Wingnuts Helpfully Threaten To Kill Police After Arrests Of Neo-Nazis Who Planned Pride Event Riot
Whole new version of 'Back the Blue.'
Police in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, arrested 31 members of a white supremacist hate group Saturday, disrupting an apparent plan to bash heads at a local Pride event. A phone tipster advised police they'd seen the men, “looking like a little army,” piling into the back of a U-Haul van; when police pulled the van over, they found riot gear, shields, at least one smoke grenade, and writings that police said "resembled an operations plan" to riot at Coeur d'Alene's annual "Pride in the Park" event.
Since the arrests, rightwingers on social media have tried to doxx officers from the Coeur d'Alene Police Department and the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office, and at a press conference yesterday, Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White said the police department has been getting phone calls threatening the police from as far away as Norway, possibly from the sort of people Donald Trump would like to immigrate to America.
The police department received 149 phone calls on Monday morning about the arrests, including one from as far away as Norway, White said. He said they were a ”50/50 split,” between local calls of support for the police and anonymous angry calls from those upset about the arrests. [...]
“The other 50%, who are completely anonymous, who want nothing more than to scream and yell at us and use really choice words, offered death threats against myself and other members of the police department merely for doing our jobs,” White said.
Well sure you were doing your jobs, but you aren't supposed to do your job when a hate group plans to bash gay and trans people, especially since Pride in the Park was billed as "family-friendly," which is impossible since only straight white people are supposed to have families.
The Idaho Statesmanalso reports that White declined to say whether the men had been carrying firearms or other weapons, and that he didn't know why the group chose Coeur d'Alene as a site for its riot, or who exactly the riot was meant to target. (Gay people. It was meant to target gay people.)
Also too, the presser was briefly interrupted by an attendee who wasn't actually a reporter, who shouted about the bullshit conspiracy theory that Patriot Front is actually made up of FBI members, a common belief among conspiracy types for whom a hate group can't just be a hate group. White explained, "To be very clear here, these were not law enforcement officers that we arrested. These were members of the hate group Patriot Front.” And no wingnuts believed him, because of course that's what a cop would say.
Patriot Front is actually a splinter group that broke from the neo-Nazi "Vanguard America," which was among the groups responsible for violence at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founder Thomas Rousseau, who was arrested in Coeur d'Alene, sought to rebrand his faction after a Vanguard America member murdered Heather Heyer by ramming a car into a crowd of counter-demonstrators.
So far, the 31 Patriot Front members have only been charged with "conspiracy to riot," a misdemeanor, although after the arrests Saturday, White said additional charges might be brought.
In my opinion, I would gladly arrest 31 individuals who are coming to riot in our city for a misdemeanor rather than have them participate in some sort of seriously disruptive event, which is exactly what they were planning in the downtown area.
Despite Chief White's caution about ascribing motives just yet, Patriot Front's plans to attack a Pride event reflects the far-Right's growing attempts to roll back the rights and even the existence of LGBTQ people, especially transgender Americans, who rightwing media accuse of "grooming" children simply by existing.
As historian of white nationalist extremism Kathleen Belew noted in a Twitter thread, it shouldn't be especially surprising that a white supremacist group would target an LGBTQ+ event, because
[To] the white power movement and some of the militant right, a host of social issues (abortion, gay rights, interracial contact, immigration, secularism) are all a problem for the same reason.
White power activists have long seen all of these issues as part of an interconnected conspiracy to lower the white birth rate, attacking their race and nation. They see this as an apocalyptic threat.
This is what connects attacks on the black community (Buffalo, Charleston) with attacks on immigrants (El Paso) with attacks on Jews (Pittsburgh) with attacks on Pride (Idaho, SF)
Belew also noted Coeur d'Alene's history as a locus of White Power organizing, from the now-defunct Aryan Nations compound in nearby Hayden Lake to current efforts to recruit white nationalists and anti-government ideologues to North Idaho as part of the so-called "American Redoubt" movement.
While Idaho has plenty of its own armed extremists, some of them in state government, most of the Patriot Front extremists arrested Saturday were from other states. The Spokane Spokesman-Review reports that two of those arrested, Mishael and Josiah Buster, are brothers from Spokane, Washington. One of the brothers, Mishael Buster, 22, can be seen reading announcements during services at a loony rightwing church led by loony rightwing former Washington state legislator Matt Shea. Shea, you may recall, was expelled from the state House Republican caucus after an investigation found he had engaged in domestic terrorism.
Shea is still very active in Washington wingnut circles, and led a "prayer walk" Saturday at the park where the Pride event was held. (Spokane is only about 40 minutes down the road from Coeur d'Alene.) Late that day, he lied about the Patriot Front arrests, claiming on the Facebook page of far-right "Redoubt Radio" that police had "thwarted" an "ambush from antifa." Happily, virtually no one appears to have believed him, as the story hasn't even gotten any traction in rightwing circles.
Also too, the Daily Beast reports that after fellow wingnuts paid his bail, the mom of Jared Boyce, one of the Patriot Fronters arrested in Idaho, threw him out of her house in hopes that he'll get a life and stop being a racist shitbag. Boyce's mother, Karen Amsden, said that her son showed up Sunday after posting bail and told her, "Don’t believe the media, mom. We were just there because they’re grooming kids." She said she gave him an ultimatum:
"You can choose between Patriot Front and your family. And he’s like, "Well, I can’t quit Patriot Front." I’m like, "Well, then you've just chosen. So pack your stuff and get out of my house."
Good call, mom!
[Idaho Statesman / Vice / Spokane Spokesman-Review / Boise State Public Radio / Spokesman-Review / Daily Beast]
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How's The Right's War On Trans Kids Going? Good Christ It's Awful
Decent people are fighting back, so there's that.
The ongoing rightwing panic over transgender young people keeps chugging along, because the GOP loves traditional families so much it wants to force everyone into one. The only good thing to say about it is that while these campaigns are finding some success, resistance from families and allies of trans kids is also growing.
Louisiana: Another Ban On Trans Athletes
On Monday, Louisiana became the whateverth state to ban transgender women and girls from being on sports teams consistent with their gender, after Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards refused to either sign or veto an anti-trans bill passed by the state Legislature, goddamn it. Last year, Edwards vetoed a similar bill, so Republicans in the Lege just went and passed it all over again in the current session. Edwards said at a news conference Monday that it was clear Republicans had the votes to override a veto, so even though he opposed the measure, he allowed it to slink into law.
“Whether it’s intended or not, the effect is to tell – send a strong message to at least some of these young people that they shouldn’t be who they think they are, who they believe they are, who they know that they are,” he said. “And I find that very distressing. I do believe that we can be better than that.”
Edwards should have vetoed it and made them override, if you ask us, but Louisiana never does.
The ban will apply to all public elementary and secondary schools and colleges, as well as to some private ones that receive state funding, just to be assholes about it. The bill also includes provisions shielding schools that enforce the ban from any legal action, which sounds constitutionally hinky to our not-a-lawyer ears, and it will allow cisgender athletes to sue if they believe they were “deprived of an athletic opportunity” because a trans athlete was illegally allowed to compete.
Such bills are allegedly meant to "protect the integrity" of women's sports, an area of athletic competition Republicans usually ignore or openly mock. But now they have a chance to stir up hatred among the fuckchud base, so suddenly the GOP cares a whole bunch about women's sports, as long as they don't actually have to watch any of the games. CNN helpfully notes that a 2017 report found that there hasn't actually been any "direct or consistent research" showing that trans women have any athletic advantage, but why let facts get in the way of a good panic? [CNN / NIH]
Ohio: Genital-Exam Bill Not Just Invasive, Also Unethical As Fuck
Last week we let you know about Ohio's weirdass ban on trans athletes in school sports, which takes the cruelty up a notch by allowing anyone, literally ANYONE, to demand that any school athlete be subjected to an examination by a physician that would include "external and internal genital inspections," testosterone level checks, and genetic tests if that school athlete is suspected of maybe being trans.
Read More: Ohio Republicans Demand Right To Inspect Children's Genitals
As Robyn noted in that story, there's currently precisely one trans girl playing organized school sports in Ohio; she's a high school junior who loves being on her school's softball team, and the integrity of the sport has suffered no discernible damage.
This week the Columbus Dispatch published a fact check and update on the bill, confirming most of what's already been reported and adding details about Ohio doctors' objections to being asked to perform a pelvic exam on a girl who has no medical need of one. The exam
could include ultrasound and/or insertion of a doctor's hand to confirm the presence of a uterus and ovaries, said Melissa Wervey Arnold, CEO for Ohio's chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
"People need to understand that this is not standard practice," Arnold said. "Adult males and females do have their genitals examined, but that’s not standard practice in pediatric care."
Arnold said multiple doctors have already told the association that they would be uncomfortable with the law, and that they might well refuse to perform such an exam on a minor child, because "First, do no harm" and stuff.
Democratic state Rep. Beth Liston, now a professor of pediatrics at Ohio State University, said she would have refused if one of her minor patients asked.
Aside from the stigma of having your identity questioned, the Dublin Democrat said, an exam that involves insertion to check for a cervix could be emotionally damaging and even traumatizing to a young girl. That's why children's hospitals have specially trained staff who examine minor victims of sexual abuse
OK, but what about the rights of transphobes to get confirmation of their suspicions that a girl on the track team looks a little too butch, huh?
Liston said that, since the bill would, like others of its ilk, allow lawsuits by cis athletes who feel "discriminated" against, schools would likely pull any girl from competition if her sex were questioned (again, by any rando who demands it). That, or they might make all girls get the exams in order to compete, which might just depopulate some teams.
"She’s way too tall. She's way too good. She doesn’t look like a girl to me. She doesn’t ever wear dresses. These are things that can prompt a question," Liston said.
As an example of how awful this would absolutely get, Ben Ferree, a former Ohio High School Athletic Association employee, recalled a state lawmaker who was absolutely certain a trans girl was unfairly running amok in eighth-grade basketball, it just wasn't FAIR!
"We didn't have a record of a trans athlete being at that school or even that sport, so we called to check," Ferree said. "The school told us, 'They're probably thinking about this girl who is very large for an eighth-grade girl and has a short haircut.'"
Aha! But if they didn't do an invasive exam, how do they know she wasn't just lying about really being a girl?
As of yet, no amendments have yet been added to allow retroactive demands for pelvic exams so that decades-old suspicions and grudges can be settled. Maybe that's more of an Idaho idea. [Columbus Dispatch]
Texas: Parents Sue To Stop 'Abuse' Investigations For Gender Affirming Care
Content warning: Story discusses an attempted suicide; if you need support, contact the the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling 800-273-8255 or texting 741741. For LGBTQ+ mental health support, the Trevor Project's support line is available 24/7 at 866-488-7386.
Finally, an update on the continuing fuckery by Texas officials against parents of trans kids. Three Texas families, with help from the ACLU and Lambda Legal, are suing to block Governor Greg Abbott's instructions to state agencies to investigate parents for "child abuse" if they authorize gender-affirming care for their minor kids. In March, a judge enjoined the state from continuing one such investigation, but the order applied only to the one family. At least nine Texas families are currently under investigation by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services for the "offense" of providing such care for their kids.
Read More:
Texas AG And Gov Just Made It Illegal To Provide Medical Care To Trans Kids, All By Their Lonesomes
Texas Won't Be Able To Throw People In Jail For Being Good Parents To Trans Kids ... For Now
The new lawsuit aims at stopping any current or future investigations, and would also block Texas from investigating any families that belong to the advocacy group PFLAG, too. The filing notes that PFLAG currently has more than 600 members in 17 Texas chapters.
There's also some horrible news contained in the lawsuit, the Texas tribune reports:
According to the lawsuit, a 16-year-old transgender boy tried to kill himself the same day that Abbott issued the child abuse directive.
“[He] said that the political environment, including Abbott’s Letter, and being misgendered at school, led him to take these actions,” the lawsuit said.
He survived the attempt and was admitted to an outpatient psychiatric facility, where staff learned that he was undergoing hormone therapy. A week after he was discharged, an investigator from DFPS visited the family’s home and, according to the lawsuit, said that the psychiatric facility had reported the family for child abuse. The family remains under investigation.
Jesus fucking Christ. If a trans kid gets treatment for a suicide attempt in Texas, their family could end up under investigation. Gee, what sort of effect might that have on people in crisis seeking help, Governor Abbott, you evil creep?
Yes, yes, you're all about helping "protect families," no matter how many kids have to die. [Texas Tribune]
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They're Coming For Drag Shows. Really.
These vile pieces of shit.
If you can watch this Ron DeSantis press conference without a shiver going down your spine, there's something fundamentally wrong with you. Where is the mediocre white fascist Right's next moral panic going? What's the logical conclusion of their "groomer" fantasies?
Here is Florida Fascist Party Gov. Ron DeSantis explaining that he'd like to investigate drag shows. Right now, he's only talking about family-friendly drag shows where kids are present, but mark our words, the Satanic Panic will go far beyond that before this is all over. (JoeMyGod notes that he is flanked by an extremist sheriff named Carmine Marceno, who sounds like a real peach.)
Florida Politics has some transcript:
“I’ve asked my folks to look,” the Republican Governor said. “We have child protective statutes on the books. We have laws against child endangerment.”
DeSantis wants to let “kids be kids” and grow up in a “normal environment” without having political agendas “shoved down their throats,” he continued.
“You had these very young kids, and they must have been like 9, 10 years old, at a quote, ‘drag show,’ where they were putting money in the underwear of this — and that is totally inappropriate. That is not something that children should be exposed to,” DeSantis said. “We probably — we may have the ability to deal with that if something like that happens.” [...]
“Part of the reason why we fought the fight with parents’ rights in education is because there’s a movement to inject these things like gender ideology in elementary schools, even,” DeSantis said. “My view is our schools need to be teaching these kids to read and write and add and subtract and do the things (that are) supposed to be done in school. Injecting these agendas into it is wrong.”
Organizers of the Dallas drag show called it a family-friendly event, but DeSantis noted the “graphic language” used at the event, which featured a neon sign that read, “It’s not gonna lick itself.”
“It used to be kids would be off-limits. Used to be everybody agreed with that,” DeSantis said. “Now it just seems like there’s a concerted effort to be exposing kids more and more to things that are not age-appropriate.”
All of this is such bullshit.
The white Right has been in a 100 percent manufactured moral panic since this weekend, when literal actual self-described fascists decided to descend upon a gay bar in Dallas that was doing a family-friendly drag show for Pride weekend. Those insurgents screamed at and berated children and their parents, and kids covered their ears because they were scared.
Now, in Florida, an extremist state rep named Anthony Sabatini is calling for an emergency special session, because a kid-friendly drag show was advertised for Pride in West Palm Beach.
\u201cBREAKING: Drag Sex Shows aimed at children have come to Florida \n\nI will be proposing Legislation to charge w/ a Felony & terminate the parental rights of any adult who brings a child to these perverted sex shows aimed at FL kids\n\nWhen will the sexualization of children stop?\u201d— Rep. Anthony Sabatini (@Rep. Anthony Sabatini) 1654564501
Sing along, everybody, it's a call-and-response! "If you think drag shows are sex shows, that's about you. (That's about you!) If you think drag shows are sex shows, that's about you. (That's about you!)" Come on, everybody, clap your hands!
DeSantis's weirdass spox Christina Pushaw says she's not sure DeSantis knew about the West Palm Beach thing when he made those comments. He definitely knew the American Right was collectively diarrheaing its pants because some kids had fun at a drag show during Dallas Pride.
If DeSantis and the rest of these people weren't such total losers devoid of happiness, they'd know you don't put quotes around "drag show," because it's not some exotic concept to people who live in the real world. Moreover, there's nothing inherently "inappropriate" about a man dressing up in exaggerated costumes and lip-synching, unless you're just a bigot with nothing to contribute to society, and to be clear, the people complaining are precisely that. As to the picture going around of a kid allegedly sticking money in drag queen's underpants, it appears that is a hoax. But they will just keep lying about it, because rightwingers are just liars wearing human skin.
It's like their drag.
But be clear: One picture isn't what DeSantis and the rest of his pathetic cohort are mad about. They're mad at kids being "exposed" to fun LGBTQ people whose very existence is the negation of whatever white supremacist "traditional Christian" sexual ethics these trolls want to brainwash children with. Kids are remarkably non-judgmental until bad parents teach them otherwise, so kids enjoying innocent drag shows featuring funny people dressing up in funny costumes and lip-synching to songs goes against the fundamentalist Christian obsession with grooming little children to become little fire-breathing bigots just like them. Therefore, they must be stopped.
And again, as we've noted, because these people live underneath rocks in joyless suburban Biblescapes from Chip and Joanna's ugly fucking shiplap hell, they think drag shows are inherently sexual, because repressed losers think everything is inherently sexual, and because they are scared of drag queens and the liberation they represent.
Florida Democratic politicians are calling this out for the absolute bullshit it is:
Orlando Democratic Rep. Anna V. Eskamani told Florida Politics that Republicans aren’t targeting heterosexual content. The recent push for family values is grounded in homophobia and transphobia, she argued.
“If you have concerns about sexualized content being available to those under the age of 18, then why are we not talking about Hooters or cheerleading or beauty pageants or billboard in our communities or magazines at the store or internet ads?” Eskamani said. “It’s just a continuation of homophobic rhetoric disguised as safety concerns.”
Fellow Orlando Democratic Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an openly gay House member, called DeSantis’ comments “sad and pathetic.”
“This is not a parody. It’s the actual Republican Party of Florida putting forward proposals to regulate drag queens,” Smith said. “I mean, this is a joke. It’s laughable. I have to laugh, otherwise I would cry just at the pathetic state of affairs that our politics is in right now.”
It is absolutely fucking goddamned pathetic, and we shouldn't be surprised. The modern authoritarian Right is fully powered by racist Little White Man Little Dick syndrome. Of course they're going after drag queens next. Ofcourse. Of course a Texas GOP legislator wants to ban funny dress-up ladies from doing silly songs for kids, but has no interest in banning them from being with Christian youth group leaders. Of course this thin-lipped jackal taint Sabatini is calling for an emergency session of the legislature. Of course.
GROUP ACTIVITY EXPERIMENT: Google news stories about drag queens sexually abusing children and then google Christian youth group leaders sexually abusing children and do the math on your abacus! Google the Southern Baptist sexual abuse scandal and then google all the times things went terribly awry at Drag Queen Story Hour! Google the Roman Catholic church, like, just in general.
But none of that matters, because conservatives don't actually care if kids are sexually abused. As long as it happens within the Father Knows Best puritanical framework they like, their deafening silence on actual sexual abuse of children tells you all the stories you need to hear. Brain-addled QAnon wackjobs are obsessed with fake child trafficking they think Democratic politicians and Tom Hanks are doing in underground tunnels, but they don't have a word to say about real child trafficking.
This is all just stupid, ginned-up hysteria. As Melissa Gira Grant argued yesterday in The New Republic, they're laying the groundwork for Pizzagate shootings in every city. One of the loser fascists outside that Dallas bar, John Doyle, said something that day that should tell you exactly what you need to know about the thoroughly hallucinatory worldview these people are coming from:
“I wonder if the mama bear instinct is gonna come out in three years when the mainstream Democrat[ic] party platform is to rape their kids,” John Doyle, an influential figure in the white nationalist American Populist Union, taunted the families with kids lining up to get into the event, a family-friendly drag show at the queer club Mr. Misster in the Dallas gay neighborhood of Cedar Springs. Two children stood in line a few feet away from the approaching Doyle, plugging their ears with their fingers as he continued to yell at those in line through his megaphone. A crowd surrounded the club and chanted, “Groomer! Groomer!” One person waved a Christian flag. “The fist of Christ will come down on you—very soon,” screamed one man, with a rosary clenched between his fingers.
All these people are becoming radicalized together. And because of thin-skinned politicians like Ron DeSantis, they have every reason to believe they will be aided and comforted in their holy war. How long until Republicans try to ban drag shows, in general? How long until the fascist pig terrorists show up at gay bars on regular nights?
Oh wait fascist pig terrorists what?
\u201cWhen introducing the segment on the fascists attacking a Dallas drag event, Tucker Carlson opened with the line "Just another weekend in Weimar." This is a talking point among fascist neo-nazis who justify nazi persecution of gays in Nazi Germany. \n\nhttps://t.co/xb9bJfI821\u201d— Alejandra Caraballo \ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\uddf7\ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\u26a7\ufe0f (@Alejandra Caraballo \ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\uddf7\ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\u26a7\ufe0f) 1654700681
So.
[Florida Politics / The New Republic]
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Fascists Terrorize Kids At Dallas Pride, But Don't Worry It's For Jesus
Stranger danger.
We've been talking about how a big part of the fascist Christian right's obsession with accusing everyone else of "grooming" has to do with their desperate and futile obsession with preventing the next generation from becoming LGBTQ. Because they cling to ignorant beliefs like they cling to their guns and their Trump-autographed Bibles, they think if they just keep kids from seeing LGBTQ folks on TV or from reading about LGBTQ characters in books or seeing LGBTQ people in public, then they'll never be exposed to the concept, and therefore will grow up to be mindless mouthbreathing bigots like their parents.
These people are fucking morons. We've been explaining for decades that LGBTQ people simply exist, and that nothing they can do can change that, but they don't believe it. And so they're obsessed with eliminating it. Yes, people should understand that has potentially genocidal implications. We're dealing with white Christian fascists, after all.
Here is Greg Kelly, the beclowned Newsmax host, callingthe cops crimestoppers because he saw a video on the internet of kids in Dallas attending a drag show that's for kids.
\u201cTODAY I CALLED THE DALLAS POLICE TO REPORT THE CRIME OF CHILD ABUSE AT THAT HIDEOUS "DRAG THE KIDS TO PRIDE" event. This must must be investigated and the offenders PROSECUTED!!!\u201d— Greg Kelly (@Greg Kelly) 1654557075
Greg says he's calling Dallas police, but as Mediaite explains, and as you can hear in the recording, he's calling the North Texas Crime Commission, which is where you call for crimestoppers.
People can debate whether Kelly's schtick is performance art or he needs therapy or both — those are the only options we're providing — but this is what he's selling to his paste-eating viewers. He's yelling into the crimestoppers voicemail that he saw a "horrible video" online of "dancing transvestites with young children." He explains it "happened in the heart of Dallas," calling it "incredibly inappropriate" and "probably criminal."
This weekend, as part of Dallas Pride, a bar called Mr. Misster threw a family-friendly daytime drag show event called "Drag the Kids to Pride." Kids got to dance with the drag queens, and kids got to tip them, because that's what you do at drag shows. There are videos going viral, because some conservative trash showed up to terrorize people, to scream at children, and to call folks "groomers."
One woman who was protesting, Dasy, who didn't want to give her last name, first saw the poster for the event near where she lives. She was at the bar after the event with a "Stop grooming the kids" poster.
"I live in this community," Dasy said. "I have for several years. I don't believe that I should be seeing signs advertising for children to be dancing on stage with men in thongs and in inappropriate clothing and makeup. I do not in any way condone the behavior that these people are engaging in, but what drags me out here is it's kids now."
"Dasy" doesn't approve of drag queens. "Dasy" thinks the very idea that these kids were around drag queens is inappropriate. People like "Dasy" think it's inappropriate for kids to be around gay people. Got it? It doesn't matter how much anybody ever points out that a kid is clearly a hell of a lot more likely to be in danger of being sexually exploited near a Southern Baptist church leader than they are at a drag show. These people think the existence of LGBTQ people is inappropriate. Read their own coverage of this event. They're not hiding it.
And as we said above, they think kids become LGBTQ by being exposed to LGBTQ people. They think they can prevent it. (When the reality is that kids who are already going to grow up LGBTQ are merely less likely to grow up depressed and suicidal if they see early and often that there are people out there just like them and their families support them.)
Do you see the overinflated pig-ignorance we are dealing with here?
In a statement, the bar explained the event and decried the people who showed up "yelling homophobic threats, transphobic remarks and vile accusations at these children and parents." A group of joyless bigots calling itself "Protect Texas Kids" explained that it was protesting because it was a gay bar and they went on the gay bar's website and there was a picture of a fixture inside the bar that said "It's not gonna lick itself." Protect Texas Kids continued:
The mission was to raise awareness that an event like this, a drag show for children, was happening right in Dallas. We also hoped that if we raised awareness, the event might be canceled or modified so that children couldn’t be present.
Again, because a drag show in and of itself is "inappropriate" to these grunting fascists.
Their statement says they're happy because the cops got all the kids out of the drag show. The news says that's absolutely not true, but this is apparently a lie they're intent on telling the press. Rather, according to the Dallas Voice, citing an activist on the scene, the bigots asked the cops to go in the bar and do a "welfare check" on the kids." They did. The cops came back and said, "There are no problems in there." Just a fabulous and fun drag show.
This link has pictures of the protests, if you're interested. Below is a sampling of videos from JoeMyGod. In the first, read the copy to see which usual suspect was sharing these videos and making them go viral. The second video is particularly vile, but do listen to what the man with the megaphone is saying, because it's like the visual aid to everything we've been saying about why these people are obsessed with calling people "groomers."
\u201cThis video, shared by Andy Ngo, shows the terrifying moment a man who stated: \u201cI\u2019m a Fascist, Not a Nazi\u201d charged at a family with two young children leaving the event. \n\nAntifascists blocked his path and he attempted to barrel through them. It\u2019s unclear what he intended to do.\u201d— Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club (@Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club) 1654407697
\u201cJohn Doyle confronts parents outside of the Children\u2019s Drag Show in Dallas, TX.\u201d— Tayler Hansen \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@Tayler Hansen \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1654359226
As Yashar Ali notes, in this next video, you can see how much these garbage people are visibly scaring a child. When that's pointed out, they directly yell at the child.
\u201cHarassing parents in front of their children about their parenting. This kid is clearly anxious. It's awful.\n\nDon't talk to me about the drag show element, he doesn't even bring that up in the video.\n\nHe keeps saying "gay bar" over and over and that she's indoctrinating her kid.\u201d— Yashar Ali \ud83d\udc18 (@Yashar Ali \ud83d\udc18) 1654558559
For a whole lot more on who the people in the videos are, what they said, and so forth, Daily Kos has a great rundown written by David Neiwert, chronicler of extremists. Surprise, it's some of the leading lights of the white supremacist fascist insurgency in these here United States.
And now, some dick GOP state rep in Texas named Bryan Slaton says he's filing a bill to ban people from taking children to drag shows. Yep.
\u201cDrag shows are no place for a child.\n\nI would never take my children to a drag show and I know Speaker Dade Phelan and my Republican colleagues wouldn\u2019t either. \n\nI will be filing legislation to address this issue in the new #txlege .\u201d— Bryan Slaton (@Bryan Slaton) 1654526299
In his statement, he refers to the event as "perverted adults [...] obsessed with sexualizing young children," because he can't imagine that this isn't somehow sexual. He refers to kids "being subjected to drag shows," because nowhere in his pea-sized little man syndrome white boy brain can he imagine that in families that aren't consumed by hate, kids might think fun people in fun costumes lip-synching to fun songs and making funny faces are, you know, fun.
JoeMyGod notes that this guy has also tried to make the death penalty happen for both abortion doctors and patients. He offered an amendment, which was adopted, to Texas's new transgender sports hate bill, that allows for kids in sports to have to endure invasive genital exams.
You know, because he's so concerned about "protect kids."
He's still babbling on Twitter:
\u201cAt a drag show in Dallas this past weekend, sick adults enticed kids to put dollar bills the underwear of men dressed as women.\n\nThis is disgusting and dangerous. It can\u2019t be allowed to continue.\n\nMy Republican colleagues and I will protect kids from these sickos.\u201d— Bryan Slaton (@Bryan Slaton) 1654557636
Riiiiiiiight, we bet that's exactly how it happened.
So here we are. This is what happened at Dallas Pride this weekend. Or at least part of it. It looks like the rest of the event was a blast.
Fuck these people, and watch out for them. They, the ones yelling "groomer," are the ones who are coming for the children, and they are dangerous.
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