I am seriously getting tired, scared, and very worried that these terrorist groups can operate openly spewing hate with impunity. This is incitement to committed violence and terrorism. And the right wing fascist fundamentalist Christians groups love these actions, as they are looking forward to a time of legal moral police and the Christian Taliban church doctrine enforcers. This is domestic terrorism.
noun
The use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.
Resort to terrorizing methods as a means of coercion, or the state of fear and submission produced by the prevalence of such methods.
The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode of government by terror or intimidation.
Brookings, South Dakota. A university LGBTQ+ group is hit with a flood of hate mail, culminating in a bomb threat that terrifies students.
San Lorenzo, California. A drag queen story hour is one of several Pride events across the country stormed by suspected members of the extremist street gang the Proud Boys. The men shout homophobic slurs and threats, and a performer hides in a back room, waiting for police to arrive.
Philadelphia. Boston. Pittsburgh. Washington, D.C. Akron, Ohio. Threats hit hospitals and medical clinics, and some temporarily evacuate their patients while law enforcement assesses the danger.
Then comes summer and fall 2023, at least two dozen public schools and libraries start receiving bomb threats. In California, Colorado, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, they cancel classes and evacuate students.
These cases, and many more, share a common link: The victim of each threat had also been targeted, in the days before, by the enormously popular conservative social media channel Libs of TikTok.
In almost every case, the perpetrator of the threat is unknown, and Chaya Raichik, the far-right influencer who runs Libs of TikTok, says she opposes violence, and that because there have been almost no arrests, there’s no proof the threats come from her followers.
Numerous news reports have covered individual threats, noting the target had also been mentioned by Libs of TikTok. But the new analysis of years of tweets, including archives of many Raichik has since deleted, shows the pattern is more extensive and pervasive than has been previously known – and that threats, specifically against schools, have ratcheted up significantly in the past two months.
Media Matters used searches of published news reports to help identify more than 30 possible threat incidents. USA TODAY verified bomb, death and other threats in more than two dozen cases.
The research most likely undercounts the total number of cases. Other threats may never be reported to police or the media, and some targets are reluctant to publicize their plight for fear of drawing even more harassment.
As Libs of TikTok’s reach has expanded – the account now has more than 2.6 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter – so, too, has the frequency and ferocity of the threats that follow Raichik’s posts.
Hospitals have been evacuated; schools and libraries have cleared classrooms and canceled lessons while police officers search for bombs. Bookstores, Pride parades, cafes, even a dog rescue center, have had to lock down for fear of reprisals – and violence.
“We can only insulate ourselves from what’s happening on social media for so long,” said Ari Drennen, LGBTQ+ program director for Media Matters. “In a country where so many people have the ability to take things into their own hands, that’s a very real worry.”
Libs of TikTok: A far-right force driving the conversation and fueling outrage
The @LibsofTikTok Twitter handle was created in April 2021 by Raichik, a former Brooklyn real estate agent who grew up in Los Angeles.
Raichik created the account to “raise awareness about the situation in America,” she told USA TODAY. “There’s a clear pattern of the sexualization of children going on in public schools, and I think that’s a problem,” she said. “I think it’s super harmful, and I want to call it out, and raise awareness to it.”
The account has become a creator of, and a force multiplier for, right-wing outrage, particularly on LGBTQ+ issues. On X it has been amplified by the platform’s owner Elon Musk, and a hive of conservative politicians, media personalities and far-right online influencers, including former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and podcaster Joe Rogan.
For 2½ years, the account has posted a drumbeat of videos, photographs and links, often featuring TikTok or Instagram videos recorded by progressive leftists, accompanied by a derisive comment from Raichik.
Like most social media influencers, Raichik doesn’t produce all the content she tweets about. Libs of TikTok regularly shares videos and posts created by other far-right accounts, often with inaccuracies, misinformation and thinly veiled hatred mixed in.
But while those other accounts may have a smaller reach, once Libs of TikTok chooses a target, the viral response can quickly spin out of control.
Once Raichik posts something, “it just gets amplified to an order of magnitude larger audience,” said Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic who has been openly critical of Libs of TikTok. “Any tweet she puts out gets – instantly – millions of views and potentially tens of thousands of retweets and likes. So it gets wide dissemination.”
Shortly after – media reports and interviews show – is when the threats often begin.
Hospitals receive threats after Libs of TikTok posts
In Spring 2022, Raichik began directing her audience toward doctors, hospitals and medical facilities that provide care to LGBTQ+ patients, especially children.
On March 16, 2022, Libs of TikTok targeted Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Oregon, part of the Oregon Health and Science University’s health system, for providing gender-affirming care to youth. Almost immediately, the hospital and its staff started receiving harassment and threats.
“The harassing calls, emails and other messages that OHSU received in March 2022 objected to gender-affirming health care. Most of these messages cited social media posts that contained inaccurate or misleading information about life-saving and medically necessary care for gender-diverse patients,” reads a hospital statement provided to USA TODAY. “OHSU and its staff continue to be subjected to anti-transgender harassment today.”
By the summer, Raichik focused on Boston Children’s Hospital.
From Aug. 11 to 15, 2022, Libs of TikTok tweeted about the hospital at least seven times, Media Matters found. In one post, Raichik shared a debunked – but wildly popular – video claiming the hospital was performing hysterectomies on children.
Almost immediately, far-right message-boards and Twitter caught fire, with one poster threatening to “start executing these ‘doctors.’” On Aug. 16, the official Twitter feed for Boston Children’s Hospital posted a statement saying it had “been the target of a large volume of hostile internet activity, phone calls and harassing emails, including threats of violence towards our clinicians and staff.”
The statement specifically cited the false video about hysterectomies as the driver of the campaign.
The next day, Aug. 17, the local U.S. attorney announced an investigation into the threats and a month later, federal agents arrested 37-year-old Catherine Leavy, charging her with making a false bomb threat against the hospital. Leavy pleaded guilty in September and faces up to 10 years in prison.
But the Libs of TikTok tweets against healthcare workers continued unabated.
On Sept. 18, 2022, the account posted about gender-affirming care at Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio. The online abuse got so bad, the hospital had to take down a section of its website.
A few days later, on Sept. 21 it was the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s turn, when Libs of TikTok posted about the hospital’s efforts to help parents of transgender children. The hospital soon reported increasing its security because of threats to staff.
And it’s not just big institutions; Libs of TikTok has also targeted individual doctors.
Last October, Raichik posted a video of Dr. Katherine Gast, co-director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s UW Health gender services program, describing gender-affirming operations. The backlash was swift, with thousands of Twitter accounts sharing the post, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
The subsequent harassment campaign against Gast was “scary and overwhelming,” she told NBC News.
“The followers of Libs of TikTok and Ted Cruz lied about my practice to stir up outrage, doxxed me and my family, and my clinic is receiving harassing phone calls,” she told the network.
‘They want to become famous’
Asked for her reaction to the established pattern of harassment that follows her tweets, Raichik has a simple – and standard – response: She’s merely reposting what institutions and individuals have already, themselves, chosen to put out to the world on social media, she says.
“If an individual posts publicly on TikTok, the goal of TikTok is to get views,” Raichik said. “That’s why people post on TikTok – they want to become famous, they want clicks, views.”
But Raichik doesn’t just repost other people’s content.
First, her posts almost always include some kind of commentary. One in October, for example, featured an Instagram video of a New York music teacher, joyfully waving a Progress Pride flag while the message “Happy National Coming Out Day – Black, Gay and Thriving” appears at the bottom of the screen. “An actual elementary school teacher in NY,” reads Raichik’s comment on the video.
That teacher told USA TODAY that while he had not been aware Libs of TikTok posted his video, he had seen an immediate surge of hate mail. “I’m so mortified by this!” Eric Williamson said via email. “I have seen an increase of nasty messages on my post this week and wondered why.”
Other posts either directly or indirectly encourage Libs of TikTok’s followers to contact the original poster directly. In a post last April for example, Raichik sarcastically told her followers “definitely do not keep up the pressure” on a school district in Oregon that supported transgender students using their chosen pronouns. Asked about that post, she acknowledged it was a call to action, but only to “tag” or mention the account on social media. “I’ve done that a couple times, where I told people to tag accounts on Twitter,” she said. “That is nowhere near telling people to call in bomb threats.”
Libs of TikTok also doesn’t post solely public material.
Posts regularly include clandestine photos and videos that have been sent to Raichik or her network, presumably without the permission of a hospital, school clinic or library.
And some of the material she posts is doctored or fake – something Raichik acknowledged in her interview with USA TODAY. In April 2022, she reposted photographs and claims purporting to show an elementary school teaching children about a lifestyle some people believed depicts a fetish for animal costumes. The original post was an easily debunked hoax, and Raichik later deleted her tweet.
“I deleted it, and actually it taught me a lot, because now I’m much more careful in vetting everything,” Raichik told USA TODAY. “But yes, that is one example, I’ll admit, of a story that wasn’t true.”
Early this year, Raichik said, she deleted all of her prior tweets from 2022 and 2021 – an act she called a “one-time editorial decision.” She wouldn’t elaborate on her reasoning.
In recent months, Raichik, who calls herself a journalist, has begun labeling certain posts as “Scoops” – indicating they contain original reporting that nobody else has published, including the targets of her posts.
She told USA TODAY she is increasingly filing requests under public records law, with the hope of revealing previously unknown information. That’s a shift away from her original brand – the idea that she just posts videos the “libs,” themselves, already made.
Whatever her intention, Raichik has clearly spent recent months focused on one target: public schools.
Libs of TikTok turns its attention to schools
In at least 12 cases in the past two years, Libs of TikTok posts about schools, school districts and teachers have been followed by bomb threats, Media Matters found – often multiple bomb threats against the same location.
Most of these happened in the past two months.
Since Aug. 21, Media Matters tallied, and USA TODAY confirmed, there have been at least 25 bomb threats against schools, libraries, school administration buildings and universities after Libs of TikTok posts.
On Aug. 21, Libs of TikTok posted about a public library in Davis, California, where staff refused to allow a group to continue a public presentation. During a speech about transgender athletes, the speakers broke library rules by repeatedly referring to them as “biological males.” Libs of TikTok then tweeted a video of the confrontation, which has been viewed more than 1.4 million times and liked by 20,000 accounts.
The library almost immediately received bomb threats, and had to close temporarily, according to local media reports and the local police. And though the event was at a public library, the Davis Joint Unified School District also then received at least five bomb threats, and district staff stated publicly that their personal information was posted online. The FBI are assisting local authorities in investigating.
“The County of Yolo unequivocally condemns hate crimes and incidents that have cast their shadows over our vibrant community,” Dwight Coddington, a spokesman for Yolo County, which includes Davis, told USA TODAY. “Hate crimes and incidents have no place in Yolo County.”
In recent weeks, similar bomb threats have been made following Libs of TikTok tweets about schools in Oklahoma, Iowa, Massachusetts, Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado, Washington and Oregon.
Despite the steady, and increasing, drumbeat of bomb threats against the very public schools and libraries her posts have targeted, Raichik said she was not convinced Libs of TikTok is connected to these harassment campaigns.
Schools, hospitals and other public institutions get bomb threats all the time, she told USA TODAY.
“It’s possible that some of these bomb threats were not even real bomb threats, you know,” she said. “Why are these bomb threats – the ones that are allegedly coming after my tweets – why are those making it to the news, while others aren’t?”
Two school security experts told USA TODAY that many schools do, indeed, receive more bomb threats than the public might realize. But victims and experts say the pattern of threats following Raichik’s posts shows more than just coincidental timing.
At the Cherry Creek School District in Arapahoe County, Colorado, for example, a local media station received a threat in September claiming multiple bombs had been placed at three schools and two administration buildings. The buildings, including a day care center, were evacuated.
The day before, Cherry Creek had been the subject of a Libs of TikTok blog post claiming the district kept “pornographic” books in elementary school libraries. The Libs of TikTok post ended with a call to readers to contact the district.
Almost immediately, the district was inundated with thousands of harassing phone calls, emails and social media posts. Then came the bomb threat.
In a letter to parents, the district superintendent, Chris Smith directly connected the threat to “bullying” and homophobic views expressed about the LGBTQ+ books on social media.
“The attacks from last week were driven by hate and have no place in our schools,” he wrote.
Ken Trump, a former Federal Protective Service officer and author who runs a school safety consultancy, said he’d be very surprised if the recent string of threats immediately following Libs of TikTok posts had happened by chance.
“I’ve seen some coincidences in my years doing this work, but that would be a really big one,” Trump said.
Libs of TikTok targets Pride events
Alyssa Gonzales was standing in her parents’ kitchen when she got the phone call late last November: A bomb threat had been made against the South Dakota State University Gender and Sexualities Alliance, where Gonzales volunteered and now serves as president.
Gonzales’ parents knew something was up.
Her father quizzed her about the call, and Gonzales’ reaction to it. The 19-year old took a deep breath. She had never told her parents she was gay. Now, she couldn’t wait any longer.
She came out to her family, explaining she had become heavily involved with LGBTQ+ causes at SDSU, and that she and her colleagues were now the target of a bomb threat.
The chain of events had begun a few days earlier, when Libs of TikTok reposted a video of a drag queen dressed in an outfit designed to make the wearer appear naked. The tweet claimed the video was from a “family friendly” drag show hosted by SDSU’s Gender and Sexualities Alliance.
It wasn’t.
The clip was actually from the previous year’s drag event, at which no children were present. But that didn’t stop the outrage. Replies to the tweet flooded in. The university began fielding hundreds of hateful and threatening emails, and eventually the bomb threat that led to Gonzales’ untimely coming out to her parents and grandparents.
The threats didn’t stop Gonzales and her colleagues at the college. Instead, in an act of defiance, they like to read out some of the more bizarre messages in ridiculous voices at their meetings.
“It feels like, ‘Oh, we’ve made it, we’re making news, and people are going to notice us.’” Gonzales said. “And if they notice us, then we can talk more, too – we can still say that, despite all this, we’re here, we’re queer, we’re out, and we’re proud.”
Other activists and performers across the country have also taken the threats in their stride.
Panda Dulce, a drag queen from the San Francisco Bay Area, hosted the event at the San Lorenzo library in summer of last year. It had been targeted by Libs of TikTok tweet, then was disrupted by a group of men wearing black and gold – the colors of the extremist group the Proud Boys. The men shouted homophobic slurs at Dulce as she tried to read to children, she said.
“They called me a ‘pedophile,’” Dulce wrote in an email to USA TODAY.
Dulce said the men made direct threats at her safety. “It was clear I was the target and focus of their attack,” she wrote.
But more than a year later, Dulce said she can’t let hate win.
“I still lead Story Hours,” she wrote. “I will not stop simply because some hobbyless extremists decided to cosplay Call Of Duty and throw a tantrum in a shameless grab for attention.”
For Gonzales, despite the bomb threat incident forcing her to come out to her family, the process went really well, she said. Her parents were loving and accepting, open and embracing – and all the more so given the hostility they knew their daughter was facing.
“They were very understanding,” she said. “They don’t get everything, but they’re still accepting.”
Right from the start my day has been on my feet with little pauses. During those pauses, I quickly posted a few things I felt important. I got up at 3:30 am. I feed the cats, did all that stuff, handled a few things on the computers. Ron got up and informed me he had two appointments he failed to put into the calendar, one a doctor’s appointment and the other a Zoom meeting I needed to set my computer system up for. Ok, I got a quick shower and started doing the dishes from last night, kept dealing with cats. Then Ron left for his appointment and called me from the grocery store he stopped at on the way home. He had forgotten to take the cane he uses, and he was struggling to walk. I asked if he needed me to come get him. Nope.
When he got home, I had already set up the computer system, just needed him to sit and do a sound check. But when he pulled in to the driveway, he couldn’t walk, so I got his cane and helped him inside. Then I brought the few groceries in. I put them away. I got him settled in my Pink Palace and ready for the Zoom meeting with family and his brother in the nursing home.
As he did that, I started a red spaghetti sauce for supper. After his meeting He came out and I got him some lunch. I was struggling my self by now so I took even more medications. After he ate he went to bed, I finished making the sauce and got my own lunch.
After eating a great meal of Chicken Supreme with egg noodles and lots of the gravy, I took the remainder out of the large baking dish and put it into smaller containers, then washed all my dishes, his dishes, and the stuff I used to cook the meal. I then got stuff ready for Ron, who wants to make meatballs for the sauce.
I am beat, I am done. At this point, I don’t even care if we eat tonight. I have clenched my teeth so much my own teeth and jaw aches. My back won’t hold me well, my legs hurt and are so shaky. I have four open windows with many tabs, I did not answer any comments or read any other people’s blogs. I keep having pain shocks and muscle spasms, and I am afraid Ron is going to want me to help him more when he gets up. I have 10 minutes left of The Majority Report with Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland. Then I will shut the computers down and go to playing Halo. If you don’t hear from me tonight or you had something you needed a response to, I hope I can get to it tomorrow, but for today I have reached the end of Scotties rope. I know that has happened a lot lately, but the fact is with Ron hurting himself and us not having access to needed healthcare, and being rather lowering income, hell just say it we are poor now, things are much more demanding on me at this time in my life than ever before it seems. Plus I also am old, disabled, in bad health, and today very tired. Hugs, loves, Best wishes. Scottie
This is what the M4L and other fundamentalist Christian racist bigot groups want here in the US. This is what they are trying to do. Wipe the existence of LGBTQIA people from public sight / society. They want us gone, outlawed, a progressive society of equality for all so all can live freely as themselves without oppression from government or other people. Instead, they want to replace it with the regressive oppressive society of the 1950s and worse only allow the public display of church approved doctrine. Remember when on TV married couples could only be shown going to bed in separate beds, because god forbid people get the idea that married people slept together back then. The idea that non-married actors would lay down on the same surface was pornographic even if they had their clothing on and were playing a married couple. Remember when the only way a gay or lesbian character could be shown is as a depraved villain who got destroyed somehow by the end of the film, showing that good church doctrines triumph over such evil beings every time. See that is the society they think everyone should be forced to live today, by church doctrines, never letting on people have sexual desires or that anything other than straight cis people exist or are good people. This is the person Orbán, that the right wing pushes as the perfect way to run the US, he is a complete authoritarian driven to change the country and government to his view of morality and under his personal control. Former rights and liberties have been restricted and outlawed. When people show you who they are, believe them. This who the fundamentalist right wing Christian majority are. Hugs. Scottie
Hungary’s cultural minister on Monday fired the director of the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest, accusing him of failing to comply with a contentious law that bans the display of LGBTQ+ content to minors.
The dismissal of Laszlo L. Simon, who became director of the museum for a five-year term in 2021, came after Hungary’s government determined in late October that five photos on display at the prestigious World Press Photo exhibition violated the law restricting children’s access to content that depicts homosexuality or gender change.
The museum subsequently put a notice on its website and at the entrance to the World Press Photo exhibition — which showcases outstanding photojournalism — that the collection was restricted to visitors over 18.
Read the full article. Writing this morning on his Facebook page, Simon notes that the age restriction went into place immediately upon the government’s order, adding, “As a father and grandparent of four children, I strongly refuse that our children should be protected from me or the institution I manage.”
As I noted last week, the five offending photos merely portray elderly queer Filipinos caring for each other in a group home they’ve shared for decades. Speaking this weekend to Florida Republicans, Trump again lavished praise on Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban and again falsely claimed that Hungary and Russia share a border.
Hungary has fired the national museum director over LGBTQ+ content in World Press Photo exhibition https://t.co/KDHPFLZR5f
I assume they wouldn’t even know the subjects of the photos were gay except the descriptions of the photos informed them of it? Image how delicate and unstable they must be to be trigger just by knowing that someone is gay.
Idiotic, but that’s the way fascists roll. I saw the exhibition in Montréal in August. If you’re a normal person, the elderly queer Filipinos caring for one another were among the most hopeful and least disturbing in the show. Other images feature bloody war, famine, terrorism, environmental catastrophe etc. But it’s the caring queens that’s supposedly too much for youths. It should be noted that Budapest is NOT Orban-friendly like other parts of Hungary.
Thanks for sharing that. Gender fluidity in precolonial Philippines tracks the tradition of other Pacific Island and First Nations cultures. Trans persons were referred to as Babaylan, Hawaiian and Tahitians were Mahu and held similar roles in pre-contact society. Generally perceived as shaman or spiritual beings.
How exactly would those photos damage children? Were there nudity? Sexual content? Or is it too much for the fragile Hungarians to see men taking care of other men?
Anti abortion is never about pro-life, anti drag queen is never about children grooming and so on and so forth. This is the standard fascist talking point.
Harmless images of gay seniors somehow are more offensive than the scantilly clad beach goers? These fascists love to make a mountain out of a molehill to spin their lies.
If the Republicans win next year they will pass all kinds of laws against lgbtq and have setup the best supreme court to make them stick. When Lawrence v Texas is overturned we’ll all go back to being outlaws.
Can we not see the abuse of the legal system to target and cause harm to your opponent? In many ways it is terrorism. This is a deliberate attempt to remove a group of people, a segment of the public from schools and other media, so only they can be seen or represented. Calling any book with and LGBTQIA character in it pornography is ridiculous but resonates with people who don’t know how innocent these books are. They surely are cleaner and safer than the bible they claim is so moral. But their fire is dying down as more people see them for what they are. They are now like Marge Greene playing to a maga base for views and clicks in the media. As more of us get the word out about what they are doing, they have lost momentum and support. This is a deliberate attempt to whitewash an entire society to install a white religious over class, just as Russia did. Change the removal of books with LGBTQIA to the removal of books with black or brown people in then because it is pornographic, now who does it seem? Wouldn’t it be racist? Notice also how she claims that people like her fighting to censor and remove books are the good people using their rights, but she claims it is illegal for any groups or people to oppose or try to form groups against what her group is doing. WTF! Hugs. Scottie Also there is videos at the link above I am unable to repost here.
Two members of Moms for Liberty, a right-wing activist group, have reported several Florida school librarians to law enforcement. They claimed they had evidence that librarians were distributing “pornography” to minors and requested that law enforcement officers be dispatched. This represents a serious escalation of the tactics deployed by members of Moms for Liberty against school librarians.
On October 25, Jennifer Tapley, a member of the Santa Rosa County chapter of Moms for Liberty and a candidate for school board, contacted the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office. “I’ve got some evidence a crime was committed,” Tapley said in an audio recording of the call obtained by Popular Information through a public records request. “Pornography given to a minor in a school. And I would like to make a report with somebody and turn over the evidence.” Tapley made the call from the lobby of the main office of the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office in Milton, Florida.
She told the dispatcher that she did not want to provide her name because she was “afraid of people getting mad at me for doing this.” Tapley said that she would tell the Deputy Sheriff her name, but she didn’t want “any public records with her name on it because then people could look it up.”
In an interview with Popular Information, Tapley said she was “scrolling through Facebook” this summer and saw “a video of a mom reading a book” that was “really disgusting.” She later learned that there was a Moms for Liberty chapter in her area addressing the issue and joined the group. As a member of the group, she learned that local schools had “some really shocking pornographic books in our libraries.”
Tapley was accompanied at the Sheriff’s Office by Tom Gurski, who is also active in the local Moms for Liberty chapter. Soon, Deputy Sheriff Tyler Mabire and another officer arrived and interviewed the pair.
“The only reason we are here: A crime is being committed. It’s a 3rd-degree felony. And we’ve got the evidence,” Gurski said in a body cam video of the interview obtained by Popular Information. “The governor says this is child pornography. It’s a serious crime,” Tapley added. “It’s just as serious as if I handed a playboy to [my child] right now, right here, in front of you. It’s just as serious, according to the law.” The video has been edited to protect the identity of a minor:
The “pornography” at issue is actually a popular young adult novel, Storm and Fury, by Jennifer L. Armentrout. The book, which is 512 pages, is mostly about humans and gargoyles fighting demons. The main character of the novel, Trinity, is 18 years old. There are some passages with sexual themes, including a few makeout sessions, and one where the main character almost has sex. In the 2020-21 academic year, the Florida Association of Media in Education (FAME), a professional association of Florida librarians, recommendedStorm and Fury on its “Teen Reads” list. FAME says books on the list “engage” teens and “provide a spur to critical thinking.” Barnes and Noble recommends the book for readers 14 to 18. It was also recommended for students by the School Library Journal.
Armentrout told Popular Information that it was surprising to learn we are “living in an era where, apparently, some adults find it appropriate to contact the police over a fictional book involving gargoyles.” She said Storm and Fury “is very close to my heart, as the main character has the same degenerative eye disease, retinitis pigmentosa, as I do.” Armentrout said she wrote the book “to educate people on a little-known disease in a fun, suspenseful, and adventurous way.” The purpose of the book, Armentrout said, was not to “incite sexual excitement.”
Tapley told Popular Information that any book that has a “sex scene” is pornography and not “appropriate for minors.” She did acknowledge that there may be exceptions for “extreme classics.” But the books Moms for Liberty is targeting, Tapley says, are “without significant literary value.”
Florida law, however, only bans distributing a book or other material with sexual content if it is “harmful to minors,” a standard established by Supreme Court precedent. Under Florida law, a book is only “harmful to minors” if it “[p]redominantly appeals to a prurient, shameful, or morbid interest” and is “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for minors.” Storm and Fury, a book that is predominantly about fighting demons, is routinely recommended by adults for high school students.
Gurski told the officer that Storm and Fury was checked out from Jay High School “by a 17-year-old, which is important because she is a minor.” Tapley showed the officers the book, with the offending passages marked with orange sticky notes.
In Santa Rosa County schools, once a book is challenged for sexual content, the policy is to take it out of circulation within five days, pending a review. Tapley alleged, “we have already turned in this book,” but the Jay High School librarian did not remove it. That allegation appears to be incorrect. Storm and Fury does not appear on lists of challenged books in Santa Rosa County maintained by the school district and Tapley.
In addition to the librarian at Jay High School, Tapley points the finger at Ruth Witter, the head librarian for the county. Tapley presents the officers with a printout of Witter’s Facebook page and claims it is proof that “she [has been a] member of Santa Rosa County Stop Moms for Liberty since May.” She explains that “Moms for Liberty is trying to… get rid of these books” and “fights for parents’ rights.” Meanwhile, Tapley alleges, Stop Moms for Liberty “are the people who are against Moms for Liberty.”
Tapley claims that, by following the Santa Rosa County Stop Moms for Liberty group, Witter is “fighting us actively.” She also connects this to alleged “death threats” against
Moms for Liberty members, without elaborating. Tapley does not mention that Witter also follows several conservative pages on Facebook, including Fox Nation and a Republican candidate for local office.
The librarian at Milton High School is also singled out by Tapley for posting in a Facebook group called Emerald Coast SWEEP, a local chapter of the group Red, Wine, and Blue. Tapley describes Red, Wine, and Blue as “a very liberal activist group of people fighting for abortion rights” that opposes the removal of books from public school libraries. Tapley says the Milton librarian is seeking “liberals” to join the school’s book review committee, which Tapley claims is “illegal.”
Asked if she would like to see librarians criminally charged, Tapley told Popular Information that it “depends on if there’s an intent.” She said her hope was that the Sheriff would tell the librarians, “you can’t do this,” and “if you continue to do this, then there would be charges.” Tapley added that she “didn’t really want to see anybody have their life ruined.”
In an interview, Tapley downplayed her role at the Sheriff’s Office, claiming she was not “seeking out any books and trying to go to the police with it or anything.” She described her role “as a helper.” She only put her name on the report “so that somebody else could be protected.” In an email, Tapley said she “had no interactions with the Sheriff’s Office beyond accompanying a citizen there” and “any reporting that states otherwise would be unfactual.”
Popular Information has posted the full video from the Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office on YouTube.
“To see the orchestrated campaign to remove books from schools escalate to a police station is shocking,” Kasey Meehan, a Director at PEN America, a non-profit dedicated to free expression, told Popular Information. “Professional librarians apply sensible measures to curate their collections for diverse audiences of readers, and they should not be punished for making knowledge accessible to students that falls well short of the well-established legal standards for obscene materials.” Stephana Ferrell of the Florida Freedom to Read Project described the tactics of Moms for Liberty members in Santa Rosa County as an effort to “bully the district into sacrificing access to protected speech.”
Popular Information contacted Mariya Cakins, the chair of Santa Rosa Moms for Liberty, for comment. Cakins said that she would be happy to speak, but the request needed to be routed through the national Moms for Liberty organization. The group never responded to that request. Popular Information was unable to identify reliable contact information for Gurski.
The efforts of Tapley and Gurski to initiate an investigation by the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office appear to be unsuccessful. According to a document obtained through a public records request, the Sheriff’s Office quickly referred the report to Daniel Hahn, the director of safety at Santa Rosa County Florida School District. The Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office then closed the case.
Gurski, however, is having better luck with other law enforcement agencies.
Florida police department has open criminal investigation of Florida librarians
“Approximately ten days ago, I had a book in my hand that was issued by the Milton school library, which is not your jurisdiction,” Gurski told Deputy Mabire at the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office. “I went to the Milton police station. Submitted an affidavit and the evidence of that particular book. And they have that now for investigation.” Gurski said he considered the book pornography.
Tapley says the book reported by Gurski to the Milton police was another young adult novel, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. The book is a romantic comedy and has some sexual situations and discussions. It also includes LGBTQ characters. It is recommended by Common Sense Media, an independent non-profit that evaluates media for parents, and Publishers Weekly for readers 14 and older.
In response to a public records request, the Milton Police Department said it could not release any information regarding Gurski’s complaint about the book because there is an “open and active investigation pending State Attorney review.”
The Vicki Baggett connection
Tapley told Popular Information that Vicki Baggett, an English teacher in Escambia County, has been “helping us.” Baggett, who Popular Information interviewed earlier this year, has challenged hundreds of books in public school libraries, including many that have LGBTQ characters or address racism. Baggett told Popular Information that she challenged When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball — the inspirational story of a Black woman who overcame racial prejudice to become an Olympic champion — because it would make white students “feel uncomfortable” as “they are being white-shamed.” In a follow-up report, Baggett’s current and former students alleged that Baggett openly promoted racist and homophobic beliefs in class. Nevertheless, Baggett has been successful in getting numerous books removed from Escambia public schools. The Escambia school district is now facing a federal lawsuit from a group of authors and First Amendment advocates.
Tapley described Baggett as “a valiant warrior for the kids, an amazing English teacher, and a wonderful Christian woman.” According to Tapley, Baggett has come to Santa Rosa County and “has been helping us see what’s in our libraries.” Many of the challenges in Santa Rosa County are duplicates of those Baggett submitted in Escambia County. “She’s been the catalyst really for a lot of this,” Tapley said. “She taught me how to do it.” Baggett initially submitted the challenges in Santa Rosa County herself, but those were rejected because she is not a resident. Many of those challenges have been resubmitted with Baggett’s name alongside a Santa Rosa County resident.
This is a great video detailing the lies, debunking the myth or the anti-trans line of the mass rush to force kids to transition gender, it goes over the fake studies, provides real information, and shows how several of the detransitioned are still having gender issues, but due to religious pressures from family they try to ignore them. One person claims to still dream three or more times a week of being a man, thinks of it, hates her body, but knows she has to be a good woman and mother. The video shows more of the flaws of the anti-trans movement than its claim to validity. It is longer than some of my viewers like at a bit over an hour. I watched it about 20 minute segments while doing other things. It is delivered in a well spoken deliberate non-sensational manner. Just going over the video and the real facts. I really hope if you have questions about trans people, are an anti-trans hater, are someone who thinks kids are rushed into being trans and that a large number regret it, please watch the video. It shows you the proof these are hate myths pushed to cause a regressive return to gender stereotypes. Most based in a religious foundation of god doesn’t make mistakes, and kids don’t know their gender, they just need to be convinced to be happy with the way the world wants them to be. Like gay kids are not gay, they just need to be convinced they are straight. Like one point, it is easy for 15 and 16-year-old girls to get breast implants, but when it is a trans woman wanting them the anti-trans haters call it abuse and mutilation. That doesn’t make sense. At one point the video shows the same study that Tildeb tried to push where the claim was a huge percentage of kids were having their breasts removed. But like I pointed out the report showed the number was small and the ages of the majority were adults in their countries and those younger were for medical reasons other than trans such as cancer. Such deceptive tactics have to make people wonder what the anti-trans people really are driven by. Watch the video please, at least get past the first part of jabber about the scary music and into the real substance of the issue. Thanks. Scottie
Wake up US public. The Christian theocratic take over of the government is well underway. This is just like Afghanistan and Iran, other countries where religions were allowed to start shaping and making the laws. Individual rights, progressive societies, even science and medical knowledge becomes restricted and regressive to a time of what was written in old holy books as people interpret them now for their own power and profit. Lying and out right making things up is OK to these people in order to institute the Christian dominated society ruled by church doctrine rather than by the will or for the good of the people. This fake historian has rewritten history, simply made up stuff, ignored other stuff and has been used for decades in home and religious schools to spread a false fake understanding of history that now those who were taught it as kids are in positions of authority in state legislatures and as judges to enforce those lies and myths. I remember James as a teen coming to our home after school telling us all about how the founding fathers were highly religious Christians, the laws of the country were founded on Moses and the bible, and that worshiping god was why we became an independent nation, because god himself bless his holy Christian nation. And we had to work hard to get back to that ideal so god would be happy and give us more blessing. After all, it was the liberals with their sexual immorality and push to undo gender roles, take women from the home raising children, and perverting god’s ideal lifestyle of marriage and men’s right to dominate. They also were trying to take god away from everyone and all that was making god angry and he might smite all of us. Such nonsense we had to gently correct for him. Then he would go home to his highly religious very unchristian parents who pushed religion but did not live it. It is scary what is happening. We need to stop it. Hard stop. Hugs
Barton has been a staple of Texas’ Christian conservative movement, offering crucial support to politicians and frequently being cited or called on to testify in favor of bills that critics say would erode church-state separations.
David Barton, left, of WallBuilders, poses for photos at a Texas Eagle Forum reception at the Texas Republican Convention in Fort Worth on June 7, 2012. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune
For nearly four decades, Texas activist David Barton has barnstormed statehouses and pulpits across the nation, arguing that the separation between church and state is a myth and that America should be run as a Christian nation.
Now, he’s closer to power than perhaps ever before.
One day after little-known Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana was elected as the new House speaker last week, Barton said on a podcast that he was already discussing staffing with Johnson, his longtime ally in deeply conservative, Christian causes.
“We have some tools at our disposal now (that) we haven’t had in a long time,” Barton added.
Johnson recently spoke at an event hosted by Barton’s nonprofit, WallBuilders; he’s praised Barton and his “profound influence on me, and my work, and my life and everything I do”; and, before his career as a lawmaker, Johnson worked for Alliance Defending Freedom — a legal advocacy group that has helped infuse more Christianity into public schools and government, a key goal of Barton’s movement.
Barton, who lives in Aledo, has been a staple of Texas’ own Christian conservative movement, offering crucial public support to politicians and frequently being cited or called on to testify in favor of bills that critics say would erode church-state separations — including in front of the Texas Legislature this year.
Johnson’s election — and his proximity to Barton — is a massive victory for a growing Christian nationalist movement that claims the United States’ foundation was ordained by God, and therefore its laws and institutions should favor their brand of Christianity.
“Johnson’s rise means that Barton and his fellow Christian nationalists now have unprecedented access to the levers of power on the national stage, paralleling the access they already have here in Texas and some other states,” said David Brockman, a non-resident scholar in religion and public policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
Barton and Johnson did not respond to requests for comment this week
Barton has spent nearly all of his life in North Texas, save for the few years he spent at Oral Roberts University, an evangelical school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After graduating with a degree in religious education, he returned to Aledo and worked as a math and science teacher, basketball coach and, later, principal at a K-12 school that grew out of his parent’s Bible study group, according to a 2006 Texas Monthly profile of him.
In 1988, Barton founded his group, WallBuilders, to “exert a direct and positive influence in government, education, and the family by educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country” and “providing information to federal, state, and local officials as they develop public policies which reflect Biblical values,” according to the group’s website.
Since then, Barton has been arguably the most influential figure in a growing movement to undermine the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Barton claims the clause has been misunderstood. He argues that most of the Founding Fathers were “orthodox, evangelical” Christians, and that it would thus be more accurate to read the establishment clause’s use of the word “religion” as a stand-in for “Christian denomination.”
“We would best understand the actual context of the First Amendment by saying, ‘Congress shall make no law establishing one Christian denomination as the national denomination,’” he has said.
Barton also argues that the country’s founders “never intended the First Amendment to become a vehicle to promote a pluralism of other religions.”
In his mind, the wall separating church and state was only meant to extend one way, protecting religion — specifically, Christianity — from the government, but not vice versa.
“‘Separation of church and state’ currently means almost exactly the opposite of what it originally meant,” his group’s website claims.
And he argues that most of what he considers society’s ills — from school shootings, low standardized test scores and drug use to divorce, crime and LGBTQ+ people — are the natural consequences of abandoning the Judeo-Christian virtues, as articulated in his form of Christianity, that he says are the bedrock of the nation’s founding. Sometimes, he’s drawn fire for those views — such as when he said the lack of cure for AIDS was God’s vengeance for homosexuality or when he compared the Third Reich’s “evils” to the “homosexual lifestyle” in 2017.
Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian,” has for years been debunked and ridiculed by actual historians and scholars, who note that he has no formal training and that his work is filled with selectivequotes, mischaracterizations and inaccuracies — critiques that Barton has claimed are mere attacks on his faith. He has been accused of whitewashing the Founding Fathers — particularly, their slave owning — to fit his narrative of a God-ordained nation. He has acknowledged using unconfirmed quotes from historical figures. And Barton’s 2012 book, “The Jefferson Lies,” was so widely panned by Christian academics that it prompted a separate book, “Getting Jefferson Right,” to debunk all of his inaccuracies, and was later pulled by its Christian publisher because “the basic truths just were not there.”
Despite that, Barton has remained a fixture in conservative Christian circles and Republican Party politics. He served as vice chair of the Republican Party of Texas from 1997 to 2006 and, in 2004, was tapped for clergy outreach by President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign. In 2010, his fellow Texan and prominent conservative personality Glenn Beck praised him as “the most important man in America right now.” Barton was an early and important endorser of Sen. Ted Cruz’s unexpected first win in 2012. And in 2016, Barton ran one of multiple super PACs that were crucial to Cruz’s reelection.
“Having David Barton running the super PAC gives it a lot of validity for evangelicals and pastors,” Mike Gonzalez, the South Carolina evangelical chair for the Cruz for President campaign, told the Daily Beast at the time.
In Texas, Barton has become increasingly instrumental among GOP politicians. He and WallBuilders currently work closely with Rick Green, a former state representative and current leader of Patriot Academy, a Dripping Springs-based group that trains young adults, churches and others how to “influence government policy with a Biblical worldview” and borrows heavily from Barton’s teachings.
Barton has also railed against the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits tax-exempt groups, including churches, from direct political advocacy. And he is frequently called on to support laws that would infuse more Christianity into public life — including in public schools. In May, he and his son, Timothy Barton, testified in favor of a bill — which later failed — that would have required all Texas public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.
During the hearing, Barton’s work was praised as “great” by Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels. His theories were echoed by Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, who said that church-state separation is “not a real doctrine.” And the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, extolled Barton and his son as “esteemed witnesses.”
Other prominent Texas Republicans have similarly echoed Barton’s views, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has called the United States “a Christian nation” and said “there is no separation of church and state. It was not in the Constitution.”
“We were a nation founded upon not the words of our founders, but the words of God because he wrote the Constitution,” Patrick said last year.
The mainstreaming of Barton’s views has corresponded with a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have allowed for a greater infusion of Christianity into the public sphere, and a burgeoning Christian nationalist movement on the right that was turbocharged by former President Donald Trump and his promise to white evangelicals that “Christianity will have power” should they support him.
February polling from the Public Religion Research Institute found that more than half of Republicans adhere to or sympathize with foundational aspects of Christian nationalism, including beliefs that the U.S. should be a strictly Christian nation. Of those respondents, PRRI found, roughly half supported having an authoritarian leader who maintains Christian dominance in society. Experts have also found strong correlations between Christian nationalist beliefs and opposition to immigration, racial justice and religious diversity.
Johnson’s election to House Speaker shows how normalized such beliefs have become, said Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, a Washington, D.C.-based group that advocates for a strong wall between government and religion. She noted that some Republicans — including U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, have embraced the title of Christian nationalist in recent years.
Tyler said that Johnson’s views are particularly concerning because of his background as both a Southern Baptist and as a constitutional lawyer. Baptists, she noted, have a long history of advocacy for strong church-state separations because of the persecution they faced during the country’s founding — a stance that she said Johnson has betrayed throughout his legal and political career.
“He has worked actively for these principles that further Christian nationalism,” Tyler said. “I am also a Baptist, and to see someone who is a Baptist really reject foundational concepts of religious freedom for all — concepts which are really core to what it means to be a Baptist — is also very disheartening.”
Johnson played a central role in attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election by crafting a legal brief that was signed by more than 100 U.S. House Republicans in support of a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that sought to have election results thrown out in four swing states by President Joe Biden.
At the same time that he was aiding the legal charge to overturn the 2020 election, Johnson was also cultivating closer ties to figures in the New Apolostolic Reformation,a fast-growing movement of ultraconservative preachers, televangelists, self-described prophets and faith healers who abide by the “Seven Mountains Mandate” — a Christian nationalist-adjacent theology that says Christians must fulfill a divine mandate to rule over all seven aspects of society (family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government) in order to usher in the “end times.”
Driven by that theology, New Apolostic Reformation figures played major roles in the lead up to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, combining Trump’s lies about a stolen election with claims that they were engaged in “spiritual warfare” with their political enemies and, thus, extreme and anti-democratic measures were not only necessary, but God-ordained.
Disclosure: Rice University, Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and Texas Monthly have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
Via press release from the Justice Department: An Oregon man was sentenced today to 37 months in prison and three years of supervised release for attempting to run over three people with a car as part of a week-long crime spree targeting the LGBTQI+ community around Boise, Idaho, in October 2022. According to court records, on Oct. 8, 2022, while at the Boise Public Library Main Branch in downtown Boise, Matthew Alan Lehigh, 31, approached a transgender library employee, called her a slur, punched her and threatened to stab her. A member of the library’s security staff intervened, and Lehigh fled into the parking lot. When the security guard attempted to speak to Lehigh in the parking lot, Lehigh got into a car and suddenly accelerated it toward the guard, intending to collide with him. The guard narrowly escaped being struck by jumping behind a concrete barricade at the last moment, and Lehigh fled the scene. Four days later, while sitting in his car in a public parking lot elsewhere in Boise, Lehigh saw two women walking together towards another vehicle. Assuming that the women were lesbians, Lehigh began shouting threats and slurs at them, then suddenly accelerated his car toward the women, intending to collide with them. The women jumped out of the path of Lehigh’s oncoming car, which struck the other vehicle at significant speed. On June 15, 2022, Lehigh pleaded guilty to one felony count of violating the Hate Crimes Prevention Act for the vehicular assault on the library security guard, and a second felony violation for the vehicular assault on the two women. As part of his plea agreement, Lehigh also admitted that he was responsible for three other instances of anti-LGBTQI+ vandalism and violence that occurred in Boise during early October 2022. Specifically, he admitted to setting fire to a rainbow-striped “pride” flag attached to a residential property in North Boise, breaking several windows at a commercial building jointly occupied by an LGBTQI+ community organization and an LGBTQI+-affirming religious congregation and punching a grocery store customer after calling him an anti-LGBTQI+ slur. Read the full press release.
#NEW: Matthew Lehigh has pleaded guilty to 2 federal hate crimes for attempting to run three people over with his car in Boise because he perceived these people as LGBTQ+. pic.twitter.com/oY2GL3vWOe
what a thing to wake up to, a morning news feed about a man who was helpful, involved, loving, caring, preached acceptance and caring for others. He worked hard in the community, helping the best he could during crises. He had something he did that was found out, something he said he did as a hobby With his wife in the privacy of their own home and on social media under a pseudonym. It involved only them from all the stories I have read and I want to read more of them but first I want to share what hate has caused. The online accounts were not offensive or harmful, just someone role playing a part of themselves online. Talking with others who had the same interests and feelings, not harmful to anyone.
See what happen next was due to hate and intolerance. Refusing to see the good of someone, of who they are, because they are different from you in some way you don’t like. Hatred of them not because they harmed you but don’t live just as you do.
Bubba like to dress up as a woman. I must say he looked really good as a woman. He smiled more as a woman than when dressed as a man. But several anti-LGBTQIA hate groups claimed he was a drag queen or trans and to them all drag queens / trans people no matter how much good they do are evil, are sin, need to be erased from society. For something that did not affect / or effect them in any way except, someone was a bit different and enjoyed doing something a bit different from what the anti-trans haters did. These people made it a point to try to turn the community against this good man. They doxed him, exposed his private life to the public, pictures of him in drag, all his home information was doxed to a country wide network of haters who went to work online. The contacted other Baptist organizations to rile up dislike and hate, to get the main church bodies to turn against his smaller church in an attempt to get him removed as pastor. They claimed publicly in meetings and online that he was unfit to lead the community he had been doing so for so long and well. They tried to create an angry outraged mob to attack this man and make his life hell on earth. Just because he put on a dress, a wig, and make up. He had social media accounts in the female persona and according to what I read they were not offensive in any way. That was his sin. That was his great crime. The result they got was he took his own life. He killed himself due directly to them, the haters, the anti-drag, the anti-trans. Are they happy now? Do they think by removing someone who cared about others and worked hard to help his community is better not being there? What did they gain except spreading hate and hardship? What about the surviving members of his family, his wife, his three children, all the others? What has this great religious purge gave them, except more hardship, the loss of a loved one, grief? Yes that is what their hate brings, grief. They spread it thick, far, and wide. That is what their hate does. Don’t help them, please don’t help them. Love, acceptance, tolerance, patience with, for, and to others is what we need to spread. And trust me it will not be a one way street. Hugs. Scottie
Below I will post several videos I have seen. I ask you to please watch them if you can, and to read the Joe My god story and the comments. Best wishes, hopes for a better future for all of us when the hate stops. Hugs
The Alabama Policy Institute is an anti-LGBTQ hate group that has appeared here many times for its lawsuits against same-sex marriage and for its support of Alabama’s leading anti-LGBTQ figure, former Alabama Supreme Court justice and US Senate candidate Roy Moore. They last appeared here in 2021 when they joined a lawsuit to block an LGBTQ rights ordinance in Alabama’s capital. 1819 News takes its name from the year Alabama became a state.
This didn’t have to happen.
After @1819News published pictures of Smith Station Mayor Bubba Copeland wearing women’s clothes and makeup, the official took his own life. https://t.co/Drp0CKTHn2
BREAKING: Alabama mayor and pastor Bubba Copeland commits suicide just days after a conservative news outlet with close ties to Steve Bannon and Breitbart published private photos of him wearing women’s clothing.
Copeland addressed his Baptist congregation on Wednesday night, stating that he was the victim of an “internet attack” and declaring, “Yes, I have taken pictures with my wife in the privacy of our home in an attempt of humor because I know I’m not a handsome man nor a beautiful woman either. I apologize for any embarrassment caused by my private, personal life that has come publicly.”
Unfortunately, bigoted Baptist leaders in Alabama issued a damming statement saying they had “become aware of the alleged unbiblical behavior.”
Today, Copeland took his own life, according to police. They did not release any further details. One of his close friends responded to the tragic news by declaring, “I am so angry right now and heartbroken. I witnessed a good man be publicly ridiculed and crucified over the last few days…to the point that he just took his own life today. I knew he was suffering so I reached out to him yesterday and offered him support and encouragement. He was appreciative and acknowledged that he had been going through some “dark days” over the last few days. I just want to ask you people who thought it humorous to publicly ridicule him, ‘Are you happy now?’ What crime did he commit?”
Other friends of Copeland noted that he didn’t hold bigoted views “toward transgender people or people who enjoy cross-dressing,” so there was simply no need for the conservative news outlet to out him.
The mayor of an Alabama town and pastor of a local church killed himself after a right-wing news website called 1819 News (praised by Steve Bannon) cruelly doxxed him as transgender.https://t.co/qE3uWogGGT
This pastor committed suicide not too far from here today.
We must end LGBTQ+ persecution.
ARTICLE: The secret life of Smiths Station Mayor and Baptist pastor F.L. 'Bubba' Copeland as a 'transgender curvy girl': 'It’s a hobby I do to relieve stress' https://t.co/WedLbd5vFJ
There’s a story making the rounds about an Alabama preacher/mayor who secretly dresses in drag and adopts the persona of a trans woman on social media.
The secret life of Smiths Station Mayor and Baptist pastor F.L. 'Bubba' Copeland as a 'transgender curvy girl': 'It’s a hobby I do to relieve stress' #alpolitics By @CraigMonger1819https://t.co/TBul39wPW8
Will Carless
USA TODAY
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/ce3304c12c048d392c33fa8f29b1eb09/BD%20INC%20Barton%20David%202012)
