Analyzing and refuting the inaccuracies lodged against the lgbt community by religious conservative organizations. Lies in the name of God are still lies.
Extremely anti-trans (and very public about it) SC Congresswoman Nancy Mace is the subject of what many are calling an explosive expose in a New York Magazine profile. And it's not pretty.
The title alone, Nancy Mace Is Not Okay, gives you an indication of where the article is going.
By focusing on her recent questionable behavior (such as causing a huge scene at a Charleston airport last year and then accusing SC Attorney General Alan Wilson of plotting against her) and interviews with former staff members, it paints the picture of an erratic and unbalanced lawmaker.
The publication cites several former staffers, including a former top consultant to her gubernatorial campaign, who described her behavior as erratic and accused her of being abusive. Mace’s office fiercely denied the claims made in the piece and trashed its author in a statement to NYMag.
The picture painted by the former employees detailed some of their concerns with Mace, who was first elected as a representative in 2021. Supporters of the congresswoman argue that Mace instead is a victim of ex-staffers’ axe grinding.
“We were scared of her,” one former staffer told NYMag. “She would make staffers cry. She would threaten to fire them, take their money away, not give them raises, not to give them days off, religious days.”
Another former staffer detailed how early in her career Mace would push for appearances on national and local TV to help her brand. Her staffers thought she had potential, even if her behavior had them questioning her actions.
“Something’s broken. The motherboard’s fried. We’re short-circuiting somewhere,” a staffer told the magazine.
Former staffers said Mace treated them like maids after she arrived in Congress in January 2021, ordering them to clean the multiple properties she was renting out on Airbnb, including her Washington townhouse. Ahead of election night in 2022, Mace instructed her staffers to spiff up her $3.9 million home in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, for a watch party, a former staffer with direct knowledge told New York magazine.
Mace also started dispatching staffers on late-night runs for alcohol to keep parties going at her home. “Look, when I worked for her, our poor scheduler was getting calls at two o’clock in the morning to come bring her bottles of tequila,” one former staffer told New York magazine.
. . . One staffer alleged Mace’s excessive drinking and marijuana use became an issue. They recalled an incident in 2022 when Mace wanted to fire an aide for “doxxing” her because the aide told reporters she was out of the country, even though Mace had already announced her trip to a group of supporters just days before.
“She would definitely do it excessively,” the staffer said of the congresswoman’s drinking and marijuana usage. “And again, not to say that most members don’t or most staff don’t, but it got to the point where it was an issue.”
Mace infamously transformed herself from an LGBTQ ally to one of its loudest and meanspirited opposers in Congress, often publicly slurring trans women during hearings. She blames transgender Americans for supposedly changing her mind, particularly the election of the first trans woman to Congress, Sarah McBride. In doing so, Mace also utilizes ugly and untrue tropes about transgender women in bathrooms and locker rooms to justify her change.
A lot of folks have claimed that she was being opportunistic. Perhaps there is more to the story.
Forty-seven conservative and anti-LGBTQ groups are teaming up in an effort to overturn the 2015 SCOTUS decision which legalized gay marriage. There is one interesting roadblock in their efforts, though. Their goal is to change public opinion by utilizing the same tired lying narrative of "gays are dangerous to kids" which led to their defeat.
Forty-seven right-wing organizations have joined together to try to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell ruling that found same-sex couples have the same rights and responsibilities to marriage as different-sex couples. The coalition’s focus is to change national public opinion on same-sex marriage by declaring that children are “Greater Than” equality.
“We’re all going to speak with one voice, and it is ‘don’t touch the kids,’” the group’s founder, right-wing activist Katy Faust, told American Family Radio, as People for the American Way reported.
“Faust made it clear that the campaign will continue a long and dishonorable legacy of anti-LGBTQ forces smearing gay people and couples as threats to children,” PFAW added. “She called parenting by same-sex couples a ‘destructive state-sanctioned gaslighting experiment on children.'”
According to The Daily Signal, which was launched by The Heritage Foundation, Faust also said that since the Obergefell ruling, children have been “deprived of the unique love and guidance only a mother and father can provide.”
Numerous studies have shown that children raised by same-sex parents fare at least as well as children raised by different-sex parents.
A large 2014 study found that children raised by same-sex couples were happier and healthier than their peers raised by different-sex couples.
In 2023, The Guardian reported on a study that also found that “children of same-sex couples fare just as well, if not better, than those of heterosexual couples.”
“The findings chime with several other studies, including three decades of research from Australia that revealed children raised by same-sex parents do as well emotionally, socially and educationally as their peers in heterosexual families.”
This, however, doesn't seem to deter Faust nor anyone else on the video which you can view above as they spew generalized nonsense about the virtues of heterosexual couples raising kids. They offer no proof that children are damaged by living in married same-sex households or same-sex households in general.
While the video has received the bulk of the attention so far, it’s the campaign’s website that actually deserves a closer look. Because surely there’s evidence that children with gay parents suffer, right?
Nope. There are no studies cited on the website. There’s no proof of any sort offered anywhere.
On a Q&A page that asks “Don’t studies show that children with same-sex parents fare just as well as those raised by their mother and father?” the response is that any study affirming that notion… must be a bad study.
Studies of same-sex-headed households — which are always missing a biological parent, maternal or paternal love, and in which the child has suffered parental loss — largely suffer from poor methodology.
And then there is this one:
There’s another question that asks “Do you believe gay people are bad parents/don’t love their kids?”
Instead of saying “Yes” or “No,” the website just repeats the conservative talking point that same-sex couples can’t provide kids with what they need:
A woman who identifies as a lesbian can be a loving mother, but she cannot be a father. A gay man can be a loving father, but he cannot be a mother. Children need, deserve, and have a right to both.
Faust and company are using an embarrassingly fraudulent game plan and based upon the timidity shown on their webpage, it's obvious that they don't believe it themselves.
Same-sex parenting isn't an experiment nor is it seen as such by the American public. It's a fact. Back in the day before gay marriage, or marriage equality, it may have been categorized as an "experiment," but now is completely different. Many more people personally know gay couples raising children. They don't see anything wrong with it. And they definitely don't buy the idea that a gay couple raising a child is somehow depriving a child of anything.
While we have seen the anti-LGBTQ industry garner tremendous success with transforming their anti-gay tropes to harm the trans community, the idea that they can circle back and reuse these lies against gay couples and families is doubtful. At least for now.
But a little advice from me to you, Katy Faust. If your mantra is "don't touch the kids," then you should follow your advice and leave our families and OUR KIDS alone.
Editor's note - I apologize for not posting as much as I should. The situation in Minnesota is bad enough to make me sad for my country, but a personal tragedy at home knocked me on my ass. I'm slowly getting back up.
Federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is known for making rulings conveniently unfavorable to LGBTQ people. The recent ruling against drag shows is the latest.
Federal judge upholds drag ban claiming drag is the same as “blackface" - The courts in general have ruled against drag bans. The judge in this case, Matthew Kacsmaryk, however, is known for issuing rulings conveniently biased towards conservatives in cases regarding LGBTQ equality and reproductive freedom
(Kacsmaryk has) become the go-to jurist for plaintiffs looking to turn extremist ideology into binding precedent. He’s the one who tried to revoke FDA approval of mifepristone, a safe and widely used abortion medication. He’s ruled against LGBTQ+ protections in the Affordable Care Act. He even tried to force Planned Parenthood to pay $2 billion to Texas and Louisiana—a ruling so outrageous that even the deeply conservative Fifth Circuit tossed it. Now, he’s taking aim at Title VII itself, effectively inviting employers to harass and discriminate against LGBTQ+ workers by pretending Bostock never happened.
(Editor's note - Bostock is the 2020 SCOTUS ruling which said the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects LGBTQ people from employment discrimination.)
(Editor's note - The irony is that I'm willing to bet that if a ban on "blackface" came in front of Kacsmaryk's court, he would defend "blackface" as a matter of free speech.)
Former SC lawmaker Robert John May III was sentenced to 17.5 years for charges linked to child sex abuse material. Ironically, during his tenure as a lawmaker, May accused trans people and drag queens of harming children.
Former SC lawmaker - and now confessed child sex offender - Robert John (RJ) May III is indicative of the hypocrisy of far-right attacks on the trans community and drag queens when it comes to the sexual abuse of children.
Former South Carolina state lawmaker RJ May was sentenced to 17.5 years in federal prison Wednesday on charges linked to child sexual abuse material.
Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, who oversaw May’s sentencing, said that the abuse in this case was “more severe” than any other she has seen and that May “claimed to be an advocate for children at the State House but was their abuser behind closed doors.”
May, a Republican who represented part of Lexington County in the South Carolina House of Representatives, pleaded guilty to five counts of distributing child sexual abuse material.
During his time in office May was outspoken against gender-affirming care, trans inclusion in sports and drag performances, and was listed as a speaker at Mom’s for Liberty’s Reclaiming Education in America event in 2022. Many of his concerns about LGBTQ+ topics were cited in regards to child safety.
On Wednesday (14 January), May was handed a 17.5 year sentence in federal prison by US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, a term that was slightly less than the 20 years prosecutors requested but much longer than the five years the former lawmaker requested for himself.
Currie said May was given a higher sentence than the average for similar charges because the content he disseminated was the “most severe the court had seen."(Editor's note - bold emphasis added by me)
Following his release from prison, May will have to spend another 20 years under supervised release, with federal parole officers monitoring his actions to be sure he doesn’t reoffend. He was also ordered to pay $58,500 in restitution to eight victims who the authorities identified and will be required to register as a sex offender for life.
According to LGBTQNation in September of last year:
(May) — an anti-LGBTQ+ politician who has accused drag queens and transgender people of harming kids — pleaded guilty . . . to distributing child sex abuse material (CSAM) after first denying it, Newsweek reported — including images of adults sexually abusing seven-year-olds. The anti-LGBTQ+ “parents’ rights” group Moms for Liberty honored the child pornographer as their 2023 Legislator of the Year.
May used the screen name “joebidennnn69” to exchange 265 different files of toddlers and young children involved in sex acts on the Kik social media network during spring 2024. Representing himself in court — despite not having a law degree — May had originally asked the judge to throw out the warrant used to search his home, laptop, and mobile devices, as well as evidence that he had flown to Colombia to film himself having sex with three underage girls.
This is nothing to laugh at or to be happy about. But it's a hell of a lot to be angry about.
And also remembered.
The next time far-right hypocrites (particularly a certain emotionally, psychologically, and morally barren harpy who runs a certain Twitter address) goes after us with accusations of child grooming, let's be sure to remind them just who the actual sexual groomers of children are.
to jumping the gun by labeling Good a domestic terrorist before all of the facts came in,
to refusing to backtrack admit they were wrong (because Trump never apologizes when he's in the wrong, which is pretty much most of the time),
to continuously trying to gaslight Americans with supposed "newly released" footage of the incident which is pretty much nothingburgers amplified by Elon Musk and far-right wannabe social media influencers.
And now they are compounding the error by sending more ICE agents into Minnesota. The one thing we have learned from the Renee Good killing is that American lives, much like truth, are expendable to the Trump Administration.
Right-Wing Influencers Have Flooded Minneapolis - Speaking of far-right wannabe social media influencers, they are the Trump Administration's army. And effective too until they make complete asses of themselves. These were some of the same losers responsible for the anti-drag hysteria a while back.