“ In a little-noticed development, more than 100 LGBTQ community leaders and allied supporters in Arizona sent a joint letter in January to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights group, demanding that it withdraw its political and financial support for U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) unless and until Sinema ends her support for the Senate filibuster.
The letter points out that by continuing to refuse to join efforts by Senate Democratic leaders to end the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass legislation, Sinema is helping Republicans block progressive legislation already approved by the U.S. House of Representatives, including the Equality Act, the LGBTQ nondiscrimination bill stalled in the Senate.
The LGBTQ leaders, who drafted the letter in partnership with the Arizona Coalition to End the Filibuster, told HRC they will call on HRC’s supporters to stop funding the group unless it backs away from its support for Sinema.”
The Arizona Senate on Wednesday passed a Republican-authored bill that advocates warn could prompt “the most extreme voter purge in the country” by requiring state residents to retroactively provide proof of citizenship to stay on the rolls.
“Take the proof of citizenship requirement for voter registration, which was adopted in '04. By making this a requirement for voters, this bill would retroactively apply it to the millions of AZ voters registered before the proof of citizenship law took effect 18 years ago,”
This is a recipe for chaos, not election integrity, and it would likely cut the state’s electorate in half overnight.
“Irrespective of the circumstances around this, we can all agree that Brian and (his wife) Bobbie have served God faithfully over many decades and that their ministry has resulted in millions of people across the world being impacted by the power, grace, and love of Jesus Christ,” the board said.
There’s just so many weird things going on with these laws. Like the Texas abortion bounty law makes no sense to me because how can a third party be part of any valid civil suit with respect to an abortion? And by third party, I don’t mean the sperm donor/father/parent. I mean just a random stranger who heard that X person was getting an abortion, regardless of the veracity of the hearsay. This would mean that there would have to be some legal injury incurred by which the court can cure said injury but it’s clear no such injury exists and no cure could even be administered by the courts if one did exist. I should note that I’m no lawyer but what little I grasp of civil law as a layperson just points me in the direction that it can’t be enforced because it doesn’t even match the shape of civil lawsuits.
Then there’s the interstate prohibition aspect of these laws which also makes no sense. Imagine this scenario, you are going out of state to buy fireworks and set them off in a state that allows them due to your home state prohibiting the purchase, possession, and utilization of said fireworks. But let’s take that scenario further, let’s say your home state says you as a resident cannot purchase, possess, and utilize fireworks anywhere else on top of in the borders of said state. That kind of law is literally overstepping interstate commerce which there’s already a mountain of case law to invalidate it, but more to the point that it violates the very condition of the US Constitution with respect to the rights given to the states to regulate conduct within their borders. Meaning, Texas can’t demand Iowa to enforce its laws on Texas residents in their boundaries because Iowa is sovereign from Texas. This attempt to violate state sovereignty is utter nonsense but it also exposes their true intentions which is to enforce minority rule onto other states in which they are by nominal count of elections. This kind of violation would pretty much invalidate the US Constitution and thus the union of states under the federal government if it’s allowed to stand.
This is truly a major issue with that law. What you are talking about is called “standing.” A plaintiff must have standing to sue and that almost always means some kind of injury (physical, economic, to their constitutional rights, property, etc.). The TX abortion law itself creates the standing for a random person to sue. It is novel and a serious fucking issue for our legal system if it ends up constitutional because laws creating standing to sue out of whole cloth is serious trouble, above and beyond forcing a lot of people to give birth.
Yep, I don’t see how it’s constitutional to invent standing where none can be made. Standing here for civil law has to come from actual interactions between parties and not imagined ones or ones that are as vague as having one’s personal sentiments slighted. Imagine having laws invent standing for disliking MCU movies or something else equally absurd to sue others over. That’s why I just can’t process this level of nonsense.
Yup, but that is (in their view) a feature, not a bug. I said earlier that the goal is not to return to the 1950’s, but the 1850’s and the days of the Fugitive Slave Act, where fascistic state laws claim to limit the freedoms accorded by other states. The fact that this structure, involving civil suits not involving the government in order to make them very difficult to challenge in court, is novel is part of the terror of it. There is no precedent, no case law to invoke, and the fascists have remade large chunks of the judiciary in their own image, so overturning these laws is not a given as it should be. For all who are of the “it won’t affect me” school of thought, allow me to point out that the provision for felony charges against doctors, teachers, social workers who refuse to turn in people for these “offenses” will, absolutely, affect you when your doctors, teachers, social workers, etc. resign en masse out of self preservation. Many of us have already notified our upper level people that we will not comply and will leave if pressed. Many unforeseen consequences coming, and the GQP will not like them. I anticipate an unpleasant reaction from them.
this bill wouldn’t just forbid teachers from mentioning LGBTQ topics to elementary school students. It would ban LGBTQ K-8 teachers from answering honestly if a student asks about their sexual orientation or gender identity; it would be a crime to come out to the student.
State Rep. Dodie Horton (R) admits that Florida’s bill inspired her and that her preacher egged her on, saying that she read about Florida’s GOP-sponsored attack on children online.
while the Florida legislation inspired her, she insists that it’s not the same as the Sunshine State’s blatant bigotry.
“This is not a ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill,” she said. “It has nothing to do with someone’s lifestyle choice. Their sexual orientation is between them and God and it’s their choice.”
It’s not a “Don’t Say Gay” bill, you just aren’t allowed to talk about being gay…makes perfect sense, at least to the fuckwits who vote for these assholes.
People keep asking where the bottom is. Who knows… but we too often are given a view of things gripping on to the shaft walls as we plummet toward the bottom:
His humans’ homophobia likey saved his life. Not only are they bigots, but they’ve never taken the dog to the vet and the doggo is suffering from heartworms.
Vintage homophobes appear to have forgotten one of their proclamations that homosexuality was wrong because it was unnatural and not part of God’s plan. God must have really fucked up big time. Even insects.:
