Hello everyone. I have put off writing this all day. First I have not felt well and second I wanted to do it without sounding overdramatic. But Ron’s panic when he saw the EKG’s and his insistence that if it ever happens again I must wake him right away, I think a little drama is warranted.
Last night, I had a dream unlike any dream I have had before. Something to keep in mind is that other than my nightmares about my childhood abuse, I have the ability to gain superpowers in my dreams. Even in dreams dealing with my adoptive father lately I have seen my self trying to stand up to him, even if I am unable to get the words out that I want to shout and instead being woken / waking up with Ron trying hard to help me and telling me I am either shouting or making guttural sounds at a large volume.
Last night was different, I had no powers, and in my dream I knew I was about to die. The dream took place in the front yard facing the street in a home we use to own. One of my favorite homes. It was very dark, no moon, and was slightly raining. We also had rain last night. In my dream as I twisted and danced to avoid stepping in a large puddle on our walkway to the street, (I did not have and did not seem to need my ever present canes) a black car pulled up in the street next to me. A woman was in the car and gesturing to me, I could see this because she had the inside car dome light on. As I approached the street she pulled up to the curb in the next door home.
As I walked toward the car she pulled into the driveway of the home. I was not sure what to do so I stood there in the yard. The woman got out of the car and had a large double barrel shot gun and pointed it at me as she walked towards me. I turned to run but tripped and fell on the ground.
As I rolled over she was less than five feet from me with the gun pointed at me. In my mind / dream I knew she was going to shoot me. In the dream I remember thinking she is going to kill me and I cannot do anything to stop her. Then I woke up with my Apple watch buzzing like crazy on my wrist. Unlike Ron or James, I wear my watch all night. The watch was displaying a red alert saying I was in AFIB. I really couldn’t process what the watch said as I did not have my glasses on and I was struggling to breathe.
After a while I calmed down and got my glasses and ran an EKG from my phone. That also came back bad with AFIB. I laid in bed for another 45 minutes cuddling with Ron before doing it again. The reason I did it again was I was again having shortness of breath. It again came back with AFIB. My chest hurt so I got up.
When I did so I woke Ron and that is normal. He asked what was going on and I stupidly said my heart was in AFIB and I stupidly told him the truth, that I was having trouble breathing and my watch was saying I was in AFIB. Ron worked 16 years in the Open Heart ICU and I don’t think I have ever seen him out of bed that quickly. He demanded to see the EKGs, so I gave him my phone. That started a morning of checks, repeat checks, lots of me being told to do this, don’t do that, and being watched like a toddler around open live electrical wires. After I had my coffee and breakfast, my heart rate returned to sinus rhythm. It has stayed that way all day. The breathing problem is much worse at night when I am laying down in bed. Anyway, that is what happened. I was not scared until Ron seemed to be so upset. I never had a dream where I was in danger and couldn’t save myself that was not related to my childhood abuse. This time I knew she was going to shoot me and I was going to die. Weird. Hugs
Read the full article. Josh McKoon [photo above] first appeared on JMG in 2015 when he introduced an ultimately failed bill to legalize anti-LGBTQ discrimination by businesses and employers. In 2016, he appeared here for his pointless bill to “protect” preachers who refuse to officiate same-sex marriages. According to McKoon, the veto of his 2016 bill by GOP then-Gov. Nathan Deal was “slap in the face to conservatives, to evangelicals and to the broader faith community.”
The Confederate monuments (and the flag) are kept around to keep the flame alive that the South is gonna rise up again, and next time they’re gonna win. I can’t tell you how many times I heard “The South shall rise again!” growing up. Far too many Southern whites are still bitter about losing the war and having slavery taken away from them. And the end of segregation just made them even angrier. The Union may have won the war, but far too many Southern whites remain unreconstructed in their heart and mind. They revere the monuments for what they stand for. So, I’m not one bit surprised that the Georgia GOP wants to keep those monuments in place.
O/T: Ms Lindsey’s staunch defense and filthy boudoir mouth at yesterday’s interview explained:
The program enables schools that predominantly serve children from low-income backgrounds to offer all students free breakfast and lunch, instead of means-testing them and having to manage collecting applications on an individual basis. As with many universal-oriented programs, it is more practically efficient and, as a bonus, lifts all boats. This is what Republicans are looking to eliminate.
NEW: The New Republic is reporting that Republicans are focused on banning free lunch for America’s school children. Despite ample need, Republicans believe exacerbating child hunger is a winning message for them in 2024. @newrepublichttps://t.co/P7FcHycoGl
— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) June 15, 2023
mkbear68a day ago Because those poor kids cold get a job and pay for their own damn lunch!
and pull them out of school so they are both poor and dumb …equals perfect Fox New viewers.
… well because we all know that nothing says “Loving Christian” better than “Hungry Poor Children”.
now they can live in fear of being human trafficked. By their own parents because they cannot afford to feed them.
GOP: “Why should I pay for free lunches for those rugrats? Let their whore mothers who should have kept their knees together pay for their lunches.”
Also GOP: “Anybody who even gives a pregnant 14-year-old a ride to a state that offers abortions gets the death sentence.”
It is not about abortion… or anything except policing women’s sexuality, keeping the poor poor, and maintaining the rich white cishet “Christian” men from feeling threatened in anyway.
I used to work for my State’s Free Lunch program. You wouldn’t believe the number of kids who told me that the School Lunch was the only real meal they got all day. And they feared the coming of summer because it meant the wouldn’t be getting a real meal until school started again.
You have to be really malignant to pull a meal out of a hungry kid’s mouth.
Gregory In Seattle2 days ago This is what Republicans want for us all. While they might mouth platitudes against violence, this is EXACTLY what they and right wing propaganda outlets stir up with their incessant, vitriolically hateful rhetoric against the LGBTQ+ communities.
JackFknTwist3 days ago Aged 21 and 23. They must know fucking everything at that age. They must be so bright, politically astute and have vast knowledge of international history. Or else they are another pair of ‘fucking morons’ (thanks Rex) or Evangelicals or pro-life , again fucking morons. Or all of the above
Doug1054 days ago A common statement from the religious side of this issue goes something like this “stop shoving your gay agenda down our throats”. In the same breath, they go on to say, “You don’t see us shoving our religion down your throat”. Well then… Have you ever had a homosexual knock on your door (usually around dinner time) asking if you have found Elton John? Have homosexuals ever passed laws that make the government print “In Homosexuality We Trust” on your money? When was the last time homosexuals passed laws that rewrote the Pledge of Allegiance to say, “One Homosexual Nation”? Have homosexuals erected a monument with Marc Jacobs’ top 10 fashion rules at your local courthouse? Have any homosexual groups spent millions trying to pass laws to outlaw marriage between a woman and a man? Have homosexual activists worked to pass laws limiting birth control, abortion, etc? Did a homosexual ever prevent you from buying liquor or a car on Sunday? Is there a book promoting homosexuality in almost every hotel room in the country? Have homosexuals pushed for laws to make the missionary position illegal? Have homosexuals tried to pass a law allowing them to legally refuse service to Christians? Right, they have never shoved their religious agenda down our collective throats.
As a liberal, I am constantly accused of being intolerant for not accepting someone’s hateful or repressive convictions. It’s as if “tolerance” has come to mean accepting and respecting someone else’s views, regardless of what they are or who they affect. And that’s wrong.
Tolerance: a fair, objective and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc.,. Differ from one’s own; freedom from bigotry
Being open-minded does not mean arbitrarily respecting everyone and accepting everything. There are things that no one should tolerate, such as bigotry, suppression of liberty, denial of equal rights, and abusive restrictions.
I try to preach and practice tolerance, but I do not have to tolerate anyone’s intolerance. There is never an excuse or justification for hatred or abuse.
Read the full article. Kristina Karamo, you will recall, says Democrats drink the blood of children and that demonic possession is sexually transmitted. She last appeared here when she compared a gun control bill to the Holocaust.
Here is a guy pushing hate but too cowardly to be upfront about it. He prefers to be sneaky and do the right wing gaslighting. He calls the pride flags divisive, but who are the ones making them that way? Not the LGBTQ+, the fundamentalist religious right wing conservatives are the ones drumming up the hate and anger. He is doing what the right always does, blame the victim of their hate and abuse. Just like a domestic abuser often blames the victim by saying “look at what you made me do”, he blames the flags that I just posted a group made little boys stomp on! Hugs
“We’ve flown the pride flag for two years, and the world didn’t end,” one local official said.
Orange County, California has banned the Pride flag from being flown outside of any county offices or on county government properties. The banning follows a recent increase in anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes in the county.
In a meeting last Tuesday, the county’s Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to ban the flag. Republican supervisor Andrew Do requested the ban, Q Voice News reported, citing his desire to stop any “divisive” flags from potentially creating community disruptions at future board meetings.
Florida town defiantly flies Pride Flag after mayor warns against it
The town gave in to the mayor’s request last year, but this year they chose a new path.
Democrat Doug Chaffee voted in support of the ban along with Republican Donald Wagner. The board’s two other Democratic members, Vicente Sarmiento and Katrina Foley, voted against the ban.
Do’s resolution only allows the flying of the Orange County, state, and federal flags, as well as a flag for U.S. military soldiers who are prisoners of war and missing in action (POW-MIA). He said he supports the LGBTQ+ community, pointing to his efforts to help transgender people get vaccinated against COVID-19 and his hiring of a gay man to the county’s top public health leadership role, Voice of OC reported.
Do said his proposal wasn’t motivated by opposition to any specific social issue. However, Wagner disagreed, noting that Do issued his proposal at the beginning of Pride Month.
“It is not a coincidence that this policy is in front of us right now,” Wagner said. “It is not a coincidence that we’re considering it today for the first time in the more than 100 years of this County’s existence. We’re considering it today, in response to the divisive effort to fly one particular flag. So yes, there absolutely is a connection.”
Foley asked Do if his proposal would ban a recent sheriff’s flying of a police appreciation flag, one that doesn’t fall under Do’s list of pre-approved flags. Do responded, “You’re free to ask, and I’m free to ignore you.”
Foley said, “By taking the stance today of banning the Pride flag, which is what this is tantamount to, at all of our county buildings, our county board offices, other than in our internal offices, our parks, our airport, our harbors, our beaches, it sends the wrong message to America and to the world.”
In February, the conservative-led city council of Huntington Beach (13 miles southwest of Orange County) voted 4-3 to ban Pride flags from flying outside of its City Hall. Supporters of the policy said it was necessary to stop future battles over which group’s flags are allowed and which ones aren’t.
Councilmember Dan Kalmick denounced the vote, saying, “It’s of course a ban on the city flying the Pride flag. Call it what it is… We’ve flown the pride flag for two years, and the world didn’t end.” The city previously flew the flag for six weeks during Pride Month.
Huntington Beach resident Gretchen Dawson told the council that the ban “sends a signal that we’re not safe here,” adding, “Safety is the biggest reason why we fly the Pride flag … by taking it away – not flying it – you are communicating to me that we don’t deserve safety.”
Frank Rodriguez, who called himself an executive member of the anti-LGBTQ+ group Gays Against Groomers, said the Pride flag doesn’t represent him. He destroyed one while making his public comment to the council.
Again, it is driven by fundamentalist religious people and their demand to have everyone live by their church / religious doctrines. The right claims that social acceptance and tolerance of people who are different from them, the LGBTQ+, is indoctrination. But teaching kids to stomp on a symbol of another group, teaching kids to yell insults to kids different from them, teaching kids to hate is somehow not indoctrination but good parenting to these bigots. Being kind and respectful of a kid’s feelings and respecting their desire to be addressed by a preferred name or pronouns is abuse, but including your kids in a violent shouting hate shouting when they might be either soon feeling or are feeling that they are different is again good parenting. These people want to close off young minds and deny young people the right to develop into more than clones of their parents. The pro-LGBTQ+ supporters showed up in great numbers and that is what we need in the US also.
One last point. These people scream leave our kids alone, but they are the ones attacking other peoples children. These peopel demand the right to not only teach hate to their children but to also they demand the right to teach that same hate to every other child regardless of those kids parents wishes. They demand parental rights not only for their children but yours as well, removing your parental rights over your own child. Leave our kids alone should be the slogan of the LGBTQ+ parents. These haters are terrorizing the LGBTQ+ kids and their teacher supporters in the schools, yet they claim others are indoctrinating or grooming kids. Hugs
Protests against “gender ideology” in Canada’s capital city Friday brought far-right conservative Christians and Muslims together to attack Ottawa’s local school board for supporting LGBTQ+ students.
The unusual alliance was met by an equal or greater number of counter-protesters defending the rights of LGBTQ+ kids and denouncing “transphobic, fascist ideology.”
A new directive by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board inspired the demonstration, organized by notorious far-right Canadian provocateur Chris Elston, aka Billboard Chris.
The all-staff notice advised the use of they/them pronouns for students until their preferred pronouns were expressed.
Video from the demonstration shows Muslim women and others encouraging young children to stomp and dance on progress Pride flags strewn on the ground and clapping with joy.
The clip shows an older white man holding a large Canadian flag leaning down to shake one kid’s hand in solidarity.
“Right on, boys!” he declares, beaming.
"LEAVE OUR KIDS ALONE" – Muslims and Christians unite on the streets of Ottawa, trampling the Gender Ideology Flag. This is a turning point. Let kids be kids. pic.twitter.com/ATvXfzMPao
Shouts of “Leave our kids alone!” were heard up and down the street where the protest took place, home to two high schools and a primary school.
“This is going to horrify Justin Trudeau,” posted Keean Bexte, with the far-right media site The Counter Signal. “All of these proponents of childhood mastectomies and penectomies are officially on notice. The minority communities that have propped up your governments have finally had enough.”
It is very rare for transmasculine teens to get mastectomies before the age of 18 and genital surgery is not performed on trans minors.
Police announced they made five arrests at the demonstration, without providing details. Scattered acts of violence were reported.
While a heat wave, fires, and smoke have enveloped the region since the beginning of June, Bexte laid recent high absentee rates at Ottawa schools at the feet of the school board and their nonbinary naming advisory, claiming parents were pulling their kids out in “silent protest” of Pride Month.
Hundreds showed up to counter the right-wing alliance.
The counter-protest “fills my heart,” said Emily Quail, an organizer and mom of a child at one of the nearby schools.
“The only way to correctly counter fascism is by showing up like this on the street and telling them we outnumber them,” she told The Canadian Press.
“We will not let them spread their transphobic, fascist ideology anywhere, here or anywhere else, and that starts with community strength and that’s what I’m really proud to see today.”
The Ottawa area school board condemned Elston for planning the protest in front of schools.
“It really raises doubts about a group that, I think it goes without saying, but it’s a group that is literally targeting children,” said Alex Silas, a school district official.
In 2020, Elston, a Vancouver insurance agent, paid for a billboard declaring, “I ❤️ JK Rowling”, and then wore the message on a sandwich board at protests after it was denounced as “hateful expression” and taken down.
The hate is rising. There was a series of kids books I read as a child called The Dark is Rising, with each book having an individual title. The story is basically a good vs bad story built loosely around the King Arthur Merlin myths. I see that same evil hate that the book showed rising doing so today. But the evil devil that the good beings are fighting is the rising hate and threats of violence by the religious conservative right against the LGBTQ+ in the hope of bring back a dictatorship of a strict society based on their church doctrines.
One note on the story. He says he got punched in the back and the face. The story says that the video shows he got hit by his bullhorn where the cut is. But it is possible someone hit or pushed the bullhorn hard enough to cut the skin and feel like being punched. Hugs
Joel Harden said, “I’ll take a punch for queer and trans youth any day.”
On Friday, a protest and counter-demonstration on a leafy street in Ottawa — normally home to students making their way to and from three schools in the area — was instead the site of hateful rhetoric and violence in the Canadian capital.
A local MP became the face of the melee, when he was “rabbit-punched” at the protest — he said he’d do it all over again to keep trans and queer kids safe.
“I’ll take a punch for queer and trans youth any day,” said Joel Harden, a member of Ontario’s provincial Parliament with the New Democratic Party (NDP).
The demonstration was organized by far-right Canadian provocateur Billboard Chris to protest a local school board advising staff to use they/them pronouns for students who had yet to share their personal pronouns.
Muslim parents joined a mostly White crowd denouncing the advisory notice. Some were seen encouraging their kids to violently stomp on progress Pride flags littering the street.
Harden, elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario five years ago, has been a longtime advocate for LGBTQ+ issues, and attended the counter-protest in solidarity with LGBTQ+ youth and their parents.
The MPP recounted that during the protest, he noticed a woman berating another individual, with her hands in the person’s hair. He says he rushed over to break up the altercation.
“I felt a punch in the back and then a rabbit-punch to the face,” Harden recalled for Yahoo Canada. “It happened in a split-second.”
Photos of Harden reveal a cut below his right eye.
Video on social media shows the megaphone Harden was holding striking his face (where the cut now appears).
The day before the protest, the legislator warned in a speech to members of Parliament of the threat to queer and trans youth as the country celebrates Pride Month.
“As incidents of hate against the 2SLGBTQIA are rising, we have a message for queer and trans youth in #OttawaCentre and everywhere in this province,” Harden posted to Twitter afterward. “We see you, love you, value you, and we will not continue to let you be threatened by hate or bigotry.”
As incidents of hate against the 2SLGBTQIA are rising, we have a message for queer and trans youth in #OttawaCentre and everywhere in this province:
Harden says the far-right is weaponizing social media, calling it a “vitriolic cesspool,” and manipulating parents’ instincts to protect their kids in order to further conservatives’ own anti-LGBTQ+ agenda.
“I am a father. What measures I wouldn’t go to in an effort to protect my own children? But what this movement is doing is convincing individuals that to protect your children, you have to hate trans and queer people,” he says.
Those supporting the rights of LGBTQ+ youth “are not your enemy,” he adds.
“History and present day has taught me that there are some of us who are willing to put the work in to de-program hatred, and I’m down for that,” said Harden. “If people want to come to my office and throw rotten tomatoes at me, come over.”
Fellow lawmakers and constituents alike expressed solidarity with Harden.
“My local MPP @JoelHardenONDP just got punched in the face at a counter rally, during an anti-trans protest,” posted Kathryn LeBlanc. “Queer and trans people are sounding the alarm on rising hate. It’s time to come together, mobilize, and build solidarity on this issue.”
While conservative Muslims joined far-right Canadians in protest, Sikh pol and federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh had Harden’s back.
“I’m proud of you @JoelHardenONDP,” posted Singh. “Queer and Trans people — and kids — are being targeted by angry and hateful extremists. Governments must step up to protect the queer and trans community.”
Is history repeating itself? Are the Nazi fascist rising again, using their favorite targets again? You know the gays, the non-whites, the Jewish people. Look what is it the fundamentalist Christian nationalist racist bigots want so badly? To return to a time when the white people were given automatic privilege and superiority in the country. A time socially where white men were automatically assumed to be in charge and women were subservient as well as dependent on men. When society catered to the white cis heterosexual people with no mention in public of those others. All they are doing with these ban laws is to return to those days by banning all advancement in society, in our culture. Here is the most important paragraph in the article, I think. Hugs
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), that changed when the Nazis came into power in the 1930s. Hitler saw gay men as a threat to his campaign to purify Germany, especially because their partnerships could not bear children who would grow the Aryan race he wanted to cultivate.During that period, gay-friendly bars and clubs started being shut down, authorities burned the books at a major research institution devoted to the study of sexuality, and gay fraternal organizations were shuttered. These efforts only increased after the Night of the Long Knives, the 1934 purge of Nazi leaders who were accused of trying to overthrow Hitler; they included Storm Troopers leader Ernst Röhm, whom the SS murdered, later citing his homosexuality as justification for his murder. A Nazi revision of the 1871 law took effect in September of 1935, outlawing anything as simple as men looking at or touching one another in a sexually suggestive way, and enabled authorities to arrest people even if they had only heard rumors that people had been engaging in such behavior. (Lesbians, however, didn’t face the same criminal penalties.) The Gestapo began to keep “pink lists” of violators.
Prisoners wearing pink triangles on their uniforms are marched outdoors by Nazi guards at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany on Dec. 19, 1938.
With LGBTQ Pride Month beginning June 1 — a month chosen to honor the history of activism epitomized by the Stonewall Riots of June 1969 — celebrants around the world will be getting ready for parades and other tributes. Symbols such as the rainbow flag and the pink triangle will abound; for example, Nike has announced a new line of LGBTQ history-themed sneakers, including two that boast pink triangles.
The brightly colored symbol is now often worn proudly, but it was born from a dark period in LGBTQ history and world history.
Just as the Nazis forced Jewish people to wear a yellow Star of David, they forced people they labeled as gay to wear inverted pink triangles (or ‘die Rosa-Winkel’). Those thus branded were treated as “the lowest of the low in the camp hierarchy,” as one scholar put it.
The roots of the Nazi persecution of gay people are deep. Since German unification in 1871, a section of the country’s criminal law widely known as “paragraph 175” had said that men who engaged in acts of “unnatural indecency” could go to jail. In 1877, the German Supreme Court of Justice clarified that to mean evidence of an “intercourse-like act.” But the law was only enforced sporadically. And the fact that it was almost impossible to convict anyone unless he confessed to such a crime in court meant that police just kept a watchful eye on gay bars and events, and Germany ended up becoming home to a vibrant gay community. Historian Robert Beachy argues that, ironically, the law spurred scientific interest in the study of sexual preferences, and that research tended to encourage a more scientific understanding of human sexuality, which further allowed the idea of gay rights to flourish.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), that changed when the Nazis came into power in the 1930s. Hitler saw gay men as a threat to his campaign to purify Germany, especially because their partnerships could not bear children who would grow the Aryan race he wanted to cultivate. During that period, gay-friendly bars and clubs started being shut down, authorities burned the books at a major research institution devoted to the study of sexuality, and gay fraternal organizations were shuttered. These efforts only increased after the Night of the Long Knives, the 1934 purge of Nazi leaders who were accused of trying to overthrow Hitler; they included Storm Troopers leader Ernst Röhm, whom the SS murdered, later citing his homosexuality as justification for his murder. A Nazi revision of the 1871 law took effect in September of 1935, outlawing anything as simple as men looking at or touching one another in a sexually suggestive way, and enabled authorities to arrest people even if they had only heard rumors that people had been engaging in such behavior. (Lesbians, however, didn’t face the same criminal penalties.) The Gestapo began to keep “pink lists” of violators.
Between 1933 and 1945, by the USHMM’s count, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested for violating this law, and about half went to prison. It’s thought that somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000 men were sent to concentration camps for reasons related to sexuality, but exactly how many died in them may never be known, between the scant documentation that survived and the sense of shame that kept many survivors silent for years after their ordeal.
From the few survivors and prison guards who have shared their stories, it’s been learned that those sent to concentration camps were segregated, for fear that their sexual preference was contagious. Many were castrated. Some were used as guinea pigs in various medical experiments to find a cure for typhus fever and a cure for homosexuality, the latter of which led the SS to inject them with testosterone to see if it would make them straight. At the same time, some Kapos (prisoners selected by the SS to keep fellow prisoners in line) are said to have demanded sexual favors from prisoners, who were known as “doll boys,” in exchange for extra food or protection from hard labor.
Yet in the post-war years, fear of arrest and imprisonment didn’t go away. The Nazi law stayed in place until a 1969 West German law decriminalized gay relationships among men over 21. As one of the USHMM’s curators has pointed out, even as the Allied powers carefully worked to scrub Nazism from Germany, they left that part alone — perhaps because they had anti-gay and anti-sodomy laws of their own. Paragraph 175 wasn’t repealed until 1994.
As the gay liberation movement grew in America in the ’70s and the ’80s, so did awareness of the persecution of gays during the Holocaust, as books and data about period started being published.
Former “doll boy” Heinz Heger’s 1972 memoir The Men With The Pink Triangledescribed SS guards torturing prisoners by dipping their testicles in hot water and sodomizing them with broomsticks. Data on these victims started to be cited in 1977, after a statistical analysis by sociologist Rudiger Lautmann of Bremen University claimed that as many as 60% of the gay men sent concentration camps may have have died. The first reference to pink triangles in TIME also appeared that year, in a story about gay-rights activists in Miami who attached the symbols to their clothes as a show of solidarity while protesting a vote to repeal a law protecting gay people from housing discrimination. When the magazine noted that the symbol was “reminiscent” of Nazi-era yellow stars, a reader wrote in to note that they were in fact analogous, not “reminiscent,” as both the star and the triangle were real artifacts of that time. “Gay people wear the pink triangle today as a reminder of the past and a pledge that history will not repeat itself,” he added.
And while the Miami effort did not succeed, the activists did succeed in bringing national attention to the way they had reclaimed the pink triangle as a symbol of solidarity. In 1979, Martin Sherman’s play Bent, inspired by Heger’s memoir, opened on Broadway; in the play, one of the characters trades in his pink triangle for a yellow star, “which gives him preferential treatment over the homosexuals,” as TIME’s review put it. The magazine called the play “audacious theater” and a “gritty, powerful and compassionate drama.” Sherman later said that he had also based the play on research by Holocaust scholar Richard Plant, who was having trouble finding a publisher who would turn it into a book, as the topic was still considered taboo. It was later published as The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals.
By that time, the gay community was facing a very different threat: HIV and AIDS. The activists who formed the organization ACT-UP to raise awareness about this public health crisis decided to use the pink triangle as a symbol of their campaign and alluded to its history when they declared, in their manifesto, that “silence about the oppression and annihilation of gay people, then and now, must be broken as a matter of our survival.” Avram Finkelstein is credited with designing the campaign’s pink triangle — which is right-side up, instead of the Nazi-era upside-down pink triangle — after conservative pundit William F. Buckley suggested that HIV/AIDS patients get tattoos to warn partners in a 1986 New York Times op-ed. Earlier this year, Finkelstein said that the op-ed was a “galvanizing moment,” at a time when there was “public discussion of putting gay men into concentration camps to keep the epidemic from spreading.” This bolder stance required a more boldly colored triangle. He explained that the triangle in the middle of the campaign’s signature “Silence=Death” poster was fuchsia instead of pale pink, as a nod to the punk movement’s adoption of the “New Wave” color. (He said the background of the poster is black because “everyone in lower Manhattan wore black.”)
More recently, pink triangles have been visible during gay rights demonstrations worldwide that were sparked by reports that gay men were being persecuted in Chechnya. For example, outside of the Russian embassy in London on April of 2017, protesters scattered pink triangles with messages written “Stop the death camps.” Three months later, the German parliament voted unanimously to pardon gay men convicted of homosexuality during World War II, awarding €3,000 to the 5,000 men still living, and €1,500 for each year they were imprisoned. The vote came about 15 years after the issuing of an official apology and almost a decade after the unveiling of a memorial to gay Holocaust victims in Berlin. Another well-known memorial is the Pink Triangle Park in the Castro district in San Francisco, which calls itself “the first permanent, free-standing memorial in the U.S. to gay Holocaust victims.”
The last death of someone forced to wear the pink triangle during the Nazi era is believed to have come in August of 2011, with the death of Rudolf Brazda at the age of 98. The symbols of pride that will be proudly worn around the world this month are a reminder of both what he survived and the pride that came after.
Sorry everyone. Today has been rather bad for me. I couldn’t sleep last night, but got up early and went to a lab to have my blood drawn. After I can home and ate my breakfast I just got so tired and over whelmed I spend most of the day in bed. I got up and mangaged to get this post done because I think it is so important. But my heart seems to be slaming in the viens of my neck, I am so tired. I had some instant oatmeal for supper and now I am going to bed even though it is only 6 PM. I love everyone and hope to do better getting the news out tomorrow morning. Best wishes, loves, and hugs. Scottie
Los Angeles school board President Jackie Goldberg pulled out an oversized children’s book titled “The Great Big Book of Families” and turned a public meeting into story time, her own not-so-subtle statement to critics of LGBTQ+ education. “In real life, families come in all sorts of shapes and sizes,” she read, as the text by British author Mary Hoffman explained. Some children live with “mummy and daddy,” or just their mummy or daddy. Goldberg soon got to the line “Some children have two mommies or two daddies.”
“A great book,” she said after reading it from cover to cover. “I recommend it.” Her statement set up the unanimous school board approval of a resolution listing all the ways the nation’s second largest school district intends to raise awareness about the LGBTQ+ community. Goldberg’s reading occurred on the same day that violence erupted outside the Glendale Unified school board meeting — which had its own gay pride resolution on the agenda — and once again, fights broke out among demonstrators.
She recounted from the assembly: “At the little discussion at the school after that, as soon as the book was over, one little girl sitting at my knees said ‘I have two mommies.’ A little boy on my other side said: ‘I have five grandmas. You better treat me the same way you treat everybody else. That’s how we live in this country.”
Getting more visibly emotional and angry Goldberg expressed her tiredness, shared by the LGBTQ community, of hearing the screaming on this type of issue. “What do you think that did to them?!” It made them afraid!” she screamed. “How dare you make them afraid because you are!” She continued: “I’m sorry I told you this was personal.”
Her son was once harassed for having two mommies. The fact that Goldberg’s grandchildren aren’t is a sign of progress. “Nobody has to accept me. I’m not looking for your acceptance,” she also said. “But you better treat me the same way you treat everybody else. That’s how we live in this country.
I insist that you watch every second this.
Powerful lecture from Jackie Goldberg of the Los Angeles school board on protests against a children’s book with one sentence about families with two moms or dads. She says this is personal for her and really lets loose at the end. pic.twitter.com/R9xx0nrtzo
Again if you missed watching this short heartfelt clip please do!!!
Powerful lecture from Jackie Goldberg of the Los Angeles school board on protests against a children’s book with one sentence about families with two moms or dads. She says this is personal for her and really lets loose at the end. pic.twitter.com/R9xx0nrtzo
Wow. Thanks for posting this longer version. So powerful but also very emotional. Gave me tears as I listened to her. We really need more of this everywhere. She is awesome and everything she says is so true.
More simply, they have always tried to argue that acknowledging something aloud is the same as advocating for that thing.
The same hysterical arguments were made regarding sex and drug education… that talking frankly about these things to kids is, in their minds, advocating for kids experimenting with sex and drugs… and that the only way to truly keep kids safe from sex and drugs is refusing to even discuss them outside of a ‘Those things are evil!’ context.
In their (small/hateful) minds, teaching kids that LGBTQ people are ‘acceptable’ is the same as pushing kids to give it a try.
The Right’s entire M.O. is premised on the false notion that if children never hear that gay people exist and that being gay is an immutable human characteristic like left-handedness and a natural variation of the human condition, they won’t end up being gay. They are not open to any argument that suggests they are wrong, which is why we’ve been treading water for the last half century, at least. I don’t see how we get past this impasse if the other side isn’t open to reasoned argument.
I went to Catholic school until the 6th grade. I’ll never forget my first grade teacher, a nun, swatting a left-handed student for writing with his left hand. She scolded him, telling him that was a mark of the Devil. Somehow that particular dogma just magically went away without any comment from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Go figure.
More importantly, the dogma of anti-Semitism, which dates right back to the Gospels, also disappeared. As did the Church’s defense of slavery and segregation. Holy Mother The Church Inc. evolves whether they care to admit it or not.
Our politicians could take a lesson from Jackie Goldberg. That is the kind of pushback we need to stave off the right-wing lunatics. Fuck decorum. Speak the damn truth.
To be fair, the right-wing base is really fucking stupid.
A large fraction believe Noah’s Ark was real and that anthropogenic climate change is not. They believe that Trump won the last election and that Hillary Clinton murders babies for adrenochrome.
They’ll cling onto a false premise like a hungry tick, and no amount of facts, data, or antipsychotic meds will dislodge them.
It’s the same playbook as sex education, ie … if you don’t teach them about sex they won’t have sex. Then they are shocked when they discover that their 16 year old is pregnant.
So, when did the haters “choose” to be heterosexual? What was this process like for them? Did they try both gay and straight sex before making up their mind?
Of course you know that the ant gay Saticoy Elementary Parents instagram group who protested last week feature make fun of and demonized Goldberg for being who she is. Those Christianism and in this case, Armenians, are lethal. They are the same “Leave Our Children Alone” t- shirt group that caused so much trouble for the Glendale SChool District Board the week following when all the board wanted to do was past a Pride resolution, but if course some how that all about sex and grooming. These people are really sick.
Yet how difficult it is chasing the will o’ the wisp of ‘mainstream’ public opinion, when even the more progressive media still shy away from calling out the far right for the malignant genocidal cancer that it is.
The mainstream public gets exercised over the price of eggs (which seem to have come back down recently), and gasoline, and are easily duped and manipulated by a lot of the anti-trans rhetoric.
Even parts of our community are conned by the propaganda into thinking that trans children are a threat to cis children. And the Caitlyn Jenner types who are out there spewing the GQP’s vicious lies do not help. Even the Biden Administration’s proposed order partly throws trans kids under the bus.
Even the better advocates, like Katie Porter, are not equipped with the facts and figures to fight back. Watching her the other week looking brave but only weakly parrying the braying Piers Morgan on cissexist Bill Maher’sReal Time made me wish she had the ammunition to shoot them both down,. convincingly.
Yours — good and thoughtful observations, Joann. Thanks.
Re the “calling out” on commercial TV of (how you put it…) “the far right for the malignant genocidal cancer that it is” — even on, say, MSNBC — you see very little, if any, of that. The commercial sponsors don’t like it. MAGAts buy suppositories, soap, cereal and Medicare supplemental plans, too. Best not to offend them.
Re the general public’s knowledge/understanding of trans people and their issues, it’s almost non-existent.
There’s this thing called “Progressive Blog Myopia.”
We here in the progressive blogosphere know about trans people and their issues. We think, “Well surely everyone understands.”
I guarantee you, Joann, that 90% of the rest of the country knows shit about the subject.
What she had to say is my life in a nutshell. I can’t believe that I’m over 70 and we are now going backwards on my civil rights. I am sick up to here with it, too.
Homophobic bullying is one of the biggest problems for gay teenagers. It makes them suffer, destroys their self esteem and sometimes even drives them to suicide. Such cases happen every day all over the planet. Most of the don’t become a public issue and moreover don’t lead to any consequences.
Thank you to Luis Fernando Midence to allow us to show this short film. Watch more of his films here: https://vimeo.com/guatguy
"1/50K know your bridges." Is an organizational code for county level insurrection. This man, who already sought a pardon for the Jan 6 insurrection, is organizing a revolt against the government on Twitter right now. Republicans are active traitors & a threat to our democracy. https://t.co/MDFTpsCkV7
— A New York Observer (@NewYorkHistory) June 9, 2023
Domestic terrorism against the public by religious gang brownshirt thug enforcers of the conservative wing. Please notice this is entirely religious driven, using Christian fundamentalist talking point. They are desperate to turn the secular US in to a religious Christian theocracy with their own moral police and Taliban enforcers. They are demanding the right of superior privilege for their religion yet deny any rights to others or other faiths. Notice also thewy changed their name to protecting the children to get more people to agree with their bigotry. Notice the leader of the religous group was asking for the pride leader to take down a old picture on his facebook page that said everyone should get laid once. Just that idea that people should be able to have enjoyable sex at least once was offencive to them. Hugs
Alex Keen wanted to show support for his local LGBTQ+ community. Now he’s afraid to even enter his home.
The downtown area of Connersville, IndianaPhoto: YouTube screenshot
Alex Keen, a 38-year-old gay man who grew up in the conservative rural Indiana town of Connersville (population 13,310), wanted to show support for his local LGBTQ+ community. So, last December, he founded a group called “Whitewater Pride” and later organized three events for this Pride Month.
Soon after announcing the events, two residents — Melissa Rose and her husband Andrew Rose — set up a now-defunct Facebook group called “Whitewater Groomer Removers,” which insinuated that Keen is a child sex abuser. Its members harassed his events’ sponsors. Keen has been followed in public by the group’s supporters and has gone into hiding. He now plans on moving out of the state, worried that someone will target him for violence.
After an angry crowd accused the district of “moral depravity” with its “Luciferian” policy, a vote for a school tax levy failed.
“I spent most of my life in the closet. I didn’t come out until I was 36. And so living in this community, surrounded by right-wing Christian conservatives, it’s hard to be gay, it’s hard to come out of the closet,” Keen told LGBTQ Nation. “I just wanted there to be some kind of organization, some kind of support for the LGBT community… Having that support system around us is very important.”
Keen’s group, which mostly consists of him and three board members, purchased a table at the May 15 Celebration in the Ville community fair. For Pride Month, his group planned two all-ages games nights at the local Fayette County Public Library, a drag night at a local bar named Ozzie’s on June 15, and an all-ages pool party at the Roberts Park Family Aquatic Center on June 30.
But on April 29, Ozzie’s bar canceled the event after people complained, Keen said. LGBTQ Nation contacted the bar for comment. The adults-only event didn’t have any drag queens booked. Instead, it offered a $50 award to the attendee wearing the best drag.
Around the same time, Keen became aware of a Facebook group named “Whitewater Groomer Removers.” One of its members linked to Keen’s personal Facebook page, and another wrote, “Sick… Let’s make him famous for trying to groom children.”
Andrew Rose posted an image of Pantera’s album Vulgar Display of Power that showed a man being punched in the face.
Rose wrote, “The vibe of this song is the vibe I’m going for with this group…. I refuse to allow these freaks impost their will in my community…. I plan to protest every event put on by the suspected child grooming operation known as ‘whitewater pride’ (as well as any other group promoting the same degeneracy) & I’m going to need A LOT of good people behind me. I crated this group to organize & discuss such matters.”
Facebook screenshotAn image from “Whitewater Groomer Removers” co-founder Andrew Rose
Melissa Rose posted an image of a late March edition of the local newspaper, the Connersville News Examiner, specifically an article mentioning Whitewater Pride’s efforts. She told her group’s members to call the paper and complain, stating, “We don’t want this group sexualizing and grooming our children in Fayette County.”
LGBTQ Nation contacted the Roses for comment.
One of their group’s members reposted an image from Whitewater Pride’s Facebook group announcing its three Pride Month events. Commenters wrote, “Pride is a sin in the eyes of God! And everything associated with it,” “Our kids are targeted by the left,” “Yes they are! Bas**rds are everywhere,” “Shame on all of them.”
When Keen looked through the group’s members, he recognized about a third of its members, including a person who regularly cut his lawn. He knew some of these people from around town. A week after discovering the group, he stopped staying at his home. Ever since, he has stayed at a friend’s place about 10 minutes away.
“It’s got to the point it’s affecting me physically,” he said. “I usually wake up and throw up in the morning, not really eating anything.”
By May 5, “Whitewater Groomer Removers” changed its name to “Protecting Our Children.” Its banner image showed a white man rolling up his sleeves.
As the May 15 Celebration in the Ville community fair approached, Melissa Rose sent messages to Sassy Peacock Events, the fair’s organizer, discouraging them from allowing Whitewater Pride to host a table at the event. She claimed that the group wants to allow pornography in schools, let “men be able to use girls’ locker rooms and restrooms,” and legalize the “mutilation of children under the age of 18” (even though gender-affirming genital surgeries aren’t conducted on minors).
At this point, Whitewater Pride’s Facebook page only contained posts about respecting people’s pronouns, Indiana’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, suicide and bullying statistics for queer youth, a bio of Stonewall veteran Marsha P. Johnson, announcements of upcoming game nights, a call for volunteers, and posts recognizing International Women’s Day and the International Transgender Day of Visibility.
“They are most certainly trying to set up a stronghold of far left sexually inappropriate ideologies for children,” Melissa Rose wrote to Sassy Peacock Events. “These are all of the issues that they are fighting for, on the side of evil, and that is ver much going to be devisive in a Conservative, Christian family oriented community. They should not even be trying to do all of this political activism while also trying to embed themselves in our community, under the guise of ‘helping kids to feel accepted.’… [They are] doing all of this work to indoctrinate confused kids.”
She demanded that Sassy Peacock Events allow her group to have a booth as well and suggested that she might stage a possible protest.
Though that protest never materialized, Sassy Peacock Events contacted the mayor’s office and local police anyway. In a public May 2 Facebook post, the organizer wrote, “There will be an extensive multi-departmental security presence Friday evening for set-up, through the night and all day Saturday till the end of the event. The whole downtown area has security cameras, there will be multiple drones capturing footage for us throughout the event as well.”
“We expect everyone to behave in a professional, respectful manner,” the organizer added. “Sassy Peacock Events has no tolerance for hate speech, disruptive displays, harassment, or protests.”
Facebook screenshotAn image advertising Whitewater Pride’s Pride Month events
In early May, Whitewater Proud announced that it had received a grant from the Fayette Community Foundation, a local organization that funds local non-profit efforts, as well as small donations from a few other local businesses. The Roses’ followers called the foundation and those businesses to complain, Keen said.
During one of Whitewater Pride’s game nights at the Fayette County Public Library in early May, three older men from a “second amendment club” showed up to try and disrupt the event, the library staff told LGBTQ Nation. The men complained about the hour-long event, even though they’re poorly attended and held in a private room separate from the main library.
“It was all awful and I wish it hadn’t happened,” library staff said of the men’s appearance.
On May 15, Andrew and Melissa Rose confronted Keen at one of his library game nights. In a video of their conversation in the library’s lobby, Andrew Rose said it wasn’t right to “indoctrinate” children. He claimed that Keen’s group and game nights “encourage children.”
“They’re sitting there,” he said. “They’re watching, they’re observing.” At this time, however, no minors had ever attended the game night.
“God doesn’t think it’s right either,” Andrew Rose told Keen. When Keen told him that he was free to have his own religious beliefs, Andrew Rose said, “Well, LGBT is a religion.”
Melissa Rose told Keen that she and her husband are “super nice and calm and wouldn’t harm anyone” and that her online comments had no “context of anger, violence, or hatred behind them.” She claimed that Facebook commenters had called her group’s members’ employers to get them fired and that her son’s girlfriend had also been “targeted.”
“We’ve had people from all over the globe, LGBT, coming and then saying we are literally causing harm and violence and trying to eradicate their community,” she said.
Melissa Rose then expressed disappointment that Keen and his group didn’t publicly defend her group when a nearby Pride organization, Rainbow Richmond, made an April 28 Facebook post referring to the Roses’ group as an “active hate group.” Keen has no affiliation with Rainbow Richmond.
“You could have certainly approached [Rainbow Richmond] and said ‘Look, this really is just escalating the situation, All this is doing is just fueling the fire of hatred and ignorance,’” she told Keen. “We didn’t want to contribute to any sort of disruption in the community or make you guys feel threatened in any way.”
She also admitted that she took down her group’s page when she “realized it was getting so much attention.” She then asked if Keen would make a statement against her group being called a hate group.
“I started hysterically laughing,” said Jama Sullivan, a local straight ally who was present during the discussion. “I was like, ‘First of all, we’re not doing that. Second of all, you are bigots…. I told her, ‘You started a fire and you’re getting burned a little from the flames, and you want us to put it out? Like, no, it doesn’t work that way.’”
Sullivan said she too has been publicly identified and targeted by Roses’ followers because of her support for Whitewater Pride.
“I put cameras all around my property because now we’re worried because you’ve targeted us,” Sullivan said she told the Roses. “It takes one person you’ve triggered, one person to come to my home and shoot at my house. I have a child there. So no, we will not put out a public statement on your behalf. You’re an idiot.”
When another person asked Melissa Rose why their respective groups can’t just co-exist, Rose said, “You can exist. No one’s trying to stop you.”
Melissa Rose then said that she doesn’t think that it’s appropriate for Keen to say he supports children because his personal Facebook page contained a photo, taken years ago at the Coachella Music Festival, of something that said, “Everyone should get laid once.”
“I think you should delete that,” Rose told Keen. He told her that he had already deleted that post.
During the conversation, Sullivan said she pointed out to the Roses that the U.S. Catholic Church has been accused of hundreds of thousands of child sex abuse cases.
“You’re not at our local Catholic school saying, ‘Get these kids out of here. They’re not safe,’” Sullivan told the couple. “You’re the library attacking adults. I mean, there’s not even children here. It’s just adults in a room playing games.”
“In Connersville,” Sullivan said, “we have one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state of Indiana, one of the highest unemployment rates in the state of Indiana. We have one of the highest drug uses in the state of Indiana. Connersville is ranked like 92 out of 100 in the healthiest cities in Indiana. The education system is suffering dramatically. The rate of high school dropouts is astronomical.”
She recently advised a lesbian friend against moving to the town because she’d likely be targeted with hate if she and her same-sex spouse walked into a Walmart store holding hands.
“So what can we do, as a community, to make people feel welcome to get them to stay here?” Sullivan asked rhetorically.
The Roses showed up again at June 5 Pride Month game night with three fellow protesters. Keen said they “got incredibly worked up” when four older teenagers showed up to play games.
“I heard one of them call me a coward when I walked away from them,” Keen said. He said that the protesters followed him to his car after the game night ended. Though he hasn’t personally received any death threats, Keen hasn’t returned to his home since early May. He plans on selling his house and moving out of state because he no longer feels safe.
Facebook screenshotAn image advertising Whitewater Pride’s Pride march
He contacted several LGBTQ+ and Pride organizations around the state for advice on how to safely hold his events. Volunteers from other local Pride groups have said they’ll help with their security. That may come in handy, since the Roses have reportedly pledged to protest his June 30 pool party.
Despite the intimidation, Keen has added one extra event to his Pride Month plans: a June 28 march through Connersville on the 54th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.
“I just want a combined show of strength that the LGBTQ community in the area has come together and is going to stand up to the people who want to bully us back into the closet,” Keen said.
Sullivan praised Keen when he first told her about his plans to start Whitewater Pride because she felt their community really needed it. But when Keen told her of his plans to leave the state, she said, “You can’t Alex, because they win. You’re letting them win.”
“I’m angry. I’m so angry,” she said. Keen told her that he doubted anyone would want to continue leading Whitewater Pride after he leaves because of all the hatred he’s endured.
“I think I’m going to tell him, I’ll [run his group] in the interim and take applications for a new director,” Sullivan said, “because I don’t want this to go away.”
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