Courts Government & Politics Libraries Appeals court allows Arkansas to enforce law restricting library materials

If you read the law it lets anyone claim to be offended by any media and that it doesn’t need to be declared obscene to be labeled obscene.  Why is that? Because to a small group of very vocal haters just the existence of LGBTQ+ people is obscene. It offends their god so it offends them.  But don’t try to claim the Bible is obscene or pushes offensive stuff it has special carve outs that make all the icky bad parts OK.   I hope this will be appealed to the full appeals court as this attempt to errase an entire population of people based on bigotry must not be allowed to stand.  I also just read where the education department under the hypermaga education secretary will not be enforcing or even recording the bullying and abuse of the LGBTQ+ kids at school.  Her view is let the little fagots fend for themselves it seems. Remember she and her husband turned a blind eye to the many young boys being sexually assaulted by the wrestlers in their group. 

Also the majority of the three judges panel said that the three patrons did not have standing to object because no books had been banned yet.  They seem to have a wait and see if the victim is stabbed before taking the knife from the threatening person.  That is stupid.  Everyone knows what the law is intended to do and the writers of the law admit that openly.  It seems the tRump appointed judges want to let attacks on the librarians and on the books that mention gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, and questioning kids / people be removed as soon as possible knowing it is harder to put them back than to ban them in the first place.   Hugs.  


https://arkansasadvocate.com/2026/07/30/appeals-court-allows-arkansas-to-enforce-law-restricting-library-materials/

Law creates penalties for librarians distributing content deemed ‘harmful’ to minors

By
The "social section" in Crawford County Library's Van Buren branch (From court documents)

 The “social section” in Crawford County Library’s Van Buren branch (Screenshot from court documents)

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Arkansas’ 2023 law restricting access to library materials can go into effect, three years after a judge blocked two sections of the law on First Amendment grounds.

The three-judge panel from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled that the 18 plaintiffs had no standing to challenge one section of Act 372 and failed to prove that the other section was unconstitutionally vague.

The two sections create criminal liability for librarians who distribute content that some consider “obscene” or “harmful to minors,” and give city and county governing bodies the final say over library content.

Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin praised the ruling, saying it “allows Arkansas to move forward in enforcing a law that protects children from obscene materials while increasing accountability for public-library curation decisions.”

The plaintiffs challenging the law include libraries, bookstores, advocacy groups and individual library patrons. Their lead attorney, John Adams, said in a statement that the legal team is “evaluating all available legal options, including further review by the courts,” after Thursday’s ruling.

“Libraries and bookstores should be places where people can freely explore ideas — not where booksellers and librarians face criminal liability for selling, checking out, or even just shelving constitutionally protected books,” Adams said. “The freedom to read is fundamental to a free society and has always been protected by the First Amendment.”

Griffin said Act 372 was meant to “to address legitimate concerns about minors’ access to obscene materials and to establish a process for reviewing challenged content.”

School and public libraries already had content challenge policies before Act 372. The law stalled in the Legislature in 2023 before it was amended to say library materials would be relocated to an area inaccessible to minors, not removed from the premises, if elected officials find them to be “obscene.”

Section 5 of Act 372 allows city and county governing bodies to relocate challenged material if a challenger disagrees with a library panel’s decision to keep it in its original section. 

Another section of the law that gave school boards the same authority over school library materials had not been challenged.

Adams told the appeals court in June that Crawford County, a defendant in the case, showed what the law’s restrictions would look like in practice. The county’s five library branches separated LGBTQ+ children’s books from the rest of the collection after public outcry, and county officials cited Act 372 as a reason to maintain these “social sections,” even before the legislation became law.

Crawford County lost a separate federal lawsuit in 2024 after three parents alleged that the “social sections” violated the First Amendment.

The three library patrons who sued over the state law do not have standing because Section 5’s book challenge and relocation policies do not harm the plaintiffs, the appeals court panel said Thursday.

“Plaintiffs are speculating libraries might decide to segregate certain books as part of their curation policies, which they have not yet adopted, or in response to challenges, which have not yet been filed,” the panel wrote.

The librarian and bookstore plaintiffs have standing to challenge the other section of the law because they would be at risk of prosecution for noncompliance, according to the ruling, but the three judges disagreed with Adams’ claim that Section 1 of Act 372 was too vague.

This section makes “furnishing a harmful item to a minor” a Class A misdemeanor. Conviction would lead to a maximum prison sentence of one year.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks wrote that the law’s lack of a definition for terms like “furnishing” and “harmful” could lead to violations of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

An unchallenged provision of Act 372 removes schools and public libraries from the part of Arkansas state code that previously exempted them from prosecution for disseminating obscene content. Another unchallenged provision made school and public library employees liable for a Class D felony if they “knowingly” distribute obscene material or inform others of how to obtain it. A Class D felony conviction carries a maximum prison sentence of six years.

However, the language of Section 1 “limit[s] its application to situations when a person knowingly furnishes an item to a minor knowing of the item’s harmful character” and therefore is not too vague, the appeals court ruled.

Chief Judge Steven Colloton wrote in a concurring opinion Thursday that he understood the plaintiffs’ vagueness claim but disagreed with it “because third-party library patrons have no constitutional right to receive unfettered access to books of their choice at taxpayer expense.”

Colloton was appointed to the court in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush and has been chief judge since 2024. President Donald Trump appointed the panel’s other two judges, Ralph Erickson and L. Steven Grasz, in 2017.

Erickson was on the three-judge panel in April that allowed a 2023 Iowa law to go into effect, requiring the removal of books containing “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act” from Iowa public school libraries.

The removal of the injunction on Act 372 comes as the Arkansas Department of Education has been considering requiring public libraries to restrict children’s access to “sexually explicit materials” in order to receive state funding.

Dozens of Arkansans told the education department in June that they oppose requiring libraries to ensure patrons age 16 or younger cannot check out materials that depict or describe sexual contact and behavior.

The Arkansas State Library Board will meet Aug. 14 to consider sending the rules to a legislative panel for further approval. Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed all six board members.


Author Info

Tess Vrbin

Tess Vrbin

Tess Vrbin came to the Advocate from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, where she reported on low-income housing and tenants’ rights, and won awards for her coverage of 2021 flooding and tornado damage in rural Arkansas. She previously covered local government for The Commercial Dispatch in Mississippi and state government for the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri.

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

 

Neo-Nazi leader admits drag story hour stunt amounted to anti-LGBTQ civil rights violation, N.H. attorney general says

I do not think the punishment fits the crime here.  These people tried to stop other people from exercising their civil rights simply due to the bigotry and hate of the oppressors.  Hate doesn’t give people the right to stop people from gathering or enjoying legal activities.  These haters got away with it.  That will simply encurage others to do the same thing over and over until they drive those they hate underground and out of the public view. Which is what these haters want to accomplish: remove those they hate from society.  Hugs


https://archive.ph/zxplS#selection-1211.0-1211.118

The group behind the incident, NSC-131, will be permanently barred from ‘unlawful discriminatory practices’ in the state, if a judge approves

By Steven Porter Globe Staff,Updated July 31, 2026, 25 minutes ago
In this file photo, Christopher R. Hood Jr. appears at West Roxbury Municipal Court on July 25, 2022, when he was 23 years old. Hood founded the Nationalist Social Club 131 in 2019.In this file photo, Christopher R. Hood Jr. appears at West Roxbury Municipal Court on July 25, 2022, when he was 23 years old. Hood founded the Nationalist Social Club 131 in 2019.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
The founder of a neo-Nazi group that sent masked men to protest outside a 2023 drag queen story hour event in Concord, N.H., has admitted their anti-LGBTQ intimidation tactics amounted to a civil rights violation, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office announced Thursday.
Christopher R. Hood Jr. of Newburyport, Mass., and his group, the Nationalist Social Club-131, or NSC-131, will be permanently barred by court order from engaging in any further unlawful discriminatory practices, if a judge accepts the deal. Anyone who violates those terms could face further sanctions.
Hood, 27, will be required to complete 250 hours of community service and pay $2,500 in civil penalties, plus another $7,500 if he violates the terms of the court’s order, according to a motion filed by prosecutors. He’ll also be barred from coming within 250 feet of the eatery where this occurred or any other Teatotaller Café location.
The core allegation in this case was that Hood, his organization, and 19 unnamed co-defendants — who directed intimidating chants and homophobic slurs at those inside the establishment, performed Nazi salutes, and banged on the cafe’s glass windows — had sought to compel a place of public accommodation to engage in unlawful discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
“No individual or organization has the right to threaten, intimidate, or coerce a New Hampshire business into violating the law or denying lawful access based on protected characteristics,” Attorney General John M. Formella said in a statement.
 
“This resolution delivers accountability and sends the message that organized hate group activity that violates the law will not be tolerated,” he added.
The attorneys who represented the defendants in this case, Bradford Ryan Stanton and William E. Gens, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Formella said certain terms under the agreement apply to NSC-131 as an unincorporated association. For example, the group will be permanently barred from all unlawful discriminatory practices and will be prohibited from coming within 250 feet of any location that’s part of the Teatotaller Café business, which has since rebranded as Totally Tea and Coffee.
That means an individual who didn’t participate in the 2023 incident could theoretically be subjected to the terms of this agreement in the future, if there is evidence of their affiliation with NSC-131, he said.
The motion Formella’s office filed with the court indicates NSC-131 has disbanded and Hood has stated he intends to discontinue his involvement with that group and other organized hate activity.
Formella told the Globe that securing a victory in which the defendant admitted wrongdoing represents a significant achievement.
“It was worth it, I think, in the greater context of our civil rights efforts to get that admission,” he said.
This wasn’t Formella’s first attempt to clamp down on NSC-131’s activity. His office filed a complaint in early 2023 alleging the group had committed civil rights violations by hanging a “Keep New England White” banner from a Portsmouth overpass in 2022. But the New Hampshire Supreme Court ultimately ruled in early 2025 that the prosecution was unconstitutional on free-speech grounds.
Formella’s office filed the second case against Hood and NSC-131, regarding the Teatotaller incident, in late 2023.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell also filed a complaint in late 2023 against Hood, NSC-131, and a group leader named Liam McNeil of Waltham, Mass., over incidents involving LGBTQ events and immigrants in emergency shelters. That case is still pending, according to court records. 
Hood was formerly part of Patriot Front and the Proud Boys before he founded NSC-131 in late 2019. The members of his group disrupted or shut down several drag queen story events in Massachusetts in 2022, according to the lawsuit. Members of the group regularly wore khaki pants, black shirts or jackets, and ski masks, balaclavas, and neck gaiters to hide their identities.
——————————————————————————————————
Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.

Christian Supremacy shows its ugly face to the Northern Arapaho Tribe!

I had my allergy shots this morning. I’m in agony right now.  Not from the shots, but from the pain in my back muscles as they spaum.  Every since I have had the operation on my lower back to reduce the pain in my right leg, the pain in my back from the rest of the back muscles spasuming is out of control.  When I saw the surgeon this week, he looked and noticed how badly swollen the mucles were and agreed that I needed immediate relief from the situation I was in. He put in for mucle relaxing trigger point injections to relax the mucles. But other than lying down and taking muscle relaxers, there is little I can do at this point. I do have a hot tub, but if I push Ron to open it and get it ready to work, he will have to stop the work on the rest of the projects, including my new office, which I really need finished. So I suffer and often go to bed.  

This video is a great way to talk about how to deal with Christian nationalist bigotry and the forcing of Christian religion on others who have different beliefs.  In fact I read a post while waiting for my shots about a new trend of Christian evangelicals going on airplanes and forcing those in the plane to listen to sermons and preach about the Christian god.  I don’t get this, but I experienced something similar in the military, where a sect of Christians would try to cornor me every time I sat down for a meal in the chow hall to eat they would swarm my table demanding I listen to them talk about their god.  It did not make me feel better about their faith nor did it make me less gay, which was their real goal.  In fact when I returned the gesture to talk to them about my beliefs, they got really offended. Strange how they think pushing their religion goes only one way in their minds.  The thing is they know religion is a protected class where sexual orientation is not, but some friends and I came up with a good way to discourage them.  We would listen to their spiel if they listened to ours first.  We then spun them a made up religion on the house of Approditie, a religion based on having sex and being body worshippers. They got so grossed out over having to discuss the sex and nudity that they stopped pushing their shit on me.  I wonder if it would work today on the religions and indiscretions you hear about in the news.   Hugs.  


 

 

The UK’s new plan for trans students: bathroom bans, forced outing, & no social transitions

More hate and bigotry enacted against all the medical safety data available.  Guess I am just not being understanding today because these laws are not only not needed but also very harmful.  They cause a lot more problems than the pretended harm they claim to solve.  It is the attempt to regulate and restrict sexual / gender standards into the laws.  It just causes kids and people problems for no reason and promotes anger / bigotry against a small minority of people.   Hugs

 


https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/07/the-uks-new-plan-for-trans-students-bathroom-bans-forced-outing-no-social-transitions/

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Faefyx Collington (They/Them)July 19, 2026, 11:00 am EDT

The United Kingdom’s Department of Education has published its updated guidance for “Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026” (KCSIE) and it will take effect on September 1. However, the guidance is likely to put trans and gender-non-conforming children at greater risk.

“We criticise numerous aspects of the guidance, especially as to how schools should approach requests related to ‘social transition,’” The Good Law Project wrote in a statement responding to the draft guidance earlier this year. “We also emphasise its failure to properly explain how schools should accommodate the needs of trans pupils in accessing various aspects of school life, such as toilets, changing facilities, and sports.”

Last year, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court ruled that, for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act, the legal definition of “woman” is based on “biological sex.” In the aftermath, the Equality and Human Rights Commission released temporary guidance on barring trans people from single-sex spaces. They’ve now released their finalized plan, which says that businesses and institutions should prevent trans people using a single-sex spaces, and that if they allow trans people to use them, they will no longer be considered single-sex spaces.

The aggressive new schools guidance set out in KCSIE is set to comply with the EHRC’s updated policies around single-sex spaces, ruling that trans and gender-questioning children cannot use spaces aligned with their gender identity, even if they have socially transitioned.


“Schools must not allow children into toilets designated for the opposite biological sex,” the guidance reads. “This includes where schools are responding to a request to support any degree of social transition for children who are questioning their gender.”

The same policy is applied to changing rooms for those over 11 years old, nor should the students “share overnight accommodation with a child of the opposite biological sex,” it states.

The guidance allows for single-use restrooms “if a gender-questioning child does not want to use the toilet designated for their biological sex.” However, there is no actual requirement for this, but only the suggestion that “schools and colleges should consider whether they can provide an alternative toilet facility—for example self-contained individual toilets—without compromising the provision of single-sex facilities.”

When it comes to all of these arrangements, the guidance clearly states, “These alternative arrangements should not compromise the safety, comfort, privacy or dignity of the child, or of any other children.”

However, such arrangements in their own right will challenge the safety and dignity of trans children. One plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s bathroom bill died by suicide earlier this year. Before her death she said of similar provisions, “It is scary having to look around before to see if anyone will see me going into the single-user restroom, as I worry about people gossiping and speculating about me being transgender.”

When it comes to social transition at school, the guidance advises against staff and teachers supporting it, citing concerns raised in the controversial Cass Review. The guidance sets out extensive hurdles before any member of staff at a school or colleges can be supportive of a social transition.

The guidance establishes that “parents and carers should be actively involved and their views treated with importance.” That rule alone amounts to a forced outing policy that could put trans children at risk of harm if their family are not supportive. While the guidance goes on to carve out an exception for “rare circumstances” where involving parents and carers could pose a “greater risk,” such a policy would require a lot of trust and a careful hand from school administrators who are inexperienced with such matters.

The possibility of the school deciding not to allow the social transition is not only laid out but encouraged. The guidance notes that “when considering a child’s request for support with social transition will be to consider what is in the best interests of the child and other children, and a decision relating to social transition may not be the same as a child’s wishes.” They also note that, for younger children, support for a social transition should be “agreed very rarely.”

More of the choice is taken away from trans children and their families with the note that for “pre-pubertal children” clinical involvement should be part of the decision-making process and that “should include advising on the risks and benefits of social transition as a planned intervention, referencing best available evidence. This is not a role that can be undertaken by staff without appropriate clinical training.”

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Faefyx Collington is a British American author who writes about LGBTQ+ issues, politics, popular culture, and their intersection. You can find Faefyx Collington on socials and the wider internet by googling their unique name.

U.K. government covered up dramatic spike in trans youth suicides, new report says

This is what all the medical data and medical science shows which is why laws were passed to promote transgender acceptance. Then some people decided it was an insult to their god, some decided that they needed everyone to be the same as they are in life, and politicians realized it was a way to distract and get people to vote for them. There is no medical reason, no safety reason, and no social reason for hate towards trans people and other LGBTQ+.  To be so dismissive of the needs of other people who cause you no harm is crazy and I do not understand the motivation of the bigots.   Hugs


Photo of the author

John Russell (He/Him)February 12, 2026, 3:30 pm EST· Updated on February 13, 2026
transgender, teen, texas, texans, suicide

The U.K. government appears to have covered up a dramatic rise in transgender youth suicides, according to data obtained by U.K.-based government accountability non-profit the Good Law Project.

As Erin in the Morning reports, data the non-profit obtained from the National Health Service (NHS)-funded National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) via a Freedom of Information request sharply contrasts with the government’s official report on trans youth suicides in the wake of the 2020 Bell v. Tavistock ruling.

As the Good Law Project notes, following the U.K. High Court of Justice’s initial ruling in Tavistock, which found that minors under 16 could not legally consent to receive puberty blockers for the treatment of gender dysphoria, the National Health Service (NHS) substantially limited access to gender-affirming care for minors. Those limits reportedly remained in place even after the Tavistock ruling was overturned in 2021.

The U.K. government commissioned its 2024 Appleby Report after the Good Law Project reported that two whistleblowers with the Tavistock gender clinic alerted the organization to a significant rise in suicides among young people on the NHS’s waitlist for appointments to begin gender-affirming care in the wake of the Tavistock case.

————————————————————————————————————————

According to Good Law Project, the Appleby Report identified only 12 suicide deaths among current or former Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) patients at the Tavistock clinic between 2018 and 2024. However, as Erin in the Morning notes, the report disregarded young people who were unable to access GIDS care due to long wait times, which, post-Tavistock, now last an average 25 years.

At the same time, Good Law Project submitted a Freedom of Information request with the NCMD, and has only just published the data it received.

“Good Law Project can confirm that in 2021–2022 suicides of trans children in England surged to 22, a marked increase from 5 and 4 the previous two years,” the organization wrote in a February 7 release. “This spike follows the decision by NHS England to pull down the shutters on gender-affirming healthcare for young trans people” following the Tavistock case.

In total, the NCMD data show 46 transgender children in the U.K. died by suicide between 2019 and 2025. In addition to the nine accounted for between 2019–2021 and the alarming spike to 22 between 2021–2022, the data also show 10 suicide deaths between 2022–2023. And, according to Good Law Project, NCMD added that “the numbers reported in more recent years will likely be underestimated, due to a higher proportion of child death reviews that have not yet been completed.”

Good Law Project said it was “appalled” that U.K. health secretary Wes Streeting “commissioned and published a report to reassure the public that there was no significant rise in suicide rates, when 22 children took their own lives in a single year: 2021-22.” The Appleby report, they said, “denied the reality of trans deaths, as Streeting’s ban on puberty blockers denied the reality of trans lives.”

The nonprofit claims that Streeting department “fought tooth and nail” to block its freedom of information requests.

“To silence those raising the alarm on rising trans suicides as ‘dangerous’ while ramping up the policies correlating with that rise is an act of grave moral wickedness,” the group said.

Trans journalist Erin Reed said of these findings, “More alarming is what appears to be an explicit attempt to cover up trans youth suicide deaths. Those who seek to restrict gender-affirming care also seek to restrict any information showing those restrictions may lead to harm. Among the far right, claims have emerged that transgender youth are in no danger of suicide from the withdrawal of gender-affirming care, but this could not be further from the truth.”

Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. The Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) is staffed by trans people and will not contact law enforcement. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for youth via chat, text (678-678), or phone (1-866-488-7386). Help is available at all three resources in English and Spanish.

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John Russell is a writer and editor based in New York City. In addition to covering politics and entertainment for LGBTQ Nation, he has written for Vanity Fair, Slate, People, Billboard, and Out. He also writes about film, TV, and pop culture in his free newsletter Johnny Writes…

 

AG says locals have asked about LGBTQ+-themed story time

The haters of the LGBTQ+ community are normally Christian bigots using their religion as an excuse to attack and bully those they don’t like or agree with.   To these people just the existence of the LGBTQ+ people is a crime.   These bigots call just telling or letting kids know that LGBTQ+ people exist is sexualizing kids.  To these haters, just being LGBTQ+ is pornographic.  How stupid and silly. Just not being straight and cis is porn?  All nonesense just to attack the LGBTQ+ community.  Hugs


AG says locals have asked about LGBTQ+-themed story time

Published  1:12 pm

By: Matthew Sanders

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ) — Missouri’s attorney general wrote to a local library board saying that “residents” have requested her office make sure that an LGBTQ+-themed story time is “conducted in a manner consistent with Missouri law.”

A library spokeswoman told ABC 17 News that the event is family friendly.

The letter was dated Thursday and released publicly by Attorney General Catherine Hanaway on social media platforms.

Hanaway, in her letter, reminded the Daniel Boone Regional Library that providing minors with pornography is illegal, as is displaying sexually explicit material in a public location. She also wrote that libraries jeopardize their state funding if they hold events that are not designated for the proper age group.

The letter is in response to the Columbia Public Library’s “Rainbow Story Time” event scheduled for 10 to 10:45 a.m. Saturday in the Children’s Program Room.

“Join us for a queer-led story time with an LGBTQ+ theme. We’ll share stories, sing songs and do an activity with time to meet new friends at the end,” the event description on the library website states. The page states the event is meant for families, toddlers and preschoolers.

Library spokeswoman Mitzi St. John wrote in an email that the 30-minute event includes readings of “Rainbowsaurus” and “Big Wig.”

“Neither include sexual content,” St. John wrote.

 

Parents speak out after their teen died by suicide: Idaho’s anti-trans extremism took a toll

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/07/parents-speak-out-after-their-teen-died-by-idahos-anti-trans-took-a-toll/

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John Russell (He/Him)July 20, 2026, 1:00 pm EDT

The parents of a transgender teen who died by suicide earlier this year are speaking out about the toll Idaho’s anti-trans laws and the Trump administration’s anti-trans crusade took on their daughter.

“You worry about that hatred being internalized, and that’s what happened to my kid,” Elyse Thorpe told NBC News in a recent profile. “It got inside.”

Thorpe and ex-husband Joseph Pollard describe their late daughter, May Pollard, as an energetic and curious child who loved sloths, video games, and writing poetry. She just wanted to live her life and experience the same things any teen does. But she was also keenly aware of the wave of anti-trans laws and sentiment that have swept Idaho and much of the U.S. in recent years.

According to NBC News, May, who had also been diagnosed with autism, came out as trans when she was in eighth grade. She began receiving gender-affirming medical care in ninth grade. But due to Idaho’s ban on such care for minors, passed in 2022 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2024, her parents were forced to travel to Portland, Oregon, every six months to get May the care she needed. Following President Donald Trump’s return to office in January 2025, Thorpe began making the 13-hour round trip by car to avoid creating a flight record amid the administration’s relentless crackdown on gender-affirming care for young people.

While the treatment improved things for May, the obstacles placed between her and the care she needed by anti-trans legislators continued to weigh on her.

Then, in July 2023, Idaho’s law banning trans students from accessing single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity took effect. Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit challenging the law on behalf of Boise High School’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance, and in July 2025, May joined the lawsuit under the pseudonym Jane Doe. In court filings, May described feeling stigmatized by being forced to use her campus’s two single-occupancy restrooms, which came to be referred to as the “trans bathrooms.”

“It is scary having to look around before to see if anyone will see me going into the single-user restroom, as I worry about people gossiping and speculating about me being transgender,” she said. “I don’t want people to know I am transgender without my consent — even students who might be friendly. For me, it is not a part of myself I talk about or that I feel is the most important part of my identity.”

Her parents told NBC News that May would avoid eating and drinking during the school day, hoping to not have to use the school’s bathrooms. “I just want to fit in,” she wrote in her affidavit in the Lambda Legal case. “It is upsetting to think that I may have to go through the rest of high school without access to something as basic as the ability to use the same restroom as everyone else.”

May’s parents say she became more troubled last fall and winter, according to NBC News. She attempted to run away to Oregon, and at least one of her poems seemed to reference self-harm. Then on the morning of January 27, Thorpe woke to find May missing from her bedroom. She later found her daughter’s body in a downstairs bedroom. May was just 16 years old.

When a detective asked her parents whether anyone might have wanted to harm May, Thorpe responded that “A lot of America” did.

“There is a huge amount of animosity, every single day, thrown at trans kids,” an angry and grieving Pollard told the detective. “The whole f**king country. The whole f**king administration, every single f**king day.”

As NBC News notes, over the last few years, Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) has signed 15 anti-LGBTQ+ laws. In April, Little signed a pair of bills, one of which made it a criminal offense for trans people to use the bathroom associated with their gender, while the other banned Pride flags on government buildings.

As for Lambda Legal’s challenge to the state’s school bathroom ban, at the time of May’s death, she was one of just two plaintiffs left in the case, as all the others had graduated high school and no longer held standing. Earlier this spring, Lambda Legal moved to dismiss the case after the final plaintiff graduated.

But Thorpe has continued to protest Idaho’s anti-trans laws. According to NBC News, she stood outside Gov. Little’s office during a March 31 protest holding a photo of her daughter.

“I wanted to support the protesters and remind everyone, including the governor,” Thorpe told the outlet, “that the stakes are real.”

“The parents go and testify, and we say, ‘Children are going to die,’” she said. “We tell the legislators that, and they dismiss it. I guess they think it’s hyperbole, or they think it’s hysteria, or they think it’s an acceptable outcome, probably some mix of those things. So I don’t understand why there is an unwillingness to connect these laws to these outcomes. It was right there from the start.”

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John Russell is a writer and editor based in New York City. In addition to covering politics and entertainment for LGBTQ Nation, he has written for Vanity Fair, Slate, People, Billboard, and Out. He also writes about film, TV, and pop culture in his free newsletter Johnny Writes…

Israeli Lawmakers March On Gaza Vowing Settlements

For those who think it is just the government of Israel that is pro-genocide of the Palestinians.  In fact due to media and training in jewish schools the drum has long been pushing that Palestinians are evil sub humans.  Sound familiar?  It is what happened to the very people now doing it to others.  Seems they learned the wrong lessons from Germany in the 1930s to 1945.  The public is mostly fully OK with what the government is doing and the media has pushed it hard like our own billionaire bought media is trying to do.   The media is hiding the truth and wants to push a narrative that supports / makes Israel the poor agreevied party when they are in fact the ones pushing the hostility and threats onto others.  Israel retuniely killed journalists and banned all others from entering Gaza and the West Bank trying to keep video of the crimes being committed by the Jewish public and Israeli government from being seen by the world.  They know what they are doing is wrong and if people knew the truth they would force their government to stop Israel. 

Israel doesn’t want coexistence with others; it wants to rule over them.  They want to take land they claim a 2,500 year old document gives to them that the rest of the world doesn’t recognize as the borderlines.  Here is the public supported by the majority of the government, saying no Arabs in Gaza anymore. While the IDF destroyed water for the Gazans, they passed it out to the illegal settlers.  If Palitisinans were doing this on their side of the fence the IDF would shoot them no questions asked.  The MR crew is doing an impressive job laying out the difference in rules and privileges for the Palestinians and the settlers.  As Matt says, Israel is now South Africa apartheid on steroids.  Hugs


 

Happy Pride Week Halifax!

I watched this three times because the message is so good.  The  fact that the reverend of this faith can rejoice in diversity makes me wonder what hater preachers and haters get out of their faith, out of their hate?  I have been listening to the book Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang.  He is like Dan McClellan in that he is a biblical scholar; he knows the original manuscripts, times of use for each edition, and where different translations screw things up, and Fugelsang is a comedian, so he can throw it all out there with humor.   I recomend everyone try to find the book or the audio book.  He has whole chapters taking on the different haters and the clobber verses of the bible.  He shows what the original meaning, as far as can be known of each of those verses was, correcting the misunderstand and hate.   He like me feels that Christians follow Christ, biblcians follow the bible and they get that wrong because they don’t know the subtext or original intent; they hear only what the weekend preacher said who is preaching his version of the bible, not Christ’s.   Happy Pride week Halifax.  Long may your flags fly.   Hugs


Trump Crashes Spain’s World Cup Moment & Jon Examines Team Trump’s “Meritocracy” | The Daily Show

An update on my procedure to shave the spinal cord in my lower spine.  The people at the surgical center were grand.  I can’t describe them any other way.  One nurse even joked with Ron and me that she would love to spend time with us off work hours because she loved our sexual innuendo banter with each other, stuff like we can’t even think straight after 36 years together and that we don’t say move straight forward we say move gayly forward.  But work required her to only join us around the fringes but we had her laughing so hard.   All of the staff were wornder and one even walked me to the bathroom when I felt I needed to pee.  It was relatively embarrassing, but as I had worked in  ICUs before I realized it was totally every day normal for the nurses to see my butt.  She did hang the IVs and give me privacy which was more than we were able to do for the ICU patients.  

When they took me into the procedure room, I was worried that I might not be out enough and would feel pain.  The anesthesiologist asked me if I had ever had a colonoscopy.  I repiled yes.  He said do you remember it?  No I replied.  Same here he said, once we get you positioned, you won’t remember anything.  They got me positioned, and then he told me that once they got me an arm rest for my right hand he would administer the aniestha.  I was gone even before the arm rest was set up.  Totally out.  Woke up in the recovery room, and once I was awake they went and got Ron.  

I have a list of do and don’ts.  But on the way home we stopped to eat, I had a large breakfast for me.  Then we got home, and I went to bed until 12:30.  Got up, ate again, and locked the Majority Report into the fun half so I can watch it free, and went back to bed.  Then I slept until nearly 5 PM.  Got up and started working on the cartoon / meme / news post that was to go out today.  I will go out tomorrow.  Sorry about that, the spirit is willing, but the body is very weak right now.  On the plus side the pain in my right leg I have been living with seems to have diminished greatly and in some cases gone away.   

The video below is very funny and points out how tRump is now just a befuddled grandpa who thinks everything must be about him and how he is the greatest even when he is clueless about what he is talking about.  The host points out the mistakes and money interests of the entire cabinet.  Hope you enjoy.  Hugs