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| Charlie Kirk |
Just something short to put things in perspective. How ridiculous is the new Tennessee law which bans drag in the presence of minors and public places? If this the pro wrestling segment below, taped in 1992 in Tennessee took place today, Jerry Lawler (a pro wrestling legend in the state) could be charged with a felony
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| Chloe Cole is the anti-LGBTQ industry's latest willing patsy against LGBTQ equality and safety. |
Earlier last week, I posted about the now refuted claim of "whistleblower" Jamie Reed against a St. Louis transgender center. On the heels of that comes a "lawsuit" whose goal seems to be not winning but creating an incentive to justify more anti-trans laws across the country.
California teenager Chloe Cole has become something of a star in the movement to deny treatments to transgender youth. She has given testimony or made public statements in support of anti-treatment bills in Florida, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Idaho and North Dakota; appeared on Fox News; and shared a Washington platform with right-wing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). That’s useful for you to know in assessing Cole’s latest moment in the spotlight: her filing of a lawsuit against the giant Kaiser Permanente healthcare system.. . .The context of Cole’s lawsuit bears close scrutiny. It’s part of a concerted right-wing attack on LGBTQ rights, in which the health of transgender youth is exploited as a pretext for bans on gender-affirming care. It resembles the right-wing attack on abortion rights, another movement that cynically masquerades as an effort to improve healthcare but actually exposes millions of Americans to injury and death for strictly partisan purposes.. . . Cole is one of a handful of self-described detransitioners who have been flown around the country by anti-transgender activists to speak in favor of treatment bans. Their presentations aim to convince legislators that second thoughts are common among transgender patients, as though to suggest that gender-affirming treatment is a sham.
Cole’s legal complaint incorporates what seem to be misleading or inaccurate descriptions of developments in the gender dysphoria treatment field. The complaint states that “negative results” from the use of puberty blockers and hormones “caused” the shutdowns of a transgender clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1979 and Britain’s Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service more recently.Neither assertion is quite accurate.The Johns Hopkins clinic was closed by the hospital’s chief of psychiatry, Paul R. McHugh, on ideological and religious grounds; a devout Catholic, McHugh opposed gender reassignment treatments in principle and maintained, as he put it in a 2016 Wall Street Journal opinion piece, that “‘sex change’ is biologically impossible.” Johns Hopkins shed McHugh’s four-decades-old judgments and reestablished its gender identity clinic in 2017.Tavistock has not been shut down, though it is slated for closure by Britain’s National Health Service later this year. Its problems were not related to the medical issues with the treatments themselves, but rather with its being overwhemed, as Britain’s lone treatment center, by a torrent of new gender dysphoria cases. The NHS plans to replace Tavistock with several regional centers to improve access for all such patients.Cole’s complaint also describes the conclusion of a 2011 Swedish study it cites as having found that “transition treatment does not improve long-term mental health for transgender individuals.” That’s not what the study concluded, however.
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| Chaya Raichik |
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| Under a Missouri bill, learning about these LGBTQ historical figures could be banned in schools. |
When it comes to undermining LGBTQ people, Republicans have a talent for making their positions sound reasonable at first. But they always go too far and the masks drop. We are then left with what was there all along - hysterically raging bigotry.
From NBC News:
Missouri lawmakers argued Wednesday over a bill that would ban most LGBTQ education subjects for all grades in the state’s public schools. The proposal is modeled after a Florida education law passed last year, touted by supporters as protecting “parent’s rights” and dubbed by opponents as a “ Don’t Say Gay ” law.The Missouri bill debated in a state House committee hearing would ban K-12 public school staff from teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation. The Florida law only prohibits teaching those subjects from kindergarten through third grade, although any lessons on those topics for students of any grade are also banned if they are not age-appropriate.“Exposure to such topics is inappropriate for children, creating confusion which may then cause doubt in their identities,” said Rep. Ann Kelley, a former teacher and the Republican sponsor of the Missouri bill. “It is not the place of the school to indoctrinate our children by exposing them to gender and sexual identity curriculums and courses.”
In response to a question from a committee member, Kelley said she assumes that under her bill, educators would be banned from explaining the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage.“It seems like the things that you want to prohibit are targeted to one particular group that you find disfavorable,” Republican Rep. Phil Christofanelli told Kelley.
Democratic Rep. Ian Mackey, a former teacher who is gay, asked Kelley if him “being gay in the classroom” and not hiding that from students would be limited under her bill.“Did you ever inform your students on your beliefs?” Kelley asked Mackey. “They did know I was gay,” Mackey said. “They would see my wedding ring and they would ask about it, and I would say I have a husband.”A committee vote on the bill was not scheduled as of Wednesday afternoon.
