#family welfare programs

[cksaksen-blog]

Big Changes to Singapore’s Welfare System: What Every Family Needs to Know!

The Singapore government has rolled out several key welfare initiatives aimed at improving support for the elderly, expanding housing grants for low-income families, and strengthening family welfare programs. These changes will provide increased financial aid in areas like healthcare, housing, and childcare, ensuring that vulnerable groups in society have better access to essential…

[alwaysbewoke]

[dr-archeville]

TANF: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) [source]

"John Oliver discusses TANF – a federal program designed to help families with little to no income – who’s currently receiving these vital funds, who should be receiving them, and what it all has to do with Brett Favre.”  [22 mins 44 sec]

[neechees]

Hey if you're from the U.S and you care about Native kids & ICWA, The National Indian Child Welfare Association needs your help before September 17th 2024

Text SIGN PBAZHN to 50409 to send this letter to your US House Representative

Please support H.R. 9076 when it reaches the house floor. Native families deserve support from the federal government, especially when it comes to keeping Native children with Native families.

This bill includes critical provisions for tribes that receive funding under the Title IV-B child welfare programs, such as:

- Increasing funding for tribal agencies and courts.

- Reducing administrative burdens.

- Enhancing data collection on Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) cases in states.

Please sign and share, it takes about 30 seconds to use resist bot. Thank you!

[courtana]

📌 Mutual Aid, Fundraisers, and Actions

a white heart "🤍" denotes GFM campaigns who have reached out to me via in my inbox

I will be updating this as frequently as possible with new information, campaigns, and forms of supporting displaced and vulnerable folks in Palestine, Sudan, DRC, Ukraine, and elsewhere.

Vetted GFM Campaigns 🤝

🤍 Donate to Khader and Ragheb - [€708 raised of €55,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to Amira - [€5,118 raised of €20,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to Fadi Ayyad - [$9,530 raised of $35,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to Hani Al-Sharif [$445 raised of $50,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to Mohammed Alanqer [€18,196 raised of €38,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to Ahmed Alanqer [€16,338 raised of €35,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to Kareem and Carmen [$6,971 raised of $50,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to Walaa & her family [$3,405CAD raised of $50,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to the Shamaly family [$23,910CAD raised of $90,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to Basel Ayyad [CHF1,828 raised of CHF60,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to Ashraf Alanqar [€1,463 raised of €30,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to Musab [€705 raised of €7,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to Ahmed and his family [£5,253 raised of £30,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to Alaa and her children [€2,995 raised of €20,000 goal]

🤍 Donate to Dr. Mohammed Aldeeb [€23,929 raised of his €30,000 goal]

Palestine 🇵🇸

Donate to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society - humanitarian org serving the health and welfare of the Palestinian people

Donate an eSIM for Gaza - helps Palestinians to connect to the outside world

Donate to Gaza Direct Aid - small volunteer-run program funding humanitarian aid in Gaza

Donate to Care for Gaza - supporting displaced families in Gaza

Donate to GazaFunds - find a struggling fundraiser to support

Sudan 🇸🇩

Donate to the Sudanese American Physicians Association - provides critical medical aid, food, and water

Donate to Sudan Solidarity Collective - provides direct financial assistance to civilian-led groups

Sudan Diaspora Network's Sudan Benefit Fundraiser - supports displaced Sudanese by providing medical equipment and food

Fight Hunger in Sudan: The Khartoum Kitchen appeal - feeds the hungry, up to 1,250 people daily, in the greater Khartoum area

Help Sudan- Sudan Relief Fund - helps people on the ground with immediate needs such as food, water, shelter and medication

Congo 🇨🇩

Donate to Focus Congo - partnerships with local grassroots organizations and access to resources necessary for survival

Support Friends of the Congo & the Basandja Coalition - provides food, delivers reporting, rescues children from the cobalt mines and supports diggers and miners demanding accountability, combats sexual violence and provides care for women’s health

Action Kivu - dedicated to repairing the harm done by years of violence and neglect in this region with focus on women and children.

Mutual Aim team fundraiser for Congo, Sudan, and Tigray - campaign collecting money that will be will be divided between the DRC, Sudan, and Tigray

Ukraine 🇺🇦

United 24 – main venue for collecting charitable donations in support of Ukraine

Come Back Alive – provides support to service members in Ukraine

Prytula foundation – provides support to Ukrainian Defense Forces and affected civilians

Dzyga’s Paw – provides Ukrainian Defenders with high-tech equipment

[the-cimmerians]

Today, ProPublica reports on yet another big change that stands to solve a decades-long problem we first learned about back in 2016, closing a huge loophole that allowed states to divert federal antipoverty funds to governors’ pet projects, like promoting abstinence, holding “heathy marriage” classes that did nothing to prevent out-of-wedlock births, funding anti-abortion “clinics” to lie about abortion “risks,” sending middle-class kids to private colleges, and other schemes only tangentially related to helping poor kids. It’s the same loophole that Mississippi officials tried to drive a truck through to divert welfare funds to former sportsball man Brett Favre’s alma mater, for a volleyball palace. [ ]

The agency has proposed new rules — open for public comment until December 1 — aimed at nudging states to actually use TANF funds to give cash to needy parents, not fill budget holes or punish poor people.

One change will put an end to the scheme Utah used to substitute LDS church funds for welfare, by prohibiting states

from counting charitable giving by private organizations, such as churches and food banks, as “state” spending on welfare, a practice that has allowed legislatures to budget less for programs for low-income families while still claiming to meet federal minimums.

Another new rule will put the kibosh on using TANF to fund child protective services or foster care programs, which are not what TANF is supposed to be for, damn it.

And then there’s the simple matter of making sure that funds for needy families go to needy families, not to pet projects that have little to do with poverty:

The reforms would also redefine the term “needy” to refer only to families with incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. Currently, some states spend TANF money on programs like college scholarships — or volleyball stadiums — that benefit more affluent people.

[batboyblog]

The governor was firm: Nebraska would reject the new federal money for summer meals. The state already fed a small number of children when schools closed. He would not sign on to a program to provide all families that received free or cut-rate school meals with cards to buy groceries during the summer.

“I don’t believe in welfare,” the governor, Jim Pillen, a Republican, said in December.

A group of low-income youths, in a face-to-face meeting, urged him to reconsider. One told him she had eaten less when schools were out. Another criticized the meals at the existing feeding sites and held a crustless prepackaged sandwich to argue that electronic benefit cards from the new federal program would offer better food and more choice.

“Sometimes money isn’t the solution,” the governor replied.

.......

The new $2.5 billion program, known as Summer EBT, passed Congress with bipartisan support, and every Democratic governor will distribute the grocery cards this summer. But Republican governors are split, with 14 in, 13 out and no consensus on what constitutes conservative principle.

One red-state governor (Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas) hailed the cards as an answer to a disturbing problem. Another (Kim Reynolds of Iowa) warned that they might increase obesity. Some Republicans dismissed the program as obsolete pandemic aid. Some balked at the modest state matching costs. Others hinted they might join after taking more time to prepare.

The program will provide families about $40 a month for every child who receives free or reduced-price meals at school —$120 for the summer. The red-state refusals will keep aid from about 10 million children, about a third of those potentially eligible nationwide.

......

As with Medicaid, poor states are especially resistant, though the federal government bears most of the cost. Of the 10 states with the highest levels of children’s food insecurity, five rejected Summer EBT: Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas.

Like the school lunch program, it serves families up to 185 percent of the poverty line, meaning a family of three would qualify with an income of about $45,500 or less.

......

Some Republicans, in rejecting the aid, found critics in their own ranks. After Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina dismissed Summer EBT as a duplicative “entitlement,” State Senator Katrina Shealy, a fellow Republican, wrote a column with a Democratic colleague warning that “hunger does not stop during summer break.”

In an interview, Ms. Shealy said the state should not reject $65 million “just because Biden is president,” and perhaps just partly tongue-in-cheek wrapped her plea in Trumpian bunting: “Everyone wants to say, ‘America First’ — well, let’s feed our children first.”

Oklahoma initially said it rejected the program because federal officials had not finalized the rules. But responding to critics, Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, sharpened his attack, calling Summer EBT a duplicative “Biden administration program” that would “cause more bureaucracy for families.”

Tribal governments, which have influence over large parts of the state, stepped in. Already feuding with Mr. Stitt, they promised to distribute cards to all eligible families on their land, regardless of tribal status, while bearing the $3 million administrative cost. The five participating tribes will cover nearly 40 percent of Oklahoma’s eligible children, most of them not Native American.

“I remain dumbfounded that the governor of Oklahoma would turn down federal tax dollars to help feed low-income children,” said Chuck Hoskin Jr., the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

-------------------------

some of the most stunning highlights of this story.

All I got to say is, let's feed the children? every single Democratic Governor took the money to feed the kids, every governor who rejected it, every single one, is a Republican. If you don't vote for Democrats you are STEALING food out of kids mouths.

[kcinpa]

TL;DR Project 2025

Project 2025 has crossed my dash several times, so maybe tumblr is already informed about the hellish 900-page takeover plan if Trump wins office again. But even the articles covering Project 2025 can be a LOT of reading. So I'm trying to get it down to simple bulleted lists…

Navigator Research (a progressive polling outfit) found that 7 in 10 Americans are unfamiliar with Project 2025. But the more they learn about it, the more they don't like or want it. When asked about a series of policy plans taken directly from Project 2025, the bipartisan survey group responded most negatively to the following:

Allowing employers to stop paying hourly workers overtime

Allowing the government to monitor people’s pregnancies to potentially prosecute them if they miscarry

Removing health care protections for people with pre-existing conditions

Eliminating the National Weather Service, which is currently responsible for preparing for extreme weather events like heat waves, floods, and wildfires

Eliminating the Head Start program, ending preschool education for the children of low-income families

Putting a new tax on health insurance for millions of people who get insurance through their employer

Banning Medicare from negotiating for lower prescription drug costs and eliminating the $35 monthly cap on the price of insulin for seniors

Cutting Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age

Allowing employers to deny workers access to birth control

Laurie Garrett looked at the roughly 50 pages within Project 2025 that deal with Health and Human Services (HHS) and other health agencies, and summarized them on Twitter/X in a series of replies. I've shortened even more here:

HHS must "respect for the sacred rights of conscience" for Federal workers & healthcare providers and workers broadly who object to abortions, contraception, gender reassignment & other issues - ie. allow them to deny services based on religious beliefs

HHS should promote "stable and flourishing married families."

Require all welfare programs to "promote father involvement" – or terminate their funding for mothers and children.

Prioritize adoptions via faith-based organizations.

Redefine sex, eliminating all forms of gender "confusion" regarding identity and orientation.

Eliminate the Head Start program for children, entirely

Ban all funding of Planned Parenthood

Ban birth control services that are "egregious attacks on many Americans' religious & moral beliefs"

Deny pregnancy termination pills, "mail-order abortions."

Eliminate Office of Refugee Resettlement; move all refugee matters to the Department of Homeland Security

Healthcare should be "market-based"

Ban all mask and vaccine requirements.

Closely regulate the NIH w/citizen ethics panels, ensuring that no research involves fetal tissue, leads to development of new forms of Abortions or brings profits to the researchers.

Redirect the Office of Global Affairs to promoting "moral conscience" & full compliance w/the Mexico City policy

The CDC should have no role in medical policies.

"Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism," HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence & by what method.

I'm still looking for a good short summary of the environmental horrors that Project 2025 would bring if it comes to fruition…

[reasonsforhope]

Flint, Michigan, has one of the [United States]'s highest rates of child poverty — something that got a lot of attention during the city's lead water crisis a decade ago. And a pediatrician who helped expose that lead problem has now launched a first-of-its-kind move to tackle poverty: giving every new mother $7,500 in cash aid over a year.

A baby's first year is crucial for development. It's also a time of peak poverty.

Flint's new cash transfer program, Rx Kids, starts during pregnancy. The first payment is $1,500 to encourage prenatal care. After delivery, mothers will get $500 a month over the baby's first year.

"What happens in that first year of life can really portend your entire life course trajectory. Your brain literally doubles in size in the first 12 months," says Hanna-Attisha, who's also a public health professor at Michigan State University.

A baby's birth is also a peak time for poverty. Being pregnant can force women to cut back hours or even lose a job. Then comes the double whammy cost of child care.

Research has found that stress from childhood poverty can harm a person's physical and mental health, brain development and performance in school. Infants and toddlers are more likely than older children to be put into foster care, for reasons that advocates say conflate neglect with poverty.

In Flint, where the child poverty rate is more than 50%, Hanna-Attisha says new moms are in a bind. "We just had a baby miss their 4-day-old appointment because mom had to go back to work at four days," she says...

Benefits of Cash Aid

Studies have found such payments reduce financial hardship and food insecurity and improve mental and physical health for both mothers and children.

The U.S. got a short-lived taste of that in 2021. Congress temporarily expanded the child tax credit, boosting payments and also sending them to the poorest families who had been excluded because they didn't make enough to qualify for the credit. Research found that families mostly spent the money on basic needs. The bigger tax credit improved families' finances and briefly cut the country's child poverty rate nearly in half.

"We saw food hardship dropped to the lowest level ever," Shaefer says. "And we saw credit scores actually go to the highest that they'd ever been in at the end of 2021."

Critics worried that the expanded credit would lead people to work less, but there was little evidence of that. Some said they used the extra money for child care so they could go to work.

As cash assistance in Flint ramps up, Shaefer will be tracking not just its impact on financial well-being, but how it affects the roughly 1,200 babies born in the city each year.

"We're going to see if expectant moms route into prenatal care earlier," he says. "Are they able to go more? And then we'll be able to look at birth outcomes," including birth weight and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions.

Since the pandemic, dozens of cash aid pilots have popped up across the nation. But unlike them, Rx Kids is not limited to lower-income households. It's universal, which means every new mom will get the same amount of money. "You pit people against each other when you draw that line in the sand and say, 'You don't need this, and you do,' " Shaefer says. It can also stigmatize families who get the aid, he says, as happened with traditional welfare...

So far, there's more than $43 million to keep the program going for three years. Funders include foundations, health insurance companies and the state of Michigan, which allocated a small part of its federal cash aid, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Money can buy more time for bonding with a baby

Alana Turner can't believe her luck with Flint's new cash benefits. "I was just shocked because of the timing of it all," she says.

Turner is due soon with her second child, a girl. She lives with her aunt and her 4-year-old son, Ace. After he was born, her car broke down and she was seriously cash-strapped, negotiating over bill payments. This time, she hopes she won't have to choose between basic needs.

"Like, I shouldn't have to think about choosing between are the lights going to be on or am I going to make sure the car brakes are good," she says...

But since she'll be getting an unexpected $7,500 over the next year, Turner has a new goal. With her first child, she was back on the job in less than six weeks. Now, she hopes she'll be able to slow down and spend more time with her daughter.

"I don't want to sacrifice the time with my newborn like I had to for my son, if I don't have to," she says."

-via NPR, March 12, 2024

[writingwithcolor]

Thanksgiving/Day of Mourning

Last year, I made a very quick, basic post about thanksgiving: Indigenous Day of Mourning aka Thanksgiving. if you want the sources for what I’m about to say, check there.

This post will be about why you cannot just go “fuck the pilgrims, we deserve a harvest festival no matter the origin” or anything else that tries to sanitize the holiday.

You Are Still On Stolen Land

As a result, you are still actively profiting off the genocide the pilgrims committed.

I don’t care how educated about racial issues you profess you are. I don’t care how you behave the other 364 days of the year. If you try to distance yourself from the origins of Thanksgiving simply because it makes you uncomfortable to see the blood under the tablecloth, you’re not practised in sitting with actually being anti-racist. You know what to say, but you don’t practice what you preach.

You Are Eating Our Food

Pumpkins/squash, beans, turkey, cranberries, potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes, pecans, maple syrup?

Those are all Native American foods that we taught you how to grow and harvest.

You wouldn’t have any of your traditional Thanksgiving foods without us. The ideal meal of Thanksgiving is ripped right from Indigenous practices and cannot be separated from it.

The fact that these foods have been taken out of Indigenous hands and appropriated by colonizers as the bounties they somehow deserve for landing here is a tragedy, and people need to remember where their food comes from and who had been growing it for thousands of years.

You Had So Much Because Of Massacre

Thanksgiving became an annual tradition after 700 Pequot men, women, children, and elders were killed, freeing up acres of land that colonizers promptly took over. The sheer amount of extra acreage that colonizers had because of their genocide contributed to the excess of food experienced during Thanksgiving. That land had been structured to support more people originally.

Colonizers had never, ever, deserved that much food. They were taking more than they needed, not leaving much behind for the animals that depended on a balance to be held with humans. They took far more than was needed, throwing the balance off in nature.

Maybe I’m reaching. But I think that if you suddenly had 700 less people in the area, after all of the growing and planting for the total population had been done, you’d have excess food? Or even before the growing, you’d have land set up to support 700, that I’d assume you’d still use, when you were a much smaller population?

Sit With Your Own Grief

If this makes you feel bad and that you shouldn’t celebrate Thanksgiving? Sit with that.

I’m not telling you that you have to give up Thanksgiving traditions. I’m telling you that you cannot divorce them from Indigenous people.

You are giving thanks for our massacre. You are giving thanks for stealing so much from us that you had this excess.

Yes, you can need a break; yes, you can need time with family and friends. None of this is inherently bad.

It’s not even bad to eat local food from Turtle Island! Part of having a sustainable diet is eating locally, in time with the seasons.

But remember, it is Indigenous people who first gave this to you—and then you stole far more than you ever needed from us, killing us to get what you felt you deserved.

Do not divorce Thanksgiving from Indigenous people for your own comfort.

We are still here. We must live with the aftermath of colonizers stealing from us every single day.

If you feel this way hearing about our history, imagine what we feel like living it.

Donate to a local org/Indigenous person this Thanksgiving

I (again) don’t have the spoons to compile a list of vetted charities, but look for local tribe language revival programs, COVID relief funds, and activism around the Indian Child Welfare Act currently in front of the Supreme Court.

Pay reparations for what you have taken, and remember. It is also Indigenous Day of Mourning.

Indigenous people, drop your links below.

~Lesya

[juniperharvest]

The National Indian Child Welfare Association needs your help before September 17th 2024

Text SIGN PBAZHN to 50409 to send this letter to your US House Representative

Please support H.R. 9076 when it reaches the house floor. Native families deserve support from the federal government, especially when it comes to keeping Native children with Native families. This bill includes critical provisions for tribes that receive funding under the Title IV-B child welfare programs, such as: - Increasing funding for tribal agencies and courts. - Reducing administrative burdens. - Enhancing data collection on Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) cases in states.

Please sign and share, it takes about 30 seconds to use resist bot. Thank you!

[opencommunion]

"While largely toothless as a democratic body—shorn of true legislative capacities and having never developed a genuine transnational dynamic—the European Parliament is nonetheless an important bellwether to track the continent’s political winds. As the results of the parliament’s June 6-9 elections confirm, those winds are blowing in a bleakly reactionary direction.

... There are two principal causes for this. First, the fact that for many decades now European national governments and federal European institutions have legitimized — through emergency measures, moral panics and murderous border policies that have led to thousands of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean — the far Right’s defining claim that migration threatens the material and cultural survival of white European civilization. The far Right’s obsessive talk of borders and births, and its promotion of the myth of the Great Replacement, were enabled by the EU’s political center. Governments across the continent advanced anti-migrant policies on the grounds that stricter regulations would sap the foundations of extremism. But it turns out voters often prefer the original brand, choosing bellicose nativism over technocratic repression when it comes to the ​'migration crisis.'

The second engine of Europe’s turn towards authoritarianism is the EU’s promotion of fiscal austerity policies that have particularly impacted Southern Europe and Ireland, but which have led to welfare state retrenchment across the board. Beyond eroding livelihoods and exacerbating inequality, austerity also led to the rise of multiple movements to reclaim national sovereignty, almost all of which (after the punishment and capitulation of Syriza’s left-wing government in Greece) are now monopolized by reactionaries. While all of Europe’s far-right parties have played on this supposedly populist register, none have challenged the hegemony of markets and the rating agencies that dictate cuts to social programs. ... The real social malaise that plagues so much of Europe — overburdened and privatized healthcare, labor precarity, anemic social security, accelerating climate-related emergencies — is projected onto the far Right’s favorite scapegoats: primarily migrants, but also ​'gender ideology' and its alleged assault on the family as Europe’s moral and material core."

[charlesoberonn]

Republican-to-English Dictionary

"Law and order" - Police should violently oppress marginalized people and protesters regardless of the law.

"Fiscal responsibility" - Cut all welfare programs for poor people and replace them with subsidies for the rich.

"Family values" - Heterosexual Patriarchy

"Judeo-Christian" - Christian

"Religious freedom" - Forcing Christianity on people and giving Christians special privileges.

"Marxism/Communism/Far-left" - Anything to the left of them (increasing all the time)

"The American people" - Only the people who vote Republicans

[nerdygaymormon]

Sometimes you mention that you've lived long enough to see changes in the church on LGBTQ topics. What are some of the major changes you've experienced in church?

I feel like I've lived in 3 eras of the LDS Church.

When I was a child, it was an era that now seems very far away. Black people weren't allowed to go to the temple or have the priesthood (which also limited which callings they could have in church). Church met twice on Sundays, once for Sunday School (children attended Jr Sunday School) and I think priesthood quorums met prior to Sunday School, and then we came again later that day for Sacrament meeting. This part is fuzzy to me, but I think youth activities were on Tuesday, and Primary was on Wednesday (and I think Relief Society was also on Wednesday). In addition to paying tithing, my parents were asked to contribute to the local ward budget, and we raised money to build the local church building. I remember my family working on the local church farm (I'm not sure if it was part of the welfare system or was a fundraiser for the local stake/ward budgets, perhaps both). There was a BIG emphasis on food storage. Social life revolved around church as there were many activities such as the annual Gold & Green Ball (dinner and a dance for the married folks, it was a big deal, they'd dress fancy for it). The church members were socially and politically conservative.

My teens and young adult years were spent in a different era. The church had undone the restrictions on Black members. Church was now consolidated to a 3-hour block on Sundays (except for youth activities on Wednesdays). Temples started getting built in big cities outside of Utah but still were a far drive for many members, instead of going on a temple trip once a year, as a youth we could go twice a year when a temple was built a few hours away. There were still a lot of activities, especially for the teenagers, such as big stake/regional dances, sports competitions, road shows, and a big youth trip in the summer. The ward budgets came from the church (from the tithing) and not from individual members of the ward giving more, and we no longer had to contribute (either money or labor) for local church buildings to get constructed. We didn't work on farms anymore, but worked in the cannery (I remember hearing adults talk about operating machines that bottled ketchup). While the membership was still very conservative, a more moderate approach was being taken by top leadership, and President Hinckley made big steps towards being more open with the world.

I'd say that President Nelson has ushered in another era. Two-hour church on Sundays. Wednesday youth programs being less rigorous or programmed. Temples within a relatively short drive of members and encouragement to go often. Teenagers can have their own temple recommends. No home or visiting teachers and instead a conversation and informal friendship counts as ministering. Few church activities outside of those for youth and our regular church meetings. More accommodation for differences in beliefs of what were considered core doctrines & principles (this started before the Nelson era). The internet has caused the church to be more open about its past, including some issues which are hard like racism and polygamy (again, this predates the Nelson era). There's also been steps to undo some of the patriarchy in the church structure (like women can serve as witnesses and changes to the temple ceremony).

I definitely would not want to go back to the era of the 1970's when I was a child. While there are things I miss from the era of Hinckley & Monson, I don't think I'd like to revert back. The one effect I worry about from the recent changes is people have weaker social ties to their church community. I've heard leaders say that church isn't a social club, but for a long time it was and I think the church underestimates the importance of social connections.

—————————————————

As for LGBTQ history in the LDS Church, Nathan Kitchen, the former president of Affirmation, did an excellent job in describing the changes in the church on these topics. I have lived through 5 eras of the church on LGBTQ issues.

The era from when I was a child was brutal. Even saying you're gay was seen as sinful. You were expected to fight with everything you had to completely erase these feelings. Attempts to remove these “tendencies” included electro-shock therapy at BYU. Most families would reject the queer family member.

The death of President Spencer W. Kimball in 1985 led to the next era for LGBTQ members. Rather than insist on complete erasure of homosexual feelings, gay members were to behave like straight people--get married and have kids and DON'T TELL ANYONE. This is the invisible generation who felt isolated and alone, hidden from other members and each other. Every so often we still hear about a former mission president or stake president who finally comes out after decades of living as a straight person. Most of the mixed-orientation marriages failed, the queer person eventually spoke their truth, picked up the pieces of their shattered dreams, and moved on and out of the church.

In 1998, President Gordon B. Hinckley did a widely-viewed interview with Larry King in which he said said we love "so-called gays and lesbians" and put forward the idea that gay thoughts aren’t a problem, but gay actions are. The church's view was that some of us are struggling with unwanted same-sex attractions, much like people who have other addictions. Even as the church led a major effort to defeat marriage equality, queer members no longer had to remain hidden, so they found each other and attended conferences together and encouraged each other. Members would admire queer members for their wrestle against their attractions. Because they were trying to make this path work and were admired for it, these queer members mostly didn’t share their struggles & mental health challenges with their family, friends, or other members. They were visible, but largely were silent. A generation seen but not heard.

Beginning in the early 2010's, a growing number of gay members receive media attention, and groups like Mama Dragons and North Star are formed. By the mid-2010's the church shifts its approach and starts highlighting and celebrating gay and bisexual members who are single & celibate, and also a few who are in mixed-orientation marriages. The church starts softening its former positions as it officially rejects conversion therapy, advocates for no violence and doesn't require members to deny their queer identities. As long as you are single & celibate, you are welcome. This is also when trans members start entering the consciousness of the church as in 2015 Emmett Claren (now Emmett Presciado) starts a YouTube channel where he documents his transition and in 2017 Kris Irvin makes national news for having a bishop threaten to withhold a BYU ecclesiastical endorsement if Kris receives top surgery. LDS families no longer automatically reject their queer children, but tend to leave the church together if their queer child doesn't feel welcome or safe at church. One last effort to pull membership back occurred in 2015 with a policy against gay couples and their children, and it received a LOT of pushback and generated a wave of members leaving the LDS church.

I think we entered a new era in 2019 as the Handbook policy of 2015 is reversed. In 2020 the now-publicly available Church Handbook softens the approach to gay and bi members but puts in more rules and restrictions of trans members. It's the beginning of a dichotomy where we see progress for people who aren't heterosexual and regression for people who aren't cisgender. In 2024, there are now married gay couples quietly attending church and not being excommunicated (which wasn't a thing even just 2 or 3 years ago), and trans members are facing severe restrictions due to more changes in the Handbook. It's hard not to believe more positive changes for gay and bi members will be coming, even as the church ratchets up its fight against trans members.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Someday, we’ll all take comfort in the internet’s “dark corners”

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me on SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and beyond!

Platforms decay. Tech bosses, unconstrained by competition; regulation; ad blockers and other adversarial interoperability; and their own workers, will inevitably hollow out their platforms, using ultraflexible digital technology to siphon value away from end users and business customers, leaving behind the bare minimum of value to keep all those users locked in:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/23/evacuate-the-platforms/#let-the-platforms-burn

Enshittification is the inevitable result of high switching costs. Tech bosses are keenly attuned to opportunities to lock in their customers and users, because the harder is to leave a platform, the worse the platform can treat you – the more value it can rob you of – without risking your departure.

But platform users are a heterogeneous, lumpy mass. Different groups of users have different switching costs. An adult Facebook user of long tenure has more reasons to stay than a younger user: they have more complex social lives, with nonoverlapping social circles from high school, college, various jobs, affinity groups, and family. They are more likely to have a chronic illness, or to be caring for someone with chronic illness, and to be a member of a social media support group they value highly. They are more likely to be connected to practical communities, like little league carpool rotas.

That's the terrible irony of platform decay: the more value you get from a platform, the more cost that platform can extract, a cost denominated in your wellbeing, enjoyment and dignity.

(At this point, someone will pipe up and say, "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." It's nonsense. Dignity, respect and fairness aren't frequent flier program perks that tech companies dribble out to their best customers. Companies will happily treat their paying customers as "products" if they think those customers can't avoid other forms of rent-extraction, such as "attention rents")

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

Now, consider the converse proposition: for younger users, platforms deliver less value. Younger users have less complex social lives on average relative to their parents and grandparents, which means that platforms have fewer ways to sink their hooks into those young users. Further: young users tend to want things that the platforms don't want them to have, right from the first day they sign up. In particular, young users often want to conduct their socializing out of eyesight and earshot of adults, especially parents, teachers, and other authority figures. This means that a typical younger user has both more reasons to leave a platform as well as fewer reasons to stay there.

Younger people have an additional reason to bail on platforms early and often: if your online and offline social circles strongly overlap – if you see the same people at school as you do in your feed, it's much easier to reassemble your (smaller, less complex) social circle on a new platform.

And so: on average, young people like platforms less, hate them more, and have both less to lose and more to gain by leaving one platform for another. Sure, some young people are also burning with youth's neophilia. But even without that neophilia, young people are among the first to go when tech bosses start to ratchet up the enshittification.

Beyond young people, there are others who tend to jump ship early, like sex-workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/21/early-adopters/#sex-tech

Sex-workers' technology changes are only incidentally the result of some novelty-seeking impulse. The real reason to change platforms if you're a sex-worker is that the platforms are either absolutely hostile to sex-workers, or profoundly indifferent to the suffering their policy changes rain down upon them.

The same is broadly true of other disfavored groups, including those with out-of-mainstream political ideologies. Some of these groups hold progressive views, others are out-and-out Nazis, but all of them chafe at the platforms' policies at the best of times, and are far more ready to jump ship when the platforms tighten the noose on all their users.

This is where "dark corners" come in. The worst people on the internet have relocated to its so-called dark corners – privately hosted servers, groupchats, message-boards, etc. Some of these are notorious: Kiwi Farms, 4chan, 8kun, sprawling Telegram groupchats. Others only breach when they are implicated in waves of unthinkably cruel and grotesque crimes:

https://www.wired.com/story/764-com-child-predator-network/

The answer to crimes committed in the internet's dark corners is the same as for crimes committed anywhere: catch the criminals, prosecute the crimes. But a distressing number of well-meaning people observe the nexus between dark corners and the crimes that fester there, and conclude that the problem is with the dark corners, themselves.

These people observe that social media platforms like Facebook, and intermediaries like Cloudflare, DNS providers, and domain registrars constitute a "nexus of control" – chokepoints that trap the online lives of billions of people – and conclude that these gigantic corporations can and should be made "responsible" for their users:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

From there, it's a short leap to conclude that anyone who isn't in a position to be controlled by these too big to jail, too big to fail, relentlessly enshittifying corporations must be pushed into their demesne.

This is a deal with the devil. In the name of preventing small groups of terrible people from gathering in private, beyond the control of the world's insufferable and cruel tech barons, we risk dooming everyone else to being permanently within those unworthy billionaires' thumbs.

This is why people like Mark Zuckerberg are so eager to see an increase in "intermediary liability" rules like Section 230. Zuckerberg's greatest fear isn't having to spend more on moderators or algorithms that suppress controversial subjects:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/instagram-users-outraged-by-app-limiting-political-content-ahead-of-elections/

The thing he fears the most is losing control over his users. That's why he bought Instagram: to recapture the young users who were fleeing his mismanaged, enshittified platform in droves:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

A legal mandate for Zuckerberg to police his users is a legal requirement that he surveil and control those users. It's fundamentally incompatible with the new drive in competition circles to force Zuckerberg and his fellow tech barons to offer gateways that make it easier to escape their grasp, by allowing users to depart Facebook and continue to socialize with the users who stay behind:

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

Remember: the more locked-in a platform user is, the harder that platform will squeeze that user, safe in the knowledge that the cost of leaving is higher than the cost of staying and tolerating the platform's abuse.

This is the problem with "feudal security" – the warlord who lures you into his castle fortress with the promise of protection from external threats is, in reality, operating a prison where no one can protect you from him:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/08/leona-helmsley-was-a-pioneer/#manorialism

Rather than fighting to abolish dark corners because only the worst people on the internet use them today, we should be normalizing dark corners, making it easier for every kind of user to find a cozy nook that is shaded from the baleful glare of Zuck and his fellow, eminently guillotineable tech warlords:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/15/normalize-dark-corners/

Enshittification is relentless. The collapse of the restraints that penalized tech companies who abused their users – competition, regulation, interoperability and their own workers' consciences – has inculcated every tech boss with an incurable enshittification imperative.

Efforts to make the platforms safer for their users can only take us so far. Fundamentally, these vast, centralized systems that vest authority with flawed and mediocre and frail human dictators (who fancy themselves noble, brilliant and infallible) will never be safe for human habitation. Rather than focusing on improving the platforms, we should be evacuating them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/09/let-the-platforms-burn/

Online communities that control their own moderation policies won't always get it right. But there is a whole host of difficult moderation calls that can never be adequately handled by outsiders overseeing vast, sprawling platforms. Distinguishing friendly banter from harassment requires the context that only an insider can hope to possess.

We all deserve dark corners where we stand a chance of finding well-managed communities that can deliver the value that keeps us stuck to our decaying giant platforms. Eventually, the enshittification will chase every user off these platforms – not just kids or sex-workers or political radicals. When that happens, it sure would be nice if everyone could set up in a dark corner of their own.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/23/evacuate-the-platforms/#let-the-platforms-burn

[odinsblog]

When the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion smugly declared that “nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Alito mocked the dissent’s concern that getting rid of abortion would ultimately imperil things like access to contraception, saying the dissent was “designed to stoke unfounded fear that our decision will imperil those other rights.”

But as anti-choice politicians and activists are now deploying Dobbs to try to roll back decades of law about bodily autonomy, it’s clear the dissent’s fears were quite well-founded.

Conservatives are not going to stop at unwinding the constitutional right to privacy, which underpins things like the right to obtain birth control and the right of same-sex couples to marry. After they destroy the agency of half the population by imposing so-called “fetal personhood” laws, they’re coming for the modern welfare state.

The blueprint

Over at the hard-right Washington Examiner, Conn Carroll, a former comms person for both the Heritage Foundation and Utah Sen. Mike Lee, has a lengthy list of laws he’d like to get rid of — everything from Medicaid, to Head Start, to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Those laws, he argues, “penalize marriage and encourage alternative family formation.” Carroll’s goals therefore dovetail not only with forced-birth conservatives but also with forced-marriage conservatives.

(continue reading)