he/him (cisgender)

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • I don’t live in the US and am not an expert on any of this State vs Fed stuff but it seems to be the case that the government at the State level CAN restrict speech and descriminate against you based on your sexual orientation? Because they’re targeting books/speech that are relavant to people, partly at least, due to them being in the LGBTQIA+ community. And it’s up to YOU to defend your right to access that speech by taking legal action? So a kind of ‘guilty until proven innocent’ adjacent scenario. I’m so confused and maybe I’m missing something but it sure FEELS like the 1st amendment is optional?

    I assume they could also therefore remove books based on the race of the characters in the books or because of the subject matter being of particular relavance to people of colour? But I assume that’s happened before and been tested legally and that’s the process that’s happening now with the LGBTQIA+ book bans? Is it simply that the LGBTQIA+ community isn’t yet as robust in their advocacy, lobbying & litigation as they need to be? That they don’t have the equivalent of the NAACP on their side? Should they have to? Isn’t the 1st ammendment and anti-descrimination law pretty clear?

    As someone living outside the USA, I have struggled to understand what’s going on there and why it’s allowed to happen when the 1st ammendment exists expressly to stop the government from suppressing speech, the restriction of which can be damaging to vulnerable communites. Take the story of Roy and Silo, about a same sex couple (of penguins for goodness sake?!) raising a child together. This being banned sends a message to children of same sex parents that there is something wrong with their parents / family unit. I find that disturbing enough, but to the child, it could be traumatizing. How would parents explain to their child that their favourite book has been removed from their library purely because the subject of the story is a family just like theirs?!







  • No actor/actress should have their pool of potential roles made vanishingly small because of a thing they can’t change, the colour of their skin! And then on top of there being very few roles for people of colour in western pop culture based on your criteria, the very few roles they COULD take are often ALSO given to white actors/actresses in bizarre acts of whitewashing idiocy! It’s infuriating! Talent, passion, skill, training, these should be the kinds of factors involved when choosing who gets cast for what role, not where you fall on the colour wheel! It’s just crazy to me that it’s even a consideration at all and in future people will look back and be incredulous that it ever was!? At least I hope that will be the case, as we are making slow progress in that direction.