"Have You No Sense of Decency?"

That is what Edward R. Murrow on his television show “See It Now” asked Wisconsin Republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy and another Republican needs to be asked that question today.

Lawmaker Mocks Trans Health Secretary, Denounces ‘Discrimination Against Unmasked’

Forbes

By Dawn Ennis

August 1, 2020

Some political hot water reached the boiling point this week in an ongoing tiff between an outspoken Republican opponent of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and State Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine.

After months tolerating slurs involving her gender identity, Levine spoke out on Tuesday in response, ahead of a news conference on the spread of Covid-19 pandemic in her state. One day later, State Rep. Russ Diamond of Lebanon County, Penn., issued a statement that parroted Levine’s words, but he did so in defense of those — like him — who refuse to wear masks to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.

Diamond, who was elected to the statehouse in 2014, has openly criticized Levine’s order that requires most Pennsylvanians to wear a mask in public, except in rare cases of health concerns.

Like Senator McCarthy, Representative Diamond needs to be asked if he has if he has any decency. It is one thing to attack the Democrat policies and another to attack a person.

The governor called on Diamond’s superiors in the Republican legislative caucus to censure the representative for mimicking Levine, calling it a “thinly veiled attack on the LGBTQ community,” according to the Pa Post.

“To equate any disrespect for those not wearing masks to the decades of disrespect, threats, and violence against our LGBTQ community goes far beyond the hallmarks of a decent society,” Wolf said in a statement. “For these actions to come from a legislator elected to fairly represent all his constituents is simply unforgivable.”

But somehow the Republicans don’t seem to see the difference. They have no sense of decency at all.

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As temperatures rise in America’s summer of discontent, a transgender doctor becomes a flashpoint

The Daily Maverick

By Glen Retief

August 2, 2020

In Johannesburg, three decades ago, the homophobes were out in force: bible-thumpers trying to save our souls; right-wingers with their AWB swastikas. Last week, too, there were missionaries galore, with bibles and salvation brochures; giant pickup trucks, with gun racks and Trump 2020 signs, revving their engines at us, and in some cases shouting ‘queer!’ and ‘faggot!

What a blistering summer this is turning out to be for the United States. It is not just the literal heat, unprecedented here in my adoptive home of Pennsylvania.

Patients are running fevers, too. Like South Africa, the US is a world leader in uncontrolled coronavirus spread, at around 18 new cases per day, per 100,000 residents: the comparable figure for Greece is only 0.3. 

[…]

Enter Dr Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health—the equivalent of, say, Dr Bandile Masuku or Dr Nomafrench Mbombo. Levine has, for the past four months, been the public face of Pennsylvania’s coronavirus response. In semi-weekly television briefings, she has explained and justified one of America’s tougher Covid regulatory regimens, one which has spared our state the spectacle of, say, people crowding into bars, nightclubs and churches, even as hospital morgues order refrigerator trucks for excess bodies.

Jumping back into time to before the plague when she was nominated for Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health…

By all accounts, Levine is a star, having earned degrees from Harvard and Tulane, and rising to become one of the top doctors at the famed Hershey Medical Centre. The Republican-controlled Pennsylvania Senate unanimously confirmed her, without any attention to her gender identity.

You got that? The Senate unanimously confirmed her!

But now things have changed, the Republicans are falling behind in the polls and have a chance of losing control of the Senate and House and the Republicans go for the jugular.

Then at a country fair in Pennsylvania, they had a dunking booth just like at the fair in my hometown but unlike my hometown where you dunk a high schooler…

Then came Saturday, 18 July. A group of hose companies held a fundraiser at the grounds of the Bloomsburg Fair, a giant agricultural fair held down the road every September. Hose companies – volunteer firefighting clubs in small-town America – have, like everyone else, been hit hard by the coronavirus, since they make most of their income from late-night bars.

However, the most popular game that day turned out to be a dunk tank. There, a man dressed in a garish parody of Levine – long, blonde wig, bookish spectacles, and a flowery dress – sat under a target. For a fee, locals could throw a ball, and if they hit the bull’s eye – bam, the mock cross-dressed Health Secretary would end up in a tank.

No they don’t have any decency. What they don't see that belittling and mocking people and communities is wrong they have lost their moral compass.