A Texas man has been federally charged after allegedly harassing and making death threats against a Boston doctor who treats members of the transgender community, including trans youth.
Matthew Jordan Lindner, 38, of Comfort, Texas, was arrested Friday and charged with one count of transmitting interstate threats, according to the U.S. District Attorney’s Office. Lindner appeared in the Western District of Texas Friday afternoon and will appear in federal court in Boston at a later date.
Prosecutors say that in August, inaccurate information about procedures at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) for the transgender community was spreading online. According to the charging documents, on Aug. 31, Lindner called the Boston-based National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center and left a threatening voicemail targeting one of the center’s affiliated doctors.
According to its website, the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center provides “educational programs, resources and consultation to health care organizations with the goal of optimizing quality, cost-effective health care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and all sexual and gender minority (LGBTQIA+) people.” The education center is part of Fenway Health and the Fenway Institute, which are among the world’s largest health centers focused on LGBTQIA+ communities.
Investigators say the targeted doctor cares for gender-nonconforming children and transgender patients.
In Linder’s expletive-packed voicemail, officials say he allegedly threatened, “You’re all gonna burn. There’s a group of people on their way to handle [the doctor]. You signed your own warrant, [doctor].”
Prosecutors also say Linder accused the doctor of “castrating our children” and said, “You’ve woken up enough people. And upset enough of us. And you signed your own ticket.”
If convicted, Lindner faces a sentence of up to five years in prison, up to three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000.
“Death threats instill fear and terror in their targeted audiences,” U.S. Attorney Rachael S. Rollins said in a news release. “The conduct alleged here is not protected free speech. The words used here do not amount to someone simply expressing their discontent or engaging in a heated debate. Mr. Lindner’s alleged conduct — a death threat — is based on falsehoods and amounts to an act of workplace violence. The victim, a doctor caring for gender nonconforming and transgendered patients, should be able to engage in this meaningful and necessary work without fear of physical harm or death.”
In August, Rollins announced the creation of the “End Hate Now” hotline (1-83-END-H8-NOW or 1-833-634-8669) for reporting hate-based incidents or potential criminal activity. Callers can report incidents of hate, hate crimes, or individuals believed to be supporting acts of hate-based violent extremism. Callers can remain anonymous.
Seriously is anyone surprised at this news. This is what the don’t say gay and the anti-trans rhetoric are all about. The guy who wrote and pushed the don’t say gay bill said the reason he wrote it was he couldn’t stand that gay kids were coming out in school and accepted by the other students. He wanted them targeted and bullied to stop other kids from coming out. He said that! It is the goal. Oh and yes he claims he is a deeply religious Christian. It is the Russia model of removing the LGBTQI+ from society / the public. These red states have now removed any anti-bullying programs or campaigns based on it would violate parents’ rights according to these laws to teach their children that being gay of trans is an abomination to their god and so they need to be beaten / removed to make god happy. Think of it, kids who get told that gays are molesting kids they are going to beat up and pick on gay kids and right now teachers cannot stop it in places in Florida. This is the end result the maga religious right thugs love, the right to force others to live as they demand, do what they demand, they are the US Christian Taliban. Hugs
There has been a marked increase in parents demanding limits to LGBTQ+ students’ rights that may have spilled over to bullying in schools.
Nearly half of the public high school principals who participated in a new nationally representative survey say they faced efforts from parents or the broader community to “challenge or limit LGBTQ+ students’ rights” during the 2021–2022 school year. The new study’s results suggest that adult efforts to limit LGBTQ+ students’ rights has led to increased bullying of LGBTQ+ students in schools.
During the summer of 2022, the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at UCLA and the Civic Engagement Research Group at UC Riverside surveyed 682 public high school principals and found that culture war issues have their jobs increasingly difficult.
As NPR reports, policies and practices related to LGBTQ+ students’ rights were among the topics that 69 percent of those surveyed said led to “substantial political conflict” with parents or members of their communities.
Researchers found that principals in narrowly divided purple districts were almost twice as likely as those in more conservative or liberal areas to say they faced multiple efforts to limit LGBTQ students’ rights.
A similar 2018 survey found that 15 percent of principals indicated multiple attacks on LGBTQ students. That percentage rose to 24 percent across all schools in the 2022 survey, with the number more than tripling in purple districts.
The 2022 survey also indicated that adult efforts to limit LGBTQ students’ rights paralleled an increase in students harassing LGBTQ classmates.
“It’s quite disheartening to work so hard and care for all our students when so many people are being hateful and threatening,” said one California principal, who reported an incident in which a parent screamed an anti-gay slur at a school counselor over the phone.
Other issues that caused significant conflict, according to 69 percent of the principals surveyed, include teaching issues around race and racism, social-emotional learning, and student access to books in school libraries. They also reported that rampant misinformation is making it harder to teach many subjects, particularly current events and media literacy.
Despite their grim findings, John Rogers, a professor of education at UCLA who helped lead the survey, and collaborator Joseph Kahne, a professor of education at UC Riverside, said that many principals believe that a majority of parents do not support the conflicts raging in public schools.
Rogers told NPR that principals believe that most parents stay silent, however, “because they’re too busy or overwhelmed or are afraid that if they become engaged, they’re going to face danger.”
“If the vast majority of folks are quiet, then folks who have very strong opinions or who are willing to engage in very contentious politics will have an outsized influence,” Kahne said. “If all parents and community members speak up, and if they have reasoned and focused conversations, that dialogue will be good for schools.”
The schools use to be the place to combat prejudice, bigotry, and hate. But now the teachers are told they cannot support the attacked kids, they cannot affirm anything positive about gay or trans kids. Meanwhile this is what the right wing parents are hearing all day on right wing media and the kids are being told. Wonder why a right wing kid would think trans kids are trying to attack them in the bathrooms? Wonder why right wing kids think all gays are child molesters?
This is what the Christian nationalists want to have in the US. This is what the fundamentalists / evangelical / fundamentalism religious groups want to create for US society. They want the ability to force their god, their ideas of right / wrong / morality on everyone. No disagreement tolerated, no free will, no religious freedom. You will worship their god as they tell you to and you will live / act as they demand. You will dress as they say you must. The Taliban make women cover head to toe, and men must wear man’s / manly clothing. Sound familiar? No drag queens there, and if the US Christian Taliban / vice police get their way there wont be any here. Only books that paise their god is allowed and insulting their god is a serious crime, and we have now attempts to ban any books the fundaments don’t like spreading across the red states especially in the bible belt areas. It is happening here now. As the people in Iran found out, once the religious people took over they wont ever let go of their power to force their god / ways on the public. They will kill everyone first. It is easy to let the fundamentalists take over but incredibly hard to remove them from power afterwards. We have to stop them now. Tell me will the LGBTQI+, gay people like me and my family have to apply to other countries for help to flee the US when the right wing republican maga fundies like DeathSantis take over? Will we beg these countries to open their borders for us, when now we limit and prevent those fleeing persecution from coming here? Hugs
Taliban security personnel. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar / AFP via Getty Images)
The Taliban have flogged a group of people in a crowded football stadium for “moral crimes” including gay sex.
Twelve people, including three women, were lashed in front of thousands of onlookers in the eastern Logar province, a Taliban official has informed the BBC.
According to the source they were punished for “sins” including “adultery, robbery, and gay sex”.
The people flogged received between 21 and 39 lashes each, with the maximum a person can receive being 39, another Taliban official shared.
It comes a week after the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, announced the group would be “implementing sharia law” in full force across the country.
The islamic law enforces punishments such as public executions, stoning, floggings and the amputation of limbs for thieves.
Under Sharia law same-sex sexual activity is prohibited and can be punished by the death penalty.
The recent floggings resemble the group’s previous rule from 1996 to 2001, when it was condemned for carrying out public executions, stoning and floggings at the national stadium in Kabul.
The flogging in Logar province follows 19 people being flogged in a similar way in the Takhar province in northern Afghanistan just last week.
It also comes after the Taliban promised a “softer” version of its regime, but since the group’s return to rule last year reports of public floggings have been rife.
Since the group’s rule it has continued to destroy women’s freedoms by banning them from entering parks, funfairs, gyms and public baths, with women saying they were beaten for standing up of their rights.
A 22-year-old gay man was previously shot dead by the Taliban in Afghanistan because of his sexuality.
Hamed Sabouri, from Kabul, was killed in August, local activists told PinkNews.
He was reportedly kidnapped by the Taliban and a video showing his murder sent to his family days later.
Nemat Sadat, an Afghan activist who is fighting to have LGBTQ+ people evacuated from the country, told PinkNews that Sabouri’s death is the result of inaction from western governments, many of which have failed to take in adequate numbers of fleeing Afghans.
As I posted earlier today and despite something the anti-trans people try to push gender identity not matching birth assigned sex is not new, it is not being pushed in schools, and it is not being forced on kids. It has existed all through history just as same sex attractions have. Why not just give people equality and civil rights, why use old incorrect old traditions or religious dogma to stand in the way of the best medical understanding we have today. In 2022 we should not be denying the advanced reality we have to pretend that people that did not even understand to wash their hands had a better understanding of medical gender or sexual attraction. Also understand that in the end of the story they tried to bully this man into wearing female clothing that the sheriff thought he should be wearing. The authority of law had decided on their own that this person who by dressing and acting as the masculine person they were so upset the legal authorities they tried the best they could to force them into obeying. But Harry understood his gender and who he was and was willing to die first. Just like the kids today willing to kill themselves instead of being forced to live as a gender they are not. Hugs
Harry Allen was a skilled barroom brawler, trick shooter, and dashing womanizer known for having multiple mares in his stable at any given moment.
Harry Allen, the transgender heartthrob of the Wild West Photo: Public domain
He was a skilled barroom brawler, trick shooter, and dashing womanizer known for having multiple mares in his stable at any given moment. If 19th-century trans “cowboy” Harry Allen hadn’t been assigned female at birth, John Wayne—or Elliot Page, if we’re casting looks—would have played him in a sexy biopic already.
Hollywood has spent billions depicting the frontier as a gun-slinging frenzy of cisgender masculinity, but in reality, the Old West was one of the queerer places in America. This sprawl of undeveloped land drew hundreds of closeted men, women, and gender non-conforming folk from across the United States out of suburban hidey-holes, and into a difficult but liberating new ecosystem where survival meant more than gender norms.
Given the Wild West was built on the bones of indigenous tribal lands, its more relaxed approach to gender wasn’t surprising. Tribes like the Navajo and Cherokee were never moved by Christian colonizers’ binary dog-and-pony show, recognizing anywhere from four to six “genders” on average. Their tradition of accepting “two-spirits”—transgender, gender fluid, and/or non-binary tribe members—as treasured community members bled subtly into the culture of the West, creating cracks of space for other queer people to experiment. Infamously lawless, the burgeoning area was too busy dealing with murders and dysentery to make Puritanical “masquerading laws” a priority, removing the legal leverage well-established cities used to subjugate queer bodies for offenses like **checks notes** wearing a dress while male.
The ratio of men to women was also around 14:1 on the frontier, which meant three things:
“Gay sex” wasn’t always seen as homosexual, just a necessity.
Sexual violence was a significant problem across the board.
It wasn’t uncommon for women to dress in men’s clothes to prevent becoming victims of sexual violence.
Because of this, some historians have reduced overt queerness to crossdressing as a survival tactic and all Brokeback Mountain sexual partnering as a supply and demand issue.
Harry Allen is a prime example of why these historians are silly.
Born in Indiana in 1882 to poor ranch workers, Allen’s family relocated to the Pacific Northwest just as he entered puberty. His mother, Jennie Gordon, gave interviews asserting her child rejected girls’ clothes almost immediately, dressing in pants instead of skirts and learning to shoot on horseback instead of taking up needlepoint. He formally changed his name to Harry Livingston in around 1900, switching to Allen once police records attached to “Livingston” became cumbersome. This name change was not, as some historians have suggested, for employment reasons.
Allen communicated clearly in a 1908 interview with The Seattle Sunday Times that everything from his name to hat choice was rooted in gender dysphoria, saying, “I did not like to be a girl, did not feel like a girl, and never did look like a girl,” he said. “Sick at heart over the thought that I would be an outcast of the feminine gender, I conceived the idea of making myself a man.”
As it turns out, Harry executed his idea a little too well for the time. He secured “manly” work throughout the Washington area, including bartending and participating in prize fights. He had no trouble attracting a parade of girlfriends, some quite desperate to marry him. Harry even assimilated into a gang of young men, though they participated in little crime outside of drinking and petty theft. But everything he did, from playing the piano drunk to messy breakups, became catnip for cops and local tabloids.
By 1902 Allen was in the newspaper regularly. His first publicized arrest in 1900 was for appearing “in male attire,” despite no local or federal law saying he couldn’t wear pants. Once the arresting officer was humiliated by the revelation Allen hadn’t committed a crime—and Harry loved polished menswear, always sporting a silk hat, tie, and a walking stick even on quick trips to the barber—the young man became a punching bag for law enforcement. “Vagrancy,” an intentionally vague charge used at the turn of the century to target LGBTQ people, appears on his rap sheet multiple times alongside accusations of bootlegging and prostitution.
While the frontier may have been safer than the average “lawful” city for queer people, Allen could never escape the burden police, judges, and media heaped on him. He was jailed in 1911 for selling liquor to an indigenous person, a minor and non-violent offense, but held on a massive bail for weeks while awaiting trial. During his imprisonment, the Spokane Chief of Police made bullying Allen into petticoats under threat of solitary confinement his personal pastime. Journalists enabled this by publishing weekly updates on whether Harry had given in to skirts. (He never did.)
By the time Harry Allen died of syphilis in 1922, he had been written up by the media no less than two dozen times, mostly for living as his authentic self and dating “young women of respectable parentage.” At the time of his passing, at least two paramours had committed suicide out of unrequited love for him, though it’s unclear if these reports were accurate or sensationalized tabloid fodder.
Allen remains strong evidence that gender dysphoria and trans ideology are not, as pundits today wail from their Twitter accounts, a new “social contagion,” but a long and well-documented part of the human experience no matter where those humans settle.
If you go read the article you see things like this; “We’ve heard stories about voters who are eligible to vote but have a criminal conviction in their past, and they are now scared to register and vote,” said Michael Pernick, a voting rights attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He called it “deeply concerning.” This was all about scaring the more marginalized members of society from voting. After all the unpopular minority republican party needs to cheat as much as possible to be able to win. Hugs
State-level law enforcement units created after the 2020 presidential election to investigate voter fraud are looking into scattered complaints more than two weeks after the midterms but have provided no indication of systemic problems.
That’s just what election experts had expected and led critics to suggest that the new units were more about politics than rooting out widespread abuses. Most election-related fraud cases already are investigated and prosecuted at the local level.
Florida, Georgia and Virginia created special state-level units after the 2020 election, all pushed by Republican governors, attorneys general or legislatures.
These enforcement units found no indication of systemic problems because they were (conveniently) looking in the wrong places. What about examining GOP gerrymandering, voter intimidation and suppression, marginalization of minority voters, refusal to make Election Day a national holiday (as it is in some countries), etc?
I wonder if now they will quietly stop claiming that all elections that they don’t “win” are somehow stolen… The gaslighting is really getting on my last nerve.
Most people here get it, but just in case, here’s a recap.
GOP politicians have been screaming that the 2020 election was stolen, and in a very limited and twisted way, they are RIGHT. They had worked very hard to steal the election themselves, by purging voter rolls, limiting when, how, and who could vote. But then Covid came along and many states enacted new voting rules to increase access to voting to accommodate the new social distancing. So their hard-working effort to steal the election didn’t work; the people they attempted to prevent from voting were allowed to vote. THAT’S what they’re mad about, what all this talk of “voter fraud” is really about underneath the surface. Their own attempt to rig the election didn’t work. And they’re pissed about that!
Then look again! Hard! Like this – no, harder than that! Because there’s got to be someone, somewhere, who’s doing it, otherwise this would just be a big waste of money designed to intimidate voters, especially voters of colour, and a respectable political party wouldn’t do that.
That last bit is the bright shining lie in all of this. Republicans are all about making sure that the black and brown people are kept away from the polls. I’m really excited to see that wherever possible, early voting is catching on. I’ve been voting early for a long time now. These days, I’m doing it by mail. I get my signature and ballot notarized, just so they can’t fuck with me. I can get that done for free at my credit union or at the election office.
I entirely agree with other posters here: – the voter fraud is wholly Republican in the gerrymandering and the intimidation of voters and their removal of ‘Drop boxes’, so as to make it more difficult to vote. So, fuck you Republicans in Florida and everywhere.
Well, duh. The whole “voter fraud” thing was political grandstanding, not a serious effort to counteract fraud, because there wasn’t enough to worry about to begin with.
Voter Fraud Unit finds nothing. MAGA response: I’ve been telling everyone that the Deep State goes even deeper than anyone suspected, and this just proves it! See! I’ve been right about EVERYTHING ALL ALONG !!! And Hillary, Hunter Biden and George Soros are behind it all! Why aren’t they in jail.
Was a single Resident of the Villages, convicted of Felony Voter Fraud, and Lost their Right to Vote??? NOPE!!! Yet, voting to allow FORMER Felons to REGAIN their Right to Vote, has been BLOCKED by DeathSentence and the FL State Houses!!!
Lauren Boebert went on a radical right television station to let viewers know that the real victim of the attacks against the LGBTQ community in Colorado Springs was… her. Meidas Contributor Tennessee Brando reacts.
The US is developing it’s own version of the Taliban who are trying to enforce dress codes and moral standards of their own on the rest of the population via threats of violence and death. In the US it is called the maga republican right wing. Hugs
An Afghan woman and a girl walk in a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, November 9, 2022. REUTERS/Ali Khara
Taliban’s treatment of women may be crime against humanity: UN experts
An Afghan woman and a girl walk in a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, November 9, 2022. REUTERS/Ali Khara
GENEVA, Nov 25 (Reuters) – The Taliban’s treatment of Afghan women and girls, including their exclusion from parks and gyms as well as schools and universities, may amount to a crime against humanity, a group of U.N. experts said on Friday.
The assessment by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Richard Bennett and nine other U.N. experts says the treatment of women and girls may amount to “gender persecution” under the Rome Statute to which Afghanistan is a party.
Responding to the assessment, Taliban Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Abdul Qahar Balkhi said: “The current collective punishment of innocent Afghans by the U.N. sanctions regime all in the name of women rights and equality amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
The U.N. experts said in a statement that women’s confinement to their homes was “tantamount to imprisonment”, adding that it was likely to lead to increased levels of domestic violence and mental health problems. The experts cited the arrest this month of female activist Zarifa Yaqobi and four male colleagues.
They remain in detention, the experts said.
The Taliban took over from a Western-backed government in August 2021. They say they respect women’s rights in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic law.
Western governments have said the Taliban needs to reverse its course on women’s rights, including their U-turn on signals they would open girls’ high schools, for any path towards formal recognition of the Taliban government.
Separately, a spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office called for the Taliban authorities to immediately halt the use of public floggings in Afghanistan.
Ravina Shamdasani said the office had documented numerous such incidents this month, including a woman and a man lashed 39 times each for spending time alone together outside of marriage.
Balkhi said the Taliban administration considered the statement by the United Nations and others by Western officials were “an insult towards Islam and violation of international principals.”
Days after the horrific attack on an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado, Tucker Carlson hosts a segment featuring the leader of an anti-trans hate group, and the garbage right takes to Twitter to blame the victims of the shooting. Meidas contributor Troy breaks down the right-wing conspiracy that is causing violence.
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