There’s got to be a morning after If we can hold on through the night We have a chance to find the sunshine Let’s keep on lookin’ for the light
Oh, can’t you see the morning after It’s waiting right outside the storm Why don’t we cross the bridge together And find a place that’s safe and warm
It’s not too late, we should be giving Only with love can we climb It’s not too late, not while we’re living Let’s put our hands out in time
There’s got to be a morning after We’re moving closer to the shore I know we’ll be there by tomorrow And we’ll escape the darkness We won’t be searchin’ any more
There’s got to be a morning after (There’s got to be a morning after) There’s got to be a morning after (There’s got to be a morning after) There’s got to be a morning after (There’s got to be a morning after) There’s got to be a morning after (There’s got to be a morning after) There’s got to be a morning after MAUREEN MCGOVERN
Jennifer Pippin says had she known of Rick Wiles’ antisemitic views, she wouldn’t have appeared on his program, but she didn’t apologize for having gone on.
By ANDREW LAPIN/JTAUpdated: NOVEMBER 1, 2023 18:01Books that have been donated to the “Read with Love Book Drive” run by PFLAG Bucks County to help place LGBTQ+ books in Bucks and Montgomery County libraries are placed in a donation box at the Doylestown Bookshop in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, U.S., April 7, 2023.(photo credit: REUTERS/HANNAH BEIER)
A Florida organizer of the right-wing activist group Moms For Liberty who successfully pressed her school district to remove a version of Anne Frank’s diary recently appeared on a livestream banned from YouTube because of its pastor host’s antisemitism.
Jennifer Pippin, who chairs the group’s chapter in Indian River County, Florida, appeared in September on the show TruNews, which is hosted by End Times preacher Rick Wiles. Wiles is a conspiracy theorist who has claimed that Jews and Zionists have “attacked Christian culture” and railed against the “Jewish lobby” and “Kabbalah wizard rabbis.”
Wiles, who is based in the same county as Pippin, has also stated, “That’s the way the Jews work, they are deceivers, they plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda.” He has claimed that “Israel” was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 2019 he stated, “It’s not Muslims that are going to kill us. It’s the Jews.”
The following year he called the first attempted impeachment of Donald Trump a “Jew coup.” adding that Jews would “kill millions of Christians” after they overthrew the president. The Trump administration credentialed the outlet multiple times, leading to major pushback from Jewish groups. The channel was permanently banned from YouTube in 2020 over Wiles’ antisemitic rants.
Speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Monday, Pippin said she had not been aware of Wiles’ antisemitism before she appeared on his show and would not have agreed to it if she’d known.
A Little Free Library, which was designed to look like a prison, invites residents to take books that the library says have been challenged by schools across the state of Texas, in Houston, Texas, U.S. May 3, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/CALLAGHAN O’HARE)
Says she was ignorant of hosts’ views, but doesn’t apologize
“Honestly, I’ve never heard of him before,” she said. “And I wasn’t aware of anything that he said against any organizations or group of people or anything like that.”
Yet when she was asked if she was sorry for appearing on TruNews, Pippin responded, “Absolutely not. No.” She said she did not necessarily endorse the views of everyone she speaks to about her efforts to ensure that school libraries contain only “age-appropriate” material.
“My interview was a representation of me and our work with Moms For Liberty,” she said. “Just because somebody says or does something years ago that I don’t agree with doesn’t mean that just because I did an interview with him, I agree with every single little thing that he said or what his news outlet has put out.”
Although Moms For Liberty has some Jewish members in its leadership, the group borrows much of its rhetoric from Christian nationalist organizations and one local chapter has quoted Hitler in its communications to parents. The “parents’ rights” movement the group represents has largely targeted books about race, gender and sexual identity, but some Jewish and Holocaust books have also been caught in the dragnet.
Public figures call the graphic adaptation ‘pornography’
This spring Pippin’s school district on the state’s Atlantic coast, acting on her challenge, made national headlines when it agreed to pull “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” from high schools. A spokesperson told JTA at the time that the 2018 illustrated reimagining of Frank’s diary was “a fictional novel” and “not age-appropriate.”
Since then, opposition to the book has only grown. A Jewish parent at another Florida school district successfully petitioned for the book’s removal last month, while a middle-school teacher in Texas was recently fired for reportedly assigning and reading aloud passages from the book. Politicians and other public figures have since claimed that the book’s depiction of Frank’s attraction to another girl, and her descriptions of her own genitalia, were “pornography”; a local Florida news outlet claimed Pippin had called the book “sexually explicit” in her own challenge.
Pippin told JTA that the quote attributed to her was incorrect and that she did not object to the book’s sexual content, which she recognized came from Frank’s original diary. “I didn’t challenge it for the sexually explicit content because this was actually what she wrote,” she said. “This is what she was thinking in her teenage years, during the Holocaust.”
She instead said she objected to the book’s presence in her high school for a different reason: that it was a highly abridged version of the diary’s original text, and she and a local Holocaust education group jointly believed high school students should be expected to be able to read the original instead.
“They agreed that this one book, the graphic adaptation, should be permanently removed because they felt that children in high school should be reading the true diary of Anne Frank, and not the graphic adaptation, to get the actual, factual information from the diary,” Pippin said, adding that she supported “age-appropriate” Holocaust education in schools.
Wiles: ‘Marxist Communists are waging war against America’s innocent children’
Pippin said Wiles had reached out to her to ask about her challenge to the Anne Frank book specifically, although she said she did not think his questions about the book were antisemitic in nature and the two did not discuss the book in their live conversation.
Wearing a Moms For Liberty T-shirt, Pippin spoke to Wiles for around 30 minutes on his show, chiefly promoting the work of her group, which Wiles said he fully supported. “I will do everything I can to help you,” he told her. “I will help raise money, I will help organize, I will help you get a lawsuit against the school board.”
Wiles introduced his interview with Pippin by stating, “Marxist Communists are waging war against America’s innocent children in almost every state in the USA. They have infiltrated our nation’s local school districts and public libraries.” He concluded it by comparing Moms For Liberty’s battles with school boards to the French Revolution, adding, “If we don’t stop it really soon, none of us are going to survive over the next 10 years, because these people are violent. … They’re going after our children now.”
Pippin told JTA she did not agree with Wiles’ characterization of her activism and had tried to steer the conversation back to books.
TruNews has broadcast in various forms for more than two decades, and Wiles has taken aim at Muslims and LGBTQ individuals as well as Jews over time. In recent weeks, since his broadcast with Pippin and Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Wiles has posted almost exclusively content targeting “godless, atheistic, antichrist Zionism” on social media and called on the Israeli government to “stop the Palestinian pogrom.”
A wonderful post. I got the link from https://poodyheads.wordpress.com/2023/11/02/stop-trying-to-hide-s-e-x-from-students-in-school-they-already-know-all-about-it-from-the-internet/ and adult who thinks kids own bodies are not driving their innocent angels to pleasure are beyond stupid. Most of them deny their own preteen / teen years. Heck, can any of us at any number claim to know that we did not know that rubbing and touching ourselves felt good. I remember as a 14 yr old seeing a classmate rub his junk on a counter and I wondered if he knew he was doing it. He knew it felt good, or he wouldn’t have been doing it. But yes kids often younger than age 8 know it feels good to touch themselves. Why do you think adults get so upset and punish toddlers for doing that in public, because the youngest kids know it feels good, and the adults want them to feel shame over it and do it sneakily in private.
Of course as the post hints to abused kids like me knew all those things. I can not remember the first times I was abused sexually I was so young. But I knew about touch, how to touch, what happened at the end that made the abuser happy when the white stuff came out. You know what I did not know? That I could have gotten help! That it could have stopped! The reason I did not know that is because the right to my body was not taught in my schools back in the late 1960s. The idea of consent or where to go if an adult uses you was not taught. No kid knows about that so lets not burden with it, was the idea. Think of the abused kids lives could be saved and changed if the fundamentalist Christians would move aside and let schools educate kids. Then I remember, a lot of the Christian churches have huge sexual abuse of children scandals. Then I remember that every attempt to raise the age young girls can be forced into a legal marriage, which in many red / religious states is 12, and the Christian religious leaders come out strongly to defeat those bills / laws. I wonder why? Would they be just as happy with a 12-year-old boy being required to marry an adult man? Anyway here is the post and it is a great one. Hugs. Scottie
“Mr. Singer, do you know what foot finder is?”
“No,” I said to the 5th grade girl in the class where I was substitute teaching.
Her friends and her giggled through an explanation of the Website where people post pictures of their feet for sexual gratification.
***
Several days later, I tried to play a video on ancient Rome for my students, but before it even began the 8th grade class burst into laughter over the station identification.
The video was produced by the British Broadcasting Company. The BBC.
I looked at them in confusion until I heard some of them muttering about “Big Black Cock” – a class of porn video many of them had seen online identified with the same abbreviation.
***
Yesterday I overheard some of the girls in my 7th grade homeroom talking. One girl was saying how she really liked a certain boy but wasn’t sure if she was ready.
I smiled thinking about my first kiss. Then I heard her ask a friend, “Can you get pregnant from swallowing it?”
This is middle school, people.
Most of the kids here already know about sex. They know way more than I did at their age. But what they know is a jumble of images and details without the big picture.
And here come Republicans with a bunch of copycat laws to make sure public schools do nothing to dispel children’s ignorance.
In my home state of Pennsylvania, GOP lawmakers are taking action once again to hide any mention of S-E-X in schools throughout the Commonwealth.
For kids in kindergarten through 8th grade, this even includes books with depictions of any kind of nudity.
God forbid they saw a wee wee or a va-jay-jay!
Fun fact: did you know that most public school students have genitals?
It’s true.
Many boys have access to a penis anytime they want – in their underwear.
Many girls have access to even naughtier bits.
And don’t even get me started on nipples! Under their shirts, the Devil’s raisins!
Thankfully the GOP legislation only prohibits depictions of these things in books. Kids are still allowed to look at their own bodies.
For now.
The bill passed the Senate in a 29-21 vote nearly along party lines, with only one Democrat supporting the proposal. It faces an uncertain future in the House where Democrats hold a one seat majority and would also require the signature of Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro before becoming law.
A similar measure was passed before Democrats took the House last year but was vetoed by the previous Democratic Governor Tom Wolf.
If the new bill became law, districts would need to go through all books in their libraries and classrooms and list any that contain potentially sexual material. These would be books used in classroom instruction or available in the library that would then require parents to sign an opt-in form to grant permission for their children to access the books.
The bill defines sexually explicit as showing “acts of masturbation, sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality or physical contact with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or, if the person is a female, breast.”
Schools can provide a safe place to discuss issues kids may be uncomfortable talking about with other adults. Books provide a safe way to mentally grapple with concepts and ideas of the adult world.
For example, in my 7th grade classes, we read “Silent to the Bone” by E.L. Konigsburg. The book is about a middle school age boy who has gone mute after a questionable interaction with an adult.
There’s nothing very graphic in the text, but among other issues it does discuss physical attraction, sexual coercion and an erection.
The book was approved by the school board and has helped foster many productive – if uncomfortable – conversations that help kids put their thoughts on these matters into words.
In my daughter’s school, in 9th grade she read “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson. The book is about a high school girl dealing with being raped and the stigma of trying to talk about it.
The text does a marvelous job of getting into the point of view of the girl and the trauma she endures while still being humorous, touching and empowering.
Narratives like these are absolutely vital. They allow kids to relate to issues many of them have not directly experienced (but some have) and find a common language to discuss it. When we censor sex and sexuality and paint all of it as something dirty that can’t be talked about seriously, we do our children a major disservice.
Conservatives complain that talking about these things grooms kids for greater sexual activity, but that’s nonsense. Kids grow into adults many of whom become sexually active. That’s positive and healthy. Meeting that in the safe places of the classroom and books helps kids prepare for adulthood without becoming victimized.
Finally, let’s consider the amount of ridiculous extra work this bill demands of schools and teachers. You really expect every educator with a classroom library to go through every book in it looking for anything that someone might consider sexually explicit!? Some people might think a book about a kid with two daddies is sexually explicit. You want teachers to become your perverted morality police!? Please!
I dearly hope this bill has little chance of passing.
It’s a way of insinuating that public schools are doing things they aren’t.
No school is indoctrinating kids to be sexually active. But kids are coming into contact with sexually explicit material – usually on the Internet – and they have few tools to deal with it.
Liquor laws in Louisiana are a clusterfuck. Because of a state supreme court decision decades ago, they are subject to the whims of a community vote whenever someone can get it on the ballot. So a town can allow alcohol sales in, say, restaurants for a while and then, whenever some opportunistic Christian dickflea gets enough people itching, they can vote to overturn the law and go back to being a dry town or county. Or, you know, parish, as they call counties in the state because Catholicism.
The decent-sized, if generally shitty, town of Minden in the generally shitty Webster Parish was dry in 2003. Minden is 30 miles from Shreveport, which is a decent-sized, if generally shitty, city. The economy of Minden was not doing great 20 years ago, so a group of business owners, with the support of the Chamber of Commerce, wanted to have another vote on allowing alcohol sales in restaurants, hoping that it would attract some chains to town or at least provide a new tax revenue stream. Minden had been dry since a vote in 1974, but after a contentious city council meeting in August 2003, it was decided that the restaurant alcohol sales law would be decided in a special election just a couple of months later.
The people against allowing alcohol sales were straight out of a 1980s movie about tight-ass evangelicals refusing to allow anyone to have fun. Their warnings were like the lyrics of The Music Mansong “Ya Got Trouble.” According to one local columnist, “They expanded from simply claiming this was a back-door was to bring about bars and package sales to more extreme connections. They alleged this was an ‘end-around’ to bring sexually oriented businesses, such as strip clubs to Minden. They also pointed out it could be an attempt to bring legalized gambling into Minden.” Churches went into overdrive, with prayer services just to try to get their invisible sky wizard to intervene. They even had round-the-clock prayers just before the election date.
The anti-fun forces, led by five plaintiffs, tried to sue to stop the election, but they filed their lawsuit too late for it to be heard. Their lawyer was a Shreveport attorney who was making a name for himself as a supporter of nutzoid right-wing Christiand causes. And since you read the title of this piece, you already know that it was Mike Johnson, who is now Speaker of the House and second in line to the presidency. That’s right. Two decades ago, he was trying to stop alcohol sales in a town.
The voting occurred that November and over half the registered voters went out to the polls. That’s how much this meant in an off-year election. And, Lord have mercy, they voted 57-43% in favor of alcohol sales in restaurants in Minden. Johnson’s clients considered another lawsuit to question the elections results, but they decided against it, and Minden restaurants and now bars and, yes, casinos can serve alcohol. The nearest strip joint is still about 15 miles away, in the next parish over.
For years, Mike Johnson represented the shittiest fucking people in trying to halt others from having rights or enjoying life in a way that harmed no one. As a dick lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom (motto: “‘Freedom’ should probably be in quotation marks in our name”), Johnson was on the fucked up side of issue after issue in our bullshit culture war. He fought the city of New Orleans to stop it from offering domestic partnership benefits in the pre-Obergefell days. The law had been in place since 1999, and they sued in 2003 in a case they lost in 2005. He opposed the Obama abortion pill mandate, he sued in favor of various school prayer cases, and more. When it comes to abortion and LGBTQ rights, Johnson is the hardest of the hardcore opposing both. And when he was a state representative, in the panicked days before the Obergefell same-sex marriage decision in 2015, Johnson sponsored legislation that would allow businesses to refuse to serve same-sex couples and, going back to his earlier case, would allow a business to deny benefits to same-sex couples because of “religious” reasons.
And perhaps it’s here that we need to pause for a moment and say that Mike Johnson loves God. His version of God, I mean, since, you know, God is made up. But he fuckin’ loves God as intensely and loudly as a newly-out Omaha lesbian loves pussy. He leans Christian dominionist, which is as weird and insidious as it sounds. He says that the United States is a “biblical republic,” whatever the fuck that means. He told Sean Hannity, “Someone asked me today in the media, they said people are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun? I said, Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview, that’s what I believe.” I wonder if that includes all the rules in Leviticus, but I don’t want to ask about beard-shaving regimen.
In his speech before being sworn in as Speaker of the House, he said, “I want to tell all my colleagues here what I told the Republicans in that room last night. I don’t believe there are any coincidences in a manner like this. I believe that scripture, the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you, all of us, and I believe that God has ordained and allowed each one of us to be brought here for this specific moment in this time.”
I know they don’t give a shit what heathens like me think, but that shit sounds creepy as fuck. You’re telling me that your imaginary invisible sky wizard contorted all time and space and made everything in the universe move in such a way that you could become the leader of one house of the American Congress. That’s fucking insane because, see, first, you believe in an invisible sky wizard, and, even worse, you have no problem telling me what your invisible sky wizard is doing and saying, and, even worser, you demand that I follow what your invisible sky wizard says. You can say that there are lots of people who believe in your invisible sky wizard, but that doesn’t make it less creepy. In fact, it makes it way creepier.
While Johnson talks a lot about “consensus” and shit, he sure has spent his career, including trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, approaching every issue with the clear-eyed resolution of someone who just loves to make shit worse for everyone except those who also hate nearly all of us. It won’t be some god who ruins the nation. It’ll be a very weird man.
(Quick note about Minden, Louisiana: It sucks as a town. But, man, there are awesome soul food joints there.)
The new House speaker called for “Biblically-sanctioned government.”
This is a very dangerous time to have someone like him in such a possition of authority. He really doesn’t want democracy. He is not OK with everyone doing their own thing, living their own lives, worshiping in their own way, being who they are. Nope, he doesn’t favor that at all. He insists on the right, demands it, to force everyone to worship as he does, live as he church doctrines say, have only the kids of sex he wants you to have, raise your children the way he demands, structure your home in a “Christian way” which means wives summit and be submissive to your husbands like good little half humans. Get the point! He wants to force his god down your throat. These same people once claimed gays wanted to force our lifestyle on everyone, but that is what he is demanding to do to the entire country! Think how now the Christians want special rights to discriminate and to be exempt from laws they don’t like because they are Christians. Think how they have screamed about being forced to live in a secular society, but they want the right to force everyone to live a religious lifestyle. Think how they would react if other religions demanded the same special rights or the right to force everyone to live as a devote Muslim? Very scary, these people are. Hugs. Scottie
“The government has replaced the Creator,” Mike Johnson said in a 2019 seminar appearance. “Government is becoming God.” He is pictured here addressing the House chamber after winning the speakership this month.Tom Williams/Zuma
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Rep. Mike Johnson, the newly elected Republican House speaker, used to conduct a seminar in churches premised on the idea that the United States is a “Christian nation.” This ministry, as he has referred to it, is yet more evidence that Johnson is committed to a hardcore Christian fundamentalism that shapes his views of politics and government.
The seminar, titled “Answers for Our Times: Government, Culture, and Christianity,” was organized by Onward Christian Education Services, Inc., a company owned by his wife, Kelly Johnson, a Christian counselor and anti-abortion activist who calls herself a “leader in the pro-family movement.” The website for her counseling service—which was taken down shortly after Johnson became speaker—described the seminar, which featured both her and Johnson, as exploring several questions, such as, “What is happening in America and how do we fix it?” The list includes this query: “Can our heritage as a Christian nation be preserved?” There were different versions of the seminar running from two-hour-long lectures to retreats lasting two days.
Mike and Kelly Johnson, each a fundamentalist Christian and culture war battler who advocates adhering to what they call a “Biblical worldview,” launched this initiative in 2019. After one such presentation on February 24, 2019, at the First Baptist Church in Bossier City, Louisiana, where they are members—an event that also featured Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council—a local television news show reported that the seminar’s goal was to “keep God in Government.” Johnson posted the article on his congressional website.
According to a Louisiana Baptist newsletter, the Johnsons intended to first pitch their seminars to Baptist churches in the Pelican State before expanding to other states. The publication reported that the couple’s goal was “to equip churches to take a stand against the cultural attacks now being directed at people of faith, the traditional family and basic freedoms embedded in the U.S. Constitution.” It noted that Johnson said he was compelled to create this new ministry while serving in the US House because he was concerned “that too many believers today feel ill-informed to provide substantive answers to fake arguments.” It quoted Johnson: “Our nation is entering one of the most challenging seasons in its history and there is an urgent need for God’s people to be armed and ready with the Truth.” He was referring to what fundamentalists call “Biblical truth.”
A promotion blurb for the seminar described it this way: “As polls show that Christianity is in rapid decline in America, and the culture is growing more secularized and more coarsened, many believers feel ill-informed and ill-prepared to do anything to reverse these trends. Scripture is clear that we have an obligation to provide substantive answers… But HOW?”
At a “Answers for Our Times” seminar held at the First Baptist Church of Haughton, Louisiana, in April 2019, Kelly Johnson proclaimed that “Biblical Christianity” is the only “valid worldview.” Nothing else, she said, “makes sense.” She contended that guidance to the problems of today can be found in the “simple answers in the Bible.” Mike Johnson referred to the Bible as the “owner’s manual” for “how things are supposed to operate” and called for “Biblically-sanctioned government.” Johnson complained that there is now “total chaos on the street… God’s not at the top anymore.” He added, “The problem is most people” want “the government to take care of us now, we want the government to provide us everything… It will not work because it defies the created order of the Creator… The government has replaced the Creator. Government is becoming God.”
Mike Johnson ran through a quick version of US history, in which he insisted, “We began as a Christian nation.” He pointed out that Christopher Columbus said that he journeyed to the Americas “to bring the gospel to unknown coast lands and people.” Johnson added, “We would call him an evangelical today.” Fired up, he offered a litany of statements from the nation’s founders, government officials, and Supreme Court officials who cited God or religion as essential to the United States. “Is this a Christian nation?” he asked. “Yes, we live in a post-Christian culture. I think that’s beyond dispute. You can’t even argue with a straight face that this did not begin as a Christian nation.”
At this seminar, Mike Johnson groused that few of his colleagues in government abide by or even recognize God’s principles—that is, his view of God’s principles—and he expressed great cynicism about his fellow politicians:
A shocking number of elected officials in this country and state do not have a fully formed philosophy of government. They don’t know what their world view is. They’re just moving around waiting for whatever the loudest voice or the most powerful lobbyist tells them how to vote. God help us. That’s why we’re in the situation we’re in… They poll it. It’s not necessarily what his constituents want. I try to do every day what my constituents want. But sometimes what your constituents want does not line up with the principles God gave us for government. And you have to have conviction enough to stand [up] to your own people in a town hall and say, “I know you feel that way, but this is what you’re missing.” And I’m telling you, there’s a tiny percentage of elected officials who are willing to do that.
Mike Johnson sees himself as part of small band of righteous officials who take on the hard task of governing strictly according to the tenets of Christian fundamentalism. He and Kelly are true believers. He has long associated with Christian nationalism; crusaded against gay rights and same-sex marriage; decried no-fault divorce; and pushed for a total ban on abortion. Her Christian counseling practice has compared homosexuality to bestiality and incest. They share a dark view of the modern world. In a sermon he preached in 2016, Johnson declared, “We’re living in a completely amoral society.” And during a podcast last year with Jordan Peterson, the Canadian conservative provocateur, he said that “sinister” elites were responsible for orchestrating climate change as an issue to achieve global “control.”
In a time of political upheaval, cultural clashes, and war, it’s clear that Mike Johnson believes he has the solution. It’s not government of the people, but government shaped by his fundamentalist worldview. As his wife and partner-in-preaching says, nothing else makes sense. They possess the truth, and now, as he has become second in the line of presidential succession, he has the opportunity to meld power to this truth and serve the goal of making America a Christian nation.
