The Discovery+ network is airing a show about children who dress in hypersexual drag costumes to explore their identities and gain confidence in a new show called “Generation Drag.”
The show will feature five teenagers and their families as they prepare for a performance at “Dragutante,” a drag show aimed at helping young LGBT people express themselves, according to a Discovery+ description.
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An LGBT Senator in Ohio is upset over a recently-introduced bill that would prevent “divisive concepts” from being taught in the classroom.
“HB 616 is more than just about censoring LGBTQ discussion. The bill combines the worst parts of Ohio’s curriculum bans censoring topics of race and intersectionality. A more expansive version of Florida’s Recent Bill,” State Sen. Nickie Antonio (D-District 23) said.
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The Ohio Senate Democrats Thursday marked their party’s holiday – the “Transgender Day of Visibility” – by peddling what is called the “Ohio Fairness Act.”
“Today is #TransDayOfVisibility and Ohio Senate Democrats are committed to creating policies that protect the safety and wellbeing of all Ohioans,” the group said. “Passing the #OhioFairnessAct, introduced by [State Sen. Nickie Antonio (D-District 23)], will ban discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation, creating a more safe and inclusive Ohio.”
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In an MSNBC interview that went viral on the internet, a gay Florida kindergarten teacher says he is hurt after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed into law an anti-grooming bill.
“Personally, my kids do have questions,” said Cory Bernaert, a teacher of five-year-olds. “They want to know who my partner is in pictures outside my classroom, and I should be able to speak to that.”
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A far-left Political Action Committee (PAC) is spending six figures on billboards that say “Say Gay,” in response to a Florida bill that bans kindergarten through third grade teachers from talking to students about sex, gender and sexuality.
“Starting Wednesday these will be going up all throughout Florida. Thank you to everyone who made this possible, especially Ron DeSantis for being a terrible person,” left-wing activist Ally Sammarco said on Twitter.
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The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of a web designer fighting a Colorado law that forces her to promote messages against her religious beliefs, the court announced Tuesday.
Lorie Smith of 303 Creative asked the court to review the 10th Circuits’ ruling that Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act requires Smith to engage in speech that violates her conscience, according to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing her.
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The latest findings from Gallup indicate that the number of American adults who claim to be part of the “LGBT” crowd – lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender – has doubled in the last decade.
ABC News reports that the new percentage of LGBT-affiliated Americans in 2021 is 7.1 percent, which is slightly more than double the previous total of 3.5 percent in 2012. The survey was conducted by interviewing over 12,000 adults in the United States. Of the remaining percentage, 86.3 percent confirmed their heterosexuality, while 6.6 percent did not say one way or the other.
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Two law professors this week argued that the U.S. is on the verge of seeing most states recognize “multiparent families,” a novel familial arrangement that the instructors nevertheless claimed was “hardly new.”
Professors Courtney Joslin and Douglas NeJaime of UC Davis School of Law and Yale Law School, respectively, argued in the Washington Post this week that it “soon could be unremarkable for a child to have three or more legal parents,” with that legal concession “fast becoming reality” throughout the country.
“These new laws have been spurred, in part, by the rising numbers and public profile of LGBTQ families and others with children conceived through assisted reproduction,” they write. “In many of these families, one or more parents are not genetically related to their children, and many states now legally recognize these ‘intended parents.'”
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Two teachers at an elementary school in Lakewood, Colorado have started what they call “Rainbow Fridays” to push LGBT content on children.
According to Denver-based KMGH, Slater Elementary School Social Worker Davanta Greer and Physical Education teacher Karen Schroeder “dress in rainbow gear at the end of each week to perform these dance numbers on social media.”
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The Star News Network has identified a “woke” fifth grade teacher, whose classroom is centered around left-wing propaganda.
Allyson L. Ryoppy teaches 10 and 11-year-olds at Halle Hewetson Elementary School in Las Vegas, Nevada, part of the Clarke County School District.
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Michigan’s 2020 Teacher of the Year openly promotes his political beliefs in his high school classroom.
Owen Bondono teaches ninth grade at Oak Park High School. He won Michigan’s Teacher of the Year in the 2020-2021 school district. He is also a TikTok personality, clocking in at over 11,000 followers.
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Since taking office as Commissioner for the Florida Department of Agriculture, Nikki Fried (D) has made numerous moves backing LGBT advocacy issues. One LGBT advocacy group, Equality Florida, has been a large player in Florida’s progressive politics and receiving an official endorsement can lead to major financial contributions.
Equality Florida previously endorsed then-Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum (D) against Ron DeSantis (R) in 2018. As election day drew nearer, the Human Rights Campaign, another pro-LGBT group, bought more than half a million dollar ad buys encouraging voters to support Florida’s Democrats, including Gillum.
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Amazon removed Daily Wire host Matt Walsh’s children’s book, “Johnny the Walrus,” from its LGBTQ+ bestseller list on Friday.
Walsh’s book reached the top spot on Amazon’s LGBTQ+ bestseller list last weekend, according to the Daily Wire. However, as of Friday, the book can no longer be seen on the list at all, apparently having been removed.
“Amazon has removed my bestselling LGBT children’s book from their LGBT book list. This is an unconscionable attack on gay rights and a horrific example of homophobia and gay erasure,” Walsh posted on Twitter on Friday morning.
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Based on a report by the Florida Capital Star, the Florida Department of Education (DOE) has initiated a review of all links on the FDOE website “to make sure information is relevant, current, and appropriate.”
A report by the Florida Capital Star found that there were external links on the FDOE webpage related to bullying that redirected users to left-wing advocacy groups promoting controversial gender policies. After the report, FDOE officials took down the webpage.
Agriculture Commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried criticized the DeSantis administration for FDOE taking down the webpage. Fried said the move was dangerous for students.
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A transgender assistant professor of sociology and criminology at Old Dominion University (ODU) has been making the media rounds advocating in support of pedophilia, or what he calls “minor attraction,” according to a report from earlier this week.
Allyn Walker is a transgender female – a biological male – who identifies as “non-binary.” Walker also teaches at ODU.
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Chalk displays are common tools for spreading messages on college campuses, but they can also be examples of the different treatment that conservative and liberal students experience.
This semester, a College Republicans’ chapter had their chalk messages defaced while another group of liberal students were able to celebrate National Coming Out Day without harm to their chalk display.
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Twenty-five House members have introduced a resolution to support the free-speech rights of concerned parents speaking at school board meetings nationwide.
The chief proponent of the resolution is Rep. Pete Stauber of Minnesota. Its stated purpose is to “express the sense of the House of Representatives that the First Amendment rights of parents at school board meetings shall not be infringed.”
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Social justice groups are up in arms Thursday over what they have labeled “anti-transgender” bigotry from comedian Dave Chappelle, who recently released a new Netflix special called “The Closer.”
In part of his standup routine, he discusses cancel culture, and how author J.K. Rowling was “cancelled” for an essay she wrote defending the idea of biological sex. For that, she was labeled a “Trans-exclusionary Radical Feminist” (TERF).
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Biologically male athletes have unfair advantages over women, a report from the Sports Councils’ Equality Group released Thursday found.
The Sports Councils’ Equality Group (SCEG) found that there are “retained” differences in an average woman’s strength, stamina and physique compared to the average transgender woman “with or without testosterone suppression.”
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The state of California will no longer sponsor trips to Ohio after the Buckeye State passed what California describes as a discriminatory law against the LGBT community.
A clause in the recently-passed Ohio budget allows medical professionals to opt-out of performing procedures that violate their own moral beliefs. Under the new law, a doctor could, for example, refuse to perform a gender reassignment surgery on moral grounds.
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A provision Ohio’s latest budget bill, which was recently passed, gives doctors the right to refuse service to potential patients on religious and moral grounds.
“This simply puts in statute what the practice has been anyways,” Gov. Mike DeWine (R) reportedly said. “Let’s say the doctor is against abortion, the doctor is not doing abortion. If there’s other things that maybe a doctor has a conscience problem with, it gets worked out, somebody else does those things.”
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A group of Christian college students is suing the U.S. Department of Education, alleging that Title IX’s religious exemption allows federally-funded religious colleges and universities to discriminate against LGBTQ students.
The Religious Exemption Accountability Project filed the lawsuit in an Oregon federal court on March 29. The suit aims to prohibit any students from using federal tuition grants, student loans, and any other federal financial aid at post-secondary schools that uphold biblical beliefs on gender and sexuality.
“REAP’s lawsuit asserts the constitutional and basic human rights of LGBTQ+ students, seeking to end the sexual, physical and psychological abuses perpetrated under the religious exemption to Title IX at thousands of federally-funded schools, colleges and universities across America,” according to the organization’s website.
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An Ohio school has walked back an order requiring teachers to read a script and play a video for students encouraging them to lobby their city council in support of a Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity ordinance.
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Minnesota’s newly proposed social studies standards for public schools place significant emphasis on race, gender, climate change and LGBT issues.
Under the first draft of the proposed standards, students will be asked to “develop a respectful awareness about how ideas and norms about gender have changed over time,” accept that “some forms of slavery continued even after emancipation” and learn how the “fight for social justice” continues today.
Students will also be asked to “analyze how resistance movements in the U.S. have organized and responded to oppression,” and “imagine and work toward an equitable and caring future” in keeping with the social justice model.
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A Tennessee high school student has filed a lawsuit against Overton County School District (OCS) for banning her Biblical shirt while allowing other free speech. The shirt read: “HOMOSEXUALITY IS A SIN – 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.”
OCS claimed that the student’s shirt violated Livingston Academy dress code policy. Although the policy doesn’t define “offensive messages” or “sexual connotations,” Principal Richard Melton determined that the student’s shirt fell under those criteria.
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit last week filed against Shawnee State University by a professor who claims he was retaliated against for refusing to address a transgender student by the student’s preferred pronouns.
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A Michigan business has sued the state’s Department of Civil Rights after it was placed under investigation for refusing to host a same-sex marriage.
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Minnesota taxpayers will fund a number of leftist art projects this year, including the “next season of free Drag Story Hour performances” and a production of “Queertopia.”
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A Michigan-based group has accused Attorney General Dana Nessel of using “police-state tactics” to target Christians, specifically those who hold a traditional view of marriage.
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Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Michigan driver’s licenses could have a gender-neutral option after her office completes a technology overhaul in 2021.
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Dozens of supporters stood outside Secret Identity Comics in Delaware, Ohio Wednesday to welcome the controversial “Drag 101″ class, which was canceled by the Delaware County Library. Originally scheduled for Wednesday, June 5 at the Delaware County Library’s Orange Branch, the class was moved to Secret Identity Comics and funded by an anonymous donor. It took place on the same day and time as originally planned. Kyle Gale, who performs on-stage as “Selena T. West,” appeared in full costume as he was greeted by dozens of supporters. There were no signs of protesters, despite the fact that the library canceled the event on the grounds that it had received “threats.” There was a significant law enforcement presence nearby, and several Delaware City Police cars were seen at Frank B. Willis Intermediate School, less than a block from the event. Additional officers rode by the crowd multiple times on bicycles. Delaware City Police Sergeant Adam Willauer told The Ohio Star there was no trouble or protesters present. “No one has filed any reports about threats,” he said. “We were there because whenever a large crowd is expected, we want to be present for safety.” Speaking on camera with WCMH reporters, Gayle responded to…
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An Ohio library plans to host a “drag 101” program for teenagers to explore the “art of drag” and meet with former Miss Gay Ohio America Selena T. West. “Curious about the art of drag and no idea where to start? Come learn the basics with former Miss Gay Ohio America and local queen, Selena T. West. We will learn about the application of makeup and creating characters, as well as the history of drag,” an online description for the event states. “All genders welcome. Teens only, please.” The event is set to take place on June 5 at the Delaware County District Library’s Orange Branch as part of a number of summer programs for teenagers. The library’s Board of Trustees hosted a public meeting Tuesday night to discuss the event, but its recording of the meeting cut off just ten minutes in. “We are experiencing some technical difficulties in network and signal out here in Ostrander,” the library claimed on Facebook. “We’re going to try to record remaining comments and post.” The library later claimed that “the service at the facility was poor and we have no more recordings from this.” The recording, however, did manage to capture…
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by Rachel del Guidice A rally this weekend will give New Jersey parents an opportunity to oppose a new state law requiring public schools to teach children about the “political, economic, and social contributions” of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. The new law also requires schools to stress such contributions made by disabled persons, but it’s the LGBT education component that prompted organizers to plan the rally. “When you teach about George Washington, you don’t teach that George Washington had sex with his wife and what he did; we teach what George Washington did as a president,” Victoria Jakelsky, a political consultant and parental rights activist in New Jersey, told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday. “But they are twisting it around to say that anyone who is LGBT, they’re going to explain what they did, who their relationships were [with], and incorporate it as gay and lesbian and bisexual people are the history-makers,” Jakelsky, a paralegal by training, said. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed the legislation into law Jan. 31, and it is set to go into effect for the 2020-2021 school year. Jakelsky is among those organizing the rally Saturday from 11…
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State Rep. Tim Schaffer (R-Lancaster) has introduced a bill that he says would close a “loophole in child exploitation laws” after a 9-year-old boy performed in drag at a bar just outside of Columbus. Jacob Measley, who performs under the name “Miss Mae Hem,” sparked outrage online in December after photos of him surfaced performing at JD Hendersons bar in Schaffer’s district. Under House Bill 180, the definition of “endangering children” would be expanded to include a “performance that suggests a minor is participating or engaging in sexual activity” that, “taken as a whole by the average person applying contemporary community standards, appeals to prurient interest.” The bill also states that no Ohioan shall “entice, coerce, permit, encourage, compel, hire, employ, use, or allow the child to act, model, or in any other way participate in, or be photographed for, the production, presentation, dissemination, or advertisement of any material or performance that the offender knows or reasonably should know is obscene, is sexually oriented matter, or is nudity-oriented matter.” “Given our heightened focus on human trafficking and the role money plays in trafficking children, I knew I had to take action to make sure this activity does not occur again,”…
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by Leonard Sax What should you do if your five-year-old son tells you that he is a girl? The proportion of children and young adults who say that they are transgender is rising at an extraordinary rate, not only in the United States but in other countries as well. In 2009–2010, only forty girls in the United Kingdom requested reassignment to the male gender. In 2017–2018, that number was 1,806 girls, a rise of more than 4,000 percent in less than a decade. The UK Government Equalities Office (yes, it’s a thing) has announced that it will investigate. What’s going on? Our nation’s largest association of pediatricians, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), recently released new guidelines for the evaluation and management of children and adolescents who identify as transgender. Previous guidelines have recognized that best practice depends on the age of the child. The great majority of five-year-old boys who say that they are girls will not persist in that conviction; ten years later, most of those boys will say that they are boys. They may be gay, they may be straight, but they are now sure that they are boys. They no longer want to be girls. Five-year-olds are not mature adults. They are young…
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by Tony Perkins Martina Navratilova is an 18-time Grand Slam tennis champion, but now, she’s creating a racket over something else – transgenderism. Turns out, refusing to stick to the LGBT talking points can land you in a lot of hot water with the left, even if you’re someone as famous as this tennis legend. After years of identifying as a lesbian, Navratilova has been one of the sports’ most visible LGBT faces. But not even she is allowed to commit the movement’s most unforgivable crime – speaking the truth. With society knee-deep in a gender-identity crisis, some pro sports are floating the idea of relaxing the rules on traditional competition. If a man identifies as a woman, extremists argue, they should be allowed to compete as one. A lot of people – including Navratilova – disagree, arguing that it would create an unfair advantage for men. For the first time, she explained her position in depth, writing in the Sunday Times of London: “The rules on trans athletes reward cheats and punish the innocent.” She added, “Letting men compete as women simply if they change their name and take hormones is unfair – no matter how those athletes…
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A group of state Democratic senators want to amend the Minnesota education statutes to mandate a “cultural competency training” on topics such as “gender identity” and “implicit bias” for all public school teachers. According to Senate File (SF) 289, the training program would promote “self-reflection, effective interaction with people of different cultures, and discussion on all of the following topics: racial, cultural, and socioeconomic groups; American Indian students; implicit bias; systemic racism; gender identity, including transgender students; sexual orientation; language diversity; and individuals with disabilities.” “Training programs must be designed to increase teachers’ understanding of these topics and teachers ability to implement this knowledge with students, families, and the school community,” the bill adds. SF 289 would amend various sections of Minnesota Statutes 2018 to require that public school teachers “participated in cultural competency training” before obtaining licensure or renewal. Additionally, the bill would require teachers to present “to their local continuing education and relicensure committee” evidence of “work that demonstrates professional reflection and growth in best teaching practices, including among other things, cultural competence.” The bill was introduced by five DFL state senators and referred to the E-12 Finance and Policy Committee for a hearing. A second bill pertaining…
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In one of his first acts in office, Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) signed an executive order seeking to prohibit discrimination on the basis of “gender identity or expression” in state agencies. Executive Order #1 states that it “is the expressed policy of my administration that the executive branch should prevent discrimination and harassment against any class of citizens because of age, race, religion, color, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression,” and so forth. The order is not yet available online, likely because Evers was just sworn in Monday, but he posted a picture of it to his Facebook page. “In addition to the excitement of taking the oath of office today, I had the opportunity to sign my first two executive orders as governor. These orders prevent discrimination in state agencies and recognize the importance of state employees,” Ever said in a Facebook post. “Each person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. This fosters sound government, society, and business, and it’s just the right thing to do.” According to The Capital Times, the order states that any recipients of government contracts or grants can only hire on the basis of merit, and requires the Equal Employment…
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A transgender woman was awarded $20,000 in damages last week by a Dakota County jury who found that the Minnesota Vixen female football team had wrongfully discriminated against the plaintiff. Christina Ginther, who underwent gender-reassignment surgery to transition from a man to a woman, was prevented from playing on the Independent Women’s Football League (IWFL) team after teammates discovered that Ginther is transgender. According to MPR, an attorney representing the Minnesota Vixen argued that league rules state that “a player may not play in the IWFL, unless they are now, and always have been, legally and medically a female, as determined by their birth certificate and driver’s license.” Ginther first went public with the story in March 2017 after filing a discrimination lawsuit against the Minnesota Vixen, owner Laura Brown, and the IWFL. “She said, ‘Well, your numbers were good. But in the process of drawing up player contracts, we looked at your social media and found out that you’re transgender,” Ginther recalled Brown saying. “I hung up the phone and just felt violated,” Ginther said. “I mean, just the sense of, ‘I’m a freak. I’m a defective. I am not worthy to be with this team.’” Ginther later joined…
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by Neetu Chandak The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Friday the University of Iowa violated First Amendment rights after deregistering a student Christian group. Business Leaders in Christ (BLinC) stopped receiving recognition from the public university in November 2017 due to the organization’s statement of faith, which the university found “unwelcoming,” according to the Iowa City Press-Citizen Friday. BLinC was created by the students in the university’s Tippie College of Business. The purpose of the group was to provide a space for Christian students to network, hold group discussions and “keep Christ first in the fast-paced business world,” the DOJ’s statement of interest said. Leaders in the Christian group were required to sign and follow the statement of faith, which included a belief that sexual relations should only occur “between a man and a wife in the lifelong covenant of marriage,” and “every person should embrace, not reject, their God-given sex.” The university deregistered the group over the faith statement and it claimed it made LGBT people unwelcome and therefore was exclusive, a DOJ news release reported. BLinC filed a lawsuit against the university in December 2017. “The University of Iowa in this case de-registered Business Leaders in Christ because university…
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In 2009, when Karl Dean was Nashville’s mayor he signed into law an ordinance making “sexual orientations” and “gender identity” protected classes in Nashville’s non-discrimination employment policy. Two years later, Dean tried to require vendors wanting to do business with the Metro government to include the same LBGT protections in their employment policies. Megan Barry was the Metro Council member that sponsored the 2009 ordinance which did not define the terms “sexual orientations” or “gender identity” which are generally understood to refer to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. The ordinance passed by the Metro Council and signed into law by Dean continues to apply to all Metro employees including public school teachers. Two years later, the Metro Council passed and Karl Dean signed the Contract Accountability Non-Discrimination Ordinance (CANDO) requiring any vendor seeking to do business with the Nashville government to also include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in their employment non-discrimination policies. The Tennessee General Assembly responded by passing the Equal Access to Intrastate Commerce Act which stopped Dean’s CANDO law. The legislature’s action stopped the over-regulating of businesses resulting from Dean’s CANDO law, but it has not slowed the LGBT agenda from advancing in Tennessee. For example, despite efforts in…
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by Spencer McCloy and Monica Burke Events at the July 7 Pride in London parade revealed deepening fractures that could lead to a schism in the LGBT community. A group of eight lesbians interrupted the parade to protest the inclusion of transgender individuals in the LGBT community. One protester shouted, “A man who says he’s a lesbian is a rapist,” referring to a man who identifies as a woman. The Daily Wire cited a flyer shared by anti-transgender lesbians that read, “The trans movement is … coercing lesbians to have sex with men. We firmly condemn this vicious form of anti-lesbianism disguised as progress.” The disruption was a demonstration by the “Get the L Out” campaign, which organizers describe as “a group of lesbian and feminist individuals and organizations, opposing the increasingly anti-lesbian and misogynistic LGBT movement and the erasure of lesbians.” The organizers of the Pride in London parade scrambled to issue an official apology, denouncing the protesters’ message in the days following the parade and calling the protest a demonstration of “bigotry, ignorance, and hate.” Adversaries labeled the protesters and others like them TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), a term the feminists consider a slur. The demonstration produced a large backlash on Twitter: Live from Pride in London…
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LGBT activists were ecstatic Wednesday when word spread that State Representative Gerald McCormick (R-Chattanooga) announced he was dropping his “controversial bathroom bill” following, as the Times Free Press reported, “assurances from Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery that he already can and will step in with legal aid to smaller systems facing lawsuits over LGBT access policies.” But alas, it was short lived – “Fake News,” if you will. A follow-up report by the news outlet clarified that while the McCormick did withdraw the measure, afterward, in an interview, the Chattanooga-area Republican said that he had a new bill in the works he planned on introducing soon that he told the Times, “should be a little clearer,” adding (sarcastically): “…plus, I wanted to give the Democrats time to introduce their own legislation since they’re so opposed to this and in favor of men being in little girls’ bathrooms.” The Times continues: McCormick said he believes the new wording “is a little bit better in terms of just giving the locals common-sense discretion to take care of this problem on their own without lawyers from New York or California coming in and telling some little rural county what to do in their bathrooms.” The…
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Despite being from two different parties, two millionaire gubernatorial candidates, Republican Randy Boyd and Democrat Karl Dean, have used the umbrella of employment discrimination to publicly validate the LGBT agenda. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), LGB (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual), “refers to sexual orientation. Sexual orientation is defined as an often enduring pattern of emotional, romantic and/or sexual attractions of men to women or women to men (heterosexual), of women to women or men to men (homosexual), or by men or women to both sexes (bisexual).” The “T” in LGBT refers to “transgender,” considered by the APA to describe people whose “gender identity, gender expression or behavior” does not match the sex with which they were born or assigned at birth. Gender identity “refers to a person’s internal sense of being male, female or something else; gender expression refers to the way a person communicates gender identity to others through behavior, clothing, hairstyles, voice or body characteristics.” During his tenure as mayor of Nashville and Davidson County, Karl Dean issued Executive Order No.008 ensuring that the issues of “gender, gender identity and sexual orientation” were embedded in the city and county’s employment policies. Randy Boyd voiced his support for the same agenda through…
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The Center for Equality and Social Justice (CESJ) at the University of Kentucky released two policy briefs last week promoting continued protections for DACA recipients and for amending nondiscrimination laws in Kentucky to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Started last year, the center exists “to better understand social inequality” and “to empower scholars, students and the community to advocate for greater social justice,” according to its website. The center reflects the growing entrenchment of progressive ideas in the academic world, even in red states. Economics professor Jenny Minier (pictured above, left) wrote a position paper titled “Immigrants Benefit the Community and Economy,” in which she offers moral and economic reasons for Congress to allow young people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to stay legally in the U.S. The DACA program was started by former President Obama with an executive order and granted young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children a chance to temporarily live and work in the U.S. if they met certain criteria. President Trump has ended the program but given Congress a chance to act. Nearly 800,000 people have been granted DACA status since it began in 2012, and there are currently around 690,000 with DACA status. Recipients…
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California became the first state in America to legally recognize a third gender after Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown signed the legislation Sunday. State drivers’ licenses, birth certificates, and other identity documents will now allow residents to check “non-binary” rather than just male or female, the Sacramento Bee reported Monday. The Gender Recognition Act is one of…
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A Georgia mom is asking questions after her sixth-grade daughter was asked to identify sexual preferences and identities on a school assignment. “Why are they teaching that in school?,” Octavia Parks said to Fox 5 Atlanta. “What does that have to do with life?” Her daughter brought home the assignment last week from a health class at Lithonia Middle School in suburban Atlanta. The assignment had 10 questions asking students to come up with words like gay, lesbian and transgender. Parks said her daughter still watches Nickelodeon and that she’s not ready to explain those words to her. She said she would remove her daughter from the class and also go to the school board. A spokesman for the DeKalb County School District said in statement that “DCSD has been made aware of this alleged event, and is working to verify its authenticity. We will investigate this event and take action, as appropriate, once that investigation is completed.”
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Editor’s update: Despite the risks associated with maintaining the creation of additional, vaguely defined “protected classes,” the Knox County school board acquiesced to Mayor Madeline Rogero’s wishes and voted Wednesday night to keep the extended language in the employee and student handbooks with regards to the school system’s harassment policy. New language was added in 2012 that authors say was intended to protect LGBTQ persons from harassment, however, Chief Deputy Law Director David Buuck told the Knoxville News Sentinel that the change could imperil the school system with more – not less – lawsuits: “It has cost the taxpayers several hundred thousand dollars just to defend those. It’s just not right,” he said. “We have a duty to protect this board also from frivolous lawsuits, and despite what the professor of law said, as soon as you put in some of this wording that people out in this audience are wanting, it’s creating another protected in class in violation of equal protection for all students. “And the minute that happens, one or two of those same attorneys is going to be filing a lawsuit, and we’ll have to go to federal court and defend it.” The News Sentinel broke down the school…
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The Birmingham City Council in Alabama this week passed non-discrimination ordinances that include sweeping protections for LGBT people and spell out criminal penalties for violators. The council on Tuesday unanimously passed an ordinance addressing discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations, and a companion measure addressing discrimination in awarding city contracts. The council will create a human rights commission “to promote principles of diversity, inclusion, and harmony” and to hear complaints. The ordinances also mention other statuses such as race and disability, but the main intent was to offer protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity, which are not covered under Alabama law. The legislation is the first of its kind in the state, though there are more than 200 cities and counties across the country with similar protections. Sexual orientation is defined in the Birmingham legislation as “actual or perceived homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality.” Gender identity is defined as “actual or perceived gender related identity, expression, appearance, or mannerisms or other gender related characteristics of an individual, regardless of the individual’s designated sex at birth.” Violators found to be discriminatory can be fined up to $500. In 2014, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest pro-LGBT activist group, launched an…
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The Family Action Council of Tennessee (FACT) has joined 32 other family policy councils nationwide in filing a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of a Colorado baker accused of discrimination for declining to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the major, closely-watched case involving Jack Phillips and his family business, Masterpiece Cakeshop. The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that a state law could force Phillips to create a custom cake that conveys a message contrary to what he believes as a Christian. Phillips and his attorneys petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMn3WycWJsg The amicus brief was drafted by David French, an attorney and senior writer for National Review who lives in Columbia, about 45 miles south of Nashville. In a letter to supporters, David Fowler, the president of FACT, said joining the amicus brief is in keeping with “our mission to defend free speech and religious liberty.” The Supreme Court has received at least 45 friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the baker. The support comes from 479 creative professionals, 20 states including Tennessee, and 86 members of Congress, all Republicans. A variety of legal experts, civil rights advocates and…
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