In the Jon Stewart interview with Arkansas AG Leslie Rutledge, she said they had "experts" in their brief that supported their state ban on gender affirming care. The "experts" are not qualified and are ideologically motivated. Let's take a look at them.
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There are a total of four experts relied on by the state of Arkansas:
Dr. Stephen Levine
Dr. Mark Regnerus
Dr. Paul Hruz
Dr. Patrick Lappert
Let's take a look at them.
Dr. Patrick Lappert is a plastic surgeon who's allowed his board certification to expire and no longer practices surgery. He runs a botox clinic in a strip mall in Alabama next to a Pizza Hut. He's never worked with trans patients and has no experience treating gender dysphoria.
Dr. Paul Hruz is a doctor affiliated with the hate group Alliance Defending Freedom. He objects to gender affirming care on religious grounds and doesn't care about trans youth. He stated "some children are born in this world to suffer and die."
Hruz is unqualified and the court in Kadel rejected most of his testimony finding him to not qualified. "He has never diagnosed a patient with gender dysphoria. . . conducted any original research about gender dysphoria. . . or published any scientific, peer-reviewed literature"
Dr. Stephen Levine makes his entire living on denying trans people access to gender affirming care. In his testimony, he's referred to trans people as "narcissistic" and has practiced a form of conversion therapy on his patients.
Dr. Levine almost entirely subsists on being an anti-trans "expert." He's in his 80's, rarely sees patients, and does not publish any peer-reviewed research. Levine gets paid more than $20k by earning $400+/hr per case he's involved in as an expert. It's about the money for him.
Dr. Mark Regnerus wrote the infamous "New Family Structures" paper in 2012 on same-sex couples and the effects on children with a terrible methodology. The paper was ideologically driven by animus and it attracted significant controversy for being flawed. austinchronicle.com/news/2013-03-2…
Regnerus was thoroughly discredited by this study and he has no expertise in the care of gender dysphoria in trans youth. He went to significant lengths to undermine LGBTQ families with a severely flawed paper that was driven by his animus.
These are the experts that Leslie Rutledge relies on in pushing back against Jon Stewart. It's no wonder she couldn't answer the question. The experts she relies on are bigots and quacks with no expertise on treating gender dysphoria.
This is why they consistently lose in court. They have no experts. Gender affirming care is the standard set by every major medical organization in the US. They have to rely on these hacks because they are driven by hate and animus, not a genuine concern for trans youth.
I've litigated cases with Levine, Lappert, and Hruz. I helped prepare rebuttal witness testimony against them. I mean it when I say these so called "experts" are unqualifed. Their bias against trans people is palpable and it'a reason why most of their testimony was stricken.
To close out the thread, I presented a peer reviewed paper at a UCLA Law health justice conference this past week dealing with this exact issue and how to push back against pseudoscience and unqualified experts. I'll post the link to the paper when it's published.
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Florida passed a law to ban transgender athletes. They are now enforcing it by requiring female athletes to track their menstrual cycles and report it to the school and a 3rd party company called Aktivate.
This has gravely serious implications about medical privacy and the ability for the state of Florida to track student's menstrual cycles to detect potential abortions. It's the exact thing Poland did after they banned abortions.
Keep in mind that all of this started out of a need to screen for trans female athletes. They are so dedicated to targeting a handful of athletes to the point of destroying the privacy of all the students who were assigned female at birth.
Anti-LGBTQ activist and friend of JK Rowling, Caroline Farrow is being investigated by British authorities for her alleged accounts on Kiwifarms.
Imagine being taken into custody for interrogation by police, being read your right to remain silent, and deciding to make a transphobic comment and then bragging about it on Twitter. This is truly deranged.
The instigators of the anti-LGBTQ moral panic are now pushing the narrative that they are going to be prosecuted by DOJ for their speech. They won't be prosecuted. They haven't violated the law. However, they need to fuel further outrage and feign persecution.
The letter is asking for actual threats against the hospitals and providers to be investigated. Just a few weeks ago, Catherine Leavy was arrested for calling in a bomb threat to BCH. There are very real threats being made that do violate the law.
As much as these anti-LGBTQ accounts incite this violence, what they're doing does not violate the law. They need to stoke further outrage in order to perpetuate their narrative. They are not being censored and the government will not prosecute them for their tweets and articles.
Fascists sent a bullet with a confederate flag to a library in suburban Chicago. They are being threatened for hosting a drag queen story hour. This is the terrorism being inflicted on the LGBTQ community as a result of a moral panic. Awake, IL is likely tied to this.
Awake, Illinois is a Mom's for Liberty spinoff that works closely with proud boys to target LGBTQ events around Chicago. In July, they targeted Uprising Bakery and a local proud boy was charged.
The members of Awake regularly work with proud boys and celebrate the attacks on LGBTQ events in the Chicago area. They have also worked to dox local LGBTQ parents and their children. They need to be investigated for terrorism by state and federal officials.
I know this may sound harsh but maybe don't rebuild in an area that can get covered in 10 feet of water by a hurricane? It's only going to get worse as sea levels rise, oceans warm, and storms get stronger. Take the insurance payout and move to higher ground.
So much of this can be blamed on the national flood insurance program that subsidizes these developments in areas where no sane insurance company would ever insure due to the risk. It's pure hubris to build developments like this.
I grew up in Florida and it's so glaring how much safety was sidelined by developers and local politicians who wanted growth at all costs. This is unsustainable. Driving by houses on the water of Tampa Bay, I wondered why anyone would ever build their house there.
The "charitable non-profit" behind Libs of Tiktok's legal fund, Coolidge Reagan Foundation is a shady front org for run by conservative political lawyer, Dan Backer. It seems to be an illegitimate charity used for partisan purposes.
A thread:🧵and actions you can take.
501(c)3 charitable organizations are heavily regulated by the IRS for good reason. Donations are tax exempt and could be used to limit tax liability for personal gain if abused. Using tax-deductible donations to fund the legal defense for a for-profit company is unconscionable.
The IRS says as much in its description of 501(c)3 orgs. They cannot be organized or operated for the benefit of PRIVATE INTERESTS. That seems to be the sole reason for this organization with the LoTT LDF. They have no website or other charitable work.