Scary Stuff - Could This Happen In The US?

 

Putin signs expanded anti-LGBTQ laws in Russia, in latest crackdown on rights

CNN: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed into law a bill that expands a ban on so-called LGBTQ “propaganda” in Russia, making it illegal for anyone to promote same-sex relationships or suggest that non-heterosexual orientations are “normal.”

Vladimir Putin's walk:
 the 'gunslinger gait'

The package of amendments signed by Putin include heavier penalties for anyone promoting “non-traditional sexual relations and/or preferences,” as well as pedophilia and gender transition. Under the new law, it will be banned across the internet, media, books, audiovisual services, cinema, and advertising.

Under the new law, individuals can be fined up to 400,000 rubles ($6,370) for “LGBT propaganda” and up to 200,000 rubles ($3,185) for “demonstrations of LGBT and information that encourages a change of gender among teenagers.”

These fines rise to up to 5 million rubles ($80,000) and 4 million rubles ($64,000) respectively for legal entities. [I would assume this would including writing a transgender blog] 

But the broadening of the “LGBT propaganda” law is just the latest in many steps that Putin’s government has taken in recent months to crush the last pockets of opposition, liberal values and free speech in Russia.

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The Palm Beach Post: Florida leaders misrepresented research before ban on gender-affirming care | PolitiFact

Florida's Republican-Fascist 
Governor, Ron DeSantis

Behind Florida's decision to block clinical services for transgender adolescents is a talking point — repeated by the state's governor and top medical authorities — that most cases of gender incongruence fade over time.

The Florida Board of Medicine voted Nov. 4 to approve a rule that barred physicians from performing surgical procedures on minors to alter "primary or secondary sexual characteristics" and from prescribing them medication to suppress puberty and hormones. The rule included an exception for patients who were already receiving those treatments. 

Two days later, Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, said gender-affirming care is "an example of ideology overtaking the practice of medicine," touting that he worked with the board to take a stand against it. 

DeSantis said during a Nov. 6 campaign event. 

So why are you mutilating their body parts? Over 80% of the dysphoria amongst teenagers resolves itself by the time they become older," 

[A total Lie and misrepresentation of the facts!]

A study published in July, for instance, sought to develop an estimate of transgender children who later stop identifying with a gender incongruent with their assigned sex. (The American Academy of Pediatrics - Gender Identity 5 Years After Social Transition)

It evaluated 300 transgender children over five years. To participate in the study, children must have already begun social transitioning, which often involves changing names, haircuts and pronouns. 

Researchers from Princeton University's TransYouth Project followed up with participants in-person and online. At the end of the five years, 94% of participants still identified as transgender.

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New York Intelligencer: Ron DeSantis Would Kill Democracy Slowly and Methodically Whether he’s as bad as Trump isn’t the question.

Read the whole article

The conclusion: Whether a President DeSantis would be more or less dangerous than Trump is not a question I can answer with any confidence. Trump poses a greater danger of triggering an immediate constitutional crisis, while DeSantis is more likely to methodically strangle democracy through a series of illiberal Orbanist steps like he has modeled in Florida. I suppose the threat of a quick death is more dire than the threat of a slow one, but I have little confidence in projecting out these comparative dangers. The only meaningful conclusion I can make about the choice of Trump versus DeSantis is “neither.”