Dear friends,
My father used to caution against ‘preparing for the wrong emergency’. I think about this often when politicians use fear-mongering tactics to excite us into a frenzy about the wrong stuff.
There’s a bill in the Florida legislature designed to gag all mention of gender identity through grade 8, including allowing children and adults to identify themselves with pronouns other than those that conform to their sex assigned at birth.
Equality Florida Action, Inc. was one of the first groups to denounce the proposal, criticizing the bill's "fake moral panic."
I am reminded of what we learned from Jessica Valenti about the playbook of the anti-choice movement. Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay Bill was ‘just for young children’ and now we are looking a full-blown attack on free speech. In both cases, they start with innocuous-sounding proposals as they pursue a broad attack on peoples’ rights.
The folks who want us up-in-arms about pronouns and about minors seeking gender-affirming care are preparing for the wrong emergency; painful dysphoria and suicide are the emergencies.
Acknowledging and respecting gender identity and fluidity and allowing doctors to prescribe hormones and puberty blockers and surgery are appropriate, life-saving responses.
When the media drinks the Kool-Aid of reactionaries, they contribute to distortions of the actual problems we face.
Tell the New York Times to stop spreading misinformation about trans people! This quick action is from GLAAD.
Mayor Eric Adams managed to turn an interfaith prayer breakfast on Tuesday into a troubling digression into his own rejection of the separation of church and state. Among other bizarre remarks, he said
“When we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools.”
In fact, separation of church and state means that schools accommodate students who wish to pray in school. Gun violence is a real emergency; his misrepresentation of cause and effect is disturbing and distracting.
Hate crimes against Jews and Muslims are on the rise. Christian groups are attacking the rights of bodily autonomy, seeking to eliminate all access to abortion. This context makes the Mayor’s rhetoric particularly dangerous.
“In order for our government to truly represent us, it must not favor any belief over another, including non-belief.”
Let the Mayor know that you value the separation of church and state.
I reject the idea of ‘culture war’ and have been looking for alternative language. We are really talking about assaults on fundamental rights. Freedoms of speech and religion and privacy and autonomy are under attack.
And there are other existential threats. Apparently, my call to action on Tuesday was insufficiently strong, so in the spirit of throwback Thursday, I will try again.
Environmental groups refer to such trains as ‘bomb trains’, because if even one LNG-filled car were to explode, it could wipe out a city. That’s an emergency we can prevent.
Sign the petition to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to adopt the rule that will stop the bomb trains!
The Administration has missed its own deadlines for repealing or amending the rule that allows trains to carry LNG. It is right now legal for trains to carry LNG; the uncertainty about what the Biden Administration is going to do about the rule has delayed manufacture of train cars designed to carry LNG. That won’t last forever.
Tell the President that the rule to allow rail transportation of LNG must be reversed. I made it easy!
And, lest we forget the mother of all crises, Fridays for the Future NYC will be in the streets tomorrow.
Strike for climate action with Fridays for the Future!
with love,
L