Pete Buttigieg and Husband Make History on Cover of TIME

Even as the Trump/Pence regime announces yet another attack on LGBT Americans through a regulation that would allow "Christian" healthcare workers - perhaps even ambulance drivers - to refuse to treat LGBT patients and others who offend their religious sensibilities, something remarkable has happened.  Pete Buttigieg and his husband (to the abject horror and character assassination attempts of Christofascists and those who prostitute themselves to them politically) have made the cover of Time Magazine with a caption  "First Family."  Where Buttigieg's campaign will go is anyone's guess as more and more Democrats, many totally unknown to the general public, throw their hats in the nomination ring.    Here are some excerpts from a very lengthy story:  

As Pete Buttigieg addressed supporters off a back porch in Marshalltown, Iowa, the Devil was whispering his name. “Pete,” the Devil hissed into a microphone. “You’re sooo smart, Pete.”

Buttigieg ignored the heckler, plowing forward with his stump speech about American decency as his husband ­Chasten looked on. “Pete,” the Devil whispered. “I want the heartland, Pete.”

The man in the devil costume was Randall Terry, an antiabortion activist. He had traveled to Iowa to torment the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., the early breakout star of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

Four years after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed his right to marry, Buttigieg has become the first openly gay person to make a serious bid for the presidency. And Terry is hardly the only right-winger worried about the rise of “Mayor Pete.” Buttigieg’s saying that “God doesn’t have a political party” prompted evangelical leader Franklin Graham to tweet that being gay is “something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized.” Concerned by the campaign’s rise, right-wing provocateur Jacob Wohl was recently caught trying to fabricate sexual-­assault allegations against Buttigieg to slow him down.

But to some Americans, Buttigieg may just be the man to vanquish America’s demons. In a field of more than 20 ­candidates­—including six Senators, four Congressmen, two governors and a former Vice ­President—Buttigieg (pronounced Boot-edge-edge) has vaulted from near total obscurity toward the front of the Democratic pack, running ahead of or even with more established candidates and behind only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

Buttigieg is a gay Episcopalian veteran in a party torn between identity politics and heartland appeals. He’s also a fresh face in a year when millennials are poised to become the largest eligible voting bloc. Many Democrats are hungry for generational change, and the two front runners are more than twice his age.

But Buttigieg’s greatest political asset may be his ear for languages. He speaks eight, including Norwegian and Arabic, but he’s particularly fluent in the dialect of the neglected industrial Midwest. Buttigieg is a master of redefinition, a translator for a party that has found it increasingly difficult to speak to the voters who elected President Donald Trump. The son of an English professor and a scholar of linguistics, he roots his campaign in an effort to reframe progressive ideas in conservative language. “If the substance of your ideas is progressive but there’s mistrust about them among conservatives, you have three choices,” Buttigieg tells TIME, sitting on his living-room couch in South Bend. “One is to just change your ideas and make them more conservative. The second is to sort of be sneaky and try to make it seem like your ideas are more conservative than they are. And the third, the approach that I favor, is to stick to your ideas, but explain why conservatives shouldn’t be afraid of them.”

His platform is “Freedom, Security and Democracy,” which wouldn’t sound out of place coming from a Bush-era Republican yet actually harks back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But in order to maintain his momentum, Buttigieg will have to do more to flesh out those ideas. Unlike many of his opponents, he hasn’t posted any detailed policy proposals on his website. He’ll also have to convince Democratic voters that his experience running South Bend (pop. 102,245) is adequate preparation for running the world’s most powerful country. And he’ll have to make inroads with black and Hispanic voters who have so far appeared unimpressed with his campaign.

Buttigieg likes to say he has more government experience than Trump, and more military ­experience than any ­President in 25 years. And Trump’s victory in 2016 proved that many Americans were willing to elect a President without a traditional Washington résumé. But some voters long for stability after three years of chaos, and it’s not clear whether the Trump presidency has made it easier or harder for outsiders.

In many ways, Buttigieg is Trump’s polar opposite: younger, dorkier, shorter, calmer and married to a man. His success may depend on whether Democrats want a fighter to match Trump, or whether Americans want to “change the channel,” as Buttigieg puts it. “People already have a leader who screams and yells,” he says. “How do you think that’s working out for us?”

Buttigieg met Chasten Glezman, then a Chicago grad student, on the dating app Hinge in 2015. They talked over FaceTime for a few weeks before Chasten drove to South Bend for their first real date, at an Irish bar famous for its Scotch eggs. Less than three years later, Pete proposed in gate B5 of Chicago’s O’Hare airport, the exact spot where Chasten had first noticed his dating profile.

Both men grew up closeted in conservative Midwestern communities. “Being gay was not culturally acceptable where I grew up, mostly for a lack of understanding,” Chasten says. “And so my family and I were just at a crossroads, and we didn’t really know how to talk to one another.” When he came out after his senior year of high school, tensions at home forced him to spend months crashing on friends’ couches and sleeping in his car. His parents ultimately changed their minds, welcomed him back home and now fully support their son and his marriage.

It was a sign of how rapidly public opinion on LGBTQ issues has changed. In 1996, only 27% of Americans supported same-sex marriage; today 67% do, including 44% of Republicans. Some of Buttigieg’s fellow officers who had used gay as an epithet in his presence reached out to express their support. “I bet some of them still go back and tell gay jokes because that’s their habit, you know?” he says. “Bad habits and bad instincts is not the same as people being bad people.”

All this informs his belief that it’s still possible to reach across America’s political divide. “We’ve got to get away from this kill-switch mentality that we see on Twitter,” he says. He has seen once disapproving parents dance at their gay son’s wedding and homophobic military officers take back their words, and so he believes in the power of redemption and forgiveness. “This idea that we just sort people into baskets of good and evil ignores the central fact of human existence, which is that each of us is a basket of good and evil,” he says. “The job of politics is to summon the good and beat back the evil.”

Other black leaders in South Bend say Buttigieg listened to the concerns of the community and adjusted when he was wrong. “I trust him,” says Stacey Odom, founder of a local organization that helps families on the West Side repair their homes. “I asked him for five different things, and he gave them all to me.” Buttigieg created an office of Engagement and Economic Empowerment to help address the wealth gap, and issued an executive order on diversity and inclusion in response to local demands, Williams-Preston said. When local leaders asked for $3.5 million to renovate the Charles Black community center, Buttigieg came up with $4.5 million, according to ­Cynthia Taylor, the center’s director. “You’re gonna have to invite him in, you’re gonna have to sit him down, you’re gonna have to show him the issue,” she says. “Because he definitely will listen.”

Buttigieg’s sexuality has imbued his campaign with a sense of historical promise. After the valedictorian at Brigham Young University, a conservative Mormon school, came out as gay in his commencement speech in April, he cited Buttigieg as his inspiration. (“I know that kid is going to make it easier for somebody else,” Buttigieg told BuzzFeed News.) Buttigieg’s campaign has also gotten a boost from a network of wealthy LGBT donors.

The millennial mayor’s call for generational change could also prove to be a powerful one. Even as young voters stay enamored with Sanders, older voters seem attracted to Buttigieg’s youth: according to an April 29 Morning Consult survey, his highest polling numbers come from baby boomers. “I like the idea of a millennial,” says Alice Mayer, 62, who voted for Sanders in 2016, as she waited for Buttigieg’s speech in South Bend. “He’s looking at the future, while Bernie’s been there, done that.”

Far-Right Tries to Slime Pete Buttigieg with False Sex Assault Claim

Jacob Wohl, one of the sleaze masters in the plot against Buttigieg.

I guess in some ways it was to be expected given the far rights hatred of gays, willingness to engage in personal destruction of opponents, and relentless willingness to lie, yet the brazenness of some of the sleaziest elements of the far right right to fabricate false claims of sexual assault against Pete Buttigieg is nonetheless stunning.  It s also instructive that among the "news outlets" that sought to quickly disseminate the lie was Big League Politics which played a leading role on the attacks on state wide Democrat office holders here in Virginia back in early February (others involved were crackpot conspiracy sites: Infowars and Gateway Pundit). The thankfully, unsuccessful effort is ironic for two reasons: (i) it is Republicans elected officials and right wing preachers that seemingly are the assault perpetrators in 99 out of 100 cases, and (ii) Buttigieg seeming is everything Trump - and most Republican congressional figures is not  - a military veteran, academically brilliant, versed in foreign languages, and has a guiding morality and decency.  In any event, the plot fell apart because when right wing sleaze masters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman tried to recruit young men to falsely claim they were sexually assaulted by Buttigieg, one of them recorded their conversation and  and gave it to The Daily Beast.  Here is more from The Daily Beast:

A pair of right-wing provocateurs are being accused of attempting to recruit young Republican men to level false allegations of sexual assault against Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

The details of the operatives’ attempt emerged as one man suddenly surfaced with a vague and uncorroborated allegation that Buttigieg had assaulted him. The claim was retracted hours later on a Facebook page appearing to belong to the man. A Republican source told The Daily Beast that lobbyist Jack Burkman and internet troll Jacob Wohl approached him last week to try to convince him to falsely accuse Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, of engaging him sexually while he was too drunk to consent.

The source who spoke to The Daily Beast said Burkman and Wohl made clear that their goal was to kneecap Buttigieg’s momentum in the 2020 presidential race. The man asked to remain anonymous out of a concern that the resulting publicity might imperil his employment, and because he said Wohl and Burkman have a reputation for vindictiveness.

[T]he source provided The Daily Beast with a surreptitious audio recording of the meeting, which corroborates his account. In it, Wohl appears to refer to Buttigieg as a “terminal threat” to President Donald Trump’s reelection next year.

Neither Burkman nor Wohl responded to repeated requests for comment on this story.  But after The Daily Beast contacted them last week, traces of the scheme disappeared from the web and social media.

On Monday, a separate individual using the name of Hunter Kelly published a post on the site Medium in which he alleged that Buttigieg sexually assaulted him in February. That post was tweeted out by David Wohl, Jacob’s father, and quickly re-written by the site Big League Politics, which is known as a landing ground for right wing conspiracy theories.

Kelly’s supposed Medium and Twitter accounts both say they were created this month. His Facebook page includes several posts lauding Trump and criticizing Hillary Clinton.
The Daily Beast reached out to Kelly on a cell phone listed to him in the student directory at his  Michigan college. Told we were reporting on apparent efforts by Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman to drum up false sexual assault allegations against Buttigieg, Kelly replied, “I was unaware this was happening. But yes it is true.”

Kelly wrote that he did not control the newly-created Medium and Twitter accounts that posted the allegations under his name. When asked if he could verify his identity, he texted the Daily Beast a selfie that matched the photo seen on Medium and on Kelly’s longstanding Facebook accounts.

“Here is a selfie of me, sorry I have been crying,” he wrote. “Today and the promises made didn’t go as planned.”

Kelly declined to provide more details. But two hours later he posted a message to his Facebook timeline headed, “I WAS NOT SEXUALLY ASSAULTED.”

Again, it is ironic that the Christofascist and right wing trolls like Wohl and Burkman see Buttigieg as some sort of existential threat - most likely because he shines a light on their rank hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy, as well as that of Trump. 

Doug Jones’s Gay Son Stares Down Homophobic Mike Pence

One of the ironies of the Alabama special election last month in Alabama is that not only does Alabama now have a Democrat in the U.S. Senate, but that new senator has an openly gay son, something Roy Moore attacked Doug Jones on repeatedly.  At his father's swearing in ceremony, Jones' son attended and stared down Mike Pence, a virulently homophobic individual who has done all in his power to harm LGBT citizens throughout his political career.   The Advocate looks at the confrontation:

In a triumphant turn of events last month, voters elected Democrat Doug Jones to the U.S. Senate seat in Alabama over accused sexual predator and known homophobe Roy Moore. Shortly after the win, Jones’s son — Carson Jones — who at the time said he “couldn’t be prouder” of his dad, confirmed to The Advocate that he's gay. 

On Wednesday, Carson Jones stood side-by-side with his dad as his father took the Senate oath of office, administered by virulently homophobic VP Mike Pence.  Shortly after, Carson Jones, who goes by TheDapperZookeeperon his Instagram page — which includes celebratory photos of the day his father won the election, Pride photos, and a picture of him meeting Lance Bass at a gay bar — posted a photo at the oath-taking in which he appears to be staring pointedly at Pence. 

As for Pence's history of anti-LGBT actions, Towleroad has this:

Pence, as his record shows, is no friend to the LGBTQ community.

In 2000 during his first successful run for Congress, Pence said that he was in favor of sending money allocated to care for people with HIV/AIDS to organizations that provide conversion therapy.

From running a think-tank that published virulently anti-gay articles, to attempting to divert HIV/AIDS money to fund conversion therapy, to refusing to protect LGBT Hoosiers from discrimination, to legalizing anti-LGBT discrimination in Indiana, to cozying up to notorious homophobes, to supporting a ban on gay marriage, and decrying the ‘mainstreaming of homosexuality in the military’ after DADT was repealed, Pence’s record is among the worst records on LGBTQ issues of anyone who has ever occupied the office of the Vice President.

Mike Pence’s Fantasy Running Mate

click image to enlarge

As noted in the previous post, one of the take aways from last night's vice presidential debate is the willingness that GOP vice presidential candidate Mike Pence has shown to lie and disclaim reality and behavior of his running mate that is captured on video.  In my view, it should surprise no one since Christofascists like Pence can generally be assumed to be lying if their lips are moving.  The New York Times editorial board correctly takes Pence to task on his dishonesty.  Here are excerpts:

We’ve seen presidential candidates in the past try to defend an unlikely choice of running mate. But we’ve never before seen a vice-presidential candidate try to defend a bizarre choice of nominee.

Yet that was the daunting task that Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana faced on Tuesday night, as he labored to defend Donald Trump, a nominee with contempt for many of the principles, much of the policy agenda and all of the dignity of the Republican Party that Mr. Pence cherishes.

Mr. Pence simply ignored the Donald Trump we have seen on the trail for more than a year — the one who would build a wall against Mexico, the one who would disregard our security treaties and tear up our trade agreements, the one with a crush on Vladimir Putin — and instead dreamed up a more conventional, right-wing Republican, a Republican, that is, very like Mike Pence.

Mr. Pence has his own political aspirations and abandoned his re-election bid for governor to sign on with Mr. Trump when he was surging.

Since then, Mr. Pence has been engaged in the same compromising maneuvers that Republican leaders like Paul Ryan, the House speaker, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, have been performing almost daily since they reluctantly embraced their party’s standard-bearer.

On Tuesday night, Mr. Pence resorted at times to repeating some of Mr. Trump’s own thin claims, including his preposterous justification for not releasing his tax returns. And he simply ducked rather than try to address questions about Mr. Trump’s egregious attacks on women and minorities; instead, he accused the Democrats of unleashing “an avalanche of insults” on his running mate.

How Gay-Friendly Are the Presidential Candidates?

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Florida Republican Files Hideous "Religious Freedom" Bill

Anti-gay bigot Julio Gonzalez

Gay marriage is the law of the land, science is increasingly confirm that sexual orientation is fixed at birth and not a "choice", and rational members of society are moving on and accepting gay couples as a normal part of life as evidenced by local yacht and country clubs that are accepting gay couples as member. But in the Republican alternate universe where policies and legislation is based on a race back to the worst aspects of the 1950's, gay bashing and special rights for far right white Christofascists is the highest priority.  A case in point?  A heinous bill introduced in the Florida legislature aimed at granting the right to anti-gay discrimination to adoption agencies, health care institutions and many other businesses.  Towleroad looks at the batshitery.  Here are highlights:

A Republican lawmaker in Florida has introduced a hideous “religious freedom” bill that would empower adoption agencies and certain businesses in the Sunshine State to turn away LGBT couples for ‘religious or moral reasons.’

The bill is modeled on similar “religious freedom” bills that were introduced to disastrous consequences in Indiana and Arkansas.

State Rep. Julio Gonzalez filed the bill, HB 401, in response to what he views as the erosion of religious liberty caused by the advancement of LGBT rights.

Via heraldtribune.com:

“There have been various situations where there are increasing possibilities of subsections of society having their religious freedoms encroached on,” Gonzalez said. “Over time it became obvious to me we need to adopt some statutory protections.”  […]

[HB 401] states that individuals, businesses with five or fewer owners, religious institutions and businesses operated by religious institutions are “not required to produce, create, or deliver a product or service” to a customer if they have a religious or moral objection. […]

The bill does not mention sexual orientation. Its wording is vague enough that it would allow businesses to reject any customer for religious or moral reasons. Asked if someone’s race could be cited as a reason to deny service under the legislation, Gonzalez said there already are federal protections to prevent discrimination based on race.

Executive director of Freedom for All Americans, Matt McTighe, released a statement on the bill’s introduction:

“HB 401 uses a thinly veiled guise of religion to justify denying services to people in need at hospitals, adoption agencies, and other important institutions that Floridians use every day. It’s cruel to deny any child the opportunity to be welcomed into a loving, supporting family, just because they or a parent might be gay or transgender. It’s wrong to refuse potentially life-saving medical care to a person who has been in an accident simply because they are LGBT. This bill goes too far and would make Florida a worse place for everyone.”

Gay rights lobbyist Carlos Guillermo Smith, said Gonzalez’s bill is “sweeping anti-LGBT legislation” that is “extreme even for the extremists”:

“Bills like this threaten Florida’s tourism-based economy and could provoke an Indiana-style backlash,” Smith said. “It would be a disaster for Florida.”

I cannot help but wonder about what psychological issues plague Gonzalez and how soon it will be before he's caught in some gay sex scandal.  Anyone this hysterical about gays is generally hiding something.   Let's hope the bill goes down to defeat.

Heretick Defeats Anti-Gay Johnny Joannou in Primary

Steve Heretick

In yesterday's Democrat primary, Steve Heretick defeated anti-gay Del. Johnny Joannou and sent the fossilized Democrat in name only into political retirement.   While news stories focused on Joannou's opposition to Medicaid expansion, Joannou also had a documented anti-gay voting record in the House of Delegates.  Given the nature of the 79th district, Heretick is presumed to be the winner come November.  Heretick's win underscores how progressives working together can make a difference.  Joannou was so reactionary that even the lunatics of the Tea Party came to his aid .  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

Steve Heretick upset longtime Del. Johnny Joannou on Tuesday in the Democratic primary for the state House 79th District.  With all precincts reporting, Heretick claimed 52.7 percent of the votes while Joannou took 47.2 percent.

Joannou, who has served more than 30 years in the General Assembly, hadn’t faced a challenger since 2007.

Heretick, a former Portsmouth City councilman, said Joannou’s conservative voting record was out of touch with the district.

Specifically, Heretick, 54, attacked Joannou for his opposition to expanding Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act and for not doing enough while the state was negotiating a deal to bring tolls to Hampton Roads to pay for a second tube at the Midtown Tunnel.

Heretick said it felt good to beat an “entrenched” incumbent backed “by the city’s old guard.”
“I really do feel like we’ve overcome a tremendous amount of opposition and I’m pleased to say that we’ve done it with a lot of progressive groups,” Heretick said.

Joannou declined to comment Tuesday night.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe supported Heretick. "We're happy with everything that's happening," said Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesoman for the Democratic Party of Virginia. 

Heretick created a website, www.johnnyjoannou.com, that referred to Joannou as “our Tea Party delegate.” Indeed, members of the Tea Party and the National Rifle Association backed Joannou.

Members of the Portsmouth Tea Party came to his aid by encouraging members to vote in the primary, hoping to stop a more liberal candidate from getting to Richmond. Because it's a heavily-Democratic district, the primary winner is likely to win the seat in November.

Good riddance to Joannou.

New York Hotelier Lied About Ted Cruz Donation

Ian Reisner (pictured above) and his business partner Mati Weiderpass are both in my view "legends in their own minds" gays who see themselves as "A listers."  Reisner is also proving to be an out and out liar as he tries to do damage control following his host of a "fire side chat" with anti-gay zealot Texas Senator Ted Cruz (the following day, Cruz introduced two anti-gay bills).   Reisner's claims that no donations were made to Cruz's presidential campaign have proven untrue and, if anything, Reisner has dug himself an even deeper hole as calls for boycotts of his businesses continue.  Metro Weekly looks ate this latest phase of Reisner's self-created shit storm.  Here are article highlights:

Ian Reisner just can’t extricate himself from the web of lies he spun in the wake of the Ted Cruz scandal.

After hosting the anti-gay Republican presidential candidate for a “fireside chat” in April, Reisner and business partner Mati Weiderpass (both gay) faced a huge backlash from the LGBT community. Though initially apologizing for hosting Cruz, Reisner has since repeatedly clashed with his detractors in statements made to the press, including calling gays “cheap” and “entitled.”

Reisner attempted to diffuse the controversy by claiming he wasn’t hosting Cruz (he was), that it was organized by others (it wasn’t), that he had no idea about Cruz’s anti-gay history (implausible), and finally by saying that he regretted the incident entirely. Still, though, Reisner continues to dig an ever-deeper hole for himself.

It transpires that not only did Reisner host Cruz in his Manhattan apartment, he also made the maximum possible donation to his campaign. Reisner cut Cruz a check for $2,700, despite telling New York magazine earlier this month: “There were no checks given, it was nothing like that.”

The New York Times, which initially broke the story of Reisner’s meeting with Cruz, has learned that after Reisner was aware that the LGBT community wasn’t happy with his hosting Cruz, he asked for his check back.

What further complicates matters for Reisner, who hosted a fundraiser for another anti-gay politician earlier that month, is that Weiderpass apparently did not donate to Cruz’s campaign.

For Ian Reisner, it seems no amount of PR and damage control can solve the problems caused by his support for Senator Cruz.

Reisner is either a total idiot or pathological liar.