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LGBT Groups File 1st-Ever Lawsuit Challenging “No Promo Homo” Bans In Public Schools

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Utah Among 8 States That Prohibit Positive Speech About LGBT People

For the first time ever, LGBT advocates have filed a lawsuit challenging “no promo homo” laws, which prohibit positive speech about LGBT people in public schools. 

The National Center for Lesbian Rights brought the suit Friday against Utah’s State Board of Education and three local school districts. NCLR alleges the laws violate the U.S. Constitution and state education law by discriminating against LGBT people and restricting the First Amendment rights of students and teachers.

Utah is one of eight states with so-called “No Promo Homo” laws on the books. Some, like Utah’s, prohibit positive speech about LGBT people, while others require schools to portray LGBT people in a negative light. LGBT advocates are hoping the case will set a precedent for the laws to be struck down nationally, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.  

“These are some of the last remaining anti-LGBT laws that are currently being enforced in the country, and they’re especially odious, because they explicitly apply to school classes on every subject,” Equality Utah Executive Director Troy Williams said in a statement. “These laws send a message that our lives are shameful and must be hidden and censored. They create a deadly culture of silence and non-acceptance, causing harms that can never fully be undone. The time has come to end the stigma and strike down this shameful law.”

Utah, of course, is home to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which last year adopted a policy declaring same-sex couples “apostates” and barring their children from being baptized. The policy led to a rash of suicides among LGBT Mormon youth, according to one advocacy group. 

NCLR is representing Equality Utah and three individual plaintiffs in the case, including a 7-year-old gender nonconforming boy who was forced to leave school after being teased and beaten by other students, who once pulled down his pants to see what type of underwear he wore. Another plaintiff is a gay high school student who’s suffered consistent bullying and was barred from talking about his uncle’s same-sex marriage at school. The third plaintiff is a lesbian high school student who was disciplined for holding hands with a girl and discouraged from asking questions about 

Utah’s “no promo homo” laws prohibits the “advocacy of homosexuality” in public schools and references the state’s unconstitutional ban on same-sex marriage, which is also still on the books. The laws also require schools to teach “abstinence before marriage” and prohibit advocacy of sex outside of marriage. 

“It is long past time for these dangerous laws to be struck from the books,” said NCLR Executive Director Kate Kendall, a Utah native. “The U.S. Supreme Court has held that sexual orientation is ‘a normal expression of human sexuality’ and that LGBT people must be treated equally under the law. These laws openly discriminate against LGBT students and teachers. They stigmatize vulnerable young people who should be celebrated and supported, and they censor constitutionally protected free speech, including students’ right to receive accurate information about sexual orientation and LGBT people.”

Read the full complaint here. 

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News

DeSantis Busted by Florida Paper Over ‘Horrific’ Abortion Debate Tale

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August 26, 2023

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On Saturday morning the Miami Herald called out Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for a story he told during Wednesday’s Republican Party debate about an abortion where he got the facts entirely wrong in order to make his anti-choice point.

At issue was a tale about a woman he called “Penny” who survived an abortion.

The Florida governor told a national TV audience, “I know a lady in Florida named Penny. She survived multiple abortion attempts. She was left discarded in a pan. Fortunately, her grandmother saved her and brought her to another hospital.”

According to the Herald, DeSantis got the story wrong even down to the woman’s name.

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As the Herald’s Julie K. Brown wrote, “Critics of the governor flocked to social media to suggest the “Penny” story was made up or wildly embellished. Supporters countered that liberals were triggered by an ugly truth.”

She continued, “Penny is real and her last name is Hopper. But DeSantis failed to note key details from her remarkable story: The person who tried to end Penny’s life in the womb was not a doctor or even an illegal abortion provider — it was her father. And his effort to abort his daughter with a coat hanger took place almost two decades before the Supreme Court’s seismic Roe v. Wade decision, which established a woman’s right to an abortion.

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Brown added that her debunking of the DeSantis’ story “is based on previous recorded statements made by Hopper, newspaper clippings, public records and an interview with a family member who after speaking to a journalist at length asked not to be identified. She confirmed that Hopper’s version of events has been told in family circles for years.”

You can read more here.

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OPINION

‘Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow’ Didn’t Indict Trump, ‘Regular People’ Did: Fox News Host Destroys ‘Two-Tiered’ Justice Claims

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August 25, 2023

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A Fox News host destroyed conservative claims that Donald Trump‘s criminal indictments show there’s a “two-tiered” system of justice being used against Republicans.

Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal co-host on the conservative cable channel’s popular afternoon show, “The Five,” reminded her right-wing counterparts on Friday that Trump was indicted in four different jurisdictions by “regular people,” while pointing to a new poll that finds majorities of Americans believe he is guilty of the federal crimes he has been charged with and if convicted believe he should be imprisoned.

“Donald Trump was indicted in four jurisdictions around this country, by juries of regular Americans in New York, in D.C., and Atlanta, and in South Florida, where he calls home,” Tarlov said. “This wasn’t Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow sitting there. It was regular people who listened to the evidence that was brought before them.”

READ MORE: ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Singer Mocks GOP Candidates After Song Used in Debate: It’s ‘Definitely’ About Them

“When you say that people are rallying behind him, his diehard base is, but the average American isn’t,” she continued.

“There’s new polling out today. 62% think that he committed a crime, including 67% of independents. 61% think that he must stand trial before the election. Why? Because you don’t want to put someone in office who’s going to jail, and 59% think that the DOJ is being fair.”

“That shoots straight through the argument that this is a ‘two-tiered’ system of justice,” she continued. “If you don’t like that Joe Biden is fundraising off of it, you know, Donald Trump is doing the same thing, he’s having his moment. Mitch McConnell even – remember he fundraised off of ‘Cocaine Mitch.'”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Singer Mocks GOP Candidates After Song Used in Debate: It’s ‘Definitely’ About Them

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OPINION

‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Singer Mocks GOP Candidates After Song Used in Debate: It’s ‘Definitely’ About Them

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August 25, 2023

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Country-folk singer-songwriter Oliver Anthony, who wrote the Billboard number one hit song used in the opening of Wednesday night’s first GOP 2024 presidential debate on Fox News is mocking the Republican candidates on stage for embracing it, revealing for the first time the song is “definitely” written about them.

Declaring that “what makes us strong is our diversity,” Anthony says, “it was funny seeing it at the presidential debate, ’cause it’s like, I wrote that song about those people, you know,” he said with a chuckle.

“So for them to have to sit there and listen to that, that cracks me up,” Anthony added, laughing a bit more. “But it was funny kind of seeing the response to it, like that song has nothing to do with Joe Biden, you know, it’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden. That song’s written about the people on that stage and a lot more too, not just them, but definitely them.”

Fox News opened the debate with clips of Americans complaining about inflation and the cost of living, along with a clip of President Joe Biden saying that his economic plan, dubbed Bidenonmics, is working.

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“As we sit here tonight,” Fox News host and debate moderator Martha MacCallum said Wednesday, to cheers and applause from the audience in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, “the number one song on the Billboard chart is called ‘Rich Men North of Richmond,'”

“It is by a singer from FarmVille, Virginia named Oliver Anthony. His lyrics speak of alienation, of deep frustration with the state of government, and of this country. Washington, D.C. is about 100 miles north of Richmond,” MacCallum concluded before playing a short portion of the song.

“Why is this song striking such a nerve in this country right now? What do you think it means?” she asked.

On Thursday, The Washington Post published a short clip of Fox News using the song during the debate, and after, Oliver Anthony, whose actual name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford, talking about himself and his political beliefs.

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“We got to go back to the roots of what made this country great in the first place,” Anthony says, “which was our sense of community and our, I mean, we are the melting pot of the world and that’s what makes us strong is our diversity and we need to learn to harness that, appreciate it, and not use it as a political tool to keep everyone separate from each other.”

“I sit pretty down the center on politics, and always have, it seems like you know, both sides serve the same master and that master is not someone of any good to the people of this country,” he added.

READ MORE: Kellyanne Conway Urges GOP to Attack Abortion as Biden Campaign Releases Ad Pledging to Protect Women’s Rights

Watch the videos of Oliver Anthony above or at this link.

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