The Supreme Court is damaging its legacy and moral authority by delaying justice in Trump’s insurrection trial, President Biden passed his annual physical, and Donald Trump Jr. believes Amish voters could put his father back in office.
Hi. I don’t think I could add anything more worthwhile than has been in the post and the comments. Please read this. We have to stop this hard push to turn the US into a theocracy. Christian religious sects are terrified at the decline in asses in the pews. It cuts into their profit, and churches are closing due to lack of people to attend services. They are desperate to indoctrinate kids as they know a bunch of them will stay in the church and give the church money. Hugs. Scottie
It is what the laws were meant to do, stop the teaching of tolerance and acceptance and vilify LGBTQ+ kids with the goal of trying to return to when LGBTQ+ kids were scared to be found out so were invisible. These laws have to go, it is a horrible attempt to install a fundamentalist religious view on everyone else and their children. Hugs. Scottie
The data comes amid an ongoing explosion in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
According to a new report, anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes in K-12 schools have quadrupled in U.S. states that have laws restricting the rights of LGBTQ+ students.
A Washington Post analysis of FBI data on anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes taking place in K-12 schools and on college campuses, published on March 12 found that anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes “serious enough to be reported to local police” more than doubled across the country in recent years. The Post found that while an average of 108 anti-LGBTQ+ school hate crimes were reported between 2015 and 2019, that average rose to 232 between 2021 and 2022. According to FBI data, the most common hate crimes reported at schools were intimidation, simple assault (assault where no weapon was used), and vandalism.
However, this rise in school hate crimes was more pronounced in the 28 states that have enacted policies restricting LGBTQ+ students’ self-expression and/or limiting how teachers can talk about gender and sexuality in school. In these states, reported anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes on K-12 and college campuses more than tripled from an average of 28 per year between 2015 and 2019 to an average of 90 between 2021 and 2022.
As the Post points out, this increase is even more staggering when you remove college campuses and look at the anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes in K-12 schools only. In states that have enacted restrictive laws, there were more than four times the number of anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes across elementary, middle, and high schools, per year, from 2021 to 2022, compared with the years 2015 to 2019.
Although it’s only March, the American Civil Liberties Union is currently tracking a whopping 478 anti-LGBTQ+ bills across the U.S. this year, with 190 of those bills targeting student and educator rights.
Gerald Declan Radford, 65, initially claimed he shot Lay in self-defense. Prosecutors believe that Declan was the aggressor and was motivated by Lay’s sexual orientation.
Meanwhile, nonprofits that work with LGBTQ+ youth have reported an increase in crisis calls. According to the Post, The Trevor Project received over 500,000 crisis contacts during the fiscal year ending in July 2023 compared to the 230,000 the group received the previous year, while the Rainbow Youth Project received over 1,400 calls to its mental health crisis hotline per month in 2023 compared to 1,000 per month in 2022. According to the Rainbow Youth Project, calls from Oklahoma to the group’s hotline more than tripled after details about Nex Benedict, the trans Oklahoma teen of Choctaw ancestry who died the day after three older girls reportedly beat them in a school bathroom, became national news.
“Young people will say, ‘My government hates me,’ ‘My school hates me,’ ‘They don’t want me to exist,’” the Rainbow Youth Project’s founder and executive director, Lance Preston, told the Post. “That … is absolutely unacceptable. That is shocking.”
So this is the second time I am writing this as the first time I lost everything due to … A sudden loss of internet and a dropping out of my entire comment on the video, which was against the government. Ron asked me if I thought it was deliberate and I am not such a conspiracy theorist yet … but it was weird timing.
The point I was making is he is correct that all our data is already collected by every social media, every news sites … if I don’t want to give a news site permission to all data on my computer or every other website I visit they block me. It is why I don’t post from them. And the same with one of my favorite news sources for in depth information, they demand others to register or pay with them, so I have stopped sharing them. Any way I won’t retype all I wrote, my hands are sore and I have so much more to get to. The video is here. If you want to see through the political attempt to hold down the progressive youth vote watch the video. Time moves on and societies progress. Hugs. Scottie
Wow how do these rejects get elected? Sex is the fault of the woman? That is not how it works. Tell him it takes more than a woman to make a baby. Guys are taught to want sex all their lives, and from puberty they’re told not to masturbate but to find a girl. But girls are property of daddy and they are told not to have sex to preserve their value. WTF. If boys / men get to enjoy sex, why can’t girls / women? Hugs. Scottie
A bid to make birth control a right in Arizona that was a top policy priority for Gov. Katie Hobbs has stagnated in the Republican-controlled legislature and is likely dead.
Sen. Sonny Borrelli, the No. 2 Republican in the state Senate, responded to a question about whether he would oppose future efforts to restrict access to emergency contraceptives by saying that women wouldn’t need contraceptives if they weren’t so promiscuous.
“Like I said, Bayer Company invented aspirin. Put it between your knees,” he said, implying that, if women hold aspirin between their legs, they won’t be able to have sex and risk pregnancy.
Borrelli’s comments echo those made by late Wisconsin pastor and former GOP mega donor Foster Freiss. In 2012, while Freiss was the head of a super PAC that backed Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, Freiss contended that women putting aspirin between their knees was a cheaper alternative to contraception.
In 2001, Borrelli plead guilty to a domestic violence charge. His then-wife’s child told police he witnessed Borrelli rapidly punch his mother three times in the mouth before shoving her to the ground.
Borrelli said he only plead guilty to keep custody of his children, and he later blamed his wife for the incident, claiming she was having a “stress-induced meltdown.”
Borelli, an election denier, first appeared here in 2021 when he and several other Arizona lawmakers spoke at a QAnon convention organized by a man who had just approvingly posted a link to a neo-Nazi film. We heard from him again last year when he tried to force Arizona to discard all voting machines.
AZ State Senator Sonny Borelli, singled out by Trump at rallies for pushing the audit, presents his ‘challenge coin’ today at the Vegas QAnon conference to Vincent Fusca, who some in the Q community believe is JFK Jr.. Resemblance is uncanny. pic.twitter.com/0lEIVfxIOn
AZ Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borelli issues letter to every county election office notifying them no electronic voting machine can be used in ‘24 election
Katie Hobbs vetoed law, but Constitution gives plenary authority to state legislature so they’re overriding her pic.twitter.com/FPwtEDaU5T
None of these yahoos make even the slightest effort to encourage men to take more responsibility for their own sexual behavior even though men are usually the ones who are more sexually eager due to the influence of testosterone (and even then, using that as an excuse really only goes so far!). They don’t even bother encouraging men to use condoms more often even though condoms actually have many advantages over most female forms of birth control. Condoms are relatively reliable when used correctly, aren’t difficult to find, aren’t difficult to use, don’t become less effective if you gain or lose weight, don’t cost much, don’t have any potentially dangerous side effects, don’t have any restrictions for age and/or existing health conditions, don’t require administration or authorization from a licensed medical professional, and don’t require much advance planning like most female forms of birth control do — and they have an double advantage in the sense that they help prevent the transmission of STDs.
It’s amazing the number of people who refuse to believe that sometimes things go wrong. That’s why abortion is healthcare, not every fetus is viable. Some of the ones that are born, don’t survive either.
It’s about whether men should dictate to women whom they don’t even know how to manage their personal life. It’s about whether women can get pregnant without the assistance of “promiscuous” men.
It’s about whether men should dictate to women whom they don’t even know how to manage their personal life. It’s about whether women can get pregnant without the assistance of “promiscuous” men.
The Christian religion is apparently based on the premise that women are by definition sluts, since Eve in Genesis disobeyed God and accepted advice from a serpent.
I am still waiting for the day that a pharmacist refuses to fill any prescriptions for Viagra or Cialis unless the man is wearing a wedding ring, or produces a marriage license, or signs a sworn affidavit saying they will use the drug only to have sex with their wives. I want to see the heads of a few right-wing males explode.
“But honey, I’m feeling romantic. This is your 30th headache this month. Why don’t you use that aspirin between your legs to make your headache disappear.”
*wife thinks a divorce attorney would do a better job at making her headache disappear.*
15 years ago, this Neanderthal would have been sent back under his rock, but Trump/MAGA has emboldened their misogyny, allowed them to use their “religious freedom” to spew this garbage in the public square, and encourage even more wackos to spew their hateful, medieval views
How is forcing women to continue with an unwanted pregnancy not an economic concern?
I can’t wait for these old white, white haired men and women who agree with them to die out but I know there is a crop of them right behind on the conveyor belt.
Contraceptives a.k.a. birth control are not just prescribed for birth control.
Here again we have elected officials who know nothing about the medical field making laws regarding women’s bodies that they know nothing about. Here again we have one of these old dinosaurs yapping about women not needing birth control if they weren’t promiscuous.
Funny how they get away with ignoring the fact that it takes two people to be promiscuous when making a baby… and funny how nobody points out that, if women must be forced to endure a pregnancy, men should at least be financially responsible for that same pregnancy.
I love this. The hate preachers in the US desperately need to hear this message. He says spreading hate and inciting attacks on others is not the message Jesus wanted his people to spread, that is not freedom of religion. It is so refreshing and wonderful to hear the message that this Rev. is talking about. Makes me remember the Jesus I was once told about as a child. Hugs. Scottie
Mighty Christian of this first one. Good old republican Christian concern and caring. Hugs. Scottie
Florida’s Senate approves a bill that would ban cities and counties from adopting requirements for mandatory water breaks and other workplace protections against extreme heat. https://t.co/zGlFrAG8Kr
Read the full article. The bill’s author, state Sen. Jay Trumbull, previously appeared here for his successful bill allowing medical professionals to refuse to treat LGBTQ patients. Last year, he authored a bill allowing businesses to sue to block local LGBTQ rights ordinances and other regulations.
Of note, the lead attorney in the lawsuit is Roberta Kaplan, who is best known to most as E. Jean Carroll’s attorney. Kaplan was also Edith Windsor’s attorney in the landmark Supreme Court ruling on DOMA.
This is quite a story and as you’d expect a portion of their ideology centers against LGBTQ people.
OK with this first batch I am trying to reduce the 74 posts window I have open. I have to start shrinking these windows. That means I can not go deep in depth on each thing I think is important to share. So for a few days I am going to shotgun a bunch of older stuff out. Do I expect everyone to read all of them? NO! What I hope is people see story titles that interest them, open them, and follow the story which is what I do. So expect a few more of these as I clear out old tabs. Hugs. Scottie
So everything is basically reset back to where it was before this law. The only difference is teachers and schools will have to deal with fundamentalist Christian maga parents and wing nuts who don’t even live in those schools claiming that teachers are teaching gender or sexual orientation for allowing a rainbow sticker, that the schools are violating the law because the library returned the books with and about LGBTQIA characters / plots in them, and it will tie all schools up in lawsuits the state won’t help them with. DeathSantis is really just admitting he was wrong without saying it. Kaplan said that she was sure that the law would be ruled unconstitutional if they continue with the appeal, but that it would take at least two years of kids being bullied and the books out of the library. Of course DeathSantis is claiming a total win when it completely rolls back his law. Gay teachers can let the kids know they are gay, those married can talk about their spouses and post pictures. Anti-gay bullying programs are allowed again. Plus maybe the best thing, the gay straight alliance clubs are allowed again. The real thing you see is DeathSantis only pushed this as long as he was running for office, and once he was no longer needing to suck up to the fundamentalist Christians he backed down, and did not fight for it. I think he knew all along it was an illegal bill. Hugs. Scottie
*** Personal note. Was not feeling well all weekend and this morning I woke up at 4 am needing to throw up. But all I could bring up was air. Then after half a cup of coffee, I started to throw up last night’s meal. All morning I keep feeling dizzy and nauseous every 20 minutes or so. I have spent a lot of yesterday and so far today, in bed. Hugs. Scottie1`
Opponents said the law had created confusion about whether teachers could identity themselves as LGBTQ or if they even could have rainbow stickers in classrooms.
ORLANDO, Fla. — Students and teachers will be able to speak freely about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms, provided it’s not part of instruction, under a settlement reached Monday between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged a state law which critics dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.”
The settlement clarifies what is allowed in Florida classrooms following passage two years ago of the law prohibiting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. Opponents said the law had created confusion about whether teachers could identity themselves as LGBTQ or if they even could have rainbow stickers in classrooms.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attends the drivers meeting prior to the NASCAR Cup Series Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway, in Daytona Beach, Fla., on Feb. 19, 2024.Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images file
Other statesused the Florida law as a template to pass prohibitions on classroom instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation. Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky and North Carolina are among the states with versions of the law.
Under the terms of the settlement, the Florida Board of Education will send instructions to every school district saying the Florida law doesn’t prohibit discussing LGBTQ people, nor prevent anti-bullying rules on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or disallow Gay-Straight Alliance groups. The settlement also spells out that the law is neutral — meaning what applies to LGBTQ people also applies to heterosexual people — and that it doesn’t apply to library books not being used in the classroom.
“What this settlement does, is, it re-establishes the fundamental principal, that I hope all Americans agree with, which is every kid in this country is entitled to an education at a public school where they feel safe, their dignity is respected and where their families and parents are welcomed,” Roberta Kaplan, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said in an interview. “This shouldn’t be a controversial thing.”
In a statement, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office described the deal as a “major win” with the law remaining intact.
“Today’s mutually agreed settlement ensures that the law will remain in effect and it is expected that the case will be dismissed by the Court imminently,” the statement said.
The law, formally known as the Parental Rights in Education Act, has been championed by the Republican governor since before its passage in 2022 by the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature. It barred instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through the third grade, and it was expanded to all grades last year.
Republican lawmakers had argued that parents should broach these subjects with children and that the law protected children from being taught about inappropriate material.
But opponents of the law said it created a chilling effect in classrooms. Some teachers said they were unsure if they could mention or display a photo of their same-sex partner in the classroom. In some cases, books dealing with LGBTQ topics were removed from classrooms and lines mentioning sexual orientation were excised from school musicals. The Miami-Dade County School Board in 2022 decided not to adopt a resolution recognizing LGBTQ History Month, even though it had done so a year earlier.
The law also triggered the ongoing legal battles between DeSantis and Disney over control of the governing district for Walt Disney World in central Florida after DeSantis took control of the government in what the company described as retaliation for its opposition to the legislation. DeSantis touted the fight with Disney during his run for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, which he ended earlier this year.
The civil rights attorneys sued Florida education officials on behalf of teachers, students and parents, claiming the law was unconstitutional, but the case was dismissed last year by a federal judge in Tallahassee who said they lacked standing to sue. The case was appealed to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Kaplan said they believed the appellate court would have reversed the lower court’s decision, but continuing the lawsuit would have delayed any resolution for several more years.
“The last thing we wanted for the kids in Florida was more delay,” Kaplan said.
Of note, the lead attorney in the lawsuit is Roberta Kaplan, who is best known to most as E. Jean Carroll’s attorney. Kaplan was also Edith Windsor’s attorney in the landmark Supreme Court ruling on DOMA.
A settlement over Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law will allow students and teachers to speak about sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom, if it's not part of a lesson. https://t.co/FTg3TWJCyo
#Florida settles lawsuit over @GovRonDeSantis' controversial parental rights law & will clarify vague wording. Plaintiffs calling it the Don’t Say Gay law say the deal will stop school districts from “overreacting.” https://t.co/E4SQGjlUYQ via @JeffSolochek
Wow how clueless can some people be in following their god and right wing ideology? Seriously, does he realize that when women couldn’t vote, he was not covered by the civil rights laws and he wouldn’t be allowed to serve in such a high government position by the white people who think he shouldn’t be able to vote or speak up in public. Yes just as he looks down on women as inferior to him a man, the majority of whites then, and some now also, believe he as a black man is inferior to any white person. I don’t understand bigotry, no matter who it is against. See bigotry is counter to reason, it is irrational. Yet it is hard to use reason to combat it is difficult because bigotry is built on emotion. But this guy is out there as a bigot, hater, and just abusive to anyone who disagrees with him. Again how is this acceptable? What ever happened to decorum and civility from elected officials? Seriously what happened to being able to look up to elected federal and state legislators as the best of the public? Seriously when did being an internet troll be one of the qualifications for political office? When was being a vicious bully an admired trait? But this guy is both? Hugs. Scottie
“The only thing worse than a woman who doesn’t know her place, is a man who doesn’t know his,” he wrote on Facebook in December 2017.
In a newly unearthed video, North Carolina’s GOP nominee for governor says America was better then because Republicans “fought for real social change.”
On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson won the GOP primary to become his party’s nominee for North Carolina governor, presumably with the help of female voters.
But just four years ago, Robinson invoked a bizarre hypothetical in which he said he’d “absolutely” like to return to the days when the 19th Amendment didn’t exist ― when women didn’t have the right to vote.
“I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote,” Robinson said in a newly resurfaced video of his remarks at a March 2020 event hosted by the Republican Women of Pitt County.
During this event, Robinson, who was running for lieutenant governor at the time, recalled someone recently asking conservative activist Candace Owens to pick which version of America would make America “great again,” one where “Black people were swinging from cheap trees” or one where women weren’t allowed to vote.
Robinson said he would definitely return to the days in America when women were denied the right to vote “because in those days we had people who fought for real social change, and they were called Republicans.”
This room full of women was quiet as he spoke, though a faint “That’s right” could be heard when Robinson later said Republicans ended Jim Crow laws. (In fact, lawmakers in both parties in Congress and President Lyndon Johnson ended Jim Crow laws by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.)
You catch watch the full clip of Robinson’s remarks here:
Requests for comment from Robinson’s campaign and from his government office were not returned.
In still more Facebook posts, the GOP gubernatorial nominee strangely equated feminism with sexism and racism.
“If blacks should stand up against racism, and women should stand up against sexism….shouldn’t men stand up against feminism?” he posted on Sept. 20, 2016.
That same day, he also wrote, “I am REALLY sick of feminism and feminist. They are just as bad, if not worse, than racist.”
Robinson will go up against Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein in November. North Carolina is a crucial swing state in the 2024 presidential election. Former President Donald Trump won North Carolina in 2020, but barely ― and that was before he tried to steal the election, incited an insurrection and was facing 91 felony charges.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who endorsed one of Robinson’s challengers in the GOP primary, said Wednesday that it’s up to the voters in his state to decide in November if they want him to be the governor.
Asked if he agrees with Robinson’s inflammatory rhetoric, Tillis told HuffPost, “Not at all.”
“Now that we’re past the primary … he just needs to go to the people in North Carolina, explain that and get their vote,” he said.
Back when women were property, “colored” folk like you were not allowed to eat at restaurants with white folk, were segregated in public venues(sitting in the shitty section at theaters and such), schools, hospitals, and even the men weren’t allowed to vote even though they had the right. Go back a little further and all black people were owned by white people in the slave states with absolutely no rights at all. And you, sir, are a fucking idiot. Go slap yourself silly.
For Republican women all that matters apparently is the “R” after his name. Of course why any woman would suppport the Republican Party is the obvious next question.
A lot of Republican women have been beaten, raped and otherwise abused into submission by the men in their lives; fathers, husbands, pastors, etc. to the point where they are brainwashed to vote how the men in their lives tell them to. A while back, I read an article about some fundie douchebag pastor preaching to a group of men how they really shouldn’t allow their wives to vote, but if their wives insist on voting, their husbands should make sure that their wives vote “correctly,” so their votes do not “cancel out” the husbands’ votes.
That reminded me of a story an ex-Mormon friend told me, about how before she went in to vote for the first time as a college freshman in 1992, her father handed her and her mother a list of candidates (all Republican) and said “This is how I expect you to vote, I’ll be watching.” Her father stood in the voting booth next to her, giving her the side eye the entire time she was casting her ballot. Even though she wanted to vote for Clinton, she voted for George Bush I instead, because dad was also an abusive asshole, and she feared what he might do if she didn’t vote as she was told. If the poll workers saw what her Dad was doing, they didn’t do anything. It was probably quite common in the shitty Mormon town she was raised in. And I doubt things have changed.
Back when women were property, “colored” folk like you were not allowed to eat at restaurants with white folk, were segregated in public venues(sitting in the shitty section at theaters and such), schools, hospitals, and even the men weren’t allowed to vote even though they had the right. Go back a little further and all black people were owned by white people in the slave states with absolutely no rights at all. And you, sir, are a fucking idiot. Go slap yourself silly.
