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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

DeSantis’ Has Record of Appointing Conservatives With ‘Radical Fringe Beliefs’: MSNBC Producer

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After Florida Republican Governor Ron Desantis last week appointed a far-right Christian extremist who believes tap water may turn people gay, an MSNBC producer and editor is calling him out.

“DeSantis keeps tapping conservatives for official positions of influence, and they have something important in common: a set of radical fringe beliefs,” says MSNBC’s Steve Benen, a producer on The Rachel Maddow Show and the editor of The MaddowBlog.

Benen points to DeSantis now fully stripping Disney World of its fifty-year special self-governing status after the Magic Kingdom’s corporate leaders  criticized his “Don’t Say Gay” bill. DeSantis’ appointment of Ron Peri, a former pastor who now runs the far-Christian right men’s ministry called The Gathering to the new Disney World area oversight board leads Benen to ask, “Has Gov. Ron DeSantis tapped far-right conservatives to serve in key government positions despite their radical records or because of them?”

CNN’s KFile last week reported Peri has “frequently” made derogatory remarks about LGBTQ people, and “shared a baseless conspiracy theory that tap water could be making more people gay.”

READ MORE: After Being Mocked Over Three ‘Nutcase’ Whistleblowers Jim Jordan Now Threatening 16 FBI Agents With Subpoenas

“’So why are there homosexuals today?” Peri asked in a January 2022 Zoom discussion. “There are any number of reasons, you know, that are given. Some would say the increase in estrogen in our societies. You know, there’s estrogen in the water from birth control pills. They can’t get it out.”

“The level of testosterone in men broadly in America has declined by 50 points in the past 10 years,” he has also claimed. “You know, and so, maybe that’s a part of it.”

“But the big part I would suggest to you, based upon what it’s saying here, is the removal of constraint,” Peri also said. “So our society provided the constraint. And so, which is the responsibility of a society to constrain people from doing evil? Well, you remove the constraints, and then evil occurs.”

In other words, Peri believes that being LGBTQ is the result of water laced with drugs, or “evil.”

It’s not just Peri.

Benen adds, “it’s also worth appreciating the Republican governor’s broader track record when it comes to making personnel assessments. DeSantis had a great many choices for state surgeon general, for example, but he picked Dr. Joseph Ladapo, despite — or perhaps because of — the physician’s highly controversial record.”

“Similarly, the governor had an opportunity last year to appoint a new Florida secretary of state — an office that helps administer state elections. DeSantis tapped Cord Byrd, who has partnered with election deniers and has refused to say President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.”

READ MORE: ‘Emperor With No Clothes’: DeSantis Mocked for Being Unable to Say How He Would Handle Ukraine as President

“Byrd’s wife, meanwhile, has taken some radical positions related to the Jan. 6 attack, the Proud Boys, and even the QAnon delusion — and DeSantis appointed Esther Byrd to the state board of education.”

There’s more.

Benen doesn’t mention her but Gov. DeSantis’ former official spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, who switched over to his political campaign office, is the one largely responsible for getting the damaging and offensive “groomer” label against LGBTQ people to go viral.

Recently, Pushaw pinned her response to a VICE News tweet to the top of her Twitter account page.

The tweet reads: “If DeSantis gets his way—and he likely will—diversity, equity and inclusion efforts will be eliminated from every public college and university in Florida.”

Pushaw’s one-word response: “Good.”

Also not mentioned in the article is DeSantis’ highly-controversial appointment of far-right activist Christopher Rufo to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees. Rufo is the Manhattan Institute extremist behind the right’s CRT panic.

In 2021, Rufo bragged he wants to “have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory,’” and “put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.” Last summer he told conservatives to make drag queens “more lurid” and sexual.

“Conservatives should start using the phrase ‘trans stripper’ in lieu of ‘drag queen,’” Rufo said on Twitter, despite drag queens not generally being transgender. “It has a more lurid set of connotations and shifts the debate to sexualization.”

It’s little wonder DeSantis found a home in Florida for Rufo.

“Mr. Rufo has taken aim at opponents of a new Florida law that prohibits teachers in some grades from discussing L.G.B.T.Q. issues and that critics call ‘Don’t Say Gay,’” The New York Times reported last year in April. “He declared ‘moral war’ against the statute’s most prominent adversary, the Walt Disney Company. And he has used the same playbook that proved effective in his crusade on racial issues: a leak of insider documents.”

Rufo consulted on and appeared with Governor Ron DeSantis “at the signing of a bill known as the Stop W.O.K.E. Act, which bars teaching in workplaces and schools that anyone is inherently biased or privileged because of race or sex,” The Times added, noting that Rufo “warned Disney that an in-house program it had run that urged discussion of systemic racism was ‘now illegal in the state of Florida.’”

Last week, Florida Democratic state Sen. Tina Polsky likened DeSantis’ takeover of state boards, (which he is doing via appointments,) to “fascist regimes,” as the Florida Phoenix reported.

“When you look to fascist regimes, it starts with beating down the press. Beating down academics. Excluding minorities. Targeting minorities – I think exactly what he’s (DeSantis) doing with the LGBTQ community fits into that. And with the Black community with AP African American studies,” Polsky told the Phoenix. “That’s how it starts. And you control all levels of government, and you ban books. And so that is how it starts, and to me, that’s what it looks like is going on right now.”

 

 

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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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BIGOTRY

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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