Category: Political / Governments / Nations / Countries /

Montana bill would let students misgender classmates

https://apnews.com/article/lgbtq-people-montana-gender-bullying-74af22b3512137ffb8538526edb96572

The republicans are not even trying to hide it anymore; it is about bigotry and being able to bully other openly without any consequences.   It is about installing the right to hurt and harm others into law and preventing anyone from being able to stick up for the bullied persons.   It is about the right to discriminate freely against a marginalized minority which says it is wrong to be that minority so if you are then the rest of us get to hurt you.   That will make those damn trans and gay kids stay hidden, right.   It won’t make their gender identity be the same as their assigned sex nor make gay kids straight, it will only make them too afraid to admit who they are making them hide it as best they can for as long as they can.   It tells gays and trans kids they are bad, evil, need to be hidden away, and that it is good that others hate them.   Damn it we left that thinking long ago.  It is thug thinking.   It is gang thinking.   We suffered that back in the 1950s to 1990s.   Let the past go.  This is not about protecting kids, it is about hurting kids.   It is about bigots wanting to make sure their kids can be bigots.   The one guy says his kids learned gender based on the sex of the cows on their farm.   Talk about being ignorant of what sex and gender are, and also thinking cows and humans are the same in either respect.  They want to set the US society back a century.    

It is time to realize what this really is.   These are the same type of people that want to call black people the “N” word and don’t want their kids punished for calling black kids that at school.    These are the same parents that don’t want those people / kids in the schools / stores / restaurants as white people or white kids.   If you think it is OK to bully trans or gay kids, substitute the word black or jew or even a religion in the place of the word gay or trans.   Now would you think it is OK?   Hugs

1000

Montana schools would not be able to punish students who purposely misgender or deadname their transgender peers under a Republican-backed legislative proposal that opponents argue will increase bullying of children who are already struggling for acceptance.

The proposal, co-sponsored by more than two dozen GOP lawmakers, would declare that it’s not discrimination to use a transgender classmate’s legal name or refer to them by their birth gender. Schools would be prevented from adopting policies to punish students who do so.

It comes amid a wave of legislation this year in Montana and other conservative states seeking to limit or ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. Montana’s Senate passed a ban on gender-affirming medical care or surgery for minors on Wednesday.

But the proposal on misgendering and deadnaming is apparently the only existing legislation of its kind in the country this year, said Olivia Hunt, policy director for the National Center for Transgender Equity.

“This would make Montana unique in enshrining the right to be bigoted toward or the right to bully trans children in the state code,” Hunt said.

The proposal would not apply to teachers, but some states are considering bills that would protect teachers’ rights to refer to students by their birth names and gender.

The main sponsor, Rep. Brandon Ler, said Wednesday during a hearing that his children, who live on a farm and ranch, “have learned from a very young age that cows are cows and bulls are bulls” and it’s not open for interpretation.

“Children should not be forced to call somebody something they’re not,” Ler said.

Opponents agreed that students who accidentally use a wrong pronoun or name should not be punished, but said schools should still be able to respond to purposeful misgendering and deadnaming, perhaps under an anti-bullying policy. Refusing to acknowledge a transgender student’s preferred name and pronouns amounts to bullying, said SK Rossi, testifying on behalf of the Human Rights Campaign.

“The problem with the bill is that it takes away the ability of schools and teachers and administrators to intervene when something becomes cruel, before it becomes physical,” Rossi said.

The issue of punishment for misgendering or deadnaming doesn’t appear to be a problem in Montana, according to Emily Dean, director of advocacy for the Montana School Boards Association. She said she was unaware of any students who had been punished for such actions.

Max Finn, a transgender middle schooler from Missoula, said he faces backlash from fellow students, including having crude remarks made about him and being tripped in the hallway, even though his teachers try to stop it from happening.

“If my teachers can’t or won’t intervene, it gets much worse,” Finn said.

People representing educational organizations, pediatricians, parents of transgender children and students testified against the bill, saying it would lead to unchallenged bullying and harassment as well as anxiety and depression among transgender students.

Layla Riggs told lawmakers about defending friends who were being bullied because they are transgender or gender nonconforming. Someone once threw rocks at her and a nonbinary friend after school, she said.

“School is supposed to be a place where you are accepted and a place where your safety is supposed to be one of the top priorities,” Riggs testified. “With the passage of this bill, even the illusion of safety for transgender and nonbinary students would be gone.”

A survey by The Trevor Project in 2022 found that 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the previous year, but that those who were supported socially or at school reported lower rates.

Jeff Laszloffy with the Montana Family Foundation told lawmakers his group supports the measure because it would avoid students possibly facing civil lawsuits over using the wrong pronoun or name. He was the lone supporter to testify in a hearing that ended without lawmakers voting on the measure.

Richard Schade told lawmakers his 9-year-old nonbinary stepchild is bullied on a near daily basis with little to no intervention from school administrators.

“This demonstrates that the stated purpose of (the bill) is to address a problem that doesn’t exist, and that the real intent is to send a message to trans kids that they deserve to be bullied because of who they are,” he said.

During his testimony against the bill, Montana Pride President Kevin Hamm intentionally misgendered Laszloffy and a male lawmaker who had earlier sought to block opposition arguments that the bill would lead to bullying. Hamm said he wanted to hear “her” reasoning on that.

“Does she feel that misgendering isn’t a bullying tactic?” Hamm asked.

At that point, Rep. Amy Regier, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, interrupted, saying: “Please don’t attack other testimony.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Hamm retorted. “Is it a bullying and an attack? So you do understand what this bill will do. Thank you for proving my point. Don’t enshrine a tool for bullying into the law.”

Florida Schools Pull Books On Prominent Latino Figures

Florida Schools Pull Books On Prominent Latino Figures

The short version for those who do not want the full long text version.   Hugs

NBC News reports:

A book about late Afro-Puerto Rican MLB legend Roberto Clemente can’t be found in the shelves of public school libraries in Florida’s Duval County these days.

“Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates” by Jonah Winter and Raúl Colón — and other books about Latino figures such as the late Afro-Cuban salsa singer Celia Cruz and Justice Sonia Sotomayor — are among the titles that have been “covered or stored and paused for student use” at the Duval County Public Schools District.

In January, 52 certified media specialists for Duval started reviewing about 1.5 million book titles, Sonya Duke-Bolden, a spokesperson with the public schools district told NBC News Friday. Close to 2,800 books have been approved by media specialists so far.

Read the full article.

kevwayan hour ago

Why arent people revolting ?

victorvond0oman hour ago

And the Florida Cubans will continue to vote for the GOP

Max-1 🔫+cult(R)=☠️

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Gustav2an hour ago

Any mention of racism the subjects may have encountered it a red flag to pull the book.

jimbo65 an hour ago

They’re just no stopping this maniac.

Roberto Clemente book removed from Florida public schools pending review over discrimination references

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/roberto-clemente-book-removed-florida-public-schools-rcna70081

 

“His story is his story. He went through racism. It’s something that can’t be changed,” Clemente’s son, Roberto Clemente Jr., told NBC News.
Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1966.
Roberto Clemente, pictured here in 1966, often denounced racism and spoke publicly about his experiences as a Black Latino climbing the baseball ranks during the civil rights movement.Bettmann Archive
 
 
By Nicole Acevedo

A book about late Afro-Puerto Rican MLB legend Roberto Clemente can’t be found in the shelves of public school libraries in Florida’s Duval County these days.

“Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates” by Jonah Winter and Raúl Colón — and other books about Latino figures such as the late Afro-Cuban salsa singer Celia Cruz and Justice Sonia Sotomayor — are among the more than 1 million titles that have been “covered or stored and paused for student use” at the Duval County Public Schools District, according to Chief Academic Officer Paula Renfro.

 

School officials are in the process of determining if such books comply with state laws and can be included in school libraries.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed laws last year that require schools to rely on certified media specialists to approve which books can be integrated into classrooms. Guidance on how that would be implemented was provided to schools in December.

Books must align with state standards such as not teach K-3 students about gender identity and sexual orientation; not teach critical race theory, which examines systemic racism in American society, in public grade schools; and not include references to pornography and discrimination, according to the school district.

In January, 52 certified media specialists for Duval started reviewing about 1.5 million book titles, Sonya Duke-Bolden, a spokesperson with the public schools district told NBC News Friday. Close to 2,800 books have been approved by media specialists so far. Duke-Bolden did not say if more books were reviewed but not approved.

PEN America, a nonprofit group that advocates for free expression in literature, said in December that 176 elementary school books from their Essential Voices collection were among the titles removed from Duval County public school libraries.

The organization said the books removed included some substituted titles and more than 100 deemed to have “content too mature for the grade level for which they were included in that collection.”

Duke-Bolden said that 47 substituted titles, which were swapped in for books in the Essential Voices collection that were unavailable, were sent back. Of the more than 170 books, “106 were deemed to be useful for our reading goals and have been distributed to classrooms” while 26 others remain under review.

“Note that even though a title may appear to be appropriate, we must evaluate each book’s full content for its age-level appropriateness and full compliance with Florida law,” Duke-Bolden added.

Of the books removed from Duval County, more than 30 were by Latino authors and illustrators or centered Latino characters and narratives. Among these were “Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa” by Veronica Chambers and Julie Maren, “Sonia Sotomayor (Women Who Broke the Rules Series)” by Kathleen Krull and Angela Dominguez, and Winter’s Clemente book.

"Robert Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates" by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Raúl Colón.
“Robert Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates” by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Raúl Colón.Atheneum Books for Young Readers via Simon and Schuster

The son of the Pittsburgh Pirates player, Roberto Clemente Jr., told NBC News he owns the book, which was written for children K-3.

“His story is his story. He went through racism. It’s something that can’t be changed,” Clemente Jr. said. “But obviously, for the younger students, if it’s something that they feel is too much for them, they might be able to utilize a different book with the same story, but it’s framed differently for them, for that for that age group.”

Clemente Jr. added that he expects his father’s life story and legacy to empower people of all ages.

LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a Latino civil rights organization based in New York, blasted the school district in Duval for removing the Clemente book over its “references to racism and discrimination.”

 

“Learning about Clemente’s achievements, his pride in his Afro-Boricua identity and his struggles with racism and discrimination would provide needed insight on historical conditions in the U.S., and inspiration for the majority Black and Latino student population in Duval County schools,” Lourdes Rosado, president and general counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF, said in a statement.

“We urge the school district to restore this book and others that shine a light on the experiences of exemplary people in our country who have contributed greatly to our society and culture,” Rosado said. “Our children deserve to understand the full scope of our society’s flaws and strengths.” 

Clemente died in 1972, when his plane crashed off the coast of Puerto Rico as he was delivering relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. He was 38.

His humanitarian efforts are perhaps his greatest legacy in addition to his professional baseball career. Clemente became a posthumous Baseball Hall of Famer, with exactly 3,000 hits, four National League batting titles, 12 Gold Gloves, an MVP award, two World Series championships and 15 All-Star appearances.

Clemente often denounced racism and discrimination in his native Spanish language, and he spoke publicly about his experiences as a Black Latino climbing the baseball ranks during the civil rights movement. He even spoke about political and social issues alongside Martin Luther King Jr.

“The book on Roberto Clemente is pending review,” Duke-Bolden said. She couldn’t immediately share the review status on the books about Cruz and Sotomayor. 

Cruz, known as the Queen of Salsa, was one of the 20th century’s most celebrated Latin music artists. Sotomayor is the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

Clemente Jr. and his family are waiting to see what happens with the book about the baseball great and plan on reaching out to the school district some time next week.

“We need to continue to figure out how to continue that conversation and unifying our cultures and nationalities,” he said.

LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a Latino civil rights organization based in New York, blasted the school district in Duval for removing the Clemente book over its “references to racism and discrimination.”

 

“Learning about Clemente’s achievements, his pride in his Afro-Boricua identity and his struggles with racism and discrimination would provide needed insight on historical conditions in the U.S., and inspiration for the majority Black and Latino student population in Duval County schools,” Lourdes Rosado, president and general counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF, said in a statement.

“We urge the school district to restore this book and others that shine a light on the experiences of exemplary people in our country who have contributed greatly to our society and culture,” Rosado said. “Our children deserve to understand the full scope of our society’s flaws and strengths.” 

Clemente died in 1972, when his plane crashed off the coast of Puerto Rico as he was delivering relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. He was 38.

His humanitarian efforts are perhaps his greatest legacy in addition to his professional baseball career. Clemente became a posthumous Baseball Hall of Famer, with exactly 3,000 hits, four National League batting titles, 12 Gold Gloves, an MVP award, two World Series championships and 15 All-Star appearances.

Clemente often denounced racism and discrimination in his native Spanish language, and he spoke publicly about his experiences as a Black Latino climbing the baseball ranks during the civil rights movement. He even spoke about political and social issues alongside Martin Luther King Jr.

“The book on Roberto Clemente is pending review,” Duke-Bolden said. She couldn’t immediately share the review status on the books about Cruz and Sotomayor. 

Cruz, known as the Queen of Salsa, was one of the 20th century’s most celebrated Latin music artists. Sotomayor is the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

Clemente Jr. and his family are waiting to see what happens with the book about the baseball great and plan on reaching out to the school district some time next week.

“We need to continue to figure out how to continue that conversation and unifying our cultures and nationalities,” he said.

Florida school district pulls children’s book on Roberto Clemente

https://www.axios.com/2023/02/10/florida-school-district-book-roberto-clemente-crt

Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates before the opening game of the National League playoffs in October, 1971.

Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates before the opening game of the National League playoffs, October 1971. Photo: Bettmann Archives/Getty Images

A school district in Florida has removed a children’s book on Latino baseball Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente to see if it complies with a new state law limiting discussions about race, Axios has confirmed.

Why it matters: The pulling of “Roberto Clemente: The Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates” is part of a larger purge of books happening nationally amid laws forcing schools and libraries to remove literature about people of color or with LGBTQ themes.

Details: Duval County Public Schools, which includes Jacksonville, Florida, announced late last month that it was “taking further steps to comply with Florida laws on library books.”

  • Those steps include a “formal review of classroom libraries,” the district said. The 2005 illustrated children’s book on Clemente is one of those under review.
  • The district said state officials trained district staff on how to use a “certified media specialist” to approve books.

Catch up fast: Florida is one of 19 states that have passed laws or used executive orders to limit the teaching of what it calls “divisive concepts” or critical race theory since 2021, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures, the American Instructional Resources Survey and an Axios analysis of recent stories.

Reality check: Critical race theory — which holds that racism is baked into the formation of the nation and ingrained in our legal, financial and education systems — was developed in law schools in the 1970s and 1980s and isn’t really taught in grade school.

State of play: PEN America said the Clemente book is one of 176 pulled by Duval County Public Schools since last year.

  • Others include “Barbed Wire Baseball: How One Man Brought Hope to the Japanese Internment Camps of WWII,” by Marissa Moss and Yuko Shimizu.
  • “Henry Aaron’s Dream,” by Matt Tavares, and “My Two Dads and Me,” by Michael Joosten and Izak Zenou, were also pulled from Duval County Public Schools.

The intrigue: The Clemente book references the racism the Black Puerto Rican player faced in the U.S. — something well documented in his interviews and biographies.

 
  • Duval County Public Schools told WTAE-TV the book is not permanently banned, but it is under review with many others.

What they’re saying: The removal of the Clemente book “is the latest attempt from Florida’s education administrators to score cheap political points at the expense of the education and well-being of Florida’s children,” Lourdes M. Rosado, president and general counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, said in a statement.

  • “Learning about Clemente’s achievements, his pride in his Afro-Boricua identity and his struggles with racism and discrimination would provide needed insight on historical conditions in the U.S.”
  • Rosado said the book is an inspiration for the majority Black and Latino student population in Duval County schools and should be placed back on the shelves.

Don’t forget: Last year’s World Series had no non-Hispanic Black American players for the first time in 72 years, yet games featured Black Latino stars like Clemente.

  • Afro Latinos are redefining America’s pastime even as the nation can’t define them.

What’s next: The National Council for Black Studies, an organization dedicated to advancing Black Studies, will be holding its annual conference March 22-25 at the University of Florida.

  • Scholars in Black Studies will be coming to Florida in solidarity with other scholars in the state facing pressure to limit classroom materials on race.

Rep. Raskin brings the house down with clapback of the year

Trans lawmaker calls out GOP hypocrisy on school sports in moving speech

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/02/trans-lawmaker-calls-out-gop-hypocrisy-on-school-sports-in-moving-speech/

“How many times have any of you here gone to a girls’ basketball game?”
By  
Del. Danica Roem at a 2017 White House protest
Del. Danica Roem at a 2017 White House protestPhoto: Ted Eytan/via Wiki

Out transgender Virginia lawmaker Del. Danica Roem (D) shut down opponents of transgender students participating in school sports by calling out the hypocrisy of conservatives who say they want to protect girls’ sports.

“When we want to deal with the idea of how do we support women athletes, how about we show up to their games?” she said.

Roem was speaking against H.B. 1387, a Republican bill that would ban transgender students from participating in school sports as their authentic selves, effectively banning many of them from participating in school sports. Del. Karen Greenhalgh (R) said the bill is needed to “encourage” cisgender girls to participate in school sports.

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“Similarly gifted and trained males will always have the physical advantage over females, which is the reason we have women’s sports,” she said, defending her bill.

Her rhetoric echoes that of Republicans across the country over the past several years: girls’ school sports need to be saved from transgender girls, and only transgender girls, not from a lack of interest from local communities, sexual predation, and harassment, or bullying girls face for participating in school sports.

Prominent Republican politicians have claimed to have saved girls’ sports, despite never showing any interest in girls’ or women’s sports except when they could attack transgender girls for wanting to participate.

Roem wasn’t having it.

“How about we pay them equally?” Roem said, calling out income inequality between women’s and men’s professional sports.

“How many times have any- any of you here gone to a girls’ basketball game followed by a boys’ basketball game where the girls’ game starts at 5 or 5:30 and the boys’ game starts at 7 or 7:30, and you saw the gym get packed right in the very end of the fourth quarter of the girls’ game because so many people were there excited for the boys’ game, regardless of how competitive, regardless of the skills, regardless of the rankings of the girls’ team?” Roem asked her colleagues.

“If we want to support female athletes, then show up to their games! Fight for equal pay for them! But at the same time, to beat up on trans kids because nine trans kids last year wanted to play sports, we’re now going to affect a policy for more than 1.2 million students?”

Jamie Raskin takes brilliant shot at Marjorie Taylor Greene

Let’s talk about science in Montana….

Missouri House votes against limits on kids carrying guns

https://apnews.com/article/politics-joplin-missouri-st-louis-children-24e0b91f63d83011e1f938c8cb587786

They claim trans kids needing to use the toilet are a threat needing to be addressed at the highest levels of government but kids who cannot even get a license to drive, cannot sign for their own medical care, cannot buy alcohol, have known lack emotional and judgment control at this stage of development / age in their lives can walk around with weapons with mass killing capacity in public with no restrictions.   Tell me what really the indoctrination is, what really is the harm to society.   This is the republican ideology that makes no public safety sense at the same time republicans claim that drag queen reading hours where men dress up in costume to read to children with adults present are a danger to children and society.     WTF!   These republicans want to destroy civil society, and install some kind of dystopian mythical wide west macho idea that never existed.   In the real history, western towns and cities had strict no carry gun laws.  Guns for most people were tools rarely carried.   They were expensive and ammo also expensive and hard to get / store.  Think about it, there was no Amazon or large guns / ammo store nearby to just walk over to and get a few hundred rounds.   I wish these people would learn history and reality and get their heads out of right wing mythology.   Hugs

Missouri’s Republican-led House on Wednesday voted against banning minors from openly carrying firearms on public land without adult supervision.

The proposal to ban children from carrying guns without adult supervision in public failed by a 104-39 vote. Only one Republican voted in support of it.

Democratic Rep. Donna Baringer said police in her district asked for the change to stop “14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St. Louis carrying AR-15s.”

“Now they have been emboldened, and they are walking around with them,” Baringer said. “Until they actually brandish them, and brandish them with intent, our police officers’ hands are handcuffed.”

Missouri lawmakers in 2017 repealed concealed carry requirements in most situations.

The measure was part of an hours-long House debate on the best way to fight crime, particularly in the St. Louis area.

Republican Rep. Lane Roberts —- a former Joplin, Missouri police chief and state public safety director — initially included the restrictions on children possessing guns in a broader crime bill, which the House voted to give initial approval to later Wednesday. But lawmakers on a House committee that Roberts leads stripped the provision on guns last week.

“Every time we talked about the provision related to guns, we knew that that was going to be difficult on our side of the aisle,” Roberts said Wednesday.

 

Republicans decried the effort as an unneeded infringement on gun rights.

“While it may be intuitive that a 14-year-old has no legitimate purpose, it doesn’t actually mean that they’re going to harm someone. We don’t know that yet,” said Rep. Tony Lovasco, a Republican from the St. Louis suburb of O’Fallon. “Generally speaking, we don’t charge people with crimes because we think they’re going to hurt someone.”

Other provisions in the measure would allow the governor to appoint a special prosecutor in counties with high crime rates, a provision targeted at St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner.

Republican lawmakers for years have criticized Gardner, a 47-year-old Democrat first elected in 2016 as St. Louis’ first Black female prosecutor.

She is one of several progressive prosecutors elected in recent years with a focus on creating more fairness in the criminal justice system. But Republican lawmakers say she’s not doing enough to fight crime.

 

Missouri GOP Blocks Ban On Children Openly Carrying

He tried to de-fund Sesame Street for letting a gay actor appear

Want to live in a theocracy?    This is the situation in the US, we have a set of Christian Nationalist aided by traditionalist conservatives that think 1950s was the golden days in society in the US.  This is not just an attempt to roll back the advances in society the last 70 years, changes that are normal if you look at history, this is an attempt to lock all of society to a point in the past with it never changing.   We are at a very dangerous point in history.  Look how this people project their actions on others claiming the LGBTQ+ and their supporters are violent thugs, are brown shirts and SS troopers, are intolerant of others views, all the things these Christian nationalists do to the LGBTQ+ community.  You don’t see the LGBTQ+ removing Christian books or the bible from libraries defunding them for having books with Christian characters, attacking churches or places where bible studies are happening.   The Christians are not the victims here.    Hugs

OT.   I am really trying to post and to make sense of the information.  I had a setback with my pharmacy for the new medication my pain doctor prescribed due to the Florida government’s laws so I had to call them, and it will be three days from when prescribed to when I may be able to get it.  There were other problems. The pain doctor removed one medication to add another stronger one, but that caused a problem with the pharmacy which is under threat from the Florida government on any pain medication.   I hurt so bad right now in back, arms, legs, fingers that I can hardly reason and make this post.   The doctor offered me several different changes of medications including OxyContin and its versions, Vicodin, and the one that scares me the most Fentanyl.   They agree I need more pain relief than I am getting.  They scheduled an appointment next month for an injection into my T6 /T7 vertebrae but there is also a problem with my T8 vertebrae.   Another issue is under Medicare I can only get 4 injections a year in any one area.    Plus another issue is the amount of steroids I can take with my poor bones VS the number of injections I need to relieve the pain.  Also remember the state of Florida legislators think they know more than the trained professions so they restrict the help I can get.    The important thing is my doctors now all agree I am beyond functioning, and they need to go to a higher level to help me.    Also a side note: I got a jury summons.   I showed it to my pain doctor.   She said no way you can do that; they would be calling an ambulance if you tried.   She wrote a letter to the clerk of court and had her office fax it to them.   I also sent an email to the clerk of court with the same.  I got a reply very shortly saying I was permanently removed from jury duty.   Understand I have done jury duty before, and I take it seriously and back then wanted to do it.  I even might say I enjoyed doing it.   But there is no way I can do so now when I cannot sit to read news or even handle my blog that I love.  Hugs

He tried to de-fund Sesame Street for letting a gay actor appear on the show. Now he’s taking on the drag queens running America.
 
By  
State Sen. Jason Rapert
State Sen. Jason RapertPhoto: Screenshot

A staunchly anti-LGBTQ+ Arkansas Republican is warning his constituents about the dangers of drag queens “running this place” and said that Christians have to “take authority” over the government in the U.S.

“We must take authority,” Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert (R) said on his Save the Nation with Jason Rapert broadcast. “God told us to go out there and be fruitful, multiply, fill the Earth, subdue it, and have dominion over everything.”

“Friends, the reason the country is struggling,” he continued, “is because the Christians in America have failed to take authority and now is the time to choose, now is the time to stand.”

“Look, do you think that America is gonna be free with a bunch of drag queens running this place? No!” he said, not mentioning any drag queen by name who is in a position of political power in the federal government. There is only one known former drag queen in Congress, Rep. George Santos (R-NY), and he has promoted staunchly anti-LGBTQ+ political positions.

“If you’re tired of that stuff, it’s time to make a change,” Rapert continued.

“This is a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people. It was created for you to be in charge,” he said, likely referring to his conservative constituents and no one else.

Rapert has a history of anti-LGBTQ+ statements and actions. In 2020, he suggested cutting off funding for PBS because out actor Billy Porter was going to appear on an episode of Sesame Street.

“I can pass a bill to cutoff all funding for the rebroadcast of PBS programming through AETN [Arkansas’s PBS affiliate] and also stop all funding for AETN altogether if necessary,” he wrote on Facebook at the time.

In a separate Facebook post, Rapert claimed to have signed a petition to stop Porter from appearing on Sesame Street, a petition started by Canadian rightwing website Lifesite News that claims to have over 38,000 signatures.

The petition said that Sesame Street was trying “to push drag queens on children,” even though Billy Porter isn’t a drag queen. It claimed that Porter’s appearance on the show would “sexualize children” and cited a statistic about the epidemic of suicide among transgender youth, implying that Sesame Street will turn kids transgender and being transgender leads to suicide.

In 2017, he compared LGBTQ+ people to Nazis.

“The LGBT activists who behave as Nazis are trying to ruin anyone who ‘disagrees’ with them – even grandmothers,” he said on Facebook. “Simply believing in the Bible is offensive to these activists. They can’t stand it if you disagree. They demand full compliance with their diminished morality. They clearly behave just like the ‘brown shirts’ and ‘SS’ troops that Nazis used to destroy Jews and anyone who disagreed with the Nazi ideology.”

“I don’t care what THEY believe, but I refuse to let them intimidate those who disagree with them,” he continued. “Our laws should not give special protections to people who behave this way. It is a sad time in American history.”

That same year, he tried to get the Arkansas Senate to ban marriage equality despite the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges protecting same-sex couples’ right to get married in every state. He claimed that a “silent majority” spoke out against equal rights in the 2016 election and “they’re going to speak again.” His bill failed.

“It is not bigoted to say that marriage is between a man and a woman,” he said at the time.

In 2020, he spoke out against his state’s mask mandate, calling measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic “draconian measures” as originating from “liberal hacks” who are “spreading fear.”

“There is no question that Covid19 is serious and can be very deadly for those with underlying conditions and the elderly,” he wrote in a Facebook post about then-Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s (R) mask mandate. “But the fact is 99% of our nation has not been afflicted and this pandemic is no worse statistically than other severe outbreaks we have endured without draconian measures isolating the healthy and shutting down our entire economy.”

By July 2020, he had been hospitalized for pneumonia after testing positive for COVID-19. He told his supporters that his family was “sincerely grateful for the many prayers of love and support that have been expressed on our behalf.”