Del. Danica Roem at a 2017 White House protestPhoto: Ted Eytan/via Wiki
Out transgender Virginia lawmaker Del. Danica Roem (D) shut down opponents of transgender students participating in school sports by calling out the hypocrisy of conservatives who say they want to protect girls’ sports.
“When we want to deal with the idea of how do we support women athletes, how about we show up to their games?” she said.
Roem was speaking against H.B. 1387, a Republican bill that would ban transgender students from participating in school sports as their authentic selves, effectively banning many of them from participating in school sports. Del. Karen Greenhalgh (R) said the bill is needed to “encourage” cisgender girls to participate in school sports.
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“Similarly gifted and trained males will always have the physical advantage over females, which is the reason we have women’s sports,” she said, defending her bill.
Her rhetoric echoes that of Republicans across the country over the past several years: girls’ school sports need to be saved from transgender girls, and only transgender girls, not from a lack of interest from local communities, sexual predation, and harassment, or bullying girls face for participating in school sports.
Prominent Republican politicians have claimed to have saved girls’ sports, despite never showing any interest in girls’ or women’s sports except when they could attack transgender girls for wanting to participate.
Roem wasn’t having it.
“How about we pay them equally?” Roem said, calling out income inequality between women’s and men’s professional sports.
“How many times have any- any of you here gone to a girls’ basketball game followed by a boys’ basketball game where the girls’ game starts at 5 or 5:30 and the boys’ game starts at 7 or 7:30, and you saw the gym get packed right in the very end of the fourth quarter of the girls’ game because so many people were there excited for the boys’ game, regardless of how competitive, regardless of the skills, regardless of the rankings of the girls’ team?” Roem asked her colleagues.
“If we want to support female athletes, then show up to their games! Fight for equal pay for them! But at the same time, to beat up on trans kids because nine trans kids last year wanted to play sports, we’re now going to affect a policy for more than 1.2 million students?”
WATCH: Del. @pwcdanica's powerful statement on the House floor today, calling out the hypocrisy behind the anti-trans sports ban.
They claim trans kids needing to use the toilet are a threat needing to be addressed at the highest levels of government but kids who cannot even get a license to drive, cannot sign for their own medical care, cannot buy alcohol, have known lack emotional and judgment control at this stage of development / age in their lives can walk around with weapons with mass killing capacity in public with no restrictions. Tell me what really the indoctrination is, what really is the harm to society. This is the republican ideology that makes no public safety sense at the same time republicans claim that drag queen reading hours where men dress up in costume to read to children with adults present are a danger to children and society. WTF! These republicans want to destroy civil society, and install some kind of dystopian mythical wide west macho idea that never existed. In the real history, western towns and cities had strict no carry gun laws. Guns for most people were tools rarely carried. They were expensive and ammo also expensive and hard to get / store. Think about it, there was no Amazon or large guns / ammo store nearby to just walk over to and get a few hundred rounds. I wish these people would learn history and reality and get their heads out of right wing mythology. Hugs
Missouri’s Republican-led House on Wednesday voted against banning minors from openly carrying firearms on public land without adult supervision.
The proposal to ban children from carrying guns without adult supervision in public failed by a 104-39 vote. Only one Republican voted in support of it.
Democratic Rep. Donna Baringer said police in her district asked for the change to stop “14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St. Louis carrying AR-15s.”
“Now they have been emboldened, and they are walking around with them,” Baringer said. “Until they actually brandish them, and brandish them with intent, our police officers’ hands are handcuffed.”
The measure was part of an hours-long House debate on the best way to fight crime, particularly in the St. Louis area.
Republican Rep. Lane Roberts —- a former Joplin, Missouri police chief and state public safety director — initially included the restrictions on children possessing guns in a broader crime bill, which the House voted to give initial approval to later Wednesday. But lawmakers on a House committee that Roberts leads stripped the provision on guns last week.
“Every time we talked about the provision related to guns, we knew that that was going to be difficult on our side of the aisle,” Roberts said Wednesday.
Republicans decried the effort as an unneeded infringement on gun rights.
“While it may be intuitive that a 14-year-old has no legitimate purpose, it doesn’t actually mean that they’re going to harm someone. We don’t know that yet,” said Rep. Tony Lovasco, a Republican from the St. Louis suburb of O’Fallon. “Generally speaking, we don’t charge people with crimes because we think they’re going to hurt someone.”
Other provisions in the measure would allow the governor to appoint a special prosecutor in counties with high crime rates, a provision targeted at St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner.
Republican lawmakers for years have criticized Gardner, a 47-year-old Democrat first elected in 2016 as St. Louis’ first Black female prosecutor.
She is one of several progressive prosecutors elected in recent years with a focus on creating more fairness in the criminal justice system. But Republican lawmakers say she’s not doing enough to fight crime.
Want to live in a theocracy? This is the situation in the US, we have a set of Christian Nationalist aided by traditionalist conservatives that think 1950s was the golden days in society in the US. This is not just an attempt to roll back the advances in society the last 70 years, changes that are normal if you look at history, this is an attempt to lock all of society to a point in the past with it never changing. We are at a very dangerous point in history. Look how this people project their actions on others claiming the LGBTQ+ and their supporters are violent thugs, are brown shirts and SS troopers, are intolerant of others views, all the things these Christian nationalists do to the LGBTQ+ community. You don’t see the LGBTQ+ removing Christian books or the bible from libraries defunding them for having books with Christian characters, attacking churches or places where bible studies are happening. The Christians are not the victims here. Hugs
OT. I am really trying to post and to make sense of the information. I had a setback with my pharmacy for the new medication my pain doctor prescribed due to the Florida government’s laws so I had to call them, and it will be three days from when prescribed to when I may be able to get it. There were other problems. The pain doctor removed one medication to add another stronger one, but that caused a problem with the pharmacy which is under threat from the Florida government on any pain medication. I hurt so bad right now in back, arms, legs, fingers that I can hardly reason and make this post. The doctor offered me several different changes of medications including OxyContin and its versions, Vicodin, and the one that scares me the most Fentanyl. They agree I need more pain relief than I am getting. They scheduled an appointment next month for an injection into my T6 /T7 vertebrae but there is also a problem with my T8 vertebrae. Another issue is under Medicare I can only get 4 injections a year in any one area. Plus another issue is the amount of steroids I can take with my poor bones VS the number of injections I need to relieve the pain. Also remember the state of Florida legislators think they know more than the trained professions so they restrict the help I can get. The important thing is my doctors now all agree I am beyond functioning, and they need to go to a higher level to help me. Also a side note: I got a jury summons. I showed it to my pain doctor. She said no way you can do that; they would be calling an ambulance if you tried. She wrote a letter to the clerk of court and had her office fax it to them. I also sent an email to the clerk of court with the same. I got a reply very shortly saying I was permanently removed from jury duty. Understand I have done jury duty before, and I take it seriously and back then wanted to do it. I even might say I enjoyed doing it. But there is no way I can do so now when I cannot sit to read news or even handle my blog that I love. Hugs
He tried to de-fund Sesame Street for letting a gay actor appear on the show. Now he’s taking on the drag queens running America.
A staunchly anti-LGBTQ+ Arkansas Republican is warning his constituents about the dangers of drag queens “running this place” and said that Christians have to “take authority” over the government in the U.S.
“We must take authority,” Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert (R) said on his Save the Nation with Jason Rapert broadcast. “God told us to go out there and be fruitful, multiply, fill the Earth, subdue it, and have dominion over everything.”
“Friends, the reason the country is struggling,” he continued, “is because the Christians in America have failed to take authority and now is the time to choose, now is the time to stand.”
“Look, do you think that America is gonna be free with a bunch of drag queens running this place? No!” he said, not mentioning any drag queen by name who is in a position of political power in the federal government. There is only one known former drag queen in Congress, Rep. George Santos (R-NY), and he haspromoted staunchly anti-LGBTQ+ political positions.
“If you’re tired of that stuff, it’s time to make a change,” Rapert continued.
“This is a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people. It was created for you to be in charge,” he said, likely referring to his conservative constituents and no one else.
Former Arkansas state senator and founder of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers Jason Rapert declares that Christians “must take authority” over government: “Do you think that America is gonna be free with a bunch of drag queens running this place?” pic.twitter.com/cUp6pyr4XF
Former Arkansas state senator and founder of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers Jason Rapert declares that Christians "must take authority" over government: "Do you think that America is gonna be free with a bunch of drag queens running this place?" pic.twitter.com/cUp6pyr4XF
Rapert has a history of anti-LGBTQ+ statements and actions. In 2020, he suggested cutting off funding for PBS because out actor Billy Porter was going to appear on an episode of Sesame Street.
“I can pass a bill to cutoff all funding for the rebroadcast of PBS programming through AETN [Arkansas’s PBS affiliate] and also stop all funding for AETN altogether if necessary,” he wrote on Facebook at the time.
In a separate Facebook post, Rapert claimed to have signed a petition to stop Porter from appearing on Sesame Street, a petition started by Canadian rightwing website Lifesite News that claims to have over 38,000 signatures.
The petition said that Sesame Street was trying “to push drag queens on children,” even though Billy Porter isn’t a drag queen. It claimed that Porter’s appearance on the show would “sexualize children” and cited a statistic about the epidemic of suicide among transgender youth, implying that Sesame Street will turn kids transgender and being transgender leads to suicide.
“The LGBT activists who behave as Nazis are trying to ruin anyone who ‘disagrees’ with them – even grandmothers,” he said on Facebook. “Simply believing in the Bible is offensive to these activists. They can’t stand it if you disagree. They demand full compliance with their diminished morality. They clearly behave just like the ‘brown shirts’ and ‘SS’ troops that Nazis used to destroy Jews and anyone who disagreed with the Nazi ideology.”
“I don’t care what THEY believe, but I refuse to let them intimidate those who disagree with them,” he continued. “Our laws should not give special protections to people who behave this way. It is a sad time in American history.”
That same year, he tried to get the Arkansas Senate to ban marriage equality despite the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges protecting same-sex couples’ right to get married in every state. He claimed that a “silent majority” spoke out against equal rights in the 2016 election and “they’re going to speak again.” His bill failed.
“It is not bigoted to say that marriage is between a man and a woman,”he said at the time.
In 2020, he spoke out against his state’s mask mandate, calling measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic “draconian measures” as originating from “liberal hacks” who are “spreading fear.”
“There is no question that Covid19 is serious and can be very deadly for those with underlying conditions and the elderly,” he wrote in a Facebook post about then-Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s (R) mask mandate. “But the fact is 99% of our nation has not been afflicted and this pandemic is no worse statistically than other severe outbreaks we have endured without draconian measures isolating the healthy and shutting down our entire economy.”
By July 2020, he had been hospitalized for pneumonia after testing positive for COVID-19. He told his supporters that his family was “sincerely grateful for the many prayers of love and support that have been expressed on our behalf.”
And on these same republicans that claim that the democrats are stealing elections, so they need to enact strict voting laws that disenfranchise a lot of voters while the right itself is desperately breaking election laws to try to entrench their dying minority into permanent rule. It is important to remember by numbers of people the republican party is a shrinking minority, and their ideas are ever more unpopular with the majority of the country. This is their desperate attempt to push time back to when their ideas were popular and the way the country was. Hugs
These are all articles I wanted to talk about. But right now the center of my spine is on fire, I have an appointment with pain management on the 6th and I will get the report of the MRI and ask to move forward with quality of life. I can’t continue this way. Ron is talking about moving one of my Xboxes to the bedroom so I can rest and still play. Best wishes to everyone. Hugs
Please note several things in play to hide the bigotry. Instead of family values or family friendly talk is instead the songs have vulgarity. Like kids don’t hear or know vulgar talk already? Tell me a middle schooler who doesn’t know all the swear words and I will show you a kid that is homeschooled, has no internet / smart phone, and is parented by mute parents. Parents swear, there are swears on TV, and there are swears between kids at school, and it is everywhere on the internet. But the songs were already changed to be more acceptable. What stopped the play was that two of the parents were gay. They couldn’t admit gay people exist, that must be hidden from kids and not acknowledged in society. That is what this is about, removing any mention of gay people. As I recently reported and have learned this is being driven hard by several hard right religious think tanks trying hard to force red states to adopt a total ban on LGBTQ+ representation in schools via books, rainbow stickers, and any media that even hints at LGBTQ+. It is a desperate well funded attempt to return a more religious morality view before advances in society and the understandings that people are born different from what was know or understood in 1950s. They want to remove the advancements in medical knowledge. Think of everything that has changed since 1950 and these well funded groups want to reverse all of that. Hugs
After months of planning, a local school district abruptly canceled its musical, claiming it was “vulgar.”
In a statement, the Cardinal Local Schools superintendent Jack Cunningham said, “The Cardinal Local School District has decided that its spring musical production will not be ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.’ Its dialogue and song lyrics contain vulgarity and are therefore not suitable for our pre-teen and teenage students in an educational setting.”
Two of the characters in the musical are gay male parents. The district states anyone suggesting discrimination is “mistaken.”
“When we found out it was canceled, everybody was just heartbroken. Honestly, it was terrible. Everyone was just crying,” said Riley Matchinga a senior who was playing a lead role in the musical.
Mandi Matchinga, Riley’s mother and assistant director for the musical, said she was shocked to learn production was halted given it was greenlit early in the school year by the district.
The superintendent stated the musical was not approved by the school board or district administration.
The school board made the decision to cancel the musical. A request for comment was not returned.
A meeting was held earlier this month with the administration where Matchinga said three concerns were brought up by the superintendent, who informed the production of some complaints.
“There were concerns about the language in one of the songs,” said Matchinga. “There was a concern about Jesus appearing in the show and there was a complaint about the fact that two of the parents were gay.”
The district went on to state it wants “student productions to be something that community members of all ages may enjoy without adult supervision.”
Matchinga said $1,700 was spent on the production. She said it’s too late in the school year to gain licensing required to put on another musical because that would involve 10 to 17 weeks of rehearsing.
Her daughter is planning to study musical theater in college and said the purpose of theater is not only to entertain, but to inform.
“Theater is about making you think about things and making you question things and thinking critically,” she said.
Matchinga plans to address the issue at the upcoming school board meeting.
“Now they’re using the word vulgar instead of family-friendly,” said Matchinga. “What is vulgar? What exactly are the issues you have with this show and can we sit and come to some sort of compromise and agreement?”
I was just reading in the republican interpretation of the don’t say gay laws just the existence of LGBTQ+ characters in books or shows and the acknowledgement that gay people exist is considered “instruction in sexual orientation”. Bill is gay, he dates boys is called instruction in sexual orientation according to the law. Just the mention of a famous person in history being gay is a violation of the don’t say gay laws because the republicans say telling kids that a famous person was gay is instructing them in sexual orientation. How is that reasonable, the teachers are not saying here is how to be gay, here is how to do gay sex, here are the gay bylaws and agenda. It is like saying that the earth is round is instruction in anti-Christian rhetoric. Hugs
Like false election litigation in 2020, the plan is funded by the far-right Thomas More Society.
A newly formed far-right wing group in Michigan is taking a page out of the election-denial playbook with a plan to flood Michigan school boards with false documents akin to the fake electors scheme in 2020, which sought to award made-up electoral votes to Donald Trump and hand him the presidency.
In this case, the goal is to erase all references to LGBTQ+ identity from Michigan public schools.
The scheme, concocted by a new group posing as a state-sponsored education initiative, was first reported by Judd Legum with Popular Information and revolves around a fake “opt-out” form the group plans to distribute to Michigan parents in February.
That paperwork, which organizers have crafted to appear “official”, purports to give parents the option to opt their children out of any instruction, policy, program, event or discussion that references LGBTQ+ identity, from traditional sex education classes and gender-neutral bathrooms to non-heterosexual storylines in novels and proximity to gay Pride flags or rainbow-themed stickers.
The Great Schools Initiative (GSI), founded by three Michiganders in September 2022, seeks to exploit Michigan schools’ sex education class opt-out that gives parents the choice of pulling their kids from traditional sex-ed instruction “without penalty or loss of academic credit.” By law, if parents think their children have not been sufficiently shielded from that instruction, they can embark on an appeals process all the way up to the Michigan Supreme Court.
GSI’s founders hope to fool parents, administrators, school district lawyers, and judges into thinking parents’ complaints based on GSI’s form are the same as those based on the letter and spirit of the actual opt-out policy.
The group’s founders include Nathan Pawl, the CEO of a network security company; attorney Matthew Nelson; and Monica Yatooma, a director at a medical waste company.
GSI is funded by far-right wing advocacy group The Thomas More Society, which itself is financed by a group of mostly secret donors, among them the Leo J Dreiling & Albina Dreiling Charitable Trust, a family foundation that donated $250,000 to The Thomas More Society in 2021.
In a January 19 Zoom meeting and presentation, GSI co-founder Pawl outlined the strategy. The group’s goal was to have “20, 30, 50, or 100 parents per school” start “dropping off the opt-out forms” next month. The uprising will “be too much for them to handle,” and in order to comply with GSI’s opt-out form, which Pawl mistakenly believes school districts in the state would be obligated to do, the only option would be “to transform our schools.”
At a meeting on October 26, held at Mother of God Chaldean Catholic Church in Southfield, MI, The Thomas More Society’s Erick Kaardal said GSI would pursue “asymmetrical lawfare” to overwhelm the public schools.
It’s the same tactic Kaardel and The Thomas More Society tried in 2020 with their support of efforts to overturn the presidential election. Kaardel sued former Vice President Mike Pence, the United States Senate, and dozens of other entities on behalf of a large collection of fringe groups demanding the certified results of the election be thrown out.
State legislatures were encumbered from executing the will of the people by unauthorized state officials, the lawsuit stated, including submitting so-called “alternate slates” of state electors who voted in favor of Donald Trump.
“This wholesale delegation of legislative authority operates contrary to the Constitution by inviting ‘cabal, intrigue and corruption’ rather than operating to prevent the same,” the filing stated without a hint of irony.
Student athletes will be forced to hand over information about their periods (Pexels)
Student athletes in Florida could be forced to turn in information about their menstrual history after an athletics association’s medical panel doubled down on its recommendation.
The move comes after a suggestion that the association’s board adopt a national sports registration form – which makes menstrual information mandatory.
Questions listed on the form include asking if players have had a period, when they first got their period, the date of their most recent one was and the regularity of their cycle during the previous 12 months.
Notably, the main difference between the national form and Florida’s system, as the Palm Beach Post reports, is where the information is stored.
The national form states that the part detailing athletes’ medical history – including their menstrual history – should not be turned into schools but remain with their physician.
However, the FHSAA’s sports medicine committee recommended that all pages of the form be handed over to their schools.
The committee argues that school staff need all the information they can get on their athletes, in case of a medical emergency.
The committee’s recommendation now goes to the FHSAA’s board of directors, which is due to meet at the end of next month.
The questions could pose legal consequences
The questions and the recommendation about where the information will go has come under fire from parents, medical professionals and abortion rights campaigners in recent weeks and months.
Such information could thus be used by courts to convict students if they have an abortion after the 15-week limit.
Parents have also spoken out against the risk of children’s medical information being leaked or stolen in the event of a data breach.
As the Palm Beach Post reported, huge swathes of student athletes’ registration forms have already been moved online and are stored by a third party.
Dr. Michael Haller, a paediatric endocrinologist based in Florida city of Gainesville, said: “I don’t see why [school districts] need access to that type of information. It sure as hell will give me pause to fill it out with my kid.”
These clueless morons don’t seem to understand heterosexuality is a sexual orientation. You cannot have gay without having straight also. “… prohibit books depicting sexual or gender identity …” also means any books that have parents, boys or girls, no Mr. or Mrs., no dating stories even of straight kids because all of these things are sexual or gender identities. What these people really want is nothing about anyone not straight and cis. They want their Leave It To Beaver 1950s style society. Only a society that never really existed is what they wish for. These laws apply to public libraries, not just school ones. They want to erase the entire LGBTQ+ from society in the same way the Russians have done. Simply make them all illegal, make it illegal to talk about them in a positive way, illegal to write about them in a positive way, illegal to show them in any media such as movies, TV, or even theater in a positive way. They are doing this in schools in red republican run states like Florida already. Not even rainbow stickers can be displayed or even rainbow colors on clothing in schools yet I see they have not outlawed the confederate battle flag. Removing these things from schools and society wont stop kids from being born gay or stop kids from having a different gender identity from assigned at birth, but it does make those kids more isolated and at risk of being targeted or bullied. This stuff is a radical attempt to undo 70 years of social advancement for minorities. Hugs
The bill, which would prohibit books depicting sexual or gender identity, proposes up to 30 days in prison for librarians who refuse to remove banned titles.
Amanda Darrow, the director of youth, family and education programs, with books at the Utah Pride Center in Salt Lake City on Dec. 16, 2021.Rick Bowmer / AP
By Associated Press
Books containing “sexually explicit” content — including depictions of sexual or gender identity — would be banned from North Dakota public libraries under legislation that state lawmakers began considering Tuesday.
The GOP-dominated state House Judiciary Committee heard arguments but did not take a vote on the measure, which applies to visual depictions of “sexually explicit” content and proposes up to 30 days imprisonment for librarians who refuse to remove the offending books.
The proposal comes amid a national wave of Republican-backed laws to ban books that feature LGBTQ subject matter — though usually those bills have been limited to school libraries, not public ones.
Supporters of the bill said it would preserve children’s innocence and reduce their exposure to pornography.
But critics said the measure is “steeped in discrimination” and would allow government censorship of material that is not actually obscene.
House Majority Leader Mike Lefor, of Dickinson, introduced the bill and said public libraries currently contain books that have “disturbing and disgusting” content, including ones that describe virginity as a silly label and assert that gender is fluid.
Lefor argued that a child’s exposure to such content has been associated with addiction, poor self esteem, devalued intimacy, increasing divorce rates, unprotected sex among young people and poor well-being — though did he did not offer any evidence to support such claims.
Stark County resident Autumn Richard also spoke in favor of the bill, giving examples of explicit content in the graphic novel “Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human” and the kids’ comic book “Sex Is a Funny Word” — both available in public libraries.
Richard argued the books might have beneficial knowledge about contraceptives, body image and abusive relationships, but many sections provide information that she said was harmful for minors.
Though supporters of North Dakota’s bill repeatedly called the sexual content “obscene,” opponents said the material in question is not actually considered legally obscene.
“Nearly 50 years ago, the (U.S.) Supreme Court set the high constitutional bar that defines obscenity,” said Cody Schuler, an advocacy manager at the American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota, who testified against the bill.
Obscenity is a narrow, well-defined category of unprotected speech that excludes any work with serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value, Schuler said. Few, if any, books have been deemed obscene, and the standard for restraining a library’s ability to distribute a book are even more stringent, Schuler added.
The definition of pornography is also subjective, opponents of the bill said.
Library Director Christine Kujawa at Bismarck Veterans Memorial Public Library said the library has a book with two little hamsters on the cover. At the end of the book, the hamsters get married, and they are both male.
“It’s a cute book,” Kujawa said — but it would be considered pornography under the bill because the book includes gender identity.
Facing criminal charges for keeping books on shelves is “something I never thought I would have to consider during my career as a librarian,” Kujawa added.
In addition to banning depictions of “sexual identity” and “gender identity,” the measure specifies 10 other things that library books cannot visually depict, including “sexual intercourse,” “sexual preference” and “sexual perversion,” — though it does not define any of those terms. The proposal does not apply to books that have “serious artistic significance” or “materials used in science courses,” among other exceptions.
The bill would allow prosecutors to charge any person who displays these materials at places that children visit with a class B misdemeanor. The maximum penalty is 30 days of imprisonment and a $1,500 fine.
The wave of attempted book banning and restrictions continues to intensify across the country, the American Library Association reported in September. Numbers for 2022 approached the previous year’s totals, which were the highest in decades. Bills to restrict mature content in school libraries became laws last year in Tennessee, Utah, Missouri, Florida and Oklahoma.
The most targeted books have included Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir about sexual identity, “Gender Queer,” and Jonathan Evison’s “Lawn Boy,” a coming-of-age novel narrated by a young gay man, according to an April report.
The U.S. Department of Educationinvestigated the removal of LGBTQ-themed booksfrom the library of a Texas school district in December. The investigation followed a complaint by the ACLU and appeared to be the first based on a nationwide movement to ban school library books dealing with sexuality and gender.
Brutal Persecution of Lesbians under Nazi Regime Rape, Beatings & Murders Nazi Germany. During the Weimar Republic, German society experienced complex social, political, and cultural transformations. Meeting places advertised in a new lesbian press that emerged in the mid-1920s and lesbian journals also contributed to the growth of lesbian networks. Public discussions of sexuality had occurred in Germany since the late 19th century. Physician and sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld as well as others organized gay and lesbian “friendship leagues”, which also included heterosexual members.
Large numbers of Germans were opposed to these public discussions of sex and sexuality. They viewed such debates as decadent, overly permissive, and immoral. Even before coming to power, many Nazis resented the visibility of gay and lesbian communities.
Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on the 30th of January 1933.
Beginning in 1933, the Nazi regime began to harass gay and lesbian communities and individuals by shutting down and raiding their meeting places and organizations. By eliminating gay and lesbian gathering places and presses, the regime made it far more difficult for lesbians and gay men to connect with each other and the Nazis effectively dissolved the communities that had developed during the Weimar Republic.
Over the course of the 1930s, Nazi actions targeting male homosexuality became even more systematically oppressive. In 1935, the Nazi regime reformed Paragraph 175. The statute now criminalized any and all sexual intimacy between men.
Eventually, SS leader Heinrich Himmler took the lead in persecuting male homosexuality, which he called a “public scourge.” In 1936, Himmler created the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion.
However, the Nazi regime never criminalized sexual relations between women as it saw lesbians, first and foremost, as women. The Nazis believed that German women had a special task to perform: motherhood. They had a responsibility to give birth to racially pure Germans, called “Aryans.” The Nazis did not create any separate policies that singled out lesbians as a problem for Aryan procreation. Their reasoning drew on widespread attitudes about the differences between male and female sexuality. The Nazis concluded that Aryan lesbians could easily be persuaded or forced to bear children. During the Nazi regime, lesbians could not continue to live and socialize as they had during the Weimar Republic.
There were lesbians who joined underground anti-Nazi resistance groups or helped hide Jews.
Such was a case of Frieda Belinfante, a half-Jewish lesbian, who was a member of Dutch gay resistance group called the CKC.
The reason why some lesbians were arrested and sent to concentration camps was, that they were arrested as members of other groups such as Jews, Roma, asocials, political prisoners and professional criminals.
In lesbian prisoners’ paperwork, concentration camp authorities usually listed a racial, political, social, or criminal reason as the primary cause for their arrest. In a few cases, the authorities also noted their sexuality.
Such was a case of Henny Schermann, a Jewish lesbian from Germany. Sometimes their arrest had little or nothing to do with the fact that they were lesbians. At other times, their sexuality may have played a role. This was especially the case regarding arrests prompted by denunciations. Yet, denunciations could cause unwanted scrutiny for lesbians. To such women belonged Elli Smula and Margarete Rosenberg.
Between 5,000 and 15,000 men were imprisoned in concentration camps as “homosexual” offenders. This group of prisoners was typically required to wear a pink triangle badge sewn onto their camp uniforms. According to many survivor accounts, pink triangle male prisoners were among the most abused groups in the camps.
However, women who self-identified or were identified as lesbians did not wear the pink triangle. Same-sex relations in the camps could be shocking to other prisoners, who came from a variety of cultures and backgrounds. Homosexual prisoners rarely benefited from solidarity from the other prisoners, which for many camp inmates provided tools of survival, such as access to food and clothing.
To this day, it remains a research challenge to find historical sources related to lesbian experiences under the Nazi regime.
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Del. Danica Roem at a 2017 White House protestPhoto: Ted Eytan/via Wiki
State Sen. Jason RapertPhoto: Screenshot
Photo: Shutterstock
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