That anti-transgender law is even worse than you think

  The Alabama Legislature rushed a bill to Gov. Kay Ivey last week. It was so important that House Republicans limited debate on the measure to 10 minutes on Wednesday. It was so urgent that Ivey signed it on Thursday.

  You would hope legislation passed so swiftly would address a major problem in the state. Like gun violence. The rural health crisis. Or the ongoing inequities in Alabama’s public schools.

Who will we thank next year? Those who fought

  Anticipatory obedience, a term we will all be familiar with by Jan. 20, describes how major figures and institutions appease an authoritarian before he takes power.

  It’s hard to maintain a straight posture against threats and coercion, particularly if you think no one else will stand with you.

  So they bow and scrape, hoping it will spare them pain or punishment. They pull punches. They accommodate. They hope to maintain what used to be normal life.

Throwing Alabama’s children and physicians to the wolves

  Three federal judges exposed Alabama physicians to felony charges last week.

  But U.S. Circuit Judge Barbara Lagoa wanted everyone to know it was complicated.

  “This case revolves around an issue that is surely of the utmost importance to all of the parties involved: the safety and wellbeing of the children of Alabama,” Lagoa wrote in a 49-page majority opinion allowing Alabama to make it a crime to offer medical treatment to transgender youth under age 19. “But it is complicated by the fact that there is a strong disagreement between the parties over what is best for those children. Absent a constitutional mandate to the contrary, these types of issues are quintessentially the sort that our system of government reserves to legislative, not judicial, action.”

SPLC report is a wake-up call for LGBTQ people

  In its most recent report on hate groups in the United States, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented a spike in the number of groups targeting LGBTQ people and promoting dangerous lies and misinformation, particularly about transgender people. Shockingly, the number of those groups rose from 49 in 2018 to 70 last year.

  Across the country, LGBTQ advocates have become alarmed by the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive attempts to enshrine their anti-LGBTQ bigotry in federal law. Even as our country and the world struggle in the face of an unprecedented pandemic, LGBTQ people in the U.S. must confront another brutal reality: Our own government is seeking to harm us.