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Pandemic In Puerto Rico: 3 LGBT Murders This Week, 18 In 18 Months

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At least three gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender Americans have been murdered in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico this week, bringing the tragic total to 18 in the past year and a half. While there are both local and federal hate crimes laws that would assist authorities in investigating and potentially stemming the rapid rise of these anti-gay hate crimes, the Republican Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis G. Fortuño, has often refused to implement or access these statutes.

Luis G. Fortuño, whose term began in January, 2009, refused to classify as a hate crime the infamous  decapitation murder of 19-year old Jorge Steven López Mercado, perhaps the most-publicized of the 18 murders. Only under threat from the federal government, was Mercado’s murder investigated as a possible hate crime. Last year, Fortuño attempted to ban same-sex marriage in Puerto Rico permanently via a constitutional amendment.

In addition to the murder of Jorge Steven López Mercado on November 14, 2009, the following have also been classified as LGBT murders:

  • Michaell Galindo
  • Ashley Santiago
  • Angie González Oquendo
  • Fernando López de Victoria
  • Humberto Bonilla Rodríguez
  • Michelle González García
  • La Flaca Soto Fernández
  • Benjamín Acevedo Román
  • Charlotte Crespo
  • Frank Di Giovani
  • Ivan McDonald
  • Edwin Rodríguez Grajales
  • Ezequiel Crespo
  • Eugenio Alberto Rivera Ortiz
  • Karlota Brown
  • Alejandro Torres Torres
  • Ramón ‘Moncho’ Salgado

Tuesday, Edge On The Net National News Editor Michael K. Lavers was the first to recognize that in addition to the deaths this week of Karlota Gómez Sánchez and Alejandro Torres Torres, “Salgado is the 18th LGBT Puerto Rican who has been murdered on the island over the last year and a half.” Lavers added, “This is simply unacceptable. And people really need to begin to pay attention to this appalling situation in Puerto Rico that continues to grow worse by the day.”

Today, The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force issued a statement “calling upon authorities to act immediately to address the ongoing anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) violence in Puerto Rico.”

Task Force Communications Manager Pedro Julio Serrano, Founder, Puerto Rico Para Tod@s, added,

“The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force stands in solidarity with the LGBT community in Puerto Rico and sends its deepest condolences to the families and friends of Karlota Gómez Sánchez, Ramón Salgado and Alejandro Torres Torres. As someone who grew up in Puerto Rico and has been very active in its LGBT community, this is a heart-wrenching moment. Our thoughts and sympathies go out to all of the victims’ loved ones at this difficult time. Justice must prevail. This is about members of the Puerto Rican LGBT community feeling safe in their communities and being able to take care of the ones they love. We call upon the authorities and political leaders to effectively address this epidemic of anti-LGBT violence. This must stop now.”

On his personal blog, Serrano said the LGBT communities “are on alert to the danger that lurks and the government’s response is zero. They are killing us with impunity and the government turns a blind eye. The official response so far has been silent or complicit, shameful and immoral as is the case with Fortuño or a blatant homophobia that incites to violence as is the case of Rivera Schatz. It is time for the governor of all Puerto Ricans to recognize that there is a problem of violence against gay people, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in our country, we’re as Puerto Ricans as heterosexuals,” according to a Google translation.

GLAAD today told The New Civil Rights Movement via email they are calling on “local and national media to keep shining an all-important spotlight on the terrible violence being faced by the gay and transgender people in Puerto Rico. We will continue monitoring media and reaching out to journalists to ensure they have the resources they need to do this in ways that are fair, accurate and inclusive.”

HRC on Wednesday “called upon federal and local government officials and law enforcement authorities to strengthen their efforts to implement a long-term strategy to address violence against LGBT individuals in Puerto Rico.”

“The alarming rate of violence against LGBT Puerto Rican’s cannot be tolerated,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese in a statement. “Puerto Rican government officials and law enforcement, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, must ensure that LGBT people have the protection they need to survive.  When a community has to live in constant fear of violence and even death for who they are, everyone suffers.”

 

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Carville Says There’s Only ‘One Thing’ Trump Is Thinking About on His China Trip

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Democratic strategist and political commentator James Carville is blasting what he says is the “one thing” President Donald Trump is thinking about on his trip to China, and it has nothing to do with diplomacy, the U.S. economy, or the war in Iran.

Carville told Al Hunt on their Politicon podcast that it was “really interesting” that all the people he took to China were essentially the people who were in the “first three rows” from his inaugural address. He “put them on Air Force One, and he took Eric — who handles the business end of his business.”

“You’re going to watch a grift and graft over there, like you can’t imagine,” Carville continued. “That’s all this trip is about, and I got news for you, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sixpack, or whoever you are out there, he doesn’t give a s—— about you, your future, your finances, your retirement, your anything.”

“He just cares about making all the money he can as fast as he can, and people [who] don’t realize that are just, just woefully stupid.”

Hunt reminded Carville that earlier this week Trump said, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”

READ MORE: Republicans Are Now Doing to Trump What Few in the GOP Have Ever Dared to Do

“Oh, you don’t, Donald,” Hunt responded. “Well, you know something? I think a lot of Americans think about their financial situation, and I’m sure those billionaire oligarchs you’re traveling with don’t, but a lot of voters do, and, uh, you’re gonna pay, you’re gonna pay a price.”

Carville added that Trump also said that he doesn’t even think of Iran.

“I think there’s only one thing that he’s thinking about in his trip to China. And that is a big grift,” Carville said. “Look at who he’s taking with him.”

Carville said there would be “economic exchanges” and “investment opportunities” during the China trip.

“You can see, this is where this is going,” he continued. “They just buy him off. He does not care.”

“He doesn’t care if he, as long as he can go there and make as much money, as fast as he can make it, that’s all what he cares about.”

READ MORE: ‘Rededicating the Country to God’: Trump White House Hosts Evangelical Christian Festival

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Christian Content Creator Fighting Sin Is Teaching Others How to Eat Biblically: NYT

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27-year-old Michigan-raised Kayla Bundy is a Christian content creator who turned to the Bible for ways to eat healthy — but her lifestyle is also part of a “higher calling,” The New York Times reports, explaining that she is “a biblical eater, someone who consumes mostly foods mentioned in the Bible.”

“Sin entered into the world through food,” Bundy told the Times, “and Satan doesn’t stop there. Food, for me, is really like a weapon of how I can fight back.”

According to the Times, a “diet inspired by the Bible has found new audiences online in the Make America Healthy Again era.”

Bundy, who has over 500,000 followers on TikTok, and has been eating biblically for eight years, “claims that her diet ‘fixed’ her skin, her hair and her depression, and she sells coaching sessions to help others with their diets,” The Times reports. She “is open about not having nutrition credentials, but she sells a $28 digital guide to biblical superfoods, as well as coaching sessions that start around $700 for a month, she said.”

READ MORE: Republicans Are Now Doing to Trump What Few in the GOP Have Ever Dared to Do

She buys raw milk, eats sardines and authentic sourdough bread without commercial yeast, and tries to cook with locally sourced foods.

“I had never really thought to look to the Bible for a recipe book,” said Bundy, who now lives in Bali. Cutting out refined sugar made her feel good, and she started “studying scripture from that lens of noticing what they are eating.”

32-year old Georgia stay-at-home mom Annalies Xaviera “posts biblical eating tips,” and “said her Facebook following had jumped from scant thousands to over 300,000 in just a few weeks this spring. She sells a digital cookbook.”

“The Bible says that God appreciates and celebrates small steps of obedience,” Xaviera told the Times.

“When you’re in a craving,” she said, “have you ever thought to stop and pray?”

READ MORE: ‘Rededicating the Country to God’: Trump White House Hosts Evangelical Christian Festival

 

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‘Rededicating the Country to God’: Trump White House Hosts Evangelical Christian Festival

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The Trump White House is hosting an unprecedented Christian prayer festival Sunday on the National Mall — a nine-hour event that a Trump advisor describes as “rededicating the country to God.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and House Speaker Mike Johnson are all expected to appear.

The funding for “Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving,” comes in part from taxpayer dollars earmarked for America’s 250th birthday celebration, organizers say, according to The Washington Post.

The speakers are almost all Christian, and expected to largely be evangelical Protestant leaders and members of the Trump administration, “many of whom have embraced the message that America’s founders wanted the country to be explicitly Christian,” the Post reports. The event will have a “focus on American identity as aligned with a specific slice of conservative Protestantism.”

Pastor Paula White-Cain, Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office who delivered the invocation at President Donald Trump’s first inauguration, said the Jubilee “is about the history and the foundations of our nation, which was built on Christian values, on the Bible.”

“This is really truly rededicating the country to God,” she added.

READ MORE: Republicans Are Now Doing to Trump What Few in the GOP Have Ever Dared to Do

According to The Guardian, the invited speakers include those who experts have been “characterized as Christian nationalist or extremist.”

Among them, a pastor who has called the Democratic platform “demonic,” the Guardian says, along with “a rabbi who has defended the use of torture,” and “a Christian author and radio host who said in 2020 he would die in the fight to keep Joe Biden out of the White House and was later named in a defamation suit over 2020 election fraud claims.”

Scholars have deemed the event unprecedented in the modern era.

“I’m unaware of anything like this, with this involvement of senior government officials, on this scale, trying to paint this false picture of the United States as a quote unquote Christian nation,” Amanda Tyler told the Post. Tyler is executive director of BJC, a Baptist group that promotes religious liberty through church-state separation. “Trump’s rhetoric in the past 18 months is how he’s ‘going to make America Christian again,’ that it’s his job to push religion. This is all part of that piece.”

Princeton University historian Kevin Kruse told the Post, “There’s a difference between saying America is a nation with many Christians in it and that America is a nation dedicated to Christianity and defined by it.”

“Those are very different things,” he said.

Kruse also noted that the only rules about religion that the framers of the Constitution wrote “were ones that keep religion at arm’s length. No establishment, no limits on free exercise, no religious test for office.”

But the Trump White House defended the event, its focus, and its list of speakers.

Brittany Baldwin, executive director of the White House’s 250 Task Force, in an April webinar, said: “We worked very hard with the faith leaders we trust … to ensure that we hear their concerns and we have the right focus for our community of believers, across the country. So I think if you do see another religion represented, it would probably be in a modest way.”

Paula White-Cain went even further, saying that the jubilee would not include leaders “praying to all these different Gods.”

READ MORE: Republicans Are Using a Secret Super PAC to Pour $1 Million Into Democratic Primaries

 

Image via Reuters 

 

 

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