El Paso Killer Echoed the Words of Conservative "Media Stars"

At work in the kitchen I will walk in and find on occasion that someone has set the TV to Fox News.  I typically turn it off or change thee channel rather that hear the lies and distortions spewing from the like of Laura Ingraham or other "stars" of the conservative media universe. Some of the things said are so outlandish that one has to wonder who believes the crap being said - certainly not the anchors who cannot possibly believe some of the things that are so far from even remotely true. The shooter in El Paso apparently not only listened to the lies but believed them and acted on them.  That's the conclusion in a piece in the New York Times that looks at the shooters "manifesto" and other writings.  Words have consequences, yet the shrills of Fox News and other conservative "news" sites care nothing about the potential for violence they are happily creating.  Just yesterday, the Orlando Sentinel reported as follows:

Richard D. Clayton, 26, of Winter Park, [a white supremacist] was arrested Friday after he posted threats to kill or do bodily harm on Facebook.  According to officials, the investigation began Tuesday after Clayton made a threat on Facebook saying: "3 more days of probation left then I get my AR-15 back. Don't go to Walmart next week." 

People are listening and some will frighteningly act in violent ways. Here are highlights from the Times piece: 

Tucker Carlson went on his prime-time Fox News show in April last year and told his viewers not to be fooled. The thousands of Central Americans on their way to the United States were “border jumpers,” not refugees, he said. “Will anyone in power do anything to protect America this time,” he asked, “or will leaders sit passively back as the invasion continues?”

When another group approached the border six months later, Ann Coulter, appearing as a guest on Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News show, offered a dispassionately violent suggestion about what could be done to stem the flow of migrants: “You can shoot invaders.”

A few days after, Rush Limbaugh issued a grim prognosis to his millions of radio listeners: If the immigrants from Central America weren’t stopped, the United States would lose its identity.

There is a striking degree of overlap between the words of right-wing media personalities and the language used by the Texas man who confessed to killing 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso this month. In a 2,300-word screed posted on the website 8chan, the killer wrote that he was “simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”

[H]is post contains numerous references to “invasion” and cultural “replacement” — ideas that, until recently, were relegated to the fringes of the nationalist right.

An extensive New York Times review of popular right-wing media platforms found hundreds of examples of language, ideas and ideologies that overlapped with the mass killer’s written statement — a shared vocabulary of intolerance that stokes fears centered on immigrants of color. The programs, on television and radio, reach an audience of millions.

“Calling it anything but an invasion at this point is just not being honest with people,” Laura Ingraham, host of “The Ingraham Angle,” said on her show on July 10. Days after the shooting, the “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade dismissed a connection between words used by the gunman and by President Trump, saying: “If you use the term ‘invasion,’ that’s not anti-Hispanic. It’s a fact.”

In the four years since Mr. Trump electrified Republican voters with slashing comments about Muslims and Mexicans, demonizing references to immigrants have become more widespread in the news media, the Times review found.

Sometimes the hosts are repeating [Trump's] the president’s signature phrases. Sometimes [Trump] the president appears to take his cues from television pundits. The cumulative effect is a public dialogue in which denigrating sentiments about immigrants are common.

Before the first groups of Central American migrants received heavy news media coverage in 2018, words like “invaders” or “invasion” were rarely used by American outlets. In the last year, the use of such terms has surged, with references to an immigrant “invasion” appearing on more than 300 Fox News broadcasts. The vast majority of those were spoken by Fox News hosts and guests, but some included clips of Mr. Trump using that language at rallies and other public appearances.

“It’s a bit of a vicious cycle,” said the conservative writer William Kristol, a Republican critic of Mr. Trump’s who has worked at Fox News and other networks. “Something is said on Fox News, and Trump repeats it, and that legitimizes it — and then someone else goes a little further.”

He added, “The use of what once would have been viewed as really extreme and inappropriate and sometimes conspiratorial, sometimes dehumanizing language is really striking.”

The Trump-friendly media world — from outlets like Sinclair Broadcast Group and The Drudge Report to platforms like Breitbart News and Gateway Pundit — has used similar incendiary rhetoric. At the start of the El Paso suspect’s screed, he refers to the “great replacement,” a white supremacist conspiracy theory based on a French book that claims the migration of minority groups can lead to a “genocide” of white culture.

The El Paso suspect, who confessed to the mass shooting last week, claimed in the document he posted to be defending against a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” The words “invasion” and “invaders” appear six times in the text, a stark parallel to the language heard on conservative television and talk radio today.

Before the El Paso shootings, others with deadly or hateful motives used the same language. 

The man who is alleged to have killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue last October had expressed his contempt for “invaders” before he opened fire on the congregation with an AR-15-style assault rifle, the authorities say. During the white supremacist demonstrations in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 that left one woman dead, marchers shouted, “You will not replace us.”

Lawrence Rosenthal, a professor at the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, said that the shared vocabulary of white nationalists and many prominent conservatives was chilling. “Where that intersects with the Republican Party today,” he added, “is the Republican argument that the Democrats are in favor of immigration because that will give them a permanent majority.”

The overlap between fringe ideology and the words of conservative talk show hosts is not accidental, critics say. “They’re putting that into the zeitgeist,” said Carl Cameron, the former chief political correspondent for Fox News, who is now working for a news aggregator aimed at a progressive audience, Front Page Live.

“Fox goes out and looks for stuff that is inherently on fire and foments fear and anger,” Mr. Cameron added.

Days after the El Paso massacre, Mr. Carlson said on-air that white supremacy was “actually not a real problem in America” and likened it to a “hoax.”

Be very afraid of the seeds these irresponsible shrills and self-promoters are sowing.  

Christian Activist Arrested At Pulse Memorial

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the Pulse massacre that left 49 dead and more than 50 people wounded (and countless more emotionally and psychologically scared).  And true to form a "Christian activist" showed up spewing hatred and bigotry - see the image above - and disrupting the memorial service.  As noted before, unless and until religious liberals loudly confront and condemn the hate groups and individuals - e.g., Family Research Counsel, Tony Perkins, Brian Brown, James Dobson, the Southern Baptist Convention, etc. - who traffic in such ugliness, they will continue to allow Christianity to be defined by these types of hate merchants.  Sometimes open confrontation is warranted.  Thankfully, the Orlando police intervened and arrested the "Christian" protesters.  Here are highlights from WFTV 9:

A man who protested outside Pulse nightclub Monday following a ceremony marking the anniversary of the attack was handcuffed by Orlando police.

Local officials and the community had just finished a remembrance ceremony at the venue, which honored the victims and first responders.

The man, who has not been identified, was part of a group of about three protesters holding anti-gay signs. The crowds chanted, “Love conquers hate,” as the man was placed in handcuffs.

With "Christians" like these protesters on constant display, it is no wonder that nearly one third of the under 30 generations have walked away from religion.  With Hampton Roads Pride events in full swing this week and this weekend, this incident is a reminder that many hate us because we challenge their myth and fairy tale based beliefs derived from Bronze Age herders in the case of Christians, and the writings of a mentally deranged individual in the case of Islam. 

On a more positive note, the Orlando Sentinel has a number of respectful articles on those who died and the experiences of survivors which can be found here.

Trump To Headline Anti-LGBT Hate Group Event

Remember how self-loathing "gays for Trump" have ridiculously claimed that Trump would be the better president when it comes to protecting gays?  That same Donald Trump is now going to be headlining a veritable hate fest of anti-gay Christofascists in Orlando just two months after the Pulse massacre.  Some of the attendees who will be at this gathering of religious extremists even went so far as to complain that the Pulse shooter didn't kill even more LGBT individuals. I'm sorry, but in my view, if you are a gay Republican you need to either pull your head out of your ass and/or seek a mental health intervention to over come your apparent internalized homophobia.  People for the American Way (which advocates for separation of church and state) had these remarks:

According to news reports today, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump will be attending an American Renewal Project event along with Sen. Marco Rubio later this week in Orlando, scheduled to take place exactly two months after the horrific Pulse nightclub shooting. The event includes some of the most extreme anti-gay activists in the country and is organized by an activist who has said that God would punish the country with “car bombs in Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Des Moines” for the LGBT-inclusive program at President Obama’s inauguration.

People For the American Way president Michael Keegan released the following statement:

“That the GOP standard bearer is choosing to rub shoulders with some of the most extreme anti-gay voices in the country speaks volumes about the Republican party today. These are people who revile gay people, calling them ‘demonic,’ and who claim that LGBT rights will lead to the ‘utter destruction’ of our country. But the GOP presidential candidate seemingly has no qualms about casting his lot with these dangerous anti-gay voices.”

 Right Wing Watch also looks at the foul gathering that Trump will be headlining.  Here are excerpts:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is scheduled to attend a radical anti-LGBT event in being held in Orlando this week exactly two months after the Pulse nightclub shooting, according to news reports from Jenna Browder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News.

As we reported last week, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and a host of anti-LGBT extremists are slated to address the “Rediscovering God in America” event, which is sponsored by the American Renewal Project.

Self-described “political operative” David Lane founded the American Renewal Project as a way to mobilize conservative Christian voters and inspire right-wing pastors to run for elected office. He told Jacobs that he intends to quiz Trump on how he plans to fight “homosexual totalitarianism” and the gay rights “militants.”

Lane, a vocal opponent of LGBT equality, has said that “homosexuals praying at the Inauguration” in 2012 would cause “car bombs in Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Des Moines, Iowa” as a sign of God’s judgment and that the “pagan onslaught” of the LGBT rights movement will lead to the destruction of America. 

Local lunatic and professional Christian parasite Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network lauded Trump for attending the hate fest.  Here are excerpts:

We have an exclusive to share with you: GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump will be speaking to hundreds of pastors this Thursday in Orlando, Florida. This is a private event sponsored by the American Renewal Project.

Trump will speak to them about his push to repeal the Johnson Amendment. The law, which has been in place for decades, has made it more difficult for pastors to speak out on political issues and candidates from the pulpit. We should also note that former presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio will also speak to pastors at the two-day event.

Events like this one will be crucial to Trump if he wants to beat Hillary Clinton. The reality is that evangelical pastors are a major key ingredient to mobilizing the masses. They hold great power over a captive audience every week in the pews. Trump needs them engaged. If they are, the flocks will typically follow.

The result? A bottom up approach that will affect turnout exponentially. The top down approach of receiving key endorsements won't do squat unless the evangelicals sitting in the pews are motivated.

Trump shouldn't assume that the anti-Hillary sentiment will be all he needs. No. He needs to do some work and by showing up in Orlando he's well on his way to striking evangelical gold.

Note how Trump wants to grant tax-exempt churches the right to engage in political activities.  Stated another way, Trump wants to force all taxpayers to indirectly subsidize the political activities of churches that seek to take away their civil rights.   

Marco Rubio To Headline Radical Anti-LGBT Event

While the dishonest and delusional Donald Trump continues to claim that he would be a protector of the LGBT community, Marco Rubio - always a self-prostituting sleaze back who makes real prostitutes look virtuous - is underscoring the GOP{'s real approach to LGBT Americans by headlining an event for anti-LGBT hate group Liberty Counsel.   Worse yet, Rubio - who has been rumored to have his own gay history - will be speaking in Orlando, the cite of the worse LGBT massacre in American history.   Right Wing Watch looks at this foul bigotry.  Here are excerpts:

When Marco Rubio cited the deadly attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando as a reason he was changing his mind and running for re-election to the U.S. Senate, many LGBT allies immediately noted that the Florida senator and failed presidential candidate has never been an ally of the LGBT community.

“To be using the tragedy in Orlando as a time to reflect on his Senate career, when his career and his promises on the campaign trail have been anti-LGBTQ consistently, it’s just staggering to think he would be using this moment for his own personal ambitions,” said Jay Brown of the Human Rights Campaign at the time.

It comes as no surprise, then, to see that Rubio is slated to address an event in Orlando next month that will feature some of the country’s most vehement anti-LGBT activists.

The Orlando-based Liberty Counsel Action, an extreme anti-LGBT group whose affiliate is famous for representing Kentucky clerk Kim Davis in her stand against the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision, announced in an email today that the Florida Renewal Project will be hosting an event called “Rediscovering God in America” in August. The event will be headlined by Rubio, who will speak alongside anti-LGBT activists David Barton, Bill Federer, Ken Graves and Mat Staver.

The Florida Renewal Project is an affiliate of conservative activist David Lane’s American Renewal Project, which hosts “Rediscovering God” conferences around the country.

The event will put Rubio in the company of some of the most extreme anti-gay activists in the country:

• David Lane, whose organization is hosting the event, believes that gay rights will lead to the “utter destruction” of the U.S. and “car bombs in Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Des Moines, Iowa.” (Learn more about David Lane here).

• Mat Staver, whose Liberty Counsel Action sent out the invitation to the event and who is scheduled to speak, has gained a national reputation by representing Davis and Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore through the affiliated Liberty Counsel. Last month, Staver denounced memorial gatherings for the victims of the Orlando nightclub attack as “homosexual love fests.” Staver has claimed that gay people are “demonic,” seek to abuse children and are similar to terrorists, and has warned that gay rights victories could lead to “forced homosexuality” and “another civil war.” At the same time, he has praised countries that outlaw same-sex relationships. (Learn more about Mat Staver here).

• David Barton, a Republican Party activist who styles himself as a historian, thinks that God is justly preventing a cure for HIV/AIDS because it is a divine “penalty” for homosexuality, and has lamented that public schools try to “force” students “to be homosexual” when homosexuality really should be regulated by the government. (Learn more about David Barton here).

• Maine pastor Ken Graves preaches against “militant homofascism” that he says “seeks to take over our land and make it Sodom” and argues that gay people cannot build happy families because they are “depressed.”

• Bill Federer, a Religious Right activist and conspiracy theorist, believes that gay rights are bringing about the Islamist takeover of America.

Rubio represents the true GOP and his views mirror those of the supporters of Donald Trump and anti-LGBT zealot, Mike Pence.  

•  

Hillary Makes Unannounced Visit to Pulse

Everything Donald Trump does is about self promotion and grabbing media attention - all to satiate his overweening narcissism.  Yesterday, Hillary Clinton demonstrated that sometimes she simply does what's right and decent without looking for media fanfare.  While many waited for her announcement of who would be here VP pick, Clinton without ceremony visited Pulse, the site of the Orlando massacre last week.  The New Civil Rights Movement looks at Clinton's visit.  Here are excerpts: 

While many across the nation have been anxiously or curiously awaiting the announcement of who Hillary Clinton will choose as her vice presidential running mate, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee spent the afternoon in an unannounced private meeting with family members and friends of the victims of the Orlando Pulse nightclub hate crime mass shooting terror attack. Clinton then spent the next hour holding a roundtable discussion with community leaders, including members of Equality Florida, and, as one reporter noted, "listening." 

Orlando commissioner Patty Sheehan, according to Buzzfeed's Ruby Cramer, told Clinton, "I want to thank you for not politicizing this, and for waiting until we were ready." 

Rather than playing politics, Clinton is now visiting the Pulse nightclub, to pay her respects and meet with first responders. In fact, this tweet from NBC News' Alex Seitz-Wald appears to show Clinton prioritized spending time with victims' loved ones and meeting with community leaders then visiting Pulse, rather than focus on her VP announcement.  Clinton laid white roses at the site.

Hillary may have her negatives, but the choice is clear that she must be elected in November to defeat the fascism and authoritarianism that that a Trump victory would unleash on America.  What continues to shock me is the manner in which some Sanders supporters still cannot get their heads out of their asses and realize the existential threat posed by Trump.   Really, you want to stay home and by default elect a man that might become America's Hitler?  Get over yourselves!!

Confronting Religion, The Source of Anti-LGBT Animus

I continue to feel a general malaise since the massacre at Pulse in Orlando, which has been followed by new assaults on LGBT Americans through the GOP's adoption of the most anti-LGBT platform EVER.  Now, this evening we have seen our own possibly American version of Hitler or Stalin accept the nomination as the Republican presidential nominee.   It is a frightening time to be an American.  It is perhaps even a more frightening time to be an LGBT American despite the strides that have been made in recent years.  Indeed, LGBT people will never be safe and fully equal until we and our allies confront the root cause of homophobia and anti-LGBT animus: religion, especially fundamentalist religions.  My August column in VEER Magazine - which is longer than usual - looks at this issue and what needs to be done.  Pick up a copy on local Hampton Roads newsstands.  For those who are not locals, the following are some excerpts from the column:

Like so many in the LGBT community, I have found myself profoundly shaken by the massacre last month at Pulse, a gay dance club in Orlando, Florida.  When my husband and I travel, we often enjoy going to local gay dance clubs in the cities that we are visiting, be it New York City, Key West, Ft. Lauderdale, or last year, a club called Raidd in Paris, France.  Though worlds apart in some ways such clubs have a common trait: they offer a refuge in a still too homophobic world.  They offer a place to dance, talk with friends and to have fun. While I had never visited Pulse, we know a number of people who had visited.  We also have a friend who lost someone he knew in the carnage that took place during the early hours of June 12, 2016.
 What happened at Pulse sadly could have happened at any gay club, including clubs here in Hampton Roads.  And, if one looks at history, over the years at least twenty five (25) attacks have taken place against gay clubs, although not on the scale of the Pulse massacre.  The most notable was in 1973 at the Upstairs Lounge in New Orleans where 32 individuals lost their lives. Closer to home, in 2000 an attack on the Backstreet Cafe in Roanoke, Virginia, one person died and six were wound.  The shooter's motivation in the Roanoke attack?  To kill some "faggots" - seemingly the same as that of the shooter in Orlando.   All of these incidents stand as a reminder that if one is LGBT, hatred toward you is always lurking in the hearts of those who would happily commit violence.   Conveniently for Republican politicians and those I call Christofascists, America's homegrown answer to the Taliban, to whom these Republican politicians regularly prostitute themselves, the shooter at Pulse pledged allegiance to ISIS.  This allowed them to quickly blame Islam and "radical Islamic extremists" and to ignore the root cause of homophobia and anti-LGBT animus in America: religion, especially fundamentalist Christianity. Numerous pastors and “professional Christians” like Pat Robertson and anti-gay hate group leaders Tony Perkins and James Dobson stepped forward to make this religious based animus all too visible following the Orlando tragedy.  Some of them implied that the gays and their allies who died at Pulse "deserved" what happened to them.  Others went further and even bemoaned the fact that there had been any survivors at all.  And some advocated for the government to execute LGBT citizens. Some statements even repeated the deliberate lie that most gays are pedophiles - in truth the vast majority of those who molest children are heterosexual males - and suggested the world was now safer for children.  At the same time that some American Christians were making their animus to LGBT people shockingly obvious, others engaged in strenuous efforts to avoid condemnation of Bible based anti-gay hatred even as they condemned that found in Islam.  . . . . . Nowhere does it mention the fact that Leviticus predated the Quran by roughly 2100 years.  The Quran and hadiths were not authored in a vacuum and, sadly, the misogyny of the Bible and in more recent centuries, Christian missionaries and colonial regimes found their way into Islam. Another effort to apologize for religious based hatred can be found in Pope Francis' comment to journalists that Christians and the Roman Catholic Church needed to "apologize to gays and should seek forgiveness from homosexuals for the way they have treated them."  The problem with Francis' nice words is that when he has had the opportunity to dramatically change Catholic dogma and doctrine on gays he has done nothing and backed down in a cowardly fashion to the ugliest homophobes in the Church hierarchy.  Likewise, Francis ignored his own past attacks against gays, equating gay marriage and adoption by gay couples with the work of the Devil, and declaring that gay marriage was a “destructive attack on God’s plan.” 

 We cannot allow these subterfuges and insincere apologies to succeed.  I hope the Orlando massacre has set the stage for a long overdue discussion about the role of Christianity in anti-gay animus.  Likewise, those I call the "good Christians" - i.e., akin the "good Germans" at the time of Hitler's rise to power – must face the complicity they bear in keeping anti-gay animus alive and well and socially acceptable.  I call this Christians "good Christians" because, like their German counterparts of roughly 85 years ago, they stand by silently as their churches and pastors preach anti-gay hatred even as they themselves claim to not agree with the anti-gay diatribes. Despite such protestations - almost always made in private conversations - these Christians continue to financially support the very same churches and "family values" organizations that daily promote hatred and reject modern knowledge while clinging to a few passages written roughly 3400-3500 years ago by unknown Bronze Age authors who would be deemed utterly ignorant by today's standards of knowledge.  

In my opinion, it is long past time that these "good Christians" cease being given a pass for their complicity in funding and supporting homophobic denominations, church hierarchies, and pastors.  They need to either become part of the solution or they need to be confronted for their role in keeping hate and homophobia alive.  Will these people like the confrontation?  Most assuredly not.  Like most of us, they will not like to be forced to candidly analyze their beliefs and/or cease their sheep like following of church leaders. The favored phrase of "love the sinner, hate the sin" needs to be challenged head on for the disingenuous lie that it is.  The implicit support of hate and homophobia must be challenged.  

However, "good Christians" are not the only ones who need to be held accountable.  The Republican Party needs to be held accountable for its role in cynically keeping anti-gay hatred alive and well and politically acceptable.  Over the last year, roughly two hundred (200) anti-gay bills have been introduced in states across America in reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court's same sex marriage ruling in 2015.  All of these bills have been almost unanimously backed by Republican elected officials only too happy to seek political favor at the expense of the lives and dignity of LGBT Americans. 

If you find yourself falling into the "good Christian" category, perhaps it's time to cease your silence.  Consider (i) speaking out against homophobes, (ii) confronting anti-LGBT clergy, and/or (iii) ceasing your financial contributions until your church ends its homophobic teachings (make sure the church leadership knows why you are taking the action).  If need be, find a new church that does not espouse homophobia and the marginalization of LGBT lives. Such actions may be scary and uncomfortable, but unless you take them, you will be complicit in the hatred and violence based on slavish adherence to a handful of Bible passages - even as the balance of Leviticus, including dictates against wearing clothes of two different fabrics, planting multiple crops, eating "unclean" foods and other supposed "abominations," are utterly ignored by Christian denominations.  

Hate Is A Public Health Emergency

As I listen to the ongoing batshitery at the Republican Party convention where a liar and sociopath was just nominated as the party's presidential nominee, one message comes through loud and clear from today's GOP: hate and bigotry underscores almost every aspect of the party platform.  Given that the GOP is now controlled by hate-filled Christofascists, white supremacists and insane conspiracy theory devotees, it should not come as a surprise.  The irony is that as Republican rail about all of the supposed problems in America, there is one common thread that powers much of it: hate.  And no one nowadays - with the possible exception of ISIS - does more to fuel and generate hate than the GOP and the right wing factions that support it.  Two physicians have co-authored a piece at Huffington Post that looks at how hate is now a public health emergency.  Here are highlights:

The massacre of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12 is the latest manifestation of violence as a public health emergency. A public health emergency, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is “an occurrence or imminent threat of an illness or health condition, caused by ...an epidemic... or ... highly fatal infectious agent ... that poses a substantial risk of a significant number of human facilities....” Violence is the “epidemic” and the “health condition” is disability, death, and trauma to families and neighborhoods.

So then what is the infectious agent? It is hate. And in the wake of this man-made disaster, we are left in the debris and horror of incalculable hatred.  . . . .It manifests itself as racism, homophobia, religious discrimination, sexism, ageism, and a whole host of other injustices.

Hate is not a feeling without consequence. Hatred causes deadly harm, with or without a gun. Hate enables us to judge people on who they love, how they express their gender, or the color of their skin. This creates barriers to health and wellbeing that are as violent as the damage done by a gun, knife, or bomb. It can lead to a quick death such as from gun violence or a chronic, slow, festering death that seeps the health out of our communities.

Hate can be expressed through policy and can evolve into hard-to-see structural biases. We see it expressed in the ban on blood donation for gay and bisexual men and in barriers to equal restroom access to for transgender people. These policies are a reflection of oppressive systems, that regularly ignore, insult, and stigmatize LGBTQI, Black, and Latino communities.

What should we do as medical and public health professionals to respond to this emergency? Most in the public health community know that ensuring good health is about more than promoting good behaviors. It requires supporting policy and structural changes to an inequitable social, political and economic system that results in gun violence and persistent health inequities.  But how do we address hate?

As a start, with intention and without fear, we must acknowledge that these -isms and phobias are a public health threat, just as real as a gun, a virus, or a bomb. Systems cannot wait to change organically. They must be pushed to change.

Public health and common sense dictate that imminent threats are not nursed with the hope that they will extinguish by neglect. Public health emergencies—and hate is a public health emergency—require aggressive and decisive action. Orlando is a wake-up call, an opportunity to say “never again,” not only to obvious acts of violence like the Pulse Nightclub massacre, but to the more subtle but equally lethal acts of violence fueled by every day, systemic hate.

The GOP's Insidious Calls for "Religious Freedom"

As noted previously, yesterday was the one month anniversary of the horrific massacre of 49 LGBT individuals and their friends and/or family members in Orlando.  These victims all died because of the hate-filled religious beliefs of the shooter who proclaimed that he supported the toxic religious agenda of ISIS.  Despite this reality, yesterday Congressional Republicans held hearings on a bill that would grant special rights to Christian extremists who hold anti-LGBT beliefs not all that different that those of the Orlando shooter.  Short of authorizing the murder of gays, the bill would place toxic anti-LGBT religious beliefs above the law.   A piece in The Advocate looks at this deadly and unconstitutional effort by Republicans.  It's a reminder of why no LGBT person should ever vote Republican until this anti-gay jihad of the GOP ceases. Here are article excerpts:

Though the bill's authors — anti-gay Republican Rep. Raúl Labrador of Idaho and GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah — refer to the bill as a "defense" of the First Amendment, the name is misleading. As ThinkProgress points out, the First Amendment does not allow religious people to arbitrarily discriminate against those they don't like, at least according to the Supreme Court. When right-wing Christians attempted to turn away mixed-race couples from their businesses, the high court intervened by ruling that religious beliefs don't trump the rights of others.

“The abuse of religious exemptions as a tactic for undermining civil rights advances is a classic pattern of civil rights progress in America,” Evan Wolfson, the founder of Freedom to Marry and a key architect of the legal and cultural strategy that won marriage equality, told The Advocate. “In the '50s and the '60s and the '70s and the '80s, whether it was with racial minorities or women or other steps forward — including now gay and transgender people — when the opponents of civil rights progress fail to stop an advance, they then try to circumvent it.”

FADA is an endgame to the state strategy of "religious freedom" bills; one that will likely fail. Take Mississippi, for example. The Magnolia State passed a "religious freedom" bill in April that legalized discrimination, but a federal judge struck it down just before it went into effect.

This is how District Court Judge Carlton Reeves put it in his ruling: “The United States Supreme Court has spoken clearly on the constitutional principles at stake. Under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, a state ‘may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another.’” 

Reeves said the Mississippi law “grants special rights to citizens who hold one of three ‘sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions’ reflecting disapproval of lesbian, gay, transgender, and unmarried persons. That violates both the guarantee of religious neutrality and the promise of equal protection of the laws.”

[T]he White House said in a statement, "It's disturbing that Congressional Republicans plan to hold a hearing tomorrow on discriminatory, anti-LGBT legislation. President Obama remains firmly committed to promoting and defending the equal rights of all Americans, including the rights of LGBT Americans."

Regardless of whether FADA passes, the timing of the hearing is a clear expression of the animus that still exists toward LGBT people in the Republican-controlled Congress.

House GOP Holds Hearing to Legalize Discrimination on One Month Anniversary of Pulse Massacre

Anti-LGBT bigot, GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz

One thing about today's Republican Party is that it never passes on an opportunity to make it perfectly clear to LGBT Americans that they hate us and will do all in their power to grant special rights to Christofascists to mistreat us under the ruse of "protecting religious liberty."  Their idea of religious loberty, of course only favors Christofascists and all those of other faiths and beliefs are basically told to go to Hell.   Particularly foul are today's hearings before Congressional Republicans on the falsely named "First Amendment Defense Act," a pet project of leading anti-gay hate groups.  Blogger friend Bil Browning looks at this foul exercise in bigotry.  Here are excepts:

One month after the mass shooting in Orlando at a gay nightclub, congressionalRepublicans are holding a committee hearing to discuss legalizing discriminationagainst LGBT people. Despite repeated calls from fellow lawmakers, activists, and civil rights organizations, chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) refused to cancel or postpone the hearing.

The hearing will focus on the so-called “First Amendment Defense Act” which would allow businesses and individuals to discriminate against LGBT people if they cite their religious beliefs. Conservative Christian organizations and activists have been clamboring for special exemptions from civil rights laws since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

“This hearing is nothing more than an election-year stunt to rally conservatives at the expense of LGBT Americans,” said Equality Act sponsor and LGBT Equality Caucus Co-Chair Rep. David Cicilline (RI-1). “Let’s be clear – there is no religious basis to deny basic rights and liberties to someone based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Period.”

“The Orlando tragedy on June 12 was a time of heartbreak for millions around the world and the worst attack on the LGBT community in our nation’s history,” said Obergefell. “Today, exactly one month after this horrifying event, this hearing is deeply hurtful to a still-grieving LGBT community.

Jim Obergefell, lead plaintiff in the 2015 same sex marriage ruling will testify.  His pre-written testimony can be found here at the ACLU website.

Quote of the Day: The Violence of Silence

Since the Orlando massacre at club Pulse, I have truly had my fill of "good Christians" and others who stand by and allow bad things to happen in part because of their silence and refusal to take a moral stand.   Be it homophobia, anti-black racism or other forms of bigotry, if one does not subscribe to such misogyny, you have a duty to speak out and oppose these foul forces in society.  Silence becomes complicity.  In a piece in the National Catholic Reporter, Sr. Jeannine Gramick, a member of the Loretto Sisters, a Catholic order of nuns that has ministered to LGBT individuals  - often much to the extreme displeasure and censure of of the Vatican - sums up this violence of silence.  Here are some of the most powerful excerpts:

One kind of violence not often recognized is the violence of silence. After the Orlando massacre, some in our church were guilty of this kind of violence. Headlines the world over noted that the shooting took place in a gay club, but statements released by the Vatican press office, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Orlando's bishop conspicuously passed over references that the people targeted were lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Some bishops issued no statement at all.

Silence is violence when, as in this instance, it denies the existence of a whole category of people, people who have been targeted with physical violence because of who they are. If I don't acknowledge your existence, I do not need to recognize your rights; I do not see that you need added protections. Furthermore, I am unable to know you or to relate to you in a meaningful way.

"Silence=Death," the slogan of AIDS activists in the 1980s, not only questioned President Ronald Reagan's silence about the disease, it also boldly declared that, as a matter of survival, silence about the repression of LGBT people must end. The violence of silence kills.

Would more Catholics had the spine and backbone of Sr. Jeannine.

Orlando: The Complicity of Christians

I realize that I have beaten this horse a great deal recently, but given the batshitery just noted in Maine in the previous post, the time has come when Christians who continue to support anti-LGBT churches MUST be confronted with their complicity in anti-LGBT discrimination, animus, and, yes, the murder of LGBT individuals.  No longer can these people be given a pass and allowed to speak out of both sides of their mouths.  They have a moral choice to make: they must renounce the religious based bigotry and cease funding anti-LGBT churches and organizations.  They need to grow the balls and spine to demand that their respective churches end their anti-LGBT policies and positions now, or they need to walk away.  Doing the morally correct thing often brings discomfort with it, but this Christian complicity needs to end.  I came across this lengthy piece written by a Methodist minister that looks at Christian complicity in anti-LGBT animus and atrocities.  Here are some excerpts:

The horrific massacre of 49 people and wounding of 53 more at Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando confronted certain Christian leaders with the dreadful reality that their own denominations might be complicit. The possibility that their Biblically-based anti-homosexual beliefs and discriminatory practices could have contributed to the anti-LGBTQ climate inviting such shocking violence was too repulsive for them to consider. Thus they responded with denial — and compassion.

Yet the reality of their complicity must be acknowledged and transformed, if LGBTQ persons are going to feel safe and be themselves in nightclubs – and in sanctuaries. The reality of Christian complicity must also be confronted if Jesus’ fundamental teaching, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” is to include everyone – rather than be perverted by denominational beliefs that brand certain neighbors as “incompatible” (United Methodist Church), “objectively disordered” (Catholic Church), or engaging in a “sinful” not “valid alternative lifestyle” ( Southern Baptist Convention).

While the 6,000 SBC messengers “regard those affected by this tragedy as fellow image-bearers of God and our neighbors,” they could not bring themselves to identify their “neighbors” as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender persons, which leads to another enacted resolution.

In the face of the shocking violence in Orlando just days earlier, The Southern Baptist Convention messengers, representing some 6,000 local churches, adopted a resolution ‘ON BIBLICAL SEXUALITY AND THE FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE.’ This resolution reaffirms the biblical statement that “marriage is between one man and one woman ordered by God,” and rejects same-sex marriage, legalized by the Supreme Court in 2015, as it “does violence to the Constitution and is contrary to the Bible and natural order.” The resolution favors the enactment of religious freedom laws that protect the conscience of Christians, by giving them the right to discriminate against persons whose lifestyle conflicts with their anti-LGBTQIA biblical beliefs.

Something else is going on among Christian leaders of anti-LGBTQIA denominations when prayer is their primary response to the Orlando shootings. Their refusal to acknowledge and confront their own denomination’s complicity in creating an anti-gay climate,  . . . .  they are compensating for their comfortable commitment to the status quo. . . . The moral posture of folding one’s hands and doing nothing.

The horrible violence against LGBTQIA persons at the Pulse gay nightclub led the Vatican to issue a statement, which began, “The terrible massacre that has taken place in Orlando, with its dreadfully high number of innocent victims, has caused in Pope Francis, and in all of us, the deepest feelings of horror and condemnation, of pain and turmoil before this new manifestation of homicidal folly and senseless hatred.”

Various Christian leaders used the word “senseless” to describe the horrific attack in Orlando. If the massacre of gay nightclub partygoers is defined as “senseless,” the complicity of Christian leaders and their anti-gay denominations disappears.

Florida Catholic Bishop Robert Lynch is one of the few Catholic bishops reported to have acknowledged the complicity of the Catholic Church in the massacre of people in the Pulse gay nightclub. To him, they were not “objectively disordered” second class church members. He wrote, “Sadly it is religion, including our own, which targets, mostly verbally, and also often breeds contempt for gays, lesbians and transgender people.”

The United Methodist Church engages in forked tongue theology by calling homosexuals “individuals of sacred worth, created in the image of God,” and in the next breath rejects their integral identity in declaring that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” (Ibid) The practice of discrimination with a straight face. In reality, LGBTQIA United Methodists are relegated to an inferior position, and forced to ride in the back of United Methodism’s family bus — never behind the steering wheel.

But biblically-based and culturally indoctrinating homophobia dies hard. Just two months ago, the General Conference of The United Methodist Church met in Portland, Oregon, and continued its four decades-long practice of kicking the can of real inclusion down the road: another commission was formed to study The Book of Discipline’s discriminatory positions on homosexuality.

My July, 2016, VEER Magazine column looks at the issue of Christian complicity.  I am sure that many of the "godly folk" will be offended.  They need to be offended and forced to open their eyes and face the reality of their actions. 

Pope Francis Can Begin By Apologizing For His Own Hateful Words

I have been highly critical of Pope Francis' statement that the Catholic Church needs to apologize to gays for they way the Church has mistreated them (he also named other groups mistreated by the foul old men in dresses at the Vatican).  I will take another swing at the issue in my July column in VEER Magazine.  Over at Huffington Post, Michelangelo Signorile has a great column that takes Francis to task for not just for the Church's past demonetization of - and at times out right murder of  - gays but also for his own misdeeds while Cardinal Bergoglio in Argentina.  I will not be holding my breath for a real, heartfelt apology  from Pope Francis.  Here are highlights from Michelangelo's column: 

Last week the media gave a lot of attention to Pope Francis agreeing that the Catholic Church owed an apology to gays. But his statement, while positive on its face, deflected from horrendous remarks Francis himself made in the past and which he can and should personally apologize for right now. Before diving into that, however, let’s review Francis’s journey on the issue of homosexuality since he became pope in 2013.

Francis stayed silent as country after country in Europe and the Americas legalized marriage for gays and lesbians over the past few years, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Pope Benedict, who railed against Spain when it was out front on marriage equality in 2005; he even traveled there to speak out against it. And then came Francis’s “Who am I to judge?”response to a question about a gay priest, and several other comments that indicated his emphasis would be different.

Like an artful politician, however, Francis has seemed to play to his audiences. Six months into his papacy he told a fellow Jesuit interviewer for a Jesuit journal that he is not a “right-winger” and criticized those in the church who had become “obsessed” with gay marriage and abortion. But then in January of last year it was Francis who seemed obsessed with the issue while speaking to an audience in the Philippines, a traditional Catholic country, suggesting that gay marriage threatens families.

And now these new comments from the pope last week have reverberated after he was asked about a German cardinal’s opinion that, in light of the Orlando mass shooting at the Pulse LGBT nightclub in Orlando, the church should apologize to gays.

Francis agreed that the church owed an apology to gays, and it drew headlines around the world. He repeated his “who are we to judge?” line, though was was careful to add in that the church should apologize to a lot of groups, which mitigated his statement somewhat . . . . Nonetheless, it was a major statement — enough to drive anti-LGBT forces into a frenzy. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League emphatically said “No!” when asked if he agreed with his pope that gays deserved an apology.

LGBT Catholic groups, however, were right to criticize the pope for saying nothing of church doctrine that condemns homosexuality as “intrinsically disordered” — and pointed to the fact that young people, including LGBT people, are taught this from a young age and that teachers in Catholic schools are fired if found to be gay. Francis referred to the catechism to back his stance that gays shouldn’t be discriminated against, yet it is that same catechism that condemns homosexuality — and it needs to be re-written.

That’s an immense undertaking that he likely doesn’t have the will for — if it could even be done at all in the current climate at the Vatican.  One thing, however, that the pope could easily do is apologize for his own harsh and, yes, violence-inciting words about gays when he was Cardinal Bergoglio in Argentina in 2010.

As the Argentine government was moving to legalize marriage for gays and lesbians, Bergoglio was quietly lobbying for civil unions instead, having spoken to at least one gay activist, realizing that the rights gays were deprived of were real and knowing that he and the church couldn’t support marriage.

When that didn’t work, and the government made it clear it was moving forward on marriage, Bergoglio did what the Vatican expected of him and which, like a politician, he knew he likely had to do if he were ever to have a shot at becoming pope in Benedict’s Vatican: He issued an ugly, earth-scorching attack against gays, equating gay marriage and adoption by gay couples with the work of the Devil, and declared that gay marriage was a “destructive attack on God’s plan.”

Those kinds of words are the kind that killers of gay people take solace in. Those are the words that empower those who bash gays, and those who fire gays from their jobs. And those are the kinds of words that Francis clearly is saying the church must apologize for. If it’s not those words, after all, then what exactly is Francis referring to?

So, Francis didn’t have to say the “church” should apologize, and thus distance himself from an institution that, though he leads it, he likely rightly sees as difficult to change. All he had to do was say, “I apologize” for the harsh words that “I’ve made,” in the name of the church by equating gay people with evil — words that inspire those who would do harm to LGBT people.

Rather than wait for “the church” to make the apology for which he called — which could take eons — he could still make that personal apology himself right now.

Was Orlando Straight America’s Stonewall?

Like so many in the LGBT community, I continue to feel the lasting effects of the Orlando massacre that brought out in the open the hatred the LGBT community faces daily.  As my husband has said, that could have been us had we been in Orlando visiting and looking for a fun dance club to visit. And it could have been any gay/gay friendly bar across the country.   While a wake up call to those of us who are LGBT, as noted in a piece in Huffington Post, one can ope that what happened at Pulse on June 12, 2016, will over time prove to be the seminal act of terror/horror that gave straight America the wake up call that it needed to recognize its own complicity in the slaughter.  In my view, there needs to be a much larger discussion of religion's role in fomenting homophobia and the responsibility borne by "good Christians" who fail to forcefully confront - and hopefully over time, silence - the purveyors of anti-LGBT hatred who continue to stand in pulpits across America.  The truth is that Christianity is the wellspring from which homophobia was globalized.  The following are highlights from the HuffPo piece on how Orlando will make a lasting difference:

President Obama made history last Friday by conferring national monument status upon the site of the Stonewall Rebellion. As of yesterday’s dedication, Stonewall became the first national monument commemorating an event in LGBT history. That the president took this step with the nation still reeling from the antigay massacre in Orlando highlights how the two events — Stonewall and Orlando — are intertwined as major inflection points in the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality.

The mass shooting at Orlando’s gay nightclub Pulse jolted straight Americans in much the same way that 1969’s Stonewall Rebellion accelerated the LGBT rights movement. Like Stonewall, Orlando catalyzed a collective self-reckoning and resolve for progress. But unlike Stonewall and the other anti-LGBT attacks that followed it in the decades since, Orlando’s aftershocks have rocked all of America - most notably Straight America - and not just LGBTs.

No LGBT American needed yet another reminder of the dangers we face on a daily basis. Orlando was not the first mass murder motivated by antigay hate.  . . . Many LGBT Americans have been the victims of violent crimes motivated by antigay or antitrans animus. In fact, the FBI classifies LGBT Americans as significantly more likely than any other minority - including Latinos/as and African-Americans - to be targeted by hate crimes.

So, while the Orlando mass shooting was horrifying to LGBT people, it did not necessarily surprise us. It was anti-gay violence and hate of the kind to which we have grown accustomed. We have learned to coexist with precarity, and walk the netless high wire that outness often entails.

Orlando’s aftermath, however, has differed materially from that of prior anti-gay mass hate crimes. This time, LGBT Americans were not left to mourn alone. To the contrary, there has been a loud, sustained, and unprecedented outcry by straightpeople condemning what happened in Orlando - and not solely as a mass shooting of unprecedented magnitude, but as an expressly and intolerably antigay mass hate crime.

Some statements rang hollow, like those from politicians and religious leaders known for trafficking in antigay hate in exchange for votes or donations. But a great many came across as sincere and heartfelt.

Some of the boldest displays of solidarity came from corners not usually known to be welcoming, nevermind attuned, to the LGBT community. Sports, for example. 

Teresa Jacobs, the mayor of Orange County, FL, which includes Orlando City, at the Lake Eola vigil that drew 50,000 straight and LGBT mourners lamented that the straight majority’s indifference to homophobia’s ubiquity helped the Orlando Massacre happen. She said: “We failed them when we were insensitive....and we failed them when we knew it was wrong, and we did nothing.” She observed that her “generation and the generations before were indoctrinated with beliefs and messages that fostered and perpetuated hate and prejudice, sometimes intentionally....” She called “on every member of our straight community to open their hearts to acceptance, to embrace diversity, and to cherish our differences.”

Slate’s J. Bryan Lowder reported from Orlando that “[a] number of queer folks [he] spoke with...observed that, in the wake of the tragedy, straight people in their lives seemed to be experiencing a kind of revelation about how precarious and stressful being LGBTQ still is in America.” He quoted one person as saying, “people are getting woke, right?” . . . . Many straight Americans arrived at these distressing realizations in Orlando’s wake, after having been lulled into the false reassurance that last year’s nationwide marriage equality victory represented the full normalization of gay life. 

This heightened interweaving of Straight with LGBT America cultivated the familiarity and empathy demonstrated so vividly, everywhere, over the last two weeks. It rendered the Orlando Massacre a catalytic event in LGBT history - as a straight counterpart to Stonewall. It is a watershed moment that is accelerating progress in the LGBT movement by raising awareness, activating countless new straight allies, and mainstreaming demands for full LGBT equality.

Orlando’s aftermath has recruited legions of new straight allies to the LGBT movement. The LGBT civil rights movement is no longer a movement for and by LGBT Americans. It is an American movement. For and by all of us.

I hope the author's prediction proves right.  Meanwhile, we in the LGBT community need to keep the pressure up on  the many new straight allies and help to focus efforts on destroying the roots of homophobia in America: toxic religion and shameless Republican politicians who use anti-LGBT animus literally daily to promote themselves with the hate-filled Christofascists.