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Last Year Susan Collins Urged McConnell to Pass the LGBTQ Equality Act – Now She’s Refusing to Even Co-Sponsor It

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Is U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) playing politics with vital civil rights legislation?

Just eight months ago Senator Collins was the only Republican Senator to co-sponsor the LGBTQ Equality Act. She was also in a desperate re-election race.

On June 15 she tweeted her strong support for the bill:

The following day she signed onto a letter to then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, demanding he “immediately bring the bipartisan Equality Act (H.R. 5) to the Senate floor for a vote and fully enshrine in federal law explicit protections for LGBTQIA+ people against discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The bill never came to the floor, and Collins got re-elected.

On Tuesday The Washington Blade reported Senator Collins was refusing to co-sponsor the Equality Act, a dramatic about face after being such a strong supporter last year.

Why?

“There were certain provisions of the Equality Act which needed revision,” Collins told the Blade’s Chris Johnson, not specifying what “revisions” were so desperately needed they were resulting in her refusing to sponsor the bill – and putting its passage in jeopardy.

“Throwing some veiled criticism at the Human Rights Campaign,” Johnson writes, “which declined to endorse her in 2020 as it had done in previous elections, Collins added, ‘Unfortunately the commitments that were made to me were not [given] last year.'”

The Equality Act will receive a vote on the House floor this week, reportedly Thursday or Friday. President Biden has said he wants to sign it into law in his first 100 days (although his staff has since suggested it may take longer.)

Like so many other critical pieces of legislation, the Equality Act  will need 60 votes to pass, unless Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) kills the filibuster, something many liberals are demanding he do.

Other GOP Senators are treating it like they used to treat tweets from Donald Trump.

“I don’t know what’s in it,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said.

“I have not read the bill,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) also said.

Will Collins change her mind? Will she co-sponsor the Equality Act? Will she reveal what vital “revisions” she’s demanding be made before she does?

Senator Collins’ office did not immediately respond to a call from NCRM.

 

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LGBT

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine Vetoes Anti-Trans Bill After Talking to Families With Trans Kids

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Mike DeWine

Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio became only the second Republican to ever veto a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors. He made his decision after traveling to children’s hospitals and talking to families that would be affected by the bill.

DeWine vetoed the bill, Sub. H.B. No. 68, Friday morning. Not only would the bill ban transgender athletes from competing on teams matching their gender expression, the AP reports, it also would stop trans kids from receiving puberty blockers, hormone therapy or gender-alignment surgeries—even though the last of these is extremely rare in minors.

DeWine told the AP last week that he had just been to three children’s hospitals in the state to learn more about the realities of trans health care for minors. He also spoke to families with trans youth, according to NBC News.

READ MORE: Federal Judge Issues Injunction on Idaho Anti-Trans Law Days Before It Takes Effect

“We’re dealing with children who are going through a challenging time, families that are going through a challenging time,” DeWine told the AP. “I want, the best I can, to get it right.”

After vetoing the bill, he said that decisions about gender-affirming care “should not be made by the government,” but families and doctors, NBC News reported.

“This bill would impact a very small number of Ohio’s children,” DeWine said Friday, according to Axios. “But for those children who face gender dysphoria and for their families, the consequences of this bill could not be more profound.”

Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas is the only other Republican governor to veto a similar bill banning gender-affirming care for minors. Hutchinson, who is also running for the presidential nomination for his party, vetoed the bill in April 2021, telling NPR he thought it was “too extreme.”

“It was too broad, and it did not grandfather in those young people who are currently under hormone treatment. And so this really puts a very vulnerable population in a more difficult position. It sends the wrong signal to them,” Hutchinson told the radio network at the time.

“But also in my veto, I wanted to say to my Republican friends and colleagues that we’ve got to rethink our engagement in every aspect of the cultural wars,” he added. “The Republican Party that I grew up with believed in a restrained government that did not jump in the middle of every issue.”

Unfortunately, Hutchinson’s veto was overridden by the Arkansas legislature. A similar fate may await DeWine’s veto. Ohio’s legislature has a Republican supermajority, and only one Republican, Senator Nathan Manning of Northeast Ohio, voted against the bill when it was initially passed, according to the AP. State senators need a three-fifths majority to overturn the veto.

 

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LGBT

Trans Man Says Walgreens Pharmacist Refuses to Give Him His Hormone Prescription

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Transgender rights protest

An Oakland, California transgender man says one of the pharmacists at a Walgreens refused to hand over his hormone replacement medicine, even though the prescription was ready for pickup.

Roscoe Rike posted his story and a video to Reddit’s r/Oakland forum on Tuesday. Though the text of the post has since been deleted, according to KRON, Rike said he had the specific prescription filled for three years at the Telegraph Avenue location. He also said he’d been going there for other medications for the past decade, and never had a problem before.

Was denied my HRT medication at the temescal walgreens by a transphobic religious bigot
by u/lokigoeswoof in oakland

This time, though, an unfamiliar pharmacist was behind the counter. When Rike asked to pick up his prescription, the pharmacist, he says, asked what it was for.

“I told him I was pretty sure that it wasn’t any of his business,” Rike said, according to KRON.

READ MORE: No, Elon Musk, ‘Cis’ Is Not a Slur

In a followup comment on the Reddit post, he added that since Rike wouldn’t tell him, the pharmacist tried calling Rike’s doctor—though Rike doesn’t know if he was able to find anything out.

The pharmacist then told Rike that he couldn’t fill the prescription “due to his religious beliefs.” This is when Rike took out his phone and recorded the video that can be seen in the Reddit post above. In the clip, Rike asks “So right now you’re telling me that you’re going to deny me my medication because of your personal religion, you’re not my f***ing doctor? So you think you know better than my doctor, that’s what’s going on?”

“I just need to know the diagnosis,” the pharmacist replies.

“Why? That’s none of your f***ing business,” Rike counters. “I’m going to let you know right now that I’m going to be reporting this, by the way, what’s your name?”

The pharmacist replies “Malik Tahir,” and Rike says that he’s going to report him for discrimination. Tahir says Rike can come in at noon, but Rike says he wants it now.

“Always the religious people who have the most f***ing hate in their hearts. You’re disgusting,” Rike says, and Tahir repeats that Rike can come in at noon. Rike reiterates that he wants his medication now, and the video cuts off.

In comments, he said that he’d “never yelled at a stranger before that day.” He then asked to see the manager, KRON reports, who “apologized profusely,” Rike said, and gave him his prescription.

Walgreens told KRON it would “review the matter.”

“Our policies are designed to ensure we meet the needs of our patients and customers, while respecting the religious and moral beliefs of our team members. In an instance where a team member has a religious or moral conviction that prevents them from meeting a customer’s need, we require the team member to refer the customer to another employee or manager on duty who can complete the transaction. These instances, however, are very rare,” a Walgreens spokesperson told the station.

Rike says he’s reached out to the Transgender Law Center and hopes to hear back in the next two weeks.

“My main concern is making sure I do everything I can to keep this guy from doing what he did to me, to anyone else. That comes first. If I can get a settlement out of it, great! But it’s not my priority. I just want peace for myself and other trans people trying to live their lives,” he wrote on Reddit.

 

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BIGOTRY

‘And Tango Makes Three’ Authors Sue Florida, Say Law Suggests Book ‘Deserved To Be Banned’

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and tango makes three

The authors of a beloved children’s book about gay penguin parents, And Tango Makes Three, are suing a Florida school board as well as members of the Florida Board of Education. One of the arguments is that the book, based on a true story, is implied to be obscene by the fact that it’s banned.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, the two authors of And Tango Makes Three, along with six children who wish to read the book and their parents. It challenges Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Law, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. The law bans education on sexual orientation and gender identity through the third grade. Many Florida school districts ban students up to that grade from checking out books with LGBTQ themes from school libraries.

The suit alleges is that the law in question is “vague and overbroad,” thus running afoul of the First Amendment. Lawyers for the plaintiffs argue that removing And Tango Makes Three from public school libraries was illegitimate because the libraries do not follow a specific curriculum.

READ MORE: Drag Queen Story Hour Interrupted by Neo-Nazis Seen in Terrifying Video

“Books in school libraries are, by nature, optional reading. Even if library shelves constituted curriculum, Lake County had no legitimate pedagogical purpose for barring students’ access to Tango,” the lawsuit reads.

And Tango Makes Three tells the true story of Roy and Silo, male penguins at the Central Park Zoo in New York City. The penguins were seen performing mating rituals, and had even attempted to hatch a rock. Zookeepers gave the penguins an egg from a different pair of penguins who were unable to hatch it. With Roy and Silo’s help, the egg hatched into a female penguin chick, Tango.

The suit says that the book “contains no obscenity or vulgarity; and it is factually accurate,” and thus it’s appropriate for schoolchildren in the 4- to 8-year-old age range suggested by the publisher. By keeping it out of the hands of children, the school district is violating the First Amendment rights of the authors based on their viewpoint, the suit says.

“By censoring Tango and barring students below the fourth grade from accessing the book in Lake County public school libraries, Defendants have stripped the Authors’ book of an essential aspect of its communicative value. They have also injured the reputation of the Authors and Tango by implicitly and falsely suggesting that the book contains obscene, vulgar, sexual, or age-inappropriate material that deserved to be banned—contrary to the wholesome, positive and family-friendly content of the book—and have thereby deprived the Authors of more of their target audience and speech rights,” the suit continues.

The students are part of the suit because their “right to receive information” has also been infringed, lawyers argue. The six children, identified only by their initials, all wanted to check out the book from their library at the beginning of the school year, but are prohibited by the law. They would check it out, the suit says, if it were available.

Ironically, this is not the only penguin-related lawsuit over the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. In May, the publisher Penguin Random House—no relation to And Tango Makes Three—sued Florida’s Escambia County School District in Pensacola for removing books “based on ideological objections to their contents or disagreement with their messages or themes.”

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