#Parker Molloy

[thatstormygeek]

A responsible press would either decide that whatever real backlash there is to a comedian’s special isn’t newsworthy; if it is newsworthy, it would cover it through the frame of engaging with whatever specific criticisms there are, not knee-jerk “free speech” framing despite lack of a “free speech” issue. But we do not have a responsible press. We have a press that loves chaos and controversy. We have a press that frames everything as a “culture war,” in which two equally valid sides score points. So they love this stuff. The result of this is a slew of comedians who pose as far more edgy than they actually are.

But at the risk of stating the obvious, the fact that the world’s biggest comedians are getting paid massive amounts of money by some of the most powerful companies in media to record these variations on the same jokes that others have told for years already… should probably lead us to tap the brakes on the “OooOoOoh, they’re so edgy!” claims.

The whole piece is so good (and if you hit the paywall and want more, I have a handful of 3 month subscriptions I can share), but I also wanted to put a spotlight on this comment because it really cuts through some bullshit:

#dave chappelle #ricky gervais #parker molloy #the present age #transphobia #transphobes eat shit #ableism

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

#us politics #twitter #tweet #2023 #parker molloy #transphobia #transgender #transgender ideology #transgenderism #gender ideology #pronouns #gender pronouns #respect pronouns #trans rights #lgbtqia+ #lgbtqia+ rights

[charliejaneanders]

I’ve watched in horror for the past several years as Republican lawmakers, “contrarian” writers, and right-wing pundits have targeted LGBTQ people. I’ve watched as Republican politicians try, repeatedly and sometimes successfully, to enshrine anti-trans sentiment into law while many (not all) of the “good” politicians on the Democratic side turn a blind eye to the horrors happening. All the while, mainstream news organizations take the disingenuous Republican arguments at face value (remember when they all pretended to care about women’s sports earlier in the year? And now they’re pretending to care about, uh… bone density for trans kids? Okay, sure, right, right), making it near impossible to actually cut through the smears.

What will journalism look like in 2023?

#trans #lgbtq #lgbtqia #parker molloy #politics #journalism

[burritosandpeppermint]

Excellent read, lots of good stuff here.

#parker molloy #the present age #don't debate people who just want to shout

[thehumanarkle]

#parker molloy #transphobia #barbie 2023

[incorrectlighttreasonquotes]

I wasn't paying attention. I was too busy making up a song in my head about how mac and cheese were best friends.

Parker

#light treason news #parker molloy #source: happy endings

[shirkers2018dirsanditan]

every mf who has publicly voiced support of restrictions on so called hate speech is trying soooooooo hard to be in the right side of what just happened to rushdie. turns out! things can escalate when you decide words are violence

#sorry lol #look at parker molloy and co acting a fool lol

[coochiequeens]

Personally, I don't want to live in a world where little boys playing with dolls and little girls who don't like wearing pink are subjected to lifelong medical intervention because lunatics think these kids are in the wrong body. If that's the right side of history, then history can go f**k itself." - Graham Linehan

Stretched out on a hospital trolley after a surgeon had removed my cancer-riddled testicle, waiting for a doctor to give me the all-clear to go home, I lazily opened Twitter.

This was five years ago and, at this point, I had not quite nailed my colours to the gender-critical mast. I had defended women being smeared with the slur 'Terf' (for 'trans-exclusionary radical feminist') and was being monitored by trans activists as a result. This made me nervous, though I wasn't quite sure why.

I'd had an inkling of what I was up against when my wife Helen and I played a small part in repealing Ireland's draconian abortion laws. Working with Amnesty International, we appeared in a video in which Helen spoke of terminating a pregnancy because the foetus she was carrying had an abnormality which would have resulted in death moments after birth.

We tried to attend every protest and, at one event, I remember some strange person with a bullhorn bellowing out this nonsense: 'We want the state to pay for abortions!' [general cheering] '...and surgeries for trans people' [puzzled mumbling].

I felt uneasy. Sure, let's talk about trans rights, but first things first. We hadn't yet won the fight on abortion.

In retrospect, this was the first sign I had of the sleight of hand that would allow a sinister movement to attach itself to progressive causes and wrap itself in their stolen banners.

Then, when Ireland voted to overturn the abortion ban, Amnesty Ireland tweeted that this was a victory for 'pregnant people'. I was enraged.

My wife wasn't a 'pregnant person'. She was a woman, and a mother.

But these were only the first ripples of a gathering tsunami of madness. Online, people had started to go dangerously insane. It was such a slow process that I didn't notice it at first, but now, as I lay in hospital, I was collecting my thoughts on the subject.

I knew my positions were thought-through and sound, and I was sure that once people saw I was arguing in good faith, they'd see the problems with gender ideology and we could have a sensible, grown-up conversation about it.

I also told myself that, as co-writer of well-loved television sitcoms Father Ted and The IT Crowd, I had an audience out there who would listen to me. So I sent a few tweets carefully outlining my argument.

Meanwhile, I was in intense pain from the wound under my bandage and, when I was finally told I could go home, I couldn't stand up. A bed was found for me and I lay there, enjoying a bit of peace until the morphine wore off.

The visitors had gone and all was quiet. I decided to have a look at Twitter (now X).

My careful explanation of my position had certainly had an impact.

A trans activist and journalist called Parker Molloy, who identifies as a woman and is enraged if anyone disagrees, had sent me a number of increasingly frenzied direct messages.

After the third or fourth time telling Molloy I was in hospital, I ended the conversation. Meanwhile, another tweeter hopped into my replies to say, 'I wish the cancer had won'.

My ordeal had begun. Cast adrift, I was about to lose everything — my career, my marriage, my reputation.

A little bit after my brush with cancer, I brushed with something almost worse. A biological male, now going by the name Stephanie Hayden, was determined to wreck the life of anyone who flouted trans dogma.

A woman was arrested at home in front of her two young children and put in a prison cell for seven hours after she referred to Hayden on Twitter as a man.

When I made a public accusation about Hayden on X, Hayden didn't challenge it.

Instead, I was accused of breaking confidentiality by publicising Hayden's former male identities.

Hayden reported me to the police. The Guardian, whose editors seemed to have given up any pretence of being even-handed on this issue, published an article headlined 'Graham Linehan given police warning after complaint by transgender activist'.

It claimed I had been given a 'verbal harassment warning' by police acting on Hayden's complaint. This was untrue. I'd been phoned by a policeman who seemed confused when I told him that I'd blocked Hayden on Twitter months ago, so could hardly be accused of harassment.

The policeman then said something like 'stay away from her, awright?' and rang off.

For a national newspaper to headline this as a 'harassment warning' — a formal document that needs to be delivered in writing — was disgraceful, but typical of how many journalists liked to frame things that involved feminists and their allies.

After seven months of wrangling, the paper eventually removed the word 'harassment', which was too little, too late.

By then, the 'police warning' had morphed on social media into 'police caution' — which is issued where a crime has been committed and requires an admission of guilt, neither of which had happened. The false claim that I received a police caution for transphobia is constantly repeated to friends and colleagues to justify my cancellation. It was even presented to my publisher as a reason not to publish this book from which you are reading an extract. I found it grimly funny that the police and media were acting as reputation managers for a character like Hayden, but my wife Helen was terrified at being targeted in this way.

Hayden and Adrian Harrop, a Liverpool-based GP who was temporarily suspended from practising medicine as punishment for his aggression towards women on Twitter, trolled a Catholic journalist called Caroline Farrow, live-tweeting a visit to her home in a way that seemed designed to frighten and intimidate her.

She was about to travel to the U.S., but her visa was withdrawn. Harrop tweeted that he'd just visited the U.S. embassy in London: 'Consular staff very efficient at dealing with my important diplomatic business,' he wrote, with a wink emoji.

In a tweet, I called Harrop 'Doctor Do-Much-Harm'. The next morning, the police turned up at my door. I told them I wouldn't be changing my online behaviour one iota, and that Harrop bullied women online.

The policeman nodded, said something about free speech, and left. However, that visit wore heavily on my wife.

But the likes of Hayden and Harrop could not have had such success without accomplices in the police and the Press. It was surreal how swiftly they gained such power over society.

As for my career as a successful television scriptwriter, that proved to be over before the stitches from my cancer operation had healed.

Around this time, I received a letter from Sonia Friedman, one of the biggest theatre producers in London's West End, about me writing a new companion piece for the late Peter Shaffer's classic one-act farce Black Comedy.

I was apparently 'top of our dream list' to pen it.

Black Comedy is possibly the most ingenious farce ever written. I'd seen it years before with David Tennant in the lead and it left me giddy and envious. Now, going from lowly sitcom writer to being considered worthy of pairing with Shaffer had me floating.

Not for long, though. Only a few days later, Shaffer's estate decided on the late playwright's behalf that they 'didn't want to get involved' by 'taking one side or the other'.

More jobs began to fall away. A tour to Australia to teach comedy was cancelled because the company claimed it 'wouldn't be able to afford the security'. I discovered later this was a standard excuse given to those of us declared unclean by the new sacred class.

I'm also the person who worked with comedians Steve Martin and Martin Short for the shortest period of time. Five minutes, I think it was. A producer invited me to develop a comedy-drama TV series in which both would star. I had a flat-out offer and then, within minutes, an email from the same producer rescinding it, I suspect after a Twitter user in his office told him I was a bigot.

Even what I thought would be my pension was taken away from me. There were plans to make a musical of Father Ted, written and directed by me, which I was certain would be a huge hit, perhaps even make my fortune if I could get it right.

I hadn't reckoned how resolute the forces against me actually were, and how quiet my colleagues would be in the face of their onslaught. Sonia Friedman, the producer, told me I was 'on the wrong side of history' and advised me to 'stop talking'.

I suddenly found myself in a raging argument with this powerful woman who held my musical in her hands. But hearing one of these copy-and-pasted, thought-terminating clichés from the mouth of a colleague was more than I could bear.

Personally, I don't want to live in a world where little boys playing with dolls and little girls who don't like wearing pink are subjected to lifelong medical intervention because lunatics think these kids are in the wrong body. If that's the right side of history, then history can go f**k itself.

The meeting ended with each of us trying not to catch the other's eye in case it kicked off again.

I thought at least that Jimmy Mulville, the head of Hat Trick Productions, was on my side.

As the original producer of Father Ted, the company had a big stake in this new venture. But now the Hat Trick people began to go the other way.

I had another meeting around the supposed problem of my defending women and girls, in which, as always, no one could locate the flaw in my analysis as I explained over and over again: 'Children are being hurt. Women are losing their sports, their language, their privacy.'

Finally, I referred to the violent, terroristic nature of trans rights activism. Casually, off-handedly, Jimmy said: 'Well, there's bad behaviour on both sides.'

'Both sides' is a poisonous smear. No one on my side of the argument insists that people should be shunned by polite society. No one on our side wears T-shirts with slogans such as 'Kill all Terfs' and 'Die Terf Scum'.

I was told by one acquaintance: 'Some of the things you've done have been questionable.' 'Give me an example,' I replied. Long pause. 'All right, well maybe not.'

The final act was a meeting in the Hat Trick offices in which Jimmy told me I was to remove my name from Father Ted The Musical or he would not make the show — my show, which I had been tending, rewriting and refining for the best part of half a decade.

Once again, I asked what I was being accused of.

Jimmy rolled his eyes, as if it was self- evident. Desperately, I tried to explain what was happening to women's rights, and to the young girls mutilating themselves because of — 'I DON'T CARE!' Jimmy shouted. I left.

Later, I heard from my agent that in return for declaring me an unperson, Hat Trick was suggesting an up-front payment of £200,000 as an advance on my royalties. Initially, I agreed to go along with it, because I needed the money. But then I changed my mind.

I saw an interview with the mother of one of the women competitors who found themselves up against the trans swimmer Lia Thomas.

Lia was still physically intact and all the girls worked out how many towels to take into the locker room to cover themselves up completely as they changed.

'I asked my daughter what she would do if Lia was changing in there,' said the mother. 'And she said resignedly, 'I'm not sure I'd have a choice.' I still can't believe I had to tell my adult-age daughter that you always have a choice about whether you undress in front of a man.'

What messages have these girls been receiving?

My heart was ripped apart. I closed the door for ever on making any kind of deal with Hat Trick. I was prepared to betray myself for £200,000, but I couldn't abandon my daughter.

BEFORE the gender hoopla, I only knew people in the media. Now I had been so effectively cancelled that virtually no one in the media would return my calls. But I began to count as friends social workers, police officers, solicitors, barristers, doctors, nurses and academics who sided with me or shared my experience.

One of the few people I still know in the creative arts is the choreographer Rosie Kay.

At a party at her home in Birmingham for her company of young dancers — some of whom went by 'preferred' pronouns — the conversation turned to her plan for an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's gender-bending Orlando.

The discussion turned heated as she explained that she strongly believed in the reality of sex because she and her son had both almost died while she was in labour.

During that ordeal, her womanhood was literally a matter of life and death for her.

Her husband would never know that experience, and that difference between them meant something.

To the little sparrows of the Church of Gender, this was all high heresy, and could not be tolerated. The dancers harangued Rosie to such an extent that she hid in her own bathroom, then they formally complained about her to the company chiefs.

'They cancelled Orlando and then were making efforts to re-educate me, to stop me from centring women's rights in my future work,' Rosie told me. 'I had to resign from the company I founded.'

Then there's the children's author Rachel Rooney, who wrote a picture book called My Body Is Me. Its message was that children should be happy with their body.

But trans rights activists dislike any mention of being happy with your body as it undermines their message that being trans is a thrilling and transformative lifestyle choice.

Tweets called the book terrorist propaganda and likened Rachel to a white supremacist.

The author's 'trade union', the Society of Authors, declined to offer support. So devastating was the experience that Rachel stopped writing books for children and has now taken on a part-time care job.

But what did Rachel do to deserve cancellation? She wrote a beautiful, kind, responsible book for children, and she got the same treatment I received: they tried to destroy her life. Trans activists mostly target women for disagreeing with them, but I'm not the only man to have suffered. Some 30 years after we'd first worked together, I crossed paths once more with the comic actor James Dreyfus (Constable Kevin in The Thin Blue Line).

I persuaded him to sign a letter asking Stonewall, the former lesbian and gay rights charity which has altered its remit and done more than any other institution in the UK to promote extreme gender ideology, to reconsider its stance.

James agreed without hesitation. The letter argued that Stonewall was 'seeking to prevent public debate of these issues by branding as transphobic anyone who questions [its] current trans policies'. It asked the charity to 'commit to fostering an atmosphere of respectful debate'.

Stonewall refused. Even asking the question was painted as a moral failing. Five years later, James is still being hounded by trans rights activists and he has had difficulty finding work.

In 2021, the company Big Finish released Masterful, a celebration of 50 years of Doctor Who's arch-enemy, The Master, who James had played on its audio productions.

The credits featured every living actor who had taken the iconic role… except James. When the history of these years is written, it's not only the extremist activists who will be recalled with revulsion, but also the spineless corporate figures who never made an attempt to resist them. Their inaction contributed to the ruin of James's livelihood.

A brilliant comic actor, a gay man, was abandoned by the very people who should have had his back, because the celebrity class is more interested in looking like they're doing the right thing than actually doing it.

Meanwhile, a chasm was opening up between me and my wife as she watched me lose jobs and opportunities.

Helen was looking for normality, and I was perpetually dismayed and angry. She asked me to cease operations, which she was perfectly within her rights to do to protect our family.

But I couldn't do it. I knew what everyone who's in this fight knows — the Gender Stasi never forgive.

I could never be confident of a having a job again until the entire gender ideology movement, which has caused so much misery, was burnt to ashes.

Even if I had been prepared to recant or keep my mouth shut, it wouldn't do any good because my heresy was out there and would never be forgiven.

I could never be confident of a having a job again until the entire gender ideology movement, which has caused so much misery, was burnt to ashes.

Even if I had been prepared to recant or keep my mouth shut, it wouldn't do any good because my heresy was out there and would never be forgiven.

I was fighting for women and children, sure, but also for my reputation and my ability to make a living.

With my marriage now over, I left the family home and moved into a modest flat. It had a nursing home for old people to one side and an overgrown, neglected graveyard behind it — which is a little too symbolic of my situation for comfort.

Adapted from Tough Crowd by Graham Linehan (Eye Books, £19.99) to be published October 12. © Graham Linehan 2023. To order a copy for £17.99 (offer valid to 15/10/2023; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.

#Graham Linehan #TRAs attaching themselves to other causes #TRAs wanting free stuff #Only women can get pregnant #Father Ted #The IT Crowd #how many identities did Hayden have before transitioning? #The Guardian and poor journalism #A TRA got a women’s visa withdrawn and we are supposed to believe the man in a dress is oppressed? #Sonia Friedman is a TRA handmade #Jimmy Mulville is a coward #The Society of Authors abandoned Rachel Rooney #James Dreyfus may have portrayed a villian but he has more integrity than the producers of Big Finish

[ltwilliammowett]

England expects that every man will do his duty, or ?

What was Lord Nelson's famous signal during the Battle of Trafalgar?  "England expects that every man will do his duty”. Well, not everyone always did their duty. And there were some who were either discharged or even court-martialled for it. Here are some of them.

Captain Anthony Molloy (1754-1814) was court-martialled on 28 April 1795 for refusing to cross the French line during the Battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794 and ignoring orders to do so. His defence was that a hit had rendered his ship unmanoeuvrable and there was nothing he could have done. They consulted for three weeks and each thought he lacked courage, as he was also very dominated at home by his wife. Finally, his courage was no longer questioned, but he was discharged from the Navy.

Lord Howe's action or The Glorious First of June, by Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg 1795 

Admiral Sir John Jervis would have liked to have strangled the future Admiral Sir Charles Thompson with his own hands near the Battle of Cape St. Vincent (14 February 1797), after the latter had ignored an order from him and carried out his own, thus failing to support another ship and himself having little involvement and only one man in harm's way, and that as second in command. However, Thompson was a well-liked man and his successes outweighed his failures and so he got off lightly in this matter.

Battle off Cape St. Vincent, 1797 by William Adolphus Knell 1846

Captain John Williamson was sacked after the Battle of Camperdown for failing to get his ship into action. Nelson was deeply unimpressed by Captain Davidge Gould's conduct at the Battle of the Nile for failing to take his initiative and support his fellow captains as ordered. But he too was lucky and was able to pursue his career and even became a Vice Admiral.

The Battle of Camperdown, 11 October 1797, by Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg 1801

Admiral Hyde Parker was at the Battle of Copenhagen on 2 April 1801, only Nelson led the attack there. For the cautious Parker remained offshore. Watching three of Nelson's twelve ships run aground at the start of the attack, Parker allowed himself to be persuaded by fleet captain William Domett to signal Nelson to recall, but at the same time chivalrously allowed his flag captain Robert Otway to row over to Nelson's flagship with the instruction that he could ignore the signal if he saw fit.

The Battle of Copenhagen, 2 April 1801, by  John Thomas Serres 1801

After Nelson's victory and the negotiation of an armistice, Parker refused to sail further into the Baltic to attack the Russians and Swedes, concerned for the safety of his supply line. Unsurprisingly, he was abruptly recalled from St Vincent after Nelson's criticism and did not serve thereafter, because the admiralty had blacklisted him. 

#naval history #failing officers #late 18th - early 19th century #age of sail

[thatstormygeek]

“The New York Times did not quote any transgender people in a majority of their articles about anti-trans legislation in the past year,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, President & CEO of GLAAD, in a statement posted to GLAAD’s website. “One of the first recommendations we make during the hundreds of LGBTQ education briefings we hold with national and local newsrooms is to include LGBTQ voices in LGBTQ stories: interview the people impacted by your coverage and include their perspectives. The New York Times failed that basic reporting lesson 101, and replaced it with a pattern of obfuscating sources’ anti-trans affiliations and allowing their misinformation to go unchecked. Our coalition of more than 150 organizations, community leaders, and notable LGBTQ people and allies remains steadfast in our calls for the Times to improve their coverage of transgender people.” “The paper of record has an obligation to present its readers with the full human toll of the anti-trans legislative assault,” added Ari Drennen, LGBTQ Program Director at Media Matters. “Trans people are more than theoretical curiosities to be debated from afar. Each and every anti-trans bill affects living, breathing people whose voices deserve to be heard and whose stories deserve to be told.”

#us politics #new york times #anti trans bills #parker molloy #the present age

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

After debate citing indoctrination and Nazis, Miami-Dade School Board rejects LGBTQ month

After listening to more than three hours of angry debate, with one side likening the measure to student indoctrination and the other talking about how Nazis ostracized gays and lesbians with a pink triangle, the Miami-Dade School Board voted late Wednesday evening to slap down a measure recognizing October as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer History Month and teaching 12th graders about two landmark Supreme Court cases impacting the LGBTQ communities.

The vote was 8-1 with board member Lucia Baez Geller, who proffered the item, the only one voting for the measure.

The vote brought out droves of parents, teachers and students — along with a contingent of Proud Boys, who got in a loud argument with a person hoisting a trans flag outside the School Board headquarters at 1450 NE Second Ave. in downtown Miami. Throughout Wednesday, about 35 to 45 people stood in line in the afternoon sun outside the building, waiting to enter to make their comments known.

A person waving a transgender flag stands in front of a group of Proud Boys outside a contentious Miami-Dade School Board meeting discussing whether to recognize October as LGBTQ+ History Month in schools on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2022, at the board’s headquarters in downtown Miami. Sommer Brugal [email protected]

“There is an election year and the anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric is a tool used by some to spread misinformation,” said board member Lucia Baez Geller. “This is just plain disinformation.”

Baez Geller’s proposal called for recognizing October as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) History Month and teaching 12th graders about two Supreme Court landmark decisions — Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015 (recognizing same-sex marriage) and Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020 (finding an employer can’t fire someone for being gay or transgender).

The school district recognizes many months throughout the school year to teach students about history, whether it be about Hispanic heritage, Black history or women’s history. October is National LGBT History Month.

A woman looks up at Maxx Fenning while he speaks in support of the Miami-Dade School Board designating October as LGBTQ+ History Month. Fenning, president and founder of PRISM FL, a nonprofit organization that provides sexual health information to LGBTQ+ youth, wore a pink triangle as he likened opposition to the measure to how Nazis ostracized gay people, making them wear a pink triangle badge to reflect their sexual orientation. Alie Skowronski [email protected]

Ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, Baez Geller said the measure “is mostly to recognize the dignity and the respect for each other.” On Wednesday, she noted that 12th graders could opt out of learning about the two Supreme Court cases.

Alex Serrano, director of the Miami-Dade chapter of County Citizens Defending Freedom, speaks against recognizing LGBTQ History Month in October in Miami-Dade Public Schools at the School Board meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2022. The group fought the School Board over a sex-education textbook that the board first banned, then reinstated in a second vote. Serrano has no children in Miami-Dade Public Schools. He sends his children to Centner Academy, a Miami private school with a controversial anti-COVID-19 vaccination agenda. Alie Skowronski [email protected]

Last year, the Board voted 7-1 to recognize October as (LGBTQ) month, but last year’s measure did not include the provision to add the two Supreme Court cases to the 12th grade coursework.

Around 9:45 p.m. Wednesday, nearly six hours after the discussion first began — with a nearly one-hour break to hear about the district’s $7 billion budget in between — the Board finally voted. Those still in the audience cheered and clapped while others sat stoically after the 8-1 vote defeating the measure.

Before the vote, many who spoke in favor of the adoption, including numerous human rights organizations, argued a recognition would create a safe and reaffirming environment for students in the district. Many cited discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community and how many students struggle with mental health issues.

Maxx Fenning, president and founder of PRISM FL, a nonprofit organization that provides sexual health information to LGBTQ+ youth, likened those who wanted to block the measure to how Nazis ostracized gay people, making them wear a pink badge to reflect their sexual orientation.

“LGBTQ history is American history,’’ he said, noting if he were alive when the Nazis were in power, he would have been forced to wear the pink triangle badge that he wore on his shirt as he spoke.

Another man, who was a product of Miami-Dade Public Schools, urged the board members to pass the measure, noting he did not want students to feel the isolation that he did when he was a gay student in school decades ago.

“I can tell you as a gay child, I felt completely alone,’’ he said.

Those who opposed the measure said it went against their religious beliefs and that the board was abiding in the indoctrination and sexual abuse of children. Some, however, falsely claimed that the measure would adopt new curriculum for students to learn about LGBTQ+ issues. They said it was a gateway to speaking with students about LGBTQ+ topics without parental consent.

Max Tover, a pastor and parent in the district, led those outside in a prayer, asking that the board members reject the motion. In speaking to the Herald, he said passing the measure is “a Trojan Horse.” His friend, who wouldn’t provide his name, said talking about the law equates to child abuse.

During the public comment period, parent after parent who opposed the measure used the term “indoctrination” when speaking against the measure, saying it was parents’ right to decide whether to teach their children about gay and lesbian rights, not teachers in public schools.

Baez Geller countered that the measure did not indoctrinate students nor did it take away parental choice, as many who opposed the measure cited the recently passed “Parental Rights in Education” law, which prohibits instruction related to gender identity or sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade. Those opposed to the law say it could potentially restrict such instruction for older kids and have called it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Baez Geller reiterated that parents could opt out of the 12th-grade lessons on the Supreme Court cases, but noted that students already learn about other Supreme Court cases that have become the law of the land, and these two cases are no different, she said.

Shortly before the vote, Andrea S. Pita Mendez, the board’s student adviser, spoke in favor of the item, despite feeling scared to share how she felt and what she believed in after listening to the multiple hours of public comment. Nevertheless, she said, she was elected by her peers to represent the student body, which she said supported the item.

Moreover, she said, she disagreed with board member Lubby Navarro’s comments claiming parents were the district’s clients. Instead, she argued, students were the district’s clients.

#us politics #2022 #twitter #tweet #parker molloy #miami herald #Florida #don't say gay bill #gov. ron desantis #obergefell v. hodges #us supreme court #scotus #us history #@BGrueskin #Bostock v. Clayton County #proud boys #lgbtqia+ #lgbtqia+ rights #lgbtqia+ representation #republican homophobia #homophobia #lgbtqia+ month #lgbtqia+ pride #Maxx Fenning #PRISM FL #Baez Geller #parental rights in education #Andrea S. Pita Mendez

[charliejaneanders]

There have been a number of right-wing social media platforms that have popped up in recent years, many of which have received significant funding. One by one, they failed. Parler, Gab, Gettr, Truth Social — even the people who are (or were) on those sites spend their time scrolling and posting on the more mainstream social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). The reason is simple: their political beliefs and their lives, generally, revolve around mocking and tormenting their political opponents. They don’t stand for anything so much as they stand against things they’ve collectively decided to hate. In short, they need to “own the libs” to have fun.

Parker Molloy on right-wing outrage is worth reading in its entirety

#politics #discourse #hate #abuse #social media

[burritosandpeppermint]

#Parker Molloy #bo burnhan #social media #internet #capitalism

[fishstickmonkey]

prompt "Donald Trump and Barack Obama playing basketball" - Midjourney March 2023

Parker Molloy

So the interesting thing about this, aside from the hands (I'm assuming Trump's tiny left hand is a result of all the internet cruft about his "tiny hands" while Obama's freakish right hand is just another shining example of generative "AI"'s well known hand difficulties.), is what the fuck is up with Obama's pants? Is he going clamming? Cosplaying as Urkel?

#midjourney

[lookwhatilost]

look, the guys on kiwi farms did some really gross shit and i’ll never defend the harassment and doxxing. i just don’t believe that morals and ethics are why that phony group of online lefties wants to bury the site. that website exposed the dirtiest secrets of so many of them. it’s most famous for outing ana mardoll’s employer, but do you remember what else it outed about ana mardoll? This self professed impoverished disabled trans boy was living as a cis woman in real life, while owning a large house in a major metro area, and using her stepdaughter’s crutches as a photo prop for twitter.

who else were they rapidly uncovering information on? charlotte clymer, shaun king, parker molloy, daniel mallory, grace lavery, among others.

twitter’s greatest villains don’t give a fuck about the morals and ethics of kiwi farms. they give a fuck about their donors and supporters getting brave enough to actually check out kiwi farms for themselves.

[azspot]

The truth is that none of the people claiming that they love free speech whose first impulse is to scream “These are men!!!” at trans women like a small army of digital Picards yelling “There… are… four… lights!” actually care about free speech. If they did, they’d be speaking out against the anti-speech agenda of DeSantis (see above) and other state-sponsored censors on the right. No, what they want is tightly-restricted speech that they agree with. But I digress. My point here is that the people who spend their days whining about “free speech” and very selectively railing against “cancel culture” (including Musk, himself, who is an extraordinarily litigious man) spend their days making Twitter into their own personal cesspool while demanding praise for their fake love of “free speech.”

Parker Molloy

#freespeech #twitter