The Bad and The Good ... Monday May, 2, 2022

These really are the easiest posts to compile because there are dumb people everywhere ... but that’s what makes it so frightening. So this week, I decided to include some Good News as sort of a palette cleanser for the crazies …

BAD

TENNESSEE

GOP Governor Bill Lee has signed a new bill to allow Ivermectin, AKA horse paste, to be available for the treatment of COVID-19 without a prescription in Tennessee. Horse.Paste.

Of note is that in 2019 Governor Lee declared that God would stop school shootings and opioid overdoses if enough people would just pray for it to happen. In 2020 he asked people to pray away the COVID.

How’s that workin’ for you, Governor? Looks like your god doesn’t care about school shootings, opioid deaths, or COVID.

OKLAHOMA

The state Senate approved a GOP bill to outlaw abortion, putting the state on track to be the first in the nation to enact a total abortion ban once the GOP governor signs the measure into law.

Raped and pregnant? Too bad. Victim of incest? Too bad. Not viable for mother or child to survive a pregnancy? Too fucking bad.

GEORGIA

GOP Governor Brian Kemp signed several education bills into law last week: one empowers the state school athletic association to exclude transgender athletes, one allows for the banning books, and one makes it wrong to teach history, well, real, true, history.

The world is going to hell in a  handbasket and Kemp is worried about books and history and transgender athletes.

OKLAHOMA

GOP Governor Kevin Stitt has signed a bill prohibiting the use of nonbinary gender markers on state birth certificates.

The bill followed a flap last year over the Department of Health’s agreement in a civil case allowing a nonbinary option. The birth certificate in that case was issued to an Oklahoma-born Oregon resident who sued after the agency initially refused the request. The GOP and Stitt were incensed and Stitt issued an executive order prohibiting any changes to a person’s gender on birth certificates.

FLORIDA

Jeremy Baldwin teaches social studies at Booker High School in Florida and has flown a rainbow colored Coexist flag in his classroom for four years without any problem, but shortly after the Don’t Say Gay law was signed he was forced to take it down because it’s “political” in nature.

Now, I get the rainbow part cuz, you know, gay is illegal and all, but the idea of asking people to coexist, regardless of their religious beliefs, is too hot a topic?

Oh Flori-duh.

GOOD

GEORGIA

About 200 members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans gathered at Stone Mountain over the weekend for an observation of Confederate Memorial Day, but they were met with roughly 100 counter protesters shouting and jeering, forcing the SCV speakers to struggle to be heard over the din. SCV member Kenneth Buggay said:

“These protesters are against our Christian faith. They are anti-Christ. We have been fighting this war since 1861. We will be victorious.”

You’ve been fighting for 161 years and you are nowhere near victorious, asshat.

KANSAS

The GOP-controlled House failed to override Democrat Governor Laura Kelly’s veto of a transgender sports ban, blocking the measure from becoming a law.

Kelly is the fourth governor this year to veto a transgender sports ban, though two of the others—Utah GOP Governor Spencer Cox and Kentucky Democrat Governor Andy Beshear—had their vetoes overridden by their state’s legislatures; the Indiana legislature has not yet tried to override GOP Governor Eric Holcomb’s veto.

FLORIDA

The Human Rights Campaign is welcoming people to Florida with new billboards:

“Governor Ron DeSantis welcomes you to Florida, the ‘Don’t say gay or trans’ State.”

The “Don’t say gay or trans” part is written over “Sunshine”—Florida’s official nickname.

UTAH

Jillian Orr recently graduated from Brigham Young University— a private university in Utah sponsored by the Mormon Church—but she may be in trouble with the university for her graduation stunt.

Orr, who is bisexual, sewed a rainbow flag into her graduation gown and showed it off at the ceremony, and then shared it to social media where it went viral.

Stand out. Speak out. Live out.

And CAST A GODDAMNED VOTE.