Mid Vermont Christian School refused to play trans athletes or abide by anti-discrimination laws. But they still want access to state-sponsored benefits.
Christians are very quick to play the victim and claim they are being persecuted, but what this school is trying to do is impose their religious beliefs on others. As they always do, they wail and gnash their teeth whenever they face consequences for their bigotry. They tend to be the people who think their religion entitles them to rule the country.
That's exactly how they see it. If the preachers ever acquired the power they seem to think they're entitled to, they would be killing one another over doctrinal errors within a week.
“The 71-page lawsuit cites Supreme Court decisions (like Carson v. Makin) that said if a state offers certain benefits to public schools, they can’t deny those benefits to private (usually Christian) schools.“
Public school money should never go to private schools, religious or secular. Ever. Public school money is constantly being diverted to private institutions and that causes the public schools to fail. Tax money is to provide a benefit to the entire community, in the case of public school money, it is to build, maintain and operate schools open to all citizens of the community. It is not for each individual student to have funds to get an education as they choose. If parents want to choose a different school from the local public school, they can move to a better public school district, or apply to bus into another public school district, or pay for homeschooling or pay for private schooling. There are options. However, if the public school district has to parcel out the money for each student to go to different schools then it will never have enough money to function. But that is the intent of the GOP who are making these voucher proposals and the Christian schools that force their bullshit on public schools.
The explanation I've heard is that galloping large heaping helpings of Texas's school districts are small rural districts in which the REAL religion is Friday-night HS football, and their citizens don't want any competition from state-subsidized parochial schools siphoning off their best players.
My understanding is it is the rural school districts that are fighting this the most. No surprise, they are the ones just barely able to get the funds to stay open now.
They're already going to be hurting from the reduction in property taxes for school districts that passed on election day. A constitutional amendment no less.
It's nice to save $600 on my property tax this year, but not at the expense of the local school district.
The Legislature of the State of Texas, operating under the biennial system, convenes its regular sessions at noon on the second Tuesday in January of odd-numbered years. The maximum duration of a regular session is 140 days.
State legislators in Texas make $600 per month, or $7,200 per year, plus a per diem of $221 for every day the Legislature is in session (also including any special sessions). That adds up to $38,140 a year for a regular session (140 days), with the total pay for a two-year term being $45,340.
No wonder the state legislature is ripe for corruption.
Well, they're going to earn their keep this session. Abbott is going to keep them seated until Austin freezes over or the rural districts cave on the vouchers.
The last time Austin froze over the power grid collapsed. And it's mostly the rural school districts that barely get enough funds to stay open who are leading the fight in the Republican controlled legislature to stop school vouchers. This is apparently Abbott's pet project, so he keeps calling 'special sessions' for them to vote on it. Apparently, in Texas, the executive can decide the legislature hasn't done their job and call them in on the weekend.
Clearly, their first mistake was allowing the girls to play sports. What were they thinking? 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 knows that intense physical exertion could make a woman's uterus fall out, and 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 what's she good for?!
(/s, 𝘫𝘶𝘶𝘶𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘦 there's anyone dense enough to need it...)
Oh yeah? My religious beliefs say that anti-LGBTQ beliefs are immoral. Allowing this school to play basketball against my kids violates my religious liberties! And think of the danger to my kids. You can’t force them to be around immoral people.
I must admit I'm completely sick of this. Too often, some Christian group comes along and joins some sort of larger organization, then tries to insist the whole organization cater to their whims. Sure, it happens more often when the large organization is in some way part of the government, but even when it's not the Christian group still tries to force the issue, and when they don't get their way, they scream about how persecuted they are.
Enough already. The expectation that the rest of the public will be willing to do things the Christian way is ridiculous, and is by no means persecution in any event. Mr. Nichols was completely correct when he said “If you don’t want to follow VPA rules, that’s fine… But then you're just not a VPA member." Let me reiterate here: You cannot be a 'member' of a group when you refuse to follow that group's rules, codes, standards, or whatever expectations there may be for that group. If you don't want to follow those expectations, that's fine, but then the group is right to tell you to take a hike. 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒅𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒔𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒂 𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒄𝒉𝒖𝒓𝒄𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒇𝒂𝒊𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒂𝒅𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒂𝒔𝒊𝒄 𝑪𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒅𝒔.
This whining because the shoe is now on your foot is unbecoming. It sets a poor example. It's tired, old, and immature. Nobody wants to deal with that, the vast majority are working three jobs to stay in debt while raising kids. As I've been told by Christians too many times to count: Suck it up, buttercup, this isn't going to the way you think it will.
Christian schools fire single women from their teaching staff over being pregnant, while also ignoring the male teacher that is the father who isn’t stepping up, all the time.
“because the school believes biological differences between boys and girls matter.”
The biological differences between boys and girls matter how? This lie has kept women out of nearly every aspect of society and life for centuries, but tell me again how this is protecting your girls. It’s been used to say women can’t be in the workplace, or driving cars, or even playing sports at all. The false idea that women are incapable of rational thought is still being used to block women from high levels of government and, hell, even low level menial jobs.
Fuck right off with that shit.
Oh and btw, Women’s sports leagues were started so that they wouldn’t show up the mediocre men playing sports. Look up Babe Ruth getting struck out by a teenaged girl.
We don’t want the fragile male egos to breakdown if they lose to a team with women, now do we.
I’ve played plenty of rec sports in co-ed situations. There’s plenty of them out there and the women keep up just fine. It won’t be the end of the world.
“Canceling our membership is not a solution and does nothing to deal with the very real issue of safety and fairness facing women’s sports in our beloved state.“
Yes it does, it eliminated misogynist, bigoted jerks from the league and kept them from being an influence on the children having fun playing sports.
Sorry if this is a repeat, we’re having internet issues and this was given a couple error messages.
It improves the situation, but it doesn't completely solve it: there's still the issue of the innocent teenagers who are forced by their parents to go to a bigoted Christian school instead of a public school.
The state offers you the benefit of participating in a trans-accepting league. The league is trans-accepting because, among other reasons, State law requires it. There no 1st amendment constitutional requirement for the league to function according to your specific religious precepts. Not only that, but based on the article State law appears to forbid the league from doing so even if they wanted to (hint: they don't).
The only problem being that they will continue clog up the courts for years with one frivolous law after another, hoping to finally find a religiously bigoted judge to carry their holy water.
As the article so well says, if you want to participate in society, your behavior must be acceptable to society. I guess God is a sociopath to the larger, money giving society.
Actions. Consequences. In this case, a Christian school wants to behave in a bigoted fashion, and they have to face the fallout of that bigotry. They have nothing but their own narrow-mindedness to blame, though it will take them a bit to admit that (if they ever do).
In any case, I hope the Vermont sports sanctioning body does NOT back down.
What is the actual endgame here? Do they really want to forfeit a game every time they play a school with a trans kid on the team? Do they not realize what the result of that would be, especially if they wind up with a competitive year? Let me spell it out: EVERY team you play will have a trans athlete on it. So either these people are morons or the end game is actually that they will then insist the trans athlete be removed and plan to sue over that later. iow - what they really want is to continue to spew their hate message in a public forum for years to come.
The big book of BS starts out with two naked kids only a day old being punished for being hungry. One single bite of food by a one day old boy and girl doomed us all, so the story goes.
Well... statistically speaking, trans people are such a tiny percentage of the population (less than 1%, as far as we currently know) that you would have to face several teams in a row before running into any trans athletes, since trans people are no more or less interested in sports than any other demographic, and team sizes for most sports tend to be counted in the low dozens rather than the hundreds. Plus, there's no guarantee that every player on any given team is even going to participate in every single game, so even if the stuffy Christian school team had just played the damn game instead of throwing a temper tantrum, they may not have even faced the athlete they were making so much noise about.
Which is another reason why this entire manufactured outrage is a giant nothingburger.
But... it's a convenient wedge issue for their culture war, and they can also use it to attack any 𝘤𝘪𝘴 female athlete whose presentation doesn't conform to their concept of femininity. Realistically, since there are 𝘸𝘢𝘺 more masc-presenting cis women than there are trans women, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 actually the ones who are going to catch the lion's share of the grief. Cut your hair short? Must be trans, everything stops until the gender police have a look! Flat chest? Trans. Baggy clothing? Trans. Unusually deep voice? Trans. Taller than average? Yup, you guessed it! By the time they're through, the list of women who are actually allowed to do anything unmolested will be virtually nonexistent- and, in the end, that's exactly the point; it's all about 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘭 and always has been.
I could see schools using it on purpose if there's one Trans kid in school. Just ask them to be on the team. Automatic win. Also, what happens if schools put Trans Boys on the girls team. A 17 year old trans boy whose been on testosterone for two years may have a real advantage. But according to transphobes, trans men are really women.
Christians are very quick to play the victim and claim they are being persecuted, but what this school is trying to do is impose their religious beliefs on others. As they always do, they wail and gnash their teeth whenever they face consequences for their bigotry. They tend to be the people who think their religion entitles them to rule the country.
Yep, they probably think the other team should have forfeited.
That's exactly how they see it. If the preachers ever acquired the power they seem to think they're entitled to, they would be killing one another over doctrinal errors within a week.
“The 71-page lawsuit cites Supreme Court decisions (like Carson v. Makin) that said if a state offers certain benefits to public schools, they can’t deny those benefits to private (usually Christian) schools.“
Public school money should never go to private schools, religious or secular. Ever. Public school money is constantly being diverted to private institutions and that causes the public schools to fail. Tax money is to provide a benefit to the entire community, in the case of public school money, it is to build, maintain and operate schools open to all citizens of the community. It is not for each individual student to have funds to get an education as they choose. If parents want to choose a different school from the local public school, they can move to a better public school district, or apply to bus into another public school district, or pay for homeschooling or pay for private schooling. There are options. However, if the public school district has to parcel out the money for each student to go to different schools then it will never have enough money to function. But that is the intent of the GOP who are making these voucher proposals and the Christian schools that force their bullshit on public schools.
I'm amazed Abbott's push for vouchers has so far failed in Texas, despite him keeping the legislators at work for months beyond their scheduled time
The explanation I've heard is that galloping large heaping helpings of Texas's school districts are small rural districts in which the REAL religion is Friday-night HS football, and their citizens don't want any competition from state-subsidized parochial schools siphoning off their best players.
My understanding is it is the rural school districts that are fighting this the most. No surprise, they are the ones just barely able to get the funds to stay open now.
They're already going to be hurting from the reduction in property taxes for school districts that passed on election day. A constitutional amendment no less.
It's nice to save $600 on my property tax this year, but not at the expense of the local school district.
The Legislature of the State of Texas, operating under the biennial system, convenes its regular sessions at noon on the second Tuesday in January of odd-numbered years. The maximum duration of a regular session is 140 days.
State legislators in Texas make $600 per month, or $7,200 per year, plus a per diem of $221 for every day the Legislature is in session (also including any special sessions). That adds up to $38,140 a year for a regular session (140 days), with the total pay for a two-year term being $45,340.
No wonder the state legislature is ripe for corruption.
I presume you’ve heard the joke that the Texas legislature meets for 140 days every 2 years and every Texan wishes it was the other way around.
Well, they're going to earn their keep this session. Abbott is going to keep them seated until Austin freezes over or the rural districts cave on the vouchers.
I take it neither are a good thing?
The last time Austin froze over the power grid collapsed. And it's mostly the rural school districts that barely get enough funds to stay open who are leading the fight in the Republican controlled legislature to stop school vouchers. This is apparently Abbott's pet project, so he keeps calling 'special sessions' for them to vote on it. Apparently, in Texas, the executive can decide the legislature hasn't done their job and call them in on the weekend.
Clearly, their first mistake was allowing the girls to play sports. What were they thinking? 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 knows that intense physical exertion could make a woman's uterus fall out, and 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 what's she good for?!
(/s, 𝘫𝘶𝘶𝘶𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘦 there's anyone dense enough to need it...)
It's ok if it falls out as long as she's still a virgin.
Not round here surely?
Check out George down below. And "Don't call me Shirley."
Maybe you should sit or lying down before you get the answer.
You are good at channeling pierre de coubertin.
"MVCS refused to play, however, because Long Trail had a trans athlete on the team."
Leave it up to Christians to literally take their ball and go home like the spoiled brats they are.
They didn't take *the* ball, though....the game ball remains; they took their skagged practice balls home. 😁
Oh yeah? My religious beliefs say that anti-LGBTQ beliefs are immoral. Allowing this school to play basketball against my kids violates my religious liberties! And think of the danger to my kids. You can’t force them to be around immoral people.
O/T: Houston School District To End PragerU Indoctrination After 73 Schools See Video Mocking Climate Change.
https://www.joemygod.com/2023/11/houston-school-district-to-end-prageru-indoctrination-after-73-schools-see-video-mocking-climate-change/
Ah, good old PU. Not even a real university. Just a site for inane videos.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/PragerU
Wait for denazillon to sign a bill making the use of pu* mandatory.
* Put together these two letters are pronounced the same as "pue" (stinks). I am not joking.
That's what P U means in this country. A foul odor. Which makes it utterly appropriate for Prager.
Pepé Le Pew.
Not mandatory, but teachers can use them if they want.
That's "teacher", not teacher.
PragerU: Because TrumpU was shut down, and you're just too fucking stupid to pass the entrance exams for Dunning-Kruger Community College.
I must admit I'm completely sick of this. Too often, some Christian group comes along and joins some sort of larger organization, then tries to insist the whole organization cater to their whims. Sure, it happens more often when the large organization is in some way part of the government, but even when it's not the Christian group still tries to force the issue, and when they don't get their way, they scream about how persecuted they are.
Enough already. The expectation that the rest of the public will be willing to do things the Christian way is ridiculous, and is by no means persecution in any event. Mr. Nichols was completely correct when he said “If you don’t want to follow VPA rules, that’s fine… But then you're just not a VPA member." Let me reiterate here: You cannot be a 'member' of a group when you refuse to follow that group's rules, codes, standards, or whatever expectations there may be for that group. If you don't want to follow those expectations, that's fine, but then the group is right to tell you to take a hike. 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒅𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒔𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒂 𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒄𝒉𝒖𝒓𝒄𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒇𝒂𝒊𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒂𝒅𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒂𝒔𝒊𝒄 𝑪𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒅𝒔.
This whining because the shoe is now on your foot is unbecoming. It sets a poor example. It's tired, old, and immature. Nobody wants to deal with that, the vast majority are working three jobs to stay in debt while raising kids. As I've been told by Christians too many times to count: Suck it up, buttercup, this isn't going to the way you think it will.
Christian schools fire single women from their teaching staff over being pregnant, while also ignoring the male teacher that is the father who isn’t stepping up, all the time.
Or the ones who have side pieces.
Yes. The child is supposed to be 'premature' when some man does step up. (Not necessarily the sperm donor)
DM older sister was so premature she was born before my grandparents met 🤣
Just because their standards are hard for others to recognize doesn't mean they aren't there. :)
I'll admit most of the 'standard' seems to be staying in lockstep with the zealotry of the group, though.
“because the school believes biological differences between boys and girls matter.”
The biological differences between boys and girls matter how? This lie has kept women out of nearly every aspect of society and life for centuries, but tell me again how this is protecting your girls. It’s been used to say women can’t be in the workplace, or driving cars, or even playing sports at all. The false idea that women are incapable of rational thought is still being used to block women from high levels of government and, hell, even low level menial jobs.
Fuck right off with that shit.
Oh and btw, Women’s sports leagues were started so that they wouldn’t show up the mediocre men playing sports. Look up Babe Ruth getting struck out by a teenaged girl.
Did you ever heard of the Heraean games ? If not google it 😉
Hogwarts "believes".....
Fuck 'em.
The best women can throw a ball underhand faster then the best overhand pitch.
We don’t want the fragile male egos to breakdown if they lose to a team with women, now do we.
I’ve played plenty of rec sports in co-ed situations. There’s plenty of them out there and the women keep up just fine. It won’t be the end of the world.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munitionette
“Canceling our membership is not a solution and does nothing to deal with the very real issue of safety and fairness facing women’s sports in our beloved state.“
Yes it does, it eliminated misogynist, bigoted jerks from the league and kept them from being an influence on the children having fun playing sports.
Sorry if this is a repeat, we’re having internet issues and this was given a couple error messages.
"Canceling our membership is not a solution and does nothing to deal with the very real issue...."
That's like saying that flushing the toilet does nothing to get rid of the shit one just dropped off in the bowl.
That's OK. It needs to be repeated.
It improves the situation, but it doesn't completely solve it: there's still the issue of the innocent teenagers who are forced by their parents to go to a bigoted Christian school instead of a public school.
If we could convince their parents of the mistake they’re making we could help them, unfortunately we can’t for the most part.
𝑇ℎ𝑒 71-𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑤𝑠𝑢𝑖𝑡 𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑠 𝑆𝑢𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑡 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 (𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑣. 𝑀𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛) 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑 𝑖𝑓 𝑎 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑜𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑏𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐 𝑠𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑙𝑠, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑐𝑎𝑛’𝑡 𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑒 (𝑢𝑠𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛) 𝑠𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑙𝑠
The state offers you the benefit of participating in a trans-accepting league. The league is trans-accepting because, among other reasons, State law requires it. There no 1st amendment constitutional requirement for the league to function according to your specific religious precepts. Not only that, but based on the article State law appears to forbid the league from doing so even if they wanted to (hint: they don't).
Agree to the rules, then complain when they're not granted a special exception to the rules... that's, like, Jesusing 101 or something, isn't it?
Christian privilege gets pushback, christians throw tantrum. Water still wet, Francisco Franco still dead.
Heureusement. Too bad this salopard died in his bed. So much for La Haye.
The only problem being that they will continue clog up the courts for years with one frivolous law after another, hoping to finally find a religiously bigoted judge to carry their holy water.
There is several at the sc.
And that worries me.
It should worry anyone who is not a raging far right nutjob.
As the article so well says, if you want to participate in society, your behavior must be acceptable to society. I guess God is a sociopath to the larger, money giving society.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I said, what does God need with a subsidy anyway?
Jim!
C'mon Bones, treasures in heaven right? He can just sell some of that off...
He has gambling debts.
IOKIYAG
He shows it by page three of his book, when he sets up his pet humans with a Kobayashi Maru scenario. The snake was the hero.
Somebody is going to have to pull a Paul Atreides and cheat out way out huh? Or just not buy into the bad bet...
Actions. Consequences. In this case, a Christian school wants to behave in a bigoted fashion, and they have to face the fallout of that bigotry. They have nothing but their own narrow-mindedness to blame, though it will take them a bit to admit that (if they ever do).
In any case, I hope the Vermont sports sanctioning body does NOT back down.
Why does so much of religious belief concern kids' naughty bits? They're obsessed with it.
Especially their clergy.
What is the actual endgame here? Do they really want to forfeit a game every time they play a school with a trans kid on the team? Do they not realize what the result of that would be, especially if they wind up with a competitive year? Let me spell it out: EVERY team you play will have a trans athlete on it. So either these people are morons or the end game is actually that they will then insist the trans athlete be removed and plan to sue over that later. iow - what they really want is to continue to spew their hate message in a public forum for years to come.
They want to be coddled and catered to. They want their bigotry to be seen as the way things are done. It's all about power and control.
The big book of BS starts out with two naked kids only a day old being punished for being hungry. One single bite of food by a one day old boy and girl doomed us all, so the story goes.
Well... statistically speaking, trans people are such a tiny percentage of the population (less than 1%, as far as we currently know) that you would have to face several teams in a row before running into any trans athletes, since trans people are no more or less interested in sports than any other demographic, and team sizes for most sports tend to be counted in the low dozens rather than the hundreds. Plus, there's no guarantee that every player on any given team is even going to participate in every single game, so even if the stuffy Christian school team had just played the damn game instead of throwing a temper tantrum, they may not have even faced the athlete they were making so much noise about.
Which is another reason why this entire manufactured outrage is a giant nothingburger.
But... it's a convenient wedge issue for their culture war, and they can also use it to attack any 𝘤𝘪𝘴 female athlete whose presentation doesn't conform to their concept of femininity. Realistically, since there are 𝘸𝘢𝘺 more masc-presenting cis women than there are trans women, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 actually the ones who are going to catch the lion's share of the grief. Cut your hair short? Must be trans, everything stops until the gender police have a look! Flat chest? Trans. Baggy clothing? Trans. Unusually deep voice? Trans. Taller than average? Yup, you guessed it! By the time they're through, the list of women who are actually allowed to do anything unmolested will be virtually nonexistent- and, in the end, that's exactly the point; it's all about 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘭 and always has been.
“and they can also use it to attack any 𝘤𝘪𝘴 female athlete whose presentation doesn't conform to their concept of femininity.“
BINGO!!
We have a winner.
Anyone remember Martina Navratilova?
I could see schools using it on purpose if there's one Trans kid in school. Just ask them to be on the team. Automatic win. Also, what happens if schools put Trans Boys on the girls team. A 17 year old trans boy whose been on testosterone for two years may have a real advantage. But according to transphobes, trans men are really women.
The end game is for their cult to control others' lives. Fuck that, Stand Your Ground and feed the lions.
If the other team won't bench their trans player, they will demand it be the one who forfeits.