So in the spur of a moment decision, I shaved all my hair off. Three days ago to be exact. Since I was a young babe I’ve wanted to do this, and its been incredibly empowering for me. (Reality check, ive cried six times ah.) Sending love to everyone who is being effected by this coronavirus. It’s tragic, scary, and indefinitely stressful on unfortunately a multitude of levels. It’s important to remain calm, stay quarantined as much as possible (if not always), and always wash your hands/wear a mask when going out.⛅️ Take this time to rest, or to work. But please don’t go out if it isn’t necessary. Honestly, how you spend your time during this shouldn’t reflect negatively on your progress, as long as you respect social distancing. I am realizing how underprepared I am, how underprepared my partner is, yet we still own an incredible, insane amount of privilege. Especially compared to many of my neighbors, my loved ones, and strangers, that are effected due to systematic failure and oppression. Wrapping my head around the fact that my friends and family have the potential to starve, and to lose crucial medical care, has been a gruesome reminder that the capitalistic lifestyle we survive under is literally killing people. The government is not on our side. The amount of blood smeared on the hands of corrupt lawmakers and politicians is criminal. I have enough stamina to write letters to my loved ones, enough stamina to bake cookies, and enough stamina to feel beautiful without hiding behind a my hair. Maybe this will make me feel somewhat pleased with the limited amount of attention I’ve been able to obtain, as an extrovert, in quarantine. Reblog with a picture of yourself that makes you feel really beautiful, and positive ☀️ Comment something that makes you feel warm, and safe. The amount of time I have to spread love now is more than ever. It’s all gonna be alright. xxx ooo
the thing that strikes me about this latest wave of anti-trans hate and legislation in the U.S. is that it feels like it’s *kind of* about trans people but really about a fear fundamental to all conservatives that a day will one day come when they will no longer be able to completely control their children
american conservatism is a death cult. trump made this incredibly obvious but it’s been trending that way for a while. it is spiteful, bigoted, cruel, morally bankrupt, and all evidence in support of it has either been fabricated, forged, deceptively edited, or disproven. being conservative goes against a fundamental human desire to be kind to those around you and I think on some level conservatives know this, and thus, they know that the only reason children would subscribe to these values is if they are indoctrinated into them with cult-like single-mindedness
Conservatives have been pushing for homeschooling for decades, they’ve been raising concerns about teaching evolution in schools since the early 20th century, they’ve made wedge issues out of sex ed, history textbooks, and now gay and trans teachers. They want a world in which children are taught to be conservative from birth and any attempt to teach them anything else is a literal crime. They want this because they know, deep down inside, that most children would not agree with them unless they were literally brainwashed into it.
also worth pointing out that most child abuse (sexual or otherwise) takes place within a “traditional” family structure or a “traditional” religious institution and I have to wonder if people who want to abuse kids have a fundamental investment in preserving strict hierarchies in which adult men have unquestioned authority over children
Like I’m not saying *every* conservative is like this but perhpas their emphasis on “groomers” is a wee bit of projection
Anyway abolish the family trans rights are human rights institute fully automated luxury gay space communism now
This tweet sums it up pretty well:
This is another big reason why most conservatives bitch about higher education; a lot of younger people (myself included) undo their conservative upbringing brainwashing after being exposed to new ideas, meeting new and diverse people, and getting a higher-quality education when they attend college.
This is also, of course, why conservative lawmakers constantly seek to undermine public education and make it shittier so the kids who go through it are more ignorant. An educated and well-informed populace is the GOP’s worst nightmare.
From the dystopian, political, action, horrorfilm The Purge: Election Year back in2016 & it’s 3rd installment to the franchise. I always did dig the Christmas-light lit covered car, it looks so dope.
I’m back at my desk after a week of family visits and back at my blog after a busy November/December. Some exciting things happened this past month…
My gothic Midwestern flash fiction piece “Women’s Work” is up at Flash Fiction Online. I love the art the editorial team picked to be featured with the story so much! I’d also like to give a shout out to Tanya DePass for consulting on this story. If you are looking for professional manuscript consultation regarding diversity issues (i.e. you’re writing characters backgrounds and identities than you and you really don’t want to fall into tired tropes), I highly recommending working with Tanya.
My article “Interviewing Venture Capital and Private Equity Professionals” made the top five most popular article list on the Helen Brown Group’s TheIntelligent Edge. I started reading The Intelligent Edge when I started my first job in prospect research four years ago; reading it helped me dive right into important conversations in the field–so I’m very excited to be included on such a great resource!
Seeing my friends, family members, and colleagues take the opportunity to have tough discussions, fundraise, and do difficult self-reflection during the holiday season. Witnessing my community’s commitment to doing the work needed to build a safer and more just world helps me do the same.
Looking towards the future, I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions this year, but two phrases have been rolling around in my head during the past month:
WATCH: Married Lesbian Politico Couple Launches Politics/Pop Culture Series
Politics and pop culture in this lesbian couple's Politini!
By: Tracy E. Gilchrist
There’s just something about a smart lesbian politico couple, which is why we’re excited for married couple Danielle and Aisha Moodie-Mills’ new web show PolitinionTheGrio.
The couple aims to get at the intersection of pop culture and politics, including comparing House of Cards and Scandal to what really happens on The Hill.
The bill would have allowed businesses to refuse service to gays and others based on religious beliefs.
PHOENIX – Facing intense pressure from political and business interests and a growing public outcry, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announced Wednesday that she had vetoed a bill that would have allowed businesses to refuse service to gays and others based on religious beliefs.
Brewer said the bill was unnecessary legislation that threatened the state’s recovering economy by driving away high-profile events such as next year’s Super Bowl and corporations looking to relocate to Arizona.
“Religious liberty is a core American and Arizona value — so is non-discrimination,” Brewer said at a news conference announcing the veto.
She said the proposed law, known as Senate Bill 1062, was too broadly worded and could have resulted in “unintended and negative consequences.”
Brewer also said she hasn’t heard of a single instance in which an Arizona business owner’s religious liberty was violated.
“After weighing all of the arguments, I have vetoed Senate Bill 1062 moments ago,” Brewer said at the news conference. “Our society is undergoing many dramatic changes. However, I sincerely believe that Senate Bill 1062 has the potential to create more problems than it purports to solve.”
Her veto – coming two days after state lawmakers sent the measure to her desk – capped a week of escalating furor over the bill.
The state’s Republican U.S. senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, hundreds of protesters and the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee, which is preparing for the 2015 game, all urged the governor to veto the bill. Secretary of State John Kerry and 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney also weighed urged Brewer to nix the measure.
Supporters of the bill, who argued it provided needed religious protections, acknowledged defeat. Four Republican lawmakers who voted for the bill walked back their votes this week, saying they hoped Brewer would veto it.
The conservative advocacy organization the Center for Arizona Policy was behind the bill, along with the Christian-based legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.
Center for Arizona Policy President Cathi Herrod said the bill did nothing more than try to assure that laws could not force people to violate their faith unless there is a compelling governmental interest.
“It is truly a tragic day in our state and nation when lies and personal attacks can over shadow the truth,” she said.
Had Brewer signed it into law, the bill would have offered a legal defense for individuals and businesses that face discrimination lawsuits if they could prove they acted upon a “sincerely-held religious belief.”
Similar efforts in Idaho, and Kansas and were recently proposed, but have not moved forward.
Kansas’ Anti-Gay Segregation Bill Is an Abomination
By Mark Joseph Stern
On Tuesday, the Kansas House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a measure designed to bring anti-gay segregation—under the guise of “religious liberty”—to the already deep-red state. The bill, written out of fear that the state may soon face an Oklahoma-style gay marriage ruling, will now easily pass the Republican Senate and be signed into law by the Republican governor. The result will mark Kansas as the first state, though certainly not the last, to legalize segregation of gay and straight people in virtually every arena of life.
If that sounds overblown, consider the bill itself. When passed, the new law will allow any individual, group, or private business to refuse to serve gay couples if “it would be contrary to their sincerely held religious beliefs.” Private employers can continue to fire gay employees on account of their sexuality. Stores may deny gay couples goods and services because they are gay. Hotels can eject gay couples or deny them entry in the first place. Businesses that provide public accommodations—movie theaters, restaurants—can turn away gay couples at the door. And if a gay couple sues for discrimination, they won’t just lose; they’ll be forced to pay their opponent’s attorney’s fees. As I’ve noted before, anti-gay businesses might as well put out signs alerting gay people that their business isn’t welcome.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to barring all anti-discrimination lawsuits against private employers, the new law permits government employees to deny service to gays in the name of “religious liberty.” This is nothing new, but the sweep of Kansas’ statute is breathtaking. Any government employee is given explicit permission to discriminate against gay couples—not just county clerks and DMV employees, but literally anyone who works for the state of Kansas. If a gay couple calls the police, an officer may refuse to help them if interacting with a gay couple violates his religious principles. State hospitals can turn away gay couples at the door and deny them treatment with impunity. Gay couples can be banned from public parks, public pools, anything that operates under the aegis of the Kansas state government.
It gets worse. The law’s advocates claim that it applies only to gay couples—but there’s no clear limiting principle in the text of the bill that would keep it from applying to gay individuals as well. A catch-all clause allows businesses and bureaucrats to discriminate against gay people so long as this discrimination is somehow “related to, or related to the celebration of, any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement.” (Emphases mine.) This subtle loophole is really just a blank check to discriminate: As long as an individual believes that his service is somehow linked to a gay union of any form, he can legally refuse his services. And since anyone who denies gays service is completely shielded from any charges, no one will ever have to prove that their particular form of discrimination fell within the four corners of the law.
Supporting the bill on the House floor, Republican state Rep. Charles Macheers proclaimed that “discrimination is horrible. It’s hurtful. … It has no place in civilized society, and that’s precisely why we’re moving this bill.” The latter claim is absurd, of course—this bill is an explicit effort to make gay people’s lives miserable—but the former is absolutely true. Discrimination is hurtful and horrible, and it will also soon be codified into Kansas law, as other red states look on (and follow suit). Homophobes are nothing if not savvy, and while the judiciary dukes out the gay marriage issue, the shrewdest bigots have already moved on to the next battle. There might still be time to prevent such discrimination in bluer states. But in dark-red places like Kansas, anti-gay segregation is the new reality.
WASHINGTON — A sweeping decision on Thursday night struck down Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage and continued a remarkable winning streak for gay rights advocates, putting new pressure on the Supreme Court to decide the momentous question it ducked last summer: whether there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Since June, when the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples are entitled to equal treatment in at least some settings, federal judges in Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia have struck down laws barring same-sex marriages. In state legislatures and state courts, too, supporters of same-sex marriage have been winning.
“The pace of change has perhaps outstripped the Supreme Court’s preferences, but the momentum is tremendous,” said Suzanne B. Goldberg, a law professor at Columbia.
Rapid changes in public opinion are also playing a part, said Andrew M. Koppelman, a law professor at Northwestern. “It is becoming increasingly clear to judges that if they rule against same-sex marriage their grandchildren will regard them as bigots,” he said.
Instriking down Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage, Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen of Federal District Court in Norfolk relied heavily on the Supreme Court’s decision in June in United States v. Windsor, which ruled that the federal government must provide benefits to same-sex couples married in states that allow such unions.
The Windsor decision also figured prominently in recent rulings from federal judges striking down bans on same-sex marriage in OklahomaandUtah.
The three trial-court decisions vindicated a prediction from Justice Antonin Scalia, who dissented in Windsor. “By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency,” he wrote, “the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition.”
He has so far turned out to be right, presumably to his bitter dismay.
In keeping with the pace of change, Judge Wright Allen’s decision was marked by haste. It was issued late in the evening, which was curious in light of the fact that it was stayed pending appeal. And its first paragraph, since corrected, initially attributed the phrase “all men are created equal” to the Constitution, though it is in the Declaration of Independence.
The decision chose just one of the plausible readings of Windsor, which contained doctrinal crosscurrents. Indeed, Judge Wright Allen quoted a long passage from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion extolling the central role of states in defining marriage. That would seem to support allowing Virginia to decide whom it will let marry.
“Notwithstanding the wisdom usually residing within proper deference to state authorities regarding domestic relations,” Judge Wright Allen wrote, prompt action from the courts was required. “When core civil rights are at stake,” she said, “the judiciary must act.”
She drew on other parts of Justice Kennedy’s opinion, and she had plenty to work with. Treating same-sex marriages differently from others, he wrote, “demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects, and whose relationship the state has sought to dignify.”
“And,” he added, “it humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples.”
Judge Wright Allen began her decision with a quotation from Mildred Loving, who successfully challenged Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage in the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia.
The Loving decision, which struck down such bans nationwide, is instructive in many ways, including in how to gauge the pace of change.
The Supreme Court issued the decision in 1967, which was quite late in the civil rights era. At the time, only 16 states still prohibited interracial unions.
Almost two decades had passed since the California Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on interracial marriage in 1948.
In the meantime, the United States Supreme Court took sometimes unseemly pains, in an era when its jurisdiction was often nominally mandatory, to avoid ruling on the question.
If past were prologue, this might indicate that the Supreme Court will take its time before returning to the question of what the Constitution has to say about same-sex marriage, particularly now that the court’s jurisdiction is almost entirely discretionary.
After all, only 17 states and the District of Columbia allow such unions, not counting the recent decisions, all stayed, from Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia.
On the other hand, public opinion in 1967 was strongly against interracial marriage, while most polls show that a rapidly growing majority of Americans support same-sex marriage.
That transformation in public sentiment will not be ignored by the judiciary, Professor Koppelman said.
He added that the Supreme Court is likely to step in as soon as next year should any of the recent decisions be affirmed by a federal appeals court.
Professor Goldberg agreed that “pressure is building in society and building in the courts,” making it “likely but not inevitable that the Supreme Court will take a marriage case in the near future.”
Still, the justices are often wary of a backlash and might prefer to let the democratic process and lower courts work through contentious social issues before weighing in.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a leading champion of women’s rights, has often said the Supreme Court should have issued a narrower decision in 1973 in Roe v. Wade rather than announcing a broad constitutional right to abortion nationwide. State legislatures, she has said, were making progress on the issue.
Justice Ginsburg’s historical account is contested, but there is reason to think that her caution played a role in the court’s failure in June to say in Hollingsworth v. Perry whether the Constitution requires states to let gay and lesbian couples marry.
The justices continue to mull the crucial question of when to weigh in when society is on the move.
Ina joint appearance last week, Justice Elena Kagan seemed to give Justice Ginsburg a nudge.
“She has been critical of certain cases, most notably Roe v. Wade, for having ruled too expansively and too quickly,” Justice Kagan said of Justice Ginsburg, who listened attentively. “But she has also recognized that when the time is right courts can play an important role in ratifying society’s progress.”
