Long Island library board votes to ‘remove all Pride displays’ and LGBTQ books from children’s section

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-smithtown-library-remove-all-lgbtq-pride-dispays-book-children-section-20220623-5ijwgad53fb3je6m3hw5zxgp3u-story.html

Why do these people think that kids just seeing gay people and pride items is wrong. Didn’t we just have Father’s Day? The media and daily life are awash with heterosexual / straight couples doing lovey stuff, kissing, holding hands, hugging, sleeping in the same beds on TV sometimes out right close to making out and no one yells and screams protect the kids. I am sick of the way this shit is going. I remember what it was like as a gay kid not seeing anyone else like me with my feelings on TV or movies and instead hearing only bad things about people who had feelings like me. It totally messes you up. I am so upset over the drive to wipe the LGBTQ+ out of the public square and instead fill the space with their religion, God, and the bible. Hugs

A library on Long Island has voted to remove “all Pride displays” as well as Pride-related books from its children’s sections.

The Smithtown Library Board of Trustees voted 4-2 Tuesday to ban any and all displays related to LGBTQ Pride from kids’ areas at Smithtown Library buildings, a move that was met with fierce backlash and call for action by advocates.

The New York Library Association slammed Smithtown’s move, calling it “a direct violation of NYLA’s commitment to intellectual freedom and the freedom to read that libraries are entrusted to uphold.”

The organization reaffirmed its commitment to stand alongside the LGBTQ community, “especially our LGBTQ+ youth, who utilize libraries across the state as a refuge to foster their love of learning and of their authentic selves.”

For many LGBTQ+ kids, libraries are one of the few spaces where they can be welcomed and affirmed for who they are.

Our public spaces should be accepting our young people — not rejecting them.

To LGBTQ+ New Yorkers: We stand with you, we support you, & you are welcome here. https://t.co/x6w1q8o3El
— Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) June 22, 2022

Library officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the ban, but library director Robert Lusak told Newsday that at least 29 books are affected by the ban. They include a history of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and picture books like “Pink is for Boys” and “Pride Puppy.”

Governor Kathy Hochul tweeted Wednesday night that “our public spaces should be accepting our young people — not rejecting them,” reminding all LGBTQ New Yorkers that the state supports and welcomes them.

The LGBT Network, a nonprofit that fights for the rights of LGBTQ people and their families in Queens and Long Island, has planned a press conference for late Thursday morning to announce its plans to oppose anti-LGBTQ measures in libraries and schools.

The library’s “bigoted move” to remove the books and Pride displays “enraged members of the LGBT community in Suffolk County, where over 100,000 LGBT residents reside,” the group said in a statement ahead of the press event.

NY Library Pulls Pride Display From Children’s Section

While we condemn the actions taken by the Smithtown Public Library’s Board of Trustees, we remain in full support of the library’s staff & Director who were required to remove the materials encompassed in the vote & work tirelessly to ensure their entire community feels welcome.
— New York Library Association (@NYLA_1890) June 23, 2022

For many LGBTQ+ kids, libraries are one of the few spaces where they can be welcomed and affirmed for who they are.

Our public spaces should be accepting our young people — not rejecting them.

To LGBTQ+ New Yorkers: We stand with you, we support you, & you are welcome here. https://t.co/x6w1q8o3El
— Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) June 22, 2022

Todd20036 • 19 hours ago • edited

When I was growing up, I had no gay books. No internet. No one to talk to. No one to ask questions

I still ended up being gay

Orientation isn’t some choice you learn about. It just is

But try telling the MAGAts that

nocadrummer Todd20036 • 19 hours ago

Orientation isn’t some choice.
But Religion IS a choice.

🄿🅁🄸🅇🄰🅃🄾🅁 – 🅃🅁🄸🄿🄻🄴 🅅🄰🅇🅇🄴🄳 nocadrummer • 18 hours ago

And, children are definitely indoctrinated or “groomed” into religion.

Caitlyn Haiku 🄿🅁🄸🅇🄰🅃🄾🅁 – 🅃🅁🄸🄿🄻🄴 🅅🄰🅇🅇🄴🄳 • 17 hours ago

As someone who a church tried (and eventually failed) to indoctrinate, I feel kids should not be exposed to religion until they are in their late teens at the earliest.

Dot Beech 🇺🇦 Todd20036 • 19 hours ago • edited

There were no gay books when I was growing up. Not for kids, anyway.

But the library had Broadway Original Cast Albums. Heh heh heh. The first time I became acquainted with Elaine Stritch, it was on the COMPANY cast album I checked out of the library.

I can’t say for sure that Julie Andrews turned me queer, but I can’t be certain that she didn’t. (It might have been Mary or Ethel.)

Chris Baker Todd20036 • 17 hours ago

Same here, grew up in a conservative Christian house. Didn’t know anyone gay, wasn’t molested, didn’t have any sexual encounters, grew up thinking that being gay was one of the worst things possible. But nonetheless, I am gay. It did take me a little while to ‘realize’ it and caused some depression in my 20s. But with that upbringing, it really made me realize that being gay was not a choice, or something I was ‘tricked’ or seduced into, etc.

MrRobotoLA • 19 hours ago

My public library is where I found hope as a young child, unsure of myself and having nowhere else to look for answers on what I was feeling.

Ross • 19 hours ago • edited

& work tirelessly to ensure their entire community feels welcome.

By making sure that LGBTQ people feel unwlecome.

joe ho • 18 hours ago

For decades the far-right has been outraged by the “queering” of America. Now their battle cry is to “stamp it out”.

And now they have taken over the courts and a majority of state legislatures.

In the history of the rise of fascism the US is now in the stage of “institutional capture.” When complete, it’s almost impossible to recover.

It’s going to get very ugly and dangerous for LGBTs for a very long time. Orban’s Hungary, Putin’s Russia. Winter is coming.

Is It Last Call for Lauren Boebert’s Gun Restaurant?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-it-last-call-for-lauren-boeberts-gun-restaurant?ref=home

The Colorado GOP congresswoman ascended into the political spotlight partially because of her gun-themed restaurant. It may now be closing its doors soon.

Roger Sollenberger

Political Reporter

Updated Jun. 23, 2022 5:52AM ET / Published Jun. 23, 2022 4:00AM ET

EXCLUSIVE

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty/Google/Facebook

The institution at the center of Rep. Lauren Boebert’s origin story now appears to face an uncertain future.

Shooters Grill, the gun-themed Hooters parody restaurant that put Rifle, Colorado, on the map and elevated Boebert to local celebrity status, has run into some trouble with its new landlord—a marijuana retailer.

But her landlord isn’t all that new. And the story, which has gone through several iterations over the last week, isn’t exactly adding up.

On Guns and Jesus, Lauren Boebert Is a Complete Ignoramus

IT’S ALL IN THE BOOK

Matt Lewis

As it stands, the landlord has told Boebert he will revoke the restaurant’s lease at the end of August, and send Shooters packing. The rest is up in the air.

Boebert told The Daily Beast that she and her husband, Jayson Boebert, had been surprised to receive the notice last week announcing that their lease would not be renewed. The building’s ownership changed hands last month, she said, and now Shooters would either have to find new digs or shut down for good.

But the day after that notice arrived, an anti-Boebert political group somehow got word that the timeline was even tighter than that—two weeks, the group said, putting the possible ouster just days before Republicans hit the polls for primary day.

Her employees hadn’t heard that yet, so Boebert scrambled to quash that rumor, which she characterized to The Daily Beast as rank misinformation. Still, the truth stood: The restaurant she and her husband founded eight years ago was on the brink of closing.

She didn’t explain exactly why her business was being kicked out. A person familiar with the arrangement said the property manager felt he had a “moral” imperative to close the business, and had planned to lease the space to another restaurant.

Boebert told The Daily Beast at one point that she and her husband were “at peace” with ending their run, and did not plan to fight the order. But as the plot thickened politically, she bought some time.

Now she says she’s entertaining two contradictory options: The original shutdown plan, or buying the building outright from the new owners. She won’t say which she and her husband are choosing until after the primary.

Boebert: ‘When 9/11 Happened, We Didn’t Ban Planes’

PAINFUL

Shooters was central to Boebert’s rocketship ascent to federal office, but it hasn’t been a financial success. The restaurant turned in a streak of six-figure annual losses leading up to Boebert’s 2020 election, and struggled to stay above water even after she shot to fame as a MAGA darling. She said it had been a lot of work balancing the stress and drama of running a restaurant against her legislative duties 1,800 miles away, and she often found herself turning to her mom to pick up the slack. That struggle is partially why she at first saw the closure as a blessing.

Jayson Boebert also appears to have had his hands full. Between 2019 and 2020, as Shooters was losing money, he pulled in nearly $1 million as a contracted shift worker for oil and gas outfit Terra Energy—though Lauren Boebert appears to have reported the wrong source of that income on her federal financial disclosures.

Today, however, the Shooters website is down. The last time it appears active in an archive search was December 2021.

A buyout would appear unusual—and not only because the Boeberts had apparently decided less than a week ago that they would wind down the business—but also because the new owners bought the building less than a month ago. If they chose to sell, it would be a near-instant flip—morally and financially.

But they’re not exactly new owners. In fact, it’s the same family.

The company that took over the Shooters building, Milkin Enterprises, was formed days before the purchase, according to Colorado business records. And the two men on the Milkin Enterprises incorporation documents—Mike Miller and Dan Meskin—run a cannabis dispensary, Rifle Remedies, which until 2019 shared a street address with Shooters, according to state filings.

Boebert told The Daily Beast that Shooters had cut its previous rent checks to Dan Meskin’s father—Mike Meskin, who owned the building through Meskin Enterprises. She didn’t remark on Dan, who was named in a local Post Independent story from 2016 as the building’s property manager.

It’s not clear what morality the new owners are acting on. County records indicate the father-son deed transfer went through on May 26, two days after the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas. That same day, Boebert remarked that after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, “We didn’t ban planes.”

Just days after Boebert first grabbed the national political spotlight for confronting Beto O’Rourke on gun control in Aurora, Colorado—site of a movie theater massacre—the Rifle Remedies storefront changed its address from the Shooters building, according to state business records.

Neither Dan nor Mike Meskin appear to have made any political contributions. While Dan Meskin’s wife is not a big donor—about $225 total lifetime contributions—she made a few small-dollar gifts to Democrats trying to defeat Boebert in 2020 and last year. The two other Meskins don’t appear to have made any political donations.

It’s unclear why Boebert would appear unfamiliar with the “new” owners, as she suggested in phone calls. It’s also unclear why those owners wouldn’t have been familiar with Boebert, who claimed to have “first option to buy” the building—an option that Mike Meskin, and possibly his son Dan, would have given her personally.

Boebert, who repeatedly dismissed the possibility of a political motive behind the ouster, did not say whether she was offered that option to buy. But she told The Daily Beast that Milkin Enterprises now appeared open to a sale.

“He said, ‘If you’re still interested in purchasing, I’m interested in selling,’” she told The Daily Beast.

But Shooters—whose gun-packing waitresses attracted international attention as a roadside novelty long before Boebert stepped into the political arena—has never lived high off the hog.

The restaurant lost more than $600,000 in total between 2018 and 2020, according to Boebert’s financial disclosures, and it appears to have struggled with annual tax obligations, incurring a number of liens totaling nearly $20,000, the Denver Post reported.

A series of articles in 2014 boosted the novelty restaurant’s profile, turning it into something of a “tourist trap,” as one former employee described it to The Daily Beast. Shooters has marketed itself as a Second Amendment-positive business, where waitresses open-carry loaded firearms on their hips and serve up menu items like a “Swiss and Wesson” sandwich.

“The customers love that they can come here and express their rights,” Boebert said in a 2014 CBC interview. “We called it ‘Shooters’ and started throwing guns and Jesus all over the place.”

Some of those waitresses, however, were too young to carry—and a rare few chose not to, one former worker told The Daily Beast. One of them appears to have been on probation for a year in which she worked at the restaurant, and would have been prohibited from carrying a firearm.

This former employee said that, unlike some other servers, she wouldn’t pack a loaded gun at work, and soon stopped carrying altogether.

“I was tired of getting maple syrup on my Glock, running my gun into the corner of the bartop,” she explained.

The Boeberts never seemed able to keep a steady grip, the employee said, though they certainly would put in the work, with Lauren Boebert sometimes even pulling shifts as a cook.

And it was the Shooters cooking—though not Boebert’s—which caught bad press in 2017, when the restaurant’s pork sliders caused mass diarrhea at the Rifle Rodeo.

“I did not eat that day, because I saw who was cooking and I knew better,” a former employee told The Daily Beast.

“There were Mexicans back in the kitchen, and if they were cooking, I would eat. But not this cook,” she said, adding that the cook responsible for the food poisoning would often “scratch his balls” on the job and routinely “drop food on the floor.”

(The Daily Beast could not independently substantiate these claims.)

Boebert’s elevation to household name, along with her aggressive publicity operation, appear to have helped buoy the business over the last two years. While not exactly swimming in cash, Shooters is now at least above water.

Asked about those finances, the first-term congresswoman told The Daily Beast that the grill is “not in the red,” and made its June rent.

“Does a restaurant ever turn a profit?” Boebert joked. “No, we’re doing fine. We’re not in the red, we’re—we’re in the black, so it’s a lot better than last year.”

Perhaps conveniently, though, the Boeberts have tabled the family decision until after the primary.

“I had a conversation with my husband and we decided that after the election, we would get together and talk about maybe purchasing the building,” she said.

“That’s in six days,” she added.

Some cartoons to get back into it.

Herschel Walker Says There Are 52 States

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/herschel-walker-52-states_n_62b35b92e4b0cf43c85f2cd4

Georgia GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker holds rally day before primary election.

MEGAN VARNER/GETTY IMAGES

There are 50 states in the United States of America.

But in an interview Tuesday, Georgia GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker said there were 52.

Walker was going after Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor, for recently saying, “I am tired of hearing about [Georgia] being the best state in the country to do business when we are the worst state in the country to live.”

Abrams cited the state’s problems with mental health treatment, maternal mortality, incarceration rates and wages. Republicans seized upon the remark and used it to criticize her, although Abrams said she stood by her belief that Republican Brian Kemp is “a failed governor, who doesn’t care about the people of Georgia.”

In an interview Tuesday with the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, Walker said Abrams should go live in another state ― saying she had 51 others from which to choose.

“If you don’t believe in the country, leave and go somewhere else,” he said. “If it’s the worst state, why are you here? Why don’t you leave ― go to another? There’s, what, 51 more other states that you can go to?”

“Herschel misspoke ― he obviously knows there are 50 states,” spokeswoman Mallory Blount told HuffPost.

Walker is a former NFL star whose campaign has been filled with controversies and misstatements.

He has faced domestic violence allegations, and recently, claims of being an absent father. Walker has talked frequently about his 22-year-old son Christian and railed against fatherless homes. But The Daily Beast reported that Walker actually has three other children he doesn’t talk about publicly. He has since acknowledged his four children, saying he “never denied any of my kids.”

Walker has also said he’s skeptical of evolution, pointing to the fact that apes and humans coexist.

“At one time, science said man came from apes, did it not? … If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it,” Walker said in March.

After the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, Walker called for “a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at social media,” as a solution to curb school shootings, but it was not clear what that was or how it would solve the problem.

In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama also misspoke on the number of states.

“It is wonderful to be back in Oregon,” Obama said. “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it.”

He later said it was “a sign that my numeracy is getting a little, uh ―” before an aide cut him off.

Some on took this comment as further proof of the birther conspiracy, claiming that he was actually referencing Muslim countries.

CLEARLY @HerschelWalker misspoke.

He meant he has 52 KIDS https://t.co/PMHEsuoTC4
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) June 22, 2022

Texas Paul REACTS to Despicable Texas GOP Platform

Man Charged With Death Threat Against Pride Event

Man Charged With Death Threat Against Pride Event

Seattle’s CBS News affiliate reports:

A resident of Oak Harbor was arrested Friday after expressing his desire to kill members of the LGBTQIA+ community on social media, according to the Oak Harbor Police Department and court documents.

Tyler Dinsmoor, 27, was arrested without incident and transported to the Island County Jail. According to court documents, Dinsmoor posted on social media that he “might not make it through this f** month,” and he “was 9mm away from fedposting two f****** at home depot yesterday.”

‘Fedposting’ is Internet slang for anything posted online that shows a premeditated planning of criminal activity. Dinsmoor started focusing on the Anacortes Pride Parade that is scheduled to be held on June 18 and was asking people to “talk me out of it.”

Hemant Mehta reports at Only Sky:

A woman renting a property near Dinsmoor heard him openly express his desire to murder gay people. She noticed the words “Bible Bigot” painted on his truck and heard him shout, “It used to be legal to kill gay people!”

Regardless of context, the woman (who’s lesbian) told her kids not to go outside. She later saw Dinsmoor with a weapon. She also found out from another neighbor that Dinsmoore had pointed a gun at a Black man who was trying to return a fishing pole.

Mehta has screenshots of Dinsmoor’s horrifying Gab posts and notes that he appears to be linked to a “death to gays” church.

Dinsmoor has so far raised over $18,000 on the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo. Here’s his pitch:

Tyler Dinsmoor is a God fearing man, who was arrested on June 17th, 2022 by 7 different law enforcement agencies and is being held on a $1M bail. His crime? Hurting the feelings of a homosexual, and he is being charged with a hate crime because of this. I started this fund for fellow Gabbers and frens to chip in for Tyler’s legal defense. This is a slippery slope we have been dealing with for quite a while now, and it’ll eventually happen to all of us.

A GiveSendGo campaign for Tyler Dinsmoor, the man who was arrested after threatening to kill LGBTQ people at a Pride parade, has raised over $17,000 so far.

"His crime? Hurting the feelings of a homosexual…" https://t.co/kRI9HngScT pic.twitter.com/pzPgRMWnQH
— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) June 21, 2022

A GiveSendGo campaign for Tyler Dinsmoor, the man who was arrested after threatening to kill LGBTQ people at a Pride parade, has raised over $17,000 so far.

"His crime? Hurting the feelings of a homosexual…" https://t.co/kRI9HngScT pic.twitter.com/pzPgRMWnQH
— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) June 21, 2022

According to court documents, Dinsmoor shouted, “It used to be legal to kill gay people!” https://t.co/FTIQaM3rnv
— KIRO 7 (@KIRO7Seattle) June 18, 2022

May 22,, “I am Tyler and the Jews are agents of Satan and deserve severe punishment for their nefarious deeds.

All homosexuals are child-rapists in wait, & should be put to death.”

He was Arrested for civil rights malicious harassment with a hate crimes enhancement. pic.twitter.com/JJz4kRm6Vc
— Popitics (@Popitics1) June 19, 2022

“Jesus, guns, babies”: Religious violence is now at the core of the Republican Party

https://www.salon.com/2022/06/14/jesus-guns-babies-religious-violence-is-now-at-the-core-of-the-party/

Wow, just holy shit wow! People need to read and understand the movement going on and how deeply they have worked themselves both into the Republican party and into the power levels of government. Shit we are so close to this minority of religious zealots taking over the country while the majority sleeps unaware. I just posted about Egypt which was a secular country until an authoritarian leader took over and used religion to stomp out any culture advances and to advance their conservative agenda of returning to a tradition where only they had power. It happened in Russia where democracy got started and the culture was advancing and opening up, only to have an authoritarian take over and use religion to push everything back to a time when he / they had power over the population. We are in danger of not just regressing but becoming an active theocracy where all people will be forced to live under the doctrine and dictates of a religion regardless of if you believe it. You will pay taxes / tithes regardless. Your private life will be scrutinized to make sure you are following the dictates of the church doctrines. Welcome to the Handmaidens tale. Hugs

Lauren Boebert prayed for Biden’s death — and that’s not even close to the craziest item on the GOP wish list

By THOMAS LECAQUE

PUBLISHED JUNE 14, 2022 6:30AM (EDT)

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo. (Getty Images)

At the tail end of last week, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado took the stage at the Charis Christian Center’s Family Camp Meeting. The event claims that, “you will hear God’s Word shared through speakers who have proven God’s Word,” and follows the speakers’ list with Acts 2:17-18:

And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.

The apocalyptic context notwithstanding, Boebert’s talk made quite a splash because of her invocation of Psalm 109:8 in the context of praying for President Biden — “May his days be few and another take his office” — before laughing at the cheers of the crowd. This is certainly not a new use of that text by the GOP — Sen. David Perdue of Georgia invoked it against Obama in 2016, and it became an anti-Obama slogan featured on bumper stickers. With the passage divorced from its full context, people can laugh — but Psalm 109 is a war psalm, calling for the death of the man in question, with 109:9 reading “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” And that’s the point: As with so many aspects of contemporary Christian nationalism, give the line people can nod along to, and hold back the violent context. This is a prayer for the death of the president, and it is one we can honestly say has become normal for Republicans to use about Democratic presidents.

Maybe that’s a big enough problem that we should acknowledge it not just as a fringe phenomenon, but as part of the core problem of the contemporary, MAGA-infused GOP.

RELATED: From the Pilgrims to QAnon: Christian nationalism is the “asteroid coming for democracy”

Of course, Boebert has gone much further than prayers against the president. She met with organizers of the Jan. 6 coup attempt beforehand. She tweeted the locations of lawmakers, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as insurrectionists were breaking into the Capitol. Like Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Boebert and her family have posed for Christmas cards with AR-15-style weapons, with all of the problematic associations of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth with weapons designed for combat. These things — Jesus, guns and, with family photos, babies — are in fact pillars of the Christian nationalist branch of the GOP.

Georgia candidate Kandiss Taylor called fellow Republican Brian Kemp “Luciferian” and defined the First Amendment as “our right to worship Jesus freely — that’s why we have a country.”

Kandiss Taylor’s failed Republican gubernatorial primary campaign in Georgia was incredibly instructive on where the GOP now stands. Her campaign bus, which literally had “Jesus, Guns, Babies” emblazoned on the side, was just the most overt aspect of her Christian nationalist campaign. She told followers to pray for good sheriffs and said that corrupt ones would be executed for treason, strongly implying her belief in the extremist “constitutional sheriff” doctrine, which holds sheriffs are arbiters of what the law is in their counties, not enforcers of it. She said at one campaign rally, “We’re gonna do a political rally and we’re gonna honor Jesus. They’re not gonna tell us ‘separation of church and state.’ We are the church! We run this state!” — an aggressively Christian nationalist idea. Taylor called Gov. Brian Kemp’s administration a “Luciferian regime,” said that as governor she would release an executive order against the “Satanic elites,” and vowed to tear down the “Satanic” Georgia Guidestones.

Taylor even championed Native genocide, saying, “The First Amendment right, which is our right to worship Jesus freely — that’s why we have a country. That’s why we have Georgia. That’s why we had our Founding Fathers come over here and destroy American Indians’ homes and their land. They took it.” And, of course, she champions the Big Lie, saying on Twitter, “We are in a spiritual war … it’s God versus Satan. If GA goes down, if we let them steal the election from us .. we’re gonna steal it back if we have to.” That carried over to her own loss — despite losing the primary by 70 points, she refused to concede.

We might well ask: So what? Taylor was defeated by a staggering margin, as were numerous other Christian nationalist candidates. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, for example, lost his primary race in North Carolina after the Republican establishment turned on him. Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin embraced extremism, appearing with militia members in photo ops, administering oaths to them reserved for the state military, and appeared on video at the America First PAC meeting, saying, “God calls us to pick up the sword and fight, and Christ will reign in the state of Idaho.” She lost by 20 points. The Republican candidate for secretary of state in California, Rachel Hamm, said she decided to run for office because she was a prophetic dreamer, and because her youngest son, “a seer,” had found Jesus in the closet where she prays, holding a scroll telling her to run. She also lost and then claimed fraud, tweeting, “When you’ve fought the good fight, had an honest contest & lost, that’s when you concede. So, in my case, there will be no concession. Stolen elections=stolen Republic.”

And then there those who are still running. Greg Lopez, a GOP gubernatorial candidate in Colorado, believes in a blanket ban on abortion, rejects climate change, has said that the “educational system has now been converted into state indoctrination centers” and is a proponent of the Big Lie. He appeared, alongside a range of conspiracy theorists and far right figures, at the Western Conservative Summit at the beginning of the month. And he is not shy about his negative views of the LGBTQ community, a common theme among GOP candidates.

Mark Burns in South Carolina, for example, was an early Trump supporter in 2016. He’s an evangelical minister, a conspiracy theorist and pastor at the Harvest Praise & Worship Center. He’s running for Congress in the state’s 4th congressional district, and his platform reads like a grab bag of right-wing ideas:

Our right to bear arms is INHERENT, given to us by God almighty — NOT by any man;

If we don’t fix these elections NOW, America will be lost. Without open, honest, transparent elections, no other issue matters;

Life begins at conception;

Marriage is defined as between one man and one woman;

Critical Race Theory is Communist, anti-white Racism;

Vaccine and mask mandates are medical tyranny, and have no place in America;

The Pelosi budget opens the door wide open to full-blown communism.

And while these may sound like wild ideas, they’re nothing compared to what Burns says. He has called for reviving the House Un-American Activities Committee — yes, the infamous Red-hunters of the 1940s — to investigate LGBTQ “indoctrination,” which he calls a national security threat, saying that anyone engaged in it (or in gun control) should be tried for treason, and executed. Burns is literally calling for reviving the “lavender scare,” which has a certain evil logic because that, in essence, is where Christian nationalists have settled in the culture wars: anti-trans legislation, anti-LGBTQ rallies and attacks, and pushing to re-criminalize sexual minorities.

One South Carolina candidate literally wants to bring back the anti-LGBTQ persecution of the “lavender scare,” which has a certain logic: That’s where Christian nationalists have landed in the culture wars.

The Jesus part is obvious. The guns have been covered, be it Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano’s links to the apocalyptic Rod of Iron Ministries or the marketing of AR-15-style guns as sacred weapons. But babies may be the most important part of it. Attacks on the LGBTQ community must be understood in the context of right-wing ideas about sexual purity and a full-blown mania for forced birth legislation. Anti-abortion laws, attacks on contraception and attacks on sexual minorities are all part of a Christian nationalist assault on the nation. Movements like Quiverfull, taken from Psalm 127, have a number of political aspects alongside a belief system that shuns birth control and believes God will give them the right number of children. They literally believe that whoever has the most babies wins, and see that as the fundamental political and spiritual battle. One Quiverfull-affiliated author has said:

It is the womb that conceives and nourishes the “godly seed” who will come forth to be the light in the darkness and who will destroy the works of Satan in this world. God is looking for an army. … The womb is a powerful weapon against Satan. Some women fear to bring babies into this evil world, but this is one of the greatest reasons for having children — to be the light in this dark world!

Quiverfull is a Christian patriarchy movement, not only pushing female submission to husbands and fathers, and eschewing education and contraception to win the culture war — as Salon reporter Kathryn Joyce has detailed in her book “Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement” — but also contributing to the protection of sexual predators in church communities and vigorously promoting the anti-abortion and forced birth laws being passed around the country.

I would also suggest, rather forcefully, that Christian patriarchy and Christian nationalism are linked to the “great replacement” theory, the deeply racist and xenophobic notion that nonwhite people are being brought into Western countries to “replace” white voters, in order to further a specific political agenda, leading to the supposed extinction of white people. As is well understood, this delusional ideology has fueled multiple massacres, including the mass shooting in Buffalo in May and earlier mass shootings in El Paso, Pittsburgh and Christchurch, New Zealand. Forced-birth laws and abortion bans are also part of this perceived demographic war, part and parcel with the spiritual battles Christian nationalists believe they are fighting and the very real stockpiling of arms, association with militia groups and opposition to government. PRRI’s August 2021 survey shows that “great replacement” ideas are growing in evangelical circles, and have only become more mainstream since then.

Religious violence is the bedrock of Christian nationalism, and Christian Nationalism is becoming the bedrock of the contemporary Republican Party. Forced birth laws, anti-LGBTQ legislation and the “great replacement” theory are all forms of violence, and all but certain to fuel the spread of more lethal violence. is violence. “Jesus, Guns and Babies” may seem like a laughable slogan, stripped of context. But it isn’t funny at all.

Read more on Christian nationalism and the far right:

White nationalists get religion: On the far-right fringe, Catholics and racists forge a movement

How Democrats dumped secularism, found God — and doomed Roe v. Wade

So who are “evangelicals”? And how did they become such massive hypocrites?

THOMAS LECAQUE

Thomas Lecaque is an associate professor of History at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa. He specializes in the nexus of apocalyptic religion and political violence. He has written for the Washington Post, Religion Dispatches, Foreign Policy and The Bulwark, among others. Follow him on Twitter: @tlecaque.

Texas AG On School Shootings: “God Has A Plan”

Texas AG On School Shootings: “God Has A Plan”

“If I lost one of my children I’d be pretty devastated, especially in a way that is so senseless and seemingly has no purpose.

“I would just have to say, if I had the opportunity to talk to the people I’d have to say, look, there’s always a plan. I believe God always has a plan. Life is short no matter what it is.

“And certainly, we’re not going to make sense of, you know, a young child being shot and killed way before their life expectancy.” – Texas AG Ken Paxton, speaking on right wing radio.

.@KenPaxtonTX, as the father of Jaime Guttenberg who was murdered in Parkland, FUCK YOU!!! How dare you justify your failures by saying "god has a plan" & “Life is short no matter what.” People like you are the reason, not any plan godly plan.https://t.co/EZaNqaZb7M
— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) June 16, 2022

stevenj • 2 days ago

Uncle Mark eats the rainbow Doug105 • 2 days ago

We never heard Eve’s testimony about this. Adam readily blames his wife. How do we know she didn’t just whip an apple at Adam’s head because he was being a chauvinist pig, unlike the pigs, who were too busy building homes of straw, sticks & bricks to engage in any kind of sexist behavior?

Kari Lake is horrified by kids at drag shows but did she let her own daughter watch one?

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2022/06/18/kari-lake-attacks-drag-shows-but-did-she-expose-her-daughter-drag/7672290001/

OPINION: Kari Lake is worried about the impact of drag shows on children but a well-known Valley drag queen in Phoenix says she performed at Lake’s house, in front of Lake’s young daughter.

Laurie Roberts
Arizona Republic

Count Kari Lake among the outraged over the latest controversy to fire up the far right.

Drag queens, that would be.

It is, Lake assures us, positively indecent that children have attended drag performances.

“They kicked God out of schools and welcomed the Drag Queens,” she said on Friday, on Instagram and Twitter. “They took down our Flag and replaced it with a rainbow. They seek to disarm Americans and militarize our Enemies. Let’s bring back the basics: God, Guns & Glory.”

While we’re at it, let’s also bring in a drag queen who has known Lake for well over two decades.

Rick Stevens is one of the Valley’s best known drag artists, performing for the last 25 years as Barbra Seville at theaters, bars and parties around town — and, he says, at parties held at Kari Lake’s home.

One of those parties, he says, was attended by Lake’s then-elementary school-aged daughter.

So you can imagine that Lake’s social media posts demonizing drag were a stunner.

“She’s friends with drag queens,” he told me. “She’s had her kid in front of a drag queen. I’ve done drag in her home for her friends and family. She’s not threatened by them. She would come to shows constantly. To make me be the bogeyman for political gain it was just too much.”

Stevens, who is supporting Democrat Katie Hobbs for governor, on Friday evening posted pictures of Lake posing with him and another drag performer as well as some of their correspondence from 2015. Similar pictures, dated 2012 and 2014, are posted to Kari Lake’s social media.

The Lake campaign says Lake’s daughter has never attended a drag show.

“Richard’s accusations were full of lies,” she said, in a statement emailed to me. “The event in question was a party at someone else’s house, and the performer was there as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. It wasn’t a drag show, and the issue we’re talking about isn’t adults attending drag shows, either. The issue is activists sexualizing young children, and that’s got to stop.”

Actually, a man dressing up as a female and entertaining an audience is considered a drag performance.

Drag shows are the latest front in America’s culture wars. It all started earlier this month in Texas (as so many things do) with a Dallas gay bar’s “Drag the Kids to Pride” event, which was billed as “a family friendly drag show.”

While conservative politicians were fairly fainting over what they called the “sexual perversion” of our children, it’s unclear what was giving them the vapors. In the video clip that went viral on social media, prompting all the outrage, the performers were clothed and the dancing didn’t appear overly sexual.

There was a neon sign that was rather risqué and a child was pictured handing a dollar bill to one of the dancers. But tipping a dancer doesn’t seem all that much different from tipping your garden variety street performer.

Regardless, Republican legislators in Arizona immediately swung into action week, vowing to “fight like hell to protect the most innocent from these horrifying and disturbing trends”.

Stevens is horrified and disturbed as well, though for a different reason: Hypocrisy.

He says he met Lake in the late 1990s when she and some of her Fox10 co-workers would come to the 307 Lounge, a downtown Phoenix gay bar that hosted (adult) drag shows featuring Barbra Seville, Ms. Ebony, Pussy Le Hoot and Celia Putty, among others.

“They (Lake and her co-workers) would come down to the 307 Lounge which was about a mile or two from the station and they would hang out,” he said. “She would come to the show pretty regularly. I wouldn’t say every week but it wasn’t uncommon.”

Stevens says he and Lake became friends — “I was sort of her go-to gay person sometimes” for interviews on news stories involving LGBTQ topics.

Stevens says Lake invited him to her central Phoenix home to perform as Marilyn Monroe at her birthday party 10 or 12 years ago and later to do a drag routine at a 2015 baby shower for a fellow news anchor. He says he specifically remembers Lake’s young daughter at one of the performances because she wore glasses and he sympathized, having hated wearing them when he was a child.

Drag shows can run the gamut from raunchy to G-rated, depending on the crowd. While there is no nudity involved, Stevens acknowledged there can be revealing costumes though that wouldn’t happen, he says, at a family event.

“The whole idea that you need to protect kids from drag is just ridiculous because there aren’t a lot of people that do that and there aren’t a lot of shows that cater to families,” he said.

He considers the recent attacks on drag queens a calculated response designed to rouse the right and distract people from the real danger to children.

“Everyone knows what’s going on,” he said. “People needed something else to talk about because the conversation was getting too real about gun control and children being killed in schools so people want to say let’s protect kids from drag queens instead of protecting kids from gun violence.”

As for Lake’s response in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre, she wants to end the tax on ammunition.

But oh, those dangerous drag shows.

Stevens believes Lake’s reincarnation as a warrior for the far right is an act.

“She supported Obama and now I’m here to tell you that she supported drag queens and had her kid in front of drag kids,” he said “So if I can do anything to expose the hypocrisy and if I can do anything to keep someone like that, a few votes away, from power, I’m happy to do that.”

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

After Kari Lake’s former Drag Queen friend called her out on hypocrisy and posted several photos, Lake issues a statement threatening to sue, and wants to know why the media isn’t focusing on Hunter Biden. pic.twitter.com/0w9H0dSFAL
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) June 19, 2022

Here’s another drag show Kari Lake posted from in 2014.

Kari Lake: “When an 80 year old goes to her first drag show.” pic.twitter.com/sd9hBki8fD
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) June 19, 2022

Randy left an incredible video in the comments on a trans post recently. I thought it should have its own post. Hugs

Thank you Randy. Sad that it is needed but grand she felt strong enough to do the video in front of some people she knew hated her. Hugs

Hi Scottie;
I thought to add this link. Hope it’s useful.
Big hugs.
randy

What a bright light you are, Kai. 💕 Your poise and courage are far beyond your years. pic.twitter.com/gZRX5eq3pf
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) June 19, 2022

Scotties Playtime says:

June 20, 2022 at 5:42 pm EDIT

Hello Randy. An incredibly beautiful video. It is just sad that a child that young had to make it. It breaks my heart that a child her age understand people hate her for just existing. Hugs