As is stated in the article the school officials were not interested in working the situation out by using other neutral terms, they wanted to force a nonbinary person to go by female pronouns and titles. Hugs. Scottie
A Florida state law that went into effect in July 2023 prevents public school teachers from using pronouns that do not align with their sex assigned at birth.
AV Vary became a teacher to help teenagers through the painful experience of growing up and to teach some science along the way.
Over the course of 15 years, Vary has taught in the Orlando area and in Maryland. Most recently, Vary taught at the Florida Virtual School, a statewide online public school for kindergarten through 12th grade students.
But on Oct. 24, Vary was terminated from FLVS after refusing to change the courtesy title used on school materials and communications from “Mx.” to “Ms.,” “Mrs.” or “Miss.”
Vary is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. AV Vary is not their full legal name, but they requested to only be referred to as such out of concern for their privacy.
FLVS issued a statement in response to USA TODAY’s request for an interview about Vary’s termination.
“As a Florida public school, FLVS is obligated to follow Florida laws and regulations pertaining to public education. This includes laws such as section 1000.071(3) of the Florida Statutes pertaining to the use of Personal Titles and Pronouns within Florida’s public school system,” the statement read.
Vary’s termination came as a lawsuit challenging Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law sits in an appeals court and districts struggle to fill vacant teaching positions.
Vary told USA TODAY in an interview that they have filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the matter and are seeking legal counsel. They said their fight to get back into the classroom is not just for them, but for the students too.
“I am a human being… I have feelings and my goals in life are positive ones. I want to see my students be successful in however they define success,” Vary said. “Yeah, this is a fight for my rights. But this is also a fight for the kindness, compassion and respect for every individual in the country.”
Florida statute requires teachers to use titles and pronouns corresponding to biological sex
Documentation reviewed by USA TODAY showed that leadership at FLVS asked Vary to change their courtesy title from Mx. to Ms., Mrs., or Miss in accordance with Florida Statue 1000.071.
The statute states that every public K-12 educational institute must operate under the understanding that a person’s sex is biological and unchangeable. As such, employees may not provide pronouns that do not align with their biological sex.
The law went into effect in July 2023 after Governor Ron DeSantis signed HB1069, which is considered an expansion of the 2022 “Don’t Say Gay” bill. A lawsuit on behalf of Family Equality and Florida families challenging the 2022 bill went to an appeals court in March 2023 after a Florida judge dismissed the original suits for not showing direct harm from the bill.
Vary said that, before termination, they offered other gender-neutral suggestions for courtesy titles.
While Vary does not hold a PhD., “Dr.” is a gender-neutral title that other teachers and administrators in Florida schools use. But Vary said FLVS wouldn’t allow Vary to use it on the grounds that they did not hold a PhD. The school said Vary could go without a courtesy title, but they were not comfortable with that.
Vary also recommended “professor,” “teacher” and “coach” as alternatives. The school did not permit those either.
“Clearly, to me FLVS is not simply concerned with following the law. There’s something more to it,” they said.
Vary said being visibly nonbinary was a safety signal for Florida students
Vary’s students have known them as Mrs. Vary, Professor Vary or Mx. Vary, depending on when they worked together.
When Vary started at FLVS in July 2021, they felt that “misunderstood female” was the best way to describe their gender. They have also truncated their legal name for students, as a way to protect their boundaries as a teacher. But over time, Vary learned more about what it means to be nonbinary and it resonated with them, as they don’t identify entirely with women’s or men’s social norms.
Vary also said there was more to their decision to use Mx. than reflecting their own identity. In the face of anti-LGBTQ laws being passed in Florida, Vary wanted to signal to students that they were an ally.
“I needed a way for my students’ first impressions of me to be that I was safe, because underrepresented minority communities need people who can protect them, especially when they’re teenagers,” Vary said.
Vary worried for colleagues amid teacher shortage
Vary said they have never lost a job before FLVS. They got into science in part because the teachers are in such high demand. They have a partner with a good salary that can help cushion the job loss as they try to get reinstated.
But in the meantime, Vary worries for colleagues.
“When I got the voicemail that I was suspended, my first thought was, ‘Oh, my colleagues, they’re now going to have way more students than they should. They’re gonna have to put in more hours than they’re getting paid for,'” Vary said. “Teacher overwork all over again.”
Vary said they felt that school leaders tried to remain neutral in the weeks leading up to their termination. But their final call became heated and Vary said the school hung up on them.
“I recognize that FLVS is in a tough position. They have to uphold Florida State law. At the same time, they’re committed to upholding the U.S. Constitution,” Vary said. “Right now, those two things are mutually exclusive.”
Vary’s complaint to the EEOC alleges that the school discriminated against them because of their sex and gender identity.
They have contacted some lawyers who said that the case may have some merit, but would be too big or too expensive to take on. Vary is exploring advocacy groups as well, or possibly joining with other people who have experienced the same thing.
“It would be unrealistic to expect any individual to cover this on their own,” Vary said. “But with a community of like minded individuals who believe in civil rights, I think that we can take it as far as it needs to go.”
Florida test scores are abysmal, teachers are fleeing the state and profession, books are banned, Black history is whitewashed, kids are doing heil hitler to my children, but a nonbinary teacher at Florida school fired for using 'Mx.' as courtesy title https://t.co/jdJS0GruMZ
First they came for the Drag Queens Then they came for the Gender Non Conforming and Non Binary Then they came for the Transgender Then they came for the Lesbians and Gays
Right to work state, so the easy answer says there isn’t a case to be had. If plaintiff wants to find a lawyer that’s willing to argue Title IX gender discrimination, that might work but it will take decades and more money than any teacher will earn in a lifetime.
“Florida test scores are abysmal, teachers are fleeing the state and profession, books are banned, Black history is whitewashed, kids are doing heil hitler to my children, but a nonbinary teacher at Florida school fired for using ‘Mx.’ as courtesy title”
And every day DeSantis goes onto a stage to polish his turds, pretends that he is a friend to all Jews. Going so far as to make threats against tiny island nations in the Caribbean.
Yet every single day that passes he fails to say so much as one word against real-life neo-Nazis who chant his name and wave his banners. Nazis love him and not only does he know it… they know it, too.
And of course while Putin supports all the actual attackers of democracy and Republicans support him attacking Ukraine while pretending he’s not behind Iran using Hamas to pick this very fight with intolerable atrocities…. in hopes of solidifying Netanyahu turning Israeli democracy into fascism as they hope to do here, and not just in Florida.
And the media make no issue of it. If they cared about democracy, they’d keep after him about it. But every outrage is allowed to slide, just as they let them slide with Trump, are STILL letting them slide. There is no rightist outrage which the media aren’t normalizing.
What DO they talk about? They busy themselves spreading GOP talking points as if they were the truth. They ignore or belittle election results and harp on polls, the way they did in the lead-up to the Midterms, pushing the “red wave is coming” BS. “Biden is too old!” They never mention Trump is just a few years younger AND showing clear signs of losing it. They shrug their shoulders over his ongoing threats to establish an obvious dictatorship if he regains the Oval Office. THAT’S their laughable IDEA of how to do their jobs as the “Guardians of Democracy.”
If Trump were still in office and the economic numbers were what they are under Biden, the media would be in ecstasies, trying 24/7 to convince everyone how GREAT things were. With Biden, they sneer and talk only about how people are “unhappy with high prices,” as though they wouldn’t be, for the same reasons, just as high if a Republican were in the White House. And, of course, they never mention that things are much worse everywhere else in the world. These dishonest men and women don’t report the news–they manipulate it to harm Democrats and help the GOP, the party their oligarch owners want in charge, the party, led by an evil MADMAN, that will establish the dictatorship THEY want.
I love the Majority Report with Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland. Here are some clips. People might wonder why so many at once. Because I have two monitors / computers. One I normally blog with and the other I constantly stream videos. Mostly news. If I am not in my Pink Palace I have my apple earbuds in listening to podcasts. I rarely do music. Those that follow me and know my history know that I have to constantly have that stream of new data, of idea and sound in to my head to stop the thoughts I don’t want. Granted, it has gotten less urgent over the last few years as I am getting better at coping, but I can not stand longish periods of only my own memories. The first thing I do when I leave my bed to get up is pull my hair back and put in my ear buds. At night when I go to bed I fill my mind with my own stories written based on the characters of books, movies, TV shows that I can fill my mind with writing my self into those stories, keeping the memories from coming up to the front of my mind or having a say. I had these videos ready to post for a while, but never found the time. Today is the time. I don’t expect everyone to watch all of them, but maybe bits or sections, or just the ones that interest you. Thank you for understanding. Hugs. Scottie
CNN’s Abby Phillip asks Sen. Lindsey Graham if there’s a threshold for him where he’d be supportive of holding off on offensives in Gaza to prevent further civilian casualties. Sen. Graham responds in part: “No, no, no!” He then compares the current state of affairs to World War II.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer spoke with international IDF spokesperson Richard Hecht about the Israeli strike carried out on the Jabalia refugee camp, and Blitzer asked whether the IDF was aware of the amount of Palestinian civilians in the area, despite the potential for a Hamas leader to be there as well. Hecht responds by saying: “This is the tragedy of war. We told them to move south.”
Ilan Pappe, professor of history at the University of Exeter and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies, to discuss the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza.
Sen. John Fetterman is confronted at an event by human rights attorney Dan Kovalik about Fetterman’s unwillingness to call for a ceasefire in Israel/Gaza. Kovalik is then forcibly removed from the event by staff,
Jodan Peterson seemed to have a moment of clarity during this interview with comedian Jim Jeffries. Too bad it didn’t stick.
Ilan Pappe, professor of history at the University of Exeter and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies, to discuss the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza.
Homicides in the U.S. have seen a significant drop in 2022, and this trend has continued into 2023, placing the country on course for one of the largest recorded declines in homicides; although crime rose across the nation in 2020 and 2021 due to various factors including the pandemic and increased gun availability, there has been a notable decline in these figures in recent times. According to the FBI’s annual report on national crime statistics, homicides saw a 6% decrease in 2022, which surpassed expectations. Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst and consultant, indicates that so far in 2023, homicides have fallen by 11% to 12%. This trend extends to violent crime overall, aligning the U.S. with 2019 levels, although certain crime categories, such as auto thefts, have experienced increases in specific areas.
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, to discuss the ongoing situation on the ground in the Gaza Strip.
After briefly touching on the international politics around the 2007 blockade and election of Hamas in Gaza, Shakir explores how the Israeli government has supported and maintained Hamas’ rule as a part of their “policy of separation” between Gaza and the West Bank, and a central tool against the establishment of a Palestinian state. Wrapping up, Omar explores the obvious parallels between the current assault on Palestinians in Gaza and the 1948 Nakba that began the occupation, the recent discovery of Israel’s use of white phosphorus, and what a push for a ceasefire and an end to apartheid could look like.
9News Colorado’s reports on Republican State Rep. Ron Weinberg telling a group of students that allowing trans kids to go by their preferred names could confuse police during a mass shooting.
Rep. Ilhan Omar was asked by a reporter why she wants a to push the Israelis to ceasefire their bombing of Gaza. Omar asks: “How many more killings is enough for you?” She says that’s a question that the press should ask New York Rep. Ritchie Torres that.
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, to discuss the ongoing situation on the ground in the Gaza Strip.
Omar Shakir then joins as he jumps right into the history of the Gaza Strip, from the beginning of its occupation by Israel in 1967, through the establishment of their full blockade on people, goods, and aid in the wake of their military withdrawal in 2005, which launched the current era of strict apartheid and de facto Hamas rule.
Ever since Reagan’s presidency, the core of Republican positions on public education have been five-fold: 1. Let white students attend schools that are islands of white privilege where they don’t have to confront the true racial history of America, 2. Use public money to support private, for-profit, and religious schools that can accomplish this (and cycle some of that money back to Republican politicians), 3. Destroy public schools’ teachers’ unions, 4. End the teaching of science, critical thinking, evolution, and sex ed, and, 5. Bring fundamentalist Christianity into the classroom. Earlier this year, Republican Senator Marco Rubio called America’s public school system a “cesspool of Marxist indoctrination.” “Dangerous academic constructs like critical race theory and radical gender theory are being forced on elementary school children,” Rubio wrote for the American Conservative magazine, adding, “We need to ensure no federal funding is ever used to promote these radical ideas in schools.”
A bit on the long side, but really informative over what has happened and what is currently happening in this seeming never ending war on Public schools. Hugs. Scottie
Jennifer Pippin says had she known of Rick Wiles’ antisemitic views, she wouldn’t have appeared on his program, but she didn’t apologize for having gone on.
By ANDREW LAPIN/JTAUpdated: NOVEMBER 1, 2023 18:01Books that have been donated to the “Read with Love Book Drive” run by PFLAG Bucks County to help place LGBTQ+ books in Bucks and Montgomery County libraries are placed in a donation box at the Doylestown Bookshop in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, U.S., April 7, 2023.(photo credit: REUTERS/HANNAH BEIER)
A Florida organizer of the right-wing activist group Moms For Liberty who successfully pressed her school district to remove a version of Anne Frank’s diary recently appeared on a livestream banned from YouTube because of its pastor host’s antisemitism.
Jennifer Pippin, who chairs the group’s chapter in Indian River County, Florida, appeared in September on the show TruNews, which is hosted by End Times preacher Rick Wiles. Wiles is a conspiracy theorist who has claimed that Jews and Zionists have “attacked Christian culture” and railed against the “Jewish lobby” and “Kabbalah wizard rabbis.”
Wiles, who is based in the same county as Pippin, has also stated, “That’s the way the Jews work, they are deceivers, they plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda.” He has claimed that “Israel” was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 2019 he stated, “It’s not Muslims that are going to kill us. It’s the Jews.”
The following year he called the first attempted impeachment of Donald Trump a “Jew coup.” adding that Jews would “kill millions of Christians” after they overthrew the president. The Trump administration credentialed the outlet multiple times, leading to major pushback from Jewish groups. The channel was permanently banned from YouTube in 2020 over Wiles’ antisemitic rants.
Speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Monday, Pippin said she had not been aware of Wiles’ antisemitism before she appeared on his show and would not have agreed to it if she’d known.
A Little Free Library, which was designed to look like a prison, invites residents to take books that the library says have been challenged by schools across the state of Texas, in Houston, Texas, U.S. May 3, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/CALLAGHAN O’HARE)
Says she was ignorant of hosts’ views, but doesn’t apologize
“Honestly, I’ve never heard of him before,” she said. “And I wasn’t aware of anything that he said against any organizations or group of people or anything like that.”
Yet when she was asked if she was sorry for appearing on TruNews, Pippin responded, “Absolutely not. No.” She said she did not necessarily endorse the views of everyone she speaks to about her efforts to ensure that school libraries contain only “age-appropriate” material.
“My interview was a representation of me and our work with Moms For Liberty,” she said. “Just because somebody says or does something years ago that I don’t agree with doesn’t mean that just because I did an interview with him, I agree with every single little thing that he said or what his news outlet has put out.”
Although Moms For Liberty has some Jewish members in its leadership, the group borrows much of its rhetoric from Christian nationalist organizations and one local chapter has quoted Hitler in its communications to parents. The “parents’ rights” movement the group represents has largely targeted books about race, gender and sexual identity, but some Jewish and Holocaust books have also been caught in the dragnet.
Public figures call the graphic adaptation ‘pornography’
This spring Pippin’s school district on the state’s Atlantic coast, acting on her challenge, made national headlines when it agreed to pull “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” from high schools. A spokesperson told JTA at the time that the 2018 illustrated reimagining of Frank’s diary was “a fictional novel” and “not age-appropriate.”
Since then, opposition to the book has only grown. A Jewish parent at another Florida school district successfully petitioned for the book’s removal last month, while a middle-school teacher in Texas was recently fired for reportedly assigning and reading aloud passages from the book. Politicians and other public figures have since claimed that the book’s depiction of Frank’s attraction to another girl, and her descriptions of her own genitalia, were “pornography”; a local Florida news outlet claimed Pippin had called the book “sexually explicit” in her own challenge.
Pippin told JTA that the quote attributed to her was incorrect and that she did not object to the book’s sexual content, which she recognized came from Frank’s original diary. “I didn’t challenge it for the sexually explicit content because this was actually what she wrote,” she said. “This is what she was thinking in her teenage years, during the Holocaust.”
She instead said she objected to the book’s presence in her high school for a different reason: that it was a highly abridged version of the diary’s original text, and she and a local Holocaust education group jointly believed high school students should be expected to be able to read the original instead.
“They agreed that this one book, the graphic adaptation, should be permanently removed because they felt that children in high school should be reading the true diary of Anne Frank, and not the graphic adaptation, to get the actual, factual information from the diary,” Pippin said, adding that she supported “age-appropriate” Holocaust education in schools.
Wiles: ‘Marxist Communists are waging war against America’s innocent children’
Pippin said Wiles had reached out to her to ask about her challenge to the Anne Frank book specifically, although she said she did not think his questions about the book were antisemitic in nature and the two did not discuss the book in their live conversation.
Wearing a Moms For Liberty T-shirt, Pippin spoke to Wiles for around 30 minutes on his show, chiefly promoting the work of her group, which Wiles said he fully supported. “I will do everything I can to help you,” he told her. “I will help raise money, I will help organize, I will help you get a lawsuit against the school board.”
Wiles introduced his interview with Pippin by stating, “Marxist Communists are waging war against America’s innocent children in almost every state in the USA. They have infiltrated our nation’s local school districts and public libraries.” He concluded it by comparing Moms For Liberty’s battles with school boards to the French Revolution, adding, “If we don’t stop it really soon, none of us are going to survive over the next 10 years, because these people are violent. … They’re going after our children now.”
Pippin told JTA she did not agree with Wiles’ characterization of her activism and had tried to steer the conversation back to books.
TruNews has broadcast in various forms for more than two decades, and Wiles has taken aim at Muslims and LGBTQ individuals as well as Jews over time. In recent weeks, since his broadcast with Pippin and Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Wiles has posted almost exclusively content targeting “godless, atheistic, antichrist Zionism” on social media and called on the Israeli government to “stop the Palestinian pogrom.”
This story is bat shit. Random nobody staffer copy and pasted a Presidential directive to pull out of Afghanistan without consulting any national security leaders. He’s the guy running Project 2025. These fuckers are a menace. https://t.co/KYKyG4LOx1
Trump's aide John McEntee was fired today because he is currently under investigation by DHS for serious financial crimes. Minutes after McEntee was escorted from the WH, he was named a senior adviser to Trump's reelection campaign. Only the best people! https://t.co/vYhq57nVxl
Good old Johnny McEntee – the fuckboi frat bastard that ran trump’s Presidential Personnel Office – where if you came across a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, you were obligated to chug it. (That’s not a joke) https://t.co/xL81DTePeG
Read the full article. According to the piece, the flag was re-popularized in 2013 by Christian nationalist Dutch Sheets and is now often seen at far-right and QAnon events. Rioters brandished the flag during the attack on the US Capitol. As I reported this morning, Johnson is presently attending a far-right conference in Paris.
"An Appeal to Heaven" flag outside #NAR Mike's speaker's office.
"But for the past decade it has become a symbol of the NAR movement and their goal of establishing a “Seven Mountain Mandate" over the government."
Read the full article. The piece notes that $1.7 million is more than Ohio dioceses spent running local Catholic Charities programs last year. Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr last appeared here in 2014 when he launched a “prayer in defense of marriage” campaign as the Sixth Circuit Court considered the same-sex marriage case that ultimately would be folded into the Obergefell case before the Supreme Court.
Read the full article. The original clip has nearly 10 million views at this writing. As you can see below, Salzman appears to be a supporter of Moms For Liberty. Salzman has one of the wildest Wikipedia entries that you’ve likely seen.
What happened in Wichita and JoCo is happening nationwide, the AP reports. Voters rebuked conservative candidates who want to ban books and restrict classroom conversations on race and gender. #ksedhttps://t.co/OF1RKOg15G
Yesterday CNN reported that “a plumber, a maid, a chauffeur and a woodworker are among Mar-a-Lago staffers and contract workers who federal prosecutors may call to testify against former President Donald Trump.”
In 2023, a whole bunch of orcas started attacking boats off the coast of Spain. Was this the first battle in an all-out interspecies war? Well, probably not. But it’s a pretty neat look into how trends come and go in orca pods – like salmon hats.
The title is very low-key and misleading until the hard a punch this post has. I have to admit, I am jealous I can not write this well and put such emotion with detail into a post. The author is an accomplished writer who can lead a reader down a path and then deliver the real message. Please read and enjoy. Hugs. Scottie
One of the most serious reasons I quit being a member of TYT and refuse to watch their shows was because of Cenk’s and Anna’s constant refrain that the left supporting trans people was a losing issue, causing the republicans to win races. They were vicious about it, how the left had to stop supporting trans people, stop talking about them, and just let the right have that space. Even as it was pointed out to both of them that the election results showed they were wrong, they doubled down on the idea that the left needed to stop supporting trans people, pushing for trans people to play sports with the gender they identified with, and letting trans people use the public / school restrooms of the gender they identify with. This election again shows how Cenk and Anna have become so out of touch with the left now. They doubled down because in their minds they are the experts that everyone must agree with and follow. Hopefully these election results will get Cenk to drop his grift of running for president against Biden. I will also remind everyone that Riley Gaines is a failed losing swimmer that makes her money being a star of the anti-trans movement complaining that she mistreated but always fails to mention the truth both her and Lia Thomas were beaten by four other women swimmers. If Thomas had such great advantages, why was she beaten by four other women? Gaines is just a poor swimmer compared to the competition. Hugs. Scottie
Does Kentucky’s election show that trans rights isn’t a winning issue for Republicans?
Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy BeshearPhoto: Shutterstock
Despite an outside organization spending millions of dollars on ads attacking transgender people to support GOP candidate and state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, incumbent Gov. Andy Beshear (D) is projected as the winner in the Kentucky gubernatorial race with 90% of precincts reporting.
“We have been through a lot together,” Beshear told supporters late last night after the race was called. “Devastating tornadoes in the west, historic flooding in the east and after each I made a promise, a promise that I would help rebuild every home and every life. And thanks to the people of Kentucky and thanks to this election, we’re going to see that promise through.”
Transgender rights became a major campaign issue this past year in the state. One of the ads funded by the American Principles Project PAC (APP-PAC) said that Beshear would send the FBI to take trans kids away from their parents if their parents didn’t accept their identities, which was not a part of Beshear’s platform.
Another ad showed a drag queen and accused Beshear of pushing “child sex changes with permanent consequences.” The ad was removed from YouTube under the platform’s hate speech policy.
In several other ads featuring former University of Kentucky swimmer and anti-trans activist Riley Gaines, APP-PAC attacked Beshear for vetoing a bill to ban trans kids from participating in school sports. The Republican legislature ultimately overturned his veto.
In the ad, Gaines complained about tying with trans University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas for fifth place in a competition, a moment Gaines described as “heartbreaking and somber.” She has used her story for the past two years in political ads and speeches as she decries trans equality.
In the ad, Gaines also said that Beshear wasn’t a “real man” while calling Thomas a “male” and misgendering her.
On X, Terry Schilling of APP-PAC said that the group spent $2 million on the anti-trans ads in Kentucky.
Schilling got national attention in 2020 when he told Politico that he hoped to make opposition to transgender rights a wedge issue to support Republican candidates. His group paid for anti-trans ads supporting Trump’s campaign. Trump ultimately lost the election by about seven million votes.
“What I’m hoping is that once we release these ads and numbers start to move, the Trump campaign will see it’s a powerful issue that the Republican Party can use to its success,” Schilling said at the time.
Scottie's Playtime 