I Knew This Was Coming, The Handwriting Was On The Wall

With all the flack over LGBTQ+ in schools I saw this as only a matter of time that this would happen.

Conservatives Are Ludicrously Accusing GLSEN of ‘Grooming’ Kids

They claim that making school better for queer and trans kids is somehow indoctrinating kids into “woke gender ideology.”

The Advocate

By Christopher Wiggins

June 6 2023

As conservatives continue their attacks on LGBTQ+ people and their supporters during Pride Month, GLSEN is the next target for right-wing conservatives after they attacked Target and the company’s associates.

Target announced it was removing different Pride merchandise from its stores after conservatives filmed themselves attacking Pride displays and ranting about the items. The conservative movement has taken its frustrations out on Target for alleged “grooming” of children based on “woke” beliefs.

Even Target partner GLSEN has been attacked by conservative outlets like Fox News.

As a nonprofit organization, GLSEN commits to ending anti-LGBTQ+ prejudice and harassment in K-12 education. The group has been working with Target for many years. Since their decades-long relationship began, Target has donated over $2 million to the nonprofit. However, conservatives see this relationship as supporting child “grooming.”

According to Fox News, GLSEN was pushing “gender ideology” in all classes, conflating its guidance on how educators can accommodate trans and nonbinary students in math classes with gender ideology.

You know that the Republicans and the conservatives don’t want inclusion, they want segregation. They don’t want to get along with us, they want us in the closet.

As a result of its support of LGBTQ+ authors and books, GLSEN has also been accused of promoting “sexually explicit” books to children. All of these claims are false.

GLSEN employees have received threatening and hateful messages due to this media assault.

According to GLSEN’s executive director Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, these attacks are familiar.

“Unfortunately, these vicious attacks from right-wing extremists and media are nothing new. We’ve seen this playbook before — they create blatantly false narratives knowing that it will fire up their base, unleashing hate and violence,” they told The Advocate in a statement.

And it is only going to get worst!

And I fear if the Republicans get a trifecta with Congress and the presidency.

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This is what the Republicans are stirring up!

The animosity that the conservatives are creating, and it is disgusting!

Is ‘Anti-Woke’ Bar in Florida Mocking Pulse Victims With 49-Cent Buds?

The owner wanted to “poke the woke,” according to screenshots allegedly taken of the bar's social media.

The Advocate

By Christopher Wiggins

June 5 2023

An establishment in Florida has come under fire after seemingly offering a promotion that celebrates the deaths of 49 people in the tragic Pulse Nightclub massacre in an attempt to make fun of liberals.

The bar, MoonCricket Grille in Winter Garden, posted a flier to its Facebook page advertising 49-cent Bud Light bottles, urging patrons to “take one for the team,” noting, “It’s okay if you want to buy a bottle and have it poured down the drain.”

The promotion was for May 31, the day before Pride Month.

People on Facebook discovered the advertisement and called out the bar for being insensitive.

“So I just went into Moon Cricket in downtown Winter Garden, FL, to verify if this ad that they had on their Facebook page was legit,” wrote Andy Wright. “I talked to the first person that I came in contact with and asked her about the legitimacy of the ad and what did it mean.”

I am just bringing this to people’s attention to let them know that, based on this ad, this particular establishment supports homophobia, hate, and inequality, specifically within the LGBTQ+ community. I, for one, will never be giving them my business,” he concluded.

There is no proof that was what they meant but is a coincident that 49 people died and the beers are 49¢? But there indications that the bar knew what they were doing.

The post has since been removed from the establishment’s page, but screen grabs of comments reviewed by The Advocate indicate that the owner knew the uproar the promotion would cause.

“It’s been a while since I played Poke a Woke; I forgot how much fun it is. They are so easy,” somebody wrote from the restaurant’s Facebook account.

These people are sick! They are gleeful over our deaths.

“This is the infuriating and inevitable outcome of the kind of climate that DeSantis and his right-wing allies have created in Florida,” Wolf tells The Advocate. “My best friends and the 47 other victims of Pulse are not a punchline. What I and so many others went through that night isn’t right-wing marketing fodder. This community -- our entire state -- deserves better than emboldened right-wing hysteria bait that desecrates the memories of people we loved and peddles our grief for clicks and giggles. Shame on him.”

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At school Pride event the rhetoric and threats are increasing...  

‘The hate never went away’: US schools face violent Pride backlash

The decision to observe Pride did not spark street brawls last year. This time, things were very different

The Guardian

By: Lois Beckett

11 June 2023

Hundreds of furious demonstrators. Police in riot gear. Barricades on the street and helicopters overhead. This was the scene outside a suburban California school board meeting this week, as the board planned to vote on whether the district should officially recognize June as LGBTQ+ pride month.

A year ago, the decision to observe Pride at schools in Glendale, a suburb about 20 minutes from downtown Los Angeles, did not spark street brawls or result in multiple arrests. But this year things were different.

Did you get that? There was no problems with Pride in all the other years no problems this year problems, so what changed in a year?

Maebe Pudlo, a trans nonbinary activist and drag queen who has run for US congress in the district, was among those who showed up to the Glendale unified school district’s meeting. She says local advocates supporting Pride were greeted by people calling them “groomers” and “pedophiles”, and were accused of trying to “indoctrinate” children.

[…]

Local journalists and advocates said that multiple rightwing activists with a history of violence were present at the Glendale incident. The unrest came less than a week after protesters and police clashed outside a North Hollywood elementary school during a demonstration over a planned Pride assembly. There, too, protesters were seen wearing T-shirts reading “Leave our kids alone,” and a trailer with a “leave our kids alone” banner drove through the streets.

What pumped up the Right this year?

Just three years ago, a surging QAnon conspiracy theory movement claimed that Democrats and other elite figures were torturing and violating children as part of satanic rituals, lurid allegations that helped galvanize the January 6 attack on the US capitol.

Now, those same kind of political “conspiracies” are being applied to LGBTQ+ people, Bamby Salcedo, the president of the TransLatin@ Coalition in Los Angeles, noted.

The misanthropes got a green like from the politicians in 2017 Trump call the white nationalists who protested in Charlottesville “some very fine people.” The Los Angles Times wrote…

“The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism,” Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the former third-ranking member of that leadership, who has been exiled for her candor, wrote Monday on Twitter.

“History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse,” Cheney wrote. GOP leaders “must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”

In another Guardian article,

Almost a third of Republicans believe violence may be necessary to “save” the US, according to a new poll.

Republicans are most likely to believe “true American patriots may have to resort to violence”, PRRI found, with just 11% of Democrats and 17% of independents agreeing with the statement. Among all Americans, 18% agreed.

“It is an alarming finding,” Robert Jones, chief executive and founder of PRRI [Public Religion Research Institute], told Yahoo News. “I’ve been doing this a while, for decades, and it’s not the kind of finding that as a sociologist, a public opinion pollster, that you’re used to seeing.”

And they Republicans are pumping the use of violence up and around the country the rhetoric and violence is increasing by the Republican Brownshirts… The Proud Boys, Patriot Front, and the Oath Keepers that use fear and violence to bully us into silence.