Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) held an anti-trans rally at the Capitol this week. A whopping 12 or so people attended and no major media outlets covered it.
The rally was a veritable who’s who of contemporary transphobic trolls, including members of the book-banning “parents’ rights” group Moms for Liberty; members of the anti-LGBTQ conservative think tank Heritage Foundation; de-transitioned young adult right-wing media darling Chloe Cole; J.K. Rowling fanboy Chris Elston; conspiracy theorist James Lindsay; sexually harassing “comedian” Alex Stein; and of course, Greene herself.
The protestors held signs proclaiming, “Children cannot consent to puberty blockers,” “Gender ideology does not belong in schools,” and signs that defined the words “mom” and “dad” as “a human parent who protects kids from gender ideology.”
Greene brought the transphobic sign that she hangs in front of her congressional office which says, “There are two genders: male and female. ‘Trust the science.’” In reality, biology has proven the existence of numerous animals that can change gender and that gender and sex are both more complicated than binaries.
The protestors spent their time taking pictures of each other and then re-tweeting one another’s posts about the protest.
In a tweet tagging many of the protestors, the Heritage Foundation wrote that the demonstrators were “calling out policies that push for minors to have access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-reassignment surgeries.”
This is a lie, of course. No policies are “pushing” minors to undergo gender-affirming treatment, and surgeries aren’t conducted on minors either. The policies the protestors oppose include acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ+ people in schools and ensuring that trans youth have access to life-saving care as well as an equal education.
Right-wing transphobes imagine that LGBTQ+ people and allies, drag queens, and medical professionals all use “gender ideology” to “indoctrinate” and “groom” impressionable young kids into states of “gender confusion” and “rapid onset gender dysphoria” in order to “mutilate” their bodies in profitable surgeries.
However, every major medical and psychological association recognizes that trans youth self-identify consistently, insistently, and persistently from young ages. They also have deemed access to gender-affirming care as necessary for ensuring the emotional and physical well-being of trans youth.
Why? My dogs that love gravy why would an adult want kids bullied and hurt? Damn why are republicans and the right so hateful? This is to respect and protect students making the classroom a place they can learn without fear. Their push to have a homogenous society where everyone is just the same as them and fit into the mold they insist everyone must be with no diversity or difference from them? They see no beauty in others if they are not clones of themselves. These people are so spiteful they would see kids harmed rather than allow them to be protected. There is a video at the linked site that my security / cookie settings won’t show. Hugs
Idaho State Senator Chris Trakel (R) Speaks out against a proposed policy protecting LGBTQ+ studentsPhoto: Screenshot
An Idaho school board meeting devolved into chaos on Monday night while a Republican state senator was virulently speaking out against a proposed policy to protect LGBTQ+ students in the district.
The proposed Caldwell School Board policy seeks to prevent discrimination against LGBTQ+ students by, among other things, allowing them to use the locker rooms and bathrooms that align with their lived gender, requiring teachers and other staff to use their preferred names and pronouns, and allowing same-sex couples to attend dances and other activities.
The room was reportedly filled to capacity that night, with several others standing up to speak about the policy before state Sen. Chris Trakel (R) took the podium.
According toKTVB, most speakers were there to advocate against implementing the policy, but three students spoke out in favor of it.
Before Trakel got up to speak, the meeting was almost recessed and adjourned several times as people continued to get rowdy during the public comment period.
Trakel’s speech is immediately hostile. Video of the meeting shows him lambasting the board for allegedly violating Idaho state law based on other proposed curriculum policies and for violating the meeting attendees’ First Amendment rights by not allowing them to criticize school district employees.
“Now, to get on to the exciting part,” he said before attacking the proposed LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination policy and saying he was there under his official position as a state senator.
“You, under Idaho law, are required to maintain the morals and health of all the students… You are going to put all of their moral health and safety at risk, and like I told you before you will face litigation. You call that a threat, I’m telling you that is what will happen. It has already happened in several states and there’s already been rulings on it.”
“Before you waste taxpayer money, before you put a kid in harm’s way, you better throw this policy out and not even consider it.”
At that point, the board chair, Marisela Pesina, turned to a fellow board member and whispered something. Trakel snapped, “I’ve got the floor. Ms. Pesina will you please listen to me.”
“Sir,” Pesina responded tersely. And that is when the chaos began.
Trakel started yelling, “You claim you want people to follow the rules, but you break the rules left and right.”
As his rant continued, Pesina called a recess, at which point more meeting attendees began yelling along with Trakel. The board then voted to adjourn the meeting early, which only caused more anger in the audience.
People began screaming “cowards” and “unethical.” Many could be heard threatening to recall board members.
“Boo on all of you! This is absurd!” one person shouts.
“It was disappointing that some attending refused to follow the rules, which prevented others from sharing their thoughts with the Board,” Caldwell School District communications director Jessica Watts toldIdaho EdNews. “Caldwell School District welcomes and encourages feedback on its work. What we do not welcome are those who refuse to follow the steps necessary for a civil, courteous, and respectful environment for that feedback to occur.”
This was in France, but it is what the republicans and the right want here in the US for gay or trans kids. I admire the bravery of this child to try to stand up to the abuse as long as he could. I hate that adults cannot seem to understand how these bullying attacks and insults eat deep into children. The leadership in Florida seems to want to make this a common thing, drive the gay kids underground, make the too scared to be openly gay. But while some gay kids can pass others can’t. Some kids just cannot act in a way society says is straight, and they never should have to do so. They should be allowed to be who they are. Hugs
“He was constantly harassed for the way he dressed, his mannerisms, his presence. He didn’t hide himself and that bothered some people.”
A 13-year-old boy in France named Lucas died by suicide last Saturday, January 7 after facing anti-LGBTQ+ bullying at school. People close to his family say that the school did little to stop the bullying.
The student at the Louis Armand de Golbey middle school in the Vosges department was out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, the French magazine Têtu reports.
“He was constantly harassed for the way he dressed, his mannerisms, his presence,” said Stéphanie, a family friend. “He didn’t hide himself and that bothered some people.”
She said Lucas was “always pleasant, caring, spontaneous, full of dreams and a life.”
Psychological help has been made available for students and teachers at the middle school who need it.
“There’s really a lot of emotion from adults who didn’t see anything, didn’t see that Lucas wasn’t doing well recently,” said Valérie Dautresme in a radio interview. She’s the academic services director for the National Education system in the Vosges department.
Dautresme said that Lucas and his mother reported homophobic insults since the start of the school year in September at a parent-teacher meeting.
“For us at this point, the situation had been resolved,” she claimed. “Lucas said that things were working themselves out and that he was no longer being insulted at school.”
Stéphanie contradicted Dautresme’s claim that the matter had been “resolved” and said that Lucas complained “again and again and again. His mother asked for help several times. The school, where he spent three-quarters of his time, didn’t react.”
She said that the family is going to file a formal complaint. The family’s lawyer, Catherine Faivre, said, “There is a whole chain of people with responsibilities who can be investigated and spoken with if, in effect, the elements of an infraction can be constituted.”
Louis Armand de Golbey middle school has been taking part in a national program to fight bullying in schools under the direction of National Education and Youth of France Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer. Staff members were to be trained in how to spot bullying and in a protocol on what to do if someone faces bullying.
A fundraiser was opened online to help the family that raised 7554 € ($8200). Lucas’s funeral is planned for Saturday, January 14. A vigil is being planned but the date has not yet been announced.
Editor’s note: This article mentions suicide. If you need to talk to someone now, call the Trans Lifeline at 1-877-565-8860. It’s staffed by trans people, for trans people. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for LGBTQ youth at 1-866-488-7386. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
A bill proposed in the unicameral would place limitations on who can watch drag shows in Nebraska. The bill would ban anyone under 19 from watching a drag show, and it would prohibit anyone under 21 from watching drag shows where alcohol is present.
LB371 was introduced by Republican State Sen. Dave Murman and is already stirring debate in the Legislature. Democratic State Sen. Megan Hunt has filed a motion to postpone the bill indefinitely, a decision that is still pending.
Anyone who knowingly brings someone underage to a show would be subject to a misdemeanor. The entities themselves would be subject to a $10,000 fine per violation. The bill would also make it illegal to use state funds to host a drag show.
This bill doesn't even bother with the "prurient interest" part.
It entirely is just "if you are exhibiting a gender identity other than your own and making jokes or doing a play or monologuing or creating art, you're doing drag"
Senator Murman just introduced a bill to put age limits on drag shows, and I just filed a motion to indefinitely postpone it which would kill the bill. We will fight this bill every step of the way. #NELeghttps://t.co/CWHVnf8CfA
And so the haters / republicans / right wing pushes it further. Really it is turning the clock back. It is regressive. It is denying every advance in society and in medical science since the 1950s. Ask your self why that age / time stamp is so attractive to republican males? Because everyone but them were oppressed and they had unfettered control. Hug
Advocates want the bill to forbid discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity to 8th grade.
The Florida chapter of Moms for Liberty, the conservative nonprofit that advocates for parental rights in schools, would like state lawmakers to expand the state law that restricts classroom instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation for children from kindergarten through the third grade.
The Parental Rights in Education law, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by its critics, ignited a firestorm of criticism among Democrats and LGBTQ advocates and received national attention after it was introduced and later signed into law last year.
“We are advocating to increase that as far as ages and grades to have it be K-8,” said Angela Dubach, the Pinellas County chapter chair of the organization, speaking to the members of the Pinellas County legislative delegation as they met as a group on Wednesday morning at the Clearwater branch campus of St. Petersburg College.
A group of students, parents, and teachers filed a lawsuit last year to block the measure from being implemented, alleging it is unconstitutional in part because it “chills speech and expression that have any connection, however remote, to sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Brandon Wolf,press secretary for Equality Florida, slammed the idea.
“At every step of the way, right-wing extremists have gaslit the community about its insatiable desire for censorship and erasure of LGBTQ people,” he told the Phoenix in an email.
“They insisted that the Don’t Say LGBTQ law would be narrow in scope and limited to K-3, despite knowing that the law’s impacts would be far broader and more sweeping. Already, we’ve seen books with LGBTQ characters banned, ‘Safe Space’ stickers peeled from classroom windows, the contributions of LGBTQ people in history censored, and LGBTQ History Month itself rejected in districts across Florida,” he continued.
“The desire of right-wing groups like Moms for Liberty to wield more government censorship over more students is shameful and at odds with the bogus rationalization for this harmful policy they were peddling throughout 2022. LGBTQ people are a part of society’s fabric. We are your neighbors, family members, and friends. And our state should be a place committed to protecting all students and respecting all families.”
Four asks
The expansion of that law was one of four proposals that Dubach called on lawmakers to consider going into the 2023 legislative session. Dubach said that she’d also like legislators to “take a look” at expanding the timeline on legislation signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021 that bans private employers and government entities from implementing COVID-19 vaccine mandates and school districts from requiring face masks. The measure is slated to expire on June 1.
Another measure that the Florida chapter of Moms for Liberty supports relates to school board races.
“Myself and our organization supports partisan school board elections,” Dubach said. “That’s something that we are asking you to take a look at. I was originally told that we’d have to change the Florida Constitution so we wouldn’t be able to do that, so if you could advise me on that that’d be wonderful.”
Measures have been filed in both the House and Senate this year calling for a constitutional amendment to require members of a district school board to be chosen in partisan elections. If approved, it would go into effect in 2026.
Florida voters voted overwhelmingly in 1998 to make school board races nonpartisan, and efforts to put such an amendment on the ballot have failed in recent legislative sessions. But that was before Gov. DeSantis weighed in on the topic last summer and endorsed 30 candidates in school board races, the majority of whom won either in their Primary or General Election contests last year.
The last item Dubach mentioned was “some type of legislation” around the amount of mental health funding that public schools in Florida receive.
“Right now, Pinellas County schools have $140 million allocated for mental health, and I talk to teacher after teacher after teacher and they say, ‘We are not mental health counselors. We want to educate these children and get them ready for the next grade,’” Dubach told the group of legislators. “They don’t want anything to do with mental health. That is up to the parents, their doctors, and all of that stuff is at home.”
The Phoenix reached out to the Pinellas County School District to confirm those financial figures but did not immediately receive a response. State lawmakers have five more weeks of committee meetings scheduled between now and the official beginning of the legislative session on March 7.
What police states Florida and other republican states have become. Remember these are the same people who were super angry that the Dr. Seuss people decided not to publish racist books that were not selling well anymore. These are the same people angry that the Potato head toy with no gender got rid of the Mr / Mrs in the name of the toy. This is what a dictatorship looks like, the start of state sanctioned ideology forced on kids, this is the real indoctrination. I want to point out the kids were already aware of discrimination and racism. What better place to address it and try to encourage an acceptance of equality and diversity? Third grade is 8 years old and by that age the black kids are well aware of race and racism, why shouldn’t the white kids have it explained to them so they understand it is a bad thing? Hugs
The assistant director of communications for Olentangy Local School District abruptly stopped the reading of the Dr. Seuss book “The Sneetches” to a third-grade classroom during an NPR podcast after students asked about race.
Shale Meadows Elementary School third grade teacher Mandy Robek was reading “The Sneetches” to her class as part of NPR’s latest episode of “Planet Money” about the economic lessons in children’s books. During the podcast, which aired Friday, Amanda Beeman, the assistant director of communications for the school district, stopped the reading part way through the book.
NPR reporter Erika Beras spent the day in Robek’s class with Beeman for the podcast. As part of the district stipulations, politics were off limits. Six books were selected ahead of time by Beras and the district — including “The Sneetches.”
“I don’t know if I feel comfortable with the book being one of the ones featured,” Beeman is heard saying on the podcast during the middle of “The Sneetches” reading. “I just feel like this isn’t teaching anything about economics, and this is a little bit more about differences with race and everything like that.”
“The Sneetches,” published in 1961, is a book about two kinds of Sneetches: those with stars on their bellies and those without stars. The Plain-Belly Sneetches are judged negatively by their appearance, so capitalist Sylvester McMonkey McBean makes money selling them stars for their bellies. Meanwhile, the Star-Bellied Sneetches don’t like associating with the Plain-Belly Sneetches, so they start paying to have a machine take their stars off.
The Seuss family has said the book was intended to teach children not to judge or discriminate against others because of their appearance and to treat people equitably.
“It’s almost like what happened back then, how people were treated … Like, disrespected … Like, white people disrespected Black people…,” a third grade student is heard saying on the podcast.
Robek keeps on reading, but it’s shortly after this student’s comment is made on the podcast that Beeman interrupts the reading.
“I just don’t think that this is going to be the discussion that we wanted around economics,” Beeman said on the podcast. “So I’m sorry. We’re going to cut this one off.”
Beras tried to tell Beeman that “The Sneetches” is about preferences, open markets and economic loss, but Beeman replied, “I just don’t think it might be appropriate for the third-grade class and for them to have a discussion around it.”
On the “Planet Money” episode, Beras reached back out to Beeman to ask about what happened. Beeman replied, “When the book began addressing racism, segregation and discriminating behaviors, this was not the conversation we had prepared Mrs. Robek, the students or parents would take place. There may be some very important economics lessons in ‘The Sneetches,’ but I did not feel that those lessons were the themes students were going to grasp at that point in the day or in the book.”
Olentangy Schools responds to The Dispatch
Beeman explained to The Dispatch on Monday that the school district agreed to be part of the “Planet Money” story “to feature the great work that Mrs. Robek does.”
“We do not ban any books,” Beeman said.
“As (‘The Sneetches’) was being read, I made a personal judgment call we shouldn’t do the reading because of some of the other themes and undertones that were unfolding that were not shared that we would be discussing with parents,” Beeman said.
The book touches on racism, segregation, and discriminatory behavior, Beeman said.
“We are really not about suppressing any viewpoints or dialogues,” Beeman said. “There were great economic lessons and the conversation wasn’t going toward (economics).”
Looking back, Beeman said she does wish she had handled the situation differently by talking to Robek separately to figure out a way to continue the Seuss book and have the discussion geared more toward economics.
Beras did not immediately respond to The Dispatch’s questions Monday afternoon.
Some of the other books that Robek’s class read when Beras visited included “Pancakes, Pancakes!” by Eric Carle; “Put Me In The Zoo” by Robert Lopshire; and a poem from “Where The Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein.
The six books are “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” “If I Ran the Zoo,” “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer.”
What makes these people so afraid of sex? Why do they think teens / young adults were not just as horny in the 1950s as they are in the 2020s? How much better to just explain porn to kids starting at about ten years old. Explain it is not real, explain about consent, and as the kids age explain their feelings, desires, needs, and conception because teens and young people are going to have sex. They really are, and they have forever. The body is driven to it and unless you give them an outlet for that need, they will do it the most risky way as that normally is what young people do. The most risky stuff. Hugs
Louisiana web users who want to view adult content must now provide a valid driver’s license or state ID to prove they’re above 18 years of age, thanks to a new state law that recently went into effect.
And while that might sound funny, Republicans want to pass a similar law nationwide.
The law, House Bill 142 (HB 142), says that any commercial website containing 33.3 percent or more of sexually explicit material must “perform reasonable age verification methods to verify the age of individuals attempting to access the material.” While all popular adult websites haven’t instituted age checks yet, if they don’t, they can be sued for non-compliance.
The bill was introduced by anti-LGBTQ+ state Rep. Laurie Schlegel, a woman who introduced legislation banning transgender kids from playing on school sports teams matching their gender identities.
Schlegel’s HB 142 says, “[Sexual content] is creating a public health crisis and having a corroding influence on minors.” It also blames adult content for “the hypersexualization of teens and prepubescent children… low self-esteem, body image disorders, an increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages, and increased desire among adolescents to engage in risky sexual behavior.”
The bill also says sexual content may “impact brain development and functioning, contribute to emotional and medical illnesses, shape deviant sexual arousal, and lead to difficulty in forming or maintaining positive, intimate relationships, as well as promoting problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction.”
Louisiana is the second-poorest state in the country, with 17.4% of its population at or below the poverty line. It also has the second-highest rate of childhood poverty, with 26.8% of its children living at or below the poverty line. And this is what state lawmakers there are currently focused on.
Web viewers will have to enter information from their IDs into a third-party verification system that claims not to store the user data.
Schlegel says the bill is meant to protect children rather than penalize adults. However, if web viewers feel scared about entering their personal information into a verification system, they may turn to lesser-known websites that feature illegal content, one researcher worries.
Olivia Snow — a sex worker, professor, and research fellow at UCLA’s Center for Critical Internet Inquiry — told TechCrunch, “[The law is] really just further marginalizing sex workers, which I think is going to be the primary effect. I imagine this means that there will be an increased black market of premium [sexual] content that’s non-consensually disseminated.”
If Schlegel’s bill sounds ridiculous, don’t laugh. It may actually be a sign of things to come.
“The definition for obscenity [under Lee’s law is] so broad that it would encompass almost all sexual speech now legal,” adult industry advocacy group Free Speech Coalition (FSC) Director of Public Affairs Mike Stabile told The Mary Sue.
“It would also criminalize fans who share content, or couples who sext or share intimate images on dating apps. People don’t think of themselves as ‘[sexual content] distributors,’ but under this bill, even retweeting adult content or DMing a dick pic is a criminal act. The headlines are about [sexual adult content], but this bill criminalizes sex,” Stabile added.
Students at a high school in Florida are pointing to the state’s Parental Rights in Education law, aka Don’t Say Gay, as the reason for the sudden cancellation of a long-scheduled drama department production.
The canceled play, Indecent by Paula Vogel, depicts the true story of another stage play called God of Vengeance, which was shut down in New York in 1923 on charges on indecency; the Broadway production of the Yiddish play depicted the first-ever onstage kiss between a lesbian couple in American theater.
The production at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville was scheduled last May and cast in December. Indecent was to premiere March 1, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the ill-fated Broadway show.
Senior cast member Madeline Scotti, 17, shared news of the cancellation in an emotional Instagram video on Thursday night.
“Indecent is a story about how detrimental censorship is, about how its damaging effects can ruin a nation and a community. I don’t need to point out the irony,” Scotti said.
An email from Douglas Anderson principal Tina Wilson the same evening informed parents that Anton Chekov’s The Seagull would replace Vogel’s play. “A closer review of the mature content” of Indecent led school officials “to the conclusion that Seagull is better suited for a school production,” Wilson wrote.
In her Instagram video, Scotti claims school administrators all but acknowledged the show was axed due to the Don’t Say Gay law, which prohibits discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K through 3 and restricts them in higher grade levels.
“Tonight during rehearsal our company was notified that the school board is shutting us down not because of, but related to the ideals stated in the Don’t Say Gay bill,” said Scotti. “They are trying to tell us this play is dirty, immoral, obscene, and, of course, indecent. And by that nature, they’re trying to tell me that I myself and my community is dirty, immoral, obscene, and indecent.”
A spokesperson for Duval County Public Schools denied any connection to the controversial new law, enacted in September.
“Indecent contains adult sexual dialog that is inappropriate for student cast members and student audiences,” Tracy Pierce told Teen Vogue. “It’s that simple. The decision has no relevance to any legislation but is rather a function of our responsibilities to ensure students engage in educational activities appropriate for their age.”
Drama productions at Douglas Anderson preceding the Parental Rights in Education law include Rent, depicting multiple LGBTQ+ relationships and the devastation wrought by the AIDS epidemic, and Chicago, a musical featuring singing prostitutes.
Damn, Damn, Damn! Joe My God had two of these today. All religious leaders but not a single one a drag queen or a trans person. This one left me raw, maybe because it is late and I had a rough day but more likely if I admit the truth because of what the victims said. I admit that I had to stop reading after that and go get an alcohol filled drink. Even Odie who is sacked out on my desk lifted his head to look at me when I let out my gasp of anguish at this. I won’t be graphic but those who have not been taken against their will / wishes really don’t understand the feelings those things bring up in those of us who have. Even typing this I have had to wipe the tears from my eyes and blow my nose. And this is not in anyway graphic! It is just I can fill in the gaps, I know … Damn I know and at nearly 60 years old I still cannot forget. Anyway it is a worthwhile read. Hugs
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation also cited 400 alleged victims of Catholic sexual abuse since 1950
Catholic priest with hands on his head (image via Shutterstock)
Reading Time: 3MINUTES
Afour-year investigation into Kansas’ Catholic churches has found 188 alleged predators suspected of committing “aggravated criminal sodomy, rape, aggravated indecent liberties with a child and aggravated sexual battery.”
The report also says there were 400 victims of sexual abuse in the Kansas archdioceses since 1950, but in most of those cases, either the clergy member has died or the statute of limitations has long expired.
The [Kansas Bureau of Investigation] originally focused on reports of clergy sexual abuse in the state’s four Roman Catholic dioceses — Wichita, Salina, Dodge City and Kansas City, Kansas. It later expanded to include the Society of St. Pius X, a breakaway Catholic group known for its traditional Latin Mass with a large branch in St. Marys in northeast Kansas.
Some of the victims withheld vital information from investigators because they said they had signed non-disclosure agreements. In many cases, the report said, Church leaders failed to report allegations of abuse to law enforcement, failed to keep records of those allegations, and failed to conduct thorough internal investigations.
And, just as you’d suspect, there were instances where accused priests were merely shuffled to another parish while remaining on the Church’s payroll.
It’s a predictable yet troubling account of what we’ve seen in state after state ever since attorneys general began taking these matters seriously. After a Pennsylvania grand jury report came out in 2018, the floodgates opened. In some states, laws were enacted to put power back into the hands of victims by reopening a window for filing sexual abuse lawsuits that had previously been closed due to statutes of limitations. It’s not clear how Kansas politicians will act moving forward.
Whatever they do, if they do anything, it’ll be too late for some:
A few of the victims the task force dealt with were in prison and attributed that in part to the sexual abuse they’d endured as children, the report said.
“Our agents witnessed men, now in their 60s and 70s, break down in tears as they reported their sexual abuse to our team,” it said. “In many cases they have never previously disclosed the sexual abuse to anyone.
“Many times the victims thought they were the only victim of the offending priest. Following appropriate investigative interviews and actions, some victims learned for the first time they were not the only one the priest had abused.”
Some of the alleged victims had also died by suicide.
There are a couple of silver linings, that is if there can really be any in a situation like this.
One is that this investigation was requested by a Republican attorney general (Derek Schmidt), in response to a request from Kansas City Archdiocese Archbishop Joseph Naumann, which came after lawyers identified 15 clergy members who “warranted further investigation.” The people who may seem least likely to take these matters seriously did the right thing, though it’s possible public pressure had a lot to do with that.
The other is that the Church appears to be taking these matters more seriously. Too little, too late, no doubt, but it’s something. The allegations are more likely to have occurred decades ago than recently. That said, only a few dozen priests accused of abuse have been identified by name by the four dioceses in Kansas. The report suggests there are many more where those came from.
I would also highlight the report’s list of how the Catholic Church, despite cooperating with the KBI, hindered the investigation. The KBI cites non-disclosure agreements, Church officials using language that “minimized the seriousness or severity” of abuse, a failure to report abuse allegations to law enforcement, a lack of “transparent communication” with parishioners about the allegations, horrible recordkeeping policies, inadequate internal investigations, and an inability to hold people accountable for their roles in the abuse.
We knew a lot of those things already, but that means the Church’s willingness to assist with the investigation was hampered by the Church’s own actions in the past. The people who (sometimes unintentionally) destroyed evidence shouldn’t get much credit for supposedly opening their doors wide open to investigators.
As of now, no criminal charges have been filed in the 30 cases where the task force submitted affidavits. That’s likely because there are some hurdles (including death) that prosecutors can’t overcome. Justice will not be served in those cases.
Which means the only real consequence the Catholic Church in Kansas will ever face is the exodus of worshipers who call themselves Catholic. If you’re a Kansan who still attends or supports the Catholic Church with your time or money, you’re complicit in their actions. It’s not too late to break ties. Tradition is no excuse to prop up a criminal institution. If that leads to more of these dioceses going bankrupt, no one who cares about the victims is going to shed a tear. The Church has enough property and stashed artwork to sell to cover the costs of the trauma they’ve inflicted upon victims.
It’s long past time for the Catholic Church in Kansas (and everywhere else for that matter) to suffer for what it’s done to members.
HEMANT MEHTA
Hemant Mehta is the founder of FriendlyAtheist.com, a YouTube creator, podcast co-host, and author of multiple books about atheism. He can be reached at @HemantMehta. More by Hemant Mehta
My dogs that love gravy please make no mistake in thinking what these people are driving hard for. It is not the 1950s as most of us assume, but for these die hard Christian white male power nationalists the goal is the 1850s. Hugs
As of last week, Republican efforts to ban birth control in America have officially started, and teenagers in Texas are its first victims
To paraphrase Pastor Niemöller, first they came for our abortion rights. Now they’re coming for our birth control.
Psychologist Dr. Marty Klein notes at Psychology Today that there are typically only a few reasons why people oppose birth control. They are:
— Fundamentalist religions fear sexual pleasure, which birth control facilitates — Contraception effectively limits family size, empowering women — Contraception promotes personal autonomy [making women more likely to challenge male authority] — Birth control may make abortion more acceptable to society
As of last week, Republican efforts to ban birth control in America have officially started, and teenagers in Texas are its first victims.
When Clarence Thomas wrote in his Dobbs concurring opinion that the Supreme Court should next overturn the right to birth control in the United States, a lawyer and a judge in Texas were apparently listening.
Most Americans have no idea this high-stakes drama — heading toward the Supreme Court but already now law in Texas — is even going on.
Lost in the Christmas holiday chatter, a Trump-appointed federal district judge in Texas just a week ago put a stop to teenagers getting confidential access to federally-funded birth control pills and devices in that state.
He did it based on a lawsuit filed by attorney Jonathan Mitchell, the same man who co-authored the Texas “abortion vigilante” law. Everybody ridiculed that effort at first, you’ll recall, but the Supreme Court upheld it and today it’s Texas law and spreading across Red states like a fungus.
Mitchell is also known as the guy who supported the Mississippi abortion ban before the Supreme Court that led to the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade.
Perhaps anticipating Clarence Thomas’ later call to overturn Supreme Court decisions legalizing birth control, homosexual behavior, and gay marriage (Griswold v Connecticut, Lawrence v Texas, Obergefell v Hodges), Mitchell even wrote in his amicus brief for the Dobbs case an originalist reference similar to the argument the Texas judge would later make against birth control:
“The right to marry an opposite-sex spouse is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’; the right to marry a same-sex spouse obviously is not.”
In the Texas federal lawsuit Mitchell brought, Deanda v. Becerra, Trump-appointed Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that teens between 15 and 18 shouldn’t be able to make birth control decisions independent of their parents because, he ruled, that had always been the law in the early years of America:
“For centuries, the common law held minors were incapable of giving consent to make important life decisions.”
Somehow, he managed to overlook the fact that the age of sexual consent “for centuries” was, in every American state from the founding of this nation in 1789, 10 to 12 years old. It wasn’t raised to 14, 15, or 16 in any US state until the 1930s.
But don’t try to argue facts with people running on religious or male-power arguments.
Although the fight for women’s bodily autonomy is as old as time, this part of the story begins in 1970.
Richard Nixon had a reputation as an awkward, bumbling prude when it came to sex, but even he knew that teenagers should be able to get birth control without their parents’ consent.
A teenage pregnancy could destroy a young woman’s life, and, at that time, over one-in-ten girls became pregnant between 15 and 19 years old. Fully 92 percent of those teenage pregnancies, according to research published in the following decade, were unintended and could have been prevented with access to birth control.
So, in 1970, President Nixon signed into law Title X, a federal grant program that included funds for confidential access to birth control for people across the nation regardless of their age.
Nonprofit agencies were formed in each state to receive the federal money and provide birth control (among other services): in Texas “Every Body Texas” is the group that administers Title X statewide through 32 agencies and 156 clinics.
The week of Christmas, because of Kacsmaryk’s Deanda v. Becerraruling, Texas agencies affiliated with Every Body Texas learned they had to start turning away teenagers, virtually all of them girls and women, who were seeking confidential birth control.
This is now the law in Texas.
Picking up the beat, Republican legislators in Missouri, Idaho, and Louisiana have introduced or are proposing birth control bans in those states, according to the Pew Trust. Expect Republicans in your state to soon try the same.
Lest you think that hyperbolic, consider how Republicans in the US House and Senate voted when Democrats introduced the Right to Contraception Actimmediatelyafter Clarence Thomas suggested the Court should overturn that right.
Fully 195 Republicans voted against the legislation in the House; only 8 supported it. And when it reached the Senate, it was killed by a Republican filibuster.
The Deanda v. Becerradecision in Texas banning confidential dispensing of contraception to teenagers will be appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, known across the nation as the place most likely to uphold crackpot rightwing rulings. From there it goes to the six crackpot rightwingers on the Supreme Court.
Republicans appear quite fixated on banning both abortion and birth control nationwide.
Authoritarian societies have a long history of trying to regulate women’s bodies.
The first books the Nazis burned in May of 1933 were birth control guides by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, shortly before Hitler banned birth control in that nation (soldiers were allowed to possess condoms “to maintain their good health”).
Birth control was similarly banned in Romania by Nicolae Ceaușescu, bringing that nation Europe’s highest infant mortality rate and lowest life expectancy (particularly for women), a legacy which continues to this day even though Ceaușescu was overthrown and killed in 1989.
And now the GOP wants to ban birth control in the United States, starting with the youngest and most vulnerable among us. Authoritarians, after all, always first attack those least able to defend themselves before they climb the ladder of the society they intend to conquer.
This opening shot — coming out of Texas, just like the first ban on abortion (and from the same lawyer) — should make all Americans sit up and take notice.
Marjorie Taylor GreenePhoto: Screenshot
Idaho State Senator Chris Trakel (R) Speaks out against a proposed policy protecting LGBTQ+ studentsPhoto: Screenshot
LucasPhoto: Family photo
Photo: Screenshot Madeline Scotti Instagram
Scottie's Playtime 