South Dakota’s regressive politics have cost us a shot at hosting the national Botany Conference. In an e-mail to at least one member of the Legislature, the Botanical Society of America and its conference partners say South Dakota’s anti-LGBT policies make us a no-go zone for their member scientists:
We are writing as the Presidents of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, Botanical Society of America, American Fern Society, International Association of Plant Taxonomy, Society for Herbarium Curators, and American Bryological and Lichenological Society, international organizations of professional and student biologists specializing in the plant sciences. Together we hold an annual five-day meeting, which in recent years has attracted more than 1000 attendees to cities such as Rochester, MN, Boise, ID, New Orleans, LA, Fort Worth, TX, St. Louis, MO, Savannah, GA, and Columbus, OH. Our annual conference is known to contribute on the order of $2,000,000 to local economies.
The Executive Boards of the international societies referenced above, have decided not to hold our annual conference in your state. A number of our attendees reside in states that prohibit state-funded travel to South Dakota because your state or local governments have enacted a law that (1) has the effect of voiding or repealing existing state or local protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression; (2) authorizes or requires discrimination against same-sex couples or their families or on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression; or (3) creates an exemption to anti-discrimination laws in order to permit discrimination against same-sex couples or their families or on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
We regret therefore that we will not be considering cities in your state for the location of our annual conference as long as such laws are in place. We hope you will consider this in future decision-making.
Sincerely,
Mark Fishbein, President, American Society of Plant Taxonomists
Andi Wolfe, President, Botanical Society of America
George Yatskievych, President, American Fern Society
Patrick Herendeen, President, International Association for Plant Taxonomy
Patrick Sweeney, President, Society for Herbarium Curators
Catherine LaFarge, President, American Bryological and Lichenological Society [e-mail received by Dakota Free Press 2019.06.18]
South Dakota violates the BSA’s second criterion with 2017 Senate Bill 149, now SDCL 26-6-36 through SDCL 26-6-50, which allows adoption agencies to deny LGBT parents and anyone else who doesn’t live up the agency’s religious standards the opportunity to adopt children.
The Botany 2019 Conference is taking its two million dollars of economic impact to Tuscon, Arizona. The Botany Conference went to Rochester, Minnesota, last year and Madison, Wisconsin, in 2002. Having Sioux Falls mayored by an endorsee of a major anti-LGBT lobbying group likely makes our biggest town even less appealing to 21st-century conference-goers.
Oh well. Who wants a bunch of scientists coming to South Dakota, anyway?
Botanists mostly collect flowers and identify weeds. That’s all well and nice, but I don’t know they’re any more a #RealScientist than is your average pig farmer or lumberjack. That said, it is sad they couldn’t visit Rapid City where they could walk among the forest trees and purple flowers. Now if you got some Nuclear Physicists all combined in one place, like Rapid, with a portable hadron collider or two, you’d really have a conference #4Science, you would.
Well this sucks. My granddaughter just graduated from a Seattle area high school and with my wife (SDSU) and my (DSU) encouragement picked Mitchell SD for continued education start. Maybe SD not such a good state anymore.
South Dakota has lost a nice two-million-dollar economic impact thanks to Al Novstrup’s Sharia for Jesus. Some of those botanists could have ridden Al’s bumper cars. Oh well. We’ll all get our reward in heaven.
It appears there are enough potted plants in Pierre to have a governmental botany expo. Probably good to know South Dakota can afford to shrug off million dollar paydays so the uber-righteous can hate Gays.
We r not evolving with regards to the future or current times, that’s embarrassing
I wonder if this will even be addressed by the
Governor or anyone else ? Apologizing, I mean, not a sorry not sorry………..
We could use two mill in our community
Not to mention state….. you know how many bad roads I have been on lately??? And no money to fix them.
John: it’s not the state you left. It’s hardly recognizable from the state I left in the 1970s. I stupidly returned to care for decrepit parents who hadn’t left the 1960s. That attitude is testament to most voters and politicians. Some pockets of areas still offer opportunities for starting a young career. If so, your grand daughter could use the opportunity, then get out of state. Opportunities will depend on her field, attitude to pursue them, and ability to mask any reasonable political or social ideals of treating others as she would want to be treated. Fakey South Dakota nice is a high art form that most locals use to willfully blind themselves to thinking they are magnanimous when their judgmental imposing of right-wing froth is their reality.
Scott Galloway has a podcast and wrote a book on the subject that, in part, urges, young people to get to a city, early, or be left in the economic, social, and political dumps. So true. I’d kick my kids and grandkids a$$es if they returned or came to the Mississippi of the north. Dropping in for a quick undergrad degree is one thing; but then get out to expand ones economic, social, and political horizons. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2019-05-31/scott-galloway-discusses-the-algebra-of-happiness-podcast
Botany is a vast area of science. It includes epigenetics which is the study of heritable changes in gene function that cannot be explained by changes in the underlying DNA sequence but cause the organism’s genes to behave (or “express themselves”) differently. One example of epigenetic change is the marking of the genes by DNA methylation which determines whether they will be expressed or not.
In short, botany holds the keys to stem cell therapy, to mitigate Alzheimer’s, and possibly helping grudznick back to the common sense he claims he still has.
Botany is an incredibly hot science leading the way in dealing with climate change. Botanists are the ones who become crop specialists trying to find ways to keep farmers afloat in all the rain this spring and springs to come.
Can’t say for sure, but this conference may have given SD farmers a leg up, sure wouldn’t have hurt. But at least the SDGOP gets to take cheap shots at LBTG people.
Aaaaand everybody loses– except the SDGOP leadership. Hmmmm. What is wrong with this picture?
Grudz doesn’t know squat about science, obviously.
I have an MS in Botany, and worked in a lab and in the field research on a number of projects before going into environmental activism. Collecting plants is one small aspect of plant taxonomy, which is one small part of what is known as the science of botany. I was involved in plant physiology and plant ecology. Yes, you often do have to collect plants if you are going to study plants. However, it’s not as simple as pulling a plant up by the roots. There is often a randomized sampling plan and a lot of field work involved, and then you have to go into the lab for further work.
One project I worked on involved aquatic plants collected, processed and tested for phosphorus to understand the seasonal cycling of phosphorus in a lake. This research helped build and test one of the first computer models of lake ecosystems. Another project was to determine how the changed flow and heat regime of water expelled from the cooling towers of a coal fired power plant affected the carbohydrate storage in Typha latifolia (cattails).
South Dakota has some very famous botanist and it would have been great for them to have had this conference in the state. Unfortunately for them and South Dakota, botanists don’t support hate, so they had to pass for the time being. When South Dakota stops the hate, the botanists will be happy to spend their money in the state.
This link provides a list of botany journals. This doesn’t even include ecology and genetics journals, or specialized journals on various types of plants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_botany_journals
By the way, I’m going to forego my Lincoln High Class of 69 Reunion this summer for the same reason. I won’t support hate with my dollars.
You are your own bore-hole, Grudznick.
“A number of our attendees reside in states that prohibit state-funded travel to South Dakota”. It isn’t just the Botanists that won’t be coming. I hope they all write letters.
Botanists study biodiversity, which is just code for “Liberal’s letting immigrants pour into our country.”
That’s all it means – to the average rural.
Dumb asses in Pierre losing millions for being anti-gay. I will never ever begin to understand why SOuth Dakotans vote against their best interests.
The LGBT 🏳️🌈 community takes the anti-gay agenda very seriously. Millions of straight supporters take discrimination very seriously also. Keep losing millions SD if you choose to discriminate.
I second that Donald Pay, I was planning a trip to the Black Hills in July but am upset enough that I will not be spending any money in South Dakota.
It doesn’t take much for a boycott of South Dakota when you have one of the biggest gay pride organizations in the Twin Cities. All I have to do is send them the Make Marriage Great again picture of the governor’s daughters wedding. That photo says it all when it comes to hate and discrimination.
Good idea with the photo Jenny. Minnesota Pride is this week with the big finale this weekend. Many politicians will participate in the parade Sunday morning and next year every Democrat and a few moderate Republicans will walk the parade route, tossing candy and shaking every hand they can grab.
It’s not that LBTG alone is such excellent politics, but equality for all is, and that’s been the goal of LBTG organizers forever. That’s the fearsome “Gay Agenda”: Equality.
Spread that photo far and wide, Jenny.
http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-good-ol-days-are-over.html
Truer words seldom spoken.