“It is a complicated issue. It is truly a complicated issue, with a wide range of views, truly a wide range of views,” Jean-Pierre said. “There is no ‘yes or no’ answer to this, it is complicated. There is a rule that the Department of Education [DOE] has put forward, and we’re going to let that process move forward, and again, we want to make sure that while we establish guardrails with this rule, we also prevent discrimination, as well, against transgender kids. But again, a complicated issue with a wide range of views, and we respect that.”

“Absolutely no reason for the Biden admin to do this,” New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “It is indefensible and embarrassing. The admin can still walk this back, and they should. It’s a disgrace.”

“Honestly, this move by Biden to push a rule on trans kids in sports is not only a backwards betrayal, it [forces] us to have to spend our time dealing with god d*** sports instead of criminal bans on our healthcare,” Alejandra Caraballo, a civil rights attorney and LGBTQ+ advocate, wrote. “He could have just done nothing. This is legitimizing transphobia.”

The mOsT PrOgReSsIvE Administration in History™ funny-clown-hammer “A complicated issue with a wide range of views, and we respect that” funny-clown-hammer Fuck off out of here with that “centrist” nonsense. There’s nothing complicated about it, and it’s not an issue unless you want to turn it into one and want to appeal to people’s emotions like Republicans are doing. It was only a matter of time before they’d start throwing trans people under the bus. I guess with the coming elections it’s as good a time as ever.

    • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      So, you think voting for a Republican or not voting is going to get the job done?

      • no, democrats have demonstrated repeatedly that they are unwilling to do anything. you would be a fool to vote for them over and over again after seeing their incompetence and unwillingness to even slightly push back against the reactionary policies being enacted under biden

        • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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          The Democratic Party has room for improvement, sure, but it’s also the only party with room for improvement. On this issue, not voting is the same as voting for a Republican. That surely won’t get you any improvement.

      • So you think that rewarding the Democrats for having the only standard be “Our senile, racist, rapist, corrupt, reactionary war criminal doesn’t have an orange spray tan” is going to “get the job done”? Or just the entire party being the polite, norms-respecting Republicans.

        • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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          I think it’s the only party that does not vilify LGBTQ people, so I’ll keep voting for them for that reason and many others.

          • You’re right. They are more of the Uvalde Cops to the Republicans school shooter. Even when they nominally have power they wont even rhetorically fight back, let alone use that power, to defend LGBTQ people in any way.

            • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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              I understand your frustration, but not voting or voting for a Republican will just make matter worse. There’s surely room for improvement among Democrats, but it’s also the only party with room for improvement.

              • MiguelParenti [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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                There’s room for improvement? Are you sure? What are you basing that on? It must be vibes cause it sure as fuck doesn’t follow with the transphobic statements of brump brandon’s handlers.

              • build_a_bear_group [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                No, ignoring the extremely limited efficacy and right-wing bias of electoralism, their entire point is just being the “Not Republican Party”. As long as they can only offer that and nothing else, and still be electorally competitive, they never have to improve and will actively fight against improvement. Additionally, they actually do more to aid the Republicans and right-wing agenda as long as they are really ineffective and out-of-touch and in people’s minds voting for them is the only real opposition the Republicans, while constantly capitulating to Republicans on issues like trans rights. But ultimately, this is why the Republicans are much more responsive to what their base wants, since even if they are reactionary, and can somewhat generate the culture war issues, they are the only party offering a positive agenda. (Positive in the sense of a politics of making changes and advancing agendas rather than just saying that the other party is worse. Not saying their agenda is good, obviously)

                So, yes, there is some times, particularly on close elections or local elections where you can get improvement by voting Democrat over some Q-anon or MAGA psycho. But you also have to admit, especially with Federal elections, not voting for Democrats is not really making things worse or doing less “harm mitigation” than voting for a Biden, or whatever right-wing bigot the Democrats throw up next. Especially if, even on things like LGBTQ rights, they immediately capitulate and take the Republican position, just with more polite rhetoric.

              • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                There’s plenty of room for improvement to be very diplomatic about it. But you seem to mistake room for improvement with actual improvement. Who cares if the democrats could theoretically do better when they patiently and consistently don’t? What good is this void of unrealised improvement doing anybody?

                Either you believe that the mere existence of room for improvement is a material gold, which makes no sense. Or you believe that there exists a mechanism for getting the democrats to realise that improvement, a way of pursuing then left. How this is going to work remains a mystery and believing that the democrats will improve tomorrow seems more like a coping mechanism than anything that is likely to actually happen.

            • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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              Sure. Some might think that. But there is still lightyears between those two parties when it comes to LGBTQ priorities. Republicans are just hoping your frustration will cause you to stay home on election day.

              • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                Republicans are just hoping your frustration will cause you to stay home on election day.

                This is literally about the Democrats being worthless craven shitheads as usual. I’m writing in Hillary again in 2024, fuck you.

              • AcidSmiley [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                Which LGBTQ priorities? When Biden talks about the rights of queer people, the only thing he brings up is gay marriage when the GOP openly talks about ending the right of trans people to exist as ourselves in public, whi9ch if you knew anything about our lifes and how we need to lead them you’d recognize as openly genocidal. Biden is a coward who doesn’t even dare to say the word trans in public while DeSantis and Abbot are already making lists of trans people. What he has done instead is this shit we’re discussing here, when he could’ve opened up planned parenthood clinics on federal land to guarantee access to free abortion and gender affirming care in red states, could’ve stepped in when Florida "legalized abducting trans kids out of state for forced conversion therapy*, could’ve coordinated the isolated efforts of some democrats on the state level to create asylum states for trans people etc. etc.

                Instead, he is tiptoeing around the “complicated issue” if people like me should have basic human rights.

              • charly4994 [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                No they’re not. You have conservative think tanks with a detailed plan about how they’re going to make being trans illegal in the US and you have literally nothing from the leader of the Democrats who is supposedly different in their priorities with queer folk. There hasn’t been any serious attempt at pushback against states criminalizing and going after trans youth. And in the context of years and years of conservative laws across the country eroding our right to exist, they release a statement like this. There is no difference between these people. They just want to be able to call themselves allies because they think it builds character for themselves. Allies cannot dictate our liberation and allies will just as quickly silence their support of us when it becomes a little uncomfortable while we are still here and we still have to live in this shitty country.

                But tell me how it’s all according to keikaku and that the Dems are actually totally on our side guys, just ignore the last 70 years of history.

      • Bruja [she/her, love/loves]@hexbear.net
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        Since I was eighteen, I have voted for a third party even when its chances were hopeless, if the main parties were unsatisfactory; or, in absence of a third choice, voted for the lesser of two evils.

        I could vote, but the election in which I could vote was a farce.

        I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.

        This Administration is dominated and directed by wealth and for the accumulation of wealth. Corporate wealth profits as never before in history. We turn over the national resources to private profit and have few funds left for education, health or housing. We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is “legal” we call it high profits and the profiteers help decide what is legal. If the theft is “illegal” the thief can fight it out in court, with excellent chances to win if he receives the accolade of the right newspapers.

        Gambling on the stock market is increasing and all prices are rising. It costs three times his salary to elect a Senator and many millions to elect a President. This money comes from the very corporations which today are the government. This in a real democracy would be enough to turn the party responsible out of power. Yet this we cannot do.

        I have no advice for others in this election. Are you voting Democratic? Well and good; all I ask is why? Are you voting for Biden and his smooth team of bright ghost writers? Again, why? Will your helpless vote either way support or restore democracy to America?

        Is the refusal to vote in this phony election a counsel of despair? No, it is dogged hope. It is hope that if millions of voters refrain from voting in 2024 because of their own accord and not because of a sly wink from Putin, this might make the American people ask how much longer this dumb farce can proceed without even a whimper of protest. Yet if we protest, off the nation goes to Russia and China.

        Fifty-five American philanthropists are asking China “to face manfully the doubts and promptings of their conscience.” Can not these do-gooders face their own consciences? Can they not see that American culture is rotting away: our honesty, our human sympathy; our literature, save what we import from abroad? Our manners are gone and the one thing we want is to be rich–to show off. Success is measured by income.

        University education is for income, not culture, and is partially supported by private industry. We are not training poets or musicians, but engineers. Business is built on successful lying called advertising. We want money in vast amount, no matter how we get it. So we have it, and what then?

        Is the answer the election of 2024? We can make a sick man President and set him to a job which would strain a man in robust health. So he dies, and what do we get to lead us? We remain in the same mess. I will be no party to it and that will make little difference. You will take large part and bravely march to the polls, and that also will make no difference.

        Stop running Russia and giving Chinese advice when we cannot rule ourselves decently. Stop yelling about a democracy we do not have. Democracy is dead in the United States. Yet there is still nothing to replace real democracy. Drop the chains, then, that bind our brains. Drive the money-changers from the seats of the Cabinet and the halls of Congress. Call back some faint spirit of Jefferson and Lincoln, and when again we can hold a fair election on real issues, let’s vote, and not till then. Is this impossible? Then democracy in America is impossible.

        web

        dubois-depressed

      • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Voting for Democrats means you are actually voting for Republicans because Democrats do whatever Republicans want, serve the same class, and are themselves Republicans. So not voting is actually harm reduction. Voting just helps Republicans.

      • silent_water [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        yes, if the democrats won’t earn our votes, we’ll withhold them. it’s not like a democrat in office meaningfully slows down the pace of fascism.