All Things LGBTQ+ (3 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.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Forking Oklahoma again
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Republicans in red states across the US have been pushing a slew of anti-LGBTQ+ measures targeting same-sex marriages with an aim of ultimately securing a supreme court ban on the federally protected right.

The recent wave of Republican-led bills targeting same-sex marriage comes amid a second Donald Trump presidency in which his administration has taken on more emboldened attacks against LGBTQ+ communities across the country, as seen through a flurry of executive orders he signed, assailing various LGBTQ+ rights.

Numerous Republican lawmakers across red states have followed suit in both rhetoric and the introduction of bills, sparking concerns across LGBTQ+ and civil rights organizations over their social and political effects.


In Oklahoma last month, a day after Trump’s inauguration, the Republican state senator Dusty Deevers introduced a series of bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights, among them the Promote Child Thriving act.

The Promote Child Thriving act establishes a $500 tax credit per child for a mother and father filing jointly and is escalated to $1,000 if the child was born after the marriage of the parents.

Describing the bill, Deevers said: “There is no greater factor in the wellbeing and future success of a child than whether they grew up in a two-parent household with their mother and father. It’s not even close.”

He added: “I know that not everyone benefits from this act, but everyone should support what is good for kids, and growing up with one’s mother and father is, in the vast majority of cases, the most important factor in a child’s wellbeing.”

In response to Deevers’s bill, the Tulsa-based pastor Randy Lewis of the All Souls Unitarian Church told News Channel 8: “I have a non-traditional family – my partner’s kids are not mine, so it would be one of those situations. My kids aren’t biologically my partner’s. We’d be one of those situations [where] we’re eliminated from the grant process.”

Another Republican Oklahoma state senator, David Bullard, introduced a similar bill that would offer a $2,000 child tax credit per child only for married couples with biological children from the marriage.


Explaining the bill to Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer for Trump, Bullard said it was introduced to challenge the supreme court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v Hodges that declared same-sex marriages as legal across the US.

“Really what we want to do is challenge that concept and see if we can get to Obergefell,” Bullard said. “And I think that’s kind of what we’re pushing at all the way around the board with a bill like this, is to actually go straight at Obergefell and say: ‘No, the constitution protects my right, my freedom of speech, my freedom of expression, my freedom of religion to disagree with same-sex marriage.’”

“The reality is we have to push back on Obergefell,” Bullard added.………

Republican state lawmakers galvanize to attack same-sex marriage

The recent wave of GOP-led bills comes as Trump becomes emboldened in orders against LGBTQ+ communities

www.theguardian.com