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Russian Parents are Having Gay Children Abducted to be "Cured"

Vladimir Putin is the darling of numerous far right "Christians" in America because of his all out war on LGBT individuals in Russia and the manner in which he has given great deference to the always ultra-reactionary Russian Orthodox Church. While Putin commits war crimes in Ukraine, these American "Christians" cheer on his repression of the LGBT community and long for a similar regime in America - something Trump has promised them. One of the exports to Russia is the fraudulent myth of "conversion therapy," a cash cow from charlatans like Michelle Bachmann's husband and Speaker Mike Johnson's wife who run "Christian counseling" operations.  In the West and parts of the USA, the practice has been banned, especially for minors, because of the emotional and psychological damage that can lead to suicide - and often physical harm inflicted on the victims - that the fraudulent "cure" programs wreaks on those subjected to it.  Sadly, many Russian parents of gay children are seemingly embracing the conversion therapy lie either out of fear of what the Putin regime may do to their children or, just as likely, out of their own embarrassment at having gay offspring.  As a piece in the Washington Post reports, parents are even resorting to having their children abducted and force to undergo these dangerous and guaranteed to fail "cure" programs.   Here are highlights:

In Russia, where the entire LGBTQ+ community has been banned as “extremist,” some parents are paying thugs to abduct their queer sons and daughters, forcing them into secure private centers to “cure” them with so-called conversion therapy.

Some of these young people are fleeing the country, looking for safety in the West. Former residents say conditions behind high concrete walls are like small unregulated prisons, designed for alcoholics, drug addicts, or people whose families see them as problems.

Many were tricked or abducted, then held for months. They recounted being beaten, humiliated or forced to read out confessions that they were destructive and selfish because of their “addiction” to their sexual or gender identity — mimicking rigid programs designed to combat drug and alcohol addiction.

Many of them emerged “somehow mentally broken,” believing there was something wrong with them, said Vladimir Komov, who formerly served as a rights lawyer at a prominent LGBTQ+ legal advocacy group DELO LGBT+, which shut its operations last week due to the ban.

A 2020 report by an independent United Nations expert found that conversion therapy was “deeply harmful … inflicting severe pain and suffering and resulting in long-lasting psychological and physical damage.” The report called for a global ban.

In President Vladimir Putin’s move to cement his rule and build a repressive, deeply conservative nation, he has singled out LGBTQ+ people as scapegoats alongside antiwar activists.

But the rhetoric is also part of Putin’s bid to enlist socially conservative nations in Africa and the Middle East to back Russia in its war against Ukraine. At the same, he hopes to divide liberal Western democracies by encouraging antipathy to LGBTQ+ rights.

In a Nov. 30 ruling, Russia’s Supreme Court endorsed a Justice Ministry application to ban the “international LGBT public movement” as an extremist organization, following other repressive laws. After the ruling, police raided LGBTQ+ venues in Moscow.

Before its closure, DELO LGBT+ handled 200 monthly requests for legal help from queer people. Of these requests, 7 percent said their families threatened to put them into treatment centers, tried to do so or had done so in the past, the group said. “After these laws, the number of people facing threats to be put in such institutions has increased,” Komov said.

Ada Blakewell, a 23-year-old transgender . . . . underwent nine months of conversion treatment, from August 2022 until May 2023, in a remote treatment center, Freedom Rehabilitation Center, in the Altai region of Siberia.

Those undergoing the treatment had to swim in the river daily at 8 a.m. before morning prayers, even in winter in subfreezing temperatures. She was given “manly” jobs like chopping wood and helping slaughter chickens, turkeys and pigs “to help myself to become a man.”

In one disturbing incident, she was forced to castrate a pig, after being told that she would see what transgender surgery was like.

“I was given a surgical knife and given instructions how to do it,” she said. “But I couldn’t finish it. I had a severe panic attack and from then on, I was getting more and more suicidal.”

Alexandra, 28, a Moscow transgender woman whose wealthy parents also rejected her gender identity, was forcibly held in several treatment centers for 21 months.

The accounts by Blakewell and by Alexandra could not be independently verified but were consistent with previous accounts in Russian independent media and by international rights groups about conversion therapy centers in Russia.

Blakewell said she had been tricked into going to the center by her mother, a business executive, who asked her to support her during heart surgery in a rural area of the Altai region. Her mother got out of the car. A hefty, thuggish man then pressed Blakewell against the door, the locks snapped shut and her phone, Apple watch and backpack were taken.

As they drove to the treatment center, the driver told her it was time to atone for being queer, using an offensive epithet. “I still feel really bitter toward my family,” Blakewell said. Alexandra faced similar deception.

Conversion therapy has been banned in 22 U.S. states and in 12 countries, with many others planning national bans, according to Global Equality Caucus, an international network of lawmakers that supports equal rights for LGBTQ+ people.

Last month, Konstantin Boikov, a lawyer with DELO LGBT+, fled Russia for New York after homophobic threats and abuse. (He does not identify as gay.) Tomatoes and eggs were hurled at his apartment door, and abusive notes and severed chicken heads were also left there.

He said he feared imprisonment by Russian authorities or homophobic violence if he stayed.

“The state is trying to convince the population that all the country’s ills all come from these enemies,” Boikov said, “so that people unite around one leader, without thinking.”

Alexandra was freed in June after she broke a staircase fitting and threatened managers that she would continue to break more things unless she was released. Her parents still shun her.

Blakewell escaped a month after she was abducted but was quickly caught and beaten so severely some of her teeth were broken. She tried twice more and was beaten again. She won her freedom by calling police from a staffer’s cellphone that was left lying around, insisting on rescue until they finally came.

Frighteningly, Putin's "Christian" admirers long to bring similar horrors to America.

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Comparing Trump to Hitler Is Appropriate

Never in America's history has there been a presidential candidate who has signaled that he wants to overthrow the U.S. Constitution, jail or kill his political adversaries, and to silence those in the media that tell the truth about him and his frightening agenda.  Even Richard Nixon on his worst days never sought to end American democracy and the republic. Just as frightening, Trump is - in my view - is knowingly adopting rhetoric and making hate based statements reminiscent of Adolph Hitler and his horrific regime.   Perhaps just as frightening is the fact that the MAGA base, like many in late 1920's and early 1930's Germany, are embracing the message of dehumanizing others and the use of violence against those they deem as "not true Americans."  They are eagerly drinking up Trump's claims that immigrants and by extension all non-whites, are "poisoning the blood" of America and seem all too ready to put their self-designated enemies in concentration camps or worse. Working hand in glove with Trump and his enablers and acolytes within the Republican Party are the evangelicals and "Christian" nationalist who seek a white, Christian nation where their enemies are subjugated or, better yet in their minds, erased.  In the face of such hate mongering, some continue to fall on their fainting couches at accurate comparisons of Trump to Hitler and calling out the danger he and his henchmen and followers pose.  A column in the Washington Post argues such comparisons are appropriate and need to be made to America's history ignorant population.  Here are highlights:

 My very minor status as an authority on Adolf Hitler comparisons stems from having coined “Godwin’s Law” about three decades ago. I originally framed this “law” as a pseudoscientific postulate: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” (That is, its likelihood approaches 100 percent.)

[W]hen people draw parallels between Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy and Hitler’s progression from fringe figure to Great Dictator, we aren’t joking. Those of us who hope to preserve our democratic institutions need to underscore the resemblance before we enter the twilight of American democracy.

And that’s why Godwin’s Law isn’t violated — or confirmed — by the Biden reelection campaign’s criticism of Trump’s increasingly unsubtle messaging. We had the luxury of deriving humor from Hitler and Nazi comparisons when doing so was almost always hyperbole. It’s not a luxury we can afford anymore.

Trump has the backing of political actors who are laboring to give the would-be 47th president the kind of command-and-control government he wants. Their proposals for maximizing and consolidating the powers of the federal government under a single individual at the top — provided that the individual is appropriately “conservative” — don’t sound like an American democracy. Sorry, sticklers, they don’t even sound like an American republic, either. What they sound and look like is a framework to enable fascism. And we have to thank Trump for being admirably forthcoming that he plans to be a dictator — although, he says, only on “Day One.”

What’s arguably worse than Trump’s frank authoritarianism is his embrace of dehumanizing tropes that seem to echo Hitler’s rhetoric deliberately. For many weeks now, Trump has been road-testing his use of the word “vermin” to describe those who oppose him and to characterize undocumented immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country.” Even for an amateur historian like me, the parallels to Hitler’s rhetoric seem inescapable.

Unsurprisingly, though, there are plenty of people who push back whenever anyone or anything gets compared to Hitler or the Nazis — or to related subjects like the Holocaust or the confinement of Jews to ghettos or the systematic killing of civilian populations.

First, has the sheer absurdity of so many hyperbolic Nazi comparisons in popular culture made us less vigilant about the possible reemergence of actual fascism in the world? I think it shouldn’t — comparisons to Hitler or to Nazis need to take place when people are beginning to act like Hitler or like Nazis.

Second, is Germany’s specific culture of remembrance — which privileges the idea that the Holocaust is unique — working, as some have said Godwin’s Law has also functioned, to quash appropriate comparisons of today’s horrors to the 1930s and 1940s? I continue to insist that Godwin’s Law should never be read as a conversation-ender or as a prohibition on Hitler comparisons. Instead, I still hope it serves to steer conversations into more thoughtful, historically informed places.

And Trump’s express, self-conscious commitment to a franker form of hate-driven rhetoric probably counts as a special instance of the law: The longer a constitutional republic endures — with strong legal and constitutional limits on governmental power — the probability of a Hitler-like political actor pushing to diminish or erase those limits approaches 100 percent.

Will Trump succeed in being crowned “dictator for a day”? I hope not. But I choose to take Trump’s increasingly heedless transgressiveness — and, yes, I really do think he knows what he’s doing — as a positive development in one sense: More and more of us can see in his cynical rhetoric precisely the kind of dictator he aims to be. 

Friday Morning Male Beauty

 

Colorado Just Gave Republicans An Exit Ramp

The ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court barring Donald Trump from that state's ballot should be a welcomed exit ramp for the Republican Party to jettison Trump and  move on to a more normal - and I would argue less mentally ill - candidate that would have a better chance of prevailing in 2024.   While evangelicals and white supremacists within the GOP welcome Trump's signals that he would become a defacto dictator, a majority of voters may find Trump too frightening and dangerous.  Putting that cultist fringe aside, conservative J. Michael Luttig (pictured at left), a prominent conservative legal scholar and former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit notes in a piece in Politico that the Colorado ruling is justified and should be upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.   Despite the whining and bloviating by Republicans, including the other presidential candidates, this matter is NOT about politics, but rather the simple application of the law - namely Section 3 of the 14th Amendment:

In fact, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is self-executing, which means that congressional action is not required. Nor is it required that the former president be convicted of the criminal offense of an insurrection or rebellion against the United States under Title 18 USC 2383.

The Constitution itself tells us that disqualification of the former president is not anti-democratic. Rather, the Constitution tells us that it is the conduct that can give rise to disqualification under the 14th Amendment that is anti-democratic.

This is not politics. This is the opposite of politics. This is constitutional law. And right now, the courts — the state courts and eventually the Supreme Court — will be interpreting the Constitution of the United States without regard to politics, let alone partisan politics.

I am confident that the Supreme Court would affirm Colorado Supreme Court’s decision based upon the objective law, which in this instance is Section 3 of the 14th amendment. Which is to say that I know that the Colorado Supreme Court decision is unassailable in every single respect under the Constitution of the United States. . . . I believe that this Supreme Court will affirm the Colorado Supreme Court if it takes this case for review.

Luttig's faith in the U.S. Supreme Court may be misguided, but the whole issue raised by the Colorado ruling should be enough for sane and moral Republicans seize upon to purge the stench of Trump from the GOP,  A piece in The Atlantic by a conservative former Republican looks at the exit ramp that has been offered to the Republican Party:

“The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary,” John Kenneth Galbraith wrote. “No economist should be denied it, and not many are.”

I’m not an economist. But I was wrong about the litigation to bar Donald Trump from the ballot as an insurrectionist. I wrote in August that the project was a “fantasy.” Now, by a 4–3 vote, the Colorado Supreme Court has converted fantasy into at least temporary reality.

The Fourteenth Amendment provides that anyone who swore an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, and who then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,” is forbidden to hold any federal or state office unless pardoned by a vote of two-thirds of both houses of Congress.

According to Colorado’s court, his actions leading up to the violent coup attempt of January 6, 2021, amounted to “engaging in” an insurrection. Therefore, the court ruled earlier today, Trump is disqualified from appearing on the Republican primary ballot in Colorado.

The U.S. Supreme Court now has the opportunity to offer Republicans an exit from their Trump predicament, in time to let some non-insurrectionist candidate win the Republican nomination and contest the presidency.

The Colorado court has invited the U.S. political system away from authoritarian disaster back to normal politics—back to a race where the Biden-Harris ticket faces more or less normal opponents, rather than an ex-president who openly yearns to be a dictator.

The Colorado Supreme Court harshly condemned Trump personally. It ruled him an insurrectionist, in effect a traitor. It joined his name to the roster of the Confederate rebels whom the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment wanted to ban from politics. And at the same time, that court offered emancipation from Trump to Trump’s party.

The polls seem to indicate that Americans’ preferences for 2024 stack up as follows: Trump will probably lose to Biden, but almost any other Republican would likely beat the current president.

Republicans who want to win in 2024 were just delivered a big favor, if they will accept it: a state supreme court ruling that their weakest general-election candidate is disqualified from running in the primaries where his too-loyal base is not emoting, not thinking.

If upheld by the Supreme Court, the Colorado court’s decision might yet save the GOP from itself. Will the GOP consent to be rescued?

Since Trump made his comments about wanting to be a dictator for a day, some Republicans have argued that there’s nothing to fear, because the institutions will stop him: The military won’t obey the illegal orders Trump has said he’ll issue; the Department of Justice won’t prosecute the authoritarian cases Trump says he wants to bring. For those Republicans: Here’s your chance. The Colorado court has just granted you what should be your fondest wish, a clear path to the Republican nomination for a post-Trump candidate.

Until now, Trump’s Republican rivals have shown themselves too scared to fight and too weak to win. The question ahead: Are they too scared and too weak even when the win is presented to them by the courts? The immediate reaction of many of them was, as usual, to cower and truckle—to take Trump’s side against their own. This is their last exit; if they drive past, there will not be another before the primaries finish.

The present Supreme Court is highly attuned to the wishes of conservative America. If the conservative majority senses permission from Republicans to save Republicans from themselves, they might do it. If they sense a veto from Republicans, they may not. What is said and done in the next days and hours may matter a great deal. If Republicans want rescue, they must stop pretending they object.

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Trump Disqualified from Colorado’s 2024 Ballot

In what one can only hope will be a series of such decisions, the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that Donald Trump is disqualified from being on Colorado's 2024 ballot due to his participation - I would even argue in planning  and being the  mastermind  of the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Trump will no doubt seek to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court which, if the "conservatives" on the Court are true to the plain meaning and language of the 1868 language of the 14th Amendment barring insurrectionist from holding political office, should either affirm the Colorado ruling or decline to take the case and leave the ruling intact.  The ruling underscores the need for such cases to be pursued in other states and hopefully result enough rulings against Trump that he would be unable to carry a majority of the Electoral College.  The Colorado Supreme Court stated that “We conclude that the foregoing evidence, the great bulk of which was undisputed at trial, established that President Trump engaged in insurrection,” . . . . . The ruling no doubt potentially changes the calculus for Trump and his shameless (and in my view, unethical attorneys) and in a sane Republican Party would be a death knell for Trump's candidacy for the Republican Party nomination.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post on the Colorado ruling:

In a historic decision Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court barred Donald Trump from running in the state’s presidential primary after determining that he had engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

The 4-3 ruling marked the first time a court has kept a presidential candidate off the ballot under an 1868 provision of the Constitution that prevents insurrectionists from holding office. The ruling comes as courts consider similar cases in other states.

If other states reach the same conclusion, Trump would have a difficult — if not impossible — time securing the Republican nomination and winning in November.

The decision is certain to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but it will be up to the justices to decide whether to take the case. Scholars have said only the nation’s high court can settle for all states whether the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol constituted an insurrection and whether Trump is banned from running.

“A majority of the court holds that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the decision reads. “Because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.”

The U.S. Supreme Court justices separately are weighing a request from special counsel Jack Smith to expedite consideration of Trump’s immunity claim in one of his criminal cases — his federal indictment in Washington on charges of illegally trying to obstruct President Biden’s 2020 election victory.

The Colorado Supreme Court’s majority determined the trial judge was allowed to consider Congress’s investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which helped determine that Trump engaged in insurrection.

“We conclude that the foregoing evidence, the great bulk of which was undisputed at trial, established that President Trump engaged in insurrection,” the majority wrote.

In its decision, the Colorado Supreme Court said it was staying the decision until Jan. 4 and would keep that stay in place if an appeal is filed to the U.S. Supreme Court. That means Trump’s name could be placed on the ballot while the case is ongoing. Colorado is one of more than a dozen states scheduled to hold primaries on March 5, also known as Super Tuesday.

Derek Muller, a University of Notre Dame law professor who has studied the cases challenging Trump’s candidacy, called the Colorado decision unlike any other in history.

“No candidate’s ever been kept off the ballot for engaging in an insurrection, much less a presidential candidate, much less a former president,” he said. “So it’s just extraordinary.”

The decision puts intense pressure on the U.S. Supreme Court to act. A broad ruling by the high court would resolve the issue for all states.

In the short term, the Colorado ruling could influence courts and election officials in other states, he said. Other states have not taken such a step so far but may be willing to do so now that Colorado has acted, he said.

Section 3 of the [14^th] amendment barred people from office if they swore an oath to the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection. The measure was meant to keep former Confederates from returning to power.

Six Republican and independent voters from Colorado invoked the provision in a lawsuit this fall meant to keep Trump off the ballot.

“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” the majority wrote. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

Section 3 bars those who engage in insurrection from holding office and does not mention who can run for office. The majority rejected the idea that that meant the state could not keep candidates off the ballot who did not meet qualifications for serving as president, such as being at least 35 years old and being a U.S. citizen.

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Don't Believe Republican Fear Mongering on Crime

To listen to Republicans, not the least Donald Trump, one would believe that America finds itself with surging crime rates and that large cities in blue states are dangerous and crime ridden.  They propose draconian policies that all too often target black and brown citizens and play to the hatreds of the Republican Party base of evangelicals and white supremacists who are best defined by who they hate.  Meanwhile, actual crime data shows that crime rates are falling, crimes involving guns are highest in red states with little or no sensible gun control laws, and that almost all mass shootings are perpetrated by white males, many of whom have been influenced by right wing propaganda and websites. Why the disconnect from reality?  Perhaps two reasons: (i) spreading lies about crime frightens voters to back Republican candidates who promise to be "tough on crime" even as their opposition to gun control makes all of us less safe, and (ii) good news on crime garners less media attention that stories about rape, murder and car jackings with much of the mainstream media which has the attention span of a fruit fly. even as the right wing "news" outlets focus on stories to frighten their viewers.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the real data and underscores the dishonesty of Republican doomsayers.  Here are excerpts:

Rents, average monthly temperatures, grocery prices—most things in American life seem to be rising these days.

But not everything. In 2023, murder rates in the United States dropped at an astonishing rate, probably among the highest on record. That’s according to data gathered by Jeff Asher, an independent criminologist, from cities with publicly available numbers. In the sample of 175 cities, murder is down by an average of almost 13 percent this year.

And it’s not just murder. FBI data for the third quarter show that every category of crime except for motor-vehicle theft is down, some of them sharply, year over year from 2022. (As for the car thefts, they seem—in one of the weirdest data flukes you’ll ever see—to have been driven almost entirely by TikTok videos showing the ease of breaking into certain Kias and Hyundais.) Two years ago, as worries about soaring crime resounded, I wrote that America was in the midst of a violence wave, not a crime wave, as property crime continued to sink even while violent crime rose. Now America seems to be experiencing a peace wave.

“The quarterly data in particular suggests 2023 featured one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the United States in more than 50 years,” Asher wrote in his Substack newsletter.

The drop is unlikely to get the same attention that the increase did. Last month, Gallup found that the percentage of Americans who believe that crime in the United States is a very or extremely serious problem has risen sharply, from 54 to 63 percent, since fall 2021, when I noted the violence wave—even as most types of crime have declined over the same period.

The old adage is that if it bleeds, it leads: Lurid stories attract press coverage. More positive stories, such as the absence of crimes, are less likely to receive attention. This is bad news, so to speak, because mistaken impressions about how much crime is going on can lead policy makers and the public to embrace hasty or poorly considered policies, some of them with serious negative side effects. . . . reaction, rather than overreaction, should be the goal. Calibrating that is harder with inaccurate impressions.

“Citizens have only the mass media to rely on for information about the national crime picture, and that information is often alarmist, sensationalistic, and decontextualized,” Mark Warr, a sociologist who has studied the perception of crime, told me in 2021. “So crime nationally often looks much worse than it is.”

Dropping crime rates, and the perception (or misperception) of them, could be a factor in next year’s election. During the 2020 election, debates about policing were at the forefront, following the murder of George Floyd. . . . Donald Trump sought to emphasize “law and order”—or, rather, his vision of it—and instill fear in voters. Ahead of the 2022 midterms, some polling indicated that crime fears would badly damage Democratic candidates, though in the end Republicans severely underperformed.

Assuming he is the Republican presidential nominee, Trump is likely to once again run fear-based appeals on crime in 2024 . . . . If crime is not rising, the lack of headlines about rising crime could help Biden, but scanty coverage of falling crime could also limit the president’s gains. One quirk of the data is that Washington, D.C., where much of the press and the political establishment are based, is one of the few cities that has seen murder rise this year.

The drop in 2023 comes atop a 6 percent drop in 2022, according to statistics released by the FBI in October. . . . . Some voices, especially on the left, have hastened to note that even during the worst of the recent bad years, rates still sat below their peaks, in the 1980s. But for the majority of Americans born after 1981, who had seen falling national crime rates and historic lows for most of their lives, this was a jarring reversal.

[T]he specific reasons for the drop are also unclear. Part of it is that the conditions that seem to have led to the rise—including the Floyd protests and the pandemic—have eased. But actions taken by policy makers to quell crime may have also helped.

“There is no single trend that explains why violence might rise or fall in different places—for instance, Philadelphia has seen a sharp drop in violence this year, but a couple hours away is Washington D.C., one of the few cities where violence has risen,”

The exact details of the drop in crime won’t be known for months. The FBI releases its annual report on crime in the fall of the following year. Statistics collated by Asher, by Sharkey’s AmericanViolence.org, and by other groups are the best available and have to stand in for official figures. . . . That said, even without official FBI numbers, the 2023 drop is distinct enough to trust—and celebrate. 

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Sex Scandals and the Hypocrisy of the Far Right

If one wants to witness one of the most extreme, homophobic and unhinged gatherings each year, follow the  Conservative Political Action Conference where Christofascists, Christian dominionists, white supremacist and far right elements come together and engage in batshit crazy behavior and insist that Republicans come and swear fealty to the group's effort to forge a "Handmaiden's Tale" like future for America.   Overseeing the lunacy and sanctimonious posturing is CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp who like "Moms for Liberty - a/k/a Moms for Threeways - founder Bridget Ziegler who admitted having a menage a trois with her husband and another woman finds himself in a gay sex scandal, obviously not practicing what he preaches.  Even more damning is the fact that CPAC knew of Schlapp's forcing himself onto other males but looked the other way.  Sadly, this type of sex scandal spectacle is all too common among the leaders of the far right that preach one message of sexual Puritanism while ignoring it in their own lives.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the lawsuit filed against Schlapp for sexual assault. Here are article excerpts:

Officials overseeing the Conservative Political Action Conference knew about past accusations of sexual misconduct by chairman Matt Schlapp but failed to investigate or remove him from his powerful post, an amended sexual battery and defamation lawsuit claims.

In one alleged incident, during a fundraising trip to South Florida in early 2022, Schlapp was accused of stripping to his underwear and rubbing against another person without his consent, according to the filing. In 2017, at a CPAC after-party, Schlapp attempted to kiss an employee against his wishes, the lawsuit claims.

In both cases, according to the suit, the alleged victims reported the unwanted advances to staffers at CPAC’s parent organization, the American Conservative Union, but no action was taken against Schlapp, a longtime Republican power broker and prominent backer of former president Donald Trump.

The new allegations were added one week ago to a lawsuit filed in January by a former Republican campaign staffer, Carlton Huffman, who accused Schlapp of groping him in October 2022. The alleged additional victims are not identified and are not joining the suit; the court filing says their allegations were obtained through the discovery process.

Schlapp’s attorney, Benjamin Chew, did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.

The amended lawsuit adds to the financial and political pressures on the ACU, a standard-bearer of the conservative movement that has endured an exodus of board members, staffers and corporate sponsors amid mounting concerns about Schlapp’s leadership and financial stewardship. Schlapp and the ACU have not responded to the amended complaint in court yet.

The new complaint in Alexandria Circuit Court adds the American Conservative Union as a defendant and asks for an additional $3.7 million in punitive damages and costs. Previously, only Schlapp and his wife were named as defendants in the $9.4 million suit. ACU had paid more than $1 million in legal fees as of August, as the discovery process was in the early stages, according to a former board member’s resignation letter.

The lawsuit began in January when Huffman, a staffer on Herschel Walker’s U.S. Senate campaign in Georgia, alleged that Schlapp groped his crotch during a campaign trip to Atlanta last fall. Call logs, texts and videos provided by Huffman and his confidants to The Post and in his lawsuit broadly matched his account of quickly sharing the allegation with six family members and friends, and three Walker campaign officials confirmed to The Post that he told them about the alleged incident that night or the next day.

Schlapp, 55, has acknowledged going to two bars with Huffman that night but has denied any wrongdoing. Huffman initially filed the suit anonymously, and Schlapp’s allies accused him of trying to avoid scrutiny of his own record, which includes expressing extremist views on a white-supremacist blog and radio show more than a decade ago.

Meanwhile, the scandal and reaction against Bridget Ziegler and Moms for Liberty continues with Ziegler's hypocrisy being a target of constituents' wrath.   The New York Times looks at this scandal and hopefully the implosion of Moms for Liberty.    Here are article highlights:

Moms for Liberty, a national right-wing advocacy group, was born in Florida as a response to Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates. But it quickly became just as well known for pushing policies branded as anti-L.G.B.T.Q. by opponents.

So when one of its founders, Bridget Ziegler, recently told the police that she and her husband, who is under criminal investigation for sexual assault, had a consensual sexual encounter with another woman, the perceived disconnect between her public stances and private life fueled intense pressure for her to resign from the Sarasota County School Board.

“Most of our community could not care less what you do in the privacy of your own home, but your hypocrisy takes center stage,” said Sally Sells, a Sarasota resident and the mother of a fifth-grader, told Ms. Ziegler during a tense school board meeting this week. Ms. Ziegler, whose husband has denied wrongdoing, said little and did not resign. Ms. Sells was one of dozens of speakers who criticized Ms. Ziegler — and Moms for Liberty — at the meeting . . . .

Perhaps no group gained so much influence so quickly, transforming education issues from a sleepy political backwater to a rallying cry for Republican politicians. The organization quickly became a conservative powerhouse, a coveted endorsement and a mandatory stop on the G.O.P. presidential primary campaign trail.

Yet, as Moms for Liberty reels from the scandal surrounding the Zieglers, the group’s power seems to be fading. Candidates endorsed by the group lost a series of key school board races in 2023. The losses have prompted questions about the future of education issues as an animating force in Republican politics.

John Fredericks, a Trump ally in Virginia, said the causes that Moms for Liberty became most known for supporting — policies banning books it deemed pornographic, curtailing the teaching of L.G.B.T.Q. issues and policing how race is taught in schools — had fallen far from many voters’ top concerns.

“You closed schools, and people were upset about that. Schools are open now,” he said. “The Moms for Liberty really have to aim their fire on math and science and reading, versus focusing on critical race theory and drag queen story hours.”  He added: “It’s nonsense, all of it.”

Nearly 60 percent of the 198 school board candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty in contested races across 10 states were defeated in 2023, according to an analysis by the website Ballotpedia, which tracks elections.

Jon Valant, the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank, found in a recent study that the group had an outsize presence in battleground and liberal counties. Yet in those areas, the policies championed by Moms For Liberty are broadly unpopular.

“The politics have flipped on the Moms for Liberty, and they’re turning more people to vote against them than for them,” Mr. Valant said.

In November, the group announced that it had removed the chairwomen of two Kentucky chapters after they had posed in photos with members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence. That came several months after a chapter of Moms for Liberty in Indiana quoted Adolf Hitler in its inaugural newsletter. The year before, Ms. Ziegler publicly denied links to the Proud Boys after she had posed for a photo with a member of the group at her election night victory party.

Anne Pogue Donohue, who ran for a school board seat in Loudoun County, Va., against a candidate endorsed by the group, said she saw a disconnect between the cause of Moms for Liberty and the current concerns of voters.

“There is a pushback now,” she said. “Moms for Liberty focuses heavily on culture-war-type issues, and I think most voters see that, to the extent that we have problems in our educational system that we have to fix, the focus on culture-war issues isn’t doing that.”

[O]pponents have started showing up to school board meetings in force, trying to counter the group’s message — including in Sarasota, where Ms. Ziegler’s critics turned out to try to push her out.

The school board, which includes several conservatives who have aligned with Ms. Ziegler before, voted 4 to 1 on Tuesday for a nonbinding resolution urging her to resign; Ms. Ziegler was the only one on the board to vote against it.

One has to wonder why "conservatives" follow leaders who by their personal lives - think Jerry Falwell, Jr. - make a mockery of the causes they claim to support.  More impotently, they show their followers to be easily duped fools. 

Sunday Morning Male Beauty