South Florida LGBT teen jumped for second time

This video is horrible and hard to watch. This kid is given a vicious beating because he is trans according to his grandmother. Notice the police and school have done nothing to help this teen and now with the don’t say gay laws no teacher can support him. This is what the republican’s in office and the right wing maga thugs want with the don’t say gay bills. This is the result of demonizing trans people to claim they are assaulting people in bathrooms, suggesting they are doing perverted stuff in locker rooms, and removing support for LGBTQ+ kids along with anti-discrimination messages that might help teach tolerance and acceptance. This is what the legislator that wrote the Florida don’t say gay bill admitted he wanted to have happen. He wanted LGBTQ+ kids targeted for abuse and harm. Well he is getting his way. With more abuse comes more suicide.

To those who say that kids are transitioning on whims and doing so because it is a fad or perceived as the cool thing to do need to see the reality of this video. This is the reality far too many gay, lesbian, and trans kids face. Far too many LGBTQ+ face these threats of hate and violence in their daily lives made worse by the actions of DeathSantis and his anti-LGBTQ+ maga thugs. When religious leaders scream that LGBTQ+ people should be killed, this is the result. Some of these LGBTQ+ face this at home which is why they are not out at home, but now republican laws force teachers to out them to their parents. Kids are not willing to transition and face this, living every day with the hassles of trying to find a bathroom, trying to make it through the day without support, suffering abuse and the danger of being beaten up unless they truly are of a different gender than they were assigned at birth.

We are working so hard to remove this hate from society and the LGBTQ+ communities were gaining such deserved acceptance in society. Schools had programs to teach tolerance, to show other kids there was nothing wrong with the LGBTQ+ kids, to establish acceptance. To teach that diversity was a good thing. Now in Florida married same sex couples cannot put up pictures of their spouses like straight couples and must hide from the kids their marriages / sexual orientation. These red states / republicans / right wing thugs are trying to create a country where only straight white Christians are accepted and have assumed authority / privileges. Everyone else must hide who they are and be silent. 50 years of work, decades of changing the perceptions in schools and the minds of the people, creating safer schools and workplaces, all destroyed in red states due to a small minority of violent thugs, the republican brownshirts, who won’t tolerate anyone different from them because they have the state authority’s permission to force other to live as these gang thugs’ demand. The power / authority of the state is supporting and energizing these thugs. If you vote republican this is the country you want. If you vote republican this is the way you want the LGBTQ+ to be treated, along with women being second class citizens whose duty is to be an incubator for a male’s offspring. Shame on you all for voting republican! This is personal. I lived through these beatings and worse. I lived through the fears in schools, I lived with the mistreatment at home, and the discrimination in all aspects of adult life for being gay. It was getting better until now. We were moving away from this stuff being acceptable. Now it is back. What next? Will black kids be the next targets of these laws, to make them the targets of more abuse? Will LGBTQ+ adults not be able to rent, buy in some neighborhoods? Will gays / lesbians get married on Sunday and be fired from work for being in a same sex marriage on Monday? Hugs

Shock as London police admit strip-searching hundreds of children

https://www.euronews.com/2022/08/08/shock-as-london-police-admit-strip-searching-hundreds-of-children

I am posting this to show that the same racist bigotry toward black kids exists here in the US. The right allows this mentality to fester and grow. Hugs

A view of a Metropolitan police officer on patrol, in London, Friday, Oct. 1, 2021.

Several hundred children were subjected to strip searches in London over the last two years, newly released figures reveal.

Data shows that 650 children aged 10 to 17 underwent the practice between 2018 and 2020.

Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, said she was “deeply shocked” that so many youngsters had been searched this way.

“In a strip search, your most intimate parts are searched,” said de Souza. “For any child, that’s going to be traumatic and concerning.”

The data also reveals ethnic disparities, added De Souza.

She said 58% of children strip-searched over the two-year period were black, despite just 19% of 10-17 year-olds in the UK capital having this ethnicity.

The commissioner also found that in nearly a quarter of cases the search took place without the presence of a third adult.

More than half of the searches did not lead to a prosecution, with Dame de Souza saying they were probably not “warranted or necessary in all cases”.

Two London police officers sanctioned after ‘disturbing’ arrest on black man

The commissioner launched her investigation following widespread outrage over the case of Child Q, a 15-year-old black schoolgirl who was strip-searched at her school in east London.

She was wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis.

The strip search prompted days of protests in Hackney after it emerged the schoolgirl was searched without another adult present and with the knowledge that she was menstruating. Her parents were not contacted.

In the UK, it is a legal requirement for an appropriate adult to be present during the strip search of a child, except in urgent situations.

A Child Protective Services report into the incident concluded that the search should “never” have taken place and that “racism (whether deliberate or not) was likely a contributing factor.”

Strip searches on females are rare in the UK, with 19 out of 20 performed on males.

Two London police officers charged for taking selfies at murder scene

De Souza said her findings showed the case of Child Q was not a one-off.

“I am not reassured that what happened to Child Q was an isolated issue, but instead believe it may be a particularly concerning example of a more systemic problem around child protection within the Metropolitan Police,” she said.

“I remain unconvinced that the Metropolitan Police is consistently considering children’s welfare and wellbeing.”

She also expressed concern about “holes in the data” recorded by London’s police force.

“For about one in five of the strip-searched, they can’t even tell me where they took place, so the data collection needs to be better,” de Souza said.

In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said it is “progressing at pace” to ensure children subject to intrusive searches are dealt with respectfully.

It added new measures have been introduced requiring an inspector to give authority before a search takes place.

The Right Is Misusing the Word “Grooming,” and It Can Have Serious Consequences

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/the-right-is-misusing-the-word-grooming-and-it-can-have-serious-consequences

CHANDAN KHANNA/GETTY IMAGES

As survivors of sexual violence and advocates for survivors, we know exactly how precious and vital it is to be safe in our homes and our bodies, and how much is lost when that safety is violated by people who claim to love and protect us. We also know that words have power – both the words we use to describe our own experiences, and the words other people use to describe us.

That is why we can no longer stay silent while right-wing extremists appropriate the idea and terminology of “grooming” and “pedophilia” to attack gender equity and young people’s access to necessary education, whether these attacks are used to stoke fear and panic in attempts to ban any discussions of LGBTQ+ identity from classroom discussion, leveraged in efforts to ban books or get teachers or administrators fired, or used to undermine access to necessary relationships and sexuality education. The word “grooming” means something specific and serious: it is a secretive process by which someone builds false trust with a child they are intending to abuse.

LGBTQ+ representation and acceptance is life-saving for young people questioning their gender or orientation, and age-appropriate comprehensive sexual health education both gives youth skills to recognize and disclose abuse and helps reduce perpetration of sexual abuse.

This is why we are speaking today with one voice to demand that the journalists covering this devastating and false rhetoric do so responsibly. Whenever a source invokes the terminology of child abuse survivors as reasons to oppose education, LGBTQ+ rights, or other fundamental freedoms, we call on you to responsibly contextualize what child abuse actually is, and center the voices of survivor advocacy groups.

Child sexual abuse is real, and it is devastating. Standing in solidarity with the LGBTQ community has nothing to do with child sexual abuse. Child sexual abuse is about people in positions of power harming the most vulnerable. As Kendall Ciesemier, a survivor, wrote in the New York Times: “Abusers often seek to gain the trust of their victims and, in time, use that trust to assert control over them… No anti-LGBTQ education bill, book ban or health care ban, would have prevented my abuse or helped me in its aftermath.” For survivors who are trans or queer, remaining in the closet and not coming to terms with our own identities has never protected us from the kind of violence we endured as children. For some of us, our abuse may have been directly related to others’ attempts to suppress our identity, and the impacts of this abuse were made worse by being unable to access LGBTQ-specific information about sexuality, sexual health, and relationships.

The extremists who use this harmful rhetoric are not keeping anyone safe. They do not support or speak for survivors. To the contrary: They are muddying the waters of language, trivializing the suffering of survivors, gaslighting the public, and making it increasingly impossible for children to name when they are experiencing harm from abusers. When there is confusion about what child abuse actually is, it will be harder to identify it and intervene to stop it. Using inaccurate and sensational narratives to stir a moral panic about LGBTQ+ rights and sexual health education will lead to ineffective and harmful interventions and policy decisions based on fictions rather than evidence. These extremists are only fueling the epidemic of child sexual abuse, increasing violence against the LGBTQ+ community, and ultimately threatening public health.

Many of the same politicians co-opting the use of language created to name sexual violence are doing nothing when their political allies are discovered to have committed actual sexual violence. They are using this rhetoric because they believe that keeping us afraid will help them gain and cling to power. And by spreading these baseless, cynical allegations, they are inciting violence against queer and trans people — people who are already significantly more likely to be victims of abuse, rather than perpetrators of it.

In fact, the very initiatives that do reduce children’s vulnerability to groomers and prevent child sexual abuse are the ones extremists are weaponizing the language of child abuse to oppose. LGBTQ+ affirming books and curricula save lives by helping all kids know their lives and rights to bodily autonomy are important, and that their identities are valid. Studies repeatedly show that quality, inclusive relationships and sexuality education can reduce child abuse, and empowers children to report if someone does try to harm them. We are tired of being weaponized as a right-wing talking point against the education and protections that will prevent more children from experiencing sexual violence.

Survivors of abuse will tell you that information is power and the real threats are fear, shame, and silence. Don’t make children pay the price for these politicians’ lies. By centering survivor advocates in this narrative and educating the public about what grooming is and is not, you can help people see through this fear-mongering ploy, return the power of words to survivors, and make children across this nation safer in the process.

Respectfully,

Advocates for Youth

Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Initiative

Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence

Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking

Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault

Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence

EducateUS: SIECUS In Action

Equality Federation

Equality Florida

Equality North Carolina

Florida Freedom to Read Project

Freedom Network USA

Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault

Jane Doe Inc. (JDI), the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence

Jews for a Secular Democracy

Keshet

Know Your IX

Lauren’s Kids

Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault

Michigan Organization of Adolescent Sexual Health Action Fund

Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault

Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence

Montana Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence

National Alliance to End Sexual Violence

National Center for Transgender Equality

National Survivor Network

Nevada Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence

New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault

North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault

Northern Marianas Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence

Our Bodies Ourselves Today

Partners in Sex Education

Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida

Polaris

PRISM FL, Inc.

Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence

SafeBAE

Scarleteen

SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change

Stop It Now!

The Irina Project

The Trevor Project

Transinclusive Group

UN|HUSHED

University of Kansas Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Victim Rights Law Center

We Testify

Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault

You Are More Than

And the Following Individuals:

Amy Agigian

Anastasia Owen

Annie E. Clark

Beth Roselyn, PhD, Lecturer, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Kansas

Chel Miller

Chris Ash, Advocate and Educator

Dr. Melinda Chen

Florida Representative Anna V. Eskamani

Florida Representative Carlos Guillermo Smith

Florida Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book

Hannah E. Britton

Heather Corinna

Ida V. Eskamani

Jaclyn Friedman

Kimm Topping

Lenny Hayes, Executive Director, Tate Topa Consulting

Kai X. Christmas

Kolyn Brown

Mary Eakins-Durand

Max Micallef, Queer Rights & Suicide Prevention Activist

Melanie Andrade Williams

Pamela Merritt, Executive Director of Medical Students for Choice

Rebecca Kling, Advocate for Transgender Rights

Renee Bracey Sherman

Rin Alajaji

Sarah Deer

Sarah “Mili” Milianta-Laffin

Sarah Sophie Flicker

Shael Norris

Soraya Chemaly

Stacey Vanderhurst

Takeata King Pang

‘Social contagion’ isn’t causing more youths to be transgender, study finds

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-health-and-wellness/social-contagion-isnt-causing-youths-transgender-study-finds-rcna41392

By the way this is the same study that Tildeb tried to attack in a comment. As you can see, the study debunking the social contagion idea is accepted by both mainstream media and the medical community. I find it interesting that Tildeb claims I have a religious like faith in my acceptance of trans people and the best care practices for trans gender kids which is supported by the majority of medical organizations, yet the idea behind the social contagion idea has been completely debunked and Tildeb still clings to it. Which one of us is unaccepting of the data and reality? He tries so hard to push fearmongering right wing myths about trans people and he manages to confuse some people. It is sad and harmful, and it must be countered as often as possible. Hugs

The study, published in Pediatrics, disputes the theory that more adolescents, particularly those assigned female at birth, are identifying as trans due to social influence.

A giant trans flag held by participants of the Reclaim Pride Coalition’s (RPC) fourth annual Queer Liberation March, on June 26, 2022 in New York.Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty Images file

Aug. 3, 2022, 5:52 PM EDT

By Jo Yurcaba

“Social contagion” is not driving an increasing number of adolescents to come out as transgender, according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Pediatrics.

The study also found that the proportion of adolescents who were assigned female at birth and have come out as transgender also has not increased, which contradicts claims that adolescents whose birth sex is female are more susceptible to this so-called external influence.

“The hypothesis that transgender and gender diverse youth assigned female at birth identify as transgender due to social contagion does not hold up to scrutiny and should not be used to argue against the provision of gender-affirming medical care for adolescents,” study senior author Dr. Alex S. Keuroghlian, director of the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center at the Fenway Institute and the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Gender Identity Program, said in a statement.

The “social contagion” theory can be traced back to a 2018 paper published in the journal PLOS One. Dr. Lisa Littman, who at the time was a professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown University, coined the term “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” which she described as adolescents experiencing a conflict between their birth sex and gender identity “suddenly during or after puberty.” These adolescents, she wrote, “would not have met the criteria for gender dysphoria in childhood” and are experiencing dysphoria due to social influence.

Littman also hypothesized that adolescents assigned female at birth are more likely to be affected by social contagion and, as a result, are overrepresented in groups of adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria when compared to those who were assigned male at birth.

After intense debate and criticism, PLOS One conducted a post-publication reassessment of the article, and issued a correction that included changing the headline to clarify that Littman did not survey transgender or gender-diverse youth themselves, but actually surveyed their parents. The correction also noted that, “Rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) is not a formal mental health diagnosis at this time.”

To test the social contagion theory, researchers used data from the 2017 and 2019 biennial Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which collected gender identity data across 16 states from ages 12 to 18. In 2017, 2.4%, or 2,161 of the 91,937 adolescents surveyed, identified as trans or gender diverse. In 2019, that percentage dropped slightly to 1.6%, or 1,640 of 105,437 adolescents surveyed.

Researchers concluded that the decrease in the overall percentage of adolescents identifying as trans or gender diverse “is incongruent with the (rapid-onset gender dysphoria hypothesis) that posits social contagion.”

The study also found that the number of transgender adolescents who were assigned male at birth outnumbered those assigned female at birth in both 2017 and 2019, providing additional evidence against a “notion of social contagion with unique susceptibility” among those assigned female at birth.

The social contagion hypothesis, by assuming that youth are coming out, for example, because their friends are, asserts that there’s some social desirability to being trans. Some supporters of the theory, according to the study, also believe that more youth identify as trans or gender diverse because those identities are less stigmatized than cisgender sexual minority identities, or those who identify with their birth sex and are lesbian, bisexual, gay or queer, among other sexual identities.

To evaluate these claims, researchers examined rates of bullying among adolescents who identified as trans and gender diverse, and those who did not.

They found that, consistent with other surveys, trans and gender-diverse youth were significantly more likely to be victims of school bullying (at 38.7% in 2017 and 45.4% in 2019) compared to cisgender lesbian, gay and bisexual youth (at 30.5% in 2017 and 28.7% in 2019) and cisgender, heterosexual youth (at 17.1% in 2017 and 16.6% in 2019).

“The idea that attempts to flee sexual minority stigma drive teenagers to come out as transgender is absurd, especially to those of us who provide treatment to [transgender and gender diverse] youth,” study lead author Dr. Jack Turban, incoming assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a statement. “The damaging effects of these unfounded hypotheses in further stigmatizing transgender and gender diverse youth cannot be understated. We hope that clinicians, policymakers, journalists, and anyone else who contributes to health policy will review these findings.”

They wrote that despite the methodological flaws in Littman’s study, the concept of rapid onset gender dysphoria “has been used in recent legislative debates to argue for and subsequently enact policies that prohibit gender-affirming medical care” for trans and gender diverse adolescents.

For example, in June, Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration issued guidance against gender-affirming care for minors — including social transition, which involves changing a child’s name, pronouns, clothing and/or hairstyle. The guidance linked to reports that cited Littman’s paper.

An increasing number of states have also tried to ban or restrict trans youths’ access to gender-affirming medical care through legislation. The number of bills seeking to restrict gender-affirming health care for transgender youths has grown from one in 2018 to 36 this year, according to an analysis by NBC News. Governors in three states — Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee — have successfully signed such restrictions into law, though judges have prevented those measures from taking effect in Alabama and Arkansas.

The study lists several limitations, including that the data were collected through a school-based survey and, as a result, youths who don’t attend school were not represented. It also noted that youths were asked, “What is your sex?” and that response options were limited to female and male. It didn’t ask about respondents’ “sex assigned at birth” and didn’t include an additional question about their “gender identity,” which is an established research method for asking about gender identity. But the researchers credited several studies that found trans and gender-diverse youths are aware of the differences between their sex assigned at birth and gender identity.

Florida instructs schools to ignore federal protections for transgender kids

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/07/florida-instructs-schools-ignore-federal-protections-transgender-kids/

Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. said that new federal protections under Title IX “are not binding law.”

By John Russell Friday, July 29, 2022

Photo: Shutterstock

Florida’s Department of Educations has instructed the state’s public and private schools to ignore federal guidance on protecting transgender students from discrimination.

In a memo sent to school administrators on Thursday, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. said the new federal protections under Title IX “are not binding law, do not create any new legal obligations, and should not be treated as governing law.”

“The Department will not stand idly by as federal agencies attempt to impose a sexual ideology on Florida schools that risk the health, safety, and welfare of Florida students,” the memo continues.

Last month, the Biden Administration proposed changes to the legal interpretation of Title IX which would help prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The proposed changes mostly undo rollbacks of Title IX rights during the Trump administration.

“As we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of this landmark law, our proposed changes will allow us to continue that progress and ensure all our nation’s students — no matter where they live, who they are, or whom they love — can learn, grow, and thrive in school,” U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in June.

Diaz claims that allowing transgender girls to use the restrooms and locker rooms of their gender and to participate in school sports as their gender would jeopardize “the safety and wellbeing of Florida students” and risk violating Florida law. In 2021, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill to ban transgender girls from playing school sports.

“While Governor DeSantis and Commissioner Diaz are intent on weaponizing state agencies in their war on transgender youth, the fact remains: the U.S. Department of Education has said unequivocally that students are to be protected from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” Equality Florida press secretary Brandon Wolf said in a statement.

“The DeSantis Administration repeatedly puts the political ambitions of the Governor over the wellbeing of Florida’s students and the result is a state that is increasingly more hostile toward and unsafe for young people. LGBTQ students exist. The federal government has recognized that they are protected from discrimination. Even as the Governor attempts to bolster his right-wing bona fides by hurtling our state toward full-tilt authoritarianism, school districts across Florida should remain committed to protecting all students.”

DeSantis has declared an all-out war on Florida’s LGBTQ community. In March, he signed the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law, prohibiting any mention of LGBTQ topics in schools.

Last month, he signaled that he is open to using Florida’s child protective service laws to terminate the parental rights of adults who take their kids to see drag shows, and his administration is trying to get a drag bar’s liquor license revoked for allowing children to attend a drag show.

VA Gov: Teachers Should Out LGBTQ Kids To Parents

VA Gov: Teachers Should Out LGBTQ Kids To Parents

Dogs that love gravy these people really are clueless on the subject. Don’t they every ask themselves why the kids are not coming out to mom and dad already? The kids live with them. They get a feel for how they would react. Kids are still being kicked out of homes or forced into conversion therapy to force / torture them to act straight. The governor says that parents need to be at the forefront of these decisions. Got news for you there is no choice to be made as to if your gay, lesbian, or trans. It is something you are born with. Yes kids know at a very young age what orientation and gender they are. It cannot be changed. As soon as a kid realizes there are stuff for girls and other stuff for boys they understand gender and which one they are. As soon as a kids realizes that some people are attracted to each other, that there are boyfriends and girlfriends they understand attraction / orientation. The only choice is to help the child accept and be happy with who they really are or scare and intimidate them into a miserable life of hiding who they are. That is what these republican leaders want, what the religious leaders want. They want the LGBTQ+ to go away, to hide, to not be seen or heard. Why does the rainbow flag trigger them so much, it is a sign that the LGBTQ+ are here and we exist. Damn it, the dangers of this are clear and being ignored. Now wonder red states want unqualified untrained teachers that will follow the authoritarian state line. They want the increase in kids committing suicide. Why do they deny proven science? Hugs

“With regards to informing parents with most important decisions about their children, I think everybody knows where I stand, parents matter.

“Parents should be at the forefront of all of these discussions. And I firmly believe that teachers and schools have an obligation to make sure that parents are well informed about what’s happening in their kids’ lives.

“And one of the things we learned last year during the campaign is that parents were tired of being pushed to the background in their child’s education.” – Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

JCF 11 hours ago

“I think everybody knows where I stand, parents matter.”

Repeat after me, motherfucker: Best. Interests. Of. The. Child!!! 🤬

Ed Michigan • 12 hours ago

And when child abuse and abandonment skyrocket, what will be his excuse?

Tim 🇺🇦 Ed Michigan • 12 hours ago

Same as it is now.
Parents right.
Children aren’t people to GQP, they’re possessions.

crewman Ed Michigan • 11 hours ago

No problem. They’ll just clamp down on reporting, a la DeSantis during the Covid pandemic.

Uncle Mark eats the rainbow Snarkaholic • 9 hours ago

He’ll blame the kids, schools, media, internet for making the kids LGBTQ in the first place.

Lazycrockett • 12 hours ago

If kids felt they could talk to their parents, teacher and schools wouldnt be asked for help.

Karl Dubhe IV • 12 hours ago

So the kids can be murdered, tortured or abused by their parents?

Oedipal bastard.

bovsklo Karl Dubhe IV • 11 hours ago

That’s what would have happened in my house. I needed that deniability until I was out of there.

Posthumously bovsklo • 9 hours ago

I admit to the same.

What, me worry? • 11 hours ago • edited

My father would have beaten the crap out of me and possibly kicked me out. As it was, he was pressuring me about being homosexual. I didn’t even know. I just knew that I was different. I left “home” when I was not quite 16. That was in 1967. It saddens me to see things are going right back to those bad old days. All of the progress of the last 50 years, gone in a split second.

Atman, Schopenhauer’s Poodle • 11 hours ago

When I came out in my early twenties, my mother cried and said, “I was ready for this when you were in high school, but I figured when you didn’t, you weren’t.” And I thought, “Yeah, I know you were ‘ready’ then, which is exactly why I didn’t.” I had to wait until she had no control over my life or I would’ve ended up at some Christian “conversion” camp. I’ll just take the regular pain life throws at people, please and thank you.

BensNewLogin • 11 hours ago

Simply put, they want to cause harm. They want kids to be afraid to come out.

Steve in NOLA BensNewLogin • 9 hours ago

If a child is going to a teacher for help about this, that means they don’t trust their parents not to be horrible, even violent. If schools start outing children who had good reason to keep their secret, then a significant number of them are going to kill themselves rather than face their parents’ wrath. This guy is trying to kill our children.

ECarpenter • 12 hours ago

So gay kids stuck in fucking christian cults won’t have any safe haven, anywhere. That’s what these fucking assholes want.

Jurgen • 11 hours ago

Twenty five effing years after Ellen came out. 24 since Will and Grace and Matthew Shepard, 53 since Stonewall, 19 since Lawrence v Texas, 7 since Obergefell. These cruel shits in sweater vests will never stop, so neither can we.

JCF • 11 hours ago

“I think everybody knows where I stand, parents matter.”

Repeat after me, motherfucker: Best. Interests. Of. The. Child!!! 🤬

THE FASCIST CIRCUS COMES TO CPAC TEXAS

The Fascist Circus Comes to CPAC Texas

Republican politicians joined Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for speeches laced with antisemitism and overt Christian nationalism.

by STEVEN MONACELLI

AUGUST 5, 2022, 10:36 AM, CDT

Hundreds of die-hard right-wing activists descended on the Hilton Anatole in Dallas for the Conservative Political Action Conference this week. It’s the third CPAC event this year alone, following prior events in Orlando, Florida and Budapest, Hungary. It’s also the third CPAC event in a row which featured explicitly Christian nationalist and fascistic speakers.

Before the speeches kicked off on Thursday, Christian musician Natasha Owens—who wore an American flag dress branded with the logo of a Christian mobile phone company—gave a brief concert.

“You know, President Trump coined the term ‘America First,’” she said. When she attempted to launch into the eponymously named song, the wrong music began playing instead. Incidentally, the term America First was initially popularized by pro-Nazi groups in the United States and was also used by the Ku Klux Klan.

Though only two of the speakers on Thursday were Texas politicians, the introductory session—”Texas: The Start of the Big Red Wave”—placed the state at the center of the American conservative movement.

“There are two big red engines to our politics and economy,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of CPAC. “As many of you know we had CPAC Florida, and it’s right to be here in Texas.”

“IF YOU WANT TO PITCH IN AND HELP OUT, YOU CAN BUY YOUR OWN BORDER BUS.”—GREG ABBOTT

Governor Greg Abbott was the first guest brought to the stage, where he spoke in front of a more than half-empty room about the border, Elon Musk, California liberals, critical race theory, the ongoing program to bus undocumented immigrants to Washington, D.C., and why he thinks Republicans will win big with Hispanics and Latinos in Texas.

“If you want to pitch in and help out, you can buy your own border bus,” Abbott said to the crowd. “You can help fund sending all these folks to Washington, D.C. and make them deal with the problem.”

Out of all of Abbott’s statements, this one seemed to garner the most excitement from the crowd.

A major theme among speakers at the conference—aside from the officially stated one, “Fire Pelosi: Save America”—was Christian identity and nationalism. In addition to leading the crowd in prayer, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick took a page right out of the John Birch Society playbook by proclaiming that the Constitution was literally written by God.

“We’re a nation founded upon not the words of our founders, but the words of God because he wrote the Constitution,” Patrick said to the crowd. “We were a Christian state and lost that for many years.”

So much for James Madison. But if Patrick is correct, one has to grapple with the difficult questions of whether God also wrote the Articles of Confederation or perhaps signed off on the deeply racist Three-Fifths Compromise, as well as how this all squares with the notion that God doesn’t make mistakes.

“WE’RE A NATION FOUNDED UPON NOT THE WORDS OF OUR FOUNDERS, BUT THE WORDS OF GOD BECAUSE HE WROTE THE CONSTITUTION.”—DAN PATRICK

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—who recently gave a speech criticizing “race mixing” which caused a long-time advisor to resign and describe it as a “pure Nazi diatribe”—spoke severely about the ostensible Judeo-Christian roots of his nation and urged Christian nationalists across the world to unite together in a struggle against the so-called “woke globalists.”

Orbán’s language dovetailed with the John Birch Society-tinged talking points around “globalists” and Christian government that have become so common in contemporary politics, and the crowd was so excited by what he had to say that Orbán had to pause for uproarious applause on several occasions. One young man from Oklahoma told me that Orbán was the only speaker he was excited to see, and an elderly couple said they particularly enjoyed Orbán’s speech.

“Globalists go to hell, I have come to Texas,” Orbán bellowed as he concluded his speech.

But not everyone was thrilled with the Hungarian’s presence in Dallas. In the atrium of the hotel, two groups of protesters expressed their displeasure. One group covertly hung a banner and dropped flyers condemning the conference before dashing away. Another group, which included a legendary civil rights activist who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr., Reverend Peter Johnson, held banners specifically condemning Orbán’s presence before being escorted out by Dallas Police.

“Dr. King told me that as long as I’m alive, I ought to stand up against bigotry, antisemitism, and racism,” Johnson told the Texas Observer. “So I’m standing up.”

Johnson was joined by Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk, a socialite from Dallas, who also spoke out against Orbán. “It’s very important for people to know that Orbán stands for Holocaust denial, antisemitism, racial purity, and is against interracial marriage,” Thompson-Frenk said. “I don’t think a lot of Republican people actually agree with that, but they need to speak out and let their leaders know they don’t endorse that.”

Former Republican Congressman Alan Steelman issued a statement in response to Orbán’s presence as well. “Is this what the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush has come to?” Steelman wrote. “Orbán’s record and spoken word during his 12 years in office are clearly those of a white supremacist, an antisemite, and anti-immigrant leader.”

A sense of subtle antisemitism pervaded a number of comments made by speakers, Orbán included. Orbán claimed that all the worst things in history were orchestrated by people who hate Christianity and juxtaposed these comments by describing George Soros—a Hungarian-Jewish investor and philanthropist who is a common boogeyman among the far right—as his “opponent.”

“Papa John” Schnatter told the crowd there are “five evil entities” that own the processed food and pharmaceuticals industries (suggesting the former make you sick so you take the latter) as well as media and academia. But he was not talking about the recently released conspiracy-theory themed Mike Myers show, The Pentaverate. He claimed this all somehow ties back to the Frankfurt School, a group of primarily Jewish left-wing intellectuals and academics founded during the Weimar Republic in the lead-up to Nazi Germany that has become the villain of the far-right “Cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory, which itself is a rehashing of the Nazi propaganda term “Cultural Bolshevism.”

RAMBO-TRUMP CUTOUTS, BEDAZZLED PURSES IN THE SHAPE OF .45 PISTOLS, AND EVEN A MOCK JAIL CELL COULD BE SEEN ON THE EXHIBITION FLOOR.

Friday and Saturday will feature other guests and speakers that have their own histories of antisemitism, including Jack Posobiec, a fascistic media figure who the Southern Poverty Law Center reports has “collaborated with white nationalists, antigovernment extremists, members of the Proud Boys, and neo-Nazis in his capacity as an operative.”

The speakers are only one part of the CPAC experience. Rambo-Trump cutouts, bedazzled purses in the shape of .45 pistols, and even a mock jail cell could be seen on the exhibition floor. Nearby, our federally indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton—who recently teamed up with other Republican attorneys general to sue the federal government for the right to take lunch money from LGBTQ+ kids—mingled with an AM radio host. Toward the end of the day, Posobiec spoke in front of the Patriot Mobile booth with Leigh Wambsganss, a woman who has played a major role in the PACs that have helped elect far right school board candidates across Texas.

This is all to say that the mask of this movement has slipped, if not fallen off completely. It has revealed its illiberal, anti-democratic, deeply prejudicial tendencies, even if it comes across as completely absurd. The entire scene, a veritable circus of far-right fascistic kitsch, brings to mind what legendary journalist Hunter S. Thompson wrote about Las Vegas: “The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the sixth Reich.”

An exaggeration, certainly, but an apt one. But don’t just take it from me. Norm Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, described the event as the “Neo-Nazi movement in America.”