The law he touts that would allow local police to arrest people they “think” are not here legally and a local judge gets to order their immediate removal. Guess what that means in reality? Arrest all brown people, charge them, quickly send them to Mexico at gun point … learn later they were here legally, or maybe even citizens. Ah who cares, they republican leaders get their nice white straight cis ethnostate where they are complete rulers over how people live. Hugs. Scottie.
The third-term Republican responded that the state is using “every tool that can be used, from building a border wall to building these border barriers.” He also touted the new Texas law empowering state officials to remove people from the U.S. who they suspect of being in the country illegally.
“… the new deportation law, which is set to take effect in March and threatens to upend longstanding precedent leaving immigration enforcement solely to the federal government. The law would allow any law enforcement officer in Texas to arrest migrants accused of unlawfully entering the state from Mexico and empower judges to order their removal”.
Department of Public Safety troopers stand guard over migrants in a detention area Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023, in Eagle Pass as a surge of migrants push across the border.
William Luther
WASHINGTON — Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas is doing everything to stop border crossings short of shooting migrants because the Biden administration would “charge us with murder.”
“We are deploying every tool and strategy that we possibly can,” the governor said in an interview with conservative commentator Dana Loesch. “The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border because of course the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”
The comments came during an appearance on Loesch’s show last week in which Abbott was asked what he believed was the “maximum amount of pressure” he could implement to secure the border.
The third-term Republican responded that the state is using “every tool that can be used, from building a border wall to building these border barriers.” He also touted the new Texas law empowering state officials to remove people from the U.S. who they suspect of being in the country illegally.
The clip was aired on Loesch’s program again Thursday without the line about shooting migrants. A version of the audio was also posted on social media by Heartland Signal, a progressive radio show based in Chicago.
Abbott said Friday that he was asked to point out where he was drawing the line on what the state can legally do to secure the border.
“I pointed out something that is obviously illegal,” Abbott said. “It’s that simple.”
The comments come as the Biden administration has sued the state to stop a slew of Abbott’s border security efforts, including the new deportation law, which is set to take effect in March and threatens to upend longstanding precedent leaving immigration enforcement solely to the federal government. The law would allow any law enforcement officer in Texas to arrest migrants accused of unlawfully entering the state from Mexico and empower judges to order their removal.
Abbott also has strung miles of razor wire along the border and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande, which the Biden administration is also fighting to have removed in a separate court battle.
But Abbott still has faced pressure from some conservatives to do more, and some in the GOP have called for the use of deadly force to stop suspected traffickers. Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged as much during a campaign stop in Texas last summer, saying those breaking through border barriers and displaying “hostile intent” should “end up stone-cold dead as a result of that bad decision.”
The Texas Department of Public Safety last month found no wrongdoing by agency officials after six troopers working for Abbott’s border security initiative alleged mistreatment of migrants last summer.
The complaints included an email from a DPS medic describing “inhumane” treatment of migrants he witnessed while deployed in Eagle Pass. The email said troopers had been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande and told not to give water to asylum-seekers even in extreme heat. The agency’s inspector general found that most of the incidents raised by the troopers did happen, but concluded that DPS officials did not violate law or agency policy.
Benjamin Wermund is the Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News. He can be reached at ben.wermund@houstonchronicle.com. He covers the Texas delegation and the many ways the state and its leaders shape national politics and policy. He’s a Texas native and a diehard Spurs fan.
People like Abbott are precisely the reason why laws exist. He has no moral compunction against murder, but luckily realizes it could land him in prison.
Aside from the normal hate and bigotry towards the LGBTQIA that religious republicans normally show, this guy adds a new wrinkle. And it goes back to the point I made that some people can not accept change. While not really old at 59 he shows he can not adjust to modern times. He says, “From time immemorial, we have known that your sex was dictated by your biology,” Black said. “All I am doing is putting into Florida Statute, what we have always known, and only recently, a few people have become confused about.” He seems to reject any advancements since time immemorial. You do know that at one time humans thought thunder and lightning were caused by gods, we also thought the world was flat, we were sure that sickness and disease were caused by spirits and demons, religious leaders at one point were so certain that the earth was the center of everything with the sun orbiting the earth that they burned anyone to death who said otherwise … so much more we always knew, took as concrete never changing fact, and we were totally wrong about. Just as he is about gender, sex, trans issues, and anything his religious teaching say about the LGBTQIA people. He rejects modern science and medical best practices but instead demands that proven harmful conversion therapy be mandated by law. “”It would also require coverage of so-called conversion therapy by requiring health insurance policies to cover mental health services “to treat a person’s perception that his or her sex is inconsistent with the person’s sex at birth” by affirming their birth sex”. Hugs. Scottie
A Northeast Florida lawmaker wants to legally define the words “man” and “woman” based on biological sex at birth. Jacksonville Rep. Dean Black filed the proposed What Is A Woman Act this week, which would also impose new requirements related to transgender individuals on state agencies and insurance companies.
House Bill 1233 requires state agencies to revoke any identification cards, like driver’s licenses, that don’t match up with a person’s sex on their birth certificate.
“From time immemorial, we have known that your sex was dictated by your biology,” Black said. “All I am doing is putting into Florida Statute, what we have always known, and only recently, a few people have become confused about.”
Black’s bill would also require any health insurance policy in the state that covers transition-related “prescriptions or procedures’’ to also cover “treatment to detransition” from such procedures.
It would also require coverage of so-called conversion therapy by requiring health insurance policies to cover mental health services “to treat a person’s perception that his or her sex is inconsistent with the person’s sex at birth” by affirming their birth sex.
The bill would also require any school district or state agency “that collects vital statistics for the purpose of complying with anti-discrimination laws or for the purpose of gathering accurate public health, crime, economic, or other data” to identify the birth sex of people in the data set, potentially restricting data collection on trans people.
Dean Black last appeared here for a bill that would allow DeSantis to remove any elected official who votes to remove Confederate monuments.
In October 2023, Black called for banning elected officials from participating in Pride events after Jacksonville’s newly-elected mayor led her city’s parade.
"It is an ugly, mean-spirited bill that helps NO ONE,” @CarlosGSmith said, “it should be voted down and rejected by lawmakers for what it is." https://t.co/7XVsoLhttp
My favorite is all the dudes who scream about trans women using women’s bathrooms. Uh………dudes? We don’t see each others’ genitals in the bathroom anyway. Because we use stalls. With locks. I have no way of knowing if the woman in the stall next to me is trans. Why would I care?
Notice how their obsession is overwhelmingly with trans women. Trans men, not so much. This is evident in his proposed legislation being titled the “What is a Woman” act.
Once again, misogyny is the root of all hatred of sexual minorities.
They also seem to think that it’s a big party in there, when all we’re doing is peeing, pooping, and menstruating. Most of us don’t even talk to anyone in there.
Take out all urinals. Put in stalls. Make every bathroom unisex. That way, men will have to wait in line just like women do now. (I went to a football game where they had port-a-potties while they were building the bathrooms. Port-a-potties, of course, are unisex. But there was one that was for women only, and of course I waited in that line for it. The other ones were disgusting.
They don’t realize that they’re saying men can’t control themselves around women and are constantly suppressing the urge to rape someone. Hell, Mike Huckabee said something like this a few years ago.
I wouldn’t be surprised if someday that red states require a mandatory genital’s check to make certain that you are male or female per their standards on gender and ID. Sigh.
Not only is he an asshole, but he’s simply fucking wrong. Factually incorrect, whether he knows or accepts it. Humans can be born with XX, XY, XO, XXY, (Klinefelter’s Syndrome) or XYY chromosomes. Take your “there are only two genders” bullshit and fuck off for all eternity.
I will call note to the plans of these hate groups. The statement outlines the primary mission for Alabama’s two chapters of Moms for Liberty in 2024: to apply for library board appointments, submit reconsideration forms for books they consider inappropriate, and discuss issues with local government officials who control public libraries, such as county commissions and city councils.Also note what they call pornographic material. It is simply any media that has LGBTQIA characters, plots, or even mentions them in a positive way. It is a way to mask their flat out bigotry and hate. Please understand had restricts been on when kids can come to the library or that they must be accompanied would have stopped me from one of my safe spaces to go to after school and I wouldn’t have been able to read because I couldn’t have books at home. Also as I got older the few books I did find on abuse and having gay characters or information about being gay saved my sanity which was teetering on a very thin edge over a cliff. Hugs. Scottie
Children’s section at the North Shelby Public Library in Mt. Laurel
The conservative political group Moms For Liberty sent a letter last week that asked the state legislature and the public library service to withhold funds for libraries that allow children to check out “pornographic” materials. It also wants the Alabama Public Library Service to create software that prevents a minor from checking out books outside of their age range.
The statement outlines the primary mission for Alabama’s two chapters of Moms for Liberty in 2024: to apply for library board appointments, submit reconsideration forms for books they consider inappropriate, and discuss issues with local government officials who control public libraries, such as county commissions and city councils.
“It is time for the Alabama legislature to utilize the power of state funding and directives to APLS to push towards meaningful and long-lasting changes that protect minors and empower parents to have their voice heard,” the release said.
APLS director Dr. Nancy Pack said it’s possible for local libraries to install software to limit minors from checking out adult books, but she thinks children and teens would still find a way around the system to check out the materials they want.
“The only way that you are going to keep children from checking out materials that the parent feels are inappropriate for their child is to have parental guidance and for the parents to have a sit down talk with their children saying this is what you may check out,” Pack said.
Emily Jones, of the Madison County chapter of Moms for Liberty, said the organization doesn’t want to remove books from libraries, “rather that books be placed in a manner that allows parental oversight when sexually explicit material is included.”
That goes for all books, she said, including non-children’s Bibles.
Jones said her group isn’t targeting books with themes such as racism or LGBTQ issues but is focusing on books recommended by the American Library Association to be moved out of children’s sections. They feel the ALA is “pushing for books that sexualize and groom children.”
“Any book that sexualizes children, exposes children to sexual content to include incest and rape, should raise concerns for any adult regardless of their political beliefs or organizational associations,” Jones said.
The group said a 9-year-old recently checked out George Johnson’s book “All Boys Aren’t Blue” at the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library. Moms For Liberty said this book is “pornographic” because it includes references to sexual assault and incest. The book doesn’t condone incest but depicts a character being assaulted by a relative. “All Boys Aren’t Blue” is listed in the library catalog as an eBook, and a print version is in the young adult section of the downtown branch.
According to Moms for Liberty, the library copy included a sticker reading, “This book was generously donated by TVA funding grant from Sen. Sam Givhan.”
Givhan told AL.com that he realized in November that the library purchased the book with funding allocated by the Tennessee Valley Authority through the state legislature. Givhan said he wasn’t involved in picking books for purchase, and asked the library to remove the sticker.
Givhan requested the library remove the acknowledgment. He said “referencing it as an LGBT book glosses over the details of the book and the age issues involved.” He added that he supports books “being properly placed in the library in age-appropriate areas along the lines supported by Moms For Liberty.”
Givhan is the only legislator mentioned in the group’s letter, and he said he’s supportive of Moms For Liberty’s goals.
The Southern Poverty Law Center named Moms For Liberty as an anti-government group in 2023 on its “Hate Map.” Jones said the designation by the SPLC is propaganda “to try and silence a movement they disagree with.”
“I love my country and the principles on which it was founded, which includes a limited role of the government,” Jones said. “I believe our country and state are best served when local citizens are making the decisions that align with the value system of their community.”
Jones said since publishing the release, she’s received emails, calls and “in-person accolades of support for our efforts.”
Library advocacy group Read Freely Alabama countered with its own statement. They emphasized that the American Library Association doesn’t control Alabama libraries and that pornography isn’t in children’s books in Alabama’s public libraries.
The group’s recommendations include suggesting libraries create material reconsideration policies “that operate from a neutral viewpoint and do not impose partisan and ideological worldviews on a community at large.” RFA also suggests every library create a policy limiting unsupervised minors.
“Read Freely Alabama urges our state leaders to consider these reasonable alternatives to the unreasonable demands of a minority who have persecuted fellow American citizens and defamed a profession in their quest for political power,” the statement read.
Pack said the American Library Association offers guidelines, not policies. The APLS board is waiting for an opinion from the attorney general regarding the role of the APLS over local libraries and will decide in a later board meeting whether or not to leave the ALA.
“We are in an advisory role and local boards dictate what materials belong in their collection,” Pack said. She added taxpayer dollars only fund some books while foundations and non-profit organizations donate books also.
The floodgates have been opened, and because the right won’t restrain their fundamentalist wing, they are pushing their hardest to enact their most extreme religious dictates. They not only believe this is a winning issue when it has been shown it is not at voting time, but they feel now is the time to push their god on to the public by law. Think of what the fundamentalist Christians believe in and worship. Now ask yourself if they will stop at just getting rid of trans and gay people? They have already shown they will get rid of the rights of pregnant people and those that can become pregnant, to control their bodies, they have shown they will make women themselves a lower class of person in the US, returning women’s rights to where they were in the 1950s. Women will be totally subservient to their fathers or their husbands. Those who are ambivalent on the rights of the LGBTQIA need to understand those are only the first targets because they are the smallest and easiest to pick off. Then they come for the rest of societies progressive equality advancements. By the way I just read that in one state they filed a bill to outlaw transitioning and instead mandate care for trans or gay kids including adults be conversion therapy to return kids to the normal natural state of straight and cis. I will post that tomorrow. Hugs. Scottie
State Rep. Beth Lear also compared gender dysphoria to delusions of being an animal, proposing a child might want to “explore being a bird” by jumping off a five-story building.
AJ McDougall
Breaking News Reporter
Maddie McGarvey/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The Ohio Republican behind a bill that would bantransgenderstudents from using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity quoted scripture in justifying the legislation on Wednesday, deploying a verse suggesting that her opponents should be drowned in the sea.
State Rep. Beth Lear whipped out the reference to Luke 17:2 while answering questions on House Bill 183 at a morning committee hearing. Facing Lear, State Rep. Joseph Miller, the ranking member of the House Higher Education Committee, asked her how she could “jive” her bill with “the teachings that you proclaim.”
“In Luke 17, Jesus says that if you cause one of these little ones of mine to stumble, it would be better for you to have a millstone hung around your neck and be thrown into the deepest sea,” Lear replied. “So—there are also concerns that Jesus has for children. And in Genesis, he tells us that he created the male and female.”
OH State Rep. Beth Lear (R) uses scripture to justify a discriminatory bathroom bill:
“In Luke 17, Jesus says that if you cause one of these little ones of mine to stumble, it would be better for you to have a millstone hung around your neck and be thrown into the deepest sea.” pic.twitter.com/jkm6ozaBbq
Lear has previously invoked the Bible in explaining her reasons for sponsoring the proposal, which she introduced alongside State Rep. Adam Bird (R) and more than a dozen other Ohio Republicans last May. At an October hearing on the matter, according to The Buckeye Flame, Lear recited Genesis 1:27, saying, “In our country, since the Puritans and Pilgrims first arrived and until recently, we believed ‘God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.’”
Nor did Wednesday mark the first time the Ohio lawmaker has used violent imagery to justify the measure. At that same October hearing, Lear shared a disturbing anecdote about a young girl who had been gang-raped by an athletic team. An adult in the child’s life, Lear claimed without further elaboration, had then “encouraged” her to transition to male. The Republican refused to answer questions about the alleged incident from Cleveland.com at the time, citing the need to protect the victim’s privacy.
The Wednesday committee hearing served as a means for Lear and Bird to unveil a new version of the bill more closely aligned with the language of another measure targeting transgender minors. That proposal, House Bill 68, prohibits transgender children from receiving gender-affirming medical care and prevents transgender girls from competing on sports teams that align with their identity. On Wednesday, it was pushed through by the Ohio House, which voted 65-28 to override a gubernatorial veto on it.
Rep Weinstein: "Recently at CPAC, a speaker said that trans people should be eradicated from the earth. What do you think?"
Sponsor: "I do not believe anyone should be wiped out. But the science is clear, there are only 2 genders. Children cannot change what they are." pic.twitter.com/ft4Ky6BbjR
Later in the hearing, Lear compared gender dysphoria to delusions of being an animal, a debunked scarecrow argument that hardline conservatives began to utilize in school policy debates several years ago. “If I had a child who thought he was a bird, am I going to take him to a doctor who tells him the best thing to do is to let him explore being a bird?” the Ohioan asked. “And oh, by the way, there’s a five-story building next door—why don’t you jump off and see if you can fly?”
Miller, a Democrat, pointed out the bill’s inherently discriminatory nature in the hearing. “This is eerily reminiscent of discussions in the ’50s about how white women feared Black people in the same restaurant, the same bathroom,” he said, according to journalist Erin Reed. “It’s eerily similar to the racist policies that were had in the south.”
House Bill 183 has not yet left committee, and it is unclear when it might be brought to the floor for a vote. House Bill 68, no longer vetoed, now goes to the Ohio Senate, which will vote on it on Jan. 24.
They do in fact believe that Jesus was always there, with his father God, and that it was Jesus who did the creating. As evidence, they will point to the language “let us make man in our image” — not realizing that it’s probably the “royal we” employed by the translators. Believe me, I’ve heard this crap my entire life, being raised in a fundamentalist family.
It’s not a royal we. Judiasm was quite polytheistic before it was forced to become monotheistic. And Judiasm didn’t have anything resembling a trinity. That was invented by Christians.
While there is considerable evidence of polytheism in early Caanan, there are multiple examples of ‘majestic plurals’ in Hebrew that have a plural noun form yet govern singular verbs. ‘Behemoth’ is one such.
Maybe Jesus was talking about hateful POS Bigots causing his children to stumble. We have plenty of actual proof of that. Maybe we should drown her sorry ass instead.
That dead skunk on her head is a sin too. Against anyone with eyes. Clearly she has no gay friend’s.
I find it incredibly ironic (not to mention hypocritical) that Phyllis Schlafly — who made herself famous by traveling to different places across the country during the 70s and 80s telling women they should stay home(!!) — actually ran for Congress unsuccessfully not just once but twice in 1952 and 1970. Also, guess which one of her parents was the primary breadwinner when she was growing up during the Great Depression? Not her dad — her mom.
A U.N. court began hearings this week on South Africa’s case against Israel for genocide — a bid to stop the conflict in Gaza and document what the Palestinian ally calls Israeli forces’ “genocidal conduct.” The U.S. calls the case “meritless.” Anita Powell reports; Patsy Widakuswara contributed.
Again the point of making the laws so vague is to instill fear of violating it as no one really knows how much it covers. That is the point of all these laws from Texas, Florida, and other maga states. It is so that people have to go to the extremes to avoid lawsuits that the laws makes almost impossible for them to win. It is all about returning the US to a time when the LGBTQIA was not seen socially nor in media in any positive way. During that time any media mention of the LGBTQIA had to make them the villain and beware little billy of the homosexual man. Of course, little Billy was in far more danger from the local Priest who was presumed a holy wonderful man because he preached the good religion, Christianity. These people pushing these to remove all mention of LGBTQIA from media, books, libraries, rainbows from schools are driven by fundamentalist religion or a desire to return to a time more comfortable for them. A time that existed only because some people did not have full equality to live openly as who they were in society. They hate that equality, and they love to engage in oppression of others.
Then they use the excuse they are preventing indoctrination. Specifically progressive indoctrination. But when you have to remove dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauruses, and Genesis book of records, and any positive mention or anything not cis white republican ideology with forced Christianity what is that? Right wing republican indoctrination. It is reeducation camps. It also is about creating a two tier schools system. The public system for poor people that prepares them to be low level workers / laborers, and the privet schools for upper incomes wealthy kids who will be the overseers / managers/ owners of the workers. Hugs. Scottie
The Escambia County School District, located in the Florida panhandle, has removed several dictionaries from its library shelves over concerns that making the dictionaries available to students would violate Florida law. The American Heritage Children’s Dictionary, Webster’s Dictionary for Students, and Merriam-Webster’s Elementary Dictionary are among more than 2800 books that have been pulled from Escambia County school libraries and placed into storage. The Escambia County School District says these texts may violate HB 1069, a bill signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis (R) in May 2023.
HB 1069 gives residents the right to demand the removal of any library book that “depicts or describes sexual conduct,” as defined under Florida law, whether or not the book is pornographic. Rather than considering complaints, the Escambia County School Board adopted an emergency rule last June that required the district’s librarians to conduct a review of all library books and remove titles that may violate HB 1069.
Each school in Escambia County has thousands of titles. As a result, many school libraries were closed at the beginning of the school year pending the completion of the review.
At the completion of that process, more than 2800 books were removed from libraries. (This includes, in some cases, multiple copies of the same book.) These books are being reviewed again by the school district. But that process is proceeding extremely slowly. According to a list maintained by the Escambia County School District, fewer than 100 texts have gone through the final review process. Many of these books remain unavailable to students absent a parental “opt-in.”
The dictionaries, according to the school district’s data, remain locked away. Their exclusion demonstrates the preposterously broad language of HB 1069. Dictionaries do contain descriptions of “sexual conduct.” Merriam-Webster, for example, defines sex as a “sexual union involving penetration of the vagina by the penis” or “intercourse (such as anal or oral intercourse) that does not involve penetration of the vagina by the penis.” But the idea that we need to exclude dictionaries from schools to protect children defies all logic.
District staff responsible for the review at each school were given a checklist to determine whether a book should be withheld from students. The checklist suggests reviewers consult “Book Looks,” a right-wing websiterelied on by Moms for Liberty and other groups to justify the banning of books from school libraries. It was created by “Moms For Liberty member Emily Maikisch,” according to public records reviewed by Book Riot.
The Florida Freedom to Read Project (FFRP) obtained a copy of the checklist from the school district, which FFRP provided to Popular Information.
Along with dictionaries, thebooks removedfrom Escambia County school libraries as a result of this process includeeight different encyclopedias, two thesauruses, and five editions of The Guinness Book of World Records. Biographies of Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, Nicki Minaj, and Thurgood Marshall are also locked in storage.
Classic texts like Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, The Adventures and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile are no longer available to Escambia County students. Twenty-three novels by Stephen King have been removed. The dragnet has also swept up books popular with the political right including Atlas Shrugged and two books by conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly.
The reality in Escambia County serves as a rejoinder to DeSantis, who has described concerns about book removals as a “leftist activist hoax” and a “false political narrative.”
At the same event, Florida Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz argued “[r]emoving clear instances of pornography and sexually explicit materials, often within arms reach of our youngest kids, is not book banning.” How would Diaz describe removing the dictionary?
DeSantis justified his statements by claiming that no school district in Florida had removed more than 19 books. At the time,148 bookshad been removed in Escambia County as part of the challenge process.Now, in part due to DeSantis signing HB 1069, more than ten times that many books have been taken off the shelves in Escambia County. And Escambia County is not an anomaly. Orange County, Florida, which includes Orlando, hasremoved at least 678 booksfrom library shelves.
Authors and parents fight back
Penguin Random House, five authors, two parents of Escambia County students, and the non-profit group PEN America sued the Escambia County School Board last May, alleging that the board’s actions violate the First Amendment. The lawsuit relates to decisions by the school board, prior to the passage of HB 1069, to permanently ban several books from Escambia schools.
The Escambia County School Board banned most of these books at the request of Vicki Baggett, a high school English teacher in the county. Baggett is responsible for hundreds of challenges in Escambia County and neighboring counties. She also appeared at the June 2023 board meeting and spoke in favor of the emergency rule.
Meet the Florida English teacher trying to ban 150 books from school libraries
Baggett has challenged books like And Tango Makes Three, the true story of two male penguins, Roy and Silo, who lived in the Central Park Zoo and raised an adopted chick. Inan interviewwith Popular Information, Baggett said she objected to And Tango MakesThree because it exposes students to “alternate sexual ideologies.” Baggett said she was concerned “a second grader would read this book, and that idea would pop into the second grader’s mind… that these are two people of the same sex that love each other.”
Last year, Popular Information reported that former and current students accused Baggett of being openly homophobic in class. For example, Baggett allegedly told a tenth-grade student that her sister, who had a girlfriend, was “faking being a lesbian for attention” because “nobody’s born that way.”
Florida English teacher pushing book bans is openly racist and homophobic, students allege
More recently, Baggett wasinvolved in a schemethat involved reporting a librarian in a neighboring county to law enforcement for failing to remove a popular young adult novel from the school library.
Although a material review committee in Escambia County voted 5-0 to reject Baggett’s challenge of And Tango Makes Three, the decision was overruled by the school board, which sided with Baggett. “The fascination is still on those two male penguins,” school board member David Williams said. “So I’ll be voting to remove the book from our libraries.”
The lawsuit alleges that the school board banned and restricted books “based on their disagreement with the ideas expressed in those books.” In so doing, the school board has “prescribed an orthodoxy of opinion that violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
Today, there is an important hearing in the case. A federal judge will consider Escambia County’s motion to dismiss the complaint. In a brief submitted by the State of Florida in support of Escambia, Attorney General Ashley Moody argued that the school board could ban books for any reason because the purpose of public school libraries is to“convey the government’s message,” and that can be accomplished through “the removal of speech that the government disapproves.”This is a novel argument about the purpose of school libraries.
They have to. Words come together to make sentences, and sentences create paragraphs. Then you’ve got people sharing information and getting ideas, and who knows where that could end up? People might start to think.
I knew that I was gay when I was three or four years old. I didn’t know what gay was, and I didn’t know what it meant. I certainly didn’t know about sex. But I knew that I was different from other boys in a way that involved other boys, and I knew that I had better not talk about it whatever it was.
When I was a child, I was a voracious reader. I went through at least two encyclopedia sets. One day, when I was about 10, I was thumbing through the dictionary looking for new words. I found the word “homosexual”, and knew that that word applied to me. It told me that I was not the only one.
And that is what they want to stop. Kids learning anything different other than the religious or right wing party line.
I hope the entry you read back then for homosexual was less judgmental than the one I read as a kid. Mine said being homosexual was about the worst thing in the world, or words to that effect.
I had a similar experience as you. Yet as Johnny says immediately below me, the reading I did secretively in the stacks at our public library did not make me feel confident. In fact, I felt there was something wrong with me. I understood it was who I was, but it was a long time till I could find pride in that.
Businesses and Universities around the country will start rejecting applicants from Florida. Having a diploma that you graduated from the Florida school system will automatically get your resume put into the circular file and it should.
Well they’re also banning science and history books, so why not dictionaries? I’m sure Prager U* can produce some word-books with definitions the fascists will like.
*No idea what the U stands for. Unacceptable? Useless?
History in Alabama is under attack again. A handful of state lawmakers are on a mission to erase it, to cancel those who would mention it and punish those who would protect it. No less than a revered state institution is on the line — the Alabama Department of Archives and History — and the stories it exists to preserve.
It’s LGBTQ history in lawmakers’ crosshairs. Founded in Birmingham in 2015, the Invisible Histories Project collects stories and material regarding LGBTQ history in the South — the things, it seems, many would like to pretend never happened.
In June, the Alabama Department of Archives and History invited one of the Invisible Histories Project founders, Maigen Sullivan, to speak in Montgomery about the group’s work, as part of a lunchtime lecture series. And that’s where all hell broke loose — this time.
Read the full article. As you can see in the June 2023 video below, state Sen. Chris Elliot [photo above] tried to defund the Archives shortly after the one-hour lecture took place. That bill failed. His new bill would fire the entire board.
Cancel culture strikes again.
Alabama Archives hosted a speaker on LGBTQ history. Republican lawmakers are pushing through legislation to fire the board.https://t.co/5stvXMxS0n
And acknowledging the crimes against LGBTQI+ people is some sort of lèse-majesté. Yasss, queen! Inflicting butthurtness upon homophobic hets is such a huge crime, so just don’t even dream of doing it or they’ll plot to toss you in jail… or worse. Really! In fact, they really like that “worse” option — and it ain’t pretty.
The point is erasing the LGBTQIA from public view. Like Russia did. Next is to make being LGBTQIA illegal, again like other countries do. This is not the end of it. It is a deliberate push to wipe out all progress of the past 70 to 80 years on equality and equal rights for those not cis straight white males. It is the first part in a war to return to white Christian cis straight male rule. Hugs. Scottie
A bill before the Legislature this year would replace trustees with political appointments.
Gay Pride Marchers in Birmingham, Alabama The Birmingham News The Birmingham News
History in Alabama is under attack again. A handful of state lawmakers are on a mission to erase it, to cancel those who would mention it and punish those who would protect it.
No less than a revered state institution is on the line — the Alabama Department of Archives and History — and the stories it exists to preserve.
But this time it’s not stories of Reconstruction or civil rights protests at risk of being lost. At least, not yet. Rather, something more recent.
In June, the Alabama Department of Archives and History invited one of the Invisible Histories Project founders, Maigen Sullivan, to speak in Montgomery about the group’s work, as part of a lunchtime lecture series.
And that’s where all hell broke loose — this time.
You see, the other Invisible Histories founder, Joshua Burford, had spoken as part of the same lunchtime lecture series the year before, and no one seemed bothered then.
But political winds changed. The Moms for Liberty types brought back the Inquisition and now a thing that had once escaped notice of all but a handful of history nerds became a moral panic of political importance.
A handful of lawmakers called the Archives and questioned why state money was being spent on such a thing. The Archives director, Steve Murray, explained it wasn’t state money but a grant that funded the lecture series.
Not that the funding mattered. These lawmakers did not want it to happen, period, regardless of who paid for it.
“I wanted to express my concern for this event,” state Sen. Chris Elliot, R-Josephine, wrote Murray in a text message I obtained through a public records request. “Ideally, I’d like to see it canceled.”
Canceled. There’s that word. The next time you hear someone yapping about cancel culture, look back at Elliot’s text message and remember who is trying to cancel who.
Murray declined, the event went forward as planned, and angry lawmakers began to plot retribution.
First Elliott tried to cut $5 million of state funding from the Archives, nearly half its budget. And remember, he already knew tax dollars hadn’t paid for the event.
This was punishment.
Elliott filed his first bill in a special session. Legislative leadership instead kept to the point of the special session to redraw congressional districts. Elliot’s bill died when lawmakers gaveled out and went home.
Now, Elliott has set his sites on those who control the Archives — its board of trustees.
“Ideally, I’d like to see it canceled.”
Alabama State Sen. Chris Elliott to Alabama HIstory and Archives Director Steve Murray regarding an LGBTQ historian invited to speak.
In a bill pre-filed for the 2024 session, Elliott would change the Archives governance from a self-nominating board to one controlled by the governor, lieutenant governor, and the Alabama House and Senate leaders.
All of the 21 current board members would be fired on June 1, 2024. Those board members include folks like Montgomery civil rights attorney Fred Gray, who knows a thing or two about Alabama history (because he made it).
But Elliott’s real target seems to be Murray.
“It really chaps me when we end up in a situation where you have unelected bureaucrats saying, ‘We know better. We’ll do what we want to do regardless of what the people think,’” Elliott said in a recent talk radio interview.
The thing is, I’ve seen Murray speak in at least a dozen public hearings, and I’ve seen him explain things to rooms full of lawmakers that they should have learned in fourth-grade Alabama History. Murray doesn’t fume, yell or condescend. Generally, he’s one of the more patient, soft-spoken people I’ve met in Alabama state government.
And I’ve never heard Murray speak the way Elliott described. Nor did Murray say any such thing in the text messages Elliott exchanged with him before the event.
The Alabama Department of Archives and HIstory was the first of its kind in the country and is home to the Museum of Alabama.Kyle Whitmire, al.com
I called Elliott to ask, who had spoken to him that way?
Turns out, no one. They just didn’t do what Elliott wanted them to do.
When I pushed him on it, Elliott argued that he doesn’t like how Archives and History board members are appointed and he said some things that weren’t exactly accurate.
“They are one of the few, if not only, self-perpetuating boards in the state of Alabama that does not at least answer to elected officials, or by extension to the people of the state of Alabama, and simply reappoints itself over and over and over again,” he said. “And you gotta wonder, is that good governance?”
There are a few problems with what Elliott said.
First, there are other boards that self-nominate to fill vacancies, including the University of Alabama Board of Trustees, and there are others controlled by professional associations, such as the State Board of Medical Examiners and the Alabama State Bar.
Elliott hasn’t filed bills to change how those boards work. I checked.
State Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, wants to fire the Alabama Department of Archives and History Board of Trustees after the department refused to cancel an LGBTQ historian’s speech last year.
Nor is it true the board lacks political oversight or that it is purely self-perpetuating.
The board does nominate its members, but those nominations then go before the Alabama Senate, where Elliott serves, for up or down votes — much like Supreme Court nominees go before the United States Senate.
If Elliott didn’t like any of these prospective board members, he could have voted against them. In fact, he’s had that opportunity 20 times since he became an Alabama state senator in 2018.
Care to guess how many he approved?
In the last four years, Elliott voted to approve all the people he now wants to fire.
Elliott approved three of those nominees this year — just two weeks before he took an interest in the LGBTQ stuff.
Not only did Elliott vote to approve those people for the board, but so did the cosponsors of his bill.
I didn’t get to ask Elliott about this during our phone call.
When I asked him how many Archives and History events he had been to — not counting the open-bar receptions special interest lobbyists host there — the phone call suddenly ended.
“Have a great day!” he said. “Bye!”
And the line went dead.
Text messages between state Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, and Alabama Department of Archives and History Director Steve Murray show Elliott knew the Food for Thought speakers series was not funded with state money. AL.com obtained the texts through a public records request.
Elliott’s record will have to speak for itself.
But what of his question: Is that good governance?
A handful of lawmakers out of 140 demanded an event be canceled because they didn’t care for its subject matter.
The director and the board declined to cancel it.
Because silencing a speaker who has tried to make Alabama history more accurate and more complete would be in direct conflict with Archives and History’s purpose — to document and share true Alabama stories.
They made the archives a place to tell Alabamians’ stories — not just the ones Elliott wanted told.
They did their jobs and now Elliott wants to fire them for it.
This is Don’t-You-Know-Who-I-Am politics.
This isn’t someone concerned with free speech.
This isn’t someone who cares about cancel culture. This is someone angry he doesn’t get to cancel someone else’s culture.
This is someone who wants to bring back the silence — to erase what little has been recovered and mute those who would speak of it.
Unless we say, enough.
Unless we say, this is history that won’t be forgotten.
Unless we say, not again.
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About the Authors
Kyle Whitmire
Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for AL.com, where he writes about political culture in Alabama. Dislikes: corruption, cruelty, incompetence and hypocrisy. Likes: quiet heroes. He is the 2023 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
Scottie's Playtime 