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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 11 months

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is a favorite target of the right. Conservatives appear to have difficulty handling the most senior gay official in the U.S. government with a husband, Chasten, and children. The Buttigieg kids, Penelope and Gus, have been in the world for over two years, and Republican voters remain obsessed with their parents.

Throughout it all, Buttigieg faced political attacks from those on the right who otherwise praised “strong family values.”

It is, therefore, no surprise that Buttigieg is keenly aware of the realities LGBTQ+ people face in 2023 as conservatives attack the community and LGBTQ+ people from American society through targeted legislation intended to limit discussion of sexual orientation, gender identity, and books, as well as eliminate essential health care for transgender people.

“I think it’s gotten worse,” Buttigieg told Time during a recent interview. “I think we’re actually in an exceptionally ugly moment in terms of some figures deciding that there’s utility, political utility, in targeting trans people and LGBTQ people more generally,” before pointing to Republicans who voted against last year’s Respect For Marriage Act, which provides some protections for same-sex and interracial marriages. The bill, which received overwhelming support from Democrats, was opposed by 36 Republican senators and 169 Republican representatives.

“I mean, look how many people voted against marriage equality—which should have been an easy one—just as recently as a few months ago. And so I think it’s a reminder that none of what’s been gained is really locked in.”

Gallup reports that more than 71% of Americans favor marriage equality.

In light of the recent ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, Buttigieg warns that a Supreme Court decision also ushered in marriage equality, and the Justices have proved themselves capable of overturning established precedent.

“I don’t think anything is safe. I mean, Roe fell, and that was the law of the land for longer than I’ve been alive. Nothing is safe. Especially right now,” Buttigieg said.

Currently, LGBTQ+ rights in this country face a terrifying reality. Far-right provocateurs and lawmakers have moved on to identity politics after the court's decision.

These policies do not help Republicans win over middle-class voters, despite the praise of hard-right lawmakers. While Buttigieg acknowledges the privileges he enjoys, he believes this approach will fail.

“The situation of an upper-middle-class, married white gay dude is not the same as a trans kid in Texas or any number of LGBTQ people of color trying to survive right now,” he said. “They see political value in this. I see not only distraction but a very real harm that’s being done. And that’s gonna persist until they figure out that it is not rewarding politically for them.”

One of the GOP candidates for president in 2024 has gone all in on hatred of LGBTQ+ people. As Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis has unapologetically targeted queer people in his state, and it appears that that disdain extends to his professional interactions with Buttigieg.

One example is a proposed rail line connecting Miami to Tampa via a station near Disney World near Orlando. Federal infrastructure dollars could be a big boon to the state. As a result of its dispute with DeSantis, the company canceled an expansion of $1 billion and the construction of a station at Disney Springs.

According to Time, the train will instead head to the Orange County Convention Center in central Florida, but the longer it lingers, the less likely a Washington cash infusion will be.

Despite his best efforts, Buttigieg said he has yet to speak with DeSantis about transportation issues. Buttigieg noted that he has called DeSantis but has yet to talk to him.

“I’ve never heard from this Governor, and it’s not because I’ve never called him. We’ve never spoken. What I will say is we’ve done a lot of good work with the Florida Department of Transportation,” Buttigieg said. “We try to work around and through all that to just get stuff done. A huge amount of energy and effort is being wasted in these dumb fights. And that’s really unfortunate. It’s policy waste in order to achieve political benefit or perceived political benefit.”

Buttigieg added, “He’s more worried about Bud Light or Disney or whatever.”

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rae-gar-targaryen · 2 years

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Good morning, loves.

I wanted to write to share my feelings and offer my support. Tw: talk of roe v wade and abortion. --

It is a dark day in the US for the privacy rights of women, for the right to privacy for women to make their own medical decisions.

Roe v. Wade has been overturned, altering and shuttering 50 years' worth of constitutional protections for women seeking safe access to abortions. I cannot tell you the amount I'm sickened by this -- the fact that earlier this week this same Court decided to diminish the rights of persons in police custody, while expanding the rights for guns. The clear and resounding statement that women have less rights than a piece of metal...

The jurist in me fears for the slope this creates -- the same constitutional basis of personal privacy upon which Roe rested also protects interracial marriage, gay marriage, personal privacy, medical privacy, and family rights. How long before my parents' marriage, my marriage, and the relationships my friends and their spouses enjoy, are also carved into? Before our other fundamental rights are called into question and subsequently stripped?

I said it yesterday and I'll say it again -- this Court is a sham. One-third of our "justices" were appointed by an insurrectionist and now they (and their ilk) control our rights and the rights of the ones we love. Our Senate is complicit. What they've done, and what they're doing, are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I wish I was writing with a silver lining. With a message of hope. But here's the thing -- no one, no entity, no government should have a say in a woman's choice to govern her own body. To choose whether she wants a family. Ive had friends choose to abort out of medical necessity. I have family who chose to abort because they weren't ready to be a mother. and regardless of how you, personally, may feel about abortion as a concept -- how dare you feel so self-important and so self-righteous that you as a person should have some say, or support that an entity should have a say, in a woman's right to make her own deeply, inherently personal choices.

This is not about the rights of children. If our government or the conservative court cared at all about the rights of children, they would fund public programs, public schools, the foster care system. Adoptions would be less expensive.

We all deserve basic human dignity. We deserve the basic equality where we can all make a choice for ourselves. And today, we've been told that we don't. This is a deeply personal, difficult blow.

I want to say that if you want to vent, scream, cry, I'm here for you. My asks and my messages are open. It's a difficult day and I'm sending you a hug from me. If you want to send a happy thought (or you need a happy thought), I'm here.

If you feel so inclined, you can also consider donating to relief funds in one of the thirteen states where abortions are illegal.

I may lose followers for this. Which, fine. I don't care. This is not a platform for you to share your anti-abortion sentiments. I'm not inviting a debate. I won't humor it. If you don't agree with the above, fine. I wish you well. But I'm probably not the person, and this isn't the blog, for you. Here, we respect the autonomy of women. Of minorities. Of the LGBTQIA community. I won't humor or stand for the idea that we deserve less rights than others. I'm a bisexual woman in an interracial marriage, and I believe in abortion. Whether I ever choose to have one or need one is irrelevant to the belief that my fellow women should be allowed to choose for themselves and control their own lives the same way a man gets to. End of story.

Stay strong today, loves. I'm here for you. Sending all my love 💜🌿

- Rae

#personal #ok to rb

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lila-rae · 2 years

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I'm currently in my final year of law school in my country (not America) and honestly, my brain just cannot process the absolute injustices of your judicial system. I'm from western Europe and most Constitutions here make it pretty much impossible to impose an *absolute* ban on abortions, because the woman's right to her own bodily autonomy must be protected. It's part of the idea that every human being has inherent dignity and worth. For the life of me, I cannot understand how rapists have more say over a woman's body than she does. It fucking infuriates me.

They’ll say I t’s cause the fetus is seen as a person with all rights, including the right to life. However if you read the opinion you’ll see that they mention how we have a huge demand for adoption but not a lot of babies being born. And our birth rate is at an all time low. And what better way to fix that then essentially making women breeding stock 😒.

I have 3 kids. I love them so much, but they were my choice. I’ve also had an abortion, which was also my choice and honestly probably set me up to have the amazing life and family I have now.

I spent the last 9 months on here talking about how awful pregnancy is, and no one should be forced to endure that if they don’t want to. Before viability a zygote/embryo/fetus is literally a parasite in the most basic definition of the word. I don’t understand how the government thinks it can compel people to use their organs to keep another organism alive. It would be akin to forcing someone to give someone else their kidney because someone else is endanger of dying. It’s a nice gesture if you want to, but it should never be forced. We should have control over any medical decision or procedure.

And this legal ruling is setting up the government to overturn other rulings like gay-marriage, access to contraceptives, sodomy laws, and interracial marriage (all of which use the right to privacy as a defense). And all of which the right argues the state should be able to decide. But why does anyone get to decide this. Honestly I want some state to just start making laws like a ban on heterosexual sex/marriage, or codifying a law forbidding men to get viagra for them to see how ridiculous their rulings are.

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pomoapple · 2 years

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TW R*pe mention: I don't care what anyone says, Roe V Wade getting overturned will skyrocket rape. Husbands raping their wives because they want just onnnnne more baby. Boyfriends raping their girlfriends to "lock them down". Dad's raping their daughters to "keep it in the family". Frat boys raping drunk girls to "spread the good times". Perverts raping strangers because they have a forced impregnation kink. Men raping women because they demand a offspring from her. In the eyes of regressives women are dumb whore idiots who should never have worn that dress and should be punished for having casual sex by being forced to give birth. God forbid they have a miscarriage or have a life threatening pregnancy. Give her the electric chair! Also government appointmed demons have already been talking about killing Lawrence V Texas (ewww yucky gays!) And Nazi politicians have been caught saying that Loving V Virgina was bullshit since interracial marriage shouldn't be enforced across America (ewww yucky coloreds!) Republicans by existence have always hated gay people and women and poc and trans people and the disabled and poor people and children and race mixing and immigrants but the party has been VERY shy with saying it out loud, but now they don't have to! Hopefully at home abortion remedies become more common to repeat than the national anthem and it cuts down on hanger abortions, that's all I can hope for.

#doomerpilled #republicans are gonna really struggle with celebrating the results of rape. but theyll do it eventually #abortion #roe v wade #terfs dni #radfems dni #republicans dni #white supremacists dni #homophobes dni

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bisexualhobi · 2 years

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212 mass shootings this year, the most recent one at an elementary school. Those babies, 7 to 10 years old and a couple of teachers got mutilated. Some were so bad they were unrecognizable and had to use their relative's dna to identify them. 10 years since sandy hook, another elementary school shooting and nothings changed. In fact, texas just made it easier to buy military grade weapons.

The supreme court overturning roe vs wade, which is controlling women's bodies and in the future could reverse legalization of gay marriage, interracial marriage, banning contraception, the list goes on and on.

A state just passed something where they say life begins at conception, which means no abortions. It's illegal, yet we have a baby formula shortage and babies are in the hospital malnourished because they literally cannot be fed. What happened when everyone went out in the streets to protest against police brutality and having to shout "black lives matter" and to literally fight to stop black people from being killed just because of skin color? What did they do? Nothing! Pro life my fucking ass.

So what does the president do? Invite a kpop group? Are we serious right now? Asian americans HAVE been attacked and HAVE been victims of hate crimes and microagressions and it only sky rocketed when covid hit. A man who watched asian p*rn went to a restaurant and killed asian women. Fetishization is huge (and really disgusting) and will literally get you killed. If the president wants to address it, that's great! But why are bringing a non asian american group here to talk about hate crimes? Yes, bts have had a shit ton of racist shit thrown at them. But they dont live here. They will never be victims of hate crimes. They get to go back to their country where they live such a privileged life and are the majority (asian). They dont have to worry about it and they wont experience it. Get asian americans to do it. If you want a celeb, get, idk, fucking eric nam to do it then (lmfaooo?????). They have to live here every single day and endure microaggressions and worry about being victims of hate crimes because of the amount of racism and fetishization towards them. Have a group of asian americans stand up there with the president and talk about this if he really wants to make an impact, not a kpop group who probably wont even serve their own country when it's mandated. Idk. Im very angry and upset these days and it probably shows in this post.

yeah you sound very angry and it's 100% valid. you are right to be upset and i can't begin to imagine what it's like because i don't live in the US and i'm not a minority where i live. I'm really sorry and i sympathize with you though.

as the previous asked said the bright side here is at least this will spark a conversation and at least bts with their enormous popularity will give a platform to this discussion. but do not forget to hold the government and the people in charge accountable and don't let your love for bts blind you either, hold them and hybe accountable too! those are my two cents, as a person who is neither asian nor an immigrant nor a US resident.

#asks #bts

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aenxiome · 2 years

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The shit that’s going on in this country it makes me not wanna live anymore. (I’m not gonna go out and do the unaliving don’t worry) like honestly first r v wade was over turned, and now they wanna go after different types of contraception

They don’t even realize that types of contraception aren’t just to stop someone from having a baby they also fix hormonal issues and can ease pain from endometriosis and other conditions. I can’t even imagine how bad it’s going to be if they overturn that next.

On the 27th they put prayer back in school which is a horrible decision. We all know what they’re going to allow and what they will not

There was even talks recently about overturning gay marriage, and even interracial marriage

What the hell is this country coming to

Something needs to be done and we need to fix this, before it gets worse, before it’s too late to fix it at all

#us politics #politics #roe vs. wade #roe vs wade overturned #prayer back in schools #human reproduction #human rights #womansupportingwoman #woman’s rights

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miffydoll · 2 years

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so thats just it huh. a cult that started a long ass time ago spread this far and wide and because of that were dealing with what has occured today. people who believe a man walked on water are in charge of america. please let this sink in. because of that cult they have taken away reproductive rights and now want to ban contraceptives and gay marriage, hell theyre even talking about overturning loving vs. virgina (interracial marriage). that is no land of the free. that is a christian fascist regime. i hope america burns to the fucking ground.

#im sorry im just so angry #i might delete this rant but i just want so badly for horrible unspeakable acts to happen to people in power #if there was ever a time for a guillotine its now

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androgynealienfemme · 2 years

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Abt your genocide post- what country is that in? Genuinely asking

I live in the United States. For the past few months and specifically these last few weeks, republicans have been ramping up in claiming lgbt people are pedophiles and groomers, and there have been Republicans openly stating we must be wiped out by any means necessary. Republican legislators in multiple states (Florida, Texas, Ok, Alabama, Tennessee, and more) have been creating laws which makes make it illegal for trans teens to seek transition care, which sends child services after parents of trans children, and which make it illegal to discuss lgbt content in schools (this law is so vague it creates a blanket ban. That’s important). This is only the beginning of what they wish to enact. They want to make it impossible for lgbt people to exist openly. We have republicans wanting to forcibly make these laws National despite their unpopularity.

We have politicians like Marjorie Green stating “democrats are the party of pedophiles”, and you’re either against “trans and pedos” or for pedophilia. Republicans are very loudly calling lgbt adults groomers and stating teachers and parents who accept the lgbt kids in their lives are making these kids trans and gay. They’re already trying to remove trans kids from supportive parents in Texas and now Florida. The next step is to remove all lgbt kids from their parents, and to remove kids from lgbt parents. To ban lgbt teachers in schools. To force us all out of public life. Because we’re “groomers”.

We are about to lose everything with the conservative leaning Supreme Court. republicans in the senate are openly stating they want to overturn Obergefell (marriage equality). They also are talking about overturning all the civil rights cases of the past 70 years, from Roe to Griswold to fucking Loving v Virginia (interracial marriage made legal), one of these cases is Lawrence v Texas (2003) which was the elimination of sodomy laws. They want to bring back sodomy laws.

They’re ramping up their base to consider all lgbt people pedophiles again. They want to create stochastic terror. They aren’t hiding how much they want us all dead anymore.

We are on arguably in between 4-6 of the genocide chart. It only gets worse from here:

#I’m a law student #I’ve been watching the court go from bad to worse #I’ve been watching republicans ramp up on their attacks for months #and it’s gotten very very very dangerous #i am scared #I’ve studied history and I am very very scared #anon #politics

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yourreddancer · 2 years

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Heather Cox Richardson

March 22, 2022 (Tuesday)

Right on cue, Republican Senator Mike Braun of Indiana today told a reporter that states not only should decide the issue of abortion but should also be able to decide the issues of whether interracial marriage should be legal and whether couples should have access to contraception. He told a reporter: “Well, you can list a whole host of issues, when it comes down to whatever they are, I’m going to say that they’re not going to all make you happy within a given state, but we’re better off having states manifest their points of view rather than homogenizing it across the country as Roe v. Wade did.”

After an extraordinary backlash to his statements, Braun walked back what he had said, claiming he had misunderstood the question. “Earlier during a virtual press conference I misunderstood a line of questioning that ended up being about interracial marriage, let me be clear on that issue—there is no question the Constitution prohibits discrimination of any kind based on race, that is not something that is even up for debate, and I condemn racism in any form, at all levels and by any states, entities, or individuals,” he said.But he had stated his position quite clearly, and as he originally stated it, that position was intellectually consistent.

After World War II, the Supreme Court used the Fourteenth Amendment to protect civil rights in the states, imposing the government’s interest in protecting equality to overrule discriminatory legislation by the states. Now, Republicans want to return power to the states, where those who are allowed to vote can impose discriminatory laws on minorities.

Senator Braun is correct: it is not possible to overrule the Supreme Court’s use of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect civil rights on just one issue. If you are going to say that the states should be able to do as they wish without the federal government protecting civil rights on, say, the issue of abortion, you must entertain the principle that the entire body of decisions in which the federal government protects civil rights, beginning with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending segregation in the public schools, is illegitimate.

And that is off-the-charts huge.

It is, quite literally, the same argument that gave us the claimed right of states to enslave people within their borders before the Civil War, even as a majority of Americans objected to that system. More recently, it is the argument that made birth control illegal in many states, a restriction that endangered women’s lives and hampered their ability to participate in the workforce as unplanned pregnancies enabled employers to discriminate against them. It is the argument that prohibits abortion and gay marriage; in many states, laws with those restrictions are still on the books and will take effect just as soon as the Supreme Court decisions of Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges are overturned.

Braun’s willingness to abandon the right of Americans to marry across racial lines was pointed, since Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose confirmation hearing for her elevation to the Supreme Court is currently underway in the Senate, is Black and her husband is non-Black. The world Braun described would permit states to declare their 26-year marriage illegal, as it would have been in many states before the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision declared that states could not prohibit interracial marriages. This would also be a problem for sitting justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni

.But it is not just Braun talking about rolling back civil rights. This week, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has challenged the Griswold v. Connecticut decision legalizing contraception, and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) has questioned Obergefell.

Seventy percent of Americans support same-sex marriage. In 2012—the most recent poll I can find—89% of Americans thought birth control was morally acceptable, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that as of 2008, 99% of sexually active American women use birth control in their lifetimes. And even the right to abortion, that issue that has burned in American politics since 1972 when President Richard Nixon began to use it to attract Democratic Catholics to the Republican ticket, remains popular. According to a 2021 Pew poll, 59% of Americans believe it should be legal in most or all cases.

A full decade ago, in April 2012, respected scholars Thomas Mann, of the Brookings Institution, and Norm Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute, crunched the numbers and concluded: “The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream,” they wrote, “it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.”

And yet, in the last decade, the party has moved even further to the right. Now it is not only calling for an end to the civil rights protections that undergird modern America, but also lining up behind a leader who tried to overthrow our democracy. A column by Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post yesterday was titled: “Fringe Republicans are not the problem. It’s the party’s mainstream.”

Rubin points out that Republicans refused to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol, refused to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act (which as recently as 2006 enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support), and refused to impeach Trump for an attempt to overthrow our democracy. The party brought us to the brink of defaulting on the debt, and it tolerates white nationalists in its ranks.

At the state level, prominent Republicans spread covid disinformation, suppress voting, and harass LGBTQ young people. To end abortion, certain Republican-dominated states are offering bounties to anyone reporting women seeking abortions beyond six weeks in a pregnancy. Worse, Rubin notes, “a law in Idaho would force rape victims to endure nine months of pregnancy—while allowing their rapists to collect a bounty for turning them in if they seek an abortion.”

The confirmation hearings this week for the elevation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court have illustrated that Republican lawmakers are far more interested in creating sound bites for right-wing media and reelection campaigns than in governing. Led by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Republicans have tried to label Judge Jackson as soft on child pornographers, a smear that has been thoroughly discredited by, among others, the conservative National Review, which called it “meritless to the point of demagoguery.” Their attacks, though, will play well to their base on social media.

Similarly, Cruz made a big play of accusing Jackson of pushing Critical Race Theory in a private school on whose board she sits. “Do you agree…that babies are racist?” he asked, sitting in front of a poster with blown-up images from a book by African American studies scholar Ibram X. Kendi that the school has in its library.

On Twitter, the Republican National Committee cut right to the chase, showing a picture of Judge Jackson under her initials, which were crossed out and replaced with “CRT.”

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yarpharp · 2 years

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Some quick summaries/highlights of more important topics and events than Will Smith and Chris Rock:

- The Ukraine-Russian war is still going. Russian Generals are dropping like flies because they're so desperate to rescue the trainwreck that is their supposed "quick invasion of Ukraine" they head straight to the front lines and end up shot. Well over 2 million Ukrainans have fled Ukraine. America is only now just opening up to accept Ukrainian refugees. Many eastern cities have been bombed almost flat, and yet Ukrainan troops keep taking out Russian attempts to make headway into their country. They keep reclaiming cities out from under control. Russia aims to crush them by leveling the entire country, but the Ukrainan people would rather fight to the last man/woman/of-age teenager than accept occupation. And it's only gonna get worse; the supposed peace talks and de-escalation isn't going well.

- The polar ice shelves keep melting. Just recently it abruptly hit SEVENTY DEGREES FAHRENHEIT above their average temperature, and a huge chunk of the ice shelf the size of New York fuckin broke off. Scientists are super worried because if enough of the ice shelf collapses, then the ENTIRE ice sheet covering the antarctic is gonna slip straight into the ocean and cause what's scientifically called "a pulse event" where the entire ocean level of the planet will abruptly surge/rise. No warning, no tsunami. Just a sudden surge of water eating up the coastlines all over the world.

- In America, the amount of voter suppression laws and anti-abortion laws and anti-gay laws are being considered/signed/debated that it is overwhelming. States are banning books, arresting librarians, and screaming about "schools teaching critical race theory" as if any of them can even explain what the fuck that is. Which, by the way, isn't taught in K-12. Critical Race Theory is a graduate-level theory class studied by LAW folk. Some areas of academia reference Critical Race Theory, but they don't teach it. What conservatives call "critical race theory" is just books that don't fit their white-washed wasp concept of appropriate literature. Politicians want to gut Roe v. Wade. It's a goddamn disaster.

- Some senator in Indiana had the gall to call on the Supreme Court to repeal legalizing interracial marriage. People are actually considering it.

-Clarence Thomas is under serious investigation for essentially being a puppet judge on the Supreme Court, and his wife is equally under investigation for a million things, including the Jan. 6 insurrection, encouraging the overturning of the election, shit tons of text message conversations that are insanely incriminating between all sorts of individuals, and also bribery.

- Gas is super expensive. Supply chain issues still haven't resolved.

- COVID-19 has not gone away. If anything, it's become more contagious and the post-illness chronic issues are insanely severe. It just isn't a big headliner anymore compared to everything else.

So there's plenty of other shit to be worried about. Can we finish laughing or screaming about Will Smith and move on to more important issues? Please, as a treat? :)

#will smith #politics #climate change #ukraine #covidー19 #covid #can we please move on yet?

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tuckinpodcast-blog · 7 years

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EPISODE 2: THE HAYS CODE AND OTHER BAD IDEAS.

LISTEN: SOUNDLCOUD / ITUNES / GOOGLE PLAY (coming soon!)

NOTES: minimal note-shuffling, I promise. Google Play is reviewing the podcast as we speak, so we should be up soon!

SOURCES: listed at end of transcript

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi! I'm Jack, and this is Tuck In, We're Rolling: Queer Hollywood Stories. This week's episode is titled 'The Hays Code and Other Bad Ideas'. This is gonna be a long episode, but it's a really important one, because it lays down the basis for a lot of our future discussions.

Let's start off with the basics. The Hays Code came about in 1930 but it wasn't really enforced until 1934. Basically, what happened was way back in 1915, the Supreme Court heard a case called “Mutual Film Corp. V. Industrial Commission of Ohio”, and voted 9-0 that free speech didn't extend to films. The courts kind of reasoned that, as a form of mass media, movies could literally be used “for evil”, and for some reason this decision also applied to circuses? I don't know, not entirely relevant, but I thought it was a weird aside. The decision by the court was what drove the studios to more closely regulate their content, and the decision was eventually overturned in 1952 with the hearing of the “Joseph Burstyn Inc. V. Wilson”, also known as the “Miracle Decision” because of the short film “The Miracle” that the case was heard over, and it really kind of marked a decline in movie censorship in the US, but by this time, the damage had already been done.

So, what was the Hays Code?

The Hays Code was basically the theaters and the studios agreeing to self-censor in order to avoid losing money from religious-led boycotts or local governments refusing to show so called “immoral” films. As I've mentioned, times were kinda tough in Depression era Hollywood, and a lot of studios went under or cut their contract stars to save money or try to cut costs somehow. The Code is actually called “The Motion Picture Production Code”, but it's known as the Hays Code after William H. Hays, who was the head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, and it's basically the racist grandfather of the MPAA ratings system we all known and love today.

How does this come back to queer history? Thanks for asking, all six of my followers on SoundCloud! Let me read the entire section of the Hays Code pertaining to what it calls “impure love”:

“In the case of impure love, the love which society has always regarded as wrong and which has been banned by divine law, the following are important:

Impure love must not be presented as attractive or beautiful.

It must not be the subject of comedy or farce, or treated as material for laughter.

It must not be presented in such a way to arouse passion or morbid curiosity on the part of the audience.

It must not be made to seem right and permissible.

It must not be detailed in method or manner.

I've included a link to a copy of a Hays Code pamphlet and the transcript of it that I just read from so you can go check out the kind of stuff it talks about. And it talks about a lot. No interracial marriage or romance, no adultery, no white slavery. No boobs, no disrespecting the American flag, no dissing the clergy. It's kind of intense, and it explains some of the weird wholesomeness and out-of-left-field endings you get with a lot of the movies from the 30's and 40's.

Now, there were, obviously, stereotypes and stigma around being queer before the Hays Code, but it really cemented this feeling of “othering” – extending beyond queer people as well.

Pre-code, you had a lot of movies that used drag or gender role reversal for laughs. In 1915, Charlie Chaplin dressed in drag for his movie A Woman, and so did Fatty Arbuckle in Miss Fatty. Early films used the “sissy” or “pansy” stereotype – you know, and you've seen it today, the flamboyant, effeminate gay man who had no real humanity to speak of but was only there for a laugh. It was kind of the beginning of that stereotype, and even if it wasn't harmful – and still is – it wasn't as overtly hateful as some of the things we'll see later on.

I've done a lot of digging into what was going on with pre-code lesbians, and I found some movie titles and a few references, but not a lot. Lesbians weren't shown nearly as much as their gay “pansy” counterparts – but if they were shown, they were butch crossdressers for the audience to laugh at, or they were weirdo older spinsters who were dead by the end of the movie – huge surprise, right? Some notable portrayals of lesbians, overt or implied, include Louise Brooks in the 1929 German film Pandora's Box, this is one where the romantic relationship is implied. There's Marlene Dietrich in Morocco in 1930 – and we're gonna talk about in detail in a later episode. There's a girl-on-girl dance scene in 1932's Sign of the Cross, and a butch lesbian in 1933's Women They Talk About. And of course, there's Greta Garbo kissing another woman in Queen Christina in 1933. Of course, it's kind of difficult to find these references, so I want to point out that people have been dismissing lesbians and women who love women as just 'gals bein' pals' for a really, really long time.

After the Hays Code, a lot of this overt sexuality got swept under the rug and buried in subtext. Culturally, you're looking at a time – again, going back to what we talked about with masculine panic – when men are looking at homosexuality as a direct attack on their masculinity. During the Depression, men were already feeling emasculated because they were losing their jobs and they couldn't afford to take care of their families. They're looking at effeminate men and masculine women, and they start to freak out even more. So even though pre-code movies were using shock value – things like queer people or prostitution and violence – to get butts into seats and boost ticket sales, there was still this pervasive anxiety from men getting scared about their masculinity, and from religious groups that were worried about the effects of on-screen sinning on polite society.

The Code essentially killed the pansy, and buried queer people in hints and subtext. So in the 1930's and 40's, if you were queer in a movie, you were either really vaguely defined like Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon, who is explicitly gay in the source material, or you're a villain, also like Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon. Censorship evolved a little to say, basically, you can show perversion of almost any kind, but you can't show it in a positive light. And this sort of gels with the feelings of the time. You have characters running around committing crimes because of their sexuality, because back then people thought that being gay drove you insane as well as being a sin. People thought of being gay as being a disease or a defect and police were running around raiding gay bars and harassing women dressed in men's clothing, and it's really not a great time to be queer.

In 1948, Hitchcock's Rope comes out, and he's very obviously skirting the censors with the two antagonists. It's very thinly veiled that they're in a romantic relationship, but they're also still murderers. But that kind of moves us along into the 50's, when that 'Miracle Decision' has the courts saying that, no, films are protected by the first amendment and they're an art form, and this is really when censorship in film starts to decline. This is also about the time that its ruled that the studios can't own the movie theaters that distribute their films, so the monopoly on the film industry is broken up and the power of the old studios is drastically reduced.

There's still a censorship code at this point, of course, but it's really loosening up in the mid-50's. The code at that time allowed for hints of queerness as long as it was used for humor or if the person was punished for their “deviance”, which eventually led to 1959's Suddenly, Last Summer, starring big names like Liz Taylor, Katherine Hepburn, and my favorite actor Monty Clift. This movie is a landmark because it has what's considered to be the first movie with a named, explicitly gay character.

Now, that's great and all – but the shitty part comes from the plot. Basically, this guy is murdered violently and his cousin, played by Katharine Hepburn, sees it and goes nuts, so the mom – played by Liz Taylor – tries to bribe Monty Clift's character into giving her niece a lobotomy so that no one finds out that her son was gay. And don't worry, I'm going to talk a lot about Monty in a later episode and we'll talk about what kind of effect the movie had on him as closeted gay man, but this movie basically proved to the public that being a “mama's boy” or being controlled by your mom led to being gay, and it was sort of implied that violent murder was the inevitable fate of gay men, and that they kind of deserved it.

This is sort of a trend, moving into the 60's. You've got a lot of subtext in the 1959 remake of Ben-Hur, a lot of covert themes and implications. But at the same time, audiences aren't so interested in boycotting a film because of religious leaders, and movies with “questionable content” didn't really need production code or religious approval anymore. But even though we've got the code loosening to compete with television and the rise of the indie studio after the break-up of the old studio monopoly, you've still got a lot of queer characters who are miserable and depressed, or suicidal and homicidal. A lot of them are still dead by the time the credits roll.

In 1965, a movie called Inside Daisy Clover comes out, and there's a gay man in it. He isn't miserable or struggling, and he survives the entire movie – but he's never really explicitly named as gay. It's all still buried in subtext. In 1967, we get Marlon Brando and Liz Taylor in Reflections in a Golden Eye, starring Brando as a repressed gay Army major – a role that was supposed to be Monty Clift's, but he turned it down due to his declining health, supposedly. This is kind of an interesting, weird movie about sexual repression, both heterosexual and homosexual, and the violence it can spark. I'm going to talk in detail about this movie when I do my Brando episode, so I'm gonna put a pin in this discussion for now.

The sixties also brought us the beautiful weirdness of Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, and other people like them who were giving us fully realized and complex queer characters, but we don't see any movies marketed towards a gay audience until the 1970's. In 1968, the final death knell of the Hays Code came with the introduction of the MPAA rating system we're all familiar with today.

So, why the long history lesson? I wanted to talk about this bit of film history for several reasons.

First of all, chronologically it makes sense in the context of the show. Last week, we talked about noted vampire Rudolph Valentino – I finished American Horror Story: Hotel, by the way – and he died before the Hays Code was even written, a whole year before, to be exact.

Second of all, it's important to talk about all of this to give context to our future discussions about Hays-era movies and about the environment that actors were working in. Next week, we're going to be talking about some ladies I mentioned this week – Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Katherine Hepburn, women who's work snapped from pre to post-code, and we're going to pick this thread of queer representation post Hays Code in a few episodes, but for now, you have some background on the subject.

And third of all, and most importantly, now you can look at some of the stereotypes that we still have today and be able to trace them back to their origins. You see these harmful stereotypes all the time, on TV and in the movies. So we have like, Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, and we can draw a straight line back to Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon. None of this is an excuse or anything – it was wrong then and it's wrong now – but now we have context. We can ask Hollywood, “Why haven't you changed? Why do these offensive things still happen?” You know, back in the 1950's, it was playing into toxix masculinity and that same fear of independent women that was driving criticism of Valentino in the 20's. And for whatever reason, we still have caricatures of queer people on screen as well as this same pervasive toxic and performative masculinity. We have a lot of trouble finding fully realized queer characters that don't end up dead or alone, or even still hidden in subtext.

There's this great moment in the last season of True Blood, maybe the only great moment other than Ryan Kwanten and Alexander Skarsgaard's sex scene – when Lafayette lashes out at Jessica after she catches him and her current boyfriend hooking up, and it's so good and sums up what I want to say so well, that I'm going to leave you with it:

“Everybody else in this fucking town is falling in love and getting engaged and having babies! Has it ever occurred to you that Lafayette – that queen that makes all you white heterosexuals laugh and feel good about yourselves – has it fucking ever occurred to you that maybe I want a piece of that happiness too?”

Thank you for listening to Tuck In, We're Rolling: Queer Hollywood Stories. This episode was researched, written and recorded by me, Jack Segreto. You can find a transcript of this episode and all of our episodes, along with some fun facts and photos, on our tumblr, tuckinpodcast.tumblr.com. You can also give us a like on Facebook at facebook.com/tuckinpodcast. We accept messages on both of those platforms, so feel free to shoot us suggestions for future shows and comments. We upload new episodes every Wednesday and you can find us on iTunes, Soundcloud, and now Google Play. Don't forget to rate and subscribe so more people can find us! Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

SOURCES:

The Motion Picture Production Code (PDF)

The Hays Code - Arts Reformation

From Sissie to Secrecy: The Evolution of the Hays Code

The Hays Code: Censorship, Sexism, and the Code that Built Pop Culture

Homosexuality in Film

Gay and Lesbian Characters in Pre-Code Film

History of Homosexuality in Film (yeah, I got lazy and used Wikipedia. SUE ME, OKAY, I WORK 40+ HOURS A WEEK)

True Blood Wiki: ‘Lost Cause’ Synopsis & Quotes

OKAY BYEEEEEE

#queer history #queer history podcast #lgbt history #lgbt history podcast #the hays code #history of lgbt characters in film #hollywood podcast #( TRANSCRIPTS & SHOW NOTES. )#( EPISODE 2. )#[ friends #i haven't done this much research on a thing since before i got my degree #it's in mortuary science btw #if anyone was curious THOUGH I DON'T THINK YOU WERE ]

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To guard against reproductive rights, Legislature revisits old laws

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=6418

To guard against reproductive rights, Legislature revisits old laws

Speaker Robert DeLeo addresses the press after lawmakers sent Gov. Charlie Baker legislation eliminating old state laws dealing with abortion and contraception. [Photo: Chris Triunfo/SHNS]

Sun staff photos can be ordered by visiting our SmugMug site.

By Michael P. Norton and Matt Murphy

STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

BOSTON — After warning that shifts on the U.S. Supreme Court could put reproductive rights at risk in Massachusetts, lawmakers on Thursday morning sent to Gov. Charlie Baker legislation eliminating old state laws dealing with abortion and contraception, including a mid-1800s law banning all abortion and a ban on contraception for unmarried couples.

The bill, which first cleared the Senate in January, picked up steam in recent weeks following the announced retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Many Democrats around the country have expressed fears that the changing makeup of the Supreme Court could lead to the overturning of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing women’s access to abortion.

“What we have done here (Wednesday) is to make sure Massachusetts is prepared in case,” said House Majority Whip Byron Rushing, a South End Democrat who has long pushed to clean up the state’s antiquated statutes.

On Wednesday, the House passed the legislation repealing old state laws that lay out criminal penalties for performing or undergoing an abortion, limiting contraception access to married couples, and requiring that all abortions provided from the thirteenth week of pregnancy onward be performed in a hospital.

The House and Senate took final votes Thursday morning to enact the bill and ensure that it takes effect immediately once Gov.

Baker signs his name, which is expected to happen.

“I’m conceptually in support of it,” Baker, a pro-choice Republican, told reporters on Monday. “Obviously, it depends upon what version ultimately ends up making it through the process, but if the legislation, as it’s currently constituted, ends up being what ends up on our desk the LG and I are comfortable with that.”

House Judiciary Committee Co-chair Rep. Claire Cronin said the bill came as a response to “repeated attempts” to limit women’s rights to make decisions about health care choices, contraception and access to care. She also referenced conservative appellate court judge Kavanaugh’s pending nomination.

“We have seen this both legislatively and through budgetary processes,” she said. “The changing dynamic of the Supreme Court is a real and legitimate concern. We have both a president and a vice president who have expressed an intent to overturn Roe v. Wade and we take them at their word. We must ensure that if this occurs, in Massachusetts we have taken the necessary steps to protect the right to choice and to protect the right to access to health care and access to the information need to make private medical decisions. These will be upheld.”

The bill’s architects have described it as the “NASTY Women Act” to memorialize Trump’s characterization of Hillary Clinton as a “nasty woman” during the 2016 campaign. Senate President Harriett Chandler wore the moniker proudly on Wednesday.

“Today, nasty women and their nasty men are here to say we’re not going to stand for it,” Chandler said.

Rushing said certain old laws should be repealed because they could be enforced in unforeseeable ways.

He noted former Gov. Mitt Romney’s bid in 2004 to enforce a 1913 law, originally designed to prevent interracial couples from coming to Massachusetts to be legally married, in an attempt to prevent same-sex couples from other states from coming to Massachusetts and legally getting married here after the Supreme Judicial Court legalized gay marriage.

“It is critical that we take all archaic laws off of our books because we never know how an old, hateful law will be used in new, hateful ways in the future,” said Rushing, who called the old laws “incredibly anti-female, anti-family” during debate on the bill.

Speaker Robert DeLeo said Massachusetts will “always stand for women’s rights,” and Speaker Pro Tempore Patricia Haddad warned that lawmakers must stay vigilant.

“We can never never relax because someone is out there looking for a loophole that will deny someone their rights,” Haddad said at a rally after the House vote.

Rep. James Lyons (R-Andover) criticized the bill and House leadership during brief floor remarks on Wednesday. He accused House leaders, who repeatedly urged him to limit his remarks to the content of the bill, of trying to shut off debate in order to advance “talking points’ of the Democratic Party.

“I understand that you have the power to do anything you want. It doesn’t mean we have a power to shut us up,” Lyons said. “Mr. Speaker, we have a right to speak. And there is a difference of opinion in Massachusetts whether you folks like it or not and that’s something that I think is really, really important in an open and transparent environment. There is another side. There is another side.”

Calling the bill a “total charade,” Lyons said, “There is no legislation that is going to eliminate the types of things that you’re talking about.”

The bill (S 2260/H 4770) cleared the Senate 38-0 in January and it passed the House on a 138-9 vote.

Rep. Colleen Garry of Dracut and Rep. Alan Silvia of Fall River were the only two Democrats to vote against the bill, along with seven House Republicans. Those GOP lawmakers voting against were Reps. Betty Poirier, Geoff Diehl, Sheila Harrington, Kevin Kuros, Marc Lombardo, Lyons and Keiko Orrall.

NARAL Pro Choice Massachusetts and Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts met with DeLeo last week at the State House to make their final pitch to the speaker, who joked Wednesday to NARAL Executive Director Rebecca Hart Holder that she could “stop twisting my arm” now.

“We all know Donald Trump wants to overturn Roe v. Wade and the statement today was, ‘Not in Massachusetts,’ ” Holder said.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren says that in Kavanaugh, Trump has found “someone to overturn Roe v. Wade” and Attorney General Maura Healey has said Kavanaugh “would be the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade” and criticized “the extremity of his views and his opinions.”

In a fundraising email this week, Massachusetts Democratic Party Chairman Gus Bickford said that Baker has “refused to comment directly on the choice, and only asked the Senate to consider the implications for Roe v. Wade.” Bickford wrote, “It’s no wonder Baker won’t take a firm stand. He’s stuck between his party, led by Donald Trump, and the people of Massachusetts.”

While in Westfield on July 10, Baker reacted to the Kavanaugh nomination.

“Well I’m a big believer in a woman’s right to choose and I think that needs to be a fundamental part of the vetting process and I hope it’s a fundamental part of the vetting process as they move forward here,” Baker said. “I support a right to choose here in Massachusetts and will continue to support that, but I do think this is an important time for the Senate to do its job, and by doing its job, I mean engage in the conversation in a thorough and serious way and ensure that this candidate is going to treat the precedent of Roe v. Wade appropriately going forward.”

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