'LGBTQ dance party goes digital amid coronavirus pandemic' & other Wed midday news briefs

Legendary playwright Terrence McNally dies due to coronavirus. See article in group below.

LGBTQ dance party goes digital amid coronavirus pandemic - There you go! No stopping the party!

Anti-LGBTQ Hate Groups Are Surging in the U.S.- An article published Thursday, but still very necessary. And why are these groups surging? Trump.

Terrence McNally, Award-Winning Playwright, Dies From Complications Due To Coronavirus - We lost a really good one, y'all. 

PrEP may be tested against coronavirus if HIV meds shown to work - This sounds interesting.

Anti-LGBTQ activist Bryan Fischer thinks the coronavirus will 'protect' children from drag queens

Bryan Fischer is living proof that homophobia makes one stupid.

Not only is Bryan Fischer a ratchet homopobe, he is also stupid:

According to LGBTQNation:

Anti-LGBTQ activist Bryan Fischer said that there’s a silver lining to the coronavirus pandemic: kids are staying home from school, where they’re safe from drag queen story hours and the “sexual deviancy, gender confusion” found at public schools. 

Fischer has devoted the better part of his life to fighting what he calls “homofascists.” He’s the former Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association (AFA) – an SPLC designated hate group largely because of work he did for them – and he currently hosts a radio show on American Family Radio, a network over over 180 radio stations.

'The Right's New Target: LGBTQ Children' & other Tue midday news briefs

The Right’s New Target: LGBTQ Children - We have to let it be known as well as do something about it.

Trump-endorsed news outlet says it’s God’s “judgment” that a gay activist died from coronavirus - Disgusting and sleazy as hell.

16 great LGBTQ movies to stream during self-isolation - Yep! Cause we need to keep our spirits up.

Miley Cyrus quit church because gay friends 'weren't being accepted' - Good for her for being supportive/

Family Research Council attempting to whitewash Trump's lack of leadership during coronavirus pandemic

With what we know about how Trump has been bungling the response to the coronavirus pandemic, I don't necessarily think it's a good thing to portray him as some type of unfairly overburdened leader. But that's what the Family Research Council and its president, Tony Perkins, are attempting to do:

There's hardly a busier, more burdened man in America right now than President Trump. And yet on Friday, when he heard that Vice President Mike Pence was about to jump on an FRC conference call with 700 pastors, he asked if he could join. Hearing his voice was a surprise, even to me -- but hearing his earnest desire to stand with the faith leaders of America in crisis certainly wasn't. 

"When I told the president I was going to be speaking to all of you," Mike explained, "[he was] in the midst of an extraordinarily busy day. [But] he looked at me and said, 'I have to find time. I need to find time.'" To the president, he went on, "the prayers of the people on this call mean [everything] to him..." So despite everything facing America, the two most important leaders of this nation stopped everything to pray with the people on the ground, who are ministering to their communities. 

It's a "wild world," the president started. The virus, he said, "came upon us so suddenly. And we were doing better than we've ever done before as a country in terms of the economy -- and then, all of the sudden, we got hit with this. So we had to close it down," he said wistfully. "We're actually paying a big price to close it down. Never happened before." But, President Trump insisted, "I think we're going to come back stronger than ever before."

I apologize to those who will accuse me of being petty, but I don't intend to change. It's not right to use prayer requests as an attempt to absolve Trump from the mess he helped make, including not challenging his inaccurate statement that the coronavirus came suddenly.

In fact, its downright sleazy.

Pray for our nation if you want. And by all means pray for Trump if you feel the need. But don't even attempt to write off, push away, or ignore the many ways he mismanaged this disaster. Don't even attempt to pretend that Trump had this situation under control from the beginning when he kept shifting positions from claiming that his administration had this problem under control, to claiming that it was a Democratic hoax, to finally acknowledging the seriousness of the situation.

And don't even pretend that he didn't attempt to absolve himself from the responsibility which came with him being elected - and I swear I will never EVER know why - as the commander-in-chief of this nation.

We aren't stupid In spite of the purveyors of propaganda working overtime, the majority of Americans aren't going to buy this attempt to transform Trump from Mr. Magoo to Abraham Lincoln.

 If Trump wants prayer, maybe he should publicly acknowledge his lack of leadership thus far. If he can't do that - and we all know he can't -  then at least FRC shouldn't aid and abet any attempt to make him look like a credible leader.

Because that's the one thing he hasn't been throughout this mess.

'Drag My Dad' allows families to connect, bond, and accept each other

 I ran across these videos on youtube and they really put me in a good mood. I hope they do the same for you. In these troubled times, we all - LGBTQ people especially -  need something to make us smile and to remind us that there are positive aspects and values in the cultures we embrace.

We all know about Drag Queen Story Hour and what it does for our children and families in spite of the ignorant backlash it has faced. But did you know that drag can also be used to help fathers and mothers reconnect with, accept, and bond with their LGBTQ children?

It all happens via Drag My Dad, an MTV show streamed on Facebook, where fathers, mothers, and/or their children are made up as drag queens. It sounds simple, but the stories as to why these families are participating is where the complexities lie. If the above episodes doesn't pull your heartstrings, you need to check your pulse.

Family Research Council gives Trump tone deaf praise for his handling of coronavirus outbreak

Fox News and Donald Trump are rightfully blamed for their actions during this coronavirus outbreak as these two videos show:

But there is a third party which deserves at least some blame for where we are now - conservative evangelical groups. During this crisis, a lot of them -  folks and groups who have defended Trump in spite of every lie, insult, and episode of bad behavior or awful leadership - having been laying low.

Conservative evangelical claims coronavirus is God's punishment for marriage equality and abortion

In spite of his stunning incompetence in dealing with coronavirus outbreak, Trump hasn't lost the support of the most loyal members of his base - white conservative evangelicals. 

According to The Huffington Post:

About 7 in 10 white evangelical Christians approve of the way Trump is handling issues related to the coronavirus outbreak, including 52% who strongly approve of his performance, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted over the weekend. In contrast, only 45% of all American adults surveyed said they strongly or somewhat approve of how Trump is handling the outbreak. Seventy percent of white evangelicals also approve of the way the U.S. government is managing the outbreak. Only 47% of all respondents surveyed said the same. The data suggests that the president’s most loyal religious supporters are standing by their man despite reports of infighting and indecision at the White House as the pandemic unfolded.

It's all about rationalization with these people. They can always point the finger at someone else, such as the media. Or, like this guy in the above video, can blame abortion and marriage equality.

From Right Wing Watch:

When right-wing pastor Perry Stone held a prayer service at his church in Cleveland, Tennessee, earlier this week, he declared that the current COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in America is a “reckoning” brought on by the nation’s rejection of God and its embrace of reproductive rights and marriage equality.

Why is there a reckoning?” he asked. “Because we have by law forced God out of our country and basically told him, ‘In public places, you’re not welcome.’ You’re not welcomed in our schools, so our schools are now shut down. No prayer in public school, no Bible reading in public school. Now they’re telling kids to stay home for who knows how long, so our schools are shut down.” 

 “Then we have said to God, ‘The infants that you put in our wombs, we don’t respect them, we don’t want them, we will get them out of our bellies through abortion,'” Stone continued. “If you watch the women who are pro-choice, the majority of them have a spirit about them where there is no love.” 

“The Bible talks about going after ‘strange flesh,'” Stone added, as he recounted the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. “There is a reckoning because the courts of the land passed a law to take an infant’s life, that it was OK, and for marriage as we have known it to be changed into something we have never known. Both of their laws, biblically in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, are what God calls an abomination. And the Bible teaches us that God is long-suffering, he is not willing that any perish, he wants everyone to come to repentance, but there will be a time when the Lord says, ‘Enough is enough.'” "

Yesterday it was hate group the Family Research Council speaking against a coronavirus relief bill because of the possibility that it could help same-sex couples. Today is this fool with the tired nonsense which we have heard before about God punishing the world for abortion and marriage equality.

It's a rather cold comfort to know that regardless of how dire any situation can get, we can always count on certain people to be the self-righteous, homophobic braying jackasses we always knew they were.