Originally a comment by Papito on Blowback for booking.

I horrified some tween girls (among whom, my daughter) the other day by saying just that: “There is no LGBTQIA+ community.”

They were stunned. They had never heard anybody say that before. They kept asking me if I’m an ally. I kept asking them what that means. And I told them that none of my gay friends want me to call myself an “ally,” because they think the word is stupid. They’re gay. I’m not. They’re my friends. That doesn’t make me special in any way. I don’t need a word for that.

The other parents with me backed me up. They’re old enough to remember history too. They pointed out that there is a gay community. And there is a lesbian community. And the two don’t really mix much. They pointed out that the two communities cooperate much more these days, after the AIDS crisis, when some of the only people who would take care of many dying gay men were lesbians. But it’s still not one community, it’s two communities that cooperate sometimes. The LGBTQIA+ (let’s just call it QUILTBAG) community is an absolute fabrication, and what’s more it was created for the benefit of people who aren’t even gay or lesbian. On the backs of people who are gay and lesbian. Look at the hatred about lesbian hiking groups. Look at all the apps that won’t let a person say they’re “same-sex attracted” anymore. That’s not a community, that’s subjugation.

All the other letters in the QUILTBAG are forced on those two communities. Sometimes people in those communities accept folks claiming other letters, sometimes not (I have friends who say they wouldn’t even talk to a guy who described himself as “queer,” let alone date him).

All this is what I told those tween girls. Because they have all already been force-fed the dominant dogma and didn’t have a choice in that. Sooner rather than later they should be able to hear different viewpoints. And the trans fad is coming for them.

In High School, they’ll either be part of the quiltbag or people will call them names. Every girl who is a tween now will have a classmate in High School who suddenly claims to be a boy. And they will bully other girls into agreeing they are, and are better for it, and if they don’t there’s names for that. At one school I know you can’t even attend the quiltbag group unless you claim an alternate sexuality or gender identity. And if you don’t… ya basic. Take your basic flag of black and white stripes and, no, wait, you can’t even have that, because it’s hateful. You get no flag, you just get insults and exonyms.

It was Humanists UK who originally reported on the falsified statement:

A UK Government-organised multinational statement committing to the fundamental rights of women and girls has been amended to remove references to ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ and ‘bodily autonomy’. The statement was issued by the UK as part of an intergovernmental conference it hosted in London on 5-6 July. A total of 22 countries signed the joint statement before it was amended. One – anti-abortion Malta – has first signed since. Humanists UK has expressed serious alarm at the changes. It is asking the UK Government for a full explanation, and if possible, a reversal.

That’s extremely shifty behavior. They got the signatures and then they secretively amended it so now the signatures are gone or invalid, or else the originally signers are simply being defrauded. Crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) has also expressed his dismay at the changes, saying that ‘Claims that FoRB can be invoked to deny women the enjoyment of their sexual and reproductive health rights… must be rejected as representing intolerant and patriarchal attitudes’. He says FoRB in fact guarantees such rights.

Your freedom of religion ends where it impinges on my rights. Get out of here.

The original statement was issued as part of the 2022 International Ministerial Conference on FoRB. It gave a commitment to abolishing discriminatory laws that ‘restrict women’s and girls’ full and equal enjoyment of all human rights, including sexual and reproductive health and rights, bodily autonomy’. It also said it would ‘support and build capacities of local religious and belief leaders to… ensure access to sexual and reproductive health and rights’.

However, it has now been revised, removing all references to ‘sexual and reproductive rights’ and ‘bodily autonomy’.

Funny kind of “commitment.”

Alongside this change, the 22 signatory countries has reduced to six. 17 have departed (and are presumably being asked to sign up to the new wording). The only country added since the change is Malta. In Malta there is an absolute ban on abortion in all circumstances, including rape, incest, and fatal foetal abnormalities.

This should be a major scandal.

H/t Gnu Atheism

Now there’s a headline:

Government quietly removes commitments to women’s rights after summit on freedom of beliefs

References to ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ and ‘bodily autonomy’ have been removed from the FCDO statement

References to repealing discriminatory laws that threaten women’s “sexual and reproductive health and rights” and “bodily autonomy” have been removed from a statement published on the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) website.

…

Lisa Hallgarten​, head of policy and public affairs at Brook, which specialises in sexual health for younger people, told i: “The whole point of the original statement is to recognise the need to support the right to religious belief and practice, but ensure it is not at the expense of the fundamental rights of women and girls.

“By changing the language, the purpose and effect of this statement are fatally undermined, and religion appears to trump human rights.”

Keep the religious freedom part, ditch the rights of women and girls part. What could possibly go wrong?

Make no mistake: many religious rules and strictures are all about controlling and limiting women and girls. It’s an obsession. Gotta control them baby-havers, because they’re all sluts so the real people might end up feeding some other guy’s brat. Amen.

Stella Creasy, the Labour and Co-operative MP for Walthamstow, said of the amendments: “I think it reflects a worrying trend behind the scenes in Government to trade women’s human rights. Because there is no ambiguity, either you make a commitment to them or you don’t.

“The original [statement] makes a very clear commitment to sexual and reproductive rights and health, bodily autonomy and other laws, and recognises them as a source of discrimination. The amended version doesn’t.”

That’s why they amended it. The hell with women’s sexual and reproductive rights.

Brave woman:

A female journalist says she was forced to publicly retract some of her reports about Afghanistan after being threatened with prison by the Taliban.

Lynne O’Donnell, an Australian columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, alleges that she was detained, abused and forced to post a series of tweets stating her articles were false.

She has since left Afghanistan.

The Taliban confirmed they had detained Ms O’Donnell and claimed she had falsified reports.

The Taliban confirmed, so the BBC could have skipped that “alleges.” The Taliban confirmed, so she didn’t allege, she said.

Afghanistan has become an increasingly hostile place for journalists, with the current regime cracking down on press freedoms, Human Rights Watch says.

Plus the Taliban hates women. It hates all women and it really hates uppity foreign critical professional intelligent heathen women.

She said she was accused of “breaking their laws” and “offending Afghan culture,” with the Taliban claiming articles she had written – including one about LGBTQ+ people in Afghanistan and another on the forced marriage practices of Taliban militants – were lies.

Ms O’Donnell – former bureau chief for news agencies AFP and AP in Afghanistan – stands by her reporting.

She said the Taliban had asked her to reveal her sources for these articles. But she had refused.

The Taliban foreign ministry said Ms O’Donnell was not asked to reveal her sources, but said she had failed to produce any proof which showed she had not fabricated the reports.

Catch 22 innit.

Once she was safely out of Afghanistan she retracted her retraction. She’s not planning to return.

The Community is Offended.

Comedian Dave Chappelle’s show at a Minneapolis venue on Wednesday was canceled hours before he was set to take the stage because of backlash from staff and the community over his recent jokes about transgender people.

Because jokes about trans people aren’t jokes, they’re blasphemy.

The venue had faced blowback for booking the legendary comedian for a surprise, sold-out performance in the months that followed his 2021 Netflix special, “The Closer,” in which Chappelle doubled down on jokes about the LGBTQ community after past accusations of homophobia and transphobia.

There’s no such thing as “the LGBTQ community.” The T doesn’t belong. The T is a wrong turn, which should fade away.

The storied venue, which is best known for its appearances in Prince’s 1984 film “Purple Rain,” added that while it believes in diverse voices and the freedom of artistic expression, “we lost sight of the impact” booking Chappelle would have on the community.

What impact? The storied venue doesn’t say.

See? No explanation, no detail, no information – just “we hear you, we’re sorry about the thing, we regret the thing, we feel guilty about the thing, we believe in diverse voices and the freedom of artistic expression but there’s the thing.”

The Post is a little more informative.

Chappelle has faced criticism for comments that LGBTQ advocacy groups say could incite harm against transgender people. As part of “The Closer,” Chappelle joked about transgender genitalia, said “gender is a fact” and told his audience he was on “team TERF,” an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. The comedian also defended J.K. Rowling, the author of the “Harry Potter” books, who has been criticized for making statements seen as transphobic. Chappelle has joked about the transgender community in the past, including in his 2019 special, “Sticks & Stones.”

The horror.

A tale of two news items:

First, Citrus County [Florida] Chronicle:

Inverness woman arrested for having inappropriate relationships with minors

An Inverness woman was jailed for allegedly having inappropriate relationships with several minors she also sent explicit images to.

Citrus County Sheriff’s Office authorities arrested Diana Elizabeth Guevara July 13 on a warrant charging the 33-year-old with transmitting harmful materials to minors, having unlawful sexual activity with minors, and four counts of lewd and lascivious battery.

…

A second victim, a teenage boy, told investigators Guevara performed a sex act on him in June while he was at her home, and a third teenage boy told Ricci that Guevara had sexual contact with him four separate times.

Both teens said Guevara told them she was younger than her actual age.

Second, Reduxx:

Trans-Identified Male Arrested After “Manipulating” Minors Into Sexual Abuse

A trans-identified male who “manipulated” children into sexual activities was arrested last Wednesday in Citrus County, Florida. According to police, 33-year-old Diana Elizabeth Guevara fostered a relationship with one child in order to “identify [his] next victims.”

Guevara sent multiple explicit photos and videos on social media to children between the ages of 12 to 17, law enforcement officials said, adding that he also had sexual relations with a number of the children at his home in Inverness.

…

Guevara’s crime received little coverage by mainstream outlets, and he was referred to as a “woman” by both police and local news.

In 2017, Guevara, a former Miami-Dade Police Officer, was featured in both print news and television reports advertising the benefits of ‘gender affirming’ medical interventions through the LGBTQ Clinic at the University of Miami. In an article published by the Miami Herald, Guevara lauds having a breast augmentation as “life-changing” experience.

The Citrus County story never once mentions that Guevara is a man or that he is trans.

Someone said what?

The intersection of Twitter and Reddit begets monsters, or something.

Let’s tease out the meaning.

Well, there’s a lesbian walking group (advertised on meetup.com) near me and I really want to go out and meet other dykes so I decided to sign up…

‘this group is for LESBIANS ONLY. Lesbian is defined as same-sex attracted biological woman.’

WHY DO PEOPLE EVEN DO THIS. The absolute nastiness of a group of lesbians, who ought to know better, saying, in essence, ‘haha we’re going to go out and have fun and you can’t come because you’re trans and we don’t want to get trans germs all over us.’ I’m really pissed off and quite frankly upset and I’m not even trans!

But that absolutely isn’t what the group is saying, not in essence or in any other way. It’s not “because you’re trans,” it’s “because you’re men.” LESBIANS ARE ALLOWED TO GET TOGETHER WITHOUT MEN.

I’ll say that again, this time without shouting. Lesbians are allowed to get together without men. That’s legal, and acceptable, and reasonable, and not unfair or discriminatory or any other pejorative. By the same token, gay men are allowed to get together without women.

It’s nothing to do with “trans germs.” It’s to do with sex, and who is which, and the power differential between the two. Men who identify as lesbians remain men, and thus are not in fact lesbians. Men can identify as traffic lights if they want to, but nobody else has to pay any attention.

The comments on the Reddit post all share the poster’s shock-horror at this monstrous exclusion of men from a lesbian group. The Reddit groups is called…”butch lesbians.”

Girl Guides is “inclusive.”

We want every member of Girlguiding to feel like they belong.

Well that makes sense. There wouldn’t be much point in having members you make feel as if they don’t belong.

It’s why we have an Equality and diversity policy, training for volunteers on how to include everyone, and why we love to share stories from all our members on what it means to feel included. We hope it helps you as volunteers feel empowered to welcome everyone to our organisation.

Well they can’t welcome everyone to their organization, surely. It’s Girl Guides – so they can’t welcome adults or boys. Right?

We’re sharing the true story of Rainbow (all names have been changed), a girl who joined our youngest section and knew Girlguiding was a space for her.

‘My husband and I are lucky enough to be parents of a seven-year-old girl, Rainbow,’ says Jane. ‘She loves LEGO, climbing trees, reading, playing with her friends and not listening to us when we ask her to wash her hands before dinner.

‘She might sound very much like your children, and she is the same, except when she was born, we assumed she was a boy.’

Ah. In other words Rainbow is a boy. “Girl” Guides is being inclooosive by incloooding a boy, which means all the girls are deprived of being in a Guides group for girls. Why is one boy privileged over a group of girls?

The rest of it is the usual fatuous drivel.

Be sure to report all this in a cheerful optimistic manner:

About 100 million Americans from California to New England were sweating through heat advisories and warnings from the National Weather Service on Wednesday, with a brutal heat wave across the central part of the country showing no signs of letting up.

Oh that sounds harsh. Let’s not say brutal heat wave, let’s say misunderstood heat wave.

Heat warnings and advisories were in place for parts or all of 28 states. People in the Southeast and the Southern Plains faced the most oppressive temperatures, with triple digits forecast for Wednesday and beyond across parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, said Andrew Orrison, a Weather Service meteorologist.

Oklahoma City broke a daily heat record dating back to the Dust Bowl era on Tuesday with a temperature of 110 — tied for the state’s highest-ever July temperature, the Weather Service said — and Austin is set on Wednesday to see its 40th straight day of highs over 100 degrees.

“These are definitely dangerous heat conditions,” Mr. Orrison said.

Well, only if you’re not a reptile.

It’s only slightly less bad in New York and New England.

It’s difficult to blame any particular heat snap on climate change without extensive scientific analysis, but heat waves like the ones in Europe, Asia and North America this summer are typical of what scientists expect as the globe warms — more frequent, longer lasting and more dangerous.

Heat waves in the United States jumped from an average of two per year in the 1960s to six per year by the 2010s. And it’s all part of an overall warming trend: The last seven years have been the warmest in the history of accurate worldwide records.

But don’t talk about it, because that’s a downer.

So – John – I want us to be happy about the weather and everything is – I don’t know whether something has happened to meteorologists to make you all a little bit fatalistic and and [giggle[ harbingers of doom.

Gee I can’t imagine what it might be.

Originally a comment by Papito on Can’t a guy get a sunburn in peace?

I see three things going on here:

Sound familiar? I definitely hear echoes of that old, regressive belief that sinister people are responsible for weird weather in today’s attempt to pin heatwaves on the rich or on coal-mining or on motorists. Environmentalism has rehabilitated in pseudo-scientific form the age-old instinct to find the witch or the sinner who is to blame for society’s misfortunes.

One part is just sticking his thumb in the liberals’ eye. This is a big part of why we got Trump in the US and you got Brexit in England. There’s no real calculation among these followers, just spite. I thought of them as the “South Park Republicans,” people who wanted to be offensive, cuss, and make fun of people, and resented Mommy and Daddy for telling them it wasn’t nice. There is no end to their rhetoric: it can always be made more hyperbolic, more ridiculous, and the mob will scream all the louder. Nor is there any need for consistency among the verses, as long as the refrain remains “F the Liberals!”

Another part is the way in which the left makes a kind of religion about every putatively correct belief. We all deal with this in the case of gender ideology. Witches to be burned, starting with JKR. The left also has its mobs of dumb followers who just repeat whatever cant they’re told to. Black Lives Matter! Trans Women Are Women!

In the case of climate change, we have some folks on the left who are very much “Ready, Fire, Aim!” In my area, where most heating is provided by natural gas if not oil, there’s a town that’s working to outlaw installation of natural gas heating and cooking in new buildings. Everybody is supposed to use electric heat pumps. But the state as a whole gets the vast majority of its electricity from gas, which is half as efficient when burned to produce electricity as it is when burned to produce heat. Virtue-signalling about dubious improvements (the recycling bin in my town really just gets dumped in with the trash at the other end of the ride) does not improve anything, and inflames the opposing mob more.

I agree that the evidence supports the idea that coal burning should flat out stop. But the left also got nuclear power dismantled in Germany, which is what put Germany in the bind it’s in today, beholden to Russia for natural gas and burning far too much coal. Germany tore down nuclear plants and built coal plants, and that was not really an improvement. Let’s get the policy right before we enact it.

A third thing going on here, which we can’t discount, is the differential burden of higher fossil fuel taxes. In my family, we are firmly in the zoomocracy. Nobody in my house has to go to an office very often, and we use cars only for out of town travel and shopping trips for large things. I live in a nice part of a nice city, and my kids can ride their bikes to school, camp, college, everything. I can go two weeks without getting in a car. Does this make me virtuous? No. I’ve got a contractor coming today to see about fixing a bathroom that has some problems. Will he ride his bicycle here? No. Will any one of the guys working for him not drive here if he takes the job? No; they’ll commute, by car, from even farther away, because it’s very expensive to live in my city. This means that the cost of gas falls most heavily on them, not on me. This is the reason the gilets jaunes got all rowdy in France.

Ritualistic blaming of the wealthy does nothing to solve global warming; they can laugh it off, or buy a tropical forest and claim absolution for their yachts. Meanwhile, the people who actually have to go to jobs – who can’t do their jobs from the other side of the internet – pay at the pump. And if their jobs happen to be mining coal, then they’ll pay twice. Global warming is a problem, and we have to respond to it, but it is politically – and morally – idiotic to put the heaviest burden on the working poor. We have to solve social problems at the same time we solve environmental problems. The working poor must be lifted up by our policy solutions to global warming, or they will be self-defeating.

And, yes, that puts us in a terrible position, because we have other political factions who don’t give a damn about either problem, and are counting on us to screw up one or both.

Brendan O’Neill’s empty formulaic “Look at the lefties making a big fuss about climate change which everyone knows isn’t a thing” piece:

Is anyone else tiring of all this green hysteria over the heatwave? There is something medieval about it. There is something creepily pre-modern in the idea that sinful mankind has brought heat and fire and floods upon himself with his wicked, hubristic behaviour. What next – plagues of locusts as a punishment for our failure to recycle?

Cute, but beside the point. Literary criticism isn’t the right tool for doing away with global warming. It really doesn’t matter whether or not Brendan O’Neill is bored by talk of climate change, what matters is that it’s happening and there is a great deal of research that shows how it’s happening. It’s not something people just kick back in their chairs and say, it’s what climate scientists discover by digging up core samples and measuring the Colorado River (when they can find it) and comparing weather statistics. It’s not a story. The permafrost isn’t thawing to annoy Brendan O’Neill, it’s just thawing.

The unhinged eco-dread over the heatwave exposes how millenarian environmentalism has become. Climate-change activism is less and less about coming up with practical solutions to the problem of pollution and more about demonising mankind as a plague on a planet, a pox on Mother Earth.

It’s not just about “pollution” ffs, and there are no “practical solutions” that will just make climate change disappear. Tipping points can’t be untipped.

To my mind, there could be no better proof that climate-change activism has become an End of Days cult than the fact that its chief ideologues are now even incapable of enjoying hot weather. 

Oh ffs. He’s not really this thick, it’s an act, but it’s such a stupid act.

That one weird trick of saying something self-involved and ridiculous, and then answering all questions with variations on “Why would you ask that?”

“Overeducated.” Really? Any evidence for that? I’d have said under.

He asked in response to your absurd tweet!

Because you’re not over-educated. You come across as quite under-educated and incurious.

Your tweet implies it.

This game is stupid, let’s play something else.

Later…

“Objective statement of fact”???

She’s like Brendan O’Neill turned inside out…which is funny because Brendan O’Neill is also like Brendan O’Neill turned inside out.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? at Miscellany Room 8.

We as a species are now taking part in a real life version of a particularly fiendish iteration of the “trolley problem,” in which we are pondering whether or not to throw the switch, riding in the trolley, and tied to the tracks all at the same time. We are the dinosaurs and the asteroid. Our current situation is an unprecedented superposition of disasters and catastrophes reinforcing each other and reverberating around the globe. The greatest threat to our way of life comes from our way of life. Climate, biodiversity, water, food, resources, war. The people who are in the position to control the situation (to the dwindling degree that such control remains at all possible or effective) are ultimately going to be subject to many of the same dire consequences as those riding the trolley or caught in its path. The timing might vary depending on locale and wealth, but like some nightmare moebius strip, but we are all on the trolley, and we are all on the tracks. As the seconds tick, the power of the switch to do anything at all ebbs away.

This has been your daily reminder that we are all so very, very fucked.

Sure, kids, go play with the chainsaw, just wear a sunhat and you’ll be fine.

It was with some trepidation that I set off into the hills of Pyrenees Orientales on Saturday. The temperature was forecast to rise to 37°C by the afternoon – a level that is lethal, according to British news sites, even if you are sitting around in the garden. Apparently, today and tomorrow’s heatwave is going to kill thousands of Britons. 

Haw haw, aren’t people stupid for understanding that excessive heat kills.

Was I going to end up being recorded in the local French newspapers as the foolish Englishman who perished after going out in the midday sun? I needn’t have worried. I didn’t see many people at first, but by the time I reached the more used paths, there were plenty of locals out enjoying the weather, including at least one family who had taken their young children on a stroll of several miles. Take a sunhat and plenty of water and there is nothing to be afraid of.

So there you go! The Spectator columnist has spoken! Just take your kids out in dangerous heat and hope for the best! He saw some people who did it and they weren’t corpses so that’s research enough, yeah? Of course.

The heatwave is just the latest manifestation of our own public authorities’ obsession with doom. Dominic Raab was in trouble on Sunday for merely suggesting that people might enjoy this week’s weather. In the grim orthodoxy of climate panic, sunny weather is not something to be enjoyed; it is a portent of doom, punishment for our excessively wealthy lifestyles and capitalism in general.

The trouble is, climate doesn’t read the Spectator. Climate doesn’t care how far the Spectator columnist walked or didn’t walk, it doesn’t care how much he taunts people who understand that excessive heat can kill, it doesn’t care whether he enjoys sunny weather or not. Climate isn’t political in that sense; climate just does what it does.

The relative humidity at Heathrow Airport – a contender if any records are broken today or tomorrow – at 10 a.m. this morning was a perfectly pleasant 41 per cent. Britain is essentially in the same body of air as down here in South West France. 

There is a side-effect to ordering us all to stay indoors during the heatwave. All we will soak up is the usual climate hyperbole being fed to us via our TV and websites  – that we are being boiled alive in a man-made cataclysm. Fortunately, for now, I am somewhere where life is going on in spite of high temperatures, and people are allowed to enjoy, rather than feel guilty about, hot weather.

Speaking of southwest France…

Researchers are investigating how humans deal with extreme heat.

One thing is for sure, scientists say: The heat waves of the past two decades are not good predictors of the risks that will confront us in the decades to come. Already, the link between greenhouse-gas emissions and sweltering temperatures is so clear that some researchers say there may soon no longer be any point trying to determine whether today’s most extreme heat waves could have happened two centuries ago, before humans started warming the planet. None of them could have.

…

When the mercury is high, we aren’t as effective at work. Our thinking and motor functions are impaired. Excessive heat is also associated with greater crime, anxiety, depression and suicide.

Being cooked isn’t good for us. Who knew?

Dr. Venugopal gets frustrated when asked, about her research on Indian workers, “India is a hot country, so what’s the big deal?”

Seriously. I get frustrated by that and similar questions and remarks too. “We’re just not used to it, to people in India this is nothing.” Wrong. People can “get used to” things that are bad for them.

Nobody asks what the big deal is about having a fever, but heatstroke puts the body in a similar state.“

That is human physiology,” Dr. Venugopal said. “You can’t change that.”

What I keep saying.

Europe is getting it in the neck.

Scientists say the persistent extreme heat already this year is in keeping with a trend. Heat waves in Europe, they say, are increasing in frequency and intensity at a faster rate than almost any other part of the planet, including the Western United States.

Global warming plays a role, as it does in heat waves around the world, because temperatures are on average about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) higher than they were in the late 19th century, before emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases became widespread. So extreme heat takes off from a higher starting point.

But beyond that, there are other factors, some involving the circulation of the atmosphere and the ocean, that may make Europe a heat wave hot spot.

It has to do with changes in the jet stream, and maybe with faster warming in the Arctic, and maybe changes in a major ocean current. Also, the first heat wave is the parent to more of them.

As in other parts of the world, a heat wave in Europe can make it more likely for others to occur in the same area, because a period of extreme heat dries out the soil.

When there is some moisture in the soil, some of the sun’s energy is used in evaporating the water, leading to a slight cooling effect. But when one heat wave wipes out almost all the soil moisture, there is little left to evaporate when the next wave of hot air arrives. So more of the sun’s energy bakes the surface, adding to the heat.

Bad and getting worse and will continue getting worse. We’re the egg slowly frying.

It occurs to me that “mother” and “father” (and their equivalents in other languages) must be the most emotionally loaded words in any language. We all have them and many of us grow up to be one or the other. We wouldn’t exist without the people behind the words. The words matter. Right? I’m not suggesting some weird incomprehensible notion, yeah?

Now this:

A government bureaucracy pretends there is no such thing as a “mother.”

Promoted on Facebook.

This important procedure – yes what could be more important than doing expensive surgery on the face of a man who wants to look like a woman. Prosthetic limbs for children who have stepped on mines in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, to name one category.

Another way the lunatic right is destroying everything:

Through a wave of pandemic-related litigation, a trio of small but mighty conservative legal blocs has rolled back public health authority at the local, state and federal levels, recasting America’s future battles against infectious diseases.

Because that’s what we want, right? To be helpless in the face of pandemics?

Galvanized by what they’ve characterized as an overreach of COVID-related health orders issued amid the pandemic, lawyers from the three overlapping spheres — conservative and libertarian think tanks, Republican state attorneys general, and religious liberty groups — are aggressively taking on public health mandates and the government agencies charged with protecting community health.

Because it’s bad to protect community health. What we want is more disease and early death!

In Wisconsin, a conservative legal center won a case before the state Supreme Court stripping local health departments of the power to close schools to stem the spread of disease.

Let the kids get sick and spread the sickness! That’s freedom!

In Missouri, the Republican state attorney general waged a campaign against school mask mandates. Most of the dozens of cases he filed were dismissed but nonetheless had a chilling effect on school policies.

Good good good. We don’t want schools trying to slow the spread of disease.

Although the three blocs are distinct, they share ties with the Federalist Society, a conservative legal juggernaut. They also share connections with the State Policy Network, an umbrella organization for state-based conservative and libertarian think tanks and legal centers, and the SPN-fostered American Juris Link, described by president and founder Carrie Ann Donnell as “SPN for lawyers.” In the COVID era, the blocs have supported one another in numerous legal challenges by filing amicus briefs, sharing resources and occasionally teaming up.

Their legal efforts have gained traction with a federal judiciary transformed by Republican congressional leaders, who strategically stonewalled judicial appointments in the final years of Democratic President Barack Obama’s second term. That put his Republican successor, Trump, in position to fill hundreds of judicial vacancies, including the three Supreme Court openings, with candidates decidedly more friendly to the small-government philosophy long espoused by conservative think tanks.

Just in time for global warming to kick into high gear. Genius.