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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Several Ohio Republican lawmakers are proposing to strip courts of the authority to review cases related to implementing the newly passed Issue 1 abortion amendment.

    In a statement released Thursday, four GOP lawmakers claimed without evidence that there was “foreign election interference” in the vote to pass Issue 1, and threatened to block the ability of courts to interpret the new constitutional amendment.

    “To prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts, Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative,” the lawmakers said. “The Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides.”

    Issue 1 passed Tuesday with 57 percent of the vote. It creates a constitutional right to reproductive freedom in the state, which protects decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing a pregnancy, miscarriage care and abortion up to the point of fetal viability.

    It allows the state to prohibit abortion after fetal viability, which is generally between 22 and 24 weeks into pregnancy, except when necessary to protect the life or health of the mother.

    But Republicans in the General Assembly have vowed to fight the measure.

    “Issue 1 doesn’t repeal a single Ohio law, in fact, it doesn’t even mention one,” state Rep. Bill Dean said in Thursday’s statement. “The amendment’s language is dangerously vague and unconstrained, and can be weaponized to attack parental rights or defend rapists, pedophiles, and human traffickers.”

    Ohio’s six-week abortion ban that was signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine ® in 2019 contains no exceptions for rape or incest. It is currently tied up in court but could have taken effect if Issue 1 failed.

    In a separate statement, Senate President Matt Huffman ® said the measure’s passage was “just the beginning of a revolving door of ballot campaigns to repeal or replace Issue 1.”

    Issue 1 will take effect in December, but it won’t be implemented until courts apply the new constitutional standard to abortion-related lawsuits, most notably the one challenging the current ban.

    The Republican-majority Ohio Supreme Court is the ultimate authority in reviewing laws to determine if they align with the state constitution.

    “It is very important that we see the new constitution be upheld,” said Lauren Blauvelt, co-chair of Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights. “So all of us who have been continuing to fight litigation … will continue to work together to ensure that the restrictions and bans that are currently in place are no longer in place.”

    On the other side, Ohio House Democrats announced Thursday a law to repeal various existing laws that directly or indirectly restrict abortion care in Ohio. But Republicans hold strong majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly, so passage is an uphill fight.















  • As someone who grew up conservative in a conservative part of the country, conservative pop culture was always there, it was just always part of regular pop culture.

    Country music has always been the genre of choice for conservative messaging, there have always been conservative leaning comedies that have poked fun at liberals and “politcally correct” culture (what we now call woke.) Hell even within “liberal” media, conservatives would often be given a neutral spotlight among liberals. There was a whole episode of Family Guy dedicated to Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly has been featured everywhere from Marvel movies to television cameos, and South Park even still gives conservative viewpoints a positive or neutral light. Not to mention there was a boom of Christian movies during the 2010s, conservative writers have always been prominent on the NYT best sellers in books, and certain sports and event like Nascar, Football, and MMA have plenty of outspoken conservatives that are massively popular and still have strong careers and followings.

    To believe that conservative media is now starting to breach its way into the mainstream is to believe the propaganda that many conservatives push in that American pop culture is inherently liberal or leftist.





  • That if these people really cared about social justice, they would have put their money where their mouths were and left long ago, instead of constantly making excuses and justifying their continued presence there.

    I don’t care how they spin it, their activity on x undermines the marginalized people they claim to support. By continuing to post updates and posts there, and nowhere else, they keep their userbase on the site, which contributes to site traffic, which contributes to ad revenue, which contributes to Musk financially, which contributes to politicians, organizations, and causes that wish to peel back rights to workers, racial minorities, women, and queer people.

    These are some of the same people that argued continuing to consume Harry Potter, or shopping at Hobby Lobby and Chic-Fil-A were harmful acts. As a queer person, I often agree with their messages, but I am getting so. fucking. tired of the hypocrisy in some of these people. And twitter/X has been the biggest integrity check for me.

    And no, they can’t use the system argument that explains why they participate in capitalism despite being anti-capitalists. We all need to interact with capitalism in one way or another to survive. Most people don’t need fucking twitter. Especially when there are so many alternate platforms, and I’m not even talking about just microblogs either.

    Fuck they don’t even throw a line to some of the smaller platforms. If they did that at least, people who don’t feel safe using the site, or don’t want to support Musk financially, wouldn’t have to view their content from halfway broken nitter. But nope, no account on any mastodon server, no attempt to establish themselves on bluesky, or hell any regular updates on the threads account they made but never use.

    And many of us queer users, these stripping away of protections and features hurt us the most. Many left cause they didn’t feel safe anymore, and that is part of the reason many of us are on fediverse. We see better than anyone who these influencers and content creators actually care about. None of them followed us here. None of them even throw us a bone. We’re are forced to look through a frosted window, or do without, and at this point, I have found myself doing more of the latter.

    Either stick to your fucking principles or admit you have an addiction you can’t easily kick. But please for the love of god stop trying to paint your remaining there as righteous or justified.