Like all people who put their feelings before the facts, that value their feelings / dislikes / hates over medical science, Ladapo is convinced only he is correct on these things no matter what or how hard people try to explain things to them. They refuse to hear what they don’t want to. In the case of Ladapo his pay check requires him to be against the medical science, approved medical facts, and accepted best practices of the majority of medical providers. Hugs. Scottie
“We’ve seen this pattern from Dr. Ladapo that every few months he raises some new concern and it quickly gets debunked,” said Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s public health school who led the White House’s national coronavirus response. “This idea of DNA fragments — it’s scientific nonsense. People who understand how these vaccines are made and administered understand that there is no risk here.”
Florida’s health department did not respond to questions about whether Ladapo’s new stance would affect vaccine access for the state’s patients, or whether his decision to repeat debunked claims could create doubts about other routine vaccinations. Scott Rivkees, a DeSantis appointee who preceded Ladapo as Florida surgeon general, called Wednesday’s announcement “surprising and disappointing” and at odds with settled science.
Grateful to live in a state where Big Pharma does not dictate health policy recommendations. Thank you @FLSurgeonGen Dr. Ladapo for standing up for scientific integrity. https://t.co/M9IwUsJV6X
I feel sad for the regular people in Florida being used as a pawn by the Florida government to create a batshit crazy talking point for the GQP to exploit their ignorance. It’s gotten people killed and will continue to do so as covid spreads.
Florida is an extremely fragile state, with inevitable disaster looming. We live on the beach. 5 weeks ago, they just had 365 trackloads of sand per day x 7 days to refurbish the dunes in our tiny area (maybe 1/4 mile) and one week later half of the sand was already gone. 3 million just washed out to sea. No climate change here folks -nothing to see. High tides with wind can easily wash across the back streets on the Canal in Indian Rocks Beach. They use water here like it is an endless resource, allowing the freshwater aquifier to be depleted as water demand from urban areas and unsustainable agricultural practices continually increase and cause salt water intrusion. Hard to fathom really.
She channels Humpty Dumpty, who says to Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Pushaw, like Humpty, has a whimsical approach to language and meaning, and does not let herself be overly bothered with reality… which does lead to tragic fatal falls.
Especially, in the quote in the picture of the article, he says “when the vaccines are known to be contaminated with foreign DNA”… no, dumbass. It’s mRNA, not DNA. Ribonucleic, not dioxyribonucleic. Big difference.
Yesterday Ladapo called for banning COVID vaccines due to “DNA integration,” a claim that was immediately ridiculed by vaccine experts and Ladapo’s own DeSantis-appointed predecessor in Florida.
So this is the crazy nutcase that Tildeb used to justify anti-trans hate. He is the Florida Surgeon General, handpicked by DeathSantis because of his anti-covid vaccine stance. He was given the job even though not qualified, and DeathSantis tried to force the state university to hire him at a huge sum of money. He refused to answer questions asked him by the Florida legislature and lied to them when forced to answer. He was part of the demon seed doctor’s team that scammed maga people by charging them huge fees for an online consultation, then prescribed Ivermectin to cure or prevent covid. It has been well proven that Ivermectin doesn’t do anything to cure or prevent covid. He has been soundly mocked by the scientific and medical communities. Remember if DeathSantis is elected to the presidency this is the type of people he hires. Below I will post the first part of the Wikipedia entry on him. Hugs. Scottie
JosephLadapoJoseph Abiodun Ladapo (born December 16, 1978) [1] is the surgeon general of Florida. [2] He has attracted attention for spreading misinformation on COVID-19 and promoting vaccine hesitancy. [
DeSantis’ Florida surgeon general Dr. Joseph Ladapo says covid mRNA vaccines “the Anti-Christ of all products… That’s so wrong, you know, it’s just complete disrespect to the human genome and the importance of protecting it and preserving it, and that is our connection to God.” pic.twitter.com/r1aGzHsBqz
mRNA, of course, is messenger molecules telling some of your immune cells to make specific antibodies. They don’t mess with DNA, they don’t get into your ova or sperm, they just wash out of your body within a few days. That’s what they were telling him when “They talked about a bunch of other things” that he didn’t understand.
The biggest thing about the new mRNA technology is getting the mRNA to survive long enough to make any proteins. The cells have a zillion RNAses waiting to chew up improper RNA not tagged with the exact signal for temporary protection. It has been nearly 20 years since I was a bench researcher handling RNA, and I still remember what a PITA it was to handle.
She is one of the people who claim to know more and be more moral than everyone else so she / them get to tell the rest of us how we must live and how our schools should be run. The article below shows how unqualified these people are to tell others how to live their lives. These people are simply self entitled ego driven people who feel entitled to rule over how others live, while often not living that way themselves. I won’t be coloring this one, too much in it is triggering to me.
Randy was visiting us the other day and we touched a bit on my abuse. For something realted. I told them something I had not told before. By the time I was 7 during my adoptive parents parties with their friends, I would be set / perched on the counter with all the booze and mixers and would be required to fix drinks for the people. They would come to me and hand me their glass, tell me what they wanted, I would make the drink and hand it back. If I did the job correctly and everyone left happy, I was rewarded but if anyone complained I was disciplined. Often right then and painfully humiliated. Sometimes I would have to stand at the counter and wait on the people playing cards, watching for their drinks to get low and offering to refill them. I learned to never let an empty glass go unaddressed. Needless to say, I did not go into detail and it was a brief mention.
A former Pennsylvania lieutenant governor candidate and outspoken voice in the conservative “parental rights” school movement has been charged with punching a teenager while hosting an underage drinking party at her Bucks County home in September.
Clarice Schillinger, 36, is facing criminal charges of assault, harassment and furnishing minors with alcohol during her daughter’s birthday party, according to the case filed in late October. Her attorney has denied all charges and said she will fight them in court.
Schillinger made an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor as a Republican last year and has played an instrumental role in a political action committee that has poured more than $800,000 into Pennsylvania school district races since 2021. The PAC has focused on supporting school board candidates who opposed COVID-19 lockdowns and argue left-wing ideologies are invading the education system.
In the recent criminal case, Schillinger is accused of punching a partygoer several times in the face during a series of alleged outbursts by drunken adults at her home on Liz Circle in Doylestown, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
The documents state that during the event — which started Sept. 29 and went past midnight — Schillinger’s then-boyfriend allegedly grabbed a 16-year-old by the neck for intervening in a fight between the couple and hit a 15-year-old in the face during an argument over football. According to the allegations in court papers, her intoxicated mother also punched the older teen in the eye and chased him around the kitchen island. Police said they had cellphone recordings of some of these reported events.
To escape the unruly adults, several minors started making their way out of the home, even as Schillinger ordered them to stay, court documents allege.
Cellphone footage showed that as the teens gathered in the foyer Schillinger lunged toward one partygoer before others began restraining her. That individual told police Schillinger struck him three times with a closed fist but that he wasn’t injured, according to the affidavit.
Schillinger had been throwing a 17th birthday party for her daughter that night, hosting about 20 teens in her basement, where there was a bar stocked with New Amsterdam vodka and Malibu Bay Breeze rum, police wrote in the affidavit. In addition to supplying the underage group with alcohol, she allegedly poured liquor for the teens, asked them to take a shot with her and played beer pong with them, witnesses later told authorities.
State law makes it illegal to serve or allow minors to drink alcohol.
One of the teen’s parents called police early the morning of Sept. 30 to report the assaults and the underage drinking at Schillinger’s home. Investigators interviewed multiple teens who had attended the party, the affidavit states.
This wasn’t the first time police visited Schillinger’s home — which she’s been renting since the spring — for reports of an underage party, according to court documents.
Emergency dispatch data provided by the Bucks County Emergency Service Division logged at least four different calls at the address.
Buckingham Township police responded to a noise complaint call and possible underage party at Schillinger’s home on Sept. 24, the weekend before the birthday party, according to 911 data and court records.
Police reported in one affidavit spotting a number of beer cans strewn around the property and street that night. They also saw about 20 teens dart into the home and, when they tried speaking with Schillinger, found her to be “intoxicated and uncooperative,” the affidavit states.
Authorities responded to another noise complaint at Schillinger’s home involving “intoxicated subjects” just after midnight on Sept. 29, though an affidavit says police only made contact with Schillinger’s then-boyfriend, Shan Wilson, that night.
Schillinger is scheduled for a late January preliminary hearing. Her mother, Danette Bert, and Wilson were charged with assault and harassment in connection with the party, but those charges were withdrawn when they pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in early December, court records show.
In an email, Schillinger said that her case had been dropped and suggested Wilson, whom she described as an “angry ex boyfriend,” was behind the accusations. However, online court records show the case is still active, and a spokesman for the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday that the charges are not being dismissed.
Schillinger has not responded to a request for further comment, including why she believes the charges against her were dropped.
While Wilson did contact the USA Today Network about the incident, the affidavit against Schillinger did not include any statements from him and relied instead on the testimony of teenage witnesses and the cellphone footage.
“Ms. Schillinger has dedicated her life to public service,” Schillinger’s attorney Matthew Brittenburg said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “Additionally, she has always been a law abiding citizen. Ms. Schillinger looks forward to the opportunity to defend against these allegations.”
Who is Clarice Schillinger?
Dissatisfied with school closures that followed the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Schillinger created a political committee to help fund school board candidates who made strict adherence to in-person education their top campaign promise.
That PAC, Keeping Kids In School, focused more closely to school districts near Schillinger’s former home in Ambler, Montgomery County, by giving out thousands of dollars to smaller PACs backing slates of candidates running on an “open schools” platform.
Bucks County venture capitalist and Central Bucks parent Paul Martino took notice of Schillinger’s PAC before the municipal primary in May 2021, and the two created Back To School PA later that summer.
Martino initially put up $500,000 of his own money for Back To School PA to disburse $10,000 checks to local school board races across the state.
Schillinger told the conservative news organization Broad+Liberty after that year’s election that Back To School saw an “incredible win” with 113 of 182 candidates supported by the PAC winning elections.
Back To School took credit for flipping at least six school districts in that story, including Pennridge and Quakertown Community school districts in Bucks County; Harrisburg City in Dauphin County; Hempfield in Lancaster County; Palmyra in Lebanon County; and Southeastern in York County.
The PAC also gave $10,000 to Bucks Families for Leadership, which was an earlier PAC Martino created and funded backing Republican candidates in the 2021 Central Bucks school board race.
Three of the five Central Bucks Republicans that ran in 2021 made it onto the board, but this year’s municipal election saw Democrat candidates sweep five seats and take a 6-3 majority.
While Schillinger’s original PAC and Back To School were described as bipartisan and focused on the single-issue of school closures by her and Martino, most of the candidates endorsed were Republican and often opposed to other pandemic mitigations like requiring masks in schools.
Schillinger threw her hat in the ring for public office in 2022 joining eight other candidates in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor. Schillinger finished fourth, gaining over 148,000 votes of the 1.2 million cast for that office.
Schillinger announced that Back To School PA would be going national during a July 25, 2022, episode of 1210 WPHT’s The Dom Giordano Program.
“Back To School USA is really going to be focused on putting candidates in place that will put our children and their education first,” Schillinger said. “Right now, we are not doing that. We are more focused on these woke and gender ideas.”
A website for the national PAC, created in October 2021, is no longer publicly accessible.
Martino told Lehigh Valley News in September that Back To School USA was “more of an idea right now” but indicated Schillinger was still involved in a fundamental way.
He declined to comment on the charges against Schillinger but wrote in an email this week that Back To School USA “never got off the ground” because other projects took priority last year.
These laws are not based on medical science nor on any evidence of the conspiracies to turn cis kids into trans kids. That doesn’t happen any more than straight kids get turned gay by seeing a rainbow flag or reading a book with LGBTQIA characters. No these laws are based on bigotry and religious doctrines. How many times do you hear anti-trans people say god doesn’t make mistakes, so you have to be the gender of your body. But they said the same thing about people being gay decades ago, that people couldn’t be born gay because god did make mistakes. Guess what, it is not a mistake to be gay if you are gay and it is not a mistake to be trans if you identify as a gender different from what is showing between your legs. It is ignorance, hate, bigotry, and religious indoctrination masquerading as fake concern for “the children”. Hugs. Scottie
“Transgender children should receive equal treatment under the law. Parents should have the right to make the most fundamental decisions about how to care for their children,” Winmill said in his ruling.
“Every family wants what is best for their children, and families who love and accept their transgender youth are no different,” Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project said in a statement. “These dangerous efforts to control our bodies and our families threaten the well-being of trans youth, the strength of our communities, and the ability of every family to determine what’s best for their child.”
“This victory is significant for Idaho transgender youth and their parents,” one advocate said.
A federal court ruled on Tuesdaythat an Idaho law prohibiting doctors from providing transgender minors with access to gender-affirming care is likely unconstitutional and blockedthe law from taking effect. The gender-affirming healthcare ban, which was originally planned to go into effect on January 1, would have made providing puberty blockers and hormone therapies to transgender youth a felony.
“This victory is significant for Idaho transgender youth and their parents, and will have an immediate positive impact on their daily lives,” Leo Morales, executive director of the ACLU of Idaho, said in a statement.
Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho heldthat Idaho’s anti-trans law likely violated the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause under the 14th Amendment.
“Transgender children should receive equal treatment under the law. Parents should have the right to make the most fundamental decisions about how to care for their children,” Winmill said in his ruling.
RELATED STORY
“Every family wants what is best for their children, and families who love and accept their transgender youth are no different,” Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project said in a statement. “These dangerous efforts to control our bodies and our families threaten the well-being of trans youth, the strength of our communities, and the ability of every family to determine what’s best for their child.”
Another plaintiff in the lawsuit, Pam Poe, a 15-year-old trans girl, “struggled with depression, anxiety and self-harm” before receiving gender-affirming care which “greatly improved” her mental health. If the gender-affirming healthcare ban went into effect, her and her family would have considered leaving the state.
“This judicial decision is a much-needed ray of hope for trans people amid a years-long onslaught against their rights to access health care and ability to navigate the world around them,” Morales said in a press release. “Everyone should be free to live and thrive in their authentic identity, which means transgender people should not be shut out of accessing medically sound health care.”
Idaho is one of 22 states that have restricted or banned transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming care, according to the Movement Advancement Project(MAP). In a recent report, MAP described the gender-affirming healthcare bans as part of a “war against LGBTQ people in America and their very right and ability to openly exist.” While many of these bans have been temporarily blocked by the courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixthand EleventhCircuits have reversed lower court injunctions, allowing bans in Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama to go into effect.
Research by the Trevor Projectshows that debates around anti-trans bills negatively affect transgender and nonbinary youth’s mental health and a majority of those trans youth (55 percent) said anti-trans bills “very negatively” affected their mental health. Gender-affirming healthcare bans don’t just hurt transgender and nonbinary people, but also affect the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ adults, according to a Human Rights Campaign poll. The poll found that 8 in 10 LGBTQ adults said that the bans made them feel less safe and “worsen[ed] harmful stereotypes, discrimination, hate and stigma.”
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Gender-affirming care is not mutilating kids genitals. That is male circumcision in babies. Gender-affirming care is not a sudden thing where an 8 or 9 year old kid walks in to a doctor’s office and tells the people at the desk they need puberty blockers, hormones, and sexual reassignment surgery scheduled for next week please. Oh and do you have any apps / phone games I can download?
Gender affirming care saves lives! That is a fact! Gender affirming care is careful medical exams and phycological assessment. The care for younger kids includes letting them dress as the gender they identify as and to wear the hair and accessories that gender uses. Only as the child nears puberty or it is determined to be starting, are they given puberty blockers, which are safe and reversible. They are well studied and used for a very long time worldwide. If the kid decides they do not want to transition, they can stop the puberty blockers and they enter puberty as they would have before.
Only when the older teen has lived as the gender they identify as for a while and nears adulthood is any surgery discussed, and it is very rare to only in cases of great need is it considered before the age of 18. Normal age of sexual reassignment surgery is early 20s.
Why are these anti-trans bills clearly discriminatory? Because they only deny puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery to trans kids and for transitioning. The laws state that they can be used on cis kids, including the often used breast surgery to enlarge female cis kid’s boobies, normally around 16. Also other body changing surgeries for cis kids are allowed like rhinoplasty which is nose reshaping surgery. Also cis kids at very young teen years are allowed to have their ears reshaped for looks. See how the laws target trans kids and are not based on medical science? If puberty blockers were so harmful and non-reversible, why are they allowed for cis kids then? Think on it? It is like the anti-sodomy laws in Texas found to be illegal. They said anal sex between a male and female were OK, but anal sex between two males were illegal. Same with oral sex, it is OK between a male and female but illegal between two females or two males. WTF! See the bigotry and hate? That is why the courts ruled the laws were illegal. Hugs. Scottie
Myriam and Cameron in NCLR’s “Healthcare is Caring” PSA.Photo: Screenshot
The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) is combating anti-trans misinformation with a campaign that’s all about love and care.
Last month, the non-profit public interest law firm, which advocates for LGBTQ+ rights, launched its “Healthcare is Caring” campaign with a short PSA directed by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Zen Pace. The clip features the voices of trans teens reading letters to their parents describing their experiences of coming out and the impact their parents’ support had on them.
The ACLU is trying to stop a ban from going into effect.
It ends with a poignant and timely message: “The thing our kids have always needed is care.”
“This film is special to me because not only does it touch my community, but it helps put forward a much more accurate story of these families that simply doesn’t exist out there,” Pace said in a statement. “It gives space to these parents; it’s a gift from their children.”
According to The Drum, NCLR’s “Healthcare is Caring” campaign was developed with the help of public relations and marketing consultancy firm Edelman. The firm’s data and intelligence division conducted a study on how misinformation about gender-affirming care spreads online. It found that a disproportionately small number of voices have driven anti-trans discourse, leading to a wave of state laws and local restrictions that have banned gender-affirming care for young people and severely limited trans people’s ability to exist openly and safely in the public sphere.
NCLR has been combating such legislation. The firm has challenged laws banning gender-affirming care for minors in Alabama, Florida, and Kentucky. After the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld state bans in Kentucky and Tennessee, the NCLR filed a petition on November 3 urging the Supreme Court to review the decision. The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Tennessee, and Lambda Legal have also asked the Supreme Court to review the Tennessee decision. If the justices agree to hear the case, it would be the first time a case involving gender-affirming care has ever come before the court.
As part of the “Healthcare” is Caring campaign, NCLR is urging supporters to sign an open letter calling on elected leaders to ensure equal access to gender-affirming care — which is recognized by every major American medical association as evidence-based, safe, and often necessary for the treatment of gender dysphoria. The letter calls on elected officials to put an end to both legal bans and the false narratives characterizing this lifesaving health care as “child abuse.”
The campaign’s hub on NCLR’s website also features more info about the families featured in the PSA, including the full text of their letters.
“The families in our campaign, like so many other families with transgender children, are proof that helping transgender youth get medically needed care can enable them to lead happy and successful lives,” NCLR legal director Shannon Minter said in a statement. “Still, many legislators continue to push harmful policies that prevent these young people from getting the healthcare they need and deserve. We’re working to take action against these bills and show the politicians behind them that transgender youth and their families are not alone.”
Thanks to Ten Bears for the link. This is for my readers in Oregon and surrounding areas. What is wrong with republican voters that they keep voting for wack job crazy people for state and federal office. These people love conspiracies and endorsing them. They prefer fantasy rather than facts or science. I guess it comes from believing in the myths about tRump instead of the facts, just as they ignore reality for a literal bible infallibility. There are videos at the link above. Hugs. Scottie
A pair of Oregon Republican legislators, state Sens. Dennis Linthicum and Kim Thatcher, have appeared on multiple QAnon-affiliated and far-right shows to promote a lawsuit they are involved with that claims the federal government inflated COVID-19 numbers.
The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Oregon in March 2022 by Linthicum, Thatcher, and naturopathic doctor Henry Ealy, who has spread COVID-19 misinformation. It claims that the federal government “failed to ensure and/or willfully manipulated data being collected, analyzed, and published,” causing “a significant hyperinflation of COVID-19 case, hospitalization, and death counts,” which they claim was used to defraud taxpayers of at least $3.5 trillion in public funds between 2020 and 2022. (The claim that COVID-19 cases were overcounted during the pandemic is dubious.)
The plaintiffs want to empanel a special grand jury and present “evidence of alleged crimes relating to the federal government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.” The case was dismissed in November 2022, but the group appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In recent weeks, Linthicum — who is also a former treasurer of the Oregon Republican Party — and Thatcher went on several programs affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy theory to promote the case.
On November 17, Linthicum and Thatcher appeared on Right Now with Ann Vandersteel, which is hosted by a known QAnon supporter who also promotes the extreme ideology of the sovereign citizenmovement. During the interview, Vandersteel praised them and Ealy as “incredible” for “com[ing] together to adjudicate the problem that apparently our government seems incapable of doing” with the “COVID fraud.”
Linthicum also pushed COVID-19 misinformation during the appearance, falselyclaiming that “face masks don’t work.”
Later that month, Linthicum, Thatcher, and Ealy sat for an interview with QAnon influencer Michael Jaco in which Thatcher called for others to “duplicate” this legal effort “all over the United States, whether people want to go to their counties or whether they could go to their — you know, the state grand jury or even do their own federal grand jury,” and Linthicum criticized what he called “COVID fraud.”
Linthicum also claimed that people are “redefining … what a vaccine is, what a vaccine isn’t,” and Thatcher pushed election misinformation, calling for people to “overwhelm whatever cheating might be out there and get their votes in.”
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In early December, Linthicum appeared on The Tina Peters Show, which streams on the QAnon-affiliated Badlands Media Rumble channel.
During the interview, Linthicum claimed that there was an “anxiety drive” and that authorities were “fearmongering with mediocre science and uncertainty, scaring the public into getting the vaccine and increasing uptake rates,” calling it “criminal fraud.”
Host Tina Peters praised Linthicum and the other plaintiffs, calling them “brave souls” and saying the lawsuit is “a solution to taking back our country.”
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During the interview, Linthicum seemingly disputed death tolls reported in the news, saying, “There’s this disconnect between what we’re seeing on the news — the nightly, you know, scrolling numbers: ‘175,000 people died today because of coronavirus’ and whatever. And it’s like, you know, in the United States of America, I know there’s only been eight cases and we’re already talking vaccines. And then, you know, there were 17 cases and then there’s videos of people dropping dead.”
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During the interview, Linthicum promoted the lawsuit, pushed false claims that the 2020 presidential election had been significantly impacted by election fraud, and promised Icke that he would come back on the show “whenever you please.” Icke praised Linthicum as “honorable” and thanked him for “all the work that you’re doing over there trying to expose” the “COVID fraud” and “election fraud as well.”
Linthicum and Thatcher’s appearances on the QAnon-affiliated shows are the latest example of an ongoing partnership between anti-vaccine and QAnon figures, with right-wing anti-vaccine figures using QAnon shows to spread COVID-19 and vaccine-related misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Thanks to Ali for the link. As I have pointed out, science has proven that sex is a spectrum / sliding scale from mostly male to mostly female chemical make up of a being. There is not one simple fixed point at which a person is male or female because biological sex is not binary. Yes it is hard for some people to grasp because for centuries the idea was if it dangles it is male and if not it is female, and if it dangles only a little because it is too short then cut it off so you can raise it as female. Again proven not to work. So what do we mean by male or female is a spectrum? Well because it is a spectrum or sliding scale a person can have a little or a lot of the chemical mix of DNA, chromosomes, enzymes, switches, and other things only scientist can understand or pronounce to look like one side of the slider but inside be all over the slider to the other side of it. The article is about birds, but the article makes it clear this same thing has been found in a lot of other animal species. And guess what? Humans are just another animal species. Hugs. Scottie
The bilaterally gynandromorphic green honeycreeper. Credit: John Murillo
A zoologist from New Zealand has spotted an extremely rare half female, half male bird while on holiday in Colombia.
The wild green honeycreeper (Chlorophanes spiza) has distinct green female plumage on its left and blue male plumage on its right.
This rare specimen is an example of bilateral gynandromorphy – a condition in which one side of an organism has male characteristics, and the other female.
“Many birdwatchers could go their whole lives and not see a bilateral gynandromorph in any species of bird. The phenomenon is extremely rare in birds, I know of no examples from New Zealand ever,” says Professor Hamish Spencer of the University of Otago, New Zealand.
***Video at link above, I am unable to post it here on WordPress***
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Short video of a bilaterally gynandromorphic Green Honeycreeper near Manizales, Colombia, 20 May 2022. Credit: John Murillo
Spencer was holidaying in Colombia when amateur ornithologist, John Murillo, pointed out the uncommon colouration.
“It is very striking; I was very privileged to see it,” Spencer says.
The finding, which is documented in a report in the Journal of Field Ornithology, is the 2nd example of gynandromorphism in this species in more than 100 years, and the 1st of a living bird.
The bilaterally gynandromorphic green honeycreeper. Credit: John Murillo
According to Spencer, the photographs of the bird are “arguably the best of a wild bilateral gynandromorphic bird of any species ever”.
Gynandromorphism occurs in a large number of groups of animals but is most often reported in species which display strong sexual dimorphism, including insects (especially butterflies), crustaceans, spiders, lizards, snakes and rodents.
Sexes of the same sexually dimorphic species display different physical characteristics. This makes it easier to distinguish gynandromorphism, where one side of the animal looks very distinct from the other.
The bilaterally gynandromorphic green honeycreeper. Credit: John Murillo
“This particular example of bilateral gynandromorphy – male one side and female the other – shows that, as in several other species, either side of the bird can be male or female,” says Spencer.
“The phenomenon arises from an error during female cell division to produce an egg, followed by double-fertilisation by two sperm.”
This error causes the egg cell to have two nucleuses: one with a Z chromosome and the other with a W chromosome. These are the sex chromosomes in birds, whereas in humans they are X and Y.
The bilaterally gynandromorphic green honeycreeper. Credit: John Murillo
Then, each of the two nucleuses are fertilised by a separate sperm. As a result, one side of the bird has female cells (ZW chromosomes) and the other has male cells (ZZ chromosomes).
The researchers observed the bird between October 2021 and June 2023. Its behaviour largely matched those of other green honeycreepers – except for one major difference.
“In general, it avoided others of its species, and the others also avoided it; it seems unlikely, therefore, that this individual would have had any opportunity to reproduce,” they concluded.
“When I woke up, I discovered that I had been shot 30 times.”
Abderrahman Al Zeghel, a 14-year-old Palestinian child and the youngest prisoner released in the Hamas-Israel hostage exchange, sustained deadly head injuries after Israeli forces assaulted him while he was buying bread in occupied East Jerusalem’s Silwan.
Despite undergoing multiple surgeries, he now lives with “half a skull” and faces health issues preventing a return to normal life.
Israeli law doesn’t permit the imprisonment of children under 14 and instead enforces house arrests as a form of punishment.
As I previously reported, the ADF first filed its lawsuit in May 2021 and lost in US district court in September 2021 before losing again before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in September 2022. According to Brian Tingley’s resume, he’s led seminars on “authentic manhood” and “true masculinity.” Before that, he wrote and produced commercials for car dealerships, bingo halls, and county fairs. As I’ve reported many times over the years, ex-gay torture therapists often end up rejecting their work and coming out as gay themselves. And sometimes, they are arrested for sexually assaulting their clients.
Then there are the ones that are busted trolling online for gay sex, such as the nationally prominent therapist caught cruising Manhunt in 2018 as HotNHairy72. The Alliance Defending Freedom, whose lead attorney was once House Speaker Mike Johnson, has advocated for criminalizing homosexuality in the United States and has provided free legal support to foreign groups seeking the same in their own countries.
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Christian therapist’s free speech challenge to a Washington state ban on so-called conversion therapy aimed at changing a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.https://t.co/ZiLMCeHH0G
Given that Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh all voted to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of Washington's ban on so-called "conversion therapy," we know that no other justice wanted to take up this case. Gorsuch's vote is somewhat surprising. https://t.co/EWShUNArYI
My sexuality is not a “debate.” It’s a fact of life, just as a straight person’s sexuality is a fact of life. Just because these religious whack jobs are too stupid to understand that should not be my problem.
No one is stopping him from saying his beliefs. What they are doing is preventing him from imposing them on others through the guise of medical treatment and accepting money for it. You can also believe massage cures cancer but you can not put out a medical shingle and take money for curing cancer through massage.
Or you can believe blood letting cures depression but you can not charge for this as a medical treatment. We have medical standards based on science.
The more right wingers are silenced, the louder they get all over social media and right wing tv and radio. They are the only silenced people who are deafeningly loud.
Brian Tingley, a licensed marriage and family counselor, said the law violates his free speech rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment because the government is seeking to dictate what he says.
No, the gov’t is still letting you “say” anything you want. They are regulating how you conduct your business so that you don’t harm your patients.
What the government is saying they are not going to pay for the mumbo jumbo via Medicaid or approve it for reimbursement by insurance companies. It is not banned, you just have to pay for the religious practice yourself.
Exactly right. The courts have long recognized that commercial speech is more subject to regulation than other kinds of speech. Tingley et al. are trying to argue that it is religious speech in a commercial context. Um, sorry, no.
Is this the place we have become. A place where thugs representing a Christian Taliban moral vice police can simply threaten the safety of the public to enforce a specific religion’s church ideals on all the public? Hugs. Scottie
Many people in conservative states are having to make a difficult choice after facing harassment and anti-trans laws.
Grey Wilson now lives in Auckland, New Zealand. He and his mother were targeted after he testified against an anti-trans bill in his home state of Texas.
BECKI MOSS FOR HUFFPOST
Until a few years ago, Grey Wilson’s journey as a trans person had largely been a peaceful one.
A week before his 13th birthday, he came out to his mother, Lauren, in a PowerPoint presentation that laid out why he should be allowed to transition. It had previously proven to be a successful method of getting what he wanted: Every time he yearned to adopt a dog or a bunny, he would create a slideshow detailing the costs of pet ownership, appropriate feeding schedules, and where to obtain the animal in question. (Grey only got turned down when he asked Lauren for a snake.)
Lauren, a self-described data nerd, found herself convinced by the research Grey had compiled on the psychological benefits of gender affirmation. When the presentation concluded, she thought to herself, “Yep, that’s my son.”
But Grey’s happy existence ended seemingly overnight when he testified in the Texas Legislature against a 2021 bill seeking to ban gender-affirming care for minors. Anti-trans activists showed up at the family’s door after their home address was shared online, and Lauren said men with assault rifles tailed her when she was driving and tried to follow her to work. Grey was suddenly troubled by a new guilt, the fear he had brought all this down upon him. “The thing they hate about her is me,” he thought to himself. “They’re going after her because of me.”
“I felt a lot of responsibility for what was happening,” said Grey, now 19. “I know logically it isn’t, but a part of me thought, ‘Well, if I wasn’t trans, she wouldn’t be getting harassed.’”
The bill banning gender-affirming care for Texas youth — which threatens doctors who offer transition care to minors with loss of licensure — became a law two years after Grey’s testimony, and many families left the state in response. But the Wilsons, who aren’t being identified with their real last name due to safety concerns, were worried that simply going to a blue state like California or Colorado wouldn’t be enough. What if their new state started passing the same policies as their old one? Lauren knew that selling their house would only generate enough revenue to finance one move, and she worried they would be stuck if they chose the wrong state.
Instead of risking their only chance at escape, Grey and Lauren decided to flee the United States altogether and start over in New Zealand — a country where they had few friends or connections. They chose New Zealand for pragmatic reasons: It’s considered among the world’s most LGBTQ+ friendly nations, ranked 10th in a 2020 survey from UCLA think tank the Williams Institute — and the climate is more mild than Canada, ranked fifth. They wouldn’t have to learn a new language, unlike third-place Norway ― and 11th-place Australia has the most reptile species of any country, a major deal breaker for Lauren. (New Zealand, in contrast, is the only country on earth with no snakes.)
Grey and his mother, Lauren Wilson, in an Auckland park. After a monthslong process of applying to schools and filling out student visa paperwork, they were both able to move to New Zealand.
BECKI MOSS FOR HUFFPOST
Lauren wearing a “Trans Texas Proud” T-shirt.
BECKI MOSS FOR HUFFPOST
After a monthslong process of applying to schools and filling out student visa paperwork, Grey enrolled in a nursing program at a college in Auckland and Lauren was accepted to a master’s program in social work. Grey finally boarded a plane in February by himself, ready to start a new life in a country he had never even visited. His mother would follow him a few months later after she had settled their affairs, including her divorce. Her former partner, who has rarely left Texas outside of being deployed to Iraq, told her shortly before the move that he couldn’t bring himself to leave.
When he stepped off the plane earlier this year, Grey expected to feel the rush of being in a new place where no one knew him, and he could finally be free. Instead, the sudden realization that the worst was finally over was actually unexpectedly overwhelming, the fact of his survival bringing back all the emotions he spent months suppressing. He then remembered something that Lauren had told him back when the harassment was at its apex: If anything should happen to her, Grey needed to leave America anyway and follow through with their plan.
“This thing that we came up with a year before was happening, and I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he said. “I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to get on the plane because something was up. I was worried when I got off it, they were going to say no. I was worried everything was going to go wrong.”
Some trans youth and their parents are making the same choice — to escape America — as lawmakers across the U.S. impose increasingly draconian restrictions upon gender-affirming health care. To date, 20 states have passed laws restricting doctors from prescribing puberty blockers, providing hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and performing surgery to minor patients, and Arizona has a law that pertains solely to gender-affirming surgery (which is only administered in rare cases of extreme medical need). Florida’s gender-affirming care ban goes so far as allowing courts to remove children from their homes if authorities learn that a child is transitioning, a provision that opponents said amounted to legal kidnapping.
“A part of me thought, ‘Well, if I wasn’t trans, she wouldn’t be getting harassed.’”
– Grey Wilson
Families that spoke to HuffPost felt that getting out was their only option, particularly as the 2024 presidential election looms. Several candidates for the GOP nomination, including former U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, have vocally opposed allowing trans kids to access gender-affirming care before the age of 18. At least three candidates have called for a federal ban on transition treatments for minors — among them former President Donald Trump, the current Republican front-runner, who has likened trans youth health care to “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.”
Grey knows that his family is privileged to be able to pick up everything and move, and that nagging guilt comes back when he thinks of the friends and community they left behind in Texas. But over a Zoom call from his new apartment, he says there’s no future in a state that denies his basic rights, in a country where his opportunities to live as himself are narrowing.
“We don’t really have a lot of hope that things will get better before they get significantly worse,” he said. “We’d rather not have to deal with the significantly worse part.”
The Costs Of Migration
It’s unclear how many other families across the U.S. have made the choice to move abroad in response to discriminatory policies because they are largely doing so without any resources or infrastructure to support them. Nonprofit organizations focused on advocating for LGBTQ+ immigrants — such as Immigration Equality in the U.S. and Rainbow Railroad in Canada — have long been focused on the migration of refugees to North America, often from the global South. The issue of trans people and their loved ones heading the opposite direction is a relatively new phenomenon.
Among the few organizations offering dedicated resources to trans Americans seeking to leave the country with their families is TRANSport, a North Dakota-based group founded by Rynn Azerial Willgohs. The organization, which is applying for formal nonprofit status, is geared toward resettlement from the Dakotas and neighboring Minnesota. When she spoke to VICE News in January, Willgohs reported that 30 people had already reached out for help moving abroad. Willgohs did not respond to several requests for comment on this story, but the number of requests has likely increased significantly in the months since: More than 700 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in 2023, by far the largest number in history, according to data provided by the LGBTQ+ think tank Movement Advancement Project.
Families of trans youth leaving the U.S. are likely to need as much help as they can get: Relocating abroad is a time-consuming, emotionally taxing process that typically costs tens of thousands of dollars. Sirelo, an independent online platform that allows customers to review moving companies, estimates that the cost of moving to New Zealand ranges from $15,000 and $20,000. Workers relocating to New Zealand for a job offer, for instance, will need to apply for a notoriously pricey work-to-residence visa, which costs nearly $2,000 in U.S. dollars. Lauren and Grey found that obtaining residences that would allow them to house four cats and three dogs was extremely difficult in New Zealand; many landlords required them to submit a “dog resume” detailing their breeds and respective temperaments.
And without established networks in place, trans children and their loved ones have largely been left to fend for themselves, whether it’s researching friendly countries or financing their move. When Marie Ponce’s family decided to move to Uruguay after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) was reelected in November 2021, they knew they couldn’t afford to take the entire contents of their four-bedroom home with them — which an online calculator for an international storage service estimates would cost up to $17,000.
When Marie, her husband and two children leave the U.S. next month, they will take just four suitcases with them. A friend has agreed to hold onto their car and some family photo albums to make sure there’s some record left of their previous life, the one they had spent years building in Texas.
“If you knew her, the least interesting thing about her is that she’s trans. I just wanted to go to a place where people wouldn’t care.”
– Marie Ponce
The Ponces, who are being identified by pseudonyms out of concern for their safety, chose to move to Uruguay despite the expense, Marie said, because it’s one of the most welcoming countries in South America to foreign workers, and they would be able to obtain residency after three years. Uruguay also has some of the world’s most progressive laws mandating equality for the trans community. After passing a law in 2009 allowing trans people to correct their name and gender identity in government documents, the country went even further in 2018, enacting sweeping policies intended to guarantee “a life free from discrimination and stigmatization.” The “Trans Law,” as it’s known colloquially, established a constitutional right to gender-affirming care and set aside 1% of all government jobs for trans workers.
What they are hoping to find in Uruguay is a place where Marie’s 9-year-old daughter, Chloe, will no longer be a political football. Before Texas passed its gender-affirming care ban, Abbott issued an executive order in February 2022 directing the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents who allow their children to transition. The directive achieved what Texas Republicans had been trying to do for an entire year: In April 2021, lawmakers advanced legislation seeking to classify the provision of gender-affirming care to minors as “child abuse,” which is a potential first-degree felony in Texas, punishable by up to 99 years in prison.
In the following months, child welfare agents opened cases against dozens of families across the state, and the Ponces compiled a “safe folder” with letters from family members, psychologists, and even local faith leaders stating that Chloe is happy and healthy, in case they got a knock at their door. Marie knew that this was no way for her child to live, that Chloe needed to live in a place where the fear of persecution wouldn’t be part of her daily life.
“It’s been really important to me to let my child have a childhood,” Marie said. “I’ve tried to keep her insulated, so that she can grow up and be who she is. If you knew her, the least interesting thing about her is that she’s trans. I just wanted to go to a place where people wouldn’t care.”
Lauren and Grey are applying for asylum. If their petition is approved, they would be the first Americans to be granted refugee status abroad on the basis of trans identity.
BECKI MOSS FOR HUFFPOST
There is little data currently on trans migration out of the U.S., but the modicum of research that does exist indicates that dozens, if not hundreds, more families may follow the Ponces and the Wilsons in the coming months and years. In a June report from the liberal think tank Data for Progress, 41% of trans adults and 43% of young people between the ages of 18 to 24 said they have considered moving as a result of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, whether that’s relocating to another state or leaving the country altogether. The national survey of 1,036 respondents found that 8% of trans adults had already left their home as a result of policies making it more difficult to live their lives freely.
Just because trans people and their families can move, however, doesn’t mean it’s an easy choice. Marie has tried to sell the move to her children as an adventure, a chance for them to see the world, but deep down she knows this isn’t what she wanted for them. Since her kids were very young, Marie dreamt that they would be nurtured by what she calls “lifelong community,” that they would grow up surrounded by uncles, aunts, neighbors and fellow churchgoers who had held them when they were still babies.
“I had that growing up in a small town,” Marie said over a staticky line that cut in and out as she spoke. “The church that they were dedicated in — where they lit the chalice and know all the little old ladies — they’re gonna lose that. It’s going to be really hard to rebuild that and in a way impossible because you’re not born again. You’re not going to be a baby growing all the way up again. That is definitely gone.”
Creating Pathways To Safety
As trans migration out of the U.S. becomes more common, the fact remains that it’s an imperfect solution to the problems currently facing America’s LGBTQ+ community. There has never been a known case of a trans American claiming asylum abroad on the basis of political persecution, and those who do move may be severely restricted in terms of where and how they are permitted to work. Some countries, for instance, don’t allow immigrants to hold employment while they apply for citizenship. Even those who obtain student visas, like the Wilsons, or rely on remote work, like the Ponces, could be extremely vulnerable if sudden job loss occurs.
A third parent who spoke for this story, Vanessa Nichols, was forced to move her 14-year-old son back to the U.S. from Costa Rica after she was unexpectedly terminated from her position working in the country’s tourism sector. She and her son had originally fled Florida in November 2020 after they started getting death threats sent to their home, including a handwritten note telling her that she would be hunted by local mobs if she didn’t “repent” for her son’s identity.
“It felt scary. It felt lonely. It just felt impossible to stay in that state because it wasn’t safe,” Nichols said over a Zoom call a few days before learning she had been let go. “I’m originally from Chicago, but my parents moved me down to Florida when I was 10 so I spent most of my life there. All of a sudden, it felt so foreign to me.”
For families who can’t afford to immigrate or don’t want to risk relocating to countries where they may lack support networks in case of emergency, upstart groups are helping trans people and their relatives find safe havens within the U.S. and other resources they need — including suggesting LGBTQ+ affirming schools and helping families find health care. Such groups include Elevated Access, a door-to-door helicopter service that helps trans passengers fly out of state to relocate or seek gender-affirming care; Transitional Justice, which provides housing for trans people seeking to leave hostile states; and A Place for Marsha, which focuses on finding safe shelter for those seeking specifically to move to Las Vegas.
A coalition of advocacy groups has formed in Minnesota to meet the needs of trans migrants who move to the state, which is one of about a dozen in the U.S. to formally declare itself a refuge for trans health care. But community organizations are scrambling to meet the needs of a population facing an unprecedented crisis: At least 60 families have either moved to the state or confirmed they intend to do so, according to the LGBTQ+ nonprofit Transforming Families Minnesota. Its executive director, Hannah Edwards, said the organization gets “two to three” emails every week from parents looking for help in getting to safety.
Because this small assortment of groups is severely limited as to the number of clients they can help — especially since many organizations are still in their pilot stage — trans migrants are often forced to create their underground passageways to get to safety, both in the U.S. or abroad.
Roberto Che Espinoza and his partner fled Tennessee this year following a yearslong campaign of targeted harassment from far-right groups, which Espinoza said included unmarked packages being sent to their home. Following his move, Espinoza’s nonprofit, Our Collective Becoming, has pivoted to providing mutual aid funds for trans people and families moving to the greater Rochester area, where he is currently living in a safe house. He estimates their sector of upstate New York has been seeing “100 to 200 trans and queer refugees a month.”
Espinoza is working to get local churches to donate food, clothing, and even money to trans refugees and their loved ones as they resettle. “Housing is a big need,” he said. “There’s no rent control in Rochester, and people are in definite need of affordable housing. There are not enough mental health care providers, period, and with this influx of people, I don’t know what we do.”
Grey and Lauren are both acclimating to life in their new country.
BECKI MOSS FOR HUFFPOST
In their new home in New Zealand, the Wilsons also hope to create a safe passage for trans people and families who aren’t sure whether they should stay in the U.S. or leave as soon as possible — and might not be sure where they would even go. They are currently applying for asylum, and if their petition is approved, they would be the first Americans to be granted refugee status abroad on the basis of trans identity. It’s unclear when their case might be decided.
While they await news on their legal fight, Grey is acclimating to life in New Zealand, whether it’s the grammatical nuances in its dialectical English or learning the meaning of common Maori words employed in everyday life. He’s also adjusting to the local food: The only place to get sour pickles in Auckland is a single grocery store that sells American food, and he says that pizzas, which didn’t become popularized in New Zealand until the 1970s, often include “all kinds of random things just shoved onto them.” There’s also the matter of New Zealand’s polarizing flavored milks, which include banana, mint and lime, the latter of which he refuses to try. “That’s a combination I’m not testing,” he said confidently.
The adjustment process has been more difficult for Lauren because of everything they sacrificed to get to where they are now. The home that she sold to pay for the move was her dream house, the one that she was supposed to grow old in, and she misses its antique wood floors. She had a great job that she loved, and after she finally left the U.S. in June, it took her months to find employment as a foreign worker seeking part-time work on a student visa.
Lauren knows they made the right choice, but as she sleeps on a mattress on the floor of their new apartment, she can’t help but mourn what they’ve lost.
“My son is happy,” she said. “He is thriving. It’s not that I’m not happy, but I gave up a big chunk of my life, and I can’t go back to it. We’re really lucky that we were able to afford to do this and that we got to safety, but it’s a lot harder than I was expecting it to be.”
Scottie's Playtime 