Note the paragraph that states because the school spying on the kids, those same kids / parents have been visited by law enforcement. One district used the software to learn the student’s sexual orientation and outed the student their parents.
As the post-Roe era underscores the risks of digital surveillance, a new survey shows that teens face increased monitoring from teachers—and police.
PHOTOGRAPH: MASKOT/GETTY IMAGES
THIS IS WHAT high school teachers see when they open GoGuardian, a popular software application used to monitor student activity: The interface is familiar, like the gallery view of a large Zoom call. But instead of seeing teenaged faces in each frame, the teacher sees thumbnail images showing the screens of each student’s laptop. They watch as students’ cursors skim across the lines of a sonnet or the word “chlorofluorocarbon” appears, painstakingly typed into a search bar. If a student is enticed by a distraction—an online game, a stunt video—the teacher can see that too and can remind the student to stay on task via a private message sent through GoGuardian. If this student has veered away from the assignment a few too many times, the teacher can take remote control of the device and zap the tab themselves.
Student-monitoring software has come under renewed scrutiny over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. When students in the US were forced to continue their schooling virtually, many brought home school-issued devices. Baked into these machines was software that can allow teachers to view and control students’ screens, use AI to scan text from student emails and cloud-based documents, and, in severe cases, send alerts of potential violent threats or mental health harms to educators and local law enforcement after school hours.
Now that the majority of American students are finally going back to school in-person, the surveillance software that proliferated during the pandemic will stay on their school-issued devices, where it will continue to watch them. According to a report published today from the Center for Democracy and Technology, 89 percent of teachers have said that their schools will continue using student-monitoring software, up 5 percentage points from last year. At the same time, the overturning of Roe v. Wade has led to new concerns about digital surveillance in states that have made abortion care illegal. Proposals targeting LGBTQ youth, such as the Texas governor’s calls to investigate the families of kids seeking gender-affirming care, raise additional worries about how data collected through school-issued devices might be weaponized in September.
The CDT report also reveals how monitoring software can shrink the distance between classrooms and carceral systems. Forty-four percent of teachers reported that at least one student at their school has been contacted by law enforcement as a result of behaviors flagged by the monitoring software. And 37 percent of teachers who say their school uses activity monitoring outside of regular hours report that such alerts are directed to “a third party focused on public safety” (e.g., local police department, immigration enforcement). “Schools have institutionalized and routinized law enforcement’s access to students’ information,” says Elizabeth Laird, the director of equity in civic technology at the CDT.
US senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey have recently raised concerns about the software’s facilitation of contact with law enforcement, suggesting that the products may also be used to criminalize students who seek reproductive health resources on school-issued devices. The senators have sought responses from four major monitoring companies: GoGuardian, Gaggle, Securly, and Bark for Schools, which together reach thousands of school districts and millions of American students.
Widespread concerns about teen mental health and school violence lend a grim backdrop to the back-to-school season. After the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Congress passed a law that directs $300 million for schools to strengthen security infrastructure. Monitoring companies speak to educators’ fears, often touting their products’ ability to zero in on would-be student attackers. Securly’s website offers educators “AI-powered insight into student activity for email, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive files.” It invites them to “approach student safety from every angle, across every platform, and identify students who may be at risk of harming themselves or others.”
See Me After Class
Before the Roe decision brought more attention to the risks of digital surveillance, lawmakers and privacy advocates were already concerned about student-monitoring software. In March 2022, an investigation led by senators Warren and Markey found that the four aforementioned companies—which sell digital student-monitoring services to K-12 schools—raised “significant privacy and equity concerns.” The investigation pointed out that low-income students (who tend to be disproportionately Black and Hispanic) rely more heavily on school devices and are exposed to more surveillance than affluent students; it also uncovered that schools and companies were often not required to disclose the use and extent of their monitoring to students and parents. In some cases, districts can opt to have a company send alerts directly to law enforcement instead of a school contact.
Students are often aware that their AI hall monitors are imperfect and can be misused. An investigation by The 74 Million found that Gaggle would send students warning emails for harmless content, like profanity in a fiction submission to the school literary magazine. One high school newspaper reported that the district used monitoring software to reveal a student’s sexuality and out the student to their parents. (Today’s CDT report revealed that 13 percent of students knew someone who had been outed as a result of student-monitoring software.) A Texas student newspaper’s editorial board argued that their school’s use of the software might prevent students from seeking mental health support.
Also disquieting are the accounts of monitoring software breaching students’ after-school lives. One associate principal I spoke to for this story says his district would receive “Questionable Content” email alerts from Gaggle about pornographic photos and profanities from students’ text messages. But the students weren’t texting on their school-issued Chromebooks. When administrators investigated, they learned that while teens were home, they would charge their phones by connecting them to their laptops via USB cables. The teens would then proceed to have what they believed to be private conversations via text, in some cases exchanging nude photos with significant others—which the Gaggle software running on the Chromebook could detect.
After this was first reported by Wired, Gaggle said in a statement that it does not scan private texts on charging phones, but that a phone’s photos do get uploaded to a school’s account (and scanned) when the student plugs their phone into a school-issued laptop. The associate principal I spoke to says he advises students not to plug their personal devices into their school-issued laptops.
This pervasive surveillance has always been disconcerting to privacy advocates, but the criminalization of reproductive health care in some states makes those problems more acute. It’s not difficult to envision a student who lives in a state where ending a pregnancy is illegal using a search engine to find out-of-state abortion clinics, or chatting online with a friend about an unplanned pregnancy. From there, teachers and administrators could take it upon themselves to inform the student’s parent or local law enforcement.
So could the monitoring algorithm scan directly for students who type “abortion clinic near me” or “gender-affirming care” and trigger an alert to educators or the police? Paget Hetherington, the vice president of marketing at Gaggle, says that Gaggle’s dictionary of keywords does not scan for words and phrases related to abortion, reproductive health care, or gender-affirming health care. Districts can, to an extent, ask Gaggle to customize and localize which keywords are flagged by the algorithm. When WIRED asked whether a district could request that Gaggle specifically track words related to reproductive or gender-affirming health care, Hetherington replied, “It’s possible that a school district in one of these states could potentially ask us to track some of these words and phrases, and we will say no.”
When reached for comment, GoGuardian directed us to the following statement: “As a company committed to creating safer learning environments for all students, GoGuardian continually evaluates our product frameworks and their implications for student data privacy. We are currently reviewing the letter we received from Senators Warren and Markey and will be providing a response.”
When reached for comment, Bark for Schools initially agreed to speak to us, then went silent. After this story was first published, the company released a statement saying, in part, that its policy is to “immediately and permanently delete data which comes into its possession that contains a student’s reproductive health data or searches for reproductive health information.” Therefore, the company says, it cannot be compelled to turn over such data to law enforcement because “it is not in our possession and therefore not produceable.”
Securly did not respond to requests for comment.
All Monitor
Even if student-monitoring algorithms don’t actively scan for content related to abortion or gender-affirming care, the sensitive student information they’re privy to can still get kids in trouble with police. “It is hardly a stretch to believe that school districts would be compelled to use the information that they collect to ensure enforcement of state law,” says Doug Levin, national director of the K12 Security Information Exchange, a nonprofit focused on protecting schools from emerging cybersecurity risks.
Schools can and do share student data with law enforcement. In 2020, The Boston Globereported that information about Boston Public School students was shared on over 100 occasions with an intelligence group based in the city’s police department, exposing the records of the district’s undocumented students and putting those students at greater risk of deportation.
When it comes to safeguarding the privacy of students’ web searches and communications, Levin says current federal protections are insufficient. The primary federal law governing the type and amount of student data that companies can slurp up is the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. While FERPA has been updated a handful of times since it passed in 1974, Levin says it hasn’t kept pace with the technology that shapes reality for schools and students in 2022. The current national privacy bill in Congress (which might, in other respects, actually be good) won’t do anything for most students either, as it excludes public institutions such as public schools and vendors that handle student data.
For teachers, the value of remote monitoring can be significant. Stacy Recker, a high school social studies teacher in the Cincinnati area, says GoGuardian was “invaluable” during the pandemic. She used the software to provide remote support for students who struggled with the technical demands of remote learning. Now that her students have returned to the classroom, she continues to use GoGuardian to help her kids stay off YouTube and focus on a lesson on W.E.B. DuBois. At the time of WIRED’s interview, she was not aware of the alerting system that claims to detect a student’s risk of self-harm or harm to others, a service GoGuardian offers as a separate product.
Educators are shouldering the unprecedented responsibility of helping students recover from two extremely disruptive years while providing mental health support in the wake of campus tragedies. The monitoring companies’ websites share stories of their products flagging students’ expressions of suicidal ideation, with testimonies from teachers who credit the software with helping them intervene in the nick of time.
Especially after school shootings, educators are understandably fearful. But the evidence that monitoring software actually helps prevent violence is scant. Privacy advocates would also argue that forcing schools to weigh surveillance against safety perpetuates a false choice. “Surveillance always comes with inherent forms of abuse,” says Evan Greer, the director of the nonprofit Fight for the Future. “There are other ways to support and protect kids that don’t.”
Some educators would agree. When the Columbine shooting shook American schools in 1999, Lee Ann Wentzel was an assistant principal at Ridley Public Schools in Pennsylvania. She remembers how her school scrambled to come up with new safety protocols, like issuing ID badges. When she became superintendent in 2010, Wentzel helped design a rigorous student privacy rubric against which her district could measure all software they would be using with students. The rubric included items like whether the student’s data was disposed of and whether it was shared with other parties. Her district does not use GoGuardian, Gaggle, Securly, or Bark for Schools.
She’s wary of the promises student-monitoring companies make. “Those systems provide A) a false sense of security, and B) it kills the curiosity that you want to inspire in learning,” she says. “If you’re going to rely on a technology system to tell you a kid’s unhappy, that’s concerning to me because you’re not developing relationships with kids who are in front of you.”
As to the companies’ claims about bolstering safety and anticipating school violence, she says, “There’s no single answer to these issues. Anyone that promises, ‘We’re gonna be able to predict that sort of thing’—No. You’re not.”
Temperatures in Longyearbyen, Norway above the Arctic Circle hit a new record above 70 degrees Fahrenheit in July 2020. The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the planet as a whole since 1979, a new study finds.
The Arctic is heating up nearly four times faster than the Earth as a whole, according to new research. The findings are a reminder that the people, plants and animals in polar regions are experiencing rapid, and disastrous, climate change.
Scientists previously estimated that the Arctic is heating up about twice as fast as the globe overall. The new study finds that is a significant underestimate of recent warming. In the last 43 years, the region has warmed 3.8 times faster than the planet as a whole, the authors find.
The study focuses on the period between 1979, when reliable satellite measurements of global temperatures began, and 2021.
“The Arctic is more sensitive to global warming than previously thought,” says Mika Rantanen of the Finnish Meteorological Institute, who is one of the authors of the study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
There have been hints in recent years that the Arctic is heating up even more quickly than computer models predicted. Heat waves in the far North have driven wildfires and jaw-dropping ice melt in the circumpolar region that includes Alaska, Arctic Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia and Siberia.
“This will probably be a bit of a surprise, but also kind of extra motivation perhaps,” says Richard Davy, a climate scientist at Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Norway, who was not involved in the new study. “Things are moving faster than we could have expected from the model projections.”
There are many reasons why the Arctic is heating up more quickly than other parts of the Earth. Changes in the amount of air pollution coming from Europe and natural multi-decade climate variations likely play a role. But human-caused global warming is the underlying reason that the Arctic, and the planet as a whole, are heating up.
Loss of sea ice is one of the clearest drivers of Arctic warming. The Arctic Circle is mostly ocean, which used to be frozen for most or all of the year. But permanent sea ice is steadily shrinking, and seasonal ice is melting earlier in the year and re-forming later.
That means more open water. But while ice is bright and reflects heat from the sun, water is darker and absorbs it. That heat helps melt more ice, which means more water to trap more heat – the loop feeds on itself, accelerating warming in the Arctic.
“That’s why the temperature trends are the highest [in] those areas where the sea ice has declined most,” explains Rantanen. There are hotspots in the Bering Sea over Northern Europe and Siberia, which are heating up about seven times faster than the global average, the study estimates.
Rapid Arctic warming affects people living far from the Arctic circle. For example, there is evidence that weather patterns are shifting across the U.S. and Europe as sea ice melts, and many marine species migrate between the tropics and the Arctic each year. “What happens in the Arctic doesn’t just stay in the Arctic,” says Davy.
The new research also finds that the advanced computer models that scientists use to understand how the global climate is changing now, and will change in the future, struggle to capture the relative speed of Arctic warming. That suggests that future models may need to be adjusted to better capture the realities of global warming in polar regions, although this study did not tease apart what exactly is missing from current models.
“The paper’s finding that climate models tend to underestimate the warming ratio [between the Arctic and the Earth as a whole] is really interesting,” says Kyle Armour, a climate scientist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the new study.
Previous studies have found that computer models actually do a good job estimating how much the Arctic has heated up, but that they tend to overestimate how much hotter the whole planet is, Armour explains. That means the models’ comparison between Arctic warming and overall warming ends up being incorrect.
“We have more work to do to figure out the source of this model bias,” says Armour. And that work is increasingly important, because world leaders use climate models to understand what the future holds and how to avoid even more catastrophic warming.
Crops, power plants, barge traffic, industry and fish populations devastated by parched waterways
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Drone footage reveals impact of climate crisis on Europe’s rivers – video
In places, the Loire can now be crossed on foot; France’s longest river has never flowed so slowly. The Rhine is fast becoming impassable to barge traffic. In Italy, the Po is 2 metres lower than normal, crippling crops. Serbia is dredging the Danube.
Across Europe, drought is reducing once-mighty rivers to trickles, with potentially dramatic consequences for industry, freight, energy and food production – just as supply shortages and price rises due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine bite.
Driven by climate breakdown, an unusually dry winter and spring followed by record-breaking summer temperatures and repeated heatwaves have left Europe’s essential waterways under-replenished and, increasingly, overheated.
With no significant rainfall recorded for almost two months across western, central and southern Europe and none forecast in the near future, meteorologists say the drought could become the continent’s worst in more than 500 years.
“We haven’t analysed fully this year’s event because it is still ongoing,” said Andrea Toreti of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. “There were no other events in the past 500 [years] similar to the drought of 2018. But this year, I think, is worse.”
He said there was “a very high risk of dry conditions” continuing over the next three months, adding that without effective mitigation drought intensity and frequency would “increase dramatically over Europe, both in the north and in the south”.
Germany’s Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) said the level of the Rhine, whose waters are used for freight transport, irrigation, manufacturing, power generation and drinking, will continue dropping until at least the beginning of next week.
On Friday the water at the critical Kaub marker 50km downstream from Mainz – which measures navigability, rather than the water depth – fell below 40cm, the level at which many shipping firms consider it is no longer economical for barges to operate. It could fall to nearer 30cm over the next few days, the BfG has said.
Many barges, which carry coal for power plants and vital raw materials for industrial giants such as steelmaker Thyssen and chemical giant BASF, are already operating at about 25% capacity to reduce their draft, raising shipping costs up to fivefold.
A vital part of northwest Europe’s economy for centuries, the 760 miles (1,233km) of the Rhine flow from Switzerland through Germany’s industrial heartland before reaching the North Sea at the megaport of Rotterdam.
A total halt in Rhine barge traffic would hit Germany’s – and Europe’s – economy hard: experts have calculated that a six-month suspension in 2018 cost around €5bn (£4.2bn), with low water levels forecast to cost Germany 0.2 points of economic growth this year.
While the EU has said boosting waterborne freight by 25% is one of the bloc’s green transition priorities, Germany is now working to divert it to rail and road – although between 40 and 100 trucks are needed to replace a standard barge load.
France’s rivers might not be such key freight arteries, but they do serve to cool the nuclear plants that produce 70% of the country’s electricity. As prices hit all-time highs, power giant EDF has been forced to reduce output because of the drought.
Strict rules regulate how far nuclear plants can raise river temperatures when they discharge cooling water – and if record low water levels and high air temperatures mean the river is already overheated, they have no option but to cut output. With Europe’s looming energy crisis mounting and the Garonne, Rhône and Loire rivers already too warm to allow cooling water to be discharged, the French nuclear regulator last week allowed five plants to temporarily break the rules.
Quiet flows the Po: the life and slow death of Italy’s longest river
Read more
In Italy, the flow of the parched Po, Italy’s longest river, has fallen to one-tenth of its usual rate, and water levels are 2 metres below normal. With no sustained rainfall in the region since November, corn and risotto rice production have been hard hit.
The Po valley accounts for between 30% and 40% of Italy’s agricultural production, but rice growers in particular have warned that up to 60% of their crop may be lost as paddy fields dry out and are spoiled by seawater sucked in by the low river level.
In the protected wetlands of the river’s delta, near Venice, its high temperature and sluggish flow have reduced the water’s oxygen content to the extent that an estimated 30% of clams growing in the lagoon have already been killed off.
Low river levels and high water temperatures can prove fatal to many species. In Bavaria, the Danube reached 25C last week and could hit 26.5C by mid-month, meaning its oxygen content would fall below six parts per million – fatal for trout.
Freight on the 2,850km of the Danube has also been heavily disrupted, prompting authorities in Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria to start dredging deeper channels while barges carrying mainly fuel for the power generators wait to advance.
Even Norway, which relies on hydropower for about 90% of its electricity generation, has said the unusually low levels of its reservoirs may ultimately oblige it to limit power exports.
Now for some good trans news. I hope more countries follow along with these steps. Being trans gender is not a crime nor a mental illness. It is an inborn difference between the assigned gender at birth based on genital inspection and gender identity of the individual. Hugs
A trans right protest. (Hesther Ng/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Germany is expected to introduce a bill allowing trans people to request a legal name and gender change without having to undergo surgery, hormone therapy or a psychological consultation.
The Self-Determination Act, which was first presented on 30 June, would allow trans adults – and minors aged 14 and older with permission from their parents or guardians – to change their gender and first name once a year, every year.
Trans and non-binary people could change their name and gender at a registry office, without any medical reports or a court order.
The bill states a fine can be given if a person’s gender or name change is disclosed without their permission.
Family minister Lisa Paus said: “The Self-Determination Act will improve the lives of transgender people and recognise gender diversity.
“In many areas, society is further ahead of legislation. As a government, we have decided to create a legal framework for an open, diverse and modern society.”
🇩🇪 BREAKING NEWS: In Germany, new Chancellor @OlafScholz has reached a coalition deal.
The upcoming bill is part of sweeping reforms of LGBTQ+ rights in Germany, with other proposals including recording the levels of related hate crimes and scrapping restrictions on blood donation for men who have sex with men.
The Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz of the centre-left Social Democratic Party, and his coalition with the Green Party and Free Democrats, revealed reforms in November 2021.
According to Der Tagesspiegel, other reforms for health insurance covering transition-related medical care in full are all being discussed.
Perhaps most ground-breaking of all is the proposal to compensate trans and intersex people physically harmed by previous legislation. For example, through forced sterilisation or unnecessary surgeries.
Before 2011, trans people in Germany were forced to undergo mandatory sterilisation in order to receive legal gender recognition.
Sweden became the first country in the world to compensate trans people for forced sterilisation, in 2018.
Julia Monro, of the German Society for Transidentity and Intersexuality, told Der Tagesspiegel: “There has never been such progressive projects for the rights of queer people in a coalition agreement.
“This is a milestone and the queer community is cheering.”
Rather than raising wages, stopping personal attacks on teachers and their families, and feeding hungry kids, or even putting more money into the school systems, instead let’s just removed all teaching standards by hiring any warm body preferably from the most conservative sectors we can find. This follows the attacks on the education curriculums that are created by well trained highly educated people that have now been trashed in red states by maga republican office holders supported by the maga cult base. Sickening. The open destruction of public education and the institution of a Christian maga conservative lie taught to kids so they have no idea of the reality of the country, its history, or of their rights. Remember what DeathSantis and most republicans think schools are, daycare for kids so the parents are free to go earn profit for the employers! That was why DeathSantis insisted that schools stay open so the parents could go back to work, and the state could go back to normal. So they state could get tax dollars and take in tourist revenue. This has nothing about the full education and needs of students, the students are there to be warehoused and indoctrinated while their parents’ slave to make the profit of the business owners. Hugs
Gov. Ron DeSantis is rolling out new proposals intended to bring teachers to Florida, with shortages affecting districts throughout the state. One such proposal may take first responders, including former police officers, firefighters and EMTs, from those high-pressure environments and move them to K-12 classrooms.
DeSantis said his proposed Governor’s Recruitment Program was “focusing on our heroes,” seeking to bring former first responders in in the way that former members of the military are now eligible for hire.
“We will waive the exam fees for the state teachers certification,” DeSantis vowed, floating a $4,000 bonus for all recruits and an additional $1,000 incentive for those teachers who are addressing “acute shortages” in the classroom.
Last week DeSantis declared that he was also seeking to hire enlisted military veterans because, he claims, they’d be better teachers than any of the highly-educated but “woke” teachers now heading for the hills in droves due to his fascist policies.
.@GovRonDeSantis wants former cops and other first responders in classrooms to address Florida teacher shortage
OAN host praising Desantis for hiring military vets and spouses without bachelors degrees as teachers: “I love this. Get rid of all these communist groomers who are responsible for indoctrinating our children. Replace them w/men & women who actually respect and honor our nation.” pic.twitter.com/epyk1UbmFv
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) defends decision to address Florida’s teacher shortage by allowing veterans to teach in classrooms without traditional credentials:
“The people that serve our country are not just some warm body, they’re people that have a lot to offer.” pic.twitter.com/yOBDUsdvpg
I have been a teacher for 22 years, and this is the worst educational idea I’ve ever encountered. During the pandemic, Ron DeSantis has shown absolutely no support at all for Florida teachers. Rather than pay us a fair wage, DeSantis demeans the profession of teaching. https://t.co/M0KL4rrxYW
Destruction of education. Destruction of any standards. Disrespect for professional teachers and their qualifications. Another example of US America’s anti-intellectual bias. And Trump/Desantis are both products to the macho-culture which despises learning. education and real qualifications. Shame on Desantis. Shame on any one who takes a teaching job unqualified to do so.
This post is for all those who claim homosexuality is not natural. Same sex relationships / sex in the animal kingdom is very well documented. Which means that the bigots must now admit that OK it is inborn and happens in some people but god meant you cannot act on it. Yet his other animal creations are allowed to do so? Why would he be OK with them doing that but not the human animal? Plus notice that the gays are always loving enough to accept and care for those kids that the straights want to ignore or throw away. Hugs
Pink-feathered fathers Hudson and Blaze were chosen by zoo keeps to take responsibility for hatching an egg.
An abandoned baby flamingo has found new life with a couple of longtime flamingo dads.
At ZSL Whipsnade Zoo, northwest of London, pink-feathered fathers Hudson and Blaze were chosen by zoo keeps to take responsibility for hatching an egg abandoned by the soon-to-be chick’s bio parents.
The American flamingo egg (Phoenicopterus ruber) was popped in an incubator while the bird team at the zoo, the UK’s largest, searched for adoptive parents.
They didn’t have to look far.
Team leader Tim Savage said: “Flamingos usually work together, as a monogamous pair, to care for their eggs and subsequent chicks. Hudson and Blaze were the clear choices for the incubated egg, as they have always proved to be ideal parents.”
Among the zoo’s whole “flamboyance”, or group of flamingos, the same-sex couple was known by staff for taking exceptional care of their shared bird crib. After the egg was handed over, the pair sat tight until it hatched.
“After the chick hatched in their nest, they sat with it for two weeks, keeping it warm and protecting it from other flamingos, who often squabble and shove around different nest sites,” Savage said.
🦩 Heart-warming news as a baby flamingo is being successfully raised by two fathers at @ZSLWhipsnadeZoo, after its biological parents vacated their nest.
As parents, male flamingos share some of the same traits found in females, making a same-sex upbringing a natural choice. The bright red “crop milk” that sustains chicks after hatching is produced by both males and females of the species.
“The same hormone that regulates milk production in mammals, regulates the production of crop milk,” said Savage. “It’s stimulated by the mother or father’s experience of sitting on an egg and watching the chick hatch.”
“The milk is made in the linings of their digestive tract and contains fat, protein and blood cells. You can often spot the new parents in a group because they give so much of their own pigment to their chicks that they almost turn white!”
Same-sex flamingo pairs have been observed at the Zoo before, as have thruples, with a mix of male and female birds in one nest. Penguins are also known to form same-sex pairings during the breeding season.
The dad couple’s adopted kiddo, still covered in a downy coat of grey feathers, is out of the nest, but they’re keeping a pair of pink birds’ eyes on it.
As Texas becomes a hotbed of anti-LGBTQ laws targeting transgender youth and their families, Bob McCranie, a gay realtor in Dallas, has launched Flee Texas, a website that helps families find homes in more accepting states.
“As LGBTQIA+ citizens of Texas, many of us feel at risk,” the website says. “If you feel the need to leave the jurisdiction of Texas, let us help you sell your property here and connect you with an LGBTQIA or ally agent in a better location of your choice.”
The website helps poeple sell their homes and connects them with LGBTQ and supportive realtors in other states.
McCranie, the founder of Texas Pride Realty, has been a resident of Texas since 1987. Since then, he said he has seen the state “transform into a juggernaut of right-wing conservatism,” particularly noting its recent crusade to prosecute the families of transgender children who get access to gender-affirming medical care for “child abuse.” McCranie said he knows of many queer Texans who have since moved to blue states and even Mexico to escape the state’s ultra-conservative politics.
While some people have accused him of capitalizing on the state’s anti-LGBTQ climate to make money, he said that it’s not about that. He pointed to realtors in other anti-LGBTQ red states who have started offering similar relocation services.
“A lot of people don’t remember what it’s like to be an illegal person,” McCranie said. “Families with trans kids need to get out of this jurisdiction now.”
“Mothers across Texas are so mad at Greg Abbott and the GOP’s policies, that every single time he opens up his mouth, he alienates a new group of parents,” Mothers Against Greg Abbott founder Nancy Thompson told Newsweek.
The state Republican Party’s 2022 platform refers to LGBTQ people as “groomers” (pedophiles) and supports so-called conversion therapy, a discredited form of psychological torture that purports to change the sexual orientations and gender identities of queer people. Some conservative lawyers have also filed lawsuits that would allow government officials to deny same-sex marriage certificates and healthcare insurance providers to stop covering PrEP and contraceptives.
“What is happening right now in Texas isn’t even Republican… it’s the extremes of the party,” Thompson said. “They’re trying to totally gain control over our personal rights and freedoms and the safety that we need in Texas for our families to be able to thrive.”
The maga cult thugs like to pretend they represent the majority of the country and local communities. They don’t. Far more people are tolerant and accepting than are against the LGBTQ+. Notice the haters prayed for a safe place for children as if even being in a room where there were books with LGBTQ+ characters was harmful somehow. Far more parents wanted masks in school than the maga brownshirt thugs who attacked school boards at their meetings. But the maga cult thugs use threats and intimidation to get their way. So much for democracy. Hugs
Conservatives defunded their local library because it carried several LGBTQ books. People from all over the world are now picking up the slack.
A library that lost most of its funding in a ballot measure earlier this month because it refused to remove LGBTQ books has managed to raise over $100,000.
Voters in Jameson Township, Michigan voted earlier this month to end the property tax that funds the local Patmos Library, gutting its $245,000 yearly budget. The move came after months of conflict between extremist residents who wanted the library to remove books with references to same-sex love and the library, which refused to do so.
A group called Jamestown Conservatives started to campaign against the library around Memorial Day, saying that its Pride Month display “promoted the LGBTQ ideology.”
“Pray that we can make changes and make the Patmos Library a safe and neutral place for our children,” one of the group’s flyers said.
“50% Millage INCREASE to GROOM our kids? Vote NO on Library!” one sign that was directly across the street from the library said, using the word “millage” to refer to the property tax, in the days leading up to the vote.
Without any funding, the Patmos Library was expected to deplete its reserves and run out of money next year. But two days after the vote, resident Jesse Dillman, set up a GoFundMe for the library that has generated $133,332 so far.
“I am very passionate about this, and I have people that are behind me to do this,” the father of two told NBC News. “I think I have to do it now, because the iron is hot. If this is going to happen, it’s going to happen now.”
Donors cited the need for LGBTQ books in libraries and their support for libraries in general in the comments.
“Australian citizen here, proud to be helping gay kids in small-town western Michigan read books that actually help them,” one donor wrote. “Keep up the good work, and be proud of whomever and whatever you are.”
“As a former Michigander… I can’t stomach seeing a library defunded because they dared to have LGBTQ books on their shelves,” wrote another. “I wish those resources had been available to me when I was a child. Shameful that so much hatred still exists today.”
“I can’t imagine that it was easy to come to work in the morning driving past all of the ‘Vote No to the Library’ signs,” a donor wrote. “But it never seemed to deter your spirits! We’d walk our daughter down to Patmos and we’ve always felt comfortable and welcomed.”
The controversy began earlier in the year when a parent complained about Gender Queer: A Memoir, Maia Kobabe’s graphic novel about coming to terms with eir identity as nonbinary and asexual. The book was in the adult section, but the parent thought that it shouldn’t be in the library at all.
This led to dozens of residents attending library board meetings in the spring, demanding Gender Queer and other books be pulled from the shelves entirely. Some of the other books include Spinning and Kiss Number 8. Both books discuss teen girls who have feelings for other girls.
Library officials said that the library has about 90 books with LGBTQ themes in its 67,000 book collection.
The library agreed to move Gender Queer behind the counter so that people would have to ask a librarian for it if they wanted to read it, but it wasn’t enough. The complaints turned into alleged harassment, and library Director Amber McLain resigned.
“I had to change my name on Facebook for a time to prevent messages that were starting to come in,” McLain said. “I never read any of them fully, but it was the typical fare — that I’m evil, that I’m indoctrinating kids. In March, a woman came into the library filming on her cell phone. She said she was looking for ‘that pedophile librarian’ and ‘the freak with the pink hair.’”
McLain was replaced by interim director Matthew Lawrence, who resigned soon after.
“I love my country, and I believe what is happening is going against the First Amendment,” Lawrence said of the defund movement. “The people who need the library the most can’t vote because they are children.”
Bizarrely, many of the people who voted to cut most of the funding to the library said they don’t believe it should close. Amanda Ensing, who helped organize opposition to the library saying that “it’s not a political issue, it’s a Biblical issue,” even said that she wanted the vote to be a “wake up call” to the library to get rid of the few LGBTQ books that it has.
“A wake-up call to what? To take LGBTQ books off the shelf and then they will give us money? What do you call that? Ransom?” library board director Walton said. “We stand behind the fact that our community is made up of a very diverse group of individuals, and we as a library cater to the diversity of our community.”
Again let me go over the facts for those that have the mistaken idea that this is happening. Boys know their gender and their sexual orientation in their preteen middle school years clearly. Teen boys know their gender and sexual orientation, ever hear the phrase “girl crazy” and teen boys trying desperately to get a girl to have sex with them. Their hormones are on over drive. Now also remember kids are desperate to fit into the majority, and the majority are straight cis kids. Trans, gay, and lesbian are really the minority. One that is frequently the victim of bullying, malicious or vicious attacks by the bigot straight cis kids. Yes more tolerance in some schools / places were happening but it is not roses and sunshine to be a kids who is different from others. It is not fun to be the odd one out. Why do you think it is so important for schools to push a message of tolerance and acceptance, to have supportive groups like the gay / straight alliances. But in many red states that is all gone now.
Now take that situation and tell a boy that he must dress as a girl, live as a girl, go by a girl’s name, wear his hair as a girl, act as a girl does, use female pronouns all the time. Not just for a day but a whole school year. Tell him he will have to struggle to get to the bathroom and will often be screamed at by adults or other kids when in public if he uses a public women’s toilet. Tell him that he will be forced to change his clothes in a separate bathroom that may be a long way from the locker rooms or in the coach’s office, then dressed as a girl do girls’ PE. That boy will freak. He will beg you not to make him. I bet they would beg for extra schoolwork instead or be willing to work after school doing your yard work for free. Anything but making them live a girl. So this idea that it a fad or lark, or kids are doing it for fun makes no sense. Hugs
“This evil idiot is what you get when you ban books.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is getting mocked online for suggesting that teachers are lying to boys to turn them into transgender women.
“Parents raise your boys to be men and protect them from teachers who try to deceive them to become women,” Greene wrote. “Guard your children from such monsters in these evil days.”
Her post doesn’t seem to be a reference to any specific story, since this isn’t something that happens in the real world. Several of her supporters responded with stories about teachers using their transgender students’ pronouns, which is not what Greene was discussing.
Greene’s critics, on the other hand, mocked her for her latest conspiracy theory.
This evil idiot is what you get when you ban books.
It is genuinely baffling to me that, after 246 years in this country, educators are suddenly, without exception, and with absolutely no discernible motivation, trying to “deceive (boys) to become women.”
Look in your mirror, Marje. The “monsters in these evil days” are you. https://t.co/39NnyNasju
You obsess over this so much. How about we thank teachers for their hours invested in our children. How about we encourage our children to be loving, compassionate and tolerant. How about we accept our children however they identify.
A baptism on the field of Swain’s Memorial Stadium (via FFRF)
Reading Time: 3MINUTES
When the Supreme Court ruled that a public high school football coach was allowed to pray silently after games (even though he was actually showboating at midfield for effect), the question in the minds of many church/state separation advocates was how far other coaches would stretch that decision. How would they subvert the new rules so that they could keep converting kids to Christianity?
In the case of Sherman Holt, the new head football coach at Swain High School in Bryson City, North Carolina, the answer isn’t even subtle. He’s just doing it right out in the open, practically daring people to stop him. According to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, there’s ample evidence that Holt is coercively pushing Jesus on his players.
For example, there’s his tweet bragging about kids who converted to Christianity:
What a great time at FCA team camp. Our team grew spiritually, physically and mentally. 16 young men gave thier heart to Jesus as their Lord and Savior. It was just what our team needed. Thank you to all the FCA staff for an awesome team camp. We will definitely be back next year pic.twitter.com/hCKUJSDe0M
That says the group prayer took place at a camp hosted by “FCA,” or Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and if this was indeed a private Christian camp the kids attended on their own, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But FFRF says Holt “organized an official team trip” to that FCA camp.
It’s the sort of thing Christians can get away with but non-Christians never could. It’s blatantly coercive, in part because Holt is a new coach. That means there’s even more pressure on the players to get on his good side because they can’t rely on past relationships or bonding experiences.
There’s more: Holt is currently running a football camp that includes church services and baptisms in the stadium. We know that because it’s all literally listed in the itinerary. (That’s how ignorant or confident they are when it comes to breaking the law to promote Christianity.) There’s also video of the baptisms.
Comparing Holt’s actions to those in the Bremerton case, FFRF says this is far beyond the legal limit, even with this ultra-conservative Supreme Court:
… Here, rather than praying privately after games, Coach Holt has transformed his football program into a religious ministry, including a “team chaplain,” religious team events, team church services, and team baptisms on school property. The religious coercion occurring within the district’s football program is particularly troubling for those parents and students who are not Christians or do not subscribe to any religion, FFRF stresses.
…
“Coaches cannot be permitted to engage in such blatantly sectarian religious behavior,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “It’s highly discriminatory toward all those members of the school district who don’t share that particular belief system.”
FFRF is asking the district to investigate the matter and put an immediate stop to it. They’ve also requested records relating to any communications to or from Holt “regarding prayer, religion, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a team chaplain or religious leaders meeting with the team, team baptisms, or church services.”
None of this should be happening—and it wouldn’t if the district hired a coach who was more interested in helping students than building up his own religious résumé. Instead, Holt is more focused on pushing his faith on kids than building up their football skills.
There’s no place for that in any public high school.
Scottie's Playtime 