This is four years old. But it is how a lot of gay kids feel when they try to address their feelings with their parents. The drama on the parents / dads part may be a bit over done. But a lot of gay boys are terrified to tell their dads they are gay. And the way the boy in the video reacts to even the acceptance of his father was realistic.
A sad side note. In late 1986, when I came home from the US army, after already being in the US Navy, I took a job at one of the two local gay bars. In hindsight, I wouldn’t have done so but I learned a lot about gay culture in our area at the time. Again how I met Ron the love of my life, and who with I am going on our 34th year as a couple. On the plus side at the other one I met Ron! At the time I was still living at the adoptive folk’s home from my childhood which was horrible for me. The point of this is when I had to admit to my adoptive father who had sexually abused me I was working at the gay bar he … asked me if I was … one of those … if I was gay?
Like every one of the letters of gay hurt him to say. When I told him I was, he asked me if I didn’t think I should see a doctor about it for help. He even told me how sick I was. This is a man who made me suck his dick when I was a kid, who raped me in … No, sorry not the place or time. Anyway the point is, I understand this boy in the video’s fear his father wouldn’t accept him. Even though as it seems he had a gay brother.
Anyway it is about how hard it is for gay kids to come out to family and to simply be themselves, even in a country that doesn’t have republicans trying to make their lives a living hell. We really need to let these kids be and give them a place to be themselves openly. Before it drives them to depression and possible suicide like in the video, which thankfully the boy did not do. Hugs. Scottie
I spent my whole life fearing coming out to my Italian parents. As a result, I lived in a world of depression and anxiety as I felt I had no freedom to be me… to be the person who I was born to be. I was determined to come out to them before my 30th birthday – and so I did… just 6 weeks prior.
Read the full article. Missouri is one of 27 states with the death penalty and has carried out around two dozen executions in the last decade. State Rep. Mike Moon recently appeared here for saying that 12-year-olds should be able to marry with parental permission. In February 2023, Moon introduced a K-12 “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Moon first appeared here in 2017 when he slaughtered a chicken on Facebook Live because abortion is bad.
“Missouri Republican lawmakers are pushing a pair of bills that would allow for women to be charged with murder for getting an abortion in the state.” https://t.co/7u6JuH9ssW
Republicans just keep doubling down on this issue that clearly is not what the public wants and then claim voter fraud when elections don’t go their way.
My mother had a potentially fatal miscarriage around late 1965. Abortion was a crime in California at the time, but she was able to get a medical exemption and had the termination. Had she not, she likely would have died; if she survived, she certainly would not have been able to have more children. Because of the termination, she went on to have me and three younger siblings. Four children alive because of that one necessary abortion.
Republicans would rather have seen my mom dead and the rest of us never born.
Just last year I was prepared to drive my sister-in-law out of state to have a fetus that had been dead for two weeks removed from her uterus. The Republicans here are morally bankrupt.
Same thing with my mom when I was 16, right around 1970. There was no way she would have lived if she had carried that fetus to term. I would have ended up taking care of it…
Yes. See the great writer Ursula K. LeGuin on how the abortion she had at age 20 or so resulted in her having three loved and happy children and a brilliant career, rather than one miserable unloved fatherless child and absolutely no career (at that time, lovely Radcliffe would have expelled her had she had a BAY-BEE.).
I was once told a story by my mother, concerning a relative who had a level of developmental disability. Back in the 40’s she was taken advantage of, impregnated, and the father skipped town. Her parents found a back alley abortionist. Things did not go well, and he ended up dying horribly from sepsis. That has stuck in my mind all these years.
And where do they get those rights they would give to fetuses? They rip them away from the women of Missouri. Time to take to the streets, ladies of Missouri. Dismantle the state capitol building, brick by brick.
To anti-choice pro-forced-birth people, fetuses are infinitely more important than the people who carry them. They’re also more important than children.
Don’t stop there. Charge men with murder if they masturbate and “spill their seed.” Those little sperms are basically pre-born babies. So masturbation is akin to killing babies. (Their logic, not mine.)
Its why its called seed. Back in the old times they hadnt discovered women have eggs that need to be fertilized. The womb was just a patch of dirt waiting for its seed.
As I previously reported, the ADF first filed its lawsuit in May 2021 and lost in US district court in September 2021 before losing again before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in September 2022. According to Brian Tingley’s resume, he’s led seminars on “authentic manhood” and “true masculinity.” Before that, he wrote and produced commercials for car dealerships, bingo halls, and county fairs. As I’ve reported many times over the years, ex-gay torture therapists often end up rejecting their work and coming out as gay themselves. And sometimes, they are arrested for sexually assaulting their clients.
Then there are the ones that are busted trolling online for gay sex, such as the nationally prominent therapist caught cruising Manhunt in 2018 as HotNHairy72. The Alliance Defending Freedom, whose lead attorney was once House Speaker Mike Johnson, has advocated for criminalizing homosexuality in the United States and has provided free legal support to foreign groups seeking the same in their own countries.
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Christian therapist’s free speech challenge to a Washington state ban on so-called conversion therapy aimed at changing a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.https://t.co/ZiLMCeHH0G
Given that Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh all voted to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of Washington's ban on so-called "conversion therapy," we know that no other justice wanted to take up this case. Gorsuch's vote is somewhat surprising. https://t.co/EWShUNArYI
My sexuality is not a “debate.” It’s a fact of life, just as a straight person’s sexuality is a fact of life. Just because these religious whack jobs are too stupid to understand that should not be my problem.
No one is stopping him from saying his beliefs. What they are doing is preventing him from imposing them on others through the guise of medical treatment and accepting money for it. You can also believe massage cures cancer but you can not put out a medical shingle and take money for curing cancer through massage.
Or you can believe blood letting cures depression but you can not charge for this as a medical treatment. We have medical standards based on science.
The more right wingers are silenced, the louder they get all over social media and right wing tv and radio. They are the only silenced people who are deafeningly loud.
Brian Tingley, a licensed marriage and family counselor, said the law violates his free speech rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment because the government is seeking to dictate what he says.
No, the gov’t is still letting you “say” anything you want. They are regulating how you conduct your business so that you don’t harm your patients.
What the government is saying they are not going to pay for the mumbo jumbo via Medicaid or approve it for reimbursement by insurance companies. It is not banned, you just have to pay for the religious practice yourself.
Exactly right. The courts have long recognized that commercial speech is more subject to regulation than other kinds of speech. Tingley et al. are trying to argue that it is religious speech in a commercial context. Um, sorry, no.
You can bet the state will go after, and try to go after the out of state doctors / facilities that help her. Plus the republican fundamentalist die hard anti-abortions will sue for their mandatory 10,000 dollars regardless of what that would do to the family and her other two children. Plus the way the law is written all court costs and lawyer fees are paid by the person getting sued even if they win, which is the reverse of how all other lawsuits go, the loser normally pays if they start the lawsuit. This is totally about control over a woman, her body, and her sexual life. This treats woman little different from breeding stock. It was done to black women to get more slaves babies. Ask why when the baby can not survive, and it endangers the health, life, and ability of the woman to have more kids, do these people still insist she carry it to birth? Do they think that god will do a miracle and have the baby healed as soon as it is born? Do they think the doctors are lying? That a woman that wants more children is lying to abort one? Hugs. Scottie
Dec 11 (Reuters) – The Texas Supreme Court on Monday overturned a lower court’s ruling that would have allowed a pregnant woman to get an emergency abortion under the medical exception for the state’s near-total abortion ban, granting a petition by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The unanimous ruling from the Texas Supreme Court came hours after lawyers for the woman, Kate Cox, said in a court filing that she had left the state to obtain the abortion, but nonetheless wanted to pursue the case. Cox has said her fetus had a fatal diagnosis and that her health was at risk if she continued the pregnancy to term, including her ability to have more children in the future.
The high court, whose nine justices are all Republicans, said in its unsigned opinion that a “good faith belief” by Damla Karsan, a doctor who sought to perform the abortion and sued alongside Cox, that the procedure was medically necessary was not enough to qualify for the state’s exception.
Instead, the court said, Karsan would need to determine in her “reasonable medical judgment” that Cox had a “life-threatening condition” and that an abortion was necessary to prevent her death or impairment of a major bodily function.
“A woman who meets the medical-necessity exception need not seek a court order to obtain an abortion,” the court wrote. “The law leaves to physicians – not judges – both the discretion and the responsibility to exercise their reasonable medical judgment, given the unique facts and circumstances of each patient,” the court wrote.
The case is a major test of the scope of the medical exception, an issue that is already before the court in a separate case brought by 22 women who experienced pregnancy complications, though none of those women was seeking an immediate abortion. Monday’s ruling appeared to reject a key argument by the plaintiffs in that case – that doctors’ good-faith belief should be enough to meet the exception.
“This ruling should enrage every Texan to their core,” Molly Duane of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a lawyer for Cox, said in a statement. “If Kate can’t get an abortion in Texas, who can? Kate’s case is proof that exceptions don’t work, and it’s dangerous to be pregnant in any state with an abortion ban.”
Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A few abortion rights demonstrators remain in the crowd after hours of public comments and discussion as Denton’s city council meets to vote on a resolution seeking to make enforcing Texas’ trigger law on abortion a low priority for its police force, in Denton, Texas, June 28, 2022. REUTERS/Shelby Tauber/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
Cox’s fetus was diagnosed on Nov. 27 with trisomy 18, a genetic abnormality that usually results in miscarriage, stillbirth or death soon after birth.
Paxton had urged the Texas Supreme Court to quickly step in after District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble at a hearing in Austin last Thursday issued a temporary restraining order allowing Cox to have an abortion.
In his filing to the top court, Paxton’s office said Cox fell “far short of demonstrating” she met the criteria for a medical exception and warned that Texas courts were not intended to be “revolving doors of permission slips to obtain abortions.”
Cox, 31, of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, filed a lawsuit last Tuesday seeking a temporary restraining order preventing Texas from enforcing its abortion ban in her case.
Cox’s lawyers have said her lawsuit is the first such case since the U.S. Supreme Court last year reversed its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which had guaranteed abortion rights nationwide.
Cox, who was about 20 weeks pregnant when she first sued, said in her lawsuit that she would need to undergo her third Caesarian section if she continues the pregnancy. That could jeopardize her ability to have more children, which she said she and her husband wanted.
Cox said in her lawsuit that although her doctors believed abortion was medically necessary for her, they were unwilling to perform one without a court order in the face of a lack of clarity in how the exception would be interpreted and potential penalties including life in prison and loss of their licenses for violating the state’s abortion laws.
Paxton warned in a letter sent shortly after Gamble issued the order that it did not shield doctors, hospitals or anyone else from prosecution or potential civil liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws. The letter was sent to three hospitals where Karsan has admitting privileges.
Read the full article. As I reported this weekend, one of the Texas justices that voted to block her abortion has been arrested 37 times while protesting outside abortion clinics.
Lawyers for Kate Cox, a Texas woman seeking an abortion due to health risks and a fatal abnormality in her fetus, say she is seeking care out of state after what they describe as "legal whiplash and threats of prosecution." pic.twitter.com/aJEbb8yeid
This is Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine—a man tasked w/ impartially upholding the law—bragging about breaking the law to harass women at abortion clinics.
He’s one of the justices who just blocked Kate Cox from getting a *legal* abortion.
Bleak: "Kate Cox has been forced to leave Texas to get healthcare outside of the state… Kate is not available for media interviews, and we are not disclosing her whereabouts."https://t.co/VU2tECGKfn
I fully expect the Texas legislature to figure out some law that they can apply to charge the woman for getting the abortion in another state, and use that to throw her in jail, all because she wanted to save her own life! You can bank on it.
Hell, if she doesn’t return to Texas, count on them demanding her return through some sick & twisted legal theory bullshit, amounting to the fugitive slave act of the 19th century.
Missouri tried to claim fetuses as state citizens and claimed their right to protect the lives of their citizenry. It was also their excuse for attempting to block pregnant women (likely to be seeking abortions) from leaving the state.
You know what? If they want to make Ken Paxton the national face of the GOP going into 2024 and make the whole election about abortion rights, then I say let them. Go right ahead, Republicans.
The Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy includes an unusual measure designed to ensure the law is enforced: Residents of the state can sue clinics, doctors, nurses and even people who drive a woman to get the procedure, for at least $10,000.
Yes, those that help. But there are so many rabid MAGAts out there, they will sue the husband, family members, the gas station where they might have filled up, etc. Even if she went alone and the husband stayed home with the kids, he has to defend himself and prove that in court. Even if he is found not guilty, there is no compensation for court costs, lost time from work, etc.
I’m sort of expecting that, but I hope they (texas) just leave her the fuck alone. I doubt they will. That state, like christianity gets off on the pain and suffering they cause.
He’ll attempt to drag her back to Texas in leg irons to face prosecution. He’ll fail, but the attempt will make him a hero to the radical right which will only embolden others to try the same stunts.
GOOD FOR HER !! There is no reason this woman’s life & health should be held hostage by a cruel, misogynist & sadistic gov’t seeking to only use this woman’s agony for their political gain.
Probably several, but it’s not media access that’s the issue. Going public to fight right-wing policies is a dangerous business these days, and if anyone is brave enough to try, the media will happily run with their stories.
Paxton is going to go after this woman, her husband and anyone who helped her after this. There’s no way he’s going to let her “win” by going around all the authority he believes he has in the state.
Yep. In TX we’re going to see just a tiny, insignificant taste of what a Trump presidency will be about 100% of the time if Dems don’t get out that vote.
Not only does he feel it “violates his authority & (faux) morality,” but it serves as a distraction from all of his previous crimes & corruption. He knows this helps to firm up support of the Christofascist right. “Sure, he’s dirty, but he supports our beliefs.”
The point is and always has been CRUELTY Delayed suffering is their objective These are all males who know so fuckung much about child birth MUST control a woman’s body Abortion should be on every states ballot and it, above much else would sink the GOP For this singular reason alone No woman should vote Republican
It’s absolutely disgusting that this woman and her husband are being forced to have what is probably one of (or the) most difficult and personal things they’ll ever deal with play out on the national stage. Fuck the Christofascists.
This shit would end fast if that cell cluster could be reimplanted into a man’s abdomen. Nope buddy, you got to carry it full term, even if it kills you. No backsies, your law, you deal with it.
This is the new normal for women in certain states. Tell me again how republicans should, in any way or any race, be seriously considered for elected office.
It should be an automatic disqualification. Disgusting misogynist Nazi fucks
She better set up house in a new state. Paxton will try to put her and anyone with her in prison for decades. He will probably try to prosecute the doctor and nurses who perform the abortion.
A race for the Texas Supreme Court has an eight-year incumbent with the backing of the Republican establishment battling John Devine, an anti-abortion activist and frequent political candidate known for his fight to keep the Ten Commandments displayed in his Houston courtroom.
Despite past criticism, Devine has not shrunk from making his anti-abortion ideology a prominent part of his judicial campaign. At a June rally in Fort Worth, he described his convictions as being “forged in the crucibles” of the anti-abortion movement and told the crowd he had been arrested 37 times while protesting abortion clinics.
A campaign video relates a decision to continue a high-risk pregnancy, his wife Nubia’s seventh, which they said was likely to end in the deaths of both mother and child. Nubia Devine survived the birth. Their daughter lived for an hour after she was born.
Read the full article. Devine last appeared him 2017 when he issued a minority opinion against same-sex spousal benefits for Texas residents because marriage is meant for “procreation.” During his above cited 2012 campaign for the Texas Supreme Court, Devine alleged declared that he chose the district he ran in because “I can beat somebody with a Mexican name.” The incumbent was then-Justice David Medina. Devine is up for reelection in 2024.
John Devine, one of the TX Supreme Court judges that issued an order preventing a pregnant woman whose unborn child has a fatal defect from getting an abortion, was arrested several times for blocking abortion clinics. His wife carried a risky pregnancy to term. The child died. pic.twitter.com/l2UsHAkDe5
Like I said yesterday: The Texas Supreme Court wouldn’t have issued the stay if their intent wasn’t to force this poor woman to carry this doomed pregnancy to term, even if it kills her. Controlling and punishing women, including for “failing” to bring a fetus to term, is the entire point.
I’m hoping that this case is, at the very least, on an expedited calendar, as time is truly of the essence. Otherwise, this poor woman has to get the hell out of Tek-Zis to seek the medical care she needs. How fucking deplorable.
That’s what gets me about this: The pregnancy is doomed. The genetic tests are conclusive. This trisomy condition WILL result in a dead baby, guaranteed. On ultrasound, it’s already seen not to have the major organs needed to survive. This woman has already had two previous c-sections, and each subsequent one reduces her chances to have another child successfully—which she says she wants very much. But trying to carry a trisomy fetus to term is itself inherently risky because the fetus can pretty much die at any time or miscarry, risking lethal sepsis infection.
Yet these Rethug motherfuckers don’t care about any of that. They want to inflict unnecessary and potentially lethal harm and suffering on this woman. Why? No reason other to ensure that no woman, girl, or transperson can escape a pregnancy, wanted or unwanted, that might kill them. Put in these terms, the intent is clear.
Why? Yes, I agree. But it’s also a message to ALL women — you are just a vessel for the child, and your life and health, not to mention your needs and wants, are of minimal consequence.
Sweet Jesus I rant through all these arguments TWENTY years ago now in the marriage equality “debates” – these people hold no coherent postions, they just hate gay people and women.
Logic has no place in their debates. Only their feelings matter. Nobody else’s feelings are relevant. Pregnancy not viable? Mother and baby likely to die? So what? It’s was jesus would want.
You identified those I call ‘The Feelers’. They’re the ones who’re most easily swayed by conspiracy theories, loudmouth narcissists, screaming evangelicals, the ‘voice’ of authority’. etc. Whenever they experience fear they ‘know’ that they’re wrong and have to repent, grovel or humiliate themselves publicly.
The Feelers dominate the GQP and they’re extremely dangerous since anything can trigger them… literally. They pull a trigger whenever they get sufficiently riled up.
Hell, how many Christianistas view an unintended pregnancy as a just punishment for sex outside of marriage, insisting the woman carry it full term, and then denigrating the innocent child as “a bastard.”
Elie Mystal was saying during an interview the other day, that if anyone is thinking about sitting out the 2024 election or if they believe that a second Trump presidency won’t be so disastrous, just shout “ABORTION… ABORTION… ABORTION !!” A Trump regime will insure that abortion (at least for the 99%) is an impossibility. As we’ve seen, these insane & unmercifully cruel zealots & misogynists don’t care about women and whether they live or die, as long as their draconian ideology prevails
This is the last one I am going to post this morning on Palestinian kids being abused by the Israeli military. They simply don’t see these kids and the other Palestinians as humans like themselves. They feel they alone have a right to the land and all on it. They feel entitled to it despite it belonging to someone else, so they feel they have a right to just take it while abusing those that might be on it. Hugs. Scottie
Some of the abuses are sexual in nature, in addition to being beaten, handcuffed and blindfolded, a report says.
Human rights groups in Israel have denounced the use of unnecessary force to arrest or detain Palestinian children and other violations [File: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images]
Palestinian minors arrested by Israeli forces face immense emotional and physical abuse, according to the rights group Save the Children, which has revealed the tragedy minors go through as detainees in a new report.
In the report published on Monday, the group said some of the former child detainees it spoke to reported violence of a sexual nature, while many others were beaten, handcuffed and blindfolded in small cages in detention centres and upon being moved between centres.
Jason Lee, Save the Children’s country director in the occupied Palestinian territory, said Palestinian children are the only ones in the world to experience systematic prosecution in military courts.
There is a marked increase in the number of former child detainees who suffer nightmares and insomnia and have difficulty returning to their normal life, with many reporting a decrease in hope for their futures.
The study said 86 percent of the 228 former child detainees surveyed were beaten in detention, and 69 percent were strip-searched, adding that 42 percent were injured at the point of arrest, including gunshot wounds and broken bones.
They were also interrogated at unknown locations without the presence of a guardian or caregiver and are often deprived of food, water and sleep, the report says.
In addition, they were often refused access to legal counsel, according to the research.
Save the Children said the former child detainees surveyed were from across the occupied West Bank and had been detained for one month to 18 months.
The report says: “The main alleged crime for these detentions is stone-throwing, which can carry a 20-year sentence in prison for Palestinian children.”
Palestinian children are the only ones in the world to experience systematic prosecution in military courts [File: Getty Images]
The new research comes as the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 presents evidence on Monday to the Human Rights Council on Palestinian children in detention.
It is estimated that between 500 and 1,000 children are held in Israeli military detention each year.
Former detainee accounts
Osama Arabi, a former detainee who is now 44 years old, said he was strip-searched when he was arrested as a minor.
“I did not understand what they were searching for. They didn’t say. It was humiliating; it made me very angry,” Osama, who was arrested as a 14-year-old, told Al Jazeera.
Save the Children said these practices are a serious and longstanding human rights concern and called for the government of Israel to end the detention of Palestinian children under military law and their prosecution in military courts.
Khalil, who was arrested when he was 13, said he did not receive essential healthcare.
Save the Children quoted him as saying: “I had an injury in my leg. I had a cast and had to crawl to be able to move. I felt my body being torn apart. I had no canes to help me walk, I kept asking soldiers for help during the transfer, but no one helped me.”
Country director Lee said: “Our research shows – once again – that they [Palestinian children] are subject to serious and widespread abuse at the hands of those who are meant to be looking after them.”
Scottie's Playtime 