Latest news with #GLAAD
UPI
21 hours ago
- Politics
- UPI
Anti-trans, DEI provisions have Michigan lawmakers at odds over school budgets
1 of 2 | Crowds gather holding signs and flags when GLAAD and LGBTQ+ activists hold a rally to protest against the Trump Administration's removal of transgender and queer people from the official government website at the Stonewall National Monument on Feb. 14 in New York City. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo June 27 (UPI) -- The Michigan legislature is nearing its July 1 deadline to approve its budget bills but the state House and Senate are at odds over anti-transgender and diversity, equity and inclusion provisions. Earlier this month, the Republican majority in the Michigan House of Representatives passed budget bills that would penalize schools, universities and community colleges for allowing transgender girls and women to participate in girls' and women's sports. Democrats, with a slim majority in the Senate, passed a different version of a budget proposal late last month. It does not include any such provisions or references to DEI initiatives and girls' and women's sports. Michigan's school aid budget bill will establish how much state funding public schools and institutions of higher learning will receive in the fiscal year beginning on Oct. 1. Since the two chambers passed different versions of the bill, they must find a compromise to send a final version to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's desk. "Ultimately, education funding bills need to be passed," Jonathan Hanson, lecturer in public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, told UPI. "They have to work out some kind of compromise. How do you meet in the middle with respect to some of this language? It's not immediately obvious how to compromise on those things." The house budget proposes withholding 20% of a school district's discretionary funding if it is in violation of prohibitions on transgender athletes participating in female sports, having curriculum that "includes race or gender stereotyping" or funding "DEI initiatives." The same prohibitions apply to public universities and community colleges. Institutions in violation of these provisions could have 5% of monthly operations installments withheld by the state budget director. The proposals cite President Donald Trump's executive orders "Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity" and "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing" as supporting federal regulations. Less than 1% of adults in the United States identify as transgender. A smaller fraction of a percent of minors identify as transgender. Twenty-seven states have passed laws banning or restricting transgender athletes from participating in the sports that are consistent with their gender identity. In the 2024-2025 school year, about 175,000 Michigan high school athletes participated in sports, according to the Michigan High School Athletic Association. Two transgender students held waivers to participate and both participated only in fall sports. "It brings up a lot of 'whys,'" Jay Kaplan, staff attorney with the ACLU of Michigan's LGBTQ+ Project, told UPI. "Why this inordinate amount of focus? Why does this seem to be a priority?" Kaplan explained that the athletic association's waiver system is already a mechanism meant to address concerns people may have regarding student-athlete participation. "These budgetary provisions, they can be challenged as discriminatory," Kaplan said. "Our message to these legislators is, 'Do your job.' What's your plan for affordable housing? What's your plan to bring more businesses to the state and improve the economy?" The Republican sponsors of the proposals in the house, Rep. Tim Kelly and Rep. Gregory Markkanen, did not respond to requests for comment. "Our local schools have been asking for the freedom to use state funding how they please, free of overregulation and burdensome government mandates," Rep. Joseph Pavlov, R-District 64, said in a statement. "Now, thanks to the new budget plan House Republicans have put together, schools are getting exactly that in record amounts of funding. This will go a long way in turning around the decline in educational performance our state has seen for a long time now." Kaplan said the political makeup of the legislature and the governor's office offers some assurance that provisions like the anti-trans house school budget proposal will fail in Michigan. Next year's midterm elections will be crucial in determining if that level of assurance continues. "We're fortunate in Michigan," Kaplan said. "We've done a lot of hard work. The LGBTQ community and allies, we've all worked together. Michigan has some very good policies for the LGBTQ. We have explicit civil rights for the LGBTQ. If anyone is singled out, we're going to challenge it." Democrats have a 19 to 18 majority in the Senate with one seat -- Senate District 35 -- vacant. Whitmer, a Democrat, has the authority to call a special election for the vacant Senate seat, which she has not done. Republicans took a 58 to 52 majority in the House in the 2024 election. Democrats held a majority in the House chamber since 2023. Michigan will elect a new governor in 2026 as Whitmer will reach her term limit. "What we're seeing from the Republican side is the incorporation of national Republican policy coming from the White House regarding things like DEI initiatives and trans athletes," Hanson said. "The fact that this is entering into state budget policies and money is tied to focusing on a minority group that is really small, it makes it seem like they're focusing on things that aren't really problems,"
CBS News
2 days ago
- CBS News
Neighbors not intimidated after pride flags torn down in Boston; "I will not be going anywhere"
Neighbors in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood said they won't be intimidated after two of their pride flags were torn down by a vandal this week. The vandalism happened sometime on Tuesday and there's no leads on who did it. One of the flags has since been replaced. Two pride flags torn down A neighbor with a Ring camera didn't have any footage but did show their solidarity by promising to buy a flag of their own. "It's good to be in a neighborhood that your actual neighbors are otherwise supportive," said the Jamaica Plain resident whose flag was torn down. They also see what's going on beyond their neighborhood. "There's a lot of anger growing towards people who are more progressive," said a Jamaica Plain resident. "I genuinely think it's a trend, it's 'cool' to hate people who are different," said another. GLAAD: People cautious about pride due to fear According to GLADD, there was 208 incidents last year where pride flags or other symbols were targeted. That's actually down from 2023 but Sarah Moore of GLAAD credits some of that to fear. "People are taking a more cautious approach to pride," said Moore. "Sometimes, people choose to do more internal or private facing work rather than this kind of like public facing support in terms of putting out pride flags or other kinds of support like that." People in Jamaica Plain said if the person in this case was trying to send a message, it didn't work. "Bigots empower bigots but unfortunately for them, I will not be going anywhere," said the Jamaica Plain resident whose flag was torn down. The police are not involved in the vandalism case because the victims said they chose not to file a report.
Miami Herald
3 days ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
The transgender activist agenda went too far, but that shouldn't be the end
Last week's Supreme Court decision to uphold Tennessee's right to outlaw gender reassignment surgery for minors, a move made by more than two dozen states, marked the beginning of the end for the most extreme effort to reshape society under the banner of civil rights ever attempted. Parents on the high court voted 6-1 for the decision. Only a decade ago, the T in LGBTQ took over the debate about how to accommodate those who identify in non-standard ways. The transgender issue was different than what had come before in that some of those who identified that way did not just want to be accepted into society without discrimination, but to fundamentally alter how Americans thought about sex and gender, reshape single sex spaces and activities, and change how the rest of society communicated even when no transgender person was present: The overreach included: A flexible definition of gender was to replace the traditional biological sex binary. Society was to accept that gender could change from day to day and go places that seemingly had nothing to do with sex. Women were to accept those who identify as women into locker rooms, bathrooms and women's sports even if the new occupants of the space had a penis and the testosterone that usually comes along with it. We were all supposed to share our pronouns before speeches, presentations, introductions and in emails so that those whose pronouns were not obvious would feel supported in sharing theirs. New words, such as Xe and Xir were introduced to our vocabulary, and others were used in new ways as sex was now 'assigned' at birth instead of observed, and referring to 'biological sex' was considered a slur. In the wake of the transformation of public opinion after the Obergefell Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage, LGBTQ rights groups including GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign approached transgender issues with a confidence that bordered on arrogance. They used social media to attempt to deplatform and stigmatize anyone who did not bow to the new elite consensus. Gang attacks on public figures who disagreed became common. People lost jobs, friendships and relationships with family members if they objected to any of the new practices or refused to accept people's identities that bordered on the absurd, like people who claimed their gender changed, day to day and even hour to hour. Athletes like Riley Gaines and public figures like J.K Rowling, the British author of the Harry Potter novels, were branded TERFS – trans exclusive radical feminists – for fighting the changes. Both faced online mobs and lost friendships. Gaines had speaking engagements disrupted over her opinions. Rowling faced calls for her arrest after Scotland passed a broadly-worded hate-crimes law. School districts in Washington state and elsewhere enacted policies that allow local schools to hide the gender transition of grade school children from parents, including new names, the use of different bathrooms and involvement in sports usually restricted to children of a different sex. In California, such a policy became state law, and local schools were sued by the state's Attorney General when they didn't comply. In some jurisdictions, courts in a divorce case can weigh disagreement over a child's gender transition against a parent who refuses to recognize a new gender identity of a child of any age. That comes as the number of people identifying as transgender passed 1.5 million and the number of young people who identified as LGBTQ more than doubled, at some colleges passing 20% of students. Business human resources departments embraced the movement, requiring ordinary workers to be trained on the new social theory. Business executives began to declare themselves 'allies.' In medical care, the idea that a pubescent teen or even a girl 12 or younger could have her breasts surgically removed went from unheard of and unethical to standard practice taking place hundreds of times in less than a decade. Such 'gender affirming mastectomies' are up '13-fold' according to the National Institutes of Health. Groups of mental and physical health care providers like psychiatrists and pediatricians took the same positions as LGBTQ advocacy groups. Biden administration officials successfully lobbied an influential healthcare group to take all age restrictions out of its medical guidelines involving these procedures. . It was insane. That fever has finally broken. Now that the extremists have been defeated in the court of public opinion where support for the transgender agenda has plummeted, at ballot boxes where Trump made transgender issues the pitch in his most successful campaign ad, and now at the Supreme Court where the 6-3 partisan divide was on display, we can try something different. Even some activists, such as the only transgender member of Congress, Sarah McBride of Delaware, admit that the movement went too far. Trans people shouldn't be punished for this overreach because most of them had little to do with it. I think there is little support for pushing transgender people back into the closet. For those of us who love a transgender person, that is simply unacceptable. There is plenty of room for a more modest pitch from the transgender community to be free from discrimination in employment, jobs and housing; to be embraced in families and society without fear of harassment; to arrange their romantic lives as they see fit; and for people to treat their requests for verbal acceptance in terms of pronouns and new names as nothing more than being polite. It is not too much trouble to create spaces in sports and bathrooms where sex and gender don't matter. If the LGBTQ lobby had started here, I doubt there would have been much controversy at all.
Axios
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Axios
Number of LGBTQ-inclusive films drops again, data shows
LGBTQ representation in major movie studios' productions has been dropping, per data from GLAAD. Why it matters: In 2024, for the second year in a row, there was an overall decrease in inclusive films, after having hit a record high, GLAAD found. The studios are "running the risk of losing the next generation of consumers," says Megan Townsend, GLAAD's senior director of entertainment research. One in five Gen-Z U.S. adults identify as LGBTQ, per Gallup. Driving the news: The entertainment industry has shown signs of succumbing to pressure to scale back on diversity and inclusion. Several distributors, including Disney, Netflix and Paramount, pulled back Pride Month messaging this year. By the numbers: Although the number of LGBTQ characters went up in 2024, from 170 to 181, fewer movies featured them. Only 59 out of 250 films included LGBTQ characters, down from 70 out of 256 the previous year, the study found. Among the LGBTQ characters, those of color decreased from 78 in 2023, to 66 in 2024. LGBTQ-inclusive animated and family films from the 10 top distributors declined from 8 out of 39 in 2022 to 2 out of 26 in 2024. The bottom line: "It is very hard to change your brand perception and win people back after they have decided that your brand is not for them, doesn't look like them, doesn't look like their friends, their family," Townsend tells Axios.
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
JD Vance becomes the most blocked account on Bluesky after anti-trans post
JD Vance has become the most blocked account on Bluesky just two days after joining the social media platform. The vice president signed up for the site, a competitor of X/Twitter, on Wednesday. Vance used his first post to mock transgender people by sharing part of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' opinion in U.S. v. Skrmetti, in which he incorrectly said that gender-affirming care relies on 'questionable evidence.' "Hello Bluesky, I've been told this app has become the place to go for common sense political discussion and analysis," Vance wrote. "So I'm thrilled to be here to engage with all of you." Within just one day, Vance became the most blocked account on Bluesky, according to Clearsky, the platform's unofficial data tracker. As of publishing, Vance has been blocked by over 117,500 accounts, more than 29,000 of which blocked him in the past 24 hours. He has only gained 10,000 followers since joining the site. The title formerly belonged to anti-trans journalist Jesse Singal, whom GLAAD has criticized for spreading misinformation harmful to LGBTQ+ people. It took 12 days for Singal to become the most blocked account, with users even starting a petition asking the site to remove his account. He is currently blocked by over 81,000 people. "The only thing I've ever accomplished in my life, gone, all because being vice president wasn't enough for JD Vance — he needed more," Singal recently posted on X/Twitter in response to the news. "We are in hell." The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Wednesday that Tennessee's law banning gender-affirming care for trans youth – while allowing the same treatments for youth who aren't trans – does not constitute sex-based discrimination, and therefore does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. In the snippet of his opinion shared by Vance, Thomas asserted that the Court should not listen to "so-called experts," accusing medical professionals of allowing "ideology to influence their medical guidance." He then falsely claimed that "there is no medical consensus on how best to treat gender dysphoria in children." The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the World Medical Association, and the World Health Organization all agree that gender-affirming care is evidence-based and medically necessary not just for adults, but minors as well. Out of 55 peer-reviewed studies, not a single one found that gender transition has negative outcomes. Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued in her dissenting opinion that the law explicitly discriminates on the basis of both sex and gender, as it 'expressly classifies on the basis of sex and transgender status,' since 'male (but not female) adolescents can receive medicines that help them look like boys, and female (but not male) adolescents can receive medicines that help them look like girls.' The decision "does irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause and invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight," Sotomayor wrote. "It also authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them. Because there is no constitutional justification for that result, I dissent." Back on Bluesky, Vance was met with , with one person asking, "Why pick such a polarizing issue if you want to have a real discussion, and why not something relevant to more Americans?" To which another replied, "It's only a polarizing issue because ignorant bigoted child abusing superstitious sadists like Vance want to pretend that they know more than doctors." This article originally appeared on Advocate: JD Vance becomes the most blocked account on Bluesky after anti-trans post JD Vance admits to making up crazy stories to get press attention and says he'll continue doing it JD Vance wants the UK to repeal its LGBTQ+ hate speech laws to secure a trade deal JD Vance falsely accuses Algerian Olympic boxer of being transgender & weirdly blames Kamala Harris JD Vance now says Haitian immigrants are spreading HIV after bizarre pet-eating claim flops
