Hat tip to Ari Drennen.@BeccaBalintVT: "whenever we make progress, we see the backlash...it was really lovely to watch this amazing ally in Tennessee speaking up for the members of her community. That gave me so much hope because that's what it's gonna take." pic.twitter.com/ymoOjaqqeL
— Ari Drennen 🏹 (@AriDrennen) October 31, 2022
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| Matt Walsh |
Earlier this month my state, South Carolina, hosted its annual Pride event in the capital city of Columbia. I went and had a good time. My goal was to take some pictures to post, but I got lazy.
Unfortunately, someone else did take pictures and videos (Editor's note - some of what you are about to see will probably scare you):
Libs of TikTok targeted SC Pride.
For those who don't know, Libs of TikTok is a Twitter address run by a woman named Chaya Raichik and supposedly its goal is to save children from being "sexually groomed." Unfortunately, Miss Thing has the idea that LGBTQ people are the ones "grooming" kids (we are all she focuses on). Via videos and pictures taken out context and posted on her Twitter address, Raichik has built up a loyal following of bigots, homophobes, transphobes, and all-around pathetic individuals who have nothing going on in their lives so they immerse themselves in the pathetically sad delusion of "saving children."
You know, trash. You can see that plainly in the comments from her followers under the pictures and videos she posted. They are the ones spinning morbid fantasies of killing LGBTQ people.
Raichik through Libs of TikTok has gotten a reputation with her lies. She's gotten teachers fired, was a figure in the development and pushing of Florida governor Ron DeSantis's 'Don't Say Gay' law, and even caused bomb threats against children's hospitals by spreading the false story that they were giving trans kids hysterectomies.
She must be slumming to if she felt the need to slither down to my state and cause trouble. As I said before, I attended Pride and I saw nothing X-rated or out of the ordinary. Raichik implies misbehavior and allows the mindset of her readership to fill in the blanks even when there are no blanks. No matter how much they may deny it, her audience's anger doesn't come from anything being done in the pictures or videos. It's about who the participants are. A child and a drag queen. A child and LGBTQ culture.
You see, Raichik is successful because of who she attracts. I'm sorry, what she attracts. One part of her audience are hardcore bigots who live for screaming the "f-word" at folks. Then there is the other part, who don't see themselves as homophobes. We know the type, i.e. the ones who say things like "I don't have a problem with gays but . ." or "Hey to each his own as long as . . ."
That type isn't saying that they don't have a problem with LGBTQ people. They are implying that they need something to fill in the blank so they don't have to own their internal bigotry.
It's similar to when Obama became president in 2008. Amid the celebrations was a little unspoken discomfort amongst some white Americans. A black man in the White House was a new dynamic and they were fearful of the unknown. They weren't open about it because they also feared being labeled as racist.
Pretty soon, conservative entities like Fox News began to fill in the blanks by outlining and highlighting problems with Obama's character. The problems were mostly manufactured, but they gave these uncomfortable people excuses to dislike Obama. They were able to transform their fear of the unknown into seemingly genuine reasons to dislike Obama such as:
He doesn't put his hand over his heart when the Pledge of Allegiance is recited.
He is so conceited. We know this by the number of times he says the letter "I" in his speeches.
He's not a genuine America.
He wants to make America like Russia
He puts mustard on his hamburger
He wore a tan suit
No matter how ludicrous the excuses were, folks clung to them as if they were truth.
In that same manner, Raichik and her site gives people an excuse to hate and fear us. What she posts is generally nothing to be alarmed about. She deliberately mischaracterizes much of what she posts and then feeds off her audience's fear after she gives them a reason to dislike the LGBTQ community
They can say things like:
"I don't have a problem with gay people, but why do they have to bring children in it?"
"To each his own, but I draw the line when they go after children. Let kids be kids, They shouldn't have to deal with stuff like sexual orientation and gender."
To these people, a drag queen reading to kids is dangerous because a child may become "exposed" to LGBTQ people and want to be one. That's rather stupid because when I was a child, someone read to me while dressed as Superman. I didn't try to fly. I knew it was make believe. On that same note, my first grade teacher used to read Bible stories to my class and I certainly never felt the inclination to put on her girdle.
To these people, a child giving money to a drag queen performing a dance and lip sync routine is part of a secret plot to "groom kids" to . . . I don't know. Want to be Beyonce, put on make-up, perform intricate dance routines, . . .it really doesn't make sense when you give it some thought.
To them, any interaction between an LGBTQ person and a child is a no-no because us LGBTQ people have nothing going on in our lives other than sex. Any and everything we do is centered around having or getting sex. That includes paying bills, cooking, cleaning, going to church etc. etc. It's all about sex and if kids hang around us, they are going to catch the "sex, sex, sex virus" from us.
To these people, children and any part of the LGBTQ culture - however innocent - should never mix. They have this adult-oriented image of the LGBTQ community and how dare we interrupt their illusions with reality.
Raichik profits from their dishonesty.
She reminds me of characters from books I read as a child. Only they weren't using social media. They were too busy making gingerbread houses.
Hat tip to Ari Drennen
I don't think anyone can honestly say when right-wing attack on drag queens and other facets of our community via Libs of TikTok and other sources began. But I am going to go off on a limb and make two observations.
1. That this was planned.
2. It was leading to something.
And that something is an attempt to push a national version of Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' law. I've blogged about it before, but it's very crucial that the LGBTQ community learn more about it and prepare ourselves to fight it because it's coming in one form or another. Folks have pointed out that even if the bill can get out of Congress, Biden would veto it.
That may be, but Biden can't veto statewide forms of the bill. In the meantime, these videos courtesy of MSNBC gives a good breakdown of what LGBTQ Americans will probably be facing in the future
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| AZ GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake with a former drag queen friend when she 'liked' drag queens. |
Lake has been attacking the LGBTQ community in her campaign:
That was before it came out that she was once good friends with a drag queen:
Richard Stevens, who has been performing as Barbra Seville for more than 25 years, wrote on social media that Lake is a friend who has attended many drag shows over the years and even hired him to perform at a family event in her home. "I've performed for Kari's birthday, I've performed in her home (with children present,) and I've performed for her at some of the seediest bars in Phoenix," Stevens wrote on Facebook.
Recently, Lake accused President Joe Biden of promoting “grooming,” claiming that he is “withholding National School Lunch Program Funds from schools that don’t adopt his perverted sexual agenda.” In reality, what happened is that the Department of Agriculture released guidance that would prohibit anti-LGBTQ discrimination in any program that receives federal nutrition money, including many school lunch programs. Notably, the guidance only applies to those specific programs; schools that follow the guidance in those programs while discriminating against LGBTQ students in other ways would continue to receive funding. Lake has frequently stated her opposition to LGBTQ inclusion in schools. In a March interview on KNST radio, she blasted schools that teach students about gender identity, claiming that they are promoting “confusion.”
The spot was paid for by the Yuma County Republican Central Committee and authorized by Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed election denialist who is the GOP candidate for governor. It covers the Republican basics: A seemingly conscientious and decent owner of a small business—and his family—is dealing with economic hardship and feels endangered by those liberal Democrats. But the ad leaves out important information: Erickson is not merely a local business owner concerned with inflation; he is a homophobic and Islamophobic pastor.
In a 2014 sermon on homosexuality, Erickson proclaimed that “fifty percent of the homosexual LGBT-Now-Q community, 50 percent have AIDS. One in twenty are child molesters, on the sex offender registry.” These numbers were way off. In 2014, Gallup found that about 9 million Americans self-identified as LGBT, and a different study concluded that about 700,000 gay and bisexual men were living with HIV, far fewer than half the gay and lesbian population.Moreover, Erickson’s stats about LGBT child molesters were dangerously false. Under his math, about half of the 800,000 or so people on sex offender registries would have to be gay, yet according to one study, heterosexual pedophiles outnumbers homosexual pedophiles by 11-to-1. He was recklessly and inaccurately depicting LGBT people as threats to children.
In that sermon, Erickson also claimed, “80 percent of homosexuals have STDs, and—how sad is this?—2 percent, 2 percent of homosexuals in the LGBT community make it to the age of 65. The average lifespan for an average person in our world is 75. Those is the LGBT community, most of them don’t make it to 39.” There seems to be no scientific basis for these claims. Though HIV still presented a health risk for gay men, the American Journal of Public Health in 2016 noted, “no general population-based survey, to the best of our knowledge, has examined whether self-identified lesbians, bisexuals, or gay men are more likely than are heterosexuals to experience early mortality.”Erickson claimed that the “average homosexual has had in a lifetime over 500 sexual partners. Eighty percent admit that half of them are absolute total strangers. Thirty percent of those who commit homosexuality, 30 percent, have had over 1000 partners. Three hundred different people a year.” A 2013 study found that the mean number of male sexual partners for gay and bisexual in the preceding year men was 2.3—which indicates the “average” gay man does not have hundreds of sexual partners.
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| President Biden |
Longtime actor Leslie Jordan died today after an auto accident. A lot of folks, particularly in the LGBTQ community, are saddened because he was an icon of comedy as well as being unashamedly gay. If anything, while he made us laugh, he also showed that here was nothing wrong with being gay and honest about who you are. And not letting negativity bring you down. Life to him was always a parade and that's what we should remember as we mourn his passing.
The video above is from where he will be most remembered - as a cast member of the hit show 'Will and Grace.' He had been in many movies, television shows, and even made a gospel album. But his Emmy award-winning portrayal as Beverly Leslie, nemesis of Karen Walker (Megan Mullally) made him a household name.
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| Boys in this 1966 video listens to a police officer telling them that if they are "involved" with homosexuality, they will be caught. |
A 1966 video of a policeman 'warning' kids about the so-called dangers of homosexuality is where some folks want to drag us back to. It is a desired result of all of the legislative and social media attacks against the LGBTQ community. It's one thing for conservatives, Republicans, and various right-wing personalities to see LGBTQ people as a criminal threats, but they want to take it further. They want that vision to be reality. So much so that they are willing to disrupt our lives, our families, and kids to make it so. They want to mold us into the monsters of their imagination because they feel entitled to edit out parts of our lives which contradicts prejudices.
I don't think a lot of us get the implications of this bill Republicans are pushing. And we're being a bit nonchalant about what it could lead to. And especially what it means.
From People magazine:
A new Republican-led House bill is being described as the national equivalent of Florida's controversial Parental Rights in Education bill, also known as the "Don't Say Gay" bill, which was passed into law earlier this year. On Tuesday, Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana and 32 other congressional Republicans introduced what they're calling the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act of 2022, which would prevent the use of federal funds from developing or funding "any sexually-oriented program, event, or literature for children under the age of 10, and for other purposes." The bill, if passed, would prevent schools from providing books about LGBTQ topics to children under 10. And beyond that, it would impact federally funded facilities like public libraries, schools, hospitals and more.
As NBC News points out, the bill defines "sexually-oriented material" as "any depiction, description, or simulation of sexual activity, any lewd or lascivious depiction or description of human genitals, or any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects."
The bill is the first introduced at the federal level that characterizes LGBTQ people and concepts as inherently sexual, and follows some Republicans calling LGBTQ-inclusive curricula, or drag events, "grooming," which NBC reports as false moral panic about LGBTQ people. Framing sexual orientation and gender identity as "sexually explicit" in all contexts is deceiving and harmful."A new NATIONAL bill by Republicans would ban 'any exposure to transgenderism to children under the age of 10,'" activist Erin Reed wrote on Twitter. "This would fire all trans teachers, Trans workers in hospitals that serve children, counselors, social workers. It defines being trans as 'sexual.'" Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School, also spoke out about the proposed bill on Twitter, writing that "equating LGBTQ people to sexually explicit material is dehumanizing and disgusting."
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| Genderqueer has been the subject of several school and library book bans. |
No matter what they say, how they present themselves, or method they use to make what they are doing seem good, hiding behind the mask of every homophobe (and that includes Franklin Graham), every so-called 'pro-family' group, every effort to ban LGBTQ books, and every effort to shut us down and undermine our right is this guy going on and on about "gay sex," vomiting and intestines. If you ask me, he has too much stuff on his mind and it is funny. It would be funnier if one doesn't think of the type of damage people like him do.
In a sermon now removed from YouTube, Christian hate-preacher Jonathan Shelley asked "Why is someone a homosexual?"
— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) October 18, 2022
His response was a litany of bigotry and lies, including the statement that "their intestines will sometimes just fall out because of the actions that they do." pic.twitter.com/r4738F2yBS
Two situations happened on Tuesday and they both point to the havoc conservatives want to wreak against LGBTQ Americans on both a state and federal level regardless of the results of mid-term elections.
In Idaho, legislators are talking about banning public drag shows. According to the Idaho Capital Sun:
A bill that would ban drag performances in all public venues will be introduced in the first days of the next session of the Idaho Legislature in January, Idaho Family Policy Center President Blaine Conzatti told the Idaho Capital Sun. Conzatti and other conservative activists around Idaho and across the country have protested against events in public spaces that feature drag queens, including drag queen story hour events at public libraries. In September, Idaho Republican Party Chairwoman Dorothy Moon called for people to pressure corporate sponsors of Boise Pride to pull their names from sponsorship at the event over a scheduled “Drag Kids” performance for ages 11 to 18, which was ultimately postponed over safety concerns.
Conzatti said the draft bill is ready to be introduced as soon as the session gets underway but declined to share the text of the bill with the Sun and wouldn’t name the legislators who worked on it with him. “No child should ever be exposed to sexual exhibitions like drag shows in public places, whether that’s at a public library or a public park,” he said.
After complaints, the local prosecutor’s office determined the video was edited to look like the performer had exposed himself when he had not. The performer has since filed a defamation lawsuit against North Idaho blogger Summer Bushnell over the incident, according to reporting from the Coeur d’Alene Press.
BREAKING
— Rep. Mike Johnson (@RepMikeJohnson) October 18, 2022
Republicans are introducing the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act—the first bill to ensure that none of your tax dollars go to federal programs, state or local government agencies, or private orgs that expose children under 10 to sexually explicit material.
🧵
Universities, public schools, hospitals, medical clinics, etc. could all be defunded if they host any event discussing LGBTQ people and children could be present. The way they define "sexually oriented material" simply includes anything about LGBTQ people.
I can't overstate how radical the private right of action portion is. The bill is so broadly defined that a pediatric hospital could be sued for having a pride flag or a medical pamphlet about gender dysphoria. It deputizes anti-LGBTQ bigots to engage in bounty lawsuits.
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— Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) October 18, 2022
These headlines are 4 years apart. Russia passed a "Gay Propaganda" law and within 4 years, gay men in Chechnya were being rounded up, put in concentration camps and killed. This is what I'm thinking about when Republican House Members introduced the American version of it today. pic.twitter.com/d45EOeo7lS
— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) October 18, 2022
On the one hand, this is awesome how comedian John Oliver goes after transphobic narratives and those who spew them with a 'take no prisoners' attitude. But on the other hand, it is rather sad that we have to count on comedians (,Jon Stewart recently took a transphobic attorney general to school) to do the things that people who get paid to be journalist aren't doing.
Oliver takes care of business superbly. The entire segment is wonderful viewing. But if you want some snippets, check out below. And while watching one (the one with the bigoted author Abigail Shrier), I want you to do something. Replace the word "transgender" in her comments with the phrase "radical homosexuals." For me it was like being transported via a time machine a few years in the past. It's like I've said before - the tactics and lies never change. Only the targets.
Abigail Shrier "sometimes dresses her arguments up by using the term 'rapid-onset gender dysphoria,' which is total horseshit." - John Oliver pic.twitter.com/PTYlz9hNn6
— Ari Drennen (@AriDrennen) October 17, 2022
A society that is forcing children to beg legislators for their lives is a society that is failing its children pic.twitter.com/cdqegAnykG
— Ari Drennen (@AriDrennen) October 17, 2022
I know John Oliver is right about this because when I was in middle school a girl pooped in a dixie cup and all the way through graduation that's what she was known for. pic.twitter.com/VwLHnkLyGa
— Ari Drennen (@AriDrennen) October 17, 2022
John Oliver DESTROYS the GOP campaign against trans girls in sports with facts and logic: pic.twitter.com/9qNcHPogQB
— Ari Drennen (@AriDrennen) October 17, 2022
This clip of trans kid Kai Shappley from John Oliver's show last night is genuinely heartbreaking pic.twitter.com/V7nXXliszK
— Ari Drennen (@AriDrennen) October 17, 2022
Holy shit pic.twitter.com/jAxYqytO8M
— Ari Drennen (@AriDrennen) October 17, 2022
This hysteria about schools supposedly grooming kids into being LGBTQ is exhausting. It's a lie instigated by calculating people wanting to make money, get clout, or undermine LGBTQ people and our families. But sometimes something comes along in it all which makes me chuckle.
From LGBTQNation:
For many progressives, local school board meetings have been the site of some pretty tragi-comic scenes recently, as right-wing activists have pushed their absurd agenda. But this week, one New York-based comedian mined the right’s anti-LGBTQ rhetoric for laughs. Walter Masterson attended a meeting of the Connetquot School District board on Tuesday night. During the public comment period, Masterson, dressed in a stars-and-stripes shirt, got up and delivered a speech satirizing conservative talking points on everything from inclusive pronouns to gun control and school choice.
I trolled the school board meeting at Connetquot after they had a teacher remove the Progress Pride flag. pic.twitter.com/2gleJ73ThX
— Walter Masterson (@waltermasterson) October 13, 2022
Those who read this blog know that I am not a fan of hate group the Family Research Council. But this one time, I will give the organization props for pointing out - in its own way - a positive development on an incident I earlier wrote about:
LGBT activists bullied a local news station into deleting a news-breaking story and reporting their version of events instead. On September 28, 2022, WCAX-TV interviewed a high school volleyball player at a high school in Randolph, Vermont, who along with her teammates was barred from using their own locker room because they felt uncomfortable changing in front of their male teammate, a boy who identifies as a girl.
WCAX-TV has quietly erased from its website and social media accounts a September 28 news report about a transgender volleyball player at Randolph Union High School. The story went viral among conservative media outlets and was condemned by LGBTQ groups and allies. But on Tuesday, links to the controversial story and a recording of the newscast from that night went instead to a page that read "404/Not Found." When Seven Days asked about the missing content, WCAX news director Roger Garrity said the station took it down last week "to prevent others from using our reporting to attack people in the transgender community.
WCAX's initial story reported that the Randolph Union High School girls' volleyball team had been banned from its locker room while school officials investigated a conflict involving a transgender athlete on the team. But the piece featured just one interview with a first-year volleyball player, who said a transgender teammate made "an inappropriate comment" and that "biological boys" should never be allowed in a girls' locker room.The story quickly went viral on right-wing websites such as Fox News, Daily Signal, the New York Post, the Daily Wire and the Epoch Times. Shortly after, the Randolph school district was forced to disable its website after it was hacked and inundated with hate speech targeting transgender people.
The mother said her daughter was actually the one targeted, by several girls on the team, and that the school closed the locker room while investigating the incident in order to keep everyone safe. Orange Southwest School District superintendent Layne Millington, who said he was unable to comment about the details of the investigation because of federal law protecting student information, confirmed part of the mother's account in an email to Seven Days. The locker room was shut down "to ensure student safety while the investigation is conducted, and the shutdown applies equally to the entire team," Millington wrote.
One week before the WCAX report aired, she said, her daughter was changing in the girls' locker room before volleyball practice when three teammates started yelling at her to get out and to stop looking at them. Her daughter hadn't encountered that kind of open negativity about being transgender since moving to Randolph in eighth grade, the mother said, so the aggressive comments came as a surprise. The girl had also previously changed in the same room as her teammates."She never really felt unwelcome or like she didn't belong," her mother said. After being yelled at, the girl went into a locker room bathroom stall to change. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to put on her team jersey, so she popped her head around the corner at one point to check with her teammates. The girls started yelling at her again. When the transgender student walked into the gym after getting changed, she encountered the volleyball coach, who told the girl that she had overheard what had happened and was planning to report the incident to the school administration.Two days later, an administrator called the mother to tell her that three people reported that her daughter had been bullied and harassed. As a result, the school was launching an investigation. The administrator also told the mother that the girls' volleyball team could not be unsupervised in the locker room until the investigation was completed.
It’s clear who’s bullying whom here. The political power in Vermont is all on the side of the transgender lobby. National heavyweights came in and pummeled a local TV station, which is probably operating with a shoestring budget and a skeleton crew to remain profitable. They not only forced them to delete the offending story but insisted on crafting the apology that the local station would be forced to recite. This is the grown-up equivalent of sitting on a smaller kid before locking him in the janitor’s closet. The LGBT lobby has lots of power, but, somehow, they insist on always being the victim.“Why are you bullying me?” they cry, as they punch another kid with his own fist. Note how men are victimizing women (again), but the transgender narrative twists the facts into the opposite interpretation. Note how swiftly and ruthlessly they suppressed this story from the single news outlet brave enough to report the girl’s side of the story. Note that what offended the powerful transgender lobby was not a right-wing smear campaign, but the simple, honest reporting of the facts.
"Schools are political punching bags these days, and everybody thinks it's a great sport to attack schools, superintendents, teachers and school boards," Seebeck said. "And oftentimes, they do that without any real knowledge, or any real reason ... without first asking if any of those books are even in their school library, they show up at a school board meeting and they read excerpts from these books that are pre-printed, the parents never read the book, and probably wouldn't even know the book existed . . .In his 17 years as superintendent, Seebeck said this is the first time he's seen so many objections to literary content. He's also noticed a new mantra of parents wanting to "take back their schools." "I ask them, take it back from who? Who has it? Because your school, your school district is run by people who live in your community. I grew up in the town that I'm the school superintendent. ... Your school board is made up of people who have kids in the school district. Why would you take it from them?
I'm going to be accused of "preaching to the choir" with this post but hearing an "amen" every now and then is good for the soul. Especially after some of the things I've read on Twitter.
This post is dedicated to the nutheads and junk spewers who slide into threads and go off on wild tangents about about trans kids, surgeries, mutilations, body parts, and the like under the guise of concern. Oh they have to save the children from gender evil, trans-something, or some other annoying nickname which they use when they are deceiving themselves into thinking that they are being profound.
They are the same type who get conveniently quiet when asked do they know any trans kids or families with trans kids? These people are idiots. They are deranged. They are annoying and unfortunately, when they are in the height of their madness, they drown out the voices we should be hearing.
If some of these folks actually listened to their kids and these families with as much enthusiasm as they spin and feed off of lies and anecdotes, they would learn something for a change.
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Dr. Levine almost entirely subsists on being an anti-trans "expert." He's in his 80's, rarely sees patients, and does not publish any peer-reviewed research. Levine gets paid more than $20k by earning $400+/hr per case he's involved in as an expert. It's about the money for him.
Dr. Mark Regnerus wrote the infamous "New Family Structures" paper in 2012 on same-sex couples and the effects on children with a terrible methodology. The paper was ideologically driven by animus and it attracted significant controversy for being flawed. Regnerus was thoroughly discredited by this study and he has no expertise in the care of gender dysphoria in trans youth. He went to significant lengths to undermine LGBTQ families with a severely flawed paper that was driven by his animus.
These are the experts that Leslie Rutledge relies on in pushing back against Jon Stewart. It's no wonder she couldn't answer the question. The experts she relies on are bigots and quacks with no expertise on treating gender dysphoria. This is why they consistently lose in court. They have no experts. Gender affirming care is the standard set by every major medical organization in the US. They have to rely on these hacks because they are driven by hate and animus, not a genuine concern for trans youth.
