Tag: LGBTQ

Bill Proposes Mandating Stricter Guidance with State Curriculum Standards, Limits to LGBT Material

Corinne Murdock

The General Assembly is considering a bill to enforce stricter adherence to state curriculum standards, effectively limiting LGBT instructional materials. The bill was introduced by State Representative Bruce Griffey (R-Paris) last month. State Senator Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains) submitted the companion bill shortly after.

Although the House Education Instruction Subcommittee was scheduled to review the bill on Tuesday, it was rolled back to next week. Griffey told The Tennessee Star that changes will be made to the bill to refocus it on stricter adherence to enforcing current state standards – not just LGBT material in classrooms. 

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Ohio Senate Bill Would Ban Transgender Student Athletes from Women’s Sports

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An Ohio state Senator introduced legislation Tuesday that would prevent transgender girls and women from participating in women’s sports at state K-12 schools and universities.

Senate Bill 132, sponsored by Sen. Kristina Roegner, R-Hudson, would require schools to separate student athletics by sex, not gender. The legislation would apply to public schools as well as public and private colleges and universities.

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U.S. House Passes ‘Equality Act’ Which Religious Conservatives Say Is ‘Conscience-Crushing’

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The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed the “Equality Act” — a piece of legislation that critics say poses a threat to Christian universities.

The Equality Act seeks to “prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation” by providing the “full range of remedies available under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

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Gender and Sexuality Studies Professor Applies Critical Race Theory to the Lives of Shelter Dogs

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A professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of California Riverside claims in a recent book that dogs end up being killed in shelters due to “capitalism, anthroparchy, white supremacy and patriarchy.”

Katja Guenther’s “The Lives and Deaths of Shelter Animals” also says that allowing your dog(s) to sleep inside your house is actually a manifestation of white privilege, reports Areo Magazine.

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Michigan University Promotes Call to ‘Speak with your Legislators’ About Transgender Policies

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A Michigan State University professor psychology professor urged the university community to lobby legislators for transgender policies in order to be an “ally” to the transgender community.

The university published an interview with Jae Puckett, an assistant professor in Michigan State University’s department of psychology clinical sciences program, that discussed “recognizing and respecting trans identities.” 

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Commentary: Enough Already with Using Cartoons and Cookies to Sell LGBTQ Agenda to Kids

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The year 2020 was tough for everyone, children and adults alike. Most school-age kids were forced to attend school virtually, at least for part of the year. This, combined with lockdowns, caused screen time use to surge.

More than usual, parents may fear kids aren’t learning well or are being exposed to things they aren’t yet mature enough to handle. On this, their intuition may be correct: 2020 saw an increase in LGBTQ-friendly marketing targeted at kids.

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Warnock and Ossoff Push ‘New Civil Rights Act’ on Bus Tour for Runoff Election

Corinne Murdock

Democratic candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are promoting a new Civil Rights Act during their bus tour leading up to the January 5 Senate runoff election. The proposed expansions on the current Civil Rights Act would include sexual orientation and gender identity. The act’s reach would also expand to impact policing, prisons, and even private businesses.

Both Warnock and Ossoff support the Equality Act, which would prohibit business owners from not employing or denying their services to LGBTQ+ individuals. There are no provisions within the bill excluding religious beliefs.

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ETSU Student Government Calls for Cutting All Ties with Neighboring Christian University Over Departure of Homosexual Professor

Jason M. Reynolds

The Student Government Association at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) is targeting a private Christian university over allegations that it forced a homosexual professor to resign last spring.

The SGA at the public university on Tuesday voted 17-5 to suggest that ETSU cut its athletics scheduling and financial partnerships with Milligan University and other universities accused of discrimination, the Johnson City Press reported. Milligan is located about five miles from ETSU.

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Student Sues School for Banning Biblical Shirt While Allowing LGBTQ Speech

Corinne Murdock

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.

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POLL: Three-Quarters of All Battleground Voters Say ‘No’ to Men Competing in Women’s Sports

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American Principles Project and SPRY Strategies released polling results this week from 10 presidential election battleground states. In the July 2020 survey, on average 74.8 percent of voters said, “No” and only 25.2 percent said, “Yes” when asked: “Should boys and men who say they identify as transgender be allowed to compete in girls’ and women’s athletics?”

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Commentary: At a School Near You, ‘Whiteness Studies’ Aims to Denigrate Its Subject

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If you had told me a couple of years ago that a book like Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism would be topping the bestseller lists and receiving accolades from all over, I wouldn’t have believed it.

And I’m speaking as someone who, in my 2012 book The Victims’ Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind, warned about the dire ascendancy of identity studies, which are far less about education than about ideological indoctrination and the promotion of social activism.

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Crom Carmichael Points Out the Silver Lining in the Recent LGBTQ Discrimination Ruling

Julie Carr

Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –  host Leahy welcomed in-studio all-star panelist Crom Carmichael.

During the third hour, Leahy and Carmichael discuss the recent Supreme Court ruling that said LGBTQ people can’t be legally discriminated against. 

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Commentary: Transgenderism and the Politics of Irreparable Harm

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For a very long time, conservatives had been engaged in a fighting retreat. They might parry a thrust here or weaken a law there, but overall, they were losing. They fought the New Deal, the Great Society, the Sexual Revolution, gay marriage, and affirmative action. In every case, they lost. The social welfare state expanded, the deficit grew, standards devolved, families dissolved, abortion continued, and, in nearly every department of life, things have declined.

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Scholars’ New Book ‘Inventing Transgender Children and Young People’ Questions Transgender Ideology

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by The College Fix Staff   A new book from a group of academics offers a “dramatic intervention” into the prevailing narrative surrounding transgenderism. In “Inventing Transgender Children and Young People,” a collection of essays challenging the “dangerous” ideology taught in schools and universities, the authors warn of youngsters not being able to have children due to “powerful sex-change drugs,” the consequences of not speaking out against transgender orthodoxy, and teens quickly being labeled “transgender” due to “normal feelings” of bodily discomfort. Contributors to the book include Oxford University’s Michael Biggs, King’s College London’s Heather Brunskell-Evans, and the University of Sydney’s Dianna Kenny, according to the Daily Mail. Dr. David Bell, a consultant psychiatrist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, said the large increase in the number of females seeking sex changes “cannot be explained by individual factors alone,” nor is the new atmosphere of feeling free to “come out” responsible. “Many services have championed the use of medical and surgical intervention with nowhere near sufficient attention to the serious, irreversible damage this can cause and with very disturbingly superficial attitudes to the issue of consent in young children,” he said. The book also features accounts by whistleblowers who…

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Big Brothers Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee Actively Targeting the LGBTQ Community to Recruit Mentors

Laura Baigert

  A new marketing campaign by Big Brothers Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee (BBBSMT) is actively targeting members of the LGBTQ community for its recruiting efforts of mentors for young people. The Facebook page of BBBSMT got a new look on June 7, when the organization updated their profile picture and cover photo to the one shown above. The new look includes a prominent display of the LGBTQ symbolic rainbow in their logo and with apparent representative members of the community literally wrapped in rainbow flags in their cover photo. Later that week, The Tennessee Star received a series of four audio scripts for a radio-type advertisement, titled “Words can hurt,” “School is hard,” “I feel both,” and “When I grow up.” All four scripts follow the same format of an introduction offering an adult narrator’s brief explanation of a scenario faced by a young person. A back and forth dialogue ensues between the adult and a young person, and the script closes with a statement that this is a dramatization of the stories they hear at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee. The closing wraps up with a direct appeal to members of the LGBTQ community, “Your life…

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Putnam County Library Remakes LGBTQ Children’s Display to Highlight ‘Families and Togetherness,’ Tennessee Pastors Network Says

Jason M. Reynolds

  The Tennessee Pastors Network says it won a victory in convincing the Putnam County Library to remake a display promoting LGBTQ children’s books. TNPN President Dale Walker has been petitioning the Putnam County Library to give equal attention to Christian views and traditional marriage that at least match the promotion of the LGBTQ agenda during Pride Month, which is in June, according to a press release from the network. “We feel this is important because Christians feel their biblical worldview is being marginalized in the Putnam County Library, and their children are not seeing a balanced display when they bring them in,” Walker said in a letter to the library. “This is offensive to many Christian families—that their view isn’t also presented equally.” In response to its community, the library removed two displays earlier this month promoting LGBTQ materials to children and families, TNPN said. The library, Walker said, had showcased Pride Month in the children’s reading section. Multiple books, he added, were highlighted as recommended reading to promote the LGBTQ agenda. Few, if any, books, Walker said, promoted Christianity. The library director responded to Walker that a new display “now contains only books celebrating families and togetherness,” along with a…

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Pete Buttigieg Says ‘the Black Church’ Is ‘Still Coming to Terms with LGBTQ Inclusion’

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by Evie Fordham   Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said the black church is “still coming to terms with LGBTQ inclusion” during an interview with BET published Friday. “I’ve had the opportunity to meet with black queer faith leaders and found there is a much more rich and diverse dialogue going on in activist communities of faith. Especially when you think about how the black church has been an original template for what I would call the religious left on civil rights but still coming to terms with LGBTQ inclusion,” Buttigieg told BET. Buttigieg, who is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has attracted media attention in the 2020 presidential race for his thoughtful approach to issues but seems to be just as far-left as many other candidates. His interview with BET focused on issues of race and equity, and he discussed the importance of civil rights training and implicit bias training “in any workforce but certainly in a police department” in the BET interview. Buttigieg was forced in April to walk back comments he made in 2015 when he said “all lives matter.” “So at that time, I was talking about a lot of issues around racial reconciliation and…

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Shaker Heights Ohio Considers Passing a LGBTQ Anti-Discrimination Ordinance

Zachery Schmidt

  The U.S. House of Representatives passed its controversial Equality Act last week, and now a local city council in Ohio is looking to follow suit. Shaker Heights City Council is considering legislation that would create a new chapter in the city code, Chapter 516, which would protect the LGBTQ community against discrimination in the areas of employment and public accommodations. The City Council first discussed the legislation during a May 13 work session. Shaker Heights implemented a Fair Housing Act in 1992 to prohibit discrimination based on race, color and religion. The city amended its Fair Housing Act in 2006 to include “sexual orientation and gender identity,” according to the new anti-discrimination ordinance. Cuyahoga County, where Shaker Heights is located, already passed an ordinance in 2018 that made it illegal “to discriminate in the areas of housing, employment, and public accommodations.” The new Shaker Heights ordinance, like the Cuyahoga County ordinance, seeks to explicitly extend protections to the areas of employment and public accommodations, although it’s unclear what, if any, additional protections the town ordinance would provide that aren’t already covered in the county ordinance. “In Ohio, it’s still legal to fire people or deny them housing simply because they…

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Democrats Unanimous as House Passes Bill Forcing Schools to Let Male Athletes Compete in Girls’ Sports

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by Peter Hasson   The Democratically controlled House of Representatives voted Friday 236-173 in favor of the Equality Act, which would require schools to include male athletes who identify as transgender girls on female sports teams. Eight Republicans crossed party lines to vote for the bill, which had unanimous Democratic support. The bill amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to make “sexual orientation and gender identity” protected characteristics under federal anti-discrimination law. Among other things, that would force public schools to expand female athletic teams to include biological males who identify as transgender girls. Republican Florida Rep. Greg Steube introduced a last-minute amendment to the bill that would have preserved Title IX’s protections of female athletic teams, but Democrats rejected it. Every House Democrat but one co-sponsored the legislation. The only Democrat who wasn’t a co-sponsor, Illinois Rep. Dan Lipinski, announced his support for the bill following pressure from left-wing activists. “People need to wake up. This radical bill is going to totally eliminate women’s and girls sports,” Republican Arizona Rep. Debbie Lesko warned in an op-ed Thursday. Republican Missouri Rep. Vicky Hartzler and a half-dozen other House Republicans held a press conference Thursday in opposition to what Hartzler…

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Ellison Joins Amicus Brief in Support of Non-Binary Colorado Resident Who Had Passport Denied

Anthony Gockowski

  Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced Wednesday that he has joined a “coalition of attorneys general” in defending the “rights of gender non-binary individuals.” According to a press release from Ellison’s office, he is joined in the amicus brief by the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. The case, Zzyym v. Pompeo, centers around Colorado resident Dana Zzyym, who applied for a passport that would “reflect an undisputed fact—that Zzyym was born intersex and is neither male nor female.” “The U.S. Department of State denied the application for the sole reason that Zzyym did not designate ‘M’ or ‘F’ in the field asking for the applicant’s gender and instead identified as ‘intersex.’ Although the Department stated that it would provide a passport listing Zzyym’s gender as ‘M’ or ‘F,’ the Department refused to provide a passport with an ‘X,’ the marker recognized internationally for individuals whose gender is neither male nor female,” the amicus brief explains. The U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado found in a September 2018 ruling that the U.S. Department of State’s gender policy was “arbitrary and capricious and that the passport application denial was in excess…

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Cincinnati Food Truck Association Reportedly Suspends Company for Insensitive T-Shirts

Anthony Gockowski

A northern Kentucky-based barbecue food truck that frequents the Cincinnati area is facing backlash for what some are calling “bigoted” T-shirts. Belle’s Smoking BBQ sells t-shirts that state: “I support LGBTQ: Liberty, guns, bible, Trump, and BBQ.” Owner Jamie Smith said he has been selling the shirts for nearly two years, but wasn’t criticized for them until he posted a picture of one on the company’s Facebook page. According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, the Facebook post went viral and the company received several messages calling the T-shirts bigoted and insensitive. “Simple bigotry … sad commentary for business good luck going broke,” one person responded in outrage. “Wearing that shirt is f—ing offensive,” another added. The Cincinnati Food Truck Association said in a Thursday statement that it “has come to our attention that a member has posted some distasteful content on their business page.” “We would like to reiterate to all of our followers that CFTA relies on and appreciates the support of all members of our community. We support positivity and building a united community. We are currently taking internal appropriate action,” the group wrote on Facebook. By Friday morning, Belle’s Smoking BBQ was allegedly “suspended” pending “a full review…

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Tennessee Republicans Fight To Protect Faith-Based Adoption Agencies From Discrimination

Jason M. Reynolds

Republicans continue to shepherd legislation through the Tennessee General Assembly to protect faith-based child placement agencies against discrimination for exercising their religious liberties provided by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. State Rep. Tim Rudd (R-TN-34) and Sen. Mark Pody (R-TN-17) are the sponsors. The bills are HB 836 and SB 1304. The tracking information is here. The legislation passed recently in the State House by a 67-22 vote. It has been placed on the final calendar of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is expected to be heard either this week or the week of April 23. “The legislation simply states that a private child placement agency that provides a written statement of their religious beliefs and policies that are within that allowed by federal law shall not be sued or (discriminated) against by the state or local government when applying for a license, grants or contracts,” Rudd said in a press release. Co-sponsor State Rep. John Ragan (R-TN-33) said, “This legislation does not change how public or private child placement agencies currently operate or place children. It simply gives protections for agencies exercising their First Amendment liberties.” Rudd said, “This legislation does not prevent or enable adoptions against any group. It…

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Senate DFL Introduces Slate of Identity Politics Bills, Seeks to Loosen Prevention of HIV in Blood Donations

Anthony Gockowski

The Minnesota State Senate plans to introduce 92 new pieces of legislation Monday, several of which are backed by the DFL, and focus on LGBT or race issues. Senate File (SF) 95, for instance, urges President Donald Trump and Congress to direct the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “revise its current blood or plasma donor deferral policy related to men who have had sex with a man and to women who have had sex with a man who has had sex with another man within the previous 12 months from the most recent contact.” The resolution, co-authored by five DFL senators, argues that the United States is “facing a critical shortage of blood donations,” which could be offset by revising an FDA donor deferral policy that “prohibits approximately 19 million American men and women from donating blood and plasma.” “Advances in HIV donor testing have reduced the risk of HIV transmission from blood transmissions to about one in 1.47 million transfusions,” the bill continues, calling for a revised policy “based on individual assessment of the risk posed by the donor.” SF 107, meanwhile, calls for the establishment of a “Council on LGBTQI Minnesotans,” which would consist of “two members…

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Tennessee Pastors Network Raises Alarm Over ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ at Putnam County Library

Jason M. Reynolds

Drag queens may be coming to your local library this year to indoctrinate your children, a pastors association says. The “Drag Queen Story Hour” is returning to Tennessee, this time to the Putnam County Library in Cookeville, the Tennessee Pastors Network said in a press release. The event was scheduled for today. A promotion for the event proclaims: Book reading, crafts and a dance party for children. Join us as local drag queens promote anti bullying. About Organizer: You asked for it, you got it…Middle Tennessee has our very own Drag Queen Story Hour chapter! This is a children’s reading program that focuses on LGBTQ+ love, acceptance and tolerance. Bring your school-aged children to the Putnam County Library the 1s Last August, the drag queens, who travel around the nation, brought their show to the Clarksville-Montgomery County Public Library, The Tennessee Star reported. The Tennessee Pastors Network cautions against the trend. We are seeing further Drag Queen Story Hour readings at public libraries in the Bible Belt,” the network’s President Dale Walker said in a statement. “This should be a matter of grave concern to pastors in Tennessee with a biblical worldview. The LGBTQ isn’t just interested in tolerance, but…

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Oregon Forced Us to Close Our Cake Shop – Here’s What the ‘Masterpiece Decision’ Means for Us

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Aaron and Melissa Klein

by Aaron and Melissa Klein   We are thrilled for our friend, Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop who recently won his case at the Supreme Court. Like Jack, we know what it is like to be treated unfairly by a state agency and mocked, threatened, and abused by critics. We can only imagine the relief Jack is experiencing. At the same time, we wonder what the future holds for our case, our lost business, and our family. Ours may be, as Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, the case that allows “further elaboration in the courts.” And we are encouraged to know that seven justices of the Supreme Court agree that a state’s hostility to the religious beliefs of its citizens will not be tolerated under the First Amendment. In one sense, Jack’s case is very similar to ours. We too declined to create a custom cake that would have required us to express a message our faith teaches against. And, like Jack, we faced a commissioner—Brad Avakian, commissioner of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industry at the time—who was hostile to our religion and biased in his consideration of our case. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values.…

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Parents Just Lost Custody of Teenage Daughter Who Wants to ‘Transition’ to a Boy: What You Need to Know

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Parents in Ohio lost custody of their 17-year-old daughter Friday because a judge ruled that she should be allowed to receive therapy, including testosterone therapy, to identify as a boy. Without commenting on the specifics of this case just outside Cincinnati, Americans can expect to see more cases like it as government officials side with transgender…

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