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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 20th, 2023

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  • Laws like this one (as well as far right fear mongering in general) misrepresent that situation even more than you’d think. Only 800 minors in the country (out of ~80 million depending on how you count, so ~0.001% of all US minors) got any transition related surgeries over the course of 2 years. On top of that, there aren’t a lot of surgeons who do these surgeries, and some of them won’t operate on minors. So because of the limited number of surgeons, trans people often have to travel across at least state lines to get these surgeries, which is why none of this very small population of minors even got their surgeries in Ohio.

    These laws are made all the more sinister when you realize half of their content outlaws things that aren’t even happening entirely for the sake of feeding into bigoted fear mongering and dehumanization - “they’re coming for your kids.”


  • Why would that work? At this point, the majority of people comfortable continuing to vote Republican after an attempted coup, the repeal of Roe, and an avalanche of explicitly harmful and bigoted legislation are die-hard reactionaries and Trump supporters, and the Republican primaries seem to be reflecting that. Nikki Haley is the closest thing we have to a center-right candidate, and her odds of beating Trump right now are pretty slim. The political right has been bleeding public support for a while now, and Trump is the only thing that’s been giving them momentum and wins - dropping him is desirable to at least some of the party, but it probably isn’t an actual option.

    And even if they did drop Trump, like… they’re probably not going to course correct at this point. Enacting christofascism and appealing to reactionaries is looking more and more like the only hope for a future the party has left, and they’ll likely continue down that path with or without Trump. “Bringing Trump to justice” is still worthwhile, but on a number of levels, it will not suddenly make the party of the southern strategy electable.


  • Pretty sure there’s an ocean of difference between Jesus Christ rebuking the literal devil and a politician traveling across state borders to illegally deface a statue as a publicity stunt to fundraise and get an interview on Fox about how he totally “decapitated Satan.” Even if his conviction was somehow driven by religion and not pure vanity (it wasn’t), any form of religious supremacy has no place in society at large, let alone a government building. The law recognizes this, “freedom of religion” is the backbone of this in the US, and I’d hope people understand why it might be a worthwhile and important protection to have and uphold.

    Additionally, I have a suspicion that anyone who favorably compares a person who postures as a Christian supremacist to Christ is less the sort of person with an understanding of their religion and more the sort of person who knows how to search for the word “Satan” in their YouVersion Bible app.




  • Well, people did stop this in Ohio, specifically. Local organizers recently successfully petitioned to put abortion rights (which Republican representatives had been threatening) on the ballot statewide - voters got it passed, alongside marijuana legalization, all while facing (and continuing to face) significant antagonism and legal backlash from “elected” Republicans in the 2nd most gerrymandered state in the union.

    Both parties suck, I’d go so far as to say both parties frequently do outright evil shit, but they are not the fucking same, and even if they were, that has yet stop people from coming together to get involved and improve their communities themselves. Observing politics near exclusively at the federal level tends to obscure that reality. I accept that this sort of doomerism can come from a place of ignorance, so I offer you suggestion: if you want things to get better, go help. Go find out what groups are actively working to induce local- or state-level government reform, or who are working to directly improve the lives of marginalized people in your community, and go help them. You can’t exactly stop fed-level Dems from being useless hypocrites, but you can get involved with groups in your community to help with the work of bringing about positive change - and while that is harder than stewing about the state of things, it actually gets results.



  • I’m a little more torn over this than others… On one hand, this is the appropriate messaging to force Democrats to actually represent the interests of their electorate, the thing they’re specifically elected to do. The phone lines of these politicians should be going off 24 hours a day with callers telling them they will never even consider voting for them again unless they show an appropriate level of change, remorse, and action to stop this. Biden should be receiving that 10x over. Additionally, there are groups of people I will never criticize for refusing to vote - should the white lefty criticize the Muslim for refusing to vote for a leader that does not value the lives of Muslims? Should they criticize the Jew for refusing to vote for a leader who commits genocide in their name?

    …and on the other hand, as a queer person who follows politics, I still feel any public refusal to vote Biden on my part must be a bluff. There’s too much at stake for me to justify going through with it privately… there’s my trans life, yes, but then there’s also the lives of my trans and generally queer friends, the freedoms of the women in my life, the lives and freedoms of those groups on the national scale, the ability for anyone to vote at all down the line - privately refusing to vote blue for the presidency would not feel like solidarity (partly because it would make the situation I’m refusing to vote over worse, and also potentially make life in the US for Jews and Muslims worse, as Republicans and Trump specifically have enacted things like explicit travel bans before). It would not feel like praxis to virtue signal my refusal to be complicit in one genocide only to be complicit in the all-to-possible ellimination of democracy at home and a subsequent net increase in genocide and funding for it around the world. Voting for Genocide Joe is not cool or satisfying or even right - it’s just the least bad… and honestly for what its worth, the least bad has never looked worse in my life.




  • I pretty much already stated all that. When it’s about performing some act, and where “what you don’t agree with” impacts the work being performed.

    …so if we go with the previous example, a photographer should be allowed to deny service to an interracial couple if they’re “not at ease” with seeing them -

    “move a little closer”, “look this way”, "kiss lightly ", etc., etc.

    Well the hypothetical protection you’re describing would in practice protect and embolden people who hold white supremacist beliefs. I say “embolden” because you know what a racist photographer would do without those protections? They’d either turn them down, or they would take the pictures, take the money, and keep their ugly mouths shut. Because those are better options than fighting a battle they believe they could lose.

    However, if they are legally protected by the federal government in communicating to interracial couples they won’t provide service to them because they are an interracial couple, can you imagine the actions a now unrepressed fanatic would take? You think you wouldn’t see “whites only” on some of these people’s websites? And can you begin to imagine the fear and anxiety that would inspire in the people who now have to see those kinds of notices while looking for a wedding photographer? A wedding cake? Who now have to ask every photographer and cake maker if they serve “couples like them” if they don’t have a notice? Can you see the parallels?

    Legal action that empowers bigots and disempowers those they hate at scale is all it takes to develop a foundation and vocal support for the return of socially acceptable and legally backed discrimination. And you better believe that a foundation is exactly what the far-right politicians that brought about these “protections” view it as, because plenty have signaled openly that they have no interest in stopping legalized queer discrimination here, and will absolutely use this decision to justify going further in the future, the same strategy they use for all their culture wars.