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Chairman Carr weighs whether to flag shows with trans or non-binary ‘programming’

"Just add a label"... a pink triangle, perhaps? Labelling undesirable people so they can be shunned has a long and dark history.

Carr's "suggestion" only refers to "gender identity", not specifically transgender identity. It is so poorly written that any acknowledgement of the differences between genders could run afoul of it. Better not have a program teaching kids Spanish, a language in which even inanimate objects have gender identities!

It's just as bad as the "Don't Say Gay" bills which attempted to ban any reference to sexual orientation, not realizing that straight people have a sexual orientation, too.
My state just passed a bill to out anyone receiving gender affirming care. Lists of "undesirables" has a bad history.
 
This goes back to why the constitution said no government imposed religion. They knew that would lead to government imposed morality. That's what's happening here. They want parent's rights, but only for parents they approve who have their same morality. That's against the law. The FCC can't use the power of the government to impose morality. If parents are concerned about what's on TV, don't buy a TV. Or use the parent controls to restrict the channels they receive. The tools are already there. Use them.

We had this same problem with Tipper Gore. Yes parents are complaining. That isn't a role for government.
 
Thinking of what you say here, maybe there should be a single symbol about "sexual preferences" that is separate from "sexual acts" that covers heterosexual behaviours as well.
I believe the terminology is “sexual orientation”, not “sexual preference” as it is not something a person chooses.

Next I’d be expecting Carr to want a special label on programming involving 2 years individuals having sex that are not married to each other, as that also goes against the beliefs of some individuals.
 
Would Bosom Buddies reruns need a warning? M*A*S*H?

This whole pearl-clutching nonsense would be comical if it wasn’t so insidious. Every damn Disney movie for decades was a princess in search of her prince. Even in the era where we didn’t dare show a bed for married couples, straight couples were the exclusive prototype. And when the concept of “gay” was introduced, it was as a mean-spirited punchline for years.

The hypocrisy is off the charts. We’re not warning people a straight person exists or finds someone of the other gender attractive. We’re not talking showing or strongly suggesting sexual activity, just someone existing and not hiding who they are. Oh the horror. The horror. These same groups are so concerned about things like teachers mentioning a spouse or partner only when it’s a same-sex partner. But the straight teachers who mention their spouse? Cool. Even when the straight teacher is pregnant, just a basic matter of biology, that in most cases means we know how they got that way as adults, but kids hearing one of their teachers is married to someone of the same gender? That’s a bridge too far.

Spare us the “don’t want our kids exposed to sexual preferences” when you’re damn well fine if the vast majority of content showing straight couples doesn’t get you riled up, only when someone in the LGBTQIA 🏳️‍🌈 community is depicted. No amount of linguistic contortions changes the reality when you don’t bat an eye at straight people being themselves but have an issue when a non-straight, non-cis character is acknowledged.

This commissioner and this entire administration has made it one of their missions to demonize and degrade the LGBTQIA community. This is one more bad idea from an FCC hell-bent on supporting the agenda. It’s no less insidious even if we presume it to be just red meat for the base without a concrete plan. When we dismiss the deliberate cruelty as just politicians being political, we dismiss the very real harm it causes to very real people.
 
This goes back to why the constitution said no government imposed religion. They knew that would lead to government imposed morality. That's what's happening here. They want parent's rights, but only for parents they approve who have their same morality. That's against the law. The FCC can't use the power of the government to impose morality. If parents are concerned about what's on TV, don't buy a TV. Or use the parent controls to restrict the channels they receive. The tools are already there. Use them.

We had this same problem with Tipper Gore. Yes parents are complaining. That isn't a role for government.
The crazy part the more I read on this proposal Chairman Carr is saying it sounds more like targeting Youtube Pundits and certain political blogs like "The Bulwark" whose pundits happens to be defenders of Trans Rights and some of their op-ed writers are former Republicans. Yes I get the reference Trans People and Ex-Republicans happens to be tied for groups Trump supporters hate the most.




 
The FCC can't use the power of the government to impose morality.
Perhaps we should recognize this administration does a great number of things they “can’t” do. And the track record of SCOTUS letting them is at best mixed. They absolutely can, if they choose, use the power of the government, whether by actually creating rules and regulations or using extortion to accomplish the same thing minus the paperwork.
If parents are concerned about what's on TV, don't buy a TV. Or use the parent controls to restrict the channels they receive. The tools are already there. Use them.
In theory, if one believed a single word of conservative rhetoric over the past decades, yes. That would be entirely consistent with the stated ideas of small government, individual liberty and the like. What we have come to see play out is very different. Liberty and rights belong to those deemed worthy of having them, and that is not the LGBTQIA community. The party of small government uses the FCC and other entities to enforce what it wants by beating entities into submission. It tries to override states’ rights on issues that it constitutionally has no actual business interfering in.
We had this same problem with Tipper Gore. Yes parents are complaining. That isn't a role for government.
Lots of things aren’t, but what we have now is something turned upside down, where things the government has no role in, it just takes, while dismantling the things it does have a valid role in.
 
Tyler Perry has become a very wealthy man with movies featuring him in drag as "Madea." He's anything but a wild-eyed "lib." He produces middle-brow, family-centric TV sitcoms and films for African-American audiences, contrasting sharply with other black filmmakers' works that feature violence, bad language and sexual content. Would his work be flagged by the FCC?
Don't forget Milton Berle.

He appeared as a man and his wife in the RATT video "Round and Round". I think a relative of his produced the video.
 
How would this be less constitutional than the current symbols and descriptions that involve sex, drugs, smoking, violence, etcetera?

The ratings (such as they are) are not handled by the Federal government. For movies, it's the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) that does the ratings. The closest that I can think of for any government monitoring was the stickers that the RIAA placed on some albums at the request of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC, if I remember correctly). That organization was headed by Elizabeth "Tipper" Gore, the wife of the then-Democratic Senator from Tenessee, Al Gore. But, as far as I know, he wasn't physically involved in the project, even if he morally supported it.

The problem here is not the evaluation (though I may have personal problems with that) but who is doing the evaluating. If the Federal government is doing the evaluating, then you run up against First Amendment protections that don't apply with private groups doing the evaluating. Also, Mr. Carr, as representative of an agency that issues licenses to both radio and television stations, would, in practice, be making it clear which stations he prefers to have licenses and which he does not by the evaluations made of the shows being aired by those stations. And I think that the ACLU and other civil liberties groups would be justified in suing the government if it ever tried to implement an evaluation of radio and television shows based on transgender and gender sexual issues.

There is a narrow window that the courts have allowed in the past in which the Federal government can act and that window involves obscenity and pornography. Unfortunately, both terms are categorically very difficult to define (what one person considers to be lascivious and prurient may be considered by another to have artistic merit.)
 
The ratings (such as they are) are not handled by the Federal government.

Exactly. For some reason, this administration is far more intrusive than the previous one in terms of individual rights & liberties. They also assume that people in this group are all democrats or liberals, so it doesn't affect them politically. They're wrong about that. They like to make these assumptions about people, that all minorities are liberals. The problem with that thinking is they're generalizing about taxpaying citizens who are all subject to the laws of the US. As a result it is textbook discrimination.
 
Exactly. For some reason, this administration is far more intrusive than the previous one in terms of individual rights & liberties.
For “some reason.” We know the reasons. We see who, exactly, is in the crosshairs. Let’s stop sugarcoating what’s happening or pretending it’s some kind of mystery.
They also assume that people in this group are all democrats or liberals, so it doesn't affect them politically. They're wrong about that. They like to make these assumptions about people, that all minorities are liberals. The problem with that thinking is they're generalizing about taxpaying citizens who are all subject to the laws of the US. As a result it is textbook discrimination.
The problem with that thinking is also racism, sexism, bigotry and xenophobia.
 
The whole thing is a made up problem. It's being used by politicians to rile up their base and get elected,
True also consider who Chairman Carr is pleasing here with his proposed FCC plans. Yes some of the endorsers of the chairman plans are Bari Weiss and David Ellison and its to get Paramount and WB to merge. It has nothing to do with kids shows its all to do with how news outlets cover certain stories that pleases the Chairman and White House.


A senior standards director at CBS News told staffers on Tuesday to use the term “biological sex at birth” without quotations when referring to a case before the Supreme Court challenging state bans on transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports, a break from its prior newsroom guidance.

Tom Burke, the network’s senior director of standards and practices, wrote in Tuesday’s memo that CBS News “will use the term biological sex at birth” with “no quotes needed” when describing arguments from West Virginia and Idaho defending their law that bans trans athletes. The company has been without a formal head of standards since October after Claudia Milne left.


Bari Weiss’ history of supporting anti-transgender politics​

While Weiss has publicly identified herself as being “pro-gay marriage,” her work and publication’s history show a consistent opposition to transgender rights, including the right for trans female athletes to play on female sports teams and the right of young trans people to obtain gender-affirming care.
 
Would Bosom Buddies reruns need a warning? M*A*S*H?

This whole pearl-clutching nonsense would be comical if it wasn’t so insidious. Every damn Disney movie for decades was a princess in search of her prince. Even in the era where we didn’t dare show a bed for married couples, straight couples were the exclusive prototype. And when the concept of “gay” was introduced, it was as a mean-spirited punchline for years.

The hypocrisy is off the charts. We’re not warning people a straight person exists or finds someone of the other gender attractive. We’re not talking showing or strongly suggesting sexual activity, just someone existing and not hiding who they are. Oh the horror. The horror. These same groups are so concerned about things like teachers mentioning a spouse or partner only when it’s a same-sex partner. But the straight teachers who mention their spouse? Cool. Even when the straight teacher is pregnant, just a basic matter of biology, that in most cases means we know how they got that way as adults, but kids hearing one of their teachers is married to someone of the same gender? That’s a bridge too far.

Spare us the “don’t want our kids exposed to sexual preferences” when you’re damn well fine if the vast majority of content showing straight couples doesn’t get you riled up, only when someone in the LGBTQIA 🏳️‍🌈 community is depicted. No amount of linguistic contortions changes the reality when you don’t bat an eye at straight people being themselves but have an issue when a non-straight, non-cis character is acknowledged.

This commissioner and this entire administration has made it one of their missions to demonize and degrade the LGBTQIA community. This is one more bad idea from an FCC hell-bent on supporting the agenda. It’s no less insidious even if we presume it to be just red meat for the base without a concrete plan. When we dismiss the deliberate cruelty as just politicians being political, we dismiss the very real harm it causes to very real people.
Tennessee's legislative session just ended, and the legislature made it very clear the LGBTQ community is NOT welcome, and that only straight, white, "Christian" Republicans are welcome. All those detention centers aren't going to only be for immigrants.
 
This seems like Carr making another attempt to show that he's a demagogue.

But if he's going to suggest a new label for transgender content, why stop there? After all, if the goal is to ensure that everything that might offend some parent somewhere is labelled, adding a label for transgender people is only the beginning. Since some parents may want to be warned before their kids are exposed to political content they disagree with, we'll need labels for political content -- and probably separate labels for left-wing and right-wing content. Same thing about religion, so we'll need labels to cover the various religions to ensure children aren't inadvertently exposed to content for a religion contrary to their parents' beliefs. And since some of the right-wingers don't want their kids exposed to accurate scientific information or uncensored history, we'll need labels for those things, as well.

And we can keep adding to that list until we have more labels than there are letters in the alphabet.

Alternatively, we can recognize what Carr is trying to do here and say "enough, already".
 
They never did drugs and smoking. Only language, dialogue, sex and violence.
Several of the channels and services I watch now add "drug usage" and "smoking" among their own warning / advisory categories at the start of each show or movie.
 
Several of the channels and services I watch now add "drug usage" and "smoking" among their own warning / advisory categories at the start of each show or movie.
I subscribe to DAZN, mainly for boxing. Every live event is preceded by three warnings: "strong language," "sporting violence" and "flashing lights." You wouldn't think that last one would be a concern in a boxing telecast, but it is, since every boxer now has an elaborate "ring walk" entrance routine featuring lights, smoke, pyro, etc.
 
Several of the channels and services I watch now add "drug usage" and "smoking" among their own warning / advisory categories at the start of each show or movie.
Those don't go in a box. I have seen warnings that weren't in a box when I stayed in motels, but not on broadcast TV which is pretty much all I have at home, unless there was a strong viewer discretion advised warning, which only included the traditional warnings.
 


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