This is the most important issue the republicans think they have to deal with. Trans and gay people / kids. Not kids being hungry, not schools shootings, not educations test scores or financing. Nope what bathroom a person can use and what medical treatment is available.
The republicans think they have a winning issue with their base because these are hate bills, socially regressive bills. But these are a driven minority fueled either by hate or driven by religious beliefs, possibly both. The majority rejects that hate, that bigotry, that demand to control how others live. These anti-trans bills mirror the anti-gay bills of the 1970s, and that mirrored the anti-race integration. It is all about resisting changes in society and inclusion of those who are different. It is about not progressing, instead wanting things to never change. But look at history, every generation advances society in some way, with causing more friction with the older generations, that forget they changed society of their elders also. Think of the bathroom bills and then think how white people did not want to share bathrooms or any place with black people. The bathroom bills trying to keep trans kids from public bathrooms and out of locker rooms is the same bullshit that I faced as a gay man, these same people wanted to keep me from using bathrooms, using locker rooms claiming gay men would sexually attack straight men. Sounds just like trans women would attack cis women. The bills about keep trans people out of sports are very like the racial segregated sports teams in the 1950, claiming first black people were inferior then also saying that black men would take over the sports winning over the whites. Does it all sound so familiar. It is the same hate, same bigotry, just repackaged to use against a new group for these people to hate.
Also these people just refuse to accept well known documented medical science / studies that show people are not made gay or trans, but born that way. You cannot force a straight person to be gay, and you can not force a gay person to be straight. Also while these bills forbid any mention of a non-cisgender or non-straight orientation, that requires the forced reinforcement of cis heterosexuality. Hugs. Scottie
The state is considering 41 other bills attacking transgender rights this year.
An opponent of one of several anti-trans bills testifies before the Missouri House Emerging Issues Committee.Photo: Screenshot
Lawmakers in both the Missouri House of Representatives and Senate debated a total of eight anti-transgender bills in a single day this week.
The measures, affecting trans people’s ability to access healthcare, bathrooms, and other facilities, and legal recognition of their gender identity, represent just a fraction of the 49 anti-trans bills Missouri Republicans have already introduced this month. Trans journalist Erin Reed described the latest wave of proposed laws as “a firehose of legislation that touches every aspect of trans people’s lives.”
State law allows the university to provide gender-affirming care, but it still refuses to do so.
On Wednesday, Missouri’s Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee heard testimony on S.B. 728, one of two bills, which would establish a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” in the state. Among other provisions affecting school curriculum, S.B. 728 “prohibits public school officials from encouraging a student under the age of eighteen years old to adopt a gender identity or sexual orientation.” It also requires school officials to “inform a student’s parent within twenty-four hours if the student expresses confusion about their documented identity or requests to use personal pronouns that differ from their documented identity” and to “obtain written parental consent before allowing a student to use a name other than the name provided by the parent when registering the student for school and before encouraging a student to wear certain items of clothing.”
Effectively, the bill requires schools to out suspected trans and nonbinary students to their parents.
The committee was also scheduled to hear S.B. 770, another “Parents’ Bill of Rights” measure that included a ban on transgender girls participating in school-sponsored girls’ athletic teams. The hearing on S.B. 770 was canceled, however.
Meanwhile, in a nine-hour hearing, the state’s House Emerging Issues Committee took up seven separate anti-trans measures.
Two bills sponsored by Missouri state Rep. Brad Hudson (R) target access to gender-affirming healthcare. H.B. 1519 would allow healthcare professionals—including, as Reed noted, pharmacists, desk workers, and nurses—to refuse to treat trans people receiving gender-affirming care. During public testimony, opponents of the bill noted that it would not only legalize discrimination but could also result in cisgender, nonbinary, and intersex people being denied medication by providers who mistakenly assume they are trying to access gender-affirming treatment.
This witness talks about how the same medications given to them (they didn't give pronouns, genderfluid) for their transition are the same ones given to cis men for hair loss, talks about the hatred the laws create. pic.twitter.com/3EH1eS9MLm
Hudson’s H.B. 1520, meanwhile, aims to strengthen and extend Missouri’s “Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act.” Signed by Gov. Mike Parson (R) last June, the law banned all gender-affirming care for minors but included an exception for trans young people who are already receiving such care, as well as a sunset provision, causing the law to expire in August 2027. H.B. 1520 would remove those provisions, forcing trans minors who are currently receiving gender-affirming care to detransition and extending the law beyond the 2027 expiration date.
State Rep. Ashley Aune (D) noted that the sunset provision was included in the SAFE Act so that lawmakers could assess the law’s “unintended consequences.” Hudson responded that there is already “enough evidence out there” and that he knows “these drugs are not good for kids.”
In fact, every major American medical association has acknowledged that gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, is evidence-based, safe, and effective for the treatment of gender dysphoria.
The committee also heard testimony on four bills aimed at banning transgender Missourians from using bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity. Proponents of such laws almost universally focus, without evidence, on the supposed threat transgender women pose to cis women in public restrooms. But during Wednesday’s hearing, opponents noted that, far from alleviating any discomfort, the bills would force masculine-presenting trans men to use women’s restrooms and also endanger trans women forced to use men’s facilities while doing nothing to prevent actual predators from accessing women’s bathrooms.
"Did you get this language from the Heritage foundation?"
Also, if you force trans men into women's bathrooms, you force people like this into women's bathrooms. A person could just as easily, if they want to use the "Wrong bathroom," claim they are a trans man if this bill passes. pic.twitter.com/sMBhYtFXg9
Rep Aune: "In a situation where you are in public, if a law went into place that required you to use the restroom as defined in this bill, would that leave you using women's restrooms?"
Additionally, one of the bathroom bills introduced by state Rep. Adam Schnelting (R), H.B. 2308, would legally define the terms “male” and “female” according to a person’s reproductive biology.
Similarly, H.B. 2309, also introduced by Schnelting, aims to legally redefine “gender” as synonymous with biological sex. According to Reed, the bill would end any legal recognition of transgender people in the state and would likely affect the gender markers on their birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and other forms of ID.
Schnelting testified that his bills would affect “bathrooms, dorms, shelters, everything” and might even “nullify sex-specific scholarships” given to trans individuals.
Democrats on the committee blasted their Republican colleagues’ seemingly single-minded focus on limiting the rights of transgender Missourians. State Rep. David Tyson Smith (D), who noted that Republicans make up 40 percent of his constituents, argued that people want lawmakers to address “inflation, grocery store prices.”
“People are wondering why we are spending time on this,” Smith said.
State Rep. Doug Mann (D) sounded an even more urgent alarm. “When it became no longer acceptable to be anti-gay in public, people moved to being anti-trans,” he said. “When you start to attack an already vulnerable group of people, you do not stop with that already vulnerable group of people.”
“I’m going to be honest, I do not trust that this is the end,” Mann said of the anti-trans bills. “Everything I have seen as a student of history, as a student from politics, as a student of government, tells me that it is going to go farther. Things are going to get worse, not better.”
Notice that the gay couple were there first. But you know how tolerant and easy to get along with maga Christians are … only if they get their own way all the time. Otherwise they are violent self entitled gang thugs who can not be talked to, reasoned with, coexisted with. Look how tolerant these people are of LGBTQIA kids and people who are a different non-white skin tone, that is how they want communities and businesses to be run also, totally intolerant and aggressively unaccepting demands they be removed from the public. Hugs. Scottie.
A slew of dirty tricks marked the MAGA family’s reign of terror, and the couple couldn’t take it anymore.
The Front Porch Market and Grill in The Plains, VAPhoto: Screenshot DMV Adventures
Gay restaurant owners William Waybourn and Craig Spaulding have hung up their aprons.
The longtime married couple have sold the restaurant they founded several years ago, the Front Porch Market and Grill in The Plains, VA. The new owner will change the name and try to make a fresh start with the restaurant’s combative Christian and MAGA-loving neighbors, Mike and Melissa Washer, who did their best to drive the gays next door out of business — and succeeded.
They’re trying to get their gay neighbors’ restaurant closed by any means possible.
“In the end, the decision was easier to make than I expected,” Waybourn told The Washington Post, which detailed the years-long feud — instigated by the Washers not long after they moved into the neighboring property — last July.
News of the Christian couple’s dirty tricks and clinical obsession with making their neighbors’ lives miserable brought Waybourne and his husband support from around the world.
“On some level, I know I am disappointing many people, especially those who have stood by us these past three years, many of whom I have never met from places I’ve never heard of,” Waybourn explained.
But he said he knows that for his own health and well-being, and for his adopted town’s, he needed to step away from the toxic environment that the MAGA-loving Washers had created.
For the longtime gay rights activist, who proudly flew a rainbow flag from the restaurant’s porch since it opened, there was no compromising with people who planted a rat by his back door and then shared a picture of it with the local health department. Incessant complaints over garbage, deliveries, parking, noise, Covid mandates, permitting, no-trespassing orders on both sides, and a lawsuit followed.
Restaurant employees reported Mike Washer had called the owners “f****ts”.
The Washers were MAGA bullies, and there was no stopping them.
Last summer, Waybourn was knocked back with a mild stroke, revealing the toll the Washers’ campaign was exacting.
For a few months after that, things quieted down.
But in November, after the Washers’ son was elected to the Board of Supervisors, a fresh round of harassment came The Front Porch’s way. The restaurant’s so-called Christian MAGA oppressors were relentless.
“My presence became so personal with the Washers that removing myself would give the new owner and the restaurant a fresh start,” Waybourn concluded.
The couple sold the Front Porch at the end of December.
Waybourn describes the restaurant’s new owner, chef and restaurateur Shawn Malone, as “very laid-back.”
Malone has a five-year lease on the building from Waybourn and Spaulding, with an option to buy. Plans are for the new business to open in February under the name Bistro at the Porch.
Waybourn hopes Malone can set the restaurant — and the relationship with his neighbors — on a new course. “I don’t think he’s going to personalize the Washers’ antics as much as I have.”
“I just can’t continue to have the emotional turmoil of owning a business that I can’t enjoy,” Waybourn said.
Thankfully President Biden is still able to enjoy the progressive advances in society. His republican right wing critics are against any advances in society since the 1940s / 1950s. The majority of the country wants to move forward with equality and acceptance of differences, and a small vocal violent minority wants to rule over every aspect of others peoples lives. That fraction demands that others live by the same restrictions, same hates, and do only what they do. Most base their belief in how others must be forced to live in the land of the free by their religious beliefs, regardless of what the other person believes. This small fraction of the public wants the right to have complete control over their own children and yours, denying other parents that right to raise their children progressively in a way. Hugs. Scottie
Trans teenage boys are just as likely to get pregnant as cisgender girls, but sex-ed programs don’t speak to them.
The Biden administration is dedicating approximately $700,000 to a sexual health program aimed at pregnancy prevention for transgender boys.
The Department of Health and Human Services has approved a grant to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research in California, which will spearhead a program focused on sex education and condom usage for trans boys.
It’s not the first time the high court have allowed trans students to pee in peace.
The grant summary explains that trans boys are “at risk for negative sexual health outcomes yet are effectively excluded from sexual health programs because gender-diverse youth do not experience the cisgender, heteronormative teen sexual education messaging available to them as salient or applicable.”
It also said trans youth who were assigned female at birth “may be less likely to use condoms when having sex with people who have penises and are at least as likely as cisgender girls to be pregnant.” The organization plans to try out a texting strategy originally designed for cisgender teenage girls who are sexual minorities. It will also hold focus groups to learn more about the sex lives of trans boys.
The Biden administration has been investing in other trans health programs as well. In 2022, it granted $1 million to the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to study thrombosis risks in trans youth undergoing hormone therapy, according toShore News Network.
Despite the relatively small grant allocated for the sexual health program, the right is outraged that any funds would be appropriated to help trans youth. Conservative media blasted the program as “woke” and “radical” and mocked the fact that it is indeed possible for boys to get pregnant.
President Biden has been the most vocal president in history in support of trans rights. Most recently, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest supporting a trans inmate seeking gender-affirming care. The administration has also participated in multiple lawsuits against states seeking to ban gender-affirming care.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just said the quiet part out loud, in complete rejection of what the Biden administration has been trying to accomplish while at the same time taking all the money & aid the U.S. has been providing.
By my dogs that love gravy … damn, damn, damn, fucking bastards, goddamn swear word swear word. I can not even think of enough vile words to say about this. This is a sickening example of how the Israeli government see the Palestinians, including children. I watched a video this morning of an Israeli government official justifying this mass slaughter and genocide saying they were not causing it, Hamas was. They hit us (why because we were mistreating their people) hurting / killing 1,200 hundred of our so we can kill over 23,000 of them 10,000 of them confirmed children, and force the others to live in worse conditions than abandon animals. Oh, and Israel took over a university / school system in Gaza, used it as their headquarters, “interrogated” Palestinians there, then proudly blew it all up, so no Palestinian could come back and someday be educated there. That is a war crime. All of this is.
13 year old children trying to be the parents of 7 siblings because their parents are dead, with only other refuges to help. They have nothing, and Israel gloats over this. I am angry. Hugs. Scottie
As Israel presses on against Hamas in Gaza, children there are facing growing misery. Richard Engel reports on a 13-year-old who is now raising his seven siblings after his parents were likely killed.
Elyria, OH Police went to the wrong house to serve a warrant, now the mother of a special needs 17 month old says he was injured in the raid; police claim that isn’t true.
Media call this a war. It is not. It is a slaughter, it is a state-driven terrorism with the goal of genocide, against a people with no air force or anti-missile technology to help them. They are sitting ducks in a pen, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no way to fight back. The Gaza civilians, women and children are not Hamas, they have no weapons to fight with. All they can do is suffer and die. Israel tries to justify it saying they were attacked, Hamas started. One boy hits another boy doesn’t give the struck boy the right to kill the other boy’s entire family and neighborhood. Israel lies about allowing food and other aid into Gaza because it is about causing as much hurt, pain, and destruction as possible. The Israeli government think they are above any attempts to stop them and have the right to do what ever they want to anyone they like. We need to show them they are wrong. Hugs. Scottie
With the Israel-Hamas war entering its 100th day, there is growing international concern about the increasing civilian death toll in Gaza as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to continue the assault. Meanwhile, vigils were held in Israel in support of those who remain held hostage in Gaza. Charlie D’Agata reports.
Over 23,000 Palestinians dead, about 11,000 are children, most of the rest are women. There are an estimated 2 million people homeless and displaced, with no shelter or food in the winter cold and rain. Israel said it won’t stop, it says it will continue what it is doing all through 2024. Their plan is for an incredible dense small area reservation tightly controlled by Israel, which hopes to force the Palestinians to become so desperate they will either overwhelm the Egyptian border or die off and leaving until there are no Palestinians left. Israel has said they are working to force deport the all Palestinians from Gaza and the West bank. This is a land grab genocide by Israel. Different officials in the government admit it. Bibi brags about knifing the US in the back as he has demanded more money, he laughs as he claims he prevented any attempt to form a two-state solution. He is as racist against Palestinians as republicans are toward brown people. Hugs. Scottie
Now 100 days old, the latest Israel-Hamas war is by far the longest, bloodiest, and most destructive conflict between the bitter enemies.
An opponent of one of several anti-trans bills testifies before the Missouri House Emerging Issues Committee.Photo: Screenshot
Scottie's Playtime 