South Dakota’s official nickname used to be “Land of Infinite Variety,” before we decided to brand out prairie state with the name of a mountain. State law includes that variety line in our pledge to the state flag: “I pledge loyalty and support to the flag and State of South Dakota, land of sunshine, land of infinite variety.” (Wow! No theocracy!)
Too bad we don’t hear that pledge more and reinforce that message of embracing variety. Our state policies and the labors of our Legislature make it pretty clear we don’t want different people, certainly not homosexual or transgender people. As KSFY reports, Human Rights Campaign calculates that South Dakota is the most gay-hating state in the nation:
A new report says South Dakota lacks in basic civil rights protections for LGBTQ residents.
That’s according to the 5th annual State Equality Index from the Human Rights Campaign and was released at the end of last month.
“Unfortunately I’m not really surprised that South Dakota was ranked as a state that doesn’t have much opportunity or much of a welcoming point of view for LGBT people,” ACLU of South Dakota policy director Libby Skarin said.
South Dakota falls into the last place category “high priority to achieve basic equality” in the 2018 State Equality Index report [Michaela Feldman, “Report: South Dakota Receives Lowest Ranking for LGBTQ Equality,” KSFY, 2019.02.11].
HRC’s South Dakota scorecard shows we tick off almost none of the boxes for LGBT-inclusive policies. We make matters worse by allowing adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples and others who don’t pass religious muster. We get a merit point for non-discrimination protections in our colleges and universities, but our Legislature is attacking our higher education system for not protecting conservative BS artists.
HRC’s graph of our Legislature’s record on LGBT bills says it all:
Compare that to Minnesota, which isn’t perfect, but where anti-LGBT bills haven’t outnumbered good bills in this decade:
While other places make progress in accepting difference in their midst, South Dakota is going backwards, increasingly freaking out over the prospect that the world might change and that people might be decent to each other, regardless of whom they love.
State law says South Dakotans should pledge loyalty to a flag that stands for infinite variety. It is to our own moral, cultural, and economic detriment that we do not take that pledge seriously.
Cory wrote:
but our Legislature is attacking our higher education system for not protecting conservative BS artists.
Stanley Kurtz has devoted the past few years to working tirelessly throughout the U.S. to persuade state legislatures to pass effective legislation protecting campus free speech at public universities. He has made progress. I wrote about this project here and here.
Now, Stanley has a new, related project. He’s trying to address the lack of intellectual diversity on American campuses, which he sees as the cause of the free speech crisis. He discusses his effort here.
The problem is real. It’s documented by George La Noue, professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in his forthcoming book, Silenced Stages: The Loss of Academic Freedom and Campus Policy Debates.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/02/promoting-intellectual-diversity-on-campus-a-legislative-proposal.php
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-campus-intellectual-diversity-act-a-proposal/
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/01/free-speech-on-campus-a-legislative-proposal.php
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/05/arizona-enacts-effective-campus-free-speech-legislation.php
https://www.nas.org/articles/the_campus_intellectual_diversity_act
For as Stanley concludes:
The disappearance of intellectual diversity on America’s college campuses is at the root of the campus free-speech crisis, and of America’s increasingly frayed political culture. The Campus Intellectual Diversity Act can help to solve these problems, while still respecting the independence of professors in the classroom.
Dakota Free Press however, is a bastion of allowed diversity in SD. The above commenter and those of his political bend are rarely censored, except when threats to others or extreme hatefulness is posted. When “Mr. Heidelberger Goes To Pierre” is published, the deck may begin to become unstacked against LGBTQ citizens.
West virginia Jason has an interesting take on what happens if his kids are Gay.
https://twitter.com/JakeJarvisWV/status/1094823914973421568
He'[d fit right in South Dakota lege.
The state pledge goes back to a time South Dakota was the Sunshine State. Then the legislature decided there were other Sunshine States, and our sunshine can’t compete with Florida’s sunshine. But there is only 1 mt. Rushmore. So some enterprising senator like Stace Nelson should bring a bill to revise the pledge to remove Sunshine, insert mt. Rushmore, and replace “infinite variety” with “intolerance” to better reflect the present state of the state.
Porter wrote:
The above commenter and those of his political bend are rarely censored, except when threats to others or extreme hatefulness is posted.
Porter also wrote:
If Jason goes in the garage, leaves the car running and shuts the garage door, he’ll see (in miniature) how humans impact the climate.
I don’t know what’s on Jason’s immediate agenda with my experiment (or his mental stability), but here’s what he’d encounter. Long before you were asphyxiated (which I’m sure he knows would eventually happen) the heat level in the garage would quickly rise to over 150 degrees, which is what’s happening in Earth’s environment from all the automobile exhaust.
Still deny global warming is caused by humans, young man? If you do it’s only because you need a group to belong to, even if they are extremist kooks.
Jason, I think you miss the elephant in the room for conservatives — address WHY so many institutions of higher learning lean liberal rather than conservative. Why does education tend to push people liberal?
The intellectuals the GOP have recognized that they must stop being the party of stupid. Intelligent ideas will always find a marketplace – even when controversial. What is it you conservatives say about “big government” intrusion manipulating markets . . .
From HRC:
“Sixteen states and the District of Columbia are in the highest-rated category, “Working Toward Innovative Equality”: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
“Twenty-Eight states are in the lowest-rated category “High Priority to Achieve Basic Equality”: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.”
The latter group is the Hateful Twenty-eight.”
One of the saddest and most disturbing things I have learned due to Orange Imbecile’s deministration, is that there are vastly more fearful and hateful Americans with sociopathic tendencies than I would have ever guessed. It’s really somewhat frightening.
On the other hand, it’s been deeply encouraging to see the enormous numbers of women, youth and men rise up fiercely to save this great nation, whatever it takes. We outnumber the others 3 to 1.
It appears that there are some places that are determined to be left behind socially, economically, educationally and culturally. SD and others in HRC’s lowest 28 seem committed to remaining on the bottom rung of the ladder.
That doesn’t please me or make me happy. There are so many wonderful people in the state who deserve better. Some of them are too compromised (Stockholm Syndrome) to be aware. The ones who are aware aren’t of sufficient numbers to save the state. I wonder when it will change? It’s truly a sad state of affairs.
Not even mentioning the plight of MY LGBT friends (and you are all welcome at my home at any time), all you have to do in some audiences is question conservative South Dakota “values” and you are told to leave the State. That will not change anytime soon. So disappointed in this State I grew up in. I was at a meeting Monday eve, a friend of mine introduced me to some young people that moved here from other states. She said, Wayne gives the best hugs. When you need one just find Wayne. I gave her a hug and had a big smile on my face.
Hey, it’s not my fault a liberal worldview fits facts better than whatever Jason and Republican legislators think they believe.
Wayne hits on a key point that distinguishes liberals and LGBT advocates from South Dakota’s arch-conservatives. I have been told several times in the midst of a political argument that if I don’t like how South Dakota does things, I should just leave. I have never lodged that complaint against my opponents. I have never heard liberals like me make that argument. Consider when we discussed proud Confederate flag flyer Nick Stensaas: I didn’t say, Get your racist falsehoods out of my state! I said, Quit celebrating a racist flag. We liberals seem to have more faith in people’s ability to change incorrect views and come to better beliefs and, in the meantime, to still be decent neighbors; conservatives seem to write off whole swaths of the population as incorrigible and unwelcome.
Liberals are willing to make room for all sorts of different people.
Conservatives, at least the somewhat unpleasant and un-Christian South Dakota brand, want to exclude everyone who’s not like them.
Liberals don’t need to brand different people as an enemy Other.
South Dakota conservatives appear to suffer from an insecurity that requires them define themselves in terms of whom they fear, whom they hate, and whom they can drive away.
Debbo points out an alarming tendency: rather than striving to be better and welcoming those who might lead them toward better, could some communities vilify and ostracize those who point out their failings and somehow embrace their failings as badges of honor?
I just ain’t buyin it. So some boxes ain’t checked off. I’ve lived all over and I’m a resident queer. There’s just a different mentality in South Dakota. More private. More reserved. My experience don’t make your business somebody else’s things go fine even in small town South Dakota. This is just more lib finger pointing at South Dakota. The haters just don’t understand the state and want it to be something else. Move somewhere you won’t complain all the time. If you don’t even live here but complain constantly about South Dakota that’s pathology.
“The haters just don’t understand the state and want it to be something else. Move somewhere you won’t complain all the time. If you don’t even live here but complain constantly about South Dakota that’s pathology.”
HC, thank you for so perfectly illustrating most of the previous comments. Amen brother!😆😆😆
During my lifetime, it has been disheartening to watch the Land of Infinite Variety evolve into the Land of Infinite Intolerance. I’m sure 40+ years of christian conservative rule has nothing to do with that though, right?
SDBlue,
Are you referring to this intolerance?
https://www.afterellen.com/general-news/568221-how-i-became-the-most-hated-lesbian-in-baltimore#dxTPdpYxUevCwPdQ.99
Saying homosexuality is a sin is not hating homosexuals.
People who think that are a product of a failed education system.
People who think that homosexuality is a sin are a product of distorted and twisted religious teaching. Or some actually know better but still hate them because it’s to their advantage politically, financially or otherwise. Or they’re simply mean, hateful people.
O- better yet, have someone point out a single conservative arts school.
Jason, I fail to see what an article about an angry lesbian in Baltimore has to do with the intolerance of SD GOP legislators. Furthermore, I don’t give a damn if your religion says homosexuality is a sin. I do give a damn that your ilk wants those in government to use their christianity as an excuse to make laws that treat the LGBTQ community as “less than”. People who don’t understand this are a product of a failed education system.
Ever wonder why Jason says so many stupid things? So many inconsistencies with so many false sources? It’s because Jason isn’t real. It’s not even human. It’s a CGA. A computer generated antagonist. Yep. Think of all the facts and all the research skills you’ve developed proving Jason is a dumb-ass. CGA’s were developed for law schools as teaching aids and have been adapted for liberal blogs and information sites. (sometimes used by Russian influencers) They’re uninterested in learning, never admit to losing an argument and regenerate daily at no cost to the host. In short, the program known as Jason is brilliant in it’s ignorance, unsurpassed in it’s stupidity and overwhelming in it’s skepticism. 😇 PS … Cory gets to drive it. Way more fun than those oil dripping, half-speed go karts at Wylie Park.
Porter, in the past Cory has required anyone wanting to comment on then Madville, DFP, to prove to him they are human before Cory would accept comments. Has he changed that practice?
Republicans deep down have a fascination with homosexuality and the LGBTQ population. This is most likely from their strict upbringing of anti_LGBT Christianity teaching which brought on adverse effects of confusion and fascination.
SD – the Land of Infinite Hypocrisy and Corruption. For the Party that Prides its self on Freedoms, the SD Pubs insist on harassing the LGBTQ with hate bills every year. Transgenders are not going away so back off. Leave them alone! They have every right to live a life of peace in the Land of the Free.
BCB … Cory knows everything about the CGA aka Jason. What Cory wants, Cory gets. Happy Valentino Day :)
Happy Valentine’s Day to all my DFP kindred spirits!
Happy Valentine’s Day to all my beautiful gay friends in MN (and SD also of course). I love you beautiful gay, lesbian transgender men and women, I love you just as you are and am proud to live in a state that accepts everyone!!! I will all always have your back!! Peace!! :)
Years ago the west river many of the conservatives I knew had a live and let live attitude. The true conservative position was that government should not be needed to guarantee LGBTQ rights, because those rights would be guaranteed by the culture and custom of life in the state. If a kid was transgendered, conservatives might not understand it, but they would simply address it thus: “This person might be a little mixed up in ways I don’t understand, but he or she is no more mixed up than all the other folks out here, including me. He or she is just mixed up in a different way.” They wouldn’t have been too concerned about bathrooms because they figured if you piss outside the only thing to worry about is which direction the wind is blowing. I liked those kind of conservatives.
Right, Donald When I roughnecked in Gillette it was live and let live. Do what you want. Dance on the bar. Just don’t kick my beer over and we’re all good.
That’s actually true Donald! The older generations of SD Pubs would have had just an aw shucks attitude with the LGBTQ population. I think they would have been kinder and gentler to them. My 86 year old mom is pro-LGBTQ and has been for decades. She’s a democrat of course but was still raised quite conservatively. My dad wouldn’t have cared. He would just say it’s none of his business.
Thanks Porter. You got me curious but when I search “CGA. A computer generated antagonist” I get no links explaining what this is or documenting how it works. I appreciate your explanation and would like to look into the matter further. Perhaps you can provide a link or two with more details? Thanks.
Not, really Bear. I’ve been researching this commenter known as Jason for a while. I’ll keep you informed. Gotta go.
Jenny,
Can you please explain the Muslim upbringing regarding homosexuality?
The Muslim religion I believe is very similar to Christianity in regards to homosexuality. The good thing is that the majority of Muslims here in Minnesota are members of the DFL party. :)
They clearly did not call South Dakota gay hating. By their set of criteria we rank low. But South Dakota is in some ways a freer state as the nostalgia expressed toward older South Dakota Republicans can attest. I would argue that although the legislature has been taken over by right-wing conservatives, still the vast majority of South Dakotans have a life and let live nature. They’re just not going to virtue signal like some parts of the country and applaud your queerness. It’s a different set of values that still has merit.
So LGBT don’t listen to the liberal diatribe listen to yourself. Don’t join the Piss and Moan Club. Finish high school, get some therapy if you need it, then set some goals and leave South Dakota if you choose but be prepared to find out life is competitive all over. The worst thing about South Dakota is the cold and fewer dating and job options, but all the libs know how to do is say how horrible everything is which is just not true.
Until you end up like Matthew Sheppard.
Blissful Happy C. In 2014, Rolling Stone listed the 5 worst states for Gays and South Dakota was no where mentioned, then. Things are getting worse as embarrassingly red wingnut Northern Mississippi gets embarrassingly redder.
Then there is this- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/opinion/charles-rhines-gay-jury-death-row.html
Jurors thought he would enjoy life in prison as a Gay man? Well, Happy. any thoughts on this? Is prison a gay utopia and gays commit criminal offenses just to get sentenced there?
No, we’re talking about South Dakota. It’s irresponsible “journalism” to tell people this is a hating place. It’s a terribly negative and incorrect message to tell kids and their parents which suggests other places must be nearly free of negative judgment (of all kinds). I know many happy gay people in South Dakota who don’t have Stockholm syndrome. Their family is here and they are very accepted. Stop acting like you know everything.
Happy Camper’s little “gay chamber of commerce” denounces the State Equality Index from the Human Rights Campaign and says he knows better? We’ll file that along with when you told everyone that doesn’t like it in SD to move away, earlier this week.
Not a good week for his credibility.
I noticed, from Cory’s posts, that people of Aberdeen don’t look fondly on immigrants and especially Muslim immigrants. I can just feel the love shine through. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
How many open Gay repubs in South Dakota can you name?
Weird how Happy Camper admits the legislature has been overtaken by fundamentalists but thinks it is unrelated to the people who vote them in.
So dicta,
Are you saying every Minneapolis citizen who voted is an anti-Semite and American hater?
The point that seems to be missed in happy’s argument is that the assessment of a state’s anti-gay or anti-anything else attitudes is based on objective, identifiable and verifiable criteria, namely, legislation passed, introduced, or missing altogether in the state.
As for the people of SD, it is entirely possible that a majority do not either hate nor discriminate based on homosexuality, gender identity, nationality, whether someone has “papers,” religion, or any other nonsensical, often immutable, characteristics. I am sure we all can describe anecdotal evidence, such as happy tends to rely on, to support such a pleasent and reassuring notion.
Indeed, the reality may well be that people vote for our apparent majority of gay hating and fearing legislators merely because they have a R behind their names, giving little thought to the actual discriminatory and hateful policies these legislators will propose or support. But it is impossible to claim to objectively judge how our state ranks, compared to other states, in discriminatory and hateful public policy decisions based only on anecdotal evidence as happy seems to do. Hence, disappointing as it is, happy’s arguments are based on wishful thinking rather than empirical evidence.
Unfortunately, but measured objectively by our actual adopted, proposed and missing laws, it appears that, as a matter of empirical fact, SD public policy has grown into one of the most sexually obsessed, gay and transgender fearing, hateful states in the union. Lo siento mucho, happy.
Exactly, BCB. In the current Living Nonviolence column (on the right margin of this blog) the author dissects Paul’s actions in response to a dream, which led to Christians spreading out across the world to convert heathens. Usually, not peacefully and definitely not what Jesus would. [Acts 16: 9 – 10] All Christians bear the guilt of what was done to Native Americans in the name of Jesus.
My point is to agree with you that the hateful and discriminatory actions by the Republicans in Pierre are absolutely hate and discrimination by the people who elected them. If you voted for legislators who are hateful and discriminatory YOU YOURSELF are hateful and discriminatory.
Wait, how do you conflate “related” and “solely attributable to”, Jason? I get that you like being the devil’s advocate, but be less stupid about it.
Porter, criminal law has a provision that is consistent with your argument. Someone can be convicted of legally intending to commit many criminal acts if a jury finds “wilful blindness.” The idea is that we cannot close our eyes to the obvious consequences of things we do, and thereby escape culpability.
Good arguments BCB and Porter.
There are anecdotes to disprove anything and everything. Except they don’t. I think it’s great that HC has had positive experiences and I wouldn’t take that away from him.
It’s fair to say an LBTG person may have positive experiences in SD, but it’s dishonest to tell her she should not expect to experience discrimination and hate when that is encoded in state law.
This quote from an article in the New Yorker vividly describes how the Wrong looks at sex, and to them LBTG is All About the Sex:
“We keep looking for a set of laws that will save us,” Bolz-Weber told me. “Relying on grace can feel shaky. If it’s free it must be worthless.” As a result, both men and women lead fractured lives, believing that their sexuality is at odds with their spirituality. “This idea that salvation comes through sexual repression. ”
Nadia Bolz-Weber is an ordained pastor in the ELCA and tends toward the classical tradition of Protestant Christianity, along the lines of Martin Luther and others of the 14th and 15th centuries. She scares the crap out of today’s “conservative/evangelical/fundamentalist” Christians because they’re actually not. Rev. Bolz-Weber is.
She’s touring in promotion of her book, “Shameless.”
The entire article is here: https://goo.gl/yKvCfw
Just to clarify the connection, that thinking is that controlling one’s sexual urges and behavior, especially women’s, is salvific. Hence all the laws controlling women’s sexual activity– abortion, birth control, doctor visits, medical options.
The fixation on LBTG folks being All About the Sex is based not on the lived reality of LBTG lives, but on the Wrong’s mental and emotional obsession with sex and male dominance.
There is no male to dominate 2 lesbians so that’s problematic. One of 2 gay males is in the receiving position sexually and that’s an extremely upsetting problem to those who believe male dominance is a god created relationship. Hence, LBTG are completely wrong and must be stopped.
The Wrong is determined to foist their sexual issues on the rest of the country. Rev. Bolz-Weber’s new book, “Shameless,” is an effort to return Christianity to the sexual ethos and place of Jesus Christ and the Christian Bible. She takes her cues from the great Christian thinkers of the Reformation, Martin Luther, Charles Zwingli, John Calvin and others.
This reformation is overdue and most welcome.
Hey, Hap, tell us again why you don’t use your real name here?
Just learned this very evening Shep Smith of Fake Noize is Gay. Who knew. No wonder he is one of the few talking heads at Fake Noize that doesn’t make stuff up.