NullTuples
NullTuples's JournalSome good transgender healthcare news!
People on testosterone (trans men, trans masc people, etc) can continue to get prescriptions remotely through 2024!
This is such a big deal for them; with the pandemic emergency declaration ended, it was no longer going to be possible for them to get or renew prescriptions via video appointments & similar; they had to go in person because testosterone is categorized as a controlled substance. For some, this meant substantial driving and time.
Thank you, to the Biden Administration! This may also cover Adderall, Xanax & similar drugs, which will help people taking those medications.
"Transgender patients who are prescribed testosterone online are signaling cautious optimism after federal health officials decided controlled substances may be prescribed via telemedicine through late 2024.
Testosterone, Adderall, and Xanax are among the controlled medications that clinicians have been able to prescribe online under Covid-era policies that eased access to telehealth when lockdowns made office visits difficult. The Drug Enforcement Administration had planned to reinstate pre-pandemic restrictions but now is backing away from that proposal, under a temporary rule published Wednesday in the Federal Register.
Transgender people who have been prescribed testosterone online say they’re relieved they won’t need to be seen by doctors at in-person clinics, which are rare in rural areas and often have wait times of several months. Clinicians, researchers, and health policy experts said requiring in-person exams would add roadblocks to care, and that could prove to be devastating for vulnerable transgender people."
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/trans-patients-testosterone-access-eased-by-online-prescribing
Gov. DeSantis signs SB 1580 aka "License to Discriminate in Healthcare"
"Gov. DeSantis signed SB 1580, a “License to Discriminate in Healthcare” bill that will allow healthcare providers and insurers to deny a patient care on the basis of religious, moral, or ethical beliefs. It creates a license to discriminate by allowing healthcare employers to discriminate in hiring, and it bars medical Boards from disciplining doctors for spreading misinformation."
He also signed SB 238, which he said will "provide an exemption from public records requirements for certain information relating to complaints or investigations regarding violations of provisions protecting from discrimination based on health care choices."
I'm still slogging through it:
https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/238/BillText/er/PDF
A microcosm of Christian Dominionism
"...voiced concerns to district leadership about adjustment counselor Hector Santos and current eighth-grade guidance counselor Delinda Dykes, noting that the two routinely misgendered and deadnamed transgender students and staff, invoked anti-LGBTQ prayer at school, allowed religion to overflow into conversations with students and staff, and failed to provide support to students who were facing gender-based bullying or intimidation at school. Santos also posted religiously worded anti-LGBTQ material on a public Facebook page.
This year, when Santos’s daughter Tania Cabrera was brought on to serve as the seventh-grade guidance counselor, staff and students told The Graphic she also misgendered trans kids, told staff that a trans student had reverted to using their legal name when they had not, did not report on an anti-LGBTQ harassment incident that was reported to her, and told a trans male student who went to her for support that she sympathized with his parents, who had “lost their daughter.” The Graphic reached out to Dykes, Santos, and Cabrera with every allegation and allowed them the right to reply; in three almost identical statements sent by email, they refuted all claims made in this report.
[...]
But Guevara also confirmed by email that district policy requires staff to file complaints against other staff with Assistant Superintendent of Diversity, Equity, and Human Resources Doreen Cunningham. “All student matters come to Faye [Brady] and me, and complaints about adults go to Doreen [Cunningham],” she wrote. Cunningham has personal ties to the three counselors. In addition to Santos being slated to officiate at Cunningham’s wedding in July, Santos referred to Dykes and her husband as his “siblings in faith” in a previously public Facebook post, which included pictures of him, Dykes, and Cunningham at a party.
Fearing retaliation if they filed a complaint against the counselors with Cunningham, multiple staff members say they dropped their complaints and took to trying to create alternative forms of support to safeguard kids. Meanwhile, Dykes was named interim principal by the superintendent in November 2022, when Diego Sharon took a leave to attend to family matters. And she and Santos were granted professional educator status in under two years, a tenure-like designation that is normally awarded only after three years of positive professional evaluations."
(continues at link)
http://thegraphic.arps.org/2023/05/its-life-or-death-failure-to-protect-trans-kids-at-arms-a-systemic-problem/
This is yet another canary in the coal mine moment.
Twenty years ago, I availed myself of the opportunity to read Christian Dominionist newsletters that my employers distributed to their "ministry". There was also significant overlap, as half the workforce had been recruited via the local Southern Baptist congregation. They organized, packaged, labeled and shipped recruitment media including Dominionist newspapers from a store room adjacent to the marketing department's printing room. I wanted to see who and what they really were so I made a habit of randomly grabbing an issue and reading it at lunch.
The situation described in the news story above is exactly what their long term goals looked like: "embedding" their followers in positions of authority throughout every level of society in order to force everyone to live as conservative Christians. Nepotism of course, is used by them as a tool. Honesty is irrelevant in the face of their larger goals, as is harm to others. And anything can be and is justified by claiming it is done in service to their god. They've taken over schools, law enforcement, health care to a large degree, and all three branches of government in half the states, plus wide swaths of federal positions - including significant portions of the judiciary. They will cheat, lie and steal to accomplish their goal of forcing American to be a "Christian Nation". Each time they've been in power over the last few decades, they've ratcheted the balance to the authoritarian, fascist right in small steps that don't seem to be clawed back before they're in power again.
Frankly, I'm terrified. They have a significant number of states where it is simply no longer possible for Democrats to regain control regardless of "getting out the vote" - and this in turn affects Congress, too. They've placed zealots in lifetime appointments throughout our legal system. They own law enforcement. They've taken control of health care via ownership and lawmaking to deny life-saving care and to deny body autonomy to half the population. I'm sure the list goes on, but I'm done typing.
From Mastodon: South Carolina House Dems bring 1,000 amendments to an anti-abortion ban
"South Carolina House Dems bring 1,000 amendments to an anti-abortion ban.
Fighting matters.
Even if you are in a red state - especially if you are in a red state - this is the kind of fight we want from our Dems."
(Link contains video of Dems carrying in BOXES of amendments to slow the passage of the bill and hopefully maybe run out the clock)
https://sfba.social/@erininthemorn@bird.makeup/110346802151492182
Silencing Opposition Is Now Standard Procedure For GOP Controlled Legislatures
"The Republican Party has repeatedly barred discussion on LGBTQ+ bills this year. Despite holding supermajorities in numerous instances, they have frequently silenced oppositional voices. Notably, in Oklahoma, GOP members censured Representative Mauree Turner, a Black, nonbinary representative. In Kentucky, an attempt was made to hold a hearing without any Democratic representatives. This was announced during a lunch break when microphones were turned off. A recent incident in Montana saw transgender Rep. Zooey Zephyr ejected from the house floor and silenced simply for speaking to the harm these bills cause, preventing her from commenting on anti-trans bills. Today, in Missouri, the GOP restricted Democrats to 15 minutes of debate against a bill prohibiting gender-affirming care for trans youth. During the vote, gay Republican Rep. Chris Sander was denied the opportunity to speak against the bill despite signaling his intent, keeping his hand raised for the entirety of the vote.
In a scene eerily familiar to many people who have paid attention to floor debates over anti-trans legislation, Missouri House Speaker, Rep. Dean Plocher, enacted a motion that restricted Democrats to a meager 15 minutes of total discourse on the bill. This appeared to be a calculated move to expedite the bill's passage with minimal opposition. House Minority Leader, Representative Crystal Quade, used some of her time to denounce this tactic, arguing it silenced representatives' speech and, in effect, muffled the voice of the citizenry they represent."
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/missouri-republicans-refuse-to-let
A running tally of how Republicans are remaking the American classroom.
28 States, 71 Bills, and an Education System Transformed
Since 2020, 60 state school laws have passed across the country. Three others are currently blocked by court injunction, and eight more bills have been vetoed. Dozens of additional measures are being debated and considered; we’ll update this list as legislation develops.
A list of how each Republican-controlled state is changing the American Education system, ranging from,
"Opens school employees and librarians to prosecution under state obscenity laws. Also grants parents the right to see a list of school-library books and materials borrowed by their child."
to, "Requires public K-12 and charter schools to make all instruction “consistent” with certain ideas related to race, sex, and American history and culture, including the idea that “defining racial disparities solely on the legacy of [slavery] is destructive to the unification of our nation.”
and, "Prohibits any mandatory staff training or public-school curricula from teaching or promoting specific concepts in the guise of prohibiting “race or sex stereotyping” or “scapegoating.”
And of course the tragically routine-for-Republicans laws attacking LGBTQ students.
Complete list, kept current, is here:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/us-education-state-school-laws.html
The GOP does straight and gay genocide, too
Basically, they are a danger to anyone they don't like or anyone they feel is a so-called "sinner". This is what they do, and they do it proudly.
"Tennessee Rejects Federal HIV Prevention Funds: A Looming Public Health And Financial Disaster
Tennessee announced that the state would reject nearly $9 million in federal funding for HIV prevention and monitoring, effective May 31, 2023. This decision threatens to reverse progress on reducing new HIV infections in a high-priority area, is economically unsound, weaponizes the withholding of federal funds against minority populations, and is likely to set a precedent for other states resulting in an unnecessary loss of life and cost to taxpayers nationwide.
More than 50 percent of HIV infections in the US occur in the South each year. Shelby County (which includes Memphis, Tennessee) is a designated HIV hotspot with one of the highest rates of new HIV infections in the country.
Prioritization of community-led delivery of prevention and testing have been working. Federal HIV funding channeled through the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) to community organizations prevents more than 500 HIV cases per year. Between 2016 and 2019, new HIV diagnoses decreased 5 percent across the South. Federal HIV prevention funding is used to provide HIV testing, expand access to PrEP—a daily medication to prevent HIV infection—and help people living with HIV to access their medication. In the absence of federal funding, leaders of successful and well-trusted community programs say their operations will be threatened.
Rejecting federal dollars for HIV prevention and treatment is also economically unsound. The lifetime treatment of HIV/AIDS costs more than $540,000 dollars per new case, meaning that the decision to reject $9 million in federal funding now could cost more than $270 million taxpayer dollars through the Ryan White Program to treat otherwise preventable HIV cases."
https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/tennessee-rejects-federal-hiv-prevention-funds-looming-public-health-and-financial
(also, you know...women & other people dying because they couldn't obtain a life-saving abortion. Also, guns)
On this day 90 years ago the Nazis destroyed the first modern LGBTQ clinic in the West
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by German President Paul von Hindenburg.
On May 6, 1933, a Nazi student group marched to the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin (Magnus Hirschfeld's Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin). With members of the SA, they ransacked the institute and looted its library and archives. Days later, the stolen books, artifacts, and clinical files were destroyed in one of several public book burnings organized across Germany (ie the famous "Nazi bookburning" photo). A bust of Hirschfeld was paraded through the streets on a stick before being thrown onto the bonfire.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/magnus-hirschfeld-2
(from @jo@blahaj.zone on mastodon)
So, I'm churning through the American College of Pediatrician files*
And this is the website they direct children's doctors to, in order to "educate" them and help them shape their talking points to a more...conservative Christian purpose.
https://www.docadvice.org
It's amazing just how much misinfo - intentional misinformation - I've found so far.
* as reported here: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217878391
CRTC holding public consultations on removing Fox News from Canadian T.V.
The Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has opened public consultations about banning Fox News from Canadian cable packages.
The CRTC is accepting feedback on a request to remove Fox News from the list of non-Canadian programming services authorized for distribution.
https://www.durhamradionews.com/archives/168696#:~:text=The%20Canadian%20Radio-Television%20Telecommunications,programming%20services%20authorized%20for%20distribution.
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