![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Republicans know this, and either don’t care or frankly love to see it because the cruelty is the point:
Across the U.S., anti-LGBTQ legislation — and especially anti-trans legislation — is limiting queer youth’s access to everything from bathrooms to gender-affirming surgery. A new national survey from the Trevor Project paints a stark picture of the mental-health toll of these forces: LGBTQ youth consider and attempt suicide at alarmingly high rates, and nearly one-third say their mental health was poor “most of the time or always” due to anti-LGBTQ policies and legislation.
“LGBTQ young people are not inherently prone to increased suicide risk because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity, but rather they are placed at higher risk because of the mistreatment and stigmatization that they experience in society,” said Ronita Rath, the Trevor Project’s vice president of research.
Stat News, 1 May 2023
Montana Rep. Zooey Zephyr sues over her removal from House floor. MSNBC’s Joy-Add Reid writes on it, saying Zooey Zephyr embodies the GOP’s war on free speech. Meanwhile, Assigned Media writes on the moral panic behind three of Montana’s recent oppressive laws.
News from Texas: “Many states have restricted how schools can teach race and gender, but only Texas has banned student interaction with elected officials.” Contacting your elected representatives is now “woke” and therefore evil, I guess.
Meanwhile, mass murders matter less if you call the victims illegals, or that’s what Republican Texas Governor Abbott appeared to be banking on this weekend when he went out of his way to describe the dead as “in the country illegally.” Turns out at least one of them had a green card, not that he cares.
The Hill finally catches on: “State Republicans have gone from opposing Democrats to opposing democracy.” No kidding. Does North Carolina’s brazenly partisan redistricting ruling affect the efforts by Republicans to get the US Supreme Court to endorse their tyrannicidal and ludicrous “Legislative Supremacy” theory? What I’ve mostly heard is that people think it makes the question moot for now, but not everyone is so sure.
Rachael Maddow has a piece on Democratic states passing laws to protect against Republican states making health care illegal. These laws will also help protect against Florida’s upcoming attempts to seize children from parents. (Also, Minnesota’s position as a Sanctuary State has improved from ‘executive order’ to ‘law,’ and I’ve updated the sanctuary state list.)
PORTLAND, watch it! We’re seeing a direct return of “stealth” candidates – rightist and far-right candidates who lie baldly and widely about their beliefs, positions, and which in some cases like North Carolina change party affiliation after winning to capture power in Democratic districts. Derrick Peterson, a leading school board candidate in Portland, Oregon, just might be one.
The discredited “whistleblower” at the Washington University Transgender Center in St. Louis is doubling down on her accusations, because of course she is. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is still taking her claims at face value, which isn’t great.
The first article I’ve found about people leaving Florida doesn’t mention SB254 – the state child kidnapping law not yet signed – but it does talk about the wave of anti-LGBT laws. Dwyane Wade and his family aren’t refugees, they have money – but they’re getting out of the state just the same.
A look at one community in Florida: Clay County. Clay County is banning dozens of books – including The Handmaid’s Tale for some reason gosh why – and it’s mostly driven by one bad-faith operator who freely admits he doesn’t know any child harmed by any of them.
TERFs dogpiled HER, the popular longstanding lesbian dating app, and got HER’s account revoked on Twitter for a while. Once HER get their account back, their leadership doubled down and told transphobes to delete their app and that their business wasn’t wanted.
Guess why books being banned by Republicans are being banned. Can you guess? Reasons nr. 1 and nr. 2 are because they’re about LGBT people and because they have leading or meaningful supporting characters of colour. Nothing else comes close. That’s why.
The Texas Observer has a somewhat more in-depth article about the Republican Texas Ag Commissioner’s new dress code targeted at trans and other queer people.
That’s it for now – sorry this one’s a bit of a mess, it’s a mix of a very busy Monday and weekend, and also just everything being so everywhere all at once. Aheh.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
