#a right-wing Christian legal advocacy group

[selfmaderibcageman]

Who do children most fundamentally belong to? Themselves.

[mariacallous]

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments in a challenge to abortion pill access across the country, including in states where abortion is legal. The stakes for abortion rights are sky-high, and the case is the most consequential battle over reproductive health care access since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.

At the center of this fight is mifepristone, a pill that blocks a hormone needed for pregnancy. The drug has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for more than two decades, and it’s used to treat some patients with Cushing’s syndrome, as well as endometriosis and uterine fibroids. But its primary use is the one contested now—mifepristone is the first of two pills taken in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy for a standard medication abortion, along with the drug misoprostol.

If the justices side with the antiabortion activists seeking to limit access to mifepristone, it could upend nationwide access to the most common form of abortion care. A ruling that invalidates mifepristone’s approval would open the door for any judge to reverse the FDA approval of any drug, especially ones sometimes seen as controversial, such as HIV drugs and hormonal birth control. It could also have a chilling effect on the development of new drugs, making companies wary of investing research into medicines that could later be pulled from the market.

Pills are now the leading abortion method in the US, and their popularity has spiked in recent years. More than six in 10 abortions in 2023 were carried out via medication, according to new data from the Guttmacher Institute. Since rules around telehealth were relaxed during the Covid-19 pandemic, many patients seeking medication abortions have relied on virtual clinics, which send abortion pills by mail. And it keeps getting more popular: Hey Jane, a prominent telemedicine provider, saw demand increase 73 percent from 2022 to 2023. It recorded another 28 percent spike comparing data from January 2023 to January 2024.

“Telemedicine abortion is too effective to not be in the targets of antiabortion folks,” says Julie F. Kay, a longtime reproductive rights lawyer and director of the advocacy group Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine.

Tomorrow’s argument comes after a long, tangled series of legal disputes in lower courts. The Supreme Court will be hearing two cases consolidated together, including FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, in which a coalition of antiabortion activists filed a suit challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, asking for it to be removed from the market. The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing Christian law firm that often takes politically charged cases.

Despite decades of scientific consensus on the drug’s safety record, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine has alleged that mifepristone is dangerous to women and leads to emergency room visits. A 2021 study cited by the plaintiffs to back up their claims was retracted in February after an independent review found that its authors came to inaccurate conclusions.

In April 2023, the Trump-appointed judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas issued a preliminary ruling on the FDA case invalidating the agency’s approval of mifepristone. The ruling sent shock waves far beyond the reproductive-rights world, as it had major implications for the entire pharmaceutical industry, as well as the FDA itself; the ruling suggested that the courts could revoke a drug’s approval even after decades on the market.

The US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed Kacsmaryk’s decision a week later, allowing the drug to remain on the market, but undid FDA decisions in recent years that made mifepristone easier to prescribe and obtain. That decision limited the time frame in which it can be taken to the first seven weeks of pregnancy and put telemedicine access, as well as access to the generic version of the drug in jeopardy.

Following the 5th Circuit ruling, the FDA and Danco Laboratories sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court, asking the justices to preserve access until it could hear the case. In its legal filing, Danco aptly described the situation as “regulatory chaos.”

SCOTUS issued a temporary stay, maintaining the status quo; the court ultimately decided to take up the case in December 2023.

As all this was unfolding, pro-abortion-rights states across the country were passing what are known as shield laws, which protect medical practitioners who offer abortion care to pregnant patients in states where abortion is banned. This has allowed some providers, including the longtime medication-abortion-advocacy group Aid Access, to mail abortion pills to people who requested them in states like Louisiana and Arkansas.

Though the oral arguments before the Supreme Court begin on Tuesday, it will likely be months before a ruling. Court watchers suspect a decision may be handed down in June. With the US presidential election in the fall, the ruling may become a major campaign issue, especially as abortion access helped galvanize voters in the 2022 midterms.

If the Supreme Court agrees with the plaintiffs that mifepristone should be taken off the market, some in the pharmaceutical industry worry that it will undermine the authority of the FDA, the agency tasked with reviewing and approving drugs based on their safety and efficacy.

“This case isn't about mifepristone,” says Elizabeth Jeffords, CEO of Iolyx Therapeutics, a company developing drugs for immune and eye diseases. Jeffords is a signatory on an amicus brief filed in April 2023 that brought together 350 pharmaceutical companies, executives, and investors to challenge the Texas district court’s ruling.

“This case could have easily been about minoxidil for hair loss. It could have been about Mylotarg for cancer. It could have been about measles vaccines,” Jeffords says. “This is about whether or not the FDA is allowed to be the scientific arbiter of what is good and safe for patients.”

Greer Donley, an associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on abortion on the law, doesn’t think it’s likely that the court will revoke mifepristone’s approval entirely. Instead, she sees two possible outcomes. The Supreme Court could dismiss the case or could undo the FDA’s decision in 2023 to permanently remove the in-person dispensing requirement and allow abortion by telehealth. “This would be an even more narrow decision than what the 5th Circuit did, but it would still be pretty devastating to abortion access,” she says.

The Supreme Court could also decide that the plaintiffs lack a right to bring the case to court, says David Cohen, a professor of law at Drexel University whose expertise is in constitutional law and gender issues. “This case could get kicked out on standing, meaning that the plaintiffs aren't the right people to bring this case,” he says. “If most of the questions are about standing, that will give you a sense that that's what the justices are concerned about.”

As the current Supreme Court is considered virulently antiabortion, reproductive-health-care workers are already preparing for the worst. Some telehealth providers have already floated a backup plan: offering misoprostol-only medication abortions. This is less than ideal, as the combination of pills is the current standard of care and offers the best results; misoprostol on its own can cause additional cramping and nausea. For some providers who may have to choose between misoprostol-only or nothing, it’s better than nothing.

Abortion-rights activists have no plans to give up on telehealth abortions, regardless of the outcome of this particular case. “Let us be clear, Hey Jane will not stop delivering telemedicine abortion care, regardless of the outcome of this case,” says Hey Jane’s CEO and cofounder, Kiki Freedman.

“They’re not going to stuff the genie back in the bottle,” Kay says.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

R.G. Cravens at SPLC's Hatewatch:

Anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is engaged in an ongoing crusade to force private businesses to adhere to conservative Christian theology, in part by spreading the false narrative that private sector banks have been dropping conservative religious clients since the Obama administration. The conspiratorial claim, which ADF calls “debanking,” has arisen out of an ongoing effort from ADF to ban or disrupt private sector investments in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and environmental sustainability. Despite the lack of evidence for any broad-based, anti-conservative Christian banking conspiracy, the idea has been gaining traction in the right-wing political sphere, even finding a sympathetic audience with some lawmakers.

Making a conspiracy

ADF’s senior vice president for corporate engagement, Jeremy Tedesco, testified about debanking at a March 7 hearing before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. His testimony largely centered on ADF’s yearslong legal, lobbying and public relations efforts to coerce boards of publicly traded companies to vote on anti-DEI policies, characterized as “viewpoint diversity” advocacy.

ADF claims that “debanking” is the result of government and corporate collusion to silence – and close the bank accounts of – conservative Christians. The government and banks, Tedesco claimed in his testimony, have shown an “unsettling willingness” to monitor “customers’ speech and religious exercise.” By conflating the market consequences for supporting hate and extremism – such as customers choosing not to patronize and shareholders not investing in corporations that do business with extremist groups – ADF has perpetuated a false conspiracy theory that claims big government and big corporations are victimizing conservative Christians. “The government can and will weaponize the financial marketplace against Americans for political benefit,” Tedesco warned. At the same time, he implored the committee to adopt a bill, the “Fair Access to Banking Act,” that would coerce banks and financial institutions to violate their corporate DEI values, forcing them to do business with hate and extremist groups.

In 2024, ADF has devoted significant resources to pushing the idea of “debanking” into the public sphere, even as the group claims that its own donations have suffered in the past five years as large, donor-advised funds question the group’s record of spreading anti-LGBTQ+ hate and extremism. Tedesco’s public appearances suggest ADF is drawing on both Christian right and white nationalist themes to build its case for government regulation to stop what it characterizes as an anti-white and anti-Christian conspiracy.

SPLC’s Hatewatch blog debunks the right-wing “debanking” conspiracy theory championed by anti-LGBTQ+ extremist hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

[recreationaldivorce]

this file ("Deutsch emails") contains the complete source of email threads for the 2023-03-08 Mother Jones story “Inside the Secret Working Group That Helped Push Anti-Trans Laws Across the Country”. the emails are comprised of communications spanning 2019-2021 principally regarding an attempt to pass a trans youth transition treatment ban in south dakota in 2019, spearheaded by republican rep. fred deutsch and sen. lee schoenbeck.

there are extensive discussions between deutsch and notorious anti-gay and anti-trans “experts” associated with known hate groups targeting transgender healthcare in the united states, including dr. quentin l. van meter and dr. michelle cretella of the catholic medical association, dr. andre van mol of the christian medical & dental associations and american college of pediatricians, dr. michael k. laidlaw of the kelsey coalition, dr. william j. malone of the society for evidence-based gender medicine, dr. paul w. hruz of the national catholic bioethics center, laura haynes of narth, and deacon dr. patrick w. lappert of catholic reparative therapy group courage international. participants discuss crafting their language to avoid acknowledging that transgender people exist, constructing new ways to define doctors as criminals for providing gender-affirming care, and targeting a federal agency publication that correctly points out the dangers of anti-gay conversion therapy. their emails frequently digress into personal vendettas and ambitions of destroying established professional groups such as the endocrine society, and they typically celebrate their anti-trans legal and political achievements as a victory of the christian god.

the emails describe a wider national effort against transition treatment for minors, which included discussions with idaho rep. julianne young and sen. steve vick, georgia rep. ginny earhart, and florida rep. anthony sabatini. several anti-lgbt conservative legal groups are intimately involved in the discussion, including alliance defending freedom, adf-affiliated detransitioners hacsi horvath and walt heyer, eunie smith of eagle forum, adf-linked attorney vernadette r. broyles of the child & parental rights campaign, jane robbins of the american principles project, kara dansky and natasha chart of women’s liberation front, richard mast of liberty counsel, and emily zinos of minnesota family council and hands across the aisle. more recently, the transphobia-captured state of alabama harassed the endocrine society and wpath with subpoenas for their internal communications regarding hate groups and individuals participating in the deutsch emails, including segm, the american college of pediatricians, michael laidlaw, william malone, andre van mol, michelle cretella, and quentin van meter. the release of the deutsch emails is in the public interest and brings an equivalent level of transparency to the internal work of these major anti-trans advocacy and lobbying groups.

[pashterlengkap]

Christian conservative group opposes IVF for the most bizarre reason yet

The anti-LGBTQ+ group Family Research Council (FRC) opposes in vitro fertilization (IVF), a conception method responsible for roughly 2.3% of all infants born in the U.S. and often used by LGBTQ+ couples, because IVF clinics use pornography to get sperm from donors. “Pornography is an integral part of the IVF process. And the husband’s use of pornography is typically how sperm was obtained. That’s not good for a marriage. We know that pornography goes against what God tells us about the dignity of men and women in a marriage,” said Mary Szoch, director of the FRC’s Center for Human Dignity (the FRC’s anti-abortion division), in a recent video. Related A couple’s fight over frozen embryos could upend IVF access in Texas The case is no doubt part of the predicted “domino effect” stemming from the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling declaring embryos as legal children. Married heterosexual couples who regularly view pornography report higher levels of relationship dissatisfaction and are more likely to get divorced, according to a 2020 study. However, the study couldn’t show which way the causation ran. That is, it’s not clear if porn causes relationship dissatisfaction or if dissatisfied partners are more likely to view porn. LGBTQ+ news you can rely on Keep track of the ongoing battle against bias and for equality with our newsletter. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Of course, the FRC’s opposition to IVF is also shared by numerous Republican legislators who view fertilized embryos as living people and who view the discarding of such embryos as a form of murder. IVF, as it’s performed today, requires the creation of multiple fertilized embryos to increase the chances that at least one will lead to a pregnancy. To date, three states — Missouri, Alabama, and Georgia — have laws that grant personhood to fertilized embryos. Arizona enacted a law granting those rights as well, but it’s currently blocked. A dozen other states have introduced legislation this year that would legally declare embryos as people. IVF is also commonly used by same-sex couples to conceive children. As such, efforts to restrict IVF access particularly harm LGBTQ+ people who want to become parents. Mary Szoch of the Family Research Council is really digging deep to rationalize the organization's opposition to IVF: "Pornography is an integral part of the IVF process … That's not good for a marriage." pic.twitter.com/DQKGr2sP5I— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) May 22, 2024 While the FRC describes itself as a church and, previously, as an educational non-profit, it’s foremost an anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion organization, designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It was founded in 1981 by James Dobson, a longtime homophobe who also founded Focus on the Family (FOF), the largest theocratic-right organization in the United States. Both FOF and FRC oppose same-sex marriage and sex education in schools (except “abstinence-only”), support so-called conversion therapy, and generally oppose anything that promotes the so-called “homosexual agenda” — even concepts of tolerance and diversity which, according to Dobson, are “buzzwords for homosexual advocacy.” According to Dobson, the goals of this homosexual movement include “universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, the discrediting of Scriptures that condemn homosexuality, muzzling of the clergy and Christian media, granting special privileges and rights in the law, overturning laws prohibiting pedophilia, indoctrination of children and future generations through public education, and securing all the legal benefits of marriage for any two or more people who claim to have homosexual tendencies.” Peter Sprigg, FRC’s Senior Researcher for Policy Studies, says that same-sex sexuality should be legislated and declared illegal and that “criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior” should be enforced. He also argued that repealing the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy encourages the… http://dlvr.it/T7Q6bQ

[dervlaann]

It's worth fighting this.

Below is some info about "he gets us" and the Pens contact page, note multiple contacts

We can also contact the team's beat reporters/pittsburgh media, ask them to run a story, investigate, ask the org about it

Hailey Hunter is supposed to be right-wing? But I would like to think Haase might bite.

also there players' instagrams etc?

A note: I am 47 and from/in the UK. I've seen in my life that though this kind of phone/letter/pressure campaign might seem lightweight, pointless, too wishywashy, unsexy, whatever, it can and does work - Amnesty International for one is an example.

I'm gonna be getting on the phone from England about it because fuck these bigots.

i do find it interesting that players can’t wear pride jerseys during warmups because it might force a player to be near a political message they don’t endorse but not only can he gets us dot com the jesus website get display ads on the boards during the games but also the penguins account will even shout them out on their instagram story. interesting. thought-provoking stuff

[msclaritea]

Meet Tim Dunn & Farris Wilks—two billionaires from West Texas.

They bought Paxton’s acquittal for $3 million. Now they’re pushing a private school voucher scam.

Their ultimate goal is even more ambitious: transforming Texas into an authoritarian, Christian Nationalist state.

Dunn & Wilks are oil and gas oligarchs.

They’re also both Christian pastors.

These two billionaire-pastors are spending their fortune enacting an extreme Christian nationalist worldview in the second-largest state in the country.

And no one is talking about it.

Dunn & Wilks have bought the top politicians in Texas with $100+ million in contributions.

And it’s not just politicians. They fund a sprawling network of PACs, think tanks, and media outlets.

Every right-wing policy that's come out of Texas lately goes back to them.

When they’re not buying politicians, Dunn & Wilks both preach at far-right churches.

They push a theology of power, control, and domination — not universal love.

Now their toxic theology is becoming law in Texas.

Just this week, a Dunn & Wilks operative espoused the racist Great Replacement Theory.

She followed it up with a claim that white people are being “genocided.”

This is the Dunn & Wilks worldview.

How significant is their influence?

Every Republican State Senator and over half of Republican House members in Texas have taken money from Dunn & Wilks.

For some Republicans, nearly HALF of their total campaign contributions are from these two billionaires.

And our statewide officials are in their pockets too.

Greg Abbott takes free trips on Wilks' private plane.

Dan Patrick acquitted Ken Paxton after taking $3 million from the Dunn & Wilks PAC fighting the impeachment.

Pro-Paxton group gives $3 million to impeachment trial judge Dan PatrickDefend Texas Liberty was the lieutenant governor’s largest benefactor in late June, providing a $1 million donation and $2 million loan to his campaign.https://www.texastribune.org/2023/07/18/ken-paxton-impeachment-dan-patrick/

Dunn & Wilks have zero tolerance for opposition.

Their PAC—Defend Texas Liberty—recruits far-right candidates to primary Republicans who don't do their bidding.

It's a win-win: they beat the moderate incumbent or force them to take extreme positions.

Dunn & Wilks also control influential legal, policy, & advocacy organizations.

One of those orgs argued in court that pharmacies shouldn't sell birth control.

The lawyer who argued that case later became a federal judge.

He banned the abortion pill.

How a Right-wing Law Firm Shaped the Judge Who Will Rule on the Abortion Pill

Matthew Kacsmaryk cut his teeth at First Liberty Institute, a “religious liberty” law firm with Texas roots—and a growing national reach.https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/first-liberty-abortion-pill-lawsuit/

And they've even created their own right-wing media bubble.

Dunn & Wilks fund Texas Scorecard, the top far-right publication.

Wilks owns the Daily Wire and bankrolls PragerU, a right-wing "education" platform they’re trying to force into our schools.

Texas fracking billionaire brothers fuel rightwing media with millions of dollarsFarris and Dan Wilks’ deep pockets fund climate denialism education, conservative politicians and pro-fossil fuel projectshttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/05/texas-fracking-billionaire-brothers-prageru-daily-wire

Now they’re taking on their most ambitious project: replacing public schools with Christian schools.

Abbott just called a special session to pass Dunn & Wilks’ voucher scam.

Republican Sen Bob Deuell said: “They want to destroy the public school system”

http://houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/dunn-wilks-paxton-texas-theocracy-democracy-18380689.php

Dunn & Wilks are executing their plan to dismantle public education:

✔️Fund manufactured controversies to discredit public schools

✔️Pass private school voucher scam to defund public schools

✔️Close public schools and shift our entire system to private, Christian education

Comments from Twitter

There’s been a lot of bad news out of Texas lately.

Paxton’s acquittal, private school vouchers, no-exceptions abortion bans, CRT hysteria, weakened gun laws, Christian nationalism…

It’s all connected to a couple billionaire mega-donors.

Texas is too big and too great to be sold to the highest bidder.

We cannot let two billionaires turn our beloved state into a Christofascist theocracy.

Two billionaire mega-donors bought Ken Paxton’s acquittal. Now those same billionaires are funding the effort to privatize our public schools with a voucher scam. Follow the money. 🧵 #txlege #tribfest23 

Just weeks before he presided over the Paxton impeachment trial in the Texas Senate, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick received a $3 million dollar check. It came from Paxton’s two billionaire benefactors: Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. texastribune.org/2023/07/18/ken…

Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"

These billionaires bought Ken Paxton's acquittal. According to the Republican Speaker of the Texas House: "The fix was in from the start." beaumontenterprise.com/opinions/colum…

Greg Abbott's voucher scam would divert taxpayer dollars out of public schools and into private schools. But private schools aren't accountable to taxpayers—no transparency, no oversight, no standards. Watch how they struggle to answer my basic questions about accountability… 

“You said you don’t want to take the STAAR test. Public schools don’t want to take the STAAR test either. But they have to because there are strings attached to public money.” 

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

“Could a child be denied admission because of behavior problems? Could a child be denied admission because of academic performance? Could a child be denied admission because they’re not a cultural fit?” 

Texas Republicans are trying to force public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. I told the bill author: “This bill is not only un-constitutional and un-American, it’s deeply un-Christian.” #txlege 

The bill author says she’s a champion of “parental rights.” So I asked her if state-sponsored religious indoctrination violates the rights of parents. This was her response. 

Would you be comfortable with adding language to receive parental consent from all the students and parents in the classroom before putting it up?” 

In high school, I played Danny Zuko in our production of Grease! Today the House passed a school finance package that includes my bill funding fine arts education. This is the first time in Texas history we’re dedicating funding specifically for the arts in our schools! #txlege

I filed a bill to create a fine arts allotment in our school finance formula. Currently, schools struggle to come up with $ for the arts—relying on booster clubs and private donations. Today Rep. Ken King added the language from my bill to his school finance package (HB 100)!!

If the Texas Senate passes this bill, school districts will receive per-student funding SPECIFICALLY for fine arts. This means hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding for music, dance, art, and theater programs! It’s a game changer.

Billionaire mega-donors are trying to destroy Texas public schools with a private voucher scam. They say it’s what parents want. But thousands of parents just showed up at the Texas Capitol to defend our schools. These PTA moms have a message: Come and Take It. #txlege

Texans love our public schools. Public schools are enshrined in our Texas Constitution, and there’s nothing more Texan than Friday night lights. That’s why voucher scammers are spending millions of dollars to demonize our schools…

These billionaire mega-donors have a simple strategy: 1) Demonize, then 2) Dismantle public education. They've paid politicians to attack our teachers, our librarians, and even our students. Now they're paying politicians to defund and close our schools with a voucher scam.

When I was a public school teacher, I struggled to make ends meet. 40% of Texas teachers work a second job. Thousands are leaving the profession to find work that can pay the bills. Today I’m introducing legislation to give every teacher in Texas a $15,000 pay raise. 

We can do this. Texas has a $47 billion budget surplus. That’s billion with a b! We can give every teacher a $15,000 raise, give all support staff a 25% raise, and still have more than HALF the surplus left over.

Hoarding this surplus while teachers and students are suffering is immoral. But it’s also bad business. You don’t stick your money under a mattress—you put it to work by making smart investments. And the smartest investment we can make is in the next generation.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the entire Republican Party were in on creating a huge, stinking distraction in Congress just so Greg Abbott could shaft the state of Texas.

[tasso1972]

Hey ChatGPT, I have a question-

Hey-ChatGPT, What are the most effective methods of self-defense when right-wing, fascist, christian, neo-nazis, homophobes, and misogynists stack the supreme court with conservative justices that remove LGBTQ+ persons and women's human rights?ChatGPT response:When facing challenges related to the political landscape or the erosion of rights, it is important to emphasize that promoting positive change and protecting human rights should primarily be pursued through peaceful, legal, and democratic means. Here are some methods individuals and communities can employ:Legal Advocacy: Engage with organizations and activists who specialize in legal advocacy and civil rights. Support efforts to challenge discriminatory laws through legal channels, such as filing lawsuits, supporting legal defense funds, or participating in advocacy campaigns.Grassroots Activism: Engage in peaceful grassroots activism by organizing or participating in protests, demonstrations, or rallies that advocate for human rights and equal treatment. Amplify your voice through peaceful collective action and raise awareness of the issues at hand.Political Engagement: Stay informed about political developments and exercise your right to vote. Support candidates who champion human rights, inclusivity, and equality. Engage in political campaigns, volunteer, or donate to organizations working towards progressive causes.Coalition Building: Build alliances and work in collaboration with diverse communities, organizations, and social justice movements. By joining forces, you can amplify your impact and create a broader movement for positive change.Education and Awareness: Engage in educational initiatives to promote understanding and empathy. Encourage discussions and dialogue about the importance of human rights, equality, and inclusion. Promote media literacy to counter misinformation and propaganda.Supportive Networks: Strengthen and cultivate supportive networks within your community. Provide assistance, resources, and emotional support to individuals and communities affected by regressive policies or actions.International Advocacy: Engage with international human rights organizations and advocacy groups. Utilize international platforms and mechanisms to bring attention to human rights violations and seek support from the international community.Donations and Support: Contribute to organizations that defend human rights, promote equality, and provide support to marginalized communities. Your financial support can help sustain their efforts in challenging discriminatory policies.It is important to prioritize peaceful means of advocacy and respect the principles of non-violence, as resorting to violence can undermine the goals of promoting justice, equality, and human rights. Engaging in constructive dialogue and fostering understanding can be powerful tools to bring about positive change.

[woman-loving]

“gender ideology”

Selection from “TERF Wars: An Introduction," by Ruth Pearce, Sonja Erikainen, and Ben Vincent, in The Sociological Review Monograph, Vol 68, No 4, July 2020.

The language of ‘gender ideology’ originates in anti-feminist and anti-trans discourses among right-wing Christians, with the Catholic Church acting as a major nucleating agent (Careaga-Pérez, 2016; Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017). In the last decade the concept has been increasingly adopted by far-right organisations and politicians in numerous American, European and African states. They position gender egalitarianism, sexual liberation and LGBTQ+ rights as an attack on traditional values by ‘global elites’, as represented by multinational corporations and international bodies such as the United Nations (Korolczuk & Graff, 2018). In this context, ‘gender’ is made to stand in for identity politics and notions of social malleability: ‘Gender provides the theatre for the struggle for hegemony ... a contest for redefining liberal democracy where “gender ideology” embodies numerous deficits of the so-called progressive actors’ (Kováts, 2018, p. 535, emphasis in original).

Mallory Moore (2019) traces the first appearance of ‘gender ideology’ in a ‘gender critical’ context: a comment responding to a 2016 blog post on trans-exclusionary feminist website 4thWaveNow, which shared material from conservative advocacy group the American College of Pediatricians (not to be confused with professional body the American Academy of Pediatrics). From this time the concept saw increasing circulation in trans-exclusionary feminist discourse, especially following its use by ‘gender critical’ activist Stephanie Davies-Arai (who has been interviewed and profiled on 4thWaveNow), at a London conference attended by anti-trans campaigners (Singleton, 2016).

Yet, what is actually meant by ‘gender ideology’ (along with anti-feminist uses of terms such as ‘genderism’ and ‘gender theory’) has not been clearly defined: as Elżbieta Korolczuk and Agnieszka Graff (2018, p. 799) argue, ‘these terms have become empty signifiers, flexible synonyms for demoralization, abortion, non-normative sexuality, and sex confusion’. This makes them an effective tool in conjuring a moral panic around the breakdown of conventional notions of sex/gender, as evidenced for example in the increasing visibility of the trans liberation movement. Meg-John Barker (2017) observes a range of contradictions within the moral panic over trans existence within the UK media, with trans people blamed for both dismantling and reinforcing the current gender system, and trans women’s status as women questioned on the grounds of biology in some contexts, and socialisation in others. The proposed solution is frequently to set aside questions of ‘gender’ in law and policy, and instead define women and men in law on the basis of ‘birth sex’. In 2020 this became a legislative reality in several jurisdictions. In March the US state of Idaho banned trans people from changing their birth certificates, and in April the government of Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán (an outspoken critic of ‘gender ideology’) moved to legally redefine sex on the very same day the far-right leader was granted the power to rule by decree.

Ultimately, the growing social acceptance of trans and non-binary people has challenged immutable, biologically derived conceptualisations of both ‘femaleness’ and ‘womanhood’. ‘Gender critical’ opposition to this can be understood as an emotionally loaded, reactionary response to reassert essentialism, resulting in interventions such as the ‘Declaration of Women’s Sex-Based Rights’ (see Hines, this collection) which effectively echo the demands of far-right, anti-feminist actors.

[lesbianfeminists]

There’s More Than One Way to ‘Erase’ Women

On 28th May Hungary’s Parliament signed a bill into law which ends legal recognition for transgender people. The votes of rightwing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party pushed the legislation through by a majority in the context of a pandemic in which he is ruling by decree indefinitely. The changes to Hungary’s Registry Act will restrict gender to biological sex at birth, a status determined by primary sex characteristics and chromosomes. All other forms of identification are tied to birth certificates in Hungary so these too will reflect birth sex.

Trans advocacy and human rights groups argue that it will lead to more discrimination because Hungarians are required to produce identity cards on a frequent basis. This means that they will, in effect, be ‘outing’ themselves in everyday situations which may be humiliating, at best, and dangerous at worst. The government say they are merely clarifying sex within the law; a disingenuous claim in a political context in which the traditional family is increasingly being placed at the heart of a ‘white’, Christian nation.

Julie Bindel recently argued that it was unwise of Pink News to look at Orban’s policies in relation to transgender people in isolation. They should instead be conceived of as part of a broader attack on women’s rights and the rights of minority groups.

But Bindel’s advice applies equally to those gender critical feminists, albeit small in number, who are responding positively to the news from Hungary, on the basis that Orban recognises the immutability of sex. Whilst Baroness Nicholson might see no problem in adding Hungary to her list of causes for celebration, feminists shouldn’t lose sight of a much bigger picture.

In 2013, Orban introduced a constitutional reform which enshrined the idea of ​​the family as the foundation of the nation in the Basic Law. Although abortion was legalised after the Second World War, since 2013 the Constitution has stated that “the life of the fetus must be protected from the moment of conception”. Orban has yet to move on abortion but he publically supports anti-abortion organisations and in 2017 he opened The World Congress of Families conference in Budapest. The WCF is a United States coalition is a virulently anti-abortion organisation which promotes Christian right values globally.

By 2018, he was setting out his plan for a new “cultural era” which included amending the kindergarten curriculum so that it would promote a “national identity, Christian cultural values, patriotism, attachment to homeland and family”. (5) In 2019, the government announced a series of pro-natalist measures which included a lifetime income tax exemption for mothers of four children and free IVF treatment for married heterosexual couples. These policies aim to reverse demographic decline and curb immigration, at one and the same time. Orban argues that “it’s a national interest to restore natural reproduction. Not one interest among others – but the only one. It’s a European interest too. It is the European interest”.

In essence, he subscribes to the white nationalist “demographic winter” theory, which claims that the “purity” of European civilisation is in peril due to the increasing numbers of non-white races, in general, and Muslim people, in particular. Orban’s draconian measures against migrants and refugees dovetail with this belief system.

Such policies also cast women in the role of wombs of the nation, echoing the eugenicist policies of Hitler, who also provided financial inducements to bribe Aryan women into motherhood. As Anita Komuves, a Hungarian journalist, tweeted, “Can we just simply declare that Hungary is Gilead from now on?”

Homosexuality is legal in Hungary, but same sex couples are unable to marry and registered partnerships don’t offer equivalent legal rights. Orban’s government has made the promotion of patriarchal family values so central to its cultural mission and policies that anti gay rhetoric amongst politicians has become commonplace. Last year, László Kövér, the speaker of the Hungarian parliament, compared supporters of lesbian and gay marriage and adoption to paedophiles. “Morally, there is no difference between the behaviour of a paedophile and the behaviour of someone who demands such things,” he said. (9) In 2017 the annual Pride event was attacked by violent right-wing extremists hurling faeces, acid and Molotov cocktails at the marchers and police.

Just as Orban has sought to eliminate the notion of gender identity within the law, so too has he gone to war against what he describes as “gender ideology”. In 2018 he issued a decree revoking funding for gender studies programmes in October that year. (10) At the time, this move was welcomed by some gender critical and radical feminists on the basis that postmodern feminism in the academy has contributed to a dogmatic sex denialism which is unable to analyse the basis of female oppression. (11) But, as with the changes in relation to the legal recognition of transgender people, Orban’s reasons were anything but feminist. As one government spokesman explained: “The government’s standpoint is that people are born either male or female, and we do not consider it acceptable for us to talk about socially constructed genders rather than biological sexes.” (12) Gender studies is seen as promoting too fluid an understanding of male and female roles in the place of a fixed social order in which women’s biological destiny is to be married mothers. The decision to withdraw funding from gender studies didn’t come out of nowhere. At a party congress in December 2015, László Kövér, one of the founders of the Fidesz party, stated:

“We don’t want the gender craziness. We don’t want to make Hungary a futureless society of man-hating women, and feminine men living in dread of women, and considering families and children only as barriers to self-fulfilment… And we would like if our daughters would consider, as the highest quality of self-fulfilment, the possibility of giving birth to our grandchildren.”

Orban’s war against “gender” also led to Hungary’s National Assembly recently passing a declaration which refused to ratify the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe’s Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.It was claimed that the convention promoted “gender ideology” and particular issue was taken with the section that defined gender as “socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men.” Hungarian politicians object to an understanding of gender which recognises that women’s ‘role’ can change, even improve (!), as societies change, an unwelcome thought to those wishing to uphold men’s power in the family and discourage homosexuality. As with a number of Orban’s other policy decisions, there was also a racist element to the refusal to ratify the convention. The fact that it would have afforded protections for migrant and refugee women was in direct contradiction to Hungary’s anti-immigration policies. As one far right, Hungarian blog put it:

“By refusing the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, Hungary, says ‘Yes!’ to the protection of women but ‘No!’ to gender ideology and illegal migration.”

(Women’s groups in the UK have long suspected that our government refuses to ratify the Convention as it would bind them to properly funding the VAWG sector.)

Orban’s concern about “gender” and “gender ideology” is shared by other states with a socially conservative programme for women. Some gender critical and radical feminists use this term, as well, which can be confusing when our respective analyses have so little in common. Here, it refers to a set of beliefs that conflate sex with gender and deny the material reality of sex-based oppression. This is a far cry from the definitions shared by the growing “anti gender” movements in Central and Eastern Europe.

These movements privilege biological understandings of what it means to be a man or a woman but only do so in order to insist that our biology should determine (and restrict) our lives.They want to hang on the man/woman binary because they believe that gendered roles and expectations, ones which place women below men, are determined by sex. In short, they deny that gender is a social construct. “Gender ideology”, as a term, has become something of a dustbin category, deployed variously to attack feminism, same sex marriage, reproductive rights and sex education in schools. Trump’s administration is engaged in an ongoing fight to remove the word “gender” from United Nations documents.

In this context, we need to remember that “gender” is still most frequently used as a proxy for women/sex in UN Conventions like CEDAW (The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women). The term is also increasingly – to our concern – conflated with gender identity with all the risks that this entails.

But that fact shouldn’t blind us to the main motivations of those who oppose the use of the word gender at UN level. When conservatives say they want to replace the term “gender” with “sex”, it’s invariably to oppose women’s equality with men and to enshrine patriarchal understandings of women’s place in society. Replacing the language of gender with the language of sex is, in their terms, a route to a biologically driven and restricted notion of reproduction as women’s only fate. Replacing the language of gender with the language of sex is not necessarily a feminist enterprise.

Unless we establish very clear lines between ourselves and rightwing, religious fundamentalists, we are in danger of being swallowed up and used by the most anti-women, global forces, the canniest of which offer themselves as ‘partners’ in the fight against gender ideology: witness several events hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a hugely powerful Christian Right think tank which has platformed radical feminists.

The Heritage Foundation has particular chutzpah. Whilst claiming to be an ally in the feminist fight to preserve female only spaces and sex-based rights, it opposes reproductive rights, lesbian and gay rights and any measures to counter discrimination against women, notably the Equal Rights Amendment. In fact, it blames feminists for the current state of affairs – though Ryan Anderson would never be rude enough to say so at their shared events. “Transgender theories are part of the feminist goal of a sexual revolution that eliminates the proprietary family and celebrates non-monogamous sexual experiences.”

When it’s not cynically partnering with (a small number) of radical feminists as ‘cover’, the Heritage Foundation enjoys the company of the Holy See, the universal government of the Catholic Church which operates from Vatican City State. (20) The Vatican has opposed the notion of gender since the early-2000s, arguing that males and females have intrinsic attributes which aren’t shaped by social forces. Recently, they published an educational document called “Male and female he created them”.

Woman’s Place UK has consistently stated an opposition to working with, or supporting the work of the religious right (and their female representatives). Not simply because it is strategically disastrous but because it is wrong in principle. (22) When we look at what is happening in Hungary it is well to remember that there is more than one way to ‘erase’ women. Andrea Pető, a professor at the Central European University of Budapest, commenting on the official reports that Hungary (and Poland) send to the UN CEDAW Committee, noted, “we see that they replace the concept of women with that of family, women as independent agents are slowly disappearing from public policy documents, behind the single word family.”

https://womansplaceuk.org/2020/06/18/womens-rights-under-attack-hungary/

[pscottm]

In multiple speeches, an interview and a widely shared article for Christianity Today, Mr. Hawley has explained that the blame for society’s ills traces all the way back to Pelagius — a British-born monk who lived 17 centuries ago. In a 2019 commencement address at The King’s College, a small conservative Christian college devoted to “a biblical worldview,” Mr. Hawley denounced Pelagius for teaching that human beings have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines.

In other words, Mr. Hawley’s idea of freedom is the freedom to conform to what he and his preferred religious authorities know to be right. Mr. Hawley is not shy about making the point explicit. In a 2017 speech to the American Renewal Project, he declared — paraphrasing the Dutch Reformed theologian and onetime prime minister Abraham Kuyper — “There is not one square inch of all creation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord.” Mr. Kuyper is perhaps best known for his claim that Christianity has sole legitimate authority over all aspects of human life.

Mr. Hawley has built his political career among people who believe that Shariah is just around the corner even as they attempt to secure privileges for their preferred religious groups to discriminate against those of whom they disapprove. Before he won election as a senator, he worked for Becket, a legal advocacy group that often coordinates with the right-wing legal juggernaut the Alliance Defending Freedom. He is a familiar presence on the Christian right media circuit.

[toshootforthestars]

Posted 10 Nov 2020:

In the late 1990s, I was sitting in an off-the-record lunch with a very high-ranking member of the Republican Party’s congressional leadership. The purpose of these meetings was to give journalists a chance to hear the candid views of influential people, peeling back the spin and polish of their public talking points. Sometimes the guests presented themselves as more sane than they appeared on television. Other times, they revealed themselves to be even crazier. This was one of the latter occasions.

One of our writers asked the guest a question premised on the most recent election results. Bill Clinton had beaten Bob Dole by more than 8 million votes. But the guest rejected the premise of the question. He insisted that Clinton’s margin reflected mass-scale voter fraud, and the true intentions of the voting public could never be known.

If you want to understand why nearly the entire Republican Party is standing by Donald Trump’s deranged claims that Joe Biden stole the election, this belief is a good place to begin. The party is playing the same extraordinarily dangerous game it has played with Trump since he emerged onto the national stage: placating his bizarre lies in hopes they can be turned to their own benefit.

They don’t expect Trump’s legal challenges to produce a victory. They do, however, sympathize with his position and believe they have every right to exploit it.

The Republican strategy has several sources of motivation, but the most important is a widely shared belief that Democrats in large cities — i.e., racial minorities — engage in systematic vote fraud, election after election. “We win because of our ideas, we lose elections because they cheat us,” insisted Senator Lindsey Graham on Fox News last night. The Bush administration pursued phantasmal vote-fraud allegations, firing prosecutors for failing to uncover evidence of the schemes Republicans insisted were happening under their noses. In 2008, even a Republican as civic-minded as John McCain accused ACORN, a voter-registration group, of “maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”

The persistent failure to produce evidence of mass-scale vote fraud has not discouraged Republicans from believing in its existence. The failure to expose it merely proves how well hidden the conspiracy is. Republicans may despair of their chances of proving Trump’s vote-fraud charges in open court, but many of them believe his wild lies reflect a deeper truth

[…]

Republicans believe Trump’s attacks on the election outcome will help them. A senior Republican official confessed the the party’s calculation in a breathtakingly cynical quote to the Washington Post:

“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” said one senior Republican official. “He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.”

Post reporter Robert Costa adds that the party sees Trump’s paranoid claims as an excellent motivator for the January Senate special elections in Georgia…

Me:

The conservative movement in the U.S. (primarily meaning these disparate yet allied groups: the ultra hyper rich, business “leaders” and power brokers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the business executive class, white supremacist and neo-nazi groups & militias **aka domestic terrorists**, 2A advocacy orgs, evangelicals & christian orgs, "right to life" disinformation orgs, every right wing advocacy org, Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, every local & state GOP stronghold and their faithful constituents, the Republican party as a whole, and most of the 70+ million Trump/Pence 2020 voters) wants every square inch of this country for themselves and themselves only. They want a brutal (yet easy & low effort!) crackdown on dissent. They want the Left and their dangerous, socialist, sinful ideas annihilated. They want *their* country back…

(above rant edited for clarity 12 Nov 20)

[mariacallous]

Right-wing American Christian groups that oppose sexual and reproductive rights are significantly increasing their spending in Africa, according to a new data analysis published ahead of a U.S. election, which could prove pivotal to abortion access both inside and outside the country.

Research by the nonprofit Institute for Journalism and Social Change (IJSC) found that 17 groups increased their Africa spending by 50% between 2019 and 2022, the most recent year for which data is available. The researchers say the data represents only a handful of Christian Right groups but indicates that they are making an increasingly concerted effort to influence abortion policy internationally as well as domestically.

A 2020 investigation by openDemocracy revealed that $54 million dollars flowed from mostly the same U.S. Christian Right organizations to Africa between 2008 and 2018. In Africa, their activities range from helping like-minded politicians obstruct key reproductive health legislation to supporting domestic groups in their fight against progressive abortion-related court rulings—tactics borrowed from the anti-abortion playbook in the United States.

While abortion laws have slowly liberalized across the continent, reproductive rights advocates say campaigning by American right-wing groups that brand themselves as “pro-family” could reverse those changes.

“The work of these groups has multifaceted effects on the continent,” said Martin Onyango, senior legal adviser for Africa at the Center for Reproductive Rights, a U.S.-based advocacy group. “We have seen a proliferation of anti-rights legislation on the continent of Africa, from Ghana to Uganda to Kenya to Malawi. We have groups that are now proposing legislation in parliament to take away fundamental rights—access to reproductive health care—that have been in place on the continents for decades.”

Many of the groups named in the report have close ties to former President Donald Trump and his administration and have influenced Trump on reproductive rights issues. Several are on the advisory board for Project 2025, a set of policy proposals seen the probable playbook for a second Trump term.

American anti-abortion groups have campaigned in Africa for decades in tandem with their fight at home. Bolstered by conservative Republican politicians, the 1973 Helms Amendment, which limits the use of U.S. foreign aid for abortion, was passed after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling. President Ronald Reagan then enacted the Mexico City policy, known as the global gag rule, which restricts U.S. funding to any international organization that provides, or even counsels on, abortion. The U.S. Christian Right has found Africa, with its strong tradition of Evangelical Christianity, fertile ground for further promoting and spreading its ideology. The result is a global movement that unites anti-abortion groups, religious leaders, and politicians around a common goal: eliminating the right to safe, legal abortion services worldwide.

Despite some liberalization, abortion remains highly restricted in many African countries. As of 2022, abortion was essentially illegal in six African countries and permitted only to save the life of the mother in another 13 countries.

Research has shown that banning abortions increases maternal mortality due to unsafe abortions. As of 2019, sub-Saharan Africa had the highest abortion case-fatality rate of any world region, at roughly 185 deaths per 100,000 abortions, a total of 15,000 preventable deaths every year.

Uganda’s Penal Code prohibits abortion except to save the mother’s life. In 2015, the Ministry of Health approved standards and guidelines on the provision of safe abortion, but those were quickly withdrawn. Onyango says this was partly due to lobbying by right-wing groups, including Family Watch International (FWI), a fundamentalist Arizona-based Christian organization whose spending in Africa increased nearly five-fold from 2019 to 2022.

Court cases challenging the withdrawal of those guidelines have not yet been heard, says Onyango.

“When they’re set for hearing, the bench is quickly reconstituted and the exercise starts again from ground zero,” he said. “And it is not by default. It is by clear design that that conversation is not intended to be concluded.”

According to reproductive rights advocates, American right-wing groups are playing the long game in Africa.

“Kenya, Uganda, Ghana appear to be the epicenter of a lot of anti-rights action, and that is where they build a lot of their strategy before exporting them to other countries. … When they leave Kenya, they go down to Malawi, and they replicate the same actions,” said Onyango.

Abortion was illegal in Kenya until 2010, when a new constitution permitted the procedure in a handful of circumstances, including during emergencies or if the life or health of the mother is in danger. Subsequent court decisions allowed abortions in cases of rape and incest and expanded the definition of “health” to include mental health.

But access remains limited, and studies have shown that most Kenyans have limited or inaccurate knowledge of their country’s abortion laws and policies. The legal landscape is confusing, even for medical providers who hesitate to perform the procedure to avoid criminal prosecution.

Ever since Roe v. Wade was overturned in the United States in 2022, reproductive rights advocates have worried that the same thing could happen in Kenya.

“We export a lot of our values and cultures from the United States, so the Roe v. Wade decision was completely misinterpreted here, because in our setting what we got was that abortion has been made illegal in the United States. That’s the message that we got because Roe was overturned,” said Dr. Ernest Nyamato, associate director of quality of care at the reproductive health care nonprofit IPAS.

In Kenya, a conservative group called the Kenya Christian Professionals Forum (KCPF) is appealing two recent court decisions: one affirming that abortion is a fundamental constitutional right, making the arrest of patients and providers illegal, and a second upholding the constitutional right to access abortion when there is a risk to the pregnant person’s health.

The KCPF’s chairperson, Charles Kanjama, denies receiving funding from any American organizations. But its annual report shows that its parent organization, the African Christian Professionals Forum (ACPF), was sponsored in 2023 by FWI. That same year, FWI’s president, Sharon Slater, was a featured speaker at ACPF’s annual conference.

FWI said it was unable to provide comment on this story within the requested time frame.

Part of the challenge of tracking the funding flows is a lack of transparent documentation. “We’re treating what we found as the tip of the iceberg,” said Claire Provost, co-founder of the IJSC. “We didn’t capture all funding from U.S. anti-rights actors into Africa. It’s a diverse and evolving ecosystem, with new organizations being set up all the time.”

The influence of these groups is clearly visible. Their members share training materials with African organizations, travel to the continent for conferences, and sponsor events such as Kenya’s March for Life, an annual demonstration against abortion, says Saoyo Tabitha Griffith, a Kenyan lawyer and women’s rights advocate.

In 2019, Nairobi hosted the ICPD25, a global population and development conference. Across the street from the venue, a few hundred people gathered in opposition to sexual and reproductive rights, including several groups tracked by the IJSC.

Former Trump administration delegates, including Valerie Huber, who was U.S. special representative for Global Women’s Health, were also there. Huber was a chief architect of the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a document submitted by the United States to the United Nations that encourages governments to improve women’s health care without abortion. She now travels across Africa promoting anti-abortion ideology for her nonprofit, the Institute for Women’s Health (IWH), another Project 2025 sponsor.

In a statement, an IWH spokesperson wrote that no IWH funds had been spent in Africa, other than for routine travel expenses, and that IHC has not provided any grants to African groups or individuals, is not partnering in Kenya, and has no plans to increase spending in Africa.

Huber hopes “to improve health and thriving for women, their children, their families, and their communities through high-quality, research-based policy guidance to nations,” the spokesperson wrote.

America’s global abortion policy seesaws back and forth depending on which party holds office, and Griffith said she witnessed years of damaging changes during Trump’s presidency. “I do not think I want to even imagine what a Trump reelection would mean for the women of Kenya,” she said.

[httpetras]

“The proposed amendment would specify that "the mother is a woman, the father is a man" and permit only married couples to adopt children.

The proposal was sent to parliament by the governing right-wing Fidesz party late on Tuesday. It would require children to be raised with a "Christian" interpretation of gender roles.

"[It] ensures education in accordance with the values based on Hungary's constitutional identity and Christian culture," it reads.

The document already defines "the institution of marriage as between a man and a woman" as well as "the basis of the family and national survival".

“The timing is no coincidence," a statement from the Háttér Society rights group said. It added: "The proposals that severely limit legal rights and go against basic international and European human rights ... were submitted at a time when... protests are not allowed."

In May, Hungary's parliament approved a law that banned transgender people from changing the gender they were assigned at birth on official documents.

"People are in panic, people want to escape from Hungary to somewhere else where they can get their gender recognised," said Tina Korlos Orban, vice president of the advocacy group Transvanilla Transgender Association.”

from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54902048

[sciencespies]

The Thorny Road to the 19th Amendment

https://sciencespies.com/history/the-thorny-road-to-the-19th-amendment/

The Thorny Road to the 19th Amendment

When the 19th Amendment became law in August 1920, it constituted the largest simultaneous enfranchisement in American history—women nationwide had finally obtained, at least on paper, the right to vote. But it’s the struggle for suffrage, which stretched more than 75 years prior, and not just the movement’s eventual victory that UCLA historian Ellen Carol DuBois recounts in her new book, aptly titled Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote.

Suffrage history is thistly and complicated. The movement got its start in abolitionist circles during the mid-19th century when most married women lacked basic property rights. Even among the progressive-minded women and men gathered at Seneca Falls in 1848, the notion that “it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise” proved radical. “One of my intentions,” DuBois told Smithsonian, “is to integrate the history of the women’s suffrage movement into American history…At every stage, the larger political atmosphere, the reform energies of the 1840s and ’50s, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the period of Jim Crow, the Progressive Era and then World War I, each of those periods creates the environment in which suffragists have to work.” To that end, DuBois traces the ways in which Reconstruction fueled calls for “universal suffrage” as well as a racial schism among suffragists. We learn how the women’s rights advocates became (sometimes uneasy) allies with different political parties, Temperance advocates and the labor movement and how outside political turmoil, like World War I, complicated their quest for the vote. Centuries before social media and the internet, reformers turned to newspapers, speaking tours, and eventually advocacy that ranged from signature-gathering to hunger strikes to convince voters and legislators alike how imperative it was that women gain the franchise.

DuBois’ richly detailed account also doesn’t shy from examining the bitter divides that fissured the suffrage movement over methods, race and class as it struggled to piece together a coalition that would vote to let women vote too. In the 1870s, after a schism between prominent suffrage leaders over supporting the 15th Amendment, the movement split into several camps, one with more moderate tactics and Republican Party allegiance than the other; in the 1910s, a similar split emerged between the more militant NWP and conciliatory NAWSA. And despite the contributions of women of color like Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell to their cause, NAWSA adopted an “explicitly racist policy” to appeal to Southern states around the turn of the 20th century, DuBois writes.

Intermixed in all this political history are the miniature profiles of the remarkable, determined women (and choice male allies) who propelled the suffragist movement. Susan B. Anthony ranks among the best known, but DuBois also adds the lesser-known facets like that Anthony was formally tried and found guilty of casting a ballot “without having the lawful right” to do so in New York? DuBois also highlights the stories of suffragists with less name recognition, like the firebrand and Equal Rights party presidential candidate Victoria Woodhull, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union leader Frances Willard and millionaire benefactress Alva Belmont. DuBois spoke by phone with Smithsonian about her book:

This book covers a long history, and I’m curious about the evolution of the movement. What are some of the twists and turns the fight for suffrage took that were not part of the original vision?

First, what really makes the suffrage movement the foremost demand of the women’s rights movement are the consequences of the Civil War. The U.S. Constitution has almost nothing to say about who votes until the 15th Amendment, [which enfranchised African American men]. In the early postwar years, the assumption was that, like economic rights, voting rights would have to be won state by state.

Then with the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, which virtually rewrite the U.S. Constitution [to abolish slavery and give formerly enslaved people legal and civil rights], the suffrage movement focuses on getting the right for women to vote acknowledged in the Constitution. When efforts to get women included in the 15th Amendment failed, suffragists actually returned to the state level for the next many decades.

The suffragists go back to the states, almost all of them west of the Mississippi, and convince male voters to amend their state constitution to either remove the word “male” or put the right of women to vote in those constitutions. Here is the crucial thing to acknowledge: When that happened, first in Colorado, then in California and ultimately crossing the Mississippi to New York in 1917, those women who were enfranchised by actions of the state constitution had comprehensive voting rights, including for president. So for instance, the women of Colorado gained the right to vote in 1893; they voted for president five times before the 19th Amendment is passed. By the time that the suffrage movement moves into high gear, in the midst of the first World War and then immediately afterwards, four million American women have the right to vote for president.

The way that the right to vote moves back and forth from the state to the federal level is something that could not have been anticipated. Especially since those first suffragists really thought that in the sort of revolutionary change of emancipation and black male enfranchisement, surely women would also be included. The failure of the 15th Amendment to extend the franchise to women so enraged a wing of the women’s suffrage movement that it broke open the alliance between black rights and women’s rights groups with serious and negative consequences for the next half century.

The second thing I’d say is that when women’s suffrage started, the political parties were quite infant. Indeed, the women’s suffrage movement begins before the Republican Party comes into being. I don’t think that suffragist reformers really anticipated how powerful the major political parties would be over American politics. One of the things I discovered in my work was how determined the controlling forces in the major parties, first the Republican and then the Democratic Party, were to keep women from gaining the right to vote.

Why was that?

When the Republican Party enfranchised African-American, formerly enslaved men, almost all of whom lived in the South, they anticipated correctly that those men would vote for their party. The enfranchisement of women was so much greater in magnitude, so there was no way to predict how women would vote. Really up almost till the end of the suffrage movement, American women had a reputation, gained or not, for being above partisan concerns and sort of concerned with the character of the candidate or the nature of the policies, which meant that they could not be corralled into supporting a partisan force. So the only parties that really ever supported women’s suffrage were these sort of insurgent third parties who had nothing to lose and everything to gain by attaching themselves to a new electorate. The most important of these was what was called the People’s, or Populist, Party of the 1890s. Those first victories in the West can be credited to the dramatic rise of the People’s Party.

Suffragists wearing the names of some of the Western states that had already granted women the right to vote process down Fifth Avenue during a 1915 march.

(Bettmann via Getty Images)

How did the women’s suffrage movement move from being very closely tied to abolitionism to largely excluding women of color?

So there were a couple things. First, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the dominating figures in the first half century of the movement, when she’s really enraged not just that women are excluded from the right to vote but women like herself are excluded from the right to vote, she expresses herself in ways that are…she’s charged with being racist. I think it’s more accurate to say she’s an elitist, because she’s as dismissive of European immigrants as she is of the formerly enslaved.

Stanton made really, really terrible comments about people a generation removed from slavery—she called them the sons and daughters of “bootblacks” or sometimes she called them “Sambo.” Sometimes that charge of racism flows over to her partner Susan B. Anthony. That’s not really fair. Anthony’s abolitionism was much deeper and more consistent. When you follow her career, until the day she died, she was always, wherever she went, she would make sure that she went to black churches, black universities, black societies.

Second, by the turn of century we’re moving into a whole different generation of leaders, none of whom have any roots in the abolition movement, who come of age during the period in which Reconstruction is portrayed as a terrible disaster for the nation and who are part and parcel of the white supremacist atmosphere of the early 20th century.

In those final eight years, 1912 to 1920, when the suffrage movement breaks through for a variety of reasons, to a real chance to win a constitutional amendment, the U.S. government is controlled by the Democratic Party. The president is a Southern Democrat. Washington, D.C., the home of the federal government, is a southern city. So the political atmosphere is radically hostile, at the national level, to anything that will help to return the African American vote.

In all the research you did for this book, was there anything that surprised you?

I was incredibly impressed by the congressional lobbying. I don’t think I appreciated, until I wrote this book, the quiet importance of Frances Willard and the WCTU, which doesn’t really fit into our normal story of suffrage radicalism. This sort of conventional women’s organization was important in bringing mainstream women, and not just the kind of radicals who had fought for the abolition of slavery, to recognize the importance of votes for women to achieve their goals, not just because these were high principles of equal rights, but because they couldn’t get what they wanted done. Whether it was the prohibition on alcohol or the end of child labor, they couldn’t do those things without the vote.

One of the lessons of the book is that the notion that women’s suffrage was a single-issue movement is just wrong. All of them had other goals. Carrie Chapman Catt was interested in world peace. Alice Paul was interested in equal rights for women beyond the right to vote. Anthony was interested in women’s right to earn a living. Stanton was interested in what we would call reproductive rights for women. Each of them had a larger vision of social change in which women’s suffrage was fundamental as a tool.

#History

[political-fluffle]

The American Dark Money Behind Europe’s Far Right

Five years ago, Matteo Salvini stripped and posed half-naked for a series of “sexy” photos that were auctioned on eBay. At the time, he was a senior official of Italy’s separatist Lega Nord party. His bizarre photoshoot took place on the sidelines of a National Front conference in France. Beneficiaries of the auction included part of an Italian anti-abortion network that claims to be “inspired” by the “heritage of Christian culture” and responds to a “conspiracy against life.”

Today, Salvini’s party has transformed itself into one of the most prominent nationalist movements in Europe (now known only as Lega). Salvini himself has become Italy’s interior minister and the country’s most recognizable politician, emboldened by stunning results in the recent European Parliament elections, in which his party won a third of Italian votes (about five times more than the 6 percent it received in 2014).

Along with Marine le Pen in France, leader of the National Front (now rebranded as the National Rally party), Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and others, Salvini is leading a startling resurgence of Europe’s far right. Across the continent, the messaging of these right-wing populists is increasingly slick, their party machines are disciplined, and their policies have been carefully crafted to appeal to a wider range of voters. (...)

These movements did not emerge overnight, nor will they fade anytime soon. Since mid-2016, together with colleagues at openDemocracy, we have tracked the growth of Europe’s nativist movements, from the Brexit campaign, to Orbán’s increasing stranglehold on the levers of power in Hungary, to cross-border networks seeking to block or roll back women’s and LGBTQI rights. Their strategy begins by influencing elections, courts, education, and healthcare systems, as well as policymakers and public opinion, and ends by taking power. (...)

This political vision is explicit about seeking to shift power away from women and LGBTQI people. It aims to promote the “life” of the unborn (while disregarding the risks of unsafe abortions and pregnancies to women’s lives); the “family,” by which it means a return to traditional gender roles, without any space for LGBTQI people, and putting women back in the home, seen as their “natural” place; and the “freedom” of markets and religious institutions, specifically Christian ones, above all other claims of rights or liberties.

This triad of “life, family, and freedom” was enshrined in the Manhattan Declaration, a manifesto written nearly a decade ago by American activists of the religious right. Signatories including Orthodox, Evangelical, and Catholic leaders pledged to act in unison and determined that “no power on Earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.” (...)

A recent openDemocracy investigation found that America’s Christian right spent at least $50 million of “dark money” to fund campaigns and advocacy in Europe over the past decade. (By the measures of US political financing, this may not seem like a vast sum, but by European standards it’s formidable. The total spend on the 2014 European elections, for example, by all of Ireland’s political parties combined was just $3 million.)

These numbers are also likely the tip of the iceberg: our analysis looked at only twelve US Christian right groups, and there were many obstacles to disclosure that limited the information we could extract. Institutions registered as churches, for example, are not required to publish their overseas funding. The largest spender appeared to be the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which spent more than $20 million in Europe from 2008 to 2014, but filings are not available beyond that period, so the true figure could be far larger. (...)

As might be expected, we also found links between these groups and senior members or advisers of the current US administration. None disclose their donors, and there is no legal requirement to do so, but at least two have known ties to famous billionaire funders of conservative causes, including the Koch brothers and the family of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos. One of the religious groups we researched, which pumped $12.4 million into Europe from 2008 to 2017, lists as its chief counsel Jay Sekulow, one of President Trump’s personal attorneys. (...)

“It took the Christian right thirty years to get to where they are now in the White House,” said Neil Datta, the secretary of the Brussels-based European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development, reacting to our research. “We knew a similar effort was happening in Europe, but this should be a wake-up call that this is happening even faster and on a grander scale than many experts could have ever imagined.” (...)

What’s clear in the pattern of connections and support between American ultra-conservatives and European far-right groups is the willingness on both sides to exploit loopholes in regulations and to embrace unscrupulous, even illegal, methods. Last month, openDemocracy worked with a nonprofit watchdog named Unhack Democracy Europe to publish a report pointing to widespread fraud by Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party in the 2018 Hungarian elections, including vote-buying, voter intimidation, tampering with postal votes, missing ballots, and election software malfunctions. (The result of that election was to give Orbán a parliamentary super-majority, enabling him to further tighten his grip on the judiciary, media, and other organs of power.) The report went on to identify ways in which the European parliamentary elections in Hungary were even more vulnerable to such abuse than national ones. Unhack Democracy is now compiling a follow-up report on what actually happened there in the European elections. (...)