Saturday Night Live demonstrates good comedy with devastatingly funny 'It Gets Better' sketch

This parody of the famous "It Gets Better" campaign by Saturday Night Live is an example of what I feel is a good joke about our community. There have been some criticism accusing LGBTQ people  - and a lot of it has come from within the community -  of not being able to take a joke. Some of us are supposedly a bit too sensitive and and "whine about being offended" too often. That's a bunch of nonsense. Good humor is not garnering cheap laughs by platforming nonsensical fears of the unknown. That's bullying. Good humor is nuanced observations and is not as difficult as folks like to pretend that it is.

Anti-LGBTQ former VP Mike Pence gets hired by anti-LGBTQ Heritage Foundation' & other Fri midday news briefs

 

Mike Pence officially hired by anti-LGBTQ Heritage Foundation. He worked for them as Vice President. - What changed? 

Trump appointee sues Biden over alleged ouster from advisory board - That evil homophobe Roger Severino don't wanna go. 

New York repeals 'walking while trans' law after years of activism - That law has to go. 

Color Purple Actress Fired for Homophobia Had Rule Against Gay Roles - Oh really?!

Discredited pediatrician says adoption & foster care agencies should be allowed to discriminate (against LGBTQ people)

 

Michelle Cretella of the anti-LGBTQ hate group the American College of Pediatricians

Today's post reminds me of efforts racists made to repair their bad image by claiming that they weren't "anti-black," but strongly "pro-white."

Via its phony online news publication, One News Now, the American Family Association hosted a discredited pediatrician who made a subtle dig against same-sex households who are raising children:

With many thousands of children available for adoption and in the foster care system, Dr. Michelle Cretella of the American College of Pediatricians says their best hope is to be placed in a positive and loving environment. 

"These children, many of them have suffered some form of abuse or neglect in the past, and that's the bad news," Dr. Cretella begins. "But the good news is that the effects of trauma in children can truly be healed by a loving and stable adoptive family." She points to the social science data collected over decades to demonstrate that all children thrive best when they are reared by a married mother and father in a loving home.

 "We therefore support all adoption agencies, particularly those which are faith-based and … only adopt out to married mother-father homes," the pediatrician tells One News Now. "That is truly in line with science and in the best interests of children. It is not prejudicial discrimination." So she says adoption agencies should not be subject to state or local anti-discrimination laws for following their faith and the science in how they place children for adoption or foster care.

Cretella seems to be saying "I am not anti-anything. I am simply pro-children." But a few facts trip her up.

You will notice that while she claimed that there are decades of social science data backing her position, she did not to name one study or report. That wasn't accidental.  To the contrary of what she said, there is an abundance of work which makes the opposite conclusion. Study after study after study have all said the same thing - children raised in same-sex households suffer no adverse effects and these homes are just as good for them as the traditional mother/father  household. And this includes cases of adoption and foster care.

Also while Cretella never says a word about gay parents or same-sex households, her dog whistle about allowing adoption and foster care agencies to discriminate against households not fitting the two-parent mother/father dynamic rings louder than she would like it to.  Added this point is her history of attacking LGBTQ people.

The organization she is affiliated with, the American College of Pediatricians, is a small splinter group of physicians who broke off from the larger and more credible American Academy of Pediatrics due to AAP's support of gay adoption. The Southern Poverty Law Center says it's anti-LGBTQ hate group, accusing it of trafficking homophobic junk science beliefs under the veneer of genuine science. Homophobic junk science such as supporting reparative or "ex-gay therapy" and claiming that gay men "sexualize" poop.

Cretella herself was called out in 2017 by The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine  (SAHM) for a post she published against the transgender community. In a letter on its webpage, SAHM denounced Cretella's post and then proceeded to call out eight errors and distortions she made in the piece one-by-one.

It's worth mentioning that very few fell for the attempt by racists to repair their image.   It's a lesson Cretella would do well to remember should she attempt to fool herself into thinking that her subtle dig against same-sex households raising children went unnoticed. She isn't fooling anyone else with that "won't someone please think of the children" act she's putting on.

'Golden Globe awards catches praise, heat for nomination of LGBTQ performances' & other Thur midday news briefs

James Corden

The Many LGBTQ+ Golden Globes Nods Unfortunately Include James Corden - Now don't be hard on James Corden. At least his character isn't sad and pathetic. And he lives at the end.

Hate Group: Transgender People Put EVERYONE in Danger - And it continues.

Richard Grenell demands White House press secretary “apologize to the gay community” - Bitch please! You first. 

Markey, Lowenthal to reintroduce bill requiring US to promote LGBTQ rights abroad - Nothing wrong with that.

Religious right have no problems with implying that transgender children are predators

The next big cultural fight is landing smack dab in the middle of trans issues. Be prepared for a retread of lies the religious right pushed against gays to be repackaged against transgender Americans. 

 But as the following memes from the Family Research Council demonstrates there is a nauseating twist. Claiming that LGBTQ equality and by extension, LGBTQ people, will harm children is an old but highly successful tactic of the religious right, going way back to the 1970s and Anita Bryant. It's probably the single most effective scare tactic they have and they use it in almost every fight against the LGBTQ community. 

But when it comes to specifically attacking the transgender community, there is a slight change in how they push the "harm to children" trope. Groups like FRC are personalizing their attacks against transgender people by portraying them specifically as the other out to harm children. And they have no problem with smearing transgender children with this label, either as these recent memes prove.

In their past lies, the religious right have claimed that it was LGBTQ orientation fed to children as a viable concept which could hard them. Now they seem to be pinpointing transgender children as the specific danger. For groups who claim that they want to "protect children," the eagerness they show in demonizing transgender children sends an ugly message about that they think about these most vulnerable boys and girls.

''Ex-transgender' & 'ex-gay' GOP staffer fired after being busted at MAGA riot' & other Wed midday news briefs

 

“Ex-transgender” & “ex-gay” Republican staffer fired after being busted at MAGA riot - Soon he may be an ex-free man.

For First Time Ever, Three National LGBTQ Orgs Have Black Leaders - VERY significant. 

The 13 (Mostly Antigay) Senators Who Voted Against Sec. Pete Buttigieg - Our NEW Transportation Secretary made history. No thanks to these folks.

Family Research Council continues to miscast anti-trans report it helped to write as legitimate Dept of Defense work - My post from last night because news of this should be getting out.

Family Research Council continues to miscast anti-trans report it helped to write as legitimate Dept of Defense work

The Family Research Council helped to create a report which justified Trump's trans troops ban. Now they are attempting to pass it off as legitimate Department of Defense work.

With Biden's continued push for the rights of transgender Americans, the religious right is stepping up its game to spook the country via lies and distortions against the president's goals.

The latest comes from Family Research Council spokesman Peter Sprigg, who published a piece in the (very biased conservative online publication) The Federalist entitled  Biden's Transgender Military Order Is Based On Politics, Not Facts.

The title is ironic based upon the number of things in the piece Sprigg either omitted or got plain wrong. I want to point out a glaring (and deliberate) distortion and why it matters.

Sprigg said the following about Biden's recent executive order which overturned Trump's ban on transgender troops:

The Biden executive order appealed to “a meticulous, comprehensive study” issued in 2016 that asserted that allowing “transgender individuals to serve” would have “a minimal impact on military readiness and healthcare costs.” The “nonpartisan federally funded research center” that published this study was the RAND Corporation. On the other hand, said Biden, “the previous [Trump] administration relied on a review that resulted in a policy that set unnecessary barriers to military service.” Biden failed to explain this “review” was conducted by the Department of Defense. 

The findings were published in a March 2018 “Report and Recommendations.” A comparison of the RAND study with the Pentagon report helps to put the issue in perspective. Most importantly, the RAND study was speculative and released around the time the Obama policy was announced. Since transgender people had never been permitted to serve in the U.S. military, RAND could only make projections based on experiences in the private sector and in other countries. The Pentagon, on the other hand, provided actual data based on the 20 months or so of experience between when the Obama policy took effect and when the “Report and Recommendations” were issued, resulting in some interesting contrasts.

There is a reason why Sprigg attempts to trash the RAND Corporation.  It's all about credibility. The RAND Corporation has been around since 1948 and since then has provided research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. Its reputation is sterling.

By contrast, the March 2018 study supposedly done by the Department of Defense was in fact NOT done by the Department of Defense. In truth, it was done by an ad-hoc committee brought together by former VP Mike Pence. And the members of this committee were several anti-LGBTQ activists, including Tony Perkins. Perkins is the head of the Family Research Council and Sprigg's boss. In addition, Pence pushed hard for the ban, even to the point of overruling then Defense Secretary James Mattis who saw no problems with transgender men and women severing openly in the military:

According to a Zack Ford article in Think Progress on March 25, 2018:

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern reported Friday night that, according to multiple sources, Pence played “a leading role” in creating the report, along with Ryan T. Anderson of the Heritage Foundation, which has been dubbed “Trump’s favorite think tank,” and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC), an anti-LGBTQ hate group. Both Heritage and FRC praised the report Friday. According to Stern’s reporting, it was true that Mattis favored allowing transgender military service, but Pence “effectively overruled” him.

 A separate source independently confirmed to ThinkProgress Saturday that Pence was involved, characterizing him as forming his own ad hoc “working group,” including Anderson and Perkins, separate from the panel of experts Mattis had assembled. Though it bears Mattis’ signature, the report released Friday appears to reflect the findings of Pence’s working group and not the committee report that Mattis submitted to Trump last month. Mattis’ original document was not currently publicly available at the time of the recommendation, but it was widely reported that Mattis favored an inclusive approach that resembled what had originally been proposed by Defense Secretary Ash Carter under President Obama in 2016. His February recommendation, also released Friday, jibes with the new report, contradicting reports at the time.

 Ford goes on to carve up the report bit by bit, revealing its continued reliance on junk science. But here is the problem I have with this entire situation. 

At my count, that's twice that the Family Research Council  has attempted to pass off a study it had a hand in creating as legitimate Department of Defense work. My guess is that they are going to do it again and will continue to do so because very few in the media seems to care enough to put them on blast. With so many overwhelming things going on, folks aren't paying attention to how the religious right is creating a false narrative with about Biden and trans right. The attempt to reconfigure how Trump's ban came into place, while ignoring how they helped to create it, is only part of their plan

They stand in front of a broad canvas slowly but surely painting in a vile masterpiece filled with vividly colorful lies about how Biden is "erasing women," ignoring science, and putting Americans - particularly children - in jeopardy in order to satisfy a tiny but very intolerant minority (that's supposed to be us) with an "agenda" aimed at destruction. 

If they are successful in this pursuit, LGBTQ Americans will be having some serious problems in the future.

'How President Biden plans to end LGBTQ housing discrimination' & other Tue midday news briefs

How President Biden Plans To End LGBTQ Housing Discrimination - Keep your fingers crossed. 

Report: Hate groups in decline, migrate to online networks - Don't be fooled. They are simply hiding their hands. They aren't going away.

I Was Attacked By A Transphobic Mob. Here’s Why I’m Fighting Harder For Black Trans Women Now. - Harrowing story by a brave woman.

How the first time I ever saw LGBTQ people on screen made me fear Pam Grier

The first LGBTQ characters I remember seeing on screen are the lesbians who fought Pam Grier in Foxy Brown. But it had an opposite effect on me than the one the makers of the movie probably desired.

I'm going to divert a little from the usual fare in order to tell an interesting story about LGBTQ images. I hope folks reading this will give their comments in the section below.

On Twitter today, a question was raised which had me chasing memories. It was:

Finish this sentence: The first time I remember seeing a queer person on screen was ______.

— The Most (@Most) February 1, 2021

Ironically, as much as I write about LGBTQ issues, I could not remember the answer to this question. I remember seeing that Harry Hamlin movie, Making Love, in 1983 on network television courtesy of a channel in another state my T.V. could catch because my local station wouldn't show it.

I remember seeing a strange CBS movie, Welcome Home, Bobby in 1986 about a guy who may or may not have been gay.

And I remember seeing Revenge of the Nerds on VHS in the same year, which is extremely ironic because a little under a decade later, my college life mimicked that of the black gay character in the movie - i.e. being a semi-closeted black gay male in a predominantly white fraternity.

Then it came to me. 

 

The first time I remember seeing a queer/LGBTQ person on screen was in the first movie I ever saw on screen - Foxy Brown starring Pam Grier. To the uninitiated, Grier was the queen of blaxploitation, which itself was a genre featuring generally low-budget action movies in the 1970s starring black characters. They were also very controversial.  This particular movie, Foxy Brown, was one I saw at a drive-in with my uncle, aunt, and cousin when I was a little boy. In it, Grier was fighting a crime cartel in her neighborhood. The scene below was her attempting to rescue a prostitute from a lesbian bar:

 

 One would think that this scene created a negative view of LGBTQ people in me. Actually, it was the opposite view. Being a small child, I didn't understand the dialogue, but it disturbed me tremendously how Grier caused a huge brawl. To my young mind,  Grier went into the bar and began beating the hell out of the women who were simply minding their own business. Subsequently for a number of years - at least until college when I saw the movie again - I always had a fear of Pam Grier.. I saw her as the "big black lady with the afro who came to parties and fucked people up." I even imagined her using razor blades on folks (which she did not in this movie).

Maybe my experience proves how young people are simply too hip to fall for the junk that adults traffic to get us to fear each other. Or maybe, there was a small part of my mind which was aware of my LGBTQ sexual orientation, even at that young age, to recognize this silly attempt to demonize a bar full of lesbians.

Who knows? Regardless, I encourage and appreciate your comments about the first time you saw a queer/LGBTQ character on the screen.

'SC lawmaker in trouble after anti-LGBTQ & anti-abortion rant on Senate floor' & other Mon midday news briefs

 

Lawmaker claims that America is in “rebellion against God” in anti-LGBTQ & anti-abortion rant - Batten down the hatches, South Carolina. But in all honesty, this sort of talk is getting SO old.

Alabama's trans ID law requiring proof of surgery is unconstitutional, court rules - And we win again.

Penn. Democrat plans to defy Republican-backed law banning his weed and LGBTQ rights flags - Keep your eye on this guy. He is a future star.

Chipotle to Papa John's: 60 Corps That Improved LGBTQ Policies in 2020 - Not just "need-to-know" information but also "good-to-know."

Fox News rigging the debate on transgender issues by lying about Biden's executive order

We all know that the anti-LGBTQ industry is targeting the transgender community in an attempt to undermine President Biden's general push for LGBTQ rights. But we should as adept in knowing about the no-so secret weapon in its attack - Fox News. There is justifiable focus on distortions and lies propagated against the trans community as well as the groups pushing those lies, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council. But equally important is spotlighting how Fox News is helping to spread these lies under the guise of "objective news coverage."

According to Media Matters:

On January 20, President Joe Biden signed an executive order telling federal agencies to protect LGBTQ Americans from discrimination in numerous areas of public life, such as housing, health care, employment, public accommodations, and education. Despite the order’s myriad protections, over the following week, Fox News aired 19 segments -- totaling 51 minutes -- that miscategorized the order as a move that would destroy women’s sports; only one of those segments even alluded to its nondiscrimination protections. 

 . . . From January 20 through 27, Fox News aired at least 19 original segments that mentioned the executive order, amounting to a total of 51 minutes. In every segment, Fox hosts and guests misleadingly framed it as focused on trans athletes, falsely claiming it would allow boys to play in girls sports and that it would destroy women’s sports. The Fox personalities also repeatedly misgendered trans athletes as “biological males.” 

 In fact, only one segment of the 19 alluded to the broader nondiscrimination protections covered by the executive order. In that segment, anchor Sandra Smith asked, “President Biden signed an executive order aimed at eliminating discrimination based on gender identity, but instead of leveling the playing field, could this move threaten the future and fairness of girls sports?” 

 In some of the mentions, Fox framed the executive order around locker rooms and bathrooms in addition to athletics; right-wing media have long and falsely suggested allowing trans people to use the restroom would pose a threat to women’s safety and privacy. 

 And what's worse, according to Media Matters, not only did Fox News distort Biden's executive order, but the guests invited on its network shows to discuss the issue were others who did the same. 

 Notably, nine of the 19 segments were on Fox’s so-called “news” side programs (as opposed to opinion shows), and every single one of the guests or commentators who discussed the executive order held either right-leaning or anti-trans views. These included Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Beth Stelzer of anti-trans group Save Women’s Sports, and The Federalist’s Ben Domenech.

In other words, Fox News not only demonized trans Americans when talking about Biden's executive order, but also rigged the debate in general by inviting only the opponents of trans right to comment.

The report by Media Matters makes for good reading and studying if we are to call out the anti-LGBTQ industry's latest moral panic before it grows the teeth to bite us. The report underscores how the media's depiction of the debate over trans issues needs a huge overhaul with a bit more focus on trans Americans themselves and genuine medical experts who deal with their issues. It would definitely be an improvement over fake analysts,  phony experts, and the news personalities who enable them with fear stories and lies appealing to basic prejudices and ignorance.

''TERFs' furious at President Biden for supporting the transgender community' & other Fri midday news briefs

 

President Biden

Anti-trans feminists are canceling Biden for signing an order that reverses Trump's definition of gender as 'biological sex' - Sorry for anyone who may get offended, but I despise TERFs. A bunch of women spreading nonsense no different than racists spreading junk about black man raping white women. "We just want our own spaces as women" sounds like "we just want our own spaces as white people" to me. Yeah. I said it. What?! 

GLAAD Media Awards: Netflix leads list of nominations - HUGE congratulations to all of the GLAAD media award nominees, particularly to the nominees for Outstanding Blog. 

Biden's rejection of Trump's trans military ban is the beginning, not the end, for LGBTQ rights - Preach!!

This gay high school swimmer has mom coaching him every step of the way - THIS is how you support your LGBTQ child.

Did Charlize Theron portray the first LGBTQ action hero in 'Atomic Blonde?'

Editor's note - Trump may be gone (thank God), but the policy established by this blog to every now and then focus on light LGBTQ issues in order to de-stress ourselves will continue.

Openly gay actor  Wentworth Miller made a comment in a recent article which got me thinking. To summarize, he was tired of gay roles which are defined by struggles and sadness. He wanted more roles which put LGBTQ people in a position of power and authority. And I agreed with him. I have long wanted to motion picture featuring a gay black man as an androgynous action hero who saves the world while beating the hell out of bad guys.  To tell the truth, I would settle for seeing any LGBTQ action hero doing all of that. I thought I had never seen that portrayal before.

It turns out that I was wrong. I had seen the character before. And so had a lot of America. In 2017, Academy Award-winning actress Charlize Theron starred in the hit motion picture Atomic Blonde. In the movie, she portrays undercover agent, Lorraine Broughton, trying to retrieve a missing list of double agents. Check out the trailer:

 

'Wave of anti-LGBTQ bills targeting healthcare of trans youths emerge from the states' & other Thur midday news briefs

As Biden backs transgender rights, a wave of anti-LGBTQ bills emerges from states across US - And the bills are targeting the healthcare of trans youths. You know this mess was planned. I cringe what our kids must be feeling during this fight. We have to let them know that they are worthy and loved.

Here's how right-wing media will lie about the Equality Act - And they got them lined up already.

Half of U.S. states get failing grade on LGBTQ protections, advocacy group says - Definitely more work to do. 

CSI student goes viral for video addressing professor who refused to use their correct pronouns - Alright now. 'Handle your business!'

Pray with the anti-LGBTQ religious right? You must be out of your mind.

 

I got this form email from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council: 

 If you are following the record number of executive orders that the Biden administration has issued during their first week in office, then you know how important it is that we pray and stand. The measures range from canceling the Keystone pipeline and shutting down oil production to imposing trangenderism upon our military and America's schools. 

 Tonight we will pray for our nation -- specifically, for the men and women who serve in our nation's military and their families who will be impacted by the executive orders aimed at using the military to advance a radical social agenda. We will also pray for our nation's media, that any deceit designed to misguide the American people will be exposed and new sources of information that will speak the truth will be elevated in this critical time. Please join me  . . . along with Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jerry Boykin and former pastor and congressman Mark Walker, at  . . .  s we seek to hear and obey the voice of God and walk in His ways. He is our only hope!

 

God forbid Perkins prays for honesty, understanding, and little bit more kindness in the world. His prayers fall strictly in the political realm.

This is the same Tony Perkins who lied last night about how Biden canceling the Keystone Pipeline is costing ten of thousands of jobs while trying to pass off a junk science report he had a hand in creating as legitimate work from the Department of Defense.

The same Tony Perkins who signed a letter not that long ago spreading the lie that Biden's electoral win was fraud. 

The same Tony Perkins who called LGBTQ people pawns of the devil and leads an organization whose mission is to make our lives miserable at every turn.

When he says God is our only hope, just who is he talking about?

Chyle please. I wouldn't bother to  squint my eyes around Perkins and his ilk or even stoop to pray around them. Not even a little bit.

'Advocates brace for anti-LGBTQ backlash at state level after Biden victory' & other Wed midday news briefs

Advocates brace for anti-LGBTQ backlash at state level after Biden victory - Let's do this thing. Equality ain't supposed to be easy.

 
Montana House rejects transgender bill, advances abortion bills - One partial victory (women's health is an important issue)

Transgender birth certificate bill defeated, then given new life in the SD Statehouse - Well that sucks.

The Resistance hasn’t won yet. The war isn’t over. - So true.

Family Research Council's Tony Perkins lies about Trump's trans troops ban while attempting to smear Biden

FRC's Tony Perkins tells so many lies, he probably doesn't remember the definition of truth.

Yes, I know that to LGBTQ Americans, the fact that Family Research Council head Tony Perkins has has a habit of telling lies is rather passe. He and his group have told so many lies about us that if they ever accidentally told the truth, that would be the story.

But anti-LGBTQ industry lies about us are like lumps in oatmeal. Every time one pops up, you have to beat it down.

And this latest lie about President Biden is a doozy. Perkins is attempting - like the rest of the right, no doubt - to create a belief that some Americans are now having rethinking their votes for Biden. The fact that Perkins is attempting to pass along this talking point is simply more proof his hypocrisy. It wasn't that long ago that he and his group were a part of an effort to claim that Biden's win was the result of election fraud. So how can there be voter remorse if there was election fraud?

But it gets better. The entire theme of Perkins's piece is that Biden's honeymoon as president is supposedly over because he is costing Americans their jobs and prioritizing things like transgender rights:

Just three days in, the hashtag #BidenRemorse started popping up on social media. By then, the new president had stopped work on the border wall, shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline, and issued an oil and gas moratorium for drilling on federal land -- firing tens of thousands of workers in the process 

Yeah that's a lie. In a 2015 post, Media Matters (a group which catalogs conservative distortions) said the following:

 . . . an exhaustive study by the State Department concluded that the Keystone XL project will result in just 50 jobs, including “35 permanent employees and 15 temporary contractors.” Further, the report stated that spending on the project would support only 3,900 temporary construction jobs if construction lasted one year and just 1,950 temporary construction jobs if construction lasted two years. The report also states that a majority of potential other jobs supported by the project would come from “indirect and induced spending,” yet a recent Washington Post article detailed how the “indirect” job estimates themselves don't hold up, as some have already been created in anticipation of the pipeline, and most would last for less than a year . . .

But the centerpiece of Perkins' distortions about Biden is - guess who - us. Or more specifically, the transgender community. Ever since Biden took office, the religious right has accelerated lies and horror stories about transgender men and women. This particular lie has to do with his repeal of Trump's trans troops ban.

Unfortunately for our troops, the new president doesn't seem to care how his social experimentation affects our actual warfighting. Unlike Donald Trump, who insisted the military study the comprehensive effects of such a policy, Joe Biden -- from the so-called "party of science" -- has not asked for any updated information. In fact, he claimed this morning that opening the doors to transgenderism "does not have any meaningful negative impact on the Armed Forces" and "minimal" effect on "readiness and health care costs." 

 That's interesting, since the findings of then-Secretary James Mattis in 2018 were that the Obama administration had to ignore stacks of research to justify the change. After wading through 21 months of actual fallout, the DOD believed that introducing this type of gender chaos into the military presented a "considerable risk" to its "effectiveness and lethality." The memo does a great job dismantling the flawed and outdated RAND study that both Presidents Obama and Biden have used to prop up their decision. After almost two years of seeing the real impact on troops, the DOD argued that RAND had "mischaracterize[d] or overstate[d] the reports on which it rests its conclusions" (p. 39). "In fact," officials write, "the RAND study itself repeatedly emphasized the lack of quality data on these issues and qualified its conclusions accordingly" -- a fact the Biden administration hasn't bothered to mention.

So many lies:

'Black HIV leaders on what they want from Biden in 2021' & other Tue midday news briefs

Black HIV Leaders on What They Want From Biden in 2021 - Good article.

Honduran lawmakers vote to lock in bans on abortion, same-sex marriage - Come on folks. Don't be so hateful.

Biden DOJ nixes last-minute Trump administration memo on LGBTQ rights - Took place two days ago. Still nice to mention. 

Wentworth Miller Is Done With Gay Roles Defined By Struggle - I definitely see his point. Let's see some LGBTQ action heroes.

Do not forget the lies and liars who made Trump's trans military ban a reality

There are times when the LGBTQ community gain a victory, we don't wrap up loose ends. This generally puts us in a situation where we find ourselves in a new battle with the same forces we defeated before. Then we busy ourselves wondering how we can combat their techniques this time while forgetting that they were same techniques used against us in the last fight.

The recent situation regarding Biden's repeal of Trump's ban on transgender troops is a good example of what I'm talking about. Now when Trump announced the ban, he claimed that he consulted with his military leaders. But this turned out to be a lie. They too were caught by surprise. 

In that same month, America learned that the ban did not come about from genuine concern about the military. It actually came from the minds of the anti-LGBTQ industry with assistance from former Vice President Mike Pence.

According to LGBTQnation:

Multiple sources are saying that Mike Pence – along with some anti-LGBTQ activists – wrote the report behind Donald Trump’s new transgender military ban. The White House released a plan on Friday night to purge transgender people from the military, which revoked the previous transgender military ban that was announced last year. 

 Accompanying the new plan was a memo signed by Defense Secretary James Mattis and a report from the Department of Defense. Multiple sources told Slate that Mike Pence “played a leading role in the creation of this report,” along with anti-transgender activists Ryan Anderson and Tony Perkins. 

Anderson works at the right wing Heritage Foundation and recently wrote When Harry Became Sally, a book that claims that being transgender is a mental illness based on the narratives of “ex-transgender” people. Perkins works for the Family Research Council, an SPLC designated hate group. Another source told Think Progress that the report was a product of a “working group” led by Pence that produced a report with different conclusions from Mattis’s committee report. The source said that Pence “overruled” Mattis’s report, but did not explain exactly what that meant.

'President Biden eliminates Trump's transgender military ban' & other Mon midday news briefs

Joe Biden Repeals Donald Trump’s Transgender Military Ban - More proof that voting matters. Instead of a Trump second term in which more attacks on our rights, health, and safety were assured, LGBTQ Americans now have a president with our best interests at heart. And determined to fight for them.

Transgender Youth Bills Reflect Deep Divisions Across U.S. States - Reflect deep divisions my ass. It's simply the new wedge issue for the religious right And this right here is goddamn lie: 

Christiana Holcomb, legal counsel at the conservative nonprofit organization Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the plaintiffs in the Connecticut suit, said she is seeing a growing trend where lawmakers across the country are recognizing that it’s “a real problem” when state athletic associations or school districts allow transgender women to compete in women’s sports. 

 The ADF goes from state to state pushing this madness up, writing anti-LGBTQ bills for state legislators to pass, and then defending the mess in court. There is NO trend. Just them instigating and pushing lies. 

Anti-LGBTQ politician who proudly opposed conversion therapy ban is kicked out of his party - Happened in Canada, but still ding dong, the fool is gone.

They lived a 'double life' for decades. Now, these gay elders are telling their stories. - Sweet! 

Biden Admin Will Have LGBTQ+ Envoy, Allow Pride Flags at Embassies - Welcome back.