This is a fundamental safety issue.

Uhhh so starting July 1st, House Bill 1421 will be put into effect in Florida. It, among other things, will prohibit people from changing their biological sex on their birth certificate, and prohibit insurance companies from covering “gender clinical interventions.” This is very vague but I believe “gender clinical interventions” refer to surgeries.

This will put many trans people’s lives in danger. Especially those on testosterone who need hysterectomies because otherwise they are at high risk of developing uterine cancer. I don’t know if there is a way to possibly find loopholes in this (going out-of-state, etc.), but if you live in Florida I recommend discussing your options with a medical professional you trust, and if you have health insurance, review your coverage plan.

There may be an influx of crowdfunding for gender-affirming procedures in the future. I ask that you please continue to support trans people in hostile places however you can.

The strategic slippage at the heart of the anti-trans campaigns—from trans child to protective caretaker to adult worker—clarifies why and for what purpose the architects of the panic organized their crusade. The anti-trans panic is part of a calculated political campaign, assembling a coalition of disparate forces with overlapping interests and plans. Those plans include destabilizing bulwarks of working-class power, obliterating free and universal public education, privatizing critical elements of social life, reinforcing racial segregation, and pulverizing institutions that can and often do produce oppositional political consciousness. And, because our opponents know what they’re doing, it starts with attacks on organized workers.

Kay Gabriel in nplusone Magazine. The Anti-Trans Panic and the Crusade Against Teachers

The goal is to crumble popular support for public education.

Republicans think that their high profile homophobia can squeeze a few more votes out of their shrinking and aging base. But they are doing serious damage to themselves in the medium to long term with future voters.

The LGBTQ+ high school students and their allies will not forget for the rest of their voting lives the GOP “don’t say gay” laws, anti-trans persecution, and homophobic hate speech condoned by high ranking Republicans and their buddies in the rightwing media.  

About 1 in 4 high school students identifies as LGBTQ, according to a report the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Thursday, using data from 2021.

In 2021, 75.5 percent of high school students identified as heterosexual, the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) found.

Among high school students, 12.2 percent identified as bisexual, 5.2 percent as questioning, 3.9 percent as other, 3.2 percent as gay or lesbian and 1.8 percent said they didn’t understand the question.

The CDC says the number of LGBTQ students went from 11 percent in 2015 to 26 percent in 2021.

Here is the Obama White House after the 2015 Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage.

A President Ron “Don’t Say Gay” DeSantis would never allow that. More likely he would try to dismiss the Supreme Court for being too “woke”. The same is true of almost all the other GOP presidential candidates. The GOP is officially homophobic.

To preserve freedom and democracy in the US: Vote Blue No Matter Who. 🏳️‍🌈

Drag Shows Not Gun Shows

Protestors participate in the Drag Me to the Capitol march and rally against anti-trans bills in Montgomery, Alabama, on Tuesday, May 16, 2023. [📷 Mickey Welsh]

Why do these people hate rock 'n roll?

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HRT Access and Aid

https://www.pointofpride.org/hrt-access-fund

Republicans have ramped up their anti-gay policies this year, trying to shore up their base of bigots and homophobes.

[Image description: YouTube thumbnail for a video segment from the MSNBC program Alex Wagner Tonight, showing Alex Wagner (a woman with dark hair in a shoulder-length bob) sitting behind a desk on a news broadcast set. The video is titled: “How does Utah’s Anti-Trans Law Work?” description ends]

Auto-generated captions. Eye contact.

They have criminalized being trans in public.

How Many Of Us?

How many people are affected by the recent waves of GOP-led anti-LGBTQ+ legislation? The data is not usually part of their lawmaking. In the past three years at least 21 states have passed laws targeting gender-affirming care for transgender people, or making it illegal for transgender kids to play sports, or made it a crime for transgender people to use the correct bathrooms. But missing from…

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Florida's CS/HB 1521 is so insidious. It's not only a standard bathroom ban but also mandates that domestic violence centers be segregated by sex which is another horrific way to put trans women in situations where they could be hatecrimed or killed (keep them in abusive situations or on the streets). It's at the Senate right now.

Saw this mentioned on Instagram and holy fuck I hadn't even considered it....

Tennessee's anti-drag laws would criminalize Purim celebrations.

Purim Spiels usually involve a lot of drag, and it's often a tradition in Orthodox congregations for a Rabbi to dress up as Queen Esther or Vashti in the Purim Spiel. As a kid, all the Rabbis at my Jewish day school would put on a Purim Spiel, and yes, two Rabbis dressed in drag to play Queen Esther and Queen Vashti. Even in more socially conservative Jewish communities, Purim is the one instance where you'll see cishet men wear make-up and glitter. Purim has always involved a lot of cross-dressing and gender-bending and flamboyant make-up and costumes.

And I mean if you're a Christian and you don't care about Jews .....this would also criminalize Mardi Gras celebrations.

"Georgia Republicans bundled over a dozen measures that targeted the state’s transgender residents into omnibus packages in a desperate attempt to get them passed. In a stunning defeat for the GOP, every single one of them failed.

Legislators gutted bills that had passed through committee and instead stuffed them full of their anti-LGBTQ+ wishlist items.

Bills that would ban transgender students from playing on teams aligned with their gender identity, ban transgender students from bathrooms aligned with their gender identity, opt parents into notification for every book a student checks out of the library, bar sex education before sixth grade, make all sex-ed classes opt-in and expand obscenity laws to make it easier to ban books with LGBTQ+ content all failed.

“MAGA politicians in Georgia tried it all in service to their anti-LGBTQ+ agenda,” said Human Rights Campaign Georgia State Director Bentley Hudgins, “including silencing debate and gutting unrelated, popular bills that had bipartisan support to ram through policies that would have put young LGBTQ+ Georgians in harm’s way. They failed.”

“It’s undeniable that the tides are shifting, both here in Georgia and across the nation,” Georgia Equality executive director Jeff Graham added. “Anti-LGBTQ actors are losing their political power, and more and more Georgians who know and love LGBTQ people are standing up against their baseless fear-mongering.”

In Florida recently, nearly two dozen anti-LGBTQ+ bills were defeated in the wake of Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s (R) presidential campaign implosion, dozens of measures in Virginia were tabled [Note: In the US, "tabled" means "shelved" or "taken out of consideration - the opposite of its meaning in the UK and other places], and Ohio’s governor backed off his attempt to restrict gender-affirming care access for transgender adults and minors. 

Meanwhile, in D.C., Democrats successfully excised 50 anti-LGBTQ+ provisions in the two budget bills passed and signed by President Joe Biden to fund the federal government.

Even Fox News has been forced to acknowledge transgender issues are among the lowest-priority concerns among voters."

-via LGBTQ Nation, April 1, 2024