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Marco Rubio Recorded an ‘Emergency Video’ After Pete Buttigieg Responded to His Anti-LGBTQ Attack. It Didn’t Go Well.

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U.S. Senator Marco Rubio was quick to strike out at Pete Buttigieg after the U.S. Secretary of Transportation was asked on Sunday to respond to the Florida Republican’s remarks calling protecting same-sex marriage under federal law a “stupid waste of time.”

Rubio’s remarks haven’t been well-received, with many pointing out the fallacies in his comments.

The far right Florida GOP Senator, running to keep his seat against a popular Democrat, U.S. Rep. Val Demmings, was one of 50 Republicans Huffpost and CNN asked if they would vote for a bill to protect existing same-sex marriages. He was the only one who leveled what could be called a nasty attack on the very institution countless LGBTQ Americans spent years fighting to enter.

READ MORE: Rubio Pushes Bill Mandating Men Pay Child Support From Moment of Conception

“Marco Rubio told me that he is a NO on House’s same-sex marriage bill, calling it a ‘stupid waste of time,'” CNN’s Manu Raju reported last Wednesday. He also noted that “when he said that, there was another senator on the elevator who heard him: Tammy Baldwin, who is gay.”

Some Republican Senators said they would vote to protect same-sex marriage, some said they didn’t think it was necessary but would vote yes if the bill came to the floor, some said no, some were noncommittal, and many didn’t bother to respond.

But Rubio was the only one to take a swing at the marriages of well over a half-million same-sex couples across America.

READ MORE: ‘Hero’ Buttigieg Heralded for Responses to Republicans’ Questions in Congressional Hearing

On Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper brought up the Florida Republican’s remarks, and asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for a response.

“If he’s got time to fight against Disney,” Sec. Buttigieg said, referring to the GOP’s attack on the entertainment giant after it voiced concern about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” bill, “I don’t know why he wouldn’t have time to help safeguard marriages like mine. But this is really, really important to a lot of people. It’s certainly important to me.”

“Our marriage deserves to be treated equally. And I don’t know why this would be hard for a senator or a congressman,” Buttigieg noted.

READ MORE: ‘Who Would Jesus Exclude?’: Rubio Mocked for Kicking Off Pride Month With Claim About Biden’s ‘Radical’ LGBTQ Policies

“If they don’t want to spend a lot of time on this they can vote ‘yes’ and move on,” the Transportation Secretary added. “And that would be really reassuring for a lot of families around America, including mine.”

Rubio, who voted against confirming Buttigieg’s nomination, was quick to respond with a video that attacked and attempted to mock the Cabinet Secretary.

Implying that marriage is a state issue (a claim many disagree with) the Florida Senator began by denigrating Buttigieg for his Harvard education, then claiming he “never learned the difference between the state level and the federal level.”

Rubio’s remarks include anti-LGBTQ attacks and even an attack on batteries from China, while implying that protecting marriage is not a problem that matters to “real people.” And he repeated the GOP talking point, which Buttigieg in Congress just last week debunked, that all electric cars cost $65,000.

“I’m not going to focus on the agenda that dictated [sic] by a bunch of affluent, elite liberals and a bunch of Marxist misfits,” Rubio concluded, “who sadly, today control the agenda of the modern Democratic Party.”

On social media many pushed back against Rubio’s claims.

CNN’s John Harwood highlighted Rubio saying protecting marriage is a “a fake problem,” as did MSNBC columnist Michael Cohen (not the former Trump attorney) who tweeted: “Equal rights for LGBTQ Americans is a ‘fake problem.'”

“Children of working Americans deserve a federal guarantee that their parents’ marriages aren’t up for debate, tweeted Alex Johnson.

Journalist and political commentator David A. Andelman: “And this is how @marcorubio and the @GOP make sure they get not a single #LGBTQ vote in 2022 or 2024 or never?!”

Author Jeff McKown wrote: “As a working Floridian in the LGBTQ+ community, I am also struggling. I need to understand why @marcorubio recently said voting to support my right to be married is a ‘stupid waste of time.’ He knows damn well the Boggs decision puts Obergfell in jeopardy,and he doesn’t care.”

Some pointed out Rubio’s votes against Democratic legislation that would help the working Americans he claimed he wanted to help.

“Working Americans do struggle. Weird you vote to cut their healthcare, child tax credits, funding for small bizs & anything else that’d help them. Also, they can’t act like spoiled idiots w/ their $ and then put it all on the FL GOP credit card like you,” tweeted Cliff Schecter, the president of a public relations firm, and an author and syndicated columnist.

“(1) Republicans don’t have policy that would help w/ gas prices & flight cancellations: they want US to focus on them, but not so hard to realize they have no solutions (2) Republicans want US to categorize all the cruel things they do to minority populations, as ‘culture war,'” wrote economist David Rothschild as he began a series of tweets.

“You’ve done literally nothing whatsoever to combat gas prices, even going so far as to vote *against* an anti price-gouging bill,” one Twitter user noted.

Others just openly mocked Rubio, like this tweet from an account named Noble Prize in Sarcasm: “Marco got dunked on so bad by Buttigieg he had to make an emergency video.”

And this Twitter user who wrote: “Pro Tip: When whining about how you can relate to the plight of the average working American, maybe don’t do it in a crisp white polo sitting on the deck of your spacious Florida mansion surrounded by sunshine and palm trees.”

 

 

 

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News

Lone Dissenter Calls Texas Supreme Court Transgender Ruling ‘Cruel, Unconstitutional’

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texas supreme court

The lone justice to dissent called the Texas Supreme Court ruling to uphold the ban on gender-affirming care for minors “cruel” and “unconstitutional” Friday.

The Texas Supreme Court, currently made up of all Republican justices, decided 8-1 to uphold a ban on providing gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers, to transgender people under the age of 18. The Court said that it did “not attempt to identify the most appropriate treatment for a child suffering from gender dysphoria,” claiming it to be a “complicated question” for doctors and legislators.

The Court ruled that even though “fit parents have a fundamental interest in directing the care, custody, and control of their children free from government interference,” that interest is bound by “the Legislature’s authority to regulate the practice of medicine.”

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

“[W]e conclude the Legislature made a permissible, rational policy choice to limit the types of available medical procedures for children, particularly in light of the relative nascency of both gender dysphoria and its various modes of treatment and the Legislature’s express constitutional authority to regulate the practice of medicine,” Justice Rebeca Aizpuru Huddle wrote.

Justice Debra Lehrmann, the only justice to dissent, was clear in her disagreement. She wrote that the decision means “the State can usurp parental authority to follow a physician’s advice regarding their own children’s medical needs.” Lehrmann identified that gender-affirming care can be “lifesaving.”

She also mocked the idea that the Court’s ruling didn’t “deprive children diagnosed with gender dysphoria of appropriate treatment.” Lehrmann pointed out that by upholding the law, it “effectively forecloses all medical treatment options that are currently available to these children … under the guise that depriving parents of access to these treatments is no different than prohibiting parents from allowing their children to get tattoos.”

“The law is not only cruel—it is unconstitutional,” she wrote, calling the ban a “hatchet, not a scalpel.”

Lehrmann also put the lie to the claims by anti-LGBTQ activists that surgery is common for transgender minors.

“Indeed, the leading medical associations in this field do not recommend surgical intervention before adulthood. Without a doubt, the removal of a young child’s genitalia is something that neither the conventional medical community nor conscientious parents would condone,” she wrote. “Moreover, medical experts do not recommend that any medical intervention … be undertaken before the onset of puberty.”

Lehrmann is correct. Prior to puberty, transgender care is basically limited to social changes. For example, wearing gender-affirming clothing and using appropriate pronouns, according to Advocates for Trans Equality.

Puberty blockers can be prescribed for those who are starting puberty. Puberty blockers are safe, according to Cedars-Sinai, and are not only used for transgender youth. A common purpose is to stop precocious puberty, which affects 1 in 5,000 children, including children as young as 6. For both transgender youth and kids going through precocious puberty, puberty blockers are known to improve patients’ mental health, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Puberty blockers are also fully reversible. However, in terms of trans youth, a study published in The Lancet found that 98% of those on puberty blockers went on hormone replacement therapy upon turning 18. But even for those few teens who realize after being on puberty blockers that they aren’t trans, all they have to do is stop taking them, and their puberty will progress as normal.

 

 

 

 

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Rep. Tim Walberg Tells Uganda to ‘Stand Firm’ on ‘Kill The Gays’ Law Ted Cruz Called ‘Horrific’

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Tim Walberg Uganda Kill The Gays Law

Representative Tim Walberg (R-MI) delivered a speech in Uganda to defend the country’s President Yoweri Museveni and the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023, better known as the “Kill the Gays” law.

Walberg traveled to Uganda in October to attend a national prayer breakfast organized by the Fellowship Foundation, also known as The Family, which also covered the cost of his trip, according to TYT. In the speech, transcribed by the blog Take Care Tim, he told the attendees to “stand firm” in the face of criticism.

“Whose side do we want to be on? God’s side. Not the World Bank, not the United States of America necessarily, not the UN. God’s side,” Walberg said. “I think as we go on here, it says, ‘So I will deliver you from the hand of the wicked, And I will redeem you from the grasp of the violent.’ – Who’s gonna do that? God is gonna do that. Your esteemed President, his excellency, President Museveni needs a nation that stands with him and says, though the rest of the world is pushing back on you, though there are other major countries that are trying to get into you and ultimately change you, stand firm. Stand firm.”

READ MORE: Mike Johnson Once Agreed to Speak at ‘Kill the Gays’ Pastor’s Conference – Until an NCRM Report

Walberg made it clear he knew his view would be unpopular in the United States.

“Now, this will probably get back to the national media in the United States, and I expect some pushback, but I’m not gonna give in to them. … I know that your President is a warrior. I like that about him. We’re in a battle, folks. We are in a battle,” he said.

Though Uganda has had homophobia enshrined in its legal code since it was a British protectorate, the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 is a drastic escalation. Previously, homosexuality was punished with life in prison, according to the Advocate. The new law allows the death penalty for those convicted of “aggravated homosexuality.” It also bans “promotion of homosexuality,” much like Russia bans queer “propaganda”.

The law is so draconian that Republican Senator Ted Cruz—no ally to the queer communitycondemned it. In May, shortly after Museveni signed the law, Cruz called the law “horrific” on X, formerly Twitter.

This Uganda law is horrific & wrong. Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ is grotesque & an abomination. ALL civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse. #LGBTQ,” Cruz tweeted.

Attempts to pass a similar bill to the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 started in 2014, with a bill also called the “Kill the Gays” law. That form of the bill was built by anti-LGBTQ activist Scott Lively, who previously claimed then-President Barack Obama was secretly gay.

While it didn’t go into effect then, the bill and ones like it kept popping up on Uganda’s parliamentary agenda. Earlier this year, President Joe Biden threatened to cut nearly $1 billion in annual aid to Uganda if the bill passed.

A previous version of this story credited Salon with the initial reporting; Salon had republished the article from TYT. The sourcing has been corrected; NCRM regrets the error.

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

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A federal judge issued an injunction Tuesday against an Idaho anti-trans law that would bar prescribing puberty blockers to transgender youth.

The Idaho anti-trans law, House Bill 71, was signed into law by Republican Governor Brad Little last April, according to the Idaho Statesman. It was scheduled take effect on January 1, 2024. Providing gender-affirming care to minors, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries would become a felony under the law. This is even though it is exceedingly rare for a person under 18 to be offered these type of surgeries, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday, stopping the Idaho anti-trans law from taking effect in less than a week. Winmill said that the pending lawsuit filed by two trans minors and their parents will most likely succeed, citing the 14th Amendment, according to the Statesman.

READ MORE: ‘I’m Suing’: Montana Democrat Silenced by Republicans in Battle Over Transgender Health Care Files Lawsuit

“Time and again, these cases illustrate that the 14th Amendment’s primary role is to protect disfavored minorities and preserve our fundamental rights from legislative overreach,” he wrote. “That was true for newly freed slaves following the Civil War. It was true in the 20th century for women, people of color, interracial couples and individuals seeking access to contraception. And it is no less true for transgender children and their parents in the 21st century.”

Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador told the paper he will appeal the injunction. Labrador claims “Winmill’s ruling places children at risk of irreversible harm.” The use of the phrase “irreversible harm” echoes the anti-trans book Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier. Shrier’s book endorses the since-debunked theory of “rapid-onset gender dysphoria.” The theory claims girls will declare themselves to be transgender as part of a “social contagion”—basically comparing transitioning to a fad.

Winmill, appointed to the Idaho district court in 1995 by President Bill Clinton, has recently ruled in other pivotal culture-war cases. This August, Winmill blocked Labrador from prosecuting doctors who send patients out-of-state for an abortion, KMVT-TV reported.

In August 2022, he also issued an injunction stopping Labrador from prosecuting ER doctors who provide an abortion in attempts to stabilize a patient, according to the Idaho Capital Sun, while a suit against the law.works its way through the court system. The injunction was overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in September of this year, according to the Capital Sun, though the lawsuit itself is still pending.

 

 

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