After Anti-Gay Activists Donate $842,387 To Pizzeria, Three LGBT Youth Orgs Ask For Help
Three worthwhile organizations that work to help LGBT youth are asking for a bit of support in the wake of a nearly million-dollar fundraiser that helped an anti-gay marriage Indiana pizzeria.
Last week news of Indiana’s anti-gay “religious freedom” law consumed the nation, and a small town pizzeria whose owners shut down after announcing support for the discriminatory legislation walked away with $842,387 in proceeds donated by anti-gay conservatives whipped into a homophobic frenzy by Rush Limbaugh.
That GoFundMe campaign for Memories Pizza was started by a Glenn Beck Internet TV host, but it was Limbaugh’s direction to donate that escalated the funds to almost one million dollars.
“Just ram it down these people’s throats,” Limbaugh urged.Â
“These people” being the LGBT community. Yes, Limbaugh told his listeners that it “takes a concerted effort rooted in lies and fraud and deceit sponsored by 10 people paid for by George Soros and Media Matters to gin something like” the attacks on Memories Pizza, “and to make you get dispirited and depressed, and think that you are vastly overwhelmed and outnumbered. You are not. We’re talking about a minority that’s not even 5% of the population here.”
And donate in the name of hate they did.Â
But now, in the wake of all that, three worthwhile groups who work with LGBT youth are asking for a bit of help, a bit of the (pizza?) pie, if you can excuse the pun.
LGBT activist Scott Wooledge has been advocating for Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors Fund. He created the Pizza 4 Equality campaign to help.
There is much disgust and consternation in the LGBT community over a viral fundraiser effort, that has as of this writing, earned $842,387. Many have lamented, “If only our cause could raise that much money that fast.” I say, yes, we can.
So I looked and saw that Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors Fund has set April 29 as the first national #40toNoneDay to end #LGBT youth homelessness! And I thought, would it not be totally awesome if we equality supporters (and pizza lovers) could match that #MemoriesPizza  “charity” by April 29?  Can we match their amount and help homeless youth get off the street, learn life skills and get an education and jobs?
Dan Savage agrees:
40% of homeless youth are LGBT kids thrown out by their families—that why I’m donating. Please consider donating: http://t.co/t23fZcg4nN
— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) April 4, 2015
You can donate via their GoFundMe page.
If you’re feeling like you want to counter the anti-gay hate in Indiana directly, consider the Indiana Youth Group. They’ve started a GoFundMe campaign in response to the Memories Pizza campaign too.
“IYG has been around since 1987 providing safe spaces and support for LGBT youth,” their GoFundMe page reads. “They were founded ‘in response to the dismal suicide, homeless, and dropout rates of self-identified gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth in Indianapolis.'”
You can check out their webpage and Facebook page.
And last but not least, the good folks at Equality House and Planting Peace have an awesome challenge.
In an email they sent NCRM, they explain:
“In the spirit of Easter a donor has come forward and said he will give 100 rooms to LGBTQ youth and families if we hit our goal of raising $100,000 in our virtual pizza party that is countering the anti-gay pizza story.”
That’s a fantastic gift!
You remember Equality House is the rainbow painted house that sits directly across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church, as a daily reminder for them.
On their Facebook page, they write:
For a fraction of the money they raised for hate, you can literally change the lives of hundreds of our LGBTQ family facing homelessness. Let’s show the world that together, we can affect true positive change for a very worthy cause.
You can contribute via their CrowdRise fundraising campaign page.
If you can, give a little, or a lot. If you can’t, why not share this message with folks you know? Let’s start the week off on a good note and help make a difference for kids who really need our help!
Â
Image by torbakhopper via Flickr and a CC license
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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
