Posts made by Jason287

He's a sociopath in power ..

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender refugees from Iran have found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place after Donald Trump’s executive order banning entry for people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

US travel ban puts 20,000 refugees in 'precarious circumstances', UN says
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The order also suspended the US refugee admissions system for 120 days, and promised to prioritise members of religious minorities.

But it made no mention of people facing persecution for their sexual orientation, and several gay Iranians who have fled a country where homosexuality is punishable by death are now left stuck in Turkey, where they say they are experiencing worse homophobic abuses than in their homeland.

Some of the refugees have already had their asylum applications approved by the UN refugee agency and were due to be resettled in the US after months or even years of interviews and security checks.

Mitra, a 27-year-old lesbian living in Denizli, a conservative city in south-west Turkey, left Iran in 2014 after receiving death threats because of her activities as the editor of Aghaliat, an online magazine focusing on LGBT issues.

She was granted refugee status by the UN nearly two years ago, and was due to attend her final interview this month before being resettled in the US. “They have just called me and said it’s all cancelled,” she said.

Until Trump’s ban came into force, the US was the only viable path to safety for gay Iranians who end up in Turkey. Canada no longer accepts them because it is focusing on Syrian refugees. European countries do not normally accept LGBT Iranians who have applied from Turkey.

Like many of her fellow minorities, Mitra was initially approved to go to Canada. “I waited for 14 months, [and] even went through the medical checks but one day they called and said Canada doesn’t accept Iranians anymore and I should go to the US. Now that’s up in the air too.”

Mitra added: “One by one all my dreams and hopes are being destroyed before my eyes. It doesn’t matter to me whether to go to Canada or the US, I just want to go somewhere – anywhere – safe.”

Mitra currently lives with her partner in a tiny room with one sofa that is also their bed. “Iran doesn’t want us, Canada doesn’t want us and now the US doesn’t want us either. I have seen the suicide of three friends since 2015. A gay Iranian [threw] himself off a balcony and an Iranian lesbian hanged herself just eight months ago.”

Donald Trump's first 100 days as president – daily updates
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She argued that the US should also make exemptions for sexual minorities as well. “At least with religious refugees, they have the support of their families, we don’t even have that. Our families are [ashamed] of us.”

Javad, 50, is a disabled Iranian gay man also living in Turkey. “I was abandoned by my family, I was abandoned by my country and now I [do not] have anywhere to go,” he said.

He said two of his friends were beaten up in the street. “One day a friend of mine, an Iranian gay name Pouya, called and said, ‘forgive me’,” he said. “I realised he was about to take his life.

“I am disabled, I struggled to get to his house, by the time I got there he had died. He had just had enough.”

Saghi Ghahraman, the head of the Canada-based Iranian Queer Organisation, said LGBT Iranians face horrific punishment and bullying. A fatwa issued in 1987 by the late Ayatollah Khomeini legalised transexuality, but social stigma remains still rampant, and homosexuality is still punishable by death.

“Up until 2013, the wait-time for the LGBT to be determined and resettled by the [UN high commissioner for refugees] in Turkey was about a year and a half, which was barely manageable,” she said. “But it changed with the war in Syria, and when the USA and Canada undertook resettlement of large number of displaced Syrians, the LGBT wait-time before resettlement went up to three years,” she said.

Meanwhile, gay Iranian exiles have been subjected to a string of violent hate attacks and murders in Turkey, said Ghahraman.

The 26-year-old Azad, a gay Iranian who was approved for relocation by the UN 23 months ago, said his friend fainted in the bus when he heard about Trump’s decision. “We’re stuck, we can’t go forward, we can’t go backward,” he said. “Turkey is so unstable too these days and anything can happen, what if they deport us back to Iran?”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/01/us-travel-ban-leaves-iranian-lgbt-refugees-in-limbo

This is in the US and highly dependent on the state

The LGBTQ community held its collective breath on Monday after sources close to The White House ― perhaps even in The White House ― claimed that President Donald Trump was scheduled to sign an executive order sometime this week that would severely limit or revoke a collection of rights currently held by LGBTQ Americans.

An unverified account that claims to be overseen by members of the president’s staff who have “gone rogue” to leak information about the administration tweeted the following on Monday:

Follow
Rogue POTUS Staff @RoguePOTUSStaff
Rumors are true. Expect by end of the week. https://twitter.com/devchelle/status/826143714947059712 …
10:42 PM - 30 Jan 2017
  10,124 10,124 Retweets  4,871 4,871 likes
Follow
Rogue POTUS Staff @RoguePOTUSStaff
Confirmed, @joshrogin . Nuances are being hammered out. Still small chance it may be abandoned, to avoid more bad press. But unlikely. https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/826174682915287045 …
2:38 AM - 31 Jan 2017
  3,012 3,012 Retweets  2,052 2,052 likes
No one knew exactly what the order would entail, but most believed that it would revoke President Barack Obama’s 2014 directive that prohibited discrimination against federal employees based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Others, as LGBTQNation reported, believed it would allow “federally funded adoption agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ parents” and “allow federal employees to refuse to serve people based on the belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and that gender is an immutable characteristic set at birth, which would impact a broad range of federal benefits.”

Early Tuesday morning, in the midst of our latest national crisis, The White House quietly sent out a press release stating that Obama’s 2014 directive would stand and assuring LGBTQ Americans that President Trump “is determined to protect the rights of all Americans”:

President Donald J. Trump is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the LGBTQ community. President Trump continues to be respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights, just as he was throughout the election. The President is proud to have been the first ever GOP nominee to mention the LGBTQ community in his nomination acceptance speech, pledging then to protect the community from violence and oppression. The executive order signed in 2014, which protects employees from anti-LGBTQ workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors, will remain intact at the direction of President Donald J. Trump.
Go ahead and breathe the tiniest sigh of relief that you aren’t being stripped of your civil rights just 11 days after Trump came to power (phew!) but don’t be fooled into thinking this is some kind of bold or inclusive move by the president. And don’t celebrate being permitted to keep the rights we’ve spent years fighting to secure. Would you thank your boyfriend for not cheating on you ― even though he easily could have? Of course not. We shouldn’t be awarding Trump points for managing to not act like an asshole. As Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin said on Twitter, “claiming ally status for not overturning the progress of your predecessor is a rather low bar.”

The ACLU put it even more bluntly: “If Donald Trump is serious about being an ally to the LGBT community, it starts with abandoning an agenda driven by fear and prejudice.”

What’s more, Trump’s decision to not do something bigoted is not proof that he won’t ultimately do the dead wrong thing some time next week or next month or the month after that.

Let’s not forget that members of his administration, like Vice President Mike Pence, and would-be members, like Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions, hold vehemently anti-queer records. Let’s not forget that Trump himself is against marriage equality and supported North Carolina’s move to enforce its transphobic House Bill 2. Not exactly encouraging, is it?

Even less encouraging are the 400 virulently anti-LGBTQ religious leaders Trump met with last summer and the rumor of a “religious freedom” law on the horizon that would allow legal discrimination against queer people.

Do not let Trump or his administration convince you that the crumb they flicked in our direction on Tuesday morning offers any kind of meaningful commitment to the LGBTQ community ― especially as we watch what he is currently doing to our Muslim and immigrant friends and as we consider the threats that women, people of color and many other minority groups in this country face. Do not take their bait. Do not become a pawn in their plot to pit one group of oppressed people against another or forget that our oppressions intersect. We’re smarter than that, we’re better than that and we’re all in this together.

Donald Trump is not an LGBTQ hero. Championing freedom and equality involves more than waving a rainbow flag and correctly stringing together the letters L-G-B-T-Q during a campaign speech.

We dodged a bullet this morning, but the gun is still loaded and pointed at our heads. Keep screaming. Keep fighting. Keep showing up to protests. Be loud. Be angry. Be righteous. Keep calling your representatives and keep telling them if they won’t help take back this country and protect every last one of us, they’ll lose their jobs. Stay vigilant. Stay focused. And no matter what President Trump tells you or what kind of symbolic token of affection he tosses your way, do not, for one brief second, believe you are safe.

Read more here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-no-lgbtq-hero_us_588ffea3e4b0522c7d3cbe59?

will have to save this for later

I need to see this video ..

If this is what “running government like a business” looks like, it’s no wonder President Trump’s companies kept going bankrupt.

One week into the presidency, we’ve gotten a taste of Trump’s management style. And so far it’s been plagued by many of the bad habits common to poorly run businesses.

Take, for example, his administration’s clear indifference to — or outright rejection of — good measurement and analytics.

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One of the first things you learn from talking to management experts and successful entrepreneurs is the importance of having a clear set of objectives, as well as good, consistent metrics for determining whether those objectives have been met.

Or, as Trump’s commerce secretary nominee, Wilbur Ross, argued not once but twice in his confirmation hearing last week: “I have a very heartfelt saying in management that anything you can’t measure, you can’t manage.”

Even at GOP retreat, Trump sets the agenda  Play Video2:34
At the Republican retreat for members of Congress in Philadelphia, President Trump's tweets, speeches and executive orders derailed the GOP's plan to agree upon a replacement for Obamacare and set other policy initiatives. (Video: Jayne Orenstein/Photo: Getty Images/The Washington Post)
Ross, arguably the most business-savvy of Trump’s Cabinet picks, has not yet been confirmed. In his absence, the administration has not exactly been taking his “heartfelt saying” to heart.

[Why a tweeting president is so bad for our politics]

During a news conference Monday, for instance, White House press secretary Sean Spicer refused to answer a simple measurement question: What is the current unemployment rate?

The answer is not exactly a secret. Three weeks ago, the Labor Department publicly announced its latest reading as 4.7 percent.

But Spicer — whose boss has variously claimed the rate is “a total fiction” and as high as “42 percent” — ducked. Instead of providing the figure, or even citing alternative metrics he thought could be better gauges of economic health (such as measures of underemployment or labor force participation), Spicer pooh-poohed interest in quantitative gauges altogether.

“The president, he’s not focused on statistics as much as he is on whether or not the American people are doing better as a whole,” Spicer said.

He went on to admonish “Washington” for fixating on numbers and forgetting “the faces and the families and the businesses that are behind those numbers.”

Bully for Trump for caring about helping real people (people with faces!) rather than statistics (notoriously lacking in faces). But numbers are the best tool we have for assessing whether the administration actually lives up to its promise to make sure “the American people are doing better as a whole.”

If you pulled this kind of stunt in business — arguing that, say, growth targets or other quantifiable metrics don’t matter, and only some ineffable sensation of “success” does — you’d probably fail.

With Ross as a possible exception, Trump’s personnel decisions also bear many of the hallmarks of badly run companies.

He’s made hiring decisions based not on qualifications or experience, but on whether candidates are members of his family or have the right “look.” Funny facial hair, inadequate height and absence of “swagger” reportedly disqualified some contenders.

He’s likewise instituted an indefinite, across-the-board hiring freeze, despite the fact that the federal government has clearly identifiable, critical needs for staffing up in select areas, including for the 2017 Economic Census and preparations for the 2020 Census (I know, those pesky numbers again).

Not to mention that a Government Accountability Office analysis of across-the-board hiring freezes implemented by earlier presidents found that the resulting agency disruptions increased costs to taxpayers in the long run. Targeted freezes and cuts, the report said, are more effective.

[Trump is starting a trade war we don’t need]

Addressing bureaucratic bloat with a chainsaw rather than a scalpel isn’t leadership; it’s laziness. Yet that’s how his administration has thus far approached regulation, too.

Rather than thoughtfully assessing rules and regulations coming down the pike — by, say, conducting a cost-benefit analysis, as you might in a real-life business — Trump halted them across the board. They include one related to keeping airplanes from crashing. (It’s about inspecting aircraft fuselages for cracks.)

Finally, Trump has recently committed to spending billions of dollars on pet projects that are essentially expensive solutions to problems that don’t exist: a border wall with Mexico, despite the fact that we’ve seen a net outflow of unauthorized Mexican immigrants in recent years, and a “voter fraud” investigation into the “millions” of illegal votes that he believes — with zero evidence — were cast in an election he won.

Again, hard to imagine that such costly, low-upside executive windmill-chasing would fly at a competitive business.

Needless to say, there are major differences between running a business and running a government; it’s a myth that aptitude at one necessarily translates to aptitude at the other.

But with ineptitude, maybe it’s a different story.

link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-government-looks-an-awful-lot-like-a-badly-run-business/2017/01/26/8b9e4886-e40d-11e6-a453-19ec4b3d09ba_story.html?utm_term=.e5fd68113b8b

The history of the development of the Republican alternative to Obamacare since the beginning of the health-care debate, in 2009, has been an endless loop of loud promises that a full plan will be announced soon, followed by quiet admissions that it will not. Seventeen days ago, Donald Trump promised a vote to repeal the law “probably some time next week” with a vote for a replacement “very quickly or simultaneously, very shortly thereafter.” At a meeting in Philadelphia yesterday, Trump and his House Republican allies produced no agreement on a plan. If there is a consensus, it is that there will be no replacement plan at all.

Representative Greg Walden, a key leader of the House Republican efforts on health care, tells Julie Rovner, “There’s no single fix. There’s no single plan.” Representative Marsha Blackburn touted bills to limit medical malpractice lawsuits and to allow the sale of state-regulated insurance across state lines. Neither of these proposals would have any significant impact on insurance coverage. If Obamacare is repealed, this would leave the individual-health-insurance market a smoldering crater.

Republicans are portraying the lack of a plan as a philosophical aversion to lengthy legislation. “If you’re waiting for another 2,700-page bill to emerge, you’re going to have to wait until the sun doesn’t come up, because that’s not how we’re going to do it,” says Walden. You may not need 2,700 pages of legislative text. But you can’t blow up the health-care system and replace it with a series of piecemeal measures. Any real plan to provide even crappy coverage — let alone the better, more affordable coverage Trump has repeatedly promised — is going to need to be paid for. Making those trade-offs means figuring out some big-picture strategy for where the money will come from.

The reason health-care reform is done by assembling a big bill with a high page count is that all the stakeholders want to know beforehand whether the final product will be acceptable to them. Hospitals or insurers or doctors or drug makers might be willing to accept provisions that hurt their bottom line if there are other provisions that help them. But they won’t support passing a bill that hurts them on the promise of getting help in a future bill, because they don’t know whether the future bill will pass. Going step by step is a talking point, not a plausible way to actually write laws.

Step-by-step changes could work if they leave the current system in place and alter it incrementally. But if you blow the market up, you need comprehensive changes to rebuild something in its place.

Several Senate Republicans have expressed severe reservations about repealing Obamacare without having a replacement. Now the House is admitting there isn’t going to be a replacement. So now the choice falls to Republicans to either defeat repeal, or allow the system to hurtle toward chaos.

Update: The Washington Post has obtained a recording of House and Senate Republican meeting over how to proceed on Obamacare. The meeting, held privately, suggests that Republicans have even less idea over how to proceed than their public comments suggest. There appears to be no consensus on anything. Can Republicans repeal the law through a budget reconciliation bill, and then try to pass a replacement later? They don’t know. (“The fact is, we cannot repeal Obamacare through reconciliation,” says Rep. Tom McClintock. “We need to understand exactly, what does that reconciliation market look like? And I haven’t heard the answer yet.”) Are they going to keep the law’s expansion of Medicaid? They don’t even agree on attaching a measure to defund Planned Parenthood.

Numerous members expressed fears about the backlash they would face by snatching coverage from 20 million Americans. They have spent eight years promising to implement something better, and the Republican party is still gawking at a whiteboard trying to figure out step one.

Read more: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/gop-quietly-admits-there-will-be-no-obamacare-replacement.html

Donald Trump campaigned on draining the swamp and to great effect. Millions flocked to Trump and his campaign to show their dissatisfaction with the path the country is on and the state of politics as usual. Looking at his cabinet it’s not clear what exactly Trump meant when he called to drain the swamp, because each and every nominee could be described as a swamp monster in their own right.

First, there was Goldman Sachs executive and foreclosure baron, Steven Mnuchin. Goldman Sachs has been used a lot to fear monger against bad financial products lately and as an institution they’ve probably hurt the middle class more than they have helped. That said, Mnuchin’s involvement with Goldman is one of the least problematic things on his legacy.

During the recession Mnuchin was a vulture capitalist of sorts, who would swoop in and buy failing financial institutions and run them into the ground at the expense of average Americans. All while turning a profit for himself and upper level executives. Most notably as CEO and chairman of OneWest Bank Mnuchin committed basically every cardinal sin someone in an upper level financial capacity could commit. Carefree foreclosures at twice the rate of similar institutions over literally dollars and targeting minority customers with red lining was the norm.

Mnuchin carried out these predatory financial practices with great success, eventually selling off OneWest Bank in 2015 to the tune of $3.4 billion dollars, and $97 million in stock from CIT group which he sold OneWest too.

And that’s just one multi-millionaire, on to the billionaires.

There is also Betsy Devos the Republican mega-donor turned potential Department of Education head. During confirmation hearings when questioned by Bernie Sanders prodded and asked if the “estimated $200 million dollars her family has contributed to the Republican Party” is an accurate figure. To which Devos replied it certainly could be a reasonable figure. And like most mega-donors the fabulously wealthy Devos family didn’t just drop $200 million dollars for no reason.

They have always expected a return on invest and originally it wasn’t supposed to be in the form of direct appointment to an incredibly influential cabinet appointment. For decades the Devos family has poured money into the Republican Party in an attempt to privatize public education by shifting funding to private school vouchers. Although she didn’t admit it during her confirmation hearing, it was her family’s main motivation and it’s hard to believe those statements during that hearing were anything but politics.

Then comes Commerce Secretary nominee, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross. For over two decades Ross managed, per Forbes, “Rothschild Inc’s bankruptcy practice before starting investment firm WL Ross & Co in 2000.” As head of WL Ross & Co the firm practiced various sorts of vulture investing, much like Mnuchin, Ross would swoop in, buy failing companies and walk off with a hefty profit somewhere down the line. Unlike Mnuchin, Ross’s record is a lot more mixed and some unions and labor organizations have some positive things to say about him.

That said, Ross was not afraid to export jobs overseas in order to gain short term profits for stockholders.

The entire cabinet and almost everyone around Donald Trump is a multi-millionaire who almost certainly are not in tune with the needs of average Americans. There is also Ben Carson, worth an estimated $26 million. Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson reportedly owns over $200 million in Exxon Mobil stock. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao brings another $20 million. And it doesn’t end there.

The list of incredibly wealthy people intimately tied to the Trump administration could be much, much, longer. Wealth might not be a set in stone requirement and it has to be said that people at this level of national government tend to come with some assets, but Donald Trump’s cabal of billionaires is not average upper echelons of government levels of wealth. His cabinet is excessively wealthy, that alone separates their interests from the average American, but these billionaires in particular have interests diametrically opposed to lifting all boats.

Unfortunately, these people got where they are today by disregarding the interests of the average American and it doesn’t look like that will change any time soon.

http://millennial-review.com/2017/01/27/donald-trumps-big-billionaire-club-cabinet-oligarchy-bernie-sanders-warned/

Read here

http://www.verygoodlight.com/2017/01/26/drag-queen/

Back in September, the Texas Supreme Court refused to review a lower court ruling that cities may not deny married same-sex couples the benefits it provides to opposite-sex couples. That was a sensible decision, since this is an easy question: The U.S. Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decisions undoubtedly prohibit the government from depriving couples of marriage rights merely because they are gay. Yet the Texas Supreme Court’s inaction prompted outrage from state Republican officials and anti-gay activists, who urged the justices, who are elected, to take the case and allow Texas cities to discriminate against same-sex couples. And on Friday, the court took the first step, caving to Republican demands and agreeing to hear the case in March—a worrying sign that the justices, fearful of a re-election fight, may soon yield to political pressure and roll back marriage equality in Texas.

Read more: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/01/william_pryor_has_no_place_on_the_supreme_court.html

The morning after Donald Trump was elected president, the Trevor Project reported that calls to its LGBTQ youth crisis hotline had more than doubled. It was just the first sign of how deeply Trump’s win has rattled many young people, with many of our most vulnerable particularly affected — LGBTQ youth, black and Latinx youth, girls, Muslims, and young immigrants.

Young people are so frightened and unsettled by the election results that some are hiding who they are, wondering if they can still have the future they’d dreamed of and questioning their own safety and well-being.

We know this because we asked them. After the election, the Human Rights Campaign surveyed more than 50,000 young people — across states, sexual orientations, gender identities, races, ethnicities, religions, and immigration statuses. The results were sobering and heartbreaking.

Seventy percent of participants have seen bullying, hate messages, or harassment during or since the election. Among these participants, 70 percent witnessed an incident motivated by race or ethnicity. More than a quarter of LGBTQ youth said they have been personally bullied or harassed since Election Day — compared to 14 percent of non-LGBTQ youth — with transgender young people most frequently targeted. Hispanic and Latinx respondents were 20 percent more likely than other youth to report having been personally bullied, with harassment targeting both immigrant and nonimmigrant communities.

In the survey, undertaken in partnership with the League of United Latin American Citizens, Southern Poverty Law Center, Mental Health America, Trevor Project, Planned Parenthood, True Colors, and National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance, we also invited participants to write about their experiences — and the stories they shared were truly alarming. Our young people are hearing messages that “Donald Trump is gonna deport you.” They are being spit on, called “freaks” or “wastes of space.” What’s worse, one transgender person of color who is only 17 years old called this harassment “just part of an average day.”

As adults, we owe it to our young people to listen — we need to hear them and we need to act. They are still coming to terms with a national election in which they were not able to vote, but one that will affect their daily lives in very real ways. Our LGBTQ, black, Latinx, Muslim, disabled, and immigrant youth, especially girls and those outside the gender binary, are coming to terms with an administration that ran on a platform of attacking their rights and belittling them.

We must work to end the bullying and harassment they are experiencing — including in their schools and from those now holding the country’s highest offices. They must see us acting with kindness and courage, unwavering in our commitment to inclusion, and we must be their strongest reinforcements when they do the same.

On a hopeful note, our survey showed that most young people feel more motivated to help others than ever before. They talked about volunteering, canvassing for political causes in which they believe, and intervening when they see bullying and harassment. They are not asking to be shielded or treated with kid gloves. But now more than ever they need us to stand with them.

As one young person from Michigan wrote, “My generation … is working harder than ever to make sure the American dream is accessible to everyone and that everyone is included in our society. They are taking a stand against hate. They are demanding a just world, and are fighting for it.”

LGBTQ teens are amazing and they are raising their voices. In a powerful video the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network produced as part of its No Name-Calling Week, high-schoolers from across the country urge President Trump to reject bigotry and hate and serve as a president for all, and GLSEN has mobilized education leaders in a Call to Action to embrace the values of respect and inclusion. Last week in another inspiring action called Reclaim Our Schools, teachers stood up in support of their students — immigrant, Muslim, LGBTQ — any and all feeling under attack.

As adults — whether parents, teachers, neighbors, members of the community — we need to support young organizers raising their voices and we need to send a strong message to all young people that they are not alone — that we can and will have their back. There are many ways adults can support the youth in their lives. If you work with youth join some of these actions and, as a teacher, counselor, social worker or other professional, consider joining us at our Time to Thrive conference in April to learn best practices in creating safe spaces for LGBTQ youth. There are still too many young people out there who feel they do not have a single ally in their lives — who feel hopeless and worry not only about the state of the future but about their ability to live in it.

We need to learn from and support young organizers and we need to act to make the world safe for all our young people. Let’s listen — and let’s get to work.

http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2017/1/26/how-election-affected-queer-teens

idiot, blackmail is a heinous crime. I can't fathom how people are supporting him  :afr:

On Thursday morning at a U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minnesota, an improbable case began to unfold. As a courtroom full of about 20 people looked on, Anmarie Calgaro's attorneys explained why the small-town mom from the state's northernmost "Iron Range" is suing her own 17-year-old child.

The teen in question—referred to as "E.J.K." in court memos—says she's been living on her own for two years. After the minor worked with a legal aid group on an emancipation statement, she began to seek transgender-specific medical care at a local clinic.

When the teen's estranged mom discovered E.J.K.had begun to receive gender transition-related care, she tried to intervene—but said she was surprised to discover her parental rights had been effectively terminated. In November, Calgaro filed a lawsuit against her daughter, health clinics and county agencies.

Alternative Facts

While Calgaro, speaking at a November press conference, portrayed herself as a loving and concerned mom, her transgender teen daughter's court declaration tells a different story.

According to an extensive brief filed by E.J.K.'s attorneys and shared with NBC News, the teen grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, in a house where unstable parents struggled with substance abuse. In court documents, she describes making her own meals and getting herself dressed for school at a young age, often relying on a "network of other adults who supplied some of the care and nurturing that her biological parents were unable to offer."

The teen also said when she first came out as gay around age 13, her mother and stepfather became verbally and physically abusive. At age 15, she said, her mom gave her permission to move in with her biological father—who became incarcerated shortly afterward. E.J.K. then stayed with her grandmother and a series of friends before finally getting her own apartment, where she currently lives.

The teen is remarkably self-sufficient: She has her own apartment, a full-time job and will graduate high school in the spring. She has already received two acceptance letters, say court documents, from college nursing programs. She turns 18 in July.

E.J.K. said she has identified as a girl since she was a young child and began to seek treatment in the summer of 2015, once she was living on her own. "I was not pressured in any way by my providers to consent to this treatment," she said in court papers. "My providers had no involvement in my decision not to involve my mother in my health care decisions."

But at a November press conference, Calgaro grew visibly upset as she recalled discovering that her daughter was receiving medical care without anyone notifying her directly.

"The news that county agencies and health service providers, the school and other county and state offices were completely bypassing me came as a total shock," Calgaro said at the press conference. "Why wasn't I even notified?"

The Lawsuit

Calgaro's lawsuit seeks damages from St. Louis County, where her hometown is located. She's also suing the St. Louis School Board and the principle of her daughter's high school, the director of the county's Health and Human Services agency, and two nonprofit health clinics. Calgaro also wants to regain parental control of E.J.K. and prevent healthcare providers from offering any further treatment.

While the original complaint asked for a jury trial, Calgaro's attorneys later filed a motion for summary judgement—hoping to speed up the case. E.J.K. turns 18 this summer, at which point regaining parental control won't be an option. But if Calgaro wins the case—which attorneys for the teen say is a long shot—she could see a settlement payout either way.

Numerous court briefs were filed in the case, including a brief that states E.J.K. should be dropped from the lawsuit because she's "not a proper defendant." Other briefs filed by the school board, clinics, and health agency named in the suit all basically argue the same thing: Calgaro doesn't have a case because her daughter perfectly fits the definition of an emancipated minor.

Thursday's oral arguments lasted about an hour, with lawyers mostly arguing about whether Calgaro has a constitutional ground for suing anyone. In the end, the judge told the courtroom that he plans to take the case under advisement, apologizing for a backlog that could delay the process.

Health Care Challenges for Trans Youth

According to Minnesota transgender advocates, Calgaro's case could make a bad situation even worse in terms of access to transgender health care services.

David Edwards of the Minnesota group Transforming Families told NBC News that even though he's an employee at the University of Minnesota—where there is a progressive Transgender Health Services clinic—his health insurance would still exclude his own trans daughter from coverage of most gender-affirming care.

"If she were to need any medical care for gender dysphoria—such as hormone blockers or hormone replacement therapy, surgeries—it's categorically excluded," said Edwards, who noted that his daughter is still too young to need such services but could in the near future.

"Parents are the gatekeepers for all health care decisions, because they usually provide the coverage," Edwards said. "Ordinarily, that facilitates access to care. Most of our families have the opposite problem, where they're trying to access care that they have a hard time getting approved because it's being denied in the first place."

Even if Calgaro could block her daughter's medical care, transgender advocates said, it would only delay the inevitable.

"Some parents think that trans health care providers encourage people to transition. But they don't, and we don't need encouragement," said Liz Lilly of the Minnesota Transgender Alliance, who attended Thursday's hearing. ""We only put ourselves through this, because we need to."

But Lilly worries about the possible "chilling effect" that a win could produce among health care providers.

"Trans medical resources, especially for minors, are in short supply," Lilly said. "At my clinic, there is a year-long waitlist for trans teens to be seen by a therapist. This lawsuit could create a chilling effect on providers or clinics who would want to avoid lawsuits, even ones without merit. This could make all health care, including trans health care, more difficult to get for emancipated teens."

Attorneys representing E.J.K. told NBC News that Calgaro is unlikely to win the case based on the emancipation issue, which is already a firm statute. No matter what happens in the case, E.J.K. will soon be an adult.

"[E.J.K.] has persevered through so much and shown so much initiative," Lilly said. "Though this case may make trans youth feel even more helpless, I hope they also hear the message from the community that they are supported and loved by us."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/transgender-teen-sued-by-her-own-mom-speaks-out/ar-AAmhFW3?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp

Nobody disputes this: Three gay Hungarian men, living in crushing poverty in a country intolerant of their lifestyle, moved to the United States with hopes of a better life.

Prosecutors argue they were duped, held in virtual slavery, forced to perform around-the-clock sex acts for webcams, or sell their bodies to johns in New York and Miami. They hardly saw any money, barely ever left the sex dens and ate only bunless hot dogs and Ramen noodles for meals.

“They were strangers in a strange land,” Miami-Dade prosecutor Brenda Mezick told jurors Wednesday on the first day of trial for two fellow Hungarians charged with human trafficking. “They were scared. They were scared all the time.”

But defense lawyers for Viktor Berki and Gabor Acs, also gay Hungarian men alleged to have run the sex-slave ring, insisted that the victims fabricated the supposed mistreatment as a way to avoid being deported back to Hungary.

“This is nothing but a group of young gay men, Hungarian men, escaping persecution in their country,” Berki’s lawyer, Ronald Manto, told jurors. “They won’t freely admit it but they knew exactly what they were doing.”

“They were not victims. If these three men were brutalized, like the state described, they would have asked for help,” said Acs’ lawyer, Elibet Caballero. “They were not that dumb.”

Wednesday was the start of testimony in the trial of Berki and Acs in an ongoing case that has been hailed as a landmark for Florida human-trafficking prosecutions — the first such case for gay male victims.

Prosecutors have already won a conviction against a third man involved in the ring. In 2015, Andras Janos Vass was convicted at trial and sentenced to just over 11 years in prison.

According to authorities, the ringleaders met two victims in Hungary through a website called GayRomeo.com. Another victim was “living with gypsies” as a male prostitute when he met Acs through Facebook.

One of the victims had a cleft palate and needed the money. “He wanted to fix his face,” Mezick told jurors.

In 2012, the three victims, all in their early 20s, were flown to New York City to work in what they believed was a legal business in the United States. The victims “believed they would only be in New York for a few months to make tens of thousands of dollars before returning to their homeland and their families,” according to court documents.

But in New York, the young men were forced to live in a cramped one-bedroom apartment while performing sex acts around the clock, sometimes with johns, other times on live Web cameras, according to the arrest warrant.

Up to eight men lived and worked in the apartment. Their travel documents were seized by Berki, who frequently reminded them he was a policeman in Hungary.

“They believed he would retaliate against their families, and they would have people in Hungary watch them, even if they returned,” Mezick said. “They did not understand what options they really had.”

In August 2012, the group moved to Miami, where, the young men said, the ringleaders continued to force them to prostitute and do webcam work inside a home on the 13300 block of Northwest Eighth Lane.

But defense lawyers said the men only claimed to be victims after a woman posing as an immigration attorney advised them they could stay in the country legally if they cooperated with authorities.

“It is undisputed they were coming here to work in the sex industry — the consensual webcam sex industry,” Caballero said. “They were OK making money that way.”

The trial continues Thursday before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Richard Hersch.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article128778549.html#storylink=cpy

what the actual fuck?  :afr:

Ryan Bos, executive director of the Capital Pride Alliance, which organizes the D.C. Pride events, including the Pride Parade set to take place on June 10, said he has spoken with Bruinooge and expects that Capital Pride officials will collaborate with the march organizers so the march and the D.C. Pride events will complement each other.

link:

http://www.towleroad.com/2017/01/national-pride-march-planned-june/

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I'm not new on this website but I just started becoming active on this forum!

Thanks for being awesome  :hug2:

Welcome!

don't forget to seed!

Have fun !!!