Homophobe 2
new 619, promoted to primary
some neglect, some other cats eg moral panic pedophile
SEE THREE
see earlier and LGBT marriage
SEE TRANSGENGER = TARGET
proxy?
perhaps somewhat neglect in text vs filament/links
see corp takeover pride ? pinkwashing?
:{see pink pill moral panic pedo, groomer}:
see 3/bak 3 23 capt
=
06/25/24 mma
Candace Owens’ eponymous new show is only one week old, but the former Daily Wire personality has already returned to an old fixation: a conspiracy theory that the first lady of France is secretly a transgender woman. Similar false accusations, known informally as “transvestigations,” are raging everywhere on social media, targeting figures from Kyle Rittenhouse to Taylor Swift — an uncomfortable if inevitable evolution of a mass hysteria fixated on the bodies of trans people.
Prior to losing her jobat The Daily Wire, Owens proclaimed that she would stake her “entire professional reputation”” on the theory that Brigitte Macron, the longtime wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, was hiding the fact that she is a transgender woman. While heraccusation was met with derision, outrage, and concern, Owens made the claim in a new video on her YouTube channel, and then repeated it several days later.
Video
CitationFrom the June 13, 2024, edition of Candace
Two women in France are currently facing defamation charges for helping spread the claim. Macron’s husband has recently adopted strident anti-trans rhetoric in the run-up to new elections.
Accusations of a secret trans identity have been weaponized against women deemed insufficiently feminine or subversive for years. Lady Gaga was asked in multiple
about rumors about her genitalia, and similar claims pushed by Infowars host Alex Jones dogged Michelle Obama during her husband’s time in office. Although Jones recently announced that he would have to liquidate his assets to settle claims over a separate conspiracy theory about the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, accusations that the former U.S. first lady and mother of two children is secretly trans have refusedto go away.
“Transvestigations” have been hard to miss on social media in recent years, targeting basketballstars Britney Griner and Caitlin Clark, pop stars outspoken in their supportfor LGBTQ equality like Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa, Man of Steel star Henry Cavill, and even former President Lyndon B. Johnson.
These false accusations come amid a broader “trans panic” encouraged by right-wing media and politicians. And right-wing media stars are not immune to this scrutiny, with similar accusations lodged against Laura Loomer, Riley Gaines, Kyle Rittenhouse, and others.
While these accusations are, on their face, an extremely funny result of a deeply unfunny moment in LGBTQ history, they come with dark precedents. The “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s grew partly from a widely covered and since-debunked memoir detailing the occult sexual abuse of children, and it eventually led to a string of false convictions for offenses ranging from sexual abuse to homicide. One couple, wrongfully convictedin Texas at the height of the panic, spent more than two decades in prison.
Although the particulars of these accusations may have changed — though not as much as you might think, with trans people frequently accused of being either sexual predators or dangerous killers — public enthusiasm for the punishment of people seen as a threat to children has not vanished, making such claims disruptive or even dangerous for their targets. Confirmation bias means that people with negative opinions about transgender people who are prompted to suspect that somebody is transgender are likely to find evidence for their claim, whether or not it exists. The right’s present fixation on trans people has led to accusations of secret trans people everywhere not because men and women are so different, but rather because we have so much in common.
In recent years, the idea that trans people either do not exist as a meaningful category or are a recent invention has taken hold in right-wing media — especially among Owens’ former colleagues at The Daily Wire. Owens herself has previously argued that trans identity is “all made up”in the heads of trans people, an assertion that would be contradicted by the seeming existence of a secret class of trans celebrities, athletes, and politicians, if consistency were a core value of the anti-transition movement. In their own way, “tranvestigators” are living in the aspirational fantasies of the trans community of today: a world where we are known not for the messy spectacle of the metamorphosis, but rather for what we accomplish in the happily ever after.
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rt trying to overturn roe and roll back gay marriage?!
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picked a fight with Disney, biggest employer and beloved corp?! gov Gavin made offer to refugees?!
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RWW 1023
Daniel Villarreal @ LGBTQ Nation: GOP school board candidate caught discussing “fire-breathing” lesbians, “grooming.”
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https://www.alternet.org/missouri-gop-dont-say-gay/
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35yrs rip off covid $ 150K landscape biz?
an 3 23
no lnx
joe Harding, the now-former Florida Republican lawmaker who authored the extremist "Don't Say Gay" bill could face up to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty Tuesday afternoon to federal felony fraud charges in a scheme to obtain $150,000 in COVID-19 relief funds, according to Florida Politics‘ publisher Peter Scorsch.
Harding, 35, was a construction project manager who started his own lawn care company. He quickly became a right-wing darling after his anti-LGBTQ legislation, officially the Parental Rights in Education Act, was embraced by Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis, who signed it into law.
Harding was charged in a December federal indictment with six counts of wire fraud, money laundering, and making false statements in his plot to obtain $150,000 in COVID funds. He resigned from the legislature the following day. He originally pled not guilty.
READ MORE: 'Chilling': Law Enforcement 'Seriously' Investigating Threats Ahead of Possible Trump Indictment Says Top WaPo Reporter
After Harding was charged and resigned, Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida, responded via social media, saying: "So much harm to students, parents and teachers because of his raw political ambitions. He slandered entire communities and trafficked in lie after lie that has emboldened violent bigotry. He will have his day in court but his legacy is already a despicable one."
Harding is not the only family member accused of criminal acts.
"Harding's indictment follows a September guilty plea from his brother-in-law, Patrick Walsh," Florida Politics reported in December. "As reported by Fresh Take Florida, Walsh pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges connected to his receipt of nearly $8 million in disaster relief loans."
Unrepentant to the harm many feel he has done to children and the LGBTQ community, in a statement Tuesday Harding said: "During the past legislative session I have felt the support of millions of Americans while fighting for our shared concerns and for the rights of parents. I will never forget the support I received from every corner of this great country."
READ MORE: 18 Attorneys General Blast Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' Law as Unconstitutional
Harding will be sentenced in July.
Florida's Voice also reported Harding's guilty plea Tuesday.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
Missouri GOP goes 'a step further than Florida' and proposes 'most extreme Don't Say Gay bill': report ›
Author of Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' bill indicted for fraud ›
Hurricane Ian washes away home of Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' law co-sponsor: report ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
Florida moves to expand 'Don't Say Gay' law in coming legislative ... ›
'Don't Say Gay' law brings worry, confusion to Florida schools | PBS ... ›
'Don't Say Gay' bill signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis | AP News ›
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an 3 23
no lnx
a trove of leaked emails between South Dakota legislators and anti-trans lobbyists read like excerpts from "The Handmaid's Tale," according to a new report.
The communications between lobbyists, state Rep. Fred Deutsch and other South Dakota legislators use deeply religious language that shows Christian nationalists are pushing restrictions on LGBTQ rights as part of what they believe is a holy war, reported Vice News.
“Know that many have prayed and are praying for you this day," wrote Vernadette Broyles, a lawyer and president of the Georgia-based Children and Parental Rights Campaign in a 2020 email. "Do not back down, nor should you be afraid. Know that the Lord is with you. The children of South Dakota belong to him. He is jealous over them. Let his jealousies be spoken forth in the House of Representatives of South Dakota today so that his children would be made safe. Know you are HIS representative today. Do not be afraid. Stand firm in what is right."
The emails were shared with Vice by Elisa Rae Shupe, a trans woman who had de-transitioned and become an anti-trans advocate before re-transitioning and renouncing her ties to Christianity.
“I fell prey to the belief that if I did what they suggested that I would be cured of my gender dysphoria," Shupe said. "I was encouraged to confess my sins, ask for forgiveness by Jesus, and turn my plight over to the Lord Jesus Christ. I was also asked to accept that my transgender status was a sexually motivated sin and to cure myself by attending a religious 12-step program, which I did for approximately a year."
The messages are peppered with references to blessings, prayers and apocalyptic warfare.
“It is the language of Christian nationalism,” said Thomas Lecaque, an associate professor of history at Grand View University. “It is the language of people who very much believe they are doing God’s will, and it is the language of people who very much believe that they are engaged in a holy war.”
:{:{Lecaque said South Dakota Republicans, who've gotten three anti-trans bills signed into law by Gov. Kristi Noem, and GOP legislatures around the country are trying to eradicate the trans community while presenting themselves as underdogs.}:
“They are not trying to protect children," Lecaque said. "They are trying to murder the transgender community,”}:
“Stopping the existence of transgender people and the acceptance of trans people in the public sphere is to them some sort of religious imperative,” Lecaque added. “It’s particularly fascinating that this group that has all this money, control in state legislatures, control of the house, they had a presidency, is acting like somehow they are David in the struggle.”
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
North Carolina GOP pushes shady law to weaken campaign regulation after a key House race was tainted by election fraud ›
How GOP lawmakers are putting teen workers in harm's way ›
'You brought this to the floor, lady': Passions ignite in Missouri House over GOP bill to control women's clothes ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
Arizona GOP lawmakers vote to shield themselves from public ... ›
GOP legislators ready bill calling for wolf population goal | AP News ›
GOP pushes for an 'earthquake in American electoral power ... ›
===}}:
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https://www.alternet.org/send/blinken-uganda/
death for hiv trans 3 23
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an 12 22
new right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ dating app struggling to perform for its users
Daniel Villarreal The New Civil Rights Movement
The Right Stuff, a conservative dating app funded by gay billionaire Peter Thiel, is showing signs of failure barely three months after its launch...
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bipart bill to protect passed house/ 11 22
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https://www.mediamatters.org/ben-shapiro/complaining-about-marriage-equality-ben-shapiro-claims-lgbtq-people-are-plotting-impose
https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/oan-guest-unofficially-respect-marriage-act-codifies-slavery-red-states
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gay marr end nuke fam
https://www.alternet.org/laura-ingraham-2658963361/
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mma 12 22 // beck
https://www.mediamatters.org/ben-shapiro/ben-shapiro-says-republican-party-needs-overhaul-very-very-serious-way-after-passage
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/ben-shapiro-kanye-west-defenders/
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an 11 22
...Respect for Marriage Act itself is both narrow and incredible in that it changes nothing in the U.S. unless the Supreme Court overturns landmark rulings in cases like Obergefell, which found same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, or Lawrence v. Texas, which found a constitutional right to sexual intimacy.
Should that happen, states and the federal government, if the bill becomes law, would merely be required to recognize legal marriages of same-sex couples. That’s it. All the religious protections that people of faith currently enjoy would be unchanged, contrary to numerous false claims of far right extremists and religious extremists.
And yet, 37 Republicans decided that in spite of same-sex marriage enjoying a favorability rating of 70% (per Gallup) and 61% of Americans saying legalization of same-sex marriage is good for society (Pew), the newly-re-elected Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, and 36 of his fellow GOP Senators voted to block the bill.
The bill is expected to receive a final vote this week, possibly as early as Thursday. Should it pass as expected, the bill will head back to the House for a final vote since it has been altered from their version. It is expected to pass there again. Afterwards, it will head to President Joe Biden’s desk, where he will sign it into law.
The 37 Senate Republicans who voted against the bill, according to the Senate’s roll call vote list include: Mitch McConnell (R-KY), John Barrasso (R-WY), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Boozman (R-AR), Mike Braun (R-IN), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Steve Daines (R-MT), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Josh Hawley (R-MO), John Hoeven (R-ND), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Ron Johnson (R-WI), John Kennedy (R-LA), James Lankford (R-OK), Mike Lee (R-UT), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Rand Paul (R-KY), James Risch (R-ID), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rick Scott (R-FL), Tim Scott (R-SC), Richard Shelby (R-AL), John Thune (R-SD), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), and Roger Wicker (R-MS).
Of note, U.S. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) did not vote, but in July he unleashed an exceptionally angry attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the bill passed the House.
“Is there a single case about it?” Sen. Sasse, often wrongly considered to be a moderate, said. “I’m not not answering questions that are about hypotheticals that are just Pelosi trying to divide America with culture wars. I think it’s just the same bullshit. She’s not an adult.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/house-republicans-dont-say-gay/ 33 gop
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rww 10 22
vid
Far-right activist and so-called “Stop the Steal” founder Ali Alexander went on a manic rant during his podcast Monday in which openly advocated for Christian fascism and “a violent Christian crusade” against his perceived political opponents.
Buoyed by reports that Elon Musk will purchase Twitter and that Kanye West was photographed wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt, Alexander expressed his conviction that his far-right worldview is gaining power and popularity, prompting him to lay out his vision for afascist Christian nationalist theocracy.
“I refuse to walk into a future where it is commonplace to have sexual perversion in public,” Alexander
. “It’s just not going to be the norm, not where we’re going. OK? You can call that whatever the hell you want. You can call that Americana, you can call that America First, you could call it fascism, you could call it a theocracy, you could call it Christian nationalism. You could call it age appropriate. How about that’s what we call it?I don’t give a crap what you call it.”
“We will not live in a future where violence doesn’t meet widespread perversion. Period,” he continued. “I am aligned with God that we will not march quietly into a future where you got all kinds of things hanging out at public eateries, restaurants, libraries, with or without children. It’s just not acceptable. That’s over. And I will train tens of millions of Americans to not denounce, to not flinch, when they see evil coming upon evil, destruction coming upon evil.”
“All the good faith that we have allowed our oppressorsto be assigned, it’s gone,” Alexander said. “I’m not gonna bomb an abortion clinic, but if somebody did, I’m not denouncing it. I’m not calling for violence. I’m not calling for death. I’m explicitly saying, ‘Don’t do that,’ but if it happens, c’est la [vie]. OK? C’est la [vie]. You know, if they can poll a bunch of moderate Muslims and they don’t feel the urge to denounce radical Islam, guess what? This guy—Ali Alexander and Ali Alexander alone—but guess what? I’m going to be joined by tens of millions, maybe a couple hundred million Americans; we’re done. I’m going to finally teach people what is the moral allowable line that we can walk up to? What does the Bible allow us to get away with? ‘Oh, no. Ali’s going to show them the loopholes.’ You’re damn right I am.”
“I’m not gonna get beatified for this,” Alexander asserted. “I’m not going to reach sainthood, but I am here to say, ‘Fuck them.’ Fuck their nuclear war. Fuck their World War III. Fuck their rejection of peace. And if they don’t deal with the middle—the Elons and the Kanyes—then they should meet—I’m talking about the whole world—they should meet a violent Christian crusade. I mean it,100 percent. … And we’ve got to start conditioning each other for these mental models.”
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https://www.mediamatters.org/libs-tiktok/right-wing-media-spread-doctored-footage-drag-queen-concoct-fear-pride-events
A drag queen who performed at the Idaho Pride event targeted by white nationalists in June is suing a right-wing blogger who doctored footage of his performance to falsely claim he had exposed himself to children. Even though the video was swiftly debunked by local news, right-wing media — including Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik and others who initially helped drive harassment against the Pride event — pushed the edited footage, leading to abuse against the performer.
On June 11, police in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, arrested 31 members of the Patriot Front near Pride in the Park, a planned Pride event. Authorities said evidence showed the white nationalists, who had gathered at the park from across the country, were planning to riot at the event and in multiple areas around the town. Patriot Front has a history of anti-LGBTQ actions, including burning trans pride flags and vandalizing a memorial for the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated it as a hate group.
The event was also targeted by a far-right biker groupthat announced it was holding an event nearby at the same time as Pride in the Park, with organizers saying there were “going to be going after the groomers” while alluding to possible violence.
One of the performers at the event was Eric Posey, whose drag name is Mona Liza Million. Following Pride in the Park, right-wing blogger Summer Bushnellposted footage from Posey’s performance that blurred his crotch. In her posts, Bushnell erroneously claimed Posey had exposed himself to minors and called for her audience to report the video to police. The video, which was debunked by local news two days after the event was held, led to harassment against Posey after it went viral on social media. Now Posey is suing Bushnell, claiming she defamed him in an effort to gain popularity as part of the nationwide effort to malign LGBTQ people and Pride Month events.
A key instigator in manufacturing outrage over the event was Chaya Raichik, who runs the social media account “Libs of TikTok.” Raichik not only targeted Pride in the Park after Idaho-based white nationalist Dave Reilly called for her to do so, but she also helped spread Bushnell’s video weeks after it had been debunked by both the media andauthorities. On July 31, Raichik retweeted a tweet with Bushnell’s video and calling Posey a “pedophile,” with Raichik adding, “This is what a ‘family-friendly’ drag show looks like.” Commenters reacting to Raichik’s post falsely accused Posey of being a “groomer” and “pedophile,” while others threatened extreme acts of violence against him, including multiple threats to castrate him.
Although the tweet she quoted was later removed for violating Twitter’s rule on hateful conduct, Raichik’s tweet was never deleted.
[twt vid libs]
raichik was joined in sharing the doctored video by anti-LGBTQ trolls including right-wing podcaster Liz Wheeler and Gays Against Groomers, with the latter writing, “If gay rights do get rolled back, it will only be because of things like this.”
The renewed social media pickup of the doctored video led to an article published by right-wing blog Post Millennial headlined “Drag queen accused of exposing self to children at 'family friendly' Pride event.” The article promoted conspiracy theories that antifa was involved in targeting the Idaho Pride event, and the header for the article included a still from Bushnell’s video, with the edited video embedded.
The Idaho Family Policy Center, a right-wing Christian nonprofit that partners with extreme anti-LGBTQ group Alliance Defending Freedom and multiple other anti-LGBTQ organizations, posted a petition on September 8 denying law enforcement’s debunking of the video and claiming it had “reviewed the unedited footage and can confirm it portrays public exposure of the performer’s genitalia.” Included with the petition, which called for drag performances to be banned from taking place around children, was a still from Bushnell’s video. The petition remains active as of publication date.
Far-right conspiracy theory outlet Infowars posted an article also featuring a still from the doctored video. The article suggested the targeting of the event by Patriot Front was “a federal false flag operation” and criticized the “mainstream media” for “ignoring a potential child sex crime occurring at the very same event.”
The article cited a press release from the local sheriff’s department saying police were investigating the video. The announcement came after a local outlet had already debunked the claims and released the unedited video, and despite law enforcement officials acknowledging that their investigation stemmed entirely from reports by individuals who had seen Bushnell’s doctored footage and none of whom had seen the performance in person. The stunt culminated on July 1 with the city prosecutor stating what had been demonstrated weeks earlier — Posey had not exposed himself.
Disregarding available evidence, right-wing media widely used the release to push the false narrative and disseminate the doctored footage. Stephanie Hamill, a contributing writer for Media Research Center and ambassador for Turning Point USA, tweeted Bushnell’s video while adding that the “dancer's genitals were reportedly exposed on the main stage with children viewing the ‘dance.’”[twt vid]
right-wing author Janie Johnson tweeted a link to the video to her nearly 200,000 followers, attempting to excuse the white nationalists who targeted the event and writing, “Wonder what ticked the Idaho dads? This drag demon exposed himself to children.”
The incident is nearly identical to another manufactured controversy pushed by right-wing media in which an edited photo of a drag performer reading to children at a library in 2019 was blurred and paired with the claim that they were exposing themselves to children. That smear, too, was quickly debunked, which did not prevent the ensuing harassment and an attempt from lawmakers to strip libraries of their funding.
The targeting of Posey and the broader attacks on Pride in the Park followed an escalating campaign of harassment against drag and Pride Month events that falsely accused participants of abusing children. This harassment, and the escalating rhetoric of maligning LGBTQ people as groomers, has largely been enabled by the failure of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to adequately handle the targeted harassment.
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/this-is-an-evil-country-christian-fascist-nick-fuentes-fumes-over-biden-speech/
rww 9 22
Joe Biden delivered a speech last week from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in which he warned that former President Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters “represent extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
Nick Fuentes, the racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, America-hating, Christian fascist leader of the white nationalist America First movement, is precisely the sort of MAGA activist that Biden was warning about. So naturally, Fuentes reacted to Biden’s speech Thursday night by unleashing an extended rant in which declared that “the United States of America is controlled by Satan” and has been taken over by “the Jews.”
“[Biden] is saying ‘Look, I’m the big gay American empire, :{and I’m gonna kill all the enemies of liberalism,” Fuentes }
:{. “That’s what he’s saying. Biden is there saying, ‘This is global homoand I’m the puppet face of it. I’m the puppet face of world Jewry and global homo and we’re gonna crush all these fascists.'”}:
“The whole thing is just a lie,” Fuentes continued. “The whole thing is a sham. Biden is a puppet. The elections are fake. The social media companies are rigged. The elections are rigged. The news couldn’t be more Jewed-up; Jewed-up, moneyed-up, corporate,under the thumb of the Illuminati, whatever. It’s all real man.”
“The devil is in charge of the world,” Fuentes griped. “Satan is in charge of America. If you don’t realize that, you’re not paying attention. And that’s not even an exaggeration. Satan runs America. I’m a patriot, but the United States of America is controlled by Satan right now. The United States is the great Satan in the world. The United States is controlled by Satan. The regime that runs America is controlled by Satan. And the regime that controls America is the empire that casts a shadow over the world. Satan runs the Western world. When you talk about the West, when you talk about democracy, you’re talking about the devil.”
“If you don’t see the hand of the demonic and all of this, you’re not paying attention,” he said. “It’s the porn empire. It’s thegay porno, abortion, feminist, diabolic empire. That’s what America stands for and it’s wrong.”
“Wake up and smell the coffee, this is an evil country,” Fuentes went on. “Until this country stands for God and the godly, this is an evil country. So, that’s just the way it is. And look at who runs it: a lot of Jews. The Jews hate me. The Jews hate me. And do you know else the Jews hate? Jesus Christ. I hate to say it. Nobody wants to say that part. People want to talk about the [Chinese communists] and everything else. I’m sick of it. You know what? It’s Jews.”
“Fuck democracy,” Fuentes proclaimed. “I stand with Jesus Christ. You can have Philadelphia, and you can have democracy. Democracy is the soul of our nation? You can have it. Christ is the soul of this nation. You can have the United States. Christ is the soul of America. We’re going to have a new country; it’s not going to be called the United States, it’s going to be called America [and] it’s going to be a Christian nation.”...[vid]
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an 6 22
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday appeared to agree it is a “blatant falsehood” that a far-right Christian ministry that has claimed “homosexuals say yes” to pedophilia and promotes anti-LGBTQ lies is a “hate group” that deserves to be placed on the same map and the KKK and neo-Nazis.
Justice Thomas’ rant appears asthe only opposition to the Court’s decision Monday to not take up a case that would effectively revisit the landmark First Amendment case New York Times v. Sullivan, which requires a plaintiff suing for defamation to prove “actual malice.”
Coral Ridge Ministries asked the Supreme Court to review its case, which it lost, against the Southern Poverty Law Center for designating it an anti-LGBTQ hate group. The case is not about whether or not the church is a hate group, but whether or not the Southern Poverty Law Center has the First Amendment right to say so. The court refused, but Thomas in an angry dissent wrote:
“SPLC’s ‘hate group’ designation lumped Coral Ridge’s Christian ministry with groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis. It placed Coral Ridge on an interactive, online ‘Hate Map’ and caused Coral Ridge concrete financial injury by excluding it from the AmazonSmile donation program. Nonetheless, unable to satisfy the ‘almost impossible’ actual-malice standard this Court has imposed, Coral Ridge could not hold SPLC to account for what it maintains is a blatant falsehood.”
Thomas also writes:
"Coral Ridge maintained that although it 'opposes homosexual conduct' based on its religious beliefs, it is in no sense a 'hate group.' … To the contrary, it 'has nothing but love for people who engage in homosexual conduct' and 'has never attacked or maligned anyone on the basis of engaging in homosexual conduct.'"
That’s false.
In its iconic 2010 report, “18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda,” the Southern Poverty Law Center explained that the “late Rev. D. James Kennedy started turning fundamentalist Coral Ridge Presbyterian into a mega-church in the 1960s.”
In an especially nasty 1989 edition of a CRM newsletter, Kennedy ran photographs of children along with the tagline, “Sex With Children? Homosexuals Say Yes!”
“Over the years,” the SPLC report adds, Rev. Kennedy “emphasized anti-gay rhetoric, particularly in his TV ministry. He recommended as ‘essential’ the virulent work of R.J. Rushdoony … who believed practicing gays should be executed.”
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https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/targeting-pride-events-follow-months-escalating-anti-lgbtq-rhetoric-right-wing-media
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cops get death threats
https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/patriot-front-2657499955/
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yikes new main target post trump big lie?
https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/patriot-front-2657499955/
no lnx pix twt
on Saturday, June 11, 31 members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front were arrested in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for allegedly planning to attack a local gay pride event. Historian Thomas Lecaque, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on May 13, stresses that this alleged plot shouldn’t be viewed as an isolated incident, but as one example of the far right’s campaign for “overturning democracy.”
“The arrest of dozens of members of extremist group Patriot Front over the weekend shines a light on the new agenda for the militant factions of the far right,” Lecaque explains. “Their energies are now being focused on another goal: prosecuting a renewed culture war against sexual minorities. Packed tightly into the back of a rented U-Haul truck with their flags and weapons, members of the accelerationist fascist groupwere en route to the Coeur d’Alene Pride rally when they were pulled over and arrested.”
:{:{}:
}:
The historian adds, “Police made the stop on the basis of a tip from local residents. Images of the men, kneeling and zip tied in a field next to their truck, spread quickly on social media.”
Lecaque, a professor at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, describes Patriot Front as part of the openly violent wing of the far right; other examples include the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
“As has been the case at other times in history when political instability has drawn extremist groups into open street-fighting — a Proud Boys calling card — these groups represent the sharp end of the ax that the far right is driving into American society,” Lecaque warns. “On January 6, 2021, their goal was to overturn the results of the recent presidential election. In June 2022, however, their goals have shifted.”
:{:{}:
}:
Lecaque notes thatPatriot Front was founded in 2017 by Thomas Rousseau, who is among the members charged with conspiracy to riot. Rousseau had been a member of Vanguard America, one of the white supremacist and white nationalist groups that was part of the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that year. But after that event, where activist Heather Heyer was murdered, Rousseau left Vanguard America to start his own group.
“Patriot Front members believe themselves to be the ruling heirs to the continent by dint of their racial connection to its European colonizers and consider their racial identity essential to American identity more broadly,” Lecaque observes. “Of course, this is just the sort of blood genealogy nonsense one expects from Nazis…. What makes them significant, however, is their media savvy.”
Lecaque stresses that Patriot Front should be viewed as part of a broader far-right anti-democracy movement.
“Patriot Front is just one distinctive group of many,” Lecaque warns. “Other extremist groups gathered in Coeur d’Alene to watch and harass the pride march, including Three Percenters, Ammon’s Army, PDX Liberation, Proud Boys, and Atomwaffen. These groups have their own ideologies, own brands of violence, and many of them — Atomwaffen being an incredibly clear example — are much readier to engage in violence first, foremost, and often.”
Lecaque adds, “The Coeur d’Alene pride event was not the only target. Christian fascists in Dallas protested at an LGBTQ bar at the beginning of the month as part of a coordinated far-right assault on Pride Month. American Nationalist Initiative, a neo-fascist group, planned to link up with Proud Boys to flash mob outside of a Planned Parenthood in Plano, Texas this weekend, while other planned to harass a Pride Drag event in Arlington.”
The push for anti-gay violence, according to Lecaque, “goes beyond the White supremacists and militias” — and he cites far-right evangelical pastor Dillon Awes as an example. During a June 5 sermon, Awes called for murdering gays.
“Violent fantasies about murdering marginalized communities and overturning democracy are not new,” Lecaque writes. “We have seen them before.”
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an 4 22
Some right-wingers have taken to using “groomer” to describe those who are sensitive to the concerns of LGBT-plus people.
A spokesperson for Florida Governor Ron Desantis tweeted: Don’t Say Gay “would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming Bill.”
US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted: “Anyone who opposes anti-grooming laws like the one in Florida is pro-child predator.”
Fox’s Laura Ingraham did a segment called “Doom and Groom.”
I agree with progressives. This is a transparent ploy having little to do with protecting children. Some argue, including Lindsay Beyerstein, that the discourse is an attempt to spread QAnon ideology. A key takeaway from John Stoehr’s interview with Gabriel Rosenberg was that “groomer speech” is being used to harden the line between real conservatives (anti-pedophile) and those who are not (pro-pedophile).
I’m interested in why the typical conservative – not the thought leader or political elite – might use the term. A more interesting reason the right uses “groomer speech” is it’s theequivalent of “bigot” on the left.
The logic appears to be this: if the left can call me a racist for all these things I don’t see as racist, I’m justified in calling the left “groomers” because they want to teach gender and sexual identity to children.
Let’s dig in.
The function of a slur
When someone hears the word “slur,” they are likely thinking of racial slurs referring to racial or ethnic groups in a dehumanizing manner.
The n-word is the paradigmatic example.
But slurs can be defined more broadly as “an insulting or disparaging remark or innuendo,” or words having “a shaming or degrading effect.”
In this sense, we use slurs quite often.
Consider the charge of being a “bigot” - a racist, sexist, homophobe or transphobe. This canbe solely a descriptor of behaviors. But usually, the charge of bigotry is infused with a moral evaluation.
The identified bigot is a bad person who does not live according to what “correct-thinking people” believe is appropriate.
The identified bigot is insulted, shamed and degraded.
But slurs serve a purpose.
The French sociologist Émile Durkheim said deviant behavior has a useful function in society. I can simplify it in three bullet points.
1. When we see deviance and call it out, we clarify right and wrong.
What do you do when you discover that your male coworker thinks women are too emotional to lead a company? Call him out as a sexist! He may see this as slurring his good name, but it can be the catalyst for a positive chain of events. By calling him out, you let him know you think those ideas are morally wrong and damaging to women.
2. When people react to deviant behavior, it strengthens social bonds.
Other people learn the man is a sexist. They come together in a collective denunciation of the man and sexism.
3. After coming together against deviance, they can enact social change.
The collective agreement that sexism is wrong can lead to collective political action and the passing of legislation against sexism.
In this way, a slur can be a small catalyst for social change.
This is one reason why I vacillate between the social niceties necessary for productive exchanges. Slurring someone can end a conversation. But slurring someone can also spark positive social change.
False equivalencies
Although we don’t usually think of them as slurs, calling someone racist, sexist or transphobe is indeed a type of slur.
However.
These slurs are grounded in the link between action or idea.
They are grounded in the fact of the harm done to people.
It’s easy to chart the consequences of someone who believes women are too emotional for leadership positions. They may not hire a qualified woman for a leadership position or listen to women who are in leadership roles. And so calling that out has justification.
Similarly, we are aware of higher rates of suicidal ideation and suicidal attempts among transgender youthand adults. Efforts to suppress healthy conversations around trans identity in public settings can exacerbate the problem. A trans activist is wholly justified in calling someone who’s suppressing these conversations “transphobic.”
People on the right complaining about the left hurling accusations of bigotry at them without basis are usually quite wrong.
But what is the link between discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools and grooming? There is none.
Obviously.
There is no link between discussing sexual orientation and gender identity and setting out to abuse children sexually, or grooming.
There is no link between learning about sexual orientation and gender identity in school and being vulnerable to sexual advances in school.
(Learning does not make kids vulnerable. It makes them powerful).
Claiming that “bigot” is the same as calling someone a “groomer” is a false equivalency. The former alerts us to actual attitudes and behaviors that can lead to harming populations. The former draw spurious links between education and sexual behavior and, in the process, diminish the actual crime of child sexual abuse.
“Groomer,” far from leading to good social change, harms two groups. It introduces noise into pedophilia discourse, making it harder for people to tune into real evidence signaling child sexual abuse. It also prevents discussions about gender and sexual identity. That may increase rates of suicidal ideation and suicidal attempts among LGBT-plus people.
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no lnx vid twt
https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/fox-news/
Fox News dangerously declares war on teachers: Calls for violence, accusations of 'inclination' to pedophilia
David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement April 11, 2022
From Tucker Carlson to Laura Ingraham to Mark Levin, Fox News propagandists have declared war on public school teachers.The dangerous attacks follow the right’s misleading claims – fueled by Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation – about children inappropriately being taught about sex, homosexuality, bisexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity starting as early as kindergarten.
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Last month, just days afterFlorida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ spokesperson Christina Pushaw charged that anyone who opposed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill was “probably” a “groomer” – essentially, a pedophile, pedophile enabler, or pedophile supporter, Fox News propagandist Laura Ingraham jumped into action.
“When did ourpublic schools,any schools, become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?” Ingraham asked, as Media Matters reported. The chyron was less ambiguous: “Liberals are sexually grooming elementary students.”
In fact, on Monday Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz wrote, “With Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, Republicans have weaponized their Fox News base against teachers.”
Sunday night Fox News’ far-right “fringe” host Mark Levin hosted award-winning playwright David Mamet, who has no degree in childhood development, education, or sexual studies, to discuss public schools. He declared that teachers, especially male teachers, are “sexual predators.”
“Teachers are inclined, particularly men because men are predators, to pedophilia,” Mamet charged, pointing to no study that proves his claim.
That claim came just days after Fox News’ top propagandist, Tucker Carlson, called for men to engage in verbal or physical abuse of school teachers, as Media Matters reported.
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“I don’t understand where the men are. Like where are the dads? You know, some teachers pushing sex values on your third grader why don’t you go in and thrash the teacher? Like this is an agent of the government pushing someone else’s values on your kid about sex, like where’s the pushback?
But Insider reports that Carlson was “repeating calls for violence he has made previously.” And The Daily Beast apparently agreed: “The Fox News host yet again suggested that violence against educators is called for.”
Rather than apologize for its hosts and guests, Fox News is doubling down.Monday morning the conservative outlet published an article claiming: “CNN, Washington Post, Vice and more fret that Republicans are worried about child grooming, pedophilia.”
On Twitter, Media Matters Matthew Gertz adds to points he made in his article.
“Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law effectively deputizes the most Fox-News-and-Facebook-addicted members of the GOP base to act on frenzied smears that LGBTQ teachers are ‘grooming’ children,” he writes.
“This vague law is then enforced by parents suing their school districts. Suits will inevitably come from the most anti-LGBTQ parents, and school districts will chill discussion of a wide range of topics to try to avoid getting mired in lawsuits,” Gertz adds.
“These baseless accusations that the right’s political opponents are actually pedophiles overlap with – and at times become indistinguishable from – the QAnon conspiracy theory,” he concludes, “which is moving ever closer to the GOP mainstream.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/groomer-speech/
edit bd
Something I’ve been meaning to tell you. My dad is a pedophile. I’m not the victim. As always, though, there’s never just one. The ties that bound my family have largely come undone. Pain is now a feature, not a bug, of our lives. It’s a story without ending, nevermind a happy one.
So you can imagine what it felt like to see Republicans in the United States Senate using the word “pedophile” (as well as “child-predator”) during the confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Their use of it was loose, irrelevant, warped and worse. The purpose was advancing conspiracy theories already spreading. The goal was smearing the new Supreme Court justice with the smell of evil.
Worst of all, by overusing it, they watered down the word. They hollowed out its primary moral essence. They created conditions in which my dad and other pedophiles can now plausible say their crimes aren’t as bad as they say. Just look at what the Democrats are doing.
Child abuse, predation, child molestation and rape – these are real problems responsible citizens much find humane ways of addressing while serving the often conflicting needs for rehabilitaton and justice.
These are real social, political and criminal problems.
By belittling them, the Republicans insult us.
They piss into the wounds of real victims, too.
That’s what you’d expect from a political party operating on the edge of political violence. Justice Jackson’s confirmation hearings were a case in point, according to Gabriel Rosenberg, a professor of gender, sexuality and feminist studies at Duke. During our interview, Professor Rosenberg walked me through the four stages of “groomer speech.”
“You're seeing a way in which partisan interests are pursued through the figure of the pedophile, not because any of these people give a damn about the sexual well-being of children, but because it's an incredibly charged and politically potent thing they can hurl.”
On Twitter, you offered an analysis of the rhetoric surrounding Florida’s new Don’t Say Gay legislation. That rhetoric seems to weaponize words like “pedophile” and “child predator” and other things beyond the pale. You outlined four items. Can you explain?
The basic thesis of what I'm calling the “groomer panic,” which I think is coherently understood as a moral panic, or sex panic, is that has the capacity to be significantly more dangerous than comparable sex panics in the past in which similar sorts of rhetorical weaponization of the terms “pedophile” or “child predator” had been deployed.
It has the possibility of spilling into actual political violence.
I made four points.
First, “groomer speech” is using the metaphor of child sexual abuse to describe educational content that rightwing forces disapprove of.
This metaphor of violent physical harm is being used to describe a disagreement over educational content and the underlying speech acts constituting that content. There is a confusion about different kinds of harm and a confusion about the difference between speech and act.
Second, this confusion means concrete evidence of child sex abuse is no longer necessary. Instead, the evidence is the speech act itself.
It becomes the case then that anyone can be credibly accused of being a “groomer,” not because there's evidence of grooming, but because such person has dissented from a preferred framework among conservatives for the understanding of Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law.
“Groomer” describes dissent from conservatism writ large.
There is specificity to the claim about “pedophile” that is itself unique and dramatic. I describe it as having an eliminationist intention.
Third, “groomer speech” is distinguishable from “subjugating speech.”
“Subjugating speech” might incite violence. It's possible. It has before. But broadly, it’s intended to justify social and political inequalities.
“Pedophile” is a specific term, however. It carries, at least in rightwing communities, a claim that the individual in question is pathologically invested in harming the most vulnerable members of society.
There's no interest in governing such individuals.
It's not about establishing them as second-class citizens.
It's about putting them to death.
That separates it from a general class of what I’m calling “subjugating speech” intended to degrade or lessen a person but isn't necessarily a suggestion that they and all people like them ought to be eliminated.
Fourth, “groomer speech” is not being directed at minorities.
At various points in American history, conservatives have accused gay people and other sexual (and sometimes racial) minorities of intending to prey on kids – they behave in a predatory fashion toward children.
What's interesting about “groomer speech” and what's most alarming about its use by the right is the charge being directed at powerful people who cannot by any measure be identified with a minority.
When Marjorie Taylor Greene said Mitt Romney is “pro-pedophile,” she's talking about the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee.
When James Lindsay called Nate Hochman, a writer for National Review, a “groomer,” he's talking about a conservative in good standing, or was. He's saying this individual also wants to abuse children.
This is radically different.
It's now about disciplining ingroup versus outgroup identity within conservatism writ large. It’s about reformatting and hardening the line between people who are conservative and people who are not.
In the end, conservatives are the good ones. They're anti-pedophile. Anyone who dissents from the conservative framework is therefore pro-pedophile. They constitute individuals who must be eliminated.
Ted Cruz used to talk about “San Francisco values.” Others talked about “the gay agenda.” Those are more abstract than “pedophile.” You’re saying we’ve arrived at a new and more explicit point in the evolution of conservative rhetoric. Is that accurate?
That's generally correct.
I would add that on the right, they're open to the idea of people who prey on children deserving the most extreme forms of violence.
I don't think anybody on the far right is trying to hide that.
That’s fundamentally important.
“Groomer speech” is deployed to advance virtually anything that fits within the broader political program of the conservative movement.
Right now, it's about targeting people who dissent from a particular kind of orthodoxy around interpretation of educational content.
But then we saw it coming into play in specious arguments about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's sentencing record – that she was “pro-pedophile.” Therefore Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski [“moderate” Republican senators who voted for her confirmation to the Supreme Court] were also “pro-pedophile.”
It's spilling into confirmations of Supreme Court nominees.
That's a break from the past.
That speaks to the flexibility and centrality of the charge eventually becoming the basis of things like criminal policy, militarization, policing, tax policy and labor policy. It can become a basic rhetorical strategy the far right uses to justify whatever they want to justify.
You're with us and the children.
Or you're on the other side with the pedophiles.
I’m thinking of eugenics. The antipathy toward LGBTQ people comes from the idea that LGBTQ-ness infects white people. As a result, they don't have enough babies. With too few white babies, white people risk becoming a minority. How would you understand that?
During the early human eugenics movement, there was a great deal of enthusiasm in the United States for coercive sterilization of anyone who exhibited homosexual tendencies or who desired sex with men.
There was this idea that homosexuality constituted a dangerous social contagion that needed to be eliminated from society regardless of whether it could be passed on as a congenital defect. It was that grave.
Immediately after World War II, there was something the Lavender Scare period in which heightened concern about male homosexuality resulted in the creation of a lot of criminal psychopathology laws.
These law created legal justification for jailing and sterilizing gay people under the auspices of gay people preying on innocent children.
So the far right isn’t punching down. It's punching sideways – or even up in the case of senators. Is there a link historically between that and a leap into political violence? Do they go hand in hand?
I think Judge Jackson's confirmation hearings clearly illustrate how this works. The Republican Party did not want to see anyone vote for her. Various Republican senators fixated on a specious charge that she'd been light on sentencing people who possessed child pornography.
It was so specious that Andrew McCarthy, who is a notable and extremely right wing figure with National Review, basically labeled it “demagoguery.” He said there were better reasons to oppose her.
The right mobilized after labeling her “pro-pedophile.” From there, they disciplined GOP apostates by labeling them “pro-pedophile,” too. They wanted to show as much opposition as they could.
Actual sexual harm to children had nothing to do with it.
But once it got invoked, it became a disciplinary tool.
You're seeing a way in which partisan interests are pursued through the figure of the pedophile, not because any of these people give a damn about the sexual well-being of children, but because it's an incredibly charged and politically potent thing they can hurl.
That kind of irresponsibility, with no bottom, carries with it its own momentum. It can become more and more difficult to control.
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rt qanon loses mind b/c last bastion of binary thinking B/W rt/wrong good/evil ~ sec hum moral relativism postmod?
https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/marjorie-taylor-greene-2657046068/
tells mayor pete and boyfriend to stay out of girls bathroom
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pink pill hype fear conspiracy qanon
https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/fox-news-chyron-liberals-are-sexually-grooming-elementary-students
3 22
fox News propagandist Laura Ingraham has been called a “monster” by her own brother, who is gay.
“Our father was a Nazi sympathizer, racist, anti-Semite and homophobe,” Curtis Ingraham wrote, as NBC News reported in 2018. “Like father like daughter?”
Last year the highest-ranking Republican elected official in North Carolina came under fire for declaring LGBTQ people are “filth.” Not only was it vile and anti-American, but it was also done by dredging up an old trope, a disgusting lie, suggesting that gay people are pedophiles.
Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, a Christian nationalist, said: “there’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth.”
Last week the taxpayer-paid press secretary to Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis went all-in on the pedophilia lie, defending the anti-LGBTQ legislation her boss is expected to soon sign.
“The bill that liberals inaccurately call ‘Don’t Say Gay’ would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming Bill,” Christina Pushaw announced.“If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of four eight-year-old children. Silence is complicity. This is how it works, Democrats, and I didn’t make the rules.”
The anti-LGBTQ and anti-left lies are back, being promulgated now by some of the most powerful propagandists in the country. Things are getting dangerously worse for LGBTQ people across America.
Freedom for All Americans, a “bipartisan campaign to secure full nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people nationwide,” lists dozens of anti-LGBTQ bills currently in state legislatures across the country. Their passage becomes increasingly assured when propagandists like Laura Ingraham promote vile, hateful tropes about LGBTQ people, even when they mask them by extending it to “liberals.”
Wednesday night Ingraham once again proved her brother right.
“LIBERALS ARE SEXUALLY GROOMING ELEMENTARY STUDENTS” read the chyron on an “Ingraham Angle” segment.
Watch:
Ingraham began by airing clips of two people who viewers likely were expected to believe are school teachers, even though they apparently aren’t. One is just someone on a streaming service who never says she’s a teacher. The other says she’s “in pre-school,” so not a public elementary school teacher.
Those facts don’t matter to propagandists, like Ingraham, who ran those clips then immediately says:
“When did our public schools, any schools, become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?” Ingraham asks (video below), as Media Matters reports. “As a mom, I think it’s appalling, it’s frightening, it’s disgusting, it’s despicable. Florida just passed a bill to keep this type ofsexual brainwashing out of schools. Democrats, though, claim the bill is bigoted, branding it as the ‘Don’t Say Gay Bill.’ Well, nice try. The real controversy, though, isn’t this bill. It’s that schools are peddling gender ideology when our international rankings in math, science, and reading are down across the board.”
As she introduces her guest, the chyron changes to read: “DEMS HAPPY TO RUN ON PRO-GROOMING PLATFORM.”
No facts, nothing to back up those claims, just outrageous, dangerous defamation.
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/former-reagan-white-house-staffer-defends-pete-buttigieg-against-maga-republicans-and-the-vilest-form-of-masculinity/
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interesting evil perversion so to spk on a YA? novel coming out coming of age bk not on any curric but avail in some schools fuelling CRT school bd BS
they call it child porn when it clearly ain't; eternal bad faith question
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eternal wedge issue?
but culture war eruption hysteria eg gay teletubbies
aha this kinda harkens back to cold war red scare blacklist commies tiring to brainwash, kids most vulnerable ; urban legend grounded in fear (of some new thing?)
hype fear anger emotion note pedophile was red pill entry drug for women into Qanon
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moral panic:
dr suess, mr potatohead, smurfs commie; sesame str?
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/pastor-kent-christmas/
gays demonic
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/nationalists/
In April 2018, researcher Frederick Clarkson exposed the existence of Project Blitz, a secretive Christian nationalist "bill mill" operating below the radar to shape and enact legislation in dozens of states, using a network of state "prayer caucuses," many of which had unsuspecting Democratic members. Its plan was to start with innocent-seeming bills, such as requiring public schools to display the national motto, "In God We Trust," and to culminate with laying the foundations for a "Handmaid's Tale"-style theocracy, enshrining bigotry in law under the guise of "religious freedom."
Salon was the first to report and build on Clarkson's findings, as well as subsequent progressive organizing efforts which eventually drove Project Blitz back underground, following a high-profile {{USA Today}_}_{ exposé}{ (Salon follow-up }_{here}_.) Now, three years later, Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, has unearthed the playbooks Project Blitz has used since going dark, and discussed their implications with Salon in an exclusive interview.
"The playbooks advise legislators to cloak their religious mission in the guise of more secular intentions and they've renamed several bills to make them sound more appealing," Clarkson reported at Religion Dispatches. But there's another, more hopeful message: These playbooks "also tell a story of the resilience of democratic institutions and leaders in the face of movements seeking to undermine or end them."
Clarkson told Salon, "While most people to the left of the Christian right view the Project Blitz playbook with revulsion, I see it as a gift to democracy. The playbook and their accompanying briefings and events laid bare their intentions and their game plan." Because of that, he continued, "We were handed a vital tool for the defense of democratic values and, arguably, the wider defense of democracy itself. The things that happened in response, I think, are underappreciated, even by some of those who should be taking great pride in their victories."
In particular, Clarkson said,"We were fortunate that Rachel Laser, the then-new president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, recognized this right away and made taking on Project Blitz a signature campaign of her presidency." One highlight of Laser's work was "organizing dozens of national religious and civil rights organizations to issue a joint letter to state legislators opposing the anti-democratic, Christian nationalist intention" behind Project Blitz.
He also cited the webinars staged for various national groups by Alison Gill of American Atheists, Elizabeth Reiner Platt of Columbia University Law School and Clarkson himself, which "laid out the implications of the Project Blitz campaign," Clarkson said. (My reporting on that is here.) That in turn led to the formation of Blitz Watch, which focused attention on the continuing threat.
In Clarkson's article for Religion Dispatches, he writes, "In 2020, depending on how one counts, 92 bills were introduced, 8 of which passed. In 2021, so far, 74 bills have been introduced, 14 of which have passed, according to Blitz Watch." So Project Blitz is still in action, and still a threat. But it's not the massive and successful onslaught that its founders intended and hoped for — and the fact that it was forced into stealth mode shows how successful the pushback has been.
At the end of his story, Clarkson offers this summary:
The ongoing exposure and response to Project Blitz has taught us several things. First, that it's possible to stand up to and prevail against anti-democratic movements and measures, and that our democratic institutions are more resilient than they sometimes seem. Sen. John Marty showed that — when he spoke up for the integrity of his faith and stood down a national smear campaign led by Fox News, as noted earlier. Librarians and their allies showed that, even in the face of demagogic attacks on the competence and integrity of public libraries, state legislators could be made to see reason. Efforts since 2018 by scores of national organizations organized by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and Blitz Watch, have also shown that it's possible to defend democracy and its institutions against a secretive and formidable opponent of democratic values, and of democracy itself. What's more, journalism has once again shown that sunlight remains the best disinfectant.
Elaborating on this last point, Clarkson told Salon, "Scores of national media outlets covered either Project Blitz directly, or covered the patterns of bills introduced in legislatures across the country, especially the most common, In God We Trust bills…. Thus Project Blitz was exposed as part of wider problem of manipulation of state legislatures, and found itself compared to the tobacco and the pornography industries as corruptors of democratic institutions."
What's equally important is that these lessons can also provide tools and strategies to counter the right's latest culture war offensive — the racist backlash flying under the banner of fighting "critical race theory."Although the two campaigns are dissimilar in some respects, in both cases the right is defending a founding myth (America as a "Christian nation," or America as a flawless "beacon of liberty") and perverting or taking hostage a progressive value to claim it as their own (religious freedom or racial equality). In both cases, the reliance on blatant deception tells us that conservatives themselves understand that progressives hold the stronger hand. The right may be more mobilized now — just as it was before Project Blitz was first exposed — but it won't win if progressives can learn, and adapt, the lessons of their recent success.
As Clarkson first reported, Project Blitz originally divided its bills into three tiers. The first tier aimed at importing the Christian nationalist worldview into public schools and other aspects of the public sphere. A signature example is display of the motto, "In God We Trust," a Cold War replacement for "E pluribus unum" — out of many, one — which better reflects America's pragmatic, pluralist foundations.
The second tier, "Resolutions and Proclamations Recognizing the Importance of Religious History and Freedom," aimed at making government a partner in "Christianizing" America, largely by promoting bogus historical narratives. For example, Clarkson told me, the model "Civic Literacy Act and the Religion in History Acts," required the study or posting of "the founding documents" in the public schools, but with a twist:
"Curiously, the Mayflower Compact is included as a founding document," he said, "but there is no mention of the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty [the law Thomas Jefferson wrote which served as the model for the First Amendment] ... because it throws a monkey wrench into the Christian nationalist narrative, which seeks to link Christianity and national identity from the British colonies at Jamestown and Plymouth to the present."
The third tier contained three types of proposed laws that "protect" religious beliefs and practices specifically intended to benefit bigotry. "Although category three is divided in three parts, you could also see it as having two main underlying intentions," Clarkson explained in a later story. "First to denigrate the LGBTQ community, and second to defend and advance the right to discriminate. This is one way that the agenda of theocratic dominionism is reframed as protecting the right of theocrats to discriminate against those deemed second-class, at best. As the late theocratic theologian R.J. Rushdoony said, 'Only the right have rights.'"
The basic structure of Project Blitz's agenda hasn't changed much, but its presentation has. "The 2020-2021 playbook offers slicker arguments than previous years," Clarkson notes. "For example, they deny that they seek a theocracy, try not to be overtly Christian, present secular arguments for their legislation and attempt to give the appearance that they respect religious pluralism. But they don't quite succeed."
The contradictions he notes are not surprising. Authors of these proposed laws insist, for example, that they're not out to "change our model of government into a theocracy" and that the bills don't "mimic or enact any particular religious code." But the inclusion of "The Ten Commandments Display Act" isn't very convincing on that score. They further insist that the model bills promote "religious tolerance" and "do not force any religion on anyone," yet the "National Motto Display Act" calls for the posting of the Christian religious slogan "In God We Trust" in public schools and buildings. Still they allege that "tolerance [is] sorely lacking in those who reject various aspects of religious teaching," an old talking point that frames rejection of imposed religion in public spaces as "intolerance."
That last point is another example of how the right attempts to usurp progressive values and turn them on their heads. It also represents an attempt to erase religious liberals, progressives and radicals from the public sphere, by pretending that only "secular humanists" can possibly oppose what they are doing.
The 2019-2020 playbook was more narrowly focused, dealing only with bills related to sexual orientation and gender identity. That made sense, since it was the rapid shift in public attitudes around LGBTQ rights that put the religious right into its current defensive posture, out of which it conceived its counter-offensive: recasting religious bigotry as a defining feature of faith, and claiming a right to discriminate as an essential aspect of "religious freedom." The fact that the other tiers were dropped from the 2019-2020 playbook is a tell of sorts — but of course the playbook's authors never expected it to become public.
The 2020-2021 playbook returned to the full three-tier format, under a new rubric of "categories," adding two additional ones. "Category 4 offers 'talking points to counter anti-religious freedom legislation,' which is simply a breakout of the talking points previously included in other sections," Clarkson notes, while "Category 5 provides four new model policies dealing with prayer in public settings — three for public school settings and one for municipal settings, such as city council meetings."
One important new ingredient
One new bill that Clarkson draws attention to would criminalize libraries and librarians, and became infamous even before Project Blitz adopted it:
The "Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act," introduced by then-freshman Missouri State Rep. Ben Baker (R-Neosho), ignited a state and national controversy in January 2020 shortly after he took office. …
His bill sought to create "parental review boards" with the authority to "convene public hearings" and restrict access to anything they deemed "age-inappropriate sexual materials." Not only would their decisions be "final," but the bill also prescribed fines or jail for librarians who "willingly" violated board decrees regarding what is inappropriate, and included the potential state defunding of libraries accused of violating the statute.
This bill is deceptive in two key ways. First, as Clarkson notes, it "feigns a democratic method to achieve an anti-democratic result." These board members wouldn't be chosen in a general election, but by voters who show up in person at a scheduled public meeting where the issue is raised. "Thus the boards could be elected by small groups of zealots able to pack an otherwise routine evening meeting of a town council," Clarkson writes. These boards would then be given powers to overrule existing library boards, which are either democratically elected or appointed by democratically elected officials. In short, this is an attack on local democratic control, the very principle it pretends to embody.
The second deception is over the term "age-inappropriate sexual materials," since the impetus for the original bill wasn't about sexual content at all, but rather gender representation:
Baker said he was originally concerned about the popular-but-sometimes-controversial Drag Queen Story Hour in libraries and bookstores around the country.
Drag Queen Story Hour describes its events simply as "drag queens reading stories to children in libraries, schools, and bookstores … [where] kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real."
Baker sees something more sinister at work. Any break in rigid gender stereotypes is inherently subversive to his snowflake sensibilities, as he explained to the New York Times: "What inspired this bill is becoming aware of what is taking place at our publicly funded libraries with events like Drag Queen Story Hour, and materials that have a clear agenda of grooming our children for the L.G.B.T.Q. community with adult themes and content that fit the description of a objectionable sexual nature."
In this worldview, any breakdown in rigid gender stereotypes is associated with "grooming our children" for the LGBTQ community," a trope used by the right dating back at least to the Eisenhower-era John Birch Society, when scientific knowledge about gender orientation and identity was virtually nonexistent. Not only does this lack any scientific credibility, it's also a hysterical overreaction, since no one is forced to attend Drag Queen Story Hour. If this law were passed, as an official with American Library Association warned, not just Drag Queen Story Hour could be censored, but also displays relating to Pride Month, Black History Month and other specific commemorations.
This attempted intrusion into local library politics is just one example of how Project Blitz overlaps with the new wave of white backlash under the banner of fighting "critical race theory." For several decades, he right has repeatedly mobilized to take over nonpartisan school boards, and occasionally library boards, as a way of building grassroots power and grooming candidates for higher office. Such elections usually have low turnout and relatively little campaign organization, which makes them attractive targets for extremists running scare-tactic campaigns. The parental oversight bill takes things one step further by empowering small activist groups who invadie local government meetings, but the organizing principle is the same: Use fear and stealth to seize power, and use simulated democratic legitimacy to advance a divisive, reactionary agenda.
These library-centered battles served to underscore a broader point that Clarkson made to Salon. "When people are invested in democratic institutions like public libraries, or any aspect of government, it is important not to 'other-ize' government, which in a democratic society is intended to be an expression and function of what we need and want to do together, and is necessarily an expression of democratic values," Clarkson said.
"That librarians and allies around the country rallied to the defense of the archives of democratic knowledge, culture and practice is a case example of how we need not be bullied by Christian right demagoguery. Screechy charges may make headlines and bring in ad revenue on right-wing talk radio, but most people, most of the time, do not want their schools and libraries messed with by authoritarian bigots and mobs of the easily led."
Reflecting on lessons learned
Exposure was the key to success, according to two important figures in this struggle, both mentioned above. Rachel Laser is president of Americans United For Separation of Church and State, and Alison Gill is vice president for legal and policy matters at American Atheists.
"To oppose Project Blitz effectively, we first had to raise awareness about this campaign," Gill said.
"Project Blitz's strategy was to start with seemingly less controversial legislation that organizers thought they could slip past the public," Laser said, "then build to even more harmful, more controversial bills. They had some success early on. But once we exposed that strategy and people became aware of Project Blitz and its agenda of codifying Christian nationalism, the initiative began to unravel, because people don't want to force religious beliefs on public schoolchildren and they don't want our laws to license discrimination in the name of religious freedom."
Gill focused more on exposing the secretive workings behind the Project Blitz operation. "At first, the campaign worked discreetly and without broadcasting their intentions to lure unsuspecting lawmakers into state prayer caucuses," she said. "These caucuses then provided a structure with which to pursue the Project Blitz legislation. By elevating the campaign to media and lawmakers, highlighting its connection to Christian nationalism and showing that these bills were not organically driven by in-state interest, we succeeded in neutralizing their advantage."
Gill cited two other lessons as well. "Our work to oppose Project Blitz reinforced the importance of cross-movement collaboration," she said. "Project Blitz is a campaign that targets civil rights in multiple fields — LGBTQ equality, access to reproductive services and religious equality — and so coordination with organizations across affected movements was required to effectively oppose it."
That took time and crucial information, Laser added: "It wasn't until we learned of the Project Blitz playbook and their organizing strategy that we were able to build a coalition of allies to fight this movement at its source, rather than only state by state and bill by bill."
Gill cites the pooling of resources as another important factor. "Project Blitz provided Christian nationalist lawmakers and activists with all the tools they needed in one place to pursue these bills and flood state legislatures with harmful legislation," she said. "However, the resources necessary to oppose these varied bills were scattered and less organized, so initially the opposition work was less cohesive. By bringing advocacy and messaging resources together at BlitzWatch.org, we helped ensure that lawmakers and advocates opposing Project Blitz had access to all of these tools."
More worrisome than Project Blitz itself, Gill said, are the forces behind it. "The same forces pushing forward Project Blitz have now seized upon new issues, and they are already flooding state legislatures with dangerous model bills," she said. "There were at least four major waves of harmful legislation propagated in 2021: anti-trans youth legislation, religious exemptions to COVID-related public health protections, broad denial-of-care bills, and bills that undermine abortion access."
Of those, she says the most dangerous element is a "renewed emphasis on Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) measures at the state level. RFRAs create a limited exemption from state laws whenever religious organizations say that their activities are burdened. RFRAs have been used to attack nondiscrimination protections, access to contraception and abortion, and even child labor laws."
Such laws were a major focus of conservative activism during Barack Obama's presidency, although "none were successfully passed after significant public setbacks in 2015 in states like Indiana," Gill noted. "In the wake of the pandemic and state-imposed public health restrictions," she said, "activists have rebranded these bills as necessary to protect churches from government overreach." Three states — Arkansas, Montana and South Dakota — passed RFRAs this year, and we should expect to see many more coming in 2022, she warns.
It's also important to consider how these lessons can be applied to the racist backlash formulated around the bogeyman term "critical race theory," which Fox News has repeated thousands of times without ever clearly defining it. This can be seen in the state legislative map as well. Chalkbeat has tracked efforts in 27 states to "restrict education on racism, bias, the contributions of specific racial or ethnic groups to U.S. history, or related topics," compared to efforts in 12 states to expand education. Brookings reports that seven states have passed such laws, though only one explicitly mentions "critical race theory." Brookings lists actions taken by state boards of education, other state actors and local school boards as well. So the scope of right-wing activism is clear, as is the need for an effective response.
For Laser, the parallels are clear. "White Christian nationalism is the belief that America is and must remain a Christian nation founded for its white Christian inhabitants, and that our laws and policies must reflect this premise," she said. "They completely reject church-state separation. White Christian nationalists oppose equality for people of color, women, LGBTQ people, religious minorities and the nonreligious.
"The same white Christian nationalist ideology that is behind Project Blitz is also driving the backlash against a deliberate caricature of critical race theory," she continued. "Therefore, a similar strategy to the one that has hamstrung Project Blitz — recapturing the narrative about our nation's ideals, exposing the real intent of the extremists, making clear how their agenda harms freedom and equality for all of us, and bringing together a diverse coalition of people and groups to speak out against this harmful movement — should be part of the strategy to combat opponents of racial justice."
Gill sees similarities, but differences as well. "Both campaigns are similar in that they focus on redefining and manipulating language for political advantage — 'religious freedom' and 'critical race theory,' respectively," she said. "However, there are also significant differences. The anti-CRT campaigns seem at once better funded and less organized than Project Blitz. Moreover, there is a degree of moral panic associated with the anti-CRT efforts that was not as present for Project Blitz."
Still, she offered three specific lessons learned from the resistance to Project Blitz:
- Raise awareness about the anti-CRT campaign and bring to light where it came from, who is funding it and for what purposes.
- Build collaboration between the various sectors that support diversity education in schools to push back against anti-CRT efforts. Successful coalitions must include educators, experts in diversity education, political leaders, civil rights leaders, parents and students.
- Ensure that tools and messaging to oppose anti-CRT efforts are effective and widely available.
If America's founding was really "as pristine as the religious myth requires it to be," Clarkson observed, "it cannot be marked by the racism and genocide that the facts of history reveal. History is thus an existential crisis for Christian nationalist beliefs. That's why history must be revised and the evils that mark so much of our history be erased, rather than acknowledged and addressed. The attack on the straw man of CRT is of a piece with what we might call the purification of American history in the name of God's history."
But history and politics tend to be messy, not pure. "The Christian right, supported in part by the Project Blitz playbooks, is using — and mastering — the tools and institutions of democracy in order to erode or end them," Clarkson said. "They know that well-organized factions can win elections, beginning with low-turnout party primaries, and that the Christian Right minority can gain the mantle of democratic legitimacy by out-organizing those of us who actually believe in it." So it's up to "everyone to the left of the Christian Right," as Clarkson puts it, to mobilize for democracy.
"This includes identifying some common approaches to history, as well as religious freedom, which will remain a battleground," he said, "as well as better approaches to electoral organization at all levels of government. This will mean jumping into electoral democracy with both feet, and learning the mechanics and calendar of electoral democracy." This may mean, he warns, avoiding the distractions of cable news, social media and other forms of entertainment in favor of real-world organizing. "To borrow from and with apologies to the late Gil Scott-Heron," Clarkson said, "the mobilization will not be televised."
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/desantis-2653522421/
Florida man was arrested and charged with multiple felonies last Thursday after intentionally performing a "burnout" with his car over a Pride-themed mural painted on an intersection in Delray Beach, opening him up to become the first person charged under the state's controversial new "anti-riot" bill pushed by Republicans.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed the bill meant to crack down on protests in the wake of the George Floyd uprisings earlier this year, just as the trial against former Minneapolis police officer Derick Chauvin was wrapping up. The legislation was heavily opposed by first amendment activists and Black lawmakers in the state. Now a young Trump supporter may be the first person entangled by the new law.
Alexander Jerich, 20, is accused of deliberately making skid marks across a mural meant to commemorate the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting, in his Chevrolet Silverado PICKUP TRUCK. According to WPBF, Delray Beach Police have since charged Jerich with criminal mischief, reckless driving, and evidence of prejudice. Just prior to the incident, Jerich was allegedly participating in a pro-Trump rally in celebration of the former president's birthday that was put together by the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee.
A witness told the police that heard someone holler "tear up that gay intersection" before Jerich shortly defaced the mural with his car. The incident was also caught on video, which allowed the police to identify Jerich, who turned himself in, through a license plate search.
Rand Hoch, founder and president of the Palm Beach Human Rights Council, told WFOR that Jerich carried out "a deliberate act of violenceagainst the LGBTQ community. We've made such progress here in the last 30 years on LGBTQ issues. To see someone do something like this took me by surprise."
"Kudos to the Delray Beach Police Department for swiftly identifying and arresting this hateful criminal," Hoch added.
The city had just unveiled the mural two days before the incident, according to law enforcement, and paid north of $16,000 for its creation.
Jerich could now be subject to heightened penalties imposed by Florida's new GOP-backed "anti-riot" law signed back in April. As WPEC's Sam Kerrigan noted: "When it comes to this case, the key here is that this new anti-riot law also stops someone from damaging historic property or a memorial. And under the law, this new Pride mural in Delray Beach, here, qualifies as a memorial because it's dedicated to the lives lost in the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando."
Hoch, too, suggested that Jerich could be charged under the new GOP measure.
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anti-gay law portray on TV where kids could see? 621
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an 521
David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement
May 26, 2021
Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield had a homophobic Tuesday night freak out over kids' breakfast cereals.
After being strongly criticized two weeks ago for disgusting antisemitic remarks, Stinchfield is back to....
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aha_let: all these pols may not be bigots at heart, but anti-gay is culture war wedge issue, big w/ evangelicals, so mostly freebie nobrainer upside?
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/gay-gaslighter-rick-grenells-dishonest-attack-on-joe-biden-and-absurd-claim-about-pro-gay-trump/
richard Grenell, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany and former acting director of national intelligence, is scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night. The Log Cabin Republicans recently promoted a video with Grenell attacking Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s record andclaiming that Donald Trump is “the most pro-gay president in American history”—an “absurd claim” that earnedfour Pinocchios from the Washington Post’s fact-checker.
In a nice bit of timing, Grenell’s video appeared at about the same time the U.S. Agency for International Development was caught purging references to LGBTQ people from a policy on gender equality and women’s empowerment, the latest in a long list of Trump administration moves to reverse Obama-era policies protecting the rights of LGBTQ people.
In the video, Grenell cites decades-old statements by Biden to portray him as hostile to equality—when in fact, Biden played a crucial role in advancing support for marriage equality within the Obama administration and the Democratic Party.
“President Trump has done more to advance the rights of gays and lesbians in three years than Joe Biden did in 40 plus years in Washington,” Grenell says, offering almost no evidence beyond his own appointment to high-level positions.
Grenell does tout one of the projects he undertook as ambassador. “President Trump began a historic campaign to decriminalize homosexuality around the world,” Grenell claimed. In reality, Grenell himself announced that “campaign” in February 2019, and a day after he announced it, Trump appeared not to have even heard about it.
“Also unclear was whether the decriminalization effort was, in fact, new,” the New York Times reported at the time. “A State Department spokesman in Washington, Robert Palladino, queried after the NBC report on the effort was broadcast, said: ‘This really is not a big policy departure. This is longstanding and it’s bipartisan.’”
Grenell did host some activist gatherings in Germany and a December 2019 event at the United Nations, and Trump did include a line about decriminalization in a United Nations speech. But the thrust of administration’s foreign policy initiatives has been headed strongly in the opposite direction of protecting or promoting LGBTQ equality.
In February 2020, when Grenell took his job as acting director of national intelligence, NBC suggested that the campaign had little to show for it, and the Human Rights Campaign said it had seen “no meaningful efforts by this administration to decriminalize homosexuality around the world.”HRC spokesperson Charlotte Clymer called it “another case of the Trump-Pence White House making promises to LGBTQ people, even while they enable discrimination and violence against us at home and abroad.” The Council for Global Equality’s Julie Dorf calls the campaign a “sham.”
But in his Log Cabin video, Grenell asks, “Why did Biden fail to make this a priority in his more than 40 years in Washington?”
The question itself is a breathtakingly dishonest insinuation. In fact, the Obama-Biden administration elevated the protection of LGBTQ human rights, making it an unprecedented priority in U.S. foreign policy, something that so outraged religious-right leaders that they embraced Russia’s anti-gay and anti-democratic strongman Vladimir Putin as the savior of Western civilization. Religious-right leaders were thrilled that the election of Trump would mean an end to LGBTQ equality playing a major role in U.S. foreign policy.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar spent last year fomenting backlash to Obama-era policies and United Nations initiatives in favor of mobilizing a new “pro-family” coalition of nations and arguing for the supremacy of “traditional” religious and cultural views. The administration has embraced anti-equality regimes in Brazil, Hungary, and Poland.
In parallel, Pompeo’s Commission on Unalienable Rights created a platform for conservative academics to provide justification for his desire to resist human rights “inflation” and elevate religious liberty above other human rights commitments.
And Pompeo has opened doors in other countries so that anti-LGBTQ Bible study leader Ralph Drollinger could recruit high-level officials to join his “ministry,” which teaches that the Bible requires public officials to support right-wing policies on sexuality and family as well as economic, environmental, and criminal justice issues.
In his video, Grenell disingenuously suggests that the Trump administration’s foreign policy toward Iran had something to do with that regime’s hostility toward gay people. It’s not the first time that anti-Muslim sentiment has been used by right-wing politicians to gain gay support. During the 2016 Republican National Convention, Milo Yiannopoulos and anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller hosted a “Gays for Trump” party whose featured speaker was a Dutch politician who said Islam has “no place in a free society.”
The misleading video ends with Grenell saying, “Gay people don’t have to vote Democrat,” a sign thatTurning Point USA’s Benny Johnson may be behind the video. Johnson’s video for Democrat-bashing congressional candidate Kimberly Klacik, aso an RNC speaker, ended with, “Black people don’t have to vote Democrat.”
Tags: Benny Johnson Donald TrumpMike PompeoRichard Grenell Anti-GayAnti-LGBTAnti-LGBTQElection 2020InternationalLog Cabin RepublicansTurning Point USA
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aha: 620 part of GOP long game is to take out dem up and comers (trending in webodec is mostly gop?]
aha2: phobias can be weaponized for offensive purposes
eg (also clinton, gray davis) turnipseed jumper cables?
ivy meerpol the nation 6/20
EG: How do you think Cohn was affected by the homophobic and anti-Semitic environment of Washington, D.C.?
IM: Do you know the story of Lester Hunt? He was a senator from Wyoming. Around the time that Cohn was in Washington, Hunt was a very popular Democrat. The Republicans, including McCarthy, were always trying to figure out how to get him out of the way, because he was powerful, beloved, and very progressive. At one point, Hunt’s son was arrested for propositioning a male undercover police officer for sex, and this was discovered by McCarthy and some other senators. They confronted Hunt, saying they’d go public with this story if Hunt didn’t pull out of his race for reelection. Hunt tried to stay strong and fight back, but they threatened again, and rather than face that kind of humiliation and the humiliation of his son, Hunt committed suicide.
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420 an
ah, the hits
https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/pat-robertson-blames-coronavirus-pandemic-on-wicked-same-sex-marriage/
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indicted Texas attorney general sides with anti-gay judge instead of state agency in legal fight
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is refusing to defend a state agency that’s being sued by a a bigoted justice of the peace who got pissed that she was disciplined for refusing to follow the law and marry…
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surgery on minors is child abuse? drs can be prosecuted?
https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/project-blitz-is-producing-model-legislation-for-christian-nationalists
no lnx
Project Blitz is producing model legislation for Christian Nationalists
Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly January 24, 2020
You may have heard about legislation passed recently in Tennessee and other states which allows adoption agencies to discriminate against gay couples or families with whom they have religious objections. The fact that bills like that are being considered and passed by red states is no coincidence. They are the product of an organized effort being led by Project Blitz.
The first thing to know about Project Blitz is that it was launched in 2015 by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, the National Legal Foundation, and Wallbuilders. The latter is an organization founded by David Barton, the Republican operative and discredited historian who rejects the separation of church and state, claiming that the United States was founded as a Christian nation.
This project seems to have maintained a low profile until Fred Clarkson, who has been studying the Christian right for decades, came across their 116-page manual of model legislation in early 2018. As Clarkson explains, Project Blitz is to Christian nationalists what the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was to big business.
Many of the bills on [the Christian right] agenda are making news; some have passed key legislative committees or whole state legislative chambers, and some have already been signed into law. But what reporters, activists, and most legislators don’t realize is that many of these bills draw from an unusual package of 20 model bills included in a report assembled by a coalition of Christian Right groups for an initiative they call “Project Blitz.”
The bills are seemingly unrelated and range widely in content—from requiring public schools to display the national motto, “In God We Trust” (IGWT); to legalizing discrimination against LGBTQ people; to religious exemptions regarding women’s reproductive health. The model bills, the legislative strategy and the talking points reflect the theocratic vision that’s animated a meaningful portion of the Christian Right for some time. In the context of Project Blitz’s 116-page playbook, however, they also reveal a sophisticated level of coordination and strategizing that echoes the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which infamously networks probusiness state legislators, drafts sample legislation, and shares legislative ideas and strategies.
According to an analysis by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, state legislatures considered 74 bills that echoed model legislation from the Project Blitz handbook in 2018.
The strategy for this effort is built on dividing model legislation into three categories, depending on how much opposition each bill is expected to receive.
The first category, intended to appear the most innocuous, included bills to promote “In God We Trust” license plates (now offered in at least 20 states) and the display of the “In God We Trust” motto in public schools. (Some version of the display legislation has passed in at least 10 states.) The next batch of bills centered on emphasizing “Christian heritage” and “the importance of the Bible in history” to promote the notion that the U.S. is a Christian nation. The third category, which organizers noted might be “the most hotly contested,” sought to empower licensed professionals to deny health care and other services based on religious beliefs and to enable adoption agencies to reject adoptive families on religious grounds. (At least 10 states have laws that allow discrimination by child welfare agencies, most of which have been passed since Project Blitz launched in 2015.)
That is a veritable “slippery slope” approach to undermining the separation of church and state. Most people wouldn’t find it terribly objectionable to display the national motto in public schools—even though it wasn’t adopted until 1956 in response to the “red scare” of “godless communism.” But doing so opens the door to promoting religion in public institutions and paving the way for legislation in the second category.
Of course, the ultimate aim of these efforts is to arrive at legislation in the third category. Knowing that the courts will reject arguments based on “biblical principles,” Project Blitz advises a strategy that is even more offensive.
To this end, they claim that their model public policy resolutions “rely heavily on the research that demonstrates the deleterious physical and mental health effects of same-sex intercourse and gender identity ‘transformation’.”… In support of this, Project Blitz offers data they suggest shows that LGBTQ people tend to be diseased, dysfunctional or both—and that they pose a threat to children and to society.
Given that any so-called “data” they present is bogus, we need to name that kind of thing for what it is: unadulterated homophobia.
As we saw with ALEC, the best disinfectant against an initiative like this is to shine a spotlight on what is happening. Unfortunately, there still 12 states with GOP trifectas—where the Republicans control both houses of the legislature and the governorship. That is where this initiative is likely to be the most effective.
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-beyonce-wants-to-eat-childrens-brains/
Alex Jones: Beyoncé Wants To Eat Children’s Brains
By Brian Tashman | April 26, 2016 12:50 pm
Yesterday, conspiracy theorist broadcaster Alex Jones claimed that Beyoncé’s new album, “Lemonade,” was part of an attempt by the CIA to promote violence and attacks on the police, which would in turn allow the federal government to take control over local police forces.
He expounded on this theory in an interview yesterday with far-right pastor James David Manning, urging parents to make sure that their kids aren’t exposed to Beyoncé because she intends to eat their brains.
“I’m pro-human so I say, black people, especially, stop killing your kids and get them in church, whatever, take them away from Beyoncé, who wants to eat their brain with the CIA, literally,” Jones said, adding: “Obama literally is the killer of black people and they love him.”
Manning, who said he gave Jones’ statements “three-and-a-half Boom Shakalakas,” said “Beyoncé is going to inspire children all across every spectrum to act in a violent way” while, at the same time, literal demons are “promoting” homosexuality “in our schools and in our institutions.”
Jones said that he even saw with his own eyes“literal, devil-worshiping communists”demonstrating in favor of abortion rights turn into satanic lizards: “The black people have a green tone, the white people have a green tone, they are turning into lizards or something.”
[vid]
The InfoWars commentator said that musicians like Beyoncé and Kesha are funded by nefarious actors “to be anti-family, anti-police.”
Beyoncé’s new music videos, Jones said, “are creating a Jezebel spirit injected into little girls to just be hateful and crazy and unhappy and make sure they die alone.”
Tags: Alex JonesJames David Manning
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Homophobic bully Franklin Graham goes after Pete Buttigieg
David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement
Franklin Graham is singling out and attacking Democratic presidential candidate and mayor Pete Buttigieg once again. Not former Vice President Joe Biden, not Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker,…
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the family c street, referendum defeated, 20%
Coaliția pentru Familie (Romanian pronunciation: [ko.aˈlit͡si.a ˈpentru faˈmili.e], English: Coalition for Family) is an association of about 30 Romanian non-governmental organizations.[1] It seeks to promote the traditional family,[2] in particular by amending the Constitution of Romania to define marriage as "the union between a man and a woman, a process that will have no juridical effect whatsoever, being just a waste of energy and money".[3] It is also involved in the anti-abortion movement.[4]
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Fox news segment goes off the rails as anti-gay hate group head promotes ‘health hazards of homosexuality’ book on-air
David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement
At the end of the six-minute segment Schaper held up and tried to advertise a book titled, "The Health Hazards of Homosexuality," which is authored by MassResistance.
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