They're Everywhere ... April 4, 2022

These really are the easiest posts to compile, because, literally, they're everywhere ... but that's what makes it so frightening.

WISCONSIN

Karen Mueller, a Chippewa Falls attorney who is a key player in a movement to take the impossible step of decertifying the 2020 election, is running for Attorney General on a platform of using the office to prosecute doctors who did not administer the anti-parasite drug ivermectin to dying COVID-19 patients.

That’s all. Except, please note, her name is Karen.

ARIZONA

Last week Doug Ducey, Arizona’s GOPQANON governor, signed a series of bills that will outlaw abortion after 15 weeks if the US Supreme Court allows it, prohibit gender confirmation surgery for minors and ban transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams.

He also signed a bill requiring voters to prove their citizenship to vote in a presidential election.

If you’re a woman, or you’re an LGBTQ+ ally, or you simply believe you have a right to live your own life, vote this motherfucker out of office.

TEXAS

GOP Congressman Pete Sessions appeared on a far-right podcast where he embraced the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.

The replacement theory is a conspiracy espoused by white nationalists who claim Democrats want to fundamentally transform American by “replacing” the white population through a combination of immigration and asymmetric birthrates.

Well, I’m not saying  the Democrats want to replace all white people, but I’d like to see almost every single white Republican replaced.

NEBRASKA

After a televised debate, GOP state Senator Bruce Bostelman cited a debunked rumor that schools are placing litter boxes in school:

“They meow and they bark and they interact with their teachers in this fashion. And now schools are wanting to put litter boxes in the schools for these children to use. How is this sanitary?”

Bostelman has since apologized for being an ill-informed fuckwit.

UTAH

The Utah GOP-controlled Legislature voted to override Governor Spencer Cox’s veto of a controversial bill that would bar transgender girls from participating in school sports matching their gender identities.

The House voted 56-18 in favor of the override, with all Democrats and two Republicans—Representatives Robert Spendlove and Mike Winder—voting against the anti-trans measure. The Senate voted 21-8 to override the veto, with all Democrats and two Republicans—Todd Weiller and Daniel Thatcher—voting against hate.

That means in the entire Utah statehouse, just four Republicans stand against hate.

FLORIDA

GOPQANON Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation that would impose School Board term limit requirements statewide and also offer parents and others a mechanism to purge texts they don’t like from the classroom.

The bill will require school districts to list all library and instructional materials in use in an online database, with a multi-step review process before adoption, including a mandatory public hearing and a “reasonable” opportunity for public comment.

If only there was a mechanism in place for the people of Flori-duh to see that their governor is an out-of-control fearmongering, anti-LGBTQ+ racist and could remove him from office.

Oh yeah, CAST A GODDAMNED VOTE.

IDAHO

Idaho has become the first state to enact a law modeled after a Texas statute, banning abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy and allowing the law to be enforced through civil lawsuits to avoid constitutional court challenges.

GOP Governor Brad Little signed law the measure that allows people who would have been family members to sue a doctor who performs an abortion after cardiac activity is detected in an embryo. :Little says he stands with “Idahoans who seek to protect the lives of preborn babies.”

Little, however, has done little, to protect children once they’re out of the womb.

And this, for a change, we can end this post with something good …

US District Judge Mark Walker has struck down portions of a Florida election law, saying that the state’s GOP-led government was using subtle tactics to suppress Black voters.

Wait. What? Suppress Black voters?

The law tightened rules on mailed ballots, drop boxes and other popular election methods, and those changes made it difficult for Black voters who, overall, have more socioeconomic disadvantages than white voters.

Get educated and save yourselves from The Stupids.

And CAST A GODDAMNED VOTE!

Nebraska Senator Bill Kintner: Porn Star?

Remember the furor over Hillary and her emails? Did she send them on a private  server? Get them on a private server? Read and forward them on a private server? Remember how the GOP went nuts about that? All that makes me wonder why most of them are so silent about this …

Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts is urging — when he should be demanding — the resignation of state Senator Bill Kintner after allegations arose that Kintner made, and exchanged, a sexually explicit video of himself using his state computer.

Apparently last summer — yes, a year ago now — Kintner asked the Nebraska State Patrol for help with computer problems, for "what he believed to be a potential internet scam that occurred while [he] was in Massachusetts using his state computer." And that’s when the patrol found the homemade porn starring Bill Kintner.

The patrol turned over its investigation to the Accountability and Disclosure Commission last November, and now, nearly a year later ADC Director Frank Daley, who declined to comment further, said the commission is expected to weigh in during a meeting this week.

No wonder nothing gets done. It’s taken a year to look at the porn, investigate the porn, find that the porn was made and distributed by a government official on a government computer.

And Governor Ricketts isn’t so clean either; he allegedly learned of the investigation "shortly after" Kintner contacted the State Patrol last summer. In fact, Ricketts says he spoke by phone to Kintner last summer and urged him to resign if the allegations were true. Ricketts now says he was forced to keep mum while the investigation was ongoing.

The year-long investigation.

Investigators haven't described the video or said whether a permanent copy was ever obtained, but another state senator, Bob Krist, said he contacted the State Patrol last fall — again, almost a year ago — after a woman offered to sell a “sexually explicit” video of Kintner.

In an interesting twist, Bill Kintner has been married for about seven years to Lauren Kintner, Governor Ricketts’ chief policy adviser; and that may explain why Nebraska Democrats are denouncing Ricketts for his handling of the situation:

"It is not enough for Sen. Kintner to resign in shame. Anyone that knew this information and continued to let him sit in office must also resign. Did Governor Ricketts or his staff look the other way so they had [Kintner's] vote in the Unicameral?" — Jane Kleeb, chairwoman-elect of the Nebraska Democratic Party

Of course it makes perfect sense that Bill Kintner is considered one of the Nebraska Legislature's most conservative senators who says his parents taught him “the moral absolutes of Christianity, and I just applied those to everything."

Well, except The Gays, undocumented immigrants and his own porn-making abilities.

Kintner says that women are life’s greatest mystery because “no one understands them. They don't even understand themselves.”

He once likened his fellow senators to monkeys; he is staunchly anti-LGBT and has opposed same-sex marriage, gay adoption, and transgender rights. And he is one of those elected officials who think Christians should let The Gays know that their business isn’t welcome by providing them with “bad service.”

Last year, when arguing against a path to citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, Kintner called the immigrants “wetbacks;” a class of fourth graders was in the senate chamber at the time. And in June of 2015 Kintner posted a photo of a beheaded woman on Facebook to express his support for the death penalty.

It seems Bill Kintner has an opinion on everything except his own amateur porn career because, on that topic, he’s not talking.

Go figure. It’s the typical GOP hypocrisy; we’ll investigate and investigate and investigate the Democrats but one of our own? Keep him around because we need his vote … unless this gets real ugly, then, and only then, will we throw him under a bus.

Journal Star

Raw Story

Good News ... Bad News ... Good News On Trans Rights

Last week, in Massachusetts, Governor Charlie Baker signed new legislation that will allow anyone in the state to use bathrooms or locker rooms that match their gender identity, and empowers authorities to make sure that no one does so fraudulently.

Now, how this is going to be done is unclear; oh, not the trans person using the bathroom, that’s been going on forever. But how will authorities make sure that a non-trans person isn’t using the bathroom for their own disgusting purposes is unclear.

Opponents of the legislation say that male sexual predators might pretend to be trans women in order to enter a woman’s bathroom or locker room even though there doesn’t seem to be a single case on the books to suggest this has been an issue ever.

“This … legislation extends additional protections to the commonwealth’s transgender community, and includes language to address the public safety concerns expressed by some by requiring the attorney general to issue regulations to protect against people abusing the law.” — Governor Baker

While this is a celebratory moment for the LGBTQ community and our trans brothers and sisters, let’s not forget North Carolina and their law that — in addition to denying LGBT North Carolinians equal protection under the law — mandates people use only the restrooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificates.And let us not forget that on the heels of Governor Baker signing this new law, some ten other states filed suit against the federal government over public schools allowing trans students to use restrooms conforming to their gender identity. Those backwoods states are, well, the usual suspects: Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North and South Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina and Wyoming.

And so now nearly half the states in this country are fighting to make sure transgender students can be discriminated against in schools. Yes, they’re fighting for the right to discriminate.

That new federal lawsuit in Nebraska challenges the federal government’s recent guidelines about the protections transgender students deserve under the law. And this new lawsuit joins a separate lawsuit that Texas — along with about a dozen states — filed in May.

The Nebraska suit argues that the Department of Justice [DOJ] and Department of Education [DOE] are overstepping their roles by “rewriting” the term “sex” to include “gender identity.” And, like the Texas suit, the Nebraska suit focuses mostly on how the new guidelines were issued; it’s semantics, y’all.

While the Administrative Procedures Act says that that when agencies like the DOF and the DOE clarify an existing rule, they can just issue new guidelines. But these Hate States say these agencies have created a new rule by now clarifying that “sex” protections should include transgender individuals, and so they want the DOJ and the DOE to go through a lengthy notice-and-comment period before the new guidelines are finalized.

You know, drag it out so the kids can’t pee. And the most disgusting part of these lawsuits is the wording in the suits seems to deny the very existence of transgender people and their identities:

“Neither the text nor the legislative history of Title IX supports an interpretation of the term “sex” as meaning anything other than one’s sex as determined by anatomy and genetics, which was the meaning assigned “sex” by the leading dictionaries at the time Congress enacted the statute.”

Basically, these Hate States think Title IX’s enforcement should be permanently attached to a 1972 understanding of the word “sex” — the term ‘transgender’ was first coined in 1965 — and the fact that trans people have failed to obtain protection under the law in the past is somehow proof that they should receive no protections now.

And while most of the research of what it means to be transgender is very recent, Nebraska and the Hate States argue that none of that new information should inform enforcement of Title IX. They want to use an understanding of transgender from back in the day when very few people knew what it meant; back when even the word itself was new. They clearly want to live in the past, with the rules and laws of the past informing the rules and laws of today, even though we have, or at least some of us have, increased knowledge and awareness of what it means to be trans.

But these Hate States aren’t concerned with how the transgender person feels, but rather how other people feel around, or about, transgendered persons. The suit maintains that individuals must use bathrooms or locker rooms based on their “biological sex” and even trots out the Hate Speech about how anyone can get access to any facility by just changing their gender identity on a whim.

You know, because that’s what it means to be trans … changing gender because of a mood or a feeling. Of course, the hate is clearly evident in the fact that, in the Nebraska suit specifically, nowhere is the word “transgender” even used unless they are quoting another document.

They’re so afraid to say the word so how can we possibly believe they’ll, ever accept the word, or the transgender person?

On the upside of the Hate … Friday was the deadline for collecting signatures for a Washington state anti-trans ballot initiative, and those anti-LGBT conservatives have fallen far short of the signatures they needed to legislate discrimination.

The Just Want Privacy campaign—an off-shoot of the Hate Group, Family Policy Institute of Washington—had proposed Initiative 1515 — very similar to North Carolina’s HB2 — to ban transgender people from restrooms that match their gender identity, but it also would have allowed students to sue schools if they saw transgender students in the “other” bathroom.

Luckily, though, Just Want Privacy cancelled their appointment to deliver their petitions to the Secretary of State because they have failed to collect even two-thirds of the 300,000 signatures they hoped to collect.

And so, last Friday, the campaign’s leaders released a statement conceding failure:

“Just Want Privacy will not give up the fight to protect the state’s girls and women and is considering all of its options for repealing the ‘Open Locker Room’ rule. The current law is grotesquely dangerous and in need of dramatic revision.”

This sign of failure is in sharp contrast to their website crowing just a week ago that they were “almost there” but, since they tried fear instead of facts, maybe the good people, of Washington saw the Hate for just that: fear and hate.

Now if only we could get those other twenty or so states to understand that ….

Massachusetts

Nebraska & Texas

Washington

ISBL Asshat of the Week: Nebraska GOP State Senator Bill Kintner

Some folks get on an anti-LGBT tear and there’s just no stopping ‘em …

Days after voting to kill a proposal to protect LGBT individuals from discrimination in Nebraska, Republican … of course … state Senator Bill Kintner took to the radio to explain that gays don’t deserve protected class status because … “men in dresses.”

Oh, but he did. Kintner argued that there are no problems with discrimination in Nebraska and that the US Constitution allows people to violate gay individuals’ civil rights, and that businesses should be able to “make it known” if they don’t want to serve LGBT people by providing them with bad service.

Oh, but he did. And then he dared Nebraskans to vote him out of office if they don’t like his positions on LGBT equality:

“When there’s a majority of people in our state that thinks [LBGT rights are an] important issue, and thinks that they want representation to do that, it’ll happen. There were 40,000 people who elected me to represent them … they sent me down here to do this job.”

To hate; to legislate hate; and, well, to be a dick. Of course, Kintner’s comments are coming at a time when states everywhere are passing, or trying to pass, so-called “religious discrimination” laws that allow people to discriminate against LGBT Americans because the Baby Jeebus said so, though where in the Bible that speech occurs, I have no idea.

And Bill Kintner is the worst of a large, sad, pathetic, hate-filled bunch because he says LGBT individuals don’t deserve a protected class status and then explained it like this:

“So if you get an employee who is habitually late — he’s just not a very good employee — and you sit him down and say ‘Joe, you’re late too often, you don’t get your work done on time, you’re not doing the job right, you’ve gotta straighten up or we’re going to replace you. And he says, ‘You know, I feel like a woman today. Now we’ve got a whole problem if you’re trying to get rid of him.”

Oh, but he did. And when he was confronted with his stupidity by radio host Matt Tompkins, who reminded Bill Kintner that transgender people don’t choose their gender identity, Kintner said:

“Let’s think about Bruce Jenner. Because he wears a dress, does that make him a woman? Of course it doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t.”

First off, dick, her name is Caitlyn, and maybe you should educate yourself about gender identity before you flap your lips again … like that’ll happen.

Tomkins then reminded elected official Kintner that the First Amendment doesn’t grant anyone the right to discriminate against other people and violate their civil rights, something the Constitution also protects, and Kintner said that it does: discrimination is in the Constitution:

“Well, if you have a restaurant, and they’re not overtly discriminating but, you know, they’re kind of making it known that you know, we don’t like men sitting around in dresses, you now, that stuff takes care of itself. Word will get out that this place doesn’t serve everyone. It doesn’t give everyone equal treatment. If you’re a man wearing a dress it takes you an hour to get waited on, and for everyone else it takes 20 minutes … that’s called bad service.”

It’s called discrimination, and when we pass laws against Asshattery, and how Asshats should not be treated equally, I will be standing at the front of that protest line arguing that, while I don’t necessarily agree with asshats, and I don’t really understand asshats, asshats are people, too. And they deserve to be treated equally and hopefully reeducated so they stop saying stupid things … even though that is their right.

I’d still call them out on being an asshat, but, hey, no one’s perfect.

Bill Kintner, the ISBL Asshat of the Week.

Think Progress

Random Musings

Well, well, well … Monica Lewinsky has crawled out of the slime once again, now that Hillary’s in the news, too. It seems every time Hillary Clinton runs for office, Lewinsky trots out her ‘Woe is me’ tales from the 1990s.

That is so last century.

“Oh, poor me, I f**ked a married man that I knew was married.”

“Oh poor me, I f**ked the President.”

“Oh poor me, I showed him my underwear. I am such an innocent and he took advantage of me.”

Siddown Monica, your story is ridiculous and old and you are not a victim. And if you ever seriously thought the President of the United Sates would leave his wife for you, please remember one thing:

You are not Olivia Pope.

[photo source] 

Same-sex couples in Nebraska, however, are being victimized, now that the state Attorney General's office is objecting to a new effort by The American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska to have both same-sex spouses listed as parents on their children's birth certificates.

The ACLU has asked a judge to order state officials to list both spouses on birth certificates, saying that the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services has refused to provide married gay couples with birth certificates for their children on the same conditions as married straight couples.

The battle is not over … the march goes on.

[photo source]

On the flip side, by a 9-2 vote, the Anchorage Assembly voted to make it illegal in the city to discriminate over sexual orientation or gender identity, making this new ordinance the first of its kind in Alaska.

Huh ... maybe now Mama Grizzly Bore can see equality from her house, too.

[photo source]

I once had long hair, luxuriously long curly hair. And I wore it in a variety of way. Loose and flowing; in a pony tail; or maybe just the top in a pony, and the rest flowing loose and lovely.

I was too early for the man bun, and, well, now, even though my hair is shorter, it’s still luxurious and lovely and perhaps ready for the newest trend: the man braid.

I need to find someone to do this for me …

[Man Bun, Man Braid]

So Kim Davis, criminal, met with Pope Frankie while he was here, but the Vatican, and Frankie, tried to keep it on the Down Low. But since Kim doesn’t know when to keep her mouth closed, she broke the story and at first the Vatican neither confirmed nor denied the story; then they opted not to deny it, and now they’re just plain saying it happened.

That’s Pope Frankie. A secret meeting with a woman who swore to God to uphold the laws of this country and when she decides she doesn’t like the laws, opts outbreak them in the name of God.

And Frankie thought this deserved a meeting, albeit a meeting in private. He’s as much a hypocrite and a coward as every other homophobe in the world, only he has a better stylist.

Sidenote: Is it me or do they look a little Separated At Birth? Or maybe it's the idea that all bigots look alike, slack jawed and vacant eyes ....

[photo source] 

With the new television season starting there are all kinds of good shows and bad shows, and trash shows, to watch, and some have some delicious man candy, like …

Hot Brit Lucien Laviscount  on Scream Queens, which is a hot mess, sometimes very funny trainwreck of a show, but, yeah, Lucien.

Oh, and they have one Diego Boneta on the show, too.

Then we have Chace Crawford, with eyelashes for days, playing rough and tumble wannabe oil barren on Blood and Oil. It’s soapy and sappy, but, hey, he takes his shirt off, so there’s that, too.

Then we have Hot Daddy James Brolin, playing it for giggles on Life In Pieces. He seems to be having fun playing the patriarch of the family, and I do love a silver fox, you know.

[LucienLaviscount, Diego Boneta, Chace Crawford, James Brolin] 

And finally, on the flip side of Man’s Law versus so-called God’s law argument … the Oklahoma Capitol Preservation Commission has agreed to comply with that state’s Supreme Court’s order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the grounds of the state capitol.

The court’s deadline to remove the monument is October 11th and the state says it will be gone by then.

Good.Bye.

[photo source]

Nebraska Senators Nordquist and Morfeld: LGBT Allies

Out in Nebraska three same-sex couples are suing the governor, Dave Heineman, and two other officials over a longstanding state policy that prevents LGBT Nebraskans from becoming foster parents or adopting children in state custody because, you know, gay.

The policy dates back to 1995 when an administrative memorandum was issued by Mary Dean Harvey, then director of the Nebraska Department of Social Services, which stated:

"It is my decision that, effective immediately, it is the policy of the Department of Social Services that children will not be placed in the homes of persons who identify themselves as homosexuals."

As in me saying, “Hello! Nice to meet you! I’m Bob, the homosexual.”

Since then the policy has prohibited  HHS from issuing foster home licenses to, or placing children with, anyone who is gay, or even to  couples who are “unrelated, unmarried adults residing together,” meaning that, since 1995, Nebraska has said that single people, and gay people, and even heterosexual couples who aren’t married, are unfit to be parents.

Hence the lawsuit. One of the couples among the plaintiffs are Greg and Stillman Stewart, who adopted five children who now range in age from 13 to 20 from the California foster care system before moving to Nebraska:

“When we moved to Nebraska, we felt we could welcome other children in need of families now that our kids are grown, [but] when we called HHS to apply to become foster parents, we were told that despite our experience raising five wonderful children, we were not eligible.”

Gay; and hopefully these plaintiffs will win their suit against the state because, with so many children in foster care, and so many people, gay and straight, married and single, who wish to be foster parents, wouldn’t it be in the best interests of the child and not maintaining some bassackwards law?

And to that end, a few Nebraska lawmakers are expected to debate a bill in their next session that would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation when determining the suitability of a placement or in issuing a foster care license, and would help remove barriers to placing children with someone they know who is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

One is Democratic Senator Jeremy Nordquist [top left], who introduced a bill to overturn the ban, which was heard by the Unicameral's Judiciary Committee last week; and the other is Democratic Senator Adam Morfeld [top right], who questioned anti-gay activist Greg Neuhaus, a fan of the ban, who told the committee he felt Nordquist’s bill is "promoting an agenda."

You know that elusive Gay Agenda, which we like to call Equality, but I digress …

Morfeld, who has also introduced pro-LGBT legislation, responded that Nordquist's measure would simply ban discrimination, to which Neuhaus replied that he is in favor of keeping The Gays from being foster parents as much as he is “opposed to placing a child with an unmarried heterosexual couple." 

"And why's that, sir?" Adam Morfeld asked.

"Because I don't think it's in the best interest of the child," Neuhaus said, to which Adam Morfeld, the son of a single mother replied:

"So, my mother was a single mother for 15 years. I grew up, I didn't get into trouble. I went to school. I went to school after working full-time for two years. I went to night school while working full-time for two years. I had a part-time job on top of that. And then I went to the University of Nebraska and worked my way through the University of Nebraska, and then after that I went to the University of Nebraska College of Law. During that time, I started a nonprofit that now employs 30 full- and part-time staff. My mother was a single mother. Did she do something wrong?"

"I didn't say she did. No," Neuhaus responded, though he sensed his big foot had entered his mouth and he tried to get up and leave the witness table after saying, "I'm not going to just be lectured to. If you want to ask me a question, I'll answer it."

Morfeld told Neuhaus that he could walk away, but he was going to finish regardless:

"Under your rationale, my mother who's a single mother likely isn't the most fit parent, and the point that I'm trying to make is that fit parents come in all shapes and sizes, all kinds of sexual orientations, and that's all I have to say. Thank you for your testimony."

Snap.

Jeremy Nordquist and Adam Morfeld; LGBT allies, and allies to foster children and families.

sources:

Towleroad
Journal Star
Aksarbent

Why Marriage Equality Matters ... Everywhere

In 2009, in Iowa, Sue Kirchofer married Mary Stroesser where equality lives, and where they lived until returning to Nebraska where Sue grew up.

Upon returning home, Sue Kirchofer changed her name to Sue Stroesser; she changed her name on her Social Security card; she changed her name on her passport; her credit cards carry the name Sue Stroesser, as do her bank accounts; she has a Nebraska state license to practice in her health care profession as a Stroesser and she pays her Nebraska taxes as a Stroesser.

But, she cannot get a Nebraska driver’s license as a Stroesser because Nebraska is on the wrong side of history … still.

When Sue went to the Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles last month to get a new driver’s license with her married name on it, she presented her Iowa marriage license as proof of her name change, only to be told by a staffer that the DMV could not accept it since Nebraska is an anti-equality state and doesn’t recognize any same-sex marriage, no matter where it was performed.

And it’s not just an inconvenience, having one name on every single document, form, identification card, and work-related license, and another name on her driver’s license, Sue Stroesser cannot change her car insurance from the company they used in Iowa to a company in Nebraska without a valid driver’s license from the state.

“Progress has been made that’s life-changing and very affirming for a lot of people. But then I run into something that happens to me at the DMV, and it feels like I go back in time. I’ve been a Stroesser for a long time. I’m not asking for recognition of my marriage with Mary. I am asking for state identification with my current legal name.” — Sue Stroesser

Nebraska’s ban on same-sex marriage is being challenged in court, as are the bans in 31 other states, but this is a prime example of why we need federal recognition of same-sex marriage.

All Sue Stroesser wants is a driver’s license with her married name on it, and yet she has to fight for it just because she’s gay.

How on earth is that allowed to happen here?

source