All Things LGBTQ+ (4 Viewers)

[Farb]

Didn't really see a place for this so I thought I would start a thread about all things LGBTQ since this is a pretty hot topic in our culture right now

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/sup...y-that-refuses-to-work-with-lgbt-couples.html

• The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered a unanimous defeat to LGBT couples in a high-profile case over whether Philadelphia could refuse to contract with a Roman Catholic adoption agency that says its religious beliefs prevent it from working with same-sex foster parents.
• Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in an opinion for a majority of the court that Philadelphia violated the First Amendment by refusing to contract with Catholic Social Services once it learned that the organization would not certify same-sex couples for adoption.

I will admit, I was hopeful for this decision by the SCOTUS but I was surprised by the unanimous decision.

While I don't think there is anything wrong, per se, with same sex couples adopting and raising children (I actually think it is a good thing as it not an abortion) but I also did not want to see the state force a religious institution to bend to a societal norm.

 

[zztop]

came across this today

Gay man wins lawsuit against Catholic employer who refused to give his husband health care benefits

"Someone’s gender or whom they love has no place in employment decisions...

www.lgbtqnation.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Bolding mine.

Yet again, when enacting a discriminatory, exclusionary policy against a group they make it very clear that they don't hate the group

They just don't want to be around them, befriend them or be reminded that they exist (and they're most definitely going to hell), and just generally and specifically want nothing whatsoever to do with them (but they don't hate them though, thank you very much)
====================================================================

A religious school in Florida says it will only refer to students by their sex assigned at birth, while pupils who are gay, transgender or gender nonconforming "will be asked to leave the school immediately."

NBC News obtained an email from Grace Christian School in Valrico, about 20 miles east of Tampa, sent before the beginning of the school year by Administrator Barry McKeen.

The subject line of the email reads: "Important School Policy Point of Emphasis. ... Please Read."

The June 6 correspondence to parents cited scripture and said that students will be referred to by the "gender on their birth certificates" during the school year beginning this month. While the email refers to "biological gender," the National Institute of Health defines "gender" as a social construct, as opposed to "sex," which is the biological difference between females and males.

"We believe that God created mankind in His image: male (man) and female (woman), sexually different but with equal dignity," the email said.

"Therefore, one's biological sex must be affirmed and no attempts should be made to physically change, alter, or disagree with one's biological gender — including, but not limited to, elective sex reassignment, transvestite, transgender, or non-binary gender fluid acts of conduct (Genesis 1:26-28). Students in school will be referred to by the gender on their birth certificate and be referenced in name in the same fashion."

It continued: "We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgender identity/lifestyle, self-identification, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery and pornography are sinful in the sight of God and the church (Genesis 2:24; Leviticus 18:1-30; Romans 1:26-29; I Corinthians 5:1; I Corinthians 6:9; I Thessalonians 4:2-7)."

"Students who are found participating in these lifestyles will be asked to leave the school immediately," the email said.............

He also said: "We are not a hateful group of people. We don't hate students who are of a particular persuasion."........

Florida Christian school says it will refer to students only by 'biological gender,' asks gay and transgender students to leave

Grace Christian School in Valrico told parents in an email that they "have to agree to all policies and procedures" before their child can start school.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[MT15]

A religious school in Florida says it will only refer to students by their sex assigned at birth, while pupils who are gay, transgender or gender nonconforming "will be asked to leave the school immediately."

NBC News obtained an email from Grace Christian School in Valrico, about 20 miles east of Tampa, sent before the beginning of the school year by Administrator Barry McKeen.

The subject line of the email reads: "Important School Policy Point of Emphasis. ... Please Read."

The June 6 correspondence to parents cited scripture and said that students will be referred to by the "gender on their birth certificates" during the school year beginning this month. While the email refers to "biological gender," the National Institute of Health defines "gender" as a social construct, as opposed to "sex," which is the biological difference between females and males.

"We believe that God created mankind in His image: male (man) and female (woman), sexually different but with equal dignity," the email said.

"Therefore, one's biological sex must be affirmed and no attempts should be made to physically change, alter, or disagree with one's biological gender — including, but not limited to, elective sex reassignment, transvestite, transgender, or non-binary gender fluid acts of conduct (Genesis 1:26-28). Students in school will be referred to by the gender on their birth certificate and be referenced in name in the same fashion."

It continued: "We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgender identity/lifestyle, self-identification, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery and pornography are sinful in the sight of God and the church (Genesis 2:24; Leviticus 18:1-30; Romans 1:26-29; I Corinthians 5:1; I Corinthians 6:9; I Thessalonians 4:2-7)."

"Students who are found participating in these lifestyles will be asked to leave the school immediately," the email said.............

Florida Christian school says it will refer to students only by 'biological gender,' asks gay and transgender students to leave

Grace Christian School in Valrico told parents in an email that they "have to agree to all policies and procedures" before their child can start school.

www.nbcnews.com

I’ll take “What would Jesus absolutely never do” for $1000, Alex.

 

[coldseat]

He also said: "We are not a hateful group of people.

Yes you are.

We don't hate students who are of a particular persuasion."........

Florida Christian school says it will refer to students only by 'biological gender,' asks gay and transgender students to leave

Grace Christian School in Valrico told parents in an email that they "have to agree to all policies and procedures" before their child can start school.

www.nbcnews.com

Yes you do.

 

[SystemShock]

I’ll take “What would Jesus absolutely never do” for $1000, Alex.

Yeah, Jesus will not send them away, he'll send them to hell .

 

[samiam5211]

Yeah, Jesus will not send them away, he'll send them to hell .

Jesus probably wouldn't, but Moses definitely would.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Scott Esk, 56, is running in the Republican primary runoff election tomorrow for a seat in the state house, and local media is bringing up some extreme comments he made in the past. He’s not handling them well.

In 2013, Esk was commenting in a Facebook conversation about the Pope saying that he couldn’t judge gay people. Esk posted some Bible quotations, including the part of Romans 1 where the Bible says that a long list of people who sinned is “worthy of death.”

Another person asked him: “So, just to be clear, you think we should execute homosexuals (presumably by stoning)?”

Esk responded: “I think we would be totally in the right to do it… Ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.”

A year later, a journalist asked him about those comments. He said it was “totally just” to kill gay people.

“What I will tell you right now is that that was done in the Old Testament under a law that came directly from God,” he said at the time. “And in that time, there was, it was, totally just came directly from God.”

After those comments, he put out a long video where he claimed he “sets the record straight.” In those videos, he claimed he has “compassion on anybody in the grips of an insidious addiction, such as homosexuality.”

“Any Christian should be in the position to say that this is sin or this is good. If we don’t make that distinction, we’re not going to help people,” he said in the first video published in 2015.

In the another video, which was from earlier this year, Esk called a local TV news report on his comments a “hit piece on the fact that I had an opinion against homosexuality.”

“Well, does that make me a homophobe? Maybe some people think it does,” he said. “But as far as I and many of the people, the voters of House District A7 are concerned, it simply makes me a Christian. Christians believe in biblical morality, kind of by definition, or they should.”

He said that he is not in favor of “expanding the death penalty in Oklahoma for homosexuality,” he just wants everyone to know that gay people are so offensive to his god that his religion wants them dead............

GOP candidate said it's "totally just" to stone gay people to death

 

[coldseat]

“What I will tell you right now is that that was done in the Old Testament under a law that came directly from God,” he said at the time. “And in that time, there was, it was, totally just came directly from God.”

After those comments, he put out a long video where he claimed he “sets the record straight.” In those videos, he claimed he has “compassion on anybody in the grips of an insidious addiction, such as homosexuality.”

“Any Christian should be in the position to say that this is sin or this is good. If we don’t make that distinction, we’re not going to help people,” he said in the first video published in 2015.

In the another video, which was from earlier this year, Esk called a local TV news report on his comments a “hit piece on the fact that I had an opinion against homosexuality.”

“Well, does that make me a homophobe? Maybe some people think it does,” he said. “But as far as I and many of the people, the voters of House District A7 are concerned, it simply makes me a Christian. Christians believe in biblical morality, kind of by definition, or they should.”

I am so forking tired of "Christians" and I spent 85% of my life as one. Not a day goes by that I don't read/see one of these homophobic, backwards and stupid beliefs by a Christian. It's forking exhausting. I don't give a fork that you/they have compassion for anybody in the "grips of the insidious addiction" that you believe homosexuality is. Shut the fork up because the way I live my life has nothing to do with what you believe. I don't care that you believe that my life is sinful. It doesn't matter one bit what you, a church or a religious faith think is sinful. Keep that shirt to yourself butt crevasses! And media, stop reporting on these degenerates and stop giving them a platform to spew this crap to where it raises their profile.

 

[SystemShock]

Jesus probably wouldn't, but Moses definitely would.

Not really, no.

 

[samiam5211]

Not really, no.

Sure, all a gay person would have to do is ask Jesus to forgive them.

Jesus loved hanging out with dudes and skinny dipping.

 

[SystemShock]

Sure, all a gay person would have to do is ask Jesus to forgive them.

Don't work that way.

Jesus loved hanging out with dudes and skinny dipping.

You said it, not me

 

[Optimus Prime]

 

[MT15]

I’m afraid their noble efforts will be for naught.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Posted on EE also
=================
LOUISVILLE — When 13-year-old Fischer Wells signed up for field hockey last fall, she had never played the sport. Her parents were confounded. Fischer had run cross-country before and once tried out unsuccessfully for a street hockey team, but outside of that, the seventh-grader had not expressed much interest in sports.

A month into the season, her parents were fighting for her right to play. The first games had been marred with challenges. First, there were not enough players, until Fischer recruited classmates to fill out the team. Then Fischer’s stick was too short. Finally, through a teary phone conversation with the athletic director, her parents had learned the Kentucky High School Athletic Association’s rules would not allow Fischer to play.

Because Fischer — besides being a middle-schooler with boundless enthusiasm, a bookworm and a novice field hockey player — is transgender. The association had set extraordinarily high hurdles for transgender athletes to play on teams that matched their gender identity. It required that transgender athletes undergo “sex reassignment” before puberty — though it was unclear what that meant.

For transgender athletes who underwent sex reassignment after puberty, the association required that “surgical anatomical changes have been completed, including external genitalia changes and gonadectomy,” procedures that are not recommended for young people.

The seventh-grader continued showing up to practices, but she couldn’t bring herself to attend the game in which she’d be benched. Her absence seemed to galvanize her teammates, who could not believe she had been ousted for being herself. For every goal they scored, they shouted, “For Fischer!”

After a few days, Fischer won back her spot on the team when the school district ruled that its own nondiscrimination clause trumped the state athletic regulations. It was the Westport Warhawks’ only victory that season; on the field, they never won a game.

For Fischer, that wasn’t the point. Sprinting around the pitch and whacking the ball made her feel good. It was fun. She had an audience for her jokes.

Then, after the first season concluded, Fischer would suffer another defeat that would sting worse than the first: In March, Kentucky lawmakers passed a law banning athletes like Fischer from playing on girls’ teams.

Fischer was the state’s only transgender student-athlete. Still, they believed, she had to be stopped............

MSN

www.msn.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

This could have gone in a few threads
===========================
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, after a “marathon” school board session featuring four hours of debate from parents, students and community members, the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District in North Texas narrowly passed a sweeping set of policies that includes a total ban on all classroom discussion of “gender fluidity.”

The new rules also impose more limits on how race, gender and sexuality is taught; restrict which bathrooms transgender youths can use; and give greater power to the school board to determine which books are available in school libraries.

Last year, state lawmakers passed a law limiting how race, slavery and history are taught in public schools. The district made national headlines then, too, after a Black principal was put on leave after being accused of teaching critical race theory.

The new rules — which passed in a 4-3 vote — are indicative of how school boards have become the “epicenter” of efforts to push anti-inclusive policies, LGBTQ and civil rights advocates say. GCISD is among a “cluster” of districts moving to further restrict education in this way, according to Kate Huddleston, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

The policies also go “far beyond” Texas law, Huddleston said: “As far as I know, this is the most extreme policy, particularly in terms of classroom censorship … of any district in Texas.”..........

“They took a lot of the policies that were floating out there in the national district and combined them all in one place,” Hill said. “Not only are these policies harmful individually, but kids are facing the full brunt of all of them together.”

The recent school board changes signal how anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and legislation, which have spiked across the country in the last couple of years, are winding their way into various communities, “impacting people’s everyday lives,” Hill added. “It’s important to remember that this could happen anywhere, even if you feel like your state policies are more affirming of LGBTQ people.”

Since 2021, conservative lawmakers have introduced hundreds of bills restricting the rights of LGBTQ people, with much of their attention focused on trans youths. Of this surge in legislation, only a fraction have been enacted into law. But those that have succeeded have seized national attention — alarming LGBTQ communities and advocates and spurring copycat proposals in other places...........

MSN

www.msn.com

 

[coldseat]

Posted on EE also
=================
LOUISVILLE — When 13-year-old Fischer Wells signed up for field hockey last fall, she had never played the sport. Her parents were confounded. Fischer had run cross-country before and once tried out unsuccessfully for a street hockey team, but outside of that, the seventh-grader had not expressed much interest in sports.

A month into the season, her parents were fighting for her right to play. The first games had been marred with challenges. First, there were not enough players, until Fischer recruited classmates to fill out the team. Then Fischer’s stick was too short. Finally, through a teary phone conversation with the athletic director, her parents had learned the Kentucky High School Athletic Association’s rules would not allow Fischer to play.

Because Fischer — besides being a middle-schooler with boundless enthusiasm, a bookworm and a novice field hockey player — is transgender. The association had set extraordinarily high hurdles for transgender athletes to play on teams that matched their gender identity. It required that transgender athletes undergo “sex reassignment” before puberty — though it was unclear what that meant.

For transgender athletes who underwent sex reassignment after puberty, the association required that “surgical anatomical changes have been completed, including external genitalia changes and gonadectomy,” procedures that are not recommended for young people.

The seventh-grader continued showing up to practices, but she couldn’t bring herself to attend the game in which she’d be benched. Her absence seemed to galvanize her teammates, who could not believe she had been ousted for being herself. For every goal they scored, they shouted, “For Fischer!”

After a few days, Fischer won back her spot on the team when the school district ruled that its own nondiscrimination clause trumped the state athletic regulations. It was the Westport Warhawks’ only victory that season; on the field, they never won a game.

For Fischer, that wasn’t the point. Sprinting around the pitch and whacking the ball made her feel good. It was fun. She had an audience for her jokes.

Then, after the first season concluded, Fischer would suffer another defeat that would sting worse than the first: In March, Kentucky lawmakers passed a law banning athletes like Fischer from playing on girls’ teams.

Fischer was the state’s only transgender student-athlete. Still, they believed, she had to be stopped............

MSN

www.msn.com

It's the targeting and hatred of children and their families (let along adults) that make all of this transphobia so disgusting. These people aren't out to destabilize society or debase the moral fabric of it, they just want to live normal lives as themselves. Why is that so wrong that we have to pass laws targeting them as outcast and make their already challenging lives more difficult?

 

[SystemShock]

Posted on EE also
=================
LOUISVILLE — When 13-year-old Fischer Wells signed up for field hockey last fall, she had never played the sport. Her parents were confounded. Fischer had run cross-country before and once tried out unsuccessfully for a street hockey team, but outside of that, the seventh-grader had not expressed much interest in sports.

A month into the season, her parents were fighting for her right to play. The first games had been marred with challenges. First, there were not enough players, until Fischer recruited classmates to fill out the team. Then Fischer’s stick was too short. Finally, through a teary phone conversation with the athletic director, her parents had learned the Kentucky High School Athletic Association’s rules would not allow Fischer to play.

Because Fischer — besides being a middle-schooler with boundless enthusiasm, a bookworm and a novice field hockey player — is transgender. The association had set extraordinarily high hurdles for transgender athletes to play on teams that matched their gender identity. It required that transgender athletes undergo “sex reassignment” before puberty — though it was unclear what that meant.

For transgender athletes who underwent sex reassignment after puberty, the association required that “surgical anatomical changes have been completed, including external genitalia changes and gonadectomy,” procedures that are not recommended for young people.

The seventh-grader continued showing up to practices, but she couldn’t bring herself to attend the game in which she’d be benched. Her absence seemed to galvanize her teammates, who could not believe she had been ousted for being herself. For every goal they scored, they shouted, “For Fischer!”

After a few days, Fischer won back her spot on the team when the school district ruled that its own nondiscrimination clause trumped the state athletic regulations. It was the Westport Warhawks’ only victory that season; on the field, they never won a game.

For Fischer, that wasn’t the point. Sprinting around the pitch and whacking the ball made her feel good. It was fun. She had an audience for her jokes.

Then, after the first season concluded, Fischer would suffer another defeat that would sting worse than the first: In March, Kentucky lawmakers passed a law banning athletes like Fischer from playing on girls’ teams.

Fischer was the state’s only transgender student-athlete. Still, they believed, she had to be stopped............

MSN

www.msn.com

The never-ending story.

Yet again, the male-female division in sports is meant to divide males of the species from females of the species.

Yet again, there are millions of people who are born with physiological conditions which prevent them from playing any sports whatsoever, or even do simple things that most people can do or participate in; and they have millions of parents who have to explain to them why they can't participate in that particular sport or activity; and we either don't bat an eye for them, or create venues and associations for them to be able to participate at some level in said sports or activities. So again I ask, why should we treat the transgender condition any different?

 

[coldseat]

The never-ending story.

Yet again, the male-female division in sports is meant to divide males of the species from females of the species.

Yet again, there are millions of people who are born with physiological conditions which prevent them from playing any sports whatsoever, or even do simple things that most people can do or participate in; and they have millions of parents who have to explain to them why they can't participate in that particular sport or activity; and we either don't bat an eye for them, or create venues and associations for them to be able to participate at some level in said sports or activities. So again I ask, why should we treat the transgender condition any different?

What's your solution? To create separate transgender leagues in primary education? There aren't the numbers (of transgendered kids), funding or desire to do that in any of the states that are passing these laws.

Should they be forced to participate as the sex they where assigned at birth or not allowed to at all?

I'm not attacking you, just asking what a plausible solution looks like, in your eyes, that also preserves the competitive balance you feel has been eroded with the inclusion of transgendered girls.