“No state was worse than Alabama in terms of outlawing treatments for transgender minors…”
SIGN LANGUAGE
There are so many anti-GLBT laws circulating through our country’s conservative state legislatures that it’s hard for me to focus on one in particular without feeling as if I am letting down those readers who might be interested in some other nasty measure from some other mean-spirited red state. Plus, I should be on top of all these news developments; the sports bans, the don’t say gay bills, the denial of medical treatment to transgender teens—the list goes on but shamefully, I’ve long since lost track.
Nonetheless, I am pulling one development out of a hundred because one of the bills that Tennessee passed into law last year was uniquely bizarre. The Fruitcake State decided that if any business allowed transgender patrons to use the bathroom of their choice, the owners were obligated to post a relatively large sign to that effect, using primary colors no less. The ACLU sued immediately, and the law was put on hold pending resolution of that lawsuit. Fast forward a year and U.S. District Court Judge Aleta Trauger has delivered a 40-page opinion granting summary judgment to the trans-friendly plaintiffs.
It’s just gratifying to see one of these sick little proposals bite the dust. In this case, the state of Tennessee violated the First Amendment rights of the business owners by forcing speech, specifically language that stated in boldface capitals:
”THIS FACILITY MAINTAINS A POLICY OF ALLOWING THE USE OF RESTROOMS BY EITHER BIOLOGICAL SEX REGARDLESS OF THE DESIGNATION ON THE RESTROOM”
The State argued that the sign was not political in nature, but merely informative, but Judge Trauger wasn’t buying it. We will see if Tennessee goes crying to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
ROLL OVER TIDE
In other legal news about horrible state lawmakers, no state was worse than Alabama in terms of outlawing treatments for transgender minors. Not only did Alabama make such treatments illegal, they made it a criminal offense subject to jail time, for a doctor to, let’s say, prescribe puberty blockers. Further, the newly enacted state law, makes it illegal to provide treatments to kids and teens with gender identity issues while those same treatments are perfectly legal when administered to cisgender minors.
Now, the U.S. Justice Department has sued the state, and a Trump-appointed federal judge has put most of the new law on hold pending the continuation of this legal action. That’s pretty excellent news. The Justice Department weighed in against a similar law in Arkansas last year by filing a friend of the court brief, and that suit is now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. But this is the first time (I think) that Merrick Garland and company have led the charge against one of these hurtful statutes.
WHAT ABOUT MONKEYPOX?
So what’s the deal with monkeypox? I’m asking because I keep seeing headlines about it on my “gay” news feeds, but as far as I can tell it’s not really a big deal. It’s a gross thing that is only contagious after unattractive symptoms emerge, and since it’s sexually transmitted, you could just avoid having sex with someone who has, um, pocks. Guys? Wouldn’t you be avoiding that person to begin with? (You’d think that “pox” was the plural of “pock,” but from all that I’ve read just now, you’d be wrong.)
At any rate, monkeypox is nothing new, but it seems a little more transmissible these days, perhaps because we stopped vaccinating people for smallpox after that disease was eradicated whenever that was. I guess all these pox type maladies are related, so those of us Boomers with our smallpox vaccine scars are immune. Meanwhile, there are a relatively few cases outside of Africa, it’s not airborne, it’s not usually fatal and there are medications you can take four days after infection. Should be no problem, right? I was one of those who poohed poohed Covid in early 2020.
