Category: Children / Kids / Minors / Teens / Family
Why are so many young people lgbtq+?
Republican attorneys general issue warning letter to Target about Pride merchandise
Seven U.S. state attorneys general sent a letter to Target on Wednesday warning that clothes and merchandise sold as part of the company’s Pride month campaigns might violate their state’s child protection laws.
Republican attorneys general from Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and South Carolina signed the letter, writing that they were “concerned by recent events involving the company’s ‘Pride’ campaign.”
The attorneys said that they believed the campaign was a “comprehensive effort to promote gender and sexual identity among children,” criticizing items like T-shirts that advertised popular drag queens and a T-shirt that said ‘Girls Gays Theys.’ They also highlighted merchandise with “anti Christian designs such as pentagrams, horned skulls and other Satanic products.”
The letter also criticized Target for donating to GLSEN, an LGBTQ+ organization that works to end bullying in schools based on sexual and gender identity. The company stated in a 2020 guide that school staff should not tell parents about a child’s gender or sexual orientation without consulting the child first, something the attorneys general said undermines “parents’ constitutional and statutory rights.”
The letter did not include any specific demands nor did it outline how they believe the campaign could violate child protection laws, but the attorneys general did suggest that Target might find it “more profitable to sell the type of Pride that enshrines the love of the United States.”
The attorneys general also said they believed Target’s Pride campaign threatened their financial interests, writing that Target leadership has a “fiduciary duty to our States as shareholders in the company” and suggesting that company officials “may be negligent” in promoting the campaign since it has negatively affected Target’s stock prices and led to some backlash among customers.
Target shares have declined 12% this year, but the company is facing issues far beyond the backlash to its Pride collection, which included onesies, bibs, and T-shirts for babies and children. Like many retailers, the company is struggling with a pullback in consumer spending because of high inflation, which has weighed on its profits.
But Target is also facing scrutiny for its merchandise selection, including its Pride line, with its stores removing some of the items in May after facing threats. At the time, the company didn’t specify which products were being removed, although Target has faced criticism online over swimsuits advertised as “tuck-friendly” with “extra crotch coverage” in its Pride collection.
“Target’s management has no duty to fill stores with objectionable goods, let alone endorse or feature them in attention-grabbing displays at the behest of radical activists,” the attorneys general wrote. “However, Target management does have fiduciary duties to its shareholders to prudently manage the company and act loyally in the company’s best interests.”
Backlash to the Pride campaign did involve threats of violence to Target stores and workers. Some merchandise was relocated to less popular areas of the store, and other pieces, including the swimsuits criticized by the attorneys general, were removed.
“Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work,” Target said in a statement earlier in June. “Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.”
Aimee Picchi contributed reporting
Bad Faith Justifications For Trans Political Persecution MUST Be Met With Militant Advocacy
OK Education Chief: “We Want The Bible In Schools” From JMG
Remember the governor of Oklahoma is a fervent fundamentalist Christian who has claimed the entire state for Jesus / his Christian god including the Native Peoples lands. He has used the office of Governor to push his religion on the entire state. The backstory of this Oklahoma Education Superintendent, Ryan Walters, is crazy. He is not qualified for the office except he is also a fervent fundamentalist Christian nationalist. The governor tried to have him hold the two highest positions over education but was blocked by that funny thing called laws. It is time to take seriously this sneak effort to get fundamentalist die hard Christian nationalists in to state office at all levels as they have taken over schools up to governors offices. They are the US Christian Taliban and the Christian moral police. They are going to force their religion on everyone, make everyone live by their church doctrines / religious views no matter what religion or lack of that people have. Just look at their insistence on Christian prayers and the Christian bible in public schools. They want to enshrine their church doctrines and religious convictions into state laws that everyone will be subject to and have to follow. Hugs
“Instead of allowing Biden and the unions to inject their ideology through graphic pornography like ‘Gender Queer’ and “Flamer,’ we want the Constitution, we want the bible in our schools where kids understand our nation’s history and what has made this country great. The reality is that the bible is a foundational document in our country’s history. Read the Founders, read their letters, listen to what these men and women said about why founding a country with the freedom of religion, the free exercise of religion was so important.” – Oklahoma Education Superintendent Ryan Walters, today on Fox Business.
Last week Walters declared that the infamous 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre should not be taught as having been caused by racism. Over 300 black people were murdered by white mobs and 10,000 were left homeless.
Last month Walters appeared here when he announced that Oklahoma’s public schools will soon have a mandatory daily prayer, the mandatory posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, and a mandatory high school course in “Western civilization.”
Walters, who was appointed state secretary of education by Christianist Gov. Kevin Stitt in 2020, faced calls to resign in 2022 after it was revealed that a Koch-funded group that advocates for privatizing public schools was paying him $120,000/year.
Stitt rejected calls for Walters’ resignation and attempted to reappoint him again earlier this year, but the state Senate refused to allow him to hold the elected superintendent and appointed secretary of education posts at the same time.
Christian Nationalists TERRIFYING Rhetoric is CREEPING into the Mainstream (And its getting WORSE)
Wow! Parent SILENCES Republican crowd during school board hearing in DEEP RED COUNTY
Adults are failing LGBTQ+ youth at school and beyond. Here’s how we can step up
Photo: ShutterstockThink back to when you were a teenager. While this time in our lives can often be filled with new experiences and self-discovery, it can also be deeply challenging and sometimes even painful. Time stretches on forever. You don’t have the full slate of freedoms that most adults take for granted. You are stuck in a microcosm of the real world, spending a good part of your life in a classroom with other young people doing their best to fit in – and feeling like you’re failing in some way.
These challenges of adolescence are even more acute for LGBTQ+ youth, who face an uphill battle to find acceptance in a world that often condemns the beauty of diversity and in many cases seeks to deny their very existence. Even before COVID-19 sent us into seclusion for the better part of the last three years – with devastating mental health consequences for many – LGBTQ+ youth were experiencing higher rates of depression and other forms of mental illness due to higher rates of bullying, harassment, and family rejection.
While young queer activists across the country – including It Gets Better’s incredible Youth Voices – are heroically speaking out against these attacks on their rights, their health and their very identities, they can’t win this fight alone. Right now, adults are failing LGBTQ+ students, and we urgently need to take bold, decisive action to support and protect them.
The first thing we can do to support our queer and trans youth is simple: listen. With the advent of social media, the escalating “culture wars,” and the lingering aftermath of COVID, the problems young people face today are different from those faced by earlier generations. My interactions with LGBTQ+ youth have shown me how deeply they have thought about the challenges they face and what they need to resolve them. We need to resist the urge to default to our own experiences, to say “you’ll understand when you’re older.”
We also need to speak out forcefully against anti-LGBTQ+ education policies, whether they restrict discussion of LGBTQ+ identity altogether, ban the use of preferred pronouns, or attempt to forcibly out trans students to their families. No matter what grades or ages these policies target, their intended message is clear: if you are LGBTQ+, you are not welcome here. Ensuring that queer youth feel empowered to express their identity, safely and on their own timeline, will have a massive, sustained impact on their overall wellbeing.
But LGBTQ+ youth need more than just our attention and our supportive words; they need our resources too. Specifically in schools, there is an almost endless list of priorities in urgent need of funding that would make an enormous difference for the day-to-day well-being of LGBTQ+ students.
Through It Gets Better’s 50 States, 50 Grants, 5000 Voices program, we were so proud to recently announce grants of up to $10,000 each to more than 70 schools across the U.S. and Canada. They cover a range of projects to uplift and empower LGBTQ+ youth, including educator training, inclusive curriculum, community art projects, Pride celebrations, and the priorities of local Genders and Sexualities Alliances (aka GSAs). The philanthropic community stepping up to fund more projects like these at schools across the country would be one of the single most effective, tangible actions to support LGBTQ+ youth we could take.
While the adults in the room argue about the nuances of parental rights in education, the right to healthcare for trans youth, book bans and curriculum restrictions, young LGBTQ+ people everywhere are serving up a counter strike fueled by their passion to create a better world – a world that celebrates diversity and understands its value. Adults should be honored to have a seat at that table to watch and learn – and to catalyze the passion of young LGBTQ+ people who are ready to pick up the banner to concretize their right to exist.
Brian Wenke is the Executive Director of leading LGBTQ+ non profit, the It Gets Better Project, and has led the global storytelling effort to empower LGBTQ+ youth since 2016. He has spearheaded multi-national campaigns to connect and engage with LGBTQ+ youth where they live, work, and socialize – and has successfully leveraged corporate and institutional partnerships to expand the It Gets Better Project’s reach, which now spans four continents and six major languages.
Trolling a school board that banned pride flags
I Interview a Trans Child and her Mother
For those that are on the fence about trans kids, and for those that are arguing that this is pushed on trans kids, please watch this short video. The person recording did not plan to record the coming out of a trans kid, but it happened. This video debunks all the trans hater talking points in one short video. Just as kids know who they are attracted to at a very young age, just as kids understand gender at a very young age as soon as they understand the idea of gender such as men or women, boys or girls, these clothing for this group or this bathroom for that gender. Kids understand this very early on. The idea of “early on stage gender dysphoria” has been debunked. I have watched an entire video on where it came from. The biggest threat to kids that know they are trans or gay is from the bigots on the right who are trying to keep kids from information they need, such as don’t say gay and anti gender identification laws. Look these republican right wingers want to return to the 1950s when gays and trans people were not positively portrayed in any media, yet they all existed. I am gay, I never got to read a book about a gay person until I was an adult. In fact the first book about gay kids I read was a book describing how a gay boy got trapped in abuse because of a person threatening to publicly out him. Denying the LGBTQ+ kids the media they need won’t stop them from being LGBTQ+ but it might stop a lot of abuse, and a lot of kids thinking they are the only one that is that way and believing how others say they are so horrible that they kill themselves! Listen to this child, just as I knew even before I was in school that I was a boy and that I was a boy who liked boys, this child knows who they are. Hugs
I was at the Pride Parade trolling the anti-LGBTQ people, when this child adamantly informed me that I am interviewing her. After getting consent from both her and the mother I spoke to her. The mother was present the entire time and requested that I do not include her name.
Scottie's Playtime 