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.
Incumbent Florida Republican Rep. Dan Webster narrowly defeated far-right fascist and self-proclaimed Islamophobe Laura Loomer in the Republican Primary on Tuesday night. Loomer, a loser in more ways than one, refused to concede and instead cried and called her party corrupt. Texas Paul reacts to the far-right GOP’s attacks on our elections.
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.
Arizona Democratic candidate for Governor Katie Hobbs has begun putting out a series of ads showing her opponent radical MAGA Republican candidate Kari Lake’s dangerous positions. In this first digital ad by Hobbs, Kari Lake is exposed saying that women are not equal to me
State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith & his husband Jerick Mediavilla NegronPhoto: Campaign website
Six out, Democratic LGBTQ candidates running for the Florida state legislature all won their primaries this Tuesday. All of them oppose the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
At least 20 states have introduced “Don’t Say Gay” laws this year. The candidates worry that, if left unopposed, Republicans will spread harm queer youth and families nationwide with their newfound brand of queerphobia.
Adam Gentle and state Reps. Carlos Guillermo Smith and Michele Rayner are all running for the State House. Eunic Ortiz and Janelle Perez are running for the State Senate. State Sen. Shevrin Jones won his re-election campaign this week. Because he has no Republican competitor, he will retain his Senate seat.
Jones became the first openly LGBTQ Black person elected to the Florida legislature when he was elected in 2020.
On the campaign trail, he shared how publicly coming out as gay at age 30 caused members to leave the south Florida church where his father preaches. Friends stopped talking to Jones, families began making jokes about him behind his back, and even his own father expressed disappointment in his sexuality, he said.
So when he spoke out against the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law — which forbids discussing LGBTQ issues in kindergarten through third-grade classes — Jones noted that it takes courage for young people to be themselves. He also said that LGBTQ issues aren’t being taught in the aforementioned grades, and that state Republicans only passed the law to rally their voting base.
“It’s discriminatory on the surface,” Jones said in an interview. “The problem is coming when young people are being treated in a manner that they now have to question who they are, knowing that they already come from households who do not support them… I think that’s the dangerous part, because LGBTQ+ youth are four times more likely to commit suicide.”
“I think that this is the time for the LGBTQ+ community to see we’re under attack,” he added. “I don’t care what it is. I don’t care if it’s Black people, I don’t care if it’s Indigenous people, I don’t care if it’s the LGBTQ+ community, because we live amongst each other and I feel that when you come for one, you come for all.”
When Michele Rayner first won her election to the state House in 2020, she became the first openly Black queer woman ever elected in Florida at any level.
“I didn’t run for office just to make history,” she said in a video. “I ran because I wanted to make a difference for people.”
“The way that I show up — I’m a Black, gay woman so I think that inspires a lot of folks,” she added in a May 2022 interview.
While she acknowledges that supporters of “Don’t Say Gay” claim it protects children from age-inappropriate discussions of sex, she said, “I don’t want my child not to be able to say that my moms and I went to Disney World or my moms and I went to the beach.”
Meanwhile, Eunic Ortiz, who is running for a state Senate seat, said the ramifications of “Don’t Say Gay” are detrimental to LGBTQ youth.
“We need to be creating solutions for the issues that everyday folks are actually facing,” she said. “Not playing political theater to try to appease a few wealthy donors in the Republican movement that, frankly, are homophobic and hate the LGBTQ community.”
Her district houses St. Petersburg, a city that has received a perfect score for eight years on Human Rights Campaign’s annual Municipal Equality Index for LGBTQ inclusive.
“We have people in the LGBTQ community living in every single county in the state. They are our neighbors and they are our community leaders…. LGBTQ people are the workers that are making our counties and communities run,” she said. “[Floridians] are tired of seeing them take on this cultural war, instead of addressing real issues,” like the environment or rising rents.
Adam Gentle spoke against the law at a political event in early March. At the event, he began his two-minute speech by announcing, “I’m gay.” He then said that schools are often the only safe spaces where LGBTQ youths feel they can safely discuss their queer identities with others.
“Their ability to talk with trusted teachers and administrators is being ripped away from them,” he said.
Rep. Carlos Smith has used his political office to oppose the law. When he debated against the bill in February, he wore a face mask with the word “gay” printed on it in large letters.
In his remarks, he said the bill was “deeply personal” to him as a queer Latino, especially since the law would prevent teachers from discussing important events, like the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting which mostly harmed other queer Latinos.
“A majority of Floridians oppose this proposal that seeks to censor conversations about LGBTQ people in our schools,” he said.
“This bill goes way beyond the text on the page,” he noted. “It sends a terrible message to our youth, that there is something so wrong, so inappropriate, so dangerous about this topic that we have to censor it from classroom discussion…. To all LGBTQ youth — we see you, you’re loved and your lives are worth fighting for!”
When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) press secretary Christina Pushaw defended the law by calling its opponents pedophilic “groomers,” Smith responded, “Bigoted attacks like this against LGBTQ people are the worst of the worst…. Literally, it’s the oldest trick in the book against LGBTQ people.”
Smith said that DeSantis only signed the law to advance his political ambitions. He worries about DeSantis’ likelihood of running for president in 2024. “My concern is that he is much smarter and much more calculating than Donald Trump ever was,” he said.
Janelle Perez agrees with Smith. She’s a mother of two, married to a woman, and, if elected, she would be the first LGBTQ parent and the first queer Latina or queer woman ever elected to the Senate.
She worries that the law will subject her own daughter to bullying and prevent her from discussing her own family in school. But even worse, she worries what will happen to when DeSantis runs for president.
“When people in Hollywood, and New York, and in California are looking at the things that Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida, what they need to understand is that Florida is Ron DeSantis’s guinea pig,” she said.
“He is going to run for president in 2024,” she continued. “So if you don’t like what’s happening in Florida, and you don’t want this rhetoric to become the national conversation in 2024, then you need to help us stop it, now. Because it’s going to come after you, and the rest of the country.”
Although DeSantis and other supporters of the law say that it protects parents’ rights to control what their kids are exposed to in schools, Perez said it basically erases queer parents from schools and tells their children to feel ashamed of their families.
“LGBTQ families aren’t going anywhere,” Perez told The Washington Post. “We want to just receive the same rights as every other parent.”
“Republicans in Tallahassee have failed our state and I cannot sit idly by as they make us less safe, restrict our rights and hurt our children,” she added.
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Lt. Gov. Mark RobinsonPhoto: Anthony Crider/via Flickr
Photo: Shutterstock
OAN’s Kara McKinney and the Hitler Youth image Photo: Screenshot
State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith & his husband Jerick Mediavilla NegronPhoto: Campaign website
