This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1459381
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1459381
First.
How about a lawsuit against MT that poses religious freedom vs. these ridiculous anti-trans laws? Let SCOTUS lose their shit over the issues.
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"Nothing unites like fear and hate."
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Great podcast called Amicus, hosted by Dahlia Lithwick, half of which is usually behind a paywall, has no paywall for the month of June. Today’s podcast starts out with an in depth discussion of the anti-trans legal movement with Chase Strangio, a deputy director of the ACLU’s LGBT project. The second half is a discussion about what can be legitimately done about the runaway Supreme Court.
Apparently something like 44 states have anti-trans laws passed and or pending in 2023. However bad you may think it is, it is always much worse.
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I’m of the opinion that fear and hate “appear” to unite, as those succumbing to that dynamic, when left to themselves, commence to chewing without mercy on one another. Love in all its forms; e.g. friendship, courtesy, respect, agape, has for millenia been humanity’s true, dependable uniter.
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I have unwavering confidence in Altio. The Blackfeet and other indigenous societies may have recognized multiple gender identities going back 30,000 years, but the first colonies that led to our country were settled only 400 years ago. Even though Two-Spirit people often “filled special religious roles as healers, shamans and ceremonial leaders,” that was part of their customs and beliefs. Those customs and beliefs are not deeply rooted in our Nation’s history as evidenced by the Constitution, which draws a clear line between free persons and Indians not taxed. Furthermore, our decision in Hobby Lobby does not serve as controlling precedent in this matter. Although we acknowledged that the Court cannot question the litigants’ truly held religious beliefs, the Court does not recognize the worship of false idols as a religion within the meaning of RFRA.
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A few comments on this important, if very summary, article.
Last night I watched Mae West (with Cary Grant and others of note) in She Done Him Wrong (1933), set in 1890’s NYC. Reading about her and her career on Wikipedia, I came across this reference to the “Pansy Craze” (which I had never heard of): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansy_Craze
All this reminded me of my grandparents (born 1890’s), both raised in “upright Christian” households (my grandmother in a very strict one in Southwest Virginia). Among their many friends in NY were several gay men and one “Boston ladies” couple. I probably became aware of this thanks to their daughter, my mother. Among the books she urged on my when I was a young teenager: Hans Koning (or Koningsberger), A Walk with Love and Death (1961), a beautiful story of young heterosexual love, and a book whose author and title I can’t remember now (though I think it’s famous in certain circles), written I think in the 1930’s, about lesbian love. In other words, many cis-gendered people, at least in the WASP-y middle class when I come, were becoming accepting of gender fluidity and non-cis people – openly so – years before 1969’s Stonewall Inn riots. That process had been going on since at least the second half of the 19th century – the same period when modern psychology was taking shape, when the term “homosexual” was coined, when Victoria Woodhull, Suffragists, and abolitionists/anti-Jim Crow activists were active, and when Anthony Comstock was active (as always, reaction sets in).
I’m also reminded of Tiresias, who experienced being female as well as male. Of so much Greek stuff that I have no energy to go into it.
Time to revive discussion of “compulsory heterosexuality.” (See esp. Adrienne Rich.)
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Addendum to my post on Love above, from Alexander McCall Smith’s The Enigma of Garlic, p. 1: “politeness cost nothing, did not smell, and there was always enough to go round.”
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100% that.
The Roberts Court will have zero problem sorting out this apparent conflict by simply elevating their right-wing Christian cult over dirty Indian “culture.”
I’d bet you anything the conservative justices and a lot of the right-wing welcome that case, because they have been chomping at the bit to neuter the establishment clause for decades.
Christofascists, all of them.
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I’m baffled by how the media, even TPM in this instance, treats these laws as if the were controversial but somehow legitimate. They are very clearly unconstitutional, something which should be noted in every headline.
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its called ‘normalizing’…
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So here’s the problem for most “liberals.” We are actually institutionalists, we believe in maintaining the established order. In our society that means that duly elected bodies pass laws and those laws are laws until a court precedent says they violate the constitution. We view these laws and the bodies passing them as illegitimate, but the legitimate way to change them is by following our established order. The so called conservatives don’t agree with our established order if it doesn’t give them what they want and are willing to corrupt both the law and the process.
Sadly the only way for liberals to fight the radicals agenda is by breaking the very thing we are trying to protect. They understand this and use it against us.
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I’m looking forward to Highland games in these states with Anti-trans laws. The contortions they’ll have to go through to write the laws so they make a distinction between a kilt and a skirt should be really entertaining.
On a related note, wouldn’t the officers at the funeral for a murdered police officer have to arrest the pipers?
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The hat the person in the image with this article is wearing looks to me kinda like the head gear the Pope and other Christian priests wear.
Just sayin’.
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They seem clearly unconstitutional to me as well, but I’m learning that only until a court challenges them and the Supreme Court rules them unconstitutional is it taken as being so. And recenty I’ve learned that a subsequent SC can overrule any settled law, so there’s that. Real people are suffering the consequences of these bad laws in real time, and will continue to be burdened until the state laws are found unconstitutional or are overturned; if they are. That’s the sad reality.
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But I truly, honestly, deeply, despise the republicans that are behind this tsunami of anti LGBTQ legislation, anti women legislation, pro gun legislation, and all the creeps that keep voting them in. I really don’t want to hate anyone. But here I am.
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Kind of reassuring, I think, that for the first time in my long life, I live in a country with a strict dress code.
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This headline clearly falls into the “feature, not a bug” category for the crafters of these laws.
For some unknown reason, the Facebook computer has plastered my feed with ads for testosterone injections — for “Low-T” (how cute) —and miscellaneous erectile-dysfunction shit, that I can get by mail after a free online consultation. (If appropriate.)
Why is that not considered gender affirming care? Why isn’t Florida taking Viagra and anabolic steroids away from their retirees in The Village?