A new study warns that sloths living in high-altitude rainforests of South and Central America could face extinction if temperatures there continue to rise according to climatic predictions.
The research, published in PeerJ Life & Environment, suggests that some sloths’ restricted ability to migrate to cooler regions and limited metabolic flexibility make them particularly vulnerable to climate change.
“Sloths are inherently limited by their slow metabolism and unique inability to regulate body temperature effectively, unlike most mammals,” says Dr Rebecca Cliffe, lead researcher of the study from Swansea University and The Sloth Conservation Foundation in the UK.
“Our research shows that sloths, particularly in high-altitude regions, may not be able to survive the significant increases in temperature forecast for 2100.” (snip-MORE)
A team at Monash University in Victoria developing a hormone-free, reversible male contraceptive has now figured out the 3D structure of one of their primary therapeutic targets – the P2X1-purinergic receptor (P2X1).
According to Dr Sab Ventura from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), this has been the main stumbling block that has so far hindered the team from progressing the drug discovery program to the next stage.
“Our primary goal is to develop a male contraceptive pill that is not only hormone-free but also bypasses side effects such as long-term irreversible impacts on fertility, making it suitable for young men seeking contraceptive options,” says Ventura.
In previous research in mice, the team showed that simultaneous inactivation of P2X1 and a second protein, α1A-adrenergic receptor, resulted in male infertility.
“Now we know what our therapeutic target looks like, we can generate drugs that can bind to it appropriately, which totally changes the game,” says Ventura. (snip-MORE)
Mount Everest is tall. In other news, the sky is blue.
But Everest (also called Chomolungma and Sagarmāthā) is taller than it logically should be – towering 238m above the world’s next highest peak, K2, and more than 250m higher than any of its counterparts in the relatively uniform Himalaya range.
Plus, it’s growing at about 2mm a year, faster than the expected rate for the range.
A team of Chinese and UK scientists have now suggested why this is the case.
The researchers think the culprit is a nearby river which “captured” another river 89,000 years ago, causing erosion that made Everest more buoyant.
They’ve published their findings in Nature Geoscience.
The Himalayan peaks get their extraordinary height from the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, causing the Earth’s crust to thicken and the mountain range to push upwards.
“An interesting river system exists in the Everest region,” says co-author Dr Jin-Gen Dai, from China University of Geosciences.
The team used numerical modelling to see how the river changed over time. They found that, about 89,000 years ago, the Arun river “captured” another nearby river.
This event, referred to as “river piracy”, happens when a river diverts its course and takes up the discharge of another river or stream.
“Our research shows that as the nearby river system cuts deeper, the loss of material is causing the mountain to spring further upwards,” says co-author Adam Smith, a PhD student at University College London, UK.
The team estimates that the river piracy has made Everest between 15 and 50m higher than it would otherwise be.
It’s also made neighbouring peaks, Lhotse and Makalu, unusually tall. These are the 4th and 5th highest mountains in the world, respectively. (snip-MORE)
It’s not the famous Star Trek tricorder but it’s close: researchers have developed a hand-held scanner that can generate highly detailed 3D images of body parts in almost real time.
The technology can accurately image blood vessels up to 15mm deep in human tissue, which the researchers say could help to diagnose conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and arthritis.
“We’ve come a long way with photoacoustic imaging in recent years, but there were still barriers to using it in the clinic,” says Paul Beard of University College London (UCL), UK, corresponding author of the new Nature Biomedical Engineeringpaper.
“The breakthrough in this study is the acceleration in the time it takes to acquire images, which is between 100 and 1,000 times faster than previous scanners.
“This speed avoids motion-induced blurring, providing highly detailed images of a quality that no other scanner can provide. It also means that rather than taking 5 minutes or longer, images can be acquired in real time, making it possible to visualise dynamic physiological events.
“These technical advances make the system suitable for clinical use for the first time, allowing us to look at aspects of human biology and disease that we haven’t been able to before.” (snip-MORE)
The mechanisms that allow some mammals to pause the development of their young inside the womb also seem work in human cells, according to a fascinating new study published in the journal Cell.
Biologists discovered they could induce a dormant state in human cells by decreasing the activity of the mTOR signaling pathway, which they previously showed is a major regulator of this process in mice.
They triggered this dormant state not in human embryos, but in human pluripotent stem cells and stem-cell based models known as blastoids, which mimic the blastocyst stage of embryonic development at about 5 days post-fertilisation. (snip)
Until now it was unclear whether diapause could be triggered in humans.
“The mTOR pathway is a major regulator of growth and developmental progression in mouse embryos,” says co-senior author Aydan Bulut-Karslioglu of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Germany.
“When we treated human stem cells and blastoids with an mTOR inhibitor we observed a developmental delay, which means that human cells can deploy the molecular machinery to elicit a diapause-like response.”
Cells in this dormant state show reduced cell division, slower development and a decreased ability to attach to the uterine lining. The ability to enter this dormant stage seems to be restricted to the blastocyst stage of development. (snip-MORE)
Chemists have made an extremely energy-dense, environmentally friendly fuel out of nitrogen.
They’ve done it by employing one of chemistry’s favourite hobbies, bullying nitrogen n (N2)into weird structures. An explosion occurred, but it was a small one.
The Chinese team has successfully made the element adopt a diamond-like structure, called cubic gauche nitrogen (cg-N) and importantly made it without extremely high pressures. In fact, they managed it at standard atmospheric pressure.
They’ve published their triumph in Science Advances.
Pure nitrogen-based molecules have drawn interest from chemists because they can release a tremendous amount of energy when they decompose. (snip-MORE)
Sep 23, 2024 Orion Rummler Originally published by The 19th
In 2020, the Supreme Court found that gay and transgender workers are protected from workplace discrimination in the landmark case Bostock v. Clayton County. Despite those federal protections, LGBTQ+ people across the country — especially transgender and nonbinary people — continue to face rampant discrimination at work and don’t feel safe being out, according to research from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.
In a 2023 study of 1,902 LGBTQ+ adults in the workforce, released in August, 17 percent said they had experienced discrimination or harassment on the job in the past year. Trans and nonbinary employees were more than twice as likely as cisgender queer employees to face discrimination and harassment: Twenty-two percent of trans and nonbinary people experienced discrimination in the past year, and 26 percent experienced harassment.
“You would hope things have gotten better,” said Brad Sears, founding executive director of the Williams Institute and coauthor of the report.
Sears believes the high rate of recent discrimination is an indication that change has been slow after Bostock, even after the Biden administration implemented additional nondiscrimination policies. Shortly after Biden was inaugurated in 2021, he issued an executive order based on Bostock that mandated the protection of gay and transgender Americans in the workplace, as well as in schools and doctor’s offices. And as of this spring, extra protections were put in place to guard against employers who consistently misgender employees or deny them access to sex-segregated spaces.
Still, the study found that many LGBTQ+ Americans are not out in the workplace to avoid facing discrimination and harassment. Nearly half of LGBTQ+ employees said that they are not open about their identity to their current supervisor, and one-fifth are not out to any of their coworkers. Staying in the closet actually did protect them: LGBTQ+ employees who were out to at least a few coworkers, or just their supervisor, were three times as likely to report discrimination as employees who were not out.
“A lot of people, even if they are out, they’re kind of downplaying their identities in the workplace,” Sears said. “Maybe they use a different voice or different mannerisms at work, or they don’t dress exactly how they would otherwise dress when they’re not at work, or they use a bathroom that they would prefer not to be using at work.”
To avoid discrimination, transgender and nonbinary people are significantly more likely to hide their identities than cisgender queer people. In a new breakout analysis of the Williams Institute’s survey, the experiences of nonbinary people are found to be especially fraught.
Nonbinary people in the study described being ostracized and subjected to violence, harassment or threatsat work due to their physical appearance either not being “feminine” enough or “masculine” enough. Their gender expression made them a target and was used as a justification for their treatment by their bosses, coworkers and customers. Frequently, nonbinary people said they were passed over for raises and promotions, called slurs, and forced to work alone.
The nonbinary people surveyed were largely young, urban, and racially and ethnically diverse. To the survey authors, such data is a call for employers to take action — especially If they want to retain young employees.
About 87 percent of nonbinary adults in the workforce are under 35 years old, compared with 71 percent of transgender adults and 51 percent of cisgender queer adults, according to the study. That research aligns with other findings from KFF that Americans under 35 are more likely to identify as nonbinary than older Americans, and research from the Pew Research Center that found adults under 30 are more likely than older adults to be out as trans or nonbinary.
About 3 in 5 nonbinary people have experienced discrimination or harassment at work at some point in their lives, like being fired, not hired, not promoted, or verbally, sexually or physically harassed.
About 1 in 5 nonbinary people reported physical harassment at work because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, with some survey respondents reporting being “assaulted,” “attacked” and “strangled.”
For some, unfair treatment looked like having their hours reduced, being isolated from other employees or customers, or being excluded from company events or socializing.
“Oftentimes, I was passed up for a promotion because I wasn’t ‘manly’ enough, and they doubted my ability to lead a team,” a Latinx nonbinary person from California said in the survey. A Latinx nonbinary participant from Colorado shared: “A co-worker strangled me at a counter and said he was trying to ‘give a girl a massage.’” In Connecticut, a Black nonbinary person said they heard their manager talking “disparagingly” about them to the rest of their bosses because of their gender expression.
One in 4 nonbinary employees said they are currently experiencing adverse treatment at their job because of their LGBTQ+ identity. For many nonbinary people, the worst experiences of discrimination and harassment that they face at work are linked to their multiple marginalized identities. In particular, they were targeted for their disability or being bisexual in addition to being nonbinary.
This research shows that company-level policies, as well as state and federal nondiscrimination regulations, need to be specific so that they protect nonbinary employees, Sears said.
The Williams Institute plans to release more breakout analyses from its survey, including reports on the experiences of transgender, Black, Latinx and Asian-American employees. Breaking down the unique experiences of each demographic is key to understanding and addressing the issues that they’re facing at work, Sears said — for example, nonbinary people face rigid and gendered expectations at work, while bisexual women face high rates of sexual harassment.
“LGBTQ+ people are not monolithic. They’re different, they have intersecting identities … and those are leading to differences that are important in the workplace,” he said.
September 24, 1968 10,000 draft files were destroyed by fourteen anti-war activists with homemade napalm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee 14 home Watch a video of the event
September 24, 1969 The Chicago 8 trial opened in Chicago. It was the prosecution of eight anti-war activists charged with responsibility for the violent demonstrations at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.The defendants included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party (“Yippies”); Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party; and two lesser-known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines. The Chicago 8 minus Bobby Seale Chicago 8 background Bobby Seale, after repeatedly asserting his right to an attorney of his own choosing or to defend himself, was bound and gagged in the courtroom and his trial was severed from the rest on November 5th. The group then became known as the Chicago 7. About Bobby Seale
September 24, 1976 Ian Smith, leader of the whites-only government of Rhodesia, a former British colony, agreed to introduce black majority rule to the country within two years. He was under pressure from the United States through Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and from British Prime Minister James Callaghan.
It’s a WaPo piece, free (I know because I got to read it all with no nagging, and it’s not a guest link according to MPS,) and really full of info concerning a place where our tax dollars work well for we the people. This is a thing at which the US excels as a public entity. More people should know about it, so we make sure it stays public, rather than outsourced to a for-profit. Also, there is plenty of general science, and it’s noticeable how many women have great positions and have done superlative work. Thanks!
First, peace to all, and make it a good International Day of Peace. Next, the Autumnal/Spring Equinox is tomorrow morning at 7:44 AM USCDT/whatever time it is where you are. Here’s a beautifully peaceful photo from NASA’s Photo of the Day:
Explanation: The defining astronomical moment of this September’s equinox is at 12:44 UTC on September 22, when the Sun crosses the celestial equator moving south in its yearly journey through planet Earth’s sky. That marks the beginning of fall for our fair planet in the northern hemisphere and spring in the southern hemisphere, when day and night are nearly equal around the globe. Of course, if you celebrate the astronomical change of seasons by watching a sunrise you can also look for crepuscular rays. Outlined by shadows cast by clouds, crepuscular rays can have a dramatic appearance in the twilight sky during any sunrise (or sunset). Due to perspective, the parallel cloud shadows will seem to point back to the rising Sun and a place due east on your horizon on the equinox date. But in this spectacular sunrise skyscape captured in early June, the parallel shadows and crepuscular rays appear to converge toward an eastern horizon’s more northerly sunrise. The well-composed photo places the rising Sun just behind the bell tower of a church in the town of Vic, province of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
I’ve been thinking this week about some of the absolutely stupid garbage conservative, culture-war-obsessed MAGA people believe, or claim to believe, for the purposes of demonizing people and making people hate the same people they hate. The most glaring current example is obviously Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and their media mouthpieces attacking innocent Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, with lies about them stealing and eating family pets.
But there are a bunch more.
There are the abortion lies Trump and Republicans love to tell — which many of them truly believe — about how Democrats love to let babies be born, at which point they lay them on the table and decide whether or not they’re going to execute them. Trump is sure it’s happening, because he saw on TV that the previous governor of Virginia (or is it West Virginia? Trump is never sure) totally said that, and if it’s on TV, it’s true.
Every election cycle lately, there’s a crop of the country’s stupidest Republican politicians babbling out loud that they have a friend whose pastor told them at the local elementary school there are children who identify as “furries” and demand to poop in litterboxes. It’s amazing watching them tell that one with a straight face.
Of course, Republican lies, blood libels and conspiracy theories often have a tiny element of 0.2 percent truth in them, something they can use to insist that the ridiculously stupid thing they say is happening really is happening. In the Virginia abortion story Trump tells, the nugget of truth was former Governor Ralph Northam talking about palliative care in grievously tragic situations where a newborn infant has no chance of surviving.
There actually have been litterboxes in classrooms. It’s so that if there’s a mass shooter in the school and classrooms are locked down for hours, poor little kids who can’t hold it might not have to be humiliated by wetting their pants.
(Did I ever mention that white conservative MAGA Republican politicians, pundits and influencers are extremely sick, evil liars?)
And then there’s the right-wing Christian Republican war on LGBTQ+ kids.
This week, Fox News tweeted a video featuring failed swimmer/anti-trans hatemonger Riley Gaines — remember her from my post about the Paris Olympics? — on “Fox & Friends,” spreading some the vile lies she so loves to tell. The clip caught my attention and pissed me the fuck off, and that’s why I’m talking about that this week instead of Mark Robinson. (I’ll get to him in due time, I’m sure.)
Here’s the video: (embedded on the page.)
Fox explained in its tweet that Gaines was “react[ing] to a California judge banning a school district from imposing a policy that would have required teachers and staff to notify parents if their student declares they want to change their name or pronouns.”
In the video Gaines bellyaches that such rulings are the government saying “they know your children better than you do. They don’t believe that these are your kids. They believe that these are the government’s kids.”
To which I reply, oh, go fuck yourself, Elon. Same message goes for Riley Gaines.
I want to talk about the California law in question and what it really does, and how that ties into how Donald Trump and Republicans are demonizing LGBTQ+ kids as part of their hate campaign against America, but I also want to tell y’all a story, so I’m going to try to do both.
Storytime!
Two nights before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, I was standing in line in the wee hours in the lobby of a prominent hotel in downtown Atlanta, with a bunch of fellow weary travelers. It was Friday, the first day of the CrowdStrike update that borked the entire global internet, and all our Delta flights had been canceled.
I struck up a conversation with the guy in front of me, a handsome young guy from El Paso. His wife and small children were somewhere in the expansive lobby, exhausted, while Dad tried to get hotel rooms sorted. They were coming from Disney. I was on my way back from the Republican convention in Milwaukee. We made small talk.
But we were in line for over an hour, so the conversation actually got surprisingly deep. He was a second-generation immigrant from Mexico, with parents who only speak Spanish. We talked about what life is really like along the border these days for people who actually literally live right on it. He described himself as a conservative, but not extreme, and not super-political. He freely offered that he couldn’t stand Donald Trump, but probably would vote for him, not that he was enthused about it.
But one thing that was bothering him, big time, was this law that had just been signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in California, to protect gay and trans kids from rogue school personnel who would out them to their parents without their consent. I was a bit surprised this Texas guy, who again didn’t seem that political, was so in tune with something California’s governor had done five days prior. But there we were.
He made extra-clear from the beginning that he doesn’t consider himself anti-gay or anti-trans. But it was immediately clear to me that this very kind-seeming guy was getting all his information on this issue filtered through the Christian nationalist bullshit machine of right-wing media.
The California law was passed directly in response to school districts in red areas of the state enacting policiesforcing schools to notify parents if a child asked to be referred to with a different name or pronouns. The legislature acted to protect those kids.
But to this dad, it sounded like California was trying to put one over on parents, to usurp their parental role, stealing and indoctrinating their kids. (Hey, Riley Gaines! How did your shitty, vile hate get in this nice man’s brain?)
It was 1:00 a.m., so I wasn’t about to start bickering, and also y’all would be amazed how gentle and diplomatic I am in person. But I did try to get on this dad’s side and maybe help him see it from a different perspective. He had gathered that I was gay, or maybe I told him.
“You obviously love your kids,” I said, “and you wouldn’t reject them for any reason, no way, no how.” He agreed.
“That law isn’t about hiding things from good, loving parents like you,” I told him. “It’s about protecting kids who don’t have parents like you, kids who are frightened of what would happen if their parents knew who they were, kids who don’t feel safe, kids who come from of abusive homes.” It could be the religious kind of abuse, and/or the non-religious kind of abuse.
He understood what I was talking about and several times reiterated how very not-anti-gay and not-anti-trans he was.
There have been memes going around lately along the lines of, if your child is gay or trans and they don’t want you to know, there’s probably a good reason for that, and likely it’s you. The problem is you.
I was trying to help this dad see, though, that he was not the problem. But he was still uncomfortable with it. He felt he would want the school to tell him. He grudgingly agreed that if one of his kids thought they were trans, he would absolutely want to make sure they had the best medical care and guidance they could get, that he would want to do whatever was best for his child.
But he wasn’t convinced this law wasn’t out to get people like him. You don’t fix the constant lava flow of conservative Christian right-wing fascist propaganda and lies in one sleepy night when all anybody wants to do is get a fucking hotel room and then fly the hell out of Atlanta the next day.
That dad is a good example of why Trump and Vance and Fox News and the rest of the Republican machinery are so committed to demonizing all LGBTQ+ people, but especially trans people, this election season.
This is a strategy, and it works on a whole bunch of people.
‘Think about it, your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation.’
(Trump also memorably screamed at the debate that Kamala Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison!” He gets confused about his conspiracy theories sometimes.)
Reality check: there is no school nurse in the country doling out top surgeries or bottom surgeries, either for trans-identifying kids, or for kids who come in after they skin their knees on the playground. (That would be real fucked up!)
Schools aren’t going gender-affirmation surgeries and kids aren’t demanding litterboxes because they say they’re “furries.” The baby isn’t being born so they can put it on the table and decide to execute it, and Haitians in Springfield aren’t eating Whiskers. Not even the best Obamacare money can buy has a plan where kids can walk in to the school nurse, without their parents’ consent, sign up for surgery, and then reappear at their parents’ house days later with a brand new set of genitals.
But Moms For Liberty got so mad at CNN for debunking Trump’s dementia lies. It was very important to them that Trump be out there demonizing transgender people, in general, regardless of whether Trump’s babbling about children getting on the school bus and coming back “a few days later with an operation” was literally true.
They angrily sent CNN a bunch of examples of lawsuits filed in various states, all focused on “parental rights” and, in particular, schools letting kids transition socially — as in, come out as trans or non-binary, etc. — without running off to tattle to their parents. Letting kids use different pronouns if that’s what they’re feeling is right for them. Etc.
Of course, because it’s Moms For Liberty, their missive to CNN — and the pissy PR email they sent to tell everybody about it — was full of hallucinatory conspiracy theory babblings about schools “secret[ly] social-transitioning … minor children” and, quoting one lawsuit from Massachusetts, “encourag[ing] minor children to hide key components of who they are from their parents, while actively encouraging children to disobey and ignore their parents’ wishes, and while actively deceiving parents and hiding information about their own children from them.” Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice even suggested that schools are “legally allowed to assign a new pronoun without parental knowledge.”
As if it’s the schools initiating these actions. As if schools are handing out pronouns with seating charts. (“Aw fuck, bro! Did you get she/her? Bro that sucks!” — common elementary school conversation now.)
They also straight up lied and said Minnesota allows gender-affirmation surgeries for minors without parental consent. It does not.
(Again I ask, on what fuckin’ insurance plan? Have I mentioned lately that these people are delusional weirdos?)
But as I said, pretty much everything Moms For Liberty was mad about, even when they were totally misrepresenting things, was social transitioning. Because that’s the slippery slope to hormones and surgery, and they’re not telling their parents, AIIIIYEEEEEEEE!
So they were fine with Donald Trump straight-up lying and saying schools are doing transgender surgeries on kids, because sometimes you have to make up really fucked up lies to con people into hating the same people you hate. Isn’t that right, Republicans?
What did J.D. Vance just say about his and Trump’s blood libel lies about Haitian immigrants? “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” And by “suffering of the American people,” he meant things he’s a total Nazi about.
Lying for Jesus! It’s been around a long time, yet it’s never done by people who actually reflect the character of Jesus in any way, shape or form.
(One of these days I’m going to write y’all a full Bible study on Matthew 7:23, AKA Jesus’s personal candygram to conservative white Christians.)
MAGA Republicans are absolutely counting on conning enough people with these absurd, demonizing lies and libels, about trans people and immigrants and abortion and anything else they can think of that deserves a good Two Minutes Hate. In Texas, it was reported this week that congressional Republicans are spending millions targeting Democrats with anti-transgender ads.
It’s literally all they have to run on. And they know it works, at least on some people.
In summary and in conclusion, and back to what pissed me off so much in the first place.
Riley Gaines griped to “Fox & Friends” that “[t]hey don’t believe that these are your kids. They believe that these are the government’s kids.”
We’ve been over this before, how these MAGA Christian fascist creeps (and their ideological compatriots) think they literally own their children. They believe they own them until they transfer ownership of their daughters to their husbands, or in the case of their sons, when they become wife-owning patriarchs in their own right.
It offends them when it’s pointed out that actually, their kids are their own people, and they own themselves.
Now, when the kids are minors, sure, their parents have custody and responsibility for them, and the schools have a part to play in that, both as partners with the parents and just in general, in preparing them to be respectable, functioning adults. Schools have a responsibility to let parents know when their kids’ grades are slipping; if they’re getting in fights, or getting bullied; if they’re acting out in school; if they’re doing something illegal, or dangerous, to themselves or others. And so forth.
This shouldn’t have to be said, but coming out of the closet — as gay, as bi, or as somewhere on the gender spectrum other than that which they were assigned at birth — DOES NOT FALL UNDER ANY REASONABLE CATEGORY OF “MISBEHAVIOR” FOR WHICH A SCHOOL WOULD NEED TO NOTIFY PARENTS.
Being LGBTQ+ is not dangerous, it’s not immoral, and it’s not “I found meth in your kid’s backpack.” It’s simply a thing. If a child is excelling and getting along well socially and in grade seven they decide to try on some new pronouns, that doesn’t warrant a phone call home.
It doesn’t warrant tattling.
But that’s what these evil fascist creeps want. They want schools to be their abusive morality Gestapo when they’re not around, to shame and punish their children in their absence, and to call a parent-teacher conference if they suspect a child has come down with the Woke Mind Virus.
By the way, schools do have another responsibility when it comes to kids, and that’s to spot abuse and neglect, and to intervene for the welfare of the child if they suspect the child is in danger at home.
And that — dearly beloved MAGA fascist assholes — is the category under which this falls.
If a kid comes out as gay, or starts socially transitioning, but they say “Hey, my parents don’t know, and I need them not to,” then there’s a reason that kid — the actual owner of their own body, mind and soul — is saying that. Maybe they’re just not ready! Maybe they’re getting their sea legs with their friends before they go home to their parents. Maybe they’ll tell them next year.
But it’s also possible that they don’t feel safe with their parents, and fear their reaction. It might be a reasonable fear. Fundamentalist Christian homes are notoriously abusive to LGBTQ+ children, oftentimes disowning them or kicking them out, oftentimes subjecting them to physical, psychological and religious abuse. There’s a reason states all over the country have been passing bans on fully discredited, fully ineffective and uniformly harmful “ex-gay” and “ex-trans” religious torture for minors for over a decade now. (Congratulations, Kentucky! You have a good governor.)
They might be scared their parents will ship them off to “pray away the gay” or “pray away the trans.”
Laws like the one in California protect those kids.
The parents bitching about this and filing lawsuits and publicly demonizing LGBTQ+ people — including their own children — they are demonstrating precisely why these laws need to exist.
That’s what this is about.
It’s not about hiding things from good and loving parents. It’s about protecting kids from parents who are monsters.
In the next 46 days, you might encounter people who say they can’t vote for Kamala Harris and against Donald Trump for truly stupid reasons. This is one of them. (And the abortion thing and the Haitian immgirants thing and the litterboxes and oh God, so many more.)
Tell them their reasons are stupid reasons.
How loving and diplomatic you decide to be about it, that’s up to your own best judgment.
Scottie's Playtime 