@Coffeetog
Florida Republicans’ infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill passed the wingnut majority house earlier this week and passed in the wingnut majority state senate today. It’s headed for DeSantis’s desk, and he’s indicated he supports it. From the Tampa Bay Times:
“How many parents want their kindergartners to have transgenderism or something injected into classroom instruction? I think those are very young kids. I think the Legislature is basically trying to give parents assurance that they are going to be able to go and that stuff is not going to be there,” DeSantis told reporters in Jacksonville last week.
His press secretary, Christina Pushaw, went further and nicknamed the legislation the “anti-grooming” bill. She tweeted that opponents of the bill were “probably a groomer” because they want young kids to be taught about “sex.” “Grooming” refers to the process by which pedophiles lure children into trusting them so the predator can take advantage of the child sexually.
Republican senators on Monday tried to distance themselves from Pushaw’s comments, saying that the issue of “grooming” is not addressed in the bill. Democrats called on Pushaw to resign.
Pushaw is a vile, homophobic, taxpayer-supported internet troll who should not only resign but volunteer for a NASA mission to explore whether humans can colonize the sun — and take her boss with her. But these are the people who run this state.
Here’s a particularly absurd moment from the senate debate:
Republican State Senator Ileana Garcia starts her debate in support for the “don’t say gay” bill by saying being gay is “not permanent” and saying this bill, which prohibits LGBTQ topics in schools is a “good topic for happy hour”. Offensive and ignorant. pic.twitter.com/eSd4OpbjYv
— Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) March 8, 2022
It’s absurd because the woman who made that stupid and offensive argument is an idiot, and it’s also ridiculous because she occupies a state senate seat that Republicans stole through election fraud. (Not that they needed that extra stolen seat on this matter; they passed this bill with room to spare, even though two Republicans defected.)
Students from across Florida were gathered outside chanting “We Say Gay!” The TBT article says they could be heard through the walls of the chamber during the debate. I’m very proud of them, and I hope they’re heard at the ballot box this November.
Open thread.
Alison Rose ???
Actually it was being straight which was very much not permanent for me
VeniceRiley
60 years of gay here.
lowtechcyclist
It hardly matters whether it’s permanent or not: if it’s a choice, there’s no reason not to choose it.
Fundie bigots, go fuck yourselves.
SFAW
Fearless Reporter X: “Ms. Pushaw, in the past, members of the Republic(an) Party have often falsely accused Democrats of doing vile or illegal things which the Republicans have, in fact, been doing themselves. My question to you is: Has the FL DOJ [sic] started investigating those Republicans who refer to this bill as an ‘anti-grooming’ bill, on the assumption that they are active pedophiles who are ‘grooming’ innocent children?”
Omnes Omnibus
Just saw something on Twitter saying that, in FL, the actor Rebecca Gayheart is now officially Rebecca Heart.
Timurid
Fascists currently control a greater percentage of this country’s territory than they do in Ukraine.
TaMara
Not like there isn’t a lot to be angry with these days, but this made me so angry, I’m still seething.
And that grooming remark, well that’s just fucking icing on a shit-cake, that is.
trollhattan
She seems nice.
The Thin Black Duke
When Democrats show up to vote, we win. Anyone who doesn’t is an accessory to this crime.
trollhattan
@Omnes Omnibus:
I remember when some conservative “news” organization installed autocorrection that changed “gay” to “homosexual,” immediately generating hilarious headlines like “Tyson Homosexual runs a 9:68 100m” and “Rudy Homosexual drains 6 three-pointers in thrilling win.”
Baud
@The Thin Black Duke: Seconded.
Antonius
Build that wall.
delk
@VeniceRiley: 59.5 years here!
Spanky
I guess this means the theme to The Flintstones is banned in Florida, because of the last line.
John Revolta
This Pushaw is a very dodgy individual. She hasn’t got a Wikipedia page and I can’t find out anything about her exact age or birthplace or family; it’s not even known if she’s married or not. What is known is that she has spent time working for Georgian President Mikheil Saakahvili and in Ukraine.
Jeffro
I was thinking this morning that Virginia, which has a serious teacher shortage going on, ought to take advantage of this by running ads in Florida trying to attract Florida teachers.
“Tired of the insanity, Florida teachers? Afraid of what’s next? There are thousands of unfilled teaching positions in Virginia just waiting for you! Mountains, beaches, bays, great college towns, and awesome city living – we’ve got it all, and we don’t have freaking Ron DeSantis or batshit nutcases in the legislature. Come and teach here!”
And then I remembered, our new Governor makes national headlines every week or so with his various “parents’ rights” and “don’t say ‘equity’ ” initiatives, our AG is nuts, and the VA GQP is just as bonkers as it is in most every other state. Sigh.
PaulWartenberg
Every student in every Florida classroom should answer every question on every test with “gay.”
Every essay, every debate, every word on paper should be “gay.”
Every school newspaper and tv show should be just the same word over and over. “gay.”
Protest the ever loving hell out of these homophobic Republican assholes, Florida.
Gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay GAAAAAAYYYY!!! Gay gay gay. Gay? Gay gay. Gay, gay gay gay gay gay gaaaayy gay gay. Too gay or not too gay, that is the gay question.
Also you can use the word “lesbian” or “transgender” for emphasis.
Scout211
Disney employees are furious at the company’s response to the bill. Source.
Brachiator
@Spanky:
No more yabba, dabba or doo.
delk
I’m multitasking! Not just content to form hurricanes I’m now grooming and according to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church causing the Ukrainian invasion. It’s no wonder it took me so long to finish knitting that scarf.
matt
@Spanky: and ‘All Apologies’
Scout211
Just in: The first J6 defendant to go through a jury trial: guilty on all counts.
O. Felix Culpa
@Alison Rose ???: Ditto.
Old School
@Spanky: @matt:
And ‘Deck the Halls.’ It’s a War on Christmas!
Baud
@Scout211:
?
Greg
And this is what we will have as a state representative in Michigan. All part of the same sickness:
https://twitter.com/leftofcentermi/status/1500678094520213504
This needs to be hung around the necks of every GOP candidate and offical.
Betty Cracker
@Scout211: Excellent news. Does anyone know how much time he’s facing? I hope he serves every minute of the maximum sentence. Scumbag threatened his own children!
mrmoshpotato
@Old School:
I guess we’ll have to don our homosexual apparel from now on.
Gin & Tonic
@John Revolta: That made my ears perk up, so I found some of what she’d written on neweurope.eu, and it’s actually fairly reasonable. Saakashvili, of course, has been widely discredited, but a lot of otherwise smart people believed in him. What she’s written on Ukraine is pretty heavy on the “widespread corruption” aspect, but otherwise not bad.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: I remember that too. Hilarious! I love it when someone’s mean-spiritedness blows up in their stupid face.
Gin & Tonic
@Scout211: But hey, we all know what DC juries are like, right? <wink, wink>
Gin & Tonic
@mrmoshpotato: I think I have a plaid flannel shirt somewhere…
Dan B
There are many people who buy these reasonable sounding arguments that claim they will protect children. They incorporate the unspoken definition that children are white, straight, and Christian. There is no need to protect children that don’t fit in this box. In fact “those children” don’t exist. I’ve encountered many 30 something guys who were terrified of being different. The goal of othering is to force people into boxes that they cannot fit and install fear that they will be shunned. Underlying these laws is the threat of extermination so that “real people” won’t be disturbed.
I lived for a decade not knowing if there was anyone besides me who was gay. Making LGBTQ people invisible hurts. Then there was AIDS that had to be invisible. Millions die and continue to due. When Covid arrived I felt very uneasy because I knew the deep reservoir of desire for everything to be normal. And now there are millions more dead.
There is additional fear that a large minority – 20% – of young people do not identify as straight. This must be made invisible as well.
Eolirin
I do not have the energy to be as angry at this as I am. Gonna have to step away for a bit, I think.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic: Patriotic?
jl
Saw a news piece that DeSantis and his flunky state surgeon general are recommending against vaccinating ‘healthy’ kids against covid
Florida surgeon general recommends against Covid vaccination for ‘healthy’ children
The state’s top medical officer cited possible links to myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, among young men and teenage boys as the rationale for his suggestion.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/florida-surgeon-general-says-healthy-kids-shouldnt-get-covid-vaccines-rcna19012
From what I’ve read, the risk of myocarditis from vaccination is much lower than going unvaccinated and getting covid, and can be avoided almost completely by slightly lengthening the interval between the first and second shot, I think six weeks instead of three is enough.
So, I guess to have a positive sounding slogan, DeSantis is adopting ‘Say Sick Kids’ .
Bupalos
Really wish we wouldn’t take this stupid bait. A big crowd of people shouting “we say gay!” does absolutely nothing for anyone except Republicans who try to portray the world this way for votes and power, to keep the oldsters and dummies cowering in fear of social change and firmly in their coalition of dread and cowardice.
Effective advocacy on this issue is to simply ignore this moronic law and treat these issues the exact way we would have treated them without the law. And if that means getting sued then good, have that monkey-trial lawsuit, nothing could be better. If it mean getting fired or arrested then good, we talk about being impoverished and imprisoned for offering compassion and sanity.
Betty Cracker
@John Revolta: This TBT article, which you may have already seen, has info on her professional path, which includes Koch Bros, etc. But she came to DeSantis’s attention by attacking his enemies as a jumped-up mommy-blogger and writing a fan-girl mash-note to his communications shop.
dnfree
I know it’s not the same thing, but I’m left-handed. It wasn’t a decision I made; I just am. And the thing is, I don’t even know if I was born that way or if it’s because my right arm was broken just before my first birthday. It doesn’t matter, because that’s the way my brain is wired, however it happened.
Interestingly, I think a greater proportion of gay people are left-handed than the general population, so maybe there is a relationship.
jl
” but volunteer for a NASA mission to explore whether humans can colonize the sun ”
That sounds like a Trump Space Force project. I’ll go check Wiki to see how it’s progressing.
Old Man Shadow
How many parents want their kindergartners to have transgenderism [discussed]
“Sometimes someone born as a boy or girl doesn’t feel like it inside. They feel like they don’t match their bodies and they really are the other gender. And that’s okay. Be kind.”
There you go. Age appropriate.
Go fuck yourself, Republicans.
Baud
@Bupalos:
I’m as skeptical as anyone with respect to a lot of protest strategies, but I think you’re wrong here. This is a law, not “bait” put forth by a troll on Twitter, and the protest messaging here seems appropriately targeted to what the law does. As far as ignoring the law goes, that may or may not happen, but we can’t make anyone risk their financial survival as an alternative “protest.” (Those that do should rightly be regarded as heroes and martyrs).
Betty Cracker
@Bupalos: So much wrong to unpack here!
It lets LGBTQ kids know lots of peers and allies have their back. That’s pretty fucking important!
Are you an underpaid, overworked Florida teacher who’s willing to be sued and/or imprisoned and/or impoverished? No? Then shaddup. Yes? Then flesh out your strategy and show your work, particularly how your plan would address the intimidation factor that will harm LGBTQ kids.
Soprano2
@Dan B: My mother told me she didn’t even know there was a such thing as gay people until she saw an article about them in a 1967 Life magazine. She was 33 years old at that time. I believe her, she was raised in a sheltered environment. I think there used to be lots of people like that.
Dan B
@Betty Cracker: My in laws are related to the Kochs. Charming, well mannered, cold as ice. Empathy is the most appalling concept to them.
Soprano2
@dnfree: I have a friend whose handwriting has always been terrible. I mean, you have to know her in order to be able to read it. She says when she was little she tried to write with her left hand, and her mother always took the pencil and put it in her right hand, so eventually she became right-handed. She thinks that’s why her handwriting is so terrible. People used to do dumb things like that.
Soprano2
@Old Man Shadow: Republicans think any discussion of any issue surrounding non-straight people has to include graphic descriptions of how they have sex. It’s insane.
jl
@Gin & Tonic:
If the wiki bio on Saakashvili is accurate, good Lord, what a sketchy operator he turned out to be. A Marcus T. Firefly running the Duck Soup of international crises.
Baud
@Soprano2: I write with my dominant hand, but my handwriting is terrible. I long for good handwriting abilities.
jl
@Soprano2: When you think about the typical GOP politician scandal that doesn’t focus purely on stealing money…. well, I’ll just have to put that topic out of my mind.
Spanky
@Brachiator: No more “gay old time.”
debbie
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Someone in Florida presents you with a small, compact floral bouquet? They’ve just given you a nose.
jl
@Spanky: The subversion of our Judeo-Christian Constitution began long before the teletubbies, if I remember the history of toxic world historical BS correctly.
Dan B
@Soprano2: I realized I was not attracted to women when I was 14. The word homosexual popped into my head. I had no idea where I’d heard it except, most likely, the Joe McCarthy hearings on communists and homosexuals in government and Hollywood. The implication was that homosexuals would be blackmailed by the communists and become traitors. In addition to being pedophiles we were traitorous.
I got tossed out of university when a couple months before I’d been in an elite honors program. My in laws poo pooh my concerns about the right wingers. I have memories that feel very recent. Being homeless in Chicago trying to find other gay people. The in laws have suffered from people saying impolite things about their goal of paving their lakeshore.
Miss Bianca
@dnfree: Fellow lefty here says: You mean…maybe I’m just not gay…yet?
SiubhanDuinne
@Spanky:
Not to mention the classic and charming seasonal chorus from Bambi: “Let’s Sing a Homosexual Little Spring Song.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Scout211:
Good, good.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: “The Homosexual 90s” would like to have a word, as well.
John Revolta
@Betty Cracker: Interesting article. Got hired by first trashing Rebekah Jones on her blog, and then emailing DeSantis and asking for a job. I guess you could call that good salesmanship….. still pretty vague about her history though.
jl
@Old Man Shadow: At that age, I wonder if just folding it into anti-bullying education would be enough, in areas where a lot parents would be against anything more. Though I don’t really know much about it and would be interested in hearing from anyone who knows more about that age group. But then the GOP would just move to an attack on anti-bullying, which from some GOPer officials I’ve heard, they’ve already started on that.
laura
@delk: And preparing to be a seized oligarch yatch commander ?
debbie
trollhattan
@Scout211:
Disney. Musicals. Capitulating to anti-gay legislation. Which of these does not belong in this group?
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
I’ve never had the slightest difficulty reading any of your comments.
trollhattan
@Spanky: “Yabba-dabba-don’t!”
debbie
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Soprano2: Madame is naturally left handed, but was ‘corrected’, she’s happy that the kid whose also left handed didn’t have to go though that.
Old School
@Soprano2: My dad has the same story. Writing right-handed was the only option in school and had horrible handwriting.
Played baseball and golfed left-handed though.
OGLiberal
@Soprano2: Does this mean then can’t talk about mommy and daddy loving each other? No drawing pictures of your family with mommy and daddy and their arms around each other?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
How in fuck can anyone say that seriously, are all these conservatwits bi-sexual and utterly unselfaware?
Ileana Garcia “You know, like everyone has their experimental phrase in college were they sleep with most every other girl in the dorm (except for the frigid ones), and then you move on when you get married (except when your husband is out of town). It’s just part of growing up. Gays just don’t respect marriage.”
Dead stunned silence from the audience.
Ileana Garcia “What? I wasn’t with a man, so it wasn’t cheating!”
Brachiator
@Spanky:
I know. I was going for an extra level of snark.
Imagine yabba yabba doo as BDSM, transgender or anything else “transgressive.”
delk
I feel pretty, oh so pretty…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Brachiator:Great, now I have an image of Barney Rubble in a leather harness, shorts, mask and whip, and I need brain bleach.
jl
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: You missed that episode?
SamIAm
@Spanky:
No, autocorrect changes it to “We’ll have a homosexual old time!”
scav
Could the Florida Tourist Board possibly need an evacuation route / humanitarian corridor?
Brachiator
@OGLiberal:
No pictures of mommy pegging daddy.
No more pictures of ball and gag play.
Spanky
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: “Say Wilma, Fred and Barney sure do spend a lot of time together out in the garage.”
Lyrebird
@PaulWartenberg: Hi, you are on the ground there. Do you or Betty know how Legoland does on this front?
Asking for a friend, no seriously asking bc I might be taking some children to Legoland. Boycotting would be hard, as the children have been waiting 2 yrs for this, but I figured I had better ask.
I did google a bit, and found this stupid bit of criticism that makes Lego corp look good, actually, Don’t click unless you get a laugh out of pseudo religious pseudo intellectual homophobic word vomit. The pseudo intellectual real homophobe thinks ha ha Lego is doing Pride but their pieces all depend on a part that sticks out fitting into a hole that goes in.
Boinking is nice, but from what he’s saying, he’s forgotten that having a thumb or a mouth among other things is not related to biological sex.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So how long before DeStantis and this human toad are involved in some child sex ring scandal?
Brachiator
@Spanky:
Not to mention the Jetsons: ‘Is that a Spacely Sprocket, or are you just glad to see me?”
Kay
I am too. They’re the only thing that keeps me hopeful sometimes.
Scout211
This video snippet of DeSantis sniping at a reporter is kind of creepy.
What’s with the guy’s head tilt and facial gestures?
And then that nasty parsing of what the intent of the bill is versus what the exact words are in the bill. The bill doesn’t actually have the words “don’t say gay,” so it’s all good! *wink, wink*. Classic Republican strategy for disguising the actual intent of the discriminatory laws they pass .
Calouste
@Soprano2: Didn’t Dan Savage say something like “Republicans think more about gay sex than I do, and I’m a gay sex therapist!”?
Lyrebird
@Betty Cracker: Hi Betty C!
ETA: and YES those brave kids matter, stepping up for their friends! parents! librarians!
Toast to your courage taking on this venomous toad! I mean Death Santis.
If you have time to read my comment at #80 I would be obliged. Don’t want the kids exposed to too much homophobia while we are there. Will not go near the State House without a large demonstration. And that is probably in Tallahassee anyhow.
Kay
@Scout211:
Same pointing he did when he was scolding the kids who generously appeared as the backdrop to his photo op.
Another nasty piece of work.
laura
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: how long before DeStantis and this human toad are involved in some child sex ring scandal?
Narrator: Matt Gaetz has entered the chat.
Kay
@laura:
You just know it, right? Tick tock.
lollipopguild
@Spanky: “Now we don our gay apparel” They are attacking Christmas!
jl
@Kay: And I think DeSantis is high on his own supply, he thinks his nasty bullying thug act will work nationwide. I’m not so sure. Trump is a natural swindler and knows how to pitch his con differently to different types of voters. DeSantis is just a nasty thug and nothing else. He knows how to present only the nasty, vindictive, sadistic, and humorless side of Trumpism (which is of course, along with infinite greed and vanity is one of three pillars of Trumpism, but I’m talking about presentation and sales technique here). To many will just gag at his vile antics. That is just an IMHO.
Just One More Canuck
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Barney Rubble, what an actor
The Thin Black Duke
@jl: Remember, to people who vote for the GOP, the cruelty is the point. To Democrats who don’t vote in spite of the hateful things Republicans do, they’re the cowards who turn up the volume on the TV when they hear their next door neighbor beating his wife again.
Old Man Shadow
@jl: A trans-girl attended the same elementary school as my kids, it was really no big deal to them.
They’re 11 and 12 now and they have LGBTQ friends. Kids are really smarter than the adults think they are and understand things better than adults think they do.
Kay
@jl:
I agree. Celebrity Right wing/ media favorite governors often flop on a national stage – Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, John Kasich.
Boy, is he touchy. Huge ego. Prickly!
laura
@Kay: I mean all of these shite-bags for all of my literal entire life starting with Joseph McCarthy and to name but a few Newt G and his wives, Denny Hastert, Mark Sandford, that shite-bag who was married to Jeri Ryan and his dad, the too many to list archdiocies of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, the Livingston fellow who was going to replace Denny Hastert, the judges-also too many to list who just cant seem to find a way to convict these white male rapists and pedophiles. I’d keep going but for risk of carpal tunnel/rage at the patriarchy, and what with it’s being International Day of the Woman and all. Yes, Kay, it’s always projection with these fellow humans who engage in monsterous sadism at every chance.
karensky
@SFAW: excellent!
Winston
Sweet Bye and Bye will become a banned tune amongst evangelicals.
cain
@Jeffro: The thing is – that is what they want. As Kay has noted many times, the goal is to destroy public education.
That said, I’m wondering what happens to the universities. DeSantis has already started leaning on them too I believe. It’s going to be a shit show over there. I’m really disgusted that the Democratic party in Florida doesn’t seem to have a deep bench of candidates that people can vote for and are generally disorganized.
debbie
@Old Man Shadow:
It’s the kids who will save this world from the stupid adults.
delk
Barney is a pocket cub.
Kay
@cain:
Public schools are remarkably resilient as an institution. I think it’s one of those situations where the anti-public school politicians and activists didn’t attend one, so think they’re horrible and easy to demonize but 90% of people DID attend one, so have actual experience for context.
RaflW
How about a “Don’t Pay Gay” campaign? Sorry Florida, we’re boycotting travel, tourism and conventions till you actually welcome LGBTQ people, our families and friends (and our dollars).
Betty Cracker
@Lyrebird: I don’t know anything about Legoland except that people I know who’ve taken kids there say it’s awesome! :-)
Betty Cracker
@Scout211: DeSantis is such a prickly, unpleasant asshole who can’t even fake human emotion. (I used to think this would bar someone from the U.S. presidency, but now I know better.)
Anyway, I LOVE that clip because it shows the power of messaging and, more to the point, framing an opponent’s message. It got under DeSantis’s extremely thin skin because he knows “don’t say gay” makes Republicans look like intolerant assholes. Which they are!
Betty Cracker
@RaflW: I hope such a movement gathers steam, even though it would suck for those of us who live here. I think hitting Republicans in the pocketbook could work.
evodevo
@Soprano2: MY mother was like that…asking ME about gays, etc. when I was a freshman in college in 1964…it was triggered by that novel The Group – she couldn’t believe there were lesbians…and then again when my teenage HS band member sister asked her about gay sex, when her HS bandleader was outed a couple years later. Back then, most gays were in the closet, and most beige middle class people like my mother were totally unaware of the culture…
Denali
The Main Street of the very red town in the Very red state where I grew up is……
Gay Street.
Wonder how long before it is renamed.
S
Scout211
@evodevo:
When marriage equality started to get closer to reality and the Christian Right and the Republicans banded together against it (with an early win in California, Ugh!), my father (a died-in-the-wool Republican) tried to teach me the importance of one man, one women marriage.
Dad: You need one man, one woman (married of course) to raise healthy children.
Me: So your oldest daughter adopting two daughters as a single woman will doom them to dysfunction?
Dad: Uh, no. My granddaughters are doing fine. Huh.
Dad: We should protect sanctity of marriage in the church.
Me: You are an atheist! You haven’t gone to church for 80 years!
Dad: Well, yeah, that’s true. Huh.
Dad: Gay people shouldn’t be married . . . because it just shouldn’t be that way because marriage is defined as one man, one woman. Legally.
Me: Well, they most certainly should have that right because they are just like you and me and every person that grows up, has a job, has a family, owns a business, buys a home and PAYS TAXES EVERY SINGLE YEAR. If they pay taxes they should also have the same rights as everyone else.
Dad: Well, you make a good point there.
Me: *speechless*
Ha Ha. My dad died in 2015 and that was probably the only win I ever had in a political discussion with him. And we had many.
Information is powerful. Even some people who are entrenched in their own beliefs and surrounded by an echo chamber of people with similar beliefs, can be moved if shown another view, another side. That is exactly what this bill tries to prevent.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I wonder if the attacks on public schools are the kill shot they hoped. Republicans consistently overestimate how much people hate public schools, because they hate public schools and over weighting Virginia election results is a common error.
They lost two big voucher fights in the last 2 weeks.
Scout211
Agreed. But aren’t they just campaigning mainly for the big donors who want to dip into the government money currently funding public schools? That is what it seems like to me. They may need those anti-public school evangelicals for the elections, though.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I loved Ed Sec Cardona’s response to the Don’t Say Gay bill:
What an upgrade from DeVos!
PaulWartenberg
Saying Gay.
matryoshka
@O. Felix Culpa: Same!
catclub
@RaflW:
I am still boycotting Arizona for its anti-immigration law. I also haven’t been to Florida over the last 12 years. [exception: transferring between airplanes]
RaflW
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, it’s a mixed bag. I am, ironically, attending a small human rights conference in Sarasota in about two weeks. Each of the years ’19-’21 the conference has included a night out at the Westcoast Black Theater Troup. We’ll go again this time.
But I will be advocating that we figure out how to either move the meetings out of FL for ’23, or at the least how to do public engagement and advocacy in FL as part of the conference.
Our Org assists marginalized peoples in far flung places like the Philippines, Bangladesh and Burma. But we have work to do at home, too!
J R in WV
@Scout211:
And this is one more reason why I will never give Disney another nickel ever! Walt would be pissed I would hope!
Lyrebird
@Betty Cracker: Thanks so much!!
sralloway
@delk: Is Fred the bear?