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.
The right-wing is dominating the discourse on trans rights and they’re doing it in the worst way possible. They are going after parents and medical professionals who try to help trans kids. But the facts and statistics are not on their side.
I keep telling people these don’t say gay and anti-trans bills do not have anything to do with “protecting kids from anything”, but are driven by hate and the desire to erase gays, lesbians, and trans people from society. Using the same laws as Russia has. This man admits it, openly. This man is an old white Christian who refuses to understand that people are born gay or gender different. They are not recruited, not bullied into it, not forced, you cannot convert them. Think of it, if that were the case that straight kids could become gay or trans just because they really wanted to be abused or targeted more for bullying, all you straight people ask yourself if you had to choose being straight with attractions to the opposite gender / sex or did it just flow naturally. These people like the guy above what to punish a group of society, a segment of the population for simply being born not straight or not identifying with the gender they were assigned at birth. That is the crime these people want hidden, want other kids protected from, simply being existing as a gay kid or a trans kid. Hugs
The Republicans are saying the quiet part out loud.
Tuesday morning, the Florida Senate passed the controversial SB1834. Formally known as the Parental Rights in Education bill, the proposed legislation is commonly called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The proposal passed with a vote of 22-17 along party lines with two Republicans, Senator Jeffrey Brandes and Senator Jennifer Bradley crossing the aisle.But in the debate, the bill’s sponsor, Senator Dennis Baxley, said the quiet part out loud and revealed his reasoning behind it all: to stop LGBTQ+ children from coming out.
The “Don’t Say Gay” bill as it stands would bar any classroom discussion around gender identity or sexual orientation in grades K-3. It would also restrict conversation around those topics to what is developmentally and age-appropriate for grades 3 – 12. To be clear: schools are already in the business of determining what is developmentally and age-appropriate discussion and almost no topics are enshrined in state-wide statute in this way in Florida. While some have said this proposal is about sex ed or sexual acts, the actual text does not refer to sexual acts. When Brandes offered an amendment to change the legislation so that it would refer to all sexual acts, Republicans shut it down.
In debate, Baxley was questioned about the legislation. He was asked on the floor multiple times to provide examples of ongoing classroom instruction that showed a need for the bill, he could provide none. Instead, he spoke about the increasing number youth coming out as LGBTQ+. He said he discussed the matter with his son, who is a psychologist.
“Why is everybody now all about coming out when you are in school?” he said on the floor, according to The Advocate. “There really is a dynamic of concern about how much of this are genuine type of experiences and how many of them are just kids trying on different kinds of things they hear about and different kinds of identities and experimenting.
“That’s what kids do, you know. Maybe they’re in this club or they’re in that club or they’re onto this. And they’re trying on these different identities of life trying to see where they fit in. I said am I crazy or what? All of a sudden we’re having all these issues come up about this topic of their sexuality and gender. I don’t understand why that’s such a big wave right now.”
Baxley had earlier said that this legislation would not impact after-school clubs and organizations, only classroom instruction.
“Some of it is I’m sure cultural shift of what’s accepted and that kind of thing,” he continued. “But I know some of it is just the confusion kids go through, particularly when you go to middle school and high school.”
Bill and Jill, Simon’s grandparents (Photo: Simon Crowther)
