Iowa is Close to Limiting Transgender Access to Health Care

As always, Republicans hate everyone and only care about themselves. Fuck the lot of them. They cannot stand for anyone to be helped and yet there are a bunch of bible verses - y'know, the book they claim to believe in??? - saying exactly the opposite of how they act. John 15:12; Isaiah 1:17; Deuteronomy 15:7-8; Proverbs 3:27; Mark 12:31 and a ton more. I guess they have their own edited version of the bible.

Iowa is one signature away from enacting a law that would limit transgender people’s access to necessary health care.

The law would allow government entities to opt out of using public insurance dollars, including Medicaid, to pay for any kind of transition-related care. This language was tacked on as an amendment to a health and human services appropriations bill late in the process, LGBTQ rights advocates said, without any committee hearings or public comment process. Lawmakers approved the legislation on Saturday.

Now, it’s up to Gov. Kim Reynolds (R). The governor hasn’t signed the legislation yet, and LGBTQ groups are talking to her staff to convince her not to do so.

Keenan Crow, director of policy and advocacy at One Iowa, an LGBTQ advocacy group, told ThinkProgress that transgender Iowans are waiting for an answer.

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Italian Girls Photobombed with Same-Sex Kiss

This is hilarious and wonderful at the same time. Fighting hate with love is epic!

Matteo Salvini, the leader of the Lega Nord Party who serves as Italy's minister of the interior and deputy prime minister. Lega is a far-right party with an anti-immigration agenda. Recently Salvini addressed an anti-LGBT and anti-abortion group in the city of Verona.

He was in the city of Caltanissetta in Sicily for a rally last week when he posed for a selfie with Gaia Parisi and Matilde Rizzo, both 19. Except it turns out they weren't supporters, but two friends ready to photobomb Salvini by kissing each other.

"We queued with his supporters and when it was our turn, we kissed while I was taking the photos," Parisi told BuzzFeed News via Instagram DM.

"An officer immediately separated us, as you can see in the second photo. Salvini's reaction was giving a pat on Matilde's head and saying, 'auguri e figli maschi.' That's an Italian saying that could be translated with 'I wish you all the best and male sons.'"

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Trans Woman to Play Don Giovani in OK

I confess that I'm not much of an opera buff, but I think this is huge news for the opera world and for transgender artists. To be honest, though, OK is the last place I would've guessed doing something groundbreaking like this. I figure NYC or SF would be more likely. Still, it's a great step forward.

A production of Don Giovanni opening this weekend in Tulsa, Oklahoma, stars a transgender woman in the title role.

While operas around trans themes are starting to emerge, Tulsa’s take on Mozart’s classic represents the first time a professional opera company in the United States has hired a trans person to sing the lead in a standard work.

Lucia Lucas, the woman charged with playing one of the opera canon’s best-known protagonists, is a rising star. The 38-year-old singer has performed on major stages in Europe and Asia. Next season, she will make her debut with the English National Opera in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld. And all this using the dramatic baritone voice with which she launched her international career, before she transitioned, a decade ago.

“I think I can retrain my voice to contralto, mezzo or soprano. But how long would that take and what’s the likelihood I would get hired?” says Lucas, who was born and raised in Sacramento, California, and calls Karlsruhe, Germany, home. “Whereas I have work in the standard baritone repertoire into 2022. Why would I mess with that?”

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LGBT Christians Critical of Franklin Graham

Frankly, Franklin needs to pass on like his dear old dad. He does not represent the new generation of Christians who are more welcoming to all. It's funny how Graham's generation are so closed to most everyone who is different. Their generation are the ones who have made this country so WASPish. It's gotta change and it's going to change, whether they like it or not. I no longer follow the Christian faith, but when I did, I viewed the judgement they're so quick to dish out none of anyone's business. God told people to share his "good news" full stop. Not to judge people. Not to do anything but spread his story. Seems to me you'd get more people to join your "club" if you didn't criticize those who joined or wanted to join.

South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a Democratic presidential candidate, has been facing a lot of criticism from conservative Christians due to his outspokenness about his own Christian faith and his experience as a married gay man.

On Wednesday, Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, criticized Buttigieg’s sexuality and called into question his standing as a Christian.

Graham tweeted, “Mayor Buttigieg says he’s a gay Christian. As a Christian I believe the Bible which defines homosexuality as sin, something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized. The Bible says marriage is between a man & a woman—not two men, not two women.”

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Morehouse College to Accept Trans Students in 2020

In the 21st Century we still have schools which are single gender. Be they high schools or universities. Plenty of students attend single gendxer schools and have certain expectations while attending these schools. By the time a student is old enough to attend college, he or she knows which gender they identify as and should plan their college attendance accordingly. There are a multitude of factors that enter into the picture when one is deciding which college or university to attend. Perhaps now gender identity needs to be part of that factoring.

Morehouse College, a historically black men’s college, recently announced it would start admitting transgender men in 2020.

Terrance Dixon, Morehouse vice president for enrollment management, said in the announcement, “In a rapidly changing world that includes a better understanding of gender identity, we’re proud to expand our admissions policy to consider trans men who want to be part of an institution that has produced some of the greatest leaders in social justice, politics, business, and the arts for more than 150 years.”

Although it was a historic win for transgender men who want to attend Morehouse, trans women will not be admitted and students who are admitted to Morehouse identifying as men and transition during their time at Morehouse as trans women, would no longer be eligible to stay at the school.

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Minor League Hockey Team Blasts Protesting Fans

With all the shit going on in Ohio, pretty soon no one is going to want to visit there, let alone live there. Their governor just signed into law the strictest and most non-sensical anti-abortion law. And their minor league hockey team is cozying up to one of the largest anti-lgbt groups in the country. Protests - peaceful protests - are indeed family friendly as it teaches children that they can protest something which is wrong (something Ohioans clearly don't believe in) and do so without destroying someone's property.

A group of fans in Cincinnati protested their professional hockey team’s partnership with Chick-fil-A on Saturday, holding signs calling the restaurant chain “anti-gay.” The team responded by blasting their peaceful protest as not “family friendly,” reaffirming their partnership, and barring the fans from coming back.

ThinkProgress reported last month that Chick-fil-A’s foundation donated $1.8 million in 2017 to groups that discriminated against LGBTQ people and that the company is one of a small number of major American businesses with a non-discrimination policy that does not protect employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Since then, the company has lost deals to open locations in airports in two different cities and the city council in a third city voted to place rainbow flags and blue, pink, and white transgender flags near the company’s airport spot.

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U of CO students protest presidential finalist

This makes me so happy! Clearly the only diversity this man possesses is that he's diverse in those he hates, be they women, black people or LGBT.

BOULDER, COLORADO — Students at the University of Colorado Boulder held a protest Monday in opposition to the impending confirmation of former Republican congressman Mark Kennedy as president of the university system, citing his record of conservative and anti-LGBTQ votes.

Kennedy, the former president of the University of North Dakota, was named as the sole candidate to be the next University of Colorado president by the University’s Board of Regents in an announcement last week. In the announcement, the Board of Regents cited Kennedy’s “commitment to diversity.”

Kennedy served as a congressman representing Minnesota in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2001 to 2006. While in office, he voted in favor of and co-sponsored bills that aimed to create a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. He also voted in favor of funding health care providers that do not provide information about abortions and against providing grants to black and Hispanic colleges.

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