The Republican party is wasting no time fucking over the country. And they want to make sure they have assholes in place to facilitate their pillaging. They have no interest in governing this country. They have no patience for democratic norms. They don’t give a single shit about ethics.

The Office of Government Ethics is raising alarm over the pace of confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees, saying Saturday that they have yet to receive required financial disclosures for some picks set to come before Congress next week.

In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released Saturday, OGE Director Walter Shaub wrote that “the announced hearing schedule for several nominees who have not completed the ethics review process is of great concern to me” and that the current schedule “has created undue pressure on OGE’s staff and agency ethics officials to rush through these important reviews.

“More significantly, it has left some of the nominees with potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues shortly before their scheduled hearings,” Shaub continued. “I am not aware of any occasion in the four decades since OGE was established when the Senate held a confirmation hearing before the nominee had completed the ethics review process.”

This is the time when we have to resist. They need us to be quiet and compliant. When we rise up en masse, they learn they don’t have the consent of the governed – and sometimes, it makes them change course.

Here’s a handy spreadsheet showing who’s up for confirmation, why they’re terrible, the date of their hearings, and who to pester about it. Get on the phone and make your voice heard. This is our job this week. We sort of have a democracy still, broken and dysfunctional as it is. Let’s remind our elected officials what their job is.

Additional action: Save Obamacare

Tell Mitch McConnell your Obamacare story. Did the Affordable Care Act allow you to have insurance for the first time? Access needed health care? Prevent medical bankruptcy? Save your life or the life of a loved one? Make sure McConnell hears your voice.

The post Republicans Are Trying to Ram Through Crooked Nominees. Here’s How to Fight Them appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.

Trump is a garbage fire, and his cabinet appointments are trash. There’s not a single person he’s nominated who’s qualified for their job. They oftentimes don’t even qualify to be out of prison, but of course America certainly isn’t stingy when it comes to giving passes to rich white people.

Steve Mnuchin is a particularly despicable specimen.

From Elizabeth Warren:

After the 2008 housing crash, Steve Mnuchin swooped in to purchase a failed bank with mountains of bad mortgages on its books. He rebranded the bank as OneWest, and led the bank as it raked in billions in profits by aggressively – and sometimes illegally – foreclosing on people’s homes. OneWest also ran a reverse-mortgage subsidiary called Financial Freedom, which serviced 17% of the reverse-mortgage market but was responsible for 39% for foreclosures. Steve Mnuchin got rich off the backs of working families who were hit hardest by the financial crisis.

Donald Trump now wants to hand Steve Mnuchin the keys to the Treasury Department, where he can make big banks even richer at the expense of America’s families. Were you or someone you know hurt by Steve Mnuchin and OneWest Bank’s predatory business practices? The Senate Democrats are asking people to come forward and share their stories.

Do you have a story to tell about Mnuchin? Please do tell it here.

The post Did Steve Mnuchin Screw You Over? Tell Senate Democrats appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.

I didn’t post to Rosetta Stones for most of November because America’s election of the least qualified president in our history has me scrambling to assess and mitigate the damage. Much of what he’s done so far doesn’t yet touch on geology, which is what that blog is mainly concerned with – but we will be talking about the threat to our national parks, and there will doubtless be impacts on the USGS and other agencies responsible for essential geological services like volcano monitoring, seismic studies, and similar, which we’ll address.

Trump is already showing which direction he’s taking the country’s public education. If you care about kids being taught science, you’d best gird yourself for a war, because we’re going to have to fight to preserve our children’s right to a strong STEM education.

To begin with, Trump’s Vice President, to whom he plans to delegate most of the actual presidential work, is an evolution-denying Christian extremist who wants creationism taught in public schools. He’s also brought all his political power to bear on overturning the will of Indiana voters while he pushes for expansions of school vouchers and charter schools.

Trump also plans to slash NASA’s earth science division, which would not only cripple our nation’s climate change research, but also have a terrible impact on earth science research.

That rather sets the tenor for what’s to come.

But Pence is merely the beginning. It gets worse.

Among the first people Trump reached out to for Secretary of Education is Jerry Falwell, Jr. Falwell runs Liberty University. Their Earth Science department is actually a Creation Studies department. And they’re not in the Old Earth camp.

Liberty University’s Center for Creation Studies is a dynamic, teaching-based academic center. Our purpose is to research, promote, and communicate a robust young-Earth creationist view of Earth history. Beginning with sound Biblical interpretation, we seek to understand how science can inform us about God’s magnificent creation.

The Center’s activities are wide-ranging, both within and without the campus of Liberty University. In addition to our two courses (CRST 290 and CRST 390) which serve LU students, we regularly sponsor prominent speakers representing young-Earth creationism and Intelligent Design to the LU community, provide in-service lectures to LU faculty, and produce informative museum displays on young-earth creation. Our faculty are also regularly requested for speaking engagements both locally and far beyond, with invites from schools, organizations, and churches from California to Canada.

Purpose

The purpose of the Center for Creation Studies is to promote the development of a consistent biblical view of origins in our students. The center seeks to equip students to defend their faith in the creation account in Genesis using science, reason and the Scriptures.

So. Trump’s first pick to oversee our public education was a young earth creationist whose private Christian college teaches that Genesis is literal history and the earth is less than ten thousand years old. If you want to get an idea of the havoc that wreaks on earth science and the study thereof, I encourage you to read my reviews of Christian creationist textbooks. These are the ideas that are taught in such a curriculum. Do you think a man who promotes those ideas would do a good job ensuring public school kids get an accurate, science-based STEM education?

And before you breathe a sigh of relief thinking that the Dover verdict prevents public schools from teaching such schlock, remember that Trump is going to be able to appoint at least one and possibly several Supreme Court justices. The chances of his people protecting science education are virtually zero.

Falwell ultimately decided not to take the job – not because Trump is a con artist and authoritarian bully, but because his family didn’t like it. But Trump loves him, and you can bet he’s going to have a direct line to the Oval Office any time he wants to discuss “reforming an overregulated government system that he believes micromanages colleges and universities.” This should chill anyone who believes America needs strong public schools, colleges, and universities.

So Trump went with his second choice: a conservative Christian billionaire who also loves charter schools and vouchers for private (including religious) schools. She pours money and support into anti-evolution Christian schools and organizations like Grove City College and the Willow Creek Association. Betsy DeVos has been a disaster for education in Michigan. Now, she’s being given the chance to push that failure of an agenda nationwide.

And make no mistake: she is pushing to have Christianity displace secular schools in this country. She has been pushing that goal for decades. And she wants our tax dollars to fund it.

“The church — which ought to be in our view far more central to the life of the community — has been displaced by the public school as the center for activity, the center for what goes on in the community,” Dick DeVos says.

“It is certainly our hope that churches would continue, no matter what the environment — whether there’s government funding some day through tax credits, or vouchers, or some other mechanism or whatever it may be — that more and more churches will get more and more active and engaged in education,” he said. “We just can think of no better way to rebuild our families and our communities.”

When asked why they don’t just spend their time — and money — funding Christian schools, Betsy DeVos said they want to reform the whole system to bring “greater Kingdom gain.”

“We could give every single penny we have, everybody in this room could give every single penny they had, and it wouldn’t begin to touch what is currently spent on education every year in this country and what is in many cases … not well spent.”

If you’re horrified, you need to get involved. There are a lot of ways you can help protect America’s schools from the worst excesses of the Trump regime.

• Tell your Congresspeople that you want them to vote against Betsy DeVos and any other anti-evolution, anti-education picks Trump puts forward. (Write or call them – letters and phone calls are far more effective than emails or petitions. Here’s some help for those who have phone anxiety.)
• Support groups like the National Center for Science Education and the ACLU who will be fighting against anti-education policies. Volunteer with local and state groups devoted to ensuring the best possible science education for our nation’s kids.
• Vote in your local schoolboard elections. I can’t even begin to emphasize how important it will be to ensure the people running your local school district are devoted to appropriate STEM education.

There will be many other opportunities to help, whether you’re mentoring a student or marching in a protest. Stay informed, stand ready, and fight for STEM.

A version of this post first appeared at Rosetta Stones. Betsy DeVos’s remarks about public schools displacing the church and her goals for public funding of religious education have been added.

The post (Updated) Trump’s Presidency Will Be a Disaster for Public Education appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.

Donald Trump won the election, but he is not my president. George W. Bush was. Much as I hated him, much as I thought he was the worst thing that had happened to America in generations, at least he was a properly-elected (the second time), career politician who had some idea of how the republic worked and some shred of decency remaining.

Trump is none of those things.

I would not call Hitler Mark II my president. I will not call him president of my country. And if the Tea Party Republicans have shown me anything, it’s that democracy in this country is dead at the national level, and at many places at the local level, and that fire is needed to fight fire.

Right now, I’m in despair and devastated and staring into a future I doubt I can survive. But I am white and cis and hetero, and I will wield those privileges in defense of those less powerful than me for all I am worth. I live on the blue side of a blue state, and I will use that position to protect everyone I can.

Friends I love are going to die.

The things that were keeping them alive will be gutted.

Bigots who despise them have been emboldened enough to murder them without a twinge of conscience.

And you did that to them.

White folk. You did this. Cis folk. You did this. Bernie-or-busters, third party voters, people who didn’t vote because you couldn’t be arsed, people who thought all candidates were the same, people who voted for Trump because you’re either too white or too sexist or too racist or too selfish or too all-of-the-above to think it through, you did this. It’s all on you.

Those of you who thought racism was over and so didn’t make a peep when the Voting Rights Act got gutted, this is on you.

You ask how fascism rises. Look in the fucking mirror. Look. Look at yourself.

That is how.

You are the reason this happened.

So I will not be kind to you. I won’t be gracious in defeat. I won’t let bygones be bygones. I will absolutely let political differences end friendships, because you just voted to watch the world burn. You voted to murder the people I love. This isn’t the bullshit faux persecution that religious right cis straight white people whine about. This is queer folk, and trans folk, and disabled folk, and colored folk, and immigrant folk, and refugee folk, and poor folk, who will all die because you didn’t want to give up your dreams of domination.

I always wondered. I wondered how this happens. I wondered how the ordinary people chose good or evil. I don’t wonder anymore, because I am living it.

So.

If you voted for Trump, understand that I hold you beneath contempt. If you suffer because of what you’ve unleashed, I will feel pity for you, but understand that you brought it on yourself. If you voted for Trump, we are through. You have no place in my life. You are vile. You’re beneath contempt. I never want to see you. I never want to speak to you. I want you out of my life, permanently. I will not seek to take away your rights, but I hope that this decision ends up haunting you. I hope you end up unable to sleep at night. You shouldn’t be able to rest easy after what you have done.

If you voted for Trump, you are not now and never were a friend of mine. Until you show your remorse for that vote and do everything in your power to reverse the damage, you are not someone I can count as a neighbor, much less a friend.

***

To anyone sharing that horrible don’t gloat/don’t despair meme: Fuck that.

This was not an ordinary election. Half of this country just voted for a fascist rapist who has emboldened and enabled people who will literally kill the people I love most in this world. I can’t with the cumbaya messages. No matter how long we’ve been friends, no matter how much I love you, I will unfriend you if I see that shit.

We lost because not enough people took the threat seriously.

My friends who did not ask for this shitshow and who stand to be harmed because of it: I’m here. I’m with you. I love you.

I’m devastated and outraged and terrified, but I won’t give in to the despair.

We are going to carry each other. Somehow. We are going to get through this somehow.

If you are one of the people who is in despair, who can’t see life after this, please reach out for help. I understand, I do. I’m right there with you. But we need to try to hold on, because if there’s going to be any future worth having, we’re the ones who have to fight for it.

Call or text for help.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Chat

Text “GO” to 741741

Trans Lifeline: (877) 565-8860

Trevor Lifeline for LGBT and Questioning folks: 866-488-7386

Chat: Available 7 days a week between 3:00pm – 9:00pm ET/12:00pm – 6:00pm PT

Text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200. Standard text messaging rates apply. Available on Thursdays and Fridays between 4:00pm – 8:00pm EST/1:00pm – 5:00pm PT

The majority of our fellow Americans just told us exactly what they think of us. They want us gone. They want us suppressed or dead.

Let’s not give them that satisfaction.

Let’s hold on through these next years, and let’s make them suffer fear and despair as we rise again.

We will overcome. My friends. We will. We must. Because there are going to be a hell of a lot of dead that we are living for.

We will make our voices heard.

The post You Wanted to Know How Fascism Wins? Look In the Mirror appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.

So. The Accountant’s out. And if anyone thought we were going to get a nuanced film with an autistic hero which doesn’t objectify or other autistic folk, well, looks like they’re wrong. Go read all of the reviews here at my friend Ronja’s Facebook post. I hope you have an ableism bingo card of some sort handy, because you’ll win big just from what the reviewers talk about.

Special notice:  if you’re epileptic or have migraines, or if those health issues run in your family, this movie might physically harm you. More on that later.

If you’re a neurotypical person who goes to this movie and laughs at the awkward things the autistic dude does because hur hur hur he’s awkward, you should probably exit my life until you’ve learned why that shit’s not funny. My autistic friends have a hard enough time in the world neurotypical folk made without you adding to their misery. I mean, seriously, don’t be these jerks:

When I was making all of these plans for how I might feel aboutThe Accountant itself, however, I failed to take into account that the act of watching a movie about autism, no matter how crudely caricatured, in a theater full of neurotypical people—people who laughed at the titular character’s awkward attempts at conversation, cooed at his even more awkward attempts at flirting, and applauded the film’s pandering Autism Awareness-laden conclusion—might inspire some emotions of its own. As Alexandra Haagard wrote in her analysis of the film’s dangerous tropes, “the pain of witnessing the perpetration and perpetuation of stigma against the autistic community” was palpable.

Nor did I consider that reading reviews of the film by those who are not autistic might exacerbate the whole situation. And it just never occurred to me that a film explicitly about an autistic character and all of the surrounding coverage would make an autistic person like me feel so incredibly invisible.

This is shit behavior right here:

The worst thing about “The Accountant” is that Wolff’s autistic traits and behaviors are played either for shock or for laughs. The most horrible thing I’ve witnessed in a long time is the actual audience LAUGHING whenever Wolff does things like misunderstand a joke, answer a rhetorical question literally, etc. It’s not like this is comedic in any sense. Wolff is clearly not trying to make a joke and/or is having difficulty with something, causing stress. It’s truly not funny. And I’m not going to publicly discuss how this affected me, but I will say that it did affect me deeply.

So if you do go see this movie, please don’t be that allistic jackass in the audience laughing at allistic people playing autistic traits for laughs. And if you are that allistic jackass, again, go the fuck away until you’ve learned to be a better person. Here are some resources that can help you.

How The Progressive Media Sells Out Autistic People: an article that will allow you to begin getting your head wrapped round the problem.

Autistic Hoya: a blog that will be very useful to you in your quest to understand autistic folk and stop being an abelist shitlord. Start with her Autism FAQ.

“Neurodiversity: Some Basic Terms & Definitions.” This will help you get up to speed on the lingo right quick.

Alyssa and Ania ‘Splain You a Thing: perspectives from two more autistic women you should definitely be listening to.

And, finally, if you have epilepsy, are prone to migraines, or have any other sensory issues, be forewarned:

***I must warn you that this film is neither very sensory-friendly or epileptic-safe. There are several scenes of very disorienting patterns throughout the film, and there are multiple scenes involving a rapidly flashing, very bright light. Please take precautions if you choose to watch this film.***

As my friend Ronja said when she asked me to warn my readership about this, “status epilepticus can kill, and trying to drive during a migraine attack can also be lethal. And 30% of autistic people have epilepsy, and it is also unusually common in blood relatives.”

So yeah. All of that is why I’m being hella harsh on a movie I haven’t seen. See, I listen to my neurodiverse friends. I believe the autistic people who have seen it. There are better movies out to spend your coin on. Please do go enjoy them instead.

The post Not Only Is The Accountant a Shit Movie – It Could Kill You appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.

It’s been a horrific week for police violence. Alton Sterling was murdered for the “crime” of selling CDs. Philando Castile was murdered for the “crime” of exercising his Second Amendment rights and driving while black. Castile’s slaughter was so egregious that even many of the white folk who typically find some infinitesimal fault on the part of the black man that excuses his extrajudicial execution have to admit this one was pure, undeserved slaughter. Not that they haven’t tried. They always try. It can never be the police who are to blame.

And as protestors peacefully gathered, a sniper in Dallas shot down cops and protestors alike, in a city that was trying to get it right. This will be all the excuse some people need to declare war upon people of color in this country. Not that a clandestine war wasn’t already being waged. Black folk in this country might as well be living in a war zone, see. They’re certainly dying as if they are.

And you may be feeling helpless right now. You may have no idea what to do with your rage and sorrow and pain. If, like me, you’re white, you may not know what do to with the power invested in you by the color of your skin.

Are you ready to listen? Because people of color are telling us what they need. This is what we must do.

Ijeoma Oluo has an entire list of the things you should find out about your local police departments, and what to do with that information. Click it now. Go down it, step by step. Do not stop until you reach the end.

She’s also asking for volunteers:

I need a web developer.
I need grantwriters/fundraisers.
I need researchers.
I need whatever the fuck I can’t think of right now.

If you have skills and time you can donate, sign up here.

Here are 15 ways to end police brutality. Let your local, state, and federal politicians know you want them implemented. Don’t let up until they are.

If you see a person of color being confronted by the police, stop and record.

Be a better ally. Here’s how.

Don’t share images and video of black bodies being brutalized. Humanize the murdered people. Share details about their lives. Show them as the living, breathing, complex, wonderful human beings they were.

Unfriend your racist relatives and friends. Your friends and family of color deal with enough racist bullshit without having to put up with it on your wall. Also, it’s time for those engaging in racist behavior to face the consequences.

Demand police be held accountable for their brutality. You don’t leave the bad apple in the barrel. You get it the fuck out of there. The same thing needs to happen with racist, corrupt, law-breaking, brutal cops.

Listen to the cops who are telling you what’s broken and what needs to be fixed about policing. Listen to them when they talk about the dysfunction of us-vs-them thinking that’s rampant in the ranks.

Educate yourself on race and racism.

Educate yourself on ways to combat police brutality. Learn ways to increase police accountability. Encourage your local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to implement these ways to combat bias and reduce racism.

Don’t shoot the police. That won’t solve this. It’ll only make it worse.

Raise a fuss about police executing people with drones.

If you want to save police lives as well as civilians, get rid of guns. Maybe even disarm the police. And resolve the us-vs-them mentality that is driving the current waves of violence.

Acknowledge it’s not just black lives that are devalued by the police: anyone with brown skin, or a disability, or a mental illness, is at risk.

Absolutely stop with the All Lives Matter bullshit.

Do you still need to be convinced there’s a problem? Someone in your life who needs some evidence stuffed in their face? Here you go:

A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011–2014

Study finds police fatally shoot unarmed black men at disproportionate rates

There’s more. There’s so much more, but you are now equipped to find it. Go seek out the voices of people of color. Shut up and listen. Raise your voice to the people in power. Call. Write. Vote. March. Do everything you can. Because if we don’t pull together, it’s going to get so much worse.

The post What We Must Do appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.

Before we begin, I have a confession to make: I was born in Indiana. I don’t like to talk about it. We moved away when I was three, and I’ve always been grateful for the choices my parents made. I’m sure some people love the state, but while there are tiny bits in my memory that stand out as fun or pleasant, most of it is a foreboding, empty gray abyss, and it’s full of cornfields. When my mom moved back there and tried to get me to follow her, I laughed bitterly. I loved her, but there was no way I’d ever be able to live there.

I’ve never been more happy about that decision than now. See, I’m a uterus-bearing American of reproductive age who doesn’t want to bear children under any circumstances, ever. In Indiana, they have decided to take that decision away from people like me. They’ve decided to take it away from people who want a kid someday, but not this soon. They’ve decided to take the choice away from people who are in a dangerous relationship and will be trapped by a child. They’ve decided to take it away from people who are already unable to feed the children they have, much less a new mouth. But they’ll generously allow people who became pregnant through rape or incest to abort, and they’ll even allow people to have an abortion if the pregnancy is putting their life at risk, but even if you fall into one of those categories, you’ll still be forced to listen to the fetal heartbeat first, and wait 18 hours, and other assorted things meant to strong-arm you into changing your mind.

And then, if you’ve stayed the course and cleared all the hurdles put in your way by the patronizing assholes of the Indiana legislature, you’ll be forced to have a funeral.

CONTENT NOTE: medical images of human fetuses below the jump.

That’s right, people with unwanted pregnancies. They want you to inter or cremate a bit of medical waste. They not only want you to pay for an abortion, they want you to pay funeral costs.

They expect you to treat something a few millimeters long as if it’s a fully-realized, born person.

Let’s have a look at what they want you to spend all this effort and money to formally lay to rest.

Over 30% of abortions happen by the sixth week of pregancy. Of course, with Indiana’s TRAP laws closing all but a few clinics, you may not be able to get your abortion so soon, so we’ll give it an extra week, but it’s still not even a fetus yet: it’s an embryo. Here’s a seven week-old human embryo:

It’s about 9mm long, or around a quarter-inch for those of us raised in metric-phobic countries like the United States. Go grab a ruler and measure out a quarter-inch. Eensy-weensy, innit?

Now, an additional 55.5% of elective abortions happen by 12 weeks. By then, we have a certified fetus! Let’s have a look:

Well, my goodness! That’s finally got some features that vaguely resemble a human: arms and legs and all. It’s all of 80mm (3.2 inches) long. And, despite the fact it’s beginning to look more like a person than an alien blob, it has at no time up to this point developed anything like consciousness:

During this time there is no scientific doubt that the developing fetus is incapable of  any form of conscious awareness. The fetal brain does not begin to develop until 3-4 weeks into the pregnancy, at which point it is little more than a hollow tube filled with dividing neurons. Between weeks 4 and 8 this neural tissue grows forming the major divisions of the adult brain (forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain and spinal cord). By 8 weeks recognisable facial features have developed and the cerebral cortex separates into two distinct hemispheres. By the end of the first trimester (12 weeks) nerve cells are beginning to form rudimentary connections between different areas of the brain. However, these connections are sparse and incapable of performing the same functions as an adult brain. So by 12 weeks, although the fetus is certainly starting to look like a little human, the neural circuits responsible for conscious awareness are yet to develop.

Now imagine having to arrange for a funeral home to pick up a never-conscious bit of tissue this size, transport it, prepare it for burial or cremation, get it a casket to bury or cremate it in, and then either pay interment costs or put the thing in an urn on a shelf somewhere. All told, with the cost of a (very cheap) children’s casket and the expenses for processing the body and paperwork, you’re looking at an additional $4,000- $5,000 for aborting a pregnancy you didn’t want. All for something that is roughly somewhere between the size of a pea and a lime.

Now, a person might choose to do this for a wanted pregnancy they lose early. They may choose to hold an actual funeral, even. We humans are symbolic creatures and yes, a potential person might mean a lot to us. I’m not going to argue with a parent who needs to think of it as a baby. But legally, it shouldn’t considered one. It’s a bit of tissue that could potentially develop into a person, but it doesn’t have any right to use another person’s body, any more than a born person does. If the person it’s growing in wants or needs it out for any reason at all, well before it develops anything even close to a consciousness, that should be the end of it.

To make someone pay to bury a bit of medical waste as if it’s an actual person is absurd. And these legislators know it’s absurd. It’s just another way to punish pregnant women* for not wanting to be pregnant. And so all people who are currently pregnant or have the potential to become so are forced to suffer endless, unnecessary shit just because these jackasses want to make it impossible for them to control their own fertility.

This time, the anti-abortion crusaders have gone so far that even some in their own pro-forced-birth contingent realize how outrageous it is.

“Today is a perfect example of a bunch of middle-aged guys sitting in this room making decisions about what we think is best for women,” said Rep. Sean Eberhart, a Republican who described himself as “as pro-life as they come.” Rep. Sharon Negele, a Republican who sponsored a bill to impose restrictions on Indiana’s Planned Parenthood last year, agreed: “The bill does nothing to save innocent lives. There’s no education, there’s no funding. It’s just penalties.”

They don’t like it when the naked truth is showing, do they? Most of them don’t give a shit about the precious widdle babies, but they do very much enjoy punishing pregnant people for wanting or needing to end that pregnancy.

Once again, it’s the poor who will suffer the most. Wealthy pregnant people will have no problem finding someone to terminate their pregnancy, affording the travel costs and time off work for the procedure, and paying for a completely unnecessary funeral. But this bill, if it becomes law, will put abortion completely out of reach for many.

This is what’s happening to reproductive rights in our state legislatures in 2016.

I don’t care if you’re for her or feeling the bern. I don’t care if you want to boycott the presidential race completely. But if you care at all for people’s right to control their own fertility, get off your ass this fall and vote these anti-abortion shitstains out of the legislatures.

And remember that the next president will be the one to appoint the Supreme Court justices who will decide those rights for the next generation or two. Choose accordingly before you and your loved ones completely lose their right to choose.

*Most of them don’t yet realize that such a thing as a pregnant trans man or non-binary person can happen. But I’m pretty sure they’ll come up with terrible ways to target them extra when they do.

The post Indiana Is Poised to Strip Away Abortion Rights – And Make You Pay For Fetal Funerals appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.

There are few people in the world I find more irritating than secular pro-lifers. I mean, religious right-wing anti-abortion activists at least have the excuse of indoctrination. Secular folks should be able to reason without getting misty-eyed over a clump of cells. But there’s a group that fetishizes fetuses above all else. They pretend, occasionally, to care about the women forced to carry said fetuses, but those women are secondary to their desire to populate the earth with bouncing babies. And they have a remarkable amount of magical thinking going on. They believe a world without abortion will be some kind of utopia where men will take care of those darling little bebbies, and women are never ever tricked or forced into becoming pregnant, and the only problem they see is that since everything will be so wonderful, there will be no way to terrorize teens into never having sex.

Think I exaggerate? Read Angie Jackson’s series, which quotes their words and thoroughly demolishes each inane idea.

Part 1:

In which we are told abortion is a great injustice to the wee clump o’ cells growing inside a uterus (which, according to them, can only ever belong to a woman, cuz apparently trans men and nonbinary folk do not exist in their world), and abortion makes teh ladiez just like men.

Part 2:

In which pregnancy is a gladiatorial competition between woman and fetus – but only cuz of abortion!

Part 3:

In which the patriarchy has apparently only existed since Roe vs. Wade.

Part 4:

In which fathers only abandon their children and children’s mother because abortion is legal.

Part 5:

In which men will step up if we make women suffer badly enough to make them feel guilty – although that’s never worked in the past.

Part 6:

In which it will take a village to raise those unwanted children – a village that in reality will actually tell the mom and kid to fuck off, because unwanted.

Part 7:

In which secular forced-birth fans sound exactly like all those Christians wanting to fill the earth with babies because God said to be fruitful and multiply.

Part 8:

In which pro-forced-birthers are unsure as to how teenagers will be terrorized into not playing with each others’ naughty bits.

Part 9:

In which Angie hammers the final nails into the coffin of secular pro-forced-birthers’ arguments.

The post Secular Forced-Birth Fans Thoroughly Schooled appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.

America’s despicable right wing, having failed to prevent same sex couples from getting hitched, has now opened a new front in the culture wars. Their newest campaign is focused on denying transgender folk the right to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender. We’re seeing legislation spring up everywhere trying to force people to pee in the bathroom corresponding to their genitals or their chromosomes rather than their actual gender. It’s fucking ridiculous, and dangerous, and a horrible waste of taxpayer time and money on top of being horrifically bigoted.

South Dakota has the dubious distinction of being the first state to actually pass one of these noxious bills.

Washington isn’t the only place where conservative legislators are figuratively burning transgender people at the stake during an election year. South Dakota has become the first state to pass a terrifying new anti-transgender discrimination law out of its state legislature.

From Stranger alum Dominic Holden at Buzzfeed:

House Bill 1008 states that “every restroom, locker room, and shower room located in a public elementary or secondary school that is designated for student use and is accessible by multiple students at the same time shall be designated for and used only by students of the same biological sex.”

The bill defines “biological sex” as “the physical condition of being male or female as determined by a person’s chromosomes and anatomy as identified at birth.”

So how the hell would schools and gyms check that people using restrooms and lockers have—in their minds—the correct genitalia? What about intersex people? HB 1008 sounds very, very similar to Washington State’s SB 6548, a bill that trans rights activists have dubbed the “Genital Check” bill for the same reasons. SB 6548 would allow businesses, gyms, individuals, whomever, to adopt the same policy. In South Dakota, however, it’s specifically for kids.

So yeah, it’s not bad enough that it targets transgender folk, it has to go after trans kids in particular. Kids who aren’t harming a single soul by being themselves. The only danger is in the poisonous minds of the people who have decided that genitalia is the only thing a person has that matters, and if your naughty bits happen to be the type generally assigned to the gender opposite yours, too bad. I can’t even understand this obsession.

The bill hasn’t been signed yet, so please do add your name to the petition asking Governor Daugaard to veto the damned thing. And while you’re at it, let him know he needs to get acquainted with a few trans folk. Ignorance is literally getting people killed. We can’t accept this.

Gear up, my darlings. It’s going to be a long, hard fight for equality.

The post South Dakota Blazes a Trail of Bigotry appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.

NECSS is so sorry they offended the fucking asshole who says something awful every 2.2 seconds, and hopes we can all just get along.

Well, we can’t.

Let me explain to the not-so-fine folks on the NECSS board why Richard Dawkins is such a divisive figure, and why giving him his talk back and asking him to be on a panel to discuss the issues “causing conflict both within the skeptical community and within society as a whole” is basically spitting in the faces of those of us who are trying very, very hard to end the abuses that are causing those conflicts.

Here is a brief history of Richard Dawkins being awful, pulled from my own archives, and therefore in no way comprehensive, because the man is a firehose of terrible statements and I have better things to do than spend 100% of my time trying to catalogue all his fuckery.He kicked off the opening of the Deep Rifts™ with a sneering attack on Rebecca Watson for mildly asking guys to please not corner women on elevators. Then he refused to understand why women might be a tad upset about his cavilier dismissal of our concerns.

He has a distressing habit of erasing women when he discusses abortion. (Alas, I didn’t get around to writing up his abhorrent views on fetuses with Down Syndrome, but any discussion of his views on abortion is incomplete without mentioning them.)

He decided that classifying some child sexual abuse as “mild pedophilia” was a reasonable thing to do. I mean, if Dawk wasn’t much bothered by being diddled as a child, it can’t be that big a deal.

He thinks that women who drink and get raped brought it on themselves. As if that wasn’t despicable enough, he’s also decided that only women with “clear and convincing memories” of their assault can report a rape – so those of us who get raped after being knocked out by drugs or physical force are shit out of luck, no matter what other evidence we have.

And then he tried to silence rape victims to protect a celebrity in the skeptic community.

He attacked a black Muslim kid for building a clock and taking it to school, even going so far as to descend into conspiracy theories worthy of Alex Jones.

He’s impervious to criticism because he’s convinced himself we’re only in it for the money and fame. (My perpetually depleted bank account can attest to the fact that there is no fame and fortune to be found in criticizing one of the most popular men in the atheist movement.)

And then there was the episode that got him briefly disinvited from the 2016 NECSS conference, wherein he retweeted a video equating feminism with radical Islam (complete with a rape “joke”), and, upon discovering that the video targeted a flesh-and-blood woman who’d been horribly harassed, decided she deserved it.

And all of that is just a tiny sampling of the endless amounts of awful that spew from Richard Dawkins’ Twitter feed on a daily basis, aside from the days when he’s recuperating from a stroke. Then he just uses audio interviews to shit all over the people who’ve already suffered due to his above-noted words siccing hordes of harassers on them. Poor dear, he’s so stressed by the fact we get upset at him for being a sexist, racist, bigoted asshole.

This is the man you’re so very sorry for briefly subjecting to consequences for his actions.

Let me tell you something, NECSS organizers and board people.

I’m sick of this shit. I am completely tired of women, minorities, and people concerned with social justice being an afterthought in this movement. I’m sick of us getting trodden underfoot in the rush to kiss the asses of the Great White Menfolk. I’m tired of watching people and orgs take a tiny step forward, and then stampede back to the status quo.

We on the social justice side of the Deep Rifts™ will change the face of atheism. We will make a secular community where women, people of color, queer folk, trans folk, disabled folk, and other underrepresented folk find safe harbor. We will defeat the harassers, the old-school sexists, the gentlemen racists, the trolls, the harassers, the assholes, the greedy, and the other assorted jackasses that make movement atheism such a terrible place right now. We will resolve this shit, and we will make a better world.

And we will remember who stood with us, who failed us, and who opposed us.

And the question orgs such as yours need to ask: what do you want to be remembered for? Helping achieve equality and justice, or being the jerks we had to overcome to get there?

Consider carefully.

And no, there is no “room for a range of reasonable opinions on these issues.” There is no discussion to be had with people like Dawkins, who regularly shit all over women and minorities within the movement whilst proclaiming themselves our hero. We’ve tried. We have tried so hard, and so long, to reason with them, and we are done. We are moving on. You can move with us, or we can leave you behind.

As for those of you in the community who had a brief moment of hope when NECSS temporarily decided to do the right thing: they offered a refund to Dawkins’ fans for the disappointment, and now they owe you one. They didn’t bother to offer it, as they should have done. That’s another way they’ve shown that we aren’t shit to them.

If you donated to NECSS or purchased a ticket as a thank you for standing up for the women, minorities, and allies in the secular community who have been harmed by Richard Dawkins, it’s time to ask for your money back. Here’s a handy contact form.

They need to give your your money back. And then they need to give up all pretense of decency, because pretending these are just reconcilable differences is shitting on everyone who isn’t wealthy, white, and generally (though not always) male in this movement. There is a rift for a fucking excellent reason. If they can’t be bothered to figure out why, they need to stay the hell on the other side of it.

It’s okay. We can build a better movement without them.

The post Dear NECSS: You Have Seriously Fucked Up appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.