This article was sent to me for all of us to read from Ali. Thank you Ali. I would add that that what this person says about the Kansas legilature can be said about all of them including the federal one. Hugs
CLAY WIRESTONE
AUGUST 18, 2022 3:33 AM
After a year on the job, Kansas Reflector opinion editor Clay Wirestone says he has learned several truths about the state. (Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism)
A year ago Tuesday, I came aboard the good ship Kansas Reflector as opinion editor. While my first column on the job promised big goals and lofty aspirations, I’ll admit that doubts lingered in the cobwebbed recesses of my mind.
Would the work make a difference? Would readers pay attention? Would they and I find it satisfying, both journalistically and creatively?
Thankfully, the answer to all of those questions has been a resounding yes. No, I don’t believe this section and my columns have changed the course of Kansas history, but I think they did a good job of reflecting that history over 12 months. In turbulent times like these, that counts for something.
According to my tally, this is the 123rd article I’ve written from Kansas Reflector’s opinion seat. Here’s more of what I’ve learned over the course of those columns.
Visitors to the Kansas Statehouse could be glimpsed at the bottom of the rotunda on the last regular session day of the Legislature. (Clay Wirestone/Kansas Reflector)
The Kansas Legislature is more badly broken than you imagine.
I thought I knew about the dysfunction at the Kansas Statehouse. I worked in nonprofit advocacy for four years before joining Kansas Reflector and had seen how seldom the needs of everyday Kansans were considered by legislators.
But I didn’t have the full picture.
Watching the full body over the past session taught me difficult lessons. Legislators obscured what they were doing, repeatedly and willfully. The worst derailed hearings and grabbed headlines by attacking the powerless. Worst of all, perhaps, leadership repeatedly ignored good policy and pursued their own power-hungry ends.
Medicaid expansion? Forget about it. Lowering barriers to public assistance? Nope. Not when there’s a Democratic governor to demonize.
Rep. Cheryl Helmer, right, and Rep. Michael Houser respond to having their picture taken during House action April 27, 2022, at the Statehouse in Topeka. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Extremism has taken root in state politics, and we all have to be wary.
This doesn’t have to do with Democrats or Republicans. This has to do with the loudest voices in the room and how they manipulate the public.
You could see this happen in the debate over health measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Outspoken residents and legislators spread disinformation that put their fellow Kansans at risk. That’s just the start, of course. We also endured lies about critical race theory and transgender folks.
While outside groups have tried to quantify that extremism, they have fallen short. The news media and public at large have much work to do in shining a light on those who would breed hate and anger for political advantage.
Attendees at the Kansans for Constitutional Freedom watch party in Overland Park applaud after Kansans vote to keep abortion a constitutional right on Tuesday. (Lily O’Shea Becker/Kansas Reflector)
When the stakes are high, Kansans come through.
With all of the above being said, I have to recognize the surprise abortion-rights victory Aug. 2.
Freedom contended with fundamentalist repression on the ballot. Our state chose freedom. That vote, and the nearly 20 percentage point rejection of extremism, suggests that Kansans are fully capable of grasping the stakes when fundamental rights are on the line.
Nearly a year ago, I wrote: “A state that was once known for its moderation and temperance has become, too often, a wannabe member of the confederacy.” For most of the last year, those words rang true for me.
After the vote, I have re-evaluated. Perhaps that moderation and temperance endures, slumbering somewhere underneath the plains, roused only by a genuine threat.
Columnist and documentarian Dave Kendall sent along this image of a crowd singing along with “Home on the Range” at the end of the 2021 Symphony in the Flint Hills concert. He wrote a piece about the event, and then shared video after a storm cut it short this year. (Dave Kendall)
So many of you have so much to say. Please keep doing so.
Kansas Reflector has been lucky to publish so many talented writers in the opinion section.
Max McCoy held down the Sunday column slot for much of the first year, until he decided to step aside. Since then, we’ve welcomed weekend work from Kansas poet laureate Huascar Medina, documentarian Dave Kendall, Mark McCormick, Inas Younis and Brenan Riffel, among others. Do yourself a favor and check them out.
But that’s not all! University of Kansas instructor Eric Thomas has held down the Friday columnist slot, first writing about podcasts and then widening his gaze. Throughout the rest of the week, we’ve welcomed contributions from throughout the state.
The Ad Astra statue aims high atop of the Kansas Statehouse on Jan. 24, 2022. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Kansas Reflector readers are the best.
The biggest surprise this past year has been the support and feedback I’ve received from readers. Two decades in journalism had prepared me for a chorus of catcalls and barrage of brickbats.
Instead, the Kansas Reflector’s opinion section has been welcomed. I’ve heard from so many readers who appreciate a different, people-focused take on news and politics. And while many progressives have gotten in touch, so have libertarians and conservatives. I might lean left, but I also value the honest and open exchange of ideas.
So, thank you. Thanks for the kindness you’ve shown me, and thanks as well for pointing out any missteps via Twitter. Thanks for following along throughout the last 12 months. I’m still learning, and I hope to keep learning until the primordial seas that once covered Kansas return.
Police Officers in West Virginia racially profile and arrest a U.S. military veteran because he failed to provide identification. However, prosecutors later dropped the obstruction charges because the deputies didn’t show up for their hearing. Now, the Military veteran and his tenants are suing the sheriffs department for racial discrimination and civil rights violations. David Shuster breaks it down on Rebel HQ.
Scott Esk, a Republican candidate running for a seat in Oklahoma’s state House once said it is “totally just” to kill gay people in comments that have recently resurfaced amid his campaign. Meidas Contributor Texas Paul Reacts.
This is a tump judge. Even Scalia admitted that rules and regulations could be put on gun ownership. These people won’t be happy until grade school kids and hormonal teens are all strapped and carrying guns around. Hugs
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, who cited the Second Amendment in his decision, stayed the ruling pending appeal.
Texas law bars most 18- to 20-year-olds in the state from obtaining a license to carry a handgun or carrying a handgun for self-defense outside their homes. Credit: Callie Richmond for The Texas Tribune
A federal court in Fort Worth on Thursday struck down a Texas prohibition that limited adults under 21 from carrying handguns.
Texas law bars most 18- to 20-year-olds in the state from obtaining a license to carry a handgun or carrying a handgun for self-defense outside their homes. Two plaintiffs, who fall within that age range, and the Firearms Policy Coalition Inc., filed a lawsuit against the state to challenge the statute. The suit says the Texas law prevented the plaintiffs from traveling with a handgun between Parker, Fannin and Grayson counties, where they lived, worked and went to school.
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman wrote that the Second Amendment does not specify an age limit and protects adults under 21 years old.
“Based on the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by Founding-Era history and tradition, the Court concludes that the Second Amendment protects against this prohibition,” Pittman wrote in the ruling.
The order will not go into immediate effect. Pittman stayed the ruling for 30 days pending appeal.
The decision comes just three months after an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in the deadliest school shooting in Texas.
The Firearms Policy Coalition filed the lawsuit in November 2021. It came months after a legislative session in which lawmakers passed a law that allows Texans to carry handguns without a license or training, despite previous promises from Republican leaders to address gun safety following the 2019 El Paso and Midland-Odessa mass shootings.
Everyone thought I was over the top when I said the Christian nationalist were trying to destroy public education and to change what schools taught removing science and biology and instead pushing the Christian religion. Well here it is right from the republican Christian Taliban themselves. This hate preacher is the Lt Governor in NC, and recently attacked a fellow lawmaker who disagreed with what the Lt Governor was saying, the Lt governor threatened him publicly and refused to even admit he did wrong by threatening someone. He is a large bully, a thug and proud of it. He is the maga and wants to rule in a theocracy not a democracy. Hugs
Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson said gay people go to elementary schools to “teach kids about what you do in the bedroom.” (We don’t.)
Lt. Gov. Mark RobinsonPhoto: Anthony Crider/via Flickr
North Carolina’s extremely anti-LGBTQ Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R) is now calling for eliminating science and social studies education in elementary schools.
In his soon-to-be-released memoirs – entitled We Are the Majority: The Life and Passions of a Patriot – he railed against kids learning about history in first through fifth grade.
“In those grades, we don’t need to be teaching social studies,” Robinson wrote. “We don’t need to be teaching science. We surely don’t need to be talking about equity and social justice.”
Science classes should end because they’re teaching kids about climate change.
“Guess what? Most of the people of North Carolina know global warming is junk science,” he wrote. Whether or not most people in North Carolina believe it, there is scientific consensus that the planet is warming.
Robinson also attacked the state Board of Education, saying the state should “get rid of it.” He also said that “traditional public schools might be a thing of the past” because of charter schools.
“We need to build more, not limit them,” he wrote. “And if we find success along the way, we should bring it into the system. We might adopt charter school methods throughout the system.”
Robinson got national attention last year when his extreme anti-LGBTQ rhetoric during sermons at a local church were made public in online videos.
In one sermon, he compared gay people to maggots and said that maggots at least have a “purpose.”
“If homosexuality is of God, what purpose does it serve? What does it make? What does it create? It creates nothing,” Robinson said.
Robinson said he was once asked by a gay man: “So you think your wife and you, you think your heterosexual relationship is superior to my husband and my homosexual relationship?”
“Yes!” Robinson emphatically told the congregation.
“These people are superior because they can do something these people can’t do,” Robinson said, referencing having a child. “Because that’s the way God created it to be. And I’m tired of this society trying to tell me it’s not so.”
In another sermon, he called homosexuality and trans identity “filth.”
“I’m saying this now, and I’ve been saying it, and I don’t care who likes it: Those issues have no place in a school. There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality — any of that filth,” Robinson said, “and yes, I called it filth. And if you don’t like it that I called it filth, come see me and I’ll explain it to you.”
And he didn’t back off of LGBTQ issues in his book, writing, “Gay marriage is not marriage either in the eyes of God or even by definition.”
“But I don’t believe you should come down to the school, most especially the elementary schoolhouse, and teach kids about what you do in the bedroom, as if your sexual preferences and practices ought to be celebrated and govern government approval and even support,” he wrote.
In another part of his upcoming book, Robinson attacked Pride and said that minors can’t be gay.
“Telling a child, ‘Oh, you’re gay,’ or dressing a kid up at the gay pride parade in a fairy costume with a pair of rainbow flags—using kids like that is demented,” he wrote. “You shouldn’t let them walk around seeing men with their butts hanging out.”
Robinson attacked transgender people: “Someone who is troubled in this way has something wrong with their brain.”
Robinson also opposed abortion. He went so far as to compare it to murder: “It’s no different than, for instance, me killing my neighbor because he’s standing in the way of me having a job that I want.”
He also wrote that Black people are trying to be “a victim forever.”
“Have you been a victim of wrongdoing?” he wrote. “Yes. But you were victorious over that. Somebody was victorious over that on your behalf. There’s no reason for you to look at yourself in the mirror and think you are a victim. You’re a receiver of benefits because of what people who came before you did. You should be a benefactor for others.”
Herschel Walker made one of the dumbest statements criticizing the new climate law in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act by Democrats, idiotically asking ‘Don’t we have enough trees around here?’ Meidas Contributor Texas Paul Reacts.
This is not about the teachers pushing their personal feeling / opinions, these flag stickers / signs let LGBTQ+ kids know that classroom is a welcoming safe space and the teacher is not going to hate them. It is symbol to the gay, lesbian, and trans kids that they are welcome also. In the environment in schools today it is even more important these rainbow flags be allowed to stand. It was not too long ago that the school used to put up posters of inclusion, tolerance, and acceptance. Now they are removing anything that shows anything different than the white cis straight majority. Hugs
Administration told teachers to take down Pride flags because they violated a “personal opinion” policy.
Demonstrators gathered outside a Springfield, Missouri high school on Monday to protest a school board policy that has resulted in the removal of Pride flags from classrooms.
Among the protesters outside Kickapoo High School holding signs that said “Acceptance Saves Lives” and “Hate Has No Home Here,” was Brett Baxley, a local drag performer and alum of the Springfield Public School district.
“Issues in Springfield Public Schools are really close to my heart. As an existing queer person in SPS, I know how difficult it can be in this area,” said Baxley, who organized the protest. “I know that teachers who were allies were one of the only reasons that I was able to make it through my high school experience.”
In an email last week, Kickapoo High School principal Bill Powers instructed “a handful” of teachers at the city’s largest high school to remove the rainbow flags from their classrooms in order to be in compliance with the school board’s staff conduct policy. The policy, which was adopted in 2014 and revised in 2019, does not explicitly ban Pride flags.
“I’m writing today in regards to the Pride flag each of you has in your classroom,” Powers wrote in the email. “It was recently brought to my attention that we should not be displaying the flags.”
When asked about the flags, Springfield Public School chief communications officer Stephen Hall noted that the staff conduct policy states that “employees will not represent their personal opinions as the opinion of the district.”
“This applies to speech and to the use of district property, including the classroom. When employee conduct does not align with this policy, it is the district’s expectation that supervisors hold team members accountable for maintaining a professional standard,” Hall wrote in a statement.
“It was really disheartening to hear that the administration was fighting against the few teachers who were making an effort to make queer people feel more accepted in the classroom,” said Baxley.
State Rep. Crystal Quade (D) was on hand and spoke to the protesters. “I came out today to show support for our LGBTQ students and faculty,” she said. She noted that the issue was “a districtwide conversation about policy” and that she did not want to single out Powers.
In an interview with the Springfield News-Leader, Missouri State University assistant professor of sociology Kyler Sherman-Wilkins called the protest a way to “call attention to a particular issue and to highlight the fact that people are energized and mobilized.”
Sherman-Wilkins has been addressing the school board for over a year, advocating for diversity training, inclusive curriculum, and support for children and staff from underrepresented backgrounds. Along with the protesters he supports challenging the board policy that resulted in the removal of Pride flags.
PFLAG Springfield board president Aaron Schekorra said that the issue is bigger than the board policy or the flag removal at one high school.
“We’re not interested as an organization in making this about one administrator, or one teacher, or a handful of individuals,” he said. “This is about our school district and what it means for our community. And we are interested in looking at the bigger picture, how our district as a whole, from the top-down, can be a better place for all students.”
OAN’s Kara McKinney and the Hitler Youth image Photo: Screenshot
One America News (OAN) reporter Kara McKinney used a photo of Nazis burning books while calling LGBTQ literature “filth” that deserved to be banned earlier this week on her show.
McKinney was ranting about how Democrats “use their outsize media influence” to trick voters into thinking that conservatives want to ban books
“It’s the [unintelligible] Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals tactic of accusing your political opponent of what you’re doing yourself,” McKinney insisted as she showed an image of the Hitler Youth burning books that were labeled “anti-German” in 1938.
But less than a minute later, she was arguing for banning books.
“I think banning pornographic books from school libraries was not only justifiable, it’s the only moral option,” she said.
Of course, no school libraries are handing out pornography to students. What she’s talking about is the presence of LGBTQ-themed books in school libraries, which conservatives have been calling “pornography” for the past year.
Massachusetts secretary of state candidate Rayla Campbell (R) last week even had the police called on her because she was waving around a book that she called “child pornography.” The police officer who responded determined that she was not in possession of child porn, that she was just holding the memoir of nonbinary and asexual author Maia Kobabe.
McKinney pressed on: “It’s our duty, in fact, to purge our schools of such filth.”
Yes, McKinney is using a photo of Nazi youth partaking in a book burning to argue that banning LGBTQ books in public schools is good. She says banning these books "is not only justifiable but the only moral option, it's our duty in fact to purge our schools of such filth" pic.twitter.com/TeLOxkngFW
If anything, McKinney’s use of the Hitler Youth image while talking about banning LGBTQ literature is apt; the Nazi Party destroyed Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexology – which did pioneering work on understanding LGBTQ identities, including transgender people – in 1933, years before the onset of World War II.
The Institute of Sexology, founded in 1919, was a pioneering research institute on homosexuality and transgender identity. Hirschfield himself advocated for an end to Paragraph 175, the German law that criminalized homosexuality, which made him a target of the Nazis.
On May 6, 1933 — several months before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany — the Institute of Sexology was broken into and occupied by a Nazi student organization. Several days later, the contents of its library were moved to Bebelplatz Square in Berlin and burned, according to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
These people will not stop until the US looks like the Handmaids tale, or the Amish community, the Puritans from the 1600s. The won’t stop until they get control over women as chattel slaves like their bible claims they should be, owners of the women. The don’t want females to have rights, to have agency, and to have worth other than as property to men. To me they are disgusting and more like Incels who think women exist only for men’s pleasure. How horrible but this is where they are driving the country. They want a world where cis white straight Christian males have the only rights with automatic authority / privilege, women exist as property of men, blacks are workers and unpaid labor, and the LGBTQ+ are not heard of being too scared of the punishments of being known. That is the world of the Islamic Taliban that the white Christians want to make here in the US. Hugs
This preacher exhorts men to toss their wives’ pants in a fire because that’s crossdressing.
Now a far-right preacher known for his vile rants about the LGBTQ community is calling for men to burn their wives’ pants because, he says, it’s just a form of crossdressing.
Brother Duncan Urbanek spread the love of God by using anti-gay slurs and encouraging men to destroy their spouses’ possessions. Urbanek is a member of the Stedfast Baptist Church, one of the most vicious anti-LGBTQ hate groups in the nation. Church leaders have called for the execution of gay men and publicly celebrated tragedies that killed members of the LGBTQ community.
“People want to get so riled up… Yeah! F*gs are an abomination. God hates ’em,” he begins. “Well, didn’t it just say if you’re a crossdresser, you’re an abomination too?”
“Now obviously it’s not as bad as being a fa***t,” he continued, “But God is still very upset with your sin.”
“No what should we do about that, knowing this as Christians? If you’re a woman and you own any pants, throw them away. Light them on fire. If you’re a man and your wife has pants, throw them away. And if she yells at you, so be it. Throw them away. That’s a good fight to be in.”
“If I was caught wearing a dress and that was online,” he said as his strange rant continued, “I would do everything in my power to get rid of that picture. Like, man, I gotta find the owner of it and persuade him. I gotta pay him off. Like, man, please delete that picture.”
“You know, there is no picture of me wearing a dress,” he added quickly with a nervous chuckle, “because I’m never going to put one on. I don’t own any and I don’t want to wear any. And women should have that same standard.”
There is no Biblical injunction that’s specifically about women and pants. At the time the Bible was written, trousers weren’t part of the Jewish wardrobe and men wore tunics and robes.
Christian hate-preacher Duncan Urbanek condemns all pants-wearing women.
"If you're a woman, and you own any pants, throw them away. Light them on fire. If you're a man, and your wife has pants, throw them away. And if she yells at you, so be it." pic.twitter.com/sI5UZdQ1vB
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/f1358a98a282a684559f78f8d0ecdcd5/Guns%20Gun%20Store%20CR%20TT.jpg)
CLAY WIRESTONE