Equal Protection Under The Constitution

Equal protection under The Constitution is spelled out in the 14th Amendment, Section one. No State shall make or enforce any law which denies to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Any law would include federal laws. Any "person," no matter what their gender or sex status, is entitled to equal protection under both state and federal laws. Any law which discriminates against male, female or other cannot be made or enforced. Any law, including Title IX civil rights law, cannot exclude transsexuals and asexuals. Restrictions on someone on the basis of their DNA whether by federal law or State law cannot be enforced or allowed by any State; to do otherwise is to abridge privileges and deny equal protection of the laws for citizens.

Amendment 14 of The Constitution, Section 1: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

From Jacobinmag.com and linked to on Facebook by Sen. Bernie Sanders:
Socialists Must Defend Trans Life

Bernie Sanders Facebook post:
Transgender Rights

Addendum:
Quick, let's whip out our DNA testing kits! If a woman tries to enter the woman's room but her DNA says male, we must enforce our binary beliefs and send her to the men's room! We must protect other women from lesbian transsexuals. She must go into the other bathroom where the men there can get their probes out and test her DNA. No, I don't know what to do if a person has XXY instead of XX or XY; we must take her to catholic priests for exorcism of that extra X or take her to the Supreme Court for a ruling. But don't let an XXY into either bathroom! Test everyone! Protect everyone from everybody!

Pure Capitalism

It's not capitalism vs. socialism or communism. It's capitalism plus socialism. That is what distinguishes Republicans and Democrats. Nobody wants to nationalize industries. We like capitalism, but not without social responsibilities. Not everything should be for profit.

 I don't like having a for-profit insurance company between me and my doctor. I don't like not being able to afford healthcare with its 20% plus co-pays and premiums and caps and coverage holes and coverage denials for undisclosed acne treatments 40 years prior when my medical care becomes expensive and unprofitable. I don't want my retirement stolen. We don't like corporations that pay their workers poverty wages so that they need taxpayer assistance. That is corporate welfare, the reliance of companies on taxpayer assistance for their underpaid employees.

Do you really want privatized prisons, privatized pollution prevention and clean-up, for-profit courts, privatized borders, payday lenders charging 585% interest (see Wisconsin), for-profit schools without regulations or oversight but still with public funding, privatized police and fire protection, unregulated construction and unfunded infrastructure maintenance, for-profit roads and utilities, privatized coast guard and military, unchecked monopolies, unregulated health insurance that is more like a coupon, and companies and hospitals and doctors operating with no regulations or requirements or oversight? Privatized for-profit elections (you think voter suppression and gerrymandering is bad now?). Do you approve of massive student debt? Medical bankruptcies? Bernie Madoff?

That is what pure capitalism is. A free market that is supposedly inherently moral. Companies operating without regulations because supposedly the free market will weed out unscrupulous practices. It's a theoretical fantasy because a pure free market assumes 100% knowledge by consumers. Nope, no need for consumer protection bureaus with your totally unregulated free market.

Republicans are ideologically opposed to government programs because they think private enterprise, not government, is the way to go. Their beliefs can be summed up with one word. Profits. That is what their notion of freedom boils down to.
Privatized Social Security with retirements subject to stock market crashes, thefts, bankruptcies, high admin fees and churning, and major benefit reductions because of the selling off of pension obligations when taking over a company.

I don't want a nanny state regulating our bedrooms, our bodies, and our individual freedoms, which for some reason Republicans like along with their free markets.

 I don't want freedom from pollution protections, worker safety, gun safety, union protections, consumer protections, discrimination protections. I don't believe in freedom from accountability and ethics. I want clean air and water and soil. I want religious freedom in my life and in my workplace.

BTW, the for-profit courts? We have that in some areas. Collection agencies suing people that can't pay all of their court and incarceration fees, and a judge finding the debtors to be in "contempt of court" and thrown in jail (rendering them unemployed and subject to more fees). That used to be called debtor's prison.

Our New Supreme Court and The Constitution

Malfeasance by our Supreme Court. Denying the people's right to "promotion of the general welfare," i.e., the concern of the government for the health, peace, morality, and safety of its citizens. The part in the preamble of The Constitution which is anti-Republican.

Health is not just health care, it is also things such as pollution prevention and mitigating the effects of Climate Change.

Peace and safety does not mean building a huge military and encouraging adventurism.

Safety as in sane gun laws, especially for all those people who are not members of a "well regulated Militia" such as the National Guard.

Morality means not cheating, fleecing, lying, stealing. It does not mean imposing religious edicts on citizens.

From Vox.com: The Supreme Court stepped in to stall a climate lawsuit. That’s really weird.

Transgender Politics

It's one thing when the brain is not aligned with the genitalia. What do the binary advocates say about people who are born with both sets? Check the DNA?

Are people only smart or only dumb, with no cognitive abilities higher than others? Are they only left-handed or right-handed, no ambidexterity allowed? Skinny or obese? Only black or white, no brown allowed? Eidetic memory or unable to remember anything longer than 30 seconds (no long-term memory)?

These authoritarians are not biologists or neurologists, yet they happily peddle their ignorance to their base for their own agendas. Dick Chaney only believed that gays had rights because a daughter of his was lesbian. Will it take changing the color and apparent sex of every politician?

How about if we just do it on posters or ads against binary politicians? I would love to see Mitch McConnell with a wig and lipstick on a campaign ad. Or see him being shoved into the transgender bathroom between male and female marked doors.

Authoritarians like Trump target trans people for a reason

Fire Me For Religious Reasons?

Trump Is Planning A New Rule To Let Federal Contractors Fire Employees For Religious Reasons

If someone is going to fire me for religious reasons, I want to be sure that their religious beliefs are not just an excuse. I want to know if they really subscribe to their professed religion's beliefs or if they just pick and choose precepts which are convenient. If they are Christians, then I expect them to follow all the laws of their religion, including those in the Old Testament. Matthew 5:17-18  "17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

These are a few of the things forbidden: Divorces, horoscopes, tattoos, illegitimate births, praying aloud or in public, braided hair, jewelry, expensive clothes, damaged genitals (vasectomies or cancer?), shaving.

So if my employer fires me for religious reasons, but wears jewelry or does not have a beard, then I know that they are not really Christian and so cannot use it to fire me.

The same principle applies to those who would deny me services because of a professed religious reason. They must follow all the laws of that religion, and they must deny services to others who do not follow every law. Otherwise, they are hypocrites and liars who are just using a religion that they don't believe in.

So sayeth me.

This Modern Utopia

I don't want a Republican between me and my lover, just like I don't want a for-profit insurance company between me and my doctor. But hey, with regulations and oversight and accountability and ethics disappearing, I won't have time to worry about that while I am worried about having a living income, having affordable health care, being safe, having clean water and air and soil, a safe retirement income, and lead-free schools.

But I will be a model citizen. In this modern radical conservative utopia, in order to fulfill my societal obligations, I will give up my religion, disown people of color, agree to for-profit justice, for-profit prisons, wild west gun laws, unregulated for-profit schools, unregulated markets, and let corporations write the laws for their own benefit.

I will listen to people judge me for not being rich and will let them explain to me that my stagnant income and lousy or non-existent benefits are not because the wealthy don't pay enough, but because it is their money and I should not try to take it out of their pockets like they are taking it out of mine. I will listen as the elitists tell me I have health problems and an inability to treat them because I have made immoral or idiotic lifestyle choices including having a pre-existing condition or being the wrong gender.

I will stand by and wave while the White Nationalists and Nazi-wannabes march. I will stand meekly while there is gerrymandering, purging of voter rolls, requirements for photo ID's to correct a problem that doesn't exist, limited numbers of voting booths and voting hours in less privileged areas, unlimited money for elections and the ability of the wealthy and large corporations to buy politicians and elections both nationally and state-by-state.

I will not complain if my company has been bought and the new owners sold off the pensions, thus cutting drastically my retirement income. I will give up my blood for testing for drugs while politicians on the public dime are exempt. I will just stand by as we return to the era of back-door abortions and dead women, robber barons, sawdust in hot dogs, rivers catching fire, and being fired because I can't do my job without the limb I lost while working on that job.

Cigarettes are good for me, lead and arsenic are both natural substances, pot is a severely addictive narcotic, and great will be the return of poorhouses where the destitute elderly beg for medicine and food and heat and are kept away from the public eye.

I will be part of the nanny state that regulates and limits consensual behaviors and the sanctity of my body. I will give up my home so a company can build on that great location and be good generators of taxes 20 years from now when their agreement with the city expires. And I will understand that companies, for our own good and for the advancement of capitalism, place their enlightened interests above the interests of consumers, neighbors, voters, indigenous people, workers, women, children, people of color, and the elderly and the poor and the disabled.

I will not laugh as our lawmakers spout nonsense and disproven theories, explaining to us how victims of rape cannot get pregnant, climate change is a Chinese hoax, being gay is a choice, trickle-down works, cutting Social Security will help balance the budget, and universal healthcare that most western industrialized nations have had for years and decades won't work. Just because we are the wealthiest nation on Earth doesn't mean we can afford more than a third-world health care system.

And now, a tear threatens to fall from my eye as I listen to those sacred words, "We The Corporations hereby establish this plutocratic system of government of the Corporations, by the Corporations, and for the Corporations in order to insure the peace and comfort and segregation of the wealthy from the grubby little people."