Thursday, August 21, 2025

We Come to Bury James Dobson, Not Praise Him

James Dobson

Infamous religious leader James Dobson died today. 

Dobson was a prominent and influential figure of the religious right because he not only started Focus on the Family but also had a hand in creating the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom. He also, according to The Advocate, help to push the Republican Party further to the right. 

Those who have kept up with my blog over the years know how I feel about the religious right, or as I call them, the anti-LGBTQ industry.  And how I also feel about the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom.  It shouldn't take a palm reader to guess how I feel about Dobson in general and the specific news of his passing.

To put it politely, James Dobson was an odious, self-righteous, evil man who weaponized Christianity to hurt LGBTQ people. It was never about love or God with him. It was always about power and control. He thought that Christians who believed as he did should control this country, our laws, and general culture.

And he didn't mind overlooking certain passages of the Bible in his quest for political power.  How else could anyone explain his embracing of Donald Trump. In exchange for White House access, Dobson made excuses for Trump, at one time even calling him a baby Christian. Other times, Dobson would not only ignore Trump's behavior, but he also praised him in spite of it all. 

Then again, praise is too weak of a word to describe what was going on. Dobson not only kissed Donald Trump's ass. He wiped and polished it:




 In the coming days, you're going to hear a lot of nice comments about Dobson. Folks are going to talk about his so-called strong character and devotion to God. His so-called commitment to preserving purity and American culture.

It's all a lie. 

The comments you are welcome to read below tell us just who James Dobson actually was. These are voices of the people he hurt and those who were tasked to pick up the pieces of broken spirit which came from his "teachings." 

" When I read that James Dobson is being remembered as a man who cared about families, I think instead about the families torn apart by his message. Parents taught to fear their own children. Spouses trapped in marriages built on self-denial. Young people who looked at me — the smiling “success story” on the magazine cover — and walked away believing they were broken beyond repair because they couldn’t replicate my lie. Dobson’s empire baptized cruelty and called it love. That is his true legacy. But those of us who lived through it are writing a different ending. Our story is one of survival. It looks like telling the truth, even when it costs. It looks like acknowledging our complicity while naming the coercion. It looks like building lives where we no longer need to prove our worth." - John Paulk, former chairman of Exodus and former Focus on the Family's point person for "ex-gay" therapy

“James Dobson cynically used faith as a cudgel to bludgeon vulnerable communities, spread disinformation, and inject toxic bigotry into the bloodstream of American culture. His legacy is one of cruelty disguised as Christianity, and our nation is worse off because of the relentless campaigns of intolerance he orchestrated. 

 Dobson’s obsession with changing LGBTQ people was a moral abomination that caused immeasurable harm. Parents were misled, children were traumatized, and lives were destroyed because he refused to accept people for who they are. His pseudoscientific crusade for conversion therapy will be remembered as one of the darkest chapters of modern religious extremism.”- Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen  

(Editor's note - Truth Wins Out created a wonderful project, Respect My Research, which exposed Dobson for deliberately distorting scientific research against LGBTQ people.) 


" James Dobson helped me in my career by providing therapy clients who were harmed by religious, spiritual, emotional, and physical abuse. He gave me clients who were traumatized and self-loathing because they had the great misfortune to be born to parents who believed that being LGBT is "not God's plan" and that they could be "cured."

 He provided clients who were physically abused by parents who hit them with objects - "paddles" - "rather than your loving hands." He helped create clients who believed they were innately evil, undeserving of kindness, unworthy of love, and hated by God. Yes, I've been told that in the therapy room. 

 Because of him, I sought specialized training in treating traumatic injuries, which has helped me to help others. He was ignorant about human development, a religious extremist, and someone who is personally responsible for uncountable incidents of child abuse as well as suicide. He caused incalculable harm to be inflicted on countless innocent children. Good riddance." - Alice Clearman, psychologist


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Wednesday, August 20, 2025

'Nancy Mace battles nonexistent 'transgender mice research' after Trump's false claim' & other Wed/Thur news briefs



Nancy Mace introduces ludicrous ‘Trans Mice Act’ after false Trump claims​ - Long story short - Trump made up a ridiculous story about research turning mice transgender. Nancy Mace, the desperately attention-seeking Congressional leader, jumps on the story to spearhead some type of "legislation." In other words, a stupid man makes up a stupid story, causing a incredibly attention-hungry but nonetheless stupid woman to piggyback on it for the sake of publicity. 


Trump quietly bans federal health insurance from covering gender-affirming care - Trump's ugly war against the transgender community continues. A president, or any elected leader, having such vitriol against an innocent group of people is simply vile. And it's worse how so many folks are desensitized to it because it doesn't affect them. 


Hillary Clinton: Supreme Court ‘will do to gay marriage what they did to abortion’ - We will see, Mrs. Clinton. Still, your advice is something our community should follow. 

LGBTQ groups denounce takeover of D.C. police – except for one - Who else but the Log Cabin Republicans? 

And finally:

The Trains of Dusk and Dawn (The Astraeus Journey) - Queer author - and a good friend of mine - Erica Lieberman presents something for you LGBTQ science fiction fans:
 Anna Alla is a young, gifted woman with a mouth to match. Unfortunately, her attitude leaves her vulnerable in the society she lives in. Her home, Astraios, is a tidally locked planet with one side always facing the sun, and one side always facing the night; the same way our moon faces the earth. Both extremes are uninhabitable, leaving only the narrow space between dusk and dawn for the people of Astraios to live. The society built around this unique world demands austerity. With a caste system designed to remind the inhabitants of their place in the world, there is no moving up, and every chance to be moved down (Downgraded). 
There is no home. Members of the higher castes travel on trains from one city to the next, working a week at a time assigned to jobs based on their caste. The lowest cast, Walkers, walk the tracks in a perpetual loop, clearing the tracks of debris. No one owns more than the clothes they wear, the most basic essentials, and the food they eat. Anna Alla fit neatly into the lowest level of the middle caste (Specialists) as a child. To satisfy her love of history, she hoped to be assigned to maintenance of the oldest equipment on Astraios.

 Instead, she finds herself downgraded and living a life she doesn’t understand. Anna has to find a way to overcome her situation and her tendency to make her situation worse in ways she can’t fully appreciate. With her newly found friends, the nerdy outcast ekes out a place for herself and shares a new way of thinking that is a threat to the leaders of her society. Anna Alla’s life is hard, but one of her own making, for better or for worse.
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Monday, August 18, 2025

Drag show ban blocked at West Texas A&M University. Major parts of Florida book ban struck down by federal judge.


A federal appeals court blocked a drag show ban at West Texas A&M University on Monday. A few days before, a federal judge in Florida struck down major parts of Florida's book ban law.


 As we deal with the second term of the jackass better known as Donald Trump, vestiges of old culture wars are disintegrating under our noses.

From The Texas Tribune:

A federal appeals court Monday blocked West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler from enforcing a campus drag show ban, ruling that the performances are likely protected under the First Amendment. 

The 2-1 ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a lower court’s decision upholding Wendler’s 2023 cancellation of a drag show, which he argued was demeaning to women and compared to blackface. The decision means Spectrum WT, the student group that brought the lawsuit, can produce drag shows on campus while its lawsuit continues in a lower court. 

 Judge Leslie H. Southwick, who wrote for the majority, said the context of the students’ event made its message of supporting the queer community clear. 

 “The viewers of the drag show would have been ticketed audience members attending a performance sponsored by LGBT+ student organizations and designed to raise funds for LGBT+ suicide-prevention charity, “ wrote Southwick, who was appointed by George W. Bush. “Against this backdrop, the message sent by parading on a theater stage in attire of the opposite sex would have been unmistakable.” 

 The court concluded that Legacy Hall, where the drag show was scheduled to take place, was a designated public forum open to a variety of groups, including churches and political candidates. That meant banning drag shows targeted the content of the event, something the Constitution allows only in the rarest cases.

 Finally, the court found that students faced ongoing irreparable harm to their speech rights, noting Wendler had canceled another drag show planned for 2024 and declared that no drag shows would ever be allowed on campus.

 

And a few days earlier in Florida, according to LGBTQNation:

A federal judge in Florida has struck down major parts of the state’s book ban law, ruling that it violates the First Amendment by sweeping protected literature off school library shelves. 

 In 2023, Florida enacted H.B. 1069, expanding the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law to prohibit classroom discussions of LGBTQ+ identities through the end of high school. The measure also required schools to remove books flagged for “sexual content,” a vague standard most often applied to works addressing race, gender, and sexuality. 

 Six major book publishers, the Authors Guild, and parents from Escambia County sued after dozens of books were removed. They argued that H.B. 1069 gave parents and residents unchecked power to demand removals of any book considered “pornographic” or “describes sexual conduct,” without clear legal definitions. Under this sweeping standard, students lost access to award-winning books including The Color Purple, Cloud Atlas, The Freedom Writers Diary, Looking for Alaska, Slaughterhouse-Five, Shout, The Handmaid’s Tale, Beloved, and The Bluest Eye.

 In a broad order, federal Judge Carlos Mendoza of the U.S. Middle District Court of Florida found the state’s book ban unconstitutionally overbroad, calling it an “I know it when I see it” test that chilled free speech. “None of these books are obscene,” Mendoza wrote in his order. “The restrictions placed on these books are thus unreasonable.” 

. . .Rejecting the state’s claim that removals were simply government “curation,” Judge Mendoza held that delegating an unchecked “license to object to materials under an ‘I know it when I see it’ approach” to parents, “regardless of the holistic value of the book individually or as part of a larger collection,” amounted to outright censorship.

 

We probably won't hear the opposition make noise about these decisions because they've moved on to new rage-baits campaigns involving male cheerleaders and Sydney Sweeney (and I don't even KNOW who that little white girl is.)

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Wednesday, August 13, 2025

'Lara Loomer repeats claim about Lindsey Graham being gay in deposition' & other Wed/Thur news briefs

Sen. Lindsey Graham. Is he or isn't he? Lara Loomer says he is.


'It's well-known!' MAGA activist repeats salacious claims about GOP senator in deposition​ - It IS Lara Loomer and she has made this claim about Lindsey Graham before, so maybe it should be taken with a grain of salt. Then again, we are talking about Lindsey Graham here, so . . .




New Orleans Saints have 12 male cheerleaders, sending some NFL fans into hysterical meltdowns - Some on the right find the dumbest things to fake outrage about.
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Monday, August 11, 2025

Trump justifies taking over DC police with claim that Democrats 'want transgender for everybody'

If you haven't heard by now, Trump has decided to take over the DC police and deploy the national guard in the Capitol city. He claims to be doing it because of crime even though the crime rate in DC has been going down. He has also threatened to do the same in other cities which, just like DC, have high populations of African Americans. 

It's racist pandering but of course the media will probably fail to mention that interesting point. They are too busy calling Trump's move extraordinary. They should be honest and call the move batshit crazy.   Or at least call it an attempt to take attention away from the Epstein Files. 

Speaking of batshit crazy, Trump held a press conference to justify his action. He was accompanied by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

And like he always does when having a press conference, Trump went on a wild tangent. This time, he went from telling lies about crime in DC to claiming that Democrats won't stand against crime because they want everyone transgender. 

Transcript:

“Probably won’t get one Democrat vote because they have no idea what they’re doing. That’s why they want men playing in women’s sports,” Trump said, while discussing seeking legislation to fight crime in D.C.. 

 “That’s what they — why they want transgender for everybody! Everybody transgender. And they — they’ve just got walloped in an election in a landslide, and they haven’t changed one thing,” Trump fumed, adding: I saw the other day that a certain gentlemen . . 

Is Hegseth simply smiling or just trying to suppress a laugh? Bondi has got a fixed expression on her face, but one wonders is she thinking "Lawd, hammercy. Hurry up and die so Vance can be my boss and I don't have to do shit like this anymore."

Either way,  I'm done with calling Trump incompetent. At this stage, it's like saying that humans need to break to live. Instead I'm blaming the voters. Some people like to say that Democrats are to blame for both of Trump's presidencies, but they are full of shit. They are either pundits too chickenshit to tell the truth or folks whose aim is not to tell the truth.

And that truth is voters are to blame for this. Our country is lazy and complacent. We take our votes for granted. We whine about those running while omitting how we run off good candidates because of nonsense like soundbites taken the wrong way. 

We think that when we vote, we are doing the candidate a favor. "The candidate has to earn my vote," I've heard some voters say.

No, dumbass. You aren't doing candidates a favor by voting for them. You are doing yourself a favor by putting someone in office who will help you.  And if you vote the wrong way, you will end up with an insane, incompetent asshole squawking some nonsense about political parties turning people transgender.

Like so.

I'm going to make a guess that like so many other times, Trump is going to fall on his face and it will be up to the right-wing propaganda ecosystem (led by Fox News of course) to clean up after him and make his latest nonsense into some semblance of sense. 

By now it's as predictable as Trump's tangents.
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Thursday, August 07, 2025

'Slap in the face: Air Force to deny retirement pay to trans soldiers being kicked out by Trump Administration' & other Thur/Fri news briefs



US Air Force to deny retirement pay to transgender service members being separated from the service​ - Just another way the Trump Administration is kicking trans soldiers in the face. Trans soldiers are serving for their country, and they should be treated like other soldiers instead of being cast off. I hope they sue because I think they would have a good case. 

Nancy Mace under fire after Trump-voting town hall attendee 'jeered' for not clapping - Trash is as trash does. And Nancy Mace is pure trash. 



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Tuesday, August 05, 2025

America owe drag queens a huge apology



America owe drag queens a huge apology. 

Drag queens have had to endure a long season of being mispresented, taken out of context, threatened with of violence, being scapegoated by ridiculous laws outlawing their art, and basic fearmongering about how they were sexually grooming kids to turn them transgender or something or another.

 And what has come out of all of this? Nothing negative about the drag queens, but consistent news stories about church leaders, Republicans leaders, and other supposedly upstanding members of the community being caught sexually harming kids.

 Don't even get me started on the Epstein Files. 

Taking all of this into account, an argument could be made that perhaps kids are safer with drag queens than with youth leaders, church leaders, and elected officials. 

That's not fair. It's wrong to generalize about church leaders and elected officials because of the actions of a few of them. 

 But that's exactly what's been done to drag queens. And what's more, much of the finger pointing was conjured up by cherry-picked photos and videos (see list of articles below post) and the general naivety of people to instantly trust something on social media, all brought together by wannabe social media influencers with a nasty agenda in mind. 

 In truth, drag is an art. It can be adult-oriented, but a lot of times, it's not. It involves having multiple skills, talent, and discipline. Drag queens generally make their own costumes, create their names, and performance routines. Aside from that, they also freely donate their time and talent at prides, various charity events, reading to children, and (for those who are constantly asking such leading questions) at hospitals and nursing homes. 

The narrative that drag queens are a part of some plot to "sexualize kids" is yet another time in which homophobes have successfully played upon fears that LGBTQ people are out to "sexually recruit" kids.  It's a noxious lie in itself, but it goes beyond sad in the case of the anti-drag queen hysteria. 

While certain disgusting, low-budget sons of bitches (it's the politest way I can describe certain people) were pointing fingers at drag queens, children were being victimized by other folks. While folks were attempting to get clout, engagement or some sort of fake fulfillment for their pathetically empty lives by screaming "leave the kids alone," children were being victimized, but not by the people they were screaming at. While lawmakers were on crusade against drag queens for votes and attention, children were being sexually molested, but not by drag queens.

While all of these idiots were busy chasing imaginary monsters draped in sequins and mascara, wigs and rainbow flags, real monsters were having their way with kids. Just think about what harm could have been prevented if these folks actually did care about children instead of screaming at, vilifying, and threatening drag queens.

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