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Dear Christians: You Are Not Being Oppressed.

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One of the great things about the It Gets Better campaign, apart from the fact that it is an immensely valuable and unquestionably brilliant idea, is that it made anti-gay bullying a national issue. The premise is simple. Tell your story of survival. Send that message. Things suck now, but they won’t forever. Genius. Stories flooded in, the message proved to be even more powerful than probably anyone expected, and the living hell that passes for the lives of many LGBT youth got some long overdue attention. I expect that straight people hadn’t thought much about what it was like to grow up gay until that point. A large chunk of them probably had never even considered the existence of gay youth.

Organizations like the Family Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage, not to mention most of organized religion, have been fairly successful in painting LGBT people as mustache twirling villains. Once people started seeing countless pictures of fresh-faced young people hounded to the breaking point, turning to suicide rather than endure the daily tortures their lives had become at the hands of their hate-fueled abusers, only the most hard-hearted ideologues on the planet could fail to empathize.

All of a sudden, people cared about bullying. Anti-Bullying programs, bills, and countless other efforts began to rise in prominence. Bullies were on notice: You are being watched. This put Republicans in a tight spot. It is impossible to come out in favor of beating up children, but they must also hate homosexuality. They have no choice. When it comes to gay people, the Republican base will tolerate nothing but complete intolerance from its elected officials.

Here’s a fun trivia question:

Q: What do you call a Republican who supports gay rights?
A: A Democrat.

The problem they faced was simple. How do you denounce a bully for behaving in exactly the same way you behave? In the modern conservative playbook, anything a like-minded comrade does is automatically righteous, and anyone they do it to must have had it coming. No empathy for their enemies, regardless of age, is to be permitted.

Given this, the right was faced with one of two possible avenues for spin; either figure out a way to blame LGBT youth for their victimization, or figure out how to paint the bullies as even bigger victims. Oh sure, they could try to ignore the issue, or claim that the bullying epidemic has been blown out of proportion, but that only works for so long. It’s pretty hard to ignore a thirteen-year old with a busted eye.

Finding a good media strategy became of paramount importance. Luckily, this is the only thing the modern Republican Party is good at.

First we had a few attempts to re-frame the issue. This sort of thing is usually left to the fringes of the conservative movement, as it is almost impossible to pull off without looking like an asshole. Here is a classic example of this tactic from Tea Party Nation activist and Radio host Rich Swier.

This is not bullying. It is peer pressure and is healthy. There are many bad behaviors such as smoking, under age drinking and drug abuse that are behaviors that cannot be condoned. Homosexuality falls into this category. Homosexuality is simply bad behavior that youth see as such and rightly pressure their peers to stop it. In Sarasota County over 70% of all HIV/AIDS cases are due to male sex with males.
I agree with Gulf Coast Gives that “LGBT youth are up to five times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight counterparts”. Homosexuality, like drugs, harms young people if they experement [sic] with it. That is the greatest tragedy.

Classy.

Needless to say, this caused a little controversy. This was to be expected, as that sort of concentrated hate is designed for consumption by only the most hearty and ravenous of right wing sociopaths.

 

It’s not like if gay people disappeared from the planet, NOM could get back to selling sandwiches. Trying to screw over gay people is their primary activity.

 

For everyone else, a more subtle tactic would be needed. This brings me to Rick Santorum. Rick is apparently the last person on earth unaware that Saturday Night Live is a comedy program, so when he found himself the target of a little standard issue satire, he reacted poorly. From The Hill:

“We’ve been hammered by the left for my standing up for the traditional family and I will continue to do so,” Santorum said. “The left, unfortunately, participates in bullying more than the right does. They say that they’re tolerant, and they’re anything but tolerant of people who disagree with them and support traditional values.”

If the Gay community is Batman, then Rick Santorum would be its Joker. Actually, let’s not go crazy here. Rick Sanatorium is really more of a second or third tier nemesis, like Scarecrow, or maybe Clayface. He is an annoyance, but no real threat, especially after his epic neutering at the hands of Dan Savage. His comments however, while asinine and horrible politics for him personally, represent exactly the tactic the right finally settled on.

We have this, from the National Organization for Marriage:

Some homosexual activists will continue to smear conservatives as “bigots” in order to bully them out of the debate and even out of their jobs.

And there we have it.

Let’s be clear. The concept here is that we in the gay community are bullies for calling anti-gay activists bigots, even though the only reason for their existence is to launch prejudicial, hate based, completely unprovoked attacks on our community. It’s not like if gay people disappeared from the planet, NOM could get back to selling sandwiches. Trying to screw over gay people is their primary activity. If that’s not bigoted, I don’t know what is.

NOM got this quote from a guy named Frank Turek and his article, Who Are the Real Gay Bigots and Bullies. This article is so absurd, and contains such wildly specious logic, that I could honestly spend three times its length debunking it. I will refrain, as it would require reading it a second time, and I can only throw up so much in one day without becoming dehydrated.

 

You know who doesn’t need a book called It Gets Better? Straight Christians. For them, it really doesn’t get much better.

 

Turek crystallizes the Meme. His thesis is that defending yourself from anti-gay attacks amounts to anti-christian bigotry. The idea is that as their hatred of gay people is based on their Christianity, any actions they take as a result of that hatred amounts to anti-Christian bullying. I suppose we are also responsible for damages should the person punching us in the face hurt their hand. My pity for the bully’s cuticles knows no bounds.

Shockingly, this is catching on. Last week, the Michigan state senate tried to pass a bill aimed enshrining this nastiness into law. From an excellent article by Amy Sulivan:

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled state senate passed an anti-bullying bill that manages to protect school bullies instead of those they victimize. It accomplishes this impressive feat by allowing students, teachers, and other school employees to claim that “a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction” justifies their harassment.

See how that works? A handful of grown up anti-gay bullies invent a half-assed defense of younger anti-gay bullies. Next thing you know, some GOP legislature is trying to get it passed into law. To be fair, Michigan Democrats in the House were able to smooth the language out a little. I bet Senate Republicans were upset about that. They appear to have cheered themselves up by passing a bill requiring students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Because, you know, Jobs for Michigan.

I find this all very frustrating.

You know who doesn’t need a book called It Gets Better? Straight Christians. For them, it really doesn’t get much better. I have no mechanism in my body capable of manufacturing the least bit of sympathy for their “plight.” Various polls have Christians coming in at something like 75% or 80% of the population of the United States. Christians represent over 85% of the Federal Government. Straight Christians have dominated every part of every debate we have had in this country since wooden boats full of white people started showing up here in the fifteenth century.

Christians do not have to worry that if they kiss their loved ones in the wrong neighborhood they will find themselves beaten or murdered. No one goes to the parking lot to find “Christian” spray painted on their cars. No states have laws banning Christians from adopting children or getting married, and no one, anywhere, will find themselves without legal standing if they have been fired simply for being Christian. Apart from gay people asking for a few reasonable protections, the notion of Christian oppression in the United States is entirely imaginary.

In contrast, every single gay person I know has their handful of horrific stories to tell. When we were young our attackers made our lives miserable through violence, harassment  and intimidation. When the bullies grow up they turn into Rich Swiers and Frank Tureks, harassing us still, and always looking for ways to encourage and protect those who perpetrate the violence by grounding their hate in legitimacy of scripture. I’m pretty sure Dan Savage had no problem finding tales of survival to fill his book. Our enemies are the same people that were having us jailed, institutionalized, and lobotomized only a generation ago, and if we want to call them bigots for it, we are entirely justified in doing so.

Does this mean I hate Christians? No. I don’t. For one thing, hating almost everyone in the country would take a tremendous amount of energy, and I am way too lazy. I like to believe that most Christians are decent, well-meaning, hard-working people who have no malice in their hearts toward gay people, however inaccurate their conception of us likely is. I do feel like they could be doing a better job of making clear that they reject the anti-gay extremism so prevalent among their ranks. Intentional or not, keeping silent in the face of these reprehensible atrocities sends a message of implied endorsement. I’m just saying.

What I do find appalling are the attempts of anti-gay hate groups and their spineless puppets in the legislature to claim victim-hood by cloaking themselves in dubious Christian righteousness. People like Maggie Gallagher, or Rick Santorum, or any of these other sketchy “moral crusaders” should be at least as offensive to mainstream Christians as they are to LGBT people. Anti-gay groups and the mealy-mouthed hate merchants who represent them take advantage of the well-meaning loyalty and heartfelt faith of a largely disinterested Christian base in order to further their own extremist ends. This is pretty cynical manipulation, and I’m surprised Christians aren’t more upset about it. I know I would be.

Yes. We don’t like being slandered, tortured, and murdered. Calling these people bullies represents our attempt to be diplomatic. What we are really talking about here are violent hate crimes. Do you think the KKK advertises themselves as a hate group? Of course not. Ask them and they will insist that they are an organization of ethnic advocacy, like a white version of the NAACP. Does them saying it make that so? No. They are obviously a horrible hate group. It is the only reason they exist. The only difference between a Klan member and Rich Swier is that the Klan member has the good sense to hide his face in public.

If our attempts to establish legal equality for our community and relative safety for our youth ruffles a few feathers, then so be it. Under no circumstances do the successes of our fight translate into Christian oppression. Getting your way only 98% of the time doesn’t make you oppressed. It makes you the Harlem Globetrotters. If you intend to force this battle, at least do so honestly.

 

(Image: “The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer,” 1883, by Jean-Léon Gérôme.)

Benjamin Phillips is a Humor Writer, Web Developer, Civics Nerd, and all around crank that spends entirely too much time shouting with deep exasperation at the television, especially whenever cable news is on. He lives in St. Louis, MO and spends most of his time staring at various LCD screens, occasionally taking walks in the park whenever his boyfriend becomes sufficiently convinced that Benjamin is becoming a reclusive hermit person. He is available for children’s parties, provided that those children are entertained by hearing a complete windbag talk for two hours about the importance of science education, or worse yet, poorly researched anecdotes PROVING that James Buchanan was totally gay. If civilization were to collapse due to zombie hoards or nuclear holocaust, Benjamin would be among the first to die as he has no useful skills of any kind. The post-apocalyptic hellscape has no real need for homosexual computer programmers who can name all the presidents in order, as well as the actors who have played all eleven incarnations of Doctor Who.

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News

Trump Team Pushing ‘Utter Propaganda’ on Deportations to Create ‘Climate of Fear’: Experts

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January 24, 2025

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The Trump administration’s long-promised “largest mass deportation operation” in U.S. history, which was announced to begin “on day one,” has so far resulted in what some experts and immigration advocates suggest are an average number to mild increase in arrests and deportations. Activists, experts, and journalists are working to provide context to the White House’s claims of its own effectiveness.

“The White House said immigration agents have arrested 538 undocumented immigrants with criminal records and deported ‘hundreds’ more,” The Washington Post reported Friday. “Those numbers, if accurate, would be relatively modest for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge operations — a possible indication that the Trump administration’s show of force has so far outpaced the government’s capacity to deliver on the president’s lofty goals.”

Ahead of his inauguration on Monday, the media was awash with reports that President Trump’s mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would start Tuesday, the day after he was sworn into office, and one day after it was originally supposed to. Chicago was identified in reports as the first city to be targeted by Trump’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities.

“ICE will start arresting public safety threats and national security threats on day one,” Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan said, according to the BBC. “We’ll be arresting people across the country, uninhibited by any prior administration guidelines.”

RELATED: ‘Hunting Grounds’: Trump Cancels Biden Ban on ICE Arrests at Schools, Churches, Hospitals

But Homan, who served as acting director of ICE during Trump’s first administration, then served up a curious claim: “Why Chicago was mentioned specifically, I don’t know.” He went on to suggest that the “leaked” Chicago details could be putting the safety of federal agents at risk.

“What was leaked in Chicago was more specific, what was happening, and that raises officer safety concern,” Homan said, according to The Hill.

Homan on Fox News had promised a “big raid” across the country, BBC had reported, and “has previously said Chicago will be ‘ground zero’ for the mass deportations.”

The mass arrests and deportations, despite appearing to be average, were heralded by the media.

Wednesday night, Fox News host Jesse Watters posted video to his Facebook page, declaring, “FOX NEWS ALERT: The largest mass deportation operation in American history is underway, and Primetime has exclusive photos of ICE’s first arrests.”

READ MORE: ‘Not Good’: Trump Proposes ‘Getting Rid of’ FEMA, Conditioning California Aid on Voter ID

Numerous media outlets blared that the Trump administration on Thursday arrested 538 undocumented immigrants.

And yet, according to a former Capitol Hill staffer, President Joe Biden’s average was often higher.

The White House on Friday posted an image to social media, declaring, “Deportation Flights Have Begun.”

Immigration experts, activists, and journalists pushed back hard.

“Deportation flights were taking place under Biden too. What’s new is the military aircraft,” noted The Bulwark’s Sam Stein. CNN’s Brian Stelter added, “Also new: The PR strategy.”

PR appears to be a major focus.

The Washington Examiner’s DHS reporter, Anna Giaritelli, quickly corrected the record on the White House’s above social media post: “DHS official authorized to speak with media said this is not a deportation flight — these are roughly 80 Guatemalans who were arrested AT the southern border recently and are being REPATRIATED. That is legally not a deportation.”

Immigration activist Thomas Cartwright, who, according to The Washington Post “tracks ICE deportations for the immigrant advocacy group Witness at the Border,” pointed to this data, and also challenged the White House’s narrative.

“Theater of the absurd,” he charged. “The only thing new about this is subjecting people to transport on a cargo plane rather than charter and the LOWER number of people on the plane – 75-80 compared to the average for ICE deportation flights to Guatemala of 125. In 2024 there were 508 deportation flights to Guatemala and in 2020 – 2023: 247, 184, 369, and 470, respectively. The 508 in 2024 represents just under an average of 10 deportation flights per week to Guatemala. Counting this flight there have been only 5 this week through Thursday.”

Immigration attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, also responded to the White House’s post: “This is utter propaganda and you have to make sure not to fall for it. There were dozens of deportation flights every single week over the last year and before that. Deportation flights never stopped. If they try to claim otherwise, they are lying to the American people.”

Reichlin-Melnick also blasted White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in response to another of her posts on immigration. “Are these people seriously trying to suggest the deportation flights have not already been going on? They’re lying to you. The Biden administration had already ramped up deportations from the border to a higher level than it was under the Trump admin.”

And pointing to Cartwright’s data, he noted, “In 2024, ICE carried out an average of 4.27 deportation flights per day (which includes weekends and holidays) The normal weekday total was above 6 deportation flights a day, per @thcartwright. Deportation flights never stopped. This is propaganda.”

Meanwhile, The New York Times’ Hamed Aleaziz on Friday afternoon told MSNBC that the Trump administration is really going “on the offensive when it comes to putting out pictures of ICE deportations from the White House Twitter account, from Tom Holman being on several new spots, talking about deportations, it is front and center. And I think it’s an effort to show that President Trump is fulfilling this promise of mass deportations.”

He says their goal is they “want people to be uncomfortable. They want there to be a climate of fear. And ultimately, maybe people will decide that they want to leave this country voluntarily?”

See the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: Danish MP Follows Profane Message to Trump With Warning to Greenlanders on US Civil Rights

 

Image via Reuters

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‘Not Good’: Trump Proposes ‘Getting Rid of’ FEMA, Conditioning California Aid on Voter ID

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January 24, 2025

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President Donald Trump intensified his attacks on the Federal Emergency Management Agency during a visit to Hurricane Helene-damaged parts of North Carolina on Friday, announcing he is planning on reforming or “getting rid of FEMA,” and proposed an unprecedented move to condition disaster relief on the passage of a voter ID law by California’s lawmakers, “as a start.” Trump’s trip, which will include travel to California later Friday, appears designed to target the emergency management agency, which he has been criticizing for months.

In what appeared to be scripted remarks, Trump later elaborated that he would “sign an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think frankly, FEMA’s not good. I think when you have a problem like this, I think you want to go and, uh, whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time.”

“Calling FEMA and then FEMA gets here and they don’t know the area,” Trump claimed. “They’ve never been to the area and they want to give you rules that you’ve never heard about, they wanna bring people that aren’t as good as the people you already have,” he alleged.

“FEMA turned out to be a a disaster. And you could go back a long way, you could go back to Louisiana, you could go back to some of the things that took place in Texas. And it turns out to be the state that ends up doing the work. It just complicates it. I think we’re gonna recommend that FEMA go away. And we pay directly and we pay a percentage to the state, but the state should fix it.”

RELATED: Is Trump Using Project 2025 to Eliminate FEMA?

In his wide-ranging remarks, President Trump also claimed that “rather than going through FEMA,” disaster relief aid to California and North Carolina “will go through us,” meaning, through his administration. FEMA is a federal government agency under the wide umbrella of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The president nominates the HHS Secretary, a cabinet level official, and the FEMA administrator.

And Trump appeared to say that he will assign Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley to manage financial aid to North Carolina, removing FEMA from the state.

“Trump also said FEMA would not be involved in further relief efforts and instead suggested that Whatley, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein (D), and a trio of Republican House members would be working with the White House directly because the agency ‘hasn’t done the job,'” The Independent reported.

“I wanna see two things in Los Angeles,” Trump also told reporters late Friday morning, “voter ID so that the people have a chance to vote, and I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state. Those are the two things. After that, I will be the greatest president that California ever has ever seen.”

“I want the water to come down and come down to Los Angeles and also go out to all the farm land that’s barren and dry,” Trump claimed. This week the President appeared to suggest that water runs only north to south.

READ MORE: Danish MP Follows Profane Message to Trump With Warning to Greenlanders on US Civil Rights

“So, I want two things,” Trump repeated, “I want voter ID for the people of California. They all want it. Right now you have no, you don’t have voter ID. People want to have to voter identification. You wanna have proof of citizenship. Ideally, you have one-day voting, but I just want voter ID to start, and I want the water to be released, and they’re gonna get a lot of help from the U.S.”

Trump later responded to a reporter’s question about his remarks on ending FEMA, calling the agency “a very big disappointment” that costs “a tremendous amount of money.” He alleged, “they end up in arguments if they’re fighting, all the time over who does what, it’s just it’s just not a good system.”

“I think it’s, I think when there’s a, uh, when there’s a problem with the state, I think that that problem should be taken care of by the state. That’s what we have states for. They take care of problems, and a government can handle something very quickly,” Trump said, appearing to not mention the scope of FEMA’s actions, responsibilities, and resources.

Jordan Weissmann, reporter for Yahoo Finance covering federal agencies, offers this explanation on California water: “The water issue Trump is fixated on doesn’t really have anything to do with the wildfires. It’s a fight between Central Valley farmers and Northern California farmers and environmentalists about who gets more fresh water.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump’s J6 Pardons Are ‘High Crime’ and ‘Abuse of Power’ Legal Expert Says

 

Image: Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and Franklin Graham in North Carolina Friday, via Reuters

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Danish MP Follows Profane Message to Trump With Warning to Greenlanders on US Civil Rights

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2 days ago

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January 24, 2025

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President Donald Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland from Denmark isn’t going over well with some Danes, including one of Denmark’s politicians who used vulgarity to express his opposition earlier this week, and is now citing a century-long historical record to issue a warning to Greenlanders on America’s refusal to grant full voting rights to its citizens in U.S. territories.

Anders Vistisen, a Danish Member of the European Parliament, reminded Trump earlier this week that “Greenland has been part of the Danish Kingdom for 800 years,” and “is not for sale.”

“Let me put it in words you might understand: Mr. Trump. f*** off,” Vistisen said.

Thursday night on CNN, Vistisen, a member of a right wing populist party, expanded his battle against Trump’s aspiration to annex Greenland.

READ MORE: Trump’s J6 Pardons Are ‘High Crime’ and ‘Abuse of Power’ Legal Expert Says

Addressing what he called the “argument that America can make a great deal,” an apparent reference to Donald Trump, Vistisen said, “we actually have some historical precedence for this. A hundred years ago we sold you what you call the U.S. Virgin Islands. Today, that territory still doesn’t have voting rights for your presidential elections.”

“That place doesn’t have a voting member of your parliament, the Congress — or the House of Representatives, and the Senate, and when I visited, when we had the hundred years commemoration, there was not a great lot of enthusiasm about the way the U.S. is handling that.”

“So I think if the Greenlandic people are looking carefully at this and they are looking on the U.S. overseas territories,” Vistisen continued, “looking at how Indigenous people are treated in the U.S., it’s very hard to make a compelling argument that they will have a better deal from the United States than what they have within the Danish realm, the kingdom of Denmark, where they have full voting rights in the Danish parliament are actually are overrepresented, and as you clearly stated, they have a very beneficial agreement, economically with Denmark.”

The Atlantic’s David Frum, a former Bush 43 White House speechwriter, responded to Vistisen’s remarks.

“In 1917, Denmark (legally neutral but sympathetic to the Allies) sold the [Virgin] islands to the USA to prevent Germany from seizing them for a submarine base. Also, the islands were economically desperate, and war-isolated Denmark could not aid them. As part of the deal, the US guaranteed Danish sovereignty over Greenland. Another reason that seizing Greenland would be an act of US bad faith,” Frum wrote.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Is Trump Using Project 2025 to Eliminate FEMA?

 

Image by Elekes Andor via Wikimedia Commons and a CC license

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