Trump's Putin Fixation Is an LGBT Problem

Anti-gay violence has doubled in Russia since 2013 - all with government approval.
American Christofascists want it to happen in America.

I find "friends" who whine that political differences should not divide friends.  They, of course, are white, Christian heterosexuals who are not facing threats to their civil rights and perhaps even physical safety as a result of the Trump/Pence regime that they supported.   Seemingly, they expect me and others in the LGBT community to simply ignore the fact that they support those who openly seek to harm us.  I'm sorry, but seeking to defend one's rights against insidious foes that "friends" support is not just a matter of "political differences."  Were the shoe on the other foot, I suspect they would be livid and anything but cordial with those supporting their enemies. Thus, I view the "political differences" meme to be the height of hypocrisy.  As a piece in The Advocate notes, Trump/Pence pose a true threat to LGBT Americans, especially with Trump mimicking Putin's alliance with the regressive Russian Orthodox Church by the manner in which is is boosting the Christofascist agenda.  Here are article highlights:

As Donald Trump moves the United States closer to authoritarianism, we must be concerned. Human rights, including LGBTQ rights, do not flourish under authoritarian regimes.

Any doubt as to Trump’s subservience to Russian President Vladimir Putin was erased at this month's Helsinki summit and its subsequent press conference, where it was clear that Trump is in Putin’s pocket. Trump spent over two hours alone with the former KGB agent, with only translators in the room. With no record made of that meeting, we have no idea of what concessions Trump made — and no insight is forthcoming from the White House or the secretary of State. . . . . If Trump is taking direction from Putin, it's clear the American LGBTQ community is at risk of losing basic human rights.

It was Putin who allowed the leaders of Chechnya, an ultraconservative region of the Russian Federation, to kidnap, beat, imprison, and murder gay men. On June 11, 2013, the Russian federal law "for the Purpose of Protecting Children From Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values" was passed. It is also known as the “gay propaganda law,” and by placing a ban on promoting LGBTQ rights and culture in Russia, it has encouraged violence against the Russian LGBTQ community — which has doubled. The White House has moved in a similar direction — attempting to boot trans people from the military, dismantling the AIDS commission, advocating in court for antigay businesses, working to scrub us from the Census, and refusing to acknowledge Pride. 

While Putin claims he seeks to protect children, Trump cites religious freedom in order to endanger our human rights.

Trump’s self-serving sycophant of a vice president, Mike Pence, is an antigay religious zealot who resurrected a failing political career in Indiana by signing on with Trump; he gave his boss high praise after the shameful Helsinki summit, while John Brennan, the former CIA director, called Trump’s performance “nothing short of treasonous.” 

The indictment of Maria Butina as an unregistered Russian agent sheds light on Russia's infiltration of the Republican Party. She, along with her handler, Russian operative Alexander Torshin, allegedly used the National Rife Association and the religious right to gain access to top-level Republicans to advance Russian interests. Butina attended two National Prayer Breakfasts to hobnob with Republicans' friends. Guns, religion, and an attractive young female Russian helped Republicans and Russians find common ground. Religious right leadership also seems fond of Putin. Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, traveled to Moscow four times and testified in 2013 before the Duma in support of antigay laws. In December 2015, evangelist Franklin Graham had a private audience with Putin.

As Trump and the Republicans embrace Putin and authoritarianism, we can expect that lessons will be learned from Putin as to how to render the LGBTQ community invisible and suppress our human rights in the name of protecting something else — in Russia, it’s children, and in the U.S., it’s religious liberty.

Trump’s base is just fine treating us as scapegoats or punching bags. We live in dangerous times.

2017: Russian LGBT Persecution Defied Belief

As noted many times on this blog, Donald Trump's most enthusiastic supporters are evangelical Christians whose self-styled "leaders" met with Trump in New York in June, 2016, where they were basically promised the moon by Trump.  Among the promises made were an unrelenting attack on LGBT rights and so far Trump has delivered through rescinding Obama pro-LGBT executive orders and even having the U.S. Department of Justice argue in briefs to the United States Supreme Court that anti-gay discrimination is perfectly fine.  But there is another place where the government's anti-gay agenda is being loudly applauded by these same evangelical "leaders": Russia.  Indeed, by prostituting himself to the reactionary and homophobic Russian Orthodox Church, Vladimir Putin has been described by these "leaders" as defending Christianity.  Thus, it is instructive to look at what has transpired in Putin's Russia where saying anything construed as being LGBT supportive can lead to one's arrest.  A piece in the New Yorker reminds of the horrors occurring in Russia.  Horrors the evangelicals would like to bring to America.  Here are article excerpts:

I can think of only two times it’s happened to me: I read a news story, or even a series of stories, and thought that it contained such extreme exaggerations that it had to be, essentially, false. . . . I have known violence to be insidious, messy, trivialized by all participants, even as it happens, and these stories seemed to paint the exact opposite picture. These stories were preposterous—the word Hannah Arendt used in explaining why the world was so slow to understand the murderous threats posed by Hitler and Stalin.

The first story emerged in Russia about four years ago. Reports claimed that organized groups of young men were entrapping gay men, torturing them on camera, and posting the videos. I had a hard time believing that the effort was as well organized and widespread as the reports claimed. I have since learned that it was much more widespread than initially reported. Vigilante groups continue to entrap gay men in several Russian cities.

This spring, I didn’t believe a story that claimed that authorities—no longer vigilantes but actual police—in Chechnya were rounding up and torturing gay men, and that some of these men had apparently been killed, while others were released to their relatives, who were instructed to kill the men themselves.

I flew to Moscow in late May to report the story of the men who had been able to flee Chechnya, and at that time I still couldn’t quite imagine the scale of the purges. I dropped my bag at a hotel and immediately headed to one of the safe houses. It had been difficult to get people to agree to talk with me, and I feared giving them time to change their minds. I spent the rest of the evening and half of the night talking to victims of the Chechen attacks, and went back again the next day, and the day after that. . . . . I developed short-hand notations for the executioners’ repertoire: electrocution, solitary-confinement cells, beatings, dunking in a vat of cold water, starvation.

Back in New York, I sorted through my notes on the men’s personal tragedies. There was the guy whose name had been given up by someone he seemed to have loved—and who was now presumed dead. There was the man who had left his lover behind. And there were several men who were married to women, and had children they adored, who were struggling to figure out how to save their own lives and keep their families. There were several very young men who desperately missed their mothers but also knew that their families would probably kill them if they made contact.

By the end of the year, the Russian L.G.B.T. Network and the Moscow L.G.B.T. Community Center had succeeded in getting a hundred and six people out of Chechnya and then out of Russia altogether. A handful of people with no special training and very little funding at the start managed to save a hundred and six people from certain death. . . . . Toward the end of the summer, my contacts in Moscow told me that they were wrapping up their effort. They thought that they were about to send the last of their charges out of the country. But then people kept coming. 

So far, most of the men they have helped have gone to Canada. A few have landed in Latin America and in Europe. Many of them fear going to countries with large Chechen diasporas, where they are likely to be targeted again in exile. None of the men appear to have made it to the United States. . . . with the Trump Administration reshaping this country’s immigration landscape, it’s hard to imagine this country welcoming many Muslim gay men, even when they are fleeing mortal danger.

The Rising Global Tide Against LGBT Individuals

I generally do not view myself as paranoid, but if one looks at what is happening both here in America and around many places in the world, if one is LGBT, there is much to worry about.  Here in America the Trump/Pence regime is waging a relentless war against LGBT Americans and has already taken measures rolling back LGBT protections put in place by the Obama administration, has intervened in a case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit arguing that existing federal civil rights laws do not apply to LGBT individuals and that gays can be fired at will, and had its representative to the United Nations recently voted against a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution that condemned the death penalty for those found guilty of committing consensual same-sex sexual acts.  Meanwhile, Betty Price, a member of the Georgia House of Representatives and wife of former Trump Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, asked this week whether the government could quarantine people with HIV to limit transmission of the virus that causes AIDS.  In doing so, Price parroted a long time talking point of Christofascist organizations - much like what the Nazis did toward Jews - that gays are diseased and pose a public health crisis.  In her ignorance, Price ignored the fact that the exploding HIV crisis now is among blacks, but then again the Trump regime and evangelical Christians do not like blacks anymore than they like gays.

Overseas, things are just as disturbing.   In Russia, that country's awful law that fines anyone expressing support for LGBT rights in public could get even harsher after a senior official in the Ministry of the Interior suggested making it a criminal offense.  A piece in the Washington Post lists other anti-LGBT efforts fueled by religious belief and opportunist politicians only too happy to scapegoat gays to divert attention from their failing policies.  Here are excerpts:

This week, a government journal in the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan announced that the country's interior ministry had compiled a registry of “proven” gays and lesbians. The list named 319 men and 48 women, whom Tajik federal prosecutors identified in operations they called “Morality” and “Purge.”

A purge — likely in the form of mass incarcerations — is exactly what human rights organizations are afraid will happen. But the phenomenon would not be unique to Tajikistan: Over the past few months, police in Egypt, Azerbaijan, Tanzania, Indonesia and the Russian republic of Chechnya have rounded up people suspected of being gay — and in many cases tortured or publicly humiliated them.

What's more, many of the crackdowns look like “copycats” of one another. “There are a lot of ways in which these crackdowns follow the same sequence of events,” said Kyle Knight, a researcher on LGBT rights at Human Rights Watch. “And there's reason to believe that what's happening in Tajikistan now is based on things their government there has learned from, say, what Azerbaijan just did.”

The sequence generally starts with someone — most likely a religious figure or government official — publicly denigrating acts of alleged sexual deviance. In countries where homosexuality is taboo and driven underground, such comments may be the first thing a person has heard in public about LGBT people. “It is easy to say that these particular people are spreading disease, that they are foreigners or sinners. From a starting point of ignorance, prejudice is an easy next step,” said Knight.

Then things get dangerous. . . . In most of the countries listed above, homosexuality is not illegal. But there also aren't any nondiscrimination laws that include sexuality. Without them, political leaders have to expend their own political capital to step in — assuming they think LGBT communities deserve protection at all. Instead, leaders usually side with the denunciations, or even calls for criminalization, and obscenity and prostitution laws are often turned against sexual minorities.  My colleagues in Jakarta, Moscow and Cairo have all recently documented that sequence.

As of this Tuesday, at least 20 people in Egypt had received prison sentences ranging from six months to six years, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights told our Cairo bureau chief, Sudarsan Raghavan. Four people were sentenced to three years each, and rights groups say some have already been beaten and forced to undergo anal examinations.  Of the 20, some were arrested for waving rainbow flags at a concert, others for Facebook posts supporting the LGBT community, and some were tracked down by police on gay dating apps and chatrooms.

In Azerbaijan, meanwhile, more than 80 people have been arrested since mid-September for suspected homosexuality.

The United Nations and Human Rights Watch have interviewed some of those arrested in Azerbaijian, who claim they were subjected to “electric shocks, beatings, forced shaving and other forms of humiliation to force them to incriminate themselves before being released,” according to a U.N. spokesman.

That torture and humiliation is reminiscent of what rights groups were hearing out of the Russian republic of Chechnya earlier this year. Roughly 100 people, mostly young men, were allegedly detained and mercilessly beaten as police attempted to force them to confess their homosexuality. This week, Maxim Lapunov became the first of them to lodge a formal complaint with Russia's Investigative Committee, which has previously dismissed allegations that any such “gay pogrom” ever took place.

Knight, of Human Rights Watch, said conditions are ripe for similar crackdowns in countries all over the world, pointing to Malaysia, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova as examples.

 International out cry can push back against these horrific agendas.  Yet the United States in the age of Trump has signaled that it will not champion human rights for all even as it strives to give Christian extremist at home special rights to ignore non-discrimination and public accommodation laws. Here in Virginia, extremist GOP attorney general candidate John Adams has made it clear that he thinks religious belief should trump the Constitution's right of freedom of religion for those who are not right wing Christians.  It is indeed a worrisome time to be LGBT.  

The Real "Gay Agenda"

One hears ad nausea from the Christofascists - who ARE seeking special rights to discriminate and be above the law - about the so-called "gay agenda."  These "godly folk" who are motivated mostly by hatred of others and a fear of modernity itself - science and knowledge that raise questions as to the truth of the myth based world view must be stamped out - project on gays what they themselves are guilty of.  For gays, all we want is (i) to have the same rights as others, and (ii) to enjoy the same level of safety from violence and bigotry that Christians have enjoyed for over two centuries in America.  There truly is no other "gay agenda."   A column in the New York Times by a transgender author looks at the aspects of this gay agenda as Christian zealots in Texas seek to enact a special anti-transgender law through a special session of the Texas legislature.  Read the piece and decide who is really seeking special rights.  It's not the LGBT community.  Here are excerpts:

My wife and I spent the morning riding our bicycles to the beach. It was a beautiful day. Seals dived in the surf, a couple played Kadima with their grandchildren, and Deirdre and I lay in the sun.

We celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary this summer. Our sons are in their 20s now. One is working as an actor. The other is an engineering student, researching the effects of lasers on glass. Both of them called us that day, to say hi, and that they loved us.

Meanwhile, in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott opened a special session of the Legislature, during which Republicans will attempt to portray me, and transgender people like me, as sexual predators. The legislature is expected to vote once again on a bill to restrict which bathrooms transgender Texans can use.

Somehow, during my time in the ladies room, the republic had failed to collapse.

I hear a lot about the “gay agenda” in my work as an advocate for L.G.B.T. people. Sometimes I hear that we are agitating for “special rights.”

Which — let’s be honest — is true. I do want special rights.

I want the special right, for instance, to not be beaten or murdered by ignorant bigots. At least 15 transgender women have been killed so far this year for the crime of being themselves.

I want the special right not to be fired from my job. In 28 states, it’s perfectly legal to terminate an employee because you don’t like the gender of the person that he or she is in love with. In others, gay employees are protected, but trans ones aren’t. In some states, it is even illegal for local governments to pass or enforce anti-discrimination laws.

I want the special right to not be homeless. In this country, an estimated 1.6 million young people experience homelessness each year; 40 percent of them are L.G.B.T. A third of the homeless queer young people ran away from home because they faced physical, emotional or sexual abuse.

I want the special right to be able to turn on the television, or go to the movies, and see, maybe just once, a person like myself on the screen. I mean someone other than a murder victim in a crime show, or a straight, cisgender actor getting a trophy honoring his bravery for pretending — ineptly — to be someone like me, or trans people being interviewed on talk shows as if gender transition is something as distant as the moon . . . .
I want the special right to open up the newspaper and not have to read one more clever “think piece” in which the humanity of people like me is held up for public debate.

What I want above all, is the special right to be left alone, and to be considered half of just one more unextraordinary American couple — just as the two of us were as we sat at the bar watching the ocean and drinking our beers.

You’d think that most of this would be common sense — that protecting American citizens from violence and unemployment and homelessness would be something we’d all agree upon. You’d think that respecting the privacy and humanity of some of the country’s most vulnerable souls would be a common goal.

But then, maybe you didn’t know that in the last six months the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services have already withdrawn or revised policies or proposals meant to protect L.G.B.T. Americans. Maybe you didn’t know that the governor and lieutenant governor of Texas feel that the state is so endangered by the prospect of leaving transgender people alone that they felt it necessary to call a special session of the Legislature to enshrine discrimination against us into state law. Maybe you didn’t know that Vice President Mike Pence has said that gay parents like me bring about “societal collapse” and the “deterioration of marriage and family.”

But you should.

The number of Americans who continue to have no idea that 28 states allow gays to be fired at will simply for being LGBT is staggering.  Here in Virginia, the vast majority support unemployment non-discrimination protections yet every year bills that would add such protections are defeated by Republicans yielding to the demands of The Family Foundation, Virginia's largest hate group which masquerades as a "Christian" "family values" organization.  Are hatred of others and the desire to have the freedom to mistreat others "family values"?  When you hear the bleating of Christofascists about special rights, please remember that it is they, not the gays, who are demanding them. 

 

The Global Backlash Against Gay Rights - Homophobia As A Political Tool

Pulse massacre victims remembered - St. Pete Pride Parade

Later today, Donald Trump - who I refer to as Der Trumpenführer - is reportedly scheduled to sign a so-called "religious freedom" executive order.  The order has nothing to do with protecting religious freedom for all Americans but instead would grant special rights and privileges to Christian extremists - the Christofascists, if you will.  If the order is as expected, Christofascists will be granted a license to discriminate at will against LGBT individuals and possibly others who do not conform to Christofascists' religious views.   The driving force behind the effort?  Obviously, the religious based hatred of Christofascists toward anyone and/or anything that challenges their beliefs or underscores the fallibility of the Bible, a work first authored by ignorant, uneducated, unknown Bronze Age authors.  The other is the political opportunism of Republicans and reactionary politicians and autocrats who see fanning homophobia as a means to motivate Christofascist voters in America, and scapegoat minorities  to retain power in Russia, much of Africa and parts of South and Central America.  A lengthy piece in Foreign Affairs looks at  the anti-gay backlash and the poisonous religion  dogmas and political whores/autocrats who care nothing about the lives they harm so long as they remain in power.  Here are highlights:

No revolution worth its salt comes without pushback. The fight for gay rights—widely regarded as “the fastest of all civil rights movements” (over a short period of time, 20 nations have come to recognize same-sex marriage and an additional 15 now allow same-sex civil unions)—is no exception. A shooting rampage last June at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by a terrorist who had expressed loathing for the LGBT community, was the deadliest assault ever on the American gay community and attests to the viciousness of this pushback. But that was only one incident. In recent years, there has been a global backlash against gay rights that runs from the United States, through many parts of the global South, to Russia and other parts of the post–Communist world.

The opposition to gay rights comes in two strains and reflects what the Pew Research Center has called “the global divide on homosexuality.” In Western Europe and the Americas, home to the world’s most democratically advanced states and the largest and most sophisticated gay rights movements, the gay backlash takes the form of a counter-revolution designed to intimidate the gay community and roll back gains in gay rights. Across Africa, the Middle East, and much of the post–Communist world, the parts of the globe where democracy, civil society, and human rights are either in short supply or struggling, the gay backlash consists of a “preemptive strike” meant to stop the gay rights movement before it can gain its footing. This involves passing legislation that criminalizes or re-criminalizes homosexuality and that bans the promotion of homosexuality. Both strains, however, serve to fuel anti-gay violence and discrimination, and have exposed the political, rather than cultural nature of the backlash. 

In Europe, there have been massive protests against same-sex marriage, especially in Catholic-majority countries. . . . The protests were for the most part peaceful, but at least one demonstration in May 2013 turned violent, forcing the police to use tear gas and batons to disperse demonstrators.

Across Latin America, the gay backlash has been felt most profoundly in Brazil, where the highest court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in 2011. Since then, Brazilian legislators have retaliated with a plethora of anti-gay bills that call for redefining the family to exclude homosexual couples, for establishing a national day of “heterosexual pride,” and for banning “Christ-phobia,” or the desecration of Christian symbols. The ban targets the provocative floats mixing religious imagery and sexuality typical of Brazilian gay pride parades. Although these bills don’t really stand much chance of ever becoming law (for one thing, they are of dubious constitutionality), they contribute to the homophobic culture that underpins Brazil’s massive problem with gay killings.

It is in the United States, however, where, along with liberal democracy, the strongest backlash against gay rights can be found. We can count three distinct waves.  The first began immediately after the rise of the gay liberation movement in the 1970s and entailed nothing short of moral panic. Its most dramatic manifestation was country singer Anita Bryant’s “Save the Children” campaign, which succeeded in overturning an anti-discrimination ordinance enacted in Dade County, Florida, by depicting homosexuals as pedophiles. A second wave of backlash crashed in the late 1990s. Between 1998 and 2012, some 30 states enacted constitutional bans on same-sex marriage.

A third wave arrived in 2013 in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, a 1997 law that barred the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage. A virtual tsunami of legislation intended to undermine LGBT rights has ensued: 254 anti-gay bills have been introduced, 20 of which have become law. In the first half of 2016 alone, 87 bills that could in theory limit LGBT rights were introduced, a steep increase from previous years. The bulk of these laws are justified as measures to protect religious freedom. The passage of bills of this kind has increased by at least 50 percent every year between 2013 and 2015.

Russia’s “gay propaganda law,” enacted in 2013, has also earned its share of infamy. It punishes anyone who promotes homosexuality with jail time and fines. So broadly written is the law that, in principle, it outlaws pride parades; public displays of affection by same-sex couples; gay newspapers and magazines; gay-themed literature, television, and films; and symbols of the LGBT community, such as the rainbow flag. Even an admission of homosexuality, unless the admission is made in order to denounce homosexuality, can be considered illegal.

Darker still is the picture across Central Asia and the Middle East, where the gay backlash has unleashed a nasty wave of anti-gay violence. Since March, more than 100 gay and bisexual men have been reported tortured, held in camps, and killed in the semi-autonomous Russian Republic of Chechnya. For several years now, the world has been horrified by the ghastly antics of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), which has been beheading gays and throwing them from rooftops in the territories that it controls. . . .

What is causing the global gay rights backlash is less clear, since societal acceptance of homosexuality in most countries has never been higher. A popular sociological explanation is that increasing visibility makes LGBT people an easier target for anti-gay rights activists. . . . Although this visibility has had a positive effect, leading to greater acceptance of the gay community, the normalization has also galvanized staunch opponents. As Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told The New York Times, “As the majority of society becomes more tolerant of LGBT people, some of those who are opposed to them become more radical.” 

Another popular explanation is the enduring strength of homophobia, which flows from the cultural heterosexism embedded in most religions. Public polls show that societal acceptance of homosexuality is intimately linked to levels of social and economic development and rates of religiosity. The higher the religiosity, the lower the acceptance rate of homosexuality, and vice versa.

Decidedly less noted, and therefore less understood, are the political roots of the gay backlash. By openly embracing anti-gay violence and extremely homophobic legislation, many autocratic regimes across the world are doing what such regimes have done for centuries to groups as varied as Jews, heretics, and various ethnic minorities: scapegoating a socially despised minority as a way to consolidate power, to justify conservative policies, and to distract from other issues.

The governments of Egypt and Iran, for example, employ anti-gay violence in a way that is strikingly similar to the way terrorist organizations, such as ISIS, use violence. Beheading and hanging gays is as much about punishing individuals as it is about intimidating a community or an entire group of people. Russia’s “war on gays” is more a reflection of President Vladimir Putin’s desire to crack down on civil and political liberties than it is an expression of homophobia in Russian culture. Before Putin’s rise, Russia had decriminalized homosexual activity immediately following the fall of Communism.

Although homophobia in Africa is often seen as an “ancient hatred,” its history is surprisingly short. A study by Human Rights Watch revealed that roughly half of the world’s remaining anti-sodomy laws are holdovers from British colonial rule. . . . Leaders such as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe discovered that they could score political gains by condemning homosexuals and demonizing homosexuality as a “Western perversion.”

Politicians in the West, but especially in the United States, have also found that exploiting hostility toward homosexuality can score them political points, especially around election time. . . . Karl Rowe, the architect of George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign, put same-sex marriage referenda in as many states as possible for the sole purpose of mobilizing so-called value voters. That year, 11 state anti-gay marriage referenda were put to the voters, including in the very important swing state of Ohio.

U.S. President Donald Trump, despite his pledge at the 2016 GOP National Convention to protect LGBT Americans from violence and discrimination, ran on a platform described by gay Republicans as the GOP’s “most anti-LGBT platform” in the party’s 162-year history. . . . While these anti-gay stances no longer have the popular political appeal that they once had, they still serve the useful purpose of keeping social conservatives within the GOP’s fold.

If there is a silver lining to the gay backlash, it is that the backlash is forcing the international community to confront the issue of anti-gay violence and discrimination. . . . faster and more effective change could come if the international community took a stronger stance against those regimes inclined to use gays as a political scapegoat and to employ homophobia as a political tool.

Why Russia’s Persecution Of Gays Matters

In the wake of the Pulse night club massacre last June, Donald Trump, a/k/a Der  Trumpenführer, lied and said that he would be an ally to LGBT Americans and would defend them from anti-gay Islamic extremists (in France, Marine Le Pen is making similar false claims).  That same month, of course, he sold the LGBT community out when he promised an anti-gay jihad to a gathering of Christofascist in New York City.   Then there is the treatment of gays by Trump's BFF, Vladimir Putin of Russia who has sponsored the equivalent to anti-gay pogroms and legislation that criminalizes sexual orientation as a means to gain support from the historically anti-gay Russian Orthodox Church.  Add to this poisonous mix, Trump's reversal of LGBT protections and was on transgender Americans and it becomes clear to all but the willingly blind, that Trump is menace to LGBT Americans.  All of it represents an assault of liberal democratic values.  It bodes ill for the future and not just for members of the LGBT community.  A piece in Huffington Post makes this argument.  Here are excerpts:

“The beatings begin as soon as you’re brought in. The electric shocks, being beaten with plastic pipes. They said that we were ‘dogs who have no right to life.’” This is a firsthand account of the torture being suffered by gay men in Chechnya, a conservative Muslim republic in Russia’s Caucasus region. Reports of Chechen authorities launching a violent crackdown on suspected gay men have circulated widely in recent weeks. Men as young as 19 are reportedly being abducted, and shoved into overcrowded cells in secret prisons where they are brutally tortured, and sometimes beaten to death.

In a virulently homophobic society such as Chechnya’s, where persecution of homosexuals is policy, gay men go to extraordinary lengths to keep their sexual orientation hidden. One dangerous consequence of being detained on suspicion of homosexuality in such homophobic societies is that your orientation is revealed to your family. In one case, a gay man in his early twenties was returned by Chechen officers to his family, only to be killed by his uncle.

Chechen authorities often set up traps for men they suspect of being gay, and abduct them without releasing any information on their whereabouts. Those detained are then tortured until they release names of gay friends and acquaintances.

But none of this appears to have moved Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who made no public remark on the matter during his visit to Moscow last week, ignoring a letter signed by 50 members of Congress to do so. In fact, there appears to be no indication that Tillerson even raised the abuses in Chechnya in his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite a message of condemnation from the State Department prior to Tillerson’s Russia trip.

Regardless of the disdain for LGBT rights openly displayed by the Trump administration, it is a grave error to allow Russia to get away with flagrant human rights abuses on its own soil. What is at stake here is the very notion of universal human rights, in the specific context of how citizens are treated within their national borders.

What Russia does to its own citizens resonates in the rest of the world. As one of the world’s major powers, Russia enjoys a privileged status in the international hierarchy of states – see, for example, its veto-wielding permanent membership of the UN Security Council. Allowing Russia to lower those standards provides a carte blanche for smaller countries to follow suit. If Russia can get away with torturing and killing LGBT persons, why can’t Uganda? Or Saudi Arabia? Or Iran? If Russia can get away with persecuting LGBT persons today, who will they persecute tomorrow?

As part of its effort to undermine American power (both hard and soft), Russia aims to present an alternative for the world’s nations. That alternative includes tolerance for kleptocracy, the assassination of political opponents, the intimidation of journalists, and the persecution of “unwanted” minorities. Russian authorities have continuously targeted the LGBT community for over a decade (and not only in Chechnya). Chechnya’s abuses are not an isolated blemish. They are a symptom of the neo-fascist Russia that Putin has systematically cultivated.

When Moscow allows one of its local cutthroats to go on a killing spree of vulnerable minorities, it is effectively advertising to the world that countries no longer need follow the liberal democratic model of the United States. . . . . We should think long and carefully about the risks of giving up support for such values. The price for abandoning them will be high.

Wave of Vandalism, Violence Hits LGBT Centers

While "friends" who voted for Der Trumpenführer continue to deny any responsibility for the rising tide of hate and intimidation that his campaign and election have ushered in, the sad reality is that threats against synagogues. Jewish community centers, mosques, and LGBT centers have sky rocketed.  Even in gay-friendly Key West a visiting Trump supporter attacked a gay couple on Duval Street.  Thankfully, he was arrested in his hometown in North Carolina, but many perpetrators are getting away with their acts of hate and violence.   Operating hand in glove with the violence are a slew of GOP sponsored anti-LGBT bills being introduced in legislatures across the nation. NBC News looks at the troubling attacks and threats.  Here are highlights:

When Ruby Corado arrived at her office on Sunday, she found broken glass everywhere, a door ripped off its frame and a shaken staffer.

Corado told NBC News a man had burst into Casa Ruby — the Washington, D.C. drop-in center and advocacy organization for transgender women she founded in 2004 — and demolished a door and physically attacked a trans woman working at the center.

"He grabbed something and threw it at her. It hit her on the arm. Then [he] walked toward her and said, 'I'm gonna kill you, faggot,'" Corado said. "Everyone was trying to control him. He goes to the door and leaves, then a brick comes flying through the door from the outside."

This is the third time in just two weeks that men have come to Casa Ruby to harass and attack the transgender women that meet there for support and companionship. And D.C. is not the only city to see its local LGBTQ community center hit by violence or vandalism in recent weeks.

In February and March, a spate of hate incidents occurred at LGBTQ community centers and similar venues across the nation, in a trend that has gone underreported.

When Ruby Corado arrived at her office on Sunday, she found broken glass everywhere, a door ripped off its frame and a shaken staffer.

Corado told NBC News a man had burst into Casa Ruby — the Washington, D.C. drop-in center and advocacy organization for transgender women she founded in 2004 — and demolished a door and physically attacked a trans woman working at the center.
 Casa Ruby, located in Washington, D.C., was vandalized and a staff member assaulted two days after Mayor Muriel Bowser reported a 100 percent increase in hate crimes against the transgender community.

On March 6, a drive-by shooting targeted the Tulsa, Oklahoma headquarters of Oklahomans for Equality. The very next day, a man entered the center harassing and threatening staff, reportedly saying "I wish you all would die." The center's executive director, Toby Jenkins, told The Tulsa World it was the most serious incident he'd seen in 12 years.

LGBTQ community centers in Los Angeles and Milwaukee were hit with hate graffiti in February, with workers in L.A. arriving to see "F**k Trannies" spray-painted across the walls. Milwaukee's Diverse & Resilient center was covered in paint reading "Fag."

Churchgoers in New Orleans were startled on Sunday morning when a brick flew through a stained-glass window. Members of the LGBTQ-affirming First Unitarian Church had held a widely publicized town hall on anti-transgender violence less than 48 hours prior to the attack. Rev. Deanna Vandiver told The Times-Picayune the town hall may have "stirred up hate mongering."

The offices of New Jersey's Garden State Equality and Orlando's Equality Florida were both vandalized about a week apart. On February 24, someone smashed the windows at Equality Florida, and two men kicked at the front door of Garden State Equality until it shattered on March 4.

Last Wednesday, police arrested an Indiana man they said threatened to carry out a Pulse-style shooting at a local gay bar.

New York's Anti-Violence Project (AVP) cited a "surge" of hate violence and incidents since the 2016 election, tying together recent threats called into Jewish community centers with the attacks on LGBTQ spaces.

AVP Communications Director Sue Yacka told NBC News she sees a connection between direct attacks on LGBTQ community venues and the more than 100 pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation that have been proposed in just the first few weeks of 2017.

"It's a message that we shouldn't be in public, that we should be hidden away, that we should hide our identities," Yacka said. "You use legislation and intimidation and violence to make this happen, to try and make people go away. But we are not going away."

How Trump is Allowing Putin to Export Anti-LGBT Hatred

If one knows Russian history, then one knows that, excluding portions of the Bolshevik and communist period, for centuries reactionary and dictatorial Russian autocrats have always relied upon the Russian Orthodox Church to wage war against independent thought and opposition to the governing regime.  With the fall of communism, Vladimir Putin has revived the unholy alliance between the Russian Orthodox Church and his regime where the Church once again is allied with a regime that is anathema to the Gospel message and the rights of average Russians.  One of the tools Putin has employed to strengthen this alliance is legalizing the Russian Orthodox Church's extreme homophobia and scapegoating LGBT Russians.  Here in America, Der Trumpenführer is seeking to solidify a similar alliance of reactionary fundamentalist and evangelical Christians easily motivated by hatred of "non-belivers," those of other faiths, and LGBT citizens. to shore up and maintain support for his regime.  In the process, we now see similar moves to those made by Putin directed towards LGBT Americans and the question becomes one of how bad will things get. "Friends" who voted for Trump continue to close their eyes and ears to what they have unleashed on their LGBT friends and neighbors.  A piece in Queerty looks at the manner in which Russian is now freely exporting anti-LGBT hatred to America and the West (although not noted in the piece, the Russian Orthodox Church also has a long history of supporting Great Russian discrimination against non-whites). Here are excerpts:

We’ve already discussed why Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin is terrible for us. But in light of the expanding firestorm over Russia’s outsized influence in the Trump administration, the question is, just how terrible. As it turns out, it could be worse than we imagined.

Trump’s campaign was bizarrely and distressingly cozy with anti-democratic Russia. The candidate himself openly admired Putin and even egged Russia on its hacking of the Democratic National Committee. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia was trying to put a finger on the scale in the election, an unprecedented intrusion into American democracy.

That much everyone knows. But less known is the extent to which Russia has emerged as a ringleader of the American religious right. In fact, according to one new study, Russia is the leader of the global Christian right. Which in part explains why the Trump administration remains enamored of a nation with a smaller economy than the state of California.

To say that this is a disastrous development is an understatement. Russia’s homophobia runs deep and virulent. Here’s a sampling of the type of harassment and violence that are now commonplace in the country, where three-quarter of its citizens believe homosexuality should not be accepted by society.
·        Routinely allows thugs to attack gay activists without fear of prosecution·        Arrest gay activists for standing up for their rights·        Bans any pro-gay materials as “propaganda”·        Forbids same-sex couples from adopting·        Blocked the country’s most popular LGBTQ site·        Banned transgender people from getting drivers licenses

Much of this has been done in concert with the Russian Orthodox Church, which has emerged as an ally of Putin and which now provides a template for the type of Church-State relationship the religious right would like to see in America.

The American religious right’s admiration for Putin and Russia soared during the Obama administration. Such high-profile figures as Franklin Graham, Bryan Fischer, and Brian Brown have proclaimed Russia to be on the right track when it comes to gay issues. But for a long time, the assumption was that the religious right was simply exporting its particular brand of homophobia to a friendly venue.

As it turns out, according to the report from People for the American Way, we may actually be a net importer of Russia hatred. At the heart of this disturbing trend is Brian Brown. Brown headed the rapidly dying National Organization for Marriage but he has managed to fail upwards as head of the International Organization for the Family, formerly known as the World Congress of Families. In this role, Brown has been hitting the road, landing in Russia just last week to promote closer relations between the U.S. and Putin.

What has changed over the years is that, by increasing repression (and violence), Russia has been able to position itself as the promised land for the homophobic right in the U.S. and claim the moral (if that’s the word) high ground.

Exactly how deep the relationships run is anyone’s guess. Putin has deep pockets and grand ideas, and he’ll be happy to collaborate with anyone who espouses his nationalist viewpoints. But the salient point is that Russia has gone from being the recipient of homophobic outreach to the standard against which the far right judges the U.S. At a minimum, it is setting the tone for our bitterest enemies.

Just one glance at the hell Russia has made for the lives of its LGBTQ citizens is chilling. What’s even more chilling is the growing power of the eager audience that would like to see that hell replicated in the U.S.

Homophobia and Anti-Gay Violence are a Theological Issue

To continue a theme that I believe MUST be forcefully addressed in the wake of the Orlando massacre is the continued role that religion plays in encouraging anti-LGBT violence and sustaining homophobia in general.  Like it or not, even gay affirming denominations need to do far more and become loud and outspoken in their opposition to churches and falsely named "family values" organizations that disseminate anti-LGBT hatred - and hatred toward all deemed "other."   Silence and passivity can no longer be accepted or tolerated.  The time has come for a line in the sand that Christians (and Muslims) need either step across or be deemed the enemy.  As the husband said to one of his gay friendly clients who remains a member of an anti-gay church, "there were good Germans too."  Yes, leaving one's denomination and/or vocally opposing its dogma can be frightening for many, but  we are truly talking about a life and death issue for many.  For Christians, they must be forced to choose between being either (i) "good Germans" who silently were complicity in horrors or  (ii) following in the shoes of abolitionists and those who fought for civil rights for black Americans in the worse days of the 1960's.  A piece in Religion Dispatches from a few years ago looks at  this time to choose.  Here are highlights: 

Beyond the inflicting of individual pain, violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people has effects far beyond the individual target. This is what Iris Marion Young terms “systematic violence” in her famous “Five Faces of Oppression.” It is a violence of instrumentality—violence with the effect of keeping an entire group subjugated and in a state of oppression.

We must widen our perspective from individual acts of bullying and violence to the instrumental purpose these serve in subjugating LGBT people to particular religious and cultural ideologies in which reality is defined from a strictly heterosexual perspective—and gay and lesbian people become non-persons.

As more churches and denominations ordain gay and lesbian clergy, more gay and lesbian people are featured in media, and more medical, psychological and psychotherapeutic organizations reject notions of the pathological in sexual minorities, dominant religious and cultural ideology is in a state of crisis. It is no longer an unquestioned assumption that heterosexual experience represents the definition of reality for all people. The power to define reality for the masses is at stake and this power comes with all manner of political and ideological implications. Thus, there is a vested interest on the part of the religious and political right in keeping LGBT persons silent and subjugated.

Anti-gay bullying is a theological issue because it has a theological base. I find it difficult to believe that even those among us with a vibrant imagination can muster the creative energy to picture a reality in which anti-gay violence and bullying exist without the anti-gay religious messages that support them.

These messages come in many forms, degrees of virulence, and volumes of expression. The most insidious forms, however, are not those from groups like Westboro Baptist Church. Most people quickly dismiss this fanaticism as the red-faced ranting of a fringe religious leader and his small band of followers.

More difficult to address are the myriad ways in which everyday churches that do a lot of good in the world also perpetuate theologies that undergird and legitimate instrumental violence. The simplistic, black and white lines that are drawn between conceptions of good and evil make it all-too-easy to apply these dualisms to groups of people. When theologies leave no room for ambiguity, mystery and uncertainty, it becomes very easy to identify an “us” (good, heterosexual) versus a “them” (evil, gay).

Additionally, hierarchical conceptions of value and worth are implicit in many of our theological notions. Needless to say, value and worth are not distributed equally in these hierarchies. God is at the top, (white, heterosexual) men come soon after and all those less valued by the culture (women, children, LGBT people, the poor, racial minorities, etc.) fall somewhere down below. And it all makes perfect sense if you support it with a few appropriately (mis)quoted verses from the Bible. . . . the most dangerous form of theological message comes in the subtlest of forms: silence.

[W]ell-meaning, good-hearted people respond to this appeal, saying, “Things are a lot better for gay people today than they were several years (or decades) ago. In time, our society (or churches) will come around on this issue.” To these friends and others, I must say, “It’s time.” . . . The longer we wait to respond, the more young people die.

Our children and teenagers are being held hostage by a religious and political rhetoric that strives to maintain the status quo of anti-gay heterosexist normativity. The messages of Focus on the Family and other organizations actively strive to leave the most vulnerable among us exposed to continuous attack.

Ministers who remain in comfortable silence on sexuality must speak out. Churches that have silently embraced gay and lesbian members for years must publically hang the welcome banner. How long will we continue to limit and qualify our messages of acceptance, inclusion and embrace for the most vulnerable in order to maintain the comfort of those in our communities of faith who are well-served by the status quo?

In the current climate, equivocating messages of affirmation are overpowered by the religious rhetoric of hatred. Silence only serves to support the toleration of bullying, violence, and exclusion. In the face of what has already become the common occurrence of LGBT teen suicide, how long can we wait to respond?

Why We Must Protect LGBT Youth

With the continuing circus surrounding Kim Davis' effort to push a Chrisofascist version of Sharia and Republicans racing to prostitute themselves to Davis' spittle flecked, gun totting supporters, one thing is clear: there are a lot of hate-filled people out there and the battle for LGBT equality under the civil laws still has a long way to go.  What is also upsetting is that the vile things being said about gays send a terrible message to LGBT youth in general and those being raised in anti-gay households.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at the situation and the dangers posed to LGBT youth.  Here are excerpts:

I've watched Kim Davis crying to "Eye Of The Tiger" a dozen times. . . . It's a grotesque spectacle . . .

These people are a dying breed. Within the decade my guess is they will be nonexistent.

In the longterm, I'm utterly unconcerned. However, I'm a bit worried that violence will rise within the next couple of years, especially toward LGBT youth. The live broadcast of Kim Davis' "liberation" before a cheering crowd surely came off as anti-gay empowerment for some with Mike Huckabee spinning it all into the supposed criminalization of Christianity. I mean, they are really raising the stakes here. If your crazy kind is gasping its last dying breaths, now would be the time to fight back hard.

It worries me a bit. That is why it is important, especially if you live in small rural communities like Rowan County, to vocalize your acceptance of LGBT people. Reassure your youth that there is nothing wrong with them. That they are accepted fully just the way they are.
The bigots might be on their way out, but some won't go without one last fight. Hopefully the fight will just be hot air, and not baseball bats.

As I have said before, forcing anti-gay beliefs on LGBT youth ought to be an official form of felony child abuse.   I just hope the batshitery doesn't harm to vulnerable LGBT youth.  Meanwhile, the sooner Christianity is a dead religion, the better off the world will be.  Ditto for Islam.

Religious Extremeist Injures Six at Jerusalem Gay Pride

UPDATED:17 year old Shira Banki (pictured above) has died from the wounds inflicted on her by right wing orthodox extremist Yishai Schlissel.  Take a good look.  Death, hate and bigotry are the fruits of fundamentalist religion.  Personally, I would like to see Schlissel drawn and quartered.  Yes, it is a barbaric punishment, but a message needs to be sent to members of fundamentalist religions of all faiths that modern societies will not tolerate their hate and poison and that they will be dealt with in the most brutal and forceful ways possible.  Fundamentalism of every stripe is a poison that needs to be eradicated from the face of the earth.

American Christofascists do not have a monopoly on anti-gay hate and animus.  This week at Jerusalem's gay pride event, Yishai Schlissel, a knife wielding ultra-Orthodox Jew, stab six people leaving a sixteen year old girl still in critical condition.  The photos above via Huffington Post show some of the carnage and Schlissel in custody.  Take a good look.  This is the true face of conservative religion.  Hate and violence, and often death.   Conservative, fundamentalist religion, be it Christian, Jewish or Muslim, is a pestilence that deserves no respect or deference in the modern world.   Here are more details from Huffington Post:

An anti-gay ultra-Orthodox extremist suspected of stabbing revelers at Jerusalem's Gay Pride Parade appeared in court on Friday and the judge ordered that he remain in custody.

The suspected attacker, Yishai Schlissel, was arrested at the pride parade the previous day, after he brandished a knife and stabbed six people. The court extended his arrest by 12 days as the investigation against him continues, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

Schlissel was convicted of a similar attack that wounded several people at a gay pride parade in Jerusalem in 2005. Schlissel had been released from prison just three weeks ago after serving his sentence. 

Israeli hospital officials said Friday that a 16-year-old girl remained in critical condition after the attack, with wounds to her chest and shoulder. Three others are in hospital but their conditions are not life threatening, while the remaining two have been discharged, hospital officials said.

The Gay Pride Parade was proceeding as planned with party music, Israeli flags and rainbow-clad marchers wending their way through central Jerusalem's barricaded streets, under a heavy police presence, when the attacker entered the throng of people. Within seconds he raised a knife and began stabbing people in the back.

Police pounced on him and arrested him. The crowd's carefree cheers suddenly gave way to screams.

A world without fundamentalist religion - perhaps without religion entirely - would be a far better world.  It's telling that everyone of the death threats I have receive via comments on this blog (I never publish their venom) have come from "godly Christians."