#new church policies for transgender members

[loveerran]

The 99 (plus 1)

On September 9th, President Russell M. Nelson, prophet and leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, will turn 100 years old. His has been a full life, dedicated to service and a desire to improve the lives of others.

As part of that ministry, the prophet has invited us to help celebrate his birthday by reaching "out to 'the one' in need", "'the one' in our lives who may be feeling lost or alone". This invitation references the parable of the lost sheep (Matthew 18 and Luke 15), which emphasizes the value of one that is lost.

This is interesting to me as a transgender disciple of Christ. Transgender individuals generally make up no more than 1% of the overall population, making us (in some very real ways) 'the one'. If a typical ward has 100-200 active members, then there should be approximately 1 transgender individual in every congregation of the church. It is sad there are far, far fewer than that. Most leave. They feel alone, lost, isolated and discriminated against despite the council President Nelson has given.

There will be a special broadcast commemorating the prophet's 100th birthday. During the broadcast, "Examples of what people around the world have done over the past 100 days to commemorate his birthday will be shared through stories from people who were 'the one.'"

Throughout his ministry, I see the Savior ministering to those who felt lost or alone, forgotten or marginalized. I imagine that the broadcast will show outreach efforts that look familiar to us. When I think about the people the Savior ministered to, I often think on those who were rejected or discriminated against by the society around him, including:

Those who may have been considered enemies, like the Samaritans - including the good Samaritan of the parable or the woman at the well,

Those who may have been considered outsiders, like the centurion's servant - or tax collectors and sinners like Levi and others,

Those who may have been considered unclean, like lepers (at least one of whom was another Samaritan) and the woman with the issue of blood,

Those who may have been considered sinners, like the woman taken in adultery or the woman who washed his feet, and others.

We also read of several times where Jesus' followers didn't want him to interact or minister with a certain class of people, from the blind man who called after him "Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me" to the little children he instructed should be suffered to come unto him.

I am grateful for the church's emphasis on (and exercise of) ministry and outreach, and for the good that it will bring to the world. I am grateful for those who try to make the world a better place, as President Nelson has. I hope someday we will see inclusion of LGBT people in our outreach narratives, including stories of truly sensitive, kind, compassionate and Christlike ministry - even when some in our society may consider us to be enemies, outsiders, unclean and sinners.

Love, Erran

[queerstake]

Good morning, Queerstake! Thank you to everyone joining us for our community fast and letter writing campaign in response to the 2024 Church Handbook update with regards to transgender people. The policy update has shaken all of us. It is exclusionary and degrading. But we will find strength in each other as a community and courage in our efforts to effect change in this church that belongs not only to the General Authorities who authorized this policy update but also to all of us. Change in the Church happens from the ground up. Harmful policies have been issued and redacted before in our own lifetimes! We deserve to be treated with respect.

Today, we will fast together as a community that the Lord softens the hearts of the First Presidency. We will also write and send letters expressing our grief. Please don’t be quiet about your feelings today. Share your heartbreak with as many of your fellow ward and Queerstake members as you feel comfortable doing. Please post your feelings as well so we can inspire and uplift each other as we write our letters. It’s important that our grievances are heard.

Please send physical letters to:

The Office of the First Presidency

47 East South Temple Street

Salt Lake City, UT 84150

If you are unable to send a paper letter to Salt Lake, because I was not able to find an appropriate email, please instead email your letters to me at QUEERSTAKEONTUMBLR@GMAIL.COM. I’ll print and mail them myself.

Edit: @nerdygaymormon found an email address! Please feel free to send email to lgbt@churchofjesuschrist.org. However, you are still more than welcome to send them to me to print. In fact, why not do both!

A quick word of caution: Of course, no one can guarantee the type of responses we might receive for these letters. In fact, I urge you to consider using a pseudonym in order to avoid potential church discipline. Please take care to note what legal name or return address might be associated with your membership records. I don’t want to scare anyone, especially because we’re doing nothing wrong, but it’s always good to be very aware of what might make it back to your bishop.

Thank you again to everyone for joining. I’ve always felt so supported and uplifted by Queerstake. I know that our Heavenly Parents love us just as we are and that they don’t want us excluded and humiliated in our wards. We have unique and valuable testimonies to share. We don’t go unheard by our Heavenly Parents.

I’ve included a few sample letters and templates below the cut for people who might need a shortcut for one reason or another. You are welcome to send them verbatim or modify them.

#1

Dear First Presidency,

I'm writing to express my grief and concern over the 2024 handbook policy update on transgender people.

I believe that Christ invites all to come unto him and that as Christ's church, we have a responsibility to embrace people from all walks of life. No other demographic within the church is being treated with such severity as our transgender siblings under this new policy. I fear our transgender siblings in Christ will feel excluded and degraded, and we will lose many great members.

I believe it's of the utmost importance that we express Christlike love and charity even to people we don't understand. There is no excuse for asking transgender youth to leave activities with their peers as though they are a danger. There is no excuse for not allowing transgender people to work with children or humiliating them in our bathrooms. This is a demographic of people who have suffered in our society and Christ would want us to reach out to them with open arms. I humbly and respectfully ask that you reconsider these policy changes with regards to the doctrine of unconditional love that the church espouses. I beg you to consider the church experience of our transgender siblings in Christ and to prioritize their feelings over the feelings of people that wish to hurt them.

Thank you for your time.

#2

Dear First Presidency,

I feel deeply grieved by the Handbook update on transgender people. As a transgender member myself, I am doing everything I can to remain in the church and exclusionary policies like these make me feel deeply unwanted and deeply unloved.

I understand very well the church's position on gender, but I hope that despite that position that I might still be able to feel Christ's love at church. Our Heavenly Parents put me on this or Earth as a transgender person. I am not a danger to children and I am not a predator in bathrooms. I am your sibling in Christ. I want to serve in church. I want to serve in teaching positions. I want to serve the youth. I believe that we attend church with the purpose of uplifting each other and studying our religion together as a ward family. I want to be edified and I want to edify.

President Hinckley said every member needs a calling, a friend, and the word of God, and if I'm treated this way at church, I'm not receiving any of those things. If I can't have a real role to play within my ward, then I have no responsibility. If I am treated as an outsider and an enemy and a predator by policy and by my fellow church members, then I don't have a friend. If I can't also receive Christ's gospel through the love of the people around me, then I'm not receiving the real word of the Lord.

I seriously urge you to reconsider this policy update. I beg you on behalf of myself and my transgender siblings in the church to not hate us and to not exclude us.

Thank you for your time.

#3

Dear First Presidency,

I felt ______ when I heard about the new policy update to the handbook about transgender individuals. I believe we should treat our transgender members with the love and respect they deserve as our siblings in Christ.

I urge you to reconsider this policy update because ______

Thank you for your time.

#4

Dear Leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,

I'm writing to express my grief and concern over the 2024 handbook policy update on transgender people, which I have been made aware of due to the negative impact it is having on my [friend(s)/family/loved ones].

The reputation of love, kindness, and family values that your church fosters with its programs, teachings, and community outreach is undermined by your continued exclusion of LGBT+ members and specifically with this policy change of your transgender members.

My [friend(s)/family/loved ones] have expressed _____ in regards to the August 19, 2024 changes to the handbook that relegate transgender members of your church to second-class citizens within the organization, and deny them the full capacity of worship and belonging within your church; all because of something so insignificant to their capacity to worship and belong to a community as their gender being different than the gender that they were assigned at birth. This decision _____ me/ negatively impacts my view of your church.

Thank you for your time.

I believe that there is no excuse for asking transgender youth to leave activities with their peers as though they are a danger. There is no excuse for not allowing transgender people to work with children or humiliating them in your bathrooms. This is a demographic of people who have suffered in our society and I believe that every person needs to reach out to them with open arms. I respectfully ask that you reconsider these policy changes with regards to the doctrine of unconditional love that the church espouses. I beg you to consider the church experience of your transgender members and to prioritize their feelings over the feelings of people that wish to hurt them.

[gay-mormon-wizard]

these new policies are awful. without question, people will lose their testimonies, their communities, and their families. some members on-the-fence with allyship will swing back into transphobia. many people will be driven to self-harm and suicide.

as a "socially transitioned" nonbinary member, I feel the sting of everything I've just been newly hit with. but I also have hope.

up until now, central Church leadership has been content to try and prevent people from being transgender by preaching that it's morally wrong, and justifying that belief with doctrines about God creating individual people - "God made you to be a woman because that's His purpose for you, you're offending Him by saying He was wrong," etc. They were happy to believe that there were so few of us trans people in the Church that "dealing with" us could be done on a case-by-case basis. Why make a policy for such a rare situation, when most such circumstances can be prevented by teaching moral doctrines?

These policies are the lashing out of a wounded animal with nothing left except its claws and teeth to defend itself. Trans church members coming out and being loud and proud have backed up central leadership into a corner. The Church has resorted to harshly punishing us because they've realized that they can't stop us. the Church is being forced to confront the fact that their transphobic rhetoric is weak against the power of people's personal experiences. The Church is trying to isolate and exclude us because people who get to know us typically realize that we are not the evil that they say we are.

the Church's desperate clambering for lost power here is a reaction to all of the progress we've made. I won't blame anyone for saying "fuck this" and spending their life on other things. but I will be continuing to be loud and proud, advocating for queer people in the church, and putting pressure on central leadership to accept us.

[nerdygaymormon]

I wrote a letter to the church leadership already, and I wanted to share the last part, because I feel like it would be appreciated.

"This brings me to my final point: that these new additions to the handbook, which embolden and encourage members to exclude, hate, or harm those who are LGBTQ+, go against the core of the gospel, which is love. Jesus said the first great commandment is to love God with everything that we have and are, and the second is to love our neighbors as ourselves. These commandments are the anchor of my faith, and I strive to only ever act out of love. I believe that if you can only strive to follow the commandments of love, the other commandments aren’t even a question. But the policies and stances of the church on the allowed participation of transgender and gay members make us feel unloved and unwanted.

I find no love in the policies that exclude my transgender siblings from all the major ordinances of the gospel. I find no love in your words telling my gay siblings that they are expected to marry someone they do not love, or to not marry at all. I find no love in the church for the straight members who feel lonelier and more unwanted than ever when they discover they unwittingly married someone who is not actually attracted to them because their spouse felt pressured into it. And I find no love in the words “love the sinner, hate the sin,” because every part of me, including my attraction and potential for love toward both women and men, is God-given and divine.

One final note: I try to give others the benefit of the doubt, but if you promote and stand on these harmful policies because you fear the alienation of the queerphobic members of the church more than the emotional, physical, and mental harm you are causing the rest of us, you will one day find your olive tree producing only wild fruit. May the Lord of the Vineyard be merciful and just."

(I had to add the last part because I sometimes wonder if they have had revelation for the full integration of LGBTQ+ members, but that they're withholding it to keep other people happy.)

😭💖😭💖

Thank you for sharing

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mira Lazine at LGBTQ Nation:

Yesterday, a group of “gay furry hackers” known as SiegedSec released 200 gigabytes of leaked data from the Heritage Foundation on their Telegram, a group texting application. “This breach can help shine light on who exactly is supporting Heritage, and also encourage people to fight against them even more than before,” said a member of the group known as “vio” to LGBTQ Nation. “I believe it’s also worth noting, this could help show the amount of support Heritage has that’s provided by malicious users or bots from China,” she said while linking to a thread on X by journalist Jackie Singh, which analyzes the leak’s data.

The leak resulted from a string of hacks carried out by the group’s “#OpTransRights,” which targets groups opposed to trans civil rights. The Heritage Foundation in particular was targeted for its creation of Project 2025, a plan to install ultraconservative policies if former President Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election. Project 2025’s desired policies include strong restrictions on transgender care and denying any legal recognition of trans people’s gender identities.  LGBTQ Nation obtained access to the leaked data. It contains information from between 2007 and 2022, and it focuses primarily around the Heritage Foundation’s news wing, The Daily Signal. The data includes information on commenters’ email and IP addresses, along with information regarding those who had articles posted on the site.

[...] SiegedSec has targeted other groups and individuals earlier this year as part of #OpTransRights, including the ultraconservative outlet Real America’s Voice and a Minnesota church pastor who was accused of transphobia.

Project 2025 architects The Heritage Foundation got targeted by a gay furry hackers collective called SiegedSec. These heroes shined a light on Heritage’s bigoted ways.

See Also:

The Advocate: Gay furry hackers target Heritage Foundation

PinkNews: Heritage Foundation exec rages against ‘degenerate’ Gay Furry Hackers following hack

[suntomemp3]

If you know any trans Mormons (current members or ex members) please check up on them. I am not okay and I seriously doubt anyone else is

Some context if people need it

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 19, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 20, 2024

Yesterday morning, NPR reported that U.S. public health data are showing a dramatic drop in deaths from drug overdoses for the first time in decades. Between April 2023 and April 2024, deaths from street drugs are down 10.6%, with some researchers saying that when federal surveys are updated, the decline will be even more pronounced. Such a decline would translate to 20,000 deaths averted.

With more than 70,000 Americans dying of opioid overdoses in 2020 and numbers rising, the Biden-Harris administration prioritized disrupting the supply of illicit fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. They worked to seize the drugs at ports of entry, sanctioned more than 300 foreign people and agencies engaged in the global trade in illicit drugs, and arrested and prosecuted dozens of high-level Mexican drug traffickers and money launderers. 

In March 2023 the Biden-Harris administration made naloxone, a medicine that can prevent fatal opioid overdoses, available over the counter. The administration invested more than $82 billion in treatment, and the Department of Health and Human Services worked to get the treatment into the hands of first responders and family members. 

Addressing the crisis of opioid deaths meant careful, coordinated policies.

Also today, markets all over the world climbed after the Fed yesterday cut interest rates for the first time in four years. In the U.S., the S&P 500, which tracks the stock performance of 500 of the biggest companies on U.S. stock exchanges, the Nasdaq Composite, which is weighted toward the information technology sector, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, an older index that tracks 30 prominent companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges, all hit new records. The rate cut indicated to traders that the U.S. has, in fact, managed to pull off the soft landing President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen worked to achieve. They have kept job growth steady, normalized economic growth and inflation, and avoided a recession. 

As they have done so, the major U.S. stock indices have had what The Guardian's Callum Jones calls “an extraordinary year.” Jones notes that the S&P 500 is up more than 20% since the beginning of 2024, the Nasdaq Composite has risen 22%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gone up 11%.

Bringing the U.S. economy out of the pandemic more successfully than any other major economically developed country meant clear goals and principles, and careful, informed adjustments.

And yet the big story today is that Republican North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson frequented porn sites, where between 2008 and 2012 he wrote that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography; referred to himself as a “black NAZI!”; called for reinstating human enslavement and wrote, “I would certainly buy a few”; called the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a “f*cking commie bastard”; wrote that he preferred Adolf Hitler to former president Barack Obama; referred to Black, Jewish, Muslim, and gay people with slurs; said he doesn’t care about abortions (“I don’t care. I just wanna see the sex tape!” he wrote); and recounted that he had secretly watched women in the showers in a public gym as a 14-year-old. Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck of CNN, who broke the story, noted that “CNN is reporting only a small portion of Robinson’s comments on the website given their graphic nature.”

After the first story broke, Natalie Allison of Politico broke another: that Robinson was registered on the Ashley Madison website, which caters to married people seeking affairs. 

Robinson is running for governor of North Carolina. He has attacked transgender rights, called for a six-week abortion ban without exceptions for rape or incest, mocked survivors of school shootings, and—after identifying a wide range of those he saw as enemies to America and to “conservatives”—told a church audience that “some folks need killing.”

That this scandal dropped on the last possible day Robinson could drop out of the race suggests it was pushed by Republicans themselves because they recognize that Robinson is dragging Trump and other Republican candidates down in North Carolina. But here’s the thing: Republican voters knew who Robinson was, and they chose him anyway. 

Indeed, his behavior is not all that different from that of a number of the Republican candidates in this cycle, including former president Trump, the Republican nominee for president. Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) embraced Robinson’s candidacy, and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) welcomed “NC’s outstanding Lt. Governor” to a Republican-led House Judiciary Committee meeting “on the importance of election integrity.” “He brought the truth with clarity and conviction—and everyone should hear what he had to say!” Johnson posted to social media. Robinson spoke at the Republican National Convention.

The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in this election is stark, and it reflects a systemic problem that has been growing in the U.S. since the 1980s. 

Democracy depends on at least two healthy political parties that can compete for voters on a level playing field. Although the men who wrote the Constitution hated the idea of political parties, they quickly figured out that parties tie voters to the mechanics of Congress and the presidency.

And they do far more than that. Before political thinkers legitimized the idea of political opposition to the king, disagreeing with the person in charge usually led to execution or banishment for treason. Parties allowed for the idea of loyal and legitimate opposition, which in turn allowed for the peaceful transition of power. That peaceful exchange enabled the people to choose their leaders and leaders to relinquish power safely. Parties also create a system for criticizing people in power, which helps to weed out corrupt or unfit leaders.

But those benefits of a party system depend on a level political playing field for everyone, so that a party must constantly compete for voters by testing which policies are most popular and getting rid of the corrupt or unstable leaders voters would reject. 

In the 1980s, radical Republican leaders set out to dismantle the government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. But that system was popular, and to overcome the majority who favored it, they began to tip the political playing field in their direction. They began to suppress voting by Democrats by insisting that Democrats were engaging in “voter fraud.” At the same time, they worked to delegitimize their opponents by calling them “socialists” or “communists” and claiming that they were trying to destroy the United States. By the 1990s, extremists in the party were taking power by purging traditional Republicans from it.

And yet, voters still elected Democrats, and after they put President Barack Obama into the White House in 2008, the Republican State Leadership Committee in 2010 launched Operation REDMAP, or Redistricting Majority Project. The plan was to take over state legislatures so Republicans would control the new district maps drawn after the 2010 census, especially in swing states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It worked, and Republican legislatures in those states and elsewhere carved up state maps into dramatically gerrymandered districts.

In those districts, the Republican candidates were virtually guaranteed election, so they focused not on attracting voters with popular policies but on amplifying increasingly extreme talking points to excite the party’s base. That drove the party farther and farther to the right. By 2012, political scientists Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein warned that the Republican Party had “become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

At the same time, the skewed playing field meant that candidates who were corrupt or bonkers did not get removed from the political mix after opponents pounced on their misdeeds and misstatements, as they would have been in a healthy system. Social media poster scary lawyerguy noted that the story about Robinson will divert attention from the lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets, which diverted attention from Trump’s abysmal debate performance, which diverted attention from Trump’s filming a campaign ad at Arlington National Cemetery. 

When a political party has so thoroughly walled itself off from the majority, there are two options. One is to become full-on authoritarian and suppress the majority, often with violence. Such a plan is in Project 2025, which calls for a strong executive to take control of the military and the judicial system and to use that power to impose his will.    

The other option is that enough people in the majority reject the extremists to create a backlash that not only replaces them, but also establishes a level playing field.  

The Republican Party is facing the reality that it has become so extreme it is hemorrhaging former supporters and mobilizing a range of critics. Today the Catholic Conference of Ohio rebuked those who spread lies about Haitian immigrants—Republican presidential candidate Trump and vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance were the leading culprits—and Teamsters councils have rejected the decision of the union’s board not to make an endorsement this year and have endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. Some white evangelicals are also distancing themselves from Trump. 

And then, tonight, Trump told a Jewish group that if he loses, it will be the fault of Jewish Americans. "I will put it to you very simply and gently: I really haven't been treated right, but you haven't been treated right because you're putting yourself in great danger."

Mark Robinson has said he will not step aside.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[coochiequeens]

If the Catholic Church was going to allow men who identify as women into a woman only college would they eventually allow women who identified as men into thepriesthood? No because the they have too many centuries worth of traditions based on biological sex.

INDIANA

Catholic women's college in Indiana reverses policy change allowing applicants who ‘identify as women’

Saint Mary's College president wrote, 'We lost people’s trust and unintentionally created division where we had hoped for unity... For this, we are deeply sorry'

Published December 21, 2023 7:38pm EST

Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, reversed a recent decision to allow biological males to attend the university if they have a history of identifying as a woman.

Last month, President Katie Conboy told the faculty about the policy change in an email obtained by Fox News Digital.

"Saint Mary’s will consider undergraduate applicants whose sex assigned at birth is female or who consistently live and identify as women," Conboy emailed.

The school’s policy change drew harsh criticism from people like Fort Wayne-South Bend Bishop Kevin Rhoades, who reportedly urged the school to reverse course because the policy went against Catholic teachings.

On Wednesday, Conboy and the chair of the school’s board of trustees, Maureen Smith, emailed the Saint Mary's College community saying the school would return to its previous admission policy.

"When the board approved this update, we viewed it as a reflection of our college’s commitment to live our Catholic values as a loving and just community," the letter read. "We believed it affirmed our identity as an inclusive, Catholic, women’s college."

The two acknowledged in the letter that not all members of the community took the same position, with some worried it was more than a policy decision. Instead, some saw the move as "a dilution" of the school’s mission or even a threat to the school’s Catholic identity.

"As this last month unfolded, we lost people’s trust and unintentionally created division where we had hoped for unity," the letter read. "For this, we are deeply sorry.

"Taking all these factors into consideration, the Board has decided that we will return to our previous admission policy," the president and chairperson added.

The school was opened by four Sisters of the Holy Cross in 1844.

Earlier this year, Pope Francis told journalist Elisabetta Piqué for the Argentine daily newspaper La Nación, that "Gender ideology, today, is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations."

"Why is it dangerous? Because it blurs differences and the value of men and women," he added.

He also noted that there is a major difference between caring for people who identify as transgender versus actually endorsing their values, noting the contrast "between what pastoral care is for people who have a different sexual orientation and what gender ideology is."

Fox News Digital's Alexander Hall contributed to this report.

I can't believe that not only am I posting from Fox, I still refuse to call it news, and agreeing with the Pope

If the Catholic Chuch wants to be inclusive in a meaningful way they can continue to provide shelter to speak up for refugees in Palestine and other war torn reigns

[misfitwashere]

September 19, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

SEP 20

Yesterday morning, NPR reported that U.S. public health data are showing a dramatic drop in deaths from drug overdoses for the first time in decades. Between April 2023 and April 2024, deaths from street drugs are down 10.6%, with some researchers saying that when federal surveys are updated, the decline will be even more pronounced. Such a decline would translate to 20,000 deaths averted.

With more than 70,000 Americans dying of opioid overdoses in 2020 and numbers rising, the Biden-Harris administration prioritized disrupting the supply of illicit fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. They worked to seize the drugs at ports of entry, sanctioned more than 300 foreign people and agencies engaged in the global trade in illicit drugs, and arrested and prosecuted dozens of high-level Mexican drug traffickers and money launderers. 

In March 2023 the Biden-Harris administration made naloxone, a medicine that can prevent fatal opioid overdoses, available over the counter. The administration invested more than $82 billion in treatment, and the Department of Health and Human Services worked to get the treatment into the hands of first responders and family members. 

Addressing the crisis of opioid deaths meant careful, coordinated policies.

Also today, markets all over the world climbed after the Fed yesterday cut interest rates for the first time in four years. In the U.S., the S&P 500, which tracks the stock performance of 500 of the biggest companies on U.S. stock exchanges, the Nasdaq Composite, which is weighted toward the information technology sector, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, an older index that tracks 30 prominent companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges, all hit new records. The rate cut indicated to traders that the U.S. has, in fact, managed to pull off the soft landing President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen worked to achieve. They have kept job growth steady, normalized economic growth and inflation, and avoided a recession. 

As they have done so, the major U.S. stock indices have had what The Guardian's Callum Jones calls “an extraordinary year.” Jones notes that the S&P 500 is up more than 20% since the beginning of 2024, the Nasdaq Composite has risen 22%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gone up 11%.

Bringing the U.S. economy out of the pandemic more successfully than any other major economically developed country meant clear goals and principles, and careful, informed adjustments.

And yet the big story today is that Republican North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson frequented porn sites, where between 2008 and 2012 he wrote that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography; referred to himself as a “black NAZI!”; called for reinstating human enslavement and wrote, “I would certainly buy a few”; called the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a “f*cking commie bastard”; wrote that he preferred Adolf Hitler to former president Barack Obama; referred to Black, Jewish, Muslim, and gay people with slurs; said he doesn’t care about abortions (“I don’t care. I just wanna see the sex tape!” he wrote); and recounted that he had secretly watched women in the showers in a public gym as a 14-year-old. Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck of CNN, who broke the story, noted that “CNN is reporting only a small portion of Robinson’s comments on the website given their graphic nature.”

After the first story broke, Natalie Allison of Politico broke another: that Robinson was registered on the Ashley Madison website, which caters to married people seeking affairs. 

Robinson is running for governor of North Carolina. He has attacked transgender rights, called for a six-week abortion ban without exceptions for rape or incest, mocked survivors of school shootings, and—after identifying a wide range of those he saw as enemies to America and to “conservatives”—told a church audience that “some folks need killing.”

That this scandal dropped on the last possible day Robinson could drop out of the race suggests it was pushed by Republicans themselves because they recognize that Robinson is dragging Trump and other Republican candidates down in North Carolina. But here’s the thing: Republican voters knew who Robinson was, and they chose him anyway. 

Indeed, his behavior is not all that different from that of a number of the Republican candidates in this cycle, including former president Trump, the Republican nominee for president. Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) embraced Robinson’s candidacy, and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) welcomed “NC’s outstanding Lt. Governor” to a Republican-led House Judiciary Committee meeting “on the importance of election integrity.” “He brought the truth with clarity and conviction—and everyone should hear what he had to say!” Johnson posted to social media. Robinson spoke at the Republican National Convention.

The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in this election is stark, and it reflects a systemic problem that has been growing in the U.S. since the 1980s. 

Democracy depends on at least two healthy political parties that can compete for voters on a level playing field. Although the men who wrote the Constitution hated the idea of political parties, they quickly figured out that parties tie voters to the mechanics of Congress and the presidency.

And they do far more than that. Before political thinkers legitimized the idea of political opposition to the king, disagreeing with the person in charge usually led to execution or banishment for treason. Parties allowed for the idea of loyal and legitimate opposition, which in turn allowed for the peaceful transition of power. That peaceful exchange enabled the people to choose their leaders and leaders to relinquish power safely. Parties also create a system for criticizing people in power, which helps to weed out corrupt or unfit leaders.

But those benefits of a party system depend on a level political playing field for everyone, so that a party must constantly compete for voters by testing which policies are most popular and getting rid of the corrupt or unstable leaders voters would reject. 

In the 1980s, radical Republican leaders set out to dismantle the government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. But that system was popular, and to overcome the majority who favored it, they began to tip the political playing field in their direction. They began to suppress voting by Democrats by insisting that Democrats were engaging in “voter fraud.” At the same time, they worked to delegitimize their opponents by calling them “socialists” or “communists” and claiming that they were trying to destroy the United States. By the 1990s, extremists in the party were taking power by purging traditional Republicans from it.

And yet, voters still elected Democrats, and after they put President Barack Obama into the White House in 2008, the Republican State Leadership Committee in 2010 launched Operation REDMAP, or Redistricting Majority Project. The plan was to take over state legislatures so Republicans would control the new district maps drawn after the 2010 census, especially in swing states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It worked, and Republican legislatures in those states and elsewhere carved up state maps into dramatically gerrymandered districts.

In those districts, the Republican candidates were virtually guaranteed election, so they focused not on attracting voters with popular policies but on amplifying increasingly extreme talking points to excite the party’s base. That drove the party farther and farther to the right. By 2012, political scientists Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein warned that the Republican Party had “become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

At the same time, the skewed playing field meant that candidates who were corrupt or bonkers did not get removed from the political mix after opponents pounced on their misdeeds and misstatements, as they would have been in a healthy system. Social media poster scary lawyerguy noted that the story about Robinson will divert attention from the lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets, which diverted attention from Trump’s abysmal debate performance, which diverted attention from Trump’s filming a campaign ad at Arlington National Cemetery. 

When a political party has so thoroughly walled itself off from the majority, there are two options. One is to become full-on authoritarian and suppress the majority, often with violence. Such a plan is in Project 2025, which calls for a strong executive to take control of the military and the judicial system and to use that power to impose his will.    

The other option is that enough people in the majority reject the extremists to create a backlash that not only replaces them, but also establishes a level playing field.  

The Republican Party is facing the reality that it has become so extreme it is hemorrhaging former supporters and mobilizing a range of critics. Today the Catholic Conference of Ohio rebuked those who spread lies about Haitian immigrants—Republican presidential candidate Trump and vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance were the leading culprits—and Teamsters councils have rejected the decision of the union’s board not to make an endorsement this year and have endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. Some white evangelicals are also distancing themselves from Trump. 

And then, tonight, Trump told a Jewish group that if he loses, it will be the fault of Jewish Americans. "I will put it to you very simply and gently: I really haven't been treated right, but you haven't been treated right because you're putting yourself in great danger."

Mark Robinson has said he will not step aside.

—

[loveerran]

What does 'Sensitivity, kindness, compassion and Christlike love' feel like?

A new church policy affecting transgender members of the LDS church has recently been implemented. This new Policy of Exclusion severely restricts or eliminates baptism (38.2.8.9), fellowship and opportunities for service for transgender members - including transgender children. Insofar as I am able to tell, it treats transgender members, who have transitioned in any way, worse than convicted child molester members (treatment of convicted child abusers who are members, including child sexual abuse, in 38.6.2.5 vs. guidance for church participation of transgender members, including transgender children).

If the default setting for a transgender member, including a transgender child, is to be treated by their congregation more severely than a convicted adult sexual predator of children, can you see why some of us are having difficulty feeling the church's stated 'sensitivity, kindness, compassion and Christlike love' for us? Why we may feel we are not part of 'All are welcome'?

[queerstake]

I wrote my own email to the First Presidency, at the email nerdygaymormon provided, and I wanted to share it here:

To the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

Your new policies on transgender adults and children run counter to the most fundamental principles of the Gospel and of God's teachings: to love God and to love thy neighbor. Christ's teachings were given not to religious leaders but to women, to publicans, to sinners, to the poor and the needy--in sum, to the marginalized, the outcasts, the forgotten and abused. Today Christ would teach and minister to the queer, the gay, the trans, the people of color, the poor, the sex workers, the ex- and post-Mormons. When Alma and Amulek go to teach the Zoramites, the ones who are ready to receive the word of God are those who have been cast out of the synagogues, much like how you tried to bully gay members away and how you are now trying to bully trans members away.

But I promise you this: you will not bully me away. You cannot bully me away. My very existence is a beacon to my fellow trans Mormons. My visage exposes your hypocrisy and callousness to everyone with eyes to see. You cannot hide the blood on your hands for much longer; in the face of God, your earthly power will not allow you to escape the consequences of your actions. For remember what Christ said: Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

- A Transgender Mormon.

And remember: God loves the outcast.

What a beautiful and passionate letter! Thank you so, so much for sharing. <33 You're right--we uplift each other. Regardless of the institutional church, queer Mormons have a community amongst ourselves and your presence in it edifies us all. <33 Thank you again for sharing.

[midnight-in-eden]

Sorry to bother you. I'm a transmasc exmo and my brother is inactive but intends to leave someday. He brought something to my attention, but so far I've only seen a reddit post about it, allegedly a story about a transgirl was affected by this already is on facebook, but I can not find it. It's being said that a new policy has gone to affect, that "Any one who has socially transitioned, is now excluded from baptism." In other words, transgender children can not be baptized, and neither can any other transgender individual, unless they detransition. People are confirming that this policy is going into the Handbook within the next few weeks. I don't have a big exmo support system, has anyone heard of this policy? Are they going to announce this change or are they literally just trying to slip this in and hope it goes unnoticed?

You’re not bothering me at all. Yes, I’ve heard of this. I don’t know any more than you do, I’m afraid.

I think the surface reason is this way they just don’t have to deal with transgender people. Just like they don’t have to deal with gays. Either group will still be “welcome”—as long as we don’t “act on it.” “We love you, but only if you stay in the closet and don’t make problems for us.”

I think the underlying reason is the church has elected to try and ingratiate itself with mainstream American Christianity. (I mean, it’s been doing this since it got rid of polygamy, but it’s accelerated in recent years.) That is why they’ve emphasized the church’s full name instead of “Mormon,” that’s why they’ve quietly backed off more outlandish beliefs (Kolob, exalted people getting their own planets, etc). That’s why they got rid of the various pageants showing parts of 1800s church history—and kept the Easter pageant in Arizona, redoing the soundtrack and script to be more appealing to Christians in general. And that is why they’ve dug in their heels when it comes to accepting LGBTQ people. Genuinely, I believe that this policy is meant to play out like the first Policy of Exclusion, which banned the children of gay parents from baptism until they turned 18 and could disavow gay marriage. That policy was reversed after a few years, but not before flushing out a lot of people who—up until then—had been trying to stay in the church but advocated loudly for LGBTQ acceptance. A lot of undesirables, in the church’s view. A wave of those people left when the original PoX was instituted. Another wave will leave with this one. That will leave the church with a membership that skews even more strongly conservative, that is even more acceptable to American evangelicals. They do not want gay and trans members. They want to be respectable to American Republican Christians.

(Most evangelicals are never going to accept Mormons as Christians, imho, but that isn’t going to stop the church from trying.)

My feelings on this are torn. I think it is actually better for LGBTQ people to leave/not join the church, and perhaps this will protect some trans people from the harm the church does. On the other hand, I know queer people who consider the church their spiritual home. I think everyone should have spiritual autonomy—but in Mormonism, you really don’t. Your access to every covenant necessary for salvation and exaltation is locked behind a gate that is only opened if a priesthood leader decides you are worthy. Trans people who transition are being deemed unworthy en masse and that seems like spiritual abuse to me.

We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out. Even among Mormons I know who are relatively accepting of gay people, few are as welcoming of trans people, so I doubt they’ll get much pushback from the majority of members.

[nerdygaymormon]

Hi, I'm a young queer mormon living in Utah who finished their first year of college and decided halfway through after lots of prompting that I should serve a mission. The choice brought so much joy into my life and reconnected me with the church, my family, my beliefs, and my self. I felt really lost and unfulfilled at school, and the decision to put my schooling on hold for the next two years or so and bring the joy I felt from the gospel to more of God's children has felt so right every step of the way. I've have my call since March now, and I leave in a couple weeks.

But this new church announcement (the transgender policies) has absolutely shaken me. Obviously from a young age I have struggled with the church's stance on queer identities, and many more aspects. But my heart always felt that Christ cared not about these things and wanted only for us to try and be better and accept his atonement into our life. I also felt like the community of a ward or a church was one of the best parts of the gospel, and so many people need it and could benefit from it even if they did not wish to or choose to carry out sacred ordinances or covenants.

But this handbook change has made me feel like that's not true anymore. How can I stand for and represent a church that is directly excluding and prejudiced against my transgender friends? How am I supposed to tell other families and individuals to come to church when I myself can't even seem to grapple with what it stands for right now? I'm really struggling, I don't know if I should cancel my mission or push through in the hopes that more understanding will come through acting in faith. While every step of this process has brought me closer to myself and my family and brought me a lot of clarity in a confusing time, I feel that right now God is giving me a choice. I listened to Him with full faith and put in my papers and put my school on hold, but now I feel like he's telling me to choose for myself what to do next. And I have no idea what to do.

I'm lucky enough to have parents who will support my decision either way and who are also furious at the handbook change, but that doesn't take away the issues that choosing not to serve a mission brings. All the ward members who will be informed about it, all the explaining I'll have to do. If I don't go, I wish to instead use my mission funds to pay for a humanitarian trip to a place near the mission I was called, so I can still dedicate my time to bringing help to God's children, but I'm already so far in my mission process and I know there is a reason I was prompted to do all of this. But I'm so stuck.

Any advice?

Thank you for sharing all this.

I was just telling a friend that I think God's way is to have us make our own choices, especially the bigger the decision. Sometimes there's times like where you got the prompting to serve a mission, but it's still your choice. Often those promptings are making us aware there is another path available to us, perhaps one we weren't aware might be a good choice for us. However, most of the time God doesn't prompt us what to do, we have to study it out and then pray about the choice we made and ask God to affirm.

I think this way we own the decision. If we marry someone, we have to put in the work to make it a successful relationship and not just assume it will all work out because God said to do it. And when things don't go perfectly, if God told us what to do then we would blame God when it's us who messed things up.

I can see that the prompting you received helped you take a step back from a situation you were in (college) that maybe wasn't the right time for you, and get closer to the Lord. This gave you a firmer spiritual foundation on which to stand when these Handbook changes were announced.

My advice is to not ignore your feelings. If something bothers your conscience, pay attention to that.

Another piece of advice is to think about how you want to serve. A humanitarian mission perhaps is the mission you were being prompted towards, you are in a position now to make that choice because of the decisions you made based on the prompting you received. You can make a list of pros & cons, and as you think about what these different experiences will be like, the proselyting mission or the humanitarian mission, pay attention to which one brings you a sense of peace?

The Spirit is accompanied by feelings, think about how you feel when you're getting a prompting or feel that something is the right direction to go. Keep in mind those feelings when you pray about whichever decision you make.

I admire your desire to serve and to stand for goodness, and I commiserate with you in regards to these steps our church has announced.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin In The Morning:

On Friday, numerous conservative accounts and news sources promoted headlines that the "American College of Pediatricians" had issued a statement against transgender care. A video accompanied the announcement featuring Dr. Jill Simons, who, wearing a white lab coat, states that there must be an end to "social affirmation, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones" for transgender youth. Despite the official-looking attire and name, the organization's name serves to mislead observers into thinking they are the much larger American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents tens of thousands of pediatricians. In reality, the ACP is a hyper-conservative Christian group of doctors created in 2002 to oppose gay parenting. In the announcement released on Friday, Simons called for an end to social transition and gender-affirming care for transgender youth. One video, which went viral, begins with a statement that the organization has released a "declaration" authored by the American College of Pediatricians, along with "hundreds of doctors and healthcare workers," opposing transgender care. It references the highly-politicized Cass Review from the United Kingdom, whose author controversially blames pornography for being transgender, as well as the Climategate-style leak of the “WPATH Files” to support the statement.

The video, which was viewed over 51 million times on Twitter, cuts off just before the next speaker is introduced: Dr. Andre Van Mol, who represents the Christian Medical and Dental Associations. Van Mol serves on the board of the Bethel Church of Redding, which made headlines in 2019 for attempting to pray a dead child back to life. He is followed by representatives from several other Christian medical organizations that also support banning transgender care. The website promoted at the event lists signatories to the statement, including the Catholic Medical Association, Genspect, The National Catholic Bioethics Center, the Family Research Council, and the Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design over evolution in schools.

The American College of Pediatricians has been hugely influential in the promotion of anti-trans policy in the United States, relying in part to its misleading name. Members of the organization testify in state houses and courtrooms across the United States, misleading legislators into thinking they are the much larger American Academy of Pediatrics, the professional society that represents 67,000 pediatricians in the United States. In 2023, the organization inadvertently left a Google Drive public, leading to the leak of a massive trove of files showing their extremist roots. According to these documents, the group received significant donations from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing organization that has played a large role in the passage and defense of anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the United States. It also received free video production from Family Watch International, a group of Christian fundamentalists opposing homosexuality, birth control, abortion, and sex education. The American College of Pediatricians itself has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2012, when the group’s leader stated that “homosexuality poses a danger to children” and that the group was “essentially a Judeo-Christian values organization.”

[...] Despite the widespread misinformation, every major medical organization in the United States supports gender-affirming care. In February, the American Psychological Association, the largest psychological association in the world, released a policy resolution stating that gender-affirming care is medically necessary and saves lives. The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends that transgender youth have access to gender-affirming care tailored to their unique needs. The Advocates for Trans Equality maintains a list of over 30 of the largest U.S.-based medical organizations that support transgender care, including the Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, the American Public Health Association, and the American Medical Association.

Anti-trans extremists such as X owner Elon Musk and numerous right-wing and anti-trans pundits and websites are touting a video from American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) Dr. Jill Simons issuing a statement opposing gender-affirming care for trans children.

In contrast to radical right-wing whacko group ACPeds, mainstream medical organizations support gender-affirming care as a medically necessary.

ACPeds is a radical right-wing medical group that is opposed to abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and transgender rights, and has trafficked in COVID denialism and anti-vaxxer extremism.

[beardedmrbean]

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Russian lawmakers gave initial approval Wednesday to a bill that would outlaw gender transitioning procedures in yet another blow to the country's beleaguered LGBTQ+ community.

Senior lawmaker Pyotr Tolstoy, who is among the bill’s sponsors, has said it is intended to “protect Russia with its cultural and family values and traditions and to stop the infiltration of the Western anti-family ideology.”

Russia's LGBTQ+ community has been under growing pressure for a decade as President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church embarked on a campaign to preserve what they deem the country’s “traditional values.”

The bill bans any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” as well as changing one’s gender in official documents and public records.

Russian transgender people and LGBTQ+ rights advocates contacted by The Associated Press described the measure as a grim development.

“We knew that they didn’t like us here, but to go absolutely against human rights, against the existing laws even," said Maxim, a 29-year-old transgender activist who spoke on condition of anonymity because of safety concerns.

The only option for those seeking to transition through medical care or changing their gender in documents would be to leave the country, according to human rights lawyer Max Olenichev, who works with the Russian LGBTQ+ community. “Neither medical, nor legal transitioning will be possible without changing the country of residence.”

The bill must receive three readings by Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, but there is little doubt it will pass because about 400 members of the 450-seat house signed it, including the house speaker and the leaders of all political factions.

The independent Russian news outlet Meduza reported that such a massive show of unity has happened only three times before under Putin, most recently when 385 Duma members signed on to a bill last year to ban “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” among adults.

That initiative was quickly rubber-stamped, and by December 2022, any positive or even neutral representation of LGBTQ+ people in movies, literature, or media was outlawed. The bill severely restricting trans rights came just a few months after that.

The crackdown on the LGBTQ+ community started well before last year, however. Maria Sjödin, executive director of the Outright international LGBTQ+ rights group, told AP in an interview that the situation in Russia has been deteriorating “over quite a long period of time, coming up on at least 10 years.”

In 2013, the Kremlin adopted the first legislation restricting LGBTQ+ rights, known as the “gay propaganda” law that banned any public endorsement of “nontraditional sexual relations” among minors. In 2020, Putin pushed through a constitutional reform that outlawed same-sex marriage.

But the Kremlin has ramped up its rhetoric about protecting “traditional values” from what it called the West's “degrading” influence after sending its troops into Ukraine last year, in what rights advocates saw as an attempt to legitimize the war.

“Do we really want to have here, in our country, in Russia, ‘Parent No. 1, No. 2, No. 3’ instead of 'mom' and ‘dad?’" Putin said in September at a ceremony during which four Ukrainian regions were formally annexed by Moscow. "Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed in our schools from the primary grades?”

Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the State Duma, called gender transitioning “pure satanism" as he opened voting on the measure Wednesday.

“We do not want this to happen in our country. Let the diabolical policy be carried out in the U.S.," Volodin said.

But the clampdown on trans rights is actually a global trend that's happening in the U.S., too, Sjödin said, adding: “We know there have been over 500 state-level bills introduced in the U.S. attacking LGBTQ rights in different ways with specific focus on trans rights.”

The move targeting transgender people in Russia was not unexpected. Yana Kirey-Sitnikova, a transgender studies researcher, told AP that when anti-Western sentiments emerged last year, she realized that “the authorities would now take us on.” That's when she changed her gender marker in her documents, even though she wanted to postpone the process for some time.

Kirey-Sitnikova said the procedure under existing Russian law is simple. A person has to obtain a medical certificate stating that they have been diagnosed with “transsexualism.” Such certificates are issued by a panel of medical specialists, Kirey-Sitnikova said, and unlike in some other countries, hormonal therapy or gender-affirming surgery is not required to get this diagnosis.

With this medical certificate in hand, the next step is to go to a state registry office and get a new birth certificate, allowing for the issuance of a new passport and other documents. The whole process could take from several weeks to over two years, depending on the panel’s availability and procedures they do to issue a diagnosis.

Maxim, the activist with the Center T trans rights group who changed his gender marker three years ago, echoed Kirey-Sitnikova’s sentiment that Russia currently "is unique in a good way when it comes to gender transitioning.” He also praised the quality and availability of gender-affirming medical care in Russia, saying there are many good surgeons and endocrinologists advising on hormone therapy.

The new bill will take all of that away, according to Olenichev, the lawyer.

Doctors won’t be allowed to diagnose those seeking to transition, hormonal therapy and surgery will be outlawed for those who haven’t yet managed to change their gender in the documents. Those who have should be able to access necessary medical care, Olenichev saids, because the bill outlaws “changing the sex of a person,” but not medical care in accordance with the person’s official gender.

There’s no official data on how many people in Russia have changed gender in official documents, Olenichev said, but the number apparently has grown in recent years.

Independent news outlet Mediazona reported in February that the number of passports issued due to “gender change” has more than doubled in 2022 compared with two years earlier -– from 428 in 2020 to 936 last year, according to Russia's Interior Ministry.

In justifying the new bill, lawmakers cited concerns that men are using the relatively simple procedure of changing gender in official documents to dodge the military draft.

Maxim said that isn't true. The process “is lengthy, costly, and for transphobic people it is humiliating,” he said, adding that the spike in numbers could be linked to fears about the bill and people rushing to complete the procedures before it takes effect.

Among those hoping to have enough time to transition are transgender teenagers who are under 18 and can’t act on their aspirations even under existing legislation.

Lyubov, a therapist who works with such teenagers, told AP that “the vast majority of them lived on hope and anticipation of their 18th birthday,” and now they have a lot of anxiety. “I view the future as rather sad,” said Lyubov, the mother of a trans 17-year-old who asked that her last name not be used for safety reasons.

“Our children are between a rock and a hard place: On one hand, there’s social pressure, and on the other, lack of hope that when they turn 18, something will change,” she said.

“It is an impossible situation,” Lyubov said, because trans people will be hit with the ban on “changing your life in accordance with your gender identity,” while also having to deal with a society that paints them as “not healthy, not normal, not having the right to live.”

[pashterlengkap]

New Mormon Church policies ban trans people from getting baptized, group them with pedophiles

The Mormon Church became increasingly bigoted towards transgender church members this week, with new anti-trans policies saying that those who have transitioned socially but not medically are not allowed to be baptized and threatening to categorize them with child abusers, the Advocate reports. The policies come from an updated church handbook which was issued Monday. The handbook states that trans people may not work with children, become clergy members, or teach. Related Christian teacher sues for the “right” to misgender trans students Two trans students & their families complained when the teacher just started nodding or pointing at them instead of using their first names. “Church leaders counsel against pursuing surgical, medical, or social transition away from one’s biological sex at birth. … Leaders advise that taking these actions will result in some Church membership restrictions. These restrictions include receiving or exercising the priesthood, receiving or using a temple recommend, and serving in some Church callings,” the handbook says. Stay connected to your community Connect with the issues and events that impact your community at home and beyond by subscribing to our newsletter. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Trans people who completely “transition away from their biological sex at birth” will not be denied from the church completely, but “these individuals and their families are encouraged to counsel with their local leaders regarding Church participation.” In 2020, the church said those who have transitioned medically would be denied baptism and has now expanded that to social transition as well. Detransitioning will make trans Mormons eligible for baptism, the handbook says. NBC News reported that “Trans members will also face possible annotation on their membership records, grouping them with churchgoers who have committed incest, sexual predatory behavior, sexual violence against children, and embezzlement of church funds.” The Salt Lake Tribune says that the policy changes mean that trans people “cannot stay at most youth camps overnight” and “are urged to use single-occupancy restrooms at church meetinghouses or station a ‘trusted person’ outside to keep others from entering when they use a restroom that aligns with their personal gender identity.” Affirmation is an organization for LGBTQ+ Mormons that strongly condemned the decision. “We mourn with our transgender siblings as we wrestle with the painful impact of recent policy changes and guidelines released by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” said a statement from the group. “With over 45 years of providing support to LGBTQIA+ individuals who are current and former members of the Church, we know first-hand the pain that policies like this cause. We stand with our transgender siblings.” Despite the demeaning policy changes, the handbook does state that transgender people “often face complex challenges” and “should be treated with sensitivity, kindness, compassion, and Christlike love.” It stops short of granting them equality. http://dlvr.it/TCfs1R