Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Aviva Stahl writes that a Christian advocacy group known as Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is seeking to roll back protections that had been put in place in prisons that had enabled transpeople to petition to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity.
For Lagan and the other trans women locked up at Carswell, the new policies were a lifeline. They were allowed to escape the pervasive risks they faced in male custody, including sexual and physical assault from prisoners and guards; they frequently ended up in solitary confinement, either as punishment or, perversely, for “protection.”
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than one third of transgender people held in prisons and jails experience sexual violence, the highest reported of any demographic group studied; the new policies were meant to ease this burden.
Today, however, a Christian legal advocacy group with a growing national profile, called Alliance Defending Freedom, is working to undo the regulations and policies that helped Langan move to Carswell. Now she is at risk of being sent back into the male prison population.
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Last week I wrote about how House Democratics leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, people who have been loudly protesting Donald Trump’s authoritarianism, then turned around and lobbied to pass a bill that would continue to give him sweeping warrantless domestic spying powers. The bill then went to the senate and there too Democrats were instrumental in enabling it to pass, as Alex Emmons writes.
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Most people have heard about David and Louise Anna Turpin who kept their 13 children aged 2 to 29 like prisoners under the most appalling conditions, where they were shackled and starved. These children were not sent to school but kept at home pretty much all the time. It was only after one 17-year old child escaped through a window and called the authorities that the abuse was discovered although it had been going on for years. She was so emaciated that police thought she was just 10 years old.
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As was inevitable, there has been a backlash against the #MeToo movement and from some surprising quarters. The French actress Catherine Deneuve was one of the signatories to an open letter from 100 women that suggested that the movement had gone too far and was risking infantilizing women and denying them agency and becoming puritanical. The letter suggested that the movement seemed to be condemning even flirtatious behavior and defended the right of men to hit on women. She later apologized to victims of sexual assault and, while she herself stood by the letter, distanced herself from some of the other signatories whom she said had distorted the message of the letter in the process of expanding upon it.
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After initially not denying that he used the word ‘shithole’ at a meeting to describe Haiti, EL Salvador, and every single African nation, and even having his aide issue a statement that did not deny the use of the word, Donald Trump later started vigorously denying it, although Democratic senator Dick Durbin and Republican senators Jeff Flake and Lindsey Graham confirmed his use of it. Trump accused Durbin of lying and was supported by two Republican senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue who said that he had never uttered the word.
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Glenn Greenwald says that she has much to offer over the existing mediocre do-nothing Democratic incumbent in Maryland, but that has not stopped the Democratic party establishment from already trying to smear her presumably because of her radical politics.
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Now that New Jersey will swear in a new Democratic governor Phil Murphy tomorrow to replace the widely reviled Chris Christie, the party controls all three branches of government, and Murphy reportedly has plans to take the state in a more progressive direction, and other states will be watching closely.
On Tuesday, when he is sworn in, New Jersey will become one of just eight states where Democrats run every branch of government. If Murphy has his way, New Jersey will become a proving ground for every liberal policy idea coming into fashion, from legalized marijuana to a $15 minimum wage, from a “millionaire’s tax” to a virtual bill of rights for undocumented immigrants.
Undergirding all of it: automatic voter registration, early voting and the right to register with a political party as late as Election Day.
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I have written before about how people are often treated severely for the most petty of crimes, such as shoplifting a toothbrush or a single 12-oz can of beer. There was even the tragic case of the manager of a drug store chasing and catching someone who stole a tube of toothpaste and in the process of subduing him, the man was strangled by the manager and bystanders.
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