September 25, 2019

Queer Conversations

Contributed | Blaire Ostler:

One of my FB pals reached out and asked me, “I see you and your marriage with your husband and think how great it must be to be that open about your ‘queer-ness’. My question is, … Read the rest here

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21 hours ago

BREAKING: A federal judge has blocked Idaho from enforcing its new criminal bathroom law against transgender people while a lawsuit challenging the measure moves forward.

Chief U.S. District Judge Amanda K. Brailsford granted a preliminary injunction Tuesday in Jackson-Edney v. Labrador, a case brought by six transgender Idahoans against Attorney General Raúl Labrador and county prosecutors across the state. The court also certified a class covering transgender people who seek to use restrooms in government buildings or public accommodations consistent with their gender identity.

House Bill 752 was set to take effect July 1. The law would have made it a crime for transgender people to use certain public restrooms that match their gender identity, including in government buildings and private businesses open to the public. A first offense could carry up to one year in jail; a second offense could become a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

In her order, Brailsford found the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that the law is unconstitutionally vague. The ruling focused on the law’s unclear exceptions, including when a restroom is “reasonably available” and when someone is in “dire need” of using one. The court said those vague standards left too much discretion to police and prosecutors.

The ruling does not end the lawsuit, but it stops Idaho from using HB 752 to prosecute transgender people covered by the order while the case continues.

Civil rights groups, including Lambda Legal, the ACLU, and the ACLU of Idaho, argue the law violates due process, equal protection, and privacy rights. They also noted that Idaho law enforcement groups opposed HB 752 because there was no clear or reasonable way to enforce it without invasive questioning or searches.

For now, one of the most extreme anti-trans bathroom laws in the country has been stopped before it could take effect. ... See MoreSee Less

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1 day ago

Located in Berlin is an unassuming concrete box with a single window and a small screen inside. This is the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism.

It recognizes gay men, and men accused of being gay, who were targeted under Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code. The old law criminalized sexual relationships between men, but in 1935 the Nazi regime expanded it and turned it into a broader weapon of persecution.

The law did not work alone. It had help from a society already conditioned to believe gay people were immoral, diseased, predatory, or defective. Once that belief took hold, punishment could easily be made to look like order. Humiliation could be dressed up as morality and violence could be explained as consequence.

Thousands of men were arrested. Many were imprisoned. Men were forcibly castrated. Most were sent to concentration camps, where gay prisoners were often forced to wear a pink triangle, a symbol.

The end of the Nazi government did not mean freedom for every gay man imprisoned under Paragraph 175. Some men liberated from concentration camps were re-arrested and sent back into prisons. The Nazi-expanded version of Paragraph 175 remained unchanged until 1969. It was not fully repealed until 1994.

The regime had fallen, but the boogeyman it helped create was still useful.

A government does not have to begin with mass violence to do enormous damage. It can begin by telling the public that a small, vulnerable group is a threat to children, families, faith, order, or civilization itself. Once people believe the threat is real, they will excuse almost anything done in response.

That same machinery is still familiar today.

When governments, churches, and institutions describe LGBTQ people as threats to children, families, faith, morality, or social order, they are not simply expressing concern. They are teaching the public who to fear, who to blame, and whose mistreatment can be justified as protection.

Pride is not a celebration of wickedness. It is a refusal to let shame do its old work.

It is a refusal to become the boogeyman someone else needs in order to feel righteous. It is what happens when people choose visibility. ... See MoreSee Less

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2 days ago

Front row, shirtless fighters, and plausible deniability.

The Senator sashayed into UFC Freedom 250 and somehow found the least heterosexual photo booth on the White House lawn. 🫣

Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈 ... See MoreSee Less

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