lefty Bill Maher slams media for censoring Hunter Biden laptop

[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

that’s the parents job, to decide when their kid is ready for that.

you can teach kids not to be too trusting with strangers, without discussing the pros and cons of different kinds of gender identity. the FL law prohibits discussion of gender identity and personal
sexual choices. it doesn’t prevent all safety discussions.

you’re misinformed or lying.
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Floriduh’s latest political bill is just the resurrection of an old trope.

The bill’s proponents insist that the measure has nothing to do with harming the dignity of gay individuals but rather is aimed at ensuring age-appropriate sexual education. A series of tweets by Governor DeSantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, however, suggests otherwise. “The bill that liberals inaccurately call ‘Don’t Say Gay’ would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming Bill,” Ms. Pushaw wrote. “Grooming” is a term for the tactics sexual predators use to manipulate and exploit their victims. “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill,” she said in a second tweet, “you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.”

The conflation of gay people, and gay men in particular, with pedophiles is an old and pernicious stereotype. In 1988 the British Parliament passed a measure preventing local authorities from “promoting homosexuality” or “the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” Known as Section 28, it stayed on the books until 2003. Ten years later, the Russian Duma unanimously passed legislation “for the purpose of protecting children from information advocating for a denial of traditional family values” prohibiting the dissemination of “propaganda” of nontraditional sexual relationships.

While branding gay people as child molesters has been a staple of right-wing rhetoric around the world, there has long existed a strain of American libertarian conservatism that deems the legal enshrinement of such prejudices as an invasion of privacy and a dangerous enhancement of state power. During a similar episode of anti-gay moral panic, none other than Ronald Reagan — whose record on L.G.B.T. issues is most often defined by his shameful inaction around H.I.V. and AIDS during his presidency — turned to his libertarian roots to thwart such bigotry, rather than promote it.
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Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

Floriduh’s latest political bill is just the resurrection of an old trope.

The bill’s proponents insist that the measure has nothing to do with harming the dignity of gay individuals but rather is aimed at ensuring age-appropriate sexual education. A series of tweets by Governor DeSantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, however, suggests otherwise. “The bill that liberals inaccurately call ‘Don’t Say Gay’ would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming Bill,” Ms. Pushaw wrote. “Grooming” is a term for the tactics sexual predators use to manipulate and exploit their victims. “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill,” she said in a second tweet, “you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.”

The conflation of gay people, and gay men in particular, with pedophiles is an old and pernicious stereotype. In 1988 the British Parliament passed a measure preventing local authorities from “promoting homosexuality” or “the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” Known as Section 28, it stayed on the books until 2003. Ten years later, the Russian Duma unanimously passed legislation “for the purpose of protecting children from information advocating for a denial of traditional family values” prohibiting the dissemination of “propaganda” of nontraditional sexual relationships.

While branding gay people as child molesters has been a staple of right-wing rhetoric around the world, there has long existed a strain of American libertarian conservatism that deems the legal enshrinement of such prejudices as an invasion of privacy and a dangerous enhancement of state power. During a similar episode of anti-gay moral panic, none other than Ronald Reagan — whose record on L.G.B.T. issues is most often defined by his shameful inaction around H.I.V. and AIDS during his presidency — turned to his libertarian roots to thwart such bigotry, rather than promote it.
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Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

read the bill, then tell us what’s bigoted against gays.
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[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

read the bill, then tell us what’s bigoted against gays.
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To persuade him to oppose Proposition 6, Mr. Mixner used Mr. Reagan’s own language: “Anarchy,” he told the former governor, who had used that word to describe campus unrest at Berkeley, would be unleashed in classrooms statewide as students lodged spurious charges of homosexuality against their teachers. Disciplinary proceedings would in turn spark court challenges, and the power of state authorities over school boards would increase — a development that ought to raise alarms with any advocate of local control, as Mr. Reagan was. Finally, endless witch hunts against teachers would swell administrative budgets and legal costs, bugbears of every small-government conservative.

Mr. Reagan, Mr. Mixner told me four decades later, “almost grinned” as he heard the case, “like he was looking for an excuse not to support these people.”

A few days later, Mr. Mixner’s gambit paid off. “I don’t approve of teaching a so-called gay lifestyle in our schools,” Mr. Reagan announced. But Proposition 6 “has the potential of infringing on basic rights of privacy and perhaps even constitutional rights.” He made a more substantive case in his syndicated column published a week before the election, refuting the claim that gays had a greater propensity to be child molesters and the canard that they joined the teaching profession to recruit impressionable youngsters.

On Election Day, voters rejected Proposition 6, 58 percent to 42 percent, a nearly exact reversal of what the polls indicated just two months earlier. “That one single endorsement — Ronald Reagan’s — turned the polls around,” Mr. Briggs groused after the election. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, then emerging as a leader of an increasingly powerful voting bloc, evangelical Christians, declared that Mr. Reagan had taken “the political rather than the moral route” and would “have to face the music from Christian voters two years from now.”
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[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

To persuade him to oppose Proposition 6, Mr. Mixner used Mr. Reagan’s own language: “Anarchy,” he told the former governor, who had used that word to describe campus unrest at Berkeley, would be unleashed in classrooms statewide as students lodged spurious charges of homosexuality against their teachers. Disciplinary proceedings would in turn spark court challenges, and the power of state authorities over school boards would increase — a development that ought to raise alarms with any advocate of local control, as Mr. Reagan was. Finally, endless witch hunts against teachers would swell administrative budgets and legal costs, bugbears of every small-government conservative.

Mr. Reagan, Mr. Mixner told me four decades later, “almost grinned” as he heard the case, “like he was looking for an excuse not to support these people.”

A few days later, Mr. Mixner’s gambit paid off. “I don’t approve of teaching a so-called gay lifestyle in our schools,” Mr. Reagan announced. But Proposition 6 “has the potential of infringing on basic rights of privacy and perhaps even constitutional rights.” He made a more substantive case in his syndicated column published a week before the election, refuting the claim that gays had a greater propensity to be child molesters and the canard that they joined the teaching profession to recruit impressionable youngsters.

On Election Day, voters rejected Proposition 6, 58 percent to 42 percent, a nearly exact reversal of what the polls indicated just two months earlier. “That one single endorsement — Ronald Reagan’s — turned the polls around,” Mr. Briggs groused after the election. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, then emerging as a leader of an increasingly powerful voting bloc, evangelical Christians, declared that Mr. Reagan had taken “the political rather than the moral route” and would “have to face the music from Christian voters two years from now.”
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not sure what any of that no
sense had to do with the bill.

for the second time, point to language that’s actually in the bill, which is bigoted against gays, please?

you guys keep saying it’s anti gay, i keep asking which specific language is anti gay, then you go on some rant.

which means even you know it’s not anti gay.
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[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

not sure what any of that no
sense had to do with the bill.

for the second time, point to language that’s actually in the bill, which is bigoted against gays, please?

you guys keep saying it’s anti gay, i keep asking which specific language is anti gay, then you go on some rant.

which means even you know it’s not anti gay.
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Then answer this

If a classroom is discussing a book about a picnic, and a girl says she went on a picnic with her two moms, and her brother who used to be her sister, and the other kids ask the teacher questions because their parents didn't tell them this happens, how does the teacher respond?
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[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

Then answer this

If a classroom is discussing a book about a picnic, and a girl says she went on a picnic with her two moms, and her brother who used to be her sister, and the other kids ask the teacher questions because their parents didn't tell them this happens, how does the teacher respond?
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so you dodged my question twice, then expect me to answer yours?

the answer is simple. the teacher says to the kids, “ask your parents. it’s their job, not mine, to discuss the pros and cons of different lifestyle choices. “

how is that answer favoring any one group, over any other group?

i answered your question, so show me the same courtesy and answer mine.
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[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

so you dodged my question twice, then expect me to answer yours?

the answer is simple. the teacher says to the kids, “ask your parents. it’s their job, not mine, to discuss the pros and cons of different lifestyle choices. “

how is that answer favoring any one group, over any other group?

i answered your question, so show me the same courtesy and answer mine.
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What’s a “lifestyle”?

Ostensibly, HB 1557 is about protecting the rights of parents, which sounds laudable enough. But a close read of the text shows it to be an overly broad piece of legislation that requires school mental-health counselors to “out” LGBTQ+ children to their parents and makes any discussion of LGBTQ+ issues or identities practically forbidden because parents could start a state investigation and sue for damages any time they feel aggrieved. As a result, the bill endangers the lives of children who already suffer disproportionately high rates of houselessness and self-harm. Really, it’s the “Don’t Discuss Anything About Queer or Trans Existence and Don’t Counsel Trans or Gay Kids (Instead, You Must Out Them to Their Parents) or Else Parents Can Force a State Investigation of the School, Get Money Damages, and Probably Get You Fired” bill.

The bill states that classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity is barred “in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

Florida Rep. Joe Harding — the House bill’s sponsor — said at a Feb. 17 hearing that classroom instruction on such topics could be restricted beyond third grade if it is determined not to be age or developmentally appropriate.

“Anytime a law is vague there’s going to be litigation,” Jane Windsor, a Florida attorney who specializes in education law, told PolitiFact. “They did not draft it well, so it could be clearly understood past the third grade.”
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