This speaks for itself. There is a direct correlation between the republican / right wing media targeting on the trans, gays, and all LGBTQI+ and the violence / domestic terrorism attacks on LGBTQI+ establishments and drag queen events. As Democrat AOC said, you can connect the dots right back to the republicans and their don’t say gay bills and their constant attacking trans kids. Lauren Boebert cluelessly tweeted out prayers for the family of those killed at the Q nightclub but never mentioned the dead or injured nor her own vicious attacks on gays / trans people for political advantage. She inspires acts like these. Hugs
Daniel Aston
The mother of trans victim Daniel Aston, killed in the Colorado Springs shooting, has spoken out after the attack on Saturday (19 November), calling on lawmakers to “have a voice” for the LGBTQ+ community.
Aston’s mother Sabrina spoke to Colorado Public Radio (CPR) shortly after the deadly shooting, claiming that he was the “happiest he had ever been” while working at Club Q.
“He was thriving and having fun and having friends. It’s just unbelievable. He had so much more life to give to us and to all to his friends and to himself,” she said.
‘The trans community are the biggest targets’
Sabrina added her son “knew he was trans when he was four”, and started transitioning shortly after graduating from college.
“I always worried about it… He’s a trans man and the trans community are really the biggest targets I can think about it right now.”
Sabrina said she and her family wanted to speak out about what happened in order to bring more “exposure and acceptance” about the trans community, with LGBTQ+ Americans targeted with several laws affecting healthcare, education, and more in the past year.
“We need to get our legislators and our people high up to have a voice for us… Those are our children, we do not care how you dress or what you identify as. It doesn’t harm anybody,” she said.
People have gathered near Club Q, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to honour and remember the five people killed and at least 25 people wounded in a mass shooting. (Getty)
President Biden has condemned the “senseless attack” in an official statement, calling for an end to “violence against LGBTQI+ people” after the horrific shooting.
“Gun violence continues to have a devastating and particular impact on LGBTQI+ communities across our nation and threats of violence are increasing,” he wrote.
“We saw it six years ago in Orlando, when our nation suffered the deadliest attack affecting the LGBTQI+ community in American history. We continue to see it in the epidemic of violence and murder against transgender women – especially transgender women of colour. And tragically, we saw it last night in this devastating attack by a gunman wielding a long rifle at an LGBTQI+ nightclub in Colorado Springs.
“Places that are supposed to be safe spaces of acceptance and celebration should never be turned into places of terror and violence. Yet it happens far too often.”
The president added: “Today, yet another community in America has been torn apart by gun violence. More families left with an empty chair at the table and a hole in their lives that cannot be filled.”
This kind of hate is created by those including right wing media, right wing Christian hate preachers, and republicans in office that are demonizing the LGBTQ+. By constantly shouting into the ears of their faithful / viewers that gays are molesters, groomers of children, sexually abusing your child, that the trans / gays are recruiting your child, that teachers are indoctrinating your innocent kids into sexual experimentation and orgies … all this and so much more vitriol that the right is spewing just incites this kind of stuff. Is this what you pay your elected officials for? Is this what you want your religion to be known for?
At least five people were killed and 18 injured late Saturday in a shooting at an L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub in Colorado Springs, the police said early Sunday morning.
Lt. Pamela Castro, a public information officer with the Colorado Springs Police Department, said at a news conference outside the nightclub, Club Q, that the investigation was only beginning and that the number of victims was subject to change. She added that the victims had been taken to multiple area hospitals.
After the police received an initial call about an active shooting at 11:57 p.m., Lieutenant Castro said, officers entered the club and took into custody an individual they believed to be a suspect. The suspect was also injured and was being treated at a hospital, Lieutenant Castro said.
Police officers had entered the club overnight as they responded to reports of the shooting and located “one individual believed to be the suspect inside,” Castro said.
She said the casualty toll “is subject to change as the investigation continues,” adding that ambulances and police had transported “numerous people” to hospitals. The hospitals are helping to notify families of the victims, she added.
Capt. Mike Smaldino, spokesperson for the fire department, said 34 firefighters and 11 ambulances were dispatched to the scene to help quickly move people to hospitals.
The club was reportedly planning to hold a drag brunch today to mark the Transgender Day of Remembrance.
There was a mass shooting at my job tonight. I am alive. Please pray for my community. #coloradosprings#clubq
#Breaking: Colorado Springs Police first got the call around 11:57pm for a an active shooter at Club Q. Again, they confirmed five dead and 18 injured. They are taken to local hospitals. The gunman was injured in this. Not sure if by police or civilian. pic.twitter.com/cpcIhSfWzZ
Not just conservative. It is a hotbed of evangelicals, like Ted Haggard, and is also where the evangelicals work to make sure the Air Force academy there stays rigidly Christian.
Waiting for words of condolence from DeSantis for the victims. Of course, the politicians trying to protect the children from grooming who used gays as scapegoats for their political ambition had absolutely nothing to do with this sad, sad occurrence.
They want us to live in fear. There’s no way to “ethnically cleanse” gay people from anywhere. Now another murderer is about to be purged from society. We still exist. He will get to write hateful manifestos from prison, but society will still have gay people because we will refuse to live in fear.
Gay kids will still be born, and we will be here as long as there are people, we’ll remain. He will not change that fact. We will still love each other, but no one will remember or love him.
The far-right fascist QAnonGOP and Nazi scum are doing all they can to silence and cancel lgbt Americans! Of course the motive will turn out to be homophobia and/or anger at the drag brunch due to radicalization by far-right fascist social media.
The media are partly to blame, but a lot of the media are merely reporting what the goddamned rethugs are doing with their don’t say gay tirades, grooming crap, and transphobia. It is just a game for those bigots. Part of their attempt to encourage homophobia to garner votes.
This is what these bills are designed to do, create fear and keep the gay and trans kids hidden, to stop any positive reinforcement of LGBTQ+ while allowing all the negatives and slurs full volume to attack them. This is designed to reenforce white cis heterosexuality only. Make being gay or trans so hated kids and teacher live in fear of the other kids who target them with the authority of maga parents and the school administration behind them. It is indoctrination of right wing hate. It worked in Russia and other countries it has been done like China or the Islamic countries. It is about erasing the LGBTQ+ from society and returning to a time when hate and hostility towards minorities was accepted as normal. How is combating racism and bigotry controversial or political unless one party has racism and bigotry as their identity? How can it be a bad thing in 2022 to be against racism? This is a serious regression in society, the right wants to unwind the entire civil rights movement. Ask yourself why? Who wins in that situation? Hugs
Anything deemed political, with LGBTQ subject matter in the bullseye, is being torn down, boxed up and otherwise removed from campuses.
Across Florida this new school year, rainbows, safe space stickers and books with LGBTQ themes and history are being replaced in classrooms out of fear.
The Parental Rights in Education Bill – called the Don’t Say Gay bill by its opponents – was signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in March. It’s had a chilling effect on students, teachers and free speech across the state. Anything deemed political, with LGBTQ subject matter in the bullseye, is being torn down, boxed up and otherwise removed from campuses. Black Lives Matter posters are leaving along with rainbow flags.
In Sarasota, where high school senior Zander Moricz organized a headline-making student walkout in March, students and faculty report a grim environment imposed by school administrators enforcing the Don’t Say Gay law.
Gail Foreman, a longtime social studies teacher at Booker High School and a lesbian, says her principal didn’t wait for the law to take effect before conducting an inventory of inappropriate materials last March. “Anything that could even remotely be construed as gay-related came down,” Foreman told Buzzfeed News. “It wasn’t me putting this stuff up,” she said. “It was the kids. It was their classroom, too.”
Among the items removed were student-created posters reading “All Students Deserve Equal Education” and “All Minds Matter”; pride flags; a pride cape gifted by a student; safe space stickers from the Trevor Project; and a Mickey Mouse pen topped with a rainbow head. “Rainbows now symbolize politics,” Foreman said.
Senior Nora Mitchell, who founded Sarasota Students for Justice in 2020, says the Don’t Say Gay law has “allowed the Sarasota County School Board to create new policies that are, for lack of better words, extremely repressive within our school.” That school board now includes three new DeSantis-endorsed members, two of whom celebrated their victory in August with members of the neo-Nazi group, Proud Boys. One flashes a white power sign in a photo published by Vice News.
Mitchell, who came out to friends and teachers just before Don’t Say Gay was signed, says two banners she created were taken down and thrown away. One read, “Black Minds Matter,” and the other said, “We are all welcome here” and was decorated with rainbows. Officials “want school to feel unsafe,” says Mitchell, “and they want schools to be spaces where they can impress their own values of heterosexuality of whiteness. They want to reaffirm those values.”
Sarasota County Schools spokesperson Craig Maniglia denied the event Mitchell describes took place.
Mitchell and 2021 graduate Anthony Frisbee add that it’s not just school administrators tracking down violations. “Students have reported about teachers who are wearing anything rainbow-related,” says Mitchell. “It’s horrible.” In Frisbee’s view, “It’s like the Hitler Youth outing their parents.”
“You feel the sense of danger — like, school does not feel safe. It does not feel as vibrant as it was before,” Mitchell says. “Teachers can’t teach what they want, they can’t call students by their actual name, students are scared to be themselves at school. I mean, how can that possibly be conducive to learning or be a welcoming and fun place?”
I wish the US could do something like this. The entire idea behind conversion therapy is that if a person / kid is hurt enough they wont do that behavior anymore. That is the idea behind spankings and corporal punishment. Even the people still pushing this admit it won’t change the desire, just make the thought of it so painful, the feelings about it so adverse that the person is unable to go forward with the desire. Think of that. Say you are attracted to a set gender / sex and you are tortured to the point where every time you try to fulfill that desire the effects / memories of the torture kick in giving you a fresh taste of the torture. It doesn’t matter your sexual orientation or what gender you ID as, if your conditioned to hate it in yourself or hate it in anyway, you have just been programed to hate yourself forever, all of yourself. This is done to teens by religious parents who think their religion gives them the authority to claim such feelings either don’t exist or are from the devil and because of laws in most places the parents in that case have the unquestioned authority to force their teenager to go to these places and undergo the torture. That is why these bans on these conversion therapy places need to happen. Hugs
11th edition of the ‘Antwerp Pride’ parade. Credit: Nicolas Maeterlinck
Belgium is banning conversion practices – a pseudoscientific practice of trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity to align with heterosexual and cisgender norms – for members of the LGBTQ community, announced State Secretary for Gender Equality, Equal Opportunity and Diversity Sarah Schlitz.
Although Belgium is regularly regarded as a model of LGBTQ rights due to its extensive legislative arsenal, conversion practices – often referred to as “conversion therapy,” which is considered a misnomer by medical professionals as it does not constitute a legitimate form of therapy – were not yet officially banned in the country.
“Belgium is a pioneer in the field of LGBTQ rights. Numerous legislative reforms and social efforts bear witness to this, but a ban [on conversion practices] was sadly missing from our legislative arsenal,” Schlitz said in a press release.
While the phenomenon is better known abroad – especially in the United States where at least 700,000 cases of conversion practices are known – Belgium is not spared from it: a recent study by the ‘Centre Permanent pour la Citoyenneté et la Participation’ (CPCP) reveals the stories of LGBTQ people who have been victims of these so-called medical therapies or even forms of exorcisms.
Symbolic, psychological and physical violence
Conversion practices are “deceptive, ineffective and dangerous” practices that aim to change, suppress or eliminate the sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression of LGBTQ people.
“The opportunity to be yourself and the freedom to live the way you want is a fundamental principle of our society that must not be compromised under any circumstances,” Schlitz said. “This prohibition is a powerful act to protect the victims from this symbolic, psychological and sometimes physical violence.”
Methods range from psychotherapy and electroshock therapy to beatings and even “corrective rape.” They can take place in religious, medical or sectarian environments, can be carried out by relatives or pseudo-professionals and have terrible consequences for the people who undergo them.
From now on, carrying out conversion practices will be punishable by imprisonment of one month to two years and/or a fine of €100 to €300.
The court will also take into account whether the offence was committed by a person in a recognised position of trust, authority or influence over the victim and whether the offence was committed against a minor or a person in a vulnerable situation.
Suggesting or inciting conversion practices, directly or indirectly, will also be penalised. The court will be able to prohibit people convicted of conversion practices from carrying out a professional or social activity related to the commission of these offences for a maximum period of five years.
Again gang thugs. Funny white supremacy and Nazis do not bother the republicans and churches but peaceful creative dress up does. But I see that these thugs are not getting the big crowds and backing they used to get, I think the good people are pushing back against this rule by gang violence. Hugs
Some demonstrators reportedly carried Patriot Front flags and shouted “white power.”
Anti-LGBTQ protesters in Chattanooga, TN Photo: Screenshot
A drag brunch in Chattanooga, Tennessee drew protest Sunday, in a scene that has become all too common over the past year.
The crowd of about 30 people outside the Seed Theater was reportedly organized by Chattanooga-based right-wing group Tennessee Neighbors for Liberty. But, as the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports, in photos and videos posted to social media, several protesters can be seen carrying flags bearing the logo of white supremacist group Patriot Front.
In one video, a protester appears to throw a Nazi salute and shout “white power.”
Protesters chanted slogans like “strong families, strong nation,” and “reclaim America,” and held signs saying “stop the abuse of children,” “groom dogs not children,” “cross-dressing is an abomination to the Lord,” and “You do not know what love is.”
They were met, however, by a group of counter-protesters, which was reportedly slightly larger, holding Pride flags and chanting “love will win.”
Police were present at the protest, but no incidents were reported, according to a Chattanooga Police Department spokesperson.
Elizabeth and Brenton Haley started the Seed Theater earlier this year to give LGBTQ people like their 15-year-old transgender son a place to feel safe.
“That’s what we hear more than anything from parents, especially for teachers and young people in those important formative years, they don’t have places their kids can go to,” Elizabeth Haley explained. “Having a safe space their children can come and experience community is really important.”
Sunday’s drag brunch, which was billed as an all-ages event, was the second show at the Seed Theater to draw protests. But Haley said that the backlash has actually led to an increase in support and donations to the theater.
“It’s been really great for our community, as difficult as it is,” she said. “It’s very clear that we have a strong and healthy presence of LGBTQ people and allies here in Chattanooga.”
Haley said that Sunday’s drag brunch sold out all 80 tickets.
Earlier this month, Tennessee Republicans introduced a bill that would ban any “adult cabaret performance” — including “topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest” — on public property within view of anyone who is not an adult.
This story has a good ending even though it starts with bigotry. For those that claim they shouldn’t have used a Catholic cemetery the surviving spouse asked if it would be a problem and was told no it was acceptable and fine, it would be no problem. First the cemetery tried to ignore and avoid the spouse after they defaced his memorial stone. But a law suit where they were looking at having to pay a big damage award brought them right around to not only apologizing to offering to replace the stone with the wording the spouse wishes.
“Somebody just decided that [our marriage] doesn’t count,” the surviving husband said.
The headstone, before it was changed Photo: Screenshot
Darrell Frye of Dayton, Ohio is speaking out after he says a Christian cemetery “purposefully” removed the date of their marriage from his late husband’s headstone, which originally had both of their names and the date they were married.
“Somebody just decided that that doesn’t count,” Frye said about his marriage with Jason Neto, who passed away in 2020.
Frye and Neto met in 2006 and got married in 2016, about a year after marriage equality was legalized in Ohio.
In 2020, tragedy struck when Neto died of a heart attack. Frye purchased a plot in the Catholic Calvary Cemetery because Neto was raised Catholic.
“I chose the St. Kateri preserve because that was very much in the spirit of what Jason was as a person,” he told WHIO. “I knew this was a Catholic cemetery, and I point-blank asked, ‘Is this going to be a problem that we’re a gay couple and buying a plot here?’”
He said that he was told that it wasn’t a problem, so he bought an engraved memorial boulder to honor Neto. He decided to “keep it simple” when deciding what to write on the boulder because of a 30-character limit, and he chose to include the line “Married 23 July 2016.”
The boulder was installed a year later and it said what it was supposed to at first. But then Frye went to visit the plot in mid-October and he didn’t see the boulder.
“I came out here and it was gone, just gone,” he said.
He went to ask Cavalry Cemetery about what happened and he was told that it was taken in for maintenance. But when it was brought back, the text had been altered.
“The line about our marriage was just erased. They dug into rock to erase our relationship.”
Frye tried to talk to the cemetery staff about it, but he couldn’t get ahold of anyone. So he hired a lawyer and now he’s coming forward with his story.
“It’s just part of life as a gay man in America in 2022,” he said.
WHIO tried contacting Cavalry Cemetery by email, phone, and with a visit to their office, and they finally got a statement: “In consideration of the family we will communicate directly with them, and release a statement at the appropriate time.”
Frye said that he met with them in early November.
“I have met with the leadership team at Calvary,” he said on November 3. “They have offered a full and unconditional apology for their mistake and expressed a sincere interest in making amends and in restoring the memorial boulder to its original state or an acceptable equivalent.”
Cavalry then told WHIO that Frye’s statement was “accurate and much appreciated.”
“We will be working with the engraver to restore the memorial immediately,” they said.
Two former Kansas City, Missouri police officers have pleaded guilty to assaulting a Black trans woman three years ago.
Matthew Brummett and Charles Prichard were charged with third-degree assault based on witness accounts and a video of them arresting 30-year-old Breona Hill outside of a beauty supply store on May 24, 2019.
In the video, they reportedly kneed her in the ribs, face, and torso; slammed her face into the sidewalk; and forcefully shoved her arms over her head while she was handcuffed. A witness also reported seeing an officer punch her with a closed fist.
The video also shows Prichard telling Hill, “We tried to be easy” and “You made it this way,” while she cries for help.
After they pleaded guilty, a judge suspended Prichard and Brummett’s prison sentences. Instead of jail time, they lost their law enforcement licenses and received three years of unsupervised probation. The pair had already left their department in December, after having been placed on administrative leave once charges were filed.
“I think it was fair and that it was the best we could hope for under these circumstances,” Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker told FOX4. “That’s how I feel about it. You can only get what you can get from the law and the statutes that are available to you.”
“I’m really hoping this can be a teachable moment. I think the culture of KCPD needs to be explored, and how do guys get away with this out in the streets.”
The incident has furthered activists’ calls for police reform.
“But today is beginning to smell like justice,” said a spokesperson for Hill’s family, Rena Childs, according to the AP. “These two officers will never be able to be police officers again.”
Interim Police Chief Joesph Mabin also released a statement declaring, “I expect our officers to treat all those they come into contact with on a daily basis with dignity and respect. The officers’ actions that day did not meet those expectations. They were unacceptable, will not be condoned, and will not be tolerated. I want to strongly reiterate if any member of the community has a concern regarding our members’ conduct, please contact the Office of Community Complaints.”
Hill’s assault led to an amendment to the city code to make sure those witnessing arrests are not banned from filming the officers. After filming Hill’s assault, Roderick Reed was convicted of a municipal violation because he would not move his car after he stopped filming. Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas pardoned him.
“I felt that it’s necessary for us to move on beyond it and ensure that people now that they have a right to film police conduct, and they have a right to make sure that is shared more broadly,” Lucas said at the time.
Hill was shot and killed in her home on October 14, 2019 in a separate incident determined to be self-defense by the shooter.
After being pardoned in 2020, Reed spoke to FOX 4 about having stayed in touch with Hill until her death and said the assault “broke her spirit.”
The last post I did on over the top maga right wing haters who won seats on school boards was in Florida. This time it is in Lafayette, Indiana. He is another that thinks there is a gay ideology, an indoctrination of gayness and trans quotas. Look that is just a rehash of the gay agenda we all heard so much about, but no one could tell us what it was or who had the authority to create it. It was just a mysterious thing claimed by conservative right winger to hint that gays were trying to recruit your kids and molest your little boys /girls. Well I guess it is the boys the gays molest and the trans go after the girls, right? You know the gay agenda right wingers would seriously say to each other. After all every right winger knew gays couldn’t breed so the only way new gays happened was recruitment / molestation of the young. They just couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that kids are born gay or straight and everywhere on the spectrum of sexuality / orientation. He says it is ok for gay teachers to exist but not to really be out. They cannot talk about how they feel like straight people can or that is pushing the gayness on others. It is back to the 1970s /1980s gay teachers are just looking to sex your kid from kindergarten to the senior prom. Don’t these people ever grow up? Did they not understand society moved on from their 1950s homosexual pervert threat thoughts. Anita Bryant flamed out people, stop holding on to her ideas. WTF, I am so tired of this shit. He admits up front he is totally against that way of life. So what, there are gay people, gay people exist. We are legally able to get married and have families, and to say just the idea of promoting tolerance and ending bullying is pushing gay lifestyle on others is wrong and stupid. Because every heterosexual act then is pushing sexuality and sex on to students and other adults. You cannot have it both ways, if a straight couple can talk about their spouse and it be OK then so can a same sex couple. If a boy and girl can hold hands, then so can two girls or two boys. What these people want is to erase gays / trans / and civil rights from society and they will start in the schools. In Florida attacks and assaults against LGBTQ+ students have gone up at an alarming rate and teachers are not able to use the programs / instructions in stopping discrimination and promoting tolerance / acceptance they used to do. This new school board member doesn’t want any posters put up in schools trying to stop bullying or promoting tolerance / acceptance. That is pushing the gayness I guess.
Plus he is sure they are teaching CRT and he won’t have it. These people think teaching the truth about the horrors of slavery and how the economy of the south was built on the backs of black people because the whites did not want to work is CRT. That is bullshit. CRT is a legal theory of the interconnectedness of institutional racism in business / society.
Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.
The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.
CRT is not being taught in grade schools, middle schools, nor even in high schools but it damn well should be. It should be part of every history class tailored for the class level and age of the students. It is our history in this country. The people who keep claiming US exceptionalism need to be made to defend slavery and the discrimination of black people from the end of slavery to that it is still going on today. But that is just what the conservatives don’t want, they don’t want kids knowing that the “nation founded to be a Christian nation” was up to its neck in horrifying harm to different segments of the population, genocide and slavery in all its ugliness. Teach it so discrimination stops and doesn’t ever come back.
This guy ran against teaching peer to peer sexual education. I think he thought comprehensive sexual education is in class orgies? He wants teachings on emotions gone. Again understandings have increased and kids need to learn positive emotions and how to handle negative emotions. Hell we are making these same kids do active shooter drills, yes they need emotional reassurance. He goes on to list a bunch of other woke stuff he is against. Then he gets back to the in my day we did this but did not have that and we were great, look how great we are that we think the best thing to do is hit kids. Like all these type of people they have a romantic attachment to the “Leave It To Beaver” TV show and think the 1950s was the peak of human civilization. They have no understanding that society and human understanding has improved and moved forward. They long for the past that was more how they liked life. Damn. He talks about things he doesn’t even understand and talks like he is an expert. He has the strange idea that because these things were not talked about when he was a kid (he is 80 years old, so he started school in 1947) and his five kids he says went through school without any of these modern ideas, and things were all great being normal. But again is 80 years old, if he had his children in his 20s, his kids would have been in school during the 1960s or early 1970s. Things have changed a lot since then. Hey let’s return to teaching only what was known in the 1600s while we are being regressive. Wouldn’t that be better? The last thing he talks about is how bad it is that a minority is telling the majority what to do, he is not going to allow it. Yet he and the republicans are the minority that are trying to rule the majority and he is too blinded by hate or old age to see it. Hugs
Newly elected board member Chuck Hockema ran on a platform of keeping gay teachers in the closet.
There’s a new school board member in town, and he’s taking names.
Eighty-year-old Chuck Hockema, elected Tuesday to the Lafayette Community School Board in Lafayette, Indiana won’t brook openly gay teachers, Critical Race Theory for kids, or a “woke” agenda.
“My reason for running for school board is because when I talked to the school board members, they would not give me an answer to the questions,” Hockema told the Lafayette Journal & Courier. “And I thought, ‘Now this is some crap.’ If you can’t tell me whether you’re going to vote for CRT or you are not, you’re on my list and I’m going to find out why.”
Hockema is also coming for anyone advocating a gay “ideology.”
“If there’s a teacher that wants to be gay, that’s OK,” Hockema said. “That’s their prerogative. I’ve hired gay people. I’ve had them work for me, but I would not allow a gay person to push his feelings and his ideology off on other employees.
“If they did that, they’d be gone.”
“I’m totally against that as a way of life,” said Hockema.
“I don’t want to see any banners, I don’t want to see any posters,” he said. “The teachers are there to educate, not to try a form people’s opinions about anything other than reading, writing, arithmetic, civics, and science.”
Hockema ran on a platform supporting the three R’s, and against “undermining of traditional values and beliefs, promoting gender confusion, encouraging peer-to-peer sex education, violating or undermining parental rights, supporting critical race theory (CRT) or social-emotional learning (SEL) when used as a cover for divisive instruction, and promoting ‘woke’ ideology.”
“I’ve got five children that went through school, and we did well with that,” Hockema said of teaching the basics. “We never had any issues to worry about when it came down to CRT or woke or SEL or transgender or none of that stuff. They didn’t teach this. We helped them with their assignments, and it was a different world then.”
Hockema says he isn’t going to “monkey around” with school board members, either.
“If they want to support these things, I feel like they should be removed from office. That’s my strong opinion.”
Hockema said he’s got no quarrel with LGBTQ kids, “as long as they stayed within their bounds.”
“A little boy might be like, ‘I feel more like a little girl.’ And if you got a teacher that encourages that, that’s the impression they’re probably going to go. And if they just left them alone because it’s a normal thing to have that thing happen to children at different ages, they’ll grow out of it,” Hockema said. That is not how being transgender works; transgender children’s identities have been shown to be stable into adulthood.
His goal, Hockema says, is to “save the children.”
“I don’t want them being indoctrinated by someone’s opinion, who’s 100 percent different than mine. What my wife and I teach our children, I don’t want them to erode that with their ideology. They can make it sound so sweet and so pleasant and so wonderful, and kids are impressionable.”
“When the minority starts ruling the majority like these whole issues, you got one percent of the population dictating what the rest of us, what we can and can’t do, that’s ridiculous.”
Nearly most of the day has gone by but I am so frustrated and due to allergies about ready to jump out of my own skin.
Today I went to an older woman’s home, she is someone I helped even when I tried to go back to work, and even after failing when I sunk into a deep depression, I would work up the ability to leave my bedroom and go to her home to help her with computer / phone issues. Her husband is a wonderful person who in the park for decades that we have been here is well sought after as he is every knowledgeable for every type of repair from wood to electrical. I never asked about his background, but it seems just from his knowledge he has been in the construction field for a long time.
But his wife has had computer issues and I have helped them and their sister in the park. Remember I work only for donations and never make payment an issue, I will help anyone who needs assistance regardless if they are willing to offer me anything or not.
This time it was a repeat problem they had where they needed to print something important, but the printer only printed a page in one color. As I knew and understood the problem it was an easy if time consuming fix. But the conversation between us all was far more valuable to me than the money they insisted I take even when I tried gracefully to refuse.
We got talking about how the park has changed, and these are two people I have never heard a curse word from. I have never heard either of them say a bad word against anyone. Not to dox them but I would say that as I understand it they are from Indiana originally.
As I was cycling the printer through the cleaning program which is all it really needed, I mentioned how the park had changed for Ron and I. How it has gone from when I was on the homeowner’s board and Ron and I would walk around being given hellos and hand waves to now where we are ignored and glared at by some of the people. Not a lot but a notable amount.
This couple is the only people I know who I have never heard say vulgar words against others, they do not curse, they also do not push any kind of religious message or other holier than thou message. They are an enigma as far as that goes, but I learned a few things today sitting with them. When I mentioned how the park had changed and how some people now refuse to acknowledge Ron and I when we are walking around, I mentioned a specific person / home who had directed seeming dislike and nastiness towards us but I mentioned we try to be nice when we walk by that home. The man ( I trying to be deliberately vague so if by some weird the haters come across this they can not attack such a nice couple) for the first time spoke up telling me he told that person they did not belong in our park and chewed them out. Remember in the last decade this has been one of the most sought-after persons for every repair anyone could need. He is legendary in the park to the point if you don’t know how to do a repair or build project everyone says go ask him. And he told me how he went off on the guy after hearing him say something very homophobic (he wouldn’t tell me what the other guy said) and after telling him off and refusing to work for him told him that he did not belong in this park! Then he told me that if Ron and I ever needed advice or help to let him know and he would help us any way he could.
Wow! I knew anti-gay feelings were gaining strength here in our park, our home. We have noticed that the waves and hellos had decreased and sometimes completely ignored as we walk around and meet people. They told me of several people leaving the park I did not know about, and I guess that the change is happening park wide. This is DeathSantis state, so I guess soon it will be our turn to move away. Ron is already making the arrangements. I had so hoped it wouldn’t go that way this year. Sad hugs, keep the asylum doors open please. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 