“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” (Courtesy Anne Frank Fonds)
(JTA) – A school district in suburban Fort Worth, Texas, has ordered its librarians to remove an illustrated adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” from their shelves and digital libraries, along with the Bible and dozens of other books that were challenged by parents last year.
The book purge at the Keller Independent School District in Keller, Texas, was requested Tuesday by a district executive in an email, a copy of which was obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. A copy of the email also circulated on social media.
“By the end of today, I need all books pulled from the library and classrooms,” wrote Jennifer Price, Keller ISD’s executive director of curriculum and instruction.
It was the latest in a string of book removals being implemented at schools at the behest of conservative activist parents and school board members who are challenging a slew of texts on grounds ranging from their LGBT-friendly content to their supposed connections to “critical race theory.” Some of these challenges have ensnared books with Jewish themes in the past.
“It’s disgusting. It’s devastating. It’s legitimate book banning, there’s no way around it,” Laney Hawes, a parent of four children in the Keller district, told JTA about the order. “I feel bad for the teachers and the librarians.”
“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation,” by Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman and illustrator David Polonsky, is a 2019 illustrated adaptation of the bestselling diary by the teenage Holocaust victim. The New York Times called the book “so engaging and effective that it’s easy to imagine it replacing the [original] ‘Diary’ in classrooms and among younger readers.”
The parental challenge against the book came in February, and the district initially dismissed it, Hawes said. Hawes, who is not Jewish, is on a list of parents who can be called in to serve on a committee to review book challenges.
“When we got ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ we thought, ‘This is a joke.’ But it wasn’t,” Hawes said, adding that the complaint was that “the book shouldn’t be read without parent supervision.” She suspected that the parent may have objected to the unabridged diary’s references to female genitalia, same-sex attraction and other sexual matters, which have been deemed “pornographic” by parental challenges in the past. But she couldn’t be sure because the parent who challenged the book didn’t show up to the meeting.
Hawes’ committee reinstated the book and thought that would be the end of the saga. But following school board elections in May, right-wing activists backed by campaign funds from a PAC affiliated with conservative cell phone company Patriot Mobile gained a majority on the board. They are now rewriting the guidelines for responding to parental book challenges and have ordered all challenged books from last year to be removed from school libraries in the meantime.
“Right now, Keller ISD’s administration is asking our campus staff and librarians to review books that were challenged last year to determine if they meet the requirements of the new policy,” the district said in a statement to JTA when reached for comment. “Books that meet the new guidelines will be returned to the libraries as soon as it is confirmed they comply with the new policy.”
The district’s statement made no mention of Anne Frank, nor of the Bible, which was one of last year’s other challenged books in the district and thus will presumably also be removed from school shelves. Other books which will presumably now be removed include Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home” and Jon Ronson’s “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.”
The district has not shared any timeline for when the new review policy will be implemented. Under the current policy, any district parent, employee or “District resident” may challenge any book in the district “on the basis of appropriateness.”
The Keller district was the subject of a 2021 investigation by the Texas Education Agency, during which Republican Gov. Greg Abbott alleged the district was making “sexually explicit” books available to children.
“This group of people elected to our board, and the crazy parents behind them, decided that the committees must be rigged,” Hawes said, describing parents who would attend school board meetings alleging “conspiracies to take over our public schools,” wearing shirts reading “Alex Jones Was Right.”
Hawes, who said she had become an unofficial activist for district teachers and librarians who felt unsafe speaking out about such policies, said she had been contacted by more than a dozen educators the morning the email went out.
One teacher called her in tears. “She said it: ‘I can’t even let them read ‘The Diary of Anne Frank.’”
Note the paragraph that states because the school spying on the kids, those same kids / parents have been visited by law enforcement. One district used the software to learn the student’s sexual orientation and outed the student their parents.
As the post-Roe era underscores the risks of digital surveillance, a new survey shows that teens face increased monitoring from teachers—and police.
PHOTOGRAPH: MASKOT/GETTY IMAGES
THIS IS WHAT high school teachers see when they open GoGuardian, a popular software application used to monitor student activity: The interface is familiar, like the gallery view of a large Zoom call. But instead of seeing teenaged faces in each frame, the teacher sees thumbnail images showing the screens of each student’s laptop. They watch as students’ cursors skim across the lines of a sonnet or the word “chlorofluorocarbon” appears, painstakingly typed into a search bar. If a student is enticed by a distraction—an online game, a stunt video—the teacher can see that too and can remind the student to stay on task via a private message sent through GoGuardian. If this student has veered away from the assignment a few too many times, the teacher can take remote control of the device and zap the tab themselves.
Student-monitoring software has come under renewed scrutiny over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. When students in the US were forced to continue their schooling virtually, many brought home school-issued devices. Baked into these machines was software that can allow teachers to view and control students’ screens, use AI to scan text from student emails and cloud-based documents, and, in severe cases, send alerts of potential violent threats or mental health harms to educators and local law enforcement after school hours.
Now that the majority of American students are finally going back to school in-person, the surveillance software that proliferated during the pandemic will stay on their school-issued devices, where it will continue to watch them. According to a report published today from the Center for Democracy and Technology, 89 percent of teachers have said that their schools will continue using student-monitoring software, up 5 percentage points from last year. At the same time, the overturning of Roe v. Wade has led to new concerns about digital surveillance in states that have made abortion care illegal. Proposals targeting LGBTQ youth, such as the Texas governor’s calls to investigate the families of kids seeking gender-affirming care, raise additional worries about how data collected through school-issued devices might be weaponized in September.
The CDT report also reveals how monitoring software can shrink the distance between classrooms and carceral systems. Forty-four percent of teachers reported that at least one student at their school has been contacted by law enforcement as a result of behaviors flagged by the monitoring software. And 37 percent of teachers who say their school uses activity monitoring outside of regular hours report that such alerts are directed to “a third party focused on public safety” (e.g., local police department, immigration enforcement). “Schools have institutionalized and routinized law enforcement’s access to students’ information,” says Elizabeth Laird, the director of equity in civic technology at the CDT.
US senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey have recently raised concerns about the software’s facilitation of contact with law enforcement, suggesting that the products may also be used to criminalize students who seek reproductive health resources on school-issued devices. The senators have sought responses from four major monitoring companies: GoGuardian, Gaggle, Securly, and Bark for Schools, which together reach thousands of school districts and millions of American students.
Widespread concerns about teen mental health and school violence lend a grim backdrop to the back-to-school season. After the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Congress passed a law that directs $300 million for schools to strengthen security infrastructure. Monitoring companies speak to educators’ fears, often touting their products’ ability to zero in on would-be student attackers. Securly’s website offers educators “AI-powered insight into student activity for email, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive files.” It invites them to “approach student safety from every angle, across every platform, and identify students who may be at risk of harming themselves or others.”
See Me After Class
Before the Roe decision brought more attention to the risks of digital surveillance, lawmakers and privacy advocates were already concerned about student-monitoring software. In March 2022, an investigation led by senators Warren and Markey found that the four aforementioned companies—which sell digital student-monitoring services to K-12 schools—raised “significant privacy and equity concerns.” The investigation pointed out that low-income students (who tend to be disproportionately Black and Hispanic) rely more heavily on school devices and are exposed to more surveillance than affluent students; it also uncovered that schools and companies were often not required to disclose the use and extent of their monitoring to students and parents. In some cases, districts can opt to have a company send alerts directly to law enforcement instead of a school contact.
Students are often aware that their AI hall monitors are imperfect and can be misused. An investigation by The 74 Million found that Gaggle would send students warning emails for harmless content, like profanity in a fiction submission to the school literary magazine. One high school newspaper reported that the district used monitoring software to reveal a student’s sexuality and out the student to their parents. (Today’s CDT report revealed that 13 percent of students knew someone who had been outed as a result of student-monitoring software.) A Texas student newspaper’s editorial board argued that their school’s use of the software might prevent students from seeking mental health support.
Also disquieting are the accounts of monitoring software breaching students’ after-school lives. One associate principal I spoke to for this story says his district would receive “Questionable Content” email alerts from Gaggle about pornographic photos and profanities from students’ text messages. But the students weren’t texting on their school-issued Chromebooks. When administrators investigated, they learned that while teens were home, they would charge their phones by connecting them to their laptops via USB cables. The teens would then proceed to have what they believed to be private conversations via text, in some cases exchanging nude photos with significant others—which the Gaggle software running on the Chromebook could detect.
After this was first reported by Wired, Gaggle said in a statement that it does not scan private texts on charging phones, but that a phone’s photos do get uploaded to a school’s account (and scanned) when the student plugs their phone into a school-issued laptop. The associate principal I spoke to says he advises students not to plug their personal devices into their school-issued laptops.
This pervasive surveillance has always been disconcerting to privacy advocates, but the criminalization of reproductive health care in some states makes those problems more acute. It’s not difficult to envision a student who lives in a state where ending a pregnancy is illegal using a search engine to find out-of-state abortion clinics, or chatting online with a friend about an unplanned pregnancy. From there, teachers and administrators could take it upon themselves to inform the student’s parent or local law enforcement.
So could the monitoring algorithm scan directly for students who type “abortion clinic near me” or “gender-affirming care” and trigger an alert to educators or the police? Paget Hetherington, the vice president of marketing at Gaggle, says that Gaggle’s dictionary of keywords does not scan for words and phrases related to abortion, reproductive health care, or gender-affirming health care. Districts can, to an extent, ask Gaggle to customize and localize which keywords are flagged by the algorithm. When WIRED asked whether a district could request that Gaggle specifically track words related to reproductive or gender-affirming health care, Hetherington replied, “It’s possible that a school district in one of these states could potentially ask us to track some of these words and phrases, and we will say no.”
When reached for comment, GoGuardian directed us to the following statement: “As a company committed to creating safer learning environments for all students, GoGuardian continually evaluates our product frameworks and their implications for student data privacy. We are currently reviewing the letter we received from Senators Warren and Markey and will be providing a response.”
When reached for comment, Bark for Schools initially agreed to speak to us, then went silent. After this story was first published, the company released a statement saying, in part, that its policy is to “immediately and permanently delete data which comes into its possession that contains a student’s reproductive health data or searches for reproductive health information.” Therefore, the company says, it cannot be compelled to turn over such data to law enforcement because “it is not in our possession and therefore not produceable.”
Securly did not respond to requests for comment.
All Monitor
Even if student-monitoring algorithms don’t actively scan for content related to abortion or gender-affirming care, the sensitive student information they’re privy to can still get kids in trouble with police. “It is hardly a stretch to believe that school districts would be compelled to use the information that they collect to ensure enforcement of state law,” says Doug Levin, national director of the K12 Security Information Exchange, a nonprofit focused on protecting schools from emerging cybersecurity risks.
Schools can and do share student data with law enforcement. In 2020, The Boston Globereported that information about Boston Public School students was shared on over 100 occasions with an intelligence group based in the city’s police department, exposing the records of the district’s undocumented students and putting those students at greater risk of deportation.
When it comes to safeguarding the privacy of students’ web searches and communications, Levin says current federal protections are insufficient. The primary federal law governing the type and amount of student data that companies can slurp up is the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. While FERPA has been updated a handful of times since it passed in 1974, Levin says it hasn’t kept pace with the technology that shapes reality for schools and students in 2022. The current national privacy bill in Congress (which might, in other respects, actually be good) won’t do anything for most students either, as it excludes public institutions such as public schools and vendors that handle student data.
For teachers, the value of remote monitoring can be significant. Stacy Recker, a high school social studies teacher in the Cincinnati area, says GoGuardian was “invaluable” during the pandemic. She used the software to provide remote support for students who struggled with the technical demands of remote learning. Now that her students have returned to the classroom, she continues to use GoGuardian to help her kids stay off YouTube and focus on a lesson on W.E.B. DuBois. At the time of WIRED’s interview, she was not aware of the alerting system that claims to detect a student’s risk of self-harm or harm to others, a service GoGuardian offers as a separate product.
Educators are shouldering the unprecedented responsibility of helping students recover from two extremely disruptive years while providing mental health support in the wake of campus tragedies. The monitoring companies’ websites share stories of their products flagging students’ expressions of suicidal ideation, with testimonies from teachers who credit the software with helping them intervene in the nick of time.
Especially after school shootings, educators are understandably fearful. But the evidence that monitoring software actually helps prevent violence is scant. Privacy advocates would also argue that forcing schools to weigh surveillance against safety perpetuates a false choice. “Surveillance always comes with inherent forms of abuse,” says Evan Greer, the director of the nonprofit Fight for the Future. “There are other ways to support and protect kids that don’t.”
Some educators would agree. When the Columbine shooting shook American schools in 1999, Lee Ann Wentzel was an assistant principal at Ridley Public Schools in Pennsylvania. She remembers how her school scrambled to come up with new safety protocols, like issuing ID badges. When she became superintendent in 2010, Wentzel helped design a rigorous student privacy rubric against which her district could measure all software they would be using with students. The rubric included items like whether the student’s data was disposed of and whether it was shared with other parties. Her district does not use GoGuardian, Gaggle, Securly, or Bark for Schools.
She’s wary of the promises student-monitoring companies make. “Those systems provide A) a false sense of security, and B) it kills the curiosity that you want to inspire in learning,” she says. “If you’re going to rely on a technology system to tell you a kid’s unhappy, that’s concerning to me because you’re not developing relationships with kids who are in front of you.”
As to the companies’ claims about bolstering safety and anticipating school violence, she says, “There’s no single answer to these issues. Anyone that promises, ‘We’re gonna be able to predict that sort of thing’—No. You’re not.”
The new leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland, Mal O’Hara. (Facebook/ Malachai O’Hara)
Belfast councillor Mal O’Hara has become the first openly gay political leader in Northern Ireland after being named as the new leader of the Green Party.
O’Hara will replace Clare Bailey as leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland, after she lost her seat in May’s Stormont assembly election.
Before embarking on his career in politics, O’Hara was an active LGBTQ+ rights campaigner, having worked for the Rainbow Project and acted as vice-chairman of Northern Ireland’s equal marriage campaign.
He joined the Green Party in 2014, and was elected to Belfast City Council in 2019. That same year, he became deputy leader of the party.
On Monday (15 August), O’Hara became leader of the party after he was elected unopposed.
In a statement posted to social media, he said: “I am beyond delighted to have been elected as the new leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland.
“I’ve big shoes to fill. Clare Bailey has been my mentor, boss, friend and confidant. As leader she led us to record council elections, [she] and Rachel Woods passed two pieces of law that will change lives and they forced the NI Executive to bring forward climate legislation for Northern Ireland.
“It’s time for a new generation of activists. We were right on marriage and abortion and we were always right on the environment. It is welcome that others are following our lead.
“Northern Ireland faces many challenges; cost of living, housing, mental health, reconciliation and of course the climate and biodiversity crises.
“I believe that Greens uniquely have the solutions to these challenges. We can create a fairer world and a fairer Northern Ireland. Come and be part of that.”
Mal O’Hara is determined to tackle homophobia in Northern Ireland
Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, Mal O’Hara said he came out while at university in 1998, and that he was “lucky” his family and social circle were affirming.
“I know that is not the experience of everybody,” he said.
“I’ve had death threats, I’ve had harassment, I’ve had homophobic abuse, I’ve experienced all of that and that is what led me into LGBT activism.
“The fundamental failure is the executive promised a sexual orientation strategy in 2007; it is 2022 and that has still not been delivered and that is a key mechanism for addressing inequality.
“While I am very lucky, I am conscious that is not the experience of very many people across Northern Ireland.
“There has never been a better time to be LGBT, but there is still a lot of work to do to make sure it is better for coming generations.”
Over 1/3 were worried about repercussions, others didnt think the police could do anything or they wouldn't be believed. This is why @TRPNI works with our partners within @HCASNI@PoliceServiceNI@Justice_NI to take action to tackle Hate Crime wherever and whenever it appears.
In an interview with The Irish Times, he added he hopes his new position will encourage the younger queer generation, and that it will be a step towards diversifying politics.
O’Hara said: “I hope that says to the next generation of LGBT activists that you can be what you can see. That means you can be the leader of a party, that means you can be an elected representative, and that broadens the political representation in the North.
“I think we have an over-representation of heterosexual older men of a certain class, and politics needs to change and be more diverse and representative of those wider communities and I think that brings us better politics.”
Now for some good trans news. I hope more countries follow along with these steps. Being trans gender is not a crime nor a mental illness. It is an inborn difference between the assigned gender at birth based on genital inspection and gender identity of the individual. Hugs
A trans right protest. (Hesther Ng/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Germany is expected to introduce a bill allowing trans people to request a legal name and gender change without having to undergo surgery, hormone therapy or a psychological consultation.
The Self-Determination Act, which was first presented on 30 June, would allow trans adults – and minors aged 14 and older with permission from their parents or guardians – to change their gender and first name once a year, every year.
Trans and non-binary people could change their name and gender at a registry office, without any medical reports or a court order.
The bill states a fine can be given if a person’s gender or name change is disclosed without their permission.
Family minister Lisa Paus said: “The Self-Determination Act will improve the lives of transgender people and recognise gender diversity.
“In many areas, society is further ahead of legislation. As a government, we have decided to create a legal framework for an open, diverse and modern society.”
🇩🇪 BREAKING NEWS: In Germany, new Chancellor @OlafScholz has reached a coalition deal.
The upcoming bill is part of sweeping reforms of LGBTQ+ rights in Germany, with other proposals including recording the levels of related hate crimes and scrapping restrictions on blood donation for men who have sex with men.
The Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz of the centre-left Social Democratic Party, and his coalition with the Green Party and Free Democrats, revealed reforms in November 2021.
According to Der Tagesspiegel, other reforms for health insurance covering transition-related medical care in full are all being discussed.
Perhaps most ground-breaking of all is the proposal to compensate trans and intersex people physically harmed by previous legislation. For example, through forced sterilisation or unnecessary surgeries.
Before 2011, trans people in Germany were forced to undergo mandatory sterilisation in order to receive legal gender recognition.
Sweden became the first country in the world to compensate trans people for forced sterilisation, in 2018.
Julia Monro, of the German Society for Transidentity and Intersexuality, told Der Tagesspiegel: “There has never been such progressive projects for the rights of queer people in a coalition agreement.
“This is a milestone and the queer community is cheering.”
Republicans have long made being poor a reason to be denied medical care or having any quality of life. Some states make being homeless a crime now. This country has become one of well off upper incomes / the wealthy and the lower incomes / desperate workers / the poor. This is driven by anti-trans hate and bigotry. This goes against the best medical practices accepted by the majority of medical associations. Trans gender affirmative medical care is the treatment backed up by medical science and data. That is a fact. Gender-affirming care, as defined by the World Health Organization, encompasses a range of social, psychological, behavioral, and medical interventions “designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity” when it conflicts with the gender they were assigned at birth.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. (Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Florida will ban transgender residents from using Medicaid to obtain gender-affirming healthcare, including hormone medications and surgery.
According to ABC News, the new law will come into effect on Sunday (21 August).
Florida will join several other states – including Arizona, Missouri and Texas – in explicitly banning residents from using the medical expenses assistance programme to cover transgender healthcare, disproportionately affecting lower-income trans people.
The state’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) laid out the legislation in June, recommending limitations on puberty blockers, hormones, gender-affirming surgeries, and “any other procedures that alter primary or secondary sexual characteristics”.
The state’s surgeon general Joseph Ladapo previously said that providing trans healthcare to minors is “about injecting political ideology into the health of our children”.
LGBTQ+ civil rights organisations including Lamda Legal said in a statement they would “fight this rule and defend the rights of transgender people in Florida in whatever forum necessary to protect their rights to access health care coverage”.
Gender-affirming care is healthcare. Providing access to life-saving treatment should be based on facts — not discrimination. https://t.co/lioAAjbm20
Sarah Warbelow, Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) legal director, said it was the “latest example of the DeSantis administration shamefully targeting transgender Floridians”.
“The governor’s administration thinks it knows better than the residents and medical providers of Florida,” Warbelow said.
“The purported rationale behind these latest moves to deny medical care to transgender people has been thoroughly debunked time and time again since this effort first surfaced publicly in April.
“Rather than following the science, the data or the experts, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration instead chose to misinterpret studies, ignore evidence, and lend credence to prejudice – yet again putting the state between patients and doctors for no reason other than political grandstanding.
“This rule will harm thousands of Floridians when it goes into effect, and it should be reevaluated immediately.”
Following the signing of the bill, Amit Paley, CEO and executive director of LGBT+ mental health and suicide prevention charity The Trevor Project, said in a statement: “LGBTQ youth in Florida deserve better. They deserve to see their history, their families, and themselves reflected in the classroom.
“Social support is vital for suicide prevention, and I want to remind LGBTQ youth in Florida and across the country that you are not alone.”
Serbian Orthodox Church bishop Nikanor Bogunović of Bana. (Screen capture via YouTube)
A senior bishop in Serbia has been condemned for encouraging armed attacks against an LGBTQ+ Pride event in Belgrade.
In September, the Serbian capital will host EuroPride, which celebrates LGBTQ+ rights across the continent, in a first for a southeastern European country.
But Serbian Orthodox Church bishop Nikanor Bogunović of Banat, a region that covers parts of Serbia, Romania and Hungary, has vowed to “curse” all those who attend the week-long festival.
“I will curse all those who organize and participate in something like that,” Nikanor said in remarks made on 11 August, according to Balkan Insight.
“I can do that much. If I had a weapon, I would use it, I would use that force if only I had it, but I do not.”
He added that EuroPride participants “will come to Belgrade and flaunt and desecrate the city of Belgrade, the holy Serbian city,” and that “we raise our voice against such [people]”.
Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić said Nicanor’s sermon had another clear target – the country’s lesbian prime minister, Ana Brnabić, elected in 2017.
“Bishop Nicanor insulted himself and our church, humiliated our church, much more than Ana Brnabić or anyone else ever did,” he told TV network Prva TV on 12 August.
Only three days after Nikanor’s comments, chants of “Hands off our children” and “Stop the parade of shame” boomed through the streets of Belgrade as part of a protest against EuroPride.
Tens of thousands of people gathered outside Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarchate offices before ending at the Sain Marko Church. The demonstration was backed by the Serbian Orthodox Church, according to local media reports.
Queer Serbs do enjoy some protections in the eyes of the law, but same-gender couples are not legally recognised and marriage equality remains firmly banned by the constitution.
Serbia’s prime minister Ana Brnabić (2-R) at Belgrade Pride in 2017. (ANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP via Getty Images)
The knock-on effect of this is easy to see. Almost 60 per cent of LGBTQ+ Serbs have reported physical or emotional abuse in the course of a year, according to a 2020 report by the human rights group Center for Research and Development of Society IDEAS.
So for a high-ranking religious figure like Nikanor to call congregants for arms wasn’t exactly unexpected to some activists.
“It’s deeply disturbing to see a bishop incite armed violence against the LGBTQ+ community, however, it’s not surprising,” Nik Jovčić-Sas, a British-Serbian LGBTQ+ activist, told PinkNews.
“The Serbian Orthodox Church’s response to the queer and trans community for the past 20 years has been one of implicit and explicit violence.”
Jovčić-Sas said the first Belgrade Pride ever held in 2001 has come to be known as “Крви Прајд, ‘the bloody Pride’, for its extreme violence”.
Football hooligans joined right-wing nationalists to beat up and stone Pride-goers wishing to celebrate who they are. The violence only ended when police fired in the air to disperse the seething crowds.
The haunting scene was repeated nearly a decade later in 2010 when the second Belgrade Pride was held. Thugs tore through the march, lobbing Molotov cocktails, bricks, stones, glass bottles and firecrackers at Pride-goers and police in a protest egged on by religious leaders.
More than 100 people were arrested after the office of the ruling Democratic Party was set on fire and at least one shot was fired in clashes with the police.
“The church has always allowed itself to be the heart of the country’s most virulent anti-queer campaigns,” Jovčić-Sas added.
“However considering that he has not condemned Bishop Nikanor for his comments and allowed the church to be the rallying point for this weekend’s anti-Pride march,” Jovčić-Sas said, “I am not optimistic we will see any change from this Patriarch.”
Back in June, Harvard Law clinical instructor and trans activist Alejandra Caraballo tweeted about the troll account Libs of TikTok harassing a Nebraska children’s hospital for providing access to information about gender-affirming care at a Pride event.
Now, the account has taken on a bigger target: Boston Children’s Hospital.
As Caraballo has pointed out, Libs of TikTok has been publicly harassing the hospital on Twitter for the past week due to its policy of providing gender-affirming care to trans teens and adults. Now, employees and providers at BCH have been receiving death threats and harassment.
In the last 5 days, Libs of Tiktok has tweeted and retweeted 14 posts about Boston Children's Hospital. As a result, BCH providers are being inundated in death threats and harassing calls and emails. It's now affecting their services. This is stochastic terrorism, full stop. pic.twitter.com/CEMlRsX6S4
The Libs of TikTok account claims, like so many other right-wing propaganda accounts, that providing access to gender-affirming care for minors is tantamount to child abuse and “grooming.” The truth is much less sensational: the hospital provides care to children and adults who are seeking transition-related care. Libs of TikTok, however, seems to believe that because the Wayback Machine shows a time when BCH didn’t specify a specific age cutoff for gender-affirming surgeries, the hospital is responsible for encouraging teens to seek medical care without their parents’ knowledge or approval.
Which, even if it were true, wouldn’t actually be a bad thing, especially if your parents are rampant transphobes.
.@BostonChildrens is working with @PolitiFact to cover up for the fact that they provide “gender affirming” hysterectomies to minors. They changed their website after the video went viral. We will not forget. https://t.co/aIDqLNsSge
But there’s a bigger question to be asked in the midst of all this: why is Libs of TikTok still allowed to be active on Twitter? Once again, Alejandra Caraballo has the answer:
One of the things I've consistently heard is that Twitter is in a holding pattern because of the Musk buyout situation. There's a hiring freeze and no new initiatives may be started. This includes moderation of hate speech that will increase political blowback.
Despite the clear link in real world anti-LGBTQ violence to LoTT's tweets, Twitter won't act because they don't want to rock the boat politically while the Musk issue is ongoing. So essentially, Twitter is allowing this hate to proliferate as a business decision.
This all goes back to Musk's attempted takeover of Twitter which was apparently started b/c of the Babylon Bee's lockout. This is all the more perverse seeing as he has a trans daughter.
With or without the Musk drama, it’s pretty interesting to see accounts like Libs of TikTok flourish on Twitter while other accounts end up banned for “hate speech” when they are, in fact, trying to counteract hate speech.
Meanwhile, in France, Libs of TikTok has already been banned thanks to laws in place that prevent bigots and white nationalists from being platformed:
Interestingly, Twitter are perfectly able to regulate the tweets from these hate accounts when they’re legally required to. pic.twitter.com/CnjrwaoRq3
This post is for all those who claim homosexuality is not natural. Same sex relationships / sex in the animal kingdom is very well documented. Which means that the bigots must now admit that OK it is inborn and happens in some people but god meant you cannot act on it. Yet his other animal creations are allowed to do so? Why would he be OK with them doing that but not the human animal? Plus notice that the gays are always loving enough to accept and care for those kids that the straights want to ignore or throw away. Hugs
Pink-feathered fathers Hudson and Blaze were chosen by zoo keeps to take responsibility for hatching an egg.
An abandoned baby flamingo has found new life with a couple of longtime flamingo dads.
At ZSL Whipsnade Zoo, northwest of London, pink-feathered fathers Hudson and Blaze were chosen by zoo keeps to take responsibility for hatching an egg abandoned by the soon-to-be chick’s bio parents.
The American flamingo egg (Phoenicopterus ruber) was popped in an incubator while the bird team at the zoo, the UK’s largest, searched for adoptive parents.
They didn’t have to look far.
Team leader Tim Savage said: “Flamingos usually work together, as a monogamous pair, to care for their eggs and subsequent chicks. Hudson and Blaze were the clear choices for the incubated egg, as they have always proved to be ideal parents.”
Among the zoo’s whole “flamboyance”, or group of flamingos, the same-sex couple was known by staff for taking exceptional care of their shared bird crib. After the egg was handed over, the pair sat tight until it hatched.
“After the chick hatched in their nest, they sat with it for two weeks, keeping it warm and protecting it from other flamingos, who often squabble and shove around different nest sites,” Savage said.
🦩 Heart-warming news as a baby flamingo is being successfully raised by two fathers at @ZSLWhipsnadeZoo, after its biological parents vacated their nest.
As parents, male flamingos share some of the same traits found in females, making a same-sex upbringing a natural choice. The bright red “crop milk” that sustains chicks after hatching is produced by both males and females of the species.
“The same hormone that regulates milk production in mammals, regulates the production of crop milk,” said Savage. “It’s stimulated by the mother or father’s experience of sitting on an egg and watching the chick hatch.”
“The milk is made in the linings of their digestive tract and contains fat, protein and blood cells. You can often spot the new parents in a group because they give so much of their own pigment to their chicks that they almost turn white!”
Same-sex flamingo pairs have been observed at the Zoo before, as have thruples, with a mix of male and female birds in one nest. Penguins are also known to form same-sex pairings during the breeding season.
The dad couple’s adopted kiddo, still covered in a downy coat of grey feathers, is out of the nest, but they’re keeping a pair of pink birds’ eyes on it.
I am getting really tired of the open bigotry and the willingness of some to go along with it. I try to be understanding so that if it is a misunderstanding or an issue of wrong education, I can correct these things. But the times have reverted to where bigots and haters are taking open pride in their cruelty and their ability to slam doors in other people’s face in the name of their god, their bible, or their political party. It is not only hurting the people involved but the ones causing the harm are then taking a victory lap celebrating the pissing on another person’s happiness, while in some cases celebrating doing all they can to ruin joyous occasions for LGBTQ+ people. What kind of person does that? I am getting angrier and more bitter about it. It used to be a fringe thing, until our government got taken over by a fascist religious movement and now the highest court in the land is openly pushing religion and removing the rights of the LGBTQ+ people along with women. 50 years of progress wiped out by religious bigots. This reminds me of the dark ages when Europe went from enlightenment to regressive religious control. They call it the dark ages for a reason. Please note this was the only baker int the area of what kind of cake they needed. This answers the question of just go to a different company / place to get what you need. There is often not another provider for what you need without a lot of trouble and travel.
Personal note. I made a joke with my doctor today and mentioned my spouse. He said she must be … I replied “Yes Ron and I have been together …” He immediately apologized for assuming it was a woman and using the pronoun her. He clearly was not trying to be offensive, and the things he said showed me he was accepting of my relationship and gave it value. I told him it was not a problem, and we continued to talk. The reason I mention this is this doctor had the right now in Florida to end our medical relationship, to stop being my medical provider and all he would have to do is say his religious beliefs said so. I like this doctor, I trust him, he has done a lot for me that other doctors missed, and I am following him to his new practice. But by mentioning that my spouse was male he could have legally dropped me, refusing to provide me service in Florida. He has the right now in the red bigoted kingdom of DeathSantis to leave me with no medical assistance in his field of practice. That is the world we now live in as LGBTQ+, something that we once had secured wouldn’t be allowed. How chilling it must be for younger or less secure people to be open about their relationships or being different when it can cost them their jobs, their housing, their medical providers, all the things in their lives that used to be secure. This is what the republican maga cult Christian nationalist thugs want, to drive the LGBTQ+ back into the closet too scared to let it be known who they are. That is what the republicans / maga cult have brought us. If you support the hate / bigotry, then this is the world you support for people like me. Hugs
A New York baker stepped in when another cake-maker backed out at the last minute.
“We don’t know how to begin to wrap our heads around this and voice our gratitude.”
So said engaged couple Desirie White and Jess Dowd after a New York baker stepped in to save their wedding day with a free vegan cake.
In June, the pair were planning their nuptials and contracted for a cake over the phone with local vegan bakery O Taste and See Delight in Effort, PA.
After the bakery owner received the signed contract back indicating the cake would be for a same-sex couple, she denied them service.
The owner wrote: “I want to thank you again for reaching out to me and asking me to create your wedding cake. However, I will not be able to do this for you. Please accept my deepest apologies.”
“I believe that the LGBT + community has the right to live as other civilians and be protected. Yet, my refusal to make your cake is based on my fidelity to the God of Scripture, and my religious beliefs are combined with my business practices. I have refunded you the full amount of $275.00. The contract is no longer binding.”
White posted the about-face on Facebook.
“I don’t know what to make of this. I am extremely upset. I’m extremely upset that she has waited a month to the date to wait and tell us no, when I reached out to her in June.”
“Jess and I agreed we wanted to invest in her small, black owned business. I reached out to her because she specializes in cakes that I need for a medical issue. It has taken us awhile to find that type of bakery so it felt like a blessing to have found a small business that bakes vegan goodies and is about 15 minutes away from our venue.”
“I believe in God, but I know that MY GOD would not condemn or deny me because of who I am and who I love. My conscience and my decisions are made from unconditional love, respect, and understanding which I know in my heart are God’s values, too. Not fear of punishment. I’m not going to lie, this hurts really deep.”
That’s when Rebecca Riley, the owner of Peace, Love, Cupcakes in Syracuse, NY reached out online to offer the couple her own wedding day dessert, free of charge.
White told Syracuse.com of the offer: “I immediately started crying, like something hit me in the gut. Some people in my family wouldn’t go this far for us.”
Riley posted she was “furious” with the baker’s denial of service, and since she’s “only two hours and 52 minutes away,” she would provide the couple’s vegan lemon cake for free.
White added in a follow-up post: “Rebecca extended her hand without a second thought to offer her services in making us a beautiful cake at no cost with the support of her followers.”
“One person turned their back on us and a whole community stepped up to stand beside us and the feeling I get from that is just so overwhelming… from the bottom of our gay hearts, thank you.”
While Riley got pushback on Facebook for ”patting ourselves on the back” and “shoving our liberal agendas down everyone’s throats,” she wanted her followers to know:
“Our hearts are just bursting. Thank you for all of the love and beautiful words but please know, this is about so much more than us. This is about the incredible community surrounding us and how they chose to step up just as quickly as I did, no questions asked. That’s the real feel-good story here.”
One follower commented: “You just keep kicking butt and frosting cupcakes. We know where your heart is. And we appreciate it.”
The name of the bakery that denied service is likely a reference to the Bible’s Psalm 34:8: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
Donald Norcross, a fourth-term Congressman, is a blue collar workhorse. That’s precisely why his impassioned stemwinder before a marriage equality vote in Congress stands out.
Rep. Donald Norcross (NJ)Photo: House of Representatives
There’s no shortage of media-hungry bigmouths in Congress rights now. Sadly it’s a feature of American politics and not a bug at this point.
By contrast, Donald Norcross, a fourth-term Congressman, is a blue collar workhorse from Philly’s South Jersey ‘burbs. And that’s precisely why his impassioned stemwinder before a marriage equality vote in Congress stands out. With the Supreme Count poised to reverse their 2015 gay marriage decision, the Democratic-controlled Congress is keen to codify marriage equality into Federal law.
Congressman Norcross:
“I woke up this morning, got ready to come over to the Capitol, and as I often do, I glanced over to pictures of my family. And I glanced to a picture of my nine-month-old grandson. Couldn’t be happier about the newest addition to my family. I couldn’t be prouder of the two people who brought him into the world: my daughter Corey and her wife, Hedya. When my daughter told me she wanted to get married, I told her what every good parent should tell her: that if this is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, I couldn’t be happier for you.”
His voice filled with emotion, he explained how his daughter-in-law’s cancer diagnosis brought a life-and-death urgency to their wedding plans.
“And as I stood at their wedding… I knew it was only made possible because of a recent Supreme Court decision. And today… that same court has opened the door to dismantling families like mine. Splitting this little guy’s family apart, potentially. We can’t let that happen…. I don’t speak about the religious beliefs of my colleagues, but I have to ask: What God would fault in this baby and his two mommies? There is nothing wrong with this. This is pure love. It’s what we all should aspire to. And with that, I encourage my colleagues to vote ‘yes’ so we are equal in all states.”
The legislation passed 267-157, a tally that includes most of the Democratic caucus plus 47 republicans. The bill’s prospects are unclear in the upper house where at least 10 GOP votes are needed to break a Senate filibuster and get the legislation to President Joe Biden’s desk.
And if supporters meet the 60 vote threshold in the Senate, it’ll be thanks to anecdotes like the one Donald Norcross shared on the House floor.
“I’m a rather private person when it comes to the family,” Congressman Norcross told LGBTQ Nation. “But the idea of having some of the statements from the other side of the aisle, what they were saying was just no middle ground. I think it’s incredibly important that people can be who they are.”
Norcross beamed when he mentioned his grandson.
“And he came into this world because of an absolutely wonderful marriage between my daughter and her wife and I spoke from a very real perspective of who they are, and how their life has just grown and blossomed,” Mr. Norcross added.
According to Brielle Winslow-Majette, Deputy Director, Garden State Equality, support for marriage equality is at an all time high because of personal anecdotes like this one.
“Congressman Norcross’s story about his daughter, her wife, and their 9-month-old son is a story millions of Americans across the country share,” Ms. Winslow-Majette told LGBTQ Nation. “Simply put, it is a story about a loving family. Loving someone and building a family with them is all we’re talking about here. I was touched by the Congressman’s story and I hope the commonality of a story that is shared by so many will resonate in the halls of Congress.”
It’s a high bar in the Senator where supporters must flip ten (or more) Republicans to clear the next hurdle.
Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK), Susan Collins (ME), Rob Portman (OH), Thom Tillis (NC), and Ron Johnson (WI) have previously expressed support for marriage equality legislation. That takes the whip count to 55 if all Democrats vote yes as expected.
The list of on-the-fence GOP Senators includes Mitt Romney (UT), Pat Toomey (PA), Tommy Tuberville (AL), Dan Sullivan (AK), Ben Sasse (NB), and Indiana’s Mike Braun and Todd Young, among others.
Congressman Norcross noted that Utah’s entire Congressional delegation, all Republicans, voted for marriage equality, perhaps portending Senator Romney as a pivotal 56th YES vote in the Senate.
For his part, Congressman Norcross is already discreetly lobbying members of the Senate to vote YES on marriage equality.
“This is one of those times that I’m going to keep that a little bit quiet,” Mr. Norcross told LGBTQ Nation when queried about who he’s lobbying. “They, depending on what Senator we’re talking about, face different pressures from outside, in addition to their own personal views. And I don’t want to give anybody a reason to go and torque him up or her up, I think we’re going to try to do this just a little bit more quietly, and see where we can go with it and I think it stands a chance.”
Photo: Whipsnade Zoo
Photo: Shutterstock
Rep. Donald Norcross (NJ)Photo: House of Representatives
