When you read the article, you see the first person to object was a doctor and why did he object? Because the bible told him to! Yes he kept telling the mother of a trans child that god had a plan and made her child the gender they were and that was that. When the mother told him a lot of trans kids are suicidal without gender affirming care, he replied, “Some children are born into this world to suffer and die.” Would you want this man treating anyone in your family? Horrible junk studies, lies, and myths some people spread to stop and prevent a well documented best medical practice on the issue of gender care. The best medical practice agreed to by the majority of medical associations. It is long but if you want the truth read it. If you want to see the lies, distortions, and lack of qualification of the anti-trans experts, then read it. It took me a day and a half to color it and digest it. Read it, especially if you are a bigot, you will see your heroes are frauds. Hugs
For years, these experts have struggled to establish their credibility in court. Judges have found their testimony to be “biased,” “illogical,” “conspiratorial” or based on fabrication, or tossed their testimony in its entirety for having no basis in research. More than a dozen major U.S. medical associations have endorsed gender-affirming care as medically necessary, including for adolescents.
Their purpose is to convince judges that gender-affirming care is scientifically controversial, unnecessary and dangerous — and they’re increasingly having an impact.
Kim Hutton was leading a charge to bring gender-affirming care to the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis when she agreed to get lunch with a skeptic. She met Dr. Paul Hruz, a pediatric endocrinologist at the university, in October 2013 at a cafe near campus, hoping that if she shared her struggles to find suitable health care for her young trans son, he would change his mind.
But Hruz was not there to listen.
No sooner did she sit down than he launched into a breathless lecture on “God’s plan” for her son. “I can’t begin to count the number of times he said, ‘If only you will read the writings of Pope John Paul II on gender, you will understand,’” she recalled.
Hruz made it clear he would try everything in his power to stop the medical school’s new gender clinic. When Hutton pleaded that trans kids were more likely to have suicidal thoughts without affirming care, he replied, “Some children are born into this world to suffer and die.”
Washington University started the gender clinic despite Hruz’s efforts. But as the assault on trans rights intensifies nationwide, he has come to play a pivotal role, and a lucrative one.
ZOE VAN DIJK FOR HUFFPOST
Hruz is part of a small but prolific roster of expert witnesses who crisscross the country to testify in defense of anti-trans laws and policies facing a legal challenge. Pulling ideas from the fringes of medicine, their purpose is to convince judges that gender-affirming care is scientifically controversial, unnecessary and dangerous.
Most, like Hruz, practice medicine in a field related to gender-affirming care — such as psychiatry or endocrinology — but have treated only a handful of adolescent patients for gender dysphoria, if that, and haven’t published relevant research. Several belong to openly anti-trans groups and have urged state legislatures to pass the very laws they get paid to defend.
Some of the most prominent witnesses were recruited by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal powerhouse whose mission is to realize a country governed by far-right Christian values. And many share ADF’s extreme antipathy toward LGBTQ+ people.
“They’re hired guns,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, a lawyer for the LGBTQ+ rights group Lambda Legal who has faced Hruz and his cohorts in several cases. “These are not real experts. They’re manufactured as experts by the opponents of transgender rights.”
Still, for a rate of hundreds of dollars an hour, they can lend a sheen of scientific rigor to school bathroom restrictions and bans on gender-affirming care.
And they are increasingly having an impact. On Aug. 25, a Missouri judge temporarily upheld the state’s four-year ban on most gender-affirming treatments for minors, writing, “The science and medical evidence is conflicting and unclear.”
“These are not real experts. They’re manufactured as experts by the opponents of transgender rights.”
– Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, a lawyer for the LGBTQ+ rights group Lambda Legal
HuffPost scoured thousands of pages of court filings and dozens of state vendor databases and filed more than 40 public records requests to get a full picture of their growing cottage industry. The search revealed that these expert witnesses routinely pull down five figures in return for just a few weeks of work. Since 2016, state and local governments have spent more than $1.1 million on expert testimony, much of it going to just six go-to witnesses.
Some states also hired high-priced outside legal teams, at a cost of another $6.6 million. The University of North Carolina hired the conservative legal giant Jones Day for up to $1,075 an hour after becoming embroiled in the state’s 2016 bathroom ban.
All these figures likely undercount the true cost by at least half: Out of more than three dozen state and local agencies that defended anti-trans laws in court, fewer than 20 disclosed their spending.
For years, these experts have struggled to establish their credibility in court. Judges have found their testimony to be “biased,” “illogical,” “conspiratorial” or based on fabrication, or tossed their testimony in its entirety for having no basis in research. More than a dozen major U.S. medical associations have endorsed gender-affirming care as medically necessary, including for adolescents.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration enlisted nearly every expert witness of note to craft and defend a 2022 state ban on Medicaid coverage for transition care. Yet all the witnesses combined, in the words of U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, could muster “no evidence that these treatments have caused substantial adverse clinical results in properly screened and treated patients.” Hinkle struck the ban down in June.
But for the first time, other courts have begun to buy their arguments. Fortified by a belief that attacking trans people is “a political winner,” in 2023, state lawmakers, mostly Republicans, have introduced more than 550 new bills assailing trans health care and legal recognition. Not only are the experts having their busiest year as a result, but they have notched several critical successes.
In July, a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel allowed Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care to remain in place while a legal challenge proceeds. In August, an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel reinstated Alabama’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans youth.
The courts, applying the same reasoning the Supreme Court used to overturn Roe v. Wade, ruled transgender care is not constitutionally protected and that states only need some rationale to regulate it. The expert witnesses were key to cultivating the impression that the medical community is divided. “The medical and regulatory authorities are not of one mind about using hormone therapy to treat gender dysphoria,” wrote the 6th Circuit panel.
The rulings increase the odds of a split among the circuit courts and the likelihood that the Supreme Court will eventually take up the issue of gender-affirming care.
And in the meantime, these experts have helped block medically necessary care for thousands of trans people around the country.
“They’re wasting their time and their energy and money trying to convince me and people like me we aren’t who we say we are, and we aren’t who we feel we are,” said Dylan Brandt, a high school senior and the lead plaintiff challenging Arkansas’ first-in-the-nation ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors.
“I’ve known for a long time exactly who I am, and I am so much happier now that I can express and show who I am. For people to be trying so hard and using so much time and effort to stop me — that’s hard.”
Dylan Brandt at Bell Park in Greenwood, Arkansas. Brandt, his mother and several other families challenged the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. “They’re wasting their time and their energy and money trying to convince me and people like me we aren’t who we say we are, and we aren’t who we feel we are,” he said.
SHANE BROWN FOR HUFFPOST
A Group Of Outliers
Besides Hruz, the core group of experts includes James Cantor, a Canadian psychologist; Stephen Levine, a clinical psychiatrist whom prisons often enlist when they are facing pressure to provide gender-affirming care; Patrick Lappert, a former plastic surgeon, who has said he considers gender-affirming surgery “diabolical in every sense of the word”; Michael Laidlaw, an endocrinologist who has urged lawmakers to criminalize gender-affirming care; and Quentin Van Meter, a pediatric endocrinologist and the former head of the anti-LGBTQ+ American College of Pediatricians.
This ragtag group of outliers did not find their way into the courtroom at random. Dismayed at the “poverty of people who are willing to testify” in defense of anti-trans laws, according to Lappert, the Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the most formidable forces on the religious right, held a conference in Arizona in 2017 to identify potential recruits. Lappert, who later described the conference in a deposition, Hruz, Van Meter and a California family physician named Andre Van Mol all attended and became go-to witnesses soon afterward. A few years later, the ADF enlisted Cantor to his first case — a lawsuit brought by another expert witness who claimed his university fired him for his courtroom work.
ADF’s recruitment effort paid off right away. Around the same time as the conference, Ashton Whitaker, a 16-year-old transgender boy, became one of the first students to sue over his school’s bathroom ban. An administrator at his high school, part of Wisconsin’s Kenosha Unified School District, had gone so far as to suggest he wear a bright green wristband so teachers could monitor his restroom use, the lawsuit said.
“They’re wasting their time and their energy and money trying to convince me and people like me we aren’t who we say we are, and we aren’t who we feel we are.”
– Dylan Brandt, the lead plaintiff challenging Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming care for adolescents
The legal team Kenosha hired spent months poring over past cases and medical journals for potential expert witnesses, according to records obtained by HuffPost — a search that produced little more than several thousands in legal bills and a list of people who seemed “likely favorable” toward the ban. Then a lawyer reached out to the Alliance Defending Freedom, and Kenosha finally retained an expert: Hruz.
ADF plays a central role in the mounting backlash to LGBTQ+ rights — the witness roster is just one piece. The group, envisioned by its founder as a “Christian legal army,” has a $104 million annual budget and drives impact litigation around the country. On gender issues, it has helped organize a diffuse group of reactionary and religious-right lawmakers, lawyers and activists into a sprawling working group that trades model legislation, coordinates PR campaigns and fine-tunes bills to withstand legal challenges, a recent Mother Jones investigation found.
Several of the expert witnesses are active members of the working group, such as Laidlaw. Emails leaked to Mother Jones show he told lawmakers that gender-affirming surgical procedures are “crimes waiting to be recognized and codified into law.”
ZOE VAN DIJK FOR HUFFPOST
Kenosha lost its trial and a subsequent appeal. After that, ADF began closely coordinating with Kenosha’s legal team to try to appeal the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. They spent weeks strategizing on the legal approach and amicus briefs before the district ultimately chose to settle.
Opponents of trans rights lost most of their early legal battles in the late 2010s and early 2020s — Kenosha was just one. But the new cadre of experts has no shortage of work. Although their No. 1 assignment today is to defend bans on gender-affirming care for minors — these target puberty blockers and hormone therapy — the core group of experts has defended every variety of anti-trans policy under the sun, from school sports and bathroom bans to orders to investigate parents for child abuse if they support their child’s transition, to bans on gender-affirming care for adults.
The most prolific is Cantor, the Canadian psychologist, who has been a witness in 24 cases total, 11 this year alone. Close behind are Levine, who has been a witness in at least a dozen challenges to anti-trans laws and is the only defense witness with substantial experience treating transgender people, and Hruz.
Most of them bill between $200 and $650 an hour — which is standard for an expert trial witness — for writing reports, giving depositions and trial testimony, and traveling. When Cantor testifies in person versus over video, he said in an interview, he usually earns an extra $10,000 for traveling and waiting his turn in the courtroom.
In Brandt v. Rutledge, the case in which Dylan Brandt is the plaintiff, Arkansas paid Hruz, Lappert and Levine more than $40,000 apiece, records show. (“Yes, I find it pays well, but not nearly as well as your information suggests,” Levine said in an email.)
Mark Regnerus, a sociologist who testified, pocketed $57,062. Regnerus is a veteran of the expert witness circuit, having previously testified that children of same-sex couples grow up at a disadvantage in defense of bans on same-sex marriage. Hruz, a few months after he submitted his expert report to Arkansas, sold a “nearly identical” version to North Carolina, court records show.
“It’s not a difficult job for $200, $300, $400 an hour,” said Carl Charles, a senior attorney at Lambda Legal. But few are willing to do it, he speculated, because “These bills do real harm to young people and to their families, and I think doctors take that pretty seriously.”
ZOE VAN DIJK FOR HUFFPOST
Cantor, the Canadian psychologist, does not share the religious mission of groups like ADF. He credits “his inner Vulcan” for his ability to testify in cases that involve banning a 10-year-old trans girl from playing on the girls’ softball team or stopping adults from correcting their gender on their government documents, to name two recent examples.
“When I first started getting contacted by these groups, it was a long, hard conversation I had to have with myself,” he said. “It’s not up to me, I ultimately decided, what society does. That’s up to society.”
Although he has defended more policies involving trans kids than any other expert, Cantor has never counseled a transgender child or teenager. He has never carried out original research involving trans people, either. His expertise is in paraphilia: abnormal sexual desires, such as pedophilia. And he has acknowledged in court that gender dysphoria — the distress a person feels when they don’t identify as their sex assigned at birth — is not a form of paraphilia.
In a 2022 deposition over West Virginia’s ban on trans girls playing in school sports, Cantor failed to recall the names of any puberty-blocking drugs: “Oh, I couldn’t tell them to you by name so much as by function,” he said. “I’ve always been bad with names,” Cantor told me. “These drugs have had different names in different countries at different times.”
Cantor believes his lack of direct experience allows him to evaluate the field dispassionately.
“The best analogy I have is that, if you want to know if fortunetelling is valid, you’re not going to find that out by just asking the fortunetellers,” he said.
A deposition he gave last summer defending Indiana’s ban on trans girls playing girls’ sports suggests he does not believe trans adolescents are really trans, but are primarily either gay, young and “mistak[ing] the emotions that they’re having” for gender dysphoria, or have autogynephilia, an outlier theory holding that some trans women are merely aroused by the thought of themselves as a woman.
“It’s just a different phenomenon that only looks similar superficially” in children, he said in our interview.
He also argues that studies “consistently, even unanimously” find that the majority of youth who identify as trans stop doing so after a few years. But many of the sources he has cited aren’t studies of trans kids: In multiple examples, the researchers didn’t differentiate between kids who consistently and persistently identified as trans and kids who just behaved in ways associated with the opposite gender. Several studies are decades old and have research topics like “the sissy boy syndrome.”
More recent research finds very low rates of detransitioning among children who socially transitioned, and for reasons that include social pressure and a lack of parental support.
Cantor earned $23,400, he said, defending Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s notorious directive to investigate the parents of children who receive gender-affirming care for child abuse. In the case over Alabama’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, he earned $52,400. Because of his lack of experience treating trans youth, the judge in that case, Liles C. Burke, a Trump appointee, ruled that Cantor’s testimony held “very little weight” and blocked the ban from taking effect. A dozen states have nevertheless asked him to be an expert witness since that May 2022 ruling. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Burke’s ruling a few days after we spoke.
“The question in the back of people’s heads is, is he only saying this for the money?” Cantor said in our interview. “If my assessment of the literature was the other way around, I’d be working from the other side. It wouldn’t make a difference. So it’s good that I’m getting paid, right?”
ZOE VAN DIJK FOR HUFFPOST
Levine declined to be interviewed because he is an expert witness in at least one ongoing case. (HuffPost contacted all the experts named in this story and was unable to reach Lappert despite multiple attempts.) In response to specific questions, Levine wrote, “Your questions illuminate how information can be dysinformation [sic] or simply wrong. Like delusions that often contain a kernel of truth, it is the distortions of reality that enable the label delusion.”
In 1997, he chaired a committee of the organization known today as WPATH, which develops the best practices for treating gender dysphoria. He cut his ties, however, after WPATH became too responsive, in his view, to trans advocacy.
Before he started defending anti-trans laws as an expert witness, Levine provided expert testimony for prisons seeking to block trans inmates from socially transitioning or receiving gender-affirming care, which prisons often oppose for cost reasons.
“The question in the back of people’s heads is, is he only saying this for the money?”
– James Cantor, the top expert witness for states defending anti-trans policies
In that role, Levine has also questioned whether trans people are genuinely trans or if their gender dysphoria is actually an expression of deviant desires or something unresolved from childhood, like “excessively symbiotic” mothering. Of one trans inmate, he wrote that her “transgenderism is tied very much up to her narcissistic character, her demanding character.”
ZOE VAN DIJK FOR HUFFPOST
Van Meter, the former president of the American College of Pediatricians, or ACPeds, has appeared in at least six cases. Like ACPeds’ original founders, he became disillusioned with the American Academy of Pediatrics and sought an alternative because the AAP would not endorse the superiority of the “intact, married family” over same-sex parents and single mothers, he said in an interview.
Van Meter has seen a very small number of adolescent patients with gender dysphoria but says he believes the root cause in “100%” of cases is their family environment. “Divorce is probably the most common thread in all of these cases,” he said. He refers these patients to counseling for depression and anxiety, believing it will resolve their gender dysphoria — an approach with roots in gay conversion therapy that research has linked to an increased risk of suicide attempts.
“You basically ruin their lives” by allowing adolescents to transition, Van Meter said, and so at every opportunity, he pressures them to abandon the idea. To one of his current patients, “I have said it a bazillion times … You will always be a biological female.”
“You have a group of people who say they exist, and what they are saying is, ‘No you don’t. You’re not real, you’re sick,’” said Michelle Forcier, a professor of pediatrics at Brown University and a clinician specializing in gender-affirming care. “Let’s be clear: These are adults who are bullying children.”
Dylan with his mother, Joanna Brandt, who sat through expert testimony that minimized the harms of eradicating medically necessary care. “Actual lives are being saved by affirming care, and nobody on the state side cared,” she said.
SHANE BROWN FOR HUFFPOST
Dylan Brandt decided not to be in the courtroom on the days that Arkansas presented its case, but his mother, Joanna Brandt, was. The hardest moment for her was when Regnerus, the sociologist opposed to same-sex parenting, minimized the risk of suicide among trans youth, saying researchers had “document[ed] fairly small numbers of actually completed suicides.”
“If we distinguish suicidality from actual suicides — completed suicides — we see a much more narrow story validated,” he said.
Joanna thought about Dylan and felt the sting of tears.
“I was afraid I would start loud, ugly crying, so I got up and left,” she recalled. “How could you come here and talk about these people that you’ve never spoken to, that you don’t know anything about, in such a way? Actual lives are being saved by affirming care, and nobody on the state side cared about that.”
“God Is With Us!”
Hutton never forgot her lunch with Hruz. And in the years that followed, as Hruz developed his side hustle as an expert, she began to testify at some of the same trials that he did.
In a 2017 case where Hruz was defending the St. Johns County School District’s bathroom ban, she recalled before a court in central Florida how Hruz had said her child might be “born to suffer and die.” This summer, she flew down to Tallahassee to face off against Hruz again, this time over the state’s Medicaid ban. (She was only reimbursed for travel.)
Her goal is for the courts to understand his true motives. “I know he’s wrapping his whole presentation up in court now as based on science, but that is not what is driving Paul Hruz,” Hutton said. “It is religion.”
Hruz is not the only expert who appears to have religious motivations.
ZOE VAN DIJK FOR HUFFPOST
Lappert, the former plastic surgeon, is a chaplain in Alabama for a Catholic organization called Courage, which, according to its website, counsels “men and women with same-sex attractions in living chaste lives.” In a 2018 presentation titled “Transgender Surgery & Christian Anthropology,” he said “the challenge” at hand was “evangelizing people who are being relentlessly [misled] concerning human sexuality.” They needed “catechesis” and “the sacraments.”
Van Meter, on learning that Gov. Brad Little of Idaho had signed two bills the group supported, boasted, “God is with us!”
“It’s not that I’m driven by a religious ideology,” Van Meter said in an interview. “I do use that as a battery pack, during the weary times, to say, don’t give up, there is a reason you are here.”
Courts place few restrictions on who can serve as an expert witness, as long as their testimony is relevant and soundly reasoned. The bar is low enough that groups suing to overturn anti-trans laws rarely challenge these experts’ ability to testify. But when they do, courts have discounted their testimony in about half of cases.
“Hruz fended and parried questions and generally testified as a deeply biased advocate, not as an expert sharing relevant evidence-based information and opinions,” Judge Hinkle wrote when he blocked Florida’s Medicaid ban. Another judge called his testimony “conspiratorial.”
Levine has had parts of his testimony struck several times, including for relying on a fabricated anecdote.
There are moments in the courtroom when the lack of qualification on the defense side is obvious. During a deposition defending Florida’s Medicaid ban, G. Kevin Donovan, who recently retired as the director of Georgetown University’s center for clinical bioethics, claimed that most transgender girls eventually “revert in their self-perception.” But when pressed for his sources, he flailed.
Q: “What is your evidence of that statement?” A: “Oh, that — that’s been widely published and repeatedly published.” Q: “Can you name the study that that information comes from?” A: “I’m sure I could. It’s more than one source, but, yeah.” Q: “Can you name those studies?” A: “Not right now, no.”
Records show the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration paid Donovan $34,650. He did not respond to questions about his testimony.
The other side has its experts, too. Typically, they are clinicians who have provided gender-affirming care to hundreds of trans people or published substantial research on gender-affirming care, or both.
The expert witnesses for the defense, lacking the same breadth of experience, typically try to poke holes in the research supporting gender-affirming care, largely by nitpicking and misrepresenting the evidence or ignoring newer studies in favor of dated ones. “Their way of operating is to look at each study, say it has limitations, and because it has limitations, to disregard it entirely,” said Gonzalez-Pagan, the Lambda Legal attorney. “And the pile of evidence never grows because they keep finding reasons to disregard studies.”
Many have seized on the fact that there were no long-term, randomized controlled trials to test the efficacy of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for treating gender dysphoria.
Framing randomized trials as the only valid form of evidence lets them ignore the large body of observational and clinical data that does support gender-affirming care. Nearly 20 studies with components of randomized trials — that follow trans adolescents receiving gender-affirming care over a long period of time, or compare outcomes for trans people who accessed gender-affirming care with those who didn’t — have associated gender-affirming care with better mental health outcomes, such as reductions in depression, anxiety or thoughts of suicide.
Those positive associations make it unethical to run a randomized trial over the long term, especially one involving adolescents. “You wouldn’t randomly assign people to smoke a pack a day,” said Briana Last, a research psychologist at Stony Brook University, adding that scores of common medical practices were established without randomized trials.
And, in the past few weeks, researchers have published a randomized trial of 64 transmasculine adults showing that suicidality declined by more than half for the participants who received treatment right away.
The research that expert witnesses for the defense don’t ignore, they often distort. Many, especially Levine, have argued that transition care is potentially harmful by pointing to a 2011 Swedish study that found that trans people who had gender-affirming surgery still had a 19.1% higher suicide rate than the general population.
But the lead author, Cecilia Dhejne, says that is a blatantmisrepresentation of the study, which actually showed that providing medical care is not enough without also fighting societal discrimination.
When he deposed Levine in 2022, Charles, the Lambda Legal attorney, read Dhejne’s critique of how Levine misused her research out loud. Undeterred, Levine cited Dhejne again this year in support of Florida’s Medicaid ban.
Several of these experts have argued that other countries, such as the U.K., Finland, Norway and Sweden, have severely restricted puberty blockers and hormone therapy for adolescents. “They’ve decided that in all, it’s experimental and does more harm than good, and they’re stopping,” Kristopher Kaliebe, who has testified in three cases, said in an interview.
Gender-affirming care providers acknowledge their field faces unanswered questions and that people’s understanding of their gender identity can deepen over time.
Before puberty, Forcier noted, gender-affirming care consists mostly of supporting children if they want to dress or cut their hair differently or go by a new name. “The vast, vast majority will say, this is what I need and where I want to be,” she said, but “it’s OK to change your mind if you’re more gender fluid, it’s OK to change your plan.”
Opponents of gender-affirming care, she argued, aren’t bent on studying and improving care but on eradicating it. Recently, a former employee, Jamie Reed, accused Washington University’s gender clinic of rushing adolescents on to puberty blockers and hormones. While her core claims appear to be proving false or alarmist — one parent said Reed “twisted” her child’s medical history; out of nearly 1,200 patients who sought care at the clinic, Reed claims 16 detransitioned — the main challenge the clinic appears to face is overwhelming demand. Missouri’s response has not been to increase funding for adolescent trans care, but to pass a ban.
“I’m not seeing these people say, ‘This is such an important problem, let’s shift money from white male cardiovascular research to gender care,’” Forcier said. “They are making these arguments in favor of a ban.”
Out of all the government offices asked to justify their hiring of these experts, only the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which wrote the state’s Medicaid ban, responded.
“Our process has been transparent and based on factual evidence that we put out for the world to see,” said Bailey Smith, the agency’s spokesperson, hyperlinking to a webpage containing the expert reports from Hruz, Laidlaw, Levine, Van Meter, Lappert and others. “Maybe you just fear the evidence will challenge your biased view of the world.”
Netball Amateurs
The spike in anti-trans legislation means states need even more experts to defend it. And in order to deepen the bench, states have started enlisting academics who aren’t in health care or don’t even primarily research humans.
One is a Manchester University professor named Emma Hilton, who mainly studies a particular species of frog and how it offers an understanding of inherited human genetic disorders.
Hilton is a founder of a British group, Sex Matters, that advocates for legally segregating spaces by sex. She earned $300 an hour last year defending bans on trans girls playing on girls’ sports teams in Utah and Indiana. By way of explaining why she was qualified to weigh in on school sports, she told one court, “I participate keenly in sports at an amateur level, playing netball recreationally.”
“Our understanding of human biology is in part a result of the study of animal models,” Hilton said in an email. She declined to address the relevance of netball, which is like basketball without dribbling.
Another is Michael Biggs, an Oxford sociology professor who admitted in court to writing transphobic tweets under the pseudonymous handle @MrHenryWimbush and described himself as a “teenage shitlord [turned] Oxford professor.” “Transphobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons,” reads one representative post.
Florida paid Biggs $400 an hour to defend its Medicaid ban. But he plays another, more important role in the expert pantheon: churning out publications that question the efficacy of gender-affirming care. One of his oft-cited critiques of puberty-blocking hormones relied on a questionable reading of hormone trials in sheep, in which the sheep appeared to have anxiety. The other experts have cited Biggs scores of times.
“I’ve known for a long time exactly who I am, and I am so much happier now that I can express and show who I am,” Dylan said.
SHANE BROWN FOR HUFFPOST
Dylan, the teenager challenging Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming care, avoids thinking about a future in which these people’s arguments carry the day. Instead, he thinks about going to college in a state that isn’t hostile and studying education. “I’ve dealt with a lot of bullying, but I’ve had some pretty amazing teachers [who’ve] given me a safe place,” he said. “I want to be that for somebody else.”
His lawsuit has already made a temporary shelter for other trans teenagers. In June, a judge struck down Arkansas’ ban. The state had assembled a who’s-who of experts — Lappert, Hruz, Levine and Regnerus — but “failed to prove that gender-affirming care for minors with gender dysphoria is ineffective or riskier than other medical care provided to minors,” in the words of U.S. District Judge James M. Moody.
“He knows better than any of these people, better than I do, who he is, and none of them have any right to tell him any differently,” Joanna said of her son.
“When I started testosterone, I felt like I could breathe normally for the first time,” said Dylan. “In the past three years, I have been able to look at myself in the mirror and smile. It’s changed my life — it’s saved my life — in so many ways.”
I have rebloged from this site before. I was temped to simply repost where the link goes, as I hope people will follow the link and read it. But that wouldn’t be fair to personnelente. So please follow the link above and enjoy the short page. I followed the link on the page and was laughing as Ali said I would. Hugs
Remember the people behind these bills deny they ban the word gay. Well here is the proof of how these laws are being used. The object is to wipe the entire LGBTQIA from society, remove us from the public view. Here is how these people view just saying a person is gay.
Caracciolo likened saying “gay” in front of third graders to talking to kindergartners about one of the greatest atrocities in world history. “It would be almost like if someone was doing a speech to kindergartners and they talked about the Holocaust and the horrors of the Holocaust,” the district’s chief spokeswoman, Jennifer Caracciolo, said, according to The New York Times.
Here is what the presenter told the school person above.
That’s a huge point missed in much of the debate surrounding LGBTQ visibility in education. There is a big difference between discussing sexual acts—whether heterosexual or otherwise—and someone’s orientation, especially when there’s a good chance that there are children of LGBTQ parents in the audience.
Further, in a world where same-sex marriage and heterosexual marriage are treated equally, why is mentioning one orientation any different than the other?
“If a child asks me if I am married, can I say I have a wife? This is discrimination. It is also extremely insulting and dangerous to our children,” Nobleman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We have so much LGBTQ teen suicide because they are not welcome to speak up about their own lives in their own community.”’
“I asked her not to compare a kind of love to mass murder,” Noblemanwrote in Newsweek.
We have to fight back on these attempts to drive the LGBTQIA back into hiding ashamed of who they are, how they were born. The LGBTQIA kids are not broken, they are not diseased, they don’t need fixing or cured. They need acceptance and allowed to be themselves openly like their peers. Hugs
After being censored by the school’s principle, he quit.
Over the past few years, “Don’t Say Gay” bills have been introduced across the U.S., sparking widespread controversy about how LGBTQ issues should be addressed in schools. Supporters argue they protect children from inappropriate content by restricting discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in educational settings.
Opponents believe these bills marginalize LGBTQ individuals by fostering stigma and potentially infringing on teachers’ ability to openly address students’ questions or experiences.
Author and comic book expert Marc Tyler Nobleman recently found himself at the center of the controversy, and his simple rationale for using the word “gay” in his school presentations presents an age-appropriate and inclusive way to approach at the issue.
Nobleman has spoken in schools in “about 30 states and almost 20 countries” to inspire children to write and do research. He’s the author of the book “Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-creator of Batman” about the fabled superhero’s unsung co-creator.
THE RIGHT WAY TO WRITE: Visiting Author #MarcTylerNobleman, writer of numerous fiction and nonfiction books for young readers, met with students in Grades 3-8 last month. He inspired curiosity, shared his research process, and provided guidance. #TaipeiAmericanSchoolpic.twitter.com/GoLCxYilFt
Artist Bob Kane is known as the creator of Batman; however, Bill Finger is believed to have refined the costume and given the character his secret identity as Bruce Wayne, amongst other contributions.
Nobleman notes in his speeches that one of the significant reasons why Finger lives in obscurity is that he died in 1974, and his son, Fred Finger, was gay and died of AIDS complications at 43 in 1992. Without an heir, the movement to get Finger the proper credit lost any hope.
However, the twist in Nobleman’s presentation is when he reveals that through his research, he discovered that Fred Finger had a daughter, Athena. This led to DC Comics officially recognizing her grandfather as Batman’s co-creator in 2015.
“It’s the biggest twist of the story, and it’s usually when I get the most gasps,” Nobleman told the Associated Press. “It’s just a totally record-scratch moment.”
After a presentation at Sharon Elementary in Forsyth County, Georgia, on Monday, August 21, where he mentioned Fred FInger’s orientation, the principal handed Nobleman a note saying, “Please only share the appropriate parts of the story for our elementary students.” So, he removed any reference to Fred Finger’s sexuality over his next two days of presentations.
The school’s principal, Brian Nelson, sent a letter to parents after the initial presentation that read: “This is not subject matter that we were aware that he was including nor content that we have approved for our students,” Nelson wrote. “I apologize that this took place. Action was taken to ensure that this was not included in Mr. Nobleman’s subsequent speeches and further measures will be taken to prevent situations like this in the future.”
But after some soul-searching, in a presentation two days later, Nobleman said the word “gay” once again. After discussing the situation with the school, the remaining assemblies were canceled.
Nobleman shared his reasoning for using “gay” on X, formally known as Twitter, and his rationale makes a lot of sense. “And as I’ve told Jennifer [Caracciolo, the school’s chief communications officer] and her colleagues, mentioning a sexual orientation is NOT the same as discussing sexuality.”
Answering student questions is ALSO not a problem.
Teaching without parental approval of every line is not a problem.
And as I've told Jennifer and her colleagues, mentioning a sexual orientation is NOT the same as discussing sexuality.#pride#saygay
That’s a huge point missed in much of the debate surrounding LGBTQ visibility in education. There is a big difference between discussing sexual acts—whether heterosexual or otherwise—and someone’s orientation, especially when there’s a good chance that there are children of LGBTQ parents in the audience.
Further, in a world where same-sex marriage and heterosexual marriage are treated equally, why is mentioning one orientation any different than the other?
“If a child asks me if I am married, can I say I have a wife? This is discrimination. It is also extremely insulting and dangerous to our children,” Nobleman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We have so much LGBTQ teen suicide because they are not welcome to speak up about their own lives in their own community.”’
Caracciolo likened saying “gay” in front of third graders to talking to kindergartners about one of the greatest atrocities in world history. “It would be almost like if someone was doing a speech to kindergartners and they talked about the Holocaust and the horrors of the Holocaust,” the district’s chief spokeswoman, Jennifer Caracciolo, said, according to The New York Times.
“I asked her not to compare a kind of love to mass murder,” Nobleman wrote in Newsweek.
After his remaining presentations were canceled, Nobleman emailed administrators involved in the controversy and asked them to take three specific actions:
-Apologize to their community for the principal’s apology.
-Apologize to their community for censoring an established author who did what he was hired to do: Pump up their kids about reading, writing, and research.
-Challenge the standards that stigmatize any mention of LGBTQ people.
So they are protecting children by … blowing them up with a bomb? See why the claim they are only saving children fails. This is not about children, but instead about their own bigotry and hates. They hate drag because they think it is the same as being transgender. They refused to accept that people can dress in any way they like to as long as the sexual organs are covered. But those people can’t allow people to live as they wish, instead they insist they must be allowed to dictate how everyone lives. They don’t like you wearing that, so you can not wear it. Think it will stop with just drag queens or trans people? Did they stop with abortion after their SCOTUS win? These people hated the idea of short skirts, short dresses, bikinis, or women outside the assigned gender roles these people have mandated. But in the case of the drag queen story hour, parents rights to raise children how you wish is limited only to maga / right wing parents. Tolerant and accepting parents don’t get a choice to raise their children this way because … well again the fundamentalist Christian moral police Taliban demand the right to control you and your children. Hugs
A planned “Drag Story Hour” at a Brooklyn library was forced to move on Saturday morning after bomb threat were called into 911. Police officers, the bomb squad, a K-9 unit and emergency medical services responded to the threat phoned in by a male caller against the Cortelyou branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.
The library was evacuated, and a thorough search conducted, but no bomb was found, police said. The story hour, featuring a group of drag performers reading books to children, was moved to Connecticut Muffin, a nearby dessert and coffee shop.
NYPD later confirmed that an email threat was sent to the branch from an unknown source in Buffalo alleging an explosive device was supposed to go off inside the site at 11:30 a.m. A male caller also phoned 911 about the threat, authorities added.
“It’s a shame, and it’s something that’s extremely dangerous,” fumed a parent of a 2-year-old girl who sat in on the reading. “These are children, and children just want to hear stories … It’s a shame how somebody just ruined it and threatened violence.”
N.Y.C. Library Moves Drag Queen Story Hour Location Following Bomb Threat https://t.co/kp4W3koyqn
I thank Ten Bears for posting this. It is an important to view. It shows clearly how racism and bigotry of the republicans are harming national security. Chris Hayes makes it clear just how racist Sen Tuberville is.He doesn’t want mixing races in the military, but instead wants the best of the best. Well the way he says it is clear he thinks the best of the best are white. I found the view very informing and interesting. Hugs. Scottie
It is great to see sane people in blue states standing up for equality for people in the US. Republican led states ignore medical science, instead they prefer to trust tradition and religion as the basis of their laws. If the rest of the country did this we would still have slavery and be using prayer for medical treatments. Instead of banning progress in understanding they should welcome new advancements. But every day shows they are further out of touch, their religious views wrong, and their desire to return to a past where they were comfortable, in charge, and understood the world / society they lived in. LGBTQIA people exist including also kids. Yes young kids know and have sexual feelings and gender identity. Cis straight people want to deny that yet they can never point to the time they choose either. Hugs
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the measures a day after issuing a controversial veto that was criticized by LGBTQ advocates.
Gavin Newsom during the San Francisco Pride parade in 2017.AFP via Getty Images file
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed several bills Saturday aimed at bolstering the state’s protections for LGBTQ people, a day after issuing a controversial veto that was criticized by advocates.
The new laws include legislation that focuses on support for LGBTQ youth. One law sets timelines for required cultural competency training for public school teachers and staff, while another creates an advisory task force to determine the needs of LGBTQ students and help advance supportive initiatives. A third requires families to show that they can and are willing to meet the needs of a child in foster care regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“California is proud to have some of the most robust laws in the nation when it comes to protecting and supporting our LGBTQ+ community, and we’re committed to the ongoing work to create safer, more inclusive spaces for all Californians,” Newsom said in a statement. “These measures will help protect vulnerable youth, promote acceptance, and create more supportive environments in our schools and communities.”
The governor also signed legislation that requires schools serving first through 12th grade to have at least one gender-neutral bathroom available for students by 2026.
The law was spurred by a Southern California school district that instituted a policy requiring schools to tell parents when their children change their pronouns or use a bathroom of a gender other than the one listed on their official paperwork. A judge halted the policy after California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the Chino Valley Unified School District. The lawsuit is ongoing.
The governor’s bill-signings came after Newsom vetoed a bill on Friday that would have required judges to consider whether a parent affirms their child’s gender identity when making custody and visitation decisions.
Assemblymember Lori Wilson, a Democrat who introduced the bill and has an adult son who came out as transgender when he was a teenager, was among the LGBTQ advocates who criticized the governor’s decision.
“I’ve been disheartened over the last few years as I watched the rising hate and heard the vitriol toward the trans community. My intent with this bill was to give them a voice, particularly in the family court system where a non-affirming parent could have a detrimental impact on the mental health and well-being of a child,” Wilson said in a statement.
Newsom said existing laws already require courts to consider health, safety and welfare when determining the best interests of a child in custody cases, including the parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity.
The veto comes amid intense political battles across the country over transgender rights, including efforts to impose bans on gender-affirming care, bar trans athletes from girls and women’s sports, and require schools to notify parents if their children ask to use different pronouns or changes their gender identity.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signs three new bills into law to strengthen the state’s protections for LGBTQ people. Newsom: “California is proud to have some of the most robust laws in the nation when it comes to protecting and supporting our LGBTQ community, and we’re… pic.twitter.com/TLuJM7tMdB
We can’t wait for our Florida house to sell so we can move California. What a wonderful change it will be. I expect we will actually need some time to de-stress and de-traumatize from trying to live here.
I left Florida and moved to Massachusetts. The first time walking around near Harvard and MIT and hearing someone performing Shakespeare on the street and having two people in a cafe almost come to blows over a mathematical theorem instead of over drugs, the first time passing an open field and seeing someone with an easel painting the landscape instead of circling on a quad tearing it up…
It’s a whole different world when you escape to someplace more blue.
Last year I left SW FL for SW GA. Stable blue congressional district and 2 Dem Senators. I grew up in the South so no adaptation problems. I am glad I got out of the toxic swamp FL has become.
Assuming we have a country in another 5 years, that is when he will make a run. Pete will also make a run as well and he will have the federal seasoning he lacked that last time. We have some young and very good people coming up over the next few years. Katie Porter is another one they are scared shitless of. Eric Swalwell, Ted Lieu, and AOC are all very capable and message well. There are of course a slew of others from across the country but all of the above are young and well regarded in general and absolutely hated by the right (that is a good thing).
My heart weeps for all the beautiful trans folks out there, especially the younger ones, just trying to live their lives with some dignity and respect and maybe a little joy, and they’re constantly barraged by crap like this from crap like this.
In 12 countries around the world, people can be put to death for having a same-sex relationship, while in 66 states private, consensual same-sex sexual activity is criminalised, according to the Human Dignity Trust.
“Transgenderism, especially in kids, is a mental health disorder.” — Vivek Ramaswamy. This is false. Being transgender is not a mental health disorder. Many transgender people experience gender dysphoria, or psychological distress as a result of the incongruence between their sex and their gender identity. Gender dysphoria is a diagnosis in the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and can be given to children, adolescents or adults.
I feel for the transgender children in America who have to listen to Vivek Ramaswamy and the Republican presidential candidates telling them they have a "mental disorder" and don't know the first thing about their lives. Shameful demagoguery.
18 House “Republicans” voted today against an amendment that would have defunded drag shows and pride month events at the Defense Department. Time to name and shame:
Duncan appeared here in January 2023 when the House approved his bill to ban vaccine mandates at Medicare and Medicaid-certified health facilities. In 2015, Duncan co-sponsored a bill that sought to place a ban on same-sex marriage in the US Constitution. In 2018, Duncan co-sponsored a bill allowing adoption agencies to ban same-sex parents.
In filing for divorce, wife of Jeff Duncan (R-SC)– another GOP "strong advocate for traditional family values"– said he's been screwing anything that moved including shady DC lobbyist Liz Williams. He's one of the ones trying to shut down the U.S. government for Trump pic.twitter.com/QCioH2i1TH
Honored to receive the Friend of the Family Award this week from the Faith and Freedom Coalition for my conservative voting record in the 116th Congress and commitment to defend the family, protect religious freedom, and stand with Israel. @FaithandFreedompic.twitter.com/uV8he0xTKv
When Jeff Duncan left his "Faith and Freedom BBQ" at the end of August, after calling Melody Duncan his loving and supportive wife, he then went "directly to the home of his paramour." https://t.co/LuZIDcipYF
Hanson last appeared here when the same outlet exposed her arrest record for facilitating prostitution. She made her JMG debut when she was exposed for using the photos of minority women in campaign materials, claiming that they support her. The women said they’d never heard of her. Hanson’s campaign manager spoke at last year’s public hearing on the local Pride event to declare that the festival had provided children with “dildos and butt plugs.”
EXCLUSIVE: Gabrielle Hanson fought Franklin Pride, but celebrated her scantily clad husband at Chicago Pride https://t.co/toLuP98piF
This person, speaking out against Pride at a Franklin BOMA meeting, has the same name and background as the person identified as Gabrielle Hanson’s campaign manager. pic.twitter.com/T1xtFNFaEd
NEW from @formvscontent: “Records show @CityOfFranklin Alderman and mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson. was charged with money laundering, organized crime, in addition to her admission of conviction(s) of promotion of prostitution.”
Now do you see the point? This attack on woke is just the same old attack on LGBTQIA people. This is the same right wing attack on people who are different. It is the same right wing attack on gays, lesbians, and trans people that was happening in the1960s and 1970s. It is about removing us, people like me, the entire LGBTQIA from society. Basically a genocide. There are LGBTQIA kids in schools and that go to libraries. These kids need to see people like them, need the information in those books. Plus kids own books that have gay characters are not permitted even for scielent reading by themselves. Removing the books won’t stop kids being born LGBTQIA, it will just increase the targeting and harassment, the bullying along with increasing the isolation / shame these kids will feel about themselves for being different. It is cruel. Especially as science has proven beyond a doubt people are born with their sexual orientations and gender identity already set. DeathSantis said it was a hoax, that no books were being banned only pornographic ones, this order to remove the books specifically says remove them even if there is no sexual content.
The guidance made clear that all books with LGBTQ characters are to be removed even if the book contained no sexually explicit content. The librarians asked if they could retain books in school and classroom libraries with LGBTQ characters “as long as they do not have explicit sex scenes or sexual descriptions and are not approaching ‘how to’ manuals for how to be an LGBTQ+ person.” Vianello responded, “No. Books with LBGTQ+ characters are not to be included in classroom libraries or school library media centers.”
DeathSantis claimed that his anti-woke doesn’t equal don’t say gay. But that is the way the law is written and the goal of the fundamentalist Christian nationalists people that he is a member of and leads. Hugs
Librarians in public schools in Charlotte County, Florida, were instructed by the school district superintendent to remove all books with LGBTQ characters or themes from school and classroom libraries.
Charlotte County school librarians sought guidance from the school district about how to apply an expansion of the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, better known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, to all grades. “Are we removing books from any school or media center, Prek-12 if a character has, for example, two mothers or because there is a gay best friend or a main character is gay?” the librarians asked. Charlotte County Superintendent Mark Vianello answered, “Yes.”
The guidance by Vianello and the school board’s attorney, Michael McKinley, was obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project (FFTRP) through a public records request and shared with Popular Information. FFTRP requested “electronic records of district and school decisions regarding classroom and library materials.” In response, FFTRP received a document memorializing a July 24 conversation between Vianello and district librarians, known in Florida as media specialists.
The guidance made clear that all books with LGBTQ characters are to be removed even if the book contained no sexually explicit content. The librarians asked if they could retain books in school and classroom libraries with LGBTQ characters “as long as they do not have explicit sex scenes or sexual descriptions and are not approaching ‘how to’ manuals for how to be an LGBTQ+ person.” Vianello responded, “No. Books with LBGTQ+ characters are not to be included in classroom libraries or school library media centers.”
Vianello also says teachers must ensure that books with LGBTQ characters and themes do not enter the classroom, even if they are self-selected by students for silent reading. According to Vianello, books with “[t]hese characters and themes cannot exist.”
The librarians were seeking guidance on how to interpret a revised version of The Principles of Professional Conduct for the Education Profession in Florida. The revised rules, issued by the Florida Department of Education earlier this year, expanded the restrictions imposed by the”Don’t Say Gay” law. According to revised Rule 6A-10.081, educators in Florida “[s]hall not intentionally provide classroom instruction to students in prekindergarten through grade 8 on sexual orientation or gender identity.” (A similar provision was included in a law Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed in May.) The revised rule also extends that prohibition through grade 12, except where explicitly required by state standards or as part of “a reproductive health course or health lesson for which a student’s parent has the option to have his or her student not attend.”
Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has insisted that allegations that his policies, including the “Don’t Say Gay” law, are being used to ban a wide range of books is a “hoax.” DeSantis claimed that the only books being removed from Florida libraries are “pornographic and inappropriate materials that have been snuck into our classrooms and libraries to sexualize our students violate our state education standards.” But in Charlotte County, DeSantis’ policies are being used to justify purging all books with LGBTQ characters, even if there is no sexual content.
In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for Charlotte County Schools told Popular Information that books with LGBTQ characters were removed from libraries because “there are elementary schools that utilize their school library media center as classrooms… [for] elective courses that our students are officially scheduled into and attend on a regular basis.” Therefore, the library “is considered a classroom setting.” As a result, “our school board attorney advises that we do not make books with these themes available in media centers that serve as classrooms since this would be considered ‘classroom instruction’ and such instruction and/or availability of these themes may not occur in PreK- grade 8.” The spokesperson acknowledged that “high school media centers are not designated as classrooms,” but books with LGBTQ characters were excluded anyway because “if a teacher were to bring a class of students to the media center and provide instruction, books with these themes cannot be included in that instructional time unless supported by the academic standards of that course of study.”
The problem with banning all books with LGBTQ characters
There are serious legal issues with banning all books with LGBTQ characters.
In June, the authors of the children’s book And Tango Makes Three, and several students sued the Lake County School Board, the Florida Department of Education, and other state officials for removing the book from K-3 library shelves. And Tango Makes Three is the true story of two male Penguins, Roy and Silo, who lived in the Central Park Zoo and raised an adopted chick. It has no sexual content. The lawsuit contends that the removal of And Tango Makes Three violates student rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and by “discriminating based on content and viewpoint, it infringes the authors’ right to freedom of expression.”
In response, the Lake County School Board filed an affidavit on July 13, 2023, from its superintendent, Diane Kornegay. She stated that, on June 21, 2023, she received guidance from the Florida Department of Education that the “age restriction on sexual orientation and gender identity does not apply to library books.” The guidance included a legal memorandum by the Florida Attorney General filed in a separate case challenging the “Don’t Say Gay” law, which contends that the law “does not even arguably restrict library books.”
As a result, And Tango Makes Three was returned to the shelves in Lake County.
The Florida Department of Education has been repeatedly asked to clarify the application of “Don’t Say Gay” and other laws and regulations restricting LGBTQ instruction to library books. But it has refused to do so, despite the urging of FFTRP and others.
“Every child deserves to have their lives reflected in the books available in their public school classroom or library,” Stephana Ferrell, co-founder of the FFTRP told Popular Information. “The Florida Department of Education was informed of Charlotte County’s overreaction to the law and state rule over two weeks ago, and has not acted to correct it. Public school families in Florida deserve better. We cannot tolerate this discriminatory exclusion.”
The result of the Department of Education’s inaction has been chaos. And Tango Makes Three remains banned in Escambia County and elsewhere. While Charlotte County is the only school district known to have a formal ban on all books with LGBTQ characters, other Florida school districts have the same policy in practice.
In the Broward County School District, the sixth-largest school district in the country, nearly half of the books that have been removed or restricted feature LGBTQ themes. One of the books banned from all school libraries is the children’s book A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, a fictional story about former Vice President Mike Pence’s family bunny. In the story, Marlon Bundo falls in love with another bunny named Wesley, and the two decide to get married. The book does not contain any sexual or explicit content whatsoever. The Broward County School District ordered that all school libraries remove Bundo, because it contained “gender identity content.”
The Broward County School District told Popular Information that it was aware of the state’s position in the Lake County lawsuit. But, as of last month, Bundo remained unavailable in Broward County schools.
A survey of Florida school districts by Popular Information revealed that at least 16 school districts in Florida have banned books with LGBTQ characters.
Remember these were 8th grade students. Children in 8thgrade in the United States are 13 or 14 years old. They enter 8thgrade at 13 years of age and leave at 14 years of age under normal circumstances. These students should by then known parts of the human body, both male and female. Yet one mother claimed the teacher was making a little girl talk about feeling each other’s breasts. Also by then most people clearly know their sexual attractions and feelings. Yes there are gay kids in those schools and in those classrooms. Remember kids have computer, TV, Movies, they have books with LGBTQIA people in them … well in some states still, they know of same sex couples and families. Some people think young people simply are blank slates with no desires or sexual feelings until either they’re married at 12 or they suddenly get them when they turn 18. These are the same people that think little girls should be forced to carry to term a pregnancy, giving birth, but are too fragile to know that some girls like other girls? How stupid has this country gotten? The last paragraph of the article says: “The book has long been used to teach students about the Holocaust. Its sexual passages reflect similar experiences that teenagers undergo throughout puberty.” Hugs
In the passage, Frank describes her genitals and wanting to see a female friend’s breasts.
A Texas school district has fired an 8th-grade English teacher for having students read a passage from The Diary of Anne Frank in which the titular writer describes her genitals and lesbian attraction.
The Hamshire-Fannett Independent School District (HFISD) of Jefferson County, Texas — a near coastal region about 80 miles east of Houston — fired the unnamed teacher after she assigned students a reading from Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation. The adaptation is an illustrated, comic book version of the diary that Frank, a German-born Jewish teen, wrote in the late 1940s while hiding from Nazis. Frank was 13 to 16 years old when writing the diary.
Grace Linn compared today’s book bans with Naziism and said her late husband didn’t fight in WWII for this.
In one section of the graphic adaptation, Frank asks a female friend if she’d feel comfortable exposing their breasts to each other. In the three-panel scene, Frank’s friend refuses and they both remain clothed. In another section, Frank walks amongst nude female statues and admits, “I must admit, every time I see a female nude, I go into ecstasy. If only I had a girlfriend!”
In yet another section, Frank writes about her own genitals, describing their changing physical appearance as she experiences puberty. This section was omitted from the book’s 1952 English edition but eventually restored in its 1980s republication.
HFISD notified parents on Tuesday via email, “It was brought to the administration’s attention tonight that 8th-grade students were reading content that was not appropriate. The reading of that content will cease immediately. Your student’s teacher will communicate her apologies to you and your students soon, as she has expressed those apologies to us.”
By Wednesday, the district fired the teacher. While district officials said the book had never been approved, “it was on a reading list sent to parents at the start of the school year,” KFDM reported, and the middle school’s principal reportedly approved the syllabus that mentioned the book.
Nevertheless, one parent told the aforementioned news station, “It’s bad enough, [the teacher is] having them read this for an assignment, but then she also is making them read it aloud and making a little girl talk about feeling each other’s breasts and when she sees a female she goes into ecstasy — that’s not ok.”
The fired teacher has reportedly hired an attorney, but this isn’t the first time that the book’s lesbian content has angered parents.
A Florida principal removed the book from the Vero Beach High School library for being “not age appropriate” after a local chapter of the anti-LGBTQ+ group Moms for Liberty complained the book was “not a true adaptation of the Holocaust” and contained “graphic” and “sexually explicit” illustrations.
The book has long been used to teach students about the Holocaust. Its sexual passages reflect similar experiences that teenagers undergo throughout puberty.
Scottie's Playtime 