This bill is specifically aimed at gay and trans people, especially gay and trans kids. In the article on Rep talks about traditional values and we all know what that is code for. A view that society was better in 1950 when white Christian men were in assumed to always be in charge, women were subservient to those white Christian men, black people knew and kept to their place, while the LGBTQ+ were hidden from society never being seen or talked about publicly. These republicans want to enshrine in law the right to discriminate against those they think shouldn’t be in society. They want to have it be legal to show your displeasure / hate by denying people public services that are extended to the people they think are good normal people. If you think this is OK for doctors to deny care to LGBTQ+ people because they don’t like them, substitute black for LGBTQ+ and do you still see it as OK. I worked around doctors and I can tell you many are bigots and racists. Especially now that it costs so much to go to college and medical school new doctors tend to be from families of doctors. It is fast becoming a profession that runs in families while those not wealthy students tend to be come either Phyicians Assistants or go into nursing and become Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner. I have sat at the nurses desk and listened to the most bigoted religious doctors (Catholic doctors seem to have a huge moral superiority chip on their shoulders or at least the ones I worked with did.) talk about their patients / the families of patients that horrified me. I have told the story of a highly religious catholic doctor that refused to recognize or honor the legal paperwork giving a same sex partner authority over his lovers care going to the extent to contact the estranged family to instead follow their wishes. When told by the hospital legal department that he was not allowed to do that and to include the same sex partner the doctor came in, signed himself off the case, and left. Our ICU director had to scramble to find a doctor with the needed credentials to take over care as the patient was in an ICU which needs doctors with certain qualifications. The point was his bigotry and hate for gays meant more to him, was more important to him than the health of the patient, the patient’s wishes, or the patient’s long term same sex relationship. Think what would have happened had this law that they are trying to pass would have let that doctor do? How is that tolerable? Hugs
HB 303, which allows medical providers to decline services based on moral or religious beliefs, cleared a key House vote Monday.
State lawmakers in the House of Representatives gave broad approval Monday to a bill that would allow medical providers, health care facilities and insurers to deny services based on “ethical, moral, or religious beliefs or principles,” signaling the bill’s likely advancement to the Senate this week.
House Bill 303, sponsored by Rep. Amy Regier, R-Kalispell, passed the Republican-majority chamber largely along party lines, with 65 votes in favor and 35 against, after roughly 20 minutes of debate.
Regier portrayed the bill as a “preservation and protection for medical conscience” in the state for practitioners and health care institutions that object to specific “lifestyle and elective procedures” such as physician aid in dying, prescribing marijuana or opioids, abortion procedures and gender-affirming medical care for transgender people.
“To be clear, this bill would not give the right to refuse to serve a person. It would only apply to the narrow circumstances where a nurse or physician cannot conscientiously perform a specific procedure,” Regier said.
A subsection of the bill says it is not meant to conflict with the federal emergency health care access law known as EMTALA as it applies to health care institutions, such as hospitals. But the bill does not provide a holistic exemption for emergency departments and emergency health care providers. When it comes to abortion, for example, the bill would require providers to opt-in to participating in those procedures in writing beforehand.
Similar legislation has had recent success in other states. For instance, a Medical Ethics and Diversity Act was signed into law in South Carolina last spring. The legislation in that state saw support from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative religious advocacy group that is also backing the Montana proposal.
The opposition to South Carolina’s legislation, including from transgender patients and LGBTQ advocacy groups, echoes concerns now surfacing in Montana over HB 303. Medical associations and groups, including the Montana Hospital Association, Montana Primary Care Association, Montana Nurses Association and the Montana Medical Association, testified against the bill during a January committee hearing, saying it would put patients’ care at risk.
During Monday’s debate on the House floor, Democrats reiterated that the bill includes no discrimination protection for patients, and does not guarantee that a patient has a right to access health care even if a specific provider declines to participate in those services.
Rep. Zooey Zephyr, D-Missoula, told fellow lawmakers the bill would mean transgender people like herself could be turned away from medical services they need.
“What is actually going to happen is it will be a denial based on diagnosis. Something like, I am diagnosed with gender dysphoria,” Zephyr said. “And the thing is, that is inherently discriminatory because you cannot pass my diagnosis from who I am. To deny me based on my diagnosis of gender dysphoria is to deny me based on my being a trans woman.”
Republican moderates appeared to try and derail the bill by proposing a strategic amendment during Monday’s floor session.
As written, HB 303 does not apply to a “health care institution or health care payer owned or operated by the state or a political subdivision of the state.” Some Republican representatives showed interest in striking that provision from the bill, an amendment that would have triggered a higher threshold for the bill to pass because of a specific provision of the state constitution. That amendment, proposed by Rep. Tom Welch, R-Dillon, failed in a 39-61 vote.
Republicans who spoke in support of the bill on the floor said they hoped the bill would protect freedom of expression for medical providers, even those they disagree with.
“I think in this increasingly lack of traditional values and conscience world, and oftentimes profit-driven world, that protection needs to be provided for providers and health care workers that do have those values and do have that conscience,” said Rep. Jerry Schilling, R-Circle.
Other Democrats who considered the bill as part of the House Judiciary Committee urged lawmakers to consider the unintended consequences of the bill. Rep. Laura Smith, D-Helena, said she’d heard stories from parents of young children faced with challenging medical circumstances who feared that, had HB 303 been in place, their desires for care would have been trumped by the prerogative or ideology of their providers.
“This is just one of many examples that I receive where medical teams have tried to deny parents’ rights to choose procedures for their children,” Smith said. “If the bill passes, it will take away parental rights, and your constituents’ parental rights, to make these life-and-death procedural and medical decisions for our own children.”
The bill ultimately passed with widespread Republican support and one affirmative vote from Rep. Frank Smith, D-Poplar. Four Republican lawmakers joined Democrats in opposition.
If the bill passes a third, non-debatable vote this week, it will then be transmitted to the Senate and assigned to a committee for a second hearing.
Speaking to Montana Free Press Monday afternoon, Regier said she was pleased by the vote margin.
We are constantly being lied to by people online. These people are not your friends. Do not trust someone just because they claim to belong to your political “team”. The lying has become endemic. By design it has caused us to hate, fear, and fragment.
And on these same republicans that claim that the democrats are stealing elections, so they need to enact strict voting laws that disenfranchise a lot of voters while the right itself is desperately breaking election laws to try to entrench their dying minority into permanent rule. It is important to remember by numbers of people the republican party is a shrinking minority, and their ideas are ever more unpopular with the majority of the country. This is their desperate attempt to push time back to when their ideas were popular and the way the country was. Hugs
These are all articles I wanted to talk about. But right now the center of my spine is on fire, I have an appointment with pain management on the 6th and I will get the report of the MRI and ask to move forward with quality of life. I can’t continue this way. Ron is talking about moving one of my Xboxes to the bedroom so I can rest and still play. Best wishes to everyone. Hugs
Please note several things in play to hide the bigotry. Instead of family values or family friendly talk is instead the songs have vulgarity. Like kids don’t hear or know vulgar talk already? Tell me a middle schooler who doesn’t know all the swear words and I will show you a kid that is homeschooled, has no internet / smart phone, and is parented by mute parents. Parents swear, there are swears on TV, and there are swears between kids at school, and it is everywhere on the internet. But the songs were already changed to be more acceptable. What stopped the play was that two of the parents were gay. They couldn’t admit gay people exist, that must be hidden from kids and not acknowledged in society. That is what this is about, removing any mention of gay people. As I recently reported and have learned this is being driven hard by several hard right religious think tanks trying hard to force red states to adopt a total ban on LGBTQ+ representation in schools via books, rainbow stickers, and any media that even hints at LGBTQ+. It is a desperate well funded attempt to return a more religious morality view before advances in society and the understandings that people are born different from what was know or understood in 1950s. They want to remove the advancements in medical knowledge. Think of everything that has changed since 1950 and these well funded groups want to reverse all of that. Hugs
After months of planning, a local school district abruptly canceled its musical, claiming it was “vulgar.”
In a statement, the Cardinal Local Schools superintendent Jack Cunningham said, “The Cardinal Local School District has decided that its spring musical production will not be ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.’ Its dialogue and song lyrics contain vulgarity and are therefore not suitable for our pre-teen and teenage students in an educational setting.”
Two of the characters in the musical are gay male parents. The district states anyone suggesting discrimination is “mistaken.”
“When we found out it was canceled, everybody was just heartbroken. Honestly, it was terrible. Everyone was just crying,” said Riley Matchinga a senior who was playing a lead role in the musical.
Mandi Matchinga, Riley’s mother and assistant director for the musical, said she was shocked to learn production was halted given it was greenlit early in the school year by the district.
The superintendent stated the musical was not approved by the school board or district administration.
The school board made the decision to cancel the musical. A request for comment was not returned.
A meeting was held earlier this month with the administration where Matchinga said three concerns were brought up by the superintendent, who informed the production of some complaints.
“There were concerns about the language in one of the songs,” said Matchinga. “There was a concern about Jesus appearing in the show and there was a complaint about the fact that two of the parents were gay.”
The district went on to state it wants “student productions to be something that community members of all ages may enjoy without adult supervision.”
Matchinga said $1,700 was spent on the production. She said it’s too late in the school year to gain licensing required to put on another musical because that would involve 10 to 17 weeks of rehearsing.
Her daughter is planning to study musical theater in college and said the purpose of theater is not only to entertain, but to inform.
“Theater is about making you think about things and making you question things and thinking critically,” she said.
Matchinga plans to address the issue at the upcoming school board meeting.
“Now they’re using the word vulgar instead of family-friendly,” said Matchinga. “What is vulgar? What exactly are the issues you have with this show and can we sit and come to some sort of compromise and agreement?”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been featuring anti-vaxxer Dr. Jon Ward at COVID-19 events as he positions himself for a 2024 presidential run. Ward said in a podcast appearance last year that Dr. Anthony “Fauci should face a firing squad” because of his work.
Ward is a Florida dermatologist who, as Politico recently reported, has become “a central figure in DeSantis’ Covid-19 events.” He appeared at a COVID-19 press conference with DeSantis on January 17.
In August 2022, DeSantis appointed Ward to the Northwest Florida State College District Board of Trustees. Ward has linked the death of Lisa Marie Presley to “Pfizer and Moderna” and told parents to lie to schools about their children’s COVID-19 history.
Ward’s views are aligned with DeSantis’ on Covid. The Florida governor has built a national reputation by rejecting Covid-19 mandates such as masking students and vaccinating children. DeSantis’ surgeon general, Joe Ladapo, has also come under fire from the medical community for questioning vaccine safety and warning men against taking the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccine.
Ward’s emergence as a central figure in DeSantis’ Covid-19 events has given rise to concern among many in Florida’s medical community, some members of which think Ward is, at best, misguided and, at worst, a dangerous font of misinformation. He also does not claim to be an expert on public health, a criticism frequently raised by critics who are concerned the governor is amplifying the views of a dermatologist without training in pandemic response.
Why not a proctologist… “Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light,and then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way.”
DeSantis appointee to New College board floats "terminating all contracts for faculty, staff and administration" and rehiring those who "fit in the new financial and business model." He also wants to shakeup leadership & remove Herald-Tribune from meetinghttps://t.co/ttvh3XFBPz
The far-right fascists are setting up an “educational” system that will groom and recruit children into fascism. This will help them continue turning Florida into the first far-right theo-fascist prototype state.
“I move that we remove USA Today and its affiliates from the list of approved media outlets until an apology is received with a commitment from USA Today to adhere to its own policies,”
By “it’s own policies”, he of course means anything but. Because unlike Fox, ‘USA Today’ has no policy on uncritical pandering to Republicans and their talking points.
“I only want professors and staff that will support my radical right-wing ideology and ban any media that does not provide 100% fawning coverage – but I stand for freedom!”
but what about my sincerely held religious beliefs???
“Among them is a proposal to identify “wokeness” as a “set of beliefs” akin to religion. He then wants to identify aspects of wokeness that are “shared values” worth preserving, that are “dogmatic” and should be excluded from curriculum and that are “pledges of fealty” that should be actively fought against.”
He doesn’t quite understand logical follow-though ….
I guess he doesn’t realize that he’s now part of the Florida state government and it is illegal and unconstitutional for him to attempt to punish or suppress speech.
I’m guessing the ultimate goal is to completely close the “New College” and convert it into a government-run seminary. Apparently the separation of church and state is not a thing anymore.
The Christian Nazis have taken over a liberal arts college that the Deathsantis wannabe king hated as it taught respect and compassion for others along with all the other life skills of education. I am so worried that we did not realize how behind the curtain these groups were building up power. Remember the first time he got elected governor Deathsantis barely won, he was almost defeated. But by giving into the hate and discrimination demanded by the minority haters who cannot accept that time has moved on from cavemen days and stoking that hate into action DeathSantis created a large following. He won this last election with a wide margin partly due to the corporate democrats insisting on putting a former republican up against him. Think about it, Democrats don’t want a former republicans who vetoed everything they wanted and the republicans don’t want a republican lite. Those of us in the state knew this would be the result but the national democratic committees claimed they knew better, as they always do and they are always wrong. Notice the first thing this new right wing Christian Nationalist insisted on was opening with a prayer to his god, not anyone else’s god but his Christian god. We are lucky that DeathSantis cannot run again for governor but the state is seriously fucked now as much as other southern states. Yet it was a blue state not this way when I moved here in 1994. Sorry I hurt too much to colorize it. Hugs
A new president, new board chair and new legal counsel all will be up for discussion Tuesday when the New College of Florida board meets, along with the possibility of ending faculty tenure, terminating all employee contracts and rehiring anyone who fits into the school’s “new financial and business model.”
Speir, a Christian school founder appointed by DeSantis to the board, wrote a Substack post over the weekend saying he wants to “Discuss need for new president and possible motion to give Pat Okker title of Interim President.”
The agenda also includes “Election of the Board Chair and Vice Chair” and “General Counsel to Board of Trustees.” Speir appears to be a driving force behind some of these discussions.
Speir and other new board members have criticized the college’s leadership.
Speir clashed with legal counsel David Smolker over his request to open the board meeting with prayer. He said Smolker initially denied the request, but in his latest Substack said that decision was reversed and an opening prayer will be allowed.
Speir writes in his Substack that he wants to “dismiss General Counsel from the Board, NOT the school.” He also makes it clear that he wants to remove board Chair Mary Ruiz.
“My concern is that Chair Ruiz will not resign and/or delay resignation,” he writes. “Thereby halting and/or delaying the necessary clarity that NCF needs as soon as possible.”
New College Professor Amy Reid, director of the school’s gender studies program, urged board members to be more deliberative and not move “rashly” to replace leadership.
“We’ve heard a lot of saber rattling from individuals, but we still haven’t heard from the majority of the board” Reid said. “I encourage the board to find out more about the institution, to really look before they leap when it comes to leadership changes.”
It’s not clear if a majority of board members would back a leadership shakeup at the college.
Mark Bauerlein, one of the board members appointed by DeSantis, told the Herald-Tribune recently that he has “no idea” if he would support Okker’s removal.
“I haven’t seen any records about her, but our phone call the other day was pleasant and informative,” Bauerlein said.
Speir has a long list of motions he plans to make at Tuesday’s board meeting.
Among them is a proposal to identify “wokeness” as a “set of beliefs” akin to religion. He then wants to identify aspects of wokeness that are “shared values” worth preserving, that are “dogmatic” and should be excluded from curriculum and that are “pledges of fealty” that should be actively fought against.
“One such example of a pledge of fealty is the demand that woke pronouns are used,” Speir writes.
Speir also wants to explore ending faculty tenure and “terminating all contracts for faculty, staff and administration and immediately rehiring those faculty, staff and administration who fit in the new financial and business model.” He wants to board to send a letter to “the new counsel” seeking a legal opinion on the feasibility of such a plan.
Another motion Speir plans to introduce would remove some media members from the meeting.
“I move that we remove USA Today and its affiliates from the list of approved media outlets until an apology is received with a commitment from USA Today to adhere to its own policies,” Speir writes, referencing Herald-Tribune parent company Gannett’s flagship newspaper, USA Today.
The Herald-Tribune is part of USA TODAY Network – Florida. Speir is upset about comments made by Herald-Tribune readers.
The Herald-Tribune reached out to Speir for comment Monday morning and has yet to receive a response. When contacted for comment last week, Speir said “I’m still waiting for a formal apology” from the Herald-Tribune and the removal of reader comments.
New College Board of Trustees meeting
The New College of Florida Board of Trustees is meeting from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 31 at Sudakoff Conference Center, 5845 General Dougher Pl Sarasota, FL 34243.
Visit the Herald-Tribune’s website – http://www.heraldtribune.com – for live coverage of the board meeting. A full report on the meeting will be in Thursday’s print newspaper.
I was just reading in the republican interpretation of the don’t say gay laws just the existence of LGBTQ+ characters in books or shows and the acknowledgement that gay people exist is considered “instruction in sexual orientation”. Bill is gay, he dates boys is called instruction in sexual orientation according to the law. Just the mention of a famous person in history being gay is a violation of the don’t say gay laws because the republicans say telling kids that a famous person was gay is instructing them in sexual orientation. How is that reasonable, the teachers are not saying here is how to be gay, here is how to do gay sex, here are the gay bylaws and agenda. It is like saying that the earth is round is instruction in anti-Christian rhetoric. Hugs
Like false election litigation in 2020, the plan is funded by the far-right Thomas More Society.
A newly formed far-right wing group in Michigan is taking a page out of the election-denial playbook with a plan to flood Michigan school boards with false documents akin to the fake electors scheme in 2020, which sought to award made-up electoral votes to Donald Trump and hand him the presidency.
In this case, the goal is to erase all references to LGBTQ+ identity from Michigan public schools.
The scheme, concocted by a new group posing as a state-sponsored education initiative, was first reported by Judd Legum with Popular Information and revolves around a fake “opt-out” form the group plans to distribute to Michigan parents in February.
That paperwork, which organizers have crafted to appear “official”, purports to give parents the option to opt their children out of any instruction, policy, program, event or discussion that references LGBTQ+ identity, from traditional sex education classes and gender-neutral bathrooms to non-heterosexual storylines in novels and proximity to gay Pride flags or rainbow-themed stickers.
The Great Schools Initiative (GSI), founded by three Michiganders in September 2022, seeks to exploit Michigan schools’ sex education class opt-out that gives parents the choice of pulling their kids from traditional sex-ed instruction “without penalty or loss of academic credit.” By law, if parents think their children have not been sufficiently shielded from that instruction, they can embark on an appeals process all the way up to the Michigan Supreme Court.
GSI’s founders hope to fool parents, administrators, school district lawyers, and judges into thinking parents’ complaints based on GSI’s form are the same as those based on the letter and spirit of the actual opt-out policy.
The group’s founders include Nathan Pawl, the CEO of a network security company; attorney Matthew Nelson; and Monica Yatooma, a director at a medical waste company.
GSI is funded by far-right wing advocacy group The Thomas More Society, which itself is financed by a group of mostly secret donors, among them the Leo J Dreiling & Albina Dreiling Charitable Trust, a family foundation that donated $250,000 to The Thomas More Society in 2021.
In a January 19 Zoom meeting and presentation, GSI co-founder Pawl outlined the strategy. The group’s goal was to have “20, 30, 50, or 100 parents per school” start “dropping off the opt-out forms” next month. The uprising will “be too much for them to handle,” and in order to comply with GSI’s opt-out form, which Pawl mistakenly believes school districts in the state would be obligated to do, the only option would be “to transform our schools.”
At a meeting on October 26, held at Mother of God Chaldean Catholic Church in Southfield, MI, The Thomas More Society’s Erick Kaardal said GSI would pursue “asymmetrical lawfare” to overwhelm the public schools.
It’s the same tactic Kaardel and The Thomas More Society tried in 2020 with their support of efforts to overturn the presidential election. Kaardel sued former Vice President Mike Pence, the United States Senate, and dozens of other entities on behalf of a large collection of fringe groups demanding the certified results of the election be thrown out.
State legislatures were encumbered from executing the will of the people by unauthorized state officials, the lawsuit stated, including submitting so-called “alternate slates” of state electors who voted in favor of Donald Trump.
“This wholesale delegation of legislative authority operates contrary to the Constitution by inviting ‘cabal, intrigue and corruption’ rather than operating to prevent the same,” the filing stated without a hint of irony.
Zac Anderson
Scottie's Playtime 