My country Our candidate right or wrong. Sign the loyalty oath or lose your job.

Top Republican Party officials have a message for any candidate worried about signing a loyalty pledge to potentially support a convicted felon: There’s the door.

…

In light of Donald Trump’s indictment for his handling of classified documents, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s campaign on Wednesday requested a meeting with RNC officials about amending the loyalty pledge.

An aide took the meeting; the RNC said forget it buddy.

In a statement, RNC senior adviser Richard Walters said the GOP primary candidates are only “being asked to respect the decision of Republican primary voters and support the eventual nominee.”

So if Republican primary voters pick … Read the rest

Carla Jaeger seems to have a bit of a specialty in reporting on men who claim to be trans invading women’s sports. Her specialty is carefully concealing the fact that she’s talking about men invading women’s sports. I shared today’s entry; there’s another from four days ago.

In March, Harcourt and Robinson formed part of the three-person panel assembled by Basketball Australia to assess the eligibility of transgender basketballer Lexi Rodgers, who applied to join the semi-professional WNBL1 South league. The application was rejected after a near-month long assessment.

Yebbut transgender how? Which kind of transgender?

She doesn’t say. Not only does she not say here at first mention, she never says. She never once spells out that Lexi … Read the rest

The joys of commerce. Nice Frogtees promotes its line of “or I will stab you” merch.

I wonder if they have any others in that vein. Move to the back of the bus or I will stab you? Get on the train to Auschwitz or I will stab you? End the strike or I will stab you? Stay south of the Rio Grande or I will stab you? Stop screaming and spread your legs or I will stab you? Obey the tyrant or we will stab you?

The text that accompanies this festive threat is slightly discordant.

This is the newest Respect My Pronouns Or I Will Stab You Shirt, hoodie, sweater, tank top and long sleeve tee

… Read the rest

Journalism simply refuses to report on this subject honestly or accurately. The Age on “Australia’s new sports trans guidelines”:

Transgender athlete Hannah Mouncey has declared Australia’s new guidelines for elite trans athletes as the best and most detailed that she’s seen.

The issue isn’t “trans athletes.” The issue is males in female sports. Journalism simply will not say that.

However, the guidelines, developed by the Australian Institute of Sport to guide Australia’s sporting codes on what to do when transgender athletes seek to join elite competitions, were condemned in a scathing statement from the Queer Sporting Alliance.

Not transgender athletes; male athletes in female elite competitions. They know this but refuse to say it.

At a time when the

… Read the rest

Always start the day with a bracing challenge to pious humiliation rituals. Kathleen Stock is a brilliant challenger. The news from Ukraine is grim, she says, but on the upside…

…the American author of Eat, Pray, Love has withdrawn her next book from publication.

The novel in question, The Snow Forest, is set in Siberia, and is now postponed indefinitely in the name of the Ukrainian people. In a video made by its author Elizabeth Gilbert to explain her decision, she explained she did “not want to add any harm to a group of people who have already experienced and who are continuing to experience grievous and extreme harm”.

Upon hearing this, my first thought was that surely

… Read the rest

Wait, who missed the point here?

On top of the Sex Matters tweets yesterday, sometimes terfs get within MILLIMETRES of getting it. But I fully expect JK Rowling to zoom off into deep space oblivious to how close she was. pic.twitter.com/v6Mqg0GgOt

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) June 15, 2023

… Read the rest

Hinting that we’re vermin now. Always a healthy sign.

So happy to enjoy a bigot free shopping experience wearing my terf repellent ear rings pic.twitter.com/OdQonn472z

— ©️Findus Paddywack (@finduspaddywack) June 15, 2023

… Read the rest

It turns out Trump is the victim of an authoritarian coup.

The day before former President Donald J. Trump was arraigned on federal charges, he gave an interview to Americano Media, a conservative Spanish-language broadcaster in South Florida, and described his indictment as a “regression” of democracy.

Minutes before he pleaded not guilty in a Miami courtroom on Tuesday, his spokeswoman told reporters that the episode was something “you see in dictatorships like Cuba and Venezuela.”

…

As he mounts his political defense against a 37-count indictment, Mr. Trump has repeatedly invoked corruption and dysfunction in Latin American governments, casting himself in the role of oppressed political dissident.

Why does that sound so familiar? Oh yes – because it … Read the rest

Other people’s identities…

Ireland’s descent into authoritarianism continues.

This is Irish Green Party Senator Pauline O'Reilly weaponising the concept of “safety” to justify censorship and other encroachments on freedom of speech.pic.twitter.com/qdD59IDE07

— Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) June 15, 2023

…and if your views on other people’s identities go to make their lives unsafe, insecure, and cause them such discomfort that they cannot live in peace, then I believe that it is our job as legislators to restrict those freedoms for the common good.

What does that even mean?

At this particular moment we know that “people’s identities” means the raging insistence of a small number of men that they are women and that women must not say they are men.… Read the rest

Reduxx reports:

A prominent trans activist has been sentenced for the 2016 triple homicide of a California lesbian couple and their son. Dana Rivers, born David Chester Warfield, has been handed a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

“It is a horrible thing to sentence someone to die in prison, and I don’t take that lightly,” Judge Scott Patton said during the court hearing held today. “But this is the most depraved crime I ever handled in the criminal justice system in 33 years. Frankly, you deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison.”

…

Rivers’ crimes date back to November 11 of 2016, when police were called in response to the sound

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by latsot on Preserving mystery in legislation.

I’ve lived a sort of double life as part scientist and part engineer, so I like to come at these things from two directions. On the one hand we have the big-picture thinking described well by iknklast and Holmes: this is a terrible idea for freedom and democracy. It will be used to serve political goals, that’s inevitable. Over in the UK, we’ve installed Police and Crime Commissioners as political appointments; these are the people who would be in charge of how hate laws are implemented in practice, which makes me more than a little uneasy. The entire principle of policing in the UK is that police are supposed … Read the rest

Make it make sense.

Women have shared their concern about the erasure of “all female identities” after Johns Hopkins University used the phrase “non-man” to describe lesbians.

The Baltimore-based university received backlash online after defining “lesbian” as “a non-man attracted to non-men” in its glossary of LGBTQ+ terms.

The update, which has since been removed from the website, was initially meant to be inclusive of non-binary individuals, who may still identify as lesbians.

That last bit. What can possibly be the point of being “inclusive” of a tiny tiny tiny fragment of the population, which has a fatuous delusion that it’s something labeled “non-binary,” which doesn’t mean anything, at the expense of over half of the population? Why … Read the rest

Katha Pollitt on Elizabeth Gilbert’s self-cancellation:

Sometimes, the censors get lucky. The latest writer to cancel herself is Elizabeth Gilbert, the immensely popular author of Eat, Pray, Love and other memoirs, novels, and self-help tracts. On Monday, Gilbert announced on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook that she is “making a course correction” and pulling her upcoming novel, The Snow Forest, from publication. The novel, she explains, is about a Russian family that withdraws from Soviet society in the 1930s and remains isolated for many years in Siberia. “Over the course of this weekend,” she writes, “I have received an enormous massive outpouring of reactions and responses from my Ukrainian readers, expressing anger, sorrow, disappointment and pain about the fact that

… Read the rest

“The reason we haven’t defined hate crime in our bill banning hate crime is that then people would know what the crime is.” They’re going with that?

[Ireland’s Minister for Justice Helen] McEntee also defended the proposed hate crime and hate speech bill, and said she believes the majority of people want to see it enacted.

…

“Firstly, when it comes to the hate speech and the hate crime legislation, the reason that we haven’t defined hate is by defining hate and using another word, you then have to try and describe essentially what that means. And you’re potentially leaving a gap where certain prosecutions might fall or where it may be more difficult to have prosecutions under this legislation.”

… Read the rest

Dang, self-important much?

https://twitter.com/MavenOfMayhem/status/1668547072549699585

Definitely! So especially important for some boutique genderperson to cross the pond to rescue Britain from the parching lack of boutique genderpersons. Thank god she has arrived to do her advocacy work!!

https://twitter.com/MavenOfMayhem/status/1668699649362784256

Even Parliament is asking her what it should do! I’m impressed now.

https://twitter.com/MavenOfMayhem/status/1668747621161406465

Hmmmmmm. Do we think that really happened? Google News doesn’t even turn up news of her arrival. … Read the rest

Don’t bring up Anne Frank only to talk about something else.

Today is Anne Franks's birthday

In Uganda, Afghanistan & Somalia, LGBTs are being hunted like Anne was

They hide in rooms like she did – fearing arrest, torture & execution

In the name of #AnneFrank NEVER AGAIN!@benjamincohen @benjaminbutter @BenWeinthal @sanditoksvig pic.twitter.com/av7b1z3VPZ

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) June 12, 2023

Uganda Afghanistan and Somalia are not havens of human rights, for sure, but if you’re going to talk about Anne Frank, then talk about Anne Frank. Don’t bring her up just to point to something else.… Read the rest

Fucking hell.

I am hoping the Metropolitan police will reconsider their decision on the criminality of the first tweet threatening to kill me in the light of the second tweet threatening not just my life but that of 2 other MPs @RosieDuffield1 & @JNHanvey https://t.co/WXJiJUjUQT pic.twitter.com/R9MD0c2RK4

— Joanna Cherry KC (@joannaccherry) June 14, 2023

… Read the rest

Trump says the law is not the law.

Hours after he was fingerprinted, booked and entered a “not guilty” plea in federal court in Miami, former President Donald Trump defied the very premise of the federal government’s case against him, claiming presidents have an “absolute right” to keep any and all documents they want. 

Which is funny because that’s the opposite of the truth.

“Whatever documents a president decides to take with him, he has the right to do so. It’s an absolute right. This is the law,” Trump said. 

The law is the opposite of that. The exact, clearly worded, explicit opposite. At noon on January 20 all presidential records become the property of the National Archive. That… Read the rest

News from Queensland:

Trans and gender-diverse Queenslanders will be able to change the gender on their birth certificates without having to undergo surgery, in a development that advocates have called “life-changing”.

Previously, people could only apply to change the sex on their birth certificates where they’d undergone sexual reassignment surgery – an invasive, costly procedure that isn’t readily available.

The new laws remove that provision and instead require people to supply a supporting statement from someone they’ve known for 12 months or longer.

Well let’s not stop with gender. Let’s have laws saying people can change their species on their birth certificates. First you’d have to make species a category on birth certificates, because as of now it’s just … Read the rest

The very first words of the Newsweek piece are a lie.

A small subset of conservatives online has expressed outrage at Johns Hopkins University over its non-binary-inclusive definition of “lesbian” in its glossary of LGBTQ+ terms.

The people outraged are far from exclusively “conservatives” and there’s nothing “inclusive” about defining women as non-men – especially when the Johns Hopkins definition of “gay” does not match that insulting (and useless) definition of “lesbian.”

The Baltimore-based university, a major hub of medical research in the U.S., maintains an extensive glossary of definitions for terms relevant to the broad LGBTQ+ community. The definitions are often updated with greater inclusivity in mind, and as the medical establishment’s understanding of gender and sexual identity evolves.

… Read the rest