Yes the left is starting to fight back instead of giving in to the attempt by the religious right to erase those they don’t like or agree with from society. Also people are seeing through the fake claim that they are just trying to protect children from being sexualized. They don’t want to just mold their children, they want the right to mold your child in their image. They are demanding the right to take away your parental rights to raise your child, even as they are demanding more and more rights for themselves to dictate what children are taught. Be clear this is about removing any reference to the LGBTQ+ from first schools and then all of society. They are already moved on to banning drag, which in their written laws means wearing the clothing normally associated with a gender not assigned at birth in public. Why? It doesn’t sexualize kids if a man wears a nice skirt, but it does challenge the strict gender norms these fundamentalist are trying to return all the country to. These fundamentalist religious groups got a huge head start on their attempt to outlaw even the mention of what they don’t agree with, they pushed a false narrative on the public that many have bought into because they were not hearing the other side. Now we who are on the side of progress and advancement need to make sure people get the full story and real goals of these people. We have our work cut out for us, but to save the present and build the future we have to fight back. For the sake of the gay, lesbian, trans, and all the other non-cis and non-binary kids we must fight and win the right for them to see positive role models and see themselves represented in books and movies. We must grant these LGBTQ+ children the safety and security that we should give all children. Hugs
A standing room-only crowd gathered at the Lincolnwood Village Hall Monday for a heated debate about a book with LGBTQ+ content on the public library’s children’s collection.
The monthly library board meeting was moved from the library to the village hall to accommodate a large turnout after last month’s meeting got heated and ended early with police being called.
Once again, library board members and the public came face to face.
“The library has decided that they, not you the parent, knows what is best for your child,” said Bryan Johnson, Lincolnwood resident.
“Gay people and drag queens have a right to exist and be themselves and have books written about them,” said Jen Mierisch, Lincolnwood resident.
At the board meeting, some attendees voice objections to certain titles with LGBTQ+ themes that are part of the library’s children’s collection. At least one formal challenge was filed against a book called “The Hips On The Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish.”
The nursery rhyme book features characters in drag, and was read aloud during a library-sponsored story time over the summer.
“I’m not here to ask for a ban on any books,” said resident Rahila Siddiqui. “I’m here to fight for my right to choose when my elementary school children should be exposed to complicated topics like drag queens.”
“If parents prefer their children not read a book, that’s their decision. But that does not give them the right to impose their short-sighted beliefs on anyone else’s children,” said Susan Ginsburg, Lincolnwood resident.
After reviewing the book, library officials declined to remove it from the children’s department. The library director told ABC7 such action would constitute censorship, adding, “Our goal is to respect everyone in our community and what they want to read.”
“When you’re at Macy’s and you don’t like a purple shirt, you can’t demand that they take it away. Just don’t buy it,” said Judy Abelson, Lincolnwood resident.
Library officials said they also declined a patron’s request to remove another book that some consider anti-transgender. That patron has now dropped that formal challenge on censorship grounds.
Why cannot these people understand or accept that people are born with the sexual attractions / orientation and gender identity are formed in the womb. They are inborn, formed with a person as the rest of them is building. While environment can influence the minor subsets and details of those things, the environmental factors cannot take a straight person and force them to be gay. If a straight person cannot be changed in to loving same-sex relations, why do they think that gay or lesbian people can be changed to be straight. It is not an idea backed up by science, it is a myth these people created to justify their hate. It is no different from the other science denying crap put out by fundamentalist religions / religious people. To deny these facts about sexuality that have been backed up with science is the same as denying the earth goes around the sun or that the earth is a globe instead of flat. It is the same as the refusal to accept the medical science on vaccines or the well documented science on transgender peoples treatments with gender-affirming care. I am so tired and sick of these anti-science anti-progress haters who only want to keep the status quo when they felt in charge and comfortable. Hugs
Via email from activist Wayne Besen:
The Freedom March is a right-wing Christian fundamentalist organization that exists to “help” LGBTQ people “pray away the gay.” They also claim to help people transition out of being trans. So, it was a really bad day for the Freedom March when its founder, Jeffrey McCall, announced online that he was hooking up with multiple men. Freedom March told the world that he was “healed”. They sold the lie that Jesus “cured” him. When Jeffrey McCall said he was straight – we didn’t know he meant straight to bed with men.
It gets worse for the Freedom March. McCall recently announced that she was transgender and came out as Scarlett. This group’s “gay cure” worked so well, that their founder tried to “pray away the gay” and somehow became significantly gayer. Those thoughts and prayers are always so effective. When they promised Jeffrey McCall was transformed by Jesus Christ, I don’t think this is what they meant. Instead of transformation, they got transition.
As you’ll see in the video below, the group is now calling themselves “Rainbow Revival.” In 2021, McCall was featured in the Netflix “ex-gay” documentary “Pray Away” and his appearance in the film resulted in adulatory posts on multiple Christian sites.
I wanted to post here before some people found out other ways. I have went back to my life as Scarlett. I never intended to hurt or disappoint anyone. I felt like no matter what I chose someone would get hurt. That’s a horrible spot to be in. felt like I tried to fight for so long. I tried to help many in ministry for so long. Please remember I’m just a human being and didn’t ask for any of things that I have went through. I didn’t ask to feel this way. Please show me compassion as a human being just as I have always tried to show everyone else compassion and understanding.
I’ve had this argument countless times with bigots on religious websites. Their response is always the same: Jesus didn’t say anything about a lot of things, that doesn’t mean he approved of it. You can’t win for losing with these people.
Christianity is founded on Paul’s teachings, where Jesus is little more than a figurehead. That is why Christianity does not observe the Sabbath, does not keep kosher, and basically ignores Jewish laws. Except, for some inexplicable reason, the prohibition on homosexuality, which the Tanakh imposes only on men, not women.
There actually are gay Orthodox Jews who avoid anal sex so as not to transgress that commandment, but they give and receive sexual pleasure in other ways.
(And there are plenty of other gay Jews who couldn’t care less about that ancient prohibition.)
A lot of LGBTQ christians squirm and writhe and do that christian thing of saying “oh, yes, the bible’s words say that, but what it really means is . . .” but, it’s an intrinsically anti-LGBTQ religion.
If they want to start their own religion, with a rewritten holy book, they’re always welcome to do that. They can make up whatever they want in a new religion. They can call themselves Jesusites or something if they want to hang on to some version of Jesus. But christianity is and has always been anti-LGBTQ, that was built in by the people who invented it.
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I’m an Anglican Priest in the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and I get to serve in the Parish of St Margaret of Scotland, in the beautiful city of Halifax, NS, that sits on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people.
My pronouns are he/him/his. My theology is primarily Christo-centric – Jesus is at the centre and it is against Him that all values are bounced off. I believe all people are created in the image of God and are children of God and are heirs to the throne of God – no conditions – therefore every single person we meet deserves our love, and respect.
I am watching the Sunday news shows I can get for free. But I am again very tired and find it hard to concentrate. I love Star Trek and yet due to being poor rarely get to watch the newer series as they are all subscriptions services. Sometimes I can get a season of one on Amazon Prime at a good discount, and we buy that.
Over this week I save the open news tabs I have not gotten to yet. This morning when I opened my browser I had 36 new stories to read and maybe post. But I just don’t feel up to it, I am struggling to think and process information, I am very tired. Soon they will be out of date, if not already.
But I was able to buy the second season of Picard a while ago with Prime points. Plus I found on YouTube a free first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I think I am going to watch the movies and not try to deal with the news today. Sorry everyone, I know I am letting everyone down. I should watch and post the videos of what is happening, the articles on the rabid right rise of Nazism, and the attacks on the LGBTQ+ in society by those people. Maybe later I will. Best wishes and lots of hugs. Scottie
This is hilarious. The butt hurt these people have over even the smallest bits of inclusion of others they hate into society causes them such pain and outrage. Go to the link and read the responses to the butt hurt, they are wonderfully funny. Hugs
Barbara Johnson tells the story of a her advice to a Wealthy CEO who threatens to cancel his Son’s Harvard Graduation Party because he discovered his son was is “Gay”.
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
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.
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.
Powerful lecture from Jackie Goldberg of the Los Angeles school board on protests against a children’s book with one sentence about families with two moms or dads. She says this is personal for her and really lets loose at the end. pic.twitter.com/R9xx0nrtzo
Again if you missed watching this short heartfelt clip please do!!!
Powerful lecture from Jackie Goldberg of the Los Angeles school board on protests against a children’s book with one sentence about families with two moms or dads. She says this is personal for her and really lets loose at the end. pic.twitter.com/R9xx0nrtzo
Wow. Thanks for posting this longer version. So powerful but also very emotional. Gave me tears as I listened to her. We really need more of this everywhere. She is awesome and everything she says is so true.
More simply, they have always tried to argue that acknowledging something aloud is the same as advocating for that thing.
The same hysterical arguments were made regarding sex and drug education… that talking frankly about these things to kids is, in their minds, advocating for kids experimenting with sex and drugs… and that the only way to truly keep kids safe from sex and drugs is refusing to even discuss them outside of a ‘Those things are evil!’ context.
In their (small/hateful) minds, teaching kids that LGBTQ people are ‘acceptable’ is the same as pushing kids to give it a try.
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.
I went to Catholic school until the 6th grade. I’ll never forget my first grade teacher, a nun, swatting a left-handed student for writing with his left hand. She scolded him, telling him that was a mark of the Devil. Somehow that particular dogma just magically went away without any comment from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Go figure.
More importantly, the dogma of anti-Semitism, which dates right back to the Gospels, also disappeared. As did the Church’s defense of slavery and segregation. Holy Mother The Church Inc. evolves whether they care to admit it or not.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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’sReal 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.
What she had to say is my life in a nutshell. I can’t believe that I’m over 70 and we are now going backwards on my civil rights. I am sick up to here with it, too.
I love how when Matt Walsh compares fully dressed drag queens reading to kids as obscene and sexual, lance reminds everyone about a place in public that many people of different sexes go wearing hardly anything, men in speedos and thongs, women in string bikinis all with kids around. Yet no outcry from the maga conservative religious right. Why because it is the beach or a pool and there is no association with the LGBTQ+ who are the real targets of the right. Hugs
Domestic terrorism against the public by religious gang brownshirt thug enforcers of the conservative wing. Please notice this is entirely religious driven, using Christian fundamentalist talking point. They are desperate to turn the secular US in to a religious Christian theocracy with their own moral police and Taliban enforcers. They are demanding the right of superior privilege for their religion yet deny any rights to others or other faiths. Notice also thewy changed their name to protecting the children to get more people to agree with their bigotry. Notice the leader of the religous group was asking for the pride leader to take down a old picture on his facebook page that said everyone should get laid once. Just that idea that people should be able to have enjoyable sex at least once was offencive to them. Hugs
Alex Keen wanted to show support for his local LGBTQ+ community. Now he’s afraid to even enter his home.
The downtown area of Connersville, IndianaPhoto: YouTube screenshot
Alex Keen, a 38-year-old gay man who grew up in the conservative rural Indiana town of Connersville (population 13,310), wanted to show support for his local LGBTQ+ community. So, last December, he founded a group called “Whitewater Pride” and later organized three events for this Pride Month.
Soon after announcing the events, two residents — Melissa Rose and her husband Andrew Rose — set up a now-defunct Facebook group called “Whitewater Groomer Removers,” which insinuated that Keen is a child sex abuser. Its members harassed his events’ sponsors. Keen has been followed in public by the group’s supporters and has gone into hiding. He now plans on moving out of the state, worried that someone will target him for violence.
After an angry crowd accused the district of “moral depravity” with its “Luciferian” policy, a vote for a school tax levy failed.
“I spent most of my life in the closet. I didn’t come out until I was 36. And so living in this community, surrounded by right-wing Christian conservatives, it’s hard to be gay, it’s hard to come out of the closet,” Keen told LGBTQ Nation. “I just wanted there to be some kind of organization, some kind of support for the LGBT community… Having that support system around us is very important.”
Keen’s group, which mostly consists of him and three board members, purchased a table at the May 15 Celebration in the Ville community fair. For Pride Month, his group planned two all-ages games nights at the local Fayette County Public Library, a drag night at a local bar named Ozzie’s on June 15, and an all-ages pool party at the Roberts Park Family Aquatic Center on June 30.
But on April 29, Ozzie’s bar canceled the event after people complained, Keen said. LGBTQ Nation contacted the bar for comment. The adults-only event didn’t have any drag queens booked. Instead, it offered a $50 award to the attendee wearing the best drag.
Around the same time, Keen became aware of a Facebook group named “Whitewater Groomer Removers.” One of its members linked to Keen’s personal Facebook page, and another wrote, “Sick… Let’s make him famous for trying to groom children.”
Andrew Rose posted an image of Pantera’s album Vulgar Display of Power that showed a man being punched in the face.
Rose wrote, “The vibe of this song is the vibe I’m going for with this group…. I refuse to allow these freaks impost their will in my community…. I plan to protest every event put on by the suspected child grooming operation known as ‘whitewater pride’ (as well as any other group promoting the same degeneracy) & I’m going to need A LOT of good people behind me. I crated this group to organize & discuss such matters.”
Facebook screenshotAn image from “Whitewater Groomer Removers” co-founder Andrew Rose
Melissa Rose posted an image of a late March edition of the local newspaper, the Connersville News Examiner, specifically an article mentioning Whitewater Pride’s efforts. She told her group’s members to call the paper and complain, stating, “We don’t want this group sexualizing and grooming our children in Fayette County.”
LGBTQ Nation contacted the Roses for comment.
One of their group’s members reposted an image from Whitewater Pride’s Facebook group announcing its three Pride Month events. Commenters wrote, “Pride is a sin in the eyes of God! And everything associated with it,” “Our kids are targeted by the left,” “Yes they are! Bas**rds are everywhere,” “Shame on all of them.”
When Keen looked through the group’s members, he recognized about a third of its members, including a person who regularly cut his lawn. He knew some of these people from around town. A week after discovering the group, he stopped staying at his home. Ever since, he has stayed at a friend’s place about 10 minutes away.
“It’s got to the point it’s affecting me physically,” he said. “I usually wake up and throw up in the morning, not really eating anything.”
By May 5, “Whitewater Groomer Removers” changed its name to “Protecting Our Children.” Its banner image showed a white man rolling up his sleeves.
As the May 15 Celebration in the Ville community fair approached, Melissa Rose sent messages to Sassy Peacock Events, the fair’s organizer, discouraging them from allowing Whitewater Pride to host a table at the event. She claimed that the group wants to allow pornography in schools, let “men be able to use girls’ locker rooms and restrooms,” and legalize the “mutilation of children under the age of 18” (even though gender-affirming genital surgeries aren’t conducted on minors).
At this point, Whitewater Pride’s Facebook page only contained posts about respecting people’s pronouns, Indiana’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, suicide and bullying statistics for queer youth, a bio of Stonewall veteran Marsha P. Johnson, announcements of upcoming game nights, a call for volunteers, and posts recognizing International Women’s Day and the International Transgender Day of Visibility.
“They are most certainly trying to set up a stronghold of far left sexually inappropriate ideologies for children,” Melissa Rose wrote to Sassy Peacock Events. “These are all of the issues that they are fighting for, on the side of evil, and that is ver much going to be devisive in a Conservative, Christian family oriented community. They should not even be trying to do all of this political activism while also trying to embed themselves in our community, under the guise of ‘helping kids to feel accepted.’… [They are] doing all of this work to indoctrinate confused kids.”
She demanded that Sassy Peacock Events allow her group to have a booth as well and suggested that she might stage a possible protest.
Though that protest never materialized, Sassy Peacock Events contacted the mayor’s office and local police anyway. In a public May 2 Facebook post, the organizer wrote, “There will be an extensive multi-departmental security presence Friday evening for set-up, through the night and all day Saturday till the end of the event. The whole downtown area has security cameras, there will be multiple drones capturing footage for us throughout the event as well.”
“We expect everyone to behave in a professional, respectful manner,” the organizer added. “Sassy Peacock Events has no tolerance for hate speech, disruptive displays, harassment, or protests.”
Facebook screenshotAn image advertising Whitewater Pride’s Pride Month events
In early May, Whitewater Proud announced that it had received a grant from the Fayette Community Foundation, a local organization that funds local non-profit efforts, as well as small donations from a few other local businesses. The Roses’ followers called the foundation and those businesses to complain, Keen said.
During one of Whitewater Pride’s game nights at the Fayette County Public Library in early May, three older men from a “second amendment club” showed up to try and disrupt the event, the library staff told LGBTQ Nation. The men complained about the hour-long event, even though they’re poorly attended and held in a private room separate from the main library.
“It was all awful and I wish it hadn’t happened,” library staff said of the men’s appearance.
On May 15, Andrew and Melissa Rose confronted Keen at one of his library game nights. In a video of their conversation in the library’s lobby, Andrew Rose said it wasn’t right to “indoctrinate” children. He claimed that Keen’s group and game nights “encourage children.”
“They’re sitting there,” he said. “They’re watching, they’re observing.” At this time, however, no minors had ever attended the game night.
“God doesn’t think it’s right either,” Andrew Rose told Keen. When Keen told him that he was free to have his own religious beliefs, Andrew Rose said, “Well, LGBT is a religion.”
Melissa Rose told Keen that she and her husband are “super nice and calm and wouldn’t harm anyone” and that her online comments had no “context of anger, violence, or hatred behind them.” She claimed that Facebook commenters had called her group’s members’ employers to get them fired and that her son’s girlfriend had also been “targeted.”
“We’ve had people from all over the globe, LGBT, coming and then saying we are literally causing harm and violence and trying to eradicate their community,” she said.
Melissa Rose then expressed disappointment that Keen and his group didn’t publicly defend her group when a nearby Pride organization, Rainbow Richmond, made an April 28 Facebook post referring to the Roses’ group as an “active hate group.” Keen has no affiliation with Rainbow Richmond.
“You could have certainly approached [Rainbow Richmond] and said ‘Look, this really is just escalating the situation, All this is doing is just fueling the fire of hatred and ignorance,’” she told Keen. “We didn’t want to contribute to any sort of disruption in the community or make you guys feel threatened in any way.”
She also admitted that she took down her group’s page when she “realized it was getting so much attention.” She then asked if Keen would make a statement against her group being called a hate group.
“I started hysterically laughing,” said Jama Sullivan, a local straight ally who was present during the discussion. “I was like, ‘First of all, we’re not doing that. Second of all, you are bigots…. I told her, ‘You started a fire and you’re getting burned a little from the flames, and you want us to put it out? Like, no, it doesn’t work that way.’”
Sullivan said she too has been publicly identified and targeted by Roses’ followers because of her support for Whitewater Pride.
“I put cameras all around my property because now we’re worried because you’ve targeted us,” Sullivan said she told the Roses. “It takes one person you’ve triggered, one person to come to my home and shoot at my house. I have a child there. So no, we will not put out a public statement on your behalf. You’re an idiot.”
When another person asked Melissa Rose why their respective groups can’t just co-exist, Rose said, “You can exist. No one’s trying to stop you.”
Melissa Rose then said that she doesn’t think that it’s appropriate for Keen to say he supports children because his personal Facebook page contained a photo, taken years ago at the Coachella Music Festival, of something that said, “Everyone should get laid once.”
“I think you should delete that,” Rose told Keen. He told her that he had already deleted that post.
During the conversation, Sullivan said she pointed out to the Roses that the U.S. Catholic Church has been accused of hundreds of thousands of child sex abuse cases.
“You’re not at our local Catholic school saying, ‘Get these kids out of here. They’re not safe,’” Sullivan told the couple. “You’re the library attacking adults. I mean, there’s not even children here. It’s just adults in a room playing games.”
“In Connersville,” Sullivan said, “we have one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state of Indiana, one of the highest unemployment rates in the state of Indiana. We have one of the highest drug uses in the state of Indiana. Connersville is ranked like 92 out of 100 in the healthiest cities in Indiana. The education system is suffering dramatically. The rate of high school dropouts is astronomical.”
She recently advised a lesbian friend against moving to the town because she’d likely be targeted with hate if she and her same-sex spouse walked into a Walmart store holding hands.
“So what can we do, as a community, to make people feel welcome to get them to stay here?” Sullivan asked rhetorically.
The Roses showed up again at June 5 Pride Month game night with three fellow protesters. Keen said they “got incredibly worked up” when four older teenagers showed up to play games.
“I heard one of them call me a coward when I walked away from them,” Keen said. He said that the protesters followed him to his car after the game night ended. Though he hasn’t personally received any death threats, Keen hasn’t returned to his home since early May. He plans on selling his house and moving out of state because he no longer feels safe.
Facebook screenshotAn image advertising Whitewater Pride’s Pride march
He contacted several LGBTQ+ and Pride organizations around the state for advice on how to safely hold his events. Volunteers from other local Pride groups have said they’ll help with their security. That may come in handy, since the Roses have reportedly pledged to protest his June 30 pool party.
Despite the intimidation, Keen has added one extra event to his Pride Month plans: a June 28 march through Connersville on the 54th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.
“I just want a combined show of strength that the LGBTQ community in the area has come together and is going to stand up to the people who want to bully us back into the closet,” Keen said.
Sullivan praised Keen when he first told her about his plans to start Whitewater Pride because she felt their community really needed it. But when Keen told her of his plans to leave the state, she said, “You can’t Alex, because they win. You’re letting them win.”
“I’m angry. I’m so angry,” she said. Keen told her that he doubted anyone would want to continue leading Whitewater Pride after he leaves because of all the hatred he’s endured.
“I think I’m going to tell him, I’ll [run his group] in the interim and take applications for a new director,” Sullivan said, “because I don’t want this to go away.”
This video is from ten years ago. Not that long ago, right. Yet this boy describes some of the same feelings of being the only one that I did. My gods his story was so close to mine except no one came to help me back in 1970s. I suffered, took the abuse, tried to fight the bullies who had the backing of the teachers. All on top of being abused at home. If I only had someone to talk to about it all, any positive role model to turn to. So much a lifetime of harm I could have been avoided / saved from if I had just had someone to go to who was LGBTQ+ friendly. That is why we need the rainbow stickers and flags in classrooms, that is why we need pride rainbow merchandise in stores. Social acceptance, and safety along with being able to be open by the LGBTQ+ kids. This is what the right is desperate to remove and take away. They don’t want acceptance of gays, lesbians, trans, and non-binary people. They want a strict heterosexual 1950s cisgender role’s society. Hell and be damned to those people that don’t fit that mold. Their god and their comfort come first. How many more kids need to suffer this way? If your concern is for children, understand there are LGBTQ+ children in schools. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 