An arsonist who said it’s “wrong” that there are “a bunch of queers in our society” has admitted to setting fire to an LGBTQ+ venue in Washington, United States.
Kalvinn Garcia, 25, pleaded guilty on Thursday (26 May) to setting fire to Queer/Bar in Seattle on 24 February 2020, telling police that “I think it’s wrong that we have a bunch of queers in our society”.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) added that Garcia told a stranger he wanted to trap people inside the venue and injure them after he set it alight.
According to the DOJ: “The blaze scorched the brick exterior and forced the cancelation of events planned at the nightclub over subsequent days.
“The nightclub is across the alley from the Seattle Police East Precinct and the fire attracted immediate attention… Garcia tried to run from officers but was apprehended.”
Garcia now faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 (around £198,000) fine for starting the fire.
“The defendant targeted the patrons inside Queer/Bar, a known safe space for the LGBTQI+ community,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a DOJ press release.
“Hate crimes have no place in our society today and we stand ready to use our federal civil rights laws to hold perpetrators accountable.
“All people deserve to feel safe and secure living in their communities, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
US attorney for the Western District of Washington, Nick Brown, added: “Garcia endangered countless people who he did not know and who were simply trying to live their lives, solely because of his own hatred.
“We must stand up to this hate at every opportunity, to demonstrate to our community that acting on hate will not be tolerated.”
John Lhota, 24, has been arrested and charged with arson after allegedly setting fire to Rash nightclub in Brooklyn on 3 April.
Jake Sillen, who co-owns Rash with Claire Bendiner, told Pink News: “There were a few people inside, but luckily it was early enough in the night that the party hadn’t started and there wasn’t a huge crowd.”
Montana has legally erased trans people by banning birth certificate changes in the latest attack against the community.
The western US state ignored a court order that blocked the GOP-controlled legislature from restricting even further the rights of trans people.
The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services said in an emergency order Monday (23 May) that birth certificates will now solely list “sex” and no longer record a person’s “gender”.
Even if a trans Montanan has undergone gender-affirming surgery, they will legally be unable to change the sex marker on their birth certificate. This is, the order says, because sex is “immutable” while gender is a “social concept”.
“Sex is different from gender and is an immutable genetic fact, which is not changeable, even by surgery,” the order by department director Adam Meier says.
“Accordingly, this emergency rule does not authorize the amendment of the sex-identified/cited on a birth certificate based on gender transition, gender identity or change of gender.”
The only instance in which a sex marker can be changed on a birth certificate is if it was incorrectly listed when issued or if a person’s sex was “misidentified” at birth, Meier adds. The order went into effect immediately.
Montana ‘makes it even harder for trans people to live’ with birth certificate ban
The directive means that trans Montanans may struggle to access certain services, such as social security, or apply for other identification documents, such as passports or driver’s licenses, because of their inaccurate birth certificates.
The agency’s move goes in the face of a Billings district court judge who in April blocked Senate Bill 280, a 2021 law requiring a “surgical procedure” and a court order to change the sex listed on a birth certificate.
It was swiftly signed into law by Republican governor Greg Gianforte. He has previously signed laws banning trans athletes and allowing religion to be used to “attack” LGBTQ+ people.
Two trans Montanans sued the state in response last year, arguing the bill violated their state constitutional rights to privacy and equal protection. Not all trans folk undergo surgery either, they added.
Judge Michael Moses ruled that the bill does interfere with a person’s right to privacy by making trans people disclose private details.
Montana Republican governor Greg Gianforte signed the anti-trans bill in 2021. (William Campbell-Corbis via Getty Images)
“Only transgender individuals are subjected to these procedures and burdens in order to have a birth certificate that accurately reflects their gender,” he wrote in his decision.
But Moses’ order left the department without a “regulatory mechanism” to process birth certificate changes, the order claimed. A 2017 policy that allowed trans applicants to update their birth certificates without surgery or through the courts had been binned because of the bill.
Emergency orders can only be issued when a situation poses “an existing imminent peril to the public health, safety, or welfare that cannot be averted or remedied by any other administrative act”, the Montana Administrative Procedure Act says.
Democratic lawmakers, health experts and LGBTQ+ campaigners, unconvinced that the order was at all needed, condemned the department.
“While this rule is intended to make the lives of our transgender neighbors harder, it impacts all of us by eroding the rights that let us live our lives free from government overreach,” House minority leader Kim Abbott and Senate minority leader Jill Cohenour said in a Tuesday statement.
“As someone who cares for transgender patients, I don’t understand why our state government is spending so much time, energy and money trying to prevent them from having accurate documentation,” Lauren Wilson, vice president of the Montana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the Montana Press.
“This rule is unfairly singling them out and making it even harder for them to live a public life in Montana.”
ACLU of Montana decried the health department for so openly rebelling against the court.
“The State is willfully refusing to comply, and in doing so is showing their true colours – these laws and regulations are about harming transgender Montanans,” a Tuesday statement said.
This is a new video updating the one I posted earlier about arming teachers. As he says the very teachers you don’t trust with rainbow stickers and to teach the history of racism while you claim they are grooming your kids with LGBTQ+ something … You are now demanding they have guns to handle what armed police can’t. Please watch to see him again shatter the right-wing talking point, again. Hugs
This is from three years ago. He describes all the reasons arming teachers is not going to work. He details all the reasons that it is set up for failure. The video is a great answer to the Republicans that want more guns in schools. Hugs
North Carolina Senate Republicans took a step that could have been expected: They are filing a bill that dictates what teachers can say to young children about sexuality and requires them to disclose confidential conversations they have with students about gender identity and sexuality.
State Sen. Deanna Ballard (R-Watauga), chair of the Senate Education Committee, announced the bill, joined by Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Eden) and Sen. Michael Lee (R-New Hanover).
If Republicans do pass this bill or something like it, there’s a strong possibility it would be vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper, and Republicans don’t have votes by themselves to override. However, this does create a political debate leading up to elections in November.
The new bill’s parental notice section generated concerns among opponents Tuesday that LGBTQ students, afraid of how their parents would react if they find out about their sexual identity, could no longer turn to trusted teachers for guidance.
What if a parent is abusive, state Rep. Allison Dahle, one of the legislature’s few openly LGBTQ members, said after the bill was announced.
“Is the teacher going to be responsible for the child’s beating,” said Dahle, D-Wake. “North Carolina needs to be a safe place for everybody, and this is going to remove that safety net for children.”
Today @DeannaBallardNC will host a press conference to unveil a Parents' Bill of Rights!
It will "enumerate the rights of parents to direct the upbringing, education, healthcare, and mental health of their children."#parentalrights#SchoolChoice#ncleg#ncpol
— I don’t coparent with NEA (@ReopenWcpss) May 24, 2022
Join us at our next Bold & Courageous Event in Banner Elk on Thursday, May 12th with @DeannaBallardNC
Republicans want to hide the fact that sexual orientation is fixed, immutable. If a gay child is not informed that there are others, that can lead to suicide. That has happened. It is documented by news media. I know this because I was on a suicide prevention hotline in D.C. when a young gay teen killed himself because he couldn’t face being gay with parents who hated gays. That is what happens when you hide the fact that being gay is not a choice but is immutable and there are others who are well-adjusted adults and successful. After local Citizens on Patrol public seminars, I picked up a young hitch-hiker years ago and took him to a shelter for homeless teens since he was trying to hire himself out as a rent boy to make a living after his God-fearing parents threw him out of their home and he was on his own. They were “Christians”. Right. Don’t hide the facts. Don’t belittle gays. They are not sick. They are different. Accept that.
Wow, so ‘bold and courageous’ to have started a moral panic which will lead to kids being abused, subjected to conversion torture, and disowned by their families.
Does the “Parent’s Bill of Rights” include anything about a reasonable expectation that the kids won’t have to face down gunmen with military-level hardware designed to mow down hordes of humans in short order? Or is it only to protect them from the horror of hearing about same-sex couples?
“Removing the safety net” has been a key GOP platform plank for decades. Republicans want corpses, and they aren’t picky as to how they get them: children beaten to death by their parents for not being straight and cis is just one way to reach that goal.
Candidates who take part in an insurrection may be barred from holding public office under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, a federal appeals court ruled, overturning a lower court judge’s decision.
The US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals issued the ruling Tuesday in a challenge to former North Carolina Representative Madison Cawthorn’s candidacy for the House of Representatives.
While the ruling is legally binding only in the states that make up the 4th Circuit — Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina — it could influence the outcome of legal challenges to multiple Republican House candidates tagged by critics for participating in events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The decision undermines a key argument that Cawthorn and others — like GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia — have used to defend themselves against the January 6-releated challenges. The groups behind these challenges say they’ll target former President Donald Trump if he runs again in 2024, so Tuesday’s ruling could have far-reaching implications.
“This ruling cements the growing judicial consensus that the 1872 Amnesty Act does not shield the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021 — including Donald Trump — from the consequences of their actions under the Fourteenth Amendment, and provides no basis to block state proceedings seeking to exclude insurrectionists from the ballot,” Free Speech For People, the constitutional advocacy group that challenged Cawthorn and Greene, said in a statement.
Attorneys for Cawthorn argued that since the House of Representatives can grant any insurrectionist amnesty with a two-thirds vote, state officials can’t preemptively take someone off the ballot for activity that may yet be forgiven. Cawthorn’s attorney, James Bopp Jr., said he was “very surprised” that the 4th Circuit “issued an opinion” after the congressman’s primary loss. “The case is moot,” he said.
Praveen Fernandes, vice-president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, which filed an amicus brief, said: “Although Representative Cawthorn just lost his party’s nomination for his seat in Congress, today’s ruling remains an incredibly important one.
“It makes clear that the 1872 Amnesty Act poses no barrier to similar future … challenges of the qualification of candidates to appear on the ballot, thus ensuring that section three of the 14th amendment can continue to serve its purpose as an important mechanism for holding public officials accountable when they violate their oaths of office.”
"The 1872 Amnesty Act does not categorically exempt all future rebels and insurrectionists from the political disabilities that otherwise would be created by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment”
A federal appeals court has made it easier to try to disqualify political candidates for being "insurrectionists," reversing a lower court ruling and ruling against Madison Cawthorn in a case challenging his candidacy based on his alleged support for the Jan. 6 attack.
