
These laws violate fundamental human rights. LGBTQ plus are just the modern Hitler-hunted Jews. Remember always that first they came for the Jews, and then they came for us. The recent Supreme Court ruling against the gay website is just the first step to repeal same-sex marriage.

Then they come for blacks, then browns, then women, then the Jews again, then Muslims, and it never stops in this totalitarian tiptoe against Democracy. Ban DeSantis instead of books and keep America free from oppression.
Do not let authoritarianism ideology destroy our country and this planet. Trumpism led by Trump and DeSantis and all their ring kissers is out to turn America into Russia and China.
We must fight for our very lives and freedom. Vote Democratic and run for office from class president to city council to Congress. We cannot let these factions destroy our world and send us back to the dark ages.
Time to pay attention and speak out while we still can. Get your heads out of the sand. Fight for the freedom to be free, independent, and individualistic. These regimes repress, stifle and destroy our joy and are killing us.

Major Pole-Dancing Convention Cancels Florida Event Due To Ron DeSantis’ Anti-LGBTQ Laws
The governor and White House hopeful recently signed a flurry of legislation targeting the LGBTQ+ community, including one law that targets drag shows.
Jun 29, 2023, 02:41 PM EDT
|Updated Jun 29, 2023
A major pole-dancing convention no longer plans to head to Orlando in 2024 after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a flurry of laws targeting the LGBTQ+ community, including one that targets drag shows.
The International Pole Convention, known as PoleCon for short, has decided to relocate the annual event because attendees will include people of various genders and ages, including youth performers and children attending with their parents, and some attendees will be in drag.
“It’s just too risky to go to Florida,” Colleen Jolly, the CEO of the International Pole Convention, told HuffPost. “At this point, I’m signing [event-related] contracts one year in advance. What kind of shenanigans are going to be happening there by then?”

One of the Florida laws purports to bar business from admitting minors to sexually explicit drag shows, but critics say it’s written in such a way that it could apply to all drag events. The text says that such shows include those that are “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community of this state as a whole with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for the age of the child present.”
Any establishment that violates the law could be fined $5,000 for a first offense and $10,000 for a subsequent violation, as well as having its liquor license revoked.

Last week, a federal judge temporarily halted the drag ban after Hamburger Mary’s, a chain restaurant that hosts drag performances for all ages, sued Florida, saying the law’s broad language has a chilling effect on the right to free speech.
But the legal uncertainty still has Jolly concerned about holding an inclusive event in Florida. Even before DeSantis signed the drag law, right-wing extremists and other protesters had shown up to drag events at restaurants and other venues.
“I wouldn’t want my attendees to have people standing outside picketing,” Jolly said. “This is their time to get away, relax and have fun. They shouldn’t have to worry about getting hassled.”
PoleCon was held in Orlando in 2018, and Jolly said that many attendees — professional and hobbyist pole-dancers alike — visited local theme parks, participating in Florida’s large tourist economy. But now there is a real danger to any organization holding drag events.
Last year, DeSantis threatened a Miami restaurant’s liquor license over drag shows, alleging that the popular events were targeting minors with lewd performances. Then in February, DeSantis filed a complaint against the Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation after it hosted a family-friendly drag show, similarly accusing the nonprofit of putting on sexually explicit performances for children.

DeSantis signed the raft of anti-LGBTQ laws right before announcing last month that he was running for the White House, signaling what his priorities could be as president. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment from HuffPost.
Florida’s drag ban is a part of a conservative moral panic about children being exposed to the LGBTQ+ community. While it has spread across the country in GOP-led states, Florida remains at the forefront.
Conservative culture warriors in the Sunshine State have sought to clamp down on the books that children can access and what teachers can say at school. And in addition to restricting drag shows, they’ve worked to prohibit transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming care.
“It’s not really about protecting children,” Jolly said. “It’s about control.”
Jolly is now searching for a new location for PoleCon 2024.

“I won’t go to any state with a drag ban,” she said. “So, I’ve had to block out a third of the country.”
However, Jolly is not concerned about where the convention will be held. She said the real issue is how drag bans affect anyone looking for a safe and inclusive space.
“PoleCon will find another place,” Jolly said. “But real people are being hurt by this. And even if you’re straight and cisgender, you need to be paying attention.”
Arizona AG Kris Mayes tells Supreme Court to take their discrimination elsewhere
by Mother Mags
Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)
Monday, July 03, 2023 at 9:12:34a
150 NEWRecommend Story753

Only 280 votes separated Democrat Kris Mayes from Republican Abraham Hamadeh in the 2022 Arizona Attorney General race; in fact, Hamadeh is still appealing to the courts to overturn the result, just like the failure Kari Lake. If Lake had won the governor’s race, the majority of Gov. Katie Hobbs’ vetoes (she set a record) would’ve been signed into law, and Arizona would resemble the homophobic, transphobic, racist, anti-voter, anti-education, anti-choice hell holes emerging in Florida, Texas, and other Republican-controlled states that are codifying white religious extremism.
If Abraham Hamadeh had won the AG’s contest, we never would’ve seen this—a statement from Kris Mayes after the Supreme Court ruled last week, in a totally hypothetical Colorado case, that businesses can discriminate:

“By issuing this new license to discriminate … the immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status.”
Not in Arizona, according to Mayes.
Attorney General Mayes, a lesbian and former Republican, blasted the “woefully misguided majority” on the Court and said her office will continue to enforce the anti-discrimination laws that are on the books in Arizona, regardless of the Supremes’ “profoundly wrong” decision.

“If any Arizonan believes that they have been the victim of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), national origin, or ancestry in a place of public accommodation, they should file a complaint with my office. I will continue to enforce Arizona’s public accommodation law to its fullest extent.”
my emphasis
Who knows what’ll happen? I sure don’t, but I’m glad mine was one of the 280 votes that put Kris Mayes in office.

Supreme Court LGBTQ ‘Fake Case’ Could be Reversed—Lawyer
BY GIULIA CARBONARO ON 7/3/23 AT 4:50 AM EDT
As backlash grows over the Supreme Court‘s recent decision to rule in favor of a Christian designer who didn’t want to make wedding websites for a gay couple in 303 Creative v. Elenis, allegations that the case hinged on a fake claim are gaining strength.
Lawyer Neal Katyal, who as acting solicitor general between 2010 and 2011 argued more than 50 cases in front of the Supreme Court, said that if the case turned out to be based on a fake claim, as he said it would appear, the court’s decision could be officially stricken.
On Friday, the court’s conservative majority delivered a blow to LGBTQ rights nationwide, ruling 6 to 3 in favor of Colorado graphic artist Lorie Smith, who had refused to design a website for a same-sex couple’s wedding despite state law barring discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender, and other characteristics.

The Supreme Court voted to defend Smith’s free speech rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment, opening the way for artists to refuse work that, as the court put it, goes against their beliefs.
But recent reporting by The New Republic (TNR) revealed that the name of the plaintiff in the case—allegedly the gay man who had asked Smith to design a wedding website for himself and his husband-to-be, Stewart—had never made a similar request.
In fact, Stewart—whose name, address, and contact information could be found in court filings—was married to a woman at the time the request to Smith was allegedly made, and he had never heard about the case, as he told TNR.
Stewart’s theory is that someone—potentially Smith and her attorneys—used his information to invent the case of a gay couple asking a Christian designer for a wedding website.
Talking about this revelation on MSNBC this weekend, Katyal said that the court’s decision could be stricken if it was in fact not actually based on a serious claim.
“The U.S. Supreme Court is bound, our founders in Article 3 said you have to have an actual case or controversy in order to go to the United States Supreme Court and seek relief,” he said.
“Here, it’s a fake case, according to the story. There’s no controversy. This person never wanted to be involved in this in any way, shape or form,” he continued, adding that the Colorado Attorney General should be going back to the United States Supreme Court now.
“It’s a tragedy that they didn’t find this information out before, but there is a procedure to seek re-hearing and to get this decision stricken from the book, and I think that’s what should happen here,” he added.
Katyal represented the federal government in all appellate matters before the Supreme Court during the Obama administration. He previously served as an attorney in the Solicitor General’s office and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General in the U.S. Justice Department.
He has spent the last three years serving as Special Prosecutor for the State of Minnesota in the murder of George Floyd.
The potential striking of the court’s decision would have LGBTQ communities and advocates rejoicing, after having expressed dismay at Friday’s ruling.
The ruling was backed by the conservative justices only. The liberal justices dissented, saying that the rationale behind the conservative majority’s decision “cannot be limited to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.”
President Joe Biden called the ruling “disappointing,” saying that it “weakens long-standing laws that protect all Americans against discrimination in public accommodations—including people of color, people with disabilities, people of faith, and women.”
Newsweek has contacted Katyal for comment by email.