Trans Teens And Catholic Schools

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Trans Issues At Local Catholic School

A group of LGBT alumni from St. Thomas More, a Catholic high school in Lafayette, are calling for a meeting with the school, students, and even the Diocese of Lafayette over a policy the school moved to the front of its student handbook.

The policy says the school will provide an environment “consistent with Roman Catholic teachings and principles.” Essentially, the policy prohibits behavior and expressions of a person’s sexual identity at school that are inconsistent with Catholic principles. Critics of the policy were especially alarmed that the school placed the new policy at the front of its handbook.
Blue Rolfes, spokesperson for the diocese and its schools, said Friday that the sexual identity policy’s tenets are not new. What has changed, she said, is that the policy is spelled out in school documents.
“Our focus is on children in the schools following what the church teaches,” she said.
Conversely, the fledgling alumni group said in its statement, “We ask that the policy be repealed and that students be allowed to use pronouns, names, uniforms and facilities according to their gender identity.”

One of the spokespeople for the group, Thomas Luke, will be joining the show today. That interview will be posted later.

Joe Manchin's Favorability Plummets

Some caveats that I would be remiss in not sharing. First of all, YouGov is not exactly reliable in its polling, their polling focuses on “registered voters” rather than “likely voters,” and, lastly, this is a poll of Americans, not exclusively West Virginians.

All of that said, however, this isn't good for Manchin but its even worse for Democrats. One does have to wonder if he decided to cash in his chips and roll out after this term, but if one of the more popular Democratic Senators is suddenly floundering in the polls, that doesn't bode very well.

Jobless Claims Are Up

Despite a jobs report last week that Democrats were hailing, the Labor Department released jobless claims today. The total claims are up from last week.

Figures released Thursday by the Labor Department show that applications for the week ended Aug. 6 rose to 262,000 from the downwardly revised 248,000 recorded a week earlier. That is above the 2019 pre-pandemic average of 218,000 claims and marks the highest level since mid-November.
Continuing claims, or the number of Americans who are consecutively receiving unemployment aid, rose slightly to 1.428 million for the week ended July 30, up by 8,000 from the previous week's revised level. One year ago, nearly 12.96 million Americans were receiving unemployment benefits.

The economy is more unstable than anything right now, and that includes the job market - even as the Biden administration points to it as the surest sign we're not in a recession.

Headlines Of The Day

U.S. Home Prices Jumped to Record High in Second Quarter (Wall Street Journal)
Mortgage rates climb above 5% once again (CNN)
Sales in Lafayette Parish in June lagged behind inflation rate (The Advocate)
Whole Foods Founder and CEO Says Socialists are 'Taking Over,' American Liberties are Threatened (RedState)
Democrats’ Inane Stock-Buyback Tax (National Review)

Tweet Of The Day