In a letter to Target, seven Republican Attorneys General implied that LGBTQ+ merchandise could be considered obscene and threaten Target for selling LGBTQ+ youth merchandise.
A onesie with a pride rainbow is obscene but no one tell Becky her toddler's "Ladies' Man" shirt and her other toddler's pink unnecesesarily short shorts are gross..
Haven't had time to read the full article yet, but what I have read reminds me very much of the Russian anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda laws. The rapid descent into this dystopian authoritarianism targeting LGBTQ+ communities (and bodily autonomy) is frightening.
I can't see how any of these laws would be deemed Constitutional. With that said, it doesn't stop the bigots from putting them into affect until knocked down in court.
I wrote the following to an atty friend of mine . . .
[begin excerpt]
Essentially what I said, yes of course many of those bills/statutes are being slapped down by the courts, but even if they are, there is a subsidiary effect of forcing LGBTQ people to be constantly fighting against them. As soon as one bill is dealt with another pops up. It keeps us in a constant state of strife. Strife that in the long run is not healthy and can cause other health issues.
I can personally attest to the negative effects, and I live in a (currently) safe State. The last time I felt this sad, angry, and generally depressed was before my transition. It is easy for a CIS person to say, “the courts will slap it down,” but that professes an ignorance of the psychic and physical impacts.
Further, I no longer have any faith in the Courts to do the ”right” thing. SCOTUS showed their true colours with their recent rejections of settled law and Stare Decisis. They set the tone . . . lower courts consciously or unconsciously take their cues from the higher Courts.
In closing . . . One aim of all this legislation is to wear down and exhaust the community. That was part and parcel of their anti-abortion playbook.
This bigoted insanity won't stop "by itself". I despair at the time-suck addressing their pointless and ridiculous "arguments". But good people, like ourselves, have to Act Up.
They are so gross. I imagine MT AG Knudsen is curled up in a corner that he missed out on this.
Who knew rainbows were so scary!
(I'm an 80s kid... grew up when HIV/AIDS with making the news...when the fear was rampant....until folks got more educated. This feels so much worse than all of that --- possibly because wtf do we continue to take giant leaps backwards?!)
Um, clothing doesn't make a person gay. It.doesn't.work.that.way!
A rainbow logo as obscene?! I can't even... in my wildest imagination (and I've seen/heard/experienced things beyond wild!), I couldn't fathom this happening now, in the 21st century, in this country. I mean, even typing that possibility --- makes my eye twitch.
Somewhere we took a wrong turn; one with dangerous consequences that are ahead of us. My concern and fear is that reversing course will come after much MORE harm/damage is done. Being reactive is rarely as beneficial as being proactive.
Now we wait and see how long it all takes to work out in the courts... while 'hoping' big biz will stand up and fight FOR us - for everyone, and not just 'with' us!
Not just the courts. We can't count on the courts so long as we have a reactionary cabal majority on the Supreme Court who have shown themselves more than willing to ignore precedent, strip away established rights, issue advisory opinions (which SCOTUS is not supposed to do), and invent new legal doctrines out of thin air (e,g., "major issues") in pursuit of their ideological agenda.
So not just the court houses, but the state houses. And the school boards. And the stores, voting with our money. And the streets, voting with our feet.
Specious argument and rhetoric only injures our cause.
Overruling precedent is not the same thing as "ignoring" it. There is a meme propounded by the political Left recently that "precedent" means "carved in stone." Nothing is carved in stone, and the SCt has overruled precedent many times in the past.
By "stripping away established rights," I assume you're referring to abortion. Again, nothing is carved in stone. Rights to hold slaves were once "established rights."
Can you point me to any of the advisory opinions to which you referred?
As for inventing new legal doctrines out of thin air ... the right to privacy in Roe, affirmative action and public accommodation are all legal doctrines pulled out of thin air.
I don't say these things to belittle your passion; but these kinds of statements hurt us much more than they help us. And don't forget that your "reactionary cabal majority" on the SCt held for the trans employee in the Harris Funeral Homes decision.
Ah, you don't mean to "belittle [my] passion," just my 'specious rhetoric" that "injures" and "hurt[s]" the cause. Oh, well, I guess that's alright, then.
My position, edited to a line, is that we can't just put our trust in the courts, particularly SOCTUS, but have to employ all the means open to us. So I could just reply that you have charged, but not even attempted to demonstrate, that such assertions "hurt us much more than they help us" or even that they hurt the cause at all.
However, I think a few oh I promise dispassionate comments are in order. Wouldn't want to "injure the cause." (This despite the fact that, as a quote I like has it, "passion and substance are not mutually exclusive.")
No, of course precedent does not mean "carved in stone" in the sense of being utterly unchangeable. But it does mean in this context a guiding principle for future decisions that should not be dismissed or rejected without good clear reason (and a principle to which the sleazy six - oh, wait, I mustn't be passionate - the conservative majority all swore almost religious fealty during their confirmation hearings). And I am hardly the first to note that this SCOTUS majority's attitude toward precedent could be described as flippant. (And before anyone jumps, note that in what follows I am not referring to the current membership of the Court but to the ongoing clearly conservative majority.)
For just a couple of examples:
- "Students for Fair Admission" (I'm putting case names in quotes because I have no idea how to do italics in comments. Someone help?) ignored decades of precedent upholding the principle of affirmative action in college admissions. As Justice Sotomayor said in her dissent "At bottom, the six unelected members of today’s majority upend the status quo based on their policy preferences about what race in America should be like, but is not." More bluntly, the majority simply replaced established law and precedent with their group ideology that the goal of a colorblind society is achieved by pretending we already have one.
- In "DC v. Heller" (2008), the Court ignored literally decades of precedent on gun control to effectively overturn "US v. Miller" (1939) while insisting it was doing no such thing.
- And, of course, there was "Dobbs," which yes, did overturn an established right; as again widely noted, it was the first time a right had been overturned via judicial fiat. Slavery is an embarrassingly bad comparison: It was acknowledged in the Constitution - twice. And it took a Civil War and a Constitutional amendment to (in legal terms) end it. In terms of an end to legal slavery, the courts didn't have a damn thing to do with it.
"303 Creative" was an advisory opinion. There was no conflict at issue, no dispute to resolve. Rather, the Court essentially ruled on what it would do under a hypothetical future situation. It was a case that by it's own procedures the Court should not have taken. Some have tried to excuse it as a "peremptory challenge," but that is at best a stretch: Such cases most commonly address a case where someone is doing something currently legal which some change would make illegal or harmful to them and they want to prevent that. This is the opposite: Someone wants to start doing something currently illegal and wants to be free to do it.
As for doctrines pulled out of thin air, your attempt as dismissal via assertion flops. First, "Roe" did not establish the right to privacy. That was "Griswold v. Connecticut" (1965) and it was not just invented for the occasion but was carefully argued for, drawing on the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 9th Amendments (and in his concurrence, Justice Harlan added the 14th). More importantly, affirmative action and public accommodation are not judicial doctrines but legislated polices. Courts have had a role in defining and refining their reach and meanings, but no court invented them.
But if you want a real example, try the "major questions doctrine." This Court did not create this idea, but has pumped it full of steroids, interpreting it so broadly that it amounts to a new doctrine, under which the Court can decide (any time it thinks the issue is "major" enough) to forego the usual deference given to regulatory agencies in interpretation of laws and regulations and say that anywhere the original legislation did not lay out in precise detail agency authorities and limits, any resulting regulation is presumptively invalid. As Justice Kagan put it in her dissent in "West Virginia v. EPA," the Court made up new rules that contradict nearly a century of regulatory law. (Again, so much for precedent.) Quoting Kagan, the Court majority "does not have a clue about how to address climate change...yet it appoints itself, instead of congress or the expert agency...the decision-maker on climate policy."
Finally, re "Harris Funeral Homes," you'll recall the old line about a broken clock.
I stand by my words.
Have at me, if you will. I've had my say and will be silent.
Re: 303 Creative: An advisory opinion is not any opinion that includes dicta, but one which issues an opinion where there is no case or controversy at bar.
Re: Roe and Griswold: I think you're correct; I was thinking of the "penumbra" reasoning, and that was indeed Griswold. Thank you for the correction.
Re: hurting more than helping: The explanation for this is implicit in my first line; the statement is a tautology, unless you believe that power has more meaning than truth. Is this your position? It is the position of many these days.
Okay, I wasn't going to reply, but with a question and a clarification in play, I have to add what I hope can be seen as a couple of footnotes.
1. I agree with your description of an advisory opinion. Which was the point: There was no case, no conflict, no dispute to be resolved actually at issue. It was a case SCOTUS should not have accepted according to its own rules of procedure.
2. I don't see how the comparative statement "hurt us much more than they help us" is a tautology. But I don't want to get into a side argument about grammar and semantics. More importantly, my best understanding is that you think your objections were sufficient to demonstrate the contention of your opening line, but I'd reply that just going "others have done something similar" in no way shows my argument to be specious. Which, I admit, leaves me wondering what position "believe that power has more meaning than truth" intends to describe. The only thing I can come up with is suggesting I could hold that any lie is justified if it advances gains in power, a suggestion I would, if that was the intention, find personally insulting.
3. The clarification: "Have at me, if you will," was just a flip sign-off. A variation on "Last licks are yours, if you want them." An informal way of saying "I'll read your response if there is one, but don't be offended if I don't reply." Nothing more was intended.
Which, barring any direct questions wanting an answer, is where I'm at now.
So where does this end? "Mom and Dad" is no less obscene and implies just as much sex as "Mom and Mom."
Consider this along side the recent Supreme Court decision in 303 United where the web-page "creator" claimed that in her religious view, gay marriage "wasn't real," that "only a marriage between and man and a woman was legitimate in the eyes of (her) God." None of us should ever be subjected to the self-serving rants of an imaginary deity occupying other people's minds.
The notion that public officials would have the audacity to tell a retail store what they can and can't sell where the merchandise is clearly not obscene is stunning. This is Hitler leaning on corporations to do his bidding. This is "I'll come break your windows" if you don't do what I want.
A onesie with a pride rainbow is obscene but no one tell Becky her toddler's "Ladies' Man" shirt and her other toddler's pink unnecesesarily short shorts are gross..
Haven't had time to read the full article yet, but what I have read reminds me very much of the Russian anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda laws. The rapid descent into this dystopian authoritarianism targeting LGBTQ+ communities (and bodily autonomy) is frightening.
Yup, I reference them!
Nobody is sexualizing LGBTQ+ except people who think we’re sexy. We literally just exist.
Thanks Erin, keep the coverage coming 💕
Do most Republicans buy into this? I’d be embarrassed.
I honestly don't think so - in fact even in many conservative legislatures, Republicans often raised free speech objections.
But they're more afraid of their right flank, so often they pass these kinds of laws.
I can't see how any of these laws would be deemed Constitutional. With that said, it doesn't stop the bigots from putting them into affect until knocked down in court.
They're afraid of losing the $$$$ and 'power.'
I wrote the following to an atty friend of mine . . .
[begin excerpt]
Essentially what I said, yes of course many of those bills/statutes are being slapped down by the courts, but even if they are, there is a subsidiary effect of forcing LGBTQ people to be constantly fighting against them. As soon as one bill is dealt with another pops up. It keeps us in a constant state of strife. Strife that in the long run is not healthy and can cause other health issues.
I can personally attest to the negative effects, and I live in a (currently) safe State. The last time I felt this sad, angry, and generally depressed was before my transition. It is easy for a CIS person to say, “the courts will slap it down,” but that professes an ignorance of the psychic and physical impacts.
Further, I no longer have any faith in the Courts to do the ”right” thing. SCOTUS showed their true colours with their recent rejections of settled law and Stare Decisis. They set the tone . . . lower courts consciously or unconsciously take their cues from the higher Courts.
In closing . . . One aim of all this legislation is to wear down and exhaust the community. That was part and parcel of their anti-abortion playbook.
[end excerpt]
This bigoted insanity won't stop "by itself". I despair at the time-suck addressing their pointless and ridiculous "arguments". But good people, like ourselves, have to Act Up.
They are so gross. I imagine MT AG Knudsen is curled up in a corner that he missed out on this.
Who knew rainbows were so scary!
(I'm an 80s kid... grew up when HIV/AIDS with making the news...when the fear was rampant....until folks got more educated. This feels so much worse than all of that --- possibly because wtf do we continue to take giant leaps backwards?!)
Um, clothing doesn't make a person gay. It.doesn't.work.that.way!
A rainbow logo as obscene?! I can't even... in my wildest imagination (and I've seen/heard/experienced things beyond wild!), I couldn't fathom this happening now, in the 21st century, in this country. I mean, even typing that possibility --- makes my eye twitch.
Somewhere we took a wrong turn; one with dangerous consequences that are ahead of us. My concern and fear is that reversing course will come after much MORE harm/damage is done. Being reactive is rarely as beneficial as being proactive.
Now we wait and see how long it all takes to work out in the courts... while 'hoping' big biz will stand up and fight FOR us - for everyone, and not just 'with' us!
Not just the courts. We can't count on the courts so long as we have a reactionary cabal majority on the Supreme Court who have shown themselves more than willing to ignore precedent, strip away established rights, issue advisory opinions (which SCOTUS is not supposed to do), and invent new legal doctrines out of thin air (e,g., "major issues") in pursuit of their ideological agenda.
So not just the court houses, but the state houses. And the school boards. And the stores, voting with our money. And the streets, voting with our feet.
Specious argument and rhetoric only injures our cause.
Overruling precedent is not the same thing as "ignoring" it. There is a meme propounded by the political Left recently that "precedent" means "carved in stone." Nothing is carved in stone, and the SCt has overruled precedent many times in the past.
By "stripping away established rights," I assume you're referring to abortion. Again, nothing is carved in stone. Rights to hold slaves were once "established rights."
Can you point me to any of the advisory opinions to which you referred?
As for inventing new legal doctrines out of thin air ... the right to privacy in Roe, affirmative action and public accommodation are all legal doctrines pulled out of thin air.
I don't say these things to belittle your passion; but these kinds of statements hurt us much more than they help us. And don't forget that your "reactionary cabal majority" on the SCt held for the trans employee in the Harris Funeral Homes decision.
Ah, you don't mean to "belittle [my] passion," just my 'specious rhetoric" that "injures" and "hurt[s]" the cause. Oh, well, I guess that's alright, then.
My position, edited to a line, is that we can't just put our trust in the courts, particularly SOCTUS, but have to employ all the means open to us. So I could just reply that you have charged, but not even attempted to demonstrate, that such assertions "hurt us much more than they help us" or even that they hurt the cause at all.
However, I think a few oh I promise dispassionate comments are in order. Wouldn't want to "injure the cause." (This despite the fact that, as a quote I like has it, "passion and substance are not mutually exclusive.")
No, of course precedent does not mean "carved in stone" in the sense of being utterly unchangeable. But it does mean in this context a guiding principle for future decisions that should not be dismissed or rejected without good clear reason (and a principle to which the sleazy six - oh, wait, I mustn't be passionate - the conservative majority all swore almost religious fealty during their confirmation hearings). And I am hardly the first to note that this SCOTUS majority's attitude toward precedent could be described as flippant. (And before anyone jumps, note that in what follows I am not referring to the current membership of the Court but to the ongoing clearly conservative majority.)
For just a couple of examples:
- "Students for Fair Admission" (I'm putting case names in quotes because I have no idea how to do italics in comments. Someone help?) ignored decades of precedent upholding the principle of affirmative action in college admissions. As Justice Sotomayor said in her dissent "At bottom, the six unelected members of today’s majority upend the status quo based on their policy preferences about what race in America should be like, but is not." More bluntly, the majority simply replaced established law and precedent with their group ideology that the goal of a colorblind society is achieved by pretending we already have one.
- In "DC v. Heller" (2008), the Court ignored literally decades of precedent on gun control to effectively overturn "US v. Miller" (1939) while insisting it was doing no such thing.
- And, of course, there was "Dobbs," which yes, did overturn an established right; as again widely noted, it was the first time a right had been overturned via judicial fiat. Slavery is an embarrassingly bad comparison: It was acknowledged in the Constitution - twice. And it took a Civil War and a Constitutional amendment to (in legal terms) end it. In terms of an end to legal slavery, the courts didn't have a damn thing to do with it.
"303 Creative" was an advisory opinion. There was no conflict at issue, no dispute to resolve. Rather, the Court essentially ruled on what it would do under a hypothetical future situation. It was a case that by it's own procedures the Court should not have taken. Some have tried to excuse it as a "peremptory challenge," but that is at best a stretch: Such cases most commonly address a case where someone is doing something currently legal which some change would make illegal or harmful to them and they want to prevent that. This is the opposite: Someone wants to start doing something currently illegal and wants to be free to do it.
As for doctrines pulled out of thin air, your attempt as dismissal via assertion flops. First, "Roe" did not establish the right to privacy. That was "Griswold v. Connecticut" (1965) and it was not just invented for the occasion but was carefully argued for, drawing on the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 9th Amendments (and in his concurrence, Justice Harlan added the 14th). More importantly, affirmative action and public accommodation are not judicial doctrines but legislated polices. Courts have had a role in defining and refining their reach and meanings, but no court invented them.
But if you want a real example, try the "major questions doctrine." This Court did not create this idea, but has pumped it full of steroids, interpreting it so broadly that it amounts to a new doctrine, under which the Court can decide (any time it thinks the issue is "major" enough) to forego the usual deference given to regulatory agencies in interpretation of laws and regulations and say that anywhere the original legislation did not lay out in precise detail agency authorities and limits, any resulting regulation is presumptively invalid. As Justice Kagan put it in her dissent in "West Virginia v. EPA," the Court made up new rules that contradict nearly a century of regulatory law. (Again, so much for precedent.) Quoting Kagan, the Court majority "does not have a clue about how to address climate change...yet it appoints itself, instead of congress or the expert agency...the decision-maker on climate policy."
Finally, re "Harris Funeral Homes," you'll recall the old line about a broken clock.
I stand by my words.
Have at me, if you will. I've had my say and will be silent.
Re: 303 Creative: An advisory opinion is not any opinion that includes dicta, but one which issues an opinion where there is no case or controversy at bar.
Re: Roe and Griswold: I think you're correct; I was thinking of the "penumbra" reasoning, and that was indeed Griswold. Thank you for the correction.
Re: hurting more than helping: The explanation for this is implicit in my first line; the statement is a tautology, unless you believe that power has more meaning than truth. Is this your position? It is the position of many these days.
I'm not interested in "having at you."
Okay, I wasn't going to reply, but with a question and a clarification in play, I have to add what I hope can be seen as a couple of footnotes.
1. I agree with your description of an advisory opinion. Which was the point: There was no case, no conflict, no dispute to be resolved actually at issue. It was a case SCOTUS should not have accepted according to its own rules of procedure.
2. I don't see how the comparative statement "hurt us much more than they help us" is a tautology. But I don't want to get into a side argument about grammar and semantics. More importantly, my best understanding is that you think your objections were sufficient to demonstrate the contention of your opening line, but I'd reply that just going "others have done something similar" in no way shows my argument to be specious. Which, I admit, leaves me wondering what position "believe that power has more meaning than truth" intends to describe. The only thing I can come up with is suggesting I could hold that any lie is justified if it advances gains in power, a suggestion I would, if that was the intention, find personally insulting.
3. The clarification: "Have at me, if you will," was just a flip sign-off. A variation on "Last licks are yours, if you want them." An informal way of saying "I'll read your response if there is one, but don't be offended if I don't reply." Nothing more was intended.
Which, barring any direct questions wanting an answer, is where I'm at now.
I'm starting to get worried about Skittles. Should I stock up now?
Can’t sing “Over the Rainbow” anymore either.
So where does this end? "Mom and Dad" is no less obscene and implies just as much sex as "Mom and Mom."
Consider this along side the recent Supreme Court decision in 303 United where the web-page "creator" claimed that in her religious view, gay marriage "wasn't real," that "only a marriage between and man and a woman was legitimate in the eyes of (her) God." None of us should ever be subjected to the self-serving rants of an imaginary deity occupying other people's minds.
Wow. I would like to see how many counter suits we could lob back, for short-shorts, thong bikinis, etc being sold.
The notion that public officials would have the audacity to tell a retail store what they can and can't sell where the merchandise is clearly not obscene is stunning. This is Hitler leaning on corporations to do his bidding. This is "I'll come break your windows" if you don't do what I want.
OUTRAGEOUS
Obviously, Target can sell whatever the hell it wants. If the Supreme Court doesn't agree, we have a constitutional crisis.
Actually we DO have a constitutional crisis.
Basically, yes.
A terrific, needed cite, as usual, from our miracle woman, Erin.
Everyone should read the whole, as LGBTQNation called it (https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/07/7-gop-attorneys-general-threaten-target-over-pride-display/), "at times incomprehensible" letter. You just don't get the full flavor without the whole text, including its invocation of supposed "anti-Christian" imagery on some clothing.
Wonder what Ken "Deadeye" Paxton would have had to say were he not suspended.
Ahem, impeached
#PaxtonForPrison