On the day the ruling was issued, the conservative Family Research Council called it “the latest in a trend of victories for free speech and religious liberty,” while the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression hailed “a resounding victory for freedom of expression and freedom of conscience.”
But contrary to these claims, the Supreme Court’s decision does not protect the freedoms of all Americans. Rather, it represents the culmination of a decadelong strategy by conservative Christians – known sometimes as the Christian right – to use the courts to limit the freedoms of groups of Americans of whom they disapprove. On issues where the Christian right’s First Amendment claims directly threaten the equal citizenship of sexual minorities, for example, the court left no question about which side it was on.
The ADF has for many years represented conservative clients who claim anti-discrimination laws violate their religious rights, and scored a major victory in 303 Creative v. Elenis this summer when the Supreme Court ruled that a web designer could not be compelled to create a wedding site for a gay couple, even if they provided the same service for straight couples. In their arguments to the Court, ADF attorneys cited several of their previous victories on behalf of wedding vendors like Masterpiece Cakeshop who demanded the right to refuse service to LGBTQ+ customers. But in its investigation, Post reporters found that not only did many of those clients leave the wedding industry entirely after their lawsuits were over, some of them did not even have such a business until the ADF established one on their behalf.
According to the Post’s report, ADF lawyers signed off on incorporation documents and drafted policy frameworks for several new companies, which in turn were used as justification to bring lawsuits challenging local nondiscrimination statutes. To promote some of the lawsuits, the ADF distributed “videos and images of plaintiffs photographing women in bridal gowns,” reporters found, which were fabricated at “staged events featuring ADF employees.”
One such client was Chelsey Nelson, a Louisville woman who claimed she had always wanted to be a wedding photographer. The Post reported that ADF lawyers approached Nelson in 2018 and founded a business in her name a month before filing suit against the city. Nelson has since moved to Florida, leading city attorneys to ask to have the case thrown out; although the ADF claimed in a court filing earlier this year that Nelson was still somehow open to bookings in Louisville and had photographed two weddings this summer, reporters noted that one of those events was for a family member and neither took place in Louisville.
Another ADF case concerned two Minnesota videographers who said they refused to film same-sex weddings. Although the ADF cited the case in their eventual 303 Creative petitions, Minnesota officials claim that the group withdrew the case to avoid handing over evidence that would have revealed the videographers did not actually have a viable business, according to the Post. The judge overseeing the case agreed to throw it out, writing that the ADF had “conjured up” the case as a “smoke and mirrors case or controversy from the beginning.”
As Dulak rejects being part of a religious flock, he has plenty of company. He is a “none” — no, not that kind of nun. The kind that checks “none” when pollsters ask “What’s your religion?”
The decades-long rise of the nones — a diverse, hard-to-summarize group — is one of the most talked about phenomena in U.S. religion. They are reshaping America's religious landscape as we know it.
In U.S. religion today, “the most important story without a shadow of a doubt is the unbelievable rise in the share of Americans who are nonreligious,” said Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University and author of “The Nones,” a book on the phenomenon.
I exercise my parenting rights directly with my children daily by sharing my thoughts, inquiring with questions, and supplementing those classroom and life lessons in my own way. The parents of my children’s peers do or don’t do the same to their own degree.
However, those actions on my part don’t come from storming school board meetings, trashing or threatening school and classroom leaders, or trying to impose my worldview on the school and community at large.
The “parents' rights” movement is not new, although it has seen a boost in visibility in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The topics falling under this umbrella over the decades have covered what books are in schools (and libraries), what material is taught in lessons, homeschooling, charter schools, dress code, sexual content, bathroom usage, sports participation and even the censoring of history lessons.
Parents should be involved in the education and upbringing of their children. We have that right.
While it may be my right to direct the education and upbringing of my children, it is not my right to impose my views on parenting on my child’s entire classroom, school or community.
That, sadly, is precisely what the culture warriors of the current parents' “rights” movement are trying to do.
Instead of this polarizing tactic, a collaborative approach that includes a professional methodology, supplemented at home by the individual desires and experiences of parents, provides a solid balance for the educational outcomes of our students. This has been and continues to be happening in school communities nationwide.
The leaders of the parents' rights movement and self-serving political actors are jeopardizing every child’s educational opportunities and experiences to serve their selfish, short-term political goals.
Billy Porter has voiced frustration with education systems that ignore the contributions of queer artists to American culture.
The Pose star appeared on Live With Kelly and Mark on Thursday to promote his new musical, Billy Strayhorn: Something to Live For, currently playing in his and the legendary jazz musician's hometown of Pittsburgh.
"Everybody knows Duke Ellington, but very few people know one of the mastermind behind Duke Ellington, and his name was Billy Strayhorn," Porter explained to cohosts Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos. "He's one of he greatest jazz musicians, writers, and arrangers of all time."
Recent legislation signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom last week includes a number of bills that bolster support for LGBTQ youth in schools. Advocates and researchers say that continued protections are necessary in the face of increasing policies and legislation that specifically target students to exclude them from participating in sports, from classroom discussions and lessons that include representation of diverse families, from feeling safe in their identities and expressions of those identities at school.
"And it's troubling, but we have a reality here in California where some people say, 'Gosh, do we even need to do LGBTQ inclusion work? We live in a blue state,'" said Vincent Pompei, an assistant professor in the doctoral program for educational leadership at San Diego State University, and a member of a state advisory committee to create online training courses for school faculty to support LGBTQ students who are experiencing bullying, harassment, discrimination, or rejection at school or at home. "Well, advocates like myself, who are entrenched in this work, have always known that not to be true, but it's becoming more and more clear what our current state is of LGBTQ young people living and trying to survive and thrive in California," he said, citing survey statistics on the mental and emotional health and well-being of LGBTQ kids compared to their heterosexual, cisgender peers.
To discuss about some of these new bills, the arguments around notifying parents if a child prefers to identify at school in ways that don't align with their assigned gender at birth, and what may shift a collective understanding of the experiences of LGBTQ students to one of greater support and inclusivity, Pompei is joined in conversation by Emily Fisher, a professor in the school psychology program at Loyola Marymount University where her work is focused on increasing school support and creating safe and supportive learning environments for LGBTQ-plus students. (These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. )
Q: California is among a group of states rated by the Human Rights Campaign to have a broad range of equality protections for LGBTQ people; what are your thoughts on these recent bills and why they're necessary?
Fisher:There's been a lot of attempts to try to deny the existence and the basic humanness of LGBTQ individuals. What schools have done, and districts that have tried to put policies in place, is that they don't even acknowledge that LGBTQ youth exist. I think that the bills that the governor signed [last] weekend really say that there are basic human rights that are afforded to all young people and that your sexual orientation or gender identity should not determine your right to exist. You should be able to be yourself, you should feel supported, and you should be able to access the academic and social curriculum that your peers do.
Pompei:My wish is that we wouldn't need legislation to protect the human and civil rights of another human being. Unfortunately, because of bias and stigma and misinformation, we have to pass policies that provide further protection to prevent harm, but also to send a message to vulnerable populations — in this case, LGBTQ young people — that even in light of these attacks that they're experiencing, the state of California and their government have their back. They are listening to the voices of LGBTQ young people, to the research about what these students need in order to learn, in order to engage in their education, and in order to thrive in school and beyond. Part of me wishes that this was not necessary; that we were just decent human beings and said, 'Hey, you know, everyone's treated with dignity and respect.' That's, unfortunately, not the world that we live in today.
Any time I hear a school board passing anti-LGBTQ policies or proposing anti-LGBTQ policies, they're never discussing the disparities that we continue to see, and the data as it relates to LGBTQ students compared to their non-LGBTQ peers. That relates to feeling connected, feeling safe, feeling cared for, experiencing mental health challenges, and even suicide. They're passing policies without talking about what the school district is going to do to address them. From the California Healthy Kids Survey, the latest public data that they have available on their dashboard for San Diego County, shows that 68 percent of LGB students and 79 percent of trans students indicated chronic sadness or hopelessness in the past year, compared to 25 percent of straight students and 30 percent of cisgender students. Forty-four percent of LGB students and 57 percent of trans students in our county seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, compared to 9 percent of straight students and 12 percent of cisgender students. So, it's troubling to me that we're passing policies rooted in transphobia, homophobia, biphobia, rather than actually looking at what the research says about what will help all students, including LGBTQ students, learn and engage and thrive in school. It's hard to answer that question without painting a larger picture, but I can say that yes, I'm excited, I'm celebrating, but I'm also sad that we have to pass laws to protect students from our elected officials who have made an oath to serve all children in public school. It's troubling to me.
Policymakers typically push these bills under the guise of “protecting women and children” or “defending fairness in sports.” In reality, this year’s deluge of legislation is the latest in a series of ongoing, coordinated political attacks against the trans community. It’s been mounting since 2016, when GOP lawmakers in North Carolina advanced the nation’s first anti-trans “bathroom bill.” And with the 2024 presidential election on the horizon, advocates expect to see right-wing politicians double down on anti-trans attacks as a means of galvanizing voters.
Every child deserves the freedom to be their authentic self without persecution. And although transphobia may seem like a niche issue, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Attacks on trans kids hurt all children, including those who are cisgender by jeopardizing their rights, safety, and education. This is how.
First and foremost, every form of systemic oppression — from transphobia, to sexism, to racism — is interconnected. It’s no mistake that this wave of transphobic bills has cropped up alongside anti-abortion laws and book bans. The conservative politicians who back these harmful policies are one and the same.
A political attack on one marginalized group invariably affects others. To grasp this, it’s helpful to understand intersectionality, a term coined by feminist scholar KimberlĂ© Crenshaw to describe the ways Black women experience intersecting dimensions of gender- and race-based oppression. If we examine systemic transphobia through an intersectional lens, we see that Black and Brown folks experience the brunt of transphobic violence, and anti-trans sports bans, for example, disproportionately impact girls and young women, cis and trans.
So, anti-trans laws don’t just harm trans kids; they create an overarching climate of fear and prejudice that endangers cis girls, queer kids, and children of color, too.
West said Thursday he would seek the presidency as an independent candidate, choosing to forgo a run with the Green Party. The decision complicates his ability to get on the ballot—if he had won the Green nomination, it would have ensured ballot access in nearly 20 states with the potential for close to all 50 states.
West dismisses talk that he could serve as a spoiler in the race and says he is in the campaign with a message tailored to disaffected voters. And even though he has raised minimal funds, Democrats are fretting about him for two reasons: he has the ability to appeal to elements of the Democratic Party that are central to President Biden’s re-election campaign. And in an election that may again be decided by thousands of votes in a handful of states, every vote for West could aid the public intellectual’s larger target: Donald Trump.
In his speech on Monday, Mr. Kennedy will lay out a path to the White House that involves a major shift in American politics. We invite you to witness history in the making, at the very spot where our founding fathers launched this nation in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence. On Monday, we come together again to reset the course of our nation.
This is an event you won’t want to miss. We hope you will join us. Please RSVP to be there in person.
If you can’t make the event in-person in Philadelphia, we will be livestreaming the event as well. If you would like to register for the livestream event, you can register for that as well.
[. . .] Washington has been pressing Iraq to slow the flow of dollars through the foreign currency auction run by the CBI to countries under US sanctions, including Iran, Syria and, to a lesser extent, Lebanon, where some people and groups have been sanctioned by the US Treasury.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has applied strict measures on requests for international transactions from Iraq, rejecting many and delaying others.
It has also blacklisted several Iraqi banks suspected of money laundering and carrying out suspicious transactions. The latest restrictions were put in force in July, when 14 private Iraqi banks were barred from conducting dollar transactions.
This has led to an increase in demand for US dollars on the black market in Iraq.
The government has taken several measures to protect the dinar, including a currency revaluation, banning dealing with the greenback in the market, and offering a specific amount of hard currency for traders and travellers at the official rate.
Iraq is seeking a special shipment of $1 billion in cash from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but U.S. officials have withheld approval, saying the request runs counter to their efforts to rein in Baghdad’s use of dollars and halt illicit cash flows to Iran.
Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq two decades ago, the U.S. has supplied $10 billion or more a year to Baghdad on semimonthly cargo flights carrying massive pallets of cash, drawn from Iraqi oil sales proceeds deposited at the Fed. In Iraqi hands, the bank notes have become a lucrative source of illicit dollars for powerful militias and corrupt politicians, as well as for Iran, U.S. officials say.
In making a request for an extra shipment of $1 billion, Iraq says it needs the cash to help prop up its stumbling currency. After the U.S. denied Iraq’s initial appeal last month, the Central Bank of Iraq last week submitted a formal request, which the Treasury is still considering, a senior Iraqi official said.
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