whether the story was published.
Miller claimed that she felt pressured to agree to the puberty blocker implant after doctors implied that Alex was at high risk of suicide if they didn’t receive the treatment. Alex says that while doctors did quote statistics around suicide in transgender adolescents, they never said that Alex was at substantial risk.
They also say that Millers claims about their grades and mental health were exaggerated. “My grades were on a steady decline since 2020 due to unrelated mental health concerns,” they wrote. “The article claims that my mental health issues can be attributed to the Supprelin implant, however, my personal experience shows that this is not the case. Since Covid-19, my mental health has been declining, and it was already an issue.”
Alex also praised their counselor at Washington University Transgender Center, but says that they were denied access to counseling after Miller retroactively objected to the Supprelin implant.
In atweet responding to Alex’s thread, Miller identified herself as Alex’s mother (the Free Press story omitted her last name) and asked that users not “harass my child.” She also defended her decision to speak to The Free Press. “This is actually my story about how I was treated as a parent at this center,” she wrote. “Alex has a story too, but this article wasn’t it. Don’t confuse the two.”
Below I have unrolled the entire twitter thread. Hugs
I have reinstalled Twitter to respond to this story and make sure my voice is fully heard. I am Casey.
My real name is Alex but my mom decided it would be best to hide it for anonymity. But this is my story, not hers. This is not the free press’s story.
Caroline was told that a puberty blocker would relieve her child's psychological distress. That's not what happened.
About a week ago my mom contacted @EmilyYoffe without my knowledge and told her what was supposed to be our story. She expressed her frustration with the transgender clinic at Washington University, many of which are false perceptions that my mom has about the doctors and clinic.
I learned of this article through my mom over the phone when she asked if it was okay that @TheFP published the article. I said that I wanted to read it first. When I read the draft I was disgusted with what the reporter and my mom had made my experience out to be.
Upon interviewing Emily Yoffe myself I was told that I had no say in whether or not the article was published. I asked if my consent was required to publish the article and the reporter told me, “that’s not how these things work.”
After she had edited the article and published it (I had not found this out until 20 hours later) I was extremely frustrated. The article makes it out that my mother had no say in the implant of the Supprelin. This is completely false.
My mother claims that she was pressured into saying yes by the doctors. A big issue they point out is that the doctors quoted suicide statistics in transgender adolescents. I do not deny that these statistics were quoted, but I also sustain that the doctors didn’t say (continued)
(continued) that I was at substantial risk of this.
The article mentions that my grades dropped from A’s and B’s to D’s and F’s in a semester. This is a completely exaggerated statement. My grades were on a steady decline since 2020 due to unrelated mental health concerns.
Speaking of mental health, the article claims that my mental health issues can be attributed to the Supprelin implant, however, my personal experience shows that this is not the case. Since Covid-19, my mental health has been declining, and it was already an issue.
I was in counseling with the Washington University transgender care center in which I was treated amazingly by my counselor. She was a friend to me and offered a great amount of support. This was taken away when my mom revoked consent for the Supprelin.
After she revoked consent, my father and I, along with the university, attempted to set up a meeting with my mom. She did not attend this meeting, claiming that she was not contacted. Later, she admitted that she was.
Perhaps it was a poor choice. Some would certainly say so, while others, me included, found it a fantastic and hilarious romp into the absurd. Nonetheless, wisdom be damned, there he was. Dressed as a woman. He said he felt there was no choice. He said it didn’t change who he was, only allowed what made him distinctive and what he found to be imperative the opportunity to exist rather than be closeted and slowly dying in the darkness, the loneliness, the loss of all that was dear. The person he was, the identity that he felt in his heart wouldn’t change with the dress, it wasn’t the dress or the men’s clothing that made him who he was, it was only the outward appearance shown to a world that rarely gave a damn.
For a while, as he navigated this new life as a woman, he felt mostly complete. The children loved him as he watched over them, cared for them.
The stuffed bra was something to get used to, something he had to learn to reach around. The make-up was daunting, but convincing. The wigs, the garters and hose, and the dresses. They were new, different, and they allowed his genuine being to be there. In the mirror held his alter-ego, staring at him soul to soul, questioning his motives, his beliefs, his methods to obtain that which he realized was his greatest calling. We all have those moments; I do as I look into the mirror in the mornings as I prepare for my day. What will today bring? Who will I be when incidents and consequence calls? Do I even believe what I say I believe? Do I live what I believe?
Perhaps you have already seen through my deception as I bring my most favorite and troubled actor’s great film into this debate. Robin Williams was the great storyteller, the comedian who made the world laugh. Who knew his pain?
Who knew, despite how he was loved, that he felt so alone and lost. Behind the makeup, behind the laughter, behind the scenes of all that drama he brought to us beat the heart of a man who would leave us all too soon. It became all too obvious that we never knew him at all. We never knew what worried him, what he feared, what demons chased his dreams. We laughed at his characters as he made it all right with the world and brought about a happy ending in just a couple hours. If only it would.
To all those struggling to be free, I pray you may be one day. Never give up. Never surrender.
I would like everyone to notice Joe’s tweet at the end. Pro-life pretenders in Florida legislators passed this b ill along with the anti-trans, don’t say gay bills, anti-woke bills, anti books with LGBTQ+ or race history all in the name of protecting the children, but they approve open carry with no training. The amount of gun violence is already high here in Florida and will now go up. How is this pro-life? I don’t get it. Hugs
Senate preps anti-drag show bill by @Clay_Yarborough for passage despite apparent conflict with existing law
🚨 JUST IN: Florida Republicans introduced a late-filed amendment to expand their bill censoring drag shows to include those at city pride parades.
They're now using intimidation and threats of misdemeanor charges to scare LGBTQ-friendly cities out of hosting drag altogether. pic.twitter.com/if60MwYUvO
— Carlos Guillermo Smith (@CarlosGSmith) April 4, 2023
To be clear, the bill doesn’t ban drag. It censors drag in front of minors w/vague, subjective language and threatens misdemeanors, $10,000 fines, and license revocation for violations. That means businesses, and now cities, will be scared to welcome drag for fear of punishment.
— Carlos Guillermo Smith (@CarlosGSmith) April 5, 2023
Florida is currently debating SB 1438, a bill banning drag shows. Senator Yarborough, the chief sponsor of the bill admits that the bill would apply to live performances of Rocky Horror Picture Show. pic.twitter.com/klRKy0dFp8
Op-ed: #Florida's attacks on drag shows puts Shakespeare theatrical productions at risk, because he often featured characters who cross-dressed. https://t.co/dSA0jaModg
Florida Replicans have introduced a late amendment to implement a criminal ban on pride events throughout the state of Florida if anyone present is dressed in drag. pic.twitter.com/RVHnpf0yww
US District Judge Robert Pitman ruled that at least 12 books removed from public libraries must be placed back onto shelves within 24 hours.
Courtney Sacco/Odessa American/AP
CNN —
A federal judge in Texas ruled that at least 12 books removed from public libraries by Llano County officials, many because of their LGBTQ and racial content, must be placed back onto shelves within 24 hours, according to an order filed Thursday.
Seven residents sued county officials in April 2022, claiming their First and 14th Amendment rights were violated when books deemed inappropriate by some people in the community and Republican lawmakers were removed from public libraries or access was restricted.
The lawsuitfiled in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas in San Antonioclaimed county officials removed books from the shelves of the three-branch public library system “because they disagree with the ideas within them” and terminated access to thousands of digital books because they could not ban two specific titles.
Books ordered to return to shelves include “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson, “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti and “Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen” by Jazz Jennings.
Texas residents are suing their county after books were removed from public libraries
The library system also is required to reflect these books as available in their catalog and cannot remove any books for any reason while the case is ongoing, US District Judge Robert Pitman said in his order.
“Although libraries are afforded great discretion for their selection and acquisition decisions, the First Amendment prohibits the removal of books from libraries based on either viewpoint or content discrimination,” Pitman said.
The fight to protect access to books comes amid a book banning boom, with an alarming increase in attempts to censor books in K-12 schools, universities and public libraries. Many of these efforts seek to pull books with LGBTQ characters or themes and are part of a broader, conservative-led movement to chisel away at the rights and status of LGBTQ Americans.
Many of the book bans have also been aimed at authors of color exploring history, racism or their own experiences in America.
“This is a ringing victory for democracy,” said Ellen Leonida, an attorney representing the plaintiffs in the Texas case. “The government cannot tell citizens what they can or can’t read. Our nation was founded on the free exchange of ideas, and banning books you disagree with is a direct attack on our most basic liberties.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Llano County officials have complied with the judge’s order.
Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham, county commissioners Jerry Don Moss, Peter Jones, Mike Sandoval, and Linda Raschke; library system director Amber Milum and four members of the Llano County library board, Bonnie Wallace, Rochelle Wells, Rhonda Schneider, and Gay Baskin, are named as co-defendants in the case. They did not respond to CNN requests for comment.
The defendantsargued the books were removed as part of a regular “weeding” process following the library’s existing policies, but Pitman said there was clear influence from outside sources.
School just started but the debate surrounding gender and race in classrooms is already at a fever pitch
“Whether or not the books in fact qualified for ‘weeding’ under the library’s existing policies, there is no real question that the targeted review was directly prompted by complaints from patrons and county officials over the contents of these titles,” the judge wrote in his order.
“And, notably, there is no evidence that any of the books were slated to be reviewed for weeding prior to the receipt of these complaints; to the contrary, many other books eligible for weeding based on the same factors appear to have remained on the shelves for many years,” he said.
Complaints from community groups targeted multiple books they labeled as “pornographic filth” because they promoted “acceptance of LGBTQ views,” according to the order. These books were removed from the libraries, according to the order, as well as other books listed as “pornographic” that were about ” ‘critical race theory’ and related racial themes.”
In one email from community member Bonnie Wallace, who was later elected to the library board, she suggested “all the pastors to get involved in this. Perhaps they can organize a weekly prayer vigil on this specific issue. … May God protect our children from this FILTH.”
County commissioners also voted to dissolve the library board and replace it with a new “Library Advisory Board” that appointed multiple Llano County residents, including Wallace, who advocated for the book removals, the order said.
The new board required all new books to “be presented to and approved” by them before purchase, and staff librarians were banned from attending the new board’s meetings, according to the order.
Book bans aim to ‘suppress the voices’ of LGBTQ and communities of color
In 2022, the number of attempts to censor library books reached an unparalleled record high since the American Library Association (ALA) began documenting data about book censorship over 20 years ago, ALAsaid in a March press release.
ALA cataloged 1,269 attempts in 2022; nearly double the number of challenges in 2021.
Alabama community rallies in support of a Black author after school district cancels Black History Month event
“A book challenge is a demand to remove a book from a library’s collection so that no one else can read it,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said in a statement. “Their aim is to suppress the voices of those traditionally excluded from our nation’s conversations, such as people in the LGBTQIA+ community or people of color.”
Schools are among those where book bans have been especially targeted. In 2022, Texas led the country with the most book bans – 713 – affecting 16 school districts, followed by Pennsylvania and Florida with 456 and 204 bans, respectively,according to an analysis by PEN America, a literary and free expression advocacy organization.
“Each attempt to ban a book by one of these groups represents a direct attack on every person’s constitutionally protected right to freely choose what books to read and what ideas to explore,” Caldwell-Stone said. “The choice of what to read must be left to the reader or, in the case of children, to parents. That choice does not belong to self-appointed book police.”
I want to thank Ali for sending me this back in February. I have been meaning to post it. I followed several atheist blogs that already went over this in depth, but this is the best post on it that I can show to the followers of this blog. Hugs
Or ‘young boy molester’, in Greek. A mistranslation of the word in the 19th century, present in all modern Bibles, is the basis for today’s Xristian homophobia.
The words “homosexual” and “heterosexual” were first coined as German nouns by Austrian-born Hungarian psychologist, Karoly Maria Benkert, in the late 19th century, who wrote under pseudonym K.M. Kertbeny.
Ed Oxford is a scholar and researcher. A gay Christian, as well as a graduate of the Talbot School of Theology, his specialty is the history of the Bible, focusing on Bible translations, with a focus on the Greek and Hebrew translations, especially those that relate to human sexuality. Kathy Baldock is an LGBTQ+ advocate and executive director of Canyon Walker Connections, an organization dedicated to repairing “the division that exists between social and Christian conservatives and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community through education, training, and dialogue in both secular and religious environments.”
Each had been dedicated to researching the roots of antigay theology, and together have written Forging a Sacred Weapon: How the Bible Became Anti-Gay, and they are also the researchers behind the documentary, 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture. In the process of this research, they discovered boxes and boxes of notes in the Yale University archives, among them a half-century old letter written by a young seminarian named David S., to the RSV — Revised Standard Version of the Bible — committee.
Now, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, is, according to the National Council of Churches, the “authorized revision of the American Standard Version, published in 1901, which was a revision of the King James Version, published in 1611.”
This is important to know, because the actual word “homosexual” appears for the first time on February 11, 1946 in the Revised Standard Version. In it, their translation of 1 Corinthians 6:9, they substitute the word “homosexual” for the the Greek words “malakoi” and “arsenokoitai.”
Further, as Oxford shares with Forge, a nonprofit organization that “that creates space for post-evangelical conversations, which includes tools and resources for lgbtq+ inclusion in the church,” “…we went to Leviticus 18:22 and [the translator is] translating it for me word for word. In the English where it says, ‘Man shall not lie with man, for it is an abomination,’ the German version says, ‘Man shall not lie with young boys as he does with a woman, for it is an abomination.’ I said, ‘What?! Are you sure?’ He said, ‘Yes!” Then we went to Leviticus 20:13– same thing, ‘Young boys.’ So we went to 1 Corinthians to see how they translated arsenokoitai (original Greek word) and instead of homosexuals it said, ‘Boy molesters will not inherit the kingdom of God.'”
Further from there, Oxford shares, “I then grabbed my facsimile copy of Martin Luther’s original German translation from 1534. My friend is reading through it for me and he says, “Ed, this says the same thing!” They use the word knabenschander. Knaben is boy, schander is molester. This word ‘boy molesters’ for the most part carried through the next several centuries of German Bible translations. Knabenschander is also in 1 Timothy 1:10. So the interesting thing is, I asked if they ever changed the word arsenokoitai to homosexual in modern translations. So my friend found it and told me, ‘The first time homosexual appears in a German translation is 1983.'”
Although the mistake was corrected from “homosexual” to “sexual perverts” in the Revised Standard Version in 1971, the damage had been heavily done, with the word “homosexual” appearing in most translations of the Bible, mostly in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10. This became the fuel for the antigay movement embraced by American conservative Christians, as well as others around the world.
The documentary, 1946, explores and enlightens about this issue, using research and physical evidence, as well as the testimony of scholars, academics, and experts in the field. The movie also features an original score from celebrated queer musician Mary Lambert.
As the director, Sharon “Rocky” Roggio, has said, “It is my goal to change the Christian narrative and liberate the many LGBTQIA+ people living in the dark; oppressed by bad theology. I want us all to live and be acknowledged as equals, under God’s love. There are truths that must be shared.”
Perhaps it was a poor choice. Some would certainly say so, while others, me included, found it a fantastic and hilarious romp into the absurd. Nonetheless, wisdom be damned, there he was. Dressed as a woman. He said he felt there was no choice. He said it didn’t change who he was, only allowed what made him distinctive and what he found to be imperative the opportunity to exist rather than be closeted and slowly dying in the darkness, the loneliness, the loss of all that was dear. The person he was, the identity that he felt in his heart wouldn’t change with the dress, it wasn’t the dress or the men’s clothing that made him who he was, it was only the outward appearance shown to a world that rarely gave a damn.
For a while, as he navigated this new life as a woman, he felt mostly complete. The children loved him as he watched over them, cared for them.
Perhaps you have already seen through my deception as I bring my most favorite and troubled actor’s great film into this debate. Robin Williams was the great storyteller, the comedian who made the world laugh. Who knew his pain?
