Governor Attacks Trans Athletes, Pastor Says Gays Are Not as Smart..
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...as Straights but I say They are Cuter and eminently smarter than people with limited schooling but a book written 2 Millenniums ago and who does not follow science
The bill is something of a backtrack for Noem, who just last year vetoed a very similar bill. The veto, which arrived as a cascade of states sought to target trans kids by blocking their access to sports and gender-affirming health care, sparked enormous criticism among Republicans just as Noem sought to carve out a space on the national stage.
Ultimately, Noem issued executive orders that aimed to limit trans athletes’ ability to participate in sports that match their gender identity.
“Noem has been protecting girls’ sports for years, and never backed down,” Noem’s new ad states. “Noem’s steady, conservative leadership doesn’t win headlines—it wins results.”
State lawmakers, and particularly Republicans, have seized on trans people as a white-hot “culture war” issue: Last year, legislators in 34 states introduced 147 anti-trans bills, according to the Human Rights Campaign. At least 10 states ended up enacting bills that target trans athletes, despite the fact that even lawmakers frequently couldn’t find local examples of trans girls, a particular target of these bills, even playing sports. There are relatively few trans kids participating in sports, according to multiple analyses—and even if there were, there’s no evidence to back up anti-trans advocates’ claims that trans athletes threaten cisgender athletes or the integrity of women’s sports.
Studies have found, however, that trans people’s mental health is in danger due to these controversies. A recent poll by the Trevor Project, which aims to prevent suicides among LGBTQ youth, found that two thirds of LGBTQ youth overall say that the recent legislative debates about trans people’s rights has negatively impacted their mental health. Among trans and non-binary youth, that number rises to 85 percent.
Trans people also face a staggering level of physical violence. At least 51 trans or gender non-conforming people were violently killed last year, according to the Human Rights Campaign. In 2020, 44 trans or gender non-conforming people were killed.
“I am certain that Gov. Noem would much rather talk about this issue than her pandemic response,” Gillian Branstetter, press secretary for the National Women’s Law Center, told NBC News. “We have significantly larger problems, for example, problems that exist! Those would be good problems to solve as opposed to conjuring fictional ghosts of a changing society and attempting to exploit people's ignorance.”
North Carolina’s lieutenant governor said that straight people are “superior” to gay people in a church sermon last week, where he also claimed that there are only “two genders” and asked about the “purpose” of heterosexuality.
“If homosexuality is of God, what purpose does it serve? What does it make?” asked Mark Robinson, a Republican expected to run for governor in 2024. “What does it create? It creates nothing.”
By Carter Sherman
The sermon, which was livestreamed, took place on Nov. 14 at the Berean Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Having children, Robinson suggested, makes straight people better than gay people.
“These people are superior, because they can do something these people can’t do,” he said. “Because that’s the way God created it to be. I’m tired of this society trying to tell me it’s not so.”
At another point, Robinson said, “Ain’t but two genders: male and female. Two. There are two genders. Male and female.”
“I don’t care how much you cut yourself up, drug yourself up, and dress yourself up,” he continued. “You’re still either one of two things. You’re either a man or a woman. You might be a cut-up, dressed-up, drugged-up, ugly man or a woman, but you’re still a man or a woman.”
Robinson’s comments were repeatedly met with enthusiastic applause in the church.
This isn’t the first time Robinson has spoken about LGBTQ people.
In October, in another church sermon, he said, “There’s no reason anybody, anywhere in America should be telling children about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth.” Afterward, a Democratic state senator demanded that Robinson resign, while a White House deputy press secretary said Robinson’s comments were “repugnant and offensive.”
Robinson refused to step down.
“This whole thing has been an attempt to once again change the argument and silence voices on the right,” he said in a statement on Facebook. “Well, let me tell you plainly right here and right now. I will not back down. I will not be silent. And I will not be bullied into submission. I will continue to fight for the rights of our children that is free from sexual concepts that do not belong in the classroom.” At multiple points in his most recent sermon, Robinson acknowledged that his comments would incite a backlash, as he repeatedly referenced Right Ring Watch, which tracks right-wing activity and disinformation.
Robinson’s rhetoric arrives in a year that has already seen staggeringly high violence against LGBTQ people. So far in 2021, at least 47 transgender or gender non-conforming people have been violently killed, according to a tally by the Human Rights Campaign.
Still, Robinson said that he would defend LGBTQ people’s rights.
“In America, you have the right to be a homosexual. And as an elected official, I have a duty to protect your constitutional rights,” he said. “And I will. But we in church right now. And we talking about church stuff.”
A spokesperson for Robinson did not immediately respond to a VICE News request for comment. A trans woman was placed in a San Diego jail cell with three men—and one of them assaulted her so “viciously” that he broke her jaw, forcing her to wear dentures, a lawsuit filed earlier this month alleges.
The woman, Kristina Frost, was booked into the San Diego Central Jail in November 2020, according to a lawsuit Frost filed in federal district court. Frost made it clear upfront that she’s a trans woman: Not only did she tell jail staff about her identity, but government records list her gender as female. Still, her lawsuit alleges, staffers repeatedly misgendered her. And then they ended up putting her in a cell with three men.
“It was clear Ms. Frost did not want to go into the cell, and she was confused as to why she was being moved into the cell,” alleges the lawsuit, which is asking for unspecified damages. “No reasonable deputy would have put Ms. Frost in a minimally monitored cell with three men. She was forced into the cell anyway.”
At some point, Frost fell asleep. But after midnight, one of the men allegedly started punching her in the head.
“Deputies observed this assault, yet none of them immediately intervened,” the lawsuit alleges. “Ms. Frost saw one or more deputies pausing outside the cell before entering to intervene. Deputies eventually removed the assailant from the cell and put him alone in another holding cell.”
Frost then had to wait more than 12 hours to be released and get medical care, according to the lawsuit. (It’s unclear why Frost was in custody.) During that entire time, she was in “excruciating pain” and couldn’t eat food or drink water.
Frost was ultimately diagnosed with two jaw fractures, per the lawsuit. She’s had two separate operations to treat the fractures, had her jaw wired shut, and now wears dentures.
In February 2021, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department issued a bulletin making it clear that arrested people should be taken to facilities that match their gender identity. The sheriff’s department didn’t immediately respond to a VICE News request for comment. A spokesperson for San Diego County also didn’t immediately reply.
A 2020 investigation by NBC News found that nearly all transgender prisoners are put in custody facilities that match their sex at birth, rather than their gender identity. Out of 4,890 trans prisoners in state prisons across 45 states and Washington, D.C., NBC News was able to find only 15 cases where people were housed according to their lived identity.
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