'Holidays can be painful for LGBTQ kids' & other Wed midday news briefs

The holidays can be painful for LGBTQ children and teens - An unfortunate facet of homophobia. While the religious right spooks, fundraises, and scares about some 'War on Christmas' mess, their actions and instigations have helped to create a season of sadness for our LGBTQ kids. 

D.C. may soon have America’s toughest conversion therapy ban - Sweet! 

Why the Religious Right Hates Target - Cause Target is too inclusive and nothing raises funds better than some lie about women and children being threatened.

Queer Catholics Condemn Pope’s Claim That Being Gay Has Become ‘Fashionable’ - Give him hell, y'all!  

PETA criticized for comparing ‘anti-animal language’ to homophobia, racism - Come on, PETA. This here is some bullshyte.

How much were anti-LGBTQ religious evangelicals up Trump's tookis? This much.

Trump as president will be seen by history as an incompetent disaster. You cannot sugarcoat this fact. And whether America's greatest nightmare will be ended by the Russian investigation, plain resignation, loss in re-election or after serving two terms (God help us), I have a hard time believing that nothing Trump does in the future will redeem him.

With that in mind, I have a serious concern because I know that regardless of how it all ends, our community will not take advantage of the perfect opportunity engage in righteous pettiness against those anti-LGBTQ evangelicals.. And that would be a serious shame because whatever path of embarrassment and ruination Trump goes down, they deserve to follow. These right-wing conservative evangelicals supported him as if he were the Second Coming.

And by supporting him, I mean showering him with syrupy pandering praise for every move they benefited from. In addition, and most importantly, they made excuses for him for just about every lie he told, ugly slurs he uttered, or downright cruel or boneheaded decisions he engaged in - and there were a lot. And when they couldn't make excuses for him, they did the "exit stage left" disappearance, i.e. kept a  very low profile so they wouldn't be noticed and asked about his behavior. It was all for the access and power he gave them

So from time to time, I am going to take it upon myself to post reminders of  right-wing conservative evangelicals abandoning the status they like to anoint themselves as religious voices of conscience and opting to dig far up Trump's tookis.

Like so:

'Powerful testimonials tell of being forced to go through 'ex-gay' therapy' & other Tue midday news briefs

Can't Be Converted: Child Abuse in Utah - The Advocate magazine is running a series of testimonials from folks who were forced to go through "ex-gay" or "conversion therapy" in states where it remains legal to be forced on minors. The series, "Can't Be Converted" is powerful stuff. The one spotlit today is from a young lady who was forced to undergo this fraudulent therapy at age 15 when her parents discovered she had a girlfriend. 

Ryan Murphy has a multi-million dollar plan to vote out anti-LGBTQ politicians - I'm all for this but don't be telling everybody. Have some "super villain realness." You think Lex Luthor brags about his plans? 

This woman is suing a Florida prison for thinking she was transgender instead of menopausal - This incident makes me doubly sick. The fact that it happened to her at all is awful enough. But the fact that if she  were transgender, a lot of folks crying foul about the abuse she suffered probably would not care.

Gay cadet discharged after diagnosis fights military HIV ban - Good for him! 

A college football coach of the year recruited openly gay player while others got cold feet - Wow! Not bad at all. A winning player is a winning player.

Judge to Trump Administration's request to lift ruling blocking trans ban - Nope. Sorry. It's not going to happen

Trump Administration can't catch a break in attempt to block trans men & women from military service

When it comes to his ridiculous attempt to ban transgender men and women from serving in the military, Donald Trump keeps striking out. His latest swing-and-a-miss took place Friday.

From The Advocate:

A federal judge Friday refused to reverse or limit her ruling blocking enforcement of Donald Trump’s ban on military service by transgender people.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said the Trump administration, which asked for her injunction against the ban to be lifted, had not proved the government would suffer irreparable harm if the injunction stayed in place, The Hill reports.

Kollar-Kotelly had issued the injunction in October 2017, blocking the ban while a lawsuit against it was heard. Three other federal judges have issued injunctions in the other suits filed against the ban.

“The government had asked for a stay pending any potential, future proceedings in the Supreme Court,” The Hill reports. The administration has asked the high court to hear its appeal of judges’ orders blocking the ban, even before federal appellate courts had weighed in.

“Without supporting evidence, defendants’ bare assertion that the Court’s injunction poses a threat to military readiness is insufficient to overcome the public interest in ensuring that the government does not engage in unconstitutional and discriminatory conduct,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

'George H.W. Bush wasn't much of a hero to the LGBTQ community during his presidency' & other Mon midday news briefs

George H.W. Bush wasn't much a hero to the LGBTQ community during his presidency.

George H. W. Bush blew GOP’s last chance to abandon anti-LGBTQ extremism - President George H.W. Bush died last weekend and while I said be nice, I didn't say lie about his history in regards to LGBTQ equality. You can be nice and truthful at the same time. He was a good man to many people and his family loved him. But he wasn't as much of a hero as he COULD have been to the LGBTQ community.  

The Media Is Erasing George H.W. Bush’s Catastrophic Harm To LGBTQ People - Michelangelo Signorile breaks it down. 

 The HIV Epidemic Won’t End Until We Address Health Disparities In Communities Of Color - Point blank, amen.

 Anti-LGBTQ pediatrician was called out in 2017 for error-filled post on transgender community - Post from last night. The targets of the anti-LGBTQ industry may change, but the tactics and lies don't. Neither do the condemnations when they are caught lying.
 

Lesbian couple made to quit jobs for being ‘too gay’ - So much mess the LGBTQ community continues to fight against. 
 

 Pope Francis says gay life has become ‘fashionable’ and is hurting the Catholic Church - Really? Don't blame us for fallacies in the Catholic church.

Anti-LGBTQ pediatrician was called out in 2017 for error-filled post on transgender community

Dr. Michell Cretella was called out in 2017 for an error-filled attack on the transgender community

Just in case folks haven't noticed, there has been certain shift of attacks from the anti-LGBTQ industry. Seeing that they lost the marriage equality, they have taken on two new directions. One is to portray themselves as defenders of "religious liberty."

The other is to make the transgender community the scapegoat of their attacks. Just about every argument the anti-LGBTQ industry have used to demonize gay men as harmful to children and unhealthy have been slightly altered to focus on the trans community.

But with the shift comes the same thing which plagued them when they were making gay men scapegoats - they distort scientific information and get called out on it. The following incident from July 2017 (I apologize extremely for the lateness of me documenting the situation) proves my point. It involves Dr. Michelle Cretella. Cretella is the president of the American College of Pediatricians, an organization recently deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for how it attempts to legitimatize anti-LGBTQ lies under the veneer of science.

Cretella attacked the transgender community in a piece entitled “I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse”. But she was quickly called out by the The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine  (SAHM).

'Video catches school officials harassing trans student while she was using the restroom' & other Fri midday news briefs

This is result of anti-trans hysteria promoted by groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom - Minnesota school staff breaking open a bathroom stall door simply because a trans student  is occupying it.

Trans student films being harassed while in school bathroom stall - I had to calm myself down so I can write this without swearing. I will say this - at press time, this is the situation (the facts may or may not change) in the same time period the anti-LGBTQ hate group the Alliance Defending Freedom is publishing bullshyte op-eds in the USA Today pushing false assertions about transgender students using school restrooms (claiming that they violate privacy of other students), we got a real incident in Minnesota about an underage transgender girl being humiliated simply because she was using the restroom at school. The stall door was shut and locked. But they jimmied it open. I am willing to bet you that all of this hysteria over trans students using public school restrooms was NOT started because they were using restrooms, but because groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council spooked people with their lies about "transgender predators."

School officials caught on video busting into bathroom stall with trans girl inside - LGBTQNation covers the situation WITH the tweet.

 Fox News continues to provide a safe space for extreme anti-LGBTQ group ADF - on the risk of sounding hysterical, ADF knows exactly that situations like the above can happen because of them. It's additional chaos which their nonsense causes. And according to Media Matters, this is how they do it. Go on Fox News, which is a safe space for them, and humanize their bigotry, i.e. present fake victims of the supposed LGBTQ agenda. The op-ed I mentioned in the first post was supposedly written by one of their clients. And in this post, the Fox News interview is with a representative of ADF and their latest clients - two owners of a calligraphy studio in Arizona.  The owners are claiming that non-discrimination laws themselves are wrong because these laws would violate their "religious liberty." Media Matters puts it like this:

ADF’s case is a “pre-enforcement” challenge, a common ADF legal tactic in which people sue over a law that has not yet been enforced against them. This case is one of at least half a dozen license-to-discriminate cases that ADF and its allies are pushing through the courts.

Anthony Kennedy says he ‘struggled’ with marriage equality ruling - I bet he did. 

Arizona’s new state House Speaker doesn’t believe LGBTQ people are equal under the law - Oh he doesn't? He will learn.