“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he’s willing to defend Texas’ law banning “sodomy” which was overturned by the landmark Lawrence v. Texas case if the Supreme Court rules that the states should be able to regulate issues such as sex, birth control, and same-sex marriage.
After the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health overturned the landmark Roe decision, ending the national right to an abortion, Paxton ordered his office closed for a holiday “as a memorial to the millions of lives lost due to abortion.”
Paxton is also a virulently anti-gay politician who provided the legal underpinning for Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order to investigate parents of transgender children for child abuse, and taken the city of Houston to court over benefits for same-sex couples.”*
In Orange County, Florida, the school district has pushed restrictions on LGBT teachers, preventing them from displaying pictures of their spouses, wearing rainbow articles of clothing, or discussing their lifestyle with students. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.
“WOW: Gay teachers in Orange County, Florida must remove all photos of their spouses from their classrooms following the passage of the Don’t Say Gay law. All rainbow items of clothing or other memorabilia are banned.”
Mississippi State Speaker of the House Phillip Gunn is refusing to budge on making an exception to the state’s total abortion ban, even for 12-year-old girls who are victims of incest. When confronted with this specific scenario, Gunn asserted that he believes life “begins at conception” while his party refuses to do anything to combat child poverty in the state. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.
“The Mississippi Republican Speaker of the House says there should be no exception to the state’s ban on abortion now that the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the five-decade-old Roe v Wade ruling.
Asked specifically about 12-year-old girls who are victims of incest, Speaker Philip Gunn repeatedly stated his “personal belief” is “life begins at conception.” “What about the case of a 12-year-old girl who was molested by her father or uncle?” an Associated Press reporter, Emily Wagster Pettus, asked the Speaker on Friday, as the Mississippi Free Press reports.”
So as you read the story of how thugs enter a library and say they will prevent a event of reading to children and despite a 45 minute stand off with library staff asking them to leave, library security telling them to leave and the police coming and arguing with them, they get their way. Scared parents took their kids and left so the event was canceled. This is the brown shirts of the Republican party, scaring and threatening people to get their way and the police allowing it. This is stunning, it was a legal event supported by the patrons of the library and a gang of thugs was allowed to just stop it because they did not like it based on the rabid rantings of the Republicans in office and their rabid right followers. The accusations have no basis in fact, it is completely wrong. Yet this is the new fascist theocracy USA. Hugs
Minutes before a scheduled “Rainbow Storytime” program, about a half a dozen men walked into a reading room at the Tutt Branch of the St. Joseph County Public Library and demanded the event be shut down.
The men mostly wore black shirts and hats with yellow trim. At one point during the confrontation, one member unfurled a flag reading “Michiana Proud Boys,” appearing to identify the men as a local chapter of the white nationalist hate group.
In a video, the men badgered library staff and event attendees for around 45 minutes, calling the books that were to be read a “perversion” and belligerently asking “what gives you the right” to push sexuality on children.
Eventually the men left after being talked to by South Bend police officers and the library’s security personnel, though the reading event was postponed after most of the families went home.
“It is a shock and we are very disappointed an event celebrating LGBTQ+ communities was disrupted,” said Marissa Gebhard, communications manager for the library system. “Our staff are very affected by it.”
Gebhard added that the library will reschedule the event, which was planned in partnership with the Tree House Gender Resource Center, and will continue to offer programming “to all members of our community.”
“The library will always be a welcoming place for everyone of all viewpoints, so the library will continue to offer programs like this no matter what the response is,” Gebhard said.
She added that the books that were to be read were “carefully selected” and meant to promote gender inclusivity in an age-appropriate manner.
Though Monday’s standoff ended without violence, similar confrontations have played out in libraries and schools across the county in recent months as members of the Proud Boys have disrupted LGBTQ-themed events.
The Proud Boys has been designated as a hate group by multiple advocacy groups, and often engages in violence to further its white extremist agenda, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Local activist Tonna Robinson, who works with the Indiana Mutual Aid Coalition and Black Lives Matter South Bend, said the local Proud Boys chapter has not been active to her knowledge, but said the group’s attempt to target an LGBTQ-themed event at the library is part of the group’s national goal.
“This is an organized effort to disrupt and target LGBTQ people nationwide,” Robinson said.
Robinson pointed out altercations at libraries in San Fransisco, Wilmington, N.C, and Dallas in the last month, as well as an incident in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho where nearly three dozen members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front were arrested for planning a riot at a pride parade.
Earlier this month, federal prosecutors charged former Proud Boys national chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and four other group leaders with seditious conspiracy in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Locally, Gebhard couldn’t remember any other instances of library events being disrupted by white supremacist or any other groups.
Rainbow Storytime
A video posted by the Proud Boys appeared to depict the incident and begins by showing six men and their videographer walk into the library and stand in the middle of a room where staff were preparing for the Rainbow Storytime event. The event was set for 5 p.m. on Monday.
The men then accost a librarian setting up a whiteboard with questions about why she’s indoctrinating children with “sexuality.”
“You’re grooming these children’s minds,” one of the Proud Boys said. “This is our region and we will not have that in our region.”
A library patron then enters and begins debating with the group before a manager asks the group to leave. The group doesn’t and other staff and patrons come talk to and argue with the group for 20 to 30 minutes. One woman enters, identifies herself as a mother and also criticizes the event. Eventually, South Bend police officers show up and tell the group they can’t interfere the event.
Proud Boys members repeatedly deny disrupting the event, while also repeating the contradictory statement that they will not permit the event to take place.
At one point near the end of the video, an unidentified South Bend police officer tells the group they can remain at the library only if they quietly observe the event and not disrupt it. The members reiterate their intention to prevent the event, and the officer says, “You know the program is going to go on, right?” Less than a minute after police tell them they cannot stop the event, the video abruptly ends.
Rona Plummer, the St. Joseph Public Library’s director of branch services, arrived at the Tutt branch around 5:15 p.m. to a scene full of confusion as the Proud Boys confronted library staff, curious patrons and police. Plummer said library staff were concerned for their safety during the incident.
“The Proud Boys vocalized that the program was not going to happen, period. That’s where our concern was,” Plummer said. “It was very disruptive and it changed what was supposed to be a pleasant, positive experience into a confusing and negative experience.”
Gebhard and Plummer said they didn’t see any violence and don’t believe members of the Proud Boys were carrying weapons.
South Bend Police Department logs list the incident as a miscellaneous public report and show no arrests were made. A representative with the department did not respond to a message from The Tribune seeking more information about the incident.
Gebhard said the library has two security officers stationed at library’s main branch in downtown South Bend, as well as a few other officers at different branches. After Monday, library leadership is considering changes to security, Gebhard said, but nothing has been finalized.
— Indiana Mutual Aid Coalition (@INMutualAid) June 28, 2022
The Proud Boys recognized one person because Purple for Parents (a local hate group focused on schools) had doxxed her before.
This disruption is extremely concerning because it seems to be a part of coordinated disruptions of similar events across the country. 2/4 pic.twitter.com/QumqYn4Bxd
— Indiana Mutual Aid Coalition (@INMutualAid) June 28, 2022
In a video on their public Telegram channel the Proud Boys posted a video of themselves flashing white power hand signs during the disruption.
Hate like this cannot be tolerated, it is dangerous. At another disruption in Nevada a gun was pulled. 3/4 pic.twitter.com/L3HEBoffA8
— Indiana Mutual Aid Coalition (@INMutualAid) June 28, 2022
Far-right attacks on LGBTQ+ events are spiking around the country. In response, communities in North Texas are organizing for self-defense.
Pro-democracy champion Texas Paul gives red alert plea that if we don’t stop the GOP they will turn the United States into a fascist theocratic state as they have already begun.
And so the erasing of same sex couples begins. Just students know that a teacher is married to someone of the same gender is now forbidden in Florida. How does this protect children? It does clearly make gay married teachers a lower class of people than straight married teachers. What next limiting benefits to gay married teachers or just making it illegal to have gay teachers? WTF, I am going out of my mind that the US in a few short years snapped back into a theocracy. Hugs
Representatives for Orange County teachers sounded alarm bells Monday after word spread from principals that Orange County Public Schools would impose strict restrictions on classroom behavior after Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education law, a.k.a the “Don’t Say Gay” law, took effect.
According to representatives of the county’s teacher association, teachers and staff members will be disallowed from wearing rainbow articles of clothing, including lanyards distributed by the district last year. Elementary-level teachers reported being discouraged from putting pictures of their same-sex spouse on their desk or talking about them to students.
“Safe Space” stickers aimed at LGBTQ students may have to be removed from doors, teachers will have to report to parents if a student “comes out” to them and they must use pronouns assigned at birth, regardless of what the parents allow, the CTA reported.
"teachers and staff members will be disallowed from wearing rainbow articles of clothing, including lanyards distributed by the district last year… teachers reported being discouraged from putting pictures of their same-sex spouse on their desk"https://t.co/rGqqNeeKQn
— Christian Vanderbrouk 🇺🇸🇺🇦🌻 (@UrbanAchievr) June 29, 2022
Florida has no law barring such discrimination nor does the federal government. There’s no basis for such a suit and should it actually go into court the current right wing courts will rule against us. This is why we are so fucked and this is just the beginning.
Give it time. If Thomas gets his no ‘substantive due process’ case, that would undermine Loving. And there’s cases every year about one wedding or another not allowing an interracial couple to celebrate there – and the venues do win the cases if they are sufficiently private.
Hear, fucking, hear. I think a lot of Americans, including people on this forum, really haven’t grappled with what’s happening. For all the country’s history of injustice against Blacks, Native people, women and LGBT people, most of us have only ever known life in a nation of democracy, freedom and rule of law.
We’re now entering a phase of history that people in Europe and other countries such as Chile have already seen – where democracy, freedom and rule of law all collapse and are replaced with dictatorship, oppression and lawless rule by decree. It’s disorienting, like the sudden death of a loved one, and it takes a while to wrap your head around it and realize that what you have always known as normal is now gone.
They already are. I am in a number of online groups for music teachers. They are leaving in droves. I guess the MSM will wait and report on this in September when schools can’t open for lack of teachers. (Always a day late and a dollar short our US excuse for journalism!) So it’s already bad, but yes this will make it worse.
The books that have been banned are like “And Tango Makes Three” showing two male parents and no sex. But stories like Goldilocks with a Mama Bear, Papa Bear and Baby Bear are not banned.
It is about indoctrinating their version of what a family looks like, what a couple looks like.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late Before you are six or seven or eight
Again these people insist the LGBTQ+ are the moral degenerates and that men dressed in costume reading to kids in public is somehow grooming kids for abuse. Hugs
A Kissimmee pastor was arrested Monday after he was suspected of exposing his genitals and masturbating at a Starbucks, according to Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.
Enginio Dali Muniz-Colon, 39, was arrested and taken to Osceola County Jail, where he faces a charge of exposure of sexual organs, OCSO said. Muniz-Colon is a pastor and teaches online Ministry classes, according to OCSO.
On May 9, deputies received a report of an incident involving a man exposing his genitals and pleasuring himself at a Starbucks at 1041 W Osceola Parkway, OCSO said. The sheriff’s office Special Victim’s Unit began investigating and found Muniz-Colon had similar charges at the same Starbucks.
Deputies with the @OsceolaSheriff have arrested Enginio Dali Muniz-Colon after they say he was found exposing himself, masturbating on the patio of Starbucks on Osceola Pkwy. They say this isn’t the first time and that he’s a pastor in Kissimmee. @WESHpic.twitter.com/ju2JEpLvza
With its decision on Roe v Wade, the court has signaled its illegitimacy – and thrown the American project into question
‘Can a country be properly understood as a democracy if it subjugates half of its population?’ Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
As of 24 June 2022, the US supreme court should officially be understood as an illegitimate institution – a tool of minority rule over the majority, and as part of a far-right ideological and authoritarian takeover that must be snuffed out if we want American democracy to survive.
On Friday, in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, the supreme court overruled its nearly 50-year precedent of Roe v Wade, the 1973 case that legalized abortion nationwide. It is difficult to overstate just how devastating this is for pregnant people, for women as a class and for anyone with even a passing interest in individual freedom and equality.
But it’s also devastating for those of us who care quite a bit about American democratic traditions and the strength of our institutions. Because, with this ruling, the supreme court has just signaled its illegitimacy – and it throws much of the American project into question. Which means that Democrats and others who want to see America endure as a representative democracy need to act.
Of the nine justices sitting on the current court, five – all of them in the majority opinion that overturned Roe – were appointed by presidents who initially lost the popular vote; the three appointed by Donald Trump were confirmed by senators who represent a minority of Americans. A majority of this court, in other words, were not appointed by a process that is representative of the will of the American people.
Two were appointed via starkly undemocratic means, put in place by bad actors willing to change the rules to suit their needs. Neil Gorsuch only has his seat because Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, blocked the ability of Barack Obama to nominate Merrick Garland – or anyone – to a supreme court seat, claiming that, because it was an election year, voters should get to decide.
And then Donald Trump appointed Amy Coney Barrett in a radically rushed and incomplete, incoherent process – in an election year.
And now, this court, stacked with far-right judges appointed via ignoble means, has stripped from American women the right to control our own bodies. They have summarily placed women into a novel category of person with fewer rights not just than other people, but than fertilized eggs and corpses. After all, no one else is forced to donate their organs for the survival of another – not parents to their children, not the dead to the living. It is only fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses that are newly entitled to this right to use another’s body and organs against that other’s will; it is only women and other people who can get pregnant who are now subject to these unparalleled, radical demands.
This raises a fundamental question: can a country be properly understood as a democracy – an entity in which government derives its power from the people – if it subjugates half of its population, putting them into a category of sub-person with fewer rights, freedoms and liberties?
The global trend suggests that the answer to that is no. A clear pattern has emerged in the past few decades: as countries democratize, they tend to liberalize women’s rights, and they expand abortion and other reproductive rights. Luckily for the women of the world, this is where a great many nations are moving.
But the reverse is also true: as a smaller number of countries move toward authoritarian governance, they constrict the rights of women, LGBT people and many minority groups. We have seen this in every country that has scaled back abortion rights, reproductive rights, and women’s rights more broadly in the past several years: Russia, Hungary, Poland, Nicaragua and the United States.
The same week that the supreme court issued its decision in Dobbs, the US House of Representatives has been holding hearings to inform the public about what actually happened during the attempted coup of 6 January 2021, and to ideally hold perpetrators, traitors and seditionists to account. We are only a year and a half past that disgraceful day, when an angry mob decided that they, an authoritarian, patriarchal, white supremacist minority, should rule – that any other outcome, no matter how free and fair the election, was illegitimate.
The supreme court decision stems from that same rotted root: the idea that a patriarchal minority should have nearly unlimited authority over the majority. The conservatives on the court rightly understand that individual rights and women’s freedoms are incompatible with a system of broad male control over women and children, and a broader male monopoly on the public, political and economic spheres.
But that authoritarian vision is also incompatible with democracy.
And so Democrats now have a choice. They can give speeches and send fundraising emails. Or they can act: declare this court illegitimate. Demand its expansion. Abolish the filibuster. Treat this like the emergency it is, and make America a representative democracy.
Jill Filipovic is the author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind
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