FILE – Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at an annual Basque Fry at the Corley Ranch in Gardnerville, Nev., Saturday, June 17, 2023. The mother of a transgender girl sobbed in federal court Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023, as she contemplated having to move away from her Navy officer husband to get health care for her 12-year-old if Florida’s ban on gender dysphoria treatments for minors is allowed to take affect. (AP Photo/Andy Barron, File)
A federal judge hearing achallenge to a transgender health care ban for minorsand restrictions for adults noted Thursday that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly spread false information about doctors mutilating children’s genitals even though there’s been no such documented cases.
The law was sold as defending children from mutilation when it is actually about preventing trans children from getting health care, Judge Robert Hinkle said to Mohammad Jazil, a lawyer for the state.
“When I’m analyzing the governor’s motivation, what should I make of these statements?” Hinkle asked. “This seems to be more than just hyperbole.”
Hinkle said he will rule sometime in the new year on whether the Legislature, the Department of Health and presidential candidate DeSantis deliberately targeted transgender people through the new law. He raised some skepticism about the state’s motivation as lawyers gave their closing arguments.
Jazil said the motivation behind the law was simply public safety in an area that needs more oversight and can have permanent consequences.
“It’s about treating a medical condition; it’s not about targeting transgender individuals,” Jazil said.
Jazil added that if the state was targeting transgender people, it could have banned all treatment for adults and children. Hinkle quickly replied that Jazil would have trouble defending such a law.
At least 22 states have now enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and many of those states face lawsuits. Courts have issued mixed rulings, with the nation’s first law, in Arkansas,struck down by a federal judgewho said the ban on care violated the due process rights of transgender youth and their families.
Enforcement is blocked in two states besides Florida, and enforcement is currently allowed in or set to go into effect soon in seven other states.
Thomas Redburn, a lawyer representing trans adults and the families of trans children, said DeSantis and the Legislature have shown a pattern of targeting transgender people. He listed other recent laws that affect the community, including restrictions on pronoun use in schools, the teaching of gender identification in schools, restrictions on public bathrooms and the prohibition of trans girls from playing girls sports.
Read the full article. Hinkle first appeared here in 2021 when he blocked Florida’s law that sought to prevent social media platforms from banning users for hate speech.
A federal judge says Florida Gov. DeSantis repeatedly spread false information while advocating for a transgender health care ban for minors law in his state. https://t.co/SEEpu8rmxR
So he wants to pass a law to protect children against genital mutilation that doesn’t exist and even if there was genital cutting it would be done on a person old enough to ask for it. Yet countless thousands of boys in the state of Florida have part of their genitals cut off without their consent every year and no one has even considered a law protecting males from involuntary genital cutting. I’m all for anyone doing anything they want to their own genitals when they’re old enough to make the decision themselves but 100% against anyone having anything unnecessarily cut from their body without their consent.
Circumcision performed on a male before he’s old enough to understand and consent to the procedure is involuntary genital mutilation, plain and simple.
The Genital Autonomy Legal Defense and Education Fund (www.galdef.org/equal-protec… has a strategy to remedy the fact that over 1.25 million baby boys in the U.S. each year are subjected to medically unnecessary genital cutting with no legal protection of their bodily integrity or eventual autonomy. Subscribe to GALDEF’s newsletter at their homepage and help them build their war chest to launch an equal protection lawsuit.
The practice started in Egypt millennia before the Israelites were a people. They adopted circumcision from them, in the same way they adopted monotheism from the Babylonians.
Not quite. Christianity did away with the Jewish requirement for male circumcision at the Council of Jerusalem or Apostolic Council, circa, 48-50 CE. It was the fear of masturbation which sparked its resurrection in the U.S. in the early 1870s.
Hinkle said he will rule sometime in the new year on whether the Legislature, the Department of Health and presidential candidate DeSantis deliberately targeted transgender people through the new law.
For those wondering, Robert Hinkle is a judge put on the courts under Bill Clinton and is a longtime LGBT ally. But both sides are the same right? I’m sure someone like this would totally have been put on the courts under Trump or George W or a Cruz etc. Oh wait…
DeSantis is a laughing stock at this point in time. The stuff of SNL. Even if Trump were to disappear, there’s no way in hell that the Republicans would nominate DeSantis as their 2024 candidate.
Besides being a total asshole, he is SO weird and awkward. We need to get rid of him and his government in Floriduh as well.
I’m just chilling with my long time best friend (60 years) in Delray Beach, having a tasty Knob Creek 9 on the rocks. Gonna get gummied soon. Nice plans for the Christmas weekend here. Wishing your and your hubby a wonderful holiday weekend!! Cheers!!
Remember state national guards are under the control of both the state and the DOD, and have to observe military rules. Deathsantis created his own militia, totally under the singular control of the governor of Florida. It is the governor’s private army. The republican legislature gave Deathsantis a huge amount of money from the Florida taxpayers for this, and then twice added even more millions. Normally these types of state national guards are there to help with national disasters like floods and hurricanes and are trained for that work. But the governor’s private army is training with weapons, boats, and aircraft to attack people, non-white people. Right now DeathSantis makes it seem Florida is being overrun with migrants and illegal immigrants, but remember when he needed a press stunt to fly immigrants out of state they had to go to Texas to get enough to partially fill the plane. We get most of our undocumented immigrants from Cuba, but because there is a huge republican voting group of Cubans in Florida. While DeathSantis keeps pretending to be a tough man by threatening to “flatten” the Bahamas, which is a place that has never threatened or been a threat to the US, yet he ignores that Cuba once did have Soviet bases they were going to put missiles in, and now has a Chinese spy base designed to hear US military traffic. But that is what happens when you are pretending to be a tough guy instead of being one. Oh, and did I mention you have to pass the ideological screening to be a member, which means you have to be a republican maga white supremacist Christian nationalist bigot who hates the LGBTQIA and wants kids indoctrinated with Christian hate. Oh did I mention that DeathSantis insisted that they be given arrest powers so they can arrest / detain, and remove people including those the governor thinks shouldn’t be voting. Hugs. Scottie
A select group of volunteers expected to help Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis intercept migrants at sea gathered at a Panhandle combat training facility this fall for lessons on how to use rifles and pistols, treat “massive hemorrhages” and practice “aerial gunnery.”
A $1.2 million purchase order signed in August makes clear the DeSantis administration felt it had an “immediate and emergent need for specially trained personnel” to intercept migrants traveling by boat.
A draft plan of instruction shows the vendor, Stronghold SOF Solutions, offered to recruit, vet and train volunteers at its facility in Defuniak Springs. The contract was executed without a competitive process, made possible after DeSantis declared a state emergency in January related to illegal immigration.
Read the full article. Earlier this year some members of DeSantis’s private army quit during training, saying they didn’t sign up to be part of what they feel is a militia.
You can’t charge someone with breaking a law until they have broken it. It’s more likely than not, the FBI has underground observers in the ranks. The FBI is unlikely to announce who and what they investigating.
“States have the power to create defense forces separate from the national guard, though not all of them use it. If Florida moves ahead with DeSantis’ plan to reestablish the civilian force, it would become the 23rd active state guard in the country, DeSantis’ office said in a press release, joining California, Texas and New York. These guards are little-known auxiliary forces with origins dating back to the advent of state militias in the 18th century. While states and the Department of Defense share control of the National Guard, state guards are solely in the power of a governor.
The Florida State Guard was created in 1941 during World War II as a temporary force to fill the void left behind when the Florida National Guard was deployed to assist in the US combat efforts. It was disbanded after the war ended, but the authority for a governor to establish a state defense force remained.”
The stupidity here is that it’s the migrant farm workers who are picking Florida’s oranges and winter vegetables. Go right ahead and shoot yourself in the foot … morons!
Oh they’re going to do away with child labor laws and send the little brats out to do that work. Kids don’t need education–they might get woke and start thinking for themselves and grow up to vote democrat. (sic) And what the hell? 6 year olds with machetes. What could go wrong?
Friendly reminder that the isolationists trying to cut off aid to Ukraine today were the ones trying to cut off aid to Britain before we were forced to enter World War Two.
The New York Times ran this headline recently:
Polish parliament’s Speaker to take action against MP who targeted Jewish holiday celebration
Szymon Hołownia, the Speaker of the Sejm [Parliament], told reporters that a complaint will be filed with the prosecutor’s office against Grzegorz Braun, a member of the far-right Konfederacja party, Gazeta Wyborcza reports.
Braun used a fire extinguisher to put out a Hanukkah menorah in the parliament.
On the eve of the German occupation of Poland in 1939, 3.3 million Jews lived there. At the end of the war, approximately 380,000 Polish Jews remained alive, the rest having been murdered, mostly in the ghettos and the six death camps: Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Is the point we are at now, the anti-LGBTQIA haters can’t get the books they hate out of schools or public libraries, so they call the police and lie that porn is being shown to kids? These groups did a sneak attack and got into positions to act on their racism and their bigotry. But now people understand who they really are and the public is fighting back. The majority doesn’t believe what the haters do, just as the majority of the public doesn’t agree with the maga republicans and what they are claiming and want to do. Just as the maga republicans keep claiming that they speak for the country, they represent what the people want, which is clearly not true, it is the same with the haters. They also claim to represent the people, the public, the parents, everyone! Yet their ideas and what they want are very unpopular, so clearly they don’t speak for the majority, do they? This is like calling in bomb threats to stop drag shows. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t give you the right to deny it to everyone else. Hugs. Scottie
The ACLU is concerned about a police officer’s having searched a classroom at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School for the coming of age novel, “Gender Queer” after receiving a complaint. The incident has prompted outrage in the school community.
AP FILE PHOTO
GREAT BARRINGTON — The plainclothed police officer who entered an eighth grade classroom to search for a book wore a body camera and recorded the incident, leading to more legal questions and concerns.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other free speech advocates say they are alarmed by the recording, as well as the entire Dec. 8 incident that took place after classes let out at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School.
They also say they cannot recall any instances of police going to a school to search for a book. Schools and libraries have internal procedures for book challenges.
“That’s partly what is so concerning,” said Ruth A. Bourquin, senior and managing attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts. “Police going into schools and searching for books is the sort of thing you hear about in communist China and Russia. What are we doing?”
The Berkshire Hills Regional School Committee and Superintendent Peter Dillion have, in a statement sent to the school community Tuesday, apologized for how it handled the situation, stating “clearly and unequivocally” that it does not support book banning, and committed to making all of its students feel safe.
“The recent incident at the middle school has challenged and impacted our community,” according to the statement. “Faced with an unprecedented police investigation of what should be a purely educational issue, we tried our best to serve the interests of students, families, teachers, and staff. In hindsight, we would have approached that moment differently. We are sorry. We can do better to refine and support our existing policies. We are committed to supporting all our students, particularly vulnerable populations.”
The ACLU has requested that body camera footage and other records related to the complaint and the investigation, Bourquin said.
It was an anonymous complaint that led Great Barrington Police to open a probe about whether parts of the book, “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe, could be considered obscene material or pornographic.
Police then notified the Berkshire District Attorney’s Office as per the department’s policy.
They also notified school and district administrators they were coming to the classroom, and the officer was escorted there by the school principal. The teacher, who kept the book in her resource library, was surprised to see the officer. The officer announced he was turning on his body camera and then looked for the book and did not find it.
The DA ordered the investigation closed. The matter of whether the book is appropriate now rests with the schools.
In its letter, the BHRSD School Committee said the incident “has challenged and impacted our community.”
“Faced with an unprecedented police investigation of what should be a purely educational issue, we tried our best to serve the interests of students, families, teachers and staff. In hindsight, we would have approached that moment differently. We are sorry,” the letter said.
The committee said it would work to collect feedback on how it can do better, starting by hosting a community meeting on Jan. 11.
“It is the obligation of the district to use its policies, existing or amended, to select curriculum. In this case, the content was not the issue. The process challenging it was. We want to ensure that students and staff feel safe and supported and that families’ voices are heard.”
“Gender Queer” is a coming-of-age memoir about reckoning with confusion about gender and contains sexually explicit illustrations and language.
It is this that many in LGBTQIA+ community say they believe is the reason for the censorship — not so-called “obscenity” concerns.
In Massachusetts the testfor obscenity is if the material is of interest sexually, depicts or describes sexual conduct “in a way that is patently offensive to an average citizen of this county,” and “has no serious value of a literary, artistic, political or scientific kind,” according to the state.
It was a complaint about so-called obscene materials in the classroom that police say led them there — something they said they had a duty to investigate.
But the ACLU’s Bourquin disagrees.
“We’re very troubled by this notion,” she said. “They say anytime someone could call they have an obligation to go marching into places wearing a body cam, and you know, interrogating people,” Bourquin said.
State laws, she said, are “pretty clear about police not having roles in this situation.”
Both the state and federal constitutions also protect the rights of students to receive information, she added, noting the ACLU and GLAD — Legal Advocates & Defenders for the LGBTQ Community — sent an open letter in January to school superintendents statewide given the rise in attempts to ban school library books.
The letter, also sent to the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, noted that legally such bans “may constitute unlawful discrimination.”
The letter says the courts “have recognized that the fact that some parents do not want their children to read certain books cannot justify depriving other students of their rights of access.”
The ACLU’s letter serves as a legal guide for schools and students’ rights to have access to information that is “free of censorship,” and says the ACLU stands “ready as a resource in this fight.”
The librarian at Du Bois middle school, Jennifer Guerin, made another point about that access. She said that it is “critically important for concerned community members to remember that the current situation is not about forcing a book into students’ hands.”
“It’s about the freedom to read,” Guerin said. “It’s about providing voluntary access to a well-written, highly acclaimed resource in a safe place for a teenager who might want or need it.”
A complaint that led police to search a middle school classroom for the book, “Gender Queer,” sparked a demonstration by Monument Mountain Regional High School students on Friday. The ACLU and other free speech advocates are worried both about the police involvement and about book banning in general.
HEATHER BELLOW — THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE
Using obscenity as an excuse to censor books with literary value is a heavy legal lift, said Bourquin. Obscenity laws have been “carefully crafted to ensure not tromping on constitutional free speech rights.”
If a book has value and isn’t meant to sexually arouse it will be hard for it to fail the legal test for obscenity, she said.
That test is “very specific,” and not something the average person or police officer necessarily would know, said Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition.
“It’s not a very easy test,” Silverman said. “And just because you have a community member pointing to something and saying, ‘That’s obscene,’ well, that doesn’t mean that it is obscene under the First Amendment.”
Like Bourquin, Silverman is stunned by the police involvement and thinks it wise to set a precedent for the future given the uptick in school book challenges.
“While it might be rare now, it doesn’t mean that it will be rare in the future,” Silverman said of police involvement in school literature. “I think the school and the police department have to come forth with a policy to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
The American Civil Liberties Union says it has “deep concerns” after a police officer in plain clothes entered a classroom, turned on his body camera, and searched for a book someone reported was sexually explicit. https://t.co/Sn0hAqyuer
Someone called the police to report that a Massachusetts classroom was harboring obscene material: Gender Queer.
The book does not meet the legal definition of obscenity: "Many see it as an important story helping build empathy," said the superintendent. https://t.co/IzbIZ1k7RQ
Listen to the student. He makes it clear that the attempts by people like Bridget Ziegler and other haters to make only one man / one woman cis straight sex acceptable, the students still are tolerant of other ways to express sexual enjoyment. What the students are not OK with is the hate and hypocrisy. He calls her out for teaching hate towards same sex relationships and the LGBTQIA while engaging in lesbian sex and FFM sexual relations with her husband, again while demanding it is wrong to have sex out of marriage. Hugs. Scottie
As the Sarasota County School Board convened for the final time this year on Tuesday, Bridget Ziegler entered the board chambers facing a rift largely driven by agenda item No. 1: a colleague’s resolution calling for her resignation.
Zander Moricz, who was the class president at Pine View School in Osprey and now attends Harvard, said Bridget Ziegler deserved to lose her job, but not because of her private sex life.
“That defeats the lesson we’ve been trying to teach you, which is that a politician’s job is to serve their community, not to police personal lives,” Moricz said. “So, to be extra clear Bridget, you deserve to be fired from your job because you are terrible at your job.”
Read the full article. The clip below has gone wildly viral with millions of views on TikTok, where I came across it a dozen times last night. Watch every second.
“You don’t believe in public schools — you send your kids to private… you deserve to be fired not because of a threesome, but because you are terrible at it.” pic.twitter.com/uehU7IIGp7
I would agree with that IF she agreed that other people’s private business is their own private business. But she vilified people for doing exactly what she was doing in her own bedroom. She’s bisexual but mistreated others for identifying as lgbt. She thought this was okay for others, so it’s good enough for her.
As J is pointing out, it’s not her sex life that’s the issue here – it’s her hypocrisy. Her bisexual, polyamorous sex life is evidence of the hypocrisy – that’s its only importance to anyone but herself.
That’s it. Her fellow conservatives would kick her off the school board on the irrelevant issue of her sexual “immorality.” He realizes it is her hypocritical judgmental sanctimony that is the real problem, not the issue of her private sex life.
The bottom line is this: Ziegler’s refusal to resign her School Board seat is more than just a morality play. If Ziegler steps down or is removed, three out of the five School Board seats, not just two, will be on the ballot in August 2024.
That’s right: What’s truly at stake here is that we could vote on a majority of the School Board’s seats on Aug. 20, 2024. And that would give us a chance to have a School Board with leaders who are more interested in students, teachers and academic achievement than posturing for a national audience in the culture wars.
“That defeats the lesson we’ve been trying to teach you, which is that a politician’s job is to serve their community, not to police personal lives,” Moricz said. “So, to be extra clear Bridget, you deserve to be fired from your job because you are terrible at your job.”
I had to look up the kid’s sweatshirt and it turns out that “you give me the ick” is teen slang for being grossed out by someone, often for undefinable reasons.
I think it can be both at the same time. Sort of like one of our cats. She will watch the dogs play with a toy she wants. When they are outside, she’ll bat it with all her might to move it under something like a grandfather clock from under which the dogs can’t retrieve it. She can’t, either, but the satisfaction she feels is tremendous. I try to stay on her good side.
That’s part of it. It’s also racism. Private schools were rare in the US until local districts were losing the last of their desegregation lawsuits in the late 60s and early 70s. (Yes, I know Brown was 1954. It was up into the 1970s for many districts to finally comply!) And then homeschooling also for the same reason. They can say whatever they want and some of it is religious and political but a lot of it is not wanting their kids to get to know black and brown kids growing up.
Context: This isn’t the first time Zander made a headline.
The class president at a Florida high school says he wasn’t allowed to share his experience as a gay student in his graduation speech or how the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law will affect students like him, so he got creative.
Let’s be very clear on what this “anti-white” discrimination is about, it is racism against any non-white people. Yes the entire thing is about how unfair and bad white people in the US have it, even though they control almost everything. Miller and his ilk do not want brown / black / those type people to be included in corporations in the US, plus they want them out of the government. The whole point of the anti-diversity movement is they see any job filled by a black / brown person as a job taken from a white person. To hell with the idea that the best qualified should get the job, to them the best qualified is always a white person. It is outright racism packaged in something they can sell to the public. It is why red states known for historic racism are suddenly claiming that diversity programs are wrong and evil. The reason that such programs are desperately needed is that white people control almost every position of authority and power in the US. Non-white people, people with non-white sounding names are often ruled out or judged more harshly for jobs in companies than white people. That is a simple fact. Often the racism is so outright an applicant with a not white sounding name doesn’t even get an interview. This movement is simply a refresh of the KKK and the White Council and other organizations that want only white people in good jobs that might pay more while being easier, and black people in hard labor low income jobs. Hugs. Scottie
A prominent MAGA legal nonprofit run by a top Donald Trump aide has credited itself for gathering “some of the nation’s best legal, political, and strategic thinkers” to fight “anti-white bigotry” in the courts, spending a staggering $35.2 million to initiate dozens of culture-war lawsuits against the Biden administration, universities, and corporations last year.
But tax filings show that the group, “America First Legal,” isn’t exactly spending all that money on lawsuits. In fact, the lawsuits account for a very small percentage of the $35 million budget. That’s because America First Legal blew nearly all of that money, about $30 million—more than 85 percent of the budget—on advertising.
Read the full article. As you’ll see at the link and as you’ve probably already guessed, most of those advertising millions reportedly went to firms linked to Trump cultists. Among the companies targeted by Miller for “wokeness” are Macy’s, Target, Anheuser-Busch, Starbucks, McDonald’s, and even NASCAR.
NEW: Stephen Miller's America First Legal nonprofit, MAGA's "answer to the ACLU," spent almost all its money on ads — $30 million of its $35 million in expenses last year went to "advertising and promotion." Me @thedailybeasthttps://t.co/VVQjR96Y28
With a heaping helping side dish of hate that they love to serve up! Honestly, Miller would probably do it for free, given his history, like screaming about how he shouldn’t have to pick up his own trash back when he was in high school since that’s what others are for…
ALL of this money comes from the very rich people and corporations who believe they don’t have the money to pay taxes. But the poor and middle class(what’s left of it) have to pony up more taxes as well as having their life lines cut to nothing.
We need to go back to those tax rates on the rich where many Americans actually prospered and push more progressive ideas for all the people, not a select few.
The orange dump just took advantage of a system that was corrupted by the Supreme Court years ago. By declaring money as speech, this opened the floodgates of legal, dark and illegal foreign money being poured into our election system.
America First Legal is a 501(c)(3), which means donors can take a tax deduction for their donations. That’s 28% or more back in their pockets. Then they are funnelling that money back to their donor class and insiders in terms of advertising spending (they can claim it as “public education” or “awareness building” — the same things a lot of more legitimate charities do, in sending out information along with their money begs and thus counting the mailing costs as spending on their mission).
The guy is proud of himself. After all, only his religion should be acknowledged in the US. After all, religious freedom is only for Christians. If the country is to be a democracy for everyone, then Christians must understand that they don’t get to rule over others. They don’t have the right to make rules that allow only their way of life and force others to live as they do. What do you think these same assholes would do if a Muslim or a person from another faith destroyed one of their Christian displays? Plus remember that this guy destroyed private property. That is a crime. Hugs. Scottie
The Satanic Temple of Iowa says a statue in its Iowa capitol display was destroyed “beyond repair.” The display made headlines this week when an Eastern Iowa state lawmaker called for the governor to remove it, calling the display “blasphemous.”
Governor Kim Reynolds issued a statement saying, “In a free society, the best response to objectionable speech is more speech.”
The Satanic Temple said in a Facebook post, “We are proud to continue our holiday display for the next few days that we have been allotted. We ask that for safety, visitors travel together and use the 7 Tenets as a reminder for empathy, in the knowledge that justice is being pursued the correct way, through legal means.”
Michael Cassidy, a Christian and former military officer, tore down and beheaded a Satanist altar erected in the Iowa Capitol as the display provoked nationwide controversy, The Sentinel has exclusively learned. Cassidy said in comments exclusively provided to The Sentinel that he destroyed the shrine on Thursday in order to “awaken Christians to the anti-Christian acts promoted by our government.”
Cassidy turned himself into police officers present in the Iowa Capitol, who confirmed that the Satanic Temple of Iowa desires to press charges. The Sentinel obtained a complaint and affidavit which said Cassidy was charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief. “I saw this blasphemous statue and was outraged,” Cassidy continued. “My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted.”
Cassidy ran for the US House in Mississippi last year, finishing 35 points behind incumbent GOP Rep. Michael Guest in the primary. Earlier this year he lost a bid for the Mississippi House.
BREAKING: Satanic altar at Iowa State Capitol BEHEADED by Christian veteranhttps://t.co/nH93Mrs8tB
As long as ‘Satanism’ is considered a religion, then they have just as much right to showcase their ‘God/Prophet, as we Christians do. I realize this won’t be a popular opinion, we you have the freedom of NOT looking at it. It goes both ways.
Unfortunately, the right thing to do is not always the popular thing. I respect them very much for doing the right thing, anyway. They did it with women in the church, too. Surprise! The world did not come to an end.
Unless he was in Iowa for other reasons, this cultist drove 13 hours from Mississippi to Des Moines to earn social media cred from Christian nationalists.
That’s the problem with monotheism, the god has to run everything and even deities can get worn out. It’s why pantheons are better, the work gets delegated and important aspects get more focus.
Imagine if a Muslim beheaded a statue of the Virgin Mary and said it was against his religion. I don’t think many Christians would applaud that. But they’re cool with beheading a satanic statue.
Read the full article. Missouri is one of 27 states with the death penalty and has carried out around two dozen executions in the last decade. State Rep. Mike Moon recently appeared here for saying that 12-year-olds should be able to marry with parental permission. In February 2023, Moon introduced a K-12 “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Moon first appeared here in 2017 when he slaughtered a chicken on Facebook Live because abortion is bad.
“Missouri Republican lawmakers are pushing a pair of bills that would allow for women to be charged with murder for getting an abortion in the state.” https://t.co/7u6JuH9ssW
Republicans just keep doubling down on this issue that clearly is not what the public wants and then claim voter fraud when elections don’t go their way.
My mother had a potentially fatal miscarriage around late 1965. Abortion was a crime in California at the time, but she was able to get a medical exemption and had the termination. Had she not, she likely would have died; if she survived, she certainly would not have been able to have more children. Because of the termination, she went on to have me and three younger siblings. Four children alive because of that one necessary abortion.
Republicans would rather have seen my mom dead and the rest of us never born.
Just last year I was prepared to drive my sister-in-law out of state to have a fetus that had been dead for two weeks removed from her uterus. The Republicans here are morally bankrupt.
Same thing with my mom when I was 16, right around 1970. There was no way she would have lived if she had carried that fetus to term. I would have ended up taking care of it…
Yes. See the great writer Ursula K. LeGuin on how the abortion she had at age 20 or so resulted in her having three loved and happy children and a brilliant career, rather than one miserable unloved fatherless child and absolutely no career (at that time, lovely Radcliffe would have expelled her had she had a BAY-BEE.).
I was once told a story by my mother, concerning a relative who had a level of developmental disability. Back in the 40’s she was taken advantage of, impregnated, and the father skipped town. Her parents found a back alley abortionist. Things did not go well, and he ended up dying horribly from sepsis. That has stuck in my mind all these years.
And where do they get those rights they would give to fetuses? They rip them away from the women of Missouri. Time to take to the streets, ladies of Missouri. Dismantle the state capitol building, brick by brick.
To anti-choice pro-forced-birth people, fetuses are infinitely more important than the people who carry them. They’re also more important than children.
Don’t stop there. Charge men with murder if they masturbate and “spill their seed.” Those little sperms are basically pre-born babies. So masturbation is akin to killing babies. (Their logic, not mine.)
Its why its called seed. Back in the old times they hadnt discovered women have eggs that need to be fertilized. The womb was just a patch of dirt waiting for its seed.
“We’ve got ‘In God We Trust’ on our money. It’s a Christian country. Most people are Christian. It’s just a Christian country. There’s no other way to put it.Elagabalusa day ago
Before the “illegals” arrived in 1620 from across the seas, the native population was decidedly NOT Christian. So there.
and the Pilgrims of the Plymouth colony were different than the Puritan founders of the Mass Bay Colony who were different than the Roger Williams who was kicked out, and formed Rhode Island, let alone the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Catholics in Maryland, and the Anglicans of Virginia.
(and of course, assorted early Jewish synagogues.)
Didn’t some states even ban Catholics? Even the idea of what is “Christianity” is up for debate. Catholics, Protestants, Othodox and even Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses disagree on what a “Christian” is.
And the fact that the 1607 Virginia colony was founded earlier and solely as a commercial venture.
And yes, those Puritans & Separatists who set themselves up in Massachusetts Bay & Plymouth didn’t set up “our country.” They set up a religious dictatorship that executed and exiled other sects, like Quakers and Baptists. And, oh yeah, witches too.
This is what happens when the Internet effectively lowers the barriers of entry to zero and anyone with a microphone can potentially draw millions of listeners – and millions of dollars. Networks of decades past wouldn’t have given this kind of bullshit air and it would have been limited to fringe pamphlets handed out at Bircher rallies.
That’s exactly it. The very democratization of information that was supposed to be the liberating part about the internet has instead opened the floodgates to fascist propaganda and disinformation. Any smooth talker with some inexpensive equipment and decent production sense can become an instant thought leader despite having no discernible expertise or talent.
It’s worth noting that it was the rapid spread of new communication technology that enabled the last rise of fascism too.
The Volksempfänger (“people’s receiver”) was a range of low-cost German radio receivers developed by engineer Otto Griessing at the request of Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda of the Nazi regime. Its purpose was to make radio reception technology affordable to the general public. Goebbels realized the great propaganda potential of this relatively new medium and thus considered widespread availability of receivers highly important.
1936 Nazi propaganda poster, promoting the use of the Volksempfänger. The text can be translated as, “All of Germany hears the Führer with the People’s Receiver.”
Word Salad for breakfast. Half that lot stayed behind, and the passenger list had to be made up from scraping the streets of London in order to make the trip profitable on that old scow.
The colony was very much a mix of “Saints” and “Strangers”. My ancestor Edward Bumpus, who arrived on the ship Fortune in 1621, was very much of the latter category, and notable as America’s first welfare deadbeat. His origins are uncertain, and one theory is that he was one of the “lusty young men” of the Southwark docks.
As long as we’re sharing lusty progenitors, Ahem: John Howland arrived as the indentured servent to the Carvers, a childless couple who then very conveniently died the very next Sping. Of course, this broke the indenture, and he somehow inherited the entire lot. He then proceeded to marry Elizabeth Tilley, another Mayflower passenger, producing ten children, each of whom married in turn, spewing another 8-10 apiece. By the third generation, then, we’re dealing with some 75+ people. John also brought over his brothers Henry and Arthur, each of whom appeared nearly as busy between the sheets. The real kicker on the last two is that they turned Quaker by mid-century, and promptly got booted to Dartmouth Township, a tract purchased from the Natives, and extending from Fairhaven to the RI border. The Joke was on the Plymouth Colony when New Bedford became fabulously wealthy from whaling, including Howland descendant Henrietta Howland Greene!
No, you idiot. It was “founded,” after a fashion, in 1607, when English settlers built Jamestown, in what is now Virginia. Religion had nothing much to do with that one; they were looking to make a profit. They didn’t, but the settlement held, unlike the earlier effort at Roanoke, in what is now NC. The pilgrims were latecomers in 1620; slavery had already arrived in Virginia, in 1619.
Our Founding Fathers made sure that the country they were creating was NOT Christian. They rejected an established church, did not mention Christianity in any of our founding documents, and made their intentions clear in both letters and treaties. Some individuals, certainly, were ardent Christians, like William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. Others, like Thomas Jefferson, rejected the divinity of Jesus. He removed the supernatural happenings and miracles from the Bible, creating a work he called “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.” Most of the Founding Fathers were Deists, not Christian. We are, thanks to them, a secular nation, Mr. Knowles–welcoming all faiths and none–and we need to stay that way.
We’re 40th on the list of longevity by nation. All of the top 39 have more socialistic style of healthcare. That’s cuz all of those other countries care for their poor citizens more than we do. The poor are figured in those stats whether you want it or not.
And who was it who is the namesake of the christian religion, and who walked among the poor and implored his followers to care for the poor? Well that would be their christ.
The 60 attempts to kill the Affordable Care Act prove conclusively to me that those Care Killers are as far away from the teachings of their “moral” leader as the Andromeda galaxy is away from our own galaxy. And those “Care Killers” are working hard to make the lives of the poor among us, even more difficult. You can hardly get farther away from a so-called Christian view than that.
Amazing how many people here are certain that only they know the “real” definition of christian. As we all know (those of us who read history, anyway) christians have frequently slaughtered other christians over their differences, and all christians claim to follow the “one true christianity” – but they have over 20,000 different sects, so that is laughable. And they all get extremely upset if outsiders look at the whole herd of them and say “yup, you’re all christians”.
As I previously reported, the ADF first filed its lawsuit in May 2021 and lost in US district court in September 2021 before losing again before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in September 2022. According to Brian Tingley’s resume, he’s led seminars on “authentic manhood” and “true masculinity.” Before that, he wrote and produced commercials for car dealerships, bingo halls, and county fairs. As I’ve reported many times over the years, ex-gay torture therapists often end up rejecting their work and coming out as gay themselves. And sometimes, they are arrested for sexually assaulting their clients.
Then there are the ones that are busted trolling online for gay sex, such as the nationally prominent therapist caught cruising Manhunt in 2018 as HotNHairy72. The Alliance Defending Freedom, whose lead attorney was once House Speaker Mike Johnson, has advocated for criminalizing homosexuality in the United States and has provided free legal support to foreign groups seeking the same in their own countries.
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Christian therapist’s free speech challenge to a Washington state ban on so-called conversion therapy aimed at changing a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.https://t.co/ZiLMCeHH0G
Given that Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh all voted to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of Washington's ban on so-called "conversion therapy," we know that no other justice wanted to take up this case. Gorsuch's vote is somewhat surprising. https://t.co/EWShUNArYI
My sexuality is not a “debate.” It’s a fact of life, just as a straight person’s sexuality is a fact of life. Just because these religious whack jobs are too stupid to understand that should not be my problem.
No one is stopping him from saying his beliefs. What they are doing is preventing him from imposing them on others through the guise of medical treatment and accepting money for it. You can also believe massage cures cancer but you can not put out a medical shingle and take money for curing cancer through massage.
Or you can believe blood letting cures depression but you can not charge for this as a medical treatment. We have medical standards based on science.
The more right wingers are silenced, the louder they get all over social media and right wing tv and radio. They are the only silenced people who are deafeningly loud.
Brian Tingley, a licensed marriage and family counselor, said the law violates his free speech rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment because the government is seeking to dictate what he says.
No, the gov’t is still letting you “say” anything you want. They are regulating how you conduct your business so that you don’t harm your patients.
What the government is saying they are not going to pay for the mumbo jumbo via Medicaid or approve it for reimbursement by insurance companies. It is not banned, you just have to pay for the religious practice yourself.
Exactly right. The courts have long recognized that commercial speech is more subject to regulation than other kinds of speech. Tingley et al. are trying to argue that it is religious speech in a commercial context. Um, sorry, no.
Puny god…
Scottie's Playtime 