Clothing is scary for republicans it seems. Pants on women, dresses on men, I wonder they don’t freak out about ear rings on men or long hair. Stupid, pure stupidity, rather than work on real issues they want to worry about what other people wear. Hugs
Photo: ShutterstockArkansas state Sen. Gary Stubblefield (R) has filed a bill that would classify drag queens as employees of an “adult-oriented business,” similar to nude models, porn actors, and sex workers.
The bill would put restrictions on transgender and non-binary people singing and dancing in public. It would also require bars, restaurants, shops, and theaters to relocate if they allow such behavior from people of those identities or anything resembling drag.
The bill, S.B. 43, defines a drag performance as one in which a performer “exhibits a gender identity that is different from the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other accessories that are traditionally worn by members of… the performer’s opposite sex,” and performs a song or dance “intended to appeal to the prurient interest” in front of an audience of two or more people.
By this broad definition, a transgender or non-binary person singing a song about lovemaking, reciting a sexual story, or gyrating while dancing would be legally considered the same as a sex worker or someone having sex on camera. In fact, the law would consider any person doing these things as someone who works for an “adult-oriented business” if they wore anything not associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.
The law would also redefine an adult-oriented business as any place where such a performance occurs. This would include bars, restaurants, and any places that allow gender non-conforming individuals to sing, dance, or otherwise perform.
The state’s zoning laws would require such businesses to be relocated outside of areas where children can easily view them.
Legislators from at least seven states — Arizona, Idaho, Michigan, Montana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas — have proposed anti-drag laws in recent months, according to Bloomberg Law. Republican legislators in these states claim that drag shows “sexualize children” even though such performances rarely ever feature sexual content.
The proposed legislation would almost certainly be challenged in court soon after being signed into law since it violates constitutional protections for free speech. But the real aims of such laws are to silence LGBTQ+ allies and generate outrage against the LGBTQ+ community.
Their proposed legislation has also emboldened neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, white supremacists, and other anti-LGBTQ+ activists to issue death threats against businesses and public libraries that hold all-ages drag events. At least 124 incidents targeting drag events were reported in 2022 far this year across 47 U.S. states, according to the LGBTQ+ media watchdog group GLAAD.
And so the haters / republicans / right wing pushes it further. Really it is turning the clock back. It is regressive. It is denying every advance in society and in medical science since the 1950s. Ask your self why that age / time stamp is so attractive to republican males? Because everyone but them were oppressed and they had unfettered control. Hug
Advocates want the bill to forbid discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity to 8th grade.The Florida chapter of Moms for Liberty, the conservative nonprofit that advocates for parental rights in schools, would like state lawmakers to expand the state law that restricts classroom instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation for children from kindergarten through the third grade.
The Parental Rights in Education law, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by its critics, ignited a firestorm of criticism among Democrats and LGBTQ advocates and received national attention after it was introduced and later signed into law last year.
“We are advocating to increase that as far as ages and grades to have it be K-8,” said Angela Dubach, the Pinellas County chapter chair of the organization, speaking to the members of the Pinellas County legislative delegation as they met as a group on Wednesday morning at the Clearwater branch campus of St. Petersburg College.
A group of students, parents, and teachers filed a lawsuit last year to block the measure from being implemented, alleging it is unconstitutional in part because it “chills speech and expression that have any connection, however remote, to sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Brandon Wolf, press secretary for Equality Florida, slammed the idea.
“At every step of the way, right-wing extremists have gaslit the community about its insatiable desire for censorship and erasure of LGBTQ people,” he told the Phoenix in an email.
“They insisted that the Don’t Say LGBTQ law would be narrow in scope and limited to K-3, despite knowing that the law’s impacts would be far broader and more sweeping. Already, we’ve seen books with LGBTQ characters banned, ‘Safe Space’ stickers peeled from classroom windows, the contributions of LGBTQ people in history censored, and LGBTQ History Month itself rejected in districts across Florida,” he continued.
“The desire of right-wing groups like Moms for Liberty to wield more government censorship over more students is shameful and at odds with the bogus rationalization for this harmful policy they were peddling throughout 2022. LGBTQ people are a part of society’s fabric. We are your neighbors, family members, and friends. And our state should be a place committed to protecting all students and respecting all families.”
Four asks
The expansion of that law was one of four proposals that Dubach called on lawmakers to consider going into the 2023 legislative session. Dubach said that she’d also like legislators to “take a look” at expanding the timeline on legislation signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021 that bans private employers and government entities from implementing COVID-19 vaccine mandates and school districts from requiring face masks. The measure is slated to expire on June 1.
Another measure that the Florida chapter of Moms for Liberty supports relates to school board races.
“Myself and our organization supports partisan school board elections,” Dubach said. “That’s something that we are asking you to take a look at. I was originally told that we’d have to change the Florida Constitution so we wouldn’t be able to do that, so if you could advise me on that that’d be wonderful.”
Measures have been filed in both the House and Senate this year calling for a constitutional amendment to require members of a district school board to be chosen in partisan elections. If approved, it would go into effect in 2026.
Florida voters voted overwhelmingly in 1998 to make school board races nonpartisan, and efforts to put such an amendment on the ballot have failed in recent legislative sessions. But that was before Gov. DeSantis weighed in on the topic last summer and endorsed 30 candidates in school board races, the majority of whom won either in their Primary or General Election contests last year.
The last item Dubach mentioned was “some type of legislation” around the amount of mental health funding that public schools in Florida receive.
“Right now, Pinellas County schools have $140 million allocated for mental health, and I talk to teacher after teacher after teacher and they say, ‘We are not mental health counselors. We want to educate these children and get them ready for the next grade,’” Dubach told the group of legislators. “They don’t want anything to do with mental health. That is up to the parents, their doctors, and all of that stuff is at home.”
The Phoenix reached out to the Pinellas County School District to confirm those financial figures but did not immediately receive a response. State lawmakers have five more weeks of committee meetings scheduled between now and the official beginning of the legislative session on March 7.
Yet still not a drag queen or trans person. There were other ones posted in the days I got these from but I felt one was enough. You can see the tally that Joe has been keeping. Hugs
The handmaids tale gets closer and closer as the republican run states fight to return the society to a much more regressive time when women were under more control of men. Hugs
The republicans know there is voter fraud because they are the ones doing it. I wonder if this guy will get five years in prison like the poor black woman who was told she could vote and did so but she did not qualify. Texas threw the maximum punishment at her. Hugs
Notice that he never thinks of women pilots. To him all piolets must be male and the ones in dresses or skirts are cross dressing men to his mind. What a bigoted piece of shit. Hugs
Drag queens are the newest boogieman of the right, easy targets to rile up their base that hopes for either the return to the 1950s or the 1850s depending how they feel about women and black people. Hugs
Notice it is only indoctrination and wrong when it is about acceptance / tolerance of diversity and minorities. Push hard right wing ideology is just reality for these republicans. Pushing an outdated 1950s style of society to them is normal but in truth that is the indoctrination they accuse the left of. They are trying hard to regress society and the acceptance of others who are different from them. They cannot live and let live. They must force everyone to fit the mold they demand they live in. The want a society where straight Christian males are assumed to be in charge, women are subservient to white straight men, blacks know their place and stay in it, and the gay and trans people are not seen or acknowledged in society staying firmly hidden in their closets. Hugs
As the article points out once born it is a child, living child and to kill it is already murder. By definition abortion is not being born. The bill is just grandstanding. Plus they don’t seem to learn, restricting abortion is not popular so they are doubling down and this time claiming that abortion is the killing of already born babies. Hugs
We must not admit that discrimination is real and happening even now. Afterall they don’t seem concerned about the discomfort the minority children of color and the LGBTQ+ kids experience every day, but we must never make the white kids uncomfortable. Actually it is not the kids’ comfort they care about, but the white republican parents. Hugs
If you read the comments you will see that several admissions directors commented that the persons scores were not that great and they look at social media along with other factors. They clearly seen something all of the schools disliked. Considering his complaint is non-whites are getting into the school while white males such as himself are waiting for a spot seems that he is a racist misogynist who they don’t want in their student body.
Because letting kids know that even in nature with animals there are gay couples will rot their teeth curve their spines and cause them to suddenly become gay or trans. What stupidity. Gay couples exist and are legal. Land of the free remember. They don’t want to hide straight couples from kids. They don’t think kids seeing straight couples is sexualizing the children or teaching them sex. It is simply bigotry, and they are not really hiding it. They want to erase the gays and trans from society and they are using the kids as the excuse. Hugs
The right wing doesn’t even want to be on their own platform because there is no one for them to fight with, these site ban liberals which takes the fun away from the trolls. Hugs
This was an attack on minority people of color and totally racist. It was a set of laws designed to let the state stop any protest for equality or the killing of unarmed black people by the police. They also passed a law saying that if protestors such as the George Floyd killing protestors got into the street they could legally be run over and arrested even when they had a permit. Yet when the Cubans who normally vote republicans protested in the street the government did not allow them to be run over nor did they arrest them. Strange it seems the law only applies to the left or democrats. Hugs
Notice he doesn’t admit Nixon broke the laws and did things that were illegal. Nope it is the fault of the people who caught him, and they are the bad guys. Hugs
Religious views should not and must not take priority over human rights or medical care. This must be stopped in the US as more states face the fact that all the hospitals are owned by the Catholic church and the church requires them to let people die rather than provide accepted needed medical care that goes against religious dogma. Hugs
Catholic Hospital Broke Law by Denying Transgender Patient Surgery: Judge
A Catholic hospital discriminated against a transgender patient by refusing to provide him a hysterectomy, a federal judge ruled.
Jesse Hammons, a transgender man, sued the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center, after he was denied the surgery, a gender-affirming procedure performed on many transgender men, in 2019, alleging that the hospital discriminated against him because of his gender identity.
St. Joseph Medical Center, a religious entity purchased by the University of Maryland Medical Center in 2012, argued that its doctors would not perform the surgery because doing so contradicts their religious beliefs.
The Friday ruling came as the LGBTQ community continues advocating for stronger legal protections against discrimination. Conservatives, on the other hand, have argued that strengthened anti-discrimination protections would violate their freedom of speech.
A person holds a transgender pride flag. On Friday, a federal judge ruled that a Catholic hospital violated anti-discrimination laws by denying a transgender men gender-affirming surgery, citing religious beliefs.CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES; DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES
U.S. District Court Judge Deborah K. Chasanow ruled that the refusal by the hospital—which is part of the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS)—to perform the hysterectomy violated Maryland’s anti-discrimination laws and that UMMS is bound by Maryland law to “operate the medical system without discrimination based upon race, creed, sex, or national origin.”
Chasanow ruled that the hospital, which receives Medicare and Medicaid funding, violated Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits providers who receive public funding from discriminating “on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or sex,” including gender identity.
In 2019, Hammons was set to receive the surgery as part of his gender-affirming plan, but the hospital canceled it only one week prior, citing religious reasons, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Hammons, in a statement released by the ACLU, which represented him in court, described the ruling as a “great win for myself and all transgender people denied equal treatment because of who they are.”
“All I wanted was for UMMS to treat my health care like anyone else’s, and I’m glad the court recognized how unfair it was to turn me away,” Hammons said. “I’m hopeful UMMS can change this harmful policy and help more transgender people access the care they need.”
In a statement forwarded to Newsweek on Monday, a UMMS spokesperson wrote that the medical system disputes “many of the conclusions that were reached in this decision and may be in a position to comment further after additional analysis of the ruling.”
“Legal disagreements aside, we sincerely wish the very best for Mr. Hammons and we support his efforts to seek the highest quality healthcare,” the statement reads. “We may disagree on certain technical, legal points but compassion for the patients we serve remains foundational to our work.”
