New York Times Gets Into The Gay-Bashing Gutter
In its January 22, 2012 article, “G.O.P. Ventures Into Florida, a State Harder to Pigeonhole,” the New York Times used two propagandistic euphemisms to describe political gay bashers, yet never once directly mentioned gay rights as issues of consequence in the Republican primaries.
One of the offending euphemisms is the phrase “family values issues.” Â Despite wan attempts by Democrats to stake a claim on that phrase so that anti-gay bigots do not exclusively define it, it remains mainly and overwhelmingly a political gay basher’s bludgeon.
An Internet search of the terms “family values” and “Florida” very quickly reveals that reactionary anti-gay-rights forces have political control over the phrase “family values.” Â Florida law makers proposed tax credits to movie production companies which film on a so-called “family values” basis — and the proposed law specifically excluded movies with gay characters favorably depicted from the tax credit. In reporting on that matter, The New York Times used the phrase “family values films” in its story headline. Unambiguously there, the Times was conveying the notion that excluding gay people from films puts the films in the “family values” category.
Even if only through editorial carelessness, the Times endorsed the notion that gay people do not belong in “family values” films. The Faith and Family Values Republican Club of Pasco County website includes links to many anti-gay hate groups. The Florida Family Policy Council — which bills itself as a “family values” organization and lobbying group — pulls out all the stops in its political gay bashing. One could go on and on showing evidence that among Republicans in Florida, “family values” and “anti-gay-rights” are synonymous. The state issues a Family Values license plate.  Proceeds from sales of the license plate go to Sheridan House, a purported charity. Sheridan House does not on its website say anything directly against gay human beings, but, it holds religious rallies at the New Testament Baptist Church, whose site links to some of the most virulent political gay bashers in the country. Furthermore, the Sheridan House site appears not to link to any gay-affirmative organizations.
The second offending euphemism in the Times article is “rock-ribbed social conservatives.” “Rock-ribbed” is a flattering, not neutral phrase. Significantly, the Times posited “rock-ribbed social conservatives” in Florida’s north as having different political concerns than Republican Cuban-Americans in the state’s south, yet the Cuban-American United States Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, is maliciously and very aggressively anti-gay. The Associated Press has reported that Gingrich’s evangelical supporters in Florida are planning a conference call — a veritable anti-gay-rights pep rally — with 1,000 pastors.  Two days before the Times article appeared, Santorum’s honorary campaign chairman in Florida, Reverend O’Neal Dozier said that gays “make God want to vomit.”  The Florida Prayer Network — whose leaders say that gay rights cause natural disasters — is not shy about announcing on its Facebook page that it is allied against gay Floridians with many of the state’s elected officials and that together, they pray against gay human beings’ rights every Tuesday inside the Florida State Capitol.
The editorial board of The New York Times consistently expresses support for gay rights, yet allows hacks like Ross Douthat to allege that ending sexual orientation apartheid is tantamount to abandoning Western civilization. Whereas all leading Republican presidential candidates have signed the malignantly anti-gay “pledge” from the so-called National Organization for Marriage — and whereas NOM has been a sponsor of several of the Republican debates — The New York Times has not yet apparently reported on that “pledge” or published an exposé of NOM and its hate-mongering activities. And that is so, even though right in the Bronx in May, during a NOM-sponsored anti-gay hate rally, a preacher hollered through a megaphone at a mob of anti-gay bigots that God says homosexuals are “worthy to death.” We should not forget that in Florida, NOM produced a fund-raising video with Jerry Buell, who in his public high school class had said that gay people should be allowed to serve in the military, at the front lines with heterosexual troops deserting them from behind.
On a most urgent basis, The New York Times editorial board should resolve never again to use the phrase “family values” as a euphemism for political gay bashing. And they should take the hint — already — to carry out and to publish an in-depth investigative report about the so-called National Organization for Marriage and its pernicious influence on the presidential election.
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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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
