Sorry everyone. Today has been rather bad for me. I couldn’t sleep last night, but got up early and went to a lab to have my blood drawn. After I can home and ate my breakfast I just got so tired and over whelmed I spend most of the day in bed. I got up and mangaged to get this post done because I think it is so important. But my heart seems to be slaming in the viens of my neck, I am so tired. I had some instant oatmeal for supper and now I am going to bed even though it is only 6 PM. I love everyone and hope to do better getting the news out tomorrow morning. Best wishes, loves, and hugs. Scottie
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Los Angeles school board President Jackie Goldberg pulled out an oversized children’s book titled “The Great Big Book of Families” and turned a public meeting into story time, her own not-so-subtle statement to critics of LGBTQ+ education. “In real life, families come in all sorts of shapes and sizes,” she read, as the text by British author Mary Hoffman explained. Some children live with “mummy and daddy,” or just their mummy or daddy. Goldberg soon got to the line “Some children have two mommies or two daddies.”
“A great book,” she said after reading it from cover to cover. “I recommend it.” Her statement set up the unanimous school board approval of a resolution listing all the ways the nation’s second largest school district intends to raise awareness about the LGBTQ+ community. Goldberg’s reading occurred on the same day that violence erupted outside the Glendale Unified school board meeting — which had its own gay pride resolution on the agenda — and once again, fights broke out among demonstrators.
Attitude reports:
She recounted from the assembly: “At the little discussion at the school after that, as soon as the book was over, one little girl sitting at my knees said ‘I have two mommies.’ A little boy on my other side said: ‘I have five grandmas. You better treat me the same way you treat everybody else. That’s how we live in this country.”
Getting more visibly emotional and angry Goldberg expressed her tiredness, shared by the LGBTQ community, of hearing the screaming on this type of issue. “What do you think that did to them?!” It made them afraid!” she screamed. “How dare you make them afraid because you are!” She continued: “I’m sorry I told you this was personal.”
Her son was once harassed for having two mommies. The fact that Goldberg’s grandchildren aren’t is a sign of progress. “Nobody has to accept me. I’m not looking for your acceptance,” she also said. “But you better treat me the same way you treat everybody else. That’s how we live in this country.
I insist that you watch every second this.
Again if you missed watching this short heartfelt clip please do!!!
The Right’s entire M.O. is premised on the false notion that if children never hear that gay people exist and that being gay is an immutable human characteristic like left-handedness and a natural variation of the human condition, they won’t end up being gay. They are not open to any argument that suggests they are wrong, which is why we’ve been treading water for the last half century, at least. I don’t see how we get past this impasse if the other side isn’t open to reasoned argument.
Our politicians could take a lesson from Jackie Goldberg. That is the kind of pushback we need to stave off the right-wing lunatics. Fuck decorum. Speak the damn truth.
What I take from this is we need to start YELLING THE FUCK BACK AT THESE PEOPLE!!!!
I HATE when the GQP cultists start a sentence with “we the people.” They’re trying to co-opt the Preamble without understanding what it means.
* Offer not valid in Florida
(love the T-shirt, though)
Early Week in Review.
I saw this yesterday
To be fair, the right-wing base is really fucking stupid.
A large fraction believe Noah’s Ark was real and that anthropogenic climate change is not. They believe that Trump won the last election and that Hillary Clinton murders babies for adrenochrome.
They’ll cling onto a false premise like a hungry tick, and no amount of facts, data, or antipsychotic meds will dislodge them.
Exactly. Just try debating with them. I stopped that a long time ago. They are completely resistant to truth and facts.
It’s the same playbook as sex education, ie … if you don’t teach them about sex they won’t have sex. Then they are shocked when they discover that their 16 year old is pregnant.
And then scramble to get her an abortion, but can’t because the politicians they voted for abolished that option.
So, when did the haters “choose” to be heterosexual?
What was this process like for them?
Did they try both gay and straight sex before making up their mind?
I swear the root cause of conservatism is a missing empathy gene. They are incapable of seeing anything from a perspective other than their own.
That is exactly what connected them strongly with Trump.
Keith Olbermann’s ‘Conservatism In Nine Words’ –
“Need help? Screw you!
I’m screwed? HELP ME NOW!”
Of course you know that the ant gay Saticoy Elementary Parents instagram group who protested last week feature make fun of and demonized Goldberg for being who she is. Those Christianism and in this case, Armenians, are lethal. They are the same “Leave Our Children Alone” t- shirt group that caused so much trouble for the Glendale SChool District Board the week following when all the board wanted to do was past a Pride resolution, but if course some how that all about sex and grooming. These people are really sick.
Longer version
Just a reminder:
Vote Democratic, get LGBT advocates.
Vote Republican, get theofascist haters.
Yet how difficult it is chasing the will o’ the wisp of ‘mainstream’ public opinion, when even the more progressive media still shy away from calling out the far right for the malignant genocidal cancer that it is.
The mainstream public gets exercised over the price of eggs (which seem to have come back down recently), and gasoline, and are easily duped and manipulated by a lot of the anti-trans rhetoric.
Even parts of our community are conned by the propaganda into thinking that trans children are a threat to cis children. And the Caitlyn Jenner types who are out there spewing the GQP’s vicious lies do not help. Even the Biden Administration’s proposed order partly throws trans kids under the bus.
Even the better advocates, like Katie Porter, are not equipped with the facts and figures to fight back. Watching her the other week looking brave but only weakly parrying the braying Piers Morgan on cissexist Bill Maher’s Real Time made me wish she had the ammunition to shoot them both down,. convincingly.
Yours — good and thoughtful observations, Joann. Thanks.
Re the “calling out” on commercial TV of (how you put it…) “the far right for the malignant genocidal cancer that it is” — even on, say, MSNBC — you see very little, if any, of that. The commercial sponsors don’t like it. MAGAts buy suppositories, soap, cereal and Medicare supplemental plans, too. Best not to offend them.
Re the general public’s knowledge/understanding of trans people and their issues, it’s almost non-existent.
There’s this thing called “Progressive Blog Myopia.”
We here in the progressive blogosphere know about trans people and their issues. We think, “Well surely everyone understands.”
I guarantee you, Joann, that 90% of the rest of the country knows shit about the subject.
Democrats HELP
Republicans HARM
ot: JMG culture moment
Scottie's Playtime 
Sort OT, sorta on. https://lithub.com/parting-glances-mourning-the-work-we-didnt-get-from-queer-director-bill-sherwood/
“It’s not clear when Bill Sherwood knew he was closer to the end of his life than the beginning. He was sure he had contracted HIV early on—at least he told some of his friends he was sure—though they didn’t see symptoms, Kaposi’s sarcoma or otherwise. He wrote the screenplay for Parting Glances, his debut feature, in the fall of 1983 and filmed it through 1984, pausing production when he ran out of funds and then starting again when he got more money.
The very last week of shooting was held in March 1985, just when the first HIV tests were approved by the FDA. Sherwood had drafts of other screenplays and he would write several more, but when Parting Glances was released in 1986, he may have at least suspected that this genteel film, a romance set in the early AIDS era, would be his legacy.
Parting Glances is a gem. Steve Buscemi, in his first major screen role, plays Nick, a punk star facing an early death, at times with sardonic reserve, at others with righteous fury. Kathy Kinney—best known as the outrageous Mimi on The Drew Carey Show—portrays Joan, an artist with a talent for empathy. The film maintains remarkable rhythm.
It opens on the joyous “Gypsy Rondo,” from Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1, as a young couple, one a man in a green sweater and jeans, the other a Ken doll in a jogging outfit, meet at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Riverside Park. They are not aggressively claiming their territory in Reagan-era America; they are matter-of-factly appropriating a secular temple in New York as their playground.
Sherwood died in 1990, at the age of 37. You can only curse. What would he have given us had he lived?” (more on the page including biographical info.)
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Here’s hoping that Jackie Goldberg’s impassioned words penetrated a few hardened hearts.
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