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Does Teaching Your Teen To Be An Anti-Gay Bigot Qualify As Brainwashing?

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Editor’s note: On Monday, as The New Civil Rights Movement reported, 14-year old Sarah Crank stood in front of the Maryland State Legislature and asked them to give her “the best birthday present ever” by voting “no” on a same-sex marriage bill. Sarah willingly gave her first and last name in her testimony, and her mother, Kathleen Crank, has been extremely active on the Internet this week commenting on blog posts about her and her daughter’s testimony, and their views on same-sex marriage equality, “traditional marriage,” and home-schooling. To be clear, not only has the elder Crank not attempted to shield her daughter from any future challenges that might arise by taking such a public and controversial position on a matter of huge importance to society, as any normal parent would do, she has been actively promoting her daughter as a modern-day anti-gay Joan of Arc. 

The gay bashing testimony delivered to the Maryland State Legislature by 14-year old Sarah Crank is very disturbing, yet hardly surprising; after all, in a majority of schools around the country even today, 14-year-old anti-gay bullies torment fellow students actually and/or perceived to be gay.

Yet the question arises; did Sarah Crank decide to have contempt for gay people’s rights all on her own, or is she being raised and home-schooled in an environment that teaches her contempt for gay human beings?

Under a post about her daughter’s political gay bashing, Kathleen Crank has been (nearly endlessly) commenting, (see: images throughout) telling all who look that her gay bashing daughter aspires to be a Supreme Court justice and that the daughter has reached vehemently anti-gay conclusions all on her own, a precocious and spontaneous bigot, as it were. In her comments, Kathleen Crank states that her daughter Sarah “wanted” to give the gay-bashing testimony — but very obviously, the child “wants” to because the child has learned that this is how to get her professional gay-bashing mommy’s approval.

Internet research on Kathleen Crank, indeed, suggests that she personally has taught her daughter to hate gays.

Kathleen Crank describes herself professionally as a “public interest lobbyist.” The lion’s share of her “public interest lobbying” appears to be against gay rights. She has been active in the so-called Concerned Women for America; many of CWA’s most powerful figures have been caught out telling propagandistic lies against gay human beings.

Here is a report with a full gay-bashing statement that Kathleen Crank made to the Maryland State Legislature in 2008 when her daughter Sarah was 10.  In that shocking, counter-factual testimony in which Kathleen Crank bore false witness against all of those of her fellow citizens that happen to be gay, she said that 1) homosexuality is a “lifestyle;” 2) that a gay adult forced by prejudice into a heterosexual marriage has no right to liberate him or herself and the spouse from that untenable relationship; 3) that when women have AIDS, it is exclusively the fault of male homosexuals that they have it; 4) that the entire African AIDS epidemic is the fault of gay people; 5) that same-sex marriage legalized in certain countries in Europe has been “a dismal failure” and caused “cultural chaos” in all of Europe; and that 6) for the United States truly to have a government that is of the people, for the people and by the people, sexual orientation apartheid must be maintained forever.

In this document pertaining to matters of adoption, Kathleen Crank states that all gay human beings are unfit to be parents, that all research stating otherwise is a sham, and that most Catholic priests that abuse children are gay. Here is a report that Kathleen Crank cried as she gave her gay-bashing testimony to the Maryland State Legislature. A Maryland Catholic Conference press release reported on Kathleen Crank’s personal contribution to defeat of a proposed equality measure.

The above is just a sampling of Kathleen Crank’s ferocious engagement against LGBT Americans’ rights. One Internet commenter stated that Kathleen Crank has “weaponized” her daughter Sarah Crank, “in an attempt to destroy our rights.” The appearance certainly is that Kathleen Crank has taught her daughter Sarah far less about what loving commitment really means than she has taught her about relentlessly beating down a sexual minority as a nasty-spirited public arena blood sport.

It is especially revealing of the upbringing through hatred to which Kathleen Crank has subjected her daughter Sarah that Sarah stood in front of the Maryland State Legislature and declared that if the elected officials voted against equality, it would be her “best birthday present ever.”  That is how little Kathleen Crank has taught her daughter about the meaning of love.


Images: Kathleen Kositzky Crank’s comments at Think Progress. 

New York City– based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT– interest by– line has appeared on Advocate .com, PoliticusUSA .com, The New York Blade, Queerty .com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.

 

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‘I’m Not Suicidal’: Kari Lake Pushes Hillary Clinton Murder Conspiracy Theory

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April 22, 2024

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Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake is promoting a conspiracy theory suggesting Hillary Clinton wants to assassinate her. Her remarks came just one day before she lost her attempt to have the Supreme Court review what some have called her conspiracy-theory fueled lawsuit about electronic voting machines.

“Lake, who filed the lawsuit during her failed campaign for governor in 2022, challenged whether the state’s electronic voting machines assured ‘a fair and accurate vote.’ Two lower courts dismissed the suit, finding that Lake and former Republican state lawmaker Mark Finchem had not been harmed in a way that allowed them to sue,” CNN reported Monday.

Also on Monday Law&Crime reported that when she filed her lawsuit, a Dominion Voting Systems spokesperson “rejected Lake’s cybersecurity claim, telling Law&Crime it was ‘implausible and conspiratorial.'”

Democracy Docket, founded by top Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias, called it “the end of the road for a conspiratorial lawsuit,” and Lake and Fincham, “election deniers.”

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Lake, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has yet to concede the 2022 election, which she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has a history of pushing exaggerated and baseless claims.

On Sunday, as MeidasTouch Network reported, Lake promoted an old, anti-Clinton conspiracy theory but twisted it to try to make it appear she was in danger from former U.S. Secretary of State and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Lake on Newsmax listened to a clip of Secretary Clinton calling Trump’s fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin a “bromance,” and saying the ex-president is “just gaga over Putin, because Putin does what he would like to do: kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive, you know, journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance.”

Then Lake promoted a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory by responding, “Oh, boy. Oh, that’s really rich coming from a woman like Hillary Clinton, who’s, how many of her friends have just like, mysteriously died or committed suicide?”

“I mean, honestly, that’s rich of her. What President Trump wants is to root out the corruption and deliver our government back to We The People and she looks very nervous. She talked about her friend Mark Elias, Mark Elias has meddled in in his and his cohorts have meddled in the elections.”

She called Democratic policies, “destructive, deadly and frankly, in some ways, diabolical,”and added, “it’s almost comical that Hillary Clinton is talking about Trump wanting to kill his opponents.”

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“I just want to say as I’m as I’m speaking about this topic, I want everyone out there to know that my brakes on my car have recently been checked and they work. I’m not suicidal. And Hillary, I don’t mean any harm to you. Please don’t send your henchmen out to me. We understand what you’re about. ”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide

 

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‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

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April 22, 2024

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MSNBC top host Rachel Maddow, inside Manhattan’s Criminal Courthouse on Monday declared Donald Trump appeared “old and tired and mad,” as she delivered observations about the ex-president on trial for 34 counts of falsification of business records alleged in the alleged pursuit of election interference to protect his 2016 presidential run.

Trump “seems considerably older, and he seems annoyed. Resigned, maybe, angry. he seems like a man who’s miserable to be here,” the award-winning journalist told MSNBC viewers Monday afternoon.

“I’m no body language expert,” she conceded, “and this is just my observation. He seemed old and tired and mad.”

The New York Times’ Susanne Craig, from inside the courthouse Monday morning reported: “Trump is struggling to stay awake. His eyes were closed for a short period. He was jolted awake when Todd Blanche, his lawyer, nudged him while sliding a note in front of him.”

The Biden campaign was only too happy to pick up and report Craig’s observation, adding “feeble.”

Former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, pointing to his piece at The Atlantic, wrote of Trump: “He has charmed & conned, schemed & marauded his way through life. He was bred that way. But the weariness & vulnerability captured in courtroom images betray a growing sense in Trump that he could wind up as the thing his old man most reviled:
A loser.”

Watch Maddow’s remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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April 22, 2024

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Prosecutors for the State of New York in their opening statement drew a direct line between the October 2016  “Access Hollywood” leaked audio and Donald Trump’s alleged “hush money” payoff to two women, including the adult film actress Stormy Daniels, telling the jury it was “election fraud, pure and simple.”

Legal experts are dissecting the prosecution’s opening argument. Professor of law, MSNBC contributor and former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann summed it up, saying New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg “squarely places the NY criminal trial in the election interference/corruption bucket– exactly what the DC and GA indictments allege, just 4 years later.”

“And the NY alleged ‘cover up’ is reminiscent of the two MAL [Mar-a-Lago] alleged obstruction schemes post-presidency, to keep prosecutors from uncovering evidence of that scheme,” Weissmann added.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo late Monday morning in his 45-minute opening argument told jurors, “This case is about criminal conspiracy and a cover up,” according to MSNBC’s Joyce Vance.

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“The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” Colangelo told jurors, CNN reports. “Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”

“This was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures,” Colangelo, a former U.S. Department of Justice Acting Associate Attorney General, told jurors.

“Another story about sexual infidelity, especially with a porn star, on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign,” Colangelo added. “’So at Trump’s direction, Cohen negotiated the deal to buy Daniels’ story,’ and prevent it from becoming public before the election.”

“It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

Vance, an MSNBC legal analyst, professor of law and former U.S. Attorney, explains: “The scheme the prosecution is outlining is catch & kill to elect Trump-awful but lawful. Trump crossed the line into illegality when he created false business records to conceal his payments to Cohen to cover up the payments to Stormy Daniels.”

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“It’s always the cover up,” she adds.

Professor of law and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman adds, the prosecution told jurors “a straight election-interference story.”

Colangelo, Litman says, told jurors that Trump’s then personal attorney Micheal Cohen “then discussed the [Stormy] situation with Trump who was adamant he did not want the story to come out. Another story…on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign.”

MSNBC legal contributor Katie Phang describes Colangelo’s opening argument, saying he is “working methodically and chronologically through the conspiracy, identifying the main characters and their involvement. He speaks clearly and succintly [sic].”

Trump has been criminally indicted in four separate cases and is facing a total of 88 felony charges, including 34 in his New York criminal trial for alleged falsification of business records to hide payments of hush money to an adult film actress and one other woman, in an alleged effort to suppress their stories and protect his 2016 presidential campaign, which could be deemed election interference.

Watch an MSNBC clip below or at this link.

 

READ MORE: Gaetz: ‘Corrupt’ Republicans Could ‘Take a Bribe’ and Throw House to Dems, Blocking Trump Run

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