A Texas church has chosen a radically different path from many denominations nationwide. Instead of demonizing LGBTQ+ people, the Galileo Church in Fort Worth has opted to support and welcome the community.
The congregation is particularly disturbed by the state legislature’s recently enacted law that bans healthcare providers from treating trans kids and has launched a program to help families get their children the healthcare they need.
“Health care is a human right, and withholding necessary care for trans kids is state-sponsored cruelty. As neighbors to one another, we seek ways to help each other’s families flourish,” the church says on the website for the new program, the North Texas TRANSportation Network.
The church will assist families who need to travel out of state to get treatment for their children with a $1000 grant. Individual donors and organizations fund the group; no public money is used.
The not-for-profit doesn’t require religious beliefs or church participation from applicants. The only qualification is that families must live in the 19-county northern Texas area and have a trans or gender-diverse child.
“I’m a mother, I have three kids so and I have always been able to get the healthcare for my kids that they desperately needed,” Executive Director Cynthia Daniels told CBS News. “So to me it’s just being a good neighbor to a group of people who have been selected to not be able to receive their healthcare and to me that’s devastating.”
Grants are distributed as the funds become available.
Isn’t Texas famously very rightwing? If so, this is great news!
In general, the rural areas are red and the cities are blue. Austin, Dallas - Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, all center to left leaning. Literally everywhere else is full of repuglicunts or ‘libertarians’.
A greater number of people in the state lean left rather than right, but a greater number of districts lean right rather than left. This is primarily because there are far more rural areas in the state than otherwise, but gerrymandered districts make the problem worse.
From my anecdotal experience growing up, Texas used to be a lot more chill when it came to civil rights. It was a lot more common to hear, “I don’t agree with you, but it’s your right to do it” than it was to experience truly hateful people. They still existed, but the average person tended to get annoyed or offended by the outspoken, hateful people, even if their views aligned. Somewhere along the way it started going downhill (before Trump), and then Trump gave it a big shove which is why Texas is where it is today.
Edit: also, something a lot of people forget is how massive Texas is as a state. Any single European country can comfortably fit inside of Texas with room to spare. There’s a reason why Texans tend to talk about distance in terms of minutes or hours instead of yards or miles.
you think that’s big. My state can fit texas in it 4 times.
One thing that tends to be overlooked is that the Californians and other people that move to TX tend to be hard R voters. In fact, according to the Dallas Morning News, native Texans voted for Beto 51-48 when he ran against Cruz, while people who moved here voted 57-42 in favor of Cruz.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/11/09/native-texans-voted-for-native-texan-beto-o-rourke-transplants-went-for-ted-cruz-exit-poll-shows/
Listen to George HW Bush, from Texas, talking about immigration in a debate with Reagan (who also talks about “an open border both ways”). Reagan ruined a lot of things, but it still used to be different. https://youtu.be/YsmgPp_nlok
Pretty sure all Americans do that. A result of a car based society.
I have heard people talk like that in NYC.
Yeah it’s because miles are meaningless when you’re encountering traffic along the way.
I remember once being just out of walking distance of a place I wanted to go to, the mass transit “distance” being well over an hour, and the taxi “distance” being about ten minutes.
Something is far when it takes me a while with loads of effort to get to it. Something is close when I can get to it quickly and easily. Western PA is further from me than London is. One involves a single flight and one train, the other involves a 10 hour drive with traffic, PA drivers, and PA roads.
How? They use same road. Assuming there are 10 between each for one minute(which is a lot, usually it’s 10-15 seconds), it would add 10 minutes.
For example my route from home to uni takes 45-100 minutes driving, 50 minutes with two changes or 65-70 minutes with one change.
Oh because there wasn’t a direct bus or train route from where I was to where I wanted to go. It was Long Island.
Nah, in Europe same thing except minutes are different. 15 minutes means about 1 kilometer.
Parts of Texas are. Overall it’s about 50/50 politically.
No state is homogenous in their political beliefs. Not any county, city, or street.
Bigger cities tend to be majority Democratic while rural areas are majority Republican but even in both places it isn’t unanimous.
Get enough decent people finding each other and you get acts of compassion that can fight against the tidal wave of bigotry and hate.
Fort Worth is not as right wing, probably the influence of Dallas next to it which leans left.
Rural areas are very red and cities are largely blue. It was shocking to me that this was a church in Fort Worth, that city was a conservative stronghold through Obama’s presidency. It’s only been in the last few years that it has started turning purple and you could start to feel safe in a public space as LGBT.
There is massive gerry-mandering that helps keep R’s in power. For example, downtown San Antonio and downtown Austin were in a dumbell shaped district that extended down I-35 to water down blue votes.
IIRC, TX was one of the first states to enact early voting, which they recently expanded. We have 2 weeks to vote and polls are required to be open for at least 9 hours the first week and required to be open at least 12 hours the second week and final day of voting. Polls can be open on weekdays from 6 AM-10 PM with different hours on Saturday and Sunday, though typically polls tend to be open from 7 AM - 7 PM through the second week. It’s just infuriating that people won’t go early vote on their way to/from work. I’ve lived all over the state and in all major metro areas beside San Antonio and have never waited more than 10-15 minutes in line to vote. Through most of the day, there is no line at all at polling places until the very last day when the procrastinators come to vote.