What happened to parent’s rights? Why can just one parent stop a field trip to see a play because they object to any children seeing an actor in a female role, yet a parent has no rights to help their child socially transition? The only parents who have rights are maga republican parents. This is the state that the king wannabe governor calls the “free state of Florida”? This is the enforcement of a Puritan religious belief and view of Christian morality. This is enforcing a dress code on the entire public to agree with church doctrine of how the bible says to dress. This is real child abuse to separate children from loving parents following the medical advice of doctors, following the approved accepted best practice from the major medical organizations including the AMA and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is the largest professional association of pediatricians in the US. But what do doctors know compared to religious conservatives who get their medical information from a book written 2,500 years ago before people even knew about germs. Think of what the republicans are doing and have managed to do in the last two years. They have set the country and civil rights back 100 years and have set child labor laws back 150 years. Every poll says what the republicans are doing is unpopular and unliked by the majority, the republicans don’t care. Why, because they want to rule the people, not serve the public. Hugs
The Florida legislature passed a bill Thursday that will let the state take transgender minors away from their families if they are receiving gender-affirming care.
The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 26–13, mainly along party lines, and the House shortly after by a vote of 83–28, again along party lines. The measure now goes to the desk of Governor Ron DeSantis, who has previously expressed support for it and will likely sign it into law.
If he signs it into law, the measure will allow the state to take custody of a child if they have been “subjected to or [are] threatened with being subjected to” gender-affirming care, which includes puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy.
“Parents have the right to raise their children as they see fit, and government intervention should be a last resort,” Senate President Kathleen Passidomo [photo] said in a prepared statement Friday.
“Unfortunately, all too often we are hearing about treatments for gender dysphoria being administered to children, often very young children. That’s just wrong, and we need to step in and make sure it isn’t happening in our state.”
The bill’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Clay Yarborough, appeared here in March for his bill banning minors from public drag shows.
He first appeared on JMG in 2010, when as a member of the Jacksonville City Council he declared that gays, Muslims, and atheists should not be permitted to hold public office, otherwise God will smite the fuck out of the country.
One of the many, many reasons I pleaded with the American public to care about family separation. It was just a matter of time before it came for all of us
The bill that would grant Florida the power to seize trans-identifying children receiving or likely to receive treatment for gender dysphoria is sponsored by Republican state senator Clay Yarborough, who is a follower of Christ. @Clay_Yarboroughhttps://t.co/rp83mxCzFNpic.twitter.com/7mWED7xNva
100% horseshit, its all made up to attack trans people. period. Its a start too, they’re not going to stop with trans kids. Next it will be taking children from gay couples and we need to know thats where its going.
Kids are being operated on. Approximately 1.5% of breast augmentation surgeries are preformed on girls under the age of 18. Thousands of cisgender girls receive “gender affirming” surgery every single year.
Funny how no Republicans are writing laws to take those girls away from their parents.
I’ve been tired of the Florida bashing but now I’m feeling the same way. Fuck this state. I want to get the fuck out of here ASAP. I just hope I can sell my home quickly. This place has become a quagmire of insanity. It’s horrible for all of the good LGBTQ+ people who choose to live here, including myself.
Parents, get your Trans kids out of the state now. I am sure they included provisions to detransition the children too. You know he’ll sign it. Anything to hurt someone.
You can bet Florida is going to eventually be setting up contracts with “ministries” to “counsel” the trans kids they steal from their parents to pray away the trans.
These people are mostly religiously driven, and they use fake or misleading information from debunked failed studies to push their hatred. They chose their name to confuse people who mistakenly think they are the highly-regarded American Academy of Pediatrics. They are behind a lot of the misinformation about abortion. One of their main targets right now is trans children. This includes pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder, one that’s capable of spontaneously causing others–à la the dancing plague–to adopt similar thoughts and behaviors. There is a lot more in the article. How ever since I reloaded my computers the classic editor is not working like it use to allowing me to color in the pages easily. I have to figure out if it is a setting on my security programs or if WordPress changed the editor. Hugs
A Google Drive left public on the American College of Pediatricians’ website exposed detailed financial records, sensitive member details, and more.
PHOTOGRAPH: ROHANEH/GETTY IMAGES
A DOCTORS’ ORGANIZATION at the center of the ongoing legal fight over the abortion drug mifepristone has suffered a significant data breach. A link to an unsecured Google Drive published on the group’s website pointed users last week to a large cache of sensitive documents, including financial and tax records, membership rolls, and email exchanges spanning over a decade. The more than 10,000 documents lay bare the outsize influence of a small conservative organization working to lend a veneer of medical science to evangelical beliefs on parenting, sex, procreation, and gender.
The leaked records, first reported by WIRED, offer an unprecedented look at the groups and personnel central to that campaign. They also describe an organization that has benefited greatly by exaggerating its own power, even as it has struggled quietly for two decades to grow in size and gain respect. The records show how the College, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as a hate group, managed to introduce fringe beliefs into the mainstream simply by being, as the founder of Fox News once put it, “the loudest voice in the room.”
The Leak
A WIRED review of the exposed data found that the unsecured Google Drive stored nearly 10,000 files, some of which are compressed zip files containing additional documents. These records detail highly sensitive internal information about the College’s donors and taxes, social security numbers of board members, staff resignation letters, budgetary and fundraising concerns, and the usernames and passwords of more than 100 online accounts. The files include Powerpoint presentations, Quickbooks accounting documents, and at least 388 spreadsheets.
One spreadsheet appears to be an export of an internal database containing information on 1,200 past and current members. It contains intimate personal information about each member, including various contact details, as well as where they were educated, how they heard of the group, and when membership dues were paid. The records show past and current members are mostly male and, on average, over 50 years old. As of spring 2022, the College counted slightly more than 700 members, according to another document reviewed by WIRED.
Data visualization: DataWrapper
The breach exposes some material dating back to the group’s origin. It includes mailing lists gathered by the group of thousands of “conservative physicians” across the country. (One document outlining recruitment efforts states in bold, red letters: “TARGET CHRISTIAN MDs.”) The ongoing recruitment of doctors and medical school students seen as holding Christian views has long been its top priority. The leaked records indicate that more than 10,000 mailers were sent to physicians between 2013 and 2017 alone.
While the group’s membership rolls are not public, the leak has outed most if not all of its members. A cursory review of the member lists surfaced one name of note: a recent commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, who after joining in 2019 asked that his membership with the group remain a secret. (WIRED was unable to reach the official for comment in time for publication.)
The SPLC’s “hate group” designation, which the College forcefully disputes, haunted its fundraising efforts, records reveal. A barrage of emails in 2014 show that the label cost the group the chance to benefit from an Amazon program that would eventually distribute $450 million to charities across the globe. Amazon would deny the College’s application, stating that it relied on the SPLC to determine which charities fall into certain ineligible categories.
A strategy document would later refer to a “unified plan” among the College and its allies to “continue discrediting the SPLC,” which included a campaign aimed at lowering its rating at Charity Navigator, one of the web’s most influential nonprofit evaluators. One of the group’s admins noted that despite SPLC’s label, another charity monitor, GuideStar, listed the College as being in “good standing.”
The College’s GuideStar page no longer says this and appears to have been defaced. It now reads, “AMERICAN COLLEGE OF doodoo fartheads,” with a mission statement saying: “we are evil and hate gays :(((”
The Google Drive containing the documents was taken offline soon after WIRED contacted the American College of Pediatricians. The College did not respond to a request for comment.
The Talk
Leaked communications between members of the group and minutes taken at board meetings over the course of several years speak loudly about the challenges the group faced in pursuing its deeply unpopular agenda: returning America to a time when the laws and social mores around family squared neatly with evangelical Christian beliefs.
Many of the College’s most radical views target transgender people, and in particular, transgender youth. The leak, which had been indexed by Google, includes volumes of literature crafted specifically to influence relationships between practicing pediatricians, parents, and their children. It includes reams of marketing material the College aims to distribute widely among public school officials. This includes pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder, one that’s capable of spontaneously causing others–à la the dancing plague–to adopt similar thoughts and behaviors.
This is one of the group’s most dubious claims. While unsupported by medical science, it is routinely and incuriously propagated through literature targeted at schools and medical offices around the US. The primary source for this claim is a research paper drafted in 2017 by Lisa Littman, a Brown University scholar who, while a medical doctor, was not specialized in mental health. The goal of the paper was to introduce, conceptually, “rapid onset gender dysphoria”—a hypothetical disorder, as was later clarified by the journal that published it. Littman would also clarify personally that her research “does not validate the phenomenon” she’d hypothesized, since no clinicians, nor individuals identifying as trans, had participated in the study.
The paper explains that its subjects were instead all parents who had been recruited from a handful of websites known for opposing gender-affirmative care and “telling parents not to believe their child is transgender.” A review of one of the sites from the period shows parents congregating to foster paranoia about whether there’s a “conspiracy of silence” around “anime culture” brainwashing boys into behaving like girls; insights plucked in some cases straight from another, more insidious forum (widely known for reveling in the suicides of the people it has bullied).
A 2021 prospectus describing the group’s focus, ideology, and lobbying efforts encapsulates a wide range of “educational resources” destined for the inboxes of physicians and medical school students. The materials include links to a website instructing doctors on how to speak to children in a variety of scenarios about a multitude of topics surrounding sex, including in the absence of their parents. Practice scripts of conversations between doctors and patients advise, among other things, ways to elicit a child’s thoughts on sex with the help of an imaginative metaphor.
While the material is not expressly religious, it is clearly aimed at painting same-sex marriage as aberrant and immoral behavior. Physicians lobbied by the group are also told to urge patients to purchase Christian-based parenting guides, including one designed to help parents broach the topic of sex with their 11- and 12-year-old kids. The College suggests telling parents to plan a “special overnight trip,” a pretext for instilling in their children sexual norms in line with evangelical practice. The group suggests telling parents to buy a tool called a “getaway kit,” a series of workbooks that run around $54 online. The workbooks methodically walk the parents through the process of springing the topic, but only after a day-long charade of impromptu gift-giving and play.
These books are full of games and puzzles for the parent and child to cooperatively take on. Throughout the process, the child slowly digests a concept of “sexual purity,” lessons aided by oversimplified scripture and well-trodden Bible school parables.
Another document the group shared with its members contains a script for appointments with pregnant minors. Its purpose is made evidently clear: The advice is engineered specifically to reduce the odds of minors coming into contact with medical professionals not strictly opposed to abortion. A practice script recommends the doctor inform the minor that they “strongly recommend against” abortion, adding “the procedure not only kills the infant you carry, but is also a danger to you.” (Medically, the term “fetus” and “infant” are not interchangeable, the latter referring to a newborn baby less than one year old.)
The doctors are urged to recommend that the minor visit a website that, like others shared with patients, is not expressly religious but will only direct visitors to Catholic-run “crisis pregnancy centers,” which strictly reject abortion. The same site is widely promoted by anti-abortion groups such as National Right to Life, which last year held that it should be illegal to terminate the pregnancy of a 10-year-old rape victim.
The Professionals
The effort to ban mifepristone, which the Supreme Court paused last month pending further review, faces significant legal hurdles but could ultimately benefit from the appellate court’s disproportionately conservative makeup. Most of the legal power in the fight was supplied by a much older and better funded group, the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has established ties to some of the country’s most politically elite—former vice president Mike Pence and Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett among them.
A contract in the leaked documents dated April 2021 shows the ADF agreeing to legally represent the College free of charge. It stipulates that ADF’s ability to subsidize expenses incurred during lawsuits would be limited by ethical guidelines; however, it could still forgive any lingering costs simply by declaring the College “indigent.”
In contrast to the College’s some 700 members, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)–the organization from which the College’s founders split 20 years ago–has roughly 67,000. The rupture between the two groups was a direct result of a statement issued by the AAP in 2002. Modern research, the AAP said, had conclusively shown that the sexual orientation of parents had an imperceptible impact on the well-being of children, so long as they were raised in caring, supportive families.
Data visualization: DataWrapper
The College would gain notoriety early on by assailing the positions of the AAP. In 2005, a Boston Globe reporter noted how common it had become for the American College of Pediatricians “to be quoted as a counterpoint” to anything the AAP said. The institution had a rather “august-sounding name,” he wrote, for being run by a “single employee.”
Internal documents show that the group’s directors quickly encountered hurdles operating on the fringe of accepted science. Some claimed to be oppressed. Most of the College’s research had been “written by one person,” according to minutes from a 2006 meeting, which were included in the leak. The College was failing to make a splash. In the future, one director suggested, papers rejected by medical journals “should be published on the web.” The vote to do so was unanimous (though the board decided the term “not published” was nicer than “rejected”).
A second director put forth a motion to create a separate “scientific section” on the group’s website, strictly for linking to articles published in medical journals. The motion was quashed after it dawned on the board that they didn’t “have enough articles” to make the page “look professional.”
The College struggled to identify the root cause of its runtedness. “To get enough clout,” one director said, “it would take substantial numbers, maybe 10,000.” (The College’s recruitment efforts would yield fewer than 7 percent of this goal in the following 17 years.) Yet another said the marketing department advised that “the College needs to pick a fight with the AAP and get on Larry King Live.” Another board member, the notes say, felt the organization was too busy trying to “walk the fence” by neglecting to acknowledge that “we are conservative and religious.”
WTF is happening in the US? This idea of the US being founded as a Christian Nation is a complete fiction, yet there are so many republican governors and legislators pushing it. When did the bible become more important than the constitution? I remember that shit being push on James when he was a teen and he is now 3o years old. We have a serious problem that generations since the 1980s have grown up being taught this fiction as fact. This was done through homeschooling and church schools. This fiction was / is promoted by churches to increase their political power and the income from adding more asses in pews. I have to tell you this drive to turn the US into a theocracy is terrifying to me and should be to others. We have seen it happen in other countries where a fundamentalist religion get governmental power, and they use it to wipe out personal freedoms in order to establish a religious doctrine enforced by the power of the state. Look at Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan. Those restrictive laws entrench the political power and funds of the religious leaders but restrict any kind of growth or advancement for the public. I can not imagine how devastating it would be for the US people to be forced to live according to the dictates of people who think morals and science was at its peak 2,500 years ago. Hugs
“Oklahomans, we have a clear choice in front of us. When it comes to our schools, do we want the radical ideology in our classroom that pushes gender theory? That pushes graphic pornography in order to push a social experiment on our kids?
“Or do want the US Constitution? Do we want documents like the Federalist Papers and the bible? So that our kids understand our history and how our government was put together?
“Those core fundamental principles have made us the greatest country in the history of the world. Real Americans know that we’ve got to support our kids by giving them a great understanding of our history.
“Radical leftists and Biden administration, they would prefer to sexualize our kids.” – Oklahoma superintendent of public schools Ryan Walters.
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.
Walters last appeared on JMG in October 2022 when he called for reeducating all teachers with “Christian patriotic history” in a program operated by Michigan’s far-right Hillsdale College.
OK Superintendent of Schools says the Biden Admin is pushing graphic pornography and gender theory in schools to sexualize our kids, but he says students should be taught from important historical documents like the Bible. pic.twitter.com/fxum2wn3xx
Oklahomans, we have a clear choice in front of us. When it comes to our schools, do we want the radical ideology in our classroom that pushes gender theory? That pushes graphic pornography in order to push a social experiment on our kids?
Are people so stupid that they think teachers are hauling out their Honcho magazines into the classroom? That’s what Sunday school is for.
That’s what gets me. People eat this crap up with absolutely no proof of any of it. And hey, what happened to the kitty litter in the classrooms issue?
Please remember that what the republicans say this is about and what is really happening it two different things. The republicans claim she violated decorum by claiming that she accused them of killing kids. That is not at all what she said. She said if the republicans pasted the bill denying trans kids medical assistance would cause kids to try to commit suicide, which is true, so the people passing the bill would have blood on their hands. No one doubts the validity of that statement. But this was the opening they used with republicans claimed victimhood and talked of how badly they were being abused by being accused of having kids blood on their hands. Yes the big bad in charge republicans were the victims here.
What this really is about is the fact Rep. Zooey Zephyr is trans! And the republicans want her gone! That is what this is about. They don’t care her constitutes not only voted her in to office to represent them, they have increased their support for her after this happened. So they are trying to make her life so miserable, hoping she will just go away. That is what the anti-trans and anti-drag people bills are about, trying to make those people so miserable they will just go away. It is what red states with the don’t say gay laws are doing in schools, just trying to make gay / trans kids just hide and go away. How proud the republicans must be to make people hide who they really are just so republicans can feel good in their lives.
Please note every act the republicans took was to make her life miserable which included locking her out of the work areas and bathrooms. She is forced to work and vote representing her voters from a public hallway, so this week some hateful people made sure to show up and occupy the only seating available, causing an elected official to be forced to stand all day and work from a food counter. This is not democracy people! This is one party trying to make those they don’t like to disappear from the public. Hugs
Republicans moved to sideline Zephyr further by canceling some meetings of the two committees on which she serves and moving the bills they were to hear to other committees, Democrats said.
She spent the first day of her exile last week battling to use a bench in a statehouse hallway. Her key card to access Capitol entrances, bathrooms and party workspaces was deactivated, according to the lawsuit.
Zephyr spoke briefly during a House Judiciary Committee meeting Monday morning. The full House — minus Zephyr — reconvened in the afternoon. Zephyr cast votes from a statehouse snack bar because several people occupied the bench.
Read the full article. As you can see in the photo below, the bench seats three people and the evil bitches have a fourth woman on standby as a seat-filler for bathroom breaks.
@ZoAndBehold works from the lunch counter outside the House of Representatives chamber today because a group of women have been occupying the bench she used last week. #mtlegpic.twitter.com/ImMaYdaioS
I agree. What the slave state legislatures like Montana’s are doing is trampling on any and all minorities’ civil rights. She didn’t break decorum. She was very measured and impeccable with her word. She never raised her voice. Her crime was that she told them the TRUTH. People will die. There IS blood on their hands.
I’ve tweeted to Montana Dems, the Montana ACLU, and Montana Pride with a plea for allies to come tomorrow and hold the bench for Zooey. I added that a couple of drag queens would be a nice touch.
Joe, I’d like to see someone bring in a comfy folding chair for her, even though both state houses would vote, and the governor would sign, a bill banning them on capitol grounds the next day.
I was just looking for that photo, that is EXACTLY what I was reminded me of. I hope they know they are on the WRONG side of history on this issue, and will be shamed for many years.
These men would be required to use the women’s bathrooms. These bathroom bills do cause harm because it forces all people who do not fit a gender stereotype to prove they are the gender of the bathroom they want to use. Not manly enough for the maga crowd, these bills let them challenge you going to the men’s bathroom. A woman who doesn’t look feminine enough will be challenged and assaulted by the maga crowd, who think they get to determine who uses what bathroom. Is the next thing genital inspectors at bathroom entrances. But the real goal of these maga republicans is to drive the trans people from the public. Then they will try to get rid of the rest of the LGBTQI+. Hugs
This is one of the best dissection of how stupid the rights anti-trans arguments are. If you are anti-trans and want to educate yourself then watch this. If you just want to see how damn dishonest the right has to be to promote their Puritan old fashion idea of what is gender / how each gender must behave / clothing they must wear, please watch this. Also I will remind everyone first that gender acceptable clothing has changed throughout history. Hugs
Today we’re discussing the proposed change to the UK Equality Act and how absurd and unworkable it is, as well as the unignorable link between gender critical activism and white nationalism.
Please consider making a donation to Gendered Intelligence, a trans-led and trans involved grassroots UK organisation with three key departments. One provides education and training for professionals, organisations, schools, colleges and other educational settings. Another department runs a number of youth and community services where young gender variant people can meet, socialise and learn as well as get 1 to 1 support from a trans youth worker. The third GI department focuses on Public Engagement, running campaigns that challenge misinformation, provide consultations and interviews and more. https://genderedintelligence.co.uk/su…
This is Ben Shapiro. The head of and the leader of the Daily Wire, one of the biggest right wing media outlets. His hosts include people like Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, Michael Knowles, Jordan Peterson, Dennis Prager all who have either called for the elimination, deportation, or making completely illegal the LGTBTQ+ community / people. This is one of the most watched and quoted right wing media, and Shapiro is wrongly considered one of the right’s intellectual. Several of these people spoke at the CPAC events calling for the extermination of gay and trans people, and all media about the LGBTQ+ community.
I was talking in the comments the other day about what the republicans / the right want to achieve with these drag bans, what their goal is. It is not to regulate adult entertainment, burlesque, and strip shows with drag performers as those laws already exist. This is not about normal obscenity such as showing genitals, as again those are already well regulated.
What is being regulated out of existence, outlawed in public, is what Nan calls cross-dressing and what right means when they say drag. They want to make it illegal for a man to dress as a woman, to wear a dress / skirt or a woman to wear clothing normally assigned stereotypically to males. It is about enforcing stereotypes of what is a woman’s role and what is a man’s role even to what clothing each role typically wore then. Remember the comedy shows in the 1970’s / 1980s where the laugh line was a man wearing an apron? Well here is Shapiro just saying what the goal is. Flat out removing trans people from society and public view. Flat out trying to legislate what a gender can wear based on old stereotypes of gender roles. The goal is to return to a time when females were in not in men’s jobs, doing men’s work, when women were home in time to make dinner for their husband and wait on him. All to protect the children, remember?
First they came for the trans people, but I was not trans … then they came for … Hugs
“Should wearing dresses and skirts be illegal for men in public? If so, should wearing pants for women in public be illegal in public? Well, pants not so much because there is a female version of pants that is nearly indistinguishable in many cases from male pants. But men wearing traditional female clothing in public – I think that there is a case that local communities should be able to stop that. Sure, I mean, we have local laws about being naked or indecent exposure, at least we used to.” – Ben Shapiro.
We’re all born naked, and the rest is just drag. — Ru Paul
I read a story once about westerners having trouble understanding that in Indian women wore something like pants while men worse robes. This was traditional gender-coded attire in their country. Gender roles differ across time and place. Only right wing Americans who don’t know that there was history before 1950 think that clothing or anything else has a universal meaning.
That was pretty common right up until around WWII. It wasn’t until after the war that it switched around. It was just like the baby dresses they used for both sexes. There are still a few photos around from my dad and my uncle when they were babies and then pre-teens. The short pants are precious.
Oh fuck that. Any actual feminist (meaning, people who aren’t TERFs/”Gender Criticals” aka conservative blowhards) knows that them criminalizing “men wearing dresses” will also inevitably mean criminalizing women wearing pants, which will mean using the violence of government to police womens’ modesty.
In other words, we’ll become Iran after Trump handed the theocrats and autocrats power by rejecting Obama’s deal that was getting them to open up.
Scottie's Playtime 