Episode 37: What’s the Matter with Homer Glen?

On this Week’s episode we talk about guitar playing, the Cubs’ playoff chances, and what the heck is going on in south suburban Home Glen, Illinois, where the local school board apparently fired a teacher for exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of religion. We discussed this last episode but naïvely thought the school district might do the right thing. They did not.  So, this week, we brought the heat.  The short version is this: It’s hard to see any legal rationale for the board’s actions, and it may, in the end, expose the board to litigation … along with the pitchfork-wielding extremist mob that demanded the teacher’s firing in the first place. We’re talking about you, Libs of TikTok, Moms for Liberty, Awake Illinois, and Awake Americans. Maybe you folks ought to lawyer up. On a related note, since the lynch mob raised the teacher’s apparent interest in Satanism, you might want to educate yourself about that theological perspective. It’s not what you think. We also discuss the racist Jacksonville shooting and conservatives’ disturbing, if predictable, pattern of using “mental illness” as a shield to protect bigots and mass murderers and sword to demonize marginalized people, especially members of the LGBTQIA+ community.  And speaking of lawsuits, with the rising wave of hate crimes in America, from the  racist murders in Jacksonville to the homophobic murder of Laura Ann Carlton in California to bomb threats phoned into Illinois libraries, it may be time to subject some of these extremist groups to the SPLC treatment. See: Aryan Nations on the Verge of Collapse Following Judgment. Finally, since groups like Moms for Liberty got their start protesting COVID restrictions in schools before they turned to attacking trans and nonbinary youth, we thought we’d take a look at the number of COVID deaths versus the number of gender affirming surgeries among kids 18 and under. While it’s difficult to find statistics for exactly identical time periods, you won’t be surprised to learn that there were more than 1,800 COVID deaths among kids from 0 to 18 through June 2023, and around 800 surgeries, nearly all on 17 and 18 year olds, during the the two-year period from 2019 to 2021. So, apparently, Moms for Liberty and their affiliates would rather that children die of COVID than have potentially life-saving surgeries. Duly noted. Anyway, please enjoy this week’s episode, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, and, as always, support the rights of LGBTQIA people everywhere! And follow us on Twitter at @itsotetPodcast. The post Episode 37: What’s the Matter with Homer Glen? appeared first on In the Shadow of the Evening Trees.