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Op-Ed: One Year Later, We Are Still Not Okay

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We Owe it to Those in Orlando to Become the Voices They Lost

My husband and I live in St. Petersburg, Florida, where it’s not uncommon to take an “Orlando weekend.” We’re about an hour and a half away from the site of the Pulse Massacre.

We haven’t gone.

Not because we don’t want to pay our respects, and not because we haven’t been to Orlando. Not because my husband knew one of the victims or that you can’t really go anywhere in the Florida “gay scene” without talking to someone who knew someone that was at Pulse on June 12, 2016.

Not even because my husband and our friends had celebrated a friend’s birthday at Pulse just months before the massacre, only reaffirming that it could’ve been us or any one of our friends that had been there that night.

We haven’t been because the Pulse Massacre, the anti-gay hate crime which one year ago today claimed the lives of 49 people, injured 68 more, and remains the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11 and the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, is still just too fresh.

We’re no longer numb, but even now, a year later, we’re still not okay.

Those men and women, mostly people of color, were targeted because of how they looked, who they loved, how they loved, or whose love they supported. On June 12, 2016, the LGBT community found itself at the center of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, and even today, that’s a fact that can’t be stressed enough.

Sons, daughters, brother, sisters, cousins, best friends, music lovers, pet owners and activists were all taken from us that night, robbed from their families, their friends and their futures.

But as I noted then, the LGBT community is strong. We’re strong because we’ve always had to be. Because in 1969, when our only way to find acceptance was at a seedy bar, and when even our right to do that was threatened, the patrons of Stonewall showed us what strength was.

It’s a strength we carry with us, even if we don’t always recognize it as such. Those men and women, and those that fought after them, gave us their strength: if only in the fact that perhaps for one moment, we didn’t second-guess ourselves before showing even the most minuscule display of public affection toward someone we love.

We now carry the strength of the Pulse Massacre victims with us, too.

A lot’s happened in a year.  For me personally, I got married. For America, Donald Trump won the Electoral College and became the 45th President of the United States. And for the world, Britney Spears released her ninth studio album. (Kidding. I mean, she did… but I digress.)

I don’t pretend to speak for the entire LGBT community. But I can tell you that for many of us, we weren’t okay a year ago, we haven’t been okay since, and if we seem “off” today, it’s because:

We are still not okay.

We’re not okay that in 2017 alone, Republicans have introduced over 100 anti-LGBT bills in 20 states. Or that following their “thoughts and prayers” last year, they’ve done nothing to change the laws that allowed a madman who’d previously been questioned by the FBI to so readily, so easily, so legally, obtain an AR-15-style semi-automatic assault rifle.

We’re not okay when the Muslim community is demonized because of the actions of one evil man or group. Many of us are Muslim, and we’ve all “been” the Muslim community: hated, feared, misunderstood. Questioned, berated, threatened, afraid to show our faces. Detained. When you try to ban one of us, you try to ban us all. 

We’re not okay that the Secretary of Education admitted that she wouldn’t work to prohibit LGBT discrimination for students. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people ages 10-24, a rate that’s four times greater for queer youth. The Human Rights Campaign found that since the election, almost 50% of LGBT youth said they’d taken steps to hide their orientation, with 70% saying they’d witnessed bullying, hate messages or harassment.

We’re not okay that a man who favored conversion therapy to “needy” HIV treatment, who said that LGBT service members weakened the military and cost the Indiana economy $60 million for his “license to discriminate” against us now calls himself the Vice President of the United States.

And we’re not okay when the president himself completely ignored LGBT Pride, opting instead to declare June as, among other things, “National Home Ownership Month.” The silence is telling, even dangerous, especially after Pulse. One need only look at the ongoing decimation of Transgender people in modern America, particularly transgender women of color, to see the danger in it.

So we’re certainly not okay when that president offers his hollow thoughts on the massacre’s anniversary, complete with no mention of the LGBT community. A president that, one year ago today as a candidate, was quick to politicize the tragedy and even claim that he “called it,” attempting to use the 49 deaths “he’ll never forget” to justify his unconstitutional Muslim ban. (The madman responsible was born in New York.)

And that’s to say nothing of his subsequent lies and pandering for the LGBT vote, nor the speech he gave ten minutes from the site, without visiting it, to anti-LGBT leaders two months later. As I said, my husband and I still haven’t gone: there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a place of healing for many, reclaimed after tragedy—but for us, it’s still too soon.

Donald Trump just didn’t care to go. And the fact that he pushed for his pro-gun agenda just eight days after the recent terror attacks in London only speaks to that fact.

On the anniversary of this heartbreaking, mind-numbing tragedy, if we’re truly “One Pulse,” truly “One Orlando,” it’s important that we recognize that we still aren’t okay – but more importantly, act upon it. 

Speak out. Be heard. Be seen. Vote in 2018. Vote in 2020.

Silence is acceptance, and we owe it to those in Orlando to use their strength and become the voices that they lost.

In loving memory of Stanley Almodovar III, 23 years old. Amanda L. Alvear, 25 years old. Oscar A. Aracena Montero, 26 years old. Rodolfo Ayala Ayala, 33 years old. Antonio Davon Brown, 29 years old. Darryl Roman Burt II, 29 years old. Angel Candelario-Padro, 28 years old.

Of Juan Chavez Martinez, 25 years old. Luis Daniel Conde, 39 years old. Cory James Connell, 21 years old. Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25 years old. Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32 years old. Simón Adrian Carrillo Fernández, 31 years old. Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25 years old.

Of Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26 years old. Peter Ommy Gonzalez Cruz, 22 years old. Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old. Paul Terrell Henry, 41 years old. Frank Hernandez, 27 years old. Miguel Angel Honorato, 30 years old. Javier Jorge Reyes, 40 years old.

Of Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19 years old. Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 years old. Anthony Luis Laureano Disla, 25 years old. Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32 years old. Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 years old. Brenda Marquez McCool, 49 years old. Gilberto R. Silva Menendez, 25 years old.

Of Kimberly Jean Morris, 37 years old. Akyra Monet Murray, 18 years old. Luis Omar Ocasio Capo, 20 years old. Geraldo A. Ortiz Jimenez, 25 years old. Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old. Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32 years old. Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35 years old. Enrique L. Rios, Jr., 25 years old. 

Of Jean Carlos Nieves Rodríguez, 27 years old. Xavier Emmanuel Serrano-Rosado, 35 years old. Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24 years old. Yilmary Rodríguez Solivan, 24 years old. Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old. Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33 years old. Martin Benitez Torres, 33 years old.

Of Jonathan A. Camuy Vega, 24 years old. Juan Pablo Rivera Velázquez, 37 years old. Luis Sergio Vielma, 22 years old. Franky Jimmy DeJesus Velázquez, 50 years old. Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37 years old, and Jerald Arthur Wright, 31 years old.

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OPINION

Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

Published

14 hours ago

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April 26, 2024

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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”

“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”

“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”

READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”

Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”

She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.

On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.

Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.

“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”

The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.

“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”

“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.

“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

Published

17 hours ago

on

April 26, 2024

By

President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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News

CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

Published

20 hours ago

on

April 26, 2024

By

Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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