Monday, November 15, 2021

'Moms for Liberty' group reminds LGBTQ and black communities that they have common enemies

 Moms for Liberty caused controversy in Tenn earlier this year by lying about a same-sex kiss on a float. 


Whenever I hear anyone play the black community vs. LGBTQ community angle, I get depressed on so many levels. As a gay black man, I feel like I'm being pulled and dissected. I feel as if no one cares about me as a person because they see me as a commodity to their struggle.

And then there is the fact that often times, both communities have the same enemies. Take the group Moms for Liberty, for example. That's a group which earlier this year caused a ruckus in Tennessee by  falsely portraying an innocent kiss between a same-sex students into  a lurid grope.

 The kiss was a "blink and you'll miss it" peck, but thanks to the lies put out by Moms for Liberty,  the incident was blown up into a huge, unnecessary controversy punctuated by a bunch of ignorant folks corralling a school board meeting with nonsense about kids "French kissing" and "groping" each other.

And surprise, surprise, Moms for Liberty - which is actually not a group of concerned parents, but astroturfed GOP operatives who, according to Media Matters:

. . . strategically harassing school board members, teachers, and administrators across the country, is deeply tied to anti-civil rights advocacy. Beyond opposing education about the history of racism in America, the organization also recommends reading an American history book by a far-right conspiracy theorist that is sympathetic to slave owners, and the co-founder of the organization actively opposed desegregation efforts while formerly serving on her school board. The organization’s staunch opposition to teaching “critical race theory” (CRT) perfectly fits in with its connection to anti-civil rights advocacy. CRT is actually a body of specific academic and legal scholarship, but this group and others have self-servingly (and incorrectly) rewritten the definition to essentially encompass any discussion of race or oppression.

Media Matters also provides clues as to what the group may want to be taught when it comes to America's racial history:

Moms for Liberty recommends The Making of America by W. Cleon Skousen as a “helpful” text “when discussing the founding documents” of the United States . . . Skousen's book is also sympathetic to slave owners, calling them “the worst victims” and writing that “in some ways, the economic system of slavery chained the slave owners almost as much as the slaves.” Skousen himself was a supporter of the John Birch Society, an anti-civil rights organization that claimed the “African-American freedom movement was being manipulated from Moscow with the goal of creating a ‘Soviet Negro Republic’ in the Southern United States.”

Slave owners as victims of slavery?  That's actually a not a new idea to me. It reminds me of the following segment of an episode of 'The Boondocks,' 

 

 The video is not graphic due to violence. It's not violent at all but it's satire and language is very controversial. On can call it an exaggeration, but it does underscore the point I am trying to make.

The black and LGBTQ communities would be better served in not arguing who gets hit with the most rocks. Maybe they should unite against the rock throwers.