Marchers cheer during the Come Out With Pride Parade in downtown Orlando on Saturday, October 15, 2022. Thousands lined the streets for the yearly event supporting inclusion. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel) User Upload Caption:
Any comprehensive history of Pride Month starts with savagery and defiance — commemorating the first time the nation’s gay community openly mutinied against routine oppression and casual violence. The Stonewall Riots radiated from one small bar in Greenwich Village, which was, in the late 1960s, seen as one of the few tiny havens for LGBTQ+ Americans to live their lives with some degree of openness.
Even inside those confines, any kind of openly non-heterosexual behavior could put life and liberty at risk. That’s why gay-friendly establishments, including the Stonewall Inn, were owned or controlled by organized crime-syndicates. Yes, there was a time in American history when the Mafia did a better job of protecting individual rights than any governmental agency did.
Instead, governments across the nation served as oppressors, raiding gay-and-lesbian clubs or posing as potential sexual partners as a form of entrapment. For the most part, Florida was no different. But slowly, small bastions of liberty began to emerge. And they included Central Florida, where ex-military people were transitioning into the space program.
Pride’s beachhead in Florida
Orlando’s first gay nightclub, The Palace Club, opened the same year as the riots. When Disney’s Magic Kingdom opened its gates, the City Beautiful took on added allure as a safer — though still not safe — space for non-heterosexual Americans to love and live their lives. As documented by the LGBTQ History Museum of Central Florida, a group of entrepreneurs known as the Gay and Lesbian Gang quickly established a series of nightclubs that included the iconic Parliament House. Within a decade of the Stonewall riots, Orlando saw its first Pride Picnic at Turkey Lake Park.
It still took decades to unwind Florida’s layers of hateful, oppressive laws. Every step felt hard-won: Stonewall-era law enshrined total bans on any expression of alternate sexuality. Some of those laws were not invalidated until the early 2000s, when a rapid tumble of landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings battered sexual-identity and orientation laws until they crumbled. And the ugliness never fully went away. Within the past few decades, Florida has seen cruel debates on whether LGBTQ people could adopt children, or marry.
The hearts and minds of Floridians, however, shifted much more quickly. By the turn of the century, most Sunshine State residents expressed support for civil unions and adoption rights. People flew rainbow flags and showed up for Pride demonstrations without fear.
Every step seemed to move things a little closer to a day when sexual orientation and non-gender-conformity were simply accepted as defining traits. When fear and hate were reviled and forced into the shadows, where love was welcome in the full light of day.
Florida saw the reflections of the fear and anger of the Greenwich Village riots shift to cheerful acceptance of sexuality in The Villages —- saw it as a change for the better. The surge of love and alliance after the massacre at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub helped heal hearts ripped apart by an openly acknowledged act of terrorism.
But as this Pride Month draws to a close, we must ask: How is it, in 2023, that we are sliding backward?
Back, to a day when providing gender-affirming care — or simply being transgender — could mean losing access to healthcare or even at risk of arrest and prosecution?
Back, to a time when Florida teachers are warned not to talk about sexuality with their students and innocent books that merely acknowledge the differences among families are outlawed?
Back, to a place where official government sources refer to gay people as “groomers” and suggest their mere existence puts children at risk of predatory behavior? Where the governor seems to obsessed by the mere existence of drag queens, and not in a healthy way?
This is nothing to be proud of.
So as Pride Month draws to a close, Floridians must make it clear: They are ready for this new fight to begin. They are ready to rebuke those who would force shame on people who yearned so long for the right to live in safety and with dignity.
They are ready to stand up for the right to love and be loved without fear once again — and be proud to do so.
A public business that serves only some of the public, but refuses to serve all the public, sound familiar? Did we not have this same fight in the 1960s? Is gay the new black? Just who gets to sit at the lunch counter? Look, just replace the words same sex with Black or Jews and does it seem correct now. We don’t serve blacks, we don’t serve Jews, I won’t make a cake or a website for blacks or Jews. Imagine the outcry if a Christian was refused service due to someone not wanting to serve, make a cake, or build a website for Christians. I am so tired of being second class. Being gay and paying taxes without the rights that the upper class straight people have. Dogs that love gravy I am so tired. Hugs
Representing the plaintiff—303 Creative, a small business run by a Colorado woman named Lorie Smith—is Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a group whose founder dubbed it a “Christian legal army,” with a long history of opposing civil rights protections for LGBTQ people. But unlike the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, which at least involved real customers wanting a real cake, there is no wedding website. No person has hired Smith to create a wedding website. In fact, Smith has never designed a wedding website.
As such, there is no client Smith has told she is rejecting due to her stated religious beliefs that marriage is only allowed between one man and one woman. In the absence of all that, ADF has, instead, fashioned Smith as the victim of an injury that has never occurred. The group has a $76 million annual budget and thousands of attorneys in its network. The goal with 303 Creative, as it was with Masterpiece, is to redefine civil rights protections for LGBTQ people as a form of religious discrimination against Christians.
Yesterday it was reported that an ADF claim that Smith [photo above] was contacted by gay man seeking a same-sex wedding website is false and that the man in question is straight, was married to a woman at the time, and says that he made no such request.
Later yesterday, however, it was reported that the claim does not appear in the filings before the Supreme Court.
As I’ve said here many times, the ADF invents these businesses with the specific intention of challenging local pro-LGBT ordinances. My first 2016 report on the 303 Creative case is here. And below is today’s ruling.
The Supreme Court decides in favor of Alliance Defending Freedom and guts civil rights laws in the 303 Creative LLC case.
The 6-3 opinion, with the typical breakdown of Republican appointed ultra-conservatives in the majority, is here:https://t.co/QPB7jmydVF
Let's be clear: nothing happened to the plaintiff in 303 Creative, the whole "case" was a hypothetical exercise, and the GOP Justices used it as a vehicle to undermine every single federal, state, county, and city anti-discrimination law in the country. https://t.co/LTgg9LRBwY
The thing that sucks most about the 303 Creative decision is that Smith's case is entirely a fiction. The entire question is based on a business she doesn't have being asked to do something they weren't.
It never should have seen a state court, much less SCOTUS
— Chris supports workers over management (@cokes311) June 30, 2023
Facts and beliefs/opinions sadly carry the same weight in this country. Their religion says sexuality can change. You just have to pray the gay away hard enough.
Legal eagles, I have a question: Would a decision necessarily have to be vacated if the facts of the case are found to be a fabrication? Can there be a ruling in favor of an injured party if there is no injury? Can a decision be made in favor of a party that has based their claim of injury upon that falsehood? Can a party that claims an injury based on a falsehood be guilty of perjury? Can the party that was claimed to have created the injury in the first place have standing to sue?
I would never call myself a “legal eagle” but no, that the court recited made up facts and circumstances makes zero difference. The literal only thing that matters is the holding and the vote. The last religion case Gorsuch wrote, Bremerton, was on completely fictitious facts and the dissent even posted a picture showing that.
Sotomayor did point out the standing issue here – to wit, the plaintiff alleged a facial challenge on a potential future harm. That’s a bit speculative for these things and against the trend of requiring ‘as applied’ challenges to laws – i.e harm in fact.
No theofascist business will be blocked, now, from discriminating against our community. If and when the theofascists are challenged in court, the lower courts will be bound by today’s Supreme Court ruling.
At what point? When the Court upholds religious laws that punish infidelity – at that point the Senators who are cheating on their wives will rise up to counteract the Court’s rulings.
Only some religions, of course. Not pro-Buddhist, or Jewish, or Sikh, or Islam, or anything Native America, or Wiccan, or Taoist, or Hindu, or…well, long list.
To expose the christofascism of this Supreme Court, we need, for example, a case involving a non-Christian baker who won’t do a wedding cake for a Christian couple because Christianity offends the baker’s religious beliefs.
“Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.” – Sotomayor
I feel sorry for Sotomayor. She knows on the deepest of levels how legally and morally wrong all these decisions are, yet she is powerless to stop them.
Media coverage of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s all-but-announced candidacy for president is already in full frenzy, and so far the script is exactly as his handlers would like it to be. The governor regularly opens up new fronts in the culture wars, sowing alarm over critical race theory, transgender rights, or border policies. In response, liberal pundits fall into the trap of accentuating the very issues DeSantis has chosen to fire up his base.
Omitted from the public debate about DeSantis’s policies is almost any discussion of his actual record of governance—what exactly he has delivered to the citizens of his state, especially those without seven-figure incomes and lush investment portfolios.
Even a cursory dip into the statistics of social and economic well-being reveals that Florida falls short in almost any measure that matters to the lives of its citizens. More than four years into the DeSantis governorship, Florida continues to languish toward the bottom of state rankings assessing the quality of health care, school funding, long-term elder care, and other areas key to a successful society.
Florida may be the place where “woke goes to die”—as DeSantis is fond of saying—but it is also where teachers’ salaries are among the lowest in the nation, unemployment benefits are stingier than in any other state, and wage theft flourishes with little interference from the DeSantis administration. In 2021, DeSantis campaigned against a successful ballot initiative to raise the state’s minimum wage, which had been stuck at $8.65 an hour. Under DeSantis’s watch, the Sunshine State has not exactly been a workers’ paradise.
DeSantis weaponizes the cultural wars to distract attention from the core missions of his governorship, which is to starve programs geared toward bettering the lives of ordinary citizens so he can maintain low taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Florida is the ideal haven for privileged Americans who don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes. It has no income tax for individuals, and its corporate tax rate of 5.5% is among the lowest in the nation. An investigation by the Orlando Sentinel in late 2019 revealed the startling fact that 99% of Florida’s companies paid no corporate income tax, abetted by tax-avoidance schemes and state officials who gave a low priority to enforcing tax laws.
This is a pattern that shows up in the statistics of many Republican-led states, which on average commit fewer dollars per-capita to health care, public education, and other crucial services compared to their blue counterparts, while making sure corporations and wealthy individuals are prioritized for tax relief. Arizona cut taxes every year between 1990 and 2019, following up with a shift to a flat tax this year that will cost its budget $1.9 billion. Meanwhile, its public-school spending ranks 48 among the 50 states.
In Florida, the state’s tax revenues come largely through sales and excise taxes, which fall hardest on the poor and middle class. A 2018 study by the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that Florida had the third least-equitable tax system of the 50 states. In the state’s “upside-down” tax structure, the poorest 20% of Florida families paid 12.7% of their income in taxes, while the families whose income was in the top 4% paid 4.5%, and the top 1% paid 2.3%, according to the study.
Florida taxpayers get less for their money than residents of many other states. The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that studies health-care systems globally, found in its 2022 “scorecard” that Florida had the 16th worst health care among the 50 states. It’s no wonder that Florida ranks below the northern blue states in life expectancy and rates of cancer death, diabetes, fatal overdoses, teen birth rates, and infant mortality.
Largely because of DeSantis’s obstinacy, Florida is one of 10 states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, an act of political spite that has cost those states billions in federal health care dollars and cost thousands of people their lives. More than 12% of Floridians are without medical insurance, a worse record than all but four other states. Despite having the country’s highest percentage of retirees, Florida has the worst long-term care among the 50 states, according to the American Association of Retired Persons.
Public schools fare no better than health care in DeSantis’s Florida. Not only did Florida rank 49th in the country for average teacher pay in 2020, but the Education Law Center, a non-profit advocacy group based in New Jersey, found in a 2021 report that the state had the seventh-lowest per-pupil funding in the country. Education Week, which ranks states public school annually, looking beyond mere test scores, placed Florida 23rd in its 2021 report, a lackluster showing for a large and wealthy state.
It says something about the state of our political discourse that Florida’s denuded public sector was not more of an issue in last year’s gubernatorial campaign. In endorsing DeSantis’s Democratic opponent, Charlie Crist, the Tampa Bay Times spent so many column inches on the incumbent’s demagoguery, vindictiveness, and authoritarian tendencies that it never even got to the minutiae of his governance. “No matter what you think about the state of the Florida economy or its schools or its future…,” the paper wrote, “the choice really is this simple: Do you want the state governed by a decent man or a bully?”
To be fair to the media, DeSantis and his allies manned the trenches of the culture wars so ferociously that it was all reporters could do to keep up with all the bomb throwing. How do you delve into the state’s tax policy when your governor is flying planeloads of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard or declaring war on Disney for issuing a statement in opposition to the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay Law”?
But that is very much the point of wedge issues, as they have been wielded by scurrilous politicians for decades, to anger and distract voters so they won’t notice the actions of public officials that mainly benefit the wealthy and are against the public interest.
As the 2024 election draws closer, DeSantis must not be allowed to accomplish nationally what he did in his state—cloak his service to the wealthy by frightening working people with stories about transgender recruiting and “socialist” college professors. There are unmistakable signs that Americans are focused on what an activist government can do for the public good, as evidenced by Floridians’ vote to increase the minimum wage.
The failure of DeSantis to better serve the most vulnerable citizens of his state is his weak underbelly in a national campaign.
From the linked article in the above Joe.My.God. post. Remember, this is a Yale history grad, claiming that is OK to honor Confederate Generals that fought the US government to keep slavery because “But at the end of the day, you know, we had people that have done great things for this country,” DeSantis said.”
Despite the limited scope of the DoD’s renaming, the Governor likened taking Bragg’s name off the fort to moves to “take Abraham Lincoln off the statue down in Boston … take Teddy Roosevelt down in New York City” and “remove George Washington’s name from schools in San Francisco.”
“And that’s not, I think, what I want to see. I mean, I think you can look back at anybody and you could find flaws. But at the end of the day, you know, we had people that have done great things for this country,” DeSantis said.
“I’m not in a position to say that somehow I’m so much better than any of this. It’s a different time. People make mistakes. There’s different parts of our society, we look back and can say was a mistake. But this idea that we’re going to erase history, I just think, is fundamentally wrong, and we’re not going to do that.”
'I think you can look back at anybody and you could find flaws.'@RonDeSantis doubles down on restoration of 'iconic' Fort Bragg name
While we’re at it, let’s also create Fort Hirohito. Why not, he was the leader of a foreign nation that attacked the United States. Let’s run with this theme Governor Fucknutz.
“And here’s the thing, you know, you learn from history, you don’t erase the history” and yet history that makes students uncomfortable can’t be taught in schools…right
Trump’s an elderly sociopathic narcissist, he’s spent decades refining his charisma and reflexes to lie instantly, without hesitation and with complete believability.
Ronnie isn’t, even if he’s a sociopath himself, he’s just hungry for power and clout and tries constantly to copy Trump to try and steal his thunder and his followers. But he can never be as good a liar.
Wow, he first says the name of the military base did not cause him to learn any history at all, then claims keeping the name is vital to learning the history he was totally ignorant about until they removed the name of the incompetent traitorous slaver, demonstrating he is lying through his teeth. He must have experts help him prove himself a liar like that, I don’t think he’s clever enough to figure it out himself.
I guess he means we learn only from white history, not the black history he is censoring in the schools. That’s erasing history, asshole!! This guy is such a lying fucking hypocrite.
Watters wanted and got the Tucker spot at fox. To get it he has to appeal to the most right wing demographics sought after by media, and to win them he has to be full open racist and the most ardent supporter of the right wing conspiracies along with pushing the idea of Christian nationalism. Hugs
Jesse Watters on Monday went after Barack Obama for criticizing the disparity in media attention on the submersible that imploded during its venture to the Titanic wreck when compared to the sinking of a fishing boat that was carrying up to 750 refugees. https://t.co/kAYwlmOh0L
Watters, new host of Tucker’s 8pm slot, says of Obama: “This is a guy whose father has roots in Africa…Spent a lot of time in Hawaii. Was that the last state to get a star on the flag? He's never really looking at things from an American perspective.” pic.twitter.com/cXZ6xKD1JE
If man sees a kid playing in the street, then notice a car driving down the street, and he shrugs and says ‘free will’ and the car hits the kid, is that man a good person or a bad person?
Yet somehow Christians want to tell you that God is good, even though he allows bad things to happen. (And he could have just stopped it all by making Adam and Eve barren, or ending the world 4000 years ago.)
Ending one segment that knocks Pete Buttigieg for "prioritizing a far-left green agenda" only to tee up another segment about the "brutal temperatures" and "dangerous heat" in Texas. pic.twitter.com/ZRFYPKBbcP
Two workers died amid extremely high temperatures in Texas, a tragedy that's likely to exacerbate criticism of Gov. Abbott's water break ban. https://t.co/11ZeBlijYd
“We are flying electric helicopters on Mars, but we can’t use the dryer in Texas. This is because scientists are in charge of Mars and Republicans are in charge of Texas” ~Amy Martin #ERCOT#Texasgrid#VoteThemAllOut2022pic.twitter.com/uIW3c3cyHr
TWO MEN leaving a public restroom . Man#1 approaches Man#2 and says: “Excuse me sir but I noticed you didn’t wash your hands after using the urinal. I’m from Texas and in Texas we’re taught you should always wash your hands after using the restroom.” Man#2 replies: “Well I’m from California and in California we’re taught you should’nt pee all over yourself.”
I wish non-Dem Texans would learn to blame the GQP they vote in for the shitty state of their infrastructure but if the Ted Cruz fleeing for Cancun didn’t teach them shit . . .
This is really a non-issue because if the power goes out and people die, nobody can sue the power company because the Republican Texas Supreme Court just held that Republican-controlled ERCOT is immune from lawsuits. No liability = No Problem.
Strang previously appeared here when he declared that people who oppose Trump are possessed by demons and that voting against Trump is a vote for the “apocalypse.” Also, holograms and Trump’s impeachments? Both the work of Satan. We last heard from him when he appeared in a “documentary” with Dr. Demon Semen.
What’s happening lines up with God’s Word regarding what would happen in the end times before Jesus returns.
But that’s what you want, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you be happy? I mean, your imaginary friend is going to show everyone he’s not imaginary after all. That’s a good thing, right?
There was a book, “The Late Great Planet Earth” that was popular among the end times folks. “The last days are nigh!” Published in 1970. 53 years ago. And even in the late 1800s, preachers were saying the end times were near.
They literally pray “Lord come quickly!” But then complain about all the “signs of the end times” as if that’s a bad thing. They should be working -toward- the ‘one world government” and a global currency and world peace and “the mark of the beast” because that’s what will bring the rapture. (Your eschatology may vary).
This is basically the attempt by white supremacists to prevent the natural decline of white majority / supremacy in the US. They are terrified over the demographics that shows the steady decline of the white majority and the increase in non-white people. It terrifies them because they fear being treated as they have treated POC all during the history of the US. They want to remain the unchallenged authority they have always been. This denies everything we understand about culture and human development, not to mention what the US has always stood for. We are better / stronger / improved the more we blend and add to our prior society. Hey if you treat others that are different from you decently, they will do the same to you. If you act like an asshole toward them, they might do the same back. The thing to understand is be a decent nice person to others. Remember race is a social construct. We are all humans. We may look different but we really are the same species. Do dogs or cats of different colors be racist against each other, and should they, as they are all dogs or cats. Hugs
LMAO this clown went to Harvard Law school and should know the Constitution a little better, particularly the 14th Amendment. But you needn't take my word for it. Birthright citizenship was defined and affirmed by the SCOTUS in 1898, in US v. Wong Kim Ark:https://t.co/OAYLAAteLy
— Deborah, who loves fashion & loathes fascists (@litbrit) June 26, 2023
Yes… and look which demographic he’s coddling. They’ll fall totally in line with him. Evangelicals always find the worst in humanity to align themselves with
I don’t do 1930s/40s comparisons lightly or often, but DeSantis could certainly be someone to take us down a similar road, just a 2020s version of it. He’s already taking actions in that vein — shipping human beings like cargo, book bannings, etc. I’m not suggesting it could be a literal Holocaust, but he will seriously and intentionally harm a lot of Americans (and more so, people wanting to become Americans) before he would be done. A lot of people would die.
Also, I’m not not saying he wouldn’t cause a literal Holocaust, either.
We will never stop fighting bigots like Ron DeSantis – they must be told repeatedly that LGBTQ Americans deserve ALL the rights due to them under our Constitution.#Pride2023https://t.co/oT6gpM9nPQ
— Democratic Coalition (@TheDemCoalition) June 30, 2023
JackFknTwista day ago edited O/T : – At the risk of having only one tune, I don’t think it can be said often enough that in their doctrinaire zealotry the conservative Justices of the Supreme Court have betrayed their underlying hypocrisy. In their preening self-importance all they have exposed is their lack on any integrity, their enthusiasm to lie at any opportunity and their shallow semblance of probity. What we have on the US Supreme Court is a few liars, charlatans and those willing to prostitute themselves at the alter of the Federalist Society on the one hand and to rich ‘grooming’ billionaires on the other. Was there ever a Supreme Court so compromised?
Yes, 1937 or so. Towards the end of the “gilded age”, the SCOTUS was as virulently anti-decency as Alito and Thomas are now. FDR, then president, make a threat to “pack” (unfvck) the court and the court suddenly changed its tune on what the law was. Then the plan to fix the court fell apart.
There’s some suggestion that a similar thing may have happened between last term and this one with regard to KNAW, Roberts and Raspberry Baret. They have not gone along with the same degree of YOLO-ALITO that marked last year / the Dobbs Term.
They can’t win on real issues that matter to people so we’ll have lots of noise on wedge issues over the next year. Brown people invading, drag queen groomers and Susie has to call her teacher they/them at school.
DeSantis keeps trying to resurrect the infamous Jones commission – which attemped to erase homosexuality from all colleges and other schools throughout the state some 50 years ago, along with the actions of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who tried it nationally. The only result was the ruining of the reputations and hopes of over 200 students and faculty in Florida. This is evil in its strongest form.
Most of this is Florida law, so US SCOTUS is largely irrelevant unless there is a conflict with Federal Law. The Florida SCOTUS is packed with bigots, in a large sense the fate of Florida rests in the hands of the appellate courts.
That’s gonna be the kicker. We already know the FLSC is packed with bigots. The appellate courts are either going to side with a dictator or with the republic that placed them in their robes.
I feel like this is part of the whole make shit up and get it to the current Supreme Court so they can declare god and church and money or whatever. Like the website bitch in Colorado and the made up gay client.
Win or lose, Tater will screech about how he’s “fighting for families* and against woke culture & a woke & woke judges.” Others will be smart enough to point out his losses or how vaguely worded his laws are, but at the end of the day, DePudding will declare himself “the great fighter for American values*”
* values & families don’t include individuals, friends or family of the LGBTQ, nonChristians, nor nonWhite racial groups. Additional exclusions not listed or implied are applicable by the tiny dictator
Ron DeSantis is the worst candidate I’ve ever seen. It’s like he’s been assembled from the discarded spare parts of Bobby Jindal, Bill deBlasio, Rick Perry, and Scott Walker. https://t.co/5f6UILNVPI
DeFascist can indeed get the country on a different path – Here’s what Ron DeFascist has accomplished – – LGBT students cannot discuss their personal lives with teachers or counselors, making them feel marginalized, alone, and possibly increasing their risks of suicide. Some parents with LGBT family members are moving out of the state. State ACLU currently suing to end this. – Universities are unsure what they can or cannot teach based on the whims of literally one man. GOP prefer students to be inculcated with cheap cheerleading America First nationalism (this shut down by a judge, results pending) – History teachers can’t teach about the truth of American racism and black history because it might upset white people – Some teachers are seeking employment in another state. – A school principal had to resign because one of her teachers showed students a picture of Michelangelo’s David. – A teacher is under investigation because she showed 13 year olds a Disney movie with a gay character. – Women who discover they’re pregnant after 6 weeks, and are unable to have a child, can’t get an abortion in Florida, even though there should be retroactive abortion, Don Jr. lives there – Property taxes and insurance costs are becoming unaffdable – Million dollar contracts are given to DeFascist’s donors – 87,141 people died of Covid in Florida. Less would have died had there been the slightest of protective measures taken, but DeFascist didn’t allow that. – Hispanic farm and construction workers are not going to work out of fear of DeFascist’s draconian rules to punish undocumented workers and their bosses. Hispanic truckers are refusing to deliver to the state. Farm products are rotting while remaining unpicked. – Students and companies who support diversity and inclusion are no longer allowed to do so. – Trans children can no longer get medical care, use bathroom of pronouns of their choice (this shut down by a judge, results pending) – a court could temporarily remove children from their homes if they receive gender-affirming care – LGBT people who seek medical care can be denied it if they’re unlucky enough to have a religious fanatic doctor. – Drag queens can be arrested for appearing in drag in public where children can see them. (this shut down by a judge, results pending) – Any idiot can buy a gun without a permit, training, or with or without a criminal record. – Disney, the state’s largest employer, is suing DeFascist because of politically motivated harassment after he started a fight with them because they don’t approve of his anti-LGBT laws. Disney cancelled a $1 billion construction project that would have brought the state over 2,000 jobs. – More to come. White retirees probably love him because he’s getting rid of the blacks, gays, immigrants and other assorted annoyances. DeSantis calls Florida “the freest state in America.” Actually you’re free to move here, retire and die.
A “standing order” that Trump has claimed authorized him to declassify documents removed from the Oval Office could not be found by either the Justice Department or Office of Director of National Intelligence https://t.co/wPbnrUTi8s
The Supreme Court has issued an interim order recognizing marriage rights for same-sex and non-traditional heterosexual couples! This landmark decision calls for amendments to the Civil Code — [1/2] pic.twitter.com/hlW7MRvqHB
Fantastic news! The world is evolving, but sadly the GQP and TFG will do everything in their power to stop equality in this country from becoming pernanent and legal. I’m sure TFG is probalby labelling Nepal as one of those shit hole countries he doesn’t like.
Apparently, our evangelical and assorted radical Christian groups, who hate us with the love of God, didn’t know where Nepal is or didn’t know such a country existed. I’ll bet they’re boning up on their geography now.
The San Diego Union-Tribunereports: Two protesters offended by a Pride exhibit at the Rancho Peñasquitos Library have checked out nearly all the books in the display and vowed to keep them until the library eliminates what they call “inappropriate content” for children. The anti-gay protest is the latest example of a growing national backlash against Pride exhibits, which experts say has been fueled by debates over how schools should handle transgender minors. The Rancho Peñasquitos protest ratchets up the usual backlash San Diego library branches experience when they create Pride exhibits or host events like drag queen story times, said head librarian Misty Jones. The protesters, Peñasquitos residents Amy Vance and Martha Martin, said libraries are open, public spaces for children that should be free of references to gender identity and how adults experience sexual attraction. Read the full article. A local city council member is raising money to buy additional copies of the books.
Protestors ruin Rancho Penasquitos library's Pride exhibit by checking out nearly all the books https://t.co/q5erkSeWAZ
I’m starting to think this is a matter for the police. They checked them out and stated that they have no intention of returning them unless the library does exactly what they want. Last I checked, that’s called theft.
They get 5 renewals, unless the items have holds on them. So I urge anyone and everyone in San Diego who is disgusted by their motives to place holds. MANY HOLDS. That way they will be required to return the items or be turned in to a collections agency. That will also likely block their library privileges to borrow any other materials. If it goes beyond that, it is indeed theft.
I had a home in a small town for nearly 30 years. It had a small library, maybe twice the size of the one in my high school. The “Christians” would come in and check out ALL the non-Christian religious books and never return them. It was their way of making sure people couldn’t learn about other religions. And this was before Trump and the MAGA folks. If your religion of “Christianity” is SO GREAT, it should be able to prove itself against the others by its merits and ideals, not by making the beliefs of others unobtainable.
Damn these people. A book offered me permission not to hate myself for being who I am.
*** Editor note *** It was books that gave me my escape from my life. It was books that let me leave the life of abuse, hurt, and fear I was living constantly at home, in my home. It was books that let me understand I was not a horrible abomination in life that was going to do horrible things and die in a gutter as my adoptive parents (the ones beating and sexually abusing me and letting their kids do so) claimed long before they even knew I was gay, that I did not need to suffer in silence, (Which I did for most of my life). These books that these people are trying to ban and deny to the very kids that need them meant so much to me and other kids. Please do not let them. Look in the 1950s these people want to revert the social and country to there were no of these kinds of books, no positiverepresentatives in media, but gay, lesbian, and trans kids still existed. I am going to post a video about a old long time soap opera about gay people and the damage hate can do. Hugs.
When you say “wife,” “husband,” “fiancé,” “girlfriend,” etc.–all commonly heard from heterosexuals–you are inserting sexuality in public spaces where children are or may be.
Mere gender identification on a bathroom door is the actual issue here. These delusional evangelicals are literally incapable of connecting the dots on gender/sexual expression issues.
I’m currently reading a book about the John Birch Society and everything they are doing now is the same shit the Birchers were doing in the 50s and 60s. Only back then MSM and even the GOP leadership weren’t on their side.
They don’t care about corporations either. They only want Republicans to hold the power over everything – people, corporations, city councils, school boards, etc.
Republicans sure don’t like people voting, do they? They’ll overturn elections, make it harder for statewide resolutions to pass, throw out elected officials they don’t like, and now this. Democrats might wish to mention this on the campaign trail.
Kinda like how Texas has created special rules that only apply to specific counties that vote mostly Democratic that take away aspects of self-governance from them.
In public facilities, including prisons and schools, a new requirement will go into place requiring designated bathrooms for men and women, and individuals will be required to utilize facilities based on their gender as assigned at birth. It has no exceptions even for those who have fully transitioned through gender-reassignment surgery.
The Board of Education has already effectively expanded through high school a prohibition of instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity. A new law (SB 1069) codifies that at least through 8th grade. The legislation also prohibits any requirement that school officials use preferred pronouns that don’t match gender assigned at birth.
Health care providers can now turn patients away and refuse treatment based on “conscience-based objections.” DeSantis signed the new law (SB 1580) in front of a “Prescribe Freedom” sign and said it empowers physicians to act within their own morals. LGBTQ advocates label it a right to discriminate bill against gay and transgender Floridians, and the latter group has already seen restrictions on health care put into place this year by statute and the Board of Medicine.
Also going into effect today is the right to carry a concealed weapon without any permit or training, the right of hospitals to refuse care to undocumented patients, and a law allowing the state to use radioactive fertilizer byproducts in the creation of roads. That last one came about due to lobbying by the phosphate industry, which in 2021 saw a leakage of their toxic byproducts into Tampa Bay.
Florida governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis signed a bill Thursday that would allow for roads across Florida to be made with “radioactive” mining waste that has been linked to cancer.
The measure, brought forward by the state House, adds phosphogypsum to a list of “recyclable materials” that state officials say can be used in road construction.
The list already included ground rubber from car tires, ash residue from coal combustion byproducts, recycled mixed-plastic, glass and construction steel, which officials had previously determined are “part of the solid waste stream and that contribute to problems of declining space in landfills.”
An aerial view of the partially drained New Gypsum Stack South wastewater reservoir at Piney Point in Palmetto, Florida, on May 4, 2021. The reservoir held about 480 million gallons of water in March and was in danger of collapsing and flooding the area. THOMAS O’NEILL/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
But unlike most of those products, phosphogypsum is not a material that is aggregated in landfills. It’s the remains left behind from mining phosphate, which is described by the EPA as being a “radioactive material” because it contains “small amounts” of uranium and radium.
Phosphate rock is mined to create fertilizer, but the leftover material, known as phosphogypsum, had decaying remains of those elements that eventually produce radon. That substance is known as a “potentially cancer-causing, radioactive gas,” a spokesperson for the EPA previously told CBS News. And because of that risk, phosphogypsum is federally required to be stored in gypstack systems – not landfills – in an attempt to prevent it from coming in contact with people and the environment.
“The Clean Air Act regulations require that phosphogypsum be managed in engineered stacks to limit public exposure from emissions of radon and other radionuclides in the material,” an EPA spokesperson previously told CBS News.
Before it can be used, the state’s Department of Transportation will need to conduct a study to “evaluate the suitability” of its use, the bill says, and “may consider any prior or ongoing studies of phosphogypsum’s road suitability in the fulfillment of this duty.” That task must be completed by April 1, 2024.
DeSantis has not yet publicly commented on the signing of this bill, and CBS News has reached out for a statement.
Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director and attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that the bill is a “reckless handout to the fertilizer industry.”
“Gov. DeSantis is paving the way to a toxic legacy generations of Floridians will have to grapple with,” Bennett said. “This opens the door for dangerous radioactive waste to be dumped in roadways across the state, under the guise of a so-called feasibility study that won’t address serious health and safety concerns.”
What makes phosphogypsum so risky?
Radon, the gas emitted from phosphogypsum, trails just smoking to rank as the second-leading cause of lung cancer, and is linked to about 21,000 lung cancer deaths every year in the U.S., according to the EPA. The agency also says it’s the “single greatest environmental source of radiation exposure.”
Because of this threat, the EPA has banned the use of phosphogypsum in projects for decades. However, a spokesperson for the agency previously told CBS News that it is permitted for agricultural and indoor research, with restrictions, and it can be approved for specific uses if the project “is at least as protective of human health as placement in a stack.”
In a statement to CBS News on Friday, the EPA said that the passing of the legislation, HB 1191, “does not affect EPA’s regulation of phosphogypsum,” noting the legislation specifies that the phosphogypsum be used “in accordance with the conditions” of the agency.
“Any request for a specific use of phosphogypsum in roads will need to be submitted to EPA,” the spokesperson said, “as EPA’s approval is legally required before the material can be used in road construction.”
If it is approved, the EPA previously told CBS News it would “open a public comment period, make any applications and our technical analysis of those applications publicly available, and seek input on the proposed decision.”
Florida’s history of phosphogypsum problems
Phosphate mining has been an ongoing source of contention within Florida for decades. This issue has most recently been seen in the controversy surrounding Piney Point, a former phosphate mining facility in the Gulf Coast’s Manatee County — that after several years of problems — had a nearly “catastrophic” breach in 2021 that resulted in 215 million gallons of water with environmentally toxic levels of nutrients ending up in Tampa Bay within just 10 days.
TOXIC LEAK: Residents near Piney Point retention pond in Manatee County, Florida were evacuated on Saturday as officials fear an "imminent" collapse of a local wastewater reservoir contaminated with material that could be radioactive. https://t.co/phrXuNUqdgpic.twitter.com/dQ9RCkYYBA
It was found to be a contributor to a red tide event and massive fish kill in the area in the following months. It lead to a lawsuit from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, and prompted Florida lawmakers to budget $3 million to clean up the site.
Ragan Whitlock, a staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, told CBS News when the bill was introduced that “history has shown wherever this waste goes, environmental contamination has followed.”
The state has 25 gypstacks, several of which have had leaks, sinkholes and other issues arise throughout their lifespans. In May, more than 20 organizations, including the Center for Biological Diversity, urged DeSantis to veto the bill.
“No environmentally conscious or ‘green’ governor worth his salt would ever sign a bill into law approving roadbuilding with radioactive materials,” Rachael Curran, an attorney with People for Protecting Peace River, said in the letter urging the governor’s decision.
And even with the promise of the state’s Department of Transportation looking at conducting a study or considering one that has already been done, Whitlock told CBS News he has “very little confidence” in the state’s “ability to manage this project.”
“The feasibility study that the Florida Department of Transportation would create is only aimed at addressing whether this would be a suitable construction material,” he said. “The Florida Department of Transportation is not in the position to make a finding about the health and safety of this product to Floridians and our environment.”
For more information on the damage to the Florida environment and the harm to residents, read the following. Sure will help get tourist dollars, won’t it. Hugs.
More than 300 hundred homes and multiple businesses in the area around Piney Point have been evacuated.
A state of emergency has been declared by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for Manatee, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.
State and local officials are coordinating efforts.
Herald-Tribune journalists are covering the situation in Piney Point and possible impacts to the area, like we have for over 20 years. Local journalism like this is supported by our readers. If you’re a subscriber we thank you. And if you’d like to subscribe, please see our current offers here.
***
Last week, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection approved the pumping of wastewater into the Tampa Bay ecosystem from a retention pond at Piney Point – a former phosphate plant in Manatee County. A leak in the liner of the reservoir has caused a partial breach in one of the containment walls and officials hope that pumping more than 30 million gallons of wastewater out of the reservoir will relieve pressure on the walls and reduce the chance of an uncontrolled major breach.
More than 300 hundred homes and multiple businesses in the area around Piney Point have been evacuated. State and local officials are coordinating efforts and a state of emergency has been declared by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for Manatee, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.
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The shoreline along Tampa Bay, just north of Port Manatee and Piney Point. Millions of gallons of wastewater are being pumped into Tampa Bay at Port Manatee in an effort to avoid a catastrophic failure of a containment wall at Piney Point.
MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
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This still image from video shows the breach in the containment wall of the Piney Point reservoir. United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.
MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
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Wastewater from Piney Point is flowing into Tampa Bay at this berth at Port Manatee. United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.
MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
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United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.
MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
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Wastewater being pumped from the Piney Point reservoir flows into Tampa Bay at Port Manatee, via this water-filled ditch in the center of this image. United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.
MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
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Wastewater from Piney Point is flowing into Tampa Bay at this berth at Port Manatee. United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.
MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
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Wastewater being pumped from the Piney Point reservoir flows into this ditch and into Tampa Bay. United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.
MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
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Wastewater being pumped from the Piney Point reservoir flows into this ditch and into Tampa Bay. United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.
MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
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The wastewater containment ponds at the old Piney Point fertilizer plant property in Manatee County. A breach in a containment pond wall led to more than 200 million gallons of polluted water being dumped into Tampa Bay. Florida lawmakers have included $100 million in the 2021-2022 budget for the Piney Point cleanup effort, among other budget earmarks targeted at projects in Sarasota or Manatee counties.
MIKE LANG/HERALD-TRIBUNE FILE
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Congressman Vern Buchanan got an aerial tour of the Piney Point reservoir breach, pumping outflow and Tampa Bay on Monday, Apr. 5th
MIKE LANG
What is the situation at Piney Point on Tuesday?
The strategy of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and other agencies working on Piney Point is to reduce the amount water so that there is less pressure on the damaged reservoir retaining walls, in order to prevent a catastrophic breach that could send a massive wall of water into the surrounding area.
After pumping more than 30 million gallons of wastewater each day from Piney Point into Tampa Bay, the amount of water in the Piney Point retention pond has dropped to under 300 million gallons, down from approximately 480 million gallons last week at this time.
The addition of new federal and state resources should increase the rate at which water can be pumped out of Piney Point.
Is there a second breach in the Piney Point retention pond?
While the leaking wastewater containment pond wall at the old Piney Point fertilizer plant site continues to be a critical situation, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection said Monday that concerns about a possible second breach in the wall have proven to be unfounded.
Manatee County officials said that a drone equipped with thermal imaging equipment identified a possible second breach in the wall at 2 a.m. Monday. An investigation later determined that the area identified was not another wall failure, according to the DEP.
“Our technical team and our engineers came in and evaluated and determined there was no second breach,” said DEP Spokeswoman Shannon Herbon.
What are the environmental impacts of pumping Piney Point wastewater into Tampa Bay?
Environmental groups say they worry that recent releases from a Piney Point wastewater treatment facility will eventually fuel an algae bloom that could impact coastal Southwest Florida.
Nutrient-rich waters from the treatment facility will offset natural balances in the coastal estuaries and will eventually end up in the Gulf of Mexico, where red tide initiates.
The region was partially crippled during a 17-month red tide bloom that started in the fall of 2017 and lasted until the spring of 2019.
What will happen to Piney Point once this crisis is over?
State lawmakers are pushing a bill to fund a complete cleanup and closure of the phosphogypsum stacks at Piney Point with American Rescue Plan funds, an effort that could cost upwards of $200 million.
On Monday evening, Senate President Wilton Simpson (R-Trilby) announced that the Senate will consider a budget amendment on Wednesday when it considers Senate Bill 2500, known as the General Appropriations Act.
What about evacuations for people living near Piney Point?
More than 300 households and numerous businesses have been evacuated and those evacuation orders are still active.
On Monday, Manatee County Public Safety reported that the county has had to help relocate more people among the more than 300 households that were covered by the mandatory evacuation around the Piney Point wastewater reservoir. 102 residents have now been provided shelter at local hotels with the assistance of Manatee County and the Red Cross.
DeFascist can indeed get the country on a different path – Here’s what Ron DeFascist has accomplished –
– LGBT students cannot discuss their personal lives with teachers or counselors, making them feel marginalized, alone, and possibly increasing their risks of suicide. Some parents with LGBT family members are moving out of the state. State ACLU currently suing to end this.
– Universities are unsure what they can or cannot teach based on the whims of literally one man. GOP prefer students to be inculcated with cheap cheerleading America First nationalism (this shut down by a judge, results pending)
– History teachers can’t teach about the truth of American racism and black history because it might upset white people
– Some teachers are seeking employment in another state.
– A school principal had to resign because one of her teachers showed students a picture of Michelangelo’s David.
– A teacher is under investigation because she showed 13 year olds a Disney movie with a gay character.
– Women who discover they’re pregnant after 6 weeks, and are unable to have a child, can’t get an abortion in Florida, even though there should be retroactive abortion, Don Jr. lives there
– Property taxes and insurance costs are becoming unaffdable
– Million dollar contracts are given to DeFascist’s donors
– 87,141 people died of Covid in Florida. Less would have died had there been the slightest of protective measures taken, but DeFascist didn’t allow that.
– Hispanic farm and construction workers are not going to work out of fear of DeFascist’s draconian rules to punish undocumented workers and their bosses. Hispanic truckers are refusing to deliver to the state. Farm products are rotting while remaining unpicked.
– Students and companies who support diversity and inclusion are no longer allowed to do so.
– Trans children can no longer get medical care, use bathroom of pronouns of their choice (this shut down by a judge, results pending)
– a court could temporarily remove children from their homes if they receive gender-affirming care
– LGBT people who seek medical care can be denied it if they’re unlucky enough to have a religious fanatic doctor.
– Drag queens can be arrested for appearing in drag in public where children can see them. (this shut down by a judge, results pending)
– Any idiot can buy a gun without a permit, training, or with or without a criminal record.
– Disney, the state’s largest employer, is suing DeFascist because of politically motivated harassment after he started a fight with them because they don’t approve of his anti-LGBT laws. Disney cancelled a $1 billion construction project that would have brought the state over 2,000 jobs.
– More to come. White retirees probably love him because he’s getting rid of the blacks, gays, immigrants and other assorted annoyances. DeSantis calls Florida “the freest state in America.” Actually you’re free to move here, retire and die.
The SCOTUS ruled for the bigots! The religiously driven seriously old haters of the newer culture ruled it is OK to discriminate against the gays, if you have a sincerely held belief. I am hurting so bad seeing the US revert to a religiously driven theocracy that denies any progress in society since the 1950s. We fought these battles, we in the US are now going so far backward from the rest of the world. Hell even Nepal just approved same-sex marriage. The fundamentalist won’t stop even as they age out and become more of a minority until they rule us all with their hateful church doctrines based on words of people who did not even understand germ theory written 2,500 years ago. I am so upset at a country that claims all people are created equal that says because I am gay I have less or no rights if someone has a belief against my existence. On a prior case one of the Justices wrote that discrimination against religion is the worst kind of discrimination. Well you can choose your religion, you can change it or stop believing in any of them. I was born gay. I don’t have a choice in that. I am gay. But someone who can choose what myths they believe in that day can deny me services or rights due to that belief. Sad hugs.
The suit centers on Lorie Smith, a website designer who does not want to provide her services for gay weddings because of her religious objections. In 2016, she says, a gay man named Stewart requested her services for help with his upcoming wedding. “We are getting married early next year and would love some design work done for our invites, place, names etc. We might also stretch to a website,” reads a message he apparently sent her through a message on her website.
In court filings, her lawyers produced a copy of the inquiry. But Stewart, who requested his last name be withheld for privacy, said in an interview with the Guardian that he never sent the message, even though it correctly lists his email address and telephone number. He has also been happily married to a woman for the last 15 years, he said. In fact, until he received a call this week from a reporter from the magazine, Stewart says had no idea he was somehow tied up in a case that had made it to the Supreme Court.
“I’m not really sure where that came from,” he told me of the mysterious 2016 inquiry that used his name, email address, and cell phone number to request a wedding website for a same-sex marriage nearly a decade after he married a woman. He is a designer himself, something of a known quantity in design circles—he’s spoken at conferences and on podcasts, and has a “decent Twitter following,” he said.
The design world is small. But not small enough, he said, that he had heard of Lorie Smith—not until her case was already before the Supreme Court, and the design community began discussing its potential fallout. It didn’t make sense to him. Why would a web designer—as the website the inquiry referenced as his own made clear that he was—living in San Francisco, seek to hire someone in another state who has never built a wedding website, let alone a website for a same-sex wedding, to build his wedding website?
Photo: Alliance Defending Freedom president Michael Farris.
Hit the New Republic link for a very in-depth accounting of this story. As I’ve said many times, the ADF invents these businesses with sole intention of challenging local LGBTQ rights ordinances. The ruling in the case is expected tomorrow morning.
Truly insane story in which @melissagira called up the man named in the court filing as someone who requested a same-sex wedding website only to find out..he says he never sent such a request and is not gay.
They will have written their opinion based on the assumption that the plaintiff’s filing was true and correct. They won’t abandon it because the filing is being challenged now. Unlike in the case involving the athletic coach proselytizing on the field on school time, where the conservative justices MADE UP “facts,” or at best completely mischaracterized them, here no one could ask if the plaintiff’s “facts” were correct. There just was not enough information to argue with them. The real argument should have been over the plaintiff’s standing to pursue a case that had no real-world consequences since she was only contemplating entering the wedding web-design business.
Well, you know how the saying goes: Love the sinner. Hate the phony-sin-I-had-to-fabricate-because-I-have-never-really-experienced-discomfort-by-being-asked-to-do-anything-and-I’m-a-big-fat-liar.
I defend their right to live their lives according to a 2,000 year old book of myths and fairy tales (even though they fail to live according to it), but I object to them legislating my civil rights according to their 2,000 year old book of myths and fairy tales.
(Written, incidentally, by misogynistic men who owned other humans, and were puzzled by where the sun went at night.)
Tomorrow is the last day of the term; the Court convenes at 10 am, and this is one of only two argued cases remaining. This case was pretextual and flouted anything I was taught about standing and before-the-fact irreparable harm. Nonetheless, it got through the appellate process without being thrown out, and here it is.
Journalism is now officially dead if a case made it all the way to the Supreme Court and will have a the ruling tomorrow and this is just now being uncovered, how much other shit has gone to SCOTUS and nobody checked.
I also blame the Defense Attorneys for not doing their due diligence
A federal court blocked Florida’s new drag show law, ruling the state’s effort to bar children from attending “adult live performances,” is overly vague and likely unconstitutional. The decision Friday by U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell comes only a day after another federal court overturned another Gov. Ron DeSantis-backed law prohibiting gender-affirming care treatment in Florida from being covered by Medicaid. “This concern rings hollow, however, when accompanied by the knowledge that Florida state law presently and independently… permits any minor to attend an R-rated film at a movie theater if accompanied by a parent or guardian,” Presnell ruled. “This statute is specifically designed to suppress the speech of drag queen performers,” Presnell wrote in his 24-page decision. “In the words of the bill’s sponsor in the House, State Representative Randy Fine: (the legislation) will protect our children by ending the gateway propaganda to this evil – ‘Drag Queen Story Time.’”
Courts are putting a stop on the anti-#LGBTQ laws pushed by @GovRonDeSantis and @TheFLGOP. This is what happens when fascist authoritarians believe they can ignore the U.S. Constitution. Thankfully, some checks and balances still exist. https://t.co/Eaf9yBzapy
“This concern rings hollow, however, when accompanied by the knowledge that Florida state law presently and independently… permits any minor to attend an R-rated film at a movie theater if accompanied by a parent or guardian,” Presnell ruled.
From the opening paragraph, US District Judge Gregory Presnell, an 80-year-old Clinton appointee, calls out the state of Florida's action for what they are: an attempt "to suppress the speech of drag queen performers." pic.twitter.com/BhxHUqZGg6
Paddycakes2001 Melissiaan hour ago From the transcript of the court hearing: THE COURT: The plaintiffs accuse you of invidious discrimination in violation of the 14th Amendment. How do you answer? STATE’S LAWYER: That’s the point, Your Honor.
mkbear684 hours ago Well, this was expected and they knew it, but it plays to the base and gets donations, but it puts real people at risk.
Moms for Liberty is an American conservative organization that advocates against school curriculums that mention LGBT rights, race, critical race theory, and discrimination, while multiple chapters have also campaigned to ban from school libraries books that address gender and sexuality issues. The group began by protesting COVID-19 protections in schools, including mask and vaccine mandates.
Moms for Liberty has been criticized for harassment, for deepening divisions among parents, for making students’ education more difficult, and for having close ties to the Republican Party rather than being a genuine grassroots effort.
The group was labeled an “anti-government extremist” organization in 2023 by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Formation January 1, 2021 Founders Tina Descovich, Tiffany Justice, Bridget Ziegler Headquarters Melbourne, Florida, U.S. Area served United States Membership 70,000
It was very obviously discrimination, and it’s obvious from the arguments they put before the court that this has nothing to do with any form of concern for anything other than brazen politics and just flat out hatred of a minority group.
Bingo. This is performative art for their target voting bloc (evangelicals) who vote solid Red in every election like clockwork. Dems don’t have the equivalent. There’s literally nothing on the Left that’s anything like the consistency of the Right when it comes to voter outreach.
Good. I hope that all these hateful and cruel laws are struck down. The slave states want to make laws that health care workers don’t have to give LGBT people medical assistance at ALL if they have “deeply held” religious beliefs against us. It’s time we are considered to be human beings, not just another theocratic political football. If you prick us, do we not bleed?
Historically, (like 2 years ago, not 20), law in the US doesn’t let you single out a group, especially a disfavored group, and pass laws against them. Nice to see some vestiges of that core idea are still here.
And note that THOMAS is the #1 cheerleader for getting rid of ‘equal protection’.
So you encourage book banning, demonize LGBTQ people and your tactics are compared to the historical actions of Nazis all while being designated as a hate group by the SPLC and then you try and refute that by quoting Hitler?! M4L keeps showing us who they are. Believe them. https://t.co/0WABae4f3A
— Jim Stewartson, Anti-disinfo activist 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙 (@jimstewartson) June 22, 2023
this Hitler quote that Moms For Liberty used is the same Hitler quote that Republican Rep. Mary Miller recited at a Moms For America event two years ago!
And yet republicans never debate about the cost, while claiming $300 for the poorest people with children a month is obscene and we can not afford it. The Pentagon fails every audit, and I just watched where they are overcharging thousands of dollars a piece for a trash can that they use to charge $300 for. Yet Manchin says we need to cut social security. Hugs
Tucker Carlson's former head writer has resurfaced as Charlie Kirk’s radio producer; he had resigned after @oliverdarcy reported that he had posted racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and other awful content on an online forum. https://t.co/K9GLB0wjlSpic.twitter.com/tqAJsBkzs4
Brooklyn Albert18 hours ago I see the handiwork of the likes of Scott Lively and his ilk, spreading the gospel of hate and their twisted comprehension of history to African, Caribbean, and Latin American countries.
Authoritarian advocates, whatever their form, need some “other” to be dehumanized and oppressed. When everybody more or less has the same race and culture in a country, they then cast about for some other way of differentiating for the purposes of fomenting hate. Sometimes it’s by religion, sometimes by ethnicity, but if those are relatively homogeneous, they’ll go for LGBTQ status or political identity.
For example, in America in the 1950s, they did both of those latter, along with racist bigotry: People perceived to be not-straight and those who were accused of being socialist or communist. All three were targeted for systematic oppression.
It stuns me that these leaders are so focused on sexuality and making gay people pay for their sexuality with severe punishments and even death. Why is this even on their minds? Is being gay causing some sort of great turmoil in their countries? Are they trying to undermine their governments? Are they just living their lives like everyone else? So much angst over gay people. He contradicts his own statements in just one paragraph. “Gay Africans don’t exist.” – “kick LGBT people out of Kenya completely,” Well, which is it? Who gets kicked out if they don’t exist in the first place? Screwy like the radical Christians that foment this hatred.
Some of them genuinely seem to think that the existence of LGBTQ people threatens the continued existence of the human race, because not enough people are breeding.
Kenya has 53 million people in an area the size of Texas. Underpopulation is not a serious issue there.
JoeMyGodMod3 days ago You may recall Eric Metaxas for the time he sucker-punched a passing kid on a bicycle on his way into the White House for a Trump event and then lied about it even after video surfaced. It’s what Jesus would want.
Read the full article. Andersen, who lost a lawsuit to get on the ballot, has not so far been accused of wrongdoing. As you can see in his campaign clip below, he ran on a promise to end pandemic mandates.
Earlier this week Kennedy claimed that chemicals in drinking water are turning children transgender and that WiFi radiation causes brain cancer.
Unearthed: RFK Jr. pushed HIV/AIDS denialism, attributing AIDS not to HIV, but to a “gay lifestyle” and recreational drugs:
“There were people that were part of a gay lifestyle, they were burning the candle at both ends, …there were poppers on sale everywhere at the gay bars.” pic.twitter.com/BK2WXxjyg8
Hank: NO MORE WoW!!!4 days ago “The magnitude of the value of the Bible as a literary work outweighs any violence or profanity which may be contained in the book,” So, will they do the same for ALL books??? or just the ones, they deem fit???
“Public spaces are public spaces,” U.S. District Court Judge David Nuffer wrote. “Public spaces are not private spaces. Public spaces are not majority spaces. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution ensures that all citizens, popular or not, majority or minority, conventional or unconventional, have access to public spaces for public expression.”
In his 80-page ruling, Judge James M. Moody Jr. of Federal District Court in Little Rock said the law both discriminated against transgender people and violated constitutional rights for doctors. He also said that the state of Arkansas had failed to substantially prove a number of its claims, including that the care was experimental or carelessly prescribed to teenagers.
“Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics…the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing.” https://t.co/Y8yImyNZoq
Republicans know these hateful laws will never survive court scrutiny. The point was to drum up paranoia and grievance among voters. And with the help of the media, it was working. But there are hopeful signs that a backlash is forming.
— Matthew, June Goomba (@TeachAllAmerica) June 20, 2023
The law is extremely broad, which actually creates a host of other complications. A group of lawyers previously told The Dallas Morning News that the measure could restrict performances by artists such as Madonna and Miley Cyrus, which often feature sexual dancing. The text could even affect bachelorette parties, if they involved sex toys or other paraphernalia. The new changes could even impact cheerleading and criminalize sexual conduct between consenting 17-year-olds (17 is the age of consent in Texas). Movie screenings and art history classes could similarly come under fire. And of course, the law will affect its original target: drag performers, Pride parades, and transgender people just trying to live their lives. Lawsuits against similar bans are planned or already underway in other states. In Florida, the Orlando outpost of Hamburger Mary’s sued the DeSantis administration last month.
Rep. Lauren Boebert claims that she is forcing a House vote on impeaching President Biden because she is "directed and led" by "the spirit of God" in everything she does: "We are doing what is right, what is righteous. History will prove that." pic.twitter.com/EBoKqYEFif
In the fall of 2022, the FBI got a report that Marian Hudak had used his Dodge 1500 truck to try to run off the road two black people who were also driving. He allegedly yelled racial epithets at them. pic.twitter.com/ZZ9jIRGXbM
Hudak eventually followed them home, where a confrontation happened. Here’s hudak’s truck, which was well known in the area because it was decked out in American, Confederate, and Trump flags. pic.twitter.com/I5x3HG3lgJ
“Kentucky law prohibits the Attorney General from using or attempting to use ‘his official position to secure or create privileges, exemptions, advantages, or treatment for himself or others in derogation of the public interest at large,’” the letter, which was sent out Friday afternoon and obtained by The Daily Beast, said.
Woah. Daniel Cameron, the Kentucky Attorney General and GOP candidate for Governor, was being bankrolled by an addiction recovery company that his office was supposed to be investigating. He only recused himself after people started looking into it. https://t.co/2FlYsqgdzj
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) June 23, 2023
Yikes. 😬
Daniel Cameron tried — and failed — to force TV stations to hide the truth about him hiring the Bevin cronies who helped pardon politically-connected killers and rapists.
Walters, who was appointed state secretary of education by Christianist Gov. Kevin Stitt in 2020, faced calls to resign in 2022 after it was revealed that a Koch-funded group that advocates for privatizing public schools was paying him $120,000/year. Stitt rejected calls for Walters’ resignation and attempted to reappoint him again earlier this year, but the state Senate refused to allow him to hold the elected superintendent and appointed secretary of education posts at the same time.
Oklahoma superintendent Ryan Walters says separation of church and state is a "false narrative" and that the 1962 school prayer case was one of the Warren court's "unAmerican and hateful court decisions." In a jaw-dropping speech, he says he'll enforce a minute of daily silence. pic.twitter.com/tQvOYVCe1m
Walters is also considering ordering each school to post a copy of the 10 Commandments and to teach a "Western civilization course" as a way "to foster gratitude and informed citizenship." These recommendations came from a panel he picked to return religion to schools.
Yves R. Mektin3 days ago edited Well, Oklahoma does have the second lowest high school SAT scores in the whole country*, so maybe tots and pears will help. * West Virginia is the only state that did worse
All those states compete to see who can lead the fastest race to the bottom. Apparently, Louisiana has the lowest life expectancy in the country (Hawaii has the highest).
So he doesn’t like the 1961 decision…toots, the SC ruled on this a bunch of times. And don’t throw that ‘found fathers’ shit around, they did NOT. Under gawd my ass. ;(
Thomas Jefferson penned the wall metaphor in a letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802. He celebrated the First Amendment for “building a wall of separation between Church & State.” The Supreme Court has endorsed this view many times. First in 1878. And then again “in 1947, 1948, 1961 (three times), 1962, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1977, 1982, and again and again in countless concurrences, dissents, and lower court opinions,” according to a recent law review article. The wall metaphor nicely sums up the relationship.
I thought Article 11 of the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli did a handy job of summarizing what The Founding Fathers™ thought of Christianity in America, since it passed in the US Senate unanimously while being signed by many of the actual founders –
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Not to forget the Treaty of Tripoli – the first treaty entered into by the United States – and having constitutional power — which states that the United States has no national religion.
After Roe was overturned, the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Institute, which has filed numerous briefs before the court, paid for a trip to Rome for Alito. https://t.co/Kvun6nQidG
Per Florida Politics, the “groomers” slur was first popularized by viciously anti-LGBTQ former DeSantis administration spox Christina Pushaw, a registered foreign agent for the nation of Georgia and his current “rapid response” campaign director. Pushaw began pushing the term early last year during the start of the “Don’t Say Gay” campaign.
sfbob Jack3 days ago “Groomer.” Noun. Definition (per DeSantis): 1. A person who does something you disapprove of or who says something you disagree with. 2. A person who believes in providing factual, age-appropriate information to children on topics pertaining to sexuality, sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity.
What amazes me is, while they’re howling about grooming, they manage to completely ignore the ones actively doing it and getting busted for it weekly, the churches.
The GOP friction stems from a push by Rep Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) who publicly revived the discussion by trying to prevent funding in an energy and water development bill from being used to rename Army Corps civil works projects that are named after the Confederacy or an individual who served in the Confederate military.
“One of the things that is irritating a few of us: a certain member from Georgia is wanting to re-bring up the Confederate base names,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told POLITICO.
Bacon said he told the Georgia Republican that he would “would fight him” on trying to prevent funding from going toward renaming. (Clyde’s amendment doesn’t mention military bases.)
Bacon led that effort in the House to create the process for renaming the military assets.
He noted on Friday that he recounted to Clyde about how African-Americans have thanked him for his work on renaming the Confederate assets. In a separate statement, Bacon added that the issue was settled in 2020 and that he didn’t think it was “wise to re-litigate” it.
“Confederate generals fought for a cause that we know was wrong and violated their oaths to Constitution. Most of the 10 that bases were named for were also terrible generals. … Finally, some were affiliated with racist actions after the war. Most of these bases were named around WW1 and done to placate the Jim Crow elected leaders at the time,” he added in the statement.
Didn't know a Confederate flag presentation in the Capitol riot on January 6th, was a part of a "normal tourist visit," as Congressman Andrew Clyde claimed. pic.twitter.com/UNYqswCV0g
— Rick Ocean 🇺🇲🇳🇴 Support Ukraine, Save Europe (@RickOceanMusic) November 8, 2022
Pollos Hermanos ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈa day ago GOP: “Democrats were the party of The Confederacy.” Also GOP: “Don’t you dare take away honors to The Confederacy!”
I don’t know the “official thinking” of American historians on point, but I believe much of what we’re seeing today with respect to the Republican Party is 160 years of simmering resentment by the South regarding its loss in the 1860s Civil War now coming to the surface.
Trump “tapped” into it. “Build the wall” was metaphor for “keep the coloreds out.” His embrace of rabid racists, including neo-Nazis, is a “message received” by the Republican base.
They miss the old plantation days, the good old days. When the coloreds and the women knew their place and there was no “deviance” like drag queens and trans people.
In Germany, Nazi paraphernalia like swastika flags, et all, as well as neo-Nazi political parties are officially banned by law. (Germany doesn’t have a First Amendment).This is the reason that German Nazis fly Confederate flags. You are known by the company you keep.
RealityBass2 days ago Remember when we were expected to believe that Trump was so rich that he would use his own funds to campaign, didn’t need to raise money, therefore he was incorruptible? Good times.
What a liar. He said he would use his own money. Just like everything else about him, – a lie, a scam, a con, a fraud …..from getting someone to sit his exams to his 2016 campaign to his subversion of a democratic election.
His whole life has been devoted to scamming. He has never earned an honest buck. It’s all been about the underhand deal, the stiffing people and companies what they are owed. Now there is no way around not paying his lawyers. they won’t act for him without being paid up-front. But Giuliani can fuck off, he’s gonna be hung out to flap in the wind.
The shoreline along Tampa Bay, just north of Port Manatee and Piney Point. Millions of gallons of wastewater are being pumped into Tampa Bay at Port Manatee in an effort to avoid a catastrophic failure of a containment wall at Piney Point.MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
This still image from video shows the breach in the containment wall of the Piney Point reservoir. United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
Wastewater from Piney Point is flowing into Tampa Bay at this berth at Port Manatee. United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
Wastewater being pumped from the Piney Point reservoir flows into Tampa Bay at Port Manatee, via this water-filled ditch in the center of this image. United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
Wastewater from Piney Point is flowing into Tampa Bay at this berth at Port Manatee. United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
Wastewater being pumped from the Piney Point reservoir flows into this ditch and into Tampa Bay. United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
Wastewater being pumped from the Piney Point reservoir flows into this ditch and into Tampa Bay. United States Congressman Vern Buchanan toured Piney Point Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, getting a look at the breach in the containment wall, the pumping outflow and Port Manatee where the wastewater is being pumped into Tampa Bay.MIKE LANG, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE
The wastewater containment ponds at the old Piney Point fertilizer plant property in Manatee County. A breach in a containment pond wall led to more than 200 million gallons of polluted water being dumped into Tampa Bay. Florida lawmakers have included $100 million in the 2021-2022 budget for the Piney Point cleanup effort, among other budget earmarks targeted at projects in Sarasota or Manatee counties.MIKE LANG/HERALD-TRIBUNE FILE
Congressman Vern Buchanan got an aerial tour of the Piney Point reservoir breach, pumping outflow and Tampa Bay on Monday, Apr. 5thMIKE LANG
Scottie's Playtime 