(09-08-2023, 08:28 PM)pally Wrote: 6-year-olds are NOT getting chemical castration medications. Matt Walsh is among the least credible sources of anything other than lies and propaganda. This whole trans-phobia thing is being exaggerated by right-wing fearmongering in order to push their culture agenda.
I hear far more about transgenderism from Republican politicians and media than I do anywhere else.
I don't blame them for fighting back. Their very lives are being put into danger with the hate being spewed by people like DeSantis
I can tell you didn’t watch “What Is A Woman” because Matt Walsh almost entirely just asked questions. I try to care more about what is being said than who is saying it, more people should do that. He never started an interview with an agenda. He simply asked questions to professors, doctors, people on the street, mostly just gave them the rope to hang themselves with. It’s pretty out of control, and being shoved down kids’ throats. Target, Bud Light, Netflix movies, colleges, elementary textbooks… if you don’t see that then you’re just ignoring it willfully because it doesn’t bother you. It should. For 250,000 years of human existence, the gender binary was totally fine… in the last 3 years, suddenly half of all women on dating apps have to virtue signal by displaying their pronouns on their profile, as if it weren’t abundantly obvious. Hell, a caller spoke to Howard Stern the other day (it was a rerun, admittedly, he was off over the summer) and said she had 3 trans kids. I call BS. It’s been shoved down their throats and kids are impressionable.
And, you’re also wrong about the puberty blockers. 5000 kids are on them today (5000 too many, by the way). They’re all… pre… pubescent (hence puberty blockers). This indoctrination happens at an early enough age to where, even if it takes them a year or two to decide, they’ll still be pre-pubescent. The drug is Lupron, btw. It’s for prostate cancer and chemical castration (for sex offenders, typically).
Quote:[color=var(--color-byline-authors)]BY BRENDAN FARRINGTON Updated 5:42 PM EDT, April 16, 2024
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Two years ago, Democrats repeatedly and forcefully warned Republicans and Gov. Ron DeSantis that a new law making it easier to challenge school books was so broadly worded that it would create havoc across the state. Now they can say, “I told you so.”[/color] DeSantis backtracked on the 2022 law on Tuesday when he signed a bill narrowing its focus. He blamed liberal activists for abusing the law, not the citizens whose objections to certain books account for the majority of book removals from school libraries and classrooms. “The idea that someone can use the parents rights and the curriculum transparency to start objecting to every single book to try to make a mockery of this is just wrong,” DeSantis said the day before the bill signing. “That’s performative. That’s political.” Coincidentally, PEN America, a group that fights book bans, issued a report Tuesday saying Florida is responsible for 72% of the books that have been pulled from the nation’s schools in the first half of the current school year.
The organization said liberal activists are not the ones who should be blamed for abusing the law.
Those challenges are being made by conservative individuals and groups such as Moms For Liberty, Meehan said.[/color] The original law allowed any person — parent or not, district resident or not — to challenge books as often as they wanted. Once challenged, a book has to be pulled from shelves until the school district resolves the complaint. The new law limits people who don’t have students in a school district to one challenge per month.
The PEN America report says Florida is responsible for 3,135 of the 4,349 school book bans in the United States so far this school year. Just this week in conservative Clay County, one person challenged 40 books, Meehan said. Before dropping out of the Republican presidential primary, DeSantis campaigned heavily on his education platform, including the law giving people more power to challenge books. “It’s just a big mess that DeSantis created and now he’s trying to disown it, but I don’t know if he’ll be able to distance himself from this because he campaigned on it so hard,” said House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell. It’s not the only example of the tough-talking governor having to make adjustments to ideology he championed while seeking the White House. He also has made concessions in the settlement of several lawsuits involving the state and Walt Disney World. The dispute between them erupted in 2022 after the company spoke out against a DeSantis-backed law that opponents dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.” The law bans classroom lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation. The Associated Press asked DeSantis’ office for examples of liberal activists abusing the law and it provided one: Chaz Stevens, a South Florida resident who has often lampooned government. Stevens raised challenges in dozens of school districts over the Bible, dictionaries and thesauruses.
The change to the law “ensures that book challenges are limited for individuals, like Chaz, who do not have children with access to the school district’s materials,” DeSantis spokeswoman Julia Friedland said in an email. She didn’t reply to follow-up emails requesting more examples. Stevens, who 11 years ago made national news when he installed a Festivus pole made out of beer cans across from a nativity scene displayed in the Capitol, was delighted DeSantis’ office singled him out. “When they need to make stupid stupider, they send me up. I’m part comedian, I’m part activist, I’m part artist. I just want a better society,” Stevens said. “I’m an idiot, but a smart guy at the same time.”
While DeSantis’ predecessor, current Republican Sen. Rick Scott, allowed what was then called the “free speech zone” in the Capitol rotunda, the rules changed under DeSantis and new barriers were put in place to use Capitol space for political expression. The League of Women Voters and Stevens are among the applicants who have been denied access under the new rules.
“I didn’t realize that I have the power of millions!” Stevens said. “I’m just one guy. I’m an agitator. I know my role in this.”
Driskell pointed out that DeSantis was warned there would be problems when the book ban law passed in 2022.
“We told him so. The Florida House Democrats on the floor — in our debate, in our questioning — pointed out the vagueness in the original law and how it could be subject to abuse,” she said. “Chaz is not the problem. It’s the folks who are taking liberties with the law who are the problem.”
We need more people out there demonstrating how stupid many laws are. Maybe we can get somewhere in this country.
Warning: Reading signatures may hurt your feelings.
Quote:Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs school chaplain bills, says Satanists not welcome
Story by Ehren Wynder
• 2d • 2 min read
April 18 (UPI) -- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed a bill allowing religious leaders and "patriotic organizations" to interact with students in school, a move that the Satanic Temple plans to contest.
DeSantis on Thursday held a conference signing two new bills, HB 1317 and HB 931, which he said would be beneficial to the mental health of Florida students.
HB 931 establishes a statewide school chaplain program, which means schools can invite religious affiliates to provide counseling and other services to students who want it and have written permission from their parents.
"There are some students where they need some soul craft," DeSantis said. "That can make all the difference in the world."
HB 1317 authorizes school districts to bring in "patriotic organizations," such as Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, The Boy Scouts of America, Boys & Girls Clubs of America and more.
"Not everyone knows what's all out there in the community," DeSantis said. "I think students are better off being involved in any of these activities than just going home and being on electronics for the rest of the day."
Members of the Satanic Temple already are planning to test the limits of the school chaplain bill by bringing their own representatives into public schools.
"Despite DeSantis' contempt for religious liberty, the Constitution guarantees our equal treatment under the law, and DeSantis is not at liberty to amend the Constitution by fiat, at whim," said Lucien Greaves, co-founder of the The Satanic Temple. "He just invited Satanic chaplains into public schools, whether he likes it or not."
DeSantis, who has sparred with the Satanic Temple before, said that's not doing to happen.
"Some have said that if you do a school chaplain program, that somehow you're going to have Satanists running around in all our schools," he said at the press conference Thursday. "We're not playing those games in Florida. That is not a religion. That is not qualifying to be able to participate in this."
The bill's sponsor, Sen. Erin Grall, R-Fort Pierce, however, has taken the opposite stance.
"I think that as soon as we get in the middle of defining what is religion and what is not, and whether or not someone can be available and be on a list, we start to run [into] constitutional problems," she said before the bill passed.
Either way, the power is in the hands of school districts as to whether or not they even want to implement a chaplain program. Schools with a chaplain program would have to provide a list of all volunteers and their religious affiliations, DeSantis said.
Any prospective volunteer chaplain also will have to undergo a background check, DeSantis said.
State Democrats who opposed the bill raised concerns about far-right Christian nationalist groups participating in the program. Other critics raised questions about the credentials of people who would interact with minors.
The law goes into effect July 1.
Warning: Reading signatures may hurt your feelings.
Interesting segment on Bill Maher were he totally concedes Desantis was right about Disney.
It seems the worm is turning on this issue, it'll be really interesting to see all the people who defended this to the hilt try and pretend they never did.
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