Again like my last post, evangelical / fundamentalist Christians feel both entitled and driven to push their god / Jesus on everyone else kids in PUBLIC schools. No one is saying the families that want a religious life can not have one. Of course they can, but they can not force it on other people’s kids. They can do it in their homes, in their churches, even in public they can show their religion. They just can not grab kids from other families and force them to go to church or other ceremonies. But as their power and numbers decline, as young people reject their message of hate and bigotry, instead of changing their plan is to force indoctrinate other people’s children. The goal is to convince more kids to “Turn to god and hate others who are different”. Hugs. Scottie
The three Rs (reading, writin’, and arithmetic) are slated to have a new addition soon in public schools: religion. The Senate legislation (SB 1044) is slated to be heard in Tuesday morning’s Appropriations Committee on Education.
That bill, sponsored by Sen. Erin Grall, would “authorize volunteer school chaplains to provide support, services, and programs to students as assigned by the district school board or charter school governing board.”
“Parents must be permitted to select a volunteer school chaplain from the list provided by the school district, which must include the chaplain’s religious affiliation, if any,” the bill reads.
A similar law has already been approved in Texas, where it is spearheaded by an avowed Christian nationalist who once worked for an anti-LGBTQ hate group.
Republican state Sen. Erin Grall has appeared here in recent weeks for her bill to ban minors from social media.
Last year Grall appeared here for her bill that would require rape victims to show proof of having been raped in order to qualify for an abortion exception.
Grall that same month authored a bill that would fine trans people $10,000 for using the “wrong” public restroom.
School chaplains proposal continues push through Legislature
Florida and Texas are the two prototype theo-fascist regimes. If the Orbanites are successful there, they will expand it all through the South and then everywhere else.
“Parents must be permitted to select a volunteer school chaplain from the list provided by the school district, which must include the chaplain’s religious affiliation, if any,” the bill reads.
Gosh, sure sounds like a religious test for public office…
If this does pass (although it’s a clear violation of the separation of church and state), I hope that parents who attend churches with their children that are open and affirming to the LGBTQ+ community demand that their pastors be included on the lists that school districts provide. If a district refuses to include a pastor then parents should sue the fuck out of the district and the state of Florida.
NO, NO, AND HELL’S NO. Parents who want their kids to see a religious chaplain can take them to a fucking church. Public schools are for teaching about the REAL world.
This is one of those bills that’s explicitly written to get challenged and overturn prior Supreme Court rulings about religion in public schools. It’s so flagrantly and obviously unconstitutional.
Kids need math, science, reading, history and other teachers. Not chaplains. There are churches on practically every corner in Florida. Anyone seeking religious counseling can easily find it.
WTAF? Sectarian chaplains have no more place in Florida’s public schools than sectarian prayer does. Florida’s government has simply ceased to do anything useful for the state, and is now reduced to “messing with it.” Some Christian parents may be pleased with this bill, but I can’t think that non-Christian parents, or their children, will be happy. I hope the ACLU, and other organizations who think the separation of Church and State is important, will take up this matter, and see it defeated. The US is NOT a theocracy.
Evangelical trump loving Jesus touting Christians who need to lie and sneak around the rules protecting children to get what they want. Because protecting kids only matters when they can use to deny LGBTQIA people exist and that kids are born that way. That it is OK to be LGBTQIA. No when it comes to pushing their version of Jesus they believe the laws / rules don’t apply to them. Every thing should be allowed them to push their Jesus on your kids, on all kids. So they lie, cheat, pretend they are not doing what they are or that they just did not know the rules. All in the name of Jesus. Hugs. Scottie.
As they stood together near Keller ISD’s Central High School on Friday, a group of parents shared their anger and frustration. “I’m livid,” said Laney Hawes, a parent whose child attends Central HS. “Our rights and our kids rights have been violated.” Their anger stems from what the district confirmed happened last Friday, February 9.
Sandi Walker, a school board trustee brought an Evangelical-based film crew into the high school to conduct interviews with her. Multiple students and parents told WFAA children were filmed and interviewed by the production crew without their consent. Trustee Micah Young was also involved in the filming.
Evangelische Omroep (EO), a Netherlands-based Evangelical broadcast television network previously produced the documentary: ‘God, Jesus, Trump.’ Elliot Mullaney, a freshman at Central High School said he witnessed the filming take place during his lunch hour.
Read the full article. The tweets below tell a fuller story so give them a minute to fully load. According to the video report, the film crew took advantage of the school’s principal being absent that day.
Let me tell you a story of how I found out our @KellerISD school board trustees snuck an Evangelist film crew into my child’s high school last week & filmed him & many other students without permission. 🧵/1 https://t.co/y47vFkPPKX
My son came home from school last week & told me a film crew from the Netherlands doing a documentary on “American schools” filmed him & his friends at lunch he said The school board was w/them. I called my mom friends. They were hearing similar stories from their kids. /2
I was immediately concerned. Our school board doesn’t talk to the “liberal news media.” It was the weekend, we made some calls. A district rep. confirmed to us that there was no official @KellerISD comms crew at the school that day. /3
I gathered all the pictures of the news crew I could find (teens take a lot of pictures). I went to the internet & searched “far right politics in the Netherlands.” Found a university proff who studies the far right in Europe. I emailed her the pictures w/ an explanation. /4
She emailed me back. She knew them. It was @TijsvandenBrink who recently produced a documentary called “God, Jesus, Trump.” He focuses his work on the evangelical embrace of Trump in America. She suggested maybe he was doing a follow-up to his documentary.” /5 pic.twitter.com/Sa5R3fyjoH
I called the principal. She was aware & investigating, she didn’t know who the crew was- I told her! The principal had been off campus Friday. Trustees lied to staff abt having permission. they have security Badges & district wide access. Staff had no reason to not believe them/6
These two @PatriotMobile funded trustees used my kid as a prop in their political games. Apparently one of them literally snuck in a side door. Kids heard them discuss & disparage “transgender teens.” They snuck one of our banned books into the library to show on camera. /7 pic.twitter.com/z26Uoago5w
We’d love to know what they were doing with this film crew. Likely some Christian nationalist story abt our trustees saving kids from “CRT & LGBT+ ideology & bad library books .” We’re guessing the film crew was also lied to-I hope they would never film children w/o permission/8
We’re demanding all trustees involved resign immediately. They’ve lost the trust of the community, they lied to staff & educators putting their jobs at risk, they sacrificed the safety of our kids for their political agenda. If they don’t resign we’ll exhaust all legal avenues./9 pic.twitter.com/QM5WzcCg6f
You can tell the Evangelicals are lying (how surprising!) because if they had no intention filming staff and students, why even bring a film crew to the school?
It’s amazing how readily “Christian” evangelists practice deceit and outright lying when it suits them. It’s almost like they aren’t really religious at all.
Christianity, like all religions, was based on deceit and lies – they call them “revelations” and “gospels” – and of course they’ve always lied and manipulated people to maintain their hold, once they were in control. So no change, business as usual.
I have first seen this on Joe My God. But it is on other news sites. This shows not only the bigotry and hate of these right wing hate groups, but how they use their influence to hurt and harm anyone they target, anyone they think doesn’t push their bigotry, hate, and regressive views. It is terrifying because they know what they are doing, and they know the result. They really want to push society to be regressive, to be 1950 along with wiping the people they hate from society, from public view. And they are clearly willing to use violence and threats of great harm to accomplish this. Total intolerance to other views than what they accept. They are a very dangerous threat to democracy and the idea of live and let live, to the idea of tolerance and acceptance. To them, they need to dictate, their way only, even as we have seen in Florida they do not practice what they demand as one of their leaders got caught enjoying having sex with others of the same sex and having relations out of marriage. Things they claim should be stopped and not be allowed to be talked about in public or in books in schools. As Joe mentions below, this woman and her group ignore the abuse of children by clergy to only attack public schools. The goal is to inspire hate, abuse, threats, and also gain attention for herself. All because of returning to a time when no one but straight cis mostly white people were allowed to be promoted in society and the rest were hidden along with vilified. It literally is terrorism via the internet to get her supporter thugs to attack the targets she selects. There are many more important comments at the Joe My God site, but I am far too tired to keep posting. Hugs. Scottie
Students have rallied behind the staff member after viral video from anti-LGBTQ account with vast following.
A Lewisville ISD staff member has been placed on administrative leave after a prominent right-wing social media account posted a video of him at school wearing a pink dress with matching boots and hat.(KXAS-TV )
4:29 PM on Feb 16, 2024 CST — Updated at 5:31 PM on Feb 16, 2024 CST
A Lewisville ISD staff member has been placed on administrative leave after a prominent right-wing social media account posted a video of him at school wearing a pink dress with matching boots and hat.
“This is an actual teacher in @LewisvilleISD,” the post reads. “How is this acceptable?!”
Students have defended the Hebron High School educator with a petition noting he was dressed up for spirit day.
District officials placed the man on leave Thursday after catching wind of the video, which had more than 4.3 million views by Friday afternoon on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“It would be natural for our families to have questions about this situation, but because this is a personnel matter currently under review, there is no additional information the district can share,” principal Amy Boughton said in a campus-wide email.
The staff member could not be reached for comment.
The district received complaints after Libs of TikTok, which has more than 2.8 million followers and is known for spreading anti-LGBTQ sentiment, posted the video on Valentine’s Day.
The post questioned whether it is acceptable for an educator to be “cosplaying as a woman and dress in drag at school.”
“It is our standard procedure to place a staff member on leave when we review concerns shared with the campus,” Lewisville spokesperson Amanda Brim said.
The video was also widely shared across other platforms.
Libs of TikTok posted images in replies to the initial video that appeared to be several years old. Other X users flooded Lewisville ISD’s account with the video and other photos.
More than 1,500 people have signed an online petition to bring the teacher off of administrative leave, adding that he was dressed up for spirit day.
“He does not deserve to be defamed and lose his job,” the petition reads. “He has been an inspiration to many students, and has created a space where everyone can feel valued and safe.”
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.
Read the full article. Chaya Raichik and her army of cultists are harassing the school district superintendent and the school’s principal. As most of you know, in 2022 and 2023, I tagged Raichik in literally hundreds of news items about pedophile pastors, priests, and Christian school officials. She never once responded, but as you can see below, she spends a lot of time responding to others.
Of note, Spirit Day is an annual event launched in 2010 in response to a rash of student suicides related to anti-LGBTQ bullying.
Lewisville educator on leave after Libs of TikTok post shows him in dress for spirit day https://t.co/EXvLvZzt4S
UNREAL. This is an actual teacher in @LewisvilleISD named Rachmad Tjachyadi. I’m told he also sometimes shows up to teach dressed in full drag and has a f*tish for wearing women’s clothing.
There is absolutely no place for this mental illness in schools. Kids need to be able to go to school without distractions like this and just learn. That’s how it used to be. Our school system is so twisted now. These kids deserve to be protected from this creepy man.
I love how that hag uses innuendo in attacking this poor teacher. “I heard he loved dressing in women’s clothing…” That is truly the digital lynch mob.
You look fabulous and so fun, Lefty! And indeed, kids understand and appreciate play, and adults who can gleefully partake in it, unless of course those poor kids have already been brainwashed and mentally abused into being righty little monsters.
Thanks! Fortunately I taught in a “woke” district, and the parents did not care if I was gay. They just wanted their children to learn and have some fun.
Still, good for you for showing those kiddos you can be a sane, responsible adult and still be fun…and gay. Man, what I’d have given to have a Lefty teacher when I was in 3rd grade!
I did have several students visit when they were juniors/seniors in high school. They were out and proud, and they cited me as one of the reasons they felt comfortable living their authentic lives. Got a bit misty eyed…
I spent my years 6-8ish living in Plano. It was a bucolic place back then. Small, largely underdeveloped, easy. I have no idea what the politix were, cuz 6 years old. All I know is my best friend, Tommy, and I could leave on our bikes at 8 am (with peanut butter and bacon sammiches in our backpacks) and not come home until dinner and no one worried or had any reason to do so. Damn, how things have changed in (cough) 48 years.
I know many of the people who follow my Play Time don’t care for videos, and also many are not interested in bible stuff. However even though this is an animated and a bit over the top portrayal of god, it does lay out some of the biggest sexual hypocrisies of the bible including the one man / one woman joke that many insist the rest of the world follow. Hugs. Scottie
Did you know that God violates his own laws in the bible? In fact, there is an example that is so egregious, complete with the exact reason spelled out, that it is completely indefensible, and anyone who tries must compromise their own moral standard to do so.
An the thing that hurts the worst is the haters / racists are proud of what they are doing, loving the attention, happy with the harm they are inflicting / inciting on others. They seem to feel that anyone different from them just shouldn’t be allowed in society, must be removed. The Russia model of life. Please take notice of the date. It was worthy read and important reporting then. Since then it has gotten much worse. Please help our LGBTQIA community members, especally the kids that in that group of people. They do know who they are, who they are attracked too, even if they have sexual or gender feelings at all. But they all know pain, hurt, fear, longing to belong, and need accpetance along with protection. Hugs. Scottie
The mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, which saw a 22-year-old man charged with hate crimes and murder on Monday, came after years of intensifying anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, acts of violence and intimidation, and discriminatory legislation from far-right individuals and groups, including powerful Republican politicians.
These actors have made LGBTQ Americans into targets: of hateful social media posts that direct harassment, threats, and attacks at schools, hospitals, and individuals; of abuse, intimidation, and violence from hate groups; of laws that limit their care or censor information about gender and sexuality.
ANTI-LGBTQ INFLUENCERS CHANNELING HATE
A cluster of online influencers have ramped up bigoted and conspiracy-laced messaging in the last two years, directing hostile attention at drag shows, businesses, Pride festivals, children’s hospitals, and other places where LGBTQ people come together or receive care.
Many such peddlers of fear and disinformation about LGBTQ people – including the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, his boss Ben Shapiro, and Candace Owens – took to Twitter in the wake of the shooting to attack “the left” and “Democrats” for drawing the obvious link between months of heightened anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and homophobic and transphobic murders. The attack, which killed five people and injured 25, took place on the eve of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, though it’s unknown if the shooter chose the date on purpose.
For her part, Chaya Raichik greeted news of the mass shooting in Colorado with a post on Twitter directing her followers’ attention to a youth-oriented LGBTQ nonprofit in that state and two state representatives who had expressed support for it.
Since early 2021, Raichik has posted a stream of transphobic and homophobic messages on platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Substack, and far-right favorite, Gab, under the pseudonym “Libs of TikTok.” Her typical operating procedure involves spotlighting LGBTQ users of the platform TikTok, especially trans people, and targeting them individually for mockery and abuse.
She helped popularize the anti-LGBTQ slur, “groomer,” which falsely equates non-heterosexual sexualities and non-cisgender gender identities with pedophilia. The “groomer” smear also plays into a conspiracy theory that underpins the propaganda of Raichik and other like-minded influencers: that LGBTQ people and their sympathizers have entered mainstream institutions to prey on children, recruit them to “transgenderism” and divide them from their families.
Joshua Thurman, center, gets comforted by friends at a makeshift memorial near Club Q on November 20, 2022 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Thurman was inside the club when the shooting began. An attacker opened fire in a gay nightclub late Saturday night killing five people and wounding at least 25, officials said. The club said the suspect was subdued by patrons and Colorado Springs police said he was taken into custody and hospitalized for treatment of his injuries. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Raichik has also branched out into anti-Black racism, with tweets denying that George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, mocking the death of Ma’Khia Bryant, and taking pains to deny the existence of systemic racism. She has directed outrage towards schools offering racially inclusive curriculums.
Originally, Raichik used her platform to single out LGBTQ people and school teachers with inclusive approaches to education, many of whom would subsequently receive harassment and death threats. But her online schtick has evolved to encompass campaigns against school districts, libraries and hospitals.
Hospitals and medical workers across the country have been subject to harassment and even bomb threats after being targeted in posts from Raichik and others including Matt Walsh. In June, members of the Proud Boys hate group attacked a Drag Queen Story Hour event at a San Lorenzo, California public library after Raichik highlighted it. Alameda County Sheriff’s Office investigators reportedly said that Libs of TikTok had caused the attack.
Later that month, more Proud Boys tried to break into a bar that was scheduled to host a drag event after Raichik alerted her followers to the event.
Also in June, Hatewatch reported that Raichik had posted about a Pride event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, days before police thwarted an attempted disruption of the event by white nationalist hate group Patriot Front.
Security experts have described Raichik’s output as “stochastic terrorism,” by which they mean that her hateful rhetoric is calculated to promote violence in some proportion of her followers.
Her posts frequently contain false information. Raichik has presented fake curriculum materials as if they were real and presented covert recordings of uninformed responses from non-medical hospital staff as if they represented treatment policies at the facility.
Her habit of spreading hate and disinformation has seen Raichik briefly suspended from the platforms she is active on, including Twitter. Since Elon Musk acquired the platform, however, Raichik has availed herself of the opportunity to purchase a “blue check,” and has even engaged in ableist banter with the new proprietor.
Raichik tried hard to maintain her anonymity as the author of the hate account, but the Washington Post unmasked her in April, noting that Raichik’s “content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers.”
Raichik has been a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience, and her content has been promoted by far-right media figures and influencers including Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, Jesse Watters, Laura Ingraham and Donald Trump Jr.
Her tweets frequently form the basis of content pushed out by right-wing media – from items on Carlson’s Fox News show to dozens of articles in so-called ” pink slime” junk news sites.
More disturbingly, Raichik and other anti-LGBTQ influencers have shaped policy by encouraging divisive campaigning and mustering support for anti-LGBTQ laws.
DESANTIS DANCES TO RAICHIK’S TUNE
In March, Christine Pushaw, press secretary to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, defended the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill with anti-LGBTQ smears accusing people of “grooming” children.
The bill, which DeSantis signed into law later that month, would prevent teachers from discussing gender and sexuality in any way with children in kindergarten through third grade. Critics have pointed out that the rule would prevent children with LGBTQ parents from participating in age-appropriate activities like making family trees. The bill also allows state intervention on any discussion of gender and sexuality in public schools through high school.
Also in March, Pushaw credited Raichik’s account with having “opened her eyes” to conspiracy-minded views on schools’ approaches to gender and sexuality in the classroom.
This was evident in scores of interactions between Pushaw and Raichik on the platform stretching back to June 2021, at the beginning of Raichik’s focus on anti-LGBTQ campaigning.
Florida’s law is just one of many recent pieces of state-level legislation across the U.S. targeting LGBTQ people, and especially trans people. Five other states have passed laws that censor classroom discussion of gender and sexuality, and four more require parents to be notified ahead of such discussions.
Eighteen states, meanwhile, have passed laws banning trans women and girls from competing in K-12 girls and women’s sports. Some of these laws also ban their participation at the college level.
In Arizona and Arkansas, gender-affirming care for trans youth is banned, and in Alabama providing such care is a felony crime. Other states, including Texas, have attempted to pass similar laws. The American Academy of Pediatrics laid out their best practices for gender-affirming care in 2018, highlighting in particular that such care improves mental health outcomes for trans youth, especially in contrast to “conversion” models of intervention. Contrary to persistent disinformation from right-wing reactionaries, such care never includes surgical or chemical castration.
As far back as 2016, many states attempted to pass so-called “bathroom bills” mandating that public restrooms in state-owned buildings could only be used by people according to the sex assigned on their birth certificates. Three states – Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee – still have such laws on their books. Missouri and South Dakota, meanwhile, prohibit schools from adding LGBTQ-specific provisions to schools’ nondiscrimination policies.
ANTI-LGBTQ HATE ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
In 2022, encouraged by political operatives like Christopher Rufo, many Republicans made “anti-woke” messages targeted at LGBTQ people the centerpiece of their midterm campaigns.
Anti-trans political ads did not stop on Election Day. On Monday, Herschel Walker’s campaign released an ad whipping up fear about trans girls and women competing in sports according to their gender identity, which referred to them as “biological males.” Walker has been delivering regular anti-trans stump speeches during his effort to unseat Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia, where the candidates now face a runoff.
Some commentators suggested that the GOP has employed this strategy to mobilize white Evangelical Christian voters, so that they would turn out in sufficient numbers to neutralize the backlash against the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned 50 years of legal precedent safeguarding access to abortion.
Rufo, a Gig Harbor, Washington based far-right propagandist and a fellow at the hard-right Manhattan Institute, was initially prominently involved with the conservative campaign to demonize critical race theory (CRT), which the right used as a proxy for all forms of inclusive education.
In August, Rufo explained to the New York Times that he had advocated for Republicans to pivot from anti-CRT campaigning to attacking LGBTQ-inclusive curriculums. He told the newspaper,”The reservoir of sentiment on the sexuality issue is deeper and more explosive than the sentiment on the race issues.”
Days before that profile was published, Rufo appeared alongside DeSantis at the signing of the Stop W.O.K.E. Act, which bans workplaces and schools from teaching that any person is privileged due to their race or sex and was the culmination of DeSantis’s multi-faceted public fight with the Disney corporation.
Many commentators – including some Republicans – have attributed the GOP’s failure to generate a “red wave” election to the malicious anti-LGBTQ messaging Rufo recommended. Based on the lukewarm outcome, such rhetoric either did not resonate with, or repelled voters around the country.
That rhetoric did pay off for DeSantis, however, who won almost 60% of the gubernatorial vote, led his party to large majorities in both houses in the legislature, and helped elect a slate of hand-picked school board candidates who were also running on platforms that opposed inclusive curriculums.
His successes have seen DeSantis touted as a possible 2024 election candidate, raising the prospect that the use of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policy as political tactics will continue on the national stage.
ANTI-LGBTQ HATE IN COLORADO
In Colorado, meanwhile, far-right figures – including Republican politicians – also actively spread smears, conspiracy theories, and falsehoods about LGBTQ people in the months leading up to Saturday’s mass shooting.
Not long after she was first elected to the House of Representatives, Lauren Boebert, the far-right Republican congresswoman for Colorado’s 3 rd District, responded to the passage of the federal Equality Act with transphobic remarks claiming trans people would spy on “young girls” in school locker rooms.
Boebert – who has embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory, hurled Islamophobic slurs at a fellow congresswoman, and amplified Donald Trump’s false claims about a stolen 2020 election – narrowly won re-election this month.
Colorado Springs, where the shooting took place, has itself has long been a hub for the Christian Right, which for decades has pumped out anti-LGBTQ propaganda in the name of a narrow and exclusionary definition of family.
In the 1990s, Colorado Springs’s Focus on the Family led the fundamentalist charge in support of Amendment 2, a Colorado ballot measure that banned municipalities from including LGBTQ people in their anti-discrimination policies. Though the initiative passed in 1992, in 1995 the Supreme Court found that it violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The SPLC’s hate map lists four anti-LGBTQ hate groups in the state, with two – the Family Research Institute and the Pray in Jesus Name Project – headquartered in Colorado Springs. The state also plays host to active chapters of other hate groups who have taken violent or disruptive actions against LGBTQ people, like the Proud Boys and Patriot Front.
Since the nadir of Amendment 2, Colorado has evolved to boast one of the most progressive policy slates for LGBTQ rights in the country.
But more liberal laws have not made the state immune from the right-wing moral panic sweeping the country.
Proud Boys attempted to disrupt Denver drag shows as early as 2019. Denver-based drag performers told reporters this year of a new atmosphere of confrontation and hostility at child-friendly performances around the state.
Now five are dead, at least 25 are injured, and an unknown number are traumatized for life by an act of violence primed by conspiracy thinking and hateful propaganda.
Photo by Helen H. Richardson/Media News Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
For more resources, visit ONEColorado. If you were affected by the attack and need to access mental health resources, community support or you’d like to get in touch with law enforcement as a victim or witness, visit coloradosprings.gov/clubq. Finally, if you would like to donate to help the victims of the tragedy, visit Colorado Healing Fund.
This is what the Mom’s of Liberty, Libs of TikTok, fundamentalist Christian republican groups pushing don’t say gay bills along with anti-trans bills, right wing media that call anyone supportive of the LGBTQIA kids groomers, and those groups constantly claiming falsely that drag queen story hours sexualize kids all want. More gay kids gone, tormented either into hiding or removing themselves from society. This is what happens when you take away the rainbow stick safe rooms for LGBTQIA kids. This is what happens when you take away anti-bullying programs and prevent teachers from stopping the harassment of gay / trans kids because they can not tell the bullies that they are wrong because if they sound like they are supporting the LGBTQIA then they could be punished or fired. This is the result of pushing for a regressive hard return to the ideas of the past, such as the society of the 1950s. We outgrew this bullshit once, now we must fight it all again. If you go to YouTube to play the video on the right-hand side will be a seemingly never ending list of gay kids bullied into suicide. I did not want to post them all, it was hard enough to watch a few. Kids dying because some adults are back to pushing hate and intolerance for their god and political reasons, at the cost of kids lives. These people don’t want to accept that non-straight non-cis people exist, so they want them gone, removed. The religious claim that god doesn’t like them or make them. The bigots just claim they shouldn’t be, so make them go away.
Thankfully enough people are starting to push back that the tide of hateful regression and change is slowing. But the right is desperately pushing more legislation, hoping to cement their feelings of hate and disgust at those different from them into law before lowing the power to do so. They are understanding they are not popular, they are a minority. But they are a very dangerous minority in charge in a lot of places. For the sake of the children they must be stopped. There is nothing wrong or shameful in being gay, being trans, or any other member of the LGBTQIA. Being born straight and cis is not the only normal way to be. Being born LGBTQIA is not some medical mistake or disease needing to be hidden or cured. It also is normal. It is documented in almost all animal species in nature.
I was feeling so rested, awake, and ready to go this morning. I was charging through stuff. Until I hit this in my few saved videos on the video computer. It had not lost its open tabs, I caught the problem first. A few of the videos on this subject and I am tired, worn, old, and just want to go back to bed. The people behind the hate put me back to my childhood with all its pain and fears. What happened to the modern age that the majority let the minority haters / bigots / racists get control of so many levelers of power to hurt those who are not like them?
Any way, find your safe space before watching the short video and maybe a few more of them, of kids from 9 to adults ending their own lives because the people around them won’t let them be who they are or are forcing them to change, or just demanding they die because their parents tell them god hates those who are different. Because they are hurting too much and too scared to live. Saddest hugs. Scottie
Jamel Myles’ mother, Leia Pierce, didn’t learn the bullying he endured was getting worse until after his death. He told his sister students at the school were telling him to “kill himself.”
Notice they let only the anti-trans bigots speak, to back up the unpopular and unneeded laws. They then abruptly ended the debate, preventing the dozens of attendees opposed to the bill from speaking. Please notice the large number of people apposed to the bill that the republicans not only did not allow to speak but ignored. In the minds of the republicans their hate is the only thing that matters. These are the last gasps of desperate fundamentalist bigot haters to attack tolerance and acceptance. I laugh at the idea that these republicans are claiming it is the trans people only they hate, but as we have seen in other states they started with trying to stop trans kids in schools, and moved to trying to stop all the LGBTQIA people everywhere in public. Also these bills are always directed at public schools, the religious ones tend to be more conservative and the more wealthy secular ones the wealthy people don’t want their schools messed with by bigots. Hugs. Scottie
A controversial bill dubbed Georgia’s version of “Don’t Say Gay” moved forward in a Senate committee Tuesday after three years of work and multiple failures to move, largely over Republican opposition to the inclusion of private schools. The bill passed committee on a 6-3 party line vote during a committee meeting in which proponents were given 15 minutes to speak but opponents did not receive time to talk. Dozens of people attended the meeting.
Jeff Cleghorn, an attorney who called himself a gay rights advocate opposed to gender ideology, said LGBTQ+ acceptance has increased because of the hard work of gay, lesbian and bisexual activists, but he said transgender people have attempted to “piggyback” off that struggle. “SB 88 is necessary because the former gay rights movement has been hijacked by those pushing this dishonest gender ideology on children,” he said.
Immediately after the bill’s sponsor spoke about the bill, he ceded the floor to Jeff Cleghorn, a gay anti-trans activist who calls transgender people “mentally ill sex fetishists” and regularly shares content from groups like Gays Against Groomers and Libs of TikTok.
Following an incendiary speech in which he advocated for separating transgender individuals from the LGBTQ+ community, Republicans allowed four people to speak.
These included a former president of the Young Republicans, a representative from Gays Against Groomers, and a representative from the Georgia Log Cabin Republican. They then abruptly ended the debate, preventing the dozens of attendees opposed to the bill from speaking.
A controversial bill dubbed Georgia’s version of “Don’t Say Gay” moved forward in a Senate committee Tuesday after three years of work and multiple failures to move, largely over Republican opposition to the inclusion of private schools. https://t.co/GjUUKpIOGG#gapol
Piggy back my ass. Trans persons have been standing alongside of us since day one. That queen needs a little snap out of it action. I could handle that.
The fact is that drag queens and trans have been with us gay men since the beginning. They were there in the stonewall bar when the cops raided it. Here is the PROOF! Marsha P. Johnson at the First Christopher Street Liberation Day March, 1970. Leonard Fink / LGBT Community Center Archive.
It is always shocking to discover trans-phobic gays among us. I stopped reading Americablog long ago when it’s owner, John Aravosis, was increasingly saying why should “we” help “them” as if we are not them.
Fuck off. Do you think they’ll stop at Trans folks?
Gays, Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, Atheists, Mormons, Catholics, they’ll keep narrowing the scope of acceptable people because Authoritarianism only thrives when there’s an Other to villainize.
They don’t realize that back then, you didn’t really have the option of transitioning unless you had a lot of money. So many of our famous drag queens who would be seen as trans today never thought to transition. It’s still a problem today, but less so.
Once places of higher learning were about gaining knowledge, acceptance, and tolerance, learning to live with other young adults. Widening one’s horizons. But that was before red state legislators tried to force hate into the schools at all levels, including higher education. White fundamental Christian white supremacists are pushing for more open intense deeper racism and no tolerance for anyone not straight cis and regressive right wing. Hugs. Scottie
Columbus police are looking into the incident as a hate crime, in which one of the men can be seen urinating on an LGBTQ+ pride flag in front of a home.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Columbus police are looking into a hate crime that happened last week near The Ohio State University’s campus last Thursday. Two men were caught on camera saying homophobic slurs and vandalizing a pride flag in front of a home in the Weinland Park area of Columbus.
“It was shocking but not surprising,” Sarah, who lives at the home, said.
Surveillance video from the home’s front porch showed the two men approaching the front door. One of them pulled down his pants and started urinating on the LGBTQ+ pride flag on display on the porch. The other man appears to be taking a video of his friend with his phone. 10TV blurred the faces of the men in the video because they have not been criminally charged.
“There’s honestly been a whole range of emotions, there’s been some fear, some anger,” Raven, who also lives at the home, said.
The man wearing blue can then be heard yelling homophobic slurs as his friend laughs.
He then banged on the doors before taking off running.
“I decided to post something online and the police found us,” Zoe, who lives at the home, said.
Columbus police officers arrived at their home within a couple of hours of posting the video online on Sunday. An LGBTQ+ liaison who specifically handles hate crimes joined the officers,
Zoe, a mother of two, said she shared the video to set an example for her kids, who are both trans.
“I’ve got a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old and we’ve had the gamut of school experiences… This isn’t something that they should expect as normalized in their life,” Zoe said.
This incident is also taking a toll on their family.
“Honestly, I’ve been a little more anxious, I’ve been checking the camera feeds, I’ve been looking outside more I’ve been more cautious,” Raven said.
“We all fear that this might just be the start of things and it could get worse,” Sarah said.
They hope that sharing their story spreads awareness about the threats they often face from the people in the community.
“None of us are looking to ruin these kids’ lives,” Sarah said.
This family said they simply hope it can become a lesson learned.
“Not just that what they did was wrong but why it was wrong and how much it genuinely hurts people,” Sarah said.
They added this incident won’t stop them from keeping their pride on full display, for themselves, their kids, and their community.
“We’re not looking for trouble, we’re not looking for a fight, but we are looking to uplift our community and be a safe space for our community,” Kieve, who lives at the home, added.
Police have not said if they have identified the people in the video, but they said they are investigating the incident as a hate crime.
In the video interview, the homeowners say the police came to them after they posted the video themselves on social media. Maybe one of our sleuths can find that original UNBLURRED video?
The news report said they posted it to Reddit I checked the post is easy to find. The videos are blurred only on the crotch. This photo was posted of the two men.
Hey, let’s go to the porch of some gay women and let’s pull out our dicks and film it, because we are totally straight and macho and need to accomplish…?
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Scottie's Playtime 