Sunshine

Several of the Democrats who voted for the bill sit at the helm of party leadership. Tartaglione is Pennsylvania’s minority party whip and Miller is the minority policy committee chairman. This kind of break of party leaders from the rank-and-file is historically atypical—but increasingly occurring where trans rights are involved. Similar splits have transpired in Michigan and New Hampshire. And California Governor Gavin Newsom platformed anti-trans extremist Charlie Kirk on his podcast, This is Gavin Newsom.

Pundits have also speculated about the extent to which trans rights issues may play in swinging votes, but the SB 9 hearings may speak to something deeper than optics and polling. The defectors were generally in “safe” districts. Tartaglione ran unopposed in the last election. Sen. Boscola and Sen. Flynn both won by about 20 points in their respective districts. Sen. Miller won by about 13 points. Only Sen. Malone won by a narrow margin.

SB 9 was introduced by State Senator Judy Ward, a Republican who, in December, announced that she would seek to eradicate gender-affirming health care for trans minors in Pennsylvania. These bills have yet to materialize, but anti-trans activists and politicians nationwide have used the manufactured “crisis” of trans athletes as a red herring disguised as “fairness” to get some Democrats to cede ground.

“Within the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, there’s a growing tension between those who understand what’s at stake for trans people and those who are trying to avoid political backlash,” they told Erin in the Morning. “The problem is that centering political convenience over people’s lives never ends well.”

But Boscola’s proposal glosses over the further-reaching and more consequential aspects of these kinds of bills. As anti-trans actors have openly espoused, excluding trans athletes is not the goal; it is a means to an end, a proverbial foot in the door leading to the erasure of trans people from all areas of public life. These kinds of exclusionary sports bans open up the floodgates to invasive, arbitrary sex testing; fuel public speculation and ridicule over young people’s bodies; and rely on false data about the prevalence of trans athletes.

Boycott the hell out of that bookstore!

It annoys the heck out of me that you now see the activity notification in the legacy ui.

British Columbia must go higher than that!

Those useless spinless particular democrats belong in the trash.

It’s nice to see that balance druids are getting the love they deserved a long time ago!

Mark Carney must be demanded to do the same.

Especially when the Canucks account was hijacked by Elon Musk placing his crypto scam video as the top post on their page.

We need to stop investing in Methane!

We should demand better game optimization and longer software support for our current hardware.

Yup, Elon Musk is definitely acting like a Nigerian prince scammer right here.

You see that China!