The windows were approved following legal counsel from Independence Law Center, a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, which has been designated as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group. BY SAMANTHA RIEDEL
(I don’t like this. Aside from the important and actual reasons, how’re the kids gonna smoke in the bathroom? Or buy tampons? Or trade clothes? Now, I realize kids likely don’t do two of those things at school anymore, anyway. But people need their privacy in restrooms. This from the people who are so worried about their own privacy in bathrooms? -A)
A Pennsylvania school district is under fire for installing windows looking into middle-school bathrooms, seemingly at the recommendation of a conservative anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy group.
Gender-neutral bathrooms at Emory H. Markle Middle School in Hanover now have large windows on their outer walls, which allow those outside to see the bathrooms’ sink area, but not inside the stalls, as seen in photos shared with local news outlets. The windows have reportedly not been installed in gendered multi-user bathrooms or in changing rooms — and according to South Western School District (SWSD) board president Matthew Gelazela, that means privacy isn’t an issue.
Our students should not consider the space outside of our stalls as private within the multiuser restrooms,” Gelazela said in a statement to PennLive this week, highlighting a district policy that specifically requires “private changing areas” be provided to students. “Areas between our stalls and sinks in multiuser restrooms are not private changing areas under that policy.” Gelazela further claimed that the district is in the process of adding higher stall walls to gender-neutral bathrooms to increase privacy.
According to district board records, SWSD board members approved the bathroom windows — the installation of which has already cost the district $8,700 — after receiving a recommendation earlier this year from the Independence Law Center (ILC), which the district contracted as an outside legal counsel in March.
Around the same time, the board adopted an ILC-recommended policy that restricted teachers from using anything but a student’s pronouns based on “biological sex” and legal name, or a nickname commonly associated with their legal name, at school. They also adopted a plan to allow parents to restrict their children from specific categories of books, another ILC recommendation.
At an August 14 meeting, one board member noted that demolition for the bathroom windows had begun before the board officially approved their installation or knew the costs associated; the board then voted to go forward with the windows by a vote of 6-3.
ILC is a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Family Institute (PFI), itself tied to the far-right Family Research Council, both of which have been designated as anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. ILC’s website claims it acts to “secure the blessings of liberty,” which it apparently seeks to accomplish by filing amicus briefs in numerous anti-LGBTQ+ legal cases like 303 Creative v Elenis and Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado.
ILC chief counsel Randall Wenger appeared to distance his organization from the SWSD policy this week, however, telling NBC affiliate WGAL that it was “not our recommendation to create a line of sight into a restroom that lacks adequate privacy” and that ILC believes “privacy in multi-user facilities starts at the door of the room, not the door of stalls,” but that if stalls were made more “like the bathrooms on airplanes,” bathrooms may “open to a public area” where staff can monitor students for drug use or loitering. It was not clear whether SWSD’s policy extended beyond what ILC originally recommended, or if the district had simply not implemented stalls with greater wall-to-ceiling coverage before installing the windows.
Them reached out to ILC for further comment, and received the following statement from Wenger, further denying ILC’s responsibility for the policy: “Independence Law Center always recommends privacy, including increasing privacy within existing facilities. We never suggest putting a window into restrooms with stalls. Facilities with full privacy, like bathrooms on airplanes can open to a public area just as we are all used to on airplanes and coffee shops.” Them also reached out to Gelazela for comment, but did not receive a reply before publication.
According to mission statements and case examples on its website, ILC primarily acts to curtail LGBTQ+ rights and advance Christian ideals and policy goals under the auspices of protecting “liberty,” including what it terms “marriage and the family” and the “protect[ion of] human life” — i.e., opposing abortion, a major goal of the PFI. The organization also has ties to past fundamentalist Christian groups. Prior to his work with the ILC, Wegner was employed by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, an “intelligent design” advocacy group that published and distributed the creationist textbook Of Pandas and People. The distribution of Pandas in a Pennsylvania public school district led to a 2005 district court decision that determined the school board had violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Parents of students at Markle Middle School told local outlets they were shocked to learn that the district had installed windows in bathrooms, pushing back against Gelazela’s claim that students’ privacy rights were not affected. “It just raised a ton of concerns for me: privacy concerns, safety concerns, concerns for the kids who need those facilities. I feel like this is a deterrent to keep them from using them,” parent Jennifer Holahan told WGAL. “I can understand needing to have supervision [….] But I also think windows aren’t a solution. I think if it was a real issue, it wouldn’t just be [in the] gender-inclusive restrooms.”
Eric Stiles, executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Rainbow Rose Center in York, PA, told PennLive he believes the windows may likely be used to harass and intimidate LGBTQ+ youth in school.
“They’ve done book banning and not using pronouns and outing students to their parents, and now this latest attempt is these bathroom windows that really call into concern the safety of students,” Stiles said. “There will be other students that use the windows, which means they can track each other [….] What does it mean for victims of violence that haven’t been able to come forward? Now you have a big window there. Are they going to have to plan their day on how and when to use the bathroom?”
This is what tRump and maga are, gang thugs enforcing their ideas of right and wrong with violence regardless of other people’s rights. This is what the party of tRump is, violence to any who they disagree with. This is brownshirt stuff from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. This is domestic terrorism, the use of violence and harming others to achieve a political goal / gain. This stuff was going away as unacceptable in the US, and now it is back thanks to tRump and his people. Hugs. Scottie
Blaze Pizza’s 96 California pizzerias are known for build-your-own pies rapidly fired in 800-degree ovens, along with Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James’ corporate investments. Last week, its Roseville location made headlines for an uglier reason.
A delivery driver walked into the Highland Reserve Marketplace restaurant about 10:15 p.m. Sept. 19, saw a Pride flag hung by employees inside and tore it down to the ground, according to the Roseville Police Department.
When a manager and employees confronted the man, he reportedly uttered a homophobic slur and left. He then returned with two other men, at least one of them wearing mixed martial arts gloves, and kicked off a brawl with two employees that multiple passersby caught on video.
Read the full article. Police are calling it a hate crime and the attackers remain at large. One of the employees was hospitalized due to his injuries.
September 30, 1962 Hundreds of Ku Klux Klan members, white students and others, tried to keep a black student, James Meredith, 29, from attending classes at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. They were supported by the governor, Ross Barnett, who had explicitly resisted the order of the Federal Circuit Court.In spite of the efforts to block his court-ordered registration, a deal to allow Meredith to register was reached between U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Governor Barnett. Meredith was secretly escorted onto campus; deputy U.S. marshals, border patrolmen and federal prison guards were stationed on and around the campus to protect him. Those standing guard were assaulted throughout the night with guns, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and bottles.
James Meredith being escorted to his classes by U.S.marshals and the military. Tear gas was used to try and control the crowd. Federal troops arrived, bringing the total to 12,000 (President Kennedy had activated soldiers and national guardsmen totaling 30,000), and the mob finally retreated. In the end, two were dead, 160 U.S. Marshals were injured (28 shot), 200 others injured, and 300 arrested. Integrating Ole Miss JFK Library
September 30, 2003 The FBI began a criminal investigation into whether White House officials had illegally leaked the identity of an undercover CIA officer, Valerie Plame, wife of diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, IV. In early 2002 the CIA had sent Wilson to look into the claim that Saddam Hussein had sought to acquire yellow-cake uranium from the African country of Niger. Ambassador Wilson found nothing to support the claim, and some of the documents cited as evidence for the claim were clearly shown to be forgeries. President Bush, nonetheless, repeated the claim in his January, 2003, State of the Union address as part of his argument for war in Iraq. Wilson wrote a column in the New York Times in July, 2003, entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” Columnist Robert Novak a few days later published Plame’s identity following conversation with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Plame, who previously had worked on counter-proliferation, was in charge of operations for the CIA’s Joint Task Force on Iraq, formed the summer before 9/11.
September 30, 2004 The U.S. Navy announce the shutdown of Project ELF. read more
The republican’s know their policies and ideas are very, very unpopular. They can’t win on them, so they are forced to cheat and drum up fake fears to scare voters to vote for them. Hugs. Scottie
‘Congratulations’ the fake letter reads, ‘you have been selected as a Wayward Steward exchange home for homeless immigrants and victims of foreign wars.’
A Bala Cynwyd couple received a fraudulent letter from the Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs this week informing her that she’d been selected as a “wayward steward” to house five refugees. The office does not exist, nor does the program. Elizabeth Bennett holds the letter on Sept. 27, 2024.Read moreCharles Fox / Staff Photographer
A Bala Cynwyd voter got a detailed letter this week from the made-up Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs notifying her that her household had been selected to house five migrant refugees.
No office exists, nor does such a government-mandated housing program, but the letter, doctored to look like an official government document, provided specific details designed to mislead someone less attuned to a scam — and laid the blame for the fake program at the feet of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during a heated and close election in which immigration has increasingly become a focal point.
“I’m concerned to find out how many people might have actually gotten it and to make sure the record’s set straight so people aren’t getting fearful or angry and deciding to vote another way,” Elizabeth Bennett, 62, said.
The letter says Bennett was selected as a “wayward steward” as part of “US5Ca12-B … written into Law by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.” No such law exists.
It advised Bennett she’d been selected based on property and income records and would receive an $80 weekly stipend for food costs. The letter suggested a “minimum of one bedroom be prepared with a minimum of 5 beds,” with a link to “government-approved” bunk beds.
The return address listed is for an intersection in front of the Capitol building in Harrisburg.
Neither the governor’s office nor the department of state immediately returned a request for comment.
Bennett is unsure why she was targeted. She has a large Harris/Walz sign in her front yard. Ironically, she’s also done volunteer resettlement work with immigrants for the last 30 years but she assumes that was just a coincidence.
“Of all the people they could send this to, I would be the one who is like, ‘OK let’s get the room set up, we gotta take care of these people,’” she said. But as she read on, she realized the program was fake and intended to scare people.
“I could definitely see, even for me reading this letter it felt threatening even though I’m very pro-immigrant because it felt like something that was being imposed on me,” she said.
It’s unclear if other Pennsylvanians received the letter. Bennett posted about it in small Facebook groups but hasn’t heard from others who received it.
But whoever created the letter took time to make it look like an official document, including an imprint of a fake Pennsylvania seal on the letterhead and a stamped date informing Bennett when to expect the migrants.
A listed phone number for the fake office, with a Harrisburg area code, goes to a voicemail for the named office where a messaging service invites the caller to press one for housing vouchers, two for reimbursements, and three to “expand your footprint to help more people.”
The letter Bennett received went on to specify garages or sheds without electricity and running water could not be used.
“Thank you for your dedication to the health and safety of these future Americans!” it concluded.
Misinformation about migrant resettlement and illegal immigration has been rampant in the campaign. Former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance have made it a focus of their bid for the White House claiming that migrant resettlement has drained resources from small towns and that illegal immigration has driven crime and economic hardship, with little evidence.
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement does invite people to be part of a government hosting program but participation is entirely optional.
State Rep. Joe Hohenstein (D., Philadelphia) is an immigration attorney who called the letter “a betrayal of the actual spirit of our country.”
“It’s definitely designed to make people think that there’s a broader government program to resettle refugees and my guess is that the intention is to stir up fear of immigrants and refugees,” he said. “That’s reprehensible It’s a betrayal of the actual spirit of our country of being a welcoming beacon to people who are seeking freedom.”
In the next week, Hohenstein is cosponsoring a bill to establish an Office of New Pennsylvanians, which would help provide support services for refugee businesses and migrants fleeing persecution in Pennsylvania.
“This would provide help to people who need it,” he said. “It would not be a mandate to anyone.”
He feels entitled to take anything he wants without paying for it. He also believes it is better to just due and ignore anyone else’s rights. He is the great cult leader. Hugs. Scottie
Walters has ordered daily bible lessons for Oklahoma’s public school students in all grades. Several dozen school districts are currently defying that edict.
Earlier this month, local outlets exposed Walters for spending state money to fund a national tour of far-right events to “promote himself on the national stage.”
Walters is widely expected to run for governor. Current governor and fellow Christian nationalist Kevin Stitt is term-limited.
Last month around two dozen GOP state lawmakers signed a letter calling for an impeachment probe into Walters for refusing to disclose his spending.
Walters has hired a raft of far-right figures, including Chaya Rachik and Dennis Prager, to help him “turn students to Jesus.” Raichik is reportedly helping overhaul public school libraries.
Imagine all the good that those millions of dollars could be used for. It could be used to pay Oklahoma’s hardworking teachers or provide additional supplies and resources for its struggling schools.
Instead, it’s being used to promote Walters’ Christian nationalist agenda. https://t.co/DE20Pw1846
Please remember the people who first led Israel in the beginning were also terrorist. Many in the Israeli government in the early decades of Israel’s existence were also labeled terrorist. One person’s terrorist is another person’s avowed wonderful member of government. It has been leaked that members of Israel’s government wants to annex another sovereign country’s land and make it Israel’s property. Just like they have in the West bank, and Gaza. In fact some have talked about trying to take part of Egypt. This is because religious fanatics are running the country now and they claim their god gave them the entire area so they simply have the right to take it. And no one can stop them as long as Biden stays in the mind set of the 1950 / 60s/ 70s, because Biden won’t let anyone else strike Israel back to show them their god did not give them permission to take others lands. Bibi has given the middle finger to every US president and he is desperate to get tRump to win by dragging the US into a war in the Middle East. That is his plan to help tRump and hurt Harris. And they bombed an entire area of occupied apartments in Beirut, which is another war crime they committed. Hugs. Scottie
A marketing director of a well-known Swiss brand, said, “When you look at all of them, they scream Chinese-made watch. None of them is worth the asking price. Those blue screws on the tourbillon cage are a dead giveaway that it was partly made in China. You won’t find blue screws on a tourbillon made in Switzerland. And you can pick up a Chinese tourbillon for $100.”
Trump's "Vastly Overpriced" $100,000 "Swiss Watch" Is Probably Made in China, Experts Say https://t.co/neyxxt5J0U
Milei has cut support for welfare programs, soup kitchens, and other efforts to aid the needy.
Milei’s biggest cheerleader is Elon Musk, who has vowed to bring similar policies as the leader of Trump’s supposed “Department Of Government Efficiency.”
Of note, the planned department’s acronym just happens to be the same as a cryptocurrency often promoted by Musk.
Earlier this year Musk posted the below porn-adjacent image in celebration of Milei.
Not only did Hawley vote against the project, the report below notes that in 2019 Trump defunded all such military projects to divert the money to his border wall.
“We can VERIFY: No, Hawley did not secure $100 million for Fort Leonard Wood's military housing.”
Lying about supporting military families? While even voting AGAINST supporting them? That amounts to nothing more than stolen valor.https://t.co/jWt78m2qd4
The party who has people arrested, charged, and found guilty of voter fraud is the Republican Party. Every accusation from them is a confession of their own actions. They are setting it up to challenge the voters will and overturn the vote in that state. Hugs. Scottie
Hancock said that he learned during the trial that Rittenhouse had allegedly used racial slurs in messages sent to his friends and appeared to be looking for an opportunity to use a weapon. “There was a history of things he was doing prior to Kenosha, specifically patrolling the street for months with guns and borrowing people’s security uniforms, doing whatever he could to try to get into some kind of a gunfight,” Hancock claimed.
‘Patrolling the streets for months’: Kyle Rittenhouse confidants reveal new details the jury never knew https://t.co/zDg2esDw0t
The party maybe have evolved into the kind of anti-migrant, anti-Islam populist force that has taken hold across much of Europe, but it began as a political refuge for former Nazis. Not only has the FPÖ not disavowed that past, it embraces it — at least in private — with the leading party figures regularly getting to trouble for paying quiet tribute to their Nazi forebears.
Abrasive and provocative, far-right leader Herbert Kickl has one of the lowest approval ratings among Austria's top politicians, yet he is the frontrunner in Sunday’s parliamentary election, which has at times felt like a referendum on him https://t.co/NAPLJKizYypic.twitter.com/IUoS0CaQoV
As I often remind the haters, almost all of the children in the foster care and adoption system are there due to abuse and abandonment by the heterosexual parents.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the federal government over its requirement that states provide LGBTQ+ affirming placement for foster care youth. https://t.co/Al87Q9y6L7
September 25, 1789 The first U.S. Congress passed the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, and sent them on to the states for ratification. See the actual document and learn more
September 25, 1957 Nine African-American children, protected by 300 members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, with fixed bayonets, entered the previously all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.The troops were there to escort the children past white segregationists and the Arkansas Militia (National Guard) thatArkansas Governor Orval Faubus had activated to prevent its federal court-approved racial integration plan. After a tense standoff, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent troops to Little Rock to enforce the court order. The order to de-segregate the Little Rock schools flowed from the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. The troops remained for the entire school term.
September 25, 1961 Herbert Lee, a farmer who worked with civil rights leader Bob Moses to help register black voters, was killed by a state legislator, E. H. Hurst, in Liberty, Mississippi. Hurst claimed self-defense and was acquitted by a coroner’s jury the same day as the killing. Lewis Allen, who witnessed the shooting, said otherwise, and was himself murdered two years later. Herbert Lee
September 25, 2002 Rick DellaRatta and Jazz For Peace performed at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. He led a band consisting of Israeli, Middle Eastern, European, Asian and American jazz musicians in concert for an international audience. Jazz for Peace continues to perform concerts to raise money for non-profit organizations. Rick DellaRatta
“Well, obviously, it would take, you know, 10,000 inaccurate ballots or 20,000 ballots to turn things around,” he said. “No, we don’t have evidence of that. But who knows? If you find a little bit of cheating, who knows if you had the time and resources to look around for more. Who knows what you’d find.”
Grothman last appeared here in July when he lamented that society should return to living “like it was in the 1960s.”
He appeared here last year when he declared that low-income housing discourages people from getting married.
That same week he complained that Biden won’t nominate “straight white guys” to the federal judiciary.
He also appeared here in January 2023 when he posted a flag associated with the Christian nationalist movement outside his Capitol office.
Months earlier he gave a floor speech condemning the US Census for collecting data on LGBTQ Americans, which he found “horrifying.”
Before that he appeared here in June 2021 when he authored a bill that would ban teaching the history of racism in Washington DC public schools.
His first appearance here came in September 2011 when as a Wisconsin state senator he authored a successful bill that banned mentioning contraception in sex ed classes.
Grothman opposes recognizing Kwanzaa and Martin Luther King Jr. Day as state holidays. In 2015, he authored a bill to place a ban on same-sex marriage in the US Constitution.
This next one is because DeathSantis wants to be able to make a political hit job on this incident to score points and claim that Biden Harris refused to give tRump proper Secret Service protection. Hugs. Scottie
Read the full article. DeSantis has said that the feds can’t be trusted to properly investigate the shooting attempt since they are also prosecuting Trump for stealing classified documents.
This week, Montel Williams called out a now deleted post of an unaltered photo claiming that he was Diddy. Williams stated, “Here they go again with ‘all black people look alike.”
All four memes below were posted separately today by the multiple felon.
You need a manual to work on my 1979 International Harvester Scout.
Donald Trump and JD Vance have a manual, too. It’s called Project 2025, and it tells us exactly how they’re going to stick it to the middle class. pic.twitter.com/e5NjTY85tX
We truly have become numb to how completely crazed, unhinged and demented Trump is, but its possible this is his craziest midnight rant EVER because of the content, length and ALL CAPS lunacy.
I truly hope local news, network news, and newsy shows like GMA & Today show and read Trump’s post about American women from late last night. Stop the sanewashing. We WANT voters to see how demented, psychotic and misogynist he is. Stop hiding the crazy from your viewers!
I’ve been thinking this week about some of the absolutely stupid garbage conservative, culture-war-obsessed MAGA people believe, or claim to believe, for the purposes of demonizing people and making people hate the same people they hate. The most glaring current example is obviously Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and their media mouthpieces attacking innocent Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, with lies about them stealing and eating family pets.
But there are a bunch more.
There are the abortion lies Trump and Republicans love to tell — which many of them truly believe — about how Democrats love to let babies be born, at which point they lay them on the table and decide whether or not they’re going to execute them. Trump is sure it’s happening, because he saw on TV that the previous governor of Virginia (or is it West Virginia? Trump is never sure) totally said that, and if it’s on TV, it’s true.
Every election cycle lately, there’s a crop of the country’s stupidest Republican politicians babbling out loud that they have a friend whose pastor told them at the local elementary school there are children who identify as “furries” and demand to poop in litterboxes. It’s amazing watching them tell that one with a straight face.
Of course, Republican lies, blood libels and conspiracy theories often have a tiny element of 0.2 percent truth in them, something they can use to insist that the ridiculously stupid thing they say is happening really is happening. In the Virginia abortion story Trump tells, the nugget of truth was former Governor Ralph Northam talking about palliative care in grievously tragic situations where a newborn infant has no chance of surviving.
There actually have been litterboxes in classrooms. It’s so that if there’s a mass shooter in the school and classrooms are locked down for hours, poor little kids who can’t hold it might not have to be humiliated by wetting their pants.
(Did I ever mention that white conservative MAGA Republican politicians, pundits and influencers are extremely sick, evil liars?)
And then there’s the right-wing Christian Republican war on LGBTQ+ kids.
This week, Fox News tweeted a video featuring failed swimmer/anti-trans hatemonger Riley Gaines — remember her from my post about the Paris Olympics? — on “Fox & Friends,” spreading some the vile lies she so loves to tell. The clip caught my attention and pissed me the fuck off, and that’s why I’m talking about that this week instead of Mark Robinson. (I’ll get to him in due time, I’m sure.)
Here’s the video: (embedded on the page.)
Fox explained in its tweet that Gaines was “react[ing] to a California judge banning a school district from imposing a policy that would have required teachers and staff to notify parents if their student declares they want to change their name or pronouns.”
In the video Gaines bellyaches that such rulings are the government saying “they know your children better than you do. They don’t believe that these are your kids. They believe that these are the government’s kids.”
To which I reply, oh, go fuck yourself, Elon. Same message goes for Riley Gaines.
I want to talk about the California law in question and what it really does, and how that ties into how Donald Trump and Republicans are demonizing LGBTQ+ kids as part of their hate campaign against America, but I also want to tell y’all a story, so I’m going to try to do both.
Storytime!
Two nights before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, I was standing in line in the wee hours in the lobby of a prominent hotel in downtown Atlanta, with a bunch of fellow weary travelers. It was Friday, the first day of the CrowdStrike update that borked the entire global internet, and all our Delta flights had been canceled.
I struck up a conversation with the guy in front of me, a handsome young guy from El Paso. His wife and small children were somewhere in the expansive lobby, exhausted, while Dad tried to get hotel rooms sorted. They were coming from Disney. I was on my way back from the Republican convention in Milwaukee. We made small talk.
But we were in line for over an hour, so the conversation actually got surprisingly deep. He was a second-generation immigrant from Mexico, with parents who only speak Spanish. We talked about what life is really like along the border these days for people who actually literally live right on it. He described himself as a conservative, but not extreme, and not super-political. He freely offered that he couldn’t stand Donald Trump, but probably would vote for him, not that he was enthused about it.
But one thing that was bothering him, big time, was this law that had just been signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in California, to protect gay and trans kids from rogue school personnel who would out them to their parents without their consent. I was a bit surprised this Texas guy, who again didn’t seem that political, was so in tune with something California’s governor had done five days prior. But there we were.
He made extra-clear from the beginning that he doesn’t consider himself anti-gay or anti-trans. But it was immediately clear to me that this very kind-seeming guy was getting all his information on this issue filtered through the Christian nationalist bullshit machine of right-wing media.
The California law was passed directly in response to school districts in red areas of the state enacting policiesforcing schools to notify parents if a child asked to be referred to with a different name or pronouns. The legislature acted to protect those kids.
But to this dad, it sounded like California was trying to put one over on parents, to usurp their parental role, stealing and indoctrinating their kids. (Hey, Riley Gaines! How did your shitty, vile hate get in this nice man’s brain?)
It was 1:00 a.m., so I wasn’t about to start bickering, and also y’all would be amazed how gentle and diplomatic I am in person. But I did try to get on this dad’s side and maybe help him see it from a different perspective. He had gathered that I was gay, or maybe I told him.
“You obviously love your kids,” I said, “and you wouldn’t reject them for any reason, no way, no how.” He agreed.
“That law isn’t about hiding things from good, loving parents like you,” I told him. “It’s about protecting kids who don’t have parents like you, kids who are frightened of what would happen if their parents knew who they were, kids who don’t feel safe, kids who come from of abusive homes.” It could be the religious kind of abuse, and/or the non-religious kind of abuse.
He understood what I was talking about and several times reiterated how very not-anti-gay and not-anti-trans he was.
There have been memes going around lately along the lines of, if your child is gay or trans and they don’t want you to know, there’s probably a good reason for that, and likely it’s you. The problem is you.
I was trying to help this dad see, though, that he was not the problem. But he was still uncomfortable with it. He felt he would want the school to tell him. He grudgingly agreed that if one of his kids thought they were trans, he would absolutely want to make sure they had the best medical care and guidance they could get, that he would want to do whatever was best for his child.
But he wasn’t convinced this law wasn’t out to get people like him. You don’t fix the constant lava flow of conservative Christian right-wing fascist propaganda and lies in one sleepy night when all anybody wants to do is get a fucking hotel room and then fly the hell out of Atlanta the next day.
That dad is a good example of why Trump and Vance and Fox News and the rest of the Republican machinery are so committed to demonizing all LGBTQ+ people, but especially trans people, this election season.
This is a strategy, and it works on a whole bunch of people.
‘Think about it, your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation.’
(Trump also memorably screamed at the debate that Kamala Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison!” He gets confused about his conspiracy theories sometimes.)
Reality check: there is no school nurse in the country doling out top surgeries or bottom surgeries, either for trans-identifying kids, or for kids who come in after they skin their knees on the playground. (That would be real fucked up!)
Schools aren’t going gender-affirmation surgeries and kids aren’t demanding litterboxes because they say they’re “furries.” The baby isn’t being born so they can put it on the table and decide to execute it, and Haitians in Springfield aren’t eating Whiskers. Not even the best Obamacare money can buy has a plan where kids can walk in to the school nurse, without their parents’ consent, sign up for surgery, and then reappear at their parents’ house days later with a brand new set of genitals.
But Moms For Liberty got so mad at CNN for debunking Trump’s dementia lies. It was very important to them that Trump be out there demonizing transgender people, in general, regardless of whether Trump’s babbling about children getting on the school bus and coming back “a few days later with an operation” was literally true.
They angrily sent CNN a bunch of examples of lawsuits filed in various states, all focused on “parental rights” and, in particular, schools letting kids transition socially — as in, come out as trans or non-binary, etc. — without running off to tattle to their parents. Letting kids use different pronouns if that’s what they’re feeling is right for them. Etc.
Of course, because it’s Moms For Liberty, their missive to CNN — and the pissy PR email they sent to tell everybody about it — was full of hallucinatory conspiracy theory babblings about schools “secret[ly] social-transitioning … minor children” and, quoting one lawsuit from Massachusetts, “encourag[ing] minor children to hide key components of who they are from their parents, while actively encouraging children to disobey and ignore their parents’ wishes, and while actively deceiving parents and hiding information about their own children from them.” Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice even suggested that schools are “legally allowed to assign a new pronoun without parental knowledge.”
As if it’s the schools initiating these actions. As if schools are handing out pronouns with seating charts. (“Aw fuck, bro! Did you get she/her? Bro that sucks!” — common elementary school conversation now.)
They also straight up lied and said Minnesota allows gender-affirmation surgeries for minors without parental consent. It does not.
(Again I ask, on what fuckin’ insurance plan? Have I mentioned lately that these people are delusional weirdos?)
But as I said, pretty much everything Moms For Liberty was mad about, even when they were totally misrepresenting things, was social transitioning. Because that’s the slippery slope to hormones and surgery, and they’re not telling their parents, AIIIIYEEEEEEEE!
So they were fine with Donald Trump straight-up lying and saying schools are doing transgender surgeries on kids, because sometimes you have to make up really fucked up lies to con people into hating the same people you hate. Isn’t that right, Republicans?
What did J.D. Vance just say about his and Trump’s blood libel lies about Haitian immigrants? “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” And by “suffering of the American people,” he meant things he’s a total Nazi about.
Lying for Jesus! It’s been around a long time, yet it’s never done by people who actually reflect the character of Jesus in any way, shape or form.
(One of these days I’m going to write y’all a full Bible study on Matthew 7:23, AKA Jesus’s personal candygram to conservative white Christians.)
MAGA Republicans are absolutely counting on conning enough people with these absurd, demonizing lies and libels, about trans people and immigrants and abortion and anything else they can think of that deserves a good Two Minutes Hate. In Texas, it was reported this week that congressional Republicans are spending millions targeting Democrats with anti-transgender ads.
It’s literally all they have to run on. And they know it works, at least on some people.
In summary and in conclusion, and back to what pissed me off so much in the first place.
Riley Gaines griped to “Fox & Friends” that “[t]hey don’t believe that these are your kids. They believe that these are the government’s kids.”
We’ve been over this before, how these MAGA Christian fascist creeps (and their ideological compatriots) think they literally own their children. They believe they own them until they transfer ownership of their daughters to their husbands, or in the case of their sons, when they become wife-owning patriarchs in their own right.
It offends them when it’s pointed out that actually, their kids are their own people, and they own themselves.
Now, when the kids are minors, sure, their parents have custody and responsibility for them, and the schools have a part to play in that, both as partners with the parents and just in general, in preparing them to be respectable, functioning adults. Schools have a responsibility to let parents know when their kids’ grades are slipping; if they’re getting in fights, or getting bullied; if they’re acting out in school; if they’re doing something illegal, or dangerous, to themselves or others. And so forth.
This shouldn’t have to be said, but coming out of the closet — as gay, as bi, or as somewhere on the gender spectrum other than that which they were assigned at birth — DOES NOT FALL UNDER ANY REASONABLE CATEGORY OF “MISBEHAVIOR” FOR WHICH A SCHOOL WOULD NEED TO NOTIFY PARENTS.
Being LGBTQ+ is not dangerous, it’s not immoral, and it’s not “I found meth in your kid’s backpack.” It’s simply a thing. If a child is excelling and getting along well socially and in grade seven they decide to try on some new pronouns, that doesn’t warrant a phone call home.
It doesn’t warrant tattling.
But that’s what these evil fascist creeps want. They want schools to be their abusive morality Gestapo when they’re not around, to shame and punish their children in their absence, and to call a parent-teacher conference if they suspect a child has come down with the Woke Mind Virus.
By the way, schools do have another responsibility when it comes to kids, and that’s to spot abuse and neglect, and to intervene for the welfare of the child if they suspect the child is in danger at home.
And that — dearly beloved MAGA fascist assholes — is the category under which this falls.
If a kid comes out as gay, or starts socially transitioning, but they say “Hey, my parents don’t know, and I need them not to,” then there’s a reason that kid — the actual owner of their own body, mind and soul — is saying that. Maybe they’re just not ready! Maybe they’re getting their sea legs with their friends before they go home to their parents. Maybe they’ll tell them next year.
But it’s also possible that they don’t feel safe with their parents, and fear their reaction. It might be a reasonable fear. Fundamentalist Christian homes are notoriously abusive to LGBTQ+ children, oftentimes disowning them or kicking them out, oftentimes subjecting them to physical, psychological and religious abuse. There’s a reason states all over the country have been passing bans on fully discredited, fully ineffective and uniformly harmful “ex-gay” and “ex-trans” religious torture for minors for over a decade now. (Congratulations, Kentucky! You have a good governor.)
They might be scared their parents will ship them off to “pray away the gay” or “pray away the trans.”
Laws like the one in California protect those kids.
The parents bitching about this and filing lawsuits and publicly demonizing LGBTQ+ people — including their own children — they are demonstrating precisely why these laws need to exist.
That’s what this is about.
It’s not about hiding things from good and loving parents. It’s about protecting kids from parents who are monsters.
In the next 46 days, you might encounter people who say they can’t vote for Kamala Harris and against Donald Trump for truly stupid reasons. This is one of them. (And the abortion thing and the Haitian immgirants thing and the litterboxes and oh God, so many more.)
Tell them their reasons are stupid reasons.
How loving and diplomatic you decide to be about it, that’s up to your own best judgment.
September 20, 1830 The National Negro Convention, a group of 38 free black Americans from eight states, met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with the express purpose of abolishing slavery and improving the social status of African Americans. They elected Richard Allen president and agreed to boycott slave-produced goods and encourage free-produce organizations. One of the most active would be the Colored Female Free Produce Society, which urged the boycott of all slave-produced goods. Read more Richard Allen National Negro Convention leaders 1879 ================ September 20, 1850 The District of Columbia abolished the slave trade though slavery itself was not outlawed. Washington had been home to the largest slave market in the country. This was an element of the Compromise of 1850. The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act ================ September 20, 1906 Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” a realist novel, was published, exposing the dangerous conditions and deplorable sanitation in Chicago’s meat-packing plants. Reaction from readers was intense, including President Theodore Roosevelt who coined the term “muckrakers” to describe Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and other writers who exposed corruption in government and business [what we’d now call investigative reporting]. “The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society … if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck, their power of usefulness is gone.” — Theodore Roosevelt More on the muckrakers ================ September 20, 1932 Rabindranath Tagore urges resistance to practice of “untouchability,” British India. ================ September 20, 1946 The first Cannes Film Festival began in that French Riviera resort town. It had originally been planned for 1939 but Hitler’s invasion of Poland that year, and later France, delayed plans until after the war. The first Grand Prix and the International Peace Prize were awarded to “The Last Chance” by Leopold Lindtberg of Switzerland, a movie (shot on location) about how three Allied soldiers, including two escaped prisoners of war, lead a group of Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied northern Italy across the Alps to safety in nominally neutral Switzerland.Cannes festival history ================ September 20, 1997 3,000 protesters helped to rip up the railroad tracks leading from Krummel nuclear power station to the main Hamburg-Berlin line. The previous year two doctors had sued for closure of the plant due to the increased incidence of leukemia among the population around the plant. In January, a train carrying nuclear waste derailed near the reactor at Krummel. At the time, Germany’s 19 nuclear reactors generated 34 per cent of the country’s electricity; in 2005 it was down to 26 percent. ================ September 20, 1999 A multinational peacekeeping force landed in East Timor in an attempt to restore law and order to the territory. Indonesian militias had killed thousands following the overwhelming vote by the East Timorese for independence from Jakarta on September 4.
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Richard Allen
Scottie's Playtime 