Category: Bigotry

Trans rights activist Imara Jones on the anti-trans hate machine the far right has assembled

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/12/trans-rights-activist-imara-jones-anti-trans-hate-machine-far-right-assembled/

For those who had any doubts that this was not really the people rising up but actually a well funded well organized by right wing billionaires’ effort to stop society from progressing further from the bible views of how to live.   This article points out how these groups get started and funded.   It points out the ones driving these issues are the religious ones founded by Christian fundamentalist billionaires with the goal of creating a repressive society that will conform to a hierarchical theocracy with them at the top being the rulers.   It is not so much about god as it is power to rule over others as god’s messengers.  The interview is not long but really informative.  Hugs

By  
Imara Jones accepting the NABJ-NAHJ Journalist of Distinction Award
Imara Jones accepting the NABJ-NAHJ Journalist of Distinction AwardPhoto: Screenshot

Imara Jones is an award-winning journalist, thought leader, and content creator whose work focuses on trans people and the intersection of religious fundamentalism, the LGBTQ+ community, and civil rights. The sequel to her award-winning podcast The Anti-Trans Hate Machine drops in March.

Jones shared some time on a chilly afternoon in Brooklyn to describe the state of the far right’s campaign targeting trans kids, drag queens, and “groomers,” from a billionaire Christian cabal spreading nationalist gospel and unlimited cash to a new and made-to-order frontline hate group called Gays Against Groomers.

LGBTQ Nation: I imagine for your work it’s got to be a full-time job just keeping up with all the connections between attacks and protests and media fueling them, and the money fueling the organizations. Do you have a giant bulletin board in your office, like a detective, with pictures and pushpins and strings connecting everything?

IJ: Yes, we have. Generally, we create what we call sitemaps. And we kind of look for who’s where, and who are they connected to, and how they link back. And at a certain point it, you know, you don’t even have to do that as much anymore because you hear a name, or you see an organization, and you go, “Oh yeah, there are links to X.” In the right-wing space that fuels a lot of his hate, you see the usual suspects and don’t have to look that hard.

LGBTQ Nation: There’s been a recent focus on drag shows and story time hours by frontline groups and media outlets like Libs of TikTok and Project Veritas. Is that a shift away from casting young people as villains, like the ones playing girls’ sports and 10-year-olds testifying in state legislatures, and moving to adults as villains or what they’re calling groomers? Is that an easier sell for hate groups and far-right media than attacks on kids and parents?

IJ: I don’t see it as an either/or. I see it as an expansion of the battlespace rather than a conversion of it from one thing to the other. We have to understand from the perspective of the right that these distinctions about gender and gender identity, it’s like blurred into one thing. Drag is very threatening because it has wide acceptance. It’s about bending gender, right? And about the part of gender that’s an illusion. And so for them that fits very much in the space of trans people.

And when I look at conservative media, they haven’t let up at all on trans people and trans kids. You know, we have anti-trans bills that were passed this year in Georgia and in Florida, and as a centerpiece of the campaigns of [Republican Gov. of Texas] Greg Abbott and [Republican Gov. of Florida] Ron DeSantis, and on and on and on. There was a huge emphasis in Uvalde in an online campaign that moved to conservative media that then moved to a member of Congress to say that the shooter was trans. So, I don’t think that it’s a flip. It’s looking new to us because it’s greatly expanded, but it’s actually not.

LGBTQ Nation: Tell us about the Betsy DeVos/Prince clan, and why we don’t hear about their influence.

IJ: Can I take those questions in reverse? I would say why don’t we hear about it, one, because they’re powerful people and people are afraid of powerful people, including newspapers, and we know that. Secondly, I think it’s because they have a degree of mainstream credibility because she was a secretary of education, even in the midst of a controversial administration. And one of the reasons why they’re so effective is because their extremism is cloaked behind this air of comity and rectitude. There’s a certain way in which she composes herself, which I think doesn’t scream extremist.

LGBTQ Nation: And how about the DeVos/Prince clan itself?

IJ: When we say the DeVos family, we’re talking about the fusion of two billionaire families into one. Betsy DeVos was born Betsy Prince into the really wealthy Prince family. And then she married Richard DeVos. It’s actually a giant clan, a billionaire clan. And there is not a far-right organization, and in many cases designated hate groups, who exist without the largess of that family. Betsy DeVos, or Betsy Prince and her husband, Richard DeVos are the second generation in this billionaire kind of clan.

Richard DeVos’ father, for example, was extremely important to the founding of the Heritage Foundation. The Prince family, which is Betsy DeVos, helped to fund the headquarters of the Family Research Council, which is designated by the SPLC [Southern Poverty Law Center] as a hate group. And they’ve been involved in so many far-right organizations throughout the decades. And so what you have here in this second generation is kind of a sophistication of their operation and particularly in Betsy Prince, this kind of fusion of strategy, of money and a whole host of other things.

LGBTQ Nation: How does that manifest itself?

IJ: So this family is kind of the royal family of the Christian nationalist movement. And they set the example for how to move money throughout the right wing for all of the other really wealthy families. They participated in an annual gathering of Christian nationalist billionaires called The Gathering, in which Betsy DeVos is on tape coaching them in terms of how, as a wealthy person in this far-right movement, you move money to other things, and encouraging them to do so. There is religious extremism in their views, which is what’s driving a lot of this.

As well, all of the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies came out of the DeVos Center for Family and Religion that’s housed in the Heritage Foundation. People were moved from that center into the Trump administration where they began to disseminate these policies. I think that we have to keep in mind that Betsy DeVos is just the most visible person of this large, far-right billionaire clan that has been active for over 40 years.

LGBTQ Nation: How did DeVos end up as education secretary in the Trump Administration?

IJ: They didn’t know who to appoint to anything because their win was a surprise, right? So they were like, “What in the world are we going to do?” So they turned to Erik Prince. It’s gonna sound familiar, younger brother of Betsy. And he’s like, okay, we’ll get you linked up with the right people. And one, he clued them into his sister and, two, they went to the Heritage Foundation, and the Heritage Foundation said, “Boy, you know, this is actually what we’ve wanted to do for a really long time.”

And so it flows that the Heritage Foundation would recommend Betsy DeVos because their family is a longtime founder at that center and they know that she’s been really active in education and educational circles. And then they basically started to populate the entire administration with people recommended by a combination of the Heritage Foundation and Erik Prince and that’s literally how she got in the mix.

LGBTQ Nation: The DeVos family are adherents of Dominionism. What is that?

In Ecclesiastes, there is the charge to basically create theocracies that are based on kind of a real religious caste system. And so how do you do that? The way you do that is something called Dominionism. And that is to say that you seize the seven mountains of society, you gain control of those things. And once you have control of them, you can then move society towards this theocratic vision. And so what are some of the seven mountains? They’re business and finance, they’re education, they’re the media, arts, etc. So the charge for Betsy DeVos at this epic gathering in the early 2000s was to charge really wealthy people and billionaires to pick their mountain, and then focus on it. As people who have been told over and over and over that their wealth flows from the fact that they are chosen and special, you can see how they gravitate towards something like Dominionism, and they have. Their whole family has.

LGBTQ Nation: I’d like to zero in on one particular group as an example of one at the bottom of this organizational hierarchy. What can you tell us about Gays Against Groomers? It appeared out of nowhere about six months ago, fully formed and led by a woman named Jaimee Michell. Do you think it’s organic?

IJ: There’s very little on the right that’s organic. It’s really funny, because I have to explain this a lot to mainstream and even the liberal funders, where, you know, on the left, a lot of things are organic, and people just form them and then they get funded. A lot of times, what happens on the right is, they’ll say, “Who’s gonna start an organization that will do X?” And then someone raises their hand.

This is one of the things we’re going to document next year on the podcast, but one of the things that they do on the right is that they go out and they shop for people from the communities that they’re targeting who are willing to essentially carry the message that they want them to carry if they give them a large enough check. And so they will go out and they’ll look for a Jaimee Michell — this is not uncommon — they’ll be actively looking for these people online or elsewhere. And once they find them, they will either engage them or platform them or say, “Can we introduce you to other people?” and that’s literally how it gets started.

A lot of the TERFs that you see platformed, and TERF organizations, it’s all because the Heritage Foundation went and found them and put them on a panel, and after that, all those people began to be kind of off to the races in terms of their public voice and platforming and a whole host of other things.

LGBTQ Nation: It says very prominently on the Gays Against Groomers website that they’re “a 100% independent, self-funded nonprofit organization.”

IJ: They’re not an official 501(c)(3). I think they claim that. I don’t think there are any 990’s on them. So, to self-assert that you’re self-funded, without in any way showing that you’re self-funded, and the fact that they have so many people — I can look at it right now and say they have a budget of close to a million dollars? Or over a million dollars? So where did that come from? There’s not a million dollars-worth of Gays Against Groomers money in the gay community, right? It’s not an organic conversation. Whereas like, okay, Gays Against Guns. Can they go out and do a GoFundMe campaign amongst people, raise money? Yeah. There’s support for that. But no, there’s nothing organic about this. It reads to me like a slick version of the ex-gay organizations that were funded and founded by Focus on the Family in the 1980’s.

LGBTQ Nation: What’s in store for Season 2 of Anti-Trans Hate Machine?

IJ: We are focusing on the way that the right has manufactured a cultural and media debate about the validity and worthiness of trans people and trans kids, and then has gone on to weaponize that to justify both political and actual violence.

LGBTQ Nation: What do you mean by weaponize, exactly?

IJ: So, you create a conversation. It’s like what happened in the 1930s — and there’s nothing analogous to the Holocaust — but there is an analogy to how you got there as a society. And one of the things that happened in the 1930s is that they just started a conversation about the bad people that needed to be separated from Germany. And that conversation was actually started by the Nazis. Once that conversation had reached a certain level, they use it as justification — they weaponized it — to then begin this campaign of physical separation and then targeting. You create the conversation, and then you recognize the conversation that you created, in order to take the action that you really want to take.

How Drag Artists Became the Far Right’s Ultimate Villains

https://www.them.us/story/drag-gop-right-wing-attacks-explained

I wonder if the far right republican fascist hate drag because it is the opposite of what they are.   Drag is about exploring boundaries, about expressing yourself, about color and fun.  What is authoritarian fascism about?  doing what you are told, stay in the line, don’t be an individual, don’t be colorful, always fit nicely in the boxes.  Hugs

BY COLLEEN HAMILTON

Over the past year, the sense of safety and joy experienced at drag performances has been punctured and replaced.

“Baby, you’re a plaaaaaaastic bag,” sings the drag queen Per Sia, parodying Katy Perry’s “Firework” as reusable tote bags sail around a usually-silent library in San Francisco. The children around her delight in the chaos, hanging on to Sia’s every word. Between sermons on the importance of reducing plastic and loving yourself, the kids leap up, grab the floating tote bags, and begin to dance. Their bodies wiggle with glee as they experience the joy — costumes! music! dance! — of drag. 

The scene would be familiar to any kindergarten teacher: “It’s the play and pleasure of reading time, but dialed up a few notches,” says Harper Keenan, a Professor of Education and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia. Keenan is referring to Drag Story Hour, events where drag performers read, sing, and make crafts with children in schools, libraries, and bookstores across the country. 

Sia, who is an elementary school teacher, says that when she began performing for Drag Story Hours, “we would walk into schools and get treated like royalty.” Initially the opportunity to integrate her expertise in early childhood education with drag was a dream come true. It was a chance to embody her full humanity and show students that a world existed in which they could unapologetically be themselves, too.

 

Over the past year, however, that sense of safety and joy has been punctured and replaced with a miasma of fear and danger. A year ago, a sizeable backlash against the art form seemed an improbability, but this year, threats against drag performances across the country, including Drag Story Hours, have increased in number and hostility. In Oklahoma, a donut shop was fire-bombed for the second time this year after hosting a drag performance. In Nevada, a man identified as a member of the Proud Boys, a white nationalist group, interrupted a Drag Story Hour reading with a gun, forcing the children in attendance to flee for safety. And in California, a group of eight Proud Boys stormed into a library where drag performer Panda Dulce was reading to children. The men made white power hand gestures and hurtled homophobic and transphobic comments at Dulce, who was rushed out of the room, along with the children. According to several parents in attendance, the far-right protesters were traumatizing the children they claimed to want to protect. 

 

These are just some specific examples of a worsening trend. This already-horrific year, which saw at least 124 significant threats and protests against drag performances, according to a November report from GLAAD, was punctuated by immense tragedy on November 19, when a shooter killed five people during a “Drag Divas” night at Club Q in Colorado Springs. An art form that has provided LGBTQ+ people a sense of community for decades has been weaponized against them, and has forced drag queens to question what safety means in a culture intent on causing them harm. 

Per Sia courtesy of the artist.

Per Sia, courtesy of the artist.

The current string of attacks against drag performers is part of a broader movement by the far-right to demonize LGBTQ+ people, including by claiming they are “groomers” and “pedophiles,” and therefore a threat to young children. Across the media landscape, from Fox News host Tucker Carlson to the far-right podcast InfoWars, conservative pundits are increasingly perpetuating the dangerous, harmful lie that proximity to drag queens and trans and nonbinary people increases the likelihood of child abuse. 

 

Accounts like Libs of TikTok, a conservative social media account that has become notorious for anti-queer and anti-drag rhetoric, post videos making fun of LGBTQ+ people and drag performers without context or consent. The video has also been caught posting doctored videos that make it seem as if drag queens are performing sexually in front of children, even if the videos are blatantly false. Criminal investigators even believe that Libs of TikTok may have provoked the Proud Boys attack on Drag Story Hour in California. In a segment from October, Carlson, who has been a vocal supporter of the social media account, called on his three million nightly viewers to “arm” themselves against drag performers. This messaging has been dangerously effective: according to the Human Rights Campaign, there was a 406% increase in tweets using “groomer” or “pedophile” in the first six months of 2022. Tragically, there has been accompanying escalation of attacks on drag performers during the same period. 

 

“The LGBTQ+ community is constantly at the whim of disinformation and misinformation,” activist Raquel Willis wrote on Instagram the day after the Colorado Springs shooting. “Hateful politicians craft dangerous narratives about us and encourage the general public to continue to do the same. Ignorance is disgusting AF and we need to be vigilant about confronting it.”  

As Willis notes, these in-person acts of violence are often stoked — and, in some cases, engineered — by far-right politicians. Florida Governor Ron Desantis has stated that parents who bring children to drag shows should be investigated for child abuse. Florida Senator Marco Rubio even featured Lil Miss Hot Mess, a member of Drag Story Hour, in a reelection campaign video in which he claimed that the “radical left” seeks to “indoctrinate children and turn boys into girls.” These politicians foster a climate of fear in which hatred and misinformation proliferates. 

However, as many drag performers are quick to point out, this rhetoric obscures the fact that gender identity and drag are distinct, though sometimes overlapping, categories. Both cisgender men and transgender women, for example, can do drag. Crucially, though, “drag generally refers to a kind of consciously artistic performance intended for an audience. In contrast, trans people do not seek primarily to entertain,” wrote Keenan and Lil’ Miss Hot Mess in a June 2021 academic article about Drag Story Hour. 

According to Keenan, though, violence against drag queens is rooted in transmisogyny, or the intersection of transphobia and misogyny as experienced by trans women and transfeminine people. In videos such as Rubio’s, the phrase “turning boys into girls” exemplifies this trans and femme-phobic line of attack, and the underlying truth that the far-right’s goal is not simply to stop all-ages drag performances. It is to exploit transphobia for political points, no matter the cost to human life. 

In a year in which over 300 state bills have been introduced to curb LGBTQ+ student and teacher rights, what’s become clear is that a rising right-wing moral panic against LGBTQ+ people — including smearing drag performers as groomers, nonbinary children as mentally ill, and gender-affirming healthcare providers as pedophiles — has ensnared the drag community. Today, after Club Q, it’s become increasingly clear that this rhetoric has concrete, real-world ramifications. 

 
 
 
How Drag Artists Became the Far Right's Ultimate Villains
Guy Smallman/Getty Images

“It’s the scariest it’s ever been. I fear for my safety, even when I’m not doing Story Hour,” said Sia. The attacks have left many drag performers feeling torn between doing what they love and subjecting themselves to the possibility of violence, leading some drag queens to pause or stop their performances altogether. Programmers at one San Antonio music venue, were forced to cancel an entire season of drag performances due to violent threats. In North Carolina, when the power went out during a drag performance, performers said their immediate instinct was to listen for gunfire.  

Paradoxically, some experts believe that the far-right has taken such extreme steps against drag performances because drag has become so popular. The visibility of shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, drag brunches, and online drag personalities have enabled performers to share their unique vision of liberation—and millions of people have found that vision appealing. 

 

Drag Story Hours and family brunches, in particular, have helped LGBTQ+ youth feel accepted and seen. Keenan notes the surprising number of straight parents among attendees of drag story hours and brunches nationwide. “They’re looking for resources,” he says, to provide their children with a LGBTQ+ affirming space that they may not know how to cultivate at home. It is a chance to move past the rigid expectations of gender they were raised with, and offer their children something new.

 
 
 

All of this visibility comes at a cost. It has drawn attention to some of the most vulnerable members of the LGBTQ+ community, such as the trans, queer, and femme people of color who pioneered the “iconic” dance moves and looks we now associate with drag, without protection. “If what you really want is to target queerness and transness, then drag is a huge part of that. It’s a visible celebration of culture,” said the attorney Chase Strangio in a recent interview with The Atlantic.

How Drag Artists Became the Far Right's Ultimate Villains
Boston Globe/Getty Images

Indeed, in the midst of escalating fear and violence, drag performances continue to offer a unique form of celebration as resistance. This impulse toward new worlds was on full display during a recent prom for LGBTQ+ youth in Birmingham, Alabama. During the drag portion of the night, performer Sharon Cocx unexpectedly stopped in the middle of her set. 

“You can be anything you want to be. You can be president, you can change the world,” she told the crowd. After such a difficult year in the state — Alabama has passed some of the strictest anti-trans legislation in the country — it was a cathartic moment of release for the directly-impacted teens there. According to several people who attended the event, many were in tears by the end of the speech. This is drag’s unique power: to challenge the conditions of the present, and embody a longed-for future. 

 
 

The day after the attack in San Lorenzo, Per Sia had a performance a few miles away in Piedmont, CA. When she arrived at the library, half a dozen police officers were outside with their sirens on, “which was triggering in and of itself,” she said. Since many performers, like Sia, are queer people of color, the presence of police at performances can feel like a compounding of the violence they face, not an alleviation of it. As a result, organizers across the country have created safety plans rooted in abolitionist frameworks. These plans seek to keep children and performers safe without involving the police. 

 

As Sia entered the library, several staff members walked her through a hastily developed safety plan, which Sia had never experienced before. They walked up a claustrophobic flight of stairs. “If anything happens, I will bring you up here,” the librarian said, “Then go down this hall and hide under that desk. If anything happens, do not come out until you hear my voice.” In her decades of teaching children and performing drag, it was unlike anything Sia had experienced before. It was terrifying in a visceral, cruel way. 

“It was a hard pill to swallow,” she said, “but queer folks are resilient. We have always had to fight for our basic needs to be met, and simply to exist.” The performance took place in the library’s parking lot during a cloudless, blue summer day. The sunlight streamed over Sia as she read to the jam-packed crowd, who hung on her every word. Many had come to support Drag Story Hour in response to the previous day’s violence. “It was beautiful,” she said. “It really, really was.”   

Let’s talk about bias and narratives….

MAGA hits NEW LOW with SHAMEFUL Inhumane STUNT

On Christmas Eve, Radical Right Republican Texas Governor, Gregg Abbott, dropped off another 50 migrants in front of Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence. Meidas Contributor Texas Paul reacts to the MAGA Republican Disgusting act.

Libs Of TikTok Creator: DeSantis Offered Me Protection – JMG

Libs Of TikTok Creator: DeSantis Offered Me Protection

“When I was doxxed, someone from Ron DeSantis’s team called me. She said, ‘The governor wanted me to give you a message. If you don’t feel safe, if you need a place to go, to hide, to stay, you can come to the governor’s mansion.’

“She said, ‘We have a guest house for you, and you can stay as long as you need. I was almost in tears. He took time out of his extremely busy schedule to send someone to call me to make sure I’m safe.

“It was incredible, I don’t even have the words for it.” – Chaya Raichik, creator of the Twitter account LibsOfTikTok.

Buzzfeed News reports:

Raichik began posting content denigrating liberals on her personal social media accounts around April of 2020, but rebranded as Libs of TikTok a year later.

Raichik started by poking fun at Anthony Fauci, the country’s chief medical advisor at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Then she started spouting hate toward Black victims of police violence before repeatedly depicting queer and trans people as predators who endangered children.

Yesterday Raichik described LGBTQ people as members of an “evil cult” dedicated to grooming children.

Her so-called doxxing was merely being named by the Washington Post as the person behind the account that has incited violent and often armed extremists to protest outside of LGBTQ events.

It’s likely that the DeSantis flack who reached out to her was the viciously anti-LGBTQ Christina Pushaw, who was his spokesperson at the time.

 

Ninja0980a few seconds ago

When you have a Supreme Court that has made it clear it’s okay to declare open season on LGBT people, this is the result.

AyJayDee 5 minutes ago

I would add that the WaPo article identified her using publicly available information.

It’s really something, the way social media has helped make psychopaths and grifters more successful than they ever could have been in any previous era.

billbear1961 26 minutes ago

On WHAT does this evil bitch BASE anything she says but her own vile bigotry?! What gives her ANY authority or credibility to speak on ANY issue, let alone to slander, denounce, and DEMONIZE whole groups of people based on NOTHING but LIES and her malicious FEELINGS?! Why do the serious media refuse, in their role as the “Guardians of Democracy,” to call out and DENOUNCE the right-wing media for spreading hate propaganda, for indulging in stochastic terrorism?! Because that’s ALL this is, and it has NO PLACE in ANY forum that gives it wide exposure in a modern democratic society!

It belongs nowhere but the GUTTER PRESS, which all decent people and all true journalists regard with nothing but CONTEMPT! There is no difference between THIS and giving wide exposure to spokesmen from the KKK or the American Nazi Party! This is the same kind of rabid, dehumanizing defamation the Nazis engaged in against the Jews under Hitler. Those engaged in it and in enabling it, in helping it spread its POISON, should be DENOUNCED by every true journalist in this country, by everyone who holds the truth and the principles of genuine democracy dear! That it is NOT denounced, and roundly, is a clear sign of advanced decadence, of societal ROT!

Robert Conner   billbear196127 minutes ago

Fox Noise is the gutter press and what gives her authority is the Old Testament.

fuzzybits an hour ago

I never thought after the gains we’ve made in civil rights that we would slide backward so fast and without anything being done to these thugs. Find the shit on this bitch and all the other ones who would give her a voice.

Paddycakes2001 an hour ago

The folks in DeSantis Country can’t wait to get to you, Chaya, after they finish with the people you hate too.

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Houndentenor an hour ago

Typical. She labels innocent people as “groomers” but makes herself out to be the victim.

THE CAPE CUBSADER an hour ago edited

Then she started spouting hate toward Black victims of police violence before repeatedly depicting queer and trans people as predators who endangered children.

Yesterday Raichik described LGBTQ people as members of an “evil cult” dedicated to grooming children.

And THIS BITCH is Jewish!

heleninedinburgh   THE CAPE CUBSADER an hour ago

Did she complain about the fact that DeSantis’s state party is full of open neonazis? As in, not just fascists, but Holocaust deniers. No? Didn’t think so.

Swamp Yankeean hour ago

You know, I grew up never trusting authority figures… including anyone involved in politics. And throughout the years, I’ve tried to mellow my views on that. But, boy-o-boy, I never thought we’d see elected officials sink this fucking low. I mean, it was one thing when they just completely ignored the AIDS crisis, but now elected Republicans are openly, gleefully, and without any blowback, ginning up maniacs to go out and murder us. And the elected officials on the left just kinda go, “Man, this awful. I’ll write a strongly worded kumbaya tweet about this, and that’ll be my due diligence.”

 

Starting its four-night Florida tour, ‘A Drag Queen Christmas’ triggers state investigation

Starting its four-night Florida tour, ‘A Drag Queen Christmas’ triggers state investigation
The Fort Lauderdale show at the Broward Center was the first of four performances around the state.

The 2022 Florida debut of “A Drag Queen Christmas” in Fort Lauderdale has triggered a state investigation, according to a tweet from the account of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Press Secretary.

The show went on in Miami’s James L. Knight Center Tuesday night — with limited tickets still available — and was scheduled to hit the heights in Orlando and Clearwater for successive nights. But it might be coming to the attention of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, according to a statement from the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR).

DBPR “is aware of multiple complaints about a sexually explicit performance marketed to children held in Fort Lauderdale on December 26. The Department is actively investigating this matter, including video footage and photographs from the event,” said the statement that Bryan Griffin tweeted.

“Exposing children to sexually explicit activity is a crime in Florida, and such action violates the Department’s licensing standards for operating a business and holding a liquor license.”

According to the traveling production’s website, Dragfans.com, the show has been going on for eight years. And, on the site’s “Past Tours” page, the show has made stops in Florida for five different Christmases, according to the posters displayed there.

 

The production company says that “all ages” are welcome at its shows, as does the website advertising the Orlando show. But the site listing all the tour stops does say potential patrons might be barred depending on local regulations.

Miami’s show, for example, is advertised with the caveat, “Adult content. Recommended for audiences — 18+.  Minors must be accompanied by an adult.” In Clearwater, it says that only those older than 18 will be admitted to Ruth Eckerd Hall for the performance.

Critics of the show tweeted videos showing a full house in the Broward Center for the Performing Arts Monday night. And the Dec. 22 event in Knoxville, Tennessee, was sold out, according to Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson’s Twitter account.

The controversy is reminiscent of a July complaint about a drag queen brunch put on at R House Wynwood after a video surfaced showing a toddler dancing with a drag queen. Statements from Gov. Ron DeSantis indicated the venue’s liquor license was at risk for the same issue.

The current status of the investigation was unavailable Tuesday, but the restaurant’s website seems to indicate that the drag brunch is still happening Saturday and Sunday with four seatings.

 

In July, DeSantis said his criticism of the drag brunch’s entertainment is part of his fight for Florida to be “where kids can be kids.” That includes efforts to pass the Parental Rights in Education law, which more closely regulates schoolhouse discussions.

Libs Of TikTok calls LGBTQ+ people ‘evil’ in chilling Fox News interview

Libs Of TikTok calls LGBTQ+ people ‘evil’ in chilling Fox News interview

With these haters / bigots lying and making things up along with projection is the standard way they do stuff.   They claim the other side is promoting violence while they get the Proud Boys to attack drag queen events.   They claim the other side is full of hate while they call the LGBTQ+ evil.  Another thing she claims unnamed studies that find parents find they are unable to stop their kids from being trans or non-binary, implying that laws and the left are blocking the wishes of good god loving parents to take care of their kids. The truth is parents cannot stop their kids from being born with a different gender than assigned at birth or being born non-binary but that is how they are when they are born!   These people who push the idea that people can be converted to a gender are the same people who support the totally debunked idea of conversion therapy for sexual orientation.    Hugs

A still of Chaya Raichik, LibsOfTikTok founder, on Fox New wearing a pink top and smiling

LibsOfTikTok founder Chaya Raichik has regularly made false and misleading comments about teachers and children’s hospitals. (YouTube)

Libs Of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik has said LGBTQ+ people are “grooming children” and are “evil” in a disturbing Fox News interview.

 

Raichik, the figure behind the virulently anti-LGBTQ+ Twitter account known for encouraging pile-ons and spreading misinformation, elaborated on her belief that the LGBTQ+ community is a “cult” in an interview with host Tucker Carlson.

In the hour-long interview, Raichik and Carlson discussed her since-debunked claim that certain children’s hospitals were performing hysterectomies on trans teenagers.

Carlson asked Raichik if she had any “theories” about what was going on with “evil” people who offer affirming care to minors.

Raichik replied: “The LGBTQ community has become this cult and it’s so captivating, and it pulls people in so strongly, unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”

 

She went on to claim LGBTQ+ people “brainwash” others to “join” their movement and that it’s “really, really hard to get out of it”.

Raichik also referred to unnamed “studies” on parents who find they cannot stop their children from being trans or non-binary.

The logo of the controversial media pages Libs of TikTok.
Libs of TikTok has over 1.5 million followers and received several temporary suspensions and a permanent suspension from TikTok. (@libsoftiktok/Twitter)

She said the situation is “unlike anything we’ve ever seen”, adding that it’s “extremely poisonous”.

Carlson asked Raichik if she sees a “spiritual component to any of this”, adding: “I don’t think this makes sense at all.”

“No, it doesn’t make any sense and I think – I think they’re evil,” Raichik replied.

“And sometimes we try to break it down a lot and we discuss why this is happening, what’s happening and whatever, and I think sometimes the simplest answer is, they’re just evil.

“They’re bad people. They’re just evil people, and they want to groom kids. They’re recruiting.”

Libs Of TikTok refers to LGBTQ+ people as ‘groomers’

This is far from the first time Raichik has shared anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric; through her Libs Of TikTok social media accounts, she has pushed false and misleading comments about teachers, medical providers and children’s hospitals.

Since the account first came to prominence, Raichik has described people who teach children about gender and sexuality as “groomers”. She has also used her platform to hit out at all-age drag shows.

Her most controversial moment came when she claimed Boston Children’s Hospital was performing hysterectomies on trans minors. In the weeks after she publicised her since-debunked claims, staff faced death threats and the hospital was targeted with two anonymous bomb threats.

Raichik originally tried to keep her identity a secret, but her real name was eventually revealed by the Washington Post.

The right has a hot new legal theory to destroy LGBTQ+ rights

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/12/right-hot-new-legal-theory-destroy-lgbtq-rights/

I would like to point out a couple things from the article.   Unsurprisingly, conservatives like the ways things looked in the 18th century a lot more than they do today, so originalism has been a handy way of bending the law rightward.   Also there is this part, They include “respect for the authority of rule and of rulers,” “respect for the hierarchies needed for society to function,” and most frighteningly, “a candid willingness to ‘legislate morality’—indeed, a recognition that all legislation is necessarily founded on some substantive conception of morality, and that the promotion of morality is a core and legitimate function of authority.”   It is a short informative article describing what the Christian right is willing to do to get to the point that they can tell everyone how to live.  Hugs

For an increasingly fervent and authoritarian-minded group, originalism is no longer good enough.
 
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The attributes of the court of justice. 3d render - Illustration
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The Federalist Society – the right-wing legal group that Donald Trump made the selection committee for his judicial appointees – has had a lot of success peeling back LGBTQ+ rights by promoting the doctrine of originalism. Originalism tests laws on the principle of whether the nation’s founders intended the Constitution to be interpreted in a particular way. Unsurprisingly, conservatives like the ways things looked in the 18th century a lot more than they do today, so originalism has been a handy way of bending the law rightward.

The apotheosis of originalism was the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. The majority decision included a tour of legal theory about abortion dating back not just to the founding of this country but 13th century England. 

However, for an increasingly fervent and authoritarian-minded group, originalism is no longer good enough. They want something more direct. That’s where a new legal theory, “common good constitutionalism,” comes in.

Common good constitutionalism is, in essence, the right wing deciding how to use the law to impose its view of the world on U.S. citizens. Harvard Law Professor Adrian Vermeule, the most prominent advocate for the idea, describes it slightly differently, of course. In a 2020 essay in The Atlantic, he relies heavily upon the “substantive moral principles that conduce to the common good, principles that officials (including, but by no means limited to, judges) should read into the majestic generalities and ambiguities of the written Constitution.”

However, that list of principles is, in many ways, antithetical to what many Americans think of as liberty. They include “respect for the authority of rule and of rulers,” “respect for the hierarchies needed for society to function,” and most frighteningly, “a candid willingness to ‘legislate morality’—indeed, a recognition that all legislation is necessarily founded on some substantive conception of morality, and that the promotion of morality is a core and legitimate function of authority.”

As Politico points out in a profile of the idea, the ramifications are radical: “the Constitution empowers the government to pursue conservative political ends, even when those ends conflict with individual rights as most Americans understand them.”

The theory would allow the right to achieve most of its goals through the courts without worrying about precedent. That includes banning marriage equality outright.

Common good constitutionalism is emerging as a hot idea because some right-wing legal eagles are worried that originalism won’t be good enough to destroy decades of advances enabled by more liberal courts. They want to jumpstart the revolution now, and they need a legal fig leaf to do it.

While the debate may seem academic, the implications are not. It’s especially worrisome that the philosophy is popular among a particular segment of young lawyers, particularly conservative Catholics.

“These are the things that people are talking about in FedSoc chapters all over the place,” one law student from Georgetown Universityt told Politico, using shorthand for the Federalist Society. “I think our generation is a lot more open to it than the older generation.”

What turbocharged the debate about common good constitutionalism was the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County. In that case, the majority ruled that an LGBTQ+ employee cannot be fired under federal civil rights law. That decision sent the right into orbit and provided momentum for a theory that would ensure them victory no matter what the law said.

Whether common good constitutionalism supplants originalism remains to be seen. But the idea that it can impose the society it wants through its own interpretation of “the common good” is a sign of just how far the right has moved toward authoritarianism. One thing is sure: They will never give up their attempt to eliminate LGBTQ+ rights. Marriage equality would just be the first step.

 
 

Libs Of TikTok Owner: LGBTQs Are In An “Evil Cult”

Libs Of TikTok Owner: LGBTQs Are In An “Evil Cult”

“There’s something so unique about — the LGBTQ community has become this cult and it’s so captivating and it pulls people in so strongly unlike anything we’ve ever seen and they brainwash people to join.

“And they convince them of all these things and it’s really, really hard to get out of it. It’s really difficult.

“I think they’re evil. And sometimes we try to break it down a lot and we discuss why this is happening, what’s happening, whatever, and I think sometimes the simplest answer is they’re just evil.

“They’re bad people. They’re evil people. And they want to groom kids. They’re recruiting.” – Chaya Raichik, owner of LibsOfTikTok, the Twitter account that has spawned violent and armed protests at LGBTQ events.

 

Raising_Rlyeh5 hours ago

She’s fucking Jewish and has no problem spreading what is essentially blood libel against lgbtq people

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