Category: Children / Kids / Minors / Teens / Family

The Guardian: A Jewish couple was rejected as foster parents because of their religion. This is the future Project 2025 envisions

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/24/project-2025-adoption-fostering?CMP=share_btn_url

The conservative blueprint envisions ‘a biblically based’ definition of marriage and wants to protect adoption agencies that only work with Christians

Rebecca McCrayWed 24 Jul 2024 07.00 EDTShare

In 2021, Liz and Gabe Rutan-Ram decided to take the next step toward growing their family and applied to foster a child. After identifying a three-year-old in Florida who they hoped to ultimately adopt, the Rutan-Rams turned back to their home state of Tennessee to start training to become foster parents.

But their plans quickly fell apart when the Christian state-funded foster care placement agency informed them by email that they “only provide adoption services to prospective adoptive families that share our belief system”. The Rutan-Rams, who are Jewish, were out of luck.

“There’s already emotions playing into wanting to be a parent, and then to have us attacked personally just made it that much harder,” Liz Rutan-Ram told the Guardian.

The Rutan-Rams sued the Tennessee department of children’s services, arguing that a state law permitting private agencies to refuse to work with prospective parents on religious grounds violates the Tennessee constitution’s equal protection and religious freedom guarantees. The case will soon go to trial.

The predicament facing the Rutan-Rams could become more common under a second Trump administration. Project 2025, a 900-plus page blueprint for the next Republican administration and the policy brainchild of the conservative Heritage Foundation, contains an explicitly sympathetic view toward “faith-based adoption agencies” like the one that rejected the Rutan-Rams, who are “under threat from lawsuits” because of the agencies’ religious beliefs.

Project 2025’s Adoption Reform section calls for the passage of legislation to ensure providers “cannot be subjected to discrimination for providing adoption and foster care services based on their beliefs about marriage”. It also calls for the repeal of an Obama-era regulation that prohibits discrimination against prospective parents and subsequent amendments made by the Biden administration.

Though Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the project, his campaign’s own 16-page policy agenda echoes many of its goals, and his ties to the plan’s architects are well-established. In Milwaukee last week, the Heritage Foundation’s role in the Republican national convention was on full display, both on welcome banners at the airport and in the millions of dollars invested in the event itself. Following Trump’s announcement of his vice-presidential pick, the organization’s president, Kevin Roberts, said he was “good friends” with JD Vance, and effusively declared him “a man who personifies hope for our nation’s future”. Vance has previously said there were “some good ideas” in Project 2025.

Project 2025 is divided into four broad pillars, the first of which is to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”. A conservative vision of family pervades the document, and the authors call on policymakers “to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family”.

The plan envisions upholding “a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family”. It would remove nondiscrimination roadblocks governing faith-based grant recipients, such as the agency that denied the Rutan-Rams. The authors argue that “heterosexual, intact marriages” provide more stability for children than “all other family forms”. In addition to calling for the passage of the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act, which would allow adoption and foster care agencies to make placement decisions based on their “religious beliefs or moral convictions”, it also calls on Congress to ensure “religious employers” are exempt from nondiscrimination laws and free to make business decisions based on their religious beliefs.

To the Rev Naomi Washington-Leapheart, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and a queer parent, the image of family portrayed by the policy agenda is blatantly exclusionary. The Christian nationalist plan rejects unmarried parents, single parents and LGBTQ+ families.

white billboard with red and blue words: ‘You gotta keep ‘em separated’
A billboard in Milwaukee, part of a campaign by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, to raise awareness of Project 2025, that ran during the Republican convention. Photograph: Americans United for Separation of Church and State

“The definition of family according to Project 2025 leaves a lot of folk out,” Washington-Leapheart told the Guardian. “This blueprint really delegitimizes the kinds of families that are day in and day out raising children, paying taxes, contributing meaningfully to society.”

The Rutan-Rams have become the face of a campaign led by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who are representing them in their lawsuit, that seeks to shed light on what they call the Christian nationalist goals of Project 2025. As part of the campaign, visitors to the Republican convention last week may have seen billboards reading “You gotta keep ’em separated,” in reference to church and state.

Project 2025’s vision is already law in a number of states. The Rutan-Rams are battling a Tennessee law, modeled after similar laws in at least 10 other states, that permits faith-based foster care and adoption agencies to exclusively work with prospective parents who share their beliefs.

Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and author of a book titled How to End Christian Nationalism, contends that the scale and reach of Project 2025 pose a far greater danger to democracy than a patchwork of state laws.

“What’s different about Project 2025 is the sweeping nature of its plan,” said Tyler. “It would really rewrite the federal government and change policies in so many different areas at once in a way that would hasten our journey down that road to authoritarian theocracy.”

The Holston Home for Children in Tennessee, Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.

Tyler worries that Project 2025’s deliberate erosion of the separation between church and state, a founding principle embedded in the first amendment to the US constitution, will get a helping hand from the US supreme court, which has handed a series of victories in recent years to Christian activists. She specifically mentioned the 2021 decision in Carson v Makin, which struck down a Maine law that banned the use of public funds for religious schools. It was “an earthquake of a decision that a lot of people didn’t really pay attention to that has really opened the door to government funding of religion”, said Tyler.

The threat of a theocracy doesn’t seem far-fetched to Washington-Leapheart.

“Project 2025 says that religion is a permanent institution that should influence American life,” said Washington-Leapheart. “That alone communicates the kind of arrogant way Christianity is situated as an inevitability. And it’s not. I say that as a Christian person who is firmly grounded in my faith. It is not an inevitable part of my identity, it is a choice I make every day.

Top Sinclair anchor resigned over concerns about biased and inaccurate content

We discussed this a bit here a few weeks ago, about Sinclair sending talking points to all their stations, so that local reporters had to report that as real news. Here’s some more, from yesterday, that I didn’t get to until late.

JUDD LEGUM  AND REBECCA CROSBY JUL 23, 2024

Former Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez

Eugene Ramirez, the lead anchor of Sinclair’s national evening news broadcast, resigned in January over concerns about the accuracy and right-wing bias of the content he was required to present on air, three sources told Popular Information. The sources — one current and two former Sinclair employees — spoke to Popular Information on the condition of anonymity, citing concerns about the potential professional repercussions of speaking out about Sinclair’s editorial processes. Ramirez’s show, which continues to air with a new host, appears on at least 70 of the hundreds of local television affiliates owned by Sinclair. 

One of the primary issues that prompted Ramirez’s resignation was the requirement to include at least three stories produced by Sinclair’s Rapid Response Team (RRT) on a nightly basis. Sinclair’s RRT is a group of four reporters who work out of Sinclair’s national headquarters in Maryland. The group’s output is prodigious. A Popular Information review found that between January 1 and July 4 this year, the RRT published at least 775 stories.

Most of the RRT’s stories are short and aggregate information from other sources. Sinclair publicly claims that the RRT and other components of its national newsgathering operation, known as The National Desk, provide a “comprehensive, commentary-free look of the most impactful news of the day.” But a look at the RRT’s stories over the course of the year shows that the group frequently produces pieces that have more in common with right-wing agitprop than journalism. 

Often, the articles summarize press releases or social media posts from Republican politicians or other right-wing groups. Recent headlines include:

53 parent groups confront Biden education secretary over new Title IX rules: ‘Disgraceful’

GOP senator says Fetterman proves how ‘radical’ Dems have become on Israel: ‘Nuts’

Trump PAC launches new ad hitting Democrats on border: ‘Joe Biden does nothing’

Biden mocked by US Oil and Gas Association for touting gas price drops: ‘You’re welcome’

Elon Musk rips VP Harris for ‘lying’ about Trump’s abortion stance

Through July 4, 2024, the RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light and just 7 stories that portray Democrats positively. Over that same time period, the RRT has produced 57 stories that portray Republicans positively and 22 that portray Republicans negatively. 

Many of the pieces produced by the RRT that do not explicitly mention Republicans or Democrats (or do so only in passing) still promote a right-wing agenda, highlighting stories that portray immigrants or LGBTQ people negatively. 

These are the stories that Ramirez was required to present each night. Sinclair’s headquarters sent a list of four stories produced by the RRT to the team that produced the evening news broadcast. At least three had to be read on air. One current employee at Sinclair’s headquarters described the RRT team as “the right-wing propaganda arm of the national digital operation.”

The RRT is run by Julian Baron, a 2021 graduate of Syracuse University. Despite having little professional experience (and none outside of Sinclair), Baron’s title is “Chief of Staff for News.” In that role, Baron serves as the right-hand man for Scott Livingston, Sinclair’s Senior Vice President for News. 

According to a fourth source, who currently works at Sinclair’s headquarters, Baron and the RRT are also responsible for creating the “Question of the Day,” which around 200 Sinclair affiliates are required to include in their broadcasts. (The questions appear on Sinclair’s website without a byline.) Recent questions include:

Are you concerned violent criminals are crossing the border?

Do you think former House Speaker Pelosi deserves some of the blame for Jan. 6 riot?

Do you think some of President Biden’s family members broke the law in their business dealings?

Do you think the Veterans Administration should be involved in health care coverage for illegal immigrants?

Do you think the FBI is protecting the Biden family?

The reporters on the RRT team who work under Baron are Jackson Walker, Ray Lewis, and Kristina Watrobski. Walker was hired by Sinclair less than two months after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May 2023. Walker spent his college years writing for The College Fix, a national right-wing student publication. On X, Walker frequently highlights when his stories are circulated by Libs of TikTok, an anti-LGBTQ activist. Walker retweeted a post by Libs of TikTok that highlighted one of his articles and described the LGBTQ community as a “child mutilation cult.” Lewis is a 2023 graduate of Rutgers University. Prior to joining Sinclair, he was an intern at the New York Post, a right-wing tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch. Watrobski is a 2020 graduate of SUNY Plattsburgh and previously worked for a Sinclair affiliate in Albany.

Baron, according to three sources, has the authority to assign and publish RRT articles without any editorial oversight. In addition to appearing on the evening news broadcasts, RRT’s articles are automatically syndicated to hundreds of local news outlets, where they are given the imprimatur of mainstream media brands, including NBC, ABC, and CBS. According to two of the sources who spoke to Popular Information, this frequently caused rancor among the news staff of Sinclair affiliates, who were concerned about the posting of biased or inaccurate content on their websites. 

Sinclair defended Baron’s work but acknowledged that local affiliates have objected to stories produced by the RRT on numerous occasions. “The Rapid Response Team has published several thousand stories,” Sinclair spokesperson Jessica Bellucci told Popular Information. “On perhaps one or two dozen occasions we have gotten questions from a station about those stories and had a healthy dialogue – sometimes leading to the stories being changed.”

Despite confirming the conflict between the RRT and local affiliates — and other aspects of Popular Information’s reporting — Bellucci also told Popular Information that “the statements made in your email are flatly untrue.” She suggested that Popular Information may be “misinforming us about having sources” and was only pursuing the story “in pursuit of your sixteenth minute of internet acclaim.” Bellucci accused Popular Information of “attacking our reporters for doing their job, reporting on stories that may be unpopular.” 

The only specific statement Bellucci disputed was the characterization that Baron and the RRT work “outside of the normal editorial process.” Bellucci did not dispute that the Baron and the RRT team operate independently. Asked to clarify what other aspects of Popular Information’s reporting, if any, are “untrue,” Bellucci did not respond. 

Don’t interrupt them

According to the sources who discussed Sinclair’s editorial process on the condition of anonymity, reading stories produced by the RRT was not the only issue that made Ramirez’s role in the evening broadcast untenable. Sinclair’s national leadership frequently booked guests from far-right groups, including Moms for Liberty and the Heritage Foundation. When Ramirez challenged the dubious claims made by these guests, he was admonished and instructed not to interrupt them. Sinclair’s leadership, including Livingston, emphasized that many of Sinclair’s affiliates were not in big cities, and the content of the broadcast had to reflect the sensitivities of those viewers. Representatives of progressive groups were almost never booked as guests. 

The evening broadcast was also required to include “packages” produced by Sinclair’s Washington, D.C., bureau. Some of these packages had a strong right-wing bias or made unsubstantiated claims. Of particular concern were packages by Sinclair National Correspondent Kayla Gaskins. For example, after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023, Gaskins produced a piece questioning whether the bank was “too ‘woke’ to function.” 

This package featured an interview with Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, who said the bank’s downfall was the result of “[n]ot hiring the brightest people but hiring people based on what they look like or where they fall on the social register” and were too busy “playing the woke game” to head off problems. Marcus presented no evidence to support his claims. 

The piece also featured Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Congressman James Comer (R-KY) making similarly unsubstantiated claims, clipped from Fox News, blaming the bank’s collapse on “woke” politics or DEI initiatives. After featuring on-camera comments by Marcus, DeSantis, and Comer, Gaskin notes in the last five seconds of the piece that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blamed former President Donald Trump’s deregulatory policies. 

Another piece by Gaskin in April 2023 falsely claimed that “children in Washington state will soon not need their parents’ permission to switch genders.” But legislation, which became law in July 2023, is limited to homeless youth, and “doesn’t change the state’s medical consent laws.” In Washington state, “those under age 18 don’t generally have the right to make medical decisions without parental consent.” 

The law deals exclusively with parental notification when a young person arrives at a homeless shelter. Previously, the shelter was generally required to notify parents within 72 hours. Under the new law, when a young person is seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care, the shelter has the option of instead contacting “the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, which could then attempt to reunify the family if feasible.” The purpose of the law is to encourage vulnerable homeless youth, who may be estranged from their parents, to obtain shelter rather than living on the street. 

Gaskin’s piece uncritically quotes Landon Starbuck, president of the anti-LGBTQ group Freedom Forever, claiming the “state is stepping in and medically kidnapping kids from their parents.” This echoed a false claim, circulated by Donald Trump Jr. and others online, that the law allowed “the state to TAKE CHILDREN AWAY FROM PARENTS that do not consent to their child’s gender transition surgeries.” 

https://popular.info/p/top-sinclair-anchor-resigned-over?r=1pk2l&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Moms for Liberty have had a rough year. They’re still RNC darlings.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/07/moms-for-liberty-have-had-a-rough-year-theyre-still-rnc-darlings/

Thanks to their friends in (very) high places.
By Keira Butler 
The Moms for Liberty co-founders hold two awards sculptures shaped like waving American flags while standing against a gold and blue background at Fox Nation's 2023 Patriot Awards
Moms for Liberty co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany JusticePhoto: YouTube clip

This article first appeared on Mother Jones. It has been republished with the publication’s permission.

On the second day of the Republican National Convention, I made my way back to Milwaukee’s symphony hall to attend a town hall hosted by the conservative parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty. This wasn’t my first Moms for Liberty event—I’ve attended the annual summits for the past two years. Back in 2022, Betsy DeVos, who served as former President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, delivered the line that got the loudest applause. “While I know that everything we did was with the interest of kids in mind and policies that would really give as much power back to the states and local communities as we possibly could,” she said, “I personally think the Department of Education should not exist.”

At the time, that statement felt a little bit edgy—like DeVos was saying the quiet part out loud. But two years later at yesterday’s event, many of the panelists expressed that same sentiment as a a foregone conclusion. “The fundamental problem that we have in the United States was the creation of the federal Department of Education,” Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) told the crowd of maybe 400 or so mostly white women. In his remarks, erstwhile GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy said, “We’re not just going to reform the Department of Education, it means we’re going to get there and actually shut it down.”

Does that mean that a ragtag group of moms single handedly turned the abolition of a behemoth government agency into a run-of-the-mill conservative talking point? Not exactly. On that issue and many others, Moms for Liberty has had a major assist from powerful conservative groups that share their goals—and are shaping the Republican agenda for 2024.

Founded in 2021 by three former school board members in Florida, Moms for Liberty rode the rising tide of anti-mask sentiment in the tumultuous year after schools were closed during the pandemic. The group’s leaders capitalized on the backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd. In fact, Moms for Liberty was one of the most prominent early groups to criticize the teaching of ant-racist curriculum in schools, which they incorrectly referred to as “critical race theory.” The group also vociferously opposed LGBTQ-inclusive lessons, and its members led campaigns to rid classrooms and school libraries of books deemed inappropriate.

Over time, Moms for Liberty grew in both membership and influence. Today, the group counts 130,000 members across chapters in 48 states. The organization groomed some members to run for local school boards, gradually expanding their influence throughout communities. Last year, all of the Republican presidential candidates, including former president Donald Trump, spoke at their annual conference in Pennsylvania.


In its marketing, Moms for Liberty comes off as a group of like-minded people, mostly women, who all happened to come together because of a shared concern for children. Founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Deskovich, the website says, are just a couple of “moms on a mission to stoke the fires of liberty.” But as I’ve previously reported, the organization’s connections to the Republican party run deep. Its conferences have been sponsored by the GOP training group the Leadership Institute and the conservative powerhouse think tank the Heritage Foundation. Earlier this week, after the RNC Heritage Foundation event, Moms for Liberty national director Catalina Stubbe told me that her group is “very close friends” with Heritage, which was one of the sponsors of today’s event, and whose president Kevin Roberts spoke on one of the panels.

 

Considering the group’s cozy relationship with Heritage, the RNC town hall panelists’ focus on abolishing the US Department of Education shouldn’t be surprising. Project 2025, the 920-page conservative policy roadmap that Heritage spearheaded, calls for the complete elimination of the Department of Education, along with the codification of parents’ rights laws similar to those in Florida, which strictly limit teachers’ use of LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum and books.

After the event, I spoke to Lydia Dominguez, a Moms for Liberty member running for school board in Clark County, Nevada. Dominguez, the mother of two teenage boys, told me that she believed schools “are being oversaturated by national agendas.” What kinds of national agendas? I asked. “They’re having CNN in the classroom,” she said. “They’re pushing national topics such as the transgender topics, sexualized content.”

—————
She believed schools “are being oversaturated by national agendas…They’re having CNN in the classroom,” she said. “They’re pushing national topics such as the transgender topics, sexualized content.”
—————

Monica Kepes serves as the secretary of a Moms for Liberty chapter in Washington County, Wisconsin. “I think the big bureaucratic institutions are instituting a lot of stuff that comes down through the education system,” she said. “I think the bigger you get, the more power there is, the more chance corruption and all that kind of stuff.”

At Moms for Liberty’s upcoming 2024 summit, which will take place next month in Washington, DC, it seems unlikely that the group will be able to muster a repeat performance of the star-studded speaker roster from last year. So far, this year’s list appears to be a grab bag of not especially famous ultra-conservative pundits, C-list comedians, and culture warriors. One reason for this lackluster lineup could be the fallout from a series of scandals in 2023. A group from a chapter in Kentucky posedfor a photo with the white nationalist group the Proud Boys. (Those members were later removed from the group.) Last year, a chapter leader in Indiana quoted Hitler in a newsletter. On the last evening of the annual summit a few months later, Justice, the co-founder, said in a speech, “One of our moms in a newsletter quotes Hitler…I stand with that mom!”

But the most damaging setbackcame in late 2023, when Christian Ziegler, chair of the Florida GOP, was accused of raping and illegally filming a woman who had been involved in a sexual relationship with him and his wife, Bridget Ziegler, a founding member of Moms for Liberty. As I wrote at the time, the situation was especially awkward because Ziegler helped craft Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” parents’ rights law, which forbids teachers in the state from talking about same-sex relationships. “The irony is crazy because you have this woman and her husband who are so concerned with preventing children from hearing anything that doesn’t totally align with their values,” one Florida mom told me at the time. “And then it’s like, I’m having to explain a three-way to a 12-year-old this week.” (Christian Ziegler has been cleared of rape charges; in March, the Florida state attorney’s office declined to criminally charge him for illegally filming the sexual encounter because of insufficient evidence.)

 

Unsurprisingly, no one mentioned the sex scandal (or any of the other ones) at the town hall event. But on one panel, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took a victory lap about a bill Ziegler helped to create. “It used to be…you didn’t have to worry about your kid going to kindergarten and being told that they should change their gender,” he said. “We put the kibosh on that in Florida—we said, ‘We are not going to be indulging in things like gender ideology in our schools.’” The crowd whooped with approval.

The Republican Party seems to agree. Its official platform, released last week, calls for funding cuts for schools that embrace “woke” policies like LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum. This serves as a reminder that even though Moms for Liberty’s star appears to have dimmed over the past year, the reverberations from its movement will be felt for years to come. Moms for Liberty, cofounder Tina Descovich told the crowd, “is here to fight, fight, fight, and win, win, win.” She paused. “And winning we are.”

 

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Florida is denying trans people updated birth certificates in defiance of its own laws

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/07/florida-is-denying-trans-people-updated-birth-certificates-in-defiance-of-its-own-laws/

Dozens of trans people have appealed the denials but they’re not even getting responses.
By  
Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference at the FGCU Kapnick Education and Research Center in Naples on Tuesday, April 23, 2024.
Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference at the FGCU Kapnick Education and Research Center in Naples on Tuesday, April 23, 2024.Photo: Jonah Hinebaugh/Naples Daily News/USA Today Network-Florida / USA TODAY NETWORK

While Republican lawmakers have repeatedly failed to pass legislation to prevent transgender people from updating their birth certificates to reflect their gender identity, the state has nonetheless been denying requests from both trans adults and minors to do so for the past year.

According to The 19th, since last year, trans minors and adults in the state have received letters from the Florida Department of Health’s Bureau of Vital Statistics denying their requests for amended birth certificates even when all their other government-issued ID documents reflect their gender identity and despite the fact that they have provided documentation of their gender transition that has previously been accepted.

In one March 2024 letter reviewed by the outlet, the agency said that documentary evidence provided by the applicant “does not establish that the sex identifier on the birth record contains a misstatement, error, or omission.”

Another from August 2023 said that for trans minors, “documentary evidence established prior to the child’s seventh birthday is required,” while a separate letter says that trans adults must provide documentation “established prior to the registrant’s 18th birthday.” As The 19th notes, for many trans people who were either unaware of or still figuring out their gender identity or were unable to access gender-affirming care as children, either requirement would be nearly impossible to provide.

Simone Chriss, an attorney with Florida-based Southern Legal Counsel (SLC), told The 19th that of the around 80 clients she has worked with since August 2023 who have appealed the agency’s denials, none have been able to obtain an amended birth certificate reflecting their gender identity. Most of her clients’ appeals, she said, “are just being ignored.”

“I’ve filed many,” said Chriss, who is also the director of SLC’s transgender rights initiative. “There’s at least five that I have pending at this moment that the department hasn’t responded to.”

 

Since 2018, trans Floridians have been able to provide documentation from a doctor showing that they have received gender-affirming care in order to get their birth certificates updated to reflect their gender identity. Before that, only trans people who could provide proof of gender-affirming surgery could qualify for an amended document.

In 2023, Florida Republicans tried to pass a bill that would have banned the state from changing gender markers on birth certificates. Another bill, introduced earlier this year, would have required state IDs and licenses to reflect a person’s sex assigned at birth. Both pieces of legislation failed to pass.

But that has not stopped state agencies from denying trans people updated documents. In a January letter, Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FHSMV) deputy executive director Robert Kynoch rescinded the agency’s previous policy allowing individuals to correct the gender markers on their driver’s licenses after transitioning.

 

“The term ‘gender’… does not refer to a person’s internal sense of his or her gender role of identification, but has historically and commonly been understood as a synonym for ‘sex,’ which is determined by innate and immutable biological and genetic characteristics,” Kynoch’s letter read in part. Allowing people to alter their licenses based on gender identity, he wrote, “undermines the purpose of an identification record and can frustrate the state’s ability to enforce its laws.”

“Misrepresenting one’s gender, understood as sex, on a driver license constitutes fraud,” the letter continued, “and subjects an offender to criminal and civil penalties, including cancellation, suspension, or revocation of his or her driver license.”

As The 19th notes, the department’s rule was not prompted by any legislation. Similarly, the Florida health department’s Bureau of Vital Statistics’ denials of trans people’s requests for amended birth certificates do not reflect any new state law, and have resulted in trans Floridians spending hundreds of dollars to obtain previously accepted documentation only to have their requests denied.

 

As Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson noted in a statement following Kynoch’s January letter, policies denying trans people documents that reflect their gender identity result in their being outed “anywhere they use a driver’s license or identification document,” potentially subjecting them to harassment, discrimination, or worse.

Southern Legal Counsel’s Chriss told The 19th that the organization plans to challenge the state’s birth certificate policy in federal court.

 

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Day 1 RNC Speeches Attack Trans Day Of Visibility, Pronouns, And Safe Schools

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/day-1-rnc-speeches-attack-trans-day

On day one of the Republican National Convention, at least four Republicans used their platform to target transgender people.

ERIN REED
JUL 16, 2024
 
 
Marjorie Taylor Green – RNC – Republican Party

Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.

On the first day of the Republican National Convention, prominent Republicans used their national platform to target transgender people. This signals that the party is not abandoning its efforts to curtail transgender and LGBTQ+ rights if they gain power in the next election. This comes after the vice presidential running mate pick of JD Vance, the lead author of a Senate bill that would institute a national ban on transgender youth care and bar all medical schools from teaching about transgender care, including adult trans care.

The most prominent figure to use her platform to attack transgender people was Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene criticized Transgender Day of Visibility for falling on the same day as Easter Sunday in 2024. Notably, Easter Sunday is a moving holiday, while Transgender Day of Visibility has always been held on March 31. There have been more Transgender Days of Visibility on that date than Easter Sundays since America was founded.

“They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday,” Greene said to raucous boos. “And let me state this clearly: There are only two genders, and we are made in God’s image,” she continued.

Video at link above

Many on X (formerly Twitter) questioned the statement and its implications for the nature of God’s gender. Vinny Thomas, a user on the platform, pointed out, “‘There are only two genders and we are made in God’s image’ is so fascinating because what exactly are you saying about God’s gender?”

Representative John James from Michigan also joined in, using some of his time to target transgender women in sports and changing rooms. “Our daughters were sold on hope, and now they are being forced onto the playing fields and into the changing rooms of biological males. America was sold on hope, and now the world is on fire,” Rep. James continued.

Senator Ron Johnson joined in with his speech, calling LGBTQ+ inclusive education, sports participation, and inclusion “sexual indoctrination,” and stating that it was an attack on American values. “This fringe agenda includes biological males competing against girls and the sexualization and indoctrination of our children,” he said to boos. He continued, “Today’s Democrat agenda, their policies, are a clear and present danger to our institutions, our values, and our people.”

Video at link above

One of the “everyday Americans” chosen to speak at the Republican National Convention, Linda Fornos, was the last to target transgender people. In a speech that fell rather flat with little reaction, she questioned children learning pronouns in schools. Many correctly pointed out that pronouns have always been part of an English education.

Video at link above

 

The willingness to lean into anti-LGBTQ+ policies on the first day of the Republican National Convention may seem puzzling. Attacks on LGBTQ+ people have faltered in 2024 compared with 2023, with far fewer laws passing. Several states that had targeted trans people in previous years, such as Florida, Georgia, West Virginia, and Kansas, failed to pass anti-LGBTQ+ policies this year, despite over 80 bills proposed in those states targeting the community. In many elections where anti-trans policies were a major issue, the Republican Party suffered setbacks: 70% of Moms for Liberty and Project 1776 candidates lost their races in 2023. Other losses Republicans have suffered on this issue occurred in the Virginia legislature elections, the Arizona Governor’s race, the Michigan legislature elections, the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, the Walker-Warnock Senate race, and in dozens more places. Furthermore, recent polling from Gallup, Navigator, and the LA Times indicates fading public support for such laws, with huge majorities of respondents seeing them as a distraction and opposing bans on trans youth care.

Still, Trump’s selection of Senator JD Vance as his running mate indicates that he and the Republican Party have not backed off from this issue. Vance notably was the primary sponsor of a Senate bill to bar all trans care for trans youth nationwide. His bill would also bar secondary educational institutions, including medical schools, from teaching gender-affirming care for any age. Trump himself has called for investigations of hormone therapy manufacturers, bans on LGBTQ+ inclusive policies in schools, and targeting transgender people “at any age.”

As the Republican National Convention unfolds, the stage is set for a parade of speakers with deep-rooted anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ records. For LGBTQ+ people, these are not just rhetorical threats but a potential harbinger of laws that could be passed over the next four years. LGBTQ+ people will therefore likely be especially tuned in over the remaining nights.

Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.

“Coconut tree”?

This week is the first I’ve heard of this, but I am old, so of course I would have missed it before. However, it’s out here now, and looks kind of exciting, as to GOTV.

The internet has entered its Kamala Harris ‘coconut tree’ era

To many young people on X and TikTok, the vice president is unironically funny and all too easy to meme.

By Angela Yang

Democrats may soon nominate a presidential candidate capable of rivaling GOP nominee Donald Trump in memeability.

After President Joe Biden announced his decision to forfeit re–election, a tidal wave of memes about Vice President Kamala Harris — whom Biden backed as the Democratic presidential candidate — flooded the internet.

On platforms like TikTok and X, the mood felt celebratory as many left-leaning accounts posted upbeat fan edits of Harris and made memes out of her more memorable lines from speeches. On Sunday, British pop artist Charli XCX appeared to back Harris, calling her a “brat,” a reference to her new album, which has become the Gen Z theme of the summer. 

Some political strategists say the memes are helping Harris generate a level of organic social media clout among Gen Z that Biden has struggled to cultivate, amplified by the spotlight of a possible presidential nomination.

“She doesn’t take herself too seriously. She knows how to have fun, and she’s somebody that is willing to be a little bit less stuffy than a traditional presidential candidate would be, and I think that’s a good thing in this election cycle,” said Marianna Pecora, the communications director for the Gen Z-run political advocacy group Voters of Tomorrow.

https://iframe.nbcnews.com/niY2c6b?_showcaption=true&app=1

But Pecora said the viral moments aren’t just for laughs — they also indicate broader support for Harris, particularly among young people who have at times felt disenchanted by presidential candidates.

“I don’t think that anyone is going to necessarily meme their way to the presidency,” said Pecora, 20, a student at George Washington University. “But I do think that being able to make this election something bright and fun and exciting and something that’s infiltrating people’s feeds and therefore their everyday lives is only a good thing.”

Part of Harris’ frequent virality comes from her tendency to show off her seemingly authentic personality online. It’s why many of her vocal online supporters — who call themselves the KHive — have staunchly defended her since her first presidential run in 2020.

The KHive, which is a play on Beyoncé’s BeyHive, has exhibited stan behavior in the way it circulates content and news about Harris. It has rallied around a plethora of humorous moments, from her love of Venn diagrams to her out-of-tune rendition of “Wheels on the Bus” to her propensity for busting out enthusiastic dance moves.

After Biden’s debate with Trump in June, which sparked a panic about his capacity to run for re-election, the KHive gained renewed momentum online. Fans of Harris turned a speech last year in which she quoted her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, talking about a “coconut tree” into a running meme.

“My mother used to, she would give us a hard time sometimes and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’” Harris said in the speech. “‘You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.’”

In the 24 hours since Biden’s announcement, Google searches for “coconut tree” spiked dramatically. (snip-more on the page)

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/kamala-harris-coconut-tree-internet-memes-gen-z-rcna162977

AP News: Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 39,000 Palestinians have now been killed in the war … repost

AP News: Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 39,000 Palestinians have now been killed in the war
With the links supplied by Ali.

Poliovirus Detected In Gaza Water Sources [VIDEO]

Poliovirus Detected In Gaza Water Sources [VIDEO]

July 21, 2024 News, Politics

 

Bloomberg News reports:

Humanitarian groups are considering a mass vaccination campaign for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip after traces of variant poliovirus type 2 were found in water sources in the war-torn territory. The disease was detected in six locations in Gaza, the World Health Organization said.

Geneva-based WHO said it was working with partners – including UNICEF and United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) – to conduct a risk assessment. Polio vaccination rates in Gaza before the war were “optimal,” according to the organization.

Israel on Sunday confirmed the resurgence of the virus, which can be spread by contaminated water and direct person-to-person contact, and said it would offer booster shots to its soldiers operating in and around the Gaza Strip.

Read the full article.

https://x.com/AJEnglish/status/1814280276681322595

 

 

 

 

 

    

   

New studies find millions of young nonbinary and transgender Americans

https://thehill.com/changing-america/3811406-new-studies-find-millions-of-young-nonbinary-and-transgender-americans

This is what terrifies the fundamentalist and republicans.  That is why the attacks on LGBTQ+ kids in schools, it is an attempt to stop this acceptance of people different, of people not straight or cis.  This is what it is about.  They are terrified their outdated unreasonable hates and moral superiority of straight people is going away.  So like the people who hated equality for black people, they created Jim Crow laws for gay or trans people.  Hopefully we can beat back this attack on liberty and rights.  Hugs.  Scottie

Photo illustration of a person's hand holding two pins, one with transgender flag colors (light blue, light pink, white) and one with non-binary flag colors (yellow, white, purple and black). Hand is over a pink-dotted background with a purple-toned group of people, as seen from behind.
Madeline Monroe/iStock
 

Story at a glance

  • Roughly 1.6 percent of American adults are now transgender or nonbinary, according to a 2022 survey. 
  • That number is higher still among young adults, with 5 percent of people under 30 now identifying their gender as different from the one assigned them at birth.  
  • The growing visibility of transgender and nonbinary people comes amid rising societal acceptance and new efforts to count the populations. 

One young adult in 20 is now nonbinary or transgender, communities that society barely recognized and seldom counted until a few years ago. 

Those populations are not new. Only recently, though, have survey-takers thought to ask people about gender identity, invoking terminology that did not exist for prior generations. The word “nonbinary” did not appear in The New York Times until 2014.  

The rising visibility of nonbinary and transgender people reflects the nation’s growing acceptance of gender fluidity, especially among the young. One landmark study found 1.2 million nonbinary people in the 18-60 age group. Of that total, three-quarters were under 30, which suggests Generation Z has explored gender identity to an extent that older Americans have not.  

“We have a world in which we are finally counting these groups,” said Kay Simon, 28, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota who studies the experiences of queer youth and their families. “You can’t identify as something if you don’t know what the word is.” 

Simon grew up in Florida and Texas. “From a very young age, I kind of realized I was gay,” they said. “At the time, I probably could have told you that I felt different about my gender, but I didn’t have a word for it.” 

The word was nonbinary, denoting a person who identifies with neither the male nor female gender.  

Simon remembers when the academic community introduced he-she-they pronouns on faculty pages and email salutations, during their grad-school years. Even now, teaching about sexuality and gender identity in the presumptively safe space of a college campus, Simon must decide “kind of regularly” whether to correct someone who refers to them with the wrong pronoun. 

“I’ve had students misgender me,” they said. “And it becomes this joke of, A, you’re referring to your professor wrong, and, B, you didn’t read the syllabus. So, we have two problems.” 

The population of young nonbinary and transgender people is clearly large and probably growing. 

A 2022 report from the Williams Institute, a research center at the University of California, Los Angeles, estimates that 1.3 percent of adults ages 18-24 and 1.4 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds are transgender, with a gender identity different than the one assigned at birth. Teens and young adults are much more likely to be transgender than older adults. 

Five years earlier, in a 2017 report, the Williams Institute had found roughly half as many young transgender people. But the earlier analysis used different methods and drew on comparatively sparse data, so it’s hard to know how much of the increase is real. 

Is the transgender population exploding, or are researchers simply counting better? That is a common quandary, researchers say, in studies of the nonbinary and transgender communities. 

“I would argue, actually, it is not an increase,” said Russ Toomey, a professor of family studies and human development at the University of Arizona. “We are seeing the numbers of people disclosing nonbinary and trans identity on a survey because we are asking people in more inclusive ways about their gender.” 

Perhaps the most expansive tally to date of transgender and nonbinary people comes from the Pew Research Center. In a 2022 survey, Pew found that 1.6 percent of U.S. adults reported a gender different from the one assigned to them at birth.  

Pew, too, found that the nonbinary and transgender populations skewed young. Three percent of adults ages 18-29 said they were nonbinary and 2 percent said they were transgender. In the 50-plus population, by contrast, only 0.3 percent of respondents identified themselves as transgender or nonbinary. 

“I think that Gen-Z individuals are not alone in this, but they are kind of leading the charge,” said Rachel Farr, an associate professor of developmental psychology at the University of Kentucky. 

Today’s young adults have grown up in a society that is gradually recognizing the rights of the LGBTQ community. In 2010, the Senate voted to repeal the Clinton-era “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, allowing LGBTQ people to serve openly in the military. In 2015, the Supreme Court recognized a legal right for same-sex couples to marry. 

“It’s not that there are more people. It’s that there are more people who are open and who are out,” said Shoshana Goldberg, director of public education and research at Human Rights Campaign, the LGBTQ rights group. “The reality is that when you talk to the average person on the street, they’re going to be more accepting and more affirming than they’ve ever been.” 

The share of American adults who identify as queer doubled from 2012 to 2021, according to a relatively long-running Gallup poll.  

Within Generation Z, polling suggests the LGBTQ population doubled in just four years, from 10.5 percent in 2017 to 20.8 percent in 2021. 

Bisexuals, and especially bisexual women, populate the majority of the Gen-Z queer community, according to research from Gallup and others. Transgender and nonbinary people constitute a smaller but significant share.  

Researchers say social media played a defining role in helping transgender and nonbinary young people define themselves.  

Landon Richie, 20, grew up in Texas and came out as transgender at 11. “But since I was two,” he said, “really as early as I could think and express myself with some sort of agency, I understood that I did not fit into the role that I was assigned as a girl.” 

Richie couldn’t fully process his identity until around age 10, when he “gained larger access to the internet and saw people who were transgender and who talked about their experiences,” he said. “And I was able to see myself reflected in their stories and their experiences.” 

Now that the transgender and nonbinary communities have been identified and counted, researchers say, they need society’s support.  

Both groups face a heightened risk of physical, emotional and sexual abuse in both childhood and adulthood, the UCLA study found. Depression and suicidal ideation are alarmingly common. 

Transgender and nonbinary people often feel under attack, and with good reason. Research shows queer people face a heightened risk of being victims of violent crime. Transgender and nonbinary individuals also face higher rates of workplace harassment and discrimination. 

The communities also face legislative attack. GLAAD, an LGBTQ media advocacy group, tracked more than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills across the nation in 2022, many of them targeting transgender persons by seeking to bar them from equal access to sports, restrooms or health care. 

“Almost for as long as I’ve been out, there’s been a target placed by the Texas legislature on my back,” said Richie, who has been politically active in his state for several years.  

Some faith-based and socially conservative groups have argued that influential Instagram posters and overzealous educators seed gender confusion in young people. 

Advocates for the queer community counter that social media and progressive curricula help transgender and nonbinary people discover their identities, rather than create them. 

Friends and loved ones can play a crucial role, researchers say, simply by honoring the name and pronoun requested by a transgender or nonbinary person. 

“I think the first thing is just to accept them and listen to them,” said Allison Eliscu, M.D., medical director of the adolescent LGBTQ* Care Program at Stony Brook Medicine in Stony Brook, N.Y.  

“If you make a mistake, because we all do, apologize, say it correctly and then try to do better.”  

Almost 50% of Gen Z identifies as “not fully straight”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/almost-50-of-gen-z-identifies-as-not-fully-straight/ar-BB1qkBD3

This is what terrifies the fundamentalist and republicans.  That is why the attacks on LGBTQ+ kids in schools, it is an attempt to stop this acceptance of people different, of people not straight or cis.  This is what it is about.  They are terrified their outdated unreasonable hates and moral superiority of straight people is going away.  So like the people who hated equality for black people, they created Jim Crow laws for gay or trans people.  Hopefully we can beat back this attack on liberty and rights.  Hugs.  Scottie

Opinion by Johnny Levanier
 • 1d • 2 min read
 
Almost 50% of Gen Z identifies as “not fully straight”
Almost 50% of Gen Z identifies as “not fully straight”© Provided by INTO
 

Anew survey confirms that a record number—nearly half—of Gen Z youth are identifying with a sexual orientation other than “fully straight.” The survey joins a growing number of studies demonstrating the rising acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities and willingness to be out and proud at younger ages.

Commissioned by condom and sex toy brand Durex, the Global Sex Survey interviewed 29,000 adults across 36 countries. 44% of survey participants aged 18 to 24 identified as “not fully straight.”

Coinciding with the growing number of out LGBTQ+ people, support for same-sex relationships has increased as well. The number of survey respondents who say that it’s acceptable to have a same-sex partner has gone up 34% since 2006.
 

Breaking that number down by country, however, shows that there’s still room to grow. 69% of respondents in the Netherlands and Spain support same-sex relationships, whereas only 66% of UK respondents do.

The fact that Gen Z is not only more likely to accept queer people but to be queer themselves has been demonstrated time and again. Earlier this year, a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute found that Gen Z were more likely to be queer than Republican. Specifically, 28% of Gen Z identify along the LGBTQ+ spectrum whereas only 21% identify as Republican.

 

As for which letter of the alphabet mafia is the most prevalent, a survey by Gallup found that—in America, at least—most LGBTQ+ people identify as bisexual. Overall, the percentage of people identifying as LGBTQ+ has more than doubled since Gallup began the survey in 2012.

While the rise in out queer people is a promising sign of progress, that increased visibility has also given bigots a target. A recent poll from YouGov found that nearly half of LGBTQ+ ages 16 to 24 have experienced bullying over their sexual orientation and 25% over their gender identity.

In this sense, Gen Z might not represent the haven for equality and acceptance we’re all hoping for. But it speaks to the resilience of queer youth today that they keep coming out in record numbers in spite of the bullying and hatred.