Monday Mini: Laws to Watch

Anney and Samantha spotlight some laws to keep an eye on in the US, including the ERA, Violence Against Women Act and voter suppression laws.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff
I've never told you protection of I Heart Radio. So
this is gonna come as zero surprise to probably anyone listening,
including you, Samantha. But I have a post it note

(00:26):
on my computer that is it's called nerd cred and
it just has random assortment of things, okay, and you
know it makes sense to me, but it doesn't make
sense to probably anyone else. But it as like I
survived the snap, the Thano snap. I just keep track
of these things. So my question for you today is

(00:47):
do you have a favorite X Man character or do
you have one that people tell you that's who you
would be? And I will tell you why I'm asking this.
This is a very especially knowing the topic we're about
to jump into the left field. Um I I don't
know if I've ever been told I am like a character,

(01:08):
but we know typically when an Asian character is introduced,
and that's that one representative character, people automatically be like
you Asian person, that's you, right, which is what I
know of the original Wolverine story where he goes to Japan,
which I am not Japanese. As a reminder, and they're
all way colder than me. It's also one of those

(01:29):
story lines that I'm like, he sleeps with a very
young girl, and I'm very disturbed by this whole plot
line because they're forcing a romance that's obviously not really
a thing for them. Side note, but would I I
don't think I would be. I don't know. No one's
ever said you remind me of the superhero character, so
I can't really say to that my favorite. I do

(01:50):
love Jane Gray, her complexity is very unique, but I
also love Elliott Pages character, and because I think that
it's really cool that they are able to go through walls. Yeah,
Rogue was my favorite. Rogue originally did that in the comics,
not to be that person, but you are take pride
in that. I try to be a nice version of

(02:12):
that person. Yeah. When I was growing up, I loved
X Men. I did read the comics, and Rogue was
my favorite. I do think her storyline is really interesting
now that I'm older because in the movies, yeah, she
does choose to give up her powers essentially for a boy. Yeah.
I guessed to be able to touch people though, And
that's the thing is, like, I get it, that does suck,

(02:35):
but it also makes her extremely powerful, or she can be.
But I highly recommend Samantha that next time and we
can all hang out in person again and we go
to our local bar, Aspen Bowl. And what your X
man is? Because he's the reason I know. He told
me I'm X twenty three and it's Logan Wolverine's daughter

(02:56):
kind of Oh yeah, anyway, I didn't know either. I
had to look it up. But then I was like, okay, man,
this is the good one, thank you. It's that the
one in the Final Wolverine where he kind of takes her.
She has similar powers to him. I think. So she's
a great character. I was. When I was reading about it,
I was like, bad, thank you. I made a note

(03:18):
of it my nerd cred. But the reason I'm asking
this is because one of my very very favorite slash
complicated slash please don't get me started talking about it
topics is how confusing the Marvel slash d C slash
Sony universes and how it impacted the Soy lines if

(03:38):
you're looking at something like even one division, like, oh
they did that because of weird laws owns what But
they made it into a story for this Samantha's been
with me at a Universal theme park, and I'll be like, well,
because of the contract, Disney can't take away the whole
like I have always. I will go on and on

(03:59):
and on about it, but You've been a great source
for that because I'd be like, wait, wait, wait, because
one of the rituals with one divisions. After I watch it,
I start texting you to find out why. Essentially yes,
and I'm like, let me tell you about this all
between those in the nineties with Marvel and Disney in
twenty century Fox, and You're like, just tell me what's
going on here? It Just tell me what's happening. Stephen

(04:22):
Colbert just did a funny because this is the Snyder
cut just came out and he did like a funny
post credit scene where he was trying to explain like
he had all the like bubble charts of who owns what.
That's really good. But I wanted to bring that up
because we are talking about a handful of laws today
unrelated to comics and entertainment. So before we get into it,

(04:46):
today's date is March and I think when we did
this outline, originally it was like the so a lot
of things have changed and are changing. But we wanted
to talk about the Equal Right Amendments, some updates on
that one and the Violence against Women's Acts and some
voting stuff. So on March the U. S. House passed

(05:11):
the Joint Resolution to do away with the deadline for
ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment, only weeks after a federal
judge ruled that it was too late that they couldn't
change that. The vote was two two and four. In
the words of California Democratic Representative Jackie Sphere, there can
be no expliration date on equality. It now faces a

(05:31):
tough vote in the Senate though, and also the filibuster. So,
but we want to talk about that too much. Yeah,
and you can actually go back to our past episode
on the e r A for more info. But at
the beginning of Virginia became the needed thirty eight state
to ratify into the twenty eighth Amendment. Opponents argue it
is too late that when the bill was originally introduced
in nineteen seventy two, it was set to expire in

(05:53):
nineteen eighty two, but it did not reach the ratification
threshold specified which it didn't is states over the years
have attempted to withdraw the ratification, but the intent of
the e r A s to legally provide protections against
discrimination based on sex, and there have been again attempts
to update it to be more inclusive in terms of gender,
to encompass transgender folks, which really really, really really needed

(06:15):
right now, which conservatives have veheminently protested it against. And
now we see that as a protect our children in
sports bs um and we talked a little bit about
that before. But yeah, Also on March seventeen one, in
the wake of the Atlanta shootings that took the lives
of seven women, the US House voted to re authorize

(06:36):
the Violence Against Women Act, or the v a w A,
after expired in twenty nineteen when the Republican controlled Senate
refused to hear it, though Congress did temporarily authorized funding
to keep programs going, in part because of the rise
of domestic violence during COVID lockdowns. Seventy two Republicans voted
against it, only twenty nine Republicans voted for it. The

(06:56):
language in it is gender neutral, and it calls for
punishment of on tribal offenders on tribal lands and improved
language access finally, so a brief history in nine. This
law was co authored by then Senator Joe Biden and
most recently reauthorized in one of several reauthorizations to broaden

(07:17):
the protections it offered. Its purpose is to provide services
like gender based violence training, national domestic abuse hotlines, and
funding for women's shelter in order to curb stalking, domestic violence,
and sexual assault. When it was first introduced, it allocated
one point six billion to these programs and also implemented
a rape shield law that prohibited prosecutors from using sexual
histories against women. One of the main arguments opponents have

(07:41):
about this act has to do with the so called
boyfriend loophole, which has to do with an unrelated federal
law making it illegal for people convicted of abuse against
a current or former spouse from purchasing a firearm. As
part of the broadening of the v A w A,
boyfriends who have had a training order taken out against them,

(08:02):
or been convicted of stalking, our sexual assault, or assault
against a partner or x would be included in an
instead of spouse just spouse. According to the FBI, boyfriends
are almost as likely to kill and quote intimate partner
as husbands are. In twenty nineteen, the n r A
spoke out against this act because of the boyfriend loophole.

(08:22):
Others say they are against it because it extends protections
to transgender individuals and might as well put this l
in here. But with this and the many instances of
light of shootings that we've seen around the country, we
know that Georgia just passed a law to make it
easier to get guns, even though we just had a

(08:43):
mass shooting a couple of weeks ago, which is a
whole other conversation and it's still going as Colorado also
had their big conversation about the n r A blocking
several bills that allowed for the access to a R
fifteens and still access seen that so uh yeah, of
course the bill isn't perfect. Their debates about contributes to

(09:04):
incosperration of marginalized communities, and these conversations again are worth having,
especially when we talk about the jail system and the
incosperration system in itself. We should have this conversation because
it affects those who are most likely to be victimized
to begin with. But the primary objections by elected of
Republicans about gun rights and trans rights are at the

(09:26):
very least ridiculous and order still waiting to see what
the Senate will do again. Yeah, filipbusters. Oh yeah, that's
the reaction. Yeah. And then we we did want to
touch on some voters suppression news here in our home
stade of Georgia. On Mars t five, Georgia Governor Brian
Kent passed several election laws aimed at making voting more difficult,

(09:48):
including prohibiting volunteers from handing out food and water to
those in line waiting to vote. As many of the
rightly pointed out laws that make it harder to vote,
many voted in racism are what may the line is
longer in the first place. But this is one of
hundreds of similar laws proposed across the country. So right

(10:09):
in Texas is just pushing theirs right now as we
were talking, they are doing the same tactics as Georgia did,
in which they are producing a very large bill and
pushing it through very quickly without allowing a lot of
people access to it, which is what happened to Georgia.
I don't know if it's public for Texas, but that
you're trying to get through very quickly, and yeah, there's

(10:30):
hundreds of proposals all over the country to suppress votes.
And it's very very obvious, even to the fact that
our secretary of State, who was such a hero at
one point in time to Georgia for actually, you know,
going against the president at that time, saying that there's
no signs of fraud and everything's being fine and quit

(10:50):
stalking our people, and yet taking that narrative and pushing
these new laws in saying, quote, it protects and gives
more opportunity, which is bs because you just rearrange English
and yeah, you're giving more access to those who already
have access. Fine blank. So yeah, well, I mean that's
also very frustrating. Part of their argument is like we're

(11:10):
trying to restore faith in the voting system, like you're
the ones that destroyed the faith in voting right anyway, anyway, anyway,
that is definitely something we are are going to keep
an eye on, and we need to keep an eye
on when we talk about the importance of local elections.
This is one of the things that we're talking about. So, yeah,
those are some laws that we I wanted to discuss

(11:34):
in this mini episode if there are any other laws
or initiatives or anything else happening here around the world.
We always love hearing from you listeners. What X men
character are you and why is it not X women.
We've got to be more inclusive, so you're bringing it
back around, huh. If it wasn't clear. X Men is
the most complicated legally in terms of like why Scarlett

(11:57):
Witch in Marvel but not called Scarlet It which anyway,
she is an excellent comics I'm getting off topic. You
can email us all Stuff Media, mom and Stuff I
Heart Media dot com. You can finde us on Twitter
at mom and Stuff podcast or on Instagram at stuff
I Never Told You. Thanks as always to our super
producer Christina. Thank you, Christina, and thanks to you for
listening Stuff I Never Told You his production of Ihar Radio.

(12:18):
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