This statement says it all, clearly and you have to ask why politicians and religious leaders are allowed to do this? The local LGBTQ group called the attack “the result of a long and systematic campaign against them by state officials, churches, and extremist groups.” “A heinous act of a radicalized individual can happen at any time, but it is a testament to the time and society who he chooses to target his attack,” the group wrote. “The fact that he has chosen LGBTI people is the result of a long and systematic campaign against them by state officials, churches, and extremist groups.” Hugs
The local LGBTQ group called the attack “the result of a long and systematic campaign against them by state officials, churches, and extremist groups.”
Two people died and one was injured in a Wednesday night shooting at a gay bar called Teplaren in Slovakia’s capital city of Bratislava.
The suspected shooter was found dead the following morning. While police haven’t released details about the shooter’s identity or suspected motive, Slovakian media said that he had posted messages on Twitter using the phrases “hate crime,” “gay bar,” and aired anti-Semitic views, Express reported.
On Facebook, local LGBTQ Pride group Dúhový Pride Bratislava named the victims who died (two young people named Matus and Juraj) as well as the injured person (Radka). The group also expressed shock about the shooting, calling it “unprecedented in the history of our community.”
“A heinous act of a radicalized individual can happen at any time, but it is a testament to the time and society who he chooses to target his attack,” the group wrote. “The fact that he has chosen LGBTI people is the result of a long and systematic campaign against them by state officials, churches, and extremist groups.”
The group called on the government to take steps to condemn and make systemic reform to prevent such violence in the future. It has also organized a “march to condemn hatred against the LGBTI community” with four other allied organizations. Local police will provide security for the event.
In a public statement, Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger said, “I strongly condemn yesterday’s attack in which two people died… It is unacceptable that anyone should fear for their life because of the way they live.”
Slovakia has anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people, allows queer citizens to serve in its military, allows people to change the gender on their government documents, and recognizes same-sex marriages that occur elsewhere in the European Union (EU). However, the nation has no hate crime laws, does not recognize same-sex marriages that occur within its borders, nor does it allow adoption or surrogate births for same-sex couples.
According to a 2019 study by the Pew Research Center, only 44 percent of Slovaks consider homosexuality to be acceptable in society. This places Slovakia well below the EU average in terms of social acceptance of LGBTQ people. These attitudes have been influenced by neighboring anti-LGBTQ nations like Poland as well as by the influential Slovakian Catholic church.
I hope this shows everyone how these anti-drag queen haters are not doing this to protect kids, they are doing this to enforce a mistaken idea of what gender roles they feel must be enforced regardless of how others do not agree. We have progressed as a society enough to know that the stereotype of gender roles is not only stupid but based only on the idea that men should control women. Seriously there are religious preachers getting furious that women might wear pants or other things considered men’s clothing. Why? Also these same preachers / people go crazy over men / boys wearing what they think are women’s clothing. Yet that ignores that until the 20th century boys and girls both wore dresses until about 10 or 11 years old. Until the boys started to go through puberty. It was done for a lot of reasons, and it was seen as a boy growing up and becoming a man to graduate to knee length shorts. I wonder how many boys would rather have kept the freedom and ease of wearing dresses. I also think that these people stuck on what each gender should be allowed to wear forget history where men wore wigs and before that togas and other non-pants dress. Frankly clothing has no sex / gender. Clothing is just fabric and it is simply stupid to get upset by the idea that one piece of fabric can be worn only by one sex / gender. The real discussion to have is in a civilized society how much modesty should be required by each sex / gender. For example why are men allowed to go shirtless in society and women are not just because their breasts are bigger, well sometimes bigger. I live in a Florida trailer park and there are retired large old men whose breasts are larger than a lot of women’s. Really that is simply sexist and makes no sense. If a woman wants to walk around topless why shouldn’t see be allowed to do so. it is not her responsibility to control others, they have a duty to control themselves. And don’t say that kids shouldn’t see her breasts. Why? They see men’s breasts all the time. It is a social convention that needs to go bye bye. Breasts exist, kids know people have them, they are not dirty or harmful, but we tell kids they shouldn’t ever see them. Why. See how some sexist old fashion out of date stereotypes of male and female dressing makes no sense? This is nothing more than the Christian Taliban mentality. Are women in the US going to be required to wear burkas? Think of the dress code for Amish women and ask, does it make them a better person or does it simply make their daily lives harder. The fact is these thugs are attempting to use lies along with threats of violence to shut down a legal completely non-sexual event because they want to rule what is allowed in society and what is banned. If you don’t do what these people want they will hurt you. That is the message they are delivering. Well is that a democracy? Is that a civilized civil society for the 21st century? This is what the right wing media and republican governors like DeathSantis are promoting and inspiring. “You guys are total f**king scumbags … You sick f**ks secretly WANT to sexualize little kids because deep down you’re twisted and demented pedos who really really want to f**k kids,” one message said. “I seriously hope that the next workplace shooting occurs at our organization and snuffs out everyone who approved of this. Maybe then our children will be safe from predators like you.” For reading stories to dogs by a man dressed in a costume. Have they seen the outfits that clergy dress in? Hugs
“I seriously hope that the next workplace shooting occurs at our organization and snuffs out everyone who approved of this,” one threat read.
A dog shelter is receiving death threats because it had a drag queen read books to dogs.
On September 24, the Hard Knocks Rescue & Training facility of Huntsville, Alabama had a drag queen named Miss Majesty Divine read to the dogs in its care.
Chaya Raichik, who goes by LibsofTikTok on social media, posted an article that sought to generate outrage about the event. Video of the live-streamed event — which had only one child in its in-person crowd — showed the drag queen reading Walter the Farting Dog: Banned from the Beach and making innuendo comments about men liking “meat” and “big bones.”
After Raichik published her article, the dog shelter began receiving violent threats. Her posts, which regularly accuse LGBTQ people of “grooming” children for sexual abuse, have inspired death threats against drag performers, educators, and healthcare providers.
James Miller, the drag performer who read to the dogs, has since been put on paid leave from his job as a teacher in the Huntsville School District after Raichik’s post. He has said the jokes he made weren’t any worse than the innuendo that has appeared in children’s cartoons.
“You guys are total f**king scumbags … You sick f**ks secretly WANT to sexualize little kids because deep down you’re twisted and demented pedos who really really want to f**k kids,” one message said. “I seriously hope that the next workplace shooting occurs at our organization and snuffs out everyone who approved of this. Maybe then our children will be safe from predators like you.”
The shelter also began getting bad reviews on its Google and Facebook pages.
In a video responding to the threats, the shelter owners said, “We’re not backing down on what we do…. We know this is a risk, but it is the right side of things to be on.”
They also said they had reported the threats to the police and FBI but would continue to operate as they usually do.
“We are being very careful about security,” they continued. “We understand that this is a scary situation. It’s a scary situation. For us. It’s a scary situation for our volunteers, and it’s probably going to make a lot of our clients uncomfortable as well.”
They also noted that Miss Majesty Divine had helped them fundraise and host story hour events at their shelter in the past. The books read during the event focus on “inclusion, acceptance, being authentic, being comfortable in your own skin,” they added.
“Our mission is to focus on the outcast dogs, the underdogs, the dogs that nobody wants to work with,” they said. “The people that we kind of gravitate to and pull into our circle are the people who have always felt pushed out.”
One of the owners also said that they knew what it was like to feel marginalized because they grew up with a gay father during the 1980s.
“To have had a place to go and activities that we could have gone to together as a family that also encompassed other things that we liked, would have been life-changing for me,” one owner said.
The shelter also said it wants to begin a program to help at-risk LGBTQ youth work with dogs so they can both “heal together.”
“We would rather be excluded for those we include that included for those we exclude,” the nonprofit’s CEO Lisa Maasen said.
If the court used the reasoning that no guns made in 1791 had serial numbers does that mean your second amendment rights to own guns is limited to the guns in the public back then. Turn in your Ar-15 and other semi auto weapons and pick up a musket or flint lock. The other thing is activist courts and finding new rights. The right to private gun ownership was not what the second amendment provided until 2008. Before that states could enact many laws restricting gun ownership and carry. But Anthony Scalia created a right to own guns by simply ignoring the part of the second amendment that mentions a well-regulated militia. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Hugs
Ghost guns, which feature no serial number.Spencer Platt/Getty Images
For decades, federal law has forbidden gun owners from scratching out the serial numbers that manufacturers are legally required to place on firearms. The reason is obvious: These serial numbers help state and federal law enforcement trace guns that are used in crimes and identify suspected shooters. Indeed, the only apparent reason anyone would remove a serial number is to avoid becoming a suspect after their gun is used illegally. On Wednesday, however, a federal judge ruled that the law prohibiting alteration of serial numbers violates the Second Amendment. Why? Because serial numbers were virtually nonexistent when the amendment was ratified in 1791, so the government has no power to mandate them today.
This decision in United States v. Price by U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin, a Bill Clinton appointee, may sound shocking. But it is a perfectly plausible application of the Supreme Court’s June ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In that case, Justice Clarence Thomas declared all gun restrictions presumptively unconstitutional if they infringe on “the individual right to armed self-defense.” (The Constitution says nothing about “self-defense,” but Thomas gleaned this right from its penumbra.) A gun restriction may only survive legal scrutiny, the justice declared, if it had an “analogue” in 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified, or 1868, when it was imposed on the states. The burden falls on the government to prove the existence of a historical analogue.
Thomas’ test has already wreaked havoc in the lower courts. One judge has struck down a Texas law that prohibits 18 to 20-year-olds from carrying a handgun outside the home. People under 21 are significantly more likelyto commit gun homicides—but in Bruen, Thomas announced that courts may never consider the real-world, life-saving impact of gun safety laws when gauging their constitutionality. A different Texas judge invalidated a federal law barring individuals from purchasing a handgun while they’re under indictment, even for a violent felony offense. Just last week, another judge struck down New York’s ban on concealed carry in airports, train stations, domestic violence shelters, summer camps, the subway, and other “sensitive locations.” Now Goodwin, who sits in West Virginia, has joined the chorus of lower court judges who feel that Bruen obliges them to strike down longstanding, widely accepted firearm laws.
Goodwin’s conclusion might sound bizarre, but his analysis closely follows Thomas’ test. First, he asked whether the federal ban on possession of a gun with an “obliterated” serial number infringes on the right to self-defense. He found that it does, presenting the hypothetical example of a father who buys a gun, removes the serial number, dies, and leaves it to her daughter. Both father and daughter’s ownership of the firearm would be a federal crime. And that, Goodwin wrote, “is the definition of an infringement on one’s right to possess a firearm.”
The only remaining question is whether the government could find an analogous regulation from 1791 or 1868 that restricted the possession of guns with an altered serial number. It could not, for a fairly obvious reason: Serial numbers only became common following the mass production of firearms, which took off in the decades after the Civil War. Federal law did not compel any manufacturers to use them until 1934. And Congress did not require almost all guns to include a serial number until 1968, when it determined (correctly) that they would facilitate the investigation of violent crime. These laws proved helpful in the government’s mission “to attack the black market in firearms” and track down individuals who used firearms to commit crimes. Yet serial numbers were largely unknown to the Framers, Goodwin wrote. And so the Second Amendment confers a right to remove them from modern weapons.
Goodwin acknowledged the “argument” that “firearms with an obliterated serial number are likely to be used in violent crime and therefore a prohibition on their possession is desirable.” But he explained that this argument “is the exact type of means-end reasoning the Supreme Court has forbidden me from considering.” Even if the serial number law demonstrably saved tens of thousands of lives each year, that fact would be totally irrelevant to the constitutional analysis.
These laws almost certainly do save lives. When law enforcement officers recover a weapon from a crime, they check its serial number against a federal database. The results can help them track down the last known seller and buyer of the firearm, who may provide information that’s critical to the investigation. It might lead them straight to the suspect if he bought the gun legally. If not—if he stole the weapon, for instance—the serial number will lead law enforcement to the last known owner, who can provide information about the theft that could lead to the suspect’s eventual arrest. The lack of a serial number is a major reason why ghost guns are so dangerous, and why they are becoming a ubiquitous tool in violent crimes: Criminals exploittheir untraceability to elude detection.
Under Bruen, though, none of this matters. All that counts is that serial number laws arose over the last century, so they are too modern to comport with the Second Amendment. Goodwin made this point over and over again; it almost sounded like he was quietly protesting the extreme and dangerous results demanded by the Bruen test. Lower courts, of course, must adhere to the Supreme Court’s decisions, and Goodwin did so respectfully and comprehensively. In the process, though, he repeatedly reminded readers that he had no choice but to follow Bruen to its outrageous logical endpoint. His decision thus doubled as a warning: The Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence has grown so radical that it now shields criminals trying to conceal their involvement in a violent crime.
In other words, Goodwin has teed up a perfect test case to see whether the conservative justices are truly ready to embrace the deadly and devastating consequences of their own revolutionary ruling.
Democratic strategist Maria Cardona just put on a masterclass on how to respond to Republican lies while debating Republican commentator Scott Jennings on the subject of immigration and Republicans cruelly sending asylum seekers to other states against their will. MeidasTouch co-founder Jordy Meiselas breaks it down.
The DOJ just submitted an updated evidence log with Special Master Federal Judge Raymond Dearie pursuant to his prior court order. Judge Dearie has ordered Donald Trump to submit a sworn affidavit in response to this evidence log by no later than September 30.
“We are out here to push back on things that society knows is wrong”. Wrong society has said that drag dressing up is fine and has for decades. It is only recently that the rabid republican elected office holders made it a sexual thing claiming it was orgies that kids were taken to. The religious leaders have decried it as sin and against the word of god and they jumped on the republican hate language. Dressing in drag has been done forever, from early theater to the advent of TV, to Flip Wilson in the 1970s to even Rudy Giuliani. It is done on Halloween and has been done in drag shows for as long as I can remember. It was done at schools. It is only the last year that these assholes that want everyone to live, act, and be just like they demand that everyone be some kind of fictionalized 1950s. But even in the 1950s you had drag. This is a made up outrage to try to force the minority view that the LGBTQ+ must be removed from society, that anyone who doesn’t follow a traditional male / female role must be removed from society, and any religion not approved by this minority must be removed from society. These groups at the US Taliban. The Proud Boys and Patriot Front are the Nazi loving brownshirt enforcers of the curreent rabid republican party. Hugs
A Drag Bingo night at a Katy Church stirred up controversy on Saturday evening. The event, meant to raise money for the church’s clothing boutique for trans-youth, sparked heated demonstrations.
KPRC 2′s cameras were rolling as demonstrators clashed outside the First Christian Church on Morton Ranch Road. A number of groups were there supporting the LGBTQ+ community and other groups against the event said they wanted to make sure their voices were heard.
“We are out here to push back on things that society knows is wrong. They are having an event, welcoming children to drag queen bingo hour. This is unacceptable,” Founder of Urban Conservatives of America Jonathan McCullough said.
“That is nonsense, because drag in itself is just a costume,” said one person supporting the event. “It’s no different than someone dressed up like a superhero at a comic convention or someone who puts on a Halloween costume.”
Heavily armed officers formed a line in the median in an effort to keep the two sides separate. As the crowds grew bigger and bigger, more officers arrived. Despite the chaos, a pastor told KHOU 11 the event was a sold-out success.
“We know that not everyone will agree with us, so we create a place for people to feel welcomed and understand there will always be people who don’t agree with us,” the pastor said.
Under the blazing sun outside, the scene at First Christian Church in Katy felt chaotic– and angry. More than 100 people traded insults for hours with counter-protesters. Some on both sides hid their faces. Some on both sides displayed big guns. https://t.co/7Ho3djT9id
Proud Boys and Kelly Neidert’s Protect Texas Kids are in Katy, Texas, protesting a drag bingo fundraiser at First Christian Church. PB and Houston antifascists just clashed. Heavy police presence dividing the two groups now pic.twitter.com/5p4EgD88mT
The group of Nazis appear to be leaving the protest, sporting for the first time today a flag with a swastika. Proud Boys and Patriot Front have also left pic.twitter.com/hJFBhgPAC6
I’m glad no one was hurt, and I’m glad they didn’t cancel the event, or back down.
Grown-ass men getting their undies bunched because they don’t like someone else’s wardrobe, and they think that entitles them to threaten violence. If there’s a better definition of toxic masculinity, I can’t think of it.
How can they even breathe in those masks? I mean, haven’t they seen the studies that show that masks reduce oxygen in the body. I am really concerned for their health.
Must be some kind of really boring life when all one does is search the internet for drag queen events that can be harrassed. I guess since all the abortion clinics were closed, there’s nothing else to entertain the nazis
I hope someone had a sign “Americans defeated Nazis once, we can do it again.” With some American flags on it. Why can’t liberals use the American flag too? We want America to be a great place to live for everyone. (Well, except Nazis)
Didn’t some right wing nut write a book about how the Nazi were really all gay? Should make a sign promoting that book. (I was going to say to hand out copies of the book, but that would be supporting the author.)
They are just trying to make their numbers much higher than those numbers are and pretend they are not just uneducated rural militia folks. I always ask crazy “conservatives” in central Ohio where their parents and/or grandparents were born.
“Sparked heated demonstrations … other groups against the event said they wanted to make sure their voices were heard“
One of the reasons we’re hurtling toward theocratic fascism in this country is because the media keep describing what’s happening with sanitizing, normalizing language like this.
Have they tried praying? They claim that prayer can solve any problem, but when they actually care about something they show up. Dead kids in school,? Nothing but prayer. Kids at a show? Threats and intimidation. They need to actually act like they believe their own religious bullshit on occasion.
If you are going to events, probably a good idea to bring something like pepper spray to defend yourself if these knuckledraggers show up. They have been given permission to act like this by the GQP.
“That is nonsense, because drag in itself is just a costume,” said one person supporting the event. “It’s no different than someone dressed up like a superhero at a comic convention or someone who puts on a Halloween costume.”
One might also suggest proud boy and oath keepers drag as costumes.
In recent speech Radical Right Republican Matt Gaetz stated that if the Republicans regain the majority in the House of Representatives he and other republicans will push to remove the seniority leadership system and instead promote the most radical republicans to positions of leadership. Meidas Contributor Texas Paul reacts to this craziness.
This is what happens when red state republican governors, right wing media hosts, and religious hate preachers make wild untrue accusations and targe the LGBTQ+. They put targets on the LGBTQ+ people and their organizations. While the police have not released the full context of the notes, one phone shows a note blaming the LBTQ+ for ” … holding get homosexual togethers for middle schoolers”. You know where that rhetoric comes from. It energizes the maga thug base to commit act of violence against those the republican governors like DeathSantis claim harm kids. About that harming kids, DeathSantis used taxpayer funds of hundreds of thousands of dollars to ship Venezuelan legal asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard and one of those was a month old baby. DeathSantis rants about saving kids by the don’t say gay bills and tough abortion bills, but he did not care he was sending a one month old baby all across the country with no warning to those where they landed and no way the mother could get help. Lucky the community there rallied to do they could for the asylum seekers that were being used as pawns and it really pissed the right wing off that the left was not assholes like the right is. Hugs
On Saturday morning, members of the Pride Community Center in Gainesville received a call from a real estate office in the same complex about their building being vandalized.
“She told me that she was just informed by somebody that came to her office that the pride center had been vandalized and that the windows were all smashed,” said board member Debbie Lewis. “The reason it’s being investigated as a hate crime is because of the notes that were left.”
Members didn’t want to share the messages due to the ongoing investigation and the community joined in helping board up the windows.
The attack came just weeks before the highly anticipated return of the Gainesville Pride Festival on Oct. 22, which was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. Those who showed up at the center helped clean the mess left behind, sweeping up glass and rocks.
“Later I will be angry about this vicious hate crime but right now I’m incredibly sad for every vulnerable person in my community,” County Commission candidate Mary Alford said, adding that she faults some elected Republicans who have shared anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
The attack came just weeks before the highly anticipated return of the Gainesville Pride Festival on Oct. 22. https://t.co/hWDKiOlDRh
For me, the hate that has been generated by the likes of DeSantis, Trump, Abbott, Youngkin, Green and their likes has turned into sadness for our country and her citizens. I cannot understand what is going on anymore and why citizens cannot have some peace and reprieve from Republicans.
A teacher in Texas reported one of her own students' families to child welfare services after stalking their Instagram page and identifying them as transgender. Luckily the family had already left Texas for Colorado after Governor Abbott ordered the state to persecute them. pic.twitter.com/rO5mAZ82lB
Beginning to understand how the Nazis did it now. Just ordinary people, thinking it’s their civic duty to do what the government tells them, and if it aligns with their own prejudices even better.
My Lyft driver on Friday that took me home from the airport was brand new here in Palm Springs, just arrived from Fort Lauderdale 2 months ago, with the cutest little dog who slept in the front seat. I welcomed him to California and gave him a big tip.
God I wish I could afford to get out. if i had the money I would be gone. The place is a human cess pool and getting worse by the minute. But alas Im poor, all my friends live here, have dogs and cats so its hard to leave right now.
In a test of the maturity of anyone who happens across this story, Rockman School Board candidate Craig Ladyman has been exposed for posting violently queerphobic and antisemitic imagery online.
Ladyman posted an image of four pride flags arranged to form a swastika pattern on Trump social media network Truth Social under the incredible username “@LadymanForLiberty”. The candidate writes, “Like my new Pride flag?” (very respectfully capitalizing the “P” in “Pride”, of course).
Appalled parents and voters sent the post along to Superintendent Steven Matthews, who says he shares in their outrage.
“It makes me feel angry,” he tells Fox WXMI. “Certainly, a symbol like that represents the and represents divisiveness. It’s a symbol that I don’t think represents who we are as a community, and anybody who would use it I don’t think represent who we are as a community.”
In addition to the bastardization of the Pride flag, the invoking of nazi imagery is deeply unsettling to community members.
Rabbi David Krishef, a leader at the Ahavas Israel congregation in neighboring Grand Rapids, explains to WXMI the harm that sentiments like Ladyman’s pose.
“It cheapens the Holocaust, it cheapens the suffering,” he says. “It’s a misuse of the imagery, it’s a misuse of the language.
“No matter what’s going on in this country, whether you’re coming from the right wing being afraid of what the left wing are doing or vice versa, we are not rounding people up wholesale and consigning them to concentration camps and death camps. But that’s what the Nazi imagery evokes.”
Not to psychoanalyze transphobes on main, but this candidate’s anti-trans rhetoric is particularly vehement and loud. His official school board candidacy poster reads, “Vote Craig Ladyman/Rockford School Board/He knows what a woman is!”
It’s giving “graphic design is my passion”:
His campaign website boasts, “I promise to fight for parental rights and children’s rights in school. I will never go along with unconstitutional mandates, medical tyranny, or the woke agenda.”
We’re not saying that this man was so horribly bullied for his name growing up that gender stricture became deeply embedded in his psyche and is now his only personality trait. Not out loud, at least.
Bexar Sheriff Javier Salazar says there is an open investigation of Venezuelan migrants lured under false pretenses and displaced from San Antonio to Florida and then Martha’s Vineyard. The Majority Report crew discusses how the Venezuelan migrants were in the United States legally with court dates and promised expedited work papers. The MR crew questions the funding behind this political stunt and if it could possibly be Right-wing money as Florida Governor DeSantis’ office staff is involved.
Photo: Shutterstock
