Category: MAGA / Republican
St. Marys officials again threaten library because of LGBTQ books
Again highly religious fundamentalists got into positions of authority and are pushing their religious beliefs on the entire community. Gerard Kleinsmith says he doesn’t like books about transgender people, he calls it garbage and feels it is his duty to remove all such books because god doesn’t make mistakes! Think on that, other religious sects say it is OK that god created transgender people, yet their beliefs don’t matter, just his. He is supported in this stance by the other members of St. Marys’ five-person city commission, a heavily religious group that attends the Society of St. Pius X, or SSPX, an extreme religious sect that broke away from the Catholic church. Hugs
City commissioners says they don’t want ‘garbage’ on the public library’s shelves
BY: RACHEL MIPRO – JULY 11, 2023 12:12 PM
St. Marys city commissioners have taken offense with a transgender book in the Pottawatomie Wabaunsee Regional Library. (Rachel Mipro/Kansas Reflector)
ST. MARYS — Gerard Kleinsmith says he hates the idea of censorship.
He just wants to pull the lease for the city’s public library because he doesn’t like books about transgender people.
As a city commissioner, he feels it is his duty to remove transgender content — “garbage,” as he refers to it. Kleinsmith said during a city commission meeting that removing the library was part of his job as a city official, emphasizing “God doesn’t make mistakes,” and his belief that people can’t change genders.
“My goal is to terminate the lease with the library,” Kleinsmith said. “If they want to have their library, so be it. Go do it. Find another building to do it in, I can’t stop that. My intention is not to stop that, but I will not ever vote for any taxpayer money, facilities, anything to be used anywhere that houses this kind of garbage.”
He is supported in this stance by the other members of St. Marys’ five-person city commission, a heavily religious group that attends the Society of St. Pius X, or SSPX, an extreme religious sect that broke away from the Catholic church. The commissioners have said at previous meetings that their views are influenced by their religious affiliation.
“Some things are wrong,” said commissioner Richard Binsfeld, during a city commission discussion about transgender books and the transgender community at large. “If you live up to your morals, if you stand by your morals at all, you’d look at it and say, ‘Why do we have it?’”
The public library has been under scrutiny from local officials for months, narrowly surviving an attempt to pull the lease at the end of last year. Library director Judith Cremer said she and her staff were trying to work with the commissioners while remaining in accordance with legal guidelines for public libraries.
She’s still not sure why the commissioners have taken issue with the library in recent months when it had operated in its St. Marys location for decades without problems. Cremer has held her position since 2003, and until last year, this was a position without controversy.
“We’re not part of the city structure and the lease agreement is the only leverage that they have seemed to be able to find,” Cremer said. “They seem to be continuing down that road, which I’m disappointed with because we have still been here doing our job, trying to help people, trying to do summer reading, and I feel like it’s a misunderstanding of who we are. We are trying to do our job and we have followed the rules.”
While commissioners have no governing influence over the library, the Pottawatomie Wabaunsee Regional Library would be forced to shift locations if the lease isn’t renewed, giving up a community spot it has held for decades and depriving St. Marys residents of easily accessible library material.
The library has been housed in St. Marys since the 1980s, operating on an annual lease with the city. The library acts as the headquarters for eight locations, including Alma, Alta Vista, Eskridge, Harveyville, Olsburg, Onaga, St. Marys and Westmoreland, with county residents funding the library through taxes.
An eight-member board of trustees provides oversight of the library’s operations, with Pottawatomie and Wabaunsee County commissioners appointing members to the board to serve four-year terms. The commission doesn’t have influence over board decisions.
The library formed an advisory group in an attempt to address community concerns with library materials, but efforts toward reconciliation have been unsuccessful.
The library’s lease renewal came up for debate last year because the library refused to accept a renewal clause asking for the removal of all LGBTQ and socially divisive books from the shelves. Facing intense public pressure, the commission in December renewed the lease for one year.
Now, city commissioners have renewed their campaign against LGBTQ books, despite federal legal protections for public libraries.
During the April city commission meeting, Kleinsmith raged against the book “Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition,” a coming of age story about a transgender teenager.
“This author is absolutely wrong. God does not make mistakes,” Kleinsmith said. “God cannot make a mistake. We can make mistakes. Mankind can make a mistake. God cannot make a mistake. … I will do everything I can to fight this kind of garbage.”
“If God makes you as a male, you are a male,” he added. “If God makes you a female, you are a female, no matter what.”
St. Marys Mayor Matthew Childs, who formulated the anti-LGBTQ renewal clause last year, said during the April meeting that the library’s contents would once again influence the commission’s decision to renew the lease.
“We don’t want transgender books in the library. … The elephant in the room is that we don’t want the library to be promoting certain types of material,” Childs said. “If the library is, we come back to the question, do we want to renew it at all?”
Sharon Brett, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, which warned commissioners to drop their censorship attempts during the first lease renewal discussion, said city officials need to remember constitutional protections.
“Each member of the commission should remember that their own discomfort with a certain book does not justify restricting its availability to everyone else in the community,” Brett said. “Not only is this potential censorship authoritarian, it has implications under even a basic reading of our First Amendment. We urge the commission to remember their obligations under the Constitution.”
Cremer said she and the library board had been trying to cooperate with the commission and concerned residents as much as possible.
“We’re providing services to the community,” Cremer said. “We’re taking care of the same people. I don’t see why there should be a problem.”
Following the April commission meeting, she sent a letter to the commissioners asking them to directly address their concerns with library staff, as they had a process in place to review book complaints.
Library staff are also participating in the advisory committee. Cremer said the library was sending regular updates about the library and the advisory committee’s work to the city commission.
But she is still fielding criticism from religious members of the community, including during a contentious June 28 library board meeting attended by Binsfeld and other St. Marys residents.
“As we move forward, we would like to see that all LGBTQ+ media — whether audio files, movies, books, activities, etc. — be removed from this branch altogether and from any access, including online ordering and inter-library loans, to any minor through this branch,” resident Stephen Murtha wrote in a letter to library board members.
The library should reflect the community’s Christian majority, Murtha wrote.
Cremer said for the most part, these complaints were from a small segment of the population and that she hasn’t had problems or complaints from a majority of library customers.
But she is concerned about the future of the library.
“We have continued, even though that stress and controversy has been significant,” Cremer said. “My staff and I have continued forward just as we always have to provide those services, because it’s not the people that we’re serving, it’s not their fault, but they’re the ones that are going to be losing.”
Republican attorneys general issue warning letter to Target about Pride merchandise
Seven U.S. state attorneys general sent a letter to Target on Wednesday warning that clothes and merchandise sold as part of the company’s Pride month campaigns might violate their state’s child protection laws.
Republican attorneys general from Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and South Carolina signed the letter, writing that they were “concerned by recent events involving the company’s ‘Pride’ campaign.”
The attorneys said that they believed the campaign was a “comprehensive effort to promote gender and sexual identity among children,” criticizing items like T-shirts that advertised popular drag queens and a T-shirt that said ‘Girls Gays Theys.’ They also highlighted merchandise with “anti Christian designs such as pentagrams, horned skulls and other Satanic products.”
The letter also criticized Target for donating to GLSEN, an LGBTQ+ organization that works to end bullying in schools based on sexual and gender identity. The company stated in a 2020 guide that school staff should not tell parents about a child’s gender or sexual orientation without consulting the child first, something the attorneys general said undermines “parents’ constitutional and statutory rights.”
The letter did not include any specific demands nor did it outline how they believe the campaign could violate child protection laws, but the attorneys general did suggest that Target might find it “more profitable to sell the type of Pride that enshrines the love of the United States.”
The attorneys general also said they believed Target’s Pride campaign threatened their financial interests, writing that Target leadership has a “fiduciary duty to our States as shareholders in the company” and suggesting that company officials “may be negligent” in promoting the campaign since it has negatively affected Target’s stock prices and led to some backlash among customers.
Target shares have declined 12% this year, but the company is facing issues far beyond the backlash to its Pride collection, which included onesies, bibs, and T-shirts for babies and children. Like many retailers, the company is struggling with a pullback in consumer spending because of high inflation, which has weighed on its profits.
But Target is also facing scrutiny for its merchandise selection, including its Pride line, with its stores removing some of the items in May after facing threats. At the time, the company didn’t specify which products were being removed, although Target has faced criticism online over swimsuits advertised as “tuck-friendly” with “extra crotch coverage” in its Pride collection.
“Target’s management has no duty to fill stores with objectionable goods, let alone endorse or feature them in attention-grabbing displays at the behest of radical activists,” the attorneys general wrote. “However, Target management does have fiduciary duties to its shareholders to prudently manage the company and act loyally in the company’s best interests.”
Backlash to the Pride campaign did involve threats of violence to Target stores and workers. Some merchandise was relocated to less popular areas of the store, and other pieces, including the swimsuits criticized by the attorneys general, were removed.
“Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work,” Target said in a statement earlier in June. “Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.”
Aimee Picchi contributed reporting
OK Education Chief: “We Want The Bible In Schools” From JMG
Remember the governor of Oklahoma is a fervent fundamentalist Christian who has claimed the entire state for Jesus / his Christian god including the Native Peoples lands. He has used the office of Governor to push his religion on the entire state. The backstory of this Oklahoma Education Superintendent, Ryan Walters, is crazy. He is not qualified for the office except he is also a fervent fundamentalist Christian nationalist. The governor tried to have him hold the two highest positions over education but was blocked by that funny thing called laws. It is time to take seriously this sneak effort to get fundamentalist die hard Christian nationalists in to state office at all levels as they have taken over schools up to governors offices. They are the US Christian Taliban and the Christian moral police. They are going to force their religion on everyone, make everyone live by their church doctrines / religious views no matter what religion or lack of that people have. Just look at their insistence on Christian prayers and the Christian bible in public schools. They want to enshrine their church doctrines and religious convictions into state laws that everyone will be subject to and have to follow. Hugs
“Instead of allowing Biden and the unions to inject their ideology through graphic pornography like ‘Gender Queer’ and “Flamer,’ we want the Constitution, we want the bible in our schools where kids understand our nation’s history and what has made this country great. The reality is that the bible is a foundational document in our country’s history. Read the Founders, read their letters, listen to what these men and women said about why founding a country with the freedom of religion, the free exercise of religion was so important.” – Oklahoma Education Superintendent Ryan Walters, today on Fox Business.
Last week Walters declared that the infamous 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre should not be taught as having been caused by racism. Over 300 black people were murdered by white mobs and 10,000 were left homeless.
Last month Walters appeared here when he announced that Oklahoma’s public schools will soon have a mandatory daily prayer, the mandatory posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, and a mandatory high school course in “Western civilization.”
Walters, who was appointed state secretary of education by Christianist Gov. Kevin Stitt in 2020, faced calls to resign in 2022 after it was revealed that a Koch-funded group that advocates for privatizing public schools was paying him $120,000/year.
Stitt rejected calls for Walters’ resignation and attempted to reappoint him again earlier this year, but the state Senate refused to allow him to hold the elected superintendent and appointed secretary of education posts at the same time.
Christian Nationalists TERRIFYING Rhetoric is CREEPING into the Mainstream (And its getting WORSE)
Knowles: We’re Coming For The Right To Contraception
This is the same person who played a gay man hooking up with other men who now is super anti-LGBTQ+. This guy admits men like sex and don’t want the resulting pregnancies. But he still feels women shouldn’t have sex, that women shouldn’t like sex, or maybe he believes the old stereotype that women just don’t like sex. He seems to be an entitled white religious guy who don’t care what harm he causes to others as long as it benefits him. But the truth is the right is coming after contraception and no-fault divorce. They are serious about returning to a 1950s or even 1850s mentality and public acceptance. These people are the Christian version of the Taliban or Iranian moral police. But women like the gays / trans are not going to give up their rights and go into hiding or being submissive just to please stupid males. Hugs
Media Matters has the transcript:
The culture that treats sex very casually and that suggests that we have a right to sex absent the consequence of pregnancy, is going to be a culture that’s more likely to engage in abortion.
The culture that embraces radical individualism and selfishness and libertinism in one area of sexual matters is going to embrace it in another, and that’s going to result in abortion.
And furthermore, we’re all complaining about the Pride movement, and the Pride movement has become much less popular than it used to be. You’re seeing this in a drop — Gallup polling and the values survey that it gives out showed a significant drop in support for the Pride coalition in just one year.
So, a lot of people are turning on it. A lot of mothers, a lot of parents in schools — it’s how Glenn Younkin won in Virginia. It’s how Ron DeSantis won in Florida. You go all the way back to the beginning of the sexual revolution. And you go all the way back to contraception.
There were two cases, Eisenstadt and Griswold. First was Griswold in 1965. Then Eisenstadt comes around in 1972, the year before Roe v Wade. And Griswold finds a right to condoms within a marriage.
Where is that in the Constitution? I have no idea. But some libs on the court discovered that magically in 1965. But they said, but — there is no right to condoms outside of marriage. Then seven years later, the court discovers, oh, actually, there was more invisible ink in the Constitution.
And actually, there is a right to condoms outside of marriage. Okay. Maybe you like condoms. Maybe you don’t like condoms. I don’t know where you’re gonna find that in the Constitution.
I think a lot of people are beginning to notice that the contraceptive mentality is the beginning of the Pride mentality. Because the contraceptive mentality divorces sex from the consequences of sex.
It introduces a sterile sexual ethic, which is exactly what gave us the Pride movement. There’s no distinction here. If you can’t read between the lines, the conclusion that one draws is that condoms are kind of gay. To put it as bluntly as possible. Okay?
And people are beginning to realize, okay, if I don’t like this insane, anarchistic view of sex that is totally self-centered and divorced from any ends whatsoever, well, then maybe I gotta rewind it and ask what is the point of sex?
Which is why it’s not gonna be the patriarchy that’s coming for your consequence free birth control. It’s not going to be the men.
The men, frankly, are huge supporters of — of birth control and contraception because it allows them to have consequence-free sex. It’s gonna be those conservative women. That’s who’s coming for it.
I’ve been telling heterosexuals for years that the same people coming after us are going to be coming after them.
Here is Knowles in his gay sex scene.
Let’s talk about a surprising GOP development….
Florida Through the Eyes of an Uber Driver: A Unique Perspective
Floridians already feeling economic effect of DeSantis immigration law
Russia wants to ban all trans healthcare and gender recognition
This is what the right / republicans / Christian Nationalists desperately want for the US. Notice how the Russian laws went, first they claimed they needed to protect the kids so the laws started out chipping away at LGBTQ+ rights until they finally outlawed any public / social LGBTQ+ representation. They outlawed LGBTQ+ people. Now they are removing trans people, denying them treatments needed to be who they know they are. Simply erasing them in society, as they did the gays and pride rainbows. Notice this time they used the excuse of saving the families, the traditional nuclear family of one man, a subservient wife, and how many ever kids. Again this is the goal of the right here in the US, reverting the US society to the 1950s / the Leave It To Beaver fiction. Hugs
Russia set to ban all gender-affirming healthcare. (Getty Images)
Russia has given initial approval to a bill that would outlaw gender-affirming healthcare for trans people of all ages.
The proposed bill reportedly bans any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person”, as well as changing gender markers on official documents like passports.
Senior politician Pyotr Tolstoy, who sponsored the bill, claimed on Wednesday (14 June) it would “protect Russia with its cultural and family values and traditions and stop the infiltration of the Western anti-family ideology,” the Associated Press reported.
Lawmakers also reportedly claimed the proposed law would prevent anybody registered as male from changing their gender in official documents to avoid the military draft.
It will now go to Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, where it must receive three readings to be signed into law. The bill was approved unanimously in its first reading, The Times reported.
The Russian bill follows similar efforts elsewhere in the world, including in the US, where several states are attempting to ban or limit gender-affirming care for young people.
According to Equaldex, Russian trans people can currently receive a certificate recognising their gender from a medical commission.
Trans rights activist Maxim, who spoke to AP about the potential law, explained that the current situation in Russia with regards to gender-affirming care is “unique in a good way”. Unlike some other countries, gender-affirming care or surgeries are currently not required to change the gender on legal documents.
Under the new law, trans people who have already changed their gender marker on their official documents will reportedly be able to continue receiving gender-affirming care, however those who have not yet changed their official gender marker will be banned from doing so.
The proposed bill comes after Russia voted to expand its notorious LGBTQ+ “propaganda” bill to cover all ages in November 2022.
The law, which previously only applied to under-18s, prevents any promotion of LGBTQ+ identities or same-sex relationships in Russian media.
Igor Kochetkov of the Russian LGBT Network explained the expansion of the bill represented “part of a broader attack on anything the government deems ‘western and progressive’.”
YouTuber Gela Gogishvili, who was arrested and detained in April along with his partner Haoyang Xu for allegedly violating the “LGBTQ+ propaganda” law, warned that the law was “working” in order to silence LGBTQ+ people in Russia.
“What it means is that, if you are queer, you have to be silent, and the propaganda is working because this is what will happen to you,” he said.
“You either have to be silent if you want to stay in Russia or, if you want to express all of this, you have to get out of Russia.”
Scottie's Playtime 