Tag: lgbt

California Has Gay-Certification Program To Tap Into $633 Million For “LGBT” Businesses

Americans are used to handouts for favored groups. Affirmative action in university admissions, corporate “diversity” initiatives, and minority-owned contracting requirements direct opportunities, resources, and contracts to supposedly “oppressed” groups, such as women, Native Americans, blacks, and Hispanics.

In California, state Democrats have embraced another kind of favoritism: contracts for state-certified gay-owned businesses.

The scheme operates through the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which regulates privately owned utility companies. California utilities spent more than $43 billion in 2024 on contractors—fuel suppliers, surveyors, engineers, and others—whose work helps deliver water, gas, electricity, and internet service to California’s 39 million residents.

In 1986, Governor George Deukmejian signed Assembly Bill 3678, which required certain CPUC-regulated utilities to submit annual “plans” for buying goods and services from woman- and minority-owned companies. Two years later, CPUC created its “Supplier Diversity Program,” which would enforce the law and set contracting “goals” for large utilities.

Under a series of Democratic governors, the program has expanded to include gay-owned businesses. In September 2014, then-Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring CPUC to recognize “LGBT-owned businesses” as eligible for supplier-diversity benefits. Five years later, Governor Gavin Newsom expanded the program further, “encouraging” other companies involved in the energy sector to award contracts to gay-owned firms.

In the years that followed, CPUC faced activist pressure as it implemented the gay expansion. BuildOUT California, a since-rebranded LGBT building-industry organization, sent a letter to the commission arguing that “homophobia” existed within “the ranks of the utility companies.” The state’s legislative LGBTQ caucus suggested in a 2021 letter that even considering lower gay-procurement targets was “an insult to the LGBTQ+ community.”

By 2022, CPUC had fully implemented the expansion. In practice, this meant establishing a “goal” for utility companies with annual revenues exceeding $25 million to buy things from state-certified LGBT businesses: 0.5 percent of procurement in 2022; 1 percent in 2023; and 1.5 percent in 2024 and beyond. If “large” CPUC-regulated utilities met these “goals” in 2024, they would have sent roughly $633 million to LGBT-owned firms.

This scheme raises an obvious question: How does a business qualify as officially gay? Paperwork. Supplier Clearinghouse, a group that certifies firms for the CPUC program, features a list of qualifications linked on its website. Applicants can secure certification by providing a letter from an “LGBT organization” attesting to their sexual preferences; proof that a newspaper identified them as “LGBT”; or three letters from “personal contacts” written “on company letterhead” attesting to their homosexual orientation. Corporate officials who “falsely represent” their business as gay face up to a year in county jail.

Supplier Clearinghouse also accepts gay-certification letters from the National LGBTQ+ & Allied Chamber of Commerce. The chamber has its own list of accepted documents, including human resources complaints or police records claiming LGBT discrimination. As NGLCC states on its website, “Certification is a journey, not a destination.”

Mary Ann Horton has experienced this “journey” firsthand. Horton, an early internet pioneer credited with helping develop the e-mail attachment, is a white male who “transitioned” and is now married to a woman. Horton’s company, Red Ace, is registered in California as a woman- and LGBT-owned business.

Keep reading

California Gay Business Certification Another Dem Lurch to the Prog Fringe

Our jumping off point is a real doozy, even by California lunatic fringe standards. Had I not read it on one of our sister sites, I probably would have triple-checked it. This is from my Townhall colleague Joseph Chalfant:

A new report from the City Journal revealed the “LGBTBE Certification” process that individuals must go through should they wish to receive preferential treatment in the taxpayer-funded contract bidding process in the state of California.

For those who haven’t updated their Victim Group Alphabet Soup glossaries, LGBTBE stands for “LGBT Business Enterprise.” I don’t know why the “++” was left out or how the “Q” was dropped. Perhaps they were lost during one of the many times that the goal posts were being moved. 

Check out all of Joseph’s post. The state of California requires extensive documentation for businesses to prove that they are gay enough for gay contract money. That’s rich coming from a state that insists that asking for identification to vote is racist and disenfranchises people. 

Don’t they care about gay business owners who may not be able to provide “Proof of domestic partnership health insurance utilization” or any of the other proof of gayness documents that the Golden State wants before it signs any checks?

There are some old school elders of the village in the Democratic Party who freely admit that the party has lost its way on so many issues, most notable among them being former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. He’s exploring a run for president in 2028 and hopes to get his party to focus on issues that matter to regular Americans. 

His party doesn’t seem to be paying attention. Nobody on the left is, they all just keep rushing headlong to the far left edges of the Milky Way galaxy. 

The “you will be made to care” agenda regarding all things LGBTQ++ is still in full swing and continues to manifest itself in ways that would indicate nothing but complete disdain for anything that even glances toward the center. 

Recently, Major League Baseball forced its players to wear caps that had Pride flag rainbows on the logos. Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen didn’t play along, and the enemy of the people media was aghast. Three members of the San Francisco Giants responded by writing Bible verses on their caps, and the San Francisco Chronicle said they defaced them. My Twitchy colleague Brett T. covered that here.

Keep reading

Biden Judge Blocks Idaho Law Criminalizing Transgender Bathroom Use

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked Idaho’s law that criminalized transgender bathroom use.

US District Judge Amanda Brailsford, a Biden appointee, issued a preliminary injunction blocking Idaho’s H.B. 752, which banned transgender people from using restrooms that did not match their biological gender.

Idaho’s law, which was set to go into effect on July 1, threatened to jail transgender people for five years if they broke the law.

The ghouls at the ACLU celebrated the judge’s ruling.

“This ruling means trans folks in Idaho can continue participating in public life without the threat of being arrested for using the bathroom,” said Paul Carlos Southwick, ACLU of Idaho Legal Director. “Trans Idahoans have been understandably anxious about the disruption this unconstitutional law would cause in their daily lives. This ruling will relieve that anxiety for our trans friends and neighbors.”

“This decision provides significant protections for transgender people in Idaho from the efforts of state politicians to force them out of public life altogether,” said Barbara Schwabauer, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. “No one should be forced to choose between the threat of arrest for being themselves in public or the threat of harassment and violence for acting the way the state wants them to be. The preliminary injunction is a vital first step as we continue to challenge this gross violation of privacy and fundamental equality until the law is blocked for good.”

“Our Constitution provides critical protections against laws that are unclear and that call on officers to make arbitrary judgments about how to enforce them, especially when the law threatens imprisonment,” said Kell Olson, Counsel with Lambda Legal. “The court recognized that threat in providing relief to plaintiffs today. This ruling will allow transgender people throughout Idaho to find and use a public restroom, without the fear of arrest looming over them, while we continue the longer fight to permanently defeat this discriminatory law in court.”

Keep reading

Family Owned Bakery in Minnesota Targeted by LGBT Mob for Celebrating ‘Nuclear Family Month’

Rather than bow to whatever PC celebration is being forced on businesses in any given month, the owners of Carl’s Bakery & Coffee Shop in Granite Falls, Minnesota, decided to make June a celebration of something that is important to the family-owned business.

In June, the bakery began celebrating ‘Nuclear Family Month,’ but it comes with a cost as they are subjected to targeting from the woke LGBT mob.

Joshua Streblow, the bakery’s owner, told The Christian Post that the monthlong promotion celebrates “the beauty of God’s design and the beauty of God’s declared word with respect to these designs.”

“We want to see all that God has said is good, true, and beautiful, celebrated in every sphere of life. And that includes our own business, that includes on Main Street in which we live and participate, and the town we have generations of life in.”

Carl’s shared on Facebook, “On this 250th anniversary of our great nation’s founding, the list of troubles that plague us is quite long: from economic woes — to general distrust of our institutions– to a precipitously declining national birthrate– to a major breakdown in generational continuity within families that do have children.”

“In short, we find ourselves as a nation in rather perilous and tumultuous times, and our little town is by no means immune from these woes.”

“Rather than fixating on these woes, however, we would like to focus our attention on what we believe both nature’s law and nature’s God reveal as the primary building block for any great society: The Nuclear Family.”

“So out of love for our neighbors and our nation, and in solidarity with our brethren from the great state of Tennessee, for the month of June we wish to celebrate The Nuclear Family!”

“More pointedly, we wish to do so in honor of the only design we believe brings about the multi-generational good we seek, the one instituted by our Creator: one man and one woman in a covenantal (married) relationship, eagerly receiving the fruit of their union (children) as God allows.”

“Along those lines we will be introducing a number of weekly specials and welcome any and all to join in the fun of the month ahead!!”

Keep reading

Elderly Transgender Serial Killer Harvey Marcelin Sentenced to Life Without Parole for Third Brutal Murder and Dismemberment, ‘He Would Kill Again’ 

An 88-year-old New York man who identifies as a woman and has now been convicted of killing three women over six decades was sentenced this week to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Harvey Marcelin, who has also gone by Marceline Harvey, was handed the maximum sentence on Wednesday for the 2022 murder and dismemberment of 68-year-old Susan Leyden.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun sentenced Marcelin after concluding he would “kill again” if ever released.

The sentencing was for Marcelin’s May conviction on charges of first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and concealment of a human corpse.

A Brooklyn jury deliberated for less than one hour before finding him guilty.

Prosecutors said Marcelin killed Leyden in his East New York apartment on February 27, 2022.

The gender-bending lunatic used a reciprocating saw to dismember her body.

Leyden’s headless torso was later found in a plastic bag inside a shopping cart.

Additional body parts, including her head, were recovered from his apartment along with bloody sheets, a hammer, and a saw.

Surveillance video captured Marcelin purchasing the saw and cleaning supplies at a Home Depot.

Marcelin was also recorded at a 99 Cent store riding his electric wheelchair while sitting on one of Leyden’s severed legs as he disposed of evidence.

Marcelin and Leyden had previously lived in the same Bronx homeless shelter.

This was Marcelin’s third conviction for murdering a woman.

In 1963, he was convicted of first-degree murder for shooting his girlfriend, Jacqueline Bonds, in Manhattan. He was paroled in 1984.

Over two decades later, in 1985, Marcelin stabbed another girlfriend, Ana-Laura Sierra, to death. Her body was found in a garbage bag.

Marcelin pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was paroled again in 2019 after promising to stay out of trouble.

Despite serving more than 50 years in prison across two prior terms, Marcelin killed Leyden while still under parole supervision.

At sentencing, Justice Danny Chun stated he had “no hope for rehabilitation” and feared Marcelin would kill again if freed.

“The cold fact is that every time you were released, you killed someone else, which leads this court to believe that, regardless of your age, if you are ever paroled again, I have no doubt that you would kill again,” Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun said, according to a report from the New York Daily News.

Keep reading

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani Announces Multi-Million ‘Investment’ in Gender Affirming Care, Weeks After Claiming City is in ‘Historic’ Budget Crisis

Back in April, New York City’s new Democratic Socialist (communist) Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared that the city was in the midst of an ‘historic’ budget crisis. He framed it as a very serious problem and even claimed that unless new sources of revenue were found, people would be denied various services.

Now, the mayor is announcing that his administration is making a $15 million ‘investment’ in providing ‘gender affirming care’ a term that is flowery language used to describe genital mutilation and the prescribing of hormones.

So which is it? Is the city really that broke, or is there really enough money to spend a cool $15 million on trans drugs and surgeries? And since when was it the responsibility of a city government to provide ANY of this to the people who live there?

Mamdani made the comments at a ‘Pride’ party at city hall.

Keep reading

Why do so many Hollywood celebs have trans or non-binary kids?

Celebrity children identify as trans and non-binary at unbelievable rates. Charlize Theron, Cynthia Nixon, Robert De Niro, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony — whose 18-year-old recently debuted a new name, changing from Emme to Oskar — are just a few of the stars with children who aren’t living as their birth sex.

There’s nothing wrong with being trans. But such an unlikely concentration in a particular community should give one pause — especially when so many of these kids began playing with gender at shockingly young ages.

In a geography where having a trans child has a tinge of chicness to it, one has to wonder: Is this partially due to social contagion? And, if so, don’t parents have a duty to their children to approach the issue of gender with compassionate skepticism?

Theron, Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dwyane Wade, Mel B, Annette Bening and Warren Beatty — I could go on. The list seems endless and, at a certain point, just starts feeling statistically improbable.

Megan Fox may be the most alarming case. She has not one, not two, but three sons — ages 9 to 13 — who have been photographed out and about with her sporting long pink hair, dresses and shirts with messages about “Strong girls.”

When her eldest started wearing dresses at the ripe age of 2, “I bought a bunch of books that … addressed a full spectrum,” Fox said in a 2022 interview with Glamour UK. “Some of the books are written by transgender children, some of the books are just about how you can be a boy and wear a dress.”

Keep reading

OUTRAGE! HelloFresh Goes Full Pride Month Cringe With Crude ‘BOTTOMSUP’ Discount Code—Grindr Jumps Into Comments

Another major brand has decided customers no longer deserve normal marketing.

HelloFresh, the meal-kit company that built its name delivering dinner boxes to American families, posted a bizarre Pride Month “official statement” on Instagram. The graphic began like a normal woke corporate Pride post, but quickly turned into adult innuendo. 

The company wrote that “eating isn’t always a top priority” during Pride Month, then promoted “high-fiber recipes” for those who are “prepping.”

The joke was not subtle. It was a sexualized Pride Month joke wrapped in the language of a meal-kit advertisement.

Then it got worse.

One user asked HelloFresh for a Pride Month discount code called “BOTTOMSUP.” HelloFresh responded by telling the user to “Use code BOTTOMSUP” for a Pride Month discount, adding, “you ask we deliver. Literally.”

Keep reading

Another Huge Victory Against the Transgender Cult

The Trump administration keeps stacking wins for parents and kids, and this one is a big deal. The Justice Department announced a landmark resolution with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, forcing one of America’s most prominent hospital systems to stop performing gender-reassignment procedures on minors.

The transgender movement’s grip on American medicine is loosening fast.

Cleveland Clinic agreed to a decades-long commitment to stop performing or even offering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or any other sex-rejecting procedure to minors. The agreement came as part of deals with both the DOJ and the Ohio Attorney General. The clinic will pay a $308,000 penalty after investigators found it submitted false billings to public and private insurers to secure coverage for these procedures on children. Cleveland Clinic also committed $2 million to fund restorative care for detransitioners, people harmed by these procedures as kids, regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay.

For years, not only has the transgender cult refused to acknowledge the existence of detransitioners, but the medical establishment has dismissed them, minimized their suffering, and assured everyone that the consequences of these procedures were manageable or reversible. Now, one of the country’s biggest hospital networks is writing a multi-million-dollar check to clean up the damage it helped cause. The activists who spent years insisting detransitioners were rare and mostly happy have some explaining to do.

Keep reading

Democrat Running to Replace Pelosi Opened Women’s Prisons to TRANS Inmates and Eased Laws on SEX OFFENDERS

For nearly four decades, Nancy Pelosi represented San Francisco in Congress and became one of the most powerful Democrats in American history. Now, as California voters decide who will replace her, one candidate has emerged as the frontrunner: State Senator Scott Wiener.

Most Americans have probably never heard his name.

That is exactly why his record deserves scrutiny.

Wiener is not just another California Democrat running in a deep-blue district. He is one of the clearest examples of how far the modern Democrat Party has moved from ordinary American values. If elected to Congress, he would bring one of the most extreme records in California politics to Washington.

In the primary race for California’s 11th Congressional District, Wiener advanced to the November general election against San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan. According to recent reports, Wiener led the primary field while Chan, who was backed by Pelosi, finished second. 

The race is now a contest to determine who will inherit one of the safest Democrat seats in the country.

But while the media will likely describe Wiener in polite terms as a “pro-housing” lawmaker or an “LGBTQ rights advocate,” voters deserve to know the rest of the story.

Wiener authored SB 145, a bill that changed sex offender registration rules for certain adults convicted of sexual activity with minors when the age gap is within ten years. Supporters claimed the bill addressed unequal treatment in California law. 

But for many parents, the obvious question was why California lawmakers were focused on weakening sex offender registration requirements in cases involving minors at all.

Wiener also authored SB 107, which made California a refuge state for minors seeking so-called “gender-affirming care.” In practice, the law placed California on the front lines of the transgender medical movement and shielded certain records and proceedings from out-of-state laws. 

For parents across the country who believe children should not be pushed into irreversible medical decisions, this was not moderation. It was radicalism.

He also pushed SB 357, which repealed California’s loitering law related to prostitution, making it harder for law enforcement to respond to prostitution and trafficking concerns in communities already struggling with public disorder.

This is the pattern. On issue after issue, Wiener has used state power to advance the priorities of California’s progressive activist class, even when those priorities collide with public safety, parental rights, and basic common sense.

That is why his congressional campaign matters nationally.

San Francisco is one of the bluest districts in America. Whoever wins Pelosi’s seat will almost certainly become another reliable vote for the Democrat agenda. 

Keep reading