conservatism

"Let's not forget what we're seeing across the country from statehouses: more than 600 pieces of legislation, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. A few hundred of those are against transgender youth. And so we have not seen that type of 'anti' sentiment, anti — against this community in decades. We also need to make sure that we let the community know that the President has their back and we're going to continue to fight for them."

"Of course, I have been covering the wonderful month of Pride, for which I feel no pride for at all. I think it should be called shame month. It’s absolute debauchery. I spoke about this last week and when you believe when you start to see that your government is sponsoring that, when they’re putting real dollars behind things like drag queen story hour in New York City, you should realize that something nefarious is going on because the government does not care about your children. No, the government does not love your children. The government does not want your children to be accepted. The government wants your children to be enslaved to government for the rest of their life. And right now, as we’re seeing, there is a marriage between government and big pharma. It is my belief that that is the push behind this effort to tell children that they can pick their gender and to confuse them. And you’re seeing right now that adults are getting behind this narrative so they can have a woke T-shirt on and say I love my children. I allowed my child to pick their gender and pick their species. And they feel proud of themselves because they can go and they can say this on Facebook that they are wonderful, accepting, and loving adults. When, in reality, they are underqualified to have children. They should have their children taken away from them because it’s child abuse."

"The decision to eliminate the 988 Lifeline's designated LGBTQ youth option comes amid Trump's push to curtail services, support, and access for transgender people across the federal government. He has pushed to end diversity, equity, and inclusion policies (DEI) within the federal government, arguing that such programmes are themselves discriminatory. The president has also ordered the removal of transgender servicemembers from the US military and issued an executive order that the US would only recognise two sexes – male and female. The US Department of State also announced it would no longer allow applicants to choose "X" as their gender on US passports. Instead, transgender individuals must choose "male" or "female" corresponding to their sex assigned at birth."

"Knowing that your governor and the top officials in your state literally don't want you to exist – That's a different kind of stress. It felt very genocidal [in Texas]."

"Pride just almost got to a place where it felt like, ‘Do we really even need to this anymore?’ But now our rights are being threatened again."

"It's not about the children. It's about pushing the LGBTQ community back into the closet. If it were about the children, they would focus on all these other issues that are going on with foster care, gun control."

"It’s actually those bills and those demagogues that choose to advocate against us, that make us fight more. I will not give up until we have full equality for our people."

"Officials at HHS proposed cutting the 988 Lifeline's LGBTQ youth services last week. In a statement to NBC News at the time, an HHS spokesperson described the option as a "chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by 'counselors' without consent or knowledge of their parents". Legislation passed in 2020 by the US Congress required the 988 Lifeline to provide services and staff specifically for LGBTQ people as well as other at-risk groups like rural and Native Americans. The legislation noted that LGBTQ youth were "more than 4 times more likely to contemplate suicide than their peers, with 1 in 5 LGBTQ youth and more than 1 in 3 transgender youth reporting attempting suicide". The law received bipartisan support - including from Donald Trump, who was then serving his first presidential term, and signed the bill into law. According to the 988 Lifeline website, LGBTQ communities are "disproportionately at risk for suicide and other mental health struggles due to historic and ongoing structural violence." The Trevor Project began providing its services through the 988 Lifeline in 2022. In 2024, it served more than 231,000 crisis contacts, the organisation said in a statement. It says it will continue to provide its own independent services."

"How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms? And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year."

"I'm with the President on this! If passed, this bill will put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy."

"There’s something so unique about — the LGBTQ community has become this cult and it’s so captivating and it pulls people in so strongly unlike anything we’ve ever seen and they brainwash people to join. They convince them of all of these things. And it’s really hard to get out of it... I think they’re evil. And sometimes we try to break it down a lot and we discuss why this is happening, what’s happening, whatever, and I think sometimes the simplest answer is they’re just evil. They’re bad people. They’re evil people. And they want to groom kids. They’re recruiting."

"So this art form I’ve devoted my life to is being used as a scapegoat for people to get votes. This is what they always do. They just take some random cause that they know people will vote for - based on nothing. But there’s no way to combat it with data, because this isn’t even a group of people that care about data… I was looking for information on stats on drag queens being pedophiles. Zero. There’s no drag queens being arrested for sexual assaults of children. That doesn’t happen. You know where that happens? The church. Okay? That’s where. This whole country mollycoddles Christians, and I’m fucking tired of it."

"[Gender transition] is a major problem. I will be actively lobbying to criminalize making severe, irreversible changes to children below the age of consent. Shame on those who advocate this! It is utterly contemptible."

"They have gone after trans kids in every conceivable dimension. They’re trying to take their parents’ support away, they’re trying to take doctors’ support away, they’re trying to take teachers’ support away, and they’re trying to take their teams and coaches away."

"A New York Times bestseller that chronicles the true story of a nonbinary teenager set on fire by another teen while riding a bus in Oakland, California. A collection of stories and poems by a New York Times bestselling author about the feelings and experiences of teenagers in love. An NPR “best book of the year” award winner featuring authors and illustrators sharing personal stories about their conversations with their kids about race in America today. This is a small sampling of the kinds of books that have been marked for “quarantine” in school libraries run by the Defense Department’s Education Activity, or DoDEA. For months, officials atop this agency have been quietly flagging and banning dozens of books in response to President Donald Trump’s executiveorders requiring federal agencies to eliminate programs or materials related to diversity, equity and inclusion. The effect is that tens of thousands of kids in U.S. military families living on military bases worldwide no longer have access at their school libraries to celebrated and highly recommended books that happen to talk about LGBTQ+ people and people of color."

"HuffPost previously talked to an active-duty military officer overseas with kids attending a DoDEA school. He described Trump’s anti-DEI policies as a constant source of stress and fear for people around him, including at home: His spouse is a DoDEA teacher and he has LGBTQ+ children. Trump’s attacks on LGBTQ+ kids and transgender service members “hits home in so many ways,” said the officer. “It’s dehumanizing.” Members of Congress previously wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, urging him to stop to the “Orwellian book purges” within DoDEA schools. “We write to express our grave concern about the escalating censorship taking place in schools run by the Department of Defense,” reads a March letter to Hegseth from more than two dozen lawmakers, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. “You are plainly violating the constitutional rights of DoD families,” they wrote. A Defense Department spokesperson on Thursday declined comment on the lawmakers’ letter, saying only, “As with all congressional correspondence, we will respond directly to its authors.”"

"The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) today sent a letter to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) urging them to restore to female athletes the records, titles, awards, and recognitions misappropriated by biological males competing in female categories. The Department has called on the NCAA and NFHS to continue the progress made in recent days and strip the records, titles, awards, and recognitions wrongfully credited to the biological males who unfairly competed against girls and women in athletics. Correcting the record is entirely consistent with the NCAA’s new policy intended to preclude males from competing in women’s sports. “Because of President Trump’s bold leadership, men will no longer be allowed to compete in women’s sports regardless of how they identify, and the NCAA has correctly changed its tune on its discriminatory practices against female athletes,” said Candice Jackson, Deputy General Counsel. “The next necessary step is to restore athletic records to women who have for years been devalued, ignored, and forced to watch men steal their accolades. The Trump Education Department will do everything in our power to right this wrong and champion the hard-earned accomplishments of past, current, and future female collegiate athletes.”"

"The news also arrived ahead of a US Supreme Court decision on Tuesday that upheld the state of Tennessee's ban on transition-related healthcare for minors who identify as transgender. The general 988 Lifeline offers free mental health support via call, text, or chat. It is funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a subsidiary of the US Health and Human Services Agency (HHS). Currently, LGBTQ young people can select option 3 from a call menu in order to connect with counsellors. After the changes, the remaining 988 Lifeline services would "focus on serving all help seekers", including those who previously chose to access LGBTQ youth services, SAMHSA said. But the hotline would "no longer silo LGB+ youth services", SAMHSA wrote in a statement, omitting the "T" and "Q" that refers to transgender and queer people in the LGBTQ acronym."

"Trump administration health officials announced Thursday that the federal government will block transgender care to children by targeting hospitals and doctors that provide it. New proposed rules would prohibit hospitals from participating in Medicare and Medicaid if they provide care such as puberty blockers and surgeries for transgender minors, and would prevent federal coverage of such treatments. “These procedures fail to meet professionally recognized standards of care,” US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, calling many types of transgender care “malpractice.” “Medical professionals or entities providing sex-rejecting procedures to children are out of compliance with these standards of health care.” Medical groups denounced the announcements, saying they intrude on physician-patient relationships and jeopardize care for everyone. “Allowing the government to determine which patient groups deserve care sets a dangerous precedent, and children and families will bear the consequences,” said Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics."

"The American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that it will challenge the administration’s rules in court. “These gratuitous proposals are cruel and unconstitutional attacks on the rights of transgender youth and their families,” Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Rights Project, said in a statement. Kennedy said Thursday that the administration is confident it’s approach will pass court challenges. “If people sue us, they’re welcome to,” he said. The HHS announcement came just after the House passed a bill that could imprison health care providers for providing trans care for minors. The bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, could imprison doctors who provide care such as surgeries or puberty blockers for up to 10 years. It’s unclear whether the GOP-led Senate will take up the measure, though it is unlikely it would get enough Democratic support to pass out of that chamber."

"“On July 17, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline will no longer silo LGB+ youth services, also known as the ‘Press 3 option,’ to focus on serving all help seekers, including those previously served through the Press 3 option,” SAMHSA’s statement said Tuesday. “The Press 3 option was established as a pilot program in Fiscal Year 2022 under a government agreement with a third party. The Fiscal Year 2023 Omnibus included a Congressional directive for $29.7 million to fund the specialized services. Federal funding in FY24 for the Press 3 services increased to $33 million,” the statement said. “As of June 2025, more than $33 million in funds have been spent to support the subnetworks, fully expending the monies allocated for 988 Lifeline LGB+ subnetwork services.” In October 2020, President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan bill making 988 the universal telephone number to reach the national suicide prevention hotline."

"I want to tell your audience there is no transgender. There is male and there is female. And transgender would be a mental health issue. So those people that say I'm bigoted, I will say you're insane and you're doing the people wrong by doing that."

"There's something really exciting happening with Target everybody. So Target has a target on their back. Target is freaking out. Target is holding emergency meetings. They're worried that they're losing their customer base. Everybody keep the pressure on. We need to go after Target in a very serious way. It is time for decent, ordinary Americans who do not believe in radical ideas in either direction to just say I will not allow my kid to be corrupted by this trans agenda and look Target - it looks like they're caving. They say they're putting the clothes in the back. I don't want - I want Target to go bankrupt. I want them to close. I want Chapter 11, okay? I want them to go Chapter 11. People say what does success look like? Chapter 11, okay? I want skull and bones all the way down to the absolute nails of the stores. That's the only thing they understand is force. Pain is a teacher and the pain of crossing the line to perverting our children and grooming them, it's going to be a lesson I hope corporate America watches because ordinary America is pushing back. We must push for the bankruptcy of Target. Make it happen everybody."

"For the good of society ... transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level."

"In light of recent and tragic events and current events, I was told by people on the internet, ‘Cancel your shows in Tennessee,’ ‘Don’t go to Tennessee.' Their reason was valid, but why would I not come to the people who need to hear this message the most? Why would I not create a safe space in Tennessee where we can celebrate drag entertainers and celebrate our differences?"

"I am deeply alarmed by a widespread, profoundly negative riptide created by deliberate actions to roll back the human rights of LGBT people at state level. The evidence shows that, without exception, these actions rely on prejudiced and stigmatising views of LGBT persons, in particular transgender children and youth, and seek to leverage their lives as props for political profit."

"Reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military. Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service, and the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers should be ended."

"For months now, I have been scared to leave my house. I have been ridiculed in public. I have been followed, and I have felt a loneliness that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I’m not telling you this because I want your pity. I’m telling you this because if this is my experience from a very privileged perspective, know that it is much, much worse for other trans people."

"In an interview at Catholic University last week, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said what he’s clearly been thinking for the past 30 years: Supreme Court precedents don’t matter, and he’s making things up as he goes along to fulfill his own political agenda. He didn’t say it in that way, of course. People would have noticed that. Instead, he couched his self-serving philosophy in legal jargon that will fly under the radar of most people, including journalists. Here’s what he said: “At some point we need to think about what we’re doing with stare decisis.… [I]t’s not some sort of talismanic deal where you can just say ‘stare decisis’ and not think, turn off the brain, right?” To translate: “Stare decisis” is a foundational legal principle in this country and all countries that follow a “common law” system. What it means, in simple terms, is that prior judicial rulings govern future judicial rulings. If a court rules, for instance, that “gay people have the same basic rights as everyone else in this country, including the right to marry other people,” then that ruling is supposed to govern all future cases concerning the rights of gay people. Thomas, apparently, doesn’t agree. Instead of respecting stare decisis and precedent, he is saying that older cases shouldn’t have the power to control newer ones. For Thomas, just because courts ruled that LGBTQ people should have rights in the past, including the right to marry, doesn’t mean he feels compelled to rule that they should keep them."

"We’ve seen this in Thomas’s opinions in recent years. In 2022, he declared, in a separate but supporting opinion in the Dobbs case, that Roe v. Wade was not respectful of our legal traditions, but Loving v. Virginia is. Why? Well because Roe gave women rights, while Loving gave Thomas the right to marry his white wife, and if you have a better legal difference between those cases other than Thomas’s own personal preferences, I’d love to hear you explain it. Thomas has also decided (in this case, writing for the majority) that simple gun registration laws are not respectful of our traditions in this country, but he signed on to an opinion giving the president the powers of the very king we revolted against. You simply cannot chart a course through what passes for logic in Thomas’s head without understanding his preferred policy outcomes. If Thomas were the only justice who thought like this, it would be a containable problem. But the entire Republican cabal on the Supreme Court rules exactly in the way Thomas is talking about, with no respect for precedent or stare decisis. This coming term, the Republicans on the court are likely to overturn a voting rights precedent they set for themselves only a couple of years ago. The Republicans literally cannot be trusted to respect their own rulings."

"I'm looking at society today and it's like I'm watching an X-Men movie… it's like we have mutants living among us on planet Earth. Some people don’t like that, but that’s a fact. This is the planet Earth, where God created men, male and women, female. I’m a proud Christian, conservative Republican. I’m not on the fence… I'm not afraid to address the dysphoria or the dysfunction. The Lord rebuke you, Satan, and all of your demons and all of your imps will come and parade before us. That's right – I called you demons and imps who come and parade before us and pretend that you are part of this world."

"So, what have Republican legislators done? Let me count the ways. They introduced nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills. They’re also banning books, which we know. And teachers in states like Florida are barred from even talking about being gay or transgender in the classroom."

"HuffPost obtained an internal list of 80-something books that have been banned, or are in the process of being banned, at schools across the DoDEA system, which provides K-12 education to more than 67,000 kids in 11 countries, seven states, Guam and Puerto Rico. HuffPost isn’t providing the full list at the request of the DoDEA employee who shared it; they feared they could lose their job. But the clear theme to these books is that in one way or another, they talk about gender identity, sexuality and race."

"Still, senior DoDEA officials’ focus on rooting out books that talk about transgender people stands out the most, said this DoDEA employee. “They are really trying to deny transgender people exist,” said the employee. “It makes me physically ill.” A second DoDEA employee told HuffPost it’s clear that, in their scramble to comply with Trump’s executive orders, the agency’s leadership has had “a tendency to err far on the side of caution.” DoDEA students last month sued the agency over its book bans, arguing that it is violating their First Amendment rights. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit on behalf of 12 students from six families, ranging in age from pre-K to 11th grade. All are children of active-duty U.S. service members stationed in Virginia, Kentucky, Italy or Japan."

"For years, we've been hearing from anti trans pundits and politicians that this is about protecting the children. But I think what this Oklahoma law reveals is that it's never been about the children. It's always been about scapegoating trans people, stigmatizing us and criminalizing our existence, making us not exist."

"We never did this through all of human history until like, what, two weeks ago? Now this is something? They’re having third graders declare pronouns? We’re not doing the pronoun Olympics in Florida."

"The Department’s letter follows the NCAA’s policy change to “align NCAA policy” with President Trump’s Executive Order Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports. That Order set forth "the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports...as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.” Last week, the Department also launched investigations into two educational institutions and an athletic association where violations of Title IX have been reported. Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments provides that no student “shall on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under” any federally funded education program or activity. As such, K-12 school districts, colleges, and athletics associations are strongly encouraged to keep factually accurate athletics records and to make corrections where male athletes were allowed to erase female records during the Biden administration."

"A part of a US national suicide prevention hotline that caters for LGBTQ young people says it will soon close, after the Trump administration cut its funding. The administration has accused the service of "radical gender ideology". It says it will still fund the wider 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline - of which the LGBTQ youth option is one part - and that all callers will receive "compassion and help". The Trevor Project, an organisation that helped to run the LGBTQ option, said the decision would have a harmful impact on vulnerable young people. "Suicide prevention is about people, not politics," said Jaymes Black, the organisation's CEO. He said his service had been told to close within 30 days. "The administration's decision to remove a bipartisan, evidence-based service that has effectively supported a high-risk group of young people through their darkest moments is incomprehensible," Mr Black added. The decision comes during international Pride Month, which celebrates LGBTQ culture and history."

"Hey Dad. Thanks for setting aside time to meet with me, it means a lot to me. There are a lot of important issues passing through the legislature right now. For my own sake I’ve chosen to focus primarily on transgender rights, as that would significantly directly affect a number of my friends… I would like to make the argument that these bills are immoral, unjust, and frankly a violation of human rights."

"It’s not our fault that the truth hurts them, it’s their fault that the truth hurts them, because they have turned their back on the truth and they’ve turned their back on God... [Democrats] passed a bill to make it a federal law to protect gay marriage. Marriage is between a man and a woman, and that’s between God and a man and a woman."

"“Patients, their families, and their physicians – not politicians or government officials – should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them. The government’s actions today make that task harder, if not impossible, for families of gender-diverse and transgender youth.” It’s the latest in a string of actions by President Donald Trump’s administration that target transgender people, including eliminating mention of trans people on federal websites, halting data collection on health issues, removing trans people from the military and suing states that allow trans athletes to play on high school sports teams. Also Thursdsay, US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said the agency is sending warning letters to 12 makers and sellers of breast binders who marketed or sold the devices for treatment of gender dysphoria in children. National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya also said the research agency will end support for research into gender transition, saying, “it was junk science to begin with.”"

"HHS leaders on Thursday cited their own review of evidence and reports from other countries, many of which have faced sharp criticism for drawing sweeping conclusions with little or poor evidence. Health officials said they expect to emphasize psychosocial assessment and support for transgender youth, including “compassionate, developmentally appropriate counseling.” But they acknowledged that there are a limited number of mental health care providers available. Gender identity care, which is sometimes called gender-affirming care, is a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender – the one a clinician assigned them at birth, based mostly on anatomic characteristics – to the gender by which they identify. It can include mental health care or age-appropriate medical care such as hormone treatments, puberty blockers, gynecologic and urologic care and reproductive treatments. Major mainstream medical associations – including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Endocrine Society, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – have supported such care and agree that it’s the gold standard of clinically appropriate care that can provide lifesaving treatment for children and adults. Professional medical organizations do not recommend surgery for children as a part of care, and research shows that it’s rare among transgender or gender-diverse teens."

"I'll tell you my priority. Protect religious liberty. Protect people of faith. And protect Americans who believe in the true meaning of marriage. I hope and pray that my colleagues will find the courage to join me in opposing this misguided and this dangerous bill."

"Some Democratic lawmakers have spoken out against retiring 988’s specialized services for LGBTQ+ youth, including Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin. She said in a statement Wednesday that the Trump administration’s plan to cut the specialized services comes at a time when it is estimated that nearly 40% of LGBTQ+ young people have reported seriously considering attempting suicide in the past year. In 2019, Baldwin, along with Senators Cory Gardner (R-CO), Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Jack Reed (D-RI), introduced the legislation to designate a three-digit phone number for a national suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline. “I worked hard to stand up a special line for LGBTQ+ youth because we are losing too many of our kids to suicide, and it’s well past time we did something about it. Children facing dark times and even contemplating taking their life often have nowhere else to turn besides this 988 Lifeline, and the Trump Administration is cruelly and needlessly taking that away,” Baldwin said in the statement. “During Pride Month, a time to celebrate the progress we’ve made, the Trump Administration is taking us a step back and telling LGBTQ+ kids that they don’t matter and don’t deserve help when they are in crisis,” Baldwin said. “This is not the final chapter of this story, and I’ll fight tooth and nail to protect these children.”"

"This month, the Trump administration officially proposed to eliminate the 988 Lifeline’s LGBTQ+ youth services in budget plans for fiscal year 2026. While some supporters of the move may view it as an efficient way to save spending, critics have called it “deeply upsetting.” “It is deeply upsetting to see the administration reverse course on an evidence-backed, bipartisan program that has successfully provided life-saving crisis care to 1.3 million LGBTQ+ young people, and counting,” Jaymes Black, CEO of the nonprofit The Trevor Project, said in a news release last week when the proposed budget was posted. The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention organization for LGBTQ+ youth, has been a subcontractor to the specialized service since 2022, serving as one of seven call centers. “We are grateful to the many people who continue to urge this administration and Congress to protect access to these life-saving services alongside us. In a nation where our children’s tears fall without distinction of how they identify, we must rise with one voice – across every faith, every belief, and every political line – now is the time for the full volume of our conviction,” Black said in part. “Now is the time to act.”"

"We have officially declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States for the first time following an unprecedented and dangerous spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year. More than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number, which was previously the worst year on record. Our community is in danger, but we won't stop fighting back — not now, not ever."

"The reason we are singling out drag performances is there are drag performances out there that are targeting children, and that needs to stop. The problem is that children are being targeted in many areas, and it is evil against good... and we’ve got to push back on evil. I will do everything I can as a senator in this chamber to protect Arizona children from perversion (and) grooming."

"The explosion of legislation is in part the culmination of efforts by a trio of conservative organizations, which are helping state legislators write and promote the bills. One of the most active — the — has a decades-long history of fighting LGBTQ rights, including in battles to preserve state laws criminalizing consensual sex between gay adults, court records show."

"I never want to put anyone in a position to be at risk or in danger in any way. But also where is the line of being silenced? How do we navigate these absurd threats and laws against our community?... We deserve to have a safe space to be ourselves while we navigate the evil that is threatening our own existence. We will not be silenced. We will find ways to continue to be our authentic selves, no matter what. We will not give up. No matter how hard they make it."

"I named SB 12 to be one of my top priorities this session because someone must push back against the radical left’s disgusting drag performances which harm Texas children. It is shocking to me that any parent would allow their young child to be sexualized by drag shows. Children, who cannot make decisions on their own, must be protected from this scourge facing our state."