Dueling Substacks about the new Pope, one from Charlotte Clymer, one from The Alt Media (language alert); both inoffensively readable by those who frequent here. Well, the language thing maybe. Snippets, not full pieces.
An American for Pope and a Great Choice by Charlotte Clymer
Chicago native Robert Francis Prevost has just been elected the 267th Bishop of Rome, the head of the Catholic Church, taking the name Leo XIV.
He was only made a cardinal in 2023 and was serving as Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, or overseeing the selection of new bishops. Prior to that was a long pastoral career in Peru. He speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese, and can read Latin and German.
Goodness gracious, y’all, I could not have been more wrong in my prediction for the new pope. I never thought the cardinal electors would select an American. To say I’m stunned would be an understatement.
However, for the record, I did humor his chances in my prediction:
For example, there’s a (very unlikely) scenario in which someone like Cardinal Robert Prevost is elected: a compromise candidate who’s broadly considered safe and palatable between both ends of the ideological spectrum. But there are other cardinals that fit this and Prevost could be in 20+ years.
Okay, so, here are my initial thoughts:
This is a great choice, and I’m quite happy.
Folks need to understand that any choice for the new pope was going to be nominally anti-LGBTQ in a number of ways. What’s important is compassion and openness toward LGBTQ folks, and I’m optimistic that Pope Leo XIV will continue that direction pursued by Pope Francis. (snip-MORE)
We might have that second question wrong. But thanks to twitter, we know the answer to the first one. And while we doubt the new pope really hates Vance, it’s nice to know he at least disagrees with the ass-kissing couch-fuck.
Before he became Pope Leo XIV on Thursday, Robert Prevost was on twitter. And it was there that he wrote “JD Vance is wrong,” posting a story that was a rebuke of Vance’s hateful beliefs. It was on twitter that he suggested he wants to battle climate change and believes that Black lives matter and subtweeted about Trump laughing at Kilmar Garcia. Thanks to twitter, we know the new pope is nothing like the new president. https://embed.bsky.app/embed/did:plc:5xeqzwhqcwnczcb62wv3da7o/app.bsky.feed.post/3loohb33sps2i?id=5706215191635626
The new pope is an American. And there’s nothing more American than thinking JD Vance is a douchebag. (snip-MORE, and you can see the bluesky bit on the page)
Roger suggested I look up this person and see what they had to say. I have read snippets of what he wrote and I like his message. He seems sincere and genuine. Hugs
Byrne said he preferred to let school boards decide if local curricula include topics on consent. “(Teaching about consent) can still happen. We’re just not going to require that in this bill,” he said. “This is a sensitive subject for many. I believe it may be different thoughts in different communities, and … this leaves, for the most part, local control on making those decisions.”
Where are these communities where they may have ‘different thoughts’ on consent?
Any community that has thoughts that consent to sex isn’t important are the communities were teaching consent (i.e. the fucking law!) is absolutely critical.
Ironic how the very same people bitching about the LGBTQ shoving our lifestyles down their throats specifically choose not to teach children about consent.
The religious right has been fighting against consent as a factor in sexual relations for at least 30 years now. They used to claim that it was because they only believed in sex between married (opposite sex) couples, but it’s become clear that they are against teaching about consent because most of their leaders are rapists.
Yes. These are the people who refuse to convict men accused of raping ten year old girls because “she was asking for it “ (tight jeans, walking alone, going to a party at another family’s house) (not said: poor or non-white or intellectually or physically handicapped – defending the high school football players who gang-raped a Down’s syndrome girl student).
Why teach consent when you can teach “slashing a tire to get someone to ride home with you so you can divorce your wife and get married to the younger model instead” like Jesse Watters did?
I want to thank brucedesertrat who sent me the link to this substack article. I enjoy learning about history but sadly this hits home too deeply. It is so close it is scary. Hugs.
Today President Trump is threatening to pull funds if Harvard does not comply with his demands for the school to shape it’s curricula to favor Trumpism. Harvard has refused to caved to Trump’s fascist demands which clearly violate free speech.
“The University will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights,” Harvard President Alan M. Garber
The seizure of power by the MAGA Republicans in 2025, led by Donald Trump, brought far-reaching changes to American Universities. Some caved, some obeyed in advance.
The seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, led by Adolph Hitler, brought far-reaching changes to German Universities. All caved. All obeyed in advance.
There is a parallel in German history for this American moment when books are banned, educational institutions are battered and a brutal and barbaric anti-intellectual ethos is on the rise.
A timeline of the Nazification of Munich University
1933
Hitler demands The University of Munich restructure its curriculum in accordance with the new ruling ideology of Nazism.
Trump demands Harvard University restructure its curriculum in accordance with the new ruling ideology of Trumpism. Abandon DEI. Police your students and faculty for viewpoint “diversity”.
Those faculty members who are not Nazi sympathizers are dismissed.
Trump’s letter calls for political undesirables to be gone.
The numbers of Jews admitted to university are restricted.
Munich University is the site of book burnings led by pro-Nazi students.
With the passage of these laws, the Nazis attempted to root out any opposition to their ideology that remain in German higher education.
Trump wants all of America’s Universities to root out anti-Trumpist thought, to be citadels of Trumpism, to employ MAGA professors who will teach American students how Trumpism will make America and her institutions of higher learning great again.
1941
Munich University appoints of Walther Wüst, an Aryan ideologue, Führer-Rektor of the University. By this time the Nazification of Munich University is complete. The once prestigious Munich University employs an all Nazi faculty.
1943
Sophie Scholl, a student attending Munich University, is guillotined for distributing anti-Nazi broadsides on campus.
Under President Trump students are deported or “disappeared”. I can safely assume an American student will be martyred for resisting fascism here in our nation in t he months ahead.
Hitler visiting the University of Munich
Here is a harrowing account of the Nazification of Frankfurt University witnessed by young Austrian economist named Peter Drucker:
Frankfurt was the first university the Nazis tackled, precisely because it was the most self-confidently liberal of major German universities, with a faculty that prided itself on its allegiance to scholarship, freedom of conscience, and democracy. The Nazis knew that control of Frankfurt University would mean control of German academia. And so did everyone at the university.
Above all, Frankfurt had a science faculty distinguished both by its scholarship and by its liberal convictions; and outstanding among the Frankfurt scientists was a biochemist-physiologist of Nobel-Prize caliber and impeccable liberal credentials. When the appointment of a Nazi commissar was announced . . . and every teacher and graduate assistant at the university was summoned to a faculty meeting to hear this new master, everybody knew that a trial of strength was at hand. I had never before attended a faculty meeting, but I did attend this one.
The new Nazi commissar wasted no time on the amenities. He immediately announced that Jews would be forbidden to enter university premises and would be dismissed without salary on March 15; this was something that no one had thought possible despite the Nazis’ loud antisemitism. Then he launched into a tirade of abuse, filth, and four-letter words such as had been heard rarely even in the barracks and never before in academia. . . . [He] pointed his finger at one department chairman after another and said, “You either do what I tell you or we’ll put you into a concentration camp.” There was silence when he finished; everybody waited for the distinguished biochemist-physiologist. The great liberal got up, cleared his throat, and said, “Very interesting, Mr. Commissar, and in some respects very illuminating: but one point I didn’t get too clearly. Will there be more money for research in physiology?”
The meeting broke up shortly thereafter with the commissar assuring the scholars that indeed there would be plenty of money for “racially pure science.” A few of the professors had the courage to walk out with their Jewish colleagues, but most kept a safe distance from these who only a few hours earlier had been their close friends. I went out sick unto death—and I knew that I was going to leave Germany within forty-eight hours.
The Nazis attacked academic dissent with lethal cruelty
Some went to nearby Dachau. Some, such as our heroic young student Sophie, were beheaded.
Sophie Scholl, photographed by the Gestapo
Here is the text of the pamphlet that cost Munich University student Sophie Scholl her life. Her haunting critique of Hitler resonates eerily with the familiar critiques of our current leader:
Fellow Students!
Shaken, our people faces the downfall of our men of Stalingrad. Three hundred thirty thousand German men have been senselessly and irresponsibly rushed into death and ruin by the brilliant strategy of the man who served as a private in the Great War. Führer, we thank you!
It is festering in the German people: Do we want to continue entrusting the fate of our armies to a dilettante? Do we want to sacrifice the rest of our young Germans to the base, power-seeking instincts of a Party clique? Nevermore.
The day of reckoning has come, our German youth’s reckoning with the most abhorrent tyranny that our people has ever endured. In the name of all young Germans, we demand that Adolf Hitler’s State return to us our personal freedom, the German’s most valuable possession, which he has cheated us out of in the most disgraceful way.
We have grown up in a State where every free expression of opinion has been ruthlessly gagged. The HJ, SA, and SS have tried to make us uniform, to revolutionize us, to narcotize us in the most fruitful educational years of our lives. “Ideological training” was the name given to the despicable method of stifling our budding independent thought and self-esteem in a haze of empty phrases. A “Führerauslese”1 of a kind as fiendish and at the same time as narrow-minded as one can possibly imagine, grooming its future Party bosses at Ordensburgen [special educational centers for Party cadres] to become godless, shameless, and unscrupulous exploiters and cutthroats, to become blind, mindless followers of the Führer. We “brain-workers” were exactly right for becoming the cudgel of this new ruling class. Front-line soldiers are disciplined like schoolboys by student leaders and would-be Gauleiter; Gauleiter, with prurient jests, assault the honor of female students. German female students at the university in Munich have given a dignified reply to the insult to their honor, and German male students have intervened and stood their ground on behalf of their female classmates. That is a first step toward gaining our right to free self-determination, without which intellectual values cannot be created. We are grateful to our brave fellow students, female and male, who have led the way by setting this shining example!
For us, there is only one watchword: Fight against the Party! Get out of the Party formations, in which the goal is to keep us politically muzzled! Get out of the lecture rooms of the SS Unter- or Oberführer and the Party bootlickers! True scholarly activities and genuine intellectual freedom are at stake! No threat of any kind can frighten us, not even the closing of our universities. Each of us must fight for our future, our freedom and honor in a body politic that is aware of its moral responsibility.
Freedom and honor! For ten long years, Hitler and his comrades have squeezed these two magnificent German words and made them loathsome, have banged on them and twisted them as only dilettantes can, dilettantes who cast the highest values of a nation before swine. They have sufficiently demonstrated what freedom and honor mean to them during ten years of the destruction of all physical and intellectual freedom, of all moral substance in the German people. Even the dumbest German’s eyes have been opened by the dreadful blood bath which they have brought about everywhere in Europe and continue to bring about each day. The German name will remain forever disgraced unless German youth stand up at last, engage simultaneously in revenge and expiation, smash their tormentors, and bring about a new intellectual and spiritual Europe.
Students! The German people is watching us! It expects us, as in 1813 with the breaking of Napoleon’s domination, now also in 1943 to break the domination of National Socialist terror through the power of the mind.
Berezina and Stalingrad blaze in the East; the dead of Stalingrad implore us!
“Fresh on, my people, the flame signals are smoking!”2
Our people is rising up against the enslavement of Europe by National Socialism, in a new, trustful breakthrough of freedom and honor!
As you read her courageous words consider how and why a regime would loathe and fear such a voice for liberty.
Now is the time to stand with all who see Trump for the terrifying tyrant he is.
Now is the time to stand with all educators and students who courageously stand against this tyranny.
Now is the time to join Thomas Jefferson in swearing “upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Now is the time to stand with Harvard University.
Now is the time to stand with all educators and educational institutions threatened by MAGA fascism.
David Fitzsimmons: Arizona’s Progressive Voice is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is an important story even though it is an older one. This shows how the rights constant badgering companies and using the idea of protecting the children, calling those who understand at LGBTQ+ children like to see themselves represented in an accepting world. This shows how the rights not stop attacks on the rights of minorities over the last 6 years are working to erode the expectancy, tolerance, and the representation of these minorities. The haters on the right are loud and very vocal, they give their opinion nonstop using incorrect misleading studies or lies. We need to be just as loud and in your face to fight back. Democrats need to start / return to defending the LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people. The democrats shrank back and hid letting the republicans loudly lie and misinform people. The republicans spend 215 million attacking trans people in the presidential election. Kamala Harris did not fight back, did not call out the adverts misinformation and lies, did not spend money attacking those ads. She gave one lame response when directly asked about the trans ad attacks. She minimized them and barely pushed back. But notice it is an openly Christian character not one of the other religions. Hugs
The Win or Lose series is Pixar’s first-ever original long-form animated series. It follows the Pickles, a co-ed middle school softball team, throughout the week as they prepare for their upcoming championship game.
Each episode focuses on a different character and their life off the field, including “the insecure kids, their helicopter parents” and “even a lovesick umpire.” It premiered on Disney+ on February 19, 2025.
In the debut episode, the character of Laurie is introduced, and is openly Christian. This character begins her scene with the words, “heavenly father” and there is an angel cutout in her bedroom.”
A spokesperson for Disney confirmed that the story arc was removed and provided the following statement to Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter: “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”
This is the first openly Christian character to feature in a Disney film since 2007’s Bridge to Terabithia. The film features young adolescent children Jesse Aarons (played by Josh Hutcherson) and Leslie Burke (played by AnnaSophia Robb) , who in one scene attend church together, and discuss religion on the way home.
Trump and his allies have often been critical of Disney and what they describe as its “woke” policies. In a May 2023 social media post, Trump branded the entertainment juggernaut a “woke and disgusting shadow of its former self,” criticizing its move toward diverse casting in some of its recent movie remakes.
Following raging culture wars over such issues as LGBTQ+ rights and diversity, equity and inclusion, Disney appears to be tempering its approach towards inclusion.
An exclusive poll for Newsweek conducted by Redfield and Wilton Strategies in July found that 34 percent of viewers disapproved of Disney’s attempt to add more LGBTQ+ topics to its content.
Since returning to office, Trump has signed an order that rolled back transgender rights, emphasizing the importance of the issue to his agenda in his second term. Trump’s executive order declared that the federal government would recognize only two sexes: male and female.
What People Are Saying
Mark Mitchell of Rasmussen Reports on X: “Openly gay out. Openly Christian in!”
One social media user on X: “Again f*** Disney for removing the trans storyline from WIN OR LOSE, but so far it’s a great show.”
Another social media user on X: “Another week, another two incredible Win or Lose episodes. The way they show both the kid’s and parent’s struggles and perspectives is top-notch. The animation, the story, the voice acting, the music… it’s all PERFECT. The team behind this show is just brilliant.”
What’s Next
Episodes of Win or Lose are being released each week up until March 12.
A second season of the show has not yet been announced.
You know this is what the fundamentalist religious right wants to do this here. This is one of the reasons the maga right loves Russia and Putin, he hates who they hate. He wants a straight cisgender stereotypical white society the same as they do. Hugs
Russia’s Interior Ministry has plans for a sweeping electronic database of LGBTQ+ people in the country, Meduza, an independent Russian news outlet, revealed this week.
Citing anonymous sources at the Interior Ministry, the outlet reported that the Orwellian plan has been in discussion since last year after Russia’s Supreme Court outlawed the so-called “international LGBT movement” as an “extremist organization” at the urging of President Vladimir Putin.
Raids and arrests at LGBTQ+ clubs have become commonplace across the country.
The database will be a “large-scale” system to track members of the LGBTQ+ community at large, according to sources.
The plans were corroborated by Dmitry Chukreyev, an official with the Civic Chamber of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth largest city. He said police have been keeping informal lists of LGBTQ+ individuals since the Supreme Court ruling was announced.
In 2024, police conducted at least 42 raids on LGBTQ+-friendly venues across Russia, according to an investigation by independent news outlet Current Time and human rights organization Sphere. Beatings, forced confinement, and sadistic humiliations based on sexual and gender identities are regular features of the sweeps.
Russian officials and state-aligned media regularly describe Russia’s LGBTQ+ community as a network of “paramilitary groups” calling for an “open gender war,” who engage in “dehumanization” and “devil worship,” the outlet reports. Officials and media credit security forces’ actions with “suppressing” anti-state activity.
The raids, in addition to intimidating the queer community at large and forcing the closure of several venues, have provided security officials with information that would supply an electronic LGBTQ+ registry.
An employee at a Siberian queer establishment told Meduza, “Security forces copied the entire database from the computer where we keep track of reservations,” obtaining information about hundreds of clients. Fingerprints and mouth swabs were collected from visitors during a raid the Eden club in Chelyabinsk, and employees and patrons at the Orenburg club Pose were forced to state their registered residential address on camera.
At a house party raided by security forces in Leningrad Oblast, guests were forced to surrender their passports and unlock their phones; if someone refused, the others were subjected to collective punishment and forced to squat.
According to human rights activists, such raids are also aimed at exposing LGBTQ+ government officials. The organizer of one queer-friendly event in the Urals region revealed police who raided the venue hoped to “catch deputies [officeholders] and other significant individuals” at the event.
While security forces continue to collect data in ever-more sadistic operations, progress on a full-scale LGBTQ+ registry has been hampered by Putin’s other current obsession: the expansion of Greater Russia through his war on Ukraine. Forces assigned to that conflict are draining the ranks of police who would otherwise be hunting down members of the “international LGBT movement.”
But the raids continue to produce results.
One sweep at a restaurant and club in Gorno-Altaysk last year yielded data on 80 patrons and staff alone, an employee said.
“We know all of you now,” security forces repeated as the raid dragged on.
The bills author said the bill was “designed to restrict government’s ability to burden anyone’s religious freedom.” What they really mean is it would allow a religious person the right to hurt others, to be a jerk, to be an asshole to other people. It is a bill to enshrine the right of someone to disregard the rights and equal treatment of those the don’t like. Anytime one of these hate bills come up just replace the LGBTQ+ with the word black, or Jewish, or even white males and see if it still sounds like a good idea. Hugs
latest push in a long-running effort from right-wing policy groups to “vilify people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
“They’re trying to elevate so-called ‘religious liberty’ above all other civil rights and claim that someone’s religious belief allows them to dominate the laws, the policies, the practices of the government and the rest of society,” Dickson said.
Arkansas ACLU Executive Director Holly Dickson testifies at the Capitol.
A bill allowing for discrimination against LGBTQ Arkansans in housing, employment, education and other areas passed out of committee Tuesday and will be heard next by the full Arkansas House of Representatives.
Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R-Springdale), the bill’s lead sponsor and a longtime crusader against LGBTQ rights, said it’s “designed to restrict government’s ability to burden anyone’s religious freedom.”
The bill would “prohibit the government from discriminating against certain individuals and organizations because of their beliefs regarding marriage or what it means to be female or male.”
“It helps protect religious organizations, places of worship, religious schools and religious ministries from government discrimination,” Lundstrum said, adding that it would protect a cake maker or wedding venue or anyone “asked to solemnize a marriage that they do not agree with.”
The bill would shield state government employees from being reprimanded in any way for engaging “in expressive conduct based upon or in a manner consistent with a belief about biological sex or marriage,” both at work and off the clock.
The state would not be able to do anything disciplinary to an employee making homophobic or transphobic social media posts, for example.
The full scope and implications of the bill aren’t clear, but Kaymo O’Connell, a transgender student from Little Rock, told lawmakers this bill clears the way for people to discriminate when making employment decisions.
Other critics of the bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, say the bill is poorly written, allows and encourages discrimination against LGBTQ Arkansans and violates multiple federal laws and protections.
Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, said the bill is the latest push in a long-running effort from right-wing policy groups to “vilify people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
“They’re trying to elevate so-called ‘religious liberty’ above all other civil rights and claim that someone’s religious belief allows them to dominate the laws, the policies, the practices of the government and the rest of society,” Dickson said.
HB1615 is supported by the First Liberty Institute, a national right-wing extremist group, and the Arkansas Justice Institute, the legal branch of local right-wing extremist group the Arkansas Family Council.
Lundstrum was joined by legal representatives from both groups in committee today.
“Whether or not this bill passes it has already harmed Arkansans because, yet again, we are saying some people are worthy and other people are unwelcome,” Dickson said.
Rep. Nicole Clowney (D-Fayetteville), who voted against the bill, noted that it’s a clear case of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
By my dogs that love gravy I like this man’s message. I enjoy listening to him as he asked everyone including the Christians to love each other, to be kind to each other. He reaches even a complete atheist like me. The fact is you can gain more converts, more adherents to your view with kindness and joy, than you will ever be able to do with anger, hate, and force. This man will bring far more people to Jesus and to the principles that Jesus taught than the Christian nationalist hate preachers ever will even if they get their way. No law forcing a person to sit in a pew can ever make them believe the stuff that is against the inborn idea of fairness, kindness, respect for others … or as someone said treat others as you would like to be treated. Period. The saying was not treat others the way you want to be treated only if they are like you, only if they believe as you do, only if they are the same skin color or the same sexual orientation. Treat everyone as you would like to be treated. Hugs
Arkansas ACLU Executive Director Holly Dickson testifies at the Capitol.
Scottie's Playtime 