ICE gang thugs ganged up on a man and while beating him they shot him several times. Then they started attacking the crowd. Watch the second video first. Hugs
BREAKING: Law enforcement responding to another shooting in Minnesota involving federal officers
BREAKING: Video of Shooting in Minneapolis by Federal Agent on Camera
According to Alison Gill of the Daily Beans news podcast the food where this boy is kept is rotten and bug ridden, there is no temperature controls, the conditions are horrific on purpose so that people will self deport or agree to deportation just to get relief from the torture they are enduring. Also they are rounding up and holding other children instead of sending them to family services and other family members as the law requires. They are just breaking laws and using kids as pawns. We still never recovered and found the kids they stole and sold the first tRump term. Those kids and their parents will never be reunited. That is child trafficking and the maga don’t care. Hugs
I have never understood the rights hate of LGBTQ+ people just for being different. I used to think it was they couldn’t understand it because they did feel that way. If they did not feel that way then it must be wrong or not exist. The very same things they say about trans people they said about gay people when I was a school kid. I remember that people were pushing to ban gay guys, and it was always gay guys just like it is always trans women, from teaching because they would molest the kids. Now it is we can’t let trans people use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity because of some fear they will molest the little girls. Always to protect the kids but if that was the goal then may I mention religious leaders? I think also the fear some religious right wingers have is that they find trans women attractive and that terrifies them. They want to force kids to go through the wrong puberty so it is harder for them to fit in with the stereotypes people have of what is masculine or feminine. For some they think they are doing the bidding of their deity but I don’t remember reading Jesus saying anything about trans people. But he did preach love and tolerance a lot. Maybe the pain and cruelty is the point after all. Hugs
Trans youth almost always feel less suicidal while undergoing treatment. (Getty
Trans youth almost always feel less suicidal while undergoing treatment. (Getty)
Yet another study proving that trans youth almost always feel less suicidal on gender-affirming care has been thrown on the pile of evidence that puberty blockers are safe and effective.
Research set to be published in the Journal of Paediatric’s February volume has once again proved that trans adolescents show “meaningful reductions” in depression and anxiety after beginning clinically-endorsed hormone therapy.
Co-written by paediatricians in Nevada, Texas, and Missouri, the study examined the wellbeing of 432 patients before and after undergoing treatment.
The participants, aged 12 to 20, were surveyed on their mental health before and at least 364 days after beginning appropriate medical treatment such as puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
Trans youth regularly come under attack by politicians. (Getty)
Using the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) toolkit – an internationally acknowledged assessment of suicidality in young people and adults – researchers found significant improvements in the mental health of patients across the board.
Suicidality among participants decreased significantly over time, according to the study’s results, with rates continuing to decrease as time went on.
The reductions, clinicians noted, were consistent regardless of gender identity, treatment duration, and, interestingly, the age at the start of therapy.
This not only once again proves that gender-affirming care is remarkably effective in improving the wellbeing of trans patients, but that its effectiveness in reducing suicidal tendencies does not diminish as patients get older.
Clinicians recommended following-up the study with a “larger sample and longer follow-up” to sufficiently prove the consistency of gender-affirming care’s mental health treatments.
Politicians continue to ban puberty blockers despite evidence
Numerous studies across the globe have proven that gender-affirming care is almost always a good thing for trans people, especially trans young people.
One study from October 2024 found that 97 per cent of trans under-18s were “highly satisfied” with the results of gender-affirming treatment, while another from March in the same year found that, out of 548 patients who accessed trans healthcare, just two regretted it.
Regret rates for gender-affirming treatment are very low according to a paper from May 2024, which found that patients are more likely to regret knee surgery, breast augmentation, and even having children than those starting gender-affirming care.
Despite the mountain of evidence proving that gender-affirming care can be, and almost always is, life-saving, anti-trans politicians and political pundits regularly claim trans young people shouldn’t be allowed to access clinically-approved medical treatment.
Wes Streeting has routinely come under fire for his policies on trans people. (Getty)
At least 27 states in the US ban gender-affirming care in some capacity, preventing over 40 per cent of America’s trans youth population from accessing care. Puberty blockers are also banned for trans youth in the UK, despite being freely available for cisgender youth.
The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ suicide prevention organisation, warned these bans have “detrimental impacts” on the mental health of trans young people, who are already disproportionately likely to feel suicidal.
Research conducted by Dr Natacha Kennedy in the University of London found that Wes Streeting’s ban on puberty blockers for trans young people is “significantly, extensively, and relentlessly harming trans children and young people”.
She spoke to the parents of trans young people who were once “happy, well-adjusted, and little different from most cis children”, but who have now resorted to self-harm because of an inability to access care.
Suicide is preventable. Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact the Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org), or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to contact the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.
Texas A&M University, earlier this month, banned a philosophy professor from teaching about Plato’s Symposium because it’s too gay (well, in their words, for discussing “gender ideology”), and, while obviously philosophy classes should be allowed to teach about Plato and state lawmakers and administrators shouldn’t be interfering in curricula… they are right that the specific texts that they banned are pretty gay.
If the legislators’ and administrators’ goal is to make LGBTQ+ people feel more isolated and alone as a way of getting them to conform and pretend to be cisgender and heterosexual, this won’t be enough to accomplish that goal — however, it’s a necessary step towards that goal.
I grew up in the ’90s in a conservative part of central Indiana, and I went to college on the other side of the country, determined to get away from everyone I knew and to live my life as I wanted. One of the classes I had to take in my first semester at college as an 18-year-old freshman was a survey of Western civilization-type class that included Symposium as one of its readings.
I still remember the professor warning us in the class prior to reading Symposium that the text was about “love” and that, for Plato, that very much included love between two men. This was 2001, pre-September 11, just a couple of years after Ellen DeGeneres came out, and at a time when homosexuality was illegal in many states, so, yes, we got a “trigger warning,” and the potential trigger was a discussion of homosexuality.
It’s hard to say what impact that book had on me. Pretty much the only mentions of homosexuality in grade school that I remember from Indiana were the slurs kids would throw around every other sentence, the jokes and insults that were never any deeper than calling someone gay, the Christians randomly arguing (against no one!) that homosexuality was sinful, the casual discussions of violence against gay people (I grew up in the days when fantasizing putting all gay men on an island and dropping a bombshell on them was just a normal thing for people to talk about, like the weather)… and here I was — a freshly minted adult among other adults — talking about Plato, the famous philosopher who (pretty much every adult my whole life had said) was an important historical figure. And Plato was gay. Maybe not “gay” in the modern sense, but he was writing books about loving men, and that was close enough for me.
[This] is why MAGA wants to end liberalism itself. To them, people are workers, soldiers, baby-producing machines, not human…. It’s a cold and sad way of looking at the world.
One of the passages that Texas A&M University had an issue with was Aristophanes’ speech about the origin of love. The short version is that, in the distant past, humans rolled around like balls with four arms and four legs and two faces. Some people were all male, some all female, and some a mix. They were powerful and a threat to the gods, so Zeus cut them all in half. Now they (we) spend our lives looking for our other half and holding on when we find them.
While the point of the story isn’t an explanation of why some people are gay and others are straight, it’s baked in, and modern readers are going to notice that Aristophanes is saying that same-sex love has the same origin as opposite-sex love. They’re all just normal variants of human sexuality, and it’s not something that anyone else in the book even comments on. That is, same-sex love is just another legitimate expression of love that comes from the same place, at least for Aristophanes. Others in the book have different opinions about male same-sex love, but none are disapproving.
I wasn’t the only one to take that message from that story. I have heard it mentioned by other queer people throughout my adult life. It featured prominently in the late-90s musical (and later film) Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It’s a part of the queer lexicon.
“The ‘gender ideology’ of this tale comes to us from the fourth century BC,” writes Guardian columnist Osita Nwanevu. “And philosophers in the many centuries since have examined it not only for what it tells us about the Greeks in Plato’s day but for what it might tell us, as far removed as we might be from ancient Athens, about sex, love, and longing. It is a tale about universal aspects of the human experience philosophers have examined in the service of understanding what it means to be a human being.”
Nwanevu’s larger point is that the underlying ideology of the presidential administration — as shown in Stephen Miller’s claim that the world is “governed by strength” and Vice President J.D. Vance’s statement that America is nothing more than a “homeland” for “people with a shared history and a common future” — is really selling people short. What it means to be human is much more than mere strength and domination, and America is supposed to be an idea and an ideal, not just a piece of land where we live.
LGBTQ+ rights flourished in the post-war world, as did other human rights protections; ending the constant spats over pieces of land inspired people to understand that there’s a lot more to being human…
That is, America is supposed to be about all people’s inherent value and right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” not Miller’s “iron laws of the world” — those of “might makes right” — that Nwanevu rightly calls “the laws of animals.”
This is fundamental to how the global neo-fascist movement sees the world: For them, everything is about domination and resource-hoarding. All other considerations are secondary.
It can be seen in the attacks on LGBTQ+ rights that are often justified by pointing to a decline in the birthrate, or in the attacks on humanities and social sciences at universities, degrees that many claim (often incorrectly) don’t pay well. This can be seen in the complaints that schools shouldn’t teach kids to be more tolerant of diverse people — a necessary skill in a multicultural world where we all get along — and should instead teach them the bare minimum of reading, writing, and arithmetic (and, since it’s the 21st century, how to code). It can be felt in the right-wing mockery of art and arts funding when they never have complaints about spending money on military equipment that will never (and should never) see combat.
And it’s in this horrifying Greenland business, which is what Miller was talking about when he was discussing “the iron laws of the world.”
| Shutterstock
On the one hand, invading Greenland would end NATO, end all sorts of ties between the U.S. and Europe, and end the peaceful world created in the latter half of the 20th century that led to prosperity in the West and an end to the wars for territorial expansion that defined Europe for millennia.
On the other hand, Greenland looks kinda big on Mercator-projection maps, and adding a big splotch to the part of the world labeled “United States” would make the president feel like he actually accomplished something of value in his life.
It shouldn’t be surprising that LGBTQ+ rights flourished in the post-war world, as did other human rights protections; ending the constant spats over pieces of land inspired people to understand that there’s a lot more to being human, to be concerned with their own and other people’s happiness, and to try to live up to the ideals laid out in previous centuries.
Which is why MAGA wants to end liberalism itself. To them, people are workers, soldiers, baby-producing machines, not human. Our worth is measured in terms of how much stuff we can produce, how much we can contribute to our nation’s domination over other nations. Individuals’ fulfillment and happiness are secondary. It’s a cold and sad way of looking at the world.
So Plato, of all people, is taking a beating in Texas. Learning about philosophy opened my mind when I was young and taught me to ask questions about what life could offer. (The part of Symposium about how homosexuality results in intellectual reproduction instead of biological reproduction like heterosexuality wasn’t even on the syllabus at Texas A&M, but I still haven’t forgotten about it.)
In the war on human-ness itself, LGBTQ+ identities will always be one of the first victims. That’s why they don’t want us learning about ourselves.
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That is because of the constant refrain they are hearing from the right. If they hear hate all day they start to hate. That is why anti-bullying campaigns were so important in schools. They taught kids young that it was OK to be different and not everyone is straight or cis. Hugs
Young men are more likely to hold homophobic views, study suggests.
Men born in the 2000s are far more likely to hold conservative views on LGBTQ+ rights compared to previous generations and women of the same age, a study has suggested.
Polling from the Pew Research Center found that men aged 24 and under are far more likely to oppose same-sex marriage and even homosexuality generally than those born between the 1980s and 1990s.
Men are also far less likely to support LGBTQ+ rights than women of the same age. In fact, women are consistently more likely to be LGBTQ+ allies than men across all age ranges.
The 2024 study, highlighted in a report from the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM) in December, found that 71 per cent of men born in the 2000s believe same-sex marriage should be legal. Comparatively, 77 per cent of men born in the 1990s and 73 per cent born in the 1980s support same-sex marriage.
Research from the Pew Religious Landscape Survey. (AIBM)
Sixty-five per cent of 2000s men believe homosexuality should be accepted in society, over seven per cent less than those born in the 1990s and three per cent less than 1980s men.
Women aged 24 and under, meanwhile, are far more likely to support LGBTQ+ rights, with 83 per cent supporting same-sex marriage and 82 per cent supporting homosexuality generally.
AIBM noted the gender gap for those born in the 2000s was the widest in nearly every subject compared to every other decade.
Trans rights were by far the most contentious subject among young people. 60 per cent of 2000s women said they believe trans people should be accepted by society, while just 44 per cent of 2000s men answered similarly – a gender gap of 16 per cent.
Support for same-sex marriage saw a 2000’s gender-gap of 12 per cent, support for homosexuality had a gap of 17 per cent, and abortion rights a gap of 10 per cent.
Washington University professor of practice, Ryan Burge, argued the survey results prove that young men are increasingly influenced by “social-issue messaging”, particularly from right-wing religious groups.
“As academics often say – we need more time and more data,” he wrote. “I suspect the next five years of survey results will significantly clarify the trajectories of young men and women when it comes to religion.
“As their lives stabilise, they settle into careers, and some begin to marry and start families, we will get a much clearer sense of whether religion is actually taking hold. If a shift is coming, these next few years will be decisive.”
Research published in 2024 suggested that Gen Z are more likely to identify as LGBTQ+ than Republican compared to other generations.
The Axios poll found that just 21 per cent of those aged between 12 and 27 describe themselves as Republican, while more than a quarter described themselves as LGBTQ+. It also found that young people are far more likely to be religious than other generations.
ICE and Vance both lied about what happened. The head of the school was there, the teachers were there, and the mother was there. Yet they took the child. Why? Is the bonus on a child worth putting a five yr old in jail, because that is what being detained by ICE is, jail. The father they took was here legally following the proper steps for citizenship. But the racist don’t want brown kids here they don’t want brown fathers or mothers here. ICE sent the boy and his father to Texas so the mother and others couldn’t help either of them. Hugs
Alex Bollinger (He/Him)January 15, 2026, 3:30 pm ESTShutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 