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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 months

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A federal judge in Austin on Thursday halted a new state law that would allow Texas police to arrest people suspected of crossing the Texas-Mexico border illegally.

The law, Senate Bill 4, was scheduled to take effect Tuesday. U.S. District Judge David Ezra issued a preliminary injunction that will keep it from being enforced while a court battle continues playing out. Texas is being sued by the federal government and several immigration advocacy organizations. Texas appealed the ruling to the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ezra said in his order Thursday that the federal government “will suffer grave irreparable harm” if the law took effect because it could inspire other states to pass their own immigration laws, creating an inconsistent patchwork of rules about immigration, which has historically been upheld as being solely within the jurisdiction of the federal government.

“SB 4 threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice,” Ezra wrote.

Ezra also wrote that if the state arrested and deported migrants who may be eligible for political asylum, that would violate the Constitution and also be "in violation of U.S. treaty obligations."

"Finally, the Court does not doubt the risk that cartels and drug trafficking pose to many people in Texas," Ezra wrote in his ruling. "But as explained, Texas can and does already criminalize those activities. Nothing in this Order stops those enforcement efforts. No matter how emphatic Texas’s criticism of the Federal Governments handling of immigration on the border may be to some, disagreement with the federal government’s immigration policy does not justify a violation of the Supremacy Clause."

Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 4 in December, marking Texas’ latest attempt to try to deter people from crossing the Rio Grande after several years of historic numbers of migrants arriving at the Texas-Mexico border.

In a statement, Abbott said the state "will not back down in our fight" and that he expects this case would eventually be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. On social media, he wrote that he is "not worried" because "this was fully expected."

"Texas has solid legal grounds to defend against an invasion," he added.

State Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office is defending SB 4 in court, said in a statement that he "will do everything possible to defend Texas’s right to defend herself."

The law seeks to make illegally crossing the border a Class B misdemeanor, carrying a punishment of up to six months in jail. Repeat offenders could face a second-degree felony with a punishment of two to 20 years in prison.

The law also seeks to require state judges to order migrants returned to Mexico if they are convicted; local law enforcement would be responsible for transporting migrants to the border. A judge could drop the charges if a migrant agrees to return to Mexico voluntarily.

In December, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project sued Texas on behalf of El Paso County and two immigrant rights organizations — El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and Austin-based American Gateways — over the new state law. The following month, the U.S. Department of Justice filed its lawsuit against Texas. The lawsuits have since been combined.

During a court hearing on Feb. 15 in Austin, the Department of Justice argued that SB 4 is unconstitutional because courts have ruled that immigration solely falls under the federal government’s authority.

The lawyer representing Texas, Ryan Walters, argued that the high number of migrants arriving at the border — some of them smuggled by drug cartels — constitutes an invasion and Texas has a right to defend itself under Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits states from engaging in war on their own “unless actually invaded.”

Ezra said that he “is not unsympathetic to the concerns raised by Abbott,” but appeared unconvinced by Walters’ argument.

"I haven't seen, and the state of Texas can't point me to any type of military invasion in Texas," Ezra said. "I don't see evidence that Texas is at war."

Immigrant rights advocates around the state celebrated the ruling because they worried that SB 4 would lead to border residents' rights being violated.

"We celebrate today’s win, blocking this extreme law from going into effect before it has the opportunity to harm Texas communities," said Aron Thorn, senior attorney for the Beyond Border Program at Texas Civil Rights Project. "This is a major step in showing the State of Texas and Governor Abbott that they do not have the power to enforce unconstitutional, state-run immigration policies."

Edna Yang, co-executive director at American Gateways, said that SB 4 does not fix “our broken immigration system” and it will divide communities.

“This decision is a victory for all our communities as it stops a harmful, unconstitutional, and discriminatory state policy from taking effect and impacting the lives of millions of Texans," she said. "Local officials should not be federal immigration agents, and our state should not be creating its own laws that deny people their right to seek protection here in the U.S."

David Donatti, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said the ruling is an "important win for Texas values, human rights, and the U.S. Constitution."

"Our current immigration system needs repair because it forces millions of Americans into the shadows and shuts the door on people in need of safety. S.B. 4 would only make things worse," he said. "Cruelty to migrants is not a policy solution.”

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vyorei · 3 months

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That's a true statement that needs audible support from the public.

#free gaza #free palestine #gaza strip #irish solidarity with palestine #palestine #gaza #news on gaza #al jazeera #boycott israel #israel #USA #American Civil Liberties Union #ACLU #Miguel Cardona

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coochiequeens · 3 months

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He killed a literal baby. And now he wants to sue the state for damages?!

By Anna Slatz February 14, 2024

A trans-identified male currently serving a 55-year sentence for the murder of his infant stepdaughter has launched a lawsuit against the Chaplain at his prison after he was allegedly denied a hijab despite identifying as a Muslim woman. Autumn Cordellioné, previously known as Jonathan C. Richardson, is seeking $150,000 in damages.

As previously reported by Reduxx, Cordellioné was first arrested in 2001 after his 11-month-old stepdaughter died in his care while her mother was at work. The night of the infant’s death, Cordellioné had been visited by friends who later told police that he had been “acting strangely.”

Despite claiming the little girl was inside sleeping, Cordellioné had loud music playing in the home, and his guests noted that he appeared to have a fresh, bleeding tattoo of the child’s name carved into his arm.

Autumn Cordellioné as of August 2023. Photo Courtesy: Indiana Department of Corrections.

Later that night, after his friends left, Cordellioné went to his neighbor and asked him to call 911, claiming the child was unresponsive. When emergency personnel arrived, they were briefly able to resuscitate the girl, but she died shortly after being rushed to the hospital.

Cordellioné was interviewed by police, who noted he was “calm and unemotional” during questioning, and his story about what happened to the baby changed dramatically over the course of the two interviews conducted.

At first, Cordellioné claimed he found the baby unresponsive after doing some household chores. But in the next interview, Cordellioné said the child was being “fussier than usual” and he attempted to throw her up in the air repeatedly in an effort to calm her down. He said her “head bopped forward and back up in a rough type of a manner,” and that the child continued to cry so he proceeded to shake her aggressively in an effort to calm her down.

During a failed appeals hearing, detectives from the case recounted how Cordellioné “physically showed” how he had manhandled the girl, getting up out of his chair and demonstrating the action in a rough manner.

An autopsy subsequently found that the baby had died of asphyxiation by manual strangulation. Cordellioné was booked awaiting a court hearing, and would later tell a prison official “all I know is I killed the little fucking bitch.”

Cordellioné was found guilty and sentenced to 55 years in prison for the horrific crime. He is currently incarcerated at the Branchville Correctional Facility, an institution for male offenders.

Last August, Cordellioné joined forces with the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the Indiana Department of Corrections, citing “discrimination” on the basis of his gender identity. That case is currently in progress.

But Reduxx has now learned that that Cordellioné has also launched a separate suit against the prison’s Chaplain, Tony Gray. Gray has been a Chaplain at the facility since 2014, and volunteered at the institution prior to being offered an official role.

Branchville Chaplain Tony Gray. Photo Source: Indiana Department of Corrections

In the lawsuit, filed on November 3, 2023, Cordellioné accuses Gray of violating his First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment constitutional rights.

According to court records obtained by Reduxx, the incident of complaint took place in May of 2023 after Gray informed Cordellioné that he was not allowed to don a hijab outside of his cell. In response, Cordellioné said: “I wear the hijab in order to cover my head and ears for modesty purposes, as I am an Islamic practicing transwoman.”

At the time, Cordellioné’s registered religion was “Wiccan” and Gray pointed that out, to which Cordellioné replied that he was an “eclectic practitioner who is a member of the Theosophical Society in America.”

The Theosophical Society is headquartered in Chennai, India, and is considered an “esoteric new religious movement.” Founded in 1875, it describes itself as a “unsectarian body of seekers after Truth,” and its practitioners appear to dabble in the philosophy and beliefs of multiple religions simultaneously. One of its founders is Russian mystic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who stated in 1889 that “the purpose of establishing the Society was to prepare humanity for the reception of a World Teacher.”

Cordellioné is claiming that his equal protection rights were violated when he was barred from wearing a hijab outside of his cell, noting that male Muslims in the facility are allowed to wear kufis or taqiyah — a short, rounded brimless prayer cap.

“Islamic faith mandates the wearing of a kufi for males … Islamic faith also mandates females of the faith wear hijabs when outside the home and when not amongst men of their family. Tony Gray allows male Muslims to wear their sufis, but denies me, a transwoman, the same privilege.”

From the legal complaint filed by Cordellioné.

Cordellioné also alleges that Gray’s refusal to allow him to wear a hijab violated his eighth amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment. In his argument, Cordellioné claims the he was subjected to “harassment and ridicule” by the Islamic community in his prison because he had not been allowed to wear a hijab.

“[Gray] should be aware, as Chaplain, the stigma and shame that is attributed to Islamic women when they go uncovered and without a hijab,” Cordellioné writes in his complaint. “Women are viewed as whores, tempters of men, and adulterators; by Islamic society both in and out of prison. I have been shunned, made a social pariah, and amongst my own religious community.”

He continues: “Without the support of the Islamic community, I will struggle and likely fail to achieve salvation for by [sic] Mohammed’s teachings a Muslim who knows of the teachings, yet strays from them, will never reach heaven.”

In his stated request for relief, Cordellioné is seeking the ability to wear his hijab in prison, as well as $150,000 in compensation.

Since filing, there has been some back-and-forth with the court surrounding Cordellioné’s financial situation, with the court requesting a nominal initial filing fee of $36.55, but Cordellioné claiming he does not have the money to pay it. If he cannot demonstrate deficiency in the time the court has specified, his case might be dismissed.

#Autumn Cordellioné is Jonathan C. Richardson #Criminals using gender identity to try to look like the victim #Branchville Correctional Facility #American Civil Liberties Union #ACLU defending violent men who claim to be women #Indiana Department of Corrections #Good for the Chaplin for standing up to a guy claiming to be an Islamic practicing transwoman #Theosophical Society in America #A lot of muslim men would not like him wearing a hijab #He wants to identify as a whole tempter of men and an adulteress?#Another guy who fetishizes submissiveness #He claimed to be Wiccan first #He's really trying to check of as many boxes for an oppression Olympics

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archivlibrarianist · 1 year

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A couple of weeks ago, the ACLU, plus the Missouri Library Association (disclaimer: I am a member of the MLA) and the Missouri Association of School Librarians filed a lawsuit over newly-passed SB 775, that would ban "sexually explicit materials" from schools-- defining "sexually explicit" to mean "materials that acknowledge that queer people exist." It is already illegal in Missouri, as everywhere else in the United States, for people under the age of 18 to access pornography. Additionally, librarians, publishers, and teachers are all trained on how to evaluate and screen materials to help parents find something appropriate for their kids. So this happened: "Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith’s budget proposal, unveiled Tuesday, would cut all $4.5 million in state funding that libraries were slated to get next fiscal year.

"Smith said he’s upset that state and school libraries are suing to overturn a new Missouri law that bans sexually explicit material in school libraries. He said the state shouldn’t subsidize the lawsuit with funding." Rep. Smith: the Missouri Library Association is funded with member dues. *facepalm emoji*

#Missouri libraries #libraries #school libraries #public libraries #MO SB 775 #Missouri Library Association #Missouri Association of School Librarians #American Civil Liberties Union #ACLU #Cody Smith #library funding #because this brain donor thinks cutting all of $4.5 million-- million! pocket change to a government!-- will hurt the MLA #in which i rolled my eyes so hard i briefly had a very good view of the wrinkles of my brain #fascism #the incompetent version but still fascism

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 4 months

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By: The Quillette Editorial Board

Published: Dec 23, 2023

The Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was founded in 1971 with a mission to fight poverty and racial discrimination. Its early litigation campaigns, which targeted the Ku Klux Klan and other overtly racist organizations, met with success, and the group soon came to be seen as an authoritative source in regard to right-wing extremism more generally.

Another form of expertise the organization developed was in the area of marketing—especially when the market in question consisted of deep-pocketed urban liberals. As former SPLC staffer Bob Moser reported in a 2019 New Yorker article, the group has consistently taken on attention-grabbing urgent-seeming causes that its leaders knew could be leveraged as a means to gain publicity and—more importantly—donations. It’s no coincidence that the SPLC’s co-founder and long-time fundraising guru, Morris Dees, had previously operated a direct-mail business that sold cookbooks and tchotchkes. “Whether you’re selling cakes or causes, it’s all the same,” Dees told a journalist in 1988.

Dees’ big fundraising break at the SPLC came when he got access to the direct-mail list from the 1972 presidential campaign of Democrat George McGovern. The SPLC co-founder went on to maximize the SPLC’s revenues through what would now be known as targeted methods. According to one former legal colleague, for instance, Dees rarely used his middle name—Seligman—in SPLC mailings, except when it came to “Jewish zip codes.”

Thanks to Dees’ slick marketing expertise, the SPLC was eventually taking in more money than it paid out in operational expenses. (As of October 2022, its endowment fund was valued at almost US$640 million.) But over time, his hard-sell tactics began to alienate co-workers, as there was an obvious disconnect between the real class-based problems they observed in society and the fixations of the naïve northern donors whose wallets Dees was seeking to pry open.

“I felt that [Dees] was on the Klan kick because it was such an easy target—easy to beat in court, easy to raise big money on,” former SPLC attorney Deborah Ellis told Progressive writer John Egerton. “The Klan is no longer one of the South’s biggest problems—not because racism has gone away, but because the racists simply can’t get away with terrorism any more.”

On March 14, 2019, Dees—by now 82 years old, but still listed as the SPLC’s chief trial lawyer—was fired amid widespread rumors that he’d been the subject of internal sexual-harassment accusations. His affiliation was scrubbed from the group’s web site; and the organization’s president, Richard Cohen, cryptically (but damningly) declared that, “when one of our own fails to meet [SPLC] standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.” (Less than two weeks later, Cohen himself left the organization, casting his resignation as part of a transition “to a new generation of leaders.”)

In describing his tenure at the SPLC during the early 2000s, Moser argued that the very structure of the organization betrayed its hypocrisy: Here was an entity dedicated to social justice (as we would now call it), yet which was run by an extremely well-paid, almost exclusively white, corps of lawyers, administrators, and fund-raisers who ruled over a mixed-race corps of junior staff. As far back as the 1980s, Dees was openly admitting that he saw the fight against poverty as passé, and admitted that the “P” in SPLC was an anachronism. Jaded staff began ruefully referring to their own flashy headquarters as the “Poverty Palace.”

Dees and Cohen may have left the Poverty Palace, but the SPLC’s tendency to betray its founding principles clearly remains a problem, as illustrated by a new SPLC report released under the auspices of what the group dubs “Combating Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Through Accessible Informative Narratives.” (This verbal clunker seems to have been reverse-engineered in order to yield the acronym, “CAPTAIN.”)

The report purports to demonstrate “the perils of anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience” and “anti-trans narratives and extremism.” Much like the dramatically worded hard-sell direct-mail campaigns that the SPLC started up under Dees, it’s marketed as a matter of life and death: According to the deputy director of research for the SPLC’s “Intelligence Project,” the “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience” uncovered by the SPLC has “real-life, often life-threatening consequences for trans and non-binary people.”

At this point, it should be stressed that there is certainly nothing wrong with the SPLC—or anyone else—campaigning for the legitimate rights of people who are transgender. Such a campaign would be entirely in keeping with the SPLC’s original liberal ethos. Just as no one should be denied, say, an apartment, a marriage license, or the right to vote based on his or her race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation, no trans person should be denied these rights and amenities simply because he or she experiences gender dysphoria.

But the SPLC’s report hardly confines itself to such unassailable liberal principles. The real point of the project, it seems, was to catalogue and denounce public figures who’ve expressed dissent from the most extreme demands of trans-rights activists—specifically, (1) the demand that children and adolescents who present as transgender must instantly be “affirmed” in their dysphoric beliefs, even if such affirmation leads to a life of sterility, surgical disfigurement, drug dependence, and medical complications; and (2) the demand that biological men who self-identify as women must be permitted unfettered access to protected women’s spaces and sports leagues.

The SPLC’s authors seek to cast their ideological enemies as hate-addled reactionaries whose nefarious activities must “be understood as part of the historical legacy of white supremacy and the political aims of the religious right.” And it is absolutely true that some of the organizations they name-check are hard-right, socially conservative outfits that endorse truly transphobic (and homophobic) beliefs.

But many of the supposed transphobes targeted by the report aren’t even conservative—let alone members of the religious right. In a multitude of cases, they’re simply parents, therapists, and activists who argue the obvious fact that human sexual biology doesn’t evanesce into rainbow dust the moment that a child—or middle-aged man—asserts that he or she was “born in the wrong body.”

It’s also interesting to note who gets left out of the SPLC’s analysis. The most influential figures leading the backlash against (what some call) “gender ideology” are women such as author J.K. Rowling and tennis legend Martina Navratilova, both of whom come at the issue from explicitly feminist perspectives. Being successful public figures, neither woman needs a cent from the conservative think tanks that the SPLC presents as being back-office puppet-masters of the alleged anti-trans conspiracy outlined in the CAPTAIN report.

In keeping with the conspiracist motif that runs through the document, the authors have provided spider-web diagrams that set out the connections binding this (apparently) shadowy cabal. In this regard, it seems that Quillette itself served as one of the SPLC’s sources: In a section titled, “Group Dynamics and Division of Labor within the Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Network,” the authors footnote “an August 23, 2023 podcast for Quillette,” wherein

it was revealed that [Colin] Wright is in a relationsihp [sic] with journalist Christina Buttons, who is an advisoary [sic] board member of [the Gender Dysphoria Alliance] with Drs. Lisa Littman and Ray Blanchard, an editoral [sic] board member of Springer’s Archives of Sexual Research [a mistaken reference to the Archives of Sexual Behavior] with J. Michael Bailey. Notably, Buttons and Wright are interviewed by host Jonathan Kay. In addition to hosting Quillette’s podcast, Kay serves on FAIR’s board of advisors.

We’ve chosen to highlight this particular (typo-riddled) text from the report not just because of the absurd suggestion that our publication has enlisted in an imaginary “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience network,” but also because the above-quoted roll call of supposed gender villains illustrates the intellectual dishonesty that suffuses the whole report.

Let’s go through the references one by one, in the order in which they are presented. The Gender Dysphoria Alliance (GDA) is a group led by people who are themselves transgender, and who are “concerned about the direction that gender medicine and activism has taken.” Are we to imagine that its members are directing transphobia—against themselves? Lisa Littman, formerly of Brown University, is a respected academic who’s published a peer-reviewed analysis of Rapid Onset Gender Disorder. Ray Blanchard is a well-known University of Toronto psychiatrist. The Archives of Sexual Behavior is a peer-reviewed academic journal in sexology. Michael Bailey is a specialist in sexual orientation and gender nonconformity at Northwestern University. Colin Wright is a widely published writer (including at Quillette) with a PhD in evolutionary biology from UC Santa Barbara. (The SPLC’s claim that he is in a relationship with journalist Christina Buttons, who also writes about gender issues, is completely true. But the fact that the group saw fit to report this fact as if it were evidence of sinister machinations says far more about the report’s authors than it does about either Wright or Buttons.) FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, is a classically liberal group led by a Harvard Law School graduate named Monica Harris. Do any of these people or groups sound like extremists?

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The fact that the SPLC is attempting to market its report as a blow against the “anti-LGBTQ+” movement, writ large, is itself quite laughable, since many of the activists who’ve been arguing for a more balanced approach to gender rights are themselves either gay (as with Navratilova and Julie Bindel) or (as with the founders of the GDA) transgender.

Others on the SPLC gender-enemies list are author Abigail Shrier, and therapists Sasha Ayad, and Stella O’Malley. These women openly broadcast their views in best-selling books, as well as mainstream magazines and newspapers. The idea that the SPLC has successfully “exposed” these women through some kind of investigation, as suggested by the title that’s been slapped on the CAPTAIN report, would be ludicrous even if they’d said anything scandalous (which they haven’t).

And what course of future action does the SPLC endorse? For one, it concludes that educators should stigmatize gender-critical views as analogous to “racism, sexism, and heteronormativity.” The report's authors also want academic journals to sniff out groups that “espouse an anti-LGBTQ+ ideology” (as that latter term is speciously defined by the SPLC). And in a final flourish, the group urges reporters to “be aware of the narrative manipulation strategies and the cooptation of scientific credentials and language by anti-trans researchers when sourcing stories about trans experiences.”

With this last point, we get to the real nub: The apparent goal is for this report to be read as a catalogue of people, ideas, and groups that must be shunned. Indeed, the authors explicitly cite the work of one Andrea James, a once-respected arts producer who, as Jesse Singal has documented, now runs a creepy (“stalker” is the word Singal uses) web site called Transgender Map, which lists personal details of anyone whom James deems a gender heretic. When it comes to one-on-one communication, James’ manner of dealing with critics is exemplified by an email sent to bioethicist Alice Dreger, in which James referred to Dreger’s then-five-year-old son as a “womb turd.”

One way to describe the CAPTAIN report is as an SPLC-branded rehash of the information contained on Transgender Map. And one can understand why the authors thought that such a gambit might work. The SPLC already publishes other curated lists of hatemongers—e.g., its “Hatewatch” service, “Hate Map,” and “Intelligence Report.” It wasn’t such a long shot to imagine that this new report might convince readers to treat the listed “Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Network” acolytes as equally disreputable.

But if that was the authors’ goal, it doesn’t seem to have been achieved. The SPLC report landed with something of a thud—and has attracted little attention on social media except insofar as it was mocked by its intended targets.

This may have something to do with the report’s timing. For several years now, a backlash against this kind of gender agitprop has been building within many of the same liberal and progressive circles that the SPLC has traditionally targeted for donations. The trend is reflected by the rise of such groups as the LGB Alliance, a coalition of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who are fed up with the ideological takeover of LGBT groups by a militant subset of trans activists.

The same trend is playing out internationally. While the SPLC does its best to heap blame on America’s conservative Christians, many of western Europe’s governments (none of which are in thrall to the Heritage Foundation or the Charles Koch Foundation) have been following a more gender-critical path for years.

Just a week after the SPLC put out its report, in fact, the UK government published new guidelines advising teachers that they have no duty to automatically “affirm” a child’s assertion that he or she is transgender; and that, in considering such situations, teachers should speak with a child’s parents and consider whether the child is under undue influence from social media or peers. Sweden, Finland, and Norway—hardly bastions of Christian conservatism—have also rolled back policies that rush children into transition. In Canada, several provinces have recently enacted rules that require parents to be notified when a child seeks to transition, even in the face of a sustained media campaign that repeats lurid claims to the effect that such policies will cause an epidemic of trans suicides. Are all of these foreign governments also complicit in the vast “junk-science and disinformation campaign” against trans people that the SPLC claims to have “exposed”?

The SPLC would hardly be the first progressive organization whose reputation has suffered by going all-in on the gender issue. The American Civil Liberties Union, which also was rooted in traditional liberal values before succumbing to more faddish progressive tendencies, has attracted ridicule due to its parroting of slogans such as “men who get their periods are men,” and the claim that males have no “unfair advantage” over females in sports.

These organizations have never been shy about angering conservatives and reactionaries; indeed, they wear such anger as a badge of pride. But their cultish refusal to engage with the reality of biological sex also antagonizes progressive feminists seeking to protect female spaces from biological men, and LGB activists who see the attempted erasure of sex-based attraction as a species of progressive homophobia.

Which is to say that the SPLC’s report seems not only intellectually dishonest, but also self-destructive. While the SPLC leaders who green-lit this project once may have been able to bank on the popularity of pronoun checks and esoteric gender identities among the wealthy white coastal progressives who comprise the bulk of their donors, this is an ideological movement that’s decidedly past its peak. It’s a marketing error that the savvy Dees likely never would have made.

The SPLC obviously does a lot more than lend its name to sloppily edited gender propaganda: A review of its press feed shows that it still has staff working traditional legal beats such as voters’ rights, police accountability, and humane treatment for prisoners. But when an organization publishes misleading materials in regard to one issue, the natural effect is to raise serious questions about the group’s values and credibility more generally—questions that SPLC supporters will want to think about the next time one of the group’s fundraisers hits them up for a donation.

This is what institutional capture looks like.

#Quillette #Southern Poverty Law Center #SPLC #ACLU #American Civil Liberties Union #ideological capture #ideological corruption #gender ideology #queer theory #conspiracy theories #conspiracy theorists #institutional capture #biological sex #biology denialism #sex denialism #gender heretic #gender heresy #religion is a mental illness #Youtube

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krissiefox · 1 year

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Hey folks, I wanted to let you all know that I found there's a school in Arkansas - which does not label itself as a christian school - that has been pushing christianity onto its students. I recommend reaching out to the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the ACLU about this. I also think it could be beneficial for this to be another potential location for TST's After-School Satan if the school will not back down on putting religion into an educational environment.

In addition to the link I shared here, here's another where they're having children read bibles in school. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02L9va1Tz7PkT2eM7dshYPpgofwrodqX7V1EZgvAuZDKKaiXUp42FVXJCjSY4ULHB6l&id=100063553270145

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benandstevesposts · 8 months

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EX-Police Officer Goes On Trial After Delaying Court Hearings For Years. Off-Duty Officer Is Accused Of Choking Man Leading To Death

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industrybuzz · 4 months

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Pregnant Woman in Kentucky Challenges Law

A pregnant woman in Kentucky, identified as Jane Doe, has filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s near-total abortion ban. The ban prohibits all abortions after six weeks except when necessary to save the patient’s life or prevent disabling injury. Most pregnancies aren’t discovered until after six weeks. This is the second legal challenge in days against restrictive abortion laws that emerged in…

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#abortion #ACLU #american civil liberties union #health care #kentucky

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 9 months

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A federal court judge has ruled that parents in Ohio don’t have the right to challenge a trans-inclusive school bathroom policy.

A case brought by parents and students in the Bethel Local School District (BLSD) in November sought to prohibit trans and non-binary students in the region from using toilets and other facilities consistent with their gender identity.

But, in a ruling issued on Monday (7 August), Judge Michael Newman decreed that the accusations brought by the group did not “pass legal muster” to warrant further consideration.

“Not every contentious debate concerning matters of public importance presents a cognisable federal lawsuit,” Newman wrote in his ruling opinion.

During a school board meeting in January 2022, BLSD announced it had implemented policies allowing transgender students to use communal toilets consistent with their gender identity.

Several months later, a group of parents filed a legal challenge, arguing that their parental rights were being infringed upon by not having a public meeting to discuss the matter.

They further argued that a previous policy, which had no protections for trans students, did not violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which states that no person in the US shall exclude or discriminate against students on the basis of sex.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing for the Title IX claim and that citing parental rights did not immediately require the school to adhere to the group’s demands.

Dismissing the case, Newman wrote that parents do not have a “constitutional right” to revoke school policies on toilet usage.

ACLU Ohio deputy legal director, David Carey, said the ruling reaffirmed that the Constitution is not a vehicle to “compel discrimination.”

He explained: “Nothing in the constitutional guarantees of parenting rights, equal protection or free exercise of religion, mandates that transgender students be excluded from gender-appropriate communal restrooms on the basis of their classmates’ beliefs and values.”

“For public schools to function, one student’s or family’s religious beliefs cannot provide a basis to exclude another student from full participation in the school environment.”

In its legal intervention arguments, the ACLU wrote that it believed the public has a “strong interest” in advancing policies that affirmatively protect transgender students and create inclusive school environments.

The LGBTQ & HIV Project staff attorney at the ACLU, Malita Picasso, said the court’s decision made it “resoundingly clear” that the rights of trans students are “not in conflict” with the rights of their peers.

“No student should have to fear discriminatory treatment every morning they walk into school, and this ruling brings us closer to the day no transgender student has to,” she added.

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personal-blog243 · 9 months

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#asylum seekers #asylum is a human right #refugees welcome #refugees are welcome here #please sign and share #petitions #petition #please sign this petition #please share #please sign #immigrant lives matter #families belong together #close the camps #abolish ice #immigrants they get the job done #aclu #american civil liberties union

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derekhernandezfuentes · 1 year

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Florida Republican Conservative-Communist Pedophile Governor Ron DeSantis desires to ban Gay Adults-to-Gay Adults Marriages so that the Gay men are forced to not think of Straight women nor Gay men sexually, but only of little boys and girls against the tax-paying Gay men’s and Gay American Soldiers’ will and consents! Republican Conservative Communists George W Bush and Ron DeSantis are Anti-American by arresting Gay men and attacking Gay men’s Rights to marry Other Adults consensually!

#pflag #gaytimes #gay times #gay news #gay rights #american civil liberties union #aclu #lgbtq #lgbt representation #human rights campaign #human rights commission #hrc #gaystarnews #gay star news #wsvn

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goodjohnjr · 1 year

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Girl Ultra - DameLove | A COLORS ENCORE

Girl Ultra – DameLove | A COLORS ENCORE

Girl Ultra – DameLove | A COLORS ENCORE What Is It? The YouTube video Girl Ultra – DameLove | A COLORS ENCORE by the YouTube channel COLORS: Girl Ultra – DameLove | A COLORS ENCORE Here is the description for this video: Mexico City’s Girl Ultra returns for a special solo version of a track from her latest album ‘Nuevos Aires’ We’ve integrated a donations feature on our channel to allow our…

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#ACLU #American Civil Liberties Union #Colors #COLORSXSTUDIOS #DameLove #Girl Ultra #Girl Ultra - DameLove | A COLORS ENCORE #Girl Ultra DameLove #Live #Mexican #Music #Nuevos Aires #Singing #Video

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 2 years

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By: Josh Gerstein

Published: Jun 6, 2022

An advocacy group that has spent more than two decades fighting for free expression on college campuses is broadening its efforts to fight so-called cancel culture and other perceived threats to free speech across American society.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is renaming itself the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and keeping the “FIRE” acronym as it launches a drive to promote greater acceptance of a diversity of views in the workplace, pop culture and elsewhere. Part of the push may challenge the American Civil Liberties Union’s primacy as a defender of free speech.

“To say the least, we have not solved the campus free-speech problem, but we started to realize if we wanted to save free speech on campus we have to start earlier and we have to do things not on campus,” the group’s president, Greg Lukianoff, said.

Lukianoff said FIRE has raised $28.5 million for a planned three-year, $75 million litigation, opinion research and public education campaign aimed at boosting and solidifying support for free-speech values.

“There’s a very strong belief in not just the First Amendment, but a culture of freedom of speech that — black or white, liberal or conservative — that most Americans think you should be entitled to your own opinion and not have to lose your job over that,” Lukianoff said. “The voices that think of free speech as a dirty word on campus or on Twitter are actually a pretty small minority.”

The new initiative includes $10 million in planned national cable and billboard advertising featuring activists on both ends of the political spectrum extolling the virtues of free speech, officials said

One TV spot includes a former Emerson College student, K.J. Lynum, whose conservative group was suspended by the school’s president for circulating “China kinda sus” stickers promoting the theory that a Chinese government lab caused the oubreak of Covid-19. “Freedom of speech is our right as Americans and we must do everything we can to protect it,” Lynum says over images of Martin Luther King Jr. and a young anti-abortion activist.

Another ad features a Montana State University student, Stefan Klaer, who was ordered to take down a Black Lives Matter banner from his dorm room window. “If you silence people, you never get to hear the other side,” Klaer says.

FIRE’s move seems likely to face an uphill battle with many on the political left disillusioned about unfettered free speech following former President Donald Trump’s successes at perpetuating misinformation. The megaphone social media platforms have given to voices spouting untruths has also prompted some former free-speech devotees to reconsider their views.

“Thinking that free speech is the problem here is, I think, missing the point,” Lukianoff said. “Do I believe bad actors are abusing this? I do. ... It’s always been the case that some people have believed absolutely crazy things. ... I’m more afraid of top-down attempts to control Twitter than I am of the cultural harm it produces.”

FIRE’s new expansion is also a challenge of sorts to the ACLU, which has faced criticism in recent years for drifting from its unapologetically pro-free-speech roots and taking a more direct role in partisan political fights.

Many of FIRE’s founders and backers are former leaders of the ACLU who have grown disillusioned with the group under its current executive director, Anthony Romero, who left the Ford Foundation to take over the storied civil liberties organization in 2001.

In 2020, FIRE released “Mighty Ira,” a laudatory documentary film about Romero’s predecessor, Ira Glasser, focusing on the ACLU’s work from the 1970s through the 1990s.

Glasser, who serves on a FIRE advisory board, said in an interview that he “strongly encouraged” FIRE to broaden its free-speech work in part because the ACLU seems to be abdicating that role.

“Once the ACLU backs off its traditional role, who else is there?” Glasser asked. “It’s great to have the ACLU fighting for racial and reproductive justice and gay rights. …The notion that you have to reduce your vigor with which you defend First Amendment rights or you will damage the strength of your advocacy for equal rights for women, gays, and Blacks, et cetera is just demonstrably not true and, yet, they’ve done that. It has created a vacuum in the viewpoint-neutral defense of free speech, which FIRE has filled.”

Romero, the ACLU chief, said Monday that he agrees free speech is under increasing attack in the U.S. and is pleased that FIRE is branching out.

“This is a welcome development,” Romero said in a statement. “Challenges to free speech are proliferating from both the left and the right, and the nation needs more organizations dedicated to upholding our most fundamental right.“

The ACLU faced internal upheaval in 2017 after its Virginia chapter provided legal assistance to white-nationalist groups seeking a permit to demonstrate in Charlottesville, Va. The “Unite the Right” rally they held ended with violence, including the death of a 32-year-old woman who was run over by a car driven by a far-right demonstrator whose friends said he was obsessed with Hitler.

The ACLU later recalibrated its free-speech advocacy, urging that its lawyers considering what cases to take also consider “offense to marginalized groups.” Romero also said it would not defend those seeking to engage in protests while armed.

Among those endorsing FIRE’s expansion are former ACLU President Nadine Strossen and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

“I think for FIRE to spread its wings is very constructive,” said Summers, who served as president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006 and was National Economic Adviser for from 2009 to 2011 under President Barack Obama.

Summers told POLITICO he’s troubled that “a stifling conformity” in discussions about issues related to identity on college campuses seems to be spreading.

“We’re seeing some tendency to some of the same imposition of orthodoxy beyond college campuses and some elevation of comfort-seeking relative to truth-seeking much more broadly,” Summers said.

Even with the planned expansion by FIRE, the ACLU will continue to dwarf the upstart organization in size and funding. The ACLU enjoyed a massive surge in funding following Trump’s victory in 2016 and now brings in almost $400 million to its coffers each year. FIRE, by contrast, raised under $16 million in its last fiscal year.

And while the ACLU and its affiliates are involved in hundreds of court cases each year in 19 policy areas ranging from voting rights to privacy to immigration, FIRE had only six cases in active litigation in the last fiscal year, according to its annual Internal Revenue Service filing.

FIRE contends that since it debuted in 1999 it has won over 500 public victories for students and faculty members, secured 425 campus policy changes, and helped drive down the prevalence of highly-restrictive campus speech codes.

While FIRE has received praise from many free-speech advocates, some critics have said the group is a thinly veiled front for conservatives looking to promote their political agenda. Since its inception, FIRE has received funding from a variety of conservative foundations, including millions from some linked to billionaire Charles Koch.

Lukianoff declined to detail who has contributed the $28 million for the new initiative or what prompted them to offer funding.

However, he said in the last fiscal year, about 69 percent of FIRE’s funding came from individual donors and about 31 percent from foundations.

Lukianoff acknowledged disappointment with major liberal foundations, who have balked at supporting FIRE’s efforts. “It’s been frustrating,” he said, adding, “Most of FIRE’s staff leans to the left politically.”

Lukianoff said his group also regularly defends left-leaning students and faculty members when their freedom of expression is threatened.

“We’re genuinely nonpartisan in the cases we take,” he said.

Excellent news, considering the ACLU has been ideologically captured and surrendered its mission and values.

In 2013, the ACLU said of sex education curriculum, that "the process will be transparent and that members of the community are involved - as they should have been from the beginning," and "we are all well served when decision on the appointment of sex education advisory committee members is subject to public scrutiny, rather than the result of the presentation of a narrow range of interests."

In 2022, the ACLU said of curriculum transparency, that "curriculum transparency bills are just thinly veiled attempts at chilling teachers and students from learning and talking about race and gender in schools."

#FIRE #Foundation for Individual Rights in Education #Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression #Greg Lukianoff #freedom of speech #free speech #First Amendment #ACLU #american civil liberties union #freedom of expression #academic freedom #religion is a mental illness

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