Transgender

On the morning of July 8, former President Donald J. Trump took to Truth Social, a social media platform he founded with people close to him, to claim that he had in fact won the 2020 presidential vote in Wisconsin, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Barely 8,000 people shared that missive on Truth Social, a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of responses his posts on Facebook and Twitter had regularly generated before those services suspended his megaphones after the deadly riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.

And yet Mr. Trump’s baseless claim pulsed through the public consciousness anyway. It jumped from his app to other social media platforms — not to mention podcasts, talk radio or television.

Within 48 hours of Mr. Trump’s post, more than one million people saw his claim on at least dozen other media. It appeared on Facebook and Twitter, from which he has been banished, but also YouTube, Gab, Parler and Telegram, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

gone mainstream among Republican Party members, driving state and county officials to impose new restrictions on casting ballots, often based on mere conspiracy theories percolating in right-wing media.

Voters must now sift through not only an ever-growing torrent of lies and falsehoods about candidates and their policies, but also information on when and where to vote. Officials appointed or elected in the name of fighting voter fraud have put themselves in the position to refuse to certify outcomes that are not to their liking.

a primary battleground in today’s fight against disinformation. A report last month by NewsGuard, an organization that tracks the problem online, showed that nearly 20 percent of videos presented as search results on TikTok contained false or misleading information on topics such as school shootings and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Women in film are still struggling to find jobs in the film industry, specifically in animation.

Animated films like Domee Shi’s “Turning Red” or Nora Twomey’s Oscar-nominated “The Breadwinner” are putting women and young girls in the spotlight, but the animation industry as a whole is still struggling to hire and promote women behind the scenes.

Nicole Hendrix is the co-founder and executive director of the BRIC Foundation.

“These pathways into the industry are not equitable,” said Hendrix.

“It’s like, there’s all this great talent out there that you’re not utilizing,” said Margaret Dean, the president of Women in Animation. Of the top animated films released from 2007 to 2018, less than 3% were directed by women and industry leaders say it’s because of inequality in the talent pipelines.

“It’s just very much exclusion by familiarity within the industry. It’s a ‘you have to know someone’ in order to get hired or to get into a really good program that you’ll get hired from. Not to mention money, right? Not everybody can afford to be an unpaid intern,” said Hendrix.

“It was just the phrases of ‘it was an old boys club,’ and then people always hired people that they knew that they were friends with,” said Dean.

A 2019 report from the University of Southern California found that women directors were more likely to be seen as a “risk” to studios, and less likely to be promoted to higher leadership roles.

Women overall hold around 30% of the creative jobs in animation. And as more people in Hollywood are becoming more aware of the gender-gap in entertainment, organizations like the BRIC foundation and Women in Animation are pushing for parity.

“There’s definitely waves that people ride and we just need to all come together to make sure that we hold people accountable,” said Alison Mann, the co-founder of the BRIC Foundation.

“Equally important work that we realized we needed to do was to start working with the women themselves, and to really launch talent development programs,” said Dean.

Women in animation, or “WIA,” has challenged the industry to achieve 50/50 parity by 2025. And its educational programs include mentorship opportunities for women, transgender and non-binary people.

“They became these little networks, almost like a seed of a little network,” said Dean.

The BRIC Foundation is working to create more opportunities for women as well through its own industry-wide summits, workshops and the development of a new apprenticeship program.

“Out of our third-year summit, the plan for an apprenticeship program came and it was an industry advisory across animation, visual effects in gaming, 60 major companies represented. And we really mapped out what are the entry level positions that people are wanting to hire for, what knowledge, software, skills, portfolio is needed to achieve those roles?” said Hendrix.

The program hopes to provide training opportunities for students in public high schools and community colleges and ultimately lessen the barriers to enter the animation industry.

“We have to remember to kind of rise above and continue pushing forward and figuring out new strategic ways to create opportunities for people that might not and, and I think everybody has a seat at the table to make change,” said Mann.

Source: newsy.com

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The pandemic might have made rising STD/STI numbers even worse. Health officials have urged action, but prevention efforts have stalled for years.

Public health has been top of mind for many the last couple of years, but there’s a public health problem that has largely flown under the radar: a growing rate of sexually transmitted diseases and infections.

The number of STD and STI cases among Americans have been rising steadily each year since 2014. Even the pandemic, which trapped millions inside their homes, didn’t really make a dent in those numbers, and it might have made it worse.

These rising numbers have led many health officials to raise an alarm and urge action. Many experts believe one of the causes behind this problem is the lack of knowledge about the basic principles of safe sex, typically taught in sex education classes.

In fact, a Centers for Disease Control survey from 2019 showed that nearly 46% of sexually-active high school students did not use a condom the last time they had sex. That’s a huge problem considering the fact that out of all new STDs reported to the CDC each year, half were among young people aged 15 to 24.

The numbers show there were 2.4 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in 2020, which is the most recent year of data.

Chlamydia is currently the most common STD in the U.S., with 1.6 million cases reported to the CDC that year. While its numbers saw a slight drop from 2016, the CDC notes that the drops are probably not really because of an actual drop in infections. Since chlamydia is usually asymptomatic, case rates are heavily influenced by screening coverage, which the pandemic worsened.

Although overall cases of STDs and STIs fell in the pandemic’s early months, the CDC acknowledges that’s likely due to the reduced frequency of in-person health care services, resulting in fewer screenings. STD test and lab supply shortages, the diversion of health workers to pandemic response teams, and lapses in health insurance due to unemployment also contributed. Plus, the pandemic came after years of cuts to public health funding.

As anticipated by many experts, numbers picked up again at the end of 2020, with other diseases like gonorrhea and syphilis surpassing 2019 levels, according to CDC data. Preliminary data from 2021 shows there were more than 2.5 million reported cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in that year, meaning STDs and STIs continued to increase during the second year of the pandemic too, with no signs of slowing.

The CDC says it’s likely, “…we may never know the full impact of the pandemic on STDs. What is clear, however, is the state of STDs did not improve in the United States. Prevention and control efforts remain as important as ever.”

But, the country’s prevention and control methods need work. Comprehensive sex ed programs would be a start on prevention among the most commonly affected age group, but robust public testing and information campaigns could help all Americans. Public health funding, however, has faced slashes for years, taking a toll on STD screening and prevention efforts.

“Public funding cuts will prevent the public health system, the safety net, of being able to track down people’s partners so that your index patient doesn’t get reinfected because their partner was also treated appropriately,” said Dr. Anna Maya Powell, co-director of the Johns Hopkins HIV Women’s Program. “It’s easy to say, ‘People should take personal responsibility and come in for care,’ but I think the picture is a lot more complex than that.”

Only 2.5% of all health spending in the U.S. — which is about $3.8 trillion — is spent on public health and prevention programs. Last year, the Biden administration did announce a $1.13 billion investment to strengthen the disease intervention specialists (DIS) workforce at the CDC, but much of that funding seems to be for the agency’s pandemic response.

Still, there’s reason for some optimism: There has been progress on STDs and STIs since the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s. The STI spread rapidly in the country then, especially among certain groups, like men who have sex with other men.

Years of public information campaigns and research into treatment brought numbers down through the early 2000s and to a stable level by 2013. More recent figures may seem to hint at further progress on the overall HIV cases during the early pandemic, but those figures are also misleading because of the sharp drop in testing.

Plus, many experts have criticized the focus of historic HIV treatment and prevention efforts as largely being focused on treating rich, white, gay men and transgender groups, leaving out many lower-income Americans, people of color and women.

Women in general face a greater burden when it comes to sexual health. Many studies have established that women have a higher biological risk for contracting many STIs and HIV than men, with a higher probability of transmission from men to women.

“Women tend to be more asymptomatic for a lot of a lot of the conditions we’re talking about,” Dr. Powell said. “Not having symptoms maybe gives people a false sense of security, and then they don’t come in to get the routine screening that they might have otherwise if things were open and accessible.”

Black women in particular suffer higher numbers of both HIV and other STDs like herpes, and many experts say public prevention efforts have failed to address these groups adequately. Overall, inconsistencies in access to health care and prevention programs across different demographics throughout the country have affected our national battle against STDs and STIs.

“We have had data that shows consistently what we need to be doing in the sexually transmitted infections, those cases in reproductive health,” said Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis, director of health for the city of St. Louis, Missouri. “We need to make sure that those policies are as standardized as possible so that they’re easily implementable and therefore easy to track data, data that then feeds back into the funding.”

Source: newsy.com

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LGBTQ+ inmates often face bias, discrimination and unsafe circumstances in prison.

Dee Farmer served time at a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, for credit card fraud. She was housed in a male facility even though she identified as a trans woman. Based on prison policy, she was placed with her gender assigned at birth. Within two weeks of her arrival, she says she was beaten and raped by her cellmate.

“I stayed in prison for 17 years. And while there, you know, I suffered all the types of abuses,” she said. “When I was raped, the guard was sitting down in his office and there were maybe 200 inmates in the unit I was in, in Terre Haute. There’s only one guard, generally, to every housing unit. So, to believe that the officers can protect you is just a myth.”

A lawsuit by Farmer against the prison system reached the Supreme Court.

The justices ruled in her favor, saying that prison officials may be liable for harm if they know of safety risks and disregard them. That case was in 1994.

Today, LGBTQ+ inmates still face bias, discrimination and unsafe circumstances in prison.

Jane Hereth is an assistant professor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee whose recent report documented the overrepresentation of LGBTQ+ people in the criminal justice system and the pipeline that funnels many of them there.

“Bias and discrimination across the board by police, by judges, by attorneys,” she said. “Things like family rejection, poverty, homelessness, bullying in schools — were all part of their story leading to the criminal legal system.”

According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, LGBTQ+ individuals were twice as likely to be arrested compared to their straight counterparts.

“When we talk about incarceration, probation, the justice system in general, there’s a high representation of LGBTQ Black and brown folks,” Black and Pink Social Worker and Deputy Director Andrew Aleman said.

Once behind bars, trans individuals are at a heightened risk, especially trans women of color.

“We know that most trans women who are who are taken into custody are housed in a men’s facility, despite knowing the risk and the high rates of sexual assault and violence that happen to trans women in men facilities,” Lambda Legal Senior Attorney Richard Saenz said.

Shows like “Orange Is the New Black” introduced many in the public to life in prison for LGBTQ+ people.

“‘Orange Is the New Black’ and some other shows that have come out since then have really humanized people who are in custody,” Saenz continued. “One of the things that I remember seeing is that a trans woman was approached, you know, maybe by four or five inmates at once, sort of like jokingly harassing her sexually. And so that is something that you generally see within the prison system on a daily basis.”

Farmer says harassment takes a mental toll.

“They suffer a number of times, many of them, even if they’re not raped, they are constantly sexually harassed and pressured into sexual relationships,” Farmer said. “And many of them have to do it for their safety.”

Farmer says there’s still a revolving door of LGBTQ+ people who go through solitary confinement for protection but then return to the general prison population because confinement was depressing.

“I was placed in the segregation unit and I was there for over a year. And while I was there, there were maybe eight or nine, not necessarily transgender, but gay and transgender — I would just say gender-nonconforming inmates — that were just back and forth into the segregation unit,” Farmer said.

Organizations like Black and Pink are advocates for LGBTQ+ in the criminal justice systems. Their programs connect gay inmates to support networks outside prison.

“My ask would be that we don’t forget our roots, and we don’t forget that there are thousands of LGBTQ people in prisons and jails right now. And these are our loved ones,” Saenz said.

Source: newsy.com

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A Newsy investigation reveals a push by organized groups to stop schools from teaching what advocates say is critical to preventing sexual assault.

Millions of students returning to public schools across Texas are encountering fallout from a battle over the state’s first major update to sex education and health standards in more than two decades.

A Newsy investigation reveals how an advocacy group helped convince the Texas State Board of Education to strike lessons about consent from the state’s planned health education standards for the 2022-2023 school year. The board’s decision went against the advice of medical experts and organizations promoting teen sexual health, which say comprehensive sex education helps reduce rape and unwanted pregnancies.

“It’s not an open communication — to talk about sex,” says 17-year-old Kennia Gonzales, a senior at Brownsville Early College High School in Texas. Gonzales says her high school does not teach any form of sex education beyond abstinence. “Teachers aren’t supposed to talk about it with students,” she says.

In fact, Texas high schools are not required to offer students sex education, and if they do, parents must opt in for their children to receive it. State regulations now require those schools that choose to teach the topic to emphasize “the centrality of abstinence education in any human sexuality curriculum.”

The state of Texas’ high hopes for convincing teens to say no to sex do not appear to be having the intended impact. A 2019 CDC survey of Texas youths showed that nearly two-thirds of high school seniors report having had sex. Texas has the ninth-highest teen birth rate in the U.S., and the state tops the nation in repeat teen births.

Gonzales says with no sex education being taught by her school, some of her classmates are left with dangerous gaps in their understanding of healthy sex and relationships.

“Men are taught to get what they want without the teaching of consent,” she says. “So, they’re just like, ‘She will say yes because I’m a macho man.’ And that’s how rape happens.”

A spokesperson for the Brownsville Independent School District did not respond to multiple requests for comments about their curriculum.

According to the 2019 CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey, nearly 1 in 7 high school senior girls say they have been physically forced to have sexual intercourse. In Texas, that number is closer to 1 in 5, according to the state version of the same survey.

THE BATTLE OVER CONSENT IN TEXAS

Records from the State Board of Education in Texas, reviewed by Newsy, tell the story of a nonprofit group named the Medical Institute for Sexual Health that played an influential role in convincing the state board to keep consent out of Texas requirements — against the advice of health experts and organizations pushing to prevent sexual violence.

Recommendations to the state board for new standards for the 2022-2023 school year in Texas did include lessons on teaching students about consent at the seventh- and eighth-grade levels. In Texas, only middle schoolers are required to receive sex education. Educators, parents and other advocacy groups expressed to state officials their support for teaching consent.

The Texas Medical Association and Texas Pediatric Society jointly wrote to the State Board of Education “on behalf of more than 53,000 physicians in Texas” to say they “strongly support adding new standards on boundaries and consent for physical intimacy where none previously existed.” The groups added that students should “understand affirmative consent is required in all physically intimate encounters.”

The Texas chapter of the National Association of Social Workers also wrote to the board: “Consent is an extremely important part of any conversation regarding healthy relationships. We believe that it is the SBOE’s duty to include clear, informative, and meaningful definitions of consent, including examples of how a student might share their consent within relationships of any kind.”

But according to state records, the Medical Institute for Sexual Health and more than 1,000 community members “expressed opposition to any efforts to add language discussing consent” to the state’s minimum health standards. The group also told the State Board of Education it supported “the omission of differentiated instruction on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) issues” for this school year.

The Medical Institute for Sexual Health, a Dallas-based nonprofit founded in 1992, is an abstinence-promoting organization active in multiple states. The group distributes guidelines for sex education that, despite the group’s name, have been criticized by some in the medical community. Researchers from Columbia University, Johns Hopkins, Case Western and others wrote in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2021 that the group’s standards were “seriously flawed from both scientific and human rights’ perspectives.”

State records show the Medical Institute played a larger role in shaping the new standards in Texas, beyond simply filing comments. The organization’s director of science at the time is listed as serving on two of the Texas Education Agency’s working groups that drafted proposals for the new health standards. The organization’s president at the time, Lori Kuykendall, says she served on multiple working groups that worked “to craft the language” for the proposed sexual health standards. After an early draft of the middle school standards still included consent, Kuykendall spoke at a State Board of Education meeting to say that there was a “slip of consent in grade seven and eight” that remained in proposed standards. She asked the board to “not include consent.”

One of the Medical Institute’s board members, Dr. Jack Lesch, was tapped by the State Board of Education to serve as one of just six content advisers who took recommendations that came out of the working groups and drafted them into one new proposal for minimum standards for the state board to consider. He recommended the board strike teaching consent from various parts of the new standards, stating: “There are extensive references to refusal skills, safe and personal boundaries, setting limits in the SE’s. Therefore, recommend DELETE consent from the topic of decision-making.”

Lesch also wrote to the state board to say that introducing consent is “unnecessary” and “also encourages moving toward sexual behavior that is better to delay (avoid).” State records show that some content advisers disagreed with Lesch.

The state board ultimately said it agreed with the Medical Institute’s position on omitting LGBTQ instruction from the minimum standards for this school year. As to the Medical Institute’s request to steer clear from “any” instruction on consent, the records further note, “The SBOE agrees and has determined that sexual consent was not appropriate” in the Texas standards. The board then “took action to eliminate” a reference to consent.

State Board of Education Chair Keven Ellis did not respond to an emailed request for comment. A spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency confirmed basic facts about the state’s standards but did not respond to requests for comment about the state board’s decision-making on the issue of consent.

Attempts to reach Lesch, the Medical Institute’s board member, by telephone, text message and email were unsuccessful. The Medical Institute’s then-president, Lori Kuykendall, responded in writing to emailed questions.

“Children under the age of 17 cannot legally give consent to sexual activity and should not be instructed how to,” she wrote. “If the goal is to empower children to know when they are being violated and what to do to resist, avoid, or run away from the perpetrator (and ultimately report), then it is logical they would be taught refusal or resistance skills.”

Instead of consent, the state board adopted standards that mirrored the Medical Institute’s guidance to instruct schools to teach refusal skills and personal boundaries, and state records show they decided to teach even those only “at some grade levels.”

“As far as I’m concerned, [consent] is one of the most important things you can be teaching,” says Shael Norris, executive director of SafeBAE, a national advocacy group working to prevent sexual violence among middle- and high-school students. 

Norris was critical of the state’s ultimate choice to teach refusal skills without also teaching consent.

“Instead of putting the blame where it belongs on the perpetrator, the victim takes on that responsibility, and that makes them that much more vulnerable to suicide — if they are victimized and they feel responsible for it,” she says.

There is not much academic research yet into the impact that lessons on consent would have on reducing sexual assaults, but studies show that people who have been sexually assaulted are at nearly three times greater risk of suicidal ideation or suicide attempts.

Norris says advocates like her agree that consent lessons can be taught in an age-appropriate, nonsexual manner to children as young as in kindergarten. An example she cites is teaching a young child it is OK for them to say yes or no to hugs, high-fives or other forms of nonsexual touch. This can form a building block to teach other kinds of consent for older teenagers.

The current leaders at the Medical Institute for Sexual Health did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, but the group’s founder and CEO, Dr. Joe McIlhaney, did answer questions in writing through a public relations firm.

In response to questions asking if the Medical Institute would support any lessons on consent for high schoolers, or “nonsexual” consent lessons for students of any age, McIlhaney said his organization “believes that school-age children understand the meaning of ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ We believe that they should refuse sexual advances, and not wonder whether they could or should give consent at such a young age. The answer should be ‘no.'”

The American Academy of Pediatrics, representing 67,000 pediatricians, says programs promoting abstinence have “conclusively” been shown not to work but that most comprehensive sexuality education programs studied have been shown to delay the age of intercourse and to promote “protective behaviors” like condom use. And a 2016 UN study of 48 countries found that comprehensive sexuality education leads to “the reduction of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), HIV, and unintended pregnancy.”

The AAP and a host of other medical and educational authorities, such as the American Medical Association and the National Education Association, endorse teaching consent.

Crime statistics from the Texas Department of Public Safety’s 2020 report reveal the two age groups with the highest number of reported sexual assault victims in the state were 15- to 19-year-olds and 10- to 14-year-olds. Altogether, a Newsy analysis found that children and teenagers 19 and younger made up more than two-thirds of sexual assault victims in Texas.

Melanie Ramirez, the director of prevention programs at the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, a nonprofit associated with 70 rape crisis centers across Texas — and one of the groups that tried to get consent added to the new state standards — says teaching only refusal and boundary skills is outdated and harmful.

“It’s reiterating an old notion that if you experience sexual violence, it’s somehow now your fault,” she says.

“We’re not trying to teach, ‘Don’t get raped.’ We’re trying to teach, ‘Don’t rape.'”

A NATIONAL DEBATE

Nationwide, 29 states require that students receive sex education, and 13 require they learn about consent, according to the Sexual Information and Education Council of the United States, or SIECUS. But the battle to change that is hitting state legislatures and local school boards across the country. Alison Macklin, a policy and advocacy director for SIECUS, says in more than 60 years her organization has never seen as many bills proposed to restrict sex education as what happened in the 2022 state legislative sessions.

“This is the busiest we have been in tracking these types of bills,” Macklin says.

Lessons about gender identity and consent have also inspired passionate parents and organized groups on both sides of the debate to storm into normally tranquil school board meetings. Some are calling to restrict or do away with sex education in schools altogether.

A Miami-Dade school board meeting made national headlines in July when police were called to remove parents who disrupted the debate on whether to adopt a pair of sex-education textbooks that had references to topics like pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. The high school textbook said consent “occurs when someone clearly says yes” in “words, not just body language.” The board initially voted to take the books out of the curriculum for this school year, leaving students with no sex-education curriculum, until a new round of upset parents later convinced the board to reinstate the books.

At the Nebraska State Board of Education meeting last August, one individual upset over the proposed standards in that state appeared to threaten a Jan. 6 style insurrection, while others compared the board to Nazis because of the proposed curriculum, which included the teaching of consent.

In Oregon, a nonprofit group called Parents’ Rights in Education, or PRIE, recently hosted its second annual summit to train parents from around the nation on how to become more politically active where they live, while trying to vote out school board members who don’t agree to keep consent and comprehensive sex education out of school curriculum. The group says on its website it was established in 2011. The group’s executive director, Suzanne Gallagher, is the former head of the Oregon Republican Party.

“This is political,” Gallagher says. “People like to deny that. They want to think, ‘Oh, it’s just a school.’ It has everything to do with politics. We’re flipping school boards.”

PRIE’s website says comprehensive sexual education should not be taught in schools because “teaching consent undermines any semblance of an abstinence message.”

Her podcast website refers to literature that claims teachers who provide sex education are implementing a “Molester’s Manifesto,” while also claiming in a bullet point “1 in 10 children will experience school employee sexual misconduct.”

Newsy traced Gallagher’s statistic to a study published by the U.S. Department of Education in 2004. The review included data from an earlier study that found that 1 in 10 students had experienced sexual harassment from educators — which included things like name-calling, spreading rumors, and inappropriate jokes. Though the author of the 2004 review recharacterized this as “sexual misconduct,” the Department of Education added a preface cautioning that misconduct and abuse were not one and the same.

Newsy made Gallagher aware of the department’s concerns and noted her own podcast website used “misconduct” statistics to support claims about child molestation in schools. Gallagher stood by her website and, at the time of publication, it was left unchanged.

Gallagher says she still believes students are more vulnerable to sexual abuse by teachers if they are taught it is ever OK to consent to a sexual encounter.

“They’re going to be thinking, ‘Oh, yeah, you know, Mr. Smith, who is just a stud, he said I could,” explains Gallagher. “It’s setting students up to be accepting of sexual advances from anyone, thinking that it’s OK, it’s all right, it’s perfectly normal, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it and I have a right to it. That goes against the values of many families.”

Gallagher says her message is cutting through at the ballot box and has, along with the work of other parents’ rights groups, helped force a changeover in school board members in Newberg, Oregon. She also points to Texas as a state where Parents’ Rights In Education is active.

“We have a couple groups in Texas. They’re on fire there,” she says.

Efforts to get sex education out of public schools worry Dr. M. Brett Cooper, a pediatrician who practices in Dallas and is trained specifically in adolescent health, with a master’s in education. He spoke publicly to the Texas State Board of Education on the importance of teaching consent while representing the Texas Medical Association and Texas Pediatric Society.

Cooper says he sees firsthand as a practicing physician how common it is for parents to shy away from teaching their own children about sex.

“Parents often come to me when they find out that their child has had sex. I ask them if they’ve talked to their child about these things before. The answer is usually no.”

A Harvard Graduate School of Education survey of 18- to 25-year-olds found that most respondents “had never spoken with their parents about things like ‘being sure your partner wants to have sex and is comfortable doing so before having sex.'”

Kennia Gonzales, who says she is the daughter of a teen mother, says that if schools don’t teach kids comprehensive sex education, they’re going to get it from less reputable sources, like the internet.

“They’re going to explore, and not giving them that education isn’t going to stop them,” she says. “I want the teen pregnancy and [sexual assault] percentages to go down. I just want to see a change.”

Zach Cusson and Meghan Sullivan contributed reporting for this story.

Source: newsy.com

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By Associated Press

and Forrest Saunders
August 23, 2022

Voters will choose Tuesday between U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist and Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried for the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is poised to learn the identity of his general election opponent on Tuesday as Democrats choose between a man who spent a lifetime in politics — much of it as a Republican — and a woman casting herself as “something new” as she seeks the energy of her party’s resurgent base.

The Democratic establishment has largely lined up behind Charlie Crist, a 66-year-old Democratic congressman who served as the state’s Republican governor more than a decade ago. Running now as a moderate Democrat, Crist is facing 44-year-old Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who hopes to become the state’s first female governor while leaning into the fight for abortion rights.

The race is ultimately a debate over who is best-positioned to defeat DeSantis, who emerged from a narrow victory four years ago to become one of the most prominent Republicans in politics. His relatively light touch handling the pandemic and his eagerness to lean into divides over race, gender and LGBTQ rights have resonated with many Republican voters who see DeSantis as a natural heir to former President Donald Trump.

His reelection effort is widely assumed to be a precursor to a presidential run in 2024, adding to a sense of urgency among Democrats to blunt his rise now.

The Florida contest wraps up the busiest stretch of primaries this year. Republicans from Pennsylvania to Arizona have supported contenders who have embraced Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen, an assertion roundly rejected by elections officials, the former president’s attorney general and judges he appointed.

And for the most part, Democrats have avoided brutal primary fights. That could be tested Tuesday, however, as voters in New York participate in congressional primaries that feature two powerful Democratic committee chairs, Carolyn Maloney and Jerry Nadler, competing for the same seat and other incumbents fending off challenges from the left.

Democrats are entering the final weeks ahead of the midterms with a sense of cautious optimism, hoping the Supreme Court’s decision overturning a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion will energize the party’s base. But Democrats still face tremendous headwinds, including economic uncertainty and the historic reality that most parties lose seats in the first midterm after they’ve won the White House.

The dynamics are especially challenging for Democrats in Florida, one of the most politically divided states in the U.S. Its last three races for governor were decided by 1 percentage point or less. But the state has steadily become more favorable to Republicans in recent years.

For the first time in modern history, Florida has more registered Republicans — nearly 5.2 million — than Democrats, who have nearly 5 million registered voters. Fried serves as the only Democrat in statewide office. And Republicans have no primary competition for four of those five positions — governor, U.S. Senate, attorney general and chief financial officer — which are all held by GOP incumbents.

Democrats hope that U.S. Rep. Val Demings, who faces a little-known candidate in her Senate primary Tuesday, can unseat the state’s senior U.S. senator, Republican Marco Rubio, this fall. But for now, the party’s national leadership is prioritizing competitive Senate contests in other states, including neighboring Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

In Florida’s governor’s race, the Supreme Court’s abortion decision has animated the final weeks of the Democratic primary.

Fried has promoted herself as the only true abortion-rights supporter in the race, seizing on Crist’s appointment of two conservative Supreme Court justices while he was governor.

The conservative-leaning court will soon decide whether the Republican-backed state legislature’s law to ban abortions after 15 weeks is constitutional. Florida’s new abortion law is in effect, with exceptions if the procedure is necessary to save the pregnant woman’s life, to prevent serious injury or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality. It does not allow exemptions in cases of rape, incest or human trafficking.

Crist insisted he is “pro-choice” and highlighted a bill he vetoed as governor in 2010 that would have required women seeking a first-trimester abortion to get and pay for an ultrasound exam.

In experience and personality, voters have a clear contrast between Crist, an establishment-backed lifelong politician viewed as a relatively safe choice, and Fried, a newer face who may be in better position to catch fire with the party’s most passionate voters.

Meanwhile, Fried has gained twice as many followers on every social network and is quick to jump on online trends. She built her profile as one of DeSantis’ fiercest opponents, regularly challenging him on policy related to the COVID-19 pandemic. She also created a position within her department to ensure LGBTQ members are given opportunities as DeSantis wages what the Human Rights Campaign recently described as “an assault on transgender Floridians.”

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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By Associated Press
August 19, 2022

Similar cases are underway in states such as Idaho, West Virginia and Indiana.

Transgender kids in Utah will not be subjected to sports participation limits at the start of the upcoming school year after a judge delayed the implementation of a statewide ban passed earlier this year.

Judge Keith Kelly’s decision Friday to put the law on hold until a legal challenge is resolved came after he recently rejected a request by Utah state attorneys to dismiss the case. Most Utah schools students head back to classes this month.

Attorneys representing the families of three transgender student-athletes filed the lawsuit challenging the ban last May, contending it violates the Utah Constitution’s guarantees of equal rights and due process.

Similar cases are underway in states such as Idaho, West Virginia, and Indiana.

The issue of whether transgender girls should be allowed to participate in female sports has become a flashpoint across the U.S., with Republican lawmakers passing a legislation to block them based on the premise it gives them an unfair competitive advantage.

Transgender rights advocates counter that the rules aren’t just about sports, but another way to demean and attack transgender youth.

As of March, the Utah High School Activities Association knew of only one transgender girl playing in K-12 sports who would be affected by the ban.

The association, which organizes leagues for 85,000 students, has said there have been no publicly made allegations of competitive advantage concerning any of the state’s four transgender youth athletes.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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Some say Pope Francis’s meeting with transgender people may not translate into doctrinal change, but it could lead to cultural acceptance.

Father James Martin has taken his message of prayer and inclusivity just about everywhere, from “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” to the halls of the Vatican.

In May, he wrote to Pope Francis with a few questions.

“I just wanted to give him a time to briefly talk to LGBTQ Catholics,” Martin said.

Francis has extended apologies to the abused and a welcome to the historically rejected. According to the Vatican News, he recently met with transgender people near Rome, Italy.

So Martin’s questions aren’t so random.

“I asked him, ‘What would you most like them to know about the church?'” Martin said. “He said, ‘Read Acts of the Apostles,’ which was really interesting because there’s a church that’s kind of mixing it up. Then also, ‘What would you say to an LGBTQ Catholic who felt rejected by the church?’ And he said very interestingly to remember that it’s not the church that rejects you, the church loves you, but it might be individual people in the church.”

It isn’t the first time Francis has corresponded directly with Martin on LGBTQ relations or the first time he has spoken up about their place within the Catholic church.

In 2016, Francis agreed the church should apologize to not only gay people but other marginalized groups, like the poor. He’s also called for parents to accept their LGBTQ children.

Francis’ gestures are one thing; changing church doctrine, which teaches that the act of homosexuality is sinful, is another.

“What would have happened really, in a sense, is for theologians working together, along with church officials, to come to some newer understanding of how they can accommodate for older church teaching on these issues, to show that the church evolves rather than dramatically changing,” said Michele Dillon, professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire. “Because the church is not going to say, ‘Oh, we were wrong.’ It’s very rare.”

“If he were to do that, which I don’t think Pope Francis will, but if he were to do that, he would not want to do it without support from the Curia and the College of Cardinals,” said Cristina Traina, professor of Catholic theology at Fordham University. “He would not want to do it without tracing a pathway theologically.”

Instead, Francis has gone another direction: one met with both criticism and praise, uplifting LGBTQ Catholics while simultaneously reiterating church doctrine.

NEWSY’S AMBER STRONG: Is he sort of riding the line between saying that this is doctrine, and doctrines not going to change. But, we also still need to love and affirm people as well?

FATHER JAMES MARTIN: I think that’s a good question, and I think he is kind of trying to straddle that line. But I think one thing to remember is that what seems very bland and tepid in the United States — overseas is a big deal. In the U.S., we might say, ‘Oh, big deal. Of course, you should welcome your kids.’ If you’re in Eastern Europe or sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America or India, that’s a big deal. So, we have to remember that he’s speaking to the whole church.”

According to Pew Research, 76% of U.S. Catholics say society should be accepting of homosexuality. That’s below the rate of Catholic support in countries like Spain and the Netherlands but far higher than places like Lebanon and Nigeria.

Some theologians argue that Francis’ support could have a trickle-down impact on individual Catholics and parishes.

“These things can do a lot to encourage Catholics to embrace LGBTQ people with love and compassion and mercy and not to see them as the Antichrist, the anathema, the enemy of salvation,” Traina said.

In 2021, a group of catholic leaders, including a cardinal and archbishop, signed a statement calling for widespread support of at-risk LGBTQ youth. According to an NCR analysis of recent listening sessions among U.S. Catholics, there was a growing call for LGBTQ inclusion and more opportunities for women.

“To me, there’s no such thing as an empty gesture because, yes, many times people want to see more clear cut evidence of change and of their acceptance within the church, but sometimes it’s in small steps,” Dillon said.

In 2021, Martin, a Vatican appointee under Francis, launched Outreach: a website that provides resources to LGBTQ Catholics and leaders. It’s an effort Pope Francis has encouraged.

“He hasn’t changed any church teaching,” Martin said. “I’m not advocating for any church teaching, but he’s advocated a more pastoral response, listening to them, welcoming them, treating them with the respect.

Source: newsy.com

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Governor Ron DeSantis suspended Andrew Warren, the State Attorney for the 13th Judicial Circuit, for neglect of duty.

A twice elected State Attorney is firing back at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who suspended him last week.

DeSantis made the announcement Thursday in Tampa, FL, that he suspended Andrew Warren, the State Attorney, for the 13th Judicial Circuit, for neglect of duty.

“This is a dangerous precedent. This is a gross abuse of power that violates one the most important fundamental principles of our democracy, that your vote matters,” Warren said.

Warren told Newsy he was overseeing a grand jury process in the prosecution of two cold cases when he was blindsided. He said an armed deputy told him to leave the building immediately, with no time to read the order. Warren said there hadn’t been any communication from the governor’s office.

“I was looking at the actual facts that were provided to me. We were able to, my office consulted with a lot of people. This was a statewide review to make sure that we were not going down the road of San Francisco, Los Angeles and like 95% of it was all right here in Hillsborough,” DeSantis said during a press conference at the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office Thursday.

DeSantis said Warren put himself “publicly above the law.”

“We are not going to allow this pathogen that’s been around the country of ignoring the law, we are not gonna let that get a foothold here in the state of Florida. We’re going to make sure that our laws are enforced and that no individual prosecutor puts himself above the law,” said DeSantis.

The executive order cited policies of “presumptive non-enforcement.” In response, Warren defends how the office handled cases citing its conviction rate and filing rate for felonies and misdemeanors.

The order also cited Warren signing on to a statement “in support of gender-transition treatments for children and bathroom usage based on gender identity.” The letter took a stance against “the criminalization of gender-affirming healthcare or transgender people.”

It also cited a statement Warren signed on to on abortion. It was signed by dozens of prosecutors across the country after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade. It stated in part, “we decline to use our offices resources to criminalize reproductive health decisions and commit to exercise our well-settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who seek, provide or support abortions.”

Florida passed a 15-week abortion ban in the spring, which has faced legal challenges.

“Let me be clear, this isn’t about anything that I did as State Attorney. This is about what I said. This was me signing on to statements voicing my opposition, value statements expressing concern about laws that were violating people’s constitutional rights. One of those laws has been held unconstitutional. The other law isn’t even on the books yet. They’re punishing me for not enforcing a law that doesn’t even exist,” said Warren, noting no case related to the two statements he signed on to have come across his desk.

The executive order states “a state attorney’s ‘blanket refusal’ to enforce a criminal law is not an exercise of prosecutorial discretion but is “tantamount to a ‘functional veto’ of state law.”

“When you’re saying you’re not going to enforce certain laws you don’t like that’s a neglect of duty. That quite frankly is incompetence as defined in Florida law. And Florida courts have been very clear that saying you’re not going to enforce the law is by definition a dereliction of duty,” DeSantis said last week.

A suspension like this is rare.

“The prosecutors in Florida have prosecutorial discretion. But Mr. Warren didn’t refuse to prosecute an active case, there wasn’t a case where someone had violated the 15 week Florida abortion ban. Rather, he signed a letter that said that he wouldn’t prosecute such cases. So firing him or suspending him, as the governor has done is arguably a violation of the prosecutor’s freedom of expression of free speech. And even the governor of Florida is bound by the first amendment’s protection of freedom of speech,” said Stetson University College of Law Professor, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy.

“The value statements that I signed were talking about opposition to laws that were being considered one of those laws wasn’t even passed at the time. One of those laws still hasn’t been passed. I mean, this is not about cases that have come in front of me, this is about me freely expressing my opinion, as I should and as I have the duty to do is State Attorney about issues that concern criminal justice in Hillsborough County,” said Warren.

Under Florida’s law, the governor can suspend a state officer not subject to impeachment “for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony.”

Warren has not specified what avenues he will take in response, but has vowed to fight back.

“This is the crumbling of democracy. If the governor can just throw anybody out of office who speaks out in a way that he disapproves of, what’s the point of having elections?” Warren said.

The governor’s office said “the governor stands by the legal and factual basis for this suspension, which was thoroughly laid out in the executive order.”

Source: newsy.com

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By Associated Press
July 20, 2022

The move comes amid a political firestorm over a 10-year-old rape victim who came to the state from neighboring Ohio to end her pregnancy.

Leaders of Indiana’s Republican-dominated Senate on Wednesday proposed banning abortion with limited exceptions — a move that comes amid a political firestorm over a 10-year-old rape victim who came to the state from neighboring Ohio to end her pregnancy.

The proposal will be taken up during a special legislative session that is scheduled to begin Monday, making Indiana one of the first Republican-run states to debate tighter abortion laws following the U.S. Supreme Court decision last month overturning Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court ruling is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states.

The Indiana proposal would allow exceptions to the ban, such as in cases of rape, incest or to protect a woman’s life. Its fate is uncertain, though, because some hardline Republicans want to ban all abortions.

Ohio’s so-called fetal heartbeat law, which bans abortions after a fetus’ heartbeat can be detected — typically in around the sixth week of pregnancy — led the 10-year-old rape victim to go to Indiana to get a medication-induced abortion on June 30, according to the doctor who performed it.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

Leaders of Indiana’s Republican-dominated Senate were set to reveal Wednesday how aggressive they want a special legislative session to go in further restricting abortions as the state has drawn attention over a 10-year-old rape victim who came from Ohio to get an abortion.

Indiana will be among the first Republican-run states to debate tighter abortion laws following the U.S. Supreme Court decision last month overturning Roe v. Wade as legislators return to the Statehouse beginning Monday for a special session that could last three weeks. The Supreme Court ruling is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states.

Republican lawmakers have pushed through numerous anti-abortion laws over the past decade and the vast majority signed a letter in March supporting a special session on further tightening those laws. But legislative leaders and Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb have been tightlipped since the Supreme Court decision over whether they will push for a full abortion ban or allow exceptions, such as in cases of rape, incest or to protect a woman’s life.

Indiana law generally prohibits abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with tight restrictions after 13 weeks. Nearly 99% of abortions in the state last year took place at 13 weeks or earlier, according to a state Health Department report.

The leader of the state’s most prominent anti-abortion group told reporters Wednesday it would pressure legislators to advance a bill “that affirms the value of all life including unborn children” while not taking questions on whether any exceptions would be acceptable.

Indiana Right to Life President Mike Fichter said the vast majority of Indiana lawmakers have “campaigned as pro-life, they’ve run multiple election cycles as being pro-life.”

“This is not the time when legislators should be drafting legislation that would appear that Roe versus Wade is still in place,” Fichter said. “Roe is no longer in place. The Roe shield is no longer there.”

Republican Senate leaders were expected Wednesday afternoon to discuss their proposal for abortion restrictions along with another providing “support for new and expectant mothers.”

Democrats have criticized Republicans for meeting privately for weeks over the abortion legislation.

“If anything, what we should be spending our time on is preparing, strengthening our safety net before we began to take away access to abortion care in this state,” said Democratic Sen. Shelli Yoder of Bloomington.

The state’s debate comes as an Indiana doctor has been at the center of a political firestorm after speaking out about a 10-year-old child abuse victim who traveled from Ohio for an abortion.

A 27-year-old man was charged in Columbus, Ohio, last week with raping the girl, confirming the existence of a case initially met with skepticism by some media outlets and Republican politicians. The pushback grew after Democratic President Joe Biden expressed empathy for the girl during the signing of an executive order aimed at protecting some abortion access.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, said she gave the girl a medication-induced abortion on June 30 because the child couldn’t get the procedure in Ohio under a newly imposed state ban on abortions from the time a fetus’ cardiac activity can be detected. A judge lifted a stay on the Ohio ban after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Indiana’s conservative GOP lawmakers have had a history of conflict over social issues. In May, they overrode a veto by Holcomb of a bill that banned transgender women and girls from participating in school sports that match their gender identity.

That came seven years after Indiana faced a national uproar over a religious objections law signed by then-Gov. Mike Pence that opponents maintained could be used to discriminate against gays and lesbians. The Republican-dominated Legislature quickly made revisions blocking its use as a legal defense for refusing to provide services and preventing the law from overriding local ordinances with LGBT protections.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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