#rpbp

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From cocaine ODs and DUIs to racial slurs.

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Proud to be featured by the Women's Media Center and eagerly awaiting your calls about this administration's ongoing all-out assault on the freedom of the press.

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No, supporting trans rights doesn’t cost elections

Opinion: Supporting protections for transgender people is not just necessary, it's crucial, argues LPAC's Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza.

“It's easy amidst the 'woke' wars to claim that supporting protections for transgender people is not just unnecessary but toxic. Democrats who stay quiet can pacify moderates and even draw conservatives without losing base voters — so goes the story.

But this facile take isn't true. Just ask Americans.”

Check out this piece drawing on polling from a wide range of sources for the real story when it comes to supporting trans rights and lives.

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If you haven't tuned into The Politics Bar yet, you're missing out. Here's September 2's Posse Comitatus episode via Spotify in which we get it mostly right on the Supreme Court's posse comitatus ruling, coming at it from a few different legal perspectives. Find them on Bluesky,

Find hosts Jody Hamilton and Shawn "Smith" Peirce as well as The Politics Bar feed on Bluesky and be sure to check out their newsletter.

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Though just one of many improbabilities that make up my life, my Catholicism is, to many people, the most confusing. A then-engaged lesbian, I was baptized and confirmed at 27 while in law school, though only after a discussion about primacy of conscience, a phrase that makes every Jesuit I’ve ever met light up as if I’ve confirmed a winning lottery ticket.

In short, if you’re Catholic, a real Catholic, a not-JD Vance-Catholic, you understand that it is possible that in complex moral circumstances your conscience — “where God reveals himself,” in Pope Francis’s words — may show you the way rather than whichever priest happens to be in the confessional that day or whichever cadre of lay Catholics feels like taking a retrograde stand.

My faith in Catholicism's potential for good and desire to serve as a godmother overcame my feelings around and knowledge of individual and institutional wrongs, past and present. This is not to say I didn’t live them through transgenerational and firsthand trauma. I did and do as a second-generation Colombian-American and a lesbian.

Today, my faith is stronger than ever. So, too, though, is my concern: The stakes could not be higher as we await a new pope.

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Substackage

As I await completion of a new, more era-appropriate site (rpbp.io), taking a moment to let you know you can find me on Substack — where I am soon to become much more active.

Please follow me at Substack, Bsky, X, Instagram, and a Facebook Page. Let me know what I've missed!

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"A binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court is in reach—if not right away. Despite facing unprecedented negative public opinion, the justices refused to do more than issue vague language on ethics without a mechanism of enforcement. Chief Justice John Roberts phoned in a dismissive letter, rather than addressing the Senate Judiciary Committee.

These actions attracted rather than alleviated concern. As a result, reform proposals have gained both congressional traction and public favor."

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Always delighted to contribute to TIME, though hoping someday soon it'll be about cheerier topics. This terrific, incisive essay is about the future of LGBTQ—and, let's be honest, pretty much all other rights—before this Supreme Court and heading into the 2024 election.

“People think that marriage equality is a fait accompli,” says Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, a former spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee and Yale Law graduate who is on the board of LPAC, which raises money to help lesbians and their allies win elections. “They think that not just because of Obergefell but because of the Respect for Marriage Act. They're wrong—dangerously wrong.”

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“The distillation of the crisis we face to whether Obergefell falls is apt and, in a way, an inversion of a familiar problem: the conflation of marriage equality with what it takes to protect LGBTQ+ people in day-to-day life,” says Buckwalter-Poza. “We didn't win civil rights for queer and trans folks across the board just by winning Obergefell, but we absolutely do stand to lose everything if we lose Obergefell.”