Indiana GOP Deletes Consent From Sex Ed Lessons

Indiana GOP Deletes Consent From Sex Ed Lessons

https://x.com/smalls2672/status/1914749817445589402


Source article:

Byrne said he preferred to let school boards decide if local curricula include topics on consent. “(Teaching about consent) can still happen. We’re just not going to require that in this bill,” he said. “This is a sensitive subject for many. I believe it may be different thoughts in different communities, and … this leaves, for the most part, local control on making those decisions.”

Where are these communities where they may have ‘different thoughts’ on consent?

Any community that has thoughts that consent to sex isn’t important are the communities were teaching consent (i.e. the fucking law!) is absolutely critical.


Ironic how the very same people bitching about the LGBTQ shoving our lifestyles down their throats specifically choose not to teach children about consent.


The religious right has been fighting against consent as a factor in sexual relations for at least 30 years now. They used to claim that it was because they only believed in sex between married (opposite sex) couples, but it’s become clear that they are against teaching about consent because most of their leaders are rapists.

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Yes. These are the people who refuse to convict men accused of raping ten year old girls because “she was asking for it “ (tight jeans, walking alone, going to a party at another family’s house) (not said: poor or non-white or intellectually or physically handicapped – defending the high school football players who gang-raped a Down’s syndrome girl student).

Monsters.


Why teach consent when you can teach “slashing a tire to get someone to ride home with you so you can divorce your wife and get married to the younger model instead” like Jesse Watters did?


 

U.S. Born Citizen Arrested By ICE

A 20 year old man who is a US citizen with a Hispanic sounding name has twice been arrested and ordered held by ICE.  The first time he was released as he sowed the judge his birth certificate and his social security card.  The second time he was ordered held for 48 hours for pickup by ICE for an immigration hearing even after the judge seen and vouched for his birth certificate.  The prosecutor claimed the court had no jurisdiction now that ICE had a detaining order on him.  I don’t think that is legally correct as blue states have said they won’t honor those orders.  But the point is it has happened twice now, and if the US doesn’t grant due process people like him could be detained and removed to El Salvador where the tRump people claim they can’t get people back from.  We can get our people from Russia, North Korea, and China but we can’t from tiny El Salvador.  Hugs

 

Trump & Moms for Liberty open “snitch line” to report on pro-LGBTQ+ schools

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/02/trump-moms-for-liberty-open-snitch-line-to-report-on-pro-lgbtq-schools/

The quote below is only because they thought it would hand control over the schools to the republican religious haters like themselves.  They fought for and got the right of a small minority to force their opinion on the majority of parents.  They got the removal of books they hate and also forced in to the schools of their religion.   It did not matter if a majority of parents wanted their children to have access to these books it was only the haters parental rights that mattered, not other kids parents.  The progressive parents were not given the same authority that the republican religious haters were.  Hugs

Ironically, Moms for Liberty, a group that has advocated for local control over schools, is now complicit in handing that power to the federal government.

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A group of Moms for Liberty members

A group of Moms for Liberty members

The Trump administration’s weaponization of the Education Department continued apace on Thursday with the debut of what some are calling a “snitch line” — a website inviting parents, students and school staff to report “illegal discriminatory practices at institutions of learning.”

“The Department of Education (DOE) will utilize community submissions to identify potential areas for investigation,” the department notes.

The website was introduced in a press release by Moms for Liberty, the group behind efforts to purge LGBTQ+ content from school libraries and apparently a new partner in the DOE’s crackdown on school systems not falling in line with Trump’s DEI and “gender ideology” executive diktats.

“For years, parents have been begging schools to focus on teaching their kids practical skills like reading, writing, and math, instead of pushing critical theory, rogue sex education and divisive ideologies — but their concerns have been brushed off, mocked, or shut down entirely,” said Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of the group, which has been labelled an anti-LGBTQ+ extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“Parents, now is the time that you share the receipts of the betrayal that has happened in our public schools. This webpage demonstrates that President Trump’s Department of Education is putting power back in the hands of parents,” Justice added.

Ironically, Moms for Liberty, a group that has advocated for local control over schools, is now complicit in handing that power to the federal government.

Critics were aghast at the call for colleagues and kids to anonymously rat out anyone not falling in line with the rightwing ideology Trump is imposing from Washington.

“I believe Hitler had a program like this,” wrote Michael E. Mann, a scientist, author and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media.

I believe Hitler had a program like thiswww.salon.com/2025/02/27/m…

Michael E. Mann (@michaelemann.bsky.social) 2025-02-28T03:58:45.502Z

“Trump Education Department opens snitch line to rat out diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at local public schools,” wrote Gabe Ortíz, an editor at America’s Voice who focuses on immigration, LGBTQ+ and Latino issues.

“The fact that Trump’s — bigoted, extremist — effort to end diversity, inclusion, & equity in schools uses Moms for Liberty as its only validation tells you everything you need to know. The same Moms for Liberty that approvingly quoted Hitler & has deep ties to violent groups like the Proud Boys,” wrote Amy Spitalnick, CEO of Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

In 2023, Indiana Moms for Liberty chapter chair Paige Miller quoted Hitler on the cover of the group’s monthly newsletterThe Parent Brigade, in a chilling preview of Trump’s efforts at the Department of Education today.

“He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future,” the newsletter’s cover read, citing the Nazi leader.

Moms for Liberty’s Justice defended Miller, declaring, “I stand with that mom!

The DOE website’s launch follows a growing number of investigations undertaken by multiple departments targeting DEI and noncompliance with Trump’s “gender ideology” order.

The DOE’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating California and Minnesota schools. Maine is also the subject of a probe by the same office and the Department of Agriculture, recieving a threatening letter from the Attorney General Pam Bondi at the Department of Justice.

Another DOE probe targets San Jose State University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) for separate incidents involving trans athletes competing on a women’s or girls’ sports team under Biden-era rules.

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How authoritarians use public education to control the “truth”

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/01/how-authoritarians-use-public-education-to-control-the-truth/

The two quotes from the article I added just below what I am writing give away the Fundamentalist Christian republican’s goal, which is to make those people they disagree with, that they hate, disappear from society.  Their goal by taking LGBTQ+ media out of schools is to make it appear that all kids are straight and cis.  No one can be different from them or their beliefs.  Everyone must walk lockstep with them, their way is the only way people can live.  Holy dictators.  Their goal is to erase anyone different from them from the public view, from society.  We must not let them do that.  Hugs

The institutionalization of a hegemonic norm functions to legitimize what can be said, who has the authority to speak and be heard, and what is authorized as the truth.

Former President Donald Trump speaks about border security at a rally at Million Air, a private airplane terminal at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Friday October 25, 2024.

Former President Donald Trump speaks about border security at a rally at Million Air, a private airplane terminal at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Friday October 25, 2024.

“When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.” -Adrienne Rich

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could possibly perpetuate the “psychic disequilibrium” that Adrienne Rich laments.

The case arose from conflicts between those in favor of teaching LGBTQ+ topics in schools and those who believe in so-called parents’ rights on religious grounds when it comes to the education of their children. The case stems from some parents’ concerns about a policy sanctioned by the Montgomery County Board of Education requiring new elementary school storybooks covering LGBTQ+ topics that could be read in class.

One of the contested books is titled “Pride Puppy!” and is about a puppy who gets lost in the crowd during an LGBTQ+ Pride parade.

When the policy first passed, parents could opt their children out of the curriculum, but later, the board reversed that part. In this demographically diverse school district, some Christian and Muslim parents, in particular, objected. I wonder, though, whether they think parents should be allowed to opt their children out of reading age-appropriate stories about Jewish or Asian people, for example.

This case harkens back to one of the earlier curricular programs created in 1991 by the New York City Board of Education. The Children of the Rainbow Curriculum was introduced to first-grade teachers to “assist with teaching about multicultural social issues.” The board developed the program to counter the increase in hate crimes directed against members of marginalized communities.

The curriculum contained 443 pages of suggested readings, activities, and other lectures, all designed to help teachers promote academic and social skills while teaching about diversity.

Unfortunately, the section on families that covered LGBTQ+ people incited enormous criticism. Some opponents argued that it promoted sex and sodomy to kids.

The battle gained significant publicity, and the New York City Department of Education ultimately voted against accepting the entire Children of the Rainbow Curriculum.

And the moments of psychic disequilibrium continued.

Surplus Repression & Anti-Knowing

Of course, parents and other adults have the inherent responsibility of protecting young people from harming themselves and being harmed by others and of teaching them how to live and function in society within our ever-changing global community.

In Freudian terms, we must develop a balance between the individual’s unrestrained instinctual drives and that person’s restraints (repression) on these drives in the service of maintaining society (civilization) and sustaining the life of the individual.

Nonetheless, we must establish a line demarcating protection from control, teaching from oppression, and minimal and fundamental repression from what Herbert Marcuse terms “surplus repression” (that which goes over and beyond what is necessary for the protection of the individual and the smooth functioning of society and enters into the realm of domination, control, and oppression).

Authorizing the “truth”

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder I can think at all
And though my lack of education hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall.

Paul Simon laments in his song “Kodachrome” that his education consisted of neutralizing, meaningless content. “Everything looks worse in black and white,” he sang of the whitewashing of his lessons.

Metaphorically, most schools teach only in black and white, whereas most students want the array of colors Paul Simon wished for: “Those nice bright colors: the greens of summers, makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah.”

Unfortunately, Simon’s educational system took his Kodachrome away: the camera film that captured the full spectrum of the rainbow from the brightest reds, oranges, and yellows, to the darkest blues and browns and deepest purples.

Schools across the nation are attempting to function amidst increased book banning and control of course content by state legislatures under the false flag of “parental rights.” It’s all part of the current tide of right-wing takeovers of educational systems.

People on the political right transform terms like “woke” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” into hate-filled and frightening epithets. In the process, they have driven us away from the underlying purpose of education.

The term “education” is derived from two Latin roots: “e,” meaning “out of,” and “ducere,” meaning “to lead” or “to draw.”

In its original translation and intent, education includes the process of drawing knowledge out of the student or leading the student toward knowledge. This is in contrast to the placing or depositing information into what some educators perceive as the students’ waiting and docile minds, or what the Brazilian philosopher and educator Paulo Reglus Neves Freire termed “the banking system of education.”

Surrounding forces – religion, parenting, schooling, and other types of socialization – often inhibit the maintenance of critical thinking facilities in young and old alike.

Let us take, for example, the Biblical warning in Genesis 2: 16-17, related to the story of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’”

The apples on that tree represent knowledge. When eaten, this “forbidden fruit” unlocks levels of knowing that can more than overturn the apple cart. But more importantly, it can give the knower a full-color spectrum of the workings of the world. We are encouraged, nonetheless, to think only in the black and white determined by those in power.

Figures like the biblical Eve and Greek Pandora, women, are blamed for the downfall of “man.” In fact, they were strong women who refused to be trapped under the thumbs of the patriarchy.

Additionally, the ancient Greek legend of Prometheus casts a cautionary tale on the gifting of knowledge. The chief of the gods, Zeus, punished him for offering mortals the best of the sections from a slaughtered cow while giving the gods the remaining fat and bones.

After an infuriated Zeus took back fire from humanity, Prometheus stole and returned it to mortals, thus turning the darkness from the spectrum of black and white to technicolor once again.

For Prometheus’ crime of returning light and knowledge to humankind, Zeus had Prometheus chained to the Caucasus Mountains and sent an eagle to eat his immortal liver every day, which grew back every night.

Literature and cinema likewise warn of the horrific and often fatal risks of challenging the limitations placed by the powerful on the accumulation of knowledge.

The first film in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise, released in 1968, can be understood as a recreation of the legend of Prometheus. A U.S.-based crew crash land their space vehicle on a strange planet in the distant future amounting to nearly 2000 years advancement on Earth, as they traveled at the speed of light.

The crew, led by Taylor – the Prometheus character – discover that the planet is ruled by a species of apes who possess what to the Earthlings appear as human-like qualities, including speech, high reasoning, and cultural artifacts such as museums, medicine, constructed homes, a judicial system, and written religious and governing scrolls.

A community of humans on this planet, on the other hand, lacks the facility of speech and operates on an animal-like intellectual level. The apes hunt, enslave, and murder humans to keep them from invading their gardens and stealing food and to use them in medical and psychological experiments.

Taylor rebels and protests his treatment by challenging the hierarchical ranking of apes over humans. Two apes listen to Taylor and befriend him, Zira and Cornelius, and they eventually come to believe that what they have been socialized to accept as factual was somehow manipulated and falsified.

Blond-furred Dr. Zaius (Zeus), Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith, knows the truth regarding the origins of his species and the rise and fall of humans through industrialization and the power of the atom, which terminated life as it had been once known. His primary objective has been to keep the fire of “knowledge” away from his ape community and humans.

He attempts to destroy any artifacts and other remnants of pre-nuclear holocaust human society to keep alive the myth of perennial simian superiority. Knowledge, therefore, represents overturning the proverbial apple cart, undermining origin myths, and challenging hierarchal positionings.

These genesis/origin stories are examples of the concept of “hegemony,” a term coined by social theorist Antonio Gramsci to describe the ways in which the dominant group successfully disseminates dominant social realities and social visions in a manner accepted as common sense and part of the natural order.

This controlled production of “knowledge” maintains the marginality of other groups, and it denies exposure to multiple perspectives.

The institutionalization of a hegemonic norm functions to legitimize what can be said, who has the authority to speak and be heard, and what is authorized as the truth.

This was certainly the case in Nazi Germany. In 1933, Nazi stormtroopers invaded, ransacked, and closed The Institute for Sexual Sciences in Berlin, founded by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish and homosexual sexuality researcher. The Institute conducted early sexuality research and was a precursor of the Indiana-based Kinsey Institute in the United States.

Storm troopers carried away and torched over 10,000 volumes of books and research documents calling the Institute “an international center of the white-slave trade” and “an unparalleled breading ground of dirt and filth.”

Soon thereafter, Nazis and conservative university students throughout Germany invaded Jewish organizations and libraries, confiscating books they deemed “un-German.”

The German Student Association (Deutsche Studentenschaft) declared a national “Action against the Un-German Spirit.” On May 10, 1933, students and Nazi leaders across Germany set ablaze over 25,000 volumes. Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, fired up the Berlin crowd of over 40,000 sympathizers by declaring, “No to decadence and moral corruption. Yes to decency and morality in family and state.”

In 2018, we witnessed anti-LGBTQ+ Christian crusader Paul Dorr check out four LGBTQ+-inclusive children’s books from the Orange City, Iowa Public Library and burn them in a 27-minute October 2018 video diatribe on Facebook. – Dorr is the founder of Rescue the Perishing, a group “contending against moral evil to advance the Kingdom of Christ.”

The books in question were Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan; Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, by Christine Baldacchino; This Day In June, by Gayle E. Pitman; and Families, Families, Families!, by Suzanne and Max Lang.

In his video rant, Dorr argued that Two Boys Kissing was “designed to get 12-to-13-year-old boys to start having homosexual sex together.”

The fight for all the colors

To build off of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famed poem:

First they came for Leaves of Grass, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not gay.

Then they came for Stone Butch Blues, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a transgender person.

Then they came for Critical Race Theory and Beloved, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not Black.

Then they came for Maus, and I did not speak out —
Because I am a Christian and not a Jew.

Then they came for books representing my experiences and identities —
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

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DHS revokes parole for hundreds of thousands who entered via the CBP One app

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/08/dhs-parole-revoked-app-00007326

So what happened to the idea of the right just wanting immigrants to come here legally.  Right?  All they wanted was to get the illegals and criminals out.  But these are people who came here the legal way and are working, living their lives as good members of the communities.  No see to the current white supremacists the crime was brown people coming to the US at all.  They want a white majority in charge with others second class or lower people.  tRump once asked why no one from the Scandinavian countries immigrate to the US.  The reason tRump wants them is they are white.  But their country is doing so much better than ours and rated so much higher on the happiness index so why would they.  The only ones who want to come here are from countries the US has made worse, ruined, and allowed for dictators or drug lords to take over.  Hugs

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The move could leave over 900,000 immigrants vulnerable to deportation — unless they self-deport, DHS said.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks.

The Trump administration is revoking parole status for immigrants who entered the U.S. via the Biden-era CBP One app, in a push to get immigrants to voluntarily leave the country.

“Under federal law, Secretary [Kristi] Noem — in support of the president — has full authority to revoke parole. Canceling these paroles is a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect national security,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told POLITICO in a statement.

Some immigrants began receiving formal email notices from the DHS on Tuesday stating that the department would be using its discretionary authority to revoke parole. The move could leave over 900,000 immigrants vulnerable to deportation.

The CBP One app, launched in January 2023, was one of the Biden administration’s key efforts to control illegal immigration, by organizing appointments at different ports of entry along the southern border for immigrants seeking asylum. The parole designation protected immigrants from deportation and also issued work authorizations for up to two years.

The Trump administration quickly suspended the app’s appointment system and rebranded it as CBP Home — with a built-in function for immigrants to report their intention to leave the U.S.

“Formal termination notices have been issued, and affected aliens are urged to voluntarily self-deport using the CBP Home App,” the DHS spokesperson said. “Those who refuse will be found, removed, and permanently barred from reentry.”

The parolees designated under United for Ukraine — which provided legal status for Ukrainians affected by the war — and Operation Allies Welcome — which resettled Afghans following the U.S. exit from Afghanistan — will not be affected, DHS added.

Trans Athletes: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

John Oliver discusses why trans athletes seem to be at the center of U.S. politics right now, the nuances around competition and safety, where the conversation could be headed, and what The Rock would do in a barre class.

Crazy Republican stuff from Joe My God

I was going through Joe My God for news and memes.  I found these stories either outrageous enough or so crazy I felt I should share them.  Hugs.  

Not much to say about the RFK ones.

The CDC Buried a Measles Forecast That Stressed the Need for Vaccinations#Measleshttps://www.propublica.org/article/measles-vaccine-rfk-cdc-report

Gail Waldby (@gailwaldby.bsky.social) 2025-03-28T21:18:30.238Z

So much for cutting fraud, waste, and inefficacies.  Hugs

The U.S. has spent $40 million to jail about 400 migrants at Guantanamo BayEarly costs of the enterprise emerged over the weekend along with a statement from five senators who toured the base Friday and urged the Trump administration to “immediately cease this misguided mission.”

Carol Rosenberg (@carolrosenbergnyt.bsky.social) 2025-03-31T19:26:19.913Z

CRT and DEI hate from the right is all about racism and bigotry.  It is so clear that to them a mediocre white male is better than the most talented gifted woman, person of color, or anyone LGBTQ+.  It doesn’t matter to them how good and educated anyone is if they are not a white male they are inferior to any white man.  These people, these Nazi wannabees in charge of our government are desperate to enshrine in the law that white males are always better than anyone else.  Why do they feel so inferior that they need to get rid of any attempts to allow others the same opportunities they have, to have shows and movies that represent the entirety of the population / society?  What are they afraid of.   Hugs 

Talk about corruption much?  The last voter give away he ran he first called it a lottery that anyone voting for a republican could win.  But when he was taken to court because that was illegal he admitted that it was all a preplanned scam.  Musk had already picked the winner which was some GOP insider.  Seems he did the same thing here.  Yet maga cult falls for it all the time.  Hugs

Gee tRump is banning refugees from most other countries, trying hard to close the Southern border, revoking the visas and green cards of legal non-white residents … yet opening the door to white South Africans.  Begging the white people who formerly keep the black people as impoverished near slaves in their own country to move here.  tRump influenced by the South African immigrant currently screwing up every department of the government maybe, you know the guy that gave the Nazi salute?  Or self avowed white supremacist Stephen Miller?  The reason given is the South African government is being mean to white people and taking their land.  That is not what the law says.  The fact is that the whites took the farm land from the blacks and they couldn’t legally own it.  The law seeks to balance that ownership out fairly.  The law has safeguards for the white owners.  The law says … expropriate land from private parties if it’s in the public interest and allows for expropriation without compensation, but only if negotiations for a reasonable settlement have failed, the government says.  It says it does not allow land to be taken arbitrarily.   Hugs

Gee, and here I thought these Nazi-racist-clowns claimed that it was wrong to use race as a basis for any decision-making; that they don't see race as a basis for admissions anywhere. ‘Mission South Africa’: How Trump Is Offering White Afrikaners Refugee Status http://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/30/u…

(@theunderminer.bsky.social) 2025-03-30T21:19:47.591Z

So much for lowering prices on … groceries.  You know that word that seemed to fascinate tRump.  Guess cars are not eggs.  And yes why would billionaires and millionaires care if prices rise and the lower incomes can’t afford to live, it won’t stop them from eating, from having homes, from driving nice cars.   Hugs

Why not let the Department Of Defense, the upper ranks and people who understand the military and its equipment / abilities.  Why farm the work out to a political regressive think tank that wants desperately wants a 1950s world.  From the article … It outlines, in broad and sometimes partisan detail, the execution of Trump’s vision to prepare for and win a potential war against Beijing and defend the United States from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama Canal. Hugs

In the land of the free where we are supposed to have freedom of speech and the right to protest.  But anyone that says anything supporting the Palestinians being exterminated and going through a genocide done by Israel.  Any acknowledgment of what Israel is doing the administration now claims is an antisemitic attack on Jewish people.   That is wrong!  It is a gross lie and crazy misinformation made to vilify the people who are correct.  Oh I have a post cued up to make about the father shipped by mistake to El Salvador but PINO tRump refuses to bring him back.  After all he is brown you know.  The real reason these people are being targeted is some are brown and others are Muslim, or both Hugs

Some of the students don't appear to have been activists or even op-ed writers; they're seemingly being targeted for being from a Mideast or Muslim country.SCOOP: ICE Revoking Students’ Immigration Statuses Without Their or the University’s Knowledge zeteo.com/p/ice-manual…

Barry Deutsch (@barrydeutsch.bsky.social) 2025-03-30T03:01:28.359Z

I think the constitution is very clear.  After this term he can’t serve as either president or vice president.  The 22nd forbids more than two terms, and the 12th forbids anyone who can not be president from being the vice president.  Plus with his mental decline so clear he soon will be sitting in a corner talking to the wall where he thinks there are people listening to him.  The way he eats and his health he will be lucky if he doesn’t have a health emergency before the end of the year much less by 2028.  I wonder if he says this stuff just for distraction?  He does think he is entitled to anything he wants and always has.  Hugs

Texas Gov Backs Batshit QAnon Bill To Ban “Furries” In Schools, Resurrects Stupid QAnon “Litter Boxes” Claims

I know this is ten days old, but I had it open in a saved tab to share.  Most of those I am deleting but this one is just too over the top stupid in a way to keep their maga cult base hyped up or enraged.  This has to be one of the greatest hoaxes ever pulled on the right.  But remember Texas is run by a group of very wealthy fundamentalist religious leaders who demand society return to the 1950s society they remember and loved.  They want a state / country that is white Christian male dominated and give unearned respect.  They want Christianity, their version of the god worshiped by their church to be forced on everyone so they can get more donations, more forced white babies that are dragged to church by their parents, more butts in pews, more donations in the plate, more tithes.  These are the kind of people that if they don’t feel that way, if they are not into something, then no one should be.  They are straight cis people who think anyone not straight or cis is doing it as a choice because they are mentally ill and need to be fixed / cured.  These are the people with no empathy who want conversion therapy torture done on children and young adults who are LGBTQ+.  Hugs

————————————————————————————————————————-

March 21, 2025

The Dallas Observer reports:

A freshly filed bill brings the topic of furries in Texas schools to the House. The bill, Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education Act, pet-named the F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act, would ban students from observing “non-human behaviors,” which include, but are not limited to, meowing, barking and hissing; wearing a tail, collar, or ears; and licking oneself in a grooming manner.

The F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act, filed by Rep. Stan Gerdes [photo], a Republican lawmaker from Central Texas, does not apply to any specific age group, and instead blankets all students at Texas schools, at the public and private level. The only exceptions are mascots, designated dress-up days and children participating in performances.

The bill follows a debunked right-wing conspiracy theory that teachers were providing students who identify as cats with litter boxes. Indeed, a section of the bill explicitly prohibits “using a litter box for the passing of stool, urine, or other human byproducts.”

The Houston Chronicle reports:

Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday resurrected debunked rumors that public schools were putting litter boxes in classrooms for students dressed as cats, amplifying right-wing criticism of some educators as he pushes for a statewide private school voucher program. The Texas Republican told a gathering of pastors at a Baptist church in Austin that the so-called furries trend is “alive and well” in communities across the state, and that lawmakers needed to ban it.

“In some small rural sections of school districts in the state of Texas, they have in their schools, what are called furries. Y’all know what this is?” Abbott asked the crowd, which responded with a smattering of “yeahs.” “Kids go to school dressed up as cats with litter boxes in their classrooms,” Abbott said. Abbott referenced two rural school districts but did not name them in his address to the Texas Pastors Policy Conference.

From the editorial board of the Dallas Morning News:

No, there aren’t schools in Texas putting out litter boxes for kids to use. That’s internet garbage that naive people take as gospel. In fact, we can think of few more effective ways to spread “furry” culture than to tell the kids it’s against the law. Gov. Greg Abbott, repeating the internet hoax about litter boxes in place of school bathrooms, has either fallen for furry worry or knows there are enough gullible people among his electorate that he can play like a fiddle by plucking their fears.

Abbott has gone full batshit QAnon.

How do these people live with themselves

This is his third attempt. At this writing the bill has 33 cosponsors.

The party that claims to worship and act according to the constitution keep demanding they get to change it of things they don’t like!.  Hugs

NEW: Elon Musk's friends have infiltrated the GSA and they're looking for ways to use White House credentials to access agency tech, potentially allowing them to remote into laptops, read emails, and more, sources say.w/ @zoeschiffer.bsky.social http://www.wired.com/story/elon-m…

makena kelly (@makenakelly.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T23:34:55.573Z

It’s also the latest example of Trump trying to blame the Biden administration and Democrats on issues that arise during his term. Trump’s memo alleges that Biden’s administration “egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all agencies to implement dangerous ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities in the FAA.”