Latest news with #AaronTerr
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Colorado Bill Would Force Judges To Consider 'Misgendering' a Form of 'Coercive Control' in Custody Cases
A recently introduced Colorado bill seeks to require judges to consider "misgendering" as a form of "coercive control" during child custody disputes. If passed, the bill would pose a major threat to parents' First Amendment rights and prevent judges from considering the individual circumstances surrounding family conflict over a child's gender identity. The bill, the Kelly Loving Act, requires that "when making child custody decisions and determining the best interests of a child for purposes of parenting time, a court shall consider deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual's gender-affirming health-care services as types of coercive control." Since the bill defines coercive control as a "pattern of threatening, humiliating, or intimidating actions, including assaults or other abuse, that is used to harm, punish, or frighten an individual," it would essentially force judges presiding over custody disputes to consider it form of child abuse when a parent refuses to use a child's chosen name. "In some custody disputes, 'misgendering' or 'deadnaming' could be part of the kind of 'coercive control' courts can consider—a pattern of threatening, humiliating, or intimidating actions used to harm, punish, or frighten," Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, tells Reason. "But treating that speech as inherently coercive or abusive, regardless of context, risks punishing parents simply for disagreeing with the state's preferred views on gender. That veers into constitutionally suspect territory." The bill leaves little room to allow judges to look at conflict over a child's gender identity on a case-by-case basis—including the possibility that a parent may object to their child's social transition for perfectly understandable reasons. Instead, the law would automatically take the side of the affirming parent and brand the resistant parent as essentially abusive. But children identify as transgender for a wide range of reasons, and transition isn't the right answer in every case, especially as many clinicians themselves disagree about whether unquestioning affirmation is the correct solution for every case of childhood gender dysphoria. "Not only are there an increase in numbers of kids coming to gender clinics—and there are more gender clinics, particularly in North America—but the composition of the population coming to the gender clinics has changed from a fairly homogeneous group of kids to a very heterogeneous group of kids dominated by natal females," a clinical psychologist and former president of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health told Reason earlier this year. "There are some of us who feel that we don't have a sufficient evidence base to decide which of these heterogeneous kids are best suited for medicalization." Terr points out that, even if people find misgendering offensive, the state shouldn't try to punish people for engaging in speech it doesn't like. "The First Amendment largely exists to protect controversial and unpopular speech," Terr says. "If the government could punish people for saying things that cause offense—or compel them to speak against their beliefs—it would hand officials of every political stripe a blank check to silence dissent. That puts everyone's rights at risk." The post Colorado Bill Would Force Judges To Consider 'Misgendering' a Form of 'Coercive Control' in Custody Cases appeared first on
CBS News
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Miami Beach cinema draws mayor's ire after showing controversial documentary "No Other Land"
A cinema in Miami Beach is dealing with drama off the scene after its mayor wants to punish the business for showing a controversial documentary. The documentary " No Other Land ' won an Oscar. It was made by a Palestinian-Israeli team and showed a group of Palestinian villages' interaction with the Israeli military in the Southern West Bank. The O Cinema in South Beach is airing the film at its theatre in the Old Miami Beach City Hall, leased from the city. But they could be booted out and cut off from city grants. Mayor Steven Meiner calls the movie anti-semitic and a "…one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people…" The commission will vote on a resolution to "terminate for convenience the O Cinema lease" and "immediately discontinue grant funding." "The mayor of Miami Beach is retaliating against the theater for showing an Oscar-winning film just because he doesn't like the film's perceived viewpoint or message," said Aaron Terr, who is with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He told CBS News Miami this violates the First Amendment. "The danger is empowering the government to make decisions about what speech Americans are allowed to hear, what movies they're allowed to watch, what books they're allowed to read," Terr said. Initially, the theatre put out a statement saying, "Due to the concerns of antisemitic rhetoric, we have decided to withdraw the film from our programming." But then an apparent about-face, the mayor writing in a newsletter, "Unfortunately, O Cinema reversed course the next day and decided to air the film…" The Miami Beach City Commission will vote on this next Wednesday. The theatre is set to air the movie next Wednesday and Thursday.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Gay Penguins Face Florida's Classroom Speech Regulations
One Florida school district is facing a legal battle over its decision to ban a book about gay penguins. In 2022, the state passed the Parental Rights in Education Act, which banned classroom discussions on sexual orientation or gender identity "in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students." While the law initially applied only to kindergarten through third-grade classrooms, the Florida Board of Education later expanded the law to all grades. Several Florida school districts began removing books from their collections that could possibly violate the new law—including And Tango Makes Three, a picture book depicting two male penguins who raise a chick together. In 2023, the authors of the book filed a lawsuit against one school district that removed the book, arguing that "the Ban's vagueness, in combination with its harsh penalties, make it more likely to be applied expansively—such as to public school libraries—at the expense of the authors' free speech rights and the students' right to receive information." The state disagrees. In a November court filing, lawyers for the school district argued that authors don't have a constitutional right to demand their books be made available at school libraries. Instead, the school board has "the First Amendment right to choose what message is conveyed through its curation of the library collection," adding that "when the Board selects books to be made available in its school libraries, it is the government speaking, not the books' authors." So who's right? "The removal of And Tango Makes Three is constitutionally suspect because it appears to be driven by school authorities' disagreement with a particular viewpoint or perspective," says Aaron Terr, the director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech group. "And when school authorities remove books from libraries out of hostility to a viewpoint or ideology, that raises serious First Amendment issues." Terr notes that in 1982, "a plurality of the Supreme Court held that public schools have discretion to determine the content of their libraries. But they can't exercise that discretion in a narrowly partisan or political manner." This isn't the only time Florida has been sued over a school district's attempt to ban the gay penguin story. In September, a group of major publishers launched another lawsuit, this time targeting another Florida law that bans any school library book that "describes sexual conduct." "The argument that library books are government speech really defies logic and is, I think, just an excuse for censorship," Terr explains. "Libraries contain books presenting a wide range of ideas and perspectives, many of which clash with each other. So if they're all speech of the government, then the government is babbling incoherently." The post Gay Penguins Face Florida's Classroom Speech Regulations appeared first on
