House Bill 673, “Clarify Regulations on Adult Entertainment,” would prohibit “adult live entertainment” on private property in the presence of anyone under age 18 and not allow it at all on public property.
“Adult live entertainment” is defined as “a performance featuring topless dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, or male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest.” The first offense would be a misdemeanor and subsequent offenses would be felonies.
“Well, I think it’s about age-appropriate entertainment for kids. I mean, there’s a reason why we don’t have adult entertainment in the schools,” bill sponsor Rep. Jeff Zenger told television station CBS-17.
Read the full article. Republicans have a new supermajority in the North Carolina legislature due to the recent defection of a formerly Democratic state rep.
NC lawmakers run bills to regulate LGBTQ people in schools, sports and entertainment https://t.co/2fFQjiBfAf
— The Fayetteville Observer (@fayobserver) May 15, 2023
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with good ole red-blooded ‘Murcan boys gittin’ them a sight of some nice titties,” said Billy Bob to his sister, who is also his wife.
These people can deny it all they want but kids know both gender and sexuality at a very young age. Kids understand gender from the time they learn of boy or girl, Mr or Mrs / Miss. Gender is not a strange thing in human society, it is ingrained in everything we humans do. Simply think how kids are taught which bathroom to use in public, little kids don’t care until they are forced by adults to use the “proper gendered” bathroom, which forces them to identify their own gender. As for sexuality, kids also understand who they are attracted to long before they are given words to understand it. The idea that kids are somehow clueless to their attraction as they grow is not what medical science or personal experience of people asked shows. Ask yourself when you knew you were attracted to … and you will say well forever. When did you know you were a boy / girl, well I just knew. Well so do trans kids. Also gay / lesbian kids know who they get tingles and attractions to. Plus the idea that kids are not sensual in knowing what feels good with their own bodies is just stupid. How often do you hear of little kids being told they shouldn’t touch themselves in public, because even as little kids it feels good and they don’t know to not do what feels good in front of other people. The problem is some people want to keep society in the 1950s strict gender roles when society and the public has moved beyond that. We have evolved, and that terrifies those that have invested interests in keeping the country in the past. Why because in the past they were in charge, their ideas were taken for granted as being the only correct ideas, their god was not really questioned in society. Think of the history of child abuse in churches, in the time frame these people want you / the country to return to the church leaders doing the abusing were not questioned and kids not believed. Because of the automatic authority of the church. That is what these people want to force us all to return too.
Then we get to the second part of the video. The videos of the Texas Guard putting up razor wire in front of people seeking asylum and trying to enter the country. My gods if you think that this huge country couldn’t find a more humane way to handle people fleeing death and destruction to work for a better life I have to ask what is wrong with you. We have states in this country that are so underpopulated they can not afford to provide for themselves without federal wealth sharing. This country is huge and needs more people willing to be in it supporting all the infrastructure. That is a known fact. Ask what would happen if you let these people come in and establish lives working and paying taxes while being part of the communities they live in? The only reason this push to keep people out at the southern border is completely racism. The white ones convinced that the brown ones are going to take over if they are let in the country, that somehow the white ones will lose all the assumed authority and power they once had. Well guess what, it has already happened and will keep happening. If you are one of those people, the tipping point was reached long ago, and yes the white majority rule is pretty much over and will be soon. The thing is that is not such a scare thing as these white supremacist want to make it. The only difference is whites that don’t want other races will have to accept them, everyone will be equal. That is all, everyone regardless of race will be equal. Everyone’s traditions and celebrations will be give equal time. See the world won’t stop, the destruction won’t happen, just equality and expanded awareness for everyone. Now to the video. Hugs
When I tell people about this they think I am crazy. This is how far modern religious Puritan morality has pushed into the public. We went from times when boys being nude was OK, fun, and pretty normal to now just the idea of young people seeing a nude statue like David of Michelangelo got a Florida principle fired. How ridiculous has this become. Seeing a nude human, even one in a painting or work of art, will destroy a child? Will cause the downfall of a nation? There are states trying to outlaw watching porn for adults because the religious people have to regulate all behavior, even adults private consensual behavior. It is time to stop this march of the moral vice police / the US Christian Taliban. I know I have enjoyed the times in my life I was able to swim nude, in public and private. I think growing up if more boys had been forced to be nude for more than a quick run under the locker shower, they may have been less self-conscious about themselves and their development. I know it surprised me when I went to church boarding school that the male dorm showers were just a large room with many shower heads on the wall but most of the kids except a few were OK with it. In fact me and my friends often planned our mornings to shower together. And it was not a sexual thing, it was the normal start of the day when we first got together. Hugs
A religious person forcing her church doctrines on what is acceptable in society on all students, teachers, and other parents. It is not enough for her child to deny gay kids exist, but to force all kids, even the gay ones, to pretend that no gay people exist. Are we going to let this keep happening? Is everyone OK with driving the country back to civil inequality and denying human rights to appease a religious view of how things should be based on a misinterpreted book written before people understood what germs were? I cannot stand this drive to return to the time when gay kids were scared and in hiding, when there were no books for them to read with gay content, when there were no positive role models, when kids were targeted for abuse if it was discovered they might not be straight. Why are we letting a group of religious conservative bigots drive us to a theocracy with a Christian Taliban in charge? Hugs
Also I want people to understand just how repressively religious these people are. Want to know where else this movie won’t be shown due to the gay story line of a few minutes of just dialog? Disney refrained from showing “Strange World” in the Middle East, China, Indonesia, Turkey, Nigeria, Uganda and other countries because of the LGBTQ storyline. Yes other religious fundamentalist countries and countries that restrict personal freedom with the government ruling what people can do in their private lives with other consenting adults. Hugs
A Florida teacher is under investigation by the state Department of Education after what she believes is a targeted attack by a school board member who took issue with a Disney movie shown in her classroom. At a Hernando County School Board meeting Tuesday, fifth-grade teacher Jenna Barbee alleges school board member Shannon Rodriguez reported her to DOE for showing her students Disney’s 2022 movie “Strange World.” It’s the first Disney movie with an out, gay character.
Barbee, a teacher at Winding Waters K-8, said during public comment the Disney movie tied into her students’ Earth science lesson and did not have sexually inappropriate content. Rodriguez, who was elected to the school board last fall, was endorsed by conservative parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty. In her short tenure, she has argued there is “smut” and “porn” on schools’ library shelves and has asked for books to be removed, according to Suncoast News.
A complaint by a #Florida school board member who belongs to the fascist group Moms for Liberty may lead to a first-year teacher being fired for showing a Disney movie in class. Welcome to what America would be like with #DeSantis as President. https://t.co/FABUjNVXP8
“The word indoctrination is thrown around a lot right now, but it seems that those who are using it are using it as a defense tactic for their own fear-based beliefs without understanding the true meaning of the word,” Barbee said at the lectern.
Florida educators are prohibited from teaching about gender and sexual identity due to the Parental Rights in Education Act, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year. Also known as “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, teachers have expressed anxiety and confusion over the vague wording of the law for fear of losing their teaching licenses or criminal penalties if found in non-compliance.
Opponents of the law say the vague wording unfairly targets books and classroom materials with gay and transgender characters and themes.
Hernando County’s school district confirmed a fifth-grade teacher is being investigated for showing “Strange World,” and that a parent complained to the principal about the movie not being appropriate for students.
Rodriguez, who was elected to the school board last fall, was endorsed by conservative parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty. In her short tenure, she has argued there is “smut” and “porn” on schools’ library shelves and has asked for books to be removed,according to Suncoast News.
She also alleges Rodriguez called her father to tell him about the DOE complaint.
“I’m a first-year teacher. I’ve had to learn so much this year,” she told the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida. “I work with teachers who have taught for 20 years, 30 years, tell me every day it never used to be like this. Times have changed so much and they are so micromanaged, they’re not allowed to teach anymore. They’re basically a caregiver who has to teach the standards. Teachers stay for the children, but because of the laws and the fear of being let go for saying one wrong thing, they can’t connect to their students.”
At the end of the school board meeting, Rodriguez said Barbee broke school policy because she did not get the specific movie approved by school administration and said the teacher is “playing the victim.”
Rodriguez’s daughter is in Barbee’s class.
“It is not a teacher’s job to impose their beliefs upon a child: religious, sexual orientation, gender identity, any of the above. But allowing movies such as this assist teachers in opening a door, and please hear me, they assist teachers in opening the door for conversations that have no place in our classrooms,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez also said she has called DOE about other issues in the district and believes children should not be “a pawn in the crossfire” of liberal political agendas.
“As a leader in this community, I’m not going to stand by and allow this minority to infiltrate our schools,” she said.
Please note again the religious parent / school admits above that she who is a minority on the school board and among the parents and is the only one objecting to the movie, is saying “She is not going to let this minority (meaning gay people or the LGBTQ+) infiltrate our schools”. Think about what she is saying, gay kids existing is an infiltration, that gays in society / public are so offensive to her that she needs to wipe them out. In other words, genocide! Hugs
Disney refrained from showing “Strange World” in the Middle East, China, Indonesia, Turkey, Nigeria, Uganda and other countries because of the LGBTQ storyline.
“In countries where we operate, we seek to share our stories in their original form as we and the artists involved have created them. If we make edits, because of legal or other considerations, they will be as narrow as possible. We will not make an edit where we believe it would impact the storytelling. In that circumstance, we will not distribute the content in that market,” Disney says in its Human Rights Policy, which was updated in 2022.
Hanna believes the investigation began after Brandi Andrews, a board member of the Leon County chapter of Moms for Liberty, sent a letter to the governor calling on the superintendent “to be removed from his position.” The letter was stamped with “LET’S GO BRANDON,” a saying popular among conservatives who use the G-rated term in place of “(Expletive) Joe Biden.”
Andrews included an excerpt from an email, a Facebook post and an op-ed in the Democrat, all written by Hanna in August 2022, as examples of “issues we have with our local school board right here in Leon County.”
In a statement, Andrews told the Democrat her complaint is “one of many.”
“Any assertion that concerns I expressed as a parent should not be presumed as a catalyst for any investigation,” she said.
The movie had no sex. It had a gay person. The prudish homophobes on the right are not worried about children being exposed to porn, they are worried about children being exposed to the fact that gay people exist.
They also think we are evil, so they don’t want to see us treated as normal or equal to them. We must be despised if they are to feel good about themselves.
I find it remarkable that that’s what they believe. There wasn’t a single gay person in my sphere of influence whatsoever as I was growing up. Not one. Thus, the reason it took me to 23 yrs old to fully come out. I had zero exposure to the gay universe. Let me tell you that I made up for lost time…
Those people seem to believe that gay sex is so hot, so rapturous, so absolutely irresistible, that even the thought of it is enough to entice anyone into giving up straight sex immediately. That’s why they are so adamantly against having anyone even mentioning anything that reminds them of what they want but won’t allow themselves to have. The temptation is just too strong and they are just too weak.
Indeed. You’d think that would give them pause, but at least some of them seem to mean it when they say they’d rather have a dead child than a gay one.
One of the first people I met when I was coming out, was an only child of a couple who disowned him when he came out to them. Not only did they disown him, however, but when people would ask how many children they had, they would say that they didn’t have any children.
Conservative Plan to Destroy the Public Education System: 1. Create fake outrage about “horrible” things kids are being taught. 2. Attack teachers and the education system to sow distrust. 3. Get radical conservatives on local school boards to create havok. 4. Siphon off funding for public schools by creating vouchers for private schools. 5. When educated teachers quit, lower standards to allow others without teaching degrees to “fill the gap”.
Mom’s for Liberty is active in my area too. I absolutely despise them! They are an outright fascist group made up of prudes and religious fanatics. They don’t want schools to acknowledge the existence of gay / trans kids and they want to whitewash American history in regards to racism. I think it was in Tennessee where one Mom’s for Liberty member wanted a book on the life of Martin Luther King banned because it was “anti-American”! JFC!
But, according to the article, they are winning. This is the saddest part, so many are supporting them and they’re increasing their control and dominance over others.
It’s because a large section of our population is made up of bigoted idiots. Plus their pleas of “Think of the children” resonates with people with no critical thinking skills.
A point repeatedly made is that the parent / school board member that is on a rampage about the gay kids in the movie who did not even kiss had no problem with all the kissing done by the straight couple in the beginning of the movie. The parent / school board member is entirely about removing all representation of gays in schools at any level. She finds them abhorrent and wants them out of society. Notice this is not about trans which is where this started, it is about pushing a religious message about being gay is shameful and bad, so don’t admit to being gay. They must not be allowed to make another generation of gay kids targets of that hate. Replace gay with Jewish or black and it wouldn’t be accepted, yet. But that is where these haters are going, back to the 1950s with only Christian white straight males being in charge and gender roles strictly enforced. Hugs
Florida teacher probed after showing Disney film in class. Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur discuss on The Young Turks. Watch TYT LIVE on weekdays 6-8 pm ET. http://youtube.com/theyoungturks/live
Read more HERE: https://www.tallahassee.com/story/new… “A Florida teacher is under investigation by the state Department of Education after what she believes is a targeted attack by a school board member who took issue with a Disney movie shown in her classroom.
At a Hernando County School Board meeting Tuesday, fifth-grade teacher Jenna Barbee alleges school board member Shannon Rodriguez reported her to DOE for showing her students Disney’s 2022 movie “Strange World.”
It’s the first Disney movie with an out, gay character.”*
As I keep saying, the anti-trans terfs all have to admit that the major medical organizations say affirming a trans child / person’s gender identity is the best medical practice possible. That includes social transitioning along with mental and medical care continuing as best to meet the needs of the person who is identifying as a different gender than assigned at birth. How in hell do you expect people to look at a baby and know what that baby is going to develop as it’s sense of its own gender as it grows up? Only the growing child can possibly know how they identify. Until all the anti-trans people get the combined medical expertise of the AMA and the American Academy of Pediatrics then accept their guidance of the best medical practices, which again is to affirm the gender identity claimed by the person no matter their age. Hugs
He said the AMA “simply will not stand” for the bans and will use “every avenue available” to oppose them.
Jesse Ehrenfeld the soon-to-be president of the AMAPhoto: YouTube screenshot
Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld is a U.S. Navy combat veteran who will be inaugurated as the American Medical Association’s (AMA) first out gay president on June 13 – and he says the organization “simply will not stand” for legislation targeting abortion and gender-affirming care. He has pledged to use “every avenue available” to oppose such laws.
“We see the attack on reproductive care, reproductive access, and transgender healthcare as a continuum of government overreach into patient-physician decision making,” Ehrenfeld told The Washington Blade. The AMA, whose mission is to advocate “the art and science of medicine [for] the betterment of public health,” represents at least 271,660 members, including physicians and medical students.
“We simply will not stand for the government coming in to interfere with the doctor-patient relationship [by passing bills that] outlaw what we know to be appropriate, evidence-based clinical guidelines-based care,” Ehrenfeld said.
But Ehrenfeld said his inauguration marks an “important moment” in the AMA’s history as it signals increased LGBTQ+ visibility in a field that wasn’t always open to queer professionals or queer patients’ needs. Ehrenfeld and his husband will be marching with an AMA group in Chicago’s Pride parade, a first for the group that seems particularly significant considering the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation being introduced nationwide.
“We have a lot of backseat drivers trying to tell doctors what to do,” Ehrenfeld said of bans on gender-affirming care for minors that have been passed in 18 states and introduced in 13 other states. He said these “backseat drivers” include “insurance companies who put up barriers around prior authorization for getting approval for care and services.”
The AMA has said that gender-affirming care is safe and essential to the overall well-being of trans youth. However, laws that criminalize gender-affirming care — charging doctors with felonies and revoking their medical licenses for rendering such care — cause “moral injury” to physicians, Ehrenfeld added, putting medical professionals in “an untenable choice: provide the care that they know is in the patient’s best interests, or break the law and [potentially] go to jail.”
“That stress is real,” Ehrenfeld said. “There’s not a week that goes by that I don’t hear from a colleague who says I can’t take it anymore.”
Additionally, Ehrenfeld said that the AMA has noticed a drop in healthcare workers applying for jobs in states passing such legislation. The lack of workers could eventually risk the lives of every potential patient in those states, regardless of their feelings on trans care for minors.
Ehrenfeld noted that a lot of his professional work has included improving healthcare access for LGBTQ+ people. He pledged that the AMA will use “every avenue available” to oppose such legislation, including encouraging the National Governors Association to file lawsuits and amicus briefs against bans on gender-affirming care as well as working with other stakeholders to influence state and federal policies in governmental and private sectors.
Ehrenfeld directs a philanthropic organization called Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment and has previously taught at Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine. He has also worked as a consultant for the World Health Organization’s Digital Health Technical Advisory Group and as a special adviser to President Donald Trump’s (R) U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams.
While serving as Adams’ adviser in 2019, he testified to the U.S. House Armed Services Committee against Trump’s ban on trans military members. Ehrenfeld told the committee that he found “no medically valid reason — including a diagnosis of gender dysphoria — to exclude transgender individuals from military service.”
DeSantis signs bill to defund DEI programs at Florida’s public colleges
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law that would bar the state’s colleges and universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and limit how race can be discussed in some courses.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks on a book tour in Des Moines on March 10, 2023. (Rachel Mummey for The Washington Post)
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill into law Monday barring the state’s colleges and universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and limiting how race can be discussed in many courses.
The move comes amid a larger conservative attack on higher education DEI programs, which DeSantis and others say reinforce racial divisions and promote liberal orthodoxy. Supporters of the programs say they are critical to serving the nation’s increasingly diverse student populations.
“If you look at the way this has actually been implemented across the country, DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination,” DeSantis said at a news conference at New College of Florida in Sarasota. “And that has no place in our public institutions. This bill says the whole experiment with DEI is coming to an end in the state of Florida.”
Florida’s new law prohibits public colleges from spending state or federal money on DEI efforts. These programs often assist colleges in increasing student and faculty diversity, which can apply to race and ethnicity, as well as sexual orientation, religion and socioeconomic status.
The law also forbids public colleges from offering general education courses — those that are part of a required curriculum for all college students — that “distort significant historical events,” teach “identity politics,” or are “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, or economic inequities.”
The Florida legislation has been met with backlash at both the state and national level, where higher education experts and First Amendment advocates say the state is trampling on academic freedom. “It’s basically state-mandated censorship, which has no place in a democracy,” Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, said in a recent interview with The Washington Post.
DeSantis said students who want to study “niche subjects,” such as critical race theory, ought to look elsewhere. “Florida’s getting out of that game,” he said. “If you want to do things like gender ideology, go to Berkeley. Go to some of these other places.”
The governor held the signing on the campus of New College of Florida, a public liberal arts college in Sarasota, where the governor recently appointed a crop of conservative trustees. Eliminating New College’s DEI office was among the newly constituted board’s first orders of business.
The event drew protests, whose chants could be heard inside the bill-signing ceremony.
Along with their parents and two health care providers, two trans teens are suing the state of Montana for its recent ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth.
The plaintiffs argue that the law, S.B. 99, violates the state constitution, which guarantees the right to equal protection, the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children, the right to dignity, and the right to seek healthcare.
Her lawsuit to be allowed back in failed right as the legislative session ended. Some of her colleagues were happy to see her.
The lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of the plaintiffs by the ACLU of Montana and Lambda Legal, also argues the unjust nature of the law because it bans gender-affirming care for trans youth but allows cisgender youth access to the same medical care for other reasons.
“The Act is so damaging to the health and well-being of transgender adolescents that some of these adolescents’ families with the resources to do so have taken steps to uproot their entire lives to move out of Montana in light of the Act,” the lawsuit states.
“For many more, however, that devastating option is not available, so these families and youth will have no choice but to remain and endure the harms that the Act inflicts.”
The litigants include 16-year-old trans girl Scarlet, along with her parents Jessica and Ewout van Garderen; 15-year-old trans boy Phoebe, along with his parents Molly and Paul Cross; Dr. Katy Mistretta of Bozeman Creek Family Health; and Dr. Juanita Hodax of Community Medical Center.
“I will never understand why my representatives are working to strip me of my rights and the rights of other transgender kids,” said Phoebe Cross in a statement. “Just living as a trans teenager is difficult enough, the last thing me and my peers need is to have our rights taken away. There were many things I hoped my elected officials would achieve, this regression in human rights is not one of those things. The blatant disrespect for my humanity and existence is deeply unsettling.”
Jessica van Garderen added, “It is mentally and physically painful to feel like you are trapped in the wrong body. Going through puberty for the wrong sex is like having your body betray you on a daily basis. The only treatment we have found to be effective and give our daughter hope again is hormone therapy. The difference we have experienced is night and day and there is no going back. Taking away this crucial medical care is inhumane and a violation of our rights. We will fight this law for our daughter and every other family whose rights are being trampled.”
The legislation was signed in April by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte and will go into effect on October 1. The state became the center of national discourse after the anti-trans Republicans banned trans Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) from the state house floor for speaking out against the bill.
Zephyr accused Republicans of having “blood on your hands” for supporting the bill. They then voted to prevent her from entering the chamber after she raised an inactive microphone toward protestors in the state house gallery who chanted, “Let her speak!” The protestors were later arrested.
Zephyr was forced to vote remotely on bills while sitting on a bench outside the chamber in the state Capitol building. She also filed a lawsuit, but the judge declined to grant her relief from the Republicans’ censure order.
She would remain barred from the state house floor until the legislative session was adjourned. It has since ended, and she made a triumphant return.
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