Herschel Walker gave a rambling, barely coherent, and absurdly false speech about climate change. It would be hilarious but for the fact that the people the Republicans promote to the highest level of their party have the capacity to cause such great harm to us all. Meidas Contributor Coach D breaks it down.
Berkeley professor Khiara Bridges clapped back at Missouri Senator Josh Hawley’s transphobic line of questioning during a hearing on the consequences of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade. Anthony Davis reacts.
And the hate continues and the attacks on trans people will increase. There is no reason for this other than othering and demonizing these people. I wish the public would see what the Republicans are doing and look how historically they have done it over and over through history. It has been done about gays, Catholics, Muslims, ethnic Irish people, blacks, the Mexicans, and anyone not straight white males that fit the majority has been treated to this hate and attempt to stir up hate against groups all for political advantage because they know their base followers are racist bigots and will endorse / vote for politicians that hate the same people they do. I am tired of the rising hate, it is time consuming and emotionally draining to see normal good people and children attacked because they are born different from the hateful majority. But as long as I can I will stand up for those that are not able to stand up to defend themselves. Hugs
Critics say the legislation could make it even more difficult for transgender people to access health care that’s recommended by major medical organizations.
Kevin McCarthy attends a House Republican Conference news confernce on Capitol Hill, in Washington, on Jan. 20, 2022.Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images file
By Reuters
U.S. Republicans in Congress are lining up behind legislation that critics say would roll back protections for transgender people, setting a playbook for action on a divisive social issue should they take control of Congress this fall.
Republicans in the House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would block federal funding to colleges where transgender women are allowed to participate in sports with cisgender women. A separate bill would allow transgender people to sue medical personnel who helped them transition as minors.
Another bill would block funding to schools that disobey state laws regarding “materials harmful to minors,” mimicking state laws that have been used to remove books discussing history around race and LGBTQ themes.
The bills have support from key Republicans in the House and Senate. Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has promoted the sports bill at a press conference and in a conservative newspaper. It is backed by 127 of 211 House Republicans.
**Editor note. There is a video here of the exchange between the professor that I can not post. To view it please go to the link of the article. Thanks, hugs. **
In the Senate, five Republicans have sponsored a version of the bill targeting medical providers, including Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio.
Republicans would be in a position to advance those bills next year if they win control of the House or the Senate in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, which analysts say is likely.
“I hope these are legislative initiatives that we can pass when we get the majority back,” said Rep. Jim Banks, who sponsored the medical providers bill and represents a district in Indiana, which banned transgender students from playing on girls’ sports teams at schools this May.
Fears of discrimination
Critics say the legislation proposed by House Republicans would reduce access to care needed by transgender people to transition. Transgender people are significantly more likely to attempt or commit suicide, often due to lack of access to gender-affirming medical care, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group.
Banks called such criticism “outrageous” and said he did not see how his legislation would contribute to an unsafe environment for transgender people.
Violence against LGBTQ people has also increased fourfold between 2020 and 2021 in the United States, according to ACLED, a nonpartisan organization that tracks violence globally. The increase occurred during a three-year uptick in anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in state legislatures, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
“There has always been fringe voices who oppose LGBTQ equality, but now, unfortunately, that fringe has grown loud and is being given national platforms,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president of GLAAD, a LGBTQ advocacy group.
** Another video **
Sixty-four percent of Americans support protecting trans people from discrimination, according to a June poll from Pew Research Center; 10% oppose protections.
Eighteen Republican-led states have enacted bans on trans girls and women participating in publicly funded women’s sports, while more than a dozen have introduced legislation mimicking Florida’s law limiting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Advocates are pushing Democrats to do more to enshrine protections into law before the November elections, but they face uncertain prospects in the evenly divided Senate.
“If we lose the House or the Senate I think it’s really unlikely we’ll be able to prevent discrimination” at the federal level, said Fran Hutchins, executive director of Equality Federation.
At a congressional hearing held on Tuesday, University of California, Berkeley law professor Khiara Bridges dismissed Senator Josh Hawley’s transphobic questions. Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola discuss on The Young Turks.
“University of California, Berkeley law professor Khiara Bridges reprimanded far-right Sen. Josh Hawley during a congressional hearing on Tuesday, accusing the Missouri Republican of asking transphobic questions.
“You’ve referred to people with a capacity for pregnancy. Would that be women?” Hawley asked Bridges during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on abortion rights titled, “A Post-Roe America: The Legal Consequences of the Dobbs Decision.”
“Many cis women have the capacity for pregnancy. Many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy,” Bridges responded. “There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy as well as nonbinary people who are capable of pregnancy.”
Apparently unsatisfied with Bridges’ answer, Hawley fired back: “So this isn’t really a women’s rights issue, it’s a… it’s what?”
Bridges said, “We can recognize that this impacts women while also recognizing that it impacts other groups—those things are not mutually exclusive, Sen. Hawley.””
This is another attempt to erase the LGBTQ+ from existing in public spaces, it is an attempt to remove protections and warnings to bullies that have protected the LGBTQ+ kids, and follow the further war to undo all the advances in equality and social acceptances that the LGBTQ+ have achieved over the last 50 years. For those I have argued with that claim the law doesn’t say don’t say gay and that all it is doing is protecting straight kids from being improperly groomed and indoctrinated in LGBTQ+ propaganda the left pushes. Sorry this is about harming and punishing the kids that are different and not straight. Why are they doing this for all grades when the law is written for K-3rd grade? Why is the districts doing this at all when there are those claiming that the law doesn’t require this? It is because it gives some bigoted right wing parent the right to sue is the district seems to be protect or advocating acceptance of LGBTQ+ kids. That hurts their god when gay kids are not bullied by their kids. This is getting serious dangerous again for kids that are different. Hugs
Duval County Public Schools removed a video teaching students how to support LGBTQ+ peers in response to Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education Law. | Claire Heddles, Jacksonville Today
Duval County Public Schools has taken down a 12-minute anti-bullying video that taught middle and high school students how to support their gay and transgender peers, the latest in a string of vanishing LGBTQ resources in the district.
Besides the video, the district is planning to dramatically reduce a LGBTQ+ support guide, and the School Board will vote Monday on a policy that could require schools to notify parents if students want to use different names or pronouns in unofficial records, like ID cards and yearbooks.
The moves are largely in response to Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education law, which restricts how schools can teach about gender identification and sexual orientation. Supporters say the law give parents control of their children’s education, but critics have labeled it the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
A Duval Schools federal grant coordinator raised questions about removing the anti-bullying video, according to a Jacksonville Today review of internal district emails. “Here is what the students have access to for training,” the grant coordinator wrote to the district’s policy team on April 5, 2022. The email was marked “high importance.”
“I just wanted to make sure you both have a look before taking it down,” she wrote, attaching screenshots from the video detailing how to support LGBTQ+ peers, combat bullying in schools and respond when peers come out.
The video is now inaccessible and, in response to questions from Jacksonville Today, district spokesperson Tracy Pierce said, “The materials you referenced have been removed for legal review to ensure the content complies with recent state legislation.”
The video’s removal follows the district’s controversial takedown of a 37-page LGBTQ+ Support Guide last fall, and draft, consolidated support guidance that cuts out many of the explicit protections for transgender students. LGBTQ advocates say the disappearing resources send a dangerous message to a vulnerable student population.
“I do believe [the school system] is trying to create some kind of balance,” JASMYN CEO Cindy Watson tells Jacksonville Today. “But I don’t want to, in any way, suggest that removing all of this is the right thing because it creates a lot of uncertainty and a lack of safety for students right away.”
A training video by students, for students
The now-removed video, specifically created for students, was developed using funds from a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant. The district consulted with LGBTQ+ students in Duval Schools about how to best communicate the anti-bullying message with their peers, according to Darnell-Cookman School of the Medical Arts science teacher, and campus Gay Straight Alliance faculty sponsor Scott Sowell.
He says he did not receive notification from the district about the plan to remove the video, even though some of his students helped to create it. It’s a training he’s used during monthly GSA meetings.
“The video was co-written by some students, and so it had very student-appropriate and student-specific language that was, you know, teenagers talking to other teenagers,” Sowell says. “It’s one critical resource that is now no longer available to teachers to help support students.”
Stills from the now-removed All In for Safe Schools student training video.
The guidance in the video includes, “Be generally respectful of things you may not understand,” and, “‘That’s so gay’ is NOT OKAY.” According to the teacher script accompanying the video, obtained by Jacksonville Today, the training was part of a program for students to obtain an “All In for Safe Schools” badge, a marker that signals the person completed the Safe Schools training.
The All In program is still in place for Duval Schools employees, according to the district’s website. It’s not clear whether the school district will continue the program for students in the upcoming school year. At the time of publishing, the student badge request form was publicly accessible, but the accompanying training video was not.
According to Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education law, classroom instruction “on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3, or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.”
The removed video was designed for students in grades 6-12, not K-3 graders, according to the script accompanying the training materials. And state guidance issued last month says the provision of the law for older students “takes effect only after the Florida Department of Education develops rules or guidance on age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate instruction.” Those rules have not yet been released, according to state officials.
Sowell says it’s disappointing the district removed the video preemptively, without notification or detailed explanation.
“If the district or individuals in the legal team are being held to a specific law, or piece of legislation or mandate that they have to change and edit this, then hopefully, they’ll be as transparent and communicate those changes to everyone involved so things just don’t just disappear,” Sowell says.
Another LGBTQ+ resource removed
The training was not the only LGBTQ+ support resource to disappear last school year. Six months prior to the video’s removal, Superintendent Diana Greene directed her staff to remove a decade-old LGBTQ+ Support Guide from the district’s website, amid rising right-wing backlash against similar support guides across Florida following a lawsuit in Leon County.
In an October 22, 2021, email obtained by Jacksonville Today, Greene told School Board members the guide was never intended to be a public document.
“As the document was not created for external use, it has been removed. Additionally, since the support guide has not undergone a comprehensive review in several years, I have instructed staff to work with the Officer of General Counsel to conduct a comprehensive review of the guidance,” Greene wrote last fall.
Duval parent Josinda York
At least a dozen districts had similar support guides in place last year, but more than half of them have since removed them from their websites, according to an Equality Florida lawsuit. Duval Schools announced a plan last month to cut back most of the former support guide.
“Consolidating training and guidance documents for staff shouldn’t reflect on our commitment to supporting students,” Dr. Greene said in a recent press release. “The proof is in our actions, and we will continue to do all we can to help students thrive.”
But parents of trans students, like Duval mom Josinda York, fear fewer guidelines could hurt kids like hers. York’s son, now in middle school, told her he was a boy when he was 4. Josinda started transitioning him at school in the second grade.
“This would have been a direct issue for him had they not had everything in place already, because that gave the school all the tools they needed to help him with his transition,” York tells Jacksonville Today. “Specifically because the School Board had these guidelines, they had something to go by.”
York says the level of detail about trans students’ federal rights and frequently asked questions in the former support guide, stripped out in the consolidated draft guidance, were an important part of her family’s experience in Duval Schools.
Without the former support guide, York says, “I think the principal still would have supported us, but I don’t know if they would have had the education to properly support us.”
Hundreds of parents have shown up at recent Duval School Board meetings to comment on the support guide, some to push back against the proposed changes and others advocating for throwing out the support guide altogether. According to the district, the proposed changes were not required by Florida’s new laws, but were a choice by district staffers.
“We are taking these steps to streamline our training and internal communication with staff even though it is not required under the law,” a district spokesperson wrote in an email to Jacksonville Today.
Monday’s vote could bring more changes
In addition to the disappearing training materials, Duval School Board members are also set to vote on a policy change — drafted in response to Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education law — requiring schools to send emails to parents if there’s a change in student services, which would include if students want to change their name or pronouns in unofficial school records, like ID cards and yearbooks, according to proposed district guidance. According to the draft policy, schools would send the email to parents, unless there’s a risk of “abuse, abandonment or neglect.”
The new policy would likely affect trans kids and their parents, like Dawn and David Clapp. The two were decked out in LGBTQ+ pride gear at the last School Board meeting, David in a pink and blue shirt that reads, “Trans rights are human rights” and Dawn with a “Love Wins” headband. They’re, by all accounts, affirming parents to their transgender daughter.
Dawn and David Clapp, and their daughter, gathered with LGBTQ+ advocates before a June school board meeting.
Even with supportive parents, their daughter was first comfortable coming out to her friends and a teacher at her Duval charter school. She told her parents she was a girl later on when she felt ready.
“We were supportive of her,” Clapp says. “It was surprising, and it’s been a lot to deal and adjust with, but she’s become this amazing, blossoming human being because she’s felt safe at home and safe at school to be who she wants to be.”
Dawn and David are among a group of parents of transgender kids, and other LGBTQ+ advocates, who oppose sending an automatic email to parents that “outs” kids without their consent, instead of letting kids like the Clapp’s daughter change their name on class rosters, but tell their parents when they want to, as the policy currently permits.
“My children’s friends that don’t have as supportive parents, it scares me for them, that they would have that taken from them,” Dawn Clapp says.
District staffers say the new policy is necessary to comply with Florida’s new law.
It’s not only LGBT students — it is anyone who doesn’t follow the norm — whether sexual or any other difference which is normal between humans. Blacks, browns, Asians, Jews, Muslims, any of several other religious sects, diet habits, dress, you name it — it is an attack against humanity itself.
Scottie's Playtime 