Transcript below the fold.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Hey, how about some good news, about people who are making other people’s lives better? All you have to do is go to a Democratically controlled state, you know, like Minnesota. High school kids have been lobbying for free menstrual products, and the state legislature is going to approve it!
Students and their allies have pressed lawmakers for years to address the problem they describe as “period poverty.” They detailed the indignities of struggling with periods at school without the products they need or the means to buy them. They framed it as a public health issue for those who viewed it as just a hassle.
The payoff for that hard work may come soon. Minnesota lawmakers appear poised to pass a bill requiring Minnesota public schools serving students in grades four through 12 to provide free pads, tampons or other menstrual products to students in all restrooms.
Advocates credit students for speaking out publicly and refusing to let the issue be ignored at the Capitol. Elif and other teens say in the fight they’ve learned some real-world lessons on power, persistence and making change.
It makes sense, it gives people dignity, it improves education. It looks like it also teaches students that they have the power to make a difference.
I think he’s one of those country-western singers I turn off the instant I hear them on the radio, but I had no idea he was so courageous. Travis Tritt has taken the bold step of dictating that concert venues must provide him with an alternative brand of free beer, because Budweiser has a trans spokesperson.
The courage! He knows that other artists might be afraid of stating their principles in public for fear of being ridiculed and canceled! But not Travis Tritt! He will boldly be ridiculous without worrying about ridiculed! In that, he shares an attribute with professional clowns. He might not be afraid of being laughed at, but he is terrified of trans women. Oh no! Dylan Mulvaney is laughing at him!
Maybe certain Kansans are going to oppose the “woke” by drinking Coors, but I have news for them.
Coors Light has been a sponsor of the Center on Colfax and the Pride Parade and Denver PrideFest for nearly two decades,” said Molson Coors spokesperson Michael Nordman. “Our Pride runs mile high so we are excited to support the Center’s vital programs and services that positively impact the LGBTQ community.”
Thanks to support from companies such as Molson Coors, Denver PrideFest has become the largest celebration of LGBTQ pride in the Rocky Mountain region.
I’m still not going to drink it.
Kansas has passed a law to ban transgender athletes which has a few incidental consequences.
The legislation, which takes effect July 1, requires children to participate in school activities based on the gender assigned to them at birth. The Kansas Reflector reports that challenges could require a student athlete to undergo genital inspections or require a birth certificate for proof of the child’s gender.
Following the vote, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach applauded the legislature’s override of the governor’s veto.
“As the father of five daughters who are involved in sports, I care deeply about the fairness in girls’ sports,” Kobach said. “If any group challenges this law in court, I will defend it vigorously. And I am confident that the law will survive any challenge.”
Caring deeply about your daughters means insisting that they be available for genital inspections. I’m not going to look, but this sounds like a scenario you’d find on PornHub.
Now here’s a weird flex.
I believe there might be a small locus of science-belief centered around Lawrence, but the rest of the state is a benighted nest of bible-thumpers, so I disagree with his bigoted claims about “biological women.” Also, I told you conservatives have recently lost what little sanity they had over “woke beer,” that is, Budweiser.
I drink neither Coors nor Bud, and I’m not going to make a choice because of an imagined “woke” connection.
The puckered sphincters who run Wisconsin schools constricted a little more. They banned a song from a first grade class.
Administrators at a Wisconsin elementary school stopped a first-grade class from performing a Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton duet promoting LGBTQ acceptance because the song “could be perceived as controversial.”
Students at Heyer Elementary School in Waukesha had prepared a rendition of “Rainbowland” for their spring concert, but school officials struck the song from the lineup last week. Parents in the district say the decision was made because the song encourages LGBTQ acceptance and references rainbows.
Superintendent James Sebert, who did not immediately return a call on Monday, confirmed to Fox6 that administrators had removed “Rainbowland” from the first-grade concert because it might not be “appropriate for the age and maturity level of the students.” He also cited a school board policy against raising controversial issues in classrooms.
Sebert has previously prohibited rainbows and pride flags from being displayed in Waukesha classrooms and suspended the school district’s equity and diversity work in 2021.
It’s just hatred all the way down, isn’t it? Mr Sebert must gnash his teeth in frustration when he steps outside after a rain. All these horrible people with sticks up their ass seem to be pretty good at clawing their way into positions of petty power, I must say.
Of course, you know what I must do: I must post the song and help it spread.
Damn. That’s so obscene…to a dirty little mind.
The Republican legislature in Kentucky assembled a set of those inhumane, ignorant anti-trans laws, and handed it to the Democratic governor…who vetoed it. Good work, Governor Andy Beshear!
Kentucky’s Democratic governor issued an election-year veto Friday of a sweeping Republican bill aimed at regulating the lives of transgender youths that includes banning access to gender-affirming health care and restricting the bathrooms they can use.
The bill also bans discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools and allows teachers to refuse to refer to transgender students by the pronouns they use. It easily passed the GOP-dominated legislature with veto-proof margins, and lawmakers will reconvene next week for the final two days of this year’s session, when they could vote to override the veto.
Gov. Andy Beshear said in a written veto message that the bill allows “too much government interference in personal healthcare issues and rips away the freedom of parents to make medical decisions for their children.”
In his one-page message, he warned that the bill’s repercussions would include an increase in youth suicides. The governor said, “My faith teaches me that all children are children of God and Senate Bill 150 will endanger the children of Kentucky.”
Wait a minute…Kentucky? Who do I know who lives in Kentucky?
Right. You can guess how he responded.
Another politician showing blatant disregard for young people, for science, for parents and for God’s Word by Vetoing legislation he claims would harm children, but the opposite is true.
Children and young people do not have the maturity to make life altering decisions (that are destructive regardless) advocated by the LGBTQ movement. So sad many will destroy their lives because politicians deny the obvious, there’s only two genders of humans, male and female. Science confirms it as males have a pair of XY chromosomes and females a pair of XX. And of course, God’s word makes it clear:
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).
Does anyone else feel stirrings of rage when a know-nothing, superstitious dogmatist like Ken Ham decides to declare what science has determined, and gets it all wrong, while relying on his authority as a preacher to persuade people to accept his views? No? Just me?
I’m not as irritated when he tries to explain what his version of the Bible says, since I don’t give a good goddamn about the book or his interpretation of it. Although I am confused by his Bible quote.
So God created male and female in his image
…how does that work, exactly? Do both men and women look like god? If we’re going to get all literal on this, as Ham prefers to do, does that imply that god is a bipedal primate with ambiguous genitalia, or is he some kind of shape-shifter? Does his god have XX chromosomes, or XY, or some other combination? I don’t really care what the answer is, since I think it’s all bullshit, but you know, Ham claims that God’s word makes it clear,
and it’s anything but.
Ham goes on to complain about bathrooms, of course.
What a travesty that this Governor would allow males to use women’s restrooms (and vice versa). By allowing young people to use the bathrooms of their choice is certainly a denial of the sin nature of man and what can happen because of that. Governor Beshear refers to his “faith,”—he needs to refer to the clear teaching of the Word of God on gender! The Governor does not own children, they belong to parents and ultimately to God. And they certainly don’t belong to teachers.
It’s been a long time since I read the Bible, but I have to ask: is there a commandment about men’s and women’s restrooms in there? Personally, I think people should be allowed to use the restroom of their choice, because what they’re going to do in there is to privately relieve themselves, and that’s about it. OK, maybe wash their hands, touch up their makeup, that sort of thing. They are not dens of sin.
Also, the idea that parents “own” kids is offensive. Parents have a responsibility for their children, which is not the same as possession, and society can step in when they fail in, or violate those responsibilities.
Actually, contrary to what Gov Beshear claims, what the Kentucky legislature passed have passed are the strongest bills in the nation protecting kids, parents and teachers! Notice how the media always like to portray such legislation as “anti-trans” instead of “pro-children, pro-family, pro-parents” etc. Media like to use words they think will cause people to believe those passing such legislation are full of hate–which is not the truth at all. Yet, I often see hate from people directed at Christians/conservatives because they won’t comply with the LGBT worldview.
Trans kids exist and should have rights. The primary consequence of those bills is to deny trans kids their autonomy (I know, Ham doesn’t believe children should have that) and cause active harm. They also deny parents their right to fulfill their responsibilities and provide appropriate care to their children.
I will concede that the people behind that legislation might not be full of hate. They’re full of stupidity and selfishness, instead.
Men these days have decayed from the power and virility of their forebears. Think of those mountain men who’d go off into the wilderness alone and hunt and fish and trap and live off the land, to return after months or years with a sledge loaded with valuable animal pelts. They were awesomely self-sufficient. We have degraded over time, to the point where some men are little more than weak parasites on society who depend on others to tend to their frail, fragile selves and pathetic needs.
I speak, of course, of American conservatives.
These smug, self-satisfied little ‘men’ chortle and laugh as they’re asked if they would rather do dishes or laundry…and admit with an air of pride that they don’t do either. Not only are they ineffectual and incapable, they are vain about their deficiencies. It makes them a special elite, I guess.
Listen. It makes them spineless atavisms.
Here’s what a real man should be able to do:
(This is what a real woman should be able to do, too, so maybe it’s a list of what real humans do.)
These guys have gone from whining about “stand up straight” and “clean your room” to bragging about their incompetence at elementary chores. I do all those things, including washing dishes and doing laundry, and I’m a wokefied candy-ass liberal who uses pronouns.
On the bright side, American conservatives are on the road to extinction.
Not even the ones who seem nice and kindly. They’ve all got a dogma driving them. Pope Francis has said some stupid things, as the Daily Wire gleefully reports.
“Gender ideology, today, is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations,” Francis said. “Why is it dangerous? Because it blurs differences and the value of men and women. All humanity is the tension of differences. It is to grow through the tension of differences. The question of gender is diluting the differences and making the world the same, all dull, all alike, and that is contrary to the human vocation.”
What is “gender ideology”? Because, near as I can tell, it’s simply that all people are of equal worth, no matter what their sex or gender or sexual preferences. Gender is not an ideology. It’s just who people are.
He thinks it’s dangerous because it blurs the differences and value of men and women. I think men and women are of equal value, so “blurring” doesn’t matter. What differences in value is he concerned about? Also, I’m not seeing any blurring of differences, I’m seeing a celebration of differences, where people with non-mainstream ideas are being allowed to flourish.
What are these “tensions” he’s talking about, and how does the “question of gender” (what question?) dilute them? Diminishing differences, requiring everyone to fit into one of precisely two molds, is what would make the world dull and all alike. Would it make the world less dull if we told all the florists you’re only allowed red roses and white lilies? It would certainly increase some tensions.
Also, a Catholic pope does not get to complain about ideological colonization. Catholicism is definitely an ideology, unlike gender, and has been on a campaign of forced ideological conversion for over a thousand years. It’s ironic to complain about “ideological conversion”, but I guess that only applies to imaginary ideologies he doesn’t like.
