Law enforcement officials Texas are saying a new law that allows people to carry handguns without a permit has led to more spontaneous shootings. John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur and Jessica Burbank discuss on The Young Turks. Watch LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET. http://youtube.com/theyoungturks/live
These are just some of the ways critics are describing Texas’ new law allowing people to carry handguns in public without a permit—a Republican achievement that many local officials say has already led to a spike in spontaneous shootings in highly populated parts of the state.
“It seems like now there’s been a tipping point where just everybody is armed.”
In one high-profile case earlier this year, Tony Earls “pulled out his handgun and opened fire, hoping to strike a man who had just robbed him and his wife at an A.T.M. in Houston,” The New York Times reported Wednesday.
“Instead, he struck Arlene Alvarez, a 9-year-old girl seated in a passing pickup, killing her.” A grand jury declined to indict Earls, agreeing with his lawyer that “everything about that situation, we believe and contend, was justified under Texas law.” *
At the end of the article you will read what is behind this. A woman demands that the LGBTQ+ materials with stories about or include LGBTQ+ characters be removed and banned from everywhere because “I will not raise kids in a county that has sexual-oriented books on the counter,” she asserted. She told the group they need “to understand that God’s judgment is for Christians and non-Christians, and a fear of the Lord, if it’s not upon you, it will be upon you in hell.” This is not her church and she is not saying her kids shouldn’t be able to read the books, she is demanding that your kids not be able to read them either. Did you notice she goes on to say that judgement is coming for Christians and non-Christians implying that you non-Christians had better live by my church doctrines and rules. Republican elected office holders like DeathSantis have opened the flood gates and let the hyper religious think they now hove more rights than anyone else in the country, in fact they have the right to force you / your family to follow their rules. How long until these people insist you go to their church even if you are not of their religion? In some Islamic countries there is a tax on anyone not Muslim simply to be allowed to exist. First they came for the trans kids, then they came for the entire LGBTQ+, now they are moving the goal to enforcing their “morality from 2,500 years ago” on everyone. Hugs
“I’ve never been sexually assaulted at a drag show, but I have been in church. Twice!” she said, adding that the church “told me it was my fault.”
Jessee Graham going off at the Maury County Board of Trustees Photo: Screenshot
A woman came to a board of trustees meeting and trounced conservative Christians after a county’s library director was driven from his job for refusing to take down a Pride display.
Maury County, Tennessee Library Director Zachary Fox resigned last week after getting pressured by a group of residents who said that the LGBTQ-themed books were inappropriate, according to WSMV-4. Fox said that his last day working would be tomorrow, October 28, but that he would stay until a replacement could be found.
“Coming to this decision has been incredibly difficult, but it is in the best interest of my family and my own health and well being,” he wrote.
Maury County Commissioner Aaron Miller – who runs the local organization Foundation for Liberty and Freedom – was at the center of the controversy, calling on Fox to resign.
“The library invested your tax dollars into a book display for LGBT History Month,” Miller told the Epoch Times. “This was surprising, considering that June is already Pride Month, a period of celebration for the LGBT community.”
Miller said that the materials were “child-targeted.”
“As a father, my line in the sand was crossed when the library exhibited a bright, colorful display of no less than 28 books for this past Pride Month, all of which were written and marketed specifically for minors, especially young children,” he said.
Last night the Maury County Board of Trustees held a meeting that got heated. And one woman – identified as Jessee Graham – is going viral for her righteously angry speech about the people who drove Fox from his job.
“Our town has never seen so much homophobic crap as we have since Miller came along,” Graham said. “These people have been with us this entire time and we have never had a problem with it. They have never done any of the vile and disgusting things that that man and his weird cronies have leaked out of their mouths.”
“I’ve never been sexually assaulted at a drag show, but I have been in church. Twice!” she continued, adding that the church “told me it was my fault.”
She called out the group’s homophobia, accusing them of wanting to “completely annihilate a group of human beings who just wanna exist.” She said that if any of her four kids are “part of this community, they will be lucky because there is not a whole lot of families that would love their child unconditionally.”
“And the fact that they want to take that away from children, that is child abuse, to immediately tell your child that he is wrong for feeling like he doesn’t belong in conversion therapy.”
🔥🔥 MUST-WATCH: “I’ve never been sexually assaulted at a drag show, but I have been at church. TWICE! The men told me it was MY fault.”
MAURY COUNTY library board – local mom rips homophobe County Commissioner Aaron Miller, whose ignorant hate chased out the library director📚 pic.twitter.com/D6HrzugANN
Earlier this month, a woman who introduced herself as Stephanie went on a diatribe at a meeting discussing LGBTQ books in the library system in Maury County that was caught on video.
“I will not raise kids in a county that has sexual-oriented books on the counter,” she asserted. She told the group they need “to understand that God’s judgment is for Christians and non-Christians, and a fear of the Lord, if it’s not upon you, it will be upon you in hell.”
The woman said she represented “every law-abiding, taxpaying citizen here in Maury County,” then told her would-be constituents, “you are blind” not to see that “when perversion permeates our county, that’s when the devil gets our children.”
“Obviously, revelation prophecies are occurring right before our eyes,” she said.
An American flag next to a wooden cross (image via Shutterstock)
Reading Time: 5MINUTES
Anew survey out today from the Pew Research Center finds that nearly half of all Americans, 45%, believe we ought to live in a “Christian Nation.” They disagree, however, on what that means in practice, and most Americans still believe church and state should remain separate.
The phrase “Christian nation” is not meant to be aspirational. As sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry described in their book Taking America Back for God (affiliate link), Christian nationalism basically represents a fusion of conservative Christianity with civic life. It’s not quite a theocracy, but if conservative Christians had their way, it’d be a distinction without a different.
The phrase suggests we were founded as a (conservative) Christian country—we were not—and that we should be guided by (conservative) Christian principles. It’s not about Jesus. It’s about pushing right-wing beliefs on everybody in the country with regards to LGBTQ rights, gender roles, abortion access, who “counts” as an American, and control of public institutions like schools and government.
Christian nationalists have become far more prominent in recent years, especially since the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt to the point where some of its biggest proponents use the phrase as a badge of honor. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has even said, “I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly: We should be Christian nationalists.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has urged Republicans to wear the “full armor of God” as they try to defeat Democrats in the upcoming elections.
Meanwhile, the other side is sounding the alarm. Earlier this year, a handful of scholars and activists met with members of the Congressional Freethought Caucus to go over their report on the connection between Christian nationalism and the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“I think the proof points about just how central Christian nationalism — we should call it white Christian nationalism — was to the planning and the execution of the insurrection is really undeniable,” [Rep. Jared] Huffman told Religion News Service in an interview.
With all that in mind, what do Americans feel about the phrase? The bottom line is that too many Americans don’t seem to understand the threat posed by Christian nationalists.
The Pew Research Center’s survey asked Americans what they felt about the term “Christian nation” without defining it for them. Because of that, the results are all over the place.
You can see there that 60% of Americans falsely believe we were originally intended to be a “Christian nation,” that 45% of Americans say we should be one, and 33% of Americans say we currently are one.
And yet the other responses don’t quite match up with any of those results. Should Supreme Court members rely on their faith when deciding cases? An astonishing 83% of Americans say no. (They are correct.) Similarly, 77% of Americans don’t want churches (and other houses of worship) endorsing political candidates.
Even among the 45% of Americans who believe we should be a “Christian nation,” the views are not monolithic.
Those people on the left side there (dark blue) want a theocracy. But the rest of them don’t want to go that far when it comes to establishing an official religion, pushing their religious views on everyone else, or blending church and state.
To put that another way, living in a Christian country sounds pretty good to a lot of Americans because they treat “Christian” as synonymous with “good.” Yet they overwhelmingly reject what that looks like in practice, at least based on the warped fantasies of actual Christian nationalists.
Here’s how Pew’s researchers parsed that:
While some people who say the U.S. should be a Christian nation define the concept as one where a nation’s laws are based on Christian tenets and the nation’s leaders are Christian, it is much more common for people in this category to see a Christian nation as one where people are more broadly guided by Christian values or a belief in God, even if its laws are not explicitly Christian and its leaders can have a variety of faiths or no faith at all. Some people who say the U.S. should be a Christian nation are thinking about the religious makeup of the population; to them, a Christian nation is a country where most people are Christians. Others are simply envisioning a place where people treat each other well and have good morals.
Of course, the Christians pushing for Christian nationalism would be more accurately described as bigots, racists, anti-feminists, intolerant, and the sort of people you don’t invite to Thanksgiving dinner. (One survey respondent described a “Christian nation” as a “White Christian ethno-state”… which deserves bonus points for bluntness and accuracy.)
Here’s another silver lining to these results. While nearly half of all Americans said we should live in a “Christian nation,” a lot of Americans have no clue what “Christian nationalism” is. They like the idea of living in a nation guided by (their interpretation of) Christian principles, but many of them aren’t familiar with the more pointed phrase.
More than half of Americans (54%) have never heard the term at all. Only 14% of Americans really know anything about it. And of the people who have ever heard the phrase at all, the ones with an opinion on it are against it.
That means there’s a tremendous opportunity to educate people on what Christian nationalism is, why it’s bad for the country, and what all of us stand to lose if Christian nationalists acquire even more power than they already have.
The “wall of separation between state and church” is an American original. It is an American invention. We should be proud of and defend that contribution to human rights. And we should challenge those who would undermine it with myths, lies, and disinformation about America being founded as a Christian nation.
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Shielding our shared laws from religious influence and capture allows Americans to come together as equals to build a stronger democracy. Democracy, equality, and freedom all depend on the separation of church and state—and the separation of church and state in turn enables those values.
A Sumner County parent broke into tears during a school board meeting after learning her child was reading a poem book about a young Black child that explores themes of racial struggles and diversity. The book, “A Place Inside of Me” by award-winning author Zetta Elliott, explores the perspectives of a Black child throughout the year as he deals with the aftermath of a police shooting. MeidasTouch Contributor Coach D reacts.
Jessee Graham going off at the Maury County Board of Trustees Photo: Screenshot
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