A. Goad (she/her or ze/zir)

“youre goddam right im for ‘they/them’ theyre americans arent they?”

its really not that hard to flip this shit right on its head if you actually want to

All students deserve to feel safe, welcome, and valued in their classrooms, and curriculum reflecting the diversity of the real world is part of how we make that happen. Thank you to the teachers who are doing this work, and to the school leaders who have their backs! 🙌🏻🌈✊🏻

Meanwhile, it’s important for teachers to keep up the great work on teaching LGBTQ+ content among other forms of inclusive education, and for administrators and community to have their backs.

"...may be analyzed differently from educational requirements for high school students.” What exactly that means will get hashed out in courtrooms and beyond, and it will take a while.

“will depend on the specific religious beliefs and practices asserted, as well as the specific nature of the educational requirement or curricular feature at issue. Educational requirements targeted toward very young children, for example, ... "

There’s a lot of figuring out left to do on these issues, because the Court in Mahmoud did not create a clear rule for how the free exercise right of parents applies to public school instruction. It held that whether instruction substantially interferes with the religious development of a child ...

The decision did NOT authorize pulling anything off library shelves. It didn’t ban Pride flags or GSAs. It didn’t change the mandates in states like California for public schools to teach inclusive curriculum and prevent discrimination or harassment against LGBTQ+ students.

Finally, DON’T PANIC or exaggerate how much of a setback we’ve suffered. Mahmoud was bad, and part of a terrible trend in SCOTUS’s handling of LGBTQ+ issues, but it did NOT address anything beyond classroom instruction. (See footnote 11 of Justice Sotomayor’s 🔥 dissent.)

DON'T PUSH OPT-OUTS: Framing notice to parents so as to encourage opting out in general would be problematic – and explicitly encouraging LGBTQ+-specific opt-out would be very problematic. Schools also must provide neutral opt-out opportunities, NOT make families opt in to "controversial" lessons.

DON’T SINGLE OUT "LGBTQ LESSONS": Districts need to train their staff on procedures for honoring parental opt-out requests. Any processes and forms they set up for opting out of instruction for religious reasons should be content-neutral, NOT just about “the gay stuff.”

DON’T BLOCK OPT-OUTS: Fighting w/ parents re: sincerity/details of their beliefs isn't likely to go well. School leaders should make sure teachers have the political & logistical support they need to keep teaching inclusive lessons, even if some students get an alternative activity.

Those who brought the case seek to make it so difficult + dangerous to acknowledge LGBTQ+ people’s existence, or anything else that offends them, that teachers & districts give up. It’s important for school leaders to stand up to that pressure and be smart about next steps. A 🧵 :

Mahmoud v. Taylor was an awful SCOTUS decision, an attack on the humanity of 🌈 families and on some of the basic premises of public education in a pluralistic society. But it’s not the end of the world or of inclusive education...

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift, Mr. and Mrs. Werner Dannheisser, 1977 © 2016 Agnes Martin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Untitled #14 by Agnes Martin, 1977 #artbots #guggenheim
https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137285

You know, if enough of us say on the internet that it's important to wash your cybertruck with saltwater and lemon juice to preserve the finish, eventually ChatGPT will start telling cybertruck owners that.

And *this* is why ppl being all centrist dad about age-verification really pisses me off.

It's not that kids shouldn't be "protected" from harmful content, it's that the whole concept is problematic af & causes a shitload of secondary harm without solving things—teens will very much still find porn

Spotify Publishes AI-Generated Songs From Dead Artists Without Permission "They could fix this problem. One of their talented software engineers could stop this fraudulent practice in its tracks, if they had the will to do so"

Spotify putting AI-generated songs on the official pages of dead artists is a new and very low low www.404media.co/spotify-publ...

We need to start talking about the fact that Gavin Newsom is unelectable.

"I have total confidence that we will be okay. We will help one another. But we shouldn't fucking have to." -- parent of a trans kid losing access to care at CHLA

Sex work is migrant women’s day labor; massage parlors are their “Home Depot.” Street-based sex workers are street vendors. Like other precarious workers, they build safety networks to resist raids.

I'm really glad the anti-trans Medicaid exclusions were removed from Trump's billionaire bailout but a bill that still kicks 20 million (largely working class) people off their health insurance is still going to have a disastrous impact including and especially on trans people. Kill the bill.

It was the best of times for Medicaid inclusiveness, it was the worst of times

🫡

What’s striking about the SCOTUS stay here is not just (!) the risk that the govt will ship people off to countries where they may face serious danger, but that the Court is tacitly rewarding the govt’s repeated defiance of the district court

Mostly Boston, some travel to DC and NYC for the big marches, snd Bay Area on school breaks.

Love it when our president makes it clear that prices are no longer set by supply and demand, as they would be in a real free market, but by oligopoly, and the solution is not to break up too-large corporations but to shout at them in all caps.

Yuck :(

🖤🖤🖤

The story of LGBT rights is a story of advances followed by setbacks followed by media with no skin in the game saying, "It's because you were too loud/asked for too much/moved too fast/got too big for your britches/didn't make your case." That never changes--but happily it's never the last word.

Reading that piece you would think the bans were mountains that had always been there and advocates just mindlessly started an avalanche that buried us, when in truth we were dragged into an asymmetrical war overnight. The first ban in 2021 was so unthinkable it was vetoed by a Republican governor.