Again these bills are a way Christians can force their moral views on everyone, a way they get to rule on how every person gets to live their lives. It gives these rabid fundamentalists Christian republican groups the right to tell everyone else what they can do, regulating what everyone can watch / read in order to conform to a strict religious view of morality written 2,500 years ago. It ignores all medical, scientific, and social advances done in the years since their holy books were written and mistranslated. Society has advanced as human understandings have, yet these oppressive regressive people want to ignore all that. Would they also like to go back to the medical understandings in the 1600s, 1700s, or even what was known medically in 1900. That was 28 years before penicillin was discovered. 21 years before insulin was discovered. Tell me if their holy book written knew everything about morals why did it support slavery? Do we return to that also to please Christian fascists? This is an attempt to enshrine a religious morality over everyone regardless of if you belong to that or any religion. Again it is not about these people being able to live and act as they wish, it is about forcing everyone else to live by their church rules / doctrines. Hugs
Bills are part of religious right’s post-Roe strategy, with most prevalent ones relating to age verification of sex-related websites
A wave of proposed legislation pushed by Republicans across the US at the state level is aimed at outlawing aspects of sexuality that could have a huge impact on Americans’ private lives and businesses.
Opponents to the laws before legislatures in various states say the planned new legislation could spawn prosecution of breast-pump companies in Texas for nipples on advertising, or a bookstore might be banned from selling romance novels in West Virginia, or South Carolina could imprison standup comics if a risqué joke is heard by a young person.
The bills are part of a post-Roe nationwide strategy by the religious wing of the Republican party, now that federal abortion rights have fallen. They range from banning all businesses that sell sex-related goods to anti-drag queen bills. Tyler Dees, an Arkansas state senator who wrote an anti-porn bill said: “I would love to outlaw it all,” referring to porn.
The most prevalent bills relate to age verification of sex-related websites. Seventeen states drafted porn age-verification bills, many inspired by Louisiana’s law that went into effect in January. Louisiana’s law requires websites featuring 33.33% or more pornographic content to check government-issued ID to verify users are 18 and older. Websites that don’t comply face civil penalties. Parents can sue the site if kids access it.
In Texas, a new bill requiring age verification on websites with pornographic content defines images of the female breast “below the top of the areola” as porn, potentially hitting at business advertisements. In West Virginia, a bill outlawing all sexually oriented businesses is on the docket, with a definition that includes art studios with nude models and wrestling arenas. In South Carolina a bill would criminalize using “profane language” related to “sexual or excretory organs or activities” in front of minors during performances. The punishment? Up to a decade in prison.
Some bills define porn so broadly that anatomy textbooks or sex education websites would meet them.
“I don’t think such laws for the internet are constitutional,” said Eugene Volokh, a professor of Law at UCLA.
Laurie Schlegel, a Republican state senator who drafted the Louisiana law, is a sex-addiction therapist educated at Baptist seminary, who opposed transgender students from being on sports teams that align with their gender. Schlegel’s anti-LGBTQ+ views fit with the broader goal of the laws, according to Carolyn Bronstein, a professor of media studies at DePaul University.
“These laws are really not about controlling minors’ access to violent pornography … In the conservative world view, pornography is information about LGBTQ identity, abortion, gay marriage,” said Bronstein.
Eight states have justified their actions by saying that porn is “creating a public health crisis”. Louisiana’s bill claims that pornography “may lead to low self-esteem, body image disorders, an increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages … impact brain development … shape deviant sexual arousal, and lead to difficulty in forming or maintaining positive, intimate relationships, as well as promoting problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction.”
Historian Whitney Strub, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University, doesn’t think these ideas are well-founded. “Framing pornography as a public health crisis is not driven by serious engagement with the social scientific literature,” he said. “They’ve even got fake peer-reviewed journals that give the imprimatur of scholarship … It’s been a very smart rebranding of evangelical Christian conservatism.”
Why are all these bills being proposed now? Strub thinks it’s partly because of the overturning of Roe v Wade. “Abortion gave a certain coherence to conservative politics in the United States. And it certainly still does … but they’re in the position of Ahab if he slayed the white whale … I mean, there’s no more Moby-Dick.”
There is hypocrisy on display also.
In many of the states where the anti-porn bills are being put forth, minors can legally have sex and get married. “In Louisiana, you can have sex when you’re 17 with a person in their 30s, but you can’t watch porn,” said Jason Kelley, associate director of digital strategy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, the age of consent is 16. With parental permission, Mississippi allows 15-year-olds to marry, Louisiana 16-year-olds, Arkansas 17-year-olds, and West Virginia kids of any age.
Dees, who wrote Arkansas’s age verification bill, a copycat of Louisiana’s, said porn causes depression and anxiety, divorce and “permissive sexual attitudes” and infidelity. “When I think about the children … I want to protect their innocence,” Dees said.
Strub said this is an old trope: “The political figure of the innocent and imperiled child just has a never-ending purchase on American politics … [it] essentially shuts down debate because it immediately creates a binary in which anybody who disagrees with you is [a] perverted groomer.”
Dees is also the co-author of anti-drag queen legislation in Arkansas, that classifies drag performances as the same category as pornography. “It’s not really a meaningful distinction to [conservatives]. They’re both sexual degeneracy in its different guises,” Strub said.
Dees claimed that his porn verification law “doesn’t have anything to do with any political messaging. It has to do with exposure to material that is harmful, period … There’s a clear enemy in the smut-peddling garbage that’s online.”
But measures already exist to prevent children accessing porn. “There’s a really easy way to keep kids from accessing adult content. And that’s a device-level filter” on mobile phones that block adult websites that are registered as Restricted to Adults, said Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition, which advocates for the rights of sex workers.
These laws, according to Stabile, aren’t going to stop kids from looking at porn. “Even if they were to block all sites, you’re still going to have adult content on Twitter and Reddit … kids will get VPNs,” he said.
Stabile thinks we’ll see up to two dozen age-verification bills introduced by the end of the year.
Dees hopes he is right and has eyes beyond the state level eventually. “My prayer is that enough states continue to push for this measure, and that we send a loud enough message where federal law can be put into place,” he said.
But reading a book or seeing a movie with an LGBTQ+ character or seeing a commercial with a same sex couple will sexualize kids. It is grooming them for sex if their teacher is in a same sex marriage but not in a straight marriage. WTF! It never was about protecting kids from sex, it is about attacking those who are not straight cis as predators that need to be removed from society. It is about marking the LGBTQ+ as wrong, bad, evil, and harmful to children. But as you can see about the idea of old men to have sex with little kids and marry them is a religious and parental rights that is good to the republicans. Hugs
The Wyoming Republican Party is seeking to kill a bill working its way through the state Legislature proposing to raise the state’s legal marriage age to 16, arguing that putting “arbitrary” limits on child marriage interferes with parental rights and religious liberty.
The bill—which already passed the Republican-controlled Wyoming House of Representatives on a 36-25 vote late last month—proposes banning state residents from marrying anyone under the age of 16, while requiring anyone under the age of 18 seeking to get married to receive written consent from their parents under the eye of a competent witness.
Currently, Wyoming is one of just eight states in the country—including California, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Washington and West Virginia—without a minimum age requirement for marriage.
Read the full article. Wyoming GOP chair Frank Eathorne [photo] attended the Capitol Riot and is a member of the Oath Keepers. Eathorne was endorsed by Trump after he spearheaded the campaign to unseat Liz Cheney.
Wyoming Republicans are now fighting to kill a bill that would ban marrying children under the age of 16.
Last year Tennessee Republicans tried to get rid of all age limits on marriage entirely until public backlash forced them to back down. https://t.co/69O6KNhAoU
Wyoming #GOP chair was on restricted grounds during Jan. 6 riot, report says. And of course his ethics arequestionable, based upon his past. Shocker. https://t.co/85KnvEewor via @cstribune
Let’s not forget about them drag queens and men who insist on using women’s bathrooms and participate in women’s sports. As long as we can Fuck a 13 yo.
I have a firm belief that these creepy motherfuckers want to marry young because they are also obsessed with getting a virgin who doesn’t know that all the painful, degrading things being demanded of her are things she has a right to say no to.
Cis-Het Republican Pedophile Groomers in Wyoming oppose bill that would raise the minimum marriage age to 16 – citing “parental rights.”
This news actually underscores just how pernicious and anti-child, this so-called “parents rights” movement in the fascist GQP, is. It is more widely known for supporting bullying, denial of medical care, and imposition of genocidal laws against trans children and adults, as well as against all LGBTQ+ people, and forcing schools to teach only whitewashed history.
Evidently they don’t realize their child brides will grow up. I guess the consolation is that by the time their “wife” gets too old, there will be children to abuse.
Of course – the bill is presented and supported by a bunch of old white coots who haven’t had a full erection in years. Yet somehow they think allowing men to bang rape a 12yo will restore their vitality.
Hey buddy! Go fuck yourself a sheep! You can get ’em real young!
I’m surprised the national legal minimum age isn’t 18, so the people getting married can give informed legal consent, as is required on all other contracts.
So to recap: Kids can carry guns Kids can’t handle hearing drag queens reading to them Kids can’t handle books Kids can be maneuvered into marriage Kids can’t get abortions Circumcision doesn’t count as genital mutilation Don’t teach about slavery or other struggles marginalized groups continue to encounter
While we’re touting “religious liberty” as if it is an absolute virtue unto itself, let’s not forget that religious liberty used to include things like burning people to death.
Despite how the republicans like to frame these bills it is about removing the LGBTQ+ representation from schools and society. It is not about protecting kids against sexualization because in Wyoming GOP Opposes Bill To Ban Child Marriagein a state with no limits to how young kids can get married; the republicans refuse to limit that to 16 and above. They say it goes against religious liberties. Yes I guess the right to marry and have sex with 10 or 12 year olds is not sexualizing them but don’t let a drag queen read to them or them know that their teacher is in a same sex marriage because they will rush to be gay? Plus the way these bills are written shows the target is anything not straight heterosexual 1950s norm. Schools would not be able to provide any program, curriculum, material, test, survey, questionnaire, activity, announcement, promotion, or instruction of any kind relating to gender identity or sexual activity in grades K-3. That would require no use of Mr. or Mrs. / Miss. It would require no use of the word boy or girl. It would require no mention of either boy / girl dating as well as stopping any same sex dating in school. Teachers wouldn’t be able to announce they are pregnant and might even have to hide it or be removed as that happens only to females and is caused by sexual activity. Really it would mean getting rid of separate boy / girl gendered bathrooms as the bills are written. No gender roles can be discussed such as who can play on which teams as that is related to gender. Also no girls or boys only clothing as that is gender promotion / instruction. But all that is ignored with a wink and a nod because everyone understands these are targeted to stop acceptance of gay and trans or other LGBTQ+ kids / people. It is to stop kids who are different from seeing themselves in books or movies, making it seem they are wrong, evil, sick, or just not to be tolerated in the US society. It is to promote hetero straight society and remove those who don’t fit that mold. It is to roll back all the advancements in society. These same people will target blacks and native people next to be removed. Also what is social-emotional learning. That is anti-bullying and programs to promote tolerance of those that are different. It is about being kind and civil to others. That is what these republican maga haters are desperate to prevent. They don’t want kids taught to be nice to others, but they want their kids to be allowed even encouraged to attack and target those who are different from them. They don’t want non-straight kids to feel safe, they want them scared and in hiding. I am tired of the attacks, and the clear assault on the rights of people to just be who they really are that harms no one. Just as straight people are born straight so are gay kids / trans kids. But these republicans insist that everyone be just like them and that only they have rights. We must fight to stop what the right is doing to harm the kids and people in our country. One republican Governor said on the news that there seems to be more trans people now and he did not understand that, maybe kids were being pushed into it. But that has been debunked. Has he thought that kids who were not being targeted for how they felt about themselves felt free to express it? These republicans don’t want information they want to run on feelings, impressions, and misinformation that reenforce their feelings that it is not a true thing. One republican on the panel said that rather than letting kids change their hair and go by a different name that they should be forced into mental health treatments. Hugs
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds proposes a wide range of changes for schools including restrictions on LGBTQ topics, new history class requirements and a process to restrict access to certain books.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds unveiled a sweeping education bill Thursday that would set new standards for what students can and can’t learn. It also establishes more control for parents over their children’s education. Here’s what’s in the bill:
Restrictions on topics involving gender identity and sexual orientation
The bill would ban any instruction related to gender identity and sexual activity in school districts, accredited nonpublic schools, charter schools and innovation zone schools in grades K-3.
Schools would not be able to provide any program, curriculum, material, test, survey, questionnaire, activity, announcement, promotion, or instruction of any kind relating to gender identity or sexual activity in grades K-3.
Schools would be required to tell parents any information their child shares with a teacher or staff member about their gender identity if what the student expresses is different from the “biological sex” listed on their birth certificate.
The bill does provide an exception if a school district believes that notifying the parent or guardian would lead to a case of child abuse. In that instance, the school district does not need to notify the parent but would be required to immediately report the safety concerns to the department of health and human services. The department would then determine whether the child is in need of assistance.
Parents would have to give schools written permission for teachers or any school employee to use a nickname or pronoun that does not match the biological sex listed on their child’s birth certificate.
Removing books from schools
The bill would require each school district to publish online all materials used in all classes throughout the district, all employees in direct contact with students, all books available in classrooms and school libraries, and a detailed process for parents to request any material be removed.
Districts would be required to update that information two times a semester or at the start of each trimester.
Any book removed from a school would be put on a statewide “removal list” maintained by the Iowa Department of Education. The “comprehensive removal list” would be available online, updated every month and sortable by the book’s title, author and the school districts that have removed the book from school libraries, classrooms or any areas on school property.
A school district must receive written parental permission before allowing a student to check out or access any book that is on the statewide removal list.
Establishes ‘parental rights’
The bill establishes that “a parent or guardian bears the ultimate responsibility, and has the constitutionally protected right, to make decisions affecting the parent’s or guardian’s minor child, including decisions related to the minor child’s medical care, moral upbringing, religious upbringing, residence, education, and extracurricular activities.”
Schools would be required to receive parental permission for students to attend any activity or instruction provided by a guest lecturer or outside presenter or any activity or instruction that involves obscene or sexually explicit material.
If school districts break that rule, they could face fines of up to $5,000.
Changes to the social studies curriculum
The bill would require all Iowa high school students to take a U.S. citizenship test, and schools would be required to provide the results to the Department of Education.
High school students would need to answer at least 70% of the questions to graduate. Students can continue to retake the citizenship test until they earn a passing grade.
Removing HPV from health curriculum
The bill would remove the current requirement that Iowa schools teach seventh-grade through 12th-grade students instruction related to human papillomavirus and the availability of a vaccine to prevent HPV.
Restrictions on social-emotional learning
Schools would be required to receive written parent permission in order for a student to take any survey or test that evaluates mental, emotional, or physical health that is not required by state or federal law.
Teachers would have to give parents written notice at least seven days before any test or survey that evaluates their child’s mental, emotional, or physical health.
Brutal Persecution of Lesbians under Nazi Regime Rape, Beatings & Murders Nazi Germany. During the Weimar Republic, German society experienced complex social, political, and cultural transformations. Meeting places advertised in a new lesbian press that emerged in the mid-1920s and lesbian journals also contributed to the growth of lesbian networks. Public discussions of sexuality had occurred in Germany since the late 19th century. Physician and sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld as well as others organized gay and lesbian “friendship leagues”, which also included heterosexual members.
Large numbers of Germans were opposed to these public discussions of sex and sexuality. They viewed such debates as decadent, overly permissive, and immoral. Even before coming to power, many Nazis resented the visibility of gay and lesbian communities.
Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on the 30th of January 1933.
Beginning in 1933, the Nazi regime began to harass gay and lesbian communities and individuals by shutting down and raiding their meeting places and organizations. By eliminating gay and lesbian gathering places and presses, the regime made it far more difficult for lesbians and gay men to connect with each other and the Nazis effectively dissolved the communities that had developed during the Weimar Republic.
Over the course of the 1930s, Nazi actions targeting male homosexuality became even more systematically oppressive. In 1935, the Nazi regime reformed Paragraph 175. The statute now criminalized any and all sexual intimacy between men.
Eventually, SS leader Heinrich Himmler took the lead in persecuting male homosexuality, which he called a “public scourge.” In 1936, Himmler created the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion.
However, the Nazi regime never criminalized sexual relations between women as it saw lesbians, first and foremost, as women. The Nazis believed that German women had a special task to perform: motherhood. They had a responsibility to give birth to racially pure Germans, called “Aryans.” The Nazis did not create any separate policies that singled out lesbians as a problem for Aryan procreation. Their reasoning drew on widespread attitudes about the differences between male and female sexuality. The Nazis concluded that Aryan lesbians could easily be persuaded or forced to bear children. During the Nazi regime, lesbians could not continue to live and socialize as they had during the Weimar Republic.
There were lesbians who joined underground anti-Nazi resistance groups or helped hide Jews.
Such was a case of Frieda Belinfante, a half-Jewish lesbian, who was a member of Dutch gay resistance group called the CKC.
The reason why some lesbians were arrested and sent to concentration camps was, that they were arrested as members of other groups such as Jews, Roma, asocials, political prisoners and professional criminals.
In lesbian prisoners’ paperwork, concentration camp authorities usually listed a racial, political, social, or criminal reason as the primary cause for their arrest. In a few cases, the authorities also noted their sexuality.
Such was a case of Henny Schermann, a Jewish lesbian from Germany. Sometimes their arrest had little or nothing to do with the fact that they were lesbians. At other times, their sexuality may have played a role. This was especially the case regarding arrests prompted by denunciations. Yet, denunciations could cause unwanted scrutiny for lesbians. To such women belonged Elli Smula and Margarete Rosenberg.
Between 5,000 and 15,000 men were imprisoned in concentration camps as “homosexual” offenders. This group of prisoners was typically required to wear a pink triangle badge sewn onto their camp uniforms. According to many survivor accounts, pink triangle male prisoners were among the most abused groups in the camps.
However, women who self-identified or were identified as lesbians did not wear the pink triangle. Same-sex relations in the camps could be shocking to other prisoners, who came from a variety of cultures and backgrounds. Homosexual prisoners rarely benefited from solidarity from the other prisoners, which for many camp inmates provided tools of survival, such as access to food and clothing.
To this day, it remains a research challenge to find historical sources related to lesbian experiences under the Nazi regime.
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After CPAC Leader Matt Schlapp was accused of sexual assault of a male Herschel Walker staffer, both the CPAC organization and Matt Schlapp’s wife, Mercedes Schlapp, have decided to blame…liberals. Texas Paul reacts.
Please notice the similarities of what the Nazis did with what DeathSantis and the republican leaders in red states are doing now with the don’t say gay laws. The Nazis started with getting rid of the literature and any gay positive news or newspapers. They made laws restricting and outlawing gay meeting places just like the red states are doing with drag queen shows. Also they made gay associations and gay supporting groups to disband and forbid them from existing just like in Florida where no gay straight alliance clubs can now be formed in schools supporting the gay / LGBTQ+ kids. There is so much more in the video that shows how DeathSantis and his advisors are following the Nazi play book to eliminate the LGBTQ+ community, to rid the state of the gay and trans people. Such as using thugs called Brown Shirts to attack and scare gay establishments which reminds me of the Proud Boys gangs. Arresting and stopping events claiming they were preventing crime and if they got a gay person in the arrests or anyone with any public indecency in their record they made a big deal of making an example of them, claiming the need to protect the public and the children. One of the reasons that the Nazis hated the gays was they did not produce Aryan children which was the goal of the movement. Similar to the current white nationalist / Christian nationalist that claim that same sex marriage is not a true marriage and that same sex families are not real because same sex couples can not produce offspring. In their minds there is not enough white kids being born. Please note the same things said about homosexuality then are the same things said about gays today by republicans, including what the religious evangelicals today say about same sex marriage not producting children. Hugs
Of all the things this piece of pond scum has been accused of doing or lying about this is not one I care about other than it seems it was an illegal marriage to allow an end run around immigration laws. As for family groupings and relationships that are adult and consensual in my opinion it is not one’s business except the people involved. Mind your own business is the way I look at it. If multiple people want to be in a consensual relationship with each other why should anyone else care. I don’t. Why should the government be involved in regulating how many people can be in love or which adults can have consensual sex? And absolutely no religion has a say in how non-members arrange their relationships or sexual encounters. Hugs
Two years into his mysterious marriage to a woman—and five years before they divorced—George Santos invited friends to celebrate his engagement to a man, The Daily Beast has learned. “Good evening everyone! As you all may already know Pedro and I have decided to join our toothbrushes! Lol and a very few friends have been selected to share this special moment with us!” Santos wrote in a 2014 Facebook “engagement dinner” invitation.
The invitation was shared with The Daily Beast by Santos’ old roommate, Greg Morey-Parker, and the boyfriend, Pedro Vilarva, confirmed that the future congressman planned the celebration. Vilarva told The Daily Beast the engagement party “never happened” because he rejected Santos’ proposals. “He asked me 3x but I didn’t accept it,” Vilarva wrote in a text. “There was never a party [or] anything in regards to it.”
Same-sex marriage became legal in New York state in July 2011. Santos’ divorce was finalized in 2020 two weeks before he filed paperwork to run for the US House.
According to Santos’ former roommate, Santos told him he could make money by marrying a Brazilian woman so that she could obtain US citizenship.
The boyfriend told The Daily Beast the engagement party “never happened” because he rejected Santos’ proposals: “He asked me 3x but I didn’t accept it.” https://t.co/ZArB0SDgH8
A man who was 18 years old when he began dating and then moved in with George Santos—while the future congressman was married to a woman—says he was lied to, too.
“He used to say he would get money from Citigroup, he was an investor,” Pedro Vilarva told The New York Times of his 2014 romance with Santos, who was then 26. “One day it’s one thing, one day it’s another thing. He never ever actually went to work.”
Vilarva said Santos once gave him tickets to Hawaii that did not exist—and then he found out he was wanted on theft charges in Brazil.
“I woke up in the morning, and I packed my stuff all in trash bags, and I called my father and I left,” he said.
In this episode we chat with sexologist, author, social worker Dr Joe Kort about male sexuality and sex. We discuss – Gay sex – What is sexual fluidity? – What does non-binary mean? – Porn, good or bad? – The problem of men, sex & shame – Homosexual attractions in straight men – What does it mean to be gay & bi – What is sex therapy?