I have been following Ethel for years. In this very short for her video she points out more mistakes of the Cass Review, the preformed biases, and the sneaky way the outgoing government managed to implement a ban on puberty blockers without following the laws. I know a lot of TERFS and other anti-trans people love to claim the UK is seeing the truth and banning trans care, but that is not the truth. Just like in the US, there are groups including political groups using everything they can to make it harder, but now the rest of the country is fighting back hard and getting treatment reinstituted. Just like the book banners in the US are now being pushed back and books being put back on shelves, trans care for minors is happening in the UK. Hugs. Scottie
It can be difficult as a trans person to hold onto the hope that things will get better, yet we are not alone in our struggle for survival. Today’s video explores efforts by the Good Law Project to restore gender affirming care for trans youth.
The situation in the UK has broken down such that Labour is now reinforcing far-right sentiments. They’re calling for anti-trans segregation whilst promoting the idea that a Jewish conspiracy is decreasing white fertility by turning ‘naive girls’ trans.
I am watching a video by Ethel of Essence of Thought debunking the Cass report and showing how the fear of trans people assaulting women were actively created to cause as much hate and anger at trans women as possible despite there being no evidence it is real or happening. The people who fought to get the message in the media admitted in writing that they had no evidence such violence or attacks had happened or were happening, but they thought it was a wonder why to stop the acceptance of trans people. That is their goal, make trans people the villain’s before they can be accepted like gay people are. Again they admitted this in writing, they felt they needed to move against trans people / kids because they lost the fight against gay people because they started to late they thought. Hugs. Scottie
Key parts of a Florida law that bans gender transition care for minors and imposes hurdles on adults seeking transition care are unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. Judge Robert L. Hinkle of Federal District Court in Tallahassee sided with advocacy groups and three families who had said that the law stripped them of parents’ rights to make medical decisions for their transgender children.
In a 105-page order, Judge Hinkle said that “gender identity is real” and that a “widely accepted standard of care” includes puberty blockers and hormone treatments that Florida unlawfully banned. “The state of Florida can regulate as needed but cannot flatly deny transgender individuals safe and effective medical treatment — treatment with medications routinely provided to others with the state’s full approval so long as the purpose is not to support the patient’s transgender identity,” Judge Hinkle wrote.
A small victory for our trans community, but we need to get to a place where trans rights aren’t up to the whims of legislatures, the courts, and the whims of despotic southern governors.
And Eastern Washington would gladly join in the tomfoolery if they could get away with it. We always joke that the Cascade Curtain keeps out the riff raff.
You will soon have the haters screech about the Judge condoning “gender confusion”.
Hey, you so-called experts. Trans folks are not “confused”. They know exactly who they are and what they need to do. If you truly care you’d STFU and get out of the way.
I know. Bashing Trans people is good for building up your brand within the Republican party and the Christian Right.
It’s amazing how some cis people can claim to know more about trans people and gender identity than trans people themselves. I mean, the sheer arrogance of it!
The only thing the screechers care about is imposing their hate on everyone else. It is not and never has been about doing what is in a child’s best interest.
A few years ago I mentioned having used multi-person all-gender restrooms (designated that way for an LGBTQ+ community choir concert, and a pride festival, and a science-fiction convention), and I turned out fine. Someone asked, “Did it turn you straight? (Or gay, whichever you weren’t before?)” Nope!
As the host notes, this group is a hate group of anti-LGBTQ+ who formed in 2002 in an attempt to block same sex marriage and adoption of children by gay people. They attacks on gay and trans people are not drive by any science but by their religious ideology. Yes they are a small group of mostly Christian people who use the bible written 2,500 years ago instead of modern science and medical studies to make judgments. Remember when the bible was written people did not know about germs, did not know anything about the world around them. They thought the world raced around the sun and other nonsense, yet they think medical treatments should be based on that book. Hugs. Scottie
A clip from a press conference held by the American College of Pediatricians is being circulated on Twitter, where so-called medical “experts” call for an end to gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth. Even though these doctors with white lab coats may look legitimate, they’re not. The American College of Pediatricians is a hate group that pushes anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience. In this video we’ll look at the harmful things they’ve pushed.
I love that they say Vermont doesn’t care about vulnerable children when these people want to abuse vulnerable LGBTQ+ children by forcing a religion on them that calls them an abomination. They want the right to force these kids into conversion therapy or to not let them transition. This is seriously scary shit. Hugs. Scottie
They claim it’s religious discrimination to not let them foster children they say they will refuse to accept.
Two Christian families in Vermont, alongside the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group Alliance Defending Freedom, are suing the state after it stripped their foster care licenses over their homophobic and transphobic beliefs.
“Vermont says they’re unfit to parent any child because of their traditional religious beliefs about human sexuality,” said ADF legal counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse in a press release. “Vermont seems to care little about the needs of vulnerable children, much less the constitutional rights of its citizens. That’s why we’re suing them in federal court.”
Roger Gannam said that trans-inclusive anti-discrimination policy would lead to sexual assaults against women.
The Wuoti and Gantt families filed the lawsuit along with the ADF on Tuesday, initiating a formal complaint against the state.
Vermont changed its policies regarding foster families in recent years to better support LGBTQ+ youth. It requires that foster parents are supportive of young people’s identities – such as properly gendering trans youth or allowing kids to embrace their sexual orientation.
It strictly prohibits “discrimination and bias based on a child or youth’s real or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
The lawsuit argues that both families are required by their religion to misgender any foster children, stating that “a person’s sex is binary and fixed by God at conception.” It goes further in arguing that, in the case of the Gantt family, they believe that trans people must detransition and that people should not gender trans people correctly.
The lawsuit also claims that Kaitlyn Wuoti had gender dysphoria as a child, leading her to be filled with “compassion” for children. Both Brian and Kaitlyn Wuoti believe that they cannot even associate with a Pride parade or those in it because “they convey a message about human sexuality that goes against their faith.”
Radke emphasized in a statement that while DCF does not comment on pending lawsuits, the lawsuit was nevertheless filed at the beginning of Pride Month, a time normally dedicated to celebrating LGBTQ+ people.
“It is a human right for all to be valued and supported, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity,” Radke said. “The Family Services Division is here to serve all and upholds that expectation for both its staff, as well as the foster parents who agree to take on the care of the youth in our custody.”
This lawsuit comes at a time when LGBTQ+ youth are especially vulnerable, facing attacks on their healthcare across the world. This atmosphere contributes to stigma against these youths. Moreover, LGBTQ+ youth are more likely to be homeless and in the foster system.
“It’s the role of families to provide that kind of affirmation and validation,” said Amanda Rohdenburg with Outright Vermont. She says it’s impossible to tell who is LGBTQ+ just by looking at them, so LGBTQ+ youth might be placed with anti-LGBTQ+ foster parents. “They are at high risk of experiencing rejection or internalizing homophobia or transphobia that impacts their sense of sense over their lifetime.”
The named defendants in the suit are Department for Children and Families (DCF) Commissioner Christopher Winters, Deputy Commissioner of the DCF’s Family Services Division Aryka Radke, and DCF’s Director of Residential Licensing & Special Investigations Stacey Edmunds.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont, Windham Division and has Gretchen M. Wade of Wadleigh, Starr & Peters, P.L.L.C as additional legal counsel.
The Alliance Defending Freedom is known for its ties to the book The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today, which was written by former ADF CEO Alan Sears and ADF member Craig Osten. They group also supports banning LGBTQ+ individuals from the military and the Boy Scouts of America.
The ADF has filed lawsuits across the country, such as in the case of 303 Creative vs. Elenis, where they defend an individual trying to discriminate against LGBTQ+ individuals based on religion.
By my dogs that love gravy I love Barry’s post. I can not think of a better way to present the facts. The most needed facts about trans people, facts about pride parades, and about young people knowing who they are. Please read the post. Also please subscribe to Barry’s blog, he present things with a view point that is often refreshing compared to what we normally hear about things. In honor of Barry, Best wishes. Scottie
I want to thank Ali for the link to this story. I will try to post the comment she left pointing me to it. I do not mind a link here or there in the comments if it leads me to new good article on issues. Ali has offered me many links in the comments and all of them so far have been worth reading, and yes many I end up posting like this one. Thank you Ali. Hugs Scottie Below is Ali’s comment.
All is well. So many things tend to work out for the very best.
Here’s a new link. I’ve been reading Oliver Willis for years, and I really like his work. You’ve probably seen his work around. I now subscribe (for free) to his work on Substack, and here is the one he posted today. Bonus on each post is a photo of his doggy Kal-El, who looks like our Chrissy back when she was that age (she crossed the bridge in 2020 at age 21.) Anyway, back to the link: https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/how-boring-lgbtq-people-made-america . Enjoy when you get to it!
When I was a kid and well up until into my teens in the 1990s, the right wing in America sold us a dystopian vision of what would occur if gay and lesbian people were granted equal rights, most notably, the right to marry.
According to conservative pundits and politicians, if we allowed same-sex marriage to occur, every street in America would immediately, overnight, turn into the most extreme version of a San Francisco leather parade. Innocent families would be forced, Clockwork Orange style, to watch as bulging crotches were shoved into their faces, sparkling zippers twirling before them, women dressed in men’s clothes, men wearing dresses, the kinkiest sexual acts occurring in public at the drop of a hat.
On Fox News, the propaganda arm of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, equal marriage rights would surely end up in people marrying ducks, cows, goats, etc. Certainly.
But in the decades since then, after figures like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both now thankfully six feet under) blamed LGBTQ people for events like 9/11, none of that happened. For sure, there are sometimes leather parades, but they’re mostly happening in the same places where there have always been leather parades and nobody there is bothered by them.
Instead, after the epochal event of same sex marriage becoming legal, nothing happened. Nothing at all. No forced Pride parades breaking out in rural Alabama. No kids in Montana getting instructed on the fine art of same-sex kissing. No families in Orange County, California, compelled to learn the words to “YMCA” in gender reeducation camps. Nothing at all.
Why? Because the vast majority of LGBTQ people are just as boring as straight people. They have jobs, go to school and work, take care of their kids, have marital bliss and squabbles and all the rest of it. They aren’t activists militantly marching in the streets for issues or disco, but simply want to make it through another day in peace. Boring as hell, like all of us are.
And this is a triumph. Because for all of American history, the people in power – almost always wealthy, straight, white, men – have attained power and retained power by demonizing everyone else who doesn’t look like them. Black men were after their daughters, Muslim people are terrorists, women are emotional hysterics, and on and on and on. These people profit off of the dehumanization of others and by working overtime to scare people about the horror that could happen if we treated everybody with equality and respect.
Yet every time that the country gets over itself and fulfills the words of the Founders in ways that they could not comprehend in their limited view of the world and who truly deserved “liberty,” we collectively discover that the nightmare was always total nonsense.
This is a lesson to keep in mind as we watch in horror as the right whips up fears about immigrants, transgender people, and refugees from the Middle East in our current electoral cycle. Integrating LGBTQ families into the mainstream of American life made the country stronger, not weaker. Our collective understanding increased, the rich tapestry that is the United States benefitted from increased diversity. The only ones who lost out were close-minded bigots who can’t accept that the world doesn’t look like the deranged fantasies in their brains (and never existed in reality).
Boring is good. We’re all boring. Reject the lurid fantasy world of the haters and instead embrace the mundane reality of a diverse world. And throw a leather parade, if you feel like it. This is America, where you’re free to do so if you like.
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This is a great take down of how bad the Cass report is that the anti-trans haters are right now loving to cite. Vaush even includes the fact that Cass herself disavows the report and says puberty blockers should be given out at younger ages than they are. The report is a shitshow. She almost comes out and admits she was paid to find ways to prevent, mock, and give reasons why kids who are claiming not to be the gender they were assigned at birth should be given gender affirming care per the trans best care guidelines, but instead should be sent to delaying / conversion therapy places. It is another open and shut case of the anti-trans right wing activists doing all they can to deny reality and roll back society to the 1950s. They don’t agree or want trans people, so no young person can know their gender. But they agree that every cis child knows their gender … so why not the kids that are different? Because they don’t want that, nor do they want to admit it. Face it, this is no different from the people that said homosexuals were a choice just to rebel against their parents, that same sex marriage was not a real marriage, that every gay or lesbian person just needed sex with the other sex to make them straight. It is just a denial of a reality they don’t like. They don’t want to admit medical science and society has moved past their comfort spot. Oh well, sorry but I don’t have to live my life to make you comfortable or happy. Hugs. Scottie
As the title suggests I am making some changes to the way I deal with blogs I enjoy, comments, and email. I have always signed on, quickly looked at the bell notifications, then got enough read / answered that if more poured in I wouldn’t miss too much. Then I would do other things like email. Often during this time or if I was not well I lost everything in the bell notification as it only allowed so many. I was constantly missing comments, which in truth is more important to me than other things online. Not sure why it has taken me to come to this change, except that if I am comfortable with something, I am the perfect frog in the pot of the hot water. Now the water is hot enough I am forced to jump out of it.
I love the blogs I follow, and I hate being rushed in reading them. But comments on my blog have to come first. I love them, I adore them, I am willing to put in the extra effort for them. I do not want to miss any more of them. So here is the change.
What I did this afternoon works for me. I had to do some other things and when I signed back on I was pissed that all my caught up stuff was no longer caught up, and I lost stuff. What did I lose? I don’t know, that is what bothers me. So I went to the top of the bell and worked down finding every comment and replying. Then when I got all them answered I went back to the top of the bell and got the new comments.
Going forward when I get up and sign on, start all my systems, I will start at the bottom of the bell notifications looking for comments. I will move up the list replying to comments. Then I will check my email and answer that, something I have not really done since … well at least a decade ago. Then I will go back to the bell notification and start reading all the grand blogs from the people I enjoy hearing their thoughts and leaving my own on. During this I will go back to the top to check for comments. If during this your blog drops off the bell notification list I am really sorry, I do love reading your blogs, but the list has gotten too long, my health is not well, and I just get too upset not keeping up. To the point I keep hundreds of open tabs, I think the count right now I keep open is near 500. I doubt I will ever get to them, answer them, or post them … some are news articles I wanted to post, but I save them with a hope. I will be going through them catching the comment left two or three months ago, then delete the windows. I just looked I am keeping tabs of blogs or comments from 3 months ago hoping to somehow get to them. It is past time to stop pushing and punishing myself. Ron is at his wits end on this. I set my alarm and got up at 3 am to start today. Yes I have to take breaks, and go lay down, I can only sit for five or ten minutes at a time, so I am up and down and laying down up at the desk, standing walking, sitting, going back to bed … I am exhausted and my health is failing, and Ron says one of the reasons is I feel driven by the stuff online. I just am recovering from a stomach virus causing me to vomit all day yet when I could sit I was at the computer. When my body drives me to bed I do it from my phone and tablet. I read news and post it. I put a keyboard on my old tablet to answer comments from there. It is not the best but it works.
So I am sorry if I miss your blogs. I am sorry if you post something really grand I think needs to be shared. I have to back off. I have to set priorities. I have gotten myself into a rut, pushing far past what my medications can hold until I am in tears trying to deal with stuff. I fall asleep at my desk after telling Ron I am going to bed. Then we argue about it.
Anyway everyone gets the point, I am just flogging the dead horse and making my self out to be a martyr at this point. That is not the case. Sorry if I give that impression, but reading over this I feel I have. None of what I do is anyone else’s fault. I do it because I enjoy it and love it. These computers are my ability to move outside the walls of my home, to connect with a larger world. I am addicted to it. But like any addiction it is hurting me, so I need to curb it. For example right now I just got up and walked around the kitchen because my right hip, the first hip I had replaced back in 2004 is burning, hurting, killing me so badly I am having to finish this sitting sideways. What people don’t know is that how I do a lot of my online posts and comments. I do a few minutes, get up and move, do more, go lay down, take more medications, get back to the computer. Ron says my exercise regiment is how much I have to keep moving to help the pain in my hips and back.
So let us all hope this gives me the chance to answer any comments without missing them. Please keep them coming, I love hearing other peoples thoughts and ideas. Plus as Ron says there is a bit of argumentive streak in me from the time I spent soaked in the bile and vitreol of the adotptive family. Hugs. Loves to all. Best wishes to those who understandably don’t want to be hugged I was there once myself. Scottie
Photo: Shutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 
All is well. So many things tend to work out for the very best.
Here’s a new link. I’ve been reading Oliver Willis for years, and I really like his work. You’ve probably seen his work around. I now subscribe (for free) to his work on Substack, and here is the one he posted today. Bonus on each post is a photo of his doggy Kal-El, who looks like our Chrissy back when she was that age (she crossed the bridge in 2020 at age 21.) Anyway, back to the link: https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/how-boring-lgbtq-people-made-america . Enjoy when you get to it!