Vergogna!

 

EXCLUSIVE UNDERCOVER AUDIO:
Martha-Ann Alito Unfurled

"I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month." pic.twitter.com/okNsW7SPlu

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) June 10, 2024

There's a lot to unpack in the conversations that undercover reporter Lauren Windsor had with the Alitos. The verification of Samuel Alito's sense of culture war driving his juris-imprudence doesn't entirely surprise me. Does he endorse the return of our country to "a place of godliness? So he does!

It seems to me he must be using his own personal notes for what he thinks godliness means--as for myself, I'm less ambitious, and would like to see the Supreme Court be a place of cleanliness, which would, I am told, be the next best thing and a bit closer to his job. 

But it's Mrs. Alito's sense of an ax to grind over Pride flags, her desire for revenge against the media (how dare they report unpleasant things--like her squabble with the neighbors, or the way her family's security detail may be threatening them), her combination of privilege and aggrievement, that fascinates me. It's her unselfconscious use of the term "feminazis". It's her reference to her German heritage. How she intends to get even. Eventually.

Faith With Only Signifying Indignant BS Works is Dead

 

The LA Dodgers decided to recognize the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for Pride, and then they didn't, and then they belatedly did. The decision to support the Sisters is the right one, even if it's getting stupid flack, and here's why, from me, the erstwhile Catholic-adjacent agnostic.

The ministry of the Sisters has gone among the people and held them up and comforted them and tried to teach them to be considerate and do no harm to one another, It has used satire of organized religion, but that's because those memes are accessible and subject to very real conversations about the actual harms that bigotry in religion causes, and that the failure to be real and upfront about sexuality in education perpetuates. 

Marco Rubio can pretend that the Sisters are anti-Catholic because of their criticism of a faith that hasn't delivered for the downtrodden--he can pretend LGBT sexuality is a choice and a sin for whatever deflection from his lived reality floats his boat, but in the real world, you either serve one another or you will be marked by the master you actually serve. And Marco serves himself. For all I can tell. And the people who wanted to protest the Pride celebration the LA team held are so dumb. 

I Never Will Forget.

 I see the folks who are having a little problem with seeing a Gay Pride flag at the White House, and I am so sorry, but--

Protesters have breached the Capitol. They’re outside the Senate chamber pic.twitter.com/I021tKliUD

— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) January 6, 2021

The Trump fans brought Confederate flags into the Capitol and tried to run up a Trump flag. The pride flag is about honoring the human rights of some of our citizens and the Trump fans were literally carrying flags of treason. Every Trump flag is about denying a legitimate election in favor of the seditious, lying punk who tried to hoard state secrets for reasons as yet unknown. I will never forget that desecration. The Pride flag is not that. 

Why don't they focus on stuff that's way more hurtful, like the Nazi flags outside of Disneyland? 

Or do we already have the answer to that? 

Pride is a Riot

 

There have been some pieces of good news to report this month, like the court's rejection of the Tennessee drag ban, and the utter rebuke of the Florida denial of trans treatment. But this year has faced extraordinary challenges to the trans community, and often using the same tired tropes as have always been used against the gay community--recruitment because "they"* can't reproduce, focused on the youth, etc. The bigots still insist on their supposed right to bigotry to deny the actual rights of marginalized people to be and feel free in public. 

That's why Pride as a riot and a protest is still ongoing. Because contention over whether gay rights and human dignity can be publicly admitted results in scenes like this:

Anti-LGBT protestors attack Pro-LGBT demonstrators outside of a Glendale, CA schoolboard meeting.

The schoolboard is voting on recognizing June as Pride month. pic.twitter.com/T1zqZMTn7D

— Brennan Murphy (@brenonade) June 7, 2023

It doesn't hurt anyone for kids to know LGBTQ people exist, that they have rights, that they are not, despite radical right-wing ideology, weirdo sex fiends but are just people. And it serves the dual purpose of ensuring that marginalized and targeted gay and trans children are understood and not victimized in their schools. We've been telling these kids since a dozen years ago "it gets better" and the trolling haters kept hating. The fight doesn't end. (And the LGB without the T jackasses in the sainted names of Marsha Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Brandon Teena can fuck off the planet. Or better yet, learn history.) 

Be allies not shall-I's.  Bonds, bunks, mutual aid and speaking up accepted everywhere anti-LGBTQ lies are being pushed,

* Right handed people give birth to left handed babies. I never understand the "LGBT people don't reproduce" thing. Of course, the bits work. The glowing and enormous pictures of transmen enjoying their pregnancies exist. IVF exists. How can this dumb trope still exist? And don't get me started on the "rounded up and put on a deserted island" thing. Um, everyone would be too busy looking for a way off Stunad Island to worry about making a new generation of coconut eaters, thanks...

Satan's Day Off

 

Misogynistic Christian fascist incel Nick Fuentes says that once he turns 30, he'll probably find himself a 16-year-old child bride: "Right when the milk is good, I want to start drinking the milk." pic.twitter.com/uM99D1YC07

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) May 17, 2023

I'm not sure how I want to go about this, but the idea that the right is incensed, just pure livid, about child abuse feels like ashes in the mouth.  I mean Matt Walsh is someone who doesn't care that the Catholic Church has priests who screw underage people:

It's only weird when it's gay, you guys. Adult males fucking underage females is not something he has a problem with. He's got issues with the idea of consent. That's a cockblock. 

We Don't Need Your Culture War

 

Target kicked out an Info Wars fan who relocated all the pride items to the back of the store. The man harassed employees and customers and yelled, “your kids can’t be gay” while exiting the store. pic.twitter.com/pixyVT2Unp

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) May 29, 2023

It feeds the rich while it buries the poor--does this feel to you like a wholly grassroots deal?  It doesn't to me. This whole thing is viral in a kind of "ice-bucket challenge for shitheads" kind of way, but the thing of randos vandalizing or taking "direct action" against department stores--including bomb threats? That has a lot of LibofTikTok kind of energy. That kind of ecosystem echochambering nonsense is anything but organic. 

It feels like we're in the midst of an escalation from rabid parents being told that drag and trans-awareness was a "contagion" for their kids, to hating the whole rainbow. Nothing new happened. 

Other than Trump lost an election. See, in one cynical. shitty sense, attacks on the LGBT community are about reigniting a wedge issue of marginalizing people like the 2004 attempt at gay marriage bans or the rear-guard protection of DADT in the military (probably why social conservatives are being stupid about "wokeness" in the military right now, when radicalization is the real danger, not admirably serving queers). If they can just give local bigots the high sign to deny pumping gas for suspected gays or making them cakes or whatever, they feel like that little bit of sanctioned bigotry is a "win".