As I recently posted there are 2.64+ million LGBTQ+ kids. One in 4 try to end their lives, some more than once. That is not think about it, 1 in 4 try to actually die. The Trevor Project estimates that at least one LGBTQ youth between the ages of 13–24 attempts suicide every 45 seconds in the U.S. Now math is not my strong suit and last time I got the numbers wrong so let me try dividing the number of kids (2,647,755) divided by 4 = 661,938.75. So 661+ thousand LGBTQ+ kids try to kill themselves. A year! Is that enough? Well not according to the radical right / Republicans. Again remember the entire goal of the rights attack on the LGBTQ+ is to make being one more unacceptable than many think it is now. The goal of the right is to deny acceptance of LGBTQ+ people and kids. The guy who wrote Florida’s don’t say gay bill admitted he couldn’t stand that kids coming out were treated decently in school, that they were not bullied and ostracized. They want LGBTQ+ kids to suffer, and if more die I guess that doesn’t matter to the forced birth misnamed pro-birth crowd. For people that think this is a one off and will go away after the midterms I have four more states in my open news tabs trying to implement these anti-LGBTQ+ laws. One legislator wants to have public book burning to destroy LGBTQ+ positive books in a Christian celebration of gods morals. The right is still waging war for the right to discriminate on serving LGBTQ+ people, waging war on same sex marriage, and same sex adoption, so this is another front in the war.
Conservatives have spent the last couple months calling everyone who disagrees with them a pedophile, and now they’re setting their sights on the Trevor Project, an organization that runs a hotline and other resources to fight LGBTQ youth suicide.
Colin Wright, an editor of the anti-LGBTQ website Quillette, shared a comic from the Trevor Project that explained how teens could erase browser history and escape the site quickly so that they could get help even if they are worried about being outed to their parents.
Wright didn’t seem able to understand how something like this could help young people and instead said that the point of the feature is to “keep parents in the dark.”
Others on the right equated the Trevor Project with pedophilia, implying that an organization reaching out to LGBTQ teens in crisis is the same as a child sex abuser having sexually charged conversations with minors, as if any conversation involving LGBTQ identities is inherently pornographic.
“Why is the Trevor Project encouraging children to keep secrets from their parents?” the far-right organization Moms for Liberty responded to Wright’s tweet.
“Leftwing activists are predatory groomers,” conservative pundit Lauren Chen tweeted. “If you sit around designing and promoting ways to get in touch with kids so you can discuss sexuality and keep it from their parents, you are a groomer.”
Leftwing activists are predatory groomers.
If you sit around designing and promoting ways to get in touch with kids so you can discuss sexuality and keep it from their parents, you are a groomer.
The anti-LGBTQ account Libs of TikTok called the Trevor Project a “grooming organization” in a now-deleted tweet.
The Trevor Project works to prevent LGBTQ kids from committing suicide, that's it. It's actually a matter of public safety to have this person's identity known if she's going to be this hateful and dishonest pic.twitter.com/suqgTBwWje
James Lindsay, the professor who is best known for getting a fake academic paper published in 2017, claimed that it’s “only a matter of time until solid evidence of serious wrongdoing emerges regarding the Trevor Project.”
Only a matter of time until solid evidence of serious wrongdoing emerges regarding the Trevor Project. They don't mobilize to protect anything unless there's something really bad going on there that they don't want anyone to find out. Mark my words.
— James Lindsay, stochastic trendsetter (@ConceptualJames) April 28, 2022
As many people pointed out, having an “escape” feature is fairly standard for crisis hotlines and web services since the people who turn to crisis hotlines often don’t have support from the people around them.
This is a hard story to listen to. In fact both of them are. Child rape hits me hard, but I guess it does most decent people. The second story is about a civilian man who was tortured for no reason except it seems that is the standard why the Russians soldiers are dealing with men. I have posted it before. They take the men’s fingers and cut them to the bone in slashes so that they will not only be painful but fester and decay. This man lost most of his. I have posted videos of others with their fingers stitched up trying to save them. The US could stop this. NATO could stop this. But we are allowing it. For how much longer?
CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh speaks with 16-year-old Dasha, who says she was raped by a Russian soldier in her village in Ukraine’s Kherson region. CNN cannot independently verify Dasha’s story, but Ukrainian prosecutors in the Kherson region said in a statement they had investigated her account.
He was tortured by Russians for eight days and left in the forest to die
On thing about this. The Russians seem to like causing pain and being cruel. These acts are deliberate. No professional army acts this way. We must act to stop this. How many generations will ask why we did not stop it when we could have? Were they not worthy enough for us to save?
Oleg Moskalenko is a Ukrainian man who was captured and tortured by Russian troops for several days and left for dead in the forest. He shares his harrowing story of survival on CNN’s New Day.
Florida activist Chaz Stevens is taking the culture war to Florida Republicans by starting a petition to ban the Bible in public schools as well as any other book that references the Bible. The request comes as the state lets parents object to educational material, specifically material that contains sexual subjects.
“A Florida activist known for his tongue-in-cheek petitions to local government agencies has asked school districts in Florida to ban the Bible. In petitions sent to public school superintendents across the state, Chaz Stevens asked the districts to “immediately remove the Bible from the classroom, library, and any instructional material,” Stevens wrote in the documents, which were shared with NPR. “Additionally, I also seek the banishment of any book that references the Bible.” His petitions cited a bill signed into law last month by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which lets parents object to educational materials. That bill came about after some parents complained about sexually explicit books being taught in Florida schools. Many of those books, such as Gender Queer: A Memoir, deal with LGBTQ themes and coming out stories. DeSantis celebrated the removal of Gender Queer at a news conference after the signing of the law. It’s “a cartoon-style book with graphic images of children performing sexual acts,” he said last month. “That is wrong.””
“Based upon this review, we do not feel that this content is appropriate for young children even though it does not rise to the level of a crime.” The group complaining about the books also wanted to ban a book about the civil rights movement.
The Florida chapter of Moms 4 Liberty (M4L), a far-right “parents’ rights group”, has filed a criminal complaint against the Indian River County School District for having library books with LGBTQ themes. Even more concerning was the local sheriff’s response to the group’s complaint.
This story began in November 2021 when M4L told the district school board to remove 51 “pornographic or sexually explicit” books from school libraries. M4L’s list reportedly included LGBTQ-inclusive titles such as “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”
M4L then submitted a criminal complaint to the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office. After the supervisor of the office’s child sex crime unit conducted “a thorough review”, Sheriff Eric Flowers wrote that the reviewed books’ content “do not allow us to make an arrest in this case.”
“However,” Flowers wrote, “based upon this review, we do not feel that this content is appropriate for young children even though it does not rise to the level of a crime.”
“Some of the content in these books is highly questionable and I certainly would not want my child to have access to it,” he concluded. “I would recommend that the district continue to review their policy to allow for stricter oversight prior to books such as these being made available to children.”
Flowers’ response is concerning because it helps add legitimacy to M4L’s true aim: banning books without full transparency or oversight. The district could start quietly removing titles from school libraries just to avoid public controversy, and one study suggests that many schools do exactly that.
Groups like M4L regularly pressure school boards to ban books without going through the official district policies and public transparency protocols meant to ensure that schools don’t violate First Amendment prohibitions against government officials banning free expression, a recent study by the free-speech organization PEN America found.
Many of the books removed from schools libraries don’t even meet the legal definitions for “obscenity” and “pornography”, PEN reported, despite M4L’s claims to the contrary.
For example, M4L has sought to ban a book about police brutality against 1960s civil rights demonstrators because it had a “negative view of firemen and police.” The group wanted to ban a book about the church’s persecution of 17th-century astronomer Galileo Galilei, writing, “Where is the HERO of the church?” The group also opposed a picture book about seahorses because it contained a “discussion of the male carrying the eggs.”
According to her own parents, she’s not a particularly gifted athlete, but the middle schooler is now banned from playing on the field hockey team she helped create.
“Kentucky’s a national embarrassment today, and it’s shameful that lawmakers would prioritize attacking one trans seventh grader, rather than the real issues facing Kentuckians,” he said. “It’s a sad day in our Commonwealth.”
Wells, who testified against the bill in February, agreed.
“It’s disgusting that this bill is even suggested,” she told legislators. Because of the passage of SB 83, Wells will be barred from playing on the team she helped to create.
Kentucky’s Republican-controlled House and Senate overrode a veto by Gov. Andy Beshear (D) to enact a law barring transgender girls from playing on middle and high school girls’ sports teams. The governor had vetoed Senate Bill 83 the prior week, saying that it likely violates Constitution’s equal rights protections.
Proponents of the bill insist it is necessary to ensure that cisgender girls don’t lose opportunities to competitors who are transgender. But there is no evidence of risk to cisgender athletes, and the state’s only known trans female athlete is actually responsible for increasing athletic opportunities for girls in Kentucky.
“Transgender children deserve public officials’ efforts to demonstrate that they are valued members of our communities through compassion, kindness, and empathy, even if not understanding,” Beshear wrote in a statement.
Despite the rhetoric of trans athletes dominating women’s sports, state efforts to ban transgender youth from participating in athletics are often legislating against an exceptionally small number of students. Kentucky’s actions echo those in Utah, where legislators likewise overturned a veto by the state’s governor to push through a ban on trans athletes that applies to very few students. According to Gov. Spencer Cox (R), only four transgender youth are currently competing in athletics in the state.
“Four kids and only one of them playing girls sports,” Cox said. “That’s what this is all about. Four kids who aren’t dominating or winning trophies or taking scholarships. Four kids who are just trying to find some friends and feel like they are a part of something. Four kids trying to get through each day. Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few. I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live.”
One troll’s story of secretly “crushing [hormone] pills” into her daughter’s cereal in the morning to force them into being transgender went viral among gullible conservatives.
An internet forum where people pretending to be parents forcing their children to be transgender has gotten shut down after it was found to be full of fake stories.
As the U.S. plunges even deeper into a moral panic over children who are supposedly being forced to transition, some anti-transgender people are reacting to the fact that that never happens by making up stories about it and trying to pass them off as real.
“Anyone else have trouble convincing your teen kids to continue transitioning?” user “Funkyduffy” wrote on the subreddit r/TransParentTransKid. “My 15-year-old daughter (AMAB) has started refusing her estradiol so I’ve been crushing the pills and putting it in her cereal in the morning.”
Reddit is a largely anonymous internet platform where most users create unidentifiable handles and connections between users aren’t the focus, a contrast to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This makes it easier and more accepted for people to create temporary profiles to say whatever they want on various forums called subreddits.
One such subreddit, r/TransParentTransKid, was started last August when some users decided to post fake stories to it to promote the negative stereotype that parents and schools are forcing kids to be transgender. In reality it is common for schools and parents to be obstacles to trans kids expressing their identities while it’s unheard of for schools and parents to impede cisgender kids the same way.
The user who called for the subreddit’s creation said that it would be “filled with stories about how our real/adoptive children magically learned they were also trans after finding out about their parents,” according to Reuters.
According to another subreddit, r/AgainstHateSubreddits, r/TransParentTransKid was shut down for violating Reddit’s rules because they were “engaged in promoting hatred of transgender people, as well as targeted harassment.”
But the stories still spread outside of Reddit to rightwingers who were all too willing to believe them.
“This is fucking child abuse and I’ll die on this Hill,” wrote libertarian author Justin O’Donnell on Twitter, posting a picture of Funkyduffy’s fake story. He got almost 46,000 likes for it.
Ian Miles Cheong – who has a history of posting misinformation about trans people online and even riling Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) up – shared the story with the words “Good parenting.”
The story comes as conservative politicians and activists are claiming that there is a massive effort by schools and parents to turn children transgender.
For example, Rep. Greene said in February that there are “these mothers that think [having a trans child] is like having a handbag. They need to have a boy, a girl, and a trans child like as if they’re some kind of accessory.”
Funkyduffy’s story may have been one that pushed her to believe that such parents exist.
“I have never – not once – heard of a child being forced to transition,” said the ACLU’s Gillian Branstetter. “The exception is intersex children who are frequently forced into surgeries, yet every effort to ban gender-affirming care exempts those surgeries.”
I have never–not once–heard of a child being forced to transition. The exception is intersex children who are frequently forced into surgeries, yet every effort to ban gender-affirming care exempts those surgeries.
Chaz Stevens of Deerfield Beach has requested that Miami-Dade and Broward County public schools ban the Bible.Photo by Tetra Images/Getty Images
Since July of 2021, more than 200 books have been banned in various school districts across Florida, the state with the third-highest number of school book banning incidents in the U.S. This comes as the Florida legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis have passed House Bill 1467, which allows members of the public to challenge and ban books available in school classrooms and libraries, and a swath of “anti-woke” legislation purportedly aimed at empowering parents to protect their children’s impressionable minds.
With that in mind, local political stunt activist Chaz Stevens of Deerfield Beach has taken it upon himself to add another book to the lengthy list: the Bible. This week, in letters sent to superintendents in eight school districts in Florida — including Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS) and Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) — Stevens, an avowed atheist, petitions the districts to ban the Christian Bible from classrooms and libraries, citing its inclusion of inappropriate topics.
“If they’re gonna ban books, then the whole library should be in play. My hope — and it’s a longshot — is that they will apply their own standards to themselves and ban the Bible,” Stevens tells New Times.
Free-speech and literary-expression advocates have been sounding the alarm about what they see as a bureaucratic, authoritarian attack on education in Florida, particularly after recent news that the state rejected 54 math textbooks from the curriculum for allegedly containing prohibited topics such as “Critical Race Theory.” When the state went so far as banning math books, Stevens says, he was inspired to use the same bureaucracy to strike back against the conservative wave with an operation he calls “Eff Off Jesus.”
“I wish to file such an objection, requesting the Miami-Dade County Public School system immediately remove the Bible from the classroom, library, and any instructional material,” Stevens writes in his request addressed to MDCPS Superintendent Jose Dotres on April 19. “And, as is often the case with banned books, I ask your agency lay flame to that giant stack of fiction in a pyre worthy of a Viking sendoff.”
Stevens cites age inappropriateness, social-emotional learning, mentions of bestiality and rape, and “wokeness” as reasons to ban the Bible. Each reason is accompanied by a corresponding Bible excerpt. (A copy of Stevens’ letter is attached at the end of this article).
“With the constant babbling concerns about teaching Critical Race Theory, should we not take stock of the Bible’s position on slavery? I am concerned our young white students will read such passages and wake up to civilization’s sordid past,” Stevens writes, followed by a passage from Ephesians that speaks of slaves and servants obeying their masters.
Though book-banning incidents have been recorded in seven Florida school districts, none has been documented in South Florida’s school districts.
But at least one South Florida school district has received Stevens’ letter. “We acknowledge receipt of the subject letter. District staff will review it and respond accordingly,” Elmo R. Lugo, a spokesperson for MDCPS, tells New Times via email.
BCPS Superintendent Vickie L. Cartwright’s office could not immediately comment as to whether the agency received the request and how it intended to address it.
“They better not fucking ignore me,” Stevens warns. “If they ignore me, doesn’t that tell you something? The government can’t pick and choose religion, but can they choose which books they review for banning and which ones they don’t?”
Since July of 2021, more than 200 books have been banned in various school districts across Florida, the state with the third-highest number of school book banning incidents in the U.S. With that in mind, local political stunt activist Chaz Stevens of Deerfield Beach has taken it upon himself to add another book to the lengthy list: the Bible.
This week, in letters sent to superintendents in eight school districts in Florida — including Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS) and Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) — Stevens, an avowed atheist, petitions the districts to ban the Christian Bible from classrooms and libraries, citing its inclusion of inappropriate topics.
Stevens cites age inappropriateness, social-emotional learning, mentions of bestiality and rape, and “wokeness” as reasons to ban the Bible. Each reason is accompanied by a corresponding Bible excerpt.
Stevens first appeared on JMG in 2013 when his Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans Festivus pole went on display in the Florida Capitol.
We heard from him again in 2015 when he applied to place a rainbow Festivus pole topped with a mirror ball at the Arkansas Capitol.
Also in 2015, he was approved to place a similar rainbow Festivus pole at the Florida Capitol.
Stevens has fought to have “Satanic prayers” included among Christian invocations at county commission meetings.
An atheist in Florida finally introduced a formal petition to ban the Bible in some schools. And the logic makes perfect sense: if you’re going to ban books for having adult/inappropriate content, you have to start with the Bible, which has rape, slavery, genocide, and much more.
As Florida is ramping up its book banning push — going so far as to ban "woke" math texts in schools, a South Florida atheist wants to add another book to the ban pile: The Christian Biblehttps://t.co/D1IXV1051w
Remember, conservatives don’t believe in rape. In their mindset, women are: 1. Property of men, and; 2. Asking for it by going outside their houses, showing any skin, being in public after sundown, etc.
Don’t forget the parts about the “how-to” instructions for owning slaves. Don’t forget the parts about the “how-to” instructions for creating a miscarriage (abortion).
Ya love that juicy little tidbit where two daughter’s get daddy drunk and then have sex with him .Good wholesome family fun Hey death sentences Stuff that in your ditty bag
Ezekiel 23:20 – There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.
1 Samuel 18:25 – Saul replied, “Say to David, ‘The king wants no other price for the bride than a hundred Philistine foreskins, to take revenge on his enemies.’” Saul’s plan was to have David fall by the hands of the Philistines.
1 Samuel 18:27 – David took his men with him and went out and killed two hundred Philistines and brought back their foreskins. They counted out the full number to the king so that David might become the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him his daughter Michal in marriage.
For the anti-abortion folks, I recommend this lovely little passage. Oopsie!
Hosea 13:16 – The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.
Photo: Shutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 