Oh Fuck. No.

ND Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem

ND Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem

Oh, look, I get to hang my head in shame now, along with a lot of other people. Fuck.

North Dakota Republican Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said Friday morning he will file a lawsuit against the federal government over transgender bathroom policies.

Stenehjem said he is working to bring together a “coalition” of attorneys general to file a lawsuit next week in the Eighth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, which includes North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas. Officials from 11 states, led by Texas, took legal action this week over the Obama administration directing public schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identities.

Stenehjem said the lawsuit he’s bringing is “basically the same” as the one brought by the other states.

[…]

Kylie Oversen, chairwoman of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party, said it was “disappointing to see Stenehjem’s response to this directive.”

“Whether it’s at the workplace, in housing, the voting booth, or public spaces, discrimination in all forms is flat out wrong,” she said in an email.

State Rep. Marvin Nelson, the Democratic candidate for North Dakota governor, was also critical of Stenehjem’s decision. He said transgender people are probably the least likely to want to “create an issue in the bathroom.”

“I don’t know why the state of North Dakota would be spending money on this lawsuit,” Nelson said, adding other states have already taken legal action.

Via Inforum, full story here.

Stenehjem isn’t joining the existing lawsuit against the government, he’s writing up his own, but says it will mirror what other states are doing.

That statement welcomed from the North Dakota School Board Association.

“This will give courts the opportunity to really consider the legitimacy of the Obama Administration’s directive,” says Jon Martinson, who is a part of the School Board Association.

The School board association says Obama’s proposal isn’t specific enough on who is a transgender child.

“A simple declaration that now on Wednesday, I’m a female, I’m declaring myself a female, although genetically and biologically I’m a male, and I want to be able to use now the women’s bathroom and the women’s locker room, is not going to fly,” said Martinson.

[…]

“Children and their education shouldn’t be politicized like this,” says Kristen Benson, Family Therapist

Benson says she often hears horror stories about life for those in the transgender community.

“She was a transgender child and she was so scared to use the restroom and didn’t feel like they didn’t have the support at school, so they didn’t eat or drink anything while at school. Because that is how they could avoid this issue, and no child should have to do that,” says Benson.

[…]

A debate of a political or lived experience, that will take months and money to fight.

“It’s a travesty that we are wasting time, energy and money to prevent children from using the restroom when there are children in this state who aren’t eating,” said Benson.

Via WDAY6, full story here.

Going back to the Inforum article for a moment, I took part in their poll:

Poll

Eliminating Conflict by Design.

Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League shared a potential design for a gender-neutral restroom that the theater chain hopes to build at its new location. (Courtesy of Alamo Drafthouse)

Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League shared a potential design for a gender-neutral restroom that the theater chain hopes to build at its new location. (Courtesy of Alamo Drafthouse)

While activists and officials on both sides of the debate are lawyering up, the founder of a popular Austin movie-theater chain has unveiled plans for his business to sidestep the debate altogether, before it’s had a chance to fully take root in Texas.

The idea, outlined on Facebook by Alamo Drafthouse Cinema founder Tim League, is to design a restroom that is “comfortable for all genders.”

“Instead of taking sides on whether or not sexual predators will be invading the restrooms of our stores or public schools, we’ve been thinking about what an inclusive commercial gender-neutral restroom design might look like so that these challenges are not even part of the dialogue,” League’s post says. “The consensus was that we’d have a room with ‘standing’ toilets (heck, we’re even looking at those all-gender urinals) and individual rooms with sinks, mirrors and trash cans in each room, our ‘seated’ toilet area.”

“I don’t want to have any ‘men’ or ‘women’ signs in the building,” the post adds.

[…]

The restroom would be placed in the next Alamo Drafthouse location, League said, noting that he has been working with an architect.

His Facebook post includes a drawing of the evolving design that he hopes will meet city code.

What exactly a gender-neutral urinal looks like remains an open question, even for those involved in designing one.

“It’s new territory,” Alamo Drafthouse architect Richard Weiss told NBC affiliate KXAN. “It’s something we’re looking into. It’s essentially a urinal that has a throat that comes out, it’s a deeper stall.”

“The ultimate goal,” he added, “is that everybody should be able to do what they want to do where they want to do it.”

[…]

In a subsequent Facebook post, League clarified his position on transgender people and restrooms.

“My intent on the previous post was to discuss architectural design details for the proposed bathroom,” he wrote.

But, he added, he does not consider himself a neutral voice on the issue. Instead, he’s taken a side.

“My side is that bigotry and the associated violence and/or shaming stemming from your choice of stall is unacceptable,” he wrote. “But changing that mindset is likely going to take a long time. My hope is that by changing the design of restrooms we can in the meantime avoid some potential violence.”

He told KXAN that he was moved to take action by stories of young people becoming targets of violence.

“It’s the stories you hear of transgender kids getting beat up in high school bathrooms,” League said. “That’s a real problem and like I say, you can’t necessarily change everybody’s mind immediately on these issues, but you can hopefully by design eliminate conflict.”

Full Story Here. And a Way to Go! to Tim League, for being thoughtful, for listening, for caring, and for seeking a solution.

Make that Twelve. Again.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin speaks during the 145th NRA Convention inside Freedom Hall on Friday afternoon. May 20, 2016(Photo: Alton Strupp/The Courier-Journal)

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin speaks during the 145th NRA Convention inside Freedom Hall on Friday afternoon. May 20, 2016(Photo: Alton Strupp/The Courier-Journal)

FRANKFORT, Ky. – Kentucky is joining 11 other states in their lawsuit against the federal government over its transgender bathroom guidelines.

“The federal government has no authority to dictate local school districts’ bathroom and locker room policies,” Gov. Matt Bevin said in a statement Friday announcing Kentucky will join the case. “The Obama administration’s transgender policy ‘guidelines’ are an absurd federal overreach into a local issue.”

Also in his news release, the Republican governor took a swipe at Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear.

“Unfortunately, Attorney General Andy Beshear is unwilling to protect Kentucky’s control over local issues,” he said. “Therefore, my administration will do so by joining this lawsuit. We are committed to protecting the 10th Amendment and fighting federal overreach into state and local issues.”

Beshear responded that Bevin’s statement “is not truthful.”

Beshear’s statement said, The Office of the Attorney General has been closely reviewing this matter. On the day the federal government issued its guidance, the governor stated he was researching legal options. I expected to be consulted on those options, but my office has not received a single phone call from the governor or his attorneys on this matter … Sadly, this is another example of the governor’s office playing politics instead of trying to work with us.”

The Full Story Here.

Back to Eleven.

Attorney General Jim Hood. AP Photo.

Attorney General Jim Hood. AP Photo.

Yesterday, Gov. Phil Bryant hollered “Twelve!”, referring to his state joining up with eleven others to sue the government over transgender rights. Today, it seems the Governor is on his own:

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood says the state will not be joining a lawsuit against the federal government, despite Gov. Phil Bryant’s plan to be involved.

“Gov. Bryant has now joined the suit on behalf of his office, but not the state,” Hood said Thursday in an online statement, referring to the governor’s plan to bypass his authority. “Only the attorney general can represent our state in such lawsuits, which includes all branches of government and, more important, all of the people of our state. I cannot lend the name of the state of Mississippi to this lawsuit.”

Clay Chandler, a spokesman for the governor, told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., that the  Democratic attorney general refused to join in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday by Texas and 10 other states. The 11 states are suing the Obama administration over the guidance it issued May 13 that suggests public schools respect the gender identity of transgender students. Chandler told the paper that the governor had plans to use one of his own staff attorneys in the suit.

[…]

Hood wrote in his online statement that transgender people have been using the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity for many decades. “This activity by a small percentage of people has gone virtually unnoticed by our society for probably a century,” he continued.

Since there has been no “enforcement action brought by the federal government against a Mississippi school” because of the guidance, Hood says he will not be taking steps toward joining the lawsuit at this time.

I’d feel better if Hood hadn’t tacked on an “at this time”, but at least it is a sensible reaction, a rare commodity these days. Full Story Here.

A Girl in the Bathroom! Humiliation! Intimidation!

Matt Stewart (WDIV).

Matt Stewart (WDIV).

Matt Stewart said his 9-year-old son told him a girl who identifies as a boy was permitted to use the restroom alongside him at Southwest Elementary School in Livington, reported the Detroit Free Press.

“My son informed me there was a girl in the bathroom with him and the other kids in his class,” Stewart told WXYZ-TV.

He said a staff member was present when several children used the boys’ restroom at the same time.

[…]

Stewart has demanded answers from the Howell Public Schools Board of Education, but he said administrators cited privacy rules and have declined to comment on the matter — so he’s keeping his boys, who are all under age 10, home in protest.

“I have three children in Southwest Elementary School and they are being humiliated and intimidated,” Stewart said. “Our kids are absent from school until there’s a policy in place that keeps them from being humiliated or intimidated.”

[…]

“The bottom line: A 9-year-old girl is in the boys’ bathroom with my son,” the father said, saying no safeguards were in place to keep the girl from walking out of a bathroom stall and see a boy urinating.

Ummm, so are you worried about your boys being in the same room with a girl (the horror!), or a trans boy seeing a penis? Much ado over nothing indeed.

Full Story Here.

A Lavatory Story.

How did public bathrooms get to be separated by sex in the first place? May 26, 2016 10.03pm EDT A 19th-century photograph of a women’s restroom in a Pittsburgh factory. Author provided

How did public bathrooms get to be separated by sex in the first place? May 26, 2016 10.03pm EDT A 19th-century photograph of a women’s restroom in a Pittsburgh factory. Author provided.

…In fact, laws in the U.S. did not even address the issue of separating public restrooms by sex until the end of the 19th century, when Massachusetts became the first state to enact such a statute. By 1920, over 40 states had adopted similar legislation requiring that public restrooms be separated by sex.

So why did states in the U.S. begin passing such laws?

[…]

Nonetheless, American culture didn’t abandon the separate spheres ideology, and most moves by women outside the domestic sphere were viewed with suspicion and concern. By the middle of the century, scientists set their sights on reaffirming the ideology by undertaking research to prove that the female body was inherently weaker than the male body.

Armed with such “scientific” facts (now understood as merely bolstering political views against the emergent women’s rights movement), legislators and other policymakers began enacting laws aimed at protecting “weaker” women in the workplace. Examples included laws that limited women’s work hours, laws that required a rest period for women during the work day or seats at their work stations, and laws that prohibited women from taking certain jobs and assignments considered dangerous.

Midcentury regulators also adopted architectural solutions to “protect” women who ventured outside the home.

Architects and other planners began to cordon off various public spaces for the exclusive use of women. For example, a separate ladies’ reading room – with furnishings that resembled those of a private home – became an accepted part of American public library design. And in the 1840s, American railroads began designating a “ladies’ car” for the exclusive use of women and their male escorts. By the end of the 19th century, women-only parlor spaces had been created in other establishments, including photography studios, hotels, banks and department stores.

It was in this spirit that legislators enacted the first laws requiring that factory restrooms be separated by sex.

[…]

Finally, Victorian values that stressed the importance of privacy and modesty were subjected to special challenge in factories, where women worked side by side with men, often sharing the same single-user restrooms.

It was the confluence of these anxieties that led legislators in Massachusetts and other states to enact the first laws requiring that factory restrooms be sex-separated. Despite the ubiquitious presence of women in the public realm, the spirit of the early century separate spheres ideology was clearly reflected in this legislation.

Understanding that “inherently weaker” women could not be forced back into the home, legislators opted instead to create a protective, home-like haven in the workplace for women by requiring separate restrooms, along with separate dressing rooms and resting rooms for women.

Thus the historical justifications for the first laws in the United States requiring that public restrooms be sex-separated were not based on some notion that men’s and women’s restrooms were “separate but equal” – a gender-neutral policy that simply reflected anatomical differences.

Rather, these laws were adopted as a way to further early 19th century moral ideology that dictated the appropriate role and place for women in society.

The whole article is very good, click over and read.

Make That Twelve.

Gov. Phil Bryant. AP Photo.

Gov. Phil Bryant. AP Photo.


On Wednesday, I posted Eleven States Sue in the Name of Bigotry. Phil Bryant wants to make it twelve.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant plans to join 11 states in a suit against the Obama administration for issuing a guidance document May 13 that suggests public schools allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity.

“In regards to the 11 state lawsuit against the Obama administration over its bathroom directive, our office has talked to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office and I intend, as soon as possible, to join the lawsuit against this latest example of federal overreach,” the governor wrote on his Facebook page Thursday.

Just what it is these asses think they are proving, I don’t know. From my perspective, they are doing a fine job of proving their brains are atrophied and their prime characteristic is that of throwing a temper tantrum.

Full story here.

‘We agree with God’ on controversial HB2.

PHOTO/LATISHA CATCHATOORIAN.

PHOTO/LATISHA CATCHATOORIAN.

RALEIGH – U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, with the support of President Obama, recently referred to transgender struggles as an issue of “civil rights.” Faith leaders who stood in front of the Capitol building Tuesday called Lynch’s remarks “offensive.”

“We’re here to debunk and dispel the many fallacious ideologies that people have attached to HB2, which is simply common sense legislation,” said John Amanchukwu, youth pastor at Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh. “Our president and our Attorney General Loretta Lynch have made some inflammatory comments and statements that are erroneous at best. A person’s ability to self-identify as something they are not has nothing to do with civil rights.”

“The language of ‘civil rights’ shouldn’t be hijacked to give privileges to the politically vocal while taking away freedoms from people disfavored by government,” said Bishop Patrick Wooden, senior pastor and bishop of Upper Room Church. “As you can see, I am African-American. I have been African-American since birth; God made me this way. For the attorney general to equate the legitimate struggle of the civil rights movement to the things that HB2 stands for is embarrassing and is wrong.”

Clarence Henderson, chairman of the Governor’s Commission on Civil Rights, participated in the Greensboro Woolworth sit-ins during the civil rights movement. He said transgender identity is a “feeling” and that to call it a “movement” offends him.

“I stand before you to tell you what civil rights is and what it isn’t. It certainly isn’t transgender (identification)… If you were born a man, that’s who you are. If you were born a female, that’s who you are. Tell me how you’re going to tell the families that came on those slave ships, in chains… tell their families (that it is comparable) to transgender (identity),” he said. “You tell me how many transgender people have been lynched.”

Oh, so now people have to be lynched to qualify for human rights? How about transgender people being disproportionately murdered every day? How about them being beaten and harassed at a continuous high level? How about continuous discrimination? I guess only lynchings will do.

Pastor Kenneth Fontenot, senior pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Wilson, said no law intended to protect a minority should be passed at the expense of the majority. “The laws passed in the 1960s did not bless black people while they hurt white people,” he said.

Really? There were a whole lot of white people at the time who would have most seriously disagreed with you.

Fontenot highlighted his point by pouring maple syrup on a stack of bread, saying that covering bread in syrup does not make it pancakes.

If you don’t have the money or means to make pancakes, syrup on bread will do nicely. Maybe you prefer bread with syrup, so what? Pancakes are made with same fucking ingredients as bread. You could say it’s just a matter of expression.

“It has become more and more challenging each day to witness our common sense liberties and freedoms being challenged and assaulted by an overreach of more and more government. I strongly believe that restrooms and showers separated by biological sex is common sense, not discrimination,” said Leon Threatt, senior pastor at Christian Faith Assembly in Charlotte.

Gabriel Rogers, senior pastor at Kingdom Christian Church in Charlotte, said that just like God loves everyone, so do the ministers, but if the government gives liberties to transgender people, it’s difficult to police the ill-willed with predatory intentions protected by the same law.

Oh yes, because we’re doing such a great job of policing the ill-willed with predatory intentions now, aren’t we? You can’t even manage to police all the ill-willed predatory actions by those who consider themselves upright people of god.

“What are we going to do with the trauma when our young girls and our young boys are exposed to (opposite sex) genitalia? What are we going to do when someone is confused about their own sexuality because they’ve been exposed to someone who was confused in and of themselves?” he said.

Oh my, the horrible trauma! FFS, aren’t there actual traumas you could wring your hands over?

Jimmy Bention, pastor of Metrolina Christian Center Church of God in Christ in Monroe, was incredulous when he said society is “soft-shoeing” the issue because the conversation is about  “penises and vaginas.”

No, it isn’t. And why are you talking about genitals at all when they are capable of causing irreparable trauma?

Added Wooden: “The African-American community is not monolithic. We’re not rogue pastors. We’re not ashamed to admit we agree with God.”

Golly, I must have missed the world-wide announcement from “god”. Can we get a replay, please?

Source.

Eleven States Sue in the Name of Bigotry.

11

AUSTIN, Tex. — The Obama administration on Wednesday faced its first major challenge to its directive this month about the civil rights of transgender students in public schools, as officials in 11 states filed a lawsuit that tested the federal government’s interpretation of the statute forbidding sexual discrimination.

The states, including Alabama, Georgia, Texas and Wisconsin, brought the case in a Federal District Court in North Texas and said that the Obama administration had “conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process and running roughshod over common sense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”

[…]

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, repeating a pledge from the days of Texas independence, called the issue a “come-and-take-it moment.” He said that the state was prepared to vigorously defy the directive and that it would not be cowed by the administration’s pledge to withhold federal funding for non-compliance.

“He says he’s going to withhold funding if schools do not follow the policy,” Mr. Patrick told reporters. “Well, in Texas, he can keep his 30 pieces of silver. We will not yield to blackmail from the President of the United States.”

Full Story Here. UPDATE: The ACLU has weighed in on this bit of mass hysteria.

However, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that is impossible because they will lack standing in court.

“The Supreme Court has made clear that one cannot sue an agency just because they disagree with the agency’s guidance,” the ACLU said in a press release Wednesday. “If these attorneys general disagree with the agency’s interpretation of what the federal ban on sex discrimination means, they can make that argument to the court when it arises in a real case.”

Instead, the ACLU said that this is nothing more than a “political stunt” from conservative states.

James Esseks, director of the ACLU’s LGBT Project said the Texas-based lawsuit is “an attack… on transgender Americans, plain and simple.” He also believes “the real targets here are vulnerable young people and adults who simply seek to live their lives free from discrimination when they go to school, work or the restroom.”

Full Story Here.

San Francisco 49ers Call for a Repeal of N.C.’s Anti-LGBT Law

Jed York, The CEO of the 49ers called HB 2 "bad for our employees, bad for our fans, and bad for business."

Jed York, The CEO of the 49ers called HB 2 “bad for our employees, bad for our fans, and bad for business.”

Jed York, the CEO of the San Francisco 49ers, is calling for a repeal of North Carolina’s anti-LGBT House Bill 2.

The National Football League hosted meetings in Charlotte, N.C., this week. Chris Sgro, the executive direcctor of Equality N.C. and the only openly LGBT person in the North Carolina legislature, says it was during this time that York chose to meet with LGBT advocates and transgender North Carolinians to learn about the impact of the anti-LGBT law. Sgro announced that the 49ers were contributing a gift of $75,000 to the Equality North Carolina Foundation to support the work of the organization.

In a statement published Tuesday, York said the San Francisco 49ers are “deeply concerned” about HB 2 because the team believes that “discriminatory laws” are “bad for our employees, bad for our fans, and bad for business.”

[…]

HB 2 will “make it far more challenging for businesses across the state to recruit and retain the nation’s best and brightest workers and attract the most talented students from across the country,” said York, the CEO of the 49ers. York echoed a fear many North Carolinians have expressed, which is that HB 2 has and will continue to create loss in business for the state. The law will “diminish the state’s draw as a destination for sporting events, tourism and conventions, and new business activity,” the CEO said. York added that his team “prides” itself on inclusivity and will “strongly urge” Gov. Pat McCrory and the North Carolina legislature to repeal HB 2.

Perhaps the threat of no more new NC sports stars will get through to McCrory. Nothing else has worked so far. I am not remotely into sports, but a big Yay! for Jed York and the 49ers.

Full Story Here.

Transgendered Orders from White House.

donald-trump-claims-accommodating-transgender-people-is-too-expensivex750_0

Bill O’Reilly and Donald Trump had a nice little chat about that whole transgender business, which didn’t take long to devolve into the same old, same old. “Eh, this bathroom thing isn’t necessary”, “this isn’t human rights”, and “shockingly expensive”. I’ve run right out of eyerolls, they need new lines.

Trump told the Fox News host that he supports leaving the issue of transgender rights up to the states. “You know Obama’s getting into a very tricky territory,” he said, referencing the guidance issued by the Obama administration. “The amazing thing is so many people are talking about this now and we have to protect everybody even if it’s one person… but this is such a tiny part of our population.”

O’Reilly asked Trump if he provided gender-neutral facilities in his properties. “No, we don’t have that,” replied Trump. “I hope not. Because frankly it would be unbelievably expensive nationwide. It would be hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Trump did not elaborate on how he arrived at this estimate, nor did he acknowlege that in many cases, gender-neutral bathrooms could be established simply by removing gender-specific signs from doors. Additionally, allowing transgender people access to the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity, as Trump previously advocated, costs nothing.

[…]

Trump said he wasn’t sure about whether trans rights are “human rights,” but providing gender-neutral restrooms would be “an unbelievably expensive thing to do,” he told O’Reilly. Instead, the country should be “spending money on other things,” said Trump. “Frankly, the number of people we’re talking about is really a small number. Again protect them — but it’s a very very small number,” said Trump.

Full Story Here. Watch Trump discuss transgender rights, begining at 4:09.

https://youtu.be/IUq70p-PnV0

Trump’s Christian Liaison is…

Frank Amedia, an extremist asshole of the worst kind. Calling him a flaming doucheweasel would be a compliment.

Frank Amedia.

Frank Amedia.

Donald Trump has appointed a “liaison for Christian policy” — a minister who has said AIDS is caused by “unnatural sex” and threatened to withhold relief from Haitian earthquake surviviors if they continued to practice voodoo.

Frank Amedia, pastor of Touch Heaven Ministries, arranged a meeting earlier this month between Trump and several other ministers, Time reports. They discussed the “erosion of religious liberty,” the magazine notes, along with Israel and immigration — the latter being a focus of Trump’s presidential campaign, with his call to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and his plan to deport all undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

Catering to the religious right, on the other hand, has not been a priority for the presumptive Republican nominee, and he has made some missteps in his references to the Bible. But now with Amedia, he’s joined up with a representative of the conservative Christian fringe.

[…]

In 2010, Amedia was in Haiti distributing food to earthquake survivors, but said he might make further aid contingent on Haitians giving up the practice of voodoo. “We would give food to the needy in the short term, but if they refused to give up voodoo, I’m not sure we would continue to support them in the long term because we wouldn’t want to perpetuate that practice,” he told the Associated Press in a story quoted by Right Wing Watch. “We equate it with witchcraft, which is contrary to the Gospel.” He later tried to walk back the comments, saying AP had not told “the full story,” but still appeared willing to cut off aid if Haitians did not embrace Christianity, according to Christianity Today magazine.

[…]

Go to Right Wing Watch for more on Amedia, including his role in the bribery case; he was never charged, but admitted to attempted bribery in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

Some other ministers who met with Trump have similarly extremist views. Rick Joyner of Morning Star Ministries has blamed gay people for Hurricane Katrina and likened Trump to Christ. Sid Roth has said homosexuality will cause a nation to “vomit out” its people. Mario Bramnick, pastor of New Wine Ministries Church in Florida and a representative of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, last year hosted a meeting that called for the “mobilization” of Christians in response to the “demonic shift” brought to the nation by the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling.

The Full Story is Here. Here’s a sample of Mr. Amedia: