Last Friday, the Granbury Police Department responded to an injury report at Granbury Middle School. Authorities said a 37-year-old female teacher put hand sanitizer in a 12-year-old male studentâs hands and lit the flammable solution on fire as part of a class science experiment. The student suffered possible third-degree burns as a result.
According to CBS Dallas / Fort Worth, parents said the teacher asked students if they wanted to âsee something cool.â The teacher had reportedly done the experiment âmultiple times throughout the day with other students without incident,â Granbury police said.
Much cancel, so culture.
If you look at the laws that are being passed in Florida, Iowa, Texas, Tennessee, and most recently in Ohioâthey are all using children as their dog whistle-turned-bullhorn. Whether itâs abortion or âDonât Say Gay,â Republicans have returned to what worked in the 20th centuryâscaring the hell out of parents and providing their base with an âotherâ to villainize. But whatâs legitimately terrifying is that these red states falling in line with their âanti-gayâ agenda are just testing grounds. Republicans are saying the quiet part out loud and yet, no one is really listening.
For those of us who are watching the anti-gay madness unfold from the safety of our blue statesârecognize that your safety is an illusion. The quiet part that Republicans keep saying is âwait until we get power back.â Republicans are chomping at the bit to once again hold the House Speakerâs gavel, so that they can pass laws that turn the clock back to a time when calling LGBTQ people (and our allies) pedophiles was in vogue.
Florida, a once-purple state turning increasingly red, is considered and often seen as a bellwether for American politics. And thatâs why LGBTQ people need to take the next elections seriouslyâboth by voting and getting out the voteâbecause our lives might literally depend on it.
As it ever was, LGBTQ+ folk are the canary in the coalmine. We neglect the 2022 election at our direst peril, not just for LGBT, but for women, minorities, progressives, the educated, and etc. We are perilously close to losing our democracy, and there will be no one who can save us if we refuse to save ourselves. This cannot be âdems are just as badâ both-sidesism. Are dems great? Hell no. But they are not out to exterminate us, which the repubs are.
File under Crooks handing out loans to other crooks.
(excerpts) According to NBC News, Trump Tower was refinanced with a $100 million loan from Axos Financial, an obscure internet-only bank in San Diego and Las Vegas, financial documents from New York Cityâs municipality revealed. According to those documents, the loan was made just days after an auditor from the Trump Organization quit, claiming that none of the financial statements for the past 10 years could be trusted. [Axos is] also involved in a lawsuit with two former employees who had questions about the way Axos was conducting its lending operations. One of those, Jennifer Brear Brinker, worked in the companyâs Risk Management and Compliance Department. She alleges that Axos intentionally understaffs the compliance team âin an effort to conceal its failure to comply with federal banking regulationsâ and contends she was terminated in January 2021 while completing a report highlighting deficiencies at Axos including âsignificant issues in the bankâs anti-money laundering practices.â
As Republicans introduced dozens of anti-LGBTQ+ bills across the United States over the past several months, they also went all-in on some very specific messaging to justify their bigotry: that queer people are âgroomingâ children for sexual abuse by pushing LGBTQ+ positivity into the mainstream.
If all this seems absurd on its face, congratulations on your critical thinking skills. But why is this concept gaining so much traction on the right, even in the halls of Congress?
This false notion that queer people are sexual predators has remained a deeply held conservative belief (including outside the U.S., as evidenced by the Russian vigilante group Occupy Pedophilia) over the decades, but belief in the myth spiked in 2016 with the Pizzagate hoax.
Though their theory was ludicrous and easily disproved, Pizzagate conspiracists soon flocked to a different, but similar, banner: QAnon.
âQâ proceeded to post thousands more âdropsâ over the next several years, asserting that liberals and gays were eventually going to be rounded up and executed for sex trafficking children. Conspiracy theoristsâ imaginations ran wild; for them, it was easy to attribute Democratsâ latter-day embrace of LGBTQ+ rights to a secret agenda to groom young children into having gay sex with them.
But the Republican obsession with labeling queer and trans people as pedophiles and âgroomersâ even while advocating for bills that give cover for child marriages goes deeper than conspiracies and religious dogma: itâs also about a fundamental disconnect regarding bodily autonomy.
In rituals like âpurity balls,â conservatives assert their core belief that young peopleâs bodies are not yet their own, but the property of their parents (specifically, their fathers). This possessive attitude towards children naturally manifests as hostility towards progressive educators and politicians who tell kids that they can self-identify
In other words, itâs projection. Itâs always projection.
They have plenty of junk science to back that up.
In some completely expected newsâŚ
Thatâs it.
Your trans union card is hereby revoked. You can no longer hold yourself out to the public as trans.
We need to protest her.
Itâs a level of self-sabotage that completely floors me. Why? I mean, seriously: WHY???
Sheâs convinced herself that theyâve accepted her - but is too stupid to realize that they never will.
I think she got 1% of the vote in her campaign. Fox will tire of her soon enough- after they drag her a few times.
As far as the community Caitlyn:
The special assholes.
I seem to remember Dolly getting some flack for hiring a trans guy as a driver back in the early 90âs.
And of course-
âon January 31st, 2006, Transamerica earned lead actress Felicity Huffman an Oscar nomination, and Parton earned one for writing the jaunty, bluegrass-infused âTravelinâ Thruâ for the filmâs end credits.â
LGBT folks are family.
