St. Petersburg, Florida has installed 11-Pride-inspired bike racks along Central Avenue and 25th Street. After Pride street murals were removed earlier this year due to state requirements, the single-colored bike racks in a rainbow array were installed as a substitute.
The racks were funded through the city's long-standing public bike rack program.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/844779981749490
Iran and Egypt, who both criminalize LGBTQ people, were picked to play on a day celebrating L.G.B.T.Q. communities in the Seattle venue for the Men's World Cup. The game in Seattle on June 26 will go all out with rainbow banners, flags, arts and stories to showcase the L.G.B.T.Q. communities in Washington State.
The football associations for Iran and Egypt said on Tuesday that they had both written to FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, objecting to the Pride association with their match, demanding that all such events and displays coinciding with the game be canceled and insisting that the match be designated strictly as a sports event.
Omid Memarian, an Iranian human rights expert and senior fellow at Dawn, an organization based in Washington, D.C., that is focused on U.S. foreign policy, said the idea of Iran’s and Egypt’s national teams playing a Pride Match was “almost surreal because it places some of the world’s most repressive governments on a stage built around openness and equality.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/world/middleeast/iran-egypt-world-cup-seattle-pride.html
Mario Rubio, currently serving as secretary of state, acting national security adviser and acting archivist of the United States, on Tuesday ordered the State Department to immediately cease using the Calibri font and go back to Times New Roman in official communications, reversing another Biden administration policy intended to help employees who are visually impaired or have low-vision issues.
Accessibility and vision impairment advocacy groups have widely recommended and advocated for sans serif fonts. They say that letters without decorative “wings” and “feet” (the small lines or strokes at the end of characters, common in serif fonts like Times New Roman) are more legible and easier to read for people with visual impairment.
Rubio believes making life more accessible for folks is a DEI issue. And DEI is "divisive and discriminatory practice has no place in our country or our diplomacy."
Goodness. Able-bodied white heterosexual Christian males are all who matter in this country apparently.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/12/10/calibri-font-rubio-state-department/?utm_campaign=wp_the7&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F4612d0b%2F693aafed52fff23634337bd2%2F69238be2e72028703ff640f9%2F60%2F102%2F693aafed52fff23634337bd2
Typically, people on top of hierarchies believe they have the right to belittle and condemn anyone below them. Donald Trump as a hierarchical male again used his position as President to get away with harassing and name-calling toward women. And as typical, men on top of the gender hierarchy are not held accountable for their treatment of the women they place below them.
On Monday, acting like a typical hierarchical male, Trump lashed out at an ABC News reporter after she pressed him on his comments about controversial military strikes on alleged drug boats, marking the latest instance in recent weeks of the president criticizing a female journalist.
“Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious – a terrible, actually a terrible reporter. And it’s always the same thing with you."
Previously, Trump shushed a Bloomberg News journalist by telling her, “Quiet, piggy.” On Truth Social Trump attacked a female New York Times reporter as “ugly, both inside and out.” On Thanksgiving Trump asked a CBS News correspondent if she was a “stupid person.”
Typical top-of-the-hierarchy tactics keep lower people in their place. And as also typical, those on top justify what they do and expect to not be held accountable for their actions toward lower groups.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5639245-trump-lashes-abc-reporter/
A Catholic church in Massachusetts has defied the Catholic Church hierarchy for now, keeping up its Christmas display, which replaces Jesus, Mary and Joseph with a sign saying “ICE Was Here.” The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has ordered the church to remove the sign.
“The Holy Family is safe in the Sanctuary of our Church,” adds a smaller note inside the Nativity scene, which is protected by a plastic shield. “If you see ICE please call LUCE.” The display includes a phone number for LUCE, an immigrant advocacy group, which tracks the activity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Massachusetts.
Some members and supporters of the Dedham parish said they were confused by the demand from the archdiocese, which came one month after a rare and nearly unanimous statement by U.S. Catholic bishops condemning the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.
In 2018, the church was controversial for depicting the infant Jesus in a cage, a scene church leaders said was a reflection on immigration policy at that time. A year later, the parish emphasized climate change, showing some of the figures partly submerged in water.
Perhaps people inclined to attend a Catholic Church and also want to mitigate the effects of hierarchies might find a church home at St. Susanna Parish in Dedham, Mass.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/us/massachusetts-church-ice-nativity-scene.html
An innovative pilot program for homeless teens in New Mexico giving each $500 a month has seen a 93 percent graduation rate.
Mayfield High School students are among about 330 New Mexico high-schoolers set to join a newly launched state pilot program offering monthly $500 payments to teens experiencing housing insecurity and other issues, conditioned on meeting certain goals.
The payment program was pioneered by New Mexico Appleseed, a child poverty nonprofit that first tested the initiative in 2020. Only 51 percent of the state’s homeless students had graduated the year before, but in the test cohort, 13 of 14 seniors graduated — a 93 percent rate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/12/05/new-mexico-paying-homeless-students/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzY0OTk3MjAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzY2Mzc5NTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3NjQ5OTcyMDAsImp0aSI6IjIzM2E2ZDE1LTYxYWEtNGFmYi1iN2FlLWZlMzhkMjkzNGU3NyIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9uYXRpb24vMjAyNS8xMi8wNS9uZXctbWV4aWNvLXBheWluZy1ob21lbGVzcy1zdHVkZW50cy8ifQ.N2gwCq8mrigs45l2QkZbaGEh3Sjumn6cf69A2rK56RU&fbclid=IwY2xjawOkp4tleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFhN2toS3BaM2ZBT0Z1dGREc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHtQnlRhAmmfhl6tTTjALqVjd69WrTZlUlnO72P787SuGAkkQi4FUT3qnn_MU_aem_kf4e6gXNbABL8tdNxd5RlQ
Of late, so many so-called Christians have used their religion in name only to promote hierarchies where non-whites and non-native-born people are pushed to the bottom.
Today the American Catholic bishops rebuked the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign in starkly moral terms.
The bishops said they “oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people” and “pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/us/bishops-trump-immigration.html