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Gay Marriage / LGBTQ Rights / Equality Act

Trying to make sense of a crazy world, with limited success mostly
jemcanada2
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#401

Post by jemcanada2 »

The university where I work has just announced that it will be expanding its benefits with gender affirming coverage. :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
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#402

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

HHHHHHOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAYYYY!
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#403

Post by AndyinPA »

:thumbsup:
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#404

Post by qbawl »

https://www.whio.com/news/local/some-th ... 9dX1pYNeVg

Hard to believe a school district can take this position.
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#405

Post by raison de arizona »

qbawl wrote: Fri Apr 28, 2023 2:53 pm https://www.whio.com/news/local/some-th ... 9dX1pYNeVg

Hard to believe a school district can take this position.
They really are assholes. Unbelievable.

Ohio, where you can use gay slurs against LGTBQ+ teachers and students with impunity.
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
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#406

Post by neonzx »

qbawl wrote: Fri Apr 28, 2023 2:53 pm https://www.whio.com/news/local/some-th ... 9dX1pYNeVg

Hard to believe a school district can take this position.
It''s Ohio -- this town has less than 8,000 people and is south-east of Dayton. It's hicksville, like much of Ohio outside of areas with universities. This position on the district's part doesn't surprise me at all.
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#407

Post by Kriselda Gray »

With all this focus on how Drag "grooms" kids, I would honestly love to see a study showing the per capita rate of sexual abusers among Drag Queens and ministers (from *any* church - not picking on denominations here.) I say per capita because I want the numbers shown on as equal a basis as possible, presuming there are more ministers than Drag Queens. Hel, lets add politicians to the comparison chart. I suspect we'd find that kids are more at risk with ministers and politicians than they are with Drag Queens, but that's just my gut feeling. I'd love to have some evidence to back that up.

----------

After writing this, I decided to search Google, figuring I wasn't the only person who'd want to see a comparison of these number, and I'm not. A lawyer named Kristen Browde has been tracking arrests that make the news for several weeks now. Granted "what makes the news" is pretty subjective, so I'm not hanging my hat on her numbers, but as she notes in the article, if a drag queen was arrested for child sexual abuse these days, it WOULD make the news. The article I found was published in March, so there's not a lot of data, but what she found supports my hunch.

This still isn't the kind of study I'd like to see, which would use actual crime statistics, not just news reports, but it's at least a step towards looking at this whole mishigas more objectively.
For the past few weeks, attorney Kristen Prata Browde, of Browde Law, has been using her social media account to outline the weekly list of people arrested in the US on charges of child sexual abuse.

The series of videos are an effort by the New York lawyer, who is outspoken in her support of LGBTQ+ people, to prove that drag queens are not a threat to children.

So far, her videos have summarised charges against 30 religious figures, one school official and three politicians. But not a single drag queen.

Her most recent clip was posted on Monday (13 March) and outlines nine youth pastors, one Catholic Church official and one school librarian.

[...]

What she found was that, across the week starting on the 21 February, there had been 17 total arrests that had made the news – none of which were drag queens.

“There are lots of cases that fly below the radar, but you can bet that if a trans person or drag queen – or a policeman or pastor – is involved, that’s an elevated thing.

“I spent decades in the news business and I know what gets reported and what doesn’t. So a case about us would be reported.”
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#408

Post by qbawl »

neonzx wrote: Fri Apr 28, 2023 4:50 pm
qbawl wrote: Fri Apr 28, 2023 2:53 pm https://www.whio.com/news/local/some-th ... 9dX1pYNeVg

Hard to believe a school district can take this position.
It''s Ohio -- this town has less than 8,000 people and is south-east of Dayton. It's hicksville, like much of Ohio outside of areas with universities. This position on the district's part doesn't surprise me at all.
Not sure 'hicksville' is the correct characterization of the area. Per a friend who lives in Dayton: "I have been told that Bellbrook has the highest “income average” in the Dayton area. I think it competes with Oakwood but it “wins” as “richest”.". Certainly not progressive of course but highly conservative. It is about 7 miles as the crow flies from Wright Patterson AFB and Wright State University and not far from the University of Dayton.
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#409

Post by RVInit »

Kriselda Gray wrote: Sat Feb 18, 2023 4:52 pm I could understand all the calls for banning gender-affirming care for kids IF the care was being provided *without* the parents knowledge or against their wishes. That would just be common sense. If, however, the parents are aware of what is happening and have given their permission for their child to receive such care, then the government should just butt out. This, like abortion, is another situation that should be decided by the patient, their parents (if the patient is a minor) and their doctor(s).

This assault on gender-affirming care started out ostensibly out of concern that parents rights were being trampled on by school counselors, but now they're wanting to extend such bans to people over 21 and up to 25 in some cases, situations where the parents rights are no longer of any concern.

Biden really needs to get as many judges confirmed as he can so that we can start to have a more balanced court system ASAP, and he should increase the size of the Supreme Court and get judges appointed. That, and making sure as many Dem candidates as possible win their elections re perhaps the best. Steps we could take to stop this creeping fascism from getting worse.
I
Diane Feinstein needs to step down NOW. She is too freaking old, she should have retired long ago. I understand that power means more to these people than money, but for chrissakes, we need severe term limits. Term limits would solve lots of problems, Congress critters wouldn't have to worry about getting "primaried", they would KNOW their time is up. I am way past my patience with Feinstein. I appreciate her service, but it's time for her to allow someone to take her place who can actually show up and get work done. We needed those judges YEARS ago.
There's a lot of things that need to change. One specifically? Police brutality.
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#410

Post by Kriselda Gray »

RVInit wrote: Mon May 08, 2023 3:50 pm Diane Feinstein needs to step down NOW. She is too freaking old, she should have retired long ago. I understand that power means more to these people than money, but for chrissakes, we need severe term limits. Term limits would solve lots of problems, Congress critters wouldn't have to worry about getting "primaried", they would KNOW their time is up. I am way past my patience with Feinstein. I appreciate her service, but it's time for her to allow someone to take her place who can actually show up and get work done. We needed those judges YEARS ago.
Yeah, no doubt. I agree with all of that.
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#411

Post by AndyinPA »

https://www.komu.com/news/midmissourine ... a13ab.html
COLUMBIA - Columbia School Board member Katherine Sasser announced at the start of the board's meeting Monday evening she would resign. Sasser said she plans to formally submit her resignation Tuesday.

She added that she would be moving out of state with her family due to the consideration of several pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation in the state legislature. Sasser, who has served on the board for 2 years, also has a transgender daughter who grew up in the district.

She highlighted her fears that young people in the state will miss out on the opportunity to truly get to know their community.

"I'm further saddened by the possibility of a future Missouri where a generation of young people are not given the opportunity to get to know and love their diverse neighbors," Sasser said.

"I'm afraid of classrooms whose bookshelves only represent one point of view, students who aren't free to show up as their full selves and educators not being trusted to make decisions they need to in order to serve each and every student under their care."

Currently state lawmakers are considering dozens of Bills affecting transgender youth and LGBTQ people in the state. She previously described these bills as attacks on LGBTQ rights and the public school system in the state.

Sasser described her start in Columbia as a student at the University of Missouri in 2003 and thanked the board members, staff and parents who worked with her throughout her 20 years in Columbia. She described her service on the board as a privilege calling Columbia a "truly special place."
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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#412

Post by raison de arizona »

Kriselda Gray wrote: Tue May 09, 2023 2:16 am
RVInit wrote: Mon May 08, 2023 3:50 pm Diane Feinstein needs to step down NOW. She is too freaking old, she should have retired long ago. I understand that power means more to these people than money, but for chrissakes, we need severe term limits. Term limits would solve lots of problems, Congress critters wouldn't have to worry about getting "primaried", they would KNOW their time is up. I am way past my patience with Feinstein. I appreciate her service, but it's time for her to allow someone to take her place who can actually show up and get work done. We needed those judges YEARS ago.
Yeah, no doubt. I agree with all of that.
I too, also agree.

Also, FWIW, Reuters is reporting that Feinstein is returning to Congress. Finally. Maybe we'll see some movement on these judicial appointments.
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
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#413

Post by RTH10260 »

UK - in London - happening now
The cuddling cowboys ride again! Saddle up as Brokeback Mountain is staged with songs
As the two hard-loving herders from the 2005 Oscar-winner get back on their horses, the team behind a new musical version talk about fear, regret – and the tragic power of forbidden desire

Ryan Gilbey
Tue 9 May 2023 14.52 BST

The tent in the corner of the rehearsal room is an off-white, bare-bones affair that scarcely looks robust enough to withstand a draught, let alone the howling wind on a Wyoming mountainside. But this, to quote MTV Cribs, is where the magic happens. The sheep-herders Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist snuggle up together here against the cold, their comradeship flaring into desire. So begins a love affair that will dominate their lives over the next few decades even as they go their separate ways and marry women.

Brokeback Mountain has already cantered from page (Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story) to screen (Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning 2005 film). Now it arrives on stage, adapted by Ashley Robinson and featuring Lucas Hedges, the grave young star of Manchester By the Sea, who steps into the late Heath Ledger’s cowboy boots as Ennis. Playing Jack, the role originated by Jake Gyllenhaal, is Mike Faist, who was wiry and electrified as Riff in Steven Spielberg’s recent West Side Story.

Robinson, an easy-going South Carolina native, takes a seat in front of a wall covered with stark monochrome images of the Wyoming landscape, which serve as a helpful reminder of the play’s brutally isolated setting. Joining him are the director Jonathan Butterell and the composer Dan Gillespie Sells, collaborators from the razzle-dazzle musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, who are quick to stress that Ennis and Jack won’t be belting out any showstoppers. “Can you imagine?” says Butterell with horror.

Why not? “A song lets the audience into an internal dialogue,” explains Sells. “But these guys don’t have that. They’re stuck. There’d be no way of writing that libretto. What we can do is bring you the poetry of Annie Proulx. Ang Lee did that in the film with cinematography. Here we do it through music.”




https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/ ... ical-oscar
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#414

Post by RTH10260 »

Life after shunning: what I faced after coming out as a queer Jehovah’s witness
My community ostracized me in the name of love. What followed was years of confusion

Daniel Allen Cox
Wed 10 May 2023 06.00 BST

The night the world ended, I was at a bowling alley in a strip mall in the suburbs of Montreal, throwing strikes with other Jehovah’s Witness friends. Wholesome activities were the only way we could cool our hot teenage blood. If we weren’t bowling, we were at chaperoned, alcohol-free basement parties or outings to the cinema to watch movies that didn’t contravene God’s laws.

This one summer night at the lanes, I made the mistake of calling another young man handsome. My friends heard me but didn’t say anything. For the Witnesses, to be queer is an abomination. I had hidden my queerness successfully for years, suffocating my desires and my identity so that I could have a chance to live forever on a paradise Earth.

But word travels quickly in a closed religious community. A few weeks later, our congregation’s presiding elder called me on the phone and asked if I was “a homosexual” and planning to live as one, as if the two can be separated. Was I planning to turn my back on Jehovah and disappoint my family, my community, my creator? I didn’t have much of a choice. I composed my letter of disassociation and dropped it into the mailbox. It was filled with grief, uncertainty, and a kind of power, but I don’t remember much of what I wrote and I didn’t keep a copy.




continued at https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... -out-lgbtq
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#415

Post by keith »

Genesis Chapter 9: (KIV)
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him:
9 “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you
10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth.
11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:
13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds,
15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.
16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
17 So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”
Has everybody heard about the bird?
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#416

Post by raison de arizona »

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
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#417

Post by Lani »

When I was an attorney on a different island, the Court would sometimes assign me to cases about abused children. Jehovah’s Witnesses often. A mom fled from it, but returned to let the family see the child and arrange visits with the child. It was a trick. She was thrown out, and they kept the child. I learned a lot about JW. Diffidently a cult. I was able to bring the child to her mom on another island. It was wonderful to meet the mom at the airport. I hope they are happy.
Image You can't wait until life isn't hard anymore before you decide to be happy.
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#418

Post by neonzx »

Orlando Publix bakery refused to put the word ‘trans’ on a cake, says support group

https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/orla ... p-34172129
Yasmin Flasterstein and Dandelion Hill had just one stop left on their way to a “transgender joy” event hosted by the Orlando group they co-founded, Peer Support Space. They walked into Publix at Colonialtown with the intention of picking out a cake and grabbing some flowers.

But when the two asked the bakery associate to write, “Trans people deserve joy,” on their flowery sheet cake, they were met with a face of confusion.

Then the bakery manager told them they couldn’t do that. The manager said “it was taking a stance, and that they weren’t allowed to take a stance on stuff like that,” Flasterstein told Orlando Weekly.
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#419

Post by neonzx »

As conservative states target trans rights, a Florida teen flees for a better life

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... better-lif

Josie had put off packing long enough. It was time to make some tough decisions about what to bring and what to leave behind. The high school sophomore from St. Augustine, Fla. sat on her bed one recent morning while her mom Sarah pulled clothes from her closet.

It held a trove of good memories — like the red dress Josie wore to the winter homecoming dance. And the pink cover-up she sported at a friend's pool party.

Good times like these have felt scarce lately. Josie, who's transgender, no longer feels welcome in Florida.

Her family requested they be identified by their first names only, fearing retaliation in a state where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and other officials have politicized and passed anti-trans policies in health care and education.

Conservative states across the country are pushing a record number of bills that target LGBTQ rights, particularly transgender rights. That's forced residents like Josie to rethink where they want to call home.

In just a few days, Josie was moving more than a thousand miles away from St. Augustine – and her parents – to start a new life in Rhode Island. Her aunt and uncle live outside Providence, and she'll stay with them and attend high school nearby.
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#420

Post by AndyinPA »

:crying:
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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#421

Post by neonzx »

Really nice state they have goin' on in NC.


NC lawmakers run bills to regulate LGBTQ people in schools, sports and entertainment

https://www.fayobserver.com/story/news/ ... 187779007/
Republicans in the North Carolina legislature this year have been seeking to expand government regulation of human sexuality that supporters say will protect teens and younger children, and protect women. Critics say these bills seek to harm and marginalize LGBTQ children and adults.

Here are some of the bills and where they stand:
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Love ya dearly Foggy, but your state is whacky.. BUT, not as wacky as Florida -- but you are in competition.
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#422

Post by RTH10260 »

‘I stood there with my mouth open. It was a utopia’: 50 years of Olivia, the lesbian cruise company
The company, which began as a record label, beat the odds to offer a space where women could ‘come out and be themselves’

Ella Braidwood
Mon 22 May 2023 11.00 BST

Jai Henrietta still remembers the first time she went on an Olivia Travel vacation: “I just stood there with my mouth open. Seeing 2,000 women in one space, all cuddling, holding hands, and kissing – it was a utopia for me.”

Henrietta has now traveled six times with Olivia, the world’s first travel company for lesbians. Her partner, Lyla Row, has been on 13 Olivia trips. For Row, the company takes away that “extra precaution” the couple otherwise has to take on holiday as a same-sex couple. “It’s relaxing, and that’s what a holiday should be – you shouldn’t be worrying about anything else,” she says.

The Olivia brand, which was launched in 1973 as a radical women’s record label, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Since the company started offering cruises, in 1990, it has hosted more than 350,000 LGBTQ+ women on cruises and resort holidays from Europe to Africa and has earned a revered status among lesbians: in 2004, the premiere of the groundbreaking lesbian TV series The L Word was held on an Olivia cruise. (An entire episode – Land Ahoy – was also set on one of its ships.) The Grammy winners kd lang, Melissa Etheridge and Mary Chapin Carpenter have performed at Olivia’s events. The tennis legend Billie Jean King has been a guest speaker seven times. Months before her death, Maya Angelou gave one of her last public speeches at an Olivia summit.



https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023 ... ian-cruise
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#423

Post by Foggy »

Whoa, I never heard of them. Part of me is thinking, "How cool!" and the other part of me knows - and fears - that the right-wing outrage machine needs to be fed new meat on a regular basis, and I could see Tucker fuming about this, wherever he lands. Or some other idiot, like Hoft or Jones or Ingraham or somebody.

:think:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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#424

Post by keith »

Yet another drag show abomination

[media]



[/media]
Has everybody heard about the bird?
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#425

Post by AndyinPA »

:dance: :clap: :dance:
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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