It is clear that Gaetz has ambitions for higher office. He has already hinted that he will run for Florida governor. So everything he is doing will set him up for that. But Florida Governor is term limited, so what then. Well historically governors have the best shot for president. Sometimes senators will win election, but it is rare. And I can not find in searches that representatives ever have. So Representatives have only two choices to advance, run for the Senate or run for governor. Gaetz has made his calculations and decision. tRump has already shown being a divisive disruption with extreme hate / bigotry positions was a way for republicans to get votes from the lowest of the lowlifes of the Republican Party. There are videos at the link I can not get to work on the post. Hugs.
They called him divisive and an attention-seeker.
Florida congressional Republicans called Rep. Matt Gaetz divisive and selfish. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
MIAMI — Florida’s congressional Republicans are done with Matt Gaetz.
They left the House chamber last night furious after Gaetz led seven other GOP members — and Democrats — to eject former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from his leadership post.
They called Gaetz divisive. Disrespectful. Selfish. No other Florida Republican voted to oust McCarthy.
Florida’s GOP delegation see Gaetz as carrying out a personal vendetta, accusing him of an overzealous bid for attention and of trying to position himself to become the state’s future governor.
“Gaetz has very few friends in the conference,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez said. “Gaetz maybe has a couple of friends in the delegation. But I’m not one of them.”
As a sign of how unpopular Gaetz’ move to unseat McCarthy was, hours before yesterday’s vote, the GOP conference blocked microphones on the Republican side of the chamber, forcing Gaetz to debate from the Democratic side. But Gaetz was never known as a people-pleaser. The son of a prominent and wealthy former Florida Senate leader, Gaetz made headlines as a young Florida House member when he defended the state’s “stand your ground” law in 2013. He was first elected to the U.S. House in 2016 and, among other things, survived a federal sex trafficking probe.
McCarthy told his conference last night that he won’t be seeking the speakership again. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) has become the interim speaker. Gaetz left that meeting toward the beginning while other Florida members exited it later with somber, defeated faces.
“You got to go one first down at a time,” Rep. Brian Mast said. “Matt Gaetz wasn’t happy with anything less than a Hail Mary 99 yard pass to the endzone.”
Members who are usually chatty had few words to say. Others looked visibly upset and appeared to be holding back tears.
Yet representatives from Florida said Gaetz probably won’t face expulsion from the chamber, even though some lawmakers on the Hill have already started talking about it.
They did, however, seethe over Gaetz fundraising off of removing McCarthy from his perch — many calling it “disgusting” and “inappropriate.” Only Rep. Cory Mills came to Gaetz’s defense, saying that he would need “monetary capital” to defend himself against “a lot of swampy people in D.C.”
Republicans further lamented that lawmakers weren’t closer to their goals of cutting the deficit and improving border security.
“It’s absolute horse s— that we’re jumping on a plane when our work isn’t done,” Rep. Kat Cammack said, referring to lawmakers returning to their home districts. The House will adjourn until Tuesday.
Rep. Michael Waltz, who is also eyeing a 2026 gubernatorial bid, said that he agreed with Gaetz’s frustrations but not his tactics. “At the end of the day, we’re doing this, we’re not passing appropriations bills,” he said. “We’re not dealing with the border. We’re not dealing with inflation.”
Gaetz remained defiant and described his colleagues’ criticisms as part of the “stages of grief.”
“It’s to the benefit of this country that we have a better speaker of the House than Kevin McCarthy,” he said. “Kevin McCarthy couldn’t keep his word.”
Christian Ziegler, chair of the Republican Party of Florida, perhaps summed it up best on X: “Some supported it and others opposed it, but no one can deny that FLORIDA — once again — is at the center of the political universe.”
A quote below is the reason. We can not have anything not supporting racism and Christian nationalist 1950s strict gender roles in society / public view. We really must stop this religious racist take over of the country. Again a person born in the early part of the last century making decisions against modern society. Governor Ivey was born October 15, 1944. She is 79 years old. She can not accept the changes in society, in medical science, in the understandings we have learned since she was in her prime. She is extremely against the LGBTQIA and doesn’t support them having any rights. She believes that the nation was a founded as a religious nation and that attempts to stop the push of Christianity on kids in public schools via government is “destroying our nation’s religious heritage.” So, another Christian nationalist. Hugs
Emails show that during the legislative session in April, the Governor’s office received a document, created by Rep. Jamie Kiel, R-Russellvillle, that highlighted passages from the book referencing systemic racism, white privilege and LGTBQ families.
“I have been told by multiple education groups that ‘divisive concepts’ are not in our schools, yet the material I read was offensive to me and the majority of the people I represent,” Kiel said at the time.
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AL.com received this photo of disposed teacher training manuals, which was taken at a Montgomery waste recycling plant on May 2, 2023. Gov. Kay Ivey disavowed a teaching manual from the National Association for the Education of Young Children in April 2023.
After Alabama’s governor ousted a top state official over a “woke” pre-K training manual, officials dumped dozens of the books, totaling thousands of dollars, in the trash.
A photograph shows more than 100 manuals, newly bought from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, scattered across the floor of a Montgomery waste recycling plant about 5 miles from the offices of the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education.
The photo was taken May 2, a day after ADECE Secretary Barbara Cooper left office amid legislative pressure.
The person who took the photograph requested to remain anonymous. AL.com has confirmed the date and location of the photo. The books and registrations cost $165 apiece, according to officials. AL.com estimates the materials in the photo initially cost the department at least $16,500.
Just a year ago, officials spent $37,950 to buy 230 book registrations of the fourth edition of NAEYC’s Developmentally Appropriate Practices manual.
The books, a common teacher development tool, are not meant to be read as curriculum, but are supposed to help early childhood educators hone their skills in the classroom. Some passages of the manual’s fourth edition encouraged educators to consider their own biases and the social and cultural backgrounds of their students.
NAEYC is a leading national preschool group that accredits hundreds of high-quality early childcare facilities. Cooper, who was also a member of the group’s governing board, praised the new manual in a review, stating that it “fully supports our practice in the field of early learning and care.”
But months later, a complaint from a lawmaker forced a complete cleanout of the books – and Cooper’s sudden departure.
Emails show that during the legislative session in April, the Governor’s office received a document, created by Rep. Jamie Kiel, R-Russellvillle, that highlighted passages from the book referencing systemic racism, white privilege and LGTBQ families.
Kiel said he created the document after receiving a complaint from an educator.
“I have been told by multiple education groups that ‘divisive concepts’ are not in our schools, yet the material I read was offensive to me and the majority of the people I represent,” Kiel said at the time.
On April 13, Liz Filmore, the governor’s chief of staff, shared a copy of the document with Cooper, asking her to review the materials. Filmore called the complaint “obviously concerning!”
In a memo released a day later, Cooper disavowed the books, calling them “unacceptable” and asking staffers to promptly return the materials to their supervisors.
Then on April 21, a week later, Ivey abruptly announced Cooper’s resignation.
“The education of Alabama’s children is my top priority as governor, and there is absolutely no room to distract or take away from this mission,” the governor wrote. “Let me be crystal clear: Woke concepts that have zero to do with a proper education and that are divisive at the core have no place in Alabama classrooms at any age level, let alone with our youngest learners. We want our children to be focused on the fundamentals, such as reading and math.”
Ivey later told reporters that the two had “mutually agreed” to part ways after a conversation about the “direction” the department was going in.
But the extent of the fallout from Cooper’s ousting – including what actually happened to all of the tens of thousands of dollars worth of manuals and other NAEYC products – is unclear.
Neither Gina Maiola, a spokeswoman for the governor’s office, nor Samuel Adams, a spokesman for ADECE, initially responded to questions about where the books were stored, or whether officials had taken any steps to resell or donate them.
After AL.com presented officials with the photo of the books at the scrap yard, Maiola issued the following response:
“The governor immediately directed the department to disavow and discontinue the book,” she said. “That was done.”
I wonder what really is driving these ultraconservative republicans? It has to be religion! It can not be conservatism because some of the deepest red states have the highest level of porn usage. The republicans love to watch people have sex, and from the statistics, these red states love trans and gay porn. So it has to be religion and forced control over others to follow their church doctrines, regardless of their own personal beliefs. They seem to want a national Christian Taliban. Hugs
A Texas judge has halted the state’s anti-porn bill. (Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
A federal judge has ruled that Texas’ anti-porn legislation violates the First Amendment, halting the bill just one day before it was set to go into effect.
The bill, known as HB 1181, was due to be implemented on Friday (1 September) and would require adult websites to use “reasonable age verification methods”, such as government ID, to ensure users who are accessing explicit content are aged 18 or older.
Alongside this, porn websites would have been forced by the legislation to display health warning on their website in 14-point font, which reads: “Pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function.”
If adult websites fail to adhere to these regulations set out in the law, HB 1181 would enable the Texas attorney general to sue such sites for $3 million a year.
On Thursday (31 August), however, senior US District judge David A. Ezra of the US. District Court for the Western District of Texas issued a final-hour preliminary injunction against the bill, describing it as “unconstitutional on its face”.
Ezra’s decision comes after Pornhub – alongside several other adult sites such as FakeTaxi.com, BangBros.com and SpiceVids – and the Free Speech Coalition (FSC), filed a lawsuit against Texas over the bill.
The judge described the legislation as “not narrowly tailored” and “chills the free speech of Plaintiffs and adults who wish to access sexual materials”.
“The state has a legitimate goal in protecting children from sexually explicit material online,” Ezra added.
“But that goal, however crucial, does not negate this Court’s burden to ensure that the laws passed in its pursuit comport with established First Amendment doctrine.”
Texas’ defence was based in ‘ideology and politics’
In response to the ruling, Alison Boden – executive director of Free Speech Coalition – said in a statement: “This is a huge and important victory against the rising tide of censorship online.
“From the beginning, we have argued that the Texas law, and those like it, are both dangerous and unconstitutional.
“We’re pleased that the Court agreed with our view that HB 1181’s true purpose is not to protect young people, but to prevent Texans from enjoying First Amendment protected expression.
“The state’s defense of the law was not based in science or technology, but ideology and politics.”
Bolden added: “The ruling rebuffs nearly every argument made by state legislatures, and not only in Texas.
“While Texas presented the most straightforward path to securing a ruling like this, the issues are the same whether in Utah, Louisiana or Virginia. Anyone who attempts to bring a case in those jurisdictions faces little hope of success.
“We are thrilled with the decision and thank our co-plaintiffs for joining this battle and defending the industry. We are confident that the law will ultimately be struck down permanently.”
Mike Stabile, director of public affairs at FSC, told Rolling Stone the ruling would have an impact on other state’s which are seeking to pass similar laws.
“The court said in no uncertain terms that this scheme in Texas is ineffective and unconstitutional, and it rejected nearly every single argument the state made,” Stabile explained.
“Unfortunately for the religious groups pushing this legislation, the copycat legislation in Louisiana, Utah, Virginia and other states suffers all the same inherent problems,” he added.
“There’s been a lot of murmuring on the right that they’d finally found a way to censor adult content online. This ruling shows that their confidence was entirely misplaced, and is unlikely to survive a court challenge.”
Currently, there are a number of anti-porn laws being discussed in states across America, which are copycat bills of each other and seek to restrict access to explicit materials across the board.
Another Christian nationalist who is desperately driven to push his religion, his faith, his church doctrines on everyone. Mandatory worship of only his god, and everyone must live according to the views of his church. What is happening in the US? No freedoms and everyone go back to living in the times when the church was the highest authority in all things. Hugs
A quote from the article. “Every conservative state should put into code that Jesus Christ is King and dedicate their state to Him,” he added. “Force RINOs to say no to Jesus and then brutalize them in elections. We need a government of Christians, not fakers.”
BISMARCK, N.D. — A North Dakota Republican lawmaker took to Twitter over the weekend to call for the total criminalization of adult content and for all politicians to submit to “the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
State Rep. Brandon Prichard began his social media tirade, which continued into Monday, by stating his belief that “pornography should be illegal. Conservative legislatures should wield their power and ban porn for both children and adults. It serves no positive benefit in society, destroys men, and treats women as objects. It’s not enough to stop at banning porn for children…
“Remember Christ spent his time on earth with the prostitutes and sinners,” he added. “You deserve better.”
Prichard added on Saturday that “conservative states should start banning Only Fans, for everyone.”
He continued by proposing that “conservatives states that want to tackle mental and behavioral health problems need to invest in programs to combat pornography addictions. This can include an anonymous hotline to call, cheap state services to block inappropriate content on personal devices, etc.”
Prichard also called for every member of the House and U.S. Senate to be subjected to a test to verify that they “submit to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
“Every conservative state should put into code that Jesus Christ is King and dedicate their state to Him,” he added. “Force RINOs to say no to Jesus and then brutalize them in elections. We need a government of Christians, not fakers.”
Prichard was elected to the North Dakota House of Representatives in 2022 and represents a district in the state capital, Bismarck. A 2019 high school graduate, Prichard is fully aligned with former President Trump’s MAGA movement and is sometimes at odds with older local GOP leaders.
A North Dakota journalist reported on Monday that several Republican lawmakers have expressed concern about Prichard’s posts, which are also blatantly and proudly anti-LGBTQ+ rights. The reporter noted, however, that “at least one of his colleagues, Republican Rep. Matthew Heilman of Bismarck’s District 7 and another recent high school graduate, was endorsing Prichard’s messages.”
As of the 2020 census, Prichard represented an average of 8,295 residents of District 8. He received 4,910 votes, only 124 more than his more mainstream Republican colleague, who was also elected to the State House
Enlarge/ Students from Launch Charter School gather for a rally for National Gun Violence Awareness Day at Restoration Plaza on June 2, 2023, in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn borough in New York City.
As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020, so did another grim reality: For the first time, guns became the leading cause of death for American children and teenagers, surpassing car accidents, the long-standing leader.
In 2021, youth firearm death rates did not fall to pre-pandemic levels as hoped, but instead continued a sharp rise to hit a new record high. That’s according to a recent study led by researchers in New York and published in the journal Pediatrics. The study was based on national mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nationwide, there were 4,752 firearm deaths of American children and teens (ages 0 to 19) in 2021, translating to a rate of 5.8 gun deaths per 100,000 people. The deaths represent a nearly 9 percent increase from 2020 (4,368 or 5.4 deaths per 100,000).
The study looked for disparities and trends in the data. As before, firearm deaths were largely in older teens, with 83 percent of deaths in teens ages 15 to 19. Most were among males, who accounted for 85 percent of the deaths. Black children remained disproportionately affected, with the gap widening—50 percent of the deaths were among Black children. The death rate among Black children and teens increased from 16.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 18.9 per 100,000, the largest increase among the racial categories.
As for intent, 64 percent of the 2021 firearm deaths were from homicides and 30 percent were from suicides, with the remainder from unintentional shootings. Homicide rates increased across all age groups, which was part of a multi-year trend. Between 2018 and 2021, homicides increased 66 percent in the 0–4 and 5–9 age groups. For kids ages 10–14, homicides increased 100 percent and 62 percent in teens 15–19.
The racial disparity in homicides was stark, with the rate of deaths among Black children being 11 times higher than that of white children. For suicides, white children accounted for 78 percent of the deaths.
Regarding where children and teens had the highest rates of firearm deaths, the study found that places where baseline death rates were already high got worse—namely in the South.
Enlarge/ Pediatric firearm mortality rate by state and year from 2018 to 2021. States with absolute mortalities <20 are grayed out because of unreliable crude death rates (these include Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, and District of Columbia).
“In 2021, firearm mortalities were largely concentrated in Southern states,” the authors wrote. “Louisiana had the highest death rate per 100,000 persons (17.0), followed by Mississippi (14.8), Alabama (11.4), Montana (11.1), and South Carolina (10.2).”
The authors speculated that this could be due to “variability in social determinants of health, inequity, firearm access, legislation, and access to preventative strategies (violence intervention, suicide prevention, firearm safety).” State poverty levels were also tightly linked with pediatric firearm death rates, the study found.
In all, the authors called for more data to understand the deadly trend and develop prevention strategies.
“These findings highlight the necessity and urgency of real-time epidemiologic surveillance of this epidemic and implementation of evidence-informed strategies to prevent pediatric firearm fatalities among children and adolescents at highest risk,” the authors wrote.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), after being removed as House speaker Tuesday, said that he won’t seek the position again. The vote to remove him was the first such action in congressional history. McCarthy’s ouster was sought by hard-right members of his own party. McCarthy was removed by a 216-210 vote, with eight Republicans joining all Democrats in favor of the removal. The move puts the House in uncharted territory as it searches for a leader.
The House will take no further votes this week. Republicans are expected to hold a speaker candidate forum Tuesday, according to sources familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
Following McCarthy’s ouster, Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) was designated as speaker pro tempore. He presided over the chamber briefly before calling a recess to allow Republicans and Democrats to meet privately.
In one of his first moves as speaker pro tempore, Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) ordered former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to “immediately” vacate her hideaway office in the Capitol by Wednesday.
While lawmakers who are not in leadership don’t usually have offices in the Capitol, Pelosi was allowed to keep one as former speaker.
In a statement, Pelosi said “this eviction is a sharp departure from tradition” and noted that, when she was speaker, she gave former speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) “a significantly larger suite of offices for as long as he wished.”
Pelosi said office space “doesn’t matter” to her, “but it seems to be important to them.”
“Sadly, because I am in California to mourn the loss of and pay tribute to my dear friend Dianne Feinstein, I am unable to retrieve my belongings at this time,” Pelosi said. “Now that the new Republican Leadership has settled this important matter, let’s hope they get to work on what’s truly important for the American people.”
8:35 p.m. EDT Return to menu By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff Reporter covering national breaking news With no official candidates yet announced for speaker, some House members have begun to float their ideas.
That includes Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who wrote on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that he wanted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for speaker.
8:34 p.m. EDT Return to menu By Mariana Alfaro Reporter on the breaking political news team In his remarks, McCarthy defended the House’s impeachment inquiry into President Biden, repeating many of the same allegations he and other Republicans have made before against the president.
“If you knew all of that, would you say, ‘Oh, I don’t have any more questions?’ Or would you at least, as a lawmaker. … Wouldn’t you at least say: ‘Okay, well, we’re going to have to go get some more documents?’” he told reporters.
The probe has so far shown no evidence of wrongdoing by the president.
8:22 p.m. EDT Return to menu By Colby Itkowitz Congress, campaigns, health policy, Pennsylvania politics Rep. Kevin McCarthy compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, saying that what is happening “looks a lot like the 1930s.” The ousted speaker, who agreed to a spending bill that did not include funding for Ukraine, warned that Hitler resented Germany’s defeat in World War I much like Putin resented that Russia “collapsed to the West” following the downfall of the Soviet Union.
8:15 p.m. EDT Constitutional expert: Acting speaker is not in presidential line of succession Return to menu By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff
Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) was appointed speaker pro tempore Tuesday. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images) A constitutional expert said it is likely that Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), now the speaker pro tempore, does not hold the title of speaker and, as a result, would likely not be in the presidential line of succession. It would instead probably go directly to Senate pro tempore, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
“The House is on untested ground,” said Sarah Binder, who studies congressional and legislative politics at the Brookings Institution.
Show more
KEY UPDATE 7:56 p.m. EDT Return to menu By Mariana Alfaro Reporter on the breaking political news team It “was personal,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said of Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-Fla.) move to remove him from the speakership.
“It had nothing to do about spending,” he said. “It all was about getting attention from [the media]. I mean, we’re getting email fundraisers from him.”
That, he said, “is not governing. That’s not becoming of a member of Congress.”
“And regardless of what you think, I’ve seen the texts,” McCarthy said. “It was all about his ethics.”
He appeared to be referring to the ethics investigation that Gaetz is under.
7:53 p.m. EDT Return to menu By Marianna Sotomayor and Kyle Melnick Republicans said privately before the motion-to-vacate vote that if Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) sought the speakership again, he would not get the necessary majority support to win unless he reached out to Democrats. That is no longer in question, as it’s expected whoever throws their hat in the ring will work to earn just GOP votes.
“If there’s a coalition government, I can assure you there’s enough of us that will slow down, logjam the House floor,” Rep. Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.) said. “This will only be a Republican vote. End of story.”
7:52 p.m. EDT Return to menu By Jacob Bogage Business reporter Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), asked whether he’ll stay in Congress, responded, “I’ll look at it.” The recently ousted speaker spoke to reporters after addressing his conference.
He later clarified his remarks to say he hasn’t thought about resigning from Congress.
7:51 p.m. EDT Return to menu By Marianna Sotomayor Congressional reporter covering the House of Representatives Former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is bemoaning how the House as an institution is broken, remarks he has never made before but is making now that he’s out of his leadership role.
He just told a story that has never been relayed publicly of when he asked former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for help on how to tweak the motion-to-vacate rule in January that led to his ousting. After years of hammering Pelosi and criticizing that she never treated him fairly as minority leader, it’s the first time he has ever truly discussed seeking her guidance.
By Marianna SotomayorCongressional reporter covering the House of Representatives
When Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced he would not seek the speakership, Republican members attending the conference meeting gasped. Several Republicans, including some who privately admitted they never really got along with McCarthy, said they greatly respected how McCarthy addressed the conference with a smile throughout his remarks.
Members in the room said many colleagues were crying as he spoke, men and women alike.
When you read the article, you see the first person to object was a doctor and why did he object? Because the bible told him to! Yes he kept telling the mother of a trans child that god had a plan and made her child the gender they were and that was that. When the mother told him a lot of trans kids are suicidal without gender affirming care, he replied, “Some children are born into this world to suffer and die.” Would you want this man treating anyone in your family? Horrible junk studies, lies, and myths some people spread to stop and prevent a well documented best medical practice on the issue of gender care. The best medical practice agreed to by the majority of medical associations. It is long but if you want the truth read it. If you want to see the lies, distortions, and lack of qualification of the anti-trans experts, then read it. It took me a day and a half to color it and digest it. Read it, especially if you are a bigot, you will see your heroes are frauds. Hugs
For years, these experts have struggled to establish their credibility in court. Judges have found their testimony to be “biased,” “illogical,” “conspiratorial” or based on fabrication, or tossed their testimony in its entirety for having no basis in research. More than a dozen major U.S. medical associations have endorsed gender-affirming care as medically necessary, including for adolescents.
Their purpose is to convince judges that gender-affirming care is scientifically controversial, unnecessary and dangerous — and they’re increasingly having an impact.
Kim Hutton was leading a charge to bring gender-affirming care to the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis when she agreed to get lunch with a skeptic. She met Dr. Paul Hruz, a pediatric endocrinologist at the university, in October 2013 at a cafe near campus, hoping that if she shared her struggles to find suitable health care for her young trans son, he would change his mind.
But Hruz was not there to listen.
No sooner did she sit down than he launched into a breathless lecture on “God’s plan” for her son. “I can’t begin to count the number of times he said, ‘If only you will read the writings of Pope John Paul II on gender, you will understand,’” she recalled.
Hruz made it clear he would try everything in his power to stop the medical school’s new gender clinic. When Hutton pleaded that trans kids were more likely to have suicidal thoughts without affirming care, he replied, “Some children are born into this world to suffer and die.”
Washington University started the gender clinic despite Hruz’s efforts. But as the assault on trans rights intensifies nationwide, he has come to play a pivotal role, and a lucrative one.
ZOE VAN DIJK FOR HUFFPOST
Hruz is part of a small but prolific roster of expert witnesses who crisscross the country to testify in defense of anti-trans laws and policies facing a legal challenge. Pulling ideas from the fringes of medicine, their purpose is to convince judges that gender-affirming care is scientifically controversial, unnecessary and dangerous.
Most, like Hruz, practice medicine in a field related to gender-affirming care — such as psychiatry or endocrinology — but have treated only a handful of adolescent patients for gender dysphoria, if that, and haven’t published relevant research. Several belong to openly anti-trans groups and have urged state legislatures to pass the very laws they get paid to defend.
Some of the most prominent witnesses were recruited by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal powerhouse whose mission is to realize a country governed by far-right Christian values. And many share ADF’s extreme antipathy toward LGBTQ+ people.
“They’re hired guns,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, a lawyer for the LGBTQ+ rights group Lambda Legal who has faced Hruz and his cohorts in several cases. “These are not real experts. They’re manufactured as experts by the opponents of transgender rights.”
Still, for a rate of hundreds of dollars an hour, they can lend a sheen of scientific rigor to school bathroom restrictions and bans on gender-affirming care.
And they are increasingly having an impact. On Aug. 25, a Missouri judge temporarily upheld the state’s four-year ban on most gender-affirming treatments for minors, writing, “The science and medical evidence is conflicting and unclear.”
“These are not real experts. They’re manufactured as experts by the opponents of transgender rights.”
– Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, a lawyer for the LGBTQ+ rights group Lambda Legal
HuffPost scoured thousands of pages of court filings and dozens of state vendor databases and filed more than 40 public records requests to get a full picture of their growing cottage industry. The search revealed that these expert witnesses routinely pull down five figures in return for just a few weeks of work. Since 2016, state and local governments have spent more than $1.1 million on expert testimony, much of it going to just six go-to witnesses.
Some states also hired high-priced outside legal teams, at a cost of another $6.6 million. The University of North Carolina hired the conservative legal giant Jones Day for up to $1,075 an hour after becoming embroiled in the state’s 2016 bathroom ban.
All these figures likely undercount the true cost by at least half: Out of more than three dozen state and local agencies that defended anti-trans laws in court, fewer than 20 disclosed their spending.
For years, these experts have struggled to establish their credibility in court. Judges have found their testimony to be “biased,” “illogical,” “conspiratorial” or based on fabrication, or tossed their testimony in its entirety for having no basis in research. More than a dozen major U.S. medical associations have endorsed gender-affirming care as medically necessary, including for adolescents.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration enlisted nearly every expert witness of note to craft and defend a 2022 state ban on Medicaid coverage for transition care. Yet all the witnesses combined, in the words of U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, could muster “no evidence that these treatments have caused substantial adverse clinical results in properly screened and treated patients.” Hinkle struck the ban down in June.
But for the first time, other courts have begun to buy their arguments. Fortified by a belief that attacking trans people is “a political winner,” in 2023, state lawmakers, mostly Republicans, have introduced more than 550 new bills assailing trans health care and legal recognition. Not only are the experts having their busiest year as a result, but they have notched several critical successes.
In July, a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel allowed Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care to remain in place while a legal challenge proceeds. In August, an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel reinstated Alabama’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans youth.
The courts, applying the same reasoning the Supreme Court used to overturn Roe v. Wade, ruled transgender care is not constitutionally protected and that states only need some rationale to regulate it. The expert witnesses were key to cultivating the impression that the medical community is divided. “The medical and regulatory authorities are not of one mind about using hormone therapy to treat gender dysphoria,” wrote the 6th Circuit panel.
The rulings increase the odds of a split among the circuit courts and the likelihood that the Supreme Court will eventually take up the issue of gender-affirming care.
And in the meantime, these experts have helped block medically necessary care for thousands of trans people around the country.
“They’re wasting their time and their energy and money trying to convince me and people like me we aren’t who we say we are, and we aren’t who we feel we are,” said Dylan Brandt, a high school senior and the lead plaintiff challenging Arkansas’ first-in-the-nation ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors.
“I’ve known for a long time exactly who I am, and I am so much happier now that I can express and show who I am. For people to be trying so hard and using so much time and effort to stop me — that’s hard.”
Dylan Brandt at Bell Park in Greenwood, Arkansas. Brandt, his mother and several other families challenged the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. “They’re wasting their time and their energy and money trying to convince me and people like me we aren’t who we say we are, and we aren’t who we feel we are,” he said.
SHANE BROWN FOR HUFFPOST
A Group Of Outliers
Besides Hruz, the core group of experts includes James Cantor, a Canadian psychologist; Stephen Levine, a clinical psychiatrist whom prisons often enlist when they are facing pressure to provide gender-affirming care; Patrick Lappert, a former plastic surgeon, who has said he considers gender-affirming surgery “diabolical in every sense of the word”; Michael Laidlaw, an endocrinologist who has urged lawmakers to criminalize gender-affirming care; and Quentin Van Meter, a pediatric endocrinologist and the former head of the anti-LGBTQ+ American College of Pediatricians.
This ragtag group of outliers did not find their way into the courtroom at random. Dismayed at the “poverty of people who are willing to testify” in defense of anti-trans laws, according to Lappert, the Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the most formidable forces on the religious right, held a conference in Arizona in 2017 to identify potential recruits. Lappert, who later described the conference in a deposition, Hruz, Van Meter and a California family physician named Andre Van Mol all attended and became go-to witnesses soon afterward. A few years later, the ADF enlisted Cantor to his first case — a lawsuit brought by another expert witness who claimed his university fired him for his courtroom work.
ADF’s recruitment effort paid off right away. Around the same time as the conference, Ashton Whitaker, a 16-year-old transgender boy, became one of the first students to sue over his school’s bathroom ban. An administrator at his high school, part of Wisconsin’s Kenosha Unified School District, had gone so far as to suggest he wear a bright green wristband so teachers could monitor his restroom use, the lawsuit said.
“They’re wasting their time and their energy and money trying to convince me and people like me we aren’t who we say we are, and we aren’t who we feel we are.”
– Dylan Brandt, the lead plaintiff challenging Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming care for adolescents
The legal team Kenosha hired spent months poring over past cases and medical journals for potential expert witnesses, according to records obtained by HuffPost — a search that produced little more than several thousands in legal bills and a list of people who seemed “likely favorable” toward the ban. Then a lawyer reached out to the Alliance Defending Freedom, and Kenosha finally retained an expert: Hruz.
ADF plays a central role in the mounting backlash to LGBTQ+ rights — the witness roster is just one piece. The group, envisioned by its founder as a “Christian legal army,” has a $104 million annual budget and drives impact litigation around the country. On gender issues, it has helped organize a diffuse group of reactionary and religious-right lawmakers, lawyers and activists into a sprawling working group that trades model legislation, coordinates PR campaigns and fine-tunes bills to withstand legal challenges, a recent Mother Jones investigation found.
Several of the expert witnesses are active members of the working group, such as Laidlaw. Emails leaked to Mother Jones show he told lawmakers that gender-affirming surgical procedures are “crimes waiting to be recognized and codified into law.”
ZOE VAN DIJK FOR HUFFPOST
Kenosha lost its trial and a subsequent appeal. After that, ADF began closely coordinating with Kenosha’s legal team to try to appeal the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. They spent weeks strategizing on the legal approach and amicus briefs before the district ultimately chose to settle.
Opponents of trans rights lost most of their early legal battles in the late 2010s and early 2020s — Kenosha was just one. But the new cadre of experts has no shortage of work. Although their No. 1 assignment today is to defend bans on gender-affirming care for minors — these target puberty blockers and hormone therapy — the core group of experts has defended every variety of anti-trans policy under the sun, from school sports and bathroom bans to orders to investigate parents for child abuse if they support their child’s transition, to bans on gender-affirming care for adults.
The most prolific is Cantor, the Canadian psychologist, who has been a witness in 24 cases total, 11 this year alone. Close behind are Levine, who has been a witness in at least a dozen challenges to anti-trans laws and is the only defense witness with substantial experience treating transgender people, and Hruz.
Most of them bill between $200 and $650 an hour — which is standard for an expert trial witness — for writing reports, giving depositions and trial testimony, and traveling. When Cantor testifies in person versus over video, he said in an interview, he usually earns an extra $10,000 for traveling and waiting his turn in the courtroom.
In Brandt v. Rutledge, the case in which Dylan Brandt is the plaintiff, Arkansas paid Hruz, Lappert and Levine more than $40,000 apiece, records show. (“Yes, I find it pays well, but not nearly as well as your information suggests,” Levine said in an email.)
Mark Regnerus, a sociologist who testified, pocketed $57,062. Regnerus is a veteran of the expert witness circuit, having previously testified that children of same-sex couples grow up at a disadvantage in defense of bans on same-sex marriage. Hruz, a few months after he submitted his expert report to Arkansas, sold a “nearly identical” version to North Carolina, court records show.
“It’s not a difficult job for $200, $300, $400 an hour,” said Carl Charles, a senior attorney at Lambda Legal. But few are willing to do it, he speculated, because “These bills do real harm to young people and to their families, and I think doctors take that pretty seriously.”
ZOE VAN DIJK FOR HUFFPOST
Cantor, the Canadian psychologist, does not share the religious mission of groups like ADF. He credits “his inner Vulcan” for his ability to testify in cases that involve banning a 10-year-old trans girl from playing on the girls’ softball team or stopping adults from correcting their gender on their government documents, to name two recent examples.
“When I first started getting contacted by these groups, it was a long, hard conversation I had to have with myself,” he said. “It’s not up to me, I ultimately decided, what society does. That’s up to society.”
Although he has defended more policies involving trans kids than any other expert, Cantor has never counseled a transgender child or teenager. He has never carried out original research involving trans people, either. His expertise is in paraphilia: abnormal sexual desires, such as pedophilia. And he has acknowledged in court that gender dysphoria — the distress a person feels when they don’t identify as their sex assigned at birth — is not a form of paraphilia.
In a 2022 deposition over West Virginia’s ban on trans girls playing in school sports, Cantor failed to recall the names of any puberty-blocking drugs: “Oh, I couldn’t tell them to you by name so much as by function,” he said. “I’ve always been bad with names,” Cantor told me. “These drugs have had different names in different countries at different times.”
Cantor believes his lack of direct experience allows him to evaluate the field dispassionately.
“The best analogy I have is that, if you want to know if fortunetelling is valid, you’re not going to find that out by just asking the fortunetellers,” he said.
A deposition he gave last summer defending Indiana’s ban on trans girls playing girls’ sports suggests he does not believe trans adolescents are really trans, but are primarily either gay, young and “mistak[ing] the emotions that they’re having” for gender dysphoria, or have autogynephilia, an outlier theory holding that some trans women are merely aroused by the thought of themselves as a woman.
“It’s just a different phenomenon that only looks similar superficially” in children, he said in our interview.
He also argues that studies “consistently, even unanimously” find that the majority of youth who identify as trans stop doing so after a few years. But many of the sources he has cited aren’t studies of trans kids: In multiple examples, the researchers didn’t differentiate between kids who consistently and persistently identified as trans and kids who just behaved in ways associated with the opposite gender. Several studies are decades old and have research topics like “the sissy boy syndrome.”
More recent research finds very low rates of detransitioning among children who socially transitioned, and for reasons that include social pressure and a lack of parental support.
Cantor earned $23,400, he said, defending Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s notorious directive to investigate the parents of children who receive gender-affirming care for child abuse. In the case over Alabama’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, he earned $52,400. Because of his lack of experience treating trans youth, the judge in that case, Liles C. Burke, a Trump appointee, ruled that Cantor’s testimony held “very little weight” and blocked the ban from taking effect. A dozen states have nevertheless asked him to be an expert witness since that May 2022 ruling. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Burke’s ruling a few days after we spoke.
“The question in the back of people’s heads is, is he only saying this for the money?” Cantor said in our interview. “If my assessment of the literature was the other way around, I’d be working from the other side. It wouldn’t make a difference. So it’s good that I’m getting paid, right?”
ZOE VAN DIJK FOR HUFFPOST
Levine declined to be interviewed because he is an expert witness in at least one ongoing case. (HuffPost contacted all the experts named in this story and was unable to reach Lappert despite multiple attempts.) In response to specific questions, Levine wrote, “Your questions illuminate how information can be dysinformation [sic] or simply wrong. Like delusions that often contain a kernel of truth, it is the distortions of reality that enable the label delusion.”
In 1997, he chaired a committee of the organization known today as WPATH, which develops the best practices for treating gender dysphoria. He cut his ties, however, after WPATH became too responsive, in his view, to trans advocacy.
Before he started defending anti-trans laws as an expert witness, Levine provided expert testimony for prisons seeking to block trans inmates from socially transitioning or receiving gender-affirming care, which prisons often oppose for cost reasons.
“The question in the back of people’s heads is, is he only saying this for the money?”
– James Cantor, the top expert witness for states defending anti-trans policies
In that role, Levine has also questioned whether trans people are genuinely trans or if their gender dysphoria is actually an expression of deviant desires or something unresolved from childhood, like “excessively symbiotic” mothering. Of one trans inmate, he wrote that her “transgenderism is tied very much up to her narcissistic character, her demanding character.”
ZOE VAN DIJK FOR HUFFPOST
Van Meter, the former president of the American College of Pediatricians, or ACPeds, has appeared in at least six cases. Like ACPeds’ original founders, he became disillusioned with the American Academy of Pediatrics and sought an alternative because the AAP would not endorse the superiority of the “intact, married family” over same-sex parents and single mothers, he said in an interview.
Van Meter has seen a very small number of adolescent patients with gender dysphoria but says he believes the root cause in “100%” of cases is their family environment. “Divorce is probably the most common thread in all of these cases,” he said. He refers these patients to counseling for depression and anxiety, believing it will resolve their gender dysphoria — an approach with roots in gay conversion therapy that research has linked to an increased risk of suicide attempts.
“You basically ruin their lives” by allowing adolescents to transition, Van Meter said, and so at every opportunity, he pressures them to abandon the idea. To one of his current patients, “I have said it a bazillion times … You will always be a biological female.”
“You have a group of people who say they exist, and what they are saying is, ‘No you don’t. You’re not real, you’re sick,’” said Michelle Forcier, a professor of pediatrics at Brown University and a clinician specializing in gender-affirming care. “Let’s be clear: These are adults who are bullying children.”
Dylan with his mother, Joanna Brandt, who sat through expert testimony that minimized the harms of eradicating medically necessary care. “Actual lives are being saved by affirming care, and nobody on the state side cared,” she said.
SHANE BROWN FOR HUFFPOST
Dylan Brandt decided not to be in the courtroom on the days that Arkansas presented its case, but his mother, Joanna Brandt, was. The hardest moment for her was when Regnerus, the sociologist opposed to same-sex parenting, minimized the risk of suicide among trans youth, saying researchers had “document[ed] fairly small numbers of actually completed suicides.”
“If we distinguish suicidality from actual suicides — completed suicides — we see a much more narrow story validated,” he said.
Joanna thought about Dylan and felt the sting of tears.
“I was afraid I would start loud, ugly crying, so I got up and left,” she recalled. “How could you come here and talk about these people that you’ve never spoken to, that you don’t know anything about, in such a way? Actual lives are being saved by affirming care, and nobody on the state side cared about that.”
“God Is With Us!”
Hutton never forgot her lunch with Hruz. And in the years that followed, as Hruz developed his side hustle as an expert, she began to testify at some of the same trials that he did.
In a 2017 case where Hruz was defending the St. Johns County School District’s bathroom ban, she recalled before a court in central Florida how Hruz had said her child might be “born to suffer and die.” This summer, she flew down to Tallahassee to face off against Hruz again, this time over the state’s Medicaid ban. (She was only reimbursed for travel.)
Her goal is for the courts to understand his true motives. “I know he’s wrapping his whole presentation up in court now as based on science, but that is not what is driving Paul Hruz,” Hutton said. “It is religion.”
Hruz is not the only expert who appears to have religious motivations.
ZOE VAN DIJK FOR HUFFPOST
Lappert, the former plastic surgeon, is a chaplain in Alabama for a Catholic organization called Courage, which, according to its website, counsels “men and women with same-sex attractions in living chaste lives.” In a 2018 presentation titled “Transgender Surgery & Christian Anthropology,” he said “the challenge” at hand was “evangelizing people who are being relentlessly [misled] concerning human sexuality.” They needed “catechesis” and “the sacraments.”
Van Meter, on learning that Gov. Brad Little of Idaho had signed two bills the group supported, boasted, “God is with us!”
“It’s not that I’m driven by a religious ideology,” Van Meter said in an interview. “I do use that as a battery pack, during the weary times, to say, don’t give up, there is a reason you are here.”
Courts place few restrictions on who can serve as an expert witness, as long as their testimony is relevant and soundly reasoned. The bar is low enough that groups suing to overturn anti-trans laws rarely challenge these experts’ ability to testify. But when they do, courts have discounted their testimony in about half of cases.
“Hruz fended and parried questions and generally testified as a deeply biased advocate, not as an expert sharing relevant evidence-based information and opinions,” Judge Hinkle wrote when he blocked Florida’s Medicaid ban. Another judge called his testimony “conspiratorial.”
Levine has had parts of his testimony struck several times, including for relying on a fabricated anecdote.
There are moments in the courtroom when the lack of qualification on the defense side is obvious. During a deposition defending Florida’s Medicaid ban, G. Kevin Donovan, who recently retired as the director of Georgetown University’s center for clinical bioethics, claimed that most transgender girls eventually “revert in their self-perception.” But when pressed for his sources, he flailed.
Q: “What is your evidence of that statement?” A: “Oh, that — that’s been widely published and repeatedly published.” Q: “Can you name the study that that information comes from?” A: “I’m sure I could. It’s more than one source, but, yeah.” Q: “Can you name those studies?” A: “Not right now, no.”
Records show the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration paid Donovan $34,650. He did not respond to questions about his testimony.
The other side has its experts, too. Typically, they are clinicians who have provided gender-affirming care to hundreds of trans people or published substantial research on gender-affirming care, or both.
The expert witnesses for the defense, lacking the same breadth of experience, typically try to poke holes in the research supporting gender-affirming care, largely by nitpicking and misrepresenting the evidence or ignoring newer studies in favor of dated ones. “Their way of operating is to look at each study, say it has limitations, and because it has limitations, to disregard it entirely,” said Gonzalez-Pagan, the Lambda Legal attorney. “And the pile of evidence never grows because they keep finding reasons to disregard studies.”
Many have seized on the fact that there were no long-term, randomized controlled trials to test the efficacy of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for treating gender dysphoria.
Framing randomized trials as the only valid form of evidence lets them ignore the large body of observational and clinical data that does support gender-affirming care. Nearly 20 studies with components of randomized trials — that follow trans adolescents receiving gender-affirming care over a long period of time, or compare outcomes for trans people who accessed gender-affirming care with those who didn’t — have associated gender-affirming care with better mental health outcomes, such as reductions in depression, anxiety or thoughts of suicide.
Those positive associations make it unethical to run a randomized trial over the long term, especially one involving adolescents. “You wouldn’t randomly assign people to smoke a pack a day,” said Briana Last, a research psychologist at Stony Brook University, adding that scores of common medical practices were established without randomized trials.
And, in the past few weeks, researchers have published a randomized trial of 64 transmasculine adults showing that suicidality declined by more than half for the participants who received treatment right away.
The research that expert witnesses for the defense don’t ignore, they often distort. Many, especially Levine, have argued that transition care is potentially harmful by pointing to a 2011 Swedish study that found that trans people who had gender-affirming surgery still had a 19.1% higher suicide rate than the general population.
But the lead author, Cecilia Dhejne, says that is a blatantmisrepresentation of the study, which actually showed that providing medical care is not enough without also fighting societal discrimination.
When he deposed Levine in 2022, Charles, the Lambda Legal attorney, read Dhejne’s critique of how Levine misused her research out loud. Undeterred, Levine cited Dhejne again this year in support of Florida’s Medicaid ban.
Several of these experts have argued that other countries, such as the U.K., Finland, Norway and Sweden, have severely restricted puberty blockers and hormone therapy for adolescents. “They’ve decided that in all, it’s experimental and does more harm than good, and they’re stopping,” Kristopher Kaliebe, who has testified in three cases, said in an interview.
Gender-affirming care providers acknowledge their field faces unanswered questions and that people’s understanding of their gender identity can deepen over time.
Before puberty, Forcier noted, gender-affirming care consists mostly of supporting children if they want to dress or cut their hair differently or go by a new name. “The vast, vast majority will say, this is what I need and where I want to be,” she said, but “it’s OK to change your mind if you’re more gender fluid, it’s OK to change your plan.”
Opponents of gender-affirming care, she argued, aren’t bent on studying and improving care but on eradicating it. Recently, a former employee, Jamie Reed, accused Washington University’s gender clinic of rushing adolescents on to puberty blockers and hormones. While her core claims appear to be proving false or alarmist — one parent said Reed “twisted” her child’s medical history; out of nearly 1,200 patients who sought care at the clinic, Reed claims 16 detransitioned — the main challenge the clinic appears to face is overwhelming demand. Missouri’s response has not been to increase funding for adolescent trans care, but to pass a ban.
“I’m not seeing these people say, ‘This is such an important problem, let’s shift money from white male cardiovascular research to gender care,’” Forcier said. “They are making these arguments in favor of a ban.”
Out of all the government offices asked to justify their hiring of these experts, only the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which wrote the state’s Medicaid ban, responded.
“Our process has been transparent and based on factual evidence that we put out for the world to see,” said Bailey Smith, the agency’s spokesperson, hyperlinking to a webpage containing the expert reports from Hruz, Laidlaw, Levine, Van Meter, Lappert and others. “Maybe you just fear the evidence will challenge your biased view of the world.”
Netball Amateurs
The spike in anti-trans legislation means states need even more experts to defend it. And in order to deepen the bench, states have started enlisting academics who aren’t in health care or don’t even primarily research humans.
One is a Manchester University professor named Emma Hilton, who mainly studies a particular species of frog and how it offers an understanding of inherited human genetic disorders.
Hilton is a founder of a British group, Sex Matters, that advocates for legally segregating spaces by sex. She earned $300 an hour last year defending bans on trans girls playing on girls’ sports teams in Utah and Indiana. By way of explaining why she was qualified to weigh in on school sports, she told one court, “I participate keenly in sports at an amateur level, playing netball recreationally.”
“Our understanding of human biology is in part a result of the study of animal models,” Hilton said in an email. She declined to address the relevance of netball, which is like basketball without dribbling.
Another is Michael Biggs, an Oxford sociology professor who admitted in court to writing transphobic tweets under the pseudonymous handle @MrHenryWimbush and described himself as a “teenage shitlord [turned] Oxford professor.” “Transphobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons,” reads one representative post.
Florida paid Biggs $400 an hour to defend its Medicaid ban. But he plays another, more important role in the expert pantheon: churning out publications that question the efficacy of gender-affirming care. One of his oft-cited critiques of puberty-blocking hormones relied on a questionable reading of hormone trials in sheep, in which the sheep appeared to have anxiety. The other experts have cited Biggs scores of times.
“I’ve known for a long time exactly who I am, and I am so much happier now that I can express and show who I am,” Dylan said.
SHANE BROWN FOR HUFFPOST
Dylan, the teenager challenging Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming care, avoids thinking about a future in which these people’s arguments carry the day. Instead, he thinks about going to college in a state that isn’t hostile and studying education. “I’ve dealt with a lot of bullying, but I’ve had some pretty amazing teachers [who’ve] given me a safe place,” he said. “I want to be that for somebody else.”
His lawsuit has already made a temporary shelter for other trans teenagers. In June, a judge struck down Arkansas’ ban. The state had assembled a who’s-who of experts — Lappert, Hruz, Levine and Regnerus — but “failed to prove that gender-affirming care for minors with gender dysphoria is ineffective or riskier than other medical care provided to minors,” in the words of U.S. District Judge James M. Moody.
“He knows better than any of these people, better than I do, who he is, and none of them have any right to tell him any differently,” Joanna said of her son.
“When I started testosterone, I felt like I could breathe normally for the first time,” said Dylan. “In the past three years, I have been able to look at myself in the mirror and smile. It’s changed my life — it’s saved my life — in so many ways.”
Remember the people behind these bills deny they ban the word gay. Well here is the proof of how these laws are being used. The object is to wipe the entire LGBTQIA from society, remove us from the public view. Here is how these people view just saying a person is gay.
Caracciolo likened saying “gay” in front of third graders to talking to kindergartners about one of the greatest atrocities in world history. “It would be almost like if someone was doing a speech to kindergartners and they talked about the Holocaust and the horrors of the Holocaust,” the district’s chief spokeswoman, Jennifer Caracciolo, said, according to The New York Times.
Here is what the presenter told the school person above.
That’s a huge point missed in much of the debate surrounding LGBTQ visibility in education. There is a big difference between discussing sexual acts—whether heterosexual or otherwise—and someone’s orientation, especially when there’s a good chance that there are children of LGBTQ parents in the audience.
Further, in a world where same-sex marriage and heterosexual marriage are treated equally, why is mentioning one orientation any different than the other?
“If a child asks me if I am married, can I say I have a wife? This is discrimination. It is also extremely insulting and dangerous to our children,” Nobleman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We have so much LGBTQ teen suicide because they are not welcome to speak up about their own lives in their own community.”’
“I asked her not to compare a kind of love to mass murder,” Noblemanwrote in Newsweek.
We have to fight back on these attempts to drive the LGBTQIA back into hiding ashamed of who they are, how they were born. The LGBTQIA kids are not broken, they are not diseased, they don’t need fixing or cured. They need acceptance and allowed to be themselves openly like their peers. Hugs
After being censored by the school’s principle, he quit.
Over the past few years, “Don’t Say Gay” bills have been introduced across the U.S., sparking widespread controversy about how LGBTQ issues should be addressed in schools. Supporters argue they protect children from inappropriate content by restricting discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in educational settings.
Opponents believe these bills marginalize LGBTQ individuals by fostering stigma and potentially infringing on teachers’ ability to openly address students’ questions or experiences.
Author and comic book expert Marc Tyler Nobleman recently found himself at the center of the controversy, and his simple rationale for using the word “gay” in his school presentations presents an age-appropriate and inclusive way to approach at the issue.
Nobleman has spoken in schools in “about 30 states and almost 20 countries” to inspire children to write and do research. He’s the author of the book “Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-creator of Batman” about the fabled superhero’s unsung co-creator.
THE RIGHT WAY TO WRITE: Visiting Author #MarcTylerNobleman, writer of numerous fiction and nonfiction books for young readers, met with students in Grades 3-8 last month. He inspired curiosity, shared his research process, and provided guidance. #TaipeiAmericanSchoolpic.twitter.com/GoLCxYilFt
Artist Bob Kane is known as the creator of Batman; however, Bill Finger is believed to have refined the costume and given the character his secret identity as Bruce Wayne, amongst other contributions.
Nobleman notes in his speeches that one of the significant reasons why Finger lives in obscurity is that he died in 1974, and his son, Fred Finger, was gay and died of AIDS complications at 43 in 1992. Without an heir, the movement to get Finger the proper credit lost any hope.
However, the twist in Nobleman’s presentation is when he reveals that through his research, he discovered that Fred Finger had a daughter, Athena. This led to DC Comics officially recognizing her grandfather as Batman’s co-creator in 2015.
“It’s the biggest twist of the story, and it’s usually when I get the most gasps,” Nobleman told the Associated Press. “It’s just a totally record-scratch moment.”
After a presentation at Sharon Elementary in Forsyth County, Georgia, on Monday, August 21, where he mentioned Fred FInger’s orientation, the principal handed Nobleman a note saying, “Please only share the appropriate parts of the story for our elementary students.” So, he removed any reference to Fred Finger’s sexuality over his next two days of presentations.
The school’s principal, Brian Nelson, sent a letter to parents after the initial presentation that read: “This is not subject matter that we were aware that he was including nor content that we have approved for our students,” Nelson wrote. “I apologize that this took place. Action was taken to ensure that this was not included in Mr. Nobleman’s subsequent speeches and further measures will be taken to prevent situations like this in the future.”
But after some soul-searching, in a presentation two days later, Nobleman said the word “gay” once again. After discussing the situation with the school, the remaining assemblies were canceled.
Nobleman shared his reasoning for using “gay” on X, formally known as Twitter, and his rationale makes a lot of sense. “And as I’ve told Jennifer [Caracciolo, the school’s chief communications officer] and her colleagues, mentioning a sexual orientation is NOT the same as discussing sexuality.”
Answering student questions is ALSO not a problem.
Teaching without parental approval of every line is not a problem.
And as I've told Jennifer and her colleagues, mentioning a sexual orientation is NOT the same as discussing sexuality.#pride#saygay
That’s a huge point missed in much of the debate surrounding LGBTQ visibility in education. There is a big difference between discussing sexual acts—whether heterosexual or otherwise—and someone’s orientation, especially when there’s a good chance that there are children of LGBTQ parents in the audience.
Further, in a world where same-sex marriage and heterosexual marriage are treated equally, why is mentioning one orientation any different than the other?
“If a child asks me if I am married, can I say I have a wife? This is discrimination. It is also extremely insulting and dangerous to our children,” Nobleman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We have so much LGBTQ teen suicide because they are not welcome to speak up about their own lives in their own community.”’
Caracciolo likened saying “gay” in front of third graders to talking to kindergartners about one of the greatest atrocities in world history. “It would be almost like if someone was doing a speech to kindergartners and they talked about the Holocaust and the horrors of the Holocaust,” the district’s chief spokeswoman, Jennifer Caracciolo, said, according to The New York Times.
“I asked her not to compare a kind of love to mass murder,” Nobleman wrote in Newsweek.
After his remaining presentations were canceled, Nobleman emailed administrators involved in the controversy and asked them to take three specific actions:
-Apologize to their community for the principal’s apology.
-Apologize to their community for censoring an established author who did what he was hired to do: Pump up their kids about reading, writing, and research.
-Challenge the standards that stigmatize any mention of LGBTQ people.
So they are protecting children by … blowing them up with a bomb? See why the claim they are only saving children fails. This is not about children, but instead about their own bigotry and hates. They hate drag because they think it is the same as being transgender. They refused to accept that people can dress in any way they like to as long as the sexual organs are covered. But those people can’t allow people to live as they wish, instead they insist they must be allowed to dictate how everyone lives. They don’t like you wearing that, so you can not wear it. Think it will stop with just drag queens or trans people? Did they stop with abortion after their SCOTUS win? These people hated the idea of short skirts, short dresses, bikinis, or women outside the assigned gender roles these people have mandated. But in the case of the drag queen story hour, parents rights to raise children how you wish is limited only to maga / right wing parents. Tolerant and accepting parents don’t get a choice to raise their children this way because … well again the fundamentalist Christian moral police Taliban demand the right to control you and your children. Hugs
A planned “Drag Story Hour” at a Brooklyn library was forced to move on Saturday morning after bomb threat were called into 911. Police officers, the bomb squad, a K-9 unit and emergency medical services responded to the threat phoned in by a male caller against the Cortelyou branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.
The library was evacuated, and a thorough search conducted, but no bomb was found, police said. The story hour, featuring a group of drag performers reading books to children, was moved to Connecticut Muffin, a nearby dessert and coffee shop.
NYPD later confirmed that an email threat was sent to the branch from an unknown source in Buffalo alleging an explosive device was supposed to go off inside the site at 11:30 a.m. A male caller also phoned 911 about the threat, authorities added.
“It’s a shame, and it’s something that’s extremely dangerous,” fumed a parent of a 2-year-old girl who sat in on the reading. “These are children, and children just want to hear stories … It’s a shame how somebody just ruined it and threatened violence.”
N.Y.C. Library Moves Drag Queen Story Hour Location Following Bomb Threat https://t.co/kp4W3koyqn
Scottie's Playtime 
