The republicans are on a non-stop attack on her, but she is correct. They just don’t like that her message is the truth, and it is correct. Hugs. Scottie
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) chokes up while condemning the resolution to censure her that the House is considering:
“Speaking up to save lives, Mr. Chair, no matter faith, no matter ethnicity, should not be controversial in this chamber.” pic.twitter.com/4ob7W6NZIB
I am seriously getting tired, scared, and very worried that these terrorist groups can operate openly spewing hate with impunity. This is incitement to committed violence and terrorism. And the right wing fascist fundamentalist Christians groups love these actions, as they are looking forward to a time of legal moral police and the Christian Taliban church doctrine enforcers. This is domestic terrorism.
noun
The use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.
Resort to terrorizing methods as a means of coercion, or the state of fear and submission produced by the prevalence of such methods.
The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode of government by terror or intimidation.
Brookings, South Dakota. A university LGBTQ+ group is hit with a flood of hate mail, culminating in a bomb threat that terrifies students.
San Lorenzo, California. A drag queen story hour is one of several Pride events across the country stormed by suspected members of the extremist street gang the Proud Boys. The men shout homophobic slurs and threats, and a performer hides in a back room, waiting for police to arrive.
Philadelphia. Boston. Pittsburgh. Washington, D.C. Akron, Ohio. Threats hit hospitals and medical clinics, and some temporarily evacuate their patients while law enforcement assesses the danger.
Then comes summer and fall 2023, at least two dozen public schools and libraries start receiving bomb threats. In California, Colorado, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, they cancel classes and evacuate students.
These cases, and many more, share a common link: The victim of each threat had also been targeted, in the days before, by the enormously popular conservative social media channel Libs of TikTok.
In almost every case, the perpetrator of the threat is unknown, and Chaya Raichik, the far-right influencer who runs Libs of TikTok, says she opposes violence, and that because there have been almost no arrests, there’s no proof the threats come from her followers.
Numerous news reports have covered individual threats, noting the target had also been mentioned by Libs of TikTok. But the new analysis of years of tweets, including archives of many Raichik has since deleted, shows the pattern is more extensive and pervasive than has been previously known – and that threats, specifically against schools, have ratcheted up significantly in the past two months.
Media Matters used searches of published news reports to help identify more than 30 possible threat incidents. USA TODAY verified bomb, death and other threats in more than two dozen cases.
The research most likely undercounts the total number of cases. Other threats may never be reported to police or the media, and some targets are reluctant to publicize their plight for fear of drawing even more harassment.
As Libs of TikTok’s reach has expanded – the account now has more than 2.6 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter – so, too, has the frequency and ferocity of the threats that follow Raichik’s posts.
Hospitals have been evacuated; schools and libraries have cleared classrooms and canceled lessons while police officers search for bombs. Bookstores, Pride parades, cafes, even a dog rescue center, have had to lock down for fear of reprisals – and violence.
“We can only insulate ourselves from what’s happening on social media for so long,” said Ari Drennen, LGBTQ+ program director for Media Matters. “In a country where so many people have the ability to take things into their own hands, that’s a very real worry.”
Libs of TikTok: A far-right force driving the conversation and fueling outrage
The @LibsofTikTok Twitter handle was created in April 2021 by Raichik, a former Brooklyn real estate agent who grew up in Los Angeles.
Raichik created the account to “raise awareness about the situation in America,” she told USA TODAY. “There’s a clear pattern of the sexualization of children going on in public schools, and I think that’s a problem,” she said. “I think it’s super harmful, and I want to call it out, and raise awareness to it.”
The account has become a creator of, and a force multiplier for, right-wing outrage, particularly on LGBTQ+ issues. On X it has been amplified by the platform’s owner Elon Musk, and a hive of conservative politicians, media personalities and far-right online influencers, including former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and podcaster Joe Rogan.
For 2½ years, the account has posted a drumbeat of videos, photographs and links, often featuring TikTok or Instagram videos recorded by progressive leftists, accompanied by a derisive comment from Raichik.
Like most social media influencers, Raichik doesn’t produce all the content she tweets about. Libs of TikTok regularly shares videos and posts created by other far-right accounts, often with inaccuracies, misinformation and thinly veiled hatred mixed in.
But while those other accounts may have a smaller reach, once Libs of TikTok chooses a target, the viral response can quickly spin out of control.
Once Raichik posts something, “it just gets amplified to an order of magnitude larger audience,” said Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic who has been openly critical of Libs of TikTok. “Any tweet she puts out gets – instantly – millions of views and potentially tens of thousands of retweets and likes. So it gets wide dissemination.”
Shortly after – media reports and interviews show – is when the threats often begin.
Hospitals receive threats after Libs of TikTok posts
In Spring 2022, Raichik began directing her audience toward doctors, hospitals and medical facilities that provide care to LGBTQ+ patients, especially children.
On March 16, 2022, Libs of TikTok targeted Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Oregon, part of the Oregon Health and Science University’s health system, for providing gender-affirming care to youth. Almost immediately, the hospital and its staff started receiving harassment and threats.
“The harassing calls, emails and other messages that OHSU received in March 2022 objected to gender-affirming health care. Most of these messages cited social media posts that contained inaccurate or misleading information about life-saving and medically necessary care for gender-diverse patients,” reads a hospital statement provided to USA TODAY. “OHSU and its staff continue to be subjected to anti-transgender harassment today.”
By the summer, Raichik focused on Boston Children’s Hospital.
From Aug. 11 to 15, 2022, Libs of TikTok tweeted about the hospital at least seven times, Media Matters found. In one post, Raichik shared a debunked – but wildly popular – video claiming the hospital was performing hysterectomies on children.
Almost immediately, far-right message-boards and Twitter caught fire, with one poster threatening to “start executing these ‘doctors.’” On Aug. 16, the official Twitter feed for Boston Children’s Hospital posted a statement saying it had “been the target of a large volume of hostile internet activity, phone calls and harassing emails, including threats of violence towards our clinicians and staff.”
The statement specifically cited the false video about hysterectomies as the driver of the campaign.
The next day, Aug. 17, the local U.S. attorney announced an investigation into the threats and a month later, federal agents arrested 37-year-old Catherine Leavy, charging her with making a false bomb threat against the hospital. Leavy pleaded guilty in September and faces up to 10 years in prison.
But the Libs of TikTok tweets against healthcare workers continued unabated.
On Sept. 18, 2022, the account posted about gender-affirming care at Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio. The online abuse got so bad, the hospital had to take down a section of its website.
A few days later, on Sept. 21 it was the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s turn, when Libs of TikTok posted about the hospital’s efforts to help parents of transgender children. The hospital soon reported increasing its security because of threats to staff.
And it’s not just big institutions; Libs of TikTok has also targeted individual doctors.
Last October, Raichik posted a video of Dr. Katherine Gast, co-director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s UW Health gender services program, describing gender-affirming operations. The backlash was swift, with thousands of Twitter accounts sharing the post, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
The subsequent harassment campaign against Gast was “scary and overwhelming,” she told NBC News.
“The followers of Libs of TikTok and Ted Cruz lied about my practice to stir up outrage, doxxed me and my family, and my clinic is receiving harassing phone calls,” she told the network.
‘They want to become famous’
Asked for her reaction to the established pattern of harassment that follows her tweets, Raichik has a simple – and standard – response: She’s merely reposting what institutions and individuals have already, themselves, chosen to put out to the world on social media, she says.
“If an individual posts publicly on TikTok, the goal of TikTok is to get views,” Raichik said. “That’s why people post on TikTok – they want to become famous, they want clicks, views.”
But Raichik doesn’t just repost other people’s content.
First, her posts almost always include some kind of commentary. One in October, for example, featured an Instagram video of a New York music teacher, joyfully waving a Progress Pride flag while the message “Happy National Coming Out Day – Black, Gay and Thriving” appears at the bottom of the screen. “An actual elementary school teacher in NY,” reads Raichik’s comment on the video.
That teacher told USA TODAY that while he had not been aware Libs of TikTok posted his video, he had seen an immediate surge of hate mail. “I’m so mortified by this!” Eric Williamson said via email. “I have seen an increase of nasty messages on my post this week and wondered why.”
Other posts either directly or indirectly encourage Libs of TikTok’s followers to contact the original poster directly. In a post last April for example, Raichik sarcastically told her followers “definitely do not keep up the pressure” on a school district in Oregon that supported transgender students using their chosen pronouns. Asked about that post, she acknowledged it was a call to action, but only to “tag” or mention the account on social media. “I’ve done that a couple times, where I told people to tag accounts on Twitter,” she said. “That is nowhere near telling people to call in bomb threats.”
Libs of TikTok also doesn’t post solely public material.
Posts regularly include clandestine photos and videos that have been sent to Raichik or her network, presumably without the permission of a hospital, school clinic or library.
And some of the material she posts is doctored or fake – something Raichik acknowledged in her interview with USA TODAY. In April 2022, she reposted photographs and claims purporting to show an elementary school teaching children about a lifestyle some people believed depicts a fetish for animal costumes. The original post was an easily debunked hoax, and Raichik later deleted her tweet.
“I deleted it, and actually it taught me a lot, because now I’m much more careful in vetting everything,” Raichik told USA TODAY. “But yes, that is one example, I’ll admit, of a story that wasn’t true.”
Early this year, Raichik said, she deleted all of her prior tweets from 2022 and 2021 – an act she called a “one-time editorial decision.” She wouldn’t elaborate on her reasoning.
In recent months, Raichik, who calls herself a journalist, has begun labeling certain posts as “Scoops” – indicating they contain original reporting that nobody else has published, including the targets of her posts.
She told USA TODAY she is increasingly filing requests under public records law, with the hope of revealing previously unknown information. That’s a shift away from her original brand – the idea that she just posts videos the “libs,” themselves, already made.
Whatever her intention, Raichik has clearly spent recent months focused on one target: public schools.
Libs of TikTok turns its attention to schools
In at least 12 cases in the past two years, Libs of TikTok posts about schools, school districts and teachers have been followed by bomb threats, Media Matters found – often multiple bomb threats against the same location.
Most of these happened in the past two months.
Since Aug. 21, Media Matters tallied, and USA TODAY confirmed, there have been at least 25 bomb threats against schools, libraries, school administration buildings and universities after Libs of TikTok posts.
On Aug. 21, Libs of TikTok posted about a public library in Davis, California, where staff refused to allow a group to continue a public presentation. During a speech about transgender athletes, the speakers broke library rules by repeatedly referring to them as “biological males.” Libs of TikTok then tweeted a video of the confrontation, which has been viewed more than 1.4 million times and liked by 20,000 accounts.
The library almost immediately received bomb threats, and had to close temporarily, according to local media reports and the local police. And though the event was at a public library, the Davis Joint Unified School District also then received at least five bomb threats, and district staff stated publicly that their personal information was posted online. The FBI are assisting local authorities in investigating.
“The County of Yolo unequivocally condemns hate crimes and incidents that have cast their shadows over our vibrant community,” Dwight Coddington, a spokesman for Yolo County, which includes Davis, told USA TODAY. “Hate crimes and incidents have no place in Yolo County.”
In recent weeks, similar bomb threats have been made following Libs of TikTok tweets about schools in Oklahoma, Iowa, Massachusetts, Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado, Washington and Oregon.
Despite the steady, and increasing, drumbeat of bomb threats against the very public schools and libraries her posts have targeted, Raichik said she was not convinced Libs of TikTok is connected to these harassment campaigns.
Schools, hospitals and other public institutions get bomb threats all the time, she told USA TODAY.
“It’s possible that some of these bomb threats were not even real bomb threats, you know,” she said. “Why are these bomb threats – the ones that are allegedly coming after my tweets – why are those making it to the news, while others aren’t?”
Two school security experts told USA TODAY that many schools do, indeed, receive more bomb threats than the public might realize. But victims and experts say the pattern of threats following Raichik’s posts shows more than just coincidental timing.
At the Cherry Creek School District in Arapahoe County, Colorado, for example, a local media station received a threat in September claiming multiple bombs had been placed at three schools and two administration buildings. The buildings, including a day care center, were evacuated.
The day before, Cherry Creek had been the subject of a Libs of TikTok blog post claiming the district kept “pornographic” books in elementary school libraries. The Libs of TikTok post ended with a call to readers to contact the district.
Almost immediately, the district was inundated with thousands of harassing phone calls, emails and social media posts. Then came the bomb threat.
In a letter to parents, the district superintendent, Chris Smith directly connected the threat to “bullying” and homophobic views expressed about the LGBTQ+ books on social media.
“The attacks from last week were driven by hate and have no place in our schools,” he wrote.
Ken Trump, a former Federal Protective Service officer and author who runs a school safety consultancy, said he’d be very surprised if the recent string of threats immediately following Libs of TikTok posts had happened by chance.
“I’ve seen some coincidences in my years doing this work, but that would be a really big one,” Trump said.
Libs of TikTok targets Pride events
Alyssa Gonzales was standing in her parents’ kitchen when she got the phone call late last November: A bomb threat had been made against the South Dakota State University Gender and Sexualities Alliance, where Gonzales volunteered and now serves as president.
Gonzales’ parents knew something was up.
Her father quizzed her about the call, and Gonzales’ reaction to it. The 19-year old took a deep breath. She had never told her parents she was gay. Now, she couldn’t wait any longer.
She came out to her family, explaining she had become heavily involved with LGBTQ+ causes at SDSU, and that she and her colleagues were now the target of a bomb threat.
The chain of events had begun a few days earlier, when Libs of TikTok reposted a video of a drag queen dressed in an outfit designed to make the wearer appear naked. The tweet claimed the video was from a “family friendly” drag show hosted by SDSU’s Gender and Sexualities Alliance.
It wasn’t.
The clip was actually from the previous year’s drag event, at which no children were present. But that didn’t stop the outrage. Replies to the tweet flooded in. The university began fielding hundreds of hateful and threatening emails, and eventually the bomb threat that led to Gonzales’ untimely coming out to her parents and grandparents.
The threats didn’t stop Gonzales and her colleagues at the college. Instead, in an act of defiance, they like to read out some of the more bizarre messages in ridiculous voices at their meetings.
“It feels like, ‘Oh, we’ve made it, we’re making news, and people are going to notice us.’” Gonzales said. “And if they notice us, then we can talk more, too – we can still say that, despite all this, we’re here, we’re queer, we’re out, and we’re proud.”
Other activists and performers across the country have also taken the threats in their stride.
Panda Dulce, a drag queen from the San Francisco Bay Area, hosted the event at the San Lorenzo library in summer of last year. It had been targeted by Libs of TikTok tweet, then was disrupted by a group of men wearing black and gold – the colors of the extremist group the Proud Boys. The men shouted homophobic slurs at Dulce as she tried to read to children, she said.
“They called me a ‘pedophile,’” Dulce wrote in an email to USA TODAY.
Dulce said the men made direct threats at her safety. “It was clear I was the target and focus of their attack,” she wrote.
But more than a year later, Dulce said she can’t let hate win.
“I still lead Story Hours,” she wrote. “I will not stop simply because some hobbyless extremists decided to cosplay Call Of Duty and throw a tantrum in a shameless grab for attention.”
For Gonzales, despite the bomb threat incident forcing her to come out to her family, the process went really well, she said. Her parents were loving and accepting, open and embracing – and all the more so given the hostility they knew their daughter was facing.
“They were very understanding,” she said. “They don’t get everything, but they’re still accepting.”
what a thing to wake up to, a morning news feed about a man who was helpful, involved, loving, caring, preached acceptance and caring for others. He worked hard in the community, helping the best he could during crises. He had something he did that was found out, something he said he did as a hobby With his wife in the privacy of their own home and on social media under a pseudonym. It involved only them from all the stories I have read and I want to read more of them but first I want to share what hate has caused. The online accounts were not offensive or harmful, just someone role playing a part of themselves online. Talking with others who had the same interests and feelings, not harmful to anyone.
See what happen next was due to hate and intolerance. Refusing to see the good of someone, of who they are, because they are different from you in some way you don’t like. Hatred of them not because they harmed you but don’t live just as you do.
Bubba like to dress up as a woman. I must say he looked really good as a woman. He smiled more as a woman than when dressed as a man. But several anti-LGBTQIA hate groups claimed he was a drag queen or trans and to them all drag queens / trans people no matter how much good they do are evil, are sin, need to be erased from society. For something that did not affect / or effect them in any way except, someone was a bit different and enjoyed doing something a bit different from what the anti-trans haters did. These people made it a point to try to turn the community against this good man. They doxed him, exposed his private life to the public, pictures of him in drag, all his home information was doxed to a country wide network of haters who went to work online. The contacted other Baptist organizations to rile up dislike and hate, to get the main church bodies to turn against his smaller church in an attempt to get him removed as pastor. They claimed publicly in meetings and online that he was unfit to lead the community he had been doing so for so long and well. They tried to create an angry outraged mob to attack this man and make his life hell on earth. Just because he put on a dress, a wig, and make up. He had social media accounts in the female persona and according to what I read they were not offensive in any way. That was his sin. That was his great crime. The result they got was he took his own life. He killed himself due directly to them, the haters, the anti-drag, the anti-trans. Are they happy now? Do they think by removing someone who cared about others and worked hard to help his community is better not being there? What did they gain except spreading hate and hardship? What about the surviving members of his family, his wife, his three children, all the others? What has this great religious purge gave them, except more hardship, the loss of a loved one, grief? Yes that is what their hate brings, grief. They spread it thick, far, and wide. That is what their hate does. Don’t help them, please don’t help them. Love, acceptance, tolerance, patience with, for, and to others is what we need to spread. And trust me it will not be a one way street. Hugs. Scottie
Below I will post several videos I have seen. I ask you to please watch them if you can, and to read the Joe My god story and the comments. Best wishes, hopes for a better future for all of us when the hate stops. Hugs
The Alabama Policy Institute is an anti-LGBTQ hate group that has appeared here many times for its lawsuits against same-sex marriage and for its support of Alabama’s leading anti-LGBTQ figure, former Alabama Supreme Court justice and US Senate candidate Roy Moore. They last appeared here in 2021 when they joined a lawsuit to block an LGBTQ rights ordinance in Alabama’s capital. 1819 News takes its name from the year Alabama became a state.
This didn’t have to happen.
After @1819News published pictures of Smith Station Mayor Bubba Copeland wearing women’s clothes and makeup, the official took his own life. https://t.co/Drp0CKTHn2
BREAKING: Alabama mayor and pastor Bubba Copeland commits suicide just days after a conservative news outlet with close ties to Steve Bannon and Breitbart published private photos of him wearing women’s clothing.
Copeland addressed his Baptist congregation on Wednesday night, stating that he was the victim of an “internet attack” and declaring, “Yes, I have taken pictures with my wife in the privacy of our home in an attempt of humor because I know I’m not a handsome man nor a beautiful woman either. I apologize for any embarrassment caused by my private, personal life that has come publicly.”
Unfortunately, bigoted Baptist leaders in Alabama issued a damming statement saying they had “become aware of the alleged unbiblical behavior.”
Today, Copeland took his own life, according to police. They did not release any further details. One of his close friends responded to the tragic news by declaring, “I am so angry right now and heartbroken. I witnessed a good man be publicly ridiculed and crucified over the last few days…to the point that he just took his own life today. I knew he was suffering so I reached out to him yesterday and offered him support and encouragement. He was appreciative and acknowledged that he had been going through some “dark days” over the last few days. I just want to ask you people who thought it humorous to publicly ridicule him, ‘Are you happy now?’ What crime did he commit?”
Other friends of Copeland noted that he didn’t hold bigoted views “toward transgender people or people who enjoy cross-dressing,” so there was simply no need for the conservative news outlet to out him.
The mayor of an Alabama town and pastor of a local church killed himself after a right-wing news website called 1819 News (praised by Steve Bannon) cruelly doxxed him as transgender.https://t.co/qE3uWogGGT
This pastor committed suicide not too far from here today.
We must end LGBTQ+ persecution.
ARTICLE: The secret life of Smiths Station Mayor and Baptist pastor F.L. 'Bubba' Copeland as a 'transgender curvy girl': 'It’s a hobby I do to relieve stress' https://t.co/WedLbd5vFJ
There’s a story making the rounds about an Alabama preacher/mayor who secretly dresses in drag and adopts the persona of a trans woman on social media.
The secret life of Smiths Station Mayor and Baptist pastor F.L. 'Bubba' Copeland as a 'transgender curvy girl': 'It’s a hobby I do to relieve stress' #alpolitics By @CraigMonger1819https://t.co/TBul39wPW8
Read the full article. As you can see below, homocon extremist Andy Ngo and the far-right hate group Gays Against Groomers are celebrating.
Drag Queen who goes by “Pickle” DENIED entrance to Drag Queen Story Hour at San Fernando Valley Public Library by protestors pic.twitter.com/YGVNrKs9JY
The jerk below is a well known right wing agitator who used to make stuff up about BLM protestors to try to promote anger at them and black people. I watched the video in which he claims people of color stopped the performance yet in the video all the people are white. Hugs
A children’s drag event at the San Fernando Library featuring Pickle the drag queen was shut down at a peaceful protest on Oct. 25. Parents of color surrounded the front of the library, preventing Pickle the drag queen from coming inside to perform. The drag event was organized… https://t.co/5ZKvFcGEXEpic.twitter.com/8qLQ2UIMD1
Angry protesters outside a San Fernando library block Drag Laureate Pickle from a Drag Storytime event inside. Now, local leaders are taking to social media to condemn the protests and support the drag events. The new controversy – Tonight at 11 from ABC7 https://t.co/7I37pYARrwpic.twitter.com/k9uiThT9AP
The cops around where I live are known for their indifference to gay people despite this being a town heavily populated by gays. This place is sick with hypocrisy
About six to eight protesters refused to leave the entrance even after police issued a dispersal order, according to Pickle.
How many did they arrest after the order was disobeyed? None.
Conclusion: It’s okay to ignore orders from police if you’re illegally blocking a public building’s entrance/exit, though maybe it’s a special rule that only applies to fascists protesting a person in costume reading to children.
Could any of them give a reason why those kids, whose parents approved and were in attendance, should have decisions made for them by some other party who doesn’t know them?
Recently on Jill’s blog we were talking about people who claim they speak for the majority when in fact they only speak for their bigoted hateful group. In the article Rowling claims that almost everyone agrees with her, even as famous people that she has worked withcondemned her words. Here is another quote from the article. Here Rowling used the common TERF argument that granting trans people rights somehow puts cis women in danger. In reality, trans folks are the ones in danger due to dangerous rhetoric like Rowling’s. The Williams Institute found that trans people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime. I find it ironic that people who actively stir up hate and anger at trans women claim to be victims, and that it is unfair when people push back on their message. Hugs. Scottie
Poor people can’t be expected to lead her movement.
Anti-trans author JK Rowling made a surprise appearance this week at the anti-trans FiLia Women’s Conference. It is thought to be the Harry Potter author’s first public appearance discussing her anti-trans views.
Rowling spoke alongside known TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) Julie Bindel on a panel about sexism and bullying. She said she felt her wealth gave her a duty to speak out against trans folks in the name of protecting women and girls.
School board candidate Derrick Wilburn has a plan for Colorado Springs, and it’s apparently very anti-LGBTQ+.
“I will always be able to feed my family,” Rowling reportedly stated.”I’ve looked around and realized that it has to be someone who can take the hit. And it has to be me. I can afford it.”
Rowling also claimed that “This has never been about trans rights.”
“This is about women’s rights and activists’ demands to dismantle those rights,” she said. “I have nothing but profound sympathy for trans women who have experienced male violence. I want trans people to be safe. I just don’t want women and girls to be any less safe.”
Here Rowling used the common TERF argument that granting trans people rights somehow puts cis women in danger. In reality, trans folks are the ones in danger due to dangerous rhetoric like Rowlings. The Williams Institute found that trans people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime.
FiLia reportedly left Rowling out of the program to avoid a trans rights protest outside the venue. The conference had already been temporarily canceled after trans activists, led by the group Glasgow Trans Rally, pressured the venue to do so, arguing in a statement that “dangerously transphobic” conferences like FiLia “legitimize debates around trans lives as an area of concern for women and pit trans rights against women’s rights,” as reported byThe Herald.
While the venue initially sided with the trans rights protestors, it reinstated the conference after FiLia threatened legal action. Nevertheless, about 70 protestors demonstrated outside the venue, chanting, “Say it loud, say it clear, trans people are welcome here,” according toThe Scottish Sun.
Rowling posted a video on X of one of the protestors singing Lily Allen’s F**k You (Very Much), calling him a pr**k.
“Inside the venue: women from 35 different countries discuss their sex-based issues and concerns, including the harassment and intimidation they face from men,” Rowling said. “Outside the venue, this prick.”
Inside the venue: women from 35 different countries discuss their sex-based issues and concerns, including the harassment and intimidation they face from men.
She then criticized the protestor again in a follow-up post, writing, “To prove his point that the female fear of male harassment is groundless, he got up early to bellow ‘fuck you’ at a group of peacefully assembling women. Is he genuinely that thick? Or are we talking #TERFblackops?”
To the heartbreak of many of her fans, Rowling has long positioned herself as an enemy of the trans community.
As Joe wrote, “Free money for Christian families who could already afford private Christian schools while draining public schools of desperately needed funds”. More Christian churches taking over the public secular government / public schools. This steals much needed money from public schools to create a Christian theocracy. Hugs
Roughly 4,800 students are participating in the first semester of Arkansas’ new K-12 voucher program. A bulk of those kids are attending the largest, mostly-religious private schools in the state. Of the 94 participating private schools, there are also a number focused on students with special needs.
The new data was reported in the Arkansas Department of Education’s first annual Education Freedom Account report to the state Legislature. Less than 5% of students in the program were previously enrolled in a public school. The report brought continued criticism from those opposed to vouchers and the LEARNS Act and praise from those who supported it.
Arkansas Education Association President April Reisma, a special education teacher in the Pulaski County Special School District, said the report should be “deeply disturbing to the tax-paying residents of Arkansas.”
Less than 5% of students receiving the new vouchers previously attended a public school. As other states have shown, we will continue to see the voucher program become an expensive subsidy for wealthier families at the expense of everyone else. https://t.co/f7ZmSLMvHF
Surprise! (Not) Sarah’s voucher law has begun a multi-million-dollar transfer of public money to unaccountable (mostly religious) private schools. In year three it will multiply exponentially with tens of thousands of benefits for rich folks like Sarah. https://t.co/FPmfvdACqb
“Madrassa” is just the Arabic word for “school (/college/university/seminary)”. Even religious madrassas may teach “secular” subjects such as science and mathematics, literature and art and history. But yes, they are usually indoctrination centres, much like any other religious school.
At my Texas high school, the choir class was all the under 18 members of the Baptist Church choir. They practiced hymns they would be performing on Sunday
They knew the demographics of their private school student body BEFORE the voucher legislation passed. If they thought, for even a minute, that lower income children, particularly brown & black children, would enroll, it wouldn’t have passed
Beau of the Fifth Column often says the younger generations won’t tolerate the hate and bigotry of the ones pushing anti-LGBTQIA / racist ideas. Yes the right wants to remove all mention and safety for kids that are different and return to an assumed superiority of white people. But they are missing the point. It was like that in the past. In the 1950s our society was just like they are trying hard to return to. Yet we progressed. Social acceptance of people being different from each other and the right to live openly as themselves happened. The right thinks it is because they did not push back hard enough to stop it. The right thinks they should have used violence from the start.
But that is not true, there was always hard push back and violence by those in authority and by churches. Ask any gay kid growing up during those times. I grew up understanding I was gay in the time of Anita Bryant, who was the early version of the hate group started by Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok. Think of the abuse the police dished out even into the late 1990s. I remember when Ron had the bar, we had to have an unbreakable material used for the windows because they were being broken as soon as they were repaired. We had to have a bunch of the bigger better fighters assisting people leaving to make sure no one was assaulted and beaten up by groups of haters. I well tell you, the most awesome thing I have ever seen was a lesbian kicking the ass of 3 redneck assholes who attacked a small gay guy leaving the bar. She taught them a lesson they did not soon forget. We fought back then and I honestly thought we were beyond that hate and society was a safe space for the LGBTQIA. Where LGBTQIA kids could be happy in schools knowing they were safe and accepted. But the haters are bringing it all back. We must not let them indoctrinate future generations into hate and bigotry. We must not let them drive kids back into the closet in fear and shame of who they are. We must not let them remove the LGBTQIA from society and public view. We are here and should be equal, we have our rights and they should be enforced for us. Hugs
Angry parents were left sputtering as students rallied in support of the trans teen.
At Oak Park High School in Kansas City over the weekend, students elected a trans homecoming queen. Tristan Young bested four other nominees to take the crown.
And Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik managed to find the only two parents who are mad about it.
“I’m appalled by NKC Schools’ continued support of the LGBT agenda,” whines one parent for Raichik in an email, referring to the North Kansas City School District.
“They not only indoctrinate children, but they are placing certain student populations over others.”
In another stilted statement from a second aggrieved parent, she writes: “As a woman, it breaks my heart to see these girls get passed over and a man stealing what is rightfully theirs.”
Then she adds, also as a woman, “I’m broken-hearted because I know the students voted for him.”
Raichik was clearly desperate to gin up the usual outrage over the student-led vote and failed miserably.
The queer-addled activist, who’s lately tried to refashion herself as an “independent journalist,” posted the “story” with a headline declaring, “Male crowned homecoming queen, beating out four other girls,” which clarified for trans supporters everywhere that Young is just one of the girls.
“Not the point but Chaya is writing at a sub-middle school level, lol” posted one amused commenter.
NKC Schools shared their congratulations for Young in a tweet with photos from the event.
In one, last year’s winner passes the sash to the new homecoming queen. In another, Young’s parents stand by beaming; her dad sports a Kansas City Chiefs Pride hat.
Young’s election in the revered high school ritual was met with a sense of betrayal by online hacks dismayed that a reliably red state like Missouri could harbor open-minded kids.
“Who’s to blame here?” whined transphobic 5th place finisher Riley Gaines, who tied with trans swimmer Lia Thomas in a collegiate meet last year.
Gaines tried sarcasm to make her poorly conceived point in on X: “So stunning & brave🤴🏻✨ Another reminder to all girls that men make the best women. I wonder if a female will win homecoming king or if it’s understood that both of these spots are reserved for males.”
So stunning & brave🤴🏻✨
Another reminder to all girls that men make the best women. I wonder if a female will win homecoming king or if it's understood that both of these spots are reserved for males. Who's to blame here? pic.twitter.com/ZXHU6Wyiiy
Will Carless
USA TODAY
JK Rowling in 2011Photo: Shutterstock
Photo: Shutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 