Georgia House Bill 51 is a Travesty

(Content warning: this is about a Georgia House Bill that would make college/university campuses unsafe for rape victims. There are numerous links here that discuss rape with varying detail, including one that could be considered graphic. The petition linked to near the end is written by a survivor who very briefly discusses her rape [though not graphically or in much detail].)

I was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on May 22, 1987. At the end of third grade, my family moved to Sandy Springs, Georgia, where I lived until 2009. Georgia is where I was raised.

And that is why I care about this.

There is a bill currently in the Georgia legislature called House Bill 51. The summary of this bill is as follows:

A BILL to be entitled an Act to amend Article 1 of Chapter 3 of Title 20 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to definitions, so as to provide for the manner of reporting and investigation of certain crimes by officials and employees of postsecondary institutions in this state; to provide for a definition; to provide for penalties for violations; to provide for exceptions; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.

This looks fine on its face, yes. But it’s when you actually look into it that you start to see the problem…

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Government-Approved Transphobia (or… Things Keep Going Backwards)

Trump Drops Defense of Obama Guidelines on Transgender Students

The Trump administration has dropped the federal government’s challenge to a nationwide injunction issued last year that blocked the fulfillment of Obama administration guidelines stating that transgender students’ access to bathrooms and other gender-segregated school facilities was protected under existing federal civil rights law.

The injunction was issued in August by Judge Reed O’Connor of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Texas as part of a lawsuit filed by more than a dozen states over the Obama administration’s position that Title IX, the federal law that bans sex discrimination in schools, protects transgender students.

Under that interpretation, transgender students have access to facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity, a proposition to which social conservatives strongly object. They argue that allowing transgender students to use those facilities poses a threat to the privacy and safety of other students.

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New on the US Education Task Force! The Return of Christian Young-Earth Creationism!

So… our Screaming Carrot Demon in Chief announced the name of the man who will be leading his Education Task Force.

If you were expecting someone who was actually qualified, you clearly weren’t paying attention to Betsy Devos. If the name I’m about to give you sounds like “of course. He would pick him.”, then you have been paying attention…

Evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, will lead an education task force put together by President Donald Trump, a spokesman for the university told CNN Thursday.

Len Stevens, the school’s spokesman, said Falwell — the son of Jerry Falwell Sr., the late televangelist — will push to stop regulations coming out of the Education Department, especially those that apply to colleges and universities.

The White House declined to comment.

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