All Things LGBTQ+ (2 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.

 

[MT15]

Yeah, this is so much better.

 

[coldseat]

Yeah, this is so much better.

This is what Republicans want, so I'm sure they're all happy about this.

 

[MT15]

I didn’t realize that far right groups are using new bills about keeping kids safe online as a vehicle to ramp down on LBGTQ content. These people are the opposite of free speech.

”Given the woke design of digital spaces” -

 

[zztop]

another day in perfectly normal 'murica

Bomb threat shuts down OHSU clinic after anti-trans information posted online

A bomb threat against Oregon Health and Science University is the latest in a string of attacks and harassment against health care facilities, spurred by far-right culture war issues and COVID conspiracies.

www.opb.org

 

[Optimus Prime]

Lawmakers in Virginia removed the term “homosexuality” from the state’s definition of “sexual conduct” that is used in a number of laws, including the law that requires schools to inform parents of sexually explicit materials used in classrooms.


Last summer, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) enacted a measure requiring the Virginia Department of Education to publish guidance for how sexually explicit material should be handled and how parents should be informed about it — so they could opt their children out of learning it.


The guidelines referenced the state code’s definition of sexual conduct as “actual or explicitly simulated acts of masturbation, homosexuality, sexual intercourse, or physical contact in an act of apparent sexual stimulation or gratification with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or, if such be female, breast.”

The law drew quick criticisms from LGBTQ+ students and advocates who worried that the inclusion of the term “homosexuality” could be interpreted to include any depiction of a romantic same-sex relationship.

If a gay couple held hands in a graphic novel, depicting the now-forbidden “physical contact,” would that break the law?


The law could cast “all references to people in same-sex relationships as inherently sexual,” a group of students with the organization Pride Liberation Project wrote in a letter to the Education Department last year.

“We are writing to you to ask that the Department of Education develop guidelines that explicitly state that instruction about LTBQIA+ people is not inherently sexual.”

This year, a number of lawmakers introduced bills to update the definition and strike the term “homosexuality.” None of the these was successful.

But in a last-minute move, Sen. Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax) said he struck a compromise to get the code changed.


Sen. William M. Stanley Jr. (R-Franklin) had written a law to require age verification on online pornography sites. The measure won bipartisan support. When it came before the Judiciary Committee that Surovell served on, the Democrat offered his support in exchange for an amendment that removed “homosexuality” from the older law. When Stanley’s bill made it out of the legislature, Youngkin signed it………

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/08/07/virginia-homosexuality-sexual-conduct-definition/

 

[Farb]

For a very few, a handful. And it’s none of my business nor of your business either.

Who's business is it?

 

[Farb]

If I went to that nonexistent web designers office and asked for a website for my gay wedding, I'd be told "No" because my lifestyle is sinful and Jesus doesn't approve. So it would be me and other LGBTQ people who are discriminated against. You already knew that.

Why would you go to a web designer that was a bigot to begin with? Are there not other places to get that service?
Does the web designer not also have rights of association? Why do you think the state can force a person to create something they disagree with on a religious/moral level?

I can see both sides but it seems the only compromise is state forced coercion of speech on one party.

 

[Farb]

You are an authoritarian, period. This is the actual opposite of a libertarian. You have turned your entire ideology around to follow an authoritarian movement, thus indicating you really don’t have a moral code, but are malleable to whatever winds blow your way.

You want to control everyone’s actions according to your own religious beliefs. You aren’t interested in anyone else’s POV. You don’t want to learn anything. You just want to push your far right wing ideology and religion on others and feel superior to those who don’t think like you do. Of course this is all my opinion, I’d love to be wrong, but I don’t think I am.

Now, you’re free to have your own ideas, free to think everyone except you is going straight to hell, free to even say whatever lies you want. Free to raise your children according to your own worldview. But you are not entitled to rule other‘s lives. You are not entitled to come between parents and their children when it comes to accepted medical care for that child, and you’re sure as hell not entitled to tell other people what kind of medical care they can have or not have. This is supposed to be a free country, and you cannot rule others.

Your side won’t win, America won’t become a theocracy. We will still be free. We‘ve all seen the plot, we see what you want, and we won’t accept that version of America.

Do you think children can consent to a sexual relationship with an adult? I don't. To me, that is not even debatable. Is that also considered authoritarian?

 

[Farb]

Yeah, this is so much better.

Are we now saying that bathrooms are safe spaces?

 

[MT15]

Who's business is it?

The patient, parents and doctors. And the doctors are governed by their clinical boards of their employer and their specialties. But you know this, don’t you? You just think it should be you. But it won’t be you or anyone like you. This is a free country, and you cannot rule it, no matter how much you think you should.

 

[MT15]

Do you think children can consent to a sexual relationship with an adult? I don't. To me, that is not even debatable. Is that also considered authoritarian?

We need a strawman emoji, really, really badly. This will have to do:

 

[MT15]

Are we now saying that bathrooms are safe spaces?

Are you saying that people should be threatened with rape in bathrooms?

 

[coldseat]

Why would you go to a web designer that was a bigot to begin with?

I wouldn't.

Are there not other places to get that service?.

Yes, and I'd undoubtedly go to one of those. But that's not the point of this discussion.

Does the web designer not also have rights of association?

Yes, but I don't want to associate with the web designer. I just want to pay for a service.

Why do you think the state can force a person to create something they disagree with on a religious/moral level?

The state can't force her to do anything. But I think it's entirely reasonable for the state to demand that if a business is going to offer services to the public, that they comply with non-discrimination laws for ALL.

I can see both sides but it seems the only compromise is state forced coercion of speech on one party.

I don't see creating web sites for sale as a public business as speech. It's not even the "developers" speech on the web site, they're putting the clients speech on it. That's like saying the engineering plans I create for our clients is "my speech". No, they're my calculations and desings, but it's clearly the owner/clients speech, if you will.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Why would you go to a web designer that was a bigot to begin with? Are there not other places to get that service?

So basically as long as there are separate but equal places they could go that’s perfectly fine?

Does the web designer not also have rights of association? Why do you think the state can force a person to create something they disagree with on a religious/moral level?

Does that work the other way as well?

If someone has a deeply help moral belief that organized religion is the cause of most of the worlds ills, that person can refuse to do any religious themed work?

Or any work for any person they know is religious?

“I know you go to church every week, so I’m not going to replace your water heater. But don’t worry I’m sure there plenty of other places you can get the same service”

 

[Optimus Prime]

There’s a sign in the office of Judy Shepard’s Wyoming home – beyond the refrigerator with its photos of her murdered son, less than three hours from the capitol building of one of the few states still to enact hate crime legislation – that reads: “I’m sorry, did I roll my eyes out loud?”

Ms Shepard, who turns 71 this month, starts talking about that sign as she attempts to describe her feelings in the wake of recent decisions by the US Supreme Court.

“I think I probably did more than roll my eyes,” she tells The Independent of the court’s June ruling allowing creative businesses to refuse services for same-sex clients.

Because Ms Shepard has spent nearly the past quarter-century fighting for equality legislation, thrown into the international spotlight in 1998 by the brutal murder of her 21-year-old son, Matthew.

The gay University of Wyoming student was badly beaten and tied to a fence in Laramie, already in a coma when he was discovered 18 hours later and succumbing to his injuries the following week on 12 October 1998.……

During the Trump presidency, Ms Shepard says, “the whole administration was just completely opposite of everything we had all been fighting for – all the marginalised communities – for decades. And it was just like, we see the haters unleashed now, even encouraged now. So that’s very scary, and I’m worried that right now, at this moment in time, some of them, even in my state, those people are being elected into office ... we are outnumbered in Wyoming at least three to one. So really, it’s going to be a while before I expect to see [progressive legislation].”

Before that, she says, she’d been heartened by the stories she’d hear from gay youth around the country – and she still is, to some extent. Things seemed to have been changing on a grassroots level when it came to acceptance across the sexual spectrum.……

“One of the coolest things is, I did a lot of colleges in the beginning, and now I'm meeting them as adults in the corporate world, which is very cool to me,” she says. “The stories we used to hear from kids were, ‘I wish my parents were as accepting as you.’ And now we don't hear that so much, which is, I think, great.”

She says: “Certainly, the young people I come in contact with, they just don’t give a crap about any of that stuff ... they’re worried about climate change and gun safety and getting an education and a job, not who’s in love with who and all that stuff,” she says. “So they believe in equality across the board.”…….

Matthew Shepard’s mother on the state of LGBT+ rights 25 years after his murder

The brutal 1998 murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard sparked an outcry that paved the way for broader LGBT+ rights and hate crime legislation across the US. But as the 25th anniversary of his killing approaches, Matthew’s mother, Judy, tells Sheila Flynn: ‘I didn’t expect...

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Bigdaddysaints]

Do you think children can consent to a sexual relationship with an adult? I don't. To me, that is not even debatable. Is that also considered authoritarian?

do you think in the states that allow minors to marry, it's ok or do you think it shouldn't be debatable and it should be illegal without question?

 

[Farb]

The patient, parents and doctors. And the doctors are governed by their clinical boards of their employer and their specialties. But you know this, don’t you? You just think it should be you. But it won’t be you or anyone like you. This is a free country, and you cannot rule it, no matter how much you think you should.

The patient is a minor. Do you also think the patient can consent to getting a tattoo?

The parents I agree with you on 100%. So naturally you are also against all the laws/policies in schools to help a child (a minor) keep transitioning from the parents a secret are wrong, right?

The same Doctors that told you the vaccine was 'safe, effective and free'? The same 'experts' that surgically and chemically transition minors?

I don't care who it is, as long as their position comes from a place of real world facts, biological science and has some sort of moral value system attached to it. Come to think of it, you are right, it should be me. I would love to be emperor. Just kidding but the amount of faith you put into people who lie to you everyday is staggering. Yes, I know you will now call me a liar and something about Trump and Fox news or some other flail.

 

[Farb]

We need a strawman emoji, really, really badly. This will have to do:

What if the parent consents to the sexual relationship between their child and the adult. That does check your boxes for it being no one else's business?