Mum and son move 1,000km from Texas to Colorado to escape cruel new trans laws: ‘It was hard’

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2022/11/27/texas-trans-law-katie-laird-son-nbc-out/

This is the goal of the republicans in office, drive the LGBTQI+ in to hiding, make them disappear from society. Red states like Texas want gay and trans people / families to leave their states. They are trying to drive them out of the state if they cannot make them illegal. We need to stop the republicans and the right wing maga thug enforcers. Think of the US divided into states where it is legal to live your life openly as who you are yet in other states it is illegal for you to even exist. Imagine being a gay couple going from a blue state through a red state on a trip, as you enter that state you are in danger of being arrested simply for being born gay or having a different gender identity from assigned birth sex. If you are a male wearing a nice dress or pantsuit leaving your home blue state and as you cross into the red state you can be arrested as you are breaking the law by what you are wearing. I think people are now seeing the excess of the republican party / the right and that we need to stand up and fight back against these attacks on civil rights / equality. Hugs

A mum and son moved 1,000km to Colorado to escape cruel new trans laws in Texas. (Anatoliy Cherkasov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

A mother and son have moved 1,000km across the US to escape cruel new trans laws in Texas that slash access to gender-affirming healthcare for young people.

In a documentary film for NBC OUT, Katie Laird and her 16-year-old son Noah have described the process of moving from their home in Texas, to Colorado, after Noah lost access to his gender-affirming care.

The family said they had been “living in fear” until they moved in June of this year, after Texas attorney general Ken Paxton described gender-affirming care as “child abuse”.

In a move quickly blocked by a judge, governor Greg Abbott, along with Paxton directed the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to begin child abuse investigation on families who have provided their offspring with gender-affirming care.

The Texas Children’s Hospital then decided to pause all gender-affirming care for minors, including Noah, due to concerns over Abbott and Paxton’s attack on trans youth. It was this decision that triggered the move for Noah and his family.

“It was just hard, and it still is hard to leave literally everything I’ve ever known in my entire life,” Noah told NBC.

Laird added she and Noah will continue fighting for trans rights in Texas, despite having moved.

“That is a commitment that Noah and I made when we left,” she said.

“This is our home. We have been pushed from it, and we will keep fighting, no matter where we live, for the state because we know that what happens in Texas has great influence across the nation, and we have to stay in the fight.”

Texas has pushed through several anti-LGBTQ+ laws over the past year, with legislation seeking to ban all public drag performances, a ruling that Christian companies can deny life-saving PrEP coverage for HIV, and a ban on trans youth playing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities.

And a mother of a trans son who left the state in November 2021 said it was a “relief” to be out of Texas after several anti-trans bills passed.

Hillary Moore-Embry told PinkNews their family left after a ban on trans children taking part in the school sports team of their choice.

“Even if it hadn’t passed, listening to those lawmakers, listening to their plans, listening to how they view my child – this is not a place that I feel safe for him,” Moore-Embry said.

“This bill is not the end. They will come after trans people in other ways. This is just a foot in the door.”

When the transphobic sports ban passed in October 2021, Ricardo Martinez, CEO of Equality Texas, said he was “devastated”, adding that the “testimony of trans kids and adults, families and advocates” had been “powerful”.

“Our organisations will begin to shift focus to electing pro-equality lawmakers who understand our issues and prioritise representing the vast majority of Texans who firmly believe that discrimination against trans and LGB+ people is wrong,” he said.

Ancient Egyptian Building Methods Inspired this Grand Canyon Bridge | Host Jay Ellis

To build the breathtaking Skywalk Glass Bridge over the Grand Canyon, workers constructed the horseshoe-shaped walkway 50 feet back from the edge, and then slowly rolled it out over the canyon–a system used by the ancient Egyptians to build their pyramids.

The Don’t Say Gay law is instilling fear in Florida kids and classrooms

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/11/dont-say-gay-law-instilling-fear-florida-kids-classrooms/

This is what these bills are designed to do, create fear and keep the gay and trans kids hidden, to stop any positive reinforcement of LGBTQ+ while allowing all the negatives and slurs full volume to attack them. This is designed to reenforce white cis heterosexuality only. Make being gay or trans so hated kids and teacher live in fear of the other kids who target them with the authority of maga parents and the school administration behind them. It is indoctrination of right wing hate. It worked in Russia and other countries it has been done like China or the Islamic countries. It is about erasing the LGBTQ+ from society and returning to a time when hate and hostility towards minorities was accepted as normal. How is combating racism and bigotry controversial or political unless one party has racism and bigotry as their identity? How can it be a bad thing in 2022 to be against racism? This is a serious regression in society, the right wants to unwind the entire civil rights movement. Ask yourself why? Who wins in that situation? Hugs

Anything deemed political, with LGBTQ subject matter in the bullseye, is being torn down, boxed up and otherwise removed from campuses.

By Greg Owen Saturday, November 19, 2022

Photo: Shutterstock

Across Florida this new school year, rainbows, safe space stickers and books with LGBTQ themes and history are being replaced in classrooms out of fear.

The Parental Rights in Education Bill – called the Don’t Say Gay bill by its opponents – was signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in March. It’s had a chilling effect on students, teachers and free speech across the state. Anything deemed political, with LGBTQ subject matter in the bullseye, is being torn down, boxed up and otherwise removed from campuses. Black Lives Matter posters are leaving along with rainbow flags.

In Sarasota, where high school senior Zander Moricz organized a headline-making student walkout in March, students and faculty report a grim environment imposed by school administrators enforcing the Don’t Say Gay law.

Gail Foreman, a longtime social studies teacher at Booker High School and a lesbian, says her principal didn’t wait for the law to take effect before conducting an inventory of inappropriate materials last March. “Anything that could even remotely be construed as gay-related came down,” Foreman told Buzzfeed News. “It wasn’t me putting this stuff up,” she said. “It was the kids. It was their classroom, too.”

Among the items removed were student-created posters reading “All Students Deserve Equal Education” and “All Minds Matter”; pride flags; a pride cape gifted by a student; safe space stickers from the Trevor Project; and a Mickey Mouse pen topped with a rainbow head. “Rainbows now symbolize politics,” Foreman said.

Senior Nora Mitchell, who founded Sarasota Students for Justice in 2020, says the Don’t Say Gay law has “allowed the Sarasota County School Board to create new policies that are, for lack of better words, extremely repressive within our school.” That school board now includes three new DeSantis-endorsed members, two of whom celebrated their victory in August with members of the neo-Nazi group, Proud Boys. One flashes a white power sign in a photo published by Vice News.

Mitchell, who came out to friends and teachers just before Don’t Say Gay was signed, says two banners she created were taken down and thrown away. One read, “Black Minds Matter,” and the other said, “We are all welcome here” and was decorated with rainbows. Officials “want school to feel unsafe,” says Mitchell, “and they want schools to be spaces where they can impress their own values of heterosexuality of whiteness. They want to reaffirm those values.”

Sarasota County Schools spokesperson Craig Maniglia denied the event Mitchell describes took place.

Mitchell and 2021 graduate Anthony Frisbee add that it’s not just school administrators tracking down violations. “Students have reported about teachers who are wearing anything rainbow-related,” says Mitchell. “It’s horrible.” In Frisbee’s view, “It’s like the Hitler Youth outing their parents.”

“You feel the sense of danger — like, school does not feel safe. It does not feel as vibrant as it was before,” Mitchell says. “Teachers can’t teach what they want, they can’t call students by their actual name, students are scared to be themselves at school. I mean, how can that possibly be conducive to learning or be a welcoming and fun place?”

Virginia’s GOP governor deleted MLK Day & Barack Obama from its history curriculum

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/11/virginias-gop-governor-deleted-mlk-day-barack-obama-history-curriculum/

Make no mistake, even the sweater wearing quiet side of the republican party elected office holders are racist bigots. They want a return to a time of white male superiority where even the thought of equality for minors was not considered or worried about. Hugs

Glenn Youngkin promised to ban “critical race theory” from schools. His new plan has left his educational appointees confused.

By Daniel Villarreal Friday, November 18, 2022

Glenn YoungkinPhoto: Kate Magee Joyce

Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) won his 2020 election by promising to ban anti-racist curriculum from schools. So he had his secretary of education consult conservative think tanks when rewriting the state’s history and social studies curriculum.

But now progressive racial groups have protested notable exclusions — like the deletion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, former President Barack Obama, and Juneteenth. Youngkin’s handpicked board of education has also been so confused by the proposed changes that they’ve asked for an extra month to review them.

Youngkin’s superintendent of public instruction, Jillian Balow, pushed the board to rewrite the new educational standards. The new document was “written over the course of about a month, replacing a prior version that took about 18 months to produce,” Axios reported.

To prepare the document, Balow consulted the Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank that praised Youngkin’s executive order banning so-called critical race theory (CRT) from public schools. The institute also supports charter schools, or so-called “school choice,” a push to weaken public education in favor of for-profit private schools which can sometimes exclude any students or topics they dislike.

Balow also consulted the National Association of Scholars, a group that opposes the alleged rise of progressive politics — like multiculturalism and antiracism efforts — in schools.

Youngkin’s Secretary of Education Aimee Rogstad Guidera submitted a rewrite of the curriculum. The plan deleted references to Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, mentioned white President Ronald Reagan five times but Black President Barack Obama only once, and referred to Indigenous people as “America’s first immigrants.” Black, Asian, Sikh, and Native American parents reportedly criticized the changes for excluding their histories.

Balow, however, swears the new curriculum won’t axe Black people from history.

“We don’t want to conflate concepts like African American History and CRT,” she told reporters on Wednesday. “Those are different conversations entirely. We have not had discussions about watering down or eliminating any of the African American history.”

To keep critics at bay, the education department submitted a new curriculum draft to the nine-member education board on Thursday, apologizing for the “unintentional errors” in the first draft. The board considered the new draft in an eight-hour meeting, but afterward, “board members mostly sounded confused,” Axios wrote, which was notable considering that Youngkin appointed five of its new members.

The board asked Balow to create a new draft that incorporates public comments while explaining what has changed and why. The board will consider those changes in about a month.

The possible changes are worrying considering that Virginia is just one of several states that have promised to ban CRT and to oppose LGBTQ inclusion in schools.

During Youngkin’s campaign, the Loudoun County, Virginia school district had tumultuous board meetings filled with anti-LGBTQ protesters who falsely claimed that the district’s trans-inclusive bathroom policies led to sexual assaults that occurred before the policies were even enacted.