Religious preference takes priority over a woman’s health. In his mind the woman had sex so should be forced to have a pregnancy followed by a forced birth. How dare she enjoy a sexual encounter and have it for anything other than procreation. He is a pharmacist and should not have the job if he cannot dispense medication ordered by a doctor. He is not a doctor. He is not the woman’s medical provider. If he doesn’t want to do the job, then get a different job. Here is a case of demanding special rights due to religion. Remember when the right used to say the gays wanted special rights when we demanded to be treated equally, well religion is now demanding special rights and they are getting it. Hugs
An emergency contraception pill is seen through packaging in this stock photo.
Andrea Anderson of McGregor Minn., sought to fill her prescription for Ella, which is used to stop a pregnancy before it starts, after a condom broke during intercourse.
She had the prescription sent to a nearby Thrifty White pharmacy, but when she called to confirm, pharmacist George Badeaux told her he would not fill it due to “personal reasons.”
According to the lawsuit, he said a colleague might be willing to fill it, but with a snowstorm imminent that person may not make it into work. Anderson got the prescription filled in Brainerd, but it required a 100-mile drive round trip in a snowstorm that allegedly took Anderson more than three hours.
In his deposition, Badeaux said it was not the first time he’d declined to provide emergency contraceptives.
According to the suit, the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy allows pharmacists to decline to fill a prescription for emergency contraceptives if it conflicts with their beliefs. However, they must make other arrangements for the patient to get their medication.
Anderson said in a deposition that the experience made her feel “embarrassment and shame.”
Leaders with the group Gender Justice, which represented Anderson in this case, said they plan to appeal.
“The testimony was so clear that she received lesser services than other customers because what she was going there for was emergency contraception. And so we believe that, by law, that’s discrimination in Minnesota,” said Jess Braverman, legal director for Gender Justice.
Braverman noted that the jury did award Anderson $25,000 for emotional harm caused by the experience, although the pharmacist will not have to pay her that money unless the no-discrimination finding is changed in future motions or on appeal.
Charles Shreffler, Badeaux’s attorney, confirmed that. “In order for [Badeaux] to be liable for damages, he has to be found liable. The jury has to first find that he discriminated against Ms. Anderson on the basis of her sex, and the jury specifically found that he did not discriminate against her.”
“We are incredibly happy with the decision,” he added. “Medical professionals should be free to practice their profession in line with their beliefs.”
Members of the state medical board have agreed to initiate rules that could ban physicians from providing gender-affirming care to transgender people under the age of 18, while also limiting access to care to adults.
The vote by the Board of Medicine on Friday means the Board will begin a several month process that Chairman and Winter Park physician David Diamond said would include public meetings across the state.
Board of Medicine Vice Chairman and Fort Lauderdale physician Kevin Cairns was the only Board member to oppose the rulemaking, which was sought by Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo last appeared on JMG earlier this week when he cast doubts on the efficacy of the monkeypox vaccine.
Ladapo, who has refused to disclose his own COVID vaccination status, is affiliated with the far-right anti-vax group, America’s Frontline Doctors.
Early this year the Florida Senate approved him as state surgeon general despite reports that he lied about having treated COVID patients while working at UCLA’s hospital.
During his confirmation hearing, he repeatedly refused to say if he believes that COVID vaccines are effective.
“I think this whole thing is dehumanizing to trans people.” One of the many transgender activists speaking to the Florida Board of Medicine today before they voted to initiate the rule-making process to consider restricting gender-affirming care. #transpic.twitter.com/xjNo3EN6nG
Still thinking about how @PatrickHunterMD , a pediatrician and sitting member of the Florida Board of Medicine, called transgender people a “social contagion” today.
Which came after their “expert witness” claimed that COVID isolation made young people transgender. 🙃
DeSantis replaced an elected Dem DA with an unelected GOP prosecutor because of his and his party’s culture wars on abortion and LGBTQ people https://t.co/qYyuPL4CcI
There’s also this shit. LGBT folks in Tampa now have a Federalist Society bigot as the top DA for their area. I wonder how she’ll be in interacting with LGBT folks?
I think it’s time for CA, OR, WA, HI, NY, NJ, VT, MA, CT, MD, etc. to officially declare Florida to be a “shithole country” (especially the parts immediately around Merde-A-Lardo and wherever Ron DuhSantis is at the moment) and require visas and vaccinations to travel to/from there.
This mofo DeathSentence won election by just four-tenths of one percent — just by 33,000 votes. And he governs as if he had an overwhelming popular mandate to drag Florida back into the Middle Ages.
This is one of the big differences between RepubliQans and Democrats.
Yes, and it’s a relevant one. Another big difference – they fall in line and goosestep down to vote. We have to fall in love before we even think about maybe showing up at the polls. If there’s nothing better streaming.
We have a bunch of fake Christians and far-right fascist idealogues promoting the end of personal freedom and the beginning of a theocracy for Florida. Hold onto your hats–it’s going to get very ugly there.
Notice that all of these have some LGBTQ+ content or characters. It doesn’t even have to be explicit as the rhyming book of babies shows. The goal is to remove representation of LGBTQ+ from society. As if you don’t see it then it won’t exist. Got news for these people, it is straight people that create gay kids. I never read a book with gay characters when I was growing up, but I was gay from birth. This is what was done in Russia and other authoritarian countries, and the maga parents want to have that kind of authoritarian government here. The thing is these vocal groups are the minority. They are a small group of religiously motivated people. Yet they scream that any mention of LGBTQ+ offends them. OK well any mention of religion or the bible offends me. So can we get a don’t say Jesus law for schools, and a warning sticker for the bible that it is not suitable for students. Hugs
Golden Gate High School in Naples, Fla.Google Maps
A southwest Florida school district added warning labels to more than 100 books, many of which touch on issues related to race or the LGBTQ community.
Collier County Public Schools, a district that includes part of Naples, added the labels both on physical copies of the books and in Destiny, the district’s online catalog, according to the nonprofit Florida Freedom to Read Project. The top of the label, according to a photo shared with NBC News by Florida Freedom to Read Project, says “Advisory notice to parents” in capital letters.
An advisory notice to parents placed on over 100 books in public schools in Collier County, Fla.Courtesy Stephana Ferrell/Florida Freedom to Read Project
“This Advisory Notice shall serve to inform you that this book has been identified by some community members as unsuitable for students,” the label states. “This book will also be identified in the Destiny system with the same notation. The decision as to whether this book is suitable or unsuitable shall be the decision of the parent(s) who has the right to oversee his/her child’s education consistent with state law.” A sticker of the notice is on the front inside cover of the books, according to Stephana Ferrell, co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which advocates against censorship in Florida schools. Ferrell said a media specialist in the school district shared photos of the labels with her in June.
After a series of public records requests about the labels, challenged books and the district’s creation of a committee that reviews school materials, Ferrell said she received a phone call from Elizabeth Alves, associate superintendent of teaching and learning for Collier County Public Schools.
Ferrell said Alves told her the district began adding the labels in February, after the district’s legal representative spoke with the Florida Citizens Alliance, a conservative group that last year issued a “Porn in Schools Report.” The report included a list of books that “promote gender self-identification and same-sex marriage” as well as titles that include “indecent and offensive material,” according to the group.
Alves defended the decision as “a compromise,” Ferrell said.
“I said, ‘It’s unfortunate, because this is a literary work. The sticker that they chose to put on there, the language that they chose, would make any reader who would otherwise pick up the book based on the cover and the description, it would make them think twice about reading the book,’” Ferrell said of her response to Alves.
Chad Oliver, a spokesman for Collier County Public Schools, confirmed that Alves spoke to Ferrell but denied that the warning labels were added in response to a conversation with the Florida Citizens Alliance.
“Based upon advice from the General Counsel, we placed advisory notices on books about which parents and community members had expressed concern and in accordance with the recently passed Parents’ Bill of Rights Law (HB 241),” Oliver said in an email, referring to a state law that allows parents to object to instructional materials.
A total of 110 books feature the advisory labels, according to PEN America, a nonprofit group that promotes free speech. This list, which PEN America shared with NBC News, has significant overlap with a list of at least 112 books that the Florida Citizens Alliance inquired about in a Dec. 11 email sent to Collier County Public Schools. Ferrell, who obtained the email through a public records request, shared a copy with NBC News.
Keith Flaugh, CEO and co-founder of the Florida Citizens Alliance, confirmed his group submitted a public records request about 112 novels in the district.
“Many of these contain sexually explicit and age inappropriate content,” which he said in an email is in direct violation of Florida laws on obscenity and the sale of harmful materials to minors. He also citeda 2017 law that the group helped draft that allows parents and any residents of the state to object to instructional materials and provide evidence for why they believe the material is inappropriate.
“Gender Queer” by Maia KobabeOni Press
Some of the titles that appear on both lists — and now have an “advisory notice to parents” warning label in Collier County Public Schools — include LGBTQ- and race-related books that have landed on banned-book lists across the country. These titles include “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, and “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. The list also includes literary classics like “Beloved” by Toni Morrison and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou.
Also included is the popular children’s book “Everywhere Babies,” a rhyming, illustrated book about what babies do. The illustrations include what could be interpreted as a few same-sex couples, but they are never identified as such in the text. The book first landed on a banned-book list in Walton County, Florida, in the spring, after the Florida Citizens Alliance included it in its 2021 “Porn in Schools Report.”
The labels appear digitally in the library records & physically on the books. They warn: “this book has been identified by some community members as unsuitable for students.” Apparently, a lot is ‘unsuitable’. Even Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers & illustrated by @MarlaFrazee. pic.twitter.com/wA5fT5fjLr
“The labeling of these books risks attaching a stigma to the topics they cover & the books themselves….Every child deserves the right to learn from a diverse set of voices & perspectives & to freely access the books they wish to read.” – @jzfriedman. https://t.co/DSrLhTQf5x
The “Babies, Babies Everywhere” book has a single illustration where there are two dudes sitting on a bench while two babies play nearby. The pairs don’t even look like they’re the same race or ethnicity.
The virulent homobigots decided the only explanation is they must be two gay dads in a blended family, when really there’s no context whatsoever. Could just be a couple of dads who were friends, letting their kids play together.
But somehow this book deserves a warning label stating the book is dangerous.
In truth, these are dangerous times for the entire LGBTQ community. I haven’t seen this kind of non-stop bigoted, slanderous shit since the early 1980s. And in truth, it feels vastly more overtly threatening now.
Great points. The overt threats and vitriol against trans people appears to be growing. If politicians continue to draft and pass laws that target trans people, the physical violence and murder statistics will rise.
I’m so sick of their extremist virtue signaling. They don’t care how much damage they do to children as long as they feel like they triumphed over someone weaker. They are coward bullies.
The fall backwards has been difficult and disturbing. I graduated HS in 92. Without the library, because I grew up pentecostal, I would have had nothing. Putting that label on a book seems like putting a target on those that have checked it out, look at it or maybe put on a list. You can’t put anything past these people I am sad that the freedoms we fought so hard for the ones coming up seems to be disappearing and our compromised Supreme Court along with the radical religious right is ushering us back to the darkness.
I didn’t dare look for anything gay-themed in the school library. This was pre-internet of course. Thank FSM for the college library in town that had a pretty good collection for the time.
The authoritarian fascist right wing government is moving forward with returning the country to a time when they did not think that the LGBTQ+ did not exist or at least were visible in the public. Anyone who thinks they are exempt from what is coming is wrong. Let the destroying of abortion rights be an example of how extreme these people will be. Now it is any book that has LGBTQ+ content or characters, but how soon will it be any book that has content that the maga crowd don’t support? How about the drive to not teach the real racist history of the US? Will those books be banned? What about books that are against religion? Will those books be banned? You fill in the blanks and ask if those books will be banned. This is the US Taliban people! Hugs
Residents of Jamestown, Michigan, voted this week to shut down town’s library rather than tolerate certain LGBTQ books
Controversy has swirled around the Patmos Library since patrons began protesting some books with LGBT themes written for young adults. Photograph: Ron French/Bridge Michigan
A small-town library is at risk of shutting down after residents of Jamestown, Michigan, voted to defund it rather than tolerate certain LGBTQ+-themed books.
Residents voted on Tuesday to block a renewal of funds tied to property taxes, Bridge Michigan reported.
The vote leaves the library with funds through the first quarter of next year. Once a reserve fund is used up, it would be forced to close, Larry Walton, the library board’s president, told Bridge Michigan – harming not just readers but the community at large. Beyond books, residents visit the library for its wifi, he said, and it houses the very room where the vote took place.
“Our libraries are places to read, places to gather, places to socialize, places to study, places to learn. I mean, they’re the heart of every community,” Deborah Mikula, executive director of the Michigan Library Association, told the Guardian. “So how can you lose that?”
“We are champions of access,” she added, including materials that might appeal to some in the community and not others. “We want to make sure that libraries protect the right to read.”
An anonymous letter Lawrence said was sent to homes in Jamestown. Photograph: Courtesy Matt Lawrence
The controversy in Jamestown began with a complaint about a memoir by a nonbinary writer, but it soon spiraled into a campaign against Patmos Library itself. After a parent complained about Gender Queer: a Memoir, by Maia Kobabe, a graphic novel about the author’s experience coming out as nonbinary, dozens showed up at library board meetings, demanding the institution drop the book. (The book, which includes depictions of sex, was in the adult section of the library.) Complaints began to target other books with LGBTQ+ themes.
One library director resigned, telling Bridge she had been harassed and accused of indoctrinating kids; her successor, Matt Lawrence, also left the job. Though the library put Kobabe’s book behind the counter rather than on the shelves, the volumes remained available.
“We, the board, will not ban the books,” Walton told Associated Press on Thursday.
A few months later, in March, an anonymous letter went to homes in the area. It criticized the “pornographic” memoir and the addition of “transgender” and “gay” books to the library, according to Lawrence. “That fired a lot of people up and got them to start coming to our board meetings to complain,” he said. “The concern from the public was that it’s going to confuse children.”
The library’s refusal to submit to the demands led to a campaign urging residents to vote against renewed funding for the library. A group calling itself Jamestown Conservatives handed out flyers condemning Gender Queer for showing “extremely graphic sexual illustrations of two people of the same gender”, criticizing a library director who “promoted the LGBTQ ideology” and calling for making the library “a safe and neutral place for our kids”. On Facebook, the group says it exists to “keep our children safe, and protect their purity, as well as to keep the nuclear family intact as God designed”.
A flyer distributed at the town’s Memorial Day events. Photograph: Courtesy Matt Lawrence
Residents ultimately voted 62% to 37% against a measure that would have raised property taxes by roughly $24 in order to fund the library, even as they approved similar measures to fund the fire department and road work. The library was one of just a few in the state to suffer such a loss, Mikula said: “Most passed with flying colors, sometimes up to 80%.”
The vote came as a “shock” to Lawrence, who left his job in part because of town officials’ criticism of the Patmos library and libraries across the US.
“I knew that there were people that were upset about material in the library, but I figured that enough people would realize that what they’re trying to do with the removal of these books is antithetical to our constitution, particularly the first amendment,” he said.
The vote comes as libraries across the US face a surge in demands to ban books. The American Library Association identified 729 challenges to “library, school and university materials and services” last year, which led to about 1,600 challenges or removals of individual books. That was up from 273 books the year before and represents “the highest number of attempted book bans since we began compiling these lists 20 years ago”, the ALA president, Patricia Wong, said in a press release.
“We’re seeing what appears to be a campaign to remove books, particularly books dealing with LGBTQIA themes and books dealing with racism,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, head of the ALA’s office for intellectual freedom, told the Guardian last year. Celebrated books by Toni Morrison, Alison Bechdel and Ibram X Kendi are among those facing bans.
“I’m not quite sure what instigated the culture wars that we’re seeing, but libraries are certainly at the front end,” Mikula said. Indeed, as states across the US move to deny LGBTQ+ rights, the ALA’s No 1 “most challenged” book last year was Gender Queer.
“When you remove those books from the shelf or you challenge them publicly in a community, what you’re saying to any young person who identified with that narrative is, ‘We don’t want your story here,’” Kobabe told the New York Times in May.
Each library chooses its own collection, Mikula noted, an intensive process that involves staying abreast of what’s new, listening to what’s being requested, and “weeding out” selections that are rarely on loan.
“Our librarians are qualified. They have advanced degrees,” she said. “We want to make sure that the people who have been hired to do this work are trusted and credible, and that they’re making sure that the full community is represented within their library. And that means having LGBTQ books.”
If community members oppose the inclusion of certain books, there are formal means of requesting their removal, involving a review committee and ascertainment that the person making the appeal has actually read the book in question. But recently, she said, people have been “going to board meetings, whether it’s a library board meeting or a school board meeting and saying, ‘Here’s a list of 300 books. We want them all to be removed from your library.’ And that’s not the proper channel, but they’re loud and their voices carry.”
Let’s face it, Republicans would defund every library on the planet if they had the opportunity, them saying it’s LGBTQ+ related is just trying to score extra points with their knuckle dragging constituency.
This entire clip is projection. He is railing against ‘book burners’ and ‘cancel culture’ when he comes from a state where the GOP governor is banning books and firing attorneys who don’t fall into line. https://t.co/c1pZ0wizop
They want books censored. Books that come with no pictures and require an imagination to illustrate. The books that almost no one reads.
Meanwhile, on the internet you can find videos of the kinkiest sex acts with even the most simple searches. They all carry the internet in their pocket 24/7.
If I had the money I would fully fund the library and turn it in to an LGBTQ resource center and history museum just to explode the heads of these small minded freaks.
Of course the fascists hate the library. Free books and media? People can watch movies, read books and magazines and listen to music without paying anything other than taxes? That’s communism!
MAGAts don’t read anyway, so for them it’s no big loss to close a library.
“Make America Great Again” means keep kids ignorant about human sexuality, like many were in the 1950s, when they were taught that girls could be impregnated by kissing boys and that gay sex was only practiced by devil worshipping atheists and godless commies.
Keeping kids away from science or knowledge was a thing when people sought books on evolution and slavery because white Christianity was the only acceptable belief system, except where Jews were tolerated.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but as I recall, reading any particular library book is optional. Nobody is going to get held back a grade for not reading the books. Oh, I forgot, conservative dictionaries don’t have the word “choice” in them.
And followed immediate by an article about Senator Rick Scott screeching against Democrats allegedly trying to cancel culture and burn books. Republicans are constitutionally incapable of recognizing hypocrisy.
In a recent comment Tildeb championed an interim report of an inquiry on the best way to serve the needs of trans children in the UK. Almost everything I read said the report only got one thing correct in that much more needed to be done to open more treatment facilities for trans people and that the national health system needed to do more. Then because it seems the thing the report wanted to push was anti-trans propaganda the report tried to say the best treatment would be to deny that kids are trans and would grow out of it and should be treated with affirmative therapy which is another way of saying conversion therapy. Affirmative therapy is saying kids should be treated and forced to see that they are in the right body to match their gender and to accept that is who / what they are. Forget that trans nonsense, just like being gay is a fad, it is just rebelling against your parents and kids will grow out of it. All kids experiment and then they grow up, no one is gay because god did not make mistakes. It is all the same thing of denying it and forcing kids to never admit it. It is something most of the modern world has grown beyond and only the traditionalists refusing to admit times have changed in a way they dislike still cling to. For those wanting to know how bias and slanted the report was here is a breakdown of it. Hugs
This morning people who care about trans kids were reacting in utter dismay to hearing the Secretary of State for Health use the Cass interim review to justify the need to exclude trans people from a ban on conversion therapy.
I’ll link the lovely Olly Alexander linking to a clip of our Health Secretary using Cass to call for conversion therapy for trans kids – see here
Despite evidence that conversion therapy on trans children is particularly harmful, with research showing “For transgender adults who recalled gender identity conversion efforts before age 10 years, exposure was significantly associated with an increase in the lifetime odds of suicide attempts”.
For days now, MPs and commentators have cited the Cass review, in justification of the need for conversion therapy specifically for trans kids.
Of course they do not say conversion therapy for trans kids. They talk of ‘children suffering from gender confusion or gender distress’, they talk of ‘exploratory therapy. They talk of ‘unintended consequences, by which some clearly mean, they fear the law would stop them conducting conversion therapy on trans kids.
Those who want to conduct conversion therapy on trans kids hide behind a new favourite term of ‘exploratory therapy’. It is a friendly sounding rebrand of conversion therapy. It is focused on probing, delaying, questioning and at its heart, problematising trans identities. There is nothing wrong with being trans. Some kids are trans – get over it.
The same people who actually want conversion therapy for trans kids, are trying to create confusion on the meaning of affirmative therapy. They are trying to paint affirmation as a bad thing, as something forced. They are wrong and they know it. Affirmation is about meeting a person where they are, about listening to what they need. It has space for as much talk therapy on identity as a person wants. Without coercion. Without compulsion. Without considering trans or cis as a bad outcome.
Parents of trans kids are today VERY upset. People had put their faith in Cass to help our kids.
Personally, I feel something else other than upset. I feel cross at myself for not speaking up earlier.
Back when the Cass review was first announced, I had serious concerns. Concerns that have continued to mount.
There was Cass’ personal twitter following of a load of highly transphobic groups & no trans people.
There was the Cass review’s initial refusal to even say the word trans kids, in a review aimed primarily at helping trans kids.
There was the lack of any trans people on the Cass team, and the fact that the Cass team explicitly asked for people with no knowledge or experience of trans-ness, as though that was a preferable.
The fact there was no oversight group consisting of respected trans health experts and trans community leaders.
Back at the start I felt deep in my gut that this would go badly and would not serve the needs of trans kids. I seriously considered trying to get parents of trans kids together to stage a boycott until there was some proper trans representation. I didn’t for four major reasons. For one, the biggest reason, I was so tired & out of time and energy. For two, I wanted to give optimism a go – just cos everything else always fails trans kids in the UK, why couldn’t this be different – here we had a paediatrician reviewing trans kids healthcare, something I’d been asking for for years, maybe this time would be different. For three, I hoped having formal peer reviewed publications to feed into the process would make a difference (spoiler – it didn’t – the Cass team had my peer reviewed research article on the UK service from the highly respected international journal International Trans Health and didn’t even bother citing it). For four, I didn’t think things could really get much worse for trans kids in the UK, so I didn’t see how much real harm it could do.
Obviously I was very wrong. I noted my initial reaction to the pathologisation embedded in the Cass report.
The Cass interim report is now being cited everywhere to justify the need for conversion therapy for trans kids. It is being cited to deny inclusion of trans people of any age from a ban on conversion therapy.
The red flags about the Cass process meanwhile continue to grow.
I’ve been interviewed, found Cass on the face of it an empathetic listener who keeps her cards close to her chest.
Other parents of trans kids have been interviewed, again felt Cass had listened with kindness.
Many are deeply upset about the Cass interim report and the way it has encouraged further bigotry.
The Cass interim report couldn’t even take a decision on whether being trans is pathological. It couldn’t even take a decision on whether trans kids are better off being loved and supported or put through conversion torture. It is not acceptable.
I won’t dig into the details of the Cass report itself, but the references and evidence base are deeply biased and flawed. It is yet another total failure for trans kids in the UK.
There are still no trans experts involved in a senior role in the Cass review. There is no trans power at all.
The Cass process seem to think the exclusion of trans people is acceptable, because they have told themselves they are not dealing with trans people at all. They have told themselves they are dealing with healthcare for ‘children suffering from gender distress’. This phrasing has become standard.
Worryingly there are also trans-antagonistic people involved in the research for Cass.
This week, the world respected paediatrician with over a decade of practical hands on experience HELPING trans kids in Australia published a response to the Cass review in the British Medical Journal. That response is not open access to the public, but this is of incredible important to those who are directly affected (and now even threatened) by the Cass outputs, so I will put its text here:
Gender identity services for children and young people in England
Landmark review should interrogate existing international evidence and consensus
Ken C Pang, 1, 3 Jeremy Wiggins, 2 Michelle M Telfer1, 3
1 Royal Children’s Hospital; 2 Transcend Australia; 3 Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
The long awaited interim report of the Cass review was finally published in March this year.1 Commissioned in September 2020, the independent review led by paediatrician Hillary Cass examined NHS gender identity services for children and young people in England. These services are currently provided by a single specialist clinic known as the Gender Identity Development Service. After consulting people with gender diversity, health professionals, and support and advocacy groups, Cass expressed various concerns within her interim report, such as increasingly long waiting lists, the “unsustainable workload” being carried by the service, and the “considerable risk” this presented to children and young people.
Recognising that “one service is not going to be able to respond to the growing demand in a timely way,” Cass used her interim report to recommend creation of a “fundamentally different service model.” Under this model, the care of gender diverse children and young people becomes “everyone’s business” by expanding the number of providers to create a series of regional centres that have strong links to local services and a remit to provide training for clinicians at all levels.1 Although it remains to be seen how and when this key recommendation will be implemented, the proposal will be largely welcomed by gender diverse children and adolescents and their families in England. The shift away from centralised, tertiary, and quaternary centres is already occurring internationally, including in Australia,2 where local services are being enhanced to meet growing demand and provide more equitable and timely care.
Hormonal treatment In what was likely a disappointment to many, the interim report did not provide definitive advice on the use of puberty blockers and feminising or masculinising hormones. Instead, Cass advised that recommendations will be developed as the review’s research programme progresses. In particular, the report expresses the need for more long term data to assuage safety concerns regarding these hormonal interventions. Although additional data in this area are undoubtedly needed, the decision to delay recommendations pending more information on potential unknown side effects is problematic for several reasons.
Firstly, it ignores more than two decades of clinical experience in this area as well as existing evidence showing the benefits of these hormonal interventions on the mental health and quality of life of gender diverse young people.3 -9 Secondly, it will take many years to obtain these long term data. Finally, Cass acknowledges that when there is no realistic prospect of filling evidence gaps in a timely way, professional consensus should be developed on the correct way to proceed.” Such consensus already exists outside the UK. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, and the World rofessional Association for Transgender Health have all endorsed the use of these hormonal treatments in gender diverse young people,10 -12 but curiously these consensus based clinical guidelines and position statements receive little or no mention in the interim report.
Indeed, there is no evidence, as yet, that the Cass review has consulted beyond the UK. This inward looking focus may be a reflection of how England’s gender identity service has come to chart its own path in this field. For example, its current use of puberty blockers diverges considerably from international best practice. In particular, NHS England mandates that any gender diverse person under the age of 18 years who wishes to access oestrogen or testosterone must first receive at least 12 months of puberty suppression.13 However, many young people in this situation will already be in late puberty or have finished their pubertal development, by which time the main potential benefits of puberty suppression have been lost.11 Moreover, using puberty blockers in such individuals is more likely to induce unwanted menopausal symptoms such as fatigue and disturbed mood.14 For these reasons, puberty suppression outside the UK is typically reserved for gender diverse young people who are in early or middle puberty, when there is a physiological reason for prescribing blockers.
Another possible reason exists for the Cass review appearing to have neglected international consensus around hormone prescribing. While the interim report often mentions the need to “build consensus,” Cass seems keen to find a way forward that ensures “conceptual agreement” and “shared understanding” across all interested parties, including those who view gender diversity as inherently pathological. Compromise can be productive in many situations, but the assumption that the middle ground serves the best interests of gender diverse children and young people is a fallacy. Where polarised opinions exist in medicine—as is true in this case—it can be harmful to give equal credence to all viewpoints, particularly the more extreme or outlying views on either side. Hopefully Cass will keep this in mind when preparing her final report.
(Back to me typing) The authors of the above include some of the most respected paediatricians with decade long expertise in working with trans kids in Australia. The Cass team should have been queuing up to learn from Australian experts. The fact they have totally ignored expertise from outside of the UK and its partner system in the Netherlands, strikes as amazing arrogance. The fact the Australian experts felt the need to write a submission to the BMJ to raise their concerns with the Cass report is again astonishing, and in another less transphobic country would set off alarm bells.
I don’t know where we go from here.
I do know the cards are now on the table. I have zero faith in the Cass process. It has already done more harm than good.
My number one hope for Cass was it would take significant strides in depathologising approaches to trans kids. It has done the exact opposite. 18 months in and they won’t even say the word trans.
I had hoped Cass would educate the public that being trans is not a problem or a pathology. It has done the opposite, and legitimised some incredibly problematising media pieces this week alone.
I had hoped it would move us from psychoanalysis to modern healthcare – instead people are using Cass to justify the need for exploratory therapy, conversion therapy by a different name.
I had hoped it would move trans kids’ healthcare away from a monopoly mental health trust to modern secondary or primary care. Instead, the focus appears to be on talk therapy to problematise trans-ness, without tackling the hostile climate that makes life so hard for trans kids, and perhaps with even less route to medical intervention where needed.
Cass has done nothing to highlight the biggest problem for many trans kids. The climate of societal transphobia. Just this week we have had headlines stating trans people can be humiliated and segregated as the UK tries to bring in a bathroom bill by the back door. Trans kids and adolescents have been in crisis again this week, many are really struggling with mental health. Not because there’s something inherently wrong with being trans, but because the UK is a hostile terrifying place to be trans as our rights are continually debated or taken away. Cass has done absolutely nothing to highlight the crisis in mental health caused by the terrible way our country treats trans people.
Cass has failed us on every level.
The whole process is cis-supremacism in full dominance.
Why do a bunch of cis people continue to debate and dictate whether or not trans kids should be put under conversion therapy.
Why do cis people continue to have all the power, and continue to use it to harm trans kids.
Trans liberation now. Trans kids deserve so much better than this.
Because he doesn’t like it and wants it to not only stop but to go away forever from his world he thinks it is OK to threaten and intimidate. Doing violence in the name of god and morality. This is the world that trump normalized. We must fight again to make this terrorism unacceptable in a decent society again. Hugs
A Bayport man who had mailed letters threatening mass shootings and bombings to those affiliated with LGBTQ+ organizations and businesses was sentenced in federal court in Central Islip Wednesday, officials said.
Robert Fehring, 74, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for mailing more than 60 letters to LGBTQ-affiliated individuals, organizations and businesses. Many of those letters contained threats to kill, shoot and bomb the recipients.
Fehring had pleaded guilty to the charge in February.
“There is no room for hate in the Eastern District of New York. Today’s sentence makes clear that threats to kill and commit acts of violence against the LGBTQ+ community will be met with significant punishment,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.
“We will use the full power of our office to bring to justice those who threaten to kill or hurt people because of who they are, and to ensure everyone in our district is able to live authentically, safely and in peace,” Peace added.
Fehring sent the letters from at least 2013 to 2021, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In the letters, Fehring threatened to use firearms, explosives and more against the recipients. Two of the letters threatened an attack on an LGBTQ+ event in Huntington that would be similar to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, according to officials.
Another letter threatened that radio-controlled explosives would be planted at a beach club in Long Beach that had hosted a LGBTQ+ event, officials said. In another letter sent in June 2018, Fehring threatened the operators of a water ferry service from Sayville to Fire Island, warning that they should “screen everyone coming on board with a metal detector” and that “a thorough search of your boats would be in order.”
A letter to the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan read, “we will blow up/burn your establishments down. We will shoot those who frequent your dens of [expletives].”
And a letter to an African American-owned barbershop affiliated with the LGTBQ+ community in Brooklyn claimed to be from “People Who Hate Gays … and In Particular [n-word] Gays” declared “your shop is the perfect place for a bombing … or beating the scum that frequents your den of [expletive] into a bloody pool of steaming flesh.”
The FBI Civil Rights Squad and New York Joint Terrorism Task Force executed a search warrant in November at Fehring’s home in Bayport. There, they recovered copies of threatening letters, supplies used to mail threatening letters, 20 LGBTQ+ Pride flags that were stolen from flagpoles in Sayville in July 2021, and reconnaissance-style photographs from the Eisenhower Park Pride event, officials said.
During the search, the FBI recovered electronic devices owned by Fehring that contained internet searches for his victims and related LGBTQ+ affiliated events and businesses. Law enforcement officers also recovered two loaded shotguns, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, two stun guns, and a stamped envelope addressed to an LGBTQ+ affiliated attorney containing the remains of a dead bird, officials said.
At the sentencing hearing, six victims addressed the court and described the fear that Fehring’s threats instilled in them.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office for their assistance in the investigation.
I want to point out a few things to those who are thinking that women / girls shouldn’t have “people with penises” in their locker room or bathrooms. Let’s take bathrooms first. I bet in the 1960’s there was a lot of talk that white women did not want black women in their bathrooms. All the black women wanted to do was use the facilities not have a social meeting, same as trans people now. They just want to use the facilities. We learned back in this time that separate was not equal. As to locker rooms the same argument applies, but not so much. I don’t know how modern locker rooms are set up, but they can be reasonably private. Showers can be smaller single occupancy showers. But that overlooks the fear and terror installed in people, kids and adults, of the human body. I told how one kid at the SDA church boarding school I went to was so scared of the “private area” that he would only shower when very few people were around and only with his underwear on. That kind of teaching about body parts is harmful and stupid. In European countries there is not a hang up or fear of the human body, kids are taught at an early age what is what, where it is, and how to be respectful of it. The responsibility is not all with the girls either, teen boys are taught how to respectfully hide or manage an embarrassing erection. But to locker rooms, what are you people doing in there, having a measuring contest of sex organs? You seem to forget the gay and lesbian kids in the room, do you think they are getting their thrills by being there. No way. A couple of boys used to clown around to hide their nervousness but really the truth was back in those days most of us hurried to change our clothes and get ourselves covered. I think we were all afraid we did not measure up to what we though men were supposed to be done there. I think that what is bothering the parents is other than the super religious families, the young people / minors are no longer embarrassed and ashamed over the body. They have been taught acceptance and no body shaming. That is why the red states are desperate to change acceptance in schools, to implement the now say gay and anti-trans bills. They want the kids to be ashamed and fearful over the human body. They don’t want sex education because they want the kids clueless and ignorant about body rights of who can touch them and how NOT to get a pregnancy they now cannot abort. Kids can be taught to use the bathrooms / locker rooms without having orgies. Look, in my day teachers had to break up the occasional fight, I am sure teachers can stop any kids from outright display of their genitals. Think of this in the hospital we used curtains on a track in the ceiling for privacy. They can be off the ground so teachers can make sure kids are not in there playing with each other. Easy single person solutions for adults and kids, if privacy means that much to you pull the curtain. This is about making trans people scary and the enemy. They are not. They are not there to attack others. With kids they are either required to have PE class or they simply want to play a sport. This is about saying anyone with a penis cannot control themselves. Hugs
The complaint filed Thursday by the Human Rights Campaign asserts that a state law preventing transgender students from accessing school facilities consistent with their gender identity violates their constitutional rights.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) on Thursday filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging a 2021 Tennessee law that prohibits transgender students from using school restrooms or locker rooms that match their gender identity.
A similar complaint was filed by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the educational arm of the HRC, last year. That lawsuit was dropped in February after the plaintiffs and their families decided to move out of Tennessee.
Thursday’s complaint was filed on behalf of D.H., a transgender 8-year-old girl entering the third grade in Williamson County, Tenn.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ rights groups, is suing the Tennessee Department of Education and its commissioner over the enforcement of a state law barring transgender students from using school facilities like restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court alleges that the law, signed by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) last May, singles out transgender students for “disfavored treatment” and violates rights guaranteed to them under the U.S. Constitution and Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs. The U.S. Department of Education last year said the policy protects students from discrimination based on their gender identity.
The law, officially titled the Tennessee Accommodations for All Children Act, requires state public schools to provide “reasonable accommodation” for students who “will not or cannot” use a gender-specific facility.
Under the measure, a “reasonable accommodation” does not include access to a restroom or changing room that is “designated for use by members of the opposite sex while persons of the opposite sex are present or could be present.” In this case, “sex” is defined as a student’s sex assigned at birth, which the law argues is immutable.
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the educational arm of the HRC, filed a similar lawsuit against the Tennessee law last year, but that case was dismissed in February after both plaintiffs and their families decided to move to another state.
Thursday’s complaint was filed jointly with the law firm Linklaters on behalf of a transgender 8-year-old girl entering the third grade in Williamson County, Tenn. Jason Golden, the director of Williamson County Schools, and the Williamson County Board of Education are also named as defendants in the complaint.
According to the lawsuit, the girl, identified pseudonymously as D.H. to protect her identity, had previously been permitted to use the girls’ restroom at school for in-person events while engaging in distance learning in 2021.
Once D.H. returned to the classroom earlier this year, she was barred under the Accommodations for All Children Act from using facilities aligning with her gender identity and made to use a single-occupancy restroom which reportedly has on more than one occasion been covered in human waste.
“These restroom ‘accommodations’ provided to D.H. by the elementary school are not accommodations at all,” the complaint states. “They reinforce the differential treatment and trauma associated with living under the [Accommodations for All Children Act], violating D.H.’s constitutional and statutory rights.”
In a statement on Thursday, HRC Litigation Director Cynthia Cheng-Wun Weaver called state lawmakers that backed the law “power hungry” and accused them of supporting the legislation to ignite their base.
“It is unfortunate that Tennessee lawmakers are using their authority to attack some of our nation’s most vulnerable – our children,” she said.
D.H.’s mother, identified in the suit as A.H., said she felt ashamed to live in an area so hostile to transgender young people.
“Years ago, I chose to move to Tennessee because it was known as ‘the volunteer state,’ whose citizens cared for their neighbors without hesitation – not a state that legalizes discrimination against helpless children,” she said Thursday. “Now, I am embarrassed to say that I live in a state that refuses to see anything beyond my child’s gender.”
“By filing this lawsuit, I am showing my volunteer spirit – because I’m fighting to not only affirm my child’s existence, but also the thousands of transgender and nonbinary children who live in Tennessee.”
Neither the Tennessee Department of Education nor Williamson County Schools immediately responded to Changing America’s request for comment.
Just in: @HRC announces a new lawsuit, filed on Monday, challenging Tennessee’s anti-trans student bathroom bill. Here’s the complaint, brought on behalf of a trans student and her parents in Williamson County. https://t.co/BZ291fYhmapic.twitter.com/SJ4isEhfB9
— Chris “Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner (@chrisgeidner) August 4, 2022
The Republican Party and its Religious Right puppet master are targeting the trans community because, sadly, to do so is a winner for them. Most Americans know shit about trans people and their lives.
The Republicans and the preachers can rake in millions of dollars — and motivate their voters to go to the polls — by playing on the fear and ignorance out there.
I started my transition shortly after you did, and while overall things have improved, the far-right nutcases and religious zealots have decided we are a convenient scapegoat, as their previous attempt (trying to scapegoat homosexual people) mostly collapsed (but they are trying to resurrect that garbage too). As much as all of us are beyond fucking tired of the bullshit they continue to spew, and tired of being targets, we need to stay strong and show the world that the hate-mongers are nothing more than delusional liars. I’ll keep standing with you April.
Ditto drag queens. All of them are icky perverts that exist only to molest children. No mention ever of the actual child molesters that, more often than not, are youth pastors or otherwise in the employ of christianity Inc.
Good. Transgender people should be able to use the bathroom and locker rooms under their gender identity. This bill, like “Don’t Say Gay” in Florida, is the gay panic repackaged and is disgraceful.
Sorry, but the whose “separate but equal ” bullshit you’re espousing was proven to be garbage over 6 decades ago. Please keep your transphobia to yourself.
This what happens when the governor and a majority of the state legislators are Evangelicals – they always go after minority groups of all types for disfavored treatment.
True. If not transgender people, then they target the homosexual people, then they target people who are not Christian, then they target people who aren’t the “right type” of Christian…. they need someone to hate so that they don’t look at who they really hate: themselves.
In the end, they’re really claiming that men can’t be trusted..
Ever.
That All men are rapists and perverts who will upend their whole life to get close to a possible naked woman. Huckabee said he would dress up just to get into the shower with school aged girls. People who pass these bills shouldn’t be allowed near women at all, without supervision. Not even their wives.
I think the purpose of these stupid laws is a shortsighted attempt to get transfolk to leave the state, but some are kids who don’t have that option until they are emancipated from their families. The vast majority of the others are people who are gainfully employed and not causing trouble, but only need to use the restroom because they are at work or out going about their business and patronizing local stores and contributing to the economy,so they can’t use the washroom at home. Their only alternative will be to use the bushes, which is creating a needless and avoidable sanitation issue.
Scottie's Playtime 