THEY NEED A KERALA LIKE LIBERATION MOVEMENT
Superstition keeps Kashmir's tribal women from accessing birth control

Women in Kashmir's nomadic tribal communities are often married as teenagers and end up having multiple children they can't support, as their husbands forbid access to birth control.

Research has shown that tribal women in Kashmir

 are more prone to high-risk pregnancies

Rukaiya Jan, a woman from the Gujjar tribal community in Kashmir, was married at 15 years old, a common practice among Kashmir's nomadic herders.

Now 35, Jan has six children. The birth of her seventh baby, a girl, ended in tragedy, as the newborn died near a hospital gate several miles away from her home. Jan was unable to reach the hospital in time.

Jan lives in a mountainous region at Fraknar village in Kashmir's central district of Ganderbal, where temporary huts housing hundreds of tribal families dot the hillsides.

She had discussed taking birth control with her husband, but she was not given permission. Jan is forbidden to attend family planning consultation because of social stigmas and religious beliefs in her family.

"My husband never allowed me to go for family planning because it is not allowed in our religion and our community's faith," Jan told DW at her home in the village.

"This has deteriorated my health because we live in poverty and do not have proper access to healthcare," she said.

The road to Jan's home is hilly and the harsh winter conditions make it tough to access hospitals.

Jan says poverty and multiple births have worn down her health. She suffers from thyroid problems, high blood sugar levels and heavy periods.

"My blood sugar goes to 300. I feel very weak. I get heavy periods, I did a treatment but still, I am not feeling healthy," she said. "I believe multiple births played a role in deteriorating my health."

Rukaiya Jan told DW that she is forbidden to attend 

family planning consultation

Family planning forbidden

"I had two daughters in two years, there was no gap … my last child died at the hospital gate, it could not survive," she said.

"It is good to go for family planning because unwanted pregnancies affect the health of women like it affected mine," she added.

Jan said women in her community have five to eight children on average because there are fear and stigma associated with even discussing family planning. However, as more women in the community learn about reproductive health, many of them are demanding control over their bodies.

Thousands of tribal women from the Gujjar-Bakarwal communities in Indian-administered Kashmir live in poverty. The tough mountainous terrain of the Himalayas comes without easy access to health care, sanitation, proper roads and basic amenities.

In many cases, the women are carried on cots on a tough journey to hospitals during childbirth. This puts the life of both mother and child at risk.
Kashmir's tribal lifestyles

Members of tribal communities in this region live a migratory lifestyle and walk hundreds of miles twice a year with their cattle herds in search of greener pastures.

Male tribal members usually forbid family planning, either citing religious reasons for their belief against the birth, or the need to ensure enough labor at home to work rearing of cattle.

Gujjars are the third-largest ethnic group in Jammu and Kashmir, behind the Kashmiri and Ladakhi ethnic groups. They constitute more than 20% of the territory's population, according to a government census.

In another village in Ganderbal district called Hillpati, 40-year-old Zubaida Begum has given birth to eight children. She used to accept that tribal women had to live without family planning, but now, her point of view has changed.

Begum said she never had the courage to discuss family planning with her husband, who works as a laborer, knowing the stigma associated with the topic in her conservative family.




Zubaida Begum says she never had the courage to discuss family planning with her husband

Now she believes women should have difficult discussions in their homes for the sake of health.

"I never talked to my husband about family planning because my father-in-law was a religious preacher, he never encouraged anyone to go for family planning," said Begum.

"I was not sure if we would be able to take care of the children, she added. "The repeated childbirth year after year affected my health, we live in poverty so it is more difficult to take care of multiple things," she said.

Begum points out that health workers now visit villages to speak with young women about family planning and unwanted pregnancies.

"Young girls do listen and they do want to take care of health and go for family planning, unlike us who feared to talk about it," she said.
More sex education needed

Many women in the tribal areas say there is no concept of safe sex among them, as there are superstitions attached to using protection.

Unprotected sex results in sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies.

Shameema Begum, 30, said she believes protected sex "causes infections."

"My husband has never used any protection. I have four children, two sons and two daughters, and we never think about keeping a gap among the children, nor do we use protection. Everyone says that using protection causes infection," she said.

"Even the birth control pills we believe are not good, so we do not take them, no one in our community takes them."

The heavy influx of tourists this year has given new cheer to the people of India-administered Kashmir. It is a dramatic change for the tourism industry in the disputed region, which faced the double whammy of the coronavirus pandemic and harsh curbs on civil rights New Delhi imposed in the region in August 2019.

Research has shown that tribal women in Kashmir are more prone to high-risk pregnancies, as high fertility rates combine with low access to maternity healthcare.

Sobia Jan, a researcher on maternal mortality at the University of Kashmir, told DW that tribal women in Kashmir are forbidden to make their own decisions about birth control.

"These kinds of decisions are made by their husbands or sometimes by their in-laws," said Jan. "Due to low education, religious taboos are used to stop women from family planning, despite critical health conditions said Jan.

A senior gynecologist at the region's largest maternity facility, Lal Ded hospital in Srinagar, said the number of children tribal women have poses serious health risks.

"When we refer these tribal women to the family planning section, their husbands do not allow them, despite warnings of the huge health risks for the women after three or four births," the doctor told DW anonymously. "The women end up giving birth to eight or nine children."

Javaid Rahi, general secretary of tribal research in Jammu and Kashmir, said multiple factors keep the tribal people away from using family planning.

"Tribal people consider family planning as anti-faith, the other is that the tribal people live a migratory lifestyle and they have to walk with their cattle. They prefer more children means more human resources to take care of the cattle," Rahi told DW.

He added that families with more children are considered stronger and better respected in the community.

"The social setup allows and encourages more children in the community. The point is, women are not even allowed to think about or have an opinion about whether or not to have children."

Unfolding nomadism? A feminist political ecology of ...

https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/JPE/article/view/23600

A feminist political ecology of sedentarization in the Attappady Hills, Kerala The landscape of the Attappady Hills in the Nilgiri range of Kerala, South India, is home to several Adivasis or indigenous peoples and settler communities, and has had intermittent cycles of agrarian crisis and sufficiency, according to colonial accounts from the early 20th century.

• Author: Deepa Kozhisseri, Sudhir Chella Rajan

• Publish Year: 2020

Discovering the First Generation of Feminists in Kerala

https://thewire.in/women/discovering-the-first-generation-of-feminists-in-kerala

2019-02-17 · Discovering the First Generation of Feminists in Kerala. There is a whole forgotten generation of defiant Malayali women from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

J. Devika – Activist, social critic, and feminist from Kerala

https://mywordsnthoughts.com/myworld/all-about-kerala/j-devika...

Her Self: Early Writings on Gender by Malayalee Women 1898-1938 is one of her early works in feminism through which she translated some writings by first-generation feminists in Kerala. She is also fully engaged in her research works related to social status of women in different eras, contemporary political and social issues etc

New Hub for Gender Equality Strategizing Established in Kerala

https://philanthropywomen.org/feminist-strategy/new-hub-for-gender-equality...

The Gender Campus in Kozhikode, Kerala was inaugurated by Chief Minister of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan on Feb 14 th.The ceremony marked the functional launch of projects, programmes and completed facilities at the campus, where the second edition of the International Conference on Gender Equality (ICGE II) was held from 11-13 Feb, 2021.

Class Feminism: The Kudumbashree Agitation in Kerala

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23391275 · PDF file

Ihe women's movement in Kerala reflects the value system, demands J. and methods of agitation of dif ferent strands of feminism. Socialist femi nism is not dominant in Kerala despite the fact that the women's wing of the Com munist Party of India (Marxist) - cpi(m) has a large membership, and debates relating to third generation feminism

Muslim Women Entrepreneurs in Kerala: Socialist Feminist ...

https://publications.waset.org/abstracts/63566/muslim-women...

Authors: Nabilah Haniph Abstract: This paper tries to examine the social and economic conditions of women entrepreneurs from the Muslim community in Kerala. It also tries to explain the problems faced by these entrepreneurs in the light of socialist feminist approach for …

Opinion: In France, no one is above the law

The verdict against former President Nicolas Sarkozy is a signal. France's ruling class has long been used to going unpunished — The verdict serves democracy, says Barbara Wesel.


A photo from better times for Nicolas Sarkozy: Shaking hands with 

Libya's dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2007

It's not as if Nicolas Sarkozy has to go to jail with drug dealers and car thieves. If his sentence is upheld on appeal, he can stay in the comfort of his own home with an ankle bracelet. His wife, the singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, can play him a song on the guitar with a chorus that goes: "You can do a lot of things, just don't get caught."

So much piled up over time in the Sarkozy era. While the French were amused by the details of his love life, his political activities only emerged later. He was convicted because the court considers it proven that he bribed an attorney general in 2014 to obtain information about an investigation.

DW's Barbara Wesel

Presidency of scandals

It was all there, from burner phones and wiretapped calls, to a luxury posting in Monaco — the court files have enough material for a fine screenplay. And that's not all: In an earlier trial, Sarkozy was acquitted on charges of having accepted undeclared donations for his election campaign from Liliane Bettencourt, the L'Oreal heiress. The allegations were a burden for years.

And the judiciary is not even done with the ex-president yet.

A trial for illegally financing his 2007 presidential campaign begins in two weeks. Sarkozy allegedly received €50 million ($60 million) from former Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi, of all people. Another investigation is looking into his consulting work for a Russian company, including awkward questions about employing his first wife as a staff member.

Sarkozy is the second former president to be convicted by a French court. In 2011, Jacques Chirac was convicted of embezzlement and misuse of public money when he was mayor of Paris. The most spectacular trial, however, was probably that against Francois Fillon, who paid his wife a salary as an employee for years even though she never worked. The verdict destroyed the conservative presidential candidate's career and opened the door for Emmanuel Macron.

Accepting benefits as an official privilege

Things were different just a few decades ago. Charges against Valery d'Estaing of accepting diamonds from the notorious Central African dictator Jean-Bedel Bokassa, came to nothing. And somehow, people just accepted the fact that Francois Mitterrand set up his mistress and their daughter in a state apartment guarded by police officers. For a long time, different rules applied to the ruling class in France. That is the reason the French are so angry at their politicians.

Sarkozy was found guilty of trying to bribe a judge by offering to help him land a top job in Monaco

For several years now, the judiciary has increasingly prosecuted offenses committed by politicians that would have previously been swept under the carpet. The public's expectation of a fair trial against everyday people and those with power has risen. Old ties are offering less and less protection — the recent sexual assault investigations against Paris society bigwigs points to a change in climate.

Hardly any chance of a comeback

Of course, judicial proceedings, like the one against Sarkozy, are also fraught with danger. After all, it was he himself who claimed the whole thing was a witch hunt. And, it is entirely possible to exploit such trials against politicians from the other side purely for political gain. It will then need to be proven just how objectively and independently the judiciary goes about its business.

The verdict is a blow for the ex-president. It is said he flirted with the idea of making a political comeback in next spring's presidential election, as the conservatives are without a credible candidate. Sarkozy can of course continue to pull strings within his party but campaigning for the presidency with a criminal record will be difficult. Nevertheless, the verdict against him is a sign that no one is above the law. It is an important sign to those frustrated and disillusioned in France.

This article was translated from German

French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy found guilty of corruption

Nicolas Sarkozy has been found guilty of trying to bribe a judge by offering to help him land a top job in Monaco. The former president, who led France between 2007 and 2012, has been sentenced to time in prison.




Despite being handed a prison sentence, it's unlikely that Sarkozy will spend time behind bars

Judges on Monday found former French President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of corruption after he tried to bribe a top lawyer with the promise of a job in Monaco.

The ruling marks the second time in France's modern history that a former president has been convicted on corruption charges.
What did the court say?

The former French leader was sentenced to three years — one year in prison and a suspended sentence of two years.

However, the court said Sarkozy can to request to be detained at home with an electronic bracelet.

The court said the promises Sarkozy made were "particularly serious" given that they were committed by a former president who used his status to help a magistrate who had served his personal interest.

The court added that, as a former lawyer, he was "perfectly informed" over what constituted an illegal act.

The 66-year-old has faced multiple graft accusations since leaving office in 2012 and prosecutors successfully argued he tried to obtain information about a separate probe into alleged financial impropriety in his party. He did so by offering to help judge Gilbert Azibert secure a well-paid legal adviser role in the principality of Monaco.


Nicolas Sarkozy is the first modern French head of state to actually appear in court

Sarkozy told the court he had "never committed the slightest act of corruption."

The graft and influence-peddling charges — among several legal cases against him — carried a maximum sentence of 10 years and a fine of up to €1 million ($1.2 million).

What was the case against Sarkozy?

The case for the prosecution rested on conversations between Sarkozy and his former lawyer, Thierry Herzog.

It is known as the "wiretapping case" in France, because investigators tapped phone calls between the pair in 2013 and 2014.

They were investigating claims that Sarkozy took illicit payments from the L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.

Liliane Bettencourt's links with Sarkozy were under investigation at the time

He used the fake alias "Paul Bismuth" during the calls in which he discussed Judge Azibert with Herzog.

The ex-president is reportedly heard saying: "I'll get him promoted, I'll help him."

Prosecutor Celine Guillet said it had been established "with certainty" that judge Azibert transmitted confidential information about the Bettencourt case to his friend Herzog.

One conversation "overwhelmingly" showed that Sarkozy had promised to intervene to get Azibert a post in Monaco, she said.

Sarkozy's lawyer Jacqueline Laffont lashed out at the flaws and "emptiness" of the prosecutor's accusations. She said the tapped conversations had just been "chats between friends."

Lawyers for the former head of state also point out that Azibert never landed a job in Monaco, but prosecutors argue that French law says an offer or promise can constitute corruption.
What is the significance of the ruling?

DW correspondent Lisa Louis, who was present at the court in Paris, said Monday's ruling is "a real blow" for the former French president.

"Sarkozy was hoping that he would win symbolic points today — that hasn't worked," she said.

"Certainly this will have a huge impact on his political career," Louis said.

Sarkozy had hoped to stage a political comeback for next year's presidential elections, but "that now seems quite unlikely," Louis added.

Ziad Takieddine has since withdraan the allegations he made against the ex-French president.

Are there other cases pending?

Sarkozy has been swamped with legal woes since he left office. He was eventually cleared of the charges against him in the Bettencourt affair.

But a probe into allegations that he received millions of euros from Libya to fund his 2007 presidential campaign is ongoing.

At that time, the late dictator Moammar Gadhafi was in power.

Sarkozy's main accuser, the French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, has since retracted his claim of delivering suitcases full of cash from the Libyan leader.

The long-running legal travails helped sink Sarkozy's comeback bid for the 2017 presidential vote.

Trained-lawyer Sarkozy says the French judiciary bears a grudge against him over his attempts to limit judges' powers during his time in office.

He retired from politics in 2018, but the former president made a series of public appearances last summer to promote his new book.

Lines of fans queued at bookstores all over France to have him sign his latest memoirs, The Time of Storms, which topped bestseller lists for weeks.

jf, jsi/msh (AFP, Reuters, dpa)

What the Bible's approach to history can teach us about America's glory and shame

Mark K. George, Professor of Bible and Ancient Systems of Thought,

 Iliff School of Theology
Mon, March 1, 2021

Trumpeting the past? The Bible has conflicting narratives over the conquest of Canaan Wikimedia Commons

At a time when Americans are seemingly as polarized as ever over the present, the country’s past also appears to be up for debate.

The killing of George Floyd and the anti-racism protests it sparked and The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which placed slavery central to the American narrative, have reminded people of the oppressive, exploitative and painful parts of the making of the United States. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission was created to counter what the administration described as a “radicalized” view of America history. Its report, released in the last days of the Trump administration, suggested that all Americans are “united by the glory of our history.”

But history is messy. It doesn’t fit easily within binary thinking.


As a Bible scholar, I am struck by the ways the Bible tells both the good and bad of ancient Israel’s history – even when the narratives conflict. Instead of only celebrating moments of glory or tragedy, the Bible recounts both together. This approach to history – treating narratives as one rather than cherry-picking the bits that fit a certain point of view – offers an example of how we can reframe the debate about how the U.S. tells its own history.
‘City on a hill’

The Bible regularly has been mined for ideas, themes and metaphors to tell America’s story.

In 1630, shortly after the first slave ship arrived in Virginia, John Winthrop, a Puritan minister and later Massachusetts Bay Colony governor, delivered a sermon calling for the Massachusetts Bay Colony to become a “city upon a hill” – a reference to a passage in the Book of Matthew in which Jesus calls on his followers to be models of behavior for the world to follow. This image became popular again in the 20th century when both Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald W. Reagan invoked it to describe American exceptionalism – the idea that the U.S. is by design, inherently different.

Meanwhile, the U.S. as a promised land given to the settlers by their God, a widely held belief in the 19th century, motivated the idea of Manifest Destiny, the doctrine under which American settlers embarked on a westward movement. This movement, with its forced displacement of Native Americans and others, implicitly reenacted another part of the biblical narratives: Canaan as the land God gave ancient Israel. It was another way the U.S. could become Winthrop’s “city upon a hill.”
Written by the victors

Beginning in ancient times, historical narratives commonly celebrate purported victories and downplay or omit whatever detracts from them.

Take for example Egypt’s Pharaoh Ramesses II who, in the 13th century B.C., fought a battle with the Hittite king Muwatalli II at Kadesh, in what is now Syria. Ramesses portrayed the event as an Egyptian victory. But Hittite accounts of the battle, discovered by archaeologists, suggest the battle was a draw. The outcome of the battle depends on who tells the story.
Different narratives

The biblical writers also provide accounts of victories. But they also acknowledge defeats and failures. They even preserve conflicting accounts of Israel’s past, providing multiple interpretations of the same event as part of one overall history – take, for example, the conquest of Canaan.

The Book of Joshua recounts a story of a sweeping military campaign to capture Canaan. Yet in the very next chapter, Joshua 13, readers learn things are not quite what they seem. Israel did not conquer all of Canaan. The first chapter of the next book, Judges 1, provides a different account of Israel’s life in Canaan.

Rather than a great military conquest, Israel takes possession of Canaan gradually and with setbacks. Israelites live among the inhabitants of Canaan, occasionally fighting limited battles to take particular cities or regions. The process took time.

Elsewhere in the Bible, there is the figure of King David. He is remembered as the one who unifies the people, makes Jerusalem the capital and has God’s favor. But he also impregnates another man’s wife and sends Uriah to his death in battle before marrying his wife Bathsheba.

He is also driven from Jerusalem when his own son, Absalom, leads a rebellion against him.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]
Replacing binary history

The point is, be it portraying a key figure as both heroic and flawed, or a campaign as triumphant victory and slow conquest, the biblical writers often told more than one side of history.

They recount the good and bad of ancient Israel’s history, without resolution of the tension, discrepancies and unseemliness of past actions.

As such, it could offer a model for how to tell U.S. history. Both the 1619 Project and President Trump’s 1776 Commission can tell the histories of the U.S. without denying or excluding the other.

As the Bible shows, coming to terms with different historical narratives is possible.

Iliff School of Theology is a member of the Association of Theological Schools.

The ATS is a funding partner of The Conversation US.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Mark K. George, Iliff School of Theology.

Read more:

Sacred violence is not yet ancient history – beating it will take human action, not divine intervention

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a priceless link to the Bible’s past

Mark K. George does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Trump Got Vaccinated Secretly, 

Because Otherwise He Might Have 

Helped the Country

Ryan Bort
Mon, March 1, 2021

Former President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump both received the Covid-19 vaccine. They just didn’t tell anyone about it.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported the news on Monday, noting that Trump and Melania got the vaccine all the way back in January, when they were still living in the White House. The news is more than a little frustrating considering the impact a public show of faith in the safety of the vaccine could have had on his supporters, who as it turns out are disproportionately hesitant to inoculate themselves

Earlier on Monday, Axios published a poll finding that a whopping 56 percent of white Republicans are unsure if they’ll get vaccinated against Covid, despite all three available or soon-to-be available vaccines having been determined safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration. The number far outpaces any other group sampled. Black Americans were the next-most hesitant at 31 percent.

Trump has an overlarge influence over Republican voters, 88-percent of whom, as he left office, approved of the (objectively terrible) job he did as president. Last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference only cemented the former president’s enduring control over conservative America, with several speakers placing him at the center of the GOP’s future. Trump did, during his headlining speech on Sunday, say that “everyone” should get vaccinated, but an offhand endorsement tucked into a 90-minute torrent of unrelated grievances pales in comparison to the message he could have sent by receiving the vaccine on camera.

Of course, Trump couldn’t care less about sending a message. He routinely mocked the idea of wearing a mask to prevent the spread of Covid-19, only doing so himself on rare occasions. His flippant attitude toward the virus undoubtedly inspired millions of Americans to disregard the safety of themselves and others, leading to untold cases, untold hospitalizations, and untold deaths that could have been prevented.

Still, it’s unclear exactly why Trump didn’t care to announce that he had been vaccinated in January. Maybe he understood that many of his supporters were anti-vaxxers and he didn’t want to betray them. Maybe he thought it would come across like he was giving into liberal propaganda. Maybe, as is the simple explanation for most of what confounds us about Trump, he’s just a huge asshole.

National Latino groups condemn Goya Foods CEO for calling Trump the 'actual president'


Suzanne Gamboa
Mon, March 1, 2021, 4:35 PM

Leaders of several national Latino organizations condemned Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue for declaring at a meeting of political conservatives that former President Donald Trump is still the "actual president of the United States."

Unanue, whose comments have previously earned him a censure from his corporate board, made the statement Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, over the weekend in Orlando, Fla.

"I'm honored to be here, but my biggest honor today is going to be that I think we're going to be on the same stage as, in my opinion, the real, the legitimate and the still actual president of the United States, Donald J. Trump," he said.

Several Latino groups said in a statement Monday that Unanue's remarks "dangerously perpetuate falsehoods that were at the core of the criminal assault on the nation's capital on Jan. 6th."

That is the day that violent groups, including many armed participants and many who alleged that the election had been stolen, violently stormed the U.S. Capitol, resulting in the deaths of at least five people and injuring many others, including police officers. Trump was impeached on a charge of inciting the attack and was acquitted in a Senate trial.

The Latino groups said Unanue's false allegation that Joe Biden is president because of widespread fraud is an "affront" to millions of Latino voters who cast ballots despite voter suppression.

No widespread fraud has been found in the election. But the lie that the election was rigged was said repeatedly at CPAC, including by Trump.

The Latino groups said in their statement that Unanue is entitled to support the candidate of his choosing. But they added: "What he most clearly should not be entitled to is the platform his role at Goya Foods provides to attack our democracy — the belief and faith in free and fair elections, which has been the bedrock of our union and national success.

"It is a slap in the face to those millions of voters and customers to insist, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that they were complicit in a grand electoral fraud," they said.

Groups that joined in the statement include the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute, Hispanics in Philanthropy, Mi Familia Vota, the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, LatinoJustice, the Latino Commission on AIDS, Alianza Americas, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Federation, Presente.org and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation.

Goya Foods did not immediately respond to email and phone requests for comment.

Unanue praised Trump at a White House event in July, saying the country was "truly blessed" to have him as a leader. That set off a campaign to boycott Goya Foods, which bills itself as the country's largest Hispanic-owned food brand.

The comments prompted social media backlash with the hashtags #BoycottGoya and #goyaway. Trump and his allies countered with support for the company.

Goya's board of directors censured Unanue in January after he made similar untrue claims about the election. Unanue has said the backlash is a "suppression of free speech."

Although most Latinos voted for Biden, exit polls showed that Trump got about a third of the votes cast by Latinos.

Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

#ABOLISHBEAUTYPAGENTS

Judge rules Miss USA can ban trans women from its pageant. On the same day the Equality Act passed the House, no less

Maggie Baska
Fri, February 26, 2021

A judge in Oregon has upheld Miss USA‘s policy banning trans women from competing in the beauty pageant, on the same day the Equality Act passed in the House of Representatives.

Anita Noelle Green was the first trans contestant for Miss Montana and was the titleholder for Miss Elite Earth Oregon 2019. But for the Miss USA pageant, she was deemed not good enough.

Green was banned from Miss USA on the basis that she is not a “natural-born female”. So she sued the competition in December 2019, claiming its gender identity discrimination violated Oregon’s public accommodations act, which says Oregonians have right to full and equal accommodations without any discrimination on account of race, religion, sex or sexual orientation.


Green’s legal team also argued her exclusion from Miss USA infringes on her first amendment rights to free speech and free association.

Anita Noelle Green. (Instagram/Anita Noelle Green)

However, district judge Michael Mosman sided with the pageant. He ruled Miss USA is an “expressive” organisation, rather than a commercial one, so it has a first amendment right to its “message” and isn’t required to change it.

He made this ruling on the same day that the US House passed the Equality Act, which would prohibit any discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Green told OregonLive in a statement that she was disappointed in the ruling, but her lawsuit drew attention to an important issue even if it wasn’t ultimately successful.

“This case brought awareness to an issue many people were and still are unaware of and that issue is that discrimination against transgender people is still actively happening in the private and public sector even within the pageant circuit,” Green said.
Miss USA claims it supports diversity and isn’t anti-trans

John T Kaempf, who represented Miss USA, praised the ruling, saying his client is “not anti-transgender“, but it “wants to be able to hold a pageant that is only for biological females”.

He told OregonLive after the ruling: “Contrary to what people might think, my client, the pageant, is a supporter of diversity.

“It believes there can be a Miss Black USA pageant, a Miss Native American pageant or a transgender pageant.”

Green’s lawyers argued she was excluded from participating in Miss USA because of an “express discriminatory eligibility policy requiring contestants to be ‘natural born female’.”

In the court documents, her lawyers argued: “This policy, intentionally designed to exclude the specific class to which [Green] belongs – transgender females – is discriminatory because it denied [Green] the full and equal advantages and privileges of [Miss USA’s] services in violation of Oregon’s public accommodations law.”

Miss USA’s motion to dismiss Green’s discrimination claims said the pageant’s mission is geared towards “natural-born women” and including Greene would “undermine its vision” and mar its “message of biological female empowerment”.

Miss USA’s legal team also continuously misgendered Green in their submissions. The court documents presented on behalf of the beauty pageant refer to Green as a “biological male who identifies as female” and a “man who identifies as a woman”.

New Orleans Archdiocese Asks Catholics to Avoid Johnson & Johnson COVID Vaccine

Brittany Bernstein
Mon, March 1, 2021, 

The Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans is asking Catholics to avoid the recently-approved Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, which it says is “morally compromised” by its “extensive use of abortion-derived cell lines.”

In a statement on Friday, the archdiocese noted that while deciding whether to receive the vaccine is an individual choice, that “the latest vaccine from Janssen/Johnson & Johnson is morally compromised as it uses the abortion-derived cell line in development and production of the vaccine as well as the testing.”

While a number of COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have used cells originally derived from an aborted fetus in the 1970s, the archdiocese argues that Johnson & Johnson “extensive use” is worse than that of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which used the cells lines only to test their vaccines, according to Religion News Service. This makes the “connection to abortion … extremely remote,” in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, the statement argues, recommending that Catholics choose one of those instead, if provided a choice.

While the archdiocese claims the decision is in line with guidance from the Vatican, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Catholic Bioethics Center, none of the three have issued statements denouncing the new vaccine.

In December, the Vatican issued general guidelines regarding vaccines in which the Holy See said it was “morally acceptable” for Catholics to receive shots that used the HEK293 cells for research. While the HEK293 cells are reportedly originated from an aborted fetus from the 1970s, ethicists have said that the cells and similar cell lines are clones and not the original fetal tissue.

The Vatican has made the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine available for all Vatican City residents. Pope Francis reportedly received the shot in January.

The Archdiocese of New Orleans’ statement comes after leaders of the USCCB and leaders from other religious organizations sent a letter to the commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last spring regarding ethical concerns over the COVID-19 vaccines.

“We are aware that, among the dozens of vaccines currently in development, some are being produced using old cell lines that were created from the cells of aborted babies,” the letter read. “For example, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has a substantial contract from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and is working on a vaccine that is being produced using one of these ethically problematic cell lines.”

However, a USCCB memo written by Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, who chairs the USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine, and Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, who chairs the organization’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities, argued that the vaccines are moral.

Pakistan expert: Religiosity aiding spike in militancy







Malala Yousafzai
KATHY GANNON

Sat, February 27, 2021

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Militant attacks are on the rise in Pakistan amid a growing religiosity that has brought greater intolerance, prompting one expert to voice concern the country could be overwhelmed by religious extremism.

Pakistani authorities are embracing strengthening religious belief among the population to bring the country closer together. But it's doing just the opposite, creating intolerance and opening up space for a creeping resurgence in militancy, said Mohammad Amir Rana, executive director of the independent Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies.

"Unfortunately, instead of helping to inculcate better ethics and integrity, this phenomenon is encouraging a tunnel vision” that encourages violence, intolerance and hate, he wrote recently in a local newspaper. “Religiosity has begun to define the Pakistani citizenry.”

Militant violence in Pakistan has spiked: In the past week alone, four vocational school instructors who advocated for women’s rights were traveling together when they were gunned down in a Pakistan border region. A Twitter death threat against Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai attracted an avalanche of trolls. They heaped abuse on the young champion of girls education, who survived a Pakistani Taliban bullet to the head. A couple of men on a motorcycle opened fire on a police check-post not far from the Afghan border killing a young police constable.

In recent weeks, at least a dozen military and paramilitary men have been killed in ambushes, attacks and operations against militant hideouts, mostly in the western border regions.

A military spokesman this week said the rising violence is a response to an aggressive military assault on militant hideouts in regions bordering Afghanistan and the reunification of splintered and deeply violent anti-Pakistan terrorist groups, led by the Tehreek-e-Taliban. The group is driven by a radical religious ideology that espouses violence to enforce its extreme views.

Gen. Babar Ifitkar said the reunified Pakistani Taliban have found a headquarters in eastern Afghanistan. He also accused hostile neighbor India of financing and outfitting a reunified Taliban, providing them with equipment like night vision goggles, improvised explosive devises and small weapons.

India and Pakistan routinely trade allegations that the other is using militants to undermine stability and security at home.

Security analyst and fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Asfandyar Mir, said the reunification of a splintered militancy is dangerous news for Pakistan.

"The reunification of various splinters into the (Tehreek-e-Taliban) central organization is a major development, which makes the group very dangerous," said Mir.

The TTP claimed responsibility for the 2012 shooting of Yousafzai. Its former spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, who mysteriously escaped Pakistan military custody to flee to the country, tweeted a promise that the Taliban would kill her if she returned home.

Iftikar, in a briefing of foreign journalists this week, said Pakistani military personnel aided Ehsan's escape, without elaborating. He said the soldiers involved had been punished and efforts were being made to return Ehsan to custody.

The government reached out to Twitter to shut down Ehsan's account after he threatened Yousafzai, although the military and government at first suggested it was a fake account.

But Rana, the commentator, said the official silence that greeted the threatening tweet encouraged religious intolerance to echo in Pakistani society unchecked.

“The problem is religiosity has very negative expression in Pakistan,” he said in an interview late Friday. “It hasn’t been utilized to promote the positive, inclusive tolerant religion.”

Instead, successive Pakistani governments as well as its security establishments have exploited extreme religious ideologies to garner votes, appease political religious groups, or target enemies, he said.

The 2018 general elections that brought cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan to power was mired in allegations of support from the powerful military for hard-line religious groups.

Those groups include the Tehreek-e-Labbaik party, whose single-point agenda is maintaining and propagating the country's deeply controversial blasphemy law. That law calls for the death penalty for anyone insulting Islam and is most often used to settle disputes. It often targets minorities, mostly Shiite Muslims, who makeup up about 15% of mostly Sunni Pakistan's 220 million people.

Mir, the analyst, said the rise in militancy has benefited from state policies that have been either supportive or ambivalent toward militancy as well as from sustained exposure of the region to violence. Most notable are the protracted war in neighboring Afghanistan and the simmering tensions between hostile neighbors India and Pakistan, two countries that possess a nuclear weapons' arsenal.

“More than extreme religious thought, the sustained exposure of the region to political violence, the power of militant organizations in the region, state policy which is either supportive or ambivalent towards various forms of militancy ... and the influence of the politics of Afghanistan incubate militancy in the region," he said.

Mir and Rana both pointed to the Pakistani government's failure to draw radical thinkers away from militant organizations, as groups that seemed at least briefly to eschew a violent path have returned to violence and rejoined the TTP.

Iftikar said the military has stepped up assaults on the reunited Pakistani Taliban, pushing the militants to respond, but only targets they can manage, which are soft targets.

But Mir said the reunited militants pose a greater threat.

“With the addition of these powerful units, the TTP has major strength for operations across the former tribal areas, Swat, Baluchistan, and some in Punjab,” he said. “Taken together, they improve TTP’s ability to mount insurgent and mass-casualty attacks.”

Anti-LGBTQ coalition targets Equality Act in the name of America's children

AMERICAN CHILDREN DENY THEY SPEAK FOR THEM



Sydney Bauer
Fri, February 26, 2021, 

A new initiative backed by a coalition of right-wing organizations is courting lawmakers and parents in an effort to stop the passage of the Equality Act — a federal LGBTQ rights bill — and promote policies targeting transgender Americans at the federal and state levels.

Backed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Policy Alliance, Heritage Foundation and other national and local groups, the Promise to America’s Children coalition says it is fighting “a culture – and sadly, a government – around us seek to sexualize our children for the sake of a political agenda.”

"It’s no surprise that the ugly wave of state attacks on trans kids traces back to a few, very familiar national anti-LGBTQ groups."

As part of this effort, policymakers and parents are asked to sign pledges protecting children’s “minds,” “bodies” and “relationships with their parents.” Elected officials can even sign up on the coalition website to receive model legislation on the policies it promotes.

“Every child deserves an education that is suited for their specific needs and development as guided by their parents, and one that is free from graphic sexual curriculum or content, the promotion of abortion, and politicized ideas about sexual orientation and gender identity,” the policymaker pledge reads.

On its website, the Promise to America’s Children coalition says anyone who signs the pledge is not signaling support or opposition to legislation, “with the exception of the federal Equality Act, which clearly violates all principles of this Promise.”

The Equality Act is federal legislation that seeks to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, credit, education, public spaces, public funding and jury service. The House passed the recently reintroduced legislation Thursday, but it will likely face an uphill battle in the Senate, where a 60-vote threshold is required to bypass a filibuster.

Related: The Equality Act faces a tougher battle in the Senate, where 60 votes must be found to bypass a filibuster.

Civil rights groups say this new conservative coalition is an attempt to roll back the rights of LGBTQ Americans, particularly the transgender community, and stall passage of comprehensive nondiscrimination laws on the federal and state levels.

“The same few sources have been responsible for peddling anti-LGBTQ legislation for many years, and this legislation is simply the latest iteration of their losing political fight against equality,” Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel for the Human Rights Campaign, said of state bills associated with the organizations in the coalition.

“While extremist groups push copycat bills down to states, these state legislators should understand that their constituents — including a large majority of Republicans — believe transgender people should be allowed to live freely and openly,” Oakley added. “The only thing these bills do is harm kids who are simply trying to navigate their adolescence.”

Emilie Kao, an attorney at the Heritage Foundation, said the coalition’s efforts were accelerated by the reintroduction of the Equality Act.

“Regardless of whether one agrees with the idea that people can have gender identities at odds with their biological sex, bills that treat Americans as criminals if they don't agree with a government-imposed ideology about the treatment of gender dysphoria is a gross violation of our most basic freedoms of speech and conscience,” Kao told NBC News. “The Equality Act will turn disagreements over marriage and sexuality into discrimination by misusing civil rights law as a sword to coerce conformity rather than as a shield to prevent unjust discrimination.”

Kao declined to disclose what model legislation the coalition is offering on its website. Prior to the coalition's official launch this week, LGBTQ advocates said anti-transgender bills were introduced in 20 states in a coordinated assault by conservative groups. At least one of those conservative groups, the Alliance Defending Freedom, is part of this newly formed coalition.

Related: Many proposed bans on trans athletes and transition care for minors share identical language.

Bethany Moreton, a history professor at Dartmouth College, said the guise of protecting children when promoting conservative ideology is not uncommon. She cited Anita Bryant's "Save Our Children" campaign in the late 1970s that worked to overturn gay nondiscrimination ordinances in Miami by referencing how such measures would harm local children. Over the past 20 years, the religious right has repeatedly lost political battles when it comes LGBTQ issues, so this new pledge is continuing in the "Save Our Children" vein in an effort to appeal to a broad base, according to Moreton.

“Their sort of arsenal of acceptable arguments have shrunk, and one of them is doubling down on child vulnerability,” Moreton said.

While the Promise to America’s Children coalition is new, groups within the coalition have already had success in assisting lawmakers with legislation intended to curtail transgender rights. One such example is Idaho's HB 500, a bill that bars trans women from participating in high school sports that was passed in 2020, which was written with the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom, according to Barbara Ehardt, the legislator who drafted it. A similar bill in Montana was drafted directly from HB 500, Laura Sankey Keip, a staff attorney in the Montana Legislature, confirmed.

The coalition, which launched Tuesday, already has 24 state representatives as signatories to the group’s pledge, three of whom have introduced legislation targeting transgender individuals. Ohio state Rep. Jena Powell and North Dakota state Rep. Ben Koppelman, both Republicans, have introduced bills that would restrict trans women from participating in high school sports, mirroring HB 500, and Kansas state Sen. Mike Thompson, also a Republican, has introduced a bill that would criminalize doctors providing gender-affirming health care to teenagers.

There are more than 45 pieces of anti-transgender legislation making their way through statehouses this year, according to a legislation tracker from Freedom for All Americans. That is more than the legislative session of 2016, which produced the largest volume of anti-trans bills in statehouses, according to civil rights groups.

"It’s no surprise that the ugly wave of state attacks on trans kids traces back to a few, very familiar national anti-LGBTQ groups,” Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, said. “They have opposed LGBTQ equality for decades, fighting marriage equality and now targeting trans youth. Bills claiming to protect children or women’s rights do neither and put trans kids in further danger.”