September 27, 1962 Rachel Carson’s book indicting the pesticide industry, Silent Spring, was published. The scientist (17 years with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) and writer demonstrated the connection between the excessive and ubiquitous use of DDT and its long-term effect on plants and animals. Rachel Carson at work c. 1936 The impact of her book proved seminal to a new ecological awareness. But even 30 years later, Carson was denounced for “preservationist hysteria” and “bad science.” But she had said when the book was published: “We do not ask that all chemicals be abandoned. We ask moderation. We ask the use of other methods less harmful to our environment.“Rachel Carson, her Silent Spring and its impact
September 27, 1967 An advertisement headed “A Call To Resist Illegitimate Authority,” signed by over 320 influential people (professors, writers, ministers, and other professional people), appeared in the New Republic and the New York Review of Books, asking for funds to help youths resist the draft.
September 27, 1990 The last U.S. Pershing II tactical nuclear missiles were removed from Germany, fewer than ten years after their installation provoked a massive anti-nuclear movement across Europe.The range and accuracy of the Pershing II pushed the Soviet Union to negotiate the Treaty on Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) which completely eliminated all nuclear-armed ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (about 300 to 3400 miles) and their infrastructure. The INF Treaty was the first nuclear arms control agreement to actually reduce nuclear arms, and the signatories destroyed almost 2700 nuclear weapons (including 234 Pershing II) by May of 1991.
September 27, 1991 President George H.W. Bush announced a major unilateral withdrawal of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons: “I am . . . directing that the United States eliminate its entire worldwide inventory of ground-launched short-range, that is, theater, nuclear weapons. We will bring home and destroy all of our nuclear artillery shells and short-range ballistic missile warheads. We will, of course, insure that we preserve an effective air-delivered nuclear capability in Europe. “In turn, I have asked the Soviets . . . to destroy their entire inventory of ground-launched theater nuclear weapons . . . . “Recognizing further the major changes in the international military landscape, the United States will withdraw all tactical nuclear weapons from its surface ships, attack submarines, as well as those nuclear weapons associated with our land-based naval aircraft. This means removing all nuclear Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. ships and submarines, as well as nuclear bombs aboard aircraft carriers.”
Former Sen. Kassebaum-Baker made one brief statement about the changing Republican and political climate when she retired; that’s pretty much what she said: that it was changing. She retired, as did Bob Dole, with the first wave of Tea Partiers (though a couple of years apart.) Since then, she’s been even more discreet, mostly concentrating on land and habitat conservation. This endorsement is a Big Deal. (I’ll copy it in here so you don’t have to take your computer to the carwash to get the stupid off.)
EXCLUSIVE:Three more Republicans are crossing the aisle to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for the White House.
Former U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., former Kansas state senator and Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger and Deanell Reece Tacha, a retired federal judge, condemned the current state of the GOP in a statement shared with Fox News Digital Thursday.
“This election presents a stark choice that is not easy for any of us. The Republican Party of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bob Dole, Frank Carlson, Jan Meyers, and generations of Kansas leaders does not exist within the current Republican Party,” the former officials wrote.
“But, it requires Republicans speaking out and putting country over party when those values are at stake.”
They added that the race between Harris and former President Trump presented a “stark choice,” but not an easy one.
“No candidate is perfect, and we do not pretend that we subscribe to all the policy positions taken either by the national parties or any individual candidates,” they wrote.
“However, we fervently believe that we must do our part to try to build a brighter future, which is why we will be voting for Kamala Harris and [Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz] in this election. We believe they most closely align with the aspirations of Kansans and reflect our rich history of working together ‘to the stars through difficulty.’”
All three have backed Democrats in recent elections, however.
Kassebaum, who now goes by Nancy Kassebaum Baker, served in the U.S. Senate from December 1978 through January 1997.
She was the first woman elected to represent Kansas in the chamber, and her career included a stint as chair of the Senate Labor Committee.
Tacha was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit by former President Reagan in 1985 and served as chief judge from 2001 until 2008.
Praeger served as the Kansas Insurance commissioner from 2003 to 2015.
Harris’ campaign has made a point of courting Republicans in a bid to widen her appeal and cast Trump as an extreme and polarizing choice.
A majority of Republicans, particularly those still in elected office, do support Trump.
The vice president has scored support from several notable GOP figures, however. Former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Trump administration aides Stephanie Grisham and Olivia Troye have all publicly stated support for Harris.
Troye is one of several people who headlined a Republicans for Harris event Thursday alongside former representatives Barbara Comstock, R-Va., and Denver Riggleman, R-Va.
A new Marist College poll found Harris and Trump neck and neck in three critical states.
(Snip-skipping blah-blah race tied crap to the final graf, which is satisfying:)
The Trump campaign said of the Harris endorsement, “Nobody knows who these people are, and nobody cares.”
Over 10,000 books have been banned across the entire United States over the past school year. The trend has seen a particularly strong increase in states with a strong Republican presence, according to the free-speech nonprofit PEN America.
This is a major increase compared to the 2022-2023 year, which saw a total of 3,362 books banned across the country.
The books were accused of having “obscene” material. One of them was a children’s picture book about gay penguins.
Florida and Iowa are leading in the total number of bans, with over 8,000 recorded between the two states. This number is largely due to the increasingly strict laws on book bans.
The banned books include Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie; the famous work on anti-Black racism Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 by W.E.B. DuBois; Alex Haley’s book about the lived experience of slaves, Roots: The Saga of an American Family; and James Baldwin’s autobiography Go Tell It On the Mountain.
Iowa’s bans stem from Senate File 496, a law restricting LGBTQ+ books from grade seven and below along with total bans on books deemed to contain sexual content. Florida’s House Bill 1069, backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), resulted in a similar ban, albeit a much more strict one.
PEN America cites other laws from Utah, Tennessee, and South Carolina as contributing to these increase in banned books as well.
Individual school districts have also had a hand in banning many books. The Elkhorn Area School District in Wisconsin, for example, banned over 300 books over a several month period.
PEN America says that the types of books banned “includes books featuring romance, books about women’s sexual experiences, and books about rape or sexual abuse as well as continued attacks on books with LGBTQ+ characters or themes, or books about race or racism and featuring characters of color.”
The organization also emphasizes that these numbers are an undercount of the actual amount of banned books since many book bans go unreported. Additionally, the organization says schools have also implemented “soft” book bans, including policies that cause greater hesitancy to check out books from libraries, restrictions on who can check out restricted books out, book fair cancellations, and the removal of classroom collections.
Six major book publishers are currently suing the Floridian government after hundreds of their books were pulled from libraries, cutting severely into their profits and discriminating against their authors.
A Florida school district recently agreed to re-shelve 36 books to settle a lawsuit concerning multiple banned books, including And Tango Makes Three, an often banned children’s book about a gay penguin couple raising a chick.
Iowa’s book ban was recently brought back into law when a permanent injunction against the ban was overturned by an appeals court.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nationnewsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
September 25, 1789 The first U.S. Congress passed the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, and sent them on to the states for ratification. See the actual document and learn more
September 25, 1957 Nine African-American children, protected by 300 members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, with fixed bayonets, entered the previously all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.The troops were there to escort the children past white segregationists and the Arkansas Militia (National Guard) thatArkansas Governor Orval Faubus had activated to prevent its federal court-approved racial integration plan. After a tense standoff, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent troops to Little Rock to enforce the court order. The order to de-segregate the Little Rock schools flowed from the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. The troops remained for the entire school term.
September 25, 1961 Herbert Lee, a farmer who worked with civil rights leader Bob Moses to help register black voters, was killed by a state legislator, E. H. Hurst, in Liberty, Mississippi. Hurst claimed self-defense and was acquitted by a coroner’s jury the same day as the killing. Lewis Allen, who witnessed the shooting, said otherwise, and was himself murdered two years later. Herbert Lee
September 25, 2002 Rick DellaRatta and Jazz For Peace performed at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. He led a band consisting of Israeli, Middle Eastern, European, Asian and American jazz musicians in concert for an international audience. Jazz for Peace continues to perform concerts to raise money for non-profit organizations. Rick DellaRatta
Sep 23, 2024 Orion Rummler Originally published by The 19th
In 2020, the Supreme Court found that gay and transgender workers are protected from workplace discrimination in the landmark case Bostock v. Clayton County. Despite those federal protections, LGBTQ+ people across the country — especially transgender and nonbinary people — continue to face rampant discrimination at work and don’t feel safe being out, according to research from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.
In a 2023 study of 1,902 LGBTQ+ adults in the workforce, released in August, 17 percent said they had experienced discrimination or harassment on the job in the past year. Trans and nonbinary employees were more than twice as likely as cisgender queer employees to face discrimination and harassment: Twenty-two percent of trans and nonbinary people experienced discrimination in the past year, and 26 percent experienced harassment.
“You would hope things have gotten better,” said Brad Sears, founding executive director of the Williams Institute and coauthor of the report.
Sears believes the high rate of recent discrimination is an indication that change has been slow after Bostock, even after the Biden administration implemented additional nondiscrimination policies. Shortly after Biden was inaugurated in 2021, he issued an executive order based on Bostock that mandated the protection of gay and transgender Americans in the workplace, as well as in schools and doctor’s offices. And as of this spring, extra protections were put in place to guard against employers who consistently misgender employees or deny them access to sex-segregated spaces.
Still, the study found that many LGBTQ+ Americans are not out in the workplace to avoid facing discrimination and harassment. Nearly half of LGBTQ+ employees said that they are not open about their identity to their current supervisor, and one-fifth are not out to any of their coworkers. Staying in the closet actually did protect them: LGBTQ+ employees who were out to at least a few coworkers, or just their supervisor, were three times as likely to report discrimination as employees who were not out.
“A lot of people, even if they are out, they’re kind of downplaying their identities in the workplace,” Sears said. “Maybe they use a different voice or different mannerisms at work, or they don’t dress exactly how they would otherwise dress when they’re not at work, or they use a bathroom that they would prefer not to be using at work.”
To avoid discrimination, transgender and nonbinary people are significantly more likely to hide their identities than cisgender queer people. In a new breakout analysis of the Williams Institute’s survey, the experiences of nonbinary people are found to be especially fraught.
Nonbinary people in the study described being ostracized and subjected to violence, harassment or threatsat work due to their physical appearance either not being “feminine” enough or “masculine” enough. Their gender expression made them a target and was used as a justification for their treatment by their bosses, coworkers and customers. Frequently, nonbinary people said they were passed over for raises and promotions, called slurs, and forced to work alone.
The nonbinary people surveyed were largely young, urban, and racially and ethnically diverse. To the survey authors, such data is a call for employers to take action — especially If they want to retain young employees.
About 87 percent of nonbinary adults in the workforce are under 35 years old, compared with 71 percent of transgender adults and 51 percent of cisgender queer adults, according to the study. That research aligns with other findings from KFF that Americans under 35 are more likely to identify as nonbinary than older Americans, and research from the Pew Research Center that found adults under 30 are more likely than older adults to be out as trans or nonbinary.
About 3 in 5 nonbinary people have experienced discrimination or harassment at work at some point in their lives, like being fired, not hired, not promoted, or verbally, sexually or physically harassed.
About 1 in 5 nonbinary people reported physical harassment at work because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, with some survey respondents reporting being “assaulted,” “attacked” and “strangled.”
For some, unfair treatment looked like having their hours reduced, being isolated from other employees or customers, or being excluded from company events or socializing.
“Oftentimes, I was passed up for a promotion because I wasn’t ‘manly’ enough, and they doubted my ability to lead a team,” a Latinx nonbinary person from California said in the survey. A Latinx nonbinary participant from Colorado shared: “A co-worker strangled me at a counter and said he was trying to ‘give a girl a massage.’” In Connecticut, a Black nonbinary person said they heard their manager talking “disparagingly” about them to the rest of their bosses because of their gender expression.
One in 4 nonbinary employees said they are currently experiencing adverse treatment at their job because of their LGBTQ+ identity. For many nonbinary people, the worst experiences of discrimination and harassment that they face at work are linked to their multiple marginalized identities. In particular, they were targeted for their disability or being bisexual in addition to being nonbinary.
This research shows that company-level policies, as well as state and federal nondiscrimination regulations, need to be specific so that they protect nonbinary employees, Sears said.
The Williams Institute plans to release more breakout analyses from its survey, including reports on the experiences of transgender, Black, Latinx and Asian-American employees. Breaking down the unique experiences of each demographic is key to understanding and addressing the issues that they’re facing at work, Sears said — for example, nonbinary people face rigid and gendered expectations at work, while bisexual women face high rates of sexual harassment.
“LGBTQ+ people are not monolithic. They’re different, they have intersecting identities … and those are leading to differences that are important in the workplace,” he said.
“Well, obviously, it would take, you know, 10,000 inaccurate ballots or 20,000 ballots to turn things around,” he said. “No, we don’t have evidence of that. But who knows? If you find a little bit of cheating, who knows if you had the time and resources to look around for more. Who knows what you’d find.”
Grothman last appeared here in July when he lamented that society should return to living “like it was in the 1960s.”
He appeared here last year when he declared that low-income housing discourages people from getting married.
That same week he complained that Biden won’t nominate “straight white guys” to the federal judiciary.
He also appeared here in January 2023 when he posted a flag associated with the Christian nationalist movement outside his Capitol office.
Months earlier he gave a floor speech condemning the US Census for collecting data on LGBTQ Americans, which he found “horrifying.”
Before that he appeared here in June 2021 when he authored a bill that would ban teaching the history of racism in Washington DC public schools.
His first appearance here came in September 2011 when as a Wisconsin state senator he authored a successful bill that banned mentioning contraception in sex ed classes.
Grothman opposes recognizing Kwanzaa and Martin Luther King Jr. Day as state holidays. In 2015, he authored a bill to place a ban on same-sex marriage in the US Constitution.
This next one is because DeathSantis wants to be able to make a political hit job on this incident to score points and claim that Biden Harris refused to give tRump proper Secret Service protection. Hugs. Scottie
Read the full article. DeSantis has said that the feds can’t be trusted to properly investigate the shooting attempt since they are also prosecuting Trump for stealing classified documents.
This week, Montel Williams called out a now deleted post of an unaltered photo claiming that he was Diddy. Williams stated, “Here they go again with ‘all black people look alike.”
All four memes below were posted separately today by the multiple felon.
You need a manual to work on my 1979 International Harvester Scout.
Donald Trump and JD Vance have a manual, too. It’s called Project 2025, and it tells us exactly how they’re going to stick it to the middle class. pic.twitter.com/e5NjTY85tX
We truly have become numb to how completely crazed, unhinged and demented Trump is, but its possible this is his craziest midnight rant EVER because of the content, length and ALL CAPS lunacy.
I truly hope local news, network news, and newsy shows like GMA & Today show and read Trump’s post about American women from late last night. Stop the sanewashing. We WANT voters to see how demented, psychotic and misogynist he is. Stop hiding the crazy from your viewers!
This was a school damn it. Fuck Israel all to hell. I am done with the Israeli government and the nation. Look at the young kids trying to help, they should have been learning in that school, not picking up the pieces and looking for dead bodies of friends. But Israel doesn’t want schools in Gaza, at least not Palestinian schools. If the world has not figured out yet that this is an attempt at genocide, to kill or drive an entire people from the land so Israeli Jews can take it over. I have posted of people camped out ready to move it. There is no justification for this slaughter. Look they just managed to pull off a covert operation in Lebanon that was sneaky and also killed indiscriminately innocent by standers and killed at least two kids, but Israel doesn’t care as they are not Jewish kids or people. But the point was they did not need to drop missiles and 2000 pound bombs on the people who live there to do the job. In Gaza the people have no way to fight back, most are living in tents that Israel hits with large power bombs. Hugs. Scottie
An Israeli strike on a school in northern Gaza on Saturday killed at least 22 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, while the Israeli army said that it targeted a Hamas command center in what used to be a school. (Production by Wafaa Shurafa) Read more here: http://apne.ws/ClCkCeK
I had a very uncomfortable moment today at work. One of those confrontations at the cross-roads of life for one young man.
My painful, often unpleasant and almost always unappreciated calling is as a shop supervisor. I sit between the owner and the employee, constantly called upon to wrestle one or the other. If I do my job right, things go smoothly. And, for such a small word, “if” carries a great deal of weight.
Today, while off site purchasing needed supplies, I get a call that a very unhappy employee, who has been working part time through a workman’s comp’ claim, wanted to see me. I hustled back to work and was immediately confronted by this worker and his mother. And, Momma Bear was pissed, seeking to take out her protective instincts for her little cub on that big nasty supervisor… That little cub who is 34 years old, mind you.
I greeted them warmly and invited them to have a seat at the conference table in the outer office where I would have witnesses. Just in case, ya know? And then Momma Bear let loose with accusations and demands to know why her little “Furry” one hasn’t been getting paid from us and is getting only a pittance, her general phrase – Scottie doesn’t like me to swear here – from the workman’s comp’ insurance. She went on to tell me I should be ashamed of myself, who did I think I was, etc.
I slowly lifted my hand with one finger raised, interrupting her rant. “Furry’s” eyes got quite large at that. Perhaps it’s not wise to interrupt Momma Bear.
“Pardon me ma’am”, I quietly said into the ringing wide-eyed silence, “Your “Furry” is over 18 and is the employee. You are here to support your son, and I am good with that, but unless you are his lawyer I can’t talk to you about his employment.” To be honest, I don’t know if that is the law or not, but it sounded good. “Now, “Furry”, what can I do for you today,” I asked.
He told me about not getting a check, getting only a little from the insurance company but not enough to cover his needs. I then, quietly reached over and picked up that bus with one hand, grabbed “Furry’s” collar with the other, and chucked him directly under said bus!
“Furry”, I said, “I have documentation from your doctor clearing you for work 3-days per week, 8 hours per day, with a list of physical restrictions. I have allowed you to set your own schedule on that, right?” He agreed. “And, in the last 5-weeks, you have logged a total of 6.75 hours,” I said, looking directly into Momma Bear’s eyes.
I’ve been thinking this week about some of the absolutely stupid garbage conservative, culture-war-obsessed MAGA people believe, or claim to believe, for the purposes of demonizing people and making people hate the same people they hate. The most glaring current example is obviously Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and their media mouthpieces attacking innocent Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, with lies about them stealing and eating family pets.
But there are a bunch more.
There are the abortion lies Trump and Republicans love to tell — which many of them truly believe — about how Democrats love to let babies be born, at which point they lay them on the table and decide whether or not they’re going to execute them. Trump is sure it’s happening, because he saw on TV that the previous governor of Virginia (or is it West Virginia? Trump is never sure) totally said that, and if it’s on TV, it’s true.
Every election cycle lately, there’s a crop of the country’s stupidest Republican politicians babbling out loud that they have a friend whose pastor told them at the local elementary school there are children who identify as “furries” and demand to poop in litterboxes. It’s amazing watching them tell that one with a straight face.
Of course, Republican lies, blood libels and conspiracy theories often have a tiny element of 0.2 percent truth in them, something they can use to insist that the ridiculously stupid thing they say is happening really is happening. In the Virginia abortion story Trump tells, the nugget of truth was former Governor Ralph Northam talking about palliative care in grievously tragic situations where a newborn infant has no chance of surviving.
There actually have been litterboxes in classrooms. It’s so that if there’s a mass shooter in the school and classrooms are locked down for hours, poor little kids who can’t hold it might not have to be humiliated by wetting their pants.
(Did I ever mention that white conservative MAGA Republican politicians, pundits and influencers are extremely sick, evil liars?)
And then there’s the right-wing Christian Republican war on LGBTQ+ kids.
This week, Fox News tweeted a video featuring failed swimmer/anti-trans hatemonger Riley Gaines — remember her from my post about the Paris Olympics? — on “Fox & Friends,” spreading some the vile lies she so loves to tell. The clip caught my attention and pissed me the fuck off, and that’s why I’m talking about that this week instead of Mark Robinson. (I’ll get to him in due time, I’m sure.)
Here’s the video: (embedded on the page.)
Fox explained in its tweet that Gaines was “react[ing] to a California judge banning a school district from imposing a policy that would have required teachers and staff to notify parents if their student declares they want to change their name or pronouns.”
In the video Gaines bellyaches that such rulings are the government saying “they know your children better than you do. They don’t believe that these are your kids. They believe that these are the government’s kids.”
To which I reply, oh, go fuck yourself, Elon. Same message goes for Riley Gaines.
I want to talk about the California law in question and what it really does, and how that ties into how Donald Trump and Republicans are demonizing LGBTQ+ kids as part of their hate campaign against America, but I also want to tell y’all a story, so I’m going to try to do both.
Storytime!
Two nights before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, I was standing in line in the wee hours in the lobby of a prominent hotel in downtown Atlanta, with a bunch of fellow weary travelers. It was Friday, the first day of the CrowdStrike update that borked the entire global internet, and all our Delta flights had been canceled.
I struck up a conversation with the guy in front of me, a handsome young guy from El Paso. His wife and small children were somewhere in the expansive lobby, exhausted, while Dad tried to get hotel rooms sorted. They were coming from Disney. I was on my way back from the Republican convention in Milwaukee. We made small talk.
But we were in line for over an hour, so the conversation actually got surprisingly deep. He was a second-generation immigrant from Mexico, with parents who only speak Spanish. We talked about what life is really like along the border these days for people who actually literally live right on it. He described himself as a conservative, but not extreme, and not super-political. He freely offered that he couldn’t stand Donald Trump, but probably would vote for him, not that he was enthused about it.
But one thing that was bothering him, big time, was this law that had just been signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in California, to protect gay and trans kids from rogue school personnel who would out them to their parents without their consent. I was a bit surprised this Texas guy, who again didn’t seem that political, was so in tune with something California’s governor had done five days prior. But there we were.
He made extra-clear from the beginning that he doesn’t consider himself anti-gay or anti-trans. But it was immediately clear to me that this very kind-seeming guy was getting all his information on this issue filtered through the Christian nationalist bullshit machine of right-wing media.
The California law was passed directly in response to school districts in red areas of the state enacting policiesforcing schools to notify parents if a child asked to be referred to with a different name or pronouns. The legislature acted to protect those kids.
But to this dad, it sounded like California was trying to put one over on parents, to usurp their parental role, stealing and indoctrinating their kids. (Hey, Riley Gaines! How did your shitty, vile hate get in this nice man’s brain?)
It was 1:00 a.m., so I wasn’t about to start bickering, and also y’all would be amazed how gentle and diplomatic I am in person. But I did try to get on this dad’s side and maybe help him see it from a different perspective. He had gathered that I was gay, or maybe I told him.
“You obviously love your kids,” I said, “and you wouldn’t reject them for any reason, no way, no how.” He agreed.
“That law isn’t about hiding things from good, loving parents like you,” I told him. “It’s about protecting kids who don’t have parents like you, kids who are frightened of what would happen if their parents knew who they were, kids who don’t feel safe, kids who come from of abusive homes.” It could be the religious kind of abuse, and/or the non-religious kind of abuse.
He understood what I was talking about and several times reiterated how very not-anti-gay and not-anti-trans he was.
There have been memes going around lately along the lines of, if your child is gay or trans and they don’t want you to know, there’s probably a good reason for that, and likely it’s you. The problem is you.
I was trying to help this dad see, though, that he was not the problem. But he was still uncomfortable with it. He felt he would want the school to tell him. He grudgingly agreed that if one of his kids thought they were trans, he would absolutely want to make sure they had the best medical care and guidance they could get, that he would want to do whatever was best for his child.
But he wasn’t convinced this law wasn’t out to get people like him. You don’t fix the constant lava flow of conservative Christian right-wing fascist propaganda and lies in one sleepy night when all anybody wants to do is get a fucking hotel room and then fly the hell out of Atlanta the next day.
That dad is a good example of why Trump and Vance and Fox News and the rest of the Republican machinery are so committed to demonizing all LGBTQ+ people, but especially trans people, this election season.
This is a strategy, and it works on a whole bunch of people.
‘Think about it, your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation.’
(Trump also memorably screamed at the debate that Kamala Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison!” He gets confused about his conspiracy theories sometimes.)
Reality check: there is no school nurse in the country doling out top surgeries or bottom surgeries, either for trans-identifying kids, or for kids who come in after they skin their knees on the playground. (That would be real fucked up!)
Schools aren’t going gender-affirmation surgeries and kids aren’t demanding litterboxes because they say they’re “furries.” The baby isn’t being born so they can put it on the table and decide to execute it, and Haitians in Springfield aren’t eating Whiskers. Not even the best Obamacare money can buy has a plan where kids can walk in to the school nurse, without their parents’ consent, sign up for surgery, and then reappear at their parents’ house days later with a brand new set of genitals.
But Moms For Liberty got so mad at CNN for debunking Trump’s dementia lies. It was very important to them that Trump be out there demonizing transgender people, in general, regardless of whether Trump’s babbling about children getting on the school bus and coming back “a few days later with an operation” was literally true.
They angrily sent CNN a bunch of examples of lawsuits filed in various states, all focused on “parental rights” and, in particular, schools letting kids transition socially — as in, come out as trans or non-binary, etc. — without running off to tattle to their parents. Letting kids use different pronouns if that’s what they’re feeling is right for them. Etc.
Of course, because it’s Moms For Liberty, their missive to CNN — and the pissy PR email they sent to tell everybody about it — was full of hallucinatory conspiracy theory babblings about schools “secret[ly] social-transitioning … minor children” and, quoting one lawsuit from Massachusetts, “encourag[ing] minor children to hide key components of who they are from their parents, while actively encouraging children to disobey and ignore their parents’ wishes, and while actively deceiving parents and hiding information about their own children from them.” Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice even suggested that schools are “legally allowed to assign a new pronoun without parental knowledge.”
As if it’s the schools initiating these actions. As if schools are handing out pronouns with seating charts. (“Aw fuck, bro! Did you get she/her? Bro that sucks!” — common elementary school conversation now.)
They also straight up lied and said Minnesota allows gender-affirmation surgeries for minors without parental consent. It does not.
(Again I ask, on what fuckin’ insurance plan? Have I mentioned lately that these people are delusional weirdos?)
But as I said, pretty much everything Moms For Liberty was mad about, even when they were totally misrepresenting things, was social transitioning. Because that’s the slippery slope to hormones and surgery, and they’re not telling their parents, AIIIIYEEEEEEEE!
So they were fine with Donald Trump straight-up lying and saying schools are doing transgender surgeries on kids, because sometimes you have to make up really fucked up lies to con people into hating the same people you hate. Isn’t that right, Republicans?
What did J.D. Vance just say about his and Trump’s blood libel lies about Haitian immigrants? “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” And by “suffering of the American people,” he meant things he’s a total Nazi about.
Lying for Jesus! It’s been around a long time, yet it’s never done by people who actually reflect the character of Jesus in any way, shape or form.
(One of these days I’m going to write y’all a full Bible study on Matthew 7:23, AKA Jesus’s personal candygram to conservative white Christians.)
MAGA Republicans are absolutely counting on conning enough people with these absurd, demonizing lies and libels, about trans people and immigrants and abortion and anything else they can think of that deserves a good Two Minutes Hate. In Texas, it was reported this week that congressional Republicans are spending millions targeting Democrats with anti-transgender ads.
It’s literally all they have to run on. And they know it works, at least on some people.
In summary and in conclusion, and back to what pissed me off so much in the first place.
Riley Gaines griped to “Fox & Friends” that “[t]hey don’t believe that these are your kids. They believe that these are the government’s kids.”
We’ve been over this before, how these MAGA Christian fascist creeps (and their ideological compatriots) think they literally own their children. They believe they own them until they transfer ownership of their daughters to their husbands, or in the case of their sons, when they become wife-owning patriarchs in their own right.
It offends them when it’s pointed out that actually, their kids are their own people, and they own themselves.
Now, when the kids are minors, sure, their parents have custody and responsibility for them, and the schools have a part to play in that, both as partners with the parents and just in general, in preparing them to be respectable, functioning adults. Schools have a responsibility to let parents know when their kids’ grades are slipping; if they’re getting in fights, or getting bullied; if they’re acting out in school; if they’re doing something illegal, or dangerous, to themselves or others. And so forth.
This shouldn’t have to be said, but coming out of the closet — as gay, as bi, or as somewhere on the gender spectrum other than that which they were assigned at birth — DOES NOT FALL UNDER ANY REASONABLE CATEGORY OF “MISBEHAVIOR” FOR WHICH A SCHOOL WOULD NEED TO NOTIFY PARENTS.
Being LGBTQ+ is not dangerous, it’s not immoral, and it’s not “I found meth in your kid’s backpack.” It’s simply a thing. If a child is excelling and getting along well socially and in grade seven they decide to try on some new pronouns, that doesn’t warrant a phone call home.
It doesn’t warrant tattling.
But that’s what these evil fascist creeps want. They want schools to be their abusive morality Gestapo when they’re not around, to shame and punish their children in their absence, and to call a parent-teacher conference if they suspect a child has come down with the Woke Mind Virus.
By the way, schools do have another responsibility when it comes to kids, and that’s to spot abuse and neglect, and to intervene for the welfare of the child if they suspect the child is in danger at home.
And that — dearly beloved MAGA fascist assholes — is the category under which this falls.
If a kid comes out as gay, or starts socially transitioning, but they say “Hey, my parents don’t know, and I need them not to,” then there’s a reason that kid — the actual owner of their own body, mind and soul — is saying that. Maybe they’re just not ready! Maybe they’re getting their sea legs with their friends before they go home to their parents. Maybe they’ll tell them next year.
But it’s also possible that they don’t feel safe with their parents, and fear their reaction. It might be a reasonable fear. Fundamentalist Christian homes are notoriously abusive to LGBTQ+ children, oftentimes disowning them or kicking them out, oftentimes subjecting them to physical, psychological and religious abuse. There’s a reason states all over the country have been passing bans on fully discredited, fully ineffective and uniformly harmful “ex-gay” and “ex-trans” religious torture for minors for over a decade now. (Congratulations, Kentucky! You have a good governor.)
They might be scared their parents will ship them off to “pray away the gay” or “pray away the trans.”
Laws like the one in California protect those kids.
The parents bitching about this and filing lawsuits and publicly demonizing LGBTQ+ people — including their own children — they are demonstrating precisely why these laws need to exist.
That’s what this is about.
It’s not about hiding things from good and loving parents. It’s about protecting kids from parents who are monsters.
In the next 46 days, you might encounter people who say they can’t vote for Kamala Harris and against Donald Trump for truly stupid reasons. This is one of them. (And the abortion thing and the Haitian immgirants thing and the litterboxes and oh God, so many more.)
Tell them their reasons are stupid reasons.
How loving and diplomatic you decide to be about it, that’s up to your own best judgment.
Scottie's Playtime 