Welcome to the white fundamentalist maga paradise, Florida. The purge is well on the way. Again the goal is to remove / wipe out all representation of LGBTQIA from public society. Also part of the goal is to return black / brown people to a lower stature and keep them there. To stop any integration or upward movement of the minority groups. These people demand a return to the time whenwhite males were automatically in charge, Christianity was the assumed only real religion and all things Christian were good, women were subservient to males and functioned to do for men in the home / public / bedroom, blacks knew their place and stayed there, and the LGBTQIA were not seen or heard of terrified of being found out. That is the world these people are fighting to have. Florida is well on the way. They have basically outlawed the teaching of acceptance or inclusion of any group not dedicated to white people or Christianity. They have removed any representation of LGBTQIA or racism from schools. They have rewritten history, legislated being cis, being straight until adult, legislated having a small groups of bigoted racist parents over ruling all other parents on what school age kids can do, read, see, say, and do medically. They call anything not right wing fundamentalist maga is indoctrination. Welcome to Florida, a state run by Christian Taliban with help from the moral police. Hugs. Scottie
The Florida Board of Governors voted to prohibit using state funding for public university programs or activities that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
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Students at the University of North Florida protested the imminent closing of the school’s four diversity centers, including the campus LGBTQ center, on Wednesday.
The protest took place the day the Florida Board of Governors, the governing body of the State University System of Florida, voted to prohibit funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs and activities at the state’s public universities. The vote comes several months after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a measure into law banning all of the state’s public higher education institutions from using state or federal funding for diversity programs.
UNF, in Jacksonville, will close its Office of Diversity and Inclusion — and, with it, its interfaith, intercultural, women’s and LGBTQ centers — to comply with the new law, President Moaz Limayem said in a letter to the university community Wednesday night.
Limayem said the four university centers will be “phased out” immediately but added that registered student organizations that aim to promote diversity will remain active on the university’s campus and that no staffers will lose their jobs. He did not weigh in on student protests or on his views about the state policy.
“We want UNF to be a place where all people feel safe and welcome, and where there is no place for hate,” Limayem said. “This semester, we will begin seeking ways to reinforce UNF’s values in everything we do, and we will review and expand resources as necessary to ensure success for all members of our campus community.”
Cassandra Edwards, a spokesperson for the university system, said in an email Thursday that Florida “will remain focused on high-quality education for our students and not allow indoctrination.”
UNF student Lissie Morales was among the protesters, many of whom were waving rainbow Pride flags and shouting: “What do we do? Stand up, fight back!”
“The center provided me friends; it provided me education to learn more about my gender and sexual orientation,” Morales told NBC affiliate WTLV of Jacksonville. “In regard to the turnout, it warms my heart to see people care about something as much as I do, especially when it comes to the LGBT center, because it was one of the reasons why I came to UNF in the first place.”
In 2022, UNF was among 40 institutions on Campus Pride’s list of best universities for LGBTQ students.
Carlos Guillermo Smith, a former Florida House Democrat who is a policy adviser at the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Florida, called the new state law “a rubber stamp for Ron DeSantis’s agenda of censorship and surveillance.”
“The Board of Governors had the opportunity to hit the brakes, but instead, shamefully followed their censorship agenda off a cliff in service to DeSantis’s failed political ambitions,” Smith said in a statement Wednesday.
A representative for DeSantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The regulation comes as Florida continues to build on its reputation for enacting anti-LGBTQ laws and legislation aimed at limiting diversity initiatives.
Dozens of UNF students attend a rally in support of the school’s LGBTQ center. WTLV
Florida made national headlines when it enacted what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law in 2022, which limited the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools in kindergarten through third grade. DeSantis signed a bill last year that expanded the law to apply to students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Last year, Florida lawmakers prompted outcry for blocking an Advanced Placement course on African American studies from being taught in high schools.
Since the start of the year, Florida lawmakers have introduced roughly a dozen anti-LGBTQ bills. They include a sweeping measure that would force Floridians to sign an affidavit when they apply for new driver’s licenses and state IDs to certify that the gender markers on their birth certificates will match their new IDs. Another bill would allow some published accusations of homophobia and transphobia to be considered “defamation per se.”
Student protests over Florida’s policies about LGBTQ issues have also become common. In November, students at a high school in Coconut Creek, about 15 miles north of Fort Lauderdale, staged a walkout after their principal and other school staffers were reprimanded for letting a transgender girl compete on the school’s girls volleyball team.
Students at the University of North Florida protested the imminent closing of the school’s four diversity centers, including the campus LGBTQ center. https://t.co/gt8e8q3kS4
Exactly! My whole youth was steeped in the straight world, I knew not one gay person and had zero history of the gay movement, yet I still turned out gay.
Same for the rest of us. This is how we can tell that the evangelicals are completely, utterly delusional; and why they’re a minority now in the US. Dems need to vote them out. If they refuse the evangelicals will begin their new Spanish Inquisition.
The War on Women’s Rights The War on LGBT Rights The War on Voting Rights The War on Oversight The War on Accountability The War on the Elderly The War on The Arts
From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling cast, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible.
They forget about that whole pesky “separation of church and state”. If the Roberts court is a “traditionalist” court, more states should be challenging the unconstitutional legislation passed in many States (esp the Federal Gov as this is setting up a State vs Federal legal battle), otherwise the Supreme Court will have to justify their reason for overturning Roe and much more. Not that it matters but it’s important for the public to understand.
If the maga right wing have their way, any and all protections from students bullied because of being different or LGBTQIA. New laws in red states like Florida remove not only the anti-bulling campaigns but also prevent teachers from stepping to defend the LGBTQIA attacked kid because that would be seen as promoting sexual orientation or gender identification. All positive posters, safe space stickers, and rainbow acceptance stuff removed. No more books or movies saying it is OK to be gay or different. These laws take us back to a time when children were terrified to be outed as not straight or cis, and leave schools with no legal way to help these kids or prevent their abuse. This is what the moms of TikTok and mom’s of liberty want. This is what the maga Christian Republican Party want, to drive the kids who are different back into hiding who they are, push them violently back into the closet so that they will feel shame and fear over who they are. Are we as a nation going to turn our backs on decades of work to promote tolerance and acceptance of those who are different? Are we going to again return to a time when kids were terrified to learn or even be in school? Will we let the maga thug mentality win as the way people in the US should act or be? Hugs. Scottie
These videos took me over a week to watch and then place here. While some are out of date, I chose them instead of newer ones because this is the school world the maga Christians are fighting to return to. Kids being different are singled out and collectively punished. While watching these the ever helpful YouTube algorithm, or the push stay on our site what these next suggestion lists filled up with abuse videos. So be careful if that bothers you as much as I, I finally took to watching them off-line. Hugs. Scottie
Michael Kuch, the father of 14-year-old Adriana, says his daughter was assaulted by other students and two days later, she took her own life. NBC New York’s Brian Thompson reports.
160,000 children stay home from school out of fear of being bullied.
Newly released video showed Gabriel, 8, being assaulted by another student in a school bathroom two days before the young boy took his own life.
An investigation is underway after a video showing a boy punched in the face multiple times in a boys’ bathroom is getting a lot of attention on social media.
As part of our continuing series “Assignment America,” Steve Hartman takes a look at bullying in America, and speaks to a victim of bullying – and the bullier, who has had a change of heart.
Shocking and emotional documentary about the pain and desperation of four young teenagers facing lives overshadowed by bullying.
This is the most important issue the republicans think they have to deal with. Trans and gay people / kids. Not kids being hungry, not schools shootings, not educations test scores or financing. Nope what bathroom a person can use and what medical treatment is available.
The republicans think they have a winning issue with their base because these are hate bills, socially regressive bills. But these are a driven minority fueled either by hate or driven by religious beliefs, possibly both. The majority rejects that hate, that bigotry, that demand to control how others live. These anti-trans bills mirror the anti-gay bills of the 1970s, and that mirrored the anti-race integration. It is all about resisting changes in society and inclusion of those who are different. It is about not progressing, instead wanting things to never change. But look at history, every generation advances society in some way, with causing more friction with the older generations, that forget they changed society of their elders also. Think of the bathroom bills and then think how white people did not want to share bathrooms or any place with black people. The bathroom bills trying to keep trans kids from public bathrooms and out of locker rooms is the same bullshit that I faced as a gay man, these same people wanted to keep me from using bathrooms, using locker rooms claiming gay men would sexually attack straight men. Sounds just like trans women would attack cis women. The bills about keep trans people out of sports are very like the racial segregated sports teams in the 1950, claiming first black people were inferior then also saying that black men would take over the sports winning over the whites. Does it all sound so familiar. It is the same hate, same bigotry, just repackaged to use against a new group for these people to hate.
Also these people just refuse to accept well known documented medical science / studies that show people are not made gay or trans, but born that way. You cannot force a straight person to be gay, and you can not force a gay person to be straight. Also while these bills forbid any mention of a non-cisgender or non-straight orientation, that requires the forced reinforcement of cis heterosexuality. Hugs. Scottie
The state is considering 41 other bills attacking transgender rights this year.
An opponent of one of several anti-trans bills testifies before the Missouri House Emerging Issues Committee.Photo: Screenshot
Lawmakers in both the Missouri House of Representatives and Senate debated a total of eight anti-transgender bills in a single day this week.
The measures, affecting trans people’s ability to access healthcare, bathrooms, and other facilities, and legal recognition of their gender identity, represent just a fraction of the 49 anti-trans bills Missouri Republicans have already introduced this month. Trans journalist Erin Reed described the latest wave of proposed laws as “a firehose of legislation that touches every aspect of trans people’s lives.”
State law allows the university to provide gender-affirming care, but it still refuses to do so.
On Wednesday, Missouri’s Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee heard testimony on S.B. 728, one of two bills, which would establish a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” in the state. Among other provisions affecting school curriculum, S.B. 728 “prohibits public school officials from encouraging a student under the age of eighteen years old to adopt a gender identity or sexual orientation.” It also requires school officials to “inform a student’s parent within twenty-four hours if the student expresses confusion about their documented identity or requests to use personal pronouns that differ from their documented identity” and to “obtain written parental consent before allowing a student to use a name other than the name provided by the parent when registering the student for school and before encouraging a student to wear certain items of clothing.”
Effectively, the bill requires schools to out suspected trans and nonbinary students to their parents.
The committee was also scheduled to hear S.B. 770, another “Parents’ Bill of Rights” measure that included a ban on transgender girls participating in school-sponsored girls’ athletic teams. The hearing on S.B. 770 was canceled, however.
Meanwhile, in a nine-hour hearing, the state’s House Emerging Issues Committee took up seven separate anti-trans measures.
Two bills sponsored by Missouri state Rep. Brad Hudson (R) target access to gender-affirming healthcare. H.B. 1519 would allow healthcare professionals—including, as Reed noted, pharmacists, desk workers, and nurses—to refuse to treat trans people receiving gender-affirming care. During public testimony, opponents of the bill noted that it would not only legalize discrimination but could also result in cisgender, nonbinary, and intersex people being denied medication by providers who mistakenly assume they are trying to access gender-affirming treatment.
This witness talks about how the same medications given to them (they didn't give pronouns, genderfluid) for their transition are the same ones given to cis men for hair loss, talks about the hatred the laws create. pic.twitter.com/3EH1eS9MLm
Hudson’s H.B. 1520, meanwhile, aims to strengthen and extend Missouri’s “Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act.” Signed by Gov. Mike Parson (R) last June, the law banned all gender-affirming care for minors but included an exception for trans young people who are already receiving such care, as well as a sunset provision, causing the law to expire in August 2027. H.B. 1520 would remove those provisions, forcing trans minors who are currently receiving gender-affirming care to detransition and extending the law beyond the 2027 expiration date.
State Rep. Ashley Aune (D) noted that the sunset provision was included in the SAFE Act so that lawmakers could assess the law’s “unintended consequences.” Hudson responded that there is already “enough evidence out there” and that he knows “these drugs are not good for kids.”
In fact, every major American medical association has acknowledged that gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, is evidence-based, safe, and effective for the treatment of gender dysphoria.
The committee also heard testimony on four bills aimed at banning transgender Missourians from using bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity. Proponents of such laws almost universally focus, without evidence, on the supposed threat transgender women pose to cis women in public restrooms. But during Wednesday’s hearing, opponents noted that, far from alleviating any discomfort, the bills would force masculine-presenting trans men to use women’s restrooms and also endanger trans women forced to use men’s facilities while doing nothing to prevent actual predators from accessing women’s bathrooms.
"Did you get this language from the Heritage foundation?"
Also, if you force trans men into women's bathrooms, you force people like this into women's bathrooms. A person could just as easily, if they want to use the "Wrong bathroom," claim they are a trans man if this bill passes. pic.twitter.com/sMBhYtFXg9
Rep Aune: "In a situation where you are in public, if a law went into place that required you to use the restroom as defined in this bill, would that leave you using women's restrooms?"
Additionally, one of the bathroom bills introduced by state Rep. Adam Schnelting (R), H.B. 2308, would legally define the terms “male” and “female” according to a person’s reproductive biology.
Similarly, H.B. 2309, also introduced by Schnelting, aims to legally redefine “gender” as synonymous with biological sex. According to Reed, the bill would end any legal recognition of transgender people in the state and would likely affect the gender markers on their birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and other forms of ID.
Schnelting testified that his bills would affect “bathrooms, dorms, shelters, everything” and might even “nullify sex-specific scholarships” given to trans individuals.
Democrats on the committee blasted their Republican colleagues’ seemingly single-minded focus on limiting the rights of transgender Missourians. State Rep. David Tyson Smith (D), who noted that Republicans make up 40 percent of his constituents, argued that people want lawmakers to address “inflation, grocery store prices.”
“People are wondering why we are spending time on this,” Smith said.
State Rep. Doug Mann (D) sounded an even more urgent alarm. “When it became no longer acceptable to be anti-gay in public, people moved to being anti-trans,” he said. “When you start to attack an already vulnerable group of people, you do not stop with that already vulnerable group of people.”
“I’m going to be honest, I do not trust that this is the end,” Mann said of the anti-trans bills. “Everything I have seen as a student of history, as a student from politics, as a student of government, tells me that it is going to go farther. Things are going to get worse, not better.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just said the quiet part out loud, in complete rejection of what the Biden administration has been trying to accomplish while at the same time taking all the money & aid the U.S. has been providing.
By my dogs that love gravy … damn, damn, damn, fucking bastards, goddamn swear word swear word. I can not even think of enough vile words to say about this. This is a sickening example of how the Israeli government see the Palestinians, including children. I watched a video this morning of an Israeli government official justifying this mass slaughter and genocide saying they were not causing it, Hamas was. They hit us (why because we were mistreating their people) hurting / killing 1,200 hundred of our so we can kill over 23,000 of them 10,000 of them confirmed children, and force the others to live in worse conditions than abandon animals. Oh, and Israel took over a university / school system in Gaza, used it as their headquarters, “interrogated” Palestinians there, then proudly blew it all up, so no Palestinian could come back and someday be educated there. That is a war crime. All of this is.
13 year old children trying to be the parents of 7 siblings because their parents are dead, with only other refuges to help. They have nothing, and Israel gloats over this. I am angry. Hugs. Scottie
As Israel presses on against Hamas in Gaza, children there are facing growing misery. Richard Engel reports on a 13-year-old who is now raising his seven siblings after his parents were likely killed.
One minority group using keywords to promote a crisis that doesn’t exist to remove books with characters and plots they don’t like. One minority group pushing for the right to control the children of the majority who disagree with them. One of the board members claimed it was up to the parents to decide what was sexual explicit not educators, yet he also claimed that he wouldn’t tolerate tax money to be spent on what he called sexually explicit books, which we all know he means books with LGBTQIA characters or plots. So he is taking the rights from the parents he just claimed had the rights to make that judgement. Hugs. Scottie
Opposing parents pushed back against Moms for Liberty’s campaign, saying that removing books is censorship and that one group of parents shouldn’t decide what’s best for everyone. There was even an attempt to challenge the Bible to test the system.
None of the 61 books that were challenged was available to elementary students. They only lived on middle and high school shelves. That was until the superintendent removed them all, except for the Bible, until they went through the review process.
Whether it’s a textbook or a library book, it won’t be allowed in Carroll County Public Schools if deemed sexually explicit by school officials. That’s thanks to a new policy passed unanimously by its school board Wednesday.
The vote came after a monthslong campaign by the conservative parent group Moms for Liberty, whose members challenged dozens of school library books they say are inappropriate for students.
The board decided in the fall that staff should tighten the policy on textbook and library book selection and tasked them with creating a definition of “sexually explicit.”
“Instructional materials, including supplemental materials, shall not contain sexually explicit content,” the new policy states. “Sexually explicit content is defined as unambiguously describing, depicting, showing, or writing about sex or sex acts in a detailed or graphic manner.”
The policy doesn’t apply to materials used in the health curriculum.
Opposing parents pushed back against Moms for Liberty’s campaign, saying that removing books is censorship and that one group of parents shouldn’t decide what’s best for everyone. There was even an attempt to challenge the Bible to test the system.
None of the 61 books that were challenged was available to elementary students. They only lived on middle and high school shelves. That was until the superintendent removed them all, except for the Bible, until they went through the review process. She said it’s because reviewing such a high volume of books would take too long. And school officials said removing the Bible would be a constitutional issue.
Kathryn Berling, a parent and school librarian at Taneytown Elementary School, told board members that they nor the school system asked for librarians’ input on the books. While she spoke, a handful of attendees stood with her in solidarity.
Berling noted that librarians were not asked for input when the superintendent took away the books, nor on a new policy put in place at the beginning of the year that requires librarians to complete a time-consuming checklist policing a book’s content before selecting for the library.
The board also, she noted, did not ask librarians about defining “sexually explicit.”
“It’s a shame you cannot trust the professionalism of our CCPS media specialists,” Berling said.
Shortly before Wednesday’s vote, a few board members questioned how staff defined “sexually explicit” in the policy proposal. Sahithya Sudhakar, the student member, said she doesn’t think the definition suffices because graphic content can look different to different people. It’s a risk to content like literature that students read in class, she added.
“I’m worried we’re losing important content in our schools because a single line is taken out of context,” said Sudhakar, who does not have voting rights.
Fellow members Tara Battaglia and Patricia Dorsey, who ended up voting for the policy, echoed her concerns on the definition and asked if there was more they can do to make it less subjective.
But members Steve Whisler and Donna Sivigny saw no issue. Whisler said as an elected official he won’t tolerate any tax dollars spent on “sexually explicit” books.
“It is the job of parents, not educators … to determine what’s sexually explicit,” he said.
“We are treating adults like children, and children like adults.” -Tiffany Justice @4TiffanyJustice The material that 13yo’s have access to in schools should be very different that the content adults enjoy. We need to stop treating children like adults. pic.twitter.com/CAmLdDWqkL
— Kit Hart, American Girl (@5sweetharts_) July 13, 2023
The crisis was strategically created in order to gain control. By isolating children for years, forcing them to cover their faces, they hurt children.
By convincing children that they were born in the wrong bodies, and that the only way to fix them was with drugs and surgeries,… pic.twitter.com/tZ8vNQAUDY
And when you advocate for a better world, you become comfortable- and even embrace – controversy. Read my full commentary here. ⬇️ @Moms4Libertyhttps://t.co/5IqQhDWVfV
[Board member] Whisler said… “It is the job of parents, not educators… to determine what’s sexually explicit.”
Then why the fuck did he argue and vote for a policy that makes it the educators and school librarians responsibility to police the board‘s definition? Whisler’s just an anti-sex control freak.
I was reading books from the adult section of our libraries when I was in 7th grade. I came across depictions of sex acts. Somehow I survived. Thank God. /s
By third grade I was reading at the 12th grade level. Mostly science fiction but many biographies and other non-fiction. I was exposed to many words and terms and descriptions of things that I didn’t completely understand, but the help of the dictionary and my extremely well-read father, I quickly learned. My parents never treated me like a little kid when it came to my choices of reading materials, and I wasn’t in any way traumatized by anything I read in books.
By age 12, I was allowed to go off on my bike, alone or with friends, and frequently would be gone 8 to 10 hours on the weekends. Sometimes we’d be riding clear across town [Columbus, OH] or far out past the suburbs, going almost to Delaware, Grove City, Reynoldsburg and others. I was also allowed to go play down by the river behind the shopping center, where, in retrospect, one might even encounter somewhat shifty characters. I never got kidnapped, raped, assaulted or killed, or exposed to drugs or cigarettes. Most of those things happened at my school. I turned out ok, well-rounded, able to discern right from wrong, to make responsible decisions and other positive attributes.
hell, I was reading from the adult section of the library when I was in grade school. if I could read it, my parents let me and my dad would answer any questions I had about things. they were just happy I was reading. I remember seeing book about cattle breeds around the world and there was a photo showing the weinies of African tribal members, I loved that book!!! LOL
Christian privilege at it again. “[S]chool officials said removing the Bible would be a constitutional issue.” But it’s not a constitutional issue to ban speech unless it’s religious (Evangelical Christian). These assholes believe they’re both divinely and constitutionality sanctioned to dominate the rest of us.
The buy-bull….Talk about a book full of filth, violence and lies! No one should be exposed to it until old enough to realize is a work of fiction created by sun baked brains and changed over the centuries by crazies, drunks, and the power hungry.
“School officials said removing the Bible would be a constitutional issue.”
School officials were wrong. Applying a general law or policy without distinction and without bias against a religion is clearly constitutional. Also, the Bible is neither a textbook nor supplemental instructional material, so it’s presence is superfluous, already.
I guess it’s not within their definition of “sexually explicit” because it’s language is too ambiguous and lacking in detail when it describes sex acts with prostitutes, sisters, half-sisters, sisters-in-law, daughters, fathers, kings, concubines, refugees, war captives, under-age girls, slaves, maids, surrogates, men, donkeys, dogs, and goats.
As a voracious young reader, I had pretty much checked out everything in the kids section of our public library by age 10 and moved into the adult stacks.The librarians panicked the first time I brought a stack of Agatha Christie and John Creasey mysteries to the check out desk and refused to let me have them without parental permission. Infuriated, I ran to get my mom. She rolled her eyes and just said, “Let him read them”.
Until puberty hit, I skimmed over the sexy bits, then had an “a-ha” moment when I finally connected the naughty descriptions in the books with my own naughty bits. I think the only significant affect it had on me was using a lot of British sex slang until the 7th grade librarian asked me if I knew what “twat” actually meant.
P.S. The librarian became a lifelong friend. RIP Mrs. Pavitt.
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