Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Two takeaways from the North Carolina legislature's vouch of homophobia

As expected, the dunderheads in the North Carolina legislature brought the hammer of homophobia down on the head of the state's lgbt community:

North Carolina’s House of Representatives voted Wednesday to block cities and counties from passing protections against LGBT discrimination in a wide-ranging bill that could have enormous implications for the state.

HB 2, which passed 83-25 in a special session, would set a statewide anti-discrimination policy, banning employers and businesses from discriminating against employees or customers based on their race, color, country of origin, religion, age or “biological sex.” The bill offers no protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and prevents local governments from passing any nondiscrimination policy that goes beyond the statewide standard.

The bill also pre-empts local employment ordinances governing wages, benefits, employee protections and leave policies. It would prevent schools from allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify.

The state Senate is set to consider the bill later Wednesday.

“This bill essentially repeals 50 years of non-discrimination efforts and gives lawmakers in Raleigh unprecedented control over our city and local governments,” Senate Democratic Leader Dan Blue said in a statement. “North Carolina Republicans want to pass what would potentially be the single most discriminatory act in the country. This is a direct affront to equality, civil rights, and local autonomy.”
Republican lawmakers called the state’s General Assembly into a special session with the goal of blocking Charlotte’s anti-discrimination measure from going into effect. That measure, which passed last month in a 7-4 vote, bans businesses from discriminating against customers based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Critics of the Charlotte ordinance particularly took issue with a provision that allows transgender people to use bathrooms designated for their preferred gender. Gov. Pat McCrory (R) vowed to overturn it, claiming it creates “major public safety issues.”

Here are my two takeaways:

1. If you think this thing is a misguided attempt to protect females from predators sneaking into their bathrooms and locker rooms, raise your hands high . . . so I can smack you upside the head like Moe used to do in "Three Stooges" shorts. Protecting females is just the excuse. If it were simply about that, what's with the overreach? This bill is yet another attempt to keep lgbts under heel as second class citizens, just like other anti-gay bills. Folks who pus these things always claim that they are attempting to protect children, women, or others they see as vulnerable. The only folks who need protection are lgbts every time one of these bills come up. Count on the opposition to also make a false argument that the "rights" of Christians are under attack and the only way to prevent this is to hinder all lgbt non-discrimination laws.

2. Which brings up point two. These bills will continue to come up. The lgbt community attaining marriage equality never meant the fight for our equality was over. It only means that it's heating up. Angry at their losses, anti-gay groups and spokespeople are working hard - and getting paid lots of money - to dream up and put into play new ways to deny us equality or just basically ruin our specific day. North Carolina is yet ANOTHER wake up call that this so-called culture war isn't over. And we have to use new tactics.  Don't get discouraged. Get engaged.. A two hour protest expressing anger won't fix this. Lgbts must stop being sitting ducks. Get engaged in the political process, voting, and running for office. Study the tactics of the anti-gay groups in your state. Know them by heart. And don't be afraid to pick public fights of rhetoric with them.

Editor's note - The bill just passed the Senate by a vote of 32-0. The Democrats walked out instead of voting on the bill. It now awaits Gov.  Pat McCrory,'s signature, which he unfortunately gave this same night.

Let the games begin.

'Gov. Brownback wrecks Kansas again, this time by signing 'religious liberty' bill' & other Wed. midday news briefs

Brownback
Watch: Kansas Governor Signs Anti-Gay 'Religious Liberty' Bill Into Law - I would be angry at Kansas but after the way Gov. Sam Brownback ruined the state's economy with his policies, the fact that he attempts to pose as a Christian is a sad allegory for our times

NORTH CAROLINA: Special Session Bill Would Ban ALL LGBT Rights In State, Not Just In Charlotte - Don't do it, North Carolina. It probably will and all hell will be in session. And we don't plan to be without our pitchforks. Listen to the audio of the session here.

 Family Research Council uses work of phony medical group in new attack on transgender community - Reiterating this morning's post. How the Family Research Council is using a phony medical group who believe that gay men sexualize feces and a John Hopkins University professor (whose university really should disavow him) to launder false information about the transgender community. 

 FBI Will Determine If Boiling Water Attack On Gay Men Was A Hate Crime - Uh yes it was.  

Rafael Cruz, Dinesh D'Souza And Selectively Flexible 'Moral Absolutes' On Marriage - Two anti-gay hypocrites and marriage . . .

Family Research Council uses work of phony medical group in new attack on transgender community


The Family Research Council was in a braggart's mood yesterday as it launched another attack against the transgender community:

Liberals like to say they're pushing these gender-neutral bills for the kids, but new research suggests they're doing it despite the kids. Every day, it seems like another city or school board is pushing a policy that tells children to ignore the anatomy that classrooms should be teaching! The waves of gender-neutral bathroom and athletic proposals keep coming, no matter how devastating it can be for students. Gender isn't a matter of self-determination, the American College of Pediatricians (ACP) is arguing, and suggesting otherwise can harm kids for life.

This isn't about helping children "find themselves" or accepting them for who they are, it's about glamorizing a disorder with life-long consequences. When legislatures or educators indulge and even encourage this confusion, ACP warns, it's child abuse. In a strong response to the transgender ideology marching across America, U.S. pediatricians are urging a complete and total rejection of these so-called "non-discrimination" bills. "Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse," they write in a statement released yesterday. In an eight-point dismantling of the trans-movement, they remind Americans that gender confusion is a "mental disorder" -- a fact, ACP points out, that has never been disproven.

I will spare you the rest of FRC's taunt. However, it cannot be ignored that yet again FRC is distorting information. Don't be fooled by the official sounding name of the organization. (The American College of Pediatricians) which crafted the  statement that FRC is pushing as legitimate.

To put it plainly, the American College of Pediatricians is a fraud, an organization which, while sounding credible, is actually a front for giving anti-lgbt propaganda a more respectable veneer. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Like NARTH, ACPeds was born from an ideological split within a profession. It was founded in 2002 as a protest against the much larger American Academy of Pediatrics’ support for LGBT adoption rights — and that opposition remains central to the group’s identity. ACPeds is believed to have no more than 200 members, a tiny fraction of the nearly 60,000 professionals who belong to the American Academy of Pediatrics. But thanks to its deceptive name — which makes it sound as if it is the mainstream professional organization for pediatricians — ACPeds often serves as a supposedly scientific source for groups pushing utter falsehoods about LGBT people.
 . . . Dr. Joseph Zanga, who heads ACPeds, described what he hoped his group would become: “essentially a Judeo-Christian, traditional-values organization ... open to membership for pediatric medical professionals of all religions who hold our core beliefs ... that life begins at conception and that the traditional family unit, headed by an opposite-sex couple, poses far fewer risk factors.

In 2010, the group sent letters to 14,000 school district superintendents asking that they peruse and use information from a webpage it created entitled Facts About Youth.   I said the following about it during that time:

Facts About Youth contains the same tired lies and misinformation about the gay community found on almost every religious right web page and repeated by almost every religious right talking head.

 The following are just a few bits of misinformation which I discovered