Very thankful for this letter to Becky Pepper-Jackson (the 16 year-old trans girl SCOTUS ruled against yesterday) from James Dale, a gay man whose expulsion from the Boy Scouts was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2000.
Literally the Supreme Court upheld sodomy bans in 1986 and said homosexuality was worse than rape and nobody even talks about it
RFK Jr. asked the National Institute of Health to dedicate $5 billion (!) to finding a link between vaccines and autism. "That would have dedicated more than a tenth of the NIH’s annual budget to investigating a hypothesis already refuted by scientists worldwide."
I'm so thankful to Becky and her mom for their trust, generosity, and strength in front of the Supreme Court. No matter what the Court says, Becky is a hero for standing up for herself and trans girls like her. Doing what's right, even when the odds are against you, is the definition of courage.
Reply to @gbbranstetter.bsky.social
This is the most important lesson for her: "If you need to step away and breathe, please do. You have your whole life ahead of you. You have done more than enough for your community and your country...That's not quitting. That's surviving."
Reply to @gbbranstetter.bsky.social
In 2004 voters in seven states enacted gay marriage bans, some of which are still on the books, and yet every compare/contrast with trans rights is like "look how flawless and careful the gay marriage movement was"
Agreed that not everyone who disagrees with me is filled with hate in their heart but the high cost of a college education sounds like a problem chasing trans kids out of public life isn't going to solve
"Another yelled at the little girl, who was trying to smell flowers."
Reply to @gbbranstetter.bsky.social
A decision that was vigorously opposed by the *current Speaker of the House* bsky.app/profile/econ...
Good example of how the US hates public housing until you put bars on the windows
Sports are such a potent area of American cultural life because they're imagined as the last refuge of meritocracy
"Identified by an ex-wife" should replace "In god we trust" on our money
When even Third Way is telling you to back tf up
Anyway tomorrow we find out how many rights trans people have left
"Taking sexual violence seriously isn’t a side issue getting in the way of the real fight against 'the establishment.' Fighting that machinery of domination is central to building a coalition broad and strong enough to beat that establishment." @naomiaklein.bsky.social
Rhymes with the Court's reasoning in Skrmetti on trans youth healthcare bans - they discriminated on the basis of age thus their discrimination on the basis of sex doesn't matter. Whichever has the lowest standard of scrutny, basically
"The fact that many women supported Platner because they cared so much about women makes this juncture extra enraging, heartbreaking, and horrible."
Reply to @gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Washington and corporate America are corrupt, Hollywood is full of nepo babies, but sports are still imagined as the place where you can prove your worth through sheer grit and effort alone - and even that's not quite true either
Fascinated by this NYT op-ed arguing parents should have more than one child so they don't have to [gasp] live in community with others
Trump is abandoning sex ed programs that prevent teen pregnancy, STDs, and child abuse in favor of an abstinence-only approach that stresses "the importance of marriage and procreation." It also discourages girls from taking birth control and discourages boys from masturbation.