My dogs that love gravy these people are driven. They are loving the authority DeathSantis and the republicans have given them. It is not enough for them to keep their children from reading these books, they don’t want any kid to read them at any age. The guy has a 15 year old son and he comments he wants the boy to attend public school and not be destroyed by these books. I can assure him if the boy has a phone or other boys as friends he has heard and learned far more than a book with an LGBTQ+ character. I love how he is against any book that mentions boys holding hands or dating calling that promoting sex when he wants them to push abstinence but he is OK with books that have boy / girl dating, holding hands and so on. He is only against it when it is same gender / same sex. Plus he made them get rid of a book that told the story of a boy who wanted to dress up as a mermaid and go to a mermaid parade. He admitted there was no sex at all in the book but felt the message of the book was too dangerous for students. The message he claims is that you can be anything you want to be, and that is a dangerous thing to tell kids. Read through his objects and you see he is a bigot and a racist. He wants a nice “Leave It To Beaver” fantasy world for kids and schools. Again he is trying to force all the schools to revert to a 1950s mind set. I love that he claims he has nothing against gay people saying he can tolerate them unless they are the sexually aggressive type of homosexual. Really unlike himself who seems a sexually aggressive type of straight pushing a culture of straightness on everyone. . I know how important it is to find gay characters in a book or to be able to read up on subjects dealing with being LGBTQI+ as a kid. Think about what it would be like if you thought you were the only straight kid growing up, that all the books, movies, magazines, couples … the entire world around you were made up of gay and lesbian people. But you could go to the library and find books about being straight, how it was OK and normal for some people. Imagine reading about other straight people that were not the monsters that some people claimed they were. I was a gay kid and I needed those books. I was an abused kid who needed some comprehensive sex education classes also. The guy wanted one book removed because it was about a girl having romantic feelings for other girls and she holds hands with a girl and shares a kiss. That was it, but he made it seem like a sex manual for creating better lesbians. According to Friedman, the book promotes “promiscuity” and “pre-marital sex” when “we are supposed to be promoting abstinence.” He believes the library should carry books that “support sturdy nuclear families.” A story about a girl holding hands with another girl. But he wouldn’t have a problem with it had it been a boy the girl held hands with. He admits he doesn’t even read most of the books he tries to have removed. He wanted a book removed that told of a black persons struggle with racists and racism, and this guy wanted it removed because he claimed it supported BLM movement. Friedman says the book should be removed because it promotes “the Black Lives Matter movement” and “a sense of white guilt in its musings about ‘micro-aggressions’ as elsewhere defined in Critical Race Theory.” Anyway I will try to post the article, please read it, and understand the attack on our society, the entire LGBTQI+ community, and our education system. This guy is saying that just reading about and seeing gays, lesbians, or trans people is harmful and destroys kids. If anyone gets in his way, Friedman vowed to “run over them like a dead body.” Hugs
Bruce Friedman speaks at a June 30 meeting of the Clay County School Board
This year, at least 102 books have been removed from the shelves of school libraries in Clay County, Florida. Many of these books were pulled at the request of one man: Bruce Friedman. A conservative activist and longtime resident of New York, Friedman moved to Clay County this May.
And Friedman says he is just getting started. During a November 28 meeting of the Florida Department of Education Library Media Working Group, Friedman said he had compiled “a list of over 3,600 titles that I believe have concerning content,” including “porn, critical race theory, social-emotional learning, [and] fluid gender.” He said this list proves that “libraries have more than a little poison in them.” Friedman demanded that the Department of Education “clean up this mess.” If not, Friedman threatened to “perform 3,600 challenges and overwhelm your awful, awful procedures and policies.”
One of the books pulled from the shelves of school libraries this year in Clay County is The Girl From The Sea, an award-winning graphic novel. The book is about a 15-year-old girl who develops romantic feelings for another girl. The two girls hold hands and, at one point, share a kiss. There is no sex, no swearing, and no nudity.
In an interview with Popular Information, Friedman described The Girl From The Sea as a book for “slightly post-pubescent little lesbians.” Friedman says he objects to the book being available in Clay County libraries because students are “not in school to learn how to be better lesbians.” The book exposes students to “a land of girls making out with great illustrations.” According to Friedman, students should not be “focused on kissing, or petting or anything else in that general territory.”
The Girl From The Sea has been removed from Clay County school libraries because of a new policy, implemented in July, that requires books to be pulled as soon as a challenge has been properly filed. The books remain unavailable to students while the challenge is being considered by a District Curriculum Council.
Friedman has exploited this policy by flooding the district with challenges. Friedman told Popular Information that, since June 30, he has “investigated between 5 and 10 thousand” books available in Clay County school libraries on “a very cursory level.”
Popular Information has obtained dozens of Friedman’s challenge forms through public information requests. Friedman, and a few others he recruited to assist him, filled out these forms identically. The reason for the request is to “PROTECT CHILDREN,” the objectionable material is “INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT,” and the impact of a student using the material is “DAMAGED SOULS.” The answer to most other questions is “N/A.”
Friedman is the president and founder of the Florida chapter of No Left Turn in Education, a right-wing educational group. He continues to play a similar role for the group in New York. No Left Turn in Education was founded in 2020 by Elana Yaron Fishbein. “Public schools are starting to resemble re-education camps and our cities have turned into the killing fields,” the group wrote on Facebook. “It’s beginning to feel like Pol Pot’s Cambodia.” Fishbein says there are evil forces focused on “getting to our kids, brainwashing them, indoctrinating them, and making them [a] brownshirt.” Friedman said he learned about Fishbein when she appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show.
Friedman gained some notoriety himself when he attempted to read aloud a rape scene from the book Lucky by Alice Sebold during a June 30 Clay County school board meeting. His mic was cut off. Friedman told Fox News he wants “his 15-year-old son to be in the public school system and come home unharmed.”
Friedman acknowledged that he filed challenges over the summer without reading the challenged books. Initially, Clay County accepted many of these challenges. But Friedman said he has already filed more than 350 challenges. Eventually, Clay County began to reject Freidman’s challenges as incomplete because they do not include any real explanation of the objection.
But Friedman is undeterred and, in the hopes of getting more challenges accepted, said he has changed his approach. According to Friedman, he has read “25 books in the last 10 days.” Friedman identified books to challenge by “scouring the internet” for lists of books that have been challenged elsewhere, including “a very conservative community” in Texas that “met with their superintendent” about “a couple of hundred books that concern them.”
Friedman acknowledged he is not aware of any children who were exposed to objectionable content at a school library and had it negatively impact their lives. But he claims that is irrelevant. “I don’t have to know them,” Friedman said. “It’s all of them. Any poor kid who had the misfortune of coming across this material.”
Stephana Ferrell, the co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, blasted Clay County’s policy of removing books from the library before any review. Ferrell told Popular Information that the procedure allowed a “singular viewpoint” to “control over what can and cannot be accessed or learned in the library.”
Legal confusion
According to Friedman, his challenges to books like The Girl from the Sea, are justified because it violates Florida law for the book to be available in school libraries. The relevant law is HB 1467, which was signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) last March.
The revised Clay County Procedures Manual for Library Media Services lays out the legal standard for library books under HB 1467:
● Free of pornography and material prohibited under s. 847.012
● Suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented
● Appropriate for the grade level and age group for which the materials are used or made available
Friedman said he did not believe The Girl From The Sea is pornographic. But, according to Friedman, it should be removed from the school library because it is “in very poor taste” and “sets a terrible example for our children, straight or gay.” According to Friedman, the book promotes “promiscuity” and “pre-marital sex” when “we are supposed to be promoting abstinence.”
Several of the books challenged by Friedman and others include LGBTQ themes but no sexual content. The Prince And The Dressmaker, for example, is about “a prince who likes to wear dresses.” The Prince falls in love with a young woman. The book features one kiss.
Friedman cited the “Parental Rights Act,” also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, to justify these objections. “You don’t want little children questioning their budding little bodies.” Friedman said. He says that the inclusion of these books is part of an effort by librarians to encourage children to get “surgery and hormones.” The Parental Rights Act, however, prohibits classroom instruction of elementary students about sexuality and gender. It does not apply to library books.
In the interview, Friedman said he is comfortable with “gay people” and “recognizes that they exist.” Friedman said he lived for years in New York City, and “on very rare occasions, I would meet a sexually aggressive homosexual person and have words with them.” But, for the most part, Friedman said he “got along fabulously with everyone.”
Friedman said he doesn’t have a problem with a book that has “gay characters” but “if the focus of the book is gayness, and it is still nonsexual, then I’d have to take it on a case-by-case basis.” He believes the library should carry books that “support sturdy nuclear families.”
Friedman also challenged Dear Martin, citing the Parental Rights Act. But Dear Martin does not have any LGBTQ content. Dear Martin is about “the story of an Ivy League-bound African American student named Justyce who becomes a victim of racial profiling.” Friedman says the book should be removed because it promotes “the Black Lives Matter movement” and “a sense of white guilt in its musings about ‘micro-aggressions’ as elsewhere defined in Critical Race Theory.”
Friedman may have been referring to the Stop WOKE Act, which prohibits instruction on Critical Race Theory in Florida classrooms. But, like the Parental Rights Act, the Stop WOKE Act applies to classroom instruction, not library books.
Despite this confusion about the legal standard, Friedman and others have already been able to permanently remove dozens of books from Clay County school libraries.
Tightening the screws on school librarians
Julie Miller, the chair of the Clay County Education Association Media Committee, has been the librarian for Ridgeview High School in Clay County for nine years. Miller told Popular Information she did not encounter a single challenge to a library book until November 2021.
Starting this year, groups like No Left Turn in Education began challenging library material en masse. School officials are fearful. Since March, Miller and other Clay County librarians have been prohibited from purchasing any new books or even new copies of books that are already on the shelves. According to Miller, no official explanation has been provided for the purchasing freeze.
Under Clay County’s July 2022 policy, any challenge should be reviewed by a District Curriculum Council, a rotating panel of school officials. But when the challenges from Friedman and others started flooding in, the leadership of Clay County schools handled things differently.
Before the District Curriculum Council considered a challenge, Miller and her colleagues were pressured to determine if the books were eligible to be “weeded” or “deselected.” Weeding and deselection are the standard processes that librarians use to remove books that are not in use, outdated, damaged, or not appropriate for students. The librarians were also reminded that, under Florida law, they could potentially be held personally liable for making “pornographic” material available to minors.
This process resulted in Clay County librarians agreeing to weed or deselect 52 books from school libraries. These included acclaimed titles like Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. Clay County schools have published a list of filed challenges, including those that librarians agreed to weed/deselect.
But it soon became clear that the challenges from Friedman and other activists were just getting started. As the challenges rolled in, Miller said she wanted to change her mind and put several books she previously agreed to remove back into circulation. Typically, a decision to weed a book is not irreversible. A damaged book, for example, could be replaced by a new copy. But she was told by district officials that challenged books that librarians agreed to remove were permanently banned from all libraries in the district.
In response, Miller and some of her colleagues resolved not to weed out or deselect any additional challenged books in Clay County because they believe the system is being abused.
Thus far, five challenges have been reviewed by a District Curriculum Council. These panels voted to keep four of the books in schools. One panel voted to remove Julian Is A Mermaid from all schools. Julian Is A Mermaid is about a little boy who wants to dress up as a mermaid and go and see a Mermaid Parade. The council wrote that the message of the book is that “you can be whatever you want to be.” According to the council, this is a “good message,” but they voted to remove the book because it is “maybe not the best way to do it.”
The council rejected Friedman’s challenge to Dear Martin, voting unanimously to allow the book to remain available in high school libraries. While the book does contain some coarse language, it was “realistic” and appropriate for teenagers.
Friedman has vowed to appeal all rejections to the district superintendent and, if necessary, to the Clay County School Board. He has reason to believe that his appeal may be successful. Friedman says that, during November’s election, we “got rid of two people” who opposed his efforts. He was “extremely supportive of two newly elected board members that I think sufficiently leaned towards protecting children.”
The goal, according to Friedman, is to use Clay County library to “set a good example for what a clean library looks like” for Florida and the country. If anyone gets in his way, Friedman vowed to “run over them like a dead body.”
1. This man moved from New York to Florida a few months ago
Now he wants to ban 3600 BOOKS from the school libraries
The world it is a’ changing. This is what programs of acceptance and tolerance produce, a better world for everyone. This is what positive representation does, it shows the LGBTQI+ are not monsters and helps people understand that they know people who are LGBTQI+, maybe even a family member. This is why the haters want to take LGBTQI+ books out of schools and libraries, why these haters want the don’t say gay laws. They want to stop the spread of acceptance that comes with people knowing, seeing, and understanding gay, lesbian, trans and the rest of the LGBTQI+ community. Hugs
Bill and Jill, Simon’s grandparents (Photo: Simon Crowther)
A man has shared the message he received from his grandparents after they found out, via a newspaper story, that he’s gay.
Simon Crowther, 28, is a British civil engineer who specializes in water and flooding. The Nottingham-based entrepreneur founded his own company, Flood Protection Solutions, while still at university in 2012. In 2018 he was featured in a ‘Forbes Under 30’ feature of entrepreneurs to watch. The latest issue of gay magazine Attitude highlighted Crowther as a rising name in the LGBTQ engineering and tech world.
Simon Crowther (Photo: Avit Media)
Crowther was out to most people in his life, including immediate family, but not his grandparents. However, his inclusion in Attitude list of 101 trailblazers was picked up by a local newspaper in his hometown of Nottingham, which ran a story about Crowther’s achievements.
Crowther’s uncle commented about the article to his grandparents, Jill and Bill, prompting this adorable message from them.
“Hello Simon, We learned from John R when he came round with Grandpa’s birthday present, that there was an excellent article recently, about you and how you built your business, in a Nottingham Evening Post Magazine.
“Apparently, you reported that you had ‘Come Out’ as being gay to your family when you were 21. Obviously, it was decided to keep it from us for if it upset us. Don’t worry, we are not upset.
“In fact, I had already worked it out for myself (Gran), but Grandpa didn’t know. Don’t worry. You are still the same Simon to us this news alters nothing. We want you to know that you are still our grandson and we love you just the same.
“We have not mentioned this to Mum or Jenny, so this message will be as big a surprise to them when you tell them, as it will be to you. I am so glad we now know. Enjoy your life.
“You are making a pretty good job of it up to now. And…..we would still love to see the article mentioned above. Can you e-mail it to us? With all our love and support,
Crowther shared the message to Twitter, adding the caption, “My 89 year old grandparents win the award for most adorable email ever 🥰🥰🥰 Feeling blessed”
My 89 year old grandparents win the award for most adorable email ever 🥰🥰🥰 Feeling blessed pic.twitter.com/aM6yNPIuTk
— Simon Crowther – The Flood Guy ® (@SCcrowther) January 12, 2022
At the time of writing, the tweet has had over 44k likes and hundreds of comments. Here are just a few of the replies.
I've not come out to my grandparents. I was too scared that it would ruin our relationship because I can't tell where they stand on those topics.
I missed my chance to tell both my grandads, but I'm still too nervous to tell my Nan 😔
2/2 to knoabout gay people in 1940s onwards etc. he just shrugged and said “he was a nice man” no judgment, no assumptions,” my dad was amazing and the kindest non judgemental man I ever met. This story is about you but I wanted to share a little of my dad x hope you don’t mind.
And this is why we need to push back on the “excuse old people for bigotry” line. They don’t need to be. The world is better when they’re actually good people, no matter how old.
That’s just wonderful! People misjudge how older people will react to things. My Mum spent her last 2 years in a care home. One of her favourite carers was a gay man. He once showed Mum a pic of new partner. Mum’s reaction? “He’s far too old for you, you need a younger man” 🤷♀️
I remember my Irish gran calling me when the vote for same sex marriage was taken in Ireland. "Ye have won the vote" she said. I asked if she had voted, and got "of course I fekkin voted for it, why wouldn't I". She is now 90 years old and going strong.
It is nice to see the people turn out to support the LGBTQI+ youth. I know there are far more people that are accepting of the gay, lesbian, and trans people than there are of the haters. The haters are just louder and willing to use violence. They wanted to mark the books so it would be easy for others to identify the kids who checked them out. A big old scarlet letter. It is the same for putting them in a different section all by themselves, nice big scarlet letter to paste on any kid who checks them out. Look at the gay kid, attack him, hurt him, making her cry. It was one kids who took a book home that had some LGBTQI+ subject material and one set of parents that complained so vigorously that an entire community was made to suffer, to be denied access to not just those books but the entire library. The school stopped sending the kids to the library because of the complaint of one parents. The school punished an entire school and all the kids to deny acceptability of the LGBTQI+ as one parent demanded. Hugs
The Crook County Library Board of Trustees voted Thursday night not to label LGBTQ-friendly children’s books or segregate them into a separate section.
In an unusual sight, people packed into the Crook County Library on Thursday night for a meeting of its board.
The topic at hand had drawn the standing room crowd: namely, whether or not to segregate LGBTQ-friendly children’s books into a separate section.
The Crook County Library Board of Trustees voted Thursday night not to label LGBTQ-friendly children’s books or segregate them into a separate section.
Adrian Vamanu
By the end of the night, the crowd had spoken overwhelmingly in support of keeping the books where they are, and the board voted 4-1 to not place the books in a special section of the library.
Library Director April Witteveen said the debate started in May when a group of local elementary school children visited the library. One student took home one of the library’s LGBTQ books. Soon after, with little to no explanation, the school stopped sending children to the library during school hours. Witteveen said the school does not have a library and students haven’t returned since.
Speaking at Thursday night’s meeting, former library board member and president ZueAnne Neal said she had started falling for the rhetoric around the books, as some community members called them dangerous for children.
Neal, appearing to be on the verge of tears, apologized to the crowd for at one point recommending the books be marked with a sticker or other identifying mark as a way to compromise between the sides.
“That was a sad, sad day,” she said.
Neal noted that after she did more research on the books, she found them to be age-appropriate and that placing the books into a separate section could create stigma, as well as potentially cost the library through lost funding and First Amendment lawsuits.
Some speakers pushed back on the notion that marking the books would ostracize people who wanted to check them out, calling such descriptions “misinformation.” Supporters of the move said marking the books would make it more clear for people who wanted to view the material, as well as those who wanted to avoid it.
Crook County is just one of hundreds of libraries across the country that have been targeted for allegedly making available LGBTQ books that contain child pornography. It comes amid a broader national debate over what educational materials should be available to children, especially those discussing racism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination.
Labeling queer people as pedophiles and dangers to children is a strategy used by anti-LGBTQ activists for decades.
One library in Jamestown, Michigan, found itself in a similar situation to Prineville in August, with residents there voting to block a tax levy on two separate occasions, meaning the small library lost 84% of its funding. The presence of LGBTQ books sparked the demand to cut the library’s funding, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Neal, the former library board president, said after looking into the issue, she ultimately came to see segregating books as a form of hate.
“If it roots here, it won’t end here,” she said. “It will just grow.”
The book issue in Crook County isn’t the first time Central Oregon has recently been roiled by misinformation involving LGBTQ people. In October, the Culver School District in nearby Jefferson County found itself in a controversy after pulling young students from a camp over false allegations about non-binary counselors.
Part I left out of this story was when one speaker read a Bible passage that described a man's genitals being like a donkey's, and then asked why that book was available in the library.
Shout out to that guy for doing homework for his testimony.
Just imagine being the poor kid that may have thought it was a good story, or that it applied to them. Then having your parents make such a fuss that your whole class can’t go back to the library. Religious indoctrination at it’s best.
This is gang rule. This is what the right wing / republicans are driving. Outrage against one segment of the population. We have seen this before, and it doesn’t end well. If they succeed in making the LGBTQI+ disappear who will be the next scapegoats? Who will be the next targets? The right wing groups that stoked this outrage and attack that could have caused death removed their inciting posts as soon as they got their way. Just like Fox news acts, drive outrage and then claim they did not do anything. Think of the preparations the shooter did, removing the license plate also wearing a mask and gloves. I wonder if the car was “borrowed”? Otherwise why wear gloves in your own car? And where are the police in all this, they set up cameras, for a masked person? Why not have increased patrols, why not have a news conference saying these acts of terrorism won’t be tolerated? Why don’t the police protect the attacked communities? Hugs
The conservative organization “Wake Up WA State” has removed posts from its Facebook page targeting the bar in the wake of the shooting.
A Seattle-area pub was hit by gunfire yesterday, days before a scheduled drag queen story hour and bingo night.
The Brewmaster’s Taproom in Renton, Washington, just south of Seattle, was hit a single gunshot to their front window in a drive-by shooting around noon on Wednesday. The pub’s monthly Drag Queen Storytime and Rainbow Bingo events will go on as planned on Saturday.
Brewmaster’s owner Marley Rall told LGBTQ Nation she was working at home when she got a text from an employee at the coffee stand next door to the pub. “They just texted me and said, ‘Hey, I just watched this.’”
Rall said the assailant had removed the license plates from the car and was wearing a mask and gloves.
Rall posted to Facebook: “So just an update for everyone. Our taproom was shot at today around noon. We believe it has to do with the people who are upset about our Drag Queen Story Time. We would like you to know we are still going to have drag queen storytime. But we also want to be transparent with parents. Renton PD is aware and has set up cameras.”
“Hatred isn’t pretty,” one commenter posted. “Hang in there. A lot of us will be there to support you! Grateful for your inclusion of all people.” Rall, who lives with her husband in Renton, calls herself a staunch ally of the LGBTQ+ community.
The shooting comes after plans for a protest at the event by right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ groups came to light. “We are aware of the chatter and threats,” Rall wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday. “Every month we get emails and phone calls about our Drag Queen Story Time. Never have we had issues, but this time feels different.”
The single gunshot came from a silver four-door sedan hours later.
Rall said she noticed unusual activity on the tap room’s Facebook page Monday night. “I get a notification,” Rall said, and a woman “had posted on our newsletter, ‘This is fucking disgusting,’ and ‘You’re fucking groomers and you’re pedophiles,’ and then had scrolled through our Facebook page to go find another post from the month before, specifically for our drag queen storytime and bingo.”
Rall was also made aware of a protest flyer originating with right-wing group Wake Up WA State that had spread across social media and was shared by advocacy group LGBTQIA+ Renton and a local councilwoman. Calls for protest also made their way to Reddit, where one poster suggested shooting up a transformer to deprive Brewmasters of power during the event.
“So I screenshot it and send it to the city,” Rall says. “This is a thing and somebody clearly wants to replicate what was going on in North Carolina.” She was referring to a
Following the shooting Wednesday, Wake Up WA State scrubbed their Facebook account of any reference to the event.
“Wake Up WA State is shutting its pages down at least for now,” wrote group organizer Justine Andrina. “We talked about it a lot and made this decision because the people running the groups are putting themselves at risk at this point and the benefit is outweighing the risks [sic].”
A deleted post archived by a Brewmaster supporter illustrated Wake Up WA State’s role in the protest and purported cancellation.
Andrina shared: “Per the organizer holding the protest: ‘Based on some recent developments we’ve decided to pull the plug on Saturday. Someone took a shot at the bar today.’ I don’t know if it was a false flag or a patriot who got too hotheaded. Either way, it now seems like a major security issue and since children will be present, we made the decision to cancel. If you are able to make a note of that on Wake Up WA FB, it would be appreciated. Thanks.”
“Whoever did this to Brewmasters,” Andrina wrote, “you’re sick in the head.”
Rall says both her parents lost family in the Holocaust, and they made sure she could recite the poem First They Came.
“Just because it doesn’t personally impact you, one day, you’re going to turn around and nobody’s going to be there, because it will,” she said. “This is about keeping everybody safe, and making sure that everybody continues to feel comfortable coming out and being their authentic self.”
Again it is about making those different from them disappear from society. It is about erasing the LGBTQI+ from public view and driving them back into the closet. This is another attempt to drive / regress the country to the past in an attempt to wind back the social acceptance clock. This is religious driven hate. Again as I posted this morning, another push by Christians to demand their religious views be imposed on everyone, that their ideas of morality be taken as the only acceptable ones. These Christian nationalists not only want a US Taliban, but they also fund raise constantly off their hatreds. They are proud of their attacks on the LGBTQI+ and take their incivility as a badge of honor. Hugs
She was forced to listen to a hate group member misgender her while he blathered about critical race theory and “sexual immorality” in school.
A transgender member of the Asheville City Board of Education has resigned after a months-long campaign of harassment by a representative of a national hate group.
Peyton O’Conner announced her resignation from the board on Monday night, effective immediately.
Ronald Gates, a self-described pastor and “ambassador” for the Arizona-based hate group Alliance Defending Freedom, started showing up at Asheville City Board of Education meetings in October, hectoring the board with anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, denouncing critical race theory, and misgendering board member O’Conner.
“Mr. Gates is a fascist whose hatred and fear-mongering have no place within the Asheville City School’s community,” O’Conner wrote in her letter of resignation to the board. “He is dragging a well-funded group of fascists into our town in order to claim his own 15 minutes of fame. His views are ignorant, disgusting, and vile.”
O’Conner was appointed to the seat in March 2021 by the Asheville City Council to fill a term ending in 2024.
O’Conner’s resignation follows a board meeting at which she ripped up a letter transmitted by Gates that demanded “parents, school board members, and local clergy be informed if teachers plan to allow ‘indoctrination teaching’ in the school system.”
Alliance Defending Freedom identifies itself as a “legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, the sanctity of life, parental rights, and God’s design for marriage and family.” The Southern Poverty Law Center describes it as a “hate group.” ADF has joined with like-minded organizations in Europe in support of forced sterilization of transgender individuals.
When Gates took the mic for public comment, he repeatedly misgendered O’Conner, despite rebukes from the board chair. O’Conner interjected: “Mr. Gates, I would ask that you refrain from bigotry and hate speech. That is not my gender.”
Gates went on: “We should be focusing on reading, writing, math, and history, true history, instead of sexual immorality or indoctrination or CRT. As I shared, the submittal of the information, it was submitted before the board, respectfully, and the individual that took time to rip up that information is not known, as you reflect it, as ‘Miss.’ I will say ‘Mr.’ if the blood was drawn XY, which is a male.”
Board members can be heard repeating “no,” and Gates is gaveled out of order and told to yield his time. The pastor and his supporters were escorted from the room by security, as Gates continued his rant.
“The ADF has a playbook,” O’Conner wrote in her resignation letter. “Essentially, Mr. Gates will continue attacking until he is censured in a way that allows him (with the assistance of the ADF) to create a lawsuit and turn our district into the circus and s**t show that he and the ADF desire. This isn’t a guess, the ADF makes no attempt to hide its tactics. It’s a group with 1.6 million followers, they are looking for their next opportunity for their next Fox News press blitz.”
Asheville is one of the most progressive cities in the southeast. According to the last U.S. Census, the Asheville area has 83% more LGBTQ+ people than the typical American city or town. In 2021, the city council unanimously passed one of the country’s most sweeping anti-discrimination ordinances, protecting residents based on sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, and several other classes.
I am so sick of the cries of fear and doom, of how their rights to discriminate against us gays are the only thing these Christians can see when it comes to same sex marriage. It has been the law of the land for over 7 years and no church has been forced to do a same sex marriage, no one has been jailed for refusing to enter into a same sex marriage, the sky has not fallen nor has their god rained fire and brimstone on the US. All that has happened is the same thing that happens when a marginalized minority gets their equality / civil rights entered into law in the US, more people are able to enjoy the rights the white Christians have always had. I am so tired of this shit. What this woman and those like her are demanding is follow my religion or Everything we love will be destroyed which is our right to deny you the same rights we have. We need that to feel superior to you, praise our god! Her own very cute nephew responded to this destroying her arguments here. Sadly this grand Christian woman is part of a family that told that nephew that he was no longer welcome to family holiday celebrations including Christmas because he has the dreaded gay disease. I will try to find the link and put it here. Love you all but this shit is getting really hard on me personally. The drive to make us conform to their straight is accepted only due to their religion lifestyle or they will kill us / drive us from society is too much now. It seems they are on a desperate push, and either make or break to drive the LGBTQI+ from society and install their own scriptures as the rules we must live by. Anyway. Hugs
Vicky Hartzler’s gay nephew Andrew posted about his aunt crying over gay marriage on the House floor pic.twitter.com/Kxwt4DLEnF
These people want the authority to deny rights to others they don’t like based on the nebulous idea of their religion. No one says they cannot worship as they want, but we are saying if they want to have a business serving the public they need to serve the entire public. They want the right to say my god hates … so I can not only hate them but deny them services also, which civil rights laws were passed to prevent. No one says they have to open businesses that deal with marriage, or that they have to open public businesses. This is being pushed by the very idea that some people don’t have a right to services sold to others in the community. This is simply a way to expand their religion / religious authority into the daily public life of the country. They want to expand their religious authority into all aspects of peoples lives. Hugs
“This hollow amendment provides no tangible protections for religious schools. No protections for faith-based adoption or foster care agencies. No protections for Christian businesses who contract with the government.
“And no protections for civil servants that justly believe marriage is between a man and a woman. The bill’s implications: submit to our ideology or be silenced.
“This is yet another step toward the Democrats’ goal of dismantling the traditional family, silencing voices of faith and permanently undoing our country’s God-woven foundation.
“This is the Democrats’ priority.” – GOP Rep. Vicki Hartzler, sobbing as she objected ahead of today’s final vote on the marriage bill.
Hartzler ran for the US Senate this year, finishing 23 points behind Missouri AG Eric Schmitt in the GOP primary. Schmitt then won the general election.
Hartzler says her priority is protecting people who believe in the true meaning of marriage and then starts to cry while she asks for her colleagues to vote against marriage equality pic.twitter.com/yk7loKCd4G
RELATED: Rep. Vicky Hartzler is one of the most vicious opponents of LGBT rights in the US House, which is saying something. She appeared on JMG in 2019 when she hosted ex-gay torture advocates in her office next door to Rep. Ted Lieu, who had just introduced a bill to ban the practice. That same year she publicly pressured Amazon to resume selling books by the now-dead Joseph Nicolosi, the so-called father of ex-gay torture. Before being elected to Congress, Hartzler headed the Missouri Coalition to Protect Marriage, which in 2004 backed the successful campaign to install a statewide constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Hartzler has compared same-sex marriage to incest and pedophilia. In 2020, she was among the 146 GOP House reps who voted to overturn the presidential election.
Free speech means she’s free to be shitty to LGBTQ folks all she wants. She’s just pissed off that federal and state governments can’t be required to be shitty at a systematic and institutional level. Even though having to get married in a different state would absolutely be a burden on same-sex couples and a pretty blatant violation of equal protection. Which this corrupt SCOTUS could well tie itself into knots to allow anyway.
The issue that keeps coming up is that Catholic (and other religious) adoption agencies are being forced to treat all people fairly even if their interpretation of their religious teaching allows for bigotry. They could be bigots without state and federal funds but they don’t want that. They want the money. Religious are exempt except when taking federal (and in the rare cases of totally blue states, state) money. That’s the issue.
But no, they lie and claim that the government is going to force churches to marry gay couples which is a lie and they know it’s a lie. Lies are all they have because the truth is that they are bigoted monsters.
Fuck off, Vicky. That was fake. It doesn’t affect you. Nothing has changed from yesterday. You are still allowed to hate, you just can’t do anything about it.
Cry more, snowflake. Why does a school need “protection” against recognizing a state-licensed marriage? Oh, right, it doesn’t; it’s just a poorly assembled and irrational smokescreen to cover for discrimination. Say what you mean: Your miserable life is so wretched that only oppressing and mistreating those whom you see as your “inferiors” makes you feel any better about it.
Actually it safeguards their protections if Obergefell and Windsor are overturned (which I expect soon).
Here’s the issue: they want that sweet government money but don’t want to follow secular rules to get it. They can discriminate all they want if they raise their own money. But now. They want tax dollars from the very people they will discriminate against. And this doesn’t just affect lgbt people. One of the religious adoption agencies recently turned away a Jewish couple. They are bigots and they want OUR tax dollars to pay for their bigotry. They aren’t charities. They are faux government agencies. Cut them off!
They can run them all they want. They just shouldn’t be getting any money from the government, including medicare and medicaid, unless they agree to abide by nondiscrimination rules.
You are not asked to bless the wedding if you are a provider of wedding services. You are not asked to officiate, you are not asked to attend the ceremony and are certainly not asked to dance at the reception.
Now if you are a social service provider receiving tax dollars, you need to take care of citizens WHO ARE PAYING YOU.
Bill and Jill, Simon’s grandparents (Photo: Simon Crowther)
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