webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

Homophobe 3

2 glitchy rename?

merri ok

see trans drag

MACHO // FASCISM

see war on xian

// misogyny? see bp budde

see heritage

SEE EVANG

SEE MORAL PANIC PEDO GROOMER QANON

hate tag

loomer anomaly?

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Material Contributors - What Does Project 2025 Say?

Jonathan Berry

Authored the section about: Section 3.9: Department of Labor and Related Agencies

Served in the Trump Administration: Yes. Berry served as counsel to the assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2017 and 2018. Berry was also part of Trump’s presidential transition team in 2016 and 2017, advising on ethics and legal policy.

In His Own Words

Berry is the author of the book “Satisfaction Guaranteed” (2016), which is a self-help book for same-sex attracted Christians (as he himself is one) designed to help them resist those attractions, and purports that real satisfaction can only be found via a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Full Bio

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MMA

How right-wing media covered corporate Pride campaigns in 2026

Reactionaries rejoice that “Pride is mostly over” — and target the holdouts

Special ProgramsLGBTQ

Written by Sage Hodil

Published 06/25/26

With Pride Month underway, right-wing media figures are celebrating that corporate Pride “is mostly over” and “beyond [its] peak,” crediting this decline to President Donald Trump and the right’s crusade “against all the weird LGBT stuff” in recent years. However, right-wing media continue to express outrage over social media posts from corporations observing Pride Month. Pundits have attacked sports teams for “trying to out-gay one another to show their fidelity to the LGBT religion,” claimed children's shows are “grooming” children and “inundat[ing]” them “with sexual messaging," and referred to posts celebrating Pride as “gross” and “repulsive.”

Corporate support for Pride Month has declined in recent years, but this may come with negative consequences for the brands that pull back

Children’s shows and books

Food delivery companies

//

  1. ### Snapshot: How right-wing media covered Pride Month in 2025

07/09/25 11:29 AM EDT

  1. ### Timeline: The right’s crusade against LGBTQ+ corporate Pride Month campaigns

05/25/23 5:36 PM EDT

  1. ### “Bye-bye North Face”: Fox News contributor attempts to turn right-wing outrage toward another corporate Pride campaign

05/25/23

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MMA

Two-thirds of Fox segments about James Talarico included anti-LGBTQ attacks | Media Matters for America

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AN 6 26

How these red state governors are trying to replace Pride Month - Alternet.org

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TARGET BC HE IS DEM STRONG IN STATE BETO ALMOST TIPPED CALLS OUT GOP RT ON BEING BAD XIANS

AMAZING OVER THE TOP BILE FROM PAXTON SPEECH WIN PRIMARY -->

“Weird,” “vegan,” and “effeminate”: Right-wing media are attacking James Talarico based on lies and vibes

Right-wing pundits have resorted to calling Talarico disparaging nicknames like “Tofu Talarico,” “Tala-freak-o,” and “Beta O’Rourke”

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Sage Hodil

Research contributions from Jane Lee

Published 05/28/26

Right-wing media are lobbing attacks at Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico, resorting to playground insults and seeking to define him as “unlikable,” “gay,” and “against meat.”

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RWW

05/13/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

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How right-wing media helped the Trump administration push a “psyop” against Iran's new supreme leader

At least 40 shows within the right-wing media ecosystem ran with unsubstantiated rumors that the new Iranian ayatollah may be gay

Written by Harrison Ray, Noah Dowe & Reed McMaster

Research contributions from Tyler Monroe

Published 03/27/26

At least 40 shows within the right-wing media ecosystem helped the Trump administration push an unsubstantiated narrative that the new Iranian ayatollah, Mojtaba Khamenei, is gay — a move that Zeteo reports was meant to be a “psyop against their Iranian enemies and the new supreme leader.”

Yet according to a March 27 report from Zeteo, there exists “no credible intel” on Khamenei’s sexuality; rather, “the idea was fabricated and pushed behind the scenes in the past several weeks by a cohort of Trump advisers, US government personnel, and MAGAworld associates.” One source told Zeteo that the administration “wanted to mindfuck [the Iranians] with gay shit,” while another suggested, “It’s some 20-year-old frat boy in the federal government’s idea of a good joke.”

While some within the right-wing media simply highlighted the New York Post story, others added their own takes.

Fox host Greg Gutfeld joked about the rumor on March 16, saying, “Speaking of world leaders, rumors are circulating that the new Iranian supreme leader is gay. They know this because he keeps throwing himself off a building — that’s what they do in Iran.”

Newsmax host Chris Plante made the same joke on his March 17 podcast, saying, “If he became the ayatollah, the first thing he’d have to do as ayatollah is kill himself.” Following a lengthy and graphic fantasy about Khamenei committing suicide, Plante explained, “That’s what they always do when they hang the gay people in Iran, and the Democrats are on the side of the Iranian regime because of their many mental illnesses.”

Referencing the death of the new supreme leader’s father, former Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Plante added, “And here’s the headline: Ayatollah disappointed to learn 72 virgins awaiting him in paradise are all women. Oh no, not the women. That is because, you know, it might run in the family, like monkeypox.”

That same day, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles ranted, “The ayatollah might be a homosexual, might be a little light in the loafers. You know what I'm saying? A couple fries away from a Happy Meal. The kind of fella has a long handshake.” While Knowles acknowledged that the story seemed at first “like an op” and “a demoralization tactic from our intelligence services,” he claimed, “There's a little bit of evidence that the ladies are not exactly his type.”

Newsmax host Rob Carson repeated the claim on March 22 and suggested the ayatollah has not been going out in public because “he's been in the closet.” After showing a clip of host Carl Higbie mocking “the Strait of Hormuz and the gay son,” Carson broke out in song, seemingly parodying “It's Raining Men.”

VID]

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  1. ### TPUSA spokesperson on Iran: “Boots on the ground is a line we don't want to cross. We are not supportive of boots on the ground, full stop.”

03/30/26 2:06 PM EDT

  1. ### Ben Shapiro downplays American ground troops in Iran: There will be “squads of, you know, at most, a few hundred who are performing special operations”

03/30/26 1:57 PM EDT

  1. ### Megyn Kelly: The goal for Iran war changed from “it’s about the missiles” to “Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon” to “we got to do regime change” to get the uranium

03/30/26

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RWW 3 26

rww

Alex McFarland Says Restoring The Pride Flag At The Stonewall Memoria Is 'Treason'

02/19/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

Last month, the Trump administration released a memo laying out guidelines regarding what sorts of flags can be flown at cites operated by the National Park Service. Following the implementation of these guidelines, the Pride flag was removed from the National Stonewall Memorial in New York City, prompting Democrats to draft legislation to have it restored.

This is not sitting well with right-wing anti-LGBTQ Christian nationalist Alex McFarland, who accused the Democrats of committing "treason," which he is quite fond of accusing them of doing.

Appearing on "The Jenna Ellis In The Morning" program on Thursday, McFarland fumed that "the Pride flag is evil."

"The rainbow Pride flag connotes so many things that are wrong, that are immoral, and [Sen.] Chuck Schumer wanting to grant this the same equal legal status to the U.S. flag is treason," McFarland declared.

"Another subject we could roll out is why the Democrat Party in recent years has become treasonous and they are betraying the United States of America," he continued. "If you have one thimbleful of patriotism and appreciation for the USA in your soul, dear friends, then you should purpose in your mind right this minute that until your dying day you would never vote Democrat again. Because the idea to put the rainbow Pride—immoral, heinously, unspeakably vile, globalist wicked Pride flag—to put that on the same plane as the US flag, that is treason. And if you have one shred of appreciation for this country, you should say, 'That's it. It's game over. Never again would I vote for anything with a letter D beside of it.'

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RWW

12/18/2025

by

Peter Montgomery

The successful fried chicken chain Chick-fil-A has for years been admired by religious-right leaders for its founder's Christian faith and the expression of that faith in business practices like remaining closed on Sundays. But earlier this month, religious-right leaders and pundits got mad over a social media post made by a local Chick-fil-A location in Orem, Utah, congratulating a same-sex couple on their wedding.

The complainers got even more upset when the company’s headquarters responded to their griping by affirming its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Religious-right activists had also complained in 2023 when the company hired a vice president to oversee DEI efforts.

On Monday, the Family Research Council’s Washington Stand—FRC’s “outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview”—slammed Chick-fil-A for having “lost its way” by embracing “wokeism.”

The article quoted David Closson, director of FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview, insulting company leaders by claiming that “recent developments suggest that this commitment [to the founders’ Christian ideals] increasingly functions as marketing rather than sincere conviction.” Some might suggest the same about certain MAGA movement leaders backed by FRC.

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rww

10/30/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Duffy has found a way to turn even the most mundane highway procurement matters into an opportunity for pandering to the MAGA base—and getting back on Fox News. His secret sauce? He has been enthusiastically using the agency to spread the Gospel and advance his mission to make America fecund again.

Trump loyalist Steve Bannon is being accused of giving MAGA false hope for 2028.

Trump cannot be president again. But he and his loyal followers have every reason for wanting to make people think he can.

Trump's Department of Education is making workers of LGBTQ+ nonprofits ineligible for student loan forgiveness.

Paul Newby, a born-again Christian, has turned his perch atop North Carolina’s Supreme Court into an instrument of political power. Over two decades, he’s driven changes that have reverberated well beyond the borders of his state.

Why Tucker Carlson platformed white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

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note miso // homophobe

an 9 25

Four sitting female judges detailed Thursday the escalating threats they face over their rulings, including explicit intimidation that often targets them in ways their male colleagues rarely experience.

At an event organized by Speak Up for Justice, a nonpartisan movement to defend the courts, judges cited threats of sexual assault, violent messages and harassment of family members as part of a rise in attacks on the judiciary.

The U.S. Marshals Service has logged 543 threats against federal judges so far this year, already exceeding the total number in 2024. Threats against state judges, who preside over 95 percent of cases nationwide, are not systematically tracked.

Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez of the Colorado Supreme Court recounted the harassment that followed a 4-3 ruling to disqualify President Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot (which was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court). She said all seven justices on the court were targeted, regardless of how they voted.

“We also quickly learned… that all of our personal information had been doxxed. As a result, many of us received very hateful phone calls and threatening text messages on our personal cell phones. Many of those messages in certain cases were overtly racist or overtly misogynistic, overtly referred to sexual violence, were overtly homophobic,” Márquez said.

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RWW

09/18/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

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rww

09/17/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing, President Trump and his allies have laid out a broad plan to target liberal groups, monitor speech, revoke visas and designate certain groups as domestic terrorists.

Within the past few days, the Department of Justice deleted one of its own studies from its website showing that “far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists.”

Past leaders have used shocking events to bring us together. Trump is making Kirk a martyr to drive Americans apart.

The Fox News host repeatedly called for "them" to get one chance to beg for forgiveness — or else.

The Trump regime is squashing speech and using the full force of government to enforce its ideology.

President Donald Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shared a bizarre post on Tuesday that appeared to claim that an earthquake in Utah on the night of Charlie Kirk’s death was a sign of God’s anger.

The killing of right wing activist and influencer Charlie Kirk has prompted disturbing and questionably legal calls for a crackdown on the left from President Trump and his allies. In an appearance on the cable network Newsmax on Tuesday evening, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) took things further — way further.

Even as the problem garners more attention, misogynistic and male supremacist violence is still often relegated to a category of “other” threats, or dismissed as the personality problems of challenged individuals, rather than addressed as an ideological belief system of its own.

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AN 9 25

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration earned condemnation from Amnesty International on Thursday over its leaked plans to downplay human rights violations in countries favored by the American government.

News of the plan was originally reported on Wednesday by The Washington Post, which documented how the administration has been revising State Department reports on human rights in El Salvador, Israel, and Russia to "strike all references to LGBTQ+ individuals or crimes against them." The Post also added that "the descriptions of government abuses that do remain have been softened."

In the case of El Salvador, where the administration earlier this year began lawlessly shipping immigrants deported from the United States, the administration's report stated that were "no credible reports of significant human rights abuses" there, even though a State Department report under former President Joe Biden's administration issued last year documented "significant human rights issues" in the country.

Human rights violations against LGBTQ+ people were deleted from the State Department's report on Russia, while the report on Israel deleted references to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial and to his government's threats to the country's independent judiciary.

Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA's national director of government relations and advocacy, ripped the administration for selectively whitewashing human rights records of nations favored by the president.

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"The leaked chapters of the latest Annual Human Rights Report reveal a disturbing effort by the Trump administration to purposefully fail to fully capture the alarming and growing attacks on human rights in certain countries around the globe," she said. "Alarmingly, we understand that the mandate from Secretary Rubio was... to go back and wipe out portions of the reports that had already been written—to delete stories from survivors of human rights violations."

Klasing went on to accuse the administration of turning the human rights report "into yet another tool to obscure facts to push forward anti-rights policy choices."

She also emphasized that "it would be a travesty and subversion of congressional intent to downplay or ignore human rights violations faced by marginalized populations including refugees and asylum seekers, women and girls, Indigenous people, ethnic and religious minorities, and LGBTQI+ people throughout the world."

An unnamed State Department official this week told the Post that the administration was merely simplifying the human rights reports to make them more "readable."

"The 2024 Human Rights report has been restructured in a way that removes redundancies, increases report readability, and is more responsive to the legislative mandate that underpins the report," the official said. "The human rights report focuses on core issues."

NOW READ:DOJ memo reveals Trump’s dark plan for a new Red Scare — and it may be perfectly legal

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RWW

08/28/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

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Tim Pool calls Obergefell v. Hodges same-sex marriage decision “unconstitutional and psychotic”

08/15/25 mma

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an 8 25

Next to his long-running radio show, Dennis Prager, now 77, is best known for PragerU — which isn't an actual university, but rather, a program of far-right propaganda videos launched in 2009. One of PragerU's admirers is Ryan Walters, Oklahoma's ultra-MAGA public schools superintendent. And according to CNN, Walters is now using PragerU to screen applicants for ideological purity and to make sure teachers in the state's public schools aren't "woke."

The screening process, CNN's Sunlen Serfaty reports, gets underway on Friday, August 15.

"Teachers from 'liberal' states who have relocated to Oklahoma and are seeking to work there must take a controversial new assessment, given for the first time today, that 'keeps away woke indoctrinators,' according to Oklahoma’s top education official," Serfaty explains. "Ryan Walters, Oklahoma's superintendent for public instruction, told CNN that if applicants do not pass the test, they will not earn a teaching certificate to be able to teach in public schools in the state this school year, which begins for some Oklahoma districts on Monday."

READ MORE: This single sentence will fast-track Trump to a prison cell

Serfaty adds, "The decision to use the assessment, developed by PragerU, a conservative media company whose teaching materials are now approved for use in public schools in ten U.S. states, opens a new front in the education culture wars just days before schools are to open their doors."

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PragerU's materials, according to the CNN reporter, have "been embraced by the political right for offering curriculums that champion ideas aligned with the Make America Great Again movement."

According to Serfaty, Walters' "multiple-choice assessment for teachers" contains "around 50 questions." One proposed question, Serfaty reports, "deals with gender — asking teachers to select from a series of multiple-choice answers which chromosome pairs determine biological sex."

"Another question asks why freedom of religion is important to America's identity," Serafty notes. "Other questions include asking for the first three words of the Constitution, naming the two chambers of the U.S. Congress, and identifying the number of U.S. senators…. The test specifically evaluates educators on areas including their understanding of 'American exceptionalism' and their 'grasp of fundamental biological differences between boys and girls,' Walters said."

READ MORE: 'Financial ruin': Trump's White House is terrified of losing this lawsuit

*Read the full CNN article at this link.

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SEE SCOTUS?!

RWW

08/12/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

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omg rww

06/18/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Indiana’s far-right Christian nationalist Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith posted a new episode of his "Jesus, Sex, and Politics" podcast in which he doubled down on his warning that Pride Month is "the rainbow beast" and "a state-corporate-pagan alliance to reprogram society."

For nearly an hour, Beckwith and his co-host Nathan Peternel railed against Pride Month and the LGBTQ agenda in general, which Beckwith called "demonic."

"If you've ever studied the origins of, just the history of the LGBTQ movement throughout ancient history and all the way up to today, this is the same demonic spirit that basically just keeps coming back again," Beckwith said. "Back in ancient Israel, there was a goddess, her name was Ishtar, and she was the goddess of transgenderism, a gender-warping goddess. She was a homosexual goddess. Men would give themselves over to lustful acts with other men, women the same, pedophilia, everything like that. They would warp their genders. All those things. Same things that we're seeing today in the LGBTQ movement."

"It's really interesting when you study it because she was always celebrated in the month of Tamar Beckwith presumably meant the month of [Tammuz], which is our month of June, the exact same time," Beckwith claimed. "And she was represented by rainbows in her eyes. Anytime you saw her, you'd see rainbows. And it's like, wow, this is the same demonic playbook just playing out all over again."

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mma pride mo

charlie Kirk guest host says Pride Month is “cultural tyranny” and “we should just get rid of it altogether” 06/03/25 3:01 PM EDT](https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-guest-host-says-pride-month-cultural-tyranny-and-we-should-just-get-rid)

READ MORE: ‘Vindictive Erasure’: Hegseth Ripped for Pride Month Order to Rename USNS Harvey Milk AN 6 25

mma

UFC figures are circulating anti-trans narratives across podcasts, right-wing shows, and social media

04/09/25

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mma

1 25

During the inaugural prayer service, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde urged President Donald Trump to “have mercy” on undocumented migrants and LGBTQ kids, and right-wing media responded by calling her a “fake bishop” with “deranged political beliefs,” saying her sermon was “heretical” and “satanic,” and claiming she was “forcing left-wing platitudes down everyone’s throat.”

Budde’s comments about mercy provoked Trump

:{
  • The bishop leading the inaugural prayer service at Washington National Cathedral made a plea to Trump to “have mercy” on behalf of LGBTQ kids and migrants.“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,”}: said Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C. “There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families. Some who fear for their lives.” She added, “They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues.” NBC News, [1/21/25]

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she is AA? thus not a real am thus deport; also retaliation; a good xian calling out a bad xian, her job

AN 1 25

The Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington — who led the inaugural prayer service Washington, DC Tuesday received fierce backlash from a Republican congressman after asking President Donald Trump to "have mercy" on LGBTQ people and immigrants.

“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” said Budde, as Trump, Vice President Vance, and their families looked on.

"There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families. Some who fear for their lives. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues."

READ MORE:**Trump Inauguration dubbed 'a coronation of our country's descent into oligarchy'**

Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) shared the video via X, writing: "The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list."

Several journalists and immigration experts immediately slammed the Georgia lawmaker over his remark.

Religion News Service national reporter Jack Jenkins replied: "Note: The person giving the sermon in question is Bishop Mariann Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington. Collins is suggesting deporting a U.S. citizen and bishop for delivering a sermon in accordance with their faith."

Longtime journalist John Harwood commented: "dangerous lunacy"

American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick added: "A sitting member of Congress calls for the deportation of a bishop who asked Trump to show mercy to those in the country who are afraid. We are in a dark moment in this country and have abandoned our founding principles. God have mercy on us."

Center for International Policy Vice President for Government Affairs Dylan Williams commented: "You know wanting to punish and purge people for exercising freedom of speech and other basic American rights makes you a fascist, right?"

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god grifters really hate it when an actual xian calls out the fake one

1 25

01/22/2025

by

Peter Montgomery

Donald Trump and his Christian nationalist supporters are demonstrating once again that much of the harshest anti-Christian rhetoric in our political life doesn’t come from secular leftists, it comes from right-wing Christian leaders and activists who bitterly trash the faith of Christians who don’t share their religious and political worldviews.

Their most recent target is Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde, who spoke at the National Prayer Service held at the Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday. Budde talked for about 15 minutes on the topic of unity, using her last few minutes to directly and respectfully address Trump and ask for mercy on behalf of gay, lesbian, and transgender people, immigrants, and refugees.

The same religious-right leaders and activists who have embraced or explained away Trump’s relentless lying, cruelty, corruption, and criminality, were outraged by Budde’s willingness to challenge him over the harmful impact his actions as president will have on many people.

Sean Feucht, a dominionist musician, political activist, and ardent Trump supporter, was contemptuous, referring to Bishop Budde as “the priestess” and saying, “They should let Christians preach next time.”

In a video posted from within the Cathedral, Feucht literally sneered at the interfaith service’s inclusion of “all these random religions and faiths,” concluding, “this was not a church service.” He continued:

We’re gonna go have a real church service with a bunch of folks that were in here. We’re gonna go lift up the name of Jesus because we are one nation under God, not all these other random religions. We don’t all worship the same God. And we definitely don’t worship the God of the LGTBQ mafia.

Feucht’s comments are a reminder that religious-right activists leaders are be quick to claim anti-Christian persecution when they are criticized for their harmful agendas or dishonest rhetoric, but they are themselves quick to attack other Christians. (Marjorie Taylor Greene recently provided another example, attacking the Catholic faith of Martin O’Malley because of his pro-choice position on abortion.)

“The Washington National Cathedral has become the Sanctuary of Satan,” ranted pundit Todd Starnes. He went on to denounce the Episcopal Church as “barely a religion.” He charged that “the blasphemous bishop at National Cathedral preached hate from her pagan pulpit.”

MAGA “prophet” Shave Vaughn declared Budde “a Bishop of Babylon.” Anti-LGBTQ activist John Amanchukwu denounced Budde as “a wolf in Bishop garments,” calling her “heretical” and “diabolical.” Dominionist Jim Garlow complained that it was “torture” to listen to Budde.

The kind of religious-right figures who constantly complain that conservative pastors aren’t preaching enough about politics complained that Bishop Budde would “lecture us about contemporary political positions,” in the words of Choral Ridge Ministries’ Rob Pacienza.

Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins denounced Budde’s comments as “rather pathetic,” tweeting that “The cause of America’s decline was not what was sitting in the pew but what was standing behind the pulpit.” Wallbuilders’ Tim Barton had the gall to complain about Budde “making a political speech from the pulpit” and griped about the service including people of other faiths.

Pastor and Trump apologist Robert Jeffress complained that Budde had “insulted rather than encouraged our great president.” Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia declared on X, “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.” Alex Jones denounced Budde as a “wokist cult leader.”

Trump himself demeaned Budde on his Truth social feed, calling her a “so-called Bishop.”

Meanwhile, Feucht also posted a celebratory video sharing his excitement that Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth has invited him to hold one of his Christians-only religious revivals in the Pentagon.

It’s worth noting that other Christians have praised and welcomed Budde’s remarks as an example of the kind of moral courage and leadership that is required in an era when Trump’s MAGA movement has been fully embraced by dominionists and white Christian nationalists. rww

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September 18, 2024 rww

* Scott Lively claims that “the term ‘homophobia’ and its derivatives are no less offensive and demeaning to defenders of the natural family and traditional sexual morality than the term ‘faggot’ is to men afflicted with SSADness [same-sex attraction disorder]”: “A slur is a slur, and none of them has a legitimate place in civil discourse.”

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three-fer satan gay anti-sem // qanon?

Warning of a “synagogue of Satan,” Candace Owens says, “All of these world leaders that we have, even President Zelensky, all seem to be homosexual” 09/03/24 mma

August 13, 2024 mma

Tina Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., was convicted on Monday of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against former President Donald J. Trump.

A heavily publicized Twitter conversation between Elon Musk and Donald Trump on Monday night began with an immediate bed-shitting technical crash. When things finally kicked off 42 minutes later with a much smaller audience, Musk blamed a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which did not appear to be true, as the rest of his site continued to function as normal.

The campaign to reelect former President Donald Trump will host a virtual training event that features Jack Posobiec, a purveyor of far-right conspiracy theories.

JD Vance and like-minded conservatives are theorizing a kind of “neopatriarchy.”

“Now she’s picked, this guy, Tim Walz. Saw him at a rally. I mean, I hate to quote, Mel Brooks, in Blazing Saddles, but he was jumping around like a Kansas City f—–. This guy — really, really weird.”

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rww 7 24

While June is typically celebrated as LGBTQ+ Pride month, Colorado Republican Party chairman Dave Williams has spent the last several weeks bashing the LGBTQ+ community. And on Tuesday night, Centennial State Republicans handed him a major loss.

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Transvestigation Nation: Right-wing media figures’ obsession with trans people is breaking their brains

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 multipleinterviews 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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note martha ann triggered by pride flags

Christian Nationalist Pastor Paul Blair Melts Down Over Pride Month

By Kyle Mantyla |

Paul Blair is a far-right pastor and Christian nationalist who runs an organization called Liberty Pastors, which is dedicated to training pastors to become more involved politically. To that end, Liberty Pastors regularly hosts multi-day retreats around the nation where local pastors and their spouses are instructed by right-wing speakers like Rick Scarborough, Mat Staver, Rick Green, E.W. Jackson, Alex McFarland, and others on how to become members of a modern-day “Black Robe Regiment.” The gatherings are financed largely by religious-right activist Art Ally, founder of the Christian investment firm The Timothy Plan, and are generally limited to 100 pastors so that attendees have an opportunity to interact with the speakers personally “and that really helps with this transformation of their ministry,” Blair claimed last year.

“Over three days at a luxury hotel, we have 20 hours of their time where we literally teach them biblical principles of civil government,” Blair has bragged.

Blair is also a longtime anti-LGBTQ activist, and his virulent bigotry was on full display during a recent episode of his “Liberty Pastors” program during which he ranted about Pride Month.

“This is child abuse,” Blair fumed while showing a photo of a child holding hands with his mother at a Pride event. “This person will one day will stand before God and give an account, but the damage that she is doing to this young man and the likelihood that he is going to wind up on drugs and contemplating suicide because of his mother’s abuse; you’re right, this is child abuse.”

Blair grew even more outraged when he showed a photo from 2015 of a father kissing his young son at a Pride event in New York, and expressed dismay that no one had put the father “face down on the concrete.”

“It’s one thing when this pervert is going to kiss this pervert, but this is abuse of a child,” he said. “This is pedophilia.”

“What’s this wench smiling about?” Blair demanded to know while pointing at a female spectator.

“And this fa**ot over here? What’s he’s smiling about over there?” Blair seethed while pointing at a male spectator. “They ought to be intervening and putting this guy face down on the concrete for abusing this child. I can’t imagine that this is going on in the streets in the United States of America and there’s no one here that’s godly enough or courageous enough to protect this child from this. One day, these men and these accomplices to the crime will stand before God and they’re gonna give an account.”

BlazeTV's Steve Deace: Decriminalizing sodomy “led to the redefinition of marriage and all the other rainbow jihad stuff we see now”

05/22/24

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May 20, 2024 RWW

* Elijah Schaffer attempts to explain “why racism is actually good.”

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Right-wing media are defending UFC fighter Sean Strickland's anti-LGBTQ remarks | Media Matters for America

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Indiana GOP targets LGBTQ Hoosiers with sweeping rewrite of state laws - Alternet.org

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Pope declares same-sex unions can be blessed by the Church in 'radical change': report - Alternet.org

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yikes trump = offense = fascism

AN 12 23 thom 3

if Trump is re-elected, he’d be America’s 47th president, so he’s named the plans for his second term “Agenda 47.” At best, it’s a dystopian nightmare: at worst it means ending our current system of American government; aligning the US with Russia and other autocratic nations; and the USA leading the charge against democracy and in favor of authoritarian, strong-man forms of government across the world.

Over at his website, Trump lays out the details of his governing agenda, complete with short videos promoting each of the steps he plans to take. They, and his many statements about future plans, include:

Part of Agenda 47, Trump says, is “finishing the job” he started as president between 2017 and 2021.

Just two hours after he and Pence were sworn into office, they removed all mention of LGBTQ+ issues from the White House website.

Two days later, his State Department deleted former Secretary of State John Kerry’s apology to the nation for the “Lavender Scare” government persecution of gays and lesbians during the McCarthy era 1950s and early 1960s. A month later, Trump’s Justice Department announced they’d no longer defend the civil rights of trans kids.

His Education and HUD offices both withdrew their court defenses of queer people, particularly students and those in homeless shelters, and his Secretary of State refused to mention to the Russian Foreign Minister the detention and brutal executions of gay men by Russian soldiers in Chechnya. On May 4, 2017 Trump signed an executive order letting the DOJ ignore claims of illegal discrimination against queer people and women throughout every single one of the nation’s federal agencies.

In September, 2017, Trump’s Secretary of Education, billionaire Betsy DeVos, officially ended that agency’s Title IX guidance requiring schools to do something about sexual harassment, including sexual violence, against women and LGBTQ+ kids. In response to a question from the media about the change in policy and gay men, Trump said that his Vice President “wants to hang them all.”

In January of 2018, Trump rolled out the “Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom” at HHS, which would backstop people who wanted to use the excuse of “deeply held religious beliefs” to justify explicit discrimination against queer people and women, or to simply to make life difficult for government agencies.

All of this is just the beginning. The Human Rights Campaign has documented page after page of anti-queer policies put into effect by Trump that will be resurrected and put on steroids in a second term.

In the Agenda 47 section of his website, Trump explains how he’s going to use our schools and colleges to indoctrinate young Americans in rightwing ideology. He explicitly says:

“When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics. We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once and for all.”

Any colleges that continue to teach “under the guise of [racial] equity will not only have their endowment taxed, but through budget reconciliation, I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.”

In other words, just like Viktor Orbán did in Hungary and Putin did in Russia, he’s going to bankrupt the nation’s schools and colleges if they continue to teach the true history of America and promote egalitarian values. As Trump notes at his website:

“[W]e are going to get this anti-American insanity out of our institutions once and for all.”

Back in the 1970s, Richard Nixon said he was going to use “impoundment” to strip funding from agencies his donors didn’t like, claiming that, even though Congress had appropriated budgets for them, he could, as head of the Executive Branch, simply “impound” the money and refuse to spend it. His plan to remake the federal government was interrupted by Watergate.

In 1974, Democrats in Congress got together and passed legislation outlawing this and Jerry Ford signed it into law. But Trump’s lawyers apparently think they can get it overturned through their appointees on the courts or even, if they can take both branches of Congress, through new legislation. As Trump says on his website:

“I will use the president’s long-recognized Impoundment Power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings.”

Since the fossil fuel companies, banks, refineries, anti-union big employers, and their billionaires who fund the GOP hate all of these agencies, it’ll be a bonanza for them.

Not so much for working people, retirees, and those of us concerned about a livable future environment for our kids and grandkids, though.

First, he wants to make it illegal for the federal government’s security services to notify social media platforms about Russian disinformation and other foreign efforts to swing elections, since nearly 100% of those efforts are coming from authoritarian countries in support of Trump and against democracy.

“I will ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as “mis-” or “dis-information,” Trump proclaims on his Agenda 47 website.

He also wants to force social media to carry his buddy Putin’s trolls’ lies and attempts to pit Americans against each other, and limit the companies’ ability to label or block lies and propaganda. As Trump puts it:

“I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk revising Section 230 to get big online platforms out of censorship business.”

In Hungary, one way Viktor Orbán got rid of actual news media and replaced the ownership of all the nation’s major radio and TV networks, websites, and newspapers was by changing the libel laws so that public figures (like Orbán himself) could sue for libel when they thought they were treated unfairly.

They then sued company after company, commentator after commentator, reporter after reporter, into bankruptcy.

Orbán’s rightwing buddies could buy the media properties out of bankruptcy which is why now virtually all the media in Hungary is like Fox “News,” broadcasting suck-ups to Orbán and criticism of “liberals,” immigrants, and gays 24/7.

Trump wants to do the same here in the US.

When Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury came out with some unflattering characterizations of Trump in it, the then-president said:

“We are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts. And if somebody says something that’s totally false and knowingly false, that the person that has been abused, defamed, libeled, will have meaningful recourse.”

Simply reporting on what Trump’s up to could bring lawsuits that would bankrupt even the Times or the Post, and, like in Hungary and Russia, pretty much end the existence of a free and independent press in America.

Trump has promised to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists who tried to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House (and whose actions led to the death of four police officers), and put into place a national “stop and frisk” law that upends the 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

It would also — like Duterte in the Philippines who executed over 10,000 people during his reign of terror — authorize the federal government to immediately execute anybody convicted of trafficking in drugs without further due process or appeals.

Republicans in Texas have already pioneered using vigilantes to hunt down women who’ve had abortions and the people who’ve helped them. Expect these vigilante-enforced laws to spread across the country with a second Trump administration, with groups like the Proud Boys and III Percenters becoming the modern-day equivalent of the old west’s 19th century bounty hunters.

In a flashback to Hitler’s “work camps” that preceded the death camps by five years, Trump’s also proposed building concentration camps around the country to house “millions” of undocumented aliens and his political enemies. As he noted in a speech on Veterans’ Day this year:

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” adding that Russia isn’t a problem. Instead, he said, “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”

Presumably that means people like me and you, who would oppose his fascist agenda.

Way back in 1881, a man named Charles Guiteau thought he’d properly bribed President James Garfield by giving the president, during an in-person visit in the White House, a speech he’d written for Garfield to use. Garfield was polite but didn’t offer Guiteau a federal speechwriter’s job, which provoked a murderous rage: shortly thereafter, Guiteau met Garfield’s train and shot him twice, killing him.

The explicit and institutionalized practice of exchanging gifts and personal loyalty for federal jobs dated back to the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), arguably the second-most depraved president in American history behind Trump (which is probably why Trump hung his picture in the Oval Office; Jackson’s favorite nickname for himself — given him by the Cherokee he slaughtered — was “The Indian Killer”).

Jackson had elevated the practice of bribing the president — himself, at the time — to get federal jobs into an art-form: it was called the “spoils” or patronage system and was insanely corrupt. It was also, by Garfield’s presidency in 1881, routine.

After Guiteau failed to gain his “spoil” or “patronage” from Garfield and killed him, President Chester Arthur oversaw the writing and passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883.

It separated all those government jobs from the administration in power, turning federal workers from patrons of the president into permanent bureaucrats, whose first loyalty was to the nation instead of the guy who happened to be in the White House at any particular time.

It also explicitly outlawed bribing the president for a job. The goal, which it accomplished and has held for 140 years, was to end corruption in the bureaucratic branches of the federal government.

Donald Trump wants to functionally end the Civil Service system and replace the top levels of the nation’s 2.7 million federal workers with people loyal exclusively to himself.

He tried to do this in the last months of his presidency through an October 21, 2020 executive order, Schedule F, (which Biden reversed on his first day in office) that reclassified those workers out of their Civil Service jobs and into political appointee positions, doing the same work but now entirely dependent on the good will of the president to keep their jobs.

The next Republican administration will almost certainly put Schedule F back into force, reestablishing the 1829 spoils system for the federal government, and ending any possibility that people in the government will push back against Trump the way they did during his presidency.

The Department of Justice was established by President Ulysses S. Grant after the Civil War, in part to enforce federal laws protecting the rights of people who’d recently been freed from slavery.

After Richard Nixon tried to use it against his enemies (and his Attorney General, John Mitchell, went to prison for his efforts), Congress in 1978 passed the Ethics in Government Act which put a wall of separation between the DOJ and the White House.

Trump has explicitly proclaimed his intention to tear that wall down and go farther than Nixon ever imagined in using our armed investigative services for personal revenge and harassment of people he perceives as his enemies.

He wants the nation’s premiere police agencies to become his own personal enforcers, and has already said they will be hunting down “liberals,” Black Lives Matter protest participants, and Joe Biden, his family, and members of his administration.

He wants to imprison them, as well as the prosecutors and judges who have been participating in the effort to hold him to account for the crimes he committed over the past 7 years.

This politicization of law enforcement has been a first-order and primary feature of every authoritarian or totalitarian regime that’s risen to power over the past few hundred years, worldwide. It’s always one of the first things fascist leaders do when they seize power.

In an apparent attempt to portray himself as a visionary like JFK, with his promise to send men to the moon and bring them back safely, Trump is promising to build “freedom cities” in his second term. The main feature he’s discussed is that people will get around in them in “flying cars.”

While it’s being portrayed as a goofy stunt designed to make him seem like an imaginative idealist, in fact there has been a movement among rightwing billionaires for some time to create cities that they basically run as little feudal fiefdoms, the same way the morbidly rich run their companies and their football teams.

Some libertarian billionaires assert that the only reason there’s never been a successful libertarian nation in the history of the world is because true libertarianism — government doing nothing but running the police, army, and courts and everything else left to private charity and business owners — “has never been tried.”

The ”freedom cities” could be a new libertarian experiment, or they may be the 21st century version of the old “company town,” where nobody has rights or protection of the law but is subject to the whims of the local billionaire owner. A group backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has already put forward what appears to be a plan to build a new city in California that they may or may not envision running along these lines. The group has so far purchased more than 53,000 acres of land, an area larger than the entire city of Beaumont, Texas, or Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Trump is also promising that he’ll end the brutal attacks against Ukraine on “day one” by simply turning the country over to his good friend, Vladimir Putin.

For the first time since World War II, this would legitimize a nation attacking another nation simply to seize their land, resources, and people.

It would greenlight China to do the same with Taiwan, and encourage every other tinpot dictator in the world to grab nearby territory that he wants. It would encourage war, and could very easily lead to a world war.

Abandoning Ukraine like this, along with Trump’s oft-stated preference to leave or end NATO and stop support for the UN, would lead the autocracies of the world — particularly Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea — to destroy the democracies in their sphere of influence, replacing those democracies with strongman autocracies.

The democratic experiment on this planet is only 250 years old, more or less, and this would signal a return to the way the world had been ruled for the 7,000 years prior to that: by kings, popes, mullahs, strongman warlords, and the morbidly rich.

Between Agenda 47 and Project 2025, Donald Trump and the rightwing billionaires who own the GOP have big plans for this nation, regardless of which Republican takes the White House next. They’re dead serious and far more well-funded than any of the groups that fight for and advocate democracy.

If you thought it can’t happen here, I have an old Sinclair Lewis book to share with you.

Triple check your voter registration, especially if you live in a Red state where the voter purges have already begun, and make sure everybody you know is registered to vote.

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a Florida Republican’s bill aims to silence accusations of racism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, or any other allegations of discrimination, making them “defamation” under the law and potentially costing the person who made them up to $35,000 in the state known for its “Don’t Say Gay” law.

The sweeping legislation also appears to void journalists’ right to not reveal sources, and, chillingly removes the long-standing requirement that a public figure needs to show “actual malice” to win a defamation lawsuit.

“In cases of alleged homophobia or transphobia, defendants charged with defamation are not allowed to use the plaintiff’s religious or scientific beliefs as part of their defense. If they are found liable for defamation, the defendant could be fined at least $35,000,” The New Republic reports, noting it “would silence basically any accusations of discrimination.”

“The bill applies to statements made in print, on television, or on social media. It also states that someone who is caught in a viral video engaging in allegedly discriminatory behaviors does not qualify as a ‘public figure,’ giving those people even more grounds to sue.”

READ MORE: ‘You Have No Balls’: Nancy Mace Launches Explosive In-Person Attack Against Hunter Biden

:{:{LGBTQ activist Erin Reed, who first reported on the legislation, writes: “A person could not call, for instance, a fiercely anti-gay or anti-trans pastor transphobic. The pastor would be able to sue their accusers for $35,000 and their accusers could not use the pastor’s ‘religious expression or beliefs’ to prove that the pastor is transphobic or homophobic.}:

Similarly, if a shopkeeper kicks a transgender person out of a shop while citing ‘God’s word’ or their ‘scientific beliefs’ and the video goes viral, the shopkeeper could claim that they were acting under their ‘constitutionally protected religious expression or beliefs’ or their ‘scientific beliefs.’ It would bar anyone from calling that shopkeeper transphobic.”}:

Florida Democratic state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani decried the legislation, writing: “More attempts to chill free speech in the ‘free’ State of Florida.”

Dr Robert Bohan, an Irish artist and scientist who says his “work is about the human condition and understanding how the mind is connected with the body and our environment,” on social media where he has over 300,000 followers voiced concern.

“The US is proud of free speech. The KKK can spit racism, misogynists can attack women & groups can call for the annihilation of Gay ppl,” Dr. Bohan wrote. “Florida is now removing free speech, but just for the Gays. If you can’t name your oppressor how do you call them out?”

Florida State University professor of history Paul Renfro observed, “For these folks, accusations of racism, sexism, transphobia, or homophobia are far more objectionable than the racist, sexist, transphobic, and homophobic policies they enact and support.”

The legislation is being sponsored by Republican state Senator Jason Brodeur, who last year “introduced a bill that would require the registration of bloggers who are critical of the state’s government,” leading a columnist at the right-wing National Review to call him a “moron” and an “idiot.” It’s unclear if that would be considered defamation under Sen. Brodeur’s new bill.

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A Trio of Anti-LGBTQ Bigots Long for the Days When Gays Were Beaten Up and Forced Into the Closet

[Kyle Mantyla | January 4, 2024

Vincent James, an unapologetic racist, antisemite, misogynist, conspiracy theorist, and fascist who currently serves as the treasurer of white nationalist Nick Fuentes’ America First organization, appeared on the bigoted Christian nationalist program “CrossTalk” last night, which is hosted by racist conspiracy theorists Edward Szall and Lauren Witzke.

During the course of the program, the three complained that gay people are infiltrating the conservative movement as part of an effort to weaken and ultimately dismantle it.

The discussion prompted Szall, who is virulently anti-gay, to assert that gay people having children should not be tolerated, for the good of the children.

“There used to be a day and age,” Szall said, “[when] it was just bad for the kid. When you think about the kid in the situation; we beat up the kid at school who had two dads. And we weren’t jerks for that, that’s just what we did.”

James, who has openly declared that he would love to live in a society where gay people are thrown off of buildings and have their children kidnapped by government task forces, agreed, saying that when he was younger, kids who were “obviously gay … pretended not to be gay” in order to avoid being bullied and beaten up.

That is how society should be today, concurred Witzke, who is currently being sued by a gay couple whom she baselessly accused of being pedophiles.

“That is how we kind of maintained the line as far as behavior,” Witzke said. “I think that they all need to go back in the closet.”

IFrame Content

This sort of unmitigated bigotry is a standard part of the “CrossTalk” program, but as Right Wing Watch reported last year, that has not prevented Republican officials , including Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, from appearing on the program.

Tags: Edward SzallLauren WitzkeVincent JamesAnti-LGBTQ

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Florida bill banning Pride flag would make showing support for LGBTQ people a 'political viewpoint' - Alternet.org

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Clarence Thomas vehemently objects to LGBTQ conversion therapy case denial by SCOTUS - Alternet.org

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spring is pride parade season?  some states passing laws ~?

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Conservative media figures are using homophobia and misogyny to attack surrogacy and IVF | Media Matters for America

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BlazeTV co-host: "Gay people are adopting children. It's a tragedy" and "that should not happen" | Media Matters for America

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last week, Tim Miller, the gay Bulwark writer who was communications director for Jeb Bush’s campaign in 2016 but left the GOP, tweeted outthat Matt Gaetz appeared to be “outing” the GOP Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Missouri Congressman Jason Smith.

You can watch the clip from Gaetz’s podcast here. Gaetz is extremely peeved that Smith attacked him for triggering the removal of Kevin McCarthy as House speaker. Gaetz played a clip of Smith saying, “Let me just tell you, if Matt Gaetz’s lips are moving, it’s only lies that’s coming out of it,” and calling Gaetz a “foolish liar.”

The vengeful Gaetz respondeed by saying Smith is the one who is “living a lie” and that every Republican in Congress knows about it:

Jason Smith says if my lips are moving, I’m lying. Well, you know what? If Jason Smith is breathing, he is living a lie. There might not be another member of Congress who lives a lie every day more than Jason Smith. And Jason Smith knows exactly what I’m talking about. And by the way, so does almost every member of the House Republican caucus.

So, there’s a good deal of projection in Jason Smith calling me a liar when it’s Jason Smith who literally has to live a lie. And I honestly pity him for that because you know, it wouldn’t be something that– I wouldn’t live that way. I’ll just put it that way. So, Jason, I would check yourself before you come at me with any accusations of being dishonest about what I say, when you’re dishonest about how you live and what you do.

So what do we know about Smith?

He has voted anti-LGBTQ for years—in office since 2013—with a score of zero from the Human Rights Campaign. He condemned the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision in 2015, saying he has “never wavered in my commitment to the biblical definition of marriage.”

Like most Republicans in the House, Smith voted against the Respect for Marriage last year, which protects same-sex marriage, and voted for the spending bills this year that added dozens of anti-LGBTQ provisions.

But unlike most Republicans in the House, Smith is 44 and single. And one of his closest friends in Congress for years—someone he traveled with on lavish trips—was none other than Illinois Congressman Aaron Schock, the closeted gay House member who resigned in 2015 amid a scandal that focused on his outrageous misuse of government funds, and eventually was indicted in 2016 for fraud and theft of government funds, among other charges.

Schock finally came out of the closet, announcing, “I am gay” in 2020.

Schock voted anti-gay throughout his time as a member of Congress—including against the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell"—even as rumors swirled about his sexual orientation. In earlier years, before becoming a House member, he flat-out denied he was gay, but during his time in Congress, he did everything to deflect from directly answering the question when asked.

When I approached him at the Republican National Convention in 2012 and asked if the rumors were true, he expressed outrage that I could even ask the question—but didn’t outright say no.

Asked on the floor of the RNC…to respond to those who’ve believed that Schock is gay and also view his vote against “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal was a vote against members of his own group, Schock responded, “Those questions are completely ridiculous and inappropriate.” He added, when asked if he is confirming that he is not gay, “I’ve said that before and I don’t think it’s worthy of further response. I think you can look it up.” Schock then walked off, abruptly ending the interview.

Of course, Schock was totally gay, as he would later confirm—and voting against LGBTQ people. And during that time, one of his closest friends in Congress was Jason Smith.

Share The Signorile Report

Attention was brought to their relationship when the spotlight focused on the luxurious trips Schock was taking, often spending taxpayer dollars. As reported by The Hill in 2018:

Rep. Jason Smith(R-Mo.) joined his close friend Aaron Schockon campaign and government trips and exotic vacations in 2014 that are being scrutinized by federal investigators looking into alleged spending abuses by the former congressman, who resigned in March.

Revelations that Smith, 35, accompanied Schock on the campaign trip come the same week The Hill reported that Smith has hired Schock’s former chief of staff, Mark Roman, who managed the congressman’s office at the time of his spending scandal.

There’s no indication that federal prosecutors have questioned or sought records from Smith, but his participation on trips now under criminal investigation could drag one of Schock’s closest friends in Congress into his legal mess and undermine Smith’s political image as a humble, salt-of-the-earth fiscal conservative. The news has also led to chatter on Capitol Hill, where Roman’s hiring by Smith surprised many.

That story also reported on a trip that Smith took with Schock to Brazil along with two other House members, most of which was paid for by the Brazilian government.

But after the official business, the Hill reports, Schock, Smith, and several of their male aides headed to the Brazilian beach town of Canoa Quebrada, a gay-friendly resort spot.

Smith and Shock also went to Argentina with their aides, and the Hill reported on how unusual it was for members to take their aides on lavish vacations:

Later that December, Schock posted Instagram photos of himself, Smith, Roman, and Schock’s photographer, Jonathon Link, hanging out at a vineyard in the famed Mendoza wine region of Argentina and whitewater rafting the Andes rivers of Potrerillos. Schock paid Link thousands of dollars in taxpayer and campaign money to snap dramatic photos of him around the country and around the world.

Many of those photos ended up on Schock’s Instagram account. Some GOP aides said it was odd for lawmakers to be taking their staffers on exotic vacations.

As noted, one of the aides on both the Brazil trip and the Argentina trip was Roman, who, as the Hill reports, many were surprised Smith hired as his chief of staff, since he was managing Schock’s during the time of the spending scandal. Roman has now moved up from being Smith’s chief of staff to being staff director of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which Smith chairs.

All of this makes Gaetz’s podcast that much more interesting. Gaetz has been a MAGA supervillain doing what he can to take down the GOP establishment, causing complete chaos. And information is power, especially if it’s being used as a weapon.

I have no problem with the truth being reported about a public figure when it’s relevant—such as if that person is voting anti-LGBTQ. And Gaetz is actually outing the entire GOP here, noting that every Republican knows about Smith’s alleged closet—while most of them rail against LGBTQ people. I’d just rather see solid facts than innuendo used as a threat.

So please, Matt Gaetz, flesh out all the details, and let’s hear about all the other GOP hypocrites. We’re all here for it!

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right-wing commentator and youth organizer Charlie Kirk has openly embraced the Christian nationalist worldview and political movement in recent years, and now he appears to have teamed up with self-proclaimed “Christocrat” Rick Scarborough. Their partnership is a reminder that the increasingly aggressive Christian nationalist movement is a threat to LGBTQ equality and to the rights and freedoms of all Americans who do not share their religious worldview and political ideology.

Scarborough has a long history of launching virulent attacks against LGBTQ people, calling them “sodomites” and declaring that AIDS is God’s “judgment as a result of an immoral act,” while insisting in 2015 that “God would probably give us the cure for AIDS today” if the U.S. stopped supporting gay rights.

Scarborough currently runs an organization called Recover America through which he has been leading an effort to take over school boards all across Texas in order to remove “godless educrats” and “expunge this entire state of every immoral book in the library.”

In an email sent out by his organization around the Independence Day holiday, Scarborough announced that Kirk will be headlining a Recover America eventin October and that the two will soon unveil a “Remnant Alliance” effort to mobilize “pastors and Christians across America” heading into the 2024 elections.[vids]

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https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/kentucky-cops-release-kkk-member/

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kKK members pulled guns on pro-LGBTQ protesters — but Kentucky officers let them go free: police docs

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Heritage Foundation and its vice president, Roger Severino, are praising the Supreme Court’s decision last week favoring the First Amendment rights of a Colorado business owner and designer over the Equal Protection rights of the LGBTQ community as a “victory for tolerance.”

Heritage, the once-vaunted right-wing think tank that has melded into pro-Trump MAGA right-wing extremism, just weeks ago attacked President Joe Biden and his historic White House Pride Month celebration, declaring: “The ‘Pride Flag’ does not represent anything good and it certainly does not represent America. It should have never disgraced the South Portico of the White House.”

Now it is using the Supreme Court decision in 303 Creative v. Elenis to continue its anti-LGBTQ attack.

“The LGBT Left says they just want to live like everybody else. That’s a lie,” Heritage on Monday wrote. “If you don’t compromise your beliefs and kowtow to their demands, they’ll make an enemy out of you.The 303 Creative decision rejects their efforts to make Americans pledge allegiance to their flag.”

Roger Severino is a former Trump administration official who served as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights. He used that position as a sword to attack the LGBTQ community.

READ MORE: ‘Treacherous March of Normalization’: ABC News Slammed for ‘Puff Piece’ Profile on Moms for Liberty

In 2019, Severino was the Trump administration’s top official behind a new regulation offering special religious rights to medical providers while harming LGBT people.

“Patients want doctors who match their values,” he said, defending the policy, which would allow medical professionals to deny service to anyone for reasons of conscience.

In 2020, Severino, as The New York Times reported, “finalized a regulation that will erase protections for transgender patients against discrimination by doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies, a move announced on the four-year anniversary of the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando and in the middle of Pride Month.”

In an interview with Newsmaxposted on Monday, Severino called the Supreme Court ruling in 303 Creative v. Elenis, “a tremendous victory for free speech and tolerance and pluralism.”

“The Supreme Court opinion focused a lot on West Virginia v. Barnette, which is a case from World War II,” Severino said. “That said Americans cannot be forced to pledge allegiance to the flag. Now this opinion elaborated and essentially saying, you can’t force Americans to pledge allegiance to the pride flag as well.”

There is no indication anyone of any authority has ever tried to “force Americans to pledge allegiance to the pride flag.”

Watch below or at this link.

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ne day when I was about six, I was walking with my dad in New York City. We noticed that someone had stuck little folded squares of paper under the windshield wipers of the cars parked on the street beside us. My father picked one up and read it. I saw his face grow dark with anger.

“What is it, Papa?”

“It’s a message from people who think that all Jews should be killed.”

This would have been in the late 1950s, a time when the Nazi extermination of millions of Jews in Europe was still fresh in the American consciousness. Not, you might have thought, a good season for sowing murderous antisemitism in lower Manhattan. Already aware that, being the daughter of a Jewish father and gentile mother, I was myself a demi-semite, I was worried. I knew that these people wanted to kill my father, but with a typical child-centered focus, I really wanted to know whether the gentile half of my heredity would protect me in the event of a new Holocaust.

“Would they kill me, too?” I asked.

Yes, he told me, they would if they could. But he then reassured me that such people would never actually have the power to do what they wanted to. It couldn’t happen here.

I must admit that I’m grateful my father died before Donald Trump became president, before tiki-torch-bearing Nazi wannabes seeking to “Unite the Right” marched through Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, chanting “Jews will not replace us!” before one of them drove his car into a crowd of counterdemonstrators, killing Heather Heyer, and before President Trump responded to the whole event by declaring that “you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

Are Queer People the New Jews?

Maybe the grubby little group behind the tracts my father and I saw that day in New York would have let me live. Maybe not. In those days home-grown fascists were rare and so didn’t have that kind of power.

Now, however, there’s a new extermination campaign stalking this country that would definitely include me among its targets: the right-wing Republican crusade against “sexual predators” and “groomers,” by which they mean LGBTQI+ people. (I’m going to keep things simple here by just writing “LGBT” or “queer” to indicate this varied collection of Americans who are presently a prime target of the right wing in this country.)

You may think “extermination campaign” is an extreme way to describe the set of public pronouncements, laws, and regulations addressing the existence of queer people here. Sadly, I disagree. Ambitious would-be Republican presidential candidates across the country, from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to the less-known governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, are using anti-queer legislation to bolster their primary campaigns. For Florida, it started in July 2022 with DeSantis’s Parental Rights in Education act (better known as his “Don’t Say Gay” law), which mandated that, in the state’s public schools,

“Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

In April 2023, DeSantis doubled down, signing a new law that extended the ban all the way up through high school. Florida teachers at every level now run the very real risk of losing their jobs and credentials if they violate the new law. And queer kids, who are already at elevated risk of depression and suicide, have been deprived of the kind of affirming space that, research shows, greatly reduces those possibilities.

Is Florida an outlier? Not really. Other states have followed its lead in restricting mentions of sexual orientation or gender identity in their public schools. By February of this year, 42 such bills had been introduced in a total of 22 states and are creating a wave of LGBT refugees.

But the attacks against queer people go well beyond banning any discussion of gayness in public schools. We’re also witnessing a national campaign against trans and non-binary people that, in effect, aims to eliminate such human beings altogether, whether by denying their very existence or denying them the medical care they need. This campaign began with a focus on trans youth but has since widened to include trans and non-binary people of all ages.

Misgendering: As of 2023, seven states have laws allowing (or requiring) public school teachers to refuse to use the preferred pronouns of students if they don’t match their official sex. This behavior is called “misgendering” and it’s more than a violation of common courtesy. It’s a denial of another person’s being, their actual existence, and can have a lethal effect. Such repudiation of trans and non-binary young people significantly increases their chances of committing suicide.

It also increases the chances that their non-queer peers will come to view them with the kind of disrespect and even contempt that could also prove lethal and certainly increases their chances of becoming targets of violence. In 2022, for example, CBS News reported that “the number of trans people who were murdered in the U.S. nearly doubled between 2017 and 2021.” It’s no accident that this increase correlates with an increase in high-profile political and legal attacks on trans people. Sadly, but not surprisingly, race hatred has also played a role in many of these deaths. While Blacks represent about 13% of trans and non-binary people, they accounted for almost three-quarters of those murder victims.

Medical care: Laws allowing or even requiring misgendering in classrooms are, however, only the beginning. Next up? Denying trans kids, and ultimately trans adults, medical care. As of June 1st of this year, according to the national LGBT rights organization Human Rights Campaign, 20 states already ban gender-affirmative medical care for trans youth up to age 18. Another seven states now have such bans under consideration.

What is “gender affirmative” medical care? According to the World Health Organization, it “can include any single or combination of a number of social, psychological, behavioral, or medical (including hormonal treatment or surgery) interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity.” In other words, it’s the kind of attention needed by people whose gender identity does not align in some way with the sex they were assigned at birth.

What does it mean to deprive a trans person of such care? It can, in fact, prove to be a death sentence.

It may be difficult to imagine this if you yourself aren’t living with gender dysphoria (a constant disorienting and debilitating alienation from one’s own body). What studies show is that proper healthcare reduces suicidal thoughts and attempts, along with other kinds of psychological distress. Furthermore, people who begin to receive such care in adolescence are less likely to be depressed, suicidal, or involved in harmful drug use later in life. As Dr. Deanna Adkins, director of the Duke Child and Adolescent Gender Care Clinic at Duke University Hospital, notes, young people who receive the gender-affirming care they need “are happier, less depressed, and less anxious. Their schoolwork often improves, their safety often improves.” And, she says, “Saving their lives is a big deal.”

Denial of life-saving care may start with young people. But the real future right-wing agenda is to deny such health care to everyone who needs it, whatever their ages. In April 2023, the New York Times reported that Florida and six other states had already banned Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care. Missouri has simply banned most such care outright, no matter who’s paying for it.

And the attacks on queer people just keep coming. In May 2023, the Human Rights Campaign listed anti-queer bills introduced and passed in this year alone:

“• Over 520 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures, a record;

“• Over 220 bills specifically target transgender and non-binary people, also a record; and

“• A record 74 anti-LGBTQ laws have been enacted so far this year, including:

“• Laws banning gender affirming care for transgender youth: 16

“• Laws requiring or allowing misgendering of transgender students: 7

“• Laws targeting drag performances: 2

“• Laws creating a license to discriminate: 3

“• Laws censoring school curricula, including books: 13″

We’re not paranoid. They really do want us to disappear.

Anti-Gay Campaigns in Africa: Made in the USA

Though they’re starting to say the quiet part out loud, even in this country, they’ve been so much less careful in Africa for decades now.

It’s not all that uncommon today for right-wing Christians in the United States to publicly demand that LGBT people be put to death. As recently as Pride month (June) of last year, in a sermon that went viral on Tik-Tok, Pastor Joe Jones of Shield of Faith Baptist Church in Boise, Idaho, called for all gay people to be executed. Local NBC and CBS TV stations, along with some national affiliates, saw fit to amplify Jones’s demand to “put them to death. Put all queers to death” by interviewing him in prime time.

In keeping with right-wing propaganda that treats queer people as child predators, Jones sees killing gays as the key to preventing the sexual abuse of children. “When they die,” he said, “that stops the pedophilia. It’s a very, very simple process.” (The reality is that most sexual abuse of children involves male perpetrators and girl victims and happens inside families.)

Though American “Christians” like Jones may be years away, if ever, from instituting the death penalty for queer people here, they have already been far more successful in Africa. On May 29th, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni signed perhaps the world’s harshest anti-LGBT law, criminalizing all homosexual activity, providing the death penalty for “serial offenders,” and according to the Reuters news agency, for the “transmission of a terminal illness like HIV/AIDS through gay sex.” It also “decrees a 20-year sentence for ‘promoting’ homosexuality.”

While Uganda’s new anti-gay law may be the most extreme on the continent, more than 30 other African countries already outlaw homosexuality to varying degrees.

It’s a little-known fact that right-wing and Christian nationalist churches from the United States have played a major role in formulating and promoting such laws. Since at least the early 2000s, those churches have poured millions of dollars into anti-gay organizing in Africa. According to Open Democracy, more than 20 U.S. evangelical groups have been involved in efforts to criminalize homosexuality there:

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“The Fellowship Foundation, a secretive U.S. religious group whose Ugandan associate, David Bahati, wrote Uganda’s infamous ‘Kill the Gays’ bill, is the biggest spender in Africa. Between 2008 and 2018, this group sent more than $20m to Uganda alone.”

Such groups often employ the language of anticolonialism to advance their cause, treating homosexuality as a “western” import to Africa. Despite such rhetoric, however, quite a few of them are actually motivated by racist as well as anti-gay beliefs. “Of the groups that are active in Africa,” says Open Democracy, “ten are members of the World Congress of Families (WCF), which has been linked to white supremacists in the U.S. and Europe.”

Is MAGA Really Fascism? And Does It Matter?

Back in the late 1980s, I published an article entitled “What Is Fascism — And Why Do Women Need to Know?” in Lesbian Contradiction, a paper I used to edit with three other women. It was at the height of the presidency of Ronald Reagan and I was already worried about dangerous currents in the Republican party, ones that today have swelled into a full-scale riptide to the right. There’s a lot that’s dated in the piece, but the definition I offered for that much-used (and misused) bit of political terminology still stands:

“The term it­self was invented by Benito Mussolini, the premier of Italy from 1922 to 1945, and refers to the ‘fasces,’ the bundle of rods which symbolized the power of the Roman emperors. Today, I would define fascism as an ideology, movement, or government with several identifying characteristics:

“• Authoritarianism and a fanatical respect for leaders. Fas­cism is explicitly anti-democratic. It emerges in times of social flux or instability and of chaotic and worsening economic situations.

“• Subordination of the individual to the state or to the “race.” This subordination often has a spiritual im­plication: people are offered an opportunity to transcend their own sense of insignificance through participation in a powerful movement of the chosen.

“• Appeal to a mythical imperial glory of the past. That past may be quite ancient, as in Mussolini’s evoca­tions of the Roman Empire. Or it might be as recent as the United States of the 1950s.

“• Biological determinism. Fascism involves a belief in absolute biological differences between the sexes and among different races.

“• Genuine popularity. The scariest thing to me about real fascism is that it has always been a truly pop­ular movement. Even when it is a relatively minor force, fascism can be a mass movement without being a majority movement.”

“Having laid out these basic elements,” I added, one “real strength of fascism lies in its ex­traordinary ideological elasticity,” which allows it to embrace a wide variety of economic positions from libertarian to socialist and approaches to foreign policy that range from isolationism to imperialism. I think this, too, remains true today.

What I failed to emphasize then — perhaps because I thought it went without saying (but it certainly needs to be said today) — is that fascism is almost by definition deadly.It needs enemies on whom it can focus the steaming rage of its adherents and it is quite content for that rage to lead to literal extermination campaigns.

The creation of such enemies invariably involves a process of rhetorical dehumanization. In fascist propaganda, target groups cease to be actual people, becoming instead vermin, viruses, human garbage, communists, Marxists, terrorists, or in the case of the present attacks on LGBT people, pedophiles and groomers. As fascist movements develop, they bring underground streams of hatred into the light of “legitimate” political discourse.

All those decades ago, I suggested that the Christian fundamentalists represented an incipient fascist force. I think it’s fair to say that today’s Make America Great Again crew has inherited that mantle, successfully incorporating right-wing Christianity into a larger proto-fascist movement. All the elements of classic fascism now lurk there: adulation of the leader, subordination of the individual to the larger movement, an appeal to mythical past glories, a not-so-subtle embrace of white supremacy, and discomfort with anything or anyone threatening the “natural” order of men and women. You have only to watch a video of a Trump rally to see that his is a mass (even if not a majority) movement.

Why should it matter whether Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and the Republican Party he’s largely taken over represent a kind of fascism? The answer: because the logic of fascism leads so inexorably to the politics of extermination. Describing his MAGA movement as fascism makes it easier to recognize the existential threat it truly represents — not only to a democratic society but to specific groups of human beings within it.

I know it may sound alarmist, but I think it’s true: proto-fascist forces in this country have shown that they are increasingly willing to exterminate queer people, if that’s what it takes to gain and hold onto power. If I’m right, that means all Americans, queer or not, now face an existential threat.

For those who don’t happen to fall into one of MAGA’s target groups, let me close by paraphrasing Donald Trump: in the end, they’re coming after you. We’re just standing in the way.

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BOLLING (HOST): The Vatican is promoting a study calling for radical inclusion LGBTQ plus communities. Now, let's bring in host of the Eric Metaxas Radio Show and author of Is Atheism Dead. Eric, you know, every time I have you on I'm bringing you on for a different story and I'll ask you the same question. With these stories -- what we're seeing now in culture and life in America --are we approaching the end of times? I mean, the Vatican. Promoting LGBTQ plus ideology.

ERIC METAXAS (GUEST): That sounds logical, doesn't it? It sounds like the end of time. I'm not joking. When you hear about something like this, you think to yourself, listen, I don't care who you are,I don't care if you're the pope, you do not have the right to change fundamental doctrine. You don't change fundamental doctrine. Any faithful Catholic knows that once somebody says, we're not merely being inclusive -- this is the term they're throwing around -- they're basically blurring the line between what is good and what is evil. And when you start saying that we're promoting -- what's the spirit -- it's the spirit of the age, it's the world in which we live. The job of the church is to stand against the spirit of the age, to speak eternal truth. So when I hear something like this, it's hard not to be shocked, and it's hard not to say what you just said.It sounds like we're in the end times. No joking

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2023 marks the 30th anniversary of the far-right Christian fundamentalist legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). A long list of Religious Right organizations had gained considerable influence in the Republican Party by the timeADF was founded in 1993, from Focus on the Family to the late Rev. Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition to the Family Research Council. But ADF, formerly the Alliance Defense Fund, was focused specifically on pushing anti-gay and anti-anti-abortion laws.

In an article published by The Guardian on June 19, journalist Adam Gabbatt stresses that ADF is still well-funded and has "extended its tentacles into nearly every area of the culture wars."

"With the U.S. besieged by a right-wing culture war campaign that aims to strip away rights from LGBTQ+ people and others, blame tends to be focused on Republican politicians and conservative media figures," Gabbatt explains. "But lurking behind efforts to roll back abortion rights, to demonize trans people, and to peel back the protections afforded to gay and queer Americans is a shadowy, well-funded right-wing legal organization, experts say."

READ MORE: How Pat Robertson helped shape the radical Christian nationalism Barry Goldwater warned against

Gabbatt notes thatADF "aims to overturn same-sex marriage, enact a total ban on abortion, and strip away the already minimal rights that trans people are afforded in the U.S."

Rabia Muqaddam, a senior staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, warns that ADF's goal is to place "a certain type of religious view at the center of American life."

Muqaddam told The Guardian, "(The ADF campaign) extends to abortion, it extends to LGBTQ folks, to immigration, to what kind of religion we think is America, what kind of people we think are American. It's as dramatic as that. I think we are in a fight to preserve democracy and preserve America as a place where we do tolerate and encourage and empower everyone."

According to Muqaddam, ADF helped create the Mississippi anti-abortion law that was at issue in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended abortion as a national right with its 5-4 decision in Dobbs in 2022.

READ MORE: How Trump exposed the moral bankruptcy of the Christian Right

"Alliance Defending Freedom has been instrumental in the dismantling of Roe and the ongoing efforts to eliminate abortion nationwide,” Muqaddam told The Guardian. "They enacted a law that they knew was unconstitutional, they enacted it for the purpose of generating case after case after case to push it out to the Supreme Court until they found a court that was sympathetic to their argument…. I think that's exactly what is happening in the LGBTQ context as well. Their goal is to limit individual rights as much as possible."

Emerson Hodges, a research analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) points out that ADF equates anti-gay laws with "religious freedom" and "religious liberty." The SPLC also lists ADF as a hate group.

Hodges told The Guardian, "Just about every anti-LGBT legislation that you've seen probably in the past decade was probably copied or paraphrased off of a model legislation built by Alliance Defending Freedom.They provide legal advocacy support, litigation and policy models for government officials."

READ MORE: 'Patriots might have to resort to violence': Survey shows 'most' GOPers sympathize with Christian nationalism

The Guardian's full report continues at this link.

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Edgelords at risk of falling off: Daily Wire hosts confirm YouTube strikes, suspensions

After stripping advertiser revenue from Matt Walsh’s YouTube channel, the platform suspended Candace Owens and Michael Knowles for violating the terms of service

Special PROGRAMS

LGBTQ

WRITTEN BY ARI DRENNEN

PUBLISHED 06/15/23

In what is becoming a regular series of disclosures, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing took to Twitter Sunday night to report that podcast hosts Candace Owens and Michael Knowles had both been suspended for receiving second strikes against their accounts on Friday and that Jordan Peterson had been given his first. Three strikes against a YouTube account in a 90-day period leads to its termination. 

Matt Walsh’s YouTube account was stripped of advertiser revenue in April for hateful conduct against trans Bud Light model Dylan Mulvaney. Walsh said in a speech denouncing Media Matters that the move had cost him more than $100,000 per month, and he complained that “it doesn’t seem that other channels are being held to this standard right now.”

That seems to be changing: Boreing alleged that “in the last 90 days, our accounts have received 104 violations for ‘Hateful and Derogatory’ content, earning them ‘limited monetization,’” He added that “nearly every one of these violations comes from our coverage of the trans debate.”

The Daily Wire once again credited Media Matters for YouTube’s decision to enforce its existing terms of service, with vice president of public relations Alyssa Cordova sharing an article from March that enumerated the anti-trans hate published across Daily Wire YouTube channels.

In a Twitter thread posted Wednesday, Knowles claimed that he had received a weeklong suspension from YouTube for violations including implying that trans people are “mentally inferior” and referring to Mulvaney using he/him pronouns.

Recent weeks of Candace Owens have featured the personality urging viewers to avoid shopping at Target “or else you’re gay and you’re a pervert,” claiming that “transgenderism” is “a cancer and we should fight it,” and bragging that she could “beat up” a nonbinary Navy service member.

Knowles has argued that banning books and drag queens is “very American,” called to ban the Pride flag and other LGBTQ symbols, and breathlessly warned viewers that “hypnosis pornography” might turn them trans. This dark and dehumanizing rhetoric fits with a larger vision of state violence against marginalized communities.

In his thread about the suspensions, Boreing called out investment firms Blackrock and Vanguard,joining  a larger conservative effort to cancel companies with pro-LGBTQ policies.Peterson called the two companies “sworn enemies” and promised retribution that would make Target and Bud Light “sideshows by comparison.”

Despite the action on YouTube, the DailyWire+ app remains available on the Google Play Store, which says that it disallows “apps that promote violence, or incite hatred against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, caste, immigration status, or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.”

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The DailyWire+ app is also available on the Apple App Store, which claims to ban “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary” about sexual orientation and gender, particularly if the app or content “is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or harm a targeted individual or group.” Apple removed Infowars, the podcast hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, from the platform in September of 2018, spurring other tech companies to do the same, and severely limiting the reach of Jones’ harmful rhetoric.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/daily-wire/daily-wires-authoritarian-vision-increasing-state-sanctioned-violence-against-oppressed

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the Daily Wire’s authoritarian vision for increasing state-sanctioned violence against oppressed communities

The right-wing media outlet has become increasingly open about using police, prisons, and bans on books and Pride events to carry out its conservative agenda

Special PROGRAMS

LGBTQ

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JACINA HOLLINS-BORGES

PUBLISHED 06/13/23

“The law is a teacher,” Michael Knowles said last month as he launched into one of his darkly ministerial rants about punishing trans and LGBTQ people. But for Knowles and his colleagues at The Daily Wire, it seems the law is more like a weapon, and one that they feel increasingly comfortable aiming at their perceived enemies.

This year alone, several of the site’s marquee stars — including Knowles, Matt Walsh, and Candace Owens — have called for massive expansions of the death penalty and the prison-industrial complex, and have celebrated state-backed repression of ideas and freedom of assembly though bans on books and LGBTQ events. Taken together, these calls to expand state capacity to reinforce existing racial and gender hierarchies — by targeting those who deviate from or challenge those structures — articulate a broader ideology, with the unambiguous goal of using state power to make life in the United State intolerable for anyone they label as a disfavored group or organization.

On May 23,the Daily Wire announced that it would begin working in partnership with Twitter to stream its shows for free on the increasingly extremist-friendly platform. It remains to be seen what effect this will have on the Daily Wire’s overall reach, but the move signals the outlet’s potential ascension, or at least aspiration, to serve as an alternative to Fox News. The joint effort with Twitter will also likely increase the ability of Daily Wire hosts to directly affect government policy; for instance, Walsh was an early supporter of a Tennessee bill, now a law, that prohibits gender-affirming care for trans youth. The outlet already has a sizable footprint on Facebook, generating millions of interactions through its anti-trans content. At the same time, YouTube has at times demonetized or suspended Daily Wire shows for violating the platform’s anti-hate speech policy.

Conservative media have historically embraced the rhetoric of small government while simultaneously advocating for expansive “big government” policies that entrench existing inequalities. Right-wing media have long advocated for using state power to control abortion and reproductive rights, to limit marriage rights to heterosexual couples only, to prohibit and penalize the use of racialized drugs, to expand policing in majority Black and brown communities, and to construct racist legal regimes, such as Jim Crow. That suite of policies in no way represents a small or limited vision of government — it exerts tremendous coercive power over individuals’ daily lives.

Current right-wing punditry, especially at the Daily Wire, has abandoned even the fig leaf of small government rhetoric. Daily Wire hosts now openly embrace the power of the state to punish, imprison, and kill those under its control, as the examples below —  all from this year alone — demonstrate.

The Daily Wire’s approach to the death penalty: “Just execute them all”

Among Daily Wire hosts, Walsh is the most open in his desire to use state power to execute people he has deemed undesirable. As Media Matters previously reported, Walsh praised Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for signing a bill in early May that would expand the death penalty as a potential punishment for people convicted of sexual assault of a child younger than 12. The new law is in direct violation of Kennedy v. Louisiana, a Supreme Court case that ruled the death penalty is available as punishment only if the offender murders the child as well.

Walsh’s endorsement of DeSantis’ new law needs to be understood within the larger campaign right-wing media have waged against LGBTQ communities. Over the last year, conservative pundits have resurrected the myth that gay people, trans people, nonbinary people, and drag performers are a threat to children, referring to them as “groomers” and “pedophiles.” Florida’s expansion of the death penalty under the guise of protecting children is in fact an extension of the state’s totalitarian project to eliminate trans people from public life all together, a goal that Daily Wire hosts share.

Video

CitationFrom the May 2, 2023, edition of the Daily Wire's The Matt Walsh Show

In discussing the new law, specifically in the context of the Kennedy decision, Walsh celebrated the fact that in theory “we don't have to make choices” between executing murderers and child sex abusers. “We can execute all of them.”

“We should be able to, anyway. Execute all the worst people, all of the worst criminals. Just execute them all,” he added. “And this is the right first step. There's a lot more that needs to be done. I mean, this is actual criminal justice reform.”

Walsh then justified his policy on the grounds that long-term imprisonment is costly, when in reality, studies have consistently found that the death penalty is more expensive than life-without-parole sentences. “I would say that along with everything else, it is an unjust and undue burden on society,” Walsh said. “You know, as a taxpayer, I should not be required to keep child rapists alive just because we're too squeamish to execute them as we should.”

He then proposed further cutting costs by abolishing the criminal appeals process for these cases altogether.

“And if we're really starting to understand that society — if we're really starting to reform the system, you know, then we're going to start talking about not only are we executing these people, but we're doing it quickly. We're not giving them 30 years to appeal, OK? The conviction is passed down, you're convicted, you're guilty, you've been found guilty, and then the execution is carried out the next day — how about, carried out at dawn following the conviction.”

Walsh had made similar comments in February. After describing what he sees as a vast conspiracy in the medical community to cover up the harms of gender-affirming care — which is in fact safe and associated with positive health outcomes — Walsh outlined his preferred remedy.

“The next step under a Trump administration, or any Republican administration, should be to arrest the culprits, the hundreds and hundreds of them, if not thousands of them, and throw them in federal prison,” Walsh said. “Now, this can't be a matter of simple fines and financial penalties – I mean, that should be part of it. But the only real recourse here, the only semblance of justice, would be prison sentences, very long ones.”

“Now, if it were up to me, you know, we'd go further than that,” he continued. “As far as I'm concerned, mutilating and castrating children should be legally considered a capital crime and it should earn the prescribed penalty for such crimes. But if we can't have that, then prison will have to suffice.”

Walsh’s bloodlust doesn’t end there. He has advocated for expanding the death penalty to include people convicted of selling illicit drugs, a position he shares with former President Donald Trump. In his May 18 episode, Walsh read a news story about the spread of xylazine, a tranquilizer that is sometimes combined with illicit drugs, including fentanyl.

Video

CitationFrom the May 18, 2023, edition of The Matt Walsh Show

“The people that are actually selling this stuff, the people that are responsible for turning our cities into zombified wastelands, we should be discussing much more severe penalties for them,” Walsh said. “And when I say, ‘much more severe,’ I mean the most severe penalties — the death penalty.”

“It is a form of murder,” Walsh added. “You’re giving these drugs — the fact that they want it doesn’t make it any different, doesn’t make it better. You are killing people en masse and the distributors of these drugs are mass murderers, there’s no question about that, and they should face the penalties prescribed for that.”

Walsh isn’t the only Daily Wire host who sees the salutary effects of expanding the death penalty. His colleague Knowleshas called for the return of public executions, which “would do a lot to bring back the deterrent effect of capital punishment, certainly,” a position he shares with other conservatives.

Hangings in the town square, or their contemporary equivalent, would also have the added benefit from Knowles’ perspective of foregrounding Christianity in public life. “And so, we live our lives trying to put it out of our head. But death is very important,” Knowles said. “It's one of the four final things — death, judgment, heaven, and hell. You're living your life as a preparation to die, and you need to be prepared for your death.”

In May, Knowles offered his own circumscribed support for DeSantis’ bill to expand the death penalty, again appealing to the Bible’s authority.

“Ron DeSantis says we’re challenging that now if you rape a child, pretty much the most heinous crime you can imagine, you get the death penalty. Totally agree with that in principle,” Knowles said. “I see no problem with that in principle. I see no problem with the death penalty in principle. In fact, I think it's quite natural, biblical.”

Knowles' hesitancy was due to his fear that the law could create unintended incentives, but he had no compunctions about the morality of it.

“I don't actually agree with this particular instantiation of the death penalty in practice,” he said. “In principle, I do. But in practice, the only reason I don't is that as a matter of prudence, if you don't kill child rapists, if you, if the punishment is not execution, then it creates some incentive for the rapist not to murder his victim. So if there's any way that through the law, we can incentivize a rapist not to murder his victim, I think that's probably wise and prudent. In principle, they deserve death, certainly.”

Daily Wire hosts frequently find inspiration from some of the world’s most oppressive legal punishment systems. In late May, Knowles criticized a New York Times tweet about a new anti-LGBTQ law in Uganda, claiming that the paper’s social media post had implied that the death penalty could apply to all gay people in the country.

“The death penalty is not for just being a little light in the loafers; the death penalty is for raping children,” Knowles said. He then contrasted the Twitter post to the Times’ print article, which foregrounded that aspect of the new law and clarified what the social media feed elided.

“The New York Times is defending Ugandan child rapists to own the cons,” he added, referring to conservatives. “Now call me a hardliner if you want, but I think it is not unreasonable to execute child rapists.”

“Attempted child rape only gets 14 years in prison,” he continued. “If anything, that aspect of the law is too lenient.”

Walsh praised the law as well, calling for its universal implementation and doubling down on his call to expand the death penalty beyond capital offenses. “This should be happening everywhere,” Walsh said. “Of course child rapists should be put to death. The idea that you can only put someone to death if they also kill their victim — it’s absurd, really. It’s an absurd idea.”

The Daily Wire’s vision for using police and prisons against its enemies: “We have to stop them aggressively, by force, by law.”

The death penalty is the ultimate form of state violence, but not the only one. As the above examples demonstrate, Daily Wire hosts frequently fantasize about incarcerating their declared enemies for extraordinary lengths of time.

Walsh hands out theoretical prison sentences with all the gusto of a tyrant-in-waiting. In addition to demanding mass arrests of LGBTQ health care providers and people who sell drugs, he also called for “life sentences for those who falsely accuse someone of rape because to falsely accuse someone of rape is just as bad as being a rapist,” specifing on Twitter that life sentences should be “mandatory.”

After the singer Lizzo defied Tennessee’s ban on drag shows, Walsh tweeted: “Throw her in jail.” He tweeted that a middle school teacher who gave her kids an LGBTQ-themed book “deserves to be in prison.” When college students protested an appearance by anti-trans activist Riley Gaines, Walsh wrote: “They all should be expelled and thrown in prison.”

During his June 2 show, Walsh illustrated how he repurposes anti-LGBTQ language to demand the imprisonment of the Daily Wire’s other enemies — in this case, a teacher giving students a sex ed lesson. Walsh played a clip of a teacher describing some of the basics of human sexual anatomy and then explaining that some big box stores sell sex toys.

“I can keep saying it and sounding like a broken record, but I will say it every time — that woman should be in prison. That should be a prison sentence,” Walsh said. “That’s the next step, the next phase — or it should be, for Republicans. There’s been a real effort to ban this kind of discussion from classrooms, which is good, but next we need to start saying that the teachers who engage in this behavior are sexual predators.”

“You are preying sexually on kids. You need to go to jail for that” Walsh added. “We will know that some semblance of sanity has been restored to this country when we see a video like that, but instead of just cutting off, it ends with police officers walking into that room, putting that disgusting predator in handcuffs, and carting her out of the room, and then throwing her into a jail cell. Throwing her into a cage like an animal.”

Far and away, Walsh directs most of his carceral demands at LGBTQ communities. On June 6, he reacted to a video of the West Hollywood Pride parade by saying every participant, and potentially every spectator, should be imprisoned for life. “In a functioning, civilized society, everyone involved in that parade — really a combination of public indecency and child abuse — would be arrested and never let out of prison.”

In March, Walsh laid out a typically vengeful fantasy of how to deal with parents who brought their children to an all-ages drag show.

Video

CitationFrom the March 2, 2023, edition of The Matt Walsh Show

“There are varied motivations for all of these adults,” who either performed at or attended the show, Walsh said. “But one thing that they all have in common is that they should all be sitting in a prison cell right now, and we will know that we have restored some semblance of sanity and dignity in our culture when — but not until — we start seeing law enforcement officers swarming these kinds of events, handcuffing every adult in the room, and frog marching them out of the building and into a prison cell.”

He then endorsed submitting drag performers to the very real threat of sexual violence at the hands of other incarcerated people or guards. “You can take the drag perverts, in their thongs, and just throw them right in the jail. We’ll see how sexually expressive they want to be in that environment,” Walsh continued. “And then you take the kids away from the parents, and you throw the parents into jail right alongside them.”

“That’s how we have to respond, because these perverts are not going to stop on their own. They will only get more brazen,” he concluded. “We have to stop them aggressively, by force, by law. And that’s why we need every Republican presidential candidate for 2024 to promise a federal ban on these child drag shows.”

Walsh isn’t the only Daily Wire host who frequently demands that parents lose custody of their children and face prison time if they have attended an LGBTQ event. On March 3, Knowles called for “the heavy hand of the state” to separate families, jail parents, and shutter businesses that host drag events.

Knowles called for “the heavy hand of the state” to separate families, jail parents, and shutter businesses that host drag events.

“I don't see how these parents should be permitted to keep their children,” Knowles said. “They're abusing their children. They're sexually abusing their children by taking them to these events.”

“I don't see how whatever company is hosting this should be allowed to keep its doors open,” he continued. “All of this should be shut down by the heavy hand of the state. All of these people, other than the children, should be arrested and some of them should face pretty severe consequences.”

Knowles used the phrase again on June 8, also targeting LGBTQ people and organizations that support them. “We need the heavy hand of the state to go in, as our duly elected representatives, and break up that Pride cartel,” he said.

In May, Knowles reacted to a TikTok post calling for civil disobedience from trans people and their health care providers to protest anti-LGBTQ laws in Mississippi. “If they do that, then we need to give them what they ask for,” Knowles said. “If they do that — say, ‘We’re gonna break the law, consequences come what may’ — we need to throw them into prison. And that’s going to be the next step.”

Video

Citation From the May 19, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's The Michael Knowles Show

“Signing the legislation is really really great, and it’s good stuff for the Republican governors who have done that and legislatures that have done that, but now, when people break the laws, when they peddle porn to kids in elementary schools, when they trans the children — we’re getting reports that in Texas Children’s Hospital some of these quacks perform sex change procedures on kids as young as 11, OK?” Knowles continued. “When these people break the law, we need to throw the book at them.”

Knowles then mischaracterized former Marine Daniel Penny’s killing of Jordan Neely, a Black unhoused subway performer, to further articulate whom the law should punish and whom it should protect. “We’re now living in a system in which if you’re a good American Marine who has served your country, you’re a good patriot and you protect people from a career-violent criminal with dozens and dozens of arrests, including for assault, and you protect them from a guy who’s saying, ‘I’m going to kill an F, I’m gonna kill, I don’t care, I’m prepared to die,’ you’re gonna go to prison — they’re going to throw the book at you.”

“But if you chop off kids’ genitals, you’re not even going to get a slap on the wrist, OK? We’re living in that system right now,” Knowles concluded. “And we need to flip that situation. We need to live in a system that does not punish people for doing good things, but encourages them to do good things. And we need to live in a system that punishes people for doing bad things — very, very bad things, in this case.”

Fellow Daily Wire host Owens has also called for people who provide gender-affirming care to trans youth to be imprisoned and prevented from practicing medicine. On May 16, Owens discussed a video from a TikTok personality named Zaya who described the challenges she faced following bottom surgery.

Owens has also called for people who provide gender-affirming care to trans youth to be imprisoned and prevented from practicing medicine

Owens blamed Zaya’s transition on the so-called social contagion effect — an anti-trans fiction that has been debunked — concluding that “Zaya was then harmed by a doctor who should be in prison. I believe that if you are chopping off people’s penises you should probably be in prison and you should not be allowed to practice medicine at all.”

Like her Daily Wire colleagues, Owens doesn’t limit her calls for harsh prison sentences to LGBTQ communities. She joined Knowles in invoking Neely as an appropriate target of state power, arguing that his previous arrest record showed the state had been too lenient in doling out punishment, and that subjecting Neely to custodial measures amounting to torture would’ve been in his own self-interest.

“So, yes, if he had been locked up and in solitary confinement — which is where I would have put him if I was running that city — then he would still be alive. He would be,” Owens said. “Someone that has 44 arrests over 10 years is someone to me that does not deserve another chance, OK? He should have been locked up permanently about 40 arrests ago.”

In addition to Owens’ extreme and tyrannical proposition that four arrests should result in lifetime imprisonment, it’s worth underscoring how dictatorial her concept of judgment and sentencing is. She imagines how she would respond “if I was running that city,” articulating a revealing conceptual slippage that transforms an elected mayor into a totalitarian ruler who also occupies the role of judge and jury.

The Daily Wire’s desire to control adults’ behavior extends to their imagined subjects’ media consumption habits as well. On at least two occasions this year, Walsh has called for a ban on pornography. In one instance he proposed imprisoning people in the industry.

On May 3, Walsh discussed a Utah law mandating age verification to access Pornhub in the state. Industry representatives and free speech advocates opposed the law on the grounds that the law was unconstitutional and counterproductive to its stated goals of protecting minors. Walsh responded to the objections by calling for a total ban on pornography under threat of prison.

“It behooves you, if you’re a porn enthusiast or if you’re someone who is involved in the porn industry — it behooves you to figure out a way to keep this filth away from kids, because if you can’t figure it out then the next step is that it’s all banned,” Walsh said. “And then anyone involved in Pornhub goes to prison. How about that?”

“I’d be fine with just skipping right to that part, but if we’re not, then I think this is a reasonable compromise,” he continued.

Walsh returned to the topic on May 30 in a segment dedicated to porn’s supposed responsibility for the purported decline of testosterone in men in the United States, and what he argued was the lower birth rates that resulted from it.

“If our political leaders wanted to take a serious step to increase fertility rates, by the same token, they could start passing laws to help free the population, especially the young male population, from the stranglehold that the porn industry has on it,” Walsh said.

The overt desire for centralized, discretionary carceral power also finds expression in the Daily Wire’s collective adoration of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele. Just as Knowles found common ground with Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ law, Daily Wire hosts have repeatedly praised Bukele, a right-wing authoritarian who has dramatically expanded his country’s carceral system by building a so-called “mega-prison” under the pretext of addressing gang violence.

Daily Wire hosts have repeatedly praised Bukele, a right-wing authoritarian who has dramatically expanded his country’s carceral system by building a so-called “mega-prison”

Knowles celebrated the new prison — which is rife with human rights abuses — at least three times this year, including arguing in February, “We in the United States need to follow the lead of the government of El Salvador.”

Owens echoed him in early March. “You would think that America should look at this and applaud it and say, ‘We need this,’ because crimes are getting so insane in America,” she said.

Days later, Walsh struck the same note. He began by discussing a Financial Times report that found the prison was “overcrowded by design” and if filled to its expected capacity would provide space that “is a fraction of what is expected for humane incarceration and less than half the minimum required under EU law to transport midsized cattle by road.”

Video

CitationFrom the March 8, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's The Matt Walsh Show

After playing footage from inside the prison aired by CNN, Walsh commented, “This is actually justice,” before affirming the prison’s cruelty as a desirable feature.

“Prisons are not supposed to be comfortable,” he added. “They are supposed to be the kinds of places that you really don’t want to go to. It’s supposed to be a punishment. You’re supposed to suffer when you’re in prison. That’s what punishment is meant to do. It is meant to cause suffering.”

“Not just suffering for its own sake but for a purpose — and the purpose ultimately is justice,” he continued. “There is no such thing as justice if you are not causing suffering to evildoers.”

The next month, Walsh pushed for authorities in the United States to construct “50 new prisons” to produce exactly that type of suffering. “And if you don't have the money for it,” he suggested, “then raise the taxes in these cities.”

The Daily Wire’s totalitarian drive to outlaw same-sex marriage and adoption, criminalize gender-affirming care, and "ban transgenderism entirely”

Sometimes the Daily Wire hosts’ threats of state violence are implicit, rather than overt. The network’s on-air talent frequently calls for bans of various sorts — typically of books or events associated with LGBTQ communities and identities, or of institutions that provide health care to trans people. In these cases, the repressive apparatus of the state looms in the background, its coercive power unstated but omnipresent.

On June 8, Walsh hyped a hoax he performed on a healthcare provider for trans people, then laid out his desired consequences. “Several states now have more than enough justification to issue subpoenas to these telehealth providers to see just how fraudulent their operations really are, and how far this goes,” he said.

Back in early February, Walsh responded to Minnesota trans activist Amber Mom expressing her fear that her state — which she described as relatively accepting — could pass bans on trans health care and her resulting desire to “flee the country.” To Walsh, that was a desirable outcome.

If Mom is “doing that, you know, in part in response to some of the laws that were — that are being passed around the country, then I consider that another great benefit of those laws,” he said.

Later that month, Knowles praised an anti-trans bill in Kansas that, in his words, was “a beautiful bill because it doesn't just say don't trans the kids,” but because “it bans transgenderism for all practical purposes in the state for everybody.”

“I love this bill because it is so much more aggressive than the other bills we've seen,” Knowles added, repeatedly using the phrase, “You have to ban transgenderism entirely.”

In addition to the existing onslaught of state bills targeting LGBTQ communities, Knowles frequently advocates for even more extreme laws.

On May 21, Knowles argued against adoption rights for same-sex couples, saying “we should outlaw” surrogacy.

Three days later, Knowles elaborated on his point. He read a paragraph in a news item about two married Black women who were struggling to find a Black sperm donor, and reiterated his arguments for prohibiting same-sex adoption while strongly implying that same-sex marriage should be illegal too.

“Whatever laws we need to pass to make that paragraph unintelligible, or less intelligible than it already is, to make it implausible in society — we need those laws,” Knowles said. “‘A woman and her wife’ — that is not real. That is not a semantically meaningful phrase. That is not the sort of thing that ought to be culturally accepted or understood, and it certainly shouldn’t be legal.”

He added that donating sperm is “extremely disordered and obviously should be illegal.”

“How are we going to fix that?” Knowles asked later in the segment. “Are we going to fix that by boycotting the sperm banks? Are we going to fix it by boycotting USA Today? No. We can wield our cultural and commercial power. The only way to fix that is by wielding political power.”

“The only way to fix that is by changing the law and then enforcing the law and then having the law be a teacher and changing the culture in the process,” he concluded.

During the same show, Knowles implored the conservative movement: “The Pride flag symbol, we need to make that toxic,” and then “to bring in the cavalry, we've got to come back in with more political force to ban some of this stuff and to say no.”

The next day, Knowles celebrated Montana’s new law banning drag shows for children, commenting: “That’s great news. Keep it up Montana.”

In addition to pushing to use state power to control acceptable family formations and social functions, Knowles repeatedly expresses his desire for the state to ban books. In April, Knowles defended banning books and LGBTQ events, as well as sodomy laws, by appealing to the United States’ history of discriminating against gay and trans people.

“Banning books is very American. Banning drag shows is obviously very American,” Knowles said.

“All sorts of weird sexual behaviors were illegal in the United States until the Supreme Court invented some right to do weird sex stuff in the mid-2000s, OK?” he added. “So, it is deeply, deeply American to proscribe this sort of weird behavior.”

The examples go on. “If the book is being banned by just and wise and prudent authorities, then maybe don't read the book,” he said in January. DeSantis’ book bans are “something he deserves praise for,” Knowles said in March. In May, he appealed to biblical precedent to support not only banning books, but burning them as well.

Punishment, conformity, and control

The Daily Wire’s articulated philosophy is one of discipline, punishment, and conformity, rigidly and ruthlessly enforced by state power. The mechanisms of achieving the Daily Wire’s desired society are prisons and police, to be deployed against internal enemies who challenge these hosts’ authoritarian, theocratic vision of society.

Walsh, Knowles, and Owens are very clear about the future they want. Those who want something different — a society that is more just, more equal, and more free — need to be just as clear in their opposition.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-deace/**youtube**-steve-deace-calls-**mass-arrests**-ahead-philadelphia-pride-events

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viral tiktok? vid dad in pink god sep gender rant rainbow (shark?)

https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-encourages-his-audience-bankrupt-target-selling-pride-merchandise

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an 5 23 badash an

an anti-LGBTQ hate group’s secret files reveal marketing “pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder,” and files detailing methods to indoctrinate pre-teens into a culture of “sexual purity” and opposing same-sex relationships.

The august-sounding American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is not the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The American Academy of Pediatrics is the most highly-respected and largest group of pediatricians in America. The American College of Pediatricians, classified as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, isone of several groups behind the lawsuit attempting a nationwide ban of mifepristone, better known as the abortion pill.

“The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a fringe anti-LGBTQ hate group that masquerades as the premier U.S. association of pediatricians to push anti-LGBTQ junk science, primarily via far-right conservative media and filing amicus briefs in cases related to gay adoption and marriage equality,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

READ MORE: Watch: DeSantis Declines to Say If He Supports ‘Mainstream Human Rights’ When Reporter Asks ‘Yes or No?’

WIRED on Tuesday published a bombshell report revealing that the American College of Pediatricians “has suffered a significant data breach.”

“A link to an unsecured Google Drive published on the group’s website pointed users last week to a large cache of sensitive documents, including financial and tax records, membership rolls, and email exchanges spanning over a decade. The more than 10,000 documents lay bare the outsize influence of a small conservative organization working to lend a veneer of medical science to evangelical beliefs on parenting, sex, procreation, and gender.”

Indeed, ACPeds has a very small membership, reportedly just 700 people, whereas the American Academy of Pediatrics boasts 67,000 members.

WIRED found records going back to the group’s inception, which include files on how it tried to recruit members, which apparently has been a challenge during its 21 years.

its primary directive was literally to target Christian physicians.

“One document outlining recruitment efforts states in bold, red letters: ‘TARGET CHRISTIAN MDs,” WIRED reports. “The ongoing recruitment of doctors and medical school students seen as holding Christian views has long been its top priority.”

Other files reveal a far more sinister focus: attacking transgender children.

WIRED found “volumes of literature crafted specifically to influence relationships between practicing pediatricians, parents, and their children. It includes reams of marketing material the College aims to distribute widely among public school officials. This includes pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder, one that’s capable of spontaneously causing others–à la the dancing plague–to adopt similar thoughts and behaviors.”

That marketing material apparently was based on a dubious research paper that hypothesized about something it called “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” which has been debunked, including in a recent study, according to Fenway Health.

READ MORE: Ted Cruz Defends Clarence Thomas by Co-Opting Controversial Covers From a Black-Owned 1990s Magazine That Attacked Him

Also found were files detailing ACPeds’s other efforts at indoctrination, including coaching parents on how to ply their children with a day of shopping and gifts, take them on an overnight trip, all with the intent of getting the children to embrace abstinence and oppose same-sex relationships.

“While the material is not expressly religious, it is clearly aimed at painting same-sex marriage as aberrant and immoral behavior,” WIRED reveals. “Physicians lobbied by the group are also told to urge patients to purchase Christian-based parenting guides, including one designed to help parents broach the topic of sex with their 11- and 12-year-old kids. The College suggests telling parents to plan a ‘special overnight trip,’ a pretext for instilling in their children sexual norms in line with evangelical practice. The group suggests telling parents to buy a tool called a ‘getaway kit,’ a series of workbooks that run around $54 online. The workbooks methodically walk the parents through the process of springing the topic, but only after a day-long charade of impromptu gift-giving and play.”

“These books are full of games and puzzles for the parent and child to cooperatively take on,” WIRED adds. “Throughout the process, the child slowly digests a concept of ‘sexual purity,’ lessons aided by oversimplified scripture and well-trodden Bible school parables.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s report on the American College of Pediatricians includes over a dozen comments by ACPeds officials and official statements from its publications. One likens LGBTQ people to pedophiles, one claims so-called trans activists “groom” children, and another dangerously states the “transgender movement is an opening for a totalitarian government.”

Ina recent video, the American College of Pediatricians’ founders freely admit the group was created in response to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ support for same-sex marriage and parenting.

“The tipping point for me and my co-founding colleagues came when the AAP endorsed same-sex adoption, claiming that children reared by homosexual parents fared as well as those reared by their own biological heterosexual parents,” says co-founder and past ACPeds president Den Trumbull, MD, FCP.

Numerous studies prove that children raised by same-sex parents in fact fare as well as those raised by different-sex parents.

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2 gay kids could be exec?

https://www.mediamatters.org/daily-wire/right-wing-media-figures-defending-ugandas-anti-gay-law-are-connected-organizations

no lnx vid

Right-wing media figures defending Uganda's anti-gay law are connected to organizations that helped inspire it

Special PROGRAMS

LGBTQ

WRITTEN BY MIA GINGERICH

PUBLISHED 04/17/23

Right-wing media reacted to passage of a Ugandan law imposing prison time for anyone identifying as LGBTQ by claiming that those condemning the law were imposing outside values on the African nation and suggesting that opposition from U.S. media and politicians amounted to colonialism. But the Ugandan law was at least partially spurred by Western influences, and many of the same conservative figures and outlets who made such assertions are themselves tied to Western organizations that have recently pushed anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and legislation in the African nation. 

In March, the Ugandan parliament passed a law that would enforce life in prison for anyone found to identify as LGBT, while also threatening lengthy prison terms for media groups, journalists, publishers, property owners, and essentially any individuals or institutions found to be supporting, advocating, or facilitating gay rights. The country previously courted international outrage after passing a similar law in 2013, which was later struck down by a Ugandan court for procedural reasons. The new law awaits the signature of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who recently signaled that he would sign the bill into law.

American organizations’ influence on Ugandan laws criminalizing LGBTQ people

Despite assertions from right-wing media that the laws are the organic outcome of anti-gay prejudice in Uganda, political attacks on LGBTQ existence in Uganda (and a number of other African nations) are fueled by Western nations and organizations.

The first laws criminalizing homosexuality were passed during British rule of Uganda, and the current focus on imprisoning and torturing members of the LGBTQ community was at least partially sparked by a 2009 meeting betweenright-wing American organizations Family Life Network and Exodus International and Ugandan political and religious leaders.The 2013 law was written by a Ugandan politician employed by the Fellowship Foundation, a secretive and highly influential conservative group from America 

After the law was repealed in 2014, Uganda continued to prosecute, imprison, and torture LGBTQ people under the original law passed by the British; in 2015, the prime minister of Uganda stated that the 2013 law wasn’t necessary “because we already have a law which was left by the British which deals with this issue.”

An even more extreme version of the 2013 law was reintroduced in 2020 but did not gain traction until last year, when a video purporting to be testimony from an “ex-gay” activist went viral on Twitter in Uganda. As detailed by journalist Caleb Okereke, the rhetoric in the video seems to stem in part from the 2009 meeting organized by U.S. organizations (namely the Family Life Network). As far-right Western religious groups promoted the 2013 law, extremist Pentecostal groups from the United States reportedly spent $26 million in recent years in Uganda advocating for passage of this newest bill.

Right-wing media claim condemnation of the law is colonialism

Prior to the bill’s passage, Breitbart published an article claiming it was an example of Uganda “resisting international pro-gay propaganda.” The piece was framed around supportive statements from one of the bill’s supporters. The article later asserted that the “United States has played a central role in pushing a pro-gay agenda contrary to Ugandan values.” That same article, along with one published after the law was passed, claimed that no one had been convicted of homosexuality since the country gained independence, an outright lie.

Right-wing media’s response to the bill, however, truly took shape after White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby condemned the law during a press conference and mainstream outlets criticized the measure.

Heritage Foundation fellow Delano Squires reacted to the coverage by tweeting that media were trying to force nations like Uganda and Kenya (which also criminalizes LGBTQ existence) to “bend the knee to ‘Pride’.” Squires quote-tweeted a video of Jean-Pierre denouncing Uganda’s law, writing, “Perhaps Uganda doesn’t want its culture colonized by the West again. Maybe the people there would rather fly their own flag than yours.” Squires included pictures of Pride flags as well as Jean-Pierre standing with Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine (a trans woman who has been harassed by right-wing media).

On the March 23 edition of his show, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh claimed that those speaking out against the bill were “cultural colonialists” and mocked their concern over “protecting so-called LGBTQ rights.” Walsh went on to claim that opponents of the bill “don't think that Uganda has any particular right to govern itself and have its own culture and its own way of life.”

Video

Citation From the March 23, 2023, edition of Daily Wire's The Matt Walsh Show

A day later, The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles followed Walsh’s lead, claiming on his show that “liberals paradoxically are the most inclined to impose their values on the world,” accusing Americans speaking out against the bill of “exporting … the LGBTQ flag and condoms and abortion and all the trappings of liberalism,” claiming it was “the new kind of colonialism.”

Video

Citation From the March 24, 2023, edition of Daily Wire's The Michael Knowles Show

New York Post columnist Miranda Devine wrote a column criticizing U.S. condemnation of the bill and attempted to excuse the extreme anti-LGBTQ policies of nations like Uganda, Hungary, and Russia, writing that “wokery is unpopular in a lot of foreign societies” and that those nations “regard gender ideology and the LGBTQ agenda as cultural imperialism that undermines their religious and family values,” asking, “Who are we to tell them otherwise?” Devine went on to describe the fight for LGBTQ rights abroad as “boutique concerns.”

The same right-wing figures are tied to organizations pushing anti-LGBTQ sentiment in Uganda

The Daily Wire

Scott Lively helped organize the 2009 conference and met with Ugandan lawmakers to spread anti-gay propaganda, and the right-wing group Liberty Counsel represented him in a lawsuit brought by Ugandan LGBTQ activists over his part in driving the persecution of gay people in the country. Prior to Liberty Counsel’s victory in the case — that freed Lively of any civil responsibility to the Ugandan victims of the law but recognized that he had contributed to persecution in Uganda and broken international law — Farris Wilks, the billionaire fracking tycoon who co-founded and still co-owns the Daily Wire, donated $1.5 million to Liberty Counsel.

Matt Walsh bragged on March 10 that his anti-LGBTQ movie, “What Is A Woman,” was screened for a select group of United Nations representatives from Africa, including representatives from Uganda. The screening was sponsored by theCenter for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) and Family Watch International, an organization that works with and supports those responsible for anti-LGBTQ legislation in Uganda and Africa more broadly. A Daily Wire article on the screening quoted Peace Regis Mutuuzo, a Ugandan politician who supported the bill and who previously stated that Uganda “shall not tolerate homosexuality even for a day.”

Family Watch International also hosted the online portion of a conference in Uganda promoting the recently passed bill.

Heritage Foundation

The American Center for Law and Justice functions as “the key organization involved in ensuring African constitutions and laws criminalize homosexuality,” and it has been one of the most influential organizations in pushing anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on African countries. As detailed by researcher Kapya John Kaoma, ACLJ hires local staff in African nations, allowing them to “hide an American-based agenda behind African faces, giving the Christian Right room to attack gender justice and LGBTQ rights as a neocolonial enterprise imposed on Africans and obstructing meaningful critique of the U.S. Right’s activities.” ACLJ has also recently represented the Heritage Foundation in federal court. ACLJ’s chief counsel, Jay Sekulow, also happens to be the lawyer who represented Trump during the Senate impeachment trial.

Miranda Devine

Lively similarly has connections to the World Congress of Families, an organization whose efforts to spread anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in Africa — including at events attended by dignitaries from Uganda — coincided with the rise of anti-gay legislation. In 2013, the group was banned from the U.S. Senate meeting room by a Republican senator for their involvement in pushing anti-LGBTQ legislation in countries like Uganda and Russia. That same year, Miranda Devine, who at the time was writing anti-gay screeds for the conservative Australian outlet The Daily Telegraph, spoke at their conference. The conference’s topics included “What Families Are Best for the Economy?” and “The Impact on Children of Legalising ‘Same-Sex Marriage’.”

Right-wing media have a pattern of invalidating casualties of LGBTQ oppression while providing cover for those driving persecution abroad

This pattern of right-wing media discounting the understandable outrage over the persecution of LGBTQ people abroad — and in the process burying their ties to those who helped make that persecution a reality — is not a new development. The same extremist evangelical organizations helped create Russia’s anti-LGBTQ movement, and when the country’s invasion of Ukraine threatened the lives of trans people, their plight also became fodder for outlets like Daily Wire.

Whether or not their intent is rooted in protecting themselves and their wealthy donors, the damage of providing cover for those perpetuating this harm is apparent. Ugandan LGBTQ activists are murdered in their homes, and LGBTQ people in Uganda are facing exile from their home country as a result of a law ushered in by Western governments and organizations.

THE LATEST

Right-wing media figures defending Uganda's anti-gay law are connected to organizations that helped inspire it

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04/16/23 9:08 PM EDT

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09/15/22

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-religious-right-coalition-behind-kansas-slew-of-anti-trans-bills/

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rww random

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Right Wing Bonus Tracks: Rise Up, Normies

March 30, 2023

Edward Szall: US Should Limit Access to Internet and ‘Free Thought’ Like Taliban and China

March 30, 2023 3:26 pm

Far Right Exploits Nashville Shooting to Smear LGBTQ People

March 30, 2023 9:13 am

FEATURED

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READ MORE

Stew Peters Says Uganda’s Harsh Anti-LGBTQ Legislation Is ‘100 Percent Awesome’

READ MORE

Religious-Right Figure Steve Turley Celebrates Uganda Legislation Criminalizing Homosexuality

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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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BAK

homophobe2

new 619, promoted to primary

some neglect, some other cats eg moral panic pedophile

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

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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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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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...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.

READ MORE: Franklin Graham’s Extremely False Claims About the Senate’s Same-Sex Marriage Protection Bill Are Riling Up His Base

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).

READ MORE: In Tight Election Race Ron Johnson Said He Would Not Oppose Same-Sex Marriage Bill – He Will Vote Against It Today: Report

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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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 a fascist Christian nationalist theocracy.

“I refuse to walk into a future where it is commonplace to have sexual perversion in public,” Alexander declared. “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 oppressors to 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 group that 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 Bushnell posted 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 and authorities. 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.

screenshot of petition

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 said. “That’s what he’s saying. Biden is there saying, ‘This is global homo and 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 the gay 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 as the 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 group were 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 that Patriot 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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https://www.mediamatters.org/candace-owens/candace-owens-there-are-freaks-predators-and-pedophiles-are-all-hiding-under-lbgt

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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 the equivalent 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 can be 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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 youth and 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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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.

Last month, just days after Florida 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 our public 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.

“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 of sexual 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 violence against 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

newsmax host loses it over Lucky Charms 'gay leprechaun' and Kellogg’s 'forcing kids to be confused about their gender'

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 and claiming that Donald Trump is “the most pro-gay president in American history”—an “absurd claim” that earned four 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 that Turning 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

Gabe Ortiz / Daily Kos

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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