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| Anti-LGBTQ SC Congressman Jeff Duncan's wife has filed for a divorce while accusing him of multiple affairs. |
Last year, South Carolina Congressman Jeff Duncan publicly accused the Democratic Party of trying to destroy families by "going after children." This year, Duncan's wife is filing for divorce while accusing him of having multiple affairs. It's a story as old as the hills and remade more times than the motion picture A Star is Born.
From Business Insider:
A politician who promotes the importance of family has abandoned them. This time, it appears to be US Rep. Jeff Duncan, a Republican in South Carolina. Duncan's wife, Melody Duncan, filed for divorce last week, citing her husband's multiple affairs. Melody Duncan, his wife of more than 30 years and mother to his three sons, accused her husband of at least two affairs in the divorce filing, which was first obtained and published by the Index-Journal, a local newspaper in Greenwood.
Duncan has been in office for 13 years and has long advocated for conservative Christian values. "As a life-long social conservative, I am a strong advocate for life and traditional family values," Duncan writes on his website. Accompanying the post is a stock image of the Holy Bible, a book famous for its views on infidelity. He then pledges himself to the anti-abortion cause: "The most basic component of our society is the family."
The family, plus a few mistresses, it would seem.
The divorce filing described Melody Duncan as a "dutiful wife" who "wholeheartedly supported" Duncan in his career. It cites a political event last month where Duncan echoed his wife's sentiment. At a "Faith and Freedom BBQ" on August 28, Duncan described his wife as "supportive and loving" while portraying himself as a "dedicated, dutiful husband," according to the divorce filing. Duncan then "left the next day and went directly" to the home of his mistress, it says.
Melody Duncan also says that her husband admitted his affair to their sons and congressional staffers, adding that she believes he has had at least one other affair.
This is the same Jeff Duncan who published a piece last year accusing Democrats of trying to destroy families and marriages:
Conservative policies are pro-child, pro-family, pro-parent, and most importantly, pro-life. Democrats, however, promote policies and ideologies that ultimately impair children in the long run, vilify concerned parents as “domestic terrorists,” and attack the most vulnerable. Conservatives believe that parents, not the government, should have the primary say in their child’s life and that a child’s rights must be protected first and foremost. For conservatives, when it comes to protecting children, that is the hill to die on.
The following is what he reportedly said about marriage equality in 2010:
I BELIEVE in family. I believe that children develop best when they have loving parents. I believe that marriage is sacred, and should only be defined as a union between one man and one woman I believe in protecting family values, and that is part of the reason why I am running for United States Congress.
And in 2015, he cosponsored a resolution to amend the Constitution to ban marriage equality.
So here we go again. A 'pro-family' Congressman who makes a big deal about his morality and opposition to marriage equality has shown himself to be a huge hypocrite. It happens so often that there simply is no shock value anymore. Worse than that, not only have we come to expect it, but we all have come to accept it. And with that acceptance comes the ability of hypocrites like Duncan to get away with it.
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| Fl Gov Ron DeSantis |
A Miami restaurant has settled a legal dispute over a drag queen show with the state of Florida, ending a yearlong case that became tinged with partisan politics as Gov. Ron DeSantis accused the venue of trying to sexualize children. The owners of the restaurant, R House, agreed to pay a $10,000 fine to end the dispute. In a statement Tuesday, the owners said the payment of the fine “did not result from the finding of any violation of any administrative or criminal laws.. . . Those cases — against the Hyatt Regency Miami and the historic Plaza Live theater in Orlando — are ongoing. But records show that in the Orlando case, state regulators filed their complaint even though they had found no evidence of lewd acts at the drag show.In the case of R House, the dispute stemmed from a video on social media that showed a drag performer leading a young girl during a brunch performance. The performer said the parent had asked her to take the girl’s hand and walk with her because it was her birthday. The performer accepted, walked with the child briefly and then returned her to her parents.On Tuesday, R House owners said their drag show performances were “never specifically intended for minors,” but that a few parents in the past had “felt they were uniquely qualified to evaluate what was appropriate entertainment for their children and brought their family to our shows.”“Be that as it may, in January 2023, we did introduce a mandatory age limit of 18+ and will continue that moving forward,” they said. “We are a small independently-owned business and never wanted to become a lightning rod for divisive political or cultural issues but unfortunately that is exactly what happened.”
Over a decade ago, I wrote about six tactics of distortions used by the anti-LGBTQ industry to inhibit pro-gay laws and demonize gays in general. Bear in mind all of this was before my knowledge of the LGBTQ community's diversity, hence me using "gay" as a general term when I meant all of us
These tactics haven't changed. They've simply been applied specifically to trans people.
Below is the list with examples:
1. Using nonrepresentative or out of date studies to make generalizations or distorting legitimate studies to give misleading conclusions.Shrier claims that “in most cases—nearly 70 percent—gender dysphoria resolves," and thus youth should not be provided gender-affirming medical care. That statistic is false.Shrier incorrectly uses this statistic to claim that trans youth shouldn't be offered gender-affirming medical interventions because most will change their minds and later regret their decision. The studies Shrier refers to used an old diagnosis of “gender identity disorder,” not the DSM-5 diagnosis of gender dysphoria.The reason this is a problem is that one could meet this diagnosis without being transgender. The old criteria largely focused on gender expression (think a tomboy or a cisgender boy who likes “feminine” toys). Those kids aren’t transgender, so it’s not surprising that most of them weren’t transgender at follow-up. This problem with the “gender identity disorder” diagnosis from the DSM-IV was fixed for the DSM-5.Furthermore, those studies were of very young prepubertal children. Under the current medical consensus, gender-affirming medical interventions are not offered to prepubertal youth. They are only offered after youth have reached adolescence. Once youth reach adolescence, it’s rare for transgender youth to later decide they are cisgender.
"For me, what adults do in their lives, decisions that they make, including transgender adults, is one thing, but for kids under the age of 18— there’s a reason why we don’t let you drive ’til you’re 16. In the state of Indiana, you can’t get a tattoo until after you’re 18, you can’t drink until after you’re 21, that’s because we understand that kids don’t fully understand the consequences of their actions … When it comes to surgical or chemical procedures, I just— I really believe that we’ve got to protect our kids from decisions that will affect them, the balance of their lives, while at the same time saying adults can make decisions according to the dictates of their own conscience."
