Conservatives are cool with the Bible saying it’s okay to own slaves, kill women and smear feces onto lazy priests. But tell a kid that it’s okay to be gay? Noooo, we can’t have that.
Ralph Rebandt, a Republican candidate for Michigan governor, says he wants the Bible to “be the basic textbook in schools.” It’s a position he came to regret in a recent interview with comedian Jason Selvig.
Selvig, part of the conservative-skewering comedy duo The Good Liars, got Rebandt to agree to ban books from schools that have porn pornographic imagery in them. Selvig then pointed out that the Bible has a story about two daughters who get their dad drunk and have sex with him — it’s in the Book of Genesis, chapter 9, verses 30 to 37.
This is where the interview went hilariously south for the Republican.
“You’re saying banned the Bible in school?” Selvig asked Rebandt.
“No, I’m not saying ban the Bible in school,” Rebandt replied.
“You’re saying anything that has a pornographic image should be banned,” Selvig reminded him. “And there are some images in the Bible about, you know, sex and incest and things like that. So it sounds like you’re saying we should ban the Bible.”
Rebandt answered, “What I am saying is that the Judeo Christian principles on which our country was founded need to be brought back into culture. And I can’t say it any more clearly than that.”
“If that means banning the Bible, so be it,” Selvig said, adding, “Protect the kids.”
“No, I—” Rebandt stammered as the interview ended.
Rebandt initially told Selvig, “I’m bringing God back into culture, because I’m convinced that if we don’t get God right in this next election, nothing will matter.”
But while U.S. conservatives nationwide are hot to ban “pornographic” books from schools, including ones that explore sexuality and LGBTQ identity, they seemingly don’t want that standard applied to their own holy book.
In the aforementioned Bible story, Lot and his two daughters live in a cave. One daughter says to her sister that since there are no men around to impregnate them, they should get their father drunk and have sex with him to “preserve our family line through our father.”
They then successfully get their father drunk two nights in a row, have sex with him and end up pregnant. The story claims that the father was so drunk that he was unaware of what happened both nights.
The Bible says all sorts of things that conservative activists say they don’t want in books in schools. It says to kill people in same-sex relationships, to kill women who have pre-marital sex, to smear animal feces on the faces of lazy priests, and that it’s okay to own and beat slaves.
The massively influential Twitter account “Libs of TikTok” called the Trevor Project “a grooming organization.” The Trevor Project runs a crisis hotline for LGBTQ youth at risk of suicide.
Chaya Raichik, who runs Libs of TikTok, became one of the most influential conservative activists this past year as she posted videos of LGBTQ people and called them “groomers.” Raichik is arguably the individual most responsible for the current Groomer Panic, referring to many perfectly normal interactions involving LGBTQ people as pedophilia.
But this past week she got more attention from mainstream media when the Washington Post unveiled her identity, something that was common knowledge in parts of the right as she had been interviewed on Fox News and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) office cited her work as influential on the state’s Don’t Say Gay law.
As a result of the media attention, she started deleting her more embarrassing tweets.
In one of the deleted tweets, she wrote, “The Trevor Project is a grooming organization.” She was replying to a Trevor Project tweet that said, “There are safe and anonymous ways to reach out for support.”
“Grooming” is a set of manipulative behaviors sexual predators use to gain access to potential victims, to coerce them to agree to the abuse, and to reduce the risk of getting caught, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. The process usually involves training the victims to keep secrets from adults they trust and desensitizing them to sexual discussions and touching.
According to the Deleted Tweets Archive, Raichik deleted 2,795 tweets this week since the Washington Post published its article about her activism. It’s unclear exactly why she deleted just these tweets – she has published over 6,000 and they’re all fairly offensive – but the Trevor Project one was among them.
Raichik’s account has been temporarily suspended in the past because it violated Twitter’s rules against harassment. Teachers have received death threats after Raichik highlighted them on her account. Raichik herself has bragged that her account has helped several teachers get fired.
“[Libs of TikTok] is playing on fears and misunderstandings of who trans people are, while amping up extreme rhetoric and normalizing portraying queer people as inherently dangerous to children,” the ACLU’s Gillian Branstetter said. “It’s hard to stoke moral panic without main characters, and the role Libs of TikTok is playing is finding those characters.”
The Trevor Project says that over 1.8 million LGBTQ young people seriously consider suicide each year in the U.S.
I did the math and as I said I stink at math. I got over 600+ thousand kids who try to kill themselves. Not think about it but try to do it. . The Trevor project here in this article say that 1.8 seriously think about doing it. So the number that try to kill themselves could rise fast in the current hateful ant-LGBTQ+ attitude being projected in radical right media.
As I recently posted there are 2.64+ million LGBTQ+ kids. One in 4 try to end their lives, some more than once. That is not think about it, 1 in 4 try to actually die. The Trevor Project estimates that at least one LGBTQ youth between the ages of 13–24 attempts suicide every 45 seconds in the U.S. Now math is not my strong suit and last time I got the numbers wrong so let me try dividing the number of kids (2,647,755) divided by 4 = 661,938.75. So 661+ thousand LGBTQ+ kids try to kill themselves. A year! Is that enough? Well not according to the radical right / Republicans. Again remember the entire goal of the rights attack on the LGBTQ+ is to make being one more unacceptable than many think it is now. The goal of the right is to deny acceptance of LGBTQ+ people and kids. The guy who wrote Florida’s don’t say gay bill admitted he couldn’t stand that kids coming out were treated decently in school, that they were not bullied and ostracized. They want LGBTQ+ kids to suffer, and if more die I guess that doesn’t matter to the forced birth misnamed pro-birth crowd. For people that think this is a one off and will go away after the midterms I have four more states in my open news tabs trying to implement these anti-LGBTQ+ laws. One legislator wants to have public book burning to destroy LGBTQ+ positive books in a Christian celebration of gods morals. The right is still waging war for the right to discriminate on serving LGBTQ+ people, waging war on same sex marriage, and same sex adoption, so this is another front in the war.
Conservatives have spent the last couple months calling everyone who disagrees with them a pedophile, and now they’re setting their sights on the Trevor Project, an organization that runs a hotline and other resources to fight LGBTQ youth suicide.
Colin Wright, an editor of the anti-LGBTQ website Quillette, shared a comic from the Trevor Project that explained how teens could erase browser history and escape the site quickly so that they could get help even if they are worried about being outed to their parents.
Wright didn’t seem able to understand how something like this could help young people and instead said that the point of the feature is to “keep parents in the dark.”
Others on the right equated the Trevor Project with pedophilia, implying that an organization reaching out to LGBTQ teens in crisis is the same as a child sex abuser having sexually charged conversations with minors, as if any conversation involving LGBTQ identities is inherently pornographic.
“Why is the Trevor Project encouraging children to keep secrets from their parents?” the far-right organization Moms for Liberty responded to Wright’s tweet.
“Leftwing activists are predatory groomers,” conservative pundit Lauren Chen tweeted. “If you sit around designing and promoting ways to get in touch with kids so you can discuss sexuality and keep it from their parents, you are a groomer.”
Leftwing activists are predatory groomers.
If you sit around designing and promoting ways to get in touch with kids so you can discuss sexuality and keep it from their parents, you are a groomer.
The anti-LGBTQ account Libs of TikTok called the Trevor Project a “grooming organization” in a now-deleted tweet.
The Trevor Project works to prevent LGBTQ kids from committing suicide, that's it. It's actually a matter of public safety to have this person's identity known if she's going to be this hateful and dishonest pic.twitter.com/suqgTBwWje
James Lindsay, the professor who is best known for getting a fake academic paper published in 2017, claimed that it’s “only a matter of time until solid evidence of serious wrongdoing emerges regarding the Trevor Project.”
Only a matter of time until solid evidence of serious wrongdoing emerges regarding the Trevor Project. They don't mobilize to protect anything unless there's something really bad going on there that they don't want anyone to find out. Mark my words.
— James Lindsay, stochastic trendsetter (@ConceptualJames) April 28, 2022
As many people pointed out, having an “escape” feature is fairly standard for crisis hotlines and web services since the people who turn to crisis hotlines often don’t have support from the people around them.
Dogs are smart, most animals are. I knew a shepherd that could open doors and would let himself in and out of the house when he wanted. As the yard was fenced in we never stopped him or chained the door, but it was weird.
A group of bears in search of food decided to check inside a van—effortlessly unlatching the door, sliding it open and jumping inside. No CC because the bears don’t talk.
This has not gotten the attention I felt it should have so I am posting it again. The Us is in this conflict up to its eyeballs so why not step in all the way and save the people. Stop the torture and stop the rapes. I still am struggling with the idea of a preteen with their teeth pulled out that was repeatedly reported when the Russians withdrew. I have not heard one reason not to go in that is not based on fear that Russia will lash out at the countries that do. Guess what they already are. I have heard people say they don’t want to extend the area of conflict but guess what Russia already did. Don’t let Russia set the rules, these are people that torture, rape, and terrorize civilians. Don’t let the worst people make the rules the rest of the world lives by. You have already seen what Russia is willing to do by violating their gas and oil contracts to hurt other countries. How much of Europe is the world willing to let Putin have? Where you see pictures in the below quoted story there are videos on the linked page. Please go to the link to see the videos.
Ukrainian forces have used specific coordinates shared by the U.S. to direct fire on Russian positions and aircraft, current and former officials tell NBC News.
As Russia launched its invasion, the U.S. gave Ukrainian forces detailed intelligence about exactly when and where Russian missiles and bombs were intended to strike, prompting Ukraine to move air defenses and aircraft out of harm’s way, current and former U.S. officials told NBC News.
That near real-time intelligence-sharing also paved the way for Ukraine to shoot down a Russian transport plane carrying hundreds of troops in the early days of the war, the officials say, helping repel a Russian assault on a key airport near Kyiv.
It was part of what American officials call a massive and unprecedented intelligence-sharing operation with a non-NATO partner that they say has played a crucial role in Ukraine’s success to date against the larger and better-equipped Russian military.
The details about the air defenses and the transport plane, which have not previously been reported, underscore why, two months into the war, officials assess that intelligence from U.S. spy agencies and the Pentagon has been an important factor in helping Ukraine thwart Russia’s effort to seize most of the country.
“From the get-go, we leaned pretty heavily forward in sharing both strategic and actionable intelligence with Ukraine,” a U.S. official briefed on the matter told NBC News. “It’s been impactful both at a tactical and strategic level. There are examples where you could tell a pretty clear story that this made a major difference.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said, “We are regularly providing detailed, timely intelligence to the Ukrainians on the battlefield to help them defend their country against Russian aggression and will continue to do so.”
NBC News is withholding some specific details that the network confirmed about the intelligence sharing at the request of U.S. military and intelligence officials, who say reporting on it could help the Russians shut down important sources of information.
“There has been a lot of real-time intelligence shared in terms of things that could be used for specific targeting of Russian forces,” said a former senior intelligence official familiar with the situation. The information includes commercial satellite images “but also a lot of other intelligence about, for example, where certain types of Russian units are active.”
Ukraine continues to move air defenses and aircraft nearly every day with the help of American intelligence, which is one reason Russia has not been able to establish air dominance. In some cases, Ukraine moved the targeted air defense systems or planes just in time, the officials said.
“The Russian military has literally been cratering empty fields where air defenses were once set up,” one U.S. official said. “It has had an enormous impact on the Russian military’s ability on the ground.”
While U.S.-Ukrainian cooperation had been building since Russia seized Crimea in 2014, the Biden administration shifted into high gear in the weeks before the Russian invasion, when a U.S. military team visited to assess the state of Ukraine’s air defenses. The Americans provided Ukraine with detailed advice about how to disperse their air defense systems, a move that U.S. officials say helped Ukraine prevent Russia from seizing control of the skies.
Once the invasion got underway, lawyers in the U.S. defense and intelligence bureaucracy imposed guidance that in some cases limited the sharing of targeting information that could enable lethal Ukrainian strikes against Russians. But as Russia’s aggression has deepened, and under pressure from Congress, all of those impediments have been removed, officials say.
Earlier this month, for example, the director of National Intelligence withdrew and replaced a memo that prohibited intelligence sharing for the purposes of regaining captured territory or aiding Ukrainian strikes in Crimea or the Donbas, officials said. NBC News was first to report on the expanded sharing.
Intel has helped Ukraine defend, and also attack
Even before the change, the U.S. had provided Ukraine with timely information enabling it to better target Russian forces.
Ukrainian forces have used specific coordinates shared by the U.S. to direct fire on Russian positions and aircraft, current and former officials tell NBC News.
Those early shoot-downs helped thwart the Russian air assault operation designed to take Hostomel Airport near Kyiv, which would have allowed the Russians to flood troops and equipment to the region around the capital. The Russians eventually took the airport for a time, but never had enough control to fly in massive amounts of equipment. That failure had a significant impact on the battle for Kyiv, U.S. officials say.
The CIA is also devoting significant resources, current and former officials say, to gathering intelligence with the aim of protecting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom the Russians want to kill. The agency is consulting with the Ukrainians on “how best to move him around, making sure that he’s not co-located with his entire chain of command, things like that,” a U.S. official said.
“I would say where we are at is revolutionary in terms of what we have been able to do,” Army Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress last month in describing the sharing of information and intelligence between the U.S. and Ukraine.
CIA Director William Burns told Congress last month that when he met with Zelenskyy in Kiev in January, “We shared with him intelligence we had at the time about some of the most graphic and concerning details of Russian planning about Kyiv as well and we’ve continued to do that every day since then.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last month that the U.S. has shared “a significant amount of detailed timely intelligence on Russia’s plans and activities with the Ukrainian government to help Ukrainians defend themselves,” adding that the material “includes information that should help them inform and develop their military response to Russia’s invasion, that’s what’s happening — or has been happening.”
The U.S. military and the CIA began seeking to deepen their relationships with Ukrainian counterparts after Russia seized Crimea in 2014. The CIA first helped Ukrainian services root out Russian spies, the former senior official said, and then provided training and guidance. The U.S. military also trained Ukrainian soldiers.
Ukrainian soldiers walk on a destroyed bridge in Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, last week.Emilio Morenatti / AP
“There has been a very robust relationship between U.S. intel agencies and the Ukrainians for the last eight years,” the official said, adding that by the time Russia invaded two months ago, the U.S. trusted Ukraine enough to provide details of Russian troops’ deployment, attack routes and real-time targeting information.
“The foreknowledge we had of Russian plans and intentions shows that our intelligence was very solid on the overall situation,” said John McLaughlin, a former acting CIA director who now teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “So just logically, if we so earnestly want them to win as we have publicly said, it only follows that we’d be giving them the results of intelligence. It would be along the lines of, ‘Here’s what we know — it doesn’t matter how we know it.’”
One Western intelligence official noted that it’s not only the intelligence that has proven decisive — it’s the performance of the Ukrainians in using it. The source said Ukrainians have fought the Russians with agility and courage, and when they have received actionable intelligence, they have moved with astonishing speed.
McLaughlin said the Ukrainians have made clever use of so-called open-source intelligence — commercial satellite imagery and intercepts of Russians talking openly on unencrypted radios.
“The fact that there is so much open source [intelligence] available means that those collecting classified intelligence can focus on the things that are really hard and not publicly available.”
As the Ukrainian government sees it, intelligence sharing has improved, a source familiar with the government’s view told NBC News. That’s as far as he would go.
This is a hard story to listen to. In fact both of them are. Child rape hits me hard, but I guess it does most decent people. The second story is about a civilian man who was tortured for no reason except it seems that is the standard why the Russians soldiers are dealing with men. I have posted it before. They take the men’s fingers and cut them to the bone in slashes so that they will not only be painful but fester and decay. This man lost most of his. I have posted videos of others with their fingers stitched up trying to save them. The US could stop this. NATO could stop this. But we are allowing it. For how much longer?
CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh speaks with 16-year-old Dasha, who says she was raped by a Russian soldier in her village in Ukraine’s Kherson region. CNN cannot independently verify Dasha’s story, but Ukrainian prosecutors in the Kherson region said in a statement they had investigated her account.
He was tortured by Russians for eight days and left in the forest to die
On thing about this. The Russians seem to like causing pain and being cruel. These acts are deliberate. No professional army acts this way. We must act to stop this. How many generations will ask why we did not stop it when we could have? Were they not worthy enough for us to save?
Oleg Moskalenko is a Ukrainian man who was captured and tortured by Russian troops for several days and left for dead in the forest. He shares his harrowing story of survival on CNN’s New Day.
Florida activist Chaz Stevens is taking the culture war to Florida Republicans by starting a petition to ban the Bible in public schools as well as any other book that references the Bible. The request comes as the state lets parents object to educational material, specifically material that contains sexual subjects.
“A Florida activist known for his tongue-in-cheek petitions to local government agencies has asked school districts in Florida to ban the Bible. In petitions sent to public school superintendents across the state, Chaz Stevens asked the districts to “immediately remove the Bible from the classroom, library, and any instructional material,” Stevens wrote in the documents, which were shared with NPR. “Additionally, I also seek the banishment of any book that references the Bible.” His petitions cited a bill signed into law last month by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which lets parents object to educational materials. That bill came about after some parents complained about sexually explicit books being taught in Florida schools. Many of those books, such as Gender Queer: A Memoir, deal with LGBTQ themes and coming out stories. DeSantis celebrated the removal of Gender Queer at a news conference after the signing of the law. It’s “a cartoon-style book with graphic images of children performing sexual acts,” he said last month. “That is wrong.””
Fox News host Kennedy revealed the Republican Party’s master plan live in an appearance on the network, calling for an end to public schooling supplemented by the federal government. Republicans want nothing more than to privatize education and push marginalized groups, especially the poor and working classes, to the edges of society while rewriting curriculums to their liking. “Fox News host Kennedy just casually suggests that public schools should be eliminated. “A great time in our country’s history where we rethink whether or not we have public schools. Maybe we should not have the government involved in education at all.””
Red States like Tennessee are moving more and more money out of public education funding, opting to give the funding to private charter schools through vouchers and other means of fund diversion. The privatization of education has long been underway as the right-wing has been chipping away at teacher unions, panicking over CRT, and more recently, the accusations that LGBT teachers are ‘grooming’ children to be gay in public schools. Ana Kasparian discusses on The Young Turks.
Ralph RebandtPhoto: website screenshot
Scottie's Playtime 